by Phil Tucker
Kyrra poured forth from behind the altar, her huge coils whispering as they glided over the stone till she reached Tharok's side. The light of the bonfires caused the scales of her serpentine form to glimmer with bewitching iridescence. The myriad snakes that grew from her scalp hissed as she reared up, as tall now as the biggest troll. "Much has changed since last I graced this sacred place," she said, and though she didn't raise her voice, it stilled the crowd better than the deepest roar. "The very mountains have shifted while I slept, and yet here stand these old walls, testament to a forgotten time, an age when kragh worshipped my kind and knew themselves to be what they truly were: beasts fit for little more than sacrifice."
Tharok felt his gut clench in a spasm of fear and marveled at Kyrra's power. Even with the Medusa's Kiss firing his veins, he still wanted to kneel and press his head to the rock. Out of the corner of his eye he saw dozens of kragh in the crowd do exactly that.
Golden Crow lifted his clawed hand. A thin and whispery white light began to glow in his palm.
Kyrra ignored him. "And yet I tell you now, those times are gone!" Her words were a whipcrack. "We cannot bring back the past. Nor do I wish to. I do not come amongst you demanding tribute and your prayers, but rather to lead you into the light. The light of supremacy. The glory of victory. Tharok has told me of his vision, his desire to lead the kragh against the humans, to smash their world and drown it in blood." She swayed back, her smile deepening. "And, oh, my sweet kragh, my delicious children, I do so approve."
"Silence!" Golden Crow was shaking as if fevered, the white light burning in his palm now like a torch, growing brighter by the moment. "We do not believe your lies! There can be no truth from your fanged mouth! Deceiver! You shall die here, where your sisters died before, and your blood will stain these rocks black like theirs!"
The other shamans were almost at the stage. There was precious little time. He scooped up a fallen ax and leaped up onto the altar. The other shamans on the stage were calling out in the sacred tongue, imploring the spirits. The air above the stage was beginning to rush as a vortex of wind built around them. The flames of the closest bonfires began to bend in their direction, their tips burning bright blue.
Kyrra smiled. "You shamans always were so problematic. I see that has not changed. Very well."
Tharok reached out and gave a push with his mind. A stone troll that had drifted to the left of the stage and behind the shamans swung a club that was more tree trunk than weapon. It whistled through the air, above the heads of the closest kragh, and collided with the obese Crokuk shaman with horrifying force. It smashed the lowlander into the next shaman and the next, shattering bones, splattering flesh, and in a moment the five shamans who had stood behind Golden Crow were gone, knocked clear off the stage in a welter of gore.
The kragh sighed as if in wonder, and in that moment when Golden Crow was looking over his shoulder at where his companions had stood, in that moment when the spirit winds had lessened and the white fire in his hand was guttering, Kyrra stuck. She swooped down upon the wizened shaman and closed her hand around his scrawny neck, lifting him clear off his feet.
But she didn't kill him. Tharok, prepared to continue his speech and win over the kragh before they could collect themselves, checked himself as Kyrra instead rose higher and higher, supported by her great lower body, Golden Crow choking and kicking his legs helplessly in her grip.
"You shall be the first, old one," said Kyrra, and though Tharok couldn't see her face, he suddenly knew what she was about to do.
"No," he said, but nobody heard him.
Golden Crow went rigid in her grip, and Tharok saw his mouth open in a silent scream moments before Kyrra pressed her lips to his own. The shaman's entire body spasmed, and the kragh immediately before the stage cried out and covered their faces. Tharok knew what they were seeing. He had seen it himself two weeks ago, when Kyrra had brought him back from the brink of death.
The Medusa's Kiss.
Golden Crow's skin darkened, charring. The kiss seemed to last an eternity, but it couldn't have been more than moments. When Kyrra pulled back, Golden Crow's entire form was black, with a crimson smoldering glow in the cracks of his features. He stood still, staring blindly out at nothing, then raised his seamed face to Kyrra before bowing low.
