He reached the portal - a huge stone slab which pivoted on some hidden and indescribably ancient mechanism - and raised his right hand to rap, once, on a diamond-shaped section of crystal set into the otherwise blank stone face. A terrible grating, grinding sound rumbled beneath their feet, and slowly the portal began to turn. Cool, clean air rushed into the chamber - he heard Ilyaya drawing a deep and grateful breath - and they stepped out to meet the deputation of Guardians who had kept vigil through the long hours of Conclave.
Each pair of pale, expressionless eyes was focused on Keridil, and the Guardians clearly read the result of the Conclave in his face without a word needing to be uttered. Their spokesman inclined his head in acknowledgement and said in his toneless, distant voice, The triumvirate will be conducted immediately to the Shrine. Those who have waited behind are now gathered outside and may stand witness to the rite if the triumvirate so wish.
Fenar cleared his throat again and glanced at Keridil with the odd mixture of deference and resentment that he always seemed to feel for the other man. ‘I promised my adviser, Isyn, that he might accompany me if it was permitted …
In other words, his confidence was flagging and he needed his old tutor’s support. Keridil could hardly blame him. He was about to smile back at Fenar but thought better of it; with his nerves in such a state the boy would probably interpret a smile as patronage.
‘It’s entirely your decision and privilege, High Margrave,’ he said.
‘Yes …” Fenar’s face cleared. ‘Yes, of course.
‘I will need two of my Sisters at my side,’ Ilyaya Kimi declared fussily. ‘If I am to endure another lengthy ritual, I will need their support, quite literally. I never thought I’d be called upon to undergo such trials of exertion at my time of life.
Of them all, Keridil thought, the Matriarch was the only one who seemed capable of accepting this extraordinary and daunting situation with ease. She was involved in the making of history, yet she behaved as though she were merely undertaking one of the more tedious everyday duties of her office. He envied her - whether her calm pragmatism stemmed from self-confidence or senility, it was a feeling he would have liked to share.
Keeping his feelings to himself, he nodded. ‘Two of my Initiates will guard our prisoner, but aside of them I shall ask only my consort to accompany me.
Ilyaya was adjusting her veil with small, impatient movements of her hands. ‘And what of that girl, High Initiate - our prisoner?’ She pursed her mouth. ‘Our baited trap doesn’t seem to have yielded up a victim. I’m beginning to wonder if the Chaos demon has decided that discretion is the better part of valour, and abandoned her.
They were walking along a narrow, unadorned tunnel that burrowed through the shoulder of the volcano.
Guardians walked before and behind, carrying torches, and there was a faintly sulphurous smell in the stale air.
Keridil thought for a few moments before replying to the Matriarch’s barbed remark.
‘No, Lady. He’ll come; I’m sure of it.’ He knew Tarod well enough not to have wavered in his conviction that the trap would work. Earlier, before the Conclave began, he had requested a few minutes alone and, escorted to another of the seeming myriad of empty rooms and vaults that honeycombed the mountain - and whose function he couldn’t begin to imagine - had cleansed his mind of all extraneous thoughts and, after a short Prayer and Exhortation, used the techniques of mind-searching that he had first learned long ago as a new Initiate, in an attempt to discover Tarod’s whereabouts. He had found nothing; but the fact that his enemy was untraceable was in itself, he thought, a favourable omen. If Tarod was seeking to invade the White Isle and rescue Cyllan, secrecy would be his greatest weapon; and though he still couldn’t locate him by magical means, Keridil sensed in his bones that he was near.
Ilyaya Kimi sniffed. ‘And if he does not?
‘If he does not, his fate - all our fates - will no longer rest in our hands.
The High Margrave shivered, and made a poor job of disguising it. ‘I still say that girl should have been executed without the need for all this subterfuge,’ he said. ‘It could have been done in minutes, and we’d have had one less risk to worry about. But I was overruled.
