The Light of All That Falls, page 15
One of the creature’s eyes opened, rolling toward Alchesh and Caeden.
“Why does he think I am an etching, Tal’kamar?” the red-scaled snake asked in a hissing lisp.
Alchesh stood frozen for a long, shocked moment before screeching in a most undignified manner, flinching backward and letting fly an enormous bolt of Essence. The snakelike creature didn’t move a muscle, but a shield of answering Essence sprang into place; blue power sizzled but the blast did not penetrate it.
Caeden smiled.
“It is good to see you again, Ordan,” he said quietly.
Chapter 8
Caeden moaned.
Something was happening. Though his entire body was numbed from the cold, he managed to open his eyes enough to register that he was moving. Being hauled, in fact. Slung in undignified fashion across someone’s back as they trudged up a series of steep steps through driving snow.
“A mountain,” a voice was muttering to itself—the same one as from earlier, he thought. The Shadow with the medallion. “Of all places, falling down a fates-cursed mountain. Stupid, Tal’kamar. Just stupid. This is going to take forever.”
Caeden let the irritated voice fade to a dull buzz as his attention wandered back to the memory that had come unbidden. There was something important there, something that had been hovering for a while now at the edge of his mind—even from before his injury. A puzzle that he needed to solve.
Alchesh’s hands trembled as he leaned back against the far wall, his eyes glued to Ordan’s imposing, red-scaled figure.
“You told me they were all dead,” he said.
“They were.” Caeden studied Ordan warily, relief and new tension layered within him all at once. “How are you, old friend?”
Ordan cocked his head to the side. “Are we friends again, Tal’kamar?” he hissed, a quietly dangerous note to his voice. “I have seen what remains above—seen what your fires wrought of Tereth Kal. I remember what you did.”
“I know. But I was also the one who put you in the Forge.” Caeden waved down Alchesh as he spotted the other man tensing at the Shalis’s aggressive tone. “I never broke my vow, Ordan. Never revealed Aloia Elanai to the others.” He dug into his satchel, then produced a leather bag that clinked as he held it out to Ordan. “One hundred and forty-two scales—one from each of the dead. The attack here was always about weakening Dareci, Ordan. I was never with Gassandrid in his war against your people.”
Ordan considered the bag, not reaching for it.
“Who is missing?” he asked eventually, though Caeden felt from his tone that he already knew the answer.
“Esdin.” Caeden said the name calmly, doing his best to hide the regret that came with it.
“Why?”
“A tale perhaps I can tell when we are a little more—”
“I would hear it now.”
Caeden exhaled, shutting his eyes. He had forgotten Ordan’s people’s penchant for bluntness. Best to be done with this part, then, and quickly.
“Gassandrid captured her. When the Forge could not be found, and she would not reveal its location, Cyr was… given access to her.” From the corner of his eye Caeden could see Alchesh shift uneasily, but thankfully the other man didn’t feel the need to elaborate. “Cyr was able to detect her connection to the Forge, and engineer a way to use it with his own Vessel. The Furnace, he called it. It drew on her tie to the Forge, and produced… creatures in her likeness, I suppose. Creatures who will fight for us. Dar’gaithin.”
Ordan said nothing for several seconds.
“‘Dar’gaithin.’ Copies,” he finally translated, more emotion in his lisping voice than Caeden could ever remember hearing. “They would be soulless. Abominations.”
“Fairly accurate,” murmured Alchesh.
Caeden gave him a sharp look to indicate that he should keep silent, then turned back to Ordan. “Not soulless—that is the argument of the others. The dar’gaithin each have their own minds, their own personalities, their own sources. They are more than simply animated shells. But yes,” he conceded heavily. “They are still a pale, subservient imitation. I tried to stop it, but you know how our war was going against the Darecians. The others were desperate. They said that a creature without a soul was no creature at all—that if we had created those same beings from steel rather than flesh, there would have been no objections. That I was imposing an illogical morality on the proposal, and that in fact making such creatures would save the lives of those with souls.” He tried to keep the defensiveness from his tone, but knew he was failing.
