by Ron Collins
Chapter 13
Garrick was back in Arderveer, stewing on the hundred ways he wanted to harm Zutrian Esta and Braxidane when the idea struck him.
He needed to find one of Braxidane’s other champions.
It was, admittedly, a ridiculously far-fetched idea. It was an idea that had no chance of success for the simple reason that the problem that kept him from making it happen—the blockade of Adruin from the rest of Existence—was the same problem he needed the champions’ help to solve.
Unfortunately, it was the only idea he could muster.
The Lectodinians were not going to help. The Koradictines were no longer of any power. Darien was too focused on Dorfort to listen to issues on the scale of All of Existence, and the planewalkers themselves were the actual problems. That left only one other group with enough power to help and enough stake in the game that they would consider doing so.
So, yes. He needed to find one of Braxidane’s other champions.
Better yet, he needed to find all of Braxidane’s other champions.
Then he needed to bring all those champions to bear on the Lords of Existence. It was the only way to stop the planewalkers from toying with the planes whenever their bickering seemed to call for it. Nothing would make him happier than to stop these Lords from destroying the lives of countless people who were living their innocent and otherwise oblivious lives.
The circular nature of the situation made it impossible, though.
He needed to break the seal on his plane to get to the other champions, and he needed the other champions in order to break the seal on his plane.
It all added up to the fact that Adruin was doomed, and, sitting alone in Arderveer’s darkness, Garrick felt the weight of that doom draped across his shoulders as if it were a water-logged bearskin. He sensed the ebb and tide of energy as it settled into stasis across the plane. It molded against his mind like liquid in a water skin, shifting and sliding. It filled empty cracks in the cosmos of the plane’s being with its slippery breath, but it no longer had current. It no longer flowed. It reminded him of life before he had been touched by Braxidane. Warm, yet insubstantial—cold, yet somehow so tantalizing he could not imagine being without it.
The plane’s barrier was that water skin. It held the power of all of Adruin inside it, constraining it, limiting it, holding it together like his own skin held together his innards. It made him morose to think that someday all those innards would drain away. Not immediately, of course, but someday, over time, slowly, certainly everything about him would fade away. That was life. Or, as Braxidane would say, the long fade to death was the consequence of life. And as long as the gate was cap-stoned, Adruin’s end game was foretold.
It was then that the rest of his idea formed.
It came in layers, congealing so slowly that he wasn’t exactly certain when it had arrived, or indeed if it hadn’t been there all the time and merely needed to be uncovered. But it came together in a moment when he was thinking about Will, and about how boundless the boy’s future should have been. He was remembering Will’s optimism and how it seemed to leak out of him like some kind of fresh-scented perspiration, and yet how Will never seemed to run out of it.
And the idea hit him.
Where would the energy go?
If Adruin was to be depleted of its life force, but its path to All of Existence were blocked, where would it all go?
And, more importantly, more relevant to the moment, if all of Adruin’s life force and all of its magical power were to be drained, how would it leave?
The question brought him upright.
He remembered Braxidane’s comment.
“Don’t waste time swooning for poor Adruin.” Braxidane had said. “It will rise again. These planes are like weeds that way. They always come back.”
He asked himself: If lands in capped planes rise again, where does the life force come from?
And he knew the answer.
There had to be other passages. Other flows.
Leakages, maybe.
If the plane’s barrier was a water skin, could it be breeched elsewhere?
As soon as he thought of it in this fashion Garrick sensed a change, a permutation in the flow that was so tiny as to be impossible to feel without looking for it. Miniscule portions of power slipped out of the bladder that held it.
And then what?
Evaporated away? Disappeared?
Flowed into something bigger outside the plane? Into Existence itself?
Maybe.
But if he was right, that seepage would work both ways. Once the plane of Adruin had been drained of its life, its empty husk would lie like detritus in the flow of All of Existence and then it would soak up energy in this slow fashion, life force slipping in through the very walls of the world itself.
Could he use this?
Garrick set gates and concentrated on the points of Adruin where he sensed the outflow. He wrapped Hezarin’s energy around himself. A space opened before him—a bubble, or a seam in the construction of the plane. Garrick followed that hole and steadied himself as he tottered on the seam it exposed. It was warm here, lit with faded orange and green glows that made everything feel disjointed and out of place. He stepped his way along the seam. As he moved, a hum of power made his stomach churn. The hairs on his arms rose. The air smelled of overripe fruit.
He knelt and ran his hand along the seam.
Existence. Yes. It smelled of the place.
Without thinking, Garrick funneled more magic through his gates. He grabbed handfuls of his own life force and stuffed it into his spell work. Then he slipped his hand firmly into the seam. He pried at it with vigor, pulling more energy around him to create the shield he knew he would need.
Soon the gap was large enough for him to slip through.
He recognized All of Existence as he would recognize anything that was a home. That part of him that was Hezarin expanded toward the energy as if it were hunger itself. Panic gripped him as he watched his fingers extend to become wafting tendrils, and he choked as they wriggled out of the protection of his shell to trail in the energy that was Existence. He was a changed man. He didn’t need the shell.
