When the Goddess Wakes

by Howard Andrew Jones

  “What are you doing?” Elenai asked.

  “Don’t be afraid,” the being answered, with the faintest touch of Kyrkenall’s own charm. “I call to the rest of me, and I hope to gather before her arrival. Then I shall speak to her. Ah, my love,” he said, now with Kyrkenall’s voice, and, stricken, looked back to the stone. “She’s there. I feel her. But she’s weak.”

  “I will stream more threads to the emerald,” Varama said on the instant, and reached for the hearthstone once more.

  “Can the God really stop the Goddess?” Elenai asked Kyrkenall.

  “He’s going to talk to her. Well, not talk really, but interact. He wants to be whole when he meets her. Those chaos spirits out in the shifts? Those are all little bits of him that escaped or dripped away, or were never captured. They’ve been out there all this time, looking for a way to be a part of a greater whole. They’re coming to be a part of him again.”

  From that jagged tear in the sky, the wind rolled down, carrying with them a vast sweep of giant figures outlined in white. The last time Elenai had seen the chaos spirits they were images of the dead. This time every single one of them was a grinning Kyrkenall.

  Those with her must have seen different things. She heard Thelar gasp in horror, and the aspirants cried out. Gyldara let out a soft moan, as of pain.

  “We’re all seeing different things,” Elenai said. “Don’t be afraid!” And then she spoke quickly to Kyrkenall. “They’re not going to hurt these people, are they?”

  “No,” the God answered. “They are a part of me. I am fond of this one, and he is fond of you. I will not harm you.” Kyrkenall thrust one hand to the sky, fingers splayed.

  The figures flowed one in upon the other, their lines blurring and twisting and swirling down, as though Kyrkenall’s outstretched hand lay at the bottom of a vast invisible funnel. He took on their energies, smiling brightly, laughing as he did. Finally the spirits were gone. The thing within Kyrkenall had absorbed them.

  “Oh, that is glorious and ever so much better!” he cried, and stretched out both hands.

  Elenai remembered what Kalandra had said about a mad god of chaos upon the loose. A changeable, shiftable god. How much understanding of humanity would he retain once he left Kyrkenall?

  The God’s energies drifted free of the archer and left him blinking and uncertain on his feet. Elenai steadied him.

  Beside Kyrkenall was a being who was, and wasn’t him. One whose eyes weren’t black, but burned with distant stars. A being of marble white skin with pearly white hair, garbed in a shining white khalat, who laughed, and smiled. “Oh, what a fine and pleasant shape this is!”

  It was then the Goddess drifted down, dark perfection, stories tall. The duplicate Kyrkenall expanded to meet her, growing swiftly in size and levitating into the air.

  Thelar cried a warning. “The hearthstones!”

  They burned bright, and their energies poured out in concentrated rays, gifting the looming Goddess with their full power. As it streamed into her, she faced the God in midair. Both started at one another, hands outstretched but not quite touching. Their enormous eyes closed.

  Kalandra reappeared dimly on Kyrkenall’s other side, a ghost through which Varama was visible. Kyrkenall turned to her, smiling in relief.

  “You did it!” Elenai grinned at Varama.

  “It wasn’t me,” the alten said. She was on her feet, looking behind them so fixedly that Elenai turned.

  The long dead, long-vanished alten Rialla stood there, pale and luminous.

  “Rialla,” Elenai said quickly, “go back and warn Kyrkenall while you’re still alive. Tell him about all of this.”

  “No, my queen,” Rialla said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it sooner, and I’m sorry I can’t explain, then or now. My time is nearly run, and I saw we had another chance here, if we do better than the first time we tried. There cannot be another.” She looked to Varama. “Hold the keystone foremost in your memory. The globe.”

  That must have made some sense to Varama, who confirmed the instruction with a single nod.

  Kyrkenall swore, not in disgust, but with pleasure. Tretton, somewhere behind, laughed genially. And Ortok shouted in joy. “My friend!”

  Elenai turned from Rialla. A gaunt, welcome figure hurried toward them from where the hearthstones disintegrated. N’lahr spared only the briefest glance at the giant figures above as he drew to a stop, Gyldara and Tretton on his heels.

