by T. A. Miles
When Vlas felt convinced that the ghouls weren’t willing to set themselves on fire, he turned from the scene and carried the torch to the others. He passed it off to Imris while giving his attention to Vaelyx and to visually examining him for injury. None seemed apparent. He asked anyway, “Are you hurt?”
Vaelyx cast him a weary eye, then shook his head. “Are you?”
Vlas rolled his eyes and frowned mildly. “I’d yet fare better than you if I were, Master Treir. Where to now?”
Vaelyx gestured further down the tunnel ahead, drawing himself to a better stand as he recovered some of his stamina. “The well’s not far.”
“And Serawe?” While he asked, he caught Imris glance at him and returned the visual contact.
“She goes often,” Vaelyx answered, shaking bits of gore off his knife.
“For what?” Vlas asked, watching the man then swipe the blade over his pant leg.
When Vaelyx felt the blade was clean enough, he sheathed it and raised his eyes to Vlas. “For our daughter,” he answered and the wry bitterness in his tone was markedly disturbing just at that moment.
Vlas frowned while Vaelyx turned from them and proceeded down the tunnel. In all his years, Vaelyx Treir may have been the first man to render him legitimately speechless.
“Let’s go,” Imris prompted from what she’d made her place at his side. Rahl had raised an admirable constable. If all of their troops were so dedicated and so skilled, the city may yet have held an advantage over the encroaching forces.
Merran brought down the Barrier. Ersana was between them, or he would have reached to touch Korsten’s hand in the moment before they emerged from their short-lived haven away from the melee of demons and the magic of an ancient witch. Merran had never witnessed one this old, nor one as determined to behave as aggressively and as inhumanely as one of the Vadryn. Unfortunately, at her age with her raw talent, it would be nearly impossible to bring her down. This was tantamount to one of the Mage-Superiors, devoid of conscience or consideration for those beneath them. He could not picture it. It crossed his mind that Ersana may not have been able to picture this before it happened either and he was forced to withdraw his judgment of her. Trust could become both helpless and dangerous. It was the betrayer of that trust who’d committed the greater wrong. His mind began to apply that same reasoning to Korsten’s former trust of a certain demon, but he forced all thoughts save those required to challenge the crone to be still.
“Take your mind from the Mother,” he advised to Ersana as they stood outside of the stairwell, looking up at the spectacular image of an ancient woman merged with nature itself. She had not become it, but transitioned herself into the tree … into a vessel that was previously inanimate, but which yet enabled magic and life to flow through her and from her. This application of the magic was also something he never would have envisioned before now. How long had this witch honed her abilities to do just this? And she’d shared it with the Vadryn….
He felt a pull at his subconscious, like a thread lifting through his blood, drawing toward a source he could not ignore. He would ignore this, though. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment and willed himself not to look at Korsten … the source of Allurance that was successfully calling. Allurance that was now paired with something else. He’d brought forward Song. There was no question. Merran had been struggling to keep himself from succumbing to it for nearly the duration of their time in the caves.
He opened his eyes again and saw that even Ersana was lured to staring at Korsten. He placed a hand over hers, his skin against hers enabling the transfer of a mild spell. It deadened her senses somewhat and enabled her to quiet the stimulating effect Korsten’s soul had on others, particularly when it was Singing … as it was now.
The demons heard it before Korsten opened his mouth to coax them away from their fight. Merran could only wonder if Korsten realized the power his voice added to the spell, or if it was incidental that he talked as much as he did, and especially when he was concentrating.
Ersana seemed to understand the essence of what was happening. She rearranged the placement of their hands over one another and returned the gesture Merran had just paid her. In her rogue manner, it felt different than any form of healing touch he’d received at the Seminary. Its effect was the same, regardless, and both cooled his blood and calmed his spirit enough that he easily assumed control over himself.
He met the woman’s gaze and said, “Go to your daughter.”
With a quiet nod, Ersana slid her hand from his and stepped away. The demons were already dropping away from the fight.
