COBALT 7.3: FATHER TIME
“There is no reason to fear what the new century will bring. Do your seers not agree with our own? Your forges beneath the Din Dalor shall burn as brightly as they ever have. We propose Anvil Row as a gift to your people. If the forges we build outstrip your own, think only of the excellent economic side-effects you stand to enjoy. Mull over the new tax arrangements, or lack thereof. We await your agreements forthwith.”
– from the Missive to Uthix Arax, 599 NE
The first of Yearsend dawned, and by the time it did I’d already been up for two hours and had another half-hour nap. With her (significantly increased) spending power, Xantaire had managed to order me Twelve Sorceries and a Soulfire, the next novel in an old series I’d been reading last year. I’d forgotten all about fiction books in my sudden ascent to archmagehood, what with the genuine article textbooks that had opened up to me following my transformation.
The twins and Xastur whooped and screamed around the main room, enjoying their gifts. Jaid’s favourite was the marble-sized Orb of Juvenile Delight that produced tiny animal-illusions at random, sending miniature, semi-transparent tigers and chickens prowling and hopping across the floor. Jaroan’s was his invisible knife – it wasn’t sharp, designed as it was for children, but it was tied to the will of the first person to draw it from its sheath, meaning only he could see its blade. Xastur was addicted to his self-reading story-book, the voice of a proper highborn lady vocalising the words as he moved his eyes across them. I’d studied the partial infinities fuelling these trinkets, and I knew I could replenish their stores of energy using my own. Temporary toys could be made permanent, with an arch-sorcerer of discernment in the vicinity.
With all this going on, I did my best to curl up on our new cushions and keep my eyes open, keep my new novel’s words trundling across my consciousness, but sleep was continually beckoning me; sometimes when I blinked I opened my eyes to find that ten minutes had passed, and after half-a-dozen failed attempts to get through the first chapter I set it aside and went to make breakfast. I could already tell from the first chapter that this book wasn’t going to be the last in the series, anyway – there was just too much still left hanging for a resolution to arrive within a hundred and fifty pages – and my personal experiences as a champion made it clear now just how poorly-educated the author was in matters of magic. He or she – whoever Z. B. Neffence was – had definitely taken liberties when it came to fiends, making out as though they were simple automatons, directed like puppets by an outside force… and I knew for a fact that an arch-wizard could create fire no matter how snowy it was… When I’d been giving them little thought I had missed just how bad they were; reading this one was retroactively ruining the rest of the books for me…
I stood bleary-eyed over the fire, cooking eggs.
“You didn’t get much sleep last night?” Xantaire prompted, coming up beside me with Xastur’s empty cup. It was chilly-enough at this hour that, even indoors and not twelve inches from open flames, she was still wearing the scarf I’d bought her.
“It wasn’t like that,” I said, noting her cheeky expression, arched eyebrow. “We took Ibbalat and Anathta out on a hunt. Four gods-damned darkmages, and one was an arch-druid. Took forty-five minutes to track the sod down.”
I wasn’t going to mention Em’s drunken outburst, the way we’d all nearly ended up having a proper argument.
“Still no Nighteye?” she asked, dipping her son a fresh cup of water from the drinking-bowl.
I felt myself pale at the question. I obviously hadn’t told her anything about me and Tanra running into the former champion at the Maginox battle, for fear a random enchanter or diviner would be able to pick up some of the details – for all I knew, they’d chop off her head as well as mine if we were found-out. She had an off-the-shelf anti-glamour ring on her pinkie finger, but there were no countermeasures that would make me feel truly confident about divulging the truth to her.
So, as with Em, I had to keep my mouth shut.
“Still no Nighteye,” I confirmed, keeping my eyes on the eggs.
“Poor guy,” she replied. She turned away to stop Xastur before he set off his self-reading story-book for the hundredth time this morning, but I caught the look on her face when she glanced across me: pity.
She thought Nighteye was dead, and that I’d been deluding myself this whole time – she thought my discomfort was due to the realisation slowly creeping over me, that he was gone and was never coming back.
She was so wrong, and yet so right at the same time. Was he ever coming back?
Poor guy. It didn’t quite cover it, did it? He’d been – what, captured, mind-controlled, enslaved… warped into a walking bag of magic tricks to serve their aims, a weapon who supported death, healed the killers, worked for Everseer… Now she’d appeared with her face bared, Timesnatcher had determined that Everseer was until recently known as Hierarch Twenty-Five, one of the most dangerous heretics to stride the city’s streets these last years. If Nighteye was under her thumb – what strength did my resolution really possess? Was there even a conceivable route by which I could free him from her influence? It was an awkward situation. I couldn’t see how I could do it without Killstop’s help – the evil diviner could predict any moves I’d make well in advance, unless my fate was being influenced by someone with Tanra’s kind of power – but Killstop herself couldn’t see Everseer, couldn’t direct me to a time or place in which I could exert my own powers in Nighteye’s defence.
