by Martha Wells
"This is Sevan-denarin, an Ancient Builder." Khat switched to Old Menian for Sevan's benefit, telling him, "This is Elen son Dia'riadin, a Warder, which is something like one of your Mages, only not as useful."
Sevan's eyes went to Elen, but his gaze was unfocused, disinterested. They were only lucky that the man had thought enough of Yoane Eveba that seeing one of her creations in the flesh was enough to shock him out of his centuries-long sleep. To Elen Khat said, "You've still got the last relic, haven't you?"
She found the winged-figure relic in her robe and handed it to him. Sevan's eyes followed it without interest, and Khat's heart sank. Still, he held it out to the old man, saying, "This isn't the catalyst that was lost?"
Sevan said, "That is not the catalyst Ashonai forged. That is some other's work."
"But we can use it to close all the Doors, forever?"
Sevan met his eyes, and for a brief instant there was nothing distant about his expression at all. "If you wish. I left a ruined world. Is it any better now?"
Khat didn't have an answer for that, at first. When one came to him he was surprised at how little hesitation he had in giving it. If someone had handed you the opportunity to destroy the world ten years ago, when you had just left the Enclave and you still hated everyone and everything, he asked himself, would you have taken him up on it? Better not to know the answer to that one. He said, "You thought it was worth saving when you built all this. Yoane thought it was worth living in. It's not so much worse off now. It maybe a little better."
Sevan held his gaze for a time, while death wailed overhead and no one else moved. Khat didn't need Constans to tell him that the old man was trying to soul-read him again. Maybe trying to make sure that Khat was really what he thought he was. Khat wasn't worried; Yoane had evidently not meant her creations to be vulnerable to the Inhabitants' voices, or to the soul-reading of the other Mages, and she must have told Sevan-denarin her plans. Finally the old man said, "Very well."
Khat let out his breath, not realizing he had been holding it. Maybe he had been a little worried. He said, "How?"
"Give it to the young woman. If she has power, the Will and the Way are to be read from the catalyst."
"You can't even give her a little advice?" Khat ventured.
"If she has power, the Will and the Way are to be read from the catalyst."
Khat sat back. That was all they were going to get. He looked at Elen.
"He's going to help us?" she asked hopefully. Khat hadn't thought about translating for her, and she must have understood only a little of what was going on.
Khat gave her the relic. She had torn her hands during their long climb, and the rags wrapping her palms were lightly stained with blood. He repeated what Sevan had said as best he could in Trade-tongue. Elen was aghast. "I can't."
"Why not?"
"I've never been able to ..." Elen tried to turn away. "My power is weak. I'm terrible at things like this."
Khat grabbed her shoulders and made her look at him. "That was before, when Riathen never let you do anything with it. And you said the Remnant made you almost as powerful as he was."
"You're stronger than you think, Elen," Constans added, startling Khat, who hadn't thought him capable of hearing what went on around him.
"Why don't you do it?" Elen shot back, glaring up at him, anger putting the strength back into her voice. "You're so damn powerful, you save the world."
"I can't do two things at once, and if I let this shield go we are all dead."
"Stay out of this," Khat told him. It might be unfair, considering that Constans was the only thing keeping the Inhabitants back at the moment, but he knew Elen would never listen to him. He said to her, "Just try."
She was silent, staring at the relic in her hand. There was a rush of freezing air from above, and they both ducked instinctively. Khat looked up, and saw the barrier had dropped again. It was no more than ten feet above their heads, if that. Constans said, "A decision soon, Elen, or it will be out of your hands." His voice was drained, exhausted.
Elen glanced back at Riathen's body and wiped her eyes. She glared at Khat. "If I fail, everything terrible that happens next will be my fault. That's the perfect, fitting end to my life, don't you think?"
"If you fail, I promise not to tell anybody," he said.
Elen managed a wry smile that was more than half grimace and got to her feet. She faced the open center of the platform, cradling the little relic in her cupped hands.
