by Tara Janzen
Morgan leaned over the bed and took the boy’s hand in his. ’Twas not easy, what he had to say, especially in light of Rhayne’s declaration. She’d meant for Aja to go with him into the hellhole of Kryscaven Crater. Was everyone he loved meant to be as doomed as himself?
The panic in Aja’s voice didn’t make it easy either. His captain had never panicked, not in any of the hundreds of places where they’d pulled off jobs with their lives hanging in the balance.
“You know as well as I that the wormhole isn’t a place either of us wants to be, but I must go, and soon, very soon,” he said to the boy. With his free hand, he pushed up his opposite sleeve, revealing the runes. “I’ve seen the dragons, Aja. These are their marks, and they give me no choice. I have been sworn to a duty as binding as the oath you swore to me.”
The words damn near stuck in his throat, but he choked them out, wondering if it was destiny that had set him on this path, or if was it something far less noble. In the Hart, he’d believed in the fate he’d seen. In Claerwen, that belief was crumbling around him, leaving him little purchase—except for the friggin’ Dragon Hearts. They called to him every time they rang, called to his blood.
“Morgan...” the boy began, trying to rise, pushing himself up with his elbow.
The effort proved too much, and he gasped with pain. Morgan caught him around the shoulders before he could fall backward, and gently laid him on the bed.
“ ’Tis no good, Aja.” Holding his anger in check, he brushed the boy’s cheek with his thumb and felt all his misdeeds come home to roost in the softness of Aja’s skin. The boy didn’t even have a beard, and Morgan had made him into one of the most accomplished thieves on Earth. Aja’s name was well known in the Old Dominion and in the Lunar colonies, and even as far out as Europa.
Too well known.
“You’ll be staying here,” he said, as much to reassure himself as anyone. “Chein has a place for you with the riders of Sept Seill when you’ve recovered, if you want to leave Claerwen, or you can while away your days here with Sachi.” He forced a smile. “No hardship, I think.”
The boy didn’t blush as he’d hoped, only stared up at him, his hair matted with blood on one side, the rest of it sticking straight up, his face seeming to collapse with the descending weight of his sadness.
Morgan’s jaw tightened. He was a beautiful boy, lightly freckled across his upturned nose, his eyebrows the same deep russet color as his hair, his eyes the green of summer trees. He was beautiful, and strong, his mind as facile as any Morgan had ever known—and for most of his life, he’d been Morgan’s to love.
He gentled his grip on the boy’s hand, realizing he was holding him too hard. “There is only one promise I can make you, Aja—that I will never forget you. Never.”
“Take me with you Morgan.” The boy held to him tight, asking the impossible.
Morgan bent his head and pressed a kiss to Aja’s brow, his other hand coming up to cup the boy’s face. He held him for a moment, but didn’t trust himself to hold him a moment more. With one last kiss, he lifted his head and met the boy’s gaze. Then he rose and walked away, knowing there was no going back.
Avallyn fell into step beside him, along with the others.
“We’ve brought the Treo Veill Le, the Green Book of Trees, to set into the Hart,” Rhayne said, her pace easily matching his as he strode down the ward.
He didn’t reply until he’d pushed through the B wing’s doors and was out of sight of the boy, and the only thing that kept him from grabbing Rhayne and shaking her godlike attitude out of her was his sure knowledge of Kael’s response: He’d strike Morgan dead on the spot.
“Why me?” he demanded, coming to a stop when the doors closed. “I’m not indispensable here. You, and Tamisk, and Kael—hell, even the High Priestess—know more about what’s going on here than I do, so why me? And why Avallyn?”
Rhayne halted when he did, thoroughly unperturbed by the anger he feared would consume him, if he let it all out.
“Your blood chose you, not I, just as Avallyn’s blood chose her. If you would know who chose the blood, for Avallyn ’twas Nemeton and the bargain he made to release us from Dharkkum.”
“And me?” he asked. “Who chose my blood, if not Ysaia who made the blade and cut her firespell into my skin? If not you, Rhayne, who?”
