Realm of Light (9 page)

There was
something very wrong in this passageway. He could smell a pervasive rottenness,
a rank corruption that made him gasp. The air felt heavy against his face. He
seemed to push against something he could not see, and it crumbled and shredded
around him like something long decayed.

“Please stop!”
Elandra called out from behind him.

He turned back to
look at her. She was breathing short and hard.

“We cannot go this
way,” she said. “We must turn back.”

“It is the only
way out of this trap,” he said.

“No. There is
something wrong. I feel it.”

“We must keep
going.”

She shook her
head. “I’m going back.”

When she turned
around, he gripped her elbow from behind and drew her to him. She struggled,
twisting around to face him, but still he would not let her go.

“Release me!” she
cried, striking at him with her fists. “You impertinent oaf, I’ll have your
hands cut off for—”

“Don’t make
threats you don’t mean,” he said, holding her fast. “You can’t go back,
Majesty. You’ll be lost forever if you do.”

“This is not the
way out.”

“Legion said it
was.”

She gasped aloud.
“You take the word of—of demons? Are you mad?”

“I sense it is
true,” he said.

She grew very
still in his grasp. Hesitantly he released her and stepped back.

“You sense it,”
she said after a moment, disbelief ripe in her voice.

“Please don’t ask
how.”

“I can’t accept
this,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t accept any of this. I—”

“Stop it!” he said
sharply, afraid she might grow hysterical. “We were supposed to go through the
hidden ways with Kostimon. But no matter how fast I hurried, never could I
catch up. Some trickery was done to us. We have journeyed for hours, far too
long. I think we were never meant to escape this place.”

She drew in her
breath audibly. “You think this is Lord Sien’s revenge?”

“Yes.”

“Kostimon might
come back. He might search for us.”

Caelan frowned.
“Do you believe he will, Majesty?”

Her eyes filled
with tears that did not fall. Pretense and false hopes leached from her face,
leaving her cheeks drawn and pale. She shook her head.

“The emperor is
well on the other side and safe by now,” Caelan said. “Do you honestly think
otherwise?”

She wiped her
face. “How could we become lost?”

“We are in the
realm of shadow, where nothing is as it seems. I think we have been walking
through an illusion. According to what Legion said, we weren’t supposed to
cross the river.”

“Then we should go
back across it.”

“No,” he said.

“But—”

“I will not swim
through it again, and you should not.”

“I can swim—”

“That isn’t the
issue,” he said in exasperation.

“No, it isn’t,”
she snapped. “It’s about your refusal to accept my authority—”

“Do you want to
swim through damnation?” he asked, losing his temper. “That is Aithe, river of
the damned! Is it such an insult that I seek to spare you from experiencing
thatl
Gods, I would not put myself willingly through such horror again,
much less you.”

She blinked at
him, looking abashed. “Oh,” she said in a small voice.

“Majesty,” he
said, calming down slightly, “we must do what we can to escape the realm of
shadow. While you were under the spell you were safe, but that is no longer the
case. I do not think we have much time to find a way out.”

She sighed. “Very
well.”

“Do I go on?”

“Yes.”

Caelan ventured
deeper into the passageway. He could almost imagine he heard something
breathing ahead of him. It was too close, as yet unseen. New shivers ran
through him, and he grew icy cold again.

When Elandra
gripped his cloak from behind, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“I am sorry,” she
whispered.

“It’s all right,”
he said, although it was all he could do to force himself forward. His sense of
danger increased with every passing moment. “Stay close.”

The fetid smell
increased around him, choking his nostrils. He fought the urge to back away
from it, his fear sharp in his throat. Once again he stopped, and he knew he
could not continue like this.

“What is it?” she
whispered behind him. “What is wrong?”

He knew of only
one way to continue. He had to use
severance,
and somehow he had to take
Elandra with him. If he did not prepare her, she would fight him, yet there was
no time for long explanations.

“Majesty,” he
whispered, holding his sword ready against the unseen danger that crept
steadily closer.

