Текст книги "Tides of Rythe"

Автор книги: Craig Saunders

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Chapter Seventy-Nine

“Just like old times,” joked Roth from behind Tirielle, bringing up the rear. It was a tight fit for the beast, but it never complained.

She supposed it had endured worse.

For long minutes they had crawled on their hands and knees through thick slime and, almost definitely, ordure. Tirielle tried not to think about it, but try as she might the thought snuck up on her, emboldened by the stench.

“It reminds me of old times, too, Roth, but I wish it didn’t. I’m trying my hardest to think of the good times, back when I was merely a dissident, a captive on my way to certain death. Thinking about it now, at least we had no choice then. It seems worse than folly to endure this because we want to.”

“Would you up and go home then?”

Tirielle thought about it, but it was difficult to think of anything with the reek making her head swim.

“No, I decided long ago to make my own fate, and I choose this path as much as it chooses me.” She shivered in the cold gloom. “But I wish, if I still have the luxury of wishes, that at the end of this tunnel waits a hot bath and a cool drink.”

Roth grunted its agreement, and fell silent. Tirielle concentrated on crawling, telling herself that it was no different to playing mudsnakes when she had been a child. Her nose, however, was firmly rooted in reality.

She crawled for what seemed like an age, knees and elbows growing sorer with each passing yard. The gloom gradually gave way to darkness, then a blackness as pitch as the cities of the Naum. Tirielle felt the primal fear that lurks at the back of every mind, the fear of the unknown, sneaking in the night, stalking the black places of the world waiting to plunge a thief’s dagger deep into a kidney, a timber wolf snarling as the campfire’s embers glow their last, a slithering across a bare foot in a desert cave.

She gave a little scream as something scampered across her hand. It squeaked angrily, scuttering down the tunnel to the exit.

She envied the rat. It chose the dark. No matter what she said, this path was not her idea. She would have rather risked walking into Arram in the open.

Time seemed drawn and tortured. Her mind conjured things crawling, hanging above her head, slimy creatures beneath her knees, no cloth to bar their poisonous blood to seep into her skin.

Perhaps sensing her fear, Roth began to speak again, and she was grateful for its voice.

“It cannot be much longer now,” it said, echoing her thoughts.

“Another minute would be too long. Can you see?”

“No, I cannot. Even smell is useless here. Any overpowering odour blinds my senses. I am just hopeful.”

She could hear Roth scraping along behind her. She imagined the rahkens massive shoulders bunched in the tight tunnel, and felt sorry for her friend. To be so cramped for a creature used to freedom, to have its senses blinded in the dark when even in pitch black it could all but see with its nose…she was lucky.

She uttered a low laugh.

“I wish I could find something to laugh about in here.”

“I’m just thankful I’m not you,” she laughed again. “I’m sorry, Roth, but it must be terrible for you.”

“I have no complaints. At the end of this tunnel waits enough Protocrats for me to take out my displeasure at the indignities of crawling through their soil.”

Typraille, crawling in front of her, whispered over their conversation.

“We’re at the end. Still yourself to silence.”

“Yes, master,” giggled Tirielle.

“Silence!” Typraille tried to whisper, but his voice came out harshly.

Tirielle moved her hand to stifle another laugh, and the thought of what she had nearly done repressed any nervous laughter she had been holding inside. Roth laid a calming hand on her calf, startling her for a moment, nearly into a scream, but she realised what it was before she could lose control.

“Easy, lady,” said the beast quietly. “We are at the end. I see the light.”

“Not nearly soon enough.”

Then she could see the light, too. She was coming out into a torch lit chamber, roughly fifteen feet in diameter. Even though it was a dim glow, she still had to close her eyes against the sudden light. When she opened them she was amazed to see that the Sard’s cloaks remained unsullied. She looked down at herself, and then around at Roth. They were both covered in grime and waste.

She wiped her hands as best she could on her ruined dress. Seeing moss growing on the walls, she decided to try and wipe her hands further on their spongy tendrils, but stopped herself with a gulp. It was eerily iridescent, a strange blue light running through its body along the walls and on the stone floor. She tried to ease her weight, so that she would not be standing on it, in case it should grow over her, eating her whole…she knew the thought was fanciful, but she could not shake it.

