He stood in front of the marble cliff, a sense of unreality washing over him. What was he doing here? This couldn’t possibly work, could it?
But he’d come this far. He might as well try. He put his hands on the stone. The stone was cool. For a long moment he hesitated, not sure he wanted to do this. He had a feeling he was about to head down a path from which there was no turning back, that he was about to see things he could never unsee.
Inside he could feel the glowing ember of his power, waiting. He fed energy into it and the power awakened. It raced through his veins, penetrating every muscle and bone. He let it build up for a few moments, then released it into the cliff.
When he did so, the stone under his hands began to glow with a soft, reddish light. The marble became soft, like clay, and his hands sank into it partway. It alarmed him and he almost pulled away, but he forced himself to stay there and remain calm.
The minutes passed as he fed more power into the stone. Nothing happened, but he began to feel dizzy and feverish. His legs grew weak and his vision blurred so that he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the cliff face.
Then, far below, in the heart of the stone, there came an answer.
Fen jerked back in surprise, breaking his contact with the cliff face. He could sense something huge and ancient and powerful rising toward the surface, rising toward him. He took a step back, every instinct yelling at him to flee. But there was nowhere to run to. Stone lay underfoot wherever he went. And he needed answers.
The presence came closer. Behind him his horse began prancing nervously, pulling on the reins. Pebbles broke free and clattered down the cliff face as small cracks appeared in it. Fen took another step back.
Slowly a face began to form in the stone. It was big, wider than he could span with his arms. Empty eye sockets, the suggestion of a nose, a crude jaw and forehead. With a cracking of stone a mouth appeared.
“Who are you, that awakens me from my sleep?” The voice was rusty with centuries of disuse. It was deep and rough, the sound of stones sliding down a hillside.
“Uh…I’m Fen.”
“How is it that a human wields Stone power?” the face asked.
“I don’t know. I hoped you could tell me.”
“Impossible. Human flesh is too weak. Only the Shapers of Stone can touch such power.”
“Are you a Shaper?”
“I am Bereth of the First Ring, of the Sphere of Stone. Or I was. Now I am nothing. Only dust and forgotten memories.”
“What is a Shaper?”
“To us was given the power to shape the Spheres of Stone, Sea and Sky, to shape our bodies as we shaped the elements of this world. But we are mostly gone now, slumbering in oblivion.”
“You said you were given the power to shape the Stone. Why?”
“That is the question, the only one with real importance. Long ago we used to argue that question. Some of us believed that we were brought to this world to serve some purpose, that somehow we had forgotten that purpose. When we found no answer, most of us gave it up.”
“But you didn’t. You kept searching.”
“For eons after the rest had quit, I continued to seek. My search led me too far, though. Larkind and I went too deep. We scratched the surface of another world. We found the Abyss and chaos power leaked through. Larkind was destroyed and I was badly injured, injuries I never recovered from. Our world’s problems began that day.
“But it was then that I remembered the first scraps, lost memories awakened by my contact with the chaos power. I remembered the masters, the ones who brought us here. We were to protect the key from the Devourers, keep it safe forever. It was for this that they made us.”
“What key?” Fen asked, bewildered. “Who are the Devourers?”
“I do not know what the key is. I could never find it, though I searched long for it. The other Shapers would not help. They had given up all interest in the big question by then. Of the Devourers I know only that they are the enemy and they must not get hold of the key.
“I smell them,” Bereth rumbled. “I smell chaos power. They are close to breaking through. Their agents are at work in this world. You must stop them. Whatever it takes, they cannot be allowed to obtain the key. Once they get the key all will be lost.”
“Why don’t you stop them? Why don’t you awaken the other Shapers and fight them as the masters intended?”
“Because it has been too long. We have forgotten ourselves. It took most of my strength to form this face you see before you. I am frozen in the past along with my brethren. There is nothing I can do.”
“There must be some way you can help us,” Fen said desperately. “At least tell me why I have this power? How do I master it?”
