Son of Khyber

CHAPTER THIRTY

The Depths Lharvion 22, 999 YK

Vyrael swooped down on Daine, a blazing raptor with a flaming sword. The Son of Khyber didn’t flinch. He held the crystal orb he’d stolen from Cannith in one hand and his sword in the other. He flung the orb. It smashed into the angel’s mask and shattered, dissolving into a cloud of mist.

No, not mist.

Ice.

Frost coated the Ashen Sword, extinguishing her burning mane and wings. She fell from the air, careening off the arm of a shattered construct before falling to the floor. Steam poured off of her as she rose from the ground, fire battling the mystical ice. Though her flames were extinguished, she was still ready for battle, and she raised her blade to meet Daine’s assault.

But Daine wasn’t the first to strike. Thorn stepped up behind the angel and drove Steel into the back of her skull. Liquid fire flowed out of the wound, burning a path through the ice. If Vyrael were a woman, the blade would have sunk deep into her brain, but as Thorn feared, her foe lacked the weaknesses of mortals. Nonetheless, the blow caught Vyrael’s attention.

The angel spun, her long blade carving a deadly arc through the air. If not for the ice, she might have finished Thorn then and there. As it was, Thorn was able to raise her vambraces just in time to block the blow, and the blade rang off Thorn’s mithral bracers. While Vyrael had the proportions of a slender woman, her strength was inhuman. The blow sent Thorn staggering back, her arms numb from the impact.

She’d done her job, though. In facing Thorn, Vyrael had turned away from Daine. The Son of Khyber struck. He’d held back in the battle with the Keeper of Hopes, but now he wove a deadly web with his shining sword. His first stroke left a burning gash across the angel’s back.

Vyrael turned to face him, and it seemed impossible that Daine could match her. Her sword was longer, and her strength greater. But he had been one of the finest swordsmen in the War of the Mark, and it seemed that his skill remained. He evaded her powerful swings with apparent ease, and whenever the angel dropped her guard to make an attack, he was there, a quick thrust leaving a burning wound on her chest. And he wasn’t alone. Thorn stayed behind the angel, darting in and striking whenever there was an opening. And while Drego kept his distance, he hurled blasts of dark energy from his wand. Vyrael howled whenever one of these struck home.

Try as she might, the Ashen Sword seemed unable to counter them. She couldn’t match their combined talents. Yet at the same time, they seemed to be making little actual progress. For every blow they landed, a previous wound melted away.

And then she exploded.

“Fools!”

The word echoed across the hall as she spread her wings. The frost had finally melted, and a blast of fire rolled out from her wings, engulfing Daine and Torn. Torn felt only the faintest warmth as the flames licked around her, but she had to look away from the brilliant light, and she heard Daine cry out in pain.

“Fools!” the angel called again, rising into the air. “You think to match my might with your petty magics? I am of the Burning Host, forged from eternal fire to battle shadow and fiend. I am the guardian of this gate, and no little tiger shall challenge me.”

Her sword blazed again, and when she swung it toward the ground, a gout of flame flowed down at Drego. The Trane threw himself out of the path of the blast And onto one of the burning glyphs scattered across the floor. He screamed as the sigil exploded, disappearing in the burst of fire and smoke. Thorn was surprised by the shiver that gripped her heart, but there was no time to go to him.

“You can’t win this battle,” Daine said. His dragonmark was glowing, and there were familiar veins of shadow running along the crimson path of the mark. There was a new weight in the air-the echo of the despair she’d felt when fighting Vorlintar.

He’s drawing on his power, Torn realized.

“No!” Vyrael cried. Her flames increased in intensity, until it was nearly painful just to look at her. Thorn couldn’t feel the heat, but it was clear that the others could. Daine staggered back a few steps. But he continued speaking, and Thorn could feel the growing misery in the air.

“You are no guardian,” he cried. “You are a prisoner, forsaken by those above you, cast out of Shavarath and Syrania to sit beneath this miserable city. You are no eternal flame. You’re guttering candle, burning away your last moments.”

“No!” the angel roared, and another wave of fire exploded from her outstretched wings. “I am eternal! I am the glorious flame, the light that stands against the darkness, the fire that cannot be extinguished. My glory shall be your doom!”

