PYRITE 10.4: A PAINFUL QUESTION
“The whole of the strategy is encapsulated in the tactic, and so the strategy falls away. Every conflict should be surprising. If you are not surprised, you are dancing the wrong dance. You are killing by rote.”
– taken verbatim from ‘The Swordfaith Lectures’ recordings, Urdara 966 NE
The shock of Infrick’s onset flooded the psychic webs, and Keliko Henthae could hold her resolve no longer. The eolastyr loped towards her with all the fearsome haste of an anti-diviner, and Henthae wasn’t just watching with one pair of eyes – she was seeing it through countless minds, all the fear looping through her own head. I could almost feel her clutching for control from here, outside, beyond her net.
Whether it was her own desperation or the emotional feedback from her slaves, I couldn’t say, but something seemingly prevented the arch-enchantress from making good her own escape. In the tumult she only held onto a small core of magisters, perhaps sixteen or eighteen of her blank-eyed fellows remaining about her in a protective circle –
While all the rest of her army dissolved.
“Mr. Mortenn! Halt this madness!”
The air was thick with screams: screams of panic from the departing magisters; screams of jubilation from the Sticktown crowds; screams of excitement from my pet demon. The masses went rushing forwards on the heels of my tigress, too fired-up with their own grievances to hold back any longer. I hauled my shields forward to cover them, pressing them right up against those of Henthae’s enslaved sorceress.
The smile on my face broadened to a grin. It appeared that none of our foes had realised the eolastyr wasn’t actually engaging her targets. They fled her all the same, only a few of the magisters retaining the wherewithal in their dread to direct their summoned hordes, using them as a screen to cover their flight, interposing eldritch and beast between the arch-demon and themselves. Even these creatures Infrick left unmolested, springing and skipping over and about them when they tried to obstruct her path. She knew as well as I that many of the golems would return to puddles, that the birds would take to the skies once more, just as soon as the mages’ spells lost cohesion. That loss of cohesion – that was Infrick’s real purpose.
She’d told me her longing for carnage was all my own, and I’d responded by warning her to put away her whip when I gave her the order to kill the magisters, to restrict herself to intimidation tactics only. I couldn’t help but think the layered commands had been something of a gamble. However, watching the mayhem now from above, I saw that she’d stayed true to her word. The whip had vanished as soon as the rout began in earnest, and now Infrick tittered as she danced through the sea of mage robes, claws retracted as she slapped or kicked at the backs of the runners, encouraging them in their retreat. She selected her blows with care, displaying what had to have been pinpoint precision, excessive gentleness so as to not send her targets flying. When they dared cast a backwards glance, looking to check whether their abandonment of their posts had doomed others of their stupid cohort, Trappy was there to deliver a smack, a close-up reminder of just how awful she was. The ones endowed with flight-spells who didn’t immediately use them to exit the area received a leaping visit from the laughing, frightful tigress, warning them of their foolishness by her mere proximity, spurring them on in their chosen directions.
As the crowds of Sticktowners started to press close, surrounding Henthae and her last guardians, I moved in with them, sliding the shields forwards again. It was more to protect the magisters from their wrath than the other way around – if one of the mages got a bit wand-happy and decided to blast a belligerent lowborn, the crowd would literally tear them to pieces.
Then I was forced to reassess the situation, as things started getting out of hand.
An inkatra-head was on the left flank of the front row, deep in the throes of his drug of choice, flailing his arms and gibbering. I was far too distant to intervene when he looked up and shot lightning from his fingertips at a fleeing wizard.
Infrick came from out of nowhere, leaping through the space above him even as he extended his arm, taking the brunt of the blast without so much as a flinch. The wizard continued flying away southwards, safe.
But she couldn’t protect them all.
“Stop! Halt!” I barked.
My words were meaningless. We didn’t just have ten or twenty inkatra-heads in the crowd – we had a hundred, clearly well-equipped with their consumable weapons. In the back of my mind I realised this might’ve been my fault. I’d certainly given some of the folks back at Xan’s orphanage the impression that we were going to war… had they prepared for this moment? Did they see this as their chance for revenge, settling old scores by turning their own crude, powerful magic on the magic-users?
Tongues of flame flashed, consuming fabric and flesh, leaving only bone and dust to tumble to the ground, filling the air with the awful smoke of human meat. Wild zikistakram and obbolomin came pouring through red gateways; I even spotted a mizelikon, its shadowy form rippling across the mud like a nest of snakes that moved as one, a hydra replete with dozens of glowing red eyes and a single white rune burning atop its central head. One inkatra-head must’ve used their power to snare the senses of a magister because the poor chap wheeled about and ran right into the crowd rather than fleeing – only his eyes bespoke his terror as the dwarf from Arnost’s Green sprang bodily upon him. The magister teetered and toppled, and his green-robed form was borne under beneath the trampling feet, beyond my sight.
“Stop!” I cried again, soaring over at maximum hovering-speed.
“See what you have done, heretic!” Henthae screeched. “See what the sorcerer’s peace has brought to our city!”
Nightfell’s words from earlier in the afternoon came back to me as I sped.
‘Maybe? Mund needs you, Kas. “Maybe” is not a leader’s word, you know. If you’re going to lead, you’re going to need to be decisive. Dispose of your ambiguity. Brook no refusal. You know what your problem is? You’re too tolerant.’
‘Tolerant? Too tolerant?’
‘Look at me! You’re talking to the worst person in the world and – don’t – don’t you see? Even there, you want to fight my corner. Stop. Too much of any good thing’s a bad thing, Kas. You don’t earn respect by hesitating, or going back on your word, or letting others do the same. Commit. It’ll take work, but it’ll be worth it.’
