Wrath of the White Tigress (21 page)

"I saw no need to rouse them. Entering the Shadowland will progress more easily if they remain relaxed."

"And what if they have changed their minds about participating?"

"Do you think any of them truly would?"

"Perhaps Caracyn and Bakulus."

"Then you know little about either man. Those two will not back down from any challenge, and they have searched many years for the great man they must follow."

"Am I that man?"

"In truth, I am not sure."

"Then it could be a lie they follow."

"Life is neither easy nor clear, even for one who sees possible futures. Their prophecy was a true one, trust in that."

Jaska sighed. "What do I need to do?"

"Remain where you are and relax. When I signal you, go to the Shadowland in your usual manner."

"What about Salahn?"

"He is not strong enough to penetrate this mountain, and we shall go to the past starting from here. Only when we observe closer to the present will he prove dangerous."
 

Jaska relaxed and the Farseer chanted her spells. The energies in the qavra he wore stirred in response. Like shy fingers, the currents swirling around him brushed his skin, sending chills across his body, fears into his mind. The energies began to bind his spirit to the Farseer and to his companions. In response, Jaska panicked. He tried to jerk his body and thrash his limbs, but he couldn't move. He tried to scream but couldn't even speak.

The Farseer stalked forward. "I feared this would happen." She placed a hand on his forehead and cast a charm that eased him somewhat. "You will not be harmed. I shall not dominate you as Salahn did. You are loosely bound to your comrades and me only because we must venture into the Shadowland farther than you have ever gone before. The shadows will be thick and without each other, we will see nothing, not even the way back. Where we go, you cannot merely speak the word of return."

He improved slowly, and the Farseer lost patience. From within one of her voluminous sleeves she pulled a wooden handle with three leather straps emanating from the top to form a miniature whip. She reared back and unerringly, despite her lack of sight, struck him in the face three times.

"Come to your senses, damn you. Do you not wish to defeat the man who misled you, the man who used you to commit the foulest deeds known to humanity?"

She struck him three more times before fires of anger lit within his amber eyes. Then he was able to speak. "Enough, I will make it."

"Are you certain? I cannot risk you panicking in the Shadowland."

"I will manage."
 

After a few more minutes he was better and found that whatever sorcery had prevented his movement before was gone now.

"Whenever you are ready," she said.

Jaska sent his spirit into the Shadowland and the Farseer joined him. "Take my hand, and I will lead you onto the path that goes into the past. We shall see together where Salahn has come from."

~~~

Jaska and the Farseer walked down a tunnel of swirling shadows and emerged somewhere deep within Hareez. He could see the landscape clearly through the shadows despite the distances of time and place. The only difference was that it looked even more colorless than it would have in the present. He shook his head in amazement.

"It is my power," she said, "that I can see the past and future so clearly."

"But it would take forever to view a man's life."

"Ah, but my powers will reveal only those things we need to know. We will view the particular moments of fate that led Salahn to be who he is and we will know and understand what came between."

"This is a great power that you possess."

"Yes, and terrible. After decades of study I endured horrific rituals, and cutting out my eyes was the least of those."

"But without eyes, what good is your power?"

"In the normal world I am sightless, but here I can see even better than you."

"If you can see and know anything within the dark past, and all possibilities of the future, then you could develop new things with great speed. You could resurrect the technologies of the Eirsenda and reclaim the lost knowledge of the Zindarhi. You could change the entire world."

She stopped, her spirit hovering outside a cave entrance. "Yes, and each development would lead to new futures with new difficulties and more discoveries. The cycle would never end. Besides, just as you can travel the Shadowland only a certain distance, I can travel only so far forward or backward in time. About a thousand years back is the best I can manage and not even a century forward into any of the many possible futures.

"Even now, my own childhood grows dim to my farsight. Soon I will not be able to reach it at all."

"You have lived a thousand years?"

"I have lived as you do for eighty years, and I have slept for ten centuries. I awake and leave my chamber for only four weeks each year, unless I am needed. I guide my people after studying possible futures and then I retire. I waited some time for you, though, having seen this day coming for many years."

"So sure was it?"

"No, but sometimes I trust my instincts to tell me which future I will end up experiencing. Of course, some would argue that a million different Farseers exist and that many of them will never meet Jaska Bavadi. I have, so I was right. But other versions of me in their own timelines may be wrong."

Jaska shook his head. "Metaphysics of that kind hold no interest for me. I have my own problems to deal with here and now."

She led him forward. "Come then, we shall begin to observe the life of Salahn."

