“He’s right, you know,” said a voice, and Draysky raised his eyes to the ritebald watching him, whose eyes had returned to earth brown from pitch black.
“Of course I’m right,” snapped Balean.
“And now I’m dead,” said Draysky, the energy depleted from him, barely able to kneel before the mighty beast.
“Dead? Better dead than this,” the ritebald said, and it walked back to its desk, seating itself upon the chair. It pulled a napkin from a drawer, one large enough to be a tablecloth, and started to clean itself, scrubbing the blood first from its hands, then forearms, then face. Beside Draysky, the two bodies of Mynar and Nyla lay still as the ritebald pulled out a length of string and started to floss.
“You’re a monster, and I will end you like you ended them,” Draysky seethed, trying to stand but falling over.
“Not anytime soon you won’t. Don’t worry though, you won’t end up like those two. As I said, you’re in far more danger of ending up like me. Take a moment and relax. This conversation may help you.”
“You’re the last person—the last thing I would ever listen to,” Draysky said, and spat blood from his split lip toward the creature, who shook its head. A slow shake, one of sadness, rather than with disapproval. “I’ve sworn to hunt you down!”
For a moment, the ritebald’s face showed shock, the earthen eyebrows raised, the dirt lips pulled back, the shale nose raised.
“Hunt the ritebald down?” he asked, rumbling the question, and a gnashing sound began deep in his throat. A terrible sound, a chuckling, the laugh of someone in the know, of a joke at ignorance.
“That’s enough, that’s enough,“ said Balean, stepping between the two of them. “You heard him, Draysky, he’s no longer hungry nor frenzied, and you’re no longer a meal. Let’s get out of here before the Keepers return, eh?”
“Back off, Balean,” said Draysky, his face reddening as the chuckling grew louder, and pebbles escaped the ritebald’s mouth like spittle as he met Draysky’s eye again.
“Hunt the ritebald down?” the creature repeated, then it leaned over its desk, bracing itself on its arms as its face came a foot from Draysky’s own. “You might as well start with yourself, then. Shouldn’t you?”
“Enough, enough! Not another word to him, I command you!” Balean shouted at the ritebald. “Draysky, it isn’t safe, we need to–”
But Draysky was ignoring him as the ritebald flashed his many sharpened stone teeth and laughed into Draysky’s face. Then he shouted with a spray of pebbles that rained down on the floor.
“You are the ritebald!”
Balean fell silent, as Draysky tensed, feeling the tricklings of his kernel’s power starting to return.
“And my father was a bird. You can’t share your guilt with me.”
“But can’t I? Anything you tell me I’ve told myself a thousand times over. Do you think you surprise me by calling me a monster? No, you merely echo my own thoughts, brother. Look upon your arm, to where the flame has marked. What did you think you would become, had you let that continue? Certainly not a human.
“It’s been near fifty years since I was taken from the outpost! And oh, what I have learned in that time, as they keep me locked down here. Do you think our people were exiled to the outpost to pay debts? That the Keepers had no better way to mine crystal than to throw helpless bodies over and over again into the Grinder, praying they brought up spoils? No, oh no. The outpost is not there for your work. It’s there as your prison.
“They fear you! They fear us, because you can become this, become me! So they pushed us as far away as they could until their time of need came again. A sword sheathed until the blade is required. And yet I slipped free of the scabbard. I thought I was so clever, you see. I thought that I could escape the outpost, become a Keeper like them, but I knew outside I would be destitute. Like you, I thought the most valuable resource in the outpost was crystal, since at the end of ridging, the Keepers always searched us for it. But there was one place they never looked.”
He raised a stony hand and patted his stomach.
“Inside. That’s the thing, about aurels and kernels.”
“They’re only powerful when they mix,” breathed Draysky as a chill ran through him, and he looked back down at his fingers.
