The Dark Remains (72 page)

Sareth raised a fist. “But you cannot sate a demon! Once free, it will never stop consuming.”

Xemeth appeared bored now. “You think I don’t know this, Sareth? Believe me, I understand far more of demons than you do. I cared only to distract both demon and Scirathi so I could get the scarab. Oh, and one more thing. You might like to know it was I who told the Scirathi about the gate artifact the Mournish possessed.”

Sareth was shaking now, beyond words.

“Why, Xemeth?” Grace said, surprised at her own words. “Why do you want the scarab?”

He turned his disconcerting gaze on her. “Tell me, northwoman, is it not the least I deserve after what I have suffered—what I have suffered all my life? Always I was second to Sareth’s first, and when I wanted the one thing he couldn’t possibly have, I was denied that as well.” He stroked the scarab. It probed his finger gently with slender gold legs. “Once I drink the blood of Orú, I will become the greatest sorcerer alive. Even the demon will not stand before me, and I will imprison it again.”

At last Sareth found words. “Vani would be ashamed of you.”

Of all the words Sareth had spoken, none of them had seemed to penetrate Xemeth but these.

Xemeth cringed. “Is she here in Tarras?”

Sareth nodded, and once again Xemeth touched his face. If he had been plain to look at before, what would Vani think of him now? But Grace knew it wasn’t his looks that had made Vani turn him away. She believed she was fated for Travis. However, something told Grace that was knowledge Xemeth didn’t have.

Xemeth stumbled back from the pedestal. He seemed suddenly lost, shaking his head, muttering. Sareth cast a glance back at the others; this was their one chance, while Xemeth was distracted by thoughts of Vani. Durge raised his sword. Travis reached into his pocket.

Ready, sister?
Lirith’s voice said in her mind.

Grace tightened her hold on the Weirding.
Ready
.

As one, they moved forward.

“Stop!” Xemeth cried, holding up the scarab.

The golden radiance was like a wall. Sareth, Travis, and Durge stumbled back. Lirith cried out, and Grace felt a sharp jab of pain as the threads of the Weirding were ripped from her mind. She reeled away from the others.

“What are you thinking?” Xemeth shrieked. “That you can stop me now? Do you know what this is? What I hold is a scarab, the greatest relic of power that remains from Morindu the Dark. With a drop of Orú’s blood, sorcerers have thrown down mountains, boiled seas, and blackened the light of the sun with plagues of locusts. You cannot possibly stop me.”

Sareth lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the golden radiance. “The demon, Xemeth. Where is it?”

“It is free,” Xemeth said in triumph. “My spies in the palace overheard Melindora’s little plan this morning, so I opened a gate to the Etherion above. And this time the
demon was strong enough not merely to reach through the gate, but to pass through entirely. It is weak and slow after millennia of starving here in its prison, and it will have to consume much before it remembers its true power. All the same, it is a demon. Even now, I imagine it is disposing of the Scirathi as well as Melindora Nightsilver and her companions. Then, once it is finished but before it grows too strong, I will bind it again—with the power of the god-king Orú!”

Xemeth lifted the scarab high, tilted his head back, and opened his mouth. His fingers tightened around the glistening scarab, crushing it. Three dark red drops dripped from the jewel into Xemeth’s mouth.

The transformation was sudden and shocking. Flecks of gold light—faint at first, like dim fireflies—fluttered beneath his skin. They grew brighter, swarming all over his face, his neck, shining through the fabric of his robe, until Xemeth’s entire form shone as brilliantly as the scarab.

He threw the crushed jewel aside and thrust his arms out.

“Yes,” he cried, his voice thundering in the cavern. “Yes!”

The gold specks danced over the right side of his face. First bone and teeth appeared, then muscle and skin. The sparks dimmed to a soft, gold corona that encapsulated him. He smiled—and the expression touched both sides of his face. Slowly, he reached up, probing his renewed flesh.

“Whole,” he murmured, two eyes shining with wonder. “I am whole. And I can feel it flowing in my veins. His blood. Surely I am the most powerful sorcerer since Orú himself!”

Sareth’s face was a mask of anguish. “You are a fool, Xemeth. Vani …”

Xemeth’s glowing features shifted into a frown. “What of Vani?”

Sareth met Xemeth’s glowing eyes. “Vani is in the Etherion.”