~~~

As Jaska moved through time, he understood things he hadn't even known about moments before. The past he wished to see began not with Salahn's first evil actions as he had expected but with those of Salahn's mother, an exiled priestess of the dark goddess Harmylkhat.

Jeraia had dominated the people of her village until a traveling priestess of the White Tigress discovered her and alerted the palymfar who then came to cast her down. Before they arrived, she fled to a forgotten network of caves in the Wedawed Mountains. There she unearthed a vault containing long-hidden copies of the works of Ylarras Kalazaar and other necromancers.
 

Using sorceries gleaned from these works along with peculiar magics of her own devising, she summoned a manlike Zhura demon from the Shadowland, copulated with him, and conceived a child by this union. The child whom she named Salahn would grow powerful. He would avenge the wrongs done to Jeraia and strike down all who had opposed her, those who would one day kill her if the future she divined occurred.
 

Jeraia placed a masking on Salahn to hide his true nature that even the power of the palymfar could not see through, along with a compulsion of hatred against the Palymfar Order that would strengthen as he aged. Then she stored all her knowledge deep within his mind, hidden but accessible should something happen to her. Finally, she abandoned him outside the palymfar compound so that they would raise him. That way he would attain all their skills in combat and stealth before she taught him her dark arts.

Salahn grew up with palymfar training and became the most talented among them, though always he had a selfish nature and a malicious spirit that his masters feared and tried to correct. The grandmaster of the time loved Salahn who quickly learned how to sweet-talk him to get his way. Jaska watched him repeatedly lie to his masters and break the rules without punishment.

To prove his worth and to gain glory and prestige, Salahn began a campaign against the dark cults and powers operating within Hareez. Along the way, he collected much of their paraphernalia and interrogated them relentlessly, learning much more than he needed to know. The masters worried about his enthusiasm, but he had a knack for sniffing out corruption no one else could find. Because he accomplished more than any other palymfar, they continued to let him rise in the ranks.
 

Young palymfar gravitated to Salahn and hung on his every word. Secretly, many of them indulged with him in the same forbidden pleasures of drugs, wine, and whores. He became a nearly autonomous operative with his own squad of loyal warriors. But Salahn still believed himself a true palymfar even if he disagreed with his masters about many of the old ethical traditions.

In time, his campaign led him to his mother Jeraia and her new temple to Harmylkhat in the mountains. She had a large and dedicated following, and her powers had increased over the years. She had refrained from contacting her child and was content to simply watch him through the Shadowland whenever she had the opportunity.
 

With his squad, Salahn slaughtered followers and acolytes with ease until they reached the inner sanctum. There, a strange sorcery their qavra couldn't stop put all asleep save for Salahn.
 

Jeraia stood beneath bodies hanging from the ceiling, their blood dripping down and seeping into a drain shaped like a fanged maw. Jeraia was hunchbacked with a face disfigured by leprosy and failed sorceries. "My son, you have come to me at last. Long have I dreamed of this day. Now I can teach you the ancient arts and we can build a great nation and rule it together."

Salahn chuckled. "I know you not, witch."

"You don't recognize me because I'm disfigured, but you will know me by my love for you. I have watched you from afar and dreamed of taking you into my embrace. We shall be as close as lovers the two of us. We shall restore my youth and beauty and have vengeance on those who maligned me."

