Her inner dragon sense, honed and eager, caught the answering vibration like a beacon from the Past. She turned slowly, ignoring the icy buffeting of the insistent gale, and concentrated, shutting out all other thought, all other interference, and locked her mind onto the sound of her name, fragile and windblown now as the breeze on which it was carried began to dissipate.
Her name, spoken in hate, rang like the deepest note sounded from a iron bell, like the roar of the sea, the music of the stars in the cold lifelessness of the night sky.
And her mind had caught it. Now it rang, over and over again, ceaselessly behind her eyes, calling to her from the darkest depths of history.
She did not know who had invoked her thus, or why it had been with such animus, but that didn’t matter. Somewhere south of the frozen peaks, somewhere beyond the viewable horizon, somewhere in the past someone had known her. Someone possessed of a power similar to her own. Someone whom she had enraged; there was a grim joy in her heart at that aspect of it.
She had a tie now to whatever place that scream had occurred.
She could find it now, and in so doing, perhaps find more of herself, her power.
And the woman she hated.
The wyrm slithered down from the peak, following the sound of her own true name, mindlessly through the jagged wind, heedlessly over the barren wasteland, southward until the never-ending winter gave way to late summer again. Once the ground was warm enough, she burrowed into it, following the harsh song of her name below the surface of the earth.
Hunting for echoes.
Her joyful excitement in the anticipation of bloodletting building with each mile she traveled.
15
Talquist waited impatiently in the gray light of foredawn.
Whenever he came to Night Mountain now, rather than approaching through the ravine that twisted and wound its way through the dry rocks that served as a natural fortification, as all the other visitors to the temple did, he instead scaled a small hidden trail that he had found many years ago, when he was an acolyte in the basilica. In his younger days it was a climb that left him winded; now, though an older man, he had learned enough, had strengthened himself enough, to make the journey without breathing hard.
While he waited for the secret door to open, he glanced around at the dry, stony rock formations that ringed Night Mountain. Their colors were glorious—streaks of pale pink and burnt rust, hints of green and darker purple that had all baked in the hot and merciless sun of Sorbold, drying them to a pale wash of their former splendor in the sandy brown stone of the desert. Deeper within the holy mountain, in the cool realm of Living Stone where the light never touched, those colors were true, deep and rich with life.
A hint of deeper glory hiding within the mountain, he thought. How appropriate.
The stone slab before him rustled; Talquist turned back to see a dark doorway appear in the shadows. He hurried inside.
Lasarys, the sexton of Terreanfor, stood just past the doorway, holding a dim lantern. Talquist noted, as the stone doorway swung shut again, blotting out the light, that the Earth priest’s pale face was more sallow than usual.
“Good morrow, Lasarys,” Talquist said solicitously. “How does this new day find you?”
“Very well, m’lord,” the chief priest whispered. “And yourself?”
“Well, that depends, Lasarys. How has your project been coming?”
Lasarys swallowed visibly. “I—I have found a few more places to harvest, my lord.”
“Excellent!” Talquist said, trying to contain his glee. He knew that shearing the flesh of the living earth was a task beyond onerous to Lasarys; as a cleric consecrated to the element, it was much like being asked to cut off one’s own mother’s breast. “Show me.”
Lasarys bowed slightly and held up the cold light, illuminating the pathway down into the cathedral.
Terreanfor was the most ancient of the five basilicas dedicated to the elements, and the only one housed in Sorbold. It was old as the earth, one of the last repositories of Living Stone on the continent, and the most well known. The magic of the place was extant in the air; from the moment he came from the hot, dry wind of the outside world into the cool, moist depths of the hallways leading into Night Mountain, Talquist could feel its power.
He followed the shadow of the sexton through the winding tunnels he remembered from his days of servitude here, the dark walls gleaming in shades of green and rose, purple and blue as the light flickered over them. Living earth, unlike its dark counterpart, was alive with color.
The ceiling of the tunnel disappeared into a huge vault above them as they entered the temple proper. Lasarys extinguished his lantern; the only fire that was allowed within the outer hallways of Terreanfor had been kindled in a golden plate by the sun. Inside the basilica itself, no light was allowed save for the glowing phosphorescent stones that gleamed with a cold radiance of their own in the otherwise complete darkness.
They passed the first of the immense pillars shaped like trees that reached to the towering ceiling into the main apse, where a great menagerie of animal statues stood, life-sized sculptures of lions and gazelles, elephants and tirabouri that, carved as they were from living earth, seemed almost to breathe. Above, in the pillar trees, Living Stone birds were perched, their feathers the deep, rich colors of the earth in the cold light. Talquist thought he could almost hear them twitter.
Lasarys led him through the earthen garden to a pathway flanked by immense statues of soldiers, a score and ten of them, each standing ten feet in height atop a three-foot base. The stone warriors formed an arch with their primitive swords, their faces reflecting the features of the indigenous people who had lived in this place long before the Cymrians came, the people who had found and preserved Terreanfor, had carved the beautiful stone tributes within Terreanfor by planting within the living earth the seeds of the trees, the feathers of the birds, and an unknown essence of the animals that had grown, as if by magic, from it.
Finally, when they were standing in a dark alcove in which a bevy of earthen flowers grew, their petals shaped like tiny stars, Lasarys stopped, then slowly pointed at the ground.
“There,” he said sadly. “I have been through the entire cathedral, and though it pains me greatly, I suppose if you must have more of the Living Stone, we can harvest one or two of these flowers. There are more of this kind than any other.”
Talquist coughed, choking on a laugh, then cleared his throat and put his arm around the shoulder of the sexton.
“Lasarys, surely you jest.” He gave the man a friendly squeeze, then released him, his face growing more solemn in the almost-dark. “I’m afraid you misunderstand, my friend.”
He turned around and surveyed the stone garden, its trees and plants, flowers and lily pads all formed from Living Stone, pulsing in the light of the phosphorescent crystals. “When I asked you to harvest the stone that I used to tip the Scales in my favor, and end the Dynasty of the Dark Earth in favor of my ascension as Emperor, I needed only a small amount, because I had this.” He reached into his robe and drew forth a tattered oval, slightly concave, violet in color had it been visible in the light. “The New Beginning; that’s what this scale portends. Its power is older even than the Living Stone, or so the ancient books say. And between the stone you gave me, and the scale, that new beginning has come to pass.
“But it was only a beginning, Lasarys. What I plan requires much more than the tip of some ancient Scales, the rigging of a weighing. No, Lasarys, I have much bigger plans. When I am crowned emperor, I want my domain to be worthy of my vision. And I can see for miles, Lasarys.” His eyes glowed brightly in the dark. “Thousands of miles.”