Was I being a bit silly? On reflection, I’d known Nighteye for less time than he’d been missing – I could probably count the times I’d run into him on one hand. There was no particular reason I should feel so wounded that he’d been subverted by the enemy – I’d lost others permanently, watched them die, and felt less grief darkening my soul. Yet the day Nighteye saved me from Termiax and Rissala’s demon, from Belexor’s shapeshift – I couldn’t shake the memory. How he’d been there to save me when I needed it most. And how he’d laughed, the night of my first Gathering, when we bullied the bullies in the Mare. How he’d been abused by his own family, Tanra telling me I didn’t want to know the details…
And now Winterprince – he too was gone. He was another one I shouldn’t have cared about, not after what he’d tried to do to me – what he did to Flood Boy…
Did he do me a favour? Ridding me of another traitorous –
“Kaaas!” Jaid was screeching –
I half-turned, almost spilling the former eggs out of the pan before realising she was shrieking at me because of the state of the eggs.
I looked down at the smoking, blackened remnants of breakfast.
“Damn it,” I muttered. “Anyone interested in a take-out?”
“At this time of the morning, on Yearsend?” Orstrum said sceptically. I could only see the top half of his body, buried as he was in the books Xastur was piling around him. “Nowhere is going to be open, my boy.”
I slipped out of phase with the world. I turned, and I could see the firelight flickering on the floor and wall behind me, through me.
“Somewhere will open for me,” I said.
* * *
Within twenty minutes I returned with a bag of bacon butties and tomato preserve, courtesy of the eponymous owner of Hontor and Sons. The bald, grey-moustached baker had been pleased to feed me from his own kitchen, what with my status as a local champion and regular – and yet more pleased when I gave him almost a hundred times the food’s value as payment. With his season’s greetings resounding in my ears – the barrel-chested man’s rumble was deafening, even without the vampire essence active – I made my way home.
Xantaire accepted the sandwich gingerly, and I was forced to remind her this wasn’t the first time she’d eaten food that’d been carried through walls and floors. She started with tiny bites and was halfway through it before she seemed to lose her inhibitions and wolfed the rest down. The kids and Orstrum didn’t appear to have the same reservations, gulping down their food as though they hadn’t eaten in days.
Two hours later, the sun bravely peered through the cloud-cover, penetrating Sticktown’s smog, illuminating the drop-slush. My brother and sister knew they couldn’t go out into the lane with their new toys. The twins’ presents were altogether too magical for any explanation to make sense – each would’ve cost the same as all the lane’s kids’ presents combined. Xastur had no interest in leaving the apartment, preferring instead to stay near his mum’s feet, playing with his books.
Still, they had a few odds and ends they could show off to their peers, purchased for just this purpose at the new Knuckle Market: a winter coat each; a leather ball attached by a cord to a sanded-down twig; some interesting-looking marbles… It had been weird shopping at stalls that were standing on the very spot where I’d entered a lopsided tower of infernal obsidian – but other than stopping to marvel for a moment or two, what else was I going to do? Everything was back to normal now.
I stood at the rail, keeping an eye out for trouble while they played below. I passed the time by admiring the new blocks standing opposite. The floating pavilions I’d hired had finally been taken down and taken away, the inhabitants resettling in apartments almost identical to those which had been destroyed. (Just one of the apartments on the top floor was kept empty, for their mysterious benefactor.) There’d been the usual fund offering victims of the Incursion a few silver for the purchasing of essentials, everyday bits that weren’t going to be replaced by the reconstruction guilds, but I – Feychilde… had distributed some more funds of his own, which in the end more than doubled the pay-outs. In addition, I’d lowered the rent payments on those I’d snapped up.
I’d become a landlord at a loss, but who cared? Eventually it might recoup what I’d shelled out, and it was worth it, to see the little ones get gifts at Yearsend.
As I watched, the lane kids soon started trading those presents, trying out each other’s Yearsend bounties. Within ten minutes this degenerated into a bunch of separate arguments over who owned what, some of the little brats blatantly stealing from their ‘friends’. Tiny little Iltri was getting visibly upset.
