The Light of All That Falls, page 38
“What is it?” Davian asked nervously.
Raeleth swallowed, then began inching backward. “We have to go,” he whispered. “Now.” There was a shortness of breath to his words, a genuine panic.
Davian frowned but followed him. “Why? What did you see?” He glanced over his shoulder, back at where the man had been. “Did you recognize him?”
Raeleth nodded slowly, clearly still aghast, eyes full of fear. He leaned in close and kept his voice almost inaudibly low, as if the words themselves might bring down some sort of harm.
“Have you ever heard the name Aarkein Devaed?” he whispered.
Chapter 23
The Wells were eerily silent as Caeden stepped through the newly opened Gate and swiftly slashed behind himself with kan, cutting through the machinery of the portal.
He allowed himself to breathe again as it winked out of existence. He had built the Gate to open in a section of the Wells where Alaris had no reason to be, but he also knew his friend would be desperate. Caeden still half expected Alaris to appear in front of him at any moment, vainly attempting to rush to the portal before it closed. The Venerate would certainly have detected its opening, particularly as there was precious little else to demand his attention down here.
But there was nothing. The shimmering, coalescing veins of color trickled all around Caeden, but there was no sound, no other sign of movement.
He closed his eyes, envisaging the layout of the Wells. He’d spent a lot of time down here—not just the month with Asar trying to restore his memory, but much of the past year as well. It was as secure a base as he could hope to find, and though Nethgalla was able to access it, he didn’t fear her as he once had. She was manipulative and terribly dangerous to those he loved, but not to him. Never to him.
He started walking. Though the network of tunnels was vast—the amount of Essence the Darecians had drawn from the earth had been simply staggering—there were only a few places that were actually designed for occupation. During his own time down here he had naturally gravitated to Asar’s quarters: a comfortable bed, close to the vast stores of stockpiled food and water, and plenty of reading and writing material. There wasn’t a great deal else to do, aside from sitting and thinking—which had occupied plenty of Caeden’s time as well, to be fair.
His footsteps echoed as he walked; despite the familiar surroundings he found himself tense, ready to leap at every shadow. Alaris would not have taken kindly to being tricked. In fact, as far as Caeden knew, the man had never suffered a defeat quite like this one. Though the Alaris he knew was always calm, always rational and looking for a peaceable solution, Caeden also knew that much of that attitude came from the knowledge that he was all but impossible to beat. It wasn’t a veneer, exactly—he was a good man, of that Caeden had no doubt.
But he’d seen the flashes of anger to which his friend was prone, too.
Still, no surprise attack came, and the longer the silence stretched, the more nervous Caeden became. He had expected desperation, resistance at the least. Was Alaris even still here? There was no way he could have escaped, surely. Nethgalla was off in Talan Gol, according to Scyner, so she could not have stumbled in here and let him go by accident—though that was the kind of mistake she would never have made anyway. And Gassandrid had never been here, had access to no one who had, and had no way of divining that Alaris was being kept here in the first place.
There was still the concern—sitting in the back of his mind, ever since his conversation with Scyner—that Nethgalla had been captured, and that Gassandrid had forced her to show him her memory of the Wells. But while that was possible, he felt it was highly unlikely. Nethgalla was nothing if not good at hiding.
Finally he came to the door to Asar’s room. It was ajar; Caeden nudged it open.
The room both looked and felt as if a hurricane of fire had torn through it.
The books that had once lined the walls—Asar’s carefully accumulated works from a thousand years, detailing the collected truth about Shammaeloth—were ash. Gone. Hot pressure blasted his face from where the walls had absorbed the heat. Charred scraps of paper littered the floor everywhere, along with the occasional splintered piece of bookshelf, which appeared to have been ripped apart.
Caeden leaned against the door post, stunned. It wasn’t as if he had expected Alaris to be converted by reading—though the sheer volume of observations about Shammaeloth were compelling, they said nothing that had not already been said—but he hadn’t expected this.
