by T. A. Miles
“Fortunately for this city, you mean,” Cayri said, on the heels of his words. She enforced again, “We’re here to help you. If you sincerely believe that it was the gods’ will that brought your former governor to Raiss when he was a child, then believe it’s their will that we’ve come to you now. The Vadryn would corrode this city with the efficiency of a plague. Morenne will deal it a swifter blow.”
“You seem to have the ear of our future governor,” Fersmyn pointed out. “I’m certain...”
“You’re certain what?” The youthful voice of the very person mentioned interrupted Fersmyn.
The deputy governor looked to the study doorway, greeting Deitir with a nod and opting not to finish his statement. Within an evening the conversation between them had grown tired and strained.
Perhaps it was often this way, though Cayri felt that the tension in this regard was all very recent. In many ways Indhovan was ill prepared for what approached.
As if alert to her thoughts, Deitir looked directly at her, his dark eyes seeming to express that it was worse, before his ensuing statement confirmed as much. “Word has arrived from the north. Our enemy has taken to sea.”
“So, that means that they’re coming,” Fersmyn said.
Leading them from the study and into the hall, Deitir answered simply, “Yes.”
“How long have they been on route?” the deputy governor continued. “That’s what we have to know.”
Deitir looked back at him, though his gaze connected deliberately with Cayri when he spoke. “We’ve no word on that.”
Cayri understood that the young man was looking for support, from someone who knew more of the war and the world outside of Indhovan than his father’s deputy. She tried to emanate a sense of calm when she returned his gaze. Panic at this hour would benefit no one. “We should not expect them for a matter of days, at least,” she said, considering the distance between the northern coast and Indhovan.
Deitir seemed relieved that he had more than a period of hours to adjust to crisis he clearly would have preferred his father handle.
Cayri didn’t believe that it was a lack of courage or willingness to act, so much as fear for his father’s condition and that Raiss Tahrsel may never act on behalf of their city again.
“Do we know how many?” Fersmyn asked next, and Cayri felt that the man would be ample assistance to their city’s heir. He was neither backing away from duty, nor attempting to take full control. He also trusted Deitir, so their greatest concern was in ensuring that Deitir trusted himself.
Deitir shook his head, stopping outside the door to his father’s room. “It may be a single ship or a fleet. Our informants were told only that Morenne had seized the pier in Sarily. They had ships of their own.”
“They must have had a shipyard somewhere further north, then,” Fersmyn assumed.
Deitir nodded at the likeliness and said, “We’ve been fools to assume the sea was safe.”
Cayri returned his gaze when he looked at her once again. Clearly, his mind had returned to the words his father had shared with him, and that he had shared with her. The air of doom was heavy already. Cayri did not add to its weight by holding herself calm and exuding as much confidence as she could. Morenne would not decide the war alone. Edrinor also had some say in this outcome. They had only to stand their ground, as they had in the past...and as they would in the future. The war had not yet entered its twilight phase. They still had a long day ahead of them.
Whether or not Deitir read that in her eyes, he drew in a breath and steeled himself before he entered his father’s room, beckoning those with him to follow. The physician was seated at a table not far from the bed. He rose when they entered.
“How is he?” Deitir asked, taking slower steps toward the bed than he had to the room itself.
“Still at rest,” the man replied. “I’ve detected no change, for the better or the worse.”
Deitir took on a tight frown, but accepted the words without argument or open grief. At the bed, he sat down beside the man he’d known as his father and laid his lighter hand over the governor’s dark fingers. Tahrsel didn’t stir.
Fersmyn glanced back at Cayri, who acknowledged him in silence, though she maintained a stronger focus on Deitir. The young man seemed to be holding a private conversation with his father in his silence. His dark eyes were wet and his expression filled with worry, but there was a strength behind it...in his posture and in his spirit. Unexpectedly, Cayri found it a comfort.
Ilayna arrived in the doorway. Without looking at her, Deitir said, “We have to prepare.”
“For what?” his mother asked, a rare note of fear detectable in her voice.
“For invasion,” Deitir answered. He rose from the bed afterward, having come to his determination of his father’s ability to contribute or perhaps drawing some strength from their bond as father and son. Cayri believed that Ilayna’s presence bolstered that bond and Deitir’s determination. He turned to Fersmyn. “Gather the others. We have to make plans immediately.”
Fersmyn nodded and exited the room to do as he’d been instructed. Ilayna watched the deputy go, then came across the room and wrapped her arms around her son, who returned the embrace. Cayri watched them comfort and support one another in that simple gesture and hoped that some of their energy would reach Tahrsel and give him the strength to sustain through whatever battle he was fighting.
“...of blood,” Vlas mumbled to himself while he walked with his unlikely companions across the misted clearing and toward what appeared to be a thick formation of rock.
Uneven pillars of stone rose from tall grass heavily populated by weeds and bramble, converging on one another in a sort of natural labyrinth. The sounds of the sea had begun to fade out of range in the woods behind them, but now it was coming back full, which told him they were returning to the island’s edge.
