The Dark Remains (64 page)

“But if he was born to such rude beginnings,” Lirith said, her eyes focused on the fire, “how did he become so powerful?”

“I fear the answer to that question is buried with
Morindu beneath the sands of the Morgolthi,” Sareth said. “And even when Morindu stood, I do not think many knew the secret of how Orú became as a god. Perhaps his wife and his seven high priests—certainly no one else. But I do know this. If a river of human blood was required to work a magic, then the same magic might be done with but three drops from Orú’s veins.

“Once, the legends say, a hundred sorcerers of Scirath sacrificed themselves at the same moment, driving black knives into their hearts and filling a great pool with their blood—all to work a magic that extended the life of the king of Scirath by ten years.” Sareth’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. “Ten years—that was what the blood of a hundred sorcerers bought Scirath’s king. And by the time Morindu fell during the War of the Sorcerers, Orú had been alive for over three centuries.”

Beltan crossed his arms. “So if this Orú was such a great king, why didn’t he save his city?”

“He could not,” Sareth said. “For you see, he was asleep.”

Grace hugged her knees to her chest. “Asleep?”

“Yes, asleep. Even as the centuries passed and his power grew, Orú became harder and harder to rouse. Sometimes he would sleep for days at a time, and he would moan and thrash with great violence, as if caught in the throes of dread nightmares, so that his priests were forced to shackle him to his throne. Then the days became weeks, and the weeks months, until …”

“He never woke again,” Aryn finished with a shudder.

Sareth nodded. “Ever after, Orú was called the Shackled God, for he dreamed, chained to his throne, while his seven sorcerer-priests ruled in his name. And in time, the seven discovered a terrible and powerful secret. For they pricked Orú’s finger and drank his blood, becoming great sorcerers themselves. However, they did not consume all the blood they took from him. Some of it they sealed in jewels of gold.”

Understanding crackled through Travis. “Scarabs. That’s what scarabs are. Jewels that contain the blood of the god-king Orú.”

“Yes,” Sareth said. “How a scarab came to be sealed in the tomb of the demon I do not know—only that the
fa’deth
told of it being there. However, there is no relic of Morindu the Dark that is more powerful. Or more dangerous.”

A piece of dark wood hissed and fell apart, consumed by fire. At last Vani spoke.

“Sareth, there is a part of this story you have not told us. You were … whole when I saw you last.” She gazed, not at his face, but at his wooden leg.

He looked down at his hands. “There is no blood more powerful than that of the god-king Orú. The blood of five hundred sorcerers could not equal that contained in one scarab. With a single drop, wonders could be worked. Or …”

“The artifact,” Grace said. “You wanted to find the scarab so you could use the blood of Orú in the gate artifact and get Vani back from Earth.”

Sareth gave a stiff nod. “It was earlier this year, after we had learned that Travis Wilder was here on Eldh, but before he returned to his Earth. I could not … I could not bear the thought of you stranded there, Vani, with no hope of …”

Tears shone in Sareth’s eyes. Vani reached for his hand, held it tight. “I am here now, brother. But you must tell me. What happened to you?”

Roughly, he wiped away his tears. “The elders forbade it, of course, but I defied them and went anyway. Only I did not go alone. Xemeth came with me.” Sareth glanced at the others. “As children, Xemeth and Vani and I were impossible to separate. We did everything together. He was like my brother. Only, when we were older, the cards—”

Vani looked away. Whatever Sareth had been about to say, he swallowed the words.

“So Xemeth went with me to Tarras. From the followers of the Rat God we learned of a crack that ran from one of the sewers deep into the rock beneath the city, one which even they had never dared follow to its end. We descended the crevice, until at last we came to a great cavern. And there …”

Sareth’s hands began to tremble. He clenched them together but could not stop the shaking. “I cannot tell you exactly what happened in that cavern. Like a nightmare, it is both dim and horribly clear. I saw the scarab, shining like a golden star, resting on an altar. Xemeth started to move toward it. And then … a shadow fell over us. A shadow whose center we could not see.

