The Last Cleric

by Layton Green

  I will flay you alive, lock you in stone for eternity! Eat the souls of everyone you hold dear!

  With the mummies steps away, Will ran forward and launched Zariduke like a javelin, straight at the abomination on the pedestal. He saw Selina’s dying eyes pick up the trajectory of the missile with the last of her power and speed it forward, striking a devastating blow in the center of the sorcerer king’s chest.

  With a snip of blue-white light, Zariduke pierced the unnatural amalgamation of flesh and magic, and Yiknoom crumbled into dust.

  At once, the mummies toppled to the floor, their life force extinguished. Mateo moaned and rushed to Selina’s side. He started to ease her off the iron-tipped staff but she gripped his hand to stop him. “I’m sorry,” she said, her face twisting from the pain.

  “Stay with me, my love,” he said. “There has to be healing aid in here.”

  Her head lolled forward as she strained to remove a slender copper necklace from beneath her shirt. “Take it,” she whispered, when her hands failed her.

  Distraught, Mateo eased the necklace off her, and she closed his palm around it. “It was all for her,” she said, and then breathed her last breath.

  Will held the spear while Mateo, his good hand trembling, eased Selina’s body off the iron tip and held her in his arms. Mateo pressed his lips to hers, then sank to his knees and lowered her body to the ground.

  Will approached from behind and touched his cousin’s shoulder, letting him know he was there. Mateo reached back and took his hand, gripping it tight.

  Mala squatted next to Gunnar’s body, taking his hand in silence. She pressed her lips to his forehead for a long moment, folded his hands across his chest, and rose to approach the pedestal. At the base of the melted statue, beneath the ashes of the sorcerer king, an iron pull ring had been exposed.

  Will left Mateo to grieve in silence, paid his respects to Gunnar, and stepped over the puddles of liquid gold to join Mala on the pedestal. She took a cloth out of a pouch and used it to wrap the superheated iron ring. Together, they tugged on the handle. A trap door opened to reveal a set of stone steps.

  “What was he?” Will asked, toeing the remains of the sorcerer king as they stared into darkness. “In the end.”

  “Who knows,” she said. “A perversion of man and magic, stripped of humanity. If he had any to begin with.”

  Will swallowed as he looked at Gunnar and Selina’s prone forms. “We should bury them.”

  “Yes.”

  A rumble arose from above, as if the earth itself had groaned. The sound increased in volume as chunks of obsidian began falling from the ceiling.

  Mala’s eyes flew upwards. She dashed away to inspect the remaining glass cases.

  “What are you doing?” Will shouted.

  “Go!” Mala yelled back. “I’ll follow soon!”

  Larger pieces started to fall, and Will feared the entrance to the staircase would be blocked. He had no idea where it led, but he had seen no other exit. After picking up a wooden shield from the floor in case he needed cover, he pulled his grieving cousin away from Selina and hustled him to the staircase. Mala was still running around the room, frantic, pawing through the remains of the treasure.

  An enormous piece of stone dropped a foot away from Will, cracking the floor. “Now, Mala!”

  “Go!”

  He would gladly risk his life for her, but what he would not do was risk his life to help her find more treasure. After another futile plea, Will shook his head in frustration and hurried down the staircase after his cousin. He hated to leave Gunnar and Selina but they had no choice.

  Enough residual light filtered down from above to make out a rough-hewn tunnel at the bottom of the stairs. They followed the passage for a few hundred yards and found another staircase leading upwards, almost vertical and only wide enough for one person at a time. A faint blue glow lit the staircase, though the light had started to dissipate into scattered turquoise motes.

  Thunderous booms erupted all around as the magic holding together the pyramid of the sorcerer king came undone. Dust and loose stones plummeted from the ceiling. The floor cracked beneath their feet. His heart heavy, Will cast a final longing glance down the collapsing passage, then started to climb.

