The God-Stone War

Chapter 41

In the darkness I saw a single light, but as I focused my attention it grew until I found myself sitting beside it, a lone candle in a darkened room. A table was before me, and sitting across it was another man, one I recognized.

“Hello,” I said amiably.

“Hello,” answered my twin with a smug expression. I could tell already that my alter ego was just as much of a smart-ass as I was, the arrogant bastard.

“Where am I?” I asked, deciding not to drag the conversation out.

“This is the end for us… or the beginning, depending on your perspective,” said my other self.

“Listen,” I told my doppelganger, “I know how much I enjoy being cryptic, but how about we dispense with the circumlocutions and just speak plainly. It won’t be long before even this dream is gone.”

“Not exactly,” the other me replied, “Time is an illusion. In a certain sense, this conversation will last forever… in another sense it is already over… and for some, it has just begun.”

I groaned, “I’m starting to wish it was already over. If this is the afterlife, please cancel my membership.”

“This isn’t the afterlife. You haven’t died yet.”

My eyes narrowed, “Then who are you?”

“I’m you,” my other-self replied.

“Really? I thought you’d be more handsome,” I shot back.

We both laughed at that; until I realized that it was rather pathetic, laughing at my own jokes with an imaginary friend… while I was dying. I wondered if Marc’s experience had been similar.

“I’m here to offer you a choice,” said my twin, bringing my attention back to the conversation.

“What choice?”

“Knowledge… or ignorance,” my hallucination answered, and opening his hands he held out a small object toward me.

My eyes were drawn toward it, even as I retorted, “What difference will it make?”

“Exactly.”

The object he held was a fruit, pinkish-yellow in color, with a high luster, and a jolt of recognition shot through me when I saw it. It was something the She’Har had called a ‘loshti’, a rare creation of their mother and father-trees. The best name for it in our language would have been ‘ancestor fruit’.

“This is where it began,” I said, lecturing my alter ego. “When our ancestor stole the loshti…” My eyes bore down on it and it seemed to grow in size. I had crossed the threshold… the door within my mind had opened, and now I chose to look into, to stare at, the knowledge that previously paralyzed me with fear.

Two thousand years of men and women struggling and living ran through my mind, the memories of my ancestors, stretching out behind me in a line that reached back to the point of my fear… the moment when my original ancestor stole and ate the loshti of the Illeniel grove. Looking deeper I saw the memories continued beyond that point, to alien thoughts and foreign dreams… the dreams of the trees. The trees we had slain.

The loshti was the vehicle by which the She’Har had passed down their collected wisdom, from one generation to the next. It was never meant for human kind, and yet he had stolen it anyway, in his quest for recognition… and power. It was the hidden place in my mind, the knowledge I hid from myself. It was what had lain hidden behind the name, ‘Illeniel’s Doom’, for its theft and the knowledge it granted had led to the destruction of an entire race, and very nearly humankind as well.

The memories of the trees stretched out into the distance for untold millennia, making the two thousand years of human memories seem small in comparison. The knowledge of the loshti had taken root in the mind of the first human to steal it, but being housed within a being that was not of the She’Har, it had passed itself on to the next generation in a new way. From that point on, it had entered the first born of each generation of the new Illeniels, carrying with it the memories of each ancestor that had gone before… including those of the trees.

My fear had only partly been of the atrocities hidden within those memories. In large part I had been afraid of the alien, the ‘other’, tens of thousands of years of knowledge that would inevitably overwhelm my own humanity.

I gazed at my mirror image, meeting his eyes. “We were right to hide this. No one can live with such knowledge.”

“You aren’t living… you’re dying,” my other-self responded.

I knew now the nature of the spell-weaving that Thillmarius had used to preserve himself against the ages, against time, and against death itself. I still couldn’t use it though… being human I was incapable of spell-weaving, but I had other abilities. Things no She’Har could do, even as vast has their powers had been.

Closing my inner eyes, I left the vision behind and listened again to the world, for it was still there all around me. One song stood out above it all, the dissonance that I had come to associate with death. I had first heard it when I brought Walter back from the void, but in the months that Thillmarius had stalked and spied upon me I had become intimately familiar with it.

