Centyr Dominance (24 page)

Leaning down on impulse, she kissed Gram lightly on
the lips. His eyes fluttered open then, staring at her.

What?

She jerked upright,
Forgive me. She—we—care about
you a great deal. That was imprudent of me.
She could sense the confusion
in him. He was thinking of Alyssa.

You don’t seem like Moira to me,
he
said at last.

I’m like she was, like she used to be,
Myra
told him.
The battle—earlier—it hurt her. She isn’t the same, Gram. She
wasn’t lying to you. She’s dangerous now.

I don’t understand.

What she did, controlling those people, it
has a price. Bending someone else’s mind exerts a similar pressure on the
mage’s mind. It’s hurt her, twisted and bent her in ways she hasn’t fathomed
yet.

But she’ll get better, right? You can
help her,
he suggested.

No, we are all marked by what we survive.
She may improve, but she will never go back to the way she was. None of us can
do that, not her, not me, nor even our father, despite being an archmage. We
are all the sum of our experiences.

As long as she can get better, I’ll take
it,
replied
Gram hopefully.

Keep your amulet on. Try not to think on
it when she’s near unless you’re wearing your armor,
warned
Myra.

Gram didn’t like the sound of that,
What does that
mean?

She may not get better, Gram. She might
get worse—much worse.

Moira found herself kneeling beside Gram’s body. She
had blood on her hands, her knees, and all over her clothes. From the look of
it he had bled all over the room. She wiped her hands on her dress with a
feeling of irritation.
How did I get here?
The last thing she
remembered was the sudden pain of her shield shattering.

He finished it off, but it nearly killed
him. Since you were unconscious I healed him. I thought it’s what you would
want me to do,
said her assistant from the back of her
mind.

The thought of her twin using her body while she was
out bothered her, but she couldn’t fault her for what she had done. It made
her angry, but she tried to suppress the feeling. Gram was passing into
unconsciousness, but a glance at his mind showed some strange things floating
through his thoughts.
Myra?

He was confused, I thought it best to take
a different name.

Moira stood, extending her magesight once more, trying
to confirm her route to the stairs down to the lowest level. She could feel
something there, and it was familiar. Whether it was her father, or just a
place where he had spent a lot of time she couldn’t be sure, but the enemy had
a lot of metal down there around what appeared to be a massive stone
outcropping.

She began to pick her way through the rubble.

Don’t you want to make sure his healing is
complete? He was very near death,
suggested Myra.

Moira dismissed the suggestion impatiently,
You
know everything I know. If you did the work then I’m sure it’s as good as
anything I might have done.
She continued walking without sparing a glance
back at Gram, either with her eyes or her magesight.

The stairs down were much longer than the previous
set, but that was to be expected since the lowest level beneath Earl Berlagen’s
home was really just one room, a large cavern with a vaulted ceiling and a
floor that was level only because someone had spent a lot of time and effort
making it so. She wasn’t sure if the cavern was natural or manmade, nor did
she care. Moira was only interested in what was within the cavern, not its
origin.

The stairway opened up halfway down, giving a view of
the room for the last half of its length as it followed the wall to the floor
below. She created two hasty spellbeasts, small barely intelligent creatures
shaped like birds, and sent them out as she neared the open area. She hadn’t
detected any more of the metal guardians but she couldn’t be certain whether
the enemy had other defenses.

Something roared in the room below and stone chips
flew from the wall along the stair as something began firing at her creations.
Moira tracked the movement within the cavern and discovered that two objects
mounted on the cavern ceiling in different places were actually more of the
enemy’s strange weapons. They pivoted, pointing long barrels at her flying
minions and spewing death wherever they aimed.

While they were distracted by her spellbeasts she took
several steps down and pointed one of her rune channels at them and sending out
a line of focused light and heat. Moira cut the two weapons free of the
ceiling before they could reorient to fire at her and watched them fall
clattering to the stone floor below. Then she hurried back up the stairs and
waited.

Nothing happened, so she sent two more small
spellbeasts flying down into the room; the first two had disintegrated under
the hail of flying metal. This time nothing responded.

