THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 2 — SWORD OF DREAMS
Chapter 30: The Waygates
“Being brave only means that you don’t tell anyone how scared you are.”
– Phillip Arno, Cyran geologist (233 PA)
Maeve sang to herself. The air in this place was stale and smelled of dirt. She wanted to fly, but her wings wouldn’t work. Maeve was sure that she knew why, but the memory kept slipping out of reach, like grasping at waves on the beach. No matter how she chased them, her own thoughts slid away again.
But the song was constant. No, Maeve realized sluggishly. It rose and fell and washed cold across the dirty floor. The voice wasn’t hers, and neither was the song.
Gavriel, Maeve remembered painstakingly. He wanted something from her.
He was singing a spell. Maeve shook her head, trying to clear away the thick white fog. There was something important that she was supposed to do. Or not do…
Yes, that was it. Maeve couldn’t give Gavriel the memories he wanted. With a groan and tremendous heave, Maeve lurched and pulled against her handcuffs again. Her wings ached and a razor sting raced up her arms. It was agony, but the pain helped clear Maeve’s mind.
Gavriel stopped singing and a long striped arm reached from the shadows to push Maeve back into the steel beam. Hallax was gentle — careful not to bash her skull and its valuable contents against the pitted metal — but firm. He peeled open an alcohol-soaked pad with his teeth and scrubbed a section of Maeve’s arm free of blood and grime.
“She’s resistant to this stuff,” said the Emberguard. He sounded almost cheerful.
“Is she ready for more?” Gavriel asked.
He sat back in his dusty, brittle old armchair, staring at Maeve. Hallax pressed two fingers up under Maeve’s jaw and then peered into her eyes.
“Yes, Lord Gavriel,” he said.
“Give it to her, then.”
“No!” Maeve protested as loudly as she could, but her voice was no more than a phlegmy whisper.
She had to fight, but Hallax slid another needle into her arm. Maeve writhed, but another pair of hands emerged from the darkness, gloved in soft doeskin.
“Please, do not struggle, cousin,” Xartasia said. “No more. You have shown your bravery.”
Gavriel gave the older princess a stern look. “As we agreed.”
Xartasia met his eye and her sharp jaw set. “You have given her enough White to drown any resistance.”
“Clearly, we have not,” Gavriel countered. “She hasn’t given up the memories.”
A soft sigh sang through the warm, empty blankness. Distantly, Maeve felt her cousin’s slender fingers tighten on her arm. Traitor, traitor, Maeve reminded herself, but the Vanora White was taking hold again.
The dark, dirty room dissolved into clouds of pure white. Maeve floated through them and the Nihilists’ voice echoed as though they stood inside a crystal cathedral.
“You owe this to our people,” Xartasia said. “To me. You destroyed the White Kingdom, Maeve. You killed them all. My father, my mother and brothers. My enarri, my Anthem…!”
“No,” Maeve whispered. The gently glittering alabaster dancing all around her stilled and began to fall away into a bottomless abyss of shadow. “No! You… you said it was not my fault. That it was the Devourers…!”
“The fault is yours, little cousin,” Xartasia said mournfully. “Our worlds are dead for your sin. The last of our people die in disease and famine. This is of your doing.”
Xartasia’s fingers were ice-cold claws as they curled into Maeve’s flesh. Blood welled up around the wounds and ran down her skin, molten and burning. Rivers of blood… Not Maeve’s blood, but the blood of the millions upon millions that she had killed. The dryads and nyads, all dead…!
Blood filled the room, rising up around Maeve’s legs and then her chest, up to her shoulders. She screamed in helpless horror as the flood of sticky red clung around her throat. Maeve twisted and shrieked, but she couldn’t move and the rivers of blood would not stop.
“There is only one release for your pain,” Gavriel said.
Maeve stared up. A point of light burned above her, a single star in the midst of this terrible night. She moaned and blood filled her mouth.
“Only death will stop this, Maeve,” the star told her. “The pain will cease. No more pain, no more guilt.”
The sky — No, I am inside a room! There is no sky! — wasn’t simply dark. There was something else out there. Something reaching for Maeve… Smoke? No, great black clouds of dust and ash, just like the Devourers’ deadly, ethereal forms.
Squeezing her eyes shut wouldn’t banish the visions of deadly red and black. The star was still singing. “When it’s done, Maeve, you will have peace. You will sleep without nightmares of the Devourers. I can save you.”
