Chosen

by Jolea M. Harrison

  “Yes. They have to go through first.”

  Maralt held out his hand. “Then you need to come with me.”

  Dynan hesitated only a second, unsure enough of Maralt, the man who’d put him here, to be afraid of what it might be like to join with him. A coherent thought answered. Maralt had also come to get him back out. Dynan took his hand.

  He was different from Alurn, far less certain of his actions. Dynan was aware of all his insecurities and the fear that evil would overcome him. The thought that he really might be related to the wrong side was shattering to him and behind it all there was a gnawing, growing hunger that seeped into every thought, of taking everything Dynan was for himself.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Maralt said. “I took an oath to protect you.”

  Dynan saw the ceremony, a deeply binding one in a flash of thought. “You’re not like them. I know that. We have to go.”

  Maralt agreed, and moved to get closer to Alurn, who was still fighting off Adiem, their hands at each other’s throats. The shaking was so much stronger Maralt fell down twice. It was getting darker too, rapidly.

  “We have to get out,” Dynan said, the level of fear rising to a pitch almost beyond endurance.

  “I’m working on it!” Maralt said.

  He finally made it to Alurn, standing near the altar at the heart of evil. Grint was there with him and Faulkin, but Polen and Fadril were separated from them.

  “Carryn, now!”

  A distortion appeared in the air right behind them, splitting down the middle and then opening. Dynan looked through and saw a woman he knew as Maralt’s twin sister, who was holding a glass vial, standing on the Sacred Seal where Maralt had stabbed Dynan to send him here.

  “Is that my blood?”

  “Alurn!” Maralt said, calling to him and then jumped between them to get him away from Adiem. Maralt punched Adiem in the face, knocking him down.

  Alurn turned from Maralt. “I’m not leaving Fadril!”

  “You have to go through first. My sister can’t hold the portal open for long.”

  “I’m not leaving Fadril here either,” Dynan said.

  Again, Dynan left his host’s body, which was even harder this time. It was like being ripped in half and made him scream to do it.

  As he did, Adiem stood, reaching. Dynan dodged under his grasp, twisted away from the jaws of a dog and jumped over a group of snapping lizards to reach Fadril and Polen.

  “Go!”

  Maralt grabbed Alurn and shoved him through the already narrowing portal. Dynan saw Dain fall away from the First King, collapsing in a heap on the seal, injured but alive. Alurn stood over him, his hands spread, holding the portal open.

  “Take her and go,” Polen commanded, but Dynan ignored him.

  “I’m taking you both, old man. No arguments.”

  Dynan grabbed Fadril by the hand and Polen followed, fighting off the hordes. Dynan wished Dain could see the way he fought, the mastery of technique and sheer strength combined to make him unstoppable. Their enemies couldn’t defeat the love Polen held for the woman he’d spent eternity protecting, or her ancestor.

  But it seemed like an impossibly long distance to make up to get back to the portal. Adiem was right on their heels. Grint and Faulkin charged through the gateway. Polen argued about going before Fadril, but she made him. Fadril followed him just before Adiem grabbed for her, and barely missed.

  His face was twisted, lips pulled back to a thin line, teeth bared. Stumbling after Fadril brought him up face to face with Maralt.

  Alurn reached in and grabbed Maralt up, yanking and pulling him through the portal. Adiem tried to follow, but Dynan lurched forward, grabbed him and spun him around. An encompassing rage boiled up to the surface over what he'd done to Dain, to himself, and to everyone else, and Dynan beat him across the face, once, twice, three times.

  Adiem fell to the ground, but he was smiling and then he started laughing.

  Dynan whirled around, watching as the portal snapped closed in his face.

  ***

  He stared after the departing hole, stunned that his only means of escape didn’t exist anymore, and thought it could not possibly stay that way. He searched frantically for it, knowing the rift would come back any second now.

  Laughter behind him brought him up short. The voice was deeper and distorted, lacking any sort of human component. Dynan should have known, but he turned and looked when he shouldn’t have.

