Read Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming Online
Authors: Van Allen Plexico
Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure
I ground my molars together till I feared they would rupture.
“Were these normal times, my lady, I would stand in full agreement. These are, however, anything but normal times. Seventy-two of us—at last count—are dead. Someone—not me—killed them, and probably also engineered the shutting down of the Fountain during that time. How can we expect anyone to abide by ancient rules at a time such as this?”
“I expect
you
to, and that is all you need concern yourself with at the moment.”
She stood and walked briskly away from the table, out to the railing overlooking the valley, and she would hear no more from me on the subject.
In the few seconds between that exchange and the moment the black star appeared in our midst and opened, I formulated a dozen new arguments on the subject. They instantly became meaningless. Sirens shrilled from all around as the sensors arrayed about Karilyne’s palace detected the ripple in spacetime, but the warning came far too late to do any good.
In the center of the terrace, a crystalline star flared from nothingness to blinding intensity over the space of a heartbeat. It expanded outward in every direction, forming a blazing oval, the center of which filled with darkness, as if the light had been sucked violently out of it. From that void emerged a horde of demons—the same sort Evelyn and I had encountered earlier, in the bowl-shaped world. Skin blackened as if burned by some other-worldly flame, clothing hanging from their twisted frames in tatters, deepest space reflected in their gaping mouths and fearsome eyes—these nightmare figures grew no less unsettling upon repeated encounters. They charged out of the dark depths and swarmed across the terrace, making no sound yet filling everyone who saw them with fear and dread.
To her credit, Karilyne reacted before anyone else, her silvery robes transforming in an instant into hard plate mail, her axe and her sword in each hand, at the ready. Even her stature appeared to increase, and she rushed to confront the hellish intruders, her long, raven hair flaring out behind her, like some beautiful and awful force of nature.
Pushing Evelyn behind me, I summoned up the Power and created a strong defensive sphere around both of us. Personal safety thereby seen to, as best it could be, I moved forward to assist Karilyne, even as the doors leading out from the palace crashed open to my left and a cadre of her personal guard charged out, weapons brandished. To their credit, the soldiers hesitated only briefly at the sight of the attackers, before quickly moving to confront them.
“Here they are again,” I called to Karilyne. “Those demons that do not exist, doing things that are impossible.”
“Indeed,” she called back, from the center of the fray. “Someone is using them as pawns, as catspaws.”
“You think?”
Shaking my head in frustration that it had taken something like this to get through her thick skull, I drew upon the Power and prepared to unleash what few offensive capabilities I possessed. Raising both arms, palms facing outward, I spilled small, blue orbs that rolled across the terrace to explode upon reaching the attackers’ flanks.
In response, the demons redoubled their assault—but not in my direction. They seemed intent upon one target—the silver lady. Karilyne roared, her sword and her axe singing their own songs of destruction in a swath all around her. The horde broke upon her like a wave upon the rocks, and I stood back momentarily, watching her in awe. Only Baranak, I imagined, could have equaled or excelled her skills at massive, devastating violence. Then, as a renewed attack by the demons pressed at her, I moved forward again, lending what little I could in terms of offensive firepower.
Another battalion of guards arrived then and opened up with their firearms, for what little good it did. The demons shrugged off the energy beams and solid projectiles with ease, and continued to focus most of their attention and their murderous efforts on Karilyne. She beat them back, hacking at them savagely, yet I saw no bodies anywhere around her. Either they were carrying their dead and wounded away as they fought, or the bodies left no trace after death. I had no idea which of those might be the case, but it scarcely mattered at the moment. Hurling exploding blue spheres of energy, I chipped away at the flanks of the enemy, opposite the side where the guards did the same.
Not enough. Our efforts were not enough. I had seen it happen before, with Vorthan, and now it was happening again with Karilyne. The silver warrior vanished beneath the press of twisted, grotesque bodies, and within moments only the tip of her sword and the occasional swing of her axe appeared above the fray. Seconds later, neither of those weapons could be seen at all, and the horde had grown noticeably smaller. This time, I understood. They had some sort of escape portal at the center of their crowd, and surely Karilyne had already been carried through. She was gone—at least for the moment, though Vorthan’s own apparent escape gave me some reason for hope concerning her fate.
The crowd of demons had dwindled down by this time to a relatively small clump, heatedly battling with the palace guards. Neither group seemed terribly interested in Evelyn or me. I turned back to her, and saw that she had drawn one of the pistols from her duffle bag and was preparing to fire.
“No,” I said. “Save it. There is nothing more to be done here.”
She looked at me wonderingly, but replaced the gun in the bag.
“Then what—?”
I watched the last of the demons fighting what must have been a holding action, keeping the guards away while the majority of their brethren spirited Karilyne away. Only a few of the guards appeared injured; Karilyne had trained them well. Turning away from the scene of combat, I motioned for Evelyn to follow me, and we moved to the far side of the terrace, away from the commotion.
