Before I could inquire further as to what it might mean, the sound returned again, followed by the bright, orange lights flaring inside the box.
We all moved back and watched and waited to see what was going to happen this time.
It was almost a duplicate of the first time: the light flared to almost blinding intensity, causing us to all look away or shield our eyes. The wail became a scream that then died out into a deafening silence. And when both the orange light and the sound were gone, the box was no longer empty.
The sliding door opened again. The same slender figure in brown robes stood there, but this time he appeared much younger; almost youthful. His skin was smooth, his hair shorter and very black. He took a step out, then another, looking around, as if he’d never seen the place before. While he was doing that, I looked past him at the interior of the box and saw that, this time, no one else accompanied him; no doppelgangers and no man in red and gold.
“Karilyne,” he said, turning his attention to me. “So nice to see you again. It has been too long.”
“It has been scarcely two minutes,” I told him.
He met my ice-blue eyes with his brown ones and frowned. “Two minutes?”
“You were just here,” Mirana informed him, from where she now stood to my left. Her own expression was of suspicion bordering on hostility, and her curved sword was out and ready.
The slender man pondered this information for a moment, then shrugged. “Oh. Well. That probably hasn’t happened yet,” he said. “At least, not to me.”
This confused me, but then I remembered Binari’s comments about temporal distortion. And I remembered our twins that had accompanied him during his prior appearance. A glimmer of comprehension started to come into focus, though just barely.
“Karilyne,” he was saying, “I have come here because I know you need my help. The problem is, I don’t know yet precisely what sort of help I am to provide.”
I met his eyes again. Perhaps I was beginning to understand all of this, and perhaps I was mistaken. And so, “You are overly familiar with me, stranger,” I told him, my hand brushing the hilt of my sword. The blade had suffered during our battle with the robots, but I felt confident it was still serviceable.
He blinked at this, then appeared to relax and even offered me a partial smile. “I apologize,” he said. “I have been so focused on learning the purpose of my mission here, it never occurred to me that you have not yet been formally introduced to this incarnation of me.” He bowed deeply. “I am Solonis, late of the Golden City. And this—” He gestured to the crystal box in which he had appeared. “—this is the latest incarnation of my Time Tomb.”
TWELVE
“I am to believe,” I said to the earnest, dark-headed young man who stood before me, “that you are Solonis, seer-god of the Golden City. Another, like me, of Those Who Remain.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. He smiled at me, then saw Mirana standing to my left and a few steps behind me. “I know you,” he told her, and his smile widened. “I remember when you first came into your mistress’s service. I was certain she was going to kill the lot of you—your entire team. But she surprised me that day. And not for the first time—or likely for the last.”
I pursed my lips at this. He had just given a vague but accurate accounting of how Mirana had become my aide and apprentice. He had not been there that day, in the Golden City—or at least, not to my knowledge. But he had been involved in the entire affair, as I later learned. And so he could have known; very likely would have known. If he truly was Solonis, that is.
“If you are who you claim to be,” I asked him, “why do you look so different? The god I remember who went by that name was old. Gray-haired. Weak.”
“Yes, and that is why I look different now,” he said with another smile. “Vorthan slew me. Slew my body, at least. Ages ago, back when he killed so many of the others. But he did not reckon on what some of my abilities allow me to do. I was able to project my spirit out of my body and preserve it, at least temporarily. You know this has always been theoretically possible, for it is essentially what Vorthan’s crystals do. I succeeded, and afterwards wandered about the aether for a very long time, a sort of cosmic ghost.”
Mirana gasped, and we both looked at her.
“The Spirit of the Vel Shah,” she said, staring at him. “That was you.”
“The Wanderer in the Desolate Places,” he replied, nodding solemnly. “Yes. That was me. For so very long.” A cloud moved over his features. “Floating from world to world, completely incorporeal, with little say in where the cosmic winds blew me…” He sighed heavily. “I have to admit, it nearly drove me insane.”
Mirana continued to stare at him, but now with awe rather than suspicion. Well. She seemed convinced, anyway.
“But,” he went on, “I finally found a suitable body that was no longer being used by its original inhabitant. The poor lad died of something or other to do with his brain, but left behind a perfectly useable body, as you can see.” He spread his hands wide. “And so here I am—young and dynamic and practically unrecognizable, at least from the outside.” He gestured back at the box. “And with a new Time Tomb as well. One that is larger, able to carry more passengers than just myself—for I knew such a thing would be necessary on this occasion.”
“And what occasion is that?” I asked him.
He gave me an odd look. “You mean you don’t already know? I was certain you did.”
Frowning, I shook my head.
He continued to regard me in silence for a moment, then shrugged. “Some of our brothers and sisters are in the process even now of attempting the unthinkable. They wish to return one of our lost number to life. We must prevent that from happening.”
I closed my eyes at this and turned my head away to cover it. I felt the crushing weight of half the galaxy pressing down on my shoulders.
Mirana spoke up. “Why is that unthinkable, when you claim to have done the same yourself?”
