by Phil Tucker
Into darkness. A ravine, perhaps. He bounced from the sides, which narrowed together, and his fall slowed, then stopped. He was wedged deep inside a crack of some kind. But he felt no pain. No fear, either.
Inside his mind, there was only a raging light of bright vermilion that sought to burst free, to tear Audsley’s mind apart so that it might slip out. Audsley felt as diaphanous as fine linen, as wispy as a cirrus cloud. He couldn’t control this power. He could barely endure its presence within him.
Ghash’la’karn. He thought the name, and the crimson light throbbed and threw itself against Audsley’s very being.
Libraries. The smell of books. The feel of a fine leather tome in his hands. Maps. Glossaries. Appendices. Footnotes.
Izmul’drr’ack.
The demon tried once more. It didn’t claw or tear or rend; it simply dissolved all that lay around it. Audsley couldn’t tell what memories he was losing, but he could feel their absence. Entire chunks of his life were evanescing under the demon’s assault.
The ocean. Blue, bright, eternal. Gradations as one dove. The word pelagic, always a favorite. The tickling tang of salt on his skin after the water had dried in the sun. Chop on the side of a boat. Towers rising to greet the sun.
Laughter. Diamonds glittering in waves.
Offash’sammaz.
The demon was losing strength. Mobility. Or was that motility? Volubility. Stability. Lability. It was ossifying, petrifying, becoming defined by its name. A form was emerging from the light. Dark and deep. Malevolent, but no longer dynamic. Too large for Audsley’s span – but one could always reach higher.
Audsley forced the scope of his inner realm to grow to match the demon. He became a cavernous vault, dwarfing the ur-destraas, but the demon continued to rage. It flew hither and yon, attacking the groined walls, and where it lashed, Audsley bled.
Tears. Fears. Woes. Something. He was losing something something something to the claws and maws.
Mmrkhao. A sound as comforting as it was strange. What was that? A furred shape, flitting through the ruined halls of his mind. A memory. A companion. A true and loving friend.
Aedelbert.
Audsley felt himself smile, the expression stiff and unnatural in the darkness of the ravine. His hands opened in the desire to cradle and caress his old firecat, but he was wedged in too tight, alone in the dark.
Still, it was a source of a little more strength, and that was all that he needed.
D’sil’varan.
The demon went still. It didn’t acquiesce, but rather withdrew into itself.
Up, thought Audsley, and he floated free of the ravine’s chill embrace and ascended back out into the night. Up and out into the sky, climbing sedately to where Asho was hanging in the air.
“Audsley?”
“Asho.” Audsley smiled.
“Did — did it tell you where Zephyr is?”
“Zephyr.” The name tolled through him like a dolorous bell. It was important.
He turned to the ur-destraas, which had fashioned a throne from Audsley’s mind-matter and was sitting upon it regarding him with disdain.
Where is she?
No words. The ur-destraas would not deign to speak with him, but neither could it resist, so it gifted Audsley with a familiar image. A straight-backed throne, a waist-high pedestal, a hall over which arched a ruined glass ceiling.
“Starkadr,” whispered Audsley. “Come.”
He reached out and touched Asho’s hand.
CHAPTER 39
Asho
Audsley’s touch seared the back of Asho’s hand, and in a flash of spiraling darkness they were transported to the great chamber at the peak of Starkadr. It was in ruinous condition; the great glass ceiling of organically curved panes had shattered, raining shards onto the tilted floor. Huge cracks ran through the floor, some several yards across, and the great balcony at the rear of the hall from which the spiraling staircases descended had detached and collapsed into a rough mound.
Asho stumbled, trying to catch his balance, and immediately flew up to compensate.
The hall was empty. Had Audsley in his incipient madness sent them astray?
“There,” whispered Audsley, who was standing hunched to one side. Waves of heat were pulsing off his body, and his skin was darkening as if it were burning from within. “Smell her? On the throne.”
Asho flew forward. At the end of the hall was a great flight of steps that rose and narrowed to a small platform on which sat a throne, its back to the room, facing out through a broken bubble of glass.