Tharok felt his chest grow tight. He did not understand this, and fought to encompass it in his plans. Kyrra had made no mention of embracing another. Beyond the stage, Tharok saw the other shamans frozen in horror. Golden Crow straightened from his bow, and there was now about him a malevolent authority, as if his old power, always hidden behind a veneer of senility and gluttony, had been laid bare for the very first time.
"Mistress," said Golden Crow, and his voice was deeper and changed in a way that made Tharok want to shudder.
Kyrra moved backward and to the side till she was alongside the altar. Tharok eyed her and saw the hint of a complacent smile on her features, her gaze inscrutable, an eyebrow raised as if daring him to question her. Golden Crow moved to stand to one side, the shadows in his blind sockets seeming to writhe as he stared up at Tharok.
Action. Seize the moment. Wrest back control. With a roar, Tharok swung the ax and smashed it against the side of Nakrok's stone head. The stone shattered and sprayed out over the stage, and then Tharok planted his boot on the stone chest and shoved it off the altar altogether. It hit the stone ground and cracked into a hundred pieces.
"The dawn of a new era is upon us!" Even as he roared, Tharok felt his own words undercut by what had just taken place, could sense that most of the gathered kragh were still staring in horrified fascination at Golden Crow and Kyrra. "I shall unite the tribes as Ogri once did, until we are an unstoppable ocean, an ocean that shall pour down the Chasm Walk and sweep away Porloc, absorbing his ten thousand Orlokor into our might, an ocean that shall sweep across the plains and annihilate the human city of Abythos! I promise you blood, I promise you glory, I promise you wealth and power and conquering! We are not many tribes, we are one! We are the kragh, and, I, Tharok, am your warlord!"
All eyes were upon him, but he did not have their support. Not as he had desired. "All warlords and clan chieftains are to remain inside the Temple! The Convocation is but beginning, and we have much to plan!" Raising his voice to its greatest boom, he swept his ruined ax through the air. "All other kragh are to leave the Temple and camp outside. If you abandon the Convocation, I shall mark you an enemy, and you shall die by fire and ax! Mark my words, kragh! This is the beginning, and none may stand aside!"
Deep rumbles filled the ranks as kragh turned to each other, faces showing every emotion from euphoria to hate, from suspicion to confusion. Tharok pulsed a thought to his trolls, and together as one they brought their clubs down upon the stone ground, sending out a deafening crack through the air.
"All warlords! All chieftains! To the front! All shamans and their apprentices, to the front!" Tharok pointed at the great ruined door, where centuries ago Ogri had made his entrance. "All other kragh – leave!"
Again the stone trolls pounded the ground, some hard enough to splinter their weapons, and this time the kragh began to move, some picking up their fallen brothers, others moving to rejoin their clans, a turgid tide of bodies pushing its way outside while the warlords and chieftains reluctantly made their way to the fore.
Tharok threw aside the ruined ax. Nakrok was dead. The Convocation was his. He had only lost three trolls in the process. By all rights, he should be filled with a savage satisfaction.
And yet...
He looked down to where Golden Crow was standing, his dark skin riven by glowing seams of crimson, then finally up to meet Kyrra's inscrutable stare. He had felt the very ground move beneath his feet. An element had been introduced that he did not understand. Not yet. He reached out and felt the texture of his trolls' minds, and realized as he did so that he was drawing comfort from their presence. From their loyalty.
Kyrra held his gaze and then turned awa
y, followed by Golden Crow as they moved into the shadows to converse. Tharok watched them go, and felt his wariness flicker into fear.
CHAPTER TWO
Audsley gasped as he emerged through the archway, Kethe cradled to his chest, the disorienting madness of the void between the Portals receding and leaving him blinking desperately as he sought to gain his bearings.
Aletheia, he thought, the name tinged with overtones of awe and reverence, of beauty and impossible grace, the pinnacle of existence, the goal of every living soul, where the Perfecti themselves resided as they awaited one final lifetime before their souls arose to pass through the White Gate and into immortal glory forevermore.
Aletheia, the White City, where everything that was refined and beautiful and elegant and cultural had its origins, the near-mythical apex of all existence.
