50: NECESSARY SACRIFICES
Talea’s story
Inside Vol Korath’s prison
After Senera’s collapse
Talea and Xivan appeared on a disused but not unpleasant city street, with overgrown weedy verges and wild trees lining the thoroughfare. The architecture was like nothing Talea had ever seen before. It all had a sameness to it, though, as if it had been built at the same time by the same team of stonemasons. Pretty, but repetitive.
“Okay, so now we just need to find Senera or any of the others!” Talea said. She pulled a coin from her sash and flipped it at random. “That way,” she said, pointing.
Xivan stared. “Talea, that wasn’t a binary choice. We could go any direction.”
“Yes, but I was thinking of going this way or that way,” Talea admitted. “So the coin said that way.” She shrugged. “Basically, any way is as good as any other.”
“Fine.” Xivan pulled out her sword and began stalking that way. After a few minutes of walking, she paused. “Someone’s over there.”
“Well, only one way to find out who it is,” Talea said, grinning broadly. “Let’s go take a look.”
They rounded the corner and found themselves in the midst of an entire platoon of armed soldiers.
“I didn’t see that coming,” Talea said.
Each of the footmen was armed and armored the same, in red-and-gold uniforms of a make and style unknown to her. Open-faced helmets protected the heads of the men … and women, Talea noticed. Some of those faces, however, lacked faces.
“What the—?” she asked.
Xivan shrugged. “Fight now, discuss existential horror later,” she ordered. Putting actions to words, she stepped forward and swung her imchii toward the nearest soldier. The man put up his arm to defend himself, and Xivan’s sword rebounded from striking his armor, which was a lot sturdier than it looked.
“Right,” Talea said. “Aim for seams. Got it. Thanks for that sage advice.”
“So glad I could provide one more lesson for you.” Xivan grinned wildly as she spun, ducked her opponent’s riposte, and slashed upward into the exposed underside of his arm. Cloth and flesh tore.
But he didn’t bleed. The grin on Xivan’s face faded. This was suddenly not nearly as much fun.
Talea parried a thrust, struck back one-handed only for her blade to skitter off her enemy’s armor. He chopped at her legs, forcing her to jump back. He had reach on her, as well as a good sixty pounds. If she couldn’t find a way to close inside his guard, this was going to be a highly unpleasant bout on her end.
She feinted high to force him to lift his blade to protect that blank face. Then she rolled under him, coming up beside and ramming her blade two-handed into the joint between his helmet and his pauldron. With a hard, sideways tug, she severed his spine.
This seemed to bother her enemy only slightly.
“Um, Xivan?” Talea said, allowing a note of worry to creep into her voice.
“Yeah, I’m having the same problems,” Xivan replied. “I suggest we switch to plan J.”
Talea parried another swing, backpedaled as she caught a second soldier moving to flank her on her left. “But I didn’t bring a bladder of goat’s milk with me. Did you?” she replied, ducking under a lateral cut from the newcomer.
“Ha,” Xivan replied. Then, “Run!”
“Running!” Talea agreed, smashing her sword against that of her first enemy to put him out of line so she could turn and flee.
They ran side by side, clattering footsteps behind letting them know they were pursued. Talea felt something was wrong as they sprinted away from the battle. It came to her; Xivan wasn’t holding back to “let” Talea keep up.
Talea glanced over and saw Xivan panting for breath.
Oh. Right.
Well, that’s not ideal, she thought. The one time it would be helpful for her to be dead …
Wait. That’s it. Dead.
“Hey,” Talea forced out between gasps. “Can you just.… you know … kill them? Herald of … Death … and all … that?”
“Can’t,” Xivan panted, her breathing even harsher than Talea’s. But that made sense; she hadn’t needed to breathe in years. Her dear teacher was out of practice. “Not … alive … can’t … die…,” Xivan finished.
Talea craned her head to look behind. Somewhere in the last several turns, they’d managed to lose their pursuers. She put a hand on Xivan’s arm and slowed, stopped, bent over holding her sides and gasping loudly.
Xivan did the same.
After what felt like several minutes, they’d both recovered enough to talk.
“What?” Talea asked.
“I said they’re not really ‘alive,’” Xivan said. “Probably why I didn’t sense them until we ran into them.”
