He didn’t want to.
But this wasn’t about what he wanted, not anymore. This was about his daughter, about Amina. About the people of Zahra and the people of Karikesh. This was about defeating the Turan Khar and sending them back to hell where they belonged.
Closing his eyes, Rylan gritted his teeth and placed his hands on the statue.
When he opened his eyes, the sun was shining brilliantly in his face. A gentle breeze traced his skin, cooling the day to a pleasant temperature. He blinked, the glare of sunlight overwhelming his eyes. The world around him swam slowly into focus, resplendent in glorious greens and the vivid blue of a summer sky. Wind sighed through the tree branches overhead, rustling the leaves. Birdsong filtered toward him, coming from every direction. The fresh scent of roses filled his nostrils, a nostalgic scent that brought him happiness.
It was a beautiful day. A perfect day.
He turned and smiled at his beloved. She smiled back, and his heart filled with joy and desire. Ilia was the woman he loved, the woman he wanted to spend his life with. A playful breeze stirred a lock of hair over her face. She jerked her head, tossing her hair back over her shoulder where it belonged. The breeze tossed it right back, and she laughed.
He pulled her close and stroked her face with his fingers, brushing the wayward strands behind her ear. His action made her grin harder, which made his heart glad. He held her in his arms and kissed her deeply.
Gazing into her eyes, he asked, “Will you be my wife?”
At first, he thought she was going to say no. Then he saw the tears collecting in her eyes, and he knew she was his.
“Yes!” she cried, her voice full of joy and laughter.
He lifted Ilia into his arms and settled down with her on the grass. Leaning back with her on top of him, he kissed her lovingly. The scent of roses filled his nostrils, and the feel of her there, in his arms, filled his dreams for years to come. For centuries to come.
He rolled over and gazed at her breathlessly.
He produced a necklace with a radiant opal stone and drew it around her neck, then kissed her hand. She looked down, fingering the pendant.
“What stone is this?” she asked in a trembling voice.
He smiled, stroking her hair. “It’s an imbued opal. With it, you can always come back to me.”
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks, her expression speaking silent words he would never hear and never forget.
The breeze sighed.
The world blurred and faded.
He held Ilia’s hands and gazed into her radiant face. She wore a garland of white rosebuds in her hair, a flowing dress embroidered with a floral pattern. She was looking at him with the same expression she had the day he proposed to her.
Holding her soft hands, he pledged, “I will honor and treasure you as my beloved wife.”
“I will honor and treasure you as my beloved husband.” She smiled at him, all the joy in the world reflected in her eyes.
“And may death never part us.”
“And may death never part us.”
He drew her in and kissed her tenderly, lovingly.
The world blurred.
He made the mistake of blinking.
“Who are they?”
His forceful strides propelled him across the Guardian Tower’s command chamber. He stopped in front of his senior officer, a white-haired man named Paru, who stood with his back against the seamless black wall, his face etched in lines of intensity. He stood at attention, staring straight ahead, legs spread, hands clasped behind his back.
In a tense but controlled voice, he responded, “The Turan Khar.”
Paru’s words provoked only vast confusion. The Turan Khar were not a warmongering society. They had coexisted with them peaceably for hundreds of years. They had neither the military knowledge nor the infrastructure to wage war on this scale.
“What do they want?” he demanded.
“To conquer us, of course.”
Men and women milled around the command chamber. Some stood staring out the tower windows, while others, like Paru, ringed the walls and waited for orders. Below, the air surrounding the Watchers glowed with an eerie blue light he’d never seen before, the surrounding air ionized by the grotesque amounts of amassed power ready to deploy.
Another explosion rocked the Guardian tower. The Watchers flared, and beams of light shot far into the night sky, aimed at infinity. Another building, this time to the south, disappeared from existence, along with the sum of the people in it.
He clenched his jaw. “There isn’t enough field strength to power that kind of weapon!”
Paru’s razor-like gaze shifted to him. “Custodian. They’ve opened a rift. They’re harvesting anti-magic from a mirror-plane.”
His mouth fell open, and he stared at Paru in shock.
The world shuddered. Then it blurred and faded.
And winked back into existence.
The order to retreat resounded like a thundering hammer in his head. He staggered a few more steps before slumping forward, hands braced on his knees, panting for breath. For a moment, he just stood there, struggling to breathe through the filth in the air. Thick black smoke poured past him, heated by unnatural fires that glowed a deep crimson red. The poison smoke stung his eyes. He wiped an arm across his face, the fabric coming away stained with bloody grime.
He sucked in as much air as his lungs could draw and cried, “Ilia!” The sound came out barely louder than a wheeze.
She wasn’t there. Men and women charged past him in mindless flight, screaming and wailing. He started limping after them.
But he stopped after only a few strides. Throwing his head back, he shouted, “Ilia!”
“I’m here, Keio!”
His eyes fell on her soot-darkened face, and a tidal wave of relief nearly swept him away. He sprinted toward her through the stampeding crowd and scooped her up, hugging her tight against his chest as flames the color of hell licked the sky behind them. Releasing her, he searched frantically for the best route of escape.
