“Splendid.”
The mermaid paced inside. She fished out the pad and flipped to the appropriate page. Ayna focused enough for her glow to light the way.
“According to Myranda, this cave is where she found Myn. If we are watching for an event, it will likely be a clash of dragons.” She closed the pad. “Exciting.”
Ayna muttered uncomfortably as Calypso paced deeper.
“How has the outside world been treating you?” Calypso asked.
“It hasn’t been treating me at all. We have a job to do.”
“But you’ve been to Kenvard already. I’ve only heard stories about it, and all of them are from the days before the massacre. When our task is through, I look forward to seeing it.”
“I don’t imagine we will find anything out here that is more impressive than what can easily be found in Entwell.”
“It’s not about being impressive. It’s about being unique.”
They paced deeper. The wind outside howled at the mouth of the cave. Ayna slipped a little deeper into the ruffle of the hood. She sniffed the air.
“Do you smell that?” she asked.
“Fresh char,” Calypso said. “And if there was a dragon here, I suspect we would be aware by now.”
“So we’ve missed the time echo.”
“It would appear so. But the prevailing theory is that the echoes precede Deacon’s appearance. He may yet be coming along. We should investigate as best we can and await word from the others.”
She crouched down. Ayna peered down from her shoulder.
“Can you feel it?” Calypso asked.
“Faintly. An odd twist of existence, but not of magic. The only distinctive aspect of this place but still quite easy to miss if we’d not been told to look for it.”
“Mmm… It feels… stable. If this is the sort of thing that changes with time, drawing inward until the point that Deacon causes it, I would expect to notice the shift.”
“Agreed. I believe he has come and gone.”
Calypso tipped her head aside. Her hair dangled down beside Ayna.
“I feel something else.”
“I do not.”
“It is weak. One moment…”
“Deacon…” Ayna murmured. “I never would have believed it. That he could bring about something like this. That he would be capable of it, not just from a competence standpoint, but in terms of wisdom and judgment.”
“You were never very fond of him. You spoke quite passionately against him just days ago.”
“I am not fond of anyone. And he broke our rules. I stand by my assessment. But he was of Entwell. His area of study may have been a pointless endeavor, but he pursued it with dedication. He should have known better.”
Calypso revealed the dagger she’d been entrusted with. She placed it down on the point in the cave where the odd twist of the fabric of the place was most prevalent. “Do you feel it now?” she said.
Ayna shut her eyes. “I can’t… yes. Yes, I can feel it. There is a force between them. They repel each other.”
Calypso picked it back up and looked it over. “It’s a good sign. Azriel knew what she was doing when she provided it.” She shut her eyes. “If we use it, it may well work. I only hope we don’t have to.”
“Do you have the package that Deacon left?” Ayna said.
“I do.”
“And what was inside?”
“I do not know. I haven’t opened it.”
“Calypso, it is clear by now that Deacon is at fault for potentially ruinous events. His privacy is undeserving of consideration.”
“Whether or not that is so, he has taken steps to protect it.”
“Let me see it,” Ayna demanded.
Calypso retrieved the small bundle from within her things. The fairy darted down and quickly set about tearing it open. She failed miserably. A tight, potent swirl of magic ripped at the package but did little more than blast the pair of wizards with kicked up ice and dust.
“I don’t understand it. This is a bundle of canvas.”
“It is a bundle of canvas enchanted by a peerless gray wizard. If it is to be opened, it won’t be opened by us.”
Ayna stewed angrily.
“Get that bundle out of my sight. The sooner we find and stop Deacon, the sooner I can put his frustrating mystic workings behind me…”
#
Myranda stood on the rocky shelf overlooking a valley in the Rachis Mountains. This place brought back chilling memories. Of all the times the Chosen had nearly fallen to the forces of the D’Karon, this was the nearest they’d come to total defeat. The wind howled as visions of that day flashed through her mind. Myn huddled around her, wings raised against the wind and puffs of flame replacing the warmth the icy gales stripped away.
