The Hammer of Darkness by L. E. Modesitt

Author:L. E. Modesitt [Modesitt, L. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780765367495
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-04-25T23:00:00+00:00

XXXIII

Help!

Martel stumbles, trying to pinpoint the direction of the thought, looking around, glancing up toward the shore and the Petrified Boardwalk.

A scattered handful of people—mostly natives—make their way through the fully lit and evening streets of Sybernal. Not a one of the three within ten meters of Martel has even flinched.

Despite the faintness of the thought, the aura of the plea is familiar. He cocks his head, trying to remember, to make a comparison. Not poor lost Rathe, for even the desperation of the thought holds a hardness that Rathe would never possess.

Why dig that up? She's gone. Gone.

Martel trots to the next corner, peering around it. No one notices him in the Street of Traders, not even the old man whose boot store is yet open with its green awning overhanging the public way.

Martel darts into the narrow lane around the corner from the bootery, gathers his shadows about him, and rises into the light. He does not notice the looped sign the bootmaker traces in the air as the black raven circles up from the lane, nor the averted glance of the young girl whose balcony he passes as he flaps awkwardly northward, from where he thinks the plea for help has come.

Martel! God of the Darkness! Save me!

Martel's wings miss a beat, and he loses altitude, then converts his drop into a dive, wings folded. For the desperate prayer has indeed come from the CastCenter.

The locked portals open at his touch.

Already the center feels empty, devoid of life. Martel's thoughts precede his body through the corridors toward the main control center. An aura of power is fading, an aura that Martel recognizes, from the control room, where Martel knows he will find what he does not want to see.

In the center, in the open space before the console, which is slaved to remote and broadcasting an opera from Karnak, on that open floor are three objects.

The first is a sheet of golden parchment, scrolled, on which a name appears. The name is Martel.

The second is a pile of heavy gray ashes, greasy in appearance, spilling across a golden starburst that has been etched into the permaplast flooring. A starburst, Martel knows, that had not been there the day previous.

The third item, collapsed in and around the ashes, is a pale golden one-piece coverall.

There may be other small objects, such as a sunburst pin, a thin golden chain, mixed in the ashes as well, but Martel does not touch anything. Except for the sheet of parchment, which he stoops to pocket.

Martel gestures. The darkness swirls over the control room, and the floor is as it was, unmarked. Ashes, coverall, objects, all are gone, taken into the darkness.

From darkness she came, and unto darkness will she go, now and forever.

The cold knot inside Martel does not dissolve, but reaches to chill his fingers, numb his thoughts.

"Flame!"

Darkness has fire, also, and that will I claim, for those who are mine, and those who claim me.

Martel stands, letting time swirl around him, then clamps himself back into reality.

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