The First Stone

by Mark Anthony

  Grace managed a grim smile. “I wish I could say the same.”

  They were silent for a moment, gazing toward the east, then he looked at her. “I saw things, Grace. Down there, when I died.”

  She nodded. “That’s common. People who’ve been revived often report seeing various phenomena—light, a tunnel, the images of loved ones. As far as we can tell, it’s simply the brain trying to make sense of what’s happening to it as it’s deprived of oxygen.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Only I didn’t see those things. I saw the two twins, the ones from the story Hadrian told us. One was shining, as if he was outlined in stars, and the other was dark— so dark I could only see him like a silhouette against the night. They were struggling, destroying each other.”

  Grace looked up at the sky. It was too light now to see it, but the rift was still there, still growing. “The end is close, isn’t it, Travis? But even an end would be something. This will be even worse. It will be like when one of the T’gol dies. It will be as if none of this—Earth, Eldh, and everything on them— ever were, or ever could have been.”

  Travis opened his mouth, but before he could speak a shout rose from the others. Grace and Travis ran toward the rest of the group.

  “There,” Farr said, pointing. “Look.”

  The sun had just crested the horizon, and to the south something glinted with a spark of red fire. Grace shaded her eyes. Then she saw it, jutting up from the horizon like a splinter of black ice: a stone spire.

  “The sorcerer was right,” Farr said.

  Vani let out a hiss. “Mahonadra’s Blood. Look!”

  It took Grace a moment to see them, then her heart lurched. A dozen specks moved across the desert, black against the gold sand, heading toward the spire. It was hard to be certain of distances here, but she guessed the specks were less than a mile away.

  “The Scirathi,” Farr said. “They must have been forced to travel around the slipsand. They are not far ahead of us.”

  “And we’re not letting them get any farther,” Travis said.

  He started into a run, but Vani was already moving, racing across the sand, along with Avhir.

  “Come on!” Farr said, pushing Grace and Larad, and together they broke into a run.

  36.

  The sand pulled at Travis’s feet like invisible hands. He lowered his head and pumped his arms, forcing himself to run faster. The sorcerers were just ahead. And so was Nim.

  The sun parted from the horizon, lofting into the sky, and the coolness of night evaporated. Waves of heat rippled up from the desert floor. A sweat sprang out on Travis’s skin and the air parched his lungs. They were deep in the Morgolthi now, in the heart of the Hungering Land. Without water or shelter, exposed to the full anger of the sun, they could not hope to survive for more than a few minutes.

  But minutes were all they needed. Like insects, the dark specks of the Scirathi swarmed up the side of a dune a half mile ahead, then vanished over the crest.

  “Did you see Nim?” Vani shouted. “Do they have her?” She coursed across the sand like a black gazelle, Avhir at her heels.

  “I cannot be sure,” Avhir called back. “I saw one carrying something on its back—a small bundle—but what it was I cannot say.”

  “We must go faster. They must not enter Morindu before we reach them.”

  The two T’gol quickened their pace, speeding like arrows over the sand. Travis and the others could not keep up.

  “The sand,” Larad hissed, his scarred face twisting in a grimace. “By Olrig, it burns right through the soles of my boots.”

  Farr shoved the Runelord on the back. “Keep moving. It’s only going to get worse. If we don’t get off the sand soon, we’ll be roasted alive.”

  They started up the slope of the dune. The T’gol were already halfway to the crest.

  Go, Vani, Travis thought. Go as fast as you can. Save her.

  Next to him, Grace stumbled. She would have gone rolling down the slope, but he caught her in time, hauling her back to her feet.

  “The sun . . . I don’t think . . . I can’t do this, Travis.” Her face was pale except for two bright spots of color on her cheeks.

  “Yes, you can, Grace.” Speaking was too hard; his mouth was dry as leather. Instead, he spoke in his mind, knowing she would hear. You didn’t leave me underneath the slipsand, and I’m not going to leave you out here. Hold on to my thread.

  But even if I can, that would drain your . . .

  Do it!