Ill-will wouldn’t do it – the dwarf and her newfound violent friends didn’t wish me any harm, and the magister would’ve probably still registered as my foe. There was no shield formulation I could drop over him that would keep them out. I had to do it physically, and I was loath to manhandle them with vampire-strength. I didn’t yet know my limits. The last thing I wanted was to hurt someone.
I sank into their midst instead, and when I hurled myself over the unconscious man the crowd about him suddenly withdrew, muttering excuses for their actions and bowing their heads like hounds caught mauling the furniture.
She was wrong. Nightfell. Tanra. Vardae. Whoever she was, she was wrong. I knew I shouldn’t follow her guidance. Ruling as an authoritarian, using my eolastyr to enforce my personal notion of justice –
It wasn’t the Feychilde way.
But it was the only way. Strength knew only strength.
I took a fistful of the green cloth at the magister’s upper arm and looked up at the Sticktowners surrounding me.
“Are you as bad as them?” I roared at them, tears in my eyes, spittle flying from my lips. “Are you also wicked? Shall I punish you, punish all of you?”
They cringed as one, falling away from me as I clasped the magister’s robe, applying the ghost-essence to him so that I could hoist him up into the air while I arose. I could always fly him free, after all.
Silence fell upon the square and every pair of eyes in a hundred yards, even inkatra-crazed ones, turned to me.
In this moment I knew everything depended on something as stupid as my tone of voice, my mannerisms. I could end this right now, or I could fail, and the violence would envelop the whole district. Perhaps the whole city. The Magisterium, the last bastion of order in the city, really could fall – in the future they would look back and say that it was beheaded right here, with many of its most-influential leaders slain by mere lowborn, trampled into the market’s mud.
Before I got ten feet off the ground the green-robed magister’s ghost slipped free of him, snared only momentarily by the ancient’s essence, and went wailing into a dim purple wind.
I stared at the corpse in my hand, blood trailing out from between its slack lips and pooling in the ear – and I felt the way it twitched to be mine.
I dropped it in revulsion – the ghost-form deserted it and it slapped down into the mud.
My eyes went to my hand, then to the broken body beneath me. I forgot my place. Who I was. Who I was supposed to be. The moment left me and the river washed it away.
I wept.
Another soul in the shadowland, thanks to me.
I haven’t changed. I’m still the same boy, kicking the gravestone.
“’E’s cryin’,” someone murmured.
“Feychilde’s cryin’!” someone else yelled.
I didn’t care what they did next.
Laugh at me. Scorn me. Throw things at me. Call me a traitor to the cause. Make me twice, thrice-cursed. Do with me as you will. I won’t keep killing, and I won’t countenance it.
“What?” I cried in despair, casting my gaze out at the sea of faces. “What did you expect? I never asked for this. Why are you killing them? What’s wrong with you?”
“Lissen ter ‘im!” a crone shouted.
“Yeah, listen to Kas!” a boy called – I recognised little Yordi, from Mud Lane – he’d survived, and he…
I forgot what I was thinking about, suddenly overcome with the outpouring of support I was receiving. Everywhere I looked the inkatra-heads were being accosted by their own, forced to drop their spells. Red portals whisked away what remained of the wild demons. I spotted Trappy, standing alone above the remnants of a golem, staring back at me with wonder on her unnatural face.
“Mr. Mortenn…”
Henthae’s tone was unreadable, and I tore my gaze away from the crowd, finding her through a film of tears. I blinked, trying to clear my vision.
She was a few steps beyond the sorceress’s blue barrier, and she just looked like a broken old woman now. Her rings were hidden, hands folded inside rose-hued sleeves. She might’ve been speaking to me but her eyes were on the ground in front of her feet. Her colleagues were staring unseeing out at Sticktown and they were shaking where they stood, held in perfect equilibrium between paralysis and flight by her all-encompassing magic.
Ciraya was there, a special kind of anguish on her face even as she stood waiting, motionless.
“Keliko,” I whispered. “Keliko, it’s okay. You can let go, now. You know they’d all be gone, far from here by now, don’t you?” I drifted closer, trying not to strangle myself on the lump in my ragged throat as I spoke. “You don’t know how to inspire. You only know how to bully.” I had to cough, so I coughed. “It’s – ahem – it’s okay. You’re highborn. You’re used to getting things your own way. You think because you see people running away, it’s in their nature to run from danger. You’re being short-sighted. It’s because of your policies that they run, because of your secret-keeping. People run from the unknown. I’m going to try a different technique. It’s called telling the truth. If they can’t live here – if we can’t win for Mund – they’ll die the same way, chased by Mund’s destruction – only feeling like faithless children, in some far-flung land. No one wants that. Not in their hearts. It’s our job, yours and mine, to help them see.”
Her eyes flicked up to meet mine as I came within twenty feet.
I halted. “I forgive you. For what you’ve done. Even this.” I gestured at her enthralled subjects. “If you didn’t make the magisters stay in Mund today, they wouldn’t be here to hear me when I speak. And we’ll need them. Oh, we’ll need them, the fight that’s coming. I can see how you’d rather go down fighting me. You’re scared. Sure, mind-controlling hundreds of people is going to land you in some legal hot water.” I shrugged again. I was getting used to the one-shoulder thing at last. “You won’t be able to continue in your current position, I don’t think, but maybe we can defer punishment – at least until we see who survives the Crucible. Who’s going to gainsay us, eh?”
“Mr. Mortenn… I always… always knew I’d need you more than I’d hate you.” She drew herself up, blinking furiously – blinking back her own tears, I thought. “Mr. Valorin will be sanctioned for his misdeeds last night.”
I shook my head, raised my open hand to stop her –
“The magisters you killed during the Incursion,” she went on regardless, “were behaving in an unofficial capacity – Mr. Mortenn will be pardoned for –“
“No.”
