Oathen (50 page)

Sanych turned to see what Curzon was doing.
The old hermit stood next to the lectern, seemingly unharmed in any
way by the
Dire
Tome
’s chaotic effects.

“I can bind it for a while, but I’ll need you
to create me a matrix.”

“A what?” asked Ahm, standing at a safe
distance.

The
Tome
’s pages turned again. Violent
horrors suddenly assaulted Sanych’s mind. Visions of death and
agony swirled unchecked through her head. She heard everyone else
crying out even as she shrieked in horror.

Then the images were gone. Gasping for breath
and clinging to sanity, she saw Curzon cross his arms and twitch
his lip in annoyance.

“Altogether uncalled for. Now make me a
blanket,” the hermit explained, pointing to the book. “I’ll infuse
it with anti-magic.”

Ahm nodded. A thin, flexible weave of metallic
fabric appeared over the
Dire Tome
, forcing its cover shut
and draping to the floor on all sides. Its shiny surface reflected
the torches with every curve of the metallic threads, making it
appear green instead of silver.

Curzon nodded and flicked a few fingers at the
fabric. It did not change in appearance, but it folded itself
around the
Tome
and tucked its ends in tightly.

“There you go,” he said. “You can carry it
now.”

Ahm grinned and stepped close to pick up the
wrapped book. “Thank you.”

“Yes, yes.” Curzon waved Ahm’s gratitude away
with a hand. He glanced at the metal capsule that enclosed Oolat at
the other end of the chamber, then squinted up at the ceiling. In a
moment, he smiled. “There. Now you can all vanish away without
getting snared in any more barrier spells.” He waggled his fingers
at Sanych. “You should hurry. The
Tome
will eat through my
anti-magic eventually.” Without another word, he turned and headed
toward the hallway.

Geret helped Salvor limp over to Meena and
Sanych. Ahm rushed to them, holding the book tightly.

The second cube shattered, its fragments
clanging loudly against the domed shield. A moment later, the
entire room was filled with seawater, cold and dark. Sanych was
lifted off her feet by the water’s buoyancy. An enormous bright
white sea creature, its multitudinous tentacles bristling with
wicked red-and-white spines, swam toward her. It grasped her, Geret
and Salvor and drew them toward a three-sided mouth that yawned
wide to receive them.

And then it was gone, along with its ocean.
The three would-be meals fell back to the floor with Ahm and
Meena.

“Go!” Curzon shouted as he stood in the
doorway. “I’ll delay the little turdling from following
you.”

Everyone stared at him.

“Always wanted to try being the hero, deep
down,” he said in a quiet voice.

“To the Deep Gateway, Sanych,” Meena said,
grasping her arm.

