Light and Dark
Caelith turned, incredulous at the sight that greeted his eyes. Directly before the colossal statue of Hrea stood the frail, diminutive form of a young girl.
“Anji?” Eryn cried out.
The waif had fixed her gaze on the gigantic figure towering over them all. “You are all lies, Ekteia, and have been from the beginning.”
Ekteia beat his breast, the thunderous sound reverberating throughout the dome. “I am the god of power and war! I am come to justify my people and release them from the chains of oppression!”
“You are a temperamental, spoiled child who is blind to the greater truths of the spheres,” Anji replied with a small, stern voice. “You meddle with the gifts of mortality without any understanding of their consequences.”
“I know the founding decrees as well as you, Hrea,” the huge being replied, his voice seeming to shake the ground.
“But no part of you knows the mind of truth or the power of faith these mortals wield. Their free will is the greatest gift given to mortals; you have squandered it long enough.”
“That was not my fault! It was that dreadful device that held me here among them,” Ekteia grumbled.
“It was you who inclined others to break it,” she countered. “That they did so was to their shame, but it was your fault nevertheless. Your prison was of your own making.”
Anji gestured with the slightest of movements in her right hand.
A thunderclap resounded through the rotunda, so loud that Caelith ducked. When he looked up, the colossus of Ekteia had vanished. In its place stood what appeared to be a surly little boy, the twin of the young form of Hrea. The young goddess folded her arms with impatience. “Come, brother, you have caused enough trouble.”
“We could have been great together,” Ekteia said, turning to Jorgan, his voice now young and full of mischief. “But it doesn’t matter now, does it? The worlds are all set in motion and there is nothing to be done but watch them spin down to their mutual doom.” His visage began to thin, dissolving in the air as it receded into the great statue behind him. “Soon enough will your souls be weighed before us and that to my great amusement!”
With that, all that remained was the cold, silent statue smiling above them.
The young waif they had known as Anji turned with a satisfied sigh and stepped toward the statue that bore her true name.
“Wait!” Caelith called out, hurt and anger in his voice. “Are these—are these the gods of Rhamas—small children behaving badly? Is this the hope that my people have sought in their hearts?”
Anji stopped and turned toward Caelith. “Mortal Caelith, the ways of the gods are both simple and complex; their eyes see further and their minds contemplate truths for which you are not yet prepared. Some mortals turn their sight toward the false comfort of darkness; they see less and less until they are blind, like Ekteia, to anything that is real. Others—like you, I believe—turn their eyes toward the light and see more and farther with each new dawn. Each takes comfort in where they are relative to the light. We appear as we do before you here because this is as much as you are ready to understand. Ekteia had no power over you that you did not willingly give him; I have no more power over you than you willingly give me. Yours is the power of choice and choose you must; for you both stand on the precipice of your destiny, the fates of worlds hanging in the balance. Ekteia has tried to topple that balance, to manipulate and confuse your course, but there is still time for both of you and for your worlds.”
“Both of us?” Jorgan said, his voice shaking.
“Think on this, young Jorgan,” Hrea said, turning her large eyes on the Inquisitas. “Your salvation is not found among the false gods of the Dragonkings, for they have not the power to grant the forgiveness you seek—nor is it found in making your pride a slave to vengeance and hate. The end of the mystics you hate is your own undoing; for the appetite of the dragons has turned to the flesh of men, irrespective of the Pir or the mystics. Your answer is Caelith’s answer; you must find it and soon, young mortal. Satinka approaches, and should you fall, both your nations shall fall with you!”
“Then stay with us,” Caelith said urgently. “Help us!”
“It is not given to me to intervene in the fates chosen of men, Caelith. You have been given all you need in this place, mortal,” Hrea said softly, her visage fading into nothingness until only her voice remained. “It is here that men decide the fate of the worlds.”
“Anji?” Margrave asked quietly.
“Yes, Margrave,” came the quiet, now disembodied voice drifting through the hall.
“Thank you,” the Loremaster said, “for putting up with me.”
A strange silence descended on the great circular room. Caelith looked at Jorgan; the Inquisitas was breathing hard, his hands shaking uncontrollably. Even Margrave was silent, looking back at Caelith with a questioning look on his face—unsure as to what they were to do next.
