“I didn’t know Erebos’s despair would touch you so strongly,” Daxos said. “Down there, it might feel even worse.”
“I can handle it,” Elspeth assured him. “And we’ve come all this way.”
“Are you sure that you’re all right?” he said. “We can go back to Meletis. I’ll throw you in the river on the way home.”
She squinted at him and tapped her blade playfully. “You could try.”
They picked their way down the ridge, slipping on loose rocks, and made their way toward the cave.
“The cave is a shrine to Athreos, the Boatman,” he said. “I don’t know what’s happened to him in the Silence. I don’t think Kruphix would have drawn him into Nyx. He has too important a role in the passage of the dead.”
“Do you want to go inside?” she asked when they reached the entrance.
“Yes, I need to,” he said. “Wait for me here?”
“No, I’ll come with you,” Elspeth said.
“I can’t speak inside the cave,” Daxos warned. “Erebos knows my voice. He wants to steal oracles for himself, so I must be silent, or he will send his agents for us. Whatever happens, don’t let go of my hand.”
Just as they stepped inside the cave mouth, it was as if the darkness reached out and engulfed them. The light from the outside world evaporated, and it felt like she was being crushed by the blackness. With no point of reference, she began to feel off-balance, and she gripped Daxos’s fingers like a lifeline. The air bristled against her skin, and suddenly there were a thousand voices screaming in her ears. Without thinking about the consequences, she cast a spell that flooded the chamber with golden light. Daxos shielded his eyes against the unexpected brilliance, but Elspeth saw what lurked beyond the circle of light. Ghostly, skittering forms encircled them—the lost souls of the dead trapped in the shrine with no one to carry them to the Underworld. The forms of the eidolons were made of light and aether, but under Erebos’s influence, Elspeth perceived them in gruesome detail. She saw a woman, her body rotting like a zombie, stumbling toward her. An old man fell to his knees with his heart pierced with a javelin. Nearby, a young man with his skull crushed in lurched against the wall of the cavern.
Elspeth wanted to leave Theros. Immediately and forever. She couldn’t planeswalk instantaneously, but she fell to her knees and focused everything she could on escaping this terrifying cave. Once, her friend Ajani told her that eventually planeswalking would get easier and become less taxing. Her terror and despair seemed to accelerate the process. The edges of her being were like sand blown away in the wind. She was willing to hurl herself anywhere into the Blind Eternities to escape this horrific visage …
Suddenly she felt Daxos beside her, the warmth of his body against her own. He wrapped his arms around her and became an anchor to reality. When she opened her eyes again, the eidolons were just blurry images. The vision of blood and carnage that had accompanied them moments before was gone.
“Please stay,” Daxos said. “Stay with me.”
Elspeth severed her spell and let the magic disperse. She and Daxos ran for the entrance and crossed the threshold into the sickly light of the Despair Lands. They didn’t stop running until they reached the withered boundary of the Nessian Forest and the unconcerned horse.
“I wondered what affect the Silence might have on the dead,” Daxos said. “I was afraid that the dead might be trapped without passage.”
Elspeth threw her blade on the ground. She couldn’t remain still. She kept turning in small circles, trying to find the breath that seemed to have gotten lost in her chest. She felt like an animal trapped inside a hunter’s snare.
“I’m sorry, Elspeth,” Daxos said. “Erebos’s despair affects you profoundly. More than most people. My hatred for Erebos keeps me safe from him.”
“I saw his agents when Nikka and I were traveling to Meletis,” Elspeth said.
Daxos nodded, but he stared at her with an expression she’d never seen before. It wasn’t awe, nor was it fear or expectation.
“What spell were you about to cast?” Daxos asked. “I’ve never felt anything like that.”
Elspeth shook her head. Even if she wanted to talk to him about it, she wouldn’t have the right words.
Below them, they saw a flicker of light moving across the Despair Lands. They stood on the edge and watched as it drew nearer. When she reached the base of the ridge, they could see it was an eidolon of a young woman with a long black braid. Daxos paled at the sight of her. Her form shifted with distorted light. It was as if the eidolon were blinking in and out of existence. She reached up to them with pleading arms. She beckoned to Daxos to follow her, but he shouted into the wind.
