by T. A. Miles
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 soul-keepers and their mages 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 bond mate 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!” He half choked, repeating himself 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 Essence 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.
Moments passed in silence. The others fell away, reclaimed by nature, diminished like the melting off of once frozen streams beneath the new heat of the spring awakening. Korsten should have felt relieved. He felt … cruel.
“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 dropped 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 mages. The Essence flowed to them from all sources. The Seminary 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.
Why had he brought the demons out this far? It had to be something significant to them … there had to be some reason why he’d been able to glean this place from them. Maybe it was Serawe’s awareness of the wave the crone had summoned, though he couldn’t believe that the demoness knew where it would be summoned from. He was inclined to doubt that even the crone knew that beyond a general notion. But maybe it was too large for him to comprehend fully. He felt very small at the moment, that was certain.
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 bond mate had shared his sense of doom. She had seemed then, prepared to carry his Essence back to the garden. But now she wasn’t.
“What can we do, Analee?” He murmured. He had an idea. He should have asked how over why.
There was energy all around him. He was literally floating in it. But it was different than ingesting the blood lilies. It was an active current … like what he’d felt in the caves. Mages had always avoided relying on it beyond that which they generated themselves, within the space they’d created at the Seminary. It could be depleting to draw it constantly from nature. It also required a constant connection. What was in the blood, was in the blood. What wasn’t spent replenished itself within the mage’s body until more could be taken in. What nature provided through water, metal, or air was far less direct and not as long to last … unless stored by some means, such as what the witches were doing. The crystals were what provided further Essence to the witches, emboldening what they possessed naturally. The mages themselves … the blood within their own bodies and their very souls was their source. That was what set them so uniquely at odds with the Vadryn. The blood and soul were the most potent source of power for a living being. The Vadryn wanted to take constantly. The mages took what was required to stop them.
In a way, perhaps that made them both enemies of Nature … defilers as the crone had accused.
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 and 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.
Merran was tired and hurt most places where feeling remained to him. It had been a long while since he’d felt quite so spent. The crone had been more than he anticipated finding in those caves, though he knew there would be something of significant importance there. Distressingly, the greater concern lay still beyond the city and he could not work at the pace he would have liked to. The very light of a new day seemed an obstacle, a golden-red glow intent on being in his line of vision and that made the air heavy as it heated the moisture in it, like a pot boiling slowly.
Beside him, Dacia performed the task set on her by her mother; to ensure that he did not fall to his exhaustion and injury in the streets. The girl’s obedience was automatic, not mindless but oddly void of consideration, as if she would drift through her life guided by whim alone if not for the direction she received very deliberately. Already what dismay she had felt in the caves appeared to have dissipated.
He let her be and the walk to Irslan’s was both silent and taxing. Dacia seemed to recognize the house when they arrived at it, and moved off ahead of Merran to announce their arrival at the door. The stairs presented themselves to Merran and he found their very existence further antagonism to his condition.
He wasn’t certain how long he considered them by the time the voices of Dacia and Irslan filtered down to him. It didn’t seem to matter; the stairs threw themselves at him before he’d made sense of the words.
Vaelyx felt a peculiar absence in him. It was impossible to describe beyond the sensation that something once there had simply vanished. He believed that bits of himself had been dying off for years, lost to madness, impotence, age….
Maybe Serawe had been feeding off his soul all along. Now that she was gone—wherever she’d gone to—the numbness of her incessant embrace left him awake and alert to what remained. And what remained was greatly diminished from the man Vaelyx once had been. I’ve been falling apart since you died, brother.
A rueful smile drew to his lips while he packed powdered ore materials into casings. When lives went wrong … how they went. Thankfully, Irslan was Dahn’s son. He had his uncle’s knack for floundering into obsession, but his father’s sense enough to see it before it became an illness. He had his mother’s generous nature as well. His ability to think about others would keep him from losing himself to himself.
Vaelyx comforted himself with those thoughts, glancing to Vlas as the old youth passed. He was a good man at the core of his unusual being. It made sense that Imris took to his side with such alacrity. The mage crouched down beside the constable and together they worked out the wicks for the tools they were putting together; the tools that were going to bring this level of hell down on itself. With them in it, he reminded himself, and his subconscious replayed a portion of the dream he and Dacia had shared. The well came down, yes, with sheets of rock obscuring his view of the blond mage. He’d quickly lost sight of him altogether. Vaelyx realized now that they would all three be buried in this place. Mages had their ways, yes, but he imagined the suddenness and sheer force of what was to come would overpower him. Maybe he was wrong.
The sounds of unhappy men who were barely that anymore drew his attention to the darkness beyond the well entrance.
“The ghouls must have found their way around the fire,” Vlas said, expressing Vaelyx’s thoughts. “Vaelyx and Imris, if you could locate these at the mouth….”
Vaelyx finished with the one he was working on and gathered up the handful of others on the floor beside him. Imris was already on her feet with her own batch and making her way the few paces it was to the mouth. He followed along and moved off to the side opposite the constable to make a mound. Vlas came along and placed one with a wick on top of the pile. He looked to Imris, who stood beside her own small heap of potential disaster, also armed with a torch. They communicated readiness to each other and lowered the flames to the wicks. When the fire took hold, Vaelyx was already backing off. The mage and constable followed, and the three of them retreated to the well.
“Quickly,” Vlas urged, sensing the doom those small containers could re
lease perhaps.
Imris was quick. The mage only had to usher her past him. In Vaelyx’s case, he literally slowed to a near stop and waited for him, then reached out to bring him forward. Vaelyx had never felt more like a tired old man.
The stark, felt eruption of elements was a recurrence of what had dropped them into the caves to begin with. Only here, it was worse. The sound blared through the well, shaking the air itself. Vlas shoved Vaelyx ahead of him and then turned, hands in motion. His hasty, patterned movement seemed slow and almost elegant against the chaotic flare of fire and rock, and blood. A wall of it rushed at them, and was stopped by a wall of magic. The reality of the violence was still enough to cause the mage to flinch, even behind the protection he’d manifested. It was enough to drop Vaelyx to his knees.
The blast from the mouth was herald to the collapse. The ceiling was coming down, and there was no magic that was going to hold it up.
Vlas turned toward Vaelyx and Imris, calling out to them. Imris was already in motion and Vlas reached his hand out to her, continuing to shout to Vaelyx, who found himself either unable or unwilling to move.
Take care of my daughter. Whomever the thought was for, he was out of time to form another.
The look on Vaelyx’s face, like a man who had too many regrets in a single moment to comprehend, was stuck in Vlas’ mind to the point of sure disaster if he didn’t evict it. He gave himself to instinct, which had him pull Imris into his space as closely as he could. Both arms wrapped around her and he articulated what may have been a last command to the strength left in him with his hands at Imris’ back. Her face was tucked against his chest and as the Reach portal was forming, looking eerily unstable in the shower of debris around them, he placed a hand on the back of her head to keep her as close and protected as possible. Dislodged boulders pounded the floor directly beside them. Scattered shards scraped across his back and legs. The Reach portal slipped around them, as if pulling heavy drapes across an ugly view. The drapes were in warm colors, accompanied by the sound of the sea.
