Glyphbinder (27 page)

Kara lunged. She bit at Cantrall’s sandal. Cantrall’s Hand of Breath ripped her into the air.

His real hand grasped her neck and squeezed with cold fingers. He smelled like fish left rotting weeks in the sun. What held her was no more alive than the revenants. It was a puppet of the Mavoureen.

“You need to know all that our world has sacrificed for you.” Cantrall released her neck and pressed his palm to her forehead, fingers bleeding black. “Let me show you.”

Images filled her mind, forced there by Cantrall. Horrible images, atrocities that made her scream. Slaughter and blood.

Kara watched as davengers devoured people. She watched as revenants hacked through the people of Taven’s Hamlet. She watched Sentinels drive their swords through each other, and after those horrific visions faded, she finally saw Elder Halde.

She saw him burning alive.

Columns of blue phantom fire roared across his body. Kara smelled the smoke, smelled the cooking flesh. She watched as it blackened, curled, and slid off his popping bones like soggy meat.

The images vanished and left her mind raw. This was worse than it had been with the Thinking Trees. This was worse than any agony she had ever known … except her mother’s screams.

Cantrall dropped her. “The price I’ve paid to save our world.”

“You killed him.” Kara sobbed.

“My own brother? Yes. I did.”

“And those people in Taven’s Hamlet. What did they do?”

“We sacrifice a few to save so many. You know the myths about the Mavoureen. Once we opened the gates at Terras, the provinces would unite against us. Thousands would die resisting our saviors and hundreds of villages would burn, not one. Unless we first divided the provinces, your foolish resistance would delay the Mavoureen and doom our world.”

“Why are you helping them? Why?”

“Many demons lurk beyond our world. Demons far worse than the Mavoureen. They hunger for our souls, and nothing here can stand against them. Not our armies. Not our magic academies. Not even the Five. The Mavoureen are the only force that can save us, and Torn locked them away from our world.”

“Stop,” Kara pleaded. “Stop hurting her. Please!” Yet Ona’s raw screams weren’t stopping, nor was the wet sound of ripping flesh.

“Swear your loyalty to me. Help me open the gates of Terras and no one you love will ever need hurt again.”

Kara wanted to break her bonds, scribe her glyphs, yet she couldn’t. Cantrall had beaten her. Her vision of Halde’s death had driven her to tears, and her mother’s screams kept her there.

Cantrall must have murdered Halde moments after supper. He had laced her dyn’s food with carrow root. He had listened to her pleas on Halde’s echo crystal, tracking her as she begged for help. He had abducted her mother, and now he was skinning Ona alive.

Kara had always believed there was no obstacle she could not overcome, no fight she could not win if she tried hard enough. Yet she couldn’t watch this man skin her mother alive. That was one fight she could
never
win.

Ona’s screaming ended and Kara could breathe again. For a moment. Cantrall turned to his revenant and frowned.

“She passed out. I’ll wake her, and then we’ll start again.”

“Cantrall.” Kara pressed her forehead against his boot. “I’ll help you. I swear. Just don’t hurt her again.”

Kara did not have the strength to watch revenants skin her mother. She did not have the strength to listen to Ona’s tortured screams. Yet she knew her own death could still save a great many people, including Sera and Trell.

“Will you?” Cantrall smiled at her. “Help me?”

“Yes.” Kara blinked back tears. “Just let her go.”

“You were previously so opposed. You told me I was mad. How do I know I can trust you?”

Kara stared up at him. “Possess me.”

Most Soulmages could only allow dead spirits of others to possess them. The most powerful, however, could project their own spirits into the bodies of other people. If a person allowed it, a Soulmage could possess their body and take complete control.

“I agree to your terms,” Cantrall said. “Open your body to me, and I will free everyone you love. We will save our world together.”

“No!” Trell shouted. “Don’t do it! Kara!”

Kara knew what she was doing. Her mother’s screams still rang in her ears. “I’m yours.”

