Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (48 page)

Cross decided the Obelisk of Dreams
really
was the object of the Shadow Lord’s
search
. 

But what about the spider?  What about Azradayne?

He waited.  Something
sounded
in the distance
overhead, some shattering of rock. 
Probably
Sorn tech
, he thought,
used to blast
through the stone. 
He
kept his
eyes
up
.  D
eep shadows
roamed
the ceiling
.  S
talactites dripped
milky
water and iron sediment.

What are you looking for, Azradayne?
he wondered. 
He’d convinced himself it wa
sn’
t the Obelisk, even if that wa
s what the Shadow Lords wanted.  They were her lackeys, powerful though they surely were.

What do you want, spider?  What have you altered my life to accomplish?  What hurricane did you trigger by
directing
my path?

What do you want?

Another sacrifice.

His mind raced.  What else had he done by following the path laid out for him by the spider?  He tried to think beyond the obvio
us, beyond rescuing the Obelisk
and defeating the Sleeper, beyond slaying Jennar and keeping Soulrazor out of Korva’s hands.

Someone he knew.  Someone he’d met.  His heart pounded hard against his chest.

Someone I’ve met, someone I wouldn’t have met without Azradayne’s interference. 
Again, was it someone obvious, some creature of import that, had he ignored the spider’s guidance, he would never have
encountered
?  The Lith.  The Soulweavers.  The Eidolos.  The Grey Clan.  Or was it someone else?

Kane?  Ronan?

Black?

What if one of
them
was what
the spider truly wanted?  Its web was vast, and the eyes in which he’d
glimpsed
so many versions of himself could
have
easily seen where the threads might conjoin, where the strands led, where tangential possibilities could take him.  He tried to dissect his own path in his mind, tried to look backwards, but it was impossible to take it all apart, impossible to know the truth of where his
choices
might have led
him
.  The possibilities were limitless, but all of it came down to
what the spider’s purpose was.

What do you want?

Not the Obelisk.  He
was
sure of that.  Was giving the Obelisk of Dreams to the Shadow Lords just a matter of convenience, a means to
an
end?  Had
the spider
so deftly manipulated
Cross
to
arrange
for
one of his friends to wind up where it needed them to be?  Did Black or Kane have something it wanted, or
did they serve
some greater purpose it needed them to fulfill?

Cross’s
heart chilled. 
He
could only dare guess at the spider’s goal
s
, at how great its vision extended
through the network of space and time
.

But he felt
with
dread certainty that his friends were in danger. 

Cross gripped his blade with hands gone numb from the cold.  He wiped rancid steam from his eyes, shook himself, breathed deep. 

He’d make his stand th
ere.  With any luck, it wouldn’
t be his last.

It can’t be.  I have to
find
them.  I have to
save
them.

Shadow
s
moved in the distance.  He heard the industrial grind of
heavy machines
and the ring of metal on stone.  The air crackled and hummed with thaumaturgy, and he smelled iron and smoke.

They were coming.  He pushed thoughts of Danica and Mike and the others from his mind.

They come for him.  He’s waited, watched the inky darkness in anticipation of
this
assault.  He
believes
he has no chance,
but
he
knows,
in
th
e
s
e
last moment
s
of his life, at this
final
crossroads, that
he
can’t
allow himself to
fail
. 

H
and-cannons
lined
with blades
push through the darkness. 
He sees gi
ant silhouettes
and
central single eyes.  He sees grey armor fused with iron plate as
Sorn
enter the chamber. 

Cross moves in a
blur, not sure where
his sudden
speed
come
s
from, not
even
cognizant of what
’
s happening
until he cut
s
the first giant down,
slices
it from groin to neck and feels hot purple blood splash onto his face.

The blade is in control.

He swipes, ducks
and weaves like a bladed dancer
.  He moves in and out of shadows like
he’
s
a shadow himself.  He sees other versions of himself, alternate possibilities.  He steps and steps again, cuts and cuts again.  He strikes the same creature only once, but from m
any angles.  His stutter-
strikes punch out from different dimensional possibilities.  He is as the spider sees him: himself at a crossroads, the many paths conjoined into one.  He is himself, striking from different futures, different pasts.

Blasts deafen his ears.  Iron shot and nail spikes rip into the stone walls.  The Sorn pour through, grim and silent, their enormous bodies blocking the way out.  Monsters from the Carrion Rift scream as ballistics
punch through the walls and
rip into them.

