MARBLE 6.5: POISONS
“I am the luck that you can pray for. I am the perseverance that pays off. I am the dream-guardian at the gate of nightmare. I am Lady Fortune.”
– from the Belestaean Creed
I couldn’t see it in their actual faces yet, but Wenlyworth was wheezing worse than he had been before. He’d be the first to go, in around eight minutes’ time.
I forced myself to smile.
Then I jolted to my feet, a huge part of my being shaken to its core as Zel departed from my flesh – I cast about, looking beneath the chair, the table, using crummy mortal eyes –
“Somethin’ wrong, Feychilde?” Spirit asked.
“Yeah! – I just lost –“
“Feychilde, is something wrong?” Em asked.
“No – I just – I dropped something –“
“Hey!” Spirit cried, jumping to his feet, glaring at Lovebright. “What the drop did you just do to him? I felt that!”
I ignored him, whoever had said something, bending forwards and reaching out my arm, grasping for something under the table. I picked something up, and went to put something back in my robe’s pocket. Nothing of significance.
But it was as I leaned forwards that I realised, from the way the chain about my neck shifted, its burden tapping lightly into the underside of my chin.
I was no longer wearing Lovebright’s amulet – just my healing elixir.
And as I straightened up, the strangest thing happened.
Within my circle, without causing me any impediment or bearing me any ill-will, a green seam opened, a gate wide enough to swallow me whole. As I rose, my head and shoulders went through and, on the other side, in the otherworld, there was –
A fairy, floating in an ethereal glade of tall glowing trees and lily-covered ponds. I knew her, once, though her name escaped me now.
Tiny. Miniscule, really. Sunflower-blonde pigtails; a neat, triangular little dress of seamless blue skies. Her perfect delicate face a contortion of emotion. Fear and anguish and horror.
Why did I feel this ridiculous sensation of unease, coupled with trust?
Trust? I had to be enchanted.
In her dainty hands, my chain. My pendant.
The urge to put it back on was strong. She was only ten feet away.
Lovebright surged forwards, trying to step within the portal. “No!” she hissed.
But I grabbed the seams with my hands, pulling myself fully through to the otherworld, even as I focussed those internal energies that would dismiss my wraith. I would deal with this troublesome fey creature in the glade, retrieve my amulet and, once I was protected again, I would return. Who knew what effects the three politicians might have employed against our minds, otherwise? It would be stupid of me to rely on Bor and Jo’s constant vigilance when the alternative was so much better.
It was valiant of the enchantress to try to come with me, though, and touching that she would fret about me, but she – I – had nothing to fear from a lowly fairy – she didn’t even bear me ill-will…
The seam snapped to beneath me, the gate transporting me. My gremlin and sylph coalesced at my sides.
Recognition flooded in.
Not just recognition of the fairy queen, my faithful advisor, my firmament…
“Z… Z… Zel…” I croaked.
“I know, Feychilde,” she replied. “This is bad. Really bad. She slipped up, though. I heard your thoughts that she’d been hiding from me.”
“But she… she…“
“Yep. For months. Maybe years.”
“And she –“
“I know. Almost all of them.” She hurled the necklace to the ground. “Every champion that wears one of those.”
“What’s going on, Feychilde?” Zab whined. “Zel?”
I met Zel’s eyes.
“Are the glasses poisoned?” Then I had a flash of inspiration. “Ah – I’ll check with Flood –“
“No!” Zel snapped. “There’s no way he could tell you whether they were actually poisoned and don’t you dare try to summon him here, now. You’d have to open a bridge across Materium and that would let her influence back in! It’s range-based; we’re currently a plane away, but if you open the jadeway even for a second, that might be long enough for her to adjust her spell, make you decide to head back.”
I had no way to be certain I could save all of them –
“But – if Em, and the others – if they die…”
Zel cut in: “I find it highly unlikely she put it in everyone’s drink, if she did do that – why would she –”
“Make me think I’d killed my girlfriend? Make the city think I’d killed the First Lady?”
“We can talk about this but we have to move. They’ll put you in Zyger! She could bring Direcrown –“
“I don’t think he wears her amulet,” I muttered, shaking my head.
It was all too much for me, but it made too much sense to be untrue.
The memories she hadn’t had chance to fully remove yet. Killstop being sick. Timesnatcher’s weird shaking.
What the lords said to us. What I said to them.
Oh gods. She wants me flayed to death!
“Netherhame or Shallowlie, then! She’ll bring someone in, and open a gate – there could be people in the Palace she can use, and she has diviners – oh, Kas –“
“I take it that momentous events are afoot,” Avaelar hedged, gazing into my face.
“Perhaps – perhaps the most momentous of our time…” I licked my suddenly-dry lips. “I think… It seems the whole of Mund is under the control of a darkmage. A dark-enchantress.”
Then I felt the grin split my face, in spite of everything this meant for us, for the world.
“I knew it!” I crowed.
* * *
Eight minutes. I have probably six or seven minutes left before whatever move she’s made, whatever move she’s making, gets underway.
Not enough time.
“Well, if everything you’ve said is correct,” I mused aloud, “Lovebright will hardly be expecting me to go back right now, will she? She would have to be quick enough to lay the spell ag-”
“No, we have to move, and, again, you’re not listen-”
“Too late.”
I silently opened a tiny seam for less than a second, just enough to peek through with one eye. Nothing assailed my mind, not overtly in any case.
They were all seated around the table, champion and politician alike, their eyes closed; Killstop and Timesnatcher were stirring, resisting, limbs jerking like those of sleeping dogs; the guards were slumped over at their posts by the door; and Lovebright – the gold-robed enchantress was standing on the table in their midst, her face raised up towards the ceiling as though she communed with the gods.