Xemeth stared, frozen, then looked up at the stone ceiling far above. “The demon …”

With a roar of fury, Sareth launched himself forward. He was nearly quick enough. Then, in an easy gesture, Xemeth moved his hand, and crackling gold sparks burst from his fingers, striking Sareth in the chest. He flew back, landing near the edge of the precipice with a grunt of pain. Lirith let out a cry and rushed to him, holding him back from the edge.

Durge and Travis started toward Xemeth, but they were too far away. Only Grace was close, but the threads of the Weirding slipped through her fingers as she tried to weave a spell.

Xemeth picked up the gate artifact from the pedestal, then thrust his hand onto one of its points. Blood oozed forth, covering the artifact.

“I am coming, Vani!” he cried, and the gate appeared: an oval of darkness ringed by blue fire.

Xemeth threw himself into the gate. As he did, the ring of blue magic flashed and expanded. Grace tried to twist away from it, but her foot slipped on a stone, and bright pain flared in her ankle. With a cry, she stumbled the opposite direction.

“Grace, no!” she heard Travis cry.

Then the cavern vanished as Grace fell into the gate.

Magic crackled. Like a seed being spat from an angry mouth, Grace flew from the orifice of the gate and landed with a grunt of pain on hard stone.

Sizzling, the gate snapped shut above her. She pushed
herself onto her hands, gasping for breath. This time, passing through the gate had been like swimming through thick, black water. And it had been cold, so horribly cold. Her muscles were clay, her brain a lump of ice.

There’s something you have to remember, Grace, something you’re supposed to look out for
.…

With a shudder it came to her. Xemeth. Where was Xemeth?

She forced her muscles to function. Frost clotted her vision; it was hard to see. All she could tell was that she was in a large space and that a storm raged around her. Wind shrieked and groaned, ripping at her hair and clothing. Blotchy shapes flew through the air, but she couldn’t be certain if they were really there or if they were artifacts of her impaired vision.

“Grace!” a man’s voice shouted over the roar of the storm.

No, not a storm. Her vision cleared enough for her to see marble columns and a high blue dome. So this was the Etherion. But there couldn’t be a storm inside a building, even a building as big as this.

Something tugged at her hard—once, then again. No hands touched her. All the same, she felt her body slide several feet over polished stone.

“Grace, you’ve got to hold on!”

At last the heat of her body melted the frost, and she blinked the water from her eyes. A familiar form crouched several feet away. He held on to a column near a wall, his blond hair whipping in the wind. Grace slid another few feet along the floor. She was almost within arm’s reach of him.

“Beltan!” The wind seemed to snatch the words from her lips. “Beltan, what’s happening?”

The knight’s eyes gazed past her. She started to turn, to see what he was looking at.

“No, Grace. Look at me, do you understand? Don’t look at anything but me.”

Grace nodded. Again invisible hands tugged at her. She tried to resist, but it was no use. She slid another foot.

“Get her, Beltan!” Vani shouted.

The assassin gripped another column near Beltan. Melia clung to the same column, blue-black hair swirling wildly. Just beyond, Falken and Aryn held on to a stone bench that must have been bolted to the floor. Clinging to another bench not far from the bard and the baroness was a figure in a black robe.

Grace’s heart lurched. Xemeth?

No. The sorcerer turned his head away from the wind, toward Grace. His gold mask was dented and cracked, and it had slipped aside, revealing a face twisted in terror. It was not Xemeth.

Grace skidded a few more inches away from the knight.

“You had best hurry, dear,” Melia called to Beltan, her words calm yet commanding.

Beltan hooked one of his legs around the column, then inched forward on his belly. Bits of paper and shredded cloth streaked past him. A chair sailed out of a nearby alcove, striking Beltan’s head and shoulders, and he grunted in pain.

The chair tumbled over the knight, then scuttled across the floor past Grace, like a thing alive. She started to follow it with her gaze.

“No, Grace! Look at me and nothing else.”

She kept her eyes on Beltan. Blood streamed from a cut on his forehead.

“Take my hands, Grace.”

He stretched out his arms. She reached for him, but it was no use; a gap a foot wide remained. Carefully, Grace lowered herself onto her belly and extended her arms toward Beltan.

It was a mistake. She had no friction in that position. At once she felt herself start to slide across the stone.

“No!” Aryn screamed.