“I think … I think the demon was still bound by the old magic. Otherwise I would never have escaped. I felt only a great coldness in my leg, and then I could not walk. But Xemeth … he was closer. One moment I saw him, then the shadow grew. There was a great noise, and the ground shook. Then he was … gone.”

Lirith clamped a hand to her mouth.

“I fled then, like a coward,” Sareth rasped. “I dragged myself up the crevice by my hands. How I returned to the sewers beneath Tarras, I do not know. It was only when the people of Geb found me and lifted me up that I realized what I had lost.” He brushed his wooden leg. “Our people came for me then, and returned with me to the caravan. I thought they would punish me for my foolishness, but they did not.”

“They believed you had been punished enough,” Falken said, flexing his black-gloved hand.

Vani folded her arms. “Poor Xemeth. I never got to …”

Her words trailed into silence, and Travis thought maybe he understood. As the childhood friends had grown older, he guessed Xemeth had fallen in love with Vani. But it was a love she had not been able to return. Something had prevented her … something she had seen in the cards.

“So you think the Scirathi want the scarab,” Grace said.

Sareth looked up, the line of his jaw hard. “I know that they do. Even as we have always worked against them, so they have always sought relics of Morindu—and there is none so powerful as a scarab. With it, there is no telling what sort of foul sorceries they might work.”

“Like raising Morindu the Dark?” Travis said.

Sareth gave a stiff nod. “Somehow, the Scirathi learned of the demon and the scarab beneath Tarras. Two months ago, one of them attacked me and wrested the gate artifact from me.”

“We know,” Vani said.

He gazed into the glowing coals. “I had believed that’s how they were doing it—how they were feeding the demon. I thought that somehow they must be using the artifact to open gates between the cavern beneath Tarras and the temples of the gods. To pass between worlds takes blood of great power—blood such as that of the being of light Vani told me of, the being who came through the gate with you. But the blood of a sorcerer might be enough to open portals within the city.”

Grace frowned. “But wouldn’t that be impossible without the artifact’s prism? And Vani had that on Earth.”

“Yes, I know that now,” Sareth said. “And as it turned out the artifact was taken to Earth anyway. Which leaves only one answer.”

This time it was Travis who got it first. “The Scirathi have another gate artifact.”

“Yes,” Sareth said.

Falken sighed. “So the sorcerers of Scirath are behind all the murders in the city. They’ve sacrificed gods to the demon in hopes of sating it so they can get past it and gain this scarab. And they’ve been killing anyone who gets close to discovering what they’re doing.”

For a moment sorrow flickered across Melia’s visage,
then her expression grew hard. “They will not succeed. We will not let them.”

“But how?” Grace said. “How are we going to stop them if they have a demon on their side?”

A cool tingling passed through Travis. Once again words whispered in his mind.

To choose what it shall be
.…

He didn’t know how, only that it had to be so, that this was the reason it had let itself be captured and carried across worlds to him. Carefully, he drew the Stone out of his pocket. It shone dully on his hand, seeming to absorb the firelight. Sinfathisar. The Stone of Twilight.

“We’re going to do it with this,” he said.

Lirith stepped from the back of the wagon in which she had slept and breathed in the moist scent of dawn. White-gold light stole among the circle of
ithaya
, and the tall trees swayed in a wind that swept off the sea. Gulls circled in the sky, their calls drifting down like the faint voices of ghosts.

Last night, when she had stumbled into the wagon to sleep, she had been too weary to really look at the craft. Now she saw that the wagon was shaped like a toad. She was grateful it was not a spider.

She left the wagon’s steps, and her bare feet sank into the dewy grass. A sharp, clean scent rose from it. She moved among the trees until she could see it far below: the white towers and gold domes of Tarras. They gleamed brilliant and perfect in the dawnlight.

No, not perfect. From the city, several thin, dark lines rose into the sky. Tarras was burning. Only in a few places, yet to Lirith it meant one thing: the darkness and
confusion they had glimpsed in the city was growing. How many people had abandoned their hearths, their businesses, their loved ones to drink the Elixir of the Past and stare at the sun with blind eyes? But maybe it didn’t matter; maybe soon there would be no city and no people left to worry about. Lirith hugged herself against the wind. To her eyes, the lines of smoke looked like black threads reaching toward the sky.

