Si glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]
A short steep ramp ended with stone doors twice Simon’s height. Closed, of course, and doubtless locked in some way from the inside, as if that would stop him.
The solid stone parted at a touch, flowing like silk.
He stepped through into a round chamber with a domed roof. In the centre stood a short basalt column, topped by a larger-than-life, stylised head of a man, cast in bronze. It was a striking sculpture — not human, of course — the long, oblate skull was typical of the Forerunners.
A map was painted on the curving walls: a world map, though not his world. The bulk of the northern continent was recognisable, but below was an entirely unfamiliar set of southern landmasses set in a sea that wasn’t the Circle Sea.
So this was the Heart, the deepest secret of the Oryche, where only the Lord could enter… He’d expected something more impressive.
Eranon cowered behind the head on its column.
Simon advanced on him. His hands trembled. The need to grasp Eranon, to grip his warm flesh and rip from him what he must have, was an urgent, gut-felt yearning.
As he closed, Eranon retreated.
‘Do not resist.’ Need spoke through Simon’s mouth. ‘What you have in your head, give it to me.’
‘The Other?’ Eranon glanced at the bronze head. Its eyes were closed, as if it were sculpted in peaceful sleep. ‘But it’s part of me. If you take it, I’ll die.’
Anger stirred below the all-consuming need. ‘Do you deserve to live? You tried to kill me.’
‘Please, Simon.’ Eranon held up his hands as if to ward him off. ‘You don’t understand. Let me go. I can do a great deal for you. We don’t have to be enemies.’
Under the compulsion, rage bubbled up, making space for Simon’s own thoughts. ‘Why, Eranon? Did your father murder mine? Is that you what didn’t want me to find out?’
‘What, Aric? Light, no. He could barely tie his own shoelaces. Mother hired the assassin. Of course, the plan was mine.’
The compulsive need to grab Eranon surged, blotting out all other thought. Simon lunged for him.
Eranon skittered away, keeping the column between them. ‘Idan was a threat. He knew someone had entered the Heart. My parents thought I’d had a nervous fit, that I’d recover with rest. I could fool them, but not Idan. He would have sent me to Holywell, to the Wardens. So I really had no choice. He had to go.’
Anger. Need. Contempt. Simon’s hands twitched. The Power didn’t understand, that was what Lorie had tried to explain. The Power couldn’t understand what he felt toward Eranon. It didn’t know how to react, so although the compulsion remained strong, it was allowing Simon to think and speak.
‘But I was no danger to you,’ he said.
‘Oh, but you were.’ Eranon scooped up a sword from behind the pillar. ‘You knew me, better than anyone. You even saw me, not long after my supposed nervous fit. We passed on the stairs, our eyes met, and I knew you had seen… that I was different. And when you returned to Athanor, and we met — you knew. You saw that I had changed.’
Simon didn’t remember ever passing Eranon on the stairs and noticing anything different about him. He was alway just Eranon, his awkward, unlovable cousin. They weren’t close, they never really had been, and by then they were in different years at the Arcanum and rarely met. He recalled vague sympathy when he heard about his breakdown, and that was all.
He shook his head. ‘I never had the slightest idea. None of this was necessary.’
Eranon swung the sword. Reflexively, Simon raised his own sword to block; the steel skidded off the black stone blade and Eranon tottered, unbalanced as he tried to move his feet and found them enmeshed in loops of stone. Wyrms snaked from the floor to loop around his ankles, his knees.
Simon seized him by the arm.
Eranon struggled. ‘No. No, don’t.’
But this time, no agreement was required, no submission. Though Eranon fought, his mind beating against his like a trapped bird, the Power in him was a small thing, and weak, and the lesser must submit to the greater. An immaterial something flowed from Eranon to Simon.
Eranon’s face spasmed. His eyeballs rolled back, his limbs twitched and jerked. He sagged in the grip of the stone-wyrms. Simon fell back against the pillar. The need faded; he was free.
Free. He could walk out, find his family, make sure they were all safe. Nothing and no one could threaten him. He’d end the fighting. Restore the city to peace and safety.
