COBALT 7.5: A CHAMPION’S WORK
“It is our belief that, ultimately, we can accept the word of the Mundian. Peace is a possibility. But what form can this take for our people? The envoys return to report the fair treatment of our kin. They will not accept us there in number – nor would we assent to go if our presence was requested. I would not have us abandon our city, and yet what choice have we? If we are no longer hunted by land and sea… is a new life possible for us down there? Might we build a second home atop the mountain peaks, and forget our red ways awhile, that we should survive this disaster? I am a sorry Singer – may a Reaper’s Bride not step forth, and settle this matter with Yane’s decree?”
– from Princess Iseliya’s address to the Ysyri, 16,498 VC
It was after midnight when we flew home from Em’s with fresh flight-spells keeping us aloft, Zab covering us with his camouflage. Em had leashed Xastur’s spell to Xantaire’s so that the boy couldn’t just fly away, and I made certain everyone had reinforced shields in case of attack. We’d make easy targets, six people floating around in the sky like this, and I was painfully aware that, whether I wore the mask or not, my identity was now compromised. Anyone who was capable of seeing through a gremlin’s illusion would be able to spot us, and in Mund that meant we were never truly safe.
Still, we didn’t fly directly home. The spell had an hour on it, and there was no point wasting it. I’d become more familiar with Mund’s different districts over the last three months, the city I’d lived in my whole life having suddenly opened up to me – so I gave them a tour of the three Doors they’d never seen, the gargantuan portals of legend. The Spring and Summer Doors were both in Rivertown; the Spring Door stood just off a busy highway in a small plaza, its warm yellow light shining like a miniature sun over the trade-shops surrounding it. Even at this time of night, even on Yearsend, it was active and functioning, tiny-looking watchmen and magisters down there checking credentials, waving groups of salesmen and travellers through. Those outbound stepped forward into the light, disappearing, while at the same time a new group would step through on the other side, inbound from Habburat.
The Summer Door, by contrast, stood alone in a disused part of town, the presence of a dozen guards and a cordon enough to keep tourists away. This Door’s red light was no crimson glimmer like the plane-fire of infernal eldritches, but it was red. For all its homely brightness, and for all that I stayed well back from the sorcerous buzz that would set my teeth on edge, I couldn’t help but feel slightly uncomfortable looking down at it.
Asilqarith. The Sunken City. A place we’d lost centuries ago – probably another Magisterium mess-up, in all likelihood, now I came to think of it. Who else was so incompetent they could sink a city? For all I knew, just like Zadhal it might’ve been done deliberately.
How had the druid at the Autumn Door put it, that day when I took the twins and Xassy? Something about how Asilqarith, like Zadhal, was explorable under the right conditions… wizard conditions…
I made our stop by the Winter Door a brief one – they started hassling me with questions, so I used the amount of time we’d taken as an excuse to race home. (Which I totally could’ve won, if I’d been trying.)
When we finally crossed back over Sticktown and charged down into Mud Lane, Xantaire got the door open and we headed into the apartment; I lugged the sack of presents through the doorway and shoved it in the middle of the room, letting the kids at its contents so they’d get their last bits of energy out. Once Zab ended his spell, I rejoined with him and stepped back out onto the balcony for a moment, checking the windows of our neighbours for any onlookers. A pair of old vigilers across the way were scrutinising me through open shutters. Some of Salli’s friends waved from one balcony, and I waved back a bit sheepishly. The expressions on their faces said it all.
Guess the pig’s well-and-truly out of the pen then.
I took a minute, listening to the dogs barking into the night, watching the snowflakes drift. I saw Rolo Sawdan, the father of the family, leaning on the rail outside his doorstep, and I inclined my head to the big guy. I didn’t see him often – he had wormface, the long thin pustule across his cheek wriggling away. He froze halfway through raising his beer to his lips, then, realising who I was – realising who I really was – he hurriedly went back in and slammed the door.
He’s scared of me. I’ve done nothing wrong, not approached him about what happened, not threatened Tick, never used a bit of magic on him or his family… but he’s still terrified.
I sighed, then I went back inside, shutting and locking the door behind me.
I looked around at the apartment. Xantaire had roped Orstrum into doing some last-minute cleaning, while Jaid, Jaroan and Xastur played with Jaid’s illusion-sphere and its miniature animal images. Everything looked the same… yet somehow different. It was as though something had changed, something fundamental in my relationship to the place, but I didn’t get the impression it was to do with the attack that took place here earlier… I still felt safe here; it still felt like home, even with my new plans to buy a place with Em, and my shielding was as strong as ever.
No, it was something to do with Wyre’s death. Something to do with the way my parents had been avenged. The catharsis was still seeping through my flesh, the sensations vaguely pleasurable despite the discomfort – my bone marrow itched; the interior of my skull felt like it was playing host to an army of ants.
When I’d finally come to terms with the fact they were gone, the internal transformation had brought with it the arch-sorcery, but I’d been kicking their gravestone. It was an acceptance borne out of anger and despair, the looming threat of Peltos’s Gentlemen… Now that I’d surmounted that obstacle, and other, far less prosaic obstacles besides – now I was ready to reconsider. The reality of the fact they were gone – it changed over time. It matured.
It no longer felt like their apartment. It felt like ours.
Goodbye, Mum. Goodbye, Dad. I hope wherever you are, you’re happy. I hope you don’t have to look down at all this mess; I hope you don’t have to worry about us. We’ll be fine.
I looked around at my family.
We’ll be just fine.
* * *
I didn’t bother making the kids have a wash before bed – they could clean off the muck from their legs and the Onsolorian sauces from between their fingers in the morning. They went out like candles the moment they crawled under the covers, and Xastur had dropped off way earlier; Xantaire carried him into their room and didn’t come back out again. I helped Orstrum get his bedding sorted, gave him a hand lowering himself onto his mattress, and bade him goodnight.