Pleasure shuddered over his entire body.
He breathed that pleasure in, and when that breathing reached its full extent he breathed deeper still, reveling in the excruciating release that stretched his lungs.
Yes.
His tendrils glowed golden. Energy coursed through him with a rhythm that felt like the beat of a heart. He felt everything around him as if it all lay just under his skin. The limitless expanse of the universe made him dizzy.
Was he now a Lord of Existence?
Hezarin laughed at him in the deep recesses of his mind.
No, fool. You cannot be one of us.
He believed her, but if he was not a planewalker, then what was he?
He stretched out his cilia and tasted the energy’s cinnamon burn.
Braxidane’s essence remained in the flow. He felt each place Braxidane had built a node. He felt his superior’s links as if they were a map—they were passages that led to Braxidane’s planes—clear and simple, easy to follow. They were lines that tied him to Braxidane, and hundreds more that tied him to each and every one of Braxidane’s champions across the Thousand Worlds.
They were exactly what he was looking for.
He turned to follow the first link.
Chapter 14
Will stepped quietly to the alcove outside Darien’s war council.
Being silent and unobserved was a skill he had learned well over the past year, having often slipped through the government center’s hallways to listen when Darien’s father had briefed Lord Ellesadil of news related to the clash at God’s Tower. The building was rife with passages a boy known for being precocious could get lost in. Now he used them to investigate tales of a strange visitor who had arrived in the city during the late hours of the night, demanding that the guard let him see Darien.
Will knelt to one knee and pressed his ear to the door.
He heard a strange voice.
“If you do not help me, your city will burn whether you defeat your Lectodinian horde, or not,” the voice said.
It took Will a moment to place it.
Braxidane.
He nearly yelped at the realization. The visitor was Garrick’s superior.
“Let me see if I have you correctly,” Darien said. “You are saying that these planewalkers, the Lords of Existence, have cut off the flow of magic to Adruin.”
“That is what I am saying.”
“And you are also saying that they intend to unleash a new Starshower that will ravish the plane?”
“That is also correct.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. The Lords locked the plane to punish me, and perhaps to punish Garrick. But in the end they will destroy Adruin merely to make an example of him. Of that you should have no doubt.”
Will grimaced.
He had never liked Garrick’s high superior, but he knew it was true that the gates had been shut. The Freeborn’s complaints and his own attempts to practice spells had told him that, but while that part of Braxidane’s story held up, Will didn’t trust the planewalker as far as he could throw a mare. He would bet anything that there was more to this than Braxidane was telling, and it took every bit of his self-control to not burst through the door and hurl an accusation at him.
“What do you think of this, Amanda?”
Will listened more closely in order to catch the softer strain of Amanda’s words.
She was young, but after Garrick’s disappearance and Reynard’s treachery, she had taken responsibility for the Torean Freeborn, and had been able to hold them together with some acumen. Will was interested to hear her position.
“Access to the plane of magic is definitely closed. That hinders all magic, and will obviously slow the Lectodinian’s efforts. But I’m sure Zutrian’s mages have sources of stored power. If anything, the blockage might accelerate his plans. He could decide to engage before the Lectodinian stores fade further, and before he loses that advantage.”
Darien spoke then.
“So if we can delay them, fight them here,” the thump of a hand against a wall or table gave Will to imagine Darien indicating a map, “and here,” another thump, “and maybe even here, they will be less able to damage the city?”
There was a pause before Amanda replied.
“Yes,” she finally said. “That is probably correct.”
“You know our walls cannot be rebuilt in less than a summer’s time.”
“Yes, Darien,” Lord Ellesadil replied. “I know that.”
“So,” Darien replied with such energy that Will envisioned his face flushing with hope. “If your story is true, Braxidane, and the planewalkers have already cut the cord to magic, why would I not do this? Why would I not play the game of delay? Force the Lectodinian’s to expend their stores of energy before they get to the city proper? Then, once the Lectodinians’ magic has been expelled—and after we have defeated them—turn to resolve the issue you raise?”
It was Amanda who answered.
“That plan is plays with fire, Darien. There is every chance the Lectodinians would still defeat us. And if we suffer great losses in the battles you’re suggesting, and if what Braxidane reports is true, we’ll be unable to respond when Existence rains their fire on us.”
“I’ve been known to gamble a bit before,” Darien replied.
Braxidane broke in.
“Can you play it both ways?”
“What do you mean?”
“Play your tactic. It seems wise enough. But give me your most capable mage—perhaps Amanda would join me? Let me use what magic she has to return to Existence where I belong. If I can get there, I will delay their hunt of Garrick, or perhaps even divert it. It would be a shame to lose him, after all.”
“Garrick is a traitor,” Darien said.
“You don’t mean that,” Amanda replied.
Darien drew a breath so deeply that Will could hear it through the wood.
