by Tara Janzen
“No,” he croaked, forcing his eyes open to a narrow slit and seeing her standing in front of him, still whole. Her hair writhed like golden snakes around her head. Light from the sphere’s dreamstone core limned her body. Her shoulders were squared, her feet set apart, her dagger balanced in her hand with a knife-fighter’s skill. The crystal haft radiated pure light, green with a violet core.
The bastard was right, he thought, trying to focus on the light. He couldn’t fight Corvus with steel. There wasn’t enough of him to take a blade. Just as in Kryscaven, it took light to defeat darkness. Only the white light of the seven books could defeat Dharkkum and its spawn, the fiendish half-creature Corvus had become.
He had to get the chamber opened. Where were those friggin’ orbs?
He looked up through Llynya’s tree and almost passed out as pain stabbed up into his head, but the orbs were there, lazily circling the sphere, wandering on their spiral path as if they had all eternity to align themselves, deflecting subatomic particles and God knew what else. Tamisk had been condescendingly vague about the quantum physics of the whole friggin’ operation, which hadn’t bothered Morgan at all. He’d learned to be as good a lasgun technician as any tech-trash runner in Pan-shei, and he knew enough electronics to get himself killed in a second or less. But when mechanics crossed the line into physics, he was out of his league, and in the Hart he knew Nemeton had gone one step further, just as Tamisk had, and physics had crossed the line into metaphysics and magical conjurations.
Whatever the orbs had to do first, he just wished like hell they’d hurry up and do it and make their friggin’ spinning ring.
The shape of a man coalesced in the shadows curving off the tower’s wall and glided toward Avallyn, or rather half the shape of a man, with half a ghastly smile on his half face. The rest of him was shadow and smoke, an undulating darkness without true form.
“Avvvallyn,” Corvus crooned. There was threat in his tone, undeniable threat, but also a thin thread of hope, and ’twas the hope that made Morgan’s blood run cold.
Corvus wanted her, not just for vengeance, but in all the ways a man wanted a woman. Morgan had seen a lot of strange things in a lot of strange places, but nothing that churned his gut with more sick rage than what the Warmonger had just revealed.
He tightened his grip on the Magia Blade, squeezing the crystal haft, forgoing steel for light, and a flash burst from between his fingers with a cracking whine. The light skimmed the edge of the Warmonger’s shadow, with most going awry and hitting a table next to the wall, shattering glass vessels and scorching wood.
Corvus reacted instantly, throwing another smoky thread around Morgan and jerking it. Morgan gasped as his body was pulled into the air, then released to crash back onto the floor. The Magia Blade flew out of his hand.
“A good trick, thief, but tricks will not save you,” Corvus sneered, his voice clearer, less sibilant, his form becoming more distinct. “Did you really think you could take her from me?”
Morgan had not. He’d never once considered the Lord of Magh Dun as a rival, but as long as Corvus was talking, he wasn’t attacking, so Morgan lied.
“Yes.” The word came out a weak gasp. Wrapping his arm around his chest, he tried to sit up. “You had your chance a long time ago.” Blood flowed over his hand, warm and sticky where he held himself together, but the vial was still whole in the pocket closest to his heart.
He had to get his sword.
Morgan heard two of the orbs click into place overhead, starting the ring that would open the portal into the chamber.
The Warmonger laughed, a curiously empty sound—and Morgan realized ’twas because Corvus had no chest to hold the breath necessary for rich laughter. His next realization proved the last one to be fleeting. Even as he watched, Corvus’s chest and hip were materializing out of the shadows, faintly at first, then with more substance, giving the man a whole right side, from the top of his dark-haired head to his booted foot.
“And it seems I’ll have a second chance.” Corvus laughed again, the sound richer than before. He moved closer to the sphere. “Look.”
Sweet Jesu. The energy from the armillary sphere was restoring shape to the Warmonger’s left foot and part of his leg.
“Yes, it seems I’ll have my chance, whereas you will have none.”
