Chapter 426
Malick laughed and the loud thrumming began again. It pounded with an intensity that forced Katelina to the ground, first to her knees, and then to her stomach. She threw her hands over her ears and tried to see through aching, tear filled eyes. It felt like everything under her face was stretching and pulling, ready to tear apart and shatter like a china doll.
She saw a flash of something red and black and then for a second she saw Verchiel hanging from the edge of the ragged floor above. Something silver arced through the air. Jorick caught it without even looking and swung.
The roar shook the building and the thrumming stopped. Katelina pulled up to her knees to see Jorick standing over Malick, holding Verchiel's bloody sword. The ancient master's face was contorted with pain and fury until he looked more demon than man. He clutched his arm. Blood gushed around his fingers from the spot where his right hand had been.
Jorick raised the sword again and suddenly the world snapped away. There was no maze, no topaz tunnel, only darkness and a door. The blackness that seeped around the edges was deeper than night, darker than the deepest pit, a blackness of such despair and agony that she never wanted to see it, never wanted to know it.
"The time has come! Open the door and see the truth, see the world for what it is. Look and know, my child!"
The door screamed as it flew open and the darkness surged out. She fought it, batting and writhing as it wrapped around her in tendrils. It slid under her skin, inside her ears, her mouth, her eyes, until she was full of the blackness, the hatred, the despair.
"This is the world. Century after century of it. Taste it. Taste it until you can no longer stand it."
She could see a room, but it made no sense. Rocks instead of walls, holes instead of floors. Blood, pain, death. The dead lay among the rocks, discarded and unsung. The misled, the betrayed, the broken lover. All had died for something different, and yet still they were dead, and beyond it there was only that blackness, pulling them in, choking out the light, reeling in soul after forgotten soul. Soon they would all be dead. Their bodies would crumble and their consciousness would disappear into the void. All their thoughts and deeds wasted.
A thousand agonies stabbed at her. She felt Cyprus' longing, his screaming rage; Sadihra's crushing regret, her guilt drawn over years and sharpened to a fine point; Wolfe's secret dread, the years of private torture as Sadihra turned away from him; Micah's empty misery, abandoned by a master he barely knew and left friendless and alone; Loren's screaming grief for a murdered brother; Torina's desperate need to be loved, never fulfilled; Oren's bloody despair as he watched his wife and children burn in a bonfire of the Executioner's making; Verchiel's aching loneliness; Jorick's throbbing terror, his unending sorrow, his guilt and pounding doubts and fears; and a thousand other dreads, terrors, aches, and agonies, all darker than the darkness, blacker than the night, the misery of nightmares.
Their pain crushed her and she let out a strangled cry of anguish. No sound could express the agony of hundreds, thousands, millions. It was more than she could stand and it needed to end before it tore her apart.
In the background, like voices echoing through a fish tank, Jorick shouted, "What have you done?"
Malick laughed, cold and cruel. He stepped back, holding the stump of his hand. "She is mine one way or another, my son. Living or dead. The choice is yours."
"He put something in her head when he was in Munich before!" Verchiel shouted, standing on the floor above. "You saw it when you looked into her mind after Samael!"
"But that was-"
And Malick laughed again. "And so you blamed Samael for my handiwork. I don't know whether to be insulted or amused." Underneath his laughter was his anguish. Betrayed by his favorite son, abandoned for a woman too weak for Jorick to ever truly love, left behind by the world to inhabit musty dungeons and dwell on the memories of grandeur.
The agony in Katelina's head pulsed, screamed, and drowned out their voices, drowned out the world. There was nothing but the pain, and desperately she grabbed the broken sword from the ground.
"Join them, my child. Join the souls that scream and end your agony."
She pressed the blade to her throat. Anything to make it stop.
"Close the door!"
The words were a command and the door in her mind slammed shut with a sound so loud it sent her sprawling. The screaming pain drained away, like water leeching down the sink, slow at first and then faster, until she could lift herself and look up.
He stood in front of her, his long black hair wind swept and glistening like strands of ebony. His tawny skin, smooth as marble and a million times finer, appeared to glow from within, begging her to touch it. His face was perfect, so beautiful it broke her heart to look at it and his eyes were like staring into the heart of a burning star.
Samael.
His voice rang through the ruined halls like summer thunder and crystal trumpets, "I have come for her. Let those who stand in my way taste death."
She could feel his power, growing, coalescing into a ball of energy. Malick shouted something and Ronnell appeared in front of her. Without a word, Samael unleashed the invisible attack. It slammed into Ronnell and his head exploded in a cloud of scarlet. Bits of bone and scalp flew through the air and splattered Katelina in gore.
Ronnell's body dropped to the ground and Samael held out his hand. Katelina stood without thought, and he wrapped an arm around her, and pulled her against him. She stared into his eyes, bright as the sun, bright as lightning, bright as the golden peace she'd touched in her dreams.
And the world disappeared.
