Shadow of the Void

by Nathan Garrison

  Ruul’s gift kept on giving, now reaching a peak, and Draevenus could feel himself falling like a boulder down the other side, shoving all his will towards holding on for one more beat . . .

  One more beat . . .

  Arivana felt the weight of each measured step as she ascended the makeshift platform, made from the hastily piled remains of several wrecked war engines. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks. She’d thought to hold them back at first, thinking she must grow used to the sight of bloodshed if she was to be an effective leader. Sometime between the first step and the last, she’d changed her mind.

  If ever I get used to death, I’ll know then that I’ve failed.

  She reached the summit of her podium and allowed her eyes to take in the full extent of the sorcerous conflagration erupting before her. Breath fled her lungs while heartbeat raced. It seemed the world itself might be torn asunder beneath such magics unleashed.

  As if I’m not under enough pressure already.

  The eyes of a thousand nearby soldiers pinned her into place, with more joining every beat. More pressure. More possibility for fear. Yet, somehow, she grew calm. Focused. She’d spoken to enough crowds to know how to emphasize for effect. The fact that untold lives were at risk did not make it any more difficult, she found. It only hardened her resolve.

  If I’m to be queen, she thought, then stopped herself with a shake of the head.

  “Something wrong?” Tassariel asked from behind her.

  “Nothing. It’s just . . . I am the queen. I think it’s time the rest of them knew it, too.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Arivana nodded. “Let us begin.”

  Tassariel moved just behind her, so close Arivana could feel the valynkar’s breath on her neck, and extended glowing palms past her shoulders. Arivana’s next exhale seemed loud enough to shake mountains.

  It was time to address her ­people.

  “Fellow Panisians,” she said, “and citizens of all other nations present: The queen greets you.”

  Her voice rumbled with vitality, carrying itself over the heads of a million troops, even reaching the six grand skyships. A hush fell over those below though the sorcerous enfilade continued unabated.

  She pressed on. “Circumstances being what they are, it falls to me to issue orders directly to those claiming allegiance to our coalition. I have spoken to representatives from the opposing faction and discovered that a possibility for peace exists.

  “As long as I live and breathe, no one should have to suffer for sins not his own. This war . . . ends . . . now!”

  As she’d been speaking, she noticed a curious change in the exchange of sorcery. The dark streaks from below dwindled, then halted altogether. And now, she could see a barrier of some sort erected in the air above the entire Sceptrine front, a patchwork shield reinforced by what seemed many thousands of those masters of darkness. She knew, without doubt, that the change had been Jasside’s doing, in response to Arivana’s words. She’d only met the woman a toll ago, but she knew a good soul when she saw one.

  Unfortunately, the flaming arcs from the flying fortresses did not relent. If anything, they intensified.

  My work isn’t done yet.

  “To you, great houses of Panisahldron, I give this command with no uncertainty: Stand down! Negotiations have already begun. Your vigilance is acknowledged, and your display of power holds us all in awe, but the time has come to let words accomplish what power alone never can.”

  Arivana inhaled, holding it in as long as she dared. Still, the fire fell. Cracks began appearing along the dark barricade. They couldn’t maintain it forever.

  She pursed her lips and hunched her shoulders. If logic won’t sway you, let’s see how you deal with a scolding.

  “The heads of your houses are dead,” she said, fiercer than ever. “The old way of doing things is abolished. If you, dear citizens of mine, wish to continue your lives of privilege and luxury under my rule, you will obey. Now!”

  The spells vanished in an instant.

  Arivana sighed in relief. Suddenly exhausted, she sagged backwards, nearly falling into Tassariel’s arms.

  “Well done,” the valynkar said in her ear. “Few ­people I’ve met can tolerate a sudden loss of status. Appealing to their baser natures always seems to motivate ­people even when nothing else will.”

  “I’m just glad it worked. This time, anyway.”

  “With the way you handled that, I think you’ll have no problems controlling your ­people from here on out.”

  “Controlling them? You make me sound like Tior. Like a tyrant.”

  “Let me rephrase, then. You’ll have no problem helping them see the right course of action.”

  Arivana felt herself smiling. “Maybe. But one little chastisement isn’t going to make these ­people forget the power they wield. Or how little real respect they ever gave the throne.” She stared out over the countless ranks of ­people for whom she now had responsibility. “Let’s hope I can tell what the right way is myself.”

  “You will,” Tassariel said.

  “How do you know?”

  The woman grinned. “Let’s just say I have faith.”

  Draevenus felt himself surging, not to the bottom, as he expected, but to the top of something wholly new. Pain dwindled in an instant. In its place came relief so great he wept freely, unconcerned with appearances. His world of a moment before, of unparalleled torment, differed so greatly than the now, he scarce believed either could be real.

  With hurricane force, the dark mist sucked back towards the box, which shut closed with a hiss. It all ended so fast, Draevenus barely had the presence of mind to catch himself on hands and knees as he fell.

  With eyes closed, he inhaled.

