Shadow of the Otherverse (The Last Whisper of the Gods Saga Book 3) (48 page)

Sorial was alone making his rounds of the area in which he had grown up. Alicia had returned to the mansion with her mother and Lady Lavella, both of whom would be staying there for the foreseeable future, restoring order to as much of the house as was possible.

The stable was gone. Not even a skeleton of the structure remained. It had fallen victim early in the pillaging and, since then, the charred debris had been cleared away. All that remained to mark its existence was the smooth slab of stone upon which it had been erected: the remnant of Vantok’s long-dead portal. The official story was that men had destroyed the portal once the gods had removed magic from the world, but Sorial found this tale unlikely. The portals were far too puissant to fall victim to tools as mundane as hammers and chisels. The inherent eldritch power would defeat mortal efforts to block or thwart it. He didn’t doubt that men had torn down the stonework surrounding the portal opening, but he suspected it had already been dead. But how?

The area around the inn was a perfect metaphor for Sorial’s life. The boy he had been while here, sheltered and protected from the reality of his blood right, was gone as surely as the stalls, bales of hay, and loft where he had once slept were - wiped away without a trace of what had once been there. The dreams he had once harbored of joining his friend Rexall on a carefree adventure, of running away with Annie, and of making love to Alicia were echoes of a fading past. Soon, he would join all those who had gone before him. Certainly, everyone would remember the great wizard who had brought down Justin and ended The Lord of Fire’s war to conquer the world. But would anyone remember the boy who had cared for their animals while they enjoyed a pint in The Wayfarer’s Comfort? Strangely, a part of Sorial still saw himself as the latter while everyone else, even his wife, saw only the former.

“It’s seen better days.”

Sorial was so lost in his thoughts and ruminations that Excela’s husky voice caused him to visibly start and erect a hasty shield.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “I thought wizards were always alert.”

“I wish that was the case. Ask my wife about what happened the day I provided a demonstration of my powers for the whole of the city.”

“No need. I was there.
Everyone
was there. But that wasn’t the first time I seen you.” Her lips pursed thoughtfully. “I wasn’t sure till now. You look so much older than I expected, than I remember. And with the mask… but your voice is the same. I used to turn the occasional trick around here. Warburm turned a blind eye or maybe he just didn’t care one way or t’other. Anyway, the other guy in the stable, the one who got killed, he was one of my regulars.”

“Visnisk.” Another ghost. How long since Sorial had thought of him? The first of so many to die. An innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“That’s it. That was you, up in the loft, watching us, wasn’t it?”

Sorial had never seen the whore’s face but he could easily imagine her being Excela. The age was right. And the hair. “It was.”

“Did it make you hard?”

“It did. First time I saw two people have sex.”

Excela’s handsome features formed an expression of distaste. “If you could call it that with him. Up, down, in, out, grunt, then collapse. Lot of customers like him, though. S’pose I shouldn’t complain. Most lasted longer than him but few smelled as bad. The stink of shit on his body and doing it in a stable. The things we do for a few studs. But my father claimed my wages as a maid so I had to find some way to make something for myself.”

“Before Alicia, I used to scrimp and save to afford a little of that ‘up, down, in, out’.”

“I know. We fucked once.”

“We did?” Sorial couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.

“Not when you were twelve.” She laughed. “Although I would’ve. Didn’t have many standards. All you needed was a dick that worked. No, it was a few years later, when you were going through every whore in the quarter. You and the one who’s the queen’s head guardsman, taking turns.”

Sorial didn’t remember any of the specific women from that dark period of sexual binging. During the days following Annie’s death, he had done a lot of things he didn’t regard with pride. More often than not, by the time he got around to fucking, he had been too drunk to care much about who he was doing it with. “I hope I was better than Visnisk.”

“Reckon you probably was. Can’t say for sure. Sorry if it hurts your feelings, but you didn’t leave an impression one way or t’other. But I wanted you to know we had a history of sorts. For some reason, it seemed important that you know.”

