Eric Van Lustbader - The Pearl Saga 2 - The Veil of a Thousand Tears

Eric Van Lustbader

THE VEIL OF A THOUSAND TEARS

Book Two of The Pearl

Tor Books by Eric Van Lustbader

The Ring of Five Dragons

The Veil of a Thousand Tears

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

This book is printed on acid-free paper

Map by Ellisa Mitchell Edited by David G. Hartwell

A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor* is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lustbader, Eric.

Veil of a thousand tears / Eric Van Lustbader.—1st ed.

p. cm.—(The pearl; v. 2) "A Tom Doherty Associates book." ISBN 0-312-87236-4 (alk. paper) I. Title.

PS3562.U752 V45 2002 813'.54—dc21

2002019002

First Edition: July 2002

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

For David, Linda, and Tom

Book One:

1. SUNKEN GATE

Of the fifteen Spirit Gates, Sunken Gate is the

one in which the spirit lies, turning over

leaves of fortune and the future; it is here

that promise begins, and dreaming ends,

—Utmost Source,

The Five Sacred Books of Miina

1

2. Breach

Riane and Giyan were alone in the Library of the Abbey of Warm Current. It was midnight. A

cold wind sighed through thorned sysal trees, and rhythmic pulses rippled through the dense bedrock

beneath the abbey, where the power bourns wove themselves like strands of the Great Goddess Miina's

ruddy hair.

The Library, columned, marble-clad, lay dreaming like a castle keep in the fastness of the fortresslike

complex. The Ramahan abbey had been abandoned for many years before Riane and her friends—the

Kun-dalan sorceress Giyan, the V'ornn Rhynnnon Rekkk Hacilar, the Kun-dalan Resistance leader

Eleana, the Rappa named Thigpen—had made it their sanctuary some weeks before. Khagggun packs

roamed the countryside searching for them. Once, they had swept through the abbey, and it was only

Giyan's sorcery that had saved them. She had roused them from sleep and, gathering up all evidence of

their stay, they had fled into the nearby forest, there to wait in stony silence for the enemy to depart.

The abbey itself, sacked decades before by the V'ornn invaders, was half-burned and crumbling when

they had first come upon it. Gimnopedes nested in untidy eaves. Spiders turned shadowy corners into

delicately veined cities. A beautiful sysal tree had, for decades, grown up through thick plaza paving to

split the lintel of the east-facing temple. The hoary knuckles of its basal roots displaced the artful pattern

of the stone, an ironic comment on how life reclaims the void and transforms it. The Library, alone,

remained intact, having been protected by a powerful spell that Giyan had counteracted in order to gain

entry.

Riane looked at Giyan, tall, slim, beautiful, golden, radiant, save for the blackened crusts of the sorcerous

chrysalides that covered her hands and forearms. Even now, she could scarcely believe that they had

been reunited. Giyan's presence gave her a sense of profound dislocation. She was not simply Riane, a

sixteen-year-old orphaned Kundalan girl who could not remember her parents or where she came from.

She was also the V'ornn Annon Ashera, eldest son of Eleusis Ashera. Eleusis had been regent of

Kundala until a ruthless coup by his archenemy, Prime Factor Wennn Stogggul, and the head of Eleusis'

own elite bodyguard, Kinnnus Morcha.

Riane's searching gaze caught Giyan's whistleflower-blue eyes. "Every time you look at me I see surprise

on your face."

Giyan's heart ached, for she heard the sentiment behind the formal words, the fragile sentence Riane

could not bear to speak: Do you still love me? "It is a marvelous moment, to be here with you, alone, in

private. To be able to call you Teyjattt." Teyj were the beautiful multicolored four-winged birds the

Gyrgon—the V'ornn technomage caste—bred and took with them wherever they went.

"Little Teyj. You loved calling me that when Annon was a child."

A sudden fear, a stab in Giyan's heart. "And Annon did not?"

A moment's pause. "Annon did not, I think, appreciate your love. He did not know what to do with it."

"It is odd the way you phrase it."

"I am no longer Annon." Riane spread her hands. "Annon is dead. All Kundala knows it."

"And we? What do we know?"

