Rythe Falls by Craig R. Saunders

taste of your blood, that which I hid from the Hierarchy. Your ancestors who I set the witch-kind to watch through the ages. The buildings I caused to be built and populated that have waited for these end-days. I made a whole continent sink into the sea and cursed the Seafarers to roam the waters and never know the touch of dirt until these days. I alone did these things and more, throughout the millennia, to bring this moment before you, Renir Esyn. I lived through these things without food or warmth or comfort. I made such long plans and such towering sacrifices throughout the lonely years, the mad years, yes, to bring you to this moment in time. You feel like a prisoner?'
                  'I...' was all Renir could manage before Caeus began to speak again, cutting him off.
                  'You feel like a prisoner because you are, but in a gilded cage, and I have been too soft. You think being in the belly of the revenant made me insane, or the power, or travelling through the black voids of space, or killing my own kin and banishing the rest...you think these things make me insane?'
                  Yes, Renir itched to say, but he settled for a shrug...and a frightened one at that.
                  Caeus leaned down, toward Renir. Renir was already pushed up against the bed. He couldn't get away. Blood-red light came from the wizard's eyes.
                  'The thing is, Renir...these things didn't make me insane. I always was .'
                  Blinding light for a split second and Caeus' words echoing on the air, but the creature was gone.
                  His last words echoed on the air, like words turned to writing.
                  'Tell the Sard I go to see my God, ' the mad wizard said. 'Tell them I go to find the Crown of Kings for you...for you. '
                  His words still hung there, in the burning air that wavered before Renir's eyes...until the air calmed and there was nothing left but a stench of fire and storm.
                  Renir finally managed to pushed himself from his bed and run to the door, to call the Sard, to call Drun, anyone, but the instant his hand touched the handle of the door he flew backward across the room and hit the wall opposite with a crack.
     
    *
     
     
     

Chapter Thirteen
     
    Reih had felt danger in her life many times before. Perhaps she was not as attuned to the currents of violence as men like Perr were, but she knew the feel of peril - a tingling in her scalp, an irritability in her mind, dread fingers on her spine.
                  The interior of the great temple was dark. Not pitch, like a deep cave might be, but dark enough that she had to fumble her way along the corridor she found herself in. The walls were lit by some minor luminescence, ineffectual in showing her the way ahead. She could see the entrance behind her, still large and wide and far more inviting than the dark, brooding gloom ahead. When the entrance closed behind her, wide doors swinging closed, cutting the light from a bar to a sliver to no more than a razor's breadth, she felt a scream of panic build in her gut, ready to burst in her throat...yet as the door closed that dim light began to grow brighter...swiftly.
                  In two or three seconds, her mood shifted from panic to wonder. The walls lit her way, not with fire but some property of the stone itself. Where the stone had seemed black, it now burst forth with light. Not blinding, but all encompassing. No longer walking along a plain black corridor, but one that shone like sun-blessed gold.
                  And on the walls, the roof, the floor (curved walls, she noted, not straight, like a human hand would build) were numerous symbols, pictograms, hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, even, at their simplest - as though people had come here to learn how to write their thoughts and dreams in this