JET 8.1: HAUNTED
“It is those who walk ever in the light who have my pity. They never know fear. They never know horror. And yet they look to the side, into the deep blackness that blankets their safe road – and they hear us wandering here, our footfalls echoing back across the worlds. They do not know for what they long – they cannot – and yet they long for it all the same.”
– from ‘The Book of Kultemeren’, 2:3-7
I craned my head back at first, watching, waiting, until the tiny speck of torchlight disappeared far above me, swallowed up by the incomprehensible distance that now loomed between me and the world. The walls of the wide, vertical tunnel whipped past me as I fell, featureless and dark. Then, when the void was complete, a jet-black smoothness, I closed my eyes and sighed.
Goodbye, everyone. You never let me say goodbye. I’ll never forgive a single one of you for that. Irimar. Borasir. Emrelet. When I die down here, my ghost is coming to haunt you.
Was that how I’d end up trapped on Nethernum? Imprisoned by my hatreds, forced into a shape of bitterness and spite? Or would I be able to let go? Would I be capable of transcending the next plane, stepping from the shadowland into the otherworld without leaving behind an imprint, a smear of soul-stuff on the nethernal winds?
No. Not if I went when I was feeling like this. I’d be a spirit of anger forever.
I opened my eyes again, looking down. My future was ascending to meet me. There was colour down there – red.
Terror hit me then, the enchantments insufficient to counter the brain-tearing horror of the reality – I was about to enter Magicrux Zyger, and it was red, blood-red like a hell-portal, like the eyes of a demon – and I seemed only to fall faster, faster and –
The waywatchers had been right. Their flight-spell spent itself, almost stopping me, and as I descended through the roof of the cavern and the spell fully dissipated, I fell into waist-high water, at such a perfectly-judged speed that I barely caused a splash.
It was a good job – the iciness of the liquid made me quake all over, causing me to lose my breath.
My arrival immediately caused commotion, though. Savage yells were ripped from a dozen chests, and most of those vocal ones started wading out into the pool towards me, pointing and shouting.
Before they reached me I unslung the bag, holding it out above me and sinking deeper into the water, gritting my teeth against the shock of its brittle coldness.
I kept my eyes above the surface – not studying the men who were seconds from falling on me, but studying it. It was a mighty distraction from my dreadful situation.
I immediately understood – everything. Beholding the huge tree of crystal on the water’s edge, its knots of roots – the whole thing made sense. Where the Ceryad resembled a tree in the full vigour of its maturity, with a kind of purity and healthiness to its shape, this tree most certainly did not. It was withered. It was ancient. It was a mess of gnarled branches, leafless and gaunt.
The Inceryad, I thought in tones of awe. I’d read about it, in the Maginox library. Also known as the Deceryad, and Inciryad. Another ‘lost’ wonder of Mund – the Eighth Wonder. Hewn, so they said, from the heart of a demon-realm using the spider-sword Crixar in the Age of Nightmares.
In use all along. In use as an archmage-trap.
And it wasn’t glowing crimson. That’d just been my fear talking, my senses deceiving me. It was refracting firelight, multiplying the orangey radiance a hundredfold. No light-globes were going to work in here. It was the wood burning, the larger and smaller bonfires scattered around, those strong-enough or intimidating-enough to get their fair share huddled up to their heat sources.
I had no more chance to stare at the glowing branches, the firelit waters pouring from the colourless limestone ceiling high overhead – the first of my assailants was upon me, and, too late, I realised my mistake.
I might’ve gotten away with it if I’d stood my ground, thrown a punch at the first guy to get to me. They might’ve backed down if I’d avoiding making myself a target, a victim… but it was instinct. I had no shields, no special strength. I was – just me.
I took at least four or five fists to the face – not great ones, but heavy blows, plenty enough to do the job. I reeled, rippling away half-submerged, and suddenly bodies were piling on top of me, wrestling for the supplies – from the way some of the firewood was left to float on the water’s surface next to me I quickly figured it was mostly the food they were fighting over. Hunger overrode all.
Nursing my re-broken nose, I stumbled towards the nearest shore, half-crawling, knees on the sharp rocks at the bottom of the basin. My eyes were half-blinded, streaming tears, and I had trouble making out where I was going – was I going to reel straight into someone else, get another few punches for my trouble?
I realised by the illumination that I was heading closer to the tree. When I glanced up I saw that there were none of the shapes I’d expected to see near it, none of the prisoners clustered beneath the crystal branches. It was only then that it occurred to me: approaching too close to the cursed tree could spell death, on top of powerlessness.
I turned about, circling the shore, blinking and shivering.
Need to… get out of… clothes…
“You! Boy!” cried an old man.
“Who are you?” cried another.
I recognised that snooty voice… Shadowcrafter, whom I’d almost crushed to death beneath a yithandreng.
I didn’t answer, kept moving towards the shore, shaking almost uncontrollably as the excitement wore off and the sheer cold crept in more and more. The water was shallow now, only up to my knees, but my clothes clung to me, a horrible death-grip. My nose was incredibly sore, and I kept one hand over it as I sloshed up the rocks, instinctively trying to hold it in place – blood was pouring out everywhere and there was no sign it was going to stop soon.