The seam had only drifted a few feet from where I’d expected it to open, and I took a few steps across the glade.
“Kas!” Zel cried in a wheedling voice. “Don’t do that again! Pl-”
When I opened a portal around Tanra and yanked her bodily from her chair into the otherworld, at first I thought I’d pulled it off perfectly, but I soon realised my oversight.
One instant I was upright, feeling fine – I’d hunched over to grab her around the shoulders, so I was leaning forwards somewhat – and in the next, I was on my back in the spongy grass, the girl straddling me, fists raised mercilessly.
My face was broken in at least four places, mask pulverised, and I didn’t even see the blows, feel them as they landed – only when she stopped.
My vision blurred. My right eye swam painfully in its socket.
“Feychilde!” she snarled.
“Stop!” Zel screamed. “Tanra, no!”
It was only the contact between our bodies keeping the diviner here, so my shield wouldn’t work. Sending her back – it could be a death sentence for me. For us all.
I felt her breath coming from beneath the mask, saw her slight chest rising and falling rapidly – this kind of indecision, it could only mean one thing –
Tanra was fighting it, the impulse to kill me – then she raised her arm, opening the coat of her robe, exposing at least half-a-dozen glittering, sheathless knives –
She froze there again, struggling.
I had to try – Avaelar was moving to intervene, and he would die.
“’Uvvbrigh’!” I moaned through a floppy jaw, a burst lip. “’Ink abou’ ‘Uvvbrigh’!”
Tanra froze, the dagger of her selection raised, poised for the killing blow.
Then I felt the surge pass through her insides, and tried to dive aside as she croaked horribly, vomiting out another load of strawberry juice –
Too late. She didn’t move, or even cast off her mask this time – it gushed down, covering the both of us.
My fairy stopped twisting in the air and now dashed forwards, swiftly unclasped the diviner’s pendant, and flung it aside.
Tanra slowly fell back, panting, resting; she was still sitting on me but no longer in a threatening posture. She removed her mask, shook it clean.
“Tha’…” I said, “wa’ di’gusting.”
I snapped my healing potion off its chain, wiped it on my sleeve, then knocked back its contents in one.
“Holy – drop.” Tanra shuddered. “I can see again.” She looked around at an enhanced speed, head blurring atop her neck, then looked back to me. “We’re in the otherworld.”
“Welcome, fair maiden,” Zab said in his reedy voice.
I shook my head, cracked my jaw back into place and activated the self-repair rune on my mask. “No time for that. We’ve got about five minutes until three of the top rulers of Mund start dropping down dead, maybe Em and Irimar with them, and I’d rather head that off if we can. Slow me down, please? Then we can get the others without as much risk.”
She nodded, and I felt it, like a pulse of lethargy slipping over our ethereal surroundings.
Zel, Avaelar, Zab. The glowing insect-things in the air. Even the wind itself.
Everything slowed, slowed. Stopped.
“I can’t bring you too deep – it’d tear you apart,” she said. “But we do have to be quick, relatively. If she’s clever she can trigger the wards, stop your portals –“
The seeress shifted her weight as though to get up –
“No!” I reached up, grabbed her hand. “Don’t get off me!”
“Oooh, Kas, really? Right now? With… my sick in your hair? You know that Em’s only a portal away –“
“If you get up, you’ll go ba-”
“I know perfectly well what you’re going to say,” she cut me off, “and you’re an oaf if you think I was going to break contact with you. My spell’s hard to maintain too, you know, and I’m going to sleep for a week after this even if I keep my hand on yours the whole time. Come on, get up.”
She straightened her knees, coming lithely to her feet, standing over me; then she planted her heels and leaned back, pulling me up. Her hand was holding mine at least as hard as mine was holding hers.
She was grinning, the way I must’ve been when I’d come through, when I’d realised what was going on. “Let’s get our friends, find out what’s been done to them, and put the screws on Lovebright.”
“Right.” I looked down at our conjoined hands. “I’ll need to scratch you, a little.”
“Oooh, Kas…”
“Tanra!” I barked.
“Sor-rr-rry,” she anti-apologised. She opened the fold of her robe with her free hand, exposing her weaponry. “Hmm – let’s go for something without incineration ensorcellments…”
“I thought they took your weapons.”
She just brayed laughter as though I’d told a joke.
“Where did you get hold of all those, anyway?” I asked.
“Here. There.” She glanced back at me. “What do you spend your earnings on?”
I shrugged with one shoulder. If I hadn’t figured out how to make explosive daggers, I’d still be buying them, in all likelihood. But most of these weapons were ensorcelled, which made them prohibitively expensive – even a champion’s bounties weren’t going to pay for all of them…
The last thing I wanted to do was antagonise her right now.
She retrieved a very plain-looking kitchen knife from one of the grooves sewn into the interior of the fabric, passed it to me.
Sharp, but not overly-so.
“Nice.” I started cutting the shape into meat of her forearm. “Sorry, if it hurts.”
“Been hurt worse.”
“Have you?”
“Just keep at it. Thinking.”
The girl stared off into the distance, tapping at her chin, seemingly studying the forest depths behind me by the way her eyes were moving minutely.
I looked back at my work.
“She’s got all of them, Tanra.” I couldn’t halt the words even if I’d been trying – what was on my mind had to vent itself, and my mouth was the only escape valve. “She’s… What does she want? I mean, she already has everything – why is she trying to make me and Spirit – and you, maybe? – tick off the highborn like this? She’s been putting pendants on us all, and –”
“She is Dream.”
The seeress’s voice had a tranquil quality, like that of someone trying to recall facts learned in childhood, almost forgotten but not yet gone – even still, the words shook me and I fell silent.