He’d as much as called her a liar, no doubt a tricky, uncertain business when dealing with beings nearly as old as Earth, shape-shifting mages with the heavens in their eyes.
“Though not nearly as mortal as you, Morgan, I am no god,” she said, her voice so rich and sweet—and so damnably reasonable—’twas difficult not to believe every word she said. “I made a cauldron in the Dark Age, hoping to save this planet from destruction, and from the cauldron came the dragons to save us from Dharkkum, and the blade to save us from the dragons. From the Starlight-born came the aethelings whose hands fit the blade—including you, Morgan. If you would have more answer than that, ’tis to the stars you’ll have to go.”
He’d been there once, thank you, with a mouth full of blood and his body near hewn in two.
Friggin’ mages.
He turned and started walking again, his strides long and determined. He didn’t like what she’d said. He didn’t like it at all, but every single damn friggin’ cell in his body told him it was the truth—or as much as he was going to get without retiring to a mountaintop and spending the rest of his life contemplating his soul.
Flight into Darkness
Chapter 23
While they’d been in the wards, the Warmonger’s army had breached Claerwen’s north wall. The last part to fall was the bell tower. The reverberations of the building’s collapse and the raucous clanging of the falling bell rippled through the whole temple complex—but even that did not mute the Dragon Hearts. Each sounding of the gongs followed the last in perfect rhythm, urging Morgan on toward the weir. The soldiers of Claerwen had opened a new route to the weir platform, and as Morgan and Avallyn hurried along after them, Morgan wondered who would reach the platform first, themselves or Corvus.
The time worms were coming at last. His awareness of their impending arrival skittered across his skin in little flashes of heat. His chest was starting to feel tight, and still he strode onward, toward the platform jutting out over the canyon’s abyss, no gaping hole as he’d known the wormhole before, but a massive stone disc set into the canyon wall, the greatest part of it hanging in midair.
Rhayne, Kael, and the High Priestess were behind him and Avallyn. They ascended the last level to the platform and were met with chaos, as priestesses and laity alike hastily erected defenses. The First Guard were pushing through from the Bridge of Knells to the weir—and Corvus was with them. His presence behind the far gallery of buildings was unmistakable.
Morgan looked to the High Priestess, and the glance she returned confirmed his cognizance. The dark lord of Magh Dun was close, within the temple and moving toward his goal.
The platform was a hundred yards in diameter, its white stone lightly veined in shades of lavender and pearl gray. A starburst of sapphire gemstone outlined with a band of gold had been inset between the Dragon Hearts, the top of it nearly covered with concentric piles of chrystaalt, a world’s fortune of it. That sight more than anything sent home a very prosaic fact for Morgan: Tamisk, Palinor, all the people of the White Palace, Sha-shakrieg and Ilmarryn alike, and all the death-witch priestesses of the Waste were spending a bloody fortune to send him back in time. A billion marks’ worth of universal salt was laid out on the platform, and the worms would take it all, every grain.
Two, intersecting lines of white-clad women circled the Dragon Hearts, each priestess taking a hammer in turn to strike one of the gongs, each tossing a handful of chrystaalt onto the platform as they passed. Their chant rose and fell with the rising of the wind through the canyon, a humming undercurrent to the sounds of war gathering strength in the halls of Claerwen.
Above the gongs, the
tower braziers burned, sending flames through the gaping jaws and golden teeth of the bone-and-stone dragons, shooting fire into the dark sky and the great vault of night. Clouds rolled in all along the horizon, encircling the canyon walls and obliterating the stars. Naught but a pale orb of light remained of the moon.
’Twas a night for fierce and dangerous magic, for mysteries to be revealed. Perhaps a night for death.
Morgan tightened his hold on Avallyn and pulled her aside from the stream of soldiers taking their places behind the defensive walls, ready for the Warmonger’s final attack. He’d run out of time.
“You are like breath to me,” he said, and still the words were inadequate.
“And you for me, Morgan,” she answered, her face shining bright in the light of the dragon flames.
“I’m not ready for what happens next,” he confessed.
