He peered at the locus in all of its filth and ugliness, and he knew its name.
“Asgaroth!” Fallion shouted. “I see you!”
But how had it come here?
“Asgaroth?” Rhianna cried, her voice high and frightened; she cringed and tried to scurry backward.
Fallion would have none of that. He raced near, loomed above her. Rhianna glanced at him briefly, and when she did, the locus shuddered, until she glanced away.
“Look at me!” Fallion commanded Rhianna. “Look into my eyes!”
Rhianna peered up at him, and her pupils constricted down to pinpoints. Fallion saw himself reflected in her eyes, a luminous creature as bright as the sun, and for a moment he worried that he really would blind her.
He could see beyond her eyes, through them, into her soul. His father had used Earth Powers to see into the hearts of men. Now Fallion used Fire to do the same.
And he saw how Rhianna had succumbed to despair and given herself to Shadoath, surrendering not only her wit, but her soul. That was when Asgaroth had taken her.
Fallion felt as if he were blazing with righteous indignation. The locus shuddered and trembled, seeking to escape his burning gaze.
“Why?” Fallion demanded. “Why are you here? Why now? Why do you trouble me?”
Rhianna fought Fallion then, fought him savagely, twisted onto the floor and tried to crawl away, but Fallion threw her onto her back, pinned her with a knee, and forced her to look into his face.
Asgaroth trembled and shuddered, and in a fit of rage, Fallion blazed. It was as if the sun suddenly flared, and Fallion heard children screaming and realized that many of them had come awake. Rhianna was screaming as Asgaroth shuddered and bulged and tried to break free.
“Answer me!” Fallion demanded, and the flaring light seared the locus, burned off an outer layer of skin.
“Nooooo!” Rhianna wailed, but Fallion did not even register her complaint, so intent was he upon the locus.
As it burned, layers of skin and flesh peeling under his scorching gaze, Fallion stripped away its secrets.
This world. For ages the loci had searched for this world, for it was like a large shard of a broken mirror, or a key piece to a vast puzzle. There was information written upon this world, a memory of the Great Rune.
The loci needed this information, this piece of the rune, to bind all of the shadow worlds back into One True World, flawless and brilliant, and under their control.
Asgaroth had taken Rhianna in the hopes that through her, Asgaroth could lead Fallion astray, make a tool of him, until a locus infected him, as it did the bright Ones that were under Shadoath’s sway.
Fallion saw it all so clearly, he was amazed that he had never understood. In that moment his attention flickered, and Asgaroth fled.
One moment the locus gripped Rhianna and the next it released, surging off quicker than thought, so that Fallion saw it only briefly, escaping from the corner of his eye.
“Kill it!” Rhianna was shouting, and her voice suddenly rose above the pounding of blood in his ears. “Kill me if you must. Just get rid of it!”
Fallion suddenly found himself growing cold, shaking. The light in him had died, and the torch in his hand and the torches all around the room had all but burned out.
Dozens of children had come awake, and they huddled around him, peering with huge eyes, some of them screaming in terror, many of them coughing from smoke.
Fallion heard guards rushing toward the keep, iron shoes clanking down the hall. With a thought, he sent the smoke hurtling from the room, billowing down the corridor toward the guards, filling the narrow passage.
Fallion had Rhianna pinned to the floor, his knee in her chest, and now he crawled off.
I’ve burned her, he thought. I’ve blinded her.
But Rhianna was crying, shouting, “Kill it. Do it now!” and Fallion realized that whatever harm he had done to her, she would bear it gladly.
“It’s gone,” Fallion told her. “The locus has gone from you.”
Rhianna choked on a sob, reached up and hugged him, weeping bitterly.
“Can you see?” he asked.
“I can see,” she said. “I’m fine. I’m good. I’m good. I’m good. I’m good.” She repeated the words over and over, as if to comfort herself or to comfort him.
Fallion held her, hugged her tightly. “I know,” he said. “I know you’re good.”
Far away, Shadoath rode upon the back of a white graak, soaring above the tops of the stonewood trees, when suddenly a shadow whispered to her soul.
“The torch-bearer has awakened. He comes to destroy us all.”
She closed her eyes, and in her mind saw what had happened to Asgaroth. Fallion had burned him with light, pierced him, devastating the locus.
Indeed, even as Asgaroth whispered to her, Shadoath could sense that he was dying.
For long moments, the shadow wailed in pain, until at last it fell silent.
Shadoath was stunned.
No locus had ever died.
We are eternal, she thought. We are spread across a million million shadow worlds, and not one of us has ever died. Asgaroth was one of the great and powerful ones.
But Fallion had awakened, had summoned a light that even the Bright Ones of old could not match.
If Asgaroth can die, so can I.
In rising fear, Shadoath raced her graak to Garion’s Port. Fallion would be coming for her, that much was certain. There was a new terror in the universe.
Shadoath was not ready to face him.
50
His power smote the wicked, and his rage burned the sky.
Fallion led Rhianna from the Dedicates’ Keep, into the outer corridors and to the guards’ chamber.
There, Fallion shoved on the door, found that it was unlocked.
The golath guards in the darkened chamber cringed and hacked, trying to clear the smoke from their lungs.
Some of them moaned in pain, their voices sounding strangely musical.
They had retreated here, fleeing. Fallion held his torch aloft, and he could see the flames dancing in their eyes.
“Take good care of the children,” Fallion warned them. “Or when I return, your cries of pain will become a symphony to me.”
He shut the door, walked out into the evening light. It limned the bowl of the volcano, all along the ridges.
A hundred yards away, near a rock, the sea ape lay on the ground, her huge paw still wrapped around Abravael’s throat.
Both of them were dead. Fallion could tell even at a distance by the whiteness of Abravael’s face, by the frantic way that his fingers clawed at the sky even though he lay perfectly still.
Rhianna stumbled to the pair, reached down, and petted the sea ape’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “He could never have loved you half as well as you deserved.”
Then Fallion led Rhianna past the dead strengi-saat, where she cringed in terror, and to the sea graak.
