“How?” Cerah asked, struggling to comprehend the mind of the Creator as He revealed it to her.
“Because of your sacrifice.”
It seemed suddenly to Cerah that the light was spinning, but she realized the whirling was within her. It was a literal manifestation of the absolute perplexity she was feeling.
“My sacrifice?”
“Cerah, you are, and have ever been, my Chosen One. Since before there was before, as my servants the wizards so poetically say. And because of this I will give you revelation understanding of the end, which is the new beginning.”
This confused her more than before, but she waited in silence.
“All of the Army of the Light saw you fall. They will hear my servant Kern say that you are lost. They will think the fight is ended.
“Likewise, the forces of Dark will believe they have won. With you out of the way they will roar and cheer and prepare to race up the cliff side to begin the massacre of your people.
“But before the Light can fade, or the Dark engulf, you will rise again. You will conquer death itself.”
“And I will save Slurr,” she said, immediately aware that her statement sounded selfish.
Sweet laughter. “I would have it no other way. It will drive the stake of fear even deeper into each evil soul, including that of Pilka’s Anger himself.”
“And then we will attack!”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. You will rise. You will raise your husband. And then you will wait.”
“As you say,” Cerah replied, immediately cognizant that there was no further place within her for doubt. She could no longer doubt herself, and she could by no means doubt Ma’uzzi. And so she promised compliance with his instructions, regardless of how they defied logic.
But then a question arose within her. “So. The Under Plane. Empty it. Empty the Under Plane. Forgive me, but I need to ask: how?”
“When Pilka dragged you to that realm, you passed out through a glistening fissure, did you not?”
“Yes, of course. I moved from there to Between.”
“Describe that portal to me.”
“Alright,” Cerah said, catching herself wondering how the Creator of the Universe could not know what the portal from the Under Plane to Between looked like.
Again he answered her thought. “I know. But describe it all the same.”
“It was a shimmering space. It looked like glistening shards of silver dancing and spinning in the air. It was narrow at the top and bottom, and swelled out in the middle. It was a little taller than me.”
“I shall open such a fissure for you to herd each lost soul through, and they shall come out the other side, once more into my Love.”
“Herd,” Cerah repeated. “Well, I have certainly plenty of experience doing that,” she said, thinking at once of agorrah.
“Do you wonder that your father sent you to the mountain now? And do you wonder that he called you his chosen one? Your brother held that job before you, but not that title.”
A flash of understanding tore through her. Suddenly everything, every instant of her life, the good as well as the bad, came in to crystalline focus. Then the understanding expanded, like the light of destruction when Surok had laid waste to the cities of the Green Lands. She now saw Ma’uzzi’s eternal plan laid out before her. It was wondrous and frightening all at once. Her mind flashed to her last encounter with the spirit of Opatta when he repeatedly said it was not for him to question, nor understand the mind of Ma’uzzi. She pitied him for that. His faith was admirable, and it had inspired Cerah. But the gift of total sight that Ma’uzzi was bestowing upon her now made her almost want to weep for those that had only faith to carry them. For months, she had been propelled forward by the Heart of Ma’uzzi. In this singular moment, she was touching the Mind of the Creator. The beauty of it surpassed even the concept of beauty. It was perfection beyond even the thought of perfection.
But then another thought. “What of Pilka? She will not stand idly while I steal from her the souls she has so long collected,” Cerah said.
The laughter.
“I am afraid I have a sad surprise for my sister, for my daughter. You will see it before you move the first soul to freedom.”
“She is your creation as well.”
“She is, created to reign with me forever. Her place was to be at my right hand. Her turning away cannot be redeemed. It will not be.”
“Then she will dwell alone in the Under Plane, with no souls to torment.”
“Not alone. The beings of darkness which think they have conquered my beautiful Green and Blue will join her. There will be room for them all.”
Cerah grew silent. She could think of no further questions. She could make no additional declarations. She waited.
As she did the light began to change. It still emanated in every direction, but now a part of it seemed to separate from the rest. She realized that she was seeing now, actually seeing with her eyes. And what she saw was beyond amazing.
Shapes rapidly resolved themselves and she witnessed a perfect landscape as far as her sight reached in every direction. For the faintest instant, she thought she was viewing the Green Lands. But at once she knew it was not so. There was grass and trees and flowers. There were birds and flutterbugs and all other animals scurrying unconcernedly in every direction. But each thing, though it was recognizable, was more of itself. The grass was like blades of emerald. The trees were taller, greener, each leaf a perfect creation, an entire universe, complete unto itself and at the same time part of everything, fully created, fully connected.
Then she saw herself. She could make out her arms and legs and body. It was clearly her own, but radiant light burst from every inch of it. As she moved her hand, the light trailed behind it, like a blazing staff-tip which moved through the darkness of night.
And then she saw Him. Immediately she fell to her knees. For although He stood before her, more radiant by far than the landscape or even her blazing self, the thing she saw most clearly was utter, perfect Love. She literally saw Love. She now knew what the word meant. For all her affection for her family, for her husband, for Tressida, she now realized that all of it was an imperfect imitation of what now revealed itself to her.
