No Return (37 page)

The force lessened, allowing Pol a moment to gather his wits. The moon still touched him, and for the first time he sensed her personality, frigid beyond the void itself, disdainful of all life. She breathed in and out, expanding and contracting like a glacier in its trough. Relentlessly, she sucked the marrow from Pol’s soul. Instead of longing to be closer to her, he now fought the urge to run away. His fear slowly grew, doubled, tripled. He fought to find calm, and came up empty. He too would be empty, a shell, if he stayed any longer.

Fly!
he told himself.
Never come back!

But still he wondered:
Noeja? Who has given me this name?

The act of questioning was in itself an act of defiance—proof that he would not flee, but instead challenge the force which sought to coerce him—and in response he felt a measure of heat enter his body, easing the cold weight of his fear enough that it could be weathered. He shivered like a bone-chilled man before a fire.

Tell me!
he projected into the void.
Who has given me your name?

It began as a pressure behind his eyelids. It became the drumming of hooves on a baked plain. It became the ocean pounding upon the shore. It became the subterranean rumble of the earth’s plates grinding together. Finally, it resolved into words:

Me
.

The voice reverberated in the cavern of Pol’s skull.

I am the voice of Noeja
.

Dust lifted from the moon’s surface. The entire planet quavered with the volume of this announcement, as if it had truly issued from deep within the satellite’s heart.

Yet it was no goddess who had spoken.

The dread that had pressed upon Pol ceased. In its wake rose the unmistakable air of amusement. Pol was filled with the sense of being humored by a wise superior, of being indulged by a patient guardian.

The voice spoke again:
You are a trespasser here, mage. Prepare to meet your god.

Pol smiled despite the threat, despite the insult. He had passed the test. He would stand face to face with Adrash. Let the god believe he was a child. Let the god underestimate him.

Pol descended to the moon and stood, the first mage ever to do so. None had dared set foot upon its fractured surface for fear of angering Adrash. He curled his toes into the soft, powdery regolith, soil that had never been touched by air or liquid water. When he lifted his foot, a perfect imprint remained. He walked, he hopped, he leapt forty feet at a bound. He stared up at the first and largest sphere of the Needle, which hung huge in the star-dusted sky, slowly turning.

It was indeed a rickety basket. A toy.

Pol projected his joy and his challenge into the void. He waited for Adrash’s arrival, wondering how the god would appear to him now that he could truly see.

‡

Light preceded Adrash’s arrival, igniting the moon’s edge as though it were a steel blade fresh from the forge. The stars above this curved line dimmed and flickered in response, and to his chagrin Pol found he had raised his right fist to his temple in respect. Much as the voice had nearly bent him to suicide, the light compelled him to awe.

The god rose above the horizon, a second sun. A coruscating yellow-white fire surrounded him, extending miles from his body. For a moment, the shifting corona of flame seemed nothing more than a vain display, but gradually, like snarled paint strokes resolving into an image upon a canvas, its true form became apparent.

Pol’s legs quivered beneath him as he took in the bewildering scope of the massive sigil, its lines melting and flowing in a constant state of rearrangement. No, he did not recognize a single configuration—if he spent a lifetime studying the symbol, its meaning would become no clearer. Here was magic on a scale impossible to comprehend.

Fear churned his empty stomach. Lead flowed in his veins, weighing him down, sinking his feet into the sterile ground. He stood transfixed, numbed, waiting for the inevitable: a quick death, befitting a frail, presumptuous mortal...

The inked sigils fell like ashes down his naked form, gathering upon his calves and feet.

Slowly, his knees bent...

No
, he told himself.
I will not allow another to do my thinking.

With great effort, he straightened his legs, swung his frozen limbs, shook the feeling back into his hands. Terror loosened its grip on his hearts, and the blood rushed giddily to his head. Thoughts spun, and then centered. Chastened for falling pray to the god’s influence yet again, he reminded himself that he possessed his own set of weapons. Awakened once more, the sigils whirled around his body like leaves in an updraft.

Another flash of amusement.

You do nothing to hide your thoughts
, Adrash said. His voice was an avalanche of rocks, the rumbling of a volcano before eruption.
What you have done to yourself is impressive, but you will not last long if you cannot silence that bullhorn of a mind.

