MARBLE 6.3: IN THE POTENTIAL
“The Arch-Druid represents the need for all that is heroic. Strength. Empathy. Healing. Reversed, she represents enforced tranquillity. Strength replaced with cowardice. An inversion of empathy. The wound festered, not scarred.”
– from ‘Tarot for Beginners’
My shift with Sol finished, I landed near home and changed out of my robe, shoving it with my mask into my satchel, before making my way down the Springwalk. The alley’s name had never been less apt; Dropswim would’ve been far closer to the truth. The big, powerful river-rats of the Blackrush had pushed west again, and were cavorting happily in the overflowed gutters all around me. It seemed that today someone had not only forgotten to shut the manhole to the demi-plane of sewage, but had actively encouraged its encroachment into our dimension. It was raining, and there were several inches of frosted filth splashing around my new boots, the padded, leather things that were the only sign of wealth I dared wear out when I was being Kas. It was with some real regret that I folded away my wings into nothingness, adjusted my wraithiness down to minimum.
Smog-mist contorting and wreathing through the darkness above me, creaking wooden walls on either side of me, I splashed towards Mud Lane.
I hadn’t gone thirty feet before Zel piped up: “Oh, something’s happening ahead.”
I halted, training my ear on the snatches of sounds.
A girlish woman’s voice, muffled: “Gerroff me! Aah!”
“Shut up, wench,” someone spat. “I put up with you long enough!”
“She doesn’t have long! Murder!”
I sped up, changing my face with a wave of my hand as I went charging through the muck, getting drop right up my pants-legs.
If it’s an impending murder, Zel, you can try actually, you know, putting some urgency into your voice…
“Hurry!”
The alley’s curvature had kept them from my sight, but it was Salli Meleine up against the wall, two men right there in her face.
The knife was already on her throat.
Oh, drop on this!
The wraith-form didn’t let me move quickly – if anything, using that ability to hover would only slow me. But I’d only just put Avaelar’s wings away – when I called them back, they thrust themselves out and caught the air in just a second or two.
I hurled myself towards the pair of ruffians and their prey with a single heavy beat of the fey appendages, and grated out in a Zab-enhanced voice: “Feel like threatening me?”
I had no mask, no robe – nothing but a randomly-conjured face and the massive, gently-glowing sylph-wings protruding through my rain-damp tunic. Nonetheless, the inhuman growl I’d produced seemed to have had an effect – the nearest man to me turned to look over his shoulder, and a single glance was all he needed – he half-waded, half-ran up the Springwalk away from me, abandoning Salli and his mate.
The other, right in front of Salli with his hand on the dagger-grip, only doubled down when he saw me approaching. I noticed his stubbly jaw setting in determination, his eyes narrowing as he gazed at the oncoming mage.
“Jus’ wha’ d’you want?” he snarled. “Wha’ we got ‘ere is a disagreemen’, me an’ her, and you don’ wan’ to be –“
The collision of my shield with his jabbering face necessitated his sudden shutting-up. The force-barrier pushed him into the wall and freed the barmaid, jarring the knife from his hand as it did so, leaving Salli with a little trickle of blood coursing down her neck.
She winced, raised her hand to the shallow slice, and gave a little moan.
“Here.” I removed my necklace and handed her my healing potion. “Just a sip – it’s quite safe, and you’ll be mended good as new.”
With trembling fingers, she accepted the gleaming phial on its chain.
“As for you…”
I leaned over my circle, then let my right hand go full-wraith and shoved it into the thug’s chest.
One moment he was struggling against the shield pressing him back, fighting to escape, to breathe – then he saw where my hand was and went incredibly, unfathomably still.
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” I said conversationally.
“Eep,” he managed.
“If I undo what I’ve done to my fist, your ticker’s probably in for a rude awakening, and I’m gonna get so much mess all over my fingers… Probably best for both of us if I don’t, eh?”
He nodded frantically, still staring down at my wrist, my hand buried in his body right where his heart should be.
“Can you feel it, in there?”
He shook his head, and this time it was a minute motion. He suspected what was coming.
I grinned. “Now?”
His eyes widened. He nodded and blubbered.
I turned the wraith back up again. “Cool. We good on this? I don’t get to spend the rest of the night scraping your innards out of my nails, and you don’t get ten seconds becoming acquainted with the great whoppin’ hole in your chest before it kills you.”
He nodded once more, contrite at last. There were tears in his eyes.
“If you – if anyone – touches her,” I gestured with my head towards Salli, “I’m coming for you. I won’t start with the heart; I’ll take something less terminal first, work my way up. Do you understand?”
“I – I do,” he looked me up and down manically, “m’lord, I do –“
I drew away and removed my hand, adding a huge sucking sound as an illusory icing on the cake.
Whimpering, the ruffian fled after his fellow. I watched him go – it took him some considerable effort to fight his way upstream.
“’M’lord’,” I muttered derisively, and let the sylph-wings fade again.
Salli had shoved the stopper back into the neck of the phial, the thimbleful of potent healing juice sloshing around inside, the consistency of milk.
“Tastes funny,” she said, passing it back and touching her neck with her other hand.
“I’m informed it’s called pomegranate,” I said.
“Never heard of it.” She smiled at me, sickly sweet. “I guess I… need to thank you.” She looked down at the blood on her fingers.
“It won’t scar,” I said, then realised in the moment that I heard my voice just how stupid I was being.
“Magic stuff,” she commented.
“Lit’rally.” I tried to affect a Lowtown-ish accent, but the damage was already done.
She laughed, infectiously as always, and patted me on the arm. “Oh, give it up already, Kas. The pig’s long-since out the pen. Well?”
I stared at her.
“Are you coming?” she asked, tugging at my elbow. “I always need my spirits topping up when I nearly get killed – don’t know about you… Not seen you in a few weeks, thinking about it. You been alright? Looking after them twins of yours?”
She half-dragged, half-towed me up the Springwalk, and that was how I ended up having drinks at Salli Meleine’s house.
* * *
Salli lived across from mine – not in the blocks still undergoing reconstruction, but farther towards the bottom end of Mud Lane, where the buildings had survived the Incursion unscathed.
“Thanks to you,” she muttered when I mentioned this fact, crossing the lane.
“Keep your voice down…”
I looked around furtively but few of the remaining camp-dwelling refugees were outside their tents at this hour, and none within earshot, something Zel was quick to point out.
Salli’s infectious, throaty laughter came pouring out. “A secret kept in plain sight, my dear Kastyr. No one would believe me, anyway, even if they heard me. You’d better, you know, fix your face or whatever, though. People are gonna notice if I have some strange man round, especially if he’s stolen Kas’s clothes, and his voice to boot!”
“Is that what it was?” I asked, feeling very much on-edge. “The voice, the clothes…”
How stupid have I been? I was bound to get figured-out eventually…
“Pretty sure I said that exact thing, oh, eighteen or nineteen times…”
Shut it, Zel, and check this isn’t Dream. I’m not putting up with any more puppies.
“I’m ninety-eight percent sure.”
Just check again, will you? Last time you were ninety-five percent sure, and the way Madame Sailor looked at me when I showed her what the fire did to the other robe…
“The voice, the clothes… everything,” Salli was replying. “But don’t sweat it. I heard you order a mug of beer a good few hundred times. I’m pretty sure I’m better than most at putting a face to a voice. Especially after seeing you in the Incursion.”
For all her reassurances, I remained unreassured. She was hardly the only one who knew me intimately. Sure, she was probably right that her job as a barmaid helped her out in identifying me with such ease. But just because she was better than average didn’t mean the average wouldn’t cotton-on eventually.