Grace tried to lift her head, to get one last look at her friends before she careened away.

“Got you!” Beltan said, grinning fiercely as he clamped his hands around her wrists.

His grip was so strong it hurt; Grace didn’t give a damn. Beltan pulled her back. Vani was holding his legs, anchoring them to the column. The blond knight gave one last heave, Vani pulled, Grace kicked, and then all three of them were huddled together, pressed against the column.

Melia sighed. “Thank the gods.”

“That was close,” Falken said, his voice all but lost in the wind.

Grace turned her head. Her hair tangled in front of her eyes, then blew back, and a coldness filled her stomach as she saw what Beltan had told her not to look at.

They were on the same broad balcony where they had gathered before, overlooking the floor of the Etherion fifty feet below. Half of the balcony’s balustrade had been broken away, leaving only a sheer edge. Grace had been no more than three feet from the precipice. Had Beltan not grabbed her when he did …

Another chair hurtled past them and flew over the edge of the balcony. However, it did not fall to the floor. Instead, it sped through the air, into the vastness of the Etherion—

—then abruptly slowed and changed direction. Grace watched, breath suspended, as the chair began to describe a circuit around the edge of the Etherion, drifting in midair.

The chair was not alone. Hundreds—no, thousands—of other objects cluttered the air. There were more chairs, and tables, benches, statues, vases, metal bowls, cups, and chunks of broken stone large and small. As she watched, a piece of the balcony’s balustrade drifted past. Several parchment scrolls followed, then an entire marble altar.
All of the objects floated in a circle around the center of the Etherion.

No, not a circle, Grace. A spiral
.…

She could see the pattern now. It looked like something straight out of her college astronomy class, like a miniature model of a galaxy: flattened at the edges, thicker at the middle, all the matter orbiting around a central point, growing closer and closer with each revolution.

A brilliant spark of light ignited in the center of the spiral and just as quickly faded. What was happening? The objects were so thick in the middle of the spiral Grace couldn’t see.

She cast a wide-eyed look at the others. “What happened here?”

“A band of sorcerers broke through the emperor’s soldiers,” Vani said through clenched teeth. “That was one of them.”

She nodded toward the sorcerer who still clung to the bench beyond Falken and Aryn. He gazed back with frightened eyes; with his mask damaged, he was powerless.

“Together, Melia, Beltan, and I were holding them off,” Vani went on. “And then—”

“A shadow came,” Beltan said. “A shadow like none I’ve ever seen before.”

Grace followed his gaze back out into the Etherion. With a jolt of sickness, she saw them drifting among the other objects: forms in black robes, their gold masks gleaming. She counted at least five. They were motionless as they drifted. Were they asleep, paralyzed? Dead?

She saw other motionless forms floating amid the flotsam: dark, furred, twisted.
Gorleths
. And there were men scattered throughout the wreckage as well, Tarrasian soldiers. They drifted on their backs, eyes shut, as if asleep on the sea. Inexorably, they spiraled with the other objects toward the center of the Etherion.

At last, with dull horror, Grace understood. With each orbit the floating objects drew closer to the shadow in the center. And when they reached it, they were …

 … consumed.

“The demon,” she breathed.

“Grace, dear,” Melia said, amber eyes serious, “how is it that you are here?”

“We were—”

“Travis,” Beltan said, his voice hoarse. “Is he all right? And the others?”

Grace struggled to speak over the wind. “They’re all right. At least I think so. I came through …”

A new fear flooded her. In the chaos of her arrival she had forgotten. Xemeth had to be here somewhere. She craned her neck, searching.

The sorcerer clinging to the bench screamed. With a groan, the bench lurched from its moorings. The sorcerer screamed again. His gold mask flew spinning through the air—then its trajectory abruptly slowed as it became part of the procession to the center and oblivion.

With another groan the bench pulled free. The sorcerer’s arms flailed—then his hands wrapped around Aryn’s ankle.

The young baroness cried out; her grip on the bench was broken.

“No!” Grace shouted.

Falken was faster. He snaked out his black-gloved hand and caught Aryn’s left wrist. The young woman jerked to a halt, as did the sorcerer still holding her ankle. The sorcerer clutched Aryn, scrabbling at her leg, while Falken held on to her with one hand, the elbow of his other arm hooked around the bench, his face lined with effort.