Enemies must be destroyed, or there is no peace, no safety.
He frowned. What enemies? Eranon huddled on the floor with vacant eyes, drooling. Who else? House Oryche?
Some of the House had supported Eranon, some probably hadn’t. He didn’t know who was who. Besides, Oryche was his own House. Once, he had sworn to defend them. Destroying Oryche wasn’t an option.
Phylaxes? They had followed Eranon’s lead, embraced guns, warred against their fellow citizens. He didn’t like Phylaxes.
Far below his feet, molten rock shifted, echoing his own deep-held anger. There was the true heart of Athanor, burning with endless rage, only waiting for his call — but House Phylaxes had no single physical home. Destroying them meant destroying the Watch Tower and large sections of the walls, leaving the city defenceless.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Defenceless against who?
The Sothron Empire, of course… he could destroy them. Earthquakes, eruptions, giant waves, sink the land and raise the seas. It wouldn’t be hard. A much smaller event than the Cataclysm…
He stiffened, looking up at the map of a lost world. — Was that you? The Cataclysm?
Not I. A similar, but lesser Power.
— Lesser? The world unmade, civilisation destroyed, a whole race of people driven to extinction, and that was a lesser Power?
Pure terror flowed in his veins. He carried a weapon to unmake the world, and he’d let it insinuate itself into his thoughts, to slip beneath his notice. Lorie had warned him. He must focus. He must remember.
— Why? The Forerunners made you. Why would they make something to destroy themselves?
If he concentrated, he could sense the separation in his mind — the part that was still himself, the part that was not. From the part-that-was-not flowed cool disinterest.
The sword does not choose where it strikes. You have the power. You must choose.
— Wait. I have to think.
Historically, the Sothron Empire were enemies, but they weren’t about to invade Athanor. These days they sent spies and missionaries, not their armies, which were busy with their own rebellious provinces. Besides, if they didn’t exist, who would Athanor trade with?
No, destroying the Empire would be foolish.
What of the northlands? Every year, the ice grinds southward. The summer shortens, crops fail. In a few years, the north kingdoms will beat at Athanor’s walls. There will be famine and war.
Images unrolled before his mind’s eye, vivid and detailed: skeletal men and woman marching in hopeless armies, consuming all before them like locusts; barbarian hosts battering the gates of Athanor; plague-ridden bodies piled in pits to burn.
Focussed inward, he allowed the horrors to come and go, while he remained still and calm. — I won’t kill people to avert a possible future. There must be a better way.
Better? The Power seemed puzzled. You could turn the ice back. Raise the earth’s fires to the surface.
Simon considered it, briefly. — There could be unforeseen consequences.
You could raise land from the sea. Undo the Cataclysm, build new realms to the south. Enough farmland for millions to live in peace.
He sensed its eagerness, almost desperate, but he had its measure now. He stilled his mind, remaining unmoved, patient as Earth. — No. I won’t do that.
But I must fulfil my purpose. You are in danger. Your children are in danger. Don’t you want to be safe?
Of course, he wanted safety. He wanted to live and breathe and hold his children close, and know they would grow up strong and healthy and happy, and live their own lives free of fear.
— Right now, the principal danger… is you.
Simon picked up the sword he’d made. The blade resembled glass more than stone now, yet it was flexible, strong, and very, very sharp. He stood and steadied himself against the basalt column. One good blow would end his life, and the Power with it.
No.
Darkness descended like a curtain: he saw nothing, nothing at all. His heart thumped. The hilt of the sword was slick with sweat. He tried to lift the blade, and his muscles wouldn’t answer.
Crushing weight held him in place. It squeezed inward, compressing his chest, grinding into his joints. His legs buckled. Overwhelming pain blocked all other sensation.
In agony, he cried out, and he tried to lift the sword, but it was gone — he’d dropped it. Once again, he’d failed. Weak. Helpless. Pitiful. Waves of despair, grief, terror, and guilt rolled over him, each scouring his soul more deeply than the last.
End this.
