by A. C. Cobble
“He is from a family of seekers,” acknowledged Lilibet.
“King Edward was not so eager for us to come,” said Sam.
“No, I imagine the king would not want to deal with your discovery,” remarked Lilibet. “Do you believe the king will be forced to act when Oliver reports back what he found? For two decades, I have existed here unmolested, but as a shadow of myself. It is only recently, with our connection, that I’ve begun to feel whole. If the king understands what has happened… Well, I don’t think he would have allowed you to come here.”
“He didn’t allow us,” admitted Sam. “He directed me to keep Oliver from the Darklands. He doesn’t know what happened in Imbon. He doesn’t know we came.”
“Ah,” said Lilibet.
Sam, unsure if she should offer bluster or honesty, claimed, “He knew you were in the Darklands, but he was content as long as you stayed away from Enhover. Another airship that was in Imbon is already returning to Southundon. They’ll report that we came here, and he will guess what happened if we do not return. You cannot fight the king and the entire might of Enhover. You… you must flee.”
“I will not flee,” replied Lilibet, her cold eyes fixed on Sam. “I have gained strength in recent months, and I do not believe the king has the power to defeat me. I thought about confronting him, but it is a risk. I assume the king feels the same. Perhaps once the king believed he could end me, but now, he is not sure. It does not matter. I am patient. Eventually, the king shall pay the price. They always do.”
Sam swallowed. “The price?”
“Ascending to great heights requires great sacrifice,” said Lilibet. “Those who attempt to bargain never truly understand that, how great the sacrifice is. They forget how long others can wait.”
Sam, gripping her wine glass in her hand, said, “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
“I got what I wanted,” said Lilibet, gesturing at a shelf behind Sam, “and I did my part. Our bargain was completed. I’ve been trapped here, a part of myself, because he thought to keep me close and use me again, but now, I could break the chains that bind me. I wonder if I should take the opportunity your presence provides instead. Perhaps I should return home.”
“Home?” questioned Sam, shaking her head, confused. Then, she paused, looking at the three small figurines Lilibet had pointed to. They were roughly carved of black obsidian and shaped like three hunched old men. They looked familiar. “Are those…”
“Uvaan,” confirmed Lilibet. “My rivals. That was our bargain. Eventually, the people of this land will entomb them in pyramids like those that litter the ground below us, but it is not necessary. These are not the crude devices the Imbonese stole, those shoddy prisons they were so afraid would be breached.”
“W-Who…” stammered Sam, her gaze fixed on the uvaan. “Those are the same as what was discovered in Imbon?”
Lilibet nodded. “Much the same. Long ago, there was a disagreement between factions here. One group cast down their foes and bound them into the uvaan. They trapped them there, outside of the cycle that passes through this world and the underworld. There is no greater crime in the Darklands. The rest of the sorcerers in this land combined forces and the winners were forced to flee. They took the prisons of their enemies and they established a settlement on Imbon. They lived there in exile until your people uncovered their secret. They came here hoping we would save them.”
“Save them?”
“Yes,” confirmed Lilibet. “They thought we would help recover the uvaan and prevent them being opened. The Imbonese were terrified about what would emerge, as they should be. Unfortunately for them, we will not save them. They will pay for their crimes.”
“One escaped in Southundon,” admitted Sam. “A reaver, we called it.”
“As good a name as any,” said Lilibet. “Was it recaptured?”
“It was stopped,” said Sam. She described facing the reaver, and the golden circlet that stopped it. “Tell me what you know of them.”
“Impressive,” said Lilibet, pursing her lips. “Reavers, as you call them, are exceptionally dangerous. When you return to Enhover, you should seal the remaining uvaan away somewhere secret, somewhere safe. Once a spirit is removed from the cycle, it will never return. In this world and the underworld, those spirits are unbound by the natural forces that command the rest of us. They cannot be destroyed because they are no longer part of the cycle. They can only be recaptured and imprisoned. The reaver you stopped in this world merely passed to the underworld. There, it will continue to torment its enemies. The Imbonese and their ancestors will feel incredible agony, forever. Alive, dead, and around and around the circle, the reaver will pursue them. They will always be its prey.”