Pol cursed himself. He had allowed himself to be distracted. He reasserted the thought-dampening spell he had let lag and widened his stance. The black forms of halfstags and diamond spiders ran across his torso. A reptilian seabeast slithered up his right leg and a horned snake wound up his left. A thousand wasps roiled in flight on his arms. With a shrug, he unfolded his wings of shadow, spreading them like night’s blanket across the surface of the moon. Adrash’s light did not pass through.

Better,
the god said.

Magic thrummed in Pol’s veins, screaming for release. He closed his eyes against the glare and saw his opponent clearly, striding forward, feet above the ground, features serene under the divine armor. He did not appear to rush, but each step brought him miles closer.

I am ready
, Pol broadcast.

No, you are not
, came the reply.
But you came for a fight...

Adrash disappeared.

A fist slammed into Pol’s stomach, rocketing him backwards. His body cut a deep furrow in the regolith before his foot caught on a submerged rock and sent him tumbling. Dust puffed up around him as his limbs bent and slapped the ground. His lips pulled back from his teeth. His mouth filled with dirt.

Chalked with iron but uninjured, he rose from the ground.

Heavy arms crossed, Adrash stood at the foot of the scar Pol’s flying body had created. Waiting.

Pol flung outstretched fingers forward, casting and throwing a bullet of compressed magefire at the god. With heightened awareness Pol watched it move through the void, its boiling blue surface spiderwebbed with black. As it spiraled toward its target, Pol clapped his hands together, cracking the ground at his feet. A crevice opened and shot forward at blinding speed, yet to Pol’s eyes it crawled.

The bullet hit Adrash square in the chest and exploded. He did not move as the magefire curled around his torso, writhing upon him as though it were a living thing. Had Adrash been a man, it would have eaten into his skin like an earthmover diving into sand. As it was, the fire failed to adhere and dripped from him in long, liquid strings.

The crevice halted at his feet.

Adrash unfolded his arms.
These are the best of your weapons? You are a fool. Labor at your task another hundred years and maybe you will do more with your powers than nudge one of my spheres. Yes, I know you. You have ambition, but little sense. Still...
He cocked his head slightly.
There is something. Something more than will or talent.
He closed his eyes, and it was as if someone had snuffed out the sun.

There is something
, the god said again.
Your voice. I know it. It is as if you wear another’s body... We have been at this juncture before, have we not?
He shook his head, and for the first time an expression could be seen under the armor: a slight downturn of his lips, the faintest wrinkle between his brows.

An opportunity. Pol reacted quickly, without forethought, letting the magic speak within him. He would interpret Adrash’s words later—if he lived.

The sigils writhed upon his body. They flowed up his legs and torso, gathering together on his arms, turning his skin from mid-bicep to fingertips solid black. Drawing upon the emptiness of the void, moving by sorcerous instinct, he formed an unknown spell between his hands: A dangerous, lifeeating thing, a portion of nothingness crystallized, condensed, conforming to the shape of his fingers. Still, the spell was difficult to hold. It wanted to be free. He cupped his hands around it, pressed it into a small sphere. Throbbing in time to Pol’s wildly galloping heartbeats, the spell’s chill crept up his arms and into his chest. His teeth chattered and then abruptly stopped.

The spit had frozen in his mouth, sealing his jaw shut.

He could not hold the spell any longer. His hands flew apart and the ball of emptiness shot forward—far slower than he had hoped. It expanded in flight, wobbling like a droplet of water, contorting reality as it passed. The stars quavered through its imperfect lens and Adrash bloated into a ridiculous shape.

Pol sagged and ungracefully sat, spent by the casting. If it did not work, he would soon be dead.

Adrash’s eyes snapped open just before impact. The spell hit him and instantly collapsed around his body, hungry for warmth. For several seconds the god strained against the constricting envelope, every muscle in rigid definition. He fell to his knees and bent forward at the waist, fists punching into the powdered earth. Pressed on all sides, he curled in upon himself. Just before he stopped moving altogether, the fiery sigil that surrounded him flickered, collapsed, expanded, and collapsed again.

