JET 8.4: BY FIGMENTS WAYLAID
“All suffering is relative. There are worlds… worlds in which the torment of souls so overflows that it can be caught up in goblets and supped by myriad entities, beings which only gorge thereupon, for ever unto eternity, or till I call. No, my prince. You cannot even imagine what it is to suffer.”
– from Of Lord Ymer and Prince Rivorn in ‘Elturiel’s Collected Fairytales’
I had Shield Four erected, the pentagon gleaming and spinning, and it was enough to hold back the first wave of statue-people. I constructed the hexagon and sent them all flying back, but then it broke into tatters as the second wave, the third wave crashed into it.
I gritted my teeth as my elbow piped up again, complaining as I drew blades on the air, attaching them to the pentagon.
Our stony enemies might’ve been shaped from a substance that was durable indeed, but it only took a few swings to lop through their limbs, their necks, leaving them scrambling for the body-chunks I took from them. They tried to reattach their severed heads, arms, legs, but they had more than just me to contend with.
Rath seemed to have snapped out of his reverie, at least for so long as he was being distracted by sport like this. He rolled outside my shield’s boundaries, snatching up the heavy-looking statue-parts, hefting them and lobbing them back into the impassable zone within my barriers. They didn’t have a shot at catching him, and before too long he’d left them rolling around like so many dismembered dolls in a child’s trolley.
But they weren’t dead. I could’ve left a shield-set here and formed another to protect us as we headed through our broken assailants – could’ve let them stay fumbling at my shield’s perimeter until I was long gone – but I felt her eyes boring into the back of my head.
I turned to meet her gaze, the whites around the pupils so bright they’d become incandescent.
“Very well.”
“Thank you, Master.” She inclined her head gratefully, raised her fore-hoof and lowered her horn as she charged.
I hadn’t seen her in action – independent action, at least – since her transformation.
Black lightning gushed from the dark horn, the unlight-fire flowing on the wind, and it didn’t just melt the stone – it set it alight, consuming it as though it were moistureless wood, shadow-flames bursting from the silently gaping mouths, the desperately contorting fingertips. At last, the cores of their torsos cracked, sending chunks of rocky flesh flying, the now-lifeless husks pouring filthy, chalky smoke into the night sky.
She trotted back to my side, panting, baring her teeth in the equine smile that was now creepy, insidious.
“Which way?” I asked her, casting about.
“Here.” Temcar pointed through the white clouds, in a direction which to me seemed completely random. “The way is this way.”
He sounded entranced, but he was within my triangle-shield…
I tried to grin, but my heart wasn’t really in it. I looked about at the others.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
* * *
When we saw what lay in store for us on Temcar’s route, we tried going through the huge, brambly hedges, only to find ourselves on the opposite edge of the graveyard. Avaelar reported from the sky that the hedges were the edge of the demi-plane; beyond them there was only distortion. Rath tried digging, and after he went down ten yards through the dirt he fell from two hundred feet – my sylph only just caught him in time. The arch-diviner was blind to our path, and so eventually we were forced to do what Tem had been suggesting all along. I wanted one bit of the enchanter’s certainty – his courage.
The only way in and out of the courtyard was the throne room.
In the middle of one of the courtyard’s four sides there were no hedges, the shortly-cropped grass letting onto a wide floor of flattened, fertile-looking soil. Pillars of the same silver stone held aloft the high ceiling, and silver-flaming torches guttered along the three walls.
Located in the very centre of the room was a raised dais of broken bones. Upon the bones, a throne of living thorns had grown, and the bush’s occupant was also its host – the vines grew through him, piercing him in thousands of places. Hundreds of beautiful red roses bloomed from his open stomach, his open left temple, the corner of his right eye…
Still, he lived. As he panted, taking shallow breaths, the thorns protruding through his breast sawed back and forth gently, releasing new scarlet offerings along the eternal rivulets coursing down his flesh.
What he actually looked like was difficult to discern. The remains of his clothing lay in tatters, snared into the mess; his skin was pallid, dripping with sweat and blood and tears.
”A tribute to Eldaleyn,” Avaelar said in a halting, hallowed voice when we first clapped eyes on the spectacle, his stern bronze face drawn in consternation.
“Who?” I whispered, not taking my eyes off the suffering creature.
“He is a legend amongst my people. Eldaleyn was once the pupil of Brother Avalyar, Key-Keeper, and for his sins was consigned to just such a chair.”
It was gibberish to me, though I thought it made a certain sense if you substituted ‘Eldaleyn’ for Illodin, ‘Avalyar’ for Joran… I’d heard of Illodin’s Chair of Woe, but never had the thing been described…
“You’re sure about this?” I asked Tem. “Just, approach him?”
He didn’t look back at me – he was staring at the guardian on the throne as he nodded.
I drew a deep breath.
“Everyone else?”
Rath was grinding his teeth – I wouldn’t get a response from him, but I received a chorus of more or less enthusiastic ‘Yes, Master’s from my eldritches.
