The Infinite

by Lori M. Lee

  “I’ll talk to him alone,” I said. Emryn had underestimated me yesterday, and although I’d made my point, I was pretty sure he still didn’t think much of me. If we were alone, he might relax his guard enough to let something slip. Not that I thought they were somehow deceiving us, but just because these people needed our help didn’t mean I was going to trust everything they said.

  Mason didn’t look happy about it, and even Gret looked concerned, but I waved good-bye and followed the servant from the room.

  The citadel was immaculately kept. Every shadow glass surface gleamed. A thick runner covered the length of the halls, cushioning our steps and muting the echoes. Paintings, oversized vases, and heavy draperies decorated the long stretches of black, but like the furniture in my room, they had an aged sort of opulence to them. They were clean and polished, but the attempts at restoration couldn’t quite hide the marks of time. Maybe Emryn liked it that way: a reminder of where they’d come from and what they’d survived.

  We took one more corner and then came upon a metal door. The servant gave it a single firm tap.

  A voice from inside called, “Come in.”

  She pushed in and bowed her head low. Then she stepped aside and gestured for me to enter. I thanked her, and moved into the room. She shut the door after me.

  It was a small council room. Maps lay scattered and unfurled over every flat surface, their curling ends weighted down by piles of books topped by scrolls that looked ready to topple at the slightest nudge. More maps had been fastened to the walls, many of them overlapping. Tables lined the walls, half-buried beneath the clutter. In the middle of the room was a wide table, also covered by heavy tomes, manuals, discolored scrolls, and loose papers. Bent over the table, studying some lines drawn on a map, was Kahl Emryn.

  I was reminded of the first time I’d met Irra, in his study bent over a miniature sculpture of bread bites. It seemed Kahl Emryn had an obsession with maps the way Irra did with lamps and sugar.

  At my entrance, Emryn straightened and clasped his hands behind his back. He looked much the same as yesterday, but I noticed other details now that I wasn’t distracted by his city. He had a white scar along his temple that disappeared into his hairline. A matching scar ran down his crooked jaw, a pale sliver through his dark beard.

  “I was told your sentinels killed two chimera yesterday,” he said, not bothering with pleasantries. I didn’t mind. “And yet they came away nearly unscathed.”

  “We were lucky,” I said, approaching the table. Directly above, glimmer glass grew down from the ceiling like the stalactites I’d seen in the history texts. They cast lights and shadows throughout the room.

  Emryn’s mouth curved into a humorless smile. “I doubt that. We’ve taken down a dozen chimera in the last two months, but we’ve suffered three times the losses.”

  Although he spoke calmly, it was easy to hear the strain in his voice, the emotion underneath that he kept tightly leashed. It was hard to tell whether he believed our presence would make a difference.

  “My soldiers have seen Ninurta’s sentinels patrol the Yellow Wastes on their silver beasts. The chimera have never attacked them.” His finger tracked an imaginary line down the map.

  I tilted my head to get a better look at it. Although the map was upside down, I recognized the lower half as the Outlands, the forest, and the very edges of the Void, but everything beyond was new to me. The lands as they were now looked very little like the archived maps in the records hall. Where there had once been a mountain range stretching from one side of the continent to the other, now only a few lonely mountains remained at either end. I couldn’t wrap my head around the amount of magic and devastation it must have taken to level mountains.

  “The chimera have learned to fear your sentinels,” Emryn said. “We’ve discovered that they’re quite intelligent. They’re able to observe and adapt, which is why the same strategy never works on them twice. Am I wrong?”

  Actually, the chimera had never attacked the sentinels because they’d been under Ninu’s control. But I wasn’t about to tell Emryn that.

  Besides, his assumption was just as accurate. If the gargoyles were anything to go by, it was no surprise that the chimera were also clever.

  “How many chimera would you say have entered Lanathrill?” I asked. I leaned over the map, my eyes following the coastline eastward. The name Lanathrill was inked onto the map in curling script. To the east, a square plot of land that shared one border with the sea and the other with the Void was labeled Peshtigo.