“I do not understand why you have this power. No Shaper would try to give a human our power. Even Melekath was not so foolhardy. You will never master it. It will inevitably destroy you.”
“So a Shaper did this to me?” Fen asked, but he got no response. The face in the stone was silent. Bereth was gone.
Fen mounted his horse and headed back to Samkara in a daze. He felt as if his world had been turned upside down. He’d never actually believed that such beings as the Shapers existed. Not really. Secretly he’d even hoped that none of it was real, that it was all his imagination, including the power he felt inside him.
But he could no longer cling to delusion. The power he’d felt in Bereth’s presence, even muted as it was, was unmistakable. He understood now why people had seen the Shapers as gods. There was something awesome and elemental about Bereth. He could only imagine what the Shaper had been like in the early days.
What he’d just experienced was worse, somehow, than the giant crab-thing, the pool of purple light, or the glowing amber orb in the hold of the black ship. Despite the fact that they were all things he’d personally seen, somehow they’d never been quite real to him. They were things outside him. But this? This was inside him, hidden in his bones, slowly crushing him. He would never master it. It would eventually kill him.
He wished now that he hadn’t come here. Better to live in the fog of ignorance than to know the truth. He’d felt Bereth’s power and he’d felt his own power answer it. It was an answer that said, I am this too. There was no escaping it now, no way to ever flee that knowledge.
Lost as he was inside himself, he wasn’t sure how he made it back to his barracks. He had no memory of passing through the city, of unsaddling his horse. He noticed distantly that his squad mates had not returned, but nothing else. He collapsed on his cot and fell immediately into a lightless abyss.
╬ ╬ ╬
Fen awakened in the morning with a sense of dread, the feeling of looming catastrophe. He jumped to his feet, the power inside him sparking into life. There was a distant rumble underfoot as the Stone answered. The barracks was dim in the predawn light. He looked around wildly, at first unable to place his surroundings. A moment ago he’d been deep underground, peeling back the stone and looking on in awe and horror as a cancerous purple light began to shine through from some other place. There were creatures in that light, peering through at him, creatures that would devour this world, that would devour all worlds if they had the chance.
“What is it?” Cowley asked, getting up and grabbing Fen’s arm. Fen, unprepared for the contact and still feeling like someone, or something, else, jerked away. “Hey, it’s me. Remember me?” Cowley said.
Fen blinked. His life, his real life, began coming back. Slowly he recognized Cowley. “The key,” he said. “We can’t let the Devourers get the key. Worlds will suffer.”
“Hold on,” Cowley said. Around them the others in the squad were stirring, sleepy eyes peering out from under blankets at them. He grabbed Fen’s arm and pulled him outside. The morning was gray. Clouds pressed down close overhead. In the distance could be heard the sound of a hammer falling rhythmically on metal.
“What key?” Cowley asked. “Devourers?”
“The Shapers,
” Fen said, grabbing Cowley’s shoulders, suddenly desperate to make him understand. “They’re gone. They can’t defend the key anymore. We have to.”
Noah came stumbling out of the barracks then, rubbing bloodshot eyes. He looked at Fen. “You still drunk or what?” he mumbled, then headed off for the latrine.
“You went and talked to a Shaper last night, didn’t you?” Cowley said.
Fen clawed at his chest. “It’s inside me. The power of the Stone. It was never meant to be held within flesh and bone.”
“Stop that,” Cowley said, pulling Fen’s hands away. “What’s this key you’re going on about? The key to what?”
Fen shook his head, trying to separate himself from the memories that weren’t his. “I don’t know. We were never told. We knew only that we had to protect it from the Devourers. But we forgot and now they’re coming.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘we’?”
“They’re inside me. They’re too heavy. They’re crushing me.”
The door to the barracks opened again. Gage came out, wincing and holding his head. He looked at the two of them and asked, “Something wrong?”
“Bad dream,” Cowley replied.
