The Last Whisper of the Gods (42 page)

Warburm removed his cloak and draped it around Sorial’s shoulders. The garment was threadbare but it at least provided some protection against the damp.

“Can you stand?”

“Not without help,” admitted Sorial.

With a grunt, Warburm wrapped Sorial in a bear hug and dragged him upright.

Sorial leaned most of his weight on Warburm, keeping as little pressure as possible on his right foot. It was awkward and uncomfortable but, short of crawling or being carried, it was the only way for him to be mobile. All the jostling forced Sorial to grit his teeth against the hurt; that in and of itself was painful because of the damage done to his mouth by the tooth’s excavation.

Before they began what was likely to be a torturously slow journey toward the portal, Sorial felt there was something he needed to say. “Lamanar and Darrin...”

“We know,” said Warburm softly in a tone of genuine regret. “It be just the three of us now. And retreat ain’t an option, not with your injuries. We do what we set out to do and make their sacrifice meaningful. Or we join them.

“Brindig, we clear?” Warburm pitched his voice between a whisper and normal volume.

“Aye. There was some noise earlier but it was a ways off. I don’t think this place sees much traffic. It’ll change once we’re outside.”

“Then get back here and help me with him.”

Seconds later, Brindig appeared in the doorway wearing his customary scowl. A new wound to his forehead looked raw and angry but not serious. He took one look at Sorial and shook his head sadly. “Guess we didn’t do such a good job getting you to your destination hale and hearty.”

Sorial was hardly in a position to argue. Even though the dungeon was quiet, he was becoming increasingly concerned that Langashin might appear. He wondered if Warburm and Brindig in concert could bring down the interrogator. The only one of his size Sorial had ever met was Vagrum.

Brindig moved to Sorial’s left side while Warburm stayed on the right and between them they supported their charge, half-dragging him with only his left foot touching the ground. The right leg was bent at the knee to protect the missing toes.

In the hall outside the cell, not far from the door, lay the bodies of Sorial’s keepers. Both were obviously dead. One had a crushed skull and was lying in a puddle of blood. The other’s neck was twisted at an impossible angle. There were several other doors along the corridor but, considering the silence of the place, Sorial assumed he was the only prisoner.

He was in too much pain to pay close attention to his environs, however, and the throbbing, which had been a comfort in his cell, was now an irritant. It was an itch he couldn’t scratch. The more he concentrated on it, the more maddening it became with its endless demand to
comecomecome
.

It took a seeming eternity to traverse the dungeon halls. Even though they appeared deserted, it was necessary to move with extreme caution since interception by even a single person could be problematic. By the time the trio emerged into the warmer air of the settlement, they were slick with condensation and sweat. Warburm immediately doused his torch. Light came from various sources - torches, lanterns, braziers, and a distant bonfire - to see enough of the roads not to stumble. Traffic was light but they weren’t the only ones traversing the byways of the ragged village erected atop the ruins of Havenham.

From the little Sorial could discern in the darkness, visible remnants of the original city were few. Some of the buildings, such as the dungeon, were buried underground and had been partially unearthed. The settlement was built on top of centuries of dust and dirt, with wood-and-thatch huts and animal skin tents providing shelter for the current inhabitants. Irregularly spaced holes marked the entrances to passageways leading to surviving structures from the past. Sorial wondered whether anyone lived underground in what amounted to man-made caves.

They moved at a exasperatingly slow pace, carefully avoiding entering the torchlight’s perimeter of any who passed them. Sorial could feel their destination, although he couldn’t yet see it. But with every painful step, his senses became more attuned to the call. He wanted to ask Warburm if he could feel it as well, but it would be folly to break their silence here, where they were vulnerable. One shout from a suspicious passerby could bring the population of the entire settlement down on them.

The streets weren’t like the roads of Vantok, which were either wide, cobbled lanes or hard-packed dirt byways. Here, they were meandering paths between hovels. The huts and tents were irregularly spaced and placed in seemingly random locations with no main thoroughfare leading from one side of the village to the other. In the original Havenham, the dungeon had been relatively close to the portal. In the settlement, a labyrinth of twisting, turning routes had to be navigated before they arrived.

The entrance to the portal chamber was unlike that of the other subterranean openings. It was framed by blocks of stone, likely part of the original structure, giving the impression of a crude archway. Braziers hung from a series of posts driven into the ground on either side of a pathway leading to the entrance. An obstacle was evident: two guards flanking the way in. Passing them surreptitiously wouldn’t be possible. The men didn’t look formidable. They were unarmored and armed only with stout cudgels, but all it would take was a cry from either and the encampment would be roused.

