Revelations
I shout “Run!” to Eryn and Margrave as the brilliant light falls on the faces of the startled Jorgan and the dwarf. I bolt across the floor, the strange device still in my hands. I hope that I may find some cover, passage, or shelter against the deadly attack that surely is coming. As I draw the blinding ornament away from the pedestal in the center of the room, the column of light flashes out of existence, and plunges the entire room into a strange, unnatural darkness. It confuses me for a moment, as I find myself running headlong into sudden and complete blackness. Confused, panicked, I slow my frantic pace, fearful that I might run blindly into one of the stone walls.
I hear applause.
The darkness parts like a curtain before me. I am standing on the stage of the dream. The rows of benches are filling with thousands of masked creatures, mystics flooding into the hall rising to a standing ovation. Their wild cheers resound through the hall.
The globe is no longer in my hands.
“Father!” I shout from the stage. “Father!”
“Ah, the noise of the crowd,” says the dwarf with the ragged scar running from his shoulder down his back. “So hard to hear when the world is cheering so loudly. That applause is for you, Caelith! You’ve found the land of promise! You showed them the way to their dreams.”
I turn toward the dwarf in horror. “No! It was you!”
“Me? How modest of you.” The dwarf smiled. “I never make anyone do anything, I thought you knew me better than that by now! They are coming because they want to come! They come because they want to believe. Now they are coming to the land of dreams and there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it. And they will get there, of course, to the land of eternal dreams where they need never wake again!”
“Father!” I shout into the crowd.
“He cannot hear you!”
I search desperately around the stage. There, emerging from the shadows, is the winged woman I have seen so often in my dreams, her face drawn and haggard. She is desperately searching for something among the many masked players that are on the stage, all taking their bows before the enthusiastically cheering audience. I try to move toward her, but the other players on the stage remain in my way. I shift about them, desperate to reach her, but I make no progress.
One of the masked figures, clad entirely in crimson red, turns toward me. In his hand he holds a dragon by its neck. It writhes slowly under his grip.
“He has followed you here,” the dwarf hisses through a tight smile. “Everything is as it should be—so well wrapped up to please the crowd, eh? Your doom and your brother’s doom; it is the same doom, and isn’t it fitting that you should meet it here?”
BOOK OF CAELITH BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME IX, FOLIO 1, LEAF 82
Aislynn gazed in horror at the hall, unwilling to look further, unable to look away.
The treasures of a thousand conquests lay scattered in a careless jumble across the polished floor of the long hall between pillars of stone supporting the arched ceiling high over their heads. The columns, however, were twisted and warped as though some heat from an unimaginable forge had melted them where they stood, bending them away from the center of the room. The room was as silent as death itself, yet in every gleaming surface, every polished tile, every glistening jewel she saw the desperate faces of the dead staring back at her in envy and despair as though they were trapped within the objects themselves. The images of their hands clawed at her from polished casings, struggling to get out. The reflection of their screaming mouths gaped silently at her from the floor beneath her feet. Mirrors lining the hall were filled with the desperate dead.
Aislynn trembled.
“What—what is this abomination?” Obadon breathed through clenched teeth.
“The Kyree never left their homeland,” Aislynn said with a shudder. “They are all still here.”
“Aislynn!” Valthesh said urgently. “There is not much time!”
Aislynn drew in her breath, taking courage from it. “It’s here—somewhere—we just have to find it.”
“Find what?” Gosrivar asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, frustration in her voice. “I—wait, I see something—something in the Sharaj. Creatures in masks and—”
“What is she talking about?” Obadon asked.
“Quiet!” Valthesh commanded.
“I see it,” she replied, her eyes narrowing as though trying to see something at a distance. “It’s—quickly, come with me!”
She dashed across the floor, her companions following, her wings still too wet to accommodate her with flight, her footfalls wet against the pleading faces trapped in the marble below her. She tried not to think of them, of what anguish they might be enduring, as she ran between them, their eyes and faces following her every move. She passed several of the pillars, then turned to her left, drawn by a vision of the dream that seemed to impose itself on her waking eyes.
She found it on the far side of a broken pillar.
“This is it,” she said as the others approached.
“But it’s so small,” Obadon said uncertainly. “It looks like a dagger.”
A bronze sphere, of intricate workmanship, lay in two halves atop a pedestal, one with a long spindle extending through it, its sharp end pointing into the bowl while a crystal bead stuck out the rounded side. A strange darkness surrounded it, making it difficult to look at in the dim hall.
“How curious,” Aislynn said as she reached toward it.
“No.”
Aislynn stopped, glancing back at her companions. “Why? What is wrong?”
They were not looking at her, however. Gosrivar and Obadon stared up at the pillar behind them, Valthesh taking several careful steps back from it.
The creature’s legs were missing, as were its lower arms and hands; both submerged in a giant rock. Only its torso and the left side of its head protruded from the stone, bent backward in a tortuous position. Near the crest of the broken pillar was the unmistakable carved outline of featherless wings pressed back against the curve of the stone, a great white crack running down through one stone wing.
“A faery of the Sharaj!” Aislynn gasped. “The Kyree stories were true!”
The stone head pulled free of the rock with a terrible cracking noise. There were no features on its right side; only broken, ragged shards from the rock pillar. The creature gazed down at them with its single eye.
“You have come for me?” the stone faery asked with hope and agony. “You have come to free me?”
“What have you done?” Gosrivar asked quietly.
The stone faery turned its gaze to the scholar. “Too much—not enough. I was a child given the power of death for a plaything. How could I have known? How could I have known?” The stone faery pulled back its head, screaming in its unending anguish.
“You’ve found it, right enough,” Valthesh said to Aislynn, her voice shaking slightly. “Whatever you have to do, be quick about it!”
