The Crystal Mountain (8 page)

A thump in the floor interrupted Aliisza. Kaanyr felt it too.

“What was that?” he asked, spinning in place. “Let’s find out,” Aliisza said and walked to the opening in the wall.

As she strode to the hole and peered out, another thud, stronger than before, reverberated through the rotunda. It came from overhead, and it dislodged a chunk of stone from the fractured ceiling that landed very near Tauran’s head before bouncing away.

“What is that?” Kaanyr demanded, moving beside her.

The other bubbles that had been drifting along beside their refuge had gathered together. They all jostled one another as they bobbed and flowed in the wake of the massive bubble with the mysterious figure inside. To Aliisza, it felt as

though the current they followed had picked up speed, and the wash streaming behind the massive form had grown more turbulent. She had nothing by which to judge it, of course. No landmarks drifted by to give her any sense of speed or scale. It was just a gut instinct.

“I think we’re getting close to something,” Aliisza murmured, trying to stare in the direction she thought they were traveling. The effort was made more tricky due to their constant rotation in the void—it hurt her head too much to try to imagine the rotunda doing the spinning. “It feels like we’re about to go down a drain or something.”

“Wonderful,” Kaanyr grumbled.

He turned and cast a withering glance at Zasian. “Is the bubble going to hold?”

Zasian shrugged. “He’s dying. I can’t stop it, only slow it down.”

“How much time do we have?”

The priest shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

Aliisza could sense that he was afraid of saying the wrong thing. “Leave him be,” she admonished when Kaanyr started to stomp toward Zasian. “We’ve got enough to worry about without you putting him in a panic again.”

Kaanyr stopped, but he continued to glare at the priest. “He’s lying. I know it. I just can’t figure out what he’s up to.”

Aliisza sighed. She had long since given up trying to figure out the veracity of Zasian’s behavior. If it was a trick, nothing they had said or done yet had caused him to slip up.

She turned back to the view beyond their little shelter. They had stopped spinning, and everything beyond her jagged little window remained in view. When she spotted

something dark on what might have been a horizon, she blinked in a double take. Could it be?

She waited and watched, not trusting her own vision enough to call Kaanyr over. After a few more moments, though, she was certain.

“Kaanyr,” she said. When he joined her, she pointed. “What is that?”

Kaanyr stared at the darkening line for several long moments before he spoke. “It looks like land,” he said. “And we’re drifting right toward it.”

“This doesn’t make any sense!” Eirwyn shouted, slamming the book down upon the table. Her voice echoed through the great chamber and came back to mock her. “In my mind, I can see this place as clearly as the Court, and it’s not to be found anywhere in these books. Why not?” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her lids, rubbing them.

Beside her, Oshiga shifted. “Perhaps we are simply not meant to find this information,” he said. “Not all divinations are meant to be.”

Eirwyn lowered her hands and glared at the celestial being. “You’re not helping,” she said crossly. “I know this is part of the dream I’ve been having. Even though I can’t recall anything else about it, I know it has something to do with this place. Maybe we’re just not hunting for it the right way. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Oshiga drew himself up and said haughtily, “Quite certain. But let’s start again, from the beginning. Describe the place

you see in the most exacting detail as you can muster. Leave no feature out.”

Eirwyn sighed and calmed herself. Yelling at him isn’t helping either, she told herself. “Very well,” she said. “Up close, it appears to be a crystalline fortress, roughly formed. It sits dark and brooding upon a plateau. Although it is night, a green glow fills the sky. It’s very eerie. The glow comes from what I can only describe as a snowstorm composed of jagged green shards or flakes. The place feels very sinister and… alive. It’s hard to explain any better than that.”

“Go on,” Oshiga said, furiously scribing into a blank book that rested before him. “Tell me more.”

“From a greater distance, the plateau is actually a floating island, much like many of the places here in the House. But this feels dark and sinister. It also feels abandoned, or… incomplete.”

“Which is it?” Oshiga pressed. “Abandoned or incomplete?”

Eirwyn sighed. “I’m not sure. I can’t tell. It’s just not clear enough. But I know it has something to do with my lost vision!”

