The Black Tower (23 page)

Jar’rod fell through a sky of black dust.  His eyes burned, his flesh screamed. 

The dreamscape was a formless mass.  The void that had taken control of Ijanna and replaced her consciousness was slowly tearing him apart.  He screamed without sound. 

Hands clawed at him from the soiled darkness, blood-soaked and muddied.  His skin was raw from being clutched and grabbed.  Blood sluiced down his face.  His tears were cold and slow. 

Something held him steady, another pair of hands which tried to stabilize him.  He thought it was the Dream Witch, imagined he heard her voice, but he couldn’t imagine why she would want to help him. 

Thunderheads clapped in the distance.  He fell into brambles made of hands and nails.  He was flayed in motion as he plummeted through a forest of black limbs.  His sense of direction was gone. 

He shielded his eyes.  Every jolt of pain made him cry out.  He fell face down, or perhaps he fell up.  Hot wind slashed at his face.  He was lost.

Jar’rod smelled black lightning, burning ozone which enveloped him from out of the depths. 

The dreamwalker crashed into a world of blood.  Dank fluid exploded over him.  He realized he’d found solid ground, that he was no longer falling, but he couldn’t be sure when that had happened.  He kept screaming for a time, but eventually lost the strength to continue. 

He wiped the fluid from his eyes and stumbled to his feet.  The vile stench of his own blood filled his mouth. 

Stars stretched thin across the night.  Power hung thick in the air, and everything hummed and shook.  He couldn’t hear anything else, not even his own labored breaths. 

He wasn’t alone.  Other presences were there, trapped in that endless room, a dull and starless onyx crypt.  Midnight waves rolled away from a flat shelf of milkstone and topaz.  He shifted back and forth, looked for whoever else was there.  He knew Ijanna was trapped somewhere in the distance, but others were closer.  He tried to find them, but couldn’t. 

They were denizens of the dreamscape, tangents of some black intelligence buried deep in the fortress.

Waves of pain pulsed through his body.  He felt the world shift and bend.  Chul Gaerog was reacting to the intruders.

Jar’rod was dimly aware of his body coming apart back in the physical world.  He flew into spasms, and his organs started failing.  Spittle flew from his mouth, blood seeped from his nose. 

A scene took shape before him.  A man and a woman, black and white.  He sensed a violation, saw torture on the stone.  Eyes like red coals, skin burning.  Gore-addled horns like those of a black stag dug into her flesh as she writhed and screamed.  Nightmares seeped from her attacker’s breath.  He forced himself inside her, but there wasn’t much of her left, for her body had been flayed and torn and her blood ran thin from slashed veins. 

They were on the crest of a dark mountain.  Blood lightning lit the atmosphere.  Churning clouds, sizzling rain, rancid wind that smelled of rot.  The black altar was slick with her blood, spilled over forty days and forty nights.

Jar’rod knew what he was seeing.  He shook with fear as he witnessed the end of the Turn of Night. 

It can’t be.

His senses melted.  The black wind twisted against him, and his skin burned.  Darkness bled through the air as demonic fliers with hooked talons and gnarled wings soared across the heavens. 

Something took shape behind him.  He sensed it, felt it growing, an utterly dire intelligence torn by rage and solitude.  It acquired form when it exploded, a blast of castigation and regret.  That eruption of bitter rage was the source, the power in the blood.

The Veil.  I’m witnessing the birth of the Veil.

Corvinia’s blood fell to the earth, dripped from the stone atop the dire black mountain.  The red rain stained the land dark. 

Jar’rod felt the Dream Witch there with him.  They witnessed the horrid birth together.  Death radiated from the Stone of Pain, a swirling fog of burning cold that blocked out the stars.  Something vital died in that moment as Nazarathos raped his sister, a death the world felt down to its core, and would keep feeling.

The power consumed them.  Two Gods, not meant to conjoin in such foul and blasphemous fashion.  Screams echoed into the sky, and not just from her.  His crime has destroyed them both.  Even as their child was simultaneously conceived and born the Gods’ death rattles rang deep into the night. 

They were gone.  Nazarathos had already killed the others during the deific uprising, and it was only he and Corvinia left.  He’d overpowered her, forced her to succumb to his foul appetites, and in return the unnatural melding of their energies had destroyed them both. 

The stories are all wrong.  The Jlantrians believe Corvinia prevailed, that she destroyed Nazarathos and still rules from on high.  Kala thought Nazarathos had emerged victorious, and that the Veil was
his
creation, a way of slowly corrupting the world and shaping it to his will. 

Neither was true – both Gods perished in an explosion that had literally turned the world upside down.  Blasting dead wind scoured the planet.  Black clouds of razor smoke tore across the surface of the world and ripped down every structure in sight.  Stones toppled, castles crumbled, mountains exploded into chunks of rock and seams split in the earth, great unnatural rifts filled with madness and shadows.  Jar’rod tasted a glacial stink as it emanated from the opened planet, frozen vapors released back into the atmosphere after centuries spent buried.  Steam vented from places dark and deep, subterranean pools of molten rock and hellish flames. 

