Paul Thompson - Destiny

Gilthas stirred. His eyes opened. “Ken-li,” he whispered.

Tears fell from the healer’s eyes. “May the gods help you, sire. May they help us all.”

Riding up with his lieutenants, Hamaramis saw the Speaker lying on the ground surrounded by a spreading stain and feared the worst. The old general, long past leaping from the back of a still-moving horse, did just that.

“Truthanar! Does he live?” he shouted, scattering elves from his path.

“He lives, Hamaramis, but not for long.” The aged Silvanesti held the hand of the ruler of the united elf nations and wept unashamedly.

“Cleanse, O cleanse the world, Mighty Power! Take back that which was yours!”

Faeterus spoke the last line of the fourth canto. As he drew breath to begin the fifth and final part of his great incantation, the ground began to quake. Rocks large and small tumbled down the mountainside. One struck the spire next to him, shearing it off and sending sharp shards flying.

Favaronas, edging toward the sorcerer, ducked, throwing his arms over his head. Faeterus turned away to shield his own face from flying stone.

Angrily, Faeterus intoned, “Rabthe” —Stillness—and the shaking stopped. He laughed. Looking at the elf cringing at his feet, he confided, “Not even the gods can stop me.”

He embarked upon the final canto of his song of annihilation.

May the Door of Heaven open wide for Him Who Bears the Key.”

Faeterus lifted his left hand. He held the long parchment, tightly rolled, onto which had been burned the inscription revealed by the valley’s standing stones. Under the spell of the sorcerer’s oratory, the columns of light emanating from the monoliths angled inward, converging on the bottom of the swirling cloud at a point directly over the Tympanum.

The brilliant concentration of light, painful to behold, must be the Door, Favaronas decided. Faeterus had reached the climax of his conjuration. The next line of the houmrya was “Let the Light shine forth so all may See.” Favaronas had no doubt the sorcerer would change the final word to “die,” or “vanish,” or some other destructive command that fit the structure of the poem, and that would be the end. Favaronas’s exhausted brain could think of no way to stop him.

He reached up one trembling hand and clutched the hem of the sorcerer’s ragged robe.

Kerian and Taranath cautiously lifted their heads above the edge of the plateau. The Lioness drew her sword.

Magically restrained but still a horrified witness, Sa’ida screamed, begging her patron deity to intercede.

“Let the Light shine forth—”

The sorcerer’s demand ended with a gurgle. Favaronas looked up.

An arrow protruded from Faeterus’s neck. Blood, black in the muted light, coursed down the front of his robe. He swayed but remained upright. With his free hand he groped for the arrow. It was deeply embedded in the left side of his neck. His fingers brushed over it but failed to grasp it. A second black bolt struck him in the back, and down he went.

Unseen and unheard, Sa’ida shouted in triumph. The goddess had heeded her servant’s pleas. Or had she? Would the Divine Healer send black arrows in answer to a devoted prayer?

The spell pinning Sa’ida to the rock dissolved as its maker’s life ebbed, and her joy changed to frustration. She felt herself pulled back to her body, lying unconscious in the elf camp, and she fought against it. The power tapped by Faeterus must be dispersed or safely channeled. If it was not, it would run riot, endangering everyone in the valley. Whereas before, all she wanted was to escape, now she fought to keep her naes on the Stair of Distant Vision.

The spell that paralyzed Favaronas’s legs likewise faded. His limbs came alive again, kindling into pain as if ten thousand needles pricked his flesh. He pounded on his legs with clenched fists, trying to force them to work.

Faeterus lay on his side only a few feet away, the hood fallen partly back from his face. He gurgled in helpless fury, then his lips began to move. He might yet complete his terrible design! Favaronas dug in toes and fingers and propelled himself to the sorcerer’s side. He clamped a bloodied hand over Faeterus’s mouth, making certain he could say nothing. Faeterus struggled weakly. Favaronas put his other hand over the sorcerer’s face and leaned all his weight on them. The spasms subsided to twitches then to nothing. Faeterus’s body constricted in a monumental exhalation, and the last flicker of life finally departed his grotesque body.

His death did not end the titanic conjuration he’d set in motion. The brilliant “door” at the center of the cloud remained, and the cloud itself began to seethe and twist. It spat a narrow bolt of lightning that struck the Tympanum with a loud crash. A second bolt, larger than the first, cracked the granite disk in two.

“Finish…”

The unknown voice caused Favaronas to whirl. A human woman knelt only a few feet away. She was translucent, like a ghost, but Favaronas recognized her at once, although he was at a loss to know how the high priestess of Elir-Sana had come to be here.

“Scroll!” she said. Her image wavered, then disappeared altogether.

Seize the key before the door opens.

The words of the ghost and the priestess’s command came together. He snatched the thick scroll from the sorcerer’s rigid fingers. The scroll was the Key!

A lightning bolt sizzled across the width of the valley and struck the mountainside below the Stair. Favaronas assumed the Speaker’s warriors had shot Faeterus, but he didn’t dare wait for them to arrive. He must finish the conjuration before the wild discharge of power tore the valley apart. He drew a deep breath and spoke the last line.

“Let the Light shine forth so all may—”

He froze. “See” was the original ending of the houmrya, but he had no idea what the consequences of such a command might be. He needed something less vague, but positive, and it must be similar to the verb “to see” in Old Elvish so the line would still scan. Merciful E’li, what should he say? A list of ancient verbs raced through the scholar’s mind. His entire body shaking, Favaronas thrust the scroll aloft.

“Live!” he shouted. “Live! Live!”

Someone called his name. Before he could see who it was, the world came apart.

The monoliths went dark, extinguished in their thousands all at once. The blazing Door they’d created in the cloud persisted for the space of four heartbeats; then it exploded. The sound was no louder than a heavy thunderclap, but the explosion blew away the glowing white corona to reveal a black core within, spinning madly. The core slowed, wobbled, then it, too, detonated.

The first explosion had sent a wave of hot wind through the valley. When the black core exploded, nothing could stand before it. Everyone in Inath-Wakenti was thrown to the ground. The monoliths burned fiercely white for an instant then dissolved into clouds of vapor. The granite Tympanum survived the blast but was cleft by a deep crack zigzagging from north to south. Trees were blown down, boulders shattered, and every source of water in the valley, from small springs to Lioness Creek shivered its contents into fine droplets and shot them into the air.

The blast occurred high above the valley, and its tremendous shock wave roared over the encircling mountains and out into the desert. Like a plow, it lifted a wall of sand and drove it across the empty wasteland. Wells were filled, oases submerged, and small towns buried in the blink of an eye. Unwary caravans caught in the open were swallowed whole, never to be found again. Enormous drifts of sand fetched up against the walls of Kortal, Delphon, and Khuri-Khan. The moving mountain of grit overtopped the low walls of Kortal, collapsing the side facing Inath-Wakenti. Upon reaching the sea, the wave dumped what remained of its sand—although ships as far out as Habbakuk’s Necklace reported showers of brown dirt peppering their sails—and lifted a swelling tide of water. The mighty wave swamped the Horn of Khur and swept ships ashore all around the Bay of Balifor. In occupied Silvanesti, trees were uprooted and waves smashed the port of Kurinost, wrecking forty minotaur ships. Flagstaffs at the Towers of Eli snapped, and the new overlord’s banner fluttered into the sea.