If she was on the throne, he couldn’t give her time to summon demons to her defense, to wield the power of the circlet. Calling upon the power of the nearly depleted spikes that perforated his body, he spread both hands before him.
A slender figure rose from the throne and turned to him with a smile carving her lips.
Asho didn’t give her time to think. He screamed his fury and unleashed a wave of black fire that flooded the throne and its former occupant, bursting the last of the glass out from the bubble and expanding out into the night sky beyond.
Asho didn’t relent. He kept pouring greater and greater amounts of flame into his attack, even as he felt the last of the spikes disappear.
With a cry, he sank down to the floor, utterly expended. His head was swimming, and he could feel blood running down his upper lip. He felt as if a massive cape of lead had been draped over his shoulders, and it took all of his strength to lift his head and focus on the platform above him.
Zephyr had fallen.
With supreme nausea roiling his belly and a terrible pain starting up in his head, Asho forced himself to his feet and climbed the steps. He stopped halfway as spasms wracked his body, forcing him to choke and gag as ropes of bitter saliva flecked with green flew from his mouth. Motes of black danced before his eyes. Something was terribly wrong with his insides. They felt loose and hot and liquid. Blood spattered out of his mouth in a convulsive spasm. He wanted to die, to curl up into a ball and let the misery carry him away into unconsciousness.
But he couldn’t.
Gritting his teeth, fighting his body’s every instinct, he climbed the last of the steps and stood swaying over Zephyr’s charred body.
Her eyes flicked open, startling white against her blackened face.
Asho took a step back in horror. He extended his hand, tried to summon more flame, but there was nothing left. The attempt made him fall to his knees in agony.
Zephyr laughed. It was a whistling, hollow sound, like wind blowing through a grove of dead trees. Her body hitched from the effort of it, and then she turned her head to gaze at Asho with flakes of charred skin falling from her neck and cheeks.
“Hurry,” she said. “I can’t hold back for much longer.”
Asho stared at her in incomprehension. He didn’t understand why she wasn’t attacking him, but it didn’t matter. This was his chance. He’d lost his sword somewhere along the way, so he fumbled at his belt, trying to draw his dagger, but he lacked the strength. Tears ran down his cheeks as he labored to pull it free.
“Hurry,” hissed Zephyr.
Audsley appeared on Zephyr’s far side. His eyes were jet black, without sclera or iris, just pools of reflective night. He knelt at Zephyr’s side and gently pried the circlet free from her brow.
Zephyr sighed in relief, and the tension left her frame. Audsley held up the circlet and examined it as if he didn’t know what it was. Asho held his breath. What would he do if the magister moved to place it on his own brow?
“Here,” Audsley said distantly.
Asho took the circlet. It wasn’t even warm. It was a plain object, made not from steel but common iron. Light. Unremarkable.
Audsley placed his hand on Zephyr’s brow. “What light remains to me and mine, my mind, oh, my heart, to shatter and find reprieve...”
The blackened, split skin began to heal.
“What are you doing?” asked Asho.
“
Restoring her,” Audsley replied. “Though I don’t know if that’s possible. Can you mend something that was born broken?”
“We have to get the circlet to Iskra. Audsley, you have to take us there.”
“Yes,” Audsley said, but his hand remained on Zephyr’s brow. Her hair was regrowing, and her skin was lightening, smoothing over.
“Now, Audsley. Please. There’s no time.”
“No time.” Audsley nodded gravely, and then tears ran down his cheeks. Without looking, he extended his hand to Asho, who reached out and took it.
The world collapsed upon itself, and then they were in Bythos. Asho’s legs gave way, and he sat heavily on sharp rubble at the bottom of a bowl in the ground. The Black Gate was there before him, a trembling diamond darker even than Audsley’s eyes. Flickers of black lightning danced around its slowly spinning form.
Draumronin was lying at the edge of the bowl. The dragon’s wings were tattered and its body was steaming; its head was barely raised off the ground. Tiron was standing at its side, while Kethe, the Ascendant and the Virtues were descending toward Iskra and Erenthil, who were standing before the Gate.