The nap I’d had on Atar and Linn’s couch before Wyre’s escape had left me feeling rather revitalised, considering how long the day had been, and even once I got under my own covers I couldn’t relax. My head was adrift on an open ocean current, waves bearing my thoughts far from the soft shores of sleep.
What kind of place should I buy with Em? How much should we spend? Should we look for somewhere close to Irimar, and Phanar and Kani, or go farther afield? Does it have to be some kind of ostentatious mini-castle? I don’t want to spend all my money… Do I have to have servants?
That would be the deal breaker, one hundred percent, and those houses were way too big to clean without access to super-speed. Neither of us were diviners, but I supposed we could always put some eldritches and elementals to the various tasks…
What happened with the twin arch-sorceresses? Where was Timesnatcher tonight? Why couldn’t anyone foresee Wyre’s actions before he took them?
After five minutes of pointless dithering I tested the vampire-senses once more, and picked up the sporadic cry of displeasure from a few streets over – the residents were still trying to deal with the consequences of Wyre’s oversized tantrum, the wrecking of their holidays and their homes.
I’d almost convinced myself to go out, see what aid I could provide to those in need, when a little, tinny voice spoke right there in my ear, a familiar voice seeming to emanate through my pillow:
“F-Feychilde? Feychilde, can we speak?”
I sat up and spun around. There, right next to where my head had been and almost invisible to the eye, was a tiny centipede.
“Nighteye?” I whispered.
“I’m sorry, I tracked you down… I, hm, I hope I’m not imposing?”
“I think imposing’s the last word I’d choose for you in that shape, no offence.” I smiled. “Why didn’t you speak up earlier?”
“I was waiting for the elderly chap – Orstrum, is it? – to nod off. Didn’t want to disturb anyone, seeing as I’m, hm, you know… what I am. Then you did something with something dead, and –“
I was eyeing the miniscule bug critically. “What you are? You mean, a heretic? Yune’s fingers, what happened, Nighteye? The last time I saw you, you were ripping vampires in half in Oldtown, and Leafcloak, she –“
She said you were coming to Zadhal, was what I wanted to say.
“She’s dead,” the centipede said, “I know. I was at the memorial. It was a, hm, good idea, that.”
“Timesnatcher was trying to bait Duskdown into showing his metallic face,” I murmured, then looked around. “Say, can we go somewhere more private? If my brother or sister wakes up and overhears us, their memories will be grounds to arrest them.”
Maybe even execute them, I thought grimly.
The centipede moved forwards and started to climb my hand.
“O- of course, if you want to carry me?”
I’d been planning on meeting him outside and using the wraith-form to pass through the walls, but I was easy either way. I moved him to my shoulder then got up, pulled on my boots, and tiptoed through the main room.
I locked the door behind me, double-checked my force-lines, then set off down the stairs to the street.
“We’ll just go across the lane,” I said. “I’ve got an apartment sitting empty, and I’ve only been over a couple of times, just to make sure there’s no one squatting in it.”
“You’ve been giving back to the people, I hear,” the druid said.
“And not just by buying beer,” I replied.
He produced a little tinkle of laughter.
“Aren’t people going to think you’re, hm, a little strange, talking to yourself?”
I cast my gaze around. There were still people out, looking over the rails with drinks in hand, being loud and revelling. I waved to a few people, but no one said anything.
“I think they found out today who I really am, most of them.”
“Yes, I’d surmised that much… How, hm, how did that happen?”
As I ascended the stairs towards my new apartment I filled in my druidic friend on the current state of affairs in Mud Lane, the fallout of Tanra’s revelation. Wyre’s true identity. All the chaos, and the death.
“Em-Emrelet?” he asked in disbelief, when I explained what had happened in the end. “She d-did that to them?”
“Stormsword,” I corrected him quietly. “I’m sorry, my good man, but there was absolutely zero chance I was letting them go… Hey, I didn’t bring a key – can you go under the door, or can I try making you a wraith?”
“Try… hm, what?”
“Never mind. Go under the door, will you?”
I met him inside, and let a green, light-shedding illusion leap off my hand, the amorphous shape flaring up the walls and across the ceiling.
“You can become yourself again, if you want,” I said, crossing to the window and casting about. Everything seemed to be in order – the place was bare, but the boards were neat-enough looking. The door opened into the centre of the main room, which had its own hearth and a proper chimney, though the trip to get fresh water was going to be a pain in the backside…
“The whole point of this place is moot, now,” I said, laughing a little – when I turned back he’d transformed into his customary shape, clothed once more in the burlap robe and purple hood I’d seen him wearing at the Maginox. “I was going to use it as my hideout, if I was followed, or if I had to meet someone. Now I’m probably going to buy a house in Treetown…”
“Really?”
“I’m moving in with her. Em, I mean.”
“Wow – don’t you think that’s, hm, a little fast? Or –”
“Nighteye,” I cut him off. “Theoras. I don’t think you tracked down a champion and infiltrated their bedroom to discuss their love life. Tell me what happened, man. You act surprised at Em killing, but you’re…”
I indicated his heretic’s guise with a hand.
In the very moment I used his real name he had seemed to stiffen, then as I finished he pulled back his hood, revealing the matted blond tresses, the narrow, elfin face. His feverish gaze trapped my own.
“Okay, Kastyr. I’ll tell you why… why I’m here. It’s Vardae, you see. She saw it, and she told Ithilya, and I – I couldn’t, hm, couldn’t not come – if you can pass the message on, Kastyr –”
“Slow down,” I said. “And I prefer Kas.”
