Phoenix Ascendant by Ryk E. Spoor

Author:Ryk E. Spoor [Spoor, Ryk E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2016-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

Arbiter Kelsley wavered on his feet; Tobimar and Discoverer (previously Seeker) Reed caught his elbows, helped him to sit down.

Kyri looked out of the holy circle, and Tobimar felt a phantom pain in his chest as he saw her understanding that even this had failed. “Nothing at all, Arbiter?”

The priest of Myrionar shook his head reluctantly. “I can injure her easily enough, Balance save me. But to break that curse lies beyond the power granted me by Myrionar; I could feel the power simply turned back, dismissed as inadequate. Even with your assistance,” he looked at Shasha and Poplock, “I cannot do more than momentarily blunt it, and it recovers any ground I deny it quickly, once I stop fighting.”

“Poplock? There’s got to be something—”

The little Toad flattened himself in a gesture of perfect despair. “Not that I can do. The Cursed are known all over Zarathan. They’re not like the Stelati, or the Umbrals, or even the Veridiai—those can, sometimes, be cured by the right invocations, or even by the victim fighting it hard enough, praying well enough. I’ve never heard of a Cursed being cured, even early on. Wieran might have been able to do something. The Wanderer. Calladan Wysterios at the Academy. Khoros, if he was around. Idinus, of course. One of the greater gods, directly intervening, if they could. But anyone else? Swimming through thicker mud every minute.”

Sasha Raithair simply shook her head. She can do nothing either.

Kelsley carefully cut across the lines of the holy enclosure, and the power faded. “We have tried for two weeks. Everything we could think of. I am sorry.”

Kyri’s face worked, and for a moment there was a glint of alien fury that frightened Tobimar more than anything he had seen in all his travels. “Failed again? Are you . . .”

She went gray with horror at what she was saying and buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Myrionar, is it happening this fast?”

“If what Tashriel told you was true—and I am very much afraid it was—he was one of those there the day the Curse was enacted. He is one of the actual ancients of the Cursed, a vampire half a million years old. His blood, mingled with yours, is terribly potent,” Kelsley said, the explanation in a tone of apology and guilt, trying to convince himself that it wasn’t his fault that the last and only Justiciar was about to be lost. “It is astonishing that you have remained . . . yourself . . . for this long; he thought that the change would be complete in days, if your recital of his words was accurate.”

“So it isn’t my imagination. It’s not just my being on edge. I’m . . . turning into a monster.”

“Kyri, maybe—”

She made a savage cutting gesture. “No, Tobimar. No false comfort. You saw that I couldn’t burn it out myself—I can’t keep the power going once the pain gets too great. I think . . . I think we’re out of options.

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