When the Goddess Wakes

by Howard Andrew Jones

  His first thought was to break off the shaft and pull it free, but it might be barbed. Too winded to curse, he drew his sword. The door rattled in its housing as one of the Naor outside hauled on it. But the lock he’d disabled refused them entrance.

  Rylin started into the hallway. He would have preferred to sprint, but he had little energy. As he jerked open the inner door his shoulder woke at last, and Rylin gasped in pain. He leaned against the door jamb as stars splintered across his vision.

  Not now, he told himself. Collapse later. He would detour through the building and back to Varama and the portal. It really wasn’t that far.

  His vision cleared, and he started forward at a jog. For all that it seemed it should require only a little effort, each step felt like ten yards. Every four or five steps felt a mile.

  But Rylin pressed on through the weird frozen menagerie of one of the vast storage rooms, all the more unsettling with the glassy open eyes of the animals reflecting the occasional lighted lanterns. He drew closer to shouts of combat and the sound of arms. He rounded a corner and nearly blundered into a pair of Cerai’s warriors. They spun at sight of him and raised weapons. He was too tired to bluff, and it might be they’d already been told all Altenerai were enemies. Or learned it.

  And so with failing strength he cast himself forward. His was no reckless, laughing charge of Altenerai heroes, but a desperate, brutal attack. If he used finesse it was only years of training pressed into instinct, so that he ducked from a blow and slid his weapon past a parry and drove it home. One man fell and scrabbled at Rylin’s legs, to put him off balance.

  Rylin stepped clear of the dying guard, threw up his good shoulder to catch a blow, then sliced halfway through the second warrior’s neck. Warm blood sprayed partly into his mouth, opened to gasp. He yanked his weapon clear, spat in disgust, and stumbled into a jog that took him into the tower with the hearthstone room. He didn’t need his inner sight to feel the power of great energies at work. An intersection loomed ahead and he saw Tretton cross it, a long-haired body slumped over one shoulder. Tesra.

  Vannek peered out from the right side of the intersection and saw Rylin, his eyes registering concern. Then they widened in alarm at something heading the general’s way from the direction Tretton had come. Vannek pulled back.

  Rylin hadn’t the strength to look through the inner world, and wondered why he could so easily see the magical threads trailing from Cerai as she stalked past the cross hall and toward the doorway through which Vannek and Tretton had vanished. She didn’t even glance at him.

  How was her power so obvious? Maybe, half conscious as he was, he was already in touch with the magical world. Or maybe her powers were so overwhelming they were visible to the naked eye. In any case, Rylin’s friends would need help.

  From somewhere deep inside he conjured the energy for a full run. His injured arm burned in pain from shoulder to fingertips, as though it had been immersed in fire, but he built speed, and as he took the turn into the intersection he rounded into the room with the hearthstones. Cerai was whipping threads of energy at both the shimmering golden portal and Varama, standing at its edge. Vannek, beside her, launched a spear that one of Cerai’s threads casually wrapped and tossed away. A wide shelf empty but for a handful of hearthstones attested to Varama’s success with that aspect of her mission. Presumably N’lahr, the squires, Muragan, the weapon, and even Tesra had been spirited free. All that was left was to get the three of them out alive.

  Rylin felt enormous satisfaction as he closed upon Cerai and saw her spin in surprise. Her khalat still smoked, but her face had already been fully restored. He swung his blade at her legs. She crouched so the khalat took the damage, but his momentum sent her over. He tripped into her and tumbled. His vision went red as he struck the floor, for his arm erupted with agony, the pain so great he almost lost consciousness.

  Someone shouted his name, probably Varama, and he forced himself up with his good hand, still somehow clutching his hilt.

  Cerai was there. He threw his good arm to block her sword strike and gasped as the point drove through his armored forearm. He groaned in renewed pain, recognizing with some surprise he’d been assaulted with Irion. Cerai glared down the shining blade. She pulled out the sword, and then a knife struck her collar and stood out from her neck.