In the blink of an eye the world was wiped away, only to be built again.

But by who?

He still felt another presence: something watched this madness, and it wasn’t he or Ijanna, some alien presence, cold and calculating. 

Vlagoth?

No.  Something else.

Time passed.  Jar’rod felt the atmosphere grow thin as the breathable air in the world dissipated, watched as the few survivors of the calamity rebuilt from stones, man turned primitive again, once great empires reduced to creatures crawling on their stomachs. 

He stood before a pool of water.  It was a constant, an oasis in the dry white landscape.  He watched it bubble and churn, as black as oil and as cold as a frozen star.  Steam rose from the edges as the pool shimmered and shook like something massive moved in the distance, a thunderous presence approaching.  The sky was dark and filled with cloud, and lightning crackled bright on the horizon.  He tasted ozone, and the wind was as stiff as iron. 

A child.  He wasn’t sure when she appeared, and for a moment he took her for Carastena Vlagoth, but knew right away that he was wrong.  She wouldn’t be born for many years.

No.  This was someone else. 
Something
else.

She watched he and Ijanna.  The child clearly wasn’t human.  She was a manifestation of sorts, an avatar of some other power, of something living in the pool, or the pool itself.

She changed.  Green dress and curly dark hair vanished and fell to the ground in the form of leaves.  The pool and the girl were replaced by a small tree which rapidly grew up around them to the sound of creaking and slithering limbs.  It was small and pure white, just a sapling, sickly and weighted down by odd-looking fruit. 

Jar’rod looked at it, and went cold inside.  Had he really been there and in his physical body he knew he would have gasped with fear at his realization – the Veil was alive.  It was the girl, the pool, the tree.  The Veil was the true child of that rape. 

It’s not Corvinia’s blood.  It’s her child.

The Veil struck out at its intruders without warning.  Brutal waves of pain slammed into him, pure hatred turned to physical force.  Sharp slivers of ice lanced across his skin.  He screamed as cold blades ripped into his flesh.

Ijanna pulled him away and they floated out of the Veil’s grip, watched as the tree burned with blinding white flames.  Cyclones of shadow rose from the desert floor.  As their unbodies pulled away from the nexus of the dream Jar’rod saw the Veil growing, watched as a maelstrom expanded from where the tree had been, acid winds and glacial air, crackling lighting and ice-hard smoke.  At the eye of that tempest was a force of intelligence so filled with anger, loss and confusion that its emotions rippled across the atmosphere. 

The creature at the center of it all was not a creature at all, but a force born by a terrible crime. 

The Veil was the monster of Chul Gaerog, not the Blood Queen.  It willed itself used, so that one day it could be expended.  It would then die, and take the world with it.

I am lost

Die

All die

Swallow it all up

Until you’re as dead as me

Ijanna was gone, pulled away as she screamed.  Jar’rod was left alone on the cold plains, small and afraid, his flesh freezing and his skin scaled by the ice-hard winds.  He faced the coming storm, and when it enveloped him it tore his mind apart.

There were hands on her throat. 

Ijanna woke gasping for breath, the strength drained from her limbs. She felt her windpipe being crushed, and weight pressed down on her as light slowly bled in around the edges of her vision. 

A hideous and green-scaled woman with short-cropped dark hair was on top of her in the round bed, fangs bared as her lips pulled back in snarl.  Cold hands capped with talons tightened their grip. 

Ijanna’s eyes bulged, and she barely had the strength to reach up and take hold of the woman’s wrists.  Grey eyes stared down at her.  Ijanna struggled as best she could, but her attacker was far too strong.

Not like this,
Ijanna thought
.  Not yet.  I see the truth now.  That Den’nari dream invader brought the Veil out of hiding, even if he hadn’t meant to.

“Rest, sweet,” the woman spoke through sparkling fangs.  “Don’t make this difficult.”

Ijanna felt the sharpness of the talons open the skin on her neck.  She pried at the hands.  Her vision went red as the Veil swelled in her chest.  Ijanna reached beneath the pillows for her blade.

Not yet.  I have to make things right.

Darkness swam across her vision like a tide of ink.

Razel watched in fright as Jar’rod thrashed around on the floor.  Blood foamed from his nostrils.  His mouth was twisted in a soundless scream, and the veins on his forehead bulged. Blank eyes stared up at nothing.

He let out a final gasp, a rattling moan that seemed to scrape the flesh from his throat.  His fingers clawed against the stone, his back arched, and she heard something twist inside him.  Finally he fell back to the ground, and then he was still.  Blood pulsed from his eyes.

Razel had never been next to someone who’d died, even during the time she’d spent on the frontier aiding the Army as part of her training.  The blood in her veins felt frozen.  She reached out and touched his hand and found it still warm, like he might have still been alive. 

A horrifying cry issued from the other side of the door, and then another call came from the depths of the pit.  The entire room was suffused with Veil energy, residual traces of foul and tainted magic that had been used in the construction of the dreadful fortress.  The call of demons sounded through the air and sent chills up her spine. 

Goddess, what am I doing here?

