Realm of Ashes

by J. D. L. Rosell

  Talan closed his eyes and bowed his head. The tendons in his jaw felt like they’d snap. Veins pulsed in his forehead. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe for the hatred that poured through him. The image of the Guilders kicking and throwing Airene to the ground, ripping her clothes off, filled his mind with a force so that he could think of nothing else. Only his revulsion that he considered Kalindi’s offer for a moment cut through it, that his fear of death and killing would give him pause.

  But he knew better. If he’d learned one thing in Avvad, it was that the best way to kill a snake was to chop off its head.

  Opening his eyes, he raised a hand. He opened his locus wider and pulled on the stream of energy that poured in. Kinesis formed at his fingertips, honing until it reached a fine, narrow point.

  Kalindi’s eyes grew wide, and he scrambled out of his chair. But he couldn’t avoid the bolt of force that sped from Talan’s fingertips and caught him in the temple. A red spray fanned out from where it entered. The Undermaster spun from the dais, landing headfirst on the stone floor below with a sickening crunch, and his limp body fell after.

  Talan watched impassively as Kalindi’s body twitched, then stopped moving. This corpse didn’t fill him with revulsion as the others had, but an ugly pleasure. What have you made of me? he thought to the dead Undermaster. What did this place make of all of us?

  “They’re coming.” Sule faced the doors behind them, her curved sword held aloft, slowly backing away.

  Talan turned as well, feeling strangely disconnected from his body. He heard them now in the chamber beyond, their stealthy approach abandoned. His hand moved into his pocket and drew out a long shard of obsidian, then channeled radiance into it. It began to glow.

  “We may die here.” His voice sounded far away. A strange, sardonic smile tugged at his lips, and he didn’t bother to hide it.

  Sule stared at him. As he met her eyes, he saw the Qarin there again. “Keep it together,” she commanded. “I’m not ready to leave this world again.”

  He nodded even as the odd mood clung to him, grasping for the urgency that had driven him before. The spark. Remember the spark. Remember what this gamble was taken for.

  As the first of the Guilders slipped through the doors, Talan raised the glowing shard and channeled. Radiance, gathered in a blinding beam, blazed forward, burning and cutting through shadowed figures. Screams from the doorway told of others dying in the chamber beyond.

  But some had slipped through and spread out around them, knives and crossbows coming up. Talan cut off the stream, nearly staggering with the exertion. Exhaustion pulled at him. The long route in and the effort of continuous channeling had drained him. But he pulled for more still, gathering kinesis and throwing it up before him. Waves of pure force caught and turned aside the bolts and knives that hurtled their way, then knocked the Guilders roughly against the wall. Not enough force to hurt them, but hopefully enough to daze.

  Tucking away his obsidian shard, he drew out a long, curved knife and sprinted forward. Behind him, Sule screamed as she ran to engage Guilders on their flank. He threw small waves of kinesis before him until he reached the first of them. The man, off-balance from his relentless magic, had time for his eyes to widen just before Talan whipped his knife across his throat.

  The other Guilders were scrambling to get away from him, heading for the door where their fellows had gathered but didn’t dare enter. No doubt Kalindi’s corpse and two wardens gave them pause. Weariness dulled his mind, but Talan moved his leaden legs after them and forced a wide grin onto his face.

  “Come on, friends!” he called to them. “I have a red smile for each of you!”

  They broke. Like a herd of panicked cattle, they rammed against each other in their eagerness to escape. Sule was the herd-dog driving them on, her sword cutting down those too slow or stupid to run. She stopped just shy of the entrance, breathing heavily, but still firm and upright.

  “They’re still coming,” he reminded her.

  Sule met his eyes and nodded, then quickly backed away from the clearing entrance.

  He felt them before they drifted through the doorway. Desire seeped into him, so subtly that, even though he was aware of what would happen, he almost took a step toward them. They looked like little more than strands of shimmering cloth floating through the air. But Talan had felt their touch before. As they came nearer, he struggled to keep his mind. The desire to go to them, to lose himself in their oblivion, nearly overwhelmed his weary will. Rest, their voices whispered in his head. Rest, and worry no more. Struggle no more. Feel no more.