  He sensed her presence draw close to his. There was a flash in his mind of green-gold light melding with gold-silver. Then he felt it: his life force draining from him, pouring into Grace. She gasped, and her eyes fluttered open. They were brilliant: emeralds flecked with gold dust.

  Travis staggered, then steadied himself. It didn’t matter that some of the essence of his own life was now flowing into Grace; he had more than enough to spare. Since the moment he had awakened, after dying in the slipsand, he had felt power burning in him. He was sweating, but not from the heat rising up from the sand. Instead, the heat came from inside him, as if there were a molten sun in his chest mirroring the one in the sky. No mundane heat could harm him now; he was certain of that.

  However, that was not true for the others. Farr had lost too much blood, and Larad was accustomed to cool northern climes. Both slumped to their knees.

  Grace, you have to connect to Larad’s thread, and Farr’s as well. Bridge their strands to mine, give them some of my power. They won’t make it if you don’t.

  He sensed Grace’s understanding, then a moment later he felt it rush from him: hot, gold power. Farr’s back arched, and Larad clutched a hand to his chest, then both were on their feet again.

  “Come on!” Travis called, and they ran with new swiftness up the side of the dune. The T’gol had already vanished over the crest.

  “That spell,” Larad said, voice hoarse, as they climbed. “I feel as if I could run for days, even in this heat. What did you do to give us strength, Your Majesty?”

  Grace didn’t answer, and Travis felt Farr’s eyes on him.

  They kept climbing, and after several more minutes they reached the crest of the dune. Travis halted, and the fire in his veins receded under a flood of cold fear. Below stretched a lifeless, wind-scoured plain. Like a beckoning finger, a spire jutted up from the plain. The spire was forged of onyx stone, polished so smooth it glistened as if wet. Perhaps thirty feet of the tower was visible, but its proportions suggested that many times that height lay beneath the sand. As for the rest of the lost city of Morindu, there was no trace.

  Vani and Avhir were still running, now halfway between the foot of the dune and the spire. A dozen figures clustered like black beetles next to the tower. Travis caught several glints of gold.

  Larad shaded his eyes with a hand. “What are the sorcerers doing?”

  “Trying to get in,” Farr said through clenched teeth.

  Even as he spoke, a darker circle appeared against the dark wall of the tower: a doorway. The Scirathi streamed into the spire. The T’gol had moved with impossible speed; they had nearly closed the gap.

  Only they were too late. The last of the sorcerers vanished inside the tower. There was a puff of black smoke, and the opening vanished. Seconds later came a low sound, like thunder that quickly faded. The T’gol threw themselves against the wall of the spire and bounced off like pebbles. Travis grabbed Grace’s hand and went half-running, half-sliding down the lee side of the dune.

  By the time they reached the spire, they found the T’gol already working to clear the doorway. But Travis saw it was no use. The doorway was a perfect circle as wide across as his splayed arms, its edges so sharp they looked as if they had been carved into the wall with a knife—one that passed through stone as if it were cheese. The top of the circle had collapsed, and a pile of rubble filled the doorway. The rubble was half-melted, fused into a solid mass. The T’gol pried at the stones, but neither Vani’s fingers
nor Avhir’s scimitar could loosen them. Around the doorway the walls were perfectly smooth, without crack or crevice, as if the tower had not been built from individual stones, but was instead molded from a single mass.

  “You cannot gain entrance to Morindu with hands or blades,” Farr said. “Physical objects are useless.”

  Vani whirled around, stalking toward the dervish, eyes molten. “Then use your magic to open the way!”

  Farr stood his ground. “Even if I had blood enough, I could not open this door. The walls of Morindu were bound with wards and spells fashioned by Orú’s sorcerer-priests. Legend holds that the stones were laved with the blood of the god-king himself.” His eyes narrowed as he gazed at Vani. “But you know that, Princess of Morindu.” The words were soft rather than mocking; all the same, Vani turned away.

  Travis drew close to the tower. Heat blazed within him, so hot that the air radiating up from the sand felt cool in comparison. The wall of the tower gleamed with a faint iridescence, like an oil slick on black water.

  “So how did the Scirathi open the doorway?” Larad said, studying the edges of the portal.