Oshiga held up his hand to forestall another outburst and continued to write. Finally, when he was finished, he set down the quill he had been using, held his hands over the page, and began to chant.

Eirwyn watched the archon, careful to remain quiet to avoid disturbing him. He had used that method three times already to attempt to discern where in Erathaol’s great library they should research her mysterious fortress, but every time, they had hit a dead end.

Oshiga finished his chant and turned the page. A listing

of texts and their locations within the library appeared on the page. The archon scanned them for a moment, frowning.

“We have three new sources to examine, plus five more that appeared previously. I’ll retrieve the new ones.” He rose from his seat. “You should begin again on the sources we already have.”

Eirwyn tried not to sigh. I’m doing that too much of late, she decided. She nodded and pulled the magic book toward her, selecting the first resource from the list and flipping through it.

“I think he’s very near death,” Zasian said from behind Aliisza.

Aliisza had been watching as the landform had steadily grown larger. The priest’s words sent a chill down her spine, and she turned away from the gap in the wall. She saw Zasian kneeling over the planetar, with his ear pressed to the celestial creature’s mouth.

“He’s barely breathing,” Zasian said. “I don’t know how much longer. Not long.”

From across the room, Kaanyr rose from the spot where he had been brooding by himself. His brief moment of affection with Aliisza had not held his bad mood in check for long, and she had left him alone. Kaanyr moved toward Zasian and his three patients and stared down. He was not frowning quite as much as he had been before.

Aliisza knew what he was thinking. If the planetar dies, the bubble pops. One way or another, we’re forced to act. She grimaced at her consort’s impatience.

The alu turned away and checked the confines of the bubble. It was definitely shrinking, she saw, and she took a step back from it where it formed a “window” in the broken wall that allowed her to see into the Astral beyond.

Can we breach it and survive? she wondered. Even if we can, how do we travel?

Aliisza wracked her brain for memories of tales of great sorcerers and demons traveling the plane. She had heard the stories, but rarely did they explain much about the magic involved in moving through the silvery void. And she had done no research at all in her years of magical training.

And with magic behaving so erratically, who knows what’s even still true anymore?

Another jostling bump made her stumble a step toward the border of their safe haven. She caught herself easily, but the glance she got beyond the confines of the ruined rotunda startled her.

The argent void had vanished, replaced by a shimmering curtain of color that rippled all around them. The strange multi-hued veil blocked the alu’s view of anything else. It flashed and shifted, and it reminded Aliisza of the first moments after she had regained consciousness.

A storm of magic, she thought, frightened.

Then the curtain was gone, and they were falling.

The bubble was no more, and the Astral Plane had vanished. In its place, brooding red sky met black water at the horizon. The rotunda, reduced to a collection of unstable stones no longer held together by the planetar’s magic, began to crumble apart as it tumbled toward that murky sea.

Zasian shouted in alarm.

Aliisza used her wings to rise up and hover, then she

whirled to see the priest flailing as the floor beneath his feet broke apart. He, along with the three comatose figures he had been tending, became four more bits of debris falling from the sky. Near them, Micus thrashed and howled as his prison careened downward with him still trapped inside.

In a panic, Aliisza shot forward, winging toward all of them, desperate to save them.

Before she had time to contemplate the consequences of her act, she conjured magic. It began as a welling of energy deep in her gut, a swelling of power that blossomed and burst from her. The ominous blue glow accompanied it, swathing her surroundings in azure light. She sought control of the potent energy, shaped it and guided it, all the while bracing herself for the pain she feared would accompany it.

Aliisza created an invisible surface beneath the four tumbling figures. It held them aloft. At the same time, she willed the magical cage surrounding Micus to vanish. The abomination took flight, veering away from the ruined chamber. The remaining stonework of the ruined rotunda plummeted away, reduced to little more than a rockfall.

Pain and sickness filled Aliisza’s limbs. Intense cramps wracked her muscles, and she nearly curled into a ball from it, fighting the urge to retch. She panted from the agony. She thought of releasing the arcane energy in order to bring blessed relief. Can’t let them fall, she thought, gritting her teeth and fighting the urge.

Micus soared past Aliisza on his mismatched wings. He glared at her, hatred filling his eyes. He still had Myshik’s powerful war axe, and he gripped it tightly as he swooped by. Aliisza watched him bank into a wide turn. He was coming around for another pass.