“Keep talking!” she snapped after a moment.
“I… Well that’s hardly a response…” I hedged, settling force-lines into my ‘F’-shaped sorcerer’s mark. “If she’s Dream, why wouldn’t Dream be able to get through my amulet, and Em’s? Any of ours? And that still doesn’t answer –“
“No – she has Dream. Dream… isn’t Dream…”
My mouth was dry. “Should we wait for the others to arrive?”
I released her; I was done with applying my seal.
But she wasn’t done. Her eyes still stared, searched.
“She laid her head upon the mound and thought her way down to us. Oh, oh Kas, oh no –“
Her hand shot out involuntarily, gripped me by the front of the robe.
“What? What is it?”
Her eyes met mine. They weren’t the eyes of the crazed inkatra-addict I’d seen when I’d first looked into them, but it was close.
“She’s a dragon.”
* * *
“Who do I go for next?” I asked, feeling a bit nervous this time. I told myself the clamminess was just the otherworld-water I’d used to wash off the worst of the diviner’s vomit, reacting strangely with my skin – but I knew I was being fanciful.
A dragon…
It was cold sweat filming across my forehead.
“Timesnatcher,” she replied at once from behind her mask. “It’s manageable with just the two of us, but I won’t be able to slow everyone at the same time, not on my own.”
“Okay. How long’s it been since I took you?”
A… dragon…
“Less than a minute.”
I shook my head. “She’s going to know something’s up this time – that I’m willing to go back, that we’re here…“
Tanra shook hers right back at me. “She’s bringing Valorin to the party. That’s the best bit of this – she’s almost out of Ceryad power! Her reach is diminishing, and she can’t find Shallowlie and Netherhame, not right now. Her other –”
“Valorin’s enough of a problem on his own,” I said, feeling a bit sick at the thought. Can I really fight someone who’s just acting under an enchanter’s control? “We’ve got to get started, or we’ve got to leave, and we can’t do this without –“
Tanra snapped: “Her other arch-sorcerers are too far away, I was going to say.”
I swallowed, thought it through, staring at the incongruously-serious frowning face she wore, garish hood pulled over her hair.
“And she has Bookwyrm and Bladesedge?” I asked.
“I… hadn’t considered that…”
Her head dropped suddenly.
“You mean you can’t see them.”
“Give me… give me time…” she murmured.
“That’s the one thing we don’t have!”
“We – have – time – Kas.”
Now her tone brooked no refusal.
What else could I do? I was at her mercy.
I waited.
Zel was moving towards us, I could tell, but only when I looked closely. She’d travelled a distance no greater than the thickness of my pinkie-finger since Tanra put me under the effects of her magic.
Everything was coming undone. If I thought I was at Tanra’s mercy, what about Lovebright? Joceine… Whoever she really was… She was the spider at the centre of the web, pulling the strings, but to what end? Nothing about this made any sense. If she’d wanted us all dead, surely she could’ve accomplished it by now… No, she didn’t want us dead – not exactly. She wanted us changed, wanted us in certain places at certain specific times, accomplishing predefined successes, failures…
Predefined? Predicted. Foreseen…
Surely she was following the steps laid out by her pet diviners…
Would it all end in us being… eaten?
Would we even know that it was happening to us?
How did I know this wasn’t all some test of her power, sending me into an illusion of the otherworld, making me think I was talking to Tanra, when in fact I was… I don’t know… still sitting in the chair?
What if I never went to the Arrealbord at all?
My head was really starting to hurt.
“I’ve got so many questions.” I sounded like I was whinging, even to myself. “Can I talk yet? Because it helped before – when I was talking, I mean – and I don’t even know how long has passed now –“
“Less than a second since the last time you asked, for your information!” she flared, raising her head at last. The eyes I could see through the slits were those of the cool Sticktowner once more, though. “First, we get Timesnatcher. And that means we need protection. We could look for Voicenoise, or one of the others… they don’t look good, though…”
‘They’ didn’t look ‘good’? Was she talking about our odds? Was she seeing us die, over and over in different futures, even as she stood there?
I thought about it. “I’ve got something. I can only hope our dragon friend hasn’t damaged it. But we have to get there and back – it’ll be a long way, on this side… and if we go back without protection, too close to Hightown, she might ensnare us… I need the best route to Oldtown through urban areas. I mean, literally, we’re better off following a road than cutting across the grass… Etherium rules. At least until you think we’re far enough away from her…”
“A long way, you say?” She cocked her head at me. “You’ve forgotten how fast we can move like this, and we’ll only go slower as we go faster… you’ll see. Come on. I know what you’ve got in mind.”
She took me, and it was like the grass was a wave – as it had been in my vision, when Nentheleme blessed me – and we rode the wave, the undulating carpet beneath us. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what had happened when she took us across a valley, across a treeline, and then we were striding atop the trees’ leaves, racing through the still, silent air.
I really hope she knows what she’s doing, I thought.
* * *
Keyla screamed as I stuck my head through her wall.
“Ah, I do apologise,” I said, sticking my arm out and offering a hand-wave to emphasise my words.
“Feychilde!”
The heaving of her chest gradually slowed, and she lowered the quivering hand she’d pressed to her lips.
“I, really, I can’t say how sorry I am about this but – can we possibly borrow that?”
I pointed to Spirit’s amulet dangling around her neck.
Keyla turned, and it was only then that she realised Killstop was standing beside her, touching her elbow.
“Of – of course, Liberator…”
She removed it and handed it right over, staring at me curiously.
“Ta. I’ll… bring it back. Later. Glaif witness me. By Kultemeren.” It couldn’t hurt, could it? “And I’ll use the door next time – I promise. Gotta rush now!”