Aletheia. Where his own demon-touched soul was in terrible peril – but also the sole place where he might find cleansing. His only hope of keeping himself from plunging through the Black Gate upon his inevitable death.
Audsley hitched Kethe close and peered around. He was in an empty hall, the ceiling vaulted and high above him, adorned with intricate and masterful paintings that no doubt depicted wondrous scenes out of Ascension's gloried history. Wishing he had a hand free with which to push up his spectacles, he shrank back against the wall, hoping to avoid notice, and then realized that he was all alone.
This hall, he realized, was abandoned. The frescoes painted on the walls were faded, the great white and gold urns held the desiccated remnants of plants, and the white marble floor had lost its luster under a thin layer of dust.
"Ah," said Audsley. "Starkadr holds its secrets close."
He sensed the demons hidden in the recesses of his mind stir, but turned his focus away from them and instead walked down the length of the hall, turned halfway to regard how his footprints betrayed the portal's location with sorrow, and then continued on till he reached a high and narrow window at the hall's end. It was filled with a peerlessly crafted glass, completely without bubbles and as clear as air. Leaning forward, he gazed out and felt his heart lift within his chest.
Wisps of cloud were floating through soaring arches of white stone that supported ethereally slender bridges and causeways, fine as gossamer, which in turn connected slender floating towers and small plazas. Below them? A hint of other structures, shadows hidden amongst the clouds, and then nothing.
Had he not gazed out the windows of Starkadr's command center only days ago, he would have been rapt at the impossibility of the view, at the endless fields of azure that stretched out in all directions, at the very fact that he was floating high above the world in a land dominated by clouds and nothing more.
And yet there was a terrible elegance to the arches and carvings, to the circular plazas that were supported in the air by nothing more than Aletheia's magic, the stark alabaster statues that arose in their centers, the shocking green cypresses that grew in stately circles around certain structures. It was an otherworldly architecture, freed from the constraints of gravity, fashioned by minds whose eyes were turned toward Ascension.
"Ah, Aedelbert," whispered Audsley, shaking his head. "If only you were here to see this!" A pang of sorrow cut through him, and he shook himself. Aedelbert wasn't dead, merely awaiting Audsley's return in a purified state, an inevitability that he would do everything to hasten.
Peering first to the far left then the far right, Audsley tried to catch sight of Aletheia's main body, the mass of the stonecloud around which these walkways and bridges and slender towers were affixed, but he couldn't. What level was he on? If he was too high up, he might get into trouble; for most of his life he had enjoyed the benefits of being a Noussian amongst Ennoians, a peer without match, but here, oh, if he was caught too high up, he would be humiliated by his betters and sent running to the more appropriate levels.
"Never mind," he said aloud, and then caught himself. Aedelbert was no longer here to converse with. His old habit would have to be checked.
He gazed down at Kethe. Oof, but she was heavy for a young woman. All that muscle, he supposed. He leaned in closer. She was barely breathing, her skin waxen, almost translucent. He fancied he could see her irises through her eyelids. "We must hurry," he said, and then scowled at himself.
An exit. A means of egress. There. Audsley hurried across the marble floor, refusing to let his eyes be drawn by the intriguing patterns inlaid in burgundy stone, and passed through another archway and into a narrow corridor. Pillars, more frescoes, a wealth of forgotten beauty. A short turn, then a dead end.
Audsley stopped short. Frowned. "Avast!" No response. He stepped closer. The hall simply ended in a smooth wall. How strange!
May I suggest a gentle push on the left side? The demon's voice was unctuous, insufferably polite, and Audsley saw him in his mind: the Aletheian old man, clad in flowing, many-layered robes, with an expression of gentle patience and suffering on his lined face.
"Say, this aspect you have assumed. Are you in truth an Aletheian?"
No, said the demon, bowing his head. No more than you are your filthy tunic and ragged boots. Which, I must warn you, shall be a serious affront to any who see you once you have stepped outside.
"Ah, yes." Audsley looked down at himself. "I was, ah, fighting demons, you know. And living under very trying circumstances. No baths or extensive clothing options."
