Gifts of Vorallon: 02 - City of Thunder

by Thomas Cardin

  Chapter 10

  A PERFECT CALM

  Twenty-Eighth day of the Moon of the Thief

  -in Halversome

  Sir Rindal, his hunger and thirst sated, interrupted them. “I am tired to the core of my being, as are you both, though you admit it not,” he took up his sword and stood over them with his face cast in a fierce visage of command. “Come. Join me in prayer for the strength to endure this day.”

  The paladin turned and walked from the common room to the large hall beneath the high vault of the pyramid’s apex. He strode to the waist high altar in the center of the bare floor, a three-sided pedestal of white stone with a peaked triangle etched into each side. Sir Rindal knelt before one face and laid his godstone sword on the bare floor, its tapering tip pointed toward the altar. With a gesture, he directed Lorace and Oen to kneel before the other two sides.

  Oen raised his eyebrows at the paladin’s actions.

  “Do you think it blasphemy for a paladin of the Order of the Lady to pray to Lord Aran?” Sir Rindal asked. “I was just a young man when I bore witness to the union of his mortal mother and father before the altar of the Lady. Later, when each son was born to them, my fellow knights and I were charged with their protection, a vow which we renewed every year.”

  He looked up at Oen’s open-mouthed awe and Lorace’s emotion filled eyes and frowned. “Oh hold your guts in! How do you expect Aran to be able to bless us if he is laughing at you two too hard to see straight?”

  “I doubt my communions with Lord Aran will ever be the same,” Oen declared with a shake of his head.

  “No, most likely not,” Sir Rindal affirmed with a grunt. “Now focus with me.”

  After bowing their heads and calling out silently to Lord Aran, a golden glow whirled out from the altar and flowed into their bodies. The rejuvenating energy straightened Lorace’s sagging shoulders and transported his sharpened awareness to the practice yard of his childhood.

  “Thank you, brother,” Lorace said to the adult Jorune who stood before him.

  “It is my gift to you and to all those who serve the light this day,” Lord Aran said with a weak smile. “Know that you face what comes as the final defender of order and life. Nearly all else in the world has fallen to darkness. The balance may only be righted by your decisions and actions.”

  Another figure stepped out of the hall of his parents to stand beside Aran. A taller, slightly heavier man, in brown robes trimmed with gray. With his broad shoulders and deep chest, he had the physique of his father. The newcomer spoke in a resonant baritone. “My gift to you is even now arriving at the battleground before Halversome. I give you the hordes of Nefryt, lured here by their own fears, lusts, and hatreds. May they provide the strength you will need to face the Undying One—the abomination that calls itself the Devourer.”

  “Bartalus, you have done this?” Lorace cried, his mind shaken by his eldest brother’s words. “How can you put all these people at risk like this? You have driven all the demons of Nefryt to do battle with the last of the pure!”

  “I am your brother, Bartalus,” the newcomer said with a severe frown, “and I am the Lord Lorn. You must heed me now. With the rise of the Devourer from the spirit that was Tezzirax, an ancient and unforgiving god seeks to merge upon this universe. It is undeath, the antithesis of all. It cares not for the grand cycle of souls that drives all life, death, and rebirth. The fall of balance toward corruption has opened the rift for this dark god’s passage to Vorallon.”

  Lorace reigned in his outrage and took a deep breath. “If I can restore the balance, can this rift be sealed?”

  “That is your decision,” Lorn said with a softening expression.

  He looked at Lorn sharply, trying to read the meaning behind the obscure words. Why would that be a decision? The thought only served to heat his deep coals of rage.

  “I will make any sacrifice to preserve the life of this world!” Lorace declared.

  “Yes, we both hope that you will,” Jorune said, sadness deepening his eyes.

  Lorace bowed his head unable to meet the eyes of his brothers. Their eyes held only remorse for him, none of the love and pride that had tinted the sadness in his parent’s gaze. The difference only enraged him further.

  “What is this third god I am to become?” Lorace fumed. He looked back toward his brothers, but their presence had already withdrawn, ending their communion. “What are you not telling me?” he yelled to the high vault above.

