We had the Shield of Sevenaya. The Fates apparently had allowed us to cheat, that one time, and go back and retrieve it before Cevelar could. But our opponent apparently now possessed several of the other Cosmic Weapons.
“We know Cevelar has my Axe as well as the Knife of Alaria,” I grumbled. “He also claimed to have found the Hammer of Voloron.”
“Do you believe him?” Davos asked.
“Why would he lie about it?” Binari wondered.
“Perhaps to dissuade us from looking for it ourselves,” Mirana said.
“That is a possibility,” Solonis said, “but for now we must assume it is true. And act accordingly.”
“Yes,” I said. “We must be prepared for the worst.”
“So which objects remain to be found?” Binari asked.
“The Scepter of Mordant,” I replied, “about which very little is known.” I frowned. “And of course Baranak’s Sword. Which I should never, ever have given away. I accept the blame for that.”
Mirana looked at me. “No, my lady. Had you kept the Sword, it would be in Cevelar’s possession now. Separating it from your Axe was the smart move—smarter even than you knew at the time.”
“I agree, Solonis said. “You acted wisely. Besides, having two or more of the Cosmic Weapons in too close a proximity to one another for even a short while can cause damage to the very fabric of spacetime itself.”
I wasn’t convinced but I appreciated their efforts to make my stupidity of ages ago seem like wisdom now.
After a long moment passed, Solonis cleared his throat. “But we must find the Sword now,” he said. “It cannot be allowed to fall into Cevelar’s hands. And it would be of enormous usefulness to us, as well.”
“No one knows where to find it,” I reminded him.
“Someone does, I think,” Solonis said.
“And who might that be?” I asked.
Solonis didn’t answer. Instead he turned and looked at Tamerlane. “Now is the time for the answer you know you possess,” he said.
The general frowned at this, then closed his eyes as if thinking deeply. When after a long moment he opened them again, he was nodding slowly. “Lucian,” he said.
Solonis nodded as well. “As I suspected.”
“Lucian?” I scoffed at this. “He gave the Sword away ages ago. And who has seen or even heard mention of him in all that time?”
“I have,” Tamerlane said.
I fixed the dark-haired general with a penetrating gaze. “You. You have seen Lucian recently.”
“I have,” he replied.
“Where? How?”
“Most recently?” Tamerlane shrugged. “On his island.”
“His island?”
“Ah, yes. His refuge,” Solonis said. “Of course.”
“How did you come to be there?” I asked.
“He took me there.”
“Why?”
The man in red looked back at me, then looked away. “That is a private matter,” he said.
My eyes narrowed but I said nothing.
“No one knows how to get there,” Mirana pointed out.
“I do,” Tamerlane replied. “He showed me the way.”
I frowned at all of this, not quite sure I should believe any of it. Who was this mortal to fraternize with the gods? Even the ruler of a mighty empire of mortals was, in my view, beneath the lowliest of the gods. Could there be more to Tamerlane than I knew?
The Time Tomb was wailing now, the orange lights pulsing around us. We were stopping.
“So that is our next destination?” Davos asked, holding his silver energy rifle at the ready.
“It is. You will have to make your own way to that place, though,” Solonis stated.
I looked at him. “And why is that?”
“Because I must leave you all again.”
He gestured to the vista now coming into focus outside the transparent walls. I recognized it. We were back outside the Water Gate of Constantinople. The box we occupied now rested on the grassy shore next to the river upon which we had traveled. The fog and fuzziness were everywhere around.
Now I remembered seeing it there before, when we had first arrived at the Mosaic City. The thought made my head spin.
Solonis opened the door. We knew by now the pointlessness of arguing. We all filed out of the box, while the god in brown robes remained standing there. “It has been a pleasure seeing you all again, my friends,” he said. “When next we meet, I will be a different me.” He smiled and executed a formal bow. “And that me will greet you on Lucian’s island.”
The others nodded or waved. I merely regarded him with a neutral expression. For all he had done to help us, I still scarcely believed half of what he said, and found the rest to be nonsense.
The Time Tomb wailed and flashed and inside it Solonis vanished, leaving us standing there on the river’s shore next to an empty glass box. The door of course was closed and locked.
“We require new transportation,” Davos pointed out.
“Where is this island he spoke of?” Binari asked, anxiety creeping into his voice.
“In another universe,” Tamerlane said.
“What?”
“Its own little universe.”
Binari stared up at him. “Then—then how will we ever get there? If the Lady Karilyne cannot open portals, are we not stranded?”
I turned to Mirana. At my unspoken command she nodded and regarded the river. “It should suffice,” she said after a moment. She closed her eyes and reached out with one hand, as I had taught her. “Yes,” she added after another few seconds of this. “I believe we are in the same general time frame as when we were last here. And what I seek has not drifted far away.”
While the others watched her with curiosity, I merely smiled to myself and waited.
A minute passed in silence. Then another. Finally she looked up and grinned. “There,” she said.
Everyone turned and looked to where she was pointing.
From out of the fog that hung thickly over the river, something had appeared. And it was getting closer. As it slipped out of the last of the haze and drew alongside us, we all recognized it.