“After you, then.” I once more locked my own eyes on the room’s sole inhabitant, preparing myself to see him rise up from his throne, start lashing us with his thorny whips –
But Temcar got ten paces in before he halted, turning back with a faint smile to wave us after him.
We followed.
Once we were within twenty feet of the horrible visage we stopped, and I was forced to avert my eyes. The punishment this creature was undergoing – did Etherium truly contain such horrors? In Infernum or Nethernum, sure, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But here, in the otherworld, the realm of dreams and fantasy? It sickened me to know that some part of this poor slave’s mind was being used in this way, to create this horrid plane of existence.
I clenched my fist. We stood there in silence, a solemn semi-circle about the front of the dais, and I could hear his pained breathing, hear the soft spatter of fluid against the bony altar. For which mighty being’s amusement was this torture being committed? I could remedy this situation, perhaps –
What’s a little more bloodshed, to end this torment?
A thorny whip came down from the figure atop the throne, slashing out faster than I could react, aimed right for me –
A tendril no thicker than my finger, and my shields erupted at its lightest touch like boils speared with a hot rod.
Rath caught the first whip, and yelped in agony as it tore through his flesh –
The second snagged my wrist, twisting my elbow and pulling me off my sylph leaning-post, making me stumble on my mashed foot –
Making me scream in a renewed torrent of agonies –
Gilaela brayed and reared back –
“No!” I cried, going down to one knee before the dais, throwing out my unconstricted hand to ward her off. “Wait!”
I looked up at the enthroned prisoner. The flagellant king.
I did my best not to growl.
“You can let me go.”
The gasp that returned from the figure was in Etheric and it was amplified, seeming to emanate from the very earth, but it lost none of its character: if I had thought myself agonised by the boneless fish I was carrying around on the end of my leg, this quiet, breathless trauma put me in my place.
“Might I? Let thee aside?” spoke the living amalgam of man and rose-bush. “By what token… might I trust thee and thine? Thou art… the demons of my wretchedness, come to barb me further.”
I licked my lips, and suddenly the thorny vine about my wrist tightened, releasing a bracelet of blood – I almost bit the end of my tongue off, grinding my teeth together.
I heard rather than saw Rath trying to reach my side, but we were within its mind. Our magic was here, but it was obsolete. We were more powerless than we’d been in Zyger. It wasn’t like this creature had any control, either, locked in its own mad world. For all I knew, this enthroned man was just one more part of the insanity, no more representative of the entity’s core than the disembodied voice Gilaela had dispelled in the caves.
I just had to hope it could be reasoned with.
“What cause, noble king,” I gnashed the words, “ha-hast thou to mistrust us? Canst thou not – ahhhhhh! – see that we are guests in thy home, and ought be – aff-ord-ed – such courtesies as are c-customary.”
“Thou wouldst eat the meat of my table?”
Only at the last second did I realise the trick in that – he almost caught me between the flood and the cliff.
“Th-that is an attempt at entrapment –“
“Quoth… the demon…”
“Noble king!” I was squealing now. “What token wouldst – wouldst thou ask of us? We are but poor travellers in thy domain -”
“What wouldst thou? I can see in thee… naught! Gnaw instead the cold earth, and know the rose’s branch… in heart and eye. Come, mortal, come unto my fate… and behold it in all its inconceivable languor!”
An unexpected voice arose behind me, in affront and challenge:
“Majesty!”
Aid, from the unlikeliest source – Avaelar strode forward. The sylph carried Zabalam clinging to his left leg, and it seemed to take the gremlin a couple of seconds to realise he was being brought closer to danger – then the little piggy guy sprang away, looking up at his winged colleague with concern on his mottled face.
Avaelar put out both his hands, and two lashes came streaming down from the rose-bush, binding him. He took a knee, but the expression on his perfect face was resolute, and wrathful.
“Majesty, might I entreat of thee the right to speak?”
“Thou… art no demon, my child… What of thee, then?”
“This man is my master.” The sylph spoke plainly, none of the pain he must’ve been feeling showing on his face – the vines cut through his dense flesh as easily as they had my own. “He is no demon. He is Feychilde, sorcerer, woe to demons, bane of undeath, scourge of eolastyr. Nentheleme herself came to heed his prayer.”
“And yet it doth… seem she hath forsaken him.”
“So thou seest it – or might it be that she doth linger upon the judgement of thine own merciful hand, Majesty? Wouldst thou bind a man as thou hast been bound, or free him? Thou didst strike awry in thy previous assessment. I tell thee Truth, and Truth alone, as the Brotherhood witnessed in the Evening Stars ere the Irradiant One’s birth, ere Nightfall – Feychilde is a champion of men. His cause is just. His quest cannot fail here, now. Had fate set him in thy place and thou alike in his, I know from great remove the quality of his own decision.”
I’d never really heard the sylph speak as though he – as though I…
I felt tears in my eyes, and not from the pain.
“… Very well, sylph. Let us… discuss terms.”
* * *
The thorns didn’t withdraw, but I saw the throne’s inhabitant flick his bleeding gaze across us, recognised the set of his jaw. He was appraising us with new eyes.