Vyrael raised her blade above her head, and it glowed with a light as intense as the sun itself. Somehow, Thorn knew Vyrael was preparing a blast even more powerful that what she’d flung at Drego, a burst that would incinerate bone itself. Yet even as the angel raised her blade, Thorn was in motion.

She bounded onto a floating chunk of rock and leaped atop the head of a Cannith construct, a massive metal mask slowly spinning in the air. As Vyrael pronounced their doom, Thorn leaped on her from behind. Calling on her own unnatural strength, she grabbed hold of the angel’s burning wings and crushed them in her grip, pinning them to Vyrael’s body. Despite her apparent resistance to heat, she could feel these flames. Yet it was enough. Vyrael tumbled back to the ground, the two of them striking hard. The angel twisted and squirmed against her, but Thorn caught hold of her arms, pinning her to the ground.

“You cannot do this!” Vyrael cried. “No mortal can survive my fires! I-”

“You may be part of the Burning Host,” Thorn said, silencing her enemy’s complaints with a knee to the back. “But I’m the Angel of Flame.”

Vyrael raged and screamed, but she couldn’t break free. And though the searing heat pained her, it didn’t actually burn Thorn’s skin. The angel thrashed and howled, but slowly her fires began to diminish.

And Daine was there. He set his hand against her mask, and Thorn could hear it sear his flesh. Daine didn’t flinch. The brilliant tendrils of his dragonmark wrapped around Vyrael’s head, and the angel screamed again, even louder than before. The temperature dropped sharply, and the brilliant flames of Vyrael’s wings flickered out, one by one. Now the angel’s dark robe was smoke, and her body collapsed into mist, flowing into Daine’s fist. Moments later, all that was left was the mask and the battered blade, which fell to the ground.

Daine rose to his feet. A ball of darkness was caught in his palm, flickering with bursts of flame. He took a deep breath and closed his fist around it. Then he screamed, a howl of pain as horrible as Vyrael’s had been. The lines of his dragonmark were truly burning, the flames spreading up his arm. Daine opened his eyes and stared at his hand, gritting his teeth to cut off his cry. His eyes widened with the effort of concentration, and the flames against his skin vanished. But the mark itself was still glowing with a baleful radiance, shining in the darkness. Thorn could see the mark spreading across Daine’s skin, claiming more space on his flesh.

“I have it,” he said, his breath slow and labored. “I… I’m in control. Find Drego. There is work to be done.”

Thorn nodded. She’d dropped Steel when she was wrestling with the angel, and she called him back to her hand as she ran to where Drego had fallen.

Something’s not right, Steel whispered. Thorn’s attention was on Drego. He was stretched out on the floor, badly burned but still breathing.

“Never trust an angel,” he murmured as she knelt beside him.

Lantern Thorn! I believe there is danger.

“What is it?” she asked. She knew Drego had healing supplies, and she searched through his pouches to see if anything useful remained intact. She found a vial of cooling salve and began to rub it into his burns.

“If only I’d known…” Drego muttered. “I’d have tried this long ago.”

“Shush,” she said.

Fallen angels, also known as radiant idols, are a documented threat in Sharn. The Citadel has encountered such beings before-exiles from Syrania punished with imprisonment in our world.

“So?”

Every one is different, but all share the same punishment. They cannot fly. The air is taken from them. You saw the chains on Vorlintar’s wings.

“And?”

Vyrael was flying.

“Get up,” she told Drego. Though he was hurt, the initial shock had been the worst of it. Just the few minutes of rest had done wonders for him.

Vyrael wasn’t chained. She’d said it herself: I am the guardian of this gate. Daine told her she was a prisoner when he channeled Vorlintar’s powers. Powers which caused doubt and despair, twisting the truth.

Daine was kneeling before the throne. He had produced a number of tools from the bag of holding, and he was assembling a strange device. At the center was the shard-studded sphere she’d seen before, but he was connecting it to a set of crystal-tipped tubes. As she watched, his dragonmark flared and pulled away from his skin, momentarily forming winglike shapes along his back.

“What is that thing?” Thorn asked. Steel was in her fist.

Daine kept his attention on his work. “I told you. A weapon that will shut down all house operations in Sharn.”