  Grace pushed her damp hair from her brow. “Nim. She was the key.” She glanced at Vani. “But how?”

  Vani shook her head, her face tight with anguish. “All I know is that my daughter’s blood is powerful, and that lines of fate weave strangely around her.”

  “That’s it,” Farr said, his dark eyes going distant. “That’s why the sorcerers wanted her. She’s a nexus.”

  The others stared at him.

  “A nexus?” Vani said, frowning.

  Farr’s gaze snapped back into focus. “I should have realized it right away from everything you told me, Vani. Only a nexus is such a rare thing, almost mythical. I never . . .” He shook his head. “But it’s the only answer. That’s why lines of fate are drawn to her and tangle in her presence.”

  “Is that why they needed Nim to open the door?” Grace asked, the words cool, curious: a scientist’s inquiry. “Because she’s a nexus?”

  “Yes,” Farr said, approaching the door. “A spell of warding, like the one cast on this doorway, is drawn in lines of fate. Passing through the portal is one possibility, one fate. The passage can be blocked by removing the chance of that fate ever coming to pass.”

  Travis thought he understood. “But because Nim is a nexus, she changed fate. New possibilities came into being, others vanished, and the spell unraveled.”

  “Then, once inside, the sorcerers blocked the doorway,” Larad said. “But what did they use to bring down the door? Surely not a spell, with the way magic has weakened.”

  Travis could guess. In the past, the Scirathi had brought guns from Earth. Why not explosives as well?

  Avhir stalked toward Farr. “Maybe you are not strong enough to open the doorway, dervish, but what about him?” He turned and pointed at Travis. “Is he not a great sorcerer?”

  Travis tried to swallow, but there was no moisture in his mouth. “Larad,” he croaked. “The Stones.”

  Larad held out the iron box, and Travis took the three Imsari. Whatever was affecting magic had not weakened the Stones; he could feel power radiating from them. He gripped them in his left hand, then pointed his right hand at the doorway.

  “Urath!”

  There was a clap of thunder and a blinding flash. When his vision cleared he saw that the doorway remained closed. He clenched the stones, his knuckles whitening. “Urath!” he shouted again, and a hundred voices chanted in his mind, a chorus of all the Runelords that had gone before him. Again thunder rent the air. The ground trembled.

  Travis opened his eyes. The doorway was still blocked.

  It was no use. He had felt the power of his runespell roll outward like a wave—then part around the tower, flowing to either side of it, repelled by the slick onyx walls.

  “I can’t do it,” he said, giving the Stones back to Larad.

  “Perhaps not with northern magic,” Avhir said, his bronze gaze on Travis. “But what about sorcery? Does not the blood of Orú himself run in your veins?”

  “He can try,” Farr said, his face covered with sweat and sand. “But it’s no use. If blood sorcery still worked as it should, the Scirathi would have left a trap for us. Only it doesn’t. The morndari will not come. Or perhaps they cannot come. Whatever has weakened magic prevents them from responding to our calls. There is . . . there is no hope.”

  They all gazed at one another, faces ashen, eyes dull. The heat was punishing now, even in the shadow of the spire. Grace could not maintain her spell for long. She and Larad and Farr would perish. Nor could the T’gol survive in these conditions, and while the heat did not affect Travis, even he needed water. They would all die.

  Grace touched his arm. “You tried, Travis. I think . . . I think in the end that counts for something. It has to.”

  Travis bowed his head, his brow touching hers. He wanted to weep, only he couldn’t. It felt as if there was a darkness in him, a rift like that in the sky, growing, consuming him from the inside out. He had failed to save Nim from the sorcerers. What would Beltan think of him? Travis didn’t know, but he did know one thing: Grace was wrong. Trying didn’t count, not for anything. In the end, trying and failing was no different than doing nothing at all. The darkness ate at his heart, his spirit. In a moment all would be gone. He would feel nothing. . . .

  No. That wasn’t right. Travis resisted the darkness. He would feel something. And if not sorrow, then something else.

  Grace gasped, pushing away from him. “Travis—you’re hot.”