When I finally emerged from the pool, the three nearest residents of this patch looked at me grimly. I could tell, even in the tangerine gloom, even with my eyes half shut, that these three didn’t want to fight. They weren’t leaping to their feet, shuffling backwards instead, putting their backs to the cavern wall. And when I sat down in their midst, lowering my backside onto the coarse rock without saying a word, the adjacent ones drew aside slightly, away from me. They didn’t want to end up involved if a group came over to harass me, that was my guess. They looked weak, slumped down in resignation.
There had to be around thirty people in here, I decided, casting about with slightly less-clouded vision. Thirty of us, sitting here in the blood-lit darkness, waiting to die. A few were women, but they were gathered together in a gang. Now that I looked more intently, I could see that everyone else sat alone.
Darkmages bad enough to… end up in here… don’t make friends easily…
I saw a few dwarves, and one that might’ve even been a gnome. Elves were too difficult to distinguish from humans, but I didn’t see any that stood out with strangely-coloured hair or pointy ears.
Is Neverwish… still alive?
I wasn’t the only one quivering from the cold. There was an old man a couple of places around; the way he was wheezing, I could’ve been persuaded he had a punctured lung. Some of the younger blokes were staring my way, but most were mesmerised by the tussling going on in the centre of the pond. I joined them in watching while I pulled off my Magisterium-supplied pants and wrung them out. It wasn’t far off watching Sarcamor and Sarminuid wrestling, that first day I saw them in Etherium.
The scuffle, if one could call it that, looked to be mostly one-sided. There was this particular man who, despite being lithe and wiry and massively outnumbered, seemed to fare better than most of his opponents – as I looked on I saw him slip out of a head-lock and use his legs to lever himself away from his foe, coming away with two packs of nuts and a pack of meat.
As the lithe man started heading towards my edge of the pool, recognition flooded through me. The thinning blond hair, receded hairline, the deep brow…
Duskdown.
He scooped up some of the slowly-drifting firewood under his arm then nodded to me as he came sloshing out of the water.
“You.” His Lowtown accent was completely different from his darkmage-voice, but the same silky softness was present. “You know who I am, right?”
I nodded back mutely. The tension stilled my quivering muscles, and I was suddenly barely shaking.
“Come with me.”
He skirted the water’s edge, heading towards one of the bonfires on the edge of the pool farthest from the Inceryad-tree. A bonfire located on higher ground, where no one was currently crouching.
I understood immediately and, groaning, scrambled to my feet. I carried on wringing out my pants, following him with my head down, letting my nose drip blood and trying not to fall – the rocks were rough, and a single mistake could leave me with an injury twenty times as painful as a broken nose.
An injury which I’d have no means by which to heal – no simple medicines, no access to a herbalist. A sliced-open knee would take days to mend, and a broken ankle would leave me seriously considering ending it all, even if it meant Infernum.
Ahead of me, someone slipped ahead of us to block Duskdown’s path – and when the ex-diviner moved I blinked furiously, trying to discern his motions –
The attacker tried to hit him three times, and received a chop in the throat from Duskdown as the only consequence of the assault; he didn’t even lose a single one of the nuts in his hand when he struck the man.
And then it was that I saw for myself the reality of my fears.
The throat-chop took the man down and it was ugly: I stood there, unable to help as he cracked the side of his head on a sharp bit of a boulder – not only was he choking, he was now bleeding, dark fluid wandering down across his face and dripping in his eyes.
He didn’t try again – moaning and panting and holding his head gingerly, he hobbled off back towards the water once we’d passed him by.
“Dry your clothes,” Duskdown said, sitting in front of his fire and immediately pulling off his own vest to reveal a slender, toned chest, stringy arms. He threw on some spare clothes – I had a suspicion I didn’t want to ask where they’d come from – and tossed me a set.
By the time I’d settled myself, he was holding his wet clothing up on two sticks, simultaneously drying the wood and the fabric. I struggled to copy him, my arms jerking around too much – it felt like my heart was being enclosed in a block of ice, and each breath came to me like a miracle.
“How d-did… you do that?”
“You get used to the technique, and the cold, after awhile,” he murmured, not looking up at me.
“No… no I mean… how did… how did you move like that?”
“I don’t know,” he said with some difficulty. “I think… The powers of an arch-diviner transcend time and space. That’s what they’re good for. To a degree, we can’t lose ours. The world gets confused, and keeps supplying us with magic. Maybe.”
“Or maybe… it’s j-just… you’re st-strong.”
“You’re tired. You should rest awhile. You’ll need your strength. I’m not the only strong one.”
I would’ve sighed bitterly at that, but my teeth were chattering too much. I tried to do as he said, to make myself comfortable on the ‘seat’ of stone I’d selected. “No… magic… No shields or sum-m-mons or portals…” I finally released the sigh, and it came out as a loud, broken groan. “Uuuh… Not strong.”
“You are strong.” His eyes gleamed in the firelight. “You having no power merely lends weight to my thesis. It’s a diviner trick.”
“M-maybe… both?”
“Maybe.” He regarded me with a flicker of doubt in his eyes, and his voice was more like the darkmage’s suddenly. “Maybe, at that…”
“See any other… ex-arch-d-diviners doing… what you’re doing?”
He grunted in acceptance of my point, still seeming to be mulling it over.
“They try,” he said at last.
I looked down at the cavern’s other occupants. No one seemed to be interested in me or my ‘friend’. Some other conversations had started, it seemed, but no one was looking in our direction.
“So n-no g-grand tour, then?”