“What comes?” she
asked. “What do I hear?”

“I must use my ...
powers,” he said carefully, “if we are to get through.”

She drew back from
him with a gasp. Swift as thought he turned on her and gripped her wrist to
keep her from fleeing.

“Trust me,
Majesty,” he said urgently. “It is our only chance.”

She pulled against
him. “No, I can’t be a part of this!”

“Do you want to
die here?”

“No! I—”

“Have I ever
harmed you?”

She twisted her
arm, gasping when he would not let her go. “Please.”

“Have I ever
harmed you?”

“No.”

“Then trust me. Do
not fight me. Let me ...” He paused and expelled his breath, trying to keep
frustration from his voice. “Let me save you.”

“I don’t know what
you are,” she said fearfully. “I will not surrender my soul to—”

“I don’t ask for
your soul,” he broke in. “I don’t even ask for your belief. Just don’t fight
me. Let me—”

A roar echoed
through the passageway, drowning out his sentence. Elandra screamed, and Caelan
heard the sound of something rushing toward them.

There was no more
time to wait. Caelan wrapped his arm around Elandra and joined them forcibly in
sevaisin.
He felt her gasp of astonishment. Her sharp flood of fear nearly
drowned him. He filled her with all the strength and reassurance he had, making
of them one entity, sharing, complete, and whole. Beyond her terror lay the
essence of Elandra—warmth and dazzling light, a joyous buoyancy that filled
him.

Sharp claws raked
down Caelan’s leg. The pain flashed through him just as he
severed,
taking Elandra with him deep, deep into the coldness, into the aloneness, into
the detached isolation.

He was not sure if
this would work, was not sure if he could use both sides of his gift at the
same time.
Sevaisin
and
severance
were total opposites. They
repelled each other. All his life, they had warred inside him. He struggled
constantly to find a balance; most of the time he managed. But now, he went
deeper and deeper into
severance,
praying Elandra was still with him,
praying she remained a part of him. He could not hear her, could not feel her
now. He was no longer buoyant, but brittle and tight. He dared not break
concentration enough to seek her. Either she remained joined with him, or she
did not.

Warding off the
demon attacking him, Caelan plunged his sword deep into the creature and at the
same time
severed
its threads of life. Its scream filled the passageway,
but Caelan was already shouldering past it.

The sense of evil
continued to intensify. It kept invading his senses despite the protection of
severance,
threatening to overpower him. He could smell evil, a foul stench
of corruption so strong he wanted to gag on it. He could taste it in every
breath he drew. He could feel it sliding over his skin, slithering in his hair.
He felt oily and unclean. It filled his mind, sliding in through the minute
cracks of
severance
like roots in search of soil.

He kept striding
forward, feeling the resistance growing against him. In
severance
the
passageway was no longer dark but instead lit by an unearthly glow of feeble
illumination. He could see a shimmering, opalescent wall before him. It looked
like spun glass, faintly colored, and heavily streaked in places where the
spell strands were stronger than others. He could see through it, could see the
end of the passageway and a vast space beyond.

Caelan put his
hand on the shimmering wall before him. Then he stepped between the strands,
feeling the crackling field of energy radiate off each of them. It felt as
though the skin were being peeled off his face, yet he went through.

Evil whispers,
uttering words he could not understand, filled his mind as though to drive him
mad. Symbols appeared in the air before him, hanging there suspended for a
moment only to vanish again. All were dire things, full of danger and evil
omen. On some level he understood them and was horrified, yet his thoughts were
centered now only on getting through. He understood nothing else, thought of
nothing else, felt nothing else.

With a last little
pop of resistance, he stepped through to the other side of the spell barrier
and found himself dizzy and nauseous. Staggering, he hurried to the end of the
passageway and came out into the open.

Overhead stretched
a vast darkness unmarked by stars. A cold moon shone down, robed in tatters of
cloud.

