The Lost City of Ithos: Mage Errant Book 4

by John Bierce

  He almost found it a little odd that he was brooding about Avah again. So much had happened in the short time since they’d left Skyhold that Hugh felt overwhelmed with new memories, as though the events of recent days were trying to force others out of his mind.

  Then he thought about the Havathi spotter he’d killed, and he realized that Avah had been right. His life wasn’t ever going to be the quiet, peaceful life he wanted, not so long as he was pacted to Kanderon and studying under Alustin. Avah wanted adventure, but ones of discovery, of visiting natural wonders and ancient ruins. Avah chased the thrill of bargaining with merchants and seeking new trades, not the stress of battle, and Hugh couldn’t blame her at all. That’s all Hugh had to offer her, and no matter how she felt about him personally, he realized that he understood her not wanting everything that came with him.

  Most of the time, he didn’t want everything that came along with his life, so he most certainly couldn’t blame her.

  But… he didn’t hate his life. He could do with less violence, with less danger, but he was coming to love seeing the world and learning new magics. He’d accomplished things that he was genuinely proud of, no matter how hard it was to admit.

  And most of all, he had Sabae, Talia, and Godrick.

  As the ship left the sheltered cove behind, Hugh felt like he’d left some part of himself he no longer needed in it, and as he turned away from the railing to join a lesson from Alustin on, of all things, the different varieties of dirt affinity, he found himself focusing a little more easily. He didn’t feel better, necessarily, just not as overwhelmed.

  They reached the first potential site for Ithos a week after the Silent Straits.

  Passing ships had reported changes in the aether surrounding an island towards the edges of the Shattered Isles, and it only required a couple days detour in their journey.

  They spent the entire morning hiking up into a mountain pass into the heart of the island, starting out at daybreak. The aether was too thin here for Alustin to fly up and check, and scrying was insufficient— Kanderon demanded that they check each location in person.

  All the physical training Alustin and Artur had put the four of them through over the last two years was coming in handy now— Hugh doubted he could have successfully ascended the pass when he’d first arrived at Skyhold. He’d hardly been out of shape then— he’d spent years wandering the alpine woods of Emblin during the days to avoid his family as much as possible— but the pass was steep as a staircase, and the ground largely unstable, crumbling shale. Hugh and the others found themselves scrambling up on all fours as often as not.

  Godrick and Artur had a particularly difficult time of it— given their greater weight, the shale crumbled far more easily beneath them. They used their magic to help stabilize it, but Godrick ran out partway up, and Artur was reluctant to let his mana reservoirs get too low.

  All of them save for Alustin and, a little surprisingly, Talia, were exhausted by the time they reached the top.

  “Ah’m used ta’ Alustin bein’ annoyingly chipper,” Artur said from his seat against a boulder, “but how are yeh just prancin’ around, Talia?”

  Talia smirked at him. “I grew up in the Skyreach Range; I’m comfortable at far higher elevations than this. Plus I’m not carrying around a couple hundred pounds of unnecessary muscle.”

  Both Godrick and Artur made rude gestures at her, and Hugh and Sabae exchanged amused glances.

  Talia wasn’t fully back to her usual brash self just yet, but she was far more confident and energetic than she’d been following the sea serpent attack. She still wore the bandanna over her scalp, but Tollin and Yarra had scrounged up a truly ridiculous broad-brimmed hat from the ship’s stores for her. It had numerous gaudy decorations, and a trio of massive, battered, colorful feathers from some unknown tropical bird jutting up from it.

  It was far too large for Talia, and was continually sagging in front of her eyes. It looked absolutely ridiculous, but Talia was delighted by it. One of her many brothers apparently had a similar hat.

  After only a few minutes of rest, Alustin had them back up and moving. The trip down into the valley in question was shorter and easier than the trip up. The valley was barren, rocky, and completely empty, save for a single rain-fed pool with some shrubs next to it. It was bordered by cliffs and steep mountain slopes, with two other exits leading in and out. It was a bit on the small side to fit a city in, to Hugh’s mind, but then, maybe Ithos had been built more vertically than horizontally?