“Problematic.” Talea chewed on her lower lip. “Okay, so our swords are basically useless, and your powers won’t help us here. That leaves me. Give us a moment to—” She looked around, frowning.
She still hadn’t seen Eshi since Thurvishar had sent them to this place.
“Er, I mean, give me a moment,” she corrected herself. She tried to figure the odds of a wall collapsing in the right direction if pushed or of there being a runaway cart at just the right time if they …
Nothing.
Nothing happened by “luck” in this world, because it wasn’t a world.
“It’s no good,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m powerless too. Damn.” She kicked at an imaginary rock and liked to believe it would have flown a good distance had there actually been anything there to kick.
“Okay,” Xivan said. “So we go at this a different way.”
“What way?” Talea asked. “No weapons, no powers … Are we going to just ask politely and rely on the good manners of people with no faces?”
“Nope,” Xivan said. “We’re going to do this really old style. For me, I mean.”
“I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Before I met Azhen, I was your typical Khorveshan swordmaster’s daughter,” Xivan said.
“Meaning?” Talea prompted.
“Meaning,” Xivan said, “I had to sneak in and out of the house to meet up with my lovers, just like any other girl my age.” Xivan grinned again, that same wild, feral grin as earlier. Talea almost swooned when she realized what it meant; Xivan was having fun. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Xivan said, and she explained the plan.
“Hello,” Talea said, waving at the soldiers from the corner of the building. “Say, you folks don’t happen to know where a girl could get a spiced sag roll in this city, do you?”
Several heads turned her way. A faceless man in slightly more ornate armor, which Talea took to mean he was an officer of some sort, pointed. Swords were drawn, and half the platoon ran toward her.
“Oh, this way? Okaythanksbye!” Talea turned and ran. Only this time, she ran slower than her flat-out sprint, letting the charging horde of heavily armed creatures stay just far enough away that they wouldn’t realize they stood no chance of catching her.
She ran to the edge of the block, made a right, and kept going. Halfway down the street, she glanced back. Sure enough, the group was still only a dozen or so yards behind her. She picked up just a little speed, so by the time she made the next right, the gap had widened to twenty yards.
It was almost thirty by the time she made the next right, running along the road toward the rest of the soldiers.
This had better work, she thought to herself, or I’m going to have to have a “I’m hole-y-er than you” talk with Xivan.
The soldiers still milling around the front turned to face her, seeing her running toward them. “Oops,” she said loudly. “Did I make a wrong turn?”
Most of that group drew weapons and ran toward her.
“Now or never!” she yelled.
Now, as it turned out.
From the building the soldiers were guarding, Xivan emerged with Senera, who looked like shit. What didn’t look like shit, however, what looked simply magnificent and beautiful and perfect, was the way the sorceress lifted her arms and made a sweeping motion with her downward-trailing fingers. Fire erupted from them and fanned out, catching most of the contingent of faceless goons.
Talea smiled. They might be hard to cut, but it turned out that they burned quite prettily.
Then she stopped smiling. Because behind those soldiers?
Were more soldiers.
Kihrin’s story
Inside Vol Korath’s prison
We’d all felt it when Vol Karoth took Senera. He’d wanted us to feel it. He was practically rubbing our noses in it.
Teraeth came over and put his arm around me. “We’ll find her,” he whispered. “We’re getting pretty good at this.”
“You’re lying,” I said. We were not getting pretty good at this.
As if to emphasize the point, Vol Karoth appeared in the middle of the room.
“Fuck.” Galen went for his sword.
I think Qown tried to do something, rearrange reality until we were someplace else, but Vol Karoth just … stopped it.
I felt my heart sink. At some point, Vol Karoth had become a lot more powerful, and I’d missed it. When had that happened?
I’ve just saved your lives.
“Excuse me?” Teraeth said. “Call me skeptical, because that doesn’t seem like your style.” He looked uncomfortable for any number of reasons, not least of which was because Vol Karoth hadn’t been stopping by for friendly chats. This was a break in pattern.
I, for one, assumed a break in pattern was bad.
Senera intended to link the Lighthouse and everyone in it to the other side of the Nythrawl Wound. Which wouldn’t kill either of us, but it most certainly would kill all your friends.
“So that’s why you took Senera,” I said.
