The First Stone tlr-6

by Mark Anthony

  Nim’s scream ceased. The girl collapsed to the floor in a small heap. Ti’an closed her mouth. She gazed at the motionless girl, then turned and bent back over Travis.

  Vani was the first to recover. “Nim!” she cried, running toward the girl.

  Farr started moving a moment later. Ti’an glared at him, thrusting a hand in his direction. The dervish ceased moving. He stood still, staring forward, and a thin line of spittle trickled from the corner of his mouth. Grace looked at Larad. Could he do something with the Great Stones? No, he was staring like Farr, motionless, a blank expression on his face.

  Ti’an seemed to concentrate on the two men for a moment, then she turned her head. For a moment she gazed at Grace, but her expression was dismissive. Then she bent again over Travis, turning his head, exposing the gleaming skin of his neck. She raised the knife.

  Vani had just reached Nim and was picking her up. Larad and Farr weren’t moving. No one could do anything. No one but Grace. The power of the Weirding was all but gone; she had no magic. However, she had something better.

  Fury.

  “Get your bloody hands off of him, bitch!” spoke a hard voice, and Grace knew it for her own.

  Ti’an’s nose wrinkled as she bared pointed teeth. She opened her mouth to scream again. However, Grace was already running. As the first siren‑like wail rose on the air, Grace gritted her teeth, ignoring the pain, and threw herself forward, up the steps of the dais.

  The wail ceased as she crashed into Ti’an. The knife flew through the air, then skittered to a stop on the lowest step. Grace’s momentum carried her forward, so that she landed on top of the golden woman. It was like embracing a bronze statue that had just been broken out of its mold, still glowing with forge heat. Grace tried to pull away.

  Slender arms and legs coiled around her. In an easy motion, Ti’an flipped her over. Air whooshed out of Grace as she landed hard, the sharp edge of a step cutting into her back. Ti’an straddled her, thighs squeezing Grace’s rib cage. Her delicate hands closed around Grace’s throat, crushing her windpipe. Ti’an’s face was impassive, like that of a golden sculpture; her breath was hot and metallic. Stars exploded in front of Grace’s eyes as Ti’an’s fingers tightened around her neck. . . .

  Ti’an froze, her dark eyes going wide. Her mouth opened, but this time no siren call came out. Instead, dark fluid stained her lips.

  “My love . . .” she gasped.

  Then she slumped to one side and rolled down the steps of the dais.

  Air rushed into Grace’s lungs, delicious and painful. After several ragged breaths, she managed to push herself up on one elbow. Ti’an’s body lay at the foot of the dais. The knife jutted from the center of her back. Already her golden skin was beginning to go dull.

  “Are you all right, Grace?” said a gentle, familiar voice.

  Grace looked up. Travis stood above her, his gray eyes concerned. Pain filled her–the good kind, the ache that let her know she was still alive.

  Travis, she tried to say, but the word couldn’t escape her bruised throat.

  “Don’t speak,” he said, as if she had the power to do so. He knelt, touching her cheek. “Thanks for coming after me again.”

  She smiled and made a gesture with her hands, one that spoke as eloquently as any the mute man Sky had ever made. That’s what I do.

  Then she wept as he held her in his arms.

  42.

  Travis cradled Grace gently as she pressed her face against his chest, sobbing. Strangely, he did not feel like weeping himself. Instead he felt alive, exhilarated.

  By Olrig, you showed her!Jack Graystone’s voice crowed in his mind. Thought she could use your blood for her own ends. Well, she found herself on the other end of the knife!

  “Shut up, Jack,” Travis growled under his breath.

  “What?” Grace said, pushing back and wiping her cheeks.

  Travis helped her up. “I said, ‘How’s Nim?’ ”

  “She is well,” Vani said, approaching the dais, holding Nim by the hand. The girl walked beside the T’gol, pale‑faced, but apparently unharmed by whatever Ti’an’s scream had done to her.

