The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [215]
“We know,” Vani said.
He gazed into the glowing coals. “I had believed that’s how they were doing it—how they were feeding the demon. I thought that somehow they must be using the artifact to open gates between the cavern beneath Tarras and the temples of the gods. To pass between worlds takes blood of great power—blood such as that of the being of light Vani told me of, the being who came through the gate with you. But the blood of a sorcerer might be enough to open portals within the city.”
Grace frowned. “But wouldn’t that be impossible without the artifact’s prism? And Vani had that on Earth.”
“Yes, I know that now,” Sareth said. “And as it turned out the artifact was taken to Earth anyway. Which leaves only one answer.”
This time it was Travis who got it first. “The Scirathi have another gate artifact.”
“Yes,” Sareth said.
Falken sighed. “So the sorcerers of Scirath are behind all the murders in the city. They’ve sacrificed gods to the demon in hopes of sating it so they can get past it and gain this scarab. And they’ve been killing anyone who gets close to discovering what they’re doing.”
For a moment sorrow flickered across Melia’s visage, then her expression grew hard. “They will not succeed. We will not let them.”
“But how?” Grace said. “How are we going to stop them if they have a demon on their side?”
A cool tingling passed through Travis. Once again words whispered in his mind.
To choose what it shall be.…
He didn’t know how, only that it had to be so, that this was the reason it had let itself be captured and carried across worlds to him. Carefully, he drew the Stone out of his pocket. It shone dully on his hand, seeming to absorb the firelight. Sinfathisar. The Stone of Twilight.
“We’re going to do it with this,” he said.
72.
Lirith stepped from the back of the wagon in which she had slept and breathed in the moist scent of dawn. White-gold light stole among the circle of ithaya, and the tall trees swayed in a wind that swept off the sea. Gulls circled in the sky, their calls drifting down like the faint voices of ghosts.
Last night, when she had stumbled into the wagon to sleep, she had been too weary to really look at the craft. Now she saw that the wagon was shaped like a toad. She was grateful it was not a spider.
She left the wagon’s steps, and her bare feet sank into the dewy grass. A sharp, clean scent rose from it. She moved among the trees until she could see it far below: the white towers and gold domes of Tarras. They gleamed brilliant and perfect in the dawnlight.
No, not perfect. From the city, several thin, dark lines rose into the sky. Tarras was burning. Only in a few places, yet to Lirith it meant one thing: the darkness and confusion they had glimpsed in the city was growing. How many people had abandoned their hearths, their businesses, their loved ones to drink the Elixir of the Past and stare at the sun with blind eyes? But maybe it didn’t matter; maybe soon there would be no city and no people left to worry about. Lirith hugged herself against the wind. To her eyes, the lines of smoke looked like black threads reaching toward the sky.
She hesitated, then shut her eyes and reached out with the Touch. Yes, she could see it: the tangle in the fabric of the Weirding. It seethed and grew as she watched, and sickness welled up in her. All the same, she forced herself to look closer, to peer into the heart of the tangle.
There, she could see it, or rather sense it: the black void at the center. Even as she watched, a thread was drawn close to the tangle—then flashed and was gone. So it was doing more than merely entangling the threads of the Weirding. It was eating them.
But, after what she had learned last night, that only made sense. That the demon was the source of the tangle in the Weirding as well as the change in the garden of the gods there could be no doubt. Yet why had Lirith first seen the knot all the way back in Ar-tolor?
Think, sister. What happened that day you first glimpsed the tangle? The