“I’m frightened too,” she said, and he could see the truth of it in her eyes. “But we are here, and we have each other. We have only to wait for the time worms to come.”
“No,” he said. “We’re not going to have each other.”
All expression drained from her face, leaving it curiously flat-looking. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not going. I’m taking the Warmonger in your place, if I have to grab him around what’s left of his throat and drag him into the worm myself. The High Priestess will not sacrifice you to Corvus.”
A spark of life lit her eyes, but he couldn’t tell if it was relief or something else.
“No, she won’t,” Avallyn agreed, her voice tight. “Because I would never allow myself to be sacrificed. What I choose as duty is mine by right of birth, the chance to go through the weir with you. A choice, Morgan, not a sacrifice.”
Not relief, then, but the argument he’d expected. “I’m making a different choice for you,” he said bluntly, and that was the end of it.
“The choice is not yours to make, prince.” Her eyes shone with a gray fierceness. “Do you not yet understand? Even if I could leave you, I wouldn’t. You are mine. We are destined to die together, Morgan. Whether tonight or in a time long past is up to the gods to decide. Until they do, I will fight by your side.” No compromise was offered.
Above the eastern rim of the canyon, a striated tracing of chain lightning caught his eye, flashing behind the clouds and making them glow. He stopped breathing for the space of a heartbeat and saw Avallyn glance toward the sky.
The worms.
Panic seeped into his veins. Kyrie eleison.
He forced himself to take a breath.
“You have a life here,” he said, “something I can’t guarantee in the past.” ’Twas the truth, a simple enough fact to understand, but she failed to grasp it.
“I am always safer with you, no matter who or what we face. It has been written, Morgan. There is naught you or I can do to change what is known to be. Come.” Her expression softened and she pulled him forward, toward the Dragon Hearts. “If you want, we can talk about this again in ten thousand years. For now, time awaits.”
Her hand in his trembled. She’d seen the lightning as well as he, but to her there was no choice. As her next breath would come, so would the worms, and she would go with him, leaving this world and all she knew for another: his world.
Wales. Dare he hope that it would still be there, whole and waiting for him, all the meadows and fells and the snow-capped peaks of Yr Wyddfa?
The High Priestess signaled to two of the Sha-shakrieg Night Watchers. Rhayne and Kael had slipped to the back, letting Claerwen’s crone have her day.
The chain lightning flashed again, the circle of it reaching out to the north and south, the farthest bolts stretching toward each other on the western horizon, wreathing the temple with their fiery grace. Morgan felt the heat of it race along his skin.
Avallyn met his gaze, her face pale.
He scanned the sky above them. The clouds were piling in thick and heavy, one atop another and obscuring the last hint of moonlight. There was naught left in the heavens except the dark surging masses of air and vapor and the bolts of lightning that streaked through them.
Morgan remembered lightning from the weir beneath Carn Merioneth, crackling and sizzling, the blue-white flash of it consuming him. Christe eleison.
Battering rams could be heard pounding against the eastern doors. If Corvus wanted the weir, he didn’t dare use sonic blasts or any other explosion near the platform.
“The time has come,” the High Priestess said, motioning them all forward.
Aye, and his last chance to save her from the weir had come to naught, the inexorable pull of fate laying out a course neither of them could deny. It quickened in his veins as he knew it quickened in hers, a calling beyond fear.
Avallyn’s hand was still in his, and Morgan knew it would stay there for the next ten thousand years. He was not letting go of her, not for an instant.
The High Priestess led the way to the middle of the platform. A priestess there handed her a golden chalice. Dragons were chased into the metal, one with emerald eyes, the other with ruby—Ddrei Glas and Ddrei Goch. Fire of topaz and diamonds rolled out of their mouths. Their bellies were softly lustrous with pearls. Chrysolite, jacinth, amber, and sapphire gems sparkled along the rim, banded below by a row of amethyst.
As soon as Morgan and Avallyn reached the star inlay, the crone held the chalice out for him to drink.