Ma’uzzi stepped toward her and put His hand upon her head. A joy so complete that it defied its own existence filled her. She never wanted to leave it. She never wanted to move. Her children, her husband, her match-mate; none of it mattered. But then as the Creator drew back His hand, it all mattered more than it ever had.
She leapt to her feet.
“I am ready!” she said, understanding those words for the first time.
“Yes,” Ma’uzzi replied. “At last you are.”
He moved his hand once more, and was gone.
In the screaming wind and knife-like rain, Parnasus stood above the prone forms of Slurr and Cerah. When the lightning had struck them, the time dilation he had experienced had vanished, and everything began happening at normal speed once more.
The sound of the weapons pounding against the creatures’ chests came to a sudden stop. And despite the noise that Surok’s unearthly, burning storm created, a sudden sense of silence fell.
Then came the roar. One hundred thousand voices tore free from one hundred thousand monsters’ throats. Raw, guttural cheers filled the dismal sky.
“Kern, come quickly!” Parnasus shouted, straining to be heard over the cacophony as he knelt beside Cerah’s body.
The wizard, who had once saved Cerah from certain death as the venom of a durra’s claw coursed through her veins, now ran to where she lay. He placed his fingers on her neck, then felt her chest. He looked up at his mentor’s face, his own an ashen mask of horror and despair.
“She is gone,” he said.
At the same instant the roar from below grew even louder, and was met in kind by a collective groan from the soldiers who heard the proclamation. Then the wretched sound of a sc
reaming dragon rose above all the other sound. Tressida bellowed in agony, as she felt the connection with Cerah snap.
“The lad,” Parnasus said.
Kern turned to where his dear friend lay and repeated the actions he’d just completed on Cerah. Though drenched with rain, when he looked again at Parnasus, his tears were obvious.
“Slurr too,” he sobbed.
Again the monsters roared, and again the warriors moaned.
From his vantage, a few feet from the wizards, Loar Pilta cried out, “Then we are lost. We are finished.”
The wizards did not reply. Parnasus wished with all his heart that he could contradict the giant man. But for every warrior of the Light that stood upon the cliff, three creatures of the dark stood at its base, roaring in demonic delight, waiting for the command from their towering master to strike.
He stood to his feet, though his head hung low. Kern had fallen across Slurr’s lifeless shell. His body shook from the sobs he could not control.
Now the creatures began to beat their weapons upon themselves once more. As they did, the warriors atop the cliff heard for the first time the soul-bashing sound of Surok’s laughter. It was unlike anything any had ever experienced. It was thunder, it was earthquake, it was roaring river and crashing waterfall, it was explosion. It was the voice of death itself.
The giant demon threw back his head and he laughed louder and longer than even his monsters had ever heard. The laughter consumed him. It caused him to double over.
Kern suddenly raised his head. With an expression that had no place upon a creature of the Light he looked to where the glowering demon stood. He knew as well as any that nothing resembling hope remained for them now. But the deaths of Cerah and Slurr had broken something in him. Slowly he stood.
As the wizard rose Surok lifted his head, and the burning vermillion eyes of the demon followed him. Suddenly his booming voice tore through the darkness. “I know you,” Surok said. “Every Silestra sees what each Silestran sees. They saw you centuries ago as you confused them and caused them to turn upon themselves. One told you then that I would bring a special death to you when your time had come. Then you deigned to strike at me again, bringing the witch-girl to your homeland, to attempt to train her… ”
Even as he spoke, Surok’s hand again raised. At the same time, Kern lifted his staff. He pointed it toward the demon and sent a blast of flaming energy down the cliff toward the demon. Before it could reach him, Orzo’s tale flashed out and batted it away. Again Surok’s laughter tore the air apart. This time when the lightning flew from his fingertips it did so not slowly, but ripping through the ether between them, reached Kern in less time than it took to realize it had started at all. However when it touched him, it did not strike him down.
Rather Kern was thrown high in the air. He hovered there for a moment, screaming in agony as his body writhed within the searing light, every one of his nerves turned against itself, and then a second flash reached him. As it did, the wizards and warriors on the escarpment gasped as they saw his arms and legs tear free from his body. The limbs fell to the ground, but still Kern hung in the air, alive, screaming. Then a third bolt crackled toward him, and when it struck, his torso was torn down the middle, his head ripped from his neck, with a final gurgling sound. Silent at last, the final pieces of the mighty wizard rained upon the roaring monsters, who fought over them.
Now Szalmi’s screams rose along with Tressida’s, the sound completing the horror of the moment for all who were unfortunate enough to witness it. At the same time the wizard who had waited patiently for Kern to return to Melsa, the same Milenda who had brought Preena from Tarteel to the plains of Kier, saw the man she loved torn asunder. She collapsed to the ground, weeping, screaming, pulling at her hair.
The First Elder also screamed in horror and despair as his friend and pupil was dismembered and devoured before his eyes.
At that instant Parnasus’s hand flew to his temple. It seemed the horror would not end. As he lowered it his beleaguered expression grew even more dire, his skin more pale and ashen.
“A rider has fallen,” he said, his voice a broken shell. “Ban has escaped, but Preena has been taken.”
