The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (69 page)

One came shooting forward, then, through the existing hole to one side of the door. U’uyen’s kin were on it as its head poked free, spears digging into its brain. The creature howled and thrashed, but their hatchet knives slit its throat, leaving it to gargle on its own screams.

Another basilisk immediately fought to wrestle its way in, but the body of the first blocked its way. Already, the Powaii were working to pile rocks to further impede its efforts.

U’uyen chirped, pointing again at the pit over which Torin hung.

“You cannot stall them for long,” Torin tried to explain. He shook the Sword in his free hand. “We’ll fight them off together.”

One moment, the elf’s touch was leathery, his hold firm. The next, he let go.

And Torin fell.

He arrested himself quickly enough upon the bed of rocks piled up within the pit, though his body cried out with fresh pains as it rolled over the jagged edges. His first thought as he gathered himself was to charge right back up to the aid of his friends. As he got to his hands and knees, however, he was already thinking that perhaps U’uyen was right. Even if he stayed to fight, he and his companions might be overrun.
For one to press forward
,
the rest must be consumed.
And he had to press forward, like it or not. He hadn’t come to do battle with the rift’s guardians, but to close the rift itself.

Nevertheless, he did climb high enough to peer over the pit’s rim for another look. As his head poked free, he could hear the basilisks outside snapping and snarling at one another, lashing out in their frustration. The dam of loose rock rattled and shifted as they dug at its far side. A lightning blast broke through, followed swiftly by a twisting maw. A Mookla’ayan spear found and pierced its throat, seeking to make its body just another block in the makeshift wall.

U’uyen turned to scowl down upon him, even as the creature squirmed on the tip of his spear. Torin accepted then that he was causing more danger to his friends in delaying than in forging ahead. He glared right back at the elf, then spun about, peering into the well at his feet. Clenching his jaw in anger and defiance, he started down, to challenge whatever hell awaited.

T
ORIN TREAD CAUTIOUSLY AT FIRST,
mindful of his step upon the tower of loose stones. The echoes of conflict from above, however, spurred his pace, until he was slipping and grinding his way down the crude stairway, focused only on reaching the bottom. His growing momentum soon carried him into a tumbling, headlong roll, full of grating pains that punished him for his recklessness.

He came to a skidding halt, battered and dizzy within an ocean of swirling blackness. He closed his eyes for a moment and gripped the Sword tightly, calling upon its soothing power. The pains quieted, and the world around him steadied.

He rolled himself to one side and climbed gingerly to his knees, coughing on the dust he had stirred. Blood streamed from a gash in his head, but he had no time to be concerned with minor wounds. In the halo of the Sword’s light, he saw the base of the rampway behind him. In all other directions…nothing. The darkness appeared boundless, save for the scabrous floor at his feet. Which way was he to turn?

He decided to follow the angle of the ramp and hope for the best. Gritting his teeth against the pain of injuries to hip, knees, and ankle, he forced himself to stand and begin hobbling in that direction. It hurt to breathe, so he did so sparingly. His stern gaze knifed forward, seeking to cut through the black folds that smothered the path ahead.

Now and then he looked around, skin crawling with the eyes of invisible enemies.
The greatest danger is that which lurks unseen.
He listened for sounds of approach, but the only movements he heard were his own—along with the faint shrieks of the basilisks above. Was it merely Ravar’s warning that had him on edge?

Then he sensed it: a quaking in the floor, like the rumble of a distant landslide. Only, there was a rhythm to this vibration, an undeniable ebb and flow, tidelike in its churn. He stopped for a moment, then veered to his right, toward what felt like the source. As the disturbance in the earth grew stronger, he hastened his pace.

But the natural cavern seemed without end. He began counting paces, in case he should find cause and opportunity to retrace his steps. One hundred, two hundred, three. Still, the den to which the Illysp had once been banished stretched away on all sides, a seemingly infinite void.

Voices in his mind whispered at him to turn back, telling him that he was moving in the wrong direction. And indeed, he no longer felt certain that he
was tracking the soundless quake at his feet. He was lost, with nowhere else to turn.

He paused, doing his best to shut the voices out and to reattune himself to the only marker he had. With more desperation than confidence, he forged ahead.

Just a few steps later, he came at last to one of the cavern’s walls. A dead end, it seemed, but at least it gave him another anchor for his bearings. Overriding the nagging voices of despair, he turned left this time, following the wall’s jagged course, still in search of the unknown vibration.