  Ortok embraced him in his great arms.

  Elenai was only momentarily confused about the commander’s unexpected revival. Just as the Goddess had pulled energy from Kyrkenall’s bow and blade and even Elenai’s horse, she had withdrawn it from N’lahr, who’d been lying only fifteen feet or so from the hearthstones.

  Ortok stepped away and N’lahr received an embrace from Kyrkenall.

  “All of you,” Rialla said, “do not interfere with what’s about to happen. No matter what you see. I will tell you when to act.” She pointed to a high dune less than an eighth of a mile north. “Cerai will attack from there. Ready yourselves. Mages, assist me when the energy falls.”

  Elenai half expected a portal to open on the dune, but Cerai simply stepped to the top and knelt, a staff in either hand. She aimed one into the sky above.

  Bright, warm energies stretched forth in a golden ray. Cerai must have had a better understanding of the shaping tool’s energies than they’d managed, for her attack was no narrow beam. It encompassed nearly the whole of the Goddess, transforming her beautiful black surface into shining crystal. She turned her head, reaching with an arm that moved ever slower, and then a blast from the chaos weapon swept down across her body.

  Elenai thought the attack would reduce the deity again to hearthstones, but it was raw energies that blew clear from her and swept into the wind. The chaos god spun, his form stretching in an instant toward Cerai, only to have holes torn through his own changing form as the shaping tool’s energy laced through him. He lifted hands as if to contemplate the wonder of this new sensation, then his outline wavered and he, too, vanished.

  Their energies rolled and sparkled and thundered—and swept toward a violet portal opening in the sky. Cerai, Elenai guessed, funneling the energies to her realm. She had out-planned them all, even Rialla.

  But the ghost alten seemed unperturbed, though no less intent. “Now, Commander! Strike her now! Mages, assist me!”

  N’lahr shouted for Tretton and Gyldara to guard the queen and for Ortok and Kyrkenall to follow, then sprinted down slope with a borrowed sword. His friends raced after.

  Rialla worked the air, hands spiraling in a complex motion. A portal opened upon them and out flowed the energies of the Gods. Pure hearthstone energy, stolen from Cerai. It washed into Elenai with such ferocious pleasure it rendered her mute. Kalandra’s form blazed up to full intensity in the onslaught. Varama threw back her head, smiling, and Thelar and Muragan laughed in joy.

  “Center yourselves!” Rialla shouted. “Guide the energy to me!”

  And this they did. Half blind with power, Elenai diverted the rushing energy toward the smaller woman, who twisted it into hundreds of threads at once and hurtled them skyward, where they curved out and away and off into the horizon. Every mage there was united in their effort—Elenai, Varama, Kalandra, Thelar, even the blood mage and the trio of aspirants—each fighting to capture and divert every particle of energy toward Rialla before it could escape. Elenai smiled the while, but no matter the boundless power at her command, fear wrapped the core of her being, for the mages wavered constantly upon the point of failure. And with that failure might come the end of everything.

  The stress was too much for the aspirant Tavella, who sank to the ground. None of them could divert attention to help, and Elenai was glad to see Gyldara pull her clear.

  Elenai glimpsed N’lahr and the others drawing close to Cerai as the rogue alten worked frantically to counter Rialla’s efforts, but she could spare no more attention.

&nbs
p; After a time, the energy had begun to ebb. Muragan had to move away, and a short while after, Elenai realized she, too, was stretched to her limits and stepped apart, doing so with a mix of relief and reluctance, for it was difficult to abandon that tremendous power.

  She wavered unsteadily on her feet, blinking dizzily. Gyldara steadied her with a firm grip. Vannek and Elik stood nearby watching the spell work, transfixed with awe by the play of rainbow energies visible even beyond the inner world.

  Either less impressed or simply more practical, Tretton knelt by Muragan, who was wearily drinking from a wineskin. Tavella sat watching nearby.

  The six other spell casters still labored, and Elenai watched in envy for a moment, then tore her attention away to where Gyldara pointed at the struggling figures on the dune. “They almost have her,” she said.

