INTERLUDE 6C: DREAM IT TOO
“This New Church must think more of Illodin! The light is not instantaneous; this the diviners and wizards have proven – and by comparison the word is slow, so slow to take wing on the air. What we think of as the present is the past. To experience is to recollect. Memory is all that can be said to exist. They think little of us, those of us who deign to tend the pools of history, and ever fail to understand: all of Being lies fragile, fluid in our hands!”
– from ‘The Collected Speeches of Saint Rothmar the Unknighted’
8th Orovost, 998 NE
Aramas was just one of dozens that waited by the pier as the ferry-barge docked, but he was one of the best at his job, and he got it done however he had to. With his handful of shiny shells from the beach at Shinglemoss, the youngster fought his way through the others – he was short but he was burly, and could wrestle with the best of them. Once he got to the front, his hands were just two of what must’ve looked to their prey like thousands. One of each pair was stretching out with stupid trinkets held in the balled fist, while the other, unencumbered, was grasping, groping for payment from the tourists…
Today he was working distraction – Cullimo was working action.
He shoved his shells in some unsuspecting rich guy’s face and kept up with him, the crowd pushing and pulling all around them.
“Hey sir! Hey sir! You want this! You want this, don’t you? Go on, take it. Take it! Only three silver! Hey sir! It’s in your pocket now! It’s in your pocket, I said – do you want me to tell the watch? Yeah, I’ll tell the watch! You know about Mund’s prisons? Or better, I’ll go tell my uncle, I’ll tell my uncle right now! You haven’t paid, don’t you speak Mundic? Dropping tourists! Three! Silver! Okay okay, one silver – one… Fine… never mind…”
Getting them to expose their wallets was the trick. They wouldn’t actually open their purse-strings, of course, unless they were complete oafs, and some were clever-enough to not even reach for them – but those were few and far between. Most marks wouldn’t be able to help themselves, securing the contents of a specific pocket or belt-pouch, to clutch it tighter or just to check it was still there.
That was their real mistake. The tiniest tell was all Aramas and his breed were waiting for. These dropping highborn, rich-as-drop types were so stupid…
Once the target had been revealed he’d deftly enter their wallet, unburden them of their coins, and even replace the copper if he was feeling particularly charitable, before refastening any cords or buckles and leaving the mark none the wiser.
He noticed when Cullimo finished in the man’s pocket, then, acting dejected by his ‘failure’, slunk off to find another mark in the crowd. Once the tourists had successfully traversed this dangerous stretch the two of them would count up their earnings and work out how much they owed the guild.
They never lied to the guild – at fourteen years old, they were far too terrified by the prospect of meeting thieves’ justice in a back-alley to risk crossing their boss. But they’d worked on their maths over the last year, so that they could know if they were being crossed. So far, everything had been above board – something Aramas had been surprised at, but not altogether shocked. It seemed Enidd Eight-Fingers was as fair as her frailty implied.
Enidd’s thieves guild had jurisdiction all the way past the Southguard Bridge to Shinglemoss upriver, and downriver to Sigrand’s Twist, incorporating Brinklenir Dock and the Morninglord Bay. A seventy-odd-year-old woman didn’t keep control of such a lucrative empire without being worthy of her reputation, and she was a revered figure in their shadowy community, a nexus for the elusive ‘honour among thieves’ which was so necessary in order for them to deal successfully with one another.
Under her rule, the area had flourished. The protection-rackets actually worked, keeping shopkeepers and dock-masters safe from unlicensed operations, and the memory of the Lowtown gangs had faded over the last twelve months, now they’d been pushed back across the water. Both the boys’ mums appreciated their efforts – neither of them had a dad, and bringing home even a few silver a week made the difference between life and death for their siblings and half-siblings.
But, best of all, they had their freedom. They could do what they wanted. They were cogs in a machine, but they knew the machine, liked the machine. The fact they had a place in the world, it made every day glorious, gave them a reason to get up in the morning and go to work.
It was a golden age, and, pockets full of coins, he and Cullimo made their way back through the alleys to the guild-hall. Minus Enidd’s cut they would still have enough extra left for beer, and those girls who hung around on the corner after tea might be persuaded to go for some.
“I like that blonde one,” Cullimo said as they entered Sicklemore Street and made their way over the horse-drop-covered cobbles towards the market.
“Why?” he asked blandly. As far as Aramas was concerned, the blonde one was a pig in pigtails, but he wasn’t about to say it outright – he let his tone convey his mockery.
The truth was, she was probably the only one of the three girls that was in his league.
“I dutto, man,” Cullimo replied wistfully. “She’s just got a certain sommat, y’ know.”
“Wha’s she got, Cull? Some mud to roller round in? Apples, to go wi’ all that sausage-meat?”
The two boys tussled briefly, spilling some of their silver into the muck; once Cullimo had successfully saved face by throwing a few punches they swiftly recovered their lost coins and continued on their way. Cullimo was faster, nimbler than Aramas, and had got two blows in for every one of his.
“You’re good at the game, Ari, but when it comes to the women, you ain’t got squat.” Cull rolled his shoulders confidently as he strode ahead, and Aramas had to admit he was right. His friend always seemed to get lucky where he got left behind.
“It’s cos I’m fat,” he rumbled.
“A fat short-ass,” Cull corrected him.
Cull couldn’t dodge what he couldn’t see coming – Aramas struck him a solid blow between the shoulder-blades, sending him sprawling face-down in the mud. (Only a few of the nearby Rivertowners even spared them a glance.)
“Gettin’ ready for blondie?” he snapped at his mate. “Oink oink!”
A random dog came over, padding merrily through the mud, and, having given Cull’s head a once-over with its nose, started to cock a leg –
“He’s about to whiz on you!” Aramas laughed.
The agile boy rolled over away from the dog and got to his feet. Muttering, he followed Aramas this time, hanging his head as he brushed the worst of the mud from his skin and clothing.
Not ten seconds later, Aramas saw the figures of a pair of watchmen heading their way, the ‘S’-shape of a winding river on their badges. Cull swiftly shut his mouth and they withdrew into the shadows behind some crates until the skull-thumpers passed by.
They weren’t three streets from the guild-hall, still bickering between themselves, when they passed the opening to what they called Alley Six and a girl stepped into their path.
Girl, or young woman – the distinction was impossible to make. She was tall and narrow-waisted, red-brown hair pulled back into a spiky pony tail. Her bodice was low-cut and her stockings disappeared beneath a skirt whose hem was considerably north of her knees. The eye-catching size of her chest alone suggested she wasn’t their age.
“Please – please, gentlemen!” she said breathily. “Can I borrow you, for just two minutes? I have a job for you – can you help me? I…” she blinked, sultry eyelashes closing, reopening as her pink-painted lips parted in a smile, “… can pay you for your time?”
Aramas wanted to look at Cull, judge his friend’s reaction, but found it hard to remove his eyes from the nice lady.
“Definitely!” he blurted.
“Whaddya want us to do?” Cull asked in a dreamlike voice.
“Oh, a couple of strong lads like you…” The girl pursed her lips thoughtfully, and they glistened, drawing all of Aramas’s attention. “It won’t take long.”
On nerveless feet, they followed her into the mouth of the alley; she moved quickly, even stepping carefully between the puddles. It was only a thirty second walk. Far too short a time for them to start heeding the voices of warning they both carried in their skulls. They were too used to ignoring such inner warbling on a whim, coming out the other side unharmed. She took the second right turn, behind the butchers’ row, and then left again into the open door of a building, stepping straight into its shadowy interior.
They were in such a rush to hurry after her that they smacked into each other, both trying to cram themselves through the doorway at the same time.
Aramas got ahead, stepped within, followed her around the wall –
Before he’d had chance to properly take in his darkened surroundings, Cull had come through behind him and the door had closed with a very final-sounding metal clang.
The windowless, unpainted wooden walls barely reflected the light of the firepit, the stone-enclosed flames that were licking about in the centre of the dirt floor. Sealed crates and ladders to the upper level were being used for seats, a number of people leaning on the edges of boxes, perching on the lower rungs of the ladders, lounging in relaxed postures, arms folded or hands in their laps.
