Age of Empyre, page 39
part #6 of Legends of the First Empire Series
Chapter Thirty-One
Fate of the Future
The river is back. The Parthaloren Falls are making far too much noise. I’ll never hear anything up here—but it is beautiful. Scary, but beautiful. — The Book of Brin
“I don’t have the key,” Brin told Trilos.
She didn’t like that her voice sounded like a guilty child. She—who had suffered death and returned with wisdom beyond any living man, who had faced the wrath of gods and climbed the Alysin Pillar, who had spoken with Elan herself—felt as frightened as an abandoned infant. But this was Trilos, second of the Aesira, younger brother of Turin, older brother to Ferrol, Drome, and Mari, and the only other being to escape the Abyss. And he had done so without Eton’s Key. He was easily the closest thing on the face of Elan, besides Malcolm, to a real god, and this time she didn’t have Suri or Minna to help. Brin’s one relief was that she was telling the truth. She didn’t have the key—not anymore.
Trilos studied her. “Were you anyone else, I’d suspect you of lying, but you’re incapable of that, aren’t you?” Trilos asked. He hadn’t moved. His foot was inches from the knapsack.
It doesn’t matter. I can always write it again.
But something told her that wasn’t true.
“Did you give it back to Turin?” Trilos stared, but Brin didn’t answer.
She also didn’t look at him, her focus lingering on that foot so close to her little satchel.
“But you really do need to hurry . . . I don’t want all that I’ve sewn up to unravel.”
Was that the reason, or had Malcolm known Trilos would find her? Had he knowingly kept silent? If so, why? What was about to happen that Malcolm didn’t want to tell her? What couldn’t she know? Was there more to this moment than Brin could see, some ripple effect that would play out across future centuries, a horizon that only Malcolm could perceive? Had he not wanted to spoil the moment because it needed to be unexpected? Or did he really not see this?
“You don’t know my father. He’s beyond manipulative and extremely clever. He shouldn’t use people like you.”
“No. You didn’t.” Trilos answered his own question. “But why not? You saw him. You warned Turin. But you didn’t return the key. So if you don’t have it, you must have hidden it somewhere.”
Brin held her breath as Trilos bent down and picked up her pack. He opened the flap and looked inside.
“Not in here, either.” He continued to peer. “Thought you might be trying to trick me with a narrow definition of have, but I should have known better, shouldn’t I? You’re so pure. Not only can’t you lie, you can’t even mislead. You’re quite the hero—good and honest to a fault, or maybe you’re just innocent. New snow is that way, but time melts everything.” He hefted the pack, appraising its weight. “Quite a bit of work you’ve done here. It’d be a shame to lose it all.”
“You might want to take measures to protect that,” Malcolm’s words of warning, which had been so soft before, rang in her head.
“Tell me.” He lifted the pack and joined her near the railing. “Where is the key?”
“If you destroy my work, I’ll just write it again,” Brin said. She was trying to sound brave, but her voice was weak. Seeing the bag so close to the edge scared her. Writing it once had been a magical feat, and not just by the way the ink had refilled and the pages never ran out. Brin knew she would never get the chance to do it again.
Trilos knew it, too. He laughed, and in his eyes, she saw the truth—his truth—that The Book of Brin wasn’t the only thing that would go over the rail.
Amid all the hoopla, no one noticed the five near-frozen, previously dead adventurers returning from the grave.
They stumbled their way down the road and past a handful of tents and smoldering fire pits. Not a soul was in camp. That morning, everyone was at the river. An army of Fhrey was gathered on the far bank.
“Looks like it has already begun,” Tekchin said.
“You can’t destroy my book,” Brin said.
“Of course I can.”
Brin reached for her bag. Trilos swung his arm, dangling the pack above the roaring falls, making her heart stutter.
“Stop! You don’t understand. I put your memories in it, all your thoughts of Muriel, the ones you wrote about on tablets in the Abyss. You have to read them. If you do, you’ll regain what you lost, what you sacrificed to get out of Phyre. The joy of your life.”
