Prince of time, p.35
Prince of Time, page 35
He glanced at Avallyn. She was looking back, her eyes wide, her hair streaming out from her head like a charged halo.
"More potent," she shouted above the humming noise.
"Aye," he agreed, wondering what they could expect when the eighth orb was released. Her expression told him she was wondering the same thing, wondering and worrying.
He set himself back to the task of finding the remaining orbs, so focused on that, it was another moment before he realized the darkness in the tower was deepening despite the increase in dreamstone light, and that the cloying closeness of the place had taken on a wicked smell.
Corvus watched the pretty, pretty pair work their petty magic, and his mind seethed. He'd found his place of power. It had drawn him like a magnet the night he'd risen from the earth. All had been dark, except for one brilliant beacon of light in the south, a beacon he'd been too basely crude to find the last time he'd been in the past. In his new, highly refined state of existence, he'd seen the place for what it was, what it had always been—Nemeton's stronghold, the lost mage who had first traveled through time and returned with the tales of the cosmos, the man who had last written in the Prydion Cal Le, the Blue Book of the Magi.
The tower had been good to Corvus, restoring him somewhat, giving him a bit more form. He could count the fingers on his right hand again, and his vision had cleared out of his right eye. He had more of a right leg and could feel a pulse beating in the side of his neck. He had at last found his salvation. It was here in Nemeton's place, where the very stones were bathed in the redemptive force of the mage's power.
He'd been saved. Saved by his own cunning and quickness.
And what were they about down there with their little copper balls, setting them all afloat in the air? he wondered. And what would be the best way to kill them ? he wondered even more—though whether to do it now or later was taking on equal importance. They'd released something in the armillary sphere, some kind of energy he felt flowing through him. To feel anything was a novelty; to feel a corporeal sense of power was grimly satisfying. Perhaps the pretty pair could hasten his salvation.
Best to let them finish then, he advised himself, wondering if it was a heartbeat he was beginning to hear in his chest.
He knew who they were. His memory had returned crystal clear, and with his memory all his hate had returned—and the painful horror of his disbelief when he'd seen Avallyn, his Avallyn, Princess of the White Palace and Priestess of the Bones, the most exalted and precious White Lady of Death from the northern dunes, when he'd seen her standing on the weir platform in Claerwen, seen her gaze lovingly at the man who would take her away, a time-rider with a white blaze streaking through his hair.
And not just any time-rider. He felt himself twist tighter into the crevices between stone and mortar at the very top of the tower wall. Not just any time-rider, but the tech-trash thief from Pan-shei.
She could have had an emperor, and she'd chosen a drunken thief, a ragged bastard who ran with a motley crew of other tech-trash renegades, a madman who had dared to steal from the Warmonger of the Waste.
For all these sins the man would die the most agonizing death Corvus could contrive, and the most agonizing death he could contrive included letting the thief watch Avallyn die first. To that end, he stirred himself from the wall.
She was still so beautiful. It was almost a pity to destroy her.
"Avallynnnn." He breathed her name into the room with all the evil intent of his deepest longings.
Morgan froze at the sound, the last copper orb lifting off his fingertips. They were not alone in the tower.
"Avallynnnn." The voice came again, nearer, the horror of it overriding even the fierce force crackling to sudden life off Nemeton's celestial sphere.
Morgan felt on fire with the sphere's energy, his skin crawling with it, yet he drew the Magia Blade and held it tight. He just wished he had a lasgun and a blast cannon—and a dragon. Only one person, if person he could be named, could call to her with such depravity: Corvus Gei. The Warmonger had been quick enough after all in Claerwen, and now he had them well and truly trapped. Even if they could make it out one of the doors, they dare not leave, not until the Indigo Book was set in place.
Avallyn backed closer to him, her dagger drawn, the book held tightly against her chest.
"Corvus," she shouted close to his ear, and there was fear in her voice.
"Aye." Morgan searched the room.
A drift of man of shadow tore away from the tower wall, and he countered with the blade, slicing through air and nothing else.
