Pawn Of The Planewalker (Book 5) (12 page)
Read Pawn Of The Planewalker (Book 5) Online
Authors: Ron Collins
He felt Braxidane behind him.
“It’s all life force,” Garrick said, realizing now why his hunger was so comfortable here. “Everything here is life force.”
“I think of it as reality.”
Braxidane hadn’t followed him so much as appeared beside him.
“Stop with your overbearing gibberish.”
“No, Garrick. It’s your turn to stop.”
Garrick sensed his superior’s anger.
“Most people have to interpret life, Garrick. Most people do the best they can to understand the purpose of their existence. And most people limit themselves because they don’t see how powerful they really are.” Braxidane’s form pulsed. “You, though—you’ve been given the privilege of seeing your essence for what it actually is. And you’ve been given the ability to use that essence to create something real.”
“A lot of good it’s done me.”
“Only because you refuse to use it.”
“Why should I steal energy from its rightful owner, and funnel it into whatever strikes my whimsy?”
“What a quaint question, Garrick. What gives
me
the right to change the world? In the end, the only answer that matters is that you can.”
“But I shouldn’t.”
“A purely subjective judgment, don’t you think? And subjective judgments require a basis.”
“Yes,” Garrick snapped. “Actions and consequences. I get it.”
He could sense Braxidane’s childish grin.
“I only suggest you use both your conscience
and
your intelligence to shape your concept of life.”
Then he was gone.
It was a leaving done in a single, instantaneous moment. No flare. No scintillating cloud of glimmering color. Braxidane was just there one moment, and gone the next, leaving Garrick alone in All of Existence.
Life force pulsed around him, pushing, moving between planes like water flowing from mountaintops. He steeped himself in it, feeling its motion, sensing its depth in the same way a sailor feels the ocean.
He thought about moving, and he did.
He thought about the planes, and the entrance to each of the Thousands Worlds was suddenly open to him, spread across All of Existence but easily within his reach. He felt the eternal, never-ending flow of life force in, and life force out. He sensed connections, and nodes, and places of calm like the location he had spoken to Braxidane in.
He chose a node with a random thought.
The robe pulsed, and Garrick found himself there.
It was a quiet place.
A calm place. A place with no pressure, no deadlines, no arguing mages, and no mobs of people banging down doors to get at him. He sat in this place for a long time, thinking, learning, feeling the heady flow of energy that wrapped around him, sensing the true nature of the worlds that comprised All of Existence. He didn’t know how long he sat there. It could have been centuries, or it could have been a single heartbeat. It could have been a lifetime.
Did time even exist here?
Were the planewalkers, those beings that moved through this connective world, truly all powerful?
Was he now a god?
Chapter 19
“Do you understand?” Braxidane said at last.
Garrick sat at an otherwise empty node, his “hands” spread into the flow, his eyes closed, his head thrown back, and his mind filled with pieces of lives he had never known. The robe pulsed an unending stream of color as it protected him from the flow. He smelled power. All of Existence—the planes, the connections, and the planewalkers—throbbed in his mind.
“You feed off energy,” Garrick said.
“We feed off the flow,” Braxidane said. “Energy in stasis has no purpose.”
“Hezarin blocked Rastella’s flow, so you had me fix it.”
Braxidane’s form grew a feeling of parental pride. “You’re learning.”
“If current is all important, why did Hezarin block the passage?”
“She was upset because I wouldn’t alter the work you did to entangle the orders’ god-touched mages. But when a god takes control of a plane, she owns the entire flow within it.”
“Meaning only she can grow from it? Meaning others wither?”
“Yes.”
Garrick thought about this.
“We once fought over planes for just that reason,” Braxidane said. “Until finally it came to war throughout All of Existence.”
“Starshower?” Garrick asked.
“Elsewhere it was known by other names.”
A wave of understanding rolled over Garrick.
Storytellers made good coin telling of the cataclysmic event in Adruin’s past that, until now, Garrick had viewed with healthy doses of skepticism and disdain. But he saw just how big the world was now. And now he saw how much like a spider’s web it was, too, a sticky mass of choices and events that were all inextricably intertwined. The world was beautiful in its simplicity, awesome in its complexity. Garrick thought of the Shariaen ancients he had faced in the hills when he first traveled with Darien.
“War in Existence can happen again, can’t it?”
“Some say it is happening already. Though our council of Joint Authority was another consequence of that first battle, it does not function as it once did.”
“Why are you showing me this?”
“It seems to be the right time.”
But Garrick felt Braxidane’s lie pulse through the flow. He moved his body and felt the robe surrounding him. It was the robe that had brought him here, the robe that had given him access to this place. And Braxidane’s story had given him nothing beyond confirmation of history he had already sensed. The planewalker loomed before him, shimmering silently with blue and green pulses. Was he hoping Garrick couldn’t see through him? Was he still expecting Garrick to follow him like the puppet Braxidane was treating him as?
“There is much to think about,” he said.
“Yes,” Braxidane said. “There is much for you to think about, but you have little time. You’ve got to go back to Adruin.”
Garrick nodded.
