With a last, long look at the ruins of the Hall, Darien made himself turn away from the sight. Delay now might cost them everything. He was going to have to take control. His mother still quivered in his arms, shaking with the force of her sobs. She was not yet capable of leading them anywhere. He had always acted by her leave, and the thought of making choices for her now just did not seem right. But they had to do something, before whatever malignancy that might be issuing from the Gateway below discovered them. They had to flee the city, but Darien doubted the wooden platform he had arrived on would ever make the trip again down the mountain’s steep face.
“Mother,” he whispered, carefully easing her back a bit so he could look into her grief-stricken face. “We must flee. Down the mountain. I know there’s a way, but you’ve never told me. If it’s some secret, I don’t think it matters anymore.”
Emelda blinked slowly at him. Her face was a mess, all crusted in grime and smudged with tears. But deep within her blue eyes stirred a flicker of the strength he was used to. It was the same, innate strength that moved within himself.
“We must reach the Temple of Isap,” Emelda told him, eyes darting toward the direction of the southeastern part of the city. Darien allowed his gaze to follow. The sun would be rising eventually in that direction, but not for awhile yet. He had no idea what nightmares had found their way into Aerysius, but there was definitely a chance the two of them could reach the temple if they kept low enough and made good speed.
But confusion continued to nettle him; it was another route he’d been considering. Placing his hands on his mother’s shoulders, he pressed her, “I don’t understand. How can the priests of Death help us escape down the mountain?”
“The Catacombs,” his mother whispered, shivering as if she had just revealed some dire secret. She probably had. “The Catacombs of Death exist partly in the Atrament. Distance and time have no meaning there. We can make use of the Catacombs to escape, and go anywhere we like.”
Darien frowned in stark disbelief. It seemed unimaginable that the Temple of Death could have harbored a secret of that magnitude for so long. If these Catacombs truly existed, then the priesthood of Death had found a wonder that would rival even the greatest works of the Hall.
“Then we must go,” he insisted, feeling a pressing sense of urgency. “Now.” He squeezed her shoulders softly, as if trying to impart some of his strength into his mother’s frail body. She was bleeding, he noticed, from cuts and scrapes she had acquired during her fall from the bridge. They were nothing serious, and yet the sight of them was disturbing.
So he did what he had been trained to do all his life. He closed his eyes and reached within. Only, this time, it was different. Whenever he had tried this same mental exercise in practice, there had always been just emptiness inside. But now his mind grasped something tangible. He could feel the song of the magic field as never before, soaring inside him like symphony. He touched it, feeling it conform easily to his will, as if it were the most natural thing he had ever done in his life.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that his mother’s injuries were healed. And there was more: she looked renewed, invigorated. The grime had been swept clean from her face, the torn fabric of her dress mended. She looked hale. And very much full of pride.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
He took her by the hand and led her off the balcony into the shadows of the building. Emelda followed quietly behind, down long flights of steps and out into the empty street. They continued down and off the terrace, working their way eastward and always down toward the bottom of the city. The night air was filled with acrid smoke and choking dust. The streets were littered with debris that had fallen from the Heights during the onslaught produced by the resonance. Many times they found themselves having to skirt the rubble or find a way to climb over as collapsed parts of buildings and bridges impeded almost every step. There seemed to be very few people even alive in the city. It was like walking in a world of the dead under the glow of that filthy green light, though every once in a while the silence was pierced by sounds of screams in the distance.
They had been traveling for over an hour and had covered only half a league. Then, as they turned a corner, they found themselves confronted by an obstacle blocking their path that looked impossible to cross or go around. An entire building had fallen across the road, cutting them off from the bridge on the other side.
Darien needed to reach that bridge. They were already at the lowest reaches of the city, at a split in the enormous rock face of the mountain where the cliff bowed inward, creating a vertical crevice that cut deeply into the sheer rock wall. The bridge that spanned the gap ahead arched over a drop of thousands of feet. There was nothing but air below it, down the sheer side of the precipice to the valley floor far below. They halted as Darien considered finding another path that could take them around or over the split in the cliff face. But the only one he could think of would require them to backtrack almost the entire distance they had come.
A wolf howled, the sound eerie and mournful. The noise made Darien look up with a feeling of dread; there were no wolves in all of Aerysius.
Something skirted the edge of his vision. It looked like a shadow moving on the far side of the road. But when he turned toward it, there was nothing there. Frowning, he rubbed his eyes as he pondered the situation. The only way to the bridge was up and over that wall of rubble.
So they climbed.
The going was slow, as the debris had a way of shifting underfoot. Darien let his mother go before him, picking out her own path as he trailed behind, steadying the blocks that threatened to slip out from under them with the force of his mind. The more he exercised his power, the more he became accustomed to it. It was simply another extension of himself, just like his sword. The sword that had been a gift from Meiran. He shoved the thought into the back of his mind. The blade was gone now; in all likelihood, so was Meiran. The thought made him gag, the taste of bile rising in his throat.