  On that height, N’lahr had just missed a savage blow from Irion at Cerai’s hand. Ortok swept her from her feet with a great axe blow that surely shattered bone, but she rolled upright with celerity superhuman even by Altenerai standards. Kyrkenall leaned in with a vicious slice, but Cerai slipped past with a savage cut to Kyrkenall’s side. Elenai gasped as she saw the spray of blood.

  Exhausted though she was, she reached for a spell thread to aid them, but before she’d even fully looked into the inner world, N’lahr thrust. She was too distant to see the how of it, only the result—Irion swirled through the air even as Cerai fell back. The blade seemed to land of its own accord in the Altenerai commander’s outstretched hand.

  Though still worried for Kyrkenall, Elenai released the spell unborn. Even Cerai couldn’t contend with three of the greatest warriors alive, not at the same time. Kyrkenall was on his feet still. Cerai managed to sidestep his attack, but she was too late for N’lahr’s slash across her chest. Then Ortok’s weapon cleaved through her head, spraying blood, brain, and bone. She dropped at last.

  At almost the same moment, the last two aspirants pulled from Rialla’s spell. The woman stood blinking. The man sank to one knee. Elik and Gyldara guided them over to where Tavella sat.

  Ortok swept Kyrkenall into his massive arms and ran downslope. N’lahr followed after. That didn’t bode well. How badly had their friend been injured?

  Varama was next to pull back. Though visibly strained, she actually looked less pale and drawn than when she’d begun.

  “Where is she sending the energy?” Elenai asked her.

  “There was a plan within the keystone for a balanced connection between the realms. In this new configuration they will finally be stable.”

  “It’s a globe, isn’t it,” Elenai said. “I could feel it forming.”

  “It’s an entire world. A sphere made up not just of our realms, but of all those other lands the Gods had dreamed, as well as vast seas.”

  Thelar stepped away from the spell. Elenai put her hand to his shoulder, and he looked up at her, eyes still shining. She understood his feelings. It had been a glorious thing to hold such power, however briefly. The exalt sighed. Only two brightly glowing ghosts were left to spin the energy of the Gods, shooting it out and away toward every horizon.

  “I wish we could be a part of it now,” Thelar said reverently. “Shaping it at the end.”

  “We couldn’t have endured,” Elenai told him. “It would have torn our bodies apart. These two are spirits, and the magic reinforces them even as they work.”

  “They’re finishing,” Varama said.

  The defensive screen of squires and kobalin parted before Ortok, who arrived bearing Kyrkenall. His black fur was stained with the archer’s blood. “There are great magics here,” he said. “And part of the God is in him. I feel it. Surely there is a means to heal him?”

  Kyrkenall’s khalat was sliced open along his left breast. Blood dripped steadily from his mouth. His skin was gray.

  N’lahr was only a few paces behind, his brows drawn in worry. Irion’s blade was dark with the blood of Cerai, and he passed it off to Elik.

  Rialla stepped away from the spell at last. She left Kalandra at what had been the nexus point of the vast energies, her arms lifted to the sky. A thin stream of energy still trailed from the portal toward her; the one Cerai had opened in the sky had vanished only a while ago.

  Rialla looked at her friend, whom she had doomed herself and saved a world to preserve. “We have won, Kyrkenall. And the kobalin speaks true. Some of the chaos remains within you. Some of the chaos surrounds us yet. I think you have a choice.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Kyrkenall replied weakly. “I’m going to go with not bleeding to death.”

  “I think I can mend you, for I’ve learned to mend a world.” Rialla’s expression softened ever so slightly. “But there is another possibility. You can’t truly destroy a concept like the God, or the Goddess. You can only change the expression of their energy. Just as some of the God is within you, some of the energy of the Goddess has sustained Kalandra.”

  “Yes,” Kyrkenall said with surprising strength. “I think I see.”

  “I don’t,” Ortok said.

  “Neither do I,” said Vannek. Elenai hadn’t even noticed him come up beside them. Tretton and Gyldara had rejoined their circle as well, watching in awed silence.

  “But what about you, old friend?” Kyrkenall asked, his gaze shifting to N’lahr.

  “What are you talking about?” N’lahr asked.

  “He’ll be all right without you.” Rialla pushed a hand toward Kyrkenall and did not quite touch him. Blood trailed from his mouth for a moment longer, then halted its flow. His skin darkened.

