Godslayer (51 page)

"
What
?" Ushahin stared at the Fjel. "The rockslide—"

"Too late." The Havenguard shuddered. "The wizard, the white gem; I know not what he did, only that the lads were slow and the rocks fell too late." He paused, his small eyes beneath the heavy brow ridge bright with anxiety. "Will you come?"

They were gazing at him; all of them, his madlings, the Fjel, guilt-ridden Meara. Ushahin tasted despair.

"Listen," he said to them. "There is no time." He pointed toward the tapestried door. "The Lady of the Ellylon has passed behind the wall, and even now her kindred attempt a rescue." He paused, drawing his sword. "I go now in pursuit, for her death is our last hope, our only hope. My madlings, I charge you, all of you, with infiltrating even' passage, every hidden egress in the fortress of Darkhaven. Do you come upon the Lady, halt her; kill her if you may. Any consequence that comes, I will accept. Do you understand?"

The madlings shouted their assent, leaping to their feet.

"Good." Ushahin pointed at the Havenguard with the tip of his blade. "Hold the Gate," he said grimly. "There is no other order I can give. Tell the lads they must resist if Malthus seeks to wield his Soumanië against them and sway their spirits. Bid them to cling to the thought of his Lordship's long suffering, bid them think of their fallen comrades. It may lend them strength. If it does not…" He glanced at Meara. "Bid them make ready to slay any comrade who seeks to betray us."

"Aye, boss!" Relieved to have orders, the Havenguard whirled to depart. The madlings went with him, surging out the door in a roiling, shouting mass. Ushahin watched them go.

Meara remained. "Will you not punish me?" she asked plaintively.

"What punishment will suit?" Ushahin asked. "Your penitence comes too late to aid his Lordship. I will deal with you anon, Meara of Darkhaven. Now go, and serve while you may."

Bowing her head, she went.

With a sword-blade naked in his strong right hand and the case containing the broken Helm tucked beneath his aching left arm, Ushahin thrust aside the tapestry and plunged into the passageways.

For a moment, the Source continued to surge upward in a blazing column.

The Bearer. Dani the Bearer with his cupped hands, stood within it; stood, and lived. Through the sheets of blue-white flame, his gaze met Tanaros'. His lips, cracked and parched, whispered a word.

"Uru-Alat!"

And then his hands parted and the Water of Life fell, splashing, slow and glistening. The scent of water filled the cavern, sweet and clean and unbearable, as though all the water in the world was gathered in the Bearer's hands.

A handful; not even that, a scant mouthful.

It was enough.

The Source of the marrow-fire, the vast, roaring column of blue-white fire, winked out of existence. Tanaros, gaping, sword in hand, caught a final glimpse of the Bearer's figure crumpling to the ground.

And then he was trapped in darkness beneath the bowels of Darkhaven.

The Source was gone.

The marrow-fire had been extinguished.

For the space of a dozen heartbeats, Tanaros saw only blackness. He sheathed his sword, hands moving blindly. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to this new darkness, and when they did, he saw that traceries remained. The blue-white veins within the stony walls lingered, their light ebbing.
When the marrow-fire is quenched and Godslayer is freed
…

A
new spasm of fear seized him. "Godslayer," Tanaros said aloud.

"Uru-Alat."

The word seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, the World God's name whispered in every corner of the Chamber, all at once a prayer, a plea, a promise. It carried the scent of water, overwhelming for a moment the sweet charnel reek of ichor.

In the center of the room, Satoris Third-Born lifted his mighty head.

"Now," he said. "It is now."

In the blink of an eye, the glittering Font vanished, plunging the Chamber into gloom. For the span of a breath. Godslayer seemed to hang in the darkling air above the hole where the Font had blazed, then it dropped, clattering off the stones that ringed the empty pit. There it lay, unharmed, its lucid crimson radiance beating vividly against the darkness.

An involuntary cry escaped Cerelinde's lips. As swiftly as thought, she moved, darting toward the extinguished Font. All around her, shadows seethed. It seemed a penumbra of darkness gathered as the Shaper, too, moved forward. But if her mother was born to the House of Elterrion, her father was a scion of Numireth the Fleet, capable of outracing the darkness. Stooping. Cerelinde seized the rounded haft of the dagger.

Godslayer.

It throbbed against her palm, singing a wordless song of power that made the blood surge in her veins; a Shaper's power, power she did not know how to use. It didn't matter. It was a Shard of the Souma, and it had another purpose. Cerelinde straightened and whirled, prepared to fend off the Sunderer.

He had not moved.

"You see," he murmured. "I kept my word." He took a step toward her, turning his hands outward. "Finish your task."

Although she could not have said for whom she wept, there were tears in her eyes, blurring her vision. Cerelinde tightened her grip on Godslayer's haft. "Why?" she asked, her voice ragged with grief. "
Why
?"

The Shaper smiled. "All things must be as they must, little sister."

