Acolyte's Underworld: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Empire of Resonance Book 4)

by L. W. Jacobs

  “Yes,” Marea said, rising from her chair. “A little practice sounds great.” Anything to take her mind off it. She followed him out of the sitting room and up the stairs, moon lower in the sky. Easy for him to talk about letting go—he was used to it, had already gone through all this many times. But she didn’t want to let go of Ella or Rena. She just wanted to be friends like they were before.

  Maybe that was impossible now.

  Uhallen set one of the blown glass lamps—an elegantly curved thing with swirls of orange—on one side of the wide space, moon casting arches of light through the columns onto the other side. “So far we have been practicing the basics of shamanic battle, to help you in our shared quest. But we have not learned endings, and so you’ve been forced to use the bloodier methods of the vulgate. Tonight I will teach you something more subtle.”

  Marea swallowed. “You’re going to teach me how to kill shamanically?”

  “That is one way to think about it,” Uhallen said, pacing toward the moonlit side of the circular space. “But death is an illusion of the vulgar mind. You know now that we do not die with our physical bodies—our revenants live on. Yes, given time, they will die without uai to sustain them. But physical death is only a transition, and the best of us can make the transition to another body with little trouble.”

  “Nauro did that,” Marea said, remembering the slender shaman showing up in Aran wearing a different body. “He—we thought he’d died, but he came back.”

  “Yes,” Uhallen said. “I can teach you that in time. But for now, for those you battle, remember that death is only a transition, not an ending.”

  “Okay,” Marea said. It made sense but still—dying was dying.

  “I tell you this because we need a living subject to practice, and the technique can be unsettling the first time you see it.”

  “Fine,” Marea said, blowing smoke, sort of beyond caring. Everything today had been unsettling. “What are we doing?”

  “We are rending an embodied revenant,” Uhallen said, and clapped his hands. A balding man appeared in the center of the space with a rush of air.

  Marea started back. “You mean—”

  “This is the technique of taking souls,” Uhallen said.

  The man’s eyes widened. “Prophets no! Please, you can’t—”

  Uhallen grimaced and a leather gag appeared in the man’s mouth, muffling his shouts. “He’s not unaware of the practice, you see.”

  “Who is he?” Marea asked, stomach turning over. “Another one of the Neverblades?”

  “Yes,” Uhallen said, “but lower in their hierarchy.”

  “But he killed shamans like the others? He deserves to die?”

  “That is a matter of opinion.” Uhallen drew on his cigar, sage crackling in the quiet air. “He acquiesced to Aeyenor’s plan to kill shamans, yes, but he was never powerful enough himself to do it. Nor will he ever be.”

  “So he’s not—” In a flash she connected Uhallen’s talk of death to this man. She drew in a breath. “You want me to kill him.”

  “I want you to learn the technique,” Uhallen said. “And to stop thinking like a vulgar. Let go of that mindset, Marea. It no longer serves you.”

  “The mindset of only wanting to kill guilty people?” Marea asked.

  “Yes. The mindset of you being a regular person. Your friends have already recognized you’ve changed. Now you must. Do hunters worry whether it is right to kill the elk? Do elk fret over the grass they consume? Your place in the world has changed, and the old way of thinking no longer fits it. Or do you not think you have changed so much since we started?”

  Marea shifted her feet. She was different, but— “Couldn’t we practice on a criminal, just to get started?”

  “No,” Uhallen said. “If we were on a traditional training schedule, one that lasted years instead of weeks, I would say yes, let us search for a better target. But you were seen today, Marea. The vulgate present at the soiree will not understand what you did, but do not doubt the ninespears of Worldsmouth will hear of it. Will know of a rogue element. The Neverblades in particular will know you are responsible for the death of two of their shamans, one of them fairly high in their ranks. They will come for you, and you need to be ready.”

  Currents. “But there were no shamans left,” Marea said. “I killed them.”