  -44-

  After he blasted the crown, the shockwave of magical energy pulsed, and the world disappeared. Val found himself drifting through a darkness as deep as outer space, though instead of stars he was surrounded by a panorama of multidimensional shapes in a constant state of flux, glowing with a bluish-white light, winking in and out of existence like the random shuffling of a million Rubik’s cubes in 3-D.

  Weightless, his body spinning out of control, he tried to right himself with physical strength and then with magic. Nothing seemed to work. He felt no pain, and wiggled his fingers to make sure he was still alive. Val twisted and caught glimpses of his companions: Synne with her bloody eye socket, Rucker floating unconscious below her, and Adaira struggling to reach Val. Dida was off to their right, semi-conscious and gravely injured from his wounds.

  Everyone was floating towards a different portal. Whether another world or universe or dimension awaited inside, Val didn’t know, but he suspected they would be lost forever if they drifted through.

  WHAT HAST THOU DONE, WHELP? THOU WILT DESTROY US ALL!

  Val looked up, towards the sound of the terrifying voice, and saw Asmodeus. The demon lord had managed to right himself. Feeling nauseated both by the sight of his wounded friends and the kaleidoscope of helixes spinning around him, Val tried to focus as the giant being fixed his gaze on the crown floating a few feet away from Val. He had lost his grip on it during the blast.

  Trying to take advantage of the distraction, Val reached for his magic, only to realize his power was spent. He could only watch, cringing, as the demon lord flew straight for the crown. Once Asmodeus retrieved the artifact, Val had no doubt as to their fate.

  Right before the demon lord snatched the crown, an old man wearing a wrinkled tweed coat appeared out of nowhere, ten feet away from Val. “That will be enough of that.”

  As soon as the man spoke, Val’s body stopped moving, as if he were a spinning top that someone had just corralled. Looking around, he saw his companions frozen as well, hovering among the shapes with glazed stares and inert bodies.

  The newcomer was a tall, angular man with wispy gray hair and a stoop to his posture. Though facing away from Val, the voice was familiar, and he could picture the sloping forehead and corkscrew eyebrows that Will had described, the silver eyes glittering with intelligence.

  Salomon.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to take the crown,” the old man said, with a melancholy sigh. “It was never created for this.”

  Asmodeus turned to face the arch mage, towering over him as he spoke. WHO ART THOU? HOW DIDST THOU ARRIVE HERE?

  Salomon ignored him and reached out towards the crown. It whisked into his hand.

  With an annoyed scowl, Asmodeus pointed his scepter at the old man. A cone of gray light shot forth, bounced off Salomon like a bullet ricocheting off of metal, and returned to strike the demon lord in the chest.

  The blow threw Asmodeus back ten feet and left him floating on his side. Stunned, he managed to regain his equilibrium and return upright, then roared and swung his obsidian rod at the elderly mage.

  Before the blow landed, Salomon dissolved and reappeared behind the demon lord. Left off-balance from the swing, Asmodeus lurched forward, confused. As he turned, Salomon casually waved a hand, causing rays of light from the polyhedra surrounding them to streak towards the demon lord and wrap him in bands of blue-white energy.

  Furious, Asmodeus tried to escape but found he couldn’t move. His eyes widened as he looked at the arch mage with sudden recognition. IT IS THEE.

  “Is it?” Salomon said mildly. He pressed his palms together and then spread them. A portal opened in front of Asmodeus similar to the one beside the lava basin, a realm of madness and b
lack spires, death and chaos.

  As the demon lord bellowed in protest, Salomon flicked his wrist and sent Asmodeus hurtling through the portal, then closed the doorway with another wave.

  “Why?” Val said, thrilled that Asmodeus was gone but trying to process the sudden turn of events. “Why intervene now?”

  “When I made the crown, I’m afraid I made a mistake by not accounting for the possibility of a powerful suffusion of spirit. Further abuse would disrupt more probability waves than would not intervening.”

  Val’s face tightened. “That’s not what I’m asking. Why now, and not before Synne had her eye plucked out? Before that monster put Dida on his torture wheel?” Val was shouting now. “Before Ferin was sent into that hellish place and I was forced to . . .”

