by A. C. Cobble
“It’s the only way,” declared Sam.
“No,” he replied. “I forbid it.”
“You forbid?” she said, venom in her voice, anger in her eyes.
“I’m the Duke of Northundon, the Prime Minister of Enhover,” he said, lowering his voice and taking a step closer toward her. “By the authority granted to me by the Crown, I forbid it. I am serious, Sam. This is too far. You’ve always said the dark path is difficult to turn from. That is what is happening now. Don’t you see? You’re being drawn into it, convinced it’s the right thing, but it is not. This is not the way.”
Sam folded her arms and stared at him, her lips pressed tightly together.
“Sam,” said Oliver quietly. “This is an order, and if you disobey, I’ll be forced to act.” He turned to Goldthwaite. “You too.”
The mistress held up her hands and backed away, clearly uninterested in both defying the prime minister and risking the attention of Ca-Mi-He.
“It was all a show, then?” asked Sam bitterly. “I’ll admit you had me fooled.”
“A show?” he said. “No, there is no show. What do you even mean? Sam, surely you can see this is not right. Whatever evil was attempted in this city must be stopped, but not by doing more of the same. Not by following the same path that my uncle and mother trod down. Look at what happened to them. Look at what sorcery turned them into! That is not the way.”
“You cannot fight what you do not know,” insisted Sam. “If it wasn’t for me, if it wasn’t for Thotham and the Council of Seven, sorcerers would be ruling this empire, not your family. The knowledge we have is what has kept this nation free of darkness. You need me, and you need what I can do. We have to find out if the bargain was completed. We have to know what’s coming. It’s the only way.”
“I won’t have it, Sam,” declared Oliver. “I’m not going to discuss it. You’re commanded to forget this. Do not attempt to contact Ca-Mi-He. I’m ordering you to drop your pursuit of dark knowledge, to stop practicing anything that might be considered sorcery. No more walking the line, Sam. It’s done.”
“Power is a strange thing, Duke Wellesley,” she hissed. “Whether it’s from the dark path or a family’s iron rule over a nation, it’s a strange thing. I’ve used my power to fight evil. Can you say the same? Would the people of Imbon agree that your way is a better way?”
He stared at her, enraged. He opened his mouth to shout, but instead, he clamped his jaw shut.
She glared at him, waiting for his response, waiting for him to explode.
“Can’t you see?” he asked after a long, terrible pause. “Can’t you see you’re pushing me away, forcing those who care about you from your life? Me, Kalbeth, who else? You’re losing your way in the current, Sam, and the dark path is what lays beyond. Do not do this.”
Her lips quivering, her arms still wrapped around her, she glanced over her shoulder at Goldthwaite. “Coming?”
The mistress glanced uneasily between the two of them then nodded.
Sam turned to Oliver. “I’ll be in Southundon when you change your mind. Your father knows where to find me.”
She and the seer left, and Oliver stood alone in his mother’s old palace.
He walked to the fireplace burning at the end of the reception hall. It was a huge, empty space meant to warm a room the size of an airship. There was just a small fire in it now, built from ruined furniture scavenged in the keep. He looked into those flames, thinking of the white inferno that had blazed in the underworld, fueled by the sacrifice of the city.
The spirits had told him that his mother was the final piece of the bargain. Sam had insisted that Lilibet was dead. If she was, did that mean the bargain was complete? Had those shades he’d seen in his vision found peace? If Lilibet had been the perpetrator of the sacrifice of Northundon and gained untold power from it, why had she fled? If she was a victim, then someone else must have been involved, but who?
He sat, idly sketching lines on his notebook, the scratch of his quill barely audible over the distant rush of the sea and the whistle of the wind. The city, without the hustle and bustle of man, felt somehow more alive than ever. It was filled with sound, with motion, but not the clatter of mechanical carriage wheels over cobbles, not the vendors hawking their wares in the market squares, or the rumble of steel on steel of the rail. This life felt real, grounded, the way it should be.
His feet dangled down over the battlement of Northundon’s keep, his mother’s garden behind him, the slate and shingle roofs spreading below. The stone was warm against his trousers and skin when he brushed against it despite the chill in the northern air. He could feel the warmth stirring in response to his presence, a spirit of life welcoming him.
In his notebook, he marked the streets that led from the palace down to the harbor, streets, twisting like veins, curling back and forth as they spilled down the slope.
In Southundon, the avenues were wide and laid out in rigid grids. From the deck of an airship, it looked as if one was looking down on a piece of carefully woven cloth or a game board. Northundon followed the flow of the land. The streets would have been too steep had they been formed in a grid, he supposed, but it looked as if there was more to it than that. They were not switch-backs designed to give maximum rise in minimum space. Instead, they spread through the city like they’d grown that way, branching out like roots of a tree.
He frowned, brushing his lips with the feather of his quill. He held up his notepad, seeing the main avenue that curved around the keep and then split into branches below. A trunk and its roots.