She stammered and fell silent when I used the gremlin-voice.
“No, Mistress Henthae. Only my life will pay for my behaviour; and only your life could – can – will – pay for their behaviour. Don’t talk to me about unofficial acts, after what you did to my home. But that’s something you’ll just have to carry with you. It’s heavy, but you’ll get used to it. I’ll help. To my point:
“Say my name.”
She squirmed, shuddering like her slaves. “Your name? He – he went to Zyger! Mr. Mortenn, you –“
“You don’t understand. You don’t understand anything. Say. My. Name.”
“Feychilde!” she screamed, weeping openly now. “Feychilde! Will you not relent? When will it be enough?”
“When you give me your own name.”
“I – wha – what?” I’d never seen her so flustered, so utterly disarmed, despite the coterie of powerful magic-users arrayed about her. “I’m – I’m Keliko Henthae – Mistress of the Pool… of…”
Her voice trailed away when she saw the gentle shaking of my head, the wistful smile on my lips.
“You – you can’t possibly mean…”
I nodded. “Go on. Get creative. I don’t care if you’re too cultured. It’s the only way I’m going to accept your apology, anyway. The only way we’re all going to move on from this. You could’ve just done it right from the start, you know. There was never any need for spies. You can just… I know this sounds mad… join in our meetings. We had a few of the worst darkmages to ever exist right there in our midst. I don’t think the Head of Special Investigations is going to be too big of a problem. Glaif and Illodin know you, right in the heart of you. You’re one of us, Henthae. You have to start by accepting yourself.”
She stared me right in the eyes as if nonplussed, her mouth agape, her blue eyes looking all the more intense through the layers of shielding.
“Come on, don’t tell me you didn’t think about it when you were a little kid. What about when you got your powers? Oh wait – I get it. There’s too many options, and you can’t decide.”
A timid smile suddenly touched her lips, transforming her completely.
“Oh!” she breathed. “I – d-do you mean it, Feychilde?”
I grinned, my heart thoroughly warmed, all my horror and self-loathing forgotten in the wake of her metamorphosis.
“You never needed anyone’s permission, Keliko. Just your own.”
She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then slowly released it. The mages around her didn’t lose their alert postures entirely, but they appeared to relax slightly where they stood, as though her control over them had changed subtly.
This is it, Nightfell, I thought to myself, pride and righteousness swelling up once more within my breast. This is Feychilde’s truth. Strength knows only strength. But weakness knows only weakness. And we’re all weak. I’ll brook their refusals, and tolerate the intolerable, as you know I will.
Filled with sudden certainty, I cast my glance up, up across the crowd, raking the surrounding buildings –
And there she was, atop one of the roofs on the northern edge of the market. A dark shape, almost invisible against the night but for the white locks trailing in the wind. She had the bow slung over her shoulder which, given what I’d heard so far of her exploits since my exile, I took for a positive sign.
Good that she saw this with her mortal eyes, I thought. Stop hating yourself, Tanra. Killstop must live again. Killstop’s who I need. Not this death-dealer, this mask you wear to proclaim your sins.
“I need clemency for Nightfell as well,” I said to Henthae. “At least a temporary reprieve. I know what you’re going to say – I know what she did – but we can’t win without them. Both of them. They didn’t choose to be a little bit insane, you know.”
“A little bit?” someone behind me snarked.
“A lot, then,” I said, turning to smile at the crowd. “Who am I to judge? Who’s any of us, in this day and age?”
“Lad’s got that much right,” an older man said gruffly to his fellows.
“Maybe we can work something out,” Henthae replied at length. Her excitement at the prospect of becoming a champion was fading; I could see the real-life responsibilities creeping into her mind simply by watching her facial expression, the way her smile became a grimace, her smooth brow furrowing into a nest of wrinkles. “I – I don’t know where to – to –“
“Start by letting these people go,” I said, indicating her enslaved magisters. “Don’t panic. What you’ve done today will have consequences, no doubt. I’m pretty sure the Pool of Reflections and Special Investigations are going to want new leadership. That’s okay. You need to step away from your old life, away from all the petty games, Henthae. If you need my support, ask for it. I’ll fight your corner for you… Come on. Just do it, without overthinking it. Go on. That’s it.”
I watched as life slowly returned to her flock of sheep.
Ciraya and several others – the youngest, of junior rank, it seemed – fled the scene almost instantly. Most of the remaining magisters just looked around and, coming to their senses, started cringing, staring into the murmuring masses with frightened eyes. Henthae’s enslaved arch-sorceress clasped one of her fellow magister’s hands and stepped with him straight into Etherium – not that I could blame her, though I hoped she’d return in time for my message. In the end only one of Henthae’s fellow leaders was brave enough to start laying into the enchantress, levelling all the same accusations of impropriety I’d made myself – it seemed from the way he kept glancing at me that he was trying to curry favour with me by lambasting his boss, but when I told him to shut up he obeyed without question, falling straight into the same cowed silence as his comrades.
“It’s okay,” I said to the lot of them as soothingly as I could. “Look, Trappy didn’t kill a single magister.” I waved the eolastyr over, and as she approached the remaining mages unconsciously formed a huddle, pressing in on one another for protection.
As though placing themselves in one giant lump could do anything other than speed up their mass-execution…
“Look, she’s harmless. A pirouette, please. See. The arch-fiend is quite tame, aren’t you, Trappy?”
“Yes, Master.”
My remonstrations were getting me nowhere. Even the Sticktowners in the crowds weren’t buying it, steering well-clear of the tigress when she sauntered over, shuddering when she span on her heel at my request.
“You could try to sound a little bit more enthusiastic, you know.”
“Yes, Master!”
