“Mm,” Lysa murmured.
“All right, you’re obviously not in the mood for small talk. So what about big talk, hmm? What’s a perfect and imperfect conjurer?”
She shrugged. “Guess.”
“Lysa…”
She looked over, folded her lips in and sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just… angry. Confused. I don’t know where we’re going. I feel like I’m a prisoner again. This was supposed to be different than my living life, remember?”
My boar hacked, snorted, then hurled up a ball of green goo that splattered onto the scorched earth. The smell was what you’d expect.
“I’m not going to let them use you,” I said. “You know that.”
“How can you promise that?”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
I winked at her and added, “Trust is all you need. And speaking of trust, I’d appreciate you not keeping secrets from me. We talked about this before, remember? So, about this perfect and imperfect nomenclature…”
The whoosh of an enormous wave toppling over itself swept across the land. A spire of lava, milky orange in color, fountained up from a pit about sixty feet away, then plummeted back inside. Onto the cracked dirt flowed thin rivulets of the molten liquid, congealing immediately and forming black bruises across its inspissating sludge.
Nikka, about thirty paces or so ahead, moved slightly away from that pit.
“A perfect conjurer,” Lysa said, “is one that… well, um. I guess to better explain it, I should give you an example of one. Amielle.”
“Amielle? When I think of perfect, I don’t think of Amielle.”
“Perfection in this case doesn’t refer to morals or beliefs.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m just being difficult. Continue.”
Lysa bounced on the seat of her saddle as we went over a rough patch. “She could manipulate the mind and the elements. She was perfect. An imperfect conjurer can only manipulate the mind, never the elements.”
Well, well. I finally had my suspicions answered. “So that’s how you and Rovid escaped the Prim. Isn’t it?”
She readjusted her grip on the reins, chewed her cheek.
Her reluctance wasn’t surprising. Conjuring for Lysa had never been about the power. The power was simply a means to achieving her ambitions: repairing the broken and piecing back together the shattered. Her competence in manipulating the elements, then, was a regrettable symptom, rather than an adjunct that most conjurers likely strived for. And now that symptom would be exploited, if Nikka, or this so-called Elimori, had their way.
And that I could not allow.
Time to plot our escape, I thought, something I’d hoped Vayle was already doing.
We couldn’t well desert while riding boars. Not because boars are rather shitty transports — which they are — but because having a spear plunging through my spine wasn’t on my list of daily desires. No, we’d have to wait until we arrived at wherever Nikka was taking us. Probably a camp, or a hideout. We’d wait until night fell and then sneak out. By the time they noticed us missing, there’d be five miles separating us.
There were, however, a couple minor problems with that plot. First problem: our destination was no camp, nor a hideout. It was a bloody city.
Second problem: there were approximately three hundred people, which was about two hundred and fifty more than you like to see when you intend on escaping from somewhere.
Third problem, and probably the biggest: a Warden. He greeted us with a nod of his head as we trotted inside the palisade. Whereas the previous Warden I’d met was frightening, this one was downright terrifying. He wore cloth breeches and no shirt — veins crisscrossing down his barreled chest. He held a three-headed mace in his hand, each head a solid black sphere — they resembled ebon, strangely enough.
Thankfully he remained at his post, and we proceeded into the womb of the city, which Nikka had told us was named Scholl, where a frayed flag was flown, a lion on its hind legs with a breastplate of steel painted on the cloth.
The streets looked made from metallic gray rock, the metals cooled to a swirl and trapped within. Wheelbarrows and carts filled with copper and iron scraps, crudely made weapons, various types of cloth, tools and so on were hefted and hauled through the streets.
Everyone here had been put to work. There were tanners, skinners, blacksmiths. There were cooks pulling breads from open hearths, tailors sewing and stitching within open-faced houses constructed of hardened mud, and laborers fixing up wheelbarrows and disassembling wagons.