“Grand tour?” He smirked, clearly amused, then pointed as he spoke. “Drink upriver, behind the tree – do your business at the wall over there, where the pool’s water follows the channels out of the system… Bodies go that way too. Be careful not to fall in. Lots of boulders. Hidden currents.”
I couldn’t quite imagine what he meant, and I didn’t feel the need to go right now anyway, but I was sure I’d understand once I had to relieve myself.
“B-but… bodies go… that w-way?”
There’s a way out?
“I know what you’re thinking, young sorcerer –“
“Ex.” I glared at him. “E-ex-sorcerer. F-for now.”
His smirk only deepened into a true smile. “I know what you’re thinking, and I’ve seen people try it. Two of them. Neither came back, though I suppose they wouldn’t… I strongly suspect the Magisterium wouldn’t give us a prison with a way out, though. And besides, if you got out that way –“
“Etherium,” I growled. “Infernum. Nethernum. Once out of range… C-come back with… with eldritches. Or t-take wizard… build way up, out…”
“Still,” he protested, looking surprised (and uncomfortably so, I thought), “nobody has ever returned from Magicrux Zyger, not in –“
“No… body… stupid enough not to… ch-change ident-tity when returning. Th-think. When has Magi… Magisteer… magisters ever visited? They kn-know about hole? Certain?”
He shook his head. “Don’t be like the idiots. Two of them dove in and they died! If you’d heard the screaming… But you can live, with my help. I get food and wood every single day.” He held out some nuts, and I stared at them there in his palm. “We can continue to exist.”
I shook my head, jolting it side to side, and he lowered his hand, his eyes.
It was only then that I saw it – he was barely hanging on. He hid it well, but the gods had abandoned him just the same as they had me. A shadow of contempt crossed his face, his eyelids twitching, lip curling in self-derision.
“You… you don’t care, really, do you?” I murmured.
“I thought it would be what you wanted,” he whispered, still looking down into the flames. “Hope.”
“Yune… she left me days ago. N-Nentheleme… I thought she was on my… my side. But no. I’m l-lost, Dusk-”
“Silence!” he snarled softly, jerking his head about to pierce me with his keen eyes. “Do not say the name! Don’t you see? I’m out of enemies – their souls moved on, but yours didn’t. I wouldn’t invite any correlations were I you! I am to be Rath, if you will, Kas. I don’t think those names will endanger us, now, but the monikers by which we used to operate? Those would surely kill you, and perhaps me along with you.”
“Rath… Okay, Rath.”
He turned his gaze away again.
“The truth is, our magic might be lost forever,” he said.
He sat there, unblinking, firelight flashing from his eyes, seeming almost augmented by the contact, as though he carried the Inceryad in his soul now.
Is that what… what he means? I wondered. We’re… powerless now? Even if… if we escaped? Or I am, at least, even… if he still has something… left inside him…
I chuckled, gasps of mirthless sound pulled from my lungs.
“What?” He still didn’t look at me.
“I sp-spent a bit of t-time lately thinking… how I wished I never got… my sorcery. Now?” I chuckled again. “It’s… all I want.”
“Freedom.” He said it caustically, as though it were a swear-word, scowling. “No, don’t blame the gods for the deeds of men, Kas. It’s not Nentheleme’s fault. We don’t deserve this place. Our endings ought to be glorious. I should trade my life for that of a Hierarch, or some other dark archmage –“
“I don’t… deserve this… place. You?” I grinned at him, baring all my teeth. “You killed… and killed… and killed –“
“Now is not the time for this conversation, young man.”
“Then when?” I leaned forward. “When will you be ready to confront what you’ve done? I s-spoke to… to a powerful arch-diviner, actually, about this. She didn’t contra… contradict me. You have to know the way you’re affecting the whole web when you start… cutting strings. You m-might’ve caused more people to turn to murder, by killing their loved ones! But once you start cutting strings you can’t stop. It’s the easy path, isn’t it? Each new… murder helps you justify the ones that came before. Wouldn’t it be harder to try the other –“
The heel of his palm under my chin, the fingers on the bridge of my nose, clamping my jaw shut painfully, my nose screaming.
I accepted the discomfort, not pulling away but gritting my teeth and leaning into the agony, unscrewing my eyes and staring at him instead. Witnessing the soul-sickness making his features flicker, a thousand emotions at war beneath the skin.
“You have no idea how difficult my life was! You… So many people hunting me, and all I was doing – finding the people-traffickers, the drug-lords, the real murderers. I was doing their job for them! They should’ve been on their knees praising me! But no. Because I saw through the irony of this! Of the life-sentence, the petty crimes being punished just the same as the heinous ones… or worse.”
I waited until he realised what I was doing and jerked his hand back.
“Eww, man… Did you just lick my hand?”
I grinned at him tightly.
“Maaaaan.” He wiped his hand on the rock.
I let my grin fade. “I d-don’t think you’ll find many in here who’re in love with the justice system.”
“Do you know a rich man who steals a guild’s coffers in its collapse into bankruptcy, impoverishing hundreds, is praised in polite circles for his foresight, but a poor lad who steals a chicken-feather gets his hand chopped off? Yes. A chicken-feather!”
I shrugged. I was hardly surprised.
“What justice is there in our system? No. Because the Ministry of Joran receives its annual tributes directly through the Arrealbord, and the Judges too. Are they going to shake the lantern? Of course not.”