People? Mages. Their cloth was poor but there was no disputing the long sleeves, the deep hoods hiding their faces… And despite the fire there was no smoke in the air – in fact, the fire seemed to have no fuel; there was no wood or oil beneath the orange flickering shapes, no crackling sound –
Aramas looked back – two tall mages were there, blocking the door, and in their hands long knives gleamed.
The girl who’d lured them into the trap gave a lazy pirouette, then curtseyed deeply to the others as her beautiful lips parted and let forth a delighted laugh.
“What did I tell you?” Her voice was North Lowtown all of a sudden. “Easy.”
“She used no spell?” one of the darkmages, male and old, asked sceptically.
“Not one bit of glamour,” another mage, female and younger, responded. Her voice was cold, level… strong. It screamed danger.
“Oh, but I feel glamorous, darling,” the beautiful girl said, running her hands over her bodice. She looked back at the two boys. “I am sorry, gentlemen. This is the end of the road for you. Let us discuss payment.”
They had unconsciously moved closer to one another until they stood back to back. Thoughts whirled through Aramas’s mind. He had his own knife – shorter and less evil-looking than the ones the mages were carrying, true – but, still, it was a weapon…
He moved his hand to his belt, showing nothing on his face, making it look as though he felt ill, wanted to hold his stomach –
He could hear the confidence in the mages’ motions as they stepped forwards, boots thudding softly on the dry dirt ground behind him –
Cold steel on his neck. Dozens of tiny serrations bit into Aramas’s windpipe.
The mage at his back stunk of wane and sweat, hot breath of beetles pouring across the boy’s face as his captor snarled, “Move your hand from your blade, child.”
They were both brought to their knees before the firepit. The two tall mages didn’t even bother to take the knife from his belt or search them, but preferred to simply stand at their sides, daggers poised to open their throats at the slightest sign of resistance.
“What – what d-did we do?” Cull managed to ask in a trembling voice. “Pl-please, we can put it right…”
“We didn’t do anything, Cull,” Aramas said in a voice that was already dead. “They just want to kill us.”
“That’s half right, lad,” said the mage leaning against the nearest crate in a gruff voice. “Only half.”
“Which one is it, anyway?” the beautiful girl asked.
The dangerous-sounding female mage who’d spoken earlier raised her arm and pointed at Cull. “Kill that one.”
Aramas’s eyes widened –
Please – Joran –
Cull screamed as the mage next to him drew back his hand, raising the knife: “Help! Help me! Please, someone help –“
Aramas clenched his fists – there was nothing he could do but watch in horror as –
As nothing he’d ever expected came to pass before his eyes.
This time the metallic clang of the door wasn’t just loud, didn’t just sound final – it was final, for Cull’s would-be-killer at least. The door itself burst into the room, ripping through the frame and the partition-wall, tumbling end over end – and the heavy iron object smacked right into the executioner, sending him flying into the firepit.
Everyone looked behind Aramas, and he did the same, staring wide-eyed over his shoulder.
The corner of the building was gone – a hooded, feminine shape was there, silhouetted against the daylight in the dimness of the darkened room. He could see her brown rags illuminated in the orange glare as the flames danced.
“Nay, Vardae.” She spoke in a rich, contemptuous tone, words carefully enunciated, despite her lowborn accent. “This is beneath us.”
She produced her hand from the long sleeve, extended it towards the other knife-armed mage standing beside Aramas, and flicked her finger as one might flick away a gnat.
The hollow rushing boom was awful. It was like the man right next to him was punched by a fist of air that weighed a hundred pounds, though the boy felt barely a whisper of wind through his hair.
The target was sent crashing into the opposite wall, his body a crumpled mess.
“Ithilya, what are you doing?” the dangerous female mage demanded angrily; she didn’t sound threatened. “The season is upon him, and the crop must be reaped before it wilts. You and I have an accord. You go your way; we,” she looked about at her colleagues, “go mine.”
“No longer,” the newcomer, Ithilya, answered in a clear voice. “One might not play with fate as a child with stones, Vardae, nor mould destiny as the potter shapes clay. This you most of all ought know. This you taught me.”
“Don’t tempt me to kill you.” Vardae’s voice had lost none of its anger but it was a whisper now. That overpowering sense of peril was back in the air.
“You know you cannot be rid of me, not yet. You need me. You know no vision is ever complete.”
Aramas didn’t usually pray, but right now his thoughts were a string of jumbled-up supplications: Please – Yune – Joran – save us from this – please – Yune –
The tension in the air was worse than the smoke that rose from the fire, from the slowly-roasting darkmage lying unconscious inside the pit –
“Very well, Ithilya. I shall let you have him. And you shall owe me a favour.”
“Vardae!” The gruff-sounding man leaning against the nearby box sounded like he was choking suddenly. “You cannot think –“
“Both of them,” Ithilya pressed.
“Both of them?” Vardae sounded surprised.
“Until the time is upon them.”
Vardae shrugged. “Two favours, then. To be repaid as I decree. And you, Enthwar, shall hold your tongue.”
Ithilya must’ve nodded, because Vardae turned her face aside, waving a hand at the other darkmages who scurried from their perches to tend their injured comrades. The attractive girl, a sullen look in her eyes and her painted lips pouting disconsolately, helped lift the man who’d crashed into the magical flames.
Fingers of air pushed Aramas and Cullimo to their feet, and proceeded to prod them along behind their ragged saviour as she led them through the shattered entryway, back into Alley Six and the morning sunlight.
I prayed, Aramas thought, I prayed, and we lived! Glory to the gods! Sweet, merciful dropping gods…
Yet a time would soon come when Aramas would curse them for such mercies, calling out the names of dark gods instead within the silent vault of his soul, praying only for the bitter medicine that burns as it heals.
* * *
Their rescuer’s robe possessed little more detail up close than it had as a silhouette; the outer covering was like a colourless shawl with holes cut out for her hooded head and her long-sleeved arms to pop through. Aramas had never met a wizard, but he’d never thought if he did that he’d meet one covered in so much drop. She was a mystery: she was medium height, maybe five-seven-ish, her build hidden by the shapelessness of her clothing. When she turned to gesture them onwards after her, Aramas could see nothing of her face beneath the cowl.
Then, when they failed to respond, her magic came to life, moving them against their wills.
They exchanged a continuous series of increasingly-petrified glances, but beyond that there was nothing they could do except follow Ithilya – the wind at their backs was a constant pressure, forcing them to keep up, barring them from escape. Cull looked really pale; his brush with death had left him well-painted.
When she started talking, Aramas did his best to keep up, but she was speaking too fast for him.
“You must comprehend me – we would not ordinarily bring you into the fold under conditions such as these. We would wait, until you had had your fill of death – until you understood it, truly, becoming able to weigh it in your hand and decide, one way or the other… It would ease the process, allow the understanding to meet with resolve, becoming a pure will, the touch of whose discerning edge nothing might endure without change. Stop.”
Ithilya whirled, staring at them. “Do you comprehend?”
Cull swallowed. “Y-you don’t think we’ve… seen enough death?”
Aramas raised his hand in objection. “Uh – ‘scuse me, an’ everythin’, but can we go? We sure appreciate what you done for us back there, but…”
“Yeah,” Cull piped up, “it was real nice, real gracious, like…”
Ithilya regarded them from the shadows of her hood. “You can never leave. Your fates are entwined with my own. I cast the stones myself, and heard the gods’ answer! We depart now for the Thirteen Candles. Do you not see? The end of the world is nigh! You, Aramas Endemion, and you, Cullimo Caris, have your parts to play. Do not fear to tread the path. All paths lead to death. Only one leads to glory. Come! Drink, and we will depart.”
She produced her arm from the deep sleeve once more, and held in her hand a trio of identical transparent phials, something like water floating within, but water that sparkled and bubbled.
“Wh-what?” Aramas stammered. He didn’t really know what he was responding to.
“What are they? Philtres of True Invisibility, an enchanted solution of phinphardion bile – with a raspberry infusion to overcome the taste. Unless you are allergic to raspberry, they will be quite safe – you cannot be allergic to the other ingredients…” She stared at the unmoving lads for a moment or two. “Come, you did not think we would be able to pass through the skies of the city unmolested? You are with me, so you too are of the unclean now. You exist on pain of death and on our sufferance alone.”
