Terian stood in place, looking around the chamber. It was dark as any cave in Saekaj or Sovar, perhaps more so. When his eyes adjusted, he could see the portal in the center of the chamber, radiating blackness out of its ovoid structure. “Huh,” he marveled to himself, “I guess it worked.”
A flash behind him jarred him enough to make him spin, where he found Kahlee standing sandwiched between Brevis and Erith. “Yes, it worked,” his wife said, “and let us hope that your plans continue to do so.”
“I’m highly in favor of that,” Terian said as she handed Brevis back to Erith, who by now simply looked completely disgusted. “Want to step inside?”
“Shouldn’t we get Gertan and Aina first?” Brevis asked, twitching as Erith held him cradled in her arms.
“Probably,” Terian said, “but are you sure they won’t run if we encounter trouble?”
“What kind of trouble are you predicting here?” Kahlee asked.
“Portals come from the gods,” Terian said, staring into the ululating blackness coming out of the structure, “so … a god, I guess? Of some sort?”
“I am not loving your plan at this point,” Erith said, “in fact I may be less sold on this than before you entrusted your tragic life story to me.”
“I can’t blame you,” Terian said, nodding. “And I can’t ask any of you to follow me on this. I should go alone.”
“Into a god’s realm on your own?” Brevis asked, voice high. “Yes. Seems like a very brave idea. I commend you. Be safe. Let us know how it turns out, if we should run, you know. Fair warning and all that.”
Terian nodded. “Will do.” And before he could hear an argument on the matter, he plunged headlong into the portal at a run.
The world distorted around him, twisting and writhing, and he felt pressed through a hole too small for him, as though he’d traveled through the shaft with Brevis with a titan pushing him in. When he popped out the other side, the light was blinding, forcing him to squint and blink to try and clear his vision.
The smell was oily, familiar, like something he’d caught wind of that could invoke memory, given time. He forced his eyes open and found himself in a chamber that was perfectly round and called to his mind the Citadel in Reikonos. The walls appeared to be white marble, gleaming and bright, and he saw a door with a staircase that led down against the wall in front of him. He circled the portal and looked behind it, finding another staircase, this one leading up.
“Hmm.” He shrugged, and started toward the down staircase, catching movement out of the corner of his eye as he did so. He spun and saw Kahlee emerge from the portal, the darkness it emitted wafting off her cloak like smoke as she separated from it. “What are you doing?”
“Following you,” she said. She took in his direction and moved to beat him to the staircase. He hurried to catch her but she slipped in before him. It was a wide stair, broad enough for them to walk together side by side, and it ran along the wall of the circular tower. He charged down as she giggled while outpacing him, and stopped when she did, hitting a solid wall where he figured there would have been a door.
“A staircase that goes nowhere,” he said, reaching out to touch the marble wall in front of him. Kahlee stood there, waiting, watching what he did with a peculiar look upon her face. “That’s just …”
At his touch, the wall disappeared, vanishing as though it had never existed, and revealing a most curious spectacle.
Terian stepped through the door into a room filled with pedestals, a chamber that looked as though it were set up for the display of objects. He saw books, golden goblets, jewel-encrusted treasures and more. His eyes swept the room and landed on an item in the corner, one which he could not quite tear his gaze away from.
“Where are we?” Kahlee asked, stepping into the treasure chamber behind him.
“It’s …” Terian let his words drift off as he walked across the room, unable to complete his thought as he moved toward the thing that he had seen. Long strides carried him toward it, and the whisper of Kahlee’s cloak ensured that she was following behind him. “It’s … that.”
“And what is that, Terian?” she asked. “And where are we?”
“Treasure chamber of a god,” Terian said, threading his way around a pedestal holding a book written with a script that he couldn’t read.
“Which god?” There was urgency in her voice, well justified to his mind, save for the thing that he knew which she did not.