We passed them all, through winding streets, advancing toward the sheer cliff into which the city was anchored. A cave loomed before us, burrowing into the cliffside. Nikka led us in that direction.
Guiding light from torches exposed a slender path through the cave that coiled like a snake and pitched and rose like the pulse of a heart. A wide room lay at the end of the cavern, wooden braziers arranged in a circle. Within them sat a table, and behind the table was a woman who was talking to several people.
The discussion ceased as they took notice of our company.
“Eleemoree,” Nikka said, “I breeng someone who knows about thee book. And a conjurer, too. A peerfect conjurer.”
The woman behind the table — this Elimori, if I discerned Nikka’s accent properly — seemed to study us. She had sleek black hair that hung just beneath her chin. It looked freshly washed; the same couldn’t be said for the rest of her. Dirt clung to her fingertips, darkened her already caramel complexion. Her clothes were of various sizes. Some too small, others that’d only fit a Warden.
“And the others?” she asked.
“They-a claim to be assasseens… not froom thees world.”
“See what they’re capable of,” Elimori said.
Nikka nodded. She pointed at Vayle and Rovid. “Come weeth me.”
“If I’m staying,” I said, “they stay. Or I’m not cooperating.”
Nikka grasped Rovid by the wrist, keeping hold of my eyes while she did so. “They’re noot staying.”
“Nikka,” Elimori said, hands folded at her waist. “Leave them.” She returned to the few dignified men around her. They had long silky hair and wore oversized cotehardies featuring splashes of powerful reds and purples and greens. “A caravan will be sent for them. Give Minister Dulik my respects, and my thanks.”
The men nodded, and one of them took a swollen leather purse from the table. They followed Nikka out of the cave, leaving Lysa, Rovid, Vayle and me alone with this Elimori woman.
“A moment,” she said. She walked toward the back wall, a slight limp in her right leg. She felt along the wall with searching fingertips, pausing at what looked like a subtle protrusion of rock.
“I’ve seen a few false walls in my time,” I said as she pushed on the protrusion and forced the hidden door to grind along its concealed tracks, “but this is one of the most convincing.”
The dark room within obfuscated Elimori into a vague shadow. Something clicked, and metal hinges screeched. When she returned, she was clutching a tome to her chest, waddling toward the table under what seemed like an immense weight.
“Is this yours?” she asked, dropping the book onto the table. Or rather, through the table.
“Fairly dense, ain’t it?” I said, sidestepping sharp chunks of splintered wood. I got down on my knees, brushed debris from the book’s cover. I almost allowed myself to open it, but… no. I paused at the frayed corner, my ugly twisted nail that needed trimming two months ago beneath the edge. Then I pulled back, clapped my thighs and stood.
“What do you want for it?” I said.
“If it’s yours,” Elimori said, “I cannot in good faith accept payment.”
I chuckled inside. Good faith, that’s always a splendid argument for doing or not doing. I doubted that a dingy gal who headed a small army of bandits dealt in good faith. She was testing me, gauging my honesty. And while my personal policy may state hon
esty is not always — quite rarely, actually — the best answer, you do need to be aware of when it’ll save your life.
“It belongs to a god,” I said. Then I waited for her to accuse me of being a funny guy and threaten to lop off my balls if I didn’t cooperate. But apparently I’d been around Braddock and Kane and all those crazy motherfuckers for too long, because she didn’t take out a knife and position it in front of my cock.
Actually, she seemed quite understanding.
“I thought as much,” she said, frowning. “Does it belong to Arken? Or perhaps Klatch?” She bit her lip. “That would make more sense. He’s refused our questions so far.”
“Who’s Klatch?” Lysa asked.
Elimori shot Lysa a quizzical look. “Where are you from?”
“Um. The Prim.”
“Which fragment?”
“I… I’m not sure.”
