The Crosser's Maze (The Heroes of Spira Book 2)

by Dorian Hart

There was more blackness—the rest of the sea was abandoned—until she reached the shores of Charagan. While it was midday in Kivia, the sun was only beginning to rise over the eastern shores of Nahalm and Harkran, of Lanei and Forquelle. Where she was going, the Ellish temple in Tal Hae, most of the sisters had recently gone to bed. Of the few she had met there, only one would likely be receptive to a visitation; the others would be horrified by the thought of allowing the White Anathema into their minds.

  Previa was not dreaming, so Morningstar waited, hoping Grey Wolf would not wake her until she had completed her errand. Her awareness hovered above the temple; what were the dreams of ordinary priestesses, ones whose service to Ell was not battered daily by hostility and scorn? Did they dream of the goddess? Were any of them dreamseers as she was? Was it even possible that they dreamed of her, the White Anathema? Previa had said that many dreamseers were prophesying a meteor, sometimes black, sometimes white, crashing into Spira. Did those dreams persist?

  A bright twinkle in the darkness; Previa had begun to dream. Gently, Morningstar brought her mind closer, wanting first to observe, so that she could integrate herself into the dream more naturally. Previa dreamt she was a child, seated at a kitchen table and stuffing walnuts into her mouth from a bowl. Morningstar smiled at the sight and entered the kitchen bearing a bowl of her own.

  “Hello, Previa,” she said. “I’ve brought you more for when yours run out.”

  Previa, maybe ten or eleven years old, threw out an arm to protect her bounty. “Did mother send you? These are mine!”

  “I do not wish to take them,” said Morningstar. She created a chair inside the room and sat nearby, sliding her own bowl of nuts toward the girl. “You enjoy these very much.”

  “Yes, I do. I did.” Previa’s voice changed, became older, though her body remained young. The room around them shifted, shrinking while the colors faded. Dreams were such changeable things; to the older Previa, spaces were smaller, their hues less vibrant. “My cousin cultivated walnuts and sent our family a great basket of them every autumn. I loved them and ate more than my fair share, though my brothers squawked. Then one day, when I was fourteen, I fell ill after an overindulgent afternoon and nearly died. Thereafter I could not eat even a single walnut without becoming sick, my lips and tongue becoming numb and welts rising on my skin. I’ve eaten none for over fifteen years, except in my dreams.”

  Morningstar laughed. “I’m happy you can still enjoy them here. Previa, you look well.”

  “As do you, Morningstar.”

  “Previa, listen to me. Though you dream, I am actually here, visiting you. There is something important I want to discuss. When you wake, remember this not as a dream, but as a true conversation between sisters.”

  “I will try.” She transformed, becoming Previa as Morningstar remembered her, a slight woman with a pleasant but unremarkable face.

  “I will come right to the point. I have been instructed to raise a cadre of sisters to do battle in the Tapestry of Dreams. I want you at my side. Do you know of what I speak?”

  The dream shifted again, and now they stood side by side in the library beneath the temple. The smells changed from the comfortable bread-and-spices aroma of the kitchen to the dust-and-leather odors of the Ellish archive. Previa ran her fingertips across a large black book upon a desk. “The Tapestry of Dreams…is a fable, isn’t it? I have read of it but always regarded it as a fiction.”

  “The Tapestry is real.” Morningstar suddenly regretted not telling these things to Previa before they left the Greenhouse. It would have established their friendship more firmly. “Every time someone dreams, the locations in that dream are left behind, and those places persist and weave themselves into a near-infinite realm of connected possibilities. Once many sisters of Ell could walk its paths, but the way of it has faded over generations.”

  “Amazing,” breathed Previa. “But I am no warrior, to do battle asleep or awake. Why do you choose me?”

  “Two reasons,” said Morningstar. “Foremost, fighting in the Tapestry is as much about mental subtlety, about understanding, guile, and quick thinking, as it is about physical technique. Since the day we met, I have admired your intellect as well as your love of knowledge. I think you would make an excellent student.

