"Ahrd," husked Bracht, "but I thought us destroyed then."
"We live," Katya said, and added, a wary afterthought, "or so I think."
Calandryll raised his face skyward, if sky it was that hung above them. "Aye," he said, "we live, and this is likely the roof of the world, likely the Borrhun-maj."
"Ochen spoke of guardians," Bracht warned through teeth that began a castanet chattering. "If this is, indeed, the Borrhun-maj."
"If the Borrhun-maj it be," said Katya somberly, "we've little to fear from those creatures Ochen described, for we shall not live long in this."
She gestured with her saber at their surroundings, at the candid wilderness, and the peril of it struck Calandryll with a terrible urgency. They had neither food nor fire, not the kindling or the sparking of it; the air was thin, barely filling their lungs, threatening to collapse those organs, slowing blood's flow, minds dazing as limbs numbed. They should, he realized, freeze before they starved.
"This cannot be the ending of it," he said, hearing his voice come harsh, straining for the air he needed to shape the words, those punctuated by the chattering of his teeth/ "There must be a second gate."
"Be it like that last," Bracht croaked grim laughter, "I wonder if I prefer this."
Calandryll lacked the energy to answer the Kern's brave sally. It seemed his lips grew too numbed to shape a smile even, and he only shook his head, eyes straining to pierce the night, the snowfall, finding nothing, neither landmarks nor hope.
Cennaire it was who saw, her vision once more surpassing their mortal eyesight. She turned slowly around, unaware, it seemed, of the crystals that frosted her lashes, the flakes that caught and froze in her hair. She pointed and cried triumphantly, "There! Something stands there!"
They began to trudge, the snow deep, to their knees and higher, clinging as if it would delay them long enough the cold might take them in its forlorn embrace. To struggle onward was an extortionate task: far easier to rest, to halt, to lie down,- to die. Cennaire went in front, crushing down a path of sorts, returning to help where help was needed. They sheathed their swords, lest hands freeze to hilts, stumbling drunkenly, heads swimming as the poor, thin air robbed them of sense, of direction, none objecting to the strong arms she lent them, holding them up when they should have fallen, bringing them on when they might have succumbed.
They traversed a level place for a while, and then the way rose, sloping upward, a hard climb for all it was but gradual and not at all steep. They could see nothing, save the snow; felt little save pain as the dreadful cold penetrated their bodies, numbing blood in its course, dulling the beat of tortured hearts. It seemed to Calandryll he roved an eternity of blank cold, no longer a living man but an automaton, empowered by purpose alone, enabled only by Cennaire's strength.
None spoke as they made that climb, which seemed to them forever, as if they clambered step by awkward step over the roof of the world, a lifetime of ascent, up to the unforgiving sky, where stars shone distant, disinterested in the waning of the lives below. They pricked out night's sable canopy, visible now, for the snowfall was ended here, as if they climbed too high for that chill precipitation. The stars and a moon waxed full, a vast blue- white orb hung like cyclop's eye above. Calandryll thought he might reach out and take it in his hand, had he only that much strength left.
"There." Cennaire stretched out an arm. "Do you see?"
They turned, slowly, three ice-beings, pale shapes that blended with the whiteness all around, life bleeding from them surely as if from wounds. Calandryll thought it little wonder no human creature, sorcerer or no, had returned from this place; and then how Rhythamun should have survived. That the warlock lived yet, he was certain. He knew not how, only that his enemy lay ahead—if direction yet held meaning in this place between the gates, in this place that existed, he sensed, in both the real world and the realm of the aethyr. He knew not how—only that within him some sensate compass turned its pointer to Rhythamun's pneuma.
Before them, a shadow thing marked out by its obfuscation of the stars, stood a gate to nowhere, two great megaliths upright against the night, sar- sen stones crossed by a lintel, within their aegis nothing, an absence that swallowed sky and stars. Calandryll gaped, wondering how it could be he had not seen so stark a monument. Then gaped again as he perceived shapes, shifting on the snow, moving toward them and the gate.
"What are they?" Cennaire cried, horror in her voice as her enhanced sight outlined them clearer than Calandryll could discern.