“I prefer Theor,” he replied, “but I never really –”
“Why don’t you start again, Theor… from the beginning?”
I sat down cross-legged with my back to the wall – it’d been a long day. Theor hesitated for a moment then flung himself down, sprawling over the floorboards, a burlap heap. He put his elbows on the floor, his chin in his hands, and watched me carefully as he spoke.
In a halting voice he explained. Everything. It took him three times as long as he needed, in all likelihood, but he got there.
Lord Justice Yular Vernays went on my ‘okay to torture’ list.
“She found me in the woods outside the house. She – she was just waiting there for me, wh-where Avenar usually waited… Is he okay, by the way? I haven’t –“
“Your grouse?”
His eyes lit up, and he nodded.
“Fang’s looking after him for you,” I said tersely.
“Oh – oh that’s good. He gets so –“
“Man.”
“Okay.” He drew a deep breath. “She was watching me, that night on Welderway, with the vampires… She knew what had happened – how I wanted to… hm… how I wanted to kill my brothers. But she said it wasn’t time – she said I had to know what it was to, hm, to kill. That there had to be something deserving of death. And I, hm, I knew there was someone. Something.”
I stared at him, perplexed.
But there were no disappearances reported – his mum and dad, his two brothers; they’re all okay… more’s the pity –
But he’d caught my confused glance. “Brancados,” he whispered. “My horse. The foulest-tempered horse in all of Mund, I sw-swear it.”
“You killed him…”
That made sense of one of the weirder aspects of Fang’s reports.
“I… She said it would make me… make me change. Change… I went to sleep on the streets amongst the scum. And – and a few nights later, I couldn’t help it. I went to her. And she showed me…”
He got up, and stared through the green-lit window-frame at the snow wafting down from the sky.
“Theor? Theor, I’m sure it did make you change, but not necessarily for the better. Do you remember what Leafcloak taught you? You aren’t suppo-“
“We aren’t supposed to kill,” he said, his voice suddenly like iron. “But we do. We have to.”
I started getting up too. “No, we don’t –“
“You can’t see it! There’s no difference! You won’t kill a man, or a horse, but you’ll kill a pig, won’t you?” He was angrier now than I’d ever seen him, angrier than I could’ve imagined him, rounding on me with the verdant radiance flaring in his eyes, jabbing a finger at me – but my shields didn’t react. “Or if not a pig, an ant – or you’ll carelessly pluck a flower, won’t you, for your lover, or kick the grass when you’re frustrated! What can we even eat?”
It was only as he said this that I noted the awful thinness of him beneath the sack-like garment he wore.
“Theor, you –“
“I didn’t come here for your pity, Feychilde. I didn’t come for you to fix me. I came –”
“I don’t care why you came! You’re here; it’s Yearsend. If you say you don’t need my help, you don’t need fixing, fine. I’ll shut up about Leafcloak, I’ll shut up about killing. But you need to come back, Nighteye. You can’t stay with them! They’re not just killers; it’s not like a kid stamping on ants, a farmer pulling spuds out of the ground. They’re mass-murderers. They’re –“
“They’re doing the right thing,” he said, his eyes closed. “We’re doing the right thing.”
“Because of some dragons?” I scoffed. “Theor, we can fight them together – Redgate alone was enough to defeat the so-called ‘King of Dragons’ – if Everseer got the heretics to agree to a ceasefire, we could join forces –“
“But that doesn’t work, does it, Kas?” he said bitterly. “That’s what they wanted, in the beginning. What the first heretics wanted. But you didn’t want to listen. You didn’t want to stop the dragons, you didn’t want to stop the archmages, and now everyone will get chewed up in their mouths –“
“They’ve got you believing that too, have they?” I asked with a sigh. “Don’t you think we need to try to fight, before we admit defeat?”
“We will fight… once you’ve tried.”
“Once we’ve died, you mean? Once all the champions are dead – then you’ll step up.”
He started crying. “You haven’t seen it! That’s not up to me! I didn’t make any of this happen! I’m just – I just –“
I held my temper in check. Maybe I didn’t know him all that well, but Nighteye had been a friend, a true friend. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Nighteye. Theor.” I put my hands on his upper arms and he fell into me, shuddering and weeping. “Theor, none of this is your fault. You’ve saved gods know how many lives, and if your worst sins are eating plants… killing a single grumpy horse when right at the end of your rope and being manipulated by a dark diviner… Your father –“
He recoiled, sobbing, glaring at me through his tears. “Don’t speak about Father!”
“I don’t know the details, what he did to you, what your brothers did. I’m not going to say that they love you, they want you back – none of that. But your true brothers…” I felt my voice catch in my throat, tears burning in the corners of my own eyes. “Your true brothers and sisters, those you fought beside… we love you, we want you back. Fang, man… that girl dotes on you. Nighteye…”
We regarded one another for a few moments.
“I can’t come back,” he said in a voice so soft it was evaporating on the air between his lips and my ears. “I can’t ever go back.”
“You could live here! You don’t have to go back to them, not your family, not if you don’t want to!”
“She will see me.” His voice carried certainty, and despair.
“She? You mean Everseer? ‘Vardae’, right?” I scowled. “How did you even get away from her? Did you escape from the Thirteen Candles?”
“We aren’t, hm, prisoners,” he said sullenly. “Once you pass the tests, they do let you leave –“
“You mean, you can just…”
“– but if she sees that I’m here, that I’m talking to you –“
“Please, just let me call Killstop –“
“No! She –“
Knock knock knock, came the gentle rapping on the door.
