by Kim Wedlock
"All four of you were entranced," Rathen explained, grateful for the change of subject. "The magic's hold over you and Petra, at the very least, was broken when the rest of it started collapsing, but not him. I went back to drag him out and when I turned around, the door was gone. He remained under its influence throughout."
"For a month." He regarded him gravely. "And his condition?"
He wasn't speaking of the magic. Rathen stiffened and looked away. "Sated."
They trekked through the afternoon and soon descended into a valley, thickly wooded, steeply sloped and carpeted where the sun broke through with bluebells. The air was fragrant and fresh, and the breeze, when it flowed to cool the warm, summer air, was channelled down into the ravine and billowed up along the sides. They stopped only when the light had grown too weak to cover the ground safely, making camp in a large, open hollow long unused by beasts if the aged bones of prey and lack of faeces were any indication.
The landscape was treacherous but their tracks were thin, and for both those facts, they were safe. That night the atmosphere was almost jovial; Rathen and Anthis were grateful for the company of more than just each other, and the rest for answers to worries and a distraction from constantly glancing over their shoulders. Questions were abound as they ate, directed mostly towards the pair and their time in Khry's Glory, which they - meaning mostly Rathen - answered as best they could, many of which with successful evasion. In time they tired and dispersed for their own matters - Eyila meditated near the bottom of the ravine where the funnelled breeze was at its strongest, Petra tended her blades, and Garon patrolled just beyond the reach of the small campfire. Rathen had noticed a strange charge between the latter two, but he spared it little thought.
Instead, he approached the fire where Anthis was sat, peering into scrolls through the flickering light, staring with the most profound concentration and drinking their cryptic contents with the steadiest focus he'd had for weeks. He sat down next to him and dropped something into his lap.
Anthis flinched in his engrossment, but after flashing him a look of irritation for the fright, his eyes dropped down to what had assaulted him.
The scrolls were forgotten in a heartbeat.
He watched him lift the Zi'veyn with a grasp so delicate it bordered on reverence and turn it in the light. He stared closely, ran his fingers gently along its lines, tapped the ends of several of its sharp thorns, watched the firelight glitter across the lotus petals. He was silent for a long while, and it absorbed his attention in the same way that a good piece of wood gripped Aria.
Rathen's heart jumped, and he forced the thought urgently from his mind. "Well?" He said in an attempt to wall it out. "Is it all you hoped?"
Anthis guffawed, sputtering a response that at the very least suggested that his expectations had been inadequate. "How elaborate were the traps around it?" He managed after another long minute or two of marvelling.
"Elaborate. And vicious."
"Vicious how?" He couldn't have torn his eyes away from it if he'd tried.
"Without falling victim to them myself, I can't truly tell you, but on paper, villainous. Mental torment, like summoning phantoms - conjuring things at the edge of your vision, gone the moment you turn, and raising your very greatest fear from something deeper than memory, whether you're consciously aware of what that is or not. Or rotating your perception of left and right, up and down. Implanting the certainty that the world is an illusion, that life is just a dream - even imposing the nature of infinity..."
Anthis didn't seem to have caught a word. "Anything physical?" He asked eventually.
"The worst of it was a bio-chemical response that turned the would-be thief's own magic into a weapon against him."
"Sounds grisly."
"Mm..."
His gaze was still devouring the relic. "How complex is the spell? Do you think casting it was a collaborative effort?"
"It was suggested that it was cast by a single individual, but piece by piece."
"Oh? Did Kienza suggest that?"
"Aria."
The light in Anthis's eyes suddenly dimmed, and they moved at last, if sluggishly, onto the fire in front of him. When he glanced towards Rathen, he found his gaze had shifted in the same direction and had dulled with an unmissable heartache that stalled him. He lowered the artefact, and after a long hesitation, inhaled to speak. But he remained silent for another uncertain moment. "W...What do you intend to do? Will you go get her now we're out? We never did make it to Kasire..."
"I...want to," he admitted guiltily, equally as indecisive about speaking, "but you heard everything Garon said. She's safer where she is."
