Griffin's Destiny (22 page)

“Hurry, Ashi! Do it now!”

Jelena gazed up at him with no trace of fear in her hazel eyes.

“You’re awake! Ai, Goddess,” he whispered, horrified. “I can’t do this, not now!”

“Listen to me, beloved. Yes, you can. We both can,” she replied, her voice calm. “You know there’s no other way. I won’t feel any pain, I promise. My death will be as easy as falling asleep in your arms. When it’s all over, we’ll be together.” She smiled, and it felt like the sunrise after a long, harrowing night. “Remember how much I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Son, strike now!

Ashinji snapped back to consciousness. He looked down at Jelena, who lay unmoving on the altar slab, slack-jawed, eyes closed.

I’ve been entranced, and she’s been asleep all along
, he realized.
She reached out to me, in a vision, to give me the strength to do what I must.

Sobbing aloud, he brought the knife down in one smooth motion.

Jelena’s body arched then fell back as the knife bit deep. A bright stain of red, like a rose opening to the morning sun, bubbled around the blade buried in her breast. Ashinji fell to his knees, his hands pressed to the wound. He felt like his body was being torn apart as the magic of the Kirians flowed through the conduit of his mind. He sensed Jelena’s life ebbing away, but he felt something else happening as well.

Taya spoke a Word of Power and Ashinji screamed as a thunderbolt detonated in his head. He looked up, senses swimming, to see, hovering a handspan above Jelena’s body, a dazzling sphere of blue light.

The Key!

Gran spoke a second Word, and Ashinji groaned as the backwash seared his already flayed nerves. The Key sparked like an ember beneath the bellows of a forge. Ashinji braced himself.

Sonoe spoke a Word and without warning, the protective circle collapsed and the flow of magic ceased. At the same instant, the red-haired mage stepped backward and threw something to the floor.

A geyser of darkness erupted from the stone to form a swirling column of black.

“Come, Master, come!” Sonoe screamed. “The way is open!”

Taya’s howl of fury mingled with Gran’s and Amara’s cries of horror.

Instinctively, Ashinji threw himself across Jelena’s body. He stared at his mother in confusion. “What’s happening!” he shouted.

“Treachery!” Amara cried.

The black column coalesced into the rough shape of a man. Ashinji could only stare, helpless, as the other Kirians raced to complete the Ritual. As Taya held aloft the Eye of Lajdala and began to intone the final incantations, a bolt of dark energy shot from the shadow figure and struck the Eye from her hand. Taya spun about and launched a fireball from her fingertips. It flew straight for Sonoe but the younger mage easily deflected it.

“Give it up, fools!” Sonoe cried, her voice ringing with triumphant glee. “You can’t win! The Key is mine!”

Wrong, slave-bitch! The Key belongs to me! It always has!

The voice of the Nameless One rolled over them, deep and grinding. Ashinji felt more than heard it, and shuddered at the slimy residue it left in its wake.

Sonoe whirled, laughing, to face what she had freed. “The tables are turned, truly,
Master!
” she hissed. “I command you,
Shiiiieee…
”

Before she could finish, Sonoe’s voice shredded into an unrecognizable croak, as if an unseen force had ripped her tongue from her mouth. She clapped her hands to her throat, eyes bulging.

“Sisters!” Taya cried. “We must secure the Key! Quickly now, while the spirit is distracted!”

“The Eye has been destroyed!” Gran pointed to the congealed lump of scorched metal and shattered stone that had once been the symbol of office for the leaders of the Society. “We have no other suitable vessel!”

“Yes, we do!” Taya replied. “We will use the White Griffin.”

“We cannot!” Amara objected. “The Key must not reside within the same vessel as the spell that opens the Void! It’s too dangerous!”

“We have no choice,” Taya shot back.

“Taya is right,” Gran said. “If we all survive, then we can separate the two later.”

An agonized shriek tore the air, causing them all to start.

“Great Goddess!” Amara whispered.

