An image flashed briefly in her mind of running after a band of brigands with her sword raised, and a squalling baby left in her husbands’ arms. Perhaps they could alternate their vigilantism? Artemi shook her head to clear her mind of such foolish thoughts. No, they would need the help of other hands with this.
She thought briefly of her need for clothing, and a neat pile appeared immediately before her. It was the original and most basic version of Kusuru Assassin garb, complete with red scarf and long boots made with soft, well-worn leather. Artemi began dressing herself in it.
Morghiad did the same with his own, and it was a moment before Artemi realised that he had barely had to concentrate to make it happen. Even though the light seemed to drain into him, and even though his eyes remained green rather than fire-full, he could manipulate The Crux just as naturally as if he had been born there.
As he went to collect the clothing he had conjured for himself, her eye was drawn to his bottom. There was something written on it. She leaned closer to see what it was, and then blinked. In dark green ink, and in a not-very-accomplished version of the Frontier Union tongue, was the tattoo, “Property of Artemi Fireblade.”
Morghiad caught the line of her sight, and grinned. “That came after the seventh or eighth beer. You insisted that I should be marked out as your own. You had something similar, but I suppose that moving between worlds has done something to yours. Or perhaps it is proof that, no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to own you.”
Now that she thought on it, she did have a vague recollection of a mraki artist holding a needle to her backside. Artemi twisted round to have a look at her bottom, but could not see anything written upon it. She almost felt disappointed. “You can brand me when we get back to the Darkworld,” she said, and shrugged into her black bodice.
Only when Morghiad had finished dressing did she recognise the coat he had chosen for himself. It was not a Hirrahan or Sunidaran jacket made for fighting or moving about; it was a long, gold-edged and dark velvet coat - the same as the one she had bought him to be kingly in. Morghiad still wore it like a king, even as he summoned his white sword, and belted it over the top. No, especially as he did that. It always had picked out the very best parts of him, but why had he chosen to dress in such a manner here and now?
She decided to put those thoughts aside, and brought forth new ones of how they would make their way home. Where were those Law-keepers? Artemi quickly snuffed out that thought as well. She did not want to draw them close without good reason. And Tallyn… well…
She put a hand to her stomach. Could such a thing be possible? The Law-keepers had no reason to be that kind to her, but surely if he were to be born again, she would have to carry him a second time…
“Is everything alright?”
Artemi could not allow herself to hope, and to permit Morghiad to go through the same emotions would have been unnecessarily cruel, but the words still burned on her tongue. She had to say it to him. “Could this be Tallyn?”
His face filled with sorrow suddenly, and he took hold of her hands. His skin felt ice cold on hers. “Artemi… I did not bargain with them for that-”
She nodded slowly. “I understand.” That he had managed to find his way to her was impressive enough. Artemi could hardly expect more from any rescuer. They embraced briefly, and began walking through the Bright Woods. She remembered that she had played in them often as a child, willing objects into existence and wishing they had movement of their own. As was true of so much in this place, where light and warmth were plentiful, spirit and life were entirely lacking.
“I had to look into some sort of pool to get to your Nightworld and find you – I hope you have a simpler method of getting home.”
Artemi had never used the Darkworld gates in the other direction before, but she had some idea of how they could be found. She summoned the idea of the Darkworld into her mind – all of its life and pain and joy and its features of wielders, kanaala, of the Blazes, eisiels, its shadowed places and its bright lands. And fire of the fires, those thoughts of the place made her heart ache!
Eight doors appeared immediately before her. Only eight? “Morghiad, one of the gates is missing.” Upon each was marked the outline of an animal. There was a tiger, a bear, a toothed fish of some kind, a Jarhoan dragon, a bird of prey and several other creatures that Artemi could not identify. Nowhere was there a panther. “They’ve closed Gialdin’s gate.”
Morghiad’s back immediately tensed. It would have been a barely perceptible change in his posture to anyone else, but to Artemi it was obvious.
“Why would they do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know – do you think they would have cut off the energy that feeds it too?”
That would have been a very cruel thing to do, but the Law-keepers would hardly have cared for the impact of it upon lowly Darkworlders. If a wielder had arrived in need of it… Artemi closed her eyes.
“That child needs to be born in an active gate, my heart.” He was using his commanding voice again, and Artemi could barely hope to disagree with it.
“They will have guardians on each of them – guardians who are not so pleasant to look upon as you are.”
Morghiad folded his arms. “If it is too dangerous, then we will stay here until he or she is born. You can… do that here safely, can’t you?”
“I think so.” Artemi had been too young to know of such things when she had first left The Crux, and the Law-keepers had not seen it proper to educate her on it. She had a faint memory of her first mother, which meant that the woman must have lived through it. That memory was so distant now, like an ancient drawing that had become sun-bleached and washed out through time. Artemi could not recall what her mother had looked like.
Her husband did not appear to be terribly satisfied with the answer, and he pressed his lips together while his brow formed a series of knots. “Choose whichever of these is closest to Gialdin then.”
A map sprang up before her, dotted with the eight creatures of the gates. The closest to the palace was undoubtedly the one on the shores of Kemen, which looked to be guarded by some sort of spider. “That one.”