Would I have to avoid Mud Lane entirely? I’d taken my idea about getting a place I could go to in my champion guise and combined it with my investment plans, taking advantage of the Incursion to purchase several plots on Mud Lane, directly opposite my current apartment. Had I made a mistake, thinking I could continue to live here, close enough to the twins to be at their sides if they needed me, but far enough to have plausible deniability of my identity? I could hardly walk on by when someone was in need, but if getting involved could expose the twins, and Xantaire’s family, to the kind of consequences champions alone were made to face… It didn’t bear thinking about. But what was the alternative? If I didn’t live here, Salli could well have died tonight.
It was just the Incursion, I told myself. She got to see and hear me close up, in costume, more than most of the others.
But it sounded like a weak excuse, even to me.
I let my illusion blink away once we were in the stairwell, out of the sight of any prying eyes that Zel failed to account for.
I followed her up the stairs to her fifth-floor apartment, while she shook out her keys. Sticktowners were sometimes too poor to afford proper wedding rings, settling for soft, cheap metals in many cases, but the one area we didn’t scrimp on the iron was locks – locks and the keys that fastened them.
She opened the door into near-darkness, and the snuffling of her dog was the only sound. I scratched the old boy’s neck and did my best to evade the expertly-wielded wet nose, while Salli lit a proper candle off the slow-burning wick on the stand. She lived with her three brothers, at least one of whom was a Bertie Boy, and I wasn’t that surprised to find they were out. She shut the door behind me, locked it, then busied herself making her home look half-presentable, wittering at me all the while. Apparently her flatmates had left it a mess – there was an empty wineskin on the table, various cooking tools and implements lying around with caked-on food, unwashed clothes hanging off the chairs…
I could discern the scent of old blood on some of the clothing, even through the general aroma of drop that clung to our footwear.
“I – can’t – believe! – Jordak. It’s gotta be a million times I’ve told him… Sorry… So, you’re the famous Feychilde, are you? I can’t believe it! I mean, now I’ve seen it with my own eyes, of course I believe it, but still… Liberator of Zadhal… What was Zadhal even like? It’s just – how did this all happen to you? And you – you’re rich! Well, rich enough for all them tents down there – oh! Oh, that was you, Kas?”
She stopped pacing, stared at me.
“Which question would you have me answer first?” I asked, smiling.
She laughed and blinked a few times, letting herself fall heavily into the one space on the couch she’d actually managed to clear. She leaned forwards and I had to fix my gaze on her face lest I get an eyeful of her assets. She did not dress demurely and, no older than twenty, she had a noticeably womanly shape. This was most definitely not the time to be noticing, no matter what my eyes thought.
We’d all fancied her, one time or another, whether we’d admitted it or not. Me and Tanny, my old friend who’d recently donned the dubious mantle of Bagger Boy, had been the kids too scared to wolf-whistle as she walked to work under our bridge, braided blonde pigtails swishing. Too scared to whistle, and a bit too young, yes, but not too scared to sit there, legs hanging over the edge twenty feet above Mud Lane, trying our hardest to get a glimpse down her bodice as she passed beneath us. She was extremely pretty, and big everywhere – top, middle and bottom – and had a personality to match. It was her that’d let us in the Griffin when we were too young, her that’d served us once we had pubescent whiskers sticking out all over our lips and chins.
I’d been set for a ruffian’s life, until I took a blade in my face. I performed unscrupulous deeds for handfuls of copper, without the knowledge of my parents. I rebelled, and I enjoyed my rebellion. Then everything got too real – the scar on my cheek frightened me with its permanence. “It’ll be there forever!” Mum had said. “And good! So it should be!” Dad had roared.
I realised now, looking back, they’d just been frightened, and they wanted me to be frightened as well. Too frightened to go back to it, the mockery of a life I was living – but their plan backfired. It worked too well.
I wasn’t just frightened – I was terrified.
And then they died, and everything had changed. I met Xantaire, who saved our collective asses, helping me bring in enough money to keep food on the table, keep a roof over our heads without moving in those circles, never again going to those rancid houses in the midnight hour to take orders from a gang-banging thug just a few years my senior…
Being here with Salli in her house, it brought it all back, the glorious, sordid, misspent years. I only saw her the odd time these days, when I accompanied Morsus for a quick drink, more to get out of the house for half an hour than anything else.
Morsus… I still wasn’t getting used to it. You’d think I’d have the hang of this by now.
I shook my head, drew a deep breath.
“It’s not Dream – one hundred percent.”
Thanks, Zel.
“So, I thought it was customary to offer your guest the only seat in the house.” I fixed my expression and beamed at Salli, eyes locked on hers. “Especially if they just sort-of saved your life, and can conjure the foulest creatures of the abyssal realms…”
She went to jump up, blurting a quick, “Sorry!”
I held out a hand to stop her, chuckling. “I’m joking, it’s fine. I’m just…” As she plonked back down again I regarded her anew. “You know you’re going to need to keep this a secret, right, Salli? Even if you think no one would believe you. You know that isn’t quite true, right?”
“Right.” She was smiling again now. “Right. I just need a drink – here…” She reached her arms around the mess covering the rest of the couch, hurled it towards a corner, then brushed the rest onto the floor. “You sit down, I’ll get the bottle.”
I figured it was probably better to accept the cup of pinkish-brown spirits she offered me, rather than summon Flood Boy for a tastier beverage and risk breaking the poor woman’s mind entirely. I sniffed the stuff – musty, nutty – before lifting it to my lips.
It tasted surprisingly nice – warm, caramellic – but the experience itself was akin to how I imagined it’d feel to drink the green fire-sauce that came with Onsolorian tempura.
Actually drink it.
“Paa-aah!”
“It’s nice, isn’t it,” she said with deep satisfaction in her voice.
“Nice,” I managed to exhale.
“So, can you really conjure the foulest of the foul?” she asked, a bit of unveiled wonder in her tone.
“I – I suppose.” I thought of the atiimogrix.
“You know you have to show me.”
“Most of the awesome ones wouldn’t even fit in here.” I looked around. “You saw them in the Incursion anyway – you sure you wouldn’t rather see a unicorn or something?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Okay, okay – check this out.”
I brought forth Sir Stinger and had him perform a few tricks. I managed to get a yelp of surprise from my host when I had him grow suddenly, but I never took him any bigger than the dog, who was hiding behind the couch even while the fey scorpion was mouse-sized.
“As for Zadhal – it wasn’t really even me. Nentheleme did most of the work…”
“The… like, actual goddess?” Salli sounded astonished.
I thought back to my fever-dream following the surge of etheric energy, when my flesh was being dragged in the clutches of the lich-lords and my soul was cradled in the arms of the Horned One.
She was pretty awesome.
“I suppose… It was scary there, though. Zadhal, I mean. We almost died, so many times. It wasn’t some glorious thing like you’d imagine.”
But I thought of the snow coming down in the blue light of the Winter Door after night fell, and fell silent.
“I saw you, at the memorial for Leafcloak and Lightblind,” she said out of nowhere.
I jerked my eyes to hers in surprise.
“What? I was looking for you – I basically know you – well, I suppose I do know you, if you get what I mean? But it was hard to find you behind Timesnatcher – you should’ve been at the front, ‘Liberator’…”
What could I say? Timesnatcher had been at the front because the whole event we staged on the Noxway, attended by tens of thousands, had been a sham, a lure for Duskdown. The omission of Rosedawn from the proceedings had been deliberately calculated so as to enrage the darkmage, force his hand…
An amateur move, in hindsight. Duskdown couldn’t have foreseen the memorial, entrenched as it was in Timesnatcher’s plans, but he was farther from the edge than we’d believed. He did precisely nothing. And he was still leaving ‘ROSEDAWN’ as his calling-card.