“That’s right. And when one is used up before the other, it creates a hunger unlike anything you could ever imagine. What you just witnessed of me, I can only live with because I cannot remember it. The swallowed aurel takes over when it senses a kernel. It turns me into a hungry beast that will not stop until I no longer sense the pure of a kernel. Those two I consumed, I am sorry for their deaths.”
“You could have stopped it,” Draysky said, but the beast shook his head.
“No. When the frenzy takes over, it is like a shark smelling blood. There is no stopping. There is no humanity. Just an aurel craving energy. They could have been my own children, it would not have mattered. I would have consumed them for their kernels just the same.”
“Then why spare me?” Draysky demanded, and the ritebald turned its head.
“Because you’re not a pure kernel,” he said, as if it were obvious.
“Because my fire aurel within you taints you,” continued Balean from Draysky’s side. “To him, you’re as appetizing as three day dead chicken. He wouldn’t be able to digest you, not at all. But cut that finger off, you become a pure kernel again and, well, I think you can imagine the consequences.
“Indeed,” said the ritebald. “I would advise against that. Control will leave me once more.”
“So you’re saying all the ritebalds—they were like me at one point? They came from the outpost? That’s ridiculous.”
“The truth doesn’t care what you think,” said the ritebald, then it continued to speak. “What matters is what happens, Draysky.”
“And how do you know my name?” Draysky asked, another layer of suspicion forming.
“Because I consumed their sources of power, Draysky. In a sense, they are now part of me. Their memories, their emotions, their loves, their fears. As Mynar would say, the snow of the true north never melts. And they will never be forgotten, so long as I live. Which brings me to my second duty. One best done when fresh.”
From within a drawer, the ritebald retrieved a bottle of ink and a pen, as well as a stack of papers.
“Dearest Mother,” he began, scribbling with stone hands that were far too big for the handwriting, yet still managed the strokes.
“You’ll be happy to receive news that Nyla and myself have started at the Keepers’ academy. There is much I have to tell you, in this letter and those that follow.”
“Hells,” Draysky said, his strength returning to him as he stood and backed away. “You’re writing to Mynar’s family? As Mynar?”
“Mynar, or Nyla, or Niam, or Sune. A hundred names, all with their own lives. Their own make believe adventures. Their own consolation to their families, and stipend they send back home,” said the ritebald as the pen scratched over paper. “After all, it’s the least I can do.”
“The least you can do is stop sending letters so they stop sending people!” shouted Draysky, the horror still showing on his face as he backed away.
“Ah, but then they’ll kill me off, the Keepers will. Would you prefer that? Then maybe you can take my place? Activate that flame again, or swallow the ice crystal. I’d be eager to trade,” said the ritebald, finishing the letter and sliding it into an envelope, his fingers particularly dexterous. “But since arriving, all you’ve done is insult me. You’re lucky I haven’t eaten you now out of anger alone. I have letters to write, and you’d best be on your way, lest they discover you here. They won’t let you escape again. You were sent here because you were too dangerous to be kept alive. You’ve learned too much, whether it be in magic or history. The exit is behind me, where they pour in my water. It’s too small for me to climb, but for one like you, you should be able to escape.”
“An
d we’ll be on our merry way,” chimed in Balean, but Draysky raised a finger. He had a final question, one he knew he was afraid to ask, that lodged itself into his throat.
“If my parents were killed by a ritebald, then that means it was someone from the outpost,” he said, and the ritebald nodded.
“Unless a skilled mage, once you change to an aurel, you cannot return. And any who have an internal kernel can become a ritebald,” the ritebald said, gesturing to the water chute behind him.
Draysky wedged himself into the tight space and began crawling upward, skirting wide around the ritebald. Above, he could just barely see cracks of daylight, and the ritebald spoke behind him as he crawled. “Once wild, they rarely return to the village. Too painful for them, you must understand. If they come near, they black out from the hunger of kernels. And all that see them consider them monsters. Whoever killed your parents, they had converted recently and would have gone missing when that occurred.”
