More dark shapes approached, moving silently around the turbulent green column. A bearded red-haired man holding a silver morning star drew up to stand beside Renquist. Aidan took him to be Byron Connel, an associate of Renquist’s who had single-handedly destroyed Caladorn’s resistance with just one use of the Circle of Convergence in Bryn Calazar’s Lyceum. The tall, dark-haired man with a red scar bisecting the arrogant sneer on his face must be Cyrus Krane, ancient Prime Warden of Aerysius who had turned rabid during the final months of destruction. Another woman approached with platinum hair that glowed a pasty green in the light of the Gateway, a thanacryst jogging along at her side. Her wide, pale eyes lent her a sense of innocence that masked the viciousness of her nature. Aidan was not fooled; Arden Hannah had deceived the entire Assembly of Bryn Calazar, helping Renquist lead them to their doom. There were two others, a man and a woman in flowing robes, who Aidan did not know. They halted to stand before him with the rest, silently contemplating him in the brilliant glow of the Gateway.
It was Zavier Renquist who addressed him. “Your efforts have been met with gratitude by our Master. He is well-pleased. In exchange for unsealing the Well of Tears, Xerys commits to you the services of the Eight and his minions of the night. We are yours to command, until the purpose of our summoning is fulfilled.”
Aidan could not help the smile that formed on his lips. He was trembling with a pride and pleasure too great to be physically contained. But the distant sound of the tolling bell reminded him that he must not tarry long savoring his success; time was running short. A greater work lay yet before him, and there was very much to do.
“I command you to help me take Aerysius,” he uttered profoundly. Renquist simply nodded, as if the ancient darkmage had been expecting no less. Aidan continued quickly, trying to hasten the explanation of his strategy. “The hour is late, and most of the Masters are still slumbering in their beds in the Spire of the Hall. They will only now be stirring from their sleep and rushing to heed the warning of the bell. I need your assistance to utilize the Circle of Convergence. Hold the doors of the Hall, so that my work may progress unimpeded.
“I intend to create a Structural Resonance that will bring down the Hall of the Watchers. We will trap them all within by reversing the polarity of the Arches. No mage shall be allowed to pass beneath them, and they will all be destroyed when the Hall collapses on top of them. After that, there will be but scant pockets of resistance left in the city. Your work will be accomplished only when I stand alone as Master of Aerysius.”
Arden Hannah’s eyes had been growing wider as Aidan revealed the perfection of his plans. He was certain she recognized the inspiration behind them; he had derived most of his ideas from what he had read of their own treachery in the Lyceum of Bryn Calazar. She was gazing at him with approving fascination.
“Then let us be about it,” Zavier Renquist uttered curtly. Turning to the dark-haired man with the red scar on his face, he said, “Cyrus, I believe your friends might come in handy. Why don’t you bring some along?”
Cyrus Krane grinned malevolently as Aidan felt an unnerving sensation grip the pit of his stomach. All around the Square pools of shadow emerged from the ground, melting upward to coalesce into black nebulous shapes that vaguely resembled human forms. Aidan held his breath as he watched the dark forms solidify into a host of necrators akin to the first two he had produced from the shadows of the crypt beneath the Well. His bargain with darkness rendered him immune to their influence; otherwise, he would be hopelessly paralyzed by dread. Most of the necrators glided soundlessly off into the night, slipping away into the shadows of the city. They would be about their own dark business, working their sinister purpose while he accomplished his own in the Hall of the Watchers.
He turned his gaze toward the Arches, considering them critically. For the first time in his life, he saw the glistening lines of power that crosshatched the space between them, like a gossamer spider’s web of energy. It would not be difficult to reverse the direction of the current in those delicate silver strands.
Aidan made his way around the glowing pillar of light toward the Hall of the Watchers, the terror of the night gliding silently behind in the wake of his footfalls.
Darien could only stare at the green column of light spiring up to challenge the dome of the black heavens above. Lightning crackled all around the pillar of energy, stabbing at it from the skies as if all of the gods were assembled together in the clouds, marshalling their greatest might against it. From where he stood on the temple steps, Darien could see the Hall of the Watchers rising behind it in the Square. Both the Hall and the Arches in front of it were bathed in the same, ethereal green light. A bell clanged in the distance, the sound of its toll a dire warning.
He was not alone on the temple steps. His mother stood beside him, staring up at the towering atrocity in the sky. The other Masters that had been inside had gathered around them, all gaping upward likewise. The terrible urgency of the spear of light had driven them out into the darkness of the night, the clamor of the warning bell speeding their feet. Until they had halted on the temple steps, frozen by the dazzling abomination in the sky.
“By all the gods,” Darien heard someone whisper behind him.
It seemed to him that the gods had little to do with it. Someone had opened the Well of Tears, the ancient portal to the Netherworld that existed somewhere beneath the city; probably right under the Square, judging by the location of the brilliant column. How anyone could do that—why anyone would—was utterly beyond him. It had to have been a mage, one of their own number, someone Darien probably knew. But a betrayal of such magnitude was unimaginable. He couldn’t think of one person he knew who could possibly harbor that degree of malice inside. It was unthinkable.