“Their souls will go… to Infernum.”
He spread his hands. “Who can say for certain? The demons might lie. Maybe we just go to the shadowland, and that’s it. We’re gone, lost, forever…”
“Maybe.” I stared holes in him. “I never asked, when I had demons to ask… That still doesn’t excuse what you’ve done.”
He shook his head. “The overall effects of my actions have been good, not evil. Some of those orphaned by my acts will turn to wickedness – you’re not wrong. But many were put off, knowing all-too-well the consequences of their misdeeds. And more will turn aside from such paths because of my retribution, and I’ve prevented so many wrongs that I have no doubt – if there is a Celestium, it has a warm spot waiting for me. It’d be warmer, if not for him. If I was still out there, the world’s best deterrent for –”
“There’s no evidence for that.” I pursed my lips. “No crazy e-explosion of crimes once you got caught.”
“Once I was betrayed, you mean.”
The firelight in his flat stare was suddenly blood-red again, terrifying.
“It’s okay,” he said heavily. “I don’t blame you. I had a good idea what you would do when I showed up. But I –”
“Had to,” I finished for him in a thick voice. “You had to, didn’t you? Because Di-“
“Enough.” He closed his eyes. “Yes. I had to.”
He gave it all up, to try to save a thousand lives.
“Maybe I… maybe I allied with the wrong arch-diviner right from the start.”
He looked at me curiously. “Did he ever tell you?” he asked in a whisper. “About this place? It was always in your future, you know.”
I gave a non-committal shrug. “It went away. Timesnatcher seemed to be obsessed with the thought of me coming here, though. Pushed hard for it, instead of execution.”
“Just him?”
I shook my head. “Killstop. Everseer. They both –”
“Everseer? She lives?”
“You didn’t know? Yeah, she’s still…” My mind filled with visions, broken memories – Vardae trying to rip Tanra’s arms off – Irimar flying out of the trees with some poor guy’s ruined corpse… “She’s still doing her thing. A Hierarch, don’t you know?”
“She was tricksier than her successor,” he replied, “and that’s saying something. Came a lot closer to getting me, let me tell you.” He looked me up and down. “So, you’re feeling better now? Your nose has stopped bleeding, and you’ve almost stopped shivering.”
He wasn’t exactly wrong. Before too long I curled up in front of the fire, a thin rag for a useless pillow. I ate a few of the nuts and a strip of pork-flavoured salt, then closed my eyes.
It wasn’t that I felt particularly safe in his presence – I didn’t feel safe at all down here, and for all I knew I’d wake up with someone’s wet boot stamping on my face – if I woke at all – but it didn’t matter. I fell asleep all the same, exhaustion and stress and horror overtaking me, dragging me down into dreams too dark for me to ever remember.
It was that I no longer cared. Smash my face. Strip me of my skin. I was already dead, down here. What more could be done to me?
Sleep claimed me, consumed me. Yet when I awoke, reborn in the firelit darkness, I felt it still.
Hope.
He hadn’t been able to give it to me, but maybe I could take it.
Or die in the attempt.
* * *
I stood there, scratching my fuzzy pre-beard, and looking down into the ‘toilet’. Rivulets of water trickled into a kind of well at the cavern-wall farthest from the Inceryad. The fact that the water didn’t rise up and spill over the rock indicated there was a way out down there. For centuries criminals had been emptying their bladders and bowels into this section of the cave – even if I did get out, a trip to a druid might prove necessary. And who knew how deep it went?
Duskdown – Rathal – had told me on the first night (morning? day? time had no meaning any longer) that he’d heard screams. That must’ve meant there were air pockets down there somewhere, with seams letting the sounds emanate into the cave… Air pockets too close to the Inceryad to use magic, it seemed, otherwise those screams would’ve surely been cries of jubilation instead. Enchanters and diviners might run into difficulties, but any sorcerer, wizard or druid would find getting out a doddle, if they got their abilities back.
Too close to use magic… but too far for them to return to the chamber? Unless the boulders and other obstacles down there prevented a retreat against the water’s current, it was possible that they’d simply stopped in an air pocket and screamed, maybe having encountered some bodies snagged on the rocks in the blackness… Stopped, screamed, and then continued on.
Escaped Zyger…
Could it be as simple as taking the plunge? Holding your breath? Having the gall to go through with it?
I’d have to start by checking the eldritch situation. Had my loss of power simply returned them to their planes awaiting my reinvestment as a sorcerer or death, like if I’d been knocked out – or had my control been completely erased? Would I have to start again from square one? Either way, it would only be a matter of delay. I could return with a full complement of minions and powers to Mud Lane, pick up the twins, and get the Twelve Hells out of Mund before anyone could stop me. Especially if Rath was involved in the minutiae of my decision-making process… no-one would see it coming.
Rath wasn’t persuaded. His own despair, bereft of his prophetic abilities, was absolute. But that was okay. He’d come around, in time. Time was something we had plenty of, these days. Plus, I had an idea in mind that would allow me to exert some peer pressure on my strange friend.
First, I had to find Neverwish and Direcrown.
The latter proved impossible, given the preponderance of older gentlemen in here; there were at least four or five people who fit his general appearance and sounded a bit like him, but, unlike Shadowcrafter, he was likely trying his hardest to mask his identity.
