by T. A. Miles
“Stay here with Ersana,” Korsten eventually enforced, then started for the back of the central space once again.
Beneath a series of pillars, there was a wooden door tucked. It was dwarfed by the height of the rest of the room and seemed almost out