Phoenix Ascendant - eARC (23 page)

He could feel a faint coldness near his right hand.
Maybe…
“What…do you…mean to do?”

“Ah, of course, it is so obvious to me, as I’ve planned it for these centuries, I forget it won’t be nearly so clear to you. But it’s really quite a simple thing, Aran. Once Kyri Vantage confronts me, she is facing the one who helped corrupt and destroy the very
religion
of Myrionar. She
must
destroy me in turn; it is, in a very real sense, a cosmic necessity, to right the wrongs I have done, to begin the true healing. To do so, Myrionar can—and
must
—invest her with every single trace of Myrionar’s power.” A shuffling sound, a tinkle of broken glass from something that had fallen on the floor; the monster in the guise of a man was getting closer. “That means that Myrionar’s very
essence
—its
self
—will be completely open, utterly vulnerable. All of its existence…and all of its
connections
.”

Despite his intention to pretend to more weakness than he felt, Aran started half-up to his knees in horror. “You can’t—”

“Ahhh, but I
can
. The stakes, you now see, are far, far greater than one minor deity in some backwater realm.” It chuckled.

But sitting up had given Aran the chance to see that it stood above him, no more than three feet distant. “You’ll
never
have that chance! Be you consumed by the forces of the
Hells!
”

The Demonshard
whipped
into his hand and Aran stabbed upward in the same moment, so close that even that monster’s speed could not let it dodge. The black blade
howled
with hunger as it struck out, a shard of a thousand collapsed suns opening themselves to consume even light itself.

But a long-fingered hand
caught
the Demonshard as though it were no more than a child’s practice sword. The Demonshard bit deep…but not through, and the arm became huge and monstrous again. To Aran’s disbelief, the hunger-song of the Demonshard shifted, became a sound of panic, and the blade vibrated desperately. Aran pulled back, but the Demonshard was held immovably, screaming in fear, its sound
weakening
, fading, the blue glow guttering out like a candle…

And the Demonshard
shattered
in the monster’s hand. Aran felt his own life drawn in, his strength fading, as the Wolf gazed down at him. “Did you even
imagine,
” it said, “that I would have allowed you
any
weapon that could kill
me?”

Its laugh was the last thing Aran heard as cold and alien hunger drained his consciousness.

Chapter 33

Kyri came awake to something small urgently
bouncing
on her armor. “C’mon, c’mon,
wake up
, Kyri, Tobimar, WAKE UP!!”

She sat up, quickly, seeing a groggy Tobimar doing the same. “What is it, Poplock?”

“That stupid Aran’s what!”

She felt a pang of disbelief as Tobimar’s face darkened. “He’s betrayed us!”

“No,” the little Toad said despondently. “Worse than that. He’s run off to do the job himself, because he knew we couldn’t really trust him. And because his honor’s poking him in the stupid places.”

She grabbed the piece of paper Poplock held out and read it quickly:

Phoenix:

I am not forsworn; I will keep my oaths to you and yours. You will find me easily tracked to the Retreat.

Our patron manipulated us all. I would give him his plans back, on the point of the sword he cursed me with.

Pray for me.

Aran Shrikeson, once Condor

She closed her eyes, seeing that pained face before her mind’s eye. “Of course. Of course he’d feel he had to do this.
Great Balance
, I should have had you tie him up!”

“Too late to argue what we should have done,” Tobimar said. “How much time have we lost, Poplock?”

The Toad squinted up at the sun. “Hmm…About an hour, I’d guess. No more.”

“Then the trail’s fresh, and if he’s telling the truth, it won’t be hard to follow.”

“Are you guys ready?”

Kyri forced herself to pause, to consider. “How long was it before he knocked you out?”

“Well…took a bit of searching…A couple hours, maybe three.”

So three or four hours total. Well, I’ve worked days with less.
“I don’t think we can afford to wait, do you?”

The bounce-grunt was an obscenity. “No, I guess not. By
Blackwart
I wish we could summon Miri or Shae. Or both of them.”

Kyri found an involuntary, but very welcome, smile at the thought. “So do I. You didn’t happen to grab any of those summoning crystals before we left, did you?”

“Hey! I know you think I’m sneaky, but I’m not stealing vital resources of a kingdom that just got pounded by a dragon.” Poplock paused. “I
did
think about it, though.
Chosen
, but that would have been a great thing to have as a backup.”