“For them, it be a holy place.” Warburm’s voice was the faintest of whispers, not carrying beyond Sorial and Brindig’s ears. “They worship the damn portal. They dug it out and made it into a temple.”

“How d’you want to do this?” asked Brindig. Earlier plans, made before discovering Sorial’s degraded physical condition, were useless.

“Can you take ’em both out?” Warburm indicated the guards, neither of whom looked difficult to overpower.

Brindig’s voice carried a trace of irritation, as if the question was insulting. “Of course. I can’t guarantee there ain’t gonna be an outcry, though. They’ll die, but maybe not clean or quick.”

“Can’t be helped,” muttered Warburm. “Get rid of ’em. I’ll be right behind you with Sorial. I’ll take him through and you watch our backs. If an alarm goes out, you’ll have a hundred savages on you in a minute.”

Grunting his assent, Brindig moved in front, placing the responsibility for Sorial’s mobility on Warburm. The watchman’s hand rested lightly on the hilt of his sheathed sword, but there was nothing inherently aggressive or threatening in the way he approached the guards. He was just another pilgrim paying homage to the sacred place. Meanwhile, Sorial hobbled along, leaning heavily on Warburm while putting pressure only on his uninjured leg. If it came to a fight, he would be worse than useless, a potentially fatal encumbrance to the man half-carrying him.

Brindig was within ten feet of walking uncontested through the entrance when one of the guards noticed something odd about his appearance and barked a challenge. Brindig took two more steps, drawing the attention of the second guard, then stopped and executed a courtly bow. The first said something in the guttural language Sorial remembered from the dungeon.

Then, his actions born of the fruit of a lifetime’s experience, Brindig slid his blade from the scabbard and sheathed it in the first man’s chest, spearing him through the heart. In one fluid motion, he jerked it free and delivered a powerful, overhand strike that split the other man’s skull. But he was a fraction of a second too slow, unable to prevent the second guard from screaming a warning. Although cut short by Brindig’s blow, the shout was loud enough to attract attention. Nearby, torches began winking on.

“Shit.” Warburm’s expletive accompanied a redoubled effort by the innkeeper to increase the pace.

Brindig took a moment to wipe his blade on one of the dead men’s jerkins. “Get in there. Good luck. I’ll hold ’em off for as long as I can, but there’ll come a point... Just get done what you gotta do. When it’s over, give my body a decent burning. Don’t want to be picked over by crows and rats.”

Warburm didn’t mention that his chances of surviving this weren’t much better than Brindig’s, regardless of how Sorial fared.

Once his companions had passed him, the watchman assumed a defensive stance under the archway. The commotion across the settlement had increased. It wouldn't be long before Brindig's sword would sing again, but this time his opponents would be more numerous and prepared.

Sorial was moving as fast as he could, but it wasn’t fast enough for Warburm, who was almost dragging him. Beyond the arch was a short tunnel with dirt-packed walls, a ceiling, and floors. It sloped down for about thirty feet before straightening out and opening into a cavernous chamber. Despite the presence of perhaps two-dozen braziers and twice that many torches mounted in wall sconces, the vastness of the cavity rendered the illumination dim and uneven. Sorial hardly saw anything, however. The portal's call reverberated with such force that he was rendered insensate.

He caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his right eye. Warburm reacted quickly for a big man. Unceremoniously dumping Sorial to the ground with an action that caused jolts of pain, Warburm drew a hand ax and drove it into the throat of an unarmed peasant rushing toward him out of the semi-darkness. The man went down in a shower of blood, uttering a strangled gurgle. After replacing the ax in a loop on his belt, the innkeeper used the ragged sleeve of his tunic to wipe the blood out of his eyes.

“You okay, lad?” Warburm bent to help Sorial to his feet. The younger man, gritting his teeth against the pain, said nothing, but allowed himself to be helped farther into the room. Behind them, a shout and the ring of steel on steel indicated that Brindig was engaging the enemy. Time was short.

If there were other worshipers in the cavern, they were hidden. Looking like an oversized water well, the portal lay directly in front of Sorial. The lip was set off the ground by two feet and there was a shelf of stone erected around the 40-foot perimeter. The radiating power was palpable, the pulsations so forceful that Sorial could focus on nothing else. Even his physical agony was subjugated to this awareness.