I couldn’t help the wry smile that twisted my lips. “You’ll have to come in through the window – I didn’t bring the key!” I called, turning back to unlatch and open the heavy shutters. “Go up to the roof, then come d-“
I needn’t have spoken. Within approximately two-point-five seconds of me swinging back the window-latch, Tanra was standing in the middle of the room. The blurred streak on the air she left in her wake scintillated in different shades of green before it faded.
“This has been one heck of a twenty-four hours, Kas,” she moaned. “Can’t we just let it be Yearsend?” Then she turned her masked face to our guest. “Hey, Theor.”
She raised her covering, revealing a serious expression – not frowning like her mask, but thin-lipped and disconsolate all the same.
“Killstop… You, hm, you shouldn’t be here.”
“You’re quite right, but what’s done is done,” the seeress replied smoothly. “You shouldn’t be here either, naughty boy. And no, Kas,” she glanced at me, “I can’t hide his trip here from her. He didn’t come here at my suggestion, did he? I’m going to hide this part of the visit with my actual presence, I suppose – but what came before? No. I’m sorry. She will find out he’s been here.” She tilted her head at the renegade once more. “But she sent him.”
“What?” the druid exploded. “No! N-no, she didn’t – I overheard her talking to Ithilya…”
His voice faded out.
“Exactly,” Tanra said, folding her arms across her chest. “You overheard her, she knew it – she spoke the words in your hearing so that you would come here. That’s why I didn’t know you were here until Kas resolved to call me. She could’ve sent you to get a better bead on Feychilde… or Killstop.” She raised a finger to her chin in thought.
The wind whistled shrilly through the unshuttered window.
“But there’s a chance she just wanted you to give us the information,” she went on, seeming unfazed at the prospect of an enemy even more puissant than Timesnatcher or Duskdown appearing through the rectangular hole in the wall. “I honestly have no idea whether she’d be aware of my involvement. It’s quite possible that you could hide the fact you know she used you from her, unless she gets an enchanter digging around in your mind. What was it, Nighteye? What did you overhear?”
“I… she said – gods…”
The druid slumped to the floorboards and, after a quick glance at each other, me and Tanra hunkered down where we stood to better meet his eyeline…
To feel less like I’m interrogating a friend.
“She said, hm, ‘she’s coming back’.” He affected Everseer’s level, almost swaggering tone. “I d-don’t even really know why I was listening, I wasn’t supposed to be listening, and they were going out of the door, so I didn’t think they thought I could hear them – I mean, I didn’t think they knew… She said, ‘Timesnatcher’s going to get a shock when he realises there are four, and he’s one of them.’ Then… then their voices faded.”
“Oh dear,” Tanra murmured, looking down at her hands, flexing the fingers.
I looked blankly between the two of them. “Who’s coming back? There are four what?”
“Don’t you remember, Kas?” Then Tanra put on an unmistakeable, unforgettable voice that still haunted my nightmares. “’In a moment we’ll be done, and say farewell. But it’s not goodbye – not for three of you at least.’”
“The… the eolastyr?” I muttered, shuddering.
“It took me a, hm, long time to figure it out, but it’s what I came up with too.” The druid looked up, met my gaze. “I don’t like the sound of it, either. I – I m-mean, Dustbringer, and –”
“It was a horrible night,” I said in agreement. “But – an eolastyr? We can’t not tell Timesnatcher, can we? Can you say you’ve received a vision, Killstop?”
She nodded, but her expression was dubious. “He might see through me, and that could be worse, Kas. Do you think, could we tell him that a heretic –“
“No!” me and Nighteye both blurted in unison.
“Hear me out! The closer to the truth, the more confused his analysis of events will become. Please trust me.”
“Don’t you know?” I asked her.
“Know what, Kas?”
She cast me an exasperated glance.
“You really don’t, do you?” I marvelled. “Timesnatcher told me you’re a Great One, or whatever. Just your involvement here will be enough.”
Now she frowned. “Are you sure? I’m not sure it matters… I –”
I cut her off: “It’s better than tiptoeing out on the ledge of Heresy.”
“I concur,” Nighteye murmured, “though I admit to understanding only, hm, a little of the context surrounding this situation; arch-diviners have long been a, hm, bugbear of mine, what with –”
“You and me both,” I said. “We in agreement, then, Killstop? We say it was a vision, nothing more.”
She raised her eyebrows, and a disbelieving grin slowly spread across her lips. “I guess we’re gonna lie to him. Directly. To him.”
“Come on, you know you live for the thrill.” I laughed lightly.
“I suppose,” she demurred.
“But, my friends, this… ‘eolastyr’ entity…” Theor seemed uncomfortable even just naming its breed. “What are we going to do?”
“‘We’? ‘We’ are going to do nothing, Nighteye.” I looked at the druid sadly. “Why, I don’t know… You could be a part of it again, a champion of Mund. No one even knows you are, or were, a heretic. We’ve been careful. You could come back, say you went on holiday – no one will care about the truth, they’ll just be glad…”
I let my voice fade out. I could already tell from the resolute look in his eyes that no matter how many words I contributed to the cause, his mind was made up.
“You don’t have to be one of them, whatever Everseer said.” Killstop supplied the parting blow. “Please, Theor, reconsider. There’ll come a time we run out of second, third, fourth chances…”
“You think I, hm, I don’t know. What I lost. What I gained. I’m, hm not stupid you know.” He looked down at his feet. “Winterprince has joined, you know?”
“We got Everseer’s message,” I said. “The body, the one that wasn’t his?”
“Oh.” Nighteye looked disturbed all of a sudden. “Oh, good…”
He shuddered into bird-form, then hopped onto the windowsill. He looked back over at us, the owl’s beady eye flicking from Killstop to me and back again, flashing in the green glow of my hand.
“I can still, hoot, call you my – my friend?” he asked in a small voice.
