The Shield of Weeping Ghosts - James P. Davis [124]
Bastun imagined himself a vessel. He allowed the power to tear through his body and spirit. Long jagged wounds opened and closed in his skin as he pulled the power into himself, denying it entrance to the world. Each rip brought tears to his eyes, yet focused them, sharpening his vision as he spent his rage. Slowly, the cold reseating of his skin became less painful and more numb. Stygia accepted the currency he had brought, though he wondered what he had purchased in return.
Several strides away, on the edge of the ice, the durthan stirred beside the black waters of the Stygian ocean. From the limitless depths of that dark sea, he sensed the attention of an ancient mind and felt its touch flow through the rush of power in his body. Malicious thoughts marched along his arms like an army of needles.
The reasonless tempest of Stygia's power became a living thing as evil caressed and crushed all at once. It whispered loving words in his ears, crooning and cajoling him to release his control, to open the doors of his willpower and loose hell upon a world that had no use for him. It shouted and screamed, the thunderous voice echoing as if submerged, tearing at the insides of his flesh in frustration to free itself.
He could see it, buried somewhere in the ocean's dark-a glacier bearing a dark blot of the prisoner within: Stygia's frozen devil-prince, Levistus.
The ice shook and cracked around him, geysers of water bursting from beneath. White faces of the damned sobbed and screamed from within the shifting blocks. Anilya rose on her hands and knees, crawling away from the rising waves of the ocean.
Despite pain and the croonings of that evil, Bastun held back the tide that swelled to break him.
This had been the failing of Arkaius. The long-unanswered covenant he had forged in Ilythiiri runes had been too much for Shandaular's king. His desire to save his people had driven him to desperate measures, pitting devils against the Nentyarch's demons. In the end he had turned away from the call of that dark mind in the depths, horrified by what he had created.
Bastun knelt alone on that precarious perch, resisting the weaknesses of his own humanity in order to hold the edges of the Word intact for those he left behind. The power that Arkaius had denied, Bastun reluctantly accepted.
He felt a measure of control transferred to him as strength flooded through his arms and legs. The wound.in his side disappeared. His aches and pains fell away. Spent rage left him hollow, and he sensed the sighing approval of Stygia and its hidden lord. With a strained thought he willed the ice to stop its quaking, and an ominous stillness settled uncomfortably within him.
Anilya approached slowly, shaking with cold, though Bastun sensed little more than a cool, gentle breeze. He looked up, coursing with a torrent of borrowed power, and only faintly felt the desire for vengeance. All doubt and things unnecessary, emotions that could unbalance his control, he made a space for them within. She had chosen her path, and he would make sure only she suffered for that choice.
"You killed him," he said, voice low and growling, amplified into an inhuman sound that grated in his ears. The last memory of his master's face, dying in the snow, flashed through his mind.
Anilya looked at him in fear, then over her shoulder at the nightmarish landscape that surrounded them both.
"You opened the Word, vremyonni," she said, straining to breathe the cold air. "Do not accuse me of trifles like murder!"
The durthan lunged, dark flames spitting from her hands as she sought to take hold of the Breath. The spell licked painfully at his hands and arms, hissing where it touched the buried blade. He stared curiously at the effect as if outside of himself. Anilya pulled and scratched at his fingers, finding them as hard