I could’ve gotten involved, but to what end? The local children could be as vicious as vermin – I knew better than most, having been one until recently. If I yelled something I’d just be ignored, and every ignored yell would be a minor victory for them. Unless I made it physical they wouldn’t listen, and if I did try to intimidate them, things wouldn’t improve – I’d just end up fighting their big brothers or dads or something… Better for the victims of the petty thefts to take this opportunity to learn how to handle things themselves. At least the stakes were only a few coppers’ worth of toys at this point. Learn how to stand up for yourself and if you couldn’t, at least learn how to mistrust for next time. Getting an instinct for mistrusting the right people was a valuable lesson, a qualification gained on the streets that was highly transferable to life as an adult… life as a champion. I should’ve learned it before Belexor…
Zel…
But the one that worried me most was Timesnatcher. Mistrust invaded everything about him, every facet of every idea that comprised the very concept of him in my mind. He didn’t tell me about Zel because I’d never have trusted a word he said – which made no sense, because I still didn’t trust him… Though perhaps we wouldn’t have even had these weeks getting to know one another, without his silence on the subject of the traitorous fairy. Perhaps we’d have been opposed to each other right from the get-go.
But that was how I felt. Opposed to him. He hadn’t been hanging out with us as much since the adventurers returned from Chakobar. He showed up at their reception last night as though he were invited, but he hadn’t been, really, had he? He didn’t show up to discuss Direcrown, and the bride and groom didn’t know him very well, no matter the gesture of removing his mask. Now he was treating this Duskdown thing as an unequivocal win, which I could’ve got behind, if not for the fact Duskdown was caught because he was trying to stop Direcrown’s hard-to-scry fiend. What more of a noble deed could you ask for? He was an arch-diviner, sure, but Tanra and Irimar were there – Duskdown had to have known he was going into that situation blind. No fixed escape routes for him. Just a desperate plea for help to the only arch-sorcerer he thought might help him… trust him, his purpose…
I clenched my jaw against the thoughts. Maybe I’d been learning the wrong lessons all along.
I saw to my satisfaction that Jaroan was sticking-up for his sister. I felt an approving smile cross my lips.
They’ll look after each other, if the worst should happen.
A gentle hum and noticeable warmth in my pocket told me my glyphstone was receiving a message.
I could’ve taken it out and answered it but the trance would claim a decent chunk of my attention. Knowing my luck, the moment I lifted the device up to my eyes a dozen heretics would descend on the kids…
Some extra perceptive power might have been handy here, and there was no way the twins would be able to spot the subtle change to my face-shape from down there. I brought forth my vampire essence –
And promptly fell over.
It took a few seconds to realise what had happened – not a single muscle was responding to me. They didn’t even feel like muscles – it was as though my skin had been pumped full of plaster until my flesh was locked in place. My breath wasn’t even misting on the air.
Oh… Vampire… Daytime…
Only then did it occur to me that I’d never once drawn on my vampire during the sunlit hours. This was the first time – I spent most of the day in bed usually, and with the dark coming early now it was winter…
I rescinded my vampiric eldritch and scrambled back to my feet, regaining my position at the rail before anyone could see me, before a dozen heretics could show up for the kids… I looked around, and thankfully I appeared to be clear on both fronts.
Requires more testing, I said to myself and making a mental note. I’d already had to get used to balancing wraith with satyr when it came to simple tasks – something as straightforward as shaking someone’s hand could be thrown into jeopardy, crushing their bones to a fine powder, or trying to grab a falling cup and having it plummet right through my fingers.
Deciding that a dozen heretics probably weren’t going to spring out of the shadows, I went for the glyphstone; its ringing and warmth had been supplemented by a subtle vibration, now.
Em was calling me. She did not look good. She was particularly pale, sitting in the garden, quivering under the blanket.
“Bet your head hurts this time,” I chided her. “You should be in bed!”
“Fresh air,” she said, gulping the stuff in.
“Can’t you warm yourself up?”
“Feel… sick when I’m warm.”
“Aww, poor thing.” I couldn’t help but smile, though I tried to do it sympathetically. “You want me to come over? I can maybe come for a short visit…”
“No, no,” she said, licking her lips. “I just… wanted to apologise for –“
“Please do shut up, luv,” I said brightly. “It’s Yearsend, by the way! Happy Yearsend…”
“Happy Yearsend.” She did her best to smile back, but I could tell it was a battle. “So I will see… see you later?”
“I’ll drop round,” I promised. “Late afternoon? I’m sure your dad will want a beer with me.”
Her pallor increased the moment she processed me using the word ‘beer’.
“Okay, I’m gonna let you go now,” I said apologetically.
“O-okay. See you later – love you.”
“L-love you…?”
The glyphstone connection dropped, and I stared the blank chunk of crystal in confusion.
That was the first time she’d said it out loud – first time I’d said it… Had she meant to say it? Was it the drunkenness, the wedding, the argument, the dropping season…? Was she just copying me, how I’d called her ‘luv’?
Or did she – did she mean it?
I felt the pulse of warmth reawakening within the glyphstone in my hand –
She’s contacting me back!
Feeling somewhat panicked, I blinked a few times and cleared my throat before focussing my awareness, allowing the connection to resume.
“I th-thought it was a bit –“
“Feychilde.”
It wasn’t Em – it was Timesnatcher.