Riane looked up at the magnificent dome of the Library, encrusted with a mosaic of Kundala and the

sinuous star constellations surrounding it. Composed of millions of tiny colored glass tiles, fitted cunningly

together as only the Kundalan artisans could, the dome produced an ethereal glow like a perpetual

sunrise or sunset. Beneath this sheltering sky she felt safe from both Annon's enemies and those of the

Dar Sala-at. For Annon was not simply the heir to the Ashera Consortium. He and the former Riane

together—this unique fused entity—were the Dar Sala-at, the chosen one of Miina, prophesied to find

The Pearl, the most powerful, mysterious, and ancient artifact of Kundala, to lead the Kundalan out of

their one-hundred-and-one-year enslavement to the technologically superior V'ornn.

"Here, alone, together," she said at length, "we can share a dead past. Like ghosts conjuring the root

stew of life."

"Stirring the cauldron."

"Yes." Riane smiled a painful smile. "Making something special of it."

She saw movement out of the corner of her eye. The vigilant figure of Rekkk Hacilar passed before the

high, leaded window to the east. His long, tapering, hairless skull was cloaked in a battle helm fashioned,

it was said, from the skull of a fallen Krael, and he held his shock-sword at the ready. His purple armor

glittered darkly. Once a Khagggun—the V'ornn military caste—he had declared himself Rhynnnon,

turning his back on his caste, turning his efforts to a greater cause. In this case, he had dedicated himself

to the service of the now dead Gyrgon, Nith Sahor. Because Nith Sahor wanted the Dar Sala-at found

and kept safe, Rekkk had sworn himself to protect Riane. Now he was also Giyan's lover.

"We have been given a unique gift, haven't we?" Giyan said. "A second chance."

Rekkk, in the ruins of the courtyard outside, began a ritualistic set of thrusts and parries with Eleana. She

was the same age as Riane. Her V'ornn shock-sword looked massive in her delicate white hands, but she

swung the twin blades deftly through the night air. Under Rekkk's tutelage she was quickly becoming an

expert in its use. They practiced endlessly. He said it took his mind off his wounds, physical and

emotional.

Riane watched her for a moment, her heart in her throat. Annon and Eleana had fallen in love. Now, like

everyone else, Eleana believed Annon was dead. As for Riane—this new Riane—she loved Eleana still,

and did not know what to make of this love or what to do with it.

Giyan, attendant to Riane's gaze, said, "You long to tell her, I know."

"I love her so. I will always love her."

"And your love makes you want to confess everything." Riane's silence was as good as an answer. "But

you cannot. If you tell her who you really are, you put her life—and yours—in grave jeopardy."

"She is Resistance. She is used to secrets."

"Not this kind. It will be too much. Like a mountain on her shoulders."

"Perhaps you underestimate her."

They all heard the sound at once and froze. Their eyes rose skyward as the drone of the Khagggun

hoverpods, bristling with ion cannons, flattened the soughing of the wind, silenced the twitter of night

birds. There ensued a period of heart-pounding terror, as if the breathable elements were being sucked

from the atmosphere. They could see the pale ion trails, ephemeral as smoke, lighted by moonslight,

making baleful runes beneath the tremulous clouds. Tense moments later, the drone drifted away, fading

from an echo into a stillness that made their ears ache.

Riane and Giyan exchanged a look of relief, and Riane returned her gaze to Eleana, her eyes filled with

the girl's lithe movements. Dark lashes. Moonslight on her cheekbones. Soft swell of her belly. "Or is it

something else? You do not trust her."

"It isn't simply a matter of trust," Giyan said carefully.

"Isn't it?" Riane said this rather more sharply than she had intended.

"I have told you. It is written in Prophesy that of the Dar Sala-at's allies one will love her, one will betray

her, one will try to destroy her."

"It could not mean Eleana. Not her."

"No." Giyan's voice was soft, gentling. "You would not think so, I know."

"She is carrying Kurgan's child." Kurgan was Wennn StoggguTs eldest son; he had once been Annon's

best friend. "She will need our help and support in the days ahead."

"You are the Dar Sala-at. You have larger issues to contend with."

