Жаклин Кэри - Godslayer

“So,” he whispered. “It begins anew.”

Tanaros wasted no time examining the inert form of the Bearer. The lad’s role was finished; it no longer mattered whether he lived or died. Moving swiftly in the dim light, Tanaros made his way to the outer wall of the chasm and began to climb.

If fear had impelled his descent, no word was large enough for the emotion that hastened his ascent. He was dizzy and unfeeling, his body numb with shock. His limbs moved by rote, obedient to his will, hauling him up the harsh crags until he reached the surface.

The passages behind the walls were growing dimmer, the veins of marrow-fire fading to a twilight hue. Tanaros paused to catch his breath and regain his sense of direction.

Then, he heard the cry.

It was a sound; a single sound, wordless. And yet it held in it such agony, and such release, as shook the very foundations of Darkhaven. On and on it went, and there was no place in the world to hide from it. The earth shuddered, the floor of the passage grinding and heaving. Tanaros crouched beneath the onslaught of the sound, covering his ears, weeping without knowing why. Stray rocks and pebbles, loosened by the reverberations, showered down upon him.

Although it seemed as though the cry would never end, at last it did.

Tanaros found himself on his feet with no recollection of having risen. Drawing his black sword, he began running.

Within ten paces, it happened.

There was no warning, no sound; only a sudden dim coolness as the veins of marrow-fire that lit the passages dwindled in brightness and the temperature in the stifling passages plummeted. Elsewhere in the passageways, he could hear his distant madlings uttering sounds of dismay and fear. Somewhere, the horns of the Rivenlost were calling out in wild triumph. Above Darkhaven, the ravens wheeled in sudden terror. Ushahin shivered and pressed onward.

He was halfway to the Chamber of the Font when he heard the cry. It struck him like a blow, piercing him to the core. It was like no sound ever heard before on the face of Urulat, and he knew, with a horrible certainty, what it must portend. Ushahin stood, head bowed as rubble pelted him from above, his branded heart an agony within his hunched torso, arms wrapped around the useless case, and waited it out as another might outwait a storm.

Too late, always too late. The enemy was at the gate. The little weavers had completed their pattern. Haomane’s Prophecy hovered on the verge of fulfillment.

Everything he feared had come full circle.

Almost …

In the silence that followed, Ushahin Dreamspinner stirred his ill-set, aching limbs. Step by painful step, gaining speed as he went, he began to follow the faint echoes of his Lordship’s cry to their source.

Entering the chamber of the Font at a dead run, Tanaros halted, brought up short by the sight before him. “No,” he said, uttering the word without thinking, willing it to be true, willing his denial to change what had happened and render it undone. “Ah, my Lord, no !”

It didn’t change. Nothing changed.

Where the Font had burned for century upon century, there was nothing save a ring of scorched stone blocks surrounding an aperture in the floor of the Chamber. It seemed a small opening to have admitted such a gout of marrow-fire. Without the Font, the Chamber was dim-lit, the fading veins of marrow-fire that laced its walls filling it with a vague, subterranean twilight.

Lord Satoris lay supine upon the floor of the Chamber; shadows clustered the length of his awesome form. It seemed impossible, and yet it was so. Even fallen, he filled the space until it seemed little else could exist within it. The scent of blood that was not blood, of sweet, coppery ichor, was thick in the air.

The rough-hewn haft of Godslayer pulsed faintly, a ruby star, where it protruded from the bulwark of the Shaper’s chest.

It moved, ever so slightly.

She stood in the far corner of the Chamber, beyond the ashen pit of the Font, shrinking away from it; from the Shaper, from her deed. Her eyes were stretched wide with horror, her hands upraised, sliding over her mouth as though to stifle a cry.

“Cerelinde,” Tanaros said. The black sword was loose in his grip. “ Why? ”

Unable to answer, she shook her head.

Ignoring her, Tanaros went to his Lord. In the dying light of the marrow-fire, he knelt beside him. The flagstones were hard beneath his knees, tilted askew by the tremors that had shaken Darkhaven. Ichor puddled, soaking his breeches.

“My Lord,” he said tenderly. “What must I do?”

At first there was no response, and he feared it was too late, that his Lordship was gone. And then the Shaper’s head moved, as though his gaze sought the western horizon beyond the stone walls of his Chamber. “Arahila,” he whispered, almost inaudible. “O my sister. What happens to us when we die?”

“My Lord, no!” Tanaros reached, touching the Shaper’s vast breast, pressing the immortal flesh pierced by the glittering dagger, feeling ichor seep beneath his fingers. “Please, my Lord, what must I do to save you?”

Slowly, Satoris lifted one dragging hand, covering Tanaros’, forcing his grip onto the dagger’s burning hilt. “Draw it,” he said with difficulty. “Let it be done.”

Tanaros wept. “My Lord, no!”

In the corner, the Lady Cerelinde made an inarticulate sound.

“So it is not you, my General.” With an effort, the Shaper turned his head. His eyes were dark and clear; clear as a child’s, but far, far older. The red light of rage had faded in them, as though it had been extinguished with the marrow-fire. So they must have looked long ago, before the world was Sundered, when Satoris Third-Born walked in the deep places of the earth and spoke with dragons. His mouth moved in the faintest hint of a smile. “Not you, at the end.”

With a crash, one of the threefold doors at the top of the spiral stair opened; the left-hand door, Ushahin’s door. Even as he entered, wild-eyed, Tanaros was on his feet, the black sword in his hand.

“Dreamspinner,” he said.

“Tanaros,” At the top of the stair, Ushahin swayed and caught himself. “They are at the Gate.” He gazed blankly around the Chamber. “My Lord,” he said, his voice sounding strange and hollow. “Ah, my poor Lord!”

“He yet lives,” Tanaros said roughly. “He bid me draw the dagger and end it.”

Ushahin laughed, a terrible, mirthless sound. It held all the bitterness of his mad, useless knowledge, of the ending he had failed to prevent. “Are you not sworn to obey him in all things, cousin? Are you not Tanaros Blacksword, his loyal General?”

“Aye,” Tanaros said. “But I think this task is yours, Dreamspinner.”

They exchanged a long glance. For a moment, they might have been alone in the Chamber. The Shaper’s words lay unspoken between them. They were of the Three, and some things did not need to be spoken aloud. “And her?” Ushahin asked at length, jerking his head toward Cerelinde. “Whose task is she ?”

Tanaros raised his black sword. “Mine.”

“So be it.” Ushahin bowed his head briefly, then sheathed his blade and descended the stair. He crossed the crooked flagstones, dropping to his knees beside the Shaper’s form, laying the leather case containing the broken Helm gently beside him.

“I am here, my Lord,” he murmured. “I am here.”

Sword in hand, Tanaros watched.

In the dusky light, the Shaper’s body seemed wrought of darkness made manifest. Ushahin felt small and fragile beside him, his ill-formed figure a sorry mockery of the Shaper’s fallen splendor; all save his right arm, so beautifully and cruelly remade.