2: THE LIES WE TELL

Kihrin’s story

Inside Vol Karoth’s prison, just after Kihrin’s death

The ruins of the city where I died stretched out around me …

Perhaps calling it a ruin was unfair. It was not, in fact, ruined at all.

Nor was it where I’d died, in this lifetime or the last.

It was a memory of such places, however. The city’s buildings stood proud and tall, but no trees lined the streets, no grass decorated the verge. The buildings—inanimate, mineral, lifeless—lay pristine as they wrapped around dusty streets. I felt a strange disconnection—as if the city only existed when I directly gazed at it, dissolving and re-forming as I moved my field of view. I couldn’t help feeling, staring at the buildings stretched out before me, that I inspected a corpse. Nothing living moved around me. No scent—good or bad—perfumed the air. Even the colors were washed out, faded.

The daytime sky loomed a dull leaden gray less like cloud cover than a physical cap over the heaven’s zenith. I couldn’t see the sun. I’m not sure a sun existed.

Only then did I examine myself. I wore funeral white, just a misha and kef with sandals, but the sword at my belt surprised me. It wasn’t Urthaenriel. It was, in fact, the thriss-crafted blade I’d worn for years while training on Ynisthana. Nameless and serviceable, with not a drop of magic owed to its existence. No realer than the clothes, the city, the … everything.

Including me.

My illusionary reality manifested in a hundred subtle ways, from the lack of scent to the way I didn’t feel hunger, weariness, or discomfort. Possibly a failure of imagination on my part. Or perhaps neither hunger nor exhaustion were necessary to communicate this particular metaphor.

A wasteland. Bereft of life, hope, or joy.¹

But I wasn’t alone here. Somewhere out there a lurked a god. A haunted, tortured god. The whole reason I’d come.

If only I had a clue where to find Vol Karoth.

So I searched. I walked through deserted streets for endless spans. I had no way to track time. No way to tell the passing of hours or minutes when no sun moved across the sky, the seasons never changed, my body had no needs, and counting to myself had long since grown tiresome. Oh, I had time. Time to contemplate how arrogant it had been to assume I could just step inside Vol Karoth’s prison and right all wrongs with a finger snap. That I could fix all the mistakes when I barely understood what was wrong.

Then, after some interminable time, I felt him.

Vol Karoth was a hollow place just under my sternum, like the gut twist of loss that scrapes one’s insides clean and leaves only stupefaction in its wake. He lurked in the back of my throat, in the unbidden sting of tears with no cause, in the creeping sour taste of malice under my tongue. Vol Karoth was empty and dark and endless. A bottomless cup that could never be filled.

Before I found him, he found me.

There was no warning before the ambush. One moment, I was walking along, and the next … a surge of anger, of hatred, of darkness barreled toward me. I parried the blow; even then, the force of his swing pushed me back along the street. Stones splintered underfoot. A sound wave blasted outward. Had this been the real world I would have been dead.

Vol Karoth slammed into me, darkness and shadow given form. I couldn’t see his face—he existed as nothing more than an outline—but I knew his expression would have been the most hateful and malicious scowl.

How dare you.

His voice was a raspy whisper, a hollow echo bouncing down long, empty streets.

Now you return? Now you think to conquer me? You fool.

“Wait,” I stammered out. “You wanted me back—”

It was hard to explain oneself while fighting for one’s life. His sword strike bounced past my defenses and sliced a line of brilliant pain along my arm.

Explain how you think I’m a mistake. Explain how you think you can control me. Dominate me. How you can destroy me, take my place. Do you think I cannot recognize betrayal? Was I not born in the fires of betrayal?

So I had a problem.

This wasn’t a child. This wasn’t someone injured and hurting, whose will wasn’t strong enough to fight off a more spiritually mature opponent (myself, I had naïvely assumed). Vol Karoth was a full-grown adult. A full-grown god. A full-grown god who saw through all my plans, knew what I’d intended to do, and laughed at my intentions.

Is it fun, I wonder? To think yourself so much better than me? Than our brother? But the two of you are not so different.

He never stopped attacking.

I wanted to ignore his words, but it was difficult when he began comparing me to Rev’arric. “Don’t—it’s not like that.”

Is it not? Don’t try to hide how you feel. You can’t. Not from me.

The next strike fell along my hip. I screamed as I stumbled backward.

I expected you to be better. His voice was grim, amused, hateful.

I didn’t know what to do. I was keeping him back, but only barely. I didn’t think I’d be able to do so forever. He seemed in no danger of becoming fatigued; I had the terrible suspicion it wasn’t possible for him to become fatigued. He’d stay here in this prison, with all this power, never tiring, never waning, all his hatred focused on me. Forever.

So I did the only thing I could: I ran.

His howls rang behind me as I tripped, stumbled, fell—

And then I found myself somewhere else in the city.

What had just happened? I wasn’t sure. I stood up. I was still in Karolaen. In the distance, Vol Karoth bellowed. Somehow I had managed to escape him.