Ordan hissed again. “And if they had been human shells, rather than Shalis?”
Caeden looked away. “That has happened, too,” he said softly. “We call them Echoes. And others—others from the Ilinar, from the Doth. Even the Vaal—we made them bigger, made them blind with rage by making them need regular submersion to survive. None of them as intelligent as the dar’gaithin, and none with enough Essence to even survive the journey through a Gate, but all strong. All fighters. And all derived from Cyr’s Furnace.” He swallowed. “I am sorry, Ordan. The world has become much darker since you last knew it.”
“And you along with it, apparently.” Ordan’s voice was heavy. “You speak of this in the past tense. What of Esdin now?”
Caeden hesitated.
“She is gone,” he admitted.
Ordan released a breath, to Caeden’s surprise seeming relieved by the statement. “She used her Sever? Cut her tie to the Forge?” He frowned. “If she had it with her, why would she not have done that straight away?”
Caeden nodded; the ‘Sever’ terminology was unfamiliar to him, but he thought he understood to what Ordan was referring. “Andrael and some of the others turned against us after… not long after the attack here. We think he was convinced by Esdin, at least in part.” He refused to mention how he’d created and used the Essence-eating Columns to destroy Dareci, wiping away millions with the great weapon. He had enough shame to deal with without seeing Ordan’s reaction to that news. “Esdin gave him her… Sever, you called it? The Vessel that would unlink her, anyway. She thought it was more important that Andrael study it, than that she use it herself. So that he could kill the rest of us,” he added drily. “When he had learned enough from it, he found her again, and…” Caeden gestured.
Ordan’s intelligent, serpentine eyes stared at Caeden intently. “For one of you to have deciphered even part of the Builders’ handiwork would have taken several lifetimes.” He spoke steadily, but Caeden marked the rising tension behind his words. “When I was reborn, I had little choice but to remain here, sleeping—I could not leave the Forge unguarded. I thought that whoever resurrected me would return fairly soon thereafter to explain why they had done so.”
He let the question hang in the air.
“A millennium.” Caeden said the words simply and honestly. It was not a blow that he knew how to soften, even if he’d thought his old mentor would appreciate it.
Ordan closed his eyes, though against the pain of that news or simply in thought, Caeden couldn’t tell. “You return not for friendship, then, but because you require something of me. That is the only reason to come back after so long,” he said as he finally reached out, taking the bag from Caeden’s outstretched hand. “I would know more of Esdin’s last days, of Dareci, and of everything else that has happened beyond these walls—but first, I would know why you are here. Because if I do not like the answer, then this may be a short reunion indeed.”
His gaze slid briefly to Alchesh, who twitched nervously beneath it.
Caeden winced, but nodded. He accepted what Ordan was saying—knew he deserved it, and far worse besides.
“The reason? I have doubts,” he said simply. “The Dareci are defeated, Ordan. Broken, fled from the Shining Lands. We commandeered Ironsails, followed to a distant continent and are even now on the cusp of victory, but…” He scowled, shaking his head. “Questions have been raised—questions which I cannot ignore, even if the others insist on doing so. I do not concede that El is anyone but who He says He is”—he held up a hand warningly, half expecting Ordan to launch into a lecture—“and yet. I met a man who claimed to have traveled from the future. A man who told me that… that none of the things that have been done can be undone.” The words still left a dry, foul taste in his mouth.
Ordan studied him. “Words which have been said before,” he observed.
“He said that he was my friend, and then I killed him.” Caeden stared vacantly at the ground, remembering. “And I cannot help but wonder. If it was true. If he came back to tell me that, and if traveling through time truly cannot alter events, whether…”
“Whether he knew?”
“Yes.” Caeden felt his lip curl in frustration; as always he couldn’t tell whether it was at the thought, or because he had not yet been able to dismiss it. Had he killed someone whom he would come to respect, to love? And had Davian come back, said those things and accepted death itself, because he’d known that his words would stick in Caeden’s mind like needles? Prick at him day in and day out until he finally took action—did exactly what he was doing right now?