“An archmage does not wield power, Mordecai,” I heard again the words of Moira Centyr, “An archmage becomes that which they seek to wield.” Opening my mind, I felt the death-song that Thillmarius Prathion had become, and I embraced it.

My eyes opened again on the physical world and I saw my foe’s expression change to one of fear as I gazed upward at him. “What? That’s not possible,” he said, shocked as I reached out to him.

An outside observer might have thought that I had died and awakened, a new and ultimately empty shiggreth, as had happened to so many others. Nothing was further from the truth. My life still burned faintly, but it was changing, warping to adapt to my new song.

My hand passed through Thillmarius’ chest, as if his flesh were merely an illusion, to touch his core, an intangible thing wrapped in the blackest of She’Har magic. Listening carefully I made it my own, and it unwrapped suddenly, leaving the undead She’Har’s spirit unprotected as his ancient spell-woven curse shifted and wound itself around the source of my own life instead.

A look of horror crossed his face, and then his body collapsed, much like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Thillmarius Prathion, last lore-warden of the She’Har, and prisoner of his own hatred and death-magic, was finally free… his spirit passed on into the void, and mine took its place within his cage.

A shocking cold washed over me and I might have screamed, had it not been for my still ruined jaw. I was forced to settle for a miserable gurgle. What have I done? I wondered, as the world changed around me. Looking within, I found only darkness where the wellspring of my life, my vitality, and my power had been, a cold impenetrable shell had encased the center of my being.

The colors of the world were different now, intense and garish, at times both too bright and too dark… a medley of contrasts. I could still hear the voices of the earth, the wind, and all too loudly, the voice of death, but they seemed more distant now. My magesight had remained even though my native wizardry, made possible by my living aythar, had vanished.

To put it succinctly, I was confused as hell.

I was still lying, battered and bloody, upon the torn stones of the road. Tired and bewildered I closed my eyes… I needed rest, and the world could worry about itself for a little while. I had done enough.

I wasn’t aware of having fallen asleep, but some time passed before I was startled by the sound of a voice nearby.

“He’s still here,” I heard Dorian say.

My eyes were still closed but my magesight revealed Penny, Rose, and my children clambering out of a hole in the stone shell that had surrounded them. It appeared that Dorian had been forced to hew and carve his way through the solid stone with his sword, a task that might have taken him hours. How long have I been lying here?

He stopped before reaching me, and his breath seemed to catch in his throat. “Don’t come any closer, Penny. You shouldn’t see this,” he told my wife, who was now some twenty feet away.

“I’ll be damned before I let anyone keep me from him!” Penny replied with her usual spirit, making a smile creep across my face… or it would have, if my mouth and jaw hadn’t been a mangled mess of torn flesh and broken bone.

“He isn’t breathing, Penny. He’s dead. Take the children away, they shouldn’t see their father like this,” responded Dorian, in a somber tone.

I decided then that the charade had gone on long enough, and I opened my eyes to look at them directly. Dorian gasped and Penny ran toward me then. “He’s alive! Someone get to the house, we need to send a message to Walter! He’s going to need help immediately,” she shouted, kneeling beside me.

Looking into her teary eyes I couldn’t help but think how lucky I was to have her love, and I struggled to speak, to say just that… or at least make an inappropriate remark, but again my shattered mouth failed me. The gurgling that I did manage only served to alarm her more.

“It’s going to be alright, Mordecai. We’re all here for you. Walter’s coming, and he’ll make sure you stay alive until we can fix this, just stay with me,” Penny told me with tears streaming from her eyes. “Please,” she begged, “just stay with me… don’t die do you hear me!?”

I’m likely to drown first if you keep crying over me, I thought, but it was impossible for me to express my words to her. To reassure her I reached up, resting my hand gently upon her cheek, and delicious warmth radiated from her skin, suffusing me with a pleasant sensation. Simultaneously, her eyes widened in shock and fear. More quickly than I might have believed possible, she bolted upright, leaping away from me. Her rejection was the most painful thing I had ever experienced, creating a loneliness in my chest that was immediate and unexpected.