With a final glance at the now-vibrating
shield dome, Sanych nodded. She
blinked
out, taking the
others with her.

~~~

With an ear-rending shriek, the dome shuddered
into ash-like fragments that wafted to the floor in a large heap
before dissipating into nothingness.

The sorry creature that stood before Curzon
made him furrow his white brows in consternation. Oolat was covered
in oozing burns and soot, and his black attire was now merely
blackened.

“My, aren’t you a sight,” he said. “Little
boys who don’t listen to their mothers when they’re told to wash up
apparently grow up to be slovenly cult lords.”

“The body will serve a while longer,” Oolat
said through a raw throat.

Curzon tipped his head, fingering the nubs in
his favorite braid. “Ah. That’s how it is, eh? Well, I’m afraid—”
he surrounded Oolat with a barrier of anti-magic, “I can’t let you
go after them like that.”

“You
dare
?” Oolat’s white eyes widened
in outrage.

“And why not? You only live once, unless
you’re truly unlucky.” Curzon flicked the braid over his shoulder
and let out a reckless cackle. “So this is the rush heroes feel
when facing near-certain death, eh? It took me eighty cycles to
feel it, but now I can die happy.”

“And die you shall! You, old man, are the
reason my followers have suffered at the hands of the Scions. You
will not hamper my plan further.” Oolat raised his hands and tried
to force magic through Curzon’s barrier.

Curzon giggled at the look on Oolat’s face as
he failed.

Oolat strode forward. Curzon kept the field
wrapped tightly around him, but he didn’t want this fight to
degenerate to a game of chase. Even the burnt and crispy Oolat,
while powered by the
Dire
Tome
’s energy, could
eventually catch him.

“That’s far enough, you evil little book-man.
Your unholy alliance is at an end.”

“You cannot separate me from my avatar,
mortal.”

“I can separate you from every magic spell
you’ve ever cast,” Curzon said with a smirk. He flicked his index
finger in a small arc toward Oolat’s head. A look of horror came
across Oolat’s burned face, followed by ecstatic joy.

“You’ve freed me!” Oolat exclaimed in
disbelief, taking another step toward Curzon.

The hermit nodded, still keeping his shield in
place.

“You have no idea how horrible it was to be
trapped in my own head, helpless to watch as another controlled my
every move, letting my body suffer endlessly!” Oolat’s hands clawed
in recollection. “I owe you my very life.”

“I didn’t do it for you.” Curzon’s eyes were
drawn to the horrible burns that covered Oolat’s exposed
skin.

“I know your loyalty still lies with your
friends,” Oolat said, coming to a stop. “The best way I can thank
you—” he said, holding his hands out in friendly greeting, “—is to
kill you quickly.”

~~~

Oolat shoved his magic through Curzon’s
relaxed shield. The hermit managed a squawk of surprise before a
sphere of shadow enveloped him entirely, enclosing him in its vast,
endless depths.

A broad section of the sphere vanished, and
Curzon tried to scramble out into the light, but Oolat slammed more
shadow around the hermit, encapsulating him again. Another section
evaporated, and Curzon managed a couple of steps before the cult
lord caught him. Over time, the sections of the shadowy sphere that
Curzon erased became smaller and smaller, until only a thumb-sized
hole appeared, over and over, like a stream of bubbles popping one
by one on the surface of a murky pond.

Oolat held the shadow sphere in place for a
long time after the bubbles vanished. When he let it dissipate,
Curzon’s limp body tumbled to the floor, his long white braids
splaying wildly.

Oolat looked down on the body. “Old fool. You
assume everyone is as you are: kind, helpful, willing to forgive
and be forgiven. A fatal mistake.”