Cull’s hand shot out and gripped him by the upper arm. Aramas could sense the waves of panic flooding out of his friend but, in himself, he was feeling stupefied more than anything.
I… am… what now?
“I – I would really like to go home now,” he managed to say.
This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. We’re goin’ home, and once we’re home everythin’ will be okay –
Ithilya was sighing. “Very well. I shall show you now; then you will come with me.”
She returned her hands to the folds of her sleeves, then produced a loop of thin wire into which a number of bright-yellow gems had been worked.
“Sh-show us what, lady? We really, really don’t wanna come with you. We’re just s-simple dock-thieves, we don’t know nothin’ about the end of the world or h-heretics or any o’ that…”
The darkmage – the heretic – settled the loop of wire like a circlet upon the top of her head, over the hood.
Sheaths of wind congealed about the boys’ wrists, and their arms were suddenly yanked out towards her; she reached for them with her fingers, taking one of their hands in each of hers; then the mage’s own pure will sliced into them and everything changed.
An old dragon dreamed a dream
And you will dream it too
There is no place for souls to hide
But in the shadows of dreams
Here, take this candle with you
And bear it thence into the dark place
That you too might see what shapes unfold
Where dreamers dream of dragons old
By keen eyes let me see you and unwind
The dusty threads of time
A journey lost to sands
Whose mountains were founded on lies
Ere clouds again crossed
The face of the sun
And moon and sky
Ere the Lord of Lords of Magic died
Whither will you find it?
In a heart made of cold?
A whisper taken across planes?
For nothing is
What it seems
In dreams untold
Aramas’s eyes rolled back in his head and he saw the ending. He saw it all.
Mund… The Dracofont…
This isn’t a city… this is a trough!
He saw the five dragons, immense and glittering, proud predators drenched in the ruins of their destruction. They moved through Hightown like wayward children through little toy buildings made of sticks.
He saw the slaughter.
Immense and insane.
The Maginox was shattered into innumerable shards, jagged splinters that the black dragon took up and used as her five-coloured weapon, her macabre lash of glass.
The rivers were turned to steam. The explosion alone killed tens of thousands. The shrieks died so fast he could hear the echoes, the spatter of liquefied flesh.
The rats rose up against the citizens in their teeming hordes. Thousands of mutated, disease-ridden bodies swarming as one up every street, seemingly picking out their targets and hunting them down, coursing over and under terrified children, snaring the kids’ soft skin in their teeth and carrying them out of their hiding places.
And through the slaughter, they roamed. The Dracofont. There were lesser dragons out there, come to see their ancient lords arisen, dragons that were imposing and daunting in their own right, resplendent in their colours – but they were nothing, nothing as compared with the Dracofont.
They roamed. They fed.
He spotted the grasping human hands, waving from between ten-foot-long teeth. Hundreds at a time. Many of those flopping limbs belonged to those already dead, redness running freely down the forearms. But some still lived: the hopeless cries of men and women and children came to his ears. They screamed, fought for breath, even as they were chewed. Even as they were swallowed, mixed in with that charnel mass.
He smelt it. Tasted it on the vision’s air.
And he heard the malice in the laughter those apocalyptic throats produced. The awful sounds, a language designed only for evil intentions.
Worst of all: they weren’t even fully-regenerated. Not yet. But he witnessed the way it fuelled them – the death, the death, it made them stronger, strong beyond imagining; their metallic tendons and glistening scales swelled, thousands of tons of armour spreading, horns and barbs and spikes bristling across every square foot of their scintillating bodies –
And they broke all the pieces on the board before them, swept them onto the floor.
It didn’t matter who came to face them. How cunning their plots. How many at once. Champions. Magisters. Screaming as they were swallowed. As the fire ripped them in two and the lightning seared every scrap of flesh from their ashen bones. As they went around wide-eyed and slew each other, weeping. As their lower parts dissolved in the acid, in the steaming puddles that stretched city-blocks, reducing civilisation back into the dirt.
Why, why in Celestium had he wanted to go home? Go home, when the end of the world was nigh?
They were going to die.
We’re all gonna die.
I’m gonna die.
He gritted his teeth savagely as if to punish his earlier self for his misconduct.
He didn’t have to go home – he had to leave! Leave Mund! Get everyone together and just –
Leave…
But go where? Where would be safe, after that?
What was he supposed to do?
“Ithilya!” he breathed, moving his eyes from their conjoined hands to her hidden face. “You – we – is this…“
“This is just a part of it,” the mage said apologetically. “There is much that cannot be learned by the transfer of thought. They eat the souls of our archmages, ministered by the hands of fiends long-since bound to their servitude. Their descendants even now move amongst us, unseen! They will slay the twins, in whose arising we find our salvation. You will come to understand all that which you would. You have a place with us, Aramas. And you, Cullimo.”
He looked at Cull. His friend’s head was still wobbling atop his neck, eyes roving this way and that, assimilating information at a ridiculous rate.
He spoke for his friend.
“What can we do?”
Ithilya sighed again, but this time it was a sigh of contentment.
“It is for all to sacrifice. I only quote the Book of Lithiguil, but the words are no less true: in the name of everything, one is permitted to do anything. Do you understand? You can help us kill.”
He stared, shocked – and it was only after a few seconds that he understood.
His response: a slow, solemn nod.
* * *
23rd Orovost, 998 NE
He looked down, and felt the hardness of his own gaze, watching them mill about down there.
The Thirteen Candles. It was not what it seemed. He sometimes caught himself wondering whether he’d just missed something everyone else had known, or whether it was true that genuinely nobody knew the place was primarily a school.
And what a school! What a place. Sometimes he just had to stop what he was doing and be amazed at the fact he was here.
From outside it looked quite straightforward. Thirteen flame-topped towers making a scabrous tree-shape, teetering in the midst of a desolate zone – an emptiness within the boundaries of which nothing dared trespass, human or animal. To tend the courtyard surrounding the Tower of Mourning was to court death at the hands of Illodin’s priesthood, whose mandate it was to preserve that place in its wasteland state. Entering the desolation about the Thirteen Candles would get you killed, but not for any such sanctimonious reason. Nothing to do with the gods. No, going near the Thirteen Candles would just kill you, flat out dead. And unless you’d been endowed with the correct selection of spells, you wouldn’t be aware of the safe distance. Everyone went, as far as Aramas could judge it from his window, at least five times farther around the Candles than they had to. He could see them down there, the people like ants, milling around on the lime-green grass beyond the scorched earth, the lush hill-ring that marked the definitely-safe zone.
Milling around, trading, cavorting… pickpocketing…
Waiting to be devoured.
He could see them, but he couldn’t pity them. Not from way up here. Not with what he now knew.
Inside? It was a mess of ideas. Thirteen worms climbing up and over and around each other. The warren of a deranged rabbit-god. Cull said he heard off one of the journeymen that the planning of the Candles had been turned over to an imp who misunderstood his instructions, and modelled the structure of the place on the imprint of an architect’s decomposing brain. Neither of the boys were capable of being sure it was a joke. Not having seen the place, lived in it.
Their door opened onto a short set of steps, rather than a level passageway, even though there would’ve been no need for it if you’d moved the door two feet across. No fewer than three separate stairwell-corridors – tunnels, really – led to the floor on which their small twin-cot room could be found. Yet as far as Aramas was able to tell none of those tunnels would meet again on their winding journey zigzagging up and down the Candles’ interiors. Other sections of his floor, areas that should’ve been just around the corner from his door, were separated off behind walls and by spells so that you’d have to use entirely different sets of staircases. In at least one spot the corridor was so dark it stopped the breath in the throat, stopped the heart beating, and even archmages wouldn’t pass that way without an arch-sorcerer in their group. He thought of it as ‘at least one spot’ because the same corridor seemed to appear in different locations, even in different towers… In the end it was impossible to tell for certain: the tunnels were all almost identical in their disorder of stone and wood and unfinished paint, and none of them had windows, all lit by a hodgepodge of light sources both ordinary and spellbound.