"With your father. But you don't think highly of him."
"I don't, but Kienza has been checking in...and, perhaps he's changed. It's been nearly forty years since he released me to the Order, and I don't think I've spent more than an hour in his presence since then. And they say with age comes wisdom..."
"I don't see it."
Rathen smiled, fleetingly, but his gaze remained among the hypnotic flames.
"What - forgive me - what did you mean when you said she 'shouldn't even have you'?" He watched Rathen remain perfectly still. "Sorry, it's none of--"
"Aria isn't my daughter."
The crackling of the fire became immense. Neither said a word. When Rathen eventually spoke, his voice was soft and reflective.
"I found her one morning in my garden. She was sitting in a tuft of arenaria, eating my strawberries. She was alone, she was wet and thin - tiny. I have no idea how she got there, and...well, my home is far from people, so she must have been extremely lost to have found her way into my garden. I took pity, made her something to eat," he smiled to himself, "scrambled eggs, it was. She devoured it in a moment... I put her in some dry clothes and went out to see if I could find her parents. I searched for a few hours, dared to set foot into villages and listened for anyone looking for a lost child. But no one was, so I headed back to make sure she was okay. I was going to go back out and look again, search the other villages, but..." He stared into the fire for another silent moment. "It transpired that a nearby village had been razed about a week before, by bandits. Kienza had told me about it. The girl had come from there, and her parents had been killed. Somehow she escaped and hid, and was found by guards sent to investigate a few days later once news of the attack had spread. One of them was tasked with taking her somewhere safe until extended family could be found, but he was killed before he could reach the next village. She must have found her way into the forest on her own, found my garden and eaten the first thing she saw."
Anthis nodded. "Strawberries..." A smile flickered across his face, though his expression was quick to sober. "Arenaria."
"Arenaria." Rathen straightened in an attempt to shrug the melancholy atmosphere from his shoulders. "None of her family made any appeal, if they even knew she'd survived - or if she even had any. So she just sort of stayed with me, and I..." he smiled. "I was thoroughly unprepared for the power she had over me. She wriggled into my heart and made herself much too comfortable. But she...she's dogged by tragedy. Truly, I'm sure of it. She lost her parents, her escort, and she wound up living in isolation with a...with me..." He picked up a stick and poked heavily at the flames. It took some time for Anthis to finally speak.
"Or is she graced with luck?"
Rathen flashed him a frown.
"Think about it," the young man said thoughtfully, "she escaped a bandit attack, she escaped whatever or whoever killed the guard, and she found the home of an isolated, banished man who came to love her as if she was his own. And she's...escaped every..." He brushed that aside. "She has the most lively and inspiring fascination, it's not stifled by tragedy or even the minutiae of the world. Everything around her is a marvel."
"Because she's been shut away from it all her life."
"And she's turned out wonderfully for it."
"She would have been better off with her true parents."
He didn't respond. He drew in his knees and rested his chin upon them. He looked older through the shifting light of the flames.
Anthis straightened, uneasy thoughts slipping into his mind, and he also looked back into the fire. But though he was reluctant to speak them, he was convinced that they had to be said. Rathen needed to hear them; Anthis needed to share them. "I was born into it."
"Born into what?" The mage asked distantly.
"The Sulyax Dizan."
Rathen lifted his chin, but didn't look towards him. Anthis took up the crucial task of poking the flames.
"My parents introduced me to it. It wasn't voluntary on my part, but I knew no different. They didn't make sacrifices in front of me - they didn't talk about it or even show me the knives. But it was always there, and when I was ten, they sat me down and told me of their ways, and it...all sounded so...reasonable. They spoke of it so easily, so coolly, that it seemed there was nothing at all sinister in taking the life of one person to protect the whole world from Zikhon. And I think, in a way, that's why they encouraged my passion for the elves - because their deaths at Zikhon's hands justified the Sulyax Dizan's actions. We've all been taught by the Temple that Zikhon destroyed them - though we five may now know that that's not the case - and the ruins I hungered over were evidence of that dead society. And my parents were adamant, so very convinced that what they were doing was for the purest ends. They made it seem as though they had been chosen for the duty - the honour - of serving Vokaad's work, of protecting our entire civilisation, and I felt that I had been, too. I felt so privileged, and I kept it a secret from my friends, as my parents told me to, to 'avoid envy' or hindrance from those who didn't understand. And I did my duty with the greatest pride..."