  “More sightings come in weekly,” he said. “Given the frequency and location of the attacks, I’d say more than two dozen. They’re making their way closer to Vethe.”

  I looked up at him. “You’re worried about the city.”

  His eyes flashed with annoyance. “Of course I am.”

  “But you live inside a mountain,” I said, not sure why I needed to point this out. What could be safer than the walls of a mountain?

  Emryn scowled. “The chimera are burrowing creatures.”

  I raised an eyebrow, not quite believing him. But then I thought about those powerful forearms with large paws and long, curved claws. Perfect for digging. A weight sank in my stomach.

  “It would take time,” Emryn said. “The mountain is strong. But eventually, they would break through, and we would have nowhere to run.”

  I remembered the chimera raking their claws against the walls of the farmhouse, gradually shredding through the stone. It would certainly take a while for them to dig through a mountain, but they could do it. And if the chimera made it into the city . . . I shuddered at the thought.

  Given that it had taken five people to kill two chimera—not unscathed—we would need a small army of sentinels to defeat two dozen of those creatures.

  “The chimera live and travel in packs,” I said, thinking of the gargoyle nest at the top of Etu Gahl. “They must have an underground burrow, a nest of some kind that they all return to after they’ve finished hunting for food.”

  Emryn nodded. “The Fields of Ishta. The majority of their attacks occur in that area. I can take you and your sentinels there to investigate.”

  “That’d be fine,” I said. Something nagged at me, though, something I was overlooking.

  I studied the room, the maps, the scrolls, and what might have been black chess pieces scattered around a tower of books. This was a war room, but where were the rest of his officers? I’d watched him run his soldiers through drills yesterday in the courtyard, something his captain of the guard should have done. Yara had mentioned the position belonged to his uncle, who’d been killed by the chimera. How could Kahl Emryn have lost all his officers in the last few months while he, himself, walked away with little more than a couple of minor scars?

  Maybe as Kahl, he remained behind the shield of his army in a battle. But he didn’t strike me as the sort. He would be at the lead, charging in first to inspire his soldiers to bravery.

  Then again, I wasn’t exactly the best judge of character. I could be wrong. Or the answer could be something as obvious as Kahl Emryn being an exceptionally talented fighter.

  But I wanted to be sure.

  “Kahl Emryn,” I said, “how—”

  “Just Emryn will do,” he told me.

  “Emryn, how have you been keeping the chimera at bay so far?”

  He understood what I was asking, because his lips pinched and his shoulders tensed. I crossed my arms and leaned back against a desk, waiting.

  “May I ask you something first?” he said, retreating to a table in the corner where some scales and writing instruments were strewn.

  “I guess.” At least he was being polite now.

  “Was it true that your Kahl Ninurta was mahjo? That he could wield magic?”

  I frowned, looking for a trap in his words. Ninu had deceived everyone into believing he was mahjo when really, he had been Infinite.

  “Having seen your silver beasts up close,” he continued,
“I believe such creatures could exist only through magic.”

  “Kahl Ninu possessed magic, yes.”

  “Then you’ll understand when I say that I’m the same.”

  “The same?” Emryn wasn’t Infinite. He couldn’t be.

  “I’m mahjo.” He held out his hand. The air around his fingers distorted, rushing and swirling and snapping his sleeve against his wrist until he held a miniature windstorm right there in his palm.

  CHAPTER 15

  MY GAZE DARTED from Emryn’s face to the tempest in his hand.

  How was this possible? The Infinite had stripped mahjo of their magic.

  But there was no denying that this was magic. I moved around the table, stepping closer.

  In my experience, there was always something about the Infinite that gave them away, from Kalla’s pale, unnatural beauty to Irra’s aura of hollowness to the fire that burned in Avan’s eyes. Nothing about Emryn’s physical appearance suggested he was anything but human.

