The Gates of Night

CHAPTER 3

In their final battle, Tashana had torn into Daine’s left arm. Her shadowy claws had cut through chainmail with ease, leaving deep gouges in the flesh below. Yet this wound wasn’t bothering him; if anything, his arm was numb. Instead, he was troubled by a burning sensation across his back. He’d noticed it the instant he’d awakened: soreness and itching, as if he’d rolled in fireweed. But there was no time for back scratching.

“Where’s Jode?” he said.

Lei and Pierce glanced at him, shock and concern painted across Lei’s face.

“Jode is … dead, Daine.”

“It’s a long story. But I was just talking to him, and here I am, so I assume …” He glanced around the chamber. “Jode!” he called out. His voice echoed off of the walls.

“You were just talking to him?” Lei pulled her staff from her satchel and leaned heavily upon it. “Daine, he’s dead.”

“I know!” he snapped. His back itched, and he considered scraping off the skin with his dagger. “I was dreaming, and he was there, and he said-”

“You were dreaming? Are you even listening to yourself?”

“I’m not imagining this! It was him. The vial I was carrying, the liquid, it must have-”

A loud rattling interrupted him … a shiver running through the shards of metal scattered across the floor.

“We don’t have time for this!” Lei said. “That thing could pull itself together at any moment. And I don’t have the strength to bring it down again. We need to get out of here now!”

“She is correct.” Pierce had abandoned the shattered remnants of his flail in favor of his longbow, and he had an arrow nocked to the string. “Whatever you may believe, Jode is not in this chamber. And we are in poor condition to fight any foe, least of all this one.”

“You’re right,” Daine said. He knew his encounter with Jode had been more than just a dream, and he’d assumed that Jode would just … appear when he woke up. But Jode wasn’t here, and this wasn’t the time for analyzing dreams. He took a deep breath, clearing his thoughts and considering the situation. “If these two made it inside, perhaps their little friend with the spiked arms is here as well. Pierce, take point. Scout the path to the front gate, then return to the central chamber. We’ll meet you there.”

Pierce leapt across the shards and disappeared into the hallway. Following the motion, Daine’s gaze was drawn to one of the pieces in the rubble. He plucked out an object battered and scorched, but quite recognizable. The head of a warforged soldier.

As he picked it up, two sensations swept over Daine. The first was a sense of familiarity: staring at the face and the sigil engraved into the forehead. He was certain he’d seen this soldier before. And now it occurred to him …

Greetings, Daine. It’s been a long time.

The creature knew who he was. How?

At the same time, a wave of energy flowed out of the head … a faint, numbing tingle. As the sensation spread across his body, the links of his chainmail began shaking and pulling against him, as if caught in a powerful magnetic force. Daine tried to let go of the head, but he couldn’t pry his fingers loose. The pressure on his armor grew greater, and the shards around him began to rustle.

“Lei!” he called.

Before he’d even completed the word, the stinging pain replaced the mystic tingle. Lei had smashed the head with her darkwood staff, catching Daine’s fingers in the process. The head struck the nearest wall with a satisfying crash. The force pulling at Daine’s armor disappeared, but as he rubbed his hand, he saw one of the metal shards skid across the floor toward the head, immediately followed by another.

“Are you hurt?” Lei asked.

Great, he thought. First I’m a madman, now I’m a fool.

He clenched his injured fist; the pain helped shield him from his embarrassment and the burning across his back. “Let’s catch up with Pierce,” he said. “I’m beginning to see why you want to get away from this thing.”

The two sprinted out of the room. Behind them they could hear the sound of metal on stone, as an ever-increasing stream of shards flowed across the floor toward Harmattan’s head.

Time was running out.

Daine was injured. He wanted to tear the skin off of his back. An unstoppable monster followed them. The mystery of Jode was heavy on his mind. And he was doing his best to prepare for whatever enemy might unexpectedly appear.

But the heart of the monolith still took his breath away.

Karul’tash was a hollow tower, an astonishing work of engineering. Daine could barely see across the central chamber, let alone spy the distant ceiling. He’d seen tall towers before. He’d spent much of the last year in Sharn, and the central spires of the city dwarfed the monolith. But it wasn’t the size of the tower that was so impressive. It was what lay within. An obsidian column filled the center of the chamber, covered with glowing sigils and inlaid with a dozen metals and gemstones. The sheer mass of the cylinder was astonishing, making it all the more impressive that it hovered suspended in the air, a good ten feet off the chamber floor.

Dozens of rings floated around the central pillar, a myriad of metals and widths. The rings rose and fell, spinning in different directions and speeds.

And then there were the spheres: twelve crystal orbs drifted around the pillar. From the ground, it was easy to imagine them as a strange form of decoration. But Daine knew better. These were planar carriages, each one designed to carry passengers to another level of reality.

“One’s missing,” Lei said.

“Lakashtai,” Daine said. “And somehow, I don’t think she’s going to come back on her own.” He gestured at the tables scattered around the room, altars covered with glowing crystals. The magic exceeded his skills, but earlier Lei had used these to control one of the spheres. Daine could see her exhaustion, and he hated to make her exert herself, but there was no choice. “I need you to get this thing working again.”