“You coward,” he raged, and his voice rang throughout the Despair Lands. “I will end you.”
Elspeth was frightened that, in his anger, he might lose his footing and slip off the side. She stood close by, in case he needed her.
“Is that your mother?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.
“It’s a trick,” he shouted. And then he said more quietly, “Erebos heard my voice in the cave, and is trying to taunt me.”
Daxos ripped off the amulet with the glass asphodel that his mother had given him on the last day of her life. He threw it down to where the ghostly woman had fallen to her knees. Still she beckoned to him. When the glass amulet hit the black sand, both it and the eidolon evaporated into smoke. Elspeth and Daxos turned away from the Despair Lands, and together they led the horse away and back into the forest. They leaned together as they walked, and just like the first night they met, each thought the other was leading the way.
Just as Rhordon the Rageblood raised his hammer to smash the skull of the injured leonin, he found himself wondering about the afterlife. Where would the leonin prisoner go after he died? Leonins didn’t worship the gods. So would Athreos refuse to carry him across the river and to the Underworld? It was an odd thought at an inopportune moment. An exceptionally large and brutal minotaur, Rhordon was not accustomed to having his mind wander wherever it wanted. He was an oracle of Mogis, whose voice had been constant in his mind until the Silence. And it wasn’t just Mogis’s voice that had typically overwhelmed his own thoughts—Iroas’s voice had been like a constant echo. Mogis would rant and Iroas’s voice would counter him, and the ripples consumed Rhordon’s mind and even his dreams.
Now his brain was asserting his independence. And he didn’t like it.
Musing about the Underworld made him pause, and the circle of bloodthirsty minotaurs that had gathered around sensed it. No minotaur hesitated in battle and lived long afterward. The leonin rolled on its back on the scarred floor of the temple. Its blue eyes stared up at Rhordon without fear. The leonin had been beaten, stomped and humiliated, but it didn’t grovel or beg. It wasn’t that it welcomed death; it just wasn’t scared of it.
The minotaurs that crowded around Rhordon growled with displeasure. They didn’t like delayed carnage. Their ear-splitting roars rattled the crumbling columns and sent a rain of dust falling from the remains of the ceiling. The Temple of Malice was a ruined fortress that had slipped into a rift between two mountains during one of Purphoros’s battles with the giants. The stylized architecture belonged to a past civilization, a precursor to Akros, although traces of the grandeur could still be seen behind the foul exterior.
“Bring me his weapon!” Rhordon shouted as if that’s why he’d been waiting to finish the prisoner all along. When the leonin had been captured in the hills above Akros, he’d carried a fine bronze sword with a glassy blue disc at the base of the blade. It was that sword that had kept him from being killed on the spot. One of the minotaur warriors insisted that Brimaz, King of Oreskos, carried such a sword. If this was the king of the leonins, he would make a handsome ransom. But the leonin had denied he was the king, even under extreme duress, so there was no use keeping him alive any longer.
One of his warriors handed him the leonin’s shiny blade, and Rhordon hesitated
no more. He struck the leonin’s neck with such force that its head flew several feet from the body. Rhordon grunted with satisfaction and moved out of the way as his fellow minotaurs descended on the body in a flesh-mad rage. But their feast was interrupted when one of his guards shouted that an intruder was about to enter the temple.
A diminutive satyr sauntered into the ruined hall, and the minotaurs stopped eating, their muzzles dripping blood, and watched him in surprise. Satyrs were considered small meals, not visitors. But stranger still, the satyr was flanked by two of the largest Nyxborn minotaurs anyone had ever seen. Rhordon was the biggest minotaur in the Temple of Malice, and he had to duck his horns when he crossed the threshold. These Nyxborn intruders stood at least a head taller than Rhordon. No self-respecting minotaur, not even a Nyxborn, should deign to serve a satyr. With his limited god-sight, Rhordon recognized that these Nyxborn were not quite what they seemed to be. While Rhordon’s brain churned with curiosity, the satyr spoke first.
“I am Xenagos,” the satyr bleated. Rhordon despised the squeaky voices of the lesser races. “The humans are joining together to slaughter all of you in Mogis’s absence. Iroas cheats the Silence and aids them from Nyx.”
