A handful of lizards spilled into the qephilim’s cell. She leaned away from them, but her manacles kept her pinned essentially in place. The movement drew the fire lizard’s attention, plus more still outside the cell. Which gave me an idea…
I shifted my attention to the toppled, winged vessel. What was the shape supposed to represent? Memory kindled from art sketches I’d approved. It was in the crude likeness of a creature of Ardeyn: a dlamma! A winged lammasu I’d adapted from Sumerian myth for the Land of the Curse.
And so I named it, but with a twist in the same way I had named Jushur, when I’d fashioned it from the refuse I’d found in the Glass Desert. Then, I’d had time to create something lasting. For this, I needed something quick before Siraja and I were overwhelmed.
Naming it, I told it to run, as far and as fast as it could.
The vessel jerked, its ungainly limbs – suddenly suffused with pseudo-life – struggling to right itself, wings spastically flapping in a crude approximation of something actually alive. The lizards near me and the qephilim responded, and flowed toward the spectacle, while we froze in place.
The faux-dlamma trundled away from me, seeming even larger now that it could move, drawing the fire lizards, despite that it’d previously served as the vessel containing them. They were too stupid to care. Or maybe they wanted revenge.
The lead fire lizards in the wave leaped after the tottering statue, scorching its exterior, but otherwise having little effect. The thing dashed itself down the length of the dungeon and into the far wall, breaking through into a larger space. I felt the enchantment I’d woken in it shatter as the statue disintegrated from the impact.
The lizards apparently liked what they found in the chamber beyond because they didn’t return the way they’d come. Then I heard distant cries of consternation from that direction. More soul sorcerers was my guess. Time to go.
A few moments of fumbling with the mechanisms got Siraja out of her cell and manacles. The qephilim rubbed her wrists, keeping a wary eye on the new hole in the wall. No one yet appeared to backtrack the source of the ruckus. That would presumably soon change.
“How many soul sorcerers do you suppose are creeping around down here?” I asked.
Siraja shrugged. “The stories don’t give good numbers. There can’t be too many because sooner or later, they’d form factions and turn on each other.”
“Whether it’s five or five hundred, I vote we avoid meeting any more of our hosts.” Of the three other exits to the prison other than the freshly smashed hole, one seemed sort of familiar. “They brought us in that way.”
“How can you be sure? I was blindfolded. And you were unconscious.”
“I was not unconscious. I just had to rest my eyes.”
The qephilim’s ears waggled. She said, “Then we should go the way you remember.”
“You are too gracious,” I said, grinning.
First we checked to make sure no one else was caged in the chamber. The other figures I’d spied turned out to be dried corpses. Neither of us was keen on investigating further, so we left them.
Torches set in wall sconces wound along the passage leading out, providing smoky light. A side chamber gaped halfway along it, which I did not remember. Of course, I didn’t actually remember having all my stuff taken, so…
We glanced into the side chamber, which turned out to be small. Two walls were stacked floor to ceiling with cubbies. Dusty bundles clogged most of the cavities, but two contained loose piles without layers of filth covering them. Jushur’s metallic curve winked in my torch light in the cubby on the left.
We reclaimed our stuff. Besides my magic talking sphere, the cavity held my clothing and everything else I’d been carrying, including my pack. Despite how my clothes smelled a bit stale with sweat, it was a relief.
“Everything’s here,” Siraja said, “including my weapons and coin. That’s surprising; I’d imagined these sad old sorcerers would find whatever visitors bring them to be diverting, at minimum, if not needful.”
“They can probably conjure all the entertainments and sustenance they need. Otherwise they’d have died out centuries ago.”
“Or they just hadn’t gotten around to sorting through our stuff yet. We’ve been down here less than an hour.”
We returned to the passage. It remained clear, so we set forth along it, heading away from the prison.
A dozen yards later, we came to a four-way intersection. One more thing I didn’t remember. Crap. Torches only lit two of the ways – straight ahead, and the path to the right.
“Which way?” Siraja asked, her ears waggling once more.
