The New World ви-3

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Chapter Fifty-five

  4th day, Month of the Bat, Year of the Rat

  Last Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

  163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

  737th Year since the Cataclysm

  Zhangjian (The Place Between)

  The trek across the last of Chong-to was accomplished with a minimum of effort and few losses. Warring bands crippled their enemies, then held them in thrall, enjoying their pain. It was hardly conduct that would win release, but this new consolidation of power occupied the bands enough that they let Jorim’s army travel unmolested.

  Jorim passed first through the shimmering veil that separated the First Hell from Zhangjian. The Place Between served as an entryway to the realms of the supernatural. It lay parallel to the physical world, and was everything it was not. Dark and empty, without form or substance, it proved unsettling for everyone. Something supported their feet, but no one could tell what it was. Shimik tried to dig in it but didn’t get very far. Riders had to dismount to lead reluctant beasts, and the Nighfor found it too disorienting even to attempt to fly.

  The gateway to the Heavens awaited in the distance and this made Jorim suspicious. “There is no reason for the perception of distance, save that someone wishes us to feel far from our goal.”

  Talrisaal nodded. “Nessagafel.”

  Pyrust did not let the plane’s featurelessness daunt him. He formed his army up, using the Naleni and Amentzutl troops as his center, with the hart-cavalry split on each wing, and the lizards flanking them. The Nighfor waited in reserve, along with the hammer-headed apes.

  Something glimmered ahead in the darkness. Jorim started to run, but reached it in two steps. Crumpled in a bloody robe decorated with bats on the wing, Tsiwen lay largely still. Pinpoint wounds from ant bites covered her visible flesh. Her throat and face had been raked with thorns. Her robe covered her belly, but she’d clearly been disemboweled.

  Jorim dropped to a knee and felt her throat for a pulse. The gesture was ridiculous. Tsiwen had no more need for a pulse than she did a physical form. Talrisaal appeared on her other side.

  Jorim looked up. “You wanted to know why Nessagafel didn’t know I’d escaped him? She took my place. I can’t imagine…”

  “Magic works here. I can help her.”

  “Please, do.” Jorim caressed her cheek. “We’d not have gotten even this far save that she fooled him.”

  “But not for long enough, Wentoki.”

  A young man materialized past Talrisaal. He was the child Nessagafel had been, now grown. He stood naked save for a black ring around his little finger. “You have been quite audacious, my son. I have not had time to fully assess the damage you’ve done. But it matters not, since I will unmake all of this. When I start over, I’ll bring you back and make a special Hell just for you.”

  He raised one hand and Tsiwen twitched. Her eyes jerked open. She flew upright, limp as a puppet, her intestines tangling in her legs. With every finger Nessagafel flexed she danced-at times clumsy, others seductively, all the while her head lolling and jaw bouncing open.

  “I told you I gave you compassion because I did not need it. I lied.” His other hand came up and Nirati appeared, hanging by invisible strings. “I gave it to you to cripple you.”

  Bones cracked. Nessagafel doubled in size. He sprouted a second pair of arms and raised those hands as well, bringing Nauana and Anaeda Gryst into his dancing troupe. The ancient god laughed, his fingers flicking. The women capered through farcical dances, then dashed against the ground like discarded toys.

  “That is it, isn’t it? You’re just a child.”

  Nessagafel’s head came up. “This, from you? You clothe yourself in flesh and play among mortals. You are the child wishing he could fight alongside his toy soldiers. All you ever sought to do was imitate me, but you never could. You never allowed yourself to set compassion aside. You hoped it would make you superior when you clearly were not.”

  “I’ll set it aside now.”

  “You, fight me? Here? Now?” Nessagafel’s puppets disappeared. “You are a man. I am a god.”

  “But you are limited.” Jorim stood. “By the ring. By your fear.”

  Light flashed for a second, blinding him. When vision returned he found his companions arranged in a circle around the two of them. They watched horrified, hands pressed to an unseen barrier. He took heart in Tsiwen’s appearance-her entrails had been replaced. This gave Jorim hope.

  Nessagafel leaped at him, all four arms wide, his fingers sprouting claws. He roared soundlessly, yet vibrations thrummed through Jorim’s chest. The murderous fires in his eyes flared, licking up over his forehead, and he descended.

