The Pearl Saga - Mistress of the Pearl Part 42

Krystren nodded. There was no time to lose. Ignoring the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she extended her mind-feeler, lowering it into the trees just past where Varda sat. Then she fashioned it into a simulacrum of herself. She had to be very careful now, because if she made a mistake, Varda would be able to use his necromancy to follow the thread of the mind-feeler back to her as Bryn had done.

At once, the sauromician's head came up. She could see it swiveling this way and that, until the necromantic eye caught sight of "her" flitting through the forest. The chanting continued as if it had a life of its own, but he was up in a flash, darting silently toward the ghost-image she had fashioned.

She leapt down, landing on bent knees in order to cushion the impact. Fortunately, the ground was soft with rain and springy with patches of moss. She scooped up the chain, slid the crystal dagger off it.

Then she stood and looked up, sighting on Bryn. She would need him to get back up into the Marre pines.But at that moment, she sky seemed to crack open. The moons paled, the clouds vanished in a silent sizzle. She saw this with the same ability that allowed her to project the mind-feeler. To anyone without her power, the night remained as it had been. But she saw-and she knew that Bryn must see it, too-the crack in the sky widen, turn fiery red, and she got her first terrifying glimpse of the Eye of Ajbal.

In an instant, her ghost image vanished. The Eye of Ajbal turned and Varda with it. He knew he had been duped.

Krystren could feel the necromantic forces swirling, gathering, gibbering with glee. She raised her arms so that, as they had planned, Bryn could pull her up to where he crouched. But Bryn was now occupied in defending them from the great flaming orb whose terrifying power had pushed apart the night sky.

Varda trod carefully through the forest. He looked this way and that, his pale eye fully open and unblinking as it searched for her.

"Krystren."

She shivered as she heard him call her name, and she shrank back, moving away from him, not directly but diagonally.

"Krystren."

It was a voice to raise the hackles on even a perwillon's neck.

"I know you're here. It's only a matter of time before I find you."

Great streamers of sorcerous energy emanated from the Eye of Ajbal. It had not yet found Bryn. She could sense him concentrating all his energies on deflecting the streamers without giving it any indication that he was doing it. He did not move; he scarcely breathed. His body had become like mist, floating and insubstantial.

Krystren gathered all this information with part of her mind as she continued to retreat from Varda's stalking. She was well aware that every step took her farther away from Bryn and the safety he provided, but what choice did she have?

She was wholly focused on Varda's frightening, pale eye, turning her energies to keeping herself shadowed from its necromantic gaze. And then she realized her mistake, for in the corner of her eye she registered a small repeating movement. Varda's other eye-the dark one-was blinking in time to the emanations from the Eye of Ajbal. Of course! The archon had summoned it. They were linked, somehow.

Now she stood her ground, tried to free her mind from the fear of the sauromician moving closer and closer while she bent her will to find a way to sever that connection. It was a perilous course of action, for, in so overtly using her mind, she would expose herself to Varda. No matter. The link between him and the spell he had conjured up had to be broken. It was their only hope.

Summoning all her strength, she put it into a single mind-feeler, shaping it, honing it into a great shining scimitar with a blade of razor-sharpness. As she had feared, Varda sensed the gathering of power and turned in her direction. He had not yet seen her, but he was aware now of where she was. In her mind, she could see the dark umbilical that connected the archon with the Eye of Ajbal. He sprinted toward her.

Krystren felt her heartbeat increase, felt the fear swirling at the edges of her mind, and by sheer force of will beat it back. She raised the scimitar toward the umbilical and, without an instant's hesitation, severed the link.

"No!"

Varda's cry echoed through the forest. He reached for her, but she slammed the heel of her hand into his chin, and, as he staggered to his knees, momentarily stunned, she darted away, circling around and back. Already the streamers were fading, the Eye itself closing.

When she reached the spot that she and Bryn had agreed upon, he had already extended the green branch he had fashioned into a spear. The moment she grabbed it, Bryn lifted her off her feet, drawing her up into the ancient Marre pine. Below them, Varda had his arms open wide, his necromantic chanting came to them, but before they could make out a word, Bryn had caught her up around the waist and was racing through the swaying treetops.By now," Bryn said, "Varda will have discovered that the crystal dagger is missing. He will have realized that you took it."

"We will deal with that when we have to," Krystren said. She was not thinking of the archon now, or of the Sintire's desperate attempts to find her. All she could think of was that at last she was going to find her brother.

Bryn stood to one side, while she and the gabir faced each other in the deep shadows of the Marre pines. Even as far away as they had gotten from the encampment, the forest was preternaturally quiet.