“Of course,” I replied, “always, my good man…”
Tanra just nodded.
Nighteye turned back to the snow-clogged air, spread his wings and leapt into the darkness.
We watched him fly away, disappear into the night.
“Everseer’s name is Vardae,” I murmured.
“Or that’s the name she chose to give them,” Tanra said, shrugging. “Now can we go to bed, please?”
I cast her an arch look, and she laughed, putting her hand on my arm fondly.
“You know what I mean. Can you, maybe, stop getting in trouble for just five or six hours? Just enough for me to recharge a bit.”
“I thought you were always having those nightmares,” I said, a bit mockingly.
I’d never thought to see her face drop like it did – she’d been looking unusually serious, solemn… but not scared.
“Tanra – sorry, I –“
“It’s okay.” She shook her head. “Just… that doesn’t mean I don’t need sleep, you know?”
“Of course, I – goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Kas.”
She blurred through the window, and was gone.
I locked the shutters, then tapped my wraith and floated across the road towards my own bed. I checked everyone was sleeping, safe within the shielding, then laid myself down and shut my eyes.
If I’d thought I was having trouble sleeping before, I had no idea. Now, on top of Timesnatcher and twin foreign sorceresses, on top of Wyre and Em and Jaid and Jaroan, I had this:
Nighteye.
I found it hard to explain to myself just why I cared so much about him. There were plenty of champions I knew better, and, due to his absence, plenty of champions I’d fought alongside more often… Sure, he’d saved me when Belexor’s curse forced me into the rat-form, and we’d had fun that night, before we fought the vampire assassins… Or, at least, I’d had fun. He’d been lying that night – parents in the Shining Circle, no siblings… Carefully weaving his web of deceptions about us, so that we wouldn’t figure out his identity… so that we wouldn’t try to help shoulder his burdens.
That was it. That was why I cared. Because he cared. He was one of the few people I’d met whose concern over others seemed to come before his concern over himself. More so than myself, more than Em or Tanra or any of the others – Theor cared. All while suspecting it was going to earn him some kind of horrible punishment, perhaps execution, he’d gone out of his way to track me down, pass on the information.
And Everseer, Vardae, had forced him to kill his own horse? It was so unlike him that it really had me worried. He still seemed unwilling to kill when he hadn’t been commanded to do so, when it concerned only his own well-being – the horrible slenderness of his frame, his talk about being incapable of eating food – but he was trapped in the paradox. Soon enough, Vardae would find a way to finish her work, complete her masterpiece, and the druid would become irreversibly dark, nails stained not with the blood of those he was helping but those he was slaughtering…
It won’t happen. It won’t. I won’t allow it.
And then the eolastyr…
I remembered the thing’s face, her horrible crooning voice. The way she’d let Dustbringer rip himself in half with his own infernal weaponry. The way she’d taunted us over his dying body.
If an eolastyr really does show up, and it really is the same one…
I didn’t make any promises to myself, but I knew it wouldn’t go pleasantly for either one or both of us next time. I would put everything into the confrontation, kill or be killed.
And Irimar had to be informed, sooner rather than later. He would want to know – he was to be one of the four… According to Vardae at least. Everseer, whose motivations were worse than inscrutable… Did it make sense for her to warn us? If I supposed the eolastyr would otherwise come to claim the souls of a number of archmages for the dead dragons, it did fit with her reasoning, didn’t it?
Drop it.
There was no way I was going to sleep now. I got up, threw on my robe, and went out. The cries of the dispossessed had quietened down by now, but there would always be someone in need of help, and I was a champion.
I cared about Nighteye, because I wanted to emulate him. I wanted to help – I wanted to care.
And I never, ever wanted to end up in a place like the Thirteen Candles.
But I’d take it over Magicrux Zyger.
* * *
As if I didn’t have enough on my plate, I’d been neglecting my duty with regard to the book that was stolen by the heretics. It’d been a week since I last went to the library, and I was beginning to feel guilty; Timesnatcher, knowing my proclivity for all things full of pages and words, had made me chief investigator, and I should have been before Yearseve, really. Now, with Nighteye’s visit and the second set of twin archmages burning in my brain, uncovering the plots of the heretics was at the forefront of my thoughts. As the second of Yearsend dawned, I headed to the Maginox and stopped by the librarian’s desk, giving my soul-fixed password for a key before descending the stair to the masters’ vaults. The perimeters of these subterranean chambers were sealed by spells that barred casual access with wraith-form and other such intangibility effects – well, barred to those I could employ, at least. But armed with one of the special black-iron keys, admittance was no issue – I turned the tumblers, peeled open the huge, heavy oaken door and stepped within.
I turned in the darkness to lock it behind me, and, while I did so, the nearest torch flared into life, casting solid, unwavering shadows across the white-painted walls. The skirt of my robe spilled over the stairs as I descended, and soon I was in the bowels of the library, the small rooms where the most expensive tomes were kept like treasures, stowed away far from the sight of even the magical elite.
Ibaran, that was what she’d called her accomplice. Timesnatcher had decreed that sorcery was used to trespass in this place, to steal the text the killers sought for months, and by the sounds of it Ibaran was the sorcerous perpetrator. Whatever magical tools the heretic had used in order to effect such a feat I was uncertain. There were traces of planar doorways, but, when I tested it with a trip to the otherworld, the spells on the masters’ vaults seemed to prevent travel across the boundary. Several areas of the library were inaccessible, no matter where I chose to reappear in material reality.
In any case, discovering the secrets Ibaran had employed wasn’t in my remit – I was to find out what was contained in the book.
