Chapter 30

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The sapphire sword arced in, sliding along the hilt studded in emeralds. Dynan put his weight into it, pushing as hard as he could, forcing Dain back a step. It was enough, barely, to push the tip of Dain’s sword from Marc. For an instant, they stood together, balanced one against the other. There was only hatred in Dain’s eyes, as sharp and cold as the weapon in his hand.

The moment of stillness didn’t last.

Dain gathered himself and shoved. He came right back and attacked. Dynan reacted, using his left hand, while he tried to protect his weakened right side. The blade coming at him whistled from lightning fast movement through air, jarring on impact. Dynan felt his hand slip on the hilt, clenching down so hard he thought he might break his fingers to keep the sword.

Dynan couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t afford the distraction, but couldn’t afford to not examine every move, each attack, the strategy behind it. He had to look at all of it or die. Dain was drawing him out. He knew Dynan was weakening from loss of blood. He knew he wasn’t the best left-handed fighter. He knew he wouldn’t last. He knew everything.

Sweat dripped into his eyes, dampened his hair, making the hold he had on the hilt more tenuous. He tripped and fell, rolled, scrambling back to his feet, turned, brought his sword up and Dain’s crashed into him. The sword slipped and Dynan chased it, snatching it back, tightening his grip. He defended the next attack and the next and the next and the next and all the ones that followed. He retreated and Dain kept coming at him.

They moved within an insulated, silent well where nothing else encroached, the only sound the jarring clang of metal against metal. Vague shadows moved on the periphery of vision. Another fight. Maybe Carryn locked in a battle against her brother. Dynan couldn’t look to find out.

The blade hissed as it struck. Dynan used two hands to stop it, a sure sign that the end was near. His arms shook, rattling against the razor sharp edge that sliced upward along the blade, bearing down, through cloth, into skin, muscle, bone across his right shoulder.

He stood so close, pressing his weight down on the sword. Dynan wanted to beg him to stop, thought if he could just reach him that it would end differently, but he knew that this man who stood before him was not Dain. He was lost. Dead after all, the thought blasted through to his soul and sucked away the last will to fight the inevitable. He knew where his life would end. When he looked, he was standing in the exact spot before the throne and the Telaerin seal.

In two swift motions, Dain knocked the sword from Dynan’s grasp. His hand slammed into his chest and came away with a fistful of jacket and shirt. He jerked him around, exposing the spider scar ... on purpose, Dynan realized. Still clutching a handful of jacket, his brother stared hard at the white lines that fingered outward above Dynan’s heart. The point of the sword found its mark and paused.

Dain blinked. Air hissed in and out through clenched teeth. His hand shook. His eyes weren’t dead anymore or filled with hate.

“Dain...”

Maralt was there too. Dynan heard the command, into Dain and through his own mind. Maralt stumbled toward them, his face twisted grotesquely. The hilt of Carryn’s sword protruded from his chest. Maralt sputtered, falling to his knees, “Now, you idiot, kill him now.”

Dynan saw Carryn dragging to her feet, stumbling toward them, one hand wrapped around her middle, blood oozing through the fingers she had pressed to her side.

Dain sucked in a gulp of air. The muscles in his arm flexed.

Dynan didn’t feel it, the blade cut so fast. He heard it, metal sliding through bone and tissue. His heart gurgled twice and stopped, a sound loud in the silence of his mind. Light retracted. He fell and Dain jumped to catch him. That was the last thing he saw before darkness took him.

Carryn leapt over Maralt, arm outstretched, fingers reaching forward, but she was too far away to stop Dain. In horror, she watched as he put his weight into the emerald sword.

Even as she slid to a halt, behind her, laughing around the blood in his mouth, she heard Maralt.

“I told you. You can’t escape. You’ll never be free of me.”

She turned as Dynan fell and Dain caught him. She rushed back the three steps she’d taken, looking down on this stranger who used to be her brother. She leaned over him, her hand slamming into the pommel of the sword, her fingers grasping the hilt. She twisted the blade. The laughter cut off. His body jerked and then he was still.

A deep growling rumble came up through the floor. Her vision of the Throne Room, littered with bodies played through her mind and in reality.

Dain clutched at his brother, his whole body shaking. Carryn felt him concentrating, trying to reach him. She saw it then, the light within, the brilliant orb of his soul leaving his body. His blood flowed over the seal, seeping through the cracks in the floor. The maw of darkness opened, centered in the Great Seal, and it drew light toward it.

It was already too far away from her to try and physically take, if that was even possible. She balked for an instant at the thought she would have to use her mind and just as swiftly set that fear aside. Here, the ruin of the world would come or not, dictated by her actions.

Dain looked up, turning to the darkness, and she knew he would go into it, willingly.