He came across a gaping cleft in the cavern wall—an open-air portal framed with massive blocks of exotic craftsmanship. The doorway itself was immense, stretching skyward beyond his red-tinted vision. But Torin knew what he had found. He recalled Darinor’s explanation of how the ancient Finlorians had brought about the rift to begin with. It had been an attempt to reach into the afterlife, to touch the realm of the departed, the divine. For such an effort, a temple would have been erected, or something akin to one. Amid the desolation of this underground desert, this doorframe alone had the feel of a palace.

And the vibration he felt was flowing from within.

He hurried inside, all but heedless of the inherent peril. Let his foes spring what traps they would. He would carve his way through, one by one.

The corridor he marched down was lined with columns and statues. He did not take time to study them, only to make sure that none posed or hid any threat. Inner doubts continued to scratch at him, but he blew them aside with an air of focused determination.

The cavernous gullet stretched on. It was considerably colder here, the darkness so thick he could almost feel it against his skin. He no longer needed to follow the vibration. He could smell his goal, marked by the same rank fetor that had escaped the pit above when he had first drawn the Sword.
The stink of their world
, he thought, recalling the unforgettable glimpse Ravar had shown him.

Frustrated by the endless length of the tunneling corridor, he broke into a trot. He found himself wincing, but otherwise ignored his body’s stabbing protests. Before long, he perceived a dim light flashing ahead. The colonnaded gallery was at last coming to a close, abutting an inner portico whose face was punctured by a single, diamond-shaped doorway.

The gentle quaking—as well as the faint light flashes—lay somewhere beyond.

He climbed the portico steps with a pair of leaping strides, then slowed before entering the doorway—just enough to tighten his grip on the Sword. With a deep breath, he plunged inside.

He hadn’t imagined hell’s heart could be so beautiful.

It sloped down before him in a series of terraced risers, a subterranean amphitheater smaller than he would have imagined, given the immensity of the temple that held it—yet undeniably magnificent in its artistry. Fluted pil
lars, twining arches, bas-reliefs of stunning scope and intricate detail, gave the chamber a soft, exquisite, Olirian feel. Gems studding the walls and sconces, the suspended cressets, and the domed ceiling, twinkled like stars, reflecting a dim, pulsing radiance.

Though, when he looked to the source of that radiance, his soul shivered with the horrid truth.

It lay upon the floor of the crescent-moon arena, reclined against a marvelously sculpted backdrop. Diamond-shaped, like the doorway behind him, its edges formed by a low stone wall. A well that reminded him of the pool in Spithaera’s lair. Only, he saw not water in this pool, but a vortex of inky clouds, lit by flashes of thunderless lightning. With each rhythmic pulse, the pool’s glow filled the chamber—

And Torin’s heart with dread.

By the fear it fostered in him, he knew that this was it: the portal he sought, the rift between his world and that of the Illysp. Born of mortal vanity, it had bred only punishment and madness. That much hadn’t been his doing, but he felt as though it was. It reminded him of all the mistakes he had made in his own life, all the suffering he had caused. Every selfish thought. Every fell deed. He didn’t know why, or how it could be, yet understood instinctively that his own sins and failings were a part of the force spilling through the fabric of that unnatural fissure.

He swallowed thickly, then started down the aisle stair before him. Mesmerized, horrified, he placed one foot before the other, forcing himself to look now and then from side to side in search of enemies. The Illychar were too cunning to abandon their portal into this world completely. Seeing it there, unguarded…it didn’t feel right. Despite his revulsion, he felt drawn to that rift in a way he couldn’t describe: an almost insatiable need to explore its depths. The army of goblins, the basilisks…their numbers might have filled the arena, and it would not have seemed enough to ward such a rare and divine treasure.

Before he knew it, he stood upon the amphitheater floor, just below the portal’s angled rim. Though he peered inside, he could see nothing beyond its smoky curtain. He felt its light upon his face, sensed its vibrations in the earth. The deepest blackness he had ever known, punctuated by those forked flashes—each of which seemed to claw at his heart and mind, bidding him to shed his mortal coil and become one with the primordial.

A loathing overcame him, a sudden need to destroy this construct, himself, everything. It was no longer about saving his world or his friends. Worms…gnats…
Less
, Ravar had said, and the Dragon God had been right.

His lip curled back in a snarl. Muscles flexed as he climbed onto the pool’s rim and tightened both hands about the Sword. He raised the talisman overhead, tip pointed down. The same stance with which he had killed Laressa. He laughed madly at the recollection, then drove the blade down with all his might, into the soundless fury of that churning cauldron.

A blinding explosion rocked the cavern and sent Torin hurtling backward.
Disoriented, waking as if from a daydream, he sat up to see what had become of the rift. His blade had struck nothing tangible, yet the portal’s stormy surface had erupted. The black clouds were roiling faster, and the lightning pulsed now at a frenetic pace. The arena, dimly illuminated before, was filled with such brightness that Torin could scarcely make out the edges of the rift’s containment wall. Reflexively, he lifted an arm to shade his eyes, hoping that the Sword’s power would shield him from the portal’s violent throes.

