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Angus Wells - The Kingdoms 03
THE THIRD BOOK OF THE KINGDOMS:
THE WAY
BENEATH
Angus Wells
BANTAM BOOKS
NEW YORK
•
TORONTO
•
LONDON
•
SYDNEY
•
AUCKLAND
This
edition contains the complete text
of
the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
THE WAY BENEATH
A Bantam Spectra Book published by
arrangement with
Sphere Books Ltd.
PUBLISHING HISTORY Sphere Books edition
published 1990 Bantam edition / January 1991
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Copyright ©1990 by Angus Wells.
Cover art copyright ©1990 by Larry Elmore.
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For
Colin Murray,
the right way round at last.
While that talisman exists I cannot hope to
vanquish either Caitin or the Kingdoms. He holds the one part, his woman the
other. Their love binds them as one, uniting the stone. While they, together,
possess the cursed thing the balance is weighted in the Lady’s favor. I must
wrest both parts from them.
“The woman,” Taws said quickly, “she
will be his weakness: he hers. Separate
them,
let the
one be bait for the other, the talisman the ransom for the captive’s life.”
It had occurred to me, responded Ashar with
massive contempt. Indeed, I have begun my move. And this time I shall not be
thwarted.
Contents
Prologue
He
had not known pain until now; that sensation had been the preserve of mortal
flesh and he had not thought to experience it. Nor had he anticipated a second
defeat, yet that had come and with it such exquisite pain his preternatural
senses exploded in disorder. Vision was gone; taste, smell, hearing lost; touch
became an abstract, consumed beneath the raw wash of agony. His universe, his
very being, was suffering, the pain overriding all save the one remaining
sensation: fear. Fear was a permanent thing for all who served Ashar; more so
for him, who was created of and by the god, who was so wholly Ashar’s creature.
And
fear possessed him now. He felt it in the deepest channels of his unnatural
being, gripping him with a strength that slowly overcame the pain, relegating
that anguish to a secondary status in his returning awareness.
He
had failed his master again.
The
once at the Lozin Gate, where the might of the Horde he had raised to bring
Ashar’s will to the Three Kingdoms broke against the determination of a single
manling, and now again when that same weak creation of flesh and blood had
stood against him, aided by no more than a weaker woman.
And the talisman,
said a voice that was
not a voice but a crescendo of agony within him.
He
opened his eyes and saw only fire. Ashar’s
fire, that
had sustained him and now seared him. He screamed, knowing the fury of his
master, and the fire abated a fraction, enough that he could assess his
situation, order his memories, sense the emptiness inside him.
“The
talisman?" he asked in a voice that quavered, no longer confident.
Kyrie’s talisman!
The god spat the words
as if even mention of the Lady’s name was distasteful.
“She
gave them power?” He saw a fragment of hope, a faint glimmer of optimism that
glinted dimly through the threatening flames.
Estrevan gave them the stones; the two
halves of the talisman. With those they defeated you.
He shuddered afresh. Had his eyes
been capable of producing tears he would have wept, but they could not and
instead he said, “Kedryn was blind.”
Kedryn regained his sight, the god
responded, he entered the netherworld with the woman and found the one you used
to take his eyes. Borsus gave him hack his sight.
“Borsus?”
Disbelief was in his reply. “Borsus was my man. How might he aid Kedryn
Caitin?”
Did l create so feeble a creature? The utter
contempt stung him with a fiery lash. Do you know that all is a balance? That
for each move of mine there is a countermove she—again the single word was spat
out—may take? It is decreed so by a power greater even than mine, and that
allowed the one they call the
Chosen
to
gain back his lost sight. I had thought to outmaneuver her; thought that your
suborning of the one called Hattim Sethiyan must win me the game, but it did
not. You failed me, Taws.
He felt resentment then, and the
god’s knowledge of it brought pain afresh to the embodiment of his creation. He
screamed, knowing the ululation was as music to his master and might thus
placate the god. After what was either a little while or an eternity the
anguish eased and he spoke again, fearfully, knowing that he pleaded for his
very existence.
“I
did not know he penetrated the netherworld. I did not know he had regained his
sight. I did not know he possessed the half of the talisman, the woman the
other.”
And I could not warn you, said the god. She
is strong in the Kingdoms—stronger now for your defeat—and I could only trust
in you to do my will there.
“As I did,” Taws moaned, cringing as
the flames that surrounded him burned brighter. “Had I but known of the
talismans I could have taken measures against their power.”
You had knowledge of the ones whose souls
you drank, countered Ashar. You had Kedryn Caitin and the woman called Wynett
within your grasp.
Taws groaned, remembering the blue
light, the quintessence of all he
opposed, that
had
struck against him and quelled his own hellish fire. “I could not fight against
the joined strength of the two halves,” he gasped.
No, Ashar agreed, you could not. That power
was too great, but it has shown me two things.
There was a pause that the cringing
form of the mage took as hopeful until the god spoke again.
While that talisman exists 1 cannot hope to
vanquish either Caitin or the Kingdoms. He holds the one part, his woman the
other. Their love binds them as one, uniting the stone. While they, together,
possess the cursed thing the balance is weighted in the Lady’s favor. I must
wrest both parts from them.
“The woman,” Taws said quickly, “she
will be his weakness; he hers. Separate
them,
let the
one be bait for the other, the talisman the ransom for the captive’s life.”
It had occurred to me, responded Ashar with
massive contempt. Indeed, I have begun my move. And this time I shall not be
thwarted.
Taws smiled then, his fleshless lips
stretching despite the pain of Ashar’s fires. He asked, “What part do I play,
Master?”