This time, the hot look he gave Keridil mingled the old resentment with a new and more personal dislike, and Keridil choked back the temptation to suggest that, if the High Margrave was so set upon that course, he might like to take a knife or sword and show the courage of his convictions by cutting Cyllan’s throat himself. It was easy now for his peers to carp and criticise, he thought angrily; Ilyaya Kimi cast aspersions on his judgement in the matter of Tarod’s capture, Fenar on his wisdom in allowing Cyllan to live as a lure to their adversary. But he had made his decision, and he wouldn’t be influenced by arguments made from the relative comfort of their positions. Theirs weren’t the hands that must unlock the casket and lift its lid; theirs weren’t the shoulders that must bear the full brunt of responsibility for summoning the White Lords to the world. If he refused to give way to them, that autonomy was surely the least they could grant him in exchange for undertaking such a burden.
A paler rectangle showed ahead, indicating that they approached the end of the tunnel. As they emerged on to the volcano’s gigantic flank Keridil saw that the Sun had set, leaving only a last, pallid shimmer in the sky.
Twilight had drained all colour from the blank rock faces, and the Guardians with their white skins and clothing looked like great, phantasmic moths in the gloom. Ilyaya’s veil shone with a weird inner radiance of its own; Fenar’s circlet glowed nacreously, and for an instant something about the scene struck Keridil as unhealthy, tainted with an edge of corruption … he shook the thought off hastily, aware that it was little short of blasphemous.
They were conducted along the narrow walkway by which they had come from the great staircase to the vault of the Conclave, and where the parapet ended, the rest of the party awaited them. Sashka saw Keridil, and didn’t wait for anyone’s consent before she ran forward and embraced him. She didn’t speak - something in his face told her it would be wiser to stay silent - but she took his hand firmly in hers as they walked together towards the stairs. The others greeted their companions with less of a show; all but Cyllan who stood at the back of the group, between two tall, thin Guardians. Just once she caught Keridil’s gaze, and he blanched at the cold, controlled hatred that burned behind her amber eyes.
Sashka squeezed his fingers. ‘It’s done?’ she whispered.
He nodded. ‘It’s done.’ He didn’t need to tell her what the outcome had been, and heard her draw in a long breath. Then: ‘And now? Will they let me come with you?
Keridil had been staring ahead, to where the monstrous stairs wound ever further up the flank of the mountain. The sky was almost dark, but he could still make out the menacing truncated peak of the ancient crater at the volcano’s summit. They would climb those terrible steps, on and on, and when finally they reached the end there would be nothing before them but the Shrine itself. Now he looked at Sashka, searching her face for signs of fear and finding none. With her beside him, he wouldn’t feel so appallingly alone. ‘They will,
he said. ‘That is … if you’ll consent?
She could almost pity him for being so naive as to think that she’d not grasp this giddying chance. She, Sashka Veyyil, would witness the opening of the casket - and when the historians came to write their accounts of this momentous night, her name would be inscribed alongside Keridil’s as the consort of the High Initiate who had summoned Aeoris to the world.
She clasped his hand more tightly in hers and gave him the sweet smile that could always win him over. ‘Of course I’ll consent, my love,’ she said softly. ‘Nothing would keep me from your side now!
Cyllan climbed with one Initiate before her and one at her back, blocking any escape route, but was incapable of giving her attention to anything beyond the huge, endless stairs. She seemed to have been c
limbing for hours, each step a strain that made her muscles throb in protest, and her mind was numb with the ceaseless, toiling effort. Ahead, Keridil Toln led the procession, flanked by two more of the white-clad zombies - a new escort, for it seemed that only a small and carefully chosen few in whatever peculiar hierarchy existed here were allowed within reach of the mountain summit.
Behind him came the High Margrave, then the Matriarch, now carried in a strange, carved chair by two more Guardians. Torches glittered like small, feral eyes, a snake of light winding higher and higher into the night and dwarfed by the threatening peak.
And when they reached the shrine, what then? She had given up praying that Tarod would not come to her, for the fear that had begun to eat at her when they were brought from the vault now had a stranglehold that she couldn’t fight. She was too alone, too lost and too threatened not to long for his presence, for no one else would help her. And if he came too late - she didn’t once consider that he wouldn’t come at all - she would be dead, and her soul, having failed both Order and Chaos, would be damned for ever …
She was so enmeshed in her fearful thoughts that she wasn’t aware of the procession ahead of her coming to a halt, until she collided with the Guardian before her as he stopped. Blinking, Cyllan looked up.