  “These last few months have been a period of many changes,” Emryn said, closing his fingers into a fist, extinguishing the storm. The violent winds dispersed in a rush of air that whipped my hair against my cheeks and sent a pile of scrolls cascading to the floor. The last traces of his magic fluttered around my hands, sending an unexpected jolt of envy through me. I rubbed my fingers to get rid of the sensation while waiting for Emryn to explain.

  He removed a book from a chair and sank heavily onto the seat, his strength spent. “It was said that mahjo came into their powers at different times in their lives,” he began.

  “Yes,” I agreed, remembering what I’d read in school. I realized what he was implying. “But it was almost always during their teen years. It rarely happened with anyone older than twenty.”

  “Maybe the Mahjo War changed that,” he said, opening and closing his fist.

  If Emryn’s magic had appeared only within the last few months, then that couldn’t be a coincidence. But I didn’t see how Ninu’s death could’ve had anything to do with this. Then again, the Infinite were good at covering their tracks.

  “Have you always known you were mahjo?” I asked.

  He lifted his chin, and even from his seat, I got the impression he was looking down his nose at me. “The Kahls of Lanathrill have always been mahjo. My great-grandmother, Kahl Bael, was the only surviving heir after the war. She was younger than you are now, but she rebuilt Vethe here, within one of the last mountains of the Leluna Range. Lanathrill had once been home to the greatest craftsmen and miners on the continent, and enough of them remained after the war to help relocate the capital. However, my great-grandmother never came into her magic the way our ancestors had. None of her children did, either. Until my grandfather first saw your silver beasts in the Yellow Wastes, we had believed the war had extinguished magic altogether.”

  He wasn’t wrong. I rubbed my forehead. “How is this happening?” I muttered.

  “The goddess has promised us many things,” he said. He rolled his shoulders back and straightened in his chair. His strength seemed to be returning.

  “Yara mentioned a goddess.”

  “The mahjo of old were said to have spoken directly to the deities.”

  Only because the Infinite were meddlesome. Like this goddess. “What exactly has this goddess been promising you?” I asked. “And does she have a name?”

  The way Emryn’s lip curled told me he wasn’t going to be as forthcoming as I’d hoped.

  As expected, he said, “The nature of the goddess and her secrets is kept between the Kahl and the Council of Vethe, and no other.”

  “Then what can you tell me?”

  He scratched his beard, right next to where his scar cut through the dark hair. “It is our belief that the world is finally righting itself.”

  I doubted it. Someone would have noticed if the sentinels and hollows, all of them mahjo, suddenly began throwing magic around. Still, how could I be sure? Maybe their collars had altered them too much, and they couldn’t wield magic anymore. There was no way to tell.

  I needed to talk to Irra.

  “It must be true,” Emryn said. He sounded pretty convinced, so I didn’t bother arguing. “The Council of Vethe have come into their powers as well.”

  I’d been studying the glimmer glass overhead. Now I turned to stare at him. “There are more of you?”

  “Four others.”

  I gaped. “Five mahjo? And you still need our help with the chimera?”

  “Our magic is weak,” he said curtly. I imagined he didn’t like having to admit it. “Only myself and one other possess the control to fight the chimera, and even then, we would never be able to face more than one at a time.” He sighed, his eyes closing. When he opened them again, his gaze was hard. “Which brings us back to our dilemma. Ninurta must send help.”

  It wasn’t that simple, not with everything Miraya was currently facing, and I was annoyed that he thought he could order me around. While I agreed that Ninurta would have to do something—the chimera were Ninu’s fault, after all—I still had to make sure that Miraya got what she wanted out of a deal with them.

  “This is the first official contact between our countries,” I said. “If Kahl Miraya sends reinforcements, she would expect you to agree to an alliance to expand our relationship as neighbors.”

  “I expected no less,” Emryn said, standing. He walked around me, returning to the central table where he braced his hands against the surface and leaned over the map again. His hair brushed his jaw, held back from falling into his face by his circlet. “We’ve wanted to discuss an alliance with Ninurta for some time now, but we were never welcome,” he said.

