Ashes and Blood aotg-2

by Terry C. Simpson

  “Nothing.” Ancel suppressed the need to think about either woman. “Kachien doesn’t care what I do one way or the other. I have a feeling she’s happy with me. Plus, she still doesn’t seem to think she belongs among us, although she’s more connected to who we really are than she ever thought. My first goal is making sure everyone is safe in Torandil, then I have a good idea of where Galiana intends to take us next.”

  “Seti,” Mirza said with a shrug. “Seems the obvious place. We announced our independence from the Tribunal, and we again partnered with the Dosteri, who according to all accounts are descendants of the Erastonians. The same Erastonians your father once relied on in an attempt to stop Nerian. Anywhere in Granadia certainly isn’t safe from the Tribunal’s reach. So what better place to go than home.”

  “Precisely. There’s something else too. Another reason I haven’t bothered to ask after your mother’s whereabouts.”

  Mirza instantly perked up.

  “I believe I know where she is. Where they are.”

  “Huh? Who’s they?”

  Ancel smiled. “I’ll give you a moment to think.”

  Mirza paced back and forth faster than before.

  “You’re making me dizzy.”

  He stopped and scowled before continuing to pace.

  Ancel took a seat on the edge of the bed and waited.

  A moment later, Mirza faced him, incredulity written across his face. “All these Matii who the Pathfinders have been capturing for years, that’s the ‘they’ you’re referring to. At any other time it would have seemed far-fetched, but it isn’t any more unbelievable than the Pathfinders being your personal guards. It actually makes sense. To fight this war, for Seti to have a chance, Galiana and the others would need an army. You would need an army. What better than to amass people who everyone thinks are dead?”

  Admiration shone in Mirza’s eyes. “The same reasons no one ventures into Seti, into the old dead capital of Benez itself, is exactly why it makes a good place to hide not only them, but to take all the refugees. All the stories of Seti being infested with creatures descended from the old wars was just to keep people out.” He shook his head. “Only the gods knows how many years they’ve been about this.”

  “With an army that formidable, we might stand a chance,” Ancel said.

  “We’ll need it too. The other Ostanian kingdoms won’t take our return lying down.”

  “No, they won’t, which worries me. Between the Tribunal’s forces already near Seti’s borders, the Vallum of Light, the shadelings, as well as the other Ostanian kingdoms, our chances still appear a bit daunting.”

  “A bit?” Mirza snorted. “Never mind. I guess you can say a bit when you’re an Eztezian and so is your teacher.”

  “Think good thoughts, Mirz. We came this far, didn’t we?”

  “True. It’s just that those are a lot of enemies, not counting the rumor of the Kassite’s seals breaking.”

  Ancel tensed. He’d held this back from his friend for so long. “Where did you hear that?”

  “When I was in the common room before coming upstairs. I needed a drink,” Mirza explained.

  “Well, it’s true.”

  Mirza’s brows seemed as if they would shoot off his forehead past his shock of red hair. “You’re lying.” When Ancel simply stared at him, he continued, “How, How do you know this?”

  “Apparently in order to release my power, it involved shattering a ward.”

  “Wait,” recognition flitted across Mirza’s features, “you don’t mean when you activated the Chainin, do you?”

  “Yes.” Ancel waited for the outburst, but none came.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Mirza said quietly.

  “Until the Entosis, I had my doubts about what I did. Besides, what was I supposed to say?”

  “Hey, Mirz, by the way, I broke one of the Kassite’s wards and soon the gods will use its weakness to bring chaos to our world.” Mirza shrugged. “Seems simple enough to me.”

  Ancel grinned. “Now, even you don’t believe that. You would have thought me mad.”

  “Probably. So what do you plan to do?”

  Mirza was taking the revelation remarkably well, which was another reason Ancel was glad his friend had stayed. Under pressure, Mirza always seemed to be at his best.

  “Nothing I can do about that for now,” Ancel said. “We’ll have enough problems once we reach Seti. Until then, I’m dealing with each situation as it arises. First, we see our people safe.”

  Not a single obstacle existed that would stop him from completing his father’s wish.