“Don’t worry,” he said, flashing her a smile that was at least a little cocky, like a piece of his character, his old confidence rushing back to him. But it was coupled with something new—or something very old, he thought.
Hope.
He stopped before the pedestal, looking at what floated above it, dancing on air as surely as if it had had Falcon’s Essence cast upon it. “This,” he said in quiet awe, “is a lot more than I expected.”
“Can you …” she looked around nervously, head practically on his shoulder, her body pressed against him from behind. “Can you just take it?”
His mouth was dry as if his father had just rubbed his face in dirt and kicked it all down his gullet, but there was a thin thread of belief upon him. “I think so.” He paused and extended his hand tentatively.
“Is there a barrier?” she asked. “Shouldn’t there be something to protect it?”
“Not this time,” Terian said, suddenly very warm, very hopeful that he was not wrong. His hand neared the edge of the pedestal …
… and passed through all the way to the thin, rounded hilt of the battle-axe that waited there, a double-bladed beast of a weapon with two heads that were larger than any he’d ever seen before.
He seized it by the grip and pulled it down, the power surging through him like a rush of cool relief across his body on a scorching day. It ran through his muscles and into his mind, and he spun on Kahlee as she appeared to move as slowly as if she were trapped in hardening amber.
“What … is … it?” she asked, impossibly slow next to him.
“This …” he said, savoring the feeling that yes, dammit, he finally was good enough—like Cyrus, “is Noctus … the Battle Axe of Darkness …” He swung it once, at his side, and it hummed through the air with the power of a god, even though its master was now dead. “And it is mine.”
72.
J’anda
One Hundred Years Earlier
The darkness of the throne room was broken every twenty feet by the lanterns hanging atop the pillars. For J’anda, it was a strange thing to see, at odds with God of Darkness’s proclamation that everlasting night should be observed in the caves, the illumination as low as possible to stay in line with his way.
After the brightness of fighting out of doors, though, it was hardly a difficult adjustment to J’anda’s eyes, and he took this strangeness in stride as another enjoyable part of being in the court. And it was enjoyable, being in the court—for the spectacle, for the feeling of power that came of being at the center of decisions. All the rule in the Sovereignty radiated outward from this place, and J’anda felt acutely the sweetness of it and the sense of slight danger as well, like the warmth of holding one’s hand close to a burning wick without getting too close for too long. It was balance, all of it, an exercise in care.
The Sovereign sat atop the throne at the far end of the room and everyone catered to him in the small crowd. J’anda estimated there were fewer than fifty people in the throne room at the moment, and he could name almost every one of them. The biggest power players stood in the front of their own respective retinues, and for his part, he stood one step behind the Guildmaster of the Gathering of Coercers, Ebridgen Varlenn. She was an older woman, hard-nosed and free of warmth, an enchanter who knew her way around fear in her spells and outside of them.
Vracken Coeltes stood only a step behind J’anda, to his left, and his teeth could practically be heard grinding up where the Sovereign sat, J’anda was sure. It was distracting, knowing that the enormous
, gaping hole in the world where Coeltes stood was just at his elbow. Couldn’t he be an insufferably disappointed vek’tag’s ass back at the Gathering?
“Come forth, Ebridgen Varlenn,” the Sovereign called, voice clear but high. “And bring your new protégé along with you.”
Varlenn, for her part, looked back at him with no sign of approval. This was simply her way, and he knew it by now. She did not show any sign of pleasure when things went well, but she certainly did not hold back the pain when things did not. “Come,” she said simply, and he followed her, leaving the black hole of Coeltes behind with some relief.
“Yes, approach,” the Sovereign said, gesturing them forward. He was shrouded in his darkness, but some elements of his strangely shaped body were obvious. The claws were visible, at the top of the long fingers. His size was not a surprise, of course. He was a god; height seemed practically a requirement. Who would worship a god that stood only as high as your knee, after all?