Slowly, Ashinji turned his head and if, at that moment, he had been given the choice to be struck blind, he would have gladly surrendered his eyesight rather than witness what he saw next.

The Nameless One hovered over Sonoe, who lay face-down on the unyielding stones, her body pressed to the floor as if pinned by a great weight. Her clothes had been torn away and scattered. Ugly welts striped her naked back and buttocks, starkly red against the whiteness of her skin. As Ashinji watched in horror, the spirit flowed between her legs, forcing them apart. Like a black snake crawling into its burrow, it began to push its way into her body. Sonoe thrashed and shrieked, a hideous high-pitched keening, like a tortured animal. Relentlessly, the spirit pushed until it had inserted its entire substance within the struggling woman.

Ashinji turned his head and retched.

The screaming stopped.

Ashinji dared to look again and the sight of Sonoe’s lifeless body, contorted from her death throes, made him wish he had not.

“Ashinji!” His head snapped around at the sound of his name. “Get ready! We are going to need your energy again!” Taya called out. She held the White Griffin between her thumb and forefinger, seemingly unaffected by the gruesome death of her erstwhile colleague. “Now, sisters!” she cried.

Ashinji braced himself, but even though he expected it, the pain still proved almost unbearable. He thought about what Gran had told him, about how to control his Talent, and imagined a filter between himself and the full power of the remaining three Kirians, a barrier of sorts that would lessen the pain while still allowing his own energy to flow.

It seemed to help, for the pain eased. He could concentrate now on what the Kirians were doing. All three mages chanted in unison, their eyes fixed on the ring, which rested on Taya’s palm. The Key hovered just above, and its light pulsed to the rhythm of the incantation. Slowly, Taya raised her free hand until she had both the Key and the ring cupped between both palms. The Kirians fell silent.

Ashinji looked down at Jelena’s face. Her lips had already begun to lose their color in the chilly air. The terrifying rush of blood from the wound in her chest had slowed to a trickle. Even though he knew it would do no good, he couldn’t make himself stop pressing his hands against her stilled heart.

Ai, Goddess! My beautiful wife, my love, my Jelena!

A whisper of sound from behind made him turn his head.

Too late, he saw a blur of white rushing toward him, swinging. He shouted a warning just as Sonoe’s fist smashed into the side of his head with the force of a war hammer. He slumped to the floor, consciousness shattered.

For a time, he drifted, lost amid a whirlwind of confusion. Shouts, screams, Words of Power—all swirled around him in a deafening cacophony. An explosion shook the floor beneath his cold-numbed body. He heard someone crying his name. Struggling against the dark that fettered his senses, he managed to wrench himself free and regain full consciousness.

He lay sprawled on the floor, in total darkness. After a few heartbeats, he groped his way into a sitting position, afraid to move much farther.

“Mother?” he croaked.

Silence.

“Gran…Princess!”

He heard a soft moan to his left. As quickly as he dared, Ashinji slithered across the slick floor toward the thread of sound. His questing fingers soon touched cloth and worked their way along the unseen form until they found skin. A voice whispered his name. “Yes, Gran, it’s me,” he replied.

“Can you conjure a light?” Gran rasped.

“I think so.” Conjuring magelight proved much simpler now that he had done it already. A silvery orb flared to life on his palm—small, but much brighter than his first attempt.

The sight of Gran’s blood-covered face made him curse in dismay. “What happened, Gran?” he whispered as he slipped his arms beneath the elder mage’s shoulders and helped her to sit up. She sucked in a sharp breath and her hand flew to her side. “Are you badly hurt?” Ashinji’s chest tightened in alarm. “Tell me how to help you!”

Gran shook her head. “I’m not important right now.”

Ashinji looked into her pale eyes and saw the terrible truth.

“No!”

Gran nodded, her face grim. “The Nameless One has possessed the corpse of Sonoe and escaped.” She pressed a shaking hand to her forehead. “I was such a fool, Ashi! I should have trusted my instincts and your Talent! All those months ago when we were slaves in the de Guera Yard…you asked me about the red-haired woman you’d seen in your visions, the one surrounded by shadow. Why did I not
see
?”