“I forget.”
“Sure.”
Waggling ears on a qephilim, I decided, might just be laughter.
“Why not ask your magic cannonball?” she suggested.
Why not, indeed? The sphere was cool and rough in my hand as I addressed it, “Which way should we go?”
“To find what you seek, turn left, Maker,” it replied.
Jushur had never given me that title before. But time was short, and I didn’t waste time trying to figure out what had short-circuited in what passed for the object’s magical mind.
Siraja gave me a fishy look. She’d heard what it called me, too, but didn’t comment on it as she grabbed a torch. We trooped along the lightless left-hand corridor for a few minutes before worry suddenly grabbed me by the lapels. Surely we hadn’t come so far after the sorcerers had ambushed us? Embarrassed, I kept my tongue for another couple of minutes.
Siraja didn’t. “Are you certain this is the way?”
“Jushur, you heard the qephilim. I don’t recall coming in this direction.”
The sphere remained silent. I gave it a shake, as if that would do any good. It didn’t.
“Look.” Siraja pointed farther along the corridor. The flickery light of her torch revealed the corridor’s end. The far wall wasn’t blank stone – it was heavily inscribed with symbols that danced around in an ever-widening spiral procession. They looked worn and old.
“Dead end,” muttered Siraja.
“We’ll see,” I said, as I searched for the wall’s name. If nothing else, I wanted to know what the symbols on it meant.
The qephilim continued, “The talisman isn’t great with directions. Of course, how could it know which way to go in the first place? It has no eyes.”
Ignoring her, I concentrated on the wall. The symbols were slippery. Changeable. They weren’t like other things I’d tried to name so far. Something like heat haze rising off a highway distorted their meaning. I concentrated, and without considering whether it was a good idea, touched the wall.
Immediately the symbols jumped to clarity. Information trickled into my brain: the symbols were magical components in a system designed to allow access for certain creatures, or blast into so many drifting motes of burning ash anyone who tried to get past who weren’t on the safe list.
For a wonder, we were already on the “safe” side of the passage. Safe if you didn’t include the crazy soul sorcerers, anyway. Getting out, the direction we were apparently heading, didn’t seem to be fraught with risk of annihilation.
“Jushur had it right all along,” I said, and pressed the symbol that should open the way.
The entire wall faded like mist, revealing a space unlike the one we’d just taken. Instead of squarely carved passages through stone, the area beyond was natural: a twisting, irregular corkscrew of a cave passage ascended via a series of flowstone formations. From somewhere far above, faint light filtered down.
The way was steep and twisty. We scrambled, crawled, and shuffled sideways in silence, but with each foot gained, my mood brightened, as did the light ahead. I couldn’t restrain a grin as I glanced Siraja’s way. “We got away,” I said.
Her ears moved apart. Maybe amusement, maybe skepticism, or a little of both.
“You know,” I said, “We’ve known each other for, what, two months? Three? You’re my only friend
in all Ardeyn.”
Siraja’s ears moved wide apart. Skepticism, then.
“OK, OK, you’re the only person I’ve met here who hasn’t either tried to kill me, promised to kill me, or laughed when someone else did their best to kill me.”
She shrugged. “I suppose you have one or two redeeming qualities. But don’t let it go to your head. I may one day decide I’d like to kill you.” Then her ears waggled.
Laughing felt good. But my curiosity was peaked. “I know nothing about you. How’d you come to be working on the Nightstar? You’re not like the other pirates. What’s your story?”
Siraja grunted, and started upward again.
We continued in silence for several yards. Definitely not the reaction I’d hoped for. Making friends with jackal people wasn’t as easy as it looked.
After another dozen or so yards of progress, she said, “That’s a story I’ve not told before, and one we don’t have time for now. The short version is that a series of bad choices brought me to the Nightstar.”
“Understood,” I said. “Sorry to pry.”
She paused, shaking her head. “No, you’ve earned the right, Carter. If we get out of this alive, I owe you that.”
