Dream now, for there you will see the light and the hopes of your tender heart.
You will be at peace as you drift through clouds of wonder and harmony.
Rest now, my child.
You will be strong.
Rest now, my child.
One day you will shine.
No one can harm you while I am here by your side.
No shadows can fall here for I am your light.
Your dreams will guide you to your morrow and you will be safe with each step you take.
You will achieve all that you wish and all of your desires will be filled.
Gabrion froze in place as the song echoed in his ears. The king merely stared at him, wondering what the man’s reaction meant. Memories swirled in Gabrion’s mind but they were muddled by everything he was feeling at the moment. He wanted to hold on to the innocence of the song, of the times she would sing it to him when he was sick, of the times he would hum it softly because it reminded him of her, of the times she sang it as they walked through Savvron. He knew he had hummed that song a thousand times over the past year; surely his companions had overheard him often.
But now the song was painful. He couldn’t shake the sudden feeling that he did not want to pass through the door. He didn’t want to confront the truth. Though he needed to see her and to speak with her, he was terrified that the king was right. But he couldn’t be.
Gabrion pressed his hand to the door and it opened silently. A waft of air swept through the room and alerted Mira to the presence of visitors. She straightened and turned around and when she saw Gabrion, she set her jaw.
“What is it?” she asked. Her voice was cold, having shed all the warmth it held as she had sung.
Gabrion stepped inside while the king waited in the hallway. “Mira, please. Listen to me.”
She shook her head. “You want me to believe in the horrors you were telling me of before. Why would you want to hurt me, Gabe?”
“I don’t,” he pleaded. “But you can’t live in a lie, Mira. This isn’t where you belong.”
Mira rolled her eyes. “What lie, Gabrion? This is my home. Don’t you see? This is where I belong.”
“At what cost?” he asked, his heart aching.
“Gabrion, we—” she stopped and tried to find the words.
He reached into his pocket as he had done earlier and he withdrew the object he had kept with him all along. “That day, Mira, I was going to offer this to you.” He reached his hand out but he couldn’t step toward her. She was half a room away from him, but for all it felt like, she was in another kingdom entirely.
Tears welled in her eyes when she realized that he held an engagement ring. “Gabe.” But she did not step toward him. “I’m sorry, Gabrion. I never… I didn’t…”
He didn’t need her to finish the sentences that were catching in her throat. “I see.” He lowered his hand and choked on a knot of his own. “But Mira, even still. This isn’t right.”
“Gabrion, stop!” she cried. “This is my place. These are my people. This is my home.”
“But how can you say that after all we had? After Savvron?”
The answer came, but not from Mira or Gabrion or the king, and Gabrion instantly knew why he had felt trepidation before entering this room. He knew why Mira so willingly believed the altered version of events concerning the battle in Savvron the day she was abducted—rescued—it didn’t matter.
The answer was in the room with them, behind Mira, fussing now that she was crying and no longer singing her lullaby.
It was Mira’s child.
She saw Gabrion’s eyes turn toward the crib behind her and motherly love pulled her around where she reached in and lifted the infant into her arms, cooing and humming to settle him. She faced Gabrion again and introduced him.
“Our son,” she smiled proudly. “Perrios.”
Gabrion could see the tiny face enwrapped in its silk blanket and he estimated the child to be two or three months old. He couldn’t offer congratulations to her. He knew he was supposed to. It was only polite. But she was denying all the pain to the people in Savvron, and himself, for the sake of this little child. She was ignoring the suffering from that day one year ago when she was taken from the village. One year ago. One year ago.
He couldn’t offer his congratulations. Instead he warbled in a strange tone, “You didn’t wait very long to produce an heir for your king, did you?”
“Gabrion!” she gasped, horrified. “How dare you!”
He couldn’t stop himself. “Was it the very night you were brought here? Did you even wait until you were his queen?” He knew he was asking hurtful questions, but his heart was crushed and each beat hurt more than the last. He wanted her to hurt; to understand the pain she was causing him. “Do you have a second one already brewing within you?”
