The Black Shriving (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 2) (55 page)

"You - you have stopped time?"

No
, said the Zoeian woman.
We are having this conversation in the blink of an eye.

Tears ran down Audsley's cheeks. "I failed. I had thought - I had thought I would find a way, that fate, or fortune..."

You are dying,
said the Aletheian man.
Like a bead of dew, you tremble on the tip of a leaf, ready to fall. But that need not be the case
.

"I - what?" He had to think. By the Black Gate, he had to marshal his thoughts! "What are you saying?"

The Sigean monk smiled warmly.
Accept our help. We shall heal you and give you power. We shall help you kill our brother.

"No!" That meant damnation. A life spent studying Ascendant liturgy made his denial absolute. "You ask me to damn myself? Never!"

The old man shook his head in annoyance.
Not necessarily. Journey to Aletheia and have us cast out by an Alabaster. Or learn sufficient lore to bind us into objects again. And even if you die with us inside you, your soul will pass on, and only your body will remain with us.

The monk shrugged.
This way you can open the Portal for Iskra Kyferin. You can save your friends.

The Zoeian woman smiled darkly.
And you can take revenge upon the one that calls itself Lania for the pain it has given you.

Audsley hesitated. The three figures before him glanced at each other.
There is no more time,
said the monk.
Your body fails you. We shall await another.

"No!" Audsley reached out to them as they turned away. "Wait! Just - wait!" He pressed his hands to his temples. Saw Aedelbert falling. Saw Lady Iskra passing through the Gate. Saw his friends, felt the weight of all his hopes, his joy in living, his desire to learn, to remain himself, to be Audsley for a few moments longer. "All right." He let out a shuddering breath. "All right. Yes."

The three demons shared an inscrutable look, then turned back to him.
Very well,
said the monk.
It is done.

Audsley was seized by vertigo. The figures wavered like heat shimmers, then swirled away and were gone. He heard a thousand bells ringing in the distance and felt a sensation akin to falling, then a flicker of fiery lashes upon his soul. The pain was eternal while they lasted -

And then he opened his eyes.

Lania was a dozen yards above him now, her grin slipping away as she stared down at him.
What have you done?

Audsley pulled off the gauntlet and tossed it aside. Then he reached down, took hold of his intestine and snapped it in two, sat up and pushed his guts back inside himself as he did so. He could feel his body healing. It felt like pins and needles, blood returning to a numbed limb – or it would have if the pins had been white-hot and accompanied by the smell of cooking flesh. His leg spasmed, the bone sank back under the skin, and he felt the bone reconnect. The flesh knitted over it. The skin smoothed out. Reaching up, he pulled off the goggles and tossed them aside as well.

Lania was studying him, eyes narrowed, a dozen yards of his intestines still hanging from one hand.

Who are you?

"I, ah, actually am a sort of plurality now," said Audsley. Terrible power was blossoming within him. He felt light, lethal, fey. The three presences were still in his mind, but now they were connected to him in ways he couldn't yet understand. Extensions of himself, he supposed. Their power flowed directly into him, filled him with their terrible light.

He looked up to where Lania was still hovering, slowly beating her wings as she gained height.

A
dashkaar
,
said the Zoeian woman.
Pitiful. Weak. Kill it.

Audsley vaguely recalled the name from the books he'd read. It was a demon rank.

He took a deep breath and jumped. Where before he might have only cleared a few inches before falling back to the ground, now he kept going up. The power of flight was his now, though his ascent was spasmodic. Not bestowed by a sword. His.

His vision had also changed. No longer was everything monochromatic, a washed-out gray. Now it was pitch black, but he could at the same time see the objects around him, as if the darkness were now a veil he could pierce.

How do I kill it?

He didn't know where to begin. He thought of Aedelbert's frail corpse. Fury filled him.

How slowly do you wish it to die?
That was the Zoeian woman.

For a second he was tempted to say
very slowly
, but he clamped down on that urge.
As quickly as possible
. Just because he had a trio of demons welded to his soul, that did not mean he had to start acting the monster.

To ashes shall she return. Spread your hands out, fingers splayed, thumb tips touching.
The Aletheian man.
Then say the demon word for fire.

Audsley did as he was bid.

Lania's eyes widened. She began to fly back, faster and faster. Audsley took a deep breath, felt a powerful roar building up in his chest like a geyser getting ready to blow, and whispered the cracked and awful sounds.

Fire.

A plume of flame extended from his hands. He could feel all three demons within him pouring their might into the blast, channeling their combined power through him, and the force of the concentrated flame caused him to be pushed back through air and fall as the power of flight left him.

The ray of flame sheared off Lania's left leg. She screamed, shrilled, the sound akin to nails being scraped along the inside of Audsley's skull. He hit the ground hard, caught his balance, adjusted his hands and the flames passed over her shoulders and head and she died. Her corpse became cinders and ashes as it fell.

Audsley dropped his hands with a gasp.
I did it!

You had some help,
said the monk, and Audsley could have sworn he sounded exhausted.

Audsley sat heavily. He felt numb. He knew he should have been feeling a riot of emotions. Instead, he stared off into the dark and called, "Aedelbert?"