Not a breath of air stirred.

She held out the crystal dagger. "We have made good on our promise to you. Now you must tell us where to find our brother."

The gabir stared at the weapon with avid eyes. "You must do one more thing for me."

"No. We have done this much at great peril to ourself and to Bryn. We have done what you asked.

We have an agreement."

"Never mind." The gabir shrugged and looked at her. "In a moment, you will do what I want, anyway."

"Here." She thrust the dagger at him hilt first. "You coveted it. Now take it." She was growing increasing impatient with the creature. Was he now going to renege on his promise?

The gabir's half-dead eyes held hers. "Your brother, Courion, is dead."

"No!" Her body tensed as her mind went into shock. "You are lying!"

"I saw him. I did. In the flashes I get of the Other World, the land of the dead. That is where he is, you see."

"No!" Krystren screamed again and, reversing the crystal dagger, buried it to the hilt in what would have been the gabir's heart if he had a heart.

"Ah, yes." He sighed, his eyes rolling up. "Thank you."

And he sank to her feet, at last dead.

"What. . ." She blinked several times. "What happened?"

"That is what he wanted all along." Bryn came toward her, deftly taking the crystal dagger from her grip. "This was the one thing that had the power to free the gabir from the limbo into which he had been cast." He looked at the crumpled form, all bone and shriveled skin, for the first time with a kind of compa.s.sion. "He is dead now. Free."

Krystren was shaking. She put her hands to her face and wept into them.

At dawn, they continued their pursuit of the party, which was now not as serene as it once had been.

Varda, clearly disturbed by the recent events, snapped at everyone. He even ground a flurry of warrior-beetles beneath his bootheel for no particular reason that they could discern. The others in his party stayed well away from him while he fulminated, intoning spells and incantations incessantly.

Krystren, who instead of sleeping had watched Courion's face revolve in her mind like a ravaged moon, traveled with the archon's crystal dagger in her belt. She had stopped Bryn from throwing it away, wrenching it from his grasp as soon as she had regained her composure. It seemed to throb coldly on her hip, paining her with tiny jolts, doubtless a consequence of its necromantic origin. Nevertheless, she would not part with it.

It kept her close to the gabir-poor creature-and, by extension, her brother. Courion dead! She could scarcely believe it. She had never lived a day in her life without his presence or, at the very least, the thought of him being near or far, at sea or on the land. She thought of all the time they had wasted being apart, not talking to one another. The anger he had felt for her-the blame he had a.s.signed for Orujo's death was so unfair. It was only now, in retrospect, that she could see that it had been easier forhim to blame her than fully to accept Orujo's death. But how could he have accepted it? He had run away from it, as far as he could go. All the way here to the northern continent. She knew now-and understood it completely-that he had accepted this dangerous a.s.signment precisely because he could see his own death waiting for him in Axis Tyr. He had seen it coming and had rushed headlong into its arms. To escape the terrible loss he could not live with. To seek the oblivion of death just as the gabir had done.

Now his a.s.signment lay unfinished. Now the Sintire had got wind of it, had sent their best Ardinals to stop her. And now she harbored the suspicion that Cerro had already known that Courion was dead when he had sent for her. That her brother's sudden demise was precisely the reason for her urgent mission. She was being sent as Courion's replacement. Why else would Cerro have risked briefing her on Courion's original mission? Now she had to finish what her brother had begun.

She knew that the Sintire wanted the information locked away in her head, the information she had been charged with delivering safely to Courion. The sauromicians would want it even more, had they any inkling of what she carried inside her. But she also knew that the sauromicians were gaining power each time they raided the Abbey of Five Pivots. That meant the Sintire were gaining in power, as well. Before she could think of how to complete Courion's mission, she had to stop this party from gaining entrance to the abbey.

A deathlike silence shrouded them all as they drew close to the southern sh.o.r.e of Blue Bone Lake.

On its northern sh.o.r.e, near the fishing village of Silk Bamboo Spring, lay the Abbey of Five Pivots. It was clear, Bryn had said not an hour ago, that this was indeed the party's destination. What their business was there he could not say, but he knew that the sauromicians, being unable to exist within the abbey's precincts, were using the Sintire to plunder it of Ramahan knowledge. This, he said, the Sintire must do in small stages, for they, too, had difficulty with the power bourns that crisscrossed the bedrock of Kun-dala.