Draysky nodded and continued crawling, continuing his journey, still disgusted and horrified at the bodies of Mynar and Nyla behind him. His stomach threatened to retch if he thought too long upon it.
When the realization came, it came slowly, bubbling up piece by piece to the surface of his mind, accompanied by waves of chills as he froze in the chute, and he tried to pack it back down.
No one had gone missing when his parents had died. It had happened at the worst possible time, as his father nearly had enough saved in chits for them to depart. He’d urged Draysky to save more, so they could leave sooner.
The ritebald behind had noticed the value in crystal long ago. He’d swallowed it, so that he could sneak it away from the outpost. Instead, the aurel had turned him into a monster.
Draysky’s father was also clever. To make up for the last few chits, he might just have done the same.
And unlike his mother, Draysky’s father’s body had never been found.
Draysky’s fists slammed against the stone chute as the memory came unbidden. The familiar lines on an unfamiliar stone face. How the monster had taken the majority of his mother’s body with him, carrying it as one would carry someone from a burning building. The roar of sheer anguish that had escaped the ritebald’s throat, and how it had fled a battle against him that it could easily have won after his mother’s kernel had satiated it.
The tears fell to the chute, where they trickled down far below, to the monster. But they were tears meant for another monster.
Tears for his father, who now roamed the Kreskian Mountains in a body of shale.
Draysky emerged into the side of a building, in a drain angled under a rooftop, a lip just thin enough for him to squeeze out into the open air. What the Keepers sent the ritebald was the rain, not fresh water. As he stumbled down the street, still weakened from the battle and mind reeling, he collided with a pair of walkers emerging from another side street.
“Watch it!” one shouted, giving him a push and sending him into a large flower pot that shattered on contact. Draysky hands sunk into dirt, and the two watched him, one shaking his head. “Now you’ve done it. Old Jolie will be furious her flowers are ruined, and–”
He cut off as Draysky seized a broken shard of pottery, holding it at eye level.
“Bumping into a Keeper is an offense, a threat, a death wish,” said the girl next to him. She couldn’t have been much older than Draysky, and she spoke harshly, as if to a misbehaving dog, or a mule that had dug its hooves into the earth and resisted the leader.
“Keeper? You’re a Keeper?” Draysky whispered, as he saw the runes lining their clothing. Then he roared in anger, lunging forward, swinging the pottery shard and barely missing the man’s throat. The girl shrieked with surprise, falling over as she backed away, and the man immediately crawled back on his hands and knees. A green light trailed behind one of his fingers, and as he finished the rune, vines leapt up from the cobblestones to assault Draysky.
But Draysky, too, had drawn rise, and the small trickle of fire he could conjure consumed the hastily created plants, the Keepers fleeing with shock.
“Rogue,” he heard them shouting as they rounded the corner. “Rogue!”
But he just stood there, the last of his energy threatening to leave him. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, not after the realization in the tunnel. Then he felt Balean’s hand on his shoulder, the man speaking in his ear.
“I tried to protect you, but you wouldn’t listen,” Balean said. “There are better ways to break the news.”
“You knew about my father?” Draysky breathed.
“We share minds, and I knew what you are. And with time, you would have learned in a way that would be easier to accept. Now, I suggest we move before they return. If you’re looking to kill yourself, there will always be time later.”
Draysky shoved him off, and Balean stood in front of him.
“I agreed to teach you, if you agreed to be my student. But I will not teach someone who cannot listen. What’s happened to you is horrific. What’s coming, if you don’t move, is worse. For both of us. They won’t kill us fast. So if you don’t want to go, at least cut me off your finger, and toss me away so I have a chance at surviving.”
Draysky turned, hissing back. “We can hit the Keepers back now, in their home city.”
“Or you give me time, and we can drop that precious Tower of theirs out of the sky. You want revenge? I’ll give you revenge. But pissing on their shoes would be better revenge than whatever you do now. They want you dead. Don’t comply, don’t give them what they want.”