  Jorim pushed panic away and grasped the mai. The key to working magic had always been to find the truth of something. He gathered the magic and, clapping his hands, launched a sizzling sphere. Argent lighting wreathed the ball. It blasted into Nessagafel’s chest and exploded. The god flew back, slamming into the invisible wall. The lower pair of arms burst into flames and fell away.

  The ancient god crouched at the circle’s edge. “You want to see what I truly am? Your mistake.”

  For the tiniest part of a second, too small to measure, Nessagafel revealed his true nature. His physical form became transparent-nothing more than a vessel for his essence. Sounds echoed in colors, light dripped, textures sang. Emotions, hundreds of thousands of them, vibrated like plucked bowstrings, each a needle scraping over his consciousness. Nessagafel was the stuff of hopes and dreams and fears and hatreds, of love and lust and despair. Understanding even one strand of his being would take eternity, and yet uncounted strands coiled in him.

  Then Jorim was down, his robe shredded, his chest bleeding.

  Nessagafel, wearing the form of a Viruk, stood over him and raised a clawed hand. “All you need to understand of me, Wentoki, is that I am the one who has destroyed you.”

  His hand fell.

  TheNewWorld

  Chapter Fifty-six

  4th day, Month of the Bat, Year of the Rat

  First Year of the Restoration of the Imperial Court

  163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

  737th Year since the Cataclysm

  North Moriande

  Free Nalenyr

  A burst of magic exploded out from Anturasikun. It blasted Keles flat, washing him in invisible fire. The flames condensed, locking him in a transparent shell. He lay there, immobile, mocked by the smooth motion of the moons.

  For a moment he considered giving up. It would have been so easy. Down, paralyzed, facing magical manifestations of Qiro’s fury, it seemed a fight he couldn’t win.

  It seemed every bit as hopeless as the defense of Tsatol Pelyn.

  Keles’ hands tightened into fists, dispelling the paralysis. It felt as if his flesh was cracking. He flexed muscles and worked joints, letting the shell fall away in bits. Rolling to his side, he came up on one knee and, for the first time, took heart.

  Whatever had knocked him down had likewise staggered Qiro. His grandfather’s image had shrunk again to match his own. The brush had vanished, though two bridges stood complete and a third was rebuilding itself. Qiro clutched his head and muttered in his beard.

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear. It’s all wrong.”

  The land shuddered. The river’s narrowing stopped and began to reverse itself quickly. Shock waves rocked the city. The change came in fits and starts; a bit would move here, a bit there. The earth tore. Roads collapsed. Towers wavered.

  “Stop, Grandfather!” Keles rose and vaulted the city’s north wall. “You’re destroying everything.”

  Qiro looked up, horror on his face. “Oh no, Keles. I must make it all right. This is wrong. Is this what you’ve gotten up to?”

  The ground shook again. Towers cracked. Keles reached out, steadying them with magic. In an eyeblink he read the structures and the forces working on them, reinforcing their strengths.

  Yet even as he blunted his grandfather’s wo
rk there, Qiro set about other tasks. More of the bridges started to reconstruct themselves. Nelesquin’s troops were already pouring north. Tens of thousands still packed the streets, waiting to cross.

  Keru fought at the Bear Bridge and Rekarafi with them. Nelesquin’s hordes came on, mindless and unmindful of the havoc the Viruk wrought. He fought using a spear and had scribed a circle around him in blood and flesh. Warriors clawed slippery bodies aside to engage him.

  To the east, the Voraxani fought. Archers on rooftops volleyed arrows into the wildmen. Naleni troops and Desei conscripts manned hastily erected breastworks, stemming the spread of the wildmen, but columns threaded deeper through alleys and side streets. Other squads hunted them down, sparing no sector from combat.