“Thank the dead gods there be no stairs.” Sorial heard Warburm’s words as if from a great distance. He attempted to step toward the portal but his right foot failed him. The innkeeper caught him before he crashed unceremoniously to the floor.

Sorial was dimly aware that Brindig’s situation was becoming desperate. The air was filled with shouts and screams. Soon, within a minute, it would all be over.

Comecomecome
. The lure of the portal was tangible. Sorial offered no resistance as Warburm dragged him the last dozen feet and dumped him at the edge.

“Go into it, lad. Do whatcha got to do. I be a dead man. Prove Ferguson right. Go back and save Vantok and marry your Bride.” So saying, he unsheathed the ax, unholstered a pistol, and stood ready to face the onslaught that would arrive after Brindig’s death. Keeping Sorial alive long enough was his final duty.

Sorial crawled to the lip and peered over. Blackness gaped back at him. Not the blackness of a starless night or a deep underground cavern. This was visceral. It crept into his bones. It was a blackness of absolute purity and it beckoned like a long-lost lover. Surcease or transformation, it promised one or the other.
Comecomecome
.

All else ceased to exist. His body was a faraway thing whose agonies lost meaning. Warburm, weapons in hand ready to die defending Sorial’s dance with fate, vanished from Sorial’s awareness, as did Brindig’s last stand at the entrance and the mob of angry men trying to bring him down. Yet even as the portal’s song drowned out everything, Sorial never forgot the one name his mind wouldn’t release: Alicia.

He took a deep breath, dragged his broken body forward a scant two feet and toppled inelegantly into the portal’s stygian depths. At first, there was a vast nothingness, eternity compressed into a moment, a sense of insuperable serenity. Sorial drifted through this with the hope it would never end. He didn’t know whether he was dead or alive, whether he had been accepted or rejected. Somehow, it didn’t matter. Then his world exploded.

“Why do you believe there’s no hope?” asked Kara into the darkness of the room she was sharing with Alicia. This wasn’t the first time they had spoken - indeed, they had spent many hours in conversation during the first week of their journey north - but it was the first time either had touched on the underlying reason for their expedition.

Alicia heaved a silent sigh. She briefly considered feigning sleep but Kara, lying only inches away on the same straw-stuffed mattress, would recognize the evasion. And this wasn’t a topic they could avoid forever. So she listened to the commotion from the packed common room below while composing a response. “It’s not that I don’t believe in Sorial. I do. With all my heart. If it was only a matter of courage or force of will, if it only depended on him... But it’s so unlikely he could be one of the few, and there’s nothing he can do to influence the portal one way or the other. If magic really has come back, that is.” The words didn’t come out as elegantly as she might have preferred. Indeed, they were hopelessly jumbled, making her sound like a scatterbrained fool. Rexall already thought of her that way; now she was on her way to convincing Kara of the same.

“So you think Sorial will fail because there’s no way for him to succeed. If magic hasn’t returned to the world, the portal will kill him. No one debates that; it’s been thus for hundreds upon hundreds of years.”

“I know your entire life is based on the faith that Sorial can step up to the portal, touch it or do whatever he needs to do, and become a wizard. If I believed that, I’d support his quest. But I don’t. So many people have died through the years because of an assurance that they were
the one
. They were told they were the exception, the chosen instrument of the gods. And they died. Horribly. Men tore down the portals to prevent that from happening again. And now, based on the word of an ancient man who’s likely senile, we’re supposed to stand aside and let Sorial throw his life away?”

Kara’s tone remained calm. “There’s so much more than Ferguson’s word to rely on. When I was young like you and they were trying to recruit me, they read me the prophesies and showed me the signs. One passage spoke of a withering heat that turned Winter to Summer and Summer to hell. That was written five hundred years ago. Isn’t that what Vantok is experiencing? Another said that magic would return on the night the twin stars kissed. Two years before he died, on a calm, clear night, Braddock and I were gazing at the heavens when two bright shooting stars collided in a blaze of orange and red. The signs are there for those who look. It took more than the preaching of one charismatic man for me to sacrifice four children to this cause.”

Alicia fought the urge to argue with Kara. There seemed little point. Her father had once said that nothing can sway the truly devout and there was no more firm proof of devotion than the way Kara had lived her life.

“I understand your skepticism. You lack the benefit of having lived in a faithful community for the better part of your youth. You see Warburm as a fat, flatulent innkeeper, not a brave, principled adventurer. You see Ferguson as a vain, self-important priest given to making long speeches, not a firebrand of conviction touched by the gods before their departure. Time and circumstances have changed these men but not their missions. I was once a handmaiden of the future. Now I’m a worried mother.”