  With her off hand, Cerai tore the weapon free, apparently unharmed even as her own blood sprayed. She turned to face Vannek. The Naor general’s arm was still extended. The Naor looked stunned that his lethal blow had achieved so little. Beside him, a shaking Varama fought to hold the shrunken portal. Rylin saw the energies swirling, knew that all he had to do was run, throw himself forward, and reach safety.

  Cerai gathered her spellthreads.

  As Rylin got his feet under him, he recognized the fatigue in Varama’s eyes. For once, emotions were bare upon her face. She was in agony, physically and emotionally. Already she’d held the portal too long. Waiting for him.

  He nodded to her. He wanted her to know it was all right, and he saw that she knew what he intended when she shook her head at him, mouthing a single word. “No.”

  “Get her away!” He shouted to Vannek, then threw himself against Cerai’s legs and punched her knee.

  The renegade alten dropped, cursing.

  Vannek grabbed Varama and dragged her into the portal, the alten shouting in protest.

  Rylin pulled the knife from his weapon belt and drove it into Cerai’s calf, hoping to catch an artery. She shouted in pain, then flipped around, grabbed his arm as it lifted for another strike. Her hand flickered with eldritch energies.

  His injuries had already weakened him, and her strength was heightened. She easily forced back his wounded limb.

  “You’re done, Rylin!” she cried. “Done!”

  He stared up at her, defiant as he felt the portal close.

  “I could have made a god of you!” Cerai screamed. She snatched Irion from the floor and leveled it at him.

  “I am Altenerai,” he said, and died smiling, for he knew his friends had escaped.

  34

  The One He Liked

  Each time Vannek had traveled through the portals had been a nightmare, where stretched landscapes had bubbled past the sides of a tunnel with too little air. Always before there’d been a sense of forward momentum. This time it was like falling from a great height.

  Varama cried out in grief, the sound warped by the weird environment.

  The walls of the portal shook, narrowed. Ahead lay only darkness.

  And then they’d passed through some membrane and both struck sand, lying in a heap. The portal shimmered just beyond Varama’s outstretched hands.

  Vannek looked to either side, saw Thelar, and Elenai, Gyldara, and the ghost alten, Kalandra.

  “Close it,” Vannek meant to shout, but his voice came out as a wheeze. “Close it!” he repeated more forcefully to the air around him.

  “Where’s Rylin?” Thelar asked quietly. But not as someone who was curious. More as someone who tried to sound as though the most important thing in the world were unremarkable.

  “Close it!” Vannek cried.

  Kalandra raised her hands and spiraled the portal closed, even as Varama let out a complaining moan.

  He rolled off the alten. Varama still lay on her back, hands stretched toward the vanished opening. He knew that hundreds of kobalin dotted the plains, but he heard nothing more than the gasp of the woman, the wail of the wind, and the thud of his own swiftly beating heart, pulsing in his ears.

  And then, again, came Thelar’s voice. “What happened to Rylin?”

  “He didn’t make it.” Vannek was pushing himself up when Varama seized his collar. With a madman’s strength Varama hurled him to the sand and knelt atop him, eyes blazing, knife to his neck.

  Dazed, breath knocked from his lungs, Vannek could only stare up at the alten and gasp. He had thought her without emotion; now bestial fury looked out from those eyes.

  Vann
ek heard the onlookers object, demanding to know what Varama was doing, and why she did it. Elenai shouted for her to calm down.

  Varama bent low, eye to eye, her hatred alive and vital.

  “I saved you,” Vannek said. His hand reached for the knife hilt at his side, but that blade had been cast at Cerai.

  “You should have saved him!” Varama screamed.

  Vannek shook his head. This, from the wisest of all Altenerai? Varama had to know there’d been no other choice, and that Rylin had given his life for her. They could not have gotten through, much less controlled the portal, while Cerai was launching inexhaustible attacks. But Vannek said nothing. He waited for the death blow.