My heart seized up at the idea of him locating me. He wouldn’t stop searching. He would track me down; he would kill me; he would recover everything he’d lost and more. He’d use me as clay to rejoin the battered shards of his soul. Then he’d be free to unleash himself upon the universe.

I had … I had done the stupidest thing imaginable, hadn’t I? I’d thought I was saving the world, but I’d done just the opposite.

I’d doomed everyone.

I stifled hysterical laughter.

I ran out into the wasteland, away from the city. Maybe I could lose myself out there so Vol Karoth couldn’t find me, but I didn’t hold out much hope.

I didn’t hold out much hope at all.

Senera’s story The Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor Twenty-four days after the Battle of the Well of Spirals

Senera timed it perfectly. She’d spent a week chaining spells together. The moment the gate dumped out everyone at the Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor, she completed the final swirl on the last sigil. She doubted anyone noticed. It would have just been another flash as the circuit completed and the swirling energies overhead closed the gate.

That had been the easy part. Magic was always the easy part.

The hard part was always people.

“Before you try to kill me,” Senera said as everyone stumbled or pulled themselves to their feet again, “you need to know I’ve brought you all here to help Kihrin.”

The witch spoke the words in a rush, hoping to let them hang on the air before Teraeth or Janel left her too busy fighting for her life to engage in banter. They weren’t the only ones she worried might react poorly to what she’d done, but they were the most volatile.

She took quick stock of her kidnap victims. There hadn’t been time to sort through the people she wanted versus those she didn’t, no time to do anything but bring the whole and entire group, damn the consequences. Teraeth, Janel, Thurvishar—she’d had to bring them, obviously. Galen was also essential. But the others? Kalindra, maybe, since she and Kihrin had been lovers. Talea, though? Xivan? Senera didn’t even know why Talea was there. Perhaps Xivan had brought her, although she had no idea what Xivan had been doing on Devors either.

Or why she was dressed like the main character in Pirate Queen of the Desolation.²

Galen’s wife, Sheloran, was also present, whom Kihrin had met exactly once.³ Lastly, two people with highly suspect loyalties: Qown, who still worked for Relos Var; and Talon, who only worked for chaos and mischief.⁴

Senera knew it was an odd tableau; a situation where analogies of kindling and matches might yet prove apt (even if her “guests” were soaking wet). The Lighthouse’s arrival room was circular, large, and devoid of windows. Ascending and descending staircases led to other floors, while a small passage joined the Lighthouse to the manor beyond. Painted black glyphs lined the stone interior. Most of the people she’d kidnapped wouldn’t consider them strange only because most of the people she’d kidnapped had never been to Shadrag Gor before.⁵ If they had, they’d have recognized those glyphs as new.

But none of them, not even Thurvishar, understood their purpose.

There was considerable irony to her scrambling, desperate fight for time, here, in this place, where time seemed in infinite supply. Yet she rushed for each precious second, for a chance to explain.

“You can’t expect us to believe—” Janel had already gone for her sword.

“Just hear me out!” Senera cried. If she could just explain …

But she had even less time than she’d believed. The Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor wasn’t a safe place anymore. Senera had no one to blame but herself; she’d made it that way.

In that moment, Vol Karoth struck.

The world changed.

Inside Vol Karoth’s prison. The arrival.

I’m not sure how many times Vol Karoth and I fought or for how long. It seemed like forever.

We fell into a routine. He always found me. No matter how far I ran or how well I hid, he eventually arrived with a sword in his hand and hate in his heart. Time had no meaning, so I couldn’t be certain how long it took him each time. It was forever, and it was instant.

Then we would fight until I became so exhausted I stumbled or he slipped a blow past my defenses. Then I would find myself somewhere else. At which point, the whole game would start up again, a cycle I hadn’t figured out how to break, let alone defeat.

Vol Karoth had just finished a swing powered with so much energy it had shattered one of the buildings behind me, when we felt the others arrive.

I couldn’t tell you how I knew.

It’s not like people appeared out of thin air. But I felt them. Twelve souls, several of which meant so much—everything—to me.⁶

“No,” I whispered. What? How? We were inside Vol Karoth’s prison, weren’t we? Nothing should have been able to get to us here. The one thing I had been able to count on was that no matter what happened to me, at least the others would be safe.

You brought friends.

“No.” I ducked away from the slash before charging him. I flipped, dodged the blow I knew he’d aimed at my legs, tagged him along the arm instead. It was a meaningless act of defiance, but I wanted him focused on me. “Leave them alone. It’s just you and me. And we don’t have to be enemies.”

Oh? You’re ready to surrender, then?

“Have it your way. I guess we do have to be enemies.” I jumped up as he slammed his sword down on the ground, fracturing the stone paving underneath.

You don’t want me hurting your friends. But they aren’t your friends. You don’t have friends. Friends are a lie.

“They’re not. You used to have them too, you know.”

Vol Karoth laughed at me.

No, I never did. That was a lie too. But what you call friendship … ah, what a joke. After how you hurt them. Shall I show you?

I felt a sweep of panic. “No, you don’t have to—”

Let’s look at the lies we tell ourselves.

The world changed.