“I didn’t realise how much you cared about champions and stuff.” I went to swig my drink, thought better of it and sipped at instead. (Which was hardly less uncomfortable, I soon realised.)
“Oh, I didn’t – not till you came along.” She giggled, and knocked back the rest of her drink before topping us both up, paying no heed to my grimace. “Bursting in the door, killing all those demons – it was really something. You’re really something.”
What thirteen-year-old me would’ve given to have had Salli talking to him like that…
I gave a short chuckle. “That’s what Stormsword thinks, too.”
“Stormsword?”
“You haven’t heard of her yet?” Em hadn’t been able to attend the memorial as it conflicted with her Maginox schedule, but the criers had still been mentioning her several times a week. “She’s an arch-wizard, and from a well-off family as well… I hope.” I gave my best dreamy smile. “And she’s mine.”
“Oh, yeah – she’s the one that found all them katra-munchers?” Salli didn’t look flustered or disappointed in the slightest – she grinned and punched me in the arm. “Good for you!” She raised her cup in salute before tipping its contents down her throat again.
It is good for me, I thought. Stuff it.
I tipped back my cup too, let the burning liquid fill my senses as I necked it, then shook my head and winced.
Salli was massively underselling what Em had done, the way I understood it – she’d been confronted with over a dozen idiots exhibiting different powers, cornered in the sewers, and she came through the fight without a scratch. But it wasn’t Salli’s fault if the town-criers and news-writers were trying to quell the panic rather than incite it. Publicising a true calculation of the inkatra epidemic and the potential dangers the herb posed would save lives, but only at the expense of damaging people’s morale, their faith in the system, and that just wouldn’t do, not for the highborn who controlled the dissemination of information, oh no…
I slowly uncontorted my face.
“Told you it was nice,” Salli said loftily.
I ducked my head and gasped a few more breaths of flaming air. “Nice.” It was suddenly hard to focus my eyes. “And pow-powerful.”
I set down my cup and shook my head when she reached for the bottle.
“I’d best be going. The twins, you know…”
“Oh – course. Thanks for, well, walking me home?”
I nodded; when I rose she copied me and threw her arms around me, pulling me into a tight embrace I only half-returned.
“I – ah, you’d best tell me who it was that was attacking you, as well,” I said awkwardly, doing my best to pull away. “You know, so I know who to threaten if you stub your toe.”
Her eyes lit up as she released me. “You’d do that?”
“Haha, you have no idea…”
“Well, it was that annoying kid. No one can touch him, his dad’s, like, joint head of the Bertie Boys. Lul… Lulton, right?”
The world darkened, three or four shades closer to midnight black, and the blood rushing in my ears was like a drumbeat.
I remembered watching Toras Lulton hang, the coldness in my belly. I remembered kicking my parents’ gravestone, the rush of emotion filling every nerve.
“Yeah, that’s it, Lulton. Orven Lulton.”
* * *
“So that’s how it went down,” I concluded. “The nephew of the man who killed my parents – he killed one of my best friends, and threatened to kill my neighbour.”
Linn lifted his eyes from the tiny scales he was expertly slicing into the side of his oaken fish.
“My baza voz killed,” he said after a few seconds.
“Your brother?” I licked my lips. “How… what happened?”
“It voz long ago, and far avay.” Em’s dad raised his face to the window, looking out at the sky. “Emrelet voz too young, she does not remember. Zere voz an argument, and later ze man – one of our neighbours, yes? – he came to ze house, viz a dagger hidden in his coat.”
He didn’t continue.
“And… what did you do about it after?”
“Ve overpowered him, brought him to ze sheriff. His hands and feet vere taken viz a saw before he was executed.”
I lowered the chunk of wood I’d been working on, the shape to come still hidden.
“He was hanged? Beheaded?”
“No.” Linn shook his head. “No, he voz not.”
He went back to his work, and I didn’t want to press. I didn’t think I really needed the details. I supposed having your hands and feet removed with a saw would probably kill you in minutes or less anyway, if no treatment was applied to keep you alive.
“And vot is zat, vot you are carving?” Linn asked after a minute, without looking.
I looked down at my hands – perhaps this was his way of reminding me I was in the middle of a job.
“It… it was my mother’s.” I held up what would hopefully soon become a little fat cat, one paw in the air, a very un-feline, satisfied smile on its face. “She had a cat, when she was young, I think. She had this little ornament of one on her dresser. Looked a bit like this.”
It was in a drawer now. I hadn’t looked at it in a long time.
“It took me years to accept – you know, accept they’re dead? It was like some trick. I thought maybe – maybe they were, you know, testing me? Like they’d just run away somewhere…But… it was the gods testing me, wasn’t it?”
“And you think zat by killing zis man you can put it right.”
“What? No – no, I don’t want to kill him.” I wanted to take him, torture him, turn him over to devils and let them do things to him the reports of which I would not be able to bear hearing – but that was far beneath the surface. What I wanted to do wasn’t what I needed to do, and not just for him – for me. For my sanity. “I want to do what’s right, and that doesn’t start with killing.”
I almost wanted him to contradict me.
If I saw Orven again, in the flesh, I was very likely to erupt, and I knew it. I couldn’t let that happen. I’d barely even focussed on his face when I’d met him and crushed him against the wall with my shields – the potential faces, all of them ugly and evil, flickered before my mind’s eye constantly, merging, separating, blending and blurring. I knew I’d recognise him if I saw him again, though.
Orven Lulton. Fate conspired against me.
I suspected that was why Telrose Gaum never gave Orven’s surname, even when threatened with hell. Because of Wyre Lulton and his reputation, the boss’s fury at treachery that would exceed anything I could do by plunging him into Infernum. I could only offer Telrose an eternal torment to which he was already bound, but Wyre Lulton would considerably shorten Telrose’s time on this plane anyway, and make every last minute into a living nightmare, especially if he had any loved ones left to him whose torture would hurt him, transform his existence into an expression of pure anguish. Hells, back in the day the word on the street was that the only reason anyone had testified to the watch about my parents’ murders was because Wyre hated his brother Toras with a passion.
I came back to myself as Linn responded, but it didn’t quite live up to my hopes.
“I think you are right about zat. Zere is no good to be found in killing. I watched my baza’s killer die, and I felt nothing. Years later, zere was a time… a time a loved one voz in danger. And I had no thoughts of anger. I only vonted to save zem.” He sounded very grim all of a sudden, then cleared his throat. “You see zis? Death is only emptiness. It brings only anger for zose left behind. I… I do not know vot I vould do if Emrelet vere to die.”
I glanced across at him, but his eyes were intent upon his work. He’d never before said anything like this to me while we were carving.
“You must protect her, Kastyr. You must. You know zat I am counting on you.”
Little splinters and curls of wood were flying off his almost-ready fish. I lowered my head to my own work, brain boiling.
She did die, I thought. She died and she won’t tell you and she won’t even tell you she’s a champion now. How long until they find out? What will he think of me then? What will Atar think of me? Hiding it from them, when he’s opening up to me like this?
But there was nothing I could say. It was her choice. When the truth came out, hopefully he’d see my side of things.
I repeated the paltry justification to myself:
My potion healed her, kept her alive long enough for Nighteye to resurrect her.
Nighteye…
I grit my teeth.
“I’ll protect her,” I managed to say, “the same as she protects me –“
“No.” Linn set his wood down in his lap, turned to me with only the knife in his hands. “No, you are ze man. You understand zis? And you are ze – ze Liberator of Zadhal. You must protect her, at all costs.”
I sighed.
“I understand, Mr. Reyd.”
