our priests.' Bestion had said. 'If anybody can persuade the Allfather to intervene then it is he.'
'Bestion may well be right, Dunsany,' Kelos had argued. 'Who knows what power Kerberos holds? Besides, the Chadassa are not just going to withdraw now that we have stymied their plans. They will want revenge.'
'I have seen the wrath of the Lord of All with my own eyes,' Spalding spoke up. 'In the World's Ridge Mountains a great bolt of energy did fall from Kerberos and destroy the heathens and their vile den of iniquity.'
There wasn't really anything Dunsany could say to that, and so here they stood waiting to take on an army from the sea.
Dunsany looked up at Kerberos. 'Don't you dare fail us, you bastard,' he said.
Silus lay back on the altar and gazed into the depths of Kerberos. The dark moon that plagued the planet's orbit clung to its face like a black canker. He could feel the cloak of negative energy it had wrapped around its host but, through it, Silus could also hear Kerberos's call. It was the same call that had plagued his dreams from the beginning, drawing him away from all that was safe and familiar and into a host of mysteries he still didn't fully comprehend.
The censers were lit and the smoke rose to the ceiling before settling over him in a choking shroud. The first few breaths were the hardest, but when Silus felt his body begin to lose its hold he relaxed.
He looked up at Katya, as though seeking her permission to leave. She nodded once and Silus let go.
Twilight dwindled swiftly below him as his spirit soared away from the temple, the words of Bestion's chanting following him.
Before he could fall into the lightning kissed depths of Kerberos, however, he was brought to a sudden halt, hanging before the dark moon.
He knew that this entity was the same as that which called itself the Great Ocean; the same being who had taken Zac from him, pouring its taint into the infant's soul. Silus stared into its implacable face, the pure black of its surface unrelieved by any flaw. It was like staring into nothingness itself and that, Silus realised, was exactly what the Great Ocean was. Nothing.
It no longer had any hold on him, and so he tumbled away from it and into Kerberos's arms.
Maybe the Chadassa aren't coming for us after all, Dunsany thought, maybe it's over already.
They had been waiting so long for something to happen that the gentle and repetitive sound of the surf breaking on the shore was beginning to lull him to sleep.
When the Faith ships exploded he dropped his sword.
The light from the blast left red ghosts flitting across his vision and he had to blink several times before he could see to where the ships had been.
A wave raced towards them, kicked up by the blast, crashing against the monoliths and soaking those who stood near the stones. Dunsany looked for Chadassa bodies in the wash but the only thing floating there was a human hand. On the index finger was a ring wrought in the shape of the symbol of the Final Faith.
Dunsany was beginning to wonder what had prompted the ships to detonate when something rose from the sea.
The giant ball of black spikes looked not unlike a sea urchin. It drifted towards the shore before coming to rest, bobbing on the swell. Dunsany had half a mind that this thing wasn't anything to do with the Chadassa at all, but rather was some benign seabed denizen which had been uprooted by the blast.
With a sound like a sneeze, a spike flew from the sphere. It pierced the chest of one of the Moratians standing further along the beach and exploded from his back, pinning him to the ground. He stood for a moment — knees slightly bent, back arched, gasping for breath — before sinking down the length of the spike, his blood a vivid scarlet on the white sands.
'Take cover!' Dunsany shouted as more spikes flew towards them.
Using the power of the stone from the Llothriall and Emuel's song, Kelos threw up a magical shield. However, it didn't encompass everybody and more spikes found their mark.
A Moratian woman ducked behind one of the stone spires, only for a spike to pierce both the rock and her. Another man was pinned to his friend as he turned to run; the spike entering the back of his head and continuing through his friend's right eye.
The barrage lasted no more than ten seconds and when it was over they had lost half their army and the survivors stood in a forest of shivering black quills.
'What the hell was that?' Jacquinto said.
'I suggest we fall back,' Kelos said, as the sea began to churn.
'The monoliths should hold off the Chadassa,' Dunsany said as he followed them in-land.
'Yes, but I don't know for how long and I don't want to be standing anywhere near the stones when they go.'
'So what are we going to do?' Jacquinto said. 'We can't just fight them all.'
'We have to hope that Silus will come through for us,' Kelos said. 'Otherwise, gentlemen, it has been a pleasure sailing with you and I hope to see you in the next life.'
There was nothing but clouds.
The first time that Silus had communed with Kerberos — in the temple on Morat — he had sensed something like a vast consciousness, a planet-sized intelligence that may well have been the planet itself.
Now there was only the storm.
As he fell through the lightning and the wind he called out to his ancestors, whose spirits surely resided here, but there was no response. In fact, it felt to Silus as though he truly were the only living thing here.
Then what had been calling to him?
'What are you?' Silus shouted.
'What are you?'
Just an echo, Silus thought. Though hadn't those last few words seemed to overlap his own?
'What are you?'
'… you… you… you… you…'
The single word echoed around him and kept on echoing, as though it had become trapped within the clouds.
This was pointless. Bestion was mistaken. There was no benevolent and just god here.
Silus began to search for the thread that would lead back to his body.
'… you… you… you… you…'
'Shut up! Bestion, help me!'
'… you… you… you… you…'
The thread wasn't there, but then something about the word cut through his panic and made him stop and think.
You.
You.
You.
There was something here. He was here. Silus had been looking in the wrong place. Even before the ritual had been completed — even before he had left his body — Kerberos had entered into him.
Silus reached out and the lightning arced around him in a nimbus of power that lit up the clouds for miles around. He reached even further and now he could hear the roar of Kerberos itself as it turned in the void, could feel the immense energies that held it together.
At the heart of the storm, at the centre of it all, Silus burned.
'… you… you… you… you…'
'Yes,' Silus said, ' me.'
Kelos watched the others nervously watching the shore as they took up their fallback positions.
The blue fire burst from the monoliths and a dome of shimmering energy closed around the island. Kelos felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as, at his feet, the stone from the Llothriall began to pulse in sympathy with the magic. Beside him Emuel was singing, the tattoos that covered his body dancing to the strange rhythms he weaved. Along the line, the rest of the crew stood with their weapons readied. Only a handful of the Moratian refugees stood with them, the rest having fallen in the attack by the urchin thing. Kelos was impressed that the survivors had chosen to fight on, even as the blood of their comrades sank into the blazing sands.
There was still no sign of the Chadassa themselves, though they must have been close else the monoliths'