“And Xavier’s hundreds of miles off that way…maybe even
at
the Black City by now,” Tobimar said. “No backup from him or his friends this time.” He shivered visibly. “Kyri, we may be going to face
one
demon now, but those five children, they—”

“We’re not
that
much older than they are, Tobimar,” she said. “And just the little we’ve seen of them…I think old Khoros knows what he’s doing. Those five are going to do just fine.” Inwardly, she said a prayer to Myrionar she was right. They’d helped the five on their journey to a place no one should ever go; if it got them killed, she might not forgive herself.

“Terian’s
Light
, I hope so.”

“Guys, worry about
us
right now. Aran’s an hour ahead of us, and even if we pick up the pace as much as we can, he’s gonna be having his head handed to him long before we get there. We’d better be ready to make sure his stupid, stupid gesture isn’t wasted.”

Kyri nodded, and strode forward as fast as she could without breaking into a run.
Have to conserve most of our strength. Running to get there will be self-defeating.
“How about the diversion wards?”

Poplock squinted forward, although there wasn’t much to see other than more jungle. “Well, if Aran’s being straight with us—and I think he is, honestly—he’s not going to be hiding his trail. Might even be making it a
lot
easier to follow when we get to the warding area. I told you we could probably have followed the Watchland if we’d got on his trail right away; we’ve got a chance now, especially since he
wants
us to follow; that’s got to affect the ward, since they’re usually designed to allow people to lead in allies and such.”

“Let’s hope so,” Tobimar said. “Otherwise we’re going to spend the day running in circles.”

It was easy to follow Aran’s trail, as Poplock had expected. The former Condor Justiciar was moving in as straight a line as he possibly could, plowing through bushes, chopping away thicker impediments, leaving crisp, heavy bootprints across clearings.

“We’re making very good time,” Tobimar said after a while. “He’s cleared the way for us as well as leaving a trail. We
must
be catching up to him.”

“I would presume he
wants
us to. He wanted to get there first, but probably not be there alone for very long. Either he’ll succeed in killing Viedraverion…or he’ll be dead or captured very fast.” She didn’t like to think about that.

“Whoa! Stop!” Poplock shouted suddenly.

“What is it?” She looked around.

“His trail’s
that
way,” the Toad said, pointing to her left.

She saw they had, indeed, departed from Aran’s trail. “Strange, he was going so straight. I wonder why he turned so suddenly.”

Poplock looked at her silently, then gave a derisive croak. “He
didn’t
turn.
You
two turned.”

“What? But no, his trail turns—”

She gestured, and then felt her eyes and mind rebelling as she tried to follow the path. One part of her could see, clearly, that Aran’s path went straight as an arrow, and that she and Tobimar had simply curved swiftly away from it; but another part of her saw that Aran’s trail curved sharply in the other direction. Yet when she focused on any individual
section
of the trail, it looked perfectly straight!

Tobimar was evidently having the same problem. “Great Terian’s
Light
. My head hurts. This is a diversion ward, then.”

“No doubt about it. Powerful one, too.”

She finally forced her eyes to simply focus on the nearest portions of Aran’s trail—some of it random, blackened cuts through the forest floor, evidently done by the demonic sword he carried—and walk forward with careful, measured strides, studying only the forest in front of her feet. “Why isn’t it affecting you, Poplock?”

“Oh, it’s affecting me, I’m just not doing the
walking
, so I can focus all my brain on watching the path, no matter how the spell tries to mess with my perceptions. It’s strongest on people trying to move, not just those sitting still, and from
my
point of view I’m sitting still, the ground’s just moving away under me.”

“Amazing,” Tobimar said, also using painstaking caution in every step. “You can even manage to confuse
spells
with your logic.”

The humor caught Kyri by surprise; she managed to turn her giggle into a snort. “It’s
incredibly
strong,” she said after a few minutes. “I
know
that Aran’s going as straight as he can, but my eyes and brain keep insisting that he’s turning somewhere, and I keep getting a feeling that I should keep going straight.”

“With ‘straight’ meaning ‘curving around so I can’t get where I’m going,’ yeah,” Poplock agreed. “Sorry, but we’re going to lose some time here. I don’t know how thick the wards are; maybe we’re almost through, maybe we’ll have to do a mile or more of this.”

“Just keep your eyes locked on the trail and stop us if we start to go wrong,” Tobimar said. “I have a feeling that if we ever actually
lose
the trail we’ll never find it again.”

Poplock bounced in a subdued way. “You’re probably right.”

