The Shattered Land

CHAPTER 44

Lei let go of her staff, and it fell to the ground. She didn’t need it to deal with Pierce. Her hands were far more dangerous than any weapon-if she could touch him, she could tear him apart from within.

While she’d fought Pierce once before, she didn’t expect this battle to follow the same path. The first time Pierce had been driven into a rage, unhinged by the powers of the mind flayer Chyrassk. Now he was in full control of himself, and he knew her capabilities as well as she did. As soon as her words had registered, Pierce dropped his flail and backed away from her. His bow was in his hands, though he was pointing it at the ground. He was fast, and under normal circumstances she’d never be able to close the distance to touch him, but she’d had a few moments to prepare. She’d magically enhanced her own speed and even woven an enchantment that would protect her from Pierce’s arrows. She was ready for the traitor, but she needed to act quickly. Surely the others would be here at any moment.

“I do not wish to hurt you, Lei,” Pierce’s voice was calm and somber. “This has been a confusing time, but I have always sought to protect you.”

“What do you call this?” She held up her maimed hand, with only a stump in place of her smallest finger. Hydra had bandaged the wound, but the injury still throbbed, and she was terrified to think how it might affect her work.

“That … is my fault. Harmattan used you to manipulate me. He threatened to kill you unless I agreed to help him.”

“So you did all of this for me,” Lei said.

“No. No, I did not. I was uncertain, curious to know what my life could be-what it would be, without you or Daine.” He paused. “There are things you and I will never share, Lei. I understand that, but I am a warforged, and I was made for a purpose. That purpose was to protect you.”

“Liar!” The loss of Daine, her wounded hand-Lei’s thoughts were a maze of pain and anguish, and she barely followed Pierce’s words. It was a trick. He was delaying, covering for the others who would soon emerge. She charged at Pierce, hands out, already envisioning the powers she would draw on to destroy him. She knew what he would do: dart to the side, loose a volley of arrows, try to maintain the space between them.

He didn’t.

He didn’t try to run from her, and he didn’t raise his bow. He simply stood there, even as she laid a hand on his chest. He just watched her. His face was as expressionless as always, but she had learned to read his moods in his stance and the tension in his limbs. He wasn’t going to fight.

For a moment she stood with her hand pressed against his torso. She could feel the cold metal, and in her mind she could sense the energies within-the pattern that gave life to stone and steel. A voice screamed inside of her: Destroy him! Destroy all of them! She’d thought it would be easier, but she’d thought he would fight back. Looking at his face, it was hard to hold onto the anger. Instead, she found herself thinking of the night they’d arrived in Sharn, when he’d carried her sobbing from the doorstep of Hadran’s manor, of the battle at Keldan Ridge, and of the vision she’d had the first time they fought.

She slammed her left fist against his torso. “Fight, damn you!”

“I cannot.” Pierce placed a hand over hers, pressing it against his chest. “Destroy me if you must, but I will not fight you again, nor will I allow you to come to any harm that I can prevent.”

Blinking back tears, she held up her left hand, the maimed finger plain to see.

Pierce looked away. “Do what you must, my lady. If my failure cannot be forgiven, let my punishment be swift.”

Lei clenched her wounded hand, feeling the burning pain. She gathered the energies once more. She reached out with her mind, feeling the familiar patterns of his lifeforce, the tapestry she’d mended so many times before.

For a moment they stood in silence. Then, slowly, she took her hand off his chest. “Where are the others?” she said at last.

“Destroyed or trapped below. It makes no difference. They will not trouble us again.”

Lei looked at him. “How? What defeated them? How did you escape?”

“I defeated them,” Pierce said, “though I had to wait for you to free yourself.”

Lei thought about the way Pierce had been speaking with the blue warforged, and an ember of suspicion flared up again. “I thought they were your new family.”

“I have a family,” Pierce said, “and you are a part of it.” He walked past her, and picked up his flail, replacing it in its harnesses. “Earlier, you said that you knew Harmattan. What did you mean?”

“I …” Lei paused.

She wanted to explain, but somehow it was difficult to force the words out. It had been a year since her strange dream, and she’d never mentioned it to Pierce. Somehow, when she tried to speak, her brain and her tongue just refused to act.

Pierce noticed her discomfort. “What is it? Are you in pain?”

“I …” Lei closed her eyes and collected her thoughts. “I had a vision last year, beneath Sharn. I’ve had others, since then. I … I think my parents may have created Harmattan.”

Pierce nodded slowly. “Why is that?”

“In one of my dreams … My father, he held up a piece of a warforged, a head. I remember him saying ‘This is how you defeat death.’ Harmattan keeps his face hidden, and when I saw it that once, it was battered and scorched, but it was him. I’m sure of it now. I don’t know how they did it, but my parents made him.”

“And they made me.”

She nodded, slowly.

