Shadow of the Otherverse (The Last Whisper of the Gods Saga Book 3) (46 page)

Basil emerged from the portal, pulling himself over the edge like a drowned man, hints of fire caressing his bare skin. In the blankness of his expression, Sorial could read no sign of his thoughts. Was this still Basil or was it Justin reborn? He teetered on the brink of action, unsure of what he could or should do. If this was Justin, time was short.

The paroxysm of indecision that paralyzed Sorial didn’t afflict Alicia. She struck immediately, unconcerned whether the new wizard was the old Lord of Fire or merely an impatient, imprudent noble. She drained the water from his body in an instant, leaving behind a desiccated husk. Basil was dead the moment his foot cleared the portal’s surface. Alicia gave him no time to act or gather his bearings.

Sorial strode forward to prod the body with his boot. It crumbled like old, rotten parchment. If this had been Justin’s gambit to extend his life, it had failed. Sorial glanced at Alicia but she avoided eye contact. Coolly calculated and dispassionately dispensed, this was a ruthlessness he had never seen from her.

The way was once again open for Excela to join the wizards’ fellowship and, after a brief delay during which she regained her composure, she completed the task and once again all four elements had a Lord or a Lady governing them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: WIZARDS’ PASS

Widow’s Pass was closed. Not that she should have expected anything different with two weeks still remaining in Winter. The path ahead, which angled upward between two gigantic outcroppings of rock, appeared to dead-end in a frozen wall. The wind cascaded unpredictably through gaps in the mountain range, creating an intermittent wailing. There was no way to take a small band of seasoned climbers through the snow and ice-clogged passage, let alone a force of forty-five hundred soldiers and nearly half as many peasants. Yet Her Majesty, Queen Myselene of Vantok and Obis, was here at the behest of her wizard, who had assured her that Widow’s Pass wouldn’t be an obstacle. She had no idea how he intended to accomplish that feat but she had learned that when he made proclamations, no matter how rash, he fulfilled them. She was interested to see what he had planned in this instance.

It wasn’t the best time to make this trip, either for her personally or for what remained of her militia. The baby within her, now past half term, was beginning to slow her down. Her appetite had increased markedly and she was beginning to have difficulty sleeping. Nevertheless, she wanted to give birth in Vantok for symbolic reasons - the purported “child of Azarak” would one day sit on that throne. The birth was expected in late Planting but, to keep up the illusion that the late king was the father, she would have to go into seclusion several weeks earlier. At this point, there was barely enough time to accomplish that - assuming Widow’s Pass could be navigated. If they had to pass through Earlford (or what remained of it), it would be early Summer before they could reach Vantok. That would make it nearly impossible to hide the true birth date.

Forty-five hundred soldiers was a surprisingly small “honor guard” for the recapturing of Vantok, but a true show of military might wouldn’t be needed. Based on the best intelligence available to her, Justin hadn’t made provisions for a defense in case of an attempted retaking of the city. As they had come to realize, he had been unconcerned about holding the places he had conquered. It would likely have been the same in Obis had he succeeded there. With Vantok, she probably could have marched in unopposed with only the remnants of its former army. The larger force was needed, however, for establishing order and aiding with the reconstruction effort. After careful consideration, she had left nearly seven thousand soldiers in Obis, where there was work enough for ten times that number to repair the damage by next Winter. She had lost nearly half her militia in the battle and it would be years before the male population would swell the army’s ranks. Fortunately, there didn’t appear to be a near-term menace of any magnitude pending. Then again, Rangarak had been unaware of Justin’s threat until shortly before The Lord of Fire had executed him from afar. It was always the enemy one wasn’t aware of who posed the greatest danger. Those were Gorton’s words - a few of many she carried close to her heart.

Myselene motioned for one of her maids to attend her. Although most royalty claimed a veritable army of personal servants, three sufficed for Myselene in these circumstances; there wasn’t much call for maids on the road. Nymia stepped forward. The queen’s friend since childhood, she was the closest person Myselene had to a true confidante and issues of rank had never interfered with their relationship. They were the same age and had grown up together. Nymia had come to Vantok as part of the wedding party but the queen had been separated from her during the chaos of the evacuation. Only recently, after she had been discovered among the refugees in Sussaman, had Myselene been able to affect a reunion.