"The guardians, likely," was all he could force out in answer.
"Then best we hasten," she said.
Stumbling, benumbed, they moved toward the gate. The guardians moved swifter, spatulate feet propelling them at a shambling run across the snow. They stood hunchbacked, and even then taller than a man, great bulky shapes of shaggy silvery fur, broad-shouldered, with dangling arms that ended in hooked talons. As the questers staggered toward the gate, Calandryll saw white eyes, empty of pupils, glowering from beneath craggy brows, nostrils invisible beneath the fur that draped the wide faces, parting where jaws all filled with serrated fangs gaped wide in anticipation. They ululated, the sound eerie in the silence, thin and high, like the howling of distant wind, full of menace, of blood-promise. They came fast, how many impossible to tell, for they blended with the landscape, and shifted, prancing, challenging with their yammering cries and flailing paws.
Unthinking, Calandryll pushed forward, staggering to the fore, the straightsword drawn now, instinctive. He thought his fingers frozen to the hilt, and wondered how in this awful cold he should find the strength to fight such creatures.
We stand with you as best we may.
Horul's promise, Dera's blessing on his blade: it seemed his blood coursed stronger then, his cold- fused joints suddenly more limber, as if the sword itself, or the promise, infused him with warmth. The guardians wailed in rage, advancing: he went to meet them.
One, larger than the rest, outpaced its fellows, greeting his challenge with a viciously taloned paw that slashed at his face. He brought the sword down, cleaving the limb, reversing his stroke to carve the furred belly. The creature screamed, in pain now, its blood a dark shadow on the silver fur, the snow. It staggered and was shoved carelessly aside as its companions thronged closer, vying with one another to confront these intruders. Calandryll swung the blade wide as they closed upon him. They were vast so close, their sheer size, their numbers, blocking sight of gate and sky, his companions. He cut again, desperate, fighting for his life, intent solely on driving through this barricade of living flesh to the waiting portal, on surviving this attack.
He ducked beneath a questing paw that should have taken off his head had it found that target, and drove his sword deep between ribs that grated on the blade as he turned the steel, gouging a livid wound there. He had thought perhaps the sword should dispatch these monsters as it had dealt with occult creations before, but these seemed physical, and were only wounded by his blows—the guardian swayed a moment, standing when weaker flesh should have fallen dead, and then was thrown aside by another that looked to overwhelm him with its bulk, its jaws agape, the fangs daggers. He thrust the sword into the maw, gagging on the foulness of the beast's breath, the sullen odor of its body, and flung himself clear as it toppled, skull pierced.
They might be slain, then. But what good that, when there were so many? How long before sheer weight of numbers overwhelmed? He cut and thrust and hacked, his comrades hidden in the press. He wondered, fearfully, how they fared, they without Dera's blessing on their steel, Cennaire without a weapon.
A lull then, a gap between the shuffling bodies revealing them locked in desperate combat, Bracht's falchion darting swift, Katya's saber slashing, Cennaire grappling barehanded. Speed and sword skill alone kept them alive—but for how long? Calandryll dodged between two grim creatures, his blade a shimmering blur that trailed blood in its wake as he hurled himself toward the Kand woman, the guardian that threatened
to bear her down. He swung the straightsword with all his strength against the beast's spine, bone cut and breaking, Cennaire's face glimpsed brief, fierce, as she turned to face another.
He fought for his own life then, aware even as he paced out the steps of that deadly dance that
Cennaire avoided the paw that reached for her and clutched a wrist so thick her hands failed to encircle the limb. She was lifted up, helplessly kicking at the beast, its free paw questing for her throat, she, for all her strength, barely able to fend off the slashing talons. Calandryll dispatched his own attacker and went again to her aid, slashing the creature's legs, severing hamstrings, Cennaire springing clear as it bellowed and fell. He drove the sword down into the neck, severing vertebrae, Cennaire moving closer, as if she sought the protection of his presence, his blade. Over the high-pitched shrilling of the guardians he shouted, "We must find the gate before they overcome us!"