“There is value buried in thy words… as gold sleeps in rock. Thou art… an intriguing creature, Aedervaeni.” Then the red stare settled on me. “So, sorcerer, thy case is stated… and passage secured. All that remains for us is… to discuss thy means of payment.”
“Payment, M-Majesty?”
“One of these three shall suffice. Each has worth to thee.”
It took me a moment to realise his meaning.
“You –“ I licked my lips, suddenly wanting to cry “– thou desirest mine eldritches?”
“Only one. Shalt not Nentheleme sing… of my mercy, sylph?”
“She – she shall, M-Majesty.”
Avaelar’s words were coming out as protracted winces, now – the barbs were starting to get to him. When it came to my own wrist, it felt as though they were biting into bone. How I wasn’t dying yet I had no idea.
How to formulate a plan of escape, when even an arch-diviner was at a loss? Rathal hadn’t been himself since the overly-friendly voice started unpicking his past, but he’d made moves when they’d been obvious to him, like when we’d fought the living statues. I couldn’t just leave someone here, even a native eldritch… not in this nightmare.
The ruler of the realm seemed to understand my resolve, and found my weak-spot instantly.
I already knew the truth of it. I’d read all about it.
“Thou art… fixed in this fate,” our captor whispered. “It is… time for thee… to choose. There is always a… price. Naught is free. Not I… nor ever thee.”
I tried not to shudder, and looked across to my left, meeting the sylph’s eyes. “Are – ahh! ha! – are there any volunteers?”
Zab just whimpered.
“No,” Gilaela said clearly, adamantly, from my other side.
“I hath in me no wish to remain here,” Avaelar murmured. “Yet I am bound, not only by thy magic, Feychilde, but by the chains of mine own faith in thee.”
“I need you!” I blurted, shaking my head.
“Nay,” he said softly, and smiled despite his agony, “thou needst naught, Feychilde. Thou shalt succeed. Remember me, shalt thou?”
“This is a command from your master!” I snapped at him. “I need you. You shall no longer offer your… services to this… this thing.” I cast my gaze back on the rose-throne, weighing the blood-drenched entity’s words.
I can’t leave Zab here. It’d destroy him – that much is obvious.
What does he really want?
Slowly, I turned to my right.
Do I play right into his hands?
“Master.” The brittle word stood alone for her refusal, then, when she seemed to realise it would prove insufficient, she tried to command me: “Do not even consider this.”
But this dark tricorn was different – she was nothing like the unicorn I’d come to respect over the last months. Even her voice, its cold, derisive tones – it made me feel as though she were a different person altogether. The old Gilaela wouldn’t have been able to grovel, either, not given her aloof nature, her demeanour of superiority – but if she’d tried, there wouldn’t have been so much hostility in it. When she spoke to me now, as it was as though she thought she were the one in charge, not me.
“You changed, Gilaela,” I panted through the pain, “and I can’t trust you anymore.”
“Can’t trust me? I who freed you from the caverns of this madman’s mind, whose power saved you from the cold clutches of countless dead men?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Princess. You can take care of yourself. You’ll be –”
And then the truth of her corrupted nature was made plain.
There was still an obvious connection between us, preventing her from attacking me directly, but none of my direct commands to her had barred her from behaving in an intimidating manner. She whipped about and bore down at me, aiming her horn at my face, stamping and screaming – a bound eldritch had never behaved in such a manner towards me before, never mind one of such overwhelming potency –
I had no shields up anymore, but I didn’t need them. She still couldn’t strike me, and she’d used me as a decoy. Even as she reached my side, pretending at violence, she reared up and turned, throwing herself bodily at the king of this demi-plane, aiming her splintered horn right at his already-broken heart.
For a moment I saw her there, the magnificent dark horse hurtling through the air, a leap of stupendous potential energy – her scream itself was a deadly thing, resounding off the walls –
Then I noticed that the moment had extended, and she was still there, still screaming that same single note, pinned ten feet off the ground. I was directly behind her, so I couldn’t quite tell what had stopped her until the wreath of vines extended about her, and through her, ripping uncountable holes in the shadowy fur.
She didn’t move except to quiver briefly.
What would this mean for us now? Would I still have to abandon Avaelar in order to escape?
There was no way to draw out a shield, not like this, not with the offending vine still wrapped about my arm…
Finally, Gilaela’s last defiant scream dropped away; she whimpered before she fell silent.
Slowly – excruciatingly slowly – our host withdrew the bonds about my wrist, and Avaelar’s too. I gasped in relief, pressing my free hand to the wound – but it was already sealing itself in a matter of seconds, agony becoming pain, pain becoming itching, until nothing more than a tingling heat covered the area.
The guardian’s weeping eyes moved to his new subject; tendrils of inestimable strength lifted her higher, turning her so that I could witness what I’d done to her.
She was silent, and she was bleeding just the same as him, her black blood dripping all over the neatly-flattened earth, smoking white where it landed.
But her eyes stared. Fixed upon me.