“I hope you like the new decor.”
Caeden flinched at the voice, twisting to see what he hadn’t noticed amid the devastation. Alaris, sitting in the sole remaining chair in the corner, almost hidden in shadow.
He looked… beyond weary.
“You did this?” It was a rhetorical question; he’d known before seeing Alaris there, but he still had to ask. “Why?”
Alaris smiled tiredly. “Something to do.”
Caeden shook his head. “You think this will make a difference?”
“We do what we can. This was what was left to me,” said Alaris, a touch bitterly. “If you prevail, if you make this world a prison, I do not want to leave anything that claims it is not. I cannot stand the thought that not only will all people be prisoners—but that they might accept it as right.”
Caeden glared. “You don’t think that this is part of the problem, Alaris?” he asked. “We were always so… dogmatic. Early on we actually thought—we discussed, we listened. We fought amongst ourselves and disagreed. We allowed for dissenting opinions. But after a while, we did exactly what we used to mock everyone else for doing. We settled. We no longer questioned.” He licked his lips. “And it made us lose respect for what others thought—especially those who did not live as long as us, had not seen the things we had seen. We bought into the lie that we were smarter than all of them. Better than all of them. And so we did things like this.” He gestured. “We tried to destroy ideas, Alaris! Shouldn’t the arrogance of that concept make you cringe?”
Alaris was silent for a moment.
“When something is self-evident. When something is inescapably true. Then yes. I believe it is right to crush the concepts that oppose it from existence. Because they are not ideas, Tal’kamar. They are lies.” His lip curled. “It is calling it idea or belief that is the problem. It is seductive. It can fool even the smartest of people.” He gave Caeden a pointed look.
Caeden shook his head. “That does not gel with what you taught me,” he said grimly. “That was not what you would have said when—”
“That man died a long time ago, Tal. Idealism is one thing, but this is about the fate of the world.”
Caeden studied the scene. The lingering heat indicated that this had just happened; Alaris had decided to do this as soon as he had detected Caeden entering the Wells, not before.
Alaris’s gaze slid to the sheathed blade hanging at Caeden’s side. “So. I did not think you would retrieve it as quickly as you did,” he said heavily. There was a note of something in his voice—not fear, exactly, but definite unease. “I may be outmatched, Tal, but know this—I will fight. And I wonder. When it comes time, when you have to do it—will you? Can you? After all we’ve been through, can you truly strike the killing blow without hesitation?”
Caeden said nothing, though inwardly he understood. Of course. Alaris thought the blade at his side was Licanius—why else risk coming here? And Alaris was preparing for a fight that he knew he could not possibly win, given how much stronger Caeden would be with Licanius. He was doing everything he could to sow seeds of doubt, give himself the faintest hint of an advantage.
Caeden gazed at Alaris sadly.
“Will you talk with me? One last time?” He hadn’t expected this, but… part of him needed to try.
“I told you at Alkathronen. The time for talking has passed,” said Alaris. He straightened, looking Caeden in the eye. “Tell me one thing, though, Tal’kamar—because I am curious. Are you going to keep your promise to him?”
“To who?”
“The boy.” Alaris’s lip curled, as if he were unable to bring himself to say the name. “The one who saved you. The one you promised to save in return.” Alaris held his gaze. “We Read that much from him, early on—it was all he could think about for a while. I even thought you might have meant it, those first few months.”
“Circumstances changed.”
“But not your heart, apparently,” rejoined Alaris harshly.
Caeden scowled. There was no benefit to giving Alaris the reason, but… Caeden needed him to know.
“You want to know why I didn’t try and rescue him?” he asked. “Because he didn’t need it. Because the only thing I needed to do was ensure that he was sent to Zvaelar.” He held Alaris’s gaze coldly.
Alaris stared back, puzzled at first, then eyes slowly widening.
“El take it,” he muttered bitterly, hanging his head.
