Beyond the Pale (13 page)
Energy rushed into him, and Lethe could barely make out a dim wispy tendril, a resonating echo in astral space left by the two people. One was a human man with an aura as black and tainted as any Lethe had ever seen. The other was a human woman whose aura flickered on the edge of darkness and light.
Lethe had seen the effects of this woman’s aura before. Long ago it seemed, when he had been bathed in light from the goddess, Thayla. When she had showed him the dark spot, the flaw in her song.
Realization hit him.
This is where the darkness that threatens Thayla is originating. This is how they plan to destroy her and take the bridge.
“Billy,” Lethe said, through the IMS. “I need to tell you something.”
“I saw it all, Lethe,” Billy said. “Don’t ask me how, but
I saw it in your mind.”
“We need to stop them before they destroy Thayla.”
Lethe saw images in Billy’s mind; he was thinking about the beauty of the song she sang. The painful perfection of the blinding brilliance that issued from her soul as her voice rang out over the Chasm.
Billy checked the clip on the submachine gun and the integrated grenade launcher. “Let’s do it,” he said, then started toward the lake bed.
Ryan followed Harlequin into the chateau and through the central room. The elf led him into a side corridor and down a set of tight-winding stone stairs into the dungeon of the ancient fortress. The air grew cool and humid as they descended, the walls glistening slightly under the yellow light of torches.
Behind them came Jane Foster, Axler, and Talon. Foster was giving Axler and Talon instructions. “You two will stay with me outside the ritual circle. We will watch over the bodies, and defend them if any nasties come through from the astral or the metaplanes.”
Axler stared coldly at Foster. “I’m ready.”
Talon merely nodded, his full concentration on the elven woman.
Harlequin led them into a low-ceilinged chamber with walls of thick masonry. The wide space smelled of the tallow candles that were the sole illumination. The room was nearly circular, about ten meters across. Over the walls hung tapestries and murals the like of which Ryan had never seen. They depicted beautiful and terrifying scenes—a battle in a city of spires, a sword duel at dawn, and the one that caught Ryan’s eyes most strongly—a likeness of Dunkelzahn crouched in a cave, speaking to two tiny dragons.
“Do you like it?” Harlequin asked, sweeping his arms to indicate the whole room. “I’ve haven’t shown it to anyone in millen ... a long time.”
“Wow, Harlequin, this is totally amazing, i’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Don’t patronize me!” Harlequin turned suddenly. Swiftly and with a dangerous look in his eye.
Ryan had been completely serious. “I didn’t mean—”
“You must know that I could destroy you with a thought,” Harlequin said. “I could destroy you all and take the Dragon Heart.”
The chill edge of adrenaline scissored up Ryan’s vertebrae. “What?”
“I am powerful,” the elf said. “You’ve only seen a fraction of it. And the Dragon Heart is . . .” Sounds of satisfaction came from Harlequin’s throat. “Divine.”
Ryan focused himself. It was hard to believe that the elf was going to try to take the Heart now, after all this, but if he did, Ryan would fight him,
“I could take it for myself. It would have many uses against those who believe I am but a jester between courts.” Harlequin’s face showed nothing but seriousness.
Ryan narrowed his eyes on Harlequin. “Frag off,” he said. “You aren’t going to destroy me. You don’t want the Dragon Heart.”
They stared at each other in a silence that stretched. Ryan did not waver in the slightest. He prepared to use his stealth magic to escape.
Finally Harlequin smiled. “You are right, of course, Ryan. I have no reason to take action against you. We want the same thing.”
Ryan breathed a sigh of relief, but he felt anger smoldering. “I’ve indulged your little game. Shall we get on
with the ritual?”
Harlequin walked to a small chest that sat on the floor next to the wall. “Don’t be too hasty,” he said. “The metaplanes should not be traveled lightly, especially by a first-timer.” He opened the chest and removed a long blue candle that was inlaid with a coppery gold metal.
In the astral, the entire room burned like a sun that it almost hurt to look at. The candle flared in the astral as Harlequin lit it, the metal veins sparking flares of mana as the elf mage paced around the chamber, making patterns with the dripping candle.
Ryan waited while the elf moved around, using the time to reflect on the last exchange with Harlequin.
The fragging sonofaslitch!
Ryan thought.
He taunted me purposely.
Ryan watched Harlequin carefully, fascinated by the elf’s hands. They had an unnaturalness to them, gaunt and chalk-white. They appeared fragile, yet the tendons, which stood out like cords, crisscrossed by veins of deep purple under the pale skin, held a strength that Ryan had never seen before.
An undying vitality.
After a few minutes, Harlequin stopped dripping candle wax. The circle had been made complete, the tracery of patterns intricate and beautiful. The painted elf extinguished the flame and set the candle down. Then he beckoned to Ryan.
Ryan nodded, awaiting instructions.
“Please step to the middle of the circle,” Harlequin said. “Place the Dragon Heart in the exact center. I’ve marked it.”
Ryan nodded, then carefully removed the Heart from his wide cloth sash. He set the artifact on the blue spot in the center of the room.
“The Heart will be the tricky part,” Harlequin said. “While the physical components of you and me will remain here in the physical world, the entire make-up of the Dragon Heart has to be carried into the astral and the metaplanes.”
Ryan nodded his understanding.
Harlequin dripped orichalcum wax from the smoking candle in his hand onto the Dragon Heart until the whole artifact was covered. “We’re almost ready,” he said
,
taking his free hand and filling his palm with hot liquid wax from the candle. He brushed Ryan’s forehead with it, then his own.
“One more thing, Ryan Mercury.”
"Yes?”
“The metaplanes are a mirror of the soul. Across the threshold, truth is always shown in metaphor—nothing is as it seems. Everything is both hidden and revealed.”
