Chris Pierson - Sacred Fire

“ Efisa ?” he breathed.

Lady Ilista smiled sadly. “Young Cathan. Only not so young any more, I see.”

Cathan had seen ghosts before. They walked the ruins of Losarcum, sometimes, and the shade of Pradian, a long-dead would-be Kingpriest, had helped him recover the Miceram beneath Govinna. But this was Ilista, once First Daughter of Paladine, and she seemed solid flesh. She looked exactly the same as she had forty years ago, when she had died defending the Lightbringer from a demon. If Cathan hadn’t known better, he would have thought her a living being.

“What is this?” he whispered, lest the guards hear. “Are you returned from the afterworld?”

“Not exactly,” Ilista replied, and shook her head. “Not all of us can cheat death as you did, Twice-Born.”

“Is this … is this the end? Has the god sent you to take me back?”

Her smile disappeared. Her eyes shining, she reached out to touch his cheek. Her hand felt warm and real against his flesh. “Poor man,” she said gently. “The torments you must have known, and to speak of your death with such hope in your voice … but no, Cathan. It is not time. Paladine sent me, but not to claim you. Your part in this is still not played out.”

“I should have known,” he muttered, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. He looked away from her, his mouth twisting. “What do you want of me, Efisa ? There’s nothing I can do, not down here in the dark.”

“So you will not remain here,” she replied. “I will take you from this place, so you may perform one last task before Istar meets its doom.”

Again Cathan saw the burning hammer before him, ablaze as it streaked down upon the Lordcity. “Then it’s true. The end is near?”

Ilista nodded. “The Kingpriest’s hubris has grown too insidious, the people’s idolatry of him too great. The Balance is shifting. Any more, and it will collapse. The gods will not let that happen. If Beldinas continues to ignore the warnings they send, the hammer will fall.”

“But what can I do?” he repeated, his voice cracking. “He won’t listen to me, not after I betrayed him. I cannot stop him!”

“You are not meant to,” she said. “This you must understand: Even if you were to kill the Kingpriest, it would not stop the hammer. Istar must be destroyed.”

He stared at her. She looked back, regarding him with maddening sympathy. He boiled with anger, suddenly. “God’s blood Efisa !” he snapped. “How many thousands of innocents will die because of this? For what?”

“For the world ” she said. Tears broke free, running down her cheeks. “If Beldinas destroys the darkness, light will die with it Krynn needs the Balance to sustain it, or it will fall back into the formlessness of chaos. It nearly happened once already, a thousand years ago. Then, the Queen of Darkness and her minions nearly destroyed Krynn with their evil, and only Hums Dragonbane saved it.

“Now, it is good that threatens the Balance. Beldinas must not triumph, Twice-Born. Fear and power have corrupted him. He never should have become Kingpriest.”

Cathan blinked, his mouth working a moment before any words came out. “But you were the one who discovered him. You wanted him on the throne!”

“Not at first,” she answered. “He believed he was destined to rule Istar, and he made me believe, as well. After all, I thought, better him than Kurnos. But I was wrong, Cathan- Paladine showed me how wrong I was, after I died. Yes, he wanted me to find Beldyn, but not to put him on the throne. He was not meant to rule. Better someone else should wear the Crown, rather than him.”

For a moment Cathan saw himself as a young man, back beneath Govinna, in the fane where the Miceram had been hidden for so long. Only he-and the gods-knew that Pradian had offered the Crown to him , but he had turned it down-and then turned it down again three days later, when the enemy laid siege to the city walls. All out of loyalty to Beldinas. He slumped back onto his cot.

“I know,” Ilista said tenderly. “At first I despaired too, when I realized the truth. He was so good, so pure, it seemed… but he was also susceptible to power. The temptations were too great, and he was too naive. Now, all Istar must pay the price, if the world is to be saved. But there is something you must do, to make sure the light survives what is to come.”

He only stared, not comprehending her. He was too numb with shock. I could have been Kingpriest, he thought. If I had donned, the Miceram , none of this would have happened. Paladine, how was I to know?

Ilista stepped toward him, reaching out with her slender hands. He started to draw back out of trepidation, then stopped. This has to be, a voice within him said-the same kindly voice he’d heard in the Vault. Let it happen.

Gentle as falling snow, she set her fingers upon his brow.

He awoke with a cry, in darkness once more. He stumbled and fell to his knees, retching. The world spun around him.

The images were a whirl and a blur, smeared across his mind like a fresco whose colors had run. He could remember little clearly, but something inside, some deeper part of him, understood what Ilista had shown him. One thing stood out: the Disks. He needed to find the Peripas . No matter what, the teachings of the good gods had to survive Istar’s destruction.

No matter what.

The disorientation passed. The nausea went away, the pounding in his head settled down to a dull ache. He sat up, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth, and gazed around. “Ilista?” he asked. “ Efisa , are you there?”

She was not.

Perhaps I imagined her, he thought. Perhaps I’ve gone mad. She had seemed so real, standing here in the cell… the cell…

The cell was gone. The floor beneath him was marble, the walls paneled in snowwood. A cool breeze blew through an open window, carrying silver moonlight. Stunned, he got to his feet and looked out-onto the Temple gardens, far below.

“ Palado Calib ,” he breathed, offering a quick prayer of thanks. He was free of the dungeon, in some empty room within the Temple’s many cloisters. Ilista had rescued him; now, standing in the shadows, he swore he wouldn’t let her down.

He looked out the window. It was autumn now. He’d been in the dungeon for over half a year. He saw himself clearly in the starlight: He was gaunt; his time in the dungeons had wasted his muscles, leaving skin and bones. He looked older than his years. His beard was long and shaggy, much of his hair had fallen out. But there was still strength left in him, and he knew it came from the god.

His face grim, Cathan turned away from the window. He had a job to do, and there was little time left.

TENTHMONTH, 962 I.A.

Quarath padded up the steps of the imperial manse, moving as quickly as decorum allowed. His face betrayed no emotion, none of the worry or irritation he felt. He had awoken to the sound of knocking at his chamber door. His steward, an elf named Melias, had apologetically handed him a scroll with the falcon-and-triangle seal of the Kingpriest. Quarath hadn’t even bothered to break that seal; he knew it was an imperial summons. He’d received many these past few weeks.

The frequency of the summonses was about annoyed him. The worry was over what awaited him when he arrived.

It was still a little more than an hour before dawn, and the windows at the top of the stair were dark. A young acolyte whose name the elf neither knew nor cared to learn stepped onto the landing to greet him.

“Eminence,” the boy said, signing the triangle. “We are glad you could come-”

“What is it this time?” Quarath snapped. “Can’t you people deal with these episodes?”