Runemaker, page 19
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Aidan expected some sort of commotion on the island. Torches and pitchforks, battle cries and armor. But nothing had changed. Birds still sang in the trees, the ocean churned endlessly against the white-sand beach. And the acolytes he’d seen earlier still wandered or meditated, their white robes making them look like seagulls in the breeze.
It was peaceful. Idyllic.
You don’t have to do this.
He wasn’t certain if it was the Violet Sage still speaking to him, or the echo of memory. He stood in the doorway of the room from which he’d stolen the Violet Sage and Tenn away, staring out at the beach, and doubt churned through him. He reached through Fire, but even though the heat filled him, the rage wouldn’t come.
These were humans.
Peaceful, innocent humans. They weren’t Howls or necromancers, they weren’t serving the Dark Lady...
He jolted.
They weren’t serving the Dark Lady, but he was. Doing her bidding like a dog. All so—what?—she might fulfill her promise and return his mother to him? Was it worth it?
For a moment, he wondered what Kianna would say. Only for a moment, though, because he knew without doubt she would have a sword in his back or a bullet in his brain before he’d even had the chance to ask. He’d betrayed her. He’d betrayed everyone.
He was no better than the Howls. No better than the necromancers.
You don’t have to do this.
His mother’s face floated through his mind.
But he did. He did.
He’d already gone too far. If he crossed the Dark Lady now, she’d kill him, and the world would go on and her reign would be unchallenged, and everything, everything would have been for nothing.
He wasn’t going to let his life be for nothing.
He had gone too far. And he had to go further if he wanted to make any of this worth it. Once he had his mother, he could stop. Then, and only then, could he start to question himself. Until that time, there was no turning back.
Closing his eyes, he reached deep into his treacherous Sphere, wrapped himself in heat and energy, fed himself to the flame. The doubt. The pity. The innocence.
He fed it all to the flames, and when he opened his eyes again, he fed his flame to the world.
In a blink, the acolytes on the beach crumpled, fire filling their lungs and veins and winking out without a trace. He turned, cast his Fire farther, seeking out the sparks he felt within the huts, the lives completely unaware they were about to be snuffed out. Another snap of Fire, and they flared and extinguished in a heartbeat.
It unnerved him, the ease with which he killed everyone. A half dozen dead. A dozen. All humans. All innocent. All seeking what he had thought he had wanted—an end to the darkness. Now, he was the darkness.
He snapped his fingers, and the huts went up in a blaze. Infernos, each of them, bright as the sun. It wasn’t right, that sun. He’d committed murder before, but it had been cold then. Dismal. The right weather for a massacre. This...this wasn’t right. None of it.
Still, he killed.
He stepped out from the building, onto the boardwalk, and behind him the bamboo and timber erupted in flame, wood snapping and crackling like skeletons beneath a boot.
There was no one around to scream or race to the buildings. There already were no survivors.
Except...
He felt them, farther in. A few dozen sparks, a few dozen lives, all huddled together like offering candles in a church. They must have felt the magic, the inferno. They must have known something was wrong. None of them moved, however. None of them seemed to know he was here, or what he had done.
You could leave them. The thought was most assuredly his own, and the voice of reason felt so alien that for a moment it froze him in place. You could let them live. She would never know.
It was true. He could turn back whenever, and the Dark Lady would believe he had done the job. He was a murderer, but he didn’t have to commit genocide, not like this.
At first, he thought the waver in the flames was from his eyes watering, from the heat and the smoke. Then he realized he was crying.
“I have to,” he said to her ghost. “I have to get you back. I have to make this right.”
Only there was no making this right. There was only going deeper. He could only make it worse.
That, it seemed, was all he was good at.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Blocked out the voice of reason in his head, his conscience coming to light all too late.
Then he turned and headed toward the sparks still wavering in the jungle, the lives he would end so he alone could carry on.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
TENN
He is not forsaken, she whispered in the darkness, her voice strained and tinged with tears. For all he has done, for all he has become, he is not lost. Only together will you defeat her. You must remember this, Tenn. You must remember. You must—
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
AIDAN
Black stone steps burrowed deep into the earth. Lamps glimmered along the walls—not magical, but fuel-burning, and the sight felt like an anachronism. Despite the lanterns, shadows lay deep and heavy farther in. He didn’t want to go down there. And yet, that was where the sparks flickered.
He could have ended them. He knew this. He could snap his fingers and extinguish all those sparks without ever seeing them. But something drew him forward. Curiosity, or something stronger.
He was a monster, yes. But he was still, in some ways, human. He descended.
The air grew colder and wetter with every step, and with every step he pulled deeper through Fire to try to fend it off. He wasn’t successful.
There was no door at the end. Only a stone archway and a mist lying heavy on the ground, illuminated faintly by lights farther in. He stepped through.