"She is still haunted by her rape at Kurgan's hands. What is larger than an individual's anguish?"

"The destiny of our people."

"The destiny of our people is built on anguish. You of all Kundalan would be the first to acknowledge

that."

Giyan gazed in astonishment at Riane, golden-haired, sun-bronzed, firm-muscled from her beloved

mountain climbing, and thought that this strong, beautiful girl might easily have sprung from her loins had

she taken a Kundalan between her thighs. "You must forgive me, Tey-jattt," she said. "I have lived my

entire life with secrets. First, keeping hidden my Gift for Osoru sorcery, which has been daemonized by

the Ramahan- Then, concealing my status as Lady from the V'ornn, who would have killed me had they

known. Finally, keeping your true identity a secret, which, had it become known, would have gotten you

killed. These have been the boundaries of my life."

Through the five arched windows set into the Library's thick walls, light from two of Kundala's five

moons fired the glass tiles, lending them the depth of three dimensions. Giyan, caught in the moonsglow,

seemed to throb with sorcerous energy. Her white robes were pale as the snow cloaking the jagged

crests of the massive Djenn Marre mountain chain to the north. Her hands and forearms, dead black

from the chrysalides covering them, were the only parts of her that did not shine like beacons. The

chrysalides had formed after she had violated the sacred circle of the Nanthera, in a futile attempt to keep

Annon alive. Well she might have, since he was her son. She had borne the son of the regent, Eleusis

Ashera. This was a potentially dangerous fact she had told no one, not Rekkk, not Annon himself. From

the beginning, Eleusis had impressed upon her the need for absolute secrecy. Periodically, the Gyrgon

sent Khagggun packs to round up the children born to Kundalan females as a result of V'ornn rapes.

These half-breeds, though outwardly looking like any other V'ornn, were taken by V'ornn Genomatekks

to Receiving Spirit, the vast medical facility in Axis Tyr that had once been a Kundalan hospice. What

experiments were perpetrated upon them there even Eleusis had not been able to discover.

Giyan shook her head. "Still, I will not tell you what to do, This must be your decision."

"Whatever decision I make," Riane said, "I promise you that it will not be a rash one."

"I cannot ask for more, Dar Sala-at."

She returned her attention to the book Giyan had given her to study. Giyan, like her twin, was a Ramahan

priestess. But, unlike Bartta who had practiced Kyofu, the Black Dreaming sorcery, before her death in a

sorcerous conflagration, she was a practitioner of Osoru, Five Moon sorcery. Riane, too, had the Gift;

Giyan had passed it on to Annon. She was just beginning her Osoru studies, but she was impatient to

become a sorceress-adept like Giyan. Though Stogggul and Morcha were dead, though she had

defeated the powerful Kyofu sorceress Malistra, the Dar Sala-at's enemies were legion. And far more

powerful than Malistra. They had worked their dark schemes and plots through her; when she had died,

Riane was certain, they had moved on, enlisting others to battle for them. But there was another matter,

more immediate, that needed explaining.

She set down the book full of complex Old Tongue runes, and approached Giyan. Dust motes hung

suspended in the air, flaring as they hit the lamplight. One full moon, the palest green of new grass, hung

suspended in a pane of glass, an insect caught in a spider's web.

"Have you so quickly finished your lesson, Teyjattt?" Thick hair of spun copper cascaded around Giyan's

long neck, settled on her square shoulders like liquid light.

"In truth, my mind is too filled with questions to absorb any more." Riane put her hands on the long

ammonwood refectory table that ran the length of the Library. "You must tell me if you know why I wasn't

able to open the Storehouse Door."

For the longest time Giyan said nothing. Doubtless she was thinking, as Riane was, of the Storehouse

Door set eons ago by Miina into the caverns beneath Middle Palace.

The Storehouse was where Miina had secreted The Pearl for the time when Prophesy said it would be

needed. Kundalan lore held that it could only be reopened by the Dar Sala-at, using the Ring of Five

Dragons. But the Door could only be opened by the Dar Sala-at. Defeating the Dark sorceress Malistra,

Riane had tried to open the Door with the Ring, but it had stayed firmly shut. Why?

