The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (40 page)

He bit off the rest, halted by his recollection of the one who had sent him on his quest to begin with. He knew suddenly that he couldn’t trust any of it, not truly.

Annleia misinterpreted his silence. “My father regrets spurning you as he did, but—”

“Darinor was an Illychar,” Torin blurted.

“What?”

“From the beginning, before he first came to me.” A dire hope blossomed within. “I discovered the truth only upon my return, when I walked into the trap he had set for me and my home city. He claimed then that my quest was not a lie, but…Annleia, I know little but what
he
told me.”

He could almost see her thoughts spinning, there behind those emerald eyes. He gave her a moment to respond. When she did not, he added, “If you were to share what
you
—”

“What did he tell you of Ravar?”

“Ravar?”

She closed her eyes, whispering to herself in a language he did not comprehend. When finished, she faced him squarely, her gaze penetrating. “It seems we must begin anew—from the start this time. Share with me what you know, and I shall do what I can to fill in the holes and correct any lies.”

As should have happened when he first met Eolin, Torin reflected bitterly. They clearly knew at least one thing of import that he did not. Had the elf been more receptive to his needs, how much tragedy might have been avoided?

He took a deep breath, refusing to travel that road of thought, fearful of where it might lead. “If” and “should have been” would accomplish nothing at this point. And he was the last person to be passing judgment upon others for any mistakes they may have made.

He tried to begin with the coming of Darinor, but she bade him go back even further. Unlike her father, she wanted to know how he had uncovered the Sword to begin with, and why. He owed her his life, she said, and she would have it all.

He started again by confessing his lifelong obsession with the Swords of Asahiel, from the moment he had
first
met Darinor, a mere storyteller who had shared with young Jarom of Diln the legend of the blades. From there, he gave an overview of his life as it had been, and how it had changed with the death of King Sorl, the wizard’s invasion of his homeland, the revelation of his own heritage…

She made him go slow. Often, when he tried to brush past something, she would have him go back and fill in the details. He quickly came to sense
that she was interested not so much in the events themselves, but in the effect they’d had on him. She wanted to know
who
he was, this young man who a madwoman claimed would determine the fate of their world. It was a struggle for Torin not to scoff at every turn.

It made for an easier telling, in a way, in that he did not have to pick and choose matters of relevance, allowing her to decide for herself what events might or might not have bearing on the current predicament. On the other hand, he often became irritated, being forced to dwell on meaningless trifles, or to relive choices that, in hindsight, he might not have made. His altered perspective had come to cast strange light on all his dealings; at times, he could hardly recognize who he had been, or the things he had believed.

But Annleia listened raptly, and never judged, as best he could tell. Because of that, he spoke candidly of matters he had never openly revealed to anyone before. He told her the truth of the wizard’s identity as his elder brother. He told her how he had been tempted by Spithaera, and how he had decided not just once, but twice, to surrender all she asked for. Given what Annleia already knew of him, of the monster he had become, such revelations felt relatively shameless by comparison.

When he finally got to speaking of Darinor and the Illysp, he immediately began asking questions. But Annleia made him put those aside and focus on his narration. One thing at a time, she said, or they would never get through this.

So he proceeded to tell her of his voyage across the sea, and of the quest that followed. He told her what he could remember of the Fenwa and Necanicum and Lorre. While describing his northward trek, the one thing he made no mention of was the intense feelings he had developed for Dyanne. Those remained his, and his alone. He would not risk that they should ever be used against her. He would not sully them by speaking them with his unclean lips.

Annleia said nothing throughout, guarding her emotions, withholding comment even when he paused to allow it. He thought to spare her another recounting of his initial visit to her valley, but she wished to hear it all, from his view. She wept anew at the attack on one father at the hands of the other, but demanded that he proceed despite her tears.

The bedside pitcher was empty by the time he spoke of his return to Alson, Darinor’s unveiling, Cianellen…and his awakening as an Illychar. His tone darkened, and his shame returned. Annleia cried again when he spoke of the dragon’s assault on Aefengaard, leading him to reconsider his continued omission concerning her mother’s fate.