  Though unable to move, even to see, when he was lying on the dais, Travis had been aware of everything that had been taking place around him. The air of this place seemed to hum, transmitting everything that happened within its walls and carrying it to him in a way light and sound could not. He had his back to the two of them; all the same he knew Farr and Larad approached, faces haggard.

  “She was sad,” Nim said, gazing down at Ti’an’s motionless body. “She was so sad, she wanted to hurt everybody.”

  Grace knelt before the girl and brushed a dark curl from her face. “Why was she sad, Nim?”

  The girl pointed to the shriveled mummy chained to the throne.

  “Orъ,” Farr said, taking a step up the dais. “So he’s dead after all.”

  “For a good long time, by the look of him,” Larad said, giving Ti’an’s body a wide berth.

  Travis picked up his fallen serafiand shrugged it on. “She wanted to resurrect him.”

  Grace stood, her expression startled. “Could she have?”

  “She believed she could,” Vani said, gesturing to the golden bowl. “She would have caught your blood in that, and taken it to him.”

  Travis moved up the dais, toward the mummy on the throne. When Ti’an had seduced him, he had fallen not only under her power, but under her thoughts as well. He had glimpsed her mind, as well as the single purpose that had consumed it.

  “She recognized his blood flowing in me. She believed it had the power to restore him. I’m not certain if she was right.” He started to reach out toward one of the skeletal hands curled on the arm of the throne, then pulled back. “I’m not sure the single drop in me would have been enough. I think it would take far more to do it. But she was determined to try. She loved him. For three thousand years, ever since the fall of Morindu, she’s been waiting to bring him back to life. And now . . .”

  “Now they are together,” Vani said, the words rueful. She knelt beside Ti’an’s body. The once‑golden skin was chalky now. “She was my ancestor. I am of the royal line of Morindu. I am descended of her and Orъ.”

  “Perhaps that explains it then,” Farr said. He had been examining the mummy on the throne.

  Vani looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “She was a nexus, just like Nim. That was how she could enter this place and guard Orъ in his slumber. I think when she screamed, when she was angry or alarmed enough, it . . . affected the flow of events. And I think it’s the same for Nim.”

  Grace held a hand to her throat, wincing. “When they were both screaming like that, it felt like I was falling apart.”

  “That’s because you were,” Farr said. Travis noticed he did not gaze at Grace. Instead, his dark eyes were on Vani. “We all were. We were being torn apart by the pull of infinite possibilities, of infinite fates. Each of us might have lived our lives in countless other ways. I think what we felt were those different lives intersecting, overlapping. And canceling one another out, like sound waves can cancel each other out if aligned properly.”

  “Is that why they were both screaming?” Grace said. “To neutralize the other?” She looked at Nim, but the girl seemed suddenly shy and hung her head, letting her hair cover her face.

  Travis wasn’t certain he completely understood all this, yet Farr’s words feltright. Only when Ti’an and Nim had screamed, it hadn’t affected him as it had the others. With Ti’an’s attention focused on Nim, her spell of seduction had lost its hold on Travis. He had been able to stand, take the knife in his hands, and use it against her. But why hadn’t he been affected by her scream like the rest of them?

  “Only a dead man has no fate,” Grace murmured.

  Had she heard his thoughts? No, the Weirding was too weak for that now. All the same, she had understood what he was thinking. He felt Farr’s eyes on him. However, before he coul
d say anything, Larad’s excited voice came from across the chamber.

  “Look at these markings. They’re fascinating–more like pictures than writing. I feel I should almost be able to understand them.”

  “Do not stray too far from Nim!” Vani called out to the Runelord.

  The girl raised her head and touched Vani’s arm. “It’s all right, Mother. It’s safe here now.”

  Travis shut his eyes, again feeling the hum all around him. “I think she’s right. I think what she and Ti’an did together . . . I think it pulled the threads of fate, untangling them.” He opened his eyes. “And now that Orъ is dead, they won’t tangle again. What have you found, Master Larad?”

  The Runelord was running his hands over the wall. “It’s a story.”

  “A story of what?” Farr said, approaching.

  Vani, Nim, Grace, and Travis followed. Then Travis saw the markings, and in an instant he understood.

