Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [28]
Caelan put his hand on the shimmering wall before him. Then he stepped between the strands, feeling the crackling field of energy radiate off each of them. It felt as though the skin were being peeled off his face, yet he went through.
Evil whispers, uttering words he could not understand, filled his mind as though to drive him mad. Symbols appeared in the air before him, hanging there suspended for a moment only to vanish again. All were dire things, full of danger and evil omen. On some level he understood them and was horrified, yet his thoughts were centered now only on getting through. He understood nothing else, thought of nothing else, felt nothing else.
With a last little pop of resistance, he stepped through to the other side of the spell barrier and found himself dizzy and nauseous. Staggering, he hurried to the end of the passageway and came out into the open.
Overhead stretched a vast darkness unmarked by stars. A cold moon shone down, robed in tatters of cloud.
They stood on a hillside, looking down at the ruins of a city spread before them. Walls had been pushed over. The stones themselves lay melted into queer rounded shapes. Nothing remained standing. From this vantage point, not even an old pattern of streets could be discerned, so thorough had been the destruction. Here and there the moonlight shone white upon sickly fungus growing along the edge of foundations or fallen pillars. The rest lay obscured beneath a dank, foul-smelling mist that flowed and ebbed like a living creature.
“Where are we?” Elandra asked in a whisper. “What is this place?”
Caelan turned his head and saw her standing beside him. She was ghostly pale; shock lay in her face. Only then did he realize that he had lost sevaisin. She was no longer a part of him, but her own separate self again.
A wave of exhaustion swept over him. His knees nearly buckled, and he braced his hand against the stone cliff at their backs. It looked solid to his eyes; he could not see where they had exited.
“What have you done?” Elandra demanded. “Where have you brought us? This place ...” Her voice trailed off in revulsion.
He sighed, sensitive to the maelstrom of emotions inside her, emotions she had not yet acknowledged. Her eyes had begun to flash at him, hurling unspoken accusations.
Better to avoid that by answering the questions she had asked. Turning his gaze back on the ruins below them, Caelan shivered and said, “It is Vrymai-hon, the city of the shadow gods.”
Elandra gasped and made a quick little warding gesture.
No one ever spoke of the ruined city of Beloth and Mael. Such talk was forbidden blasphemy, as forbidden as mention of the River Aithe. Yet throughout the ages, men had not forgotten as they were supposed to. These names were mentioned in secret, fearfully, yet with the excitement of the forbidden. The old legends survived in corners of conversation, in threats spoken sometimes to frighten children, in time of crop failure or drought, in the evenings around campfires after a day of hunting moags or lurkers who had ventured too close to the villages.
The gods of light had broken this evil city and imprisoned the shadow gods long ago, before the second age of men. Yet Vrymai-hon continued to seep evil into the realm of light, never entirely eradicated. Those who hunted Vrymai-hon never found it, yet here Caelan now stood at its edge. He had not sought it, did not want it. He feared it.
A light breeze flew his hair back from his face. In the distance, very low, came a moan of sorrow as though the stones themselves wept in desolation.
The sound made his skin crawl.
“The Penestricans say that there is much treasure abandoned here,” Elandra said. “Enough to restore a kingdom... perhaps enough to rescue an empire.”
He heard the ambition in her voice, steeled with desire. She wanted to keep her throne, intended to fight for it. Did she know yet that he wanted it too?
Thrusting the thought