Angus Wells - The God Wars 03 (54 page)

           
His oration ended on a shout, after
it a long silence, broken at last by Zedu.

           
"I say we heed Ochen's words.
We stand censured, and I say we send them through the gate."

           
From around the table came sundry
eager
Ayes,
then slower agreement
from the more hesitant, until only a handful remained objecting, and they
finally swayed by their fellows, so that concord was at last reached.

           
"You'd go now?" asked
Zedu, looking from one to the next.

           
The questers looked in turn at one
another, and it seemed to Calandryll they stood at the brink of a precipice, an
aethyric chasm far greater, far deeper, than even the Kess Imbrun. To leap into
that rift was to suffer only physical wreckage,- the step he knew they would
take now promised far worse. He saw Bracht's fierce, grim smile,- Katya's
resolution writ firm on her lovely face. He found Cennaire's hand and met her
eyes, saw her nod. "Aye," he said, speaking for them all. "We'd
go now."

           
"Then may Horul and all his kin
walk with you," said Zedu, rising. "Do you follow and we'll bring you
there."

           
BACK
then, descending stairways, traversing corridors, until they came once more
to ground level and passed out into the plaza, the wazir-narimasu a bustling
throng of color about them, Ochen beckoning them close, speaking urgently as
they went.

           
"I'd have had more time to
verse you the better in matters occult. But . . . Remember those lessons you've
had, Calandryll. That knowledge should stand you firm, do you but call on that
power within you. Remember, all of you, that you are as one, a gestalt where
you go. And you've that blade that Dera blessed . . . there's power in that.
Horul, but I'd have had more time . . . No matter,- fate decides. Katya, you've
the mirror? Aye? Excellent."

           
The roiling mutter of thunder
drowned out his words, and through one narrow window cut into the wall of the
corridor they hurried down, Calandryll saw malign crimson lightning engulf the
sky, momentarily dimming the blue radiance that domed the teng. A dreadful
wind, noisome, gusted, sending the beacon fires along the ramparts to streaming
lines of turbulent flame. A second embrasure revealed scintillating tendrils of
blue that wavered under the wash of red, trembling, assailed, but then
interweaving to reestablish the protective vault.

           
They passed along a loggia where the
colonnades and the roof trembled, quivering under the sonic impact of thunder.
Across the sky passed bolts of man-made lightning, fireballs hurled from the
besiegers' catapults, some consumed by the blue radiance, a few landing in
showers of sparks and gouts of flame on rooftops or streets. And all the time,
through the rattle of the thunder and the eerie howling of unnatural wind,
Ochen spoke, as if he would, urgently, impress upon them what knowledge was his
to impart, remind them of all he had given, and all they had learned.

           
"Remember what the gijan, what
Kyama, scried: 'You may succeed—it is within your power.' "

           
Calandryll held silent his memory of
her subsequent words: "Or you may not—victory is within the power of your
enemies."

           
"Remember," Ochen
continued as they crossed the plaza, "that 'one may, unwitting, aid you,
and be that so, his wrath shall be great. You shall need also that power one of
you commands, and that another holds. Trust—let trust be the keystone of your
union. Without trust you become nothing and shall be defeated.' "

           
Bracht said, "Trust we have
now—the rest remains a riddle still."

           
"Aye, perhaps," said Ochen
as a door was opened and they plunged into a lightless corridor, "I'd
hoped the wazir-narimasu should enlarge on that. Oh, Horul, had we only more
time!"

           
"We've not," said
Calandryll bluntly, seeing a torch flare ahead, shedding scant radiance along
the gloomy passage. "Do you give us your interpretation?"

           
"I've wondered what it should
be," Ochen returned, and fell silent awhile as they descended a narrow
stairwell, the walls cold and smooth, pressing close.

           
The stairs ended in a low-ceilinged
chamber that smelled of ancient stone, unused, a metal door black at the
farther side. Zedu went to it and pressed his palms against the surface,
murmuring, the words filling the chamber with the scent of almonds. Six of the
wazir-narimasu followed him in turn, and then he grasped a ring and swung the
door open, speaking again so that pale, achromatic light, sourceless, illumined
a farther descent.