  Varama glared for a long moment, and then the fury left her eyes and she dropped the knife, climbed off, and knelt in the sand with head bowed. At first, Vannek thought she shook from exhaustion. And then she understood that Varama wept.

  “What happened?” Elenai asked quietly.

  Varama didn’t reply.

  “Cerai just couldn’t be stopped.” Vannek sat up. “She brushed off injuries that should have left her dead. There’s no way Varama could keep her back and hold the portal at the same time. Rylin yelled at me to get her out. And then he attacked Cerai.”

  “He might still be alive,” Thelar said hopefully.

  Vannek thought about the burned, bloody, pale figure that just wouldn’t stay down, and felt moisture in his own eyes. “No. She got him, in the end. I don’t know how he stayed on his feet. He was burned, bleeding, an arrow in his shoulder, but he just wouldn’t stay down. Any warrior would be proud to die so well.”

  Vannek wiped his tears and pushed to his feet, turning away from the weeping alten. He wondered if he should tell them how Rylin had saved him and Muragan, too. They couldn’t possibly have reached the portal if they’d landed on the far side of the wall. Rylin had guided them to safety, probably at the cost of his own life, for if he’d simply raced on, he and Varama could have gotten through the portal together.

  It was a debt he would remember, and one he would tell them, when they could better hear it. For now, the Altenerai seemed unsure what they should do. The brooding exalt that had been Rylin’s friend stood with head bowed. The golden-haired beauty of an alten covered her face with one hand, tears streaming down her cheeks. Old, dark-skinned Tretton hesitated with his hand poised over Varama’s shoulder, but not touching it. The ghost alten drew closer, her expression somber.

  Elenai’s eyes were red as she came forward, but she did not let grief bow her. “The healers are still tending Muragan,” she said.

  Vannek had been startled when he’d finally seen how badly Muragan had been burned along the right side of his face. His arm had been blackened, too, and Vannek readied himself for bad news. “Will he live?”

  “They have him through the worst of it, and they think he’ll pull through.”

  Vannek grunted at the news, then worked to respond diplomatically. “Thank you. What about N’lahr?”

  Elenai looked to the left, and the knot of figures. One was the kobalin, kneeling. Kyrkenall stood near him. “Ortok brought him through.” Elenai didn’t sound very hopeful.

  “Is he alive?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  Kalandra called the others to alert, to take their stations, reminding them Cerai might be coming.

  “Did my men make it back?” Vannek asked. Only a small portion of his soldiers had gone through, and while he’d seen a few of his people racing with the squires when he and Muragan had been running after, he had no way to count them.

  “Some,” Elenai answered. “I think we lost two of Ortok’s warriors and three of yours, but most made it out. What about your dragon?”

  “Cerai killed it, too.” Vannek scowled. “And I liked that one.”

  “Did you see Anzat?”

  Vannek smiled fiercely. “For a final time.”

  The future queen nodded approvingly. Her gaze strayed toward where Thelar and Gyldara stood beside the grieving Varama.

  “For what it’s worth,” Vannek said softly, “he was my favorite.”

  “Is that Naor for ‘I liked him’?” Elenai asked.

  Vannek detected a somber joke there, and allowed a faint smile. “Yes. I liked him.”

  “Me too.”

  Vannek turned, fumbling for his waterskin. He would have to assess the casualties, speak to those who’d turned from Anzat’s leadership, and inform all his troops what might lay ahead. He didn’t look forward to any of it. Command, his father had told him, was always lonely, but without Muragan he felt almost as lonely as he had when he’d been flown from Alantris to his brother’s camp.

  He decided his men could wait and strode up slope to check on his friend.

  35

  Ortok’s Vow

  Elenai didn’t have time to mourn. While Tretton ordered the troops, she carried Kalandra’s stone in one hand so the sorceress could walk back with her to N’lahr, who had been placed near the wounded at the height of the rocky mesa. Thelar visited with the healers Varama had brought through with the Darassan forces, looking over Tesra. Elenai would check in on that situation momentarily.