“I feel the darkness of their magic all around me. It is worse than the tunnel,” said Quintal with a grimace. “The sooner we are out of this place, the better. No matter where it leads.”

“Come, brother,” said Cenphalph, taking their leader’s shoulder. “Let’s do what we came for. Every moment wasted is a chance of discovery.”

They set off up the stairs and into the long corridor with heavy hearts, heavy for those left behind, the journey yet to come, and the overwhelming power of the Protectorate’s evil magic weighing down their shoulders.

Their footfalls were soft, and they met not a soul.

If the Protocrats had a soul to boast between them.

Chapter Eighty

Klan chaffed to be gone. The machinations of the Speculate held little allure for him on this day. He longed to be on the hunt. Shorn would soon be at the fire mountain. He had proven resourceful beyond all reckoning. Klan could not count on the warrior killing himself, and could not find the red wizard.

He would have to take care of the problem in front of him. It would not matter if he never found the one, if only he could kill the other.

“The rahkens rise in the south. Our forces are hard pressed, Speculate. I humbles request a greater force to aid in suppressing the uprising.”

Jek growled at Hare Osina’tha, the leader of the Tenthers, and Klan smirked privately. His Anamnesors would be able to cut the heart out of the rahken nation and reduce them to wandering leaderless in the darkness of their underground caverns. But that, he thought with another quiet smile, was not in his remit.

“You will have it,” Jek told Hare in a cold voice. “There is too much at stake to show weakness now. The ascension comes faster than we had anticipated. Already I feel the return. The old ones are coming. It is foretold in the stars. There can be no mistakes, no rising, no dissention. Put them down, Hare. You have as many warriors as you can handle. Waste no more time. Move on them. The treaty has long been broken. Find out what they are planning. Capture one if you can. Torture it. It will speak.”

“It is not as easy as it should be. Their magic is powerful, and their warriors are a match for two of ours,” complained Hare.

“But their numbers are fewer. If we have to spare a greater force, then so be it….”

The voices droned, fading into the background. Klan sensed something at the edges of his perception. He found his concentration wavering. His eyes leaked subtle power, carefully, so as not to awaken the wards in the Speculatum.

Something was wrong. Klan did not have the power of Prognostication, but he felt something approaching, sneaking up on them. A creature of power…he allowed his senses to roam Arram.

The training halls – all was well. The gates, then the walls, the fences. Nothing amiss. And yet that sense that something was wrong.

He felt it below him. Directly below.

He longed to go and see what it was. He could not penetrate the magic below, where the portals were kept. The expenditure of power to allow a portal to remain open permanently was immense. It would be impossible to travel there directly.

Suddenly it dawned on him, and it was like eyes opening to the slow light of sunrise. They were here! Their magic didn’t work in the bowels of Arram. It was them he could sense!

“Brother! They are here! It is the Sard, in the portal rooms.”

Jek face betrayed no shock, but he wasted no time. He blinked out of existence. Klan followed him, much to the consternation of the other members of the Speculate. Together, they called the guard, and sent them racing to intercept the intruders.

Neither Klan nor Jek would be of any use. In the heart of Arram they would be powerless, and neither was a warrior. To them, it might as well have been a barren place, one where magic would not work, like the Kuh’taenium, or the blasted plains of the Naum, even the great city of Beheth, which had already seen them foiled.

Jek spat orders while Klan watched. The tenthers raced from their posts as though their backs were on fire. Klan caught Jek’s eye. Together, they paced the flagstones and clenched their fists, impotent to help despite their formidable power.

There was only one place the Sard could go. Could they know which portal to take? If they had come this far, they could only assume so.

“Brother, I believe they head to the wastes. Should they win through, I will meet them there.”

Jek nodded. “Go. Do not fail the Protectorate, Klan.”

“They will not escape me this time,” said Klan, his face grim, his anger held firmly in check.

With a perfunctory bow to Jek, his master and brother ascendant, he tore a hole in the fabric of reality, and stepped once more into the void.

Chapter Eighty-One

Events spun through the universe, twisting galaxies, burning solar systems in a final flare of terrifying light as the Sun Destroyers travelled from one star to the next, endless destruction wrought, the wages of frenzied feeding on finite light.

One world barren and bare, its vampiric denizens left for good. Flown on light, from one star to the next, souls trapped in waves, waiting for their revenge.