  He bowed his head at the thought of blasting Tobar into nothingness with Spirit Fire. The black sash gypsy mage was no innocent, he knew. Without killing him, Val would have lost the chance to help his brothers.

  Tobar’s mind might never have recovered anyway. He had chosen to go to war, and Val’s brothers had not.

  And none of that changed the fact that Val had killed him in cold blood.

  Salomon’s silver eyes turned sad.

  An image of the redheaded girl in the village sprang unbidden into Val’s mind. He swallowed and looked away. He could deal with the ramifications of his actions another time. Right now he had people to save. “Where are we?”

  “Someplace even more elemental than the Place Between Worlds. You would not understand. Not yet.”

  “Between space and time?”

  “Between, among, within, before, after.”

  Val corralled his fury, his utter hatred of this man and his godlike games, and focused on the situation. “My friends need urgent care.”

  Salomon pursed his lips and nodded.

  “Did you hear me!?”

  “They are in stasis,” Salomon said quietly.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Time is different here. Their condition will not change under my thrall.”

  “Heal them,” Val demanded.

  “I’m afraid I am not a cuerpomancer.”

  “So you can stop time and toy with a demon lord but you can’t make my friends better?”

  “Magic is not omnipotence, Val. It is only magic. And I am but a single, tired old wizard.”

  Salomon pressed his palms together again, and another portal began to form.

  “Wait,” Val said.

  The arch mage hesitated.

  “Are my brothers still alive?”

  Silence.

  Val’s voice turned low and deadly. “You owe me that much.”

  “I believe so,” Salomon said finally. “But I do not know for sure.”

  “What do you mean? You know everything.”

  “I wish that were so. In this place, especially, my sight is limited. And I can only create a portal to places I have been.”

  “What about Asmodeus’s world?”

  Salomon didn’t reply, and Val’s eyes widened. “Why couldn’t he use the crown himself?”

  “Demons have innate gifts, but cannot employ true magic. As far as I have seen in my travels, magic is the sole province of humankind.”

  “Where were we? That weird world, the blue mist?”

  “You give me far too much credit, Valjean. I have yet to scratch the surface of the multiverse. As best I can tell, when the opposing spirit mages clashed on Urfe, it triggered the crown’s powers and created an alternate dimension. Thousands of years ago, when the wild mages of Albion battled the demons who overran Badŏn, led by Asmodeus, it was perhaps the most powerful release of magic that Urfe has ever seen. I can only assume the psychic signature of that event somehow interacted with the powers of the crown.”

  “Which you created.”

  “Yes, well,” he mumbled, “I admit I lacked foresight with that particular endeavor.”

  “It’s a time travel machine, isn’t it?” Val guessed. He had been thinking about everything that had happened, including what he had seen during the Planewalk. “Only instead of going back in time, which is impossible for some reason, the crown creates an analogous alternate dimension.”

  Salomon was quiet for a moment. “Very good.”

  Val took a step forward. “You did it for the son you lost, didn’t you?”

  Salomon shuffled his feet and looked down.

  “You wanted to travel back in time so you could be with him again, but you couldn’t figure out how to do it. So you created a device that leads to alternate dimensions of your choosing. What happened, Salomon?”

  The arch mage looked up with grief-stricken eyes. “I saw him,” he whispered. “But I also saw myself, and I didn’t want to deprive that father. Inflict on him the same . . . unbearable pain . . . that I have endured.”

  Val could only imagine what it meant to live as long as Salomon had, carrying that terrible loss and guilt.

  After a moment, Salomon said, “I remained there for many years. Decades. Watching him unseen. Do you understand what that is like? What sort of torture it entails? It drove me mad. When I left, I lost track of time for many years. Decades, centuries.”

  “Why didn’t you destroy the crown? You need to stop playing God.”