Fog coiled against black rock columns, sconces carved within them and flickering candles dripping forth. Stone formations littered the floor, small heaps he could barely make out through the roiling mist. The light was too dim, the fog too heavy. And everywhere, echoing through the fog, was a sound. Murmuring. Mumbling. He’d thought it was water at first, but as he stood there, he realized it was a voice. Voices. Human. So where—
“What are you doing here?”
Aidan jumped back, nearly lashing out with flame at the voice.
It was a young man, wearing not the white robes he’d seen on the beach, but dark gray.
“I’m—”
Murdering an entire island? How had you not noticed?
Then the fog parted, just barely, and he realized it wasn’t stones resting between the columns, but people. Huddled, mumbling people, wearing the same gray robes as the man by the door. The fog curled back in, obscuring them from view.
“Who are these people?” he asked.
The young man considered Aidan. He wasn’t open to any magic; Aidan couldn’t understand why the guy didn’t attack, or raise an alarm, or seem to even be aware that anything bad was happening in the world outside. Maybe he wasn’t attuned to a Sphere? If so, what was he doing here?
“These are the Prophets,” the man said, his voice curled as if to ask, How did you not know?
“What?”
Aidan took a step toward the figures, as if in a daze. Fog curled around his ankles as he walked toward the nearest Prophet. It was a girl, maybe the same age as he, robed in gray and curled in on herself, mumbling constantly. These were the all-knowing figures that guided the motions of men?
They weren’t prophets. They were madmen.
“These are the souls that Maya cast aside,” the young man said behind him. “Although they are not deemed worthy enough to wield the Sphere, they remain...attached to it. As though a part of them is always open to Maya, in tune with a frequency the rest of us cannot hear. A sort of cosmic radio. Most of the time they mutter only nonsense. Gibberish. But occasionally, they speak in riddles we can understand. That is my job. To watch, to translate and to relay.”
Aidan barely heard him. To think, he’d almost offered himself up to Maya. What would have happened? Would he have become like this?
“It is strange,” the boy said. “I have watched over them for years. This sounds different. They almost sound afraid.”
Yeah, Aidan wanted to say. They’re afraid of me.
He couldn’t believe that this was how armies moved and humanity was influenced. A group of madmen in a cave in the middle of nowhere. Despite his doubts regarding their wisdom, a part of him wanted to shake one of them, to demand some sort of answer: How do I get out of this? How do I get my mother back?
“Who are you, anyway?” the boy asked. “A guest of the Violet Sage?”
“You could say that.”
Aidan walked back toward the entrance.
He expected one of them to reach out and grab him, to utter some dark prophecy. To tell him he’d damned the world, that only he could undo it.
He’d read enough books in his lifetime to know how it was supposed to go.
But he walked straight to the archway without any nonsense. There was no need for prophecy, not anymore.
He knew he’d damned the world. Just as he knew there wasn’t a way to undo it, not really. There wasn’t any secret, there. The Dark Lady was free. The Dark Lady had Maya and the Violet Sage. All he could do was follow her orders and hope she kept her promise.
The tide had turned on him.
Even with all the might of Fire, there was no way he could kill her.
He could only obey, and obey he would.
Behind him, flames lashed through the lungs of the Prophets, instantaneous and relatively painless. No pyrotechnics. No intimidating blaze.
There was no victory in this kill. No glory.
He didn’t even feel like a murderer. He just felt like a butcher, harvesting his meat.
The only sign that the work was done was the silence that cut through the hall. Suddenly, the cavern echoed with emptiness.
The boy at the archway gasped.
Aidan looked to him, his expression grim.
“What have you done?” He ran forward, knelt by the woman Aidan had just passed. Checking for a pulse he knew he wouldn’t find. He looked back at Aidan, eyes tight and angry. “Murderer.”
Aidan shrugged.
“I’ve been called worse.”
“Are you going to kill me then, too?”
Aidan considered it. The Dark Lady had ordered him to kill everyone on the island. But this boy? He wasn’t a threat. He wasn’t even attuned to magic—if he was, he would have felt the power Aidan had used to wipe out the acolytes. He would have attacked Aidan by now. Instead, he just knelt at the dead Prophet’s side, tears welling in his eyes.
“No,” Aidan said. He began walking up the stairs. “This way, you can tell your friends that Aidan Belmont is merciful.”
There was no conviction in his voice, no emotion. Aidan felt hollowed out. Not even fire could burn the sensation away.
Without the doubt or the drive or the pleasure, there was nothing. Not even a spark. Just a shell guided by a fading light, walking through the cold dark.
The boy called out something. Maybe a curse or threat. Maybe some lingering prophecy.
Aidan didn’t hear it. Whatever he said meant nothing, just as the Prophets had meant nothing.
Everything meant nothing.
He drew the runes of travel in the air before him, flames flickering off the cave walls.
When he wrapped the power around him and felt the world melt away, he realized he had in fact killed the boy.
He had no magic, no way to escape, and the island was deserted, filled only with the dead. It was only a matter of time before the unnamed boy joined them.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
AIDAN
The air in Natasja’s castle felt wrong.