She fell silent and joined him gazing at the empty shell of The Wayfarer’s Comfort. Eventually, she spoke again. “It ain’t never gonna be the same again, is it?”

Did she mean the world, the city, or the inn? “No. But different don’t necessarily mean worse. The death of the gods changed everything and it’s foolish to expect everything to continue the same. Now it’s up to the four of us to help make a hopeful future with no more Justins.”

“You give me hope.”

“I do?”

“I figure that if a horny little boy like you can do the things you did, things are looking up for me.”

There, in the shadow of the past with the most unlikely of companions, Sorial found a reason to be optimistic about a future he would likely never see.

* * *

Accompanied by a group of ten men, Carannan approached the front entrance to the temple. The streets of Vantok, largely deserted when the queen had entered the city in the company of two-hundred soldiers, were beginning to show signs of life as people emerged from hiding places, scarcely able to believe that the yearlong nightmare was at an end. It was difficult to guess how many citizens had been in Vantok at the time of Myselene’s arrival, but the number had likely been fewer than a thousand. The process of sending the refugees home, or relocating them, was a slow one - most were living in a makeshift encampment to the west where the army had settled.

What he would find in the temple wasn’t known. Justin had once been a priest, so there was reason to hope he might have shown leniency to his former brothers. How many priests had stayed and how many, if any, were still inside? Could there be people alive in the city’s largest building after a year? It was said that Ferguson had prepared and provisioned the temple to function as a city unto itself in case the king decided to move against him. Carannan wondered if those lofty aspirations had been put to the test.

Stepping into the building was like walking into a tomb. The temple was dark, dank, silent, and smelled of must and death. The latter odor was subtle - not the overpowering stench of carrion and corruption but the more refined scent of flesh that had long since decayed. The guards lit torches as they proceeded into the windowless blackness of the structure. Although never particularly religious, Carannan had spent many hours in the temple visiting his sister and daughter, each of whom had been housed here for a time, and this was colder and more forbidding than what he remembered. A signature characteristic - the low, rhythmic chanting that had once been heard throughout - was silent. Even without confirmation, Carannan felt certain he would find no one alive here.

They made their way slowly through empty halls and vacant chambers. The priests’ rooms were exactly as they had always been: small and tidy with a few personal belongings to go along with a functional bed and a crudely-made, matching chair and table set. A thick layer of dust coated everything, testimony to how long it had been since the building had known the presence of people.

Carannan’s purpose for surveying the temple was twofold. In addition to seeking out any living priests who might be holed up, he was looking for a book Sorial had mentioned was crucial to some future project. The title was
The Balance of All Things
and it might be in Ferguson’s library. The overcommander didn’t have a clear idea where that was, although he assumed it would be close to the prelate’s personal quarters, near to the temple’s center.

They came to a door that was outwardly no different from the dozens they had thus far opened. Yet as Carannan placed a gloved hand on the wood to push it inward, he
sensed
something that wasn’t the same. Throughout his life, he had been a great believer in instinct and that intuition informed him of a
wrongness
beyond the door. The room was larger than any they had previously entered, with a lower ceiling. At first, it appeared to be a garment room of sorts, since there were scores of robes littering the floor. Carannan took a torch from one of the guards and crossed the threshold alone. It was then that the horror of what the chamber represented asserted itself.

Those weren’t empty robes.  Each contained the skeletal remains of a priest. None of the bodies retained any flesh - the mice and rats had been thorough in stripping away anything that could be considered edible - so it was impossible to determine how long they had been here and what had killed them. Getting an accurate count was difficult, but Carannan estimated there was between fifty and sixty corpses here - likely the entire complement of priests who hadn’t evacuated.

Carannan stepped out of the room and closed the door firmly behind him. He would have to return here, but the task of identifying bodies and burying or burning corpses could be left to another day.