Embers fluttered as the harshly probing stick dislodged several larger alder branches. Rathen's eyes travelled towards him as he continued to prod. "After everything you've said before, you don't sound entirely convinced right now..."
He tossed the stick into the fire. "A few years after I was inducted, the mother and both sisters of one of my friends were raped and murdered. I began to wonder then if the hurt caused by the loss of a life was really worth it when there were others out there who, through the...through certain means of detection, bore souls far more useful to Vokaad than those of harmless wanderers or merchants, and who wouldn't be at all missed. Why use the souls of those we were trying to protect when we could use the--...you understand my point. Well, when I found my mother moments after she'd taken a life, intoxicated by the magic even while still kneeling in the blood of her kill - an enthusiastic baker, very well-loved in the community - I was disgusted. I took my own convictions to heart that day, and, since then, I have never taken a life that didn't...deserve it." He turned his gaze, hard and level, onto the black haired man beside him, who stared into the flames with an expression torn between shock and pity. "Now tell me again that true parents are always the best choice."
He didn't. He didn't move at all beyond a flickering tension in his jaw. But the thoughts that consumed him were clearer than the moon.
Anthis turned away and lifted the Zi'veyn from the ground, rotating it once more in the light. But the intricate lines and subtle, flourishing metal brushwork that covered its ebon faces did not absorb his attention as it had ten minutes ago. "About...in Khry's Glory--"
"It's forgotten."
He nodded slowly, though the relief was a fair stretch more than he'd expected. "Same."
Rathen, too, nodded, then shifted awkwardly. "And, uh..." Mercifully, Anthis waved it away. He nodded again, even more uncomfortable, then rose at last to his feet. "Well, good night, Anthis."
"Good night, Rathen."
He all but fled the campfire.
Turning quickly into the darkness, weariness barrelled over him. It felt different from that which had tormented him for weeks. It was an energised fatigue, if such a thing was possible; he knew that he was heading to a bed roll to rest and dream rather than curling up on the ground or a bed made of torn tapestries, too haggard to notice the sharp rocks or puddles beneath him, and descending uncontrollably into a dead sleep. And he knew that he would awake the following morning as a living being rather than a walking corpse to stagger through the wilderness without recallable aim, only to fall into another dead sleep when the need next hit.
It felt good. He couldn't wait to sleep.
He made for the end of the hollow where the blankets had been left, sheltered by rock shelves and overhanging bushes, and passed by Petra along his way. She was sat upon another projection a little further down the slope, expertly tending the hilt wrapping even while her eyes were looking off further along the valley. Curious, Rathen followed her gaze, and found himself unsurprised when he spotted Garon on patrol, making his way down to the ravine. And less surprised, still, when he glanced back and saw that her eyes were filled with force, willing the inquisitor to look towards her, but also with a quickness that suggested she would only look away and ignore him if he did.
Her eyes flicked suddenly onto him and Rathen smiled abashedly for having been caught as good as eavesdropping on a private moment. She smiled back just as shamefully, nodded good night, then looked down at her blade with far too much concentration, as though she hadn't been looking towards Garon at all.
He shook his head to himself as he passed, at which point her gaze surely returned, and left the matter and the rest of the world behind as he clambered beneath the blankets with little thought to even removing his boots.
He sighed in the utmost contentment as he made himself comfortable and observed the night sky through the trees on the far bank. It was a true night sky; there was no cold, ashen sun, only the light from the moon hanging somewhere to the east, out of sight through the leaves. The air was crisp and cool, as it was on Turundan summer nights, and it was silent but for the crackle of fire and Petra's quiet work. There was no empyrean music, no creeping roots, no rising tides, melting walls or flaming tapestries. It was so very ordinary. And the animosity in the air was minimal.