Balean turned and started to walk down a side alleyway.
“Is this what your mother would have wanted? Your father?”
“My father’s a monster,” Draysky answered.
“But you don’t have to be,” Balean said. Draysky grit his teeth, every muscle in his body shaking as he clenched them, then followed Balean. He seemed to know the general way, taking them far from where Draysky had hit the Keepers, ducking and weaving through alleyways, then through a crowd of people that surged through the street. Draysky recoiled as his elbows touched theirs, sweat running off him from clothes far too warm for this climate, his nose pinching at the smell of so many people so close. Balean continued leading him, directing him far to the other end of the city, the walk taking over an hour, and pointing to an inn when they arrived.
“We’ll need to figure out what to do with you, but first you need rest,” he said. “Go on. Book yourself a meal and a bed. Recover. Get your thoughts together. Mourn. We’ll move in the morning.”
But the innkeeper did not accept chits, throwing them back at Draysky and laughing as he heaped more upon the counter.
“What is this, you want to pay with rocks?” he asked. “A hundred little slivers of metal might buy you a beer, but surely not a bed!”
When he tried at the next stop, the innkeeper met him with the same response, kicking him back out onto the street. But in that inn, Draysky had seen those smoking. The smell was different than vaporweed, but the shape of the rolled plants was the same. Where there was smoke, they would need lighters. And those, Draysky could make.
Under Balean’s direction, he approached the market, his feet heavier with each step. And he worked his way through the stalls, inquiring within each.
“Is there rayflower here? Any rayflower you can sell?”
“You a beggar?” one asked, looking at Draysky’s absurd coat. “Get on, off with you.”
“Rayflower?” asked another. “You working for the Keepers, boy? Won’t be finding any of them fire aurels around here, and if you do, it wasn’t from me!”
“And what do you have for it? Doesn’t look like much. Rayflower is expensive, that is, if you can find someone willing to sell it,” said a third.
As the sun began to set in the sky, Draysky sat with his head down on the curb near a stall, the owner watching him with a suspicious eye. His stomach growled, and his clothes stank, and Balean started rattling off the next best lo
cations to sleep besides an inn. The gutters, a rooftop if he could find one, under a carriage. And in his finger, the ember called out to him, in a shadow of its earlier anger.
Burn, it whispered to him quietly. Burn it all.
But Draysky had nothing left to burn.
Right when he was about to stand, someone approached him from the marketplace. An old man, hobbling on a cane, and not looking directly at Draysky as he spoke.
“I hear you’re looking for rayflower. Is that true?” he asked, and Draysky nodded.
“Then you’d best be coming with me. My master will want a word.”
Together, they disappeared among the city crowds as the last rays of sunshine faded to dusk, Draysky’s winter coat forgotten on the cobblestones.
Chapter 49: Oliver
The first shop Oliver visited within the city was his favorite, a tailor just inside the outer ring, known for procuring fabrics not available to the average citizen. Fabrics like the spider silk of Heaven Two, notoriously hard to find after the tariffs imposed three years ago, or prime sea cow leather smuggled from the oceans of Heaven Three, impervious to just about anything the elements could throw at it. But more importantly, the tailor understood the ways of the Keepers, and he sewed hidden pouches into the undershirts and overcoats, pouches to keep kernels close to the body, to increase their channeled strength, and aurels near the sleeve ends, where they might slip into a hand at an instant’s notice.
“Two aurel pockets, sir Martin Oliver?” the tailor asked when he finished the measurements and took the selected coat from Oliver to the back. A bright blue, matched with pure white underneath, the comparison as striking as clouds in a summer sky.
“Three. And leave room for a fourth in the future,” Oliver answered as the tailor led him to a door in the back, which connected to the barbershop next door.
“Growing steadily, I see,” said the tailor as the barber took Oliver to a chair already surrounded with steaming towels. “Reminds me of your father. He used to come in here at your age. A fast riser he was, too.”
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