Getting the name of the book had been simple: cross-referencing the volumes contained in the library against the inventory, which was handily supplied by a coral-haired elf-maid of middle-aged appearance (likely two hundred years old or more, I fancied). A number of imps, under strict orders to open no text nor read any word save for those on the spines and covers of the books, were able to sort through them in short order and reveal the missing volume to be The Ten-Spoked Wheel.
The name itself alarmed me, knowing what I knew – knowing what Vardae and the heretics didn’t know.
Whilst I could guess that the reason for the book’s significance was its lore on the twins, guess that it contained material suggesting that there would be five sets, ten in total – this conjecture was proving impossible to evidence. The books in here weren’t designed for public consumption: some were relics too delicate for the same spells that forced the ones upstairs to respond to a searcher’s intentions; others were relics too dark and twisted in content to be safely imbued with such ensorcellments.
The texts down here were left in a completely disorganised state. Nonetheless, thanks to a helpful bibliography and my team of imps, I’d come across a total of five other books that referred to various passages from The Ten-Spoked Wheel. In addition, in the main library building above me there were at least three commentaries with large excerpts – but nothing relevant was to be mined from the innocuous-looking paragraphs. The book dealt with Magisterium policy, primarily, with emphasis on expansion both geographically and in terms of the guild’s purview. If there was some clue to the ‘Time of the Twins’ buried within The Ten-Spoked Wheel’s mind-numbing, desert-dry assertions, no previous scholar had thought it worth quoting.
I had the room to myself at the moment – there were less than a hundred people in all of Mund with a valid password, apparently – so I had my feet up on the redebon desk, poring over A History of Magistry: Collected Edition V, cradling the heavy book in my lap. It was truly boring. There were extensive treatises covering inter-departmental structures, economic models… thankfully I only had to flick through, really. There were far more interesting texts, both historical and theoretical, sitting right there on the shelves near my head – and of course I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t sampled some of their obscure knowledge during periods of immovable apathy – but I was doing my best to stay focussed today.
Unfortunately, focussing on such a monumentally monotonous book had its side-effects. I’d just finally started to doze off when I heard a key turn in the lock upstairs, and quickly put my boots back on the carpet. I didn’t want to look too disrespectful.
“Ciraya!” I said in some surprise, looking up at the pair of sorcerers descending into the shelf-lined room. “And you…” I didn’t think I’d ever seen her grey-robed companion before. “Happy Yearsend.”
“Is it really?” the sorceress drawled. She was moving ahead of her colleague so that the long skirt of her overlarge black robe didn’t trip him, and her hood was pulled low, hiding most of her tattoos.
“I know, right?” her male friend said in a Hilltown accent, refined but not over-the-top with it. He had his hood cast back to reveal short twists of black hair; he was average height and handsome, his creamy brown skin marked with dark patterns almost as extensively as Ciraya’s pale flesh. He didn’t have the branching tattoos across the brow and temples like her, but he did have triangular shapes stretching from under his ears along his jawline and down his throat, shapes crawling with miniature demons. There was no Magisterium wheel on his robe. “You said being in Mistress Arithos’s good books would be a great thing for us.”
He spoke casually, but his bleary eyes were fixed on me as he followed her down, his gaze tracing the smiling mouths threaded into the dark green outer layers of my robe. Those only half-awake eyes were slowly widening in recognition.
“Let me guess: you became best buds with the boss, and now you get to do extra work over Yearsend for no credit.” I grinned genially at them as they reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Something like that,” Ciraya muttered, looking at me questioningly, then finally aired her concerns: “What did you do with the mask, man?”
“Oh,” I shrugged, “it doesn’t really seem all that necessary now. Everyone who matters knows who I am, and anyone who’s going to matter in the future could find out in ten seconds flat. It’s over.”
“Th-this – you’re Feychilde!” the male sorcerer cried at last.
“Good gods, am I?” I exclaimed in my best posh-old-man impression, half-jumping out of my seat and looking down at myself in shock.
“Emphasis on the ‘child’,” the sorceress croaked, sliding into a chair. She stretched her upper body across the table and laid her hooded head on her arms.
I settled back down, smiling. “Hey, you think you’re tired. I’ve been up twenty-four hours, and spent half of yesterday dealing with the killer of my parents. Cut me some slack.”
“Heard about that.” Ciraya’s head shifted slightly, so as to look at her prancing companion. “Oh, do sit down, Ronuth. Champions don’t bite. Not this one, anyway.”
The over-excited sorcerer sat down near me, leaning forward eagerly. There was no bleariness in his eyes now.
I sighed inwardly.
“But you – you never told me you knew Feychilde!” Ronuth said. “M’lord Feychilde, if I could just ask –”
“This is my real voice,” I cut him off, “in case you were thinking I really am a posh old man. There’s no need for any ‘m’lord’-ing around here.”
He loosed a short bray of over-enthusiastic laughter. “Well, gosh… Feychilde… What really happened in Zadhal? Did you really crush a lich-lord’s heart using the Glove of the Horned One?”
“Eight lich-lords, and first I dressed them up as fairies.” I beamed, and Ciraya snorted, but it took Ronuth a second to realise I was joking, his confusion visible for a few moments. “No, really it was just Nentheleme. She fixed the undead-killing artefact and took out the Prince of Chains. Then me and Shadowcloud bought ourselves some time while Winterprince did the heavy lifting. It was him that did all the work, in the end…”
“Shadowcloud… and Winterprince,” Ronuth murmured in a reverent tone. “Long may they be remembered… Did you know Winterprince well? He seemed so mysterious.”
I chuckled humourlessly. “Let’s leave that topic for another day, shall we?” The memories of our disagreements hurt, especially now that I was one of the few in the city who knew he was still alive, held by our ancient enemies…
“Sure, sure… So, this undead-killing artefact –”
Ciraya stood suddenly, scraping her chair loudly across the carpet, cutting off her friend abruptly.