He stretched his silvered hand toward the
corpse at his feet and collected a prize, then teleported out of
the ritual chamber in a blast of shadow.

~~~

Outside the mullioned windows of the palace, a
light drizzle fell upon the trees and shrubs of the royal gardens.
The wind breathed tiny drops against the glass, where they melded
into a delicate sheet and slid off the frame, dropping to the
brickwork three stories below.

The misty-haloed lamps on the grounds below
were lit only beneath this window. The deciduous trees in the
gardens outside wore their leaves in riotous reds and yellows, wet
and shiny in the circles of light. A few pointed leaves had already
twirled to the bricks and shrubbery below.

A pale face, unlined and clean-shaven, stared
through its own reflection, watching the wind toy with a small
branch a few feet from the lamp closest to the window. The brown
eyes stared vacantly, blinking only when necessary.

As they had for eleven years.

Soft, unseen rustlings indicated that the day
nurse was leaving out for the night. Her words of farewell to him
meant little.

Time passed unnoticed.

The man’s head collided with the window
without warning, and his eyes widened as he staggered back into the
center of the room. His hands flew to his head as he stumbled to
his knees, a howl of confusion and fright echoing around the
room.

Chaos erupted as a dozen guards rushed into
the room, swords bared. The man, seeing their invasion, scrambled
onto his large four-poster bed. He gabbled in fear and warded the
men away with his hands, leaving them baffled and
concerned.

Beret Branbrey was summoned from his finance
meeting by a servant with frightened eyes. Her quick whispers into
his ear caused him to leave the meeting with rude haste, and he
outdistanced her with his long strides, climbing the stairs and
hastening down the hallway to his son’s chambers. Briefly, he
considered sending for Anjoya, but recalled she was at the Temple
of Knowledge with Braal Runcan and Halvor Thelios this
evening.

He thrust the door open and looked around for
Addan, finding him crouched on the bed, panting. The Magister
sighed in relief; his son looked perfectly healthy. After the
poison scare, Beret had been worried about a short-sighted act of
revenge from one of the executed Counts’ loyal
followers.

The guards had sheathed their weapons by now,
and stood waiting for the Magister’s orders. He nodded them out of
the room.

“Addan,” he began, approaching the crouched
figure on the bed with measured steps. “It’s all right. The men
have gone away. Your night nurse will be along shortly, and then
you can get some rest.”

A frown came over Addan’s face. “She has cold
hands!” he argued.

The Magister blinked. He couldn’t recall the
last time Addan had frowned, let alone dissented. The young man
rarely spoke, and when he did, it was never in a contradictory
tone. He simply accepted the world around him, unaware that there
was an option to disagree. But now…

Beret looked deeply into the his son’s eyes.
“Addan?”

“Yes, Papa?”

“What year is it?”

“It’s 1050. Geret’s birthday party is coming
up. He’ll be six.” Addan looked pained for several moments before
continuing. “No, that…that feels like it happened a long time ago.
I can’t remember what year it is now.”

Beret stood stunned, hope’s light gleaming in
his mind like the promise of a new sunrise.

Addan cocked his head, sitting down on the
bedside and dangling his legs off the edge. “Is Geret coming today?
Or Anjoya? Or that nice lady that helped me once…I tried to thank
her, but…everything went funny again before I could.”

A silent tear ran down Beret’s cheek as he sat
on the bed next to his son.

“What’s wrong, Papa?” Addan asked, laying a
hand on his father’s shoulder. Then he stared at it. “Is this my
hand?”

Beret laughed, still deliriously amazed, and
clasped his grown son’s broad shoulders. Meeting his eyes, he said,
“It is, Addan. You’ve done a bit of growing. And as for Geret—” The
Magister had to pause as his emotions threatened to overwhelm him.
When he trusted his voice again, he said, “As for your cousin, he
has saved you from all your years of troubles. He traveled far, far
away to set you free, and may not be back for quite some time, but
I know this, my son: he will be very happy to see you when he
returns.”

Addan beamed. “And I’ll be happy to see him,
too! I bet he’ll have a great story to tell me; Geret always had
the best stories.”

“I’ll want to hear his story, too, Addan. I
surely will.” The Magister’s emotional control broke, and he
enveloped his son in an enormous hug, weeping. “How I’ve missed
you, Addan! How I’ve missed you!”

At the bottom of the Deep Gateway’s steep,
multi-level spiral ramp rested an enormous underground chamber,
lined row upon row with the ornate tombs of Shanallese royalty from
ages past. At the head of each sarcophagus was a larger-than-life
statue of its occupant. Those who had presided over times of war
held weaponry, and those who reigned in peace held scrolls
containing maps or treaties, items that depicted their lasting
contributions. Their shadows flickered eerily in the light of
Sanych’s makeshift torch: the group had entered the volcano’s magic
dead zone as soon as they’d passed through the Deep Gateway, and
Sanych couldn’t create a magical spark if her life depended on
it.

Yet neither Salvor’s sword nor the silvery
wrapping around the
Tome
had vanished. Ahm explained that it
had to do with existing items versus new spells; he considered it a
weakness in the dead zone’s defenses. Meena countered that it was a
good thing, since it had allowed her and Arisson to protect
themselves from the
Tome
last time as well.

Sanych, having tasted the power of magic, now
felt its loss keenly. The defensive space that wrapped around the
mountain beneath its volcanic skin did not allow any magic-users to
cast spells within it. Its original purpose was lost, but it had
been co-opted by Shanallese royalty in order to protect them during
times of upheaval. Those who sought to infiltrate the royals’
hiding places also took their chances against the mechanical traps
they had constructed over the centuries.