Demons were appearing in the skies of Bythos, their forms stark against the aurora infernalis as their cries rose in an ecstasy of anticipation.
“Asho!” Kethe’s voice rang out over the din, and she broke away from the others to race to his side. Her presence did more for him than he could have believed was possible; he could dimly sense her trying to drain him of his taint, but more than that, the sight of her face and her touch gave him the strength to lift his hand and extend the circlet to her.
“We have it,” he rasped. “Give it to Erenthil.”
Audsley was cradling Zephyr in his lap. The young Fujiwara girl was completely healed and looked serenely at peace in his arms. Audsley was smiling down at her, but something Asho had said caught his attention, and he looked up, clearly confused and worried.
“No,” said Audsley. “The dangers... confusions... my mind.”
His obvious distress caused the rocks around him to begin to glisten as heat radiated from his body, a heat so intense that Kethe cried out and dragged Asho away.
“Mother!” Kethe let go of Asho’s hand and ran toward Iskra. “Here!”
Erenthil stepped forward and snatched the circlet from her hand. “Give that to me. We’ve no time for —”
A roar reverberated throughout the massive cavern as an ur-destraas appeared above them, its ropes of fire extending into the air as it manifested. Asho tried to stand, to gather himself, but it was all he could do to prop himself upright on the rocks.
Erenthil stared at the circlet, seemingly immobilized by the realization of what he was holding, then placed it on his head. He staggered, his knees almost giving out, and then slowly straightened.
Draumronin rumbled and swung its head out over the depression, fire flickering from its nostrils. The dragon could barely do even that; wounds had lacerated the length of its neck, and Tiron was cursing as he placed his shoulder under the dragon’s serpentine neck in a pitiful attempt to help.
DO AS YOU SWORE, rumbled the dragon.
Erenthil smiled. “I have sworn many oaths, Draumronin. I shall honor the mightiest of them first.”
And with that, Erenthil extended his hand and exerted his will upon those gathered before him.
It was as if a great bell had been struck, but instead of tolling out a golden peal, it gave out invisible waves of numbing silence. Each new pulse piled rapidly upon the last, and Asho saw Draumronin’s eyelids droop while Tiron’s blade slid back into its sheath. The Ascendant managed to raise his hands to form the sign of the triangle but then grew still. Everyone began to move toward Erenthil only to slow and stop.
Audsley was the only one to continue moving, holding Zephyr in his arms and rocking slightly back and forth, muttering to her in a singsong voice as he ignored everything that was taking place around them.
With effort, Asho craned his head back and looked to the skies. The demons were stilling. The ur-destraas had called back its serpentine flames and now was simply regarding them with its hellish eyes. Demons continued to appear, teleporting in from Aletheia, but none of them moved to attack.
Erenthil looked about him with a slightly fatuous smile and then laughed, a short, sharp bark of delight that culminated in his clapping his hands together and rubbing them excitedly.
“Ascendant,” he said. “On your knees.”
The Ascendant fought him, sought to resist, but slowly he dropped to one knee, then the second.
“Delightful! Oh, this is beyond — but, yes. I see it now.” Erenthil stopped, gazing over the Ascendant’s head into the middle distance. “Remarkable. Before my eyes this whole time, and I never guessed. Corollaries, of course. Diaphane, adiaphane. And to think…”
The circlet was opening unimagined vistas to his mind. What might it be revealing to one as powerful and erudite as the Artificer himself?
Asho gritted his teeth and struggled to rise. His body was clay. His muscles were watery, his breathing ragged. He could feel the circlet’s pressure upon him: how it fought to control him, to suppress his instincts, his desires, and render him a mute puppet awaiting Erenthil’s commands.
“Let us begin,” Erenthil said, turning toward the Black Gate. “So ends the age of Ascendancy. Let a new Age of Wonders dawn.”
He stretched out his arms and began to intone strange and eldritch words that were far beyond Asho’s comprehension.
