The Light of All That Falls, page 4
Alaris stared at the heatstone for a while, obviously considering.
“Can you hear yourself, Tal?” he asked suddenly. He looked up, and there was a haunted aspect to his gaze as he stared at Caeden. “You say you did not come here to talk about this, but… the man you aspire to be? You want to exchange one friend—whom you imprisoned for two thousand years—with another, and your argument for my accepting the trade is that I already know you will kill one of them anyway.” He gave a tired, bitter laugh. “Yet you are so certain that you are the one on the right path, and that the rest of us have been misled.”
Caeden scowled. “I suppose you think that you and the others are less stained, somehow?”
“Yes.” Alaris said the word matter-of-factly. “We act knowing that all that is done will be undone, Tal—that our actions against others do not matter, unless you succeed. We are not the ones bent on protecting a broken, imprisoned world and killing the people we love.”
Caeden opened his mouth to retort, then stopped himself with a weary shake of his head.
“No,” he said quietly. “No more, Alaris. No more trying to sow doubt. No more dredging up arguments that we have already had, or distracting me with questions to which I gave you my answers centuries ago. Shame on you for that. Shame on you for trying to take advantage of my ignorance.” He stared at the other man steadily, letting him see how heartfelt was his own disappointment. “The fact is, I know what I believe now. I remember why all of this is necessary. I remember that you refuse to consider that the creature we know as El has been deceiving us. I remember. So let us just… skip this part, this time.”
Alaris’s expression twitched, and Caeden saw that his rebuke had struck home. Good.
There was silence.
“It really is you this time, isn’t it, Tal,” Alaris said ruefully. He rubbed his face tiredly. “Davian for Cyr, then. Let me… think a few moments on it.”
Silence fell again; Caeden studied Alaris, loath to ask but too concerned not to. “How is he?”
Alaris hesitated.
“Well enough,” he said. “He has created some… unique politics, though, as I am sure you can imagine. Gassandrid wishes to educate, while Diara… Diara wishes to punish. Knowing who he is and what will happen to him—what he will do—has made some of their arguments quite compelling.” He held Caeden’s gaze. “But he is still under my jurisdiction. And for now, as far as I am concerned, he is simply one more person who needs protecting from you.”
Caeden felt his jaw tighten at that, but said nothing.
Alaris watched him thoughtfully. “While we are being civil…”
“If you have things to say, then I am happy to listen.”
Alaris just nodded to himself, evidently having expected no less. He reached into a pocket and drew out something small and thickly wrapped; the cloth was white but as Alaris began to remove the covering, Caeden saw the inner layers were sodden with some kind of green, viscous liquid. Soon the last piece fell to the ground with a damp slap, but it still took Caeden a few moments to realize what Alaris was holding.
“Where did you get this?” Alaris tossed the ruined remains of the Portal Box to him. “Clearly none of us made it.”
Caeden’s heart skipped a beat as he caught the Vessel, and he barely avoided displaying his relief as he examined it; getting to confirm its destruction was a gift, though Alaris couldn’t have known that. The cube’s once-bronze surface was now a slick black, the inscriptions worn off, a piece of the metal oozing away even as he held it.
Caeden had remembered early on that Talan Gol would corrupt the Vessel, as it did almost all such devices trapped for any length of time within the ilshara. But the Portal Box had been especially powerful. Unique. He hadn’t been certain that it would decay in the same way.
“The Lyth,” said Caeden, seeing no advantage to lying. “I stole it from them.” He shrugged at Alaris’s raised eyebrows.
Alaris gave a chuckle at that, shaking his head. “That is a story I would very much like to hear one day.”
“One day,” agreed Caeden. He let his gaze return to the rotting Vessel in his hand, regret heavy in his chest. Another reminder of just how badly he had used his friend. As Malshash, Caeden had linked Davian to the Portal Box, manipulating him into delivering it after Caeden’s memories were erased—all because Davian was the only one Caeden had been certain would live to do so.