To her left, a tremendous splash threw inky water in a torrent into the air. Some of the cascade drenched Zasian and the others. When the waves subsided, a great mass floated within the darkened sea. Aliisza thought it looked like a huge man, but she couldn’t take the time to get a good look at it.

Kaanyr, hovering upon his own innate magic, descended into view near her. “Can you get them to shore?” he asked, pointing.

Aliisza looked to where he indicated and saw a rocky stretch of gray beach not far from where they all hung in the air. Fighting the exertion of maintaining her magic, she nodded. “Just keep Micus away from me,” she gasped.

She guided the invisible platform toward the beach. Zasian crouched upon it, hands and feet splayed apart for balance. He looked at her, wide-eyed with fright, then he whipped his head around, staring at everything else. The three prone figures remained sprawled at his feet.

Kaanyr unfurled the magical cloak he had acquired in Dweomerheart and pushed himself forward into flight. He angled his direction to head off Micus, who had climbed to a higher altitude and was starting a dive toward them. Aliisza wanted to watch the impending clash, but the pain racked her body too much. She clenched her eyes shut to fight it and focused all her concentration on getting the rest of them to safety.

Flying behind her conjured conveyance, Aliisza steered the magical surface to a bare spot of beach and set it down as gently as she could. Even with her efforts, though, her control faltered from the pain and sickness she felt, and the arcane platform winked out when the figures upon it still sat a few

paces in the air. They all went tumbling to the soft sand in a heap.

Aliisza dropped to the beach nearby and crumpled, retching. Gods and devils, she thought as she emptied her stomach. Must… never… do that again. She panted for a moment until both the pain and the ominous blue glow subsided. When her stomach ceased heaving, she flipped over onto her back and caught her breath, staring up at the carmine sky.

Blood red clouds roiled across it, churning and obscuring whatever sun lit the place. A hot, foul wind blew over the gray sand, carrying a stench of something decayed with it. A vague sense of distaste, something strange yet oddly familiar, filled Aliisza’s senses.

Kaanyr settled to the ground beside her and furled the magical cloak. He knelt down next to her and placed his hand upon her shoulder. “You look awful,” he said, his tone gentle. “There’s something you are not telling me, Aliisza. What is it?”

Aliisza shook her head. “I’ll be fine,” she said, surprised at how weak her voice sounded.

Kaanyr’s face grew stern. “Don’t lie to me,” he said. “This strange power of yours is killing you. I want the truth.”

She tried to give her consort a defiant stare, but his expression never wavered. “Very well,” she said at last, closing her eyes in defeat. “I’ll tell you what I can. Just let me rest a bit, first. What happened to Micus?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Gone,” Kaanyr replied, “but not for long, I fear.” “Good,” Aliisza said, thankful for even a brief chance to rest. “Just give me a moment.”

“We may not have a moment,” the cambion said.

When Aliisza opened her eyes again and looked up at him, Kaanyr was staring at something in the other direction, down the beach. She stood and peered that way, too.

In the distance, a small band of beings moved toward them. Aliisza squinted and saw the muscle-bound ebony creatures spread broad, leathery wings and take flight. Wicked black horns sprouted from their heads, and they waved vicious weapons overhead as they closed the distance. Whatever they were, they were spoiling for a fight.

The hulking beasts followed a somewhat smaller but no less fearsome leader, also black and winged, although its body shimmered as it flew, the effect of shiny black scales. A tail fluttered behind it.

Aliisza swallowed hard, recognizing the source of the foul ambience of the place at last. “Devils,” she murmured. “Not good.”

“Hey!” Zasian said from behind Aliisza. “Look!”

She turned, expecting to see that Zasian had spotted the same group of interlopers, but the priest pointed in the opposite direction.

The black waves of the sea had pushed the form of the great human figure Aliisza had seen before up onto the beach. The figure was indeed a man, though larger than any giant Aliisza might have imagined. The top of his head, resting on the gray sand, appeared so gargantuan that she imagined it rising fully three times her own height. A bedraggled, graying beard covered his wizened face, and his once-fine clothes marked him as noble.