“No,” crooned the darkness, full of a deep, cold sadness. “I will never let you go. You took everything from us.”
“I… I was forgiven,” Maeve whispered. Blood poured down her throat, drowning her.
“Destroyer. Killer!” hissed the shadows. “You will never be forgiven! You will never forget. Remember, Maeve. Remember what you have done!”
The devouring darkness was right. As blood closed over Maeve’s head, she knew it was right. She wasn’t forgiven… Never forgiven. And she remembered why.
Maeve stood atop the great ziggurat. The gentle glow of the Waygate reflected in her glass armor.
It was early in the morning and the sun, Aes, still lay heavy and golden on the horizon. The city of Tamlin shone like a great jeweled crown all around the Waygate. Glass towers climbed up into rose-colored dawn and white-winged Arcadians flew between the delicate spires on the morning breeze. A knight at the Waygate wasn’t a strange sight and they paid Maeve no mind.
Gavriel sang. His voice pressed painfully into Maeve’s memory. His invasive magic pierced any lingering vestige of the Vanora White’s languor. Maeve screamed. She tried to stop, to tear her thoughts back from Tamlin, from the Waygate and the Devourers, but Gavriel’s smooth voice and Xartasia’s grasp on her arm pinned her there. The charm echoed in the close room.
Maeve took a deep breath, remembering the spell she had heard Caith sing a thousand times. This week, the gate was supposed to be open to Emassu, a city on Jinthalin. Maeve cradled her spear loosely in one glass-gauntleted hand and raised the other toward the Waygate.
The sheen of light paused, swirled and pulsed as though in recognition. Maeve smiled. This would be easy.
Better to die than let Gavriel succeed. Maeve slammed her head back as hard as she could, intent on cracking her own skull against the metal post. Could she do it? It had worked for the Lyran Emberguard on the Blue Phoenix… But she was weak, slow. She managed to slam her head once into the support, but dashing one’s own brains out was much harder than the Lyran had made it look. Her ears rang and then Xartasia’s hand was there, cradling the back of her head. The princess kissed Maeve’s salt-sweaty temple and held her fast.
“You will die,” Xartasia promised. “But not yet.”
Gavriel stood, hands outstretched like one of the Union saints, singing as Maeve’s memories haunted her.
“Alluna s’aelim wain’ii mae shassa eth am’avain,” Maeve sang in a clear voice. “Kennu varii lae ellu’da eira sessar. Qu’ii laess lai jaisha dii aes’ii soshin kae!”
No, that didn’t sound right. Maeve hesitated.
“Laennan…” she faltered. “Laennal emanuu shodav ain’no latam. Aetrix sumanni eleo ma’an… ana va’an… Tii’dai! Alluna s’aelim Emassu!”
That couldn’t have been how the spell was supposed to end. It was too short… For a moment, nothing happened. And then the Waygate blazed. The great ring swam with a warning light, strobing red and orange. Maeve stared. Something was horribly wrong.
The whole smooth white pyramid under her feet began to ring like a huge bell. A voice boomed out from the Waygate, resonating with deep authority, but Maeve couldn’t understand the language. She clapped her hands over her ears and leapt back from the bellowing Waygate.
The interior of the gate flashed. Through the portal, Maeve saw only blackness. The Waygate rang again. Something shifted in the black void on the other side of the ring of light. Maeve spread her wings. She had to find help!
And then darkness poured through the Tamlin Waygate.
Gavriel’s voice finally faded and his cold presence pulled back from her thoughts. Maeve sagged against her bonds, beyond exhausted. Even her heart beat slow and weak, too tired to sustain her body. Xartasia gently released Maeve and let the younger fairy collapse bonelessly, held only by her bound limbs.
“You have claimed the memories?” Xartasia asked in a shaking voice. “Can you now open the Tamlin Waygate as she did?”
“Yes.” Gavriel drew a deep breath, and then another. “Yes, the memories are mine. I can feel the weight of the armor, feel Aes’ warmth on my face. The horror at what I have done, what I unleashed on my home! I can do it again!”
Kemmer Andus sat on the top step of the Waygate. He finished his lunch in a few large, hurried bites as he reviewed the newest scans by Xen and his team. They should have been the same, identical to those taken just after Ava and Darius finished their work removing eons of debris, but the Waygate seemed to be in a perpetual state of flux: minor variation in the surface temperature, refraction and density.