“I had them all night,” Gage said. “I don’t think I’m made for war.” He headed off for the latrine also.
“You’re Fen,” Cowley said. “You have to hold onto that. Push everything else back and focus on that. You’re Fen. You’re my friend and you’re in the army.”
Fen blinked at him. The dream was beginning to fade. His own life was returning. “The purple pool of light in the cavern. It was chaos power. It comes from the Abyss.”
“Okay. That’s good to know, I guess. Not sure how it helps here. I’d still like to know who the Devourers are. Do they come from the Abyss?”
Fen nodded. “It’s where they live. But the barrier between our worlds is weak. Once they break through, they’ll find the key. Everything will be destroyed.”
“I can’t say I like the sound of that. Any idea where this key is?”
“No. I searched for so long.” Fen frowned and rubbed his temple. “I mean he searched. Bereth. He couldn’t find it. The masters hid it.”
“So maybe we could ask these masters where it is. If we could figure out who they are.”
“The masters are dead. They were ambushed.” Fen winced at the pain in his head. “Someone was already here when they arrived. He caught them unprepared and he killed them. He wiped the memories from the Shapers.”
“Oh, great, someone new,” Cowley said. “We still don’t know who the Devourers are, or the masters, or where the key is, and now we don’t know who killed the masters. This isn’t getting any clearer, you know.”
The barracks door opened again. Strout came out.
Cowley glanced at him. “You look bad,” he said.
“I feel like killing someone,” Strout said. “Leave me alone.” He walked off, grumbling to himself.
“The Ankharans are working for the Devourers. They’re trying to help them come into this world. They’re trying to find the key so they can give it to them,” Fen said.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Cowley said. “Did the Shaper tell you that?”
“No,” Fen said, shaking his head. “But it makes sense now. The pool of purple light was power from the Abyss and they were feeding the lives of those people into it, probably to help the Devourers break through into our world.”
“Good thing you brought the house down on it, then,” Cowley said. “That should slow them down a little.”
“I hope so.”
“You back to yourself now?”
“Mostly.”
“So I take it my idea worked?”
“I was sure it wouldn’t.”
“But you tried anyway.”
“I didn’t have any other ideas.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Keep watching the Ankharans. Maybe when they find the key we can get it first.”
“And do what with it?” Cowley asked.
“I don’t know. Hide it? Destroy it?”
“You said the Shapers were supposed to protect the key. Why don’t we get their help?”
“It’s been too long,” Fen said. “They’re asleep, lost inside themselves. Their power is gone.”
“Figures. That would make things too easy. Still, someone must still be active.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Someone gave you this power, didn’t they? The same power the Shapers have. They gave it to you so you could do what the Shapers can’t anymore.”
“I never thought of that,” Fen admitted. “I wonder who. And why give it to my father?”
“Who knows? Maybe there’s something special about you. Maybe they just picked you at random.”
“But why my father first?”
“They thought he could handle it. But he couldn’t and so they turned to you.”
“I’m not sure I can handle it,” Fen said, thinking about what Bereth had said about how the power would inevitably kill him.
“Probably you can’t,” Cowley said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Probably you’ll fail.”
“Why would you say that?”
“So you don’t feel so much pressure. You expect too much from yourself, Fen, and it makes you a little crazy. A lot crazy sometimes. But once you figure you’re going to fail anyway, well, that takes the pressure off. What do you have to lose now?”
“Sometimes the way your mind works is beyond me.”
“Don’t try to keep up,” Cowley told him good-naturedly. “Just hop on for the ride.”
╬ ╬ ╬
Shortly after sunrise the horns sounded, signaling to the soldiers in the castle that it was time to muster. Across the city at the other barracks other horns sounded and soldiers began to line up.
Fen and the rest of Wolfpack squad were already saddled up by then, their gear tied onto their horses. They mounted up and got into formation outside the main doors of the palace. A stable hand was waiting there with the Fist’s horse. Also waiting there was a large, enclosed carriage, painted black, the windows covered with red curtains.