"You fffool." A black wisp snaked down from the ceiling and snagged his ankle. With a twist and jerk, he was slammed into the floor. "Do you think you can fight me?"
The breath knocked out of him, Morgan struggled to his feet, grateful he still had two. He knew what Corvus could do with his smoky darkness, and he could only wonder why the Warmonger hadn't taken part of him.
"Corvus!" he yelled over the growing noise of the storm and the sphere. "You have no place here. Be gone!"
"No placcce?" the Warmonger hissed. "You are the trespasser here, thief. This is my place."
The shadowy man shifted again, like a curtain rippling in the wind, and Morgan instinctively lashed out, the sword's cutting edge sliding through more nothing.
"Fffool indeed, if you think you can cut me with a steel edge." Another black tendril escaped from the wall and snapped like a whip across the room, catching Morgan in the chest, cutting through his tunic and slamming him back against the jagged pedestal.
Pain exploded in his head, and with a grunt, he fell in a heap at the base of the sphere. Lights danced behind his closed eyelids. His skull felt cracked, and there was definitely something warm and wet running down the back of his neck.
"Corvus!" he heard Avallyn cry through the haze of his agony, and he feared she'd be dead or worse before he could raise himself up.
"No," he croaked, forcing his eyes open to a narrow slit and seeing her standing in front of him, still whole. Her hair writhed like golden snakes around her head. Light from the sphere's dreamstones limned her body. Her shoulders were squared, her feet set apart, the dreamstone dagger balanced in her hand with a knife-fighter's skill. The crystal haft radiated pure light, green with a violet core.
The bastard was right, he thought, trying to focus on the light. He couldn't fight Corvus with steel. There wasn't enough of him to take a blade. Just as in Kryscaven, it took light to defeat darkness. Only the white light of the seven books could defeat Dharkkum and its spawn, the fiendish half-creature Corvus had become.
He had to get the chamber opened. Where were those friggin' orbs?
He looked up through Llynya's tree and almost passed out as pain stabbed up into his head, but the orbs were there, lazily circling the sphere, wandering on their spiral path as if they had all eternity to align themselves, deflecting subatomic particles and God knew what else. Tamisk had been condescendingly vague about the quantum physics of the whole friggin' operation, which hadn't bothered Morgan at all. He'd learned to be as good a lasgun technician as any tech-trash runner in Pan-shei, and he knew enough electronics to get himself killed in a second or less. But when mechanics crossed the line into physics, he was out of his league, and in the Hart he knew Nemeton had gone one step further, just as Tamisk had, and physics had crossed the line into metaphysics and magical conjurations.
Whatever the orbs had to do first, he just wished like hell they'd hurry up and do it and make their friggin' ring.
The shape of a man coalesced in the shadows curving off the tower's wall and glided toward Avallyn, or rather half the shape of a man, with a half a ghastly smile on his half face. The rest of him was shadow and smoke, an undulating darkness without true form.
"Avvvallyn," Corvus crooned. There was threat in his tone, undeniable threat, but also a thin thread of hope, and 'twas the hope that made Morgan's blood run cold.
Corvus wanted her, not just for vengeance, but in all the ways a. man wanted a woman. Morgan had seen a lot of strange things in a lot of strange places, but nothing that churned his gut with more sick rage than what the Warmonger had just revealed.
He tightened his grip on the Magia Blade, squeezing the crystal haft, forgoing steel for light, and a flash burst from between his fingers with a cracking whine. The light skimmed the edge of the Warmonger's shadow, with most going awry and hitting a table next to the wall, shattering glass vessels and scorching wood.
Corvus reacted instantly, throwing another smoky thread around Morgan and jerking it. Morgan gasped as his body was pulled into the air, then released to crash back onto the floor. The Magia Blade flew out of his hand.
"A good trick, thief, but tricks will not save you."
Corvus sneered, his voice clearer, less sibilant, his form becoming more distinct. "Did you really think you could take her from me?"