It was only five minutes later that Em called us in for dinner, and I sat there next to her at the table, on the couch, drinking beer and trying my hardest not to think, just to exist, to be in the moment.
It wasn’t enough. My eyes painted Orven’s barely-remembered face before me, crushed, bones pulped, everything from the inside on the outside. Em lying in the bed, the way I’d taken her hand, thinking her dead or dying when the truth was that she’d already been brought back to life.
Nighteye, changing shape with me, saving me from Termiax and Rissala’s mizelikon. Lightblind, unceremoniously pinned to the wall by Duskdown. Leafcloak, turned into a garment for a sick god.
It was starting to build up within me – the feeling of inadequacy, the sense that no matter what I did, it would never be enough. Never even close to enough.
In the sun-room the lifeless chunk of wood waited for me, the cat-figurine still only subsisting in the potential, needing the edge of my knife-blade to birth it.
I never did go back to that piece of wood.
* * *
“He was here,” Killstop said to me, reaching out her hand and touching the wall yet again, moving her fingertips in tiny motions. “He leaned against these panels – I can’t tell when, though.”
“So this could’ve been from before he was kidnapped?” I asked. “Look, he must’ve leaned on a thousand walls in various bits of the city –“
“You don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head, her eyes frowning at me like her mask. “I’ve arranged the facts in order of importance. Him leaning here – it’s important. Damn it, Feychilde, can you take this seriously?”
I returned my attention to her face. We’d drawn quite a crowd, and the market-goers in this particular corner of South Lowtown didn’t seem to be particularly comfortable with our actions so far. “I’m not getting distracted – it’s just, everyone’s looking at us funny –“
“Do you care?”
“No,” I said, a trace stubbornly I had to admit. “It’s just, can you please stop fondling the woodwork like that… People already think we’re weird enough without us caressing random oak boards like they’re gonna grow arms and caress us back. We’ll find him, don’t worry.”
“I am worried,” she snapped, then sighed. “Go, work damage control. Let me think a minute.”
“Fine.” I turned my back on her, facing the market square and the horde of nonplussed shoppers. The people moved slowly, if at all, as they (supposedly) crossed through the area in which Killstop had found a trace of Nighteye.
“Soooo… Good morning, folks. Don’t mind us. Just a bit of magic business. Nothing that’s gonna cause any harm. Is there…”
I stopped myself before I could say, ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’ That could get me a thousand different requests.
“… Do any of you young ‘uns have any questions?”
“Yeah – are yer really a dead man like they says?”
“Are you really goin’ out with Stormsword?”
“D’yer ‘av any o’ that wine we keep ‘earin’ about?”
“Did yer really kill the King o’ Zadhal in a jewel?”
I heard Tanra chuckling behind me.
“I’ll get you back for this,” I said in a low voice that wouldn’t carry beyond her, barely moving my lips.
“Ha-ha-ha,” she laughed mercilessly, “my dear Feychilde – you shall try.”
* * *
“Materium, ensconced within Nethernum and Etherium, is variably known as the Cosmic Wall, the Planar Partition, the Wall of Souls, and so forth; but it is not a complete divide. Whilst discussion of distances on dimensional scales might easily veer into circuitous conjecture and argumentation ad infinitum qua infinitum, this is quite unnecessary for the beginner seeking pertinent facts. Suffice to say, there are those frontiers upon which Celestium and Infernum meet, and the forces of Light and Dark also; and though these wild borderlands might vanish into insignificance when compared with the great firmament of the Cosmic Wall, to call them aught less than infinite would also miss the mark.”
It wasn’t even five in the morning, still looking like the middle of the night outside the windows, and yet me and Em were hardly the only magic-users with their heads buried in books – there had to be almost fifty of us scattered across the library’s chairs, almost without exception sitting alone, reading alone. Even me and Em were ten feet apart, at different tables, volumes roughly similar in appearance but completely different in nature piled up in front of each of us.
She had mandatory homework. I had no such excuse, but no less desire to learn than she. I’d switched to my current text once the treatise on the comings and goings of eolastyr had started to put me to sleep: the heavy book listing the works of the tigresses was far too detailed. It seemed these Weavers of Woe (or Mistresses of Time, or Weavers of Time – the translations were muddy) had been plying their crafts down the centuries. Apparently eolastyr often answered the rituals of cultists of Mekesta, Wyrda and Yane, and they always outstayed their welcome once they’d been summoned. Dangerous, especially for the sorcerer or priest whose force bound them to Materium; eolastyr didn’t typically like to return to Infernum until their patron was drained dry and dead. Until the book started to repeat itself it’d been quite interesting, but one could only read so many charts of required ritual components without nodding off.
Those aside, there’d hardly been a paragraph I’d read so far that didn’t appeal to some facet of my will, my desire, my hidden self – drawing my attention this way one minute then another the next, my wildest imaginings seeping out of the arcane pages like the fabled Ink of Dreams. I felt lucky, in spite of everything that came along with it – to have been made an archmage, to have been given this opportunity to enter this world of magic and master it.
Not that I didn’t have more important things to be doing, obviously, but she had homework, and I was hardly getting bored keeping her company in this place of wonders for a few hours. I wouldn’t see her all day otherwise.
“Pssst,” I whispered, looking over at her.
She raised her eyes to mine and I mouthed to her: “You – look – cute – when – you’re – studying.”
She mouthed back, with a confused toss of her head: “What?”
“When – you’re – reading.” I mimed a book opening and closing. “You – look –“ I pointed to her then to my eye, “cute.”
“Hoof?” she mouthed.
“Never – mind.”
She seemed to get the message, though; I caught her glancing over at me several times in the next ten minutes, biting her lower lip, and it was only confirmed when she led me into the shadows of the shelves for a protracted expedition in search of a strangely-elusive book. By the time we returned she was no longer in the mood for her project and I flew her home, after a quick stop-off at our usual haunt, the bowers of Treetown that were just as warm and bright as any lord’s chamber, whatever the time of night or morning found us there.
* * *
“Ooooh, Em, you’re getting flanked,” Sol pointed out. The druidess’s finger indicated a space near my girlfriend’s Northern Hold. “Your rear’s undefended.”
“Ba-ha!” Bor set down his flagon of mead so he didn’t spill any while he laughed. “Good to hear!”
“Her rear is totally defended,” I said icily to my teammate. “Don’t even think of it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, mate,” the enchanter replied, elbowing me only slightly too-roughly.
“Boys…” Em chided us gently, then looked at her teammate. “Please use the link, Sol.”
Sol grinned.
“You keep doing that and I’ll go wraith next time, make you fall off your stool,” I warned Bor, rubbing my arm where his elbow connected. It didn’t actually hurt, but it reminded me that I needed to join with my satyr again; I’d granted them both leave for a while, seeing as they had this big tournament in the court of the King of Yellow Flowers to attend, but that should’ve all long-since come to an end by now.
“Oooooh, bogeyman!” Bor snickered at me.
“And don’t say dream,” I muttered, moving my Geomancer east, towards Em and Sol’s forces.
“Anyway, Em, ignore her,” Bor said. “You don’t need to defend your Northern Hold – look what Kas choosin’ a Geomancer has done to our side of the field!”
“So what if I wanted to grow some mountain ranges?”
“I think your mountain ranges are very pretty, Kas.” Em managed to not even sound particularly gloating when she spoke.
“Pretty n’ useless,” Bor said, hefting his mead again.
“So it’s going about as well for you as last time, is it?” Jo asked me from the adjoining table where she and Irimar were facing off against Tanra and Neko.