A terrible thought occurred to her. “And how will it do that, exactly?”

He stood and turned to face her. She could see that his mark had spread to both of his arms, and shadows swirled within the crimson light. “This is the Cardinal Point. The heart of the connection between Syrania and Sharn. And this… this will sever that connection.”

“What does that have to do with the houses?” Thorn demanded. “They aren’t harvesting power from Syrania. That energy is what sustains the flying buttresses, and the skycabs, and the…” Her voice trailed off as she realized the truth.

“Yes,” he said. “When the connection between the planes is broken, the buttresses will fail. Skyway and the floating spires will fall onto the city below, and the remaining towers will collapse under their own weight. It will shut down all house enclaves in Sharn, because there won’t be any Sharn when I’m done.”

“Why would you do this?” she said. “You’ll kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people.” She could already guess at the answer. Now she understood the strange sorrow she’d seen in his eyes.

“There just aren’t enough of us,” he told her. “We can’t fight this war alone. We can’t defeat the Twelve. But this… this weapon is a Cannith creation. We’re deep underground. We’ll survive the devastation. And when you take this weapon to the Citadel, when you tell them that Cannith is responsible, all of Breland will rise up in arms. All of Khorvaire will see the danger they represent.”

“No,” she said. “I won’t. I won’t be a party to this. This is Vorlintar, Daine, poisoning your hope within you. There has to be another way. A way that won’t kill these innocent people.”

“They have to see!” Daine cried, and once again the mark flowed out from his skin, forming the brilliant silhouette of angel’s wings. “Don’t you understand? Cannith made this. Perhaps I’m the one who will trigger it. But it could have been them. And if you ignore the threat, someday it will be.”

“But not today,” Thorn said.

There was no alternative. Steel was right; Daine’s mark had driven him mad. Her mission had been clear: Find the Son of Khyber and kill him if necessary. Daine was distracted. His sword wasn’t in his hand. She’d bury Steel in his right eye. She tried to throw And nothing happened. Every muscle was frozen. It was the same as when she’d fought Fileon. And the same spell Drego had used against her allies in Droaam.

“This is what has to happen,” Drego said, stepping forward. He seemed to have completely recovered from his injuries; his clothes weren’t even burned. “You need to understand. Try to remember, beloved. There’s much more at stake than Breland.”

In that instant, a half-dozen pieces came together in her mind. A corpse that vanished, without even leaving ashes to mark its passage. Drego’s arrival so soon after that death. Drego… a sorcerer of considerable skill, who seemed to have some talent for transmutation or illusion. But most of all it was the way he said that one word-Beloved. Had Drego been Dreck all along? Was he just watching House Tarkanan… or had he been watching her?

She had no voice to ask the question. She called on Lantern discipline and raw fury, but both shattered against Drego’s mystic bonds.

“So it’s ready?” Drego asked.

“Almost,” Daine replied. “I just need the power of one more soul. One more outsider.”

“What?” Drego cried. “How do you expect to accomplish that now?”

Daine laughed. His dragonmark burned even brighter, and as he stretched out his hand, long tendrils of energy lashed out and wrapped around Drego, digging into his skin. “We’ve come to the end of the game. My mark lets me taste the souls of those around me. I recognized both of you as soon as you entered my presence. You’ve been a valuable ally, Drego Sarhain. And now you will give me the power I need to finish my task and fulfill my destiny.”

Drego writhed and twisted in Daine’s grasp, and suddenly he changed. He was taller, stronger-and he had the head of a tiger, deep black fur traversed with stripes of flame.

“You’re nothing next to Vyrael or Vorlintar,” Daine said. “But you’ll do.”

All the pieces suddenly fell into place. In Droaam, Drego had aided the demon Drulkalatar, the tiger-headed demon lord. Even in her dream, he’d hovered by the creature’s skull. He hadn’t been working for Thrane at all. He must have been Drulkalatar’s ally all along.

And even as she realized this, something else became clear. Drego had released her from her spell.

She didn’t hesitate. Drego howled as Daine’s dragonmark dug into his skin. And Thorn stepped forward and thrust Steel into Daine’s eye, slamming her free hand against the pommel and driving the blade into his brain.