The Traitor's Tale (2 page)

I also wondered what they had found upon the new
world. Mara had not been entirely human. The pointed ears had
revealed her alien heritage, to say nothing of the power in her
blood. I could travel to the threshold and back, but I had learned
that ability from the Keeper in the days of Arthur Pendragon.
Mara’s power was in her blood.

I could puzzle over it later. The answers lay in
Andomhaim.

Assuming I survived the journey.

I gripped my staff in both hands and concentrated. It
took a great deal of magical power to phase from the material world
to the threshold, and I expected it would take even more power to
move from Earth’s threshold to that of Andomhaim. The staff glowed
in my hands, and I used my magical Sight, reaching out to examine
the flows of power around me. I felt the massive power of the
Warden’s gate, and I saw the tendrils of magic that joined Earth’s
threshold to Andomhaim’s. Even glancing at the tendrils filled me
with fear. The Warden was a sorcerer of tremendous might, stronger
than anyone I had ever encountered, and the complexity of the
spells proved that he had the skill to match his power.

He was stronger than the Keeper. Had Malahan and the
Keeper gone to their new world only to become slaves of the Warden
and other sorcerers like him?

It didn’t matter. I had to find the Keeper. If I had
to fight through a dozen sorcerers of the Warden’s power, it did
not matter.

Suddenly I felt the connection slipping away. The
Warden’s gate was collapsing. That meant Mara and Morigna had been
successful, that they had rescued the Keeper from the Warden’s
spell. Unfortunately, the thresholds of the two worlds would remain
joined for only a few moments longer. Once the connection was
broken, I could never follow. I could study for another ten
thousand years, gather every scrap of magical knowledge upon Earth,
and I would still never have the strength to open a gate between
worlds, or to even find Andomhaim among the uncounted billions of
stars that populated the cosmos.

I drew in more power, as much as I could safely
handle and then some, and as I did something cold brushed against
my magical senses.

I turned my head, sparing as much attention from the
spell as I could manage, and saw the wraith flowing towards me.

It looked fashioned out of black smoke and darker
shadow, a suggestion of a hooded figure in its flowing depths. The
farther one went from the threshold of Earth, the further into the
darkness you went…and there waited creatures like the cowled wraith
flowing towards me. It came from the dark voids between the worlds,
and it fed upon death. They only came to the mortal world during
times of great slaughter, when the deaths of millions allowed them
to gorge.

Europe had been crawling with them during the Black
Death, and again in the first half of the twentieth century. Come
to think of it, I had seen quite a few wraiths during the twentieth
century. Consequently I knew how to deal with the vile things, and
I could have blasted it back to the airless void between the stars
with a single spell.

But to do that, I would have to abandon the spell
that would take me to Andomhaim’s threshold, and I would not have
time to work it again before the connection was lost.

So I gritted my teeth and kept summoning power as the
cowled wraith flowed towards me. It hesitated, considering me like
a wolf examining a wounded deer.

A cold, hissing voice echoed inside my head.

“Little sorceress,” said the voice. “I can hear you.
So much pain. So much regret. Come to me and you will never know
pain again.”

I said nothing.

“Do you think you can find redemption for your sins?”
said the voice. The wraith began circling me, preparing to pounce.
“You threw a mighty realm into ruin with your lust. You were a
foolish, blind girl, a proud whore used by a man who discarded you
once were of no further use. Because of your pride and lust,
thousands upon thousands died.”

My staff trembled beneath my fingers. Almost
there.

“And how many more deaths lie upon your hands?” said
the voice, its icy words digging deeper into my head. “You saw what
happened when Arthur’s realm fell. The Western Empire collapsed
into chaos and barbarism for centuries. What might have happened if
Arthur Pendragon’s realm had stood? Perhaps the destiny of Earth
might have changed. All the horrors you have seen might never have
come to pass. The killing fields. The extermination camps. The wars
that slaughtered millions. The engines of destruction that can kill
millions in the blink of an eye. All that might have been averted
had you not let Mordred Pendragon lure you into his bed.”