And with that and a flash of green energy, we were gone.
* * *
“What’re the odds on this?” I asked, once I got my breath back. I really didn’t like moving quickly.
But for all her faults, Tanra knew her stuff. She’d brought us unerringly back to the same spot. Zel had moved perhaps a couple of hand-spans, but the fairy had still only just turned her head as though to follow our trajectory as we sped away; her body was still oriented the same direction as before. We’d lost a few seconds, tops, while Tanra put Keyla under her spell.
Whatever answer she gave, I’d believe her.
“Fifty-fifty,” she replied at length. “It’s difficult – there are no incongruencies I can see, but I’m not an enchanter; what do you think? You helped create it.”
I’d already looked the pendant over with my sorcerer’s-eye. “Everything about the rune looks the same as the day he made it, and the magic I put in it…”
“It feels the same?”
“Uh huh?”
She shrugged. “Seventy-thirty, in our favour. You’re up for this? I’ll have to run away, you know. The amulet won’t work for two, nowhere near as well.”
I nodded. “I’ll yell when I’m back –“
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Do you… you need me to refresh my seal again? Just to be on the safe side?”
“Kas, it’s been seconds, literal seconds, since you made the mark. It’s not even had chance to bleed yet, for Celestium’s sake!”
“Well I’m sorry, but I’m nervous!” I suppressed a shudder. “I know what I’ve got to do, and I’m terrified!”
A… dropping… dragon.
“You can do it. I know you can.”
“Curse you. Right after I thought to myself, how much trust I put in your judgement…”
She laughed. “Get on with it. I’ll be right back.”
I drew a quivering breath. “Okay. Go.”
She fled, and time came rushing back.
My assorted fey companions let out a variety of exclamations.
I addressed Zel, who was clearly the most miffed at being left out of the loop: “In a minute, dear. Trust goes both ways, remember.”
I reached out my hand to pinch a seam in reality, and had to take a moment to stop myself shaking. My fingers weren’t performing their usual trick.
Come on, Kas. Keep it together. They’re all relying on you.
I opened the jadeway, just a little bit.
Go to Lovebright and reprimand her. Tell her how you feel.
It was a tiny voice, whispering in my head, over and over.
Go to Lovebright and kill her. Show the others your strength.
But with Spirit’s pendant around my neck, I could hear it: the accent to the voice.
It was not my own. It wasn’t even Lovebright’s.
Too… draconic.
The room I could espy through the hole had changed.
Sunspring was laying his hands on Lady Sentelemeth, and the ancient Lord Wenlyworth was already leaning over the arm of his chair, convulsing, foaming at the mouth. Lord Haid had his eyes closed.
The others were standing to attention, in a loose ring around the arch-druid and the three politicians in their chairs; Em was standing on the table, fire-wreathed.
Lovebright was nowhere to be seen – a fact that meant precisely nothing.
The arch-diviner’s voice boomed: “There!”
I could barely withdraw, close the seam, before Timesnatcher’s blade penetrated the planar boundary, Stormsword’s orange flames flickering behind him.
At least he was in front of me now – possibly…
I ducked low and reopened the jadeway, hoping against hope –
Tackling someone armed with a knife was perilous enough. Tackling them through a planar doorway, blindly, without getting stabbed? Impossible.
Then, arm them with a dagger designed to eat demons for breakfast, trailing emerald tinctures through the air.
Then, make them a hostile arch-diviner.
I went out of and back into Etherium in a flash, and it wasn’t four punches in the face I received.
I landed face-first in a pool of thick, glistening water, life spilling out of me in a dozen places and still they kept coming – daggers falling, sinking through my robe, my unprotected flesh – my internal organs rupturing in violent floods of effluent and light that I could feel streaming out of me, high into the air –
Still I couldn’t shield –
My heart, a sucking sensation, an explosion of pain –
Then I was on my back on the grass once more, fierce clouds frozen in place in the sky above me that I could see through the canopy of tall trees. The warmth of a healing elixir was again making its way down my throat. And then another, and another.
I’m glad… I didn’t have to yell… Tanra…
The rejuvenating fluid trickled slowly, tickling my tonsils, but it still moved far more quickly than my surroundings; I’d been stopped again.
I flicked my gaze across.
Timesnatcher, crouching beside me, tipping a little phial of his own into my mouth. His other hand, in contact with my shoulder.
Killstop standing over us.
“I do apologise, Kastyr,” Timesnatcher said huskily. “Tanra’s explained. I would’ve brought your sylph in, too, but he doesn’t like us after we attacked you, no matter what your fairy says.” He sighed, withdrawing his healing elixir from my lips. “I’ll be in need of your seal, when you’re ready.”
I swallowed then croaked, a meaningless noise, before my innards started twisting a little, the healing working its way through my body.
“She didn’t poison us all.” His husky voice fell to a trembling bass. “Not Emrelet and I. She’s using Neko to replicate the effect of a toxin on the nobles, but, yes, it’s going to be blamed on you. She’s trying to manoeuvre you into a future where you don’t belong. She’s…” he swallowed “… a dragon? Seriously?”
He turned his head up to face Killstop, who merely nodded solemnly.
“I still can’t wrap my head around it,” he admitted. “I need… time…”
“This… again?” I moaned. “Thought… you were… greatest…?”
“Imagine looking through the threads in a scarf to find the shortest one,” Killstop said to me. “It can be quite frustrating, let me tell you. Luck has more to do with it than skill. Skill – power – is just the ability to search them in the first place. It never guarantees success.”
“She and I were… we were intimate, some nights ago.” Again, the deep voice shook. “It was… I cannot remember much of what happened. But it did… it happened.”
His voice dropped off almost into silence on the last words.
