Текст книги "The First Stone"

Автор книги: Mark Anthony

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

42.

Travis cradled Grace gently as she pressed her face against his chest, sobbing. Strangely, he did not feel like weeping himself. Instead he felt alive, exhilarated.

By Olrig, you showed her!Jack Graystone’s voice crowed in his mind. Thought she could use your blood for her own ends. Well, she found herself on the other end of the knife!

“Shut up, Jack,” Travis growled under his breath.

“What?” Grace said, pushing back and wiping her cheeks.

Travis helped her up. “I said, ‘How’s Nim?’ ”

“She is well,” Vani said, approaching the dais, holding Nim by the hand. The girl walked beside the T’gol, pale-faced, but apparently unharmed by whatever Ti’an’s scream had done to her.

Though unable to move, even to see, when he was lying on the dais, Travis had been aware of everything that had been taking place around him. The air of this place seemed to hum, transmitting everything that happened within its walls and carrying it to him in a way light and sound could not. He had his back to the two of them; all the same he knew Farr and Larad approached, faces haggard.

“She was sad,” Nim said, gazing down at Ti’an’s motionless body. “She was so sad, she wanted to hurt everybody.”

Grace knelt before the girl and brushed a dark curl from her face. “Why was she sad, Nim?”

The girl pointed to the shriveled mummy chained to the throne.

“Orú,” Farr said, taking a step up the dais. “So he’s dead after all.”

“For a good long time, by the look of him,” Larad said, giving Ti’an’s body a wide berth.

Travis picked up his fallen serafiand shrugged it on. “She wanted to resurrect him.”

Grace stood, her expression startled. “Could she have?”

“She believed she could,” Vani said, gesturing to the golden bowl. “She would have caught your blood in that, and taken it to him.”

Travis moved up the dais, toward the mummy on the throne. When Ti’an had seduced him, he had fallen not only under her power, but under her thoughts as well. He had glimpsed her mind, as well as the single purpose that had consumed it.

“She recognized his blood flowing in me. She believed it had the power to restore him. I’m not certain if she was right.” He started to reach out toward one of the skeletal hands curled on the arm of the throne, then pulled back. “I’m not sure the single drop in me would have been enough. I think it would take far more to do it. But she was determined to try. She loved him. For three thousand years, ever since the fall of Morindu, she’s been waiting to bring him back to life. And now . . .”

“Now they are together,” Vani said, the words rueful. She knelt beside Ti’an’s body. The once-golden skin was chalky now. “She was my ancestor. I am of the royal line of Morindu. I am descended of her and Orú.”

“Perhaps that explains it then,” Farr said. He had been examining the mummy on the throne.

Vani looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“She was a nexus, just like Nim. That was how she could enter this place and guard Orú in his slumber. I think when she screamed, when she was angry or alarmed enough, it . . . affected the flow of events. And I think it’s the same for Nim.”

Grace held a hand to her throat, wincing. “When they were both screaming like that, it felt like I was falling apart.”

“That’s because you were,” Farr said. Travis noticed he did not gaze at Grace. Instead, his dark eyes were on Vani. “We all were. We were being torn apart by the pull of infinite possibilities, of infinite fates. Each of us might have lived our lives in countless other ways. I think what we felt were those different lives intersecting, overlapping. And canceling one another out, like sound waves can cancel each other out if aligned properly.”

“Is that why they were both screaming?” Grace said. “To neutralize the other?” She looked at Nim, but the girl seemed suddenly shy and hung her head, letting her hair cover her face.

Travis wasn’t certain he completely understood all this, yet Farr’s words feltright. Only when Ti’an and Nim had screamed, it hadn’t affected him as it had the others. With Ti’an’s attention focused on Nim, her spell of seduction had lost its hold on Travis. He had been able to stand, take the knife in his hands, and use it against her. But why hadn’t he been affected by her scream like the rest of them?

“Only a dead man has no fate,” Grace murmured.

Had she heard his thoughts? No, the Weirding was too weak for that now. All the same, she had understood what he was thinking. He felt Farr’s eyes on him. However, before he could say anything, Larad’s excited voice came from across the chamber.

“Look at these markings. They’re fascinating—more like pictures than writing. I feel I should almost be able to understand them.”

“Do not stray too far from Nim!” Vani called out to the Runelord.

The girl raised her head and touched Vani’s arm. “It’s all right, Mother. It’s safe here now.”