Pol watched, struggling to make his body move. He gathered unsteady legs underneath him and stood. Cautiously, he floated toward Adrash. Though the god had stopped moving, his massive sigil continued to pulse on and off.

Pol faltered at the halfway point, struck dumb by the realization.

His magic is failing him.

Before he could form another thought, his own mysterious talent woke within him again, pounding against the interior of his skull. He threw his head back, but the scream stopped in his throat. Pain lanced through his rigid limbs, gathered in his fingers and toes. The head of his erect penis throbbed as if it were going to explode.

Through the agony, he sensed the casting of a second foreign spell.

Like iron shavings adhering to a lodestone, fragments of voidstuff stuck to his skin, covering him completely, numbing him from the outside in. Trapped, he struggled for control over his body, and lost.

The pain faded to nothing while his mind raged.

The spell moved his limbs. He strode forward, though his feet did not touch the ground. He bent, took Adrash’s head in his hands, and lifted the limp body. The god’s sigil flickered off every few seconds, reappearing slightly dimmer, slightly smaller each time.

Pol pulled him in close and kissed him at the exact moment the sigil fluttered off.

The moon disappeared. The universe flooded with sunlight—

—and he found himself on a field of blue flowers.

Three figures stood before him. A muscular man clothed in black from head to toe. A warrior-woman covered in freckles. A giant man composed of brass spheres. Adrash’s body lay at their feet. The man in black spoke harsh, alien words, and Adrash’s divine armor began to smoke, blistering and charring upon his body.

The perspective lurched, and suddenly Pol was flying at great speed over Knoori. Desert. Water. The domed island of Osa in the distance. Land. Pine forests. Finally, the Aspa range. He floated above a mountaintop valley with a lake at its center. Scattered everywhere were ruins, and among the ruins lay thousands upon thousands of elder corpses, naked to the sun. Men gathered around these, hacking them open with stone blades.

The perspective lurched again, and once more he was flying eastward over the continent. His speed increased so that he could not make out the details below. Then he was over water again: Jeru, the Great Ocean. He flew into a wall of cloud and just as quickly was out of it, descending into the alien landscape of a new continent. Glass and steel spires, entire cities of them, rose from the forests, plains and immense lake platforms. Roadways that stretched like ribbons of black silk crisscrossed the ground, and everywhere corpses lay.

No, not corpses. Living elders, glowing with life—merely sleeping. A spear of sunlight shot down upon one, and it lurched to its feet. It turned and stared at Pol with liquid eyes the color of dried blood. A sound built in the space between Pol’s ears, rising steadily in volume.

The howl of a wolf.

A hundred thaumaturgical engines churning.

The crumbling of a mountain into the sea.

The elder screamed, and Pol saw no more.

‡

He woke, sprawled on the moon’s iron soil. A yellow-white glow faded from his eyes. The spells were still upon his body.

Above him, the Needle was broken, its twenty-seven spheres spread across the sky. One hung stationary only a few thousand miles from the moon’s surface. At the limits of unaided vision, another spun so rapidly Pol could not see its rims without quickening his perceptions.

The sight filled him with fear greater than any he had experienced since childhood—the kind of fear he had forgotten he had ever felt. For a thousand years, the Needle had stretched straight and true. Fifty generations of men had stared into Jeroun’s sky, reassured or made fearful by the nearly unvarying sight of it. If they did not look too closely or were simply unobservant, they probably believed it did not change at all—that Adrash had no intention of using the spheres as weapons. Pol considered with what horror men would greet the following evening, knowing how wrong they had been.

And you will still be wrong
, he thought.
This is not your god’s doing.
He turned his head. Adrash lay on the ground where he had fallen. His chest did not rise or fall. Though whole, the divine armor had taken on a dull, greyish cast.

Pol stood, swaying on unsteady legs but otherwise unharmed. Understanding that a decision must be made, he nonetheless struggled to bring his mind to bear. His thoughts swam in a thick stew, making it difficult to concentrate. He had not killed Adrash—of this he could be sure. That would not be so easily accomplished. Furthermore, why would the armor still cling to the god if no life moved within him?