I stared at him, not even knowing how to respond to this.
Tanra knew how to respond. “Is that something we can capitalise on?”
He only shook his head, and said: “I don’t know. She – she wasn’t her. It makes no sense…”
“You can scry deeper later.” Killstop had her hands on her hips. “Come on, get up, Kas. We’ve got to get a move on.”
With Timesnatcher’s help I propped myself up on an elbow, then took Killstop’s kitchen knife when she passed it over. Timesnatcher held out his arm, sleeve drawn back, and I started slicing into it.
“Speak about your troubles, Feychilde,” he said after a moment.
I laughed, then cut the sound short. I could hear the despair in it.
“Which ones, exactly? I’m currently wondering how wide of a gate I can open… but I can’t stay in contact with them all, not at the same –”
“Don’t trouble yourself over that. You’re coming with me to see Wilderweird first. We’re getting amulets for Tanra and I before we even step into that mess out there, and then we will help you carry them through, one by one. She won’t be able to stop us.” Irimar lifted his face to the overpoweringly-moss-scented breeze. It was clear from his lack of reaction to his surroundings that he’d been to Etherium before. “I believe it’s that way.” He nodded towards what would be south, given the sun’s position, if we’d been on the Material Plane.
More stomach-lurching speeding around, and still no way to use my wraith here…
I passed Tanra her knife back, and sighed.
It was going to be one of those days.
* * *
Wilderweird was a man of advancing years, greying stubble on his neck, chin and chops. Above, the eye-drawing fractal mask covering his nose, eyes, forehead. He had a serious paunch, but was broad-shouldered and confident-looking as he strode across the silent Hightown street in front of the Oath-House of Glaif.
I could only tell he was striding by the angle of his arms and legs, their pose not quite hidden by the yellow-and-green robe’s sleeves, its spacious skirts.
He wasn’t actually in motion, of course; not that I could see.
Timesnatcher went to pass through the portal I was holding open, and even he slowed down, froze, on the threshold.
“What am I doing wrong?” I cried frantically.
“Oops – sorry,” Killstop murmured.
She did something – I saw the lurch in Mund beyond the jadeway as Wilderweird’s foot moved an inch towards the ground – heard a snippet of sounds come through, voices, footfalls of boots and hooves on the cobbles – and then Timesnatcher was in the frozen world, moving to Wilderweird’s side.
“He had to move through the portal in normal time; we were still going slow. It would’ve taken him a minute or so to step between the planes. Had to let the dragon have a second there.”
I watched as Timesnatcher started talking to our fellow champion.
“How long has passed since… since I pointed at the First Lady of Mund and shouted at her?” I asked as we waited.
How long has passed since Lovebright thought in my head that they had eight minutes? How much has she moved up her schedule?
How quickly can Springsun kill them with poison?
“Stop it, Kas.” Killstop sounded bored. “Just surrender to it. We can’t do anything till we’re safe from her. You know it as well as I do.”
My frustration was fit to boil over, so I clamped it down with a grin, screwing the smile tight onto my face.
“That’s better,” the seeress said sweetly.
“They’re coming,” I pointed out, then went to the portal, intent on pushing my arm through so I could bring him across the boundary.
My arm couldn’t go through the dimensional boundary – I looked over my shoulder.
She cocked her head at me. “Did you want to take a minute?”
“Tanra!”
She sniggered, relenting; the very next instant the arch-diviner stepped back into the otherworld with the arch-enchanter at his side. I waved the portal closed with my free hand.
“Feychilde. Killstop. I gotta admit, I ‘ave no idea what’s going on.” Wilderweird’s voice was gruff – a Rivertown accent if I ever heard one – but surprisingly emotional, rough around the edges.
I reminded myself: This one didn’t volunteer for Zadhal.
He moved his head around, taking in Etherium – I couldn’t see his eyes but I could imagine his surprise. Unlike Timesnatcher, I didn’t get the impression Wilderweird had been here before – or at least not for a while.
“But – I’m gonna do my best ter help… Timesnatcher – he mentioned a dragon?”
Killstop blurred forwards, then she was holding Wilderweird’s pendant in her hand, its snapped chain trailing from her fist.
“Hey!” the arch-enchanter yelped, reaching out –
“Lovebright made this,” Killstop said wearily.
“Nah – she – wait…” The older champion slowly lowered his hand.
“Well-handled, Killstop.” Timesnatcher sounded just a little ruffled that he hadn’t caught it.
“Oh… gods…” The yellow-and-green robed archmage sank to his knees and I bent a little to keep in contact with him. “What ‘as she done? What has she done?”
“It’s the Ceryad, amongst other things,” Timesnatcher told him in a soothing voice. “Don’t blame yourself. Blame me, if anyone.”
“She can’t, she can’t do that,” Wilderweird muttered, “not without contact…”
“First we need to get some new pendants made, and grab the others.” The black-and-white robed arch-diviner sounded weary just like Tanra. “We can’t keep this up forever, and it’s going to extract a serious toll on us. Time is passing, even if slowly. The less chance we give her to react to this…”
“Rebellion,” I supplied.
“This rebellion…” he said the word heavily, “the greater the likelihood we get past this. The likelihood we win.”
“Win?” I blenched, just a little, at the thought. “We’re going to fight a dragon?”
He nodded grimly. “I think we have to.”
Wilderweird just shuddered like the rest of us had done, vibrating under my hand.
“So,” Killstop said to him brightly, “mind some light mutilation?”
She drew out her knife, and our arch-enchanter colleague raised his head, gasping in shock.
“Yeah, well-handled, Killstop,” I grunted.
* * *
We used ensorcelled blades to cut the chains about their necks. Yanking on the links, from slowed-time, would likely hurt our friends. We snipped the necklaces off carefully, and then took them back across the boundary.
