"Reisz, where are you going?" Myrmeen called.
Instants before he vanished down a narrow side street, Myrmeen turned to Krystin and said, "I don't know what might happen. Protect the children."
"I will," Krystin said. Myrmeen turned and only barely heard Krystin's next words: "I will, Mother."
The storm engulfed Myrmeen's senses, and she forced herself on, through the rain, ignoring the lancing pain that came to her with every movement. After several minutes had passed without any sight of Reisz, Myrmeen feared she had lost him.
She ambled forward, Lord Sixx's blade still trapped in her shoulder. Blood leaked down her back, the sting of rain in her wound causing a throbbing to begin in her head. Myrmeen recognized the area into which she was running, amazed that she had found the strength to move so quickly despite her injury. She wondered if her sister's blood coursing through her veins was responsible for her sudden strength and dismissed the thought. She knew her true motivation was her resolve to pay Reisz back for the kindness, love, and devotion he had given her so many years earlier. She only wished there was something more she could do for him above being at his side when he passed on.
A flood of creatures emptied into the street before her. They raced past Myrmeen without giving her any notice. She pushed herself to move beyond them and venture into the building that had spewed them into the night: the Gentleman's Hall. Dragging herself through the main chambers of the establishment, Myrmeen found the door to Pieraccinni's lair thrown open, the merchant on his knees before Reisz. Pieraccinni was no longer human. He was as Alden had described him: His skin was dark blue, like that of a shark, the smoothness interrupted by bulging red and green veins. He had an oblong head, hooded eyes, and flaps at either side of his neck for air. His body shook as if he had palsy, and she recalled the phrase Alden had used, comparing him to a sea creature under unremitting pressure.
Myrmeen's offhand comment about Pieraccinni apparently had caused Reisz to think of the night Alden had joined their war. The boy had described the disturbing sight of his employer, Pieraccinni, transforming into a monster. Lucius had suggested that Pieraccinni was a living siphon of magical energy with immense power. Power enough, Reisz obviously had gathered, to absord the destructive forces emanating from the apparatus.
"Myrmeen, get out of here!" Reisz barked.
"Leave the apparatus and join me," Myrmeen said. "He can't get out of this room."
"I don't want to take that risk," Reisz said.
"Reisz," she pleaded, her voice cracking, "please! Don't leave me."
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and bit his lower lip until it bled. Then he turned back to her and said, "Myrmeen, get out before it's too late."
At his feet, Pieraccinni babbled incoherently. Myrmeen recalled Alden's description of what he had seen, and she suddenly understood Reisz's plan. Pieraccinni's curse was that he drew magical energy into himself. Lord Sixx had created this room to dampen any arcane power. With those wards removed, magic would come flooding in, overwhelming the man. Reisz hoped that Pieraccinni could take inside himself the apparatus's magic and spare the city its imminent destruction.
"Reisz, I-"
She stopped. I love you, she wanted to say. She finally wanted to give him the words he had needed to hear, the words he deserved to hear, especially now.
"Don't lie to me," he said.
"It's not a lie."
He nodded. "And you."
Suddenly the walls buckled and a long fissure snaked across the roof. Through the crack that had been created Myrmeen saw the rolling fireball that had been contained within the three-story-high cage at the waterfront. It had broken free of its cage and followed the apparatus.
"Myrmeen, run!" Reisz hollered.
She scrambled from the room. Passing through the doorway, Myrmeen hesitated and looked back to see the bloated, quivering body of the arms merchant ripple and become insubstantial. The creature wailed in unimaginable agony as a hole appeared in its chest and grew larger. The gap was filled by a vortex of rapidly changing images: a lake of fire; a dominion of jagged, roughly hewn clouds; a city built entirely on the remains of its dead, bones for supports, skin for covering; and a long desert trail being crossed by hooded creatures taxied in chariots that were alive and screaming under an aqua sky. The abominations were no more repugnant than the ones the Harpers had encountered in Calimport, but they existed in such numbers that as Myrmeen anchored herself in the doorway and stared at the dying creature's lair, she felt she might be sick with fear.
All paths lead here, a voice called. I am the doorway.
Pieraccinni was not a man-he was not even alive by her standards; he was one of the portals that the Night Parade had used to make the journey to the Realms. To disguise the portal, he had been cloaked in flesh, given a personality and memories, but they were nothing but lies.
Within the portal lay a swirling, chaotic mass of hellish images. Myrmeen saw demons yanking their eyes from their heads and consuming them, colonies of monstrosities waging war against one another, and landscapes where a human being would have burned the moment he touched the ground. Near each of the shifting images were creatures staring at the portal in fascination. Myrmeen wondered how long it would be before one of them decided to reach through the doorway and enter the small room.
Through the fissure in the roof Pieraccinni was able to leech the magic of her world to feed the rift, giving it strength to grow wider. She realized that without Lord Sixx's dampers in place, the portal would continue to expand until all the magic in the world had been depleted. That meant it could grow large enough to engulf continents, perhaps even the world itself.
"Reisz, we have to close the gateway!" Myrmeen shouted.
The Harper nodded, steeling himself as he hurled the apparatus into the yawning pit before him. Suddenly the lightning cage dissolved, releasing the ball of energy as it shot forward, bursting into one of the shifting tableaus. The portal was engulfed in blinding blue-white energies.
Reisz turned to run from the room when Pieraccinni's arm shot out, the force of the creature's will making it corporeal. He grabbed the Harper by the heavy belt at Reisz's waist and dragged him toward the swelling portal with inhuman force. Before Myrmeen could race to his side, the roof was torn from over their heads as the three-story-high counterpart of the sphere of entropy lowered itself into the room. The fiery, over-sized eye was no more than a dozen feet above their heads and closing. Myrmeen watched in horror as Reisz was yanked toward Pieraccinni.
"Give up the quest, Myrmeen," he called to her. "You're not going to find what you're looking for until you do!"
Before she could take a step in his direction, Myrmeen saw Reisz throw his head back and stifle a scream as he was consumed by the portal that had been Pieraccinni. The arcane energies snapped his body apart and ate him alive. All traces of the merchant's humanity vanished, leaving only the portal and the massive sphere of light that continued to descend, trying to follow its smaller counterpart. Whatever it touched disintegrated instantly.
Tears streaming down her face, Myrmeen pulled herself away and raced from Pieraccinni's lair. An implosion of sound and light knocked her from her feet and sent her body rocketing across the dining hall. Turning, she picked herself up and saw that the portal and the sphere had connected. The vortex seemed to be consuming the ball of energy, the fiery, magical lace that made up its outer edges straining to weave itself around the sphere.
This was no time for gawking, she reminded herself. Heavy gusts of supernatural winds racked what was left of the Gentleman's Hall. She ran for the door and in moments she was on the street, stumbling to the ground half a block away. She chanced a look back at the Gentleman's Hall and saw that the establishment no longer existed. The vortex had grown to encompass the entire building, and the blue-white sphere was now half swallowed up, its lower part emerging in some other world, some nightmare dimension safely away from her own.