She placed a hand on Myn’s side. It felt strange to have nothing more to do than to stand here and wait. The evidence of history repeating itself had been fresh when she arrived. Boot prints. Black blood. All far too recent to have been anything but a recurrence of the battle that had just a few years prior made this valley infamous. It felt important that she had arrived so near to the event yet late enough to miss it. Like fate was sending her a message, sparing her the pain but leaving her the certainty. Deacon would come here. The only question was when. Time, once so reliable, was now an unknown. With the echo so recent, would Deacon come here next? Some of the other sites the Chosen and their allies had been dispatched to were similarly disturbed. Would Deacon reach them first? Or had they missed him entirely?
She kept her mind in a high state of focus, constantly listening and feeling for any of a thousand things that might suggest she or one of the others had found him. She could feel the barely detectable scar on the fabric of this place. She could feel the dull mystic thrum of a place where a disgraced Chosen One had lost her life. But none of the things she sought. No glimmers of Deacon’s soul. No messages from the others.
Myn was the first to see it when it finally happened. Her head darted up. “There!” shouted the faithful beast.
Myranda followed her gaze to a point tucked in a nearby crevice of the rocky cliffside. A gleam of ragged purple energy appeared. It swirled and spread. Within the churning indigo tendrils, a deep black circle formed. It widened until it was man-sized, then clarified until she was looking upon a window to another part of the world entirely. The badly damaged black stone of a D’Karon fort became visible. Myranda’s heart froze in her chest as Deacon stepped into view.
The days had been unkind to him. There was no longer any doubt that the affliction had dug its roots deep into him. Far deeper than she’d imagined. He stepped through the portal with his gem in the chaotic hand. No longer content to simply change from one form to another without notice or regard for reality, now his arm sought to be many things at once. Through his sheer force of will, it remained recognizably human most of the time, but multiple other potential forms fought for control of it at the same time. They were ghostly overlays atop reality, simultaneous afterimages trailing his arm as he moved. Wretched, semisolid mockeries of his arm flickered into view and out again. Feral claws. Stone gauntlets. Skeletal spikes. Pure, porcelain-white flesh. And they didn’t stop at his hand. The chaotic visions claimed much of his arm. Veins of shifting discoloration had reached his neck. The many potentialities of form came and went, all secondary to his true self, but in constant struggle for dominance.
His eyes set upon Myranda. At first sight of her, a powerful wave of shame and regret claimed his face. The intensity of it chased the chaos from him, leaving Deacon briefly as she’d always known him.
Myn uncurled from around Myranda and stalked closer to Deacon. She spread her wings and, with a pained expression, let a wisp of flame curl from her nostrils. Though she could now speak, the posture was far more efficient at delivering her feelings and intentions. She didn’t like it, but she could and would attack if needed. Myranda took her place beside the beast, her
own expression similarly pained.
“Myranda,” he said. “I should have known you’d work out a way to find me.”
“You’ve tracked me across the world to help me when I needed it. What sort of a woman would I be if I didn’t do the same?” she said.
She released her staff, leaving it to drift beside her, and pulled two pads from her things. “In the valley, now,” she scribbled onto each.
“Two pads?” Deacon said. He took a step forward.
Myn lowered her head and bared her teeth. “Stay back,” she warned.
“Why do you need two pads?” he asked.
“Because the people of Entwell have pads as well now. Ayna and Calypso have come to help.”
“They have? I thought I felt them, but I… I can’t always trust my instincts at the moment.”
“They came to help you. They were worried about you.”
“Worried about me, or worried what I might do?”
“At this moment, both are valid concerns, Deacon, you aren’t right.”
“I know. I know I’m not right.” He held up his hand. “It is getting more difficult to keep myself intact. But I need this now. I can’t find my way to the root of things without it. I can’t cast the spells that need to be cast without it.”
“I’ve read your notes, Deacon,” she said.