For the first time, she saw surprise on Trilos’s furrowed brow. He looked at the bag, then back at her.
“It’s true!” Brin shouted at him. “You know it is. I don’t lie, remember? If you destroy that bag, you’ll obliterate what used to be the most important part of you. Something so powerful, it gave you the strength to escape the Abyss. They’re your own thoughts, your own words. Words you wrote to yourself.”
Trilos pulled the bag back, his expression troubled, his eyes struggling to work out this new problem.
“On those pages lies the love of your life. Her name is Muriel, and she asked me to give your memories back. She begged me. They are in your hand right now.”
His eyes shifted left then right. “I don’t know anyone named Muriel.”
“You called her Reely.”
Trilos squinted, struggling to think. That name didn’t seem to bounce off anything, either.
“It’s all in there. I’m the Keeper of Ways for my people. I remember things very well. I wrote it all down exactly as I found it, precisely the way you wrote it on the stone tablets in the Abyss. Don’t you understand? You’re right. You did help me develop writing, but you did it so that I could find, read, and return your lost memories. The stone tablets you left in the Agave, in the Abyss—they’re your memories, your joy is in that bag. Don’t throw it away.”
Once more Trilos looked down at the bag.
“I don’t lie,” Brin said. “I don’t even mislead. It’s not a trap. It’s the truth. And maybe you’re right, and there isn’t one single, perfect set of facts. I know you don’t believe in my interpretation because I’m young and naïve, but how do you know that your truth is the right one? You could be wrong, too.”
“No, I can’t.” Trilos continued to look down at the bag in his hand. “Because I don’t care about the truth.”
Brin took a breath, letting her muscles relax.
He believes me.
“Just read the words,” she implored him. “Read and remember.”
Trilos shook his head. “That’s not how it works. Your friend Suri could tell you if she were here.” He looked at the bag with a melancholy stare and nodded. “There was a gap. I knew how I escaped. I just couldn’t recall what memory I sacrificed. Now I know.”
“Yes, and your memories are here!” Brin shouted at him. “You preserved them.”
“I’m sure they are. But what does it matter?”
“Because you can get them back.”
Trilos shook his head. “No, I can’t. You don’t understand how it works. The power comes from anguish. If the loss was temporary, there would be no sacrifice. I wouldn’t have had the power to punch through the worlds.”
Brin was confused. “Then why write all of it down?”
“A suicide note, I suppose. You said that you spoke to this Reely person?”
Brin nodded.
“And you told her what was on the tablets?”
Again, Brin nodded.
“Well, there you have it. I must have foreseen that you would deliver the message. I took the time to write everything down so she would know what happened, and, I assume, how much I cared for her.”
Down below and off to the east, she heard people shouting. The Challenge was being fought, and she wasn’t even watching.
“I sacrificed someone obviously very dear to me. I must have done so because stopping Turin was more important.”
With his free hand, Trilos reached out and grabbed Brin by the throat. She screamed.
“With Eton’s Key, I can open the gates to Phyre, and all those now trapped who know of Turin’s treachery can rise against him. I need that key. I don’t care who I lost in the past, and I won’t mourn your passing now. Tell me where it is, and I’ll spare your life.”
Outside the ring, everyone was screaming at Nyphron, trying to stop him from stripping off his armor. They knew, even if he didn’t, the mistake he was making. They, of course, weren’t in the battle, and they didn’t have thousands of unseen ants eating them. With all his armor except his boots off, Nyphron began clawing at his clothes.
“Here,” Mawyndulë told him. “Let me help you with that.”
Three fingers flicked. A squeeze of his left hand and a thrust with his open right palm sent a torrent of flames out. This time Nyphron caught on fire and burned. His clothes were set ablaze, his hair igniting.
Mawyndulë let him continue to burn. It taxed him, weakened him, but this was the big finale. Nothing so marvelous as the display his father had entertained the crowd with, but a win was a win.
