The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [235]
Travis felt it before he saw it. A puff of slightly cooler air moved against his face, and the faint echoes of his footfalls no longer returned to him so quickly. There was a space ahead. A big space. The purple light mottled the darkness now like a livid disease. An acrid reek permeated the air. The walls fell away to either side.
Had it not been for his preternatural eyes, he never would have seen the edge. As it was, Travis’s right boot skittered over the precipice. The rest of his body nearly followed, then strong hands caught his shoulders. Durge.
“I thought you were supposed to be keeping back,” Travis whispered.
“As you wish, Goodman Travis. I will heave you over the edge and return to my place.”
Travis winced. “That won’t be necessary. And thanks.”
The others drew nearer, and Durge’s outstretched hands kept them from drawing too close to the edge. They stood on a flat slab of stone that jutted out into the void. In the center of the slab stood a cylinder of dark stone, about four feet high and as big around as Travis might encircle with his arms. It looked like some kind of pedestal.
The purplish light flickered in all directions like heat lightning, making it impossible to gauge the size of the cavern. It was huge, that was all Travis could tell—so huge he wondered why the entire city hadn’t already collapsed into it.
Sareth let out a hiss. “It has grown. The cavern was not half this size when I was last here.”
“The demon,” Lirith said quietly, although her words still echoed. “Where is it, Sareth?”
“Should it not be upon us in its hunger?” Durge said. He was holding his greatsword now, as if the massive blade could damage a being that didn’t truly have a body.
“I do not know,” Sareth breathed. “The demon is …”
“It’s gone,” Grace said simply.
The others turned around.
“What do you mean gone?” Travis said.
She spread her arms. “Gone. The threads of the Weirding are all tangled, just like you said, Lirith. And some of them are half … eaten. But the thing that did it isn’t here anymore. I’m sure of it.”
“The ground tremble we felt,” Durge said. “Could that have been caused by the demon’s escape?”
Sareth clenched his hands into fists. “No, that is impossible. Had the demon escaped at that moment, there is no doubt we would have known it.”
“Then maybe it just broke free,” Travis said. “Just minutes ago, after we passed through the gate.”
Durge scowled at this. “Surely we would have felt more tremors in the tunnels if it had done so. Logic says that the demon could not have escaped this place so recently. Which means it must still be here.”
“Except it’s not,” Grace said.
Lirith crossed her arms. “One of you has to be wrong. The demon can’t possibly be here and not here at the same time.”
Travis’s mind buzzed. Time. Then, in a flash, he had it.
“Time!” he said aloud, and the word ricocheted all around the chamber. “That’s it, Lirith.”
Sareth glared at him. “What are you talking about?”
Understanding fluttered in Travis’s brain, moving so quickly it was hard to pin down. “You were talking about it last night, Lirith. And we saw it when we walked through the city this morning. Gods and people are getting lost in dreams of the past. It’s the demon—it’s been distorting the flow of time here in Tarras, first for the gods of the city, and now for its citizens.”
Lirith nodded. “The demon is not just consuming the Weirding. It’s tangling the very threads of the tapestry of time.”
Grace’s eyes lit up. She turned toward Sareth. “Vani told us the morndari don’t have physical bodies. Is that right?”
“It is.”
“Travis,” she said, “do you know anything about the theory of relativity?”
“You’re the doctor, Grace.”
“Yes, but unfortunately not a doctor of physics. Yet from what little I know, relativity says that time, matter, and space are all linked. If something had no body—no mass—it could move at the speed of light. And doing that would have relativistic effects on time.”
Sareth’s angular visage was grim. “I do not pretend to understand what you say, Grace. But while the morndari do not have bodies,