Терри Брукс - Jarka Ruus

— He can still be yours–She nodded at the darkness, wanting it to be true. But how could it? Ahren was dead, the voice had already told her so. There was no way to bring him back, no way to restore life to his shattered body. She could join him, of course. She could end her own life and reunite with him in death. She believed that was possible and even preferable to what life offered without him. Maybe she would have that, anyway. Now that she had broken with Shadea, it would not take the other long to decide to eliminate her.

— You need not die to have him back–She had always trusted the voice, and she had never had cause to regret it. From the beginning, when it had summoned her north to the ruins of the Skull Kingdom and she had built the fires and made the sacrifices that had brought it into being, she had known it spoke the truth. It was a small thing for her to help it, when it was doing so much to help her. Shadea had believed from the first that she was the guiding force behind the conspiracy to eliminate the Ard Rhys, that she was the one who had sought out and found the means to carry out the act through her connection with Sen Dunsidan. The Federation Prime Minister, in turn, believed that he was the one who was determining the course of events, that his promises and gifts to Iridia, after she had approached him, had subverted her and made her his spy within the Druid camp. But she was the one to whom the voice spoke. She was the one who had brought it out of the darkness and into the light. She was the one to whom it had given the liquid night and the means by which she could gain some small measure of revenge against the woman who had turned Ahren Elessedil against her through scurrilous subterfuge and self–serving advice.

The others could think what they wished. She was the one who had made everything possible.

— I am here, Iridia–She felt a surge of expectation and joy. She had waited for it, longed for it, the time when the voice took form, as it had promised it would, to give her back her place in the world. It would happen after the exile of the Ard Rhys, it had told her. Once the High Druid was gone, the voice could come out of hiding. It could take form and become for Iridia the friend and confidant she had once thought Shadea might be.

— I can be more than that, Iridia. I can be him–Not quite willing to believe that she had heard the words correctly, she felt her heart lurch. She stood frozen in the darkness of the alcove, listening to their echo in the silence. I can be him. Was that possible? The voice was a chameleon, a changeling, capable of wondrous things. But could it bring back the dead? Could it make Ahren Elessedil whole again? Was the voice capable of that?

— Walk to me. In the cellars–She left the alcove at once and proceeded to the main staircase, descending in a rush, her footfalls tiny and lost in the cavernous passage. No other Druid was abroad; most were gathered in the dining hall, the rest in their rooms or libraries. It felt to her as if she were alone in the world, free of its constraints and discriminations. She had never been well liked, never a part of anything, always alone. It was because of her childhood, where she had been set apart by her skills and the mistrust of those who recognized them. Even her parents had looked on her with growing suspicion and doubt, distancing themselves and their other children, sending her away early to study with an old woman who was said to understand such magic. The old woman did not, but living with her gave Iridia space and time to grow as she wished, to hone her talents, to gain a better understanding of what they offered. She needed no mentor to help her with this. She needed only herself.

Ten years she lived with the old woman, a crone of demands and false promises that would have eroded a less determined student. But Iridia only smiled and agreed and acquiesced to all, pretending obedience and waiting until she was alone to do what she wished. The old woman was no match for her, and when it was time, Iridia led her abusive and demanding benefactor to the well out back and pushed her in. For three days and nights, the crone screamed for help that never came.

Iridia turned down the lower hallway to the cellar doors at the north end of the Keep, knowing instinctively that was where she was meant to go, that was where the voice would be waiting. Shadows draped the heavy stones of the floors she passed across, her own the only one moving. No guards warded the passageways or walked the walls of Paranor now; the Druids alone kept watch, and theirs was a desultory, disinterested effort. In the time of the Warlock Lord, the keep would have fallen already.

At the heavy, ironbound doors leading down, the Elven sorceress paused to look back. No one was in sight; no one had followed. Shadea might have thought to try, but had not made the attempt. Just as well, Iridia thought. That would have complicated things. She wanted no one to intrude on her meeting.

— Hurry, Iridia. I am anxious–As was she, flushed with unexpected passion. She was like a young, foolish girl, filled with wild emotion and desperate need. The voice had never failed her, and now it was going to give her the thing she desired most. It made her feel heady, as if she could dare anything, as if anything were possible. She pushed through the cellar doors in a rush, taking one of the torches from the brackets just inside, lighting it with a sweep of her fingers and a spray of magic, and started downward once more.

This time, her descent was much longer and darker, the stairwell windowless and narrow as it tunneled into the deep earth beneath the castle foundation. The air was damp and stale, smelling of long years of confinement and ageless dust. Her footsteps on the stone steps matched the sound of her breathing, quick and hurried. When this was finished, she thought, she would leave Paranor and go far away, taking Ahren with her so that they could build a life together free of everything that had gone before. It was what she would have done in the first place, had the Ard Rhys not poisoned Ahren against her. Ahren had claimed Grianne had nothing to do with his dismissal of her, but Iridia knew better. His claim that he had never loved her, did not feel for her as she did for him, was a lie forged in the furnace of his anger at what she, who would always be the Ilse Witch, had told him. For that alone, she had deserved banishment to the Forbidding, and much worse.