  The breath was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. Despite the arid atmosphere, his lungs filled with air more pure than babies’ laughter, more refreshing than hot springs in winter. His clawless fingers pressed against sand, for once the less coarse of the two. Within, deep within, warmth blossomed like a flower on the first day of spring, permeating his body with every pulse. A warmth he’d not even known had been missing. But now that it was there, he couldn’t imagine how he had lived so long without it.

  Exhaling, he opened his eyes.

  Angla stood before him. Draevenus could see the changes he’d felt reflected in her and others he had yet to notice. A full-­faced smile revealed straight, flat teeth. Her obsidian skin shone smooth and glossy in the waning light. The edges of her eyes were ivory white, and the irises were . . .

  “Brown,” Draevenus said. “I’d forgotten that your eyes were brown.”

  “A hereditary trait, it seems,” his mother replied.

  She ran fingers through the brand-­new hair running down over her shoulder, shimmering black locks with the faintest streaks of grey. Angla had not been a young woman—­though not yet old either—­when she’d first changed. Draevenus wondered what that meant about their life spans in this new state.

  Then he realized what Vashodia had been trying to say.

  And why she had fled.

  He lowered his head and cried silently. This was the greatest gift Ruul could ever had given them. And his sister had missed out. Yet for all his sorrow, he understood instinctively why she had wished it that way.

  “Do you feel it, son?” Angla asked. “In your back. It’s so . . . so . . . I don’t know how to describe it. Just let go. Let go, and you’ll see what I mean.”

  Draevenus felt it. A knot of something clenched within the upper part of his back. Despite his conflicted emotions, he did as his mother asked.

  He let go.

  And from his spine sprouted black wings.

  CHAPTER 23

  Arms crossed, Vashodia tapped her foot against the frigid apex of the mountain as night began to fall. Facing south
, the lands split three ways. Directly ahead, a few dozen lesser peaks of the Nether Mountains faded into the distance, shadows chopping them into pieces as the day’s light waned. To their left, the land rolled up and away, gradually growing greener as the Fasheshish desert gave way to the fertile plains of Panisahldron. To the right, it twisted and curled down into the foggy bogs of Weskara. Far beyond them all, at the farthest visible edge before the world curved away, sparkled a slice of the ocean the mierothi had crossed during their exodus from the Veiled Empire.

  The expanse of land before her might have been breathtaking, but she could not appreciate the beauty through a vision stained by red. Things had not gone to plan thus far. Not perfectly, anyway. Which, to her, was all that mattered.

  Vashodia sighed. Enough of the pieces have fallen into place. Things may still work out as I envisioned. Shall I become the child I seem because of a few minor setbacks?

  But “minor” didn’t really cover it. She’d let that girl get to her.

  Abyss take you, Jasside.

  Her apprentice had taken to her task admirably, even without being explicitly instructed. She’d been there to temper Vashodia. To stand in the place of a conscience she knew had long since vanished. Fled, or chased away, the difference mattered naught. For the last nineteen hundred years and counting, Vashodia had been studying the effects of greatness combined with power and left unchecked. She’d be a fool to let such a fate befall her.

  No, the problem hadn’t been with Jasside’s fulfilling her role. It had been with her doing it exceedingly well.

  Vashodia knew the value of detraction, of opposing viewpoints. Every step of the path she walked needed that voice of reason asking if that was truly the best place for each foot to fall. Jasside had done all that . . . and more. Now Vashodia was beginning to question everything. The rightness of her cause. The justifications. Whether she could actually save the world.

  Whether the world was even worth saving.

  Vashodia shook her head. No. That, at least, she made abundantly clear.

  Still, she worried, for the first time, about the possibility of defeat. And about the price she was willing to pay to give victory a fighting chance. Neither concern had crossed her mind for more than a few fleeting moments, and rarely at that, since she had embarked on this campaign all those centuries ago. But if she’d learned anything in that time, it was that nothing could ever be completely accounted for. Societies changed in subtle ways she hadn’t expected, and even Ruul and Elos, those two claimants to godhood, had managed to surprise her.

  And, of course, there was no predicting the heart.

  Vashodia kicked in frustration, dislodging a small shower of stones down the snowy slope. She giggled as she watched them tumble.

  “A pebble rolls down a mountain,” she said to herself, “and the world’s very turning changes. Or . . . it doesn’t.”

  She used to be so good at predicting which it would be. But no longer. Now she found herself, more and more, playing a reactive role, a task ill suited to her temperament and expertise. Doable, of course—­few things weren’t—­but far less comfortable than she would have liked.

  But comfort, she knew, would soon be a luxury few on this planet could afford.

  Vashodia turned north as she felt a familiar energy signature dashing leagues closer by the beat. The apprentice returning, for the last time, to the mistress.

  “What a shame that I have no more lessons to give.”

  Jasside shivered the moment she landed out of her final dash. Each breath filled her lungs with ice and little else, a stark indication of their elevation. She pulled her cloak close, glad she’d thought to don it again before leaving the battlefield. Vashodia, of course, didn’t seem the least bit affected.

