Lords Of Existence (Book 8) (4 page)

“You are cagey, brother,” he said.

“Do we have an agreement?”

Braxidane considered his alternatives.

The sharp approach of the Lords built to excruciating levels in the flow.

“When I return, will I retain Adruin?”

“No,” Agar replied. “When you return, you will have nothing but your life. But that is a start, isn’t it? Certainly it is something greater than Hezarin has now, and it is something greater than you will likely have if Joint Authority goes a different way.”

Braxidane flashed red and orange.

It was an unpleasant position to be in, but it was as it was. He had to leave now or face the consequences.

The essence of the approaching Lords grew deeper.

“Yes, Agar,” he finally said. “We have an agreement.”

Then he dived into the gate that led to Adruin, and left his brother alone to face the most powerful presence in All of Existence.

Chapter 4

Garrick stepped into the desert, shivering despite his life force. It was dark here, just as it had been dark in Dorfort. The sky was crisp and the air cold.

It seemed that he had taken just a single step from Dorfort to Arderveer, as if his trip through Existence had been a simple passage through a doorway. He shook his head and splayed his fingers. He had felt the pull of Existence as he crossed through. The energy inside him yearned for the sea of life force he knew was there, and now the essence of the place danced over his skin like the mist of a summer rain.

You are stronger than I thought you would be,
Hezarin whispered.

“Perhaps you could have learned that from Braxidane,” he replied despite himself.

Hezarin wasn’t alive anymore, was she?

He wouldn’t let her residual energy drive him insane.

She may have laughed then, or perhaps it was just the desert wind whipping through his hair.

Garrick sighed and lowered his head. He was tired of everything about planewalkers. Their constant meddling left him angry. No one could be truly free while any of these creatures held sway, and Garrick couldn’t see any way to keep them at bay. He was a marked man, too. It wouldn’t be long before the Lords of Existence would discover what he had done, and when that happened they would not leave him unpunished. There may be more to life than Braxidane’s precious actions and consequences, but he was certain to pay a price for destroying Hezarin regardless of her provocation.

He stood alone in the desert, gazing over the span of sand that he knew held the remains of a city below it.

Arderveer.

He recognized the feel of it.

Had it been nearly a year since he and Darien had made their trip to visit Takril? It seemed forever ago. He remembered Takril as a wild-eyed mage with a gemstone gaze and a bitter odor. He remembered slaves and desert knights. He remembered seeing mages of the two orders actually working together for the first time while in the city’s underground hallways.

He decided on Arderveer because he knew he would be alone here. He wanted to think. He wanted to recover. And he needed time.

In fact, now that he had this moment alone he felt …

He felt the whole of Adruin.

Yes.

Everything. All at once. The sensation was so strong it nearly choked him.

He felt Arderveer, of course. A few people still lived below in the fossilized shell of the city the orders had destroyed. Slaves who knew no other homes kept their places, and a pod of what remained of the desert knights appeared to be thriving. But there were gaps here, open places and caverns amid the city’s destruction where he could retreat and take shelter while he sorted through his life.

This was good.

But he felt more than just Arderveer.

Even across this distance, he could feel the raw pain that still coated Dorfort. He felt its panic and the fear caused by flames that were eating its streets and alleys. The power of this panic brought a deep guilt that made him hate the planewalkers even more. To be able to ease this suffering, yet be forced to flee for fear of the devastation he could cause was debilitating.

And he felt more—he felt people living, and scrounging, and working all across the plane, people taken with cold and fever, people growing strong. People tending bar, embracing, sleeping and dreaming. People in Whitestone, and Farvane. People in the farthest southern reaches.

Hezarin’s life force pulsed, and Garrick heard storms that pounded the Vapor Peaks. He sensed forests to the east as their trees dug roots against the winter, drawing nutrients through the soil and growing their footholds under the surface while—above—their bare branches seemed weak and brittle, and their trunks creaked under the pressures of a raving wind. He felt the moon above, rotating and raising the tide. He rode in ships on the oceans below that moon, their sails filling, their masts screaming against that same winter wind. The sailors were strong and firm against the salted cold, their heartbeats stout and bold. They were the best sailors, Garrick thought, the ones who worked this time of year—hearty and skilled, and able to look nature in the face and still sing their songs of joy despite ice so thick they would later pick it from their beards. He felt the owl that soared above the cliff faces to the south. He felt heat rise from the ground to create glassy waves of current others couldn’t see.

Was this what every planewalker could feel?

No wonder Braxidane could be everywhere at once.

They were talking about you,
Hezarin said.