“Ah,” Elimori said, nodding to herself. “Fragment Nine. That’s why you’ve never heard of Klatch.” She spanned Vayle, Rovid and me with a sideways finger. “And you three, Nikka told me, are foreigners to Amortis?”
“Long story,” Rovid said, chiming in with my line.
“I’m sure it is. You can explain it another time. Know that Klatch is the God of Fragments. He belongs to us now.”
I clicked my tongue. “Er, come again?”
“He’s our prisoner,” she explained. Or at least tried to explain, because that didn’t explain very much.
“Who exactly,” I asked, “are you people?”
Elimori had the grin of someone who took delight in being asked that question. “We’re the poor. We’re slaves. We’re the destitute, the savage, and the inhuman. We’re men and we’re women. We’re bakers, fighters and lovers. But right now, and until we achieve our goals, we are the rebellion.”
“What are you rebelling against?”
She creased her eyes. “The gods.”
Chapter 10
The god of fragments had the shape of a cloud being dragged through a storm — stretching, compressing and vanishing all together for brief bits of time. His appearance would stutter, brighten and suddenly collapse into coruscated shadows.
Also, he wailed. They had you stuff cotton in your ears before you saw him; otherwise, they’d bleed. And take it from the six-year-old me who had blood purged from his ear canal after receiving a fist from his father — bloody ears aren’t enjoyable.
And neither is being conned. Which I had been, according to Elimori. She’d asked me to go on a walk with her, and seeing as I wanted to stay on her good side so I could get out of here with the book sooner rather than later, I obliged.
“The snow,” she said as we strolled into the city square, “the ice, the mountain you seek… they were fragmentations.”
A couple linen bolts fell from an overloaded wagon. Elimori stopped, picked them up and handed them to the driver.
“Thanks, Ellie,” the man said. He made a clicking noise, and the horses drawing the wagon began puttering along again.
“Gotta endear yourself to the common folk, huh?” I said.
“One of us is like the other here. We’re fighting for the same cause.”
“Sure, whatever you say, Ellie. Do you mind if I call you that?”
She smiled at a smith hanging over the back of his forge, shaking his head and panting dramatically.
“Trust,” she said from the corner of her mouth, “doesn’t come easy to you. Does it?”
“If it did, I probably wouldn’t be alive right now.”
“I’ve given you the book. I’ve shown you a god. I’ve fed you and your friends, offered you beds. What more do you want, Astul?”
We emerged from the city square and onto a forked black road. The unnerving Warden was to the left. Thankfully, we went right, along the inner skirt of the palisade.
“We’ll get to what I want in a second,” I said. “Let’s revisit this fragmentation business. Maybe you people have different interpretations of language out here, but far as I know, fragments aren’t synonymous with illusions. You shatter a pane of glass and it’ll burst into a bunch of fragments, and guess what? You tilt your head down and you’ll sure as shit see those fragments, glittering like diamonds. They don’t disappear. They don’t vanish. So tell me how the mountain and the snow and the ice that I trudged through and buried a book within are fragments. Because they’re gone. As if they never existed.”
Ellie stopped beside an elongated shaft in the palisade. She leaned against the wooden fence and crossed her arms. “They exist. Maybe in their entirety, far, far away; sometimes he replicates. Or maybe in pieces; sometimes he whisks them together like the ingredients of a cake.”
“So,” I said, attempting to latch onto this rather far-out idea, “he’s a sculptor? Shapes the land as he desires, is that it?”
Ellie flinched when she heard the word sculptor, as if it was too charming a word for the god of fragments.
“You have the basics, although I don’t believe his desires factor into it. The orders come from Arken. The fragments haven’t changed in a long time. That’s how the rebellion knew something was amiss when our scouts reported the snow. It never snows here.” She peered through the slits of the palisade, looking into the sky where flakes of ash fluttered down. “Not white snow, anyhow.”