“I imagined you would. I wanted you to. I would have protected them, otherwise. Do you see the brilliance of them?”
“All I see is a man coping with his own slipping sanity.”
“All revolutionary ideas appear to be madness at first. Myranda, there is a deeper truth to the world. Deeper than elements. Deeper than raw magic. We never had the means to access it before because there is more to magic than the words and the forces. There is the one casting the spells. You cannot effect change in a world that you are not a part of. A character in a play cannot change the world of the audience, because they are of a different kind. The people of this world cannot manipulate the most fundamental and abstract elements of existence, because, compared to the gods, we are no more real than the characters on the stage. But there are those who walk among us that are born of the gods. The Chosen, Myranda.”
Both pads flipped open again. Styluses jotted down messages from the others, acknowledging Myranda.
“They’re coming,” Myranda said. “Listen, Deacon. I don’t want to see you hurt. My love for you might stay my hand if the time comes that nothing less will stop you. But you know as well as I do that Ether will not hesitate. Ayna will not hesitate. You need to stop this insanity before they arrive.”
“No! Please, listen. If you could understand, you would agree with me. It is alchemy, just at a higher level! Even someone devoid of mystic skill and power can do works of magic with the proper ingredients. Mix together the right components, each with their own effects, and you can produce the effects of your choosing. The Chosen, combined, have the power to change fate. It is why you exist. And if you can change fate, you can change other things as well.”
“We won’t help you do whatever it is you are trying to do.”
“Of course not! I wouldn’t want you to. If this goes wrong, I don’t want the stain on your hands. And that’s why I need this!” He held up his disorderly hand. “It isn’t just in my arm. It is in my mind. I am seeing things from different angles, thinking in different ways. I can do what needs to be done. I just need the ingredients. And if you want to change reality, it isn’t enough to simply sample from objects. It isn’t just things to sprinkle into a cauldron. Artifacts are necessary, but I also need to collect moments, experiences, places…”
He slipped his healthy hand into his pocket. Myn and Myranda tensed, but he revealed what appeared to be a simple coin. Myranda’s eyes locked upon it. There was nothing physical that suggested it was remarkable, but the mere presence of the coin made the valley seem like a reflection. Insubstantial and illusory in comparison. He released coin and gem, willing each into the opposite hand. The moment he was no longer clutching the gem with his monstrous hand, it ceased to behave itself. The flickering potential forms started to twist his flesh. He gripped the coin and crouched.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
Deacon pressed the coin to the ground in the precise point where the supernatural scar had marred this place. There was no light, no crackle of energy or flex of arcane might. But from the moment the coin touched the ground, the form of his arm writhed and boiled. He struggled, eyes shut tightly and face twisted in pain. Myn was able to bring herself to action before Myranda could. She surged forward and butted him. He was thrown back, sprawling on the ground a few yards away. His gem flared. He shakily rose to his feet, coin still in hand. No damage seemed to have been done, but the coin was imperceptibly more significant than it had been before.
“Look, see?” he said, swapping the gem and coin again. “The valley is intact. I’ve done what I must, and no harm is done. The coin is only a focus. I am close. I just need a little more. Somewhere down there is the place where Trigorah Teloran died. Surely you feel it. That may be enough to complete what I’ve started. The blue moon is tomorrow night. If I have the pieces by then, I will succeed, I know I will.”
“The blue moon… that is when you will cast the spell, isn’t it?”
“Of course. Something so powerful could succeed on no other day. It will be perfect, you will see.”
“Perfect? Deacon do you know what is happening? Things that were gone and buried are digging themselves back up. Soldiers who died decades ago are marching to the front again. And it is getting worse! If things continue as they have been, who knows how many lives could be lost before the blue moon tomorrow night? Do you understand what sort of horrors could fall upon the world? The Kenvard Massacre nearly happened again.”
He shook as if struck. “Has anyone been hurt?”
“Not that we know of, but it is only a matter of time. The Northern Alliance and Tressor spent more than a century at war. Land that was fought over a hundred years ago has been reclaimed for towns and farms. People might awaken tomorrow to find themselves in the middle of a battle.”