Kemmer sighed and rubbed his eyes. There was no way the scholarly community was going to believe any of this. The arrogant bastards would simply accuse Kemmer of more shoddy Prian work.
He could always lie, Kemmer realized. The pretty Arcadian girl, Panna, had certainly done it. It would be much easier to rid himself of the low-brow Prian accent than it must have been for Panna to cut off her wings.
But he didn’t want to, not really. Kemmer looked up at the Waygate, pulsing with light like a great, glowing heartbeat. Even he could not escape that ridiculous, stiff-necked Prian pride. The Pylos Waygate was a Prian treasure, and if the Tynerion scholars couldn’t accept that, then they could fly the hells off.
In the camp down below, Xen and the rest of his team read and argued over the same results as Kemmer. Gruth was quite sure that the problem was mechanical and checked over the sensors for the third time that morning. Tall, quiet Enu-Io wasn’t so sure. So he and Xen were working on a theory, something involving extra dimensions in the Waygate’s construction, subject to forces that did not register on their instruments. Phillip was a geologist and had very little to contribute except to tell Xen that if the Waygate was drawing on a power source, there was no sign of it anywhere in the mountain.
Ava and Darius took no part in the ponderings of the Tynerion team. They sat together under one of the tarpaulins strung between the tents, playing cards. The rest were gone, including the bounty hunter who stubbornly refused to sign one of Kemmer’s nondisclosure agreements.
The archeologist couldn’t help being irritated. Maeve’s abduction was undermining absolutely everything, stealing away personnel and resources that were supposed to be dedicated to the study and protection of the Pylos Waygate. Kemmer was not totally insensitive to the problem, but it didn’t change the importance of his discovery. This was so much bigger than one woman.
If Kemmer could present this amazing find to the right people, in the right light, the Waygate could change the world. Prianus would finally become a real force in Alliance politics. It was an elevation in status that Kemmer himself would appreciate from his comfortable new office on Tynerion. Maybe somewhere on Axis. Someplace warm…
An angry shout suddenly interrupted his daydreams. Tiberius Myles — the sole remaining member of their security force — stood sentry at the edge of the camp and held a battered com to his ear. Phillip and Enu-Io rushed to Tiberius.
“Has something happened?” the big Dailon asked.
Tiberius lowered the radio and drew a deep breath.
“That was Duaal,” he said. “Gavriel’s got the memories from Maeve. He doesn’t need her anymore. We’re almost out of time.”
When Maeve could see again, she found unshed tears in Xartasia’s wide violet eyes.
“You have all you need now, old friend,” her cousin told Gavriel. “Now it remains only to go to the Tamlin Waygate and see this thing done. A long journey, but only a moment when held beside the effort of years already–”
“Quiet,” Gavriel snapped. He was staring at Maeve, his thoughts still intertwined with hers.
“No,” Maeve said.
The old Nihilist sang a low word that filled the small apartment. “There’s something else in her thoughts.”
The Waygate. The Tamlin Waygate, the Pylos Waygate…
No, she couldn’t tell…! Maeve tried to push Gavriel’s thoughts away, so hard that sweat poured down her skin. But she could no more expel him than she could grasp a dream.
Clasped in ice, deep in a graveyard embrace. Ice and stone, a wound into the very mountain that seethed with violet shadows. A white ziggurat rose from the heart of secrets and the great ring glowed with slumbering power. A Waygate, here on Prianus! Even after these weeks of work, it still seemed so impossible.
No, it is a secret! I swore to keep it…!
Blood sang in Gavriel’s ears and his heart beat like a drum in his brittle old ribs as he sang. A song of triumph. A grin spread across his face.
“What is it?” Xartasia asked. Her wings rustled restlessly, whispering without words.
“There’s a Waygate on Prianus!” he said, laughing. “Here, in the mountains. That’s why she was in Pylos.”
Xartasia’s violet eyes gleamed with fervor. “The All-Singer himself watches over us.”
“We don’t have to fly out to the White Kingdom. We can summon the Devourers right here, right into the core!” Gavriel shouted exultantly. He raised his arms as though to embrace the unseen Pylos Waygate. “Prianus will be the first to fall! I will summon the Devourers onto my enemies’ very doorstep and deliver them unto death. The Prians are suffering. I will end that today!”
Xartasia looked down at Maeve. “She has given you so much. Will you finally release her?”