Sam looked at the three dark statues behind Lilibet. “If creating uvaan is so dangerous, then…”
“Great rewards require great sacrifices,” responded Lilibet. “My enemies are removed from the cycle, and if they were to escape, they would do great damage to me. I allowed myself to be torn apart to seal their prison, and now, only I can open it. These uvaan serve the same purpose as the ones you found, but they are not entirely the same. These are secure. When you return to Enhover, bury the ones you have found.”
“Tell me—” began Sam.
“I’ve said enough,” interjected Lilibet. “Bury the uvaan and forget them. That is all that you need to know. Now, tell me of Oliver.”
Sam, not sure what other choice she had, did just that.
Lilibet listened quietly as Sam gave what details she knew of Duke’s life. The other woman studied her intently as Sam described their recent pursuit and battles with the sorcerers. Lilibet nodded knowingly as the priestess revealed that William Wellesley was upon the dark path and laughed when Sam said he nearly bound the dark trinity. When Sam brought up Lilibet’s other sons, the sorceress waved her hand, insisting Sam remain focused on Duke.
Perplexed, Sam asked, “You do not want news of your other children?”
“They are no longer my children,” stated the sorceress. “I care nothing for them.”
“Why Duke, then?”
“Duke?”
“Oliver,” explained Sam.
“You were with him on the roof of the druid keep outside of Southundon,” said Lilibet. “You could feel what he did, the power that he drew from those old stones. That magic has been untapped in Enhover for over two hundred years. How did he do it? How does he keep doing it? He communed with the fae, scattered them after the dragons. He is the one who maneuvered your airship, calling to the spirits living within the stones. Who taught him these things? How did he learn?”
Sam gaped at the other woman, astonished. “How… how do you know all of this?”
Lilibet stared at her impassively.
“How could you know that?” whispered Sam.
Lilibet stood, looming over Sam.
“What does the king know of Oliver’s power, girl?” Lilibet demanded. “Is the king aware of the strength he commands, the control he exhibits? Does the king know that Oliver is a druid?”
Sam’s mouth flapped like the jaw of a fish thrown from the river. She was powerless, suffocating.
“Answer me, girl!” snapped Lilibet.
Sam could not.
Hissing in frustration, Lilibet set down her wine glass and leaned forward to grasp Sam’s head. “We are connected, girl. It is easier for us both if you simply tell me, but if you will not, I have other ways.”
The woman’s fingers were like spears of ice, making Sam shiver, but she could not move away. Lilibet’s grip was iron, and as her power poured through Sam, the priestess found she was frozen. Her body did not respond to her mind’s frantic commands. She sat, rigid, unable to move. She was unable to do anything other than look into Lilibet Wellesley’s face.
The sorceress, jaw set, stared back into Sam’s eyes.
Memories welled unbidden, images flashing by, scenes replaying themselves, the mumbled droning of half-forgotten
conversation. Interactions with the sorcerers that they’d faced, battles they’d won, times they almost hadn’t. It rose to the surface like the corpse of a fish floating atop the water, and then the memories were flicked away. Sam, powerless to stop it, sat frozen in Lilibet’s grasp. The woman was sorting through her mind like a clerk through a file cabinet, surfacing memories and discarding them when she realized they did not contain what she was looking for.
Lilibet’s lips twisted in amusement as she pawed through, from Harwick, to Yates, to William. Each flashback burst into Sam’s mind for seconds then was flung back into the depths of her memory. Lilibet took her time sorting through interactions with the king, the things he had told Sam. Other memories were sorted through quickly. Sam’s mind was an open book, the pages perused and flipped. Finally, after long moments, Lilibet returned to certain memories and lingered.
The old man in the Coldlands, the furcula, the message Sam had seen hidden inside of the reliquary. The chamber deep within Southundon’s palace where Lilibet’s effects were stored. The king showing Sam around the room, pointing out books and artifacts to her.
Lilibet chuckled at the conversation. She told Sam, “You would make a great sorceress. With resources, you could have walked far down the path. Farther than anyone could have imagined, I think. Farther than one should walk.”