  The dark came in, eating away coherent thought. He looked in its eyes and saw the history of civilization crumbling, pounded to dust. He saw the end of an Age. Death was everywhere. He couldn’t stop it and grief rose to swallow him.

  There was another voice though, very small, his own, telling him it wasn’t true. The world wasn’t destroyed. His home still stood shinning on a cliff by the sea. The light of it drew him there. Something clamped around his throat, a hand once maybe.

  “It’s all a lie,” the demon whispered in his ear.

  “It’s not a lie. It’s the light of the world and it will endure. It has for thousands and thousands of years. You won’t ever defeat it.”

  A roar cut off the rest of what he wanted to say and the dark came right back in. Dynan was thrown and decided standing back up was a bad idea. It seemed incrementally safer down here on his knees where praying came naturally. Through terror, through the dark, hope remained in the recesses of his mind. He knew someone would come back.

  “No one will come. No power remains that can defy me.”

  “The Gods are still stronger,” Dynan said, remembering what he’d asked Fadril. She wasn’t here and her children hadn’t been sent back. He had an answer. “They broke the bonds you claimed. The Gods are stronger.”

  “But they don’t care about you.”

  He was small and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. They cared more about Alurn. The demon was right. The Gods wouldn’t hear him from this dark pit anyway. The ability to resist the pull of despair left Dynan and he waited for the terrible end, being torn apart, or devoured, or whatever the plan was. No one was coming after all.

  ~*~

  Chapter 22

  The demon roared again, in triumph Dynan thought, but then he heard another voice. A deep baritone spoke behind him that he should have recognized. The incongruity of hearing that voice here in this place kept the truth hidden, until Dynan looked up.

  “This one isn’t for you,” Gradyn Vall said, standing over him.

  “I’ll take what I wish, old man.”

  “Your power doesn’t exist over him. You’ve failed, as you always will. The Gods are stronger just as he said. They are here with me now, even here in the darkest of realms and it is under Their protection that I take back Their servant.”

  “I’ll take you both.”

  Grady held down his hand to Dynan and he clambered to his feet. He stood in front of the High Bishop, feeling like he ought to protect him from the monster before them, except Gradyn didn’t seem like he needed any help. Dynan couldn’t look up though. He didn’t want to either.

  “Touch either of us and the Gods will see you destroyed, Belial.”

  The demon roared for a third time, but there was a lessening of menace, an uncertain note that lifted the terrible weight from his chest. Dynan felt something warm on his back and turned, unafraid for the first time that the demon could hurt him.

  There were seven points of light arrayed in a half circle, filling the darkness. They appeared as men and women, robed in soft colors. There were some with dark hair and light hair and black skin, or tan, or white or brown. They were every kind of people and when Dynan looked again, shading his eyes, they were different again, changing to reflect all the variations. There were even some kinds, non-human kinds that he’d never set eyes on before, or imagined could be.

  There was a sense of saturating contentment in their presence. Fear didn’t exist. One broke from the arc and came toward him, the light blinding until Dynan co
uldn’t see anything but white. The space around him started humming almost, the level of energy was so intense.

  “Don’t leave anyone here,” he said, thinking about the army of people and the archers left on the shelf who’d dared to help him. “Please.”

  A smile broke across the face before him. Something brushed against his chest over his heart, precisely where he’d been stabbed.

  When the light dwindled, he was no longer standing on the shelf. The memory of it faded, and the demon with it. Terror receded on a light, fragrant wind.

  A stone colonnade opened onto a garden. The High Bishop was gone. Off in the distance an army of people stood, milling about, dropping the crude weapons they held and taking in their surroundings. Dynan felt their relief wash through him, erasing recent anguish. Finally, he stopped shaking.

  Nearer to hand, Alurn and Fadril stood together, embracing tightly. Off a short distance away their family stood waiting for her.