He supposed he’d get used to the place eventually.
He did want to go home. It was against the rules: only journeymen and above were permitted to actually leave the Candles, and, even then, leaving without a master’s permission could get a journeyman executed. Even if he were to risk it, to see his family, tell them the truth of things, explain his absence, explain everything – that would achieve nothing other than to put them in terrible danger, Ithilya had said. Leaving on his own whim, not that of an arch-diviner, would only put everyone he’d ever known in the sights of the champions. Anyone who spoke up in his defence could be executed along with him, apparently. And he believed her – he’d seen magisters in action a couple of times, and they were worse than the watch. She said that just the merest whiff of Heresy on you meant your head would be flying off across the room quicker than you could get on your knees.
All because of the true joke.
‘Dragons are going to rise up and eat everyone.’
It was such a simple thing, to say it. You could say it and no one would even recognise it as Heresy! It would just be another one of the madcap theories that went around: ‘Mund’s going to drown in a tidal wave!’ ‘Mund’s going to be swallowed into the Twelve Hells!’ ‘Mund’s going to get devoured by mega-dragons!’… People would roll their eyes, maybe snigger at your expense, and that would be that.
Make someone believe you? Like, actually believe? Welcome to the shadowland, hope you had a happy life…
He heard footsteps, then a knock on the door.
“Ari?” Fin called through.
He spun away from the window and drew the curtain, blocking ninety percent of the light. “Come in!”
Instinctively, pointlessly, he tried to smooth down his rumpled old neophyte’s robe as the door swung inwards on its hinges.
More than the mystery of this place, more than the fear of the constant danger in here or the vigilant champions out there, Fintwyna was what made him want to stay.
Short. Weird. Cute as a button. And she liked him. He hoped she wouldn’t freak out too badly when he let her know what Ithilya had told him yesterday. Fintwyna was a member of Hirazain’s faction, allied to Ithilya’s; they were permitted to enter each other’s domains without being attacked, and they’d attend classes together once he got his act together. It would get awkward quickly if she decided she hated him after all.
“Where’s Cull at?” she asked, glancing around at the cluttered table and empty pallet-beds as she stepped into the room.
“I – ah – I think he’s in the Night Garden?”
The nightmarish botanical chamber contained a number of extremely vicious and extremely fragile species, apparently, and it was kept in absolute darkness except for those brief times when the experts would allow a little spell-light into the place. The neophytes had to pick up a pair of goggles from the basket when they entered, glasses that would allow them to see what they were doing. The druidry lessons were hard and often more than a bit disgusting; Aramas didn’t envy Cull this week’s class-rota, which took his friend up to the Garden four days in a row.
He wouldn’t mention the fact he thought they were disgusting around Fin, though.
“Night Garden… cool,” she said evenly. “So, what’re you up to?”
“I was…” Staring out the window, daydreaming. “I was reading –“ He seized on the heavy tome sitting half-open on the desk, placed his hand on it for reassurance. He could only understand one in five of the paragraphs, really, and decided to say something honest. “Wizardry’s really hard, isn’t it?”
“It is when you’re reading in the dark,” she said, eyeing the hastily-drawn curtain.
“Oh, I’ve got good eyes – er – might even give the goggles a miss, next time I’m in –“
“You were looking at them down there?” Fin moved to the window, reached out her hand to twitch the curtains open an inch, then let them swing shut again.
“… Yeah,” Aramas gulped. “Thinkin’, you know. They’re like… like ants.”
“No they’re not,” she answered at once. “Ants – do you know much of them?”
He stared at her, shook his head blankly.
“Ants are far superior to humans. They live as one, a society where everyone knows their place, does their best. If they invade another queendom,” she caught his questioning expression and smiled, “yes, they live under the rule of their queens… If they sack another colony, they take the eggs of the defeated in tribute and raise them as their own. Don’t look at me like that – they do! And did you know,” she lowered her voice, “they don’t have ears? They feel everything around them, their touch…” Fin raised her hand, twitched her fingers, and when she continued it was with a heavy breathiness, a tone of wonder: “Their touch tells them everything they need to know…”
He looked at her hand, noticed the mud under her closely-chewed nails, but before he could bring himself to speak, before he could find words worth saying, she withdrew the hand and looked away, huffing. He moved his gaze back to find hers, the dark eyes swimming in the centre of her round, olive-skinned face, but she was distracted already.
“Nothing on my spiders, though,” she murmured, spreading her hand on the page near his, peering at the lettering.
“You, uh, any good at this stuff?” he croaked, finally managing to speak. He tapped the page, its arcane, cursive script unreadable from his angle. “I don’t have any idea how the Principle of Efficacious Drawing is supposed to, what’s it called? interact – I don’t know how it’s supposed to interact with the Third Law of… of…”
“Harmonic Ideals?”
“Locus, is that how you say it?”
“Well, how were you pronouncing it?”
“Harmonique iddeals?”
He loved making her laugh. She sort of snorted, her mouth making a weird ‘v’-shape, and every time she made the face and accompanying sound he subconsciously ticked off another little win on his score-card.
Tick.
She even placed her hand on his arm. “Oh, Ari. You’ve got a long way to go. This is just the Initiate’s Handbook… The Third Law simply states that unequal reactions will result in catastrophe of… Don’t!” She stammered, almost laughing as he raised his eyebrow. “Don’t! I remember this… A catastrophe of a severity proportional to the original inequality. If you don’t use the Principle in your spell-construct you’ll draw too great a quantity of energy, and when your spell expends you’ll blow yourself up.” She noticed his eyes widen and smirked. “Oh yes – and, just so you know, it’s efficacious, not effy-cacky-ous.”
“What? I’ve only seen mosta these words written down before…” And even that is something of an exaggeration, isn’t it, Ari? “Anyway, I won’t need it soon, like you. Not all of us were born with the brains, Fin – but, the blood? I got that too.”
“Everyone’s got it,” she said, frowning.
“You know what I mean…”
She nodded by blinking.
Part of him thought it was only because she knew he was going to be like her one day, an archmage, that she was hanging around with him. Gods knew, there were few enough of them in the Candles in comparison to the mages – but there were still perhaps half a dozen their age she could’ve hung around with instead of him. Proper archmages, their power already manifested, adherents of other factions in the alliance. The fact she kept coming here; that had to mean she liked him, didn’t it?
“Ithilya found out what kind I’m gonna be, too,” he said, knowing this information was new to her – and he saw her eyes light up.
“Let me guess – not a druid, or you’d have told me already… Not a diviner, obviously…” She moved her lower lip to the left and chewed on it. “You’re studying wizardry, but that’s just because of the test…?” She regarded him for a moment longer then relented, clapping her hands in frustration. “Never mind – tell me!”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Ari! Oh…”
Seeing that she was in the process of realising, he blurted it out: “Sorcerer.”
He winced in anticipation. She had to find out sooner or later, right?
“Okay,” she said, “okay…” Then she fixed her smile. “It’s okay, really!”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, you dunce.”
“You aren’t going to let Wendy in here when I’m asleep, are you?”
“Don’t give me ideas, sorcerer.” She was still smiling good-naturedly, and he started to relax, until –
“You really wouldn’t, would you, Fin?” He’d already had one very vivid nightmare about Wendy, her favourite tarantula, which she kept the size of your average dog most of the time. She’d actually brought it to visit him once, said it liked him…
“Of course not, Ari!”
She grinned wickedly, then turned as though to leave; he went to chase her towards the door –
But she was only withdrawing to tease him. She kept facing him. Her lips glistened.
What might’ve happened as they entered the narrow space, confined between the shelving either side of the doorway, he never got to find out. The door swung in, narrowly missing Fin as she backed up, and Cull entered, his eyes wide, chest rising and falling rapidly. He’d run here.
“Guys! Have you heard?”
Aramas shook his head.
“What is it, neophyte?” the arch-druid asked.
“Meeting!” he blurted. “The Hall of Embrace… I think we’re doing somethin’!”
Aramas watched as Fin’s grin tensed into a grim smile.
“About time.”