The one calling himself Solonis shook his head. “No. I never died. Only my old body was destroyed. I told you—I was transformed into a spirit and wandered about until I could find a new form to inhabit.” He patted his chest. “But what I’m speaking of now involves actually recreating the life force of a god whose very essence was utterly destroyed, obliterated—annihilated in the Fountain itself.”
“Yes,” I told him. “Baranak. Cevelar and his accomplices wish to restore him to life. I am aware of this.” I looked back at him through narrowed eyes, and when I spoke, a touch of scorn sounded in my voice. “I will admit I do not find the prospect as abhorrent as you clearly do.”
He looked at me, frowning slightly, puzzled.
“Baranak? No,” he said. “They have no interest in restoring the golden god to life. That would in fact be counter-productive. Likely it would be the worst thing they could do for themselves.”
This startled me, though not as much as I let on. “Not Baranak? Then who—?”
“Haven’t you guessed by now?”
I had. I simply didn’t want to admit it to myself. Somehow I had been holding out hope that their target truly had been Baranak all along—and that, in some manner, I might see him again. Even if, overtly, I opposed their efforts. But in my heart of hearts I had known the truth from the start. They were never interested in my golden god of battle. They had merely used him as a way of attempting to manipulate me.
My mouth a flat line, I swallowed and nodded once, furious. Cevelar had not fooled me, not manipulated me. I had done it to myself. “Yes,” I said. “I believe I know.”
Mirana looked from my face to Solonis to me again. Her complexion grew ashen even for a Dyonari, and she shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “Not him.”
“Who are you all talking about?” Binari asked, speaking up at last. “Who do they want to bring back to life?”
Big Davos looked down at Binari and chuckled—the first warmth he had shown the Rao. “It is obvious, little
one.”
Solonis nodded, and said the name aloud, that we might bring the conversation to its end. “Vorthan,” he said. “They wish to restore life and vitality to the great murderer of the gods.”
* * *
The sorcerer Garvael had not made a return appearance while we treated with the young man who claimed to be Solonis. Neither had more of his killer automatons assaulted us. The two huge metal doors through which our attackers had poured had closed. The broad atrium complex within which we had battled those robots and wherein we now stood remained empty, aside from the deactivated bodies of those machines and the massive wreckage we had caused all about. I wondered at the fact that no authorities or city watch had come to investigate all the chaos, but I wasn’t about to question that one positive development thus far.
Thus we brought our conversation with Solonis around to our next steps to be taken. He was indeed as keen as we were to track down the other Cosmic Weapon items and seize them before Cevelar and his lackeys could gain control of them.
One small note: for the sake of clarity in my narrative, from this point forward I will indeed refer to this young man in brown robes as Solonis. At the time, I was not yet entirely persuaded, but later developments satisfied me as to his true identity.
Still I wanted to know who the individuals who had accompanied him when he’d first appeared had been—the ones who so resembled the four of us gathered there now, plus the man in the red and gold uniform.
“I have no idea,” was his reply.
“How can you not know?” Mirana asked. “You were just here with them, only a short while ago.”
“I told you—that hasn’t happened yet, at least for me. So I have no idea. Yet.” He smiled. “Obviously, soon enough I will know—but only when I actually do it.”
Mirana shook her head and offered me a skeptical look.
I made a placating gesture back to her. “Let it go,” I told her. “I have encountered these time travel contradictions before. Dwelling upon them too much will only give you a headache—it won’t make things clearer.”
“That is probably wise, yes,” Solonis agreed. He turned and gestured towards the balcony where Garvael had stood earlier, lording over us. “We must get moving now. The sorcerer’s army has fallen, but still he guards the prize we all seek. Who knows what surprises he may be preparing for us even now?”
“You wish to assault the Spire?” I asked.
“Do we dare?” Binari asked, sounding sheepish. “His first set of defenses nearly killed us all.”
“We have no choice,” Solonis said. “If we do not seize the prize, it could well fall to Cevelar.”
“You have a time machine,” Davos rumbled, startling us. He hadn’t spoken in some time; instead he had stood off to the side, seemingly absorbing all the information from our new friend and pondering it. “Why,” he continued, “can’t you just go back in time and take the items from wherever they are, before Cevelar does—even if he already has done so?”
I blinked at this, thought it through briefly, came to a general understanding of it, and turned to Solonis. “He raises a valid question,” I said. “If you can travel in time, you could simply undo anything our enemies accomplish by going back to before they did it and preventing it.”
Solonis grinned at this and shook his head emphatically. “No, no—if only it could work that way. But it does not.” He gestured toward the crystal box that stood behind him. “I have no control over the Time Tomb. It bears me—and whatever passengers I may have with me—as it will.”
“No control?” I asked. We were all puzzled by this and we made that fact abundantly clear to him.
“I know,” he said with a shrug, agreeing. “It scarcely makes sense to me, either. But I simply do not control the comings and goings of this mechanism.”
“Then who does?” I asked, incredulous.