She was not Kara Honuron, not Torn’s descendent. She knew that as she knew the sun rose at dawn. Even so, Cantrall’s mistake would save everyone she loved. He would kill her when he realized he was wrong, but her mother would be far away.

Cantrall gripped Kara in his cold, dead hands. His eyes glowed blue. She felt his spirit clawing at hers, trying to get inside, and she let him. Her world turned inside out.

She saw her own terrified face through his dead eyes.

TRELL WATCHED, tearing at his manacles, as Cantrall trembled and collapsed. Kara collapsed with him. Then Kara stood up. Then Cantrall’s body fell apart, hissing and melting away. When it ended, all Trell could make out was black goo and charred bones.

Kara spun on a revenant. “Bandage Ona’s foot. Stop the bleeding. Jair, do all you know to ease her pain.” She looked at Trell, lips tight, and Trell saw then her eyes were plain and brown. “They’ve all suffered so much.”

Panic gripped Trell as he pulled at his manacles, thumped his head against the rock. “Fight him! Push him out!”

Kara glanced at Cantrall’s robes and sighed. “It’s over now. She’s not here.” Kara — no, this was not Kara, not any longer — walked toward him. Settled at his side.

“I’ll bring her back to you,” Kara/Cantrall said. “I promise. When this is over, when we’ve opened the gates, I’ll bring her back and you’ll be together. You love her, don’t you? It’s good that you can love again. You both deserve to be happy.”

Trell strained to rise. “Let her go.”

“Soon,” Kara/Cantrall said. It chilled Trell’s blood to hear Kara’s voice and not her words. “I swear on my own soul.”

Kara’s possessed body stood and looked to the revenants. “Your purpose now is to protect these people. Do not let them escape, but do not harm them. Keep them safe. When I return we’ll speak again.”

“Elder?” Jair walked over. “What do we do now?”

Kara’s body gripped his shoulder. “We’re heading to Terras. We’re going to open the gates and save them. Save everyone.”

Jair smiled, a smile painted on a walking corpse. Then Jair turned, stiffened, threw himself into Kara’s body. “Down!”

Trell jerked as a ball of fire burst from the dark night, crackling with heat and power. It shrieked through the revenants next to Cantrall and turned them to ash. More fireballs shrieked from the darkness as the revenants turned, charging as one unit. They did not stand a chance. Flames landed, blowing them into the air.

Long gouts of flame seared the black things holding Melyssa. They made a horrific sound as they burned — a sound like a child, shrieking as something horrible happened to them — and then Melyssa’s freed arms snapped out. She opened her eyes. One nail on each hand sliced her fingers as air coalesced around her hands.

Trell stared as visible cyclones blasted toward Sera. They pulled her high into the air. They snapped her head backward.

The moment Sera died her body spun, feet pointing down. She dropped, hovered, head still twisted backward. She landed, gripped her own head, and twisted it around to face the proper way again. Her eyes were dark now, inky and black, and it felt like they were staring right into Trell’s soul.

A davenger leapt from the night, shrieking as it fell toward Sera with claws outstretched. Her arm snapped up and
nothing
burst from her hand. It ripped into the davenger and the demon simply disappeared. Wiped from existence.

“Life,” the deep voice inside Sera demanded. “Destroy them.”

Sera's other hand rose, and the glyphs chaining Trell vanished. Trell came up full of energy as familiar blue eyes surfaced once more in his thoughts, staring from inside his mind.

Trell screamed as power flowed through his body, power like water breaking through a dam and crushing everything in its path. It flowed into every muscle he had. He spun and punched the nearest revenant so hard he sent it flying into the air.

Jagged ice crackled as it sprouted from his skin, covering him from head to toe. A revenant’s blade hit him and sheared off, scraping but not penetrating ice, and then Trell grabbed its massive fist. Grabbed its sword. He ripped that sword away and swung it hard, ice overtaking the blade as he cut the revenant in half.

Trell was Life’s Champion. He knew what that meant now. He knew Cantrall and every last one of his servants was going to die.

