Lords Of Existence (Book 8) (8 page)

“Canado?” Zutrian said, turning his head to the mage at his left.

“Yes, Lord Superior?”

“Let me ask you a question.”

“As you would, Lord Superior.”

“Do you find the timing of our guest’s news to be rather odd?”

The mage pursed his lips. “Certainly, Lord Superior. I do.”

“How so?”

“He comes from Dorfort.”

“Yes. He does. And why is that a problem?”

“The city is in shambles, Lord Superior. I’m certain its leaders expect an attack at any moment.”

“You think so?”

“They are not unwise, Lord Superior.”

“No,” Zutrian said, turning back to Garrick. “They are not unwise.”

Garrick narrowed his gaze. “The people of Dorfort don’t even know I am here, Lord Esta.”

Zutrian laughed again, this time harder than before.

“That is another very good one, Garrick, God-touched of the Toreans and friend of Ellesadil. You have not failed to entertain us this evening. That much is true.”

He spoke to his mage again without lifting his gaze from Garrick’s eye.

“Canado?” he said.

“Yes, Lord Superior?”

“I believe your analysis is well-made. And given these turns of events, I would like you to inform the council that we will be moving our activation date forward. Please pass this news along. You may leave now.”

“Yes, Lord Superior.”

The mage left the chamber through a side exit.

Garrick had failed. His trip had been for naught. Zutrian was an imbecile, no different than any other politician with power, no different from any other man who was blinded to truth by an agenda he had already defined. Zutrian would not be swayed. He would not join forces with Dorfort.

Garrick bowed his head slightly.

“Shall I assume you will grant me my leave as peacefully as I arrived?”

“That is only proper, Garrick. Lectodinians are not barbaric. But next time we meet, do not assume we will be as civil.”

“I understand, Lord Superior,” Garrick said.

Then he left the chamber.

Once he was outside Zutrian’s stronghold, he transported back to Arderveer, back to his dark throne room to ponder the situation. It cost him a touch of his remaining energy, but the time he saved was worth it.

He would have to find another way.

Chapter 12

Darien had barely slept over the past three nights. The Lectodinians were coming. There would be time to sleep when the wall had been rebuilt.

This morning he stood on the edge of the shattered front gate and watched as masons spread mortar and set stone. It was a warm day, finally, a portent of spring to come. The wind blew his hair back, and carried the scent of lake and woods. It was good to get up here on what remained of the wall, up here away from the muck and mire on the ground.

He gazed to the north, then to the west.

No signs of a raiding force, yet.

Pleased, Darien turned his attention to three smiths who had set up nearby forges and were working to smelt iron girders that would fortify the new wall. He had overseen the design himself. They would hold. At least, they would hold if they were finished in time.

“Darien?”

He turned to find Will standing beside him. The boy seemed to be growing taller every minute.

“Good morning, Will.”

“Are you avoiding me?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“Because I’ve been requesting time with you for two days, yet you have not answered.”

Darien waved away the accusation, but knew there was truth to it. Will reminded him of Garrick, and every time he saw the young man, he felt anger. Garrick was too fickle, too strange. He could not be counted on. Garrick was a man who ran from problems rather than faced them straight on, a man who let his fellow citizens down when they needed him most. Darien blamed himself for his anger, though. He blamed himself for ever imagining it might have been otherwise, for thinking Garrick would change as he grew a truer understanding of the world. Men like Garrick did not change. Men like Garrick were selfish. They worked to a rhythm of their own making.

“This is a very busy time, Will.”

“That’s what I need to talk to you about.”

“Tell on.”

“I want to join your guard.”

“I don’t think Garrick would approve.”

“I am not a child, Darien. Not anymore. And I know the Lectodinians will be coming. I know Garrick will be upset that I joined your ranks, but I am not a mage, yet, and I can’t see any other way to do my part.”

Darien smiled.

“I like your fervor, Will. Garrick would be wise to emulate it.”

“So where can I help?”

“The stables—”

“I’ve done my part with the stables, Darien. I want to do more. I want to fight.”

Darien glanced north again. He rubbed weariness out of his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I don’t think that would be wise,” he said.

“I know how to handle a weapon.”

“I know you do. But a battlefield is no place for a man as young as you are.”

“And I know magic, too. Some, anyway. I was teaching myself more every day until everything shut down.”

Darien chuckled. “As only a Torean should.”

Will leaned backward and took in Darien as a farmer might assess a prize steer. “I see it now,” he said. “You’re afraid of Garrick, aren’t you?”

“Garrick is not here,” Darien said, unable to keep spite from his voice.

“But you know he will return, and you’re afraid that if he comes back to find I’ve taken up a blade, he will hold you responsible.”

Darien crossed his arms and took a defensive breath.

“It doesn’t matter, Will. You’re not going to be in the Dorfort guard, and that’s final.”

Will frowned. His gaze bore holes into the back of Darien’s head.

“I’ll find a way,” Will said, his face growing stern. “You can’t stop me.”