He’d drawn Davian into all of this, knowing that he would ultimately die at Caeden’s hand. Because he would die at Caeden’s hand, and therefore not any sooner.
He pushed both the thought and the decayed box to one side, carefully wiping his hands, tempted to again try to convince Alaris of why it had been corrupted in the first place. The other Venerate believed that the degradation of Vessels in Talan Gol, and in fact the very barrenness of the land itself, was an effect of the Boundary: something built into its machinery to make it a more effective means of imprisonment.
It wasn’t. Caeden himself had allied with Andrael to devise the ilshara, and its purpose had only ever been to delay El’s march to Deilannis, to force the other Venerate to stop and join him in questioning whether their faith had become blind. And yet, even when they’d believed that Caeden was still on their side—that he’d been an unwilling participant in Andrael’s machinations—Alaris and the others had been quick with their excuses. They’d claimed that Andrael must have added to the ilshara’s anchoring Vessels before handing them over to the Darecians, or that possibly the Darecians themselves had modified them.
The Venerate were intelligent men and women, and yet somehow unable to even entertain the possibility that the ongoing, contained presence of their god was the true problem.
Such was Shammaeloth’s nature, though. Those who were most steeped in his corruption somehow had the hardest time seeing it—something for which Caeden could barely blame them. He knew that myopic haze all too well.
Alaris abruptly shook his head.
“My answer is no, Tal.”
Caeden stared blankly, then breathed out heavily as he understood. Alaris had chosen to reject the deal for Davian’s release.
“Why?”
Alaris gestured helplessly. “Because you only came here after you realized that you couldn’t beat me in Ilshan Gathdel Teth. Because I cannot see the upside of this for you, which means that you must be concealing it.” He paused, sounding desolate now. “But most of all? Because after Is… I know that you are not the man you once were. You may have the memory of our friendship, Tal’kamar, but I am no longer convinced that you are my friend.”
Caeden felt his heart wrench, and he struggled to find the words to respond.
“You cannot know how sorry I am to hear that,” he said finally, not bothering to conceal the pain in his voice. “But you are making a mistake, Alaris.”
Alaris’s expression didn’t change. “I will exchange Davian for the location of Ashalia’s Tributary. Nothing less.”
“No.”
“Then we have nothing further to discuss.” Alaris stood stiffly. “I gave you my word that I would let you leave Alkathronen, Tal, and I meant it. But the moment you are gone from this city, we are enemies. There will be no other parleys like this.”
Caeden stood, too, then walked over to his blade and stooped, picking it up off the stone with a slight metallic scraping.
Then he slowly, deliberately leveled it at Alaris.
“I know,” he said softly.
Alaris stared at him in indignant disbelief, and Caeden hated the guilt that look stirred in him. The two men remained motionless; then Alaris was shifting smoothly, giving himself room as he reluctantly drew his own sword.
“I suppose I should be grateful that you didn’t wait until my back was turned,” said Alaris, holding his blade at the ready. “At least that much of you remains.” He sounded more tired than anything else, though his eyes were hard. “Whatever advantages you think you have here over Ilshan Gathdel Teth, Tal, you’ve miscalculated. I have no doubt that you have been busy laying the groundwork against me, setting your traps, but you said it yourself—you expected to have longer. Mere hours was never going to be enough.”
Caeden didn’t acknowledge the statement, keeping his blade up and cautiously beginning to circle. Alaris matched the motion.
“One last chance, Tal. Walk away. You do not have one of Andrael’s Blades, so even if you have some other Vessel I don’t know about, you cannot hope to win. And I will not let you escape this time.” When Caeden still didn’t respond, Alaris sighed, looking stuck between melancholy and frustration. “Then answer me one last question, before we end this and you are locked away forever.”
Caeden kept pacing. “Ask.”
Alaris’s gaze never left Caeden’s as they continued their slow, cautious dance. “I know that shape-shifting is simple enough for you, after all that practice a century ago—and I know that most of your memories must have come back by now, too. So why return to this body? Why not your own?”