* * *
Aramas looked around as everyone filtered into the circular, rune-covered room, and found their places with their fellows. There were thirteen different factions in the Thirteen Candles, by ancient agreement, each with its own leaders – though many blended into the other factions that held similar viewpoints, and lots of the heretics seemed to move at will between the groups, declaring loyalty to this or that master, switching rooms at the drop of a hat… Broadly, there seemed to be three major alliances.
Housed in the northerly towers were the mages who believed the heretics should work alongside the champions, constantly seeking for a way to bridge the gap, come to terms amidst the piles of corpses. Within that group there was a minority who hated the fact all the others used massacre as a means to an end, who didn’t want to bring the champions into the fold but rather sought to emulate them in their arguments; and amongst that minority there were a few who sought to stop the others from killing at every opportunity.
These few were often the targets of censure and even violence, their numbers kept low by predation and sniping.
In the southerly towers were housed the mages who understood the truth, who accepted the inevitability of fate, and made the true sacrifice by annihilating their fellow Mundians. It wasn’t done with glee, it seemed, but with a perfunctory prayer whispered under the breath; yet it was carried out without qualm. Every death was one less soul fed to the harbingers of apocalypse. And there were only a few months left till it began. The ‘crowning year’ would be upon them soon.
Then finally, in the central towers you would find the moderates, the fence-squatters, the weak. They had the greater numbers, the greater sway, but apparently their leaders always fell in line when Ithilya, Hirazain and Vardae gathered to put their collective foot down.
As was happening here tonight.
Given all the tumult and disorder amongst the heretics, within their first week in the Candles Aramas and Cullimo had already seen three different rallies taking place in the Hall of Embrace, the one space where spells of all kinds were disallowed by centuries-old glyphs. Three rallies which (despite the magic prohibition) still turned vicious, spellbound knives and even swords being drawn, albeit less-deadly with their ensorcellments dampened. No one had been killed, thanks to the healers, but this didn’t change the fact that since Aramas arrived there’d been almost a dozen cold-blooded murders reported across the towers. And this probably didn’t account for the true figure, according to Ithilya.
Life was cheap, when you knew it was going to end. When you really knew it. Aramas found it hard to care about death – in fact, he fancied that he now found it exciting. At meal-times, the dinner-hall would be divided into three, but you wouldn’t know until you arrived which group would be sitting at which tables; if you were one of the first to arrive, you had to hope your fellows gathered around you or you’d swiftly find yourself having to hurry across the room with your bowl of stew and chunk of bread. Sometimes fights started when a table found itself cut off from its supporters. Once that had happened to Vardae; she’d been sitting at a table with just two of her colleagues, with the uncommitted scum around her staring at her, trying to intimidate her, force her to shift away from them – but none dared approach her directly, and, having lost one of the tables that was supposed to be theirs, some of their members were forced to eat standing.
Vardae had something of a reputation, it seemed, even though by all accounts she was a relative newcomer – she’d climbed the ranks quickly, seizing the master’s position just a couple of years back. For now, though, Aramas was a neophyte without reputation or rank, and even when he gained his power this would only accelerate his rise through the upper tiers – he’d still have to pass the tests to reach the journeyman stage… Until then he would continue to get kitchen assignment, toilet assignment, even with arch-sorcery at his fingertips.
In here, therefore, he was just one of the crowd of initiates, standing on the upper levels around the edge of the Hall of Embrace. Only journeymen, adepts and masters were permitted onto the floor during a meeting, and only adepts and masters could actually speak.
The Hall of Embrace was a nexus-point, located in what he suspected was the central stem of the Candles, given the chamber’s size. It went unused except for during events such as this. There were probably close to a thousand people in the place, and there was likely room for a few more of the late-arrivals.
Vardae was making her report, quietly and calmly, and all were silent to hear her words. Her blonde curls were tied back in a bob that bounced around as she paced.
“As many of you will be aware – as some of you will not be aware – we are constantly seeking those avenues by which we can perform a major strike without walking into a trap before we can achieve our goals. I have one such almost-unforeseen opportunity, tomorrow night. We’ll assault the Sunset Keep in Treetown, and even on the low end of our estimates we’ll achieve an acceptable risk-reward ratio. Hit and run – use your mobility to your advantage, and don’t get taken down. We’ll need you in Illost, trust me. In addition, I’ll require two distractions – one for Winterprince in Firenight Square, and one for Mountainslide and Glancefall in Openway. The distractions carry higher liability, and are open to archmages only.” The diviner looked around the hall. “I am amenable to volunteers, but you should know that I would be willing to issue ultimatums, were I to find the necessity.”
People started shouting. Arms were raised, dozens of them. It seemed there would be no need for ultimatums.
While a good quarter or third of the room was in uproar, Vardae went about her business. The archmages were selected first, and Aramas watched in fascination as two older adepts were chosen, siblings in matching rope-belted robes – arch-sorcerers from Ithilya’s faction, his own faction. Liebor and Ibaran, if he remembered correctly. Then there was a journeyman from Vardae’s own cohort, and a journeyman – no, two journeymen – from Hirazain’s section of the floor…
His stomach dropped when he saw that one of them was Fintwyna.
’Hit and run,’ he reminded himself. ’Don’t get killed.’ She’ll be fine.
A whole host of lesser mages, journeymen and adepts from six or seven different factions, rounded out the group: almost three dozen, all told.
“Fin’s down there!” Cull murmured, prodding him in the arm.
“I know!” he snapped back, half-whisper, half-growl.
“Hold!” Tilasto was on his feet, lifting a hand in a plea for silence. “Hold!”
Aramas glared across at the ‘master’. Tilasto’s faction occupied the Candles’ second tower – or twelfth, depending on your perspective. One of the northernmost towers. They were preoccupied with finding loopholes, ways they could persuade champions or magisters to their point of view.
Even after just a couple of weeks in the place, Aramas could barely stand him. He was tall and stern-looking, but had the attitude of a coddled house-cat, declawed, left with only hissing and spitting to get himself noticed.
Gradually Tilasto the house-cat was afforded his opportunity to speak, and he slowly lowered his hand as he raised his voice.
“This will not do! We are to ratify any motion for massacre. They are not our enemies, Vardae. Or do you forget, our efforts are to save them, save the world from this unspeakable, irreversible catacl-”
“Do sit down, my good master,” Ithilya raised her voice, and her words were met by a clamour of approval that seemed to come from over half of the room. She was probably forty-five, and her thin brown hair had grey in it, but here in the Hall her eyes looked bright and young and vital. “We bring this message to the Hall of Embrace, that you might see sense, that we might share with our brethren. We do not require your permit to act.”
“But we must ratify –“
“Why, Tilasto?” Vardae cut him off a second time. “We have been here before. Vote amongst yourselves if it assuages your consciences. We’ve never agreed to be held by your decisions.”
Long-haired, long-bearded Hirazain cried out: “Nor could such agreement bind us when later we decided otherwise!”
Vardae nodded approvingly.
“Then we will oppose you, sabotage the mission!” Ribara wailed, wringing her hands. Ribara currently led the faction of the few, the faction of the passive sheep who slipped through the net into the Thirteen Candles.
Despite reviling her and everything she stood for, Aramas couldn’t help but admire her courage. Taking that position… It couldn’t come with a very high life expectancy.
As was immediately made plain.
“Sabotage us?” Vardae snarled. “Then I will introduce you to my dagger once we leave the Hall, won’t I? Let’s see if I get the impression there’s any truth to your claim once I’ve got my magic back –“
“Ladies – gentleman,” intoned smooth-voiced Jacel. He was the leader of the most-moderate moderates, rubbing his hand across the glistening surface of his bald sweaty scalp. “Please, let us be reasonable. Tilasto wishes to vote to ratify your proposition, Vardae. If the vote passes, you can be about your business. If the vote fails and you continue to press your case, then we can either continue our discussion or a formal complaint can be –“
Vardae stopped pacing right in front of Tilasto’s faction and threw up her hands. “Very well – look about you! Put it to the vote. I tire of your nonsense. Who is with me?”
She turned to face her supporters –
A blade, its fluorescent tint dulled to the point it looked like a mere painted knife, flashed at Vardae’s back –
“Look! – out…” someone started to shriek – but it was over before they finished the sound.
