INTERLUDE 5A: THE LIGHTHOUSE
“Do you feel the same yearning? The longing that lingers, the wanderlust that does not rest, itching ceaselessly? There is a hollow in the hidden heart of man, hallowed only by recognition, then filled with light. Such cannot but be put to use. If the light is not spent it will fade all the same. It must be spent – spent and replenished in equal measure!”
– from ‘The Book of Kultemeren’, 2:98-102
13th Taura, 989 NE
Alandrica moved through the market-stalls, her colourful scarves trailing in the winter breeze. Like a faithful puppy, Rathal followed, trying his best to keep up, but he was too tired, too laden with her conquests. She would stop, haggle the vendor down to twelve copper for a bag of spuds – she had her brought own bag, of course – and Rathal would only get there in time to accept the heavy sack before she was darting away again, her eyes on the next prize, the next soon-to-be bargain.
By the time the sun started to go down and she had grown weary of her victories, her husband resembled a packhorse more than he did a man.
“Come here,” she said, trying to take one of the many bags from him. He’d been a good boy – he deserved that much.
But he pulled back, out of her reach: “This is your first time out the house in months. I think I shall carry my wife’s baggage, thank you kindly.”
She stepped closer to him despite his protests, and hefted the small sack that’d been on top of the bundle he held between his arms.
“I wasn’t offering to take all of them, you know,” she said in a very proper, ladylike voice, and Rathal laughed.
“I should hope not,” he replied as they started making their way home. “Whatever would the neighbours say?”
Then it was Alandrica’s turn to smile. Their immediate neighbours were a family of crazy nailbiter-addicts on the one side, and a family of dagger-happy gang-bangers on the other. They were just glad they lived on the ground floor – the lives of those in the properties above them were rough.
Despite that, there was some truth to what Rathal had said. Even in South Lowtown there was honour among thieves and respect among druggies. The scum of Mund were, well, scum, but they would scowl at a man letting his recently-pregnant wife carry half the shopping. That was just the way things were, even if burglary and knife-point robbery were seen as, if not exactly acceptable, at least forgiveable.
Unless you were the wronged party, of course. Then it would be time for blood vendettas and gang-wars… All the more reason to stay in at home, safe behind a whole bunch of locks and drawn curtains, caring for sweet little Ruthi.
“What’s aunty cooking tonight?” he asked as they passed Illton Green, his voice echoing through the halls of baggage obscuring him from her vision. “Can you remember?”
His family had taken her in like she was one of their own when she and Rathal couldn’t find their own place, and she always looked forward to the evening meals.
Yes, she could remember.
“Cluck cluck.” She pulled a beak-face and bobbed her head backwards and forwards.
“You’re pulling the face again out there, aren’t you?”
“Clu-cluuuck!” She gave it her best nuh-uh intonation, swivelling her chicken-face in shock.
She missed him blindly throwing his foot out at her ankle, and he almost managed to trip her.
“Ooooh, you’ve done it now,” she declared, drawing her fingers from her belt like daggers.
“No – do not tickle me!”
He tried to skip ahead, but he dropped the potatoes, and within seconds they were wrestling in the muck. She had the advantage – he couldn’t tickle her in return without running the risk of reopening her wounds – but for the first time in a long time they were both able to completely give themselves over to the moment, heedless of those watching… Just enjoying life. Their little pocket of bliss.
And that was also the last real moment they spent together.
Within two hours, it would happen. Ruthi’s accident. The power that came upon Rathal.
Within two weeks, it would happen again. Aunty Osseya and Uncle Holdan’s ‘accident’.
The power that came upon Alandrica.
* * *
12th Illost, 998 NE
She hated the undead, but she didn’t fear them. She’d fought them plenty enough times to have long since gotten over the fear. Last year Skullsmasher had cut a bloody swathe across North Lowtown, massacring the inhabitants of the Old Pits, and Hellbane had come to her for help – she and Mindbreaker had tracked the darkmage down, sent Hellbane right up to the killer’s front door. The year before, one of the Hierarchs – she was always forgetting the dropping numbers – had brought an army up out of one of the graveyards, in addition to their own eldritches. Alandrica had been instrumental in organising the evacuation of the surrounding neighbourhoods, had even engaged the enemy head-on, blade-to-blade. Not that many of her foes had actually possessed weapons, to be fair… Blade-to-bone.