Morgan had not. He'd never once considered the Lord of Magh Dun as a rival, but as long as Corvus was talking, he wasn't attacking, so Morgan lied.
"Yes." The word came out a weak gasp. Wrapping his arm around his chest, he tried to sit up. "You had your chance a long time ago." Blood flowed over his hand warm and sticky where he held himself together.
He had to get his sword.
Morgan heard two of the orbs click into place over head, starting the ring that would open the portal into the chamber.
The Warmonger laughed, a curiously empty sound—and Morgan realized 'twas because Corvus had no chest to hold the breath necessary for rich laughter. Her next realization proved the last one to be fleeting. Even as he watched, Corvus's chest and hip were materializing out of the shadows, faintly at first, then with more substance, giving the man a whole right side, from the top of his dark-haired head to his booted foot.
"And it seems I'll have a second chance. Thanks to you and Nemeton's strange contraption." Corvus laughed again, the sound richer than before. He moved closer to the sphere. "Look."
Sweet Jesu. The energy from the armillary sphere was restoring shape to the Warmonger's left foot and part of his leg.
"Yes, it seems I'll have my chance, whereas you will have none."
Morgan glanced desperately around for the Magia Blade and saw where it had landed next to the tower was too far away for him to reach. He pushed himself to his feet, though every muscle rebelled at the pain, and took two steps before Corvus stopped him with a single gesture of his blackly ephemeral left hand, sending a thread of smoke snaking around his throat.
Morgan fell back to the floor, clutching at the strangling tendril. There was nothing to grasp, only the power of it tightening around his neck. He choked, praying that whatever purpose kept Corvus from disintegrating him would hold.
"Stop!" Corvus commanded when Avallyn would have raced to his side. "Stop, or I'll kill him."
As if he wasn't already killing him, Morgan thought, feeling faint. Above him, two more orbs clicked into place, but not nearly quick enough.
"What do you want for his release, Corvus?" Avallyn demanded.
"More." The half-smile came again. "More of this power you have conjured with the copper balls and the armillary sphere. It suits me, can't you see? My body is reforming."
"Release him, then, for he is the Prince of Time, and the sphere is his, passed down to him from Nemeton," she said, her knife still held for a quick offense.
"You know of Nemeton?" There was a hint of surprise in the Warmonger's question.
The pressure lightened a bare degree, and Morgan dragged a deep breath into his lungs.
"Aye," she said, "and of the sphere."
No wind blew inside the tower, but the shadowy half of Corvus rippled and folded in upon itself, making a column of darkness next to its human half.
"Then give me more."
"And when you are whole?" she asked. "What then, Warmonger ? "
"Then you shall be mine for all eternity," Corvus said as if 'twas a perfectly reasonable—nay, the perfectly desirable—end to it all.
Morgan thought not. Strengthened by a fresh influx of fear, he lunged for the Magia Blade, pushing himself up and diving across the floor. He rolled once and came up with the sword in his hands, blasting with light the smoky tendril that held him at the same time as he swung the cutting edge of the blade in a death stroke. If Corvus would have a body, then he would pay the price.
The blow landed true, eliciting an enraged howl from the Warmonger, for the sword had made him even less of a man than he'd been.
Corvus and his darkness retreated in the same terrifying manner as Morgan had seen Dharkkum do in Tamisk's pool: The creature imploded, drawing in on itself with whiplash speed; behind, on the floor, it had left its right arm, the fingers stretching out to grasp Avallyn's boot.
Morgan blasted the arm again with the Magia Blade's light.
Another enraged howl tore through the Hart.
"My aaarrrrmmmm," Corvus cried. "My aaa-rrrrmmmm!"
Morgan whirled on his feet, hearing the creature swing around the sphere to come at them from the other side. The speed and force of his motion created havoc in the Hart, whipping up everything that wasn't nailed down and flinging it into the air.
A rat was snatched up off the floor by a fistful of darkness, its body stretched thinner and thinner by the seething force of Corvus's ethereally black left hand.
"Deathhh-witch, see your fate." The rat was thrown aside with virulent force.
