Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (65 page)

A head emerged from the stairwell. Rork’s half-lidded,
cunning eyes fixed themselves on Liru. He was a big man, and strong. Aedan had
seen him during the Fenn encounter – he had not gained his dangerous reputation
for nothing.

Aedan drew his short sword and considered rushing
forward while Rork was still half buried, but the man’s long arm and longer
sword were already clear, swishing as casually as a tomcat’s tail.

“You going to stand against me you little leaking
coward?” He stepped up onto the platform, bigger than Aedan remembered – now
that Osric was not nearby.

“Aedan,” Liru whispered, “I lost my weapons
earlier. I will not die at his hand. If you cannot fight him, I will jump.”

Aedan stamped down a black upwelling of despair.
He concentrated on the swords, trying to distract himself from what he knew was
lurking inside him. He settled into a guard stance.

“You defy
me
!” Rork yelled and strode
forward.

Though Aedan fought it with all his mind, and though
he set his knees and clamped them, it was no use. He might as well have tried
to hold back a wave in the ocean. He heard his sword clatter to the ground and
felt his legs give way.

This was it then. All his life had been for nothing, for
waste.

Like arrows raining down in a thick and deadly
hail, sharp thoughts began to run him through with such speed that everything
else turned to a nightmarish stillness.

He had failed.

Failed Kalry.

Failed Liru.

Failed Peashot, Hadley, Osric.

He had shamed himself and disgusted all who had
supported him.

Perhaps it was right that it should end here. He
had caused enough ruin.

Shaft after shaft pierced his mind – shafts that quivered
and rang and screamed of pitiful failure and utter worthlessness. They made him
want to save Rork the trouble, to crawl over the edge and fall to his death. What
was the point of living when he would continue to fail those who leaned on him?

Then, from within, another thought rose into the chaos
of his hammering, shaking mind, a thought that stood out with icy clarity. He
knew where the blame lay.

His father.

His father had planted the weakness in his bones
that had caused him to wilt before Dresbourn, before Iver, before the Fenn, and
now before Rork. And it had meant injury not only to him, but to those he cared
about. Aedan’s long-brewed, potent swill of violent resentment bubbled up
inside him, turning his vision black.

He would hate his father forever. Even in the
grave. This hate was the one thing that couldn’t be taken from him, the only
thing left to him.

A faint, choking sob tugged at his ear, and a light
a step, Liru’s final step towards the parapet. If there was another step, he
did not hear it, because everything suddenly disappeared.

It was like being struck through by solid light. Heat
built up in his chest until it seemed it would burn him to cinders, but instead
it worked on him like the warmth of the morning sun. Power was crackling and
sparking around.

Then he heard a voice that was the roar of thunder
and the gurgle of a stream, a voice as old as the sky but filled with the lightness
of a child’s laughter.

“Aedan,” it said. And in that one word there was
enough to make his heart burst.

He was already on his knees, and he was glad of
it. He could not understand what was happening, but he wanted to kneel before
the one who spoke with this voice.

A warm, singing wind rose up and as it blew, the
statue, Kultûhm, DinEilan, Vallendal – they misted and dwindled away until they
were gone.

Around him was starlight. His feet touched the
ground, but it was like standing on clear ice, for stars glittered far beneath
him too. The singing began to build, a growing, thrilling exultation that all
but seared him with its beauty.

Then it was as if a shroud made of stars was
dropped. At first he could see nothing but the brilliance of pure, solid light
pouring down around him. When his vision cleared a little, he found himself before
a great throne. It was not just a chair – it was more like a mountain before
which even the heights of DinEilan would have been dwarfed. The upper reaches
rose among the stars, lost to his eyes.

Then, like an eruption of all the lightning ever
to burn the skies, the throne was filled, and Aedan immediately dropped his
eyes before one who was simply beyond the limits of sight or comprehension. The
radiance was overwhelming.

And in that untainted light, there was no hiding.
Of all the times he had found himself where he did not belong, none came anywhere
close to this. Never had he fallen so far short of the requirements for entry,
yet here he stood, and there was no bluff, no excuse, no argument he could make
for himself that would hold up in this place.

Until now, he had always thought of himself as
good and noble of heart. Yes, there had been some wrong choices, but it was an
un-asked-for history that had forced him into those paths. Those choices were
his father’s doing, his father’s fault.

He was damaged, not guilty. He had loathed himself
at times when seeing the warped changes taking place, but how could he blame
himself? Measured against his father or any of the other tyrants he had known,
it was obvious that he was on the better side of the line.

Reasoning this way, he had always felt justified. Aside
from a few smudges, his soul was clean.

But now, instead of being compared against dirt, he
was searched by the radiance of utter purity. And he gasped at what was
revealed. He stood as a hog dripping filth, a hog that had somehow slipped into
the royal throne room, blinking and stinking, and realising for the first time
that there was a measure as high above the ways of the sty as life is above
death.

What answer could he make?

As he lowered his gaze, he was further distressed
to find that he was no longer kneeling but standing. And it was clear why. He
held a deep cauldron in front of him that would not allow him to reach his
knees. When he looked inside he almost vomited. He did not need to be told what
it contained. It was the vile mixture of all the hatred stored and brewed for
his father, the debt he had kept, that he intended to settle. It was his
treasure.

“Kneel,” the voice said, shaking the ground.

