by Phil Tucker
“And the circlet itself corrupts,” said Tharok darkly. “Nobody could be trusted to execute our plan once they had put it on.”
“Still,” said Tiron. “If we take the circlet from Zephyr, we can foil her plans. We can try to control them. We sure as hell can’t defeat the demons in pitched combat.”
“We must defend Aletheia,” said Iskra decisively. “We cannot allow it to fall into Zephyr’s hands.”
“But to defend it requires an army,” Tiron said in exasperation. “Something we don’t have. And even if we did, that ur-destraas would destroy it in minutes.”
Tharok hunkered down, arms wrapped around his knees, his lower lip stuck out in thought. “We do have an army,” he said. “My kragh are strong. But they may not fight the demons. They would see them as evil spirits.”
“We had an army too,” Tiron said bitterly. “But you turned them all into stone.”
“Not me. The Tharok who wore the circlet.”
“The circlet allows its bearer to petrify opponents?” asked Audsley. “That shouldn’t be.”
“No,” said Tharok. “I meant at my command. Kyrrasthasa, my medusa ally. She was the one who turned your human army into stone.”
“What?” Ilina’s voice carried in it such shaking passion that everyone turned to her. “What did you say?”
Tharok scowled and rose to his feet. “I don’t repeat myself.”
“You said — a medusa?”
“Shit,” said Tiron quietly.
“Ilina,” said Iskra, “this isn’t the time —”
“No! This is the time! A medusa? You have seen such a goddess? You have worshipped before her?” Ilina’s voice was a whiplash, and faint black sparks of lightning flickered around her fingers. “Speak, kragh! Do not play with me! Is she here? Does she wander amongst your number, imbuing them with her grace?”
“No,” Tharok said coldly. “She was attacked by the dragons. She turned herself into stone to sleep away the eons in safety.”
“Where?” Ilina’s voice was a ragged cry. “I must see her! We can awaken her, bring her divinity back to the world. She must come with me back to Agerastos, visit the faithful —”
Tharok’s snarl was ugly, and it silenced her. “No. She is evil. She warps all that she touches. I would not have her return for all the world.”
Ilina faced him, chin raised, clearly not caring how massive and proudly he stood. The faint flickers of lightning grew thicker around her fingers.
Tharok bared his tusks, raised a hand, and a hint of a white shield of fire appeared before him. “Cast your magics at me, human, and I will punch your face into the back of your skull.”
“Enough,” said the Ascendant, and to Audsley’s amazement, both Tharok and Ilina turned to him. The Ascendant stepped forth, as unassuming as any man, his white robes darkened with dust and dirt, his expression severe. “We are allies, no matter what our creeds. We must all make sacrifices if we are to survive. Ilina, you say you know how to awaken the medusa?”
“There is an ancient ritual for doing precisely that,” Ilina said stiffly. “Taught to each al-Vothak in turn.” She turned to stare at Iskra with glittering eyes. “I know you think me and mine mad. The Emperor himself thought us fools, and our religion little more than a tool to bend us to his will. But ours is a true religion, a repository of faith and knowledge. A holdover from an era when medusas ruled the world and Vothaks were their handmaidens and high priests.”
Tharok drew his massive blade. Black fire dripped from its curved edge. “I would rather die than see her brought back.”
“Ilina,” said the Ascendant. “Can medusas restore life to those they turned to stone?”
Audsley’s breath caught in his throat.
“Yes,” Ilina said proudly, pushing her shoulders back.
“Never,” Tharok said again. “You lose me, my shamans, the dragons, and my kragh. Worse, you gain us as enemies. It will not happen.”
“Why do you protest so strongly?” Ilina asked with a smirk. “I recognize it now. I’ve never seen it before, but you are burned by her inner sun, are you not? You bear the mark of her blessing. You once kissed her yourself. Your blackened skin betrays you.”
Tharok roared in anger and charged forward — only to halt as a wall of golden light shot up between him and the Vothak. It shimmered and undulated like the aurora above, and Audsley fancied he could hear a faint sound coming from somewhere – a singing, perhaps, that awoke a deep longing in his soul.