Soon they would be entering a cave, Vaelyx had told them. A cave where an ancient demon resided...a cave where blood had been collected for foul purpose...just precisely as Imris had been made to fear as a young girl.
She wasn’t afraid now, for all anyone could tell. She’d had the same determined set on her face nearly since Vlas had met her. Occasionally she looked over at him, possibly because he was muttering to himself and had settled into his own manner of determination, paired with contemplation.
This was what he and the other priests had been sent ahead for...to fully understand Indhovan’s state of affairs. Vlas was fooling himself to have believed that even if it was complicated, the extent of the complications would be in politics, between people. The politics that had transpired over decades between people and the Vadryn should not have caught him off guard, but it had. He would take this to heart...and he would resolve this as far as he could, though he still fully planned to retreat if it became too dangerous. His death wouldn’t help his colleagues, Indhovan, or the Vassenleigh Order’s strategic efforts.
“...of blood...” he murmured again, his feet following the earth beneath them when it sloped upward unevenly. The demon had collected a well of it and through craft pioneered by humans, she was making vessels. They were for her own to inhabit. She was making physical soldiers of them and bypassing the difficulties of possessing a living person.
Vaelyx was privy to the demon’s dreams, through his daughter, who was connected as surely as spell-touch to her mother. Though the body of the demon had been human once, the soul had been completely overtaken and corrupted, its presence had infused aspects of its soul with Dacia’s. Vaelyx was worried that he had hindered her development while in actuality she would have never been right. She could only be better or worse off, but never normal by anyone’s standards.
Vlas could only wonder what possession and subsequent Release had actually done to her, if anything at all. She would have felt the process, he supposed, on both counts, but the after effects were beyond
the guessing power of most of them. He imagined only the very oldest of the Order would have any real idea of such things. It was at a moment like this when Vlas sorely wished the Superiors weren’t quite so anchored to the Citadel, but they rarely left it for good reason, so it was never a true complaint.
The Adepts were trained for precisely this; for being in the field and resolving matters as best they could. Ancients of the Vadryn were few and far between, and so Vlas decided that his best would include all but direct confrontation with Serawe.
He looked ahead, at Vaelyx. The man was shoving through the shadows cast by the veritable trench their route had become with unmistakable familiarity. Even if he’d only come this way once, he’d never forgotten it. Perhaps coming back to confront the demon—not directly, Vlas enforced for all of their sakes—was the man’s penance.
Behind him Imris hiked easily along. He actually wasn’t sure when she’d gotten behind him, but at some point, single file became all their path would allow for.
The night was pressing further into early morning. The damp ocean air was beginning to soak into fabric and the rhythmic waves were growing louder and somewhat distorted in the acoustics of the passages.
Vlas looked up at the open ceiling the natural corridors provided, then checked visually on both Vaelyx and Imris. The former was continuing on in his urgent personal rush and the latter followed diligently, and alertly. Whenever Vlas looked to see that she was still there, she made direct eye contact, assuring him that she was and would be.
He let her know he appreciated that with returned focus. His gaze shifted ahead again and settled on Vaelyx. The man tossed a look over his shoulder, his expression flashing with distressed impatience that may have been implying they weren’t moving fast enough, but Vlas was on the verge of stopping them. He had a feeling they were getting very near to these caves and the last thing he would be doing was dropping blindly down into them.
The way Zesyl fluttered her wings next to his ear seemed almost as if she were laughing at her bond-mate’s mild duress, but the sensation was fleeting. As the white mantis lit from his shoulder, taking flight toward Vaelyx, he knew something was wrong.
A deafening banging of stone—as if a giant had snatched up two boulders and slapped them together—assailed his ears, causing him to halt and flinch instantly in the sheer impact of the sound.
Imris covered the narrow space between them and took hold of his arm in the same instant, reacting similarly. They were turned toward each other when the ground gave way. They held awkwardly onto one another as they fell an indeterminable distance.
It was over very quickly, and Vlas wasn’t certain who had fallen on top of who when they struck a solid, though not particularly stable surface. Debris was still falling from the cave-in, Imris let him know by reaching up and pulling his head down into both arms. Simultaneously she turned her face into that same shelter.
Beneath the rush of dirt and rocks, Vlas heard her distinct, abbreviated breaths—his own was held while he tried to catch up with the moments literally rushing past. Gods knew where Vaelyx was.
Within several moments, the rain of debris tapered to enough of a halt that Vlas felt it safe to rise. Imris was already standing on her own, but he reached a hand out to steady her anyway, simultaneously looking at the space they’d fallen into.
Beneath their feet was a wooden walkway mounted on scaffolding. The walls to either side of them were rock and the space below was veiled in shadow. What little they could see was illuminated by moonlight. Looking up, the ceiling—previously the ground—was separated in a ragged hole several feet overhead.
The walkway shifted somewhat and Vlas turned enough to see behind him, where Vaelyx was pushing himself to his feet.
“Are you all right?” Vlas asked him.
Using the narrow railing for support, Vaelyx shot a glance over his shoulder and nodded. In the moment, he appeared aged and weary, beleaguered emotionally and taxed physically—the latter no doubt especially owed to several years imprisoned.