Even here with thousands of power-dampening runes all over the walls and floor and ceiling – even here she seemed to blur, spinning, taking the weapon-hand plunging down between her shoulder-blades into her grip instead of her unprotected spine. Her reaction-time wasn’t a tenth what it might’ve been outside the range of the glyphs but, still, she was ten times her attacker’s speed and at least double his strength.
When she caught his wrist and forced the forearm back against the elbow, the wrong way, the limb snapped cleanly in two – he produced an agonised gasp that fled from him as she kicked him in the chest, sending him flying back into his fellows.
Like a dancer, the thirty-ish seeress left her leg out in the air, displaying effortless flexibility, balance – then only slowly retracted her raised knee, placed her foot back on the floor.
“Hold!” she barked at her followers who started to surge forwards, thrusting out a hand in their direction before turning her attention back upon her enemies.
“Anyone else?” she demanded in that angry, unscared voice, standing right in front of them.
Hundreds of eyes stared out of the crowd at her – not in challenge. Staring in fear. The man she’d kicked was moaning and those near him looked the most afraid.
For those who’d found the reality of doom, the truth of the end of the world, they weren’t half a bunch of cowards.
Slowly, those staring eyes lowered, closed – Aramas saw Tilasto, pale and spent, ducking his head in defeat.
“So, Vardae agrees to a vote,” Jacel said, smiling. “Let us continue!”
The injured mage was taken out for healing as the stones were brought in – the adepts and masters cast their votes, and, as expected, it went in favour of slaughter.
The three masters worth listening to laid out their plans, and, despite their commitment to caution, Aramas had to hold his breath.
They’re sending Fin up against Winterprince…
Aramas knew of the champion, of course. He was one of the city’s most-powerful wizards, if not the most – everyone spoke as though Shadowcloud was the strongest, but Mountainslide had once beaten something in an Incursion that Shadowcloud couldn’t handle, apparently, and then on the next Incursion, Winterprince had fought two at once and came out the other side alive, both their heads on his swords… Aramas had tended to be one of those who thought comparing the power-levels of different champions was a fool’s game, until he’d arrived here, lived in the presence of archmagery… Suggesting an arch-diviner like Vardae was on an even footing with the other arch-diviners he’d met, that was the fool’s game…
Was Fin in their league? Could she stand up to someone like Winterprince?
Cull elbowed him again as Ithilya took the floor, and he snapped out of his daydream to listen. She pushed back her hood fully, revealing the deceptively-older face – she was perhaps in her late-forties, Ari decided, but it was hard to tell for sure because of her overall attractiveness; like Vardae she’d retained the willowy figure of her youth; where the diviner had curls Ithilya kept her pale hair long and straight, girlish in fashion.
The girlish sensibilities did not extend to her tone. When she spoke her voice was not quiet and calm as Vardae’s had been – it throbbed, its fervency spilling out over the crowd.
“This is the dark side of the soul, the price we pay Locus for our forbidden lore. We step into the darkness, that we might see clearly; for one is blinded only when one stands in the bright place. We understand the darkness, its place in our hearts. Powers forgotten by men, hated and reviled – we call upon ye, to steel our spines, equip us with those terrible weapons of the mind: ardour and zeal!”
She nodded to Tilasto, acknowledging him even in his defeat. “Let us not fall into apathy. Evil is not our purpose, only a means to an end! For what is death? Whence came the thought that ending is evil? Ending is the price we pay, for continuation. Change. Rebirth endless…
“Vaylech, King of Insects!” Ithilya raised her hands and face to the ceiling, lifted her voice yet louder. “Bless our sacrifices with your pestilence! Yane, Blade-Lord! Guide our hands in the slaughter to come! Grandfather Vaahn, Lord of Tyranny! Accept this our offering; let no restoration come from the hand of druid or divine to spurn our tributes upon thy altar! Drive Mother-Chaos from our dreams; let this city be!”
She lowered her hands, visibly shaking, and she looked over at the volunteers for the mission, the distractions.
When she concluded she sounded spent, drained:
“In the names of Belestae and Yune, go forth, bring our hopes into being. And should ye fall into the arms of our Grandfather, do so in the sure and certain knowledge: better a thousand such deaths, than one at the hands of the white dragon’s demons. Better to die and pass on, than have your soul raked apart, as will be the fate of every archmage if we fail.”
Word was, she’d once been a priestess before becoming enlightened to the truth. Everyone thought – everyone knew – that she was out of her mind. But everyone knew she was right, in every word.
“Very good,” Vardae spoke into the silence, a little dismissively, Aramas thought. “Tomorrow, then. You have tonight to prepare. Those of you on assignment, report here at three tomorrow afternoon.”
The arch-diviner had one last look around the room, then turned on her heel and used one of the two exits, her sycophants falling into line behind her instantly.
In the chaos of the rush to vacate the chamber, the place that made all their weapons and protections useless, Aramas told Cull he’d catch him later and pushed his way through the crushing bodies. He managed to catch up to Fintwyna in the doorway.
“Fin!” he gasped. “Fin!”
She looked around at him and, with a wary glance at the strangers teeming about them, she pulled herself towards him.
At first it didn’t look like she was going to make it, but druid-strength won out as the magic worked its way back into her muscles – or whatever it was that actually happened when an archmage left a place like the Hall of Embrace. They managed to find a spot beside the wall where the waves of people didn’t push against them so badly, and she shielded him with her body.
“Ari, isn’t it glorious?” she yelled over the background hubbub.
“Is – it is…” he replied. “Do you want to come over – I mean, you only just visited, and I thought we could –“
“What?” she cried.
“Do you – want to – come over?”
“Tomorrow night, once I’m back!” She looked so overjoyed she was going to burst, incredible durability or no. “I have to go work on my spiders – I’ll tell you everything – I’ll knock on late, I promise! They might make me a Hierarch, haha!”
She snorted laughter and it infected him. He smiled, in spite of everything.
Then the crowd pulled them apart.
He lingered beside the wall until the crowds were almost gone, then slipped in with a group of Hirazain’s followers, heading back to his room, never suspecting just how hard it would be to wait that long to see her again.
* * *
24th Orovost, 998 NE
A gentle knock on the door: tap-tap.
Cull chuckled at him from his pallet, lowering the book that was standing up on his chest. Aramas was sitting there beside the desk, waiting to open the door, but he couldn’t – she usually said his name, but he always let her enter informally.
“C-come in!” he said, trying to keep his voice from juddering.
Cull chuckled again.
Tap-tap.
He stood up, suddenly feeling nervous.
“What…”
He crossed the room and reached for the handle – the instant he had the door open, a flurry of spiny legs vaguely the size of a dog came rolling into the room.
“Holy Hells!” he shrieked as Wendy ran up his body – he wanted to hit her, flail about in chaotic violence, but Fin would never stand for that – he screwed his eyes shut and held his breath – the weight of the gigantic abdomen, the touch of the huge, hairy legs –
“Fin! Fin!” he screamed.
It scuttled up onto his chest, wrapping its feet around him.
“Fiiiiiiiin!”
“Ari…”
He was breathing heavily, meaning that Wendy moved palpably with every rapid intake of air, only making his skin crawl more and more every moment that passed; he felt like his body was a seething fluid, sloshing from one side of the room to the other.
“Ari!”
He opened his eyes a crack. Cull had sat upright and was as white as a sheet – but why? Cull didn’t even mind the spider, apparently…
“Ari, could she…?”
“Oh,” Aramas’s mouth said. “Oh.”
He understood.
A moment later, he felt his muscles tighten as the realisation hit his body. His body was his own again and suddenly Wendy didn’t matter anymore.
He sagged, stumbling back and sitting down in the chair, helping him bear the encumbrance of the giant spider hugging him.
“She’s – she’s gone, Wendy?” His voice sounded distant, even to his own ears. “Fintwyna… she’s dead?”
“I’ll, er, get someone,” Cull said, rising to his feet, eyes on the spider.
“No,” Aramas said. “No, it’s alright. It’s okay.”
He managed to open his eyes properly, look down at Wendy.
