by Greg Keyes
“Get away from her,” someone else said.
At first the voice didn’t sound right to Annaïg—it was too full, somehow, too large. But then she recognized Attrebus striding toward Umbriel, sword in hand. Glim and an ancient-looking Dunmer came with him.
“No,” she shouted as Umbriel’s words sorted themselves into sense and she understood. “Attrebus—the sump. The sword didn’t work because his soul isn’t in him—there wasn’t anything to reclaim. Glim! His soul is in the ingenium—”
But then Umbriel’s eyes stabbed green fire at her, and every muscle in her body went rigid with pain.
Sul snarled in agony, and something erupted into existence between them and Vuhon, something with huge bat wings and claws, but in the shape of a woman.
Then Sul turned and ran back toward the way out, grabbing Mere-Glim by the arm.
“Wait!” Attrebus said.
“You heard her!” Sul shouted.
Sul’s monster and Vuhon slammed together. Attrebus could see a dark elf woman dragging the fallen Annaïg away from the confrontation. He stood there, paralyzed. He’d come here to rescue her, hadn’t he? She was so near …
But if he died here, rescuing her, what of the Imperial City? His father? His people?
He knew then, in that moment, that he was ready to die trying to save Annaïg—but didn’t have that luxury.
So he turned and ran after Sul.
He emerged from the trunk of the tree and saw the old man and Glim bounding down a branch. It took him a few seconds to catch up, but the three of them hadn’t gone another thirty steps before they saw figures boiling up the tree toward them. Some seemed human or elven—others were stranger. There were a lot of them.
Glim hesitated only an instant before changing direction, climbing from branch to branch with dexterity that was difficult to match.
“Don’t we want to go down?” Attrebus asked him as he clambered over one rough bough and reached for another.
“Everything takes you down eventually,” the reptile replied. “This is just the long way.”
Their exertions eventually brought them to another huge trunk, and as they scrambled up on it, despite everything, Attrebus was struck momentarily still by wonder.
They were at the top of the fringe, with the whole mad forest sweeping down and away from them, a massive bent fan.
And below that, the Imperial City from high above—as he had never seen it, and indeed he saw only part of it now, because Umbriel’s shadow must already be over the wall. Before them loomed the White-Gold Tower. Whatever Umbriel hoped to do, he was about to do it.
“We’re out of time,” Attrebus said. He turned to the Argonian. “You said you could use the trees to take Umbriel out of Tamriel.”
Mere-Glim nodded tersely.
“Do it now.”
“You’ll be trapped here,” the reptile-man said.
“If that’s the way it is, then so be it,” Attrebus replied.
Mere-Glim nodded, and after a slight pause, knelt and put his face against the bark.
Glim could feel the poison dissipating; the trees could hear him again. He felt his self soften and flow around the edges as everything that was Umbriel opened itself to him. He heard the call of return, and with an easy bending of his mind gave it greater voice.
Or tried to, but then a spear of pain seemed to drive through him, an absolute command that he acquiesce and fling himself, to break on the lower boughs before falling and vanishing from this world and every other. He rose and took the first step before pushing back against the command, and for an instant he thought he could beat it, push through.
But it was ancient, and the trees bent to it from long habit.
Annaïg had been right to doubt him. He’d been so sure, it hadn’t occurred to him that the Umbriel could countermand him.
Now all he could do was escape with his life.
For a moment it looked as if Mere-Glim would jump into the open air, then he stopped, the stippled lids uncovering his eyes.
“I can’t,” he said.
“We’re wasting time, then,” Sul said.
The three of them sprinted up the bough to where its roots grappled with the stone of the rim, and after a short climb, stood on the edge, in a gap between two strange, delicate buildings of glass and wire. A long cable went from the base of one all the way across the valley; several small buildings hung suspended from it, like lanterns at a festival. From the first of those a second cable ran down to the water’s edge.