It was eerie, though. Em was my first choice – it already felt wrong that I’d prioritised Tanra, but had I really had an option? – and even now we had others to rescue first: primarily Sunspring and his three victims. When I finally got chance, I approached my wizard girlfriend furtively despite her apparent paralysis. She was a flawless statue, and some part of me hardly felt worthy to go near her. Her pale hair and skin and robe made her like a graven image of Tauremei, of winter’s wild, winsome goddess – but she was imprisoned within a burning cage, bound by a phoenix’s blaze that was reflected in her eyes. The flames ringing her were no less affected by the chronomancy than she was, but still they danced, circuiting about her in lethargic searing spirals.
Whatever fiery spell she’d been preparing when the temporal stasis took hold, it looked formidable.
“Hurry up, Feychilde,” Tanra called over. “This isn’t easy, you know!”
I delicately reached through and withdrew the amulet from its place in Em’s bodice. Then, with a spark-trailing dagger in my other hand, I set to work, deftly gripping her chain in a loop about the blade and pulling away. A few links were cleanly sheared-through, and within seconds Wilderweird was working on her mind.
“Sorted,” he said after a few moments. “Done my best to prepare her, like.”
Once Em was cleared by the enchanter he went over to help Killstop with Spirit, and one of the diviners must’ve brought the wizard into the fold because she slumped, fires quenching as she did so.
“Oh, Ka- Feychilde!” She flung her arms around me. “Zere is a dragon!”
“I know,” I murmured, mirroring her motion, squeezing her back. “I know.”
“We are going to kill it,” she said, a trace of desperation, frenzy in her voice.
Stormsword’s voice, not Em’s. I couldn’t match its hardness.
“I know.”
* * *
Wilderweird and Spiritwhisper took the wooden discs I’d crudely carved and set to work creating amulets for those of our guests who needed them – including the First Lady of Mund and her similarly shocked-looking fellows. We were all sitting in a circle between a number of huge, monolithic reeds, a spot that would be located somewhere in southern Hightown on Materium side. Whether they were avoiding us or the diviners were choosing our path with greater care than I understood, we hadn’t spotted a single fey entity bigger than a house-cat, and nothing even half as aggressive in nature. Everything around us was time-frozen in any case.
Now as we hunkered down in the dirt I had Avaelar, Zab and Zel gathered around me and Em. On the other side from the enchanters, the three politicians were looking distinctly uncomfortable without their nice chairs, but they’d been shamed into lowering themselves to the ground by virtue of the fact everyone else had been happy enough to get their clothes dirty; perhaps they’d merely been waiting for servants to miraculously appear from the supernatural surroundings, someone to help lower them to their backsides. Other than with the surprisingly-light Wenlyworth, whom I was surprised to find hadn’t dropped dead from sheer excitement at the proceedings of this extremely drawn-out afternoon, no one was going to act like their butler. Haid and Sentelemeth had adopted very refined, almost apologetic expressions as they hastily joined Wenlyworth on their noble asses.
You’d think folk who’d just had to let a lowborn sorcerer cut into their pristine, overfed flesh would have a bit more sense of priorities, but there we had it. Fortunately Sunspring had been able to do something to everyone, allowing the seal I cut into them to last longer – particularly needed in the case of the paper-skinned Lord Wenlyworth, in whose case it was a fine balance to cut deep enough for the wound to bleed without then causing him to bleed out.
Timesnatcher himself was now standing in the centre of us, slowly rotating on the spot while Tanra went prowling around the outside, keeping pace with his pirouetting – apparently this performance aided them in keeping us under their chronomantic effect. Something something increased present moments, something something minimised event-succession… I’d tuned out halfway through their explanation, focussing instead on the blade in my hand, the shapes I was slicing into the wood.
(We’d chopped up a couple of Killstop’s wooden stakes, with Zel reticent to provide reassurances about how ethereal materials would react to ensorcellment – though that perhaps had more to do with her discomfort at this exposure to powerful diviners than any certainty or lack thereof on her part. She definitely wasn’t being herself – the dainty little faerie queen was nestled in my lap, as though she wanted to hide. This whole thing had been her idea in the first place, essentially!)
We sat there in our circle, and discussed the situation. The wide-eyed politicians stared at us, looking back forth between the champions as we traded our assessments, our suggestions. Thankfully they didn’t interject too often with their pat, out-of-touch wisdoms.
“She doesn’t think of us as actual assets,” Killstop said as she paced about us. “We’re less than tools, to her. Until this happened, or until very recently, she didn’t even see us as people. Something’s changed in her, something I can’t see or do anything about. Timesnatcher?”
“Agreed,” he replied from the centre. “But I don’t think anything quite like this has happened before.”
“I don’t think this change happened due to us. I think…” It sounded like Tanra was biting her lip behind the mask, then she continued: “I think we were able to escape because she changed. Do you follow me? She’s not wholly committed, or she’s lost her way – something like that.”
“You can see all this?” Stormsword sounded sceptical.
“You’re right – no, I can’t, I’m filling in the gaps… but I don’t think I’m wrong.”
“She’s right,” Timesnatcher said, exhaustion in his voice and his stoop as he rotated on the spot.
Em looked across at me and I offered a slight shrug. Timesnatcher was thinking of the fact he slept with Lovebright, I was certain. I wasn’t going to just blurt it out like that right now, though.
“She sees us as pawns,” he went on, lifting his head again, “and although she’s never had cause to use us for anything so overt, today she’s going to marshal her forces. Pawns against pawns. She’s thinking like a human.”
Sunspring coughed loudly.