Giyan was about to speak when sudden pain clouded her features. She gasped, grabbed at the chrysalid

on her right forearm.

"Giyan—"

"It is all right," she whispered. "Already the pain is passing." Beads of perspiration hung in her hairline.

"I want to help."

"Alas, wanting will not make it so." Tears trembled in the corners of her eyes. She was white-faced, and

took a moment to compose herself before she went on. "There is only one reason the Ring of Five

Dragons would not open the Door for you. Miina put one last safeguard in place when She built the

Storehouse. Impossible as it sounds, the Portal between this realm and the Abyss has somehow been

breached. There are daemons here where they have been banished for eons. As long as they are in this

realm, the Door cannot be opened even by you."

Riane felt her heart turn over painfully in her chest. "The Tzelos—"

"Yes. You have seen the Tzelos twice, once as part of a spell cast on you, once as a sorcerous Avatar of

Kyofu. But I must conclude that the Tzelos has manifested itself here. It is a daemon from the Abyss. It

has crossed over into our world."

"But how?"

Giyan's eyes grew dark. "I fear it is my doing."

"Yours? I do not understand."

"Conjuring the Nanthera posed grave risks," Giyan said. "Not the least of which was opening the Portal to

the Abyss." In a last-ditch effort to save Annon from his enemies, Giyan and Bartta had conjured the

Nanthera, temporarily opening a forbidden Portal to the Abyss. Thus, Annon's essence, all that made him

unique, had been transmigrated into the body of Riane, a Kundalan girl dying of duur fever. He was saved

while his V'ornn body was delivered up to his enemies. Thus had he joined with Riane to become the Dar

Sala-at, the chosen of Miina. Upon this new Riane rested the future of Kundala.

"But you told me that the Nanthera does so under a number of careful and powerful safeguards."

"True. But I violated one of them. I reached back through the sorcerous circle to try to get you. I couldn't

help myself. I ..." She put a hand to her head.

Riane encircled her with her arm. "Even if you are right, even if that is what has happened, what's done is

done. It doesn't matter how the Portal seal was violated. What matters is sealing it again."

Giyan shook her head. "It is more complicated than that, Dar Sala-at. When Miina created the Abyss to

imprison the daemons and arch-daemons, She seeded it with seven Portals, each of which She provided

with a different sorcerous lock. This was a safeguard. Even if an arch-daemon—Pyphoros or one of his

three offspring—somehow managed to slip through one Portal, the other locks should protect us. For only

when all seven Portals are opened simultaneously can all the daemons escape into our realm." Giyan

walked back and forth in a tight anxious orbit. "The real problem is not the Tzelos but the archdaemon who

brought it through."

Riane stared at her. "An archdaemon in this realm?"

"The consequences will be catastrophic," Giyan said. "Unless we can find the archdaemon and somehow

neutralize him, the damage he can do is incalculable."

"But surely if he is here someone would have seen this . . . archdaemon by now."

"On the contrary. Archdaemons cannot appear for long in their own form until all the seven Portals are

open. They must take hosts—possess them, work through them. Their infiltration is more difficult to detect

and therefore more insidious. Legend tells us that their control of their hosts is imprecise. The hosts'

actions may, from time to time, appear out of character because the archdaemon does not have

immediate access to all their knowledge. However, that can change over time."

"We must either destroy them both or return them to the Abyss," Riane said. "Otherwise, I will never be

able to open the Storehouse Door. I will never find The Pearl."

Giyan, flexing her fingers inside their eerie shells, smiled grimly. "We must speed up your sorcerous

training. Thigpen and I can only do so much. Miina's Sacred Texts, Utmost Source and The Book of

Recantation, both of which you have read, require interpretation so that you may understand the inner

workings of language as science, science as sorcery. The interpretations require the precise mixtures,

constructs of phrases, incantations, theories, ideas, whispers, shadows, and light. Once you have

absorbed these lessons, you must practice those interpretations over and over until they are ingrained in

you, until they become part of you."

A shadow passed across Riane's face. "Mother could have taught me," she whispered. "But Mother is

dead." She was wearing turquoise silk robes made from Mother's garments after a terrible Kyofu spell

had caused Riane mistakenly to kill her. The murder had been foretold in Prophesy, but that did not

make it any easier to live with.