But if the Well of Tears had been unsealed, then the Gateway to the Netherworld was open, as well. It didn’t matter who had accomplished the act. The malevolent forces of Chaos were now the impetus that drove that towering pillar of energy, thrusting it upward into the sky. Soon, the terror of the night would be unleashed into the heart of Aerysius. As the peal of the warning bell rang out across the darkness, Darien realized with a chilling stab of fear that his home was under imminent attack.
“What do we do?” he all but whispered, the sound of his voice lost somewhere in his throat. He was thinking of Meiran, wondering where she could possibly be.
“We must reach the Circle.” His mother’s voice was shaking. “It’s the only way. The Circle of Convergence was used once before to seal the Well of Tears. There must be a way to do it again.”
“Prime Warden, if I may?” uttered a deep voice from behind them. Darien turned to find himself staring up into the wizened face of Master Finneus Corlan, an experienced Sentinel who was no stranger to the bitter choices of war. Prompted by Emelda’s wordless nod, Master Finneus continued, “The last time the Well was sealed, it was open only in this world. That is not the case this time.” He paused a moment, letting the grim portent of his words sink in. “Before, we confronted but a thin leakage from the Gateway, merely a seeping of the powers from the Netherworld. The Gateway now stands fully open before us. The Circle of Convergence is not the answer.”
“Then what is?” the Prime Warden demanded, eyes sparkling green in the sickening light.
“The Well must be sealed from both sides,” another mage broke in anxiously. Darien turned to Master Lynnea Nelle, who had mentored him for a time during his early training. “We must split up. According to A Treatise on the Well of Tears, there is but one way to seal it completely: some of us must descend to the level of the Well and deactivate the rune sequence. Then one of our Grand Masters must enter the Gateway itself. It must be someone of at least Forth Tier. And it should be a volunteer, I think. The Well demands a sacrifice, and surely it would not be right to compel—”
“What are you saying?” Emelda snapped, cutting Lynnea off from her rambling.
Master Lynnea looked stunned. She blinked, tak
ing a step back. It seemed to Darien that she was too frightened to continue.
Finneus placed a soothing hand on Lynnea’s shoulder and took up her point himself. “What my esteemed colleague was trying to say, Prime Warden, is that in order to seal the Well of Tears, one of our two Grand Masters will have to enter the Gateway. The mending of the seal in the Netherworld requires a sacrifice.”
Darien stared from one face to the other as his mother ruminated on the information in silence. He had no desire to volunteer. He had experienced the wonder of Transference only minutes before; he had not even had a chance to test his newfound strength. His eyes found Grand Master Tyrius Flynn, who stood stoically gazing up at the pillar of light. The man had many years of experience dealing with the idiosyncrasies of the magic field that flowed through the heart of Aerysius. Tyrius would be vastly more prepared than himself to face the challenges that might confront them. With a wrenching surge of trepidation, Darien found himself coming to the conclusion that it should be himself that volunteered. It was the only choice that made logical sense, which might explain his mother’s long silence. Fortunately, he was spared by Tyrius Flynn.
“I’ll go down to the Gateway,” the aged Grand Master announced into the night, never taking his eyes from the towering green spire. “The only thing I ask is for a couple of good friends to come along and help me on my way. And I would also like this one’s promise that he shall conduct himself tonight as if the Oath were already upon him,” he added, turning to stare at Darien significantly. “Or better yet, he should offer the Oath itself, now, instead of waiting.”
Darien found himself swallowing, unable to look the Grand Master in the eye. The old man had probably just saved his life, and knew it. What Tyrius was really asking was an easy settlement for any debt that Darien might believe he owed him.
Thinking of it that way made saying the Oath an easy thing, despite the reservations Darien felt about it. As he uttered the ancient phrases committed to memory long ago, they seemed to flow out of his mouth of their own accord, requiring no conscious process of thought. He looked Tyrius in the eye the whole while he spoke, silently admiring the old man’s iron courage.
“I swear to live in harmony with all of creation,
To use my gift with temperance and wisdom;
Always to heal and never to harm,
Or my life will be righteously forfeit.”
The group separated after that. Tyrius departed, taking with him Masters Lynnea and Finneus. Darien followed in the wake of the small company that went down from the temple steps, retracing the same path he had taken earlier that night in the rain. The downpour had stopped. The night under the cloudcover had become crisp and chill, but for the glowing column of energy and the lightning that licked against it. The buildings all around had taken on its sickly green hue, until the entire city looked otherworldly and empty. To Darien, Aerysius resembled what he imagined the Netherworld must look like: devoid of life, light and color.
As they descended from the Heights, they found few people out in the city streets. The toll of the bell had driven some residents out of their homes, but the abomination above the Square sent most scurrying back inside. Some folk looked terrified at the sight of their company, while others seemed to take heart in it. The Prime Warden’s face was easily recognizable by most of the citizens of Aerysius. The contingent she led consisted of eight men and women in formal black robes with shoulders squared and faces set in grim determination.