  “There were none active,” Uhallen said. “But there were certainly more than the two you killed present. Word will spread. And when you come against trained shamans at the very least you need to be able to defend against this attack, or all your other skills will not count for much. And so we must practice. Tonight.”

  Fear and revulsion churned in Marea’s gut, staring at the balding man still struggling against his bonds. She did not want to kill this man. Neither did she want to die because of a skill she could have learned. Was she really changed enough to justify taking his life for her knowledge?

  “It is not an ending,” Uhallen said. “Death is a transition. And you need this practice. Unless you want to go back to your old life? Find your friends and hope the Neverblades do not come after you?”

  “No,” Marea said, finally finding something she was certain of. She had worked too hard to get here, spent too long powerless to give up on it now. Death was a transition. The rules had changed.

  Maybe she could believe that.

  “Show me.”

  “Excellent,” Uhallen said, striding toward the bound man. “As most adults have revenants attached to them, most adults have also formed a revenant within them. We can call it a soul, to distinguish it from disembodied revenants. But this soul is still a revenant like any other—only that it is an integral part to the body. Take it and the body dies. Now.” He drew on his cigar. “Why would we want to do this?”

  “To kill them less publically,” Marea said at once. Currents knew she could have used a less bloody way to kill those shamans at the soiree, or Josell in West Cove for that matter. “To a vulgar, this would just look like they’ve fallen down, maybe passed out. And we are never seen to lay a hand on them.”

  “Yes,” Uhallen said. “Good. In addition to that, there are a few other advantages. You recall the silver threads we follow from the forehead to find a shaman’s thralls?”

  Marea nodded. “I have my own now.” She could see them from the corner of her eye, stretching gossamer into infinity.

  “Those threads are tied to your soul within—feeding it uai. Normally we break those ties to thrall another’s thralls, but when we take the living revenant, the ties remain.”

  “And so you gain all their thralls at once,” Marea said, eyebrows raising. “That seems a lot better than what we’ve been doing.”

  “Yes, if you can pull it off. Rending a soul is much more difficult than pulling a revenant. More like ripping an arm from its socket than a tooth from its gum. It requires more power, and usually more finesse.”

  “Why didn’t I see Nauro or Harides doing this?” Marea asked, gazing at her cigar to keep her eyes away from the bound man. “They both had power and skill.”

  “Well Harides had his secrets to keep, of course. But even for skilled shamans, the target must be more or less unconscious to pull it off—at least if they are shamans. To take a vulgate soul, often a simple revenant attack is enough. It should suffice for Oren.”

  Marea winced. She’d rather not know the man’s name, even if death was just a transition. “Why?”

  “Because as strong as the link from mind to body is,” Uhallen said, “the link from mind to soul is stronger. The mind believes very deeply that it is alive—so deeply that almost no amount of uai and outside belief can convince it otherwise. But when the mind is preoccupied, or unconscious? Then it holds very few beliefs indeed. Here. Try it on a conscious target.” He gestured at Oren. “Summon your uai and believe the man dead.”

  Marea did as he said, conjuring a vision of Oren suddenly collapsing to the floor, though she couldn’t bring herself to invest t
he kind of detail her fatewalking needed to work. She struck resonance.

  Nothing happened.

  Uhallen frowned. “That was a poor showing. But the point remains. If we could kill easily by belief alone, we would. Rending a soul is the next best thing. To do it, we first render them unconscious,” Uhallen plucked a needle from his coat and stuck in the man’s neck, “then reach either through forehead or neck nape and grasp the soul.”

  The man crumpled, not unlike how Marea had envisioned, and Uhallen grew a shamanic arm, reaching into the man’s forehead between his brows.

  “This is the difficult part,” Uhallen said, voice showing little strain. “Even maintaining an object of belief within another’s body is difficult. But then we must grip their soul.”

  As he spoke, Marea saw his shamanic hand clench around something deep inside Oren’s chest. “I can’t even see it,” she said.