Giyan stirred. When she gazed at her child, transformed, she saw great promise, but never without the

pain of regret. Regret that she could never tell Annon that he was her son, regret that she had been

forced to hide him inside Riane, to leave Riane with Bartta, who had abused Riane terribly. Claws in the

lining of her stomach.

"Mother would have been the first to tell you that no one teacher will suffice." She vibrated with her

child's sorrow, wished she could take it all upon herself. "Your journey is long, Dar Sala-at, arduous and

complex. There is someone who I must get you to as quickly as possible. She will commence your

studies. Her name is Jonnqa. She is an imari at Nimbus, a kashiggen in the Northern Quarter of Axis

Tyr."

"What could a mistress of pleasure at a salamuuun palace have to teach me?"

A small smile played across Giyan's lips. "Again you sound like a V'ornn. I know you are impatient,

Teyjattt, but you must get it through your head that you have much to learn. There are no shortcuts,

sorcerous or otherwise. As I said, the Dar Sala-at's path is a most difficult one. Up to now your life has

been as a male V'ornn of high privilege or as a Ramahan cloistered in the Abbey of Floating White. In

both instances you were protected from the everyday world. Both these lives are now at an end."

"I do not understand."

Giyan turned around the book she had been reading so Riane could see the Old Tongue text. "You see

here, in the days before the V'ornn, when lightning played across the sky, when all of Miina's magical

beasts—the Rappa, the narbuck, the perwillon, even the Ja-Gaar and the Five Sacred

Dragons—roamed the land and the skies, all Kundalan were in harmony." She turned the page. "Females

and males alike shared everything, including power. The Ramahan, too, included priests and priestesses."

"But then a cabal of male Ramahan wrested control from Mother," Riane said. "They held her captive for

more than a century."

"Until you found her and freed her." Giyan, sensing Riane's disquiet, continued. "But here is the important

thing. Nowadays, male Kundalan treat our females as inferiors, just as the male V'ornn do their own

females. This is what you will be up against when you venture out into the world." She closed the book

with a snap. "It makes my blood run cold. It is a manifestation of the worst thing the V'ornn have done to

us. Do you know what that is, Riane?"

"That they have taken away our freedom."

"That is evil, but it is not the worst."

"That they have killed and tortured tens of thousands of us."

"Terrible, yes." She shook her head. "But the worst is being done now, systematically. The V'ornn use

time, ideas, the masses against us. Why do you think the youngest Kundalan males treat their female

counterparts with contempt? Because it is all they know. Each day brings new converts to the new

Goddessless religion of Kara. Where did Kara begin, do you think? With the V'ornn, of course."

Riane was startled. "Are you certain? Annon did not know this."

"I daresay most V'ornn do not. It is a device of Gyrgon origin. And yet it continues to win converts. With

every generation the great Kundalan narrative that Miina labored so hard and long to teach Her children

is being eaten away by V'ornn acid. You saw as much when you were at the Abbey of Floating White.

Osoru is no longer taught, Sacred Scripture has been distorted beyond recognition. And the worst part

is that those distortions are being accepted by the acolytes. They cannot see the truth because the morality

inside the abbey has been murdered, and without morality truth has no dominion."

Tears stood in the corners of Giyan's eyes. Riane felt her pain as if it were her own. The V'ornn-ness

inside her recoiled at the words, at the emotions, at the implication of what the V'ornn had perpetrated. This

disconnect made her feel weak and dizzy, so that she was obliged to grab the table edge lest she pitch over

onto the gleaming floor.

"Understand this, Riane," Giyan whispered. "Time is the great ally of the liar because when lies are

repeated long enough, the truth fades and is forgotten. Then the lies become the truth. History is remade,

and all is lost."

Riane thought of how Bartta, who had run the abbey, had murdered her friend Asta and pretended it was

an accident. She recalled how Bartta had tortured her and almost killed her. Bartta was wicked, but Bartta

had come to believe the distortions and lies she herself had made up. She was perpetrator and victim rolled

into one.