Caeden almost hesitated at that. He’d asked himself something similar, in the days after Davian had decapitated him to free him from Ilshan Gathdel Teth. Wondered why he had felt so driven to change back, despite the accompanying pain. Despite his other options.
He had eventually found the answer, though.
“Because it’s who I am now,” he replied.
His blade flashed down toward Alaris’s right arm; there was a blur and then the clash of steel as Alaris slid aside and parried, the sound echoing through the silence of Alkathronen. Caeden swayed smoothly back as the counter came, swift and clinical, slicing the air where his shoulder had been a moment earlier.
Caeden pressed the attack with a flurry of quick, light strikes, nerves taut as he kept his breathing steady, quickly assessing his best course of action. Alaris’s Disruption shield was already in place, just as Caeden’s was, preventing kan attacks almost entirely. Each man had stepped outside of time, too; the snow that had been drifting gently downward was now frozen in place, suspended between them, glittering ethereally as each flake refracted the Essence-light of the city.
He broke off, exhaling hard, his frozen breath drifting outward and then gathering in place as it left his time bubble. This was an even match where kan and Essence were concerned, bringing it once again down to a physical contest.
A contest in which Alaris was invincible.
Alaris didn’t give him long to think; the muscular man was suddenly pressing forward, the wicked edge of his blade flashing in a mesmerizing, fluid dance of motion as it blurred at Caeden again and again and again, each strike whispering past skin or barely turned aside by desperate, flicking parries. Alaris wasn’t as talented as Isiliar, not as creative or unpredictable in his attacks. But he was still very, very good.
Caeden flooded his legs with Essence and propelled himself forcefully backward, skidding hard to a stop along the perfectly smooth white stone street almost fifty feet away. Alaris was already in motion, stalking toward him and closing the distance rapidly; Caeden extended his time bubble wide, tapped his Reserve and sent a torrent of Essence at the nearest building, wrenching a large portion of stone from the facade and hurling it into Alaris’s path. Alaris leaped high, clearing the enormous piece of masonry easily as it embedded itself in the road where he had been about to tread, continuing his approach as if nothing had happened.
“This is pointless, Tal,” he shouted over the crumbling roar of the collapsing building to his left.
Some of Alkathronen’s Essence lines had broken open; Caeden used kan to snatch energy from the air and then twisted it tight, hurling a brilliant ball at the oncoming man before launching himself forward after it, low and hard. The Essence dissipated as soon as it struck Alaris’s Disruption shield, but it had served its purpose; Alaris slashed blindly at the air, anticipating the follow-up attack but not where it would strike. Caeden skidded swiftly past the other man, shielding his body against the ground with Essence and slashing hard across Alaris’s knee as the other man’s steel carved through the space just above his head.
Alaris snarled as Caeden’s blade ricocheted off the Venerate’s impenetrable skin, sending a shiver down Caeden’s arm even with his Essence-enhanced strength. A small blow, almost petty, which was why Alaris hadn’t anticipated it—but it was the sort of thing that would irritate him, frustrate and cause hesitation. Slow him down just a fraction and keep him distracted.
Alaris barely faltered at the strike, spinning and unleashing a furious burst of flashing, whisper-thin Essence attacks. Caeden scrambled to his feet and flung up a solid layer of kan just in time, absorbing the strikes; though Caeden’s Disruption shield was tight, it was always shifting, and some of those near-invisible golden needles would likely have slipped through.
The ground beneath Caeden’s feet trembled and he threw himself backward just in time; the road where he’d been standing ripped away in a shower of rubble and fine white dust. He rolled, the shattering sound of stone against stone painfully loud in his ears as Alaris used the chunk of street like a hammer, leaving a crater five feet wide in the spot where Caeden had just been.
Caeden scrambled to his feet, gasping, and launched himself forward once again.
Everything was a miasma of running and dodging and thundering destruction after that.