  Ortok and Kyrkenall stood above their friend, oddly similar despite their vast difference in height, build, and appearance, for their expressions were drawn in grief. N’lahr lay on the ground, his face frozen with a slightly pained expression.

  Elenai pressed her hands to N’lahr’s side. A healer had repaired her bruise and she used both arms normally once more. She sensed that his life force was present, but stilled.

  “Anything?” Kyrkenall prompted.

  “He’s alive,” Elenai decided. “But I don’t know what to do for him.”

  “He is dead,” Ortok said quietly.

  “This tissue isn’t dead,” Kalandra said. Here in the gloomy daylight, the wind blowing, she looked even stranger than she had in the night, for the wind tugged at the hair and clothing of everyone around her. Her colors were washed out, as though she stood in bright sunlight that wasn’t there.

  “And that means he’s preserved,” Kyrkenall said. “That with the right trick you can heal him?”

  “I hope so, my darling,” Kalandra said. “But this is beyond me. And Varama’s spent. Maybe, with time, the two of us can think of something.”

  “There is nothing,” Ortok said without looking up. “I hoped I was wrong, that your magics would save him, Oddsbreaker, as he told you saved him before. But he is not there. My first Altenerai friend is dead, and too his promise to me.”

  He climbed slowly to his feet, head bowed, and seeing how gravely he was affected Elenai couldn’t help but reflect upon her long fear N’lahr would have to kill him.

  Kyrkenall’s expression had shifted from troubled to bemused, and he searched the faces of those around him. “This Kyrkenall mourns so much for this man,” he said. “Yet he did not shape him. The man was not his creation. I do not understand why he doesn’t acquire a replacement. There are other men here, with similar size and color.”

  Ortok scrutinized the little archer. The God in Kyrkenall, meanwhile, waited for an answer.

  Elenai gave him one. “None of those other men are N’lahr.”

  “A friend is not a lucky rock,” Ortok’s voice was thick with disgust. “When a rock is lost, go to the dreaming river and find another. Friendship is made with memories that cannot be found alone.”

  “Why is friendship important?” Kyrkenall asked.

  Ortok growled. “You are a foolish god. A friend helps your troubles and fights your enemies. A friend tells you when you are foolish, and lightens your burden, and teaches you new things. Maybe they walk a different path sometimes, but when they return and you see them, your whole body feels as though it smiles. We have only one heart, but a true friend is one with whom you would share it, if you could.”

  Kyrkenall seemed to be mulling that over.

  Kalandra spoke gently. “The man you share that body with knew N’lahr
since they first walked into the Altenerai arena. He’s stricken with grief not just because of the weight of memory, but because of the end of making memories together. He’s afraid there will be no more with his friend.”

  Ortok pushed one palm against the other. “I will find this Cerai, and I will slay her,” he vowed. “She owes me the fight N’lahr cannot give.”

  Elenai looked at the four of them, the morose, ghostly woman, untouched by the wind bannering Kyrkenall’s hair. The archer, slack-jawed, struggling to process concepts his shared mind couldn’t fully comprehend. Ortok, stern and decisive. And N’lahr, frozen forever in pained surprise.

  She didn’t want to believe him dead, but she couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. And she couldn’t really stand to see Kyrkenall like that, either. The two friends, one suspended by order, the other divided by chaos. With a ghost beside them.

  Ortok was the only one who made a crazy kind of sense.

  Elik, Tretton, and Gyldara approached from her left and stopped to one side.

  “Squire Elik is ready with a report,” Tretton said.

  Much as she worried for N’lahr, they had more pressing concerns. “Go ahead, Elik.”

  She felt the hair raising approach of Kalandra, who stepped to her right side.

  Elik formally passed over a long, staff-like object remarkably similar to the chaos weapon. She inspected its surface before turning her attention to her old friend. The last time she’d seen Elik there’d been a bruise on his cleft chin. That had healed. A stray lock of his curling brown hair draped down across one eyebrow. Superficially he looked little different than he had a few months ago, until she saw how much his eyes themselves had aged.