At the bottom of the stairs, a rotunda formed a hub for a dozen passageways leading in different directions. Iridia chose the one from which the voice was calling, certain of its location, of its presence. Holding out the torch to chase back the darkness, she went down the passageway, a silent presence in a silent tomb. The catacombs were used infrequently, which had something to do with the past, with the history of the Keep, though Iridia had never cared enough to find out what that history was. It was the place she met with her coconspirators, but not a place she visited otherwise. It was enough that she would do so for the last time tonight.

A hundred feet down the corridor, a door stood open, the room beyond as black as pitch.

— I am here–Iridia stepped inside, the torchlight flooding the room with its yellow glow. Her eyes searched swiftly. Four blank walls, a floor, and a ceiling. The room was empty.

«Where are you?» she asked, unable to keep the desperation from her voice.

— In the air, Iridia. In the ether you breathe. In darkness and in light. In all things. Close your eyes. Can you feel me–She squeezed her eyes shut and exhaled slowly. It was true. She could feel his presence. He was there, all about her.

«Yes," she whispered.

— It is time to give you what you were promised for helping me. To give you Ahren Elessedil, whole and complete again. To give you peace and love and joy. It is time, Iridia. Are you ready

«Yes," she breathed, tears flowing once more, gratitude flooding through her. «Oh, please.»

— Extinguish your torch and lay it on the floor–She hesitated, not liking the prospect of being left in darkness. But her need for Ahren overcame her doubts, and she did as the voice had commanded. The torchlight went out and she was left standing in the heavy darkness.

— Close your eyes, Iridia. Stretch out your arms. I will come to you, into your embrace, no longer a voice, but a man. I will be him. For you, Iridia. Forever. Enfold me with your love and your desire. Accept me–She would not have thought to do otherwise, though she still did not see how it could happen. But the persuasiveness of the voice was sufficient to make her believe. Again, she did as she was told. She closed her eyes and opened her arms.

Almost instantly, she felt a presence. It was only a faint sense of movement at first, a stirring of the air. Warmth followed, an infusion that spread through her like the flush of expectation she had experienced earlier. She felt a tingling, and her breath quickened at the prospect of what waited.

Then he was there, in her arms, Ahren Elessedil come back to life. Though she had never held him and did not know how it would feel, she knew at once that it was him. Her arms came about him gratefully, and she breathed in his smell and pressed her body against his. He responded at once, pliant and anxious, the part of her that was missing, the part that would make her whole.

«Ahren," she whispered.

He moved closer still, so close that it felt as if he were a part of her. She could feel them joining, becoming one. He was melting into her, entering her, becoming a part of her physically. She started in shock, then instinctively tried to resist what was happening. But it was too late, he was already fused to her as metals in a forge, locked together to form a single skeletal frame.

Then the pain surged through her, so intense that when she began screaming she could not stop. Raw and sharp, pulsing with razors and knife points, it riddled her from head to foot, and her scream turned into a shriek that lasted until her voice gave out and her mind snapped.

Then she ceased to think or feel anything.

* * *

It was later that evening when Shadea a'Ru passed down the corridor of the north tower on her way to her chambers and encountered Iridia coming from the opposite direction. She approached the Elven sorceress warily, remembering how they had left things in the cold chamber earlier. One hand snapped free a dirk from the sheath bound to her wrist beneath her tunic sleeve. She had endured enough of Iridia's unpredictable behavior. If there was to be a confrontation, she wanted it to be done with quickly.

The other woman came right up to her, but there was no anger or resentment or challenge of any sort in her green eyes. Her perfect features were composed, and there was an air of new determination about her.

«I behaved poorly this afternoon," she said, coming to a stop several feet away. «I apologize.»

Shadea was immediately suspicious. She didn't like the abrupt switch. It wasn't like Iridia to forgive so readily. Not her, not anyone. Nevertheless, she nodded agreeably. «We will put it behind us.»

«That would be best for everyone," Iridia said as she turned away.

She walked past Shadea and continued down the hallway without looking back. Shadea stayed where she was, watching until the other was out of sight, all the time wondering what was going on.

They chose not to bury Ahren Elessedil's remains, but to burn them. A wetland was a poor place to dig a grave, and they had only their long knives to attempt the task. Besides, Khyber was not happy with the idea of leaving her uncle interred in a mud flat where rains and erosion might soon uncover him and leave him food for scavengers.