Mawyndulë eased off and watched with grinning satisfaction as Nyphron fell to the ground, just as Lothian had.
No one was laughing anymore.
Everyone outside the ring was silent. Hands covered faces. A few even whimpered.
As Moya and the others started across the wafer-thin bridge toward the tower, the watching crowd went silent.
Moya looked behind her at Roan and Gifford. Both returned her stare, confused. Something bad had happened. Something terrible.
“Are we too late? Where do we need to go, Gifford? What must we do?” She wasn’t an Artist and couldn’t speak to trees, yet at that moment, she felt it: The world was screaming with an unmistakable urgency. Moya experienced it as an irrational fear, a dread unlike anything she’d ever known. It washed over her in a rising panic that had no apparent source.
Then, in that moment of surreal stillness, she heard a single scream from overhead.
Gifford jerked his head up. “Bwin?”
High above, Moya saw two figures on a balcony overlooking the falls. A Fhrey holding Brin’s pack shoved a woman to the edge.
Gifford was right. It was Brin.
Trilos held her against the rail. “Tell me where the key is. Now!”
Her feet were coming out from under her. All she had to hang on to was Trilos. Looking down, she saw only the roaring white mists billowing up like a meeting of many angry clouds. The morning sun cut across the falls, turning water droplets into sparkling gems.
Her stomach had climbed into her throat, and she swallowed it back down, forcing her body to relax. Her heart and lungs were pumping of their own accord, doing what they were expected to. Only things had changed. The worst part of death was the unknown, and death was no mystery to Brin.
“Go ahead,” Brin told him, her voice hard and steady. This was the articulation of the shining woman whom Brin had seen in the mirror to Alysin. “I’ve been there, remember? It’s not so bad.” She thought of the fruit that had tasted like anything she wanted and the warmth of the hearth in Mari’s home. Then she remembered Tesh. He was still down there, feeling alone and forgotten in the Abyss. She had left him, but now her work was done. The horn had been delivered and the book written. Plus, she didn’t have the key. That treasure was locked safely away in the one place Trilos would never go looking.
Trilos glared. His mouth jerked down in a severe frown that appeared painful. He was breathing hard through his nostrils again, making them flare, and for a moment, the world paused. The roar of the falls was still there but fainter somehow, and the shouts of spectators had stopped entirely as she and Trilos teetered on the brink of eternity.
“You’ve lost your fear of death. Of course you have! Turin thinks of everything, doesn’t he?”
“Bwin?” a voice came from below.
Gifford? Brin managed to turn her head far enough to see them. Moya, Roan, Tekchin, Rain, and Gifford were crossing the bridge below.
They made it! Roan found a way out of the Abyss for her and Gifford, at least. And everyone but Tressa and Tesh have come back to life. It worked. They found Padera and—
“Friends?” Trilos asked. “You don’t care if I kill you . . . but . . .”
“No. Don’t!”
“Did you know that Turin isn’t the only one who can see the future? Any Aesira can to some degree. But he ate the fruit of Alurya, and it granted him more than just immortality. Most of the time I don’t bother because the future changes so quickly, but if I really concentrate, and focus on one thing at a time, the way I did with your writing . . .”
Trilos dropped Brin’s pack on the balcony’s floor, but still kept one hand on her throat. He stared at the horizon. “Ah, yes. There’s Gifford and his wife, Roan, enjoying a happy life. And what’s this? A perfect child, not twisted like him or broken like her, but a wonderful, beautiful baby.” Trilos smiled as if amused by some joke. “They want to name it after you. Imagine that. It’s a boy so they’ll use the male equivalent: Bran. And he’ll be the perfect protégé. You’ll teach him to read, and write, and tell him everything you know. After your death, he goes on to form a religion based on The Book of Brin. The world’s a better place because of the story you wrote, the things you did, the sort of person you are. Unless . . .”