After awhile I thought it was a fool’s errand. Between my second and third sleep-periods one of the women passed away, and the others unceremoniously hurled her into the ‘toilet’; it occurred to me that Neverwish at least was in all likelihood dead already.
But then I found the him, after my sixth rest period – when the next victim of this awful place arrived.
There were only four dwarves in here, all bearded males, and, somewhat to my surprise, they sat alone, even putting as much distance as possible between one another. Perhaps it was something to do with dwarven pride, the shame brought on the clan name when one of its bearers turned to the darkness.
In any event, it’d made my job a whole lot trickier: none of them were speaking. The hues of their beards were impossible to read in the gloom. I tried making small-talk with one while we were both relieving ourselves into the ‘escape route’ but I only got a tired grunt for my trouble. I hoped it wasn’t Neverwish. He sounded close to death, despite the native hardiness of his physiology.
It was the next arrival that heralded change. He came dropping out of the shaft, shrieking as he fell.
He landed a bit more awkwardly than me – less experience flying, perhaps? – and he quickly handed over the supplies to Rath and the others, all those who waded out into the icy water to fight, those who still seemed to think they had something to live for, still feeling the need to struggle on. It surprised me sometimes that the ex-seer still found it in himself to go out there every day, bring back the supplies we so badly needed. When I quizzed him on it he just fell silent, but I suspected it was because he had me to look after. He was over twice my age, I was pretty sure – I wondered at times whether he’d developed some kind of brotherly or fatherly affection for me since we first met. He’d sought me out to protect me from myself, from my own stupid mistakes, and when his wife was killed he struck back, and found himself being punished for his faith in me. Still, despite my treachery, he looked after me now. He said little and asked for less. As the new prisoner struggled to find their footing and make their way out of the pool, I watched Rath fight, taking on guys twice his size without missing a beat, just like always.
Does he do it for me? Am I the reason he carries on? What does looking after me do for him? What does he get out of it?
To distract myself I watched the newcomer casting about for a safe place to make harbour. He was short and stocky and sported a thin, black moustache, his hair in unkempt dark locks framing a pasty face – he was perhaps in his mid-twenties, and looked like something of a rat with his long nose and untrimmed facial hair. If there was one thing that could be said of the darkmages in here, I’d never seen one of them railing against their circumstances – none of them seemed to lack the courage of their, quite literal, convictions. But he seemed distraught more than cold, and I knew the chill of those waters – his expression was a mask of panic, little whines and shrieks coming out from the crack in his face under the moustache.
On impulse I pushed myself to my feet, heading towards him.
“This way,” I called once I got close by, ushering him in my direction with gestures as well as words. “Head to me.”
“No, I – I’m not s-supposed to b-be here!” he moaned, halting, casting about nervously.
His voice was familiar despite the chattering of his teeth.
“It’s okay,” I said in as soothing of a voice as I could muster. “Doesn’t matter who you are anymore. Come get warm.”
“Yer gonna… share yer… food, lad?” someone else nearby breathed in a pain-wracked voice. They were sprawled beside a dead fire, clutching their stomach. Other than to speak, they’d likely never move again.
I looked back at the newcomer.
“I’ll share food for news,” I said. “Come on.”
He was still hesitating. From my right I heard one of the women muttering to another, “Says he ain’t supposed to be here.”
“What’s your name, newbie?” someone else cried.
“Ignore them,” I said quietly, stepping right up to the water’s edge, watching my footing on the slippery rocks. “Come on.”
“But I was a champion! A champion of Mund!” His eyes shining with insanity, his voice suddenly strong and filled with fervour, he actually took a few steps backwards, deeper into the pond, then tipped his head back and shouted up at the shaft: “There’s been a mistake! Take me back! Please! I’ll show up next time!”
But there was no answer from the waywatchers, of course. In fact the only answer was the sudden rumbling of discontent, rippling across the cavern. Most of those scrapping over the supplies had stopped what they were doing, staring in the newcomer’s direction.
“What, uh, what’s wrong?” he asked, looking around.
“I think you’ve forgotten where you are,” I said dryly.
“Oh – oh drop!” He started sloshing in my direction again. “Help me! Help!”
“That’s what I was trying to do.”
I stepped aside, giving him room to mount the ledge I stood atop, while the expected shouts filled the air:
“Oi! Champion!”
“Oo are ya?”
“Say your name, boy! Are you Feychilde?”
That last was Shadowcrafter. He sounded weaker, now. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore.
“Ignore them,” I said again insistently in a low voice, holding out my hand to him. “A champion’s welcome as far as I’m concerned. At least there’s a chance you’d be willing to step up.”
“Step… up?” he chattered, accepting my help and rising out of the water.
“Exactly. I’m getting out of here. You’re gonna help me persuade my weird friend over there.”
I indicated Rath and, panting, the other ex-champion turned to watch. Duskdown was currently clobbering one of the fools heading towards the newcomer, trying to chase after the prisoner who’d so idiotically mentioned his former allegiances in a voice that would’ve carried half-way to Mund. After a few blows in the back of the head, and a few failed attempts to elbow the ex-diviner in retaliation, the fool quickly gave up his vendetta and threw himself aside.
Rath moved past him, putting down the firewood and accepting my hand to come up out of the pool; the ex-champion shifted aside to give him room. The three of us stood there on the rock, distributing the spoils Rath won us.
“Let’s get you dry.” I turned and, gesturing at our fire with a handful of pork, started to lead the way.