  Chapter 44

  If Ryne’s eyes weren’t deceiving him, and he had no reason to believe they were, Halvor had grown bigger. Much bigger. Whereas before the Svenzar stood three times Ryne’s height, the size of a house, now, he was double that. Each shoulder could hold two wagons. If the smiling pits of his eyes and mouth weren’t open, he could easily have been mistaken for a part of the mountain behind him, except he lacked the sprinkling of snow and ice. Another Svenzar named Kendin accompanied Halvor. With them they had two score Sven, each one at least matching Ryne’s eight feet, they too as much earth and stone as the Red Ridge Mountains. As often happened when Svenzar were near, the air smelled of wet earth after a rainstorm.

  Since his days as a mere Sven, Halvor had been more than a little testy and inquisitive. Now, as a leader, a master among his kind, he carried a dignified air, a sense of being that encompassed his surroundings.

  The enormous silver sphere ahead of them was the only thing more distracting than the Svenzar. It was the awakened zyphyl. Larger than even Halvor, the featureless sphere writhed and contorted, a wriggling worm that hid the yawning expanse of the Travelshaft’s recesses. Ryne cringed at the nightmares using the creature would bring.

  “Hail, Guardian Ryne Waldron.” Halvor’s eyes smiled to match his widening mouth. His voice was the same musical cadence Ryne remembered, the words more notes than speech. It tinkled like the expertly plucked strings of a master takuatin player. One could become lost in such music, steered by the Svenzar to elicit emotions and reactions.

  “Hail Halvor. Why not use my true name?”

  “I did. Guardian is what and who you are, not what name you choose to bestow upon yourself.”

  Ryne nodded.

  “I am pleased to see you are in possession of your own mind once more,” Halvor said.

  “As do I.” Ryne nodded to where Galiana stood a ways back with Cantor. “She told me you are here because of me.”

  “Well, yes, but for more than only you.”

  “Oh?”

  “The shade cannot be allowed to use the shafts.”

  This, Ryne already knew. The Travelshafts offered access to the Svenzar’s city of Stone deep within the Nevermore Heights. The fount of Svenzar power. “I told her the same thing, that you’re here to protect your own interests.”

  “We also wanted to see your ward to safety, or relative safety. He has to be there to finish what he has begun.” The mirth fled Halvor’s expression.

  “And you doubted I will be able to see him to it?”

  “No. I for one have never doubted you, nor has my father, King Kalvor, but events conspire to move quickly, fast even for you humans. Your presence is needed somewhere else, but at the same time you must fulfill your obligation to your ward.”

  Ryne had a sinking suspicion that he knew exactly what Halvor meant. The Svenzar had a way of seeing things, knowing what was happening in the world that he could not account for. “Where might I be needed,” he asked anyway.

  “This is no time to play the game of knowledge.” Bass filled Halvor’s notes.

  Taken aback by the grim response and tone, Ryne frowned. The few times the Svenzar became this serious, the repercussions touched the world’s farthest reaches, and in ways not even the true Chroniclers, the ones who claimed to see the Planes of Existence, could predict.

  “You mean my brothers.” Ryne all
owed his mind to touch the pinpoints, the bonds that told him of their locations. The four wayward ones from earlier, the same he’d felt the day he woke in Galiana’s hospice still headed for the Great Divide. “Unfortunately, I cannot be two places at once.”

  “This is true, but it does not change the need. You must go to them.”

  The Svenzar were hardly ever direct. They enjoyed their puzzles, their riddles, even if they claimed they did not play and tried to appear serious despite the perpetual smile ingrained into their features. Seeing Halvor like this, coupled with his grim expression, made the hairs on Ryne’s arm stand on end. Whatever was happening, he hoped it was not as bad as Halvor was suggesting.

  “Prima Materium has massed near the Great Divide since my ward released it, and they’re drawn to its call,” Ryne sai. “That’s to be expected. I suspect there’s an army of shade, Amuni’s Children, and possibly one Skadwaz waiting, but I doubt even they could stop four Eztezians working together.” Ryne opened his mouth to continue then snapped it shut. He let his words out slowly. “Which one of the four is a traitor?”