That got some chuckles.
I cast my gaze to the north, checking whether Tanra –
She was gone.
“Kas! Kas –“
I turned again to see Garet approaching me, half-clambering through the crowds. Most of the Sticktowners were staring my way, peering at the exotic demon, the subjugated magisters – they didn’t know a huge Bertie Boy was shoving his way through them from behind until the massive-knuckled hand landed on their shoulders, turning them, forcing them aside.
“Kas!”
“Garet! My man. I’d like you to formally meet Trappy – give the nice man a wave, that’s a good girl.”
“Yes, Master.” Even the demon was playing along by now, waving her paw vigorously with a dumb smile on her face. “Would you like me to do a little jig, Master? I’ve sampled the dance-routines of several-dozen cultures – perhaps a belly-dance, for Mr. Garet?”
She raised both her arms high above her head, exposing strands of taut sinew along her flanks, and revolved her furry midriff as though there was supposed to be something alluring to the sight. Certainly the motions were suggestive.
“I – ah – don’t know if you’re quite Garet’s type. That’ll do. Quite enough, thank you.” Trappy sullenly lowered her arms and tail with a pout on her dusky lips, and I turned back to the Bertie Boy. “What’s the problem, Garet?”
“We done here?” he asked brusquely. “A lot to do, yer know. To be gettin’ on wi’.”
“Yeah, I reckon so. I’ll come give you a hand, in a bit.” I glanced back at the magisters. “Oh, where are my manners? Garet, local businessman, I’d like you to meet –“
“Oathbreaker.”
I stared at Henthae in surprise. “Oathbreaker?” I repeated.
Her colleagues… former colleagues… were staring at her with much the same bewildered expression. But Keliko herself seemed to be awaiting my response with bated breath, blue eyes shining.
Her choice seemed fitting, considering the circumstances. “I… like it?” I offered.
The enchantress smiled sadly, while, off to my left, one of the watching Sticktowners muttered to his companion, “They ‘ad an Oafkeeper back in the seventies, y’know.”
“Yes they did, dear chap,” Henthae said coolly, turning her head to the man. “If I can be half the champion he was… I… Yes.”
She shivered, and smoothed down her robes in what I felt was sure to be a nervous gesture. She’d paled, but she was still standing erect, still smiling her bittersweet smile.
“Tomorrow night, Oathbreaker.” I held out my hand to Trappy, and she prowled to my side, taking my fingers. “I’ll see you at the Tower of Mourning when the full moon’s high.”
“Of course… Of course!” Her eyes blazed, and she cast her gaze about at the magisters crowded around her, as if the sheer splendour of her champion’s stare was a shield against all the criticisms they might choose to make.
But in that, she’d be right.
I knew the heart of the champion.
And I refused to accept that I was alone.
* * *
The crowd started dispersing. The leftover senior magisters went on their way courtesy of flight-spells, bestowed by the lone arch-wizard remaining in their number, and their fierce debate could be heard as they rose into the air. For all that it was getting late, the sky fading and the moon rising, it was still warm out; the encounter had left me with a film of sweat across my forehead that I couldn’t wipe off without my free hand. I tried ducking my head against my shoulder, but there wasn’t enough meat left in my right arm to reach the perspiration.
Once we were out of sight I set us down on an unbroken roof, and released Infrick so that I could mop my brow. I sat down on a crate that looked like it’d been recently used by a homeless person… probably deceased. I didn’t think, wherever they were, that they’d mind too much.
I drew my sleeve across my face, trying not to shudder, brimming with emotions that warred ceaselessly with one another.
“Magnificent,” the eolastyr said at last, breaking her silence, and I could hear in her voice the smile of delight that played upon her features. “Master – when at first you asked me to refrain from killing, I didn’t understand. I do now. Your performance was truly inspired.”
I dropped my arm and stared at her. She stared back.
“Where do we go next?” she went on, making conversation in an attempt to relieve the tension suddenly growing between us. “Do we –“
“Be quiet.”
I stared at her for what felt like a long time. She couldn’t speak – I could tell that she wanted to, but my command held her like a leash. Her claws extended and retracted, scraping the tarred wooden roof.
I see through your flattery, creature.
“Performance?” I said quietly, after a minute or two. “For all your knowledge, all your intellect, you don’t understand anything, do you?”
“I –“
“Do you really think I would want them dead? Why? Why would I want that, of all things?”
“Did they not seek your death, Feychilde? I recognise it now – you wish to let them persist, so that you can use them, use them as weapons against the dragons –“
“No!” I snarled. “That’s not it at all! I… You are so selfish. All you think about are the slights you’re offered – the slights I’m offered. You have to realise – we deserve it, and worse.” I looked over her head, back the way we’d came, towards Knuckle Market. “We can’t get mad about someone wanting to take us down when they think we’re toppling their whole existence. You can’t think it’s justified when you deliver the slap then act all shocked when you get slapped back. The lesson isn’t to keep slapping harder – it’s to stop slapping. Someone… someone has to stop the slaughter.”
I returned my gaze to her face.
“And that someone isn’t going to be you, is it?”
She shook her head softly.
“Goodbye for now, Trappy. I’ll do this my way, or not at all.”
I gestured, and the heatless red flames licked up from the rooftop beneath her feet. A vague gateway formed, inside the crimson fire, then swept forwards to consume her.
“For now,” she whispered as she vanished; and for all that she repeated my own words back to me it didn’t sound like she was agreeing with me.
I sat there for awhile longer, watching the stars come out. The wind blew through my hair and for the first time since arriving back in Mund, the scents of the Incursion fell away and I could smell the salt of the sea. For whatever reason, I suddenly missed Telior. I missed the sounds of the waves crashing against the shoreline. I missed the place I earned amongst the people. And there was something else I’d had there, something important that was missing now, and I longed for it. It was as though my soul had been divided, some significant portion left behind to linger with the survivors of the massacre, clinging to cold black rocks…
“It’s been one of those days,” Nightfell said from behind me.
