And he was gone.
Sol bowed his head. He hadn't thought to feel grief. Perhaps there was something in what Ilkar said about the path between life and death. If that was the case, he just wanted it to be done. He gazed back the way they had come and immediately felt comfort from the closeness of The Raven.
'No way back, big man,' said Hirad. 'Only way is on.'
'I know, it's just . . .' Sol sighed. 'So much time I was away from her. And she never ever failed in her love for me. I never told her how much that meant.'
'You don't think so?' said Hirad. 'You told her every day you were with her. You didn't need words to say it, Unknown. You should have seen the way she looked at you even when she was angry.'
'Not always,' said Sol.
'Always,' said Hirad.
'I wonder how fa-'
Sol stopped in his tracks. He was standing in a wide, open, featureless place. Around him, below and above, all he could sense was a pale ivory colour. Slowly, distantly, dark specks appeared in his vision. He was here. Ulandeneth. He looked all around him and felt the crushing weight of defeat on his shoulders.
He was alone.
It was never too late to learn. Sharyr had returned to the dimensional research chambers to study what he could about the doorway through which only the dead could travel. The pale light still shone from the doorway and he could see nothing through it. Like staring into sand.
Dropping into the mana spectrum briefly, he studied the mana lattice that framed it. Densyr had created a network of fine lines that anchored in space. None of them did any more than touch the very edges of the doorway yet the frame was utterly rigid. He pushed at it with his mind. The force that returned through the spectrum was enough to sit him on his backside.
'Wow,' he said.
He brushed his hands together, stood up and had another look into the light. Garonin soldiers were clustered against the doorway. Sharyr shouted a warning but there was no one else to hear it. He backed away, still staring. Something wasn't right about this. The Garonin had their hands against the entrance. They brought curious-looking instruments to bear on it. One in particular had a blade that revolved at high speed. It was clear that this piece of equipment was being pushed against the doorway but was having no effect.
Sharyr smiled. 'Can't get out, can you?'
His smile was short-lived. They might not be able to get out, but since they had got in somehow, what was the state of any allies within? It didn't bode well at all. Sharyr moved forward again to stand beneath the opening. He pressed his fingertips against it, just able to reach it if he stood on the tips of his toes.
They could see him. He saw weapons brought to bear. He didn't move, confident in what he believed. White tears splashed against the entrance, dispersing harmlessly. Sharyr laughed and beckoned them on with both hands. Fists thumped soundlessly and uselessly against the doorway.
The Garonin withdrew a pace. One looked over his shoulder. Three of them threw themselves back against the doorway, clawing and scrabbling. Abruptly, the doorway vibrated and Sharyr feared his goading would be his undoing. He watched helplessly as the frame buckled, held for a moment and folded in on itself. He saw a last desperate Garonin fist hammering on the opening before it winked out of existence leaving nothing but the faint whiff of burnt mana.
'What was all that about?' he whispered.
Sharyr hurried back to Dystran's quarters to report all he had seen to Lord Densyr.
'How can it end here like this?' whispered Sol, fear gripping him.
He felt as if he was shaking but his shadow form revealed nothing. Ulandeneth was empty. The black flecks moved in the distance but perhaps they were a trick of his eyes this time.
'Where do I go? What do I do?'
So much he had yet to learn. So many assumptions he had made. About those who would stand by him to help him. Those who would show him the way. All gone now. He truly was alone.
'Where are you!' he shouted. 'Hirad! Raven! Where are you?'
Where are you?
A door. He needed a door. But there was none. He needed a sign, something to set him off in the right direction. All his life the path had been before him. The solution had always presented itself. He had always known when to talk or to fight or to run.
'But you're not alive now, are you? And none of the rules apply.'
Sol stood where he had appeared. He turned another slow circle. For all its vastness, the place bore down on him, closed around him, sought to smother him. He dropped to his haunches to feel the ground beneath his feet but his hands transmitted nothing to him. Neither did they sink in.
