She Who Has No Name (The Legacy Trilogy) (76 page)

Canyon realised his mistake and horror drained his face white.  ‘No.  No, I did nothing.’ he stammered, backing away, but the raging woman put her palms to his face and he screamed like a girl.  ‘Please!  Don’t!’

‘Why couldn’t you let me live!  Why did you do this to me!’ she cried, and Canyon vanished with a rising wail.  His flesh
was incinerated
and his clothes fell empty to the floor.  In his place was a knot of life energy that only Samuel could see and she called it into herself, pulling it in with her will.  Her hair whipped about her as she swallowed his essence and the intensity of her magic doubled, surging about her like a storm of sparks and shattered embers.  She turned back to Samuel with rage still in her eyes, but when she saw him still standing there
,
as if str
uck
dumb, she shouted
in
disbelief.

‘Go!’ she implored him.

Remembering himself, Samuel wobbled to be away, but fell on the final step, slipping in his own blood, for his vital fluid
had been pouring
down his legs all the while. 
Instinctively, h
e tried to take the fall with both hands, but with one entirely gone, he crashed roughly onto the floor. 

Alahativa’s magic then bloomed behind him and the Koian woman’s magic ceased.  Rough hands took hold of him and
hauled
him back to his feet.  As they dragged him away, he could see that the Koian woman was lying still on the floor and the Paatin Queen was standing over her, surrounded by a blaze of her own intense power.

‘Let him suffer!’ the Paatin Queen called after him.  ‘A slow death for him!  Nothing terrible should be spared!’

Everything after that was shades of grey, flashes of light and dark, and moments of silence and screaming.  He felt his body being skewered by agony and he did his best to remove himself from all sensation.  Heat and cold washed over his skin, fire drilled into his skull and ice into his bones, crushing pressure filled his joints until they felt fit to burst and his breath felt like molten lead in his lungs.  His right arm was not wracked by torturous pain
—
amazingly
—
which made less sense than anything
,
for that was the very arm he had seen quivering on the Paatin Queen’s table. 

He remembered being dragged and he remembered the smells of the catacombs.  Rough hands pushed and shoved him and then he felt himself being
shoved
into a narrow hole.  There was a moment of peace, and then a flash of lightning.

He felt the coldness of death enveloping him, forcing itself into his veins but
,
as his vision cleared, Samuel found himself lying in a stone courtyard, amidst a wild scuffle.  He could see Turians fighting Paatin, but it seemed to make no sense.  His arm had returned and he could see his fingers wriggling and flexing at the tip of his hand.  Strangely, he could feel warm blood seeping from a wound in his chest, yet the pain of that wound was too distant to bother him.

Some of the Paatin that fought nearby had wings protruding from under their capes, and the Turians that faced them wore the colours of the Ghant defenders.  Captain Ravenshood and Grand Master Tudor were there, struggling against their foe, and the battle seemed to be
going
in the Paatin’s favour.

Only then did he realise that this was some kind of dream or memory from his past.  ‘
This has all happened before,
’ Samuel thought to himself, ‘
but why can’t I remember it?
’  He tried to move, but found he was only an observer within his own dream.  He had no way to affect what was going on
,
and so he resigned himself to the fact, sitting back within his own memory and letting it unfold around him.

Darkness crept in around his vision once more as the blood continued to drain from his middle, until he was blind and the sounds of the battle felt like echoes from far away.  He knew the men were still tussling around him, for Turian and Paatin alike were visible to his magician’s senses, even though his eyes had lost their ability to focus.  They moved like luminous ghosts cavorting all around, dancing around his dying form. 

Grand Master Tudor, brighter than the others, seemed like a god amongst his followers, and the bolts of magic that bloomed out from him twirled in the air like ink in water, swirling and curling all around.  Many others already lay dead around the courtyard, and Samuel could see their life energies creeping out around the courtyard like cautious tendrils trying to escape from the scene. 

It was these he clasped onto, for the energy felt akin to his own
—
warm and inviting in the bleak coldness all around.  He remembered when Master Glim had died and he remembered the thrill of life he had felt when he had absorbed that tiny mote of his teacher’s energy.  So he grasped the dying embers of energy in the room and began calling them towards himself. 

As they reached him, he swallowed them into his own presence and they became part of him.  It was exciting, rejuvenating.  He could taste the very nature of the people
who
had died here
,
feel their final terrified thoughts
,
see their final blood-curdling visions.  It was frightening, yet somehow irresistible, for his only desperate thought was that of his own survival.

He beckoned for all the wasted power in the room to come to him, and obediently the streamers of life did come.  Slowly, they crawled through the air towards him, and each one that entered him gave him back a tiny spark of life. 

The effort seemed futile however—like raking leaves on a windy day—for
,
with every speck of energy he gathered into himself, more spilled from the gaping hole in his chest.  He called and called, wishing he could scream out to the world and have it obey him, for everything was just happening far too slowly for it to make any difference.  Soon, he would die.