Chapter Twenty
Elen ignored the dizzying drop just below her feet and slowed her breathing, calming her mind, thinking only of the catalyst.
Try, she told herself. Just try.
Her mind wanted to wander. Had Riathen subtly encouraged her not to use her power during all his years of teaching? Had she willingly agreed to it, out of her own fear of madness? Yes, yes, probably; there's nothing you can do about it now. She sensed an Inhabitant's voice in her thoughts again, subtly persuading this time and not trying to overawe with force. She was a Warder, she could be a powerful one, perhaps the most powerful one. They had always given some humans power; it was jealousy that made the others resist. She could have anything she wanted, it told her.
Maybe this was the same Inhabitant who had tempted Seul so successfully. She thought, You're lying, of course. You'll kill me like you killed Justice Rasan, and the fortune-teller, and whoever else was in your way.
No, it said, I bargain in good faith. The one called Seul would have lived if he had not tried to betray me. As proof, it offered the secret to constructing the painrods.
Elen felt the knowledge suddenly stream past her consciousness, like a waking dream, but made no effort to remember it. The information was a subtle corruption, and she saw how it must have worked on the Ancients, caught unaware, and perhaps overconfident in their power. A trade of weapons for integrity. Of course, painrods would have no effect on formless beings such as the Inhabitants, only on other humans.
And when the creature said "Betray," she had the clear sense that it had no idea what the word meant. It didn't see her as a person. It couldn't think of killing her as a betrayal, any more than she could think of stepping on an ant as murder. But it had learned to use the word as if it understood it.
You should be the successor to the Master Warder, it said. But he never thought of you, only of Seul.
I know that, she thought, but my power was never strong enough.
It could be. You could have anyone or anything you ever wanted.
The images it presented were graphic. It had used human lust to manipulate Seul, that was obvious enough. And what would you know about that, except what you learned from the Heir? Elen asked the Inhabitant, disgusted with it and herself. It's all lies, anyway. Riathen lied to me, Seul... Oh, Seul lied to everyone. Even Khat lied to me about Constans, and you really expect me to look to you for the truth? Furious, Elen shoved the thing out of her mind. She felt it resist, felt it seem to grow within her mind until her temples throbbed. But the pain fed Elen's anger and she only fought harder, pushing back at it, thrusting it away from her with all her strength. She felt the grip it had on her weaken, then suddenly give way. Its heavy presence was gone and she was alone with her own thoughts again.
The Remnant hadn't lied to her. The single clear note of its song had led her to where power dwelled. Perhaps it hadn't given her power, either; perhaps it had only kindled what was there.
She touched that place in her mind that the Remnant's song had led her to, and the catalyst was suddenly alive in her hands, its warmth enveloping her consciousness. Like a mental map, blazing lines leading her to the goal. One did this, and that, and...
***
Khat watched Elen. The mass of Inhabitants churned like a pot about to boil over, the flashes of red light and swirling clouds of gray air pressing down from overhead. Freezing vapor drifted past the barrier of Warder power, touching bare skin with a chill residue. Khat wondered if it would be like this till the
end, no signal of failure, or success, just Constans gradually weakening until the Inhabitants fought their way down to them.
Then the inside edge of the platform glowed molten yellow.
Khat came to his feet. The glowing edge was gradually creeping out toward the open center above the empty well of the Doorway, growing steadily and leaving new, cream-colored stone in its wake. It had gained at least a foot already. Elen flexed her empty hands in wonder. The relic had vanished. She said softly, "I did it."
The wailing of the Inhabitants above increased a hundredfold.
Sevan-denarin was suddenly standing next to Khat. The old man said, "Jump, if you want to live. The Door is closing. The force of it will carry you safely down, if you stay in the center and away from the walls."
Khat translated for the others, having to shout to make himself heard. "What about the Inhabitants?" Elen protested. "If Constans drops the guard, won't they follow us through before the platform closes?"
From behind them, Constans said, "I can make the barrier hold long enough for us to escape, but we won't have much time."
