Vincalis the Agitator (56 page)

“They certainly will, Farvan. I can’t imagine what the Artis clan is thinking right now. You’ll notice that none of them are
here watching.”

Wraith was having a hard time actually thinking critically—the horror he had just seen and the horror he was about to see
had nearly shut down rational thought. But watching the commentators and the hovering communication spheres, he suddenly realized
that none of the spheres had moved in on Velyn when she shouted that he was Vincalis the Agitator and pointed him out to the
crowd. In fact, the commentators had taken no notice of her either. As if, he thought, they’d been told not to.

Yet the communication spheres were right up against Solander.

So the commentators knew at least enough about what was going on that they’d kept their commentary away from Velyn. And the
wizards controlling the viewers knew enough to only catch her image from a distance. Had they known she would point him out
and spoil their illusion that Vincalis the Agitator ran free in the Empire?

Probably.

And she died hating him. That was going to haunt him forever, he thought. He’d tried to save her—tried to help her. And he’d
helped her to death.

Wraith shuddered as guards clamped the last of the second group of victims in place, and fled the killing field.

This time, the communication sphere stayed in front of Solander. Wraith saw Solander close his eyes. As the green-gold shield
of light dropped into place, he saw another fire, a pale, soft white one, shimmer from Solander’s skin.

Behind him, Jess gasped.

In front of him, Solander lifted his eyes to the heavens.

He shouted, “Vodor Imrish! More time—I am not done here!”

Jess gripped Patr’s arm as they brought Solander out and whispered, “No.”

Patr took her hand in his, leaned over, and so softly that she almost couldn’t hear him, said, “We can’t leave. If we try,
we’ll draw attention to ourselves and be down there in the arena with them before you can blink. Now sit up, keep your hood
over your head, and don’t you dare cry, or we’re both dead.”

Jess nodded.

“I’m sorry, Jess,” he added. “I didn’t want you to be here for this.”

Now she wished that she hadn’t come. She couldn’t get over the hell of watching Velyn charred to ash in front of her eyes—and
she hated Velyn. The nightmare of watching the others in the first hundred die equally horribly would never leave her. But
now she was watching Solander, who in all the world was, next to Wraith, her best friend. He was going to die, and she was
going to have to sit there and watch, helpless.

Four rows in front of her sat Wraith, with a guard on his left, a guard on his right, and two guards behind him. Jess didn’t
know why he wasn’t down on the arena floor, but she could find only a little comfort in the fact. The Inquest held him, and
according to Patr, if they let him live, what happened to him would probably be worse than what would happen if they killed
him.

Her world felt like it was coming to an end. She wanted to stand up in her seat and scream,
I’m one of them. Kill me, too.

But something in Solander’s face kept her in her seat, and gave her hope. He didn’t look afraid. He looked … almost triumphant.
He stared up at the sphere of fire that sent his image around the world, and she thought she saw the faintest of smiles cross
his lips. She could not imagine being in his place, being merest instants from torture and death, and radiating the sort of
calm he did.

Perhaps, she thought, he’s found a way to escape.

The shield dropped around the arena, and the people seated in the auditorium leaned forward in anticipation, but the
rewhah
didn’t have a chance to touch the Empire’s sacrifices. Instead, Solander shouted, “Vodor Imrish! More time—I am not done
here!”

Solander had spent his time since meeting Vodor Imrish gathering his energy. Now, bound to the post, staring up at the faces
of observers come to watch him and the rest of the rebels die, he considered for one final time the choices he had.

He could shield himself—he could, he felt sure, hold off the worst that all the gathered wizards of the Empire could throw
at him. At least, he could for a while. But the Empire could bring in hundreds of wizards, all of whom could call on the nearly
unlimited resources of the Empire’s many Warrens for their power. And he had what he held inside himself. In the end, he would
falter, and he would die.

He might be able to attack the wizards controlling the
rewhah
by drawing on his life energy. But he would have to take the
rewhah
himself, and the force he would be able to throw at them would likely be nothing compared to shields they would already have
in place. He would die having accomplished nothing.

For a long time he’d thought that he had no third option; that he would either die alone and shielded or die alone in a futile
attack. It was only when he considered the rest of the Empire’s intended victims that he realized he did have a third option.

Vodor Imrish said that Solander had accomplished almost all of what he had come to do—and that his death would complete his
mission. But perhaps he could do more. If he could not live to fight, perhaps he could fight from the place beyond death.
Perhaps he could even find a way back. The god had suggested letting go. But Solander could not … or perhaps, he thought,
he simply would not.

He felt shields building around the arena, and knew he had only instants before his death to do what he had to do.