  “Not one. Two. The Guardians for air and water.”

  “The Flows,” Ryne whispered.

  “And the other two?”

  “Cold and metal.”

  There it was. One of the Svenzar’s own had gone to defend.

  “There is more,” Halvor said. “The one you fought beyond the Vallum, near Edsel Stonewilled’s people. He is there.”

  “Voliny’s dead.” Ryne refused to call the man by his other name for fear of the memories it would dredge up.

  “That was not Voliny.”

  “What?”

  “In your haste to save the boy and to forget, you have allowed some things to slip by you. Among the second generation of Eztezians, there was none stronger than you. Even most of the first paled in comparison. While under the shade’s control, you were no less an Eztezian. If you think it was Voliny, how is it that he bested you that night? Yet, when you fought him in Castere, you defeated him rather easily.”

  Ryne left the obvious answer unspoken. “Who was it then?”

  “Voliny’s master, a boy you knew as Kahkon.”

  Memories of Carnas tore through Ryne. They scoured him, threatened to wash him away. All in scarlet, bone, and bristle. The black of soot. The gray of ash. The unrecognizable mess left after a daemon ripped out a person’s sela for deliverance into the Nether. He relived the mounds of dead. Men, women, children. Every face belonged to a friend. Kahkon danced atop their corpses.

  Kahkon, the boy he’d taught. The boy who he felt could have been his son. The boy who was ever inquisitive, having him tell stories of the gods, read him myths and legends. The boy the shade took. The boy he had failed to save.

  So many deceptions. This one greater than most.

  “He used my teaching to see if I would remember my past,” Ryne said, his voice sounding hoarse and far away.

  “Indeed,” Halvor rumbled. “Now he waits for the rest of you. Two of them are his already. Either the other two will fall or they will be his. That cannot be allowed. If he succeeds, he will capture the Sanctums of Shelter.”

  Ryne’s mind snapped from the red haze of old grief and new rage. The Sanctums of Shelter held the power of the Vallum and fueled the Great Divide. They were a balancing act between neutrality, order, and chaos. Tip the scales one way or the other and it would break the first Principle of Mater. The elements of Mater must exist in harmony.

  Nothing he, Galiana, or any of the others had planned could save what was left then.

  “I must go to them now,” Ryne declared, desperation a storm in his chest.

  “If you do, you will lose your ward.”

  The effect would be the same. A sense of helplessness suffused Ryne. He leaned his head back, closing his eyes in prayer. He prayed harder, in earnest. No one answered what choice he should make.

  “It is why I am here,” Halvor said. “It is Humelen’s will. We will see you to Torandil, and then to Seti through the Travelshafts. It will grant you enough time to see your ward safe and meet the others at the Great Divide.”

  The despair in Ryne lifted a little, just enough for him to offer Halvor a weak smile and a nod of gratitude.

  Chapter 45

  Although his Pathfinder escort marched near him, Ancel couldn’t help touching his sword’s hilt. He swore the gigantic stone creatures intended to eat him. The books mentioned the Svenzar and Sven being large, but for some reason he had not equated their size to match what he saw. Halvor and Kendin, their leaders, stood half as tall as the canyon they walked through, shoulders almost touching the icy crags rising on both sides. A thick odor of fresh earth accompanied the creatures. The Sven kept to the front, but that mattered little as their musical speech echoed above the footsteps and clink of armor carried not only by the space but also by the occasional chilly breeze. It was as if a band accompanied them, notes rising and falling, a rhythmic chime unlike the murmur of Harval’s Matii who followed behind in organized ranks.

  Striding next to him, Mirza gawked so much that he tripped more than once. Charra acted as if the creatures did not exist. What Ancel found almost as fascinating was Ryne’s ability to speak their language. Etchings glistening in the sunlight, Ryne walked next to Halvor, both engaged in conversation.

  Ancel was still staring at the Svenzar as they rounded a corner. All thought of them fled his mind.

  In liquid, translucent silver, the zyphyl loomed before him. Beyond it yawned the Travelshaft’s blackness.