“The boat,” Binari said, grinning. “Our old boat.”
“Yes,” Mirana replied, sighing and lowering her hand. She smiled a tired smile and gestured toward it. “Everyone aboard. One last voyage lies before us.”
EIGHTEEN
We sailed the rivers of Fate again that day. Past vistas unimaginable we traveled. The sky above us shimmered in waves of indigo and violet; the shores on either side transformed from grassland to forest to desert. Strangers along the banks gaped at us as we cruised past. They wore exotic clothing and drove odd vehicles—or rode upon wagons or creatures I’d never laid eyes upon before.
Mirana guided us along as she had done the first time, weaving our way along the Paths that interconnected the many layers of reality. We moved with seeming effortlessness from one dimension to another, from one universe to another. Always we remained in the Vel Shah, the Low Above, only the merest “distance” beyond the mortal realm. As a mortal herself, Mirana lacked the ability we gods possess to create portals between layers of reality herself. But her people, the Dyonari, are exceptionally sensitive to the presence and thickness of the walls that separate those realities and, given proper training and experience, can navigate quite well along dimensional pathways that already exist—the Paths. The multiverse, as it turns out, is riddled with such crisscrossing pathways of access. And now we were moving along one of them.
And all the while as we traveled, the fog enshrouding the land grew and spread, and that persistent fuzziness I’d kept seeing seemed worse; it was almost everywhere now. I had developed a very bad feeling about it, and at last I broached that subject with the others. No one knew what to make of it. I regretted failing to ask Solonis about it, though I doubt I would have accepted any explanation he might have offered as fact.
As we neared what would
turn out to be the end of our journey, we were suddenly made to confront the possibility that our mission might have already failed. For high overhead the sky churned and darkened as with a massive storm rolling in. Spots within it flared as lightning discharged and black clouds roiled. Peals of thunder rumbled, like artillery firing in some celestial war—something of which I am able to speak, for I have fought in celestial wars. The storm grew both nearer and worse by the moment, and soon large raindrops began falling and smacking the boat’s deck with audible, wet thuds.
Binari pulled his hood over his head and huddled under the overhang of the quarterdeck. Davos scowled up at the storm, as if taking personal insult from it and daring it to assault him. Tamerlane merely stood there, resolute and unmoving, hands clasped behind his back, facing ahead. Mirana leaned out over the prow, eyes closed and hands raised as she navigated our way along the river; along the Paths.
As the rain grew heavier and I began to fear we would be swamped entirely, a red light flared in the heavens, joined a moment later by a second one. Looking up, shielding with one hand against the growing intensity amid the gloom, I took the lights to be a pair of burning violet suns.
In fact they were eyes.
Binari cried out at the sight and huddled closer in on himself. Davos directed his rifle upward and Tamerlane raised both hands as if to attack. But none of us acted beyond those motions, of course, for what could we do? The eyes glowed reddish-purple far up in the sky, glaring down at us but otherwise causing no harm. I wondered to myself what they represented and was all too afraid I knew.
And then a voice, deep and resonant, boomed out and down at us from the sky.
“I see you, little ones,” it said. “I see you, Karilyne of the Snows.”
“Yes, here I am,” I called back defiantly. “I do not hide.”
“I know your mind, Ice Queen. I know your goal. But you should know: you are too late. Too late to stop what is to come.”
I glanced at Mirana, who had abandoned her post at the bow of the ship to come stand near me, sword in hand.
“You will forgive me if I am not convinced by a show of lights in the sky,” I replied, shouting over the storm.
“Go back,” the voice continued. “Come no further. Go back and prepare yourselves for what is to come.”
“And what would that be?” Tamerlane called out.
“The end,” the voice said. “The end of everything.”
Lightning flared down, the bolts just missing our boat and striking the waters all around us. For a few moments the world around us was lit up like noontime. Slowly but surely the forking bolts drew closer in, surrounding us, about to fry us.
In response I raised my hands and called upon the full extent of what little of the Power was available. I drew it in, channeled and focused it, and shaped it to my own will. Then I exerted it outward.
Cold washed over us. Ice formed instantly on every surface of our ship. But the bolts deflected away harmlessly overhead.
For several seconds this continued. Then, all at once, the lightning stopped.
I continued to exert the effects of my abilities for another moment, to be safe. With the lightning gone, my cold effects won out. The raindrops changed to sleet and hail, then snow, all dumping down upon us. Now every surface was covered.
And then the eyes in the sky flared to life again, brighter still for a brief second.
“Go back,” the voice called again. This time it seemed more remote, though; more distant somehow; almost robotic. Then it faded and disappeared entirely.
I sighed, relaxed and released my tenuous grip on the Power.
Within moments, only the storm remained—now warmer and back to rain. The snow and ice were already melting and running off the side of the ship.
“What was that?” Binari asked, his voice almost frantic. “Who was that?”
“It was Vorthan, was it not?” Mirana asked.
“Come to tell us he has returned, or has been revived,” Davos added, “and his dreams of galactic entropy are nearing fulfillment at last.”