  Alustin spent quite some time taking measurements with various arcane instruments, the largest of which resembled the offspring of a telescope and a tuning fork, taller than Hugh and Talia. Meanwhile, the rest of them aimlessly poked around the valley. Hugh had wandered over to the pool, intent on trying to skip a rock all the way across the small body of water, when he saw something reflected in its waters.

  Hugh quickly glanced up, and there, perched atop a cliff, was a sphinx.

  He was less than half Kanderon’s size, and his fur was a rich grey, rather than the tawny amber of Kanderon’s coat. His wing-feathers started off grey as well, but as Hugh’s eyes traced along the sphinx’s immense wings, they became a pattern of alternating black and white feathers towards the tips.

  The sphinx was definitely male— his face was sharp-browed and severe, though he was visibly younger than Kanderon, with skin darker of hue as well. The sphinx’s eyes were a brilliant gold as he stared unblinkingly down into the valley at them.

  Hugh wasn’t sure how long he stared up at the sphinx before he heard the crunching of feet on the rock beside him.

  “Not often yeh see a sphinx this close,” Artur said. “Magnificent, isn’t he?”

  The sphinx blinked for the first time, as if acknowledging that as his due.

  Artur chuckled softly. “Of course yeh can hear me from up there. Well, yeh don’t need ta’ worry about our intentions in yer territory. This is just a temporary stopover on our voyage.”

  Artur clapped a hand gently on Hugh’s shoulder. “Alustin’s done with his measurements, Hugh. Let’s get headin’ back ta’ the ship, eh?”

  Hugh and the others were silent on the way up out of the valley. At the top of the little pass, the whole group stopped and looked back. The sphinx was still perched atop his cliff, watching them.

  Hugh, feeling a little self-conscious, waved goodbye to the sphinx. To his surprise, the sphinx gave a deep, deliberate nod, before spreading his wings and launching himself off the cliff. He flew in a huge circle around the valley, giving them a magnificent view, then gained altitude and soared off, deep into the mountains filling the island.

  The group set off down the pass. It was, annoyingly, just as difficult descending the shale as it had been climbing it. They marched alongside the steeper edge of the pass, so they could steady themselves on the rock wall to their side— not that it was that useful, as it was made of the same crumbling shale.

  Halfway down, Sabae spoke up.

  “Why was it so much smaller than Kanderon?” she asked.

  Alustin, in the lead, turned back to look at them all.

  “He was a younger sphinx, I believe,” Alustin said. “Probably no more than a century or two old. Not that he’ll ever reach Kanderon’s size— she’s by far the largest sphinx I’ve ever even heard of, and by all accounts the oldest, too. None of the others even come close. Of course, none of them have crystal wings, either. I’m amazed this sphinx let us see him. Many of them were hunted by the Ithonian Empire, and most on the continent that survived still lurk deep in the wilderness, far away from civilization. There’s only one other I know of that’s regularly involved in human affairs, and it’s a member of the Alikean Parliament. It’s different on other continents, but—”

  “How old is Kanderon?” Talia asked.

  Alustin shrugged. “She’s never said, but she was already fully grown when the first Skyhold Council used the Exile Splinter on Ithos. So very likely seven or eight hu
ndred years, at least.”

  The rest of the trip down the pass was, despite its difficulty, filled with stories and rumors about sphinxes. Talia and Artur had the most stories to share, having spent the most time in the Skyreach Range. Talia had never seen any sphinxes other than Kanderon this close before, but she’d seen some at a distance, and she had more stories to share about encounters members of Clan Castis had with sphinxes over the years. A surprising number of the stories involved sphinxes battling dragons for territory. Despite their smaller size, sphinxes won more often than not. Their senses were far superior to dragons, so they usually managed to pull off ambushes, and their parents seldom let them leave the nest before they were capable of practicing magic at a level comparable to a human archmage, which was a huge advantage for ambushes.