The demon shrugged, a complex expression that conveyed acknowledgement, indifference, and distaste all at once.
Audsley scowled and pushed on the left side of the wall, which revealed itself to be a hinged door. It swung out stiffly, and Audsley emerged into a spacious hall through which a sparse crowd was moving slowly. Audsley's breath caught in his chest, and he pressed back against the door, which closed behind him and disappeared seamlessly.
The far wall was a series of magnificent archways that rose some thirty feet high and looked out into the heavens, with a cypress tree growing before each pillar. The ceiling was even higher, vaulted and interspersed with domes around the interiors of which ran bands of gold and gorgeous depictions of heroes and martyrs of the faith. The floor was beautifully wrought, gray marble squares interlaced between strips of white marble, and the sound of sandaled feet and boots and skirts whispering across its surface echoed from all around.
But it was the people that caught his eye. He had visited Aletheia once before, when he was very young, on a scholastic trip to a small library on one of Aletheia's lower levels, and he remembered being overwhelmed and hiding as much as he could between the covers of his books. But now, here, grown and aware, educated and taught to appreciate beauty by the travails of life – oh, how the people drifting to and fro impressed him!
Wherever his eye alit, he saw elegance and grace, robes of solid yet subtle colors layered over each other to different effect, some startling in their contrast, others gentle in their gradations. Just like the last time, he was surprised to see people of all backgrounds walking the hall: a man with a clear Noussian heritage, his black hair cropped close and his skin a rich and mellow brown; an Ennoian lady, her features harsh and narrow, her golden hair intricately done in a series of braids that were almost a work of art themselves; on and on, the variety of faces and backgrounds bewildering.
The First Ascendant declared the bloodlines of his thirty most fervent supporters to be the most spiritually refined, regardless of their city of origin; their descendants formed the premier families of Aletheia and are the most holy, equal in –
"Yes, yes, I know. I am considered a rather erudite and learned man by most," snapped Audsley, only to blink and smile apologetically as an austere Sigean man glanced disdainfully at him and brushed on by. Mental note: do not argue with demons out loud.
"Now. Where to?" He peered up and down both sides of the hall. It curved out of view in both directions, the archways revealing clouds and sky continuously down the outer side.
From the art, floor designs and plebian cro
wd, it would seem that you are at the Seventh Circum.
"Seventh Circum?" A wave of relief passed through him. "Ah, good." The upper five levels were the province of the most elect Perfecti; to have appeared that high would have been awful. "Precisely the level I wished to appear in. Now. Ah. To find Iskra's family residence. Um." He hesitated. Right or left? The crowd swept on in an endlessly refined wave. Could he accost someone?
If you must speak, do so with deference, do not make eye contact, and apologize abjectly for your appearance. A little groveling would not be untoward.
"Yes, yes," said Audsley, and his eye alit on a Noussian lady, generously formed and clad in an imperial blue. "Ah, excuse me, my dear lady, and please, let me apologize for my appearance, but –"
The lady gave him a dismissive glance out of the corner of her eye and swept on.
Audsley tried again with a Sigean notable, then a group of scholarly old men, and finally spotted a young man of indeterminate origin, clad in tights and a white tunic, who was hurrying along bearing a scroll.
A courier, supplied the demon.
"Excuse me," said Audsley, stepping boldly into his path. The young man rolled his eyes and tried to sidestep Audsley, apparently not caring that he was holding a comatose young woman in his arms. Audsley matched his sidestep. "Excuse me, the Miliaka Residence?" Audsley stepped across again, once more blocking the young man's path. "The sooner you tell me, the sooner you are done with me."
The young man sighed. "Very well. Follow the Circum moonwards until you reach Oal's Spire, then take the Honeysuckle Causeway to their front gate." The courier curled his lip derisively. "Filth." He darted past Audsley and hurried on.
"I – what? Filth? Me?" Audsley felt righteous indignation burn within his chest. He was a Noussian! How dare – a mere courier –
You exude no élan, éclat, or flair. You display no culture, refinement, or style. As such, you are not worth consideration or deference of any kind.