“Feychilde… I’ve got a problem.”
* * *
Once he was finished I lowered the hand containing the glyphstone to the rail, leaned on the thin wooden pole and tried to stay calm. I watched my breath fogging on the frigid air for a minute, using it to focus.
Okay, Kas. Nothing major to worry about. Breathe. They’re friendly.
But there was only so far I could go in remonstrating with myself. I knew what this meant.
“Where’d you get a glyphstone?”
I looked down. Salli Meleine and a few of her friends were wading down the lane, their skirts hitched up almost to their coat-hems to avoid the slush.
Salli, clearly playing her part by keeping silent.
“I found it,” I called back, lowering my foolishly-exposed hand.
“Found it,” one of them sniggered.
“Yeah, it was in this lord’s pocket,” I went on, hoping I didn’t dig myself too deep a hole. “A quick Yearsend present for myself, don’t you know. What exactly he was up to I can’t say, though – keep getting these mysterious ladies calling me…”
The one who’d sniggered released a raucous titter, then they were about to pass beneath a bridge, out of my view.
“Have a happy Yearsend!”
“You too,” Salli shouted – then they were gone.
At least they didn’t see me keel over, I thought.
I went to the stairs and headed down into the lane, then called the twins over. They dutifully turned away from Nabim, one of their friends – I noticed they both had all their toys, which was gratifying.
“Alright, Mr. Mortenn,” said Ticken Sawdan, one of the neighbour-kids, eleven years old and scrawny with a huge mop of dark brown hair, a threadbare scarf around his neck.
“Please, Mr. Mortenn wasn’t even my dad – that was my granddad.” I shuddered. “How old do you think I am? I need to shave or something?”
The kid shrugged at me.
“Just Kas will do. Say happy Yearsend to your mother for us, eh?”
“Er – will do, Kas.” He turned away to talk to another of his mates, but I saw him cast me a strange second glance over his shoulder.
The twins reached me.
“I’ve got to go and Orstrum’s headed down to the shrine. I’m going to get Xantaire to keep an eye out.”
“We’ll be fine, Kas.”
“No, Jaroan – I’ll get her to watch, thank you. Xastur will be going down for a nap anyway, given the way he’s been yawning.” I looked at them, and I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine it… if my fears became reality – if fate really dealt the hand of death to us all… “You need to be careful, you know. Behave yourselves, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“It must be serious, if you’re going on Yearsend,” Jaid said worriedly. Without seeming to even think about it she tilted her head, snaring the stray coil of her hair poking out from under her hat in her teeth, then chewing on it furiously.
“It’s not bad, I promise.” I really, really hope. “And, look, if I die, you know where I stash the money, right?”
I flashed them my most-confident grin – they hated it when I did that.
“Kas!” my sister hissed, frowning, while Jaroan just hit me, a solid thump in the bicep.
“Fine. I miscalculated.” I shook my head. “Be back soon.”
I turned and headed back for my things, then went out. There weren’t as many shadows in the daytime, so my wraith-form was of reduced effectiveness when it came to hiding me from prying eyes, but Sticktown was plenty dreary even in summer and it was almost the heart of winter now – grey dimness bloomed in every doorway. I only had to be careful until I was out of Helbert’s Bend, anyway; within a minute I spread sylph-wings and took to the sky.
I could see from afar that it was snowing over Treetown, my destination. I tried to distract myself from the horror of what I was about to confront by questioning the blizzard. Was it a curiosity of the weather patterns over the forests? More likely a deliberate action, costing some poor wizard their Yearsend morning, just so the lordlings could enjoy a more-festive day… I hoped the spell-casters responsible were being compensated appropriately for their time. I had a sneaky suspicion no money was going to make its way into my hands as a result of my particular endeavour – and mine might well prove lethal.
I descended into Irimar’s garden, slowly at first, until I was certain the dome of force would admit me. As I landed I folded away my wings and let my wraith-form fade until I was ninety-nine percent tangible. No point scaring anyone… and not like my eldritches would do me any good if I got into a fight, anyway. Not here. Not now. Not with such a powerful shield hanging over the property, blue lines forming the most effective-looking weave I’d ever seen.
He answered the patio doors before I knocked, admitting me into the drawing room. He wasn’t wearing his champion’s garb; I reached up and removed my mask as I crossed the threshold. He had the curtains drawn and the candles lit; the big room was a space of shadows but I had eyes only for the slowly-rotating bubbles of shielding.
And at the centre of the weave-to-end-all-weaves…
“Irrelya. Ardanene. I’d very much like for you to meet Feychilde – you might have heard of him? He’s an arch-sorcerer too, so he’s got some idea what you’re going through, and he’s got plenty of experience handling twins.”
He had a forced smile on his face when he was talking to them, but then he shot me a desperate look that just screamed, ‘I don’t know what to do!’…
And he was the arch-diviner here.