Tears rolled unchecked down her face. “Gabrion, stop. Please, I beg you.” Her voice teetered between sadness and rage.
“Do you think begging and pleading kept the people of Savvron out of harm’s way when your lover’s army attacked?” His voice was cold and sharp. His pain was almost palpable.
“No more.”
“Do you think ignoring the truth will make everything all right? That your… spawn will have an honest life because you’ve lied about how you became its mother?”
Mira strode forward, deeply hurt, and slapped Gabrion across the cheek with all her might. But where her hand should have struck his skin, instead it shattered. Blood sprayed everywhere and she screamed in agony, nearly dropping her baby in the process. The king rushed in, sweeping the child from her hands while trying to catch her as she fell.
Gabrion looked aghast at Mira’s hand. Or rather, at the stump that ended at her wrist. The glass jade was channeling his anger and hurt, and it had lashed out at her in force. He knelt beside her, horrified by the injury, but the jade still pulsed strongly. When he reached out for her, his fingers sliced unhindered into her shoulder and side. He retracted his hands fearfully, blood splashing everywhere. Mira howled in agony and the baby echoed her cries.
“No!” Gabrion trembled, watching the gaping wounds pour blood all over the stone floor. The king was hollering for help from the mages, but Gabrion heaved and tried to breathe against what he was seeing. His beloved Mira, bleeding out, and it was his fault.
The mages came in and dove into a furious set of healing spells, while others wrapped the wounds to quell the flow of blood. Mira’s cries grew quieter and quieter, but Gabrion realized that it wasn’t because of the healing.
It was because she was dying.
Soon the room was full of the sounds of chanting and the wailing infant. The king tried to calm the child, to no avail. It seemed to know definitively what was happening. Gabrion stared in shock, unable to fathom what he had done.
Mira’s blood soaked the floor, looking like a deep, thick wine that could not be contained. She fell silent and her body stopped thrashing. She shuddered one last time and then it was over.
She was dead.
Chapter 34
Dariak in Hiding
Dariak felt terribly weak. He was curled up in a heap behind a pile of crates, barely able to move after his stint as a metallic blob. All around him the sounds of fighting echoed, but he was powerless to do anything except wait.
Kitalla had left him some time ago after moving a few of the wood boxes to block his view of the stairwell. True, it also prevented others from spotting him, but he was essentially blind and the way the battle sounds echoed off the walls, he wondered if he would be discovered at any moment.
No, he had to remain positive and strong here. It wasn’t the time to give up or to be pathetic. Indeed, someone may come into the room, perhaps also to hide, and he had to be ready to defend himself.
He started by putting his effort into regaining control over his limbs. He tried lifting his hand up, to no avail, and then settled for flexing his fingers. He still felt weighted down by the metal, but he reminde
d himself that the effect was over and now his body was back to normal. There was no reason he couldn’t be up on his feet.
He smirked at the thought, remembering how long it had taken for him to recover from his transformation into electrical energy in his battle against Sharice. Even weeks after, he felt numbing shocks of pain that coursed through him. He hadn’t felt them recently, but he wondered if that was because he had healed or just that he wasn’t noticing the surges any more. Probably the latter. To distract himself, he turned his thoughts elsewhere while he continued to flex his extremities.
Kitalla had come back to them. He wondered what had happened. Her Trial in the tower had obviously affected her deeply, but he had no idea of the depth of her pain, nor the circumstance. It wasn’t something she had shared with him before she had knocked him down and stormed off.
Perhaps she had only come for the metal jade. She had battled great peril to claim it; maybe she felt she could not live without it. It was sort of like his earth jade, the first one he had ever possessed. He had a deep connection with it, though he hadn’t drawn much power from it recently. It was like a safety net that he could fall back to when he really needed help. He didn’t need its constant support; its presence was enough.