The cone of the volcano, which before had seemed so distant as to be unreal, now loomed with terrifying immediacy ahead and above. She could see the crater like a vast, insensate mouth edged with jagged teeth, reaching up as though trying to devour the sky; see the ugly scar of a fissure where, aeons ago, lava had come blazing in a river of fire from the earth’s heart, the malformations of rock torn and twisted and melted under unimaginable heat and pressure. It was pre-historic, savage, an aberration; and her fear began to transmute into a palpitating sickness.
It seemed that they were waiting for some signal, and after long minutes it came. A horn, sounding from somewhere near the heart of the crater itself, amplified by the towering rock walls so that it echoed like the call of some supernatural denizen of a ghost-world. The sound wound on and on, finally dissipating out over the sea and swallowed by the night, and as the last echo faded the party began, slowly and with a new purpose, to move again. Onward, upward … and the gigantic stairs were at an end.
The gateway had been hewn into the rock face of the crater; a plain, foursquare portal formed of a single massive lintel supported by perfectly angular uprights.
At the lintel’s exact centre a design had been cut and filled with gold; an unblinking eye from whose iris a single bolt of lightning emanated. It was the ultimate sign of Order, the sigil of Aeoris himself-and it marked the entrance to the heart of the crater, and the Shrine.
The two Guardians who had led the procession with Keridil stepped aside and took up new positions, one to each side of the huge gate. Their fellows joined them and the white-clad figures formed a rigid guard of honour at the entranceway.
Keridil realised that these strange men would come no further. From now on, he and his companions were alone. He stared ahead and saw a chasm-like tunnel stretching away, lit by a faint and sullen glow that appeared to seep from the rock itself, then heard movement at his side as the High Margrave and the Matriarch, who had dismounted from her makeshift litter, moved up to join him. Keridil swallowed, took a deep breath, glanced at the nearest of the stiffly attentive Guardians; and with what might - unless imagination deceived him - have been the ghost of a smile, the man raised his right hand and made the Sign of Aeoris.
It was the signal to embark on the last stage of this ritual journey, and Keridil knew he couldn’t delay it any longer. He stepped through the maw of the gaping portal, heard Fenar and Ilyaya a pace behind him, and forced down the sudden inrush of dread that tried to grip him. It must be done - it would be done. Quickening his pace as determination overcame the fear, Keridil strode forward into the chasm.
The rift which millennia ago had been torn in the volcano’s side by an eruption of lava, and which now formed the one and only entrance to the ancient crater, was not a long passage. It cut directly through the cone, following an uncannily straight path, and after only a bare few minutes Keridil saw a pinpoint of light ahead.
He couldn’t identify its source, though instinct and knowledge of lore prompted him to guess, and his throat constricted with apprehension. Only a short way more The chasm opened abruptly and shockingly, and they emerged on to a wide ledge that overlooked a vista awesome in its sheer simplicity.
All around them, dizzying, the crater walls rose in vast ramparts, pitted and scarred and creating a terrible sense of vertigo. Perhaps two or three hundred feet below lay the bowl, a plain of pumice and basalt fused in incredible patterns and lit by the faint night radiance filtering down from the open sky. In the bowl’s centre was a single, gigantic slab of volcanic stone which some long-dead hand had carved into a perfect cube to form an altar - and here, the pinpoint of light which Keridil had glimpsed from the chasm revealed itself as a golden chalice in which burned an unwavering, eternal white flame. This votive light, he knew, had shone since Aeoris and his brethren left their awesome gift to the world; it was the Guardians’ task to tend it; one they had never neglected. And before the chalice, shimmering blindingly in its spilling light, was a simple casket no bigger than a man’s clenched fist, also made of solid gold. The casket of Aeoris …
Fenar Alacar made the Sign with awed and clumsy haste, while the Matriarch lifted one edge of her veil to her lips and kissed it, murmuring a prayer. Keridil couldn’t begin to define the feelings that this first sight of the Shrine awoke in him - awe, yes, and fear and reverence, but also a sense of destiny which was impossible to put into words, but which made him forget everything beyond the short ritual, and its culmination, which lay ahead.
