It swung open to reveal Nivrotar herself, the healer Jemara hovering uncertainly behind her.
Jayr stood upright.
“What?”
“I dislike his screaming.” Nivrotar swept into the room. She was wrapped in a cloak the colour of dried blood. As the plump, cheery-faced Jemara hesitated awkwardly, the Lord stopped by Ress’s bed. “We must take control.”
“Control?” Jayr said.
“Jemara.” Nivrotar gestured for the woman to speak.
“It goes like this,” Jemara said, shrugging round shoulders. “There’s a way I can unlock his mind – but it’s dangerous. Some people ply these substances for recreation, some believe that their visions bring them great truth. Others –”
“Jem,” Nivrotar said warningly.
Jumping nervously, the healer said, “There are various narcotics, hallucinogenics...” she tailed off, watching Jayr’s expression.
Jayr snapped, “He’s not touching your – !”
“Think about it,” Nivrotar said. “If he can open his mind, we may understand him.”
“The problem is,” Jemara said, “that Ress has strength and experience – we’ll need more than a little. Eoritu’s euphoric – it can be addictive, and it could make him worse. Once it’s in his body, we’ll have to lead his visions where we want them to go. Do you understand what I’m asking?”
Jayr looked down at where Ress lay. He slept peaceably now, his face lined and sunken.
“Will it hurt him?”
Jemara shook her head.
Nivrotar said, “Not his physical health.”
Where was Syke? Where was anyone that could take the weight of this decision from her shoulders? Ress, what did they do to you?
“Do it,” Jayr said.
* * *
Heat.
Tight, sweating passageways lined with smoothed rocks and a sheen of panic. Ceilings low and dark, close and choking air.
The slash of a stone blade into flesh. Spilled blood spirals inwards towards a heart of fiery, crystalline awareness. Then a rising sense of hunger and an eagerness for release.
Elemental. Sical, creature of fire. Such a thing has not been seen upon the world in a lifetime of returns.
Here in the passageways, the twisted corpse of a Kartian craftsman, shattered by huge strength. His insides have exploded from his mouth, blood covers his face and chest – he’d thrashed for a long time as he’d been slowly crushed to death.
Here, a creature created of alchemy – a crazed cross-breed of man and horse. It stands in deepening night, the Monument its backdrop, a storm raging over it... It’s colossal – and its death crouches in the grass.
Here, a man on his knees, a slim, fair-skinned woman before him, abandoned in pleasure and passion. The man is grinning like a predator, ringed fingers twisting in the soft flesh of her buttocks. She has incredibly long, black hair, thrown wildly down her back and shoulders. She cries aloud, snarls pleasure through clenched teeth...
...and the stone grows into her flesh. Even as the man withdraws, the creeping calcification reaches her throat, her face, and she is left there – head back, lips parted, frozen forever in stone orgasm.
With her final cry, the image changes.
In that rise of passion and release, the stirring Monument awakens completely: it blazes with new, raw power.
The man’s strength is complete. His rings glinting, he stands before a brazier, a broken and twisted pillar. About him is a vast, dark chamber and within it, rank upon rank, stand blunt and misshapen creatures of rock, dark silhouettes against the light. They are ancient, creatures forgotten and now wakened from long rest. There are embers in their eyes and a terrible, grinding power in their movements. The man can feel the steady pulse of the Powerflux. He can pull its might towards the centre, towards himself.
And it is glorious.
But then he realises –
A cascade of water overwhelms the vision, what the man realises is lost. Ress hears her voice again, crying denial. Her waterfall blinds him, deafens him – he knows she was trying to show him something, but she’s too powerful and the images drown him. He tries to shout, but water fills his eyes his mouth.
There!
The grass, the vast carpet of the Varchinde, all bowing towards the Monument, paying homage to the man’s potency as he pulls the World’s energy inwards, building, building his stone army...
What was she...?
Oh, my Goddess. Mother...
At its edges, at the feet of the Kartiah, the Khohan, the Khavan Circle... at the eastern shoreline, where the great terhnwood crops grew... to the far south, the forests at Gasharta, Naskala...
...death is beginning in the grass. As the energy of the Powerflux is sucked inwards by the Monument, so the edges of the Varchinde begin to perish. Rot, devastation, a wave of lifelessness sweeping inwards: the terhnwood plantations crumble and the trees are twisting in pain.
The World will die.
The waters of the Ryll bathe him in horror.
And he screams. And screams. And screams.
* * *
“Silence him!”
The Lord Nivrotar was on her feet. Jemara shaking and white faced.
Ress’s appalling shrieking rang from the ceiling, ricocheted from cold, stone walls.
Jayr held his shoulders, shouted in his face.
“Ress! Stop it! Ress!”
Then the noise fell away, collapsed into desperate, panting breaths, a hunted animal. He rasped, “This... is just... the beginning. There is no time!”
His eyes were open, stark and wide and staring. His back was arched, his hands worked aimlessly, reaching for something – or pushing something away.
No time.
“Oh, you’re so fireblasted clever.” The Banned girl challenged the Lord of Amos and the castle healer. “What the rhez did that achieve? Look at him!”
Jemara’s cheery face held fear, her hands twitched helplessly by her sides.
“I don’t know. We gave him clarity, but what he saw...”
Nivrotar stood still, her silk-gloved forearms crossed and the fingers of one hand rapping a silent and restless tattoo.
“He was clearer – stone and flame and sex and power. Great elation and great fear. Will he stand another dose?”
Jayr glowered. “No way.”
Jemara agreed with a reluctant shrug.
“Then we can’t reach him. How do we help him free himself?”
“My Lord.” The healer was still shaking. “His mind is beyond my strength – whatever he can hear has might beyond anything I comprehend. Benign might – but such fear –”
“We must know what he sees.”
