Steven Montano - Crown of Ash

Why would anyone want to rule this world? h e wondered. The Southern Claw fight to stay alive, to protect our own. What do the Shadow Lords want? Power? Dominion? They’d rule from atop a throne of dust, and wear a crown of ash.

Another sacrifice.

Cross stood at the boundary. He could reach through if he wanted and enter the Carrion Rift. He could step back in to his own world, onto ledges of crumbling roc k and jutting bits of stone on his side of the canyon. He could be free of the Whisperlands.

Not yet. Not yet.

Blood trickled down the Rift walls. Things lurked in the darkness below. H e felt their eyes on him, sensed their ravenous hunger.

Another sacrifice.

Because I lived, there will be another sacrifice.

There was another wide shelf of rock on the opposite canyon wall. It was littered with s hards of black iron wreckage. He saw broken engines and shattered railway cars, sunken turrets and cracked metal wheels.

It occurred to him that Snow’s remains might have been there in the ruined remains of the train. He’d almost forgotten what she looked like. He pictured her charred body folded in to the metal.

Cross tried to put sight of her from his mind, but he couldn’t. He saw her, burning on the train. It was one of the only memor ies he had of her whe re he could still picture her clearly.

Stop it, he told himself. This doesn’t help.

But he was already crying, and he couldn’t stop.

He waited. It was hard to know how much time passed.

Cross stood in the cold dark. The necronaught wreckage was in sight, and the Obelisk was just a few feet away. The caves shifted unnaturally all around him. He looked back down the twisted rock corridor and saw steam clouds and molten shadows.

Cross held Soul razor/Avenger ready. He wasn’t sure what good it would do, what good he could do against a cadre of powerful warlocks. He tried to remind himself he’d survived battle s with the necrotic angel minions of the Revenger Korva, and that this would be no different.

But the truth was he felt less sure of himself than he had for a long time. H e had no idea what he should or sh ouldn’ t expect from the arcane blade. It served its own whim, held its own agenda.

He shivered. His grip on the gelid hilt slipped, so he righted himself and held it tighter. He considered propping himself against a wall to rest, but the shifting atmosphere told him that would be unwise.

Another sacrifice.

He wondered who the Shadow Lords had found.

It had to be someone particular. The conditions for the sacrifice required to destroy the Obelisk of Dreams were exact: a mage who’d forcibly been separated from their spirit, and then had had that connection restored. So far as he or anyone in the White Council knew, Cross was the only mage that had ever happen ed to. Now he wasn’t even a mage anymore, something he tried not to think about.

They’d have to create their own sacrifice somehow. They’d have to force those conditions, find a way to do it intentionally. He was sure they could: Margrave had told him that Koth had found a way, and if circumstances hadn’t made it so Cross had wound up fitting their criteria, that sacrifice would have been Snow.

But do the Shadow Lords really want to destroy the Obelisk? he wondered. What else would they do with it?

What if the Obelisk isn’t even what they’re looking for?

He wasn’t sure why that last thought occurred to him. I t came like a bolt of lightning out of a clear and quiet sky. And like some festering wound or a horrible itch, once the notion was there, it wouldn’t go away.

Are they looking for something else?

Cross watched the tunnels. He glanced behind him, into the Carrion Rift. He waited for the Shadow Lords, or for their minions.

He wondered what else they could be searching for.

If the Shadow Lords truly had the means to come and g o from the Whisperlands at will, it made little sense for them to seek anything else. If they didn’t really have the means to leave the Whisperlands, if that had all been a lie, then maybe they sought escape, just like he did…but that meant Kyver and the Grey Clan had lied to him, and he had trouble believing that. He hoped his instinct about them had been correct.

Cross decided the Obelisk of Dreams really was the object of the Shadow Lord’s search.

But what about the spider? What about Azradayne?

He waited. Something sounded in the distance overhead, some shattering of rock. Probably Sorn tech, he thought, used to blast through the stone. He kept his eyes up. D eep shadows roamed the ceiling. S talactites dripped milky water and iron sediment.

What are you looking for, Azradayne? he wondered. He’d convinced himself it wa sn’ t the Obelisk, even if that wa s what the Shadow Lords wanted. They were her lackeys, powerful though they surely were.

What do you want, spider? What have you altered my life to accomplish? What hurricane did you trigger by directing my path?

What do you want?

Another sacrifice.

His mind raced. What else had he done by following the path laid out for him by the spider? He tried to think beyond the obvio us, beyond rescuing the Obelisk and defeating the Sleeper, beyond slaying Jennar and keeping Soulrazor out of Korva’s hands.

Someone he knew. Someone he’d met. His heart pounded hard against his chest.

Someone I’ve met, someone I wouldn’t have met without Azradayne’s interference. Again, was it someone obvious, some creature of import that, had he ignored the spider’s guidance, he would never have encountered? The Lith. The Soulweavers. The Eidolos. The Grey Clan. Or was it someone else?

Kane? Ronan?

Black?

What if one of them was what the spider truly wanted? Its web was vast, and the eyes in which he’d glimpsed so many versions of himself could have easily seen where the threads might conjoin, where the strands led, where tangential possibilities could take him. He tried to dissect his own path in his mind, tried to look backwards, but it was impossible to take it all apart, impossible to know the truth of where his choices might have led him. The possibilities were limitless, but all of it came down to what the spider’s purpose was.

What do you want?

Not the Obelisk. He was sure of that. Was giving the Obelisk of Dreams to the Shadow Lords just a matter of convenience, a means to an end? Had the spider so deftly manipulated Cross to arrange for one of his friends to wind up where it needed them to be? Did Black or Kane have something it wanted, or did they serve some greater purpose it needed them to fulfill?

Cross’s heart chilled. He could only dare guess at the spider’s goal s, at how great its vision extended through the network of space and time.

But he felt with dread certainty that his friends were in danger.

Cross gripped his blade with hands gone numb from the cold. He wiped rancid steam from his eyes, shook himself, breathed deep.

He’d make his stand th ere. With any luck, it wouldn’ t be his last.

It can’t be. I have to find them. I have to save them.

Shadow s moved in the distance. He heard the industrial grind of heavy machines and the ring of metal on stone. The air crackled and hummed with thaumaturgy, and he smelled iron and smoke.

They were coming. He pushed thoughts of Danica and Mike and the others from his mind.

They come for him. He’s waited, watched the inky darkness in anticipation of this assault. He believes he has no chance, but he knows, in th e s e last moment s of his life, at this final crossroads, that he can’t allow himself to fail.

H and-cannons lined with blades push through the darkness. He sees gi ant silhouettes and central single eyes. He sees grey armor fused with iron plate as Sorn enter the chamber.