Events had been set in motion since the banishment. Since their defeat more than two millennia in the past for those on Rythe, a mere moment or an age past for those along the way.

A sun screamed in death, its last agony told to its cousins, its brothers, its birth brood. The message sped from star to star, heralding the arrival of their blight, their bane.

The Sun Destroyers come.

Their last hope, a wizard entombed, three mortals whose only crime was to be born in a time of legend. For two thousand years, the twin suns of Rythe had waited for the return. Now the moment had come. The wizard still slumbered, but the revenant was awake. He ranted beneath the earth, stone and ice.

Three would come together. The swords had spoken, the three still lived.

In the skies above, the suns watched. They shed tears, and flames roiled across their burning surface. Suns die, too. To rest would mean the death of their children. They spawned their children. Now, it was down to them to be their saviours.

Three come as one. Priests to save them, surround them with light. The suns’ emissaries on Rythe. Could they hold back the dark?

Some say legends come again, live through the ages. Some say legends live again, as long as a sun. Some say it is mere serendipity, wishful thinking on the part of mortals who write history and myth for their progeny.

There is serendipity in all things, but on Rythe the simplest coincidence is presaged by black toothed grins and blood.

Chapter Eighty-Two

Quintal held up a hand, and they halted at a turn in the corridor.

“Quiet, now. They know we are here. There is no need for them to find us yet.”

Roth growled deep in its throat, anxious to be about the battle. “I smell them. Wait, and I will clear a path.”

“Time enough for fighting later, Roth,” Quintal told the rahken. “For now, we need to find the chamber. This blasted warren has me all turned around, but we cannot fight our way out. Hold your fury in check, until we have need of it.”

Roth rumbled, but complained no more.

From above, at the head of unseen stairs, the sound of iron shod boots clattering on the stone steps came, harsh and ominous. In the echoing hallway the noise was amplified until it sounded like a marching army.

“Where is it?” whispered Tirielle. “All their symbols look the same – a peak within a white circle should not be too hard to find!” She spoke too fast, exasperation and desperation in her quavering voice.

“Be calm, lady,” said Cenphalph, more quietly than Tirielle had spoken. “We will find it.”

“I don’t know how,” muttered Typraille under his breath, but at a stern glance from their leader said nothing further.

“This way,” said Quintal. He sounded unsure, and somewhat embarrassed by the realisation himself.

They followed him at a run, down a turn in the corridor and away from the approaching soldiers. They turned several times, checking the symbols outside each chamber as they ran. Nothing. No peaks, no circles. A half moon, a flowing river, a tower nestled in a crescent…some were painted, some were not. Some symbols were so strange that they sent shivers down Tirielle’s spine. She dreaded to think what planes of existence they led to, whether the Seer’s mind had traversed those other worlds, their plateaus and plains, their peaks and canyons.

If only the Seer were here to guide them now. She had said nothing of where to find the chamber. She had not warned them of the immensity of Arram’s underground caverns, or the confusing nature of the warren.

To what worlds and places must the Protectorate be able to travel? It was huge beyond imagining. She despaired of ever finding the true path. It was a maze, full of twisting corridors, misleading turns and cross ways, with no guiding marks but those on the great doors that lead to portals behind them, the portals in turn leading to places from which there might be no return. Death awaited behind some of those doors, Tirielle was certain of it. To flee through the wrong one would be fatal. If they could not find the right path, none of them would leave Arram’s bowels alive.

They came at a run to a dead end.

The soldiers were in the corridors now. Their booted feet clattered on the flagstones. The soldiers would know their way among the corridors. They would understand the symbols, and the trick of sound within the corridor would not confuse them. They would be upon them sooner than Tirielle would have liked.

She fingered her fine blades through the soiled material of her dress. She would die before she let them capture her. She could not face torture. Not at the hands of the Protectorate. She knew that they embraced pain, and fed on suffering. She would not be food for them.

Roth saw her quivering and lay a massive hand on her shoulder. As always, Tirielle took strength from the beast’s touch. She was ever thankful to have Roth in her life. She placed her own hand on top of the furred paw and patted it, steeling herself for the battle to come.

They followed Quintal back to the branch in the corridor, and looked each way. Quintal drew his sword, and his brethren followed suit, the thin twang of steel loud in the hallway. There was no sign of the Protectorate.