“There,” Sul said, gesturing at the cable. “That’s the quickest way. It would take forever to climb down there.”
“I’ll have to go with you,” Glim said. “You won’t make it to the bottom of the sump without me.”
The cable was five feet in diameter, but the footing was still pretty tricky. They were a few yards short of the hanging building when Sul shouted and pointed. Vuhon and several other figures were flying toward them.
Sul ran three long steps and jumped; Glim went after him with only an instant’s hesitation. Attrebus followed, wondering how many times he was going to have to fall into the damned thing.
Glim smiled as he fell, remembering a long-ago day when Annaïg had dared him to jump with her into the ruins of an old villa.
He hit the water feetfirst and let his body relax—become the air, the water, the very shock that tried to slap the soul from his skin. He plunged deep, pulling a train of bubbles behind him that trailed to the broken mirror of the surface above.
As their descent slowed, he caught Attrebus and Sul by their wrists and kicked fiercely down, toward the little star he’d always been told to avoid. Now he felt it, the pulsing heart and mind of Umbriel, the core that was the true lord of souls. All other light diminished until at last they reached it.
Attrebus felt the pressure against his lungs mount and knew they would never make it back to the surface. He watched the light grow as Mere-Glim pulled them down.
When they reached it, he realized that Sul was unconscious, so he did the only thing he could—he drew Umbra from the sheath on the Dunmer’s back and stabbed it into the light. Even as he did so, he felt a rush of absolute rage. He became the blade, the edge, as Umbra drank him utterly in. He was steel and something more than steel, infinitely worse than steel. The thing waving it around and screaming was no longer Attrebus, and soon he wouldn’t be either.
The light seemed to explode about them, but he didn’t care anymore. Everyone and everything was to blame. The pleasure in Hierem’s cell, the lack of it after, the little pains of moving through any day, anywhere were too much to bear anymore. But he knew he couldn’t die yet—only when everything else was dead would he know any peace.
The light cleared, and he was lying on the floor, shuddering. Umbra lay a few feet away, as did Sul and the Argonian.
They had fallen into a vast nest of polished stone and shining crystal. The air was filled with delicate tones and fleeting incomprehensible whispers, as if motes of dust were excited to speech when light struck them. In the center of the great cavity a translucent pylon rose and met the gently rippling water above and kissed it with light pulsing up from a platform ten feet below, where a thousand glowing strands tied themselves into a coruscating sphere.
Sul was sitting up groggily; Glim was staring up at the water suspended over their heads.
And through the water, Vuhon came, lightning crackling from his eyes.
Sul leapt up to meet him. Blue flame erupted from his open palms and engulfed Vuhon, clinging to him like burning oil. Vuhon staggered back a step, then made a peculiar shaking motion and the fire vanished, replaced by gray smoke. Glim leapt forward, claws raking at Vuhon’s chest. The Dunmer replied with a vicious backhand blow that sent the reptile hurling to the floor. Then he did something that stopped Sul mid-stride; Attrebus didn’t see anything but could feel a crackling on his skin, and the air smelled like hot iron.
Sul strained to take another step, then collapsed.<
br />
“So much for your pointless revenge,” Vuhon muttered.
Attrebus looked toward where Umbra lay, trying to drive the terror from his mind, to do what he had to do.
“Stop!” Vuhon shouted.
Attrebus screamed in despair as he dove for the sword. He picked it up, and as he was drawn into it again, into anguish and horror that would never end, he aimed himself down, at the sphere. Vuhon came after him, quick as lightning.
Almost quick enough.
Then Umbra struck into the heart of Umbriel, and everything was changed.
NINE
When Attrebus plunged Umbra into the ingenium, Sul heard the Universe scream. The tortured cry rang from every surface, from the air itself, from Vuhon’s gaping mouth. A tongue of white blaze licked out from the ingenium and struck his old enemy, and his body twisted, deformed, grew blacker, hunched, feral.