My smile returned. “I look forward to it.”
“But you’ll have to tell me your story in return. You’re hiding many things from me.”
“I am?” I said somewhat guiltily.
“Something of even more import than my own circumstance, I judge.”
Yeah. That I was the author of this entire world. Siraja would find that a fascinating claim. Or rather, an insane one. She’d dismiss me as a lunatic on the spot, and maybe she’d be right to do so. I was a shadow of a shadow of the Maker.
Finally, I said, “Frankly, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Why did your magic ball call you the Maker?”
She obviously wasn’t going to let that slide.
“What would you think if I told you that I’ve, um, acquired a few of the Maker’s memories and lesser abilities?”
Siraja didn’t quite snort. “I’d say have another swallow, drunkard.”
“Exactly. Who’d blame you? Not me. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. It’s why you found me in the Glass Desert.”
Her ears pointed almost directly away from each other. “Right, because the Maker decided he’d like to be a pirate.”
“Funny.”
“That was meant to be sarcastic.”
Telling her everything was probably the wrong move, but screw it. “I’m not the Maker, I told you. But, I can do some of the things he could do. It’s why I came to Ardeyn, to stop the Betrayer from breaking the walls of the world. To do that, or wake the true Maker so he can stop the Betrayer, I need to get into the Maker’s Hall.”
Siraja nodded as I wound down. When I finished, she said, “Chaff. I said there was a lot of chaff to you. That tale goes beyond the boasts of a man in his cups, and ventures into the realm of pure insanity.”
“You saw me animate that statue back there after calling it by its true name.”
“A sorcerer with a lucky spell could’ve done the same.”
I nodded. “Perhaps.”
“You’re having me on. You’re an adventurer who lost his crew, that’s all. One with a bit of sunstroke from too much time spent on the glass before we found you. You’re mostly harmless. Mostly.”
I sighed. “I tell you what. If I ever do wake the Maker’s power, I’ll make you your own ship. Maybe you’ll believe me then.”
She snorted, but offered no more rejoinders. Arguing wasn’t going to convince her. The qephilim hadn’t even considered the possibility that I was telling the truth. My exuberance at our escape frayed. Indeed, now that I considered how fully I’d failed to achieve my objective of entering the Hall, I realized I’d come full circle. Each step was a pace farther from where I needed to be.
Gaining direct control over the situation required that I enter the Maker’s Hall. And I’d failed. A group of demented old men and their servitors had nearly killed me and Siraja. They had killed who knows how many people in their creepy dungeon, most recently a sacrifice “in place” of Mehvish. Mehvish was an entirely separate mystery, one I didn’t have time to worry about just then. But I was glad she’d apparently escaped.
My plans – both those carefully laid and the ones I’d come up with on the fly – had done nothing to stem Jason Cole’s mad schemes. My thoughts churned as I tried to devise a new plan. If I could appeal to the soul sorcerers on a logical level, if they could be made to understand what was actually at stake, they’d have to let me try, right?
Somehow, I sensed that logic might not win them over. But I had to try, otherwise, I was just a coward. A stinking, self-saving coward.
On the other hand, dying wasn’t going to solve anything. Forcing myself to turn back and face the soul sorcerers wasn’t an option. The urge to flee had me in its grip like an addiction. I’d already given in.
We exited onto the surface of the Glass Desert through a crack just wide enough to wriggle through. The sun was doubled as it dipped to touch the reflective plain. The glass was hot, but its daytime furnace intensity had already faded. Behind us, the great shattered blister of the Singing Crater threw shadows hundreds of yards long across emptiness. The Nightstar was nowhere to be seen.
“How long did Taimin say he’d wait for us?” I asked.
“Three days.”
“It can’t have been more than one,” I mused.
“Perhaps he had other matters to attend to.”
“Yeah,” I said, gazing around. “Or maybe he was chased off.” I pointed, even though I felt like curling into a ball.