The girls on the couch could be no older than the twins – my twins. Eight or nine. They were dark of complexion, their skin almost as black as Glimmermere’s, with their raven hair braided tight to their scalps. They wore near-identical clothing, cheap furs designed more for warmth than comfort, but one had a blue ribbon in her hair whilst the other had red – someone’s concession to telling the two of them apart, almost certainly.
“Hi,” I attempted. “Irrelya. Ardanene. I’m pleased to meet you. I bet you’re just full of questions.”
They didn’t look particularly curious, if I were being honest with myself. They were staring at me, and had been since I entered the house, but it was almost a blank expression, more wary than scared or inquisitive. It was the two of us who were filled with questions.
I didn’t need to ask him why he couldn’t read their futures. He’d probably have guessed it by now. Even a child would’ve been able to read the pattern at this stage.
Their futures were inextricably bound to a pair of twin diviners’ futures.
“You say you had to take them?” I asked Timesnatcher in a low voice, keeping my eyes on the girls.
“I removed them from the camps,” he replied in like fashion. “They have no family remaining. They have known no kindness at the hands of the people surrounding them – and they have no tradition of archmagery in their homeland. Their kin-folk are the last I would have care for them now. Even wizards and druids will often be treated as witches where they come from, seen as chosen by the dark powers – and killed for it. If those men and women found out what had happened to the girls – I had to act. Their shields were about to give it all away.”
He left it hanging; I took his meaning.
The girls wouldn’t have died – oh no – they would have unleashed their powers, without limit.
“So they’ve only just gained their abilities?”
“About two-and-a-half hours ago, yes, by my reckoning.”
“Their… change was unpredictable?”
He just gave me an ‘obviously’ look.
“And they speak Mundic?”
“Definitely.”
I thought it through. “Can I try something?”
“Of course. That’s why I called you. This is supposed to go far, far more smoothly with you involved.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Not Netherhame or Shallowlie? You feel you can extract more from me than from them?”
“Hardly.” He didn’t look impressed with my digression. “This is your destiny, Feychilde. Is that enough? I believe it is clear you have prior experience in this area, outweighing the experience possessed by the veterans you name. Need I go on?”
I moved across the room, coming to sit in a big comfy chair facing the sorceresses, ten feet away from them. The girls were holding one another’s hands, I saw. Again, they weren’t gripping tightly – they weren’t afraid; this was more the casual kind of hand-holding that was sought out for comfort, reassurance.
“Will you speak to me now?”
I wasn’t sure which tongue to try first, so I went with Etheric, putting my best foot forwards so to speak.
Their eyes lit up, and the one with the blue ribbon (whom Timesnatcher had indicated was Irrelya) turned and looked at her sister. For her part, Ardanene kept her gaze on me, but there was surprise writ large on her face.
Timesnatcher looked between us blankly as I spoke.
“I recognise this has probably been a very strange day for you. Disturbing, no doubt. What I’m here to do is… maybe normalise it a bit? You’ve been through something very stressful, but don’t you think for one minute that you’re alone – you’re not. We’re here now; we’re here to help you. I take it… Did you lose someone? Someone important to you?”
I waited a moment. Irrelya looked as though she were about to speak, but no words materialised.
“Noble sisters.” I raised my hands, extending my own shields with excruciating slowness. “You are now part of a bigger world. You bear the burdens that mark us all, but you don’t have to bear them alone. We share. We support one another.” I glanced at Timesnatcher, then back to the super-powerful sorceresses. “We trust each other.”
“We have been connected to the dimensional corridors,” Ardanene said suddenly, speaking Etheric flawlessly; it was likely better than her Mundic, given her age. Her voice was breathy, her eyes bright around her dark irises. “We have traversed the planes in our thoughts, backwards and forwards. We cannot find them.”
It took me a few seconds to wrap my head around what she was saying. It didn’t help that my glyphstone warmed up and tinkled for a split second, then died down again – even if it were Em wanting to discuss the whole ‘love you’ thing, I’d have to get back to her.
“You mean… your loved ones?” I asked. “You can’t find –“
“Mother’s gone,” Irrelya said, her voice sounding dejected – which wasn’t the easiest thing when speaking Etheric, the language of joy. “She did not wait for us.”
‘Mother’s gone.’ In the space of a couple of hours they’ve, what, searched Nethernum for their mum’s soul? How is that even possible?
“I understand,” I said aloud, glancing across at Timesnatcher. He looked perplexed, but not completely so. I could tell his power was helping him follow along; I could give him the summary at the end.