A block of rubble shifted overhead. Instantly, an avalanche of stone and chunks of marble was sliding down on top of them. Darien simply deflected the shower of debris, hardly sparing it a thought. The use of his gift was coming much more easily. He saw his mother turn to stare at him with open admiration in her eyes. Though Prime Warden, Emelda Lauchlin was still only a Master of the First Tier. Darien knew why she had waited so long to arrange his Raising; his mother had been waiting for just the right time, when he could receive the Transference from an especially strong Grand Master. Ezras had contained approximately five times the amount of power in his frail old body as his mother was capable of wielding. It was possible she was allowing Darien to stabilize the larger pieces of rock by himself to give him practice working with his newfound strength. Yet, he couldn’t help admitting, it was also possible that she couldn’t do it by herself.
They reached the top of the scree and gradually worked their way down the other side. In the distance, another wolf-like cry broke the silence of the night. The sound chilled Darien to the heart.
They reached the narrow bridge at last, and were about to start across the gap when Darien heard a scraping sound from behind. Whirling, he reached for the hilt of his sword and grasped only air. A lone man was coming toward them from the other side of the street, black cloak rippling about him as he moved, face lost in shadow.
Darien released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He waited patiently for the man to approach as his mother stood beside him, studying the newcomer with an expression of vibrant hope on her face. Darien was skeptical. At least there was someone else alive in the night besides themselves. He had the feeling that his mother was studying the shadows of the approaching face for traces of familiar features. She was hoping it was Aidan, miraculously saved from the catastrophe of the Hall. Darien just hoped it was someone useful.
When the figure stepped out of shadow and into the wan green light, Darien’s eyes widened in surprise. Emelda
drew in a sharp gasp and immediately started forward. But for some reason, Darien thrust out his hand and held her back.
She was right; it was Aidan.
But there was something very different about his brother.
Aidan Lauchlin halted in the middle of the street, regarding them with a narrow blue stare that somehow seemed more arrogant than usual, supremely more confident. Darien frowned, trying to put a finger on exactly what about him seemed so wrong; it was something subtle, something just not right. His mother pulled against his hold on her arm, struggling to free herself and rush toward the son she had thought was lost. But Darien tightened his grip, refusing her.
Then he saw it: Aidan was wearing his sword. Darien could think of absolutely no good reason in the world why his brother would be carrying his own weapon. A few explanations drifted across his mind, but Darien rejected them all, until the only explanation left was the one too terrible to consider. But it fit. Horribly, it made a sinister kind of sense. Like Meiran, Aidan had also missed his Raising.
“What’s the matter with you?” Emelda spat at him, tugging her arm in an effort to release his grip. Darien only held on more firmly.
“He opened the Well of Tears,” Darien informed her, eyes only for Aidan as he searched the shadowy face before him for confirmation of his words. But there was no reaction on his brother’s face. Aidan just continued to stare at him, eyes calm and confidently arrogant. Darien wished his brother would do something, anything. Shout in denial, rain him with curses, lash out with the scathing sarcasm that Darien found so horribly infuriating. Anything but his silence.
His brother’s complete lack of response confirmed Darien’s worst fear.
A confident smile spread slowly on Aidan’s thin lips. Darien reached within, the action now almost a reflex. Then he stopped himself, recalling in horror his Oath to Tyrius Flynn. Never to harm. The words rang bitterly within the confines of his head, along with his plea to his mother the previous day, Unbind the Sentinels. He was not Unbound. He had uttered his Oath, the Oath he had already chosen not to keep. But something had changed in him. Darien didn’t know if it was his experience with Grand Master Ezras, or perhaps even Tyrius Flynn. Maybe it was witnessing the destruction of the home he had always taken for granted, along with the sum of its ancient traditions.
Darien realized he would keep that Oath. Gerald Lauchlin had kept it, to a bitter grave. His son could do no less.
Dimly, on the edge of his vision, he saw four dark shapes approaching. They looked like nebulous silhouettes of mist gliding toward him from out of the shadows of the street. A sickening horror rose inside him, a harrowing chill that was appalling. The air around him thickened until it was hard to even breathe. He felt his mother’s arm growing cold in the grasp of his hand. He knew what those black forms were, had read about them in texts, heard them named in the darkest tales and myths. He knew their only chance was to run. The touch of a necrator was not death; it was something very much worse.
Darien spun his mother around, propelling her toward the bridge. He started after her, but his foot caught in a crack in the street. He stumbled, thrusting his arms out as he fell to the ground. He caught himself with the heels of his hands and rolled, barely avoiding the necrator that melted up from the street in the exact place he had landed.
Gaining his feet, he glanced behind him long enough to see his mother just clearing the end of the bridge as it exploded behind her. Shards of broken stone flew toward him, and he flung his arms up to shield his face. He groped desperately for the power within, but there was nothing there.