Being here had changed him, though. It had given him sight into the minds of the planewalkers who controlled the world. And being here had given him something else, too. Sitting in the flow, feeling the power these creatures wielded had taught him that the people of his plane—of any plane, for that matter—were subservient to the planewalkers in ways they could never see. They were puppets. Pawns. The planewalker’s power was an invisible weight tied to every being in the plane. It meant that no one was truly free to live their lives to their own plan, and having seen this truth meant that he, Garrick, was the least free of them all.
He thought of Pru’s unborn child, already tied to her planewalker.
He could not let them win.
“One thing more,” Garrick said.
“Yes?”
“I will lead your Torean House, but you have to agree to leave me be. No more pulling me back and forth. I’ll do your bidding as best as I can. But I’ll fight you if you whisk me away without warning again.”
A row of cilia waved along Braxidane’s farthest edge, stretching toward the flow.
“I thought your friend led the Freeborn.”
“Darien is my friend, but he cannot succeed.”
And at that moment, Garrick knew what he said was true.
Darien was familiar with people who wanted to be led, but Torean mages had no interest in organization. Their support at the outset had buoyed Darien’s spirit, but he had been doomed to failure.
Yet, leading the Freeborn was important to Darien. Wresting control from him would be devastating.
“I’ll keep Darien with me,” Garrick said. “It will work out.”
“I don’t care about Darien one way or the other,” Braxidane said, flashing the color of a smile.
Garrick paused. The idea of being responsible for the mages scared him. But whether he deemed himself a worthy leader or not, the Freeborn would respond to him, and there was no one else on Adruin who could address those things that needed to be addressed. Actions and consequences. If the consequence of taking control of the Freeborn was that Adruin could be made free of the planewalkers, he was willing to take that action.
“I hold your promise, though,” Garrick said. “No meddling anywhere on Adruin.”
Braxidane pulsed a lack of care.
“I’ll refrain from my
meddling
in your dealings if that’s how it has to be—though you may find my distance troubling at some point.”
Garrick grinned. “That is how it has to be.”
Braxidane’s coloring dropped brightness, the blues growing dull and the greens drab. He turned, and waved what might have been a hand.
“Go, then,” Braxidane said.
And Garrick’s vision swam.
Chapter 20
Braxidane sat at his node, anticipating Hezarin’s arrival.
It would not be long.
He dipped a tendril into the stream of consciousness that connected the Thousand Worlds, letting currents cross over him, feeling the balance that existed here. Cause and effect. Action and consequence. The flow had a simplistic beauty that he would never grow tired of admiring.
Hezarin did not disappoint.
He tasted the metallic nature of her approach, coming upon him fast, her shape pulsing with blue and red heat.
“You will pay for this, Braxidane.”
“For what?”
“Don’t play stupid with me. You sent Garrick to Rastella.”
“And what if I did?”
“I had cordoned off that plane. Now anyone can get in there and—”
“Don’t waste my time with false premises, Hezarin.” Braxidane flashed with an acidic tone. “Rastella is a desolate place. It has no value to you. You blocked it off only to spite me.”
“The plane was mine, Braxidane.”
“No. The plane was mine. You stole it and placed a dictatorial puppet on the emperor’s throne, and then you gave him the robe so he could control the links.”
Hezarin glared.
“You are, again, coming very close to violating every agreement we’ve ever made, Hezarin. That robe was one step too far.”
“You’re the one who sent a foreign mage into Rastella.”
“Only after you opened the door and gave that mage the power of All Existence.”
“Karasacti,” Hezarin said with spite. “The man’s name is Karasacti.”
“I believe,” Braxidane snapped back, “the correct tense is
was
. As in the man’s name
was
Karasacti. It is not my fault that he was not powerful enough to handle the gift you gave him, though.”
Hezarin emitted waves of animosity.
“Laugh while you can, Braxidane,” he finally said.
Then she stepped back into the flow and was gone before Braxidane could reply.
He grumbled. An upset burn permeated the center of his being. Hezarin was right in that he had stretched the rules. Sending Garrick to Rastella was no more allowable than Hezarin’s theft, but the fact that she had violated the agreements wouldn’t protect him from penalties in a formal inquiry. Leaving the sword with Garrick had been a particularly egregious breech of etiquette, and would not play well with Joint Authority—but she hadn’t specifically mentioned the weapon, so perhaps he had gotten away with that small portion of his gambit. And at least Garrick had destroyed the robe. That would speak well for him.
Regardless, it had been worth it just to feel her anger. Nothing was better than setting a radical on her edge.
He settled back and let tendrils drift into the flow.
With Hezarin on the warpath he would have to be careful, but things were moving along nicely. Garrick’s acceptance of his lot would help, and he had several other tricks at his command that might well cause his siblings in Existence to take note later rather than sooner.
Yes, he thought. It had been worth it just to feel Hezarin’s anger, but he had plans.
Much bigger plans.
* * * * *
This is the end of
Pawn of the Planewalker
, but the story of Garrick, Braxidane, and the struggle between the orders continues in
Changing of the Guard
, due to be published January of 2015!
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