Rhordon should have sent his warriors to rip the satyr into four pieces, but the satyr’s words stopped him. The warriors left the raw flesh and grouped themselves behind their leader. Rhordon knew what they were thinking—why didn’t Rhordon pound this impudent goat into a puddle? He grunted at them to hold their ground. His minotaurs seethed with anger, but the satyr took Rhordon’s signal as permission to continue.
“Akros is the beating heart of Iroas,” Xenagos said. “It’s time to rip it out.”
Rhordon snarled with rage, and his warriors clashed their rusty weapons against the shattered tiles of the floor. Xenagos scanned the decrepit hall with its crumbling pillars and piles of bones. Despite the large number of threatening minotaurs inside the structure, he acted as if he was lord of them all.
“Mogis sent you an army of Nyxborn through the shrine of the gods, but the Akroans overwhelmed them,” Xenagos said.
“How do you know this?” Rhordon demanded.
Xenagos gestured with both hands to the imposing Nyxborn looming beside him. Rhordon wasn’t impressed. But he knew that the goatman didn’t conjure them from nothing. Only Mogis could create Nyxborn minotaurs, so Rhordon decided to give the intruder a few more seconds of life. Besides, it was bleating at him again.
“The Akroan army destroyed my own valley, and you are next,” Xenagos said. “I’m willing to return Mogis’s army to you in exchange for your immediate conquest of Akros.”
Rhordon didn’t believe the lying satyr. Such a weakling couldn’t have captured an entire army of Nyxborn minotaurs. It was insulting for him to suggest that he had such prowess. Rhordon raised his grizzled chin. With that slight movement of his chin, he gave his warriors leave to kill the satyr.
The nearest warrior charged, but Xenagos anticipated his attack. The satyr did a strange sidestep, dragging his hoof through the bloody dirt, and one of his Nyxborn protectors lurched forward. Rhordon sensed an overwhelming power emanating through the unnatural creature. The Nyxborn stepped directly in front of Rhordon’s warrior and lifted him up into the air like a sack of grain. Then he tossed him headfirst into the wall, snapping his neck against the stones. Before anyone could move, the satyr did another strange sidestep. Rhordon felt debilitating pain as Xenagos blasted searing energy against the Rageblood himself.
Rhordon perceived the mystical strike with his god-senses—it was like serrated claws raking across his body, followed by a burst of fire. The blast singed his fur and ripped his flesh, but Rhordon was not greatly harmed. Indeed, he relished the pain. Rhordon’s warriors felt a sickly wind and saw their leader’s chest split open. They glanced uneasily between the satyr and the wounded oracle. Rhordon pressed his hand into the wound and wiped his bloody fingers across his brow. He knew the satyr could have killed him and chose not to. He would treat the goat with a little more respect. With another tip of his chin, he ordered his warriors to fall back and not attack their visitor again.
“I did capture them myself,” the satyr said, and Rhordon did not argue. “And I will tell you how to destroy Akros, and you will be Rhordon, Conqueror of Akros.”
“How can you know something that Mogis does not?” Rhordon asked.
“Mogis knows,” Xenagos assured him. “But Iroas will not let him break the Silence and leave Nyx to tell you himself. He sent you an army instead.”
Rhordon could believe this. Iroas existed solely to thwart Mogis and prevent his carnage.
“Tell us,” Rhordon growled. “And human blood will flood the streets of that accursed city.”
Xenagos took a long knife from his belt and drew a circle in the dirt with its tip.
“This is Akros,” the satyr said. “The city walls have never been breached because the wandering armies have always returned and flanked the invaders. Neither man nor minotaur can fight in two directions at once.”
Xenagos took his knife and drew another circle, a larger one, around the walls of Akros. Rhordon understood, even if his warriors did not. At the sight of it, he heard a rumble from above. He swore it was the sound of Mogis voicing his brutal approval from Nyx.
“A circle around a circle,” Xenagos smiled deviously. “And my Nyxborn will help you build it.”
Before Rhordon could respond, a warrior sprinted into the hall. His filthy fur was matted and damp from racing across the countryside. His battle-axe was covered in gore, and he wore fresh human skins.