  Qiro had focused on the Gold River’s flooding. He raised a new bank, cutting off the outlet Cyron had opened. Keles magically forced the water back into the narrow river channel. A wall of water twelve feet high poured through Moriande, passing beneath the Dragon Bridge. It did not, however, spare the resurrected bridges. Caught in its fury, the Bear Bridge vanished instantly. Grey water splashed, gushing up onto the River Road, scattering troops and washing away Rekarafi’s gruesome monument. The wave swept wildmen and stones down, blasting through the Tiger Bridge. It likewise evaporated, then the whole boiling mass of stone and corpses melted the Wolf Bridge as if it were a construct of rotten wood and children’s dreams.

  “Oh, no, Keles, look what you’ve done!” Qiro’s voice reflected the horror on his face. “I have to fix it all.”

  Here and there, with no order or reason, Qiro made adjustments. A bridge started to rise. The riverbank retreated, then thrust forward again. Land folded in on itself, becoming pocket worlds from which odd creatures began to emerge. The land erupted in boils, and blood seeped to the surface. Qiro would see that and react to it, compounding the problems, warping the land well beyond even the time of wild magic.

  Keles fought against panic. Everything his grandfather was doing was wrong. Keles constantly referred back to the land as it had been when he traveled with Ryn and that knowledge made it easier to repair the damage. But still he was just reacting to his grandfather’s increasingly bizarre efforts. Qiro had lost all pretense of sanity. However he was seeing the world, it wasn’t in a manner that allowed him to make things right again.

  He’s forcing me to react. He’s controlling what I do. Keles recalled his conversation with Tyressa. If all he did was react, he could never gain control. He had to link the present to the past, reasserting what was right and true about the world. That would make it harder for Qiro to alter things and easier for Keles to fix them.

  But what? What can I do? He reached out, flattening a volcano before it could explode and crack the continent. I need to anchor the world.

  Then he looked up and smiled.

  Summoning all the magic he could, Keles Anturasi reached out and caught the black moon. He ripped it from its celestial path. Heedless of what Qiro was doing, he pulled it down. The stone warmed and Keles sealed it in a mold he shaped from his memory of Virukadeen.

  He guided the luminous rock back toward the Dark Sea. Beyond it, from Ixyll, wild azure magic arced out, striking the vast mountain like lightning. And below, the islands flew into the air. They floated around the mountain, not yet restored to their former glory.

  The transformed moon settled into the Dark Sea basin. Water should have flooded all the land, except the mountains accepted that part of themselves that had been ripped away so long ago. The earth sealed itself, and springs and rivers flowed again through Virukadeen.

  With the black moon returned to the earth, exhaustion seized Keles. He went to a knee. Magic still played around him but he could not muster the strength to work with it.

  Qiro stood over him, a palsied hand trembling on his shoulder. The old man looked west, wonder on his face.

  “It’s so beautiful, Keles. That is the way it should be.”

  Then Qiro fell over and his grandson’s world went black.

  TheNewWorld

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  4th day, Month of the Bat, Year of the Rat

  First Year of the Restoration of the Imperial Court

  163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

  737th Year since the Cataclysm

  Quunkun, South Moriande

  Imperial Nalenyr

  The magic that pulsed through the city drove Ciras to his knees. Moraven Tolo sagged forward, his head down, almost as if bowing to Prince Nelesquin. Kaerinus staggered back, and Qiro Anturasi sagged against the wall, slowly slumping to the floor.

  Those who did not know jaedun remained unaffected and even appeared shocked as the others recoiled. The magic echoed in Ciras’ head like a high, piercing shriek. He clawed his flesh-and-blood hand through his hair as if to brush the sound away, then a new sound invaded.

  Laughter.

  Nelesquin sat on the throne and looked at his right arm. His fingers came away red. He held his hand up, studying the blood, rubbing a thumb over his wet fingers, and he laughed. “I’m bleeding, Kaerinus! My soul has returned. I’m whole again.”

  The big man stood, roaring. He pumped his left fist in the air and clearly sought to bring his right arm up, but it failed to move. Alarm registered on his face, but only the left half. The flesh of his right cheek remained immobile and began to blacken.

  “What’s happening?”

  Kaerinus pulled his cloak about himself. “The toxin in Prince Pyrust’s ring. You sealed the wound, but you did not neutralize the poison.”

  “Fix it.”

  “No, my lord.”

  “What?”

  Moraven lifted his head. “You thought the Empress had one spy in your vanyesh. She had more.”