She’d seen combat, but nothing like this.  Razel kept hoping she’d wake up and find herself back in Savon Karesh with Jareth.  It didn’t matter that she didn’t love him, not really, because he was a kind and decent man, understanding, caring, and he loved her with all of his heart.  Even if she could never bring herself to fully reciprocate his affections she knew he was the one for her, the type of man she needed, one who didn’t care about her status as a Veilwarden, one who’d help her live a simple life, a quiet life, the sort of life she needed so she could grow old and have children and fulfill the promise she made to her mother.  Her father had given his life defending Jlantria, a Major in the Rift War and later a judge for the embittered southern courts before an escaped prisoner found his way to Magister Rorn’s offices and cut his throat.  Razel had made the decision to pursue magic, but her mother was terrified that her daughter would also die for the Empress.  She had to get a normal life, had to marry a decent man with money.

So why are you here?  Why didn’t you tell Argus “No” when he came asking for you?

She couldn’t answer that.  She’d never been able to tell him no, had never really wanted to.  She wasn’t sure what the draw was, why she was so enamored with the young Veilwarden aside from his unintentional charm and the strange magnetism they had.  But Argus was not meant for a quiet life, she knew that, had seen that, not in any portents or visions but in the way you could look at someone and realize they were bound for greatness, or bound for nothing.  And despite all of Argus’ consistent arguments that he sought a peaceful existence, that he enjoyed the administrative duties and was obviously in over his head whenever he faced any real challenges, the fact remained he was one of the most powerful Veilwardens who’d ever lived.  That truth would always be there, would always be hanging over them, over
him
.  She tried to picture a life with Argus, something outside of the pillow talk and breathless nights, and she saw nothing. 

But if I see you again, I’ll make sure you know what you’ve meant to me.

She had to get out of there.  She had to live.

Adrenaline and fear pushed Razel to her feet.  She’d always considered herself a brave and capable woman, but her nerves were utterly frayed.  Hours spent running through the halls of that black palace and listening to rasping demonic cries had left her shaken.  She felt the grime on her face and the ice in her blood.  Razel thought about Jareth, thought about Argus, thought about all the things she’d wanted to do in her life and had never been able to.  A sense of dread overtook her.

Pain flashed through her body, sharp and quick, and the shock of it pitched her forward.  She fell to her knees, and saw more than felt her blood pool on the ground.  She looked up.

Slayne stood over her, his eyes wild, his chest heaving.  The sound that escaped his lips might have been a growl. 

Razel seized hold of the Veil.  Pale ice-riven power flowed through her, razor sharp and hissing like a burn.  The air frosted.  She winced in pain as she stood.  Her left arm had been sliced from wrist to elbow, and now the veins oozed blood that dripped thick down her fingers.  A muscle pulled high in her chest as fear overtook her.

“Slayne...”

He said nothing.  She looked down and realized his hand was now a twisted claw with talons as black as night, glistening dark with her blood.

Slayne leapt forward with such speed it made her dizzy, but Razel cast a burning cloud of poisonous vapor into the air in front of her.  His talons cut deep into her leg, pushed clean through to the other side with a burst of blood.  She screamed.

The poison vapor sprayed over Slayne’s face, burned his flesh and invaded his lungs.  Creeping fumes spread across his body and clung to him like a swarm of insects.  He opened his mouth to scream and swallowed jade fumes clustered like a hot gel.

The claws pulled back, and Razel collapsed.  Raw muscle glistened and oozed.  There was so much blood she couldn’t believe it was all hers. 

She struggled for breath, fought through tears of pain, but she was fading.  Hurt rushed across her body, but it was quickly gone, replaced by numbness. 

The man who’d been Slayne had vanished.  What stood there now was a hulking lupine beast, humanoid in shape but far from human, a wolf-headed and black-furred monstrosity of fangs and claws.  Madness glinted in its eyes, which were as pale as ice in the night.  Oily muscles tensed beneath bristles of dark fur.  He coughed up the poison fumes, gagged and spat them to the ground like a wad of caustic phlegm. 

Her attack had failed.  Razel felt the hope drain from her body.  She tried to move, and the pain returned.  Puss and blood oozed from her torn skin.  She slipped in her own gore, bit down as the tender wounds in what was left of her ruined leg made her scream. 

She Touched the Veil without even realizing it, slammed Slayne with a gust of predatory wind.  Rime ice crusted his fur as he came at her, bent into the phantom gale, snarling his way through the terrible cold. 

Razel turned, let the wind take her.  Her body lifted.  Pain covered her like a second skin, and cold lanced into her heart.  A bolt of blue fire erupted from her hands and spiked through Slayne’s werewolf chest, sprayed his burning blood just as he landed on her and grabbed hold of her arms with his enormous clawed hands, rough and sharp like broken glass.

They fell, slamming against the sides of the pit before they plummeted into shadow.  Metal flooded her mouth.  Numbness spread down her shoulders. 

Razel lost direction.  Claws tore into her.  Fire erupted from her eyes.  Blood sprayed on the walls as they fell away from the light and deeper into darkness.

For the briefest of moments she thought of Argus, and the things she’d never get to tell him. 

Goodbye, My Love.