Morghiad nodded in agreement. “A panther can flatten a spider beneath its paw. I won’t let it hurt you.”
A panther with enormous paws might do such a thing. Artemi had the distinct feeling that she may have already met one of these guardians before, and in spite of his excellent height and strong arms, she was willing to bet that Morghiad was the smallest of them all.
Without further discussion, he strode to the door and stood before it with one hand upon his hilt.
“Wai-”
But Artemi did not have time to finish. For all of Morghiad’s evident ability in this place, he clearly had not had time to practise proper control over his thoughts. The door opened before him, and stark, empty darkness was revealed beyond it. “Stay here,” he instructed, but Artemi would have sooner given herself up to the fires of The Crux than do that.
She marched in behind him and waited for her eyes to adjust to the low light. Almost immediately, the sensation of the Blazes flooded back into her, burning brightly and fiercely at every edge of her consciousness. And that was a good feeling! It was every joy and light that taqqa had come so close to bringing her, and so much more besides.
“No wielding!” Morghiad barked.
If her face had been visible to him, she would have grimaced to let him know just how she felt about that. She had wielded whilst pregnant in another life, in another world, and it had not harmed the children, though at the time, that particular pregnancy had been more advanced. Morghiad was definitely being over-cautious. Her thoughts paused there, however, as she realised she could not detect any wielding ability in this child. Another son?
Tallyn, her mind whispered back in hope, but she stamped down on that voice before it ran away with her.
“If you’re coming, you stay behind me,” Morghiad whispered firmly.
�
��As you command, my king.” She could perfectly imagine the feelings of annoyance and irritation that would have roused in him from the comment.
Slowly, her eyes acclimatised to the cave into which they had stepped, and the door behind them eased shut. It mirrored the one in Gialdin with its thick bar of light and pool of water upon the floor, but the rock that surrounded them was of an altogether different nature. It was blue and pale like the Kemeni mountains themselves, and that same colour would have faded seamlessly into the white of any snow that drifted in. But here the rocks were not frosted with ice water. Instead, every surface had been covered in the glutinous silk of a spider’s web, and strands of it arced from wall to wall in a complex tapestry of spun silver. Its creator appeared to be absent.
“This is no place for my wife-”
“It will be no worse than any of the others.”
Morghiad made a deep growling noise and stepped forward, withdrawing his sword. He began cutting through the web with long, slow sweeps of his blade, and Artemi could not help but feel frustrated at it. Her blades were probably still locked somewhere in Gialdin. She waited patiently while he cleared a way for them to the exit, and then padded behind him toward the glowing door.
Chapter 15
There was still no movement around him, and the air was too light and thin to be natural. Air ought to move about and have some substance to it, Silar thought to himself. And what was the point of these trees if nothing lived on or around them, anyway? He leaned closer to examine the bark of one of them, but could detect neither insects nor egg casings, nor anything of note. It was a playground, he decided – a playground for people who wanted nature without the horrors of it. There was no life to this place because the truth of life had become too abhorrent for its creators to bear. This was a dream world for fools to live in without living.
And who had created this dream world? Not Artemi – she had realised the stupidity of it - the Law-keepers! And as his mind came to think of them, a memory returned to him. This was all a ploy – every moment he had spent here, every puzzle he had been set to solve and fire he had been urged to tend – it was all a ploy to keep him trapped here! The unseen hands of the Law-keepers were guiding his movements, but he had been too damned stupid to see it!
“Fires of Achellon!” he shouted to the trees. But they remained impassive and lifeless. They did not even waver in the breeze nor creak in sympathy for his realisation. Blast those stupid, false trees made of nothing but mist and wishes! Burn them for turning his memory to Jarhoan cheese in this place! How was he to achieve whatever it was that he had come for if he could barely remember anything for longer than five minutes here! Blast them to the deepest depths of nothingness! He kicked at the will die pieces that still lay at his feet, and then blinked. There was something beyond them – something that looked different from his usual trail of clues. He strode toward it.
When he drew close, it became apparent that this was Achellon’s version of a house. Though windowless and plain, it did have a door on the side that he faced. Well of course it follocking-well would, wouldn’t it? And naturally, there would be no handle on the thing. Silar approached it anyway, but as soon as he did, it swung open before him.
He waited for someone to come out and attack him, or remonstrate with him for being here in the first place, but no one appeared. Silar withdrew his sword, stepped quietly through and found himself in a vast room that was really far too big to have fitted into the structure that lay outside. Blazes, how he hated this place!
The room, though stark and with walls that glowed brighter even than those at Gialdin, was not empty. A group of women lay sleeping at the far end of it, so Silar decided to investigate. Perhaps they would be pretty women, he thought to himself with some excitement.
With an assassin’s walk that even Artemi would have been impressed by, he tiptoed silently toward them and held his breath. He need not have bothered however, for when he got there, he realised that none of the women had heads. There was no blood, no mess or evidence of a fight. There were just three glowing bodies, and only air above their shoulders.