She was still alive. She was like him now, almost.
Betrayer. Heartless fiend. I knew what she’d have called someone acting like this; I’d shared a mind with her for so long. Craven. Worthless, putrid, vile little worm.
Even if I’d abandoned a demon to the guardian, for him to do this to them – the old Gilaela would’ve reacted the same. Where was the justice? Where was the good death, the sweetness of the kill, the soul’s release –
Then she spoke, dark horse-lips parting, panting.
His voice. His voice, through her lips.
“The king accepts… thine offering. Thy mightiest weapon laid at his feet… its grip fitted neat to his hand. Tribute… is paid – go in honour, sorcerer, yet speak not of trust… Thou hast already accepted into thyself all… all I might have done to poison thee. Thou alone knowest how low thou hast come. Return to the nightmare… from whence you came, and trouble no longer he whose heart… yearns for slumber’s suffering.”
The dirt floor beneath us seemed to become quicksand, and before I could even raise my hand in front of my face in alarm its darkness rose up and covered me, depositing me onto hard stone.
I glanced about, then saw the glimmer of gremlin-light just off to my right.
“Zab?”
“Master? Oh, Master!”
The little pig-man hopped towards me and hurled himself on me, embracing me and weeping greenish tears that were perhaps more snot than water.
I didn’t care. I embraced him back.
“Zabalam! Where are the others?”
He sniffled, wiped his extremely-wet face on the remnants of my vest, then looked up, raising his hand and amplifying the radiance.
Living lichen. Glowing mushrooms. Pale crystal. Soft moss.
The others were there, having simply been deposited in different areas of the cavern. All of the others – save Gilaela.
As they made their way over towards me and Zab, I raised my hand, preparing to attempt to summon the one I’d sacrificed.
I paused. Whether it worked or not, I doubted it would end pleasantly for us.
Hesitantly, I lowered the hand again.
“It’s done – it’s over,” Tem said. His chest shuddered with each breath.
I stared into his bruised face, the eyes beneath the furrowed brow. “What were you sensing?”
He didn’t answer, his haunted gaze saying everything.
‘You don’t want to know.’
I looked around. “Is everyone else okay?”
Avaelar nodded grimly. Zab was still clinging to me. Rath…
“Look, man, there’s no way he was right…“
The arch-diviner met my eyes; his voice was so quiet.
“He was right.”
Rathal raised the jagged rock I’d used to refresh their marks while we explored the ethereal gardens, and appeared to stab it straight into his neck.
It wasn’t that, though – he was going in at the collarbone, digging its tip deep into the flesh –
He flicked out a gory copper penny, and it bounced on the rocks; he followed it with those burning eyes.
“I did it. I killed her. I shook her – she was choking and… I…”
He fell to his knees, heedless of the rough impact, and he didn’t cry. Not a single tear fell down his cheek in grief, self-contempt.
He moaned instead, as he lost the core of his persona, sending bitter echoes smashing back at us from the cavern-walls.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhh…”
It was like he’d saved up a thousand gasps of a thousand knives entering a thousand bodies, and loosed them all at once.
Then he blurred to his feet. “I know now,” he whispered, holding up his hands to look at them, study them intently, fingers splayed – then suddenly he was thrusting them out in my face as though he wanted me to do the same. “I understand! I understand everything… Your dragon! Your damn dragon, Kas. Oh, oh no…”
I reached out for him hesitantly, half-expecting him to just slip out of my grasp, but instead of fleeing he fell forwards into my embrace, making my elbow-bones scrape against one another, making me bite my lip against the pain.
But it was nothing – nothing to what he was feeling.
He killed Lightblind. I was there with Timesnatcher when we found the body.
Yet I embraced him. He understood himself, now – and I did too.
Duskdown was human. Only human, like Timesnatcher, like the rest of us.
“There’s nothing you can do, Rathal. Nothing. Live with it.”
“Live… live with it.”
When he drew away, I saw his eyes, and they were haunted just like Ripplewhim’s, staring into an empty distance. He seemed to operate his limbs mechanically, setting them on some future-hunt, while his mind whirled with new avenues of knowledge.
With Avaelar and Rath’s help I got to my feet – foot – and we made our way forwards once more. There was the same chasm as before, every boulder familiar. But, somehow, it didn’t trouble me. I felt we were finally making progress. We ended up moving far more quickly the second time around – our terrifying host had seemingly taken pains to ensure he made us a perfect replica of the real caverns in the area, so we’d already had a practice run at it.
Once we came to the sheer areas Rathal expended some of his power, and I no longer needed to lean on my sylph. We ascended on the wings of an arch-diviner’s impetus. Blurring at incredible speeds up waterfall-ridden cliffs. Finding secret tunnels where the fungus sang at our approach. Skirting the smoke-webbed pits filled with giant ethereal spiders. Climbing the quartz-fortresses of some friendly magical termites.
Six hours. Just six subjective hours since we left Zyger for Infernum, and on his first go Pinktongue came popping back into Etherium with news of our success.