“Come on, Ronuth,” she croaked, grabbing him by the arm. “Sorry, Feychilde. We’ll leave you to your work.”
I raised a hand to indicate the fact I wasn’t fussed. “Oh, I don’t mind. If you guys hadn’t shown up, I’d probably be asleep by now.”
I tapped the boring-ass title on the cover of my book suggestively; Ciraya released Ronuth and sank down into her chair, sitting back this time and popping her legs up over the arm, crossed at the ankle.
“So, what are you guys doing down here on the morning of the second of Yearsend, anyway? Got some juicy bit of demonology to look up, or something?”
“Something,” Ciraya muttered. “We’ve been tasked with finding The Science of the Past. So big –” she indicated a book about as large as the one I was reading “– with a harpy-wing cover… night-blue. Gold lettering on the spine.”
“The Mistress just loves her history books,” Ronuth said dryly.
“Yeah, they’re her babies,” the sorceress said in agreement, though her voice sounded slightly troubled.
“Well, it’s got to be at least a bit juicy if it’s being kept down here,” I said. “Do you want some help?”
Ciraya waved her hand nonchalantly, but Ronuth’s ears started wagging in excitement.
I popped up the stairs and opened the door, crossing the threshold briefly so I could summon my eldritches, then came back down with a train of my most studious imps on my heels.
“Funnyfingers, you start on the left. Oldbeard, there. Blandface, this side. And Bilgebreath… good…”
I continued to give instruction until I was assured they all knew what they were looking for, and, more importantly, that they wouldn’t go opening the books, or reading any that happened to fall open… thereby learning secrets of which I had no notion… secrets that might be dangerous in the wrong hands, binding the same imp decades later and unlocking gods-knew-what…
Satisfied at last, I sat back down, and the three of us watched them work, making small talk.
The Seven-Star Swords, it turned out, were the best demon-summoners amongst all the sorcery colleges – as two of the school’s adepts would have me believe, at least. Ronuth’s family hadn’t approved of his choice of career, but he’d been making it work for five years now. Ciraya, on the other hand, was an orphan who’d travelled to Mund on the back of a wagon from the Westerlunds; aged twelve, she’d managed to sneak into the city, and she stole her first sorcerous text from some old guy’s book-store. Evidently self-taught, she’d managed to impress one of the elders of the Seven-Star Swords with some street summoning, and within a month she was climbing the ladder of Mistress Arithos’s favourites. Payment of her Maginox fees was being loaned from the college’s coffers, to be repaid out of her own labour on an ongoing basis.
“Didn’t realise it meant Yearsend duties,” Ronuth sniffed. “Not for me, at least.”
“It doesn’t for anyone, usually.” Ciraya sounded troubled again. “The Mistress really wants this book, and she seemed to be in a rush. It’s not like her.”
“Probably wants to quote something out of it for yet another super-long Yearsend speech,” Ronuth said, then affected an older, womanly tone of voice: “’Let us learn from the lesson of Abethild and Gorastar, whose tragic experiment was not in vain, yet whose –‘”
“Enough already!” Ciraya barked. “That’s a very important lesson, actually, if you’d bother to read between the lines. It’s not the dark ritual itself that is banned – it’s executing it improperly. And state of mind is just as important in execution as word and gesture –“
“Really?” I asked, intrigued. “I thought that was just an archmagery thing.”
Ciraya shook her head vehemently. “No, no, it goes all the way down into the spells themselves – consider the twenty-first canto of the Black Rose Calling, which –“
“I’m sorry, what?” Ronuth brayed, jerking his head up as if he’d been sleeping. “Gods, Ciraya, you’ll bore the champion’s head off.”
I just stared at him levelly.
“You were saying?” I asked the sorceress.
“Master! Master, I have it, I have the very book!”
Blandface, his tiny mouth agape and sunken nostrils flaring, came half-hopping, half-flying out of the corner behind Ronuth, struggling with the heavy tome.
“Here – thanks -”
I leaned across the arm of my chair and took it from him with one hand; despite its weight and the unnatural angle, my augmented strength easily won out, and I brought it up and set it down on the table.
“The Science of the Past,” I read, musing. “Could I take a peek?”
Ciraya shrugged. “Don’t see why not. You’ve saved us the awesomeness of going over this place for who knows how many hours. Take your time. You think it might be… relevant?”
I chuckled. “Can’t tell you what I’m working on, sorry.”
“No, but it looks just thrilling,” she drawled, eyeing my abandoned History of Magistry with barely-concealed loathing.
“Trust me, it’s… juicier than it looks.” I spun around The Science of the Past and opened its smooth, dark leather cover.
The words filling the pages were written in Infernal, both language and alphabet. Interesting.
Ciraya cocked her head, looking into the corner behind me, and muttered: “Rhu ak’r, zi gharar dwa grel zlond okk onnog sa kasagren olg phax.”
‘Hey guys, I don’t think you should be making a mess in here.’
I turned to follow her gaze, and saw that Funnyfingers had been building a fort out of books, standing and stacking them like walls and towers – he hadn’t broken my rules, hadn’t opened them or anything like that, but I’d given him no warnings against constructing castles.
Oldbeard growled in agreement. The withered-looking imp had black whiskers sprouting from his chin that would stretch a good twenty-four inches, outstripping his height from horn-tip to tail-barb by at least half a foot. He was floating near the others with a scowl on his red-skinned face.
“We must put them back!” he snapped at his fellow minion, then dove down, deciding to pull out one of the keystone books.