“Where are we, in relation to where we were meant to be?” Vlas asked next.
Vaelyx started to look around, not that he would have been able to see much of anything, but Vlas allowed him a space to orientate himself.
It was in those moments that the glow of fire danced in the corner of his vision. Imris had already seen and she tensed beside him while the smallish flames made a path toward them, coming from a level lower than the walkway they currently stood on.
The torch bearers weren’t far away; they were near enough that the various vocalizations they made and their footsteps could be heard.
“We should run,” Vaelyx said, which inspired Vlas to glare over his shoulder at him. The man didn’t look panicked, but he didn’t appear comfortable either. He must have known what was coming at them—or who—and damn him for not sharing the information.
Vlas damned himself for not insisting that he share more, but what would he have done? Neither of them had an army at their disposal. He doubted Rahl would have sent more than Imris and felt it a safer wager that he’d have recalled Imris and insisted on Vaelyx’s arrest, had he known about any of this.
“Who are they?” Vlas demanded. He looked to the ascending group—possibly ten to twenty figures—and as Imris took a step back, he drew her back another one. Her posture was poised, either to fight or run, Vlas was uncertain. Maybe either.
“They’re the servants of Serawe,” Vaelyx said and in a tone that might have been taken for polite suggestion under any other circumstance, repeated, “We should run.”
“Father of the gods,” Vlas cursed, guiding Imris to one side of him. “Stand back, constable,” he said to her. To both his companions, he advised, “Avert your eyes.”
With a glance over his shoulder to see that they’d both complied, he gestured the Blast spell. The first thing it did was wash the walls white and give a glimpse of the many tenuously stacked bridges, ladders, and ramps between them and the cave floor several levels below. The second benefit was halting their hosts while they turned away from the burst of white light that threw itself in their direction. The third and primary function of the casting was to reveal that there were men coming at them—men who looked strangely ashen and who donned clothing that hung in tatters from their emaciated and, at times, awkwardly bent bodies.
Vlas counted around one dozen. He realized as the afterglow of Blast dissipated, and the men began to recover that they had actually only been men at one time.
“Ghouls,” he said aloud for the benefit of his companions, though neither of them seemed to require it. “And yes, we should run.”
Twenty-One
“What do the crystals do?” Korsten asked Ersana.
“Inanimate vessels,” the woman replied. “They contain and project energy. We leave them out in the open. By day and night, they are charged by the sun and the moon, even the wind. We cast a spell onto the crystal, which will then emit from the crystal, pulsing like a heartbeat, until it’s without energy. Until it’s without life.”
Similar to the weapons crafted by Ceth and his students, Korsten thought to himself. Similar to the material within his own hand, charged constantly by his blood.
Similar to the blood lilies, and us, he realized.
It was essentially the same system, only the witches chose to work through inanimate objects, rather than to keep the magic at such elevated levels within their own bodies. They were perhaps wiser in that, understanding the risk of irradiating oneself with magic so constantly and completely.
To these witches, Korsten and his peers were perhaps more like the Vadryn, taking magic directly into their bodies, letting it affect them physically and emotionally. But unlike the Vadryn, the Vassenleigh Order and its priests had scruples and the sense to not abuse what they collected. Murder or unwilling draining of victims was never a method. Still, he unders
tood the position of Indhovan’s witches better now.
While Korsten considered that and the crystal in Ersana’s hand, the woman said, “This one has a warding spell on it, to keep the demonic instinct, and Dacia’s true mother at bay. There are similarly cast crystals about my home, but this one releases a heavier pulse and one which radiates over her specifically, but only when she wears it.”
“She loses it often,” Korsten guessed. His words went unacknowledged and he moved on to a more important topic. “How are we going to get her to wear that again?”
“I typically return it to her when she’s in a subdued mood.”
“Which she clearly isn’t interested in now.”
“What if she were asleep?” Merran suggested.
“She’s not likely to be in such a state,” Ersana said, in a tone that suggested she knew what Merran was thinking and she was not open to it.
“A Sleep spell would not harm her,” Korsten assured. “No sooner than the Mother’s defenses, or her own mother’s encroaching presence. I believe you came here because you want us to help her and you cannot. Not on your own, otherwise you’d have gone directly to her.”
Ersana could maintain her stoic expression as long as she liked. Korsten knew he was right, even without feeling the cold fear pulsing through her veins, he understood that above everything—and maybe in spite of herself and her coven’s agenda—she was a mother above all else. Dacia was her child and she would defy the crone, as she had defied the demon that had given birth to Dacia in order to protect her. It required no special talent to understand that.
“If one of the demons’ vessels is destroyed, the Vadryn will surely take Dacia,” Korsten told her. “One of them already tried.”
Ersana drew herself up in an attempt to appear even more dignified and resolute in the face of what may have felt like criticism or citation for failure, but her eyes betrayed her now. This extended outside of her coven and her devotion to it. Korsten hoped to the gods that he was reading her accurately.