She might’ve been staring back at him, the two rows of four eyes more like unreadable marbles than anything living. She was so still, he’d have thought she’d died too if it weren’t for the glistening wetness of those eyes and the mandibles beneath them.
“Don’t worry, Wendy. It’s okay. You can stay with us. Stay with me, and we’ll get them back. They’ve all got to die. We’ve all got to die.” He repeated the platitudes as he’d been taught them, then flicked his gaze over at Cull. “And now we know who gets to die first – Winterprince.”
* * *
25th Orovost, 998 NE
‘In relation to the Third Law of Harmonic Ideals, explain an approach one might use in order to avoid annihilating oneself when in danger of tapping surplus energy into one’s construct.’
Principle of Effi-cacious Drawing, he thought, and scribbled his answer on the page. See, I still need you, Fin.
He glanced up from his desk. Ithilya was there at the front of the chamber, scrawling something in chalk on the blackboard, and the white radiance of the globes illuminated everything in the blue-walled, tile-floored classroom. Every scratch of the students’ ensorcelled pens, every scrape of the arch-wizard’s chalk was rendered in perfect clarity. Yet he heard nothing, saw nothing.
For five seconds he stared into space – stared at Fin’s face – imagined her death for the thousandth time…
Why won’t my power come?
Then he loosed the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding and returned his eyes to the question sheet.
When the two hours were over, Ithilya rang the small bell that sat upon her desk. Yawns rippled across the room – it was nine o’ clock, and most of them had been hard at work revising around their chores all day.
“Very good, class. You will leave your answers here,” she indicated the corner of her table. “Success will be rewarded with greater challenges. Failure will be tolerated – only to a point. I shall see each of you with your results.” And then she said the words that were their dismissal: “Praise be to Locus.”
“Praise be to Locus,” they echoed, gathering their things and getting to their feet.
It didn’t take her two hours to arrive at Aramas’s room.
“You have both passed, almost with distinction,” she said after Cull opened the door for her and invited her in. “I am impressed, I must admit. I had thought you might be amongst those I… would need to tolerate.” The older woman offered a rare smile, the lines around her mouth crinkling. “In my discipline, there are only two more stages before you might begin journeyman preparation.”
“Thanks, Ithilya,” Cull said, smiling.
Aramas just nodded his gratitude, doing his best to match his friend’s expression, but his eyes were on the floor at the archmage’s feet.
“You have taken in Fintwyna’s pet,” Ithilya observed, glancing at Wendy beside Aramas’s cot. “None of the other druids wished to mind her?”
‘Mind’ her… Like Fin’s ever coming back…
“She… she doesn’t move much,” Aramas offered by way of explanation.
“She’s just delightful,” Cull grated out.
Ithilya merely shrugged. “I have heard from Vardae.”
“From… Vardae?” Cull asked heavily.
Clearly the memory of the arch-diviner pointing at him and saying ‘Kill that one’ was sticking with him.
“With regard to the druid’s defeat.”
Aramas looked up at last.
“What – what happened?” He heard the iciness, the demand in his own tone and couldn’t hold it back. “And who was it? Who killed her?”
“It was indiscernible; there was divination interference, somehow, although no recognised diviners of note were on the scene. Winterprince was there of course, and a number of magisters, when it ended. For the most part, however, it was surely the defeater of the Cannibal Six, the new champion Feychilde, with whom Fintwyna contended. About that there can be no disagreement, no variation in the scrying.”
Feychilde.
More than the mystery of this place, more than the fear of the constant danger in here or the vigilant champions out there, Fintwyna was what made him want to stay.
Now she was gone, and this was where he had met her. Before, there might’ve been a chance he’d have left – if she’d gone, he might’ve followed her. But now there was nowhere else to see her, no place for her ghost but the rooms in which he already spent his days.
He would come into his inheritance. He would see her, speak with her again, one way or another.
“She will be avenged upon Feychilde’s corpse,” he choked, shuddering.
“Who is Feychilde?” Cull said, looking from Ithilya to Aramas.
Aramas just shrugged. He didn’t care; it wasn’t like it mattered. This Feychilde would kill him, or he would kill Feychilde. Either way, the survivor wouldn’t have long to live before the days of doom were upon them.
“An arch-sorcerer, of Sticktown –“
Aramas started to laugh. “An arch-sorcerer! This just keeps gettin’ better.”
Cull raised his eyebrows. “You can’t fight an arch-sorcerer –“
“Not yet, he cannot,” Ithilya cut in. “And still, I would have him ready for the moment the weight of his fate comes upon him.” She surveyed the both of them, hands on her hips. “You each show the promise of accomplishment in days to come. I shall have Liebor and Ibaran come instruct you, Aramas; and you, Cullimo, may listen and glean much you would not otherwise – your rota permitting.”
Ithilya left them, but before she closed the door Aramas caught the sound of her murmuring, “Goodnight, Wendy,” and he found himself smiling as he slipped into sleep a few minutes later.
He fell straight-away into a deep dream, and for once there were no dragons the size of city-blocks; just the spiders and their reborn mistress, and Ithilya, his new mother. The three of them were together, alone in a black forest under darkness.
No, not quite alone – he laid the body of his enemy on the ground, a black-robed, black-masked champion, ready to be interred in the dirt.
Fin clung to him and he to her – she praised him, thanked him, and whispered that he had not finished.
The earth hungered yet he denied the earth its hunger, and raised his fingers, making the champion’s lifeless flesh dance – then Cull was there, and Cull was laughing, pointing at the corpse and laughing.
When the two adepts arrived the following afternoon to offer him instruction in the finer points of sorcery, they took one look at Aramas’s face before turning to each other and nodding in approval.
* * *
29th Orovost, 998 NE
Liebor chuckled. “It was all good. Vardae sent us, so the champions never even knew we were there with our invisibility potions. I completely saved Shallowlie’s ass.”
He was sitting on Aramas and Cull’s table, swinging his lanky legs – he was probably in his early twenties, while his sister, only slightly shorter than him, was probably five years his elder. Sibling archmages were a true rarity.
Ibaran didn’t look too pleased at her brother’s words; she was leaning back against the desk beside him, and she turned and glowered at him. The two of them were like night and day.
“What? It’s not like I like her.” Liebor rolled his eyes at her. “If I’d let her die, Roseoak woulda been worse.”
“And now Mal Tagar will have another soul to devour upon his return,” she said bitterly.
“Nah – Vardae said they would’ve got more than just Smouldervein, ya know? Anyway, I’ll kill her, someday.” Liebor waved a hand disdainfully. “Hey, Ari, look what I managed to find.”
Aramas sat forwards on his bedding, and Cull, on his own pallet, almost imperceptibly shrank back. They pair of them had been in enchantment-class, but the adept in charge let them both go early when Aramas told her the arch-sorcerers were visiting again on Ithilya’s orders. As much as Cull protested that he enjoyed these little get-togethers, Aramas could tell his friend was more frightened by demons than he was.
Liebor gestured. A ring of blood-red fire birthed a clot of darkness, vaguely bird-shaped. A crimson cloud in perfect miniature detail formed behind it as it hovered in the air before its master.
“Folkababil?” Aramas asked, confused.
Folkababil, the blood-birds, were one of the few types of demons Fin had seemed interested in.
“Oh no!” Liebor chortled. “Far more potent than those little scavengers. This is a pedheliorph. Rare as all hell.” He grinned happily. “If you didn’t like me, you wouldn’t even be able to look at me while this was out. It’s even more-discerning than a shield – you’d see little bits of lightning in the cloud behind it, and then you’d start drooling, watching it like a glyphstone.”
Ibaran was staring at the pedheliorph in fascination. Liebor glanced at his sister worriedly – the moment he noticed her, she clapped him around the back of the head.
“Ow!”
“More discerning, and less,” she corrected him. “It doesn’t sense ill-will, it senses general attitude. It won’t stop someone who loves you from attacking you.”
“Aw, you love me…”
“I love you so much, if you keep this up, the day you die I’ll bring your corpse back to do my laundry – eternally. We are supposed to be adepts, Liebor. Behave appropriately in front of the neophytes.”