Yet, on that count, he kept to his silence.

All that remained was the battle at Neak-Thur, of which she knew as much as he. But she asked him to tell of it anyway, and of their own fight in the wood.

“What happened to paralyze him?” she asked at the very end. “When he had the chance, why didn’t he kill me?”

He
. As if it were someone else she had struggled against, and not the very same face she was gazing upon.

He answered her as best he could, saying nothing of Dyanne, only that there were memories and feelings within him that the Illysp had not yet claimed. It had finally occurred to him, in that fateful moment, to let Thrakkon suffer their release, as the Illysp had suffered when stealing the rest.

She thanked him for that, to which Torin only snorted gracelessly. A flash of inspiration that should have come much sooner, he thought to himself. Had he been wiser, he might have seen to it that he fell victim to Killangrathor—or earlier, even, to the giant Rek Gerra and those other Illychar he had sent south against Laulk and Leaven. He should have paralyzed himself long before he had slain so many.

He deserved no gratitude.

Annleia permitted him a momentary silence, then asked, “Is that everything?”

He certainly hoped so. The afternoon sun that had peeked through the chamber’s arrow slits upon his awakening had given way to ruddy sunset. His voice was hoarse, his strength gone, his emotions all but spent. Nevertheless, he forced himself to consider, uncertain, thinking back on anything he might have unintentionally missed.

Finally, he looked at Annleia and nodded.

She gave him another moment to make sure, then shook her head and sighed. “Then Darinor revealed nothing we do not already know.”

Torin found that difficult to believe. “He spoke truly, then?”

“It would seem he had to, if he hoped to win your compliance and ours. He misled you only in regard to his underlying purpose, as he confessed to you in the end.”

“But…that can’t be everything.” This Finlorian lass who looked nothing like one was his last hope, his
only
hope. It could not end here. “What of this Ravar you spoke of? What is that?”

Her eyes fixed upon his, glimmering with their depthless intensity. “You say you wonder why Darinor did not journey himself to find my people. Have you not recognized the truth of it by now?”

Torin scowled, realizing he had not. Nor did he care to try. He was sick of questions and riddles. At this point, they all seemed knotted together, a jumble he might never unravel.

“He didn’t because he
could
not,” Annleia prompted, seeing that he was about to give up.

That only confused him more. “What do you—” he began, then halted beneath the weight of her stare. Another shiver ran through him. “It…the sea…that
thing
.”

“That
thing
, if the legends be true, is our only ally,
and
our greatest enemy.”

Another riddle.
“How can it be both? Is it an Illychar?”

Annleia laughed, though her eyes were so bright, so open, that he could see
the fear within them. “It is not a creature you or I can quite comprehend, save that it hunts them. Its only purpose, its only need, is to ward this earth, this
Ia-Tamarin
, against horrors—such as the Illysp—that are not of its sphere.”

Torin gritted his teeth, weary of being told by others what he could or could not understand—particularly when it seemed they were right. “What sort of fate is that?”

“A fate decreed by His brothers and sisters of the Ceilhigh, and a fate well earned. For He once sought to claim this earth, to enslave their creations to His own—and lost.”

Torin felt his eyes widen. “You don’t mean…”
The Dragon Wars.
“Is it even possible…?”

“To condemn a god to physical form? According to legend, when Ravar’s earthly hordes were driven forth by the Vandari and their Swords of Asahiel, the other Ceilhigh came together to do just that, imprisoning Him in the body He now wields and banishing Him to the depths of Ia-Tamarin’s oceans—there to dwell for all eternity. Immortal still, but compelled forever after to defend this earth’s creatures, whose lives He had deemed unworthy except as fodder for His once-mighty minions.”

Torin did not even attempt to respond. He sat in stunned silence, reeling with disbelief, with wonder. The divine being who had bid His armies of dragons conquer this world…Could this be the selfsame creature he had encountered twice in his journeys across the sea? Could it be he had come so near to a living god?