“Maeve will die,” Gavriel agreed. His hands fell to his sides, fists tightly clenched. “But for her insolence, she will die slowly. Hallax, break her wings and then throw her into the pit. Come, Xartasia. We have plans to make.”
“Titania, no! Do not do this,” Maeve pleaded. There was blood on her lips. It was sticky and tasted like the sea. “Please, cousin! You cannot truly wish to bring back the Devourers!”
“It must be done,” Xartasia said.
She laid one final kiss on Maeve’s cheek as Gavriel strode from the room. She followed, gliding behind him like a sad, silent ghost.
When they were gone, Hallax turned back toward Maeve. The Emberguard rested a striped hand on the hilt of his nanosword.
“To think that you held the key to so much death and that you kept it to yourself,” Hallax said. “You’re a selfish woman.”
“I would have killed myself before giving up the memories had I only been allowed!” Maeve answered with weary rage. “Your lord is a coward, Emberguard! He torments a bound and drugged woman. He would not face me!”
Hallax answered with a deep, grating laugh. He walked around behind her and Maeve heard the distinctively hard hiss of a blade sliding free.
“You want to question Lord Gavriel’s honor?” the Emberguard asked. “Honor is an illusion, little bird-back. Just like all the rest.”
Hallax tugged sharply on Maeve’s arms and then began sawing through the ropes that bound her aching wings. When the last one fell free, Maeve sagged. Every nerve in her back screamed in agony as the tortured muscle and bone suddenly had to support their own weight again.
“Release me,” Maeve said through clenched teeth. “Soon your master will unleash the Devourers upon us all. I will be dead before long. Let me go from here. Let me die under open sky!”
Maeve thought that sounded reasonable, at least enough to give the brain-diseased Nihilist pause, but Hallax laughed unpleasantly again and did not answer. He unlocked the handcuffs and they clattered to the floor.
“Get up,” he instructed.
Every part of her hurt. Maeve’s head seemed to float over her shoulders like a bubble and felt just as fragile. But she had to do something… Gavriel knew about the Pylos Waygate and how to use it to summon the Devourers!
Maeve tried to stand. Her legs were weak and wobbled beneath her. Swollen joints and weakened muscles crumpled under her, dumping the Arcadian unceremoniously back down to the dirty floor. Maeve struggled to her hands and knees. The cuffs had worn away most of the skin around her wrists and they were braceleted in wet blood, as black as ink in the dim lamplight. Hallax prodded at her with one foot.
“Get up, little bird-back,” he ordered. “I don’t want to carry you. Maybe you’ll have a last chance to face death with dignity. Walk.”
“You know nothing of Arcadians,” Maeve rasped as she climbed slowly, agonizingly upright. “There is no dignity in walking. Let me fly.”
“There’s nowhere to fly. We’re going down.”
Her bruised ankle held. Maeve leaned against the steel girder that had been her prison for the last two days. What now? She was weak, far too weak to fight the lanky Mirran Emberguard.
Did Hallax have a gun, some kind of weapon Maeve could steal before he noticed? Only the nanosword, still gleaming in his hand. Maeve could barely control her mistreated body enough to remain upright. There was no way she could wrest the blade away from Hallax. Not like this.
He grabbed Maeve by one wing and roughly propelled her out the door. She stumbled into a slanted, twisting hallway. Pale light filtered in through cracks in the concrete walls and Maeve squinted through watering eyes. Hallax pushed her along the hall.
The corridor was narrow and the uneven floor had buckled in places. Some long-gone designer had tried to disguise the ugly gray walls and painted them over in more cheerful blues and greens, but the concrete glistened with moisture and the paint hung in peeling tatters like diseased skin.
Word must have spread through the Cult of Nihil. A hundred people robed in black stared from splintered doorways and gaps in the broken walls. Some remained silent as Hallax pushed Maeve past, but many of them whispered and pointed. A few even cheered hoarsely, thanking Maeve for what she had unwillingly given. She couldn’t meet their eyes. The Nihilists kept a respectful distance — if not from Maeve, then from the Emberguard who escorted her.
Hallax guided Maeve’s agonizing progress down to a collapsing stairwell. The going was rough and steep. By the time she had staggered down two flights of warped steps, he had to carry Maeve.