I scoffed. I had watched mankind for fifteen
centuries, and I knew that it was the nature of men to form tribes
and wage war upon each other. Even if Arthur Pendragon had died of
old age in his bed, even if his son had taken the throne of
Britannia in peace, there would have been war and plague and
suffering. It was simply the nature of man.

Yet the spirit’s words held enough truth that they
stung nonetheless.

“I shall put you out of your misery,” said the cowled
wraith, flowing closer. “I shall feast upon your pain and your very
soul, and leave you with nothing but oblivion forevermore.”

The staff began vibrating in my hand.

“Bah,” I said, and I sensed a flicker of puzzlement
from the wraith. “Do you know what your problem is, spirit? The
same problem shared by all spirits. You talk too much.”

The wraith’s confusion erupted into fury, and the
spirit rose up like a dark shadow to swallow me.

Too late.

I slammed my staff against the ground, releasing the
gathered magical power, and fiery light consumed the world.

***

For a long time I knew nothing.

I had the sensation of falling, of hurtling through
an endless silent void. It seemed as if the world, as if the cosmos
itself, blurred and shifted around me, pulling me across an
unimaginable distance, across a gulf so vast that the human mind
simply could not comprehend it.

Perhaps I had failed. Perhaps the connection between
the two thresholds had broken, and I had flung myself for eternity
into the lightless places between the worlds.

It would be no less than I deserved.

Yet deserved or not, awareness returned to me.

I felt the smooth wood of my staff resting against my
fingers, warm with the presence of fire magic.

Hard, rocky ground lay beneath my back. Had I still
the ability to feel pain, I would have been quite uncomfortable. My
magical senses felt the presence of ancient spells nearby, and I
had the sense that I was upon a living world.

Time passed, and at last I was able to open my
eyes.

I lay upon a stone floor, ruined walls rising around
me. From the look of the walls, the place had once been a watch
tower of some kind. The stonework was superb, better than even the
work of the modern builders of Earth with their machines and
arithmetical engines. Strange reliefs and peculiar blocky glyphs
covered the walls. Despite the obvious strength of the stonework
the place was a ruin. It looked as if it had been frozen by some
unimaginable frost and then shattered, like a boulder in the
deepest cold of winter.

I sat up, utterly exhausted, and realized that I was
still on the threshold. No – this threshold felt different. This
was the threshold of another world, the world I had sensed through
the other side of the Warden’s gate.

Andomhaim. The world of the Keeper.

Despite my exhaustion, I felt a surge of excitement.
There was fear mixed with the excitement as well. Perhaps at last I
could find the Keeper and beg her forgiveness, and she could
release me from my curse, let me die at last…

Of course, I had to find her first. A world was a
large place. I had spent fifteen centuries wandering Earth, and I
had not seen all of it. Nations had arisen that had not even
existed when I had been born. It would take time to find the
Keeper, but I had that time.

I got to my feet, leaning upon my staff as I waited
for my head to stop spinning. My strength was returning, if slowly,
and soon I would have enough strength to shift into Andomhaim’s
material world. Until then, it seemed like a good idea to look
around and take stock of my surroundings. Would Andomhaim’s
threshold have spirit creatures like the cockroaches? Perhaps more
dangerous creatures prowled the threshold here. Or maybe it was
utterly deserted.

There was only one way to find out.

I made my way across the ruined tower’s floor and to
an archway in the far wall, and stepped onto a hilltop. Everywhere
I saw the pale gray mist of the threshold. Through the translucent
veil of the mist I saw a mountain valley, white-crowned peaks
rising over me with stately grandeur. Beyond the ruined tower’s
hill stretched a forest of pine trees, their green needles vibrant
even through the threshold’s mist. To the north I saw a broad lake
of cold blue, rippling against the base of the mountains. Likely it
would take about two days to cross the valley on foot, maybe
three.