A stranger’s voice, close by:
“You.”
The growl came from my left, and, cursing my lack of supernatural perception, I whirled to view my attacker.
But it was him – the tired dwarf. Little wonder he’d evaded my sight in the gloom; crouched down, he had to be shorter than the outcropping he’d been hiding behind.
“You think you know me?” I asked, putting some harshness into my tone.
“I do know you. Been watching.” The dwarf’s eyes gleamed in the shadows. “You owe me plat. We dwarves never forget our debts. And you wish we’d forget our grudges.”
Never… wish…
Rath and the newcomer looked between me and the dwarf – Rath would be weighing up the angles of his possible counter-attacks…
I grinned and raised an eyebrow, daring to hope. “Grudges?”
The dwarf did his best to smirk in response, but it was a wan, sad attempt. “So, she got you too, in the end… I tried to warn the lot of you. Don’t say I didn’t!”
“Never.”
“Yeah. It’s me.”
* * *
There was plenty of news to go around.
Neverwish was at times amazed, angered, thrilled, and saddened to the point of tears. Nighteye and Leafcloak, Shadowcloud and Withertongue – even Direcrown’s apostasy – all of it hurt him, but it was Starsight’s words concerning his fate that hit him the hardest, I thought. He was visibly gladdened to hear we’d finally obliterated the eolastyr and driven Lovebright, Tyr Kayn, from the city. I avoided mentioning Lightblind’s death, given our current company. The dwarf looked intrigued when I suggested we could find Direcrown, unlike Rathal, whose own thoughts about the evil arch-sorcerer were perfectly clear.
I made it perfectly clear right back at him that in situations like this you didn’t whinge about who your allies were. We had a common enemy: Zyger itself. That would be enough to see us through to the other side, even if Direcrown were untrustworthy.
I still erred on the side of caution, where it came to telling Rath he could do whatever he wanted with Direcrown afterwards. I knew this would bring the arch-diviner on board immediately. I also knew this would be a death sentence for the arch-sorcerer. I still wasn’t willing to cross that divide, even having crawled through the bones of a thousand burnt-up bodies.
This was what the darkmages were missing. They had their lovely little power-structures, always looking to the man or woman at the top to find out what to do. It did nothing for their instincts, and when they had no leader to feed them most of them starved. It was physically happening in front of me – they were wasting away.
For all our failings, as champions we’d always tried to listen to each other’s points of view. Take a little something from everyone. Hold off on judgement. Sometimes the solution to a problem could come from a surprising source, and this – this imprisonment – was a problem that demanded everyone lend their aid. What we needed most of all, the way I saw it, was some way to ensure we could return to air pockets if we encountered blockages, a way to leverage our combined strength if something was in the way down there…
But when we heard Ripplewhim’s tale, it took me aback, stymieing my plots and plans and stifling my confidence. I felt my desperate clutch on hope weaken, the tremulous grip loosening… bit by bit, loosening…
My fellow Sticktowner was the herald of doom.
“It’s all gone to hell, man! The Twelve Hells, the next Incursion! I don’t know how things are still operating, you know? I just – I didn’t show up for the Incursion, did I? But m-my wife, she didn’t want me to go, and look –“
“Slow it down now,” Rath said.
“Yeah – well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Things just moving faster and faster… Magister-bands getting attacked in the streets. Shallowlie’s still gone, and they all said she’s dead, but N-Netherhame, she spends most of her time looking for her – whether she means alive or, you know… I don’t know. But there’s hardly an arch-sorcerer left, now, ‘cept the ones the magistry brings, I guess…”
I felt sick inside – I hadn’t even thought about that until now.
Jaid… Jaroan… Get out of Mund. Just go. Leave, forever!
Even if Shallowlie was presumed dead, I presumed differently, given Vardae’s previous forays into alternative recruitment methods –
“Timesnatcher?” I interrupted. “Did he say Shallowlie’s dead?”
“R-reckon so – it was just before I – before I got in trouble…”
Timesnatcher knows better than that, I thought grimly. He’s back to his old ways, surely…
It was strange, to be in a situation where I was actually hoping Irimar was lying.
“… wasn’t until this magister tried telling me off – a real kid he was too, like eighteen, tops – no offence, F- Kas… but he was here in my face, giving it what-for, and I just – blam! – took him over, wiped his head. I shouldn’t have done it – I know that – but I was having a real bad day and then I didn’t know what to do, so I hid, and apparently they really didn’t like that… Thought they’d be short on champions, you know, with people starting to leave –”
“Leave?” Neverwish sat forward, his beard swaying. “What the drop’s this about leaving?”
“Well – what, you guys didn’t hear it?”
The pasty-faced enchanter looked at us in confusion and the three of us stared back blankly.
“But – everywhere heard it!” The rat-nosed man looked over his shoulder at the Inceryad and sighed. “Except maybe down here.” He turned back to us. “Vardae – Everseer. She spoke to us, to the whole of Mund. I guess maybe we’re all a little bit heretic, now…”
After ten seconds of stunned silence, Rath broke it with a choked whisper:
“I think… you’d better start at the beginning, young enchanter. And don’t you miss – a single – word.”
