Karilyne- Heart Cold as Ice

by Van Allen Plexico

  We disembarked and Lucian led us a short distance around to where one of the side gates was located. He laid his hands and his desires upon its gilded surface and closed his eyes and the gates swung easily, soundlessly open.

  We entered into the city of the gods.

  As we strode along the main promenade on the way to the central plaza and the Fountain, I looked around and recalled my last visit there. That had been the day the galaxy had nearly been destroyed, but it had also been the day I had first met Mirana and had offered her the chance to join me—to become my apprentice. That had been, on balance, a good day.

  We entered the central plaza and, weapons at the ready, we looked around for any sign of our enemies.

  No one could be seen. The place appeared deserted.

  “Look at it,” Solonis said, and he was pointing at the broad basin just ahead.

  Normally that was where the water-like cosmic energies spraying up from the Fountain would fall back down and collect in a shimmering pool of raw Power. But from where we all stood, we could see that the “water level” of the basin now was surprisingly low. Much more disturbingly, the Fountain itself only burbled a tiny amount of energy up from the ground—a fractional amount compared to the spectacular geyser we were used to seeing.

  We rushed toward the Fountain. As we did, a voice echoed up from somewhere just ahead, though no one was yet visible.

  Solonis reached the basin first. He leaned over the edge and looked down. “Oh,” he cried.

  The rest of us came up behind him and from there we were able to see what he had seen: Cevelar, our adversary, now dangled by his fingertips from the inner lip of the basin. A short distance below him, the raw energies of the Fountain splashed and churned. Energies that, when radiated out, gave us our Aspects and our abilities, but when concentrated like that, were the only thing in the multiverse that could utterly annihilate us.

  “Help—help me, please,” he was saying, his voice very low and weak.

  “What has happened?” I wondered aloud. I followed that with a question for him: “Why don’t you pull yourself up?”

  And then I realized why he wasn’t doing just that: Energy was spilling from his side, pouring out, even worse than it had been from Kambangan after Lucian had run him through. Clearly Cevelar was very weak and on the verge of dropping into the churning raw energies of the basin. His being able to hang there at all was remarkable enough.

  Solonis started to lean down and grasp him, but Lucian and I both moved forward and stopped him simultaneously.

  “What are you doing?” Solonis asked, confused.

  I motioned for him to wait, while Lucian stepped up and addressed Cevelar.

  “What happened?”

  Cevelar looked up at Lucian, attempted to scowl at him, failed. He was simply too weak to do much of anything beyond cling desperately to the lip of the basin.

  “Tell us,” I commanded.

  “I was betrayed,” Cevelar croaked. “It was the mortal, Vostok. He asked to examine the Knife of Alaria, and so I allowed him to.” Cevelar grimaced in pain. “He stabbed me with it, then attempted to hurl me into the Fountain. I was very fortunate to be able to grab hold of the edge.” He peered down at the bubbling pool below him and then up at Lucian and he managed to put a bit of force into his voice now. “In the name of the Above and the Below—help me!”

  “Not just yet,” Lucian said to him, raising one hand in a putting-off motion. “You’ve hung on this long. What’s a little longer? And we have questions...”

  Cevelar glared back at Lucian. “Fine,” he managed. “But make them quick, for my energies drain away, and I grow weaker by the moment.”

  “I understand.” Lucian appeared to be composing his thoughts for a moment. “So your friends just left you here?”

  Cevelar scowled. “Vostok could see I would not be able to pull myself back up, wounded as I am. He knew it would only a matter of time before I fell. And so, yes, he left me here.”

  “And where did Vostok go?”

  Cevelar’s eyes narrowed. He seemed very reluctant to divulge anything else to us.

  Lucian leaned over the edge a bit further and pursed his lips as he inspected what lay below Cevelar. “The basin appears to be at a lower ebb than usual,” he observed matter-of-factly. “Perhaps you could actually survive falling into it. Perhaps it would only disintegrate your legs. Then again, you might go in head-first.”