Sweat burned his brow, and he wanted to dry heave once more. What he wouldn’t do for a black potion, another spike driven through his body. He wheezed, and his gorge rose, but there was no potion to be had, no aid to be given. No one to help them in this final hour.
Just him, alone, Asho the Bythian, armed with nothing more than his bloody-minded resistance to all oppression and abuse.
Gritting his teeth, Asho rolled over onto all fours. His mind clamored with pain; he was being battered by the circlet’s commands. Images of the world danced before his eyes, blurred and indistinct. He was losing himself in his own personal inferno, but he persisted. With a gasp torn from his very depths, he placed a hand on his knee and straightened.
He could barely make out Erenthil and the Gate. It was now wreathed in livid bolts of lightning that surged and spat, connecting to the ground and running along it like the feeling hand of a blind, frenetic man. Asho felt the hairs on his arms and nape stir with his terror as Erenthil’s voice was raised in a rapturous yell.
Grimacing, nearly fainting, Asho rose to his feet and swayed like a rotten tree. No weapon. No magic in him. His dagger? His hands were like hunks of wood. He couldn’t feel his fingers to close them around the hilt. He coughed, and blood flowed down his chin again.
Attack Erenthil from behind by barreling into him?
No.
Demons were alighting all around them, settling on the ground between the Virtues and the shamans with their wings furled around their hideous bodies and their eyes focused on the Black Gate.
There was a heart-stopping CRACK, and the Black Gate split asunder.
Erenthil’s cry of victory was drowned out by a terrifying roar as magic poured through in an unfettered wave. Asho stumbled back as if he were caught in a terrible headwind, nearly collapsing altogether. The magic poured over him like soothing balm, and he felt a moment of delirious hope as he reached for it — only to fall to his knees and vomit even more blood onto the rocks before him, chunks of flesh amongst the gore.
Too far. I’ve pushed myself too far. Can’t take any more.
Still, he tried. He reached into the ocean of magic that was swirling past him, but his attempt to draw from it caused something within him to tear, and more blood erupted from between his lips. Pain smeared his thoughts as his blood ran between the rocks and collected in pools. He could barely breathe, was forced to desperately choke and swallow as more blood kept trying to rise up his throat.
One more tim
e. It would kill him, but he had no choice. Erenthil was turning around, had caught sight of Asho, an eyebrow rising in surprise.
No time. One last chance…
“And then thee and I shall periwinkle beneath the azure skies,” Audsley sang in a frail voice. “And chance forsooth to dance a dance that we shall divine with our feet as we explore each furthering step...”
Asho looked blearily over at the magister. Eight fragments of Audsley circled each other in his teary vision, all of them glowing with the ur-destraas’ overwhelming might, casting a fitful radiance as if the magister’s bones were glowing through his flesh.
“You, there,” said Erenthil. “Be still.”
The circlet clamped onto Asho’s mind like a vise. It twisted and squeezed, wracking Asho with further pain.
He screamed. All he had done had been for naught.
He thought of the other squires beating him with wooden swords in Kyferin Castle’s bailey, raining blows down upon his curled form.
Shaya riding away through the rain and dark, into a life of slavery.
Fleeing to Mythgræfen Hold. Defying the odds again and again. Demons and enemy knights. Struggling to free the slaves of Bythos. Mounting a desperate defense in Ennoia.
Kethe’s smile.
Asho screamed and reached for the magic. The narrowest of windows opened in the wall the circlet had erected around his mind, and for a moment he touched the power flooding through the Black Gate.
The tearing within his chest spasmed into a numbing riot of agony. He felt a rush of blood pour up his throat, but before it could erupt from his mouth, he flung himself at Audsley, hand outstretched, and touched the magister’s brow.
NO, said a voice from the depths of the magister. An imperial voice, one of negation and death, of doom and destruction.
NO.
Asho reached deep into Audsley’s mind into the depths of his soul, and there he found the ur-destraas seated in its ruinous glory, rising up from a throne of flesh in protest, seeking to break the shackles that Audsley had clamped around its arms and legs.