Cennaire nodded, and together they fought their way to where Bracht and Katya stood, barely able to hold the furious beasts at bay.
The very numbers of the creatures, and their sheer ferocity, afforded some slight advantage, for they made no effort to attack in concert, but sought individually to confront the questers, jostling one another, even lashing at their fellows in their eagerness to reach their prey. Numerous shaggy bodies littered the snow, but it seemed that for each one that fell, the darkness birthed more to augment those already contesting entry to the gate.
It seemed a hopeless battle. That the quest must end here, atop the Borrhun-maj, and Rhythamun escape to raise his fell master. The guardians were too many; they were too strong. They might be slain, but ere long they must overcome the questers by sheer weight of numbers alone: Calandryll roared, "Together! Back to back, and find the gate!"
He acted on his own words, spurred by fear of Rhythamun's victory, hacking with a terrible vigor at the howling creatures that yet stood betwixt him and the portal. Limbs fell sundered; all around the snow grew dark with spilled blood. He knew Cennaire fought at his side, trusted that Bracht and Katya stood behind as he sought to carve a way through. The guardians shrieked furiously, more and more emerged from the night. Oh, Dera, he thought, shall we die here! Does it all end heret And then, as bloodied steel clove a skull, he saw the gate, clear, the path a moment open. He yelled, “Now! Swift! I'll hold them off."
He swung the straightsword in a wide arc as the guardians ran to block the way, moving aside that the others might go by him into the gate. He heard Bracht shout, “Together, or not at all!" and then gasp. He turned his head, fearing the Kern slain, and saw Cennaire move past him, dragging Bracht and Katya bodily with her.
She halted a bare handspan before the portal, screaming, “Calandryll, now!"
He answered, “Aye!“ and hacked at an angry, bestial face, cut a thrusting paw, felt another scrape his chest, and flung himself back, against them, propelling them all into the gate.
Now they were leaves blown down the avenues of time,- flotsam on the winds of eternity. They floated weightless, noumenal in the vacancy between tellurian and aethyric hyles. There was only quiddity, as if flesh were stripped painless from bone and bone dissolved in the instant of entrance. They were pure motes of ego, no longer carnal but become atmans, incorporeal: they existed now only as pneuma.
As sparks rising from a god-built fire they drifted in absence. Sensation no longer existed, nor senses: there was only being. And in Calandryll a sudden realization that it was toward this end Ochen had tutored him so fervently. The cantrips and the gramaryes the wazir had taught him had been but exercises—useful enough in that substantial world they had quit, but meaningless in this everlasting now—designed to prepare his atman, his pneuma, for this exigency, to shift the pattern of his thinking, the very fabric of his mind, toward that level that should allow him control, the hope of survival, in this nullity.
He had not the least idea how he did it: thought was pure here, a thing of itself, less the outcome of ratiocination than the fact of whatever existence he now inhabited. Perhaps it was that power sorcerers and spaewives discerned in him,* perhaps it was some gift of the Younger Gods. The source mattered no more than the cause—only the affect held meaning. He willed it, and it was: they emerged in the realm of the aethyr.
They stood upon a greensward, beneath a sky of gentle azure, cumulus drifting majestic on a soft breeze, the sun benign on their faces. A hurst of splendid oaks rustled softly at their backs and before them ran a river painted all blue and darting silver by the sun. Little flowers, cerulean and saffron, sprinkled the grass,- birds sang. Across the river, hazy in the distance, stood an edifice of white and gold, splendid. Calandryll looked toward it, and knew Rhythamun was there, and dreaming Tharn. And that save he held this plenum extant, it should dissolve and become another thing, a thing of Rhythamun's creation, or Tharn's, or perhaps of the First Gods. He turned to his companions.
They stood befuddled, staring about as if untrusting of their eyes, their senses, as if they anticipated the dissolution of the solidity beneath their feet, a return to that state of unbeing, or to the ice wastes of the Borrhun-maj.
"Where are we?" Bracht asked. "What place is this? Another Tezin-dar?"