Before he found one, the world shuddered and faded.
He stood alone in the command chamber at the top of the Guardian Tower, looking out from one of the great wide windows. His hands, planted on the window ledge, were pale and trembling. His brain had slowed to a standstill, mired in a numbing fog that encased him like a chrysalis. Below him stretched a scarred and defeated landscape he didn’t recognize.
Tall columns of smoke rose all across the plain as the cities of Shira burned. Suheylu Ra stood alone in defiance of the Turan Khar, a situation that was untenable. Already, most of his nation lay scattered and broken, his people massacred or enslaved. The Khar had a capacity for brutality that was never-ending. All the blood and tears they had already feasted on had only intensified their thirst.
He clenched his hands until his nails bit into his palms. He felt impotent, for he was. All the great knowledge and capacity of his people meant nothing in the face of the threat posed by the Turan Khar. He could only defend with the might of one world, while the Khar conquered with the fury of two worlds, combined and weaponized.
A shadow fell over him, making him shiver. He looked up in time to see a glistening, winged form slither through the air above the Guardian. The Khar’s demons were already aloft, surveilling the city. Suheylu Ra was next. Very soon, it would fall.
The Khar would finish what they started… but what was next?
His own civilization lay slaughtered, its picked-on bones strewn across the continent. But there were still plenty of other nations in the world. Nations that would provide easy fodder.
It was within his power to help them, at an unthinkable price.
Unthinkable, and yet he was considering it.
Along the horizon, another city was reduced to vaporized particles.
He bowed his head.
The world blurred and wept like rain.
“There’s no time!” he shouted at Paru.
“Then what would yo
u have me do?”
He had no idea. He grimaced, gritting his teeth against the scream in his throat. He whirled away from Paru. “I’ll tend the Watchers. I’ll do what I can. It won’t be enough, so by all the gods, get as many as you can out of here!”
Paru stood frozen for a fraction of a second longer than he should have before effecting a bow. “Yes, Custodian. We’ll get as many out as we can.” With that, he turned and ran, the sound of his footsteps ringing up the stairwell.
“Ilia.”
His wife turned to him with despair in her eyes as she guessed his intentions. She surged forward and clutched his arms painfully. “Please don’t!” she gasped. “You’re the Custodian of this city! Your job is to protect!”
“I can’t,” he growled, taking a step back and throwing his hands up in desperation. “Don’t you understand? There’s nothing I can do. We are defeated, Ilia!”
She grimaced, anguished tears flooding her cheeks. It was obvious she thought he was betraying her, betraying them all. What she didn’t understand was that there was nothing left to betray. He moved closer, wanting to comfort her. He raised his hand to caress her face.
She flinched away from him.
The entire world shuddered as if terrified. He could hear the stone of the Guardian Tower grinding against its foundation. Striding quickly toward the window, he looked up at the darkening sky. Above the city, an enormous rift had opened and was expanding, sucking light and hope down its gullet. He’d never seen anything so monstrous.
“What is it?” Ilia cried.
It took him a moment to find the words. “It’s their Sky Portal,” he said. “They’ve summoned it here.”
Her eyes widened in terror and disbelief. “How do you know?”
“What else could it be, Ilia? They use the Onslaught as a weapon. They have to draw it from somewhere.”
“Anti-magic,” she whispered. “How?”
It didn’t matter how. He disengaged from her and sprinted back toward the center of the room. He had to bring the Watchers back online, had to get them primed and overcharged. There wasn’t much time. They were already out of hope. But the rest of the world wasn’t.
“I need you, Ilia. Help me wake the focus!”
Instead of heeding him, she turned back to the window. With a growl of frustration, he took up position in the middle of the room, centering himself over the eight-pointed star pattern depicted in tile on the floor. The star worked like a lens, focusing the lines of the magic field at a single point. Suheylu Ra was built in the center of a powerful vortex of magic, and the star focus could channel all that raw power.
Closing his eyes, he willed the focus to awaken and drew deeply on its power. He could feel it coursing through him, a blazing torrent of energy, far more than he could ever draw unaided. Using himself as a conduit, he directed all that energy outward toward the Watchers. Brilliant beams of magic erupted from the golden dome of the Guardian, streaming out across the city toward each of the twelve great sentinel towers, which came to life and begin to pulsate. Thin rays of light shot out from each of the Watchers, creating an elaborate web of energy above Suheylu Ra with the portal in the air as its focus.
“Keio!”
He opened his eyes and saw Ilia standing at his side, staring in shock at something behind him. He turned and looked over his shoulder.
There, at the edge of the stairs, stood a man and woman dressed all in black and holding chain-like artifacts that glowed with power. The woman was Darl, from the continent of Tur. She was beautiful in the way a crystal is beautiful, all sharp edges and smooth planes, with silvery hair and pale gray skin. The man beside her was also Darl, or perhaps one of the Sea People. His skin was a much darker gray, his hair utterly white, framing a face that was exceptionally thin. His narrow, black eyes glistened with sinister intellect.
How they had gotten past the Watchers, he would never know.
“Stand away from the focus,” the man ordered as he crested the flight of stairs and moved slowly into the command chamber.