  Oen’s voice was tight with concern, “Lorace?”

  Lorace lowered his head to find his friends surrounding him. They had all arisen and come into the hall while he had been lost in prayer and betrayal. Tornin and Falraan stood hand in hand, gaping open mouthed at his bellow. Iris only showed intense fascination as she knelt beside the altar, watching the play of outrage and determination on his face. Moyan stood in shock beside Hethal whose knowing smirk enraging him further.

  “Yes, Lorace,” Sir Rindal answered with a grim nod as he stepped forward to help him to his feet. “There is something they are not telling you: your destiny. Your brothers ascended on their twelfth birthdays to become two of the three Lords of Balance. With only two of them, they have failed in their task to maintain the balance between purity and corruption.”

  Sir Rindal held him firmly by the shoulders in a grip like steel, forcing him to listen, though he wanted nothing more than to flee the temple. He could only meet the eyes of his Iris, safe within her gaze while the fire of his brother’s betrayal burned within him.

  “While your brothers sought out their followers,” Sir Rindal looked pointedly at both Oen and Hethal, the muscles around his mouth tensing. “The demon lord Aizel sent forth his most insidious subordinate to disrupt the Lady’s plans for you. We had prepared for demons to attack. You had trained in the rituals as well as any of us, but Tezzirax thwarted all our plans. His gift was to absorb all magic directed at him. He absorbed your defenders rituals, all while invisible to the eyes of the gods.”

  Sir Rindal was linking everything together at last. Lorace took in the paladin’s words, but they did nothing to calm the rage burning within him. There was pain coming with those words that he remembered all too well. He continued to hold Iris’s gaze. Of all his companions, she appeared to understand his turmoil.

  “Tezzirax attacked the Order of the Lady just before your tenth birthday while the Old Gods were sleeping to gain the energy for your ascendance. The Lady knew that some great foulness would strike. It was for this unseen event that I was granted godstone which the dwarves forged into my sword, Brakke Zahn, the Heart of Destiny.”

  The paladin paused in his tale to quell the emotions rising in own his throat as his knuckles whitened on Lorace’s shoulders.

  “The deaths of Veladis and Fara awoke the Lady from where she slept among the stars. She broke many rules of the Old Gods to place me in Tezzirax’s path. Only my close bond with the Lady, as her paladin, allowed this at all. She whisked me from where I was, over a day’s ride away, and thrust me as a final shield before you. I saw the torn bodies of my dearest friends, and standing over them the black-scaled fiend. Tezzirax taunted me even as I drove him back. In my fury and despair, I succumbed to his wiles.”

  Lorace struggled to free himself from the paladin’s grip, but the man held him firm. “I do not want to hear this again,” he moaned.

  “You are going to,” Sir Rindal asserted. “It is the Lady’s will. He could not kill me. The weight of my soul, added to those he had already taken, would send him back to Nefryt.” Tears welled in Sir Rindal’s eyes as he relived his story, forcing it onto Lorace. “He taunted me with the assurance that he would return in time to take you before your ascendance. Nothing could prevent this. The gods themselves would not be able to see him, and there would be no protectors to strike him down. He knew of my sword’s ability to cut through anything, for Aizel had prepared him well. In my failure, I struck the fatal blow that would destroy him forever—I severed Tezzi
rax’s soul, but freed his spirit.”

  “Please stop,” Lorace groaned. Oen laid a hand on his back but did not interrupt the paladin. Every word Sir Rindal spoke awakened the pain he felt powerless to stop and stoked his fires of rage. His tranquility was fast becoming a forgotten thing. Iris’s eyes welled with moisture at seeing his pain, but she did not blink and the tears did not fall. She knows I need her confidence. Lorace took strength from this, and he used it to fight down the urge to scream.

  “A soul is not meant to be destroyed regardless of what it may inhabit, demon or man,” the paladin continued. “Cutting it apart released a tremendous amount of energy that knocked me back senseless. When I awoke, I believed the blast had destroyed you. The temple was in ruins, and the gore of many bodies was scattered everywhere.”