Liebor sighed, dismissing the pedheliorph. “Where were we at?” he said grudgingly.
Ibaran straightened up. “Look, Aramas, the truth of it is that the average archmage cannot perform their role to their utmost, cannot perceive all the uses to which their abilities might be put. If you pay attention to the wrong people, the wrong principles, you’ll go astray, because that’s what they did – they paid attention to the wrong people. But, if you utilise your own scrutiny, perform your own investigations into the extent of your power, you will within days already exceed the abilities of those who learned their craft by rote over years. Pay no heed to ancient texts, or even us, when we contradict what you yourself discover. You’ll often sense that a sorcerer knows less than you,” she looked at her brother archly, “and you must be ready to dispense with their advice the moment it reaches your ears. But if you sense that a sorcerer knows something you do not, then treat them with respect… at least until you’ve drained them of their lore.”
Liebor was nodding, accepting her jest without response. “And lore isn’t always true,” he said. “I mean, the truth gets repeated, distorted, over time. Popular opinion is a load of bunk, nine times out of ten. A book can’t make you a good arch-sorcerer, especially one that tells you it can.”
“What we are saying,” Ibaran cut in, “is that only putting theory into practice yields self-transformation. You must experience sorcery in order for you to improve at it.”
“Yeah, but a load of good that’s gonna do him for now.” Liebor put his feet down and stumbled as he turned to face his sister –
His foot crunched on something.
Looking down, Aramas saw Wendy beneath the desk, beneath the archmage’s boot.
Wendy didn’t react as a full quarter of her body was snapped, crumbled – just sat there.
Dead.
It was seeing it – seeing her –
He heard of the huge spider-legs that the Magisterium had been forced to destroy after Fin’s attack on Firenight Square. The ones bigger than any of the others.
The ones that had been hers. Before Feychilde mutilated her.
Now he saw it replayed in miniature before him, the broken form of the giant spider, serene in its acceptance of its end.
She is gone.
The tension that had boiled within him since that day after the meeting in the Hall of Embrace, when the crowd had torn them apart and he’d waited, waited for her – and Wendy, Wendy had waited too – all of that tension was released in a flood, a wave of steam venting through his flesh, coursing through his face and his eyes and his hands and every pore of his skin –
“Ah, man, I’m sorry…” Liebor started to apologise.
Wendy, five-legged and missing a large portion of her meat, scuttled over towards Aramas.
“Ari!” Cull shrieked, half-terror, half-shock, half-elation.
Aramas looked blankly from the reanimated, undead giant spider up to the pair of arch-sorcerers looming behind her. “But – what –“
I – I did it?
“This is an unfortunate turn of events,” Ibaran commented, folding her thin arms across her flat chest. “Unless I am much mistaken – which, if you have been listening, is entirely possible – this will make it surpassingly-difficult to properly train your perceptions now.”
“Aw, you’re done for mate!” Liebor chuckled again.
Ari looked blankly between them.
Did I just screw up?
“There is a spectrum of life, of course,” Ibaran said smoothly, “and you, my young friend, have just identified with the animals. Your affinity will serve you in good stead when animating them or working their spirits. It ought not inhibit your ability to raise other entities from the dead, of course, even sense them – but your ability to refine these senses, hone them? I am unsure now.”
“You – you mean, you two couldn’t sense she was dead?” Cull piped up.
The siblings exchanged a glance, then both shook their heads.
Aramas sighed. He’d expected it to go differently to this. More of a fanfare. Less of a let-down.
I’m an arch-sorcerer.
He reached out a hand to Wendy and she contritely came towards him, flopping all over the place.
“Let’s get you fixed, girl,” he murmured.
“What was that?” Cull asked in an awed voice.
“What?” Aramas returned, frowning in confusion.
“What you just –“
“He speaks the Netheric tongue,” Ibaran explained. “It will come naturally to him, and he won’t understand the difference at first.”
“You mean, I just…”
“You’re one of us now,” Liebor said in a tone of congratulation. “Welcome to the club, eh?”
“Welcome to being part of the problem,” Ibaran muttered.
“Well… well done, Ari,” Cull said haltingly.
Aramas looked from the undead arachnid to his best friend’s face.
He’s jealous, he realised.
“We’re gonna do it together,” he promised Cull, “like always.”
Cull nodded sombrely, then put a small smile on his lips after a moment’s struggle.
“I can help show you how to put her back together, if you like.” Liebor’s smile was genuine. “We might need to find some more giant spider parts, though…”
Aramas nodded to him and looked back to Wendy. “And then, Ithilya willing, we’ll go get your mummy’s ghost.”
“Oh dear gods no.” Ibaran sounded offended all of a sudden.
“What?” he demanded, staring up at her. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, her soul must pass on – surely, you understand this, neophyte? To reanimate a corpse is one thing, but to capture the true essence, the intelligence… That is blasphemy. Something best saved for your enemies, certainly.”
“He’s not even at that stage, yet, sis,” Liebor said in a conciliatory manner.
“I don’t get…” Aramas hadn’t really been thinking it through properly. “You mean she… I could stop her going to Celestium –“
“Whither the soul is bound is not for those in the Mist to tell,” Ibaran cut him off. “Tome of Understanding, chapter one, verse one-oh-one.”
“Oooh-ooh, yes.” Liebor adopted a mockingly-serious expression and a faux-highborn accent as he quoted: “’In the land of the blind… the one-eyed man… is the king’s fool!’”
“You’ve been reading the compilation again.” Ibaran chided him. “That’s actually from Brother To Nothingness…”
Aramas ignored them as they continued their verbal sparring-match, deep in thought. If it meant he’d be stopping her from moving on, he wouldn’t be able do it – he knew that much. With a sad smile on his face, he put Fintwyna’s ghost firmly from his mind.
Suddenly the door banged open, making everyone jump, and Vardae was there, her arms held casually at her sides. Ithilya was behind her.
Aramas sensed rather than heard as Cull backed away some more towards the corner of his bed.
“See, Vardae?” Ithilya asked.
“I told you, I saw it already,” the seeress replied, scowling somewhat. “So, you’re one of us now, boy.”
“I was just saying that,” Liebor cut in.
She turned the scowl on him, and the adept-sorcerer sealed his lips, his smile fading.
“It’s good timing,” Vardae continued, eyes moving back to Aramas’s face. “I’ve just found out exactly when you’ll get to go up against your bitter enemies. Feychilde, Winterprince… There’ll be opportunity for you to get some live action, some real training beforehand – I assume you’re up for it.”
It wasn’t a question. It didn’t need to be. She was a diviner, one of the highest calibre. She already knew the answer.
He stood up, and clenched his fists. He blinked as glowing blue lines started forming in the air around his hands.
His eyes met Vardae’s again, and the pallet he was standing on gave him a couple more inches in height. Ranks be damned – this time when he spoke, for the first time he felt he spoke almost as her equal.
“When?”
Her thin lips were pulled down, an expression which on any other face would be one of displeasure, distaste; but this was her smirk, he knew.
“A month today. It’ll be an intense spot of combat. We’re going in force.”
“Consider us volunteers,” Ibaran said quietly. Her brother was nodding alongside her.
“I too will put myself forward to attend,” Ithilya said. “It has been almost a year since I last engaged with enemies worth fighting, and Mountainslide mistook Oferine for me when they duelled. If, as you say, we must go in force, I should show them my true capabilities. Mountainslide shall not make the same mistake again.”
The smirk on Vardae’s face only deepened in its intensity, the demented leer becoming terrible to behold. She turned to her fellow master.
“Well, well. You’d truly join them?”
Ithilya just smiled distantly in response.
“In that case, who knows?” Vardae spread her hands. “I may even join you myself – see a few old faces.”
“What…” Cull’s voice was raised timidly from the corner of the room in which he was still huddled, the only one of them in the room that was not standing now. “What about me?”
“We always need some neophytes,” the seeress said contemptuously, not even looking at him.
But Aramas stepped off his mattress, then sat down beside his friend; he turned to look up at the four archmages in the room.
‘Other’ four, his mind corrected him gloatingly.
“No,” he said. “Me and Cull – we go together.”
Leave a Reply