“Akinetos, Synesis, and Mixis stand frozen with that army,” said the Ascendant. “Along with dozens of Consecrated. Thousands of knights and soldiers. We need them if we are to resist the demons.”
“She is a demon,” said Tharok. “She cannot be trusted. And with these fools to worship her? Madness!”
“We must revive her,” said Ilina, turning to the Ascendant. “She is ancient beyond belief. Wise to the world and its mysteries. We need her counsel. We need her wisdom. She can guide us in this coming war. Tell us how to handle the demons.”
“Five thousand men,” said Tiron. “That’s how many we’d stand to gain. Plus the Virtues and the Consecrated.”
“No,” Tharok said again.
“Uniter,” said Iskra, and there was such compassion and pain in her voice that Audsley wasn’t surprised when Tharok turned to her, his brow lowered, unable to resist listening. “I understand. I promise you that I do. None of us wishes to repeat past mistakes, to bring fresh suffering to our people. But we are all going to die. Humans and kragh alike — those demons will destroy us. They will destroy this world. We must stop them, even if it means sacrificing ourselves and our convictions. Even if it means breaking oaths or becoming allies with our greatest enemies.”
Tharok stared at her in mute fury, then gave a sharp shake of his head. “I will speak with my kragh on this issue. I will ask Maur to speak with her dragon. I will not decide this on my own.”
The wall of golden fire shimmered and faded. “Do so,” said the Ascendant. “And thank you. But we are short on time. Please hurry.”
Tharok grunted, spoke to Maur, and the pair of them strode off toward the other kragh chieftains and shamans.
“There... there is someone else who might be able to help,” said Audsley. He felt miserable. The more he revealed, the more complicit he felt. “The Minister of Perfection. He told me that his grandfather was yet alive. Erenthil the Artificer, who was at Starkadr when it fell to the Order of Purity. He still leads the Fujiwaras from his place in hiding.”
Kethe shook her head. “That’s not possible. He’d be... how many centuries old?”
“And why would he help us?” asked Iskra.
“The Minister of Perfection didn’t want to release the demons,” said Audsley. “He wanted to open the Black Gate to bring balance to the world, to return us to the Age of Wonders. I believe Erenthil would have the same goals. I believe he’d be opposed to Zephyr.”
“He’s the grandfather of the Minister of Perfection, whose sole goal was to bring down the Empire,” said Ramswold. He looked to the others. “Am I the only one who balks at turning to this man for help? What can he offer us but corruption and lies?”
“Just as we asked Tharok to put aside his convictions,” said Iskra wearily, “so must we put aside our own.” Her voice was haunted, hollow. Yet, for all that, Audsley thought she was still managing to hold on to her dignity, to a sense of wounded gravitas that drew the eye and made him want to help her in whatever way he could.
“We have no time,” she said. “We have no strategy, much less tactics to enact it. Our resources are virtually none. Our allies are depleted, exhausted – most of them are dead. Ennoia is gone. Starkadr is fallen. We no longer fight to protect the Ascendant, because His Holiness himself fights at our side.”
She looked about the small circle, meeting eyes, her own expression troubled, stern, compassionate. “This is our greatest test. Our final crucible. How far are we willing to go to survive? To
protect the lives of the innocents who yet look to us for succor? What are we willing to sacrifice? Our lives, assuredly. But what more? Our morals? Our compunctions? Our souls?”
Nobody spoke.
The dragons, heeding Maur’s call, descended in great swoops to alight beside the conferring kragh. But such was Iskra’s magnetism that Audsley didn’t even look their way.
“I will speak with this Erenthil,” said Iskra. “I will speak with the medusa. I will gather any and all strength that remains to us and use it to rebuff the demons that seek to destroy our world. Even if it damns me. Even if it leaves me a pariah in the eyes of those I hope to save.”
Her smile was small and bitter, but it included them, shared what little warmth she had left amongst their number. “Will you stand and fight with me, Lord Ramswold? Will all of you swear to do whatever is necessary to defeat this evil?”