  “No. NO! ” Nelesquin plucked the sword from his right hand and raised it in his left, charging at the kneeling swordsman. “I will see you in Hell, Virisken!” He whipped the blade down.

  Ciras caught it in his metal hand. “Not with my sword.” He tightened his grip and wrenched the blade to the left.

  Nelesquin looked down, contempt registering on the left half of his face. “You are nothing.”

  “Fitting last words.” Ciras slammed his fist into Nelesquin’s breastbone. The sternum snapped as the punch crushed the Prince’s heart. Ciras pulled back and jerked his sword from the dying man’s grasp.

  Nelesquin wavered for a moment, then pitched over backward. Gold bones clanked on the ground, poking at odd angles through his robe. He lay there, staring sightlessly at a mural that depicted him as a god.

  Before the Prince had even begun to collapse, Ciras rotated his wrist and transferred the vanyesh blade to his left hand. He reversed it, holding it tight along his forearm. The tip extended past his elbow. He raised his arm, catching the first kwajiin ’s cut easily, then jabbed metal fingers into the man’s throat.

  Ciras spun and parried, then stabbed back with the vanyesh blade. Sparks flew as a blow glanced from Borosan’s handiwork. A stab ignited fire in his thigh. Another parry, a lunge, then a twist, narrowly avoiding a crosscut slash. The sword’s pommel crushed a face. A slash sent a head spinning. Before it bounced the second time, the last of the kwajiin clutched at a pulsing wound in his groin, then stumbled back, tripping over Nelesquin’s body.

  Kaerinus knelt beside Moraven Tolo. Purple light played and the swordsman gasped. The vanyesh laid a hand on each broken arm. More magic flowed and the limbs straightened, but the hands clutched weakly at nothing.

  Ciras slashed the chain binding Prince Jekusmirwyn to the throne. “You are free, Highness.”

  The man still cowered. “Is he dead? Are you sure?”

  “Poisoned. Heart crushed. He’s dead.”

  Jekusmirwyn crawled forward and picked up a kwajiin sword. He tested its edge against his thumb. Apparently satisfied, he sawed away at Nelesquin’s neck. “I’ll take his head. Just to be sure.”

  Ciras recovered his scabbard and slid the vanyesh blade home. He joined Kaerin
us and Moraven. “How are you, Master?”

  “I’ll be fine. I need time to recover.” Moraven smiled.

  Ciras nodded and looked at his metal hand. “Master Gryst will be proud his work killed Prince Nelesquin.”

  “As well he should be. He’s a wise and clever man.”

  “One of several it has been my privilege to know.” Ciras hooked his metal hand beneath Moraven’s armpit and stood. “Come, Master, let’s find a way home again.”

  TheNewWorld

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  4th day, Month of the Bat, Year of the Rat

  First Year of the Restoration of the Imperial Court

  163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

  737th Year since the Cataclysm

  Zhangjian (The Place Between)

  A glowing hand caught Nessagafel’s wrist, stopping the claws inches from Jorim’s face. The Viruk ripped his hand free, then backhanded the man who’d stopped him. He spun away from the blow, rebounding from the unseen wall.

  Jorim stared disbelieving. “Prince Cyron?”

  The Prince dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his left hand. He smiled. “I hardly expected to find you here, Master Anturasi.” He flexed his fingers. “Nice to have this back.”

  Behind the Prince, Shimik dug furiously at the ground, trying to squeeze beneath the invisible wall. The others made no attempt to hide their surprise at Cyron’s appearance. His presence meant he was dead, and that betokened misfortune in the mortal realm.

  Jorim gathered his legs beneath him and prepared for Nessagafel’s next attack, but the ancient god was not coming for him. Instead, he held his clawed hand up. He rotated it forward and back, as if mocking the wonder with which Cyron had studied his own hand.

  The ring that had bound him had vanished.

  Nessagafel’s laughter started low. He spun as it rose and stared straight at Talrisaal. “It was you. It wasn’t my children who bound me with that ring. It was you, the Viruk. You did it.”

  Talrisaal nodded slowly. “You were bound with something that existed before you did. We bound you with Virukadeen.”