Morgan glanced desperately around for the Magia Blade and saw where it had landed next to the tower wall, too far away for him to reach. He pushed himself to his feet, though every muscle rebelled at the pain, and took two steps before Corvus stopped him with a single gesture of his blackly ephemeral left hand, sending a thread of smoke snaking around his throat.
Morgan fell back to the floor, clutching at the strangling tendril. There was nothing to grasp, only the power of it tightening around his neck. He choked, praying that whatever purpose kept Corvus from disintegrating him would hold.
“Stop!” Corvus commanded when Avallyn would have raced to his side. “Stop, or I’ll kill him.”
As if he wasn’t already killing him, Morgan thought, feeling faint. Above him, two more orbs clicked into place, but not quickly enough.
“What do you want for his release, Corvus?” Avallyn demanded.
“More.” The half-smile came again. “More of this power you have conjured with the copper balls and the armillary sphere. It suits me, can’t you see? My body is reforming.”
“Release him, then, for he is the Prince of Time, and the sphere is his, passed down to him from Nemeton,” she said, her knife still held for a quick offense.
“You know of Nemeton?” There was a hint of surprise in the Warmonger’s question.
The pressure lightened a bare degree, and Morgan dragged a deep breath into his lungs.
“Aye,” she said, “and of the sphere.”
No wind blew inside the tower, but the shadowy half of Corvus rippled and folded in upon itself, making a column of darkness next to its human half.
“Then give me more.”
“And when you are whole?” she asked. “What then, Warmonger?”
“Then you shall be mine for all eternity,” Corvus said as if ’twas a perfectly reasonable—nay, the perfectly desirable—end to it all.
Morgan thought not. Strengthened by a fresh influx of fear, he lunged for the Magia Blade, pushing himself up and diving across the floor. He rolled once and came up with the sword in his hands, blasting with light the smoky tendril that held him at the same time as he swung the cutting edge of the blade in a death stroke. If Corvus would have a body, then he would pay the price.
The blow landed true, eliciting an enraged howl from the Warmonger, for the sword had made him even less of a man than he’d been.
Corvus and his darkness retreated in the same terrifying manner as Morgan had seen Dharkkum do in Tamisk’s pool: The creature imploded, drawing in on itself with whiplash speed; behind, on the floor, it had left its right arm, the fingers stretching out to grasp Avallyn’s boot.
Morgan sliced through the arm again, and another enraged howl tore through the Hart.
“My aaarrrrrmmmm,” Corvus cried. “My aaarrrrrmmmm!”
Morgan whirled on his feet, hearing the creature swing around the sphere to come at them from the other side. The speed and force of his motion created havoc in the Hart, whipping up everything that wasn’t nailed down and flinging it into the air.
A rat was snatched up off the floor by a fistful of darkness, its body stretched thinner and thinner by the seething force of Corvus’s ethereally black left hand.
“Deathhh-witch, see your fate.” The rat was thrown aside with virulent force.
Morgan parried Corvus’s next attack with the Magia Blade’s light, his one edge against the darkness. Again and again the Warmonger came at them, striving to reach Avallyn, the whirlwind of his movements dragging Mychael’s worktable across the floor. Vials and jars were sucked up into Corvus’s storm, smashing into walls and sending cutting shards slicing through the air.
Almost subconsciousl
y, Morgan heard and felt more of the orbs coming together... click... click... click.
A wooden bench careened off the sphere and crashed into the pillar, shattering a chunk of dreamstone. The tower had become a perilous place.
“Deathhh-witch,” Corvus moaned, his rage twisting the words into black knots. “I will haaaavve you.”
Morgan ducked the creature’s next blow and rolled back onto his feet, crouched and ready. He looked for Avallyn, and his heart stopped. She’d been laid low, her body crumpled on the floor, her lifeblood running freely from a long gash on her head. Broken glass and the pieces of Mychael’s alembic lay all around her. The Indigo Book was by her side, her fingers curled around it, holding it tight.
She was still alive.
The runes on his arms lit with the fires of his own towering fury, and like the dragons who would eat Dharkkum, he roared, a fearsome sound that echoed round and round the tower, telling the Warmonger he had met his doom.