  “Secondly, whom else could I ask? Corinne? All those back at Port Kymer who despise or fear me? I will need someone to be an ambassador, to seek out others who will join our cause. As you find them, I will train them to fight in the Tapestry.”

  Previa appeared stunned. Perhaps Morningstar should have taken a more circumspect approach.

  “I can do as you ask,” said Previa slowly, “but if this is so important, why are you coming to me? Why not petition Prelate Milanwy or even the High Priestess Rhiavonne? If this is Ell’s will, surely our leaders could muster a force of hundreds to assist you.”

  Morningstar sighed. “I wish it were so simple. You know that the Divine Injunction prevents the gods from acting directly upon the mortal world.”

  “Of course.”

  The reasons for that had never been put to writing, though Morningstar thought she understood better now, having learned of the existence of other gods, the gods of Kivia. Best that Spira never be allowed to become a battleground upon which gods settled their disagreements. But these thoughts were not germane to the problem of Aktallian Dreamborn, and she was putting weight enough on Previa.

  “I have been given this task, and am being trained myself, by an Ellish angel. My training already strains the dictates of the Injunction, and including you and others will strain it further. To involve the high clergy of our temple directly might violate it outright.”

  Previa’s face creased with confusion. “But if this is Ell’s will…”

  “I have no proof,” said Morningstar. “At least, no proof I could provide to others. And Ell does not dictate our actions. High Priestess Rhiavonne might well decide that I am an apostate and use this as an excuse to put down the White Anathema.”

  Previa remained unconvinced. “But Ell grants visions through dreamseers—an indirect method of communication that remains inside the bounds of the Injunction. Surely she could send dreams to the sisterhood that your mission is sanctioned by the goddess.”

  Once more the dream changed, and now they stood in a lightless black chapel shaped as a triangular pyramid.

  “I have had the same thoughts,” said Morningstar. “But it always comes back to the Injunction. Ell wishes to keep her hand in this hidden. If the entire sisterhood were behind me, it could not be kept a secret. How long would it be until the churches of the other Travelers heard of it?” Or the followers of the Kivian gods, she thought, but did not speak aloud. “The goddess would not have me be the thread that unravels the Injunction—so says the avatar who teaches me.” She breathed out slowly and evenly, the only sound in the darkened chapel. “So there is the second part of my request. Not only that you find sisters whom you trust and whom you believe have sharp minds and quick reflexes, but that you also bid them keep this a secret until I have met with them in the Tapestry.”

  “You ask a great deal.”

  “I do.” Morningstar smiled, knowing Previa could see her face. “I wish we had spent more time together before I was obliged to travel. But while our meetings have been few, your friendship has meant a great deal. I do not make this request lightly, for believe me when I say the fate of Charagan may hinge on what we do.”

  “Can you be more plain? Who are we being trained to fight? What is the danger?”

  “I will tell you more at our next meeting,” said Morningstar. “For now, why don’t we set you an attainable goal? I will visit your dreams each day if I can. Find me two or three sisters whom you trust, and name them to me, and convince them that I am not a threat. I will visit them as well and see what I can make of them. Can you do that?”

  It was a huge burden to place on the one sister who had shown her kindness, and Morningstar prayed it would not overbalance Pr
evia, rouse her suspicions, dispel the warmth between them.

  “I can do that.” Previa’s voice wavered but sounded sincere. Then she smiled. “Who am I to deny the White Anathema?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Visciv’s whiskers twitched in the night breeze, bringing a tentative assurance of safety. He might be a creature of endless cunning and unexpected intelligence, but rats of his unusual size were targets while above ground and out of doors. Just this afternoon a human woman with a hoe had tried to bludgeon him as he surveyed her fields, though of course being quick and clever he had escaped her wrath and absconded with her largest turnip.

  He particularly enjoyed lemons and lychees, both of which were grown here in Seresef. Two days ago he had nearly eaten himself into oblivion beneath a wild lemon tree—the rinds had been especially succulent—but today had brought him through a patch of farmland producing mostly root vegetables, and Visciv knew how to make the most of it. There was nothing wrong, after all, with a good brassica.