It was impossibly hard to keep on the trail against the power of the diversion ward, a subtle and deviously stubborn trick that was made even more difficult by the fact that it did not care
how
you went wrong, so it would shift the direction it was trying to lead you in at any moment, seizing the advantage when you were forced to turn to the right when going around a large tree, switching back to the left if you tried to skirt a boulder, even forcing you to glance backward with the conviction that you’d somehow gotten turned around and were going
away
from your destination. Kyri trudged forward, one foot in front of the other, sometimes reaching out to pull Tobimar back in line, at other times feeling his arm dragging her in the right direction, and both of them often being corrected by the increasingly strained voice of Poplock Duckweed.

Just as she felt her head would
burst
if she had to take one more step against that senseless antagonist, the pressure on her mind
broke
. It was so sudden that she actually stumbled forward as though an actual barrier had given way before her.

Tobimar also nearly fell, and then did collapse on the ground, holding his head and muttering a prayer of thanks to Terian. She sat down beside him, letting her whirling brain settle back to normalcy. “Great
Balance
, that was an ordeal! At least Rivendream Pass ran
straight.
”

“No argument there,” Tobimar said, then heaved himself back to his feet. “Come on, we can’t take the time.”

“You’re right, of course.” She followed suit and started moving along Aran’s now obviously dead-straight trail. As they walked swiftly forward, without any impediment, her mind cleared. “How long
was
that, anyway?”

“Straight-line distance? I think it was close to a mile. We’ve got a lot of time to make up,” Poplock said grimly. “I think that took us more than an hour and a half, guessing by the sun.”

Myrionar’s Blade. Aran may already be dead, depending on how much farther it is to the Retreat.

Still she did not allow the urgency to stampede her. March fast, but no faster than endurance would allow. At Tobimar’s glance, she shook her head. “This is the end of my quest, Tobimar. Don’t you think I want to go as fast as possible?”

“I could simply draw on the power of Terian,” Tobimar pointed out.

“And I could do the same from Myrionar. But I do not know how much my god has left to give, and we do not yet know the limits of the power you have inherited from Terian and the broken Sun.”

“She’s right, you know,” Poplock said. “We’ve gotta assume Viedraverion’s as tough a nut to crack as Shae and Miri, maybe even as bad as Sanamaveridion—even if he’s probably not that big. You
saw
what Tashriel could do, and the way he talked, he didn’t even
rate
on the scale of someone like Viedraverion. You guys are going to have to be at the top of your game.”

Kyri looked at the little Toad. She knew he didn’t have any deific powers, just some clever magical tricks and a lot of luck. “What about you?”

“Hey, I’ve got some pretty potent pick-me-ups in my pack. Me and Hiriista did a lot of work before we left. He knew what I was going into. Once we’re at the Retreat, I’ll be able to keep up for at least a bit. But both of you, remember: this guy has played
everyone
. You can bet that he’s ready for us. He may not know
everything
that happened, everything we can do…but maybe he does.” The golden eyes held hers. “I know you don’t have a choice—you’ve
got
to face him down now that you can reach him. And no way are we letting you do it alone.

“But by Blackwart’s Chosen, we can do it as smart as possible.”

She smiled at Poplock and gave him a quick pat. “You’re right. And we’d
better
do it smart, because like you said, our enemy’s been very,
very
smart for a long, long time.”

Tobimar nodded, and took her hand.

They contined forward, stride by stride, together, as the sun began to sink towards the horizon.

Abruptly Tobimar halted. “Look. This is actually starting to turn into a path.”

Kyri saw he was right. Slowly but unmistakably, the traces of Aran’s passage were growing less, but not because he was suddenly hiding those traces. The ground was harder, flatter, with less and less growth, packed and pounded flat by the passage of many feet over a period of months or years. The path become more and more obvious as they continued to the west.

And then she could see a lighter space ahead, with something dark and tall just visible. They slowed and moved off the path, none of them needing to say anything; a glance, a gesture, each of them understood. Kyri crept forward through the jungle brush, slowing even more, going a few inches at a time, until finally she could peer out into the clearing.

Before her was a broad sweep of cleared land, covered with bright greenery like a lawn, and beyond that a large, tall building of dark stone, entranceways and galleries supported by graceful white columns of stone, a wide-flung construction with multiple wings sprawling over acres; carvings and inlay around the building added touches of color, dominated by blue, silver, and gold. And at the very center of the roof that sloped gently towards the center of the complex stood a great symbol, towering high above the forest surrounding it: a mighty two-handed blade suited to a giant thrusting high into the heavens, gleaming pure silver in the sunlight; a razor-sharp pivot upon which rested a sparkling sky-blue sapphire bearing supporting a pair of golden scales.

The Balanced Sword
.