The space around him was so vast that his voice didn't even echo; it simply disappeared into the dark.

"Aedelbert!"

He thought he heard a hissing, as if Aedelbert was afraid, then saw movement as a small shape flitted into the tunnel and away. Audsley blinked, not understanding. Then it hit him: Aedelbert had run away from him. Perhaps the firecat could sense the evil within him now. Perhaps Aedelbert was afraid of him now.

Anguish ran through Audsley. He wanted to call out, to chase his dearest friend. Reason with him, try to make his little mind understand. He took a half dozen steps, prepared to launch himself into flight and pursuit - then stilled. No. He couldn't chase Aedelbert. Not like this. Not as polluted as he had become.

The pain was terrible, an actual spasm in his chest. He placed his hand over his heart, marveling that he should literally be feeling heart ache. Audsley knew that if he dwelt on his new condition, he might lose his weakening grip on his self-control, perhaps even his sanity. Instead, he felt his mind beginning to pick up speed, generating questions, cataloging information, referencing what he had already learned and preparing itself to learn more. Shoving his emotions down and out of sight.

If you unleash enough fire, do you die?

The Zoeian woman laughed.
That will never happen.

What ranks are you?

He could almost feel the three of them regarding each other.

I am
urth'akak,
said the monk.

As am I,
said the Zoeian woman.

I am
nahkhor'ir
,
said the Aletheian man quietly, and Audsley felt the other two shiver.

Audsley stood. He opened his torn tunic and studied his smooth belly. Then he patted his knee. Even the scrapes on his palm were gone.
Can I regenerate limbs?

Yes,
said the monk.

Can I regenerate my head?

No,
said the monk.

Audsley nodded.
How close did the dashkaar come to opening that prison?

Very close,
said the Aletheian man. Did even he sound nervous?

What lies inside it?

A great and terrible power,
said the man.
An
ur-destraas.
This time Audsley was certain. He
did
sound scared.

Can it escape?

No,
said the Aletheian.
It is not enough to simply damage the binding runes. They must be undone in the correct order.

"Good," said Audsley out loud.
What shall I call you?

Silence.

Surely you have names?

No,
said the monk.

Hmm,
said Audsley.
Perhaps I shall name you, then.

We do not need names, or want them,
said the Zoeian woman.

I'll be the judge of that.

Audsley took a deep breath, then rose slowly into the air, turning till he was facing the hexagonal tunnel. He had hoped to fly more smoothly, but still he rose in awkward jerks, the effort requiring intense focus. Had he survived that fight? Or had he, in the most important sense of the word, died? Audsley didn't know. He didn't even really know who he was any longer.

Left to travel without his closest companion, he flew forward and disappeared into the tunnel.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Iskra's every request had been ignored by her escort, possibly due to their not understanding Ennoian. They hadn't bound her hands, but that was as much an indication of how powerless she was as any courtesy; flanked by six armed men, each almost twice her weight and trained to wield their blades with finesse, she didn't waste a second entertaining a flight like Tiron's. In large part her hopes now rested with him, which spoke to the desperation of her situation. What could a man even as resourceful and determined as Ser Tiron do while he was being hunted in a city he didn't know and where he couldn't speak the language?

They descended rapidly into the bowels of the palace. Iskra bit back a final demand to see the emperor himself, relinquishing the last feeble hope that she might be taken to an audience immediately where she could protest her innocence. A dungeon, then. That did not bode well; distinguished personages were often kept imprisoned within their own apartments, or taken to a more secure yet still luxurious suite of rooms on the chance that should they be proven innocent and let go, they would harbor as small a grudge as possible against their captors.

The stairwells grew increasingly cramped as they descended to the ground floor then went underground, till at last they were three levels down and following a curved spiral lit by spitting torches that cast a ghastly crimson glow across the rough stone walls. The air grew cool if not damp, and atrocious moans began to filter toward them from the other prisoners.

They reached a landing of sorts where Iskra stopped walking and turned to face the captain of the guard. "I am Iskra Kyferin, Sigean by birth, and I will
not
be kept amongst common -"

The captain slapped her. He didn't put much force behind the blow, but it was firm and rocked her head to the side, cutting her cheek open on the inside so that the taste of blood filled her mouth. Iskra went rigid with fury. Futile threats rose to her lips, but she bit them back and instead simply straightened with all the august anger she could muster and glared at the man, who seemed indifferent to her wrath. He pointed past her toward a hall, and when she turned to look he pushed her shoulder. So it was that she came stumbling to her cell.

It was everything a children's tale about an unfairly imprisoned princess could hope for. Isolated at the end of a long hall, it had a curiously small and robust wooden door that opened onto a broad chamber with a natural stone floor and a domed ceiling. The walls were roughly smoothed down and held black iron sconces in which the guards lit torches. Iskra was pushed against the wall and there had actual shackles clamped around her wrists, with thick iron pins slotted down the side of each one to ensure they remained closed. The shackles were too large, and there was a demeaning exchange between the captain and a man who appeared to be a prison warden which resulted in raised voices till the warden returned with black silk rope which was used to bind her wrists and ankles to the chains.