  Tornin stepped up to Lorace’s side to interpose himself between the paladin and his Lord, but Oen pulled him away. While Sir Rindal was at the whim of the Lady’s will, so too was Oen at the whim of Aran’s will. He could not look toward Hethal, but knew that he too was dancing at the strings of his god. They all worked together to force his destiny upon him. Looking deeper into Iris’s emerald certainty, he wondered whose will was holding her so firm for him, a rock to grasp hold of in a torrent of wills.

  “The Lady was silent to me in my despair,” Sir Rindal said. “I believed I had failed and was no longer worthy of her. I prayed for death to relieve me of my grief, but my wounds healed, and death was not forthcoming. I cleansed the temple and home of my lost loved ones, and before I left, I thrust my sword deep into the stone before the Lady’s altar. I no longer felt worthy of it.”

  His punishing recount delivered, the paladin released his hold on Lorace and took a step back to retrieve his sword from where it lay. He gave a shuddering sigh when his fingers closed around its hilt. Lorace wanted to stoop down and embrace Iris similarly, but he could not trust the terrible strength coursing along with his rage. He clenched his fists tight at his sides and held her gaze as Sir Rindal continued his story.

  “For a year I wandered among the southern end of the Stormwall Mountains before the Lady woke again,” his face beamed with happiness. “She told me you still lived, but she was mighty upset with me. I had betrayed her trust and my heart by falling into despair. She still belabors me at every opportunity. She told me what happened after I destroyed the demon’s soul. My own body had shielded you from the harm of the explosion, but you were far from safe.”

  Sir Rindal immersed himself in the memory as he obeyed the Lady’s will and fully recounted his tale. The Lady had embraced him in her comforting way while still chiding him with another aspect of herself.

  “Understand that the soul is merely the vessel that holds the spirit,” she had said. “True, the demon Tezzirax is now dead forever, but your destruction of his soul released his spirit. Beyond the hueratta that is the manifest corruption of a demon’s body, their spirits are often fouler still—driving their depravity. With the spirit of Tezzirax freed, I realized its intention of descending into Lorace and destroying his precious spirit. That’s when I did something quite clever.”

  He could not withhold the grin that spread across his lips.

  “Hush!” she scolded with a narrowing of her star-filled eyes. “Clever, but very costly. I sealed Lorace’s spirit away inside godstone—amazing substance. The act expended me completely. It forced me to sleep beyond the stars for a full year, but I succeeded. Before Tezzirax’s spirit could destroy that of the child’s I had locked it up safe. The foul spirit now lives trapped within Lorace’s soul. It is the demon’s hungers and desires that rule the child now.”

  “But the time of the ascendance is upon us,” the paladin said. “How can the child take his destined place beside his brothers with a demon spirit within him?”

  “He cannot. It is not possible,” she shook a finger at him imperiously. “And no, I will not explain the whys and wherefores to you.”

  “Then all is still lost, my Lady,” Rindal hung his head before her.

  “You doubt me yet again!?” Now there was genuine fire in her starry eyes. “Oh, I will make you pay for that!”

  She took a step back and filled the sky with her image, “Tell me about your sword, golden-haired knave!”

  He dropped to his knees. “My Lady, forgive me. I left it in the stone before your altar; I am no longer worthy to wield Brakke Zahn.”

  “I will be the judge of your worthiness,” she growled. “But you miss my point.”

  He hastened to answer. “Brakke Zahn will cut through any substance.”

  “All but one thing will part before the edge of that sword,” she corrected him with a devious glint in her eye as she shrunk back down to his height. “Therein is the answer to your problem.”

  “My problem, my Lady?” he asked with a puzzled frown.

  “You are going to cut the spirit of Tezzirax free from Lorace’s soul so that I may release his true spirit back into it,” the goddess said with an air of simplicity.

  Rindal opened his mouth to question this, but he snapped it shut when his goddess turned her iciest gaze upon him.

  “You must retrieve your sword at once and begin practicing until you learn how to do it,” she explained. “It is your sword. It cuts what you will it to cut, does it not? You must will it to cut the spirit of Tezzirax free while not harming the soul or body of Lorace.”