“I have heard stories.”
Harlequin gripped Ryan by the shoulders, iron-tight and unshakable. His piercing green eyes flashed with impatience. “I don’t know what Dunkelzahn did to you, but you’re more than you seem.”
Ryan did not flinch; he held Harlequin’s stare. “In all sincerity, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Then you’re more than you know,” Harlequin said. “I think you should be prepared, because in the metaplanes, you might learn the truth. And in my experience, the truth has the nasty habit of fucking up a perfectly good fantasy.” Ryan held his breath. He wasn’t sure what Harlequin was talking about, and he just wanted to get on with the mission.
Harlequin released his grip on Ryan. “I’m only telling you this because you’ve never traveled the netherworlds. When truth hits you, which it will sooner or later, I don’t want you to freeze up. At the wrong moment, it could mean death.”
“I don’t think I have any secrets,” Ryan said.
Harlequin smiled. “Everybody does.”
Ryan grinned. “Even you?”
“I have more than most,” Harlequin said. “Maybe even more than you.”
Ryan thought about that. What secrets did he have? Since defeating Roxborough’s personality transfer and recovering the Dragon Heart, Ryan knew what he had to do. He knew who he was. Or at least he
thought
he knew.
“You’re ready,” Harlequin said. Then he began pacing along the interior of the wax circle, gesturing for Ryan to follow suit.
Ryan stepped in behind him and soon the world around them changed.
Señor Oscuro’s words echoed in Lucero’s ears as she stood poised to step through the dark barrier and into the cleansing white. As she balanced on the verge of salvation. “What are you doing, my child?”
Lucero did not turn to look at him; she could not afford any doubts now. Could not allow herself any hesitation or Oscuro would control her once again. He would stop her from purifying herself in the beautiful song.
Lucero heard the wondrous voice more clearly now, near the rim of the spreading stain. And the exquisite loveliness of its harmony and strength made her heart ache for more. The song was her salvation. Her rectitude.
I
must not stop now.
“Do not be hasty,” came Oscuro’s words, like hissed ghosts from the darkness behind her. “You will have time enough for frivolity after.”
With difficulty, Lucero maintained focus. Time seemed to lengthen as she pushed against the glowing rim of the stain. Her advancement slowed; it was as though the atmosphere around her had grown thick.
Step.
Another onslaught of Oscuro’s minions struck the barrier before she could pass through. Corpses and gum toads, hideous crawlers, all bathed in the blood of a new sacrifice, threw themselves into the light. All around Lucero, they shrieked in agony, bursting into flames as they plunged into the searing white. The song drove all the stain from them until there was nothing left but a bubbling black splotch where each one had stood.
Black smoke fouled the air around Lucero as the creatures vaporized. But the blood they carried fused into the ground, advancing the line of darkness. Lucero lost her focus then. Smoke clouded her vision and she could no longer see the light.
The intolerable shrieks from the burning monsters winnowed their way into her brain, and she could no longer hear the song.
Is it gone? Has Oscuro finally extinguished the light? Silenced the song?
Lucero groped through the darkness for a long moment, listening for anything. Any fragment of the song.
Darkness and blood swirled around her. Smoke and screams.
Then it filtered through again, the hint of gray in the night. The perfect tone of the song touching her ears. It sang to her in desperation. And she understood the words.
You are the reason he can be here. You are the balance between good and evil. The yin and the yang.
Lucero squinted against the smoke. The dark wedge took up nearly all of the outcropping now, the stain of blood spanning the entire width of the unfinished bridge.
Your weakness has allowed you to be used. Step into the light and he can use you no more.
Only at the tip, a meter away, did the light still shine. A small area of glowing perfection in a wash of putrid stench.
Embrace the light, and you will be free.
Lucero stepped closer to the tip of the outcropping. She
heard the music grow as she neared the new edge. It was obvious that the singer would not last through another onslaught; Lucero must join her now.
Oscuro’s hissing voice whistled on the cold wind. “If you step into the light, you will only end up like the others—vaporized and bubbling. You will die.”
Step.
One more and . . .
“My child,” came the hiss again. “You have been useful to me thus far, but your betrayal pushes even the limits of my patience.”
Lucero maintained her focus and started through.
Searing heat flayed the flesh of her right hand and arm as she entered the light. Its beauty bringing intense pain into the parts of her body that had penetrated the barrier of brilliance. Part of her face and torso, her right leg. Purifying patches of her stained soul as the song flowed around her.
Thick tendrils of flesh, like ropy intestines, flew from the eviscerated corpses surrounding Oscuro and latched onto her. Shackles that coiled around her left leg and arm, the two that were still in darkness.
Stopped her mid-step. Half in light, half in dark.
“I cannot allow you to leave me,” came the hissing wind to her left ear. She barely heard it, however, as her soul strained under the power of the rift between worlds. Torn asunder by juxtaposition.
Immobilized on the brink of contradiction, Lucero lost all capacity for rational thought.
You must fight him.
The goddess spoke to her. Her name was Thayla, and she was the protector of the world. Lucero knew all that now, all about the light and the dark.
You must give yourself wholly to me.
She knew all, but could not move. She could do nothing.
Oscuro raised another onslaught of corpses and creatures, bathed in blood. She felt them coming, and she knew that when they hit the barrier this time, they would swallow the song. Thayla and the light that came from her was on the verge of extinction.
Lucero’s breath caught in her throat as she waited for the end.
Ryan floated in an inky black void, silent and odorless. The absence of sensation.
He tried to remain calm; he had heard stories about metaplanar travel. During his undercover stint at Fuchi Industrial Electronics, his friend Miranda had told him about the dweller on the threshold—an entity that guarded the gateway to the metaplanes.