“You want to know where Lakashtai went?” Lei said.

“For a start.”

Lei hobbled toward the bank of lights, leaning on her staff. Daine sprinted around the column, and what he saw made his heart sink. He’d brought two allies into the tower, and these warriors had helped them defeat the firebinders. One of these soldiers lay on the ground before Daine, the injuries so severe that it took Daine a moment to identify the corpse as that of the man, Shen’kar. Half of the dark elf’s body had been sheared away, and the rest of corpse was covered with cuts, as if he’d been caught in a storm of razors-or Harmattan’s whirling shards.

Damn it. Daine had spent more time fighting the savage dark elves than as their ally, but over the last hour he’d come to respect Shen’kar-and whatever their differences, no warrior deserved to die like that.

“Captain.” Pierce had a body in his arms. A woman, limp, her pitch-black skin covered with cuts. The other dark elf. “She is seriously wounded, but her condition is stable.”

Daine nodded. “Follow me. What did you find?”

“The gate remains open. The wards are in place. And the Sulatar elves are still camped at the perimeter of the magical defenses; I saw at least three of their flying sleds.”

“Wonderful.”

They found Lei working at the crystal consoles. “Status?” Daine said.

“I can’t recover the sphere that Lakashtai used to escape,” Lei said. “But she went to-”

“Dal Quor,” Pierce said.

“That’s right,” Lei said, surprised. “How did you-”

“Later,” Daine said. “Once we don’t have that trash heap on our tails. I was hoping we’d be able to leave out the front door, but that’s impossible.”

“I can deactivate the wards-”

Daine shook his head. “There’s an army camped out there, waiting for their high priest to return and lead them to the promised land. Even if we found some way to get past them we can’t just leave this place in their hands. Who knows what we’ve already unleashed by helping Lakashtai? Besides, if your rusty friend can’t lower the wards himself, we’re doing the world a favor by keeping him here.”

Lei frowned. “So you’re saying we just give up?”

“You know me … I love to give up.” Daine forced a grin. “Come on, Lei. You’re our resident magical genius. You’re the one who told me what these orbs are.”

“Carriages to other planes. You want to leave in one of the orbs?”

“Want to? No.” A vision of Shen’kar’s ravaged corpse flashed through Daine’s mind. “But it’s better than the alternative. Can you do it?”

Lei looked down at the panel. “I … I think so. But where do you want to go?”

“Since when am I an expert on other planes? I want to go home, Lei. For now, I’ll take anywhere that’s not, say, a pit of endless fire.”

“Even a plain of endless ice?”

Daine blinked. “That’s the only other option?”

“Well, it’s a possibility. I can’t access all of the spheres. It must have something to do with the current conjunctions of the planes. And there’s hardly any point to going to Dolurrh in an effort to avoid death.”

Even Daine had heard of Dolurrh, the plane where the souls of the dead were drained of all memories of their former lives.

“Use your best judgment. But do it quickly!” Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought he could hear the sound of metal on metal coming from the distant chamber where they’d left Harmattan.

“Perfect!” Lei said. Light flared around her hands, and one of the enormous orbs descended to the floor. “Well, not perfect, but given the alternatives …”

Now Daine was sure of it: a metallic roar came from the hallway. “Let’s go!” he yelled, sprinting toward the orb.

A portal had opened in the side of the massive opalescent sphere, and Daine vaulted up and through it. The interior was a disappointment. Aside from a tall ledge running around the edge of the chamber, the room was completely featureless; Daine couldn’t see any way to make the sphere move. But that wasn’t his job. Lei was right behind him, and Daine pulled her up and inside.

Lei sat crosslegged at the exact center of the chamber, and the room lit up. A complex geometric pattern spread out around her, traced in lines of fire. Runes and sigils appeared on every surface. Each letter was as long as Daine’s hand, a reminder that this was the work of giants. Lei studied the walls. She muttered a word in a harsh and unfamiliar tongue, and one of the glowing symbols on the wall flared brighter for an instant.

Pierce was at the portal. He handed the injured elf to Daine. Beneath her chitin armor, the woman was a waif and seemed like a feather in his arms. A moment later, the warforged was aboard.

“Lei! The door!” Daine cried.

“I’m working on it!”

Now the roar was growing louder, a hurricane howl combined with the gnashing of metal on metal. “We’re about to get another passenger!”

“I’m trying!” Lei said.

They saw him: a glittering cloud, steel death racing toward them.

“Hul’kla’tesh!” Lei cried.

It couldn’t have been any closer; a handful of steel shards fell to the floor as the portal snapped shut. A terrible scraping sound came from the walls, metal gouging at crystal.

“He’s all around us,” Lei said.

“Then get us out of here!”

Lei closed her eyes, her hands set against the floor. Patterns of color danced over the floor, and they felt the orb rising.

Height alone didn’t stop Harmattan. They could still hear the flurry of steel striking the walls of the sphere.

“Hang on!” Lei yelled. She sang a chain of harsh syllables, words flashing across the walls as she spoke.

And they fell out of the world.