He dragged her by one wrist and a wing into the jagged ruins of a parking lot. Cracked and snapped supports jutted up from the asphalt like great broken teeth. Maeve tried to catch her breath and gagged. The air was thick with a terrible, rancid smell: old blood and rotting flesh and worse.
The pit.
A deep crack tore into the building’s foundation like the mouth of some huge monster. Weak, pitiful moans echoed up from the depth, carried by the fetid wind.
Hallax dragged Maeve toward the pit. A choking animal panic rose in her throat. She didn’t want to die here, buried far away from the sky and wind. Maeve screamed and dug her heels into the crumbling asphalt.
“No!” she cried.
Hallax was losing patience. He shoved the fairy to her knees and grabbed one wing in preparation to break it, as Gavriel had instructed. After everything, Maeve was about to be thrown down into a hole like a piece of trash. She had served her purpose. No, Gavriel’s purpose. Even now, he made ready to unleash the Devourers on a population hundreds of times larger than that of the White Kingdom.
Maeve had fought so long and so hard to die. She spent a year coaxing Logan Coldhand closer and closer. But she had lived. If Maeve’s hunter couldn’t kill her, how could she let the Nihilists do it now?
She wouldn’t make it so easy.
Hallax’s foot came down to snap her wing like a dry leaf. With an effort that brought tears to her eyes, Maeve heaved her tortured body forward. Not into a fall, but a controlled roll. It had to work on the first try. She wouldn’t have another chance.
Pulled off balance by the sudden absence of a fairy under him, Hallax pitched backward. Maeve jumped up to feet that felt like torn sacks of shattered glass. For a heart-stuttering moment, Maeve couldn’t remember the spell. Her mind was muddy with pain and chems. Hallax recovered his balance and drew his sword from its well-worn sheath.
“Alon’ii va imanno ishae’na laeling! Vasha imannui eru chen rowshae dae!” Maeve sang.
Her raw voice wasn’t beautiful, but it was enough to get the job done. Hallax jerked to a stop as the sudden flare in his optic nerve blinded him. It wouldn’t last long and the rangy Mirran was already snapping his sword out, searching for her.
Maeve spun. What could she do now? There was no way she could overpower Hallax. Not like this, not without her spear…
There was only one place to hide down here. Maeve spread her shaking wings. The feathers were matted with blood and grit, but enough of them remained. Cold, stiff muscles protested painfully as Maeve managed to push herself into the air. One wingtip scraped along the ceiling, and then she dove into the pit. If she was going down there, she would do it under her own power, for her own purposes.
Dark gray stone and dirt raced by, all streaked in wetness that didn’t bear close inspection. The crevice was wide but irregular. Maeve curled her wings close to her body and tumbled into the darkness. The light was vanishing quickly above. A little further…
Just before the pit narrowed too much, Maeve spread her wings and frigid air pushed against her feathers. They trembled and sweat streamed across her shoulders with the strain, but Maeve slowed and grabbed onto a pipe jutting from the pit’s wall. There was something slick under her fingers and Maeve slipped.
She was too tired, too frightened to scream as she fell down into the stinking blackness… And then her left foot came down jarringly hard on a crag of concrete. Maeve pressed her body against the wall of the pit and held her breath, waiting.
The crack was a barely visible line above, just a ragged streak of shadow only slightly brighter than the deep darkness all around Maeve. For a moment, she couldn’t help thinking about Kemmer’s ravine, and cursed herself. It was just such thoughts of the Pylos Waygate that had made so much trouble…!
Here, now. Maeve made herself focus. Had her deception been enough? Hallax could surely see again. Did he realize where she had gone? Would he think to look for her in the pit?
Maeve waited. Her left leg held most of her weight and began to cramp, but Maeve didn’t dare move. No light appeared at the mouth of the pit. Neither did the Emberguard’s shadow.
Maeve listened, but could hear nothing more than creaking stone and steel. She was unexpectedly glad that she had not eaten in two days, or she would have been sick. She could taste the stench of sickness and decay in the pit. Maeve closed her eyes and made herself count heartbeats, one hundred of them until she could risk the climb out of her hiding spot.
Maeve lost count and started again five times. She only made it to forty-seven of the last count, but she had to move. Clinging to the side of the pit, her fingers were trembling and threatened to fail. If she let go now, there wasn’t enough room to spread her wings and she would fall.
But Maeve had to reach Gavriel and stop him somehow, before he could summon the Devourers. Sweating, swearing and weeping with the effort, she began to climb.