"Listen to me, Krystren of the Oronel. I know that you still do not even trust that I am what I say I am. I do not blame you. Your deadly cold war with the Sintire has made distrust a survival instinct. But now I feel I must do whatever I can to dissuade you from your innate distrust.

"One of my kind indeed looks like the monstrosity you have described. Eons ago, he was enslaved by powerful sorcery in the Storeroom beneath what is now the regent's palace in Axis Tyr, charged with guarding The Pearl. It was that very enslavement that turned him into a monstrosity."

"Who could do that? Who could enslave a Hagoshrin?"

"Only one," he said. "The Great G.o.ddess Miina."

Krystren shook her head as if trying to clear it of a question that had no answer. "Why would she do such a thing?"

"From time immemorial Hagoshrin have been enjoined from interfering with the affairs of the Kundalan, which are the sole precinct of Miina. That Hagoshrin broke this sacred Law and, as a consequence, was punished. The Dragons convened and conveyed their condemnation to Miina. She abided by their decision."

"If that is so, then by helping us you, too, have broken the Law."

He looked away from her, out across the tops of the forest to the glittering expanse of Blue Bone Lake. "Look there," he said softly. "The edifice across the water. White it is, like the very tops of the Djenn Marre. Behold the Abbey of Five Pivots."

Krystren was awestruck. High, sloping walls, seemingly made of gleaming ice, hunkered on the far sh.o.r.e. They were as smooth as obsidian, save for the faintest of grooves that revealed them to have been constructed of ma.s.sive blocks of this peculiar stone or mineral. Set into the south-facing wall were a pair of arched doors made of cinnamon chalcedony, an exceedingly hard stone. These were guarded by gates whose petrified heartwood bars were thorned along their lengths, spiked at their tops. From inside this imposing facade rose five impossibly slender towers-one inside each corner of the abbey, the fifth in its exact center-crowned by taffy-pull domes of bright silver, inset with stars composed of a myriad of sapphires.

"It is magnificent," she whispered."Yes," he said. "Isn't it."

Somehow, she felt her heart lifted by the sight of the abbey, but the feeling was short-lived because already the hue of the sun seemed to have changed. Looking up, they both saw in their mind's eye a certain darkening, a rent forming, fiery edges peeling back like blistered skin so that the Eye of Ajbal could slip through.

"Run, Krystren of the Oronel," Bryn said. She could feel his fear, seeping into her like grey sleet. "Run now and do not look back!"

She hesitated, and he shoved her off their branch. She plummeted through the boughs, the Marre pine needles flicking at her painfully, until she stretched out her arms, caught one branch tip, then another. She slowed her fall, regained her balance, swung onto a far lower branch. She thought briefly of trying to climb back to where Bryn now stood, working his Hagoshrin sorcery in order to fend off the evil spell Varda had cast. But thinking of Varda told her what she had to do. She had severed his link with the Eye once before. She would do it again.

Except this time, when she extended her mind-feeler outward toward the dark umbilical, the scimitar she had fashioned exploded soundlessly into ten thousand fragments. She gasped and, at once, she was overcome by vertigo. All strength left her, and she slipped off her perch.

She was falling again, the boughs whispering and whipping past her. And below, she felt the cold, cruel presence of the sauromician archon and knew that he had set this trap for her. Stupid of her to think that he would allow her to use the same tactic twice.

Her shoulder slapped against a branch, and she cried out as pain tore through her. She tumbled head over heels and lost her bearings. Everything became a green-and-brown blur until she hit another, thicker, branch. She grunted, wrapped her legs around it, and was flipped over by her momentum. Then she hung upside down not more than twelve meters off the ground.

And there below her was Varda, grinning with yellow teeth, his icy necromantic eye fixed on her, quivering. She tried to make her brain work, tried to summon her mind-feeler. But it was shackled, unsum-monable, and she heard Varda laughing as he made his way toward her, as green flame crackled at his fingertips. She saw his sixth finger, that black and twisted reminder of Miina's wrath and punishment. It flapped, dead and useless, as he approached her.

She could feel the horror of him, of what he was planning, of what would happen to her in the next twenty-four hours, or thirty-six, however long it would take to break her will, to rape her of all her secrets. She could feel his evil intent spiraling toward her. She grew suddenly dizzy and, losing her grip, fell to the ground at his feet.

He hit her, both with his fist and with the green flame, and she felt such agony as she had never dreamed of. She tried to spin away, but he kept up his a.s.sault. She gasped and moaned, and he grinned down at her, thoroughly enjoying his work.