I didn’t turn. “One of those weeks.”
“And then some.” She walked around to stand in front of me; black leather longwalker boots appeared in front of my eyes, their hard wooden soles grinding on the tarry surface of the roof as she turned back to face me. “It’s the eighth of Chraunost. We got started in Orovost, didn’t we? Eight months. It’s been one of those eight-months.”
What she said was one of those things that simultaneously made no sense and made perfect sense.
“You can say that again.” I lifted my gaze to meet her eyes but she was wearing the black, featureless mask once more. “Vardae?”
She shrugged.
“Show off.”
She laughed, then sat down next to me. She reached up and removed the mask, but I didn’t turn to look at her. I heard as she inhaled deeply.
“Mmmm. Did you miss it here?”
It was my turn to chuckle. I didn’t respond, and she sat with me in silence.
Why do I feel comfortable next to her? I wondered. Her, of all people? She’s slain so many… she’s a murderer without compare… a brutal, efficient nightmare of a darkmage…
I felt like a hypocrite, after dismissing Infrick so curtly. And yet even if she was Everseer, she was Tanra. Whatever the admixture of the two personalities had done to her, the change was absolute. The only difference between them had been brought out in the passage of my whips, and would it even still hold true? Would Tanra still let me slice off her head, if I were to swing at her now? Would Vardae still avoid her own death, if I offered it once more? I fancied that, after Tanra’s forgiveness of her captor there on the Thirteen Candles lawns, they were closer than ever. Was their outlook on their own death the sum of it? Was that all that could be pointed-to, as a reason to bring a distinction between them?
Tanra killed the Arrealbord… Tanra butchered unarmed civilians… She took the skin of Theor’s father…
Wasn’t I being a worse hypocrite, thinking that the borrowed soul of another killer could wash away Vardae’s sins? Wasn’t I a killer? How dare I cringe, to sit next to Vardae Rolaine! As much as I wouldn’t have wanted to admit it, she was practically my role-model.
I turned to regard her then, studying her in profile while her gaze searched out the mysteries in the stars. She looked so young, sidereal light swimming in her wide, roaming eyes.
Is she fourteen, or mid-thirties?
Diviners… if anyone could pull off agelessness, it was them. The heretic druid who’d shaped her face had done a marvellous job, smoothing the mature skin, capturing every little detail, right down to the peculiar curve to the ridges of skin at the side of her button-nose… It was a good-enough replica that I could rediscover the face of my friend in it.
If it even is Vardae… knowing Tanra…
I had to believe people could change. If Tanra could believe it, why couldn’t I? She’d been on the receiving end of Vardae’s harrowing lessons, worse than any other, and she could forgive.
That was the lesson. Forgiveness.
Acceptance.
I found myself accepting Vardae, if this really was her underneath Tanra’s skin. And if, as I suspected, she would be my accomplice this night – I had to demonstrate that trust. I had to extend the hand of peace, one last time, so she knew.
I leaned over to nudge her out of her reverie, and asked the one question I could think of.
“So… how’s your mum?”
* * *
It was much later – around eleven, I suspected, though it’d been some time since we’d passed a square with a working clock. In several places the demons seemed to have exulted in ripping the devices down, even where they’d left the other structures almost untouched. I wondered idly whether the clock-destruction was merely incidental, the result of some fiend’s personal enmity against Chraunator, or if it was the result of Abstraxia’s direct orders. Either way, her pets had made it very hard to tell the time around Mund today, and even with Nightfell’s help the hours had slipped away from us this evening.
We’d saved at least a dozen magisters from lynchings, and put the fear of the Five in their attackers. We’d helped clear several blockages preventing the flow of wagons through the streets, including a truly huge mound of debris clogging the arterial route of the Plain Road – supplies were now finding their intended recipients at last. I must’ve munched my way through half a loaf of brown bread and a quarter of a surprisingly-fresh ham, directing Khikiriaz around my mouthfuls, gesturing with the ham and blabbering Infernal. My co-conspirator seemed to have no desire for food despite the way she’d been taxing her powers – but when we stopped at Blackbrook I noticed her swooning, and after the initial sweep of the area she laid herself down in a mucky gutter. Heedless of a hundred pairs of onlooking eyes, she’d curled up with her head on her arm and treated herself to a quick nap. My ikistadreng had been diligently bulldozing tons of material in a single immense shove, causing a near-unbearable din not twenty yards away, but Nightfell seemed quite unconcerned, sleeping right through… until the nightmare took her.
I’d noticed her legs jerk, and after a minute I chose to shake her awake before her involuntary motions did it for her; she’d already been drawing some odd (odder?) looks from the civilians. She’d bolted upright at my touch on her shoulder, and her eyes met mine almost instantly.
We both knew in that moment what we had to do. The tension she sensed in me I sensed in her. As much as we were being responsible, helping secure the survival of the people in this trying time, we were shirking our true responsibility. The dream was true. The dream was true. We knew where we were supposed to be and time was ticking by, even if there was no clock to tell us directly. We had to tell the truth, and the window of opportunity was shrinking, our chances evaporating by the second. Hale and hearty warriors fled the ruin of the world’s most glorious capital with every moment that passed, and it was our task to keep them here…
If we could.
So it was that, with hardly a word exchanged between us, we set off flying, north and east, climbing over Hilltown, Hightown. We ran into Imrye and Kirid before we reached the Noxway, and the diviner suggested that the druids ought to go on a flight down the Blackrush – I said nothing to them, my mind whirling with a million thoughts.