“The Lectodinians?” he replied. He felt the power of that order in sentries who stood on a ridge along the Vapor Peaks.

No.

“I don’t understand.”

Yes, you do. You felt the truth only a moment ago. Try.

And, having now heard that statement put so explicitly, Garrick knew it was true.

He had heard the conversation as he passed through All of Existence. It had been there, so nearby he could have joined in if he had recognized it. But the flow had burned against his face for just that instant, and he had missed it. He was still digesting it all, though. The energy of that conversation was still twisting in his thoughts.

Cut the ties,
someone said.
Leave all your champions alone …
it seemed to come from the hairs that rose on the back of his hand.

It was not until he heard Braxidane’s response (
and if I do that?
) that he understood what was happening.

“The Lords of Existence are coming,” Garrick said.

That’s right,
Hezarin replied.
And your lord is giving you away.

“He won’t do that.”

But he felt the truth in the bones of the conversation, and he felt other truths, too. He felt worlds upon worlds, and he felt men and women, people just like himself—champions each, and each tied to Braxidane just as he was. They existed, he thought. These other champions were as close to brothers and sisters as any he could imagine. And at that very moment, Garrick understood Braxidane would indeed give them all up if it meant saving his own skin.

Braxidane’s voice echoed in his mind.

Yes, Agar. We have an agreement.

Inside him, Hezarin purred.

Chapter 5

Braxidane would have had to come to Adruin soon enough, anyway.

For all his bluster, Agar’s negotiations would almost certainly fail, and even if they didn’t Braxidane couldn’t stand to let Agar make a mess of something he had worked so long for. It was annoying, however, that his brother could use the pretense of protecting him to essentially banish him here in Adruin. It was more than annoying. It was embarrassing. Knowing Agar had played him as a dupe was a slap to the face. Such disrespect could not stand.

He thought these things as he dove into the gate that lead to Adruin.

Either the Lords of Existence would catch onto what Agar was doing early, in which case they would deal with him as they would, or Braxidane himself would have to go to Joint Authority to break Agar’s play. Either way, the Lords would eventually come to Braxidane to extract justice for his own aggressions.

And that meant that, regardless of which path the future took, he would have to discard one champion to save the rest.

As Garrick was the least predictable of his mages, the choice was an easy one.

There was, however, a better idea than the one Agar had suggested—rather than destroy the mage outright, he would give Garrick exactly what he had been asking for, then let him flounder with the ramifications. This would at least give Joint Authority a true sense of where the incompetence sat in this arrangement. In addition, it might slow down the progress of Agar’s Lectodinian partners. That possibility alone made the option worth pursuing.

So, however he looked at it, Adruin’s proximity was fortuitous.

Needing a target to focus his arrival on, Braxidane felt for his champion as he flowed through Adruin’s gate. He did not want to arrive directly in Dorfort, so he set himself down far enough away to take stock of the situation. Instead of being near Dorfort, though, Braxidane was surprised to find himself on the southern face of the mountain range that ringed the Desert of Dust.

He gazed out at the dusky horizon, seeing chromatic shades of heat that worked their way through the sands and misted into the atmosphere like dew over a morning swamp.

He wasn’t sure what to make of this, but thought it good news on the whole. Being in Arderveer meant fewer distractions and a simpler extraction. At the same time, it seemed strange that Garrick was not in Dorfort. It said something had happened. Something had changed, and he didn’t know what to prepare for.

It was all very intriguing.

It made him anxious, though he couldn’t really tell why.

Chapter 6

Garrick worked his way into the underground chasms that had once been Arderveer. He descended broken stairways and traversed cracked passages, feeling ghosts of the city flirt with him as he took each step. The caverns were dry and gritty. They reeked of the essence of the people who had lived here. Occasionally, he came across the presence of those who still made their homes in these caves, but he took pains to avoid them and they seemed to be unaware of his existence.

He liked that.

There was comfort in working alone.

He came, eventually, to Takril’s central conjuring room, which he took as his own, sitting on the gem-encrusted throne the insane mage had placed at the center of the chamber. Garrick left the area dark because he liked the sense of isolation it lent. He liked it because the darkness helped him focus on the field of energy that bled out of him now, radiating like heat from the sun. It was sitting in the still of this darkness that gave him to realize that those rays were his senses, that they stretched across the plane and touched everything that lived in ways that were both cold and intimate at the same time. It was this bleeding of energy that let him feel the world as it was. And here in the darkness, he knew something else, too.

It was changing him.

The power had seeped into him. He thought differently now, reacted differently to everything around him. The combination of Braxidane’s curse and Hezarin’s power had made him into something new.