A shield-sized hole hung in the air in the center of the plaza, a colorless distortion in reality that opened onto. . nothing, an emptiness so profound that looking at it for more than a moment made Brennus nauseated. The homunculi squealed and pulled the loose folds of his robes before their eyes. It seemed slowly to swirl, but Brennus was never certain. What he was certain about was that the hole represented the end to everything. He’d noticed that it grew over time, a miniscule amount each year, the mouth of Shar that would eventually devour the world. He hated it, hated Shar, hated his brother, who was her nightseer, her Chosen, and a godling in his own right.
Rivalen sat at the edge of the hole on the cracked face of a once-enormous statue. He stared into the maelstrom, his hands in his lap, unmoving. As always, Brennus wondered what Rivalen thought of when he looked into the work he’d wrought, the apocalypse he’d sown. Did he welcome it? Regret it? Did he even think like a man anymore?
The wind stirred Rivalen’s cloak and his long, dark hair. Shadows leaked from him in long tendrils. He stared at the hole as if he could see something within it, as if he wanted something from it.
“The nightseer,” the homunculi said, and covered their faces with their clawed hands.
Brennus said nothing, merely watched his brother a long while. He had no purpose in it anymore, other than to fuel his hate and remind himself of his mother. He relaxed his grip on the necklace he held.
“I’m going to kill you,” he promised his brother. Shadows oozed from his skin, swirled around him, marked his anger with their churn. “For her. I’m going to kill you for her. I’ll find a way.”
The homunculi, sensing his frustration and sadness, patted his head with their tiny hands and made cooing noises.
A cascade of green lightning veined the sky above Ordulin. Brennus blinked in the sudden glare, and when the spots cleared from his eyes he saw that his brother was gone. He saw only the hole, the ruins.
“Nightseer gone,” the homunculi said.
Before Brennus could acknowledge them, a voice spoke from behind him.
“Gone from there,” said Rivalen’s deep voice, as the power of his presence filled the room and put pressure on Brennus’s ears. “Because I’ve come here.”
The homunculi squealed in terror and curled up in the cowl of Brennus’s cloak, trembling. Brennus swallowed and turned to face his brother.
Rivalen’s golden eyes glowed in the dusky crags of his angled face. The darkness in the room coalesced around him, as if drawn to his form. The weight of his regard threatened to buckle Brennus’s knees, but he thought of his mother and held his ground.
“Every day I feel your eyes on me, Brennus.”
Brennus felt his back bump up against the still-warm metal of the scrying cube. He relied on his hate to give him courage.
“Then perhaps you’ve felt my hate, too.”
His words caused the homunculi to squeal with alarm and try to burrow more deeply into his cowl, but Rivalen’s neutral expression did not change.
“Yes, I’ve felt it,” Rivalen said. He glided over the floor toward Brennus, his form lost at the edges, merged with the darkness. He seemed to displace space as he moved, causing the room to shrink, sucking up the air.
Brennus tried to steady his breathing, his heart, tried to slow his rapidly blinking eyes. He knew he looked a fool and it only made him angrier.
“What do you want?” Brennus asked, and was pleased to hear the steadiness in his voice. The shadows leaking from his body merged with those swirling around Rivalen and were overwhelmed by them.
“That’s my question to you,” Rivalen answered. His golden eyes drifted to Brennus’s hand, to the jacinth necklace he held there. “Ah. Still that.”
Brennus dared take a step closer to his taller brother. He knew Rivalen could kill him easily, but he did not care. “Always that.”
The darkness around Rivalen intensified. His eyes stayed on the necklace. “That damned trinket.”
Brennus clenched his fist around the necklace. “Our mother wore it the day you murdered her.”
Rivalen’s eyes came up, met Brennus’s, flared in the black hole of his face. “You never told me how you found it.”
“You’re not all-knowing? Ask the whore you worship or the hole you stare into everyday.”
Rivalen held out his hand. Shadows rose from his palm, wound around his fingers. “Give it to me.”
Shadows stormed around Brennus and words leaped out of his throat before he could stop it. “No! Never!”
“I can take it if I wish.”
Rage boiled in Brennus, the steam of his anger leaking around the lid of his control. He uttered a guttural cry of hate, extended a hand, shouted a word of power, and unleashed a blast of life-draining energy that would have shriveled a mortal to a husk.
But Rivalen was not mortal, not anymore, and the beam of energy slammed into his chest, split, and ricocheted off in several directions, all to no effect.
Rivalen’s eyes narrowed. Power coalesced in him as the darkness about him deepened. He stepped toward Brennus and his form seemed to grow, to fill the room. His hands closed on Brennus’s robes and lifted him into the air. The homunculi squealed with terror.
Imminent death steeled Brennus’s courage. He glared into his brother’s impassive golden eyes, squeezed his mother’s necklace so hard the metal pierced his skin. Blood ran warm and soaked his fist before his regenerative flesh closed the wound.
Rivalen pulled Brennus close until they were nose to nose. “Give it to me.”
Brennus spat in his brother’s face, the face of a god, the globule running down Rivalen’s cheek.
“You’ll have to kill me first.”
Rivalen’s eyes flared. He studied Brennus’s face, perhaps measuring his resolve, then threw him across the length of the scrying chamber.
Brennus hit the far stone wall hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs and crack ribs. His body began immediately to regenerate itself and he winced as shadowstuff reknit his broken ribs. He grimaced as he stood, shouting at his brother.
“A hole, Rivalen! You’ve had a hole in you since you murdered our mother for your bitch goddess! Now the hole is all you have! How does it feel? How does it feel?”
“Mother died thousands of years ago, Brennus.”
The impassivity in Rivalen’s voice drove Brennus to distraction. Shadows swirled and he pointed his finger at his brother.
“You don’t get to call her ‘mother.’ You call her Alashar or don’t speak of her at all. And she did not just die. You murdered her.”
Rivalen did not deny it, did not apologize for it, said nothing at all. He stepped forward to the scrying cube, his expression thoughtful, and put his palm to its face. The entire cube turned black as onyx. In a moment the darkness lightened and an image began to resolve in the cube’s face.
Brennus’s breath left him in a rush. “Is this? This cannot be.”
“It is.”
“Don’t do this.”
“It’s done.”
His mother’s face formed on the cube. She was lying on her back amid a meadow festooned with purple flowers. Her long dark hair haloed her head. The wind stirred her clothes, caused the flowers to sway.
Brennus recognized the meadow. It was the same meadow where he had found her necklace, the same meadow from which Erevis Cale’s love, Varra, pregnant with Cale’s child, had disappeared.
His mother’s pale face looked pained, but Brennus did not think the pain physical. Her breathing was rapid, too rapid.
Brennus found himself walking slowly toward the cube.
His mother reached out a hand, her arm visibly shaking.
Brennus felt as if he could almost reach out and touch her. His hand went up to take hers into his.
“Mother,” he said softly, but her eyes were not on him. He was seeing an image of events that had occurred thousands of years before.