They wound their way down a stair flanked by anxious residents, across a terrace and out over the narrow arch of a skybridge that spanned the gap between the terrace and the tower of a building that rose up from the level beneath it. As they crossed the bridge, Darien had an unimpeded view of the Hall of the Watchers, lustrous in the reflected light. He stared uneasily down at it and at the vile column still thrusting upward into the sky.
The bridge he was standing on jolted as a tremor passed through the air. It was followed shortly by another. And another.
The disturbances in the air were visible, coming at them in expanding, concentric rings with a focus far below within the Hall. Darien didn’t need anyone to explain to him what he was witnessing and was instantly filled with numbing terror. The Circle of Convergence was being put into play, and with malicious intent. The outwardly expanding rings of compressed air were the prelude to a Structural Resonance. Darien felt his whole body shudder jarringly every time a wave of energy passed through him. And they kept increasing, coming faster and harder, until it was all he could do to just remain standing.
He had to get his mother off the bridge.
The other Masters were standing stark still, staring down at the disturbances coming from the Hall. Darien pushed his way through them and grabbed Emelda by the arm, wrenching her into motion. He could feel the stone of the bridge shuddering beneath his feet, the rhythmic vibrations increasing in frequency.
As he neared the end of the bridge, the whole structure shivered and gave way beneath him. Darien threw himself forward, clenching his mother’s arm in a two-handed grip that had been strengthened by long hours of practice with the blade.
The stone of the bridge crashed down onto the terrace below, Emelda and the others falling with it. Darien spilled onto the floor of a balcony, barely managing to retain his grip on his mother’s arm as her body slapped hard against the stone side and hung swaying in his grasp. Darien pulled, using all the strength he possessed to drag her up and over the edge. She lay there beside him, panting, blank eyes staring up into the sky.
The Resonance was still driving the air before it as Darien pushed himself to his feet, wrenching his mother up after him. The swells of air jarred against him, knocking him with the force of breaking ocean waves. He staggered, trying to keep his feet under him as the building he was standing on swayed with the rhythms of the merciless currents. Emelda almost fell, catching herself against him as Darien struggled to keep them both standing.
From far below, a loud noise rose from the Hall of the Watchers. The very stones of the ancient structure were starting to sing as they reached their point of breaking. The tone quavered in the air like a grace note with each passing ripple of energy.
“Oh, by the gods, Darien,” his mother moaned into his shoulder.
He held her, staggering under the torrents as below them the note swelled to a wailing threnody. The whole Hall shuddered, and the air was filled with the nerving-wrenching noise of stone grinding against stone. And then, so very slowly, the spire came crashing down. The top caved in first with a gushing blast of dust and debris, the deafening roar of it ripping through the night, trembling the very mountain.
One wall of the spire was left halfway standing, almost completely obscured by a swirling cloud of dust and leaning precipitously over the dome of the Hall. Another tremor shook the structure, and the wall leaned over slowly, even stately. Then it crumbled, raining enormous chunks of rock down onto the roof of the dome. The Hall of the Watchers imploded violently. Pillars of dust hurled upward into the gaping sky, illuminated by the lambent glow of the column of power.
Darien stared open-mouthed at the scene of devastation as if looking into the face of apocalypse. A chilling numbness overcame him, dampening his senses until even sound seemed to slowly fade into obscurity. Timeless seconds crept by, and he was aware of none of them. The only thing he could do was stare out at the billowing pillars of dust as his mind slowly grappled with the enormity of the devastation.
Aerysius was gone, though most of its structures yet remained standing. But the Hall of the Watchers was the heart of the city, and it had been ripped clean away, excised from the body. Darien didn’t know how many of his brethren had died in the Hall, but he knew with a certainty that it must have been many. No one moved in the ruins of the Square. Vaguely, as if from a dream, he remembered Masters Tyrius, Lynnea and Finneus, who had probably been down there somewhere. And the Masters who had come with them in search of the Well were gone, their bodie
s fallen to the street level many stories below. As far as he knew, his mother and himself were the only surviving mages in the world.
Meiran.
The thought ripped through him with the force of a blow, the pain of it almost doubling him over. His eyes scoured the ruins below him furiously until his vision blurred. But there was no movement in the scattered rubble, no sign of life. Only undulating clouds of dust swirled over the shattered, twisted remains of his home. The soaring structure of the Hall of the Watchers had been reduced to an enormous mass grave, the mounds of shattered stone and splintered marble an immense burial cairn.
If Meiran had been there, then she was dead.
“Aidan.”
The sound of his mother’s trembling voice seemed to come from another world. Instantly, sound and substance came rushing back. Darien blinked as if waking from a nightmare, a cold sweat breaking out all over his body. The air was thick with rising dust, and his vision still swam with tears he was too numb to shed. He wiped his hand across his eyes, restoring his sight. Then he turned to look at his mother’s face.
Emelda was staring at him with eyes wide with shock, shaking her head as her mouth stretched into a tight grimace of anguish. He took her into his arms, holding her against his chest as her whole frame shook with the spasms of her grief. Aidan had always been her favorite. Darien wondered why he could not summon even a fledgling tear over his brother’s death. Perhaps he was past tears, past the capacity to grieve.
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