  His mission—his first in several years—was to go to the coastal city of Kai Kin, the largest city in Ocir, to bring comfort and advice to his flocks. The human population suffered from an outbreak of the spotted plague, for which the blame was inevitably placed (unfairly, in this case) on the local rat population. Poisons, cats, and bounties were all serving to devastate his charges, and so the Skittering Mischief had convened in their underground lair beneath the city of Mirj. Their decision had been to send Visciv, and he was glad for the chance to stretch his legs and see the world, not to mention to provide succor to the rats of Ocir.

  The long evening had been thickly overcast, the sky low and leaking. That was good: less worry about hawks spying him, and fewer humans out and about to harass him. He moved steadily through the brush west of the road, far enough away that travelers and their pets wouldn’t notice him, but close enough for him to smell their leavings and nip over for a scavenge after they had moved on. Human roads were a traveling buffet for a rodent like Visciv.

  He crouched low at the fringe where the dirt road turned to grass, and nibbled on some bread crusts. Delicious—Seresef redstone wheat. Even the day-old crusts retained some chewiness and a light nutty flavor. Visciv fancied himself a connoisseur of grains, though fruits were where his heart truly lay.

  The sun had long since set, and after his repast he traveled steadily for several hours more, enjoying the smell of the fresh country air. In Mirj, the rats of the Skittering Mischief seldom went outdoors during the day; there was no need to alarm the humans with their unusual size, or risk instigating a rat hunt. They moved through the shadows of the city at night, and of course there were miles of tunnels connecting basements, root cellars, ale rooms, and gambling halls—and that wasn’t even mentioning the sewers. Visciv loved Mirj, but a sour city odor, a human smell, clung to it day and night. It did a rat good to travel.

  He went to sleep in the hour before dawn, curling up in a hollow log at the edge of a little wood, his long tail wrapped comfortably around his body. His dreams were strange and troubling. He was alone in a vast field, and the whisper-whisk sound of fluttering wings was everywhere. It was a sound any sane rat knew to fear, but Visciv didn’t see any birds of prey. The sky was empty against a backdrop of stars; still, he looked frantically for the source of the sound. Then, pain, searing pain; he had stepped into a trap, some mechanical tension-sprung bladed thing, and his right forepaw had been sheared off.

  Mercifully the dream faded and shifted, and for hours he traveled through bizarre lands barely understood or remembered. But the pain returned suddenly, and he was no longer in the field, but falling, air and clouds and all of reality rushing past him while far below the ground waited, an anvil upon which he would smash and shatter into a million pieces—

  Visciv woke, shivering. Night had fallen and the moon hung like a shiny trinket dangled above the horizon. A strange, foul smell clung to his whiskers. Nervously he stood, crept out of his log, and shook out his fur. It was oddly quiet; even small stands of trees should be full of cricket song this time of night. A nice juicy cricket or three would have done him good to start off a night of travel, but strangely Visciv had lost his appetite. He lapped some water from a tiny puddle in the dirt and prepared to head south.

  He sniffed the air one more time. What was that smell? The world must have no more scents to offer given how many years he had lived. His nose could tell the difference between a rotten cow and rotten sheep at a hundred yards, between different strains of mold that grew on week-old bread, between almonds and flour-nuts left stale in a sack. But tonight the air brought him a rumor of something new, something unpleasant but just the tiniest bit tantalizing.

  Visciv meant to spend the night walking directly toward Kai Kin, but after an hour the smell had only grown stronger, both more disagreeable and more intriguing, like an old carcass that for some reason had gone unconsumed by nature’s myriad scavengers. Before he had realized it, he had veered off the straight line toward the Ocir border, down a long slope towards a distant forest, whose deciduous tree-tops glowed in the moonlight.

  The farther he went, the more compelling was the smell, though halfway to the wood he became unsure of whether it was entirely a scent. He imagined he could hear it, too, an unsettling sound like a bird trapped in a weedy pool, slapping its wet wings in a futile attempt at escape. And behind that odd, rubbery sound, an actual whisper, beckoning…demanding…

  He broke into a run, spurred by something that was half curiosity, half compulsion. The woods came closer, and the night darkened as the clouds slowly swallowed the moon. Then the trees were around him, dark sentinels guarding a dark secret Visciv had to know. The smell overpowered him, driving him forward. The whispers spoke in a deep language beyond his understanding that filled his mind with an ecstatic fear.