Morgan parried Corvus's next attack with the Magia Blade's light, his one edge against the darkness. Again and again the Warmonger came at them, striving to reach Avallyn, the whirlwind of his movements dragging Mychael's worktable across the floor. Vials and jars were sucked up into Corvus's storm, smashing into walls and sending cutting shards slicing through the air.
Almost subconsciously, Morgan heard and felt more of the orbs coming together… click… click… click.
A wooden bench careened off the sphere, shattering a chunk of dreamstone. The tower had become a perilous place.
"Deathhh-witch," Corvus moaned, his rage twisting the words into black knots. "I will haaaavve you."
Morgan ducked the creature's next blow and rolled back onto his feet, crouched and ready. He looked for Avallyn, and his heart stopped. She'd been laid low, her body outstretched on the floor, her lifeblood running freely from a long gash on her head. Broken glass and the pieces of Mychael's alembic lay all around her. The Indigo Book was by her side, her fingers curled around it, holding it tight.
She was still alive.
The runes on his arms lit with the fires of his own towering fury, and like the dragons who would eat Dharkkum, he roared, a fearsome sound that echoed round and round the tower, telling the Warmonger he had met his doom.
Blinded with rage, Morgan went on the attack, his sword arm becoming one with the Magia Blade, his blood harkening back to a long-ago age, when Stept Agah had ruled and fought beyond death to claim the victory that had to be won.
He was an animal, his anger a primal driving force that knew no bounds of humanity. He was the Warmonger's death, and he was the death of Dharkkum.
Both ends of the blade were his to wield with killing force, the light to cut shadows, the steel to cut flesh—and cut he did, hacking Corvus's body to pieces even as it formed with the sphere's energy.
The Warmonger's maddened screams echoed throughout the eyrie, swearing retribution for every lost pound of flesh.
The storm outside was no less than the one inside. Booming peals of thunder shook the tower. Lightning ripped across the sky.
The last orb clicked into place, and the ring began to spin, opening the portal onto eternity.
"Avallyn!" Morgan cried. Her blood was everywhere, all down her face, all over the floor—and in one small vial inside the portal. He could see it and the crystal tunnel where it had to be placed.
He was the Prince of Time, her protector, the one man who could keep her alive, and he was failing.
"Avallyn!"
She didn't move.
The ring of orbs spun and spun. The portal awaited.
With another great roar, he doubled his efforts, beating Corvus back, deeper and deeper into the tower, his sword singing the Warmonger's death song.
He had only one chance to save her, one chance to save them all, Mychael and Aja, Llynya and Jons and Ferrar, Owain and Madron, all of them in this world and the world to be. One chance—and he took it.
With a final slashing strike and blasting stream of light, he laid Corvus low and ran for the sphere. Faster than he'd ever been, he grabbed the vial and shoved it home. The window of light opened, revealing the spinning chamber within.
There was no time to wait for the chamber to coast to a stop, a design flaw Morgan would have loved to take up with Nemeton. What in the hell had the mage been thinking? That Dharkkum would wait while his friggin' contraption ran down?
Instead, Morgan scooped the Indigo Book off the floor and took his chances, especially since he could see smoky threads of darkness snaking across the floor toward him. He waited a nanosecond, then two, and dared wait no more. Guided by faith and fate, he thrust the book inside the chamber.
A blinding flash of the purest white light burst into being, searing the inside of the tower and blasting beyond the walls. It had no texture and made no sound. Morgan couldn't smell it. The light was simply there, filling every atom of the Hart, and then it was gone, and so was Corvus—and so was Avallyn.
Stunned, Morgan could only stand there, his chest heaving, his mind refusing to believe what he saw.
She couldn't be gone.
She couldn't be.
Yet the place where she'd lain was empty.
The books glittered in front of him, all lined up in the radiant gradations of a rainbow, Seven Books of Lore sparkling and twinkling, every one of them shot through with luminous light. 'Twas like having all the gemstones in all the world polished and piled up to catch the sun's brightest rays—and all Morgan could see was death.
