Fire Sea (11 page)

“The Sartan,” Alfred heard himself answer and he knew then that
he
was Sartan and that he'd just killed those who had given him birth.

“Repeat it!” the man ordered him.

“The Sartan!” Alfred cried, and he wept. “Right. Never forget that, boy. Never forget.”

Haplo fell into darkness, cursing, fighting, struggling to retain consciousness. His mind rebelled against him, dragged him under for his own good. He caught a glimpse of a light, as he seemed to be receding farther and farther away, and he exerted every ounce of his being to reach that light. He made it.

The falling sensation ended, all the strange sensations ended and he was filled with a vast sense of peace. He was lying on his back and it seemed to him that he had just awakened from a deep and restful slumber lit by beautiful dreams. He was in no hurry to rouse himself, but lay still, enjoying slipping into and out of sleep, listening to a sweet music in his mind. At length, he knew himself to be fully awake and he opened his eyes.

He lay in a crypt. He was startled, at first, but not frightened, as if he knew where he was but had forgotten and now that he remembered, everything was all right. He felt a sense of excitement and breathless anticipation. Something that he'd been waiting for a long time was about to happen. He wondered how to get out of the crypt, but knew the answer immediately when he asked himself the question. The crypt would open at his command.

Lying back restfully, Haplo glanced down at his body and was amazed to see himself in strange clothes—long white robes. And he saw, with a pang of terror, that the runes tattooed on his hands and arms were gone! And with the runes, his magic. He was helpless, helpless as a mensch!

But the knowledge came to him instantly, almost making him laugh at his own simplicity, that he wasn't powerless. He possessed the magic, but it was inside him, not outside. Experimentally, he lifted his hand and examined it. The hand was slender and delicate. He traced a rune in the air and, at the same time, sang the rune to the air. The door of his crystal crypt opened.

Haplo sat up and swung his legs over the side. He jumped
lightly down to the floor; his body tingled all over with the unaccustomed exertion. Turning, he looked back into the crystalline surface of the empty crypt and experienced a profound shock. He was looking at his own reflection, but his face didn't look back. Alfred's did. He was Alfred!

Haplo staggered, physically jolted by the knowledge. Of course, that explained the absence of runes on his skin. The Sartan magic worked from within to without, whereas Patryn magic worked from without to within.

Confused, Haplo looked from his own empty crypt to one located next to his. He saw in it a woman, young, lovely, her face calm and tranquil in repose. Looking at the woman, Haplo felt a warmth well up inside him and he knew he loved her, knew he had loved her a long, long time. He moved over to her crypt and rested his hands on the chill crystal. He gazed at her fondly, tracing every line of that beloved face.

“Anna,” he whispered, and caressed the crystal with his hands.

A chill stole through Haplo, freezing his heart. The woman wasn't breathing. He could see clearly through the glass tomb that wasn't supposed to have been a tomb but only a cocoon, a resting place until it was time for them to emerge and take over their duties.

But she wasn't breathing!

Admittedly, the magical stasis slowed the body's functions. Haplo watched the woman anxiously, willing the fabric across her breast to move, willing the eyelids to flicker. He waited and watched, hands pressed against the glass for hours, waited until his strength gave out, and he crumbled to the floor.

And then, lying on the floor, he lifted his hand and stared at it again. He noticed now what he had not before. The hand was slender and delicate, but it was aged, wrinkled. Blue veins stood out clearly. Dragging himself to his feet, he stared into the crystal of the crypt and he saw his face.

“I am old,” he whispered, reaching out to touch the reflection that, when he had gone to sleep, had been bright with youth and alive with eager promise. Now it was aged,
skin flabby and sagging, his head bare, the fringe of hair around the ears whitish gray.

“I am old,” he repeated, feeling panic surge through him. “I am old! I have aged! And it takes a long, long time for a Sartan to age! But not her! She is not old.” He stared back into her crypt. No, she was no older than he remembered her. Which meant she had not aged. Which meant she was…

“No!” Haplo cried, clutching at the crystal sides as if he would tear them apart, his fingers sliding down ineffectually. “No! Not dead! Not her dead and me alive! Not me alive and … and…”

He stepped back, looking around him, looking into the other crypts. Each one of them, except his, held a body. Inside each was a friend, a comrade, a brother, a sister. Those who were to come back to this world with him when it was time, come back to continue the work. There was so much to do! He ran to another crypt.

“Ivor!” he called, pounding on the crystal sides with his fingers. But the man lay unmoving, unresponsive. Frantic, Haplo ran to another and another, calling out each dear name, pleading incoherently with each one to wake, to be!

“Not me! Not me … alone!

“Or maybe not,” he said, stopping in his mad panic, hope cool and soothing inside him. “Maybe I'm not alone. I haven't been out of the mausoleum yet.” He looked toward the archway that stood at the far end of the round chamber. “Yes, there are probably others out there.”

But he made no motion toward the door. Hope died, destroyed by logic. There were no others. If there had been, they would have ended the enchantment. He was the only survivor. He was alone. Which meant that somewhere, somehow, something had gone horribly wrong.

“And will I be expected, all by myself, to set it right?”

CHAPTER
9
FIRE SEA, ABARRACH

H
APLO DID NOT REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS, HE REGAINED A
sense of himself. He had succeeded in his objective, he had remained awake during the journey through Death's Gate. But now he knew why the mind far preferred to make the trip in unknowing darkness. He understood, with a real sense of shaken terror, how near he'd come to slipping into madness. Alfred's reality had been the rope to which he'd clung to save himself. And he wondered, bitterly, if it might not have been better to have let loose his hold.