He stared into the softly glowing blue sphere of the mages’ viewer, and smiled slightly at the thought of what the Empire’s
reaction would be if his plan worked; and with every bit of power he could gather and offer, he shouted, “Vodor Imrish! More
time—I am not done here!” And as he shouted, he gave Vodor Imrish his life, breath, bone, blood—and soul.

Around him, the light of the wizards’ shields flared to life, and he felt the
rewhah
coming up through the ground beneath his feet; he could feel the fury of it, the rage born of the deaths of souls.

But before it touched him—before it touched any of the prisoners on the killing field—Vodor Imrish acted. He took Solander’s
sacrifice— breath, bone, blood, body, and soul—and to that sacrifice added his own unimaginable power, his own righteous wrath.
Solander felt the fire of a god burning through him, cleanly and painlessly devouring him, and a terrifying joy spread through
him. Cut loose from the weight of his flesh, with his soul for the moment linked to that of the god Vodor Imrish, he suddenly
felt love and compassion for the Empire’s captives trapped on the killing field and waiting within the wings for their chance
to die.

Solander reached out to all of them, and before the
rewhah
could destroy them, he removed them from harm’s way, and secreted them safely out of the reach of the Masters of the Hars.

And when they were safe, Solander used the last of the god’s touch to recreate his own face in fire, and to speak to the audience
in the amphitheater and to the millions who watched the nightlies from their homes. “I am with you still,” he said.

Vodor Imrish released Solander from his embrace. Solander found himself bodiless, suspended in a darkness beyond time and
light, beyond flesh and need. He could feel the pull of life behind him, and the pull of something else ahead. A door opened
in the darkness—a path that would take him forward to the place beyond death.

“Go,” Vodor Imrish said. “You have done well.”

But Solander could not go. Behind him lay his world, his time, his people, his goals and ambitions, his dreams and hopes.
Behind him lay promises he had made to himself and to others. Behind him lay the magic that only he truly understood—and if
he did not find a way back, who would lead the people he had rescued against the Dragons of the Hars Ticlarim?

Vodor Imrish had said he was done. But Vodor Imrish was wrong.

Do not make this mistake,
the god whispered through his soul.
Your future is ahead of you, not behind you.

But Solander’s hunger and his heart lay behind, in Matrin. The pull of the door into the eternal, of the golden and welcoming
light, called to him strongly.
Not yet,
he thought, and turned his back on it. He moved into darkness and felt his way through void back to the world he had so recently
left.

He could see it rolling like a river before him—the past, the present, the future. He could dip his thoughts in and pull out
pieces that formed a story—and in that story, the Dragons flowed like poison.

He could not reenter the world, he discovered. Not yet. But he would find a way. He would find his way back to life, to a
body, to a voice. He would create a way to make the stand against the Dragons that would destroy them.

Solander shouted his demand to the heavens, and in the next instant, Jess saw him light up brighter than a sun—gold as the
heart of the world, pure as life itself. The light he radiated shot out and touched every one of those on the arena floor
with him. A beam of it blasted through the shield and into the tunnel from which the Empire’s sacrifices had been marched.
The prisoners vanished in the blink of an eye: One instant there, the next simply gone. Solander did not vanish, at least
not instantly. Instead, his body broke free of the bonds that held him and rose into the air, and Jess, squinting at him,
watched all the recognizable details about him dissolve into that ever-brightening light. As she raised her hand to shield
her eyes from the blinding radiance, she suddenly saw his face fill the arena and heard his voice say, “I am with you still.”

The light blinded her. Then, with a roar, the
rewhah
summoned by the Dragons to destroy their sacrifices burst up out of the ground, but without human fuel, it had nothing to
contain or control it, nothing to feed it. The
rewhah
hellfires erupted against shields that had not been designed to withstand such all-out fury, and the shields began to buckle.
All around Jess, hysteria reigned. People shouted, screamed, fled in all directions. Blinded, she reached out for Patr, and
found his seat empty. And the next instant a strong hand grabbed her upper arm and pulled her to her feet, and Patr’s voice
in her ear said, “We have Wraith, but we have to get out of here now. Keep your hood over your face and don’t say anything.”

She stumbled, still blinded, at his side as they ran up the steps, surrounded by a stampeding mob. Into the tunnel that led
into the bowels of the Gold Building, and into the cool and dark of the main hallway, in the crush of masses of panicked men
and women desperate to escape.

Shoved, buffeted, elbowed, and kicked, Jess managed to keep on her feet only through the force of fear.

“Left,” Patr shouted, and began forging a path through the herd toward the left side of the hallway. It branched, and when
it did, they were in a smaller, poorly lit, less crowded passageway.

Now they moved faster. They tucked their heads down and kept up with the robed men, all fleeing at as near a run as they could
manage.