“It was from Him,” Annleia continued, “that Algorath and the Vandari obtained the Dragon Orb, with which they fashioned the seal that ended the Illysp War.”

The
First
Illysp War, Torin thought, now three thousand years past—itself four millennia removed from the Dragon God’s banishment, Killangrathor’s exile to Mount Krakken, the close of the Dragon Wars…“But the Orb is destroyed,” he managed at last.

“And I lack the knowledge or power with which to erect a seal as my forefathers did. Our last hope, it seems, is for Ravar to provide both.”

A sudden cold gripped Torin from within. Was she suggesting he visit with such awesome majesty face-to-face? “Can He do that?”

“I know of no other course, else I would gladly seize upon it. I had hoped that you, as wielder of the Sword, might know something I did not.”

That might explain why she had been so determined to find him in the first place. She would need the Sword in any case, yes. But without the skills her people had once possessed, she’d had only two choices: Seek him, or seek the sea monster, the Dragon God, Ravar.

“You say He may also be our greatest enemy,” Torin recalled. “Why?”

Annleia looked to the bank of arrow slits serving as windows, toward the unseen ocean in which the monster lay. “If Ravar can help us, it will not be because He wishes to do so. He would sooner see the world destroyed, and all weakling creations of His fellow Ceilhigh with it. He hunts the Illysp only
because He is compelled by a feral craving too great to resist, cursed by His brothers and sisters to act against His own wishes.”

Torin shuddered despite himself, for it was a curse he understood all too well. “He hunts the Illysp, also? In addition to the Illychar, I mean.”

“He sees all. Given the chance, He will
consume
all, when the hunger to do so becomes too great to resist.”

“But the Illysp know this,” Torin reasoned, “and will come nowhere near Him.” Without Killangrathor, he realized, Thrakkon and his brood would never have dared this journey. “My own lands may be lost, but—”

“And these shores, as well,” she reminded him, “for there may be no limit to the number of Illysp that clung to the minds of Thrakkon and his army as they made their flight overseas.”

She means you,
Torin thought sourly,
your flight.

“It matters not,” she claimed, “this land or that. When the hunger becomes too great to resist”—she paused, as if to emphasize the repeated words—“
all
will be consumed.”

He kept silent, working it through while matching her inescapable gaze. “The ocean,” he realized. “Can He…?”

But he already knew. Having twice witnessed the creature—its strength and its sheer size—he needed no help to imagine the beast capable of raising waves that might swallow all but the highest reaches of this world. The Illychar could not be drowned, of course, but this would not be some gentle rising of the tides. These would be crushing waves that would smash and grind and splinter, triggering sinkholes, mudslides, and other devastating, earth-altering cataclysms. Lands would be ravaged, bodies pulverized and dragged beneath the sea. In the end, no coil would be spared, none left for the Illysp to claim.

“Necanicum spoke of it,” Annleia confirmed. “A cleansing, by waves or by fire. I needn’t tell you who she saw commanding which.”

Just a mad old crone, he wanted to suggest, though even he no longer believed that.
The fates of all
, Annleia had said, to be controlled by him. For no better reason, it seemed, than that he had been the one to draw the Crimson Sword from what should have been its final resting place.

“The blade is no longer mine,” he observed. “And we’ve no reason to believe that Lorre will return it to me—or even allow me to leave this city.” He wasn’t sure whether to be fearful of that, or grateful, yet it held true in either case.

“Then those are the first challenges we must overcome.”

Words, effortlessly spoken. But how to act on them? “Does Lorre know who you are? Who you
really
are?”

“He does.”

“And does that work
for
or
against
us?”

“You mean, does he intend to keep me here against my will.” Off his nod, she said, “I don’t believe so. Though, he is mistrustful of this entire situation—of you, and of me. He may wish us gone from here as soon as he
learns you have awakened. Else he may decide to make sure you cannot assault him a third time.”