It would be easy, much easier than the sword. The deep fires of Athanor boiled beneath him. He felt the pulse of molten rock in his own veins. He was Athanor: from the roots of the earth to the cloud-shrouded crater wall, from the wave-washed shore to the filthy slums, and everywhere pain and sickness and fear, everywhere people, everywhere suffering.
At his call, the fire would rise and drown it all. No more pain, no more fear, no more anything.
Let it be over.
He began to laugh, great wrenching sobs of laughter that tore his throat. The Power recoiled in confusion.
‘You stupid thing. You stupid, witless thing.’ Lorie was right: the Power didn’t understand humans. The darkness, the weight, the fear and pain — terrible as they were, were all familiar. His hand found the smooth side of the basalt column. He stood beneath the weight that crushed him; it wasn’t real. ‘You think you can break my will with my own memories. I lived through all that and I survived.’
Blind, he clung to the column and the bronze head, his only point of reference. The ancient metal tingled faintly against his palms. The bronze warmed at his touch, and echoed: hollow within, a vacancy waiting to be filled.
— Of course. The head isn’t here as an ornament. It’s a tool, isn’t it?
No. Don’t.
He willed the Power out, away from him, into the emptiness he sensed within the head. The Power resisted; he tore it from his mind in chunks and ripped himself with it, and didn’t care how it hurt. He scourged the last traces, chased the fragments into corners and shovelled them out as they wailed and clawed in protest.
And finally, it was done. He leaned on the column. Pain invaded his awareness, the ache of bruises and cuts and his bad knee — but these were old acquaintances. The Power was gone, expelled into the bronze head. He was free.
A dim spark of light flickered at the edge of his vision. He blinked, struggling to make sense of what he saw. A pale flickering globe lay in a puddle of light at Eranon’s feet. It was a small cold-lamp; Eranon must have used it to guide himself through the Labyrinth. Simon, of course, had needed no lamp — the Power had lit his way, or he had seen by some other sense, he wasn’t entirely sure.
But now the Power was out of his head, light would be welcome. He staggered to the glow and picked it up. The globe chilled his hand. He shook it, and it brightened.
In the pale light, the eyes of the bronze head stared blankly. Air sighed from its mouth. ‘Simon.’ Its voice was breathy, more musical than human, as if an instrument had gained the power of speech. ‘Accept the Power. I must fulfil my purpose.’
Simon laughed. From the fog and jagged edges in his mind, clarity sparked. ‘So this is the secret at the Heart of the Labyrinth.’ Not gold or a monster, after all — a bronze head that talked. ‘Only you weren’t the same before, were you? It was just a small piece of the Power in the head.’
A small piece kept separate until the weapon was to be used, like the spark that lights the blasting powder. Or perhaps the weapon never had been completed, existing only as parts under construction when the Forerunners wiped themselves out.
The small piece left behind in the head was just a voice that whispered of plans and schemes. A perfect adviser and a confidant for all those Oryche lords, down through the generations — but they’d all known what it was, that they shouldn’t trust it too much.
‘Eranon must have found his way to the Heart one day. He shouldn’t have entered. It’s against tradition. But he did, and no one had warned him what you were. What did you say to him? Take me away from here, I’ll make you Lord. Was that it?’
Of course, Eranon would have listened. Eranon so badly wanted a friend, and that’s what he’d got: a secret friend, a voice in his head. No magic power — perhaps it had even drained whatever talent he had, and in return given nothing but plans and paranoia.
‘I can make you Lord,’ said the head. ‘You can rule Athanor. The world, if you want. Wield me. You are my master. I must serve.’
‘Shut up.’ Simon picked up the black stone sword and swung it. The blade sliced through the bronze from the ear on one side to the jaw on the other. Half the head dropped and clanged into the stone floor, ringing like a bell.
What was left remained silent.
Cold liquid seeped over Simon’s fingers, shining faintly. The glass of the lamp was cracked and leaking. The light wouldn’t last long enough to see him out of the Labyrinth. He should hurry.
He glanced at Eranon. Once proud Lord Oryche, now a near-dead husk dribbling on the floor. Dragging him out of the Labyrinth would be hard. Much easier to leave him here, alone and helpless in the dark — but he couldn’t do that. A miner never left a man without light.