  “Remember,” Galiana said from next to him, “it is of the Streams, as are you. Bottle your fear. Give it nothing to feed on when you enter or else you may not return from its grasp. It will tempt you. You will see visions of things that may have happened or those to come; the possibilities created by choice. You must ignore it all. Set your mind on coming through. Take a moment to clear your heads and set your thoughts on reaching the other side. Nothing it shows you is real.”

  “Whatever you do, whatever you see,” Ryne said, “do not Forge. The zyphyl are the opposite of the vasumbrals. Instead of devouring Mater, they can multiply what you do a hundred fold. That is never good when inside. Everland still suffers from what an Eztezian unleashed within a zyphyl.”

  Ancel swallowed.

  “So go in and don’t think,” Mirza said. “Not as easy as it sounds.”

  “Regardless,” Galiana indicated the Travelshaft with a dip of her head, “this is the only way to avoid whatever traps the Tribunal has in store.”

  Galiana hadn’t been pleased when Ryne mentioned they would be skipping Calisto, but somehow their discussion resulted in her acquiescence. Whatever caused her to change her plans, Ancel figured it had to be important. He wondered what else they were hiding from him.

  “I’ve faced shadelings, seen a netherling, trained with an Eztezian, have a god’s Battleguard as my own construct, Pathfinder’s as my personal guard, and I, myself, am an Eztezian.” Ancel shrugged. “What’s there for me to be afraid of?”

  “Oh, nothing but gods and godlings,” Mirza paused, tapping a finger on his lip, and then pointed as if remembering something, “and monsters looking to eat our world. That’s all.” He threw up his hands in exasperation.

  “Enough,” Galiana said. “Just remember our instructions.”

  Both he and Mirza nodded, but Ancel still could not help the little flutters in his gut. “What’s that?” He pointed to a charcoal surface wide enough to hold three wagons that led down to the shaft’s entrance. Not a hint of snow or ice gathered on it.

  “The Svenzar say it’s a road, but unlike any other,” Galiana said. “It increases your speed, and then that determines how fast your group will travel.”

  Ancel could not begin to imagine what speed would take them to Torandil in a day with the Svenzar’s aid. The journey normally lasted two months or even longer with the winter storms.

  “Imagine the shaft being like Materialization,” Ga
liana offered as if reading his confusion. “It’s a portal, but unlike Materializing, there is a physical distance between the two places that must be crossed. Similar to the Entosis, the shafts alters the passage of your time and movement when inside. However, unlike the Entosis, the Svenzar are able to increase or decrease the effect.”

  Ancel couldn’t fathom the entire concept, but with all that he’d experienced, who was he to question the possibilities? He took a deep breath, inhaling crisp, cold air, and then nodded.

  Within moments, they arrived at the edge of the charcoal road. High Shin Cantor called for a halt.

  Halvor continued walking, leaving his counterparts behind until he stood alone upon the road. His body changed to the match its color, a deep black, and then like a mound of snow on a blistering day, his body began to melt, becoming one with the roadway. Although Ancel watched, he still found it difficult to believe what he was seeing. A moment more and the creature vanished.

  Concerned murmurs abounded except from the Sven. An eerie silence accompanied them.

  “Forward,” Cantor shouted. “Everyone onto the road.”

  “What just happened,” Ancel asked of Ryne.

  “Halvor has negated the effect of the road to ensure we are all together.”

  “What happens when the effect returns?”

  “Falling into a bottomless hole is the best way to describe it.”

  Ancel was glad he hadn’t eaten much that afternoon. The way his stomach was clenching and unclenching, he would have probably spewed its contents. He glanced back to see the last of the Matii step onto the road.

  “Everyone,” High Cantor called, “Nothing you see is real. Tell yourself that as many times as you need to.”

  Waiting for further instructions, Ancel frowned when the man said nothing more. “What about the warning not to Forge,” he whispered.

  “No need to mention it,” Ryne answered. “Of the people here, only you, the High Shin, and I could manage it once inside the zyphyl.”

  “Brace yourself!” Cantor bellowed.