The pile went tumbling down, the central gate-house collapsing, then the towers on either side. Oldbeard appeared to find this absolutely hilarious; Funnyfingers proceeded to leap on him, and soon the two imps were wrestling through the chaos. Bilgebreath went over to them and started cursing each of them in turn, trying to rile them up further, while Blandface came to float beside me, crossing his arms in disapproval.
“And people say fey are hard to deal with.” I yawned. “Okay, all of you. Put every book back except the ones on the tables – exactly where you found them, please. Then line up quietly and stop moving around until I tell you otherwise.”
“Yes, Master,” chorused the chirping little voices – then they were off, about their task.
I saw that Ronuth, having fallen silent since his weird interruption earlier, was watching them go about my orders with pure jealousy in his gaze. Was it just that I’d summoned them with such ease, that I had no fear of them subverting my control?
“Don’t see arch-sorcery much, Ronuth?” I asked, returning my attention to the book. I flicked to the back, checking the appendixes out of habit.
“Not since Hellbane,” he replied, a little brusquely.
“He was allied to your college?”
“For a time.”
I nodded absently.
Temptations of the Darkness; Ten Rhymes of Time, The; Ten-Spoked Wheel, The…
“Well, how about that,” I marvelled. “Now you’ve got me wondering just what your boss is researching… hmmm…”
I followed the footnotes back, searching for the reference; it was near the end, not far to go…
My eyes scanned the page…
Gods below!
I checked other parts of the book at random, jumping back fifty pages at a time.
“What in the Twelve Hells is this about?” I asked in disbelief, checking the front insert to make sure the book wasn’t in the wrong cover.
“What’s wrong?” Ciraya almost managed to sound concerned as she swivelled and brought her feet down from the arm of the chair. It was like she’d suddenly come awake; her icy eyes glinted in the hood’s shadows as she leaned forwards.
“It’s, well…”
I closed the book, ensuring they couldn’t reopen it to the same page just to be on the safe side, then sat back and drew a breath.
“Feychilde…”
I held up my hand to stop her. “It’s a history of, well, secret societies…”
So, The Ten-Spoked Wheel contains an appendix full of commentaries on prophecies.
“… and the kinds of things they were rumoured to get up to…”
Prophecies deemed likely to impact on Magisterium policy.
“… plenty of material for your Mistress to come up with another interesting ‘lesson’ for you all, I’m sure…”
Commentaries on prophecies about ‘the Ten’.
I fell silent, and Ciraya and Ronuth continued speaking to me, speaking to one another, taking the book from in front of me and spinning it around to study it themselves – but my mind was elsewhere.
‘Yet despite our awareness of the meaning of ten in our iconography, its duality for day and night, light and dark, its representation of the five main disciplines of magery – despite this, there are sceptics. It is often noted that the use of the plural form in most contemporary accounts of the oracle’s words indicates discrete components rather than a singular entity. We find the lines “When rise the Ten” and “Ere the Ten fall”, not “When rises the Ten” and “Ere the Ten falls”. Yet we must take such portentous passages at face value, and consider survival our first duty. This use of ‘Ten’ cannot indicate any other entity than the Magisterium, a fact which is borne out by such other studies…’
The text went on, and I was probably already misremembering the exact wording, but I had the meaning.
This book could only quote so much, but the original, full copy of The Ten-Spoked Wheel likely contained many references to ‘the Ten’. The Science of the Past even straightforwardly discussed the fact that any account from a prophecy regarding ‘the Ten’ was acting like the phrase meant ten individuals. To me, knowing what I knew, it appeared that ‘the Ten’ never referred to the Magisterium after all.
Would that be enough to clue Vardae in?
I almost smiled to myself, realising just what this all entailed… For centuries, perhaps the best part of a millennium, the Magisterium had used the ten-spoked wheel, or the ten-rayed sun or star. It was the magic-guild’s emblem, its almost-holy symbol, all over the world, branded into the face of the plane, stamped into every available soft surface like no sigil had ever been stamped before.
And it was all a lie.
They told themselves they used the symbol because something-something-five-types-of-magic, because something-something-night-and-day… When in reality, they used the symbol in the first place because the whole dropping organisation existed principally to control the Ten. The twins – those already here, and those still to arrive.
If she figures it out, she will be after Orieg and Arxine… I need to know where he left them… Can we let the Magisterium look after two pairs, or is that too much risk?
I had none of the answers. I had to talk to Timesnatcher. And I couldn’t even talk to him about Everseer’s message, not till Killstop had chance to.
I got to my feet suddenly, interrupting Ciraya and Ronuth’s conversation. “Nice seeing you both,” I murmured. “I know it might be hard, but do try to have a happy Yearsend.”
“I’ll be happy come the fifth,” Ronuth said in a grumbling but good-natured tone.
“Party time…” Ciraya drawled.
Ronuth eyed her. “Does everything you say have to sound so sarcastic?”
“Hey, how’d you take the words out of my mouth without enchanting me?” I asked him.
He barked really awkward-sounding laughter, looking a little crazy, and I regretted saying anything.
“Oooo-kay.” I stepped around the table and waved my imps to follow me. “Good luck with the book, and everything.”
“If only this were all I had to do,” Ciraya muttered, again sounding like she was hiding something; then she nodded to me and immediately returned her focus to the tome in front of them.
Ronuth was slightly less cool.
“Oh, bye, Feychilde – you have to go? Where is it you’re going? Secret champion business? I bet it’s interesting? Feychilde?”
Before I got to the top of the stairs and unlocked the door I heard her deliver a solid expletive under her breath, and Ronuth instantly shut up.
Smiling, I stepped out into the hall, dismissed my eldritches, and spread my wings while turning the key in the lock behind me.
Just another hour or two. Then I’ll let myself sleep.
Stifling another yawn, I made my way over to Timesnatcher’s.
A champion’s work was never done.
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