“Just like the ship, right?” Lukas said, pointing to the carriage.
“I wonder what weird stuff is inside there,” Noah said.
“Whatever it is, I’m not going in to find out,” Lukas said. “I’m staying as far away from it as I can.”
The Fist emerged from the palace. Behind him came the four Ankharans, their hoods pulled up to hide their faces, hands hidden inside the long sleeves of their robes. They seemed to glide across the ground rather than walk.
As they came closer, Fen’s horse tossed her head and stamped a foot uneasily. Around him the others’ horses were doing the same. Even the Fist’s stallion pranced a little before the stable hand got him under control.
“The horses don’t like them,” Gage said under his breath. He was patting his horse’s neck, calming the animal. A moment later he added, “Look at that.”
The horses hitched to the black carriage didn’t so much as twitch as the Ankharans walked by them.
“They’ve done something to those horses,” Gage said. “Drugged them or something.”
The Ankharans climbed into the carriage. The Fist mounted and rode to where he could see the mustered troops. He stood up in his stirrups, held his sword over his head and shouted, “Time for the Maradi to know retribution!”
The soldiers answered his words with a shout. Then, the Fist leading, they began to move. Behind the Fist rode his generals and other high-ranking officers, then the carriage bearing the Ankharans. Behind the Ankharans rode Wolfpack squad.
“I wonder what’s in there,” Cowley said, pointing at a wagon that they were riding by. It was a big wagon, the kind used to carry freight. There was only one thing in it, covered by a tarp.
“Looks like a hammer to me,” Noah said, standing up in his stirrups to get a better look at it.
<
br /> “No way,” Lukas said. “The thing’s huge. Why make a hammer that big?”
“It has to be at least ten feet long,” Gage said, “and the head on that thing…” He gave a low whistle. “I wonder what it’s for.”
“I guess we’ll find out when we find out,” Cowley said.
Fen looked around at his squad mates as they rode through the castle gates. All of them but Cowley looked pretty haggard. Even the brothers looked a little green. But Cowley looked bright and rested. He had a smile on his face and was whistling softly.
“I hate you,” Noah told him angrily. “You should know that.”
“How do you do it?” Lukas asked. His eyes were still bloodshot and he was holding his stomach.
“Practice, my friend. Serious drinking is like fighting. It’s not for the faint of heart. A man must be committed to doing whatever it takes to excel at it.”
“Can’t you shut up for once?” Strout grumbled.
“I’ve tried it,” Cowley said, “but it didn’t really take.”
Chapter Thirty
“Get your squad together. You’re with me,” Captain Rouk said. It was predawn and Fen and his squad were just getting up. Most of the army hadn’t yet begun to stir. They’d been marching for a week now and yesterday they had passed into Maradi territory.
“Yes, sir.”
Fen started to turn away, but Rouk caught his arm. “Are we going to have a problem, lieutenant?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
Rouk stared at him for a minute, gauging his sincerity. His eyes were so light blue they were almost gray. There was no softness in them. “There better not be,” he said at last. “Mark my words.”
A few minutes later they headed out, accompanied by three squads of foot soldiers. Captain Rouk rode at the head and set a pace fast enough that the foot soldiers had to jog to keep up.
“What’s this about?” Cowley asked Fen in a low voice.
“I have no idea. I didn’t ask.”
“Isn’t that the captain you had trouble with?”
Fen nodded.
They rode for half a bell in silence, then Rouk held up his hand and the soldiers following him came to a halt. The sun was just rising. Up ahead, nestled in a hollow beside a small stream, was a village. There were about a dozen homes in the village, simple huts with thatched roofs and stone chimneys. Smoke rose from several of the chimneys. A woman was visible outside one of the huts, pulling weeds in a small garden. There was a small pen with a dozen goats in it and an old mare grazing down by the stream. The mare raised her head and whickered at them.
Sea Born (Chaos and Retribution Book 3) Page 34