Scrambling down from the battlement, he hurried back inside and up the abandoned stairwell that led to the rooftop of the fortress. He stepped across bare stone and rotten carpet where the workers had not yet cleared it out. He got to the roof and, with his shoulder, shoved open a wooden door that hadn’t been used in decades.
Looking south, opposite of the harbor, he began to sketch again, not bothering with the details, just trying to capture the shape of the passages and byways that cut through the city of Northundon.
The main boulevard, linking the city gates and the keep, was the only piece of straight road. The rest of the paths branched off, wiggling sinuously through the stone buildings as if they were merely filling space the structures did not occupy. It was a jarring moment, looking down on it, suddenly wondering whether the roads or the buildings had come first. Were the stones stacked to form buildings beside the streets, or had someone cobbled the streets in between existing buildings?
He knew little of city planning, but he’d spent years mapping various cities throughout the world. He had some sense of how the planning was done. The lines the planners drew defined streets and the neighborhoods that would come, while his lines detailed what already existed. As he looked at Northundon, he realized no master city planner had laid out these streets. No one had designed this place. It had grown.
Below the keep, sealed behind steel gates and barred passages, were tunnels, like the druid keep outside Southundon, but these extended beneath the city of Northundon. Roots pressing into the land.
Standing atop the keep, looking at the streets below where the handful of workers were still picking up and tossing rubble into mechanical wagons, he felt the eager thrum of life pulsing within the city. He could feel the push of vegetation, the ache in the men’s backs, and the warmth of the sun chasing away the shadows that had clung to Northundon for far too long. The keep was warm, living stone and from it flowed the breath of life, filling the city with possibility.
In the quiet, he could sense it. Druid magic, he realized. He was feeling druid magic. It wasn’t the grand spectacle that was sorcery. It wasn’t raw power harnessed to a purpose. It was subtle, and it was always there, pouring possibility into the world.
He put his hands on the stone of the keep, the druid stone grown from the very earth as a whole. It was anchored in the world, its roots snaking deep, connecting it to the land, to the buildings men had carved
from it, to the quays around the harbor that men had dumped into the sea, to the water crashing and spilling around those rocks, to the wind gusting above the waves, stirring the newly sprouted leaves in the city, taking the scent of fresh growth to the men working below. It was all connected.
That was the current of life.
The cycle of living and being. The ebb and the flow as man, plant, spirit, and the forces of nature danced together. The current of life was about connection.
He felt that connection deep within the fortress, linking it to the outside. That, he realized, was the strength that had kept the druid structures standing for a thousand years. That welling of life would sustain the keep indefinitely, he guessed. It was anchored there, tied to the structure. As long as that force of life was there, the fortress would stand. It was dynamic, though, living. Like the spirits within the levitating stones, like the fae, the wind and the sea, it sought motion. He wondered if he could release it and free the spirit to roam, but then, would the fortress collapse?
He shook his head, feeling like he’d had too much to drink and thinking that perhaps being home, seeing it awaken around him, was too much to bear. The idea of returning to Southundon, to its soot-covered streets and screeching metallic clangs, curdled his stomach, but that was where his responsibility was, his family, his home, even if it did not feel like it.
The Priestess XV
“I’m glad you came to me with these concerns,” murmured King Edward, tugging on his goatee as he paced the room. “I confess I know little of how this works. If some occult bargain was completed, then what do you think the sorcerer gained from the arrangement?”
Sam shrugged. “That I do not know.”
The king frowned at her. “It was my understanding that it was Lilibet who conducted the sacrifice of Northundon. She was there, and she survived, didn’t she? When you and Oliver first returned, I believed this was over. Surely, if some sorcerer gained incredible power recently, we would see the results of it? Otherwise, why go to the trouble?”
Sam had nothing to say. He was right. Now that the bargain was completed, they should be seeing the effects of the ritual, either in the world where it was intended to have an impact or from a person who benefited from the connection to the great spirit.
“Do you plan to contact Ca-Mi-He?” asked the king.
“Your son demanded that I do not,” she said.
King Edward nodded, his eyes hard.
“You think I should?” she asked.
“No, I agree with Oliver. You should not,” he replied. “It is an incredible risk. Too much of a risk.”
“The seer, Goldthwaite, believes we can do it safely,” replied Sam. “We will not attempt to bind the great spirit, merely communicate with it. We won’t allow it on this side of the shroud. We won’t give it a finger-hold on our souls.”
“It does not already have one on you?”
Sam grimaced. “We were successful breaking that connection.”
The king grunted, clearly doubting her statement.
“If you command it, I will not proceed,” she said, “but if I am right, there will be a tide of incredible sorcery that washes over this empire.”
“That is dramatic,” noted the king.
“Such are the times,” replied Sam.
“Goldthwaite, you said the seer’s name was? She is the one who assisted you breaking the connection with the great spirit?” asked King Edward. “And you believe she has the knowledge to contact the spirit again?”
“She is, and I do,” agreed Sam.
“You are her only apprentice? She has not shared her knowledge with others?”
Sam nodded.