“I have had one of these visions as well, but I do not think it was a dream. I think it was a memory.”

Lei shook her head. “No … my visions have drawn on current events, on my surroundings. They’re just dreams. They must be.” She remembered a jeweled blade poised above her eye, and she shuddered.

Pierce considered this carefully. “If not memories … what if these are visions of the present?”

“What?”

“Perhaps someone is watching us. Monitoring you from within.”

This is our daughter, not just another experiment!

The words echoed through Lei’s mind, but her mother wasn’t the only voice she heard.

All that is flesh must perish, her father said, we knew that from the start.

Harmattan hissed: You destroy failures. It is the way of your house, and I was not talking about humanity. I was talking about you.

“You said you saw Harmattan-as a severed head,” Pierce continued, “but he was built with the body of a warforged soldier. You were an adult when I saw you. Did you see Hydra in your visions?”

“No.”

“Yet in many ways, Hydra was just as strange as Harmattan. Would you have any idea how to create such a warforged?”

“No,” Lei said. “A personality spread between multiple bodies? I can’t begin to imagine it. The sensory input alone would overwhelm a normal spirit.”

“But you said you’d seen similar designs …”

Lei completed the sentence. “At Keldan Ridge.”

“You’re certain it wasn’t a Cannith forgehold?”

“At this point, I’m not certain of anything,” Lei replied, “but there were so many strange varieties of warforged there-economically, it didn’t make any sense. You don’t hand-craft warforged, and they didn’t have the house markings.”

“Can anyone else create warforged?”

“Not without the Mark of Making, no. Except …” Lei paused. “I’m sure you’ve heard the stories-that the secrets of the warforged are hidden in Xen’drik, that Cannith expeditions built the first creation forges using knowledge stolen from Xen’drik. My parents came to Xen’drik, too. The sahuagin guide on the Kraken’s Wake, he said something about it … ‘She wanted to find ways to improve the warforged, but she did not want to share this knowledge with her kin.’” And she spoke of her desire for a daughter, Lei thought, but she kept the thought within. “What if … what if there was a conspiracy in House Cannith, a group that was creating new warforged for some purpose aside from selling them?”

“Did you not say that Aaren d’Cannith despised what the house was doing with his creations?”

“Yes … yes, I did,” Lei said, “but Aaren hated the idea of war. I can’t imagine him building the army we saw at the ridge. Besides, he was excoriated.”

“So were you … and your parents.”

Lei’s eyes grew wide. “You’re right. My parents. I never understood why Merrix would move against them, but what does Merrix know about them? Do you think … do you think they might still be alive?”

“I do not know, Lei. All I know is that Harmattan was doing the bidding of another. Perhaps if we follow his path, we can learn the identity of this hidden master.”

Lei nodded, and she crossed the clearing and retrieved her staff. “What do we know about Harmattan’s plans?”

“He was searching for this.” Pierce produced the silver sphere, and it glittered in the sunlight. “He called it a prisoner. He said it would ‘unlock the gates of Karul’tash.’”

“Karul’tash?” Lei frowned. “Karul’tash. The Monolith of Karul’tash. That’s where we were going. That’s where Lakashtai said we could find what we needed to help Daine.”

“Then if we only had Daine, I would call this a sign of destiny.”

“Let me see that,” Lei said. “It seems familiar, but I just can’t place it. A sphere … Xen’drik …” She took the orb from Pierce’s hands and almost dropped it in surprise.

It recognized her.

The instant she touched the orb, she felt a wave of thought pass over her-a sense of identity, almost like looking at a human face. It was distant, faint, but she knew that there was a consciousness within the sphere … and that it was aware of her. The sense of recognition was not strong. It wasn’t the feeling she’d get from seeing a friend, but rather one of seeing a man in a familiar uniform, of knowing that’s a member of the Sharn Watch.

“Hello?” she said cautiously.

“Greetings?” Pierce replied.

Lei shook her head and pointed at the orb. “I was … did you feel anything when you were holding it?”

Pierce shook his head.

Lei turned her attention back to the orb. She could sense that it was aware of her, but there was something … in the way. It was like looking at a lantern covered by a blanket. Reaching into her backpack, she produced a pearl; she’d found these stones to be an effective focus for divinatory energies. Touching the pearl to the silver sphere, she reached out with her mind, studying the orb.

It was beautiful.

Seen through the lens of magic, it was an intricate web of golden threads, burning with pulses of light. “It’s an … information matrix,” she said, wonderingly. “I think it’s alive-not quite alive as you, but self-aware. Conscious. Just imagine-this must have seen the civilization of the giants!”

“How can we communicate with it?” Pierce said.

“That’s the strangest part. I think … it looks like it’s designed to interface with a warforged, to attach to your essence node, but it must be tens of thousands of years old.”