  He held out his arms and saw shimmering waves radiating from his skin. Fire surged through his veins, burning away the darkness inside him, fueled by a new power: rage. The Scirathi had taken Vani’s daughter. Beltan’s daughter. His daughter.

  With a cry, Travis turned and flung himself against the wall of the tower, beating at it with bare fists. He felt a strange resistance each time his fist approached the stone, as if his hands were moving through some viscous fluid. However, he gritted his teeth and was able to punch through it, his blows landing against the tower. His fists glanced off without effect, but he didn’t care. Again he struck the onyx wall, again, again. Distantly, he felt pain in his hands, and wetness.

  “Stop, Travis!”

  It was Vani, her words sharp, but Travis hardly heard her. Fury boiled in his head, burning away thought and reason. He wanted only to beat down the tower with his bare hands, or to die trying.

  “He’s hurting himself. Avhir, help me!”

  Strong hands gripped Travis, pulling him away. He howled at them, snarled like a wild animal, trying to break free.

  Travis, please.

  The words were cool as bells in his mind. He went limp in the arms of the T’gol, the rage pouring out of him, leaving him empty, consumed. His hands hurt; they were smeared with blood. He gazed up, into Grace’s green-gold eyes. I’m sorry, he wanted to say.

  The words were drowned out by a groan from beneath their feet.

  Vani and Avhir let go of Travis, whirling around, hands raised, eyes searching.

  “What was that?” Larad said.

  Farr pointed at the black wall of the spire. “Look.”

  Blood dripped down the wall where Travis had flailed against the stones. Then, with a wisp of steam, the fluid vanished, as if drunk in by the dark stones. The ground lurched. Grace stumbled against Travis, and both would have fallen if Vani had not held them upright.

  Larad let out a breath. “By all the gods.”

  It took Travis a long moment to understand what was happening. A gap had appeared between the wall of the tower and the ground. Even as he watched, sand poured into the gap and it widened, reaching a foot from the tower. Two feet. Three. The ground shook again. Then, at the same instant as the others, he understood.

  “Run!” Vani shouted. “Away from the spire. Now!”

  The tower began to thrust upward from the ground, and the sand bulged beneath their fee
t, as if a great bubble was forming deep beneath them. Vani pulled Travis into a run. Avhir was pushing Grace and Larad, and Farr careened after them. The flat surface of the plain became a steep slope, rising behind them and falling away before them.

  Travis glanced over his shoulder and saw the black spire soaring toward the sky. He caught other shapes as well—more spires, and onyx domes—then Vani jerked his arm.

  “Don’t look back. Keep running!”

  He could hardly hear her over the rumbling. A hot, metallic odor permeated the air. They were sliding now more than running, skidding down the slope on their heels. Sand began to sheet past them in waves, carrying them along with it. If he went down, Travis knew he would be buried in a heartbeat.

  Just before them and to the left was a flat expanse of gray, wind-scoured stone, like an island in the sea of sand. The slab looked natural, not man-made. Vani veered toward it, pulling him along; they were nearly there. Then Travis felt his feet go out from under him. He fell and rolled down the slope, sand pouring over him, filling his mouth so he couldn’t scream. Not again. . . .

  A strong hand caught him, hauling him forward, and he rolled onto something hard. He groped and felt rock beneath him.

  “Look!” a voice shouted. It was Farr.

  Travis struggled to his feet. He stood on the expanse of rough rock; the others were there as well. However, the surface was no longer level with the desert floor. Instead, they were on top of a pinnacle. The ground had fallen away to either side, and a torrent of sand rushed around the pinnacle. Before them loomed a dark mountain. Travis craned his neck, looking up. Sand poured like gold waterfalls between lofty spires and broad domes, tumbling down past sheer walls of onyx stone. Then he drew in a breath, and a feeling of awe came over him.

  It wasn’t a mountain. It was a city.

  The sound of thunder rolled away across the desert. The torrent of sand flowing to either side of the rock pinnacle ebbed, then ceased. Black domes and spires no longer thrust upward, but stood still and stark against the yellow sky. A few streams of sand trickled from the walls, then even they dwindled and were gone.