“Umbra,” Sul said.
“Umbriel,” the creature snarled, slumping toward him. The flame had thinned, but remained, like a tether. “Why?”
“This has nothing to do with you. It was about Vuhon.”
“I can cleanse myself of him. I can make you powerful, more powerful than we were. We can still escape Vile.”
“No,” Sul replied. “I’m done with this.”
“You are not,” the thing snapped, leaping forward. Sul felt fingers as hard as steel close on his windpipe. He struck into Umbriel’s throat, but the creature only squeezed harder.
But then Umbra vented one last howl, and the grip softened. The flame snaked back away from his body and into the ingenium as the body went limp.
Sul pushed it off him, coughing, sucking air into his lungs.
Below, Attrebus was starting to glow and was beginning to distort. Sul glanced at his enemy, which looked like Vuhon again. His chest was still rising and falling. Sul’s hand went to his knife, but he didn’t draw it. Instead he jumped down to join Attrebus.
“It’s working,” Attrebus said. But it wasn’t his voice, and the eyes staring out at Sul were the strange eyes of Clavicus Vile.
“Let him go,” Sul snapped. “You’re destroying him.”
“He made the sacrifice,” Vile said. “You, I think, knew what the price would be.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be him.”
“Well, things don’t always work out as we plan,” the daedra said. “In coming here, I lifted the restraints around this place. A deal is a deal—you’re free to go.”
Sul balled his fist and swung, but Attrebus—or the thing wearing him—was fast. It whipped Umbra out of the ingenium and stabbed him, just under the sternum. It knocked all the wind out of him, and his legs and arms went loose, so he just hung on the blade.
Sul turned into himself then, searching for the fury that had driven him for forty years, remembering Ilzheven, the ruins of Morrowind, years of torture and hardship.
He felt his heart stop, and opened his eyes, staring at his killer, at Attrebus. It was then that he found what he needed, and it wasn’t anger, or hatred.
As if in a dream, he reached out and grabbed the hilt of Umbra and pulled himself up the blade, and with everything left in him he struck Attrebus in the jaw.
Attrebus fell back, releasing the weapon. Sul saw his gaze return to puzzled normalcy.
“It’s okay,” he told the boy. Then he took one step, fell against the glowing orb, and let go of everything. Light filled him, and coarse, mocking laughter—but then he was gone.
For Attrebus, it was like waking from one nightmare into another. Sul slumped against the sphere, and he and the sword seemed to melt together into a dark smoke with a heart of lightning.
“Sul!”
“You can’t help him now,” a weary voice said.
He looked up and saw Vuhon gazing down at him. With a cry of fury, Attrebus clambered up the wall of cable and wire and stood over him.
“I can kill you, though,” Attrebus said. He reached for Flashing.
“You might,” Vuhon said. “And you might not. It would be a wasted effort. Vile will have me now no matter what. I can fight him—I had power before I met Umbra, and that he can’t take back—but I won’t last long. But maybe long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
“For your friend there to save something of Umbriel,” Vuhon replied.
“I don’t understand.”
“Clavicus Vile will have the city now. Is that really what you want? He’ll probably just drain it and let it fall on the Imperial City, but knowing him, he may just play in your world for a while.” He nodded at Mere-Glim, who was standing up, wiping blood from his nose.
“The Argonian is a part of this place now. He has the power to remove it from this plane.”
“That’s what he said. He tried it and it didn’t work.”
“Because I became aware of him and stopped him. After all, I have been master of this place for decades.” He looked at Mere-Glim. “Do you feel it now?”
The Argonian nodded.
“Go, then,” Vuhon said. “The membrane will allow you to pass from this side as well.”
Then he turned to face the cloud, which was now twenty feet high and beginning to take on something like a human shape again. His face, so like Sul’s, was set in an expression of quiet determination.
“He’s right,” Glim said. “But we have to hurry.”