I spread my hands at the gleaming little fortify board, the tokens like small coins representing my newly-created mountains. “I just don’t understand the point of the Geomancer if he sucks this badly!” I didn’t try to contain my distress. “Every time I practice with him at home it works perfectly…”
“Aww, poor Kas,” the enchantress mocked me, moving her Swamp Hag to defeat one of Neko’s pieces. “If only your opponents were imaginary, like when you practice…”
“I practice against the twins, I’d have you know.”
“Nine year olds,” Em supplied in a solemn whisper.
I managed to laugh along with the others, even if it was at my own expense.
This was our third competition night, and I’d only won on the first, when it was me and Em against Neko and Bor. The little old gnome had a keen eye when he was on the defensive but his offensive game was terrible and Bor’s skills were certainly no greater than my own. I was slightly ashamed to admit it but despite this it was only due to a timely intervention from Em that we scored a victory.
Now that it was me and Bor on a team, with Em and Sol against us, the druidess’s plan of attack as sharp as her tiger-form’s claws, we didn’t stand a chance.
At least the purchase of the twin travel-sets of fortify wasn’t a waste. I’d come up with the idea (and the cash) last week, when everyone’s spirits had been at their lowest ebb, and taking an hour to sit in a corner of the Diamond Mare and forget about our combined failures had gone down as a resounding success. When we were out there, soaring aimlessly through the night sky following the latest lead of one of our diviners, we inevitably ended up despondent. Every trail Irimar and Tanra found turned cold in hours, whether our quarry was Nighteye, Duskdown or Dreamlaughter. Every hint Sol and Neko gathered from the gossip of plants and animals was a dead-end, a mistake, or, in one case, a trap. Jo and Bor hadn’t picked a single relevant thought out of a brain in weeks and me and Em had turned up nothing with our own abilities.
But I still had hope, and if I could help my friends evade the depths of despair by stubbornly picking the Geomancer over and over, by forcing them to spend time together that wasn’t being poured straight down the drain, I counted it as a win.
On the other table, Tanra was covering for Neko’s disadvantages by launching devastating assaults on both the Southern and Northern Holds belonging to Jo and Irimar, while the wily druid arranged his Master and Minions in a flawless rearguard. I could tell that Irimar was having trouble with Tanra. As an arch-diviner, I doubted he was used to playing ‘blind’, against another of his kind, but Tanra, who’d learned it quickly but had never played any other way, seemed to know how to circumvent all of Irimar’s plans. He’d only won their first game. Unfortunately for him, in order to take certain all-too-valid complaints of unfairness off the table, he was forced to go up against Tanra every single time he played – a fact she seemed to relish.
“D’ya think we still got a chance?” Bor asked me, using the private link that he and Jo had set up for each team to coordinate their tactics.
“I’m pretty sure even if one of us had diviner powers,” I replied, “all we’d be able to see by this point is our inevitable doom.”
Thirty minutes later, Em got her Master into one of our Holds and the game was over; Bor went to elbow me one last time and my sudden insubstantiality contributed, along with several strong meads, to the enchanter twisting off his stool and ending up on his ass. My “I told you so” was lost in everyone’s laughter.
We all settled in to watch the other match, but it only took Tanra ten more minutes to flood Irimar and Jo’s side of the board with powerful Minions. When she ignored the Northern Hold, her obvious target, instead slipping her Erudite Priest past Jo’s Swamp Hag and into the Southern Hold, many of us gasped and applauded. Even some of the nearby patrons of the Mare had evidently been watching, because they promptly joined in. Neko stood up on his stool and embraced Tanra, doing a little jig.
“I play you next,” Em said to her, and the seeress grinned back in response.
“When do I get a break?” Irimar moaned, not entirely good-naturedly.
Jo patted him sympathetically on the arm.
The very next night, under Tanra’s telepathic tuition, I finally got the Geomancer to work, and Em experienced her first defeat, Irimar hanging his head at her side.
* * *
“The wicked king used the stolen Pearl of Yesterday to lock his kingdom into an eternal night-time. Across the whole land, darkness reigned! The moon stayed still in the sky, and the creatures in the forests crept out of their burrows, feasting on the king’s subjects. Those forests died too, slowly, without the sunlight they needed to grow green and strong and healthy.”
Xastur made a bit of a moaning noise and pulled the bed-covers up to his chin.
“It’s okay, Xassy,” Jaid whispered to him. “It has a happy ending.”
Orstrum put a gentle smile on his lips to show this wasn’t something for Xastur to take too seriously, and his smooth, enrapturing voice continued. “The farmlands turned grey, the crops withered – and the people who remained in that land were hungry, so hungry! Under the cover of the everlasting darkness, the king raised armies of the dead and sent them out, expanding his borders, growing his domain. It was because of this, because of his greed and his hatred, that he came to the attention of Brenwe Bathor.”
Xastur lowered the covers slightly, and I could see his amazed expression. He was well-acquainted with many stories concerning the Lady of Life, and he knew that once one of the Five got involved, the bad guys were in for it.
“They say when she saw his armies she didn’t even stop – she just opened a way up through their ranks by spinning nets of grass, nets that didn’t break, that didn’t stop, fastening themselves around the bony men, pulling them back into the ground where they belonged! Then they sent wraiths against her, and she fought them off, one by one, green fire in her hands. They blocked her path with spells, ancient wards designed to protect them against their enemies, but she broke through them. Where she trod the ground it came back to life, flowers blooming, crops piercing up through the soil, trees regrowing their leaves in moments! And the birds and beasts returned to their slumbers, forgetting the taste of man-flesh.”
He said this last with a smack of his lips and a grimace, and Xastur, just happy that the story had taken this fortuitous turn, was beaming away regardless.
Jaroan had nodded off already, I noted, but Jaid was still enthralled, her eyes on the old man, chewing incessantly on a curl of her hair. It was a habit I’d spent years trying to break her out of, not for any particular reason other than that I was sick to death of hugging her and getting spittle-drenched cords of hair slapping against my skin.
“The people gathered and marched on the king’s castle, Brenwe leading them, shaped like a huge, golden hound.” He waved his right hand, his old eyes shining with fierce imagination, and it was like he put the image into my head, dwarfing even Leafcloak at her mightiest. “When they fought the king’s undead men Brenwe didn’t allow a single one of them to get hurt. When the rancid monsters that dwelt in the king’s hidden caverns came forth, gibbering and thirsting for blood, Brenwe fought them herself. In the end the people came before the king’s gate, and cried out for their freedom.”
Orstrum spread his hands. “But the king, he didn’t want to give them their freedom, oh no. Not when he himself was trapped. You see, the king spent so many years afraid of dying, he forgot what was natural, proper. He thought only of himself. He didn’t want to die. Why should he, master of his realm, have to suffer, go into the earth, let his spirit move on? Why should he have to be like everyone else? But the Pearl of Yesterday couldn’t make him live forever. The sorcery that made him undead could not bring him peace. And in the end, he listened.
“’Death is not a gift,’ she said to him, ‘nor is it a price to be paid. Life is its own reward, and bears its own costs. No, death is a duty. It weighs upon every elf, every dragon, every sapling, every man. In this alone is every soul equal. You have done what should never be done, and the time has come for you to set aside your crown. You are needed for greater things than this.’
“And it was only then that the king understood. He came down to the gate, and brought forth his men, their swords sheathed. And on the battleground he received the gift of life from Brenwe’s hands, and all his men too, and they were no more. The people rejoiced, for they were free once again – the sun rose in the sky, and they raised up the archmage as their saviour, their liege-lady, their queen. And that,” Orstrum said with a note of finality, “is how the Isle of Borabas was brought into the Realm of Mund.”