It took another half-hour of uneventful searching before the group came to a room whose uniqueness was marked by an ornate door. Ferguson’s quarters? The library? Carannan took the lead, motioning his men behind him. Although the prelate was dead, the overcommander felt uneasy so near to the old man’s seat of power. He twisted the handle then gave the door a gentle push. It swung silently open. The dim light from the torch revealed row after row of shelves piled high with tomes and scrolls. The place smelled faintly of must and mildew but nothing more malodorous tickled his nostrils. He took a deep breath of the stale air and stepped forward.

The pain was sudden, immediate, and absolute. Carannan’s world exploded in fire and light. It started at his feet and quickly engulfed his entire body - a greedy conflagration devouring everything it touched. Dimly, his ears detected the shouting of his men before his ability to hear was destroyed by the flames. He might have screamed - he wasn’t sure - before the endless blackness came swooping in to offer the cold comfort of infinity. Thus it was that the man who had cheated death so many times in so many places was finally lured into its embrace.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: THE BALANCE OF ALL THINGS

The tears had stopped flowing but Alicia’s face retained the stricken expression it had worn throughout the burial ceremony. Carannan’s death had hit her hard - harder than Sorial would have imagined it might. It had everything to do with timing. It was one thing to die in the midst of a battle but another altogether to die once peace had arrived. She would have been saddened had he not survived the Battles of Vantok or Obis but the actual manner of his demise had arrived with devastating results. If the gods still existed, this would have been attributed to their sometimes macabre sense of humor.

By the time Sorial had arrived at the temple on the previous day, there was nothing to be done for the overcommander. Truthfully, there wasn’t much left of him and what there was didn’t resemble a person. His death had been quick; the fire had burned hot and fast. His misfortune had been to stumble into a trap set by Justin that had likely been intended for Sorial. In practical terms, Carannan had given his life to save Sorial or Alicia: undetected, the trap could have killed either of them in their search for
The Balance of All Things
.

The cynic in Sorial wondered whether Justin’s dying words had been intended to bait the trap, but he decided that was unlikely. It was probable that, by the time he lay on the brink of extinction, Justin had forgotten about the little “surprise” left for the unwary in Vantok’s temple. And there was in fact a tome called
The Balance of All Things
. It was currently in Alicia’s custody, waiting for a time when she could regain her composure enough to study it in detail. In moments like this, Sorial felt a deep sense of inadequacy. If only he could read…

Myselene gave a touching eulogy to honor her fallen subject and Rotgut, who had been named Carannan’s successor, spoke at length about his association with the duke. Grizzled soldier that he was, Rotgut nevertheless wept unashamedly during his reminiscences. Alicia clung to Sorial throughout the ritual, her tears soaking through the thin material of his robe. At times, he could feel her trembling. Lavella sobbed as well, although not as brokenly as Alicia, and even Lady Evane showed evidence of grief.

After the ordeal was over and Carannan had been buried in a small plot in his favorite garden, Sorial and Alicia retired inside the mansion. It wasn’t long before a messenger arrived with a royal summons. Sorial hated leaving Alicia alone at a time like this - it seemed too much like desertion - but the queen had requested his presence and he knew she wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t important. So, after receiving assurances from his wife that she could survive a few hours without him, he made his way to the palace. Along the way, he noted how quickly a veneer of vitality was returning to Vantok. This wasn’t “normalcy” but at least the people walking the streets didn’t look beaten and fearful. The arrival of a huge merchant caravan carrying foodstuffs and beer on the previous day had done wonders to bolster spirits and refresh hope.

The queen met him in the newly cleaned private audience chamber. This was Sorial’s first time here since his return to Vantok. It was strange to see Myselene occupying the ruling seat instead of Azarak. Everything else was the same. The queen didn’t rise when Sorial entered, although he suspected she might have done so if not for the pregnancy. After a servant poured a goblet of wine for the newcomer, Myselene waved him outside so she could be alone with Sorial.

“How is she?”

Sorial sighed. “Hurting but healing. Ain’t much I can do except hold her during her darker moments. She’s got so little experience with grief. Aside from Vagrum, she ain’t never lost anyone close to her. Certainly not anyone as close as Carannan. And for him to die when he did, after surviving so many other things…”

“How about you? I understand you knew him since you were a boy.”