Travis shut his eyes, again feeling the hum all around him. “I think she’s right. I think what she and Ti’an did together . . . I think it pulled the threads of fate, untangling them.” He opened his eyes. “And now that Orú is dead, they won’t tangle again. What have you found, Master Larad?”

The Runelord was running his hands over the wall. “It’s a story.”

“A story of what?” Farr said, approaching.

Vani, Nim, Grace, and Travis followed. Then Travis saw the markings, and in an instant he understood.

“Everything,” he said softly. “It’s the story of everything.”

He moved past Larad, to the wall, tracing the carvings in the stone with a finger.

“They’re like the pictographs we saw in the cave beneath Tarras,” Grace said, turning around. “Only there are so many of them. It would take ages to try to translate them all.”

She was right about the first part. These were indeed like the carvings they had found beneath Tarras: stylized symbols that were not quite art, not quite writing, but something in between. Only it wouldn’t take time to translate them, because Travis understood the symbols as clearly as if they were moving before him like stick figure actors pantomiming a play. Ti’an had granted him more than he thought when she put him under her spell. Or was it something else? Was it the very air of this place that transmitted the meaning of the symbols to him, just as it transmitted the actions, even the feelings, of the others? He could sense Grace’s sharp curiosity behind him, and Farr’s more urgent craving for knowledge.

“Travis?” Grace said, and he sensed rather than saw her take a step toward him.

“I can read them, Grace.” His hands felt hot, and the carvings seemed to shimmer when he passed his fingers over them. He touched two stick figures standing side by side. Small dots fell from the arm of one of them, while the other held a curved knife. “Somehow I can read them all.”

“Maybe because he wrote them,” Larad said, and though Travis’s back was turned he knew the Runelord had pointed toward the throne.

No, that wasn’t it. Here were more symbols. The one stick figure sat on a chair. The other stood behind, still holding the knife. “It was she,” Travis said. “Ti’an. She’s the one who made these.”

He moved left, running his hands over the wall, going back to the beginning.

“Here he is—King Orú. Only he wasn’t a king then. Morindu hadn’t been built yet. It was just him and his tribe in the desert. And then . . .” A fever seemed to grip Travis. His eyes drank in the meaning of the symbols faster than seemed possible. He was racing along the wall, moving to the right now, his fingers skimming over the stones. “Then theycame. There were thirteen of them. They answered his call, and they were powerful. More powerful than any that came before. He took them . . . took them into him, and . . .” Travis stopped, then turned and gazed at the rest of the symbols that ringed the room. “Oh,” he said.

Farr’s expression was eager, hungry. “What is it? What do the symbols mean? I can’t read them.”

On shaking legs, Travis returned to the mummy chained to the throne. “He understood. King Orú. He understood the answer.”

“The answer to what?” Vani said, hands resting on Nim’s shoulders.

Travis’s mind buzzed. The heat surged in him. “Remember the story you told us, Farr? The one about the twins, the ones who were born out of nothing at the beginning—one light, the other dark? Well, they’re coming together again, struggling with each other. That’s what’s causing the rifts in the sky. Only the twins aren’t trying to kill each other.”

Farr’s gaze was fixed on him. “Then what are they trying to do?”

“They’re trying to save each other.”

The others stared at him. Travis turned around. Standing here, in the center of the chamber, he could see the story unfold in its entirety.

It began not long after the dawn of Amún. Angular symbols suggested towers and ziggurats rising up from the desert beside the waters of the River Emyr. The great city of Usyr stood among them, as well as other city-states—but not Morindu. In that time, Orú was neither god nor king, but instead was the leader of the nomadic tribe that had first discovered the presence of the bodiless spirits known as the morndari, and that had first made blood offerings to entice the spirits into doing their bidding. Over time, other tribes grew more adept at commanding the spirits; they were the ones who raised cities. In turn, the tribe that had first discovered the morndariseemed doomed to die out.

Then Orú was born. A seer proclaimed he was destined to be a great sorcerer, and so as an infant his mother fed him with her blood rather than her milk. The seer spoke truly, and even as a child he was skilled beyond the eldest sorcerers at the art of summoning the morndari. One series of symbols showed him bringing a vast herd of cattle under his command. Others suggested trees rising out of bare ground and bearing fruit while small droplets fell from his arm.