  He wrenched his mind from their grasp and was dimly aware of falling to his knees. Reaching desperately back into his memory, he tried to recall how he’d warded himself against them before. But his head felt full of cotton. The fire of Valem that had burned inside him had dampened so that it was little more than coals.

  Sule had backed away to the Guildmasters’ thrones. “Talan!” she cried, her voice shrill with fear. “You must fight them! They’ll destroy me!”

  He forced himself to rise. The knife dropped from his numb fingers, and he fumbled in his pocket for the obsidian shard. It began with the spin, he thought he remembered. Or was it the hook? It didn’t matter that he’d practiced the banishing technique countless times since leaving Erimis. With the weight of four Silks bearing down on him, he couldn’t wake the cleansing fire to free them from their bonds.

  Talan sank to his knees and closed his eyes as the Silks drifted closer.

  22

  Seeds of Famine

  Can any man survive this endless hunger?

  - Tales of the Desolate, uncensored; 1092 SLP

  I stared at the burning amphitheater, thoughts floating through my numb mind. Xaron, Isidora, and the Watchers had been tasked with entering the Wyvern’s Claw. They’d sought Vusu’s room at the heart of it. They’d meant to kill Vusu. But I couldn’t put the thoughts in any order that made sense of the sight before me. I wanted to believe they meant nothing.

  But as the haze cleared, the truth asserted itself, and I couldn’t fool myself any longer. I sank to my knees. It didn’t matter what had started the fire. Perhaps it had been stray radiance from one of the Watchers, inexperienced as they were. Perhaps it was a trap set by Vusu’s minions. Or perhaps Vusu had been undiminished in his power and paid his would-be assassins in kind. But it didn’t matter. No matter what happened, it didn’t change the fact that Xaron was a likely now burning within.

  Sobs wracked my tormented body, but I fought them off as I crawled to the chair by the fire. I had to see for myself. I had to know if Xaron was still alive.

  Dragging myself into the chair, I closed my eyes and tried to slow my hysterical breathing. Focus, Eltris had reminded me during our lessons, is only possible when your mind is not controlled by other things. But I couldn’t wrest back control. Fear and shame and guilt twined inside me and pulled my thoughts into terrible imaginings. I saw each of my loved ones — Xaron, Talan, Nomusa, my family — tortured and killed at the hands of hooded shadows. Only my anger was stronger. I ceded to it, let it fill me. I cut away the scenes and squeezed my eyes shut tighter. I could do nothing if I couldn’t focus. I had to enter the Pyrthae. Even if I couldn’t save them, I had to see.

  I abandoned Eltris’ techniques and tried Isidora’s. I painted a desert in my mind, brushing in dunes and a clear blue sky in broad strokes. Almost as soon as I’d visualized the rough sketch, the scene carried me aloft like a leaf on a strong gust, was if it had been waiting for me all along.

  I found myself ascending a dune. The pains of my body were gone, and a thin strength had returned to my limbs. Hot wind whipped dust into my face. My throat was parched with thirst, eyes gritty and dry. The sands slipped beneath my bare feet, each step losing ground, but I carried on. Dusty air wheezed in my lungs, but with each passing moment, breathing grew easier. I tilted my head back and saw nothing but the sharp edge of the dune above me. I scrambled up the last few st
eps to the crest. As soon as my foot touched the top, I felt myself lift away, the ground losing its grip on me. Panic rising, I bent down to the sand, desperate to grab hold, but it was too late. The sky took me with greater force with each passing moment, its weight having reversed. I fell upward into nothing. Barely able to breathe, I closed my eyes and let it take me.

  All may shift around you. You alone are still. Isidora’s words as she led us through the scene came back to me. I held tight to them in my mind. All shifted around me. But I was still. My fear could not touch me.

  Opening my eyes, I looked above me, only to see there wasn’t sky, but a desert, seen as if I looked down from a tall tower. All may shift around me, but I am still, I told the panic that tried to wrest back control. My ascent — or descent, it seemed now — slowed as I repeated the mantra in my head. As I came to a halt, hovering midair, I gazed down at the landscape below me, blinking in sudden recognition.

  Oedija had become a wasteland.