I returned my attention to the girls. “You have many capabilities now, options available to you that you’d never imagined before.” I remembered it, those first few days, trapped by a plethora of choices, all the unparalleled, unconstricted possibilities. “Please, take the time to think through your decisions. You don’t have to act any differently now, compared to before – just be yourselves. We can make sure you’re comfortable, that you have everything you need… I realise you may not have questions, or maybe you do but you don’t want to speak about it at all right now, but we’re always –”
“This man,” Ardanene gestured at Irimar. “He’s Timesnatcher, the one of whom we have heard?”
“I recognise that word,” the seer murmured.
I nodded to her.
“He is worthy of our trust?” Ardanene continued.
It was starting to hurt my head, hearing such a little-looking kid speak in such a grown-up vernacular.
It felt as though it were too good of an opportunity to pass up. He couldn’t understand what I was saying – I could explain it to them, the slipperiness of the arch-diviner, the games he played with people…
But the core of it would be a lie, wouldn’t it? I’d just be a hypocrite again.
“Yes,” I replied, “you can trust him. He’s tricky, and cunning, and he knows how to move people… get them to do what he wants. But he’d never hurt you, or allow you to come to harm. He’s the greatest hero in the city for a reason, and he will never cease protecting you, even if –“
“We do not need protection,” Irrelya spoke up again. “We can protect ourselves.”
“You’re telling me…” I let out a low whistle, flicking my hand at their barriers beyond my own. “Where did you learn to do this? What happened to you?”
Irrelya shook her head, and Ardanene opened her mouth to answer –
“Could we speak Mundic?” I asked, still in Etheric. “For Timesnatcher’s benefit.”
“We cannot remember how,” Irrelya said, a trace of worry in her voice now. “We can understand it, but the words – they won’t come. It is the same with our birth tongue.”
I shifted my weight uncomfortably. I was staggered at the magnitude of the metamorphosis they’d undergone. The amount of pure archmagery, pure sorcerous power that had infused them – they couldn’t even speak the language they’d grown up using?
“From what I understand, that’s what happens to…” I didn’t want to say undead, did I? “… to some others as well. Don’t worry. It’ll come back to you, in time.”
“I told you,” Ardanene muttered to her sister.
“I hope so, at least, Irrelya –” I started.
“That isn’t her name.” Ardanene stared at me, not in an unfriendly fashion, but definitely irritated. “And I am not Ardanene. I am Arxine, and my sister is Orieg. Our names… they changed them, when we came to Mund.”
I nodded. Mundicising names was par for the course back in the day, but we had such a cauldron of cultures contained in our city by now that I doubted anyone would so much as raise an eyebrow at ‘Orieg’ or ‘Arxine’. No, it was more likely done by those who took them in – a way of removing part of these poor girls’ identities, making them forget their roots, who they really were.
“Arxine and Orieg.”
Like all souls’ names, I experienced no issues using them in Mundic and Etheric. I only just noticed how convenient that was. It was very different from monikers like ‘Feychilde’ and ‘Timesnatcher’.
The twins were staring at me as I tried out their names, so I smiled back at them. “Those are lovely – your mum named you?”
Orieg nodded sombrely. “And Father.”
“Well, you can definitely keep using them – whatever they told you, it’s wrong, okay?” I stood up. “Are you alright if I talk to Timesnatcher for a minute?”
Arxine nodded, keeping her eyes on me, while Orieg looked down at her lap, murmuring, “I am hungry.”
I met Irimar’s eyes, and from his reaction I could tell that I must’ve looked a bit delirious.
“What is it?” he asked, then, before I could even answer, he seemed to smear across the air a little – and he was crossing to the girls, holding a platter of warm bread and butter.
The girls released their first exclamations of delight – Arxine took the plate from him and they started tucking in. If I’d thought my twins looked hungry eating the bacon butties earlier on, this put them to shame. These kids hadn’t just had a tough upbringing, a taste of poverty – they’d had the harshest of all possible upbringings, mired in poverty up to the eyeballs.
“You don’t have a way to speak Etheric?” I asked Irimar while we watched the miniature sorceresses stuffing their faces.
He shook his head slightly. “I don’t have the necessary implements here to bestow myself with the ability, but I could…”
He blinked, then turned around to blur through the internal doorway, into the foyer –
Then he walked back in through the patio doors in the time it took me to swing my head around, as though he’d just done a lap of the house.
It was a big house, and I suspected he’d been farther afield than that.
“Woah!” Arxine cried through a mouthful of food, butter running from the corner of her lips. “Can I learn to do thab?”
I chuckled. “They’re impressed,” I said to the diviner, then continued in Etheric: “Not quite, but we can do some cool stuff. It wasn’t only Timesnatcher you heard of, was it? Or did you hear of me too?”
“The Liberator… of Zadhal?” She swallowed. “Of course we heard of you. It was all everyone in the camp talked about… for a day or two at least.” She offered me a tight, bready grin.
“Ha! Yes, things move fast here. You can be part of that, one day, if you want to be. When you’re ready.”