Caelith looked up past the faces of the three enormous statues that graced the hall. Ancient Rhamas was there arrayed before him in the fresco overhead, the Emperor holding a dragonstaff, commanding the dragons around him to bow before him. He looked more closely at the fresco; the Emperor held the dragonstaff in his right hand but his left was reaching back behind him, his palm hovering over . . .
Caelith gasped.
There, in the fresco, pictured under the extended arm of the Emperor, was the bronze globe from the pedestal. Caelith quickly looked around the wide floor, panicking until his eyes caught sight of the bronze globe between the statues of Hrea and Ekteia. He stepped over, reached down and picked it up. The exterior globe was formed like a cage of intricately forged and carved bronze, two halves held together with intricate fasteners. A single shaft pierced the surface with a long spindle on the outside and a crystal globe—pulsing with an odd light—held in its center. Caelith looked up once more at the fresco. There was no doubt now; the device was the same.
More than that, on either side of the Emperor stood two other figures—winged Hrea and demonic Ekteia—each holding a globe identical to the Emperor’s and facing him. Rays from all three of the globes combined over the Emperor’s head, forming with their shared radiance the single column of light that was the Pillar of the Sky.
A winged woman . . .
Caelith’s eyes went wide as he looked to the bronze spherical device in his hands. He looked up quickly at his brother. “Jorgan!”
The Inquisitas shook his head nervously—he was staring at the statue of Ekteia above him.
“Jorgan! Please, I need—”
“No!” Jorgan snarled between clenched teeth.
“Jorgan! I can’t do this without—”
“No!” Jorgan’s entire upper body was shaking.
A distant screeching penetrated the hall.
Caelith’s blood suddenly ran chill. It was a sound, once heard, that was forever burned into the mind; the cry of Satinka—Dragonqueen of Ost Batar—cut through the walls and into their souls.
“Eryn! We need Jorgan! We’ve got to convince him—”
“No!” Jorgan screamed, sweat pouring off his shaved pate, his eyes bright and filled with tears. His body shook with rage. “Soulless! Blasphemers! It’s a trick! You’ve conjured all this up! You did this! You killed the dwarf, and you’d kill me, too, but that’s not enough to kill my body! You want to kill my soul as well!” Jorgan collapsed onto the floor of the temple, his hands barely holding his head above the fitted stones of the floor. His voice fell to a whimper. “Everything I’ve wanted . . . everything I was promised . . . forgive me . . . forgive me . . .”
Caelith took a step closer to his brother. The sphere cradled in one hand, he reached out with the other.
Jorgan’s head snapped up, hatred burning in his eyes. “No! I do not believe it!” He lunged for his staff lying but ten feet away from him across the floor.
Caelith leaped backward, trying to find cover behind the short pillar—knowing it would not be enough.
Caelith glanced quickly at Lucian. His friend stood transfixed halfway between the wall and the center of the vast room, his hands held still but with a building tension in their muscles. Lucian was reading for the Deep Magic.
Lucian moved, his hands suddenly rising. Great arcs of lightning ran from his fingers across the ground, tearing at the stones as it flashed toward Jorgan. A pungent smell filled the air after the electric blue snapped across the distance.
Jorgan saw it and spun his dragonstaff suddenly, connecting its head with the ground. The crackling bolts ran up the staff but stopped partway, gathering themselves into a flashing ball, each bolt snapping at the heels of another. Jorgan deftly spun the staff once more in his hands, reversing it around its crackling center.
Caelith, astonished, crossed his arms, weaving them into a pattern before him, searching within for the magic as well. He could almost see the stage from the dream superimposed around them; the winged woman stood beating on glass doors, unable to reach Caelith, while a little demon played with the bronze globe next to him. The winged woman looked terrified and the demon was not paying any attention to him, yet he had to draw on them somehow.
Lucian raised his hands reflexively, reaching once more for the magic to defend him. Caelith had nearly finished, the Deep Magic welling up within him.
Too late; the bolt flew from the end of Jorgan’s staff just as the air before Lucian began to frost over and solidify. The frozen air shattered as the bolt passed through it, breaking against Lucian’s chest. Caelith’s friend flew backward with a cry, falling hard against the stones of the forum floor.