“Anything that makes you actually question this path of yours is a blessing, Tal’kamar,” said Ordan, “but I fail to see why that brings you here.”
“I searched for years for proof that this man lied—that he in fact existed in this time. But I found nothing.” Caeden licked his lips. “As you well know, El took each of the Venerate’s ability to See through time when we swore ourselves to Him—which for most of us was a blessing, anyway—but it was always a great act of trust, too. It’s meant that for the longest time, the only visions of the future we have seen are the ones which He has given us.”
He fell silent. It felt wrong, even just implying this. But he had to be certain, didn’t he?
Ordan’s gaze slid back to Alchesh, who had been mercifully silent. Though the Shalis’s expression barely changed, Caeden saw that he understood now.
He turned back to Caeden. “You still do not believe you are wrong.”
Caeden met his gaze. “No. But if I am, then I want to know.”
Ordan studied him, then turned and placed a scaled hand against the wall. Nothing happened, and for the longest of moments, Caeden wondered whether anything would.
Then a blue light flickered.
Caeden squeezed his eyes shut against a sudden surge of emotion. There was still life here.
The blue energy—similar to that which had once shimmered and darted around the walls above—coalesced, bathing all three of them in an eerie glow.
“Stand still,” Caeden cautioned Alchesh. “Let it mark you. It is the only way you will be allowed inside.”
Alchesh did as he was instructed, looking wary and a touch startled as the energy flitted around him. “What is it doing?”
“Deciding whether you are a threat.”
There was a humming sound, and suddenly the stone in front of them just… melted.
Alchesh gaped, for perhaps the first time since Caeden had known him looking lost for words.
The room curved gently outward away from them, vertically as well as horizontally, a large oval space that stretched out into the darkness. The crystal walls began to glitter as golden light spread through them, seeping away from the entrance and gradually revealing more of the chamber, the illumination at first seeming to cover the entire surface, but on closer inspection running along thousands of minutely etched, intricate designs. Representative of kan mechanisms, Caeden believed, though he had never been able to verify that. The crystal was not only an indestructible barrier, but it hid kan from his vision completely. In his thousands of years, it was something he had never seen replicated.
Aloia Elanai, the Shalis had called it. The Serpent’s Head.
The Venerate—all of whom bar Caeden had seen this place only from the inside, and that merely in glimpses—knew it simply as the Chamber.
Ordan entered; Caeden gave Alchesh a small nudge forward and stepped after him onto the gently sloping crystal surface. The wall silently materialized behind them again, sealing them in, the golden glow close to blinding as it continued to crawl through the countless whisper-thin lines all around them. Some of those lines were ordered, uniform, systematic. Others curved and intertwined and swirled seemingly at random, more art than mechanism. Whether it showed precisely what went on behind the crystal barrier or not, Caeden had no idea.
Having seen the unshielded kan mechanisms in Deilannis, though, he could only begin to imagine how fine, how complex, the kan of this place might be.
“What in El’s name?” whispered Alchesh.
Caeden followed his gaze to the far end of the room, perhaps two hundred feet away, which was now lit. Three holes in the crystal were visible: The largest was set in the floor, almost ten feet wide and filled with a clear liquid. It was flanked by two slightly smaller holes in the wall at about head height, hearth-like—but rather than flames, golden Essence burned within.
“That’s the Forge itself.” Caeden gestured to the upper two pulsing cavities. “Formally, those are known as the Forges of Rebirth. Eye of Soul, Eye of Mind.”
Alchesh nodded, gaze fixed on the golden fires, looking as mesmerized as Caeden remembered being the first time Ordan had brought him here. “And the lower one?”
“The Waters of Renewal,” said Ordan, not glancing back at them. Caeden heard the irritation in his tone, though Alchesh appeared not to. Before today, Caeden had been the only human to ever have been allowed inside Aloia Elanai.