“How long have you known about the gods?” Alicia couldn’t help but be curious.

“I’ve known about the inevitability of their departure since shortly after I came to live in Sussaman. Back then - that would have been forty years ago - the gods were still alive, but they had informed their most faithful children of their intention to slide beyond the boredom of eternity and into the peace of oblivion. Only a select few, like Ferguson and those in his inner circle, claim to know the hour when it happened. For most, it wasn’t a momentous instance, since the gods set the world in motion so it would continue to function for years, perhaps centuries, without adjustment. But, like the pendulum of a clock, if things aren’t occasionally wound and rebalanced, a breakdown is inevitable. Although I can’t tell you the day when the gods died, I know it happened between the time when my daughter Ariel was born and when Sorial entered the world. All of us in Sussaman came to the realization during that period; it took the rest of the world twenty years to catch up. The gods didn’t ‘abandon’ us a year ago, or two or five. Humanity is just too slow-witted to have figured it out before then.”

“You have no doubts?”

Kara laughed; it was a soft sound without warmth. “You mistake faith for mindless surety. I have many doubts. Not about my cause or the return of magic, but about my son’s fate at the portal. When Braddock journeyed to Ibitsal all those years ago, my heart held only certainty. I never considered the possibility that he might perish. He was the chosen of the gods, brought into the world from parents of the strongest possible lineage. He would return magic to humanity. Yet the portal rejected him. No one, not even Ferguson, knows the reason, although there has been endless speculation. What happened to Braddock gives birth to my misgivings about Sorial. Before him, I had three children, all anointed as saviors of humankind. One died in childhood of a common affliction. One was burned to a cinder at the moment when he should have triumphed. And the other fled lest she share her brother’s fate. Of course I have doubts. What mother wouldn’t?”

Alicia processed that information. A part of her mind suggested that the best path forward would be to prey on those doubts and worries, to pick at those scabs so mercilessly that Kara might be open to stopping Sorial at the portal. At the moment, she was at best a reluctant ally, but if she could be convinced... Alicia rejected the tactic as unworthy and underhanded. Because she had suffered as the victim of a similar manipulation, she didn’t want to use it on someone else. She would shatter Kara’s faith without compunction if it meant saving Sorial, but she was certain there was another way. There had to be.

They were quiet for a while, but neither could sleep. Both were accustomed to nights of relative silence and solitude and the rowdy noise from the common room, which included drunken snatches of tavern songs belted out by men with no business singing, would persist until well past midnight. Tomorrow would be the third morning in a row they would depart later than was ideal.

Eventually, recognizing sleep wasn’t yet close to claiming either of them, Kara restarted the conversation. “The first time Sorial introduced you, I was uncertain about your suitability. I knew who you were, of course; it gave me an advantage over you both. That day, you were as carefree as an early Summer breeze, pretty and energetic in ways that would beguile any man. But I could sense the deep-rooted class bigotry and, even though you seemed fond of Sorial, it was clear he was more enamored of you than the other way around. I’m glad that changed.”

A year ago, Alicia would have been insulted by such honesty. Now, she found it refreshing. “I had some growing up to do.”

“And there will be more to come. For all of us. But I’m glad that, through all this, you and he found each other. It was a gamble to keep throwing you together, future wizard and future Wizard’s Bride. You could just as easily have ended up hating each other, and that would have ruined all Ferguson’s carefully plotted schemes. Love can’t be forced but, when it happens, it can make the unbearable times endurable. A mother can wish for no more than for her son to find such comfort.”

Alicia noticed a peculiar longing in her voice, the tone of someone who had missed the thing she was anticipating for another. “Have you never loved anyone?”

“Never.” The word was barely louder than a whisper. “There’s never been time or opportunity.”

“Not Sorial’s father?”

“Maraman? I hardly knew him. He came to me in the dark, dropped his trousers, groped my breasts roughly through my dress, hiked up my skirts, and stuck it in. Then he humped a few times and was done. Our nights together were memorable for what they produced, not how it was done. I only once encountered him outside the mating cabin and it wasn’t a pleasant meeting. He was sour, arrogant, and stank of resentment. But that was near the end, during the cycle when Sorial was conceived.”

By this time, Alicia had heard enough fragments of Kara’s life’s story to put this in its proper context. She knew Sorial had never met his father and it was unclear whether Maraman was still alive. The only one who might know the answer to that was Warburm.