“Are you ready for this?” I asked as we touched down near the Maginox library.
“Are you?” Nightfell replied, releasing her hand from mine, her skin and clothing returning to their natural solidity. “You’re the one that’s going to be doing all the talking, aren’t you? Please tell me you are…”
I swallowed. “I guess so.”
“Oh, thank the gods for that. If you made me do it, I’d be forced to start apologising, and I don’t like the way that bodes. There’s no – no apologising that’ll do it and when I start and don’t think I ever get to stop –“
“We’ll worry about that,” I said, “afterwards.”
She nodded, biting her lip momentarily. She knew it as well as I. None of us were likely to outlast the oncoming Crucible. Let the living punish the living. The dead would go their own ways, and the gods would judge them for their sins.
I cast about. In spite of the hour and the current state of emergency there were dozens of itinerant magisters in our immediate vicinity. Some had books tucked under their arms or clasped between their hands, and at least one dropped his load when he spotted me and Nightfell – seven or eight tomes of various sizes spilled from the crook of his arm onto the gravel path, the bright ink on their dark spines and covers glittering in the light of the glow-globe lamps.
“Hello!” I called cheerily, giving a little wave. “I’d – er – like to speak to whoever’s in charge, please!”
The magisters eyed us with a mix of fear, contempt and awe while we waited for their glyphstone-wielding spokesman to telepathically deliver our request. I felt better already. It was only a few minutes before we were being introduced to the new Acting Head of Operations and Special Investigations, a tall, older man with a bit of limp to his step. His robe didn’t bear the Magisterium icon, and it was dark-hued and stately, his hood framing a lined, clean-shaved face. At his side walked a woman with light brown curls, and it wasn’t until we’d started crossing the grounds and conversed a bit that I recalled where I knew her from.
“Yes, by all accounts we are most-fortuitous to have avoided the trip to Chakobar,” Rala said with a rueful smile, “if indeed one might be prevailed-upon to believe any aspect of an Infernal Incursion is positive. Phanar of N’Lem succeeded, but whether my lord and I would have escaped the confrontation with Redgate with our lives… Who can say?”
She spoke quickly, nervously; when Lord Ghemenion spoke it was with a calmer, jovial air, but he couldn’t help but glance furtively between myself and Nightfell, as though he expected us to explode without warning into unpredictable, uncontrollable violence.
“Yes, well,” he said, “I got a new library out of the fiasco. You should see it! Redebon panels. Twelve racks on a spinwheel – higher than I can reach. Have to have my imps fetch the ones off the top, don’t you know.”
“Imps – so useful,” I murmured.
“Aren’t they just?”
A pair of young magisters-in-training were sitting together on a bench beside a pond, a small construct of white glamour burning as it bobbed gently above them, illuminating the book they were bent over. Upon hearing our voices the pair glanced up at us in unison, then returned their gazes to their book –
Then, once more in unison, slowly raised their faces to stare, wide-eyed, as we approached.
I nodded to them in a friendly fashion so they wouldn’t get the wrong impression, eliciting a pair of bewildered smiles – then I emitted a scattering-sound in their direction, a soft crackling that would hopefully mask our conversation while we followed the path, passing within ten feet of the youngsters. We were going at a slow pace to accommodate the limping lord, and we’d be in earshot for a long time otherwise.
“I lost my chief imp… in the Incursion,” I went on as we strolled. “Pinktongue. Been working hard for me for a long time, that little fella.”
“Truly?” Ghemenion actually managed to sound sympathetic. “The best help is the hardest to come by. My library’s all sorted, but you should see some of the travesties produced by our new kitchens. The chefs of the Tower of the Guardians were once famous…” He sighed, perhaps a bit melodramatically. “What’s become of the world?”
What’s become of the world? Listening to this posh git expressing all his vapid insecurities was starting to make me angry again.
“It was your magisters who slew my imp, actually.” I didn’t look at him, but I perceived his glance as it raked across my face; I could’ve sensed the terror he exuded without access to vampiric essence. “A deliberate act. But all forgiven, of course, my good man.”
My tone expressed precisely zero forgiveness, but he could hardly point that out, could he?
“Well – well one imp’s much the same as another, I suppose,” Rala interjected, “from a certain perspective, at least.”
“Kas names all his imps,” Nightfell remarked.
“Oh?” Rala’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times with no sounds coming out. “O-oh… I see…”
“She’s exaggerating,” I said. “I only name the ones whose murders I swear to avenge.”
Both the Night’s Guardians staggered, not just the old man.
“I’m joking!” I heaved a real sigh, then adjusted my ghost-essence, reaching out to take Lord Ghemenion by the upper arm.
To his credit, he only flinched a little.
“Look… Lord Ghemenion…”
“Aladart! Please!”
“Lord Ghemenion,” I repeated. “I’m not afraid to use your title. Maybe, when we get to know each other better, we’ll move to a first-name basis. For now, you can be Lord Ghemenion, and I can be Feychilde. That okay?”
He nodded, sharp old eyes filled with fear.
Oh, under what rocks do they find these molluscs?
“Lord Ghemenion, have they told you what’s happening? Are you aware of the details of the Dracofont? You know about Redgate’s return?”
“His return?” the sorcerer blurted. “I – I’ve only been – I only accepted this position because – because –“
“Because no one else would,” Nightfell finished dryly. “Is the prestige worth it, Aladart? Already, you begin to regret.”
His shoulders shook, and he raised both hands to the edges of his hood, pulling them down as though to reassure himself that the cowl was in position.
“Two hours!” he gasped, his cool facade finally shattering entirely. “I’ve been in the position for two hours, and, and it’s not even my place – I only spent a year in the Magisterium, years ago, and there’s so much, so much to… already I…“
He descended into incoherent mumbles.