In stark contrast to the melee in which she now found herself. Zombies, banshees, even wights, she could handle. But these things? These so-called ‘deathknights’? They were something else entirely. Their weapons actually hummed in her head, as though she were able to hear them with her powers. A distant echoing resounded through the rafters of her mind, the combined wailing of a hundred trapped souls whose power fuelled the purple flames.
Whenever she thought of the dead, she spared a thought for her dear departed daughter. Ruthi, whose soul she would meet again one day, in Celestium.
But until then, she intended to fight.
“We can perform a great working,” she suggested, looking across at Spiritwhisper and Glancefall, trying to gauge their reaction before they spoke – it was damn hard reading an arch-enchanter, even when you were one yourself. “We can pool our power, try to weaken their bonds.”
“W-would that even – even work?” Glancefall asked, unable to keep the tremor of fear from his mind-voice. He hadn’t been around long enough to have faced many undead, and he’d probably thought of this excursion to Zadhal as some kind of interesting jaunt, a leisurely trip into the darkness.
How wrong he’d been proven.
“We can control them,” she pressed. “There’s no reason we can’t do something to them that we can to a person.”
“Except, you know, the fact they’re dead.” Spiritwhisper was only barely keeping his hopes up, too.
“Did that stop you controlling the ghoul, or was that a lie?” she snapped. She was getting sick of this. “They’re just… farther away than a person. Their minds, I mean. Look, we’re either gonna do something or we’re not. Which option do you prefer?”
Glancefall grumbled something about an option that took him away from here. Spiritwhisper didn’t respond, but floated closer to her as they moved through the streets.
“You really think we’ve got a shot at it?” Spiritwhisper asked. There was the hint of eagerness, optimism she’d been listening out for. There was the Spiritwhisper she knew.
“You bet your ass,” she said, smiling behind her mask, the depiction of a sunrise that had worked to disguise both her appearance and the meaning of her name. “Group up on me. Timesnatcher, you’re following this?”
“Of course,” his voice echoed in their heads. “Good call, Rosedawn. Keep me updated.”
He called her Rosedawn even in private, but he surely knew her real name. He knew she was hiding the identity of her husband – he had to. The amulet he wore prevented her from messing deep in his head, and he never let his knowledge about her cross his surface-thoughts; he was a wily fellow, their leader.
And a nice fellow, just as Lightblind was a lovely young girl. They might’ve been highborn, but they were just-about the most-approachable highborn she’d ever met – even with the whole arch-diviner thing not exactly working in their favour. They’d accepted her as a champion, fought alongside her, parried blows that would’ve slain her.
If Timesnatcher knew – which he surely did – he had to be the politest man in the world.
She took a final glance at the deathknight army swirling around them, then closed her eyes.
She didn’t need her eyes to see, not when there were so many people around her, friends whose barriers were low, letting her see through their eyes if she wanted to. But when in the centre of this whirling chaos, this sorcerous storm, she could track their movements more readily by the sheer location of their thoughts than by sight of any kind. Each of the champions and arch-magisters was a point of pressure in her mind, like a pin sticking in the back of her hand. Enough pins and you would lose track of the individual placements, but you wouldn’t suddenly think they were sticking in your foot.
Alandrica was adept at flying; she anchored herself to those pressure-points and joined her thoughts with those of fellow arch-enchanters. It was only a matter of trusting, being truly open… bestowing upon Spiritwhisper and Glancefall a heartfelt invitation to enter the walls of her mind…
The united willpower of three archmages, enchanters at the top of their game, would be enough to topple most countries. Her confidence filled the trio. They couldn’t fail.
Someone whispered, “Here they come,” and they couldn’t tell who it was that had spoken. Their minds were already homing in on something. They knew it as an anomaly. A deathknight who stood out from the rest.
A death-lord.
