Diablo III: Storm of Light (37 page)

And when she was done, the bubble receding, they all had wings.

The Horadrim emerged from the Pools of Wisdom in single file, Jacob in the lead. Outside the pools, the courtyard was empty. The stone boulevard, ten times as wide as any road Jacob had ever seen, was polished to a high shine. It was lined with living structures, trees made of light, and their boughs swayed without any hint of wind. Musical notes came from the movements of the delicate branches, and the sound brought him close to tears.
Song of the Arch
, Tyrael had called it. It was haunting.

Beyond the tallest branches rose the majestic, soaring spires of the Silver City, towering so high they made him dizzy. It was dreamlike, and yet every detail was wrought with a sharpness that spoke of another level of reality, as if Jacob’s senses had increased tenfold. His legs began to tremble, and he forced himself to be still, to breathe, to clear his mind of everything other than putting one foot in front of the other.

Don’t get lost. The resonance can draw you away from yourself
. Shanar’s kiss still lingered on his lips, and the ghost of her touch helped him remember.

He glanced back once, and Shanar’s talent amazed him: he saw a troop of Luminarei marching in formation, wings undulating
and angelic songs resonating wondrously, their bodies appearing to be made of pure light under golden armor and hooded features. Tyrael had made it clear that as good as Shanar could be, the illusion might fool the angels at a distance but would never work up close. The plan hinged on them making it to the Council chamber without interacting directly with anyone. Still, it was remarkable to see. No human had ever been able to mimic an angel’s song; no human had ever even understood it.

Jacob felt like a deer stepping delicately through a pack of sleeping wolves. There were so many things they hadn’t thought through, so many ways the plan could go wrong. Even if they managed to reach the stone, could there be any hope of returning to the portal with their heads still attached to their shoulders?

He concentrated on their immediate surroundings. Something was wrong with one of the trees; a thin, gray thread had wound its way up and around it, entwining itself with the other strands and running through the thickest branch to the top. To his left, he saw another one with gray woven among the light strands. A deeper chill ran through him. The Black Soulstone had spread its tainted ichor through the Heavens.

He prayed they were not too late.

A Luminarei guard emerged onto the boulevard some distance in front of them. He did not appear to be paying them any attention yet. But Jacob veered quickly to the right, leading the others off the road and into the trees, where they had some cover.

He could hear someone else coming up behind them.

They were in a pocket of space with some protection on both sides from the trees. He paused, waiting, with the others. They couldn’t risk moving until the Luminarei passed on the road.

Instead, he heard one call to the other. “You are late. Balzael will be furious if he catches you.” The other said something Jacob
could not quite hear. “Better yet,” the first said, “come along with me. I was tasked with finding one more to escort Gealith to the Halls of Valor. She has passed through the courts and the gardens and is in the library, making the final rounds.”

More from the second guard, and Jacob could hear clearly as he came closer. “. . . cut through the gardens to reach the Halls of Valor more quickly.”

“He will see you if you do,” the first said. “Come on. You can be my second; Balzael will be none the wiser.”

The sounds of the two guards moving away made Jacob sigh with relief, exhaling the breath he had been holding. If the map was correct, the gardens were on the opposite side of these trees. If the guards had come this way . . .

But they had not. The Horadrim’s luck had held so far.

Glittering branches of light and sound arched over their heads, the music like a gentle, warm hand against their minds, each pulse of blood synchronized with the notes that washed over them. Before he led them into the gardens, Jacob did a quick head count and came up one short. He did it again, more slowly this time. Seven, including him.

Someone was missing.

With a start, he realized who it was.

The necromancer is gone
.

And the satchel, the only way they had to transport the Black Soulstone from the Heavens, had vanished along with him.

Zayl kept to the cover on the opposite side of the road. The second guard had come from his right, so quickly and so close that the necromancer had been cut off, forced to abandon the others to hide among a much thinner line of trees on the left of the wide boulevard. He had watched, trying to remain still, while the two guards spoke for a moment. He could not risk crossing over, or he would be in plain view. After the guards finished speaking, they began walking up the boulevard, and it was some time before Zayl could cross safely and check on the others. When he had, they were gone.

He had two choices: he could try to follow them, not knowing exactly where they had entered the gardens or how far they might have traveled, and risk drawing more attention to himself and exposing the team; or he could head up the boulevard alone. If he went alone, he could keep to the trees and make his way around the gardens’ edge more freely. If the others were discovered, it would give him a second chance at success.

He had always been better alone.

He could sense Humbart fuming beneath the armor, but at least this time, the skull was blessedly silent. What Zayl was doing
would quite possibly lead to the end of his time among the living, but there had been no other choice; if that was his destiny, he must embrace it.

Except the satchel must make it to the Council chamber to carry the stone
.

Zayl was not afraid of death, but above all else, the mission must not fail. The Balance between light and darkness had to be maintained. He thought back to another confrontation, when he had come face-to-face with a necromancer named Karybdus, who had believed that the light had become too powerful and that darkness must be brought forth through the demon Astrogha. Karybdus had taken the wrong path, but the concept itself was a sound one, according to the beliefs of the priests of Rathma:
maintain the Balance
.