“Believe me when I say,” Nightfell said in a soothing voice, “you’ll regret your regrets. You’ll do Mund proud.”
“Both of you,” I said in agreement, nodding at Rala. Nightfell was right, if I understood the meaning of her words – it wouldn’t do for us to damage their confidence, or act as their opponents, not at a time like this. And, by the looks of things, Ghemenion was going to need all the support he could find. It would be our job to bolster his resolve, help him shoulder his burdens.
“Really?” Lord Ghemenion gasped, reaching up to stroke the sides of his hood again. “You really think so?”
“Ah, my dear Aladart…” Nightfell smiled up at him sweetly. “I don’t just think so. I know so.”
* * *
My companion was already aware of the exact location of the ‘Invocatrix’, but she’d only entered that place once before – and that was very much without permission. Now all authorisations had been granted, and the Acting Head of Special Investigations was there himself to wave us through the way-checks and into the low building. From the outside this particular pentagonal structure seemed much the same as the others dotting the grounds – a single storey of smooth white stone with a gold-tinted roof, only differentiated in that it was windowless. A ditch surrounded it on all five sides, and five causeways, short but broad enough for several to walk abreast, stretched across the trench to permit entry. The ditch was shallow-enough that one could’ve simply clambered up the far side, and I was still using my eldritches to hover so as to not expose the same lameness Ghemenion openly displayed; but still I bowed to the pressure of societal norms, soaring across the little bridge right next to Ghemenion.
How different we were. I wondered idly if he had ever partaken in the joining rituals, seeking a temporary abeyance of his condition by taking on the fiendish essence of a lesser demon… Such a thing was a risky business. He had no visible tattoos, no obvious protections against infestation. And yet, if our positions were reversed – if he had the access to the archmagery that would make a mockery of his disability, and I limped alongside him, a sorcerer by trade – how would I feel then? Would I have tried a zikistakram infusion? Would I envy him this seeming convenience that permitted him to elide his conditions and float, as if free, in the very wind? It would look costless, effortless. And in truth, I was so far removed from my own mutilation thanks to my magic that I earned his envy. It was effortless… even if the cost wasn’t something you could ever hope to pay. Fate would take its due, but until then?
Until then, I was painfully ascendant, and it would only be a worse mockery for me to try to deny it, to put away my customary trophies and limp beside him on the bridge. ‘Look, I’m injured just the same as you,’ while more than capable of transcending those concerns on a whim? I already deserved his envy. There was no need to add his hate to the list.
The guards at the door stood aside, looking grateful that they weren’t being expected to challenge us – then Rala made an insistent gesture and, sour-faced once more, one of them escorted us inside.
“Our thanks,” I said, trying to walk the line between gratefulness and dismissal; the two Night’s Guardians were clearly relieved to halt, leave us to our own devices.
Bright white walls of plain stone led only to a central staircase, then down, down, down…
“You can breathe, man,” I told the silver-robed magister guiding us after the first few flights. “We aren’t here to cause trouble. We’re here to help.”
The pale man audibly released a pent-up lungful, then hurriedly drew a new one. He glanced furtively over his shoulder at us as we rounded a landing.
“Yeah, it’s okay.” I smiled at him. “Everything’s going to get better now. Trust me.”
He turned back around, doing his best to ignore me. I noticed the involuntary shudder pass through him, descending the next stair.
“What do you think, Nightfell? How long’s it going to take for the magisters to trust us?”
“Us?” Nightfell laughed, sounding genuinely amused. “At our funerals… maybe.”
“Depending on the way we die?”
“Right.”
“The two worst heretics in the world, reassuring him that everything’s gonna be fine… I don’t blame him for not trusting us.” I kept my eyes on the back of his head. “We’re going to earn it back, though. At the moment they see a pair of killers. Everseer and Feychilde, maybe. We’ll remind them of Killstop.”
“And the Liberator.”
“Right.”
I caught Nightfell’s expression, and her smirk was infectious. Of course, the magister chose just that moment to cast us another backwards glance, only to see us grinning deviously.
I sighed. “Oh, come on, gods. Don’t make this more work than it has to be…”
The staircase let us out onto a stone corridor bathed in shadow. The only light came from globes that were out of sight, their radiance spilling out of the four exits cut into the tunnel ahead of us: two to the left, two to the right.
The magister stumbled then stopped. I glanced at Nightfell, then halted with her, floating at her side.
Finally he turned to face us and, in spite of his trembling, he spoke defiantly. His glare was fixed on my companion.
“You already know the way, don’t you? Been before?”
Nightfell nodded. She wasn’t smirking anymore.
“You two – you may have all the power. The gods may listen to your hearts’ secret desires. I don’t care.” His glare moved from her to me, softened somewhat, and went back again, harder. “On your last little visit, I was part of the clean-up crew. Do you know what that means?”
I straightened. Nightfell said nothing.
“Seven… seven of them were my friends. I had to…” He was barely keeping a lid on his emotions, fear and rage mingled into pure destructive fuel, pumping in his veins. “I had to get the bucket. Do you know what that means? Their – their – the bits of them –“
“If you think you have reason to hate me, hate away.” Nightfell met his glare with a cool gaze. “I expect your hate. I expect you to want me dead. I came here, I broke your toys, I de-souled your friends. Did I not just say it? You’ll never trust me, maybe not even when I’m in the ground. People will salt my grave when I’m gone, and two generations will lay wards about it just on the off-chance. I get it. You think you have some monopoly on my suffering? You think killing your magister buddies was the worst thing I ever did? You think I don’t have a thousand murders to atone for? Even the deaths of my guards, that night – those are on my head too. I know. To you they were just heretics.” She looked down at the ground, and it was as though his trembling had been passed to her. “So say you’re me. What do you do now? Do you… do you wallow in it? Lean into it? S-stay that way, forever?”