  The two boys were still infants and their daughter was just a young girl, but Bremen, who’d lived into his nineties, stood a grown man of around fifty. He was older than his father, in his prime. There was a women standing behind Bremen that Dynan couldn’t see at first and he thought was the second King’s wife.

  Fadril let her husband go, smiling through tears of pain and joy as she turned to her children, falling into their arms. Alurn didn’t watch.

  “How can you leave her?” Dynan asked as he came into the room from the garden that stretched on for as far as he could see. The colors were saturated, richer than anything he’d ever seen.

  “I know I’ll see her again,” Alurn said.

  “Why don’t you go with her?”

  “I can’t. I have to bring Adiem. That is my fate. Just like you, there’s work to be done. But, thank you for saving her for me. It’s a horrifying thought that she’s been there all this time, when I didn’t know it. I’m in your debt for it. Go tell her goodbye.”

  “Nice dragon,” Dynan said, deciding not to ask about what work was left, or other questions that crowded his mind. He wondered if he could turn into a dragon too.

  Alurn laughed. “It’s a talent, and no, you can't. Yours is a different kind of power.”

  Dynan didn't understand what he meant by that. A list of different questions intruded until he turned back to the garden. He didn't want to say goodbye to anyone. He wondered what happened to Polen and the others. Dynan saw them then as if in answer to the thought, walking together as they came around a tall hedge.

  They looked like they always looked, only in perfect clothes. Dynan wondered if this was another kind of between place, where souls wandered until they were ready for whatever was next.

  Polen nodded him toward Fadril where she remained with her family, her arms full of children. Dynan didn’t want to intrude or say anything he thought might bring her a second of unhappiness. He was an outsider already. He didn’t belong here. There was an underlying, tangible pull against him to leave this place and go home.

  Bremen spoke to the woman beside him and then moved so Dynan could see her. For a second he couldn’t breathe again.

  His mother smiled and held out her hands, coming down the slight slope that led to the colonnade. She stopped when she reached the walk while Dynan stared, hardly able to believe she was real.

  The next instant he was with her, pulled into her arms and held. He was taller than her, but her face, her hair, the way she smelled, everything was the same.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she said, putting her hands on either side of his face, looking at him all over.

  “Mother.”

  “I got your notes. Your father always came and read them. I can hear his voice every now and again. Come, sit with me a moment. It’s all right. It’s different for you,” she said when he hesitated where the lawn began. Dynan wondered if he crossed the boundary if he’d be able to return. “You can stay a while. Not too long, but time enough.”

  “I don’t want to leave – ever. I won’t. I can’t do it.”

  Shalael shook her head; blonde curls dancing as she pulled him to a bench beside a stand of low bushes. “You don’t have to yet, and you’ll be all right when you do.”

  Dynan didn’t believe that, but she only smiled and made him sit. For a time – he didn’t know how long – she held him until grief turned to something else. She told him again he would be all right.

  “Tell me about my family, about Dain, about Shalis,” she said, after he straightened. “I feel her the least and want to know her the most. Is she beautiful?”

  “She looks just like you. She’s a little pain in the neck,” Dynan said and made her laugh. He used the sleeve of his shirt, a pristine white shirt free of stain, to wipe his eyes. “She gets away with everything. Pop and the Surrogates can’t say no to her.”

  “How is he? Your father? How is he as King?”

  Dynan didn’t want to tell her the real answer, but by hesitating he did anyway. “It’s hard for him. I don’t think he likes it very much. We don’t see him a lot, except with a bunch of other people around.”

  “Tell him to cook dinner for you. It’s what we used to do together when you and Dain were first born. Dionin had him out almost constantly, so we decided that once a week we’d have dinner alone together as a family and your father would cook. Tell him.”

  She patted his hand and leaned against his shoulder, making him feel a grown man for the first time in his life. Dynan never imagined himself big enough to sit with her and talk like this.

  “Tell me about the girl you met,” she said and smiled at his embarrassment. It was amazing and comforting that she knew. “Is she pretty?”