“You can’t fight the whole of the Protectorate! We must run,” she said with heartfelt urgency. She was shaking now, feeling death approach. They were close now, and there was no way out in sight.

“To where?” said Typraille, his voice firm and sure. She imagined he was looking forward to the battle, and hated him a little for his calm and his eager tone.

“We will find it,” she said.

The clamour of boots on stone was nearer now – perhaps one corridor away, perhaps five hundred feet. The strange pathways under Arram had their own rules. Perhaps millennia of dark magic warped even sound, as it warped their perceptions.

“I think the tunnels are trying to confuse us. I think it is the magic here. It doesn’t want us…we are alien.”

Quintal nodded. “I have felt something working against us, tendrils of darkness pushing at my mind.”

“If it doesn’t want us to find the right chamber, how will we ever get out of here?”

j’ark strode forward, taking the lead. “We are committed now. We cannot leave and we cannot go on unless we find the path. I have an idea, though.”

The other Sard exchanged glances. Quintal was never one to take offence at j’ark’s refusal to follow his lead. J’ark was a powerful man in his own right. Perhaps Quintal understood that j’ark was at his most effective when given free rein. The leader nodded to his fellow paladins, only six remaining, and strode after j’ark. Roth grinned at Tirielle.

“I think I will get my wish. I find myself longing to see Protocrat blood.”

“You are gruesome sometimes, Roth. Their blood stinks of offal.”

Roth looked hurt. “I happen to like offal.”

Tirielle looked away and saw what she feared, j’ark running at a Protocrat who had rounded the corner suddenly. There was no room to swing a blade in the corridor, but somehow j’ark’s two-handed sword turned aside a thrust from the Protocrat’s short sword, an elbow found his throat and the soldier crumpled. With no battle cry or ceremony Carth leapt the crumpled form and fell upon the following soldiers, tumbling them. There was no room for more to fight, but Carth could hold the corridor indefinitely – only two soldiers could pass abreast, and two tenthers were no match for the mighty warrior. He seemed to tower in the gloom, filling the corridor with his girth. He used his long dagger to stab low, and his sword to turn aside the short swords of the Protectorate.

Soon, the corridor was littered with bodies. As the Protocrats stumbled over their fallen brothers, Carth pushed them back.

Behind him, j’ark had dragged the fallen soldier behind Carth, away from his ten. He held the tenther by the throat, his thumb pressing into the hollow at the base of the soldier’s throat, his fingers plying the tender spot at the back of his neck. The warrior spat at the paladin, but j’ark increased the pressure. There was no fear on the Protocrats long face, and no anger on j’ark’s. Tirielle saw what he meant to do, but even she was surprised when it came. Tirielle heard his cries even over the clamour of battle from the side of the corridor.

j’ark wasted no time. Carth could not hold back the tenthers for ever.

The dim torch light seemed to brighten, and the corridor was suddenly awash with a golden glow that had nothing to do with the flames, and everything to do with the strange powers that the Sard claimed they did not have.

j’ark’s dagger fell, and the tenther started talking, babbling in agony. They enjoyed others pain. It did not seem that they enjoyed their own with such fervour. j’ark listened serenely while Tirielle watched, unable to tear her eyes away. She watched to the end, when without warning j’ark plunged his dagger into the captive’s neck and stood. Quintal looked at him sadly, for what reason Tirielle could not tell. The warrior needed to die. There had been no other choice. j’ark spared time to shake his head angrily at Quintal.

“Don’t waste time on me now,” he said and strode forward, blood drenched dagger joining Carth’s blade, driving the Protocrat’s back from the junction to clear a path. As soon as they reached the turn, j’ark urged them forward with a wave of his hand. Then he left Carth to protect their backs.

j’ark walked with no urgency, trusting his quiet brother to protect them and hold back the tide of warriors that washed against him with no more efficacy than the sea against the sand.

“It’s all a trick,” he explained briefly. “It is always where you want it to be – whatever world or place you wish to travel to is where you most need it – usually at the base of the stairs, but we passed that,” he paused and ran his hand over the symbol of the first chamber they came to, “So now it is here. Quickly, inside!”

They dashed through the door into the chamber beyond. It was already well lit. It must have been used recently.