The other two maids, more timid than Nymia, held back. One was Posie, a number of years Myselene’s senior, who had been assigned by Azarak to attend her in Vantok. The other was Shiree, a girl from Sussaman who had attached herself to Rexall. Since he was obviously conflicted about his responsibilities where she was concerned, Myselene had agreed to offer her an opportunity in royal service. The sought-after position had provided Shiree with a legitimate reason to accompany the horde south - one her family didn’t object to the way they would have had she played the role of an officer’s mistress. A marriage seemed likely although, considering Rexall’s reputation, it wasn’t assured.

“Nymia, please inform Their Maguses that I would like to have words with them.”

Myselene had no idea where Sorial and Alicia’s wagon was - most likely somewhere toward the back of the train with the Vantok survivors. The time had come for them to reveal their plans for opening the pass.

Overcommander Carannan, who sat astride his horse near where Myselene’s carriage had come to a stop, moved to intercept the queen as she made her way slowly and gingerly on foot toward the wall of snow and ice blocking the road.

“Doesn’t look promising,” he noted, dismounting. Having traveled the pass recently - and nearly been killed in the process - he was skeptical that even clearing away all the snow and ice would be sufficient to allow such a large force to pass. When Rangarak had come south with his army to attend Myselene’s wedding, he had used the eastern passage.

“I have faith in your daughter and her husband.”

“So do I.”

“If Sorial can make a mountain, dig a warren of tunnels under Obis, defeat The Lord of Fire, and churn under a third of the city’s footprint, I don’t doubt he’ll be a match for Widow’s Pass in the Winter.”

* * *

At that moment, as Nymia was looking for them, Sorial and Alicia were twenty miles away, well within the Pass, assessing what needed to be done to realize Sorial’s vision of what it should be. He had brought them up through the ground to the top of the northernmost bridge. He scrutinized the terrain, calibrating everything that had to be done.

“The first step is to remove all the snow and ice,” he said.

“Easy enough,” replied Alicia, with a dismissive wave of her hand. Sorial didn’t miss the sarcasm.  “I’ll just wiggle my fingers and millions of tons of snow will evaporate. Couldn’t be simpler.”

“You’re the Lady of Water. This is supposed to be your area. I could do it but it would involve a lot more effort.”

Alicia sighed. “You never think small, do you?”

Sorial smiled under the hood. “You’ve got the simple part. Once you’re done, I have to reshape all the trails and that includes building up mountainsides in places like this.” He gestured at their feet. “This ain’t what it was like when it was first constructed. It was supposed to be maintained by an earth wizard who could make regular repairs but, when the gods took away magic, there wasn’t any choice but to let it fall into disrepair. Now it’s in such bad shape that it needs a complete rebuilding. I wish I still had a rock wyrm. Moving this much earth, that sort of help would be invaluable.” Sorial’s voice trailed off. In the weeks since the battle, not a day had gone by when he hadn’t tried to make contact with another creature. He could sense they were there, in the deep darkness of the farthest corners of the underground, but they were hiding from him. Did they fear subjugation? Were they that fiercely independent? Given time, he could seek them out and force them to work with him, but the benefits wouldn’t be worth the effort. He had also caught the fleeting scent of a stone giant but, like the rock wyrms, it didn’t want to be found.

“Sometimes, I think you loved that thing more than me.” The softness of Alicia’s tone belied the harshness of her words.

Although the comment had been meant in jest, Sorial took it seriously. “I won’t deny missing it. It was a companion of sorts. It didn’t argue with me. But I can live without it. I couldn’t live without you.”

“Never apart again, stableboy. Never apart.” With a sigh, she planted her hand on her hip. “All right, let’s see what I can do about this. It’s going to require a helluva lot of energy, but I know that doesn’t concern you. You’re determined to turn all my hair silver and wrinkle my face like a pickled plum.”

Sorial watched in silence as his wife went to work. She stood stock still and closed her eyes to aid her concentration. At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then the ice and snow in their immediate vicinity melted away, absorbed by the ground or running off the edge of the trail to disappear into the crevasses below. As her power extended beyond them to larger areas of frozen water, sublimation complemented the melting, enveloping the nearby environs in a bank of dense fog. The long, twisting path through the mountains emerged from the icy cocoon in which it had been entombed since late Harvest.

