by T. A. Miles
With surrealistic eventuality, the rise and fall of the wind’s hold became the rolling of the ocean. He recalled in an instant where he had Reached to and why, and he drew a long breath. He slipped into the water as if into bedding and it wrapped immediately around him, enfolding his limbs and weighing him down. He could have convinced himself he was dreaming, but he knew better than to breathe.
When he opened his eyes, he saw the sparse light of predawn filtered through a shifting window of water overhead. Soft grays and translucent blues folded over one another above him. Splinters of orange, gold, and rose stitched the not too distant surface, reminding him of when he was a boy. He’d been able to see the sunrise on the water from his bedroom. The colors made him think of his mother.
“Korsten,” he thought he heard her say. He thought he heard her silken skirts brushing across the floor of his bedroom as she walked—never in a hurry, but always with purpose, as if she were in tune with aspects of their world that most could not hope to discern and her awareness let her carry on with a destination and with no fear of that destination.
She’d died early. Korsten had liked to console himself with the idea that her destination was the sea. And now he thought he felt her with him in the water.
All too quickly he realized that the spirit with him was not his mother, and she was not pleased.
The essence of Serawe contorted violently around him, causing the water to surge suddenly downward, driving the lot of them deeper into rapidly cooling darkness.
Korsten had never harbored any fear of water and was not adopting one now. He relaxed his body and felt the action resonate through his spirit. Analee flashed in the corner of his vision, impossibly fluttering in water that should have inundated and rendered useless her delicate crimson wings. Disregarding what should have been—as the soulkeepers and their priests tended to—the butterfly spiraled upward, guiding him. Korsten moved to follow.
Of the demons present, the embodied Vadryn were hovering in a half-sunken state, a few writhing or twitching in the throes of physical drowning. The ink-dark spirits of some of them were already leaking out of the bodies. They drifted toward Korsten, not to harm necessarily, but as if they might find shelter with him or transport from the water that was already beginning to rend them apart, transferring their dark energy into a body that would quickly diminish it. They would return to nature.
The water grew quickly black around him, particularly as Serawe rose and coiled herself about his body. The demon’s grip was as ice in this environment, and equally as heavy. Korsten worked to free his arms from her constricting presence, wondering how long it would take the sea’s currents to diminish her...wondering whether or not she would be able to cling with him to the surface and if she would be released into the air and maintain any semblance of unity.
We can’t risk it, he realized suddenly and felt a literal sinking in his chest that reminded him his air was running out. He watched his soulkeeper shimmer in the scattered light that penetrated the waves above. I have to stay with her until she passes, Analee.
It crossed his mind that he might die before the demon was extinguished, and that she might take his body somehow. But she couldn’t bring it back, he reasoned with himself. Analee would take what mattered back to Vassenleigh and the demon would quickly realize that his body was a useless husk to her. What strength she might salvage from his blood would not be enough to carry her far.
He wished that he could assure himself of that. As he considered the demon using his lifeless body as a raft to carry her to shore and whomever might happen along, he wished that he’d thought of some other way to spare the people of Indhovan this particular demon. Serawe’s ancient weight pressed further around him, like a coiling serpent at first, but he came to quickly realize that it was more like a clinging child. She was going to stay with him, whether to their deaths or survival.
There had to be another way.
Korsten kicked against the binding force of Serawe and what remained of her ranks. He used his arms and the strength of his body to maneuver himself upward.
Come with me, he instructed the Vadryn, holding his arms down, extending his hands as if to summon children to his side. Remarkably, Serawe relaxed her heavy grip, enabling him better use of his legs. He felt her slip loosely around him and he felt the others hover near as well, flanking him obediently as he glided with some effort toward the surface.
His chest pinched against the dwindling supply of air left in him. He set his focus on Analee and on the rising sunlight against the surface of the water. He thought of the home time had made distant to him, and of his mother. The sensation transferred from him to the demons, which sent their greed resonating back at him...as if he meant to lead them to sustenance.
In the moments that followed, he felt their fear as well. Fear of the greater body that surrounded them, that they might be the devoured ones. It made them cling to him with what remained of their dismal spirits, and he felt a pang of remorse for what he meant to do. He felt pity for a weakness in them...for their vulnerability.
But they could not continue to exist as destructively as they were. It startled him that at the back of his mind there was some consideration of their existence at all. They were death to whomever they touched. Whether sooner or later...
His emotional faltering rippled across the demons’ awareness. The greatest of them reaffirmed her grip. She was growing suspicious again.
Stay with me, Korsten encouraged. He quickly evicted thoughts outside of getting to the surface, which wasn’t difficult while his chest ached for air.
Serawe stayed attached. Korsten drove his way steadily upward. The pressure collected inside of him had him part his lips prematurely. Warm, salty water rinsed past his teeth and inspired a small rise of panic. Bubbles textured the water around his face and shoulders. He was gasping in the moments he broke the surface, taking in what seemed like as much water as air in the rise.