He took another step forward and another, looming before her. The clean aroma of water had vanished, and the sweet, coppery scent of ichor filled her nostrils. A Shaper's blood, spilled many Ages ago. An unhealing wound. Cerelinde raised the dagger between them. The Shard's deadly edges glimmered with its own rubescent light. "Stay back!"

Satoris Third-Born shook his head. "One way or the other, you will give me what is mine." He extended his hand as he had done once before, in the moon-garden. "How do you choose, daughter of Erilonde?"

Now, as then, there was no menace in the gesture; save that it asked Cerelinde to betray all that she knew, all that she held dear. The traceries of marrow-fire that illumed the walls of the Chamber dimmed but slowly, revealing the Shaper's grave features. His empty hand was outstretched and the vast expanse of his breast was before her, immaculate and vulnerable, marrow-lit obsidian flesh. Godslayer throbbed in her hand, a reminder of the dream of the Rivenlost. The Souma made whole and Urulat healed, a world no longer Sundered.

"Will yon dare to become the thing you despise."

"Arahila forgive me!" Cerelinde gasped.

Raising the dagger high, she plunged it into the Shaper's breast.

It sank with sickening ease, driving hilt-deep. Her clenched knuckles brushed his immortal flesh, immortal no more. He cried out, only once, a cry of such anguish, terror, and relief that Cerelinde knew it would echo in her ears for the remainder of her days. For a moment they swayed, locked together: her hand on Godslayer's hilt, the Shaper's hands rising to cover hers.

Cerelinde saw things.

She saw the dawning of the world and the emergence of the Seven Shapers within it and understood that it was at once an ending and a beginning; the death of Uru-Alat and the birth of a vast divergence. She saw mountains arise and rivers burst forth. She watched the world grow green and fruitful. She beheld the Shapers at their labor, crafting their Children in love and pride. She saw Satoris Third-Born walking alone and without fear in the deep places of the earth, conversing with dragons.

And then she saw no more.

Godslayer's hilt slipped from her grasp. In the Chamber of the Font, the Sunderer had fallen to his knees, was slumping sideways. The shadow of a smile still hovered on his lips. In his breast, the dagger pulsed like a dying star.

"So," he whispered. "It begins anew."

Tanaros wasted no time examining the inert form of the Bearer. The lad's role was finished; it no longer mattered whether he lived or died.

Moving swiftly in the dim light. Tanaros made his way to the outer wall of the chasm and began to climb.

If fear had impelled his descent, no word was large enough for the emotion that hastened his ascent. He was dizzy and unfeeling, his body numb with shock. His limbs moved by rote, obedient to his will, hauling him up the harsh crags until he reached the surface.

The passages behind the walls were growing dimmer, the veins of marrow-fire fading to a twilight hue. Tanaros paused to catch his breath and regain his sense of direction.

Then, he heard the cry.

It was a sound: a single sound, wordless. And yet it held in it such agony, and such release, as shook the very foundations of Darkhaven. On and on it went, and there was no place in the world to hide from it. The earth shuddered, the floor of the passage grinding and heaving. Tanaros crouched beneath the onslaught of the sound, covering his ears, weeping without knowing why. Stray rocks and pebbles, loosened by the reverberations, showered down upon him.

Although it seemed as though the cry would never end, at last it did.

Tanaros found himself on his feet with no recollection of having risen. Drawing his black sword, he began running.

Within ten paces, it happened.

There was no warning, no sound; only a sudden dim coolness as the veins of marrow-fire that lit the passages dwindled in brightness and the temperature in the stifling passages plummeted. Elsewhere in the passageways, he could hear his distant madlings uttering sounds of dismay and fear. Somewhere, the horns of the Rivenlost were calling out in wild triumph. Above Darkhaven, the ravens wheeled in sudden terror.

Ushahin shivered and pressed onward.

He was halfway to the Chamber of the Font when he heard the cry. It struck him like a blow, piercing him to the core. It was like no sound ever heard before on the face of Urulat, and he knew, with a horrible certainty, what it must portend. Ushahin stood, head bowed as rubble pelted him from above, his branded heart an agony within his hunched torso, arms wrapped around the useless case, and waited it out as another might outwait a storm.

Too late, always too late. The enemy was at the gate. The little weavers had completed their pattern. Haomane's Prophecy hovered on the verge of fulfillment.

Everything he feared had come full circle.

Almost…

In the silence that followed, Ushahin Dreamspinner stirred his ill-set, aching limbs. Step by painful step, gaining speed as he went, he began to follow the faint echoes of his Lordship's cry to their source.

Entering the chamber of the Font at a dead run, Tanaros halted, brought up short by the sight before him. "No," he said, uttering the word without thinking, willing it to be true, willing his denial to change what had happened and render it undone. "Ah, my Lord,
no
!"

It didn't change. Nothing changed.

Where the Font had burned for century upon century, there was nothing save a ring of scorched stone blocks surrounding an aperture in the floor of the Chamber. It seemed a small opening to have admitted such a gout of marrow-fire. Without the Font, the Chamber was dim-lit, the fading veins of marrow-fire that laced its walls filling it with a vague, subterranean twilight.