With a familiar psychic squeeze, they passed back into Ardeyn. Relief made him gasp. He half expected to see Megeddon on the horizon, but as the dlamma had promised, beyond the Borderlands was only a sere flatland of polished glass. The Glass Desert.
He glanced behind them, back the way they’d come.
The barest hints of the Strange were visible beyond the tumbling earth motes, but the boundary would keep out their pursuers. Kray always tried to find a way in, but the Seven Rules inevitably kept them fenced out.
“You have my thanks,” Jason told the dlamma as it returned to its earlier, slower pace. Sweat slicked its back, and heat came off it like a furnace. Any lesser effort would’ve seen them fall into the kray’s clutches.
They flew on into the desert along the route Jason pointed out, based on his intuitive sense of where Carter had called from.
Hours later, the ache in his stomach was back. “By the Maker,” Jason muttered, rubbing. It was worse than ever. Was he going to be sick?
The sensation grew, until it burned in his belly like someone holding a torch to his skin.
He hissed at the uptick in agony and bent to visually check if he’d taken a wound he’d failed to notice. Lifting the stiff leather of his armor, he saw not the least blemish.
“How…?”
Then he realized the sensation wasn’t actually coming from his stomach; it was referred pain. The actual injury was somewhere else. The burning escalated, like acid bubbling inside him, as if one of his organs had split open and spilled its contents into his veins and arteries. He felt something shatter, and nearly fell from the saddle. Darkness stabbed across Jason’s vision like reverse lighting, and he cried out.
As did the dlamma. Its flight became erratic. It screamed, “What have you done, Betrayer? Why does the sky darken and crack in our wake? The interface between Ardeyn and the Strange is failing – and I feel the walls of the world shaking!”
“What walls?”
“The walls – the Seven Rules that keep out Strangers, you fool!” screamed the dlamma.
“Oh no,” whispered Jason as a new agony spasmed through him. He understood.
All his deals with the kray over the years – all the pieces of himself he’d traded away for their aid. He hadn’t only been trading on his own soul. How could he? He was also an Incarnation of the Maker, a manifestation of one of the Seven Rules.
Every promise he’d made, every lease on his independence he’d traded away for reality seeds, artifacts of the dark energy network he’d been too afraid to search out for himself within the Strange, and favors large and small, all had been trades on Ardeyn’s sovereignty, too.
When he’d finally seen the kray, naked and unfiltered in the Strange, they’d called all his promises due, in their massed mental voice. He thought they’d wanted him then and there.
But unlike what he’d told Merid, if the kray had eaten him out in the Strange, unconnected with the realm of his birth, the kray would’ve lost all the ground they’d gained by helping him and exacting their promises. If he’d been outside Ardeyn, the Land of the Curse would’ve remained barred to them upon his death.
Those fucking monsters had played him. After declaring their covenant due, they’d let him get away. He’d done as they’d secretly desired, his relief blinding him to what they really wanted. The kray wanted him to return to Ardeyn.
He’d been the final key in the lock.
Jason gazed back at the sky, from where they’d come. Bruised storm clouds swelled there, boiling in a way that reminded him of how the fundament of the Strange moved. Lightning dark as crow wings stabbed and played beneath, and where it struck the ground, geysers of disintegrated stone and glass from the desert sprayed up. Reality was becoming liminal, fragile.
“What can we do?” screamed the dlamma over a peal of basso thunder.
“We… I can stop this. I am War, damn it. I’m an Incarnation, by the Maker. I should be able to stop the kray’s advance!”
Jason didn’t really believe his own words, but he didn’t have to convince himself. He had to convince the shadow of War that haunted his soul to emerge once more, and take charge.
Or…
A new thought crystallized. It wasn’t quite a plan; it was more of a desperate ploy. He pointed.
“That way, dlamma! Carter waits. He’ll help. He won’t have a choice.”
33: Reunion
Carter Strange
Pre-dawn light filtered in through tent fabric. For several delicious moments, I didn’t know where I was – other than in a tent – or remember how I’d gotten there. I relished the feeling for all of four seconds.