He shrugged again. “Fate. Destiny. The great cosmic forces of the universe. Who knows?” He shook his head. “Not I.”
“But you built it,” I reminded him.
“I did, yes. But only because Fate intended that I would, that I should.”
We all stared back at him, uncomprehending.
“Time is a closed loop,” he said, trying a different tack. “Things happen because they will happen—because they did happen. I cannot alter that. I only facilitate it. I am a catalyst, but in the service of that closed loop, that already-decided Fate.”
While the rest of us wrestled with that, Davos stepped closer to him and said, “So you are claiming that when you travel in time, you are not directly changing things from how they happened before to an entirely new way of happening…”
“Correct,” Solonis agreed.
“Instead,” Davos went on, “you say you are merely causing them to follow their natural course—that you yourself were always part of the equation.”
“Precisely.” Solonis beamed. “You get it!” Then his eyebrows creased. “So few do…”
My eyes widened at this. I looked at Davos, blinking, then at Solonis, then finally at Mirana and Binari. To them I said, “Well. Davos gets it, apparently. Do either of you?”
They both shook their heads, their eyes wide.
“Neither do I.” I snorted. “But understanding is not required—at least, not at this moment.”
“Precisely,” Solonis said. He smiled at me. “What is required is action. I can feel the Fates moving now. We must go.”
“Go where?”
“Wrong question,” Solonis said.
“Go when, you mean,” Davos chimed in.
“Yes.”
I wanted to scream at both of them. Instead I composed myself and asked in an icy voice, “Very well—when?”
He pointed again at the doors through which our robotic attackers had come. “We need to be on the other side of that wall, correct?”
“Yes. But that is a where, not a when.”
“Bear with me.”
My eyes were steely. “I am trying.”
He swallowed and nodded. “We need to be on the other side, but we cannot get past those doors.”
“We cannot? You know this how?” I demanded. “We have not yet tried.”
“We have already tried. We failed.” He caught himself. “We will try. We will fail. I have seen it.” He paused, then, “I propose we skip that part entirely then, and go to the next option—which I believe stands a better chance of success.”
“We can just skip something you know we are going to do? And just not do it? Not have done it?”
“Yes,” he said distractedly. “If the Fates will it. That branch of the timeline shears off, never comes into existence at all. We never do it, because we know there’s no point.”
I breathed in slowly, exhaled heavily. “Very well,” I said, giving in to whatever this apparent madman had in mind. “Failing a frontal assault, what is your plan?”
He started to speak, then hesitated and looked at me. “First—what is the status of the six Cosmic Weapons, as of the current moment in time? I need to know this that I might better serve as an instrument of the Fates in facilitating our actions.”
I looked to Mirana. She considered for a few seconds before answering. “Cevelar has the Knife of Alaria, taken from the One Tree only a short time ago. He also took the Axe of Ayalis from my Lady Karilyne when he first abducted us.”
“The Axe of Karilyne,” I corrected.
“Yes—the Axe of Karilyne. My apologies.”
I nodded once.
She continued, “Those are the two we believe he now possesses.”
Solonis nodded at this. “Yes—I remember that now. Unfortunate, but there is nothing we can do about those at the moment. What of the others?”
“After being in the Dark Lord Lucian’s possession for many centuries, the Sword of Baranak at some point came to be owned by the ruling family of the Anatolian Empire. It was last seen in the possession of General Arnem Agrippa himself, though we cannot be certain if
he still has it. It passed out of public sight after the conclusion of the Nightfall War, and the general himself has been missing for some time now, as well.”
Solonis closed his eyes at the mention of that cataclysmic event. “I recall all of that only too well,” he said.
“Three others remain unaccounted for,” Mirana concluded. “The Shield of Sevenayis, the Hammer of Voloron, and the Scepter of Mordant. Those are the more obscure of the six. They have scarcely been seen in ages. About each of them, very little is known beyond their ancient names.” She looked from Solonis to me and back. “We do not know which of them might be inside the Spire, though we believe at least one of them is there.”
“One is,” Solonis said, nodding. “I feel I should know which one it is, but I cannot seem to access that knowledge at the moment.” He chuckled as once again we appeared puzzled by this. “That happens sometimes, when dealing with time travel. The information, should it be vital to our mission, will come to me at the appropriate time—because I will have made certain that it did.”
“Here we go again,” Binari said, groaning.
“Enough,” I said. “If we are to assault this fortress and defeat the sorcerer, I say we be about it.”
As if on cue, the Time Tomb lit up with orange light and began to whine.
“The Ice Queen is exactly right,” Solonis said. He swung into motion instantly, sliding the door to the crystal box open. “Everyone aboard. Now!”
“Where will it be taking us?” Mirana demanded, before anyone had moved. She stood blocking the way in, her curved sword in hand. I did not disapprove of this and so I watched and waited to see what would happen.
“Wrong question again,” Solonis replied to her, the orange light dancing in his eyes. “We are going back in time. Very far back. Back to before the Spire was here.”
Karilyne- Heart Cold as Ice Page 14