But she was working through the pain, fixing her gaze on his necromantic eye, and this time she did not become disoriented. Her right hand was at her belt, her fingers grasped the hilt of the crystal dagger and, drawing it free, she used his own momentum against him, slashing at him in the instant he drew her to him in triumph.

He leapt back, his fiery white gaze fixed on the crystal dagger, but he was bleeding. His lips curled back in a feral snarl, and he hurled a cold-fire bolt at her. She used her mind-feeler to deflect it, but paid a price, as pain seared through her mind. She staggered backward, and he came after her, hurling one bolt after another.

She turned and fled through the forest, dodging this way and that to avoid the bolts. It was only when she emerged into a small clearing, and saw, to her horror, that the Eye of Ajbal was not gone, as she had supposed, but rode dark and fiery in the sky, that she realized what he was doing. He was herding her.

As she watched, stupefied, she saw it turning toward her. It had seen her. It was moving toward her.

Someone else must be controlling it.

From the treetops she saw a shadow leap upward. Bryn! The Hagoshrin spread his arms and sailed directly at the Eye.

"Run, Krystren of the Oronel! Run now!""No!" she cried, and launched a mind-feeler, but it was too late or her power was inadequate, enfeebled by the aftermath of Varda's spell. Bryn plowed into the Eye and there was a flash that for an instant blanked her mind, a deep rumble in her mind that made her sick to her stomach. She felt his essence wink out, and she screamed again.

But then she became aware of Varda, and another presence. Guazu, the Sintire Ardinal that accompanied him.

Another Eye of Ajbal was forming, slowly now, almost painfully as if it were struggling to overcome what remained of Bryn's power. Through a gap in the trees, Krystren could see sunlight winking off the ma.s.sed carapaces of the warrior-beetle swarm. Those within the sorcerous vehicle were all concentrated on her.

She turned and ran.

Book three

GATE OF DROWNED.

POINT.

It is inevitable that we come to the Gate of Drowned Point, for it is the path of sorrow and loss. It is the bleak tunnel, the nadir, and therefore serves as the entrance for Transcendence. Gate of Drowned Point is important because it is clear evidence of the Wheel of Life. It is the end of the beginning, the beginning of the end.

-Utmost Source, The Five Sacred Books of Miina

21

The Mysterious Vine

The sky was on fire when Giyan and Minnum came in sight of the Abbey of Five Pivots. But for perhaps a mile Giyan, on the alert, had been preparing herself. She had felt the sorcerous rent between the Realms, had felt as if she were herself being cut. She had glimpsed the bleeding folds as the rent widened, and she had trembled a little at the advent of the Eye of Ajbal. Though she immediately knew that it was not seeking her, the very fact of its coming filled her with foreboding.

"They are here, no doubt about it," Minnum said, peering out over the lake to the northern edge of the Marre pine forest, with one hand to shade his eyes. "An archon is needed to summon the Eye." Minnum glanced at the abbey. "Is this where you think the sauromicians have made their base?"

"All signs point to it, save for one," Giyan said. "As you know, the power bourns are as inimical to sauromicians as they are to daemons. This was part of Miina's punishment. The Abbey of Five Pivots was built after the daemon uprising, and so all its power points were built over bourn lines. As a result, sauromicians cannot exist there."

"I do not understand," Minnum said. "Both sauromicians and an arch-daemon infested your own abbey."

"Floating White is the most ancient of the abbeys; it was built centuries before Miina sent the daemons into the Abyss," Giyan said. "As such, it does not have the requisite safeguards built in. Many of the key areas, including the Library and the temple the archdaemon Hor-olaggia used as a base, are unprotected by power bourns."

"Still, the Dark League could be hidden in nearby Silk Bamboo Spring."

"Or anywhere in that forest yonder."

The cold, sorcerous fire crept across the sky like a claw sc.r.a.ping flesh. Giyan's sense of foreboding deepened. She was living in a dream, a dream manifesting itself, becoming reality before her eyes. A reality with which she had recently become all too familiar.

They set off at a fast trot and soon enough came down through the last gentle slopes and onto the flatter terrain that surrounded the lake. The Marre pines and kuello-firs gave way quickly to sysal and curly-bark river lingot, lighter-limbed deciduous trees that required wetter soil. But between these rustling stands they were obliged to cross open ground where their exposure was a concern. Accordingly, she cast Wall of Hope to give them a degree of protection.

It was Minnum's a.s.signment to locate the archon controlling the Eye of Ajbal, so he was in the lead.

But the closer they came to the northernmost finger of the forest, the more uneasy she became. Her mind was awhirl with the future, and she clamped down, knowing that way lay madness.