As the moments passed, however, the lancing light did not diminish, but continued to intensify, each pulse seeming stronger than the last. A shrill, inaudible whistle pierced Torin’s mind, and a horrifying realization began to suck the breath from his lungs.

He hadn’t
destroyed
the rift.

He had enlarged it.

He looked to the Sword as if it had betrayed him. He remembered this sensation, this sinking feeling of dread. It reminded him of his final confrontation with Darinor, in which he’d learned that he’d been tricked into completing a critical task for the Illysp. It was that same, sickening realization that in everything he had been told, in all he had been led to believe, he had been deceived.

Lies
, the inner voices shrieked.

Ravar. It had to be.
Close the rift between these worlds and destroy the Illysp utterly.
And Torin, pawn that he was, had set forth with blind trust to do the creature’s bidding.

Lies.

He fought to shut the voices out, but they would not be silenced. A reflection of the portal’s raging surface, his mind became a tempest, in which cruel possibility spawned terrifying certainty. It all seemed so clear to him now; how had he missed it before? His final quest to eradicate this plague was but a fiendish scheme to destroy what little barrier had remained between the two worlds. Only Ravar and His fellow gods knew what Torin’s foolishness had unleashed.

Lies.

And who had led him to the Dragon God, but Annleia? His stomach knotted. Had she truly been a part of it? The whistle grew louder, faster, more shrill. Of course she had. Hers was the guise that had won his trust, charming him with kindness and beauty and talk of Finlorian magic. He couldn’t know what had prompted her actions—revenge, perhaps—but the deceit had begun with her.

Lies.

He thought of their dance on the beach above. He recalled her exotic song, her moonlit face…and hated himself for becoming enamored with her. How could he have been so foolish? How could he have trusted her, a stranger, so easily? So many times, he had stared directly into her eyes, and rather than recognize the truth…

A vision of her gaze steadied the spinning in his head. Those emerald orbs,
that petulant smile—for him, a haven, a sanctuary of compassion in a dark and callous world. Rarely in the course of his life had he beheld such strength of innocence. As pure as a dawn’s first rays, Annleia had become an embodiment of love, of hope, of divine splendor—all the sacred virtues that had been chased from this vile world. Despite his confusion, despite being lashed by so many harrowing doubts, Torin would carry at least one conviction to his grave.

Annleia was no servant of the Illysp.

He shut his eyes, focusing on that simple truth. For a moment, the maddening whistle quieted, losing its grip upon his mind.

But he could see the portal’s violent radiance, even behind closed lids. When he reopened them, the mental chorus struck again, with the fury of a dragon’s breath.

Lies!

The message throbbed in Torin’s head, mocking him and his foolish faith. Annleia had misled him about her charge, after all, proving already that she was not above deceit. Was there another he was missing?

Lies!

That she cared for him—that must be it. He had suspected it as soon as the words were spoken, mistrustful of her motives. Hope alone had prevented him from fully accepting it before.

Lies!

What did that matter? he demanded furiously, trying again to find steady ground within the maelstrom of his thoughts. He had come to vanquish the Illysp. U’uyen, Corathel, Dyanne, and countless others were still struggling to repel that threat. He needed to focus. He had to find a way…

Lies!

Were they even still alive? Some of them, perhaps. Surely not all. And who was deceiving whom? Whatever Ravar’s actual designs, Torin could do no more. His attack on the rift had succeeded only in speeding his enemies’ entry into this world. Without command of the Sword’s fires, he was powerless, helpless, hopeless.

Lies…Lies…Lies…

He looked to the talisman, still clutched in his hand as he lay upon the arena floor. Its light had died to a glimmer. Though he tried to concentrate, defeatist thoughts continued to flay his thinning determination. He no longer knew what to believe. With the rift flashing before him, he knew only that the horror of his mistake had never felt more real. If even his achievements had been failures, then it stood to reason that his life could end no other way.

And why should he care? He had lost them all: Marisha, Dyanne, Annleia. He had bound himself to each, in one fashion or another, finding just enough happiness to better know misery and despair. Annleia had asked him what he feared. The answer had been too selfish to utter, almost too simple to believe.

What did it matter to save the world if he found himself alone in the end?

Yet that was how he felt. He had alienated his friends. He had failed to take his chance with Dyanne, and Annleia had already decided to leave him when this was over. There was no one else to turn to, no one who could grant him a reprieve from his hateful existence.