“Please, Gran,” Ashinji pleaded. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”

“Who else, then?”

“There must be some way to stop it…stop
her
!” Ashinji’s skin crawled with revulsion.

“Help me up, Ashi. We must see to the others.”

Ashinji held steady while Gran pulled herself to her feet. The blood on her face had dripped from a cut on her forehead. It looked shallow, but it extended past her hairline.

“Your mother and Taya are still alive, but they were both rendered unconscious in the struggle,” she said. Ashinji breathed a sigh of relief. Together, they limped to where Amara and the princess lay sprawled on the stones, loose as rag dolls.

“Does the Nameless One have the White Griffin?” Ashinji asked. He crouched beside his mother and stroked her face. She moaned, her head rolling from side to side.

“He does,” Gran replied. She eased herself down on the altar beside Jelena’s body. “Poor, child,” she murmured, gazing at Jelena’s bloodless face. “We failed you.”

“If we don’t get that ring back, my wife will have died for nothing!” Ashinji felt he would choke on his despair. Just as he started to lift his mother’s head to his lap, she stirred and sat up.

“Son…” she mumbled, a swollen and bruised lower lip slurring her speech.

“There is a way to retrieve the ring, but you are the only one who can do it, Ashi,” Gran replied.

“No!” Amara cried. “He’s not trained! He can’t possibly…”

“He can, Sister, and he must!” Gran insisted. “The Kirians have failed! Your son is the only one left standing with the necessary Talent.”

“Chiana is right,” Taya added in a rough whisper, awake now. The princess climbed laboriously to her feet and shuffled over to the altar where Gran now sat. “We must send young Sakehera and there’s no time to lose.”

“What are you all talking about?” Ashinji asked, confused.

“You must go after The Nameless One and stop him from executing the spell that will open the Void,” Taya answered. Ashinji stared at the three mages in turn.

“But how?”

“I’ve never trusted Sonoe, and with good reason, as it turns out, but even I never dreamed her capable of such duplicity!” The princess paused to wipe a thin trickle of blood from her mouth. “I kept watch upon her mind during the Ritual,” she continued. “I have the skill to monitor others undetected—but I now realize, to my everlasting sorrow, that I grossly underestimated her.”

A tiny, bitter smile touched Taya’s lips. “Before Sonoe turned on us, she let slip a very important piece of information. I suppose the anticipation of her victory made her careless. She did not know I gleaned from her mind the one thing that can save us.”

“What, Sister? Tell us,” Amara said.

The princess replied, “I now know the true name of the Nameless One.”

Ashinji sat on the edge of the altar and lifted Jelena’s hand to his face. “You’re so cold, already, my love,” he sighed, pressing his cheek to her palm.

Though he had wielded the knife, her death had not seemed real to him, until now. The agonizing realization struck him like a spear of ice through his heart. “Jelena,” he sobbed. “I’ve killed you. Ai Goddess! They made me kill you!” He slipped his arms beneath Jelena’s shoulders and raised her so he could cradle her limp body against his chest.

“Ashi, my son.” Ashinji felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder and viciously, he slapped it away.

“Leave us alone!” he snarled. “Just leave us alone…” His voice dissolved in a flood of tears.

“Ashinji Sakehera, listen to me!” Taya’s voice sliced through the haze of his grief. “You must put aside your pain, at least for now, for the fate of the material world hangs in the balance!”

Ashinji raised his head.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes, damn you!”

“The spirit’s true name is the one weapon you’ll have that can prevail against him.” Taya looked at Gran, who nodded in agreement.

“Even if I do know its true name, how am I supposed to defeat something powerful enough to toss aside three of the most skilled mages in Alasiri?” Ashinji stared at the princess, incredulous. “Goddess’ tits! I’m not a mage! I’m a soldier!”