“I cannot tell you how disappointed I was to hear that he was tortured, though,” Caeden continued quietly. “You had to have known that the escherii would not hold back. That evil is on you, Alaris.”
“I don’t understand why you care.” Alaris’s voice was suddenly vicious again, full of pent-up frustration. “He is just a boy, Tal! Of all the lives to cross our paths—of all the people—why him? What makes him so special?”
Caeden shifted. “If I didn’t know any better, Alaris, I would say that you are jealous.”
Alaris looked at him incredulously.
“Of course I am jealous,” he said, laughing in bitter disbelief. “We all are! The man who was more convincing to you in a few minutes than we were able to be in thousands of years. The man whose friendship you have valued over those whom you have spent hundreds of lifetimes alongside. The ghost against which we could never compete, the perfect ideal of self-sacrifice and truth. And as a result, the man who might have single-handedly enslaved the world.” His face hardened. “That has always been your curse, Tal. You enshrine those whom you have lost, whom you have killed. You raise them above the living; their voices drown out all others who try to reason with you. They are your gods.”
Caeden was silent.
“Perhaps you are right,” he said softly. “But it goes both ways. Elliavia drove me for so long—you know that as well as anyone—and that was entirely to Shammaeloth’s benefit.” He sighed. “Davian’s sacrifice has driven me as well, true—but far from blindly. You want to know why he moved me? He gave me the gift of doubt. He made me examine myself. He made me question.”
He drew Knowing, trying to ignore the sick feeling that holding the blade imparted.
“And that is the only way we can ever find answers, Alaris.”
Alaris’s eyes went wide as he saw the blade, but Caeden already knew that this was the easy part. Alaris had no weapon of his own, and they were relatively equally matched—perhaps not across a long fight like the one at Alkathronen, but here in these close quarters, for the time Caeden needed? It was more than enough.
Alaris leaped to his feet, snatched up his chair with Essence and flung it, but Caeden was already moving, smoothly sidestepping the attack and letting time flow around him. He lunged forward, Alaris barely avoiding the blade as it slid by his shoulder; the Venerate backed away, wide-eyed, time bending around him, too, now.
“You came here for information?” gasped Alaris. He was suddenly alert, more alive than he had seemed at any point during their conversation. He thought he had a chance, now; if Caeden had no way to kill him, then he had to instead get out while leaving Alaris behind. A much more difficult task.
Caeden blurred forward, the blade slashing again and again and again, increasingly close to Alaris until finally an attack caught him—just a cut across the forearm, but it was enough. Caeden could feel the knowledge seeping into him.
He searched through it, focusing internally, seeking out what he was after. The flow of information was unpleasant, as if it were coated in filth, but Caeden gritted his teeth and allowed it in. Some of it was vague, more feeling than fact—the cut had been small and Knowing would focus on taking what Caeden wanted to know, rather than everything it could—but it was enough.
He backed away, eyes going wide.
“El take it,” he said, feeling the blood drain from his face. His heart started to pound and he gazed at Alaris in shock; when he spoke he couldn’t keep the ache from his voice. “Why?”
Alaris’s face twisted, and Caeden saw a flicker of the guilt that was hiding behind the facade.
A guilt he knew all too well.
“Because you forced us,” panted Alaris eventually, nursing his arm, though he sounded unconvinced even as he said it. “Because you led us here, Tal.”
“Shammaeloth has led you here. Just as he led me,” replied Caeden. If ever he had wondered since he had woken in the forest with no memories, if ever he had doubted that he was on the right side… those doubts were gone now. He heard the red-hot anger in his voice, but he didn’t care, was barely able to think straight from the fury bubbling within him. “You say we were friends? How could you keep this from me? From me?”