It intrigued me, to think of the kernel of truth that might lie within the tales such as these. Did an arch-druidess really confront a kingdom full of undead, like Zadhal, all alone? Could she truly use her powers to destroy undead, as the story told? I’d never seen it done. The druids I knew fought the undead with flesh against flesh, even if they sometimes used alternate shapes to do so. The green light from their hands – that was a healing thing, wasn’t it?
Jaid’s eyes were closing too, now, as Orstrum slowly got to his feet, refusing to take my offered hand. Xastur slowly crawled forth from under the covers as the old man held out his arms to the four-year-old, then together we lowered him to the floor and I bade them goodnight as they went to Xantaire’s room.
“Uncky Morsy die, Grampa?”
“That he did, lad.”
I softly closed the door behind them.
“It’s time to go back to work.”
In a minute, Zel.
I waited until my sister was fully asleep before letting the wraith’s power consume my body, turning me to a faint grey smudge, then using Zabalam’s abilities to complete the invisibility.
I slowly moved myself outside then went vertically past the apartments above my own, drifting through floors and dark corners until I reached the roof where I would call upon my wings.
Stuff the alleyways, I thought.
But it didn’t matter. Cursing my hearing for the thousandth time, I wasn’t even half way to Lord’s Knuckle before I was getting in the way of a pair of vagrants doing their best to rob an old man of his shoes.
* * *
The waxing moon shone down on Hightown, illuminating little from up here. All but the most stubborn leaves had fled the branches, and I flew across what looked from above like an expanse of dead sticks, stretching patternlessly across the streets. The air was truly frigid to my wings tonight, but it was nothing compared to the winds of Zadhal, and despite having no wizardry to maintain my temperature I had no need of gloves or other winter clothing whilst my wraith was active.
When my glyphstone started burning and humming in my pocket, I quickly dug it out, and managed to maintain my flight while I entered the semi-real vision.
At once I saw Haspophel in his bluish, star-speckled magister’s robe, his severe expression unmistakeable. He was in motion – he was sitting astride Fe – and it appeared from the blurred background impressions that they were making their way down one of the branches off Funnel Mile in southern Sticktown; I recognised the roads around there by their unnatural straightness.
“Hasslepuff! You look like you’ve been dragged out of a trance to do some work again, my friend!”
“Feychilde.” The dark-skinned diviner’s voice was flat. “Emrelet needs you.”
I swallowed, scowled.
Dream, I knew at once.
“Where?” I asked.
“If you meet us –“
Good enough for me.
I almost dropped my glyphstone in my haste to stow it away again, and between sylph-wings and wraith-weightlessness I streaked across the sky, little more to those below than a blue-edged shadow against the stars.
I cut across the ninety-five-percent rebuilt Roseoak Way and its lines of towers, descended across Hilltown, and made my way towards home. Leaving the moon behind I entered the shifting clouds of the lower districts, fey-sight piercing the smog.
‘You must protect her, at all costs.’
Linnard Reyd’s words echoed in my mind, and as the exertion of maintaining top speed increased exponentially so did my resolve, doubling and redoubling. I didn’t know what she was facing, but I knew that stopping to listen to the magister’s explanation would only have delayed me.
“I’ve got your general anti-illusion sight prepared, updated with all the seals Dreamlaughter’s used for her advanced creations… up till now at least. You want to see?”
I blinked it into one eye as usual.
Thanks, Zel. Let’s hope this time it pays off.
“She has to run out of tricks sometime. She’s not infallible. They never are.”
It didn’t take me long to spot the yithandreng making her way up the tavern-riddled street, splashing through the muck with her ten legs akimbo. As I drew closer Feast jumped clean over a half-unloaded booze-wagon that’d been left carelessly in the centre of the road.
I dipped down next to the three magisters on her back.
“Where are we going?” I yelled.
Ciraya looked across at me from Fe’s neck. “Darkmage attack,” she said. “Diviner and sorcerer. Both archmages. Branbecks Bridge – we’ll catch up.”
I looked at her blankly.
“South! Past the Goblet!” Ilitar yelped, not looking quite as happy as the sorceress in front of him or the diviner behind him – Feast’s contortions when moving at speed like this didn’t quite provide the rolling gait of a galloping horse but rather something closer to the undulations of a centipede.
Diviner and sorcerer…
I looked towards the south, and just then a cord of lightning stretched down from the sky somewhere ahead of me. Thunder rolled down from the clouds.
I speared on and hardened my barriers as I’d been practising, reinforcing them; not with spinning stars on the interior like my circle – that would be impossible, too many lines would intersect for me to hold them firm. I did it by layering ring upon ring instead. If I made a given shield three-thick, for instance, it would be that much easier to raise blades of force on its perimeter, and afford it greater durability until the moment I decided to adapt it for that purpose.
“There she is!” Zel shrilled, drawing my eyes to the south-east, beyond the old courthouse, past Funnel Mile and off to the side.
I saw her, the lightning flickering and forking all around her.
Branbecks Bridge must’ve been so named for the multiple layers upon which the neighbourhood was built. The slums extended into a dip in the earth covered with walkways, not unlike Mud Lane or a hundred other such areas in Sticktown, but wider, enclosing a marketplace and a tavern down there in the drop. When I caught sight of Em, it was as she rose up above the buildings to evade some attack before diving down again. Her fists were coated in a living stone or metal compound, seeming to be constantly growing, and they were each already the size of a man’s head.
She was wearing the new winter magister’s robe she’d picked out – still white but far fluffier, less revealing but no less amazing-looking on her with its trailing sewn-in scarf and high collar around the hood. But it was strange, now, to see her fighting without her mask on.
By the time I arrived, speeding down into the slum marketplace, it looked like the battle was almost finished. Eight or nine mud elementals were tangling with a variety of lesser demons around the perimeter, none of the fiends any greater than fifth rank, and the locals had, for the most part, wisely chosen to watch from their shutters rather than the balconies. Only a few buildings were damaged, only a few bodies lying amidst the wreckage of the market stalls.
It was just the two arch-darkmages themselves that were cause for concern, now, though as I swiftly processed the details my concern diminished and my jubilation rose.
She was actually holding her own, even winning. They didn’t look like heretics; they were too well dressed for that – the diviner in purple velvet with a clock-styled mask, the sorcerer in burnt red-ochre with a spike-covered mask.
The arch-diviner wanted to get close to tangle with her, but lightning cascaded down about her, pulsing rhythmically from the storm-clouds lingering high above; it seemed to crackle even from her hair as she swung her head, white energy seeking him out like searching fingers, driving him back as he danced outside its range. He was relatively still, standing as if deep in thought; he moved only in momentary bursts to evade the burning ribbons of white fire that came closest to him, his ponderous stance never seeming to change. Meanwhile, she flew in, pressing at the dark sorcerer’s shields, absorbing the shock of his attacks and beating him away all the while, battering him back – her ever-growing gauntlets were now spreading down to her elbows, the speed of her blows only seeming to increase along with their strength as more time passed and they swelled, bigger and bigger. I could make it out now that I was closer, the tiny chips and grains of material being drawn in instant by instant, coursing through the air to add themselves to her weaponry.
If this were happening a few hours later, she’d be getting a fair few plat as a reward, but no – as Wyrda’s way would have it, the darkmages had to come along during her work hours.
Smiling a little, I leapt down upon the arch-sorcerer, my blades withering his outermost defences in a way that Em’s blows couldn’t achieve.
“Get the diviner!” I yelled.
“On it!” she cried back with satisfaction.
“It’s Feychilde!” the spiky-faced sorcerer beneath me grunted, turning his head to seek out his comrade.
He didn’t sound rich.
Eldritches formed inside his shimmering blue rings, red flames opening up to disgorge demons.
I recognised the shapes of two ikistadreng there, and met them with Khikiriaz and Mr. and Mrs. Cuddlesticks.