  “You will not be able to. But you can feel it, so long as you keep your arm intact. It’s the only thing that offers resistance within. Then you just start to pull—” Oren’s body curled up, like the unconscious man was trying to protect something in his navel. Uhallen released his grip and it went loose again. “And if they stay unconscious and you pull hard enough, you have a soul. Care to try?”

  Marea pulled at one of her braids. She did and she didn’t.

  “Go on. You won’t be able to do it on the first try.”

  Hesitantly, Marea summoned a shamanic arm and tried to push through his forehead. “It just seems to—dissolve when I try to go in,” she said.

  “Try harder. Believe harder. I’ve seen you do much more difficult things. Don’t let your beliefs shape you. You shape your beliefs. Remember when I changed to Feynrick, and you were suddenly able to beat my attacks? Belief is a skill. Use it.”

  Marea squared her shoulders and tried again. Death not being death was too hard to believe in, so she tried thinking Oren did deserve it. It sounded close enough to the truth anyway.

  This time her arm went in, though it looked strangely bent, like a limb shoved into a deep pool.

  “Good,” Uhallen said. “Now reach down toward the heart.”

  Marea did, keeping her belief steady. The man deserved it. She deserved it. If this was what it took to be a shaman, then she would do it. She reached deeper, arm seeming to shrink the further it got into the body, until she bumped against something.

  “It’s warm,” she gasped.

  “Yes. Good,” Uhallen said. “Now grasp it.”

  Marea swallowed.

  “Control your beliefs, Marea. This is the true power of a shaman.”

  She tried to grasp the heart, but it was like her fingers wouldn’t move.

  “This man is beneath you,” Uhallen’s voice came. “A vulgar. Tried to be a shaman and failed. And he is part of the group that killed my friends. That sent Aeyenor to Aran, where he attacked your friends. Rend his soul.”

  Marea squeezed again, shamanic fingers bizarrely numb, as if the soul’s heat were stealing hers.

  “There is no heat, no cold. That is your mind searching for metaphors, clinging to beliefs. Take control of your mind. Take control of your life. Or accept that others will always control it for you.”

  Marea squeezed again, tears running down her cheeks. She wanted to be in control, but her shamanic arm felt frozen numb.

  “Your family, your friends, your lovers—they have always had the power, dictated the rules, controlled what you did and why you did it. This is your chance to change that. Forever. Take control.”

  Currents but she wanted control. Marea shut her eyes and cleared her mind and squeezed.

  This time the hand obeyed her, and closed tight on the pulsing soul.

  “Now pull it out,” Uhallen said.

  Marea hesitated. She wanted this, but—badly enough to kill Oren?

  Suddenly an arm was thrusting into her forehead, an icy grip closing over something deep in her chest.

  “Take it,” Uhallen said. “Take it or I take yours!”

  Fear surging, Marea pulled at Oren’s soul. It felt solid as a rock.

  “Take it,” Uhallen said, shamanic arm flexing. Marea gagged, body curling inward. It felt like someone was ripping her spine out, only this spine ran up the front of her body.

  Something deeper in Marea took over, something with no doubts about what to do. If it was kill or be killed, she would kill.

  Marea yanked on the thing in her hands. A cascade of cracks and pops vibrated up her arm, as though she were uprooting an ancient spruce, even as the pulling sensation in her own chest grew stronger, her knees pulling up, her abs crunching in. Marea pulled back harder, gritting her teeth.

  And stumbled backward, core snapping back into place, a glowing red revenant in her outstretched shamanic arm.

  “Bravo!” Uhallen called, withdrawing his arm. “I have never seen anyone do it on the first attempt! Bravo!”

  On the floor Oren lay curled like a sleeping baby—only he was dead, not sleeping. Marea dropped to her knees, gasping, gorge rising in her throat. She’d killed him. An innocent man.

  “Take your time,” Uhallen said, calm as ever, and a sudden white-hot fury rose up at him, that he would teach her to do this, that he would force her to it.