  Artur had quite a number of surprisingly close encounters with sphinxes as well, and had actually helped a nesting pair rescue a nestling from a collapsed cave once. Sphinxes apparently mated for life, and had a child only once every few decades. No one knew for sure whether they gave live birth or laid eggs— sphinxes were notoriously secretive about many parts of their life.

  Though, reflecting on a conversation Hugh once had with Kanderon, he suspected that part of it might be embarrassment on the part of the sphinxes, rather than them just being secretive.

  When they got back to the ship, Hugh wanted nothing more than to take an immediate nap, but, to his surprise, his spellbook was flapping around the rigging making a nuisance of itself.

  It had spent most of the time since it ate the communications diary hibernating, only rousing itself to demand attention or pets from Hugh once or twice a day.

  When Hugh managed to finally coax it down from the rigging, it snuggled up in his arms happily. He couldn’t help but notice that it had only come down once Talia had gone belowdecks— he’d have to do something about the squabble between those two. So far as he could tell, he was fairly sure the spellbook felt bad about all the inconvenience and trouble it had caused Talia, but Talia was still happily holding onto her grudge.

  “Should we give it a try?” Alustin asked him.

  Hugh hesitated, then nodded. They’d consulted extensively with Kanderon via Alustin’s book about the spellbook situation, and they’d worked out a plan of action for when the spellbook was finished… digesting… the communications diary.

  Hugh opened up his spellbook to a random page. It didn’t really matter which page he used— the spellbook could display any of the pages Hugh had written in it, either from before or after it had transformed, as well as the pages of any book it had devoured.

  “Alright, spellbook, are you ready for this?” Hugh asked.

  The spellbook didn’t move, but it projected a sense of readiness towards Hugh.

  “You really need to name that thing,” Alustin muttered.

  Hugh ignored him. He’d name the book when he thought of a good name for it.

  “Alright,” Hugh said, “contact Kanderon.”

  The spellbook’s crystal pages seemed to strain, and a wash of blue-green rippled through the normal steady green.

  Hugh took a deep breath, channeled mana, and began writing in the spellbook with his finger.

  Kanderon?

  Nothing happened for a few moments, but then a familiar bold script began to scrawl across the page.

  Ah, Hugh! It worked, I see. Excellent. That book of yours isn’t a completely useless annoyance, it seems.

  A ripple of irritation reached Hugh from the book, but it didn’t do anything to interfere with Kanderon’s words. His spellbook seemed to take its duties as a book very seriously.

  We just finished checking out the first site, Master. It wasn’t what we were looking for— Alustin said it was just a natural shift in the aether. The localized mana desert around this island is starting to collapse, apparently.

  Unsurprising. We suspected this site was an unlikely one to start with, though not firmly enough to rule it out.

  We did see something you might be interested in, though.

  Hugh spent the next few minutes describing the sphinx they’d seen. Kanderon seemed quite pleased to hear the news— she seemed to believe it was a sign that the younger sphinxes on the continent were growing bolder, and more willing to interact with the rest of civilization. She didn’t have much hope for the older sphinxes that had survived the Ithonian purges to rejoin society, however.

  Hugh spent the next hour or so discussing the events of the voyage so far with Kanderon before he finally begged off, exhausted and badly needing a nap.

  Before he went shut the book and went belowdecks, Kanderon shared one more piece of news with Hugh that she thought he’d find interesting. Rhodes Charax, Hugh’s old bully, had gotten in an argument with his master, Aedan Dragonslayer, that escalated to a battle that had leveled a good part of the Skyhold docks. Shockingly, Rhodes had actually fought his master to a standstill before escaping into the Skyreach Range. Nobody had seen him since, though most suspected he was returning to Highvale. Kanderon, however, wasn’t so sure, and she warned him to be cautious, as there was no telling what Rhodes’ intentions towards Hugh might be.

