Chains of a Dark Goddess (40 page)

Authors: David Alastair Hayden

BOOK: Chains of a Dark Goddess

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“Harmulkot!” Breskaro strained to move away from Orisala. “Stop at once!”

Harmulkot ignored him. Her will kept him pinned beside the bed as she continued to direct the machine’s energies using his hands.

“I will
not
allow you to take my daughter to be your host!” His eyes flared. “I won’t lose her the way I lost Esha. You leave me no choice.”

Breskaro began chanting the
spell of greater binding
. The energy for the spell came only from his qavra heart since he no longer had access to the power of Harmulkot’s stone. Breskaro stumbled through the words. The spell was nearly beyond his ability, and Harmulkot’s will was strong. She wanted to succeed with a passion equal to that of Breskaro’s desire to save Orisala.

Another voice joined Breskaro’s as he began to chant the spell a second time, hoping for better success. Seshalla’s casting of the
spell of greater binding
was perfection, but a spell that could bind an arch-demon was still no match for a Qaiar, even one diminished as Harmulkot was.

Harmulkot’s qavra flared to life and burned free of the metal basket that held it to the chain. It floated toward Orisala.

Kedimius leapt forward and reached out for the qavra. The moment his hand got near it, a spark blasted him back. He drew his dagger, but Nalsyrra grabbed his arm and shook her head.

“You cannot stop it.”

“You’re powerful,” he said. “Can’t you do something?”

Nalsyrra shook her head. “To do anything now would only make matters worse. Besides, this is what must be.”

The qavra landed on the birthmark on Orisala’s chest, just below her collarbone. Her eyes opened wide. Harmulkot released her control over Breskaro and ghosted onto Orisala. The qavra blazed with an amethyst light so intense they couldn’t look.

The main unit of the Akythiri Mechanism, on the back of Breskaro’s neck, overheated. The part Nalsyrra had given them popped and smoke billowed out. One final scalding charge ran through the wires beneath Breskaro’s skin. He collapsed to his knees in agony. Nalsyrra ripped the unit off his neck, tearing it free from the wires, and threw it out into the garden where it exploded.

His system went into shock from the sudden disconnection, Breskaro blacked out.

Chapter 58

Breskaro awoke to a view of a garden dappled in morning sunlight. He was lying on Orisala’s bed in the room she’d been confined to for the last three years. But Orisala wasn’t there. Seshalla was sitting beside him, a smile on her full red lips, her golden eyes alight.

“You’re awake,” she said. “We were starting to wonder if you would fade into shadow.”

His senses returned and he bolted out of bed. “Orisala? Did we succeed?” He staggered. “Where is she? Harmulkot—”

Seshalla shoved him back down onto the bed. “Sit and wait.”

Seshalla left, and moments later Orisala entered the room, walking smoothly, smiling warmly. She looked like Orisala, yet there was a grace and refinement to her movements that had never been there before. Her limbs were sleek and muscled. She was a taller than before, nearly as tall as Breskaro. Orisala’s hair had regrown already and was flowing past her shoulders. Most telling, her brown eyes had changed to a deep purple that matched the qavra on her chest.

“Harmulkot,” Breskaro said.

“Yes,” she replied, “and no.”

She surged forward and took him up in a big hug. She kissed his ruined cheek.

“I missed you so much, daddy.”

“Sala?” he said with hope in his voice.

She laughed. “Yes, it’s me.”

“But Harmulkot—”

“Is part of me. You didn’t have the strength to bind Harmulkot, even with Seshalla helping. But together, you gave me the chance to become the dominant half of our melding instead of Harmulkot.”

“Where Esha became part of me,” Seshalla said, returning to the room, “Harmulkot instead became part of Orisala. It is reversed. Orisala is dominant, not Harmulkot.”

“I have inherited all her memories and experiences,” Orisala said, “as if I lived them. But it’s my personality that is the default, and not the other way around. Though, I can tell I’m changed by her. Her personality ... It bleeds into mine a little. I mean, I have memories of her experiences, how could that not change me?”

“So I should call you Orisala?” he asked.

She hugged him tight. “Of course! I’m still the daughter you fought your way back for. But in public, you should call me Harmulkot. I have to take on her mantle and rule Mûlkra. There’s much that I must make right there.” She frowned. “You should
not
have come back for me like you did. It is the most wonderful thing you could ever have done, but you’ve damned yourself. You’ve—”

“Hush. I did it willingly and I would do it a hundred times more. I’m not worried about Torment. But I do worry about Harmulkot’s experiences. There were dark things in her past. And when I returned ... There was—”

“Some memories I would prefer not to have. But I have them nonetheless. I must deal with them. With Seshalla’s help, I’m meditating and learning to build mental walls, to keep all of it from rushing in on me at once. It will likely take me some time to work it all out.”

“It was easy for me to absorb Esha,” Seshalla said. “For Orisala to absorb Harmulkot...”

“I can’t even figure out the simplest spell yet,” Orisala said laughing.

Breskaro closed his eyes and smiled.

“What is it?”

“Your voice,” he said. “Your voice.” He touched her cheek. “You are strong and young. You will live for centuries. I am ...
happy
.”