  The arch mage stared down at the crown for a long moment, as if deciding whether to use it again. “Quite frankly, no one except me has ever been powerful enough to use the crown in its proper application. I gave it to the Congregation as a symbolic gesture. I did not anticipate recent events and the loophole of direct force.”

  He read Val’s unspoken question. “You have innate strength, yes. But true power entails far more than natural ability. It is an intense application of skill, knowledge, and desire over many years. Sometimes even lifetimes.”

  “How do I get stronger?” Val asked. “Become like you?”

  Salomon’s eyes met his, and Val felt dizzy as he locked gazes with the arch mage. “Be careful what you wish for,” Salomon said, his voice sounding far away and his eyes expanding until they were all Val could see, a tunnel of silver that opened onto a glowing skyline and the hulking sprawl of wizard strongholds flanking the Thames river.

  Val felt himself falling.

  -45-

  After a long vertical climb that sapped the last of Will’s and Mateo’s reserves, with chunks of rock cracking and falling all around, they finally reached an ancient stone door covered in runes. Will peered downward to see if Mala was behind them, but the light had almost dissipated and he could barely see. He shouted her name, over and over.

  No answer.

  With a worried glance at his grief-stricken cousin, Will turned the handle and the door slid silently inward, easing his fears of a final trap. On the other side of the door, a narrow ledge jutted over a cylindrical shaft at least fifty feet across. He looked down and saw, far below, the stippled tops of the statues dotting the floor of the first level. He prayed the life forces trapped inside them would finally be put to rest.

  Above him, chiseled into the face of the vertical shaft, was a set of step-like indentations that led to the surface. Fresh air seeped down, and a few stars twinkled above like the lights of a rescue ship.

  Mateo looked numbly at the sparkling heavens, no doubt thinking of Selina, of all that they had lost.

  Will stood with a hand on the door. “I’m going back for her.”

  A huge rumble shook the pyramid complex, lasting for long seconds and shifting the ground beneath their feet. Mateo gripped his arm. “She made her choice, cousin.”

  Will hesitated. Indeed she had.

  “Think of everyone back home, the Revolution. Think of your brothers.”

  Mateo was right, he knew. Mala did not deserve a rescue. Yet his earlier choice still haunted him, when he had left her at the mercy of the spider. Even though he knew it was an illusion, it felt like leaving her to die a second time.

  Will sighed and shook his head. “I’ll be back as so
on as I can. I promise.”

  Mateo gripped his arm, then held the door as Will dashed back to the long staircase, shouting Mala’s name as he descended, dodging pieces of stone that fell like hail from the ceiling. As darkness closed in, he came to a section of steps that had collapsed. Thirty feet beneath him, where the staircase resumed, he saw Mala standing at the edge of the top step, holding a cat o’ nine tails.

  “Foolish boy,” Mala shouted up at him. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

  “Shut up and help me think.”

  “Don’t you think I already have? Go and save yourself. Return to your senseless Revolution.”

  “What about your javelin? How far does it reach?”

  “It expands to ten feet. Don’t you think I’ve thought of that?”

  Will set down his sword and shield, lowered to his stomach, and reached down as far as he could. “You’re going to have to jump.”

  Mala shook out the acrobat’s stick to its full height, eying the distance between them. He knew it would be an absurd maneuver, even for her.

  Another section of stone collapsed right beside her. After meeting his eyes, she looked down and took a jar out of one of her pouches. She opened it and dumped a chalky powder on the ground. Something to make the pole stick, he assumed. After that, she straightened and stuffed the cat o’ nine tails in a pouch that made it disappear, sheathed her short sword, climbed down ten steps, and extended the pole out in front of her.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Ready.”

  With a deep breath, she dashed up the stairs to gain speed, planted the pole, and leaped straight into the air.

  Will tensed as the pole scooted forward a few inches and then stuck to the ground, allowing Mala to extend. She soared upwards, holding onto the pliable shaft until the last moment, then shoved off it as a pole-vaulter would. Her body rose higher, drawing closer to Will’s extended hand as she reached the apex of her trajectory.