           
"You've two enemies, I
think," Ochen said. "Rhythamun and Anomius."

           
"This is not," Bracht
remarked over his shoulder, wryly, "unknown to us."

           
"But perhaps the one might be
turned against the other." Ochen's voice faded as the stairway angled,
returning as it straightened, falling ever deeper beneath Anwar-teng: "
'One may, unwitting, aid you.' "

           
"How?" asked Calandryll.

           
"I know not." Ochen
sighed. "Only that I've sensed some design in Cennaire's presence since
first I met her. What else did Kyama say? Aye, that's it—'You shall need also
that power one of you commands, and that another holds.' "

           
"I've my sword,"
Calandryll said, "and whatever power you say rests in me."

           
"And Bracht's Ahrd's sap in his
veins," said Katya. "Might that be it?"

           
"I cannot say for sure."
Ochen shook his head ruefully. "Perhaps. And there's power in Cennaire,
too,- both that Anomius gave her, and some knowledge of magic."

           
Another door then, ensorcelled,
again opened by seven of the wazir-narimasu. As they voiced their cantrips,
Cennaire said, "I've those enhancements revenancy gives me, but what use
shall they be where we go? And magic? I know that gramarye of transportation
Anomius taught me, and that which works the mirror, none others."

           
"Time, time," Ochen
muttered. "Had I only pondered more on this ..."

           
"And none now," said
Calandryll as Zedu led the way down yet another steep stairs, his magic once
more conjuring wan radiance to light their passage. "Save we descend into
the very belly of the world."

           
"Perhaps it's enough,"
Ochen murmured. "The power in you, the sword; Ahrd's sap in Bracht's
veins,- those gramaryes Cennaire commands. You've the mirror still,
Katya?"

           
"Aye," answered the Vanu
woman, tension leeching her voice of amusement. "I've not lost it betwixt
your last asking and now."

           
"Forgive me." Ochen shook
his head, speaking absentmindedly.

           
The stairs ended in a final chamber,
carved from the bedrock on which Anwar-teng stood, doorless save for the
entryway, lit only by that glow Zedu's magicks produced. Doorless, but—to eyes
become familiar with such portals—gated. It was a small chamber, cubic, crowded
with the press of bodies, the farther wall decorated around all its edges with
sigils, those seeming to vibrate and pulse with insensate life, as if they
fought unseen pressure from an unseen place. Between them stood plain stone,
and it seemed that from the stone, oozing from its lithic pores, came a miasma
that struggled with the surrounding cantrips, seeking release, seeking to
penetrate the mortal world, as if occult powers pressed hard against the
barrier.

           
Zedu said, "This is the gate.
This is the reason Anwar-teng was built—to hold it closed."

           
Bracht said, "A pity you failed
to guard it better."

           
Calandryll said, "Do you work
your magicks then? And send us through?"

           
Zedu nodded. Calandryll took
Cennaire's hand and said, "But first I'd ask a boon of you."

           
The wazir-narimasu ducked his head:
"Be it in our power, it is yours."

           
"I'd ask," Calandryll
said, "that do we return safe, you bend all your occult skills to
restoring Cennaire her heart. Likely you know her for a revenant—if not, Ochen
shall recount the story— and I'd have you make her again mortal."

           
As had Ochen before him, so Zedu
hesitated, looking to Cennaire. "You'd have this?" he asked.

           
"I would," she said.
"Do we return; be it in your power."

           
"What you ask is not done
easily," he warned, "if it can be done at all. There's danger in
it—the possibility of failure. Better, perhaps, that you remain as you
are."

           
"No!" Cennaire's voice was
firm. Her grip tightened on Calandryll's hand. "I'd have back my heart and
be once more mortal, no matter the danger."

           
"As you wish." Zedu ducked
his head. "Do you return safe, then you've my word we'll attempt it."