Kedimius entered. “Master Breskaro! You’ve returned to us.”

“Not even the Shadowland can hold me. Are you Harmulkot’s champion now, Kedimius?”

“It seems my destiny,” he said, as she took him into an embrace.

“Then I’m pleased for both of you.” Breskaro looked around. “Where is Nalsyrra? I would like to thank her for all that she did in helping us.”

“Father,” said Orisala, “Nalsyrra caused all this!”

“
What
!? How?”

“She’s the one who kidnapped me, broke my spine, and threw me out into the river. She saw to it that I was recovered and hidden here. She made sure that Kedimius never found this place when he searched for me.”

Breskaro began to rise, weakly, but Seshalla put a hand on his chest. “Rest. There’s no point. She’s gone. As soon as the mechanism exploded, she fled with her child. There was nothing we could do to stop her.”

“We could hunt her down.”

“She is far away by now,” said Seshalla. “And she is too powerful for us. Orisala cannot work magic yet and I do not have my full strength, either. We wouldn’t stand a chance against Nalsyrra. She has powers beyond any Qaiar godling ... the Star Spirits...” Seshalla shook her head.

“So Nalsyrra brought all of this about?” Breskaro said.

“That’s what she does,” said Seshalla. “She is a powerful ally but she always knows more than you and has greater designs than you can imagine. Allying with her is a risk, but Harmulkot had no better choice.”

Breskaro felt the scarred place on the back of his neck where the mechanism had been. Then he looked at the skin on his arms, scorched multiples times on the inside and out by sorcery. Healing Orisala and fighting Harmulkot had drained him, and he had only one qavra now. His injuries from the battle against the Matriarch showed more now than they had a day earlier.

He touched a bit of singed wire that poked out from his forearm. “I’m a wreck. I must look more hideous than I did when I came out of the mausoleum.”

“You will recover somewhat,” said Seshalla. “The wires ... I’m not sure you can do anything about those. You’ll need to feed again, somehow, to fully heal.”

“Then I will
stay
as I am.”

“Maybe we can find another way for you,” said Seshalla. “For now, I can grant you some strength. It is temporary. However, if you became my champion, I could channel energies to you much more easily.”

“But he is my champion,” said Orisala testily. “
My
champion and
my
father. His devotion is to me. He came back from the Shadowland
for me
.”

“You have your champion already,” said Seshalla. “And while he may love you enough to dare Torment, Breskaro was pledged to me long ago.”

“That’s
enough
,” said Breskaro. “I am no one’s champion. Those days are over.”

“Where will you go now?” Seshalla asked, twiddling at the cords of her sling like Esha often did. “I would love for you to come back to Issaly with me.”

“Mûlkra first. I want to spend a few months with Orisala. Then I will visit you, Seshalla. After that, I must find my own way, my own place in the world.”

“But, father,” said Orisala, “I want you to live with me in Mûlkra.”

Breskaro took her hand. “I will visit often, but I’m a dead man. Whum was right. You have your own life to live now. An amazing, impossibly long life. I made that possible and now....”

He stared outside, at a world that seemed to him lacking, as if it were no more alive than he was himself.

“Well, there is one more thing I must do,” he said, thinking of Peithoom.

Epilogue

Three Months Later

With his wings tucked tight around him to block out the rain, the Keeper of Peithoom stood on the shore watching a raft slowly pole its way across the lake. The three men were later than he had expected, by an entire week. One man, brightly armored and handsome, bore the always-grinning face of a young man in love. The cloaked man twirling his mustache had the eager expression of one addicted to adventure. But the tall, powerfully built man with a viridian qavra hanging from a sliver chain around his neck did not show his true face to the world.

Their voices carried across the water.

“See, there’s the Keeper standing on the shore awaiting us,” said Breskaro Varenni.

“Our final quest is at its end then,” lamented Whum, Lord of the Darkhearts.

At that the Keeper chuckled to himself.

“It’s not over until we return home and Orisala forgives me for going with the two of you,” said Kedimius Threnna, Champion of Harmulkot.

“Ah yes,” replied Whum, “the most dangerous part of this quest: Harmulkot’s wrath.”

“She will forgive you,” said Breskaro without mirth. “And I vouched for your safety. Besides, it’s just this once, for old times’ sake. I promised her.”

The Keeper couldn’t help but chuckle again.

Whum patted Breskaro on the shoulder. “Still no humor in you, old friend. I’d say it was death’s fault but there was little there before.”

A mote of green danced playfully through Breskaro’s black eyes.

The sun was setting as they came ashore. Kedimius and Whum bowed, their faces etched with the stupefied awe that the Keeper found tedious. Breskaro merely nodded, respectfully, and then unwrapped a piece of cloth to reveal twisted metal fragments.

“I take it your venture was successful?” the Keeper said.

“My daughter is happy and whole.”

“I am glad for you then.”

“This is all that’s left of the mechanism,” Breskaro said. “It exploded when the ritual was finished.”

He shrugged his wings. “I never expected the device to return. But I
did
expect you. And your two comrades.”

The Keeper leaned over then and whispered one of his final two secrets.

Breskaro’s eyes lit into an emerald balefire.