Darien froze in the steel grip of the starkest terror he’d ever known in his life. It wrenched up from his stomach, clenching his throat, as all of the blood seemed to rush out of his head at once. He retained enough of himself to recognize the feeling for what it was: not a true emotion, but rather the awful influence of the necrator that stood like a black wraith not three paces away from him. He forced his legs to move, backing away from it, stumbling over debris.
His brother walked casually toward him, a hand lifting the baldric that held Darien’s greatsword over his head. Aidan flung the sword at him, scabbard and all. It slid toward him across the pavement, bumping along, coming to a rest at his feet. Darien reached down to retrieve it, never taking his eyes from the necrator. The other four were approaching, as well. He gripped the scabbard in his right hand, the trembling fingers of his left hand closing around the hilt of the blade.
“Aren’t you wondering who helped me open the Well of Tears?” Aidan asked quietly, striding toward him. He stopped perhaps ten paces away, as if hesitant to come too close to the necrators whose shadowy figures stood between his brother and himself.
Darien was too distracted to respond. The five dark shapes in front of him were pressing him slowly backward toward the edge of the cliff, and Darien knew exactly which cliff that was. The drop behind him was not just another plunge downward to a terrace. That kind of fall would kill him, true, but at least it would do so quickly. The cliff behind him was an entirely different kind of drop. He was standing at the corner of the lowest terrace of the city, his back to the edge of the sheer precipice that was a straight, vertical drop to the valley floor three thousand feet below. That was not a death he would choose. If he was lucky, his body might break against the rocks on the way down. If he was unlucky, he would live all the way to the bottom.
Aidan took another step toward him. “I killed Meiran. It’s her blood that stains your sword.”
Darien looked down at the blade in its scabbard, not daring to bare the steel. It would only confirm what he already knew had to be true. Meiran had not been there at his Raising. That should have been enough to tell him that something was terribly wrong. The rage and pain that consumed him was overwhelming, a harrowing fury that swept aside every other emotion, burying him under a breaking tidal wave of wrath and hopeless grief. He almost lashed out with his mind, was on the very brink of focusing his raging passion into a fiery spear of vengeance. It wasn’t his Oath that held him back.
It was the necrators. Five of them glided toward him, their vile influence keeping his power in check.
“It won’t hurt so very much,” Aidan promised, moving toward him another step. “I’ve had much practice tonight. First Meiran, then later in the Hall of the Watchers. I’ll even make it quick. Come, Brother.”
Darien took another step back away from him. And another. The necrators glided smoothly after him, maintaining their distance. Aidan strode between them as Darien looked around for anything he could use to defend himself.
There was nothing. His sword was useless against another mage, and the song of the magic field was silent inside him. There was only Aidan and the necrators, or the cliff. The choice was easy to make. Carrying out that decision, now that was hard.
But knowing that Meiran waited for him made it a little easier. He knew that she would be there, somewhere in the distances that span eternity.
Darien had backed up as far as he could against the edge of the cliff. There was nowhere else to go. He held his gaze locked with his brother’s eyes as he took one last step off the edge of the precipice.
Chapter Four
The Price of an Oath
EMELDA LAUCHLIN did not understand what she was seeing as she witnessed the final moments of her son’s life. She had been thrown from the explosion that destroyed the bridge, landing roughly on the hard stone pavement on the other side of the gaping chasm. Pushing herself up off the ground, she watched helplessly as Darien took that final step and surrendered himself entirely to the mountain’s sheer face.
There was nothing she could do.
She watched him go.
Emelda screamed his name, reaching out with her mind across the distance between them; too little, too late. She collapsed forward, arms hugging her chest. A wail of mortal grief tore from the depths of her soul.
First Gerald, and now their son. It was too much to bear. And Aidan...Darien sai
d Aidan had opened the Well of Tears. Emelda had not believed him at the time. Now, she did. Aidan was her child, her firstborn. He had opened the Well, destroyed the Hall of the Watchers, slain his only brother, and brought Aerysius to its knees. She could not understand, any more than she could stop the waves of anguish threatening to sweep her away in a harrowing current of despair.
And now he was coming for her.
From the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of the dimmest flash of light flickering just on the edge of her vision. Emelda watched through a blur of tears as delicate strands of energy twined across the yawning mouth of the crevice where the stone bridge had been only minutes before. She gaped in shock at the span of solid light that formed, woven from silver strands of magic. It was impossible. Such an act was well beyond the talents of even the mightiest Grand Master.
Emelda shuddered as her only surviving son mounted the glimmering span and moved toward her, flanked by five living shadows that flowed soundlessly after him. Part of her wanted to run, but she could not summon the strength to do more than draw breath. A chilling fear crept up from her stomach, seizing the motion of her chest. The necrators glided past him, moving toward her swiftly.
She took a trembling step backward and stumbled, steadying herself with an outstretched hand. In front of her, Aidan stepped off the glowing bridge that shimmered out of existence just as quickly as it had appeared. She shuddered involuntarily as his cold blue gaze leveled at her. There was nothing left of the son she knew in those terrible, piercing eyes. Fresh tears of horror ran down her cheeks as she shook her head in denial.
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