  He sprinted through the trees, beyond caring that he ignored the dangers of owls and foxes, or that he didn’t bother to stay quiet and unobtrusive the way a rat ought to. Closer, closer.

  Visciv stopped, panting. He had arrived. His mind was hardly his own; the sound-smell-whisper filled him with a dark desperation. On the ground, caught between two roots of a tree with unnaturally black bark, a tiny dot of liquid simmered, no more than the quick slop of a human’s ale cup. It was black like the bottom of a shuttered well, like the inside of a corpse. Its inch of surface seethed and rippled.

  I’m here. Visciv bent his head closer to the black liquid, breathing in that unknowable scent. It filled his head with a longing close to madness, a confused desire…and fear. Fear of a future he couldn’t see, as though he looked through a glass pane smeared with oil while something on the other side plotted the ruination of all he held dear.

  You must kill them. All of them. All of Quarrol’s Chosen.

  Visciv felt sick and helpless. I cannot. I am one of them!

  That is why it must be you. I will give you the power to put an end to your kind.

  No!

  But he could not refuse. His mind was being overcome by a malignant confusion rising up out of that miniscule droplet of black ooze.

  Drink.

  No!

  Drink.

  Visciv lowered his snout to the black liquid.

  Quarrol, I beg you, deliver me from this!

  He shoved his face between the tree roots and drank.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Kibi was buried alive and quite content.

  All around him was stone: stone beneath his feet, stone pressing down on his head, stone cool between his fingers, stone wrapped around his limbs. It rendered him immobile, but he felt no immediate desire to be anywhere else, and it was surprisingly relaxing.

  Aravia had done her spell, her teleport to send them somewhere random, and a good thing, too, since the Kivians had clearly had enough of Dranko’s ridiculous story. But though Aravia had assured them that her spell would land them above ground, here he was. Buried alive.

  Kibi had panicked, just for a second, before he real
ized that the lack of air wasn’t particularly troubling. He couldn’t breathe—the stone was molded around his lips—but he didn’t suffocate, and that was a puzzle he was just as glad not to solve. Beyond that, being encased in rock felt like sinking into a cool tub of water after a hot day on the road, and there seemed no rush to climb out.

  But what of the others? That was a bigger worry, no question. Kibi figured that his odd affinity for rock kept him alive, but the others wouldn’t be so lucky. Aravia had said more than once that casting teleport without good concentration could result in the magic going wonky. How she had worked any magic at all, with all those spearmen yelling and poking and threatening, he couldn’t guess. Most likely she hadn’t quite kept it all together and had teleported them all into a mountain.

  Kibilhathur.

  The stone! It spoke to him the way the Seven Mirrors had. It sounded in his mind with the voice of an earthquake, but distant, soft, the echo of a far-off tremor. He answered, hoping it would understand him, and projecting his thoughts since speech was impossible. “Are there others buried near me? Six others trapped in the stone?”

  There is only you, Kibilhathur.

  Thank the gods for that! Maybe Aravia’s spell had worked for everyone else, but not quite right for him.

  I am in pain.

  “Who are you?” answered Kibi. “Am I in a hillside or a mountain?”

  There is a splinter in my heart.

  The stone sounded doleful. But what in the gods’ names did it mean? Did the earth consider Kibi himself a splinter? “I don’t understand.”

  There is a splinter, and you must remove it. Bless it with its lover’s kiss, the watcher’s hour come ’round, and cleanse the world.

  Damn, but this was like the Eyes of Moirel all over again. The rock spoke in riddles. “I want to help, but you need to give me more than that.”

  Kibi waited what seemed a long time for an answer, but the passage of time was hard for him to reckon, entombed as he was, and the stone—or the mountain, or the world, whatever it had been—did not speak again.