“We’re trying to rid this land of sorcerers, not encourage them,” remarked the king.
“I agree, m’lord,” Sam replied.
She was willing to work with the king and Duke as long as she could, but she was seeing now there was a limit to how far they’d go. There was a point they would stop, and she would have to continue. In Northundon, it was terribly obvious the devastation that sorcery could bring. Tens of thousands had died twenty years earlier. She had to stop that from happening again, whatever it took.
The Cartographer XIX
“You support him on this?” questioned Oliver, lifting his reins and spurring his horse to catch up to his brother.
Philip glanced over his shoulder and shrugged. “I will if he asks me.”
“He will,” said Oliver, coming alongside his brother on the wide, dirt trail.
The mist that frequently blanketed the city was thick in the forest, curling around the base of the tree trunks and obscuring their vision of anything more than fifty yards in front of them. Somewhere out there, a pack of hunting dogs was coursing through the woods, yipping and barking, trying to catch the scent of a silver fox on the damp air.
Without the hounds, hunting silver foxes was an entirely futile exercise. Their coats blended into the natural mists that clung to Enhover’s west coast, and moving quickly near the ground, they were impossible to spot and follow. But once the dogs were on their trail, they could be tracked by scent, and the hunters would spur their mounts into a frantic run through the wet trees, aiming blunderbusses and blasting shot through the leaves and branches, trying to fell one of the svelte animals.
In years past, common and peer alike would be thick in the forest in the spring, searching for the silver foxes, and they’d been hunted near to extinction. Now, it was illegal to hunt the creatures by anyone without a permit from the Duke of Westundon. The scarcity made their butter-soft pelts worth a veritable fortune.
Poachers had been known to lurk in the Crown’s woods, hoping to earn several months’ wage by offering a pelt on the underground markets, but the Wellesleys and those peers close to them occasionally made sport of the human prey when the opportunity arose. Poaching was a crime punishable by death, after all, and the previous dukes in the Wellesley line saw little need to sit and judge a trial when they could handle matters in a more efficient manner.
Philip would not do such a thing, of course. He was the consummate rule follower, but every season, there was a rumor or two of some permit-holder granting rough justice. After decades of such behavior, it made the Crown’s forest outside of Westundon a rather quiet place. A perfect place for the discussions that Oliver wanted to have with his older brother.
Adjusting his seat so the butt of his blunderbuss no longer dug into his side, Oliver tried another tact. “It’d be outright war, you know, an invasion of a sovereign nation which has given us no cause to attack. There are no resources there that I saw besides a wide river filled with fish. We’ve little need of fish, brother, with abundant shoals off our own shores. There was some primitive farming Enhover’s dirt tillers would sicken at the thought of. It’s hardly worth it.”
“Aye, and what of the floating city?” asked Philip. “If it’s made of the same material we mine in Archtan Atoll, but one hundred times the size of those islands, it’s a bounty unlike any other. On a per cubic yard basis, there’s no material more valuable in the known world, not even gold. You know that, Oliver. What you describe is several times larger than the sum of the floating islands in the atoll, not to mention a good deal easier to mine. And what if, after seeing your airship, these Darklanders begin building their own? Whether they use them or sell them, Enhover’s dominance in the skies will be over the moment we no longer have a monopoly on the levitating stones. Without that advantage, the empire will be challenged from every direction.”
“They don’t need airships,” complained Oliver. “They have dragons.”
Philip snorted. “Another reason we should eliminate the threat before it becomes one.”
“You sound like father,” accused Oliver.
“I am his son and successor,” remarked Philip. “Should I not sound like him?”
“Good governance means good balance,” challenged Oliver. “You should be the foil to his impulses, keeping him in check and conv
incing him to steer a middle path. In this case, a path away from outright conquest and war.”
“I believe that’s the role of the prime minister,” suggested Philip.
Oliver winced.
“Father and I both respect your opinion, Oliver,” continued the prince. “We’ve always listened to you, but to convince either of us that we should not proceed, you have to give a reason. Why should we not campaign against the Darklands? They’ve always given Enhover the cold shoulder. They are a fount of sorcery, as you yourself told me. They have incredible resources that anyone could exploit, and the only thing preventing us from solving all of these problems is a little rough business. It’s how our ancestors built the empire, Oliver. It’s how we make progress. Tell me plain why we should not do this?”
“People will die,” answered Oliver. “Countless people will die.”
“Everyone dies,” retorted Philip. “I won’t say I like the thought, but it’s the world we live in. Everyone dies, so shouldn’t their death serve some purpose?”
“Some purpose?” cried Oliver.
Philip turned in his saddle and met his brother’s angry look. “Enhover has brought peace and prosperity everywhere we have gone. We’ve settled the wild places, Oliver, made them into proper nations with laws and commerce. It’s true that blood has been spilled along the way. It’s true that more often than not, given the choice, no one would have asked for our rule, but they’ve got it. They’ve got it, and they’re better off for it.”
“I’m not sure they’d agree,” challenged Oliver.
