Glim hesitated only an instant before changing direction, climbing from branch to branch with dexterity that was difficult to match.
“Don’t we want to go down?” Attrebus asked him as he clambered over one rough bough and reached for another.
“Everything takes you down eventually,” the reptile replied. “This is just the long way.”
Their exertions eventually brought them to another huge trunk, and as they scrambled up on it, despite everything, Attrebus was struck momentarily still by wonder.
They were at the top of the fringe, with the whole mad forest sweeping down and away from them, a massive bent fan.
And below that, the Imperial City from high above-as he had never seen it, and indeed he saw only part of it now, because Umbriel’s shadow must already be over the wall. Before them loomed the White-Gold Tower. Whatever Umbriel hoped to do, he was about to do it.
“We’re out of time,” Attrebus said. He turned to the Argonian. “You said you could use the trees to take Umbriel out of Tamriel.”
Mere-Glim nodded tersely.
“Do it now.”
“You’ll be trapped here,” the reptile-man said.
“If that’s the way it is, then so be it,” Attrebus replied.
Mere-Glim nodded, and after a slight pause, knelt and put his face against the bark.
Glim could feel the poison dissipating; the trees could hear him again. He felt his self soften and flow around the edges as everything that was Umbriel opened itself to him. He heard the call of return, and with an easy bending of his mind gave it greater voice.
Or tried to, but then a spear of pain seemed to drive through him, an absolute command that he acquiesce and fling himself, to break on the lower boughs before falling and vanishing from this world and every other. He rose and took the first step before pushing back against the command, and for an instant he thought he could beat it, push through.
But it was ancient, and the trees bent to it from long habit.
Annaig had been right to doubt him. He’d been so sure, it hadn’t occurred to him that the Umbriel could countermand him.
Now all he could do was escape with his life.
For a moment it looked as if Mere-Glim would jump into the open air, then he stopped, the stippled lids uncovering his eyes.
“I can’t,” he said.
“We’re wasting time, then,” Sul said.
The three of them sprinted up the bough to where its roots grappled with the stone of the rim, and after a short climb, stood on the edge, in a gap between two strange, delicate buildings of glass and wire. A long cable went from the base of one all the way across the valley; several small buildings hung suspended from it, like lanterns at a festival. From the first of those a second cable ran down to the water’s edge.
“There,” Sul said, gesturing at the cable. “That’s the quickest way. It would take forever to climb down there.”
“I’ll have to go with you,” Glim said. “You won’t make it to the bottom of the sump without me.”
The cable was five feet in diameter, but the footing was still pretty tricky. They were a few yards short of the hanging building when Sul shouted and pointed. Vuhon and several other figures were flying toward them.
Sul ran three long steps and jumped; Glim went after him with only an instant’s hesitation. Attrebus followed, wondering how many times he was going to have to fall into the damned thing.
Glim smiled as he fell, remembering a long-ago day when Annaig had dared him to jump with her into the ruins of an old villa.
He hit the water feetfirst and let his body relax-become the air, the water, the very shock that tried to slap the soul from his skin. He plunged deep, pulling a train of bubbles behind him that trailed to the broken mirror of the surface above.
As their descent slowed, he caught Attrebus and Sul by their wrists and kicked fiercely down, toward the little star he’d always been told to avoid. Now he felt it, the pulsing heart and mind of Umbriel, the core that was the true lord of souls. All other light diminished until at last they reached it.
Attrebus felt the pressure against his lungs mount and knew they would never make it back to the surface. He watched the light grow as Mere-Glim pulled them down.
When they reached it, he realized that Sul was unconscious, so he did the only thing he could-he drew Umbra from the sheath on the Dunmer’s back and stabbed it into the light. Even as he did so, he felt a rush of absolute rage. He became the blade, the edge, as Umbra drank him utterly in. He was steel and something more than steel, infinitely worse than steel. The thing waving it around and screaming was no longer Attrebus, and soon he wouldn’t be either.
The light seemed to explode about them, but he didn’t care anymore. Everyone and everything was to blame. The pleasure in Hierem’s cell, the lack of it after, the little pains of moving through any day, anywhere were too much to bear anymore. But he knew he couldn’t die yet-only when everything else was dead would he know any peace.
The light cleared, and he was lying on the floor, shuddering. Umbra lay a few feet away, as did Sul and the Argonian.
They had fallen into a vast nest of polished stone and shining crystal. The air was filled with delicate tones and fleeting incomprehensible whispers, as if motes of dust were excited to speech when light struck them. In the center of the great cavity a translucent pylon rose and met the gently rippling water above and kissed it with light pulsing up from a platform ten feet below, where a thousand glowing strands tied themselves into a coruscating sphere.
Sul was sitting up groggily; Glim was staring up at the water suspended over their heads.
And through the water, Vuhon came, lightning crackling from his eyes.
Sul leapt up to meet him. Blue flame erupted from his open palms and engulfed Vuhon, clinging to him like burning oil. Vuhon staggered back a step, then made a peculiar shaking motion and the fire vanished, replaced by gray smoke. Glim leapt forward, claws raking at Vuhon’s chest. The Dunmer replied with a vicious backhand blow that sent the reptile hurling to the floor. Then he did something that stopped Sul mid-stride; Attrebus didn’t see anything but could feel a crackling on his skin, and the air smelled like hot iron.
Sul strained to take another step, then collapsed.
“So much for your pointless revenge,” Vuhon muttered.
Attrebus looked toward where Umbra lay, trying to drive the terror from his mind, to do what he had to do.
“Stop!” Vuhon shouted.
Attrebus screamed in despair as he dove for the sword. He picked it up, and as he was drawn into it again, into anguish and horror that would never end, he aimed himself down, at the sphere. Vuhon came after him, quick as lightning.
Almost quick enough.
Then Umbra struck into the heart of Umbriel, and everything was changed.
NINE
When Attrebus plunged Umbra into the ingenium, Sul heard the Universe scream. The tortured cry rang from every surface, from the air itself, from Vuhon’s gaping mouth. A tongue of white blaze licked out from the ingenium and struck his old enemy, and his body twisted, deformed, grew blacker, hunched, feral.
“Umbra,” Sul said.
“Umbriel,” the creature snarled, slumping toward him. The flame had thinned, but remained, like a tether. “Why?”
“This has nothing to do with you. It was about Vuhon.”
“I can cleanse myself of him. I can make you powerful, more powerful than we were. We can still escape Vile.”
“No,” Sul replied. “I’m done with this.”
“You are not,” the thing snapped, leaping forward. Sul felt fingers as hard as steel close on his windpipe. He struck into Umbriel’s throat, but the creature only squeezed harder.