The Tattered Lands

by Barbara Ann Wright

  He draped an arm around her shoulders and leaned close. “Don’t look, Van. Someone’s hiding ahead to the right.”

  “I see them,” Fieta said, scratching her nose, covering her words. “Looks like three or four. I saw them when we crested the last rise.”

  “Sure you did.”

  Vandra’s heart sank. “Brigands?” She tried to keep her voice as quiet as theirs. “We’re so close! What do we—”

  “We’ll deal with them,” Fieta said. “You stop here and pretend there’s something wrong with your boot.”

  Vandra did as she was told, examining her feet even as her heart began to race. Maybe these brigands would hide, intimidated by the twins. Maybe they weren’t brigands at all. Maybe they were hiding because they thought the twins were—

  “Keep up!” Pietyr turned as he walked but gestured at her to stay where she was.

  “There is something in my boot!” She spoke clearly, trying to sound authentic and knowing she was failing. She was bad at lying, but she was worse in a fight. She wanted to tell the twins to be careful or order the brigands to run away. Maybe if she shouted like a lunatic, everyone would be too unnerved to act.

  And everyone would stay safe.

  The twins continued slowly. Vandra felt along her boot, eyes locked on her siblings’ backs. “Gods large and small,” she whispered. “Protect them.”

  * * *

  Watching from the trees, Lilani tensed. The three humans she’d been following hadn’t seemed to notice the other group of humans crouching behind a tangle of brush. Those waiting had weapons in hand, and her group continued blithely forward.

  Lilani took a breath, ready to shout a warning.

  “Don’t even think it,” Faelyn said from beside her.

  “But they don’t see the danger!” When the group of three split, she gasped. “Look! The smallest one has fallen behind. The other two will be ambushed.”

  “Lilani, don’t.”

  Lilani ground her teeth. The small female who’d almost seen her was now alone and vulnerable. Lilani wanted to protect her, but how? Creep up behind and warn her? More movement from the south caught her attention. Another human ran past a clump of trees on the other side of the road, racing toward the small female’s unprotected back. Lilani recognized the newcomer as one of a pair of humans that had gone past earlier on the road. She wore leather, carried a club, and had a focused, cruel look on her dirty face.

  The small female was doomed. Her armed compatriots were too far away, and she hadn’t noticed the assailant behind her. Lilani shook off Faelyn and ran. Her magic shuddered, but desperation pulled it close. Shrouded, she burst out of the trees.

  Ahead, the ambushers sprang at the small female’s protectors. The protectors’ weapons seemed to fly through the air as they fought together. They’d subdue their opponents in no time, but they wouldn’t be able to help the small female. Lilani ran harder, her breath coming in gasps. The wind rushed past her ears, and she tore through the grass.

  The small female turned, no doubt drawn by the sound of Lilani’s footsteps. She spotted her would-be assailant instead and froze, her mouth open. The assailant grinned. The small female obviously wasn’t a warrior. Neither was Lilani, but she wouldn’t let herself think about the consequences of her rush at the moment. At least two against one was better odds.

  * * *

  “Vandra!” Pietyr called. “Run!”

  Vandra’s body wouldn’t obey. By the time she’d heard her attacker coming, all she could do was stare. She noted the cudgel and the cruel grin on the brigand’s dirty face, but her rational mind refused to catalogue them in any way that made sense.

  The cudgel lifted, and Vandra raised her arms. She closed her eyes and tensed for the shock and pain. When the brigand shrieked, Vandra flinched, but no blow came. She opened one eye to see the brigand flying through the air as if blown by a strong wind, her cudgel tumbling from her hand.

  Now the world made even less sense. The brigand lay in the ditch, cursing, her eyes wide. Vandra looked to her own hands. Had she done something without knowing? An adrenaline-fueled reaction? She took a step forward, and a woman blinked into existence before her.

  Vandra gasped, and the mysterious woman’s purple eyes went wide as they locked gazes. Their skin was nearly the same shade of brown, but the mysterious woman had dark blue hair, a sight Vandra had never seen. It lifted from her shoulders as if caught in a breeze. She crouched, breathing hard as if she’d been running, and her arms were stuck straight out. Her foxlike features and delicately pointed ears belonged to a creature from another world.

