No more, he intoned, hurrying up the stairs. No more.
As light began to filter into the holy darkness, he came into the burial chapel to the base of the Faithful’s Stair, the tight, winding passageway up to the stained glass–filled sepulchers. It was a sealed tomb, but Nielash Mousa knew that the windows presented a possible entrance, a back way into Terreanfor, the only other place where Night Mountain’s hidden cathedral could be broached.
Nielash Mousa knelt at the base of the Faithful’s Stair.
Slowly he began to chant, intoning the words he had learned a lifetime before, words he prayed he would never have to utter. They were the Words of Closing, words of power, of destruction, in a language long dead, that had been taught in secret to each of the benisons who’d had stewardship over Terreanfor since it was built, with the understanding that they were never to be used unless there was no other way of avoiding them, and then only in a time when the basilica itself was under attack, in danger of being destroyed or, worse, its magic misused. That time had never before come to pass, not even in the wake of the war that had torn apart most of the continent, a war in which no weapon of destruction had been deemed too unholy to use.
That time had finally come.
46
The darkness within the cavern of Llauron’s body seemed to close in.
“Is there no opening, no hole—”
Achmed held up his hand gently to silence her. He closed his eyes and loosed his path lore, seeking an egress, any small egress, from within the enormous stone structure. Finally he shook his head.
“None,” he said. “That Progenitor Wyrm knew what he was doing when he encircled the Vault of the Underworld. If there had been any small crack, any hole, those formless spirits would have been able to escape. None ever did, not for thousands of years, until the Sleeping Child hit the Earth and shattered the Vault. It appears that in his attempt to rescue us, Llauron may have condemned the three of us to suffocation.”
“Ashe will return soon with the carriage,” Rhapsody said, her eyes glittering in the dark as the panic within her rose. “He will be able to get us out of here.”
“How? What power does Ashe have over a fired shell of elemental earth, any more than Elynsynos does?”
The bundle within Rhapsody’s arms began to move; the baby’s voice rose in the beginnings of a wail. Achmed watched as Rhapsody’s face changed completely, the sadness now replaced with horror. She crawled weakly to a stand and ran her hand up the ribbed wall of stone, banging on it.
“Elynsynos! Help! Elynsynos!”
She banged again, the sound dull and muted beneath the screams of the baby.
Achmed seized hold of her wrist; as he did, he felt light-headed. The world shifted for a moment, and he remembered suddenly the first time he had taken her by the wrist, dragging her away from her homeland, through the bowels of the world, a lifetime ago.
He loosed his grip slightly so as not to cause her pain, noting the thinness of the skin on her arm, the loss of blood in her face as she turned panicked eyes on him.
“Shhhh,” he said gently, in the same tone he had used to gentle down her child. “Save the air. If she’s alive, she already knows we’re in here. Calling won’t help.”
Rhapsody sank back to the floor of the cavern, clutching the crying child closer, her eyes spilling over with tears of desperation. She caressed the infant for a moment, then looked up suddenly.
“Yes, it will,” she said slowly. “Yes, it will help, if I can reach a Kinsman. Anborn, or Grunthor—if my call can reach them on the wind—”
“What wind, Rhapsody?” Achmed asked quietly.
He could feel the breath go out of her, along with her hope.
“Come over here,” he said, leaning against the wall. “You Lirin are so wasteful of air, because you are used to endless quantities of it. Take it from a cave dweller; it’s best to try and meditate. You will last longer.” He met her gaze as the baby began to whimper more weakly. “Calm is perhaps the last gift you can give your child.” He smiled slightly, trying to take away the sting of the words.
Rhapsody continued to stare at him for a long moment. Then realization came into her eyes. She rose shakily to her knees and crawled over to him, leaning against the stone wall that had once been Llauron’s body. Achmed exhaled shallowly as the baby fell silent, his tiny chest heaving, then put his arm around Rhapsody and drew her head down to his shoulder.
“Meditate,” he whispered with great effort. “Try and—remember—the best of things. There’s not . . . air . . . for anything . . . else.”
“You . . . are . . . one,” she said softly, leaning back against his shoulder, her head heavy now. “Even if . . . we have fought, I—I do love—”
“Shhhh,” he said again. “Don’t . . . be a Waste . . . of Breath.”
Through his very skin, he could feel her heartbeat begin to relax and slow, until he could barely detect it at all.
Nielash Mousa’s head began to hum with a negative static as he chanted; a stabbing pain emerged above his left eye, making his forehead feel as if it were about to sunder. Resolutely he pressed on until the base of the Faithful’s Stair began to shake, then tremble violently, at last collapsing upon itself, sealing off the upper tomb with the sepulchers and stained-glass windows above.
Dizzy, he lowered himself to the ground in the utter darkness. He sat, unmoving, on the floor until he could regain his senses, concentrating on the Earth’s own song, which was beginning to resound in less of a minor key.
Weakly he walked to the enormous pile of rubble that had once been the Faithful’s Stair, and examined it. As soon as he determined that the seal was complete, and the basilica would never be able to be entered through it without the dome of the sepulcher collapsing onto whoever was attempting to enter, he made his way back down the wide staircase, through the inner and outer sanctum, past the Antechamber of the Sisters, until he was standing before the only remaining place in all of Night Mountain through which the basilica could be entered.
The basilica’s front door.
Surreptitiously he peeked out of the dry earthen doorway, past the bored guards, seeking one last look at the sunshine he knew he would never see again. It was there, hazy with flecks of snow; silently the benison bade it goodbye.
Then he turned his back on the light of the upworld and made his way to the altar of Living Stone once more.
Softly he began the chant the Words of Closing again; the irony choked him, because those words were the countersign to the song that had sung the cathedral into being, the holy prayer that had revealed Terreanfor for the first time to man, or at least to men who had been able to record history. He tried not to think about that moment of discovery, when the living earth first was seen in all its dark and sacred beauty, because the loss was incalculable.
Safeguard Terreanfor. The Patriarch had risked his own life and soul reversing the Chain of Prayer to utter the words in a way the Blesser of Sorbold would be certain to hear.
Fighting the nausea, the splitting pain, the blood as it began to pour forth from his nose and eyes, Nielash Mousa continued to chant until the entire opening of the basilica past the Antechamber of the Sisters collapsed upon itself, bringing down a goodly section of Night Mountain with it, burying the guards who were waiting outside in the landslide, trapping himself inside.
Sealing the basilica forever.
Deep within a distant mountain, in a realm that bordered the lands of Sorbold, the last living Child of Earth took in a breath. The fever in which she had been tossing broke; the smoothly polished skin of her forehead glistened with the dew of its leaving.