Children, if they’re lucky enough to be born to somewhat educated parents in a somewhat educated city, are taught to add numbers. If you manage to make it out of childhood without dogmas and five-hundred-year-old beliefs stuffing your mind, you learn as an adult to add in a more abstract manner.
For instance, one in my position — there’s an unfortunate bastard, there — would have smartly taken the fact that these lands had apparently not changed in a while and then added in the sudden appearance of a blustery mountain which, funny enough, coincided with my trek into the wilds of Amortis to bury the book. The sum, so long as you could add one and two, would have equaled this: I had been watched, and I had been conned.
Ellie agreed with my assessment. “We didn’t understand when the mountain came down, but it makes sense now. Klatch was attempting to secure the book for Arken. But why? What is this book?”
I explained that, to the best of my understanding, it was a chronological history of every thought every mind had ever had.
“And you said it was created by…?”
“I didn’t. You never gave me the chance. The author — well, everyone who’s ever existed is the author, huh? Anyhow, Ripheneal supposedly brought it into creation.”
“Riph — Ripheneal?”
“The god of life.”
Ellie had a blank look on her face.
“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me the rebellion that’s going to take down the gods doesn’t know that there are a handful of celestial fuckers in the living realm too.”
“I considered it,” she said, “but I’m here, not there. How would I ever know?”
One of the lava pits in the distance bubbled up, spewing its milky-orange froth across the flatness of the lands.
“Well,” I said, “luckily for you, I don’t think they fancy coming to Amortis. So you can focus on putting Arken out of his misery, however you intend on doing that. Speaking of which… Lysa won’t be part of your war.”
Ellie straightened herself. “Then I’m afraid you cannot leave with the book.”
I had a feeling that might be the stipulation. And if I asked who was going to stop me, I’d be met with the nod of Ellie’s head in the general direction of the Warden. But that could possibly, potentially, sorta-kinda-hopefully be overcome. I just needed to confirm my suspicions as to how the rebellion had managed to snag a Warden.
“How about this?” I said. “You let me mull it over for a day or two. I’ll get back to you, yeah?”
“She’ll be fighting for a good eternity on Amortis,” Ellie said.
“She had a decent eternity in Fragment Nine.”
A wistful smile tightened her lips, then scurried aw
ay from her face. “So did those in Fragment One. And Fragment Two. Even Fragment Eight, till Fragment Nine was created. It won’t last.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
I started back the way we’d come, then reconsidered and went the opposite way. The less I had to see of that Warden, the better. I didn’t know much about them. For all I knew, they could glimpse into your mind, which was something I didn’t need to experience.
After watching Ellie descend into her cave, I took a stroll through the city, stopping off at one of the forges. The blacksmith was having himself a mug of something or other, taking big swigs as he sat on the anvil.
“Seen a whole lot of black blades being carted about,” I said. “Didn’t realize you had ebon here.”
The blacksmith wiped some pink residue off his protruding chin. “Ebon? Don’t know about that. Where ya from? Got a different vibe about you.”
“Far away,” I said, picking up a pair of forceps. “My father was a smithy, ’fore the war took him and orphaned my sister and me. I was going to become just like him.” I snapped the forceps closed, then opened them slowly. With a feigned wistfulness in my voice, I added, “Funny how things change, eh?”
“At times for the worse, at times for the better. Daddy was a smithy too, taught me everything I know. Just join the rebellion?”
There we go, I thought. He’d lowered his guard, allowing me to get closer. This was one of the first tricks I’d always taught recruits: make yourself relatable and there’s not a wall you can’t crack. It’s a human flaw to gravitate to those who hold the same desires as you, or have suffered the same hardships. Well, only a flaw if you meet people like me, who take advantage of the fact.
“I’ve offered my services,” I said. “I’ve been told I’m good at cutting heads from shoulders.” I grabbed a dagger from the smith’s workbench and rolled it over in my hand. The blade was pure black, but unlike ebon, it glistened, as if was recently bathed in a fresh coat of oil.
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