Elen looked over the edge, and then up at the Inhabitants.
"Jump," Sevan said, making an unmistakable gesture.
Khat seconded him, stepping to the edge with her. "Go on Elen, hurry."
She nodded, took a deep breath, then stepped over. "Come on." Khat caught Sevan's sleeve, urging him toward the edge. Sevan pulled away and moved back.
He means to stay here, Khat thought, understanding suddenly.
"I suggest you hurry," Constans said.
Khat looked back. "Then go. Make sure Elen gets out all right."
Constans glanced down at him, then walked over the edge of the shrinking center, disappearing after Elen.
The barrier shivered, but held. The Inhabitants wailed again, outraged. More freezing vapor drifted down, coalescing into water droplets as it passed through the warmer air.
Sevan still hadn't moved. There was perhaps ten feet of empty space left, before the platform would close entirely. Khat said, "If you don't go, I won't."
The old man turned toward him, eyes unreadable, and then moved to the edge.
Khat didn't waste any more time. He grabbed Sevan's arm and pulled the old man over with him.
They were falling, but not headlong. The walls were blurs of gold streaming by, and Khat was too overwhelmed to be frightened. He looked up and saw the platform had closed, blocking the corridor with an unbroken oval of golden light.
Then a cold wind shrieked through him, and a powerful force shoved him toward the wall of the Doorway. Khat caught hold of a ledge, the rough edges tearing at his hands as his full weight came down on his arms. He gritted his teeth and found a foothold, then hauled himself over the edge. He saw Sevan clutching the ledge a few feet away, and hastened to drag the old man up.
Sevan sprawled beside him, and before Khat could ask what had gone wrong a freezing blast of air struck them, knocking them both back against the wall. Khat wiped his eyes and looked up.
Hovering before them was an Inhabitant, its body a swirling whirlwind of dust and air so cold it was opaque, a core of pure bottomless darkness at its heart. It surged toward them again, a tendril stretching out to sweep them off the ledge. Khat ducked under it, flattening himself to the stone, but it caught Sevan, tumbling him head over heels toward the drop-off. Khat threw himself forward and caught the old man's robes, just as Sevan's legs went over the edge.
They hung there, and Sevan was a deadweight. Khat tried to brace himself, his elbows grating painfully on the rough surface. Sevan wasn't helping at all, and he didn't think he could support the big man for long on his own. Then Sevan's other arm gripped the rock, pulling hard, and Khat was able to drag him back up onto the ledge.
Khat collapsed backward. The Inhabitant still hovered there, its malignant attention fixed on them. This has to be the one from our world, the one that was trapped there all this time, Khat thought. It hated them too much to be a stranger. It must have been waiting on this side of the platform for us.
In a colorless human voice, the voice it had used when it had clothed itself as a human and stood at the Heir's side, the Inhabitant said, "I've trapped you here. The Door to your world closed even as the two Warders passed through it."
Suddenly Khat was furious. "You trapped yourself," he told the creature. It got the pleasure of killing them, but it wasn't going to get the last word if he could help it. "You can't get out either, and you can't get back to your world."
The clouds swirled, red and angry. "My vengeance is better than freedom," it said. "Your company as time travels on to eternity will make my prison bearable." It tore up and away from them, shrieking laughter.
The air warmed around them, and Khat realized his chest ached from breathing in the freezing vapor. His clothes and hair were damp with it. The place was eerily silent, except in the distance he could hear the Inhabitant howling like a remote storm.
Quietly, Sevan-denarin said, "It had no desire to return to its world. They came here because their world is dying, and in their desperation they broke the bonds of it, and found these Doorways that led them to us. They weren't always as you see them now. They are still closely tied to their world, and its protracted death throes have twisted their souls, and only the most fierce survive the journey here. It was the perfect irony that in their battle to conquer us and our struggle to drive them away we both nearly destroyed the land we were fighting over."