I felt the pressures pulling me in opposite directions – the overwhelming urge to ensure they would be treated fairly from now on, they wouldn’t be manipulated, their powers abused – and the irresistible compulsion to manipulate them, twist them to my own ends.
We might need them. Mund, the world, might need them.
Better that they know they have the choice to make now. Otherwise, when the time comes, it might already be too late.
Suddenly the vivid, unmistakeable scent of maple filled the air – I turned and saw Timesnatcher on the other side of the drawing room, making a nick in the very tip of his tongue with a sharp knife, simultaneously stepping through a cloud of green powder that he’d tossed to hang in the air.
“Excellent,” he said in Etheric, turning to face us, powder disappearing around him before it touched the ground. “I’m sorry about all that.” He looked between us. “How about I get you something better to eat, and then we can have a proper chat.”
Orieg looked to her sister, and Arxine nodded.
“So,” he said brightly, “what do you like? Wait – I have just the thing.”
Then he was off again.
If nothing else, he was diligent.
* * *
I paced slowly around Irimar’s drawing room. It was a big space, and was well-suited to pacing. The girls had nodded off after their meal; when I spoke, it was softly.
“You didn’t see them coming? Really?”
Irimar, seated on a couch near the fireplace with his eyes closed and hands on his knees, replied: “Truly. The appearance of such creatures – even once, I thought it a veridical miracle, a divine action… Now, twice, in such a short period of time? Is this the start of some new trend? Will the generation after ours face hordes of arch-archmages? When a pair of twins like these becomes darkmage… I would not wish to see the results.”
“She wanted me to kill them,” I murmured, half to myself.
There was no pause before he gave the measured reply – none I could discern, at least.
“Tyr Kayn could have used you in any number of ways.” Irimar’s voice was level, soothing in tone, even if his words had the opposite effect. “We’re fortunate to be rid of her, and to have the wards now in place to warn of a return. Don’t fret over it.”
But my twins… my twins… Will they become archmages?
There was no chance, really, was there? To have siblings become archmages was surpassingly rare, despite the shared bloodline. No, the point was that everyone had the blood – almost everyone in the damn world would have a share of the Five’s line of descent, by now, surely. Archmagery was truly random, wasn’t it?
To have twins chosen, whose brother was already an archmage? The possibility had to be infinitesimally tiny.
I drew a breath. I was getting distracted.
“I don’t even know how she thought I’d have been able to achieve it, anyway. How would I get through a shield like this one?”
“The Ceryad, likely.”
Of course…
Then I looked over at Irimar, wanting to catch him in his responses, test whether I could surprise him. “So how long were you able to speak Etheric for, really?”
I stopped pacing near him, and he just shook his head, eyes still closed.
“Diviners can speak all mortal tongues,” he said. “I tried their own dialect first, of course, but our power gives us no special insight into the planar languages. We would have to learn them from scratch, which is not so simple for the rest of us, Kas. They resist comprehension. They are living things.”
“Yet you expect me to believe you didn’t know how I’d end up getting through to them. You, who wore a spell to see shields when you just happened to be in the camps…”
He sighed, and opened his eyes, looking directly at me. “It wasn’t like that. You have to know, I knew you’d know – I knew you could ask this. You no longer carry that abominable Slave within your skull.”
More lies. Killstop… Everseer… they changed me.
“Was it to see how I answered the question? Whether they ought to trust you?”
“… Yes.”
“Why, Irimar? Damn it, man!” I felt myself tearing up all of a sudden – it was anger as much as it was sorrow, and it was hard to control the volume of my voice. “You performed the ritual before I ever got here, didn’t you? I get it now!”
Sitting there, pretending not to know how to communicate with the sorceresses. Lulling all three of us into a false sense of reality when it was all just another game, to him – a game…
“I have no way to change your mind about me, do I, Kas? Everything I try, it rots… I give you the lich’s book, but my reticence, my warnings alone are enough to earn your ire. I work to keep you from Magicrux Zyger, but my silence on this effort – a silence required to minimise the risks of making it come true – is seen as betrayal… And now, I –”
“You call me here on Yearsend!” I blurted. “You call me here, and trick me into telling these girls what I think of you, disguising your ability to follow my every word! It’s sick, man. Sick. You want to know what I really think? I think you’re dangerous. Believing in you, it’s dangerous. What if we just ‘prodded’ Direcrown? Would he be out there right now, sacrificing more souls to the Fish-Queen? What’s your vision truly worth, Irimar, if everything worth seeing is as dark to you as it is to a blind man?”
“I…” He spoke the word then paused, a long pause of ten seconds or more, a span of time surely representing more turmoil of thoughts than I’d ever experienced myself. “I just r-really didn’t want Duskdown to be right. I’m – I’m sorry, for what it’s worth, Kas.”