“I met him when I was working in the stable but won’t say I got to know him till I started at the mansion. I considered him a good man and a friend, but so many good men and friends have died that I’ve learned how to cope. I know that sounds cold.”

“It sounds like what a leader would say. People in our position aren’t allowed the luxury of normal grief. Azarak’s death cut me like nothing I’ve ever experienced but I couldn’t show it. It’s strange - I didn’t even realize how much I cared for him until he was gone. That revelation alone was crushing, but the people needed me to be strong. So I cried alone at night, my face buried in my pillow, when no one could see or hear me.

“We’re a lot alike, you and I. We’ve both lost most of the people close to us. In a different world, we might have been well mated, as we demonstrated in our short time together. We’ve both learned how to manage our pain and find a way to draw strength from it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wish it could be different. All my life, I wanted to be a queen. Now… I never thought it would be easy, but it’s so different from what I imagined. I almost envy Alicia’s mourning. You and I don’t get to indulge ourselves in such basic human emotions.

“Anyway, I won’t keep you long. In case you haven’t heard, I ‘gave birth’ this morning. Or at least that’s what the general population has been informed. A girl named Princess Kara. Mother and daughter are well, although it was an exceptionally difficult delivery and it may be some time before I’m ready to present the baby to the citizenry. How long remains to be seen.” Saying this, she rose and rounded the table to stand next to Sorial. She took his hand in hers and placed it on her belly.

Sorial didn’t try to pull away and, after a few minutes of stillness, he felt
something
move - a quick, sharp kick. His daughter. The child he would be unable to acknowledge. The girl who would never know him.

“How long before you leave us?”

“I don’t know. First, Alicia needs to decode the book. Once that’s done, we’ll have to put together a plan of action.”

“And then?”

He couldn’t lie to her any more than he could to himself. He had made peace with his fate and he didn’t think it included settling down in Vantok and living out the rest of his life as Myselene’s wizard. She already knew that, of course, but he had to say the words. “Alicia will take over the post once I’m gone. I’m worried about her, though. First her father…”
Damn it, why did it have to be him!
“She’ll need all the support she can get.”

“She’ll have it. She’ll be as my sister. She can live in the palace and Kara will be hers to raise. Through your daughter, she’ll have a connection to you. But are you sure that… will you have to make the ultimate sacrifice?”

“I don’t know. Obviously, if there’s another way, I’ll take it. I suppose we won’t know for sure until we try whatever it is we’re supposed to try. We don’t even know what that is yet.”

“If you need anything…”

“Thank you. But I suspect you asked me here for another reason.”

Myselene’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “The merchant who arrived from Basingham… I offered to buy his entire stock, which I plan to distribute on a needs-basis throughout the city. To do that, however, I need more funds than the pittance available to me at the moment in the treasury.”

“You’d like me to fatten your purse?”

“Precisely. Uncut gems are fine. Just make sure there are enough of them to dazzle even the most greedy of merchants. Not only do I want this one to go away with empty wagons but I want him to be so happy that he’ll return as quickly as possible and spread the word of our largess.”

“I’m at your disposal, Your Majesty. Until I depart for regions as yet unknown, I remain Vantok’s faithful wizard.”

* * *

“Fucker!” yelped Alicia, jumping up from her chair, overturning it in the process. The startled mouse scampered across the table in front of her, fleeing for safety.

Once it was out of sight, she turned to her husband, who was lounging on the nearby bed. Her green eyes flashed dangerously. “Damn it, stableboy, I thought you said they were all gone.”

“Mostly gone.”

“
Mostly?
Are they or are they not ‘creatures of the earth.’“

“They are… sort of. I mean, I can send thoughts to them, but they don’t always obey. They’re like you - communication don’t always mean action. Do fish always listen to you?”

“If I tell a damn fish to stay out of my bedroom, the fish will listen.”

“You don’t have a stream in your bedroom, so it wouldn’t have much of a choice.”

