The Ashes of Worlds - Kevin J. Anderson [227]
“No!” When Rusa’h screamed, a gout of fire jetted from his mouth.
The sparkling fog grew so thick that Jess could barely see what he was fighting. Flashes of blinding orange and yellow battered the wentals, but he and Cesca kept pushing closer to the faeros incarnate. Their inner water elementals were exhausting themselves, depleting their energy to protect Jess and Cesca. He hoped they could last longer than the fires.
Unable to resist the added pressure, Rusa’h stumbled backward.
Jess refused to back off, even though he could feel the wentals using up all of their energy inside him. He began to feel light-headed, empty, as if every molecule of moisture were being wrung from his pores. To summon any last vestiges of strength, he made himself remember the faeros attack on Charybdis and its pristine seas full of reborn wentals. That holocaust would always be burned into his mind — the blasted oceans, the blackened reefs and undersea rocks. Nor could he forget how the faeros had attacked Golgen, had tried to destroy the Roamer skymines . . . had burned Theroc to consume the worldtrees . . . had killed Cesca’s father and stranded his uncle on Jonah 12.
The wentals within his cells pulled together and threw themselves upon the burning man.
Unable to resist the extra push, Rusa’h staggered backward into the muddy pool from their wental ship — and the trap was sprung. Living water surged up from the ground and seized his legs. Rusa’h thrashed, hurling fire everywhere.
Before he could regain his balance, Jess and Cesca threw themselves upon the faeros incarnate, entwining him in smothering blankets of mist. Jess drained his inner reservoirs dry, spending the last of the wental power that had saved him from the hydrogues so long ago in one final surge. Beside him and connected to him, Cesca did the same.
The flames inside Rusa’h were finally quenched. Extinguished from within, the faeros incarnate collapsed.
Coughing and choking, barely able to breathe through the boiling clouds of steam, Jess and Cesca staggered away to drop to their knees near the Ildirans.
Nira set down her treeling and rushed to them. Before Jess could think to warn her away, the green priest touched him, held him. Jess automatically cringed as she helped him to his feet. He looked at the unharmed green priest in amazement. “I don’t understand. My touch should have killed you.”
Cesca stared at her hands in wonder and drew a breath. “Feel it, Jess. They’re gone. The wentals are no longer inside!”
Jess realized that his own skin seemed exactly as it once had been. He had almost forgotten the sensation of being normal. “We must have burned them out — used them up.” Jess turned around in amazement. “We’re human again. And we survived!” Joy welled up within him, mingling with sadness and admiration for the water elementals that had sacrificed themselves.
“We defeated the faeros,” Cesca said quietly. “That’s what matters. That’s what the wentals wanted.” They looked up and saw the remaining fireballs flitting away aimlessly, to be scooped up and whisked away by several tree-bubbles that dragged them to the nearby suns.
Jess smiled, feeling immensely relieved.
They heard a sound nearby. Steam still rose, scattered by churning thermal currents in the air. When the hot mist finally cleared, they saw the former faeros incarnate on his knees, wholly defeated. The fiery elementals had been purged from his system, and now he huddled there naked and weak, a mere shadow of himself.
Sobbing, Rusa’h turned his face up to the Mage-Imperator.
* * *
158
Deputy Chairman Eldred Cain
By the sharklike expression on the Chairman’s face, Cain could tell that all humanity had died within him. Basil Wenceslas, who had once been a smooth and talented leader, hard negotiator, and competent administrator, had tumbled headlong down a slippery slope.
OX stood beside the throne, his optical sensors flashing. “Chairman Wenceslas, I must point out that you have no legal