Timesnatcher gave a contrite chuckle. “What I mean is that our abilities are too diverse for her to deal with it as an enchanter, even if she’s the most powerful enchanter we’ve ever seen. She must’ve taken years… I’ll bet she found a way to draw on the Ceryad before she ever showed a face here, you know.”
“So she isn’t following instructions from her diviners?” I asked.
Timesnatcher looked at Killstop –
“It’s highly improbable.” The seeress had a dismissive tone to her voice. “She took Bookwyrm and Bladesedge as cover for Dreamlaughter; that’s why she was so vehement Dream had nothing to do with Nighteye – she’s confused about that herself, or she was, at the time, at least. And Dream herself, she’s someone else entirely -”
“But why then haven’t you been able to see what she wants?” I pressed. “And why in Twelve Hells was she trying to get me and Lady Sentelemeth to have a fight? Just so it’d look more credible I’d killed her?” I looked at the frightened, beautiful politician, this figurehead of power reduced to a shrinking mess. “My apologies, by the way… m’lady… If I’m being honest with myself, with you – I don’t think Lovebright even had me say a single thing I wasn’t feeling, on some level – but I swear, I never would’ve said what I said, how I said it…”
“I too,” frog-man Haid offered out of nowhere. “I too said what I thought, without that barrier of discernment, good judgement…” His eyes stared into the dirt between his knees, unseeing, stupid hat flopping to the side.
“It bespeaks a certain temperament, to admit that,” Lady Sentelemeth said to me, her voice surprisingly level, then turned her head to Gathel Haid. “And even to follow another in such example. My thanks, gentlemen, for your candour.”
A long shot from admitting any influence yourself, though, eh? I couldn’t help but think sneeringly.
“We shall need such cool heads, if there is indeed a dragon in Mund,” old Lord Wenlyworth mused. “I don’t suppose – there’d be another drop of that fortified wine ab-”
“Icaron!” Sentelemeth snapped. “No more wine required, thank you, Feychilde.”
“I think, in answer to your questions, Feychilde,” Timesnatcher said, “she wants to use you in a certain way I may have foreseen and about which I cannot talk – so – don’t – ask.”
I shook my head. “Not good enough, T-Man. Not good enough by half. You’ve tried this on me before. ‘I can’t tell you why, but call Neverwish out!’ And then within five minutes I’ve got Star hating… Oh Yune… Neverwish…”
He nodded. “Neverwish. And… Rosedawn. There have probably been others, too…”
His voice dropped away.
“She’s been doing this for years?” Sunspring asked, a twang of pain his usually-jovial voice.
Killstop was nodding too as she went around the circle in front of me. Timesnatcher said nothing; just wheeled away in silence.
I drew a deep breath. “But that’s beside the point, Timesnatcher. You’re the leader. That doesn’t mean I have to follow blindly. You wouldn’t tell us about Killstop coming to Zadhal –“
“Because I did not know for sure!” he retorted. “I was… guessing…”
“You risked all our lives in the name of speculation!”
It seemed I was letting it all out now. I noticed that Zel in my lap and Em by my side were both looking at my face in concern.
“The very first time we met, you fed me a bunch of nonsense I still can’t make sense of – it’s like, you can’t help yourself –“
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Killstop said, the boredom, resignation back in her voice. “Why don’t you let the experts do their thing? We don’t tell you what to summon – we trust you.”
“When you didn’t bring the liches out, when you dealt with them yourself, I trusted you,” Timesnatcher reminded me.
Killstop went on: “Trust us. Telling people their future in exacting detail is usually a guaranteed catastrophe, especially when they’re – archmages. Especially when their future is tangled with the futures of other arch-diviners.”
I caught a hiccup there. She was going to say something else instead of ‘archmages’.
What would it take, for an arch-diviner of her calibre to slip up like that? There had to be a million different things she could’ve said, and so many of them led to problematic futures that she couldn’t decide which until she’d already hesitated?
Or was it just that making me think about this was her intention all along? That the future in which she slipped up was the best one for her, encouraging her to do so deliberately?
And how did I know that Timesnatcher hadn’t told me to bring the liches out purely so that I’d see him in a different light when he ignored my refusal? What if he knew I wouldn’t have been bringing them out in any case? How would I have even achieved it, realistically?
I loosed a brief growl of irritation and bowed my head, indicating that I was giving up my interruption.
Diviners and enchanters…
“The answer to your other question,” Timesnatcher said, “is that she is clearly operating under a prophecy we haven’t seen. I think… I think I have the answer to it now. I think it is the twins.”
“Illodin’s tears,” I breathed. “She wouldn’t go after them, would she?”
Jaid and Jaroan’s faces swam before my suddenly tear-filled eyes; I sprang to my feet, sending Zel fluttering – Lovebright knew my sister was a bit of a fan of hers, I’d told her –
“I don’t mean those twins, Feychilde,” he said softly. “I mean Saffys and Tarrance. There was… there is… a destiny looming over them.”
“But my tw-“
“There are almost two million people she could go after!” he spoke over me. “If she has taken an interest in any of… our loved ones, we shall each have to bear that burden until we can know more. I can’t foresee any specific dangers.”
“They’ve not been harmed, Feychilde,” Zel said in a quiet voice, from where she now sat on Em’s knee. “I know it.”
“Our families,” Spirit muttered. “If she’s gone after our families, I’m gonna rip her droppin’ mind out, I swear.”
“Erm – do you think she knows I’m – that I’ve joined you?” Wilderweird asked in a small voice.