Darien’s temples pounded even deeper, but he found himself appreciating the boy more. It had already been a long day. But standing here on the wall, with the soon-to-be spring air flowing through his hair, Darien understood why Garrick liked the boy. It was hard not to be drawn to the way Will saw through to the core of a situation, and how he focused his energy in places that mattered. Darien laughed. It felt good to laugh, actually. It was the first time he had done so with such sincerity since arriving back in the city.

“I’m sorry to laugh, Will. But we do need you in the stables right now, so I would like you to go there. I look forward to speaking of your future later, though.”

Will turned and fled the wall, but not before his cheeks reddened and his eyes grew wet.

Chapter 13

Garrick was back in Arderveer, stewing on the hundred ways he wanted to harm Zutrian Esta and Braxidane when the idea struck him.

He needed to find one of Braxidane’s other champions.

It was, admittedly, a ridiculously far-fetched idea. It was an idea that had no chance of success for the simple reason that the problem that kept him from making it happen—the blockade of Adruin from the rest of Existence—was the same problem he needed the champions’ help to solve.

Unfortunately, it was the only idea he could muster.

The Lectodinians were not going to help. The Koradictines were no longer of any power. Darien was too focused on Dorfort to listen to issues on the scale of All of Existence, and the planewalkers themselves were the actual problems. That left only one other group with enough power to help and enough stake in the game that they would consider doing so.

So, yes. He needed to find one of Braxidane’s other champions.

Better yet, he needed to find
all
of Braxidane’s other champions.

Then he needed to bring all those champions to bear on the Lords of Existence. It was the only way to stop the planewalkers from toying with the planes whenever their bickering seemed to call for it. Nothing would make him happier than to stop these Lords from destroying the lives of countless people who were living their innocent and otherwise oblivious lives.

The circular nature of the situation made it impossible, though.

He needed to break the seal on his plane to get to the other champions, and he needed the other champions in order to break the seal on his plane.

It all added up to the fact that Adruin was doomed, and, sitting alone in Arderveer’s darkness, Garrick felt the weight of that doom draped across his shoulders as if it were a water-logged bearskin. He sensed the ebb and tide of energy as it settled into stasis across the plane. It molded against his mind like liquid in a water skin, shifting and sliding. It filled empty cracks in the cosmos of the plane’s being with its slippery breath, but it no longer had current. It no longer flowed. It reminded him of life before he had been touched by Braxidane. Warm, yet insubstantial—cold, yet somehow so tantalizing he could not imagine being without it.

The plane’s barrier was that water skin. It held the power of all of Adruin inside it, constraining it, limiting it, holding it together like his own skin held together his innards. It made him morose to think that someday all those innards would drain away. Not immediately, of course, but someday, over time, slowly, certainly everything about him would fade away. That was life. Or, as Braxidane would say, the long fade to death was the consequence of life. And as long as the gate was cap-stoned, Adruin’s end game was foretold.

It was then that the rest of his idea formed.

It came in layers, congealing so slowly that he wasn’t exactly certain when it had arrived, or indeed if it hadn’t been there all the time and merely needed to be uncovered. But it came together in a moment when he was thinking about Will, and about how boundless the boy’s future should have been. He was remembering Will’s optimism and how it seemed to leak out of him like some kind of fresh-scented perspiration, and yet how Will never seemed to run out of it.

And the idea hit him.

Where would the energy go?

If Adruin was to be depleted of its life force, but its path to All of Existence were blocked, where would it all go?

And, more importantly, more relevant to the moment, if all of Adruin’s life force and all of its magical power were to be drained, how would it leave?

The question brought him upright.

He remembered Braxidane’s comment.

“Don’t waste time swooning for poor Adruin.”
Braxidane had said.
“It will rise again. These planes are like weeds that way. They always come back.”

He asked himself: If lands in capped planes rise again, where does the life force come from?

And he knew the answer.

There had to be other passages. Other flows.

Leakages, maybe.

If the plane’s barrier was a water skin, could it be breeched elsewhere?

As soon as he thought of it in this fashion Garrick sensed a change, a permutation in the flow that was so tiny as to be impossible to feel without looking for it. Miniscule portions of power slipped out of the bladder that held it.

And then what?

Evaporated away? Disappeared?

Flowed into something bigger outside the plane? Into Existence itself?

Maybe.

But if he was right, that seepage would work both ways. Once the plane of Adruin had been drained of its life, its empty husk would lie like detritus in the flow of All of Existence and then it would soak up energy in this slow fashion, life force slipping in through the very walls of the world itself.

Could he use this?

Garrick set gates and concentrated on the points of Adruin where he sensed the outflow. He wrapped Hezarin’s energy around himself. A space opened before him—a bubble, or a seam in the construction of the plane. Garrick followed that hole and steadied himself as he tottered on the seam it exposed. It was warm here, lit with faded orange and green glows that made everything feel disjointed and out of place. He stepped his way along the seam. As he moved, a hum of power made his stomach churn. The hairs on his arms rose. The air smelled of overripe fruit.

He knelt and ran his hand along the seam.

Existence. Yes. It smelled of the place.

Without thinking, Garrick funneled more magic through his gates. He grabbed handfuls of his own life force and stuffed it into his spell work. Then he slipped his hand firmly into the seam. He pried at it with vigor, pulling more energy around him to create the shield he knew he would need.