“Carter, get out here!” The voice belonged to Queen Elandine and came from somewhere outside the tent. My waking daze crumbled, and I remembered everything.
Crap. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours since I’d been offered a tent to get some rest.
I rose, slipped on my boots and outer robe, grabbed my magic sphere, and followed Siraja outside. The sun was still below the horizon, which meant it wasn’t scorching hot. But the light was increasing fast.
The tent was set in the lee of a wall of glass shards that ran away west. The shards had apparently formed when one massive segment of the desert ground into another segment, throwing up a sharp rampart. The queen’s protector, Navar had picked the spot last evening because of its “defensive posture.” The soul sorcerers hadn’t come boiling out of their crater to track me down yet, so we hadn’t had to test whether the blade-sharp splinters truly offered a formidable barrier.
A storm was rolling up from the south, its reflection in the glass doubling its already prodigious size. It was wrong somehow, but my attention was dragged to a closer disturbance. A detachment of the queen’s guards clustered around something on the glass, blocking my view.
Shoving through the press, Siraja at my heels, I saw what had so ruffled the peacekeepers: two strangers.
One was a noble-winged dlamma, its humanlike face hidden in a ritual mask. I sensed the mask also served as its name, which translated to something like “Far Voyager.”
The other stranger dismounted the dlamma as I approached. He was a large man wearing armor forged of black iron. His helm sported impressively proportioned backward-swept spikes. He wielded something that might have been a mace, a staff, or a spear, or all three at once, that flickered redly at one end.
“Jason,” I said, knowing him despite his extravagant costume. Just as I’d known him on Earth when Jason, the psycho, had possessed Kate Manners’ friend Raul. Jason Cole stood before me, but his name echoed with the sound of swords clashing and the smell of blood spilling. He was also War.
“Carter Strange!” yelled Jason, doffing his helm. Revealed was the face I recognized from our years together, when we’d been colleagues, if not friends. Dark lines etched his brown eyes, his hair was too long, and the barest hint of a sneer twitched on his lips. How I hated that face.
I raised Jushur defensively. Of its own volition, it took flight and hovered near my head. Around me, the queen’s troops also brought up their crossbows, all fixed on Jason.
The surrounding guards stepped aside, admitting Elandine and Navar. The queen immediately drew her blade.
Siraja just looked at me, a question plain on her face. She wanted to know what my play was going to be. I wish I knew.
I opened my mouth to say something anyway, hoping the mere act would pull something useful out.
The queen beat me to the punch. Spitting each word like a trebuchet bullet, she addressed Jason, “You have something of mine, War. Give it back. Even you can’t defeat me and my army, not when the Maker stands with us.” Her eyes flicked to me when she said “Maker.” I was glad it was still too dark for anyone to see my checks flush.
“Your Majesty,” said Jason, “believe me when I tell you how sorry I am that I lied–”
“You stole the Ring of Peace! After you promised to save my sister!” She took a step closer, but
restrained herself from hewing Jason or commanding her troops to attack. I worried she wouldn’t wait much longer, though.
Jason coughed, then responded, “Despite all that, I believe we can come to an accord.” He licked his lips, smiled a sad smile. “As it happens, I need Carter’s help with something. It’s rather urgent. Have any of the other Rings come to you yet, Carter, since you made your call?” His eyes darted hopefully around the camp, as if he was looking for a stray Incarnation loitering behind the mess tent.
“So you can make off with those, too, you thief?” Elandine yelled, anger stretching her voice tight.
Surprising that Jason hadn’t attacked us outright. A good sign? On the other hand, Elandine was moments from violence.
“What do you mean you need my help?” I said. “Last time we talked, back on Earth, weren’t you gloating that you finally had your revenge? Didn’t you laugh when you saw I’d been shot?”
Jason rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighing. “Look, it’s all true. I admit everything. I’m an evil prick. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” I yelled, momentarily forgetting I’d been the one who was trying to calm the situation and figure out what War wanted before Elandine tried to cut his liver out.