Blinded with rage, Morgan went on the attack, his sword arm becoming one with the Magia Blade, his blood harkening back to a long-ago age, when Stept Agah had ruled and fought beyond death to claim the victory that had to be won.
He was an animal, his anger a primal driving force that knew no bounds of humanity. He was the Warmonger’s death, and he was the death of Dharkkum.
Both ends of the blade were his to wield with killing force, the light to cut shadows, the steel to cut flesh—and cut he did, hacking Corvus’s body to pieces even as it formed with the sphere’s energy.
The Warmonger’s maddened screams echoed throughout the eyrie, swearing retribution for every lost pound of flesh.
The storm outside was no less than the one inside. Booming peals of thunder shook the tower. Lightning ripped across the sky.
The last orb clicked into place, and the ring began to spin, opening the crystal chamber.
“Avallyn!” Morgan cried. Her blood was everywhere, all down her face, all over the floor—and in one small vial inside his pocket. He had to reach the pillar. “Avallyn!”
She moved at the sound of her name, her knee sliding forward, her palm going flat on the floor.
With another great roar, he doubled his efforts, beating Corvus back, deeper and deeper into the tower, his sword singing the Warmonger’s death song.
He had only one chance to save her, one chance to save them all, Mychael and Aja, Llynya and Jons and Ferrar, Owain and Madron, all of them in this world and the world to be. One chance—and he took it.
With a final slashing strike and blasting stream of light, he laid Corvus low and ran for the sphere. Faster than he’d ever been, he grabbed the vial from his pocket and broke it inside the chamber. Her blood pooled out onto the crystal.
But there wasn’t enough. Not enough. The blood had thickened, congealed with age and its long ride through the worm’s gullet. It did not flow into the heart of the pillar.
Tamisk had warned him—it changes nothing. She will go into the past.
And her time was now.
He whirled and parried Corvus’s next strike.
“Avallyn!”
With a harsh gasp, she pushed herself to her feet, but he didn’t dare to hope. She had much farther to go, and time was running out. Neither of them could take much more of the Warmonger’s storm.
Corvus came at him again, catching him a second behind in his defense, and he was whipped across the floor and sent spinning to crash into the wall. When he hit, he dropped like a stone and all went black.
How long he lay there, he didn’t know, but he awoke to a moment’s deathlike silence filled only with the rolling rumble of Nemeton’s rings moving around the pillar, but what he heard next made his blood run cold. The storm had stopped, nothing was flying about the tower, no wind, no glass, no broken pieces of furniture. There was only Avallyn’s voice, soothing, cajoling.
:Corvus, aye, the future is laid out before us. Inside the pillar is a portal onto eternity. It but awaits my blood, dear lord, the life elixir of a Priestess of the Bones and Princess of the White Palace, Ilmarryn and Druid bound together from the ancient lines.”
A seething, sobbing groan of anguish came from high in the ceiling. “Givvvvvve it.”
From where she stood across the tower room, cradling the Elhion Bhaas Le close to her chest, Avallyn could see Morgan regain consciousness, and she prayed he would do naught to spoil her game. They rode a razor’s edge, and of the two of them, she had Corvus most in hand.
Biting back a cry of pain, she limped toward Nemeton’s timeless sphere, the skeletal framework of bronze rings rolling in their prescribed paths in circles around the pure crystal pillar, the metal gears in the cowling rumbling and creaking. The chamber was still open, and dragging her right foot behind her with each labored step, she made her way forward. The cloying scent of darkest evil stole the air from the room, making every breath hard won—but onward she went, knowing their one chance, the very reason she’d been born, was for her to be cut once more and give whatever it took, whatever last great measure of her life was required.
“Avallynnnnn,” Corvus moaned her name.
“Aye, milord.” She reached the pillar and rested her shoulder against the glowing dreamstone.
“Avallynnnn.”