“We can’t know anything for certain.” Killstop actually stopped pacing around us for a moment and looked at Timesnatcher – something seemed to pass between them and then she continued on her way. “We have to get to the Ceryad. She knows this, or at least suspects it will be our goal. We can’t forget she’s got diviners she’ll use – ones we can’t see, not easily –”
“Excuse me – are you chaps talking about the Ceryad-tree?” Lady Sentelemeth asked in an overly-polite voice. “The heirloom of the Five Founders – the First Wonder of Mund?”
“I think… I think we’ve said… too much,” Timesnatcher replied thickly.
“But it has been lost for centuries!” the Lady went on, undeterred. “To think, that she should have discovered the whereabouts of such an ancient artifact, or that you… it –“
“Are you okay, Timesnatcher?” Killstop asked.
Then all of a sudden, in a chilling echo of his earlier outburst when it’d been me on the receiving end, Timesnatcher broke off his measured rotation – he brought his arm up, pointing over Spirit’s head, and mumbled: “There!”
This time he didn’t lunge forward, blade extended – this time he wasn’t under a murderer’s influence, and his potential target almost certainly was…
Nevertheless, there was a tiny seam in the air, already closing before I became fully-aware of its existence.
A miniscule hole, big enough only for an eye to peer at us –
But it couldn’t close, could it? It would be anchored there by the chronomantic effect –
It closed.
“Valorin!” Killstop said in a clear tone of challenge, a dagger appearing in each of her hands – not the kitchen knife. “And a few of his friends.”
“They have their own time-bubble?” Sunspring growled.
“How do they know where we are?” Lady Sentelemeth asked.
No one seemed to want to answer either question. Time for talk was over.
I unfolded my pre-prepared shield, its stars spinning in place before they were even fully formed, and quickly spread my full complement throughout the area. Avaelar unfurled his hidden wings, taking up a crouched combat posture, while Zab hid behind him.
At the same time, electricity came down through the tower-like reeds, congealing in Stormsword’s hands and in her eyes; here in this place and time in the otherworld, the lightning was pinkish in hue, almost like a little blood was mixed in with the radiance. It arced across her knuckles and between her fingertips.
Sunspring bellowed, generating a tremendous noise that belied the gnome-shape’s size; even as he roared he changed, and it was no feline or canine snarl – it was a deep, loud, primate rumble. Within a heartbeat he’d become something akin to one of the gorillas they sometimes displayed at Firenight Square, only twenty feet tall and with fur a subtle shade of dark green.
The gorilla-gnome reared up to his full height and stepped in front of our arch-enchanters, who were in turn drawing their own ensorcelled weapons, hunkering down beside Lady Sentelemeth, Lord Wenlyworth and Lord Haid. Spirit had one of Killstop’s in his hand, dripping blue stuff from the tip that evaporated the instant it broke contact with the metal.
I moved my hand to create a second shield about the politicians and their protectors, flicking my gaze back to Timesnatcher, expecting his booming voice to command us, spur us on into action.
But when I looked at the arch-diviner I noticed for the first time – his pallor beneath the mask, the trembling that was arresting the fluidity of his motions.
Something was horribly wrong with him.
“Lovebright?” I whispered to myself.
“It’s the spell!” Killstop cried. “Our spell! He’s going under!” She abandoned her post and sped to his side, put her hands on him, lowered him to the ground.
He seemed to be only vaguely aware of his surroundings; he appeared to be staring at his outstretched hand, and still he didn’t speak.
“Can we do anything?” Stormsword asked quickly, more pink light cascading down to join the glowing mass gathered around her hands.
“No, no…” Tanra sounded panicked, and she waved off Sunspring who came stomping over, still a twenty-foot green gorilla. “This isn’t physical – this is his power – damn it, Timesnatcher! Timesnatcher, can you hear me in there?”
She was practically yelling into the side of his head, and he wasn’t reacting one iota.
I filled my lungs before shouting over her: “Sunspring, watch the other side too – they don’t have to come through the same place twice!”
“I’m aware of that, young man!”
I was still keeping my eyes on the two arch-diviners, and I put another separate shield over Timesnatcher. “I’ve got shields over the whole place. Killstop – Killstop, listen to me!” When I bellowed she raised her face. “You’re going to have to get all their amulets bef-”
“It’s already too late!” she cried right back at me.
As the control slipped and their time-instant caught up to ours, they came through three gateways just beyond my farthest shield, spreading out in a semi-circle around us, and I saw that Killstop had been wrong.
It wasn’t Valorin and a few of Lovebright’s kidnapped champions.
Or rather, wasn’t just them.
The arch-magister was there, leading the group in the middle, his shields raised – but Netherhame and Shallowlie accompanied him, along with over a dozen others.
Some people I knew. A few I’d fought alongside.
“Elkostor,” Stormsword murmured.
I recognised the magister-wizard from Zadhal.
“Spirit, link us already!” I hissed, then, louder: “Do not do this thing! We are not your enemies!”
“Listen – to – him!” the twenty-foot druid commanded in a terrible voice. “Fangmoon, listen!”
But the druidess didn’t respond, and the ice elemental next to her shrugged his shoulders.
“This is going to be fun,” Winterprince grated, ignoring Sunspring, extending his titanic ice-blades from his fists and pointing one of them right at my face.
“This is not goin’ to be fun,” Spirit thought.
“See, fate beckons,” Starsight declared in a clear, solemn voice, his robe and already-drawn spellbound blades gleaming. “Already Timesnatcher has fallen. Lay down your arms, and we shall treat fairly with you.”
“Maybe we should l-listen to them…” Wilderweird stammered aloud.
“Run!” Killstop said, blurring to her feet –
“No,” I spoke grimly into their minds. I’d seen the results of flight, seen the way we’d be isolated, cut down alone. There were diviners with them – Killstop wasn’t seeing clearly.
“No.” I repeated, more confidently. “This time, we fight.”
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