  “Everything,” he said softly. “It’s the story of everything.”

  He moved past Larad, to the wall, tracing the carvings in the stone with a finger.

  “They’re like the pictographs we saw in the cave beneath Tarras,” Grace said, turning around. “Only there are so many of them. It would take ages to try to translate them all.”

  She was right about the first part. These were indeed like the carvings they had found beneath Tarras: stylized symbols that were not quite art, not quite writing, but something in between. Only it wouldn’t take time to translate them, because Travis understood the symbols as clearly as if they were moving before him like stick figure actors pantomiming a play. Ti’an had granted him more than he thought when she put him under her spell. Or was it something else? Was it the very air of this place that transmitted the meaning of the symbols to him, just as it transmitted the actions, even the feelings, of the others? He could sense Grace’s sharp curiosity behind him, and Farr’s more urgent craving for knowledge.

  “Travis?” Grace said, and he sensed rather than saw her take a step toward him.

  “I can read them, Grace.” His hands felt hot, and the carvings seemed to shimmer when he passed his fingers over them. He touched two stick figures standing side by side. Small dots fell from the arm of one of them, while the other held a curved knife. “Somehow I can read them all.”

  “Maybe because he wrote them,” Larad said, and though Travis’s back was turned he knew the Runelord had pointed toward the throne.

  No, that wasn’t it. Here were more symbols. The one stick figure sat on a chair. The other stood behind, still holding the knife. “It was she,” Travis said. “Ti’an. She’s the one who made these.”

  He moved left, running his hands over the wall, going back to the beginning.

  “Here he is–King Orъ. Only he wasn’t a king then. Morindu hadn’t been built yet. It was just him and his tribe in the desert. And then . . .” A fever seemed to grip Travis. His eyes drank in the meaning of the symbols faster than seemed possible. He was racing along the wall, moving to the right now, his fingers skimming over the stones. “Then theycame. There were thirteen of them. They answered his call, and they were powerful. More powerful than any that came before. He took them . . . took them into him, and . . .” Travis stopped, then turned and gazed at the rest of the symbols that ringed the room. “Oh,” he said.

  Farr’s expression was eager, hungry. “What is it? What do the symbols mean? I can’t read them.”

  On shaking legs, Travis returned to the mummy chained to the throne. “He understood. King Orъ. He understood the answer.”

  “The answer to what?” Vani said, hands resting on Nim’s shoulders.

  Travis’s mind buzzed. The heat surged in him. “Remember the story you told us, Farr? The one about the twins, the ones who were born out of nothing at the beginning–one light, the other dark? Well, they’re coming together again, struggling with each other. That’s what’s causing the rifts in the sky. Only the twins aren’t trying to kill each other.”

  Farr’s gaze was fixed on him. “Then what are they trying to do?”

  “They’re trying to save each other.”

  The others stared at him. Travis turned around. Standing here, in the center of the chamber, he could see the story unfold in its entirety.

  It began not long after the dawn of Amъn. Angular symbols suggested towers and ziggurats rising up from the desert beside the waters of the River Emyr. The great city of Usyr stood among them, as well as other city‑states–but not Morindu. In that time, Orъ was neither god nor king, but instead was the leader of the nomadic tribe that had first discovered the presence of the bodiless spirits known as the morndari, and that had first made blood offerings to entice the spirits into doing their bidding. Over time, other tribes grew more adept at commanding the spirits; they were the ones who raised cities. In turn, the tribe that had first discovered the morndariseemed doomed to die out.

  Then Orъ was born. A seer proclaimed he was destined to be a great sorcerer, and so as an infant his mother fed him with her blood rather than her milk. The seer spoke truly, and even as a child he was skilled beyond the eldest sorcerers at the art of summoning the morndari. One series of symbols showed him bringing a vast herd of cattle under his command. Others suggested trees rising out of bare ground and bearing fruit while small droplets fell from his arm.

  Orъ was only twenty when he became the leader of his tribe, and under his rule his people prospered–so much so that the rulers of a nearby city grew jealous of their wealth in gold and cattle.