He couldn’t put his finger on it. Not really. But there was a sensation, like an oil slick, that stuck to his skin and coated his lungs. He wanted to leave the moment he arrived.
And not just from the feeling of wrongness, but from the power. The castle reeked of magic. Of Maya. More power than he had ever felt. More than he could ever hope to harness. And it emanated from the closed door in front of him.
It wavered, undulating slightly, as if his vision were off, as if he were high or drunk or sleepwalking. He felt like he was all of those things. He didn’t want to walk through that door. He didn’t want to see what was happening on the other side.
For a moment, he considered turning around.
He could still leave. He could teleport back to...where? To Kianna? She was with the other Hunters, and she—and they—would kill him the moment he showed his face. No, he couldn’t go back. She was lost to him.
Honestly, the thought kind of hurt.
He looked over his shoulder, to the door opposite the one holding the Violet Sage. Tenn was in there. What did the Dark Lady have planned for him? She’d gotten the runes to attune to Maya. She’d gotten the Violet Sage. She had everything she needed. What use could she have for two mortals like them?
You are no mortal, Fire seethed within him. And yet, when he looked to the wavering door, he had never felt more so.
But no. He couldn’t leave. Not yet. The Dark Lady knew him. Had marked him. She would soon take over the world, he knew without a doubt. Fuck being on the right side of history. He would be on the victorious side.
He burned up the little worry he had left and opened the Violet Sage’s door.
Aidan had never been one to believe in good and evil, right or wrong. Everything had a consequence, every action a reaction. Sometimes they worked out in your favor, sometimes they didn’t. What helped one harmed another. Saving someone damned someone else. To him, morality was just a construct to keep weaker people in line.
But when he stepped into the room, he felt all that resolve fade away. He had never believed in good and evil.
He did now.
The Violet Sage sagged against her chair, the runes on the floor around her glowing like lime beams up to the ceiling. She looked dead, or nearly so, her skin sallow and her eyes bruised, her flesh gaunt, as if the Dark Lady were drawing out more than magic from her. As if she drew out her very life force.
The Dark Lady hovered at the edge of the rune ring. Her dress billowed around her in deep purple waves, her hair a halo but far from angelic. Cracks formed in the concrete around her, small pillars of stone jutting up around her feet, a dais her toes barely touched. Above her, around her, both from the crown of her head and somehow not, the Sphere of Maya bloomed.
A purple lotus of a million petals, unfurling and uncurling infinitely around her. The sight of that Sphere alone dropped Aidan to his knees.
What she did with it nearly made him retch.
He had never seen someone drained of their Sphere before, but he knew that was what he witnessed.
The Dark Lady held a crystal in front of her, an obsidian shard the size of his forearm that glowed an unearthly purple. Runes seared and simmered across its surface, ones he understood at once: runes for containment, for locks and seals, runes of unquenchable thirst and unending hunger. She held a veritable black hole in her hands, and as she funneled the purple power of Maya into it, the stone drew that very same essence from the Violet Sage.
She was turning the Violet Sage into a Howl.
She was turning the greatest mage who ever lived into a Wight.
He didn’t know how long he knelt. Time seemed to pause here, as if the gods themselves refused to turn creation in the sight of this unholy act. He knew, then, there was no hope. The Dark Lady had no intention of bringing his mother back. She had used him. As he had hoped to use her.
He couldn’t even be angry. It’s exactly what he would have done, and if anything, he felt stupid for not catching on sooner.
The Dark Lady would never help him. She wanted a Wight. She wanted to rule the world. She would. Aidan had ensured it—he’d killed everyone with the slightest knowledge of Maya and brought her the greatest weapon the world would ever know.
She had no need for him any longer.
As soon as the Violet Sage was turned, the Dark Lady would use her against him. He knew it in the pit of his heart.
He would never get his mother back.
But soon, he would join her.
They all would.
Because of him.
If he was smart, he would just end it right then and there.
Not the Dark Lady—he had no hope of killing her like this. But himself.
He couldn’t even do that. He just knelt and watched and waited for his time at the guillotine.
The Violet Sage didn’t squirm or cry out. The Dark Lady didn’t cackle or gloat. They stared at each other in silence, the Dark Lady with scorn, the Violet Sage with pleading pity.
Then the Violet Sage flicked her eyes toward him. Just briefly. The barest twitch.
When her purple eyes connected with his, he felt it in his chest.
A spark. A light.
A hope.
You must save him, he heard her whisper. Before it is too late. Before you both are gone.
She paused. Silence echoed. He thought that would be the end.
And when the time comes, she said, even quieter, you must help him kill me.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
TENN
Darkness surged and swam around Tenn. Not a peaceful, oceanic swell, but a thrashing, raging chaos that shook him to the core. He drowned in it. Screamed out in it. But it wouldn’t give. The surface never came.
In the dark, he heard the screams.
Her screams. The Violet Sage.
And their screams. Thousands upon thousands. Voices the world had all but forgotten. The spirits, shaking the cosmos imperceptibly. Demanding he wake. Demanding he make this right.