“The pact I swore with Karilyne is dissolved,” I said. “Whether of her own volition or not, she has departed this plane. She is no longer serving as my guarantor and protector. The terms were clear. I am free to go.”
Evelyn thought about that for a second, and nodded.
“An interesting interpretation, but I would tend to agree with it, given the circumstances.”
She pointed back past me.
“Especially since they seem to have taken notice of us, finally.”
I glanced back, saw that the last of the demons had vanished and that now the household guards were coming our way. They moved uncertainly at first, unsure of my current standing in their house, and what with their mistress not being present to give them orders. Quickly, though, they gathered their confidence and advanced.
“Hm. Yes,” I said, “I would definitely say that it is time to go.”
Raising both hands, I willed a portal to open between the troopers and us. They stopped short, then regained their nerve and charged. I stepped forward, into the blue, and Evelyn moved with me, reaching back to wave goodbye to Karilyne’s crack forces just before the doorway to elsewhere slammed shut in their faces.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
My plans now in ruins, perhaps the only god willing to listen to me now in the clutches of the demons, and my mood black as night, I led Evelyn on a silent, circuitous, roundabout journey back toward Mysentia. I had little to say and, in truth, nowhere else to go. Mysentia had been my power base during the period of my exile, and it held a quick route to my only hideaway that remained a secret, the floating island. It was therefore as good as any other place, and better than most. That did not change the fact that my only avenue of redress against Baranak and the others had been lost, when my weapons had been destroyed and I had failed to secure the gemstones that powered them. Finding safety and solitude and time to regroup, to create a new plan… my thoughts did not range far beyond those parameters as we made our way from Karilyne’s ice world, through jungle and valley and meadow and forest, back toward my adopted home.
“That’s twice,” Evelyn said at some point.
“Twice?”
“Vorthan and Karilyne. Both abducted by the demons. Both times with you present. And this time it even helped you. If I didn't know better, I might think you were behind it all, too.”
“But you do know better.”
Fortunately, she nodded.
“There has to be a connection, though,” she said.
“…I know.”
On we marched along the path. One path among so many I knew; so many I had walked over my centuries and centuries of life. So many footsteps. Enough footsteps to circumnavigate the universe, surely. All of them leading me ultimately, inevitably… where? Here? Trudging through some lost forest on some remote world important only because it lay along the dimension-hopping road I had mapped back to Mysentia. Millennia spent in the effort to acquire power and glory and the mastery of the Golden City and its inhabitants—and here I walked through brush and vine and thorn and mud. Had I truly fallen so low? Misery dropped upon me like some giant’s boot crushing down on my head, and I may have even groaned softly in my throat. I must have, for Evelyn looked over at me as we walked, concern etched clearly on her face.
“Are you all right?”
I made a dismissive gesture and kept walking.
“You don’t seem all right,” she said.
I stopped, turned to look at her, frowning.
“At least we’re free again,” she pointed out.
“Wonderful.”
She looked away.
“It’s better than waiting for the others to come and take you back to the City.”
I shrugged. At the moment, nothing seemed particularly “better” to me.
She watched me for several moments, as if waiting for something, but saying nothing.
I glared at her.
“This is insipid,” I growled.
She pointed at a nearby fallen log, moss covering one side.
“Sit,” she said firmly.
“What?”
She pointed again.
Grudgingly, I sat. I could not truly object. At that point, I felt I had nothing better to do. Misery surrounded me like a cloud.
We faced one another, neither speaking. The only sounds were those of the forest around us, gently swelling.
“You feel as if you’ve failed, don’t you?”
I said nothing, staring at my boots, planted in the dark earth.
“You’re not the only one who feels that way, who’s lost something, you know,” she said. “I’m still no closer to finding my crewmen. Honestly, I’m beginning to think it may be too late.”
“We don’t know that,” I replied. “Arendal is not stupid. Unless he specifically wanted to kill them, he would have made arrangements to keep them alive in case he was detained.”
I laughed sharply then, the first moment of anything other than depression I had experienced since the demons carried Karilyne away.
“And we certainly detained him, did we not?”
Evelyn smiled at that.
“We did.”
I eyed her with surprise.
“I was under the impression you felt I was perhaps too rough on him.”
She scoffed.
“Hardly. The jerk had it coming.”
I leaned back, my eyes moving along the thick, twisted vines hanging down from the towering trees all around us. Sunlight trickled though branches high above to lie in dappled patterns here and there about us, but the overall effect was one of being within a small, darkened room, or perhaps a cave. I closed my eyes and tried to think of my long, lost Halaini, but her face was not the one that came to me. Disconcerted in the extreme, I opened my eyes, stood, and began pacing in the mud.
“Maybe you can find more of the gems,” Evelyn was saying. “There have to be more, somewhere, right?”
I looked back at her, forcing my thoughts back under control.
“I don’t know. And what good would it do, with the weapons they power currently floating in pieces above Candis?”
She nodded sadly.
“Not all of them, though,” she said after a moment, patting her duffle bag. “I still have my three.”
“And that is all we may ever have, I fear.”