It would all be over soon. Gavriel barely felt the ground beneath his feet. He walked on high, a savior who could finally deliver sweet, swift death to the worlds.
My Jaissa, my Sarru… The suffering will be over soon, my beloved girls. We will all join you in oblivion.
The Nihilists had heard Maeve’s cries and their master’s song. They lined the broken halls, clustered in bowed doorways, all shivering in their black robes. The close, cold air stank of disease and blood and waste — the cloying scents of life.
These last months on Prianus had liberated so many… Only one hundred or so remained, those few strong enough to survive the cold. Another hundred Arcadian Nihilists were still in Pylos and awaited only Gavriel’s command to return home.
Two hundred of over six thousand who had sworn themselves to the Church of Nihil on Stray. Thousands lost to him because of Maeve Cavainna and Logan Coldhand… Gavriel hadn’t forgotten. Maeve deserved her fate and he gave Xartasia a sidelong glance. The lovely princess’ gaze remained downcast, her black eyelashes brushing her cheeks and sparkling with diamond tears.
“Your cousin invited her own end,” he reminded Xartasia firmly. “It could have been far worse, in fact.”
The Arcadian brought her lilac eyes up to meet Gavriel’s. They burned with such obvious rage that several of the Nihilists actually drew back. In her flowing white gown and ivory wings, she was a bright angel reigning over the dirty Nihilists.
“Maeve is a child of the House of Cavain,” Xartasia said. “I have aided you against her only for the sake of relieving my own people’s suffering!”
Gavriel towered over the tiny Xartasia. The Nihilists leaned in again, holding their breath. The icy air was dangerously still. They watched in captivated silence.
“Cavain’s was a mighty house, princess,” Gavriel told her. “But perhaps you forget who is master of this house.”
“Have you forgotten why you are master of anything more than a prison cell, human?” Xartasia asked. “I taught you the very magics by which you command these creatures’ respect!”
“They follow me because I speak the truth, Xartasia. Because I will free them! My magic is a means, not an end.” Gavriel raised one age-spotted hand. The Nihilists shouted, screamed and howled. “For me and for us all!”
“Save us!” wailed a scarred woman.
“Free us!”
“Destroy us!”
Xartasia’s alabaster cheeks went bright red. “Without my songs, none of this would be! I have walked beside you on this journey and given you gifts unknown to any human.”
“For which you have my gratitude,” Gavriel said. “But not my servility.”
The princess held his gaze for a long moment and then reluctantly dropped her eyes. “Yes, Lord Gavriel.”
He smiled and placed a knobby hand on Xartasia’s shoulder.
“Do not lose heart. We are so close to the ultimate end,” Gavriel said. He raised his voice. “There is a Waygate here, in the Kayton Mountains! We go at once to call forth the Devourers, to scour life from the galaxy!”
The Nihilists cheered and screamed out their master’s praise so loudly that for a long moment, Gavriel did not realize that one of them was pushing his way through the crowded hall. It was Hallax, tall and defiant of his prey heritage as he shouldered past the lesser Nihilists.
Gavriel frowned. The striped Emberguard was furious. Gavriel beckoned him forward and the tall Mirran dropped to one knee.
“Lord Gavriel,” Hallax said. His voice and his long body rippled with barely restrained rage and violence. “My Lord Gavriel, I have lost Maeve.”
“Lost?” Gavriel asked.
“She blinded me with a spell, my lord, and then she was gone.”
“Maeve will seek more than just escape,” Xartasia said, shaking her head. “She surely comes in search of you.”
“Then she’s still here,” Gavriel said. “But we won’t be. Not for much longer.”
“We should go at once,” Xartasia agreed. “If Maeve contacts her captain, the Prian police will be upon us before we can reach the Waygate.”
Gavriel nodded and then turned back to Hallax, who bowed his head. The dark green tangles of his hair lay sweaty against the back of his striped neck.
“Find Maeve,” Gavriel commanded. “As much as she deserves it, we can no longer afford to give her a lingering death. Kill the fairy at once.”
“Yes, Lord Gavriel.”
“When it is done, my friend,” he told the Emberguard, “you are free. You may kill yourself. You have waited a long time.”
Hallax kissed Gavriel’s withered hand and then drew his greasy-looking nanosword.
“Thank you, my lord,” he said. “It will be done! For your glory and the death of all.”