Caelith released the power within him. The shattered stones that lay scattered across the forum floor leaped up, tumbling through the air toward Jorgan.
Jorgan quickly tossed his staff into his left hand, then raised his right. In that instant, Caelith realized that Jorgan, too, was on the stage in the dream, not just as a symbol or metaphor but a participant.
The hurtling stones exploded at Jorgan’s touch, shards flying away from him. Eryn ducked behind the pedestal while Margrave yelped, diving behind the statue of the woman. Caelith threw himself flat against the ground, the shards tearing burning pain as they sliced across his back.
“Deep Magic!” Caelith shouted angrily at Jorgan. “You are a mystic!”
Jorgan slowly lowered his outstretched hand, his eyes fixed on Caelith. “Yes—the only legacy I received from my father, though it was left to High Priest Tragget to train me in the art! How ironic that you should die by the very power that—”
A tremendous crash filled the room as a section of the dome collapsed inward, its massive stones raining down on the floor below. Jorgan snatched his staff and rolled quickly out of the way, barely missing being crushed by a falling slab. Eryn tried to run from the cascade but was caught on the back by a large chunk of stone and slammed to the ground. Caelith could no longer see Margrave, Kenth, or anyone else through the choking dust that had erupted in the hall. Blinking, he looked up.
The dragon had arrived, its huge head craning through the opening. She trumpeted, her voice deafening in the confined space, as she began clawing at the shattered opening in the dome, scrambling to reach her prey.
I am in a strange place for a faery indeed. I stand as though in two places at once. In one place, I stand with my companions in the Hall of Conquest, fearful of our impending doom. In the other place, however, I stand once more on a stage. I see the ranks of the dead before me, watching me, screaming at me from their benches in the hall. Many strange creatures surround me here but two are familiar to me; the wingless man and the little long-eared Famadorian creature holding something in his hands.*
The little Famadorian is being attacked by another of his kind; a winged, vicious creature whose long talons rake the poor little fellow mercilessly. I step forward to try and stop the assault, but the wingless man runs forward, a long blade in his hand. He thrusts it through the body of the evil creature. It shrivels and dies from the blow, falling to dust and scattering before me.
I hear myself speaking, though whether to my companions or to these strange visions, I cannot tell. “We need help,” I say urgently. “We need time.”
The wingless man covers his ears at the sound of my voice; it is painful to him and the small creature as well.
“We don’t have time!” It is Gosrivar speaking from the hall.
“Then we’ve got to find a way to slow them up.” Valthesh is speaking to me, though her words seem to come from a faraway place. “To give you time to put an end to all this madness. Obadon, are you with me?”
I glance about the world of the stage. The small green creature holds a device—a globe of bronze, its halves brought together. The wingless man holds another that is of an identical fashion.
“Yes,” I hear Obadon from the waking world. “But against the undead of the Black Guard—what weapon is of any use?”
I look into the hall in the waking world and cast about for something that may be of use when my eye settles on it: a long sword of gleaming metal. I see the faces of the dead writhing within. I bolster myself, reach down, and pull it into my vision of the stage.
Lightning flashes from the bronze globes of the wingless man and the little Famadorian, arcing down the length of the sword. Its hilt becomes curved and gnarled, the straight edge of its blade bends into a wave pattern like the path of a snake. As I watch the souls within the blade fly free, rising up from the blade, spreading their spectral wings and soaring into the rafters above the stage.
“This weapon!” I cry out.
FAERY TALES BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME VIII, FOLIO 3, LEAVES 67-71
Aislynn’s voice rang through the hall as she raised her arm, brandishing a sword she had pulled from the treasures scattered about them.
Obadon looked dubiously at the three-foot-long wavy blade. He reached forward, taking its handle and visibly quaking at its touch. “It speaks to me,” he declared. “It is repulsive.”
“Perhaps, but it is a frightful blade for frightful work,” Aislynn replied, her eyes strangely unfocused. “I think I know how to make this right, but you’ve got to give me time.”
“And if we fail?” Obadon asked.
“Then the dead will have no rest and the living shall pay the price for their suffering.”