“I — yes,” said Ramswold, lowering himself to one knee. “You humble me, my lady. The Order of the Star is yours to command, as it always was.”
“Yes,” said Tiron, his voice still little more than a rasp. He moved to kneel beside Ramswold. “As you command, my lady, so I obey.”
Tóki and the Hrethings also knelt, and the Cerulean Guard followed suit. The Vothaks bowed stiffly, followed by Orishin, Patash, and the Agerastian guards.
Finally, Iskra looked to Audsley. “And you, Magister? Once, you were my most faithful and trusted ally. Once, we swore to serve the Empire, no matter how poor our qualifications. Will you hold to that vow, even now?”
Audsley’s jaw trembled. He didn’t know what to believe. What was real, what was false. Did he have a soul? Was he doomed to the Black Gate, or would he pass into mindless oblivion?
“But after what I have done,” he whispered. “How could I...?”
“Atonement,” Iskra said heavily. “We have all failed, in one manner or another. You, perhaps, most of all. But you said that at the last, you rebelled. You resisted the Minister and slew him.”
“I did,” said Audsley, wringing his hands. “But it wasn’t enough.”
“No,” said Iskra. “It wasn’t. But, all the more reason to seek redemption. If you want it.”
Did he?
Of course he did. He wanted the guilt to fall from him, the shame and horror. But could it? Could he redress the evil he had done? From the stony way Ramswold was staring at him, from the cold expression in Tiron’s eyes, he knew they didn’t think so. But could he prove them wrong?
In the end, did it matter to him what the great and ethereal truths were? No; they were beyond him. Perhaps one day he could tease fact from fiction, could debate the Ascendant, could figure out what he believed.
For now, what mattered most were his friendships. The people who needed him. For them, he would give his last living breath, even if they in turn failed to find it in their hearts to forgive him.
“Yes,” he croaked. “Yes. More than anything.”
With a groan, he lowered himself to one knee and bowed his head.
CHAPTER 12
Tharok
Fury curdled his innards. The shamans and warlords were assembling before him, forming a rough circle before the rock on which he was standing. Maur was standing to one side, and Flamska’s great head was lowered so the Wise Woman could drape an arm over the dragon’s neck with unnerving familiarity. From where he was standing, Tharok could see his thousands, a fraction of the horde he’d led into battle but days ago.
All of them looking to him for guidance. For leadership. For wisdom and control.
“Attend me!”
His roar silenced what chatter was drifting through the ranks. Warlords lowered themselves into squats, lower jaws jutting out, while shamans folded their hands into their sleeves, all of them huddled together like malignant goats awaiting slaughter.
“The world has changed! Where once the frail resistance of the humans was all we had to contend with, now the very darkness has turned into our enemy and seeks to blot out the skies with their wings and flame. The dragons have returned to us, led by Maur, Wise Woman of the Red River, and the medusa has been forced into a form of stone, her influence over our kind shattered!”
He could feel their response. There was a texture to the air, a density that pressed against him. Only hours ago, they had been rebuffed and slaughtered trying to take Ennoia. Only hours ago, they had been whipped into a fervor directed against humanity — and then crushed. And now? He could sense their confusion, their dangerous frustration. Only Flamska’s presence kept them in line — along with the shock of having lost Kyrra. But how much longer would that awe hold?
“We no longer wage war on the humans,” said Tharok. “You can see their leader there. The Ascendant himself! The man whose head I swore to cut from his shoulders. Look at him! He now stands at his ease. Why do we not crush him, end the humans once and for all, as we have fought to do since I first came down from the mountains? Because a greater enemy has shown itself. A true evil. We fight it, or we die!”
The kragh stirred, muttering, alarmed.
“We cannot win!” His own frustration bled into his roar, and the nearest kragh flinched back. “We cannot win, and we will die, all of us, even if we flee back to our land, even if we hide in the deepest cracks like vermin! We will die, torn apart and screaming, our blood forming a great, foaming river, drowning the world, our meat growing rancid beneath the sun. Our bones will bleach where this enemy leaves them strewn, and our kind will be no more!”