  Cevelar growled in his throat but still said nothing.

  “Why would you protect those who betrayed you?” I called to him.

  Cevelar held out for another few seconds—seconds that to him probably felt like hours. Then he looked up at me. “Vostok took the Cosmic Weapons and has journeyed to the Dyonari Star-City of Garyn-Dar.”

  “Garyn-Dar?” Mirana gasped. “The Walkers in Darkness.”

  “Not a fun place,” Lucian said.

  I was not familiar with this Star-City. “Why there?” I asked.

  Cevelar grunted. The fingers of his left hand slipped a bit and he scrabbled to regain a hold.

  “The Seers there have proven cooperative in the past,” he said. “They claim to have access to the Scepter of Mordant. We were to finalize a deal with them, before this betrayal.”

  “The Labyrinth,” Mirana whispered.

  “Yes,” the other Dyonari agreed. “Those fools. Some things never change, even across millennia of time. Garyn-Dar.” He spoke the name like a curse, and he spat.

  “Why would the Seers there help Vostok?” Lucian asked. “Do they not understand what it would mean for all of creation if Vorthan is reconstituted?”

  Cevelar made a dismissive sound. “I am certain they meant to betray us—to betray him, now. To try to steal the energies for themselves. For their own uses.” He snorted. “I had a plan to deal with that contingency. But Vostok—who knows.”

  “Why does Vostok want to revive Vorthan?” I asked.

  Cevelar shook his head. “He is no true believer. He is merely power-hungry. He claims devotion to the deathgod but I know his true intentions. As with the Seers, I believe he merely wanted to gather Vorthan’s raw energies together, combined with the power of the Cosmic Weapons, and wield it all himself. To, in effect, make himself into a god.” Cevelar exhaled weakly, then looked back up at us. “That is all I know. Now pull me up.”

  “One more thing.” I said, stepping forward, next to Lucian. I pointed to the weakly-bubbling thing that had once been the dynamic source of all our might. “What did you do to the Fountain?”

  His voice now growing faint and his fingers trembling where they supported his weight, Cevelar attempted to explain what had been done.

  Hearing this, Solonis cursed. “You were a fool,” he snapped, “and you may have doomed us all.”

  “It will scarcely matter much longer,” Cevelar replied—and now a red light burned in his eyes. “When the deathgod Vorthan returns—and return he will, this brief interruption in my plans aside—all of reality will be consumed by chaos and entropy. That includes this City and the Fountain itself.”

  “I see,” Lucian said. He looked at me. “So. I believe that’s all the useful information he possesses.”

  “Yes,” Cevelar replied. “It is. Now pull me up!”

  “Why?” Lucian asked innocently. Then he stepped forward, drew back his foot and kicked Cevelar square in the face.

  Screaming, Cevelar dropped. His journey was a short one, though: he tumbled down into the cosmic energies churning in the basin. They proved in fact to be much deeper than they had first appeared. They swallowed Cevelar up with scarcely a ripple. Just like that, he was gone. Forever.

  I looked at Lucian, startled. Disapproval must have been clear on my face.

  “Spare me your moral outrage, Ice Queen,” he said. “I am well-acquainted with your ruthlessness.”

  “Even so,” I began— but then I thought back to all the indignities Cevelar had subjected me to in the time since I had awoken in that cell,
and to the great evil he had been working toward, and I found I could not maintain my anger. I knew I might well have done the same thing, if Lucian had not. After a moment's reflection, I said, “Perhaps I am merely envious that you feel free to act in so callous a manner, when the circumstances call for it.”

  He looked back at me and shrugged. “Sometimes it’s good to be the dark god,” he said.

  We settled on a multi-pronged strategy.

  Binari agreed to work on the Fountain. Solonis led him to the base of the stairway that extended up and out over the basin, and there showed him a panel of white marble set into the side of the structure. After removing the rectangle of stone, the Technologist was able to take a look at the Fountain’s inner mechanisms—crystals and gems in complex geometric settings, all swathed within an aura of shimmering light. Some moments later he looked up and shook his head, admitting that much of it was far beyond his expertise. His exact words were, “I am not certain this is science at all. In fact, I’m not sure how it any of it works. Parts of it seem more… mystical… than scientific.”