He tried, but the cauldron was as big as a storage
vat. It prevented him from reaching his knees. Afraid to look up, he cringed, fearing
that he would be told to release it, knowing he could not – would not – and
dreading the wrath that would follow.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, thinking not only of
his unbending knees, but of all the filth of the sty he had brought with him,
and his inability to rid himself of it.

He would be thrown out. He
should
be thrown
out. That would be justice. He began to turn away.

The next words were quiet, but they caused every
muscle to lock and hold him in place. “If you choose, you may walk away from
me, Aedan. But I will not walk away from you.”

“But … I don’t understand,” Aedan stammered. “Am I
here to be punished?”

“You are here to be freed.” The words rumbled like
an avalanche, and the shudder in Aedan’s chest was beyond any emotion he had
ever known.

That word, kneel, echoed again in his mind. In it
rang not the groans of enslavement, but the song of freedom. He knew why. It
was about belonging, the right kind of belonging. It was isolation that led to
enslavement. He had discovered that.

Though there was more to fear before this throne than
in ten thousand of Kultûhm’s giant beasts, it was not wrath that he sensed or
dread that welled in him.

An invisible torrent surged from the throne,
washed through him, wrapped around him. He felt as if he were a fish that had hatched
and managed to survive in the muddy pool of a dry river bed, and was now being
swept up into soft, clear waters. It was unlike anything he could define. This
was defining him.

And then he looked into the cauldron.

The fumes were poison, and the container stood between
him and the throne. It blocked part of the life-giving flow, leaving a shielded
place where bitterness still coursed through his veins and gathered in dark
clots. Did he really want this?

The decision was more intimidating than any bridge-
or cliff-jump, but he drew a breath, and in his mind, leapt free of the old, dark
refuge.

He tried to pull the cauldron away from him, but
he could not. It was as if it had grown into his skin.

“Help me!” he cried.

There was no surge of power, just the faintest
tingling in his arms. He looked down and pulled again, and this time, it tore
partly away from his skin. The pain was intense, and as the raw skin was
exposed, he felt a sudden vulnerability, for the cauldron had been a kind of
shield. But from the river that was rushing around him, he drew courage and wrenched
again. The cauldron ripped free, and once he had torn it loose, he flung it
down on the ground where the noxious liquid poured out and was washed away.

Finally, he was able to fall to his knees, and as
he did so, the stains that covered him began to fade.

Then, from a distance, he saw his father. His fist
clenched automatically and he felt something in his grip. It was a dagger. He understood
at once what he needed to do, what he had never been able to do before. Looking
not at his father, but towards the foot of the throne, he opened his hand and
dropped the blade, releasing judgement to one higher.

As the dagger melted away, light flooded that part
of him that he had kept hidden by the cauldron, kept in bitterness and shadow,
and he yelled with fright at what was revealed. Crouching in that inner bastion
of hate, that long-guarded place where he had so often fled and braced himself
with fantasies of revenge, he saw it. It was not strength that had kept him
company in that place, but a coiled, venomous thing of fear. His numbing,
paralysing fear. A lying, twisted demon that now looked up at him with more
hatred than he had ever known.

But the light that illuminated suddenly became
solid, a pure rushing torrent. It struck the twisted shape with power both
infinite and effortless, tearing it loose and flinging it out, its screams
fading to nothing.

The bitterness and poison slowly washed away. It
was peace, deeper and broader than the starfields around him. It was belonging.
It was freedom. Kneeling before the one who could only be the Ancient had not
been the cost of freedom, but the means.

For a long time he laughed and wept and laughed
again, released.

Then he saw something completely unexpected, and this
time he did not understand at all. It was a book, old and faded. The cover was of
red leather and the design on the front was a lizard curled twice around
itself. He did not like the look of it and turned away, but it was put before
him again, pressed towards him. It was clear what he was expected to do, though
not why. He reached out to take the book and as he touched it, the vision faded.

Stars began to wash away as hills, mountains and
clouds took their place. The light thinned into a few sparks and cleared as if
a huge basin had been emptied and the last drops had fallen.

Liru and Rork were staring at him.

“You are alive!” Liru said, kneeling alongside. “It
struck you, it held you, and you are not even burned.”

Aedan could still feel something burning in his
chest, but he could see no mark on his hands or clothes.

Rork was recovering himself. “Yes, you are alive,”
he said. “Let’s see how long you manage that with steel through your belly.” He
had stepped back, but now he came forward, cutting at the air before him and
snarling.

It was the same beast, the same terror, but
something was different.

Aedan watched as the sword rose over the man’s
head, as the foot was planted, the weight shifted, and the blade brought down
with a fatal shriek.

There was a clash of steel.

He stared. The blade had not reached him. A sword
had blocked it. His sword. Raised by his arm. How could he do that? How could
he defy the monster?

Rork swung again, harder this time.

The blow fell like a hammer on the flat of Aedan’s
blade, nearly wrenching it from his numb hands. The shock stung him all the way
to his elbows.

Rork bellowed and raised his sword overhead. As
the large soldier towered before him, Aedan realised what was different. It was
the fear. It had changed. It was no longer infinite and crushing, undoing him
from within. That hidden traitor was gone. And there was something else. The one
who had spoken to him in the lightning dwarfed this enemy that faced him now. Dwarfed
him utterly.

The enemy too was beginning to change. The shadows
were falling away. Those great black wings that could blot out the sun, the claws
that could tear through mountains – illusions, lies. They had been powerful
ones that had taken deep root, but they were now cracking and disintegrating
like paper that has encountered fire. The monster was crumbling, shrinking,
revealing a man.