Twice Caeden completely lost track of where they were, the buildings around him disintegrating in massive, terrifying, roaring clouds as one or the other of them ripped shreds from the structures, then used the freed Essence that had been flowing through Alkathronen to tear away even more. Each time he managed to reorient himself, though, diving in for an exchange in steel and then flinging himself away so that the battle gradually, painfully drew closer to where he needed it to be. He fought as defensively as he could without being obvious, but still his body began to accumulate deeper and deeper cuts, ones that required more and more Essence to heal. With every agonizing blow he absorbed, he could feel his Reserve steadily dwindling, and it simply wasn’t enough to snatch more from the city around him.
Alaris was winning.
An Essence-enhanced leap over a shattered fountain finally brought him within sight of the low wall that marked the eastern edge of the city. Normally the view would be breathtaking, but beyond the wall the blizzard still raged, nothing but driven white snow against black night past the near-invisible protective dome that lay across Alkathronen.
Caeden forced Essence into his legs again and ran parallel to the barrier, lungs burning and breath coming in short, sharp gasps, skidding and angling down an alleyway as stone screeched and roared and shattered in his wake. If he were stronger, if he had had more time to prepare, he might have been able to make this trap less obvious.
But that wasn’t an option, now. He was dangerously close to spent.
When he finally reached the long public square that ended at the eastern wall—probably a marketplace once, undamaged as yet and perfectly lit—he slid to a stop, turning and raising an Essence shield against another barrage of stone. The shield flickered; pieces of rubble cut through it, striking Caeden in the chest and leg, breaking bone and piercing deep into muscle. He snarled in pain, stumbling back until he was leaning against the waist-high wall that marked the edge of Alkathronen’s dome, then dropping his shield and snatching Essence from a nearby illuminating line. He forced the energy into his wounds, flinching as more streaking stone pierced the cloud of grit that blanketed the open space, flying perilously close to his head.
The veil of dust eventually cleared to show Alaris at the opposite edge of the square, obviously favoring one leg and looking tired, but otherwise no less determined than when they had started. The air was acrid with the smell of shattered masonry; Caeden gave a racking cough and wiped sweat mingled with grime from his brow, his hands slick and smeared with gray. The two men’s gazes met.
There was a pause, a silent acknowledgment. Caeden let his shoulders slump, even as his pulse quickened.
“It was always going to end this way, Tal,” called Alaris, limping forward into the square. “You need to—”
Caeden activated the endpoint of his Vessel.
The outline of a wolf’s head—something he’d been compelled to add despite the extra time it took, thanks to the binding all of the Venerate had agreed to millennia earlier—sprang to life beneath Alaris’s feet across the breadth of the square, instantly draining every other Essence line and plunging the surrounding area into pitch blackness.
There was a deep cracking sound, and Caeden had only a moment to see Alaris’s face illuminated by the wolf’s head on the ground, the other man’s eyes wide, before the ground caved beneath him and the buildings that rose on all three sides smashed inward.
Even expecting it as he was, Caeden sagged back against the wall as the square exploded with a painful and disorienting roar; Alaris vanished as chunks of stone thundered at terrifying, dizzying speeds toward where he had been standing, as if drawn by some unthinkably powerful vortex. Within moments a pile of debris two stories high and just as wide had formed a tightly packed mound, barely visible within the eerily lit roiling clouds that now surrounded it.
An uneasy peace descended. The wolf’s head—what was still visible of it—faded as quickly as it had appeared, shrouding the scene in darkness for a few seconds before the illuminating lines of Essence sprang back to life, regaining their access to Alkathronen’s deep Cyrarium.
Caeden painfully hauled himself up to sit atop the low wall, letting his back rest against the net of Essence that prevented anyone from falling over the edge. He knew that if the blizzard were not obscuring the view behind him, he would be able to see the dizzying, sheer drop, though not where it ended more than three thousand feet below. Like the walls of Fedris Idri, this cliff—and the others surrounding the peak upon which Alkathronen was built—was perfectly smooth, glass-like, impenetrable by steel and impossible to scale.