  Uhallen chuckled. “I forced you to do nothing, Marea Fetterwel. What I did was force you to accept your own basic beliefs. You would never have begun with me, never have stayed with me through the trainings and assignments, if you did not believe at bottom that you are better than the bulk of humanity. Curing Rena was a useful goal to get you started on the path. But now that you are here, you can see that have always wanted more power. That you deserve it. The difference is you finally have the means to take it.”

  Marea stayed there panting, moonlit floor spinning, trying to catch hold of her mind and heart. To find some reason he was wrong, some place he was tricking her. Trying to use her. No commitments. No attachments. Get your power and get out. But what did that mean, now that Rena was cured? She had no commitments anymore, no attachments to friends or family or Uhallen.

  What she had was power. And she would choose when to get out.

  Slowly she regained her breath and stood, feeling different than she had been. Colder. Clear-eyed. And more confident—for the first time in what felt like forever, she knew who she was. And what she wanted.

  “Thank you,” she said. “What do I do with this thing now?” she asked, shaking Oren’s revenant in her shamanic arm, its color fading fast.

  “Nothing,” Uhallen said. “It is useless to us now. But if you are prepared, I have a list of those in the city who are worth your time.”

  “Do tell,” Marea said, tossing the dead thing over the edge.

  40

  This reporter has it on good faith that the perpetrator was none other than Ellumia Merewil, murderous daughter of Elyssa and Illyen Merewil, presumed dead all these years. As for the falling sickness that accompanied her crimes? Perhaps she’s been hiding with the Brineriders all these years, and her true revenge is bringing a new plague down on us.

  —Venna Jeltenets, Delta’s Oath

  Ella woke to a churning stomach, the Brokewater stench of night pots and rotting fish and unwashed bodies wafting into her room with the morning’s heat. She lost it a moment later, in the bucket she kept as part of the spear’s broom disguise. She’d forgone the spear again last night, old age crippling but still her best disguise against recognition. By evening newsmongers in the slum had been calling stories of the Downs, and chief among them was not the showdown between Houses Erewhin and Fenril, but the murderous reappearance of Ellumia Merewil, the Runaway Knife.

  It was a blessing and a curse. A blessing because slander sold, as her father used to say, and with the following her previous two articles had already gained, revealing herself as the Runaway Knife was going to make her third article explode across the city.

  It was a curse because she needed to do more than send a courier to The Councila
te Quill with the article she’d written last night. She needed to go out herself, to the heart of the city no less, to meet with Praet Sablos and finally start the real work she’d come here for—gathering evidence against the archrevenant.

  All she felt like doing this morning was laying in bed with the sickpot close to hand. Ella flopped back on the bed, breathing deep, trying to think of anything but the foul stench that pervaded the entire city, from Brokewater to Reed Heath. It felt like moon blood coming on, but her resonance had aged her past having cycles. At least, she hadn’t had one since Aran.

  Ella forced herself up, feeling her age as much as her nausea once she was on her feet. Her resonance’s premature aging was no doubt the real reason she felt so sick. Her hands were spotted and wrinkled, her bones weighed a hundred stone each, and the hair she braided was brittle and silvery-white.

  Ella gave the spear a longing look before she closed and locked the door. A few minutes holdings its torrent of uai and she would feel better, but this age was her disguise in the city. She’d briefly considered bringing the spear along—she would feel much better having the power of the entire planet’s mindseyes behind her. Well, she would if she wasn’t literally going to see an archrevenant searching for the spear and killing everyone in his way.

  Not to mention how strange it would look to show up to a secret meeting carrying a broom.

  So Ella sent off her latest article then hobbled through the humid stink of Brokewater, keeping an ear out for the newsmongers as she passed. They advertised other stories alongside the Downs—rumors of a new Brider disease that had made it out of the quarantined trade district, talk of Alsthen creating successful yura farms, but two of every three stories she heard were about the duel or the Runaway Knife. They painted her as an almost mythical figure—first vanishing from the hands of two lawkeepers in broad daylight, leaving only her jacket behind, then escaping a public murder at the Downs by striking everyone around her ill. Her mother would be furious, of course—the Merewil name was firmly involved at this point.