It was a beautiful place, though it looked
uninhabited. Yet the ruined tower proved that someone had lived
here once. I did not think Malahan or his descendants had raised
the tower. The glyphs and carvings seemed alien, and the squat,
stylized figures I saw in the reliefs did not look human. Maybe
Mara’s ancestors had built this place. Or perhaps some other
kindred.

I would not find the answers by lingering here.

Staff in hand, I left the tower, picking my way down
the hill. Far in the distance to the south, I spotted a break in
the trees. To judge from the shape, it was likely a road. A road
meant towns and cities and civilizations, and people to whom I
could speak. Maybe the builders of the ruined tower still lived
nearby. I would not speak their language, of course, but I had
learned languages before and I could do so again. Mara and Morigna
both spoke intelligible Latin, and perhaps whoever had built the
road and the tower would do so as well.

The forest was quiet as I made my way to the south,
though I did not relax my vigilance. From time to time I saw ruins
of similar style as the tower. Some of the pine trees grew up
within the ruined houses, which meant this forest had grown after
whatever battle had created the ruins. To judge from the size of
the trees, that could have been nearly two hundred years ago.

Whoever had built those houses had been masons of
exceptional skill, if their ruins still stood after so long.

After about six hours I came to the road. It was
broad and flat and smooth, and to judge from the position of the
sun, ran from east to west. (Assuming, of course, that the sun set
in the west on this world.) I looked back and forth, shrugged, and
decided to take the road to the west. One direction seemed as good
as the other. I required neither food nor drink, only rest, and I
would walk until I encountered living creatures I could
question.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind that I saw
a flicker of movement in the trees.

I gripped my staff and called my power. For a moment
nothing happened, and I waited. Something had been moving in the
trees, I was sure of it. A spirit? Or had something else come
here?

A moment later a creature came out from behind a pine
tree and walked towards me.

More precisely, it…skittered.

It looked like an enormous, man-sized praying mantis,
its carapace a shade of electric blue. Its forelegs ended in huge,
serrated blades the length of my arms, and its pincers jutted a
good four inches from its head. Its eyes were the size of my fists,
black and faceted and gleaming like polished stone, and I felt
their weight upon me. That carapace looked as hard and as tough as
steel, with black highlights upon the back and legs, and its middle
and back legs ended in claw-tipped, flexible fingers. This creature
could hold and wield weapons, assuming its massive blades did not
prove sufficient.

It was a physical creature, not a spirit. My Sight
told me that much, though I had never seen anything like it
before.

It moved towards me with steady, alien grace, and I
thought of a wolf creeping up behind oblivious prey.

I pointed my staff, the sigils flaring brighter.
“Hold, if you can understand me. I can defend myself.”

The creature went utterly motionless in a way that a
mammal could not. The head tilted to the side, and the antennae
over its eyes waved with languid motions. Its mandibles twitched,
and a horrible metallic sound came from its pincers.

It took me a moment to realize that the creature was
speaking.

“Latin,” it said in that hideous voice. “You are
speaking Latin. That tongue is known to this one.”

“Who are you?” I said.

“Query: you will identify yourself,” said the giant
mantis.

“You first,” I said.

“Query: you will identify yourself,” said the
creature.

“I suggest you name yourself first,” I said, pointing
my staff at it as I called more fire to me.

The creature’s antennae twitched several times, and
it seemed to come to a decision. “This one is a warrior drone in
the Ninth Storm Legion of the Dominion of the High Lords, before
whom all creation shall bow. Query: you will identify
yourself.”

“I have forgotten my name,” I said, “but you may call
me Antenora, if you wish.”

The mantis considered this for a moment. “Conclusion:
this statement is irrational.”

“Probably. I do not care,” I said. “What business
does the Ninth Storm Legion of the Dominion of the High Lords have
with me?” I had heard none of those names before. The Romans in
ancient days had used legions, of course, but I doubted the strange
creature was a soldier of the Empire of the Romans.