  Vandra blinked, and the woman vanished. The twins ran to Vandra’s side, weapons pointed at the brigand in the grass. The brigand scrambled up, looking for her cudgel, but Pietyr darted into her path. She dashed out of his way. Fieta leapt to the side, swinging the butt of her heavy spear. It smacked against the brigand’s head, and she fell senseless to the ground.

  “Van, are you okay?” Pietyr asked.

  “I’m fine.” Vandra searched for the mysterious woman and saw only scuffs in the dirt by the road. “Did you see…” She looked to the twins, noting their sweaty faces, but neither of them was bleeding. “Are you okay?”

  “Not even winded.” Fieta clapped her on the shoulder. “And what got into you, Van? She came at you with a club, and you threw her into the ditch? I didn’t know you had it in you.” She grinned. “Or did she rush you and trip?”

  “There was a woman.” Vandra strode to the spot where the woman had appeared. She waved her hands in the air but felt nothing.

  “Where?” Pietyr asked.

  “She disappeared.” When the twins glanced at each other, she knew what they were thinking. “I’m not hallucinating, and I don’t imagine things.”

  “Then you’ve developed the power to manifest mystery women from thin air?” Fieta asked.

  “No! She was here. I don’t know how she…” The features, the ears, the hair. And she’d vanished from sight. “A seelie.” Vandra looked to the woods but saw nothing. “A seelie saved me.” A beautiful one, but she didn’t say that part aloud. “Why?”

  The twins were staring at the brigand, not listening. “What should we do with the thieves?” Pietyr asked.

  Fieta glanced around. “We can’t march them all the way back to Saribelle, and we don’t have time to find a village to take them.”

  “I don’t want them with us anyway,” Pietyr said. “We don’t have manacles or enough supplies to feed them.”

  Fieta shrugged. “Let’s take their weapons and leave them for Van’s imaginary savior.”

  Vandra glared, but Fieta wasn’t paying attention. They took the cudgels and left the small knives so the brigands could live off the land. Vandra didn’t know if that was enough for people desperate enough to hunt this far north beside the Seelie Forest. Hopefully, this would force them closer to a settlement.

  To prey on the people there? Vandra couldn’t think too hard about it at the moment. It was the old problem of too many people living in too small a space. Something had to be done. Maybe the seelie would part with some of their syndrium. She stared into the trees. If the seelie were willing to save her from a brigand, maybe they’d help in other ways, too.

  Or maybe they simply hated an unfair fight or took pity on someone who clearly didn’t know what she was doing. Either way, Vandra lifted a hand in thanks, hoping the purple-eyed seelie was watching.

  * * *

  Lilani crouched in the forest, but when Vandra waved, she smiled, tempted to return the gesture. One glance at Faelyn’s stony face convinced her to keep her hand down. He radiated disapproval.

  “I had to,” she said quietly.

  He kept staring.

  “Go on,” she said, “tell me how disappointed you are, how foolish I am.”

  With a sniff, he looked away. “I knew something like this would happen. Why shouldn’t it? You and Awith were cousins, after all.”

  Lilani rocked
back on her heels. “We were? What do you know about Awith?”

  He gave her a look that was enough to remind her he was centuries older. “I knew her. And yes, you’re related. Many seelie are to some extent. Why do you think we keep such careful birth records?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”

  “Keep your voice down!” He glanced at the road, but the humans were distracted by one another. “If I told you about every seelie I’ve ever met, we wouldn’t have time for anything else.” He sighed. “I knew that if you met humans, you’d follow in her footsteps, throwing yourself at them.”

  “I did not!” But she had. Literally. “I had to help her.”

  “Any minute now you’ll be picking flowers for her and composing a love ballad.”

  Lilani put her hands on her hips. “I will not.” He couldn’t know that she’d pictured kissing the one called Vandra after that heroic rescue.

  “Give it time.”