Why?

“He’s gone Dorian! It isn’t him… he’s gone!” she screamed in a heart wrenching voice. I had never wanted to hear such raw pain and emotion in her voice. It was the woeful cry of a woman that had just lost everything.

“What?” asked Dorian, puzzled.

Penny’s sword was out now and she brandished it before her. “He’s turned Dorian! He’s dead… he’s one of them!” she yelled hoarsely, with swollen eyes and a nose that dripped from tears. “Why!?” she cried, venting her grief at the sky.

I sat up, and my mind raced as I tried to figure out how to reassure them. I felt odd, certainly, and I probably had a concussion, given how strange the world seemed, but I wasn’t dying. I looked to my friend for support, since Penny seemed to have lost her mind.

Dorian had approached already, sword in one hand while reaching toward me with his other, now un-gauntleted hand. I put up my own, thinking he meant to pull me to my feet, but as soon as our bare skin met he stepped away, a pained expression on his face. “It’s true,” he said, and his face twisted in a horrific expression of grief, even as his sword arm shifted… preparing to strike.

I saw death in his eyes then… the murderous resolve of a man who must slay his best friend, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I gazed at him blankly, numb with grief and sorrow at the realization that they thought I had turned. They think I’m one of the shiggreth now, but I’m not. It’s still me. Dorian’s stance changed, and I knew what he would do… what he had to do… what we always did with shiggreth. You cut them up and burn them.

A sudden movement reminded me that we were not alone. Penny had caught our daughter, Moira, by the hand, but Matthew slipped past before she saw him. Running to me he was yelling, “Daddy! Don’t hurt my Dad!”

Time froze then, as he leapt into my arms with the infinite faith of a child, as he had done so many times before. I caught him instinctively, and another surge of warmth ran through me, even as Matthew shuddered at the sudden cold… and then I understood the truth. They’re right, I’ve inherited Thillmarius’ spell-woven curse… I’m one of them.

Immediately I put my son down, trying to keep from touching his skin any further as I shoved him in front of me. He was still conscious, and he stood on his own… and despite the chill that he had just experienced, his faith never wavered. “Don’t you dare hurt him, Dorian!” he commanded my friend.

I could see a war of emotions raging through Dorian’s face as he tried to decide whether he could strike without endangering my son.

Penny tried to intervene, “Matthew, please come here,” she said calmly, but the boy refused to move. Desperate she continued, shouting, “Matthew… now! Get over here!”

“No, Momma… Uncle Dorian will hurt him. Tell him not to hurt Daddy,” replied Matthew anxiously.

Penny’s next words broke my heart, “That’s not your father, Matthew. It only looks like him.”

I wanted to die then, but the sound of giant wings distracted me. Looking skyward, we saw a giant form descending. Everyone was forced to move back as the dragon, Gareth Gaelyn, landed beside me. Staring at him I saw the flicker in his eyes as he registered the change in me.

What is your wish? He said, projecting the thoughts silently toward me.

Take me away, I thought at him, unsure if my attempt to communicate would work without my magic. I stood and moved closer to him, hoping he would understand my motion.

Leave the boy, the dragon responded, or I will not help you, bargain or not.

I had drawn Matthew with me, pulling on the back of his shirt without realizing it. I was reluctant to release him… for he felt like the only thing I had left to save me from the darkness that now surrounded me. I held onto his clothes stubbornly. I need him, you don’t understand.

The dragon roared, which sent even Dorian an involuntary step backward, while Penny instinctively sought to shelter Moira. Rose had already drawn the other children back into the stone sphere. Gareth Gaelyn’s thoughts came to me again, Trust me! Remember how I became a dragon. Release him before you destroy what you love.

Unable even to speak the words that were crushing my heart, I lifted my son and threw him at Dorian, trusting my friend to catch him safely. The moment I was alone the dragon’s claw caught me loosely, and with a great rush of air I found myself lifted, into the sky… staring down at the people I had loved.

Impotent and lacking even the capacity to cry, I was borne away by the dragon, no longer caring what might happen to me.