Trilos’s tone dropped, filling with a deadly seriousness. “I think I’ll kill her, not him, and it won’t be quick. Roan is a sensitive sort, isn’t she? Doesn’t like to be touched? I’ll make her husband watch. Without Roan, Gifford will be crippled forever, but in a different—much more terrible—way. His pain of living without her will be so much worse than sending them to Phyre together. And you should know that some horrors are so great that we take them with us into the afterlife. Some regrets are so indelible that they can make Phyre less a reward and more an eternal torture.”
“Please, I’m begging you.” Tears filled her eyes.
“All you have to do is tell me where the key is. Tell me, and I promise I won’t hurt you or any of your friends. I’m not cruel. I don’t want to hurt anyone. All I want is to open the doors to Phyre and free those who are trapped. I just need the key. What do you say?”
He waited.
Because Tressa and Tesh weren’t with the others, there was a good chance that the key was still with Padera.
But what if they brought it with them? The risk is too great.
Trilos’s only interest in the others was as leverage to make her obey. He had no idea that they, too, had been in Phyre. He would have no reason to suspect they knew anything about the key. She was his only connection to it.
“Turin entrusted the key to you,” Mari had said. “And he isn’t a trusting person.”
“You are the only one that matters.” Aria had told her. “Don’t you understand that? This hasn’t been about Tressa, or Moya, or any of the others.”
This is about me! Brin finally understood. It had been her story, which was at its end. The rest would be written by others.
All I need to do to help save the world is . . . let go of it.
Brin gritted her teeth, and with one last breath and all her strength, she shoved backward. For all his foresight, Trilos didn’t see that coming. She fell away from him over the rail, over the edge. Trilos tried to save her, but only caught her breckon mor. The clasp of the pin that held the garment snapped free.
As she plummeted, mist sprayed Brin’s face, and her hair flew back. She wasn’t afraid. She’d done this before. She knew what she was leaving behind and what lay ahead. Her work on Elan was done, but she had unfinished business on the other side.
Hang on, Tesh. I’m coming.
Brin’s small figure fell backward over the edge, making one full flip before disappearing into the mist. There was no scream. No cry other than from Moya, Roan, and Gifford. Tekchin and Rain were mute. The five stood frozen on that delicate expanse of bridge, looking up in shock.
“Nooooo . . .” The word escaped Moya as a moan.
Where the strength came from, she didn’t know, but Moya ran. What she did couldn’t have been called a sprint, but she threw everything she had into the effort. Before they crossed the remaining distance to the tower, Tekchin and Rain passed her, their swords drawn.
The three of them climbed multiple sets of stairs before finding an opening. When Moya reached the balcony, she collapsed from exhaustion, struggling to breathe. She had nothing left.
Tekchin and Rain were at the railing, looking down.
“Where’s the Fhrey?” Moya asked. “Did you see which way he went?”
“No,” Rain replied. “Are we sure this is the right balcony?”
Tekchin reached down and picked something up.
“What’s that?” Moya asked. “Is it her pack?”
“No, it’s a shawl—Brin’s breckon mor.” He looked around. “There’s nothing else.”
It’s over, Mawyndulë realized. I’ve won. I’m Fhrey again. I’m finally fane! Except . . .
The cold, it was still there. The empty sense of internal nothingness lingered within him.
Something else was wrong. Nyphron wasn’t screaming.
Mawyndulë had blasted him with enough fire to cook a bull, but the Instarya hadn’t made a sound, and worse, he was moving. He ought to be shrieking. Lothian had screamed plenty. But Nyphron was quiet, and his movements weren’t the thrashing panic Mawyndulë had expected. Instead, the warrior rolled on the ground, putting out the remaining flames from the few tatters that had been his clothes.
Then Nyphron did the impossible. Naked, hairless, and coated in mud, he stood up and smiled.
Mawyndulë wasted no time. He summoned another blast and hit Nyphron with a second round of fire. This time Nyphron didn’t fall or pat at himself. The fire did nothing more than dry the mud. And as it did, some of the filth fell from Nyphron’s skin.