It was nice to have things back to normal.
But his smile didn't stick.
How could it ever be normal if Aria wasn't there?
Chapter 6
To have food is to have power. Physically, and politically. If one doesn't eat, one weakens. If farmhands don't harvest, business weakens. With no grain to sell and no grain to eat, villages, towns and cities weaken. Thus the country weakens. The same is true for war. A hungry force is a disadvantaged force, and the larger its ranks, the more food is needed to stave off that disadvantage. But only so much can be carried and ferried, and so it has always been standard practise to reap what your enemies sow; pillage the fields and stores of your intended prize, where the food is fresh and plentiful, and the peasantry slow-witted and defenceless.
Fenard Milson had known this well. Born to a milling family and enlisted in his youth to fight in what became a long and exhausting war, he learned the true value of food, and developed a great respect for the labours of his family which, upon finally returning home, he took up with dutiful enthusiasm.
It was some three decades later, when the mill had expanded and the village around it, that the Red Nest War began. The dictatorship that had swallowed Angra, Sarunokh, Antide and Dweron had set its sights on the northern lands of Arasiin, and Turunda's 'tail' was the closest and swiftest place for the consolidated armies to make landfall. His Supreme Majesty, Emperor Rasjh swept across the Boral Channel and split those forces, laying waste both to Turunda and Skilan while they were embroiled in one of their own countless spats. Foaming at the mouth, both sides had their armies at the ready and sights locked exclusively on one another. The invading force found little resistance. They swarmed over the land like locusts and set about their plans for the fortified bordering countries, who had not missed the results of their neighbours' foolishness.
Unfortunately, His
Supreme Majesty Emperor Rasjh had overlooked the peasantry, and it was not so slow-witted.
Fenard, the war-wisened miller, had ordered his farmhands and convinced the owners of neighbouring crop lands to take their harvest early, to gather it before the light of dawn in water-tight hide sacks, donated by a few trusting leather workers, and bury them in the earth by the lake before burning their fields. He then convinced the rest of his expanding village and a few others beyond to gather as much whitetip as they could find, the tiny seeds of a small but common fern cultivated for its healing properties once shelled and boiled. But, as with many remedies, while a small dose can be beneficial to immunity, work against infections or even counter a greater dose, too much becomes a lethal poison.
Toxic whitetip oils had rendered Fenard's mill unusable by the time his plan came to fruition, but that had not been the full cost he was to pay for the swathes of dictatorial forces eradicated by his poisonous 'grain'. How the emperor's forces discovered that he had been responsible was unknown. No one ever admitted to having been the one to hand him over. But it didn't matter. Fenard Milson's very slow and very public execution had martyred him, and farmland across the country followed his rebellious strategy in outrage. The torched fields would hinder locals for a few years, but it was overcome, especially with the help of the grateful and relieved neighbouring allied forces.
But the invaders could not wait. With their numbers starved, weakened, and a great deal diminished, Turunda's army quashed them, and even the slow-witted, defenceless peasantry rallied, using anything at hand to defend their homes, be that house, farm or country.
And ninety three years on, the town of Fendale, represented by a fern and renamed in the miller's honour, had been rent and riven by an invading force entirely unaffected by the needs of food.
The fissures on the outskirts were short and narrow at first, but they grew beside every step until they gaped ominously and swallowed whole stretches of the road, coaxing travellers into the black world deep beneath the surface. And if one managed to avoid the abyssal lure and continued along the route, for whatever their purpose, to the top of the hill where the town's walls finally fell into sight, magic suddenly tumbled over them. But what lay beneath the arcane blanket was not beautiful. It was not peaceful. Whatever spells of fictitious sentiments that had been intended to ease elven hearts in Khryu'vahz had not gathered in Fendale. In Fendale, there was only foreboding. A distressing mixture of solitude, once perhaps comfortable, and anticipation, a sense of being on the brink of something wonderful never to come that raised an immediate itch of impatience.