Varlenn stopped some twenty feet before the throne, at the edge of her comfort zone, J’anda suspected. She executed a bow at the waist, deep and formal, as though she’d run into an impregnable rope stretched across the middle of the room that hit her flush with her navel. She returned to standing and turned her head to offer J’anda a look of reproach. He bowed, more deeply than she.
“It pleases me to see you again, J’anda Aimant,” the Sovereign said, “to have such a dedicated servant in my presence, one who has delivered victory after victory to me in this righteous war.”
“It pleases me to deliver these victories to you and your army,” J’anda said, bowing once more. It seemed the thing to do.
“Step closer,” the Sovereign said, gesturing him forward, and J’anda obliged, moving into the shroud of darkness as he was beckoned ever forward. He looked up and up to the Sovereign’s face, seeing for the first time the strange shape of it, the tusks jutting from either side and across the top of his skull.
J’anda lowered his head out of respect, glancing involuntarily to the side when he caught motion. He locked eyes with Trimane through the thin veil of darkness that clouded around him, the warrior standing behind General Vardeir. Trimane arched his eyebrows in amusement, and J’anda swiftly returned his own gaze to the floor, nervous tingles running through his body and causing him to quiver. Not smart, Trimane. Not here.
“Look at me,” the Sovereign said, and J’anda brought his head up slowly. He looked into the bizarre visage of the God of Darkness and caught something akin to a smile, albeit so much stranger than the one he’d just seen on Trimane’s face. This one seemed more grotesque, bizarre, and bereft of any warmth. “You are my servant, and with you I am deeply pleased.”
“I thank you, my Sovereign,” J’anda murmured, loud enough to be heard.
“You are the hero of this war,” the Sovereign said, “and your name is known to all our people. Now stand at my side.”
J’anda swallowed heavily and did as he was bade, stepping into the shadows of the Sovereign. The shroud of darkness covered him but did not blind him; it was surprisingly easy to see out of it, to see the whole room spread before him. It was certainly there, a veil over everything around him, one which the light could not penetrate from outside, but here, in its depths, he could see out of it with ease.
“Watch them squabble over favor,” the Sovereign whispered, so low that he realized it was only for his ears. “Fighting each other with words as though their petty struggles will gain them anything.”
J’anda blinked and watched as one of the Sovereign’s high advisors, a man in the fifth largest manor in Saekaj, stepped forward with a bow and began a speech that was so droolingly obvious in its attempt to beg for a morsel. “It is …”
“Disgusting, is it not?” the Sovereign asked, and J’anda looked up to find his red eyes fixed on the enchanter’s own, ignoring the subject speaking to him. “This is how it is all the time. I have considered ridding myself of a court entirely. I sit here in the shroud of darkness—my own little illusion, you see—waiting for something other than pettiness to entertain my interest. But this is it, all day, every day. It bores me, J’anda Aimant, this sameness. I long for anything different, new, unique, praiseworthy. Like yourself.”
J’anda swallowed. “I am … pleased to oblige.” He tried not to look at Trimane, but failed. The warrior was watching the cloud, just as everyone else in the room was, but J’anda could not shake the feeling that he looked at it differently, not the same, that he gave himself away in the process.
“The darkness is what matters here,” the Sovereign said, and J’anda hurried to nod along. “Keep a man in darkness, and none but the foolish question you when you are the light.” J’anda’s eyes widened at the sound of what seemed like blasphemy, but he did not speak his mind. “Now watch as these fools debase themselves before us.”
J’anda did watch and kept his mouth shut all the while, his heart beating a steady rhythm, wondering just what he feared when it was obvious that he was living his life in exactly the manner his own god had just advised—in utter darkness.
73.
Terian
He held the axe tightly in his hand in Administrator Cattrine Tiernan’s office (he didn’t quite know what to make of that title), almost afraid to let it go, as though it might puff into dust or smoke if he surrendered it even for a moment.
“Perhaps that should be your wife,” Kahlee said from her place on the old sofa next to the hearth.