  I barely recognized it in the dull light that suffused the barren city. But I knew the shape of its shoreline and the circle of the city wall too well to deceive myself. Tall dunes of gray, ashy sand had built up around the inner city as high as the wall itself. The Half-Wall on the south side was nothing more than a long, tall mound of sand. The sea was drained, the cliffs at the edge of Oedija marking where it had once been. Only an endless brown basin remained now. The Pillars were strange here, melding with their mirror images into seamless bars of dark gray stone. The Laurel Palace below me was still recognizable upon its hill away from the consuming sand, though its towers were broken and its walls eroded. The Conclave’s dome had almost completely caved in.

  Movement drew my gaze eastward, to where a huge storm of sand turned above the city. Stretching the size of an entire deme, sand billowed slowly from it, yet I felt sure the force of its winds could tear the skin from my body. The twister reached into the mirror Oedija above as well, forming a shape like a spinning top that swayed back and forth from its connecting points. The center of the tornado seemed to project the light that filled this place, for the further away from it the land was, the more it fell into shadow.

  Fear ran through me as I recognized what it meant. When I’d dreamed my way into the Pyrthae before, Famine had appeared as an inferno. I guessed I now gazed upon the daemon god’s new form.

  I glanced down at myself, and startled at the form I’d taken myself. I didn’t have a body, but was a vague figure of spinning sand and wind. Seeing my form, I felt, too, the boundaries I put around it to keep it to that shape.

  I tore my gaze away and studied the landscape again. Now that I knew what form wardens might take, I saw the other swirling patches dotting Oedija. Three hovered around Famine. Dozens of others fluttered to the northeast. Fear and exhilaration gripped me as I recognized who those must be. I willed myself toward Xaron and the Watchers, trapped deep in the Claw, but still alive.

  As I neared, I sensed the danger they were in. Xaron, whom I intuitively knew as I’d known Talan’s flame before, seemed barely able to keep turning. I descended fast toward him, though I didn’t know what I could do. Xaron I might recognize, but I couldn’t distinguish between the Watchers and the Seeker wardens among the other other shapes that spun against each other. If I threw myself at any of them, attacking them the only way I knew how, I might as easily harm an ally as an enemy, and leave them worse off.

  I halted a couple dozen feet above and watched Xaron’s life fading, urgency hammering through my form and threatening to break it apart. Ideas spun through my head, but I dismissed each of them in turn. Just as I’d suspected and feared, I could do nothing more than watch.

  Then I felt something pressing against the boundaries of myself, and I startled and looked behind. The gray, twisted face of Clepsammia smiled her mocking smile at me as she gripped my sandy shoulder. Somehow, it became more solid under her touch. I felt I could almost hear her thoughts this way, for all the good it did — her thoughts were in no tongue that I understood.

  I didn’t try to pull away. Now that she was here, I remembered the last time the Maiden of the Sands had appeared before me. When I’d struggled even to stand after the Guilders’ attack, she had done something, something that gave me the strength to make it all the way back to the Aviary.

  As if sensing my thoughts, Clepsammia’s smile tugged unnaturally wider. She twisted her hand through my shoulder, and the sand where she’d touched spun faster. A warm glow of energy suffused me from the spot.

  For a moment, I didn’t understand; then realization hit me like a wave of kinesis. I stared, dumbstruck at the thought of a goddess aiding me. But remembering Xaron’s plight below me, I didn’t waste a moment longer, but turned and dove for him.

  Strength flowing through me, I rushed at Xaron. I barely knew what I did, but as I reached him, I summoned forth my energy and pushed it into him, spinning his wind into a fury as I flew by. Passing, I looked back, and for a moment, I feared I’d dispersed his slowly swirling sand. Then his spiral reared up and surged, his twister growing stronger and more distinct.

  Exhilaration surged through me. I’d given Xaron back his strength! I sent silent thanks to Clepsammia, then turned my gaze to the other fluttering gales below me. Some of those would be Watchers, some of them Seekers. For Xaron’s sake, I didn’t dare give any others wind. I glanced back at where Clepsammia had floated, wondering if she might guide me again, but the goddess had disappeared. Hoping I’d done enough, I reluctantly ascended back into the sky.