They all appeared stricken. They all believed we had failed. Failed to stop the return of the nihilist, the deathgod.
All but two of us, that is.
“No,” Tamerlane stated, shaking his head.
“No?” Mirana asked, turning to look at him.
“No,” I agreed. “That wasn’t him.”
“But—” Mirana was frowning.
“Vorthan would never be so clumsy,” I stated. “Nor so easily foiled.”
“Big red eyes in the sky; talk of the end of everything…” Davos shrugged. “Who else could it be?”
“Not red,” Tamerlane said. “Violet.”
“Violet?” Mirana frowned, clearly searching her memory. “Who—?”
“Kambangan,” the general and I said together.
The others all frowned at us, surprised.
I was surprised as well—surprised that he had known. I looked at him.
He answered before I could ask. “I have extensively studied the mission reports and recordings of one of my special ops teams. The one that freed him in the first place. So I know his voice, his speech patterns. That was him.”
“Why would you send a team to free him?” Mirana asked, aghast.
“It was inadvertent,” Tamerlane replied. “And no sooner had they freed him from one old trap than he caused himself to fall into another. That is what I assume he has now returned from.”
“In any case, these are tidings both good and bad,” I pointed out. “Bad, in that we face yet another deadly and powerful enemy. One likely in league with Cevelar, as they worked together often back in the glory days of our City.”
“But good?” Binari asked, hopeful. “How is it good?”
“It is good in that we still have time to prevent the revival of the deathgod,” I told him.
* * *
A short while later the world around us changed drastically.
The winding river upon which we traveled remained. But the trees, the desert, the mountains and valleys—the very shores themselves on either side—vanished entirely.
It happened slowly but relentlessly. The clouds overhead had at last dissipated to leave behind a clear nighttime sky, filled with vivid, shining stars. And then the night sky extended down, eating away at the world, devouring it, replacing it, until all that surrounded us was a void; a black starscape. Everywhere. The river hung there in space like a gleaming ribbon. Gravity remained, somehow, and air to breathe. But nothing else.
The others each reacted to this drastic change in predictable ways. I merely stood there, just behind Mirana at the bow of the ship, watching and waiting. I had described the location and, for lack of a better term in the mortal languages, “feel,” of Lucian’s pocket universe. But I had no idea if she could get us there. It was asking a lot, particularly of one who was not a goddess herself.
Fortunately, once again Mirana exceeded my expectations.
She turned back to me. “I believe I have found it,” she said.
I looked around. Only the depths of space surrounded us. “Where?” I asked.
“We stand at the entrance,” she said.
Our ship had indeed stopped moving. I looked past her to what lay ahead of us. Which was, of course, nothing.
“I see naught but more of the void,” I said.
“Nor would you,” she said. “As I understand it, Lucian desires that it remain hidden, even from his own kind.”
“Especially from us, yes,” I said, continuing to study the nothing that she had brought us to.
“How do we gain access?” Davos asked, coming up behind us.
I looked at Mirana but she only shook her head.
I turned to Tamerlane. “You said you have been here before. How do we enter?”
“I didn’t come by this particular avenue,” he replied. “And I wasn’t alone. So I have no idea.”
I sighed. “I had hoped it would be more obviou
s, when we got here.” I gazed out at the blackness of space ahead and then turned back to Mirana. “You are certain this is the spot?”
“I am,” she said, almost indignantly. “I have navigated us through several outer barriers already. We stand now before the final veil. But I can feel no opening, no way through.”
I took this in and nodded. “Then I shall have to make one,” I said.
Reaching out, I moved my fingers in a slow, methodical fashion, extending their reach by a factor of ten, of a hundred, of a thousand. The texture of the cosmos all around became known to me. I could feel how spacetime was knitted together here, and I could sense the thickest spots—and the thinnest.
There. Just ahead and slightly to port. A pucker; a depression in spacetime. A thin spot in the walls of reality separating one universe from another. It was hidden; oh, how carefully it had been hidden. But it could not hide from me forever.
I reached for that spot, drew upon whatever traces of the Power I could feel, and sank my fingers in. And I pulled them apart.
Slowly, oh so slowly, the fabric of reality parted just ahead of us. I kept pulling and the separation lengthened. The long vertical crack I was making now extended some fifty meters top to bottom, but it was nowhere more than a couple of inches wide. Out through that split in spacetime poured bright light; it looked as if a sunny day awaited us on the other side.
If we could get through.
And that was proving more difficult, more problematic than I had expected.
For no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much of the Power I drew in and channeled to the purpose, I couldn’t make the split widen beyond that initial inch or two. And in fact now it was closing back up, relentlessly pushing my hands back together even as I fought to hold it.
What to do? What other tools did we possess?
“The Shield,” I called out to Mirana then.
“Yes?” She was still right beside me.
“Turn it sideways and jam it in the crack.”
I couldn’t see her facial expression but I could definitely imagine it. Nonetheless within a second she had done as I commanded. She leaned out over the front railing and reached out as far as she could, holding the Shield tightly in both hands.
Karilyne- Heart Cold as Ice Page 21