Carth shouldered the bunched mass of the Protectorate aside as he entered the chamber last. He sliced a hand from the arm that snuck through the door, and then slammed it shut. Tirielle looked away from the hand, clenched around the sword. She had seen enough death, but she was not awed by it. The Sard’s abilities with the sword were not something she could ever get used to, but the death they dealt was a necessity. She might turn away from death, and she hoped she would always do so when she could.

Instead, she turned her attention to the chamber. It was larger than she would have imagined. The walls and ceiling curved away, rising to a crest somewhere up above where she could not see. The light from the torches in the sconces on the walls could not reach the room’s heights. The flames held still, although that was remarkable, for she felt the wind from the portal on her face, cool, but bringing with it no relief from the stifling warmth of the underground chamber. Her sweat chilled on her brow, and she wiped at it with one filthy sleeve, merely wiping dirt from one place to another.

In the centre of the room a massive circle of coruscating light dominated. It was large enough for three men to pass together, or perhaps two rahkens. Not large enough for man on horseback, but then the Protectorate had no use for horses.

Beside the shimmering pool, vertical and seeming to hang on its own, two brilliant crystals hummed with power. Tirielle had never seen such a thing. She wandered around to the other side, but the portal was flat – she could not see through it. She wondered if it had a front and a back…and what would happen should they step through the wrong side.

A soft susurration came from the crystals, making her teeth ache gently. The power they must contain, to hold the space between the worlds open permanently. It was frightening to be close to so much power.

The portal itself made no noise. It sat, ominously, ripples of light running across its surface, but to look within…she forced herself to look away. It was too dark inside. Unnatural, the look of the afterworld, a dead place where nothing could live. Somehow she understood, even though she knew nothing of magic, that this portal led through the world of spirit, it was a rent in the land of the dead, where there was no space, and no time. They would have to pass among the slain, the cancerous, the lepers…children who died in their cribs, ancient women dead from age, the lonely spirits of the world gone by…her imagination ran away with her, and she could suddenly hear all their cries, forlorn and lost…she saw their hands reaching out to her, to pull her down among them, for the comfort of the living, to feel her warm flesh, to pull it apart and step inside.

She pinched herself hard. The voices subsided, and there was nothing frightening about them at all. They were merely the dead, and they meant her no harm.

The moment passed, and she remembered the urgency of their situation. Carth’s bulk was holding the door closed against the bashing bodies of the tenthers outside. Quintal was in whispered conversation with j’ark, and somehow j’ark looked troubled, more so than by the mere thought of the Protectorate massed behind the door. Carth was serene, calmly holding the door closed. Then Quintal laid a hand on j’ark’s shoulder, and pulled him into an embrace.

To Tirielle it looked like a goodbye.

j’ark turned to her and she felt her knees go weak.

“Through the portal, lady. Draw your blades. Quintal will go first, and hope that Drun Sard has reached the other side in time. You will go last.”

She nodded, feeling grim certainty gnawing at her belly.

“And what of you, j’ark?”

“You understand as I do. I have fallen from grace. I must redeem myself.”

“No!” she started to cry then, and she could not remember the last time she had cried more honest tears.

“No tears, lady. There is no other way. Someone must stay behind to close the portal.”

The hammering at the door intruded on her pain.

“You must come,” she pleaded, though from the look in his sad golden eyes she knew already that he would refuse.

“I cannot. I have sullied my vows.”

“How? How have you sullied your vows? You have done nothing wrong. All you did was kill an enemy.”

“That is irrelevant, lady, and you know it. I have fallen, and have loved more than the sun. I am no longer pure…”

Quintal stepped through the portal, not looking back. He could not interfere. It was j’ark’s decision to be the one to stay. Sword held before him, he faced the pathways of the dead. Roth, seeing its friend in distress, followed Quintal through the flowing portal, beyond the light and into the darkness. It could feel Tirielle’s pain, and it was almost palpable. Her feelings for j’ark had been evident for some time. It did not wish upon her any more pain. It knew better than most how much she had already lost on her long journey. They blinked from existence. Their receding backs could not even be seen. It was like they had never existed at all.

“What are you saying?” She slapped his face. “Are you saying that you must die because of me!?”