Three battered men fell out of a dimensional portal into a cave full of bat-droppings, and never before would three people in our condition have looked quite so satisfied to take such a pungent bath. I didn’t even call Pinktongue back and tell him off for the stunt he just pulled. My arch-diviner friend with the distracted expression, my arch-enchanter companion with the haunted eyes – I could see the relief on their faces as Tem raised a glimmering arc of white light about us, climbing out of the sludge.
And me? What was I? Was I haunted, distracted? I’d been broken in body yet not in soul. I was a murderer and betrayer, a pitiful excuse of a human being – but I didn’t feel it. I knew it, for a cold fact devoid of meaning – but the emotion? No.
I felt fine.
Shadowcrafter needed to die. Gilaela needed to be sacrificed. We needed to get home and the blood that was spilt, the blood – it was the price of the transformation.
If the guardian of Infernum hadn’t sensed the murderer in me, would it have let me leave like that?
No. None of it mattered.
The twins…
I raised shields and stars, then raised my fingertips to a looming purple shadow that I consumed –
“– the laces were white, two of them –“
Silence!
I tapped at the wraith’s essence and the very instant I faded, I started to laugh. I floated up into the air, weightless, the stinging of my smashed bones lessening yet further.
“We did it! Haha!” I threw my hands up, extending shields of greater and greater dimensions, reinforcing them all. “We did it! We’re dropping free! Oh, those idiots. Those idiots!” I descended back to the others on the edge of the stinking pool, summoning my sylph and gremlin into myself as I did so. “The magisters, the cannibals, all of them, all of them idiots – idiots…”
I summoned my satyrs, consumed them.
I summoned my vampire, and cocked my head in consideration. The temptation of the vampiric power was too great.
It had to end.
Do you know what I’m going to do, Tem? Do you, Rath?
My fellow archmages watched in silence as I carried out my business.
I turned aside to summon everything I had left in Nethernum, except the wraith and the undead condor – the former was too useful to be destroyed, and the latter was too big to fit in here. But I called all the rest to Materium and released them from their oaths.
This meant I could chop them into pieces without any complaint from my force-blades.
How differently things might’ve gone, I thought as I went about my grisly work, if I’d known back then what I know now. Release them and chop them up with force-blades. Even if I didn’t have the strength back then to destroy the whole Body Brigade simultaneously, I could’ve done them one by one, if I’d known how. I bet Zel knew all along… little witch.
It’s all linked, isn’t it? If I never went to Belexor – if the mizelikon was never sent for me after the Red Hart… what would’ve happened to me in Zyger?
In the wake of the slaughter I’d just committed, the air was pensive. Both of them were watching me. I looked at Rath.
“Did you see it all?” I asked.
His look was almost disdainful, as though he were disappointed it’d taken me so long to catch on. He was in a particularly bad mood. “Let me fetch the stones we’ll need for our amulets, and then you can prepare them with your spells for Temcar to finish.”
“I can’t carve stone,” I said, then realised how stupid I sounded. I didn’t actually have to carve the shapes myself, and Rath could make a thousand slices a second – I might not even need to direct him, given how powerful he was – could he replicate the runes just from foresight?
He sighed, then vanished.
“Amulets?” Tem said.
“You never made an anti-enchantment pendant before?”
“Uh… uh, no…”
“Don’t worry, I’ve watched it being done a few times – I can give you some pointers.” Or at least, I hoped I could. “Rath probably knows what he’s doing, too.”
“Rath is…” The enchanter swallowed. “I don’t want to touch his mind. R-Rath is dangerous.”
Duskdown laughed from behind him and my fellow Sticktowner almost jumped out of his skin.
“Oh yes, very dangerous,” the diviner said ruefully, grinning. He held out three discs of polished stone in his hands, and they were there already, the runes covering their surfaces. He’d even managed to punch or drill surprisingly-neat little holes in them without shattering them, for us to attach strings. “But not dangerous to you, I shouldn’t think.”
His eyes moved to me. “Are you ready?”
I didn’t even need to relinquish the wraith-form, now that he’d done all the hard work. I laid the glyphs as normal, then had a quick chat with Tem about what he was trying to evoke – I gave him the ability to see force-lines, and demonstrated the patterns of his spells, as far as I could see them adjusting my own.
Once he got the hang of the tricky parts Rath told him to get on with it, and we withdrew to the other side of the cavern, leaving him alone to his task. I hovered about, studying the roof. There were thousands of bats up there, all of them seemingly hibernating; I disturbed a few with my dim light but they weren’t too bothered by my presence.
We couldn’t be far from the surface if there were bats here, could we? The temptation to just go up, soar through the rock and find out where we were, how far from home we were, was overpowering.
“Kas,” Rath said quietly.
I turned back to him and sank down a little.
“You deserve an answer to your question. I’ve thought about it long and hard, and I’m ready to speak.”
I released what felt like a thousand gallons of air in a sigh, the pressure pent-up in my lungs for weeks.
“I hope you take it the way it is intended. I am attempting a full disclosure of the facts. Please, don’t react until I’m finished. The last thing I want is for us to come to blows.”