Loar said, “The only mercy is that the General did not live to hear that news.”
In total surrender to anguish, Parnasus said, “There is no more mercy.”
21
The Final Sacrifice
Cerah knew immediately that she walked once more upon the Under Plane. The sorrow and dread surrounded her as before. But this time everything was different.
When Cerah had first been introduced to the souls of the lost, many months before in the Cavern of Signs, Parnasus’s staff had lit that place so that Cerah could dimly see the spirits with whom she talked. When Pilka had pulled her deep into the realm itself, she had needed to reach within herself, to kindle the Greater Spark to illuminate her path. As great as Ma’uzzi’s fire within her had burned, the action had only cast a minor glow upon the shades and the dire confines through which she passed.
But now she carried with her the very light of the Next Plane. It blazed in the eternal darkness.
Within a moment of her recognizing where she was, fallen spirits flew toward her, like insects to a torch flame.
From the very first, Parnasus had warned her that the damned shade would try to reach out to her, to reach within her. He had told her that her spirit would be like a sumptuous feast to them, and that she must always keep them at a distance.
But now she did not. She welcomed them. They flocked to her, completely encircling her, pressing in hard against her. She let them.
“Come!” she called. “Come to me. Be warmed! Be washed!”
In a matter of seconds Cerah saw that she was surrounded by an uncountable mass of weeping, groaning spirits. The mob seemed to extend out for miles in every direction. Still she received them.
As she watched, Cerah saw those nearest to her begin to change. The spirits who populated the Under Plane had always appeared to her as billowy wisps, only vaguely recognizable as something that had once been human. They were more like falling tears in the shape of men and women. But now, as her light washed over them, they began to solidify. Their bodies took definite shape, gradually becoming tall and straight. Not only beautiful, but perfect.
At last one called out to her. “How? How Chosen One?”
“Ma’uzzi has called you all back to Himself, and has sent me to break down the gates of this Plane, and bring you into the Next.”
“But our sin…” the spirit began.
“…Has been forgiven. It is no more,” answered Cerah.
The change began to spread out like the spokes of a wheel. From the center, where Cerah stood as a burning beacon, the shades reformed in to the creatures Ma’uzzi had meant them to be. And as their bodies changed, so too did their hearts. The weeping diminished. The moaning declined, then ceased altogether.
In the place of the chorus of sorrow came a new sound. The voices of the multitude began to sing the name of the Creator they had feared had forsaken them. Cries of “Ma’uzzi!” filled the air.
All at once a searing scream broke through the rising praise.
“NO!” came the tearing voice of Pilka. As Cerah watched, the goddess rushed toward her, appearing first at the edge of the circle of souls, then ploughing through them, pushing them to the left and right. When last Cerah had seen her move through the throng, the spirits had been scattered and tossed by her passing. Now, they began simply to spread away from her, opening a wide path through which she easily passed, glaring at the changed spirits as she moved among them.
As she came closer and closer to Cerah, Pilka was forced to shield her eyes, and her unbearable brightness seemed to almost burn the embodiment of anger and hatred. But still she came forward.
Cerah did not budge. Even though she did not know what was to happen, she trusted in Ma’uzzi’s promise that He, Himself, would deal with Pilka.
As she closed the distance between herself and Cerah, the dark goddess continued to scream and curse. For even though the spirits had made way to let her pass, they continued to call out the one name that Pilka hated above all others. And the sound was clearly hurting her. She tried to cover her ears, but when she moved her hands from her eyes, the brilliance emanating from Cerah burned them once more.
“Silence! Silence, you fools! Do you think I cannot increase your suffering? Do you think your eternal sorrow is all that I can rain upon you?”
“There is no more sorrow,” Cerah said. “The chains in which you have bound these souls are broken.”
“Shut your whore mouth!” Pilka screamed. “I will deal with you soon enough.”
Pilka stood at a point about fifty feet from Cerah. She turned her back to her now, and addressed the shades once more. “Get back! Return to your crags and crevices. Dissolve and be gone!”
“Oh,” said Cerah, “They’ll be gone soon enough. But not back to their damnation.”
Pilka whirled around. She looked at Cerah now, oblivious to the pain that the light was causing her.
“What are you saying, lying witch?” she asked.
“Ma’uzzi has called them home. Look at them, Pilka. They’re no longer yours. In truth, they never were. You may have taken them, but they have always belonged to Ma’uzzi. And now their separation is at an end.”
“I will not permit it!” Pilka roared, raising her hands above her head, as if to strike out at the spirits, still calling Ma’uzzi’s name.
“You are powerless to prevent it,” said Cerah.
At that moment the ground began to shake. As Cerah watched a crack appeared beneath Pilka’s feet. In an instant, it opened into a wide gap, and with her arms and legs flailing wildly, she plummeted into it. Uttering a scream of horror, the goddess found herself plunging ever deeper into a vast pit. Before she could even react, the hole was filled with roaring flames, which surrounded her, wrapped around her, consumed her. The spirits moved even further back as the fire roared and her screams increased in volume and intensity. As they watched the flames reached to the top of the opening, and formed a seal over it.
A Single Candle (Cerah of Quadar Book 3) Page 32