'There is substance here.'
In his mind time passed terribly quickly. Only he could help the living and the dead and he had no idea where to start. He forced his mind back over what he knew. Ulandeneth was a place where he had been. Where he had fought and lived and from where he had escaped. It was the place, so Auum and Sha-Kaan had it, that held the doorways to all other places.
It was a place where will and belief held sway over the rules of the living lands.
'You have to believe,' he said to himself, his voice swallowed up by the immensity of the space around him. 'But in what?'
The capacity to succeed and the victory of the righteous were just too huge, too imprecise. Not beliefs he could hold on his own. Not yet anyway.
'So, let us start at the beginning.'
Sol stood tall. He held his arms out from his body and in front of him as if he was about to orate. He jutted his chin and spoke loudly and clearly to whoever, whatever, would listen.
'I am Sol. I am The Unknown Warrior. I am Raven.'
The simplicity of his conviction flowed through him. He felt energy surging through the shadow. He felt warmth. His fingers began to tingle. He stared at them. Flesh burst through the shadow like he was picking his hands out of black oil. Sol saw the swirls on the tips of his fingers, the hard skin of his palms and every nick and scar that had never quite faded.
The skin flowed down over his wrists, across his forearms and round his elbows. He watched it form his shoulders, pick out the lattice of old scars on his chest and his legs. He felt it creep around the back of his shaven head. He felt a breeze on him. A glorious, beautiful, cool breeze.
'Now we're getting somewhere.'
Sol was aware of other changes in the atmosphere of Ulandeneth. His nose twitched and in that there was joy. His sense of smell had returned and with it he found an acrid, burned odour in his nostrils. His ears picked up distant sound yet though he narrowed his eyes there was nothing to see. Wait. Forms in the mist, if such it was. Unrecognisable but moving all around him.
'I am Sol,' he repeated and he smiled, feeling the familiar pull of muscles in his face. 'And I never walk outside naked.'
Clothing began to form on his body. Shirt, trousers, trail boots. The ring he wore that Diera had given him seven years ago was there on the middle finger of his right hand. A delicate piece, depicting a raven in flight.
'Almost there.'
Sol tried to remember his thoughts when last he was here. Then as a living being. Some of them eluded him. He remembered he had travelled home but now he could not think how. He supposed that was right and just. He remembered that he had been without a weapon when he arrived then too.
'That I can do something about. I am The Unknown Warrior. Sword of The Raven.'
Across his back he felt the comforting weight of his scabbard and in it his two-handed blade. Interesting. Not a weapon he would use now. His hip wasn't . . . But then of course that had been when he was alive. He laughed. Around his waist came his belt and everything that hung from it. Daggers, flint and steel.
'Now all I need is a place to go.'
Sol took a pace forward and six Garonin stood before him. He backed up and looked behind him. No one there. He turned back. Light flowed around the armour of the Garonin. Their hands rested by their sides. None appeared to be carrying the white tear weapon but something that looked like a blade hung from each waist. Sol snapped his sword from his back and held it before him.
'I believe,' he said.
In front of him the blade felt momentarily light and it all but fell from his grasp. He reformed his grip, taking careful note of how it felt, how the steel shone sharp and how even the nicks along its edge were part of its perfection. It rested balanced in his hands.
'Good. Right. I may go down here and now, but some of you fuckers are coming with me.'
Chapter 40.
The dead clustered at the end of the passageway. The Raven and Auum's Tai were at the head of them. Ilkar still probed the wall. Behind them, the passageway fled off beyond their senses. Outside, the void clashed and raced. But surrounding them was an ivory light that came from beyond the end wall.
Every one of them could feel it. They were drawn to it, pulled along by it. None would so much as consider moving away from it by even a toe. Yet none of them could reach it. None, they assumed, but one.
'Where is he?' asked Hirad.
'Gone,' said Ilkar.