They stood on a
hillside, looking down at the ruins of a city spread before them. Walls had
been pushed over. The stones themselves lay melted into queer rounded shapes.
Nothing remained standing. From this vantage point, not even an old pattern of
streets could be discerned, so thorough had been the destruction. Here and
there the moonlight shone white upon sickly fungus growing along the edge of
foundations or fallen pillars. The rest lay obscured beneath a dank,
foul-smelling mist that flowed and ebbed like a living creature.

“Where are we?”
Elandra asked in a whisper. “What is this place?”

Caelan turned his
head and saw her standing beside him. She was ghostly pale; shock lay in her
face. Only then did he realize that he had lost
sevaisin.
She was no
longer a part of him, but her own separate self again.

A wave of
exhaustion swept over him. His knees nearly buckled, and he braced his hand
against the stone cliff at their backs. It looked solid to his eyes; he could
not see where they had exited.

“What have you
done?” Elandra demanded. “Where have you brought us? This place ...” Her voice
trailed off in revulsion.

He sighed,
sensitive to the maelstrom of emotions inside her, emotions she had not yet
acknowledged. Her eyes had begun to flash at him, hurling unspoken accusations.

Better to avoid
that by answering the questions she had asked. Turning his gaze back on the
ruins below them, Caelan shivered and said, “It is
Vrymai-hon,
the city
of the shadow gods.”

Elandra gasped and
made a quick little warding gesture.

No one ever spoke
of the ruined city of Beloth and Mael. Such talk was forbidden blasphemy, as
forbidden as mention of the River Aithe. Yet throughout the ages, men had not
forgotten as they were supposed to. These names were mentioned in secret,
fearfully, yet with the excitement of the forbidden. The old legends survived
in corners of conversation, in threats spoken sometimes to frighten children,
in time of crop failure or drought, in the evenings around campfires after a
day of hunting moags or lurkers who had ventured too close to the villages.

The gods of light
had broken this evil city and imprisoned the shadow gods long ago, before the
second age of men. Yet
Vrymai-hon
continued to seep evil into the realm
of light, never entirely eradicated. Those who hunted
Vrymai-hon
never
found it, yet here Caelan now stood at its edge. He had not sought it, did not
want it. He feared it.

A light breeze
flew his hair back from his face. In the distance, very low, came a moan of
sorrow as though the stones themselves wept in desolation.

The sound made his
skin crawl.

“The Penestricans
say that there is much treasure abandoned here,” Elandra said. “Enough to
restore a kingdom... perhaps enough to rescue an empire.”

He heard the
ambition in her voice, steeled with desire. She wanted to keep her throne,
intended to fight for it. Did she know yet that he wanted it too?

Thrusting the
thought away, Caelan cleared his throat gruffly. “Such gold is tainted.”

“Gold cannot be
tainted,” she retorted.

“Are you sure?”

Their eyes met,
but hers fell first. “You said we would escape this place. I trusted you, but
you ...”

Her gaze flashed
up to his again, then shifted away. “What are you?” she whispered.

He reached out to
her, but she flinched away. He saw her fear then, clawing in her eyes, barely
restrained.

Bitterness surged
up inside him. The sweet memory of their brief joining was fading now. He
should have prepared her more, should have tried to explain before he swept her
away. Yet what good were explanations?

“Some men call me
donare,”
he said, ashamed.

She blinked.

“Others say I am
casna,
a devil,” he continued. “What do you say, Majesty?”

“Your powers,” she
said unsteadily. “They are—”

His emotions
overpowered him. Not letting her finish, he knelt and laid both his sword and
dagger on the ground between them. The metal blades looked pale and shadowy in
the dim light.

“Caelan,” she said
in alarm.

“I cannot do
this,” he said in anguish. “I am not your Majesty’s servant. I am not your
protector. I am not your friend. There are no explanations. Do not command
them.”

She stood there,
very still, as though startled. Silence fell across them like a heavy cloak.
Inside, he could feel his own pulse hammering away. He was wrong to do this. He
knew it. But they had joined in
sevaisin,
and still she refused to
understand. She was lying to herself as much as to him. He could not accept
that. He was afire, and it was consuming his judgment.