  “Of course,” Solonis told him. “We are, after all, gods—not scientists.”

  This only appeared to puzzle the little Rao more deeply. Shaking his head in frustration, he turned back to the mechanisms.

  At that point the mysterious Dyonari who had accompanied Lucian stepped up. “I have some bit of expertise with systems of this kind,” he stated. “If I may—?”

  “By all means,” Lucian and I both said together.

  Leaning in over Binari’s shoulder, the Dyonari reached down and slid out a pair of vertical trays of softly glowing crystals. “Yes,” he said. “I am familiar with the basic idea here.” He pointed to a couple of dark spots that appeared to have been burned into the trays. “And those must be the places where Cevelar sabotaged it.”

  “Ah,” Binari said, some of his bewilderment fading, “I begin to see…”

  Encouraged, the Rao began asking more questions and the Dyonari reeled off detailed answers as he pointed to different areas of the crystalline mechanisms. Together they got to work.

  Meanwhile, standing a short distance behind them, I found myself becoming quite intrigued by all of this. I could not imagine how this strange Dyonari could know anything about the gods or the Fountain—and yet clearly he did. I was about to once again ask exactly who he was, when he turned to Lucian and said, “But I assume you are about to travel to Garyn-Dar. Perhaps I would be of greater assistance there.”

  “You would not be welcomed,” Mirana said, her voice cold. “No more than any of us would. Do not think they have forgotten you there.”

  So my apprentice knew this individual? How fascinating. Now I was doubly intrigued.

  “We still remember the legends of your time,” she was saying to him. “You may now be considered the Redeemed by some, but on the Star-Cities I know, you are still the Renegade—one who attempted to become a god, and who brought down near universal destruction instead.”

  The Renegade? Could this be—? I shook my head. Surely not. That all happened millennia ago. Before the gods even existed, if the stories were true.

  “I fought against that, and at great cost,” the Dyonari said. “I am falsely accused.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Lucian said.

  Mirana and the other Dyonari appeared for a moment on the verge of trading blows. But then the older one held up a hand to her and bowed resignedly. “Very well,” he said. “I shall leave my brothers and sisters to you, and will instead remain here. Where this young Rao and I will endeavor to undo the damage that has been done to your Fountain.” He relaxed a bit then and actually smiled at us. “I remember when it was created, you know. I was there.” He waved his hand in a vague gesture. “More or less.”

  My mouth dropped open. I realized that fact and closed it quickly. But I was still astonished.

  “This,” I said, motioning toward the Dyonari, who now gazed back at me levelly. “This is Istari, who traveled the Paths with Baranak? This is Istari the Renegade?”

  “The Redeemed,” he said.

  “Yes, of course,” I replied, stunned. My mind was awhirl. It seemed impossible. Perhaps this was only some eccentric Dyonari who was attempting to assume the identity of a long-dead famous ancestor.

  Perhaps that was the case. It certainly seemed more likely than the alternative.

  But then again, I reminded myself, Solonis did possess a time machine.

  * * *

  After that, Binari and the one calling himself Istari busied themselves in attempting to repair the Fountain and restore the Power.

  Solonis meanwhile decided on a new plan. He pointed out that, should they fail in their repairs and we therefore remain reduced to little more than mortals, we would need all the firepower we could get on our side. Particularly if Vostok had his own soldiers with him, or swayed the Dyonari over to his side. Therefore he summoned the Time Tomb and he and Tamerlane departed, planning to gather up some imperial forces and bring them to help us.

  That left Lucian and Davos to accompany my apprentice and me to the Star-City of the Dyonari.

  But not the one we had first intended to visit.

  “Garyn-Dar is fallen,” Mirana tried to explain. “Fallen into darkness. None who dwell there can be trusted.” She shook her head vehemently. “We must not go there.”