Stepping carefully, she began to descend once more,
her eyes drawn to the stone mass in the center of the room. It appeared to be
a massive stone outcropping that had thrust its way up from the earth below.
The paved stone floor around it was cracked and buckling, which indicated that
it was more recent than the room’s construction.

In her magesight it appeared much like normal stone,
but there was something extra, a feeling that clung to the rock, her father’s
aythar.

But she could find no sign of his mind. He wasn’t
there.

Strange metal devices were everywhere, in a wide
variety of shapes, sizes and forms. Metal boxes that might be countertops, or
devices, she couldn’t be sure. The walls were covered in more complex pieces,
from the ground up to a height of several feet. None of it made sense to
Moira.

Two large metal pillars rose on either side of the
stone in the center, each of them leaning toward it and pointing heavy
crystalline tips at the rock. She could detect some sort of energy in them but
for now they were quiescent.

Some wizard I am,
she
thought.
All of this arcane equipment is as unknown to me as a weaver’s
loom might be to a lamb.
Walking forward she approached the stone, hoping
to find some clue to her father’s disappearance. As she closed the distance,
she felt something.

Frowning, Moira put her hands out, brushing the rough
surface. Deep within, a pulse of aythar responded to her fingers.

“Father!” she cried out, knowing that touch instantly.
Unbidden tears made tracks down her dirty cheeks. Moira pressed her face
against the cold stone and stretched her arms wide, although the rock was far
too large for her to embrace it. Faintly, she felt it again, her father’s
presence, like a ghost within the unyielding stone.

You know what this means,
observed
Myra quietly from the back of her mind.

Moira’s eyes clenched tightly, hot tears spilling from
them as her face contorted into a grimace of pain.
No!
she said
silently, trying to deny the truth in front of her. Mordecai had retreated
into the earth completely, surrendering his humanity in order to escape his
enemies.

It was one of the most common traps that the archmages
of old had fallen into, pushing their abilities too far, they were often lost
to the world of men. Moira’s father had become a part of the earth itself. He
was gone.

The pain in Moira’s chest grew until she wondered if
she might die of grief alone. Turning her back on the stone, she slid to the
floor. It felt as though her heart had been replaced by a lump of red hot iron
and it burned with a searing agony as she fought to draw breath. She was
silent at first, unable to speak or cry, until she managed to draw air again.
It came in with a rush before reemerging as a shuddering scream, but there was
no relief in it. Instead, it sent a throbbing ache through the veins of her
arms and legs as well as her throat. Her entire body ached.

“It hurts,” she said to herself in a thick voice. She
tried to say the words calmly, but they came out as part of yet another sobbing
cry, one that only grew louder as she repeated the words again. “It hurts!
Why?! This isn’t supposed to happen!”

It was pure denial. The pain became anger and she
burned with it. She was filled with black hatred, but she had nowhere to
direct it.

Gram walked slowly down the stairs, but it wasn’t
him. Moira could see that clearly even through her misery. His body radiated
power as though he was made of a piece of the sun itself. The sneer on his
lips seemed entirely proper. He didn’t have his armor on, but Thorn was in his
hand.

“I see you found your father, what a touching
reunion.”

His presence was overwhelming and in her magesight the
room seemed to shimmer like the horizon on a hot day. Even the air felt heavy,
as though it had become too thick to breathe. She was being smothered by the
Shining God’s power.

Moira tightened her shield, trying to find relief from
the god’s malevolent will. It helped somewhat, but it was not enough. Her
body wouldn’t move and only the cold core of hatred and loathing in her heart
kept her from giving in to the desire to prostrate herself before the false
god.
He killed my father.

“I wish that I had, beautiful child,” he told her,
“but the coward escaped when he knew that he had lost.”

“He wouldn’t have lost to you,” she whispered.

Celior laughed, “Perhaps not, if he had been smart, but
your father was ever the fool; his pride was his undoing. I only regret that I
didn’t get a chance to educate him on his failure.”

Gram’s body was close now, leaning over, looking down
at her with contempt. With one hand he cupped her chin, drawing her face up to
meet his gaze, and then his hand dipped lower, to squeeze her breast. “You
will be my consolation prize.”