“So it seems that Cannith didn’t create the warforged after all.”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Lei said. “It may be that Cannith explorers adapted a few design elements from Xen’drik golems, and the essence node was one of them.”

“There is only one way to be certain. Attach it to me.”

“We have no idea what it might do to you!”

“Harmattan said it was the key.”

“He also said it was a prisoner!” Lei exclaimed. “It could be a demon, a monster-who knows what?”

“Study it further. Do you think there’s a danger of it seizing control of my body?”

Lei closed her eyes, reaching out through the pearl. “I … I don’t think so, but it’s difficult to say. The design is like nothing I’ve seen before.”

“Attach it to me. If it can lead us to this Karul’tash, perhaps we can find Daine and the others. Lakashtai said nothing about a key, so she may not know it is necessary. It could be our only chance to find them.”

Lei grimaced, but eventually nodded. She examined his torso, and Pierce released the metal disk he had attached earlier.

“What’s this?” she said, pulling it loose.

“Harmattan gave it to me-it is the key that opened the gates of this vault.”

“Interesting,” she said, tucking it in a pouch. “Now … here it goes.”

She pressed the orb against his socket in his chest. As she watched, the node shifted shape; metal softened and flowed in to surround the sphere. After a few moments had passed, the orb had been almost fully absorbed into Pierce’s body-only a single red dragonshard could be seen from the outside.

“What do you feel?” she said.

“I … I do not know,” Pierce replied. There is a … presence, but it is distant. I cannot reach it.”

Lei frowned. “I felt the same thing. Stand still.” She placed a finger on the dragonshard. A moment later she could feel the presence once more, and the barrier between them. “I think that it’s-damaged, somehow. I’m going to try to repair it.”

“How?”

“I can’t explain it. I just … I think I know what to do.”

She closed her eyes again, and let her perception flow into the orb, spreading out along the many threads. Here and there she could feel where a connection had broken, where something had snapped, and she found she could weave new threads to bridge these gaps. It seemed to take hours, as her thoughts flowed along one brilliant path after another, but at long last it was done. The curtain was ripped away, and she felt the presence truly come to life.

And in that moment, the ground next to her exploded.

A wave of concussive force threw Lei to the side, and her face slammed against the soil. As her vision cleared, she saw a cloud of black smoke rising up from patch of burning grass.

“Do not move!”

The words were in Elvish; it had been some time since Lei had studied the language, and the speaker was talking quickly, flowing his words together. Turning toward the sound, Lei was amazed by the sight of the firesled. She knew they were in danger, and she had no idea what to make of these strange elves with their jet-black skin and orange and red tattoos, but looking at the sleigh with its ring of fire, her first thought was how can they keep something so small in the air?

Pierce had no intention of standing still; as far as Lei knew, he didn’t even speak Elvish. His bowstring sang, and a feathered shaft struck the shoulder of the elf standing in front of the burning wheel. She cried out but held on to her fixed staff; an instant later she responded with another burst of flame, forcing Lei to leap away from Pierce.

As she rolled to the side, Lei heard her staff whispering-a quiet song, warning of malevolent motion. “A little late,” she muttered. Now shapes were moving all around her, shadows slipping through the foliage. An instant later two elven warriors darted out of the jungle. They were armored in leather and bronze scales, and their short spears were leveled at her heart.

“Surrender!” one cried in fluid Elvish.

Not likely. Lei ran her fingers along her staff, whispering softly and weaving magic with her thoughts. She quickly planted a battle-bane in the staff: a furious hatred of elves that would guide Lei’s hands and amplify the force of her blows when fighting this vile foe.

As quick as she was, one of the elves saw her flickering fingers and must have guessed that magic was afoot. He lunged forward, but he was too late. Lei had completed her work. The staff seemed to move of its own accord, pulling her with it; she swept the spear aside, then smashed him in the face with the butt of the staff. The other soldier darted in as his companion staggered back, and Lei leapt out of his reach. For a moment they circled each other, trading tentative jabs, but Lei still had the enchantments she had prepared to fight Pierce woven into her boots and armor-and one of these was supernatural speed. It took only a thought to activate this power, and her foes seemed to slow to a crawl. Within seconds, both elves had fallen beneath her furious blows, and Lei permitted herself a smile.

The smile was a mistake. The battle on the ground had drawn her attention away from the threat in the air, and the next thing she knew she was surrounded by flame. The heat seared across her skin, and the force of the explosion slammed her to the ground. Her ears were ringing, and the world was drifting in and out of focus-just staying conscious was a battle. Healing wand, she thought, but even as she struggled to reach her belt, the point of a sword appeared before her eyes-a sword wreathed in flame.

“Another move will end you,” a soft voice sang in the common tongue.

A drow woman stood over her. The stranger’s armor glowed with the heat of burning coals. Her eyes were surrounded by tattooed flames, and these glowed with their own inner light.