“It doesn’t talk back as much,” Terian said, not taking his eyes off the smooth lines of the double blades.
“Though if it did, I imagine it’d be able to back it with something more than a paltry fire spell of the sort that barely lights tinder,” she added.
“It is an impressive find,” Curatio said, back to the hearthside, his white robes shaking lightly as he moved to angle his head, looking at Terian’s new weapon with undisguised interest.
“I just wonder,” Erith said, her lips pushed together, “I mean … is it a good thing that he’s going to be carrying something called the Axe of Darkness while he’s walking this supposedly new path?”
“I’m still a dark knight,” Terian said, looking into the gleaming blade, which stared back at him, revealing his face in the curve, his features exposed without the helmet belonging to his armor. “Can’t change that.”
“Besides,” Curatio said with a light tone, “the last wearer of that armor carried a weapon known as Aterum—the Edge of Night. It is the bearer that matters, their intent. And this bearer needs a weapon, lest he be forced to attack his enemies—of which there are no shortage—with his own gauntlets.”
“I never had a talent for fisticuffs,” Terian said, staring at his scuffed gauntlets for only a moment before looking back at the axe. “With this, though … it’s not an army, but I can do some damage with it.”
“Yes, but can you do the right damage with it?” Curatio asked. “Merely bearing a godly weapon is hardly a guarantee of success.”
“Well,” Terian said, letting the axe fall to his side, “that’s the question, isn’t it? Where are Malpravus’s armies?”
“Gathering, I suspect,” Curatio said. “They have not begun to appear around Saekaj Sovar yet, presumably because he has heard the whispers of dissent within the walls of those caves. The more dead that he can sway to his control …” The healer held out a hand as if to shrug.
“He means to let the rich and poor fight it out until they’re all equal in death,” Erith said sourly, “and then he’ll unite them under his magnanimous rule.”
“Sounds like him, doesn’t it?” Terian asked. “I have to stop this … this mess in Saekaj and Sovar. Before it comes to that, and he really does end up mopping up all the corpses with his remaining soul rubies.”
“Yes,” Curatio agreed, “you do.”
Terian looked straight at him. “Well, I could use a little help. I mean, this threat—”
“No,” Curatio said firmly.
“What about us?” Kahlee asked, looking vaguely insulted.
He looked toward the couch. “This is going to be a fight, and you just admitted you can’t cast offensive spells very well. I mean, maybe I’d take Erith, because who cares if she dies—”
“I sense you’re going to need a healing spell at a critical juncture and I’m going to totally ‘whoops’ on it and cast return instead,” Erith said sourly.
“Don’t forget your gnomish friend,” Kahlee said a little acidly. “And his two tagalongs that don’t say anything.”
“Yeah, that’s a real band of true power,” Terian said. “Look, this is madness—”
“Fitting for you, then,” Kahlee said.
“We don’t even have a way into Saekaj unless Curatio teleports us in,” Terian said, pointing the axe at the healer, “and he’s saying he’s not helping.”
“Well, that much at least, I could do,” Curatio said.
“Marvelous,” Terian said, nodding slowly at the sudden reversal. “So, that’s settled.” He put the axe over his shoulder. “Erith … want to come die with me?”
“Uh … not really?” Erith looked at Curatio. “But … I suppose I can come with you until it gets really bad, and then just—”
“Erith,” Curatio said, somewhat sternly.
“Fine,” she said. “For the homeland and all that.”
“I’m coming as well,” Kahlee said, standing up. Her expression suggested she would brook no argument. “I won’t be up front with you, but I need to be there for this. If things get out of hand, I can leave too, as well you now know.”
“And I hope you will,” Terian said, looking her in the eyes as she inched closer. “Though I still have no idea why you’re doing this.”
“We all have our reasons,” Kahlee said with a smile. “Though not all of them are as clear as yours.”
Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness Page 34