  Hugh, however, found that rather than being scared or apprehensive, he was just thoughtful. He was fairly sure he knew exactly why Rhodes and Aedan had argued and then fought, and he was oddly sure that, wherever Rhodes was going, it wasn’t after him. Hugh would never forgive the cruelty Rhodes had shown him— not least because Rhodes had never actually apologized for it, or anything but abandoning him in Skyhold’s labyrinth— but after his confrontation with Rhodes near the end of the school year, Hugh realized he no longer seriously worried about Rhodes as an enemy.

  Plus, Rhodes kind of owed him for telling him the truth about Bakori and the events in the labyrinth.

  He didn’t tell Kanderon any of that just yet, however— he wanted to think about it a while longer first. So, he simply thanked her for letting him know and bid her farewell.

  As he closed the book and descended belowdecks for his nap, Hugh realized to his mild surprise that this had been the longest conversation he’d ever had with Kanderon that wasn’t a lecture or lesson.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Stormward's Gift

  At the far eastern edge of the Shattered Isles, there was a small island with a natural harbor that the Radhan knew about.

  The rock layers of the cliffs surrounding the harbor were tilted up at a shallow angle from being horizontal. One of those layers was a soft mudstone resting atop a particularly strong, erosion resistant sandstone. Over the eons, the mudstone had worn away more swiftly than the sandstone, leaving a wide exposed ledge that formed a natural road all the way from the water to the very tops of the cliffs, accessible from the lowest to the highest tides.

  The previous few days had featured considerable argument by Captain Grepha and the other Radhan elders aboard the ship about dates and calendars, though they shut up whenever they realized one of the party from Skyhold was near. Hugh even overheard them speaking in the secretive Radhan tongue a few times. Despite knowing nothing of the language, it was pretty obvious there was a lot of cursing involved. The Radhan tongue seemed especially well suited for cursing, if Hugh was any judge.

  The arguments were finally resolved with the announcement that a major Radhan holiday was occurring the next evening, and they’d be laying harbor at an uninhabited island they knew of. When asked how they could have only just figured out a holiday was the next day, they merely began muttering about conflicting calendars, and avoided any further questions.

  The island was a battered, broken-looking thing, whose outcrops were too jumbled to be called hills. Given the tilted rock layers of the island, it looked more as though some immense giant had broken a great stack of leaning boards.

  Hugh never would have noticed the half-concealed harbor if they hadn’t sailed straight into it on the morning of the mysterious Radhan holiday. The Radhan spent half a day preparing the feast-site atop the c
liffs. They refused any help, so Hugh and his friends spent much of the day exploring the jumbled rocks of the island. The cliffs near the harbor were fairly flat and open, but farther towards the back of the small island they turned into an impassible mass.

  In the afternoon, Hugh noticed the Radhan drawing a ward in chalk around the feast site. He took his leave of his friends, who were waiting on Godrick to shape a ladder into the stone of a particularly tall rock spire so they could get a view from the top.

  Artur was using his magic to help flatten the stone they were constructing the tables atop of, while Alustin was nowhere to be seen.

  Hugh spent a few moments following the curve of the ward the Radhan were constructing, frowning and muttering to himself. Finally, he strode up to the Radhan ship mages drawing the ward. They were drawing it out of a book, arguing about it as they went.

  “This,” Hugh said, “is one of the worst wards I have ever seen in my life.”

  “Excuse me,” one of the mages said, clearly offended, “we’ve been using this ward for decades. It’s a time tested design, and—”

  “It’s terrible,” Hugh said. “It’s supposed to be a concealment ward, I take it?”

  “It is a concealment ward,” another mage said. “It’s hardly safe to just have a celebration out in the open on an exposed island like this. A dragon or something could easily spot it from a distance and decide to drop in if we didn’t put up a ward.”

  “They could probably spot it from a distance even with this ward,” Hugh said. “I will take care of the warding, because this offends my professional sensibility as a warder.”