  “But that is where Cevelar said Vostok has gone, with the three Cosmic Weapons in his possession,” I said to her. “We have to catch them—to stop them before they find the Scepter of Mordant and become too powerful to be stopped at all.”

  I began to lead the way back toward the gates. We passed through them and then continued onward to the Path that had brought us there, just beyond.

  “We do not have to go to Garyn-Dar to catch them,” Mirana insisted as we walked.

  “And how is that?” Davos asked.

  “We know their ultimate destination is the Labyrinth,” she said quickly, “and there are more ways than one to get to it.”

  I was uncertain about this myself, but I kept my mouth shut and preserved my air of omniscience as Davos stepped up to ask the question instead: “How can that be?”

  “Because the Labyrinth lies in another plane, some distance above the mortal realm,” Mirana answered. “One with several points of entry.”

  She hurried around in front of us and we all came to a stop, looking at her.

  “All the points of entry I know of, however,” she said, “are on Star-Cities. Garyn-Dar is one of them, yes—but Dalen-Shala is another.”

  “So we could go there?” I asked, intrigued.

  “I am not certain the inhabitants of my Star-City would treat any of us any kinder than the people of Garyn-Dar would,” she said. “But we at least have connections there. Mine, and the fact that a number of human soldiers under General Agrippa visited there during the Nightfall War. Visited peacefully, with mutual respect.”

  Lucian looked at me and I shrugged. “Why not?” I asked.

  “It may be closer, too, in terms of travel time,” Mirana added.

  “I’m sold,” Lucian said.

  “Yes,” Davos rumbled.

  And so our mission became clear: Go to Mirana’s city. Gain access to the Labyrinth. Catch up to Vostok. Stop him from gathering all the Cosmic Weapons together. Prevent the return of Vorthan or Vorthan’s energies from being harvested.

  And do all of this amid a city of very powerful and quite possibly hostile aliens.

  Little did we suspect then that another extremely formidable and very interested party was about to involve itself in the matter as well.

  The four of us gathered at the edge of the Golden City, chose our Path and together we set out for Dalen-Shala.

  TWENTY TWO

  The Path we followed had some time earlier taken the form of a winding lane through a forest of trees made all of silver and glass. It all possessed a dreamlike quality that lulled and beguiled us. Light sparkled from every surface a
nd the very air itself seemed to hum with a hidden power.

  Mirana led the way. She had labored long to master and perfect her ability to find and walk the Paths—something normally only the most advanced Seers of the Dyonari could do—in the time since she had come into my service.

  Eventually the actual grassy path we trod upon widened out and the trees became far enough apart on either side that we could see more than dense foliage above us. A few moments later the sky changed from a gentle deep blue to the black of purest night. The stars came out and a bright comet burned overhead, dividing the heavens in half.

  We proceeded along for several hours in this fashion. And then the crystal spires of the Star-City appeared ahead of us, rearing up like glass mountains in the distance.

  Distance is a tricky thing, though, when one follows the Paths. What looked at first to require more hours of walking suddenly shortened itself into a brief span, and within only another few steps we were there, entering one of the great space-going cities of the Dyonari.

  The Star-Cities were the final refuges of that ancient race, after their own homeworld had become lost to them many eons before. For so very long they had floated through the cosmos; some dozen gigantic snowflakes, rugged as iron but as delicate-looking as glass. Thousands and thousands of Dyonari dwelt upon each of them. This particular one was Mirana’s old home, a place she had not visited in years. Her homecoming looked to be bittersweet.

  “I hate them,” she whispered to me as we walked off the grassy way and onto and then across the broad courtyard at the edge of the main deck. Behind us the Path faded away like a forgotten dream and vanished entirely, folding back into the other reality through which it had brought us. Looking around, we saw that we now stood on a massive spacecraft, many miles long and wide, adrift in the depths of interstellar space. An oxygen-rich atmosphere surrounded us; another miracle of ultra-advanced Dyonari science that bordered on magic.