Zayl had always fought for the light, but in the depths of his mind, he had wondered what might happen if he sensed that the side of the angels had become too powerful. Would he turn on them?

Now he had the answer. Sanctuary was also a key part of the Balance. If it was destroyed and the High Heavens became dominant over the Hells, the Balance would dissolve into chaos. The murder of a million souls would alter it forever.

He could not allow that to happen.

Zayl began to make his way through the trees along the edge of the wide boulevard, toward the Silver City. He thought of something else: there was no way to know how long Shanar’s magic would last as he moved farther away from her. Right now, he remained cloaked in illusion, but at any moment, he might be left fully exposed.

It was not a comforting thought.

He caught glimpses of the two guards through the branches as he went. They were passing under a gigantic carved arch made of glistening stone. Their conversation echoed back to
him, and he sped up to catch as much as he could, his curiosity piqued.

“Providing an escort to the Ascension is an honor indeed,” the first one was saying. “You will receive an audience with Balzael, and if you are lucky, even the archangel of Valor himself may appear. Not many of us soldiers have that chance.”

“I have heard that Gealith is beautiful, although I have not seen her myself,” the second said. “I was tasked to stand guard at the Ring during her birth—alone, I might add. Punishment for failing my second test.”

“Beautiful, yes,” said the first. “But something is not quite right with her. You will see what I mean when we reach the library . . .”

Their voices faded as they disappeared into the columned hall. Zayl stopped where the cover of trees ran out. He would have to cross about thirty feet of open space to reach the arch and the hall beyond it, which was empty now.

“You’re not doing what I think you’re doing,” Humbart muttered. “You’ll be discovered, lad! Think of the mission.”

But Zayl was already breaking cover, marching purposefully under the arch and into the cool interior space.

He ducked behind a column and looked around him. The wonders he had seen earlier paled in comparison with this: soaring buttresses ran in a seemingly endless line down the right side of the hall, overlooking the gardens, supported by massive columns with intricately carved figures that appeared to move, their outlines drawn with light that glittered like crystal.

Zayl began making his way through the columns, keeping to the edge of the gigantic hall, avoiding the light as much as possible. The air was filled with music so beautiful it made his heart ache for things he had left behind.
Salene
, he thought, and her face sprang fully formed into his mind, her beautiful, expressive eyes searching his, as if asking him why he had abandoned her.
As a Rathmian, he believed that his life would take a path best suited for him and that it would end when it was time and not before. And yet now he began to question fate, wondering if he had somehow wandered off the path he had meant to follow. He saw his mother and father standing on the bow of the ship as it went up in flames, beckoning to him for help. Their deaths had been his fault—
he
had started the fire that killed them. Perhaps fate had abandoned him, after all; perhaps it had been at that very moment. What if everything had been an illusion? He had dedicated his life to Trag’Oul, the Guardian of Sanctuary, had believed with all his heart in Rathma’s transformation to serve the Balance. The great dragon endured as a constellation of stars that spoke of man’s past, present, and future, and all those futures existed only because of the Balance. Light and darkness, the Heavens and the Hells, Sanctuary on the tipping point between them, an equilibrium that must be maintained. Was it all a lie perpetrated by a man who had trained the first of the priests of Rathma in his own madness and hallucinations and then left them alone to a blank future driven by chance?

The thought shocked Zayl. All these many years, he had never truly doubted Trag’Oul’s existence or the mission handed down from Rathma to Mendeln, brother of Uldyssian and the first true convert to the priesthood of the necromancers. The Balance was paramount and must be maintained. It was why he was here, risking his own life. But now it seemed incredible to him that he had rarely questioned the teachings of his elders, never wondered if perhaps Trag’Oul was the fabrication of the deranged mind of a firstborn nephalem lost and broken and pursued by his mother and father to the ends of Sanctuary and beyond.

You know the teachings of Rathma to be true
, a small and sober voice in Zayl’s head insisted.
Your powers are the proof of it; they have enabled you to peer into the other realm, to call back the dead, to sense the Balance itself in everything
. Even Humbart, a spirit he
had raised and bound to a skull, was a testament to all he had learned and all that was possible. And yet in spite of this, everything felt like a sham after the curtain had been torn away, a great cosmic joke at his expense, his life a series of wandering pursuits driven by no larger purpose than the delusions of his own mind.

Zayl slowly realized the music had changed, gaining a deeper, more complex background. A heaviness pressed down on his shoulders. He came back to himself with a jerk. What had come over him? He had covered some distance without even knowing it. The two guards were in view again, but luckily, they had not glanced back yet.

They had stopped outside a massive door. Zayl crept as close as he dared and watched from behind the nearest column. He felt impossibly small, insignificant, a speck of dust on the world. Where was Trag’Oul now, at this time of greatest need? Where was his faith?