The answer came the next second. Dynan saw it as clearly as if he was right there. Dain lay chained to an altar, weakened, trying to free himself without effect. Adiem stood over him, a thin knife in hand, using it to slice into Dain’s arm. A flow of blood drew a long line down the face of the stone.
Dynan grabbed his bicep, feeling the sting of the blade as it cut across skin. The falling rain of blood grew stronger, splattering against the road, the buildings, everyone and every thing. Off a great distance away, Dynan thought he could hear Fadril shouting something, but he couldn’t tell what. He didn’t care either, focused on his brother.
“Dain.”
Adiem turned around then, a deranged grin spreading across his face. Dynan’s immediate surroundings faded away while the area around the altar clarified, sharpening to the point where he was almost there on the shelf surrounded by pillars.
Adiem reached a hand toward him, cackling under his breath.
Dynan was drawn forward, but then something knocked into him, and arms wrapped around him, pulling him down and away from the reaching hand. He was dragged and his vision shifted. The road reappeared, only he was lying on it being pulled along by Polen. Fadril had her arms wrapped around him and she was being pulled too.
“They have Dain,” Dynan said, trying to get Polen to stop.
People were running in every direction trying to escape the gaping hole that had abruptly opened, but then Grint was there with a bow and arrow, determined and sure. He took aim and loosed the shot. Something between a shriek and a howl erupted from the darkness and then the hole closed.
“Dain!”
Dynan wrenched away from all the hands holding him and rolled to his feet. He didn’t want the portal to go away even when he was terrified of it. His brother was on the other side and in trouble. Dynan started looking around for another way to get there.
Fadril scrambled to her feet after him. “They won’t kill him until you’re there. You both have to be there at the same time.”
“So it’s okay for them to torture him until then?”
“No,” she said, and took him by the arms again.
He pushed her off and then pushed Grint out of the way, looking for any hint of the portal, but there was nothing. He thought about how it had opened and concentrated, trying to reach his brother again.
“Don’t,” Fadril said, getting in front of him. “Adiem will be ready this time. He’ll pull you through. If you want to witness Dain’s death, followed by your own, then keep trying to reach him. I’m telling you they aren’t going to kill him until you are there.”
What she meant, and what she was suggesting, finally registered. Dynan started to shake his head. “I can’t.”
“We have to wait. If you go now, through the portal, which is what they want, you’ll go alone and you’ll die alone.”
“I’m not waiting. This rain is...it’s his blood. They’re going to torture him.”
“But he’ll survive as long as you aren’t there to fulfill the prophecy. We go on our own time, in our own way, together, and we have a chance to save you all. Alurn, you and Dain. We can destroy the world or save it. Dynan, it can’t be any other way.” Fadril shook him by his arms. “Don’t you think I wanted to go to Alurn right then when you first told me about him?”
Dynan knew she was right. She understood the desire to go, an almost constant demand that made him want to get to Dain any way he could as fast as possible. It was the wrong thing to do, but the alternative was to leave Dain to suffer at the hands of a sadistic monster.
“How long?”
“Too long for you to stand. It’ll take us two, maybe three cycles to get there, traveling through the mountains like we planned.”
“Cycles?”
“It’s not exactly equivalent to a day. As you know it, there isn’t night here. It will seem longer than it really is. That’s part of the agony of this place. Time doesn’t behave the way you’re used to.”
A sudden rumble grew in the distance, growing to cover them. The ground shifted under their feet, shaking violently for several long moments, knocking some people to the ground.
Fadril turned to Polen even before the sound receded, considering her words before she spoke. “We need to move. We should take all the women and children with us to the Temple. We’ll go through the underground pass.”
Polen didn’t like that idea. Dynan agreed with Fadril. It meant they were getting started. He didn’t know what the underground pass was, or the Temple, or what good it would do the women and children to be there. Maybe it was a holy place that would protect them somehow. Dynan had a hard time believing there were any sacred places here, or any protection.
“I told you I’d never set foot in the place again,” Polen said.
Pain lance across Dynan’s other arm. The blood kept falling. Fadril held her hands out to it, catching it in her palms. “It’ll be faster. I don’t think we have a choice.”
She didn’t wait for him to approve. She turned and taking Dynan by the arm, started him toward the front of the line of people, the army, who were already on the move. Crossing through, she admonished a few to be safe and wished them good luck. Dynan couldn’t talk, fighting off another contact surge from Dain. It wasn’t something he was accustomed to doing and left him shaking when it passed.
“It’ll be all right,” Fadril told him and kept a hand firmly around his wrist.
Others followed them, Polen, Grint and Faulkin among them. The archers were there, who it turned out were mostly girls, except for one. There were a couple other fighters, but fewer than Dynan expected. He realized Fadril had sent the rest with the army so they had a better chance to protect themselves. Doing so left the incursion force very small. The women came too, carrying the infants and the children who were too young to walk. The ones who could, scrambled along after them, or were whisked up by one of the fighters.