He thought of Kitalla returning just for the jade, but he dismissed the notion. Her demeanor may be aloof to her emotions, but the smolder in her eyes was evidence enough that she cared for her companions. He had no idea in which direction she had run off after leaving him, but he knew in his heart that it hadn’t been toward the exit of the tower. She had gone further in to... to....
He wasn’t sure exactly. His thoughts were still leaden, but he had remembered Randler nearby for a fleeting moment. He wondered if Kitalla knew that Randler was here and she went after him. At the very least, she knew of the other two jades and she would seek them out.
The other two jades. The last two. The beast jade and the healing jade. Then collectively they would have all eleven of the shattered shards. They were so close to their goal.
He knew their next course of action would be to seek out his father’s laboratory and find the hidden references to the assembly of the jades. He knew the texts were there, but he hadn’t consulted them in detail before. He knew only the number of jades and their basic powers. Finding the means of combining them would be the next challenge.
He wondered what it would bring to the land. His father’s summoning of the giant colossus had brought decimation to the warring armies, and a temporary end to the fighting, yet it was almost as if years’ worth of suffering had been condensed into one moment and all lives that would have been lost over that period of time were instead lost all at once.
It was a strange thought. There was no such way of altering time or life forces like that. But it helped him to rationalize the unintended effects of his father’s last great use of magic. So many had died. But what would have been the cost had the war continued unabated? Surely, as terrible a cost as it was, his father had saved them from a truly endless war.
But what would happen when it was Dariak’s turn? Would he also become a giant? Would his summoning also bring chaos to the land? Would hundreds or thousands die because of him? Would any of his good deeds also be cast into shadow because of the fateful colossus? Or would he morph into some other being entirely? He had no idea.
The fighting outside the storeroom waxed and waned and waxed again. It seemed as if the conflict was changing tides rapidly. Swords clanged together and spells exploded violently. He wondered exactly who was fighting here and who was winning.
And as soon as he had the thought, he wished he could take it away, for someone entered the room, huffing heavily as if he had been running for some time. There was a slight wheeze to the man’s voice, and Dariak estimated that he must be an older mage. None of the warriors with their flailing swords would sound like that, he was certain.
Dariak tested his limbs, but he was still very weak. He had regained minor mobility, though not enough to truly defend himself. He reached his thoughts into and through his body, seeking help from his inner spirit, and also from the jades in his possession. When Pyron had imprisoned him, he hadn’t taken the jades away. Instead they had all been wrapped tightly together, and it hadn’t mattered anyway for the shielding had kept him secure for all those days.
Now, however, he was free of the magical bindings and he could call upon the jades at will. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure they would respond, considering what the metal jade had done to him. He had noticed such fickleness before from the jades. It was as if they had wills of their own.
The gasping man had calmed himself and settled on the ground near the doorway so he could spy on the exit. Dariak didn’t care, as long as he didn’t take to exploring here. A few moments later, Dariak heard some minor incantations being cast, complete with flourishes of robes and snapping or breaking of spell components. The mage had apparently caught his breath and was preparing to run off again into the fray, whether to fight or flee, Dariak couldn’t tell.
A few minutes more and he would be safe again, left alone in hiding. Just a few—
But then Dariak’s leg had a spasm and he kicked out uncontrollably into one of the crates. The older mage snapped to attention. “Who’s there?” he demanded.
The blood drained from Dariak’s face. It wasn’t just some older mage. It was Pyron himself! Dariak knew he was doomed. His thoughts raced frantically for a potential means of escape but there was nothing he could do.
“Who is it?” Pyron asked again, fumbling through pockets for offensive supplies. He stepped closer to the crate pile where Dariak cowered and he gasped when he saw the young mage curled on the floor. “You!” his eyes lit with rage.
“Pyron,” Dariak returned with a determined stare, knowing he must look ridiculous in his position. “It is good you survived. But leave me.”