Alchesh gazed at the two fires. “So this place… this is what you see, every time you…?”
“No. When I was first brought here in the flesh, I didn’t recognize it at all. But after a few times, you might remember something—a glimpse. After a dozen deaths, maybe an image sticks in your head.” Caeden grimaced. “Cyr killed himself deliberately near two hundred times over the course of a single year, just to see how much information he could glean about this place. It was before I met him, but I am certain he did it, because he shared the memory of what he eventually saw with all of us.”
Ordan glanced at him. “This is how Gassandrid came to learn of it?”
“Yes. I never told them anything, denied knowledge of it, but…” He turned back to Alchesh. “The Shalis only ever came here to begin the resurrection of one of their number, and their deaths were almost as uncommon as ours. The chances of a Venerate glimpsing someone in here would normally be infinitesimal.”
“But if Cyr died more than every other day for a year…” Alchesh nodded slowly. “Still unlikely, but much better odds.”
“Exactly.”
Ordan continued to watch Alchesh, who still looked overawed at his surroundings. “So Cyr actually witnessed one of us in here. That explains much.”
Caeden acknowledged the statement morosely. “Gassandrid already blamed you for destroying Zvaelar; when he found out what Cyr had seen, the thought of you intruding upon the gift El had given us, too… well, it didn’t sit well with him. The others were not so easily convinced, but once your people began actively supporting Dareci, it didn’t take much for them to give more weight to his arguments than mine.”
“He is a zealot, Tal’kamar—misled about Zvaelar and so much more—and as I have told you before: your god is outright lying to you if he claims your immortality is a gift from him.” Ordan’s voice dripped with disdain. “The Forge was made by the Builders. By men. I do not know how this creature you serve tied you to it—or how he did it without our knowledge—but there is no doubt that he did.”
Caeden held up a hand as Alchesh scowled. “And as I have said before: El making use of the Forge does not preclude our link to it being a gift from Him,” he said quietly. “We are not here to start up old arguments, Ordan.”
“No. We are not.” Ordan shook his head as if remembering what he was doing, then slithered over to a section of wall next to the Forge. He placed his hands carefully against two specific positions on the shining surface.
The golden light running through the crystal in that section suddenly faded, and then the crystal itself melted away, revealing row upon row of small shelves.
“What are you doing?” Caeden asked, a pensive note entering his voice. He had never seen this before. The shelves were lined with small objects—beautifully crafted ornaments, medallions, and pendants made of gold, each in its own distinct shape.
Ordan didn’t answer. He carefully picked up one of the medallions, then with equal reverence drew a red scale from the bag Caeden had given him. It was a mottled red, glinting in the light of Essence.
“Uldan,” he murmured.
Ordan touched the medallion to the scale, and there was a flash from the two Essence-fires to his side, each one burning brighter for just a moment.
The medallion crumbled, and the scale turned to dust in Ordan’s hand.
Caeden and Alchesh looked at each other in confusion.
“What are you doing?” Caeden repeated as the Shalis took another medallion from the shelves on the wall and another scale from the bag. This one was a brighter shade of red, almost crimson.
“Onasis,” he said softly. Another flash, and scale and medallion once again dissipated.
Caeden felt a chill. “Ordan,” he said uneasily. “Those… those aren’t Severs, are they?”
“They are,” replied Ordan, his back still to Caeden, reaching for the next scale.
“Stop!” Caeden rushed forward and placed a restraining hand on the Shalis’s arm; the next thing he knew he was lying on the floor on the other side of Aloia Elanai, blinking spots from his vision as Alchesh stood protectively over him, glaring at Ordan. The tall red serpent was ignoring them, continuing his work.
“Indral,” murmured Ordan, and the Essence burned sharper for an instant yet again.
“Why?” Caeden shouted as he stumbled to his feet, confusion and horror mingling. “I risked everything to retrieve those. I gave them to you to restore your people! El take it, Ordan—tell me why!”