"And yet..."

Giyan's whistleflower-blue eyes regarded her levelly, and a kind of current passed between them, a

language of their own design begun with Annon's first memory. What a powerful thing such a language can

be, for it flows in the blood, informs the bone with unshakable knowledge.

"And yet, what mystery beats within the V'ornn heart," Giyan whispered. "There was Eleusis, brave,

compassionate Eleusis; there is Rekkk, brave, compassionate Rekkk. And most mysterious of all, perhaps,

there was the Gyrgon Nith Sahor, who gave his life for us."

"And yet, what mystery beats within the Kundalan heart," Riane answered her, "for you to raise Annon and

not hate him as a mortal enemy, for you to love him as if he were your own flesh and blood, for you to save

him from the enemies of the Ashera at risk to your own life."

"The enemies of the Ashera are my enemies," Giyan said simply.

When she spoke thus her power was undeniable, defeating even that last bastion of V'ornn maleness that

still beat within Riane's soul.

"I love you, Giyan," Riane said. "I find it miraculous that you of all Kundalan are the Lady destined to guide

the Dar Sala-at."

"I love you more than life itself, Teyjattt." A tear slid down Giyan's cheeks. She reached out for her child,

but could feel nothing through the inconstant electrical jolts delivered by the chrysalides.

"Together we will labor to bring back Miina's sacred narrative in all its glory," Riane said with a resolved

heart.

"I fear we will labor greatly."

Riane felt something inside her quail. She knew from experience that there was something oracular about

Giyan. Then Annon's V'ornn-ness took over, and she said: "If this is our destiny, then so be it."

Giyan smiled through her tears. "When you speak thus I am reminded of Nith Sahor. I miss him. His death

was a terrible loss to our cause."

"I only met the Gyrgon once." Riane said. "But without his help I would not have reached the Storehouse

Door in time to stop the Tym-nos device from destroying Kundala."

"You would have appreciated his wisdom, might very well have come to like him. It is a great pity he was

an anomaly among Gyrgon."

For the first time, Riane saw the title of the book Giyan had been reading: Darkness and Its Constituents.

She gestured with a sun-bronzed hand. "Is the Tzelos described in there?"

Giyan smiled grimly and reopened the book. Riane saw a line drawing, filling up an entire page, precise as

an architectural blueprint, of the horrific beast she had seen in Otherwhere. The drawing was fascinating

and repellent at the same time.

"A profane experiment of Pyphoros' gone terribly wrong," Giyan said. "Like all his experiments."

"What was he trying to do?"

"Create life, something only the Maker can do."

"The Great Goddess Miina?"

"Can give life, so it is written. But that is not the same. Even Miina is not the Maker. She cannot create a

new life out of the elemental components of the Cosmos."

"But She created Kundala."

"Ah, no. She bade the Sacred Dragons to create Kundala, and they did so with the help of The Pearl. They

caused matter to cleave to matter. They brought fire and air, water and earth. Metal from dark distant

stars. When Kundala was born, in the Time before the Imagining, the hand of the Maker moved and the

Kundalan appeared."

Riane stood for a time absorbing her words. The weight of history lay upon the shelves ringing the Library,

voices of Kundalan ancestors disturbed from their long slumber by the discussion of Creation. The

faintest stirring seemed to play against her cheek, a liquification of the light reflected off the mosaic sky,

the exhalations of generations past. Hopes, fears, dreams alive here in the twinkling mosaic stars, the

burnished continents, the rakkis-dark seas. She felt all over again her deep and abiding love for this

woman who had raised Annon, who had saved him from certain death, who had been willing to sacrifice

everything, including her life, to save the V'ornn child she had raised. Part of her would never understand

that miracle; another part felt only gratitude.

Typical. The V'ornn searched for answers to everything—this is, doubtless, what led the species to

continue its long lonely quest through the Cosmos. This is doubtless what drove the Gyrgon to continue

their mysterious experiments. Looking for the answers: who are we, where did we come from, where are

we going. It was said that the Gyrgon lusted after immortality, that they wished for nothing less grand than

to be like the god, Enlil, they had rejected. Was it the truth? No one knew. The Gyrgon were masters of

secrecy, subterfuge, misdirection. They were already demigods in their way, powerful, manipulative,

remote. Except for Nith Sahor.