Stay with me, he urged to the demons again. He dropped back down, bobbing a few times and ejecting water from his mouth while he found his stability.
“Stay with me!” Korsten half choked the words, repeating himself both internally and vocally until he felt assured that none of the Vadryn had gone. They were lighter, he realized gradually and knew that portions of their being had been pulled into the sea. His intuition told him that the lesser demons would not survive intact.
Take me back, Serawe insisted, though not with the same levels of aggression she’d demonstrated earlier. She was weak and growing weaker as the far more ancient powers of the ocean kneaded her dark energies with its constant motion. She was pliable and pulling apart.
“You are going back,” Korsten promised her. It alarmed him that his subconscious mind put her in human form again, her arms weakly clinging to him while she leaned against his back.
He felt the brush of human lips against his shoulder while she said, “I could love you.”
The amount of pity Korsten felt in that moment nearly overwhelmed him. He closed his eyes while the sun warmed his face, the smooth water lapping against his chin and lower lip. He thought of Renmyr. Would it be like this freeing him? He didn’t know if he could bear it.
“You’re going back,” Korsten said quietly, opening his eyes to the morning light again. “Back to the beginnings of your being.”
Whether too weak to attempt lifting herself from the power that held her, or lulled by the spell Korsten was weaving without gesture or thought, Serawe stayed with him. In a voice so much smaller than the beast he’d faced at the well, she said, “Death?”
“Oblivion,” Korsten answered, his voice shuddering slightly from the chill of the sea, or from the emotion his own state and hers helplessly churned.
“I will come back,” she said and he could not decipher whether it was promise or wonder.
“Perhaps,” he said, in either case.
“I could love you,” Serawe said again and as the sea continued its work, he felt her grow weak enough that he could have easily called his weapon out and extinguished the last of her with more ease than he had Bael’s demon.
He did not, however. He let her continue to be taken by nature...he let her pass, peacefully and when there was barely anything to her to be felt, he whispered softly, “No... you could not.”
A tear slid down his face to join the salt of the ocean, where he now floated alone without another body to be seen, either of land or flesh. In the vast isolation that descended onto him, he found himself tired and unconcerned.
He was growing colder by the moment, and it was sapping the strength from him, as it had drawn the very energy out of the Vadryn. He did not have enough left in him to perform another Reach. He simply could not muster it...not unless he could somehow turn this encounter around and draw from the energy of the ocean.
Demons were empowered by the vitality of other creatures, but it was not the same for priests. The magic flowed to them from all sources. The Citadel was testament to that, as the caves had been in regard to the witches. But he was so exhausted. First, he had to collect the will to do anything other than let sleep take him.
He no longer had the interest in dying he once had. That alone should have been enough to motivate him to some form of action, but the sea cast a stronger spell than he ever could, and this force of nature was lulling him with its own song.
Analee fluttered around his head, refusing to mirror his lack of strength. If she did not feel the situation was beyond resolution, then it must not have been. He recalled his time imprisoned by Morenne, and how he had fallen away from any hope, and how his soulkeeper had shared his sense of doom. She had seemed then, prepared to carry his Essence back to the garden. But now she wasn’t.
The water raised him up in a long, lazy roll, as if it were heaving a sigh. He let the motion carry him up and gently set him back down. Another such motion followed, and as the water passed beneath him, he watched it swelling toward the horizon.
The crone’s low laughter played suddenly across his memory. A deep sensation of dread made the water feel even colder around him.
“Oh...gods...”
The water rolled again, pushing him forward, then seeming to draw him back, before it dragged him down and folded darkly over him.
Twenty-Six
On the third floor of the governor’s mansion there was a grand office, a space which dwarfed Ilayna’s sitting room. Layered in rich tones of blue and gold with articulate details of wood and stone throughout, the hall rivaled palaces of days long past.
Cayri found herself once again astounded by the wealth of this city, and of Edrinor’s coast in general. As she traversed a wide, but brief stair to the center of the room, she looked upon immense portraits of the sea and of ships that must have assisted the region in amassing its fortune. She could only wonder why they had not taken these vessels further out, though at the same time when the home was threatened, what lay beyond it became very suddenly unimportant.
Men and some women made an orderly rush into the hall and past her up the stairs, where an enormous table of burnished wood sat beneath a massive chandelier. The chandelier sat high, housed within a dome which boasted still more art undoubtedly detailing the history of the city. Maps and charts were dropped onto the table as the others arrived at it. At once, hands began unfurling them.
“Where is Konlan?” Deitir asked his mother as he came up the stairs with Ilayna near.
Ilayna looked over the assembly while shaking her head. “I cannot say.”
A light breath of exasperation escaped her son while he moved to the head of the table. Cayri heard him mutter, “This affects the Islands as well.”