“Now, Life!” the deep voice inside Sera shouted. “Stop Cantrall!”

Trell ducked a revenant’s strike and sliced it apart, moving with the motion to step right into another. The first halved revenant was still sliding apart as he took down another, and another after that. Blackish blood sprayed his icy armor, steamed and vanished.

Jair rushed toward him, fingers bleeding. He sent a tornado of piercing rocks. Trell stepped back and raised his sword, crystallizing ice before him. It shattered the rocks like snowflakes. He stomped toward Jair and brought his sword around. The flat struck Jair’s head and dropped him without another word.

“Mavoureen!” the voice inside Sera roared. “Be gone!”

More dark
nothing
howled from Sera’s palms, wiping davengers and revenants away. Trell knew now why he obeyed these orders so readily. Sera was Ruin’s Champion. Ruin commanded the Five.

Trell hacked through revenants, shattered swords and removed heads. They struck him, often, but no blow penetrated his icy armor. Kara had backed to the edge of the rocky bowl. A complicated series of glyphs floated before her bloody finger.

“Cantrall!” Ruin shouted. “Release Kara!”

Kara’s body finished its glyphs and a bubble of dense blue burst into being around her, absorbing even the next strike of
nothing
from Ruin. Cantrall twisted Kara’s lips into a smile.

“Your vessel is new. Your power weak. You’ve failed.”

Trell had almost reached Kara. The last revenant fell and then he was running at Kara, running at that blue shield. He gripped his icy sword as he realized that Life meant to strike Kara down.

“Trell!” Kara threw out one hand. “Stop!”

Trell skidded to a halt with his icy sword raised. Every impulse in his body urged him to cut her in half, and he fought that hard. He couldn’t murder Kara! How could the Five ask him to do that?

“Destroy him!” Sera shouted.

“Trust me, Trell! I’ll bring her back!” Kara’s finger scribed yet another series of glyphs. “Thank you!”

Shimmering stars cloaked Kara’s form. Astral glyphs. Trell threw down his blade and lunged for her, breaking free of Life’s impulses at last, but he moved too late. Kara’s body vanished, as did Jair’s.

Sera dropped to her knees. “We failed.” It was her own voice now, quiet and trembling. “We lost her.”

Trell howled and glared at the sky. He could still feel Life inside him, still feel what she had wanted him to do — kill Kara — and it made him tremble with rage. What had the Five been thinking?

“Trell.” Sera gripped his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you stop him?”

“We tried.”

“Try harder next time!” He ripped her arm off his shoulder and stalked away, fists clenched.

“We didn’t fail her, Trell.” Now Ruin’s deep voice spoke through Sera’s lips. “You did.”

Trell would have punched him had it not meant hurting Sera. “What did you expect? That I’d just slice her in half?”

“That death would be kind compared to the tortures she will face now. The fate of a soul in the Underside.”

Trell hated these deities. He hated himself. Jagged ice melted and then he was a man again, cold and alone.

He heard a gasp, a desperate intake of breath, and turned to find Jyllith breathing again. She sat up, gray eyes wide and staring at nothing. Air swirled around her, teasing and pulling at her red hair. The Five had found another Champion.

“Cantrall left us no choice.” Sera’s voice shook. “The Mavoureen left us no choice.” Her features hardened. “You must listen if you still wish to save Kara. To stop the Mavoureen.”

Trell listened. He dared not move. His mind remained too numb to do anything but wait. How much of this woman was Sera, and how much was Ruin? Was Sera even left in there?

“This will not end here,” Sera/Ruin said. “Heat has his Champion, as has Land. Breath flows now inside Jyllith. We will not stand by as our world falls.”

“I was expecting you,” a woman said. Melyssa. Her white robes swished as she approached. “We can still save Kara, Trell.”

“Is what Cantrall said true? Did you take my memories? My wife and my family?”

“I did. You, like Jyllith, were convinced the Mynt had murdered them. It was the only way I could be sure you would protect Kara.”