A horrid pain swept across Deacon’s face. He held the coin in his palm. The dancing images of chaos claiming his arm rattled and trembled. Deacon shuddered. He turned his head away and his expression changed.
“It is worth it, Myranda,” he said through clenched teeth.
The voice was almost not his own, cold and disconnected.
“Worth it? How many people need to be hurt before it stops being worth it, Deacon? How many people need to die for the price to be too high?”
Deacon did not answer. His gaze drifted to the ground. Myranda’s grip on her staff tightened.
“You shouldn’t have to think, Deacon.”
The wind was starting to kick up. Help was on the way.
“That was a D’Karon portal you used to come here,” Myranda said. “Desmeres is concerned Epidime may have gotten his claws into you.”
The mention of the D’Karon general’s name snapped him back to reality in a way that his own name failed to. He looked up, desperation in his face.
“No! No, Myranda, I assure you, Epidime remains where I left him. Take my hand, I’ll show you.”
He stepped forward. Myranda stepped back. Myn thrashed the ground with her tail and huffed a rolling puff of flame, just shy of a full attack.
“Your mark! I… here, look.” He flipped the Kenvard coin in his hand, such that the mark struck his palm. “The mark spares me! I haven’t been taken by Epidime.”
“Then there is still a chance for you to stop whatever this is, to tell us what you’ve done and how to keep it from tearing apart the world we’ve sought so hard to save.”
He closed his hand tightly around the coin. Again he was silent, grappling with Myranda’s words. He slumped a bit, fatigue and anxiety showing through the cracks in his certainty.
“I think… I think�
��” He shuddered, shutting his eyes tightly again.
Pain wracked him. The churning mass of half-substantial arm spasmed. When he opened his eyes, he looked like a cornered creature watching the walls close in on him. “I think I’ve spoken to you for too long.”
He took a step back. His crystal flashed with a brilliant light. Myranda and Myn flinched away from the brightness. When it subsided, where Deacon had once stood, there was now a crowd of precise duplicates.
“Leave me to my work, please,” they said in unison.
Myranda and Myn dashed forward. Myranda reached out with her magic, dispelling two and three of the illusions at a time. Myn lashed with her tail and swatted with her claws. None of the things they targeted were the true Deacon. A dozen of the figures leaped from the cliff, surges of magic controlling their descent. Myn spread her wings and leaped into the air. Myranda dashed for the edge and wrapped her will about herself, controlling her drop.
The dragon managed three wheeling passes, each time singling out one of the false Deacons. Only five of them reached the ground. Myranda landed hard. She raised her staff and brought it down. The ice and snow rolled in a wave. Four of the images of Deacon stumbled and fell as the wave passed them. For the final one, the wave split around him.
“That’s him, Myn!” Myranda called.
Deacon was running for the only distinct portion of the valley, a ring of five enormous trees that flanked a narrow, icy stream. The dragon landed and charged at him, ready to snatch him up.
He raised his gem. A fresh swirl of D’Karon magic curled in the air. It swelled, opening into a fresh portal in a blur of motion. The portal widened. Myn dug her claws into the icy stone, but her momentum was too great. She tumbled through the portal with an angry roar.
For a moment, the roar was in two places at once. The portal snapped shut with a soft burst of untamed energy. A far more furious second roar rang out, now from the top of the cliff. All he’d done was transport Myn to the top of the cliff again, but it was enough of a delay and distraction for him to cross the threshold of the ring of trees.
Myranda sprinted for the trees. Deacon was already among them. But as she approached the edge of the ring, she felt something deep in her core that was enough to stop her pursuit. She could see what lay before her. It was nothing more than a patch of ice and snow. But something inside her insisted there was a yawning abyss before her. Something vast, endless, labyrinthine. Everything in her mind and spirit screamed for her to remain where she was.
The Coin of Kenvard Page 24