Sorial began his effort. Like Alicia, he closed his eyes. His consciousness flowed into the ground beneath his feet, spreading out all along the Pass. He became the earth, abandoning the limiting confines of his body. The most challenging portion of the job would be the bridges. They had to be widened to at least four times their current size, which meant building and reshaping rock on a massive scale. Once that was done, the less treacherous paths had to be shored up, smoothed out, and stretched from side-to-side, eliminating the chasms and fissures that had developed between the roadside and cliff faces.

Not since creating the crude mountain near Vantok had Sorial attempted to move large amounts of earth in such a controlled, specific manner. Since then, he had become more accomplished in the craft of earth-based magic, but he was also working with material that was several orders of magnitude larger than what he had previously attempted. Even pacing himself, it was draining work. Although his consciousness was flowing through the rock and soil of the pass, his body was shouldering the burden of harnessing the Otherverse’s output. He could sense the decay of the accumulating years as energy flowed through him. His bones were becoming more brittle. His organs functioned less efficiently. For wizards, chronological age meant nothing and, as a result of all the magical feats he had accomplished, Sorial was quickly becoming an old man. This had always been true; the great wizards - the ones whose names were writ large in legend - had burned brightly for a short time then died. For Sorial, a truncated lifespan meant little. His actions were the product of the order of necessity. His intention was to give the best of himself to worthwhile activities. Husbanding resources for the future didn’t make sense since the future was tenuous at best.

When it was done, he sat down in the middle of the path, too tired to move. His joints ached. His muscles and tendons were sore. Breathing required a conscious effort. His vision was blurred and there was a persistent buzzing in his ears. Gradually, things returned to normal, but it was a “new normal,” that of a hoarier, less resilient frame. Alicia came to stand by his side, placing a hand on his shoulder. Her face expressed awe and wonderment. He was glad to see that - happy he could still exceed her expectations.

The path, a uniform twenty feet wide from start to finish, wended its way through The Broken Crags. There were no sharp switchbacks, no areas of obvious danger. The bridges had been built up to where they would seem little different to the traveler than other portions of the journey. The rock walls on either side of the path assured that no one would accidentally plunge over the sides.

“You’ve remade it,” she whispered. “The whole thing… This world hasn’t seen a feat of magic like this since the pass was first created. In the journals I read, the original build was considered to be one of the ten greatest acts of magic in history.” She paused, absorbing the reality of what she was seeing. “How do you feel?”

“Tired. Old. Like I could just go to sleep here and never wake up.” But there was also a deeply rooted sense of satisfaction. Killing Justin had been a monumental event but it had brought no joy. This was different. This was a pure achievement, a validation of how magic could be used for something other than killing and devastation.

At that moment, he felt a sensation like a tickle inside. He knew Alicia was probing his condition. He was too lethargic to be irritated and knew she wasn’t doing it to be invasive.

Her verdict was harsh. “You have to stop doing things like this. You’re killing yourself. You have the heart and lungs of a man three times your age. Your muscles and tissue are showing advanced signs of atrophy.”

“This hardly seems a time for restraint, though, does it? Think about it: no matter what road I take, you can measure my remaining time in days and weeks, not weeks and years. If I wanted a long life, I was born at the wrong time.”

“You don’t have to be so fatalistic about it. We don’t know what the process to enter the Otherverse is. It may not demand the kind of sacrifice you’ve resigned yourself to. It could be that…”

“What? That I slip into the Otherverse, do what needs to be done, and slip out again, bolting the door behind me? Incompatible universes - you said that yourself. Matter and energy. You and I both know a two-way door isn’t going to be an option. It’s a nice fantasy but that’s all it is. ‘Sacrifice’ is the right word.”

Alicia’s stricken expression proved she knew he was right. In fact, she had known it since the Yu’Tar Library but hadn’t wanted to confront what it meant.

Sorial continued, his voice strangely impassive. “If I fail, I die at the portal - same as my mother and brother. Maybe, like them, I’ll become trapped in the Otherverse as a powerless shade until the dominant powers there, The Lords of Chaos and Order, sweep me away. If I succeed, I’ll still have to leave this world, and I don’t think there will be a clear route back. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I don’t think so. The only other choice is not to do anything. There’s some appeal in that, I have to admit. Maybe the forces at work in the Otherverse won’t be ready to act for centuries. Maybe longer. Maybe never. But it could just as easily be next week, and that’s a chance we can’t risk. Every time I’m tempted to delay, I hear that voice and it chills me through and through.”