  “And now?”

  He looked at me over his shoulder. “Now that we know the Yellow Wastes can be crossed safely, opening communication would benefit both our countries.” Some nameless emotion lit his green eyes. “We have each survived the destruction of this world. But together, maybe we can repair it.”

  The servants found me some paper and a pen, and I wrote a letter to Miraya.

  First, I explained the situation with the chimera. Lanathrill needed help and only a contingent of sentinels would be of any use against the creatures. Second, Emryn had agreed that once the chimera were dealt with, he and his Council would return with the sentinels to Ninurta to meet with Miraya and begin discussing their alliance. One of the things he’d mentioned was the construction of a road between the two countries, and a shared patrol to keep travelers safe from gargoyles.

  I then drew a clean sheet of paper from the stack. This letter I addressed to Irra. I told him about Emryn’s magic and how he and the Council members had developed these powers right after Kahl Ninu’s death. I didn’t have any theories about why their magic had manifested, so I needed Irra’s opinion.

  At the bottom, I added, “Don’t patronize me by giving me roundabout answers like you always do. Tell me the facts or I’ll come back to Ninurta just to yell at you.”

  I drew a third sheet of paper. I wrote Reev’s name at the top and then paused. What should I say to him?

  I decided simply to tell him we had reached Lanathrill safely and ask that he keep me updated on how he was doing. Thinking about him filled me with homesickness, so I finished the letter and set it aside. I considered writing a fourth letter to Avan, but it had been only a few days, and I had no idea what to say to him.

  I folded all three letters together and sealed them with wax. Dennyl had volunteered to return to Ninurta to deliver them. I wandered down the hall to his room to drop them off. He would leave in the hours before dawn and reach Ninurta well after sunset. It was a long ride, but Dennyl assured me he’d be fine.

  We were leaving to see the Fields of Ishta in a couple of hours. Mason and I spent the time in between exploring the city. We followed the streets without direction, stepping over ribbons of flowered roots and stopping to pick purple blossoms. Near the western boundaries of the city was a glimmer glass garden. Crystals grew
in profusion from the ground, some as tall as three times Mason’s height, while others were as tiny and delicate as raindrops. The whole garden sparkled like a thousand miniature beacons.

  I smiled as we passed two girls on a bench, holding hands and whispering to each other with shy smiles. Nearby, a boy and girl giggled between light kisses before they disappeared around a shiny arch. The garden was a popular romantic spot, it seemed.

  Couples were concealed beneath every crystalline canopy and behind every luminous cluster. Mason and I snickered a little too loudly at the fourth pair we came across, earning us a glare from a boy who turned long enough for me to glimpse the red curls of the girl with him before her gloved fingers nudged him back around.

  The shade of those curls made my heart jump. I let Mason lead me away as I calmed the irrational desire to intrude again on their privacy to get a better look at the boy’s partner.

  I was reluctant to leave the garden, but Mason wanted to explore further, so we continued on. Eventually, we ended up at Hiyamun, the burning waterfall. Neither of us had ever seen a waterfall before, although the river that divided the North District from the East Quarter ended in one just south of the city.

  Hiyamun had to be as high as the wall surrounding Ninurta. Glimmer glass shone from behind the surging waters, transforming the waterfall into something otherworldly. A metal guardrail had been installed twenty feet away from the deep, bubbling pool that the waterfall poured into. We couldn’t talk over the roar of the water, but we lingered at the guardrail for a few minutes, which was the longest I could stand the stifling heat. This was worse than being in Irra’s workroom, especially as the spray from the waterfall could still reach us and the droplets burned.

  A series of narrow canals carried the liquid from the pool to a communal bath where people could soak in the naturally heated water. Mason wiggled his eyebrows at me, but I punched him in the arm. While the hot water was tempting, public bathing was a little too much for me. I’d learned to guard my privacy well in the Labyrinth.