She hesitated, then shut her eyes and reached out with the Touch. Yes, she could see it: the tangle in the fabric of the Weirding. It seethed and grew as she watched, and sickness welled up in her. All the same, she forced herself to look closer, to peer into the heart of the tangle.

There, she could see it, or rather sense it: the black void at the center. Even as she watched, a thread was drawn close to the tangle—then flashed and was gone. So it was doing more than merely entangling the threads of the Weirding. It was eating them.

But, after what she had learned last night, that only made sense. That the demon was the source of the tangle in the Weirding as well as the change in the garden of the gods there could be no doubt. Yet why had Lirith first seen the knot all the way back in Ar-tolor?

Think, sister. What happened that day you first glimpsed the tangle? The guard came to your door, waking you. It was …

It was the day Melia had arrived at Ar-tolor.

Yes, it all makes sense. Melia has been getting lost in thoughts of the past, and the moment she arrived at Artolor, the same thing began happening to you, sister. And now it is happening to the people of Tarras, even as the other gods become caught in the web of the past
.

Lirith supposed the tangle she saw in the Weirding was simply a vision—a construct of her ability with the Sight, one which strove to give form and shape to the peril she had been sensing. But why was the demon causing Melia and the other gods—as well as people near to them—to
mix past, present, and future? It was as if the demon was unraveling not just the threads of the Weirding, but the very fabric of time itself.

Lirith sighed. These were questions she could not answer, but she resolved to ask the others. That was, if there was time. For last night, by the dying light of the fire, they had forged what seemed to Lirith a desperate plan.

I think I’m supposed to go beneath the city
, Travis had said.
I think that’s why the fairy used its blood to fill the gate artifact again. It wants me to go through, take Sinfathisar, and stop the demon before it gets loose
.

We’ll need to distract the Scirathi
, Sareth had said.
They will be keeping watch on the cavern where the demon is imprisoned. Your magic Stone will do you no good if you never manage to get near the demon. We need to keep the sorcerers as far away from you as possible
.

I believe Emperor Ephesian will help us in that regard
, Melia had said, her eyes gleaming.
Whether he wishes to or not
.

It was Grace who had finally spoken the question on all their minds.
How, Travis? How can you use Sinfathisar to stop the demon?

I don’t have that one entirely figured out, Grace
, he had said with a wry smile.
But the fairy seems to think the Stone can do it. And I did use Sinfathisar to seal the Rune Gate. I’ll have to believe it can do this as well
.

They had gone to bed then, Sareth and Vani showing them to different wagons where they could sleep. However, Lirith had had one more conversation before she let sleep come, speaking in the dark with Aryn as they lay in the wagon. They had spoken without words—nor had they included Grace in their conversation, for she had fallen at once into the profound sleep of exhaustion. Besides, Lirith did not know how they were going to tell Grace that the Pattern required her to betray her friend.

Except Grace wasn’t at the High Coven, sister
, Aryn had spoken in her mind.
She isn’t part of the Pattern
.

That was true, only Lirith didn’t understand what it meant, not fully. She would have to consider it later. Right now there other matters at hand.

We must send word of Travis Wilder’s arrival to Ivalaine at the first opportunity. That much the Pattern requires
.

Lirith had sensed the hesitation on the other end of the thread. She felt it herself.

I know, sister. You are not the only one who was joyous to see Travis—then despaired at the sight of him. I still find it hard to believe he would seek to harm Eldh. In everything I have seen him do, he is a kind and gentle man. But he has power, great power. That much neither of us can deny
.

But what do we do, Lirith?

Just what I have said. The Pattern requires only that we send word back to Ivalaine and that we watch him. No matter how he might threaten Eldh in the future, right now Travis is the only one who has a chance of preventing the demon’s escape, and we must not hinder him in this
.

But what if he makes a mistake, sister? What if he accidentally allows the demon to escape, and that’s how Eldh is destroyed?

Lirith had not considered that. However, she knew the perils of interpreting prophecy. Sometimes, in trying to avoid what was foretold, one could cause it to happen.