The man was at a loss for words.
“We fight.” I said it gently, but passionately, and I reached down for Tanra’s hand, clasping it as tightly as I could in this form. “And guess what? You’ll fight with us, man, whether you want to or not. You aren’t a runner, are you? It’s too close to the end of the line for any of us to do any different now. We fight. You’re our brother when the battle comes, like it or lump it.”
He blinked, and ducked his head, as though the urge to nod in response was irresistible.
“It’s okay – head back up to your post.” I nodded back to him. “Nightfell here’s got it, right?”
“I’ve got it,” she said quietly, seemingly incapable of tearing her eyes from the floor.
“And you can listen in, in a minute. Maybe you’ll hear something that interests you.”
He didn’t reply; he skirted us as much as the width of the stair permitted, and took the steps two at a time in his hurry to escape our delightful company.
“It’s okay,” I murmured once I thought he’d be out of earshot.
“I know,” she murmured back, “you’re saying that a lot today. But it isn’t, is it? The Arrealbord… Zandrina… I did it all. I brought hell down on us in a hundred different ways and I couldn’t stop.”
“You…” I reeled, then gritted my teeth. “You were Zandrina?”
She bit her lip. “I was, and I wasn’t. I… I needed targets. Targets for Glimmermere, for Netherhame, Winterprince… S-Stormsword. I needed cover. I needed to keep the magisters off our backs. And only I – only I could get something like inkatra into the city. I wrecked… wrecked everything…”
I went cold when she mentioned Emrelet’s moniker, losing focus for a moment, and then I fought the feeling, fought the bitterness that swelled up inside me.
Emrelet wasn’t Zandrina’s fault. Emrelet was Henthae’s fault.
Emrelet was Emrelet’s fault…
“The pressure builds, and builds, until we just want an outlet.” I squeezed her hand. “You want to stick a knife in someone, stick one in me. I won’t pop.”
She laughed – a hacking, sobbing laugh – then grabbed my shoulder, pulling herself into me.
I couldn’t embrace her – the position was all wrong, and I was down an arm. But I stood there while she embraced me, her tears drenching my breast.
“Feel better now?” I asked when she stopped, pulling away.
She beat lightly on my chest with the heel of her hand. “Shut up.”
“Come on.” I pulled her towards the corridor. “No time like the present.”
She wiped her face with the back of her free hand. “Don’t I know it.”
“Which way now?”
“First left… then second left again. We’re almost there.”
Quite what was located down the other tunnels I never found out – Tanra took me in a blur, and it was all I could do to make my legs follow the route as we appeared –
In the Invocatrix chamber, the heavy door closing to behind us.
The room was circular, perhaps ten paces in diameter. The floor was the same clean-cut stone as the corridor, but the walls and ceiling were covered in half-domes of glass that captured and reflected the light of the central stone, casting rainbows of unimagined colours across every surface. There had to be thousands, thousands upon thousands of them. And right there in the middle of the room: a single sumptuously-upholstered chair before a tripod, into which the biggest glyphstone I’d ever seen had been inserted.
The crystalline chunk was a misshapen mess of glittering facets, and it was large-enough to require two ordinary men to lift, yet somehow the illumination it shed rotated from moment to moment, ribboned patterns of ruby and emerald dancing about the walls, cavorting with sapphire and amethyst, all interlaced with threads of lustrous amber.
Tanra gestured at the chair.
“Sit down. It’ll be a lot easier for you than it was for me – there were all these telepathic lock-outs in place, and Sordono had such trouble with the interface… Just place your hand on the stone. And take your time, before you speak. Get used to it. I don’t know what you’re going to say but… I know you’ll do right.”
“That makes one of us.” I took a deep breath then stepped forwards, gripping the arm of the chair and lowering myself into its seat. “Do you – do you think it’s too late to take it back?”
She shook her head. “I can speak for you, or we can leave. You can do it another time. No one expects this of you, you know.”
I grinned. “You’re supposed to say, ‘yes, it’s already too late, now get a move on with it’.”
“We’re haemorrhaging magisters by the hour,” she said, still unsmiling. “Get a move on with it, Kas.”
I took another deep breath, then reached out to place my fingertips gingerly against the stone.
Nothing. No reaction, physical or psychic. I’d been anticipating heat, or coldness, or a sudden telepathic overhaul. But the edges of the crystal chunk were smooth, cool –
My palm touched the glyphstone.
Suddenly I could see through the half-domes on the wall. My eyes widened, trying to take it in. I could see all of Mund. The viewpoints changed as the rainbows wheeled, the images never lasting more than a couple of seconds, never repeating as far as I could tell. A few of the looking-glasses showed me groves of trees, stretches of tents, patches of water – others showed perspectives from the rooftops, looking up into empty sky or down into desolate streets – while others displayed only the darkness between walls, the corners of shops, the gutters of houses, the shadowed glass of broken towers –
My parents’ graves.
Somehow seeing their gravestones helped ground me and when the image fell away, replaced instantly with a depiction of a rodent-choked sewer, I suppressed the shudder that threatened to spill through me, keeping my hand pressed to the cool crystal.
I couldn’t study them in detail. Without the inherent knowledge of an arch-diviner or the psychic skill of an arch-enchanter I was just going to lose myself in the Invocatrix.
Time to focus. Time to break all their plans, and do it.
I placed my force-whips upon the glyphstone, and they strummed ley-lines I couldn’t even see with my sorcerer’s eye. I leaned forwards and stared deep into the crystal’s bottomless, iridescent depths.
Time to tell the truth.
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