  “Yes,” he said and told her all about Liselle Tremault in a rush.

  “I remember Liselle’s mother from Beren; the Argentars. They were friends of my mother’s. That’s probably why your father chose Liselle to come to the Palace. She sounds lovely.”

  Dynan agreed and she asked him about other girls he may have noticed and about Dain and Kamien too, though Dynan didn’t have much to say about him. She didn’t press the issue. She asked him about the things he did and liked, about his life, and while they talked he became aware of the passage of time.

  Dynan felt the pull to leave this place, centered in his chest as if there were a rope tied to him, drawing him away. He worried about Dain the more he talked about him, wondering what had happened to him.

  In this place, thought became reality. Dynan saw Maralt standing in the room, looking around himself as though he hadn’t expected to be here. Dynan knew what was coming.

  His mother did too and she stood when he didn’t want her to. She took his hand again and pulled him to his feet. “Remember I said you would be all right. You were so little and here you are, all grown. You see that it’s true. You’ve come from there to this place in your life. You’ve accomplished so much and just now you’ve done something remarkable. You have the rest of your life ahead of you, Dynan. My beautiful son. You’re so strong. Don’t forget that,” she said and turned to Maralt. “Don’t take that from him.”

  Maralt opened his mouth to speak, but reconsidered. He thought about it, and then nodded. “I will take only what I must, my Lady.”

  “What?” Dynan said.

  “Dain is waiting for you,” Maralt said. “We need your help with him.”

  “Take what?” Dynan said.

  “You’ve been here too long,” Maralt said. “You’re dying, you know, and we need to get you back before it’s too late. I can’t explain, all right? Not here. So will you please come with me?”

  “You have a choice to make,” Shalael said softly. She turned him to her. Dynan didn’t want to leave her and live. “I think you already know what it is. Your father needs you. Shalis adores you. Kamien cares about you whether you believe it or not, a great deal, Dynan. Dain would be lost without you.” She put her hand over his heart and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “I’ll always be here. Where I’ve always been an
d always will be. The bond between us can’t be broken. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear in your heart the answer.”

  Dynan thought it might really break his heart to go, but he knew she was right. Once the decision was made, a strange, unexpected peace came over him. He’d managed before to survive the separation and he knew now he could manage again. It was more comforting than he expected, knowing he’d see her again. He found himself hoping it wouldn’t be for a long time and then felt bad for it. His mother laughed though.

  “You’ll be all right,” she said. “So will I.”

  Dynan nodded to that, and wrapped his arms around her, hoping against hope he’d be able to keep this too. He let her go and left her.

  Maralt watched behind him and Dynan vowed he wouldn’t look back, afraid the courage to leave wouldn’t last, but he couldn’t stand it.

  “Don’t,” Maralt said and stopped him. “She’s already gone.”

  Maralt wouldn’t let him look, restraining him for long enough. The white room melted away, changing to a small square space that looked very much like the room Alurn had once occupied, and Dain too.

  “I have to take your memory,” Maralt said the moment they were there.

  Dynan already knew it and couldn’t think of anything to stop him.

  “If you fight it, I’m not sure I can...” Maralt stopped, abruptly turning from him. “It does something to me and I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop myself from taking more than I should. Now I know why, at least.”

  “Because of Adiem?” Dynan said. “You’re nothing like him. If you’re really from him, then you’re from Alurn too. Besides, it doesn’t matter. You have control over your own actions. You came and helped us get out. If you hadn’t—”

  “The world would have ended,” Maralt said. “My motives weren’t especially altruistic. You don’t understand and you aren’t—”

  “What do you see?” Dynan asked. “You look at me sometimes, but you’re not seeing me. What is it?”

  “There’s a light around you that’s like some kind of pure energy. Around Dain too. I can see it. I can feel it make me stronger when I breathe it in and when I—” He hesitated to go on and Dynan thought he knew. He’d seen how the dogs and other creatures had reacted.