  She glared, but he seemed more tired than angry. If he’d been alone, would he have helped the humans? She didn’t have the heart to ask. She’d made the right decision. Vandra and her warriors didn’t kill the thieves, disarming them instead. They weren’t the paragons of wanton destruction that the stories made them out to be. When they continued on their way, Lilani followed from inside the trees. Faelyn grumbled as he trailed her. Lilani tried to ignore him, watching her humans instead. The warriors seemed lively, smiling together, giving each other playful shoves. Vandra was more composed, more seelie. None were loud brutes. Without the flutter of magic, Vandra seemed quieter than even some seelie.

  Lilani cocked her head. She’d thought before that the seelie were like the wind, and the humans were like the earth, but maybe the humans were like water instead: ever changing. Vandra stared into the forest from time to time. She’d obviously deduced what Lilani was and somehow knew Lilani wasn’t a threat, but she was also wise enough not to venture into the forest looking for her savior.

  Smart and beautiful. The sight of her large, dark eyes and curvy figure would remain in Lilani’s thoughts for a long time to come.

  She sighed. By the elders, Faelyn was right. That was the start of a love ballad if ever she’d heard one.

  * * *

  Vandra’s mind didn’t know where to focus. The seelie, the attack? The twins were all right, but Vandra had never been attacked before, and her mind kept flashing to the brigand’s awful grin.

  Fieta waved a hand in front of her face. “Are you nodding off on us?”

  Vandra tried to shake off her gloom and mumbled that she was okay.

  “Is it the fight?” Fieta asked. “Cheer up! It’s over. We won.”

  Pietyr put an arm around Vandra’s shoulders. “It’s all right. We’re all okay.” He seemed calmer, as if being attacked had broken some sort of anxiety bubble. “Try to look forward. That’s what we do.”

  For once, Fieta nodded, agreeing with him.

  Vandra tried to smile for them and focused on the seelie woman. The vision of her was stamped on Vandra’s brain, as unshakable as any formula she’d ever learned. Even on her deathbed, she’d know all her calculations and that seelie’s face. Her eyes had widened in wonder, as if Vandra was an incredible creature, too, though Vandra didn’t see how that was possible. She’d never glimpsed someone so enchanting. Was she following them from the forest?

  Vandra shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to be thinking of brigands or seelie. The pylon loomed in front of them; they’d come close enough to see the iron rungs embedded in the side, the only way to climb to the top of a structure that stood four stories tall.

  Fieta gawked. Even Pietyr whistled in appreciation. Vandra hadn’t aided in the pylon’s construction, yet she felt a jolt of pride. Alchemists had made this. Well, engineers had helped, but the composition had been determined by alchemists like her, and alchemists would breathe life into it again.

  Though from the glow, it had life still. When she’d first visited the pylons, she’d noted that they seemed different from regular syndrium: brighter, more…syndrium-like. Her colleagues had put that down to so much syndrium in one place, but Vandra had her doubts.

  She took her pack off and approached the vertical pillar, the diameter of which was nearly as long as she was tall. She dug out the notes from her first trip, though she knew them by heart. There was something missing, and she wanted to double-check…

  The “hum.” As soon as she put a finger on it in her notes, she recalled the feeling. The pylons had a vibration that was felt rather than heard. She’d labeled it the “hum” because that was what the non-alchemists of her party had called it no matter how many times she’d corrected them. And though the pylon still emitted the glow that should have symbolized activity, the vibration was missing, a fact no one would notice until they were close.

  Interesting. And disturbing.

  “By all the gods,” Fieta said as she circled the base. “How did they ever build it?”

  Vandra dipped into her bag and pulled out a book on the pylon’s construction. “Here. Light on facts and heavy on drama, but better than nothing.”

  Fieta only held it and continued to gawk.

  Pietyr put a hand to his forehead and stared upward. “Maybe they did have a god’s help. Or two. The gods of engineers and alchemists?”

  Vandra snorted. “Gods that big would want a huge favor in return. I doubt the builders would have risked that.”

  “Unless the gods wanted to help just to see if it could be done,” Pietyr said.

  “Yeah, no shit,” Fieta said as she tossed the book down by Vandra’s pack.