Sam sat helpless. Her body would not respond. She couldn’t even squirm in the other woman’s grip. She could only sit as her mind was looted, as her entire life spooled out, was pored over, and then was shoved away.
Time passed, but Sam did not know how quickly. Minutes, easily. Hours, she thought. Nothing changed except the steady deluge of her memories, and Lilibet’s sharp expressions as she sorted through.
Sam, seated on a pew in Westundon’s Church, the massive arched ceiling rising far above her head. Her mentor, Thotham, telling her that the time of his prophecy was nigh, that balance would return between maat and duat, and that the seed of the tree of darkness would bring salvation.
Lilibet murmured, “Interesting. The line has been laid. The possibility is open, but is it enough?” She looked at Sam, a question in her eyes. “The old man died, didn’t he?”
Sam couldn’t answer, but unbidden by her, Thotham’s death flashed through her mind.
Lilibet nodded thoughtfully at the shadow of the memory. Sam wanted to fight, to struggle, but she was stuck as thoroughly as if she’d been sealed in cement. She couldn’t move, couldn’t protest.
Eventually, Lilibet returned to the memories where Sam had seen Duke exploring his power. His experiments with the fae on the airship, when he’d known to set them free. The confrontation with William. Slowly, piece by piece, Lilibet pulled Sam’s memory of that night apart. She examined each moment, watched as Sam watched Duke. Sam didn’t know what the other woman was looking for, but over and over, Sam saw Duke as she burst onto the rooftop of the fortress. She felt Ca-Mi-He, and she threw herself between them.
Over and over, she remembered falling to her knees, remembered Duke kneeling beside her, putting his hands on her, and the warmth. She felt the warmth. Sam felt Lilibet grasping at it in the present, trying to understand it. Slow, agonizingly, Lilibet replayed the memory, searching Sam’s mind for every detail, every second, every stimulus that Sam had remembered or had forgotten. Like cold honey poured from a pot, the memories oozed out, and Lilibet savored them.
Sam felt the warmth suffusing through her from Duke’s hands and pushing back the bitter, deathly chill of Ca-Mi-He. It coursed through her, growing in waves and filling her with life. She felt it. She blinked, the memory cycling over and over. Lilibet examined it for more and tried to see what Sam could not recall, had not noticed.
The warmth bled through Sam’s veins and filled her in the memory… and now.
Lilibet was lost in the flow of Sam’s recollection, her entire being focused on how the warmth felt, what Duke had said, and how Sam had responded to the power that coursed through them.
The warmth grew. A finger twitched. Lilibet’s eyes were scrunched tight and she leaned closer, replaying the memory again. Warmth filled Sam like the rising tide of the sea, bathing her. The current of life rose around her, and she rose with it.
Slowly, Sam’s hand shifted.
Relentless, Lilibet scoured her memory and forced her back through the moment over and over again. She replayed the moment when they’d faced down Ca-Mi-He.
Sam smiled.
Lilibet’s face was blank.
Sam’s hand ripped up from her waist where it’d sat immobile, trapped in Lilibet’s cold prison. The warmth infused her entire body, drawn from her memory. She jerked one of the katars from its sheath beneath her arm and she plunged it into Lilibet’s chest, sliding between ribs and punching the dagger into the woman’s heart.
The memory of the moment when Oliver poured his warmth into her flashed through her mind again then skipped and then faded.
Lilibet staggered back, clutching the bloody wound. She gasped, “The seed from the dark tree, the balance. Let us hope it is enough, girl.”
Sam surged off of the couch, shoving the other woman back to where she’d been sitting, kicking her wine glass over, and holding her down against the cushions. Sam plunged the katar into Lilibet’s chest, making damned sure that it was enough. Like the woman had replayed Sam’s memory over and over, Sam stabbed.
Finally, breathless, she stood. Her hand dripped blood from where Lilibet’s life had spurted over her, soaked her. The sorceress, eyes still open, blood leaking from her still lips, lay dead.
“Frozen hell,” muttered Sam, scrubbing a bloodstained hand across her face.