From the ledge a steep but far from impossible path wound down into the crater’s bowl, and the High Initiate turned to his companions. ‘Those who wish to witness the ritual at close quarters may come to the Shrine with us,’ he said quietly. ‘Though if any of you would prefer to remain here and watch from a distance, you’re perfectly at liberty to do so.
Silence greeted his words. Though he had the impression that one or two of the party felt trepidation, no one would be first to back away. Only Cyllan seemed unmoved, standing now with two of Keridil’s Initiates flanking her; her gaze, when he reluctantly met it, was blank and empty.
‘Very well. I ask only that you all keep silence until the rite is over.’ And with a small bow to Fenar and Ilyaya in turn, he began the descent to the crater floor.
Beyond the volcano’s wall, the Guardians who had escorted the triumvirate and their company still stood in twin rigid rows at the portal. They had brought their charges this far, but the laws laid down for this eventuality centuries ago forbade them to go further. Their duty now was to wait, and they would fulfil it with the same impassive stoicism with which they approached every task. If they were curious or apprehensive about what might befall before the night ended, their distant expressions gave nothing away.
The slight movement in the shadows, some minutes after the last of the company had vanished in the gloom of the chasm, caused the two Guardians furthest from the portal to turn their heads in surprise. Both Moons were now well risen, illuminating the titanic stairway cascading back down the mountain slope - and on the first stair they sensed an untoward presence. Their fellows picked up the psychic disturbance an instant later, but before any of the Guardians could react or issue a challenge, the air before them shivered as though disturbed by an invisible hand - and a figure, silhouetted against the Moonlit staircase, stood before them.
As one, the Guardians moved to block the way, still keeping to their precise formation.
Those without sanction are not permitted to set foot on the island.’ Their spokesman’s tones were clipped, but there was a trace of disturbance in his voice. The intruder laughed softly, and something glinted with a starburst flicker of brilliance on his left hand. ‘One without san
ction has already done so. The Guardians will stand aside.
To touch their minds was child’s play, making a mockery of the awe in which they were held. Centuries of isolation, undisturbed in their stronghold, had caused the Guardians to overestimate their invulnerability - any occult skills they had once possessed but never needed had atrophied as their complacence grew, and to a will such as Tarod’s they presented no obstacle.
‘The Guardians will stand aside.’ This time the words were a sibilant command, and the white-clad figures shrank back as the interloper took a pace forward, then another. He looked from one pale face to another and another; slowly, like hypnotised children, they drew back to their old positions, reforming the double guard of honour as all motivation drained from them. The stranger waited until the formation was complete. Then he walked quietly between them, and away into the towering rift towards the crater.
The opening words of the ritual were, to Cyllan, like a death-sentence. She didn’t want to listen, but a terrible fatalism made her concentrate on the High Initiate’s gold-robed figure as he offered up a solemn prayer to the gods, while behind him the Matriarch and the High Margrave knelt in homage before the Shrine of the Casket. Her last hope was gone, and she bitterly regretted that she’d not thrown herself over the appalling drop as they neared the top of the staircase, or, perhaps better, hurled herself into the sea from the deck of the White Barque before it reached its grim destination.
Now, it was too late. She must live through this nightmare and face what was to come as best she could. Tarod had failed in his attempts to find her, she could not contact him, she could only pray - and not to the White Gods - that, somehow, he would survive the insanity being loosed against him.
Despite the night’s cold the atmosphere pervading the crater was stifling, and growing more claustrophobically intense with every moment. It was like the rising tension before a storm; a sense that something was coming, lurking beyond the horizon and marching nearer, building up its power towards fever-pitch before the first roll of thunder would boom out and shatter the breathless, unnatural calm. Keridil spoke - a prayer now that Aeoris might forgive what he was about to do, echoed by the chanting of Fenar Alacar and Ilyaya Kimi as they lent their voices to his - but the words lacked all resonance, swallowed, or so it seemed, by the thick air almost before they could take full form.
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