“So that’s your explanation. That’s why you almost let Direcrown go free.”
“I couldn’t see it! I couldn’t –“
“That’s what eyes are for!” I raised my voice, and then checked myself, barely restraining my rage. “You don’t need powers to see things, Irimar! You’re… senseless! Literally. You’re nonsense. ‘Oh, does my friend trust me? Better lie to him a bunch, see what he really thinks of me, that’ll work.’ And you’re a diviner! The greatest of them all!”
“Hardly,” he muttered, scowling now. “Tanra – Tanra’s your Great One, Kas. Don’t ever forget it. She’ll know what I know, and Everseer before me, and Blinkwind before her… Trust her, at least? The first time I tested her I couldn’t understand,” he laughed a little, perhaps at himself, “but I think now she saw through the test, failed it deliberately to spite me. Since then she’s only grown in power. I think… I think she knew what I was doing, and why. That night – when I thought Emrelet was coming with you to my house, before we went to meet the dragon-slayers – that wasn’t your old pet clouding my sight. That was Tanra. Killstop’s made an impression on you, Feychilde. Let’s hope it lasts. You need a liar you can believe in. Someone to hold your heart in their hand. Someone you can trust… Love, even…”
I stared at him in shock.
My throat made an involuntary clicking, almost strangled sound. “So now you want me to, what, fall in love with Killstop? You –“
“You’d do a damn sight better falling for her than your current fixation!” he snapped, then fell dreadfully silent, closing his eyes once more.
“Those are ominous words, from you,” I said quietly, unable to tear my gaze from his paling face. “And, frankly, a bit disgusting. You tell me Em’s… Em’s not right for me, and I’m supposed to just… believe you?”
“No – but you do. You already know it. Fall in love with Killstop – those are your words, not mine.”
“You’re a jerk, Timewaster.” I turned to head for the garden doors. “What would Bor have to say if I told him? You know, you turn up at Kani’s wedding reception, even though you’ve barely said a word to the bride or groom since they got here – and then you won’t even come with us after, don’t want to hang out with the uncool kids – but you want all this trust, all this love – I don’t get you, man.”
I put my hand on the door-latch.
“I’m alone, Feychilde.”
His voice didn’t quiver – it throbbed.
“I’m alone,” he repeated, the resignation in his voice undeniable. “Perri… Lightblind… is gone. L-Lovebright – I thought I knew her, and she’s gone too. Tyr Kayn…” This time his voice shook on the name. “And when I’m there with you – and you’re all… together, and I’m alone? Fang – she’s almost stopped visiting with you, hasn’t she? Leafcloak’s death and Nighteye’s disappearance, they hit her hard, and we weren’t there for her. Sunspring knew. Sunspring was there for her. But me? All I had was my hate. All I had was him. And in his last moment, even then when I caught him, he ruined it! He ruined it for me, don’t you see? He knew that, that afterwards I would see it for what it was! He took away my only pleasure, the one thing I thought could bring me some sliver of solace! I only caught him, because he tried to save… tried to stop… Don’t I deserve one present this year? Not one?”
He broke into sobs.
It was all too easy to forget, he was probably only a few years older than me. He spoke like a man at least ten years his senior, but – it was all an act. The studious face was thinner than ever, his eyes sunken in their sockets. He was suffering.
He had the power to unlock the past, present and future – but he was no mastermind. It wasn’t in his nature. It was just a show. He was yet another starry-eyed hero like the rest of us, doing his best to deal with the hand he’d been dealt.
I moved away from the doors, closer to him, and reached out, awkwardly patting him on the back.
“Come on, Irimar. It’s okay. You’re not alone. But I think – I think you have to trust too. You have to let it go, sometimes. Don’t be the arch-diviner all the time, you know? Trust us to do the right thing, like you did in Zadhal…”
“That was before,” he said bitterly.
Before Lightblind was murdered. Before Lovebright was unmasked.
“I know,” I whispered.
“Kas!” Tanra screamed in my ear.
I recoiled – she was there, behind me, in her Killstop attire with the mask pushed up. Her round face was contorted, button nose all wrinkled, like she was enraged or terrified or something.
“Tanra! Happy –“
“It’s the twins –” she panted.
“They’re safe.”
“What do you mean?” she moaned, grabbing me by the front of my robe, bunching her fists in the fabric. “What does that mean!” she screamed.
“He indicates the twin sorceresses in the next room.” Timesnatcher rose slowly to his feet; where moments ago his face had been flushed, now it was etched in concern. “What is it, Tanra? I can’t see it – there’s a mist on the water –“
“Inkatra!” she snarled. “Keep looking! Not sorceresses!” She snapped her eyes back to mine, gazing imploringly into my soul. “Your twins, Kas! Your twins!”
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