He steps, strikes, steps away, strikes again.  He hamstrings grey giants and severs fuel couplings, yanks grenades
away from belts
and tosses them
at
other Sorn.  He sends hails of exploding flesh and fuel sailing through the air in molten waves. 

He ha
s become a walking nightmare, a shade.  He sees them in blurs, barely aware of his own motions.  The blade cuts up and through and across.  Fingers and shells fall to the ground. 

The Sorn
are confused.  He’
s everywhere and nowhere at once.  They accidentally fire into one another, send flames back into their own ranks. 
Six
are dead in the space of a minute.

One grabs him.  It guesses correctly, or
else
the probability of his
slipping past becomes
too miniscule, even in this c
onfused and chaotic place.  He’
s thrown against the wall, and feels his back break.

Another Cross steps up and kills the offending Sorn, tears through its
chest
with his arcane
sword
.  He sees a third
Cross
cut down by rotating gun barrels and stamped into gristle.

He is all of the versions of himself.  The spider has joined more than one Cross to this battle: it has sent them all.

Condemned me to die. 
Every one
of me.

He ducks back, hides in the dark.  Sorn draw bludgeoning melee weapons and pursue
him
.  He
dodges around massive stalagmites.  The giants
spray the area with chain guns and nail launchers.  Shards of stone and steel rain down around him.

He howls a
nd
leaps back into their
midst
. 
Soulr
azor/Avenger hacks through
flesh and tears through
armor
.  He hears low grunts and watches bodies ooze purple waste
on
to the ground. 

H
e stands alone.  He has defeated all
of them
.  Over
a
dozen Sorn bodies lie
in ruins
.  They sag and fade
and bleed out without a sound
.

H
e regards the other versions of himself.  They stand as if in council, half-concealed by shadows, wavering in and out of existence.  They are barely recognizable
.  Some wear
full beards, some
are
clean-shaven; one is missing an eye, while another is dressed as a Revenger; one still possesses his spirit, and
he
can
even
taste her in the air, her scent, her power.  None of them is whole: they are half-illuminated shades, flickering ghost images.  None of them is really there, and yet they all are.

They
vanish
.  He is alone with the corpses.

Impressive
, a voice says, and he
turns around
.

They’
re there
.  T
he mages.

There are six Shadow Lords, each identical to the last
,
tall men in charcoal robes and high leather boots.  Iron belts and bracers adorn their shadow-drenched
skin. 
E
ach wear
s
a simple
and
featureless mask, a bisected segment of skin-tight steel with dark eye slits.  They are doppelgangers of
one
an
other, and the air is alive with the force of their arcane might. 

He readies his blade.  He knows he can’t ho
pe to defeat them all, but he has to
try.

The first mage sends a blast of fire
. He slices it in half, and t
he
pale
flames sear
out and strike another
warlock,
who
dies screaming.  Cross doesn’t give his attacker a second chance: he charges and removes
the man’s
head with a clean swipe.

Another warlock
attacks
him with gauntlets
covered in
crackling green waste.  A fourth forges an ice sword and meets him in battle. 

He shatters the
ice
sword and sends
the mage
back, then turns and severs the gauntlet-yielder’s hands.  He spins and finishes the sword bearer, and
both mages fall to the ground and die
at the same moment
.

But the last two
mages
have him
.  The first
warlock
slices his arm
open
with a blade
made of black steel and diamond edges
.  He cackles like a child as he watches Cross
stagger a
nd
bleed.  The
other mage
hammers
Cross
with a cone of gravitational force that sends him to his knees and
blasts
the wind from his lungs.

Well done, Tregoran.

And you, Marklahain.

He falls
on
to his back.  The uncertain world shifts even further.  His sword is on the ground, well out of his reach.

What did the Eidolos tell me? 
He struggles to remember its words, to bring to mind the secret
that had been
imparted to him by the dread psychic
.  He feels certain the knowledge
will save him. 

The
last
two mages stand over him.  One of them eyes their prize
: t
he frozen obelisk.  They both laugh coldly.

He
looks for the other version
s
of himself, but their
connection
to this place is
g
one.  He’
s all alone, left with the burden of his failure, with the knowledge that he’d nearly stopped
these mad warlocks
.

But that doesn’t matter,
he realizes. 
Because even if I’d beaten the Shadow Lords, Azradayne will still get what she wants.