That might be true, but Khat knew it wasn't going to stir any sympathy for them in his heart. He pushed away from the wall that was still damp and chill from the Inhabitant's breath. He wouldn't have thought he could last three days here, but that was before he had seen Sevan. There is no time here, the old man had said, and Khat was beginning to realize what those words might mean. Trapped here forever, with a being that was all cold death and malice. He asked Sevan, "Was it telling the truth? Are we trapped here?"
Sevan sat up, shaking his head. Much of the coating of dust had rubbed off, and Khat saw for the first time that the old man's skin was as dark as old leather, and that the hair escaping from his wrapped headcloth was white with age. "No," Sevan said, sounding disgusted and weary and really human for the first time. "The mindless thing has forgotten who I am. I'm the Builder, for damnation's sake."
He reached up behind Khat and laid a palm on the wall, frowning in concentration. Then the wall opened up, and they fell through.
***
Elen felt herself passing through the Door, felt the instant its influence ended and she was falling through the air of her own world. Then she struck water with a stunning impact. She came to the surface, coughing and gasping.
She was in the cistern of the Tersalten Flat Remnant; sunset was streaking the sky overhead. The empty sky. She stared up at it, flailing her arms to keep her mouth and nose above the water. The sky stretched above the well chamber, limitless and open, no Doorway. It worked, she told herself, jubilant. It did work!
She splashed to the side of the cistern, her clothes dragging at her, and supported herself on the broad stone rim. Her head ached, her hands and feet were cut and bruised, and her exhaustion stretched to the depths of her soul.
Constans was seated on the opposite rim of the cistern, calmly hauling his mantle up and wringing the water out of it. Men in the robes of Imperial lictors, and many of Constans's black-clothed Warders, were running out of the antechamber, carrying lamps, exclaiming in amazement, pointing. Shiskan son Karadon was standing in front of the cistern, her arms folded, unperturbed by what must have been their miraculous appearance. "You're back," she said to Constans. "We were beginning to wonder."
"It was an unusual experience," he told her, "but in the end, there wasn't much difficulty."
The ego of the man, Elen thought. She supposed she might eventually accustom herself to dealing with him, but it wasn't going to be pleasant. She was looking around, at the water, at the open sky above, without really realiz
ing what she was looking for. Then it hit her, as sudden as a blow to the midsection. Khat and the Ancient man were missing. "They aren't here! Khat's not here! They didn't get out." She stared at Constans, horrified.
"I wouldn't wager on that," Constans said. He climbed over the cistern's wall and stood, dripping on the pavement. "Besides Khat's own talents, he had a thousand-year-old Ancient who called himself a Builder with him. If there was another way out to be found, he found it."
Khat had said much the same thing about Constans. Elen closed her eyes and stretched out with her inner senses. Constans and Shiskan and the other Warders were like blazes of light on a dark landscape. The lictors who had accompanied them were less well defined, but still visible as vibrant living souls. Them she ignored, straining past the bounds of the Remnant to the limitless expanse of dead/alive Waste around them. She knew it would be impossible for her to sense Khat, but for an instant she caught a hint of Sevan-denarin's presence, unlike the other Warders, unlike anyone or anything else, but before she could touch it, it was gone again.
So Sevan was here, though he was hiding himself from her detection as he had hidden himself from the Inhabitants. After all that time, it was probably a reflex. It came to Elen suddenly, as the visions from burning bones did, that she would see Khat in Charisat again. She opened her eyes, somewhat reassured. Then she realized what she had done.
Elen looked at her hands, still wrapped in dirty rags. She had cupped the catalyst relic in them, and it had disappeared in a blaze of power, forging the barrier that would trap the Inhabitants in their own world, wherever it was, forever. And now she had soul-read on such a scale as most Warders only dreamed of, seeing for miles around, and she had had a vision of the future without the ritual. It was the same thing she had experienced when the Remnant's voice had whispered in her mind. But the Remnant was silent now, sleeping again, its purpose fulfilled.