  Vandra clucked her tongue, picked up the book, and brushed it off before putting it away and unpacking her instruments. First, she tried the small syndrium detector, knowing it would tell her there was a great lump of syndrium right in front of her, but she had to start with the smallest experiments. She adjusted the magnets, slid open the syndrium compartment, and waited.

  The compass pointed north. She nodded and walked several steps to the east, but the compass stayed on north. Vandra frowned and turned the detector, willing the needle to swing toward the pylon, but it stayed stubbornly fixed in the ready position.

  “It can’t be.” Walking a few more steps, she tried again, but the detector didn’t lie. The pylon was as dead as a common lump of stone. “No, it…it can’t…” With fear carving a pit through her insides, Vandra hurried to her pack, pulled out a hammer and chisel and knocked a fleck of stone from the pylon’s side.

  “Whoa, Van!” Fieta called.

  “It won’t miss a sliver.” She unpacked the leather satchel with her chemicals, sending some of the jars rolling in her haste. She placed the sliver of stone into her basalt mortar and added a drop of acid.

  No blue froth. Nothing but some quietly dissolving bits of stone. She had to be doing something wrong. It was the failure with her formula all over again. It had followed her here.

  “Shit!” She dumped some bicarbonate of soda into the mortar to neutralize the acid and set it aside. She took a deep breath. This wasn’t her experiment. These were tried and true methods for detecting syndrium, and this pylon, supposedly made of the stuff, wasn’t registering any. Standing, she faced the pylon with her hands on her hips.

  “What is it, Van?” Fieta whispered. She and Pietyr were both staring at the pylon as if expecting it to attack.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” Alchemy would save them, not worry. She took out her notebook and wrote about her readings as quickly as she could, trying to keep the writing legible.

  “Van?” Fieta asked.

  “Shh,” Pietyr said. “Let her work.”

  Vandra pointed her pencil at the pylon. “It has to be some sort of natural phenomenon. Help me look for cracks or damage.” She shut her book with a snap and moved to investigate the pylon’s base.

  “Besides what you just did?” Pietyr asked.

  “Yes,” Vandra said through her teeth. She
took a deep breath. “Large damage.”

  They spread out, running their hands over the pylon. Both the twins were up the ladder quicker than her, calling down that nothing seemed out of place along the arms or top. She followed them to the topmost arm, sitting when she got there and not looking down. The twins paced easily back and forth, careless of the wind tugging at their clothes and hair, seemingly oblivious of the long drop to the ground.

  Even from this height, Vandra couldn’t see far into the tattered lands, not through the drifting haze that covered the miles like a blanket. There was still a good fifty meters of empty land between the pylons and the haze, but that ground was bare and yellow, as if nothing could live this close to the tattered lands. As Vandra looked along the wall of mist, it seemed to be straining forward the closer it came to this pylon. She could see a dot on the horizon, the next pylon, visible only because of her current height. Maybe it was only the curve of the world that made the mist seem closer here. The ten pylons were built close enough to one another that their protective fields overlapped, and the mist shouldn’t be nipping at the edges of the Seelie Forest now. Beyond the trees, somewhere in the distance, lay the line of the coast. Or had the mists of the tattered lands already engulfed that?

  Pietyr and Fieta sat on either side of her. “Want to tell us about it?” Pietyr asked.

  “We’re not completely stupid,” Fieta said. “We might understand.”

  Vandra breathed a chuckle, though she felt close to tears. “You’re not stupid. I just can’t believe it. This pylon is dead. It’s not syndrium anymore.”

  They were quiet for a moment. “How?” Fieta finally said.

  Vandra had to shrug. “That’s what we have to find out.”

  Silence reigned for a few more moments. “Could someone have taken the original pylon and put up a fake?” Pietyr asked.

  It seemed impossible, but so did the idea of syndrium being turned into useless stone. And what about the glow? Vandra crawled along the pylon’s arm, peering at it closely. The silvery-blue gleam was less apparent up here, not nearly as impressive as it had looked from below. She lay down and scooted toward the rounded edge.