  Famine again drew my gaze. I couldn’t tell if it was my imagination, but his twister seemed to be growing larger, its winds stronger, with every passing moment. Only then did I wonder why Famine, bound as he was by Vusu, wasn’t in the Wyvern’s Claw as well. Wincing, I considered the Famine’s sandstorm closer. Near its base rose a Pillar; but if it was Bazaar’s, Iris’, or the Acadium’s Pillar, I couldn’t tell. It was too hard to distinguish among the force of his winds.

  Another thought jolted me back to myself. Xaron wasn’t the only one in danger. I scanned Oedija, searching for more signs of wardens. To the northwest, one twister still spun strongly. Komo at Brinecoast, attempting to save Myron, I guessed. As he didn’t seem in danger of fading, I continued my search, moving in a wide berth around Famine back toward the Laurel Palace, then onward until I hovered near the Conclave’s Pillar.

  Finally, I spotted him. To the southeast, small, fluttering sands, little more than a gust, were about to sputter out. Talan.

  As I threw myself toward him, I recognized Sule and her Qarin, a thin spiral reaching up to the mirrored Oedija. Its connection seemed so thin a small breeze might sever it. I ignored it. The daemon would have to take care of itself. I wouldn’t assist it, no matter whose side it claimed to be on.

  Talan’s winds stirred, then faltered, stilling and falling to the ground. Fear flooding through me, I didn’t slow my fast descent as I neared. Where before I’d breathed energy into Xaron, I now thrust it into Talan, throwing the whole of my being into him and filling him like wind in sails.

  A storm of emotions flooded through me. Senses flashed through my mind. The putrid stench of rotting corpses. Exhaustion heavy in my limbs. But something else pulled at me strongest, an intense desire to lose myself and finally find peace.

  NO!

  They — whatever they were — flowed like gentle zephyrs into Talan’s sputtering wind, sapping his strength and will. I moved to block them, their whispers only tantalizing to me, the separation provided by the Pyrthae enough to resist them. And though I’d given of myself to both Xaron and Talan, my will seemed to have only grown stronger.

  As I sheltered Talan from whatever assaulted him, I stirred him back to life. His being still flowing through mine, I knew he’d pushed himself too hard. Maybe beyond what I could repair. I suffocated my fears and pressed more of myself into him.

  He suddenly grasped toward me, touching my mind roughly like a blind man gripping my face. Do I know yo
u? He flung the question around him clumsily, not knowing how to direct it at me.

  Rise, I told him. Kill Kalindi. Then return to me.

  I felt his amazement and recognition. Airene?

  My heart soared, but I knew I couldn’t keep him longer. The Silks, as I’d identified them from his mind, battered against my wall, but I knew it was only he who could contend with them.

  Go! With the command, I lifted away from him, giving him one last burst of wind before I disentangled our spirits. One last glance showed Talan rising once more, his sands billowing with strength.

  I reluctantly turned my attention away from him and back north. Famine had grown ever greater. The middle of the tornado extended out, bloated with lazily rolling dust. But I could see how the winds whipped fast near the ends of it. Whatever was happening, Famine was gaining power, and quickly.

  I had to go to him. I had to see what was causing Famine’s rapid rise in power. Did Vusu grow with him? Or had Famine broken free of him? And what did the source of the storm mean, that it was not the Claw?

  Maintaining a careful distance, I brought myself closer to the daemon god. I could feel the pull of his winds from far outside the storm’s bounds. I studied the area from which it came. The Laurel Palace was to the west of it, and Conclave southwest. Now that I was closer, I could barely pick out Bazaar’s Pillar beyond, showing me the storm rose from—

  The Acadium.

  Heedless of the danger, I threw myself toward the storm. I didn’t know what Vusu and Famine were after, or what was augmenting their power. But they’d claimed Linos once before. I wouldn’t let them have what was left of him.

  I flew through the desolate city. Famine’s pull on my mind became stronger as I neared, threatening to split it asunder, and I had to fight every moment to keep myself together. The ethereal light within the twister pulsed brighter, like the beating heart of the sun. I dove low, dipping below the burgeoning middle of the tornado, and soared within the channels of sand covering the city.