“Because we all knew how you would react. Like this.” Alaris nodded to Caeden’s fists, which were clenched so tightly around the hilt of Knowing that his knuckles had turned bright white. “Davian may have been the feather that caused the roof to collapse, but we all know the true cause. Dareci was not your fault—it was Shammaeloth’s. The real Shammaeloth, the one who has imprisoned us all. But you were never able to fully accept that its burden was not yours to bear. It was too great a thing, too great a shame. And our reactions… they did not help,” Alaris conceded bleakly. “But when the ilshara was raised, when the plan was suggested, we all agreed. We needed the contingency.”
Caeden took a step back, dazed, horrified. “I thought that you’d kept me away from the Desrielites because… because you were suspicious,” he admitted faintly.
“Oh, there was that too,” Alaris assured him drily. “In retrospect, I am still unsure how you convinced us that Andrael had fooled you into helping him with the ilshara. Hindsight sees perfectly and all that, I suppose.”
“I just assumed you were using them as a backup. A secondary army of zealots, should the need arise. I understood that.” It had seemed logical enough at the time, and had especially seemed like something that would appeal to Gassandrid. “But giving them Columns? Giving them the ability to wipe out…” He trailed off, not knowing what else to say.
There was silence for a few seconds.
“And now you have given them the order,” Caeden finally finished. “You were intending to lead them in the fight yourself? After everything you saw the Columns do—to Dareci, to me—you still volunteered to be the one to use them?” He swallowed, everything coming together in his head. “Isiliar’s Tributary. That’s why it was so easy for you to meet with me. You wanted to run the test from Alkathronen one more time. You had to be certain that you had the exact location of the Cyrarium,” he said, voice tinged with horror.
It shouldn’t have been possible, but Diara had seemingly found a flaw in the Tributary’s design, devised a way to trace the flow of Essence to its destination. The Venerate already knew where the Cyrarium was; Alaris had been scheduled to return to Alkathronen simply to make sure that there had been no errors in their calculations. Once he had finished there, he had been meant to return briefly to Ilshan Gathdel Teth—and then go straight to Desriel to lead the assault.
One that would have been delayed by his absence, but only fleetingly.
Alaris’s gaze was hard. “I tried, you know. I did everything I could to stop this from happening. Even after the Boundary was strengthened again, I argued for finding that last Tributary, for convincing the girl inside of it to leave.” He shook his head. “Ultimately the lives lost in this war, the aftermath of the Columns draining the Cyrarium—none of it matters. We will each have our opportunities for redemption once El reaches Deilannis. Even you, Tal, though you don’t deserve it. All that is done will be undone.”
Caeden closed his eyes. The ilshara itself could have withstood an attack like this; it was a vast, complex construction, hundreds of interconnected parts distributed over thousands of miles that would reinforce and repair each other. Not even the Columns, staggeringly destructive though they were, could strike every section of it at once.
The store of Essence that powered it, though… that was a different story. Like the Tributaries, part of the Cyrarium’s strength had been the fact that it was hidden. It had been built to be nigh impregnable nonetheless, but against the annihilating strength of the Columns, its defenses would simply have no chance.
If the Columns were arrayed in the right place, the Cyrarium would be ripped apart just as surely as anything else.
Caeden opened his eyes again, a few points of confusion finally becoming clear. This was why Diara had offered the deal to Asha, why the Venerate had switched their focus to finding Nethgalla. The Ath had caused countless problems for them over the years, and they no doubt wanted to be certain that she would not be able to interfere again so close to the end. She was, perhaps, the last remaining unknown for them.
But Caeden knew she had already done all she could. If the Cyrarium was destroyed, Asha’s power would simply have nowhere to go. The Boundary would fall, the forces beyond would sweep through Andarra’s remaining defenses—probably few, after what Desriel was about to do—and then…
And then the Darklands. An end to all that was good.
“Well. That makes things easy,” said Caeden quietly, pain still coloring each word. There was nothing else to do here. If his old friend was willing to go through with this—had kept this hidden from him, all this time—then there would be no swaying him.
Caeden stepped outside of time, and ran.