Sitting again beside her, I thought about what we had learned from Buchner.
“I should have asked Vorthan about the gems when I had the chance, back at Karilyne’s. But I had other things on my mind then, obviously. He would have lied, in any case.”
I chewed at a fingernail absently.
“I suppose he and Baranak are assembling an armory to reinforce their group’s claim to power in the City.”
“But they destroyed all your weapons the last time, didn’t they?”
“So they claimed. Perhaps it was a trick. Perhaps they have stockpiles of the things.”
“Then maybe they’re overconfident.” She shrugged. “They’ve surely struck me that way, every time I’ve met them.”
I nodded once but said nothing. My thoughts were moving across everything I knew, everything I had learned, wrestling with each facet, searching for connections. Something connected with Vorthan had rung a bell, just then, and an unexpected one. He had appeared to us the first time as we were being attacked by demons. His removal from the scene then could have convinced anyone that he was as good as dead, or at least in imminent danger of being seriously injured. Instead, he showed up again later, none the worse for wear, with no desire to even discuss what had happened. Then, after that appearance, more demons. And just as I had someone important, someone powerful, beginning to listen to me. As if he knew. As if he were watching all along, and waiting. But if his goal were to capture me, to return me to custody in the City—as surely Baranak had instructed him to do—then why not come for me earlier? Why wait until I was besieged by attackers, on the bowl-shaped world? Or, if Baranak’s clique had already decided my fate, why not leave me to the tender mercies of the demons?
Another line from Bronte occurred to me then, I knew not why: “Like a false guard, false watch keeping.” Saying it to myself, I laughed out loud, for no particular reason. Clearly, my time in exile had resulted in my having far too much time on my hands, to be reading that stuff.
Evelyn looked up at me, startled by my laughter.
“You seem a little bit less miserable now, anyway,” she said.
Looking at her, I felt a slight smile working its way across one corner of my mouth, and I fought it down ferociously.
“Perhaps,” I said. “Perhaps you have been of some help in that regard.”
“Isn’t this sweet?”
The voice had sounded from behind me. I whirled, the Power rushing through me, ready to erect a force shield around Evelyn and myself in an instant.
Across the clearing, seated on a low branch, a tall, slender woman gazed down at us like the Cheshire Cat. Her thick, red hair sat in a bundle, held atop her head by pearl combs. Her long, black dress draped over the limb and fluttered lazily in the breeze. She wore a mischievous smile as she watched us.
Evelyn had jumped to her feet but, seeing who it was, she relaxed somewhat. I kept the Power within easy reach as I rested my hands on my hips and called up to her, “What are you doing here, Alaria?”
“Enjoying the show, obviously,” she replied. “You two are very amusing.”
Anger welled inside me. She may have been the one who first released us from captivity, but I trusted Alaria no more than any of the others, and I had never taken to her teasing.
“I am pleased we could provide you with some entertainment,” I said. “Now, let me ask again. Why are you here?”
She frowned.
“You are no fun, Lucian.”
She hopped from the branch and landed easily on the ground before me. She turned toward Evelyn.
“Is he?”
Evelyn said nothing, but I noticed she had picked up her duffle bag. Good. Despite the fact that Alaria had only ever assisted us thus far, I wanted Evelyn to understand that none of the others could be entirely trusted—and it looked as though she had grasped that concept well enough.
“I heard through the grapevine that you had visited Karilyne’s world, so I worked my way up the path you seemed likely to take away from there.”
Cold panic gripped my heart. Word had reached the City already? And—if Alaria could accurately guess my route, why couldn’t Baranak?
“Relax,” she said, reading my mood. “I said nothing to the others. The golden god seeks you in fields far remote from these. Or, rather, he sends others to do the seeking.”
She laughed.
“He has holed himself up in the City, surrounded by those few he feels are most loyal, drawing up his plans.”
“Do those few not include you?” I asked her, for several reasons.
If she visibly reacted, it was very brief.
“He trusts me,” she said.
“More the fool, he,” Evelyn said.
Alaria glared at her, then recovered smoothly.
“Perhaps,” she said, looking back at me. “In this matter, anyway. I have nothing against him otherwise, and believe he administers the City wisely and fairly.”
She reached out, a pale white hand stroking my cheek.
“I simply do not want to see my friend Lucian wronged without opportunity to exonerate himself.”
“A sentiment with which I think we can all agree,” I said. “Now: What brings you here?”
She clasped her hands behind her back and strode across the clearing, then turned theatrically and said, “Several things, actually. Where to begin? I have seen the ‘Dark Men’ of whom you earlier spoke.”
“Finally,” I breathed. “It was starting to seem as if I were imagining them.”
“No, they are quite real, and quite deadly. I was fortunate to avoid their notice.”
“How many did you see?”
“That is just it,” she replied. “I saw only one at a time, but in several locations. But I got the sense, for whatever reason, that it was not the same one each time.” She paused, chewing her lower lip, then continued. “They appear to be on the move, perhaps proliferating, moving all along the main roads leading out from the City.”