“Nope,” Jason said. “All that is bygones. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, ol’ buddy, but the Seven Rules of Ardeyn have been breached.” Jason gestured at the wonky storm still piling higher on the southern horizon. “In about ten minutes, we’re all going to be ass-deep in kray.”
My eyes found the storm again. I focused on the black thunderheads that visibly swelled as each second passed. The wrongness I’d sensed before remained. In fact…
“Oh, no,” I breathed when I saw what lay behind the clouds. The storm was an atmospheric reaction to an incursion. It was a kray invasion of Ardeyn, with every monster precipitating cloud formation by its unwelcome presence. Kray swirled in that storm, thousands strong. I could sense something like exultance mixed with unending hunger. But they were only the vanguard for the thing that followed after them, easing itself a little at a time through the crack in the bulwark of Ardeyn I’d thrown up three years earlier to protect Earth. I tried to name it, understand it, but failed so completely that the feedback of my defeat sparked a blinding headache. I grunted and grabbed my head, squeezing my eyes shut but unable to keep the memory of what I’d seen crawling behind my eyes.
“Are you all right, Carter?” I heard Siraja ask through a migraine-like aura.
Was I? The initial pain spike was already subsiding, replaced by a burning anger at what I suspected must have happened. Anger was easier to bear than uncertainty, than fear. Fury damps out other internal voices. It’s a form of certainty. And it seemed certain that Jason had killed Earth.
“We can still fix this,” he said. “We can–”
“You think I’m stupid enough to trust you?” I snapped, as my vision cleared. I focused only on him. “For all I know, you’re the one who caused this. In fact, given how you were fucking around uploading quantum computer manufacturing instructions to idiots on Earth, I’m sure of it.”
“No,” he said, but he sounded like a liar to my special sense. I didn’t believe him. On the other hand, why wasn’t he arriving with these invaders as they poured into Ardeyn? Seemed exactly like the sick thrill ride War – and maybe even Jason – would get off on.
Then the truth, a black rose blooming, sprouted and it disgusted me. “I know what happened – you tried to deal with the kray, didn’t you? They gave you something that gave you access to Earth. But then they double-crossed you, too. Betrayed the Betrayer.”
Jason said, “I didn’t–”
“You did, except you didn’t know they’d take everything on offer, and then some. There’re here to eat Ardeyn and you, isn’t that right? To consume it all, and then rush up the renewed link you forged with Earth and take that, too.”
“I didn’t know,” Jason said, almost pleading.
I shook my head in contempt. “You asshole. I made you an Incarnation. I gave you everything you could’ve dreamed of here in Ardeyn. And in return you–”
Jason interrupted, his voice suddenly loud and hot, and no longer defensive. “No. Screw that, Carter. You gave me nothing. You trapped me here in this fucking dream world. This nightmare that would never end, and told me how happy I should be. You caged me in a make-believe place filled with shadows of actual people and told me it was better than real life. You locked me, Sanders, Alice, and Melissa in here! Like we were animals in a zoo, explaining that it was OK because the cage looked so realistic. Well, we knew, you bastard. We knew. It’s a fucking fake. You’re the asshole, Carter. You betrayed all of us first.”
The storm swelled. Even as true dawn gathered beneath the horizon, the portion of the Glass Desert beneath the kray armada remained dark. In their approaching shadow, I couldn’t sustain my own anger at Jason. For the first time, I had an inkling of what had driven my old friend to such crazy lengths. If he didn’t view Ardeyn and the advantages I’d given him and the others as real and meaningful, then of course it must have felt like a trap.
Arguments I could’ve used to convince Jason that this place was every bit as real as Earth, that he had it all wrong, on and on, gathered behind my lips. And stayed there. The kray were minutes away. Besides, Jason was two hundred years – from his perspective – down the road of convincing himself of his worldview, one where I had betrayed him. Rushed observations and arguments by me were not going to make him suddenly realize he was looking at everything wrong, that everyone he’d hurt or killed to get where he was had been real enough to feel that pain and death, and, oh gee, can’t we all just be friends now?