Sodding bastard, let him groan and whine. She knew how much she hurt, near more than she could bear, and his agony had to be searing. Smears of his black, oily blood marred the floor. The arm Morgan had severed was a smoking, charred thing, reverting back to the horrifying smoke from whence it had been formed. She couldn’t bear to look, but she knew there was barely anything of flesh and blood left of the Warmonger. Between his own fury and Morgan’s blade, he was riding his own razor’s edge of annihilation.
Girding herself for what might prove to be her last act, she rested her arm inside the crystal chamber. The flash of light and cutting pain was near instant—and so she watched the flow of her blood pool atop the shards of the vial Morgan had used, and she watched as the dark red liquid rose higher and began to flow toward the center of the pillar.
A short scraping sound jerked her attention back to Morgan. Dear gods, he was rousing, rising to his feet.
No, she silently commanded, fixing him with her gaze. He had done his part. In these final seconds when her purpose was so clear, all she needed was for the moments to pass, one into the other, and for her deed to be done.
Another, softer, sound brought her head back around. The window of light had opened, revealing the spinning chamber within.
One moment after another, ’twas all she needed.
“Avallynnnn...” Corvus’s voice grew coarser, his pleading fiercer.
“A moment only, milord, and aye, the way will be open to the stars, sic itur ad astra.” It was a promise she could keep, given the chance.
But such was not to be.
“Avallynnnn...” A black wisp of smoke snaked down the side of the pillar, curling and winding its way through the great turning rings and across the crystal surface, coming closer... coming for her. He’d be the death of her. She knew it beyond doubt, and her panic began to rise.
The chamber spun and spun, the six Books of Lore flashing by in a blur. No time. There was no time, and no slowing of the chamber. If the world was to have a chance, she had to take it now.
Staring into the heart of the pillar, into the pulsing power and metaphysical anomaly of a contained break in the space-time continuum, she released her thoughts, her fears, her breath, and in one single moment of knowing, she thrust the Indigo Book of Elfin Lore into the spinning chamber.
A blinding flash of the purest white light burst into being, searing the inside of the tower and blasting beyond the walls. It had no texture and made no sound. Morgan couldn’t smell it. The light was simply there, filling every atom of the Hart, filling every cell in his body, and then it was gone, and so was Corvus—and so was Avallyn.
Stunned, Morgan could only stand there, his chest heaving, his mind refusing to believe w
hat he saw.
She couldn’t be gone.
She couldn’t be.
Yet her place by the pillar was empty.
The books glittered in front of him, still slowly spinning, all lined up in the radiant gradations of a rainbow, Seven Books of Lore sparkling and twinkling, every one of them shot through with luminous light. ’Twas like having all the gemstones in all the world polished and piled up to catch the sun’s brightest rays—and all Morgan could see was death.
Her death.
He dropped to his knees, his body unable to bear the shock or hold the sorrow.
Avallyn. He couldn’t breathe.
What had happened? Had one of Corvus’s smoky threads reached her in the split second before she’d shoved the book home?
He tried to draw a breath, but his chest hurt so badly, he thought death had come for him as well. The pain doubled him over, but he didn’t look away from the books. He would never look away from the books.
Time, he told himself. There has to be a way.
He’d been lost in time, floated through time, nearly died and been healed in time. His life had been restored in time.
He could pull the books out, rip them out of Nemeton’s chamber, but would that stop time? Or reverse it?
Does Corvus have her? Will Corvus have her for all eternity, when she should have been mine?
A racking groan tore loose from his throat, a harsh sound utterly inhuman in its agony.
“Avallyn!” Her name was wrenched out of him, from the bottom of his soul, sounding no better than the Warmonger’s agonized cries.
He was going to die. The pain building inside him was ripping him apart. He would have died in her place, should have died in her place.
Where is she?
The NGC 2300 cluster of galaxies was Dharkkum’s home, and Morgan was staring at the map that told how him to get there—the books and the path of light they’d laid. Tamisk knew how to read it, but that fair bastard was ten thousand years away. He didn’t know what happened to people who were sucked into a black hole. He knew the theories and had seen the awful thinning of their corporeal bodies, but the universe was full of unexpected things, and none more unexpected or more tenacious than life.