“What about Lamanar?”

“Dear, sweet Lamanar,” mused Kara wistfully. In the darkness, one of Alicia’s eyebrows lifted. She had only seen the man once and never truly met him but, based on Sorial’s accounts, “dear” and “sweet” were unlikely descriptors. “No, I didn’t love him, at least not in the ordinary sense, although he certainly loved me. He was many things to me: father, mentor, friend, companion. He took my virginity and surrendered his manhood for it. In another life, another time, I might have loved him, but that one night spoiled any chance of a future.”

Alicia decided to backtrack in their conversation. “When you first met me, you knew I was expected to marry Sorial?”

“Of course. It wasn’t public knowledge that you were to be the next Wizard’s Bride, but it wasn’t a secret. Didn’t you know?”

No, she hadn’t known; it was no fault but her own. Casual asides, most often by her mother, were now clear, like the repeated reminder that she was destined to “marry someone great and powerful.” But her Aunt Lavella had been dubbed The Wizard’s Bride and Alicia never connected that title with her future. She thought it an archaic rank of sorts that Lavella would carry until her death. If Alicia had read the rules governing the position, she would have discerned that it was the birthright of the first direct-blood female born after the current one’s ascension. She had been Lavella’s heir since birth, but had been ignorant of the position. She wondered whether her father had encouraged the ignorance.

“How many knew about Sorial and me?”

Kara considered. “In the beginning, five: Ferguson, his chief aide, Warburm, Lamanar, and me. Soon after, Warburm formed a cabal and most of them knew, including your father. It was key that he be told since we needed his help to ensure that a noble girl could be put into situations where she interacted with a stableboy. As I said, you could have easily grown to hate each other, but you didn’t.”

Looking back on it, Alicia realized it could have turned out differently. She remembered the mice and the stupid, smug expression on Sorial’s face when she had shrieked. Later, the insufferably insulting way he had treated her when she tried to help him in the marketplace. When had she started to feel something different for him? Probably the first day at the river, when she had seen him naked, teased him, and felt her own body respond. After that, she had wanted to seek him out rather than avoid him.

If only they had done more when they had the chance... But, of course, neither of them had known what lay ahead.

Shortly after that, Alicia heard a deeper, steadier breathing coming from Kara’s side of the bed and knew her roommate had drifted to sleep. Alicia tried to follow her, but it took two hours before the journey was successful.

* * *

A silent group mounted up to continue the trip north shortly after sunup the next morning. Vagrum and Rexall seemed to be suffering from an unspecified ailment whose symptoms included sensitivity to light, an aversion to loud noises, and general grumpiness. They claimed that having spent almost all of the previous evening in the common room catching up on local gossip wasn’t related. Meanwhile, Alicia was hampered by the ill effects of too little sleep. After not being able to nod off until well past midnight, she had awakened screaming, crying, and in a cold sweat after suffering a nightmare. Kara had done her best to offer comfort, but Alicia had lain awake for another hour before succumbing to a fitful, restless slumber.

They traveled as they had since leaving Vantok, in the guise of a minor noblewoman from the city headed into the wild lands of the North to marry a rich guard captain of Obis. She was accompanied by her governess, her horse master, and her personal bodyguard, an ex-military man of fearsome repute. The fiction was close enough to the truth that they didn’t have to work too hard to slide into their new identities; all except Alicia used their real names. She had adopted the persona of “Lady Arabelle.”

Despite Alicia’s asserted willingness to “sleep rough” and save the coin needed to rent rooms at inns, Vagrum had insisted that, as long as they could afford it, they would take accommodations of the sort a young woman like Lady Arabelle would be expected to enjoy. No self-respecting noblewoman, no matter how poor, would be caught dead sleeping in the open under the stars. That was for vagabonds, runaways, mercenaries, and bandits. By sleeping in the stables as male servants often did, Rexall and Vagrum were able to find a clean, dry place to bed down without having to pay the full room rate. Any coins thus saved were invariably lost in small games of chance and paying the common room tab.

Thus far, there had been no signs of pursuit, which worried Alicia. She had envisioned her first day out of Vantok to be a mad dash north with corps of Azarak’s crack troops close on her heels. Instead, their horses never moved faster than a canter and they covered only about thirty miles. The few soldiers they encountered were headed the other way and the only thing they were chasing was a good night’s sleep or a roll in the hay with a whore.