'Now if I'd replied that way to you, I'd be on the end of a long, long line of abuse.'
'Sorry, Hirad. Gone through here. He must have done. Ulandeneth. '
'We have to get through,' said Sirendor. 'He's going to need our help.'
'Perhaps he doesn't,' said Ilkar. 'Perhaps this is part of the whole scheme.'
'Not if Sha-Kaan is to be believed,' said Auum.
'Something must open this wall,' said Ilkar.
'Another astounding revelation,' said Hirad. 'Is it too stupid of me to ask what that might be?'
The dead surrounding them were restless and anxious. Adrift at the end of their journey. Feeling vulnerable as they stood waiting for answers in a place open to attack. They made a hum of chatter and a swirl of emotions that sometimes made coherent thought difficult.
'We must stop thinking like the living,' said Auum. 'This door will never have an iron latch.'
'Sol had an advantage over us all,' said Thraun. 'He has knowledge of this place. Did that help him travel there?'
'Well if it did, I wish he'd given us some pointers,' said Hirad. 'Unhelpful, just disappearing like that.'
'I don't think he had any choice in the matter, do you?'
Ilkar's ears would have pricked when he said that. Hirad smiled, another invisible gesture.
'No, probably not. So. Any ideas?'
'Everything so far has been an act of will,' said Thraun. 'Or a use of the soul's energy. We should start there.'
'You think we can will ourselves over there, do you?'
'Got a better idea, Hirad?' asked Thraun.
'No, it's just that it's difficult to will myself to a place where I've never been and which lies somewhere . . . you know . . . else.'
'I don't want to rush you but I think you'd better start believing as quickly as you can.'
Sirendor's shadow was facing back down the passageway. Hirad rose above the mass of the dead and looked in the same direction.
'This does not look promising.'
Three Garonin were pounding up the corridor but none of them was intent on attacking the dead. All three had eyes only for what was behind them. Panic spread among the dead. There was a concerted move to the wall, which remained steadfastly blank and impenetrable.
All the while the Garonin ran on. And well they might because the passageway was folding up behind them.
'So many problems.'
The melodious voices flowed over Sol, taking the ire from him. He lowered his blade. The Garonin were standing about five yards from him.
'We underestimated you.'
'Damn right,' said Sol. 'Lucky for you we weren't all acting together. We'd have kicked your sorry carcasses right out of Balaia.'
'We think not.' There was a susurration that Sol took for laughter. 'But we warned you that resistance forcing us to expend our resources would ultimately go badly for you.'
'I do remember that. And since then we've seen all sorts of wonderful things and bigger and nastier weapons. And yet, when last I looked, Xetesk still stood and you were denied her Heart. And here I stand once again, ready to take you on. No one who stood before me then is alive to tell you about it.'
'Ultimately.' The whispered word was discordant and sent a shiver up Sol's spine forcing him to hunch his shoulders. 'So much has been expended. So many of our people gone because of your fruitless resistance.'
'It is not fruitless.'
'No? One wrecked city still stands. Another is ready to fall. Your land is no good to you. It was ever going to be thus. And yet still you thought to fight, though to accept defeat would have been the easier option.'
'For you, perhaps. Your problem is that you have fundamentally misunderstood what drives us. It is the will to survive. The belief that we will survive, whatever the odds and however powerful the enemy. And we will. We will.'
Sol saw them hesitate. One of them even fell back a pace.
'You have spirit but you do not have the strength to turn us aside.' The melodious quality was back. 'You think to find a new home. We will follow you and we will destroy you there. You cannot escape us.'
'So you say.'
'It is forever the way. We need new worlds to harvest. We do not allow interference. We demand compliance.'
'Well, as my friend Hirad Coldheart would say, you can shove your compliance right up-'
'However. We respect a worthy foe and a worthy ruler of men. You are both of these.'
'I don't care for your respect,' said Sol, and he spat on the ground at his feet.