At last I could put a name to the wrongness of the world: the hopeless confusion, the creeping evil, the soul-scraping enchantments, the bondage of the spirit that destroyed peace and trust, the withering dark lurking just beyond every object in my sight that made ugly what should be beautiful. It was Zhev'Na. It was the Bridge.
"What is it, Gerick?" Jen laid her hand on my bare arm, her touch and my name connecting me for a moment to the old world.
"I can't stop the assault yet," I said, averting my gaze as I gently pushed her hands away. No explanation could possibly suffice. "I'll go after D'Sanya. I'll do what has to be done." And if I failed, my Zhid would have to do the work for me.
Ven'Dar spun to look at me, as if he read my thoughts. But before the horrified Word Winder could raise his hands again, I released my waiting enchantment. He crumpled to the floor, stunned, eyes still wide open.
"Gerick! Wait! No!"
I closed my ears to Jen and to my own doubts and fears. Taking a firm grip on my mind and soul, I stepped through the Gate of fire.
Chapter 37
"D'Sanya, where are you?" The rain-battered plain stretched in every direction. Nothing moved. No monstrous birds or ravening beasts. No shrieking spirits or vicious skeletons. Nothing but unceasing rain. A mud-hole sucked insistently at my boots. I could not lift either foot without sinking further.
I didn't panic. Instead of fighting such horrors as pits of quicksand, I had learned to shift my direction, to fear something else that would then manifest itself as the world. I turned to my left and found a desert, so bleak an expanse of sun-blasted rock that I knew instantly that D'Sanya was nowhere within earshot. I took a step into the scorched barrens, my feet free of the vanished mudhole.
For hours I had searched down paths of mud and slime, across rocky wastelands, and into desolate valleys, hours of holding my mind together, of resisting the insistent madness of unreality. How did one organize a search when every new direction opened up a different landscape of death? Chaos . . . the Breach.
Yet even the quality of madness in the shifting dimension of the Bridge was changed from my previous experience of it. How was I able to think at all or to travel this realm without the protection of D'Arnath's Heir? Rather than vivid horror—spiders' eyes the size of shields, bats with wingspans broader than kingdoms, tumultuous riots of naked warriors with razored fingers or barbed tongues—I perceived only deadness.
Occasionally I believed I heard sharp breaths or panting over my shoulder. But when I turned, I merely existed in yet another, equally desolate place. Alone.
"D'Sanya, I've something I must tell you." No one answered, not even an echo. A single, rasping locust shot into my face. I brushed it away, detritus no more living than the rock beneath my feet.
I changed course again and this time trod a barren shore. The charcoal-colored lake reflected only bleak storm clouds and sunless sky. At the far end of the lake a mountain peak rose into clouds that flickered with blue-and-purple lightning. The mountain . . . the shaping DArnath had taught his beloved girl child . . .
I ran, soon abandoning the graveled shore for a smooth track that wound across the mountainside, relentless in its upward bent. The path steepened, but I would not slow. A hot rain, the droplets sharp like tiny blades, left blood streaks on my arms.
She stood on the rocky pinnacle, hands upraised, wind gusts whipping her hair, sleeves, and trousers. Her fingers were spread wide as if to reach the thick clouds threaded with darkening fire. As I struggled up the last near-vertical pitch, a faint white glow pulsed from her fingertips and faded to gray wisps, indistinguishable from the cloud. A despairing sob racked her slim back.
"D'Sanya."
She whirled. "How can you be here?" she cried, as if fate had betrayed her once too often.
She cupped her trembling hands between us, but no ball of fire appeared, only a smudge of gray that drifted upward. Tears and raindrops dribbled down her cheeks.
"I don't know how it's possible." I climbed the last few steps, treading carefully on the barren rock, the wind a constant threat to my balance. "Perhaps because I am not your enemy. Please believe I'm not here to hurt you. We must talk, just for a little while. Find a solution to this disaster."
"They're all dying," she said. "You took my rings and pendant, destroyed the oculus and the orbs, too, and now I can't help them. The worlds . . . the people . . . are my responsibility. If I could just clear away this storm . . . the chaos …"
She raised her hands again. A thin, wavering thread of white fire stretched from her hands to a looming cloud. The thick gray wad exploded into more droplets of mist that pricked my exposed skin like needles. Yet, for the moment, I could not heed anything but the landscape that sprawled before us. It halted my breath.
From the base of the mountain to the horizon unfolded all of Gondai, the ocher-and-bronze wastelands centered by the lush green and brilliant white of the fertile Vales and the snowcapped Mountains of Light. Blue-gray oceans rippled at its boundaries. In its very heart huddled the dark blight of Avonar, burning and dying. From that once-bright center dark veins of poison spread into the green lands and the red-brown desert, carrying sepsis to the whole of the land.
If I turned a little to the right, I saw what was surely the mundane world spread out as far as I could see, uncountable cities and villages, mountains and plains— a land trapped in unending winter. Tree boughs sheathed in ice and bent to breaking, grain fields buried in snow, mill wheels frozen, cattle and sheep dead or starving. Bands of ragged men and women rampaged through villages and towns, tearing, burning, killing, ravaging cellars and grain stores. Whole cities were ablaze.
Yet another turn and I gazed out on my chosen homeland of black-and-purple sky, the dark landscape jeweled with golden light—the precious sunrocks that signaled life and growth. Torrential rains battered my virgin world. A cliffside gave way, drowning a cluster of towers in an ocean of mud. One by one the points of light winked out.
In the gap of gray sky cleared by D'Sanya's work another cloud already swelled with coming chaos. I wished desperately to turn my back on this wondrous and terrible display, for I had no faith that even my dreadful solution could heal any of it. "D'Sanya, you must stop. The Bridge is broken. Irretrievably corrupt—"
Her fist gripped my heart. Searing, grinding pain began in my chest and threatened to encompass the universe. As I countered her spell, forced to focus all my power to stay living, the distant, brilliant heart of the Bounded, a yellow ocean of living light, dimmed and faded. "Lady, wait," I gasped. "Please listen to me. . . ."
"This is all your doing!" she yelled, sobbing angrily while blasting another cloud from the sky. Immediately a new cloud bulged in its place, darker and thicker. The rain scalded my skin. "You're destroying my father's work."
I had to stop her. But even after all she'd been through, her power was daunting. Choking on bile and blood as heart and lungs struggled, I struck with the only weapon sure to draw blood. "Do not call D'Arnath father, D'Sanya. Didn't you guess? He disinherited you. Disowned you. Struck your name from the—"
"Liar!" Her hand cracked into my cheekbone. The shrill edge of her scream spoke of long suspicion and denial.