I made myself lighter still, and crossed my legs up in the air, floating leisurely. “The first time we met, you told me none of my plans to take you down would work. It occurs to me that if you’d been telling the truth, there was no reason for you to visit me in the first place. Am I right?”
“No,” he answered immediately. “There is no way for you to defeat me. I flee, or I defeat you. But there was another reason for me to visit you.”
I stared at him, waiting.
“I knew all along I was bound to Zyger. And I knew before I moved against Direcrown that I would be caught, that I would go there. I knew you could get me out. I knew I needed you to.”
My mouth went dry, even though it was insubstantial. The anger, the old, old anger, was still there inside me.
All of them, playing with me.
“I didn’t take advantage of you. I didn’t even lie to you, not after I threatened your brother and sister. I knew I would’ve had to kill you, if I couldn’t persuade you not to fight me.”
“And Direcrown?”
“I would’ve found another way to finish him, I’m sure, when the time came.”
“You did finish him, though! With your own hands! And –“
He held up those murderer’s hands for peace and I stopped.
“Kas. It’s been – I haven’t had a friend in years. I know we’ve only really talked shop, so to speak, but I haven’t – haven’t talked to anyone for so long… Don’t think ill of me, please. I’m… pleased fate brought our paths together. Even Irimar Nemmeneth wanted you gone –“
“No.” I didn’t care if I was confirming his suspicions – I was too angry, with the lot of them. “He gave me the way out. Grip the brand tightly.”
He furrowed his brow as he looked at me. “Truly? Yet he wouldn’t know of my release…”
“All of you, constantly messing with me!” I felt my face contort. “It’s not fate that brought our paths together. It’s you, all of you, toying with us – we’re just puppets. No responsibilities!” I laughed, and looked down at my hand – my hand that’d struck Emrelet’s father in the face, my hand that had directed the magic that split open Shadowcrafter’s throat. “No responsibilities. I was bound to go there too. You’re right, though: I don’t think he knew you’d come back with me. I just think he heard the mizelikon scream. I’m pretty sure if I go and look it up in a book there’s only one way to get that kind of reaction – exposing its essence’s nexus-point… They’re just second rank, after all… But I doubt it’s called a ‘brand’; that’ll be a phrase of Timesnatcher’s invention. Something to make me approach the fire first, maybe. I think Vardae heard him…”
“I’ve skipped ahead,” Rath said. “Yes. You could look it up. ‘Upon contact with the foreign sorcerous implement, the runic nexus of the mizelikon will unravel, its essence to dissipate in seconds unless the implement is linked with a vessel of sufficient capacity to receive the power.’ From ‘Demonic Assassins: Their Uses and Their Weaknesses’ in the sixteenth edition of Anilzar’s Key to Modern Sorcery, volume two.”
“Your power…” I just shook my head at the futility of trying to talk to someone like him. Like him, and Irimar, Tanra, Vardae… They were all impossible. Just impossible.
“So, he really wanted you free? But… I don’t understand…”
His voice dropped away, and the limits of his omniscience were laid painfully bare just moments after I’d been reminded of his boundless knowledge.
They’re not gods, I told myself, not for the first time.
“We’re not going to give him a chance to find out that I’m free. Or you. Any of us. What are we going to do? Fight the Magisterium? They sure as hell don’t want me free. They know I know what they are, they know I could be a dreadful enemy of theirs if I chose to be…”
I could imagine it, now, with these murderer’s hands stuck on the ends of my wrists. How I could raise the shield and the blades that slashed at Zakimel, watch the moustached face twisted in agony at the tips of my invisible weapons. How I could watch the all-knowing smirk on Henthae’s face be replaced by the slack-jawed look of a corpse. All those highborn, watching us crawl around in the muck, in the drop and the blood and the bones…
When I thought of Emrelet, I clenched my unfeeling fists and panted.
“So you’ll want me to give you a path out of Mund.”
I returned my focus to him, swallowed down my anger and smiled. “If you pick the direction, even the destination, that gives me better odds, right? And you can tell me how to approach getting my brother and sister?”
Rathal nodded slowly. “I’m sorry you’re going, but I think you’ll be back.”
I gave him a sceptical look, but he just shrugged.
“I said I would be honest with you. I’m not getting this from my power, not at all, but I still think you’ll be back.” He said it more firmly the second time, then got to his feet. “He’s finished.”
I only realised what he’d meant when he blurred towards Temcar.
To my surprise, when he halted and raised a huge rock as if to bring it down upon the back of the enchanter’s skull, he was ostensibly standing six feet to Tem’s left.
The real Tem is invisible, I realised.
“And now it’s time,” Rath called.
From the way he was staring into the empty space right in front of him, I could tell Tem must’ve been there, paralysed, shocked to realise the arch-diviner could find him despite his tricks. The fake Tem was looking over to his left at Rath, the same paralysis and shock I imagined on his real face evident on the false one.