Such was his mounting ferocity that the kragh stared back at him, frozen and bewitched; they were shocked into silence.
“But we have dragons, you say.” He pointed at Flamska. “Our greatest myth come back to life, unstoppable, wise and mystical, our most primal defenders. You take comfort in them, don’t you? Idiots! Even our dragons will die when they face this threat. I saw one burned to ashes with my own eyes. You saw its corpse lifted into this very sky and burned by the surviving three! They cannot save you!”
Many of the kragh rose to their feet, uncertain and alarmed, and grunted their anger at him, frightened into belligerence. Tharok bared his tusks at them and opened his arms wide as if to welcome them into a killing embrace.
“Our only hope for survival is to band with the humans, call them clanmates – and even then, that will not be enough. Their strongest castle has fallen, shattered upon their army, and killed them all in one go! Ennoia is no more. It is gone, and our mutual enemy now sets its sights on Aletheia, their floating island, where they seek to double their number. Dragons are not enough! Humans and their greatest knights are not enough!”
The kragh were appalled. Such was the virulence of his words that they felt assaulted; more rose to their feet, giving up the pretense of listening. They barked questions at him, and he saw disorder working its way through the ranks like ripples on a pond. Any moment now, they would break out into violence. Would riot.
“There is only one way!” This, he roared in his avalanche voice, that deep and carrying bellow that only the mightiest of mountain kragh could use. “One! And it sickens me to my soul!”
And in that moment, he realized what he’d been doing all along. What he’d been driving at. What he’d already decided.
“It makes me want to tear at my own face, break my tusks, shatter my blade and weep for our kind! We need the Sky Father-forsaken medusa back amongst our number!”
The kragh froze. Many of them had become her adherents, and he saw shock and glee on the faces of the shamans. They stared at him, wide-eyed. Flamska reared up, its wings beating twice as it gazed down at him with a draconian fury that would have quelled him were he not so disgusted himself.
YOU WOULD AWAKEN YOUR GREATEST FOE?
“Yes!” Tharok drew World Breaker, needing the flood of strength it gave him, the steadying effect of its power. “Yes, damn it all! She can return to the humans the army they lost at Abythos, five thousand strong. Their Virtues, their Consecrated. We need them if we are to fight thi
s enemy. Worse, we need her guidance. None here can deny that she is old and wise to the ways of the world. She may know how to fight. How to defeat this enemy. We need her, though it makes me sick, makes me want to cut my own throat. Yes!”
Maur’s eyes glittered as perilously as Flamska’s. “You used such language once before, when you wore that circlet. Always, the ends justified the means. You would damn us once more?”
“Do you want to die, Maur?” Tharok’s fury was choking him. “You saw what we face. You think we can handle it without Kyrra’s help? Without the human army? Convince me. Please, I beg you. Tell me how we can fight this war without her.”
Maur stared helplessly at him, her hands opening and closing.
Tharok turned back to the horde. “Any of you! Tell me why we should not do this thing.”
One of the shamans stepped forth. He was a cadaverous kragh, lean and wasted both by old age and some spiritual malady that had bleached half of his body, leaving the right side of his face and form wasted and pale, the skin like old porridge, the eye milky white.
“I am Blood Fire, devotee of Kyrrasthasa and leader of the remaining shamans. How do you plan to awaken her? She has fallen into a deep slumber and is beyond your reach.”
“The humans have a tribe called Vothaks amongst them.” The words felt like rocks, like he had to heave each one out of his mouth. “They claim to have worshipped the medusa in ages past. They claim to know a ritual that will awaken her.”
Blood Fire licked his lower lip, but his eyes remained narrowed. “Our loyalty and love for our mistress is well-known. But we are not fools.” He raised a trembling hand and pointed at Flamska. “You seek to awaken our mistress to use her. Are we to believe you will not kill her the moment her utility has ended? No, she is no mere tool to be used and then discarded. She is a goddess!”