He swallowed a portion of the briny liquid, knowing immediately what it was, and the ancient priestess gave the chalice to Avallyn. The golden cup went back and forth twice more before ’twas drained of the chrystaalt potion. Palinor stepped forward to take the chalice away.
“Take care, daughter,” she said, her hands encompassing Avallyn’s on the golden cup. Her voice was steady, her gaze even more so.
“Aye, Mother.”
Leaning forward, Palinor pressed a kiss to her daughter’s cheek and whispered into her ear, “Return if you can, bringing your thief if you must.”
Morgan doubted if anyone else had heard Palinor over the chanting, but he had heard the priestess’s words and took them as a sort of blessing—even knowing he was probably being overly optimistic.
The High Priestess removed a small packet from the depths of her robes. The weir kit, Morgan supposed, and not much more than the promised map, judging by its size and thinness. It certainly wasn’t big enough to be holding a juice-jacked carbo-bar. She gave the kit to Avallyn.
“Welcome, children of Arianrod, daughter of Don, Mother Goddess of us all, called Danu, Dana of the light, Domnu of darkness, she who has the earth as her womb and the sun as her heart,” the High Priestess intoned. “She whose tides pull with the moon, whose limbs spread wide to hold the stars. We are all children of the one who came before. Listen, children, to your mother.”
“Domnu, Domnu, Domnu,” the priestesses chanted, their voices rising and falling in song. “A matria patro leandra, eso a prifarym, Dommmm-nu.”
Morgan had heard the words before, deep in the caves of the Canolbarth, by the scrying pool. Then, as now, they were used to call the worms. Now, as then, he didn’t doubt that they would do the job.
A fearsome roll of thunder rumbled overhead, accompanied by a crackling bolt of forked lightning. It seared a path across the sky and hit the canyon wall, sending shards of stone flying and a thousand fingers of fire skittering over the face of the rock. His pulse leapt.
“You are the Prince of Time,” the High Priestess solemnly reminded him. “Take your place.”
He turned to Avallyn. “Are you sure?” he asked her one more time. “Corvus is going to break through any minute. I can still take him in your place.”
She shook her head, though her eyes were wide and frightened.
So it was written, so it would be, he thought, resigned to her choice and trying not to feel too damn grateful.
“Then remember I love you, and that you are safer with me than anywhere else in the galaxy.”
At her nod,
he pressed a soft kiss to her lips and led her through the piles of chrystaalt to the center of the star. The gemstone flickered beneath their feet, the firelight striking off its crystalline structure, revealing it to its depths. To Morgan’s discomfiture, the gemstone ran all the way through the platform, making it seem as if they were standing over a dark hole open to the fathomless canyon, and looking disconcertingly like the wormhole he’d fallen into the last time he’d taken this trip.
The priestesses quickened the rhythm of their chant and their pace, their white robes flowing against each other like wings, swirling, ever swirling. The High Priestess approached them once more, a dragon statue in each hand, one a reddish gold, the one he’d stolen what seemed like a lifetime ago from Sonnpur-Dzon, the other paler with a bluish sheen. The crackle of lightning drowned out most of her words as she lifted the statues toward their respective towers, but Morgan heard something about begging the worms to accept the priestesses’ offering.
A quick grin curved his mouth. She was working too hard. It didn’t take nearly the effort the women were putting into the ceremony to get a worm to swallow you.
Show up.
Get swallowed.
’Twas as simple as that.
He looked again to the sky. The clouds were tumbling over each other, piling up in dark billows. It wouldn’t be long now.
Avallyn stood with Morgan in the middle of the star, amidst a fortune in chrystaalt, and awaited her destiny. She’d imagined this moment a thousand times in her hundred and twenty-five years. She’d studied all aspects of the weir. She knew precisely when the worms would come. She knew that one of them, the largest and strongest, would be the conduit through which they passed.
She had not imagined Morgan ab Kynan as her prince. She’d not known enough of men to have imagined one she would love so fully with all her heart. She’d not imagined being frightened. It had always been the glorious adventure promised by the Red Book. Fear, she’d thought, wouldn’t take hold of her until she faced Dharkkum.