  The Lady paced back and forth gracefully as she outlined her plan to him. “You will have to learn how, and you are a painfully slow learner. We will not be able to proceed until you have mastered this. Lorace will have only one more opportunity to ascend, on his birthday thirteen years hence.”

  Rindal shifted his gaze from his adored memory to his rapt audience. “I began training my senses and my will immediately, and I did little else over the intervening years. You stand here now because I was successful. I proceeded to Zed and hired a street thug to place a price on my own head. It was the Lord Lorn, who made sure that the assassin given the task was the man Tezzirax’s spirit had made you become. I tried to lure you from the city, to take you to the Temple of the Lady to perform the task, a place that had the power to protect your body from the forces that would be unleashed. The gods had other plans. That was when the forerunners of this demon army attacked Zed. The Lady guided me to a ship in the harbor where I could get you away from everyone and use the wards on the ship to protect you when the spirit was cut free.”

  “Lorn engineered the demon attack,” Lorace could no longer hold to the sanctuary of Iris’s gaze. He raised his eyes to meet the paladin’s with a heavy scowl. “His manipulations have brought them here to me. He sacrificed an entire city of people, and now he offers up Halversome to them.”

  “Zed was already lost to corruption,” Hethal spoke up. “He could not bring forth the horde from Nefryt without that sacrifice. It does not sway the balance.”

  “But I could have!” Lorace exclaimed, rounding on the monk with ferocity burning in his eyes. The same quick rage that he had buried deep within at the forging of Sakke Vrang; it returned in answer to Bartalus’ betrayal.

  With the wind at his command, he lifted Hethal from the ground and held him immobile. “I could have saved them as I did the Zuxrans, they did not have to die! He made them food for a Demon horde. Now he serves up Halversome! Your precious Lord, my own brother, is a monster!”

  “Yes, you could have saved them, and you would have, Lorace,” Hethal asserted, not struggling against the air that held him. “Lorn knew you would have, and the choice had to be taken away or it would put you out of position for your true destiny.”

  Lorace pulled Hethal close and lowered his voice to a threatening simmer. “Out of position? Lorn’s betrayal is doubly worse, for he has denied me of my will—I am remade again into a puppet!”

  In that moment, Lorace wanted nothing more than to let loose his anger. The burning strength within him cried out for vengeance against both his brothers, impotent gods who did noth
ing while a demon murdered their own parents. They did nothing while its spirit carved scars into their youngest brother’s flesh, and fed an insatiable bloodlust as an assassin. Gods who stood by and allowed a pack of demons to descend upon the dwarves of Vlaske K’Brak, killing so many, and nearly destroying their heritage. Even now, when a dark god threatened to cross into the realm they swore to protect, they set a horde of demons upon the last city of innocent people, and call it a gift to him—they had no idea what a dark god he could be. They were children lifted up to godhood without the wisdom of men.

  Lorace felt a hand on his shoulder and spun about to glare his mounting fury at Tornin. “Lorace, this is not you. What is wrong?” the tall young man asked, tears of concern welling in his eyes.

  He gasped and set Hethal gently down. Am I any wiser? He knew what it meant to care for these people, to love and respect them as men and women deserved yet he had threatened Hethal like a child in a tantrum.

  Lorace stopped, ceased all thought of betrayal, swallowing his fury cold as he looked into Tornin’s honest, open face. With sudden clarity, he realized that nothing was wrong. This outrage was exactly what was supposed to happen. His fury was expected—foreordained. Even the words Hethal had just spoken were to fuel this fire, as he knew they would.

  Clearly, Sakke Vrang did not free him from all the darker emotions, as it seemed to do to all others who felt its touch. The rage inside him flickered, doubtful. He had chosen tranquility when the chain remade him, when the gods had intended he should take up the mantle of rage and vengeance, even to the naming of his chain.

  He clamped down on his anger, willing it to subside as he chose not give himself over to it. He denied Gnarwa’s influence—denied Tezzirax his true purpose. Finally, he denied what his brothers had expected of him. He reached within to the perfect calm, the infinite tranquility that knew no limit, no boundary, and held fast.