Siraja actually hissed when she saw the figures emerging from the shade offered by the standing shards around the crater. They’d seen us first. A group was headed our way. Here I thought we’d escaped from the goddamned soul sorcerers, but no. We’d just walked into the teeth of their power.
Although… I didn’t see any white apes, elderly people in robes, or golems.
Instead, the strangers wore chain armor with deep blue surcoats featuring a design across the chest: a gold circle set within a field of black speckled with stars. My knack for names breathed fresh knowledge into my brain: The symbol was the Crown Banner, reserved for the Queen of Hazurrium. The circle depicted the queen’s implement of rulership, the Ring of Peace.
“Holy shit, Hazurrium,” I breathed. In the defunct MMORPG, the queendom was a shining land of beauty and peace, the quintessential realm of noble humanity. Everything I knew about the place was two hundred years out of date. What had happened in the all that time? I was about to find out.
Five figures moved to the fore as the group approached. The shortest seemed the one in charge: a woman in magnificent armor wearing a crown. A sword rode her hip, and confidence lit her face. Her name was Elandine, my talent whispered. She ruled the queendom. Which was significant, for some reason. Then I had it: Elandine was directly descended from my friend Mel. Melissa Perkins.
The recognition made me gasp. I’d taken the mantle of the Maker, Jason Cole had chosen the Incarnation of War, Alice the Incarnation of Silence, Peter Sanders had become Lore… and Mel had taken up the mantle of Death. Though mostly in name – the role she’d really preferred had been that of Hazurrium’s queen. Oh, the parties she’d thrown…
Elandine had Mel’s likeness, all these generations later.
The queen fixed me with her great-to-the-somethingth grandmother’s eyes and said, “I heard your call, Maker. I came.”
30: Commitment
Elandine, Queen of Hazurrium
For the creator of the world, the Maker looked rather shabby. But the supernatural call had led here. This ramshackle man was the source, she was certain. What she was less sure about was whether she should’ve responded in the first place. His haggard stare, torn and weathered clothing, and qephilim companion – whose scars and flamboyant dress screamed glass pir
ate – made him resemble the sort of person routinely turned out of Hazurrium for disorderly behavior.
The man she’d just greeted as the Maker coughed. Then he said, “I’m Carter Morrison. I’m not the Maker. But–” he raised hand to forestall the exclamation already springing to her lips, “but what he was… is part of me. And this is my friend, Siraja.”
The qephilim pirate snorted.
Elandine didn’t care for what the raggedy man was implying. “What he was? I’ve traveled across half of Ardeyn to find the Maker, not some pretender.”
Her statement wasn’t strictly true, of course; her mission had started as one of revenge, before the call came. But as usual, anger made her tongue quick and somewhat inexact. Although the name Carter sounded familiar. Not the Morrison surname, though. Carter Strange was the name she remembered from stories her mother used to tell her. Carter Strange was the name the Maker took when he traveled among mortals. Of course, if this fellow was a fraud, he’d simply incorporate those myths into his charade. Maybe he perpetrated some kind of elaborate deceit, possibly up to and including manufacturing the call to the Rings…
Elandine let her hand drop to the hilt of her sword. “Explain yourself,” she commanded.
He saw her not-so-subtle movement, as she intended, but his expression didn’t falter. “I’m saying I was the Maker. And that maybe, with your help, I can be again. I need to get inside the Maker’s Hall, and to do that, I need the Rings of Incarnation. Which means you have one of the Seven. If you heard my call, you must.” He looked at her hopefully.
Of course she didn’t have the Ring of her ancestors. Shame colored Elandine’s face, which only made her angrier. “If the Maker is dead, with only you and your pirate friend to keep the memory alive, maybe that’s best. What’s so important that you need to enter the Hall? For all I know you simply want to steal the Maker’s knowledge. You wouldn’t be the first to try and abscond with the power of an Incarnation.”
“Listen. Everything is at stake. My world, and Ardeyn, too, and every other connected realm. Otherwise, Jason – you probably know him as War – will shatter the walls of existence and let horror consume everything.”
The Myth of the Maker Page 27