Orú was only twenty when he became the leader of his tribe, and under his rule his people prospered—so much so that the rulers of a nearby city grew jealous of their wealth in gold and cattle.

That city was Scirath.

The god-king of Scirath launched an assault on Orú’s tribe, sending a great army of warriors and sorcerers. Orú’s people were far outnumbered. Death was certain—unless Orú made a great gamble.

Travis shuddered as his eyes passed over the next series of symbols. Orú sat in his tent while his wife, Ti’an, made thirteen cuts in his body. Then he made a calling such as he had never done before, and thirteen of the morndaricame to him—spirits more powerful than any that had ever been summoned before or since. Normally a sorcerer staunched the flow of blood once the spirits came, lest they drain him to death, but Orú bid the spirits enter his veins. Greedy for his blood, they did. Then, once they were within him, Ti’an poured hot lead on his wounds, sealing them.

The symbols showed a stick figure writhing in pain. Then, in the next panel, the stick figure stood tall, lines of power radiating from it. It held out a hand, and a vast army was swallowed by the desert.

There was more in the next panel—symbols that made Travis’s head swim to gaze at—but he skipped them for the moment, turning so that he saw a later point in the story. Morindu loomed above the desert now, dark and powerful. Orú sat on his throne, shackled to it with chains, asleep, while seven stick figures drank from him, careful to seal the wounds again after they did.

Travis’s eyes kept moving across the wall. The story was almost over. An army like a sea flowed toward Morindu. Among the army were dots that radiated circles of power. Demons. The people of Morindu fled the city, escaping into the desert.

But not the Seven. Droplets fell from their arms, and a circle appeared in the air. A gate. Beyond was sea and stone. Then the Seven drank one last time from Orú, and when they were finished he was no longer a living man, asleep on the throne. He was a mummy, dead.

A figure holding a curved knife approached the Seven, jagged bolts of fury shooting from her eyes. Ti’an. Only before she could slay them, the Seven stepped through the gate, leaving only Orú and Ti’an. The last panel showed the city sinking beneath the sands of the desert as the army was crushed under the churning sands.

There the story ended.

Grace stepped onto the dais next to Travis. “So they drained him.” She gazed at the desiccated mummy. “The Scirathi thought they would find Orú’s blood here, but the Seven took it all, then escaped through a gate, leaving Ti’an. All this time she’s been trapped here with his corpse, made immortal by his blood.”

Travis hadn’t realized he had been speaking aloud as he read the story, but all the same he must have.

“If the Seven escaped, where did they go?” Larad said.

It was Farr who answered. “Earth. Look at the way the gate is drawn. It is like a tunnel through a great darkness. That must be the Void. Which means the Seven went to Earth.”

“Can we go now, Mother?” Nim said.

Vani stood. She had covered Ti’an’s body with a cloth. “Yes, daughter. There is nothing left for us here.”

“And where will we go?” Master Larad said. “There is water in this city, but we have no camels. We need to find the Last Rune, Master Wilder. But I don’t know how we’ll do that now. Not before the end comes. I doubt we’ll find it lying around here.”

Larad was right, the end was close. But the answer wasthere, Travis was sure of it. Only he couldn’t quite grasp it.

“What about the rest of the story?” Farr said, pointing to a large section of the wall. “You skipped all this. What did it say?”

Yes, that was where the answer was. Travis licked his lips. “When the thirteen morndarientered him, Orú understood the truth. The truth about the origin of the world. Of all the worlds.”

Grace touched his shoulder. “You mean like the story of the twins?”

“Yes, the twins.” Travis drew in a deep breath, then read the symbols he had skipped, speaking as he did, describing what Orú had understood as the thirteen entered him.

“It’s like Farr’s story. For an eternity, there was only nothing. Then, suddenly, the nothing gave birth to two things, two entities—one of being, and the other of . . .” Travis struggled for a word. “. . . of unbeing. Earth and Eldh, they were worlds of being. And there were more. Hundreds of them, millions. But there was only one world of unbeing, and that was the Void. It was like a sea between the other worlds, bridging them, binding them together.”

He was no longer aware of talking now. Instead, he was seeing it, understanding it without words, even as Orú had three thousand years before when the morndarientered him, becoming one with him.

It was all in perfect equilibrium, the worlds of being balanced by the Void. Or at least it was meantto be perfect. Only it wasn’t. For from the very beginning, there was something wrong.