Do you want to spend eternity locked away in a dying universe while Rev’arric takes over this one? I don’t. Aren’t you grateful? I saved you. His mockery was almost as black as his body.
The others were silent. I supposed I couldn’t blame them for that. “Fine, so now she’s here. Let her go. There’s no reason to keep her in that … loop.”
Vol Karoth circled around me. I had to turn to keep him in view. It accomplished what I wanted. I have all Three Sisters now.
I blinked. “What did you say? Tya, Taja, and Thaena aren’t—” But Taja and Thaena.
Damn it. Taja and Thaena.
It had been so cute of Eshimavari to refer to what Talea was becoming as a “herald,” but I could see the truth of matters easily enough now.
Tya and Taja had indeed learned from all Grizzst’s attempts to resurrect the Eight. The wizard had been wrong about one thing—maybe the Eight hadn’t found a cure in three thousand years, but they hadn’t spent that time being idle either. They hadn’t tried to force an Immortal’s souls, with all that copious and overabundant tenyé, into a mortal body that couldn’t contain it. Grizzst had proved that couldn’t be done. They hadn’t tried to save their immortal souls at all, which had undoubtedly been the reason Thaena had sabotaged their plan at every opportunity.
They’d taken an entirely different tactic—turning mortal bodies into something else. The talismans were never meant to resurrect the Eight; they were meant to transfer their positions to new souls and new hosts.
Taja and Thaena were dead. Long live Taja and Thaena.
I checked the Lighthouse and realized he was right. Both Xivan and Talea were gone, which could only mean that they’d gone after Senera. And while Senera wasn’t Tya, since the Goddess of Magic was still very much alive, it was still easy enough to make the comparison when Senera’s two closest friends were well on their way to replacing Luck and Death.1
“Kihrin,” Janel said. “What’s he talking about?”
“Talea and Xivan … are becoming Taja and Thaena. Not the people. The roles. Luck. Death. Being tied to those concepts are what gave the Eight Guardians their powers. Eshimavari and Irisia must have figured out a way to transfer that bond to new hosts.”
Impossible to do while they were still alive. Khaemezra would never have given up that position, no matter what she told herself in the quiet, still hours when she gave life to her regrets. But dead? Ah, dead, they can’t fight it. And so now Eshimavari and Khaemezra are truly dead. Never to return.
I realized right away the problem. There was no chance at all that either Talea or Xivan were anywhere near close to full strength. Hell, I was pretty sure Xivan hadn’t reached the stage where a friendly Khaemezra version two started showing up to give her advice—assuming that would ever happen. They were at best proto-Immortals, who had control over only a small fraction of their full powers. And that meant that here, in Vol Karoth’s literal mind, they were vulnerable. So vulnerable.
If Vol Karoth had those concepts under his control … breaking free of his prison would be the easiest thing in the world.
I’m here to make a deal. Offer you a final chance. You give yourself up and I’ll release them. You’ll be proving friendship has value, that you’d be willing to save them. But ask yourself: Why would you give yourself up for people who were perfectly willing to kill you?
My stomach knotted. I could almost admire the elegance of the logic trap. If I gave myself up, I lost, no matter if Senera, Talea, and Xivan survived for the moment. If I refused, then I proved Vol Karoth’s point—and still lost. A perfect Nemesan gambit. Any choice I made led right down the road to my own failure.
Honestly, Relos Var would have been so proud.
Could Vol Karoth have been lying about having the three women? I didn’t think so. No, scratch that. I knew he wasn’t lying. He absolutely had them. Which meant—
“Take me,” Janel said. “Take me instead.”
What.
What.
“Janel!” I said through clenched teeth. That was not going to help the situation at all.
But she ignored me, instead staring at the dark god. “You know this is all my fault. We’ve talked about this. I’m the one you’re angry with, so why don’t you just leave them alone and take me? We have so much to catch up on.”
“Janel, no—” Teraeth said, wide-eyed.
“Kihrin’s not the only one who can make boneheaded sacrifices,” Janel said, her voice thick and self-deprecating. She shuddered and looked over at Kihrin. “You’d better not waste the time I’m buying you.”
“No!” I shouted. “It’s a stupid idea, and he’s not stupid enough—”
I accept.
Vol Karoth and Janel both vanished.