"And where was Miina?" Riane asked with a teenager's directness. "Did She see the Maker?"

"She slept," Giyan said with the simple power of faith. "And when She woke, we were here, Her name

already on our lips."

She would have continued. Her mouth was partly open, the next words about to be released, when she

felt a dreadful hammerblow of pain. With a moan, she slid to her knees, hugging her arms close to her

slender waist. Riane knelt beside her, held her as tenderly as once Giyan had held Annon when his young

body had trembled with ague.

At that moment, a shadow fell between them, and they looked out the window to see a crowned owl

crossing before the full moon on huge silent brindled wings. An omen, Giyan thought, her heart

constricting. Miina has sent us a sign.

And then it seemed as if the crowned owl had crashed through the window, or perhaps it was the

moonslight itself that had been transmogrified to a solid column of energy. The books flew off the table,

their pages ruffling like the feathers of angry birds. Others exploded off the shelves, great ranks rising in

unison in response to the disturbance.

Riane herself was flung backward, skidding across the floor, trying to right herself, being shoved

sideways by the unknown force. She fetched up against a heavy ammonwood chair, which had crashed

over onto its side. A leg struck her rib cage painfully.

She saw Giyan, her back arched, her arms stretched upward, pulled as if by invisible cords. Drafts of air,

cold as death, circled the Library, howling, so that when Riane tried to call out to Giyan her voice was

swept away. Riane's heart turned over. As she watched with mounting horror, Giyan rose into the air.

An eerie glow was emanating from the chrysalides that covered Giyan's hands and forearms. They were

black no longer, but had begun to turn an ash grey. As their color lightened, thin layers peeled off and,

like plates of armor, whirled around and around in the vortex. Upon reaching the periphery, they were

hurled like ice-white missiles, slicing through books, furniture. They lodged in the fluted columns, in the

carved lintels above the doors, in the walls themselves. Riane ducked as one passed centimeters from her

head. It made a sinister whistling sound as it spun away like the beveled blades of a fan.

She tried to stand and fell back in a heap. All the heat was being sucked out of the Library. A chill

entered her bones, sheathing them in pearly frost, making of their marrow a dry white ash. Breath caught

in her lungs, painful as a sandstorm, as if the air itself were being torn asunder, remade into something

dark, dense with menace, wicked as sin.

At last, the chrysalides had let go of Giyan, the sheaths had come off, and her hands and forearms stood

revealed, thick with sinuous red veins and ropey yellow arteries, standing out in convolute profusion.

Her eyes were wide and staring, their blue turned an eerie opalescent white, and in their center pinprick

black pupils. Her mouth was drawn back in the rictus normally associated with death. Through her long,

thickly flowing hair was now wound shards of a dark metallic substance that at once cradled the back of

her head, curling up into corkscrewed points, a kind of thorned crown, living things that shifted and

shimmered in the lamplight, glimmered and glistened as they wove themselves into a pattern of hideous

design.

The moonlight, flooding through the rent window, was pale, insubstantial. The dust motes held in its

columns shivered. Riane felt herself caught as if in a deep dream, her limbs felt like deadweights, her

thoughts slow as frozen sap. As in a nightmare, she felt both terrified and helpless. She had the presence

of mind to understand that her very helplessness compounded the terror, and yet that knowledge was of

little use to her. Her mind was filled with an awful martial drumbeat that foretold her losing Giyan once

again. She did not think that she could bear it.

But now there was no more time for thought. Giyan fixed her with her bizarre and frightening white eyes

and her left arm came down, describing a shallow arc that brought her hand to point directly at Riane.

Riane could see in the center of each palm a corkscrewed spike similar to the elements of the thorned

crown piercing her flesh right through, though there was no blood or even any semblance of a wound.

Rather, the spike seemed part of her, as, indeed, the crown seemed to have grown from the bones of her

skull.