           
The answer was not so confident as
Calandryll would have wished, and he feared he saw doubt on Zedu's face, but
there was no time left for further questioning. "Then we've a battle to
fight, do you send us to it," he said, and unsheathed the straightsword.

           
He drew Cennaire to his side. Bracht
and Katya moved close, blades naked, ready.

           
Ochen said, "Horul go with you,
my brave friends. I await your safe return."

           
Calandryll smiled grim thanks as
Zedu and his fellow mages commenced their cantrip.

           
The chant mounted in volume and the
sigils blazed bright as the perfume of almonds filled the chamber. It seemed
the primordial stone of the wall blurred then, melting into an absence, beyond
which lay nothing save a terrible darkness. The blade of Calandryll's sword
seemed to flicker as if possessed of independent life as foulness gusted from
the vacuum before him, a corpse-breath venting. He glanced sidelong at his
comrades, seeing their faces set grim, resolute, and knew his own held a
matching expression. He paced a step forward, toward the limbo beyond the
stone, beyond mortal ken. It seemed to beckon. It seemed a maw waiting to
devour them. The chamber faded from his sight, Ochen, the wazir-narimasu, with
it. He heard Bracht say, "So, do we stand here watching? Or do we bring
the fight to Rhythamun?"

           
And he laughed, wild, and walked
into the darkness of the void.

           
UNLIKE the gates that had brought
them to and from Tezin-dar, this. Those transitions through the interstices of
the worlds, mundane and occult, had been mercifully brief. Not so this passage:
this was a descent into a vortex of turbulent color, incandescent, blood that
was fire, fire that was blood, crimson and scarlet, vermilion, carmine, a
sanguine spectrum, as if they were swallowed by some inconceivably vast beast,
a creature of nonsubstance down whose gullet they were sucked, microbes in its
immensity. There was heat: a roaring, pulsing holocaust, fervid, sucking air
from straining lungs, forcing tongues of leeching flame down seared throats,
melting, it seemed—it felt—the pulpy matter of eyeballs, devouring the organs
the probing flames searched out. And stench: a fetor of moldering flesh, putrid
and corrupt, mephitic, unendurable in nostrils that surely must be roasted,
watering eyes that must surely be liquescent tears on unfleshed bone. Hope was
redundant here: an abstraction, meaningless, impotent in this transition of
agony. Neither did time any longer exist: there was only the eternal
now
of the gate's imposed suffering.

           
Then recognizable pain, as when
burned flesh encounters ice, solidity cold beneath them, startling in its
immediacy, freezing air upon their faces, fire and flame replaced with utter
cold, with black and white that whirled around them, stinging with myriad
pinprick blows.

           
Calandryll groaned, levering himself
upright, the straightsword a crutch as his head spun and tormented muscles
threatened to forgo their duty, to pitch him down, loose-limbed and helpless as
a babe. Willpower alone held him up, his head turning slowly, sight returning
slower. The very air hung white about him, freckling darkness. He sucked in
great lungfuls, gasping as his lips and tongue and throat burned afresh, seared
now by cold's fire. He squinted, surveying this shadow world, and saw nothing
save the whiteness, the darkness. He turned from it, finding Cennaire rising
tottery to her feet, her raven hair all dusted white. He offered her his hand,
but she it was supported him, lending him her revenant strength, so that for a
while they clung together, then went to where Bracht and Katya clambered,
looking to one another for aid, to their feet. For a little while their
memories of that dreadful passage warmed them, then the cruel immediacy of the
present intruded and they shivered, chilled numb, each breath painful.

           
"Ahrd," husked Bracht,
"but I thought us destroyed then."

           
"We live," Katya said, and
added, a wary afterthought, "or so I think."

           
Calandryll raised his face skyward,
if sky it was that hung above them. "Aye," he said, "we live, and
this is likely the roof of the world, likely the Borrhun-maj."

           
"Ochen spoke of
guardians," Bracht warned through teeth that began a castanet chattering.
"If this is, indeed, the Borrhun-maj."

           
"If the Borrhun-maj it
be," said Katya somberly, "we've little to fear from those creatures
Ochen described, for we shall not live long in this."