Desire coursed through her, a sweet corruption as
Moira’s will was suppressed by the god’s. She felt it from her head to her
toes and most especially in her loins, a burning need for the man looming over
her. Lust filled her being, a pure desire that touched every part of her,
except the hard kernel of hatred that lay at her core. She hated him, she
wanted him, and she loathed herself for all of it.

His hand gripped her hair and he dragged her mercilessly
up, hauling her to her feet like a doll, powerless and limp. He pressed her
back against the stone with his body and set his lips to her ear, “I promised
your father that I would take care of you after he was gone. Doesn’t that make
you happy?”

With the last of her will, Moira spoke the key words
to the enchantment that made Celior immortal. They were hard to remember, but
her father had drilled them into her and her brother countless times. She
gasped them out knowing they were her last hope.

Celior straightened, pulling away, “What is your
command?”

“Kneel before me.”

Gram’s handsome face smiled, and then his arm became a
blur. Pain blinded Moira and she heard a sickening crunch as he backhanded her
to the floor. Her cheekbone had been broken.

“Perhaps I misunderstood you?” suggested Celior,
sneering. Then his face took on a look of concern, “Oh my, if you aren’t
careful with that frown your face might get stuck like that.” Reaching down he
pulled her up by her hair again before touching her swelling face with his
finger. Pleasure ran through her like golden light even as the pressure caused
more pain in her cheek.

Moira’s mind was reeling, but her hatred remained,
“How?”

“Your father of course,” he answered with a smile. “I
told you he was a fool. He fought me when he should have used the key from the
start. I let him win, but I made it satisfying for him, all while I led him to
the trap they had prepared for him. He used the key at the end, when he
realized he had been tricked, but it was too late. As soon as he spoke the
words, the railgun shattered his body. I’m surprised he survived long enough
to end his own miserable life.”

“Railgur?”

“Railgun,” corrected Celior. “The wondrous weapon that
the outsiders brought with them, the one that nearly killed you and this young
man a little while ago. I must commend you on surviving it. Your father
didn’t do nearly as well. It tore a hole through his body as big as my fist.

“I know that doesn’t sound as impressive as it should,
but he was protected by a shield so powerful even I couldn’t pierce it at the
time. Their weapon destroyed it and mortally wounded him with but a single
blow. Isn’t that marvelous?”

The key had been changed. Moira understood now.
Celior’s words were meant to break her resolve, and somewhere deeper down she
registered shock at his recounting of their final battle, but they didn’t work
quite as the god intended. She was no longer the tender young woman who had
first come to Dunbar and his painful barbs only served to add fuel to the fire
in her heart, turning her dark hatred into a burning rage.

The pain of her broken cheek had made her vision
blurry with tears, but the cold venom she felt helped focus her thoughts.
Blinking away the tears her eyes focused firmly on the pompous deity’s
beautiful features.
I need more information.

“Who are these ‘outsiders’?” she asked. “Where did
they come from? We have done nothing to them.”

Celior smiled, “Still trying to be clever? You’ll be
discovering that first hand, my dear, although I have no problem sharing the
knowledge. It will only deepen your despair. They call themselves ‘ANSIS’,
not that the name means anything to me. The important information is that they
are here largely due to your illustrious sire’s efforts. Much like the
She’Har, they have crossed over from another plane of existence. When your
father removed the Dark Gods from their place, the dimension that enveloped our
own collapsed. Our world is now open to contact with other planes.”

His description reminded her of something her brother
had said during one of his expositions about his experiments. She hadn’t been
paying close attention, but she clearly remembered him saying something about
translation being easier now than it had been in the past. ‘Translation’ was
Matthew’s term for shifting things between dimensions. He preferred it to
avoid confusion with ‘teleportation’, which was shifting something between
locations within the same dimension.

None of that seemed remotely useful to her in her current
situation, though.

Celior’s will redoubled and she fell to the floor as
he released her hair. With one hand outstretched he stared down at her,
enjoying the look of terror in her eyes as he rendered her helpless once more.
It was a purely mental sensation, but it was so powerful that Moira felt as
though a great weight had been set upon her body. She was limp and her mind
paralyzed. There was nothing left to her but a dark impotent animosity
directed at her captor.