Gathering her thoughts and every scrap of strength she possessed, she held out her hand. She called Dynan back, setting her mind on pulling that light to her. The counter force against her drew her a step forward and another and another before she stopped it and dug in. She tripped over Dynan’s body, over Dain as he bent down over his brother and she almost fell from the anguish she felt from him. He was already running from what he’d done.

“No Dain.”

She needed his help to stop this, needed him to remember how he’d done it before so many years ago. Just as quickly, she realized she was alone.

The light of Dynan’s soul hovered in the air. Sweat trickled down her back. She felt herself weakening. From the darkness, she saw other things gathering, pinpoint sets of light that turned out to be the eyes of the horde. She stopped counting at six.

“Dynan, please come to me,” she whispered, not sure he could hear her, or if he could, that he would listen. Her ability to stop the dark from swallowing him whole, from taking them all, weakened the longer she stood there holding him in this world.

She focused her will when calling him didn’t work, reaching out in her mind. She would make him stop if she had to. Everything she told him about not letting circumstances dictate his actions got thrown out in the face of him losing his soul to the Demon. She had to. She reached out her hand, concentrated, and took the orb.

Power washed through her, absorbing her into it. She became a chalice, filled to the brim, burned, washed clean, exploding from the inside out. It held her and she held on.

The monsters perched on the lip of the void snarled. They launched at her, meaning to escape their long prison. Carryn pulled in the scouring brilliance and held up her hand. The first creature – she couldn’t tell what it was, only that it was grey, bristled with spikes and had four legs – slammed into the invisible wall she erected. Another followed. They broke upon the shield like the sea against jagged cliffs, torn apart, shredded by their own force of malignant hate. She stood against them, holding back the dark.

They came and they didn’t stop. Time ceased any meaning. She stood still as a statue while the hordes raged against her. She knew she couldn’t stand forever, but didn’t know how she would stop it. Dynan’s blood pooled on the floor before the throne.

She felt someone standing behind her, but couldn’t turn to look, afraid if her attention wavered, the shield would fail. The strain of it couldn’t be endured much longer.

“You’re all right,” he said and she looked anyway, startled.

Matt Talryn stood behind her and he set his hand to her back. She remembered him. She brought him here, saved him from a fate worse than death, and maybe saved them all by being there on Cadal in that space and time when he died.

He smiled at the thought. He was inside her in such a way that was alien and enthralling, but at the same time as comfortable as putting on a second skin. She knew him. He slid his hand along her arm until he held her by the hand that held the orb. “I’ve got this.”

She wasn’t sure she could believe it.

Alurn Telaerin appeared on her other side, eyes locked on the seal. He put his hand up and took a single step forward. There was a connection to Matt and to the orb he now held, a thin strand, a thought unbreakable, chaining one to the other in a perfect triumvirate.

A resounding crack blasted through the Throne Room, a subsonic disruption that set off a high-pitched squeal in her ears.

The Demon’s Gate closed. Alurn vanished with it.

Strength evaporated. Carryn staggered forward and landed on the stairs to the throne, her hands jarring into the hard marble. She became aware of herself and of pain pulling at her senses. Matt looked down on her, Dynan’s soul still clasped in his hand.

“It’s time for you to come with me,” he said.

She shook her head in denial, but saw the truth in his face. He would take her if she refused. She understood then, what Maralt meant when he told her they would come for her too. She needed to stay at the Palace. She needed to stay with Dynan and Dain, and try to help them, even when she didn’t know if either of them would survive. She saw a man covered in monk’s robes, padding toward her and she recognized Broud from his shuffling walk. She would be taken, like it or not, and understood more.

She looked to her brother, lying in a pool of blood. She looked only once and then didn’t look again.

“Will they live?” she asked, turning her attention to Dynan and Dain. They didn’t seem alive now.

Matt tilted his head to one side. “We need to leave. I can only hold time still for so long before it will explode all around us.”

She looked at the floating particles of dust that hung suspended, the blood across her stomach that wasn’t flowing. Nothing moved except Broud, shying his way around the scattered bodies to her side. She took his proffered hand, conscious of her injuries. She put her hand across her stomach. It came away awash in red. That was all she saw.

Matt looked down at Dynan and Dain, and finally, over to his brother, his heart telling him to go to him, his mind telling him he couldn’t. That living part of his being that still existed, missed Marc more than was sometimes endurable. Matt didn’t want to leave him. He understood why Carryn didn’t either. But he was out of time and let it go.

The noise of life erupted all around him. The battle raged in the Palace, through the King’s offices, everywhere. The sounds of weapons clashing filled the spaces. He turned from it, still holding the key to the world’s existence in his hand, and departed the way he came.