  Kyrkenall’s gaze swung alertly to Elenai.

  And she understood his unasked question at the same moment she reasoned out what Rialla’s vague words hinted at. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “But what about you?” Her eyes were tearing up.

  “I will be with her,” Kyrkenall said, and as he did so he swung down from the great kobalin, patting one large arm almost tenderly as he stood.

  Kalandra walked forward, reaching out with her hand. Her fingers did not pass through Kyrkenall’s own, but grasped them. Not only was she present physically, her eyes were no longer sunken, her cheekbones no longer sharpened by emaciation.

  “You are restored!” Ortok cried. “Both of you!”

  But Elenai understood as the archer beamed at his lost love and she smiled brightly in return that they were more than themselves.

  “Oh, Kyrkenall,” Elenai said, her tears flowing freely. She felt his joy, but she feared for him, and she did not want to say good-bye. Not to him. “Do you really want this? You love your terrible wine. You want Kalandra, in spirit and in flesh. You want to ride Lyria to far and distant lands. And you want to laugh with your friend and brother, N’lahr.”

  Kyrkenall’s smile was sad and knowing. He raised Kalandra’s hand within his own. “You know the things I dreamt of and I sought. My eyes now look on greater, shining sights. They’re leagued like blooms, each opening with thoughts, enticing me with scents and colors bright.” He looked just as she best remembered him, beautiful and rakish and charming. He laughed, and she knew it really would be fine.

  “It won’t be a bad thing to have human faces on these concepts,” Kalandra said. “Maybe it will make the universe a little kinder.”

  “Just promise not to worship us,” Kyrkenall said.

  The energy she sensed within them was boundless, almost blinding even without looking into the inner world, but she was not afraid.

  Rialla, at long last, smiled. Elenai thought she looked dimmer than before.

  “Ah, my time is through. I’m sorry for my mistakes. It was hard to work it all out.”

  “You saved us all,” Elenai reassured her, and looked to Kyrkenall for help.

  Kyrkenall and Kalandra spoke as one. “And we shall save you. Come with us.”

  With a wave of Kalandra’s hand, their energies caressed Rialla and then she, too, glowed from within. For the first time since Elenai had encountered her, the strain along
the smaller woman’s high brow eased.

  Kyrkenall laughed again, and it was a sound that echoed through the cold dunes. He, and his laughter, and his energy, seemed too small for such a space, no matter its width. He addressed Kalandra, who yet held his hand. “My perspective’s already grown so far. It’s hard to hold here. But there are a few last things before we leave, don’t you think?”

  “The wounded,” Kalandra said. “We can heal them. And I’ll undo Cerai’s work upon that poor exalt. N’lahr, old friend, she left a mark on you as well, but I think you’ll find it to your benefit.”

  “Will I? What did she do?”

  “Your life threads are resilient. You have long years before you.”

  “It’s payback for the stolen years,” Kyrkenall said. “But you don’t have to take them. Why don’t you come with us? There are wonders to see. We would never be bored.”

  N’lahr smiled, then shook his head. “No, that’s not for me. Is that what you mean to do? See the far places like you always dreamed?”

  “That and more,” Kyrkenall answered. His grin was infectious.

  “We won’t remake your world,” Kalandra promised. “Much as its imperfections trouble me. It belongs to you. All of you. It’s yours to nourish and safeguard.” She looked at N’lahr. “What will you do, dear friend? Do you still mean to give up your ring and build a school?”

  “I think I do,” N’lahr said. “I’ve spilled blood for the last time.”

  “Can you bring back Rylin?” Vannek interjected, desire writ plainly, and painfully, upon his face. “And others we’ve lost?”

  Elenai’s eyes widened in hope. It hadn’t occurred to her that Kalandra and Kyrkenall had that kind of power, and she searched their faces.

  “I wish we could,” Kalandra answered sadly. “But that’s beyond even us.”

  Vannek bowed his head. Varama hadn’t looked hopeful, exactly, but her expression fell, resigned at the news.

  Kyrkenall withdrew his great bow from its shoulder holster, extending it toward Elenai. She felt magic stir within it as she touched its surface.