Travis studied the symbols. A deep line was carved into the wall. On one side of the line were myriad small specks, as well as thirteen larger dots that emanated concentric lines of power. On the other side of the line were three circles.

No, not circles. Stones.

Travis could almost see it as it had happened. A mistake was made in the creation of the worlds and the Void. Somehow, in the chaos of those first moments of formation, fragments of unbeing were caught on the wrong side of the line. They found themselves drawn in and captured by the force of one of the worlds of being. The world Eldh. There, in a later age, those fragments of unbeing became known as the morndari, or Those Who Thirst.

Still striving for balance, for perfection, the multiverse spontaneously attempted to heal itself. Fragments of primordial being were sent to Eldh to counteract the morndari, to cancel them out and remove the flaw, so that the worlds of being would be perfect like the Void. These fragments of primordial matter were the Imsari.

Although they became known as the Great Stones after the dwarf Alcendifar found them and wrought into them the power of the runes Gelth, Krond, and Sinfath, the Imsari were not truly things of stone. They were something older, deeper—pieces of the very first stuff of being that sprang out of the nothingness. If they were to be called Stones, then this thing they came from was the First Stone. It was the first pebble tossed into an ocean to create a continent. It was the very beginning of everything.

The thirteen most powerful morndariwere similar, but opposite. They were fragments of the most primordial substance of unbeing. When the Imsari came in contact with the morndari, they would cancel one another out, returning to the nothingness that once spawned them. Thus the balance would be restored and the instability healed.

Only it didn’t happen that way.

In the south, on the continent of Moringarth, the thirteen most powerful morndariwere dazzled by blood and were trapped within Orú, merging with him so completely they could never be released again. And in the north, on the continent of Falengarth, where the Imsari fell, the three Great Stones were changed by the craft of Alcendifar, then were seized by the forces of the Pale King, and finally were scattered across the world, and even beyond, to the world that drifted closest to Eldh in the sea of the Void. To the world Earth.

Thus history conspired to keep the Imsari and the morndarifrom uniting as intended. And so the instability grew. Slowly at first. And then, as the end drew nearer, more swiftly.

The final symbols showed gashes opening in the fabric of creation. The line grew blurred, then vanished. And after that . . . nothing at all. Or less than nothing, for this was an emptiness that could never give birth, that never had given birth, that was without possibility. Without hope.

Travis stopped reading. He was dimly aware of his own voice fading to silence.

“She wasn’t trying to kill the Seven,” Vani said.

He turned. The T’golstood over Ti’an’s covered form. She looked at him, and sorrow shone in her gold eyes.

“I think you’re right. I think she helped them open the gate.” Travis studied the symbols. Fury sparked in her eyes as the Seven stepped through the gate—fury for the army that approached Morindu. “I think she knew it was crucial that Orú’s blood be guarded, protected, so that one day it could be used to heal the rifts in creation.”

Only she was mad in the end. Eons of dwelling here alone, deep beneath the desert, with only her husband’s mummy as companion, had destroyed her mind. She had wanted only to kill the intruders, to use them, to get her husband back.

I’m sorry, Travis said silently, gazing at her still form.

“What about the other morndari?” Grace said. She had been studying the symbols on the wall, and now she turned around, her expression sharp with curiosity. “If the thirteen that entered Orú were part of the primordial stuff of unbeing, what were the other morndari?”

Travis glanced again at the symbols. There was so much he could understand, but it was hard to put it into words. “The thirteen were part of the stuff that first came into being. Or into unbeing, I mean. And in turn, that substance—”

“That first substance caused all the rest of unbeing, the Void, to precipitate out of the nothingness,” Grace said, nodding. “I understand now. It was like a chain reaction. The same would have been true of the worlds of being. The First Stone appeared out of nothingness, then it caused everything else to come into being.”

Despite all that had happened, Travis grinned. That scientific mind of hers.

“So the lesser morndarion Eldh are similar to those that dwell in the Void between worlds,” Farr said, touching his arm, perhaps unconsciously tracing the scars there. “They were not so powerful that their presence on Eldh caused a great instability.”

“More than that, they were balanced, too,” Travis said. He studied the drawing. If he looked close, around the shapes of the three Great Stones, he could see tiny flecks etched into the wall. “Smaller grains of the First Stone were sent to Eldh along with the Imsari—enough to balance out the other morndari. Only they . . . they were taken in by . . .” Again he struggled to describe what had happened.