He was still a killer, even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself.
But killer or not, didn’t he have at least something approaching a point? Had our positions been reversed, and Jason locked me in someplace I regarded as a facade of reality, who’s to say I wouldn’t have reacted the same?
So instead, I sighed and said, “Jason, I apologize. I disagree, and I think your tactics are shit. But I can see things from your shoes. Being trapped someplace you don’t want to be sucks. You didn’t deserve it, and didn’t ask to spend two centuries here. I’m sorry.”
“Damn straight!” he yelled. Then he blinked as if confused, apparently not quite sure where to go next. My capitulation had lanced some of his rancor and knocked him off-balance.
“So, explain more about what you said earlier,” I said. “About needing my help? Do you have a plan to turn back the kray?”
Jason fumed a second longer, glanced at the storm, then reluctantly nodded. He’d come this far, I could almost sense him thinking, and he’d be damned if he was going to give up now.
“I do have a plan,” he said. He seemed suddenly, if it was possible, afraid. As if he feared what the kray might do to him personally. Served the psycho right.
He pulled something that clinked from a pouch on his belt, displaying it on his palm. Two rings lay there, threaded on a leather thong, and a third gleamed from his index finger. Not rings; Rings. I gasped.
“Three Rings, Carter. We have three. Unless one of the other Incarnations…?”
I shook my head no.
He continued, “Had I known the kray were breaking through the interface, I’d have tried to extract a fourth Ring that’s… residing in my fortress. Sadly, no time remains for us to retrieve it. I’m hoping we don’t need it. With you – the sorry excuse of what remains of the Maker – there’s a chance we can open up the Maker’s Hall and fix everything. We’ve got three Rings plus whatever Maker you can manifest. We can re-seal the Borderlands. Eject the kray.”
I concentrated on the Rings, and knew them instantly. Jason wore the Ring of War. On his palm was the Ring of Commerce and the Ring of Death.
Elandine had moved closer during Jason’s recital of my crimes against him. Now she said in a voice devoid of all emotion, “Hand over my Ring.”
I think she was as surprised as me when he untied the cord and passed her one of the heavy bands. The queen couldn’t quite bring herself to thank Jason for returning what he’d taken from her, so she looked at me instead. “Is there any truth to what the Betrayer says? Are we all about to die?”
“If we can’t stop the kray, yes. Everyone in Ardeyn.”
“And you can use my Ring, and the two he has, to open the Hall?”
“Maybe.”
“And doing so will save us?”
“Only if we’re insanely lucky,” I admitted.
The sad truth was I didn’t know the answer to any of the queen’s questions. If Jason was wrong, there was a good chance we were about to die out on the glass. I addressed the hovering sphere, “Jushur, can we open the Maker’s Hall with only three Rings and myself?”
“You can try. I cannot predict the future. Not even the Maker could.”
“We need a little more assurance than that,” I complained.
“I have none to give,” Jushur said.
“Well,” I said, “unless someone else has a better plan, I say we try it. Better let me hold Commerce.”
Jason handed it over. It was even heavier than I expected. None of the friends I’d accidentally trapped in Ardeyn had been interested in being the Incarnation of Commerce, yet that Incarnation had also walked the Land of the Curse, too. Commerce hadn’t possessed the spark of consciousness allowing it to realize its true nature. It believed it was a demigod of Ardeyn and nothing else, unlike the Rings who I’d given human hosts. Or me, when I’d made myself Maker.
“Should I put it on,” Elandine said, “or just hold it?”
I spent a second studying her and the Ring. From it I sensed a cold wind, a whiff of rotting flesh, and a sound like a stone sarcophagus lid slamming. “Jason’s wearing the Ring of War. You might as well wear the Ring of Death. Doing so might strengthen your connection, and improve our chances to open the way.”
The Myth of the Maker Page 30