“What must we do?” Aislynn asked the stone faery.
“I—I do not know.”
“What?” Valthesh gaped. “You do not know? You caused all this!”
The grotesque stone head lolled in her direction. “I was captured, brought before the Emperor of the Kyree. I had a gift—a new truth of a place where visions could be made real.”
“The Sharaj!” Aislynn nodded.
“The Kyree have always been conquerors,” the stone faery said with a sigh. “Down the long centuries, their plunder of a hundred nations was brought in tribute here for the glory of the Emperor. Each proved the military supremacy of the Kyree Imperium save one; a mystery that troubled the Emperor’s mind. Some years before my capture, the Kyree discovered a nation that had vanished, leaving all its wealth behind as though they had simply walked into the night. In the center of their greatest city, the Kyree scouting party found a single, secured vault. With great difficulty—and no small loss of life among them—they managed to open it—and found that object.”
The torn-stone head nodded toward the spindle and bronze-tooled hemispheres on the pillar.
“It was in pieces when they brought it back here as spoils of conquest, and so it remained here,” the stone faery said, “until I came.”
“You tried to put it back together,” Gosrivar finished.
“He convinced me to—told me that it would lead me to greater power in my new truth,” the stone faery wailed.
“Who? The Emperor?” Obadon asked.
“My companion in the vision—the faery whose symbol of a scarred wing I now bear—my mark that I am his and my shame.” The stone faery breathed out with difficulty. “And in my act my soul was anchored to this place, my torment unending along with the spirits of the Kyree I have condemned with me!” The stone faery’s face contorted in agony once more, its screams resounding through the hall.
Aislynn turned away from the terrible sound, facing the device once more. The bronze globe shifted in her vision. She saw it smashed on the ground, with a pointy-eared monster shifting the pieces around. He sat on the wide platform she had seen so often in her dreams of late. He held the device up toward her, smiling with hideous sharp teeth.
“Wait,” she said slowly. “This is wrong.”
“Of course it’s wrong,” Valthesh said, nodding, urgency rising in her voice. “All of this is wrong!”
“No,” Aislynn said. “I mean this artifact. I’ve seen it in the Sharaj, but it did not look like this. The pieces aren’t in the right places.”
“You mean,” Obadon said, incredulously, “all of this happened because this faery put it together wrong?”
“Yes,” Aislynn said, looking up. “That’s exactly what I think!”
“But the question is,” Valthesh pressed, “do you know how it is supposed to go together? We’ve seen what the wrong assembly can do—what other horror will you unleash if you put it together in some other wrong way.”
“We need help,” Aislynn said, her words hurried. “We need time.”
“We don’t have time!” Gosrivar shouted. “Shaeonyn is already on her way!”
“Then we’ve got to find a way to slow them up,” Valthesh said, “to give you time to put an end to all this madness. Obadon! Are you with me?”
“Yes,” he replied. “But against the undead of the Black Guard—what weapon is of any use?”
The dwarf with the white scar draws near me. “Time for your final bow, Caelith! Whether you die in your world or in mine will be of no consequence. You have served your purpose. It is time for you to leave the stage.”
He motions to the crimson masked man, who approaches and removes his mask. It is Jorgan, the dragon in his hand stiffening, its eye getting larger and larger as he draws near.
In that moment, a crash is heard on the far side of the stage. A small, ugly demon has tumbled onto the stage, his long, pointed ears quivering as he sits up. His large eyes look dazed as though he did not expect to be here.
The dwarf turns, his voice rising to an ear-piercing screech. He speaks with the sound of steel on slate, his long hair and beard vanishing as his skin darkens to a reddish brown and dragonlike leathery wings sprout from his back. He springs into the air with a terrible sound, long talons thrust from the ends of his fingers as he swerves toward the hapless little monster.
I see it then; the demon holds a device identical to my own—a sphere of bronze surrounding an ornate shaft.
Jorgan turns, distracted by the ferocious spectacle. I reach out, stripping him of the dragon in his hand. Its head writhes horribly in my grip, struggling to be free of me, but I hold it fast. I charge forward, pointing the sharp tail of the dragon, now a hardened spear in my hand, and thrust it suddenly into the back of the winged demon.
The stage crumbles around me, the stones flashing into dust, the audience swept away as dust before a sudden gale. The darkness engulfs us just before . . .
BOOK OF CAELITH BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME IX, FOLIO 1, LEAVES 83-85
Jorgan’s dragonstaff quivered in Caelith’s hands. It had passed completely through the dwarf, impaling him. The faux-Cephas stood with a look of surprise on his face. Caelith, too, was shocked, releasing the staff and stepping quickly back.
Caelith choked out, “Jorgan, look!”
The dwarf began to laugh.
Jorgan blinked, stepping forward.
“No blood,” Caelith rasped.
The dwarf turned, his now booming laughter ringing through the hall. He reached down with his thick hands, drawing the dragonstaff directly out of his body and casting it carelessly onto the stone floor. Not a single drop of blood flowed from the closing wound; the staff remained unstained. “You surprised me, Caelith! That’s rare indeed! You shall have a great place in my kingdom!” The dwarf vanished, his visage shifting once more but growing. Larger and taller, stronger and more powerful, the figure enlarged until its head nearly touched the dome of the rotunda overhead. Its hair shone with brilliant light, its eyes blue fire. Lightning burst from its fingertips, its voice shaking the stones around them.
“Your quest is over, mortals!” the voice intoned, booming through the hall. “Now you shall avenge me and my faithful of ages past! I shall lead you and all my people in taking back with blood that which was stolen from us; for I am the god of Rhamas, the god of retribution for all humanity!”
“No, you are not,” spoke the quiet voice from before the colossal statue of the woman.