You have no part, answered the god, you have
outlived your usefulness and I have no further need of you. What I do now, I do
alone. Now Kedryn Caitin shall face me.
The smile upon Taws’s mantis
features became a rictus of inexpressible agony as the flames burned higher,
brighter, becoming all that he knew
,
the core of his
being until that gift of Ashar was taken back.
Within
the farthest reaches of the Beltrevan, Caroc hunters trembled as flame lit the
night sky, its
brilliance dimming
the light of the
spring stars,
midnight
becoming as noonday in high summer. It seemed a rift was opened in the very
skin of the world to give access to Ashar’s fire, the roiling column stretching
to the heavens, its outwash rendering the mightiest trees to pale ash that blew
on the hellish wind, that awful gusting felling timber in a great corona about
the central pyre. Birds roasted in the branches and small animals upon the
ground, burrowing creatures died in their holes while others fled in stark
terror from the conflagration, forest bulls running alongside the great cats,
wolves pacing them, companions in fear with the deer that bounded, wide-eyed
and oblivious of the predators, all unified in their desire to escape that
ghastly holocaust.
No
men were seriously harmed, for none ventured near that place where first, so
legend had it, Ashar had brought the Messenger into the world. It was a place
both sacred and cursed, for the Messenger had promised much and led the tribes
of the Beltrevan down into defeat. Now, with peace agreed and the world turned
on its head with a Kingdomer
hef-Alador
by swordright, it was deemed best to steer well clear. Consequently only a few
suffered hurt, a handful struck by storm-tossed branches, some by charging
bulls, a scattering burned by the more natural fire that followed the initial
eruption. Most hurried to the more hospitable regions of the forest, wishing
only to get
themselves
well clear of the raging
flames, not wishing to know whether Ashar expressed his anger or lamented his
defeat. That was something for the shamans to debate, and they would not come
together until the time of the summer Gathering; honest warriors, having tasted
the ashes of vanquishment, preferred now to go about their human business and
leave the arguments of the gods to the deities.
In
High Fort, the chatelain, Rycol, was summoned from his dinner table to observe
a most curious phenomenon. It was an event without precedence and drew a
sizeable crowd of onlookers, doubtless on the Keshi side of the Idre, too.
The
sergeant sent by the captain of the watch to inform Rycol did not believe it
was the work of the woodlanders for it moved down the river and there was no
sign of human participation in its coming. In any event, it came too swiftly
for the great booms to be swung out and was, in the sergeant’s breathtaken
opinion, too large for even the booms to halt. Alarmed, Rycol set down his
eating implements, pushed back his chair, and hurried from the dining hall,
bellowing orders as he went. Consequently, in addition to those merely interested
in the sight, it was also seen by a large part of the garrison as soldiers
manned the ramparts with readied bows and the artillerymen realigned their
catapults and mangonels. Rycol and those with him had the better view, for they
rushed to the quayside where sight of the river was unobstructed.
The
night was light, the moon hill,
its
radiance
offsetting the shadows cast by the bulking walls of the river canyon so that
the surface of the Idre shone like velvet spun with webs of silver. Winter’s
snows were long melted, though the runoff from the forest country to the north
still raised the level of the river, sending her hurrying swiftly southward
like some watery lover anxious to meet her paramour. The floodtides of early
spring were ended and Rycol had counted on the great waterway lowering
gradually from his walls, the races ceasing to permit a resumption of normal
river traffic. What he saw brought a frown of misapprehension to his lean
features, for he had never seen its like before.
From
the north came a surging wall of water, foam lining the crest, creamed by the
moon’s light, the waves that buffeted the rocky walls confining the river
filling the night with angry sound. Rycol’s warning shout was lost beneath the
liquid cacophony, though fortunately the sight alone was sufficient to send the
observers darting back from the riverside. Fortunate because the surge
overlapped the banks, spilling waves knee- high across the flagstones,
drenching boots and dress hems, toppling several of the less agile on their
rumps. The fort’s boats were tossed like corks, three filling and sinking, two
others hurled ashore by the sheer force of the wave. Rycol heard it slap the
stones and felt the wash over his feet, heard the fishing boats and ferry craft
of the town below his citadel crash together and against the docksides, heard
the shouts of alarm that rang from his own people. He doubted what he saw, for
he thought that within the wave he discerned a shape, the behemoth outline of a
massive creature that swam the Idre, creating the unnatural wave with the speed
of its bulky passage. He shook his head, staring into the darkness as lights
abruptly burned in the town, the folk there rushing to assess the damage. He
could not have seen what he thought he saw: no such creature existed; it must
surely have been a trick of the light, wave and moon combining to fool his
eyes.
He
turned to his wife and saw her stooping to wring the soaked skirts of her gown.
“Did you see it?” he asked.
“How
might I miss it?” demanded Marga, her tone somewhat irked. “I am drenched.”
“What
did you see?” he wondered.
Marga
let fall her skirts and looked at her husband, frowning. “I saw a wave.
A great floodtide wave.
What else?”
“Nothing,”
said Rycol, shaking his head, wondering if age began to cloud his vision.
“Nothing would not put that look on your face,”
Marga said.
Tell me what you saw—or think you saw.”
Rycol
turned to stare at the river, its surface still marked by the swell-tom
aftermath, but settling now, smoothing, so that the silvery meshing of
moonlight again set a patchwork patterning on the darkness. Wavelets still
slapped against the quay, but their susurration was the small irritation of
disturbed water rather than the furious roaring of that mighty wave.