           
She gestured with her saber at their
surroundings, at the candid wilderness, and the peril of it struck Calandryll
with a terrible urgency. They had neither food nor fire, not the kindling or
the sparking of it; the air was thin, barely filling their lungs, threatening
to collapse those organs, slowing blood's flow, minds dazing as limbs numbed.
They should, he realized, freeze before they starved.

           
"This cannot be the ending of
it," he said, hearing his voice come harsh, straining for the air he
needed to shape the words, those punctuated by the chattering of his teeth/
"There must be a second gate."

           
"Be it like that last,"
Bracht croaked grim laughter, "I wonder if I prefer this."

           
Calandryll lacked the energy to
answer the Kern's brave sally. It seemed his lips grew too numbed to shape a
smile even, and he only shook his head, eyes straining to pierce the night, the
snowfall, finding nothing, neither landmarks nor hope.

           
Cennaire it was who saw, her vision
once more surpassing their mortal eyesight. She turned slowly around, unaware,
it seemed, of the crystals that frosted her lashes, the flakes that caught and
froze in her hair. She pointed and cried triumphantly, "There! Something
stands there!"

           
They began to trudge, the snow deep,
to their knees and higher, clinging as if it would delay them long enough the
cold might take them in its forlorn embrace. To struggle onward was an
extortionate task: far easier to rest, to halt, to lie down,- to die. Cennaire
went in front, crushing down a path of sorts, returning to help where help was
needed. They sheathed their swords, lest hands freeze to hilts, stumbling
drunkenly, heads swimming as the poor, thin air robbed them of sense, of
direction, none objecting to the strong arms she lent them, holding them up
when they should have fallen, bringing them on when they might have succumbed.

           
They traversed a level place for a
while, and then the way rose, sloping upward, a hard climb for all it was but
gradual and not at all steep. They could see nothing, save the snow
_;
felt little save pain as the dreadful cold penetrated their bodies, numbing
blood in its course, dulling the beat of tortured hearts. It seemed to
Calandryll he roved an eternity of blank cold, no longer a living man but an
automaton, empowered by purpose alone, enabled only by Cennaire's strength.

           
None spoke as they made that climb,
which seemed to them forever, as if they clambered step by awkward step over
the roof of the world, a lifetime of ascent, up to the unforgiving sky, where
stars shone distant, disinterested in the waning of the lives below. They
pricked out night's sable canopy, visible now, for the snowfall was ended here,
as if they climbed too high for that chill precipitation. The stars and a moon
waxed full, a vast blue- white orb hung like cyclop's eye above. Calandryll
thought he might reach out and take it in his hand, had he only that much
strength left.

           
"There." Cennaire
stretched out an arm. "Do you see?"

           
They turned, slowly, three
ice-beings, pale shapes that blended with the whiteness all around, life
bleeding from them surely as if from wounds. Calandryll thought it little
wonder no human creature, sorcerer or no, had returned from this place; and
then how Rhythamun should have survived. That the warlock lived yet, he was
certain. He knew not how, only that his enemy lay ahead—if direction yet held
meaning in this place between the gates, in this place that existed, he sensed,
in both the real world and the realm of the aethyr. He knew not how—only that
within him some sensate compass turned its pointer to Rhythamun's pneuma.

           
Before them, a shadow thing marked
out by its obfuscation of the stars, stood a gate to nowhere, two great
megaliths upright against the night, sar- sen stones crossed by a lintel,
within their aegis nothing, an absence that swallowed sky and stars. Calandryll
gaped, wondering how it could be he had not seen so stark a monument. Then
gaped again as he perceived shapes, shifting on the snow, moving toward them
and the gate.

           
"What are they?" Cennaire
cried, horror in her voice as her enhanced sight outlined them clearer than
Calandryll could discern.

           
"The guardians, likely,"
was all he could force out in answer.

           
"Then best we hasten," she
said.