They left the road and the masses of people on it, cutting through the trees and then across a field. The rain started to turn the grass a shade of dark brown, but it was turning black in other places. Fadril’s fear that this small oasis would be taken over by evil was coming true. Dynan didn’t know if getting out with Alurn and Dain would save it. He started to think that even if they escaped, everyone else left here would be in the wild. Everyone who came here, who died from now on would be subjected to terrible horrors.
The land rose sharply, mounting upward with rocks dotting the landscape. There was again the sense of the familiar and as they climbed, the feeling grew until he realized where they were. He turned back, looking through a haze of red and expected to see the Palace sitting on its plateau beside the Wythe Sea.
Fadril tugged on his hand, refusing to let him go even for a moment. “We shouldn’t stop.”
“These are the mountains behind the Palace,” Dynan said, remembering what Polen had told him to look for. Fadril nodded. “There’s a Temple? Where?”
“I’ll show you. It isn’t likely to have any correlation to the world you know. A thousand years wears down the land.”
She was right and wrong at the same time. The mountain rose up on either side of them into sheer walls, creating a sheltered canyon. He knew the meadow that stretched between the cliffs when they reached it after climbing for what seemed a long time. He recognized the place where he fell through the hole in the ground, caused, he now knew, by his blood. The stones in the ground weren’t the same though, not exactly. There was a ruined city, and made him wonder how far back in time the beginning of the city went. He thought if he looked, he’d find a stone tablet of the Sacred Seal just like the one in Rianamar.
Through a growing torrent of blood that turned the land slick and treacherous, they kept on. Dynan tried not to think about the grossness of it, preferring to think his brother’s blood could only give him strength.
They reached the far end of the cliff meadow. This was the place where Dain crashed the transport pod against the back cliff wall, luckily. If
he’d gone the other way it would have been off the cliff. There should have been a series of caves in the left face of the mountain, but instead there was a kind of stone doorway built out from the cliffs. The interior was carved stone and didn’t resemble the caves Dynan knew at all.
They moved out of the blood rain. Once under cover, they dried off as best they could. They were all soaked with it. Dynan thought of Dain again, and felt the torture he endured. He closed his eyes, hating himself and shut him out again.
Fadril squeezed his hand and led the way through a cavernous hall. They went through an arched entry over a steep set of stairs that disappeared downward. As with the other cave Dynan had been in, this one grew lighter the farther in, instead of darker.
He was about to ask why that was when they reached the bottom of the stairs. Before him, a huge set of stone doors stood closed. They were thick and at least ten kem tall. Fadril searched the stone face on the left side for a moment. She touched a stone three in from the door in the bottom right corner, pushing inward. Half of it dislodged from its niche and slid backward. A lever came down in its place and she pulled it all the way forward. Off somewhere over their heads, something started humming, sounding strangely out of place. The next moment, the doors started to move.
When they were open all the way, Fadril hesitated on the threshold.
The room was oblong and it took Dynan a moment to realize it was shaped like a diamond. The floor was cut stone. There didn’t seem anything special about it but then he remembered what else Polen said about the place.
“This is where you—” He stopped, unable to say this was where she died. She didn’t seem dead to him. None of them did.
Polen heard him though, and came to the entrance where he stopped with Fadril. He glanced over his shoulder to Grint and Faulkin. “We all died here. Let’s just get through it and into the passage.”
“I’m going to find this place,” Dynan said. “When I get home, I’m going to find it again and I’m going to make sure you’re...”
“Properly laid to rest?” Polen said when Dynan’s voice faded and he scoffed. “You won’t find anything but dust, boy.”
“I’ll find more than that,” Dynan said, certain of it. He smiled. “You’re too stubborn to decay, old man. You’ll get that royal funeral you were promised.”
“I was never promised that,” Polen said, but he was laughing.
“You are now,” Dynan said and looked down at Fadril, nodding to her too. He saw by the glint in her eyes that it was important to her. He put both arms around her. “I’ll make sure of it. For all of you.”
“I know you will,” she said. She patted his arm and gestured to the room. “The passage is on the other side through a small hidden door. You, Polen and the others go ahead. I’m going to make sure everyone is settled. I’ll catch up to you.”
“Why don’t you just stay?” Polen said, but Fadril only shook her head.
“Why do you think this place is safe?” Dynan asked, thinking that where her life ended wouldn’t be on that list.
“Adiem won’t come here,” she said and nodded them on.
~*~
Chapter 20
Getting into City Medical wasn’t as hard as Maralt thought it would be. Turning the mind of a guard wasn’t especially difficult, although, Maralt really hoped he didn’t run into the one who’d seen him with Dain.
Maralt had taken the memory of that lone witness and jumbled it up enough that the man was no longer sure who he’d seen, saving Ralion Blaise a great deal of trouble he didn’t deserve.
Maralt considered for a moment that he wasn’t supposed to do this, erase memories the way he was. He’d been told it was wrong the whole of his life. Here in this circumstance, it seemed the only way to manage and the High Bishop hadn’t seemed angry about it. Maralt told himself he’d stop – once they got everything back to normal – if they got everything back to normal.
He could hear the wind howling outside. Everyone else called it a storm, an especially violent one, but only the weather being strange. Maralt knew better. Really, it was the precursor to the end of the world. Throughout the System, on all three planets reports were coming in of abnormal floods, violent storms and ground shifts in places that didn't usually have them.