Listening to a human’s thoughts was little different to listening to a human’s words – her enchanter’s-ear heard the constant babbling as a background noise that merely required focus to come into full awareness – but listening to an undead creature’s thoughts was different. It was like struggling to hear the words that came echoing up out of a well, a well deep enough to stretch out the other side of the world and into Nethernum.
This one, this death-lord, was loud. Closer to human, somehow. As though his archmagery had borne a shard of his true essence into his unlife.
A trace of mind they could latch onto.
Then they could hear his thoughts. His mind-voice was low for all that it was louder than the others’, little more than a rattling breath, a callous whisper, but they couldn’t make out the words – the language was foreign to them. All that came through were the impressions.
The first impression, the first piece of knowledge they gleaned, was that his thoughts were reflecting the link. Not perfectly; and it wasn’t a power he possessed. No. This was an enchantment that had been placed upon him. He couldn’t tell what they were saying to each other, but the spell was permitting him to sense the use of the telepathic space, the vibrations in the psychic tapestry of Zadhal.
This was how they’d known when champions arrived in their city.
Somewhere far off, an insignificant person said something that came sluggishly into the heads of the enchanters:”They will… break through… flee… for your lives…”
Pressure points moved in all directions at once such that they didn’t move at all, and they could still feel the indentations…
“Keep moving…” Someone else – someone they had to listen to? “We’re faster… than them…”
Why these stupid people were troubling them with this, they had no idea. They already knew they weren’t going to have to flee. They’d seen in the death-lord’s mind that he was dividing his forces to pursue the moment they abandoned the sorcerers’ weave… But they could stop the death-lord before the weave broke. They could end this.
They’d sensed it as the death-lord froze, brought his mount to a halt as close to them as he could come – they’d beckoned him into the shield, attempting to evaporate his hatred, let the nethernal rage filter out of his soul, if only temporarily –
Slowly, he’d held out his hand to them –
But there was the screaming.
Their friends were screaming, inside and outside.
Panic drowned them, emotions being thrust at them from every direction. Emotions that demanded response.
It took conscious effort for them to recognise that they were too late.
Their control slipped, and Alandrica felt it the moment they separated back into themselves: the coldness, the fear, the knowledge that it’d all gone wrong and they’d been left behind –
Even after breaking the great working, they were still touching one another’s perceptions; thankfully they had three sets of eyes, three sets of ears, three minds with which to react. As one they moved through the crowd, dipping lower than the lowest deathknights, streaking out of the conflict and away.
“What are we going to do without the links?” she said loudly, trying to ensure both her companions heard her as they fled down rubble-strewn streets towards the west. “We can’t find them without lighthousing – if they can’t – if we can’t even speak to each other –“
“We’ll find Timesnatcher, put us back together again,” Spiritwhisper said.
But how? she fretted. How do we find him without the glyphstones or the link?
She wasn’t used to being alone in her head in situations like this.
“Do we have to keep heading west?” Glancefall grated from between clenched teeth.
For a moment she drew a blank on his meaning, then the image of the map arose before her mind’s eye once more. Glancefall had looked up, showed her.
We’re heading towards the towers.
They loomed over the landscape, foreboding, too silent, too still.
Basic functions like reactions, changes of course, were essentially automatic, performed by the group-will. In unison, with no further persuasion requested or required, they took a turn north towards the walls on the far edge of the city from where they’d started – then they would loop east, back on themselves…? Theoretically that’d be the best way to find the others, right? The group-decision hadn’t yet been made, but for now they would head north, keep under the rooftops as they’d done thus far.
Not that it had worked, she thought. But that was our fault, wasn’t it? It’s not like we were spotted… Keeping low will work now.
There were no deathknights around or immediately-behind them, now, though they could still be seen in the distance, a smear of purple-gleaming greyness.
“When are we going to put the link back up, then?” she asked. “If we’re going to find Timesnatcher, we’ll have to do it at some point.”
“Everyone will come back up at once, though,” Glancefall complained. “We didn’t dispel it.” It was his eyes through which they were constantly getting updates on the nearness of the deathknights, and it appeared he was recovering a bit now that they’d put some distance between themselves and their pursuers.
“They probably won’t realise it’s back up,” Alandrica said.
“But we can’t stop them using it until they start using it!” the Rivertowner replied.