  That city was Scirath.

  The god‑king of Scirath launched an assault on Orъ’s tribe, sending a great army of warriors and sorcerers. Orъ’s people were far outnumbered. Death was certain–unless Orъ made a great gamble.

  Travis shuddered as his eyes passed over the next series of symbols. Orъ sat in his tent while his wife, Ti’an, made thirteen cuts in his body. Then he made a calling such as he had never done before, and thirteen of the morndaricame to him–spirits more powerful than any that had ever been summoned before or since. Normally a sorcerer staunched the flow of blood once the spirits came, lest they drain him to death, but Orъ bid the spirits enter his veins. Greedy for his blood, they did. Then, once they were within him, Ti’an poured hot lead on his wounds, sealing them.

  The symbols showed a stick figure writhing in pain. Then, in the next panel, the stick figure stood tall, lines of power radiating from it. It held out a hand, and a vast army was swallowed by the desert.

  There was more in the next panel–symbols that made Travis’s head swim to gaze at–but he skipped them for the moment, turning so that he saw a later point in the story. Morindu loomed above the desert now, dark and powerful. Orъ sat on his throne, shackled to it with chains, asleep, while seven stick figures drank from him, careful to seal the wounds again after they did.

  Travis’s eyes kept moving across the wall. The story was almost over. An army like a sea flowed toward Morindu. Among the army were dots that radiated circles of power. Demons. The people of Morindu fled the city, escaping into the desert.

  But not the Seven. Droplets fell from their arms, and a circle appeared in the air. A gate. Beyond was sea and stone. Then the Seven drank one last time from Orъ, and when they were finished he was no longer a living man, asleep on the throne. He was a mummy, dead.

  A figure holding a curved knife approached the Seven, jagged bolts of fury shooting from her eyes. Ti’an. Only before she could slay them, the Seven stepped through the gate, leaving only Orъ and Ti’an. The last panel showed the city sinking beneath the sands of the desert as the army was crushed under the churning sands.

  There the story ended.

  Grace stepped onto the dais next to Travis. “So they drained him.” She gazed at the desiccated mummy. “The Scirathi thought they would find Orъ’s blood here, but the Seven took it all, then escaped through a gate, leaving Ti’an. All this time she’s been trapped here with his corpse, made immortal by his blood.�
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  Travis hadn’t realized he had been speaking aloud as he read the story, but all the same he must have.

  “If the Seven escaped, where did they go?” Larad said.

  It was Farr who answered. “Earth. Look at the way the gate is drawn. It is like a tunnel through a great darkness. That must be the Void. Which means the Seven went to Earth.”

  “Can we go now, Mother?” Nim said.

  Vani stood. She had covered Ti’an’s body with a cloth. “Yes, daughter. There is nothing left for us here.”

  “And where will we go?” Master Larad said. “There is water in this city, but we have no camels. We need to find the Last Rune, Master Wilder. But I don’t know how we’ll do that now. Not before the end comes. I doubt we’ll find it lying around here.”

  Larad was right, the end was close. But the answer wasthere, Travis was sure of it. Only he couldn’t quite grasp it.

  “What about the rest of the story?” Farr said, pointing to a large section of the wall. “You skipped all this. What did it say?”

  Yes, that was where the answer was. Travis licked his lips. “When the thirteen morndarientered him, Orъ understood the truth. The truth about the origin of the world. Of all the worlds.”

  Grace touched his shoulder. “You mean like the story of the twins?”

  “Yes, the twins.” Travis drew in a deep breath, then read the symbols he had skipped, speaking as he did, describing what Orъ had understood as the thirteen entered him.

  “It’s like Farr’s story. For an eternity, there was only nothing. Then, suddenly, the nothing gave birth to two things, two entities–one of being, and the other of . . .” Travis struggled for a word. “. . . of unbeing. Earth and Eldh, they were worlds of being. And there were more. Hundreds of them, millions. But there was only one world of unbeing, and that was the Void. It was like a sea between the other worlds, bridging them, binding them together.”