“Perhaps.”
“Braxidane’s compromise seems wisest,” Amanda said. “If I can help him, he can help us. In the meantime, we move our guard north and east. And to be truthful, what little of the Freeborn we have left can be of limited help now, anyway. Perhaps I can be of best use with him.”
“You are a mage wise beyond your years, Amanda,” Braxidane said. “I find myself wishing I had selected you over Garrick.”
“I’ll not have Garrick spoken of that way,” Amanda said.
Will gave an involuntary nod from behind the door.
“All right,” Darien said. “That will be the plan.”
Silence came, then. A chair pushed back, and Amanda spoke. “I will meet you in my chambers in an hour.”
“That would be wonderful,” Braxidane replied. “In the meantime, is there anywhere I can clean up? I seem to be quite limited in my own work right now.”
“We can arrange that,” Darien said.
Will had heard all he needed to hear. He glanced down the hallway again. After waiting for the outer corridor to clear, he moved from the alcove and made his way back down the servant’s passageway.
He had to prepare.
And he had to get to Amanda’s quarters before she and Braxidane started their spell work. If anyone was going to save Garrick, it was going to be him.
Chapter 15
Braxidane’s champions fell in line more quickly than Garrick expected, though part of that was due to the nature of time itself. The ticking of a clock, it turned out, was not as rigid as Alistair had once taught him to believe.
He found Yuli first, on the plane of Golden.
Garrick had no convincing to do with him, as the mage had already lived through enough of a life that was predicated on Braxidane’s dictation. “I have no life to leave,” the huge man said to Garrick upon his offer. “The sooner the better.”
As it turned out, Yuli was a better mage than Garrick, and better with the sword, too—though he had no patience and weathered no fools, and for that reason alone would never find his way to drive the larger doings of a plane in any but the most blunt fashions.
They worked together to pull the vampiress Fei-ahn from Gostück.
“Why should I follow you?” she asked him as she floated in her bloody ship of mage stuff. “Why should I care if the Lords of Existence do anything to us?”
“It is the right question,” he answered.
She waited while he explained his own story, how he wanted to destroy the planewalker’s ability to prey upon the weak. Her eyes narrowed when he told her how Braxidane’s meddling caused death and pain and destruction, how every planewalker in Existence could reach into a plane at any time and play these games. People have enough problems as it is, he said. And he told her of the dark hunger that Braxidane had planted inside him, a hunger that let him hold power and control over others but that only served to remind him of his own self-doubt, his own lack of confidence. And then he told her of Hezarin, and the power he held within him.
And as he talked, Fei-ahn’s crimson eyes lidded, her jawline grew stern, and her lips turned contemplative.
“Yes,” she finally said, letting her fingertips trail so seductively across the hollow of her neckline. “I have felt all of that, too. And I can see that no being in the Thousand Worlds can live freely if the yahli-at-ba can be as they are.”
Garrick smiled at the word for “planewalker” in the Gostück language.
Yahli-at-ba was such a more apt title for a planewalker. It sounded so much more fluid than the coarser, more pedestrian language of Adruin.
“We are the only ones who can defeat the planewalkers,” he said to her. “You see that, don’t you? Braxidane selected us for our isolation and for our independence. Our isolation made us weak and easily swayed, but our independence is our strength. While oth
ers see us as undesirable, or perhaps merely irrelevant, we—the strongest among us who are not tied to any single ideology—are the only ones who can even see the problem.”
Fei-ahn’s smile grew strangely relaxed as he spoke.
“Yes,” she said when he was finished. “I see that. And I see there can be no true freedom as long as the planewalkers exercise their control. We should all be lords of our own existence.”
The three of them worked together to break an uprising in Tesharia before Lelio would come with them. She reminded him of Sunathri in so many ways. He liked that Lelio was a woman with other, longer names, as fitting her place as a princess of her realm, but he liked even more that she gave no quarter to those who called her anything beyond Lelio.
Yes, she was so very much like Sunathri.
He was different from them, though. Hezarin’s essence let him play in the flow as a planewalker would, but the champions needed to learn the other way.
As every new member aligned with him, Garrick taught them each survival in the realm of Existence, how to build shells of magestuff that encased their being as they slipped through the flow, how to move, and how to sip from the waves around them to fuel their magic even further.
Once it became easy for one to slip through the flow in their cocoons of mage stuff, they split off, each gathering more champions to their side.
It was a rare champion who did not agree to join forces.
Perhaps Braxidane selected his champions for their isolation, but that same isolation served to build resentment and create a yearning for self-determination that was strong in each of them.
Soon this band of champions from the Thousand Worlds had become a strange collection of misfits, truants, and otherwise free thinkers—all, Garrick decided, likely targeted by Braxidane when they were weak, all having needed something so badly that they would be easy marks for a planewalker’s asinine doctrine of actions and consequences.
They were also, however, a jaded collection, each weary of the burden Braxidane had put upon them, and each more than willing to bring it to an end.