Cennaire drew close as he answered: "This is the aethyr—limbo. Tharn rests there." He pointed across the river, to the mausoleum. "And Rhythamun."
"This seems"—Katya stooped, plucked a flower, and held it to her nose—"entirely substantial. I had thought limbo should be . . . different."
"Limbo is ..." Calandryll struggled for the words that might rationally explain concepts he did not rationally understand, then shrugged. "Limbo is nothing, nonmaterial ... A concept, and so may be shaped to what you will. Ochen should explain it better than I."
The Vanu woman studied him awhile, frowning. Then: "Do you say this world is your mind's making?"
"This world, what we see"—he gestured around— "aye. I know not how, only that I was able."
"That power in you," she said softly, awed.
Bracht, blunter, said, "You create all this?"
And Calandryll answered as best he could. "Not create it, I think, but impose my will upon the matter of creation."
"Ahrd," the Kern said softly, almost reverentially. "Are you become a god then?"
"No." Calandryll shook his head, smiling. "Were I that, I'd find it simpler to deny our enemy. I've that power in me, I suppose—what Ochen saw, and the spaewives—and that combines with Ochen's teaching, that I can better comprehend the stuff of limbo, of the aethyr, and so shape it to my wishes. To Rhythamun this is likely a very different place."
"To Rhythamun . . . aye," Bracht murmured. "I wonder what he sees."
"Likely his sight is shaped by his pneuma," Calandryll said.
"Then to him, this likely a poisonous place," Bracht returned. "You say he's there?" His gaze moved past Calandryll to the marbled splendor in the distance.
"Aye." Calandryll nodded, certainty in his voice. "The Mad God lies there, dreaming of resurrection."
"Then do we go there?" Bracht demanded. "And halt his dreaming?"
Calandryll thought it should likely not be so easy. Whatever power lay in him he thought must be equaled or outweighed by that knowledge Rhythamun possessed. The warlock had lived long ages, accumulated the ill wisdom of centuries, and now—so close to his fell goal—he should not readily concede the battle. But he said, "Aye," confidently, and began to walk toward the river, aware of Cennaire's eyes on him, admiring, almost worshipping.
Bracht stepped out as if devoid of doubt; as if, at last come close to their quarry, he foresaw only victory. It was Katya who echoed Calandryll's uncertainty. "How came he here?" she wondered. "Seven wazir-narimasu it took, to open the first gate, yet Rhythamun went through solitary. And alone, he survived the Borrhun-maj to reach this place."
"He's powerful," Calandryll said. "He commands great magicks."
Katya nodded, falling silent, a cloud passing over her face. Her grey eyes flashe
d stormy, but she said no more.
"Shall honest steel prove sound here?" demanded Bracht.
Calandryll frowned, unsure of the answer. At length he said, "I think it likely. We're fleshed, no?
We feel the breeze, the ground beneath our feet— so likely solidity becomes imposed on the insubstantial, and our blades own the same reality as we."
"Ahrd! A simple aye or nay would have sufficed." Bracht chuckled, as if he reveled in the prospect of the final confrontation. "I've no head for these metaphysics. Be all this of your making, then only hold my blade secure and sharp-edged, and I'll give you Rhythamun's head."
Calandryll smiled and took Cennaire's hand, reassuring himself that she and he were, indeed, substantial. He felt less confident of success than Bracht, and wondered if that was the Kern's function in the gestalt Ochen had spoken of, Bracht's foreordained part in the quest: to furnish them with optimism, to bring them on when fainter souls might falter, careless of danger. And were that so, he mused as they hurried toward the river, what role does Katya play! What Cennaire! What is my part!
That question he could not readily answer, and cursed himself for it: they came ever closer to their goal, and that evasive knowledge should likely prove vital to their success—or their failure. He gnawed at the problem, dredging conversations with Ochen, the pronouncements of Kyama and the other spaewives, from his memory. Those last, hurried words of the wazir's came clearest, but still fragmented . . .
One may, unwitting, aid you . . .
That power one of you commands, and that another holds . . .
Perhaps the one might be turned against the other . . .
Angus Wells - The God Wars 03 Page 40
