Sword in hand, Irmina edged around the corpses and past the last pillars in the Audience Chamber. From the door to the dais at the room's center, bodies in the rigor of death lined the floor. Near the dais, the dead were piled in an oozing heap, their chests gaping holes of flesh and bone. The very air buzzed with power. Even without touching her Matersense, she felt the tingle of essences coursing around her in short bursts. Never before had she experienced such.
A man garbed in charcoal clothing sat upon a throne. Scars marred one side of his face and he had only one eye. On the same side of his body, his arm was nothing more than a stump. She recognized the man’s face.
Mayor Bertram.
Sitting on the mosaic floor tiles in front of the man were several Astocan nobles, their clothes dirty and disheveled. They stared with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
Around Bertram’s throne stood two ebony beasts standing on spindly legs with small, humming insect-like wings on their backs. Long hair twisted like rope hung down to their waists. The daemons made keening noises, their gazes locked on Ryne.
Wraithwolves and darkwraiths appeared around the room. The Matii stopped abruptly, hands raised toward the shadelings. Having long ago embraced her Matersense, Irmina waited. Beside her, Ryne’s face was a mottled mask of rage.
“You, Bertram? Or Voliny, or whatever your real name is. You sacrificed Carnas for this? For revenge?” Ryne’s quiet voice cut through the spacious hall.
Bertram threw his head back and laughed. A scornful, vile sound. He brought his one-eyed gaze to bear on Ryne. “You would think that way. Forever naive despite all you’ve done yourself. There was a time this was about revenge. About settling the score with the Tribunal, about what losing my family meant, about you costing me my son. But then, it became so much more. I realized Ilumni had failed us. I saw a way to recapture all Ostania had ever been and more. A way to make myself a god among men. A chance to succeed where you failed, Nerian.”
Ryne’s brows drew together in confusion. Irmina frowned. Why had he just called Ryne, Nerian?
“Ah,” Bertram said. “He still doesn’t know.” Around the room grunts and whispers rose from the shadelings that sounded too similar to laughter. “Let me ask you, Ryne Thanairen Waldron, why do you think they,” he nodded to the daemons, “didn’t attack you? Why has the shade always found you? Coincidence? No. And you must know by now it had nothing to do with your little Ashishin there.”
“What in Ilumni’s name are you talking about,” Ryne said. “You lie. Just like you lied in Carnas.”
“Do I? What about your dreams? Your lost memories? The killings you do remember? The voices that war within you? The reason you slayed so many innocents? The reason you hid in Carnas in the first place. The thousands of reasons you seek redemption.” Bertram made a circular gesture with his hand. “Here, let me help you past the fog clouding the memory you try to reach.”
The Astocans on the floor gasped and crumpled. In front of Bertram, a light blue globe at least six feet in diameter appeared. At the same time, Ryne groaned and dropped to his knees.
An image bloomed in the globe. It showed a giant man about Ryne’s height garbed in resplendent black armor that seemed to drink in any light. Another image displayed the same man in golden armor, slamming a Lightstorm standard into a pile of bones and bodies. She couldn’t see the tattoos but Irmina knew by the eyes and hair both men were Ryne. The first one was also a picture she’d seen in a Tome of the Chronicles.
A portrait of Nerian the Shadowbearer.
Tears streaming down his face, Ryne choked back a sob. “All this time, you fucking bastards. All this time…”
“Yes.” Bertram laughed scornfully. “All this time. You’ve always been my master’s tool. He uses you then wipes your memories. You’ve fought on every side, but always for us. Always for his purpose. And every time, I’ve gotten the pleasure of revealing this to you. It still brings a thrill you cannot begin to imagine.”
Irmina gaped. Here before her, on his knees and vulnerable, was the cause of her family’s pain, her people’s past, the death and suffering that haunted her in her dreams. The man who the Dorns served all those years ago when they began to wipe out her family, when with the final stroke, they had her parents killed. Here, she could exact ultimate revenge.
Jerem’s words came back to her then. “This mission will be your final test. This task will force you to make the most difficult choice you have ever had to make. It will define what path you take. Regardless of your choice, you will be scarred for the remainder of your days.”
Irmina reached out to the Mater coiling in the air. When she touched it, the power flooded her in too many individual strands to count. Behind it all, she sensed something familiar, something she knew. Realization dawned on her. The pinpoints were people and places all drawn together in one enormous Forging. For some reason a picture of Ancel came to her mind, his dark hair flying behind him, a glowing sword in his hand and Mater shooting up into the sky.
Irmina stabbed.
The world slowed to a standstill for Ancel. The essences around the man waxed and waned as he struggled against not only his mother’s Forge but Galiana’s and Kachien’s also. In Ancel’s hand, the sword vibrated, power surging through it. The first pinpricks now connected to too many tiny pockets of power for him to count. There were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them.
The shadowy man’s other hand rose, and a long, silvery, horizontal slash appeared in the air. It snapped open in the shape of an eye. Beyond the opening, a night-black hall with red carpets and several torches burning with strange, black flames led to a throne.
The man snatched Ancel’s mother by the arm, stepped into the portal, and dragged her in behind him. The slash snapped close.
Ancel’s charm, the link that told him of his mother’s presence, cooled against his neck. Ancel screamed. In a desperate act, he snatched at the pinpricks of power. At all of them.
“Nooooo!” Galiana croaked.
Mater flooded Ancel in a burning white torrent. It flashed through the sword, struck a wall of the winery, and disintegrated the structure. Beyond was a tall spire of silversteel. The bar of Mater struck the spire and shot into the air in a thousand directions.
Ancel felt it then.
One by one, in every town or city, the power touched a temple. Religion made no difference, whether Streamean, Formist, or Flowic. It touched them all before ricocheting into the night sky, lighting the heavens like the noonday sun, connecting to other points in a wide band.
Ancel pictured the portal he’d seen the man use. He needed to follow. He had to follow. There was no choice if he was to save his mother. His need overpowered all else.
Charra roared. A bloodcurdling sound that drowned out everything.
Another slash appeared in the air, two times the size of the prior one. Like the other before it, the slash opened up into the shape of an eye. Inky darkness lay beyond the opening. Trembling with elation, his mouth a slit of a smile, Ancel took a step forward.
A black tentacle reached out from the portal. Then another. Dark mist billowed forth. It stretched up until it towered thirty feet into the air. Slowly, the blackness congealed like thick syrup poured into a mold and began to form a torso. From the back stretched gigantic, oval plates honed to a fine edge, each glinting with blackness. Armor of the same texture appeared to cover the chest. The tentacles split into four along the ribs, shortening and solidifying into arms with skin so shiny it glowed where it stretched over bone at the joints. Claws tipped each four digit hand. Slits opened where a head should be to reveal eight milky white eyes, and as Ancel watched, the face formed, jaw stretching out into a eel-like countenance but with fangs that never belonged to any eel Ancel knew. A horn stood out on the forehead, and two others stretched back where there should have been ears. Worm-like beings swarmed around the creature, floating in the air, each about five feet long, their facial features matching their giant counterpart.