Wait… there was something bulky underneath one of them. Silar pushed the woman over gently, but sighed forlornly at what he saw. It looked to have been a boy, no more than eight years old, who had met a similar fate to these women. No child, not even the offspring of the evil gods or whatever they were that ruled this place, deserved such a fate.
Where were their heads? And almost immediately he knew the answer would be behind him. He turned slowly to see it, and found the four of them neatly arranged upon pedestals, facing away from him. When he went to inspect their faces, he instantly recognised three of them as the Law-keepers, and each one had their eyes closed. The boy’s eyes were wide however, and though devoid of fire, they shone a very vivid shade of blue. Silar could not help but think he had seen those eyes before, but where, he could not identify.
“What I do not see cannot exist until I see it, and even then it is a world of my own making.” Had Silar done this somehow? He certainly had not intended to. It could well be another puzzle set for him by the Law-keepers, though it seemed a very odd one indeed. At least when they had set him puzzles before, they had hinted that there might be an answer worth pursuing.
He closed the boy’s eyes gently with the tips of his fingers, but as soon as he removed them, the eyes snapped open again. Burn this place! Silar cursed again, hissed through his teeth and spun to leave the room.
Something was wrong here. Even for this place, with its peculiar rules and torments designed especially for him. Something was not right about it.
Once outside, he sat against one of the glowing walls of the building to ensure that it did not disappear while he was not looking, and tried to think of what he had learned so far. He had seen Morghiad; he was fairly sure that had not been any design of his captors, and he had finally won a game of will die against himself. Before that... there had been the flagon of ale. Some dreams had come from drinking its contents, and… his mood darkened as he remembered the dreams.
Oslond, he thought, Oslond must pay.
But there was a reason he could not immediately march to his revenge - something else that itched at the back of his mind. What was it? A name? He shook his head. Whatever it was, he would remember if it was particularly important. No, the Law-keepers had revealed Oslond’s nature to him because they wanted him to understand something beyond what had happened to his mother. They had wanted him to see the sacrifice she had made, and they had wanted him to see what he was: a creation of theirs, a tool to be used for their purposes.
They wanted… someone to see into the future for them. The will die game – that had been about playing against himself, except it had not been him. It had been another version of him: The Daisain.
Silar sprang to his feet so that he could pace and swing his sword through the grass. He was not the same as The Daisain, and yet he was. They were not the same person, except that they were. The Law-keepers had made them both, but the earlier version had been killed when he could not see through the chaos of Mirel’s insane mind. They had needed a second version: Silar, but something had not worked as it should have. Silar had not developed as quickly as they had hoped, or he had disappointed them when they saw he could not anticipate Morghiad’s actions.
Chaotic minds… Talia. His jaw hardened and his teeth ground as he remembered his original reason for coming here, and how the Law-keepers had led him on a merry chase to forget her. But he was better at manipulating this place now. He could make things happen.
Silar closed his eyes and envisioned a ball of flame in the palm of his hands. He imagined it wild and chaotic as she had been, and he pictured arms and legs sprouting out from the middle of it. Talia, he thought, and he imagined the ball of flame growing too large for his hand and spilling out onto the ground. It grew into a handsome woman with blood-red hair and sky-blue eyes. She winked suggestively at him. Talia.
But when he o
pened his eyes again, she was not there. Follocks to it, he wanted to say, but the words hurt too much. Perhaps it really was not possible to bring her back, and perhaps the Law-keepers had managed to bring The Daisain back because he had never truly been dead. It was then that something fell into place in Silar’s mind, as a cog might fit into machinery and permit it to start to turn.
The Daisain would have been sensible enough to have known that Morghiad would side with Artemi no matter what. He had to have known that he would not kill his own son when it risked hurting her. No amount of chaos in Morghiad’s mind could have made that decision difficult to see, and if it had been, The Daisain would have made arrangements for future possibilities in the event of his capture. No, he had known that capture and imprisonment would most likely happen. He must have wanted it to happen.
Had the Law Keepers even known what they had created, and how powerful The Daisain truly was? They were simple enough - predictable enough to be his toys.
And then Silar saw it. He saw the truth that The Daisain had revealed to them – a truth that had been an incomplete truth. And he saw how they had been manipulated and turned like soft lead on a cart’s wheel.
The Daisain wanted the end to come; he had always wanted it. It was his route to controlling all of the worlds, bright and night, and it was his route to ruling from a grand seat of power in The Crux. Silar trotted back into the building and swallowed in disgust at what he saw. The bodies of the Law-keepers were still there, only this time they floated in rippling pools of their own blood. There was more spattered against the wall, and their heads had been mounted on spikes. Even the boy’s. They truly were dead.
No… Silar had to stop it now. He had to prevent it from going any further than this!
Fourteen eyes glittered from its hair-filled face, each of them stacked atop one another like misshapen black marbles on a gaming grid, and four great, pointed fangs curved outward from its mouth. Those were covered in sparse yellow fur, and beneath that shone the hard black casing that passed for its skin. The creature was as tall as two warhorses, with a dozen spindly legs that could have formed a cage about a good-sized house. And it moved rapidly, so very rapidly!
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