Then he felt something cold upon his finger and with a sudden shock, all the lingering energy in the room seemed to rush in towards him.  With the power of the Argum Stone to assist him, he could gather all the power he needed as simply as wishing for it.  He gathered all that wayward life force into himself, healing himself, undoing the awful harm done unto his body. 

The power of the ring was incredible, and with it he could call to everything—not just the fading spirits that wafted from their battered shells, but the more vital energies that hid within fleshy casings.  As he called, more vibrant power came flooding into him. 

The world around was still darkness to his blinded vision, but these clusters of life energy shone out to him irresistibly.  He only had to direct his will towards them and they entered him one by one. 

As he surveyed the courtyard, he spied a clot of shadow lingering near the doorway, clogged with blackness, and so he turned his attention away from that—for it was not worth considering.  A cluster of brilliant power across the room was far more appealing and so he focussed upon that with vigour. 

As he began to gather it, the spot blazed like a bonfire in a sudden wind.  He turned his gaze away momentarily, for the brightness had dazzled him, but so
,
too
,
had it excited him.  The more the energy blazed and struggled, the more it enticed him.  The outer strips of life began unravelling and tumbling in towards him and he found that a deeper, sweeter power was hidden underneath.  He drew that in as well, relishing in delight as he devoured it. 

All he could think was
I can live!  I can live!
as he swallowed all the energy in the room. 

He had forgotten the battle that had earlier waged around him and it seemed as if all the sounds of fighting had vanished
,
lost amongst the sound of power rushing in his ears.  He knew he was still lying there on the hard stones, and that this was all some kind of fantasy that one felt just before death, but it seemed so strange and real.

A sound caught his ear and he returned his attention to that last bloom of light that had proven so nourishing.  There was hardly anything of it remaining, yet it called out to him in a pained and pleading voice, calling his name and asking for him to stop.  Its voice sounded familiar, but dreams had a way of making things seem confusing.  After another moment, the room was silent and everything was again dark and cold and quiet, and he knew the dream had ended.

Tucked away in the darkness, Samuel felt a burning in his eyes, but for some reason he could not force himself to weep.  All he wanted to do was wallow in his misery, for he now realised what he had done, and he knew what had become of Grand Master Tudor.  He damned himself for being so weak and for giving in to the evil that lurked inside him.  He damned himself, for it had felt so good.

‘Father!
’ came the voice of a child.  ‘
Wake up!  Get up!
’

The image of a dead man, lying on a hard floor and staring—masked in blood—filled his mind.  He refused to let the memories of that dark night come back to him and he pushed them from his mind as they struggled at the edge of his attention.  Instead, a vast city came into view through the clouds of his dream
. It was
set beside a glittering sea and surrounded by great pale walls that were beyond comparison.  Cintar, it was called, and this city was the jewel of Amandia; perfect in every way and envied by every ruler who had ever come to behold it.

A seething host filled the lands around that city and they threw themselves against the walls without respite.  In turn, swarms of gold and blue adorned men amassed on the walls and defended their city with arrows and stones and vats of boiling oil.  Magic leapt from wall to ground and was returned in equal portion, but it seemed the battle was evenly matched.  The city could not be taken, yet the invaders could not be dispelled.

Great
carapaced
beasts lumbered across the pastures to
heave themselves
at the walls, and the armies parted to make way for them. 
Enormous
boulders flew at the beasts, but the beasts seemed resilient to everything.  Then, the vision faded and the roar of the battle subsided.

‘
Hello?
’ came a voice and Samuel found himself standing in his room within the palace.  At first, he could not tell if this was still a part of his dream or if he had actually awoken—somehow freed from his nightmares.

The Koian woman was leaning in the doorway, with guards visible at her back.  She looked straight towards him, and he tried to answer back, but that image, too, faded and the Koian woman disappeared from view.

He caught flashes of her after that, standing in her room, or sitting idly in the gardens, or lying in her bed in the middle of the night.  Each time, she
would
look up, as if startled by his presence, before the scene would vanish and he would be left wandering in senseless dreams.  He struggled to return to her, because for some reason he could not stop thinking about her and she was the only thing that made sense in this world of pain and anguish.

Whe
re
at first she had confounded and annoyed him, he now found her intriguing and compelling.  What he had considered to be her stubbornness and ignorance now seemed to be strength of will and innocence.  Whe
re
once he had thought of her a
s
alien and unsightly, he had grown to find her beautiful and fascinating.

More and more
,
he caught glimpses of her life in the palace and it seemed that the days were passing ever so quickly, for
,
every time he saw her
,
she was dressed differently, or the sun lay in different parts of the sky.  Still, he strived as much as he could to stay by her side, for the alternative to being with her was unthinkable: the deep and silent void that lingered at the edge of his conscience, threatening to engulf him.