Salahn advanced. "I see before me a madwoman who has killed many innocent people to get her wishes. You and I have nothing in common."

"But we do! We share a love for the things of darkness. You can't deny it. I know that you collect such things!"

"How do you know this?" He glanced back to his sleeping comrades. "You can't know such things!"

"I know because I gave you this hunger!"

Salahn scowled. His eyes darkened. He had long warred against his base instincts and depravities, often losing. Whether this witch was their cause or merely taunted him with her knowledge of it didn't matter. He readied his sword.

With a voice of command she said, "I am your mother, and the Zhura-demon Varderoz was your father. You must listen and obey me!"

But he was too strong against her magic. As he lunged, she lifted her hand to unleash the deadly spell she had prepared in her defense. But she couldn't do it. He was handsome and powerful and everything she wished him to be. She stayed her spell.

Salahn's saber flashed in the flickering torchlight. The steel blade cut through her midsection, disemboweling her.
 

But with her blood seeping onto his hand, he at last sensed a connection between them. "Who are you?"

"Everything I've claimed … I could have killed you. Instead I give you my knowledge."

With her last breath, Jeraia uttered a spell to recall the compulsion she had put on him long ago, and because the base spell predated his qavra, he had no protection against it. Unknowingly infected by her dark witchcraft, Salahn placed Jeraia's lifeless body on the altar and stared at it. Eventually he bent and kissed her brow. Then he pocketed her qavra and took all of her books and implements.

Afterward, he paid little attention to his masters' reprimands for overzealous brutality against the cult followers who should have been tried and sentenced, not slaughtered needlessly. While his elders debated exiling him, Salahn sat by himself and contemplated Jeraia's qavra for many long hours.
 

Finally, as rumors spread about his possible expulsion, Salahn used her stone. In doing so, her knowledge fully blossomed within him. He absorbed her hatreds and grievances, her spells and rituals. He recognized and embraced that within him which was inhuman Zhura-djinn. He now understood how he had survived a few wounds that might have killed another man. Because of his heritage, he would have longer life, and when his body perished, he would yet live on as a creature of shadow.

Salahn mourned his mother who had predicted her death and then unwittingly set into motion the events that brought it to her. He grew to hate those who had raised him, who had never let him have his way, who were jealous of his abilities. He resolved to get what he wanted in life, to embrace who he truly was. He would punish all of humanity and do as he pleased. And somehow, he would make things right for his mother.
 

Salahn became a model palymfar on the outside and made amends with his masters. Secretly, he misled those who followed him, assassinated those who opposed him, and undermined the elders. While biding his time until he could become grandmaster, a civil war erupted and broke apart the Confederated City-States of Hareez. During the war, the palymfar lost many operatives.

The order recruited new members, but Salahn handled much of their training while the masters were occupied with matters more political in nature. And as his abilities grew, he took secret actions to keep the war going and to betray entire groups of palymfar. Eventually he killed his former masters and became the leader of a restructured palymfar group.
 

Steadily, Salahn built his new palymfar organization, systematically destroying the old rites and eliminating those few true palymfar who yet remained in hiding.

Then he turned his attention toward the binding method his mother had used to create him and extended her knowledge in binding Zhura-djinn and other demons and shadowy spirits. Eventually he struck out against a lesser nature deity, a small and docile spirit who inhabited a cedar grove on a hill near to the city. He succeeded and knew then that he could conquer the world. He bound and imprisoned other minor deities, without notice, increasing his power. Then he began his plans to bind the most powerful deity in Hareez, one whose special characteristics would allow him to attain godhood himself.
 

With enough power at last, Salahn mounted an attack against the White Tigress and her cult. Palymfar warriors simultaneously seized the Grand High Temple and the shrine at Mount Barqeshal. While his warriors detained the priestesses in silence, Salahn crept up on the slumbering White Tigress, curled amongst piles of silk pillows. With each step he released long-prepared spells of binding.