“I’ll let you make the decision, Kas, but I can tell you now that he’s going to betray us – he has my identity, he has the keys to our minds – the consequences will be very messy indeed, and so I will end up killing him in a far more brutal fashion than this before it’s too late.”
For a second or two I felt appalled – then I understood.
I had an insight now into how the mind of this diviner worked. How he manipulated. I knew that unless Duskdown said these exact words, performed these precise actions, it was indeed very likely that Ripplewhim would end up betraying us. But now – now, maybe he wouldn’t.
“Give him his chance,” I called back.
Rath grunted, and lowered the rock.
“You’re a wanted man, Herreld,” he said into empty space. “You’ll get yourself out of Mund as quickly as possible, if you know what’s good for you.”
The enchanter vanished, and then Neverwish appeared; the little blocky guy was sitting on a rock about thirty feet from the diviner.
Rathal smiled. “Did it get tiring?”
The dwarf did look flushed. “I was having to go in your mind about once every ten seconds by the end, there. Dropping diviners.”
I looked between the two of them in disbelief.
“Yeah, I started editing both your memories as soon as we got out. Didn’t know if he was going to turn on us till then, Feychilde, and I didn’t want you giving it away if I had to stop him. I can read his mind, same as I read yours. You were right. He doesn’t want to kill me.”
“You…” I floated closer to Herreld. “I saw you – dead…”
He chuckled, his beard bristling. “Thanks for the compliment.”
“Gods…”
I made myself partially-corporeal just to grab his thick arm with my good hand, let him pull me into a rough hug. My broken arm hung limply at my side.
He was real. He was really here.
I released him, slid back on the air. “But – Temcar –“
“Yeah, that was him in the water, sorry.” The dwarf’s eyes were shining with unshed tears, and his smile was bitter. “It won’t make much sense to you – I just worked with what I had. But I’m exonerated, aren’t I? I can go back to the city.”
“I think the Magisterium –“ I began.
“Would they really kill me?” He crossed his arms. “For poking a hole in their precious Zyger… yeah… yeah, maybe.”
“You are still a wanted man, whether you will it or no.” Rath was smiling, but his eyes remained distracted.
“I see that.” Whatever the dwarf was perceiving in the diviner’s head, it was making him look less and less happy by the second. “I don’t think I’ll be running any unnecessary risks, from now on.”
“I think it’s time we went to the surface,” Rath said. He looked at the three discs in Neverwish’s lap. “Then we can finally part ways… for a time.”
“You’re inscrutable,” the dwarf enchanter growled, “even to me, you know that right?”
Duskdown offered a small bow.
“What are your plans?” I asked them both, adjusting my wraithiness to allow me to catch the anti-enchantment pendant Herreld tossed me.
“Hide?” The dwarf shrugged. “I’m not leaving. Something’s got to go down soon, and they’re going to need us.”
“The same.” Duskdown was studying the spellbound stone in his own fingers – then he looked over at Neverwish. “Kas is about to tell you that you need to hide in the places I describe to you, in order to avoid being scried by other powers. There’s truth to this – there’s nothing so straightforward as an anti-divination pendant, unfortunately.”
I looked down at the pendant in my hand; it had fully transitioned now, and I was able to bring it into the wraith-state with me.
“But no one is looking for you,” the seer went on, “and I think you’ll be fine wherever you go. Be bold. That is in itself enough advice to let you evade anyone but Timesnatcher, I think. He has no reason to think you escaped…”
The enchanter chuckled, smiling brightly, then said in a chiding tone: “Unless he knew Kas was the sort to bring me back.”
Rath inclined his head, eyes troubled now.
The diviner’s blind-spot. Overuse of their power, blinding them to simple realities.
“What of me?” I said. “I’m not invisible – I can’t really avoid divination without ingesting demons… And there’s my brother and sister to think about. I’ve got to run.”
“It’s two in the morning,” Rath said. “I sense this has been a fateful night. A turning point in the dream. Come, make us ghostlike and take us up through the rock, and I will tell you what you need to know.”
“I haven’t tested that yet,” I admitted ruefully. “Doing this to other people, I mean.”
“It will work. I have seen it. Come.” He waved his hand, gesturing for me to approach. “Attempt it. We can be patient. We… have nowhere better to be.”
The smile on his face was fragile, this time, and I could tell he’d meant what he’d said about his loneliness. It was something Timesnatcher had spoken of – I couldn’t even imagine Everseer’s state of mind – and Killstop…
Was Tanra still out there? Was she still doing okay?
Had she kept everyone safe?
I looked at Duskdown, and he nodded to me.
He knew what I was going to ask, knew what was on my mind.
Knew what I was going to do.
I reached out for my friends, closed my shadowy fingers about their wrists; within a minute they had transitioned into the wraith-form the same as me, and my blue wings were beating, sending us towards the slumbering bats – sending us sliding through them. Through the layers of stone, breathing our fill in dry cavities that men’s lungs had never before tasted. Through yards of dirt until, no more than a couple of minutes into our nethernal ascent, we broke the surface.
Two minutes, and that was going slowly, bearing the burden of a full-grown man and a stout dwarf.