The Cartographer XIV
“Duke,” hissed a voice in his ear.
Oliver blinked, his eyes thick with exhaustion, unable to make out the shapes in the room. The room in the floating city. His mother. They were in the Darklands, in the floating city, and his mother was there.
“Duke,” continued the voice.
It was Sam, he realized slowly.
She told him, “We have to go.”
“What?” he muttered, brushing her hand away and sitting up on the thin couch that he’d fallen asleep on. “What are you talking about?”
“We have to go right now,” said Sam. “Put your… leave your boots off. Get your sword.”
“What’s happening?” he asked, struggling to his feet and glancing around the room they’d been staying in. It felt like a dream, like he was waking into a dream.
She tugged at his sleeve. “Put your jacket on. Come on. I’ve got your sword.”
Shaking her off, he found his jacket where he’d tossed it over a chair earlier in the evening and tugged it on. “What’s happened, Sam?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re on the Cloud Serpent,” she said.
“I don’t understand. Is something—”
Shoving his boots into one hand and his sword into the other, she spun and walked out the door.
Cursing, he scurried after her. He called to her, and she hissed for him to be quiet. Walking quickly ahead of him, she didn’t slow at his urging, barely acknowledging him hurrying behind her in the bare stone corridors. Then she stopped.
He caught up to her and saw his mother’s seneschal standing in front of them, blocking the hallway. Sam’s hands dropped to her daggers.
“Death is but a transition,” said the man, eyeing the priestess. “A breaking of the bindings that life has tied to us. She returned home.”
Sam waited, as if she expected him to say more, but he didn’t. She reached back, grabbed Oliver’s hand, and dragged him along, skirting around the strange man.
Oliver looked into the seneschal’s eyes and saw a grave sorrow there, but the man did not speak again.
Following Sam into the cold, misty air of the open courtyard that capped the city, Oliver insisted, “What is it, Sam? Why are we rushing out of here?”
“Your mother is dead, Duke,” claimed Sam as they approached the ai
rships. “I-I don’t know how it happened. I know she’s dead, though, and we could be too if we stay here. We found Lilibet, but we can’t do anything for her. She can’t answer any of your questions. We have to go. This place is far more dangerous than I anticipated. It’s— We have to go.”
“You’re sure she’s dead?” he asked, grabbing Sam and dragging her to a stop. “How do you know?”
“I was speaking to her,” said Sam, her eyes falling to stare at his boots. “I was in the room, and she just… she just died.” She looked up at him. “It was sorcery, I think. Maybe some friend of that man Rijohn sought vengeance. She looked at peace, though, as if she anticipated it. I am sorry, Duke. I am sorry, but there’s nothing we can do here.”
“Someone… Did someone assassinate her?” he demanded. “What did you see?”
“I didn’t see anything,” said Sam, tugging at him and forcing him to move again toward the airship. “She’s dead. There’s nothing here for us except death. We have to go.”
Grunting, he followed her, glancing over his shoulder at the quiet palace behind them. His mother dead, killed by her fellow sorcerers? The victim of some Darklands plot? Had his arrival in the floating city led to her demise?
He didn’t know. He felt sad and angry. Sad, he realized, not because he lost her tonight, but because he’d lost her twenty years earlier. The time they could have had was gone, and there was no chance of bringing it back. Not because she was dead, but because she’d left. She’d turned her back on Enhover, the Crown, her husband, and her sons. She’d left them, and that was what he was angry about. He was furious.
The woman that they had met was not the same woman his mother had been. His mother would never leave her family. Never. That… That wasn’t her. He told himself it over and over, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. He wasn’t sure what to believe at all.
The dark path was seductive. It was so seductive that it’d lured his mother away from her home and her kingdom, lured her from her husband and her sons. The woman they’d met the day before, she was no longer his mother. She’d been right. She was something else, something sorcery had turned her into. Whatever had happened tonight, who she was had been killed long before. Sorcery had killed his mother. Sorcery had caused her to turn her back on everything she loved, everyone who loved her. Sorcery was responsible for her betrayal of her family.