Annaïg felt Umbriel shudder beneath her, and then she was suddenly falling. It lasted only an instant, but it was a terrifying one.
“What’s happening?” Fhena asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe they made it to the ingenium.”
“You mean maybe they’ve destroyed it? What does that mean?”
“Well, if the ingenium stops working, I imagine we’ll fall,” Annaïg said.
“But then we’ll die.”
Annaïg reached into her pocket and produced a small vial.
“There is a chance,” she said to Fhena. “If you drink this, you should be able to fly. We might dissolve into smoke, but it’s worth a try.”
“But what about Glim? And your other friends?”
“We’ll wait as long as we can,” Annaïg said.
“But what about everyone else?” Fhena demanded.
“I don’t care about everyone else,” she replied. “Come on; let’s get above, so we can see what’s going on.”
They climbed up to where they could see Tamriel spread before them. She could see a lake, but the Imperial City wasn’t visible, so it must be beneath them.
Umbriel shuddered again.
They sat and waited, while Fhena wept.
Umbriel was trembling constantly by the time Attrebus and Mere-Glim reached the hiding place. They found the women outside, clinging to branches. Fhena rushed to Glim, sobbing, as a deeper convulsion quaked the tree. Attrebus found himself staring at Annaïg, wondering what he was supposed to do. He felt as if he was watching everything through Coo now—the fight, Sul’s death, this meeting—all seen from a great distance. He didn’t seem to feel anything at all about any of it.
But Annaïg strode purposefully across the shivering branch.
“Drink this,” she said. “At least we’ll have a chance.”
He took the vial numbly, glad he didn’t have to respond to anything more—emotional.
When Annaïg reached Glim, he threw his arms around her and enveloped her in his familiar musk. Something burst in her then, and tears trickled on her cheeks as he stroked the back of her head.
“I’m so sorry, Glim,” she said. “About all of it.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “You know I love you.”
“Still?”
“Always.” He held her for a few more heartbeats and then pushed her gently back. “Vile lifted his striction. You’ll be able to leave this time.”
Annaïg felt her heart pause.
“You mean we,” she corrected.
He shook his head. “I’m taking the trees home,” he said. “I�
�m going with them.”
“You can’t,” she said. “What will I …” She broke off and put her forehead against his scaly chest.
“What will I,” she repeated. “I. But this is about you, isn’t it?”
“Finally, after all of these years, yes,” he replied. “I have people who need me. I have a place that wants me.”
“I understand,” she said. “I don’t like it, but I understand.”
“I’m glad,” he replied. “It makes it easier. Now, go. I have to do it now.”
She wiped her eyes and glanced over at Fhena.
“Take care of him,” she said. Then she drank the contents of her vial and turned to Attrebus.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“What do I do?” he asked.
She lifted her arm toward him and spread her fingers.
“Just hold my hand,” she said.
Colin thought of Anvil, where he had been born, of the docks and the autumn evenings, when the sun painted the sky red and gold and the waves seemed to murmur in a melancholy but somehow contented way.
He remembered the fingers of a five-year-old boy, fiddling with a little boat made of reeds. He’d put a lot of care into it, because he knew it had a long journey to make. He glanced down at the stream that wound through the willows toward the sea, but he knew the boat wasn’t ready yet, so he brushed the cracks with pine resin.
He remembered his grandmother placing those same little hands on the altar of the great chapel of Dibella.
“The gods are good,” she told him. “They came from an infinite place, but for us they limited themselves and became this world. They are everything we see and touch, everything we feel. And of them all, Dibella is most kind.” And she smiled so beautifully that he wondered if it was really his grandmother at all.
He woke on stairs, sticky with blood, laboring to breathe. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious; he hoped not long, because he didn’t have that much time left.
Doggedly, he dragged himself to his feet, leaned against the wall, and put one foot in front of the other. He felt oddly stronger, as if the prayer to Dibella had actually been answered in some small way, although he’d never had that talent.