  “What are you doing up here?” Jasside asked. “This must be the highest peak in the world.”

  “Outside of our old empire, there are only two higher, but both are too distant for my purposes.”

  “Which are?”

  “You’ll soon see.”

  Jasside scoffed. “Cryptic as ever. Can’t you just this once deliver a straight answer?”

  Vashodia waved dismissively. “By the time I explain, it will already be over. Patience, Jasside. This time, I only ask for a drop of it.”

  Jasside clenched her fists, forgetting the cold for the moment. “Will it be worth having left all your kin unprotected when they were at their most vulnerable? Will it be worth nearly killing us all?”

  “I was sure you and the daeloth would be sufficient to protect them. As it was, I barely managed to escape.”

  “Escape? Abyss, Vashodia, don’t you realize what you missed?”

  As she turned her back, the mierothi looked less like a little girl than Jasside had ever seen. “I realize all too well.”

  Jasside jerked her head back, seeing the woman as if for the first time. The burden she’d been carrying. The responsibility. The pain and fear held hidden so long beneath a mask of absolute confidence. Jasside almost felt a voyeur as she spied all this and more in the slightly drooped shoulders of her mistress.

  The anger she’d thought righ­teous vanished faster than the mist of her exhalation.

  “What’s going on?” Jasside said. “Something is happening. I can feel it. You can’t afford to keep me in ignorance any longer. Please, I must know.”

  Vashodia only shook her head as she pointed to the sky.

  Tassariel smiled as Arivana began giving orders like the queen she always could have been, but she felt little joy. Commanders, newly ascended heads of the great families, and foreign dignitaries all came to the girl, who handled them all deftly and fairly, with the grim determination of one only recently raised to authority and eager to get it right. The girl was a natural.

  Tassariel wished she could be happy for her. It was everything they’d both wanted, after all, but now that they’d achieved it, she couldn’t help but feel out of place. I hadn’t even been the one to save her. Some stranger did. It took me months to realize what needed to happen, yet Jasside arrived at the same conclusion in mere moments. And she had the talent to make it happen just as quick. What did I even do to help?

  “I’m . . . pointless.”

  The words came out at less than a whisper, and no one standing nearby could have possibly heard.

  But someone still did.

  “You are not pointless,” Elos said. “You’re exactly where you need to be at exactly the right time.”

  Tassariel shook her head. “I don’t know how you can say that. I was supposed to be your chosen one, but chosen for what? I—­we—­did nothing here that made any difference.”

  “Not yet.”

  “The fighting is over, and it looks like Arivana will be able to handle herself from here on out. What else is left?”

  “Oh, child. Did you really think helping secure a queen’s throne was vital enough to be worthy of my descension?”

  Tassariel scratched her elbow. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Hardly.”

  “But it was more than that. Look around us. Look at all the lives that were saved.”

  “As you have said, that had little to do with us.”

  “Then why the abyss are we here!”

  “Players,” Elos said. “So many different players in this game. We all had to show up to throw in our hands. The cards have now been revealed, and I am proven to be the least of them.”

  “But . . . you’re a god.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  Tassariel sighed. “Less, apparently, than I had come to expect. Care to fill me in on the big secret?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s . . . I mean . . . wow.”

  “I haven’t even said anything yet.”

  “No, bu
t you’re willing to. That’s saying something, coming from you. Should I be worried?”

  “Yes.”

  Tassariel felt a chill run up her spine and realized she hadn’t felt the icy churning of Elos’s calculations in tolls. The physical aspect offered no relief before the growing dread of its absence.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I lied about my hand. I have one or two more cards to throw in. With luck, they will be enough to prepare you for what soon will come. Either way, they’ll be the last I ever play.”

  “Last? What happened to all your calculations? I thought you could practically see the future.”

  “There are some things no one can see beyond.”

  “Like what?”

  “Death, for one.”

  “And for another?”

  Elos paused, whether searching for words or deciding how to respond, she didn’t know, yet for some reason she felt herself growing more and more sad for each beat the silence stretched.

  “Perhaps some other time,” Elos said at last. “Tell me something, child. Do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” Tassariel said, surprised by how easily the assertion came to her. Her blind faith had been shaken, but something else had taken its place. A faith born of promises kept and character unveiled. A faith that lived.

  “That is good to hear. There’s something I need you to do, but I have no means to show you how. The only way is for you to . . . surrender.”

  Tassariel gulped. “You need to take control.”

  “Yes. I am sorry.”

  “Will it be like last time?”

  “I have no plans to kill anyone if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Good to know. So, how do I . . . ?”

  “Just let go.”

  She nodded. “All right. Do it, then.”

  The force of his presence surged forward into her mind, neither ice nor lava this time but something solid, sturdy. Elos tingled throughout her muscles, dancing across her skin. Rather than fight him, she did as he had asked.

  She surrendered.