Also overhearing the words as the young man passed him, Fersmyn said over his shoulder, “We may have to proceed without counsel or participation from them.”
“We can send another emissary,” someone else suggested as what was not intended to be heard began a debate among them.
Deitir let them go for a while. Cayri came to the table and watched him stand at it with a look of contemplation and also of frustration on his face. She wondered if by letting their discussion escalate, he’d undermined himself that quickly.
Had Vlas been present, he would have been criticizing the situation. Cayri, however, believed that Deitir was responding with equanimity that deserved patience, if not praise. He was young and his experience may have been primarily in observing his father and regarding his advice. He’d been called to apply his education suddenly and under pressure the frame of mind of most of Indhovan’s officials—including his father—may not have prepared him for. He was doing fine.
Watching him, Cayri may have emanated that more tangibly than she intended. Deitir raised his dark gaze to her just at that moment, then scanned the host of men and women at his father’s table and called for their silence and attention with a firmly stated, “The Islands will be brought current once we have assessed our own position and plotted a course of action.”
In that moment, his father’s table became the governor of Indhovan’s table and for the hour at least, he was the governor of their city.
Merran opened his eyes from a dreamless sleep of indeterminable length. Above him was a ceiling he did not recognize, simple in construction and dimly lit by candlelight. A girl’s face came into his view...foreign for a moment, but then all at once familiar.
“Master Merran,” Dacia said. She didn’t quite smile, only just enough to display what may have been some relief. “We’re at home now. You’re going to be all right. Mother is going to take care of you.”
He pieced together the information as it was given to him, turning his head to look at Ersana as she approached whatever he was lying on—it felt like a thin pallet. The woman was speaking before he could ask questions.
“I was able to use the main portal to bring us here,” she explained. “That was only a few moments ago.”
Merran managed to nod, though his neck felt stiff and a soreness radiated through it with the action. He watched Ersana kneel beside him, the action ushering her daughter to the side. She placed down a bowl and began to lift swaths of fabric from it, wringing out what was presumably water from the bowl.
“I’m not sure what I can do for your hand,” she said and it was in that moment that Merran realized he had no feeling in it at all. “With any favor from the gods, it’s not your strong hand.”
It was. Merran looked to the ceiling again and felt pressed beneath a tremendous weight that he could scarcely comprehend, let alone lift. Was his hand ruined? Whether or not it was, without a more prominent healer present he would be unable to work most spells. Ironic that he might have been the only one present in Indhovan capable of attending to such injury.
Deciphering his silence, Ersana said, “I can wrap it and cast a healing that may inspire it to help itself, but I cannot repair it. I...”
She paused and began to gently wind the cloths around Merran’s hand. The coolness of the water and the stinging properties of whatever she may have mixed with it inspired some sensation of feeling throughout his skin. He winced and decided not to look at his hand beyond the glimpse of bruising he’d already seen. It would appear worse than it was and only dampen his hope for a quicker healing, or he would see that it was far worse than he imagined and his mind might find more dismal places to linger.
Ersana’s voice was scarce distraction, but he accepted it. “I apologize for what Mother has done.” Her pride had her struggle to form the words, that and perhaps some disbelief. She’d invested perhaps a lifetime of faith in a false protector and a
poor mother.
“We have to undo what we can,” Merran told her, turning his head against increasing stiffness to look at her.
She looked back at him and seemed almost at a loss for what to think, let alone how to respond.
“We have to stop that wave,” Merran pressed.
Ersana continued to wrap his hand. Before she was finished, she sent Dacia to fetch something for her. Beneath the steadiness of Merran’s gaze, she maintained her imperturbable demeanor, but there was the hint of uncertainty in her voice when she said, “The gods will protect...”
“The gods will do what they have always done,” Merran interrupted. “Which is to wait and watch. It is our calling to act.”
Ersana seemed disarmed by his statement, that he should make it so easily and with such conviction, but it was what he had come to believe. Perhaps he had seen too much of the Vadryn to be foolish enough to stay his own actions on the chance that the gods might take notice or interest beyond the fact that they’d ushered the world and its inhabitants into being.
The gods had granted him Reason. He would use it either as they intended or in defiance, it didn’t matter. They’d summoned him to act, to utilize what he’d been given, not to remain idle and hope. By nature of their own awareness, he believed it was the obligation of all who used magic—who had been granted their level of access to the magic of Nature itself—to act.
“If you do nothing, you are risking your daughter to drown with everyone in this city—enemy and not. You are risking the children of others. That’s not your place.”
Ersana silently continued to wrap. When she was finished, Merran struggled to adjust his weight in such a way that he could sit up easily. Ersana helped him with one hand on his arm and the other at his back. His entire body argued that it was too stiff and sore to respond. After a moment to breathe deeply, he said, “Do nothing if it suits you. I’m returning to the others to warn them of what comes.”