She saw the vein-wrapped forefinger unfurl, the black nail, long and gleaming, extending from it. Riane

felt displaced, separated from the world around her. Her Third Eye opened in response to the horror and

saw blood all around her, buckets of blood, cauldronsful, a veritable ocean of blood, life draining away

down an ancient stone drain clogged with eons of blackened moss and decay, the slimy debris of time.

Here was a moment she would remember all her life, a moment that would haunt her waking hours and

stalk her dreams, Giyan is dead, long live . . . What? What foul beast had the Lady become?

As best she could, she cast about for a counterspell to the sorcerous transformation the chrysalides had

worked on Giyan, but she knew so few spells, and none of them seemed right. You are untrained. Even

with a power as great as yours you are at a grave disadvantage against your enemies without the

knowledge of the ancients, Mother had told her. This is why you must exercise extreme caution.

This is why you must keep your identity hidden as much as you can until your schooling in the

sorcerous arts is compete.

Oh, yes, Mother was right. And so was Giyan. Her enemies had wasted no time in mounting another

attack. In desperation, she spoke the words of the Old Tongue, conjuring Earth Granary, the most potent

of Osoru healing spells.

At almost the same instant, she heard the quick sizzle, as of frying flesh. It made her skin crawl, her heart

beat fast. And then all the breath was knocked out of her as the sorcerous spell hit her dead on. It was

well that she had cast Earth Granary, for it afforded her a measure of protection, the difference between

life and death.

She flickered between consciousness and unconsciousness as she crawled painfully across the Library

floor, and she set all her reserves of energy into redoubling the spell, holding it close around her, so that it

would not fly apart in a thousands shreds, exposing her entirely to the ferocious attack.

And, then, there it was, leaking from the suppurating ends of Giyan's fingertips: the Tzelos, writhing in its

noncorporeal state as the thing that had been Giyan gave birth to the daemon from the Abyss.

The rotting cor-meat stink of the Tzelos assaulted her. It was black as steaming pitch, its twelve-legged

body segmented like an insect's, its bloated thorax protected by a hard carapace. Its long flat ugly head,

brown-black, shiny as obsidian, was guarded by monstrous serrated mandibles. Twelve faceted eyes,

burning like garnets, fixed on her.

Riane struggled to rise as the spell dissipated, drew her dagger, preparing to defend herself. Giyan was

moving, but Riane's attention was wholly taken up with the advancing Tzelos. And then she saw

something out of the corner of her eye, a furry, six-limbed creature with triangular ears, a long, striped,

puffy tail, and dark, intelligent eyes. Thigpen was Rappa.

"Thigpen, get back!" Riane cried.

The creature ignored her. Shaking off her dizziness, she grabbed an upended lamp, hurled it in a sidearm

motion. It struck the Tzelos and passed right through it. An illusion, just like the one that had appeared

when she had mistakenly killed Mother. The Tzelos rushed at her, and she instinctively steeled herself.

"Ignore it," Thigpen said. "Use your Third Eye to distinguish what is real and what is not."

Riane felt a brief chill, like ice sliding down the back of her neck. Giyan began to rise off the ground. Her

arms were spread wide, her head thrust slightly back, her jaw clenched and set. Employing the sorcerous

sight from her Third Eye, Riane detected another presence inside Giyan. It coiled inside her like a gigantic

serpent, spiraling up her spine. With a sickening shock, Riane realized that it had entered her brain. The

presence was levitating her.

Riane watched, stunned, as Giyan, her long hair writhing like a nest of bloodworms, flew toward the

broken window and passed through it.

"We must not allow her to escape," Thigpen cried.

"Something has taken possession of her! I can feel it!" Riane said. "What is happening?"

"It is Malasocca," Thigpen whispered. "It means 'Dark Night of the Soul'. I do not know the way of it;

I'm not sure anyone alive does. But I understand this much: piece by piece, her spirit is being replaced by

that of a daemon. If we cannot stop her, if she heeds the call, if she vanishes, she will be lost to us, Riane.

Lost for all time." Thigpen was scampering across the floor, ignoring the shards of glass that stuck to the

pads of her slender handlike paws. "Worse, she will be replaced by our most implacable enemy."

Eric Van Lustbader - The Pearl Saga 2 - The Veil of a Thousand Tears

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