           
Stumbling, benumbed, they moved
toward the gate. The guardians moved swifter, spatulate feet propelling them at
a shambling run across the snow. They stood hunchbacked, and even then taller
than a man, great bulky shapes of shaggy silvery fur, broad-shouldered, with
dangling arms that ended in hooked talons. As the questers staggered toward the
gate, Calandryll saw white eyes, empty of pupils, glowering from beneath craggy
brows, nostrils invisible beneath the fur that draped the wide faces, parting
where jaws all filled with serrated fangs gaped wide in anticipation. They
ululated, the sound eerie in the silence, thin and high, like the howling of
distant wind, full of menace, of blood-promise. They came fast, how many
impossible to tell, for they blended with the landscape, and shifted, prancing,
challenging with their yammering cries and flailing paws.

           
Unthinking, Calandryll pushed
forward, staggering to the fore, the straightsword drawn now, instinctive. He
thought his fingers frozen to the hilt, and wondered how in this awful cold he
should find the strength to fight such creatures.

           
We
stand with you as best we may.

           
Horul's promise, Dera's blessing on
his blade: it seemed his blood coursed stronger then, his cold- fused joints
suddenly more limber, as if the sword itself, or the promise, infused him with
warmth. The guardians wailed in rage, advancing: he went to meet them.

           
One, larger than the rest, outpaced
its fellows, greeting his challenge with a viciously taloned paw that slashed
at his face. He brought the sword down, cleaving the limb, reversing his stroke
to carve the furred belly. The creature screamed, in pain now, its blood a dark
shadow on the silver fur, the snow. It staggered and was shoved carelessly
aside as its companions thronged closer, vying with one another to confront
these intruders. Calandryll swung the blade wide as they closed upon him. They
were vast so close, their sheer size, their numbers, blocking sight of gate and
sky, his companions. He cut again, desperate, fighting for his life, intent
solely on driving through this barricade of living flesh to the waiting portal,
on surviving this attack.

           
He ducked beneath a questing paw
that should have taken off his head had it found that target, and drove his
sword deep between ribs that grated on the blade as he turned the steel,
gouging a livid wound there. He had thought perhaps the sword should dispatch
these monsters as it had dealt with occult creations before, but these seemed
physical, and were only wounded by his blows—the guardian swayed a moment,
standing when weaker flesh should have fallen dead, and then was thrown aside
by another that looked to overwhelm him with its bulk, its jaws agape, the
fangs daggers. He thrust the sword into the maw, gagging on the foulness of the
beast's breath, the sullen odor of its body, and flung himself clear as it toppled,
skull pierced.

           
They might be slain, then. But what
good that, when there were so many? How long before sheer weight of numbers
overwhelmed? He cut and thrust and hacked, his comrades hidden in the press. He
wondered, fearfully, how they fared, they without Dera's blessing on their
steel, Cennaire without a weapon.

           
A lull then, a gap between the
shuffling bodies revealing them locked in desperate combat, Bracht's falchion
darting swift, Katya's saber slashing, Cennaire grappling barehanded. Speed and
sword skill alone kept them alive—but for how long? Calandryll dodged between
two grim creatures, his blade a shimmering blur that trailed blood in its wake
as he hurled himself toward the Kand woman, the guardian that threatened to
bear her down. He swung the straightsword with all his strength against the
beast's spine, bone cut and breaking, Cennaire's face glimpsed brief, fierce,
as she turned to face another.

           
He fought for his own life then,
aware even as he paced out the steps of that deadly dance that

           
Cennaire avoided the paw that
reached for her and clutched a wrist so thick her hands failed to encircle the
limb. She was lifted up, helplessly kicking at the beast, its free paw questing
for her throat, she, for all her strength, barely able to fend off the slashing
talons. Calandryll dispatched his own attacker and went again to her aid,
slashing the creature's legs, severing hamstrings, Cennaire springing clear as
it bellowed and fell. He drove the sword down into the neck, severing
vertebrae, Cennaire moving closer, as if she sought the protection of his
presence, his blade. Over the high-pitched shrilling of the guardians he
shouted, "We must find the gate before they overcome us!"