Chapter Forty-five
Head still ringing from the concussive force that had hit him, Joaquim rolled himself onto his feet. He had been lucky to catch only the periphery of the spell intended for him. The three sorcerers still battled each other from different parts of the garden, flame and shadow racing through the air. Joaquim spit, once, to clear his mouth, and circled around behind Fashim. For whatever reason, the Brilliant Flame and the Bloodless—if that was who they were—did not look like they were winning.
Darkness fell over the garden, but the sound of sorcerous flame still ripped through the air.
Erlandr had vanished. Joaquim did not bother looking for the man. He kept moving, groping out for trees and bushes in the dark.
Overhead, the rivers of flame began to move more rapidly, stirred by an unseen current, and the patches of darkness swelled and retracted. Joaquim turned his eyes back to darkness below; the sight made him dizzy.
The darkness broke, suddenly.
From between two trees, he saw Fashim. Rippling waves of fire poured from the parchment-skin hands toward a new corner of the garden. Joaquim followed the line of fire. The Brilliant Flame stood there, wobbling on his feet. A shivering mass of shadow raced from his hands in answer to wrap around Fashim.
The Jaecan gave a scream. The darkness shattered, revealing Fashim, burned, but alive. He raised his hands, conjuring some new sorcery. Joaquim could see the despair in the Brilliant Flame’s eyes. Joaquim knew that feeling himself.
A blurred shaft of silver-blue light stabbed through Fashim’s chest. The Jaecan sorcerer fell to his knees. For a moment the arcane spear supported his broken body. The spell dissolved into mist and Fashim tottered, eyes still open. Joaquim saw his opportunity. He leapt forward and brought his short sword down on the Jaecan’s neck. The blade clove through flesh and bone as though they were paper. Head hanging from a flap of skin, Fashim fell into a bed of lilies. The flowers crumbled to dust beneath him.
The Brilliant Flame collapsed.
Adence traced a shape in the air that shone against the black dome like a star. Joaquim shivered, his mind overwhelmed. Somehow, impossibly, Fashim still breathed, long, ragged breaths. The monster was supposed to be dead, yet he lived. Joaquim felt his moment of vengeance slipping away with every beat of his heart.
Words fell from Adence’s lips with terrible weight; the dome shivered around them, the earth shook. Joaquim stumbled and grabbed the branch of an aspen to keep his feet. Great ropes of red energy, with a core of black, shot from Erlandr’s chest into the darkness of the dome, speeding out to an unimaginable distance. With a single jerk of Erlandr’s body, the red ropes cut off.
A smaller thread of red light emerged from Fashim’s body. Joaquim could not see the man’s face, but he knew this was what Fashim wanted. He wanted whatever Erlandr had done.
With two quick steps, Joaquim reached the man. The short sword came down, slashing at Fashim’s neck. Fashim screamed, somehow, a breathy, gasping wheeze. The sound tore through Joaquim; it was impossible and terrible, and it gripped his heart like a vice.
He did not stop though. He hacked away, ignoring the drops of gore that covered his face and arms, feeding the hate that he felt for himself as he butchered Fashim. All Joaquim wanted to feel was hatred, for what Fashim had done to Viane, and more importantly, for what Fashim had done to him. He chopped and sawed until the Jaecan’s head hit the ground, clumps of hair falling from the age-spotted scalp as it hit the grass.
The red light cut off instantly, but something remained. A core of black energy that hung, vibrating, in the air, connecting the corpse to the dome.
“What did you do?” Adence asked, stumbling over to Fashim’s corpse. His hands moved around the black wire, not touching it, but seeming to examine it somehow.
Joaquim moved to large stone planter and sat down on the lip. He felt empty inside, as though he mirrored the dome above him. “He deserved to die. For what he did.”
“He was going to die, you stupid, stupid boy. Once Erlandr recovered, we would have been able to destroy him once and for all. This,” he gestured at the black cord that seemed thicker now, “is exactly what started everything in the first place.”
“What is it?” Joaquim asked.
“Nothing, or everything,” Adence said. “It depends on whom you ask. A connection that Erlandr—and apparently Fashim—forged to somewhere else. It might be the raw matter of creation, it might be a void, it might be the world of the dead.”
“You don’t know?”
Adence turned away from him. “Not even the gods know. Or if they do, they aren’t telling.”
The world of the dead. Or oblivion. Either one sounded fine to Joaquim at the moment. He did not know if he would have a happy reunion with Viane; he realized, too late, that she had struggled with something deep and dark.
“So get rid of it. Close the connection, or whatever you have to do.”
“It’s not that easy, boy,” Adence said. “It roots itself in life, feeds on it. By killing Fashim, you used up my bait to close the rent.”
Joaquim eyed the black strand. If he had found any measure of self-worth that night, or even a sense of who he really wanted to be, it had come when he had forced himself past his fear in Bonacore’s manor. When he had tried to save that old man not because it was easy, or because it was a means to getting what he wanted, but because it was right. Not when he had avenged Viane’s murder, or his own torture, by killing Fashim. It was doing the right thing, because it was right, even if he had to die for it.
“Bloodless,” he said. “Do you think we can ever forgive ourselves?”
The old man looked up at him and blinked. Joaquim hopped to his feet, crossed the garden, and wrapped one hand around the black rope, now as thick as his wrist.
The darkness washed over him, and then receded, with an insistence, a mindless, devouring patience that was familiar to Joaquim because it was the eternal swell and retreat of the sea. He smiled as the cold washed over him and retreated, taking a bit of him with it, then advanced again. So it was oblivion. He had made the right choice. The last thing he saw before emptiness devoured him was the look of surprise on Adence’s face.