“They’ve mounted our brethren’s heads on the gates of Akros!” he shouted.
“See, I’ve told you nothing but the truth,” the satyr said. “The humans are preparing to slaughter you.”
Rhordon stared at Xenagos for a long moment. “Continue, goat,” he said.
The satyr did another funny step. And then he bowed in service to the god of war and slaughter.
You’re so dead, Daxos!” Nikka taunted.
With a flourish, Nikka slid the green tile six squares to the east and nudged a yellow tile that belonged to Daxos. Elspeth said nothing. Nikka was making a grave error, and the game would soon be over for her. Elspeth kept her eyes firmly on the game board so her face would betray nothing. The three of them were in Daxos’s rooms in Heliod’s complex. They often gathered in the evenings to sit by the fire and play a tile-and-board game known as Heliod’s Domain. At least that’s what the locals called it here in Meletis. Back in Akros, it was called Iroas’s Domain, and Xiro and his friends played the game incessantly. Xiro believed it taught actual strategy on the battlefield and had insisted that Elspeth learn it. Much to Xiro’s and his crew’s surprise, it took Elspeth only a few sessions before she grasped the subtleties and routinely won the game.
Nikka made her disastrous move. Daxos shook his head in disbelief and removed his yellow tile. Elspeth tried hard not to stare at Daxos with his secret smile and the firelight flickering across his face. Nikka started humming a little song and moving her shoulders as though she was dancing in her chair.
“You’d been setting that up for how long?” he asked. Elspeth coughed politely into her hand to keep Nikka from seeing her smile.
“For ages,” Nikka said happily.
It was nice to see Nikka smiling. She hadn’t adjusted well to life in Meletis. She refused to study or obey the rules expected of Ephara’s acolytes. While the news that Beta had survived the attack by Erebos’s agents had allayed her grief, her rebellious attitude had only gotten worse. Ephara’s priests had complained about Nikka to both Elspeth and her father. They called her defiant and uninterested in participating in Ephara’s civic works. There was talk of sending her home to her father in Akros.
“Well, you’ve been so busy trying to barge your way into my territory that you’ve completely ignored the threat right behind you,” Daxos said.
He gestured to Elspeth, who slid her red ti
le into Nikka’s home row. Nikka’s face fell in disappointment.
“Victory for Elspeth,” Daxos said.
Nikka yelled incoherently. She swept her arm across the enameled board and knocked the tiles onto the floor. Elspeth and Daxos exchanged knowing glances about the impulsiveness of youth.
“Manners, child,” Daxos said. “Don’t they teach you how to behave in Akros?”
Nikka opened her mouth to retort, but the door of Daxos’s rooms slammed open and a woman strode inside, sloughing off the priests who tried ineffectually to stop her. She had long dark hair, high cheekbones, and she wore the armor of a Setessan warrior. She carried a long white bundle while Stelanos dogged her heels.
“Daxos, we’re sorry,” Stelanos said. “She insisted on seeing you.”
“It’s all right,” Daxos told Stelanos. “I know her.”
“Do you need anything?” Stelanos asked. He was already backing out of the room while the woman stared aggressively at him. In the corridor outside the door, three more Setessan warriors waited impatiently. Each of the women was more than six feet tall and towered over the flustered priests. The two sides stared at each other distrustfully while Daxos reassured Stelanos.
“No, thank you,” Daxos said, and Stelanos retreated to the corridor.
Elspeth could only see the woman’s profile, but she looked desperate and ferocious at the same time.
“Anthousa,” Daxos said. “Why have you come to Meletis? What’s wrong?”
Anthousa laid the bundle on the cushions of a nearby couch and brushed the cloth aside. They saw the face of a small child. The girl was as still as a statue.
“Can you help her?” Anthousa asked. “Her heart beats, but no air moves through her lungs.”
“Is it a mage’s injury?” Daxos asked.
“The Nyxborn invaded Setessa in the night,” Anthousa said. “Since the Silence, they’ve been swarming through the Nessian Forest. She was bit by a Nyxborn snake, and it afflicted her with this strange sickness.”
Journey Into Nyx Page 4