And here, everyone thought the Gods were such benevolent beings.
“I’m not sure what’s worse,” Maralt said under his breath as he reached a corner and glanced around it.
He saw a guard standing at the head of another hallway, signifying the entrance to the Royal section of the Medic Center. Maralt decided he needed a disguise to help him remain unnoticed. It would really be a lot simpler if he didn’t have to turn everyone. He wasn’t wearing his robes, but regular clothes.
He found the uniform storage room after plucking that information out of the mind of a third rank Medic. It was surprisingly easy and didn’t appear to cause the young man much more than a passing wince. The greatest difficulty was making sure he didn’t press too hard. After a brief search through the stacks of clothes, Maralt picked out a Medic uniform that fit him, consisting of a jumpsuit and a lab coat. He found a comboard of the kind that Medic’s used, and felt he’d make it through the halls without too much trouble.
“Hope so, anyway,” he said to the rack of lab coats.
Once back out in the hallway and on his way toward the Royal section, he concentrated on seeming like every other Medic in the building. He started searching the mind of the guard who would stop him, finding out that very few Medics, or anyone else, were allowed in. Dr. Eldelar Elger and his daughter Geneal were the only physicians and they were handling mostly everything themselves.
There were exceptions. The people who changed the bed linens went in twice every day.
Maralt looked down at the lab coat. He turned around, going back to the storage room where he found another coat that matched what the bed linen people wore. He left again, this time with a stack of sheets in hand. He didn’t go all the way though, finding another empty room to pause in.
Maralt had to find out if Dynan was alone or at least who might have to be turned. He didn’t want to try that with the King, guessing Ambrose Telaerin would be extremely resistant to it. Maralt would have to expend a lot of energy and effort to erase the King’s memory. The more they fought, the worse the pain, so if Ambrose suddenly started suffering from an extreme headache, others would notice. Suspicions were already high.
Maralt sat down in front of a desk – he supposed it was a physician’s office – tried to relax and concentrated.
He found a Medic out in the hall going the direction he wanted and tagged along. Maralt went into the guard next when the Medic turned away and then waited with him. The guard was thinking about a conversation he’d overheard between two physicians who seemed convinced that the King would have to make a decision soon about taking Dynan off the support system.
“What?” Maralt said without thinking about how the guard might react to a voice in his head asking him questions.
“I know. I can hardly believe it,” the guard thought, answering the question as if he was having a conversation with someone else. Maybe that’s what guards did to keep themselves occupied on the watch. “It’s the fourth time I’ve heard it in the last few hours from Medics and Docs. I saw what he looked like when they brought him in. All the blood everywhere. Some of the Docs are saying Elger and his daughter don’t want to tell the King it was already too late then. Maybe they’re right to wait after everyone he’s lost, but he has to face it some day. It’s going to break him, losing them both like this, without even knowing what’s happened to the other one. I’d like to get my hands on the men who did this.”
Maralt meant to leave the guard before his thoughts devolved into threats of retaliation, but the man’s attention shifted to a young woman walking toward him. He was well trained enough not to look at her directly. Even so, he had her undressed in a flash and as she passed him, his eyes shifted to watch
after her.
The man had an imagination. An accurate one.
Maralt slipped into the mind of Geneal Elger and found her completely ignoring the guard, her thoughts only of Dynan Telaerin. She paused in mid-step though and glanced behind her. Maralt thought about Carryn’s mind, the mind of a woman, to disguise the alien presence of a man inside this woman’s being. Geneal drew in a weary breath and took him straight to Dynan’s room.
Roth Perquin sat in a chair in the far corner reading a comboard. He looked ten years older than the last time Maralt had seen him at the Oath ceremony. The First Minister glanced up at Geneal when she came in, and nodded to her briefly. His eyes shifted to Dynan for a moment before he went back to reading.
The body in the bed no longer resembled that of a young man. The change in Dynan’s physical appearance was stunning, and made Maralt acutely aware of the passage of time. They were running out of it and he thought there might not be enough left.
“Stop thinking like that,” Geneal said to herself. “He’s going to make it through this. No one is giving him enough time. It’s a small miracle he lived through it at all. His heart just needs more time to heal, and it will. I know it will.”
She told herself that a couple more times, asking herself what else she could do to make that wish a reality. She started going over the repair procedure in her head and Maralt found himself in the midst of a graphic recreation of a bloody surgery that turned his stomach.
Geneal put a hand to her temple, frowning. She’d never in her life experienced revulsion or even nausea over any medical procedure she’d ever done. That kind of thing didn’t affect her and she couldn’t understand why it was now.
“You’re just tired,” Maralt whispered, careful not to implant that thought too strongly, or she’d end up collapsing.
It was the truth anyway, since she hadn’t slept much since Dynan was brought in. “I must be,” she said, answering the idea. “Silly though. Now let’s see what we have here.”
She leaned over Dynan, pealing open one eye and then the other. She ran her fingers over his forehead and touched the back of her hand to his cheek. She started pulling back the covers to inspect the bandages and the wound.
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