Pyron cracked a laugh. “Leave you? After you destroyed half the Mage Council with your antics? You’re as daft as your father.”
Dariak cringed at the slight against Delminor, but he held his retort in check. “Who’s to say I’m not ready for more antics if you don’t get out of here?”
Pyron backed up a step in fear, but he reassessed Dariak and decided the man was bluffing. “You’re in no condition to do anything, fool. I don’t know how you accomplished what you did, but know this, Dariak, you die here. Now.”
“I’ll just draw your spells into me and send them right back at you, Pyron. Don’t be stupid. You can’t defeat me here today. Be gone.” He said it with enough conviction that the master mage took another fearful step back and looked away as if to examine an escape path.
But Dariak had done too much harm to Magehaven. The demise of Kerrish was only the beginning. He had defiled the Trials by entering into them. He had started massive fighting within the tower itself. His presence had drawn up terrible unrest within the Council. His arrogant claim for the jades had merely provoked Pyron’s own rivals to rise against his wisdom, weakening his posture as Council Leader. Then the infiltration by Dariak’s companions, and Dariak’s own escape from his magical bindings and his eruption into the metallic ooze that devoured the people around him; no, Pyron was certain that Dariak’s end was to come now. He didn’t respond in conversational tongue, but sputtered the incantation for a spell instead.
Dariak tensed as he heard the key words that called for intense flames. Fitting, he thought to himself, that Pyron would try to burn him as Kerrish had burned. The fleeting thought was followed instantly with thoughts of defense. When the inferno erupted from Pyron’s hands in swirling waves, the flames reached for Dariak but were sharply doused by the water jade.
Pyron roared as the flames fizzled. Lightning crackled from his fingertips next, but the earth jade drew the room’s dust quickly around Dariak to shield him. Pyron screamed again as he launched a volley of poison darts from his fingertips. Here, the nature jade nullified the poison, though it could not stop the spikes from cutting D
ariak.
Mad with rage, Pyron stamped his feet and ran toward Dariak, determined to kick the mage’s brain in if he had to, but the Shield of Delminor stunted the attack and augmented Pyron’s body weight, dragging him down.
Dariak wanted this stalemate to end. He wanted Pyron to flee and he needed to rest. The jades were drawing some of his energy for their defenses; he hadn’t ever noticed it before, but then he hadn’t relied on their powers so desperately when he had already been drained by one. Perhaps they always drew on his life force when they acted. He would have to explore that notion later.
Pyron readied another assault. Dariak could tell that it was going to be a combination of effects and he wondered if the jades would be able to work in tandem to repel the attack. But in his heart, he felt that if Pyron completed his incantation, then there would be no defense against it in his condition. He begged the jades for help, knowing now that they too were feeling his exhaustion. His only hope then was that Pyron would be satisfied with his victory and that he wouldn’t bother to search Dariak’s body. His friends could then reclaim the jades more easily, but whether they would know what to do with them, he had no idea.
Futility overwhelmed him. His body wasn’t responding to his wishes and he couldn’t even roll over or lift his head from the floor. He was going to die here in mere moments, once Pyron finished. It was like watching the mage in slow motion. He heard each carefully pronounced syllable. He saw each flourish of hands, arms, and feet. He watched as numerous spell components appeared from pockets and then were consumed one way or another. Doom approached. And the last thing Dariak saw before Pyron completed his spell was a flash of light.
Pyron collapsed against the wall, the smell of charred flesh rising from a badly wounded body. A massive burn mark marred the mage’s chest and he lay, apparently dead.
Dariak knew the source of that light. He felt it draw on his life force to unleash its power. The lightning jade had risen up once more to defend its master, but at the cost of Dariak’s remaining strength. He held on to consciousness as long as possible, trying to determine if Pyron was alive or dead. He didn’t seem to be moving, but it was hard to tell as his vision started to fade.
The Shattered Shards Page 40