26


    Screeching, clawing and gouging, the burned and sodden undead kept right on coming. Reston swung his sword, shouted spells, until his arms were too heavy to lift and his manna was drained like a water-pouch in the desert. Still, there were gnashing heads to slash off and clutching hands… seared by the circle''s blessing… to hack into quivering chunks.


    Anything falling on this side, twisted and writhed as it burned. Anything landing without, flopped until joined unto other shorn parts, forming towers of shrieking heads or tumbling masses of arms. And still, they kept coming; driven back by Lord Galadin''s weakening flame-blasts and the wood-elf paladin''s cold Holy Wind.


    Lady Alyanara had risen above them, shining like a beacon in the darkening sky. Between clouds, smoke and unending battle, there wasn''t much time to gawk at the heavens, but most of the stars had gone out. Only the serpent Epophys glowered there, now; burning like a river of coal.


    In the west, a faint brush of light still painted the clouds, and then even that disappeared. A tap to Reston''s left shoulder signaled the exhausted Lord Warden to fall back. Nodding, he withdrew into the blessed circle, allowing somebody fresher… a wood-elf… to take his place at the edge. Reston staggered into the circle''s warded center, where healing and rest-magic waited.


    Coughing blood and seeing double, at first, he got a chance to just… gods… sit. To drink a few gulps of carefully hoarded water from a cup held by another wood-elf, Speaker Annetta. Peered at her over the rim of the cup, grunting,


    "What''re… you doing here? Should be back… in the fortress, Speaker."


    A brief smile thawed her stern, tattooed face.


    "If we fall this night, Lord Warden, no place is safe. Not Starloft. Not Lobum. Besides, my friend Andara is here. Where else would I be?"''


    Andara, whom he''d turned his back on, all those long cycles ago. Whom he''d been fated to love… but too bitter, too sorely hurt to accept.


    "Would that you and she were a thousand miles away, Speaker," he muttered, around a mouthful of crumbly waybread.


    Annetta smiled again.


    "Would that we all were, or that the times were less evil, Lord Reston… but all we can do is battle the darkness, inside and out." Then, pointing upward, "But stay, look at the sorceress!"


    Indeed, he''d have been hard put not to, for Alyanara''s sudden bright glow was tough to miss. She flared like the sun, all at once; speaking in a voice not her own. Reston sensed She-of-the-Flowers along with the lake god, Irilan. Using Alyanara as a conduit, they created a pulse of white light that rocketed soundlessly outward; like a mage globe with the sorceress as its unicorn-hair filament.


    The bubble of light exploded away from Alyanara, who shone like a star at its center. Reston felt both gods, dying, flash clean through him. And where the light touched, not one dark thing, not one undead corpse remained. Fires doused. Wind stilled and, up in the sky, the crimson stars of the serpent flickered.


    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


    Down in the cavern, the shocked stillness that followed Valerian''s plunge didn''t last very long. Without the Mother''s foul will, her puppets just dropped to the ground. The cavern''s obsidian floor glowed briefly, displaying a lone preserved body.


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    Salem ignored the cries of sorrowing griffin and goblin child. Stepped over Orrin''s contorted body, which had everted like an over-cooked sausage, spilling black tentacles onto the bloody ground. Good riddance, and not her quarry.


    Instead, Salem''s curse drove her like the reins on a riding lizard, to the spot where, soon…


    A blazing line split the air, blossoming into a transport gate. With edges burning like paper, the portal gaped wide to reveal Mrowr''s former master, Sherazedan.


    "NO!" the elf-wizard snarled, rushing through. "It wasn''t supposed to happen like this!"


    For indeed, the center on which all was balanced, the linchpin of Chaos and Order had shifted a bit, but not cracked.


    "She was meant to be killed here, not stored! Idiot! Heedless, moronic imbecile! Five thousand years wasted! Planning beyond mortal comprehension, completely undone!"


    He would have raged more, perhaps; flinging spittle, fury and curses, but Salem had finally reached the right place and time. Here. Now.


    Moving through shadow, the night-dark Tabaxi rogue appeared directly in front of Sherazedan. Not behind him, which would have been safer. Before, as she wanted to look in his silver-pale eyes.


    With a swift flicking gesture, Salem unleashed her curse on the raging wizard. Like oily scum, it flowed from the Tabaxi''s hand onto Sherazedan, coating the startled elf in glistening darkness. All at once, he could not speak, see or breathe, and his limbs were bound up as though he''d been wrapped in adamant chains.


    "You have slain many small gods and millions of innocents, brother of Oberyn," hissed Fate, speaking through Salem. "Their cries have not gone unheard. You would free Strider, the Shepherd of Stars? Very well… take his place then, Monster."


    And then her curse struck at last, its power great enough to shift a world in its orbit or summon a swarm of life-ending asteroids. The open gate behind Sherazedan changed its view. No longer displaying a cracked, tilted workroom, the portal now reached to the nexus of planes from which everything comes. To a place where darkness and light strove in balance, forever.


    Cosmic gears seemed to shift. Multi-dimensional rust and ice flaked away, as Sherazedan was hauled through the portal and out of the cavern. Locked for so long in combat with Chaos, Oberyn found himself freed, replaced by his struggling brother. The paralyzed wizard seemed to flatten and shrink, whirling to sink like a knife-blade in wood, right at the hinge of reality.


    Someone Else stumbled into the cavern then, shedding layers of stasis and frost. Oberyn.


    He was weary. Confused, at first, but able to tap the thoughts of those all around him for the truth. Strikingly tall, his hair was as silver as Sherazedan''s, but his eyebrows were dark, as were his fathomless eyes. He was armed and armored for war, in the gear of lost centuries.


    Learning what had happened from Salem''s wide-open mind, he turned away, pulling a starry cloak over his head in mourning. The mortals just waited, too heart-sore to trouble their long-absent Lord.


    "I will hear no ill spoken of my brother," said Oberyn, in a deep and resonant voice. "He has performed acts of unspeakable evil… came close to unleashing Chaos… for the purest of reasons. He acted from love, willing to bring down the plenum, for me. Now, he will pay and I cannot save him."


    He uncovered his head once more, looking around at the Tabaxi. Salem had changed. Where once she''d been solid black, now she sported a white chin, gloves and chest. The curse was lifted, at last.


    "Your life is your own, Kitten of Distant Sands," Said Lord Oberyn. "No more the weapon of Fate, you are free."


    Past her, then, to the stunned and silent griffin, ranger and goblin.


    "There is no cure for great loss except time," he said to them. "In helping to repair the damage done by my brother, you may find some measure of comfort, along with my blessing."


    Something rose from the glossy obsidian floor, then. A wish-globe, shining with soft, whirling colors. Oberyn wafted it over to himself with a gesture. Studied it a moment or two, then shook his head, murmuring,


    "Won in a drinking contest. Ah, well… we work with the tools that we have."


    Lord Oberyn smiled a little, cupping the globe in one battle-scarred hand. Looked at the mortals again, saying,


    "Such items can only be used by the truly pure of heart, or the wish will result in disaster. One of Titania''s least merciful "gifts"... and I fear that our lost young mage would not have qualified, any more than I do."


    He tossed the wish-globe gently into the air, where it hung for a bit before curving around to hover near Pretty One. The rescued god nodded, accepting Fate''s choice.


    "Take it, little Sorceress," he said to the wide-eyed girl. "Take it and wish from the heart… for all of us."