It was Larad who gave the thought voice. “Runes. They became runes, didn’t they?” The Runelord didn’t wait for an answer. He paced, his gray robe swishing. “There was no Worldsmith, not in the very beginning, not in the first iteration of Eldh. It was the very flecks of the First Stone that brought it into being, trapping the morndarieven as they tried to counter them. Each fleck became a thing, a rune—sea or sky or stone– and was bound into it. The same was true for the Old Gods, and the Little People, and the dragons. There are runes for all of them.”

“Even Sia,” Grace said, wonder on her face now. “There’s a rune for Sia, isn’t there?” She shook her head. “But if morndaribrought blood sorcery into the world, and the flecks of the Great Stone brought rune magic, where did witch magic come from?”

Larad stroked his chin. “Granted, I know little about the magic of witches, even less than Master Graedin. But from what we have recently learned, I imagine the Weirding was an effect of the creation of Eldh. We know from our studies that witchcraft is related to runes. So runes created the world, and—”

“And then the world created witchcraft,” Grace said, tucking her blond hair behind her ears, as if it was in the way of her thinking. “Life gave rise to the Weirding. Just as the blood of the sorcerers, once it was dispersed through the world, gave rise to the New Gods.”

Larad nodded. “It would seem so.”

Travis should have felt amazement at all this. It was as if a curtain had been lifted, revealing mysteries that had existed since the beginning of time. However, his mind hummed, and it was hard to concentrate on what the others were saying.

What does it matter if we know how everything began if it’s all going to be snu fed out of existence? Magic is almost gone. Everything that bound the world together, and what the world itself brought to life, is fading.

Only the Imsari still functioned, and the blood of Orú—the very oldest of things. But how long did they have until even these things ceased? And when they did, any chance of healing the rifts would vanish.

“There are a few symbols here I do not believe you translated, Travis.”

Farr’s voice jerked Travis out of his thoughts. Farr stood close to the wall, gesturing to a group of symbols contained within an oval shape, like a cartouche. They were the only symbols carved into the wall that Travis didn’t completely understand. He supposed they had not been part of Orú’s own knowledge. Instead, they must have represented the thoughts of Ti’an, or perhaps the thoughts of the Seven Fateless Ones. The symbols showed the Three coming in contact with the Seven, and jagged rays of power shooting outward. Only there was something else, something between the Three and the Seven. Travis didn’t understand what the symbol meant. It looked like a triangle and nothing more.

“I think those symbols show how the Imsari and the Seven A’naraineed to be brought together,” Travis said. “Only I don’t understand what that third symbol means.”

Or did he? The buzzing in his mind grew louder. He gripped the bone talisman—the one given to him so long ago by Grisla—that hung at his neck, thinking. It seemed he should know what the third symbol was. Could it somehow be related to the Last Rune? The dragon Sfithrisir had said it was the Last Rune that would heal the rifts. Surely that meant bringing the Seven in contact with the Imsari. But Travis didn’t know any rune that was denoted by a simple triangle. Maybe Larad . . .

No. When he glanced in that direction, the Runelord shook his head. He didn’t know what the symbol meant either.

Maybe it didn’t matter. The Imsari were here on Eldh, and the Seven were somewhere on Earth. There was no way to get to them, to bring them together. . . .

By Olrig, Travis, that’s not true!Jack’s voice said in his mind. You’ve quite forgotten. There is a way.

Hope surged in Travis. The answer was here after all. He reached into his serafiand drew out a silver coin.

The others gazed at him, startled, but Farr nodded, drawing out his own coin. Yes, he understood.

“You want to take the Imsari to Earth,” the former Seeker said. It was not a question. “You want to find the Seven of Orú, to heal the rifts.”

Yes, Travis tried to say. However, the word was lost in a clap of thunder. Beneath their feet, the floor gave a violent lurch. Larad stumbled against Grace, and both fell sprawling. Nim clutched Vani as the T’golbraced her feet. Farr gripped the wall for support, and Travis fell to his knees. Like a candle being snuffed out, the glowing crystal high above went dark, plunging the room into stifling shadow. Travis, with his preternatural eyes, still possessed dim vision, but he could see the others flailing blindly.

“What’s happening?” Grace called out.

Before anyone could answer, the air burst asunder as a circle of blue fire crackled into being on the center of the dais, just behind the golden throne, a window rimmed by sapphire lightning.

It was a gate.