He lay for a moment on the deck, trying to draw his shattered self back together, attempted to shake off the feelings of grief and dreadful loss and fear that assailed him—all in the name of Alfred. A furry head rested on the Patryn's chest, liquid eyes looked anxiously into his. Haplo stroked the dog's silky ears, scratched its muzzle.

“It's all right, boy. I'm all right,” he said, then knew that he would never truly be all right again. He glanced across at the comatose body sprawled on the deck near him.

“Damn you!” he muttered and, sitting up, started to give the body a wakening kick with his foot. He was reminded, forcibly, of the young and beautiful corpse in the crystal tomb. Reaching out a hand, he shook Alfred's shoulder.

“Hey,” he said gruffly. “C'mon. C'mon and wake up. I can't leave you down here, Sartan. I want you up on the bridge where I can keep an eye on you. Get moving!”

Alfred sat up instantly, gasping and crying out in horror. He clutched at Haplo's shirt, nearly dragging the Patryn
down on top of him. “Help me! Save me! Running! I've been running … and they're so close! Please! Please, help me!”

Whatever was going on here, Haplo didn't have time for it. “Hey!” he shouted loudly, straight into the man's face, and slapped him.

Alfred's balding head snapped back, his teeth clicked together. Sucking in a breath, he stared at Haplo and the Patryn saw recognition. He saw something else, completely unexpected: understanding, compassion, sorrow.

Haplo wondered uneasily where Alfred had spent
his
journey through Death's Gate. He had the answer, deep inside, but he wasn't certain he liked it or what it all might mean. He chose to ignore it, at least for the time being.

“Was that? … I saw …” Alfred began.

“On your feet,” Haplo said. Standing up himself, he pulled the clumsy Sartan up with him. “We're not out of danger. If anything, we've just flown into it. I—”

A shattering crash amidships emphasized his words. Haplo staggered, caught himself on an overhead beam. Alfred fell backward, arms flailing wildly, and sat down heavily on the deck.

“Dog, bring him!” Haplo ordered, and hurried forward.

During the Sundering, the Sartan had split the universe, divided it into worlds representative of its four basic elements: air, fire, stone, and water. Haplo had first visited the realm of air, Arianus. He had just returned from the realm of fire, Pryan. His glimpses into each had prepared him, so he had supposed, for what he might find in Abarrach, the world of stone. A subterranean world, he imagined, a world of tunnels and caves, a world of cool and earthy-smelling darkness.

His ship struck something again, listed sideways. Haplo could hear, behind him, a wail and a clattering crash. Alfred, down again. The ship could take such punishment, guarded as it was by its runes, but not indefinitely. Each blow sent tiny tremors through the sigla traced on the hull, forcing them a little farther apart, disrupting their magic ever so slightly. Two had only to completely separate, one from the other,
open a crack that would grow wider and wider. That was how Haplo's first trip through Death's Gate had ended.

Making his way forward as rapidly as possible, tossed from side to side by the erratic motion of the heaving ship, Haplo became aware of a lurid glow lighting the darkness around him. The temperature was increasing, growing hotter, much hotter. The runes on his skin began to glow a faint blue, his body's magic reacting instinctively to reduce his temperature to a safe level.

Could his ship be on fire?

Haplo scoffed at the notion. He had passed safely through the suns of Pryan; the runes would most assuredly protect against flame! But there was no denying the fact that the red glow was burning brighter, the temperature growing warmer. Haplo quickened his pace. Emerging onto the bridge with some difficulty, due to the lurching of the vessel, the Patryn stopped and stared, amazement and shock paralyzing him.

His ship was sailing, with incredible speed, down a river of molten lava.

A vast stream of glowing red tinged with flame yellow surged and swirled around the vessel. Darkness arched above him, made darker by contrast to the lurid light of the magma flow below. He was in a gigantic cavern. Vast columns of black rock, around which the lava curled and eddied, soared upward, supporting a ceiling of stone. Numberless stalactites hung down, reaching for him like bony, grasping fingers, their polished surface reflecting the hellish red of the river of fire beneath them.

The ship veered this way and that. Huge stalagmites, with wicked, sword-sharp edges, thrust up from the molten sea like black teeth from a red maw. Haplo understood what had caused the crashes they'd previously experienced. Jolted to action, he moved forward and placed his hands on the steering stone, reacting by instinct more than by conscious thought, his gaze riveted with horrid fascination on the dreadful landscape into which he sailed.

“Blessed Sartan!” murmured a voice behind him. “What frightful place is this?”

Haplo spared Alfred a brief glance.

“Your people made it,” he told him. “Dog, watch him.”

The dog had obediently herded and harried Alfred to this point by nipping at the man's heels. It plopped itself down on the deck, panting in the heat, fixing its intelligent eyes on the Sartan. Alfred took a step forward. The animal growled, its tail thumped warningly against the deck.

I've nothing against you personally,
the dog might have been saying from its expression,
but orders are orders.

Alfred gulped and froze, leaned weakly against the bulkhead. “Where … where are we?” he repeated in a faint voice.

“Abarrach.”

“The world of stone. Was this your destination?” “Of course! What did you expect? That I'm as clumsy as you?”