* * *
“People in the camps are baffled, more than angry, from what I hear,” Ripplewhim – Temcar – was saying. “Dunno if the population of the city’s actually getting any lower, thinking about it, but it’s all the same, isn’t it? The guys who know what they’re doing are quitting in droves, especially the rich… it’s gonna take some time to train up the new guys… That’s why everything’s breaking down, I reckon. Half the Sticktown watch stopped showing up for work, I heard, and the construction firms are short on staff…”
“So they’ve not only not fixed the problem, they’ve potentially made it worse,” Rath observed.
“They’re heretics.” Neverwish – Herreld, apparently – spoke with true derision in his voice. “That’s all they do. I don’t care what they think about themselves, why they’re doing what they do. They’re sick. They need putting down.”
“And it’s worse than all that,” I murmured, finally coming out of my reverie. “Even if they emptied the city entirely… they want to face the weakened, recently-reborn dragons head-on. They think they’re going to be the ones to deliver the death-blows – if the champions fight first, they won’t help. They’ll wait for us… for them, to die…”
“We’re still champions,” Tem whispered.
The three of us with more experience just stared at the rat-nosed little man; Herreld regarded his fellow ex-enchanter with something close to real contempt burning in the beady dwarven eyes.
“Well, we are,” Tem muttered grumpily, putting a nut in his mouth and looking down at his feet.
“But what if that’s what the dragons really want them to want?” I continued, still trying my hardest to make it make sense. “What if it won’t work? What if the only way to win is to join our forces with theirs – present a united front? They’ll kick out any number of people who could help us…”
Neverwish started talking but I slipped away into myself again. I glanced around through the chill, smoky air at the darkmage shapes in the cavern.
It’s not just organisation that they need. A sense of community…? What’s the betting the Srol Heretics are more fractured than the champions? Theor and Aramas clearly belonged to different factions…
No. That’s not quite it. It’s a sense of… their place in things. Everyone wants to take on responsibilities that are beyond their strength to bear.
But I’m the same, aren’t I? I wanted to kill the eolastyr, and I chased it down and cut it in half. I wanted to finish the sphere, finish Saphalar’s work and undo the spell on Zadhal. I could’ve died, just like Withertongue, just like Leafcloak, oh so easily… It isn’t speculative, it’s not some game; it’s real. I did that. I took that on, because in each instance I thought – I knew – I was the best person for the job. How are the heretics any different? Isn’t Vardae, like, super-powerful? Isn’t she the best-placed to make such a decision?
And when has an arch-diviner ever been infallible, Kas? I asked myself sardonically.
If there were only one seer of such power in the city, perhaps I could’ve filled myself with absolute certitude upon hearing their prophecy. But the Line of Ulu came with divination beyond Irimar and Tanra, beyond Vardae and Rath. It would be like pitting Spiritwhisper against Tyr Kayn. There was just no competition.
Vardae’s wrong, I decided. I looked around again. We need alliances, not divisions. How many of these darkmages are truly dark? How many eat people and dig up bodies and slaughter innocents? How many were just put here because the Magisterium couldn’t be doing with them out there? Too intractable for their own good…
I focussed on Rath – he was telling the dwarf about his true identity, and Herreld only grunted every now and again, taking it in his stumpy stride. The dwarf’s reservations seemed to be buckled down tight; impressive, considering he was being informed that he was sitting down for lunch with the city’s most notorious killer.
Temcar’s reaction was less impressive, but at least my fellow Sticktowner managed to avoid flat-out fleeing – he shrank away from Rath as the ex-seer spoke, looking like he was being electrocuted, his eyes bulging and the tip of his nose quivering.
I turned my gaze back to Rath, back in my reverie, my ears only vaguely processing his words.
Was I being too forgiving, thinking of these darkmages in here as potential allies? At least Direcrown had proven his worth on multiple occasions, and I knew he had the willpower to commit to aiding us, see the deed through. It wasn’t like I’d have to actually forgive him for killing a thousand immigrants, was it? I was using him.
Perhaps to his end.
“… why Kas didn’t tell you. It’s obvious. I killed her. I killed Lightblind. No, don’t look at me like that. She was… She was his anchor. She kept him sane, even if he didn’t know it. But even then, even sane, he killed my wife. He’s told them it was because of the dragon, but it wasn’t. He knew she was my wife, all along. He knew what it would do to me – he hates me, hates that he can’t see me… No. He knew… he knew the price…”
The ex-seer looked down at his hands, holding them out palms-up, and fell silent.
Neverwish was staring at Rathal in renewed horror, but with undisguised understanding in his expression. A traditionalist dwarf might look on such a vendetta as perfectly ethical.
I took the opportunity to interrupt while neither were speaking.
“Rath, it’s time. Tell me. Which one is Direcrown?”
“I did tell you,” he said darkly, “he must’ve been –“
“Must’ve been brought here before you. You must think a prophet’s never lied to me before. Unsoothsayer.”
He drew a sharp breath, glared at me no less sharply.
“Fine. I strangled him, and threw him in the toilet, when he’d not been here five minutes.”
“That was Direcrown?” Neverwish muttered.
I stared back at him in shock. “You… you already killed him? You let me go on, about…”
I’d thought he was being recalcitrant because he didn’t want anything to do with Direcrown, not because he’d already betrayed my trust like that.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, with that one.” Rath shook his head, returning his gaze to his own hands. “We can try it without him – if that’s what you want. But we can’t take everyone in here with us, you know that, don’t you?”
I was still trying to come to terms with the casual discussion of murder.