“No, lady. It is not you that is to blame. My feelings have overwhelmed me. I am no longer pure. But never, never blame yourself. It is the way it must be.” He pushed her toward the portal, and took his place behind the door, beside Carth. At Carth’s questioning look, he said, “No, Carth. The task is mine.”

Carth’s only farewell was to touch j’ark’s shoulder, like a big brother would touch his sibling.

“At least say my name,” said Tirielle through her tears, which were falling freely. “Don’t call me lady, not anymore.”

Cenphalph was next, not turning to see j’ark. Perhaps their goodbyes had already been said. Perhaps they spoke with more than words. Typraille ducked his head. “We’ll meet again, brother,” he said, and leapt through the portal, his blade held high.

Carth was next to go.

“Farewell, old friend. Until you join us again,” said Disper, who roared and ran at the space between worlds.

Tirielle was left alone with the man she had grown to love, her saviour in all things.

“There is no more time to waste,” he said, shuddering as the force behind the door rammed it again and again with their shoulders, and hammered it with swords.

“No, no more time,” she said as she drew her daggers. She stepped into his chest and kissed him chastely on the lips. He kissed her back.

“I love you, j’ark.”

“Goodbye…Tirielle,” he said, and she turned from him. Without a backward glance, she stepped through the portal.

“Tirielle,” he said for the last time, tasting her name on his lips. Then, at last, he allowed himself to say out loud the only words that frightened him to the very core.

“I love you,” he said, and his voice was stronger now. It was not so bad. Nothing to be afraid of. His god did not smite him, and he did not feel unclean, or ashamed, but free.

He clenched and unclenched his hand. All weakness was gone, although he was sure the stitches in his shoulder would open soon.

He just had to hold on for long enough. He didn’t know how long it would take for them to travel, or what would happen when he closed the portal. He had to give them time…

The door was being battered at his back, and his feet were slipping on the stones. It opened a crack, and he was pushed inward…

He waited, and in that moment, that moment of perfect clarity when he knew death was coming, he felt at peace at last. He felt whole for loving, not sullied, not impure, but cleansed by Tirielle’s love. His heart felt light, and he knew now, too late, that his gods loved love, they wanted it, wished it on their children.

He cleared his mind, and with little effort put away his regrets. He let himself understand them for a moment, rolled them around in his mind – it was sad that he would not die embraced in the loving arms of Tirielle, or in the warmth of his gods’ golden glow, but he knew that both loved him equally, and would do so even after his death. He regretted only that he had denied himself for so long. Then, like the afterglow of a sudden flash of light burnt into a retina, his mind was clear, filled with purity and purpose.

He stepped back from the door and it exploded inward, soldiers tumbling through. His sword leapt in his hand. He beheaded the first warrior to step through, and with a thrust ripped open the neck of the second. He danced back and gave himself room, the chamber’s breadth more than ample to swing a blade. He would not fight in a corner. While he could not fight in the glory of the sun, its light filled his mind, with love, and finally, its approval.

He twirled and slashed, his blade twinkling in the eerie radiance of the portal, and Tenthers fell as they entered the room. One threw himself forward, skewering himself on j’ark’s blade, and in the moment he freed it two more soldiers entered. Their armour turned aside a glancing blow, dark armour forged with blood, a filthy grey. Beside them, j’ark was a shining light. His cloak whirled around him as he span on his heel, his sword slicing cleanly through two necks – but in the time it took to dispatch the two warriors more had entered. He was dimly aware of his shoulder wound opening again, and blood flowing within his glittering armour.

He embraced the pain, for with it he knew he was still alive.

He saw a blade swinging toward his head but could do little to avoid it. It clanged against his helm, knocking it from his head. His eyes blazed with power he did know he had, and he felt Unthor’s spirit welling inside him, giving him strength. He shook his head and his sword arm was suddenly full of renewed vigour. He thrust through the warrior’s armour, disembowelling him, drew his dagger with his failing left arm and drove it between the eye slit in the helm of yet another soldier.

Then time seemed endless. Each moment drawn fully, vision unimpaired by thought, nothing but the dance of the blade, the flowing and pumping of blood. The flagstones were slick with it, the air filled with cries of agony. None of it affected j’ark.Peace held him tight. He saw his death to come. He was tiring fast, his blood flowing freely from his shoulder. He did not realise it, but he slowed. Imperceptibly, but enough.