The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [256]
It was only when Lirith screamed that Travis saw the sleeping figures that floated on their backs amid the rubble. So it was not only inert matter that was pulled toward the demon. Melia and Falken, Grace and Aryn, Beltan and Vani—all of them seemed to be asleep as they floated around the Etherion, moving closer to the demon with each pass.
There was no sign of Xemeth anywhere. Maybe he had escaped. Or maybe the demon had already consumed him. Certainly the thing had not been bound again. And from the looks of things, Travis had known there were only minutes until the demon consumed the others.
He had turned toward Sareth, Durge, and Lirith, and that was when he had seen them let go of the balcony and rise up into the air, their eyes closed. He had cried out, reaching for them, but he had been too slow. The three had started their inexorable, spiraling trek toward the demon. Then Travis had felt a heaviness come over him. Too weary to resist, he had let go of the railing, and the shadow had wrapped around him, guiding him toward the dark remembrances of the past.
“But you’re here now, Travis,” he said through clenched teeth.
Alice. Alice had helped him. And Grace.
He stood up, searching for the others. For a terrible moment he thought they were already gone. Then he saw them, floating dangerously near the center of the spiral, their bodies still rigid. Melia and Aryn were the closest. Another turn of the spiral and they would reach the demon. The others were not far behind. But where was Grace?
“Travis!”
The word was nearly lost in the roar of the wind and the groan of fracturing stone. Then he saw her on the other side of the Etherion, staggering over the cracked and heaving floor.
“Grace!” he shouted, taking a step toward her.
Now her voice spoke in his mind. Hurry, Travis.
Before he could answer, invisible hands tugged at him with terrible strength. Across the Etherion, Grace flung her arms around a column, but in the center there was nothing for Travis to grab. He felt his body grow terribly light; the toes of his boots skittered on the floor. Then came another tug, and he was rising into the air.
The Stone, Travis! You must use it.
This time it was a different voice that spoke in his mind—the voice of an old friend.
I don’t understand, Jack.
You must use Sinfathisar against the demon. The Stone can complete it.
Travis was rising beneath the center of the spiral. There would be no slow roundabout for him. He was hurtling upward, straight toward the demon.
What do you mean, complete it?
Do quit thinking and start listening for a change, Travis. Jack Graystone’s voice sounded fiercely in his mind. Travis could almost see the elderly antique dealer’s blazing blue eyes. The Stone of Twilight cannot destroy, not like the demon. That’s not its power. The demon is a paradox, a thing of nothingness bound in rock. Sinfathisar can resolve that paradox—it can make the demon one thing or the other. Haven’t you learned by now that’s the essence of the Stone? Water to wine. Lead to gold. Darkness to light. Possibilities, Travis, that’s what it’s always been. All you have to do is choose what it shall be.
Choose what it shall be. That was what the fairy had said, why it had suffered itself to be brought to Earth to give him Sinfathisar. But what was he supposed to choose?
The wind screamed past his ears. He could see the demon amid the rubble, could see with his new eyes past the haze of shadow that surrounded it. It had no shape, but was rather a blob that roiled like a drop of liquid metal. Except that was just a shell, the thing the sorcerers had used to bind it to Eldh. Inside the shell it was one with the morndari, the ravenous spirits that had pursued him in the void between the worlds: a hungry pit of emptiness that would never, could never be filled no matter how much it consumed.
He was ten feet away.
Do it, Travis!
Five feet. A sinuous strand of darkness spun outward from the demon to reel