She shot him a withering glance then sat down again. “Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Under his hood, Sorial smiled. The mouse had in fact been perfectly obedient. The more distractions he tossed at Alicia, the more adeptly she coped with her loss. Time was the best healer and two weeks wasn’t nearly enough of it, but there were other things he could do to help. Stoking her annoyance toward him diverted emotional energy from other, less productive outlets. Having
The Balance of All Things
to study was also a balm. Perusal of it required one-hundred percent of her concentration.

A little while later, Sorial was dragged from a light slumber by his wife’s insistent command of “Wake up!”

After a little grumbling, he opened his eye to find her sitting next to him, showing more energy than she had exhibited since her father’s death. He sensed the cause without her voicing it. “You figured it out.”

She nodded. “If you know what you’re looking for, it’s all there. Justin knew where to point you. This is the framework of what he was planning although, without information from the Yu’Tar Library, it would be meaningless gibberish.”

“What does it say?” Sorial was too tired to engage in a game of riddles and conjecture. It was one thing to do it in the middle of the day but quite another in the small hours between midnight and dawn. He wasn’t getting much sleep as it was; he needed the little he could steal.

“It tells us what Justin thought was the way into the Otherverse. Unfortunately, it doesn’t say whether he was right or not.
The Balance of All Things
includes excerpts from diaries purportedly written by Altemiak
after
Malbranche made his attempt. The language is cryptic but, if it’s genuine, it gives the recipe of what Malbranche did and, presumably, the procedure Altemiak later used. This is what Justin was going to try. But if it’s a fake, using it is a death sentence.”

“Wonderful,” muttered Sorial. He had been hoping for something less ambiguous. Then again, if it had been straightforward and easy, he supposed it would have been done countless times before.

“You’ll be happy to know we were mostly correct in our assessment of what’s necessary to force open a gateway. A synchronized burst of all four elemental magics should destabilize the portal sufficiently to allow someone to pass all the way through, riding the matter-transformed energy back to its source. Unfortunately, there’s a consequence to this we didn’t foresee: any portal subjected to this kind of stress will become inactive. Portals are designed to function only to transmit; forcing one to receive will cause a catastrophic failure.”

Sorial absorbed the information. “Perhaps that explains why so many of the city portals are dead.”

“I thought it was because people destroyed them following mass deaths after the gods took back magic. After people died trying to become wizards, the portals were torn down to prevent additional deaths.”

“That’s the story. Think about it, though. Do you believe a bunch of angry men with pick-axes and sledgehammers could destroy a portal? The stonework around it, yes. But the actual portal? It would still exist, perhaps hovering in mid-air.”

“I suppose that makes sense. So you think the scarcity of portals could be the result of previous attempts made by ancient wizards to access the Otherverse?”

“Yes. Regardless of whether the attempt succeeds or fails, it appears to cost a portal, and there weren’t that many to start with. Now, there are only three left.”

“That we know of. I wonder whether there might not be another one or two somewhere in an unexplored corner of the world. Kosterbus had a theory connecting seasons with portals. He came to the conclusion that there were likely twelve. We know only of nine. That leaves three unaccounted for.”

“If all the portals were destroyed, would that be the end of magic?”

“It would be the end of wizard creation,” said Alicia. “But of magic? I think the energy would find some other way through. Our universe and the Otherverse are too closely linked for the barrier to be impermeable. But with no wizards to wield it, it becomes irrelevant, except as a path by which something could reach across to this world from the other.”

“Exactly what we’re trying to prevent, and the reason why there will be soon be two known active portals instead of three.”

“Any preference which one should be sacrificed?”

“Havenham,” said Sorial. “Ibitsal is more centrally located and you’ve got a travel-point established there. I ain’t even sure where the third one is. Somewhere farther south in The Forbidden Lands, near the east coast, I guess. I think that’s the one Justin used so if we could figure out where he was hidden all those years, we’d be close. But that’s too time consuming a process. It could take seasons to locate, if not years. My successor can worry about finding it.”