Holding the web of power as tightly as he could, Keio demanded, “Withdraw your forces, or I’ll collapse your portal and send you straight back to hell.”
The Darl man paused. His eyes roved over Keio, starting with his feet and moving upward to capture his gaze with a piercing stare.
“And how do you intend to accomplish that?”
The Darl’s voice was strangely calm. Keio stared harder at him. There was something about him. Something familiar. He couldn’t place it.
“I’ve primed the Watchers and aimed them at your portal. If you attack us, they’ll overload. We’ll see how well your portal holds up against the magic of an entire vortex flooding into it.”
The Darl’s expression didn’t change.
The woman next to him said, “That’s a very bad idea, Keio.”
So they knew who he was.
He turned to regard the woman with skin the color of a corpse and eyes black and dull like charcoal. Her face was sharp and chiseled, as though she’d been carved from marble. Her expression was just as cold.
“You cannot force that much magic into a gateway stabilized by anti-magic,” the man informed him in a patient, condescending, voice. “Doing so would destabilize the magic field over the entire area. The resulting backlash would contaminate everything: the air, the soil, the water, the animals.”
“I’m aware of that.”
He glanced at Ilia, who stood staring at him, face bloodless and slack with terror. The sight of her made his insides twist. If he carried out his threat, he’d be killing her too. He’d be killing them all.
“You’re bluffing,” the vile man said with a smirk, taking a step toward him. “The entire region would be uninhabitable for thousands of years. Now. My patience is wearing thin.” He took another step forward. “Step away from the focus.”
“I’m not bluffing,” Keio assured him, even though the very words felt like a gut punch. “Your society is like a disease. I’m going to stop the spread of it here, before it infects the entire world.”
He meant those words, meant them with all his soul. But then his gaze slipped to Ilia and his heart broke. She was everything to him, the brightest star in his heavens. He couldn’t condemn her.
He couldn’t afford not to.
There was a sudden shriek and then something knocked into him. Hard. He lost his balance and fell to the floor, almost losing his connection with the focus. He sat dazed for a moment. Then his gaze fell upon Ilia.
She lay beside him on the floor. Dying or dead. Above her floated a shadowy wraith in the form of a man.
He scrambled toward her, taking her into his arms and holding her close, the way he had the day he proposed to her. Only, this time, she didn’t hold him back. When she drew her last breath, he felt her death as his own, and a significant part of him died with her.
The Gift of magic was released from her body as she died. It flooded into him, and he screamed. He screamed until his throat was raw, then collapsed in tears.
He lay her down on the ground, then looked up at the Darl with wrath in his eyes.
Somehow, he still clung to the power of the vortex. He hadn’t dropped it. And now, more than ever, he had no hesitation about using it. He rose to his feet, glaring his hatred at the vile man across the room from him. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. No words could.
The Darl extended his hand toward him. “I have no desire to see you suffer,” he said in a calm and quiet voice. “If you come with me, I will take you to a place where you can be with her again. You can be with her for eternity. Come, Keio.”
It was too much. He was paralyzed with pain. All he could do was stand and weep. The man dismissed his shadowy minion with a motion of his hand. Then he smiled. It wasn’t a gloating smile; it was compassionate.
The smile was a mistake. The biggest mistake ever made.
With a ferocious cry, Keio drew as hard as he could on the vortex, drinking in all it
s terrible power and sending it back out to flood every Watcher that ringed the city.
The Darl let out an outraged cry, then disappeared.
Keio threw his head back and screamed in anguish as all the power of an entire vortex raged through him, shredding his mind. With his last rational thought, he commanded the Watchers to overload, to direct their wrath at the portal overhead.
The last thing he saw was the sky turning a hideous, crimson red.
Then the world blurred and ran like blood.
He opened his eyes with a strangled gasp. Before him stood his beloved—whole, beautiful, alive. The sight of her made him shudder, and his eyes shed hot tears that fell like rain. He shook his head, knowing the vision in front of him was a lie. But when he blinked, she was still there, wearing the same necklace he had given her the day she had pledged to become his wife.
He reached up and touched the opal pendant, filled with an overwhelming mixture of sadness and wonder.
“Ilia,” he whispered, hardly believing she was there, standing in front of him.
But the woman he loved shook her head. “No, Rylan,” she whispered, her eyes drowning in sorrow. “I’m Xiana.”
He withdrew his hand, suddenly uncertain. He took a step back, his gaze rising to her face, a face that looked suddenly different. But her eyes remained the same; it was her. It was his Ilia. The woman he had died loving.
“Rylan,” she whispered again.
The name awakened fresh memories within him, memories that didn’t seem real. Memories that belonged to another man, another life. His breath caught in his throat, and he stood motionless, clenched in the grasp of confusion and despair.
“I’m Rylan,” he breathed, glancing at her for confirmation.
Xiana gave a sorrowful grin. “Yes. That’s who you are.”
Her words stabbed his heart. “What of Ilia…?”
Xiana stroked his face tenderly, her eyes glistening. “She’s here, Rylan. She lives within me. Just as Keio Matu now lives in you.”
Chains of Blood Page 28
