At least, that was what she had told herself. But deep within, Deirdre had known it wasn’t over, not truly. They had all of them been waiting, that was all. Waiting for a day when two worlds would draw closer. Waiting for a time they would be called again.
“All right,” Deirdre said, setting the empty glass on the coffee table. “Who’s going to tell me why I’m here?”
Vani and Beltan both cast glances at Travis. He sat down on the sofa next to her and took her hand in his.
“I supposed I always let myself believe it was just a story, that there was nothing behind it.” His gray eyes were solemn. “I thought it would never come. Only now it finally has.”
Deirdre shook her head. “I don’t understand. What’s come?”
“Fate,” Travis said.
Before Deirdre could ask what he was talking about, Vani spoke, and for the next several minutes Deirdre listened as the T’golexplained how and why she had come to Earth, and of her last three years fleeing from the Scirathi. Vani’s words were terrible and fascinating, but Deirdre found it hard to focus on them. A droning noise filled her skull; there was something she needed to tell them, but what was it?
She stared at the T’gol. Vani’s face was sharper than before, but still lovely, even delicate. Tattoos like vines accentuated the exquisite lines of her neck; thirteen gold rings glittered in her left ear. However, Deirdre knew it would be a mistake to let that beauty lull her. Vani was an assassin, trained since girlhood in the arts of stealth, infiltration, and killing in swift silence.
There was much Vani alluded to that Deirdre already knew, things she had learned when she first met the T’goland which Deirdre had included in her reports to the Seekers: how Vani’s people believed Travis Wilder was the one destined to raise Morindu the Dark from the sands that had swallowed it long ago, and how the gold‑masked sorcerers, the Scirathi, hoped to reach it first, to steal the magics entombed within for their own purposes.
“Only what exactly is buried in Morindu?” Deirdre said as she rubbed her temples, voicing her thought without meaning to.
“Good question,” Beltan rumbled. The big man sat on the floor, making steady progress through an enormous bowl of popcorn.
“My people cannot say for certain,” the T’golsaid, prowling back and forth before the curtained window. “No records survive from the last days of the War of the Sorcerers. We have only what our storytellers have passed down. Nor were any of the Morindai there at the very end, for the people of Morindu were ordered to flee the city as the army of Scirath approached. Only the Seven A’narai, the Fateless Ones who ruled in the name of the god‑king Orъ, remained behind. They and the Shackled God, Orъ, himself.”
The War of the Sorcerers. Deirdre had heard Vani speak those words before. In Denver, the T’golhad told them of the great conflagration that, three thousand years ago, had engulfed the ancient city‑states of Amъn on Eldh’s southern continent. The sorcerers, powerful and angry, had risen up against the arrogant god‑kings of the city‑states, seeking to cast them down and take their place. However, Morindu was unique, for it was a city of sorcerers, ruled by the most potent among them. In fear and mistrust, the other city‑states named it Morindu the Dark.
Near the end of the War of the Sorcerers, a great army led by the sorcerers of Scirath had marched toward the city. Rather than fall to its foes and let its secrets be plundered, Morindu had chosen to destroy itself. When the army arrived, they found only empty desert.
Soon after that, the War of the Sorcerers ended in a violent cataclysm that destroyed the city‑states and blasted all of Amъn, transforming it into a wasteland. What few people survived fled north to the shores of the Summer Sea, to begin civilization anew in Al‑Amъn. Eventually, some of the Morindai found their way across the sea, to the northern continent of Falengarth, and there became a wandering folk known as the Mournish. These were Vani’s people. However, Vani was no mere gypsy. Deirdre knew the T’golcould trace her lineage all the way back to the royal line of Morindu the Dark.
“All right,” Beltan said around a mouthful of popcorn. “If the Mournish don’t know what’s buried in Morindu, then tell me this: What do the Scirathi thinkis buried there? What are they so eager to get their paws on?”
Vani rested her hands on her hips. “Many things, I imagine. Books of spells. Artifacts of power. Treasures of gold and gems. Or perhaps–”
“Blood,” Travis said. “They want blood.”
Deirdre shivered. At one time Travis had possessed an artifact shaped like a gold spider, a living jewel called a scarab. The scarab had contained three drops of blood taken from the god‑king Orъ. With it, Travis had been able to activate the gate artifact, opening a crackling doorway to Eldh.
“You think they want blood of power,” Deirdre said. “Blood from the god‑king Orъ.”
Travis shook his head. “No. I think they want Orъ himself.” He turned his gaze on Vani. “He’s still there, isn’t he? The Seven stayed with him to the end, and they buried him with the city.”
Vani knelt on the floor. Beltan gave her a suspicious look and edged the bowl of popcorn out of her reach.
“We suppose he is still there,” the T’golsaid. “But we do not know.”
“You mean his body,” Deirdre said. “It’s been three thousand years. It’s not like Orъ can still be alive.”
Vani shrugged. “Who is to say what can and cannot be? It is said Orъ was five hundred years old at the time Morindu was destroyed. He was the most powerful sorcerer ever known. So powerful that Fate itself tangled around him, its strands unraveling, so that only the Seven A’naraicould stand in his presence. Yet in time that power consumed him. He fell into a deep slumber, and so it was that the Fateless Ones drank of his blood, becoming sorcerers of dreadful might themselves, and ruled in his name.”
“Okay,” Deirdre said, hoping logic might make all of this seem less terrifying. “Let’s pretend for a moment Orъ is somehow still alive, buried beneath the desert. What would happen if the Scirathi found him?”
“That must not be allowed to happen!” Vani said, her eyes flashing. “With Orъ’s blood, there is no limit to the evils the Scirathi might work. I have no doubt that they would first hunt my people, slaying the Morindai down to the last man, woman, and child.” Vani stood, pacing again. “But that would only be the beginning. With Orъ’s blood at their command, they might enslave all of Moringarth–all of Eldh. They would dominate its people with all the hatred, all the cruelty, they have fostered in their hearts all these ages. Nothing could stand before them. That is what the Seven understood. That was why they destroyed their own city.”
Travis cleared his throat. “The way you describe them, the Scirathi make the Pale King sound like a chap who just wanted to come out of his kingdom and play.”
Vani raised an eyebrow. “Compared to what the Scirathi might become, he was.”
“Wait just a minute,” Beltan said, a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth. “Weren’t all of the Scirathi killed when the demon destroyed the Etherion in Tarras?”
“All of the Scirathi in Falengarth, yes,” Vani said. “But far more yet dwell on Moringarth. If each of them was to drink of the blood of Orъ, they would become an army such as you cannot imagine.”
“She’s right,” Travis said, slipping from the sofa to the floor and sitting across the coffee table from Beltan. “Remember what happened to Xemeth after he drank from the scarab? He would have destroyed us if it hadn’t been for the demon. And he was only one man, and not even a sorcerer at that. The blood made him . . .”