The Gates of Night_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [118]
“I can’t think about this right now,” she said. Her voice was thick, her cheeks streaked with tears. “This … not now. Not with everything else that’s at stake.”
“I understand,” Pierce said. And for once, he did. He felt emotions warring within him, feelings he didn’t even know he had. Recognition of Harmattan had been shock enough. Yet there was something else, a stranger feeling. Talin and Aleisa were his parents, too. He’d never known his creators, and he’d never thought such knowledge mattered. But now his mind was full of questions. What expectations did his parents have for him? How had he measured up? What plans had they had for him?
And what did Harmattan mean—This is the will of our true creator?
While loss and confusion welled within, there was one bright ember. Lei. His sister. They would face the future together, and if these mysteries could be unraveled, they would find a way.
Lei’s grip tightened. “Sovereign Host!” she said, her eyes widening. “Look at the plains!”
Pierce pushed aside his troubled thoughts and looked down at the desert. At first he saw nothing of note. They were high above the plains, and the moon was dim, then he realized …
The plains were moving.
There were no campfires below, no lights of any sort, and it took time for Pierce’s eyes to adjust to distance and limited visibility. An army spread across the desert below, stretching out as far as the eye could see. Pierce had seen many armies during the Last War, but this was a force drawn from nightmares. Platoons of insect horrors arrayed alongside masses of serpentine tentacles and figures formed of pure shadow. Shapes of strange siege engines rose up into the night, cannons formed of crystal and curved bone. Despite the constant motion, an eerie silence lay across the desert. No light, no sound, just nightmares girding for war.
Daine sprinted over to their position. “What is it?”
Lei pulled her goggles down over her eyes and adjusted the lenses. “There’s thousands of them,” she said. “Tens of thousands. Maybe more. I see … circles, glass rings set into the ground, maybe forty feet across.”
The legions of Dal Quor prepare for battle. I remember when my people gathered around our gates. Shira’s thought was touched with sorrow and shame. Song filled the air, and our crystal banners made the plain an ocean of stars. We served the great light. We thought ourselves the heralds of glory, perfect embodiments of wisdom. But the people of Xen’drik spurned our guidance and refused to be hosts for our people. And when they would not shield us from our destruction, we turned to war. We struck at their dreams. We tore at the fabric of reality itself. And these horrors down below will do far worse. There is no mercy in them, only malice. I can feel it.
“Flame,” Daine murmured. “We can’t fight that.”
“We don’t have to,” Lei said, pushing back her goggles. “All we need to do is find that orb and destroy it. That’s what my mother said. She’d send us where we needed to be. The only question is what we do now.”
“Turn around?” Jode said.
Pierce followed Jode’s gaze but saw only stone and sky.
“What are you talking about, Jode?” Daine said.
“There, in the center of the plateau. Can’t you see the tower?”
He is correct, Shira said. There is a force that seeks to deceive your senses, to hide what lies before you. Look beyond the lie.
Pierce studied the plateau. A tower, Jode had said. If there was a tower in this place, what might it look like? He let the image drift into his mind, a dark spire set against the starless sky … and it appeared. A tower of teeth. Four massive tusks reached into the night, supporting a single spire of ivory and raw flesh. Dozens of mouths adorned walls of dark muscle, and the jaws of an ancient dragon stood in place of a gate, grinning at the top of a short flight of stairs.
“What is it?” Daine said, studying the tower. “Is it alive?