Six hours and two minutes, I thought, and laughed aloud again, looking up at the sky.
We had to be in Oldtown. The yard in which we’d emerged was fenced in with rust-coated iron bars atop a chest-high red brick wall, and the space itself was filled with tombs so weathered they might as well have just been smooth, flat rocks. There were a number of half-eroded statues – not the moving, killing kind, fortunately – left eerie and alien by the passage of centuries. Low buildings surrounded the space, roofs shining blackly with the run-off of recent rainfall.
But the sky overheard – the sky…
It was wonderful, beyond wonderful, to taste again the salt of the winter breeze, see the storm clouds roll across the heavens. Yet storms brought the painful reminder, of her, of everything that had happened to me.
I looked down at the ground beneath me and floated a little higher. I didn’t have to care about any of it – the sky, the statues, my stupid memories of Emrelet, a time that had ended – ended long ago, now.
Only the twins remained.
Jaid… Jaroan…
Mum… Dad…
The diviner and enchanter were becoming corporeal once again, now that I’d let them go to drift higher. They were, like me, casting about at their surroundings, as if daring this all to be some trick, another warped game from the insane mind of the guardian of the ways.
But no. It was Mund. We were home.
Then Rath looked up at me, his face set, some awful resolution behind his eyes. For a moment I feared violence, and then –
“Leave her asleep – write a note.”
“Leave…?” I frowned. “Xantaire? Leave her asleep? But –“
“Just trust me, will you? If you say everything you need to say to her face, you’ll stay too long. You’ll… It goes blank, which isn’t good, do you understand me?” The savageness of this sudden question startled me. “No, leave her asleep! But only her boy knows what they did with your spare robe and mask. The magisters didn’t bother to probe his mind, thinking they’d already found everything, and it really wasn’t on the minds of the others –“
I was nodding my head impatiently. “Can I wake him?”
He grunted. “Please… I’m just following the lines… Ah. Not far from your uncle’s grave. No – his uncle’s grave – the boy’s. Four yards behind it – beneath a cedar, in the outer curve of an ‘s’-shaped root. There’s still a small depression in the ground.”
“I… Thanks!”
“Your… brother and sister will both be in when you get back.”
“Well I should hope so, two in the morning…” I sighed. “Do you even know what the date –“
“Your brother has stayed out on the streets past this hour twice this week. I’m sorry if I seem out of sorts, but this raises questions I can’t answer.”
“What do you –“
“And it is going into the twenty-third of Taura. I suspect if it were not for the depth of your native power, combined with the effects of the chronomantic well we clearly entered down there, Herreld and I would have been irretrievably connected to the otherworld; we left Zyger some twenty-seven days ago now. The unicorn’s sacrifice was well-made, I think.“
“What?” I gulped the air, no longer impressed with its freshness, trying to process his words. “Twenty-seven days? Healing us is going to be a problem – and why are they staying out –“
“I move to bring Fangmoon to us now. Be patient –“
He turned aside, poising himself to move –
“Stop!” What does he even mean? “He stayed out on the streets? With Jaid?”
“No. With inkatra salesmen. Knife-men. Those I often slay.” Then, with an almost sick-sounding, regretful note to his voice, he finished: “I would not have slain him…”
He might’ve said something else but I could no longer hear him.
Inkatra salesmen.
I blinked.
Knife-men.
I blinked.
Knife… men…
I blinked again.
“Joran protect us,” I breathed.
* * *
2 – 4 – 2 – 1.
X, I really wanted to wake you up but someone I trust told me I really need to do it this way, so here goes. I hope you’ll understand why. First I need to apologise. In the last few months you had to endure more ups and downs than anyone deserves in a decade. I hope you’ll have some stability now we’re gone. I’m taking them with me because they’re my responsibility, not yours, and I don’t want you to have to shoulder the burden any longer. I know you don’t think of them that way, or maybe you do at the moment – I’ve just heard Jar’s been putting you through it? Maybe I’m understating it? You’ve already done more than I could ever have asked of you, protecting them for so long, looking out for them like they’re your own.
They are, Xan. You’re my sister, and I’m not leaving you behind. I’m just going out ahead of you for a bit, okay? I’m going to get us settled, somewhere far from here, somewhere we can put down some real roots. Somewhere we don’t cause chaos. Somewhere you can be safe too. When I’ve found the place, I’ll send for you, if you want me to. You can move out with us. Well within the limits of Everseer’s time frame, so there’s that, you know? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. The twins are going to be sorry for not saying goodbye too, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to do this without anyone knowing. I had to keep them from coming for me.
I love you, Xan. Please pass it on to Xassy and Orstrum. I’ll be out of the Magisterium’s reach soon.
K.
P.S. Doing it this way has probably got around most of the ways they’d find out I escaped – I got told this method is safe, you get me? But even still you may want to burn this note immediately, ha!
P.P.S. If you see Killstop, say hi to her for me.
P.P.P.S. Stay safe. I’ll send for you as soon as I can.
I promise.
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