Direcrown… dead.
“Why?” Neverwish – Herreld – asked in a plaintive growl. His voice contained more consternation than it did rage… and more exhaustion than consternation.
“Why did I kill him?” Rathal laughed harshly. There were no tears in his eyes but he was choking on his words, holding something back as he explained: “I would l-love to say it was for the good of society – that I was removing a danger to the m-masses, deterring those who would choose to em… emulate him. But no. He was in here, in here with me, and do you know what his first words were? His introduction? ‘What I would not give, for a single cup of wine’! I killed him because I enjoyed it!” Strength returned to his voice. “I enjoyed watching him struggle, gargle meaningless garbage at me, like I cared, like anybody cared for his last words! What even is Savalar?”
“His girlfriend?” Herreld said, stroking his beard.
Rath shook his head. “He was crying the whole time –“
“Stop, wait,” I groaned. “Savalar? Or Saphalar?”
He shrugged. “That could be right. What is it?”
“Not what… who. I was just – just thinking about him, actually. Not that we met, but Saphalar was a lich in Zadhal…”
A lich who figured out a way to undo the undead.
“I always wondered which way old Sillyhat was inclined, and now we know,” Herreld rumbled, finished with a dry chuckle, “heh-heh-heh. Downwards.”
I just shuddered. It was too close to the man’s death to make jest of him, even if he were a murderer of awful proportions. And why – how had his last words been of the buried lich? What significance could that hold? We hadn’t discussed Saphalar while we were there in Zadhal – the timings were all wrong – so how did he learn of him? Had he spied upon me in the following days, or had he been doing research for his own purposes?
And, moreover, why?
There were no answers forthcoming. Answers lay drowned with the strangled corpse in the sunken tunnels which, if I had my way, we would soon be traversing. A corpse that in any other place I might’ve awoken with a thought, chained its soul to Nethernum by links forged of pure will, questioned it as to its motives, its dark secrets.
Direcrown lowers his face, and when he speaks his voice is husky, cracking: “It is not the least of the things I have done – it is not the worst. You don’t understand – Wyrda, she listened to me and –“
He’d sounded… what? Remorseful? It was difficult, thinking back to that moment when I’d ignored Timesnatcher, gone against him to accuse my fellow arch-sorcerer of mass-murder. Had it really only been a week or two? Every day down here was like ten, at least.
Why would he have sounded remorseful, though? I remembered my anger, I remembered wanting him to be punished, punished for his crimes… dead, yes, I’d wanted him dead… and the obvious guilt in his voice had been invisible to me until now, until I thought back. No wonder so many of the other champions had been so conflicted about how to treat him. How must I have come off to the others?
“He died!” Direcrown moans, and the words sound like something awful being dragged from his chest, the jagged teeth of a saw caught in his breastbone. “You don’t understand! He taught me –“
I remembered the way Irimar had interrupted him, breaking a powerful darkmage’s confession with his attack for the second time in a single night.
Had he been trying to deliberately interrupt Duskdown before he mentioned Direcrown at the wedding ceremony? Did Timesnatcher obstruct me because Direcrown had some role to play in his plans?
Saphalar… “He died! You don’t understand! He taught me –”…
The ‘he’ has to be Redgate, right? Not Saphalar? Irimar acted as though nothing Direcrown could say would surprise him… Is that really likely, though? What did Irimar ask him once he was incarcerated? Did he visit him, get him to spill all his hidden nuggets of information? Why the invocation of Wyrda? Why the regret in his voice when he spoke of his evil deeds?
“Kas?” Rath touched my knee gently. “Kas, you okay?”
“Sorry.” I shook my head, blinking rapidly, and wrapped my arms around myself to ward off the chill. “Stick some more fuel on the fire, eh? I think I need to sleep. Sleeping will help. Too… too confused.”
“I know the feeling, for once,” he replied ruefully. “Night.” He turned away from me as I sat back, resting my head on its customary rock and closing my eyes.
“Night, guys,” I said, feeling the warmth of the flames on my toes as Rath stuck some more bits of freshly-dried timber on the stack.
Night? It might be two in the afternoon. Even Temcar won’t know, if his experience prior to the big plunge was anything close to mine. He’ll have been confined for days…
I imagined that it was two in the afternoon. Orstrum was walking north-west on the Plain Road, heading for the Sticktown Gate, Xantaire and Xastur right behind them. They were walking out of Mund, getting away from this horror, this madness.
I slept. I awoke. I slept. I awoke.
Night. Day. Night. Day.
It lost meaning. There was only the need to escape.
So it was that I looked on keenly as Herreld inspected the rocks on the wall with his cunning dwarven eyes; one of us would hold a fiery brand aloft so that he could see, and he’d clamber across the wet stones with a dexterity he didn’t possess before I arrived – before we got him eating again, and put the hope back in his heart. At times he’d have us hold our breaths and watch the guttering flames, tracking the movement of the air.
It took him days of meticulous toil to find the cracks, but he found them and marked them, all the small fluctuations in currents that only he could discover. Sometimes I thought he was mad. Sometimes I thought we all were. But before we were done, we drew our audience. Half the cavern moved their fires to better watch us. And half of those wanted to help.
We found boulders small-enough to wield, dense-enough to have an effect, and, under direction from our motley collection of dwarves, we got to work.
Magicrux Zyger – Mund’s latest mining operation.
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