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take.” She suppressed the urge to shudder. It was as though the confidence with which she spoke, with which she took charge, had literally drained her own reserves and now she was left feeling nervous, inappropriately placed in a position of authority.
She’d been champion the longest of the three of them, damn it. This was her job. This was the only sane way to respond to what had happened to her – die, giving it her all.
Damn you, Rathal. She could say it to herself all she wanted, she still thought his name in loving tones. Damn you, damn you, damn you!
The deathknights behind them had slipped entirely out of view by the time they turned left, eastwards, and for the first time since they ran they were heading back on themselves, closer to the site of the previous confrontation.
She felt the tingling in her fingers and toes, elbows and knees, the body’s in-built reminders that the danger she was nearing was real, all too real.
“I… I have the greatest range. I’ll do it. We’ll split up, first.”
She halted, hanging there in the air between two dilapidated houses.
“No!” Spiritwhisper said, slowing, turning to face her with incredulous eyes wide open. “We’ll support you!”
Their minds were no longer linked. The effects of the great working had faded away and she couldn’t convince him without making an argument – every second was vital –
But Glancefall came to her rescue, pulling Spiritwhisper away.
“Come on, lad. You know it’s gotta be this way. We’ll listen, okay?”
She and Glancefall exchanged a solemn nod as the other two enchanters continued up the street away from her.
She drew in a deep breath and opened the previously-established channels of communication. She could feel them out there, the threads of the web, still solid but merely inactive, gathering dust. The lightest decision was all that was required to brush away the dust, relight the glowing white lines she could see in her mind’s eye.
I am the lighthouse. I can guide them all home.
But which lines belonged to the diviners?
“Timesnatcher?” she whispered.
Half a dozen different voices piped up – she hurriedly shushed them, then moved up the street after Glancefall and Spiritwhisper. She had to remember to keep looking out behind herself now – she was down to one pair of eyes, and the deathknights were far quieter than they ought to be…
She cast a glance over her shoulder. Nothing… yet.
“Timesnatcher?” she whispered again, then took one of the side-streets. If they were going to track her by her use of the link, she couldn’t let herself follow a fixed direction, or follow the others. “Lightblind?”
After a few more goes she heard Fangmoon… Elkostor… and Feychilde…
She whispered to them: “Stop… talking… with… minds…”
They carried on – questioning her!
Damn them!
“It’s… Rosedawn…” She cast another glance over her shoulder. “Just… stop… no!…”
The last telepathic gasp came out of her mind involuntarily as she saw what was silently swooping down at her. If it hadn’t stunk so bad she might not have even turned.
The snowy-feathered vultures were each the size Glimmermere favoured in her condor-form, and they were dead, maggots constantly falling from their stretched, stringy bodies as they descended, gliding. There were two of them, but that wasn’t even the worst of it.
They were merely the livestock… deadstock being used to pull the huge, obscene chariot.
An ornate construction of pearly bone, dropping out of the sky. Warped, sharpened femurs served as scythes, protruding from the wheels and struts on either side. Fleshless digits surmounted everything, and for a seat and rider the chariot had merely a great pile of skulls. Hideously, this was not some inanimate edifice, but an unliving creature made up of hundreds of individual parts. It had a will, a purpose. The fleshless fingers undulated, beckoning, clawing at the air. The pile of skulls rolled about and reshaped their mass as though to lean towards her, swivelling their empty eye-sockets at her, the jaws opening and closing on ancient lipless teeth in mocking, soundless laughter.
Her heart almost stopped. This was it. She accelerated backwards, but she wasn’t going to be able to build the speed required – she should’ve thrown herself to one side, but fear was her navigator – she should’ve separated her seemings, fled in a hundred directions, but it could see her despite the invisibility, could sense her blood, her soul –
She feared the undead, reacted the way a child froze in terror in the darkness,feared them now such as never before –
The giant vulture’s wing threw her into shadow and the keen edges of a dozen curved bones, gleaming like savage white scimitars, trundled through the air towards her.
She was pulled in, and the bone-scythes made contact with her legs.
The enchantress’s last thought was the name of her daughter.
Then there was only nothingness, and what awaited her beyond.
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