Merran looked up at the Mother. He held his eyes tightly shut and drew in a breath, then opened them again, dropping both the breath and his gaze in that moment. He performed the quick motions of a Fire spell and sent heat racing toward the thick base of the Mother.
Flames rolled into being as the intense warmth connected with material. The cords of wood strewn across the floor curled back from it. Several of them rose up and whipped in Merran’s direction. Foresight enabled him to anticipate behavior and action in some situations and to better respond to it. He avoided being struck at first with simple leanings and sidesteps, but before long he had the Mother’s full attention. Dacia must have been distracted, then. With the demons pulling away—toward Korsten—that rendered him the most immediate threat.
Dacia wanted to scream, so she did. Loudly. The treed bitch wouldn’t break, no matter how many of the others were on her and now they were scurrying away. To where? To who, she soon understood and set her glare on his pretty face. She was going to eat him whole. As she thought of it, she realized how immediately all she really wanted to do was to touch him and to get his blood all over her. She watched the others crawling over to him, like curious rodents, oblivious enough that the Mother’s limbs knocked several of them into the wall. It broke one of them and its true self poured onto the floor like smoking blood. Instead of quickly enveloping and eating its vessel, however … instead of reveling in its sudden freedom or coming to her, it drifted into the air and toward the Red One.
Anger should have been her first response, but she was immediately jealous … and not of the Red One, but over him. He was going to be hers, she decided. Right now. She made for him. A woman got in her way and she raised her twice-embodied arm to tear her down, but something stopped her. It was a name. Not her name, she recalled very quickly … the girl’s. The name given to the girl by this pathetic doll of the Mother.
“Do not stand in my way, bitch!” She hissed at Ersana. She wished that she could be more present than she was, but the whole of her was anchored elsewhere. It was the only reason she hadn’t fully claimed the girl. It was the only reason Ersana had any sway at all.
“Dacia,” the woman said sharply, as if she could command her. No one commanded her, not even him. Though he would try. He would try now, as if she had failed in her part … as if her task had not been seeded to yield failure. Damn the others! Damn the Mother, ancient whore of the Powers, for her betrayal and her lies! And damn these people … these all but useless blood sacks. She would devour them all. She would be bigger than the Sea, bigger than him … bigger than the Powers. The world would be sucked into her very being. She would start with Ersana … but her attention lurched in the direction of the Red One. So vivid … like a red stain across her vision. She would undress her physical form, and his, and merge them where the human fire sparked hottest. She would spread that fire through both of them and part his skin with her nails and her teeth … and drink him … and paint her naked human skin with his bright, burning soul.
Come to me, he sang in a voice as sweet as the Powers. The song strummed across the red, red strings of his soul, which were not encased within his body, but somehow radiated outside of the lovely form. She wanted to wrap the essence of him around her, like brilliant ribbons—his blood streaming around her own form.
&nbs
p; She didn’t realize she had taken physical steps toward him until the witch stood in her way again. She would strike her down this time. Her arm raised and whipped downward, hand open to rend the woman down the middle with the hardened claws encasing the girl’s fingers. The claws raked against a screen of resistance. They sunk partway into the invisible spell the witch had cast, stinging into the girl’s bones. A hiss of pain escaped the girl instinctively and it revealed a weakness in Ersana’s eyes. The witch had no desire to harm the girl. Knowing that inspired an immediate urge to shred the girl’s body before the witch, but the burning for the Red One stopped her.
“Stand back!” she commanded Ersana and swung at her again. The spell continued to shield the witch, and she grew more desperate as she noticed the others crawling closer to the Red One. They could not have him; she would destroy all of them first!
And that was when the Red One turned his dark eyes on her. Like the deepest wells of the earth, they opened onto her and she fell in. I will come to you, he promised. In that moment, his song was all she heard. Like rain through the tops of trees, the whisper of other sounds trickled down onto her. The Mother’s aggravated groans, the scuttling of the others across the floor, the incessant urges of Ersana for Dacia to respond to her … and the blunt protest of another.
“Korsten!” The man she hadn’t even noticed shouted, and that was the last she heard as she abandoned the girl to meet with the Red One. He was going to be hers … completely.