“Keep destruction to a minimum!” I growled in Infernal.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Em’s crackling sphere, her shield of all-too-visible, all-too-tangible lightning, bending and sweeping across the debris in pursuit of the diviner, moving too quickly for me to perceive. I threw out a gust of blood-coloured fire, casting my mekkustremin in their general direction. If anything could aid Em in this fight it was going to be the speedy doll-demon.
Zel, use the Shadowcrafter tactic! Here, take the scorpion!
“It’s not going to work. You’re on the offensive – he’s going to move! Look out!”
The sorcerer didn’t fly, but seemed to climb up into the air, effortlessly stepping onto nothing but the cold breeze and somehow pulling himself up with his hands, clambering higher than me in the span of a second –
He whipped around, twirling, as though he had a satyr or something even more graceful aiding his movements – and then he was somersaulting down at me, a tremendous sword of glowing amethyst appearing in his grip, one of those babil-something blades.
Curse the King of the Yellow Flowers, I thought, sliding aside more clumsily than I was used to, so that his massive swing only struck my barriers a glancing blow.
“At least you’ve still got me…”
Whatever would I do without little old you.
“Want to find out?”
I grinned. It’s just an expression.
“So is cursing people, but if you cursed a lord of the fey in the otherworld you’d end up in a bucket of trouble.”
I parried a series of blows aimed at my face, adjusting the rotation of my shielding to turn aside the pulsing demonic weapon the darkmage was using to chop away at me like a man hewing at a tree-trunk.
Kind of in a bucket of trouble already.
“Exactly. And this would be a deeper bucket. A much deeper bucket.”
It was only then that I noticed it, the movement beneath the shattered tables, the stirring under the remnants of wood that had been strewn across the space by the carnage.
“Oh, dear.”
The moving limbs, pale faces, roving eyes. Their types still indeterminate, according to my sorcerous senses.
Undead Sticktowners.
If he’d been trying to make me mad…
I swung a blade of force the size of a wagon, a blade with an edge no less keen than that of the world’s sharpest razor. I struck the blow home and wedged the blade in, expanding it instantly and heaving on it, using it like a crowbar – I sensed rather than heard as it slowly, inexorably started to crack his second-to-last shield.
The faster undead, ghouls or wights, started moving towards me.
“Kas – over there – look!”
At first I had no notion what she was indicating – there was no trace of undeath or even corpses emanating from the tumbled tables she drew my eye towards – but then I saw them.
Not dead or undead. Alive. A family of four. Parents, doing their best to stand.
Two boys, not struggling to their feet. Floating instead.
Twin boys, sallow-skinned, dark-haired. Surely no older than twelve. What they’d all been doing out here in the middle of this, at this time of night, I had no conception.
For the briefest moment I thought the arch-sorcerer was doing something to them, but the suspicion was fleeting. All I got from this was a sense of serenity.
Dream? I asked uncertainly.
“I – Kas – no. This isn’t Dream.”
I glanced about, but Em was nowhere to be seen; from the detonations echoing up the street and the fading sense I had of my mekkustremin, I guessed the arch-diviner was fleeing and they were hot in pursuit.
Even my enemies had faltered, staring at the two kids as they slowed, stopped, hanging there thirty feet up, one slightly lower than the other.
I hadn’t noticed that the kids’ eyes were shut until they opened them, but it was impossible to miss once they did.
Eyes, like balls of magma, glowing a fierce orange, broken by no pupils.
Both of them, two sets of eyes, glaring back at the sorcerer.
They raised their hands – not with any uncanny simultaneity, but with the hesitant, uncertain trembling of boys, scared boys who didn’t fully know what they were doing – the consequences –
Jerkily, one after the other, the frightened new arch-wizards pointed their fingers –
Their parents stared up in horror –
“Plane step, fool!” I cried, realising what was about to happen, flinging out my shield to protect them from what would follow –
My shield – my enemy’s shield – nothing mattered.
The fire in their eyes was unlocked by their gestures and it flooded out of their faces, its roots congealing to form a single wide beam of twisting heat, a battering-ram of pure power.
I winced as it smashed the shields, smashed into the nonplussed sorcerer. The force of it was violent enough to hurl me through the air, its energies hot enough to make my hair smoke even through my rippling circle.
I turned up my wraith and watched as the darkmage’s demons vanished and his undead dropped to the ground; and the archmages lowered their arms, the light in their eyes slowly sputtering and dying.
There was nothing left of my opponent.
Such power…
“I was having fun there,” Khikiriaz said from somewhere over my left shoulder, clearly disappointed at the fight’s abrupt cessation, his voice soft and strangely solemn.
“Hm.” My eyes were on the twin boys, who seemed to have only just realised that they were standing on air; I waved a hand at my three eldritches in dismissal. “Thanks for your time, guys.”
I felt the anticipated fluctuation in my power as they vanished.
Even as I floated towards the wild-eyed wizards, my hands held out in a gesture of peace, I knew from the sounds what was happening behind me – what was arriving. There were crowds of people coming forward, moving debris, searching out the bodies that had been left untouched by the dark sorcerer’s power; men and women and children were sobbing, cheering, clamouring in general – but the yithandreng’s footfalls were impossible to miss.
“You do realise,” Ciraya called, “I’m gonna have to report this?”
I turned in the air, looking down at her, noting the bird-shaped druid perched on Fe’s shoulders before her.
“Can’t you just give me five minutes?” I asked, hopefully in a plaintive, pathetic voice.
But when I flicked my gaze across her other companions I could see that Haspophel, seated near the base of Fe’s tail, was already utilising his glyphstone, and from the twisted, sympathetic smile on the sorceress’s face I immediately realised what she was getting at:
Hurry up.
“Hey, guys.” I approached the two scared, mega-powerful boys a little more furtively. “Can we have a quick chat?” I looked down at the weeping mother and paralysed father. “Do you mind?”
The mother managed to shake her head and moaned something that sounded like Feychilde, which I took for permission, so I trained my hopeful gaze back on the young arch-wizards.
“Guys – do you know what you are? What you’ve become?”
The one on the left cast the one on the right a pained look, desperate for guidance – the one on the right was staring at my robe and mask, moving his eyes up and down, taking it all in.
There was a snipping, snapping sound, then Killstop appeared on the ground between us, a whirl of orange, pink and green fabric.
“She’s fine,” she said to me. “Darkmage down. Someone’s coming. Speak!”
“I don’t know what to say!”
“Just speak!” the seeress insisted.
I grimaced, then looked back at them. “We’ve all been through something –“ I gestured vaguely to indicate the non-existent dark sorcerer they’d vaporised “– through something we shouldn’t have to. They’ll tell you you have to fight for them now. That this makes you killers. This is not true. You can – you should wait. Yes, you’re wizards – arch-wizards – but you don’t have to be what they want you to be. What anyone wants you to be…”
“We could be champions,” said the starer, the one on the right.
“I see the wind,” said the other, suddenly turning his face up towards the night sky. “What is… what is that…?”
I did my best to ignore the boy’s amazed whispers.
“You could be champions,” I addressed the one who was still staring, “but you don’t need to decide that now. Maybe not for years. If you fight, you fight for yourselves, you understand me? Not because someone tells you to. Not me. Not some magister or some highborn. Not even them.”
I cast their parents an apologetic look as I pointed at them.
Has to be said.
Their father tried to interrupt then, a spluttering, abortive attempt at retorting – I spoke over him:
“What’s… what’s important is that you always have someone to turn to. Someone without an agenda. I – I’ll be around the Giltergrove at sundown tomorrow. I’ll wait for you –“
I could buy them a glyphstone – they weren’t that expensive – and then they could contact us if they needed us.
“What is it?” the one on the left demanded, suddenly moving his eyes to mine, then looking down to Killstop. “What’s burning beneath us?”
“I feel it too,” his brother said falteringly.
Burning… beneath us…?
I shuddered. “Is it Infernum?”
“They shouldn’t be able to feel other planes,” Zel reminded me.
I know that! But – twin archmages. How often does this happen?
“I…”
Yeah, exactly.
Killstop was shaking her head slowly. “They sense the oceans of fire in the bellies of volcanoes, Feychilde. They sense… well, listen…”
“I feel it all.” The one on the right turned to the one on the left, flung up his arms, and cried exultantly: “Saff, I feel it all!”
Saff took his twin’s arms, smiling, tears in his quite-normal-looking eyes. “I know, bro,” he muttered. “I’m the same.”
“You’re in this together, young men,” Killstop said, sounding smug. “You’ll do fine, you two.”
“Mum? Dad?”
Ignoring us now, the two boys floated down to their parents and embraced them; I floated down towards Killstop.
“So, what brings you here?” I asked.
She shrugged lightly. “I was out and about. You know, I’m the ship on the sea. The needle in the cloth. I shrink the void and make the future where I used to be. I’m here because I have to be.”
I glared at her and then after a moment she seemed to relent. She giggled. “Fine, Feychilde. I’m here for this.”
Another snipping, snapping sound, and Zakimel appeared not ten feet away, clad in his red-and-silver magister’s robe, moustache quivering in anger.
I noted that, behind me, Ciraya and the other magisters stopped muttering amongst themselves to listen.
“Too late, Tacky Zakky,” the seeress said, not gloating but overly-casual. When I glanced back at her, I saw she was pretending to buff her nails on the front of her ridiculous robe. “You should maybe try, you know, reading the future, some time, you know? You know?”
She could no longer contain it – she tipped her head back and let the cackles come pouring out.
The older man only sneered, saying nothing, glancing over everything here in Branbecks Bridge – the destruction, the corpses, the various onlookers…
“What’s it like, reading the future? Is it half as fun as writing the future? Because if I –“
“Save it, Killstop,” I said. “You’re not doing us any favours.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that –“
“You shouldn’t be – you’re not infallible, remember? Keep it up and I’ll start calling you Pleasestop in public.”
She put her hands on her hips. “You’re the Liberator of Zadhal. People would listen to that.”
“That’s the point.” I gave it a second, but she didn’t move. “Don’t you keep frowning at me like that.”
“Children,” Zakimel hissed.
That shut us both up.
“All of you, idiot children,” he went on. “I shall leave it at this: I am glad our future is not in your hands, young lady.”
“No,” she demurred, “I think we just know how to have a good time.”
“In the midst of corpses!”
“We’re champions, Stab-You-In-The-Backy Zakky,” I said. “We’re always standing on a pile of bodies, hadn’t you realised that? Oh wait, last time the bodies were there because you –”
“Enough!” he cried, drawing himself up straight.
I simply amplified my voice and continued: “– betrayed us. You betrayed us! You’re the madman with the murderous whims. And now you want these guys on your side.” I gestured at the twin wizards. “Making more bodies. Until it’s theirs on the ground.”
Silence settled. The crowds stilled. Almost every eye was on Zakimel.
“If they’re idiot children,” one of the twins – Saff, I thought – said icily, “what d’ya think of us?”
I noticed out of the corner of my eye as Killstop folded her arms across her chest in satisfaction.
‘You’re not doing us any favours,’ I’d said.‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ she’d replied.
She’s good, I thought.
“And she’s stopping him from knowing what to do,” Zel added.
“I don’t know about Killstop,” said the twins’ mum in much the same tone as Saff, indicating the seeress with a nod of her head, “but the Liberator of Zadhal said a lot of things that… well… some things that made a lot of sense…”
I grinned, realising what bit she didn’t want to admit made sense.
“You misinterpret my intentions,” Zakimel said, addressing the mother, “or perhaps, I should say, my intentions regarding your children have been… misrepresented by those who would seek only to bring chaos into your lives. In fact it is in the Magisterium’s purview to offer you a stipend, simply for keeping the boys safe, and permitting us to enter into discussions with you at a later date…”
I could see the way the mother’s brittle glare was faltering, softening, melting into a look of pacification – the words he was using that were too big for her to understand didn’t impede his meaning: money. He was weaving his own spell, a magicless enchantment, and I –
Before I could open my lips Killstop took my hand, and I felt the lurch as reality staggered and slowed around us.
Despite the chronomantic effect (and probably due to the proximity of Zakimel) she leaned in close to me and whispered: “Don’t fret. They’ll be okay now. You’ve said all you can say, all you needed to say. The parents were always a lost cause, but the boys will remember.”
She released me, allowing the world to resume its normal pace and, not for the first time, I shuddered at being so close to the arch-diviner’s god-like powers – in such close proximity, yet so very, very far away from understanding what it must be like to see the world that way.
Tanra knew so much. It staggered me that the human brain could even access so much information, never mind store it, see the links and patterns between disparate events across time and space…
The next evening, I waited at the Giltergrove for two hours, the spare glyphstone in my demiskin. I sat on a rooftop across from the canvas of unchanging golden leaves flaring copper-red in the sun’s last light, away from the edge, avoiding the eyes of the street-goers below.
I knew from Tanra’s words that the twins wouldn’t come, and that was okay. Everyone important to me had access to a glyphstone now, but I would save it, until I came across someone who needed it. They were too expensive to waste, after all. Instead I passed the time sorting through my eldritches, trying to find out if any of them could bring me a better lead on Nighteye than Tanra’s visions. Short of possessing people, I didn’t have any new tricks I could employ.
Might be time for another shopping trip, Zel. I got to my feet and spread my wings, looking out over the darkening Sticktown.
“Oh goody – but, first, look up.”
I craned my head back –
Against the clouds, I could see the two diminutive dark shapes that were descending towards me.
I met them half way up, shook their hands.
Saffys and Tarrance – Saff and Tarr. They already had a glyphstone, Magisterium-issued – of course they did. Even still, they allowed me to tap my stone to theirs.
“But really, we just wanted to see you,” said one of them – Saff, I suspected, whose mannerisms were slightly softer than his brother’s. “To see you, to say it properly…”
“We wanted to let you know,” Tarr said, looking a bit embarrassed, “thanks.”
“Thanks,” Saff confirmed, nodding.
“No one else there wanted to treat us like people,” Tarr said.
“No one asked you what you wanted,” I said.
He nodded. “We don’t want to become champions – we don’t want to fight.”
“Don’t want to kill…” Saff murmured.
“But one day we will!” Tarr said, defiance in his outburst – defiance of what or whom I was unsure, but it was there all the same. “Want to fight, I mean. Fight the darkmages. And kill them, if we have to.”
“You never have to. Never.”
He nodded. “I don’t – we don’t want to work for them. You’ll teach us – you’ll show us how?”
I nodded back firmly, resolutely – but when I spoke, my voice was grim, my tone as much as my words telling them what they really needed to hear:
“I will, I promise… if I’m still alive by then.”
But the words didn’t have the intended effect, and as I flew away, pondering the awed expressions on their pale faces, I realised that I’d only enticed them further.
Was this it? Was this my agenda? Was I being a hypocrite? Accusing Zakimel of attempting to recruit them with the one hand, while with the other secretly swaying them towards my own side, all along protesting my innocence, even to myself?
I considered going back, insisting that they take me seriously, bide their time and weigh their options before committing to a life of violence; but by the time I resolved myself to do the right thing and turned about, they were already gone.
As I’d suspected.
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