“So, that means that they’re coming,” Fersmyn said of the news Deitir had brought to them.
As they traversed the hall from the study, Deitir answered simply, “Yes.”
“How long have they been en 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.
Vlas observed Vaelyx taking on a limp as they traversed the underground passages of the ‘uninhabited’ island. He understood what Imris had been implying when she stated that no one lived there. The Islands coven had been devoted enough to its matriarch—to a demoness—that they had ultimately given their lives. They had sacrificed their own blood to her and those who had survived the demon’s insatiable hunger had not really survived at all. They were ghouls, husks of their former selves, disintegrating spiritually at first, but by now mentally and physically as well. There was no cure for these people, and they would die sooner than later, hence the coven’s need for new members and the likeliness that they had resorted to abducting people to satisfy the demon. Vlas doubted that they even understood a genuine purpose anymore, save to feed her. They were slaves to her desire and something the Seminary would have to address.
All the more reason to survive this, Vlas reminded himself. He had no real doubt that he would, so long as he avoided needless confrontation. The greatest challenge beyond this well of Vaelyx’s would be to get out. A Reach required a destination and in order to perform one successfully, the caster needed a solid sense of where he was going. Irslan’s would perhaps be the easiest escape, but under urgent conditions, it would be a bit more difficult, particularly with the others he intended to include in the Reach. The three of them had come to this island, and the three of them would leave it.
“How much farther, Vaelyx?” Vlas asked the man.
Vaelyx looked over his shoulder. He didn’t answer beyond that at first, but then waved his hand and promised, “Soon.”
His behavior would have raised Vlas’ suspicions if he hadn’t grown quickly accustomed to his manner. Undoubtedly two decades imprisoned had stunted his social capabilities and Vlas couldn’t say that his own were superior—if the opinions of his peers were anything to go by, which of course they were. He knew he was direct and outright rude in his urgency to get things accomplished. He understood how Vaelyx felt, at least in some ways. They would resolve this, he determined, and Vaelyx could begin putting his life into some semblance of order, whatever order the war would allow.
Imris walked steadfastly beside him,
apparently undaunted by any of this. If women were soldiers, she would likely have made a good one, but outside of Indhovan and perhaps some of the other towns and cities in the coastal region, women were not even constables, let alone soldiers. The only women to see a battlefield on the side of Edrinor were mages. Vlas could not say that he’d seen a female in battle on the Morennish side either. With the increased losses of men, perhaps that would be forced to change. He wondered passingly if Imris would volunteer herself to the Alliance Army. It was a peculiar sensation that followed, one that had him consider the danger, the likeliness of her death alongside so many others, and the pang of hypothetical regret that accompanied the idea. It mystified him at times, how the years could pass he and other mages by almost without notice and how it was sometimes only hours or moments that made those years felt and lived. He’d learned that when one had more time than most, it was the smaller moments which stood out the greatest. One might have thought them lost as a grain of sand along the shore, but those grains sparkled brilliantly when lit. He would not forget these hours … not in all the years that may yet be ahead of him. He would carry the memory of this day and even this war long after Imris and Vaelyx were both dead. That realization was often the point where a mage was left to realize association outside of the Seminary should always remain as impersonal as possible.
He put his thoughts away, lest they distract him from what was of immediate concern. His focus went to his surroundings. The cave walls were rough and carved open not necessarily by nature, so much as by human hand. Evidence of the demon cult’s existence within the passages was sparse, but clear. Crude wooden construction existed sporadically, including ladders, scaffolding, small shacks, and torches or places for torches to be. It occurred to Vlas when he gave more attention to the walls themselves that the cultists may have been mining at one time. His mind took the next logical step and he determined that this island had been a resource for Morenne. The Islands coven may have been the entity in league with the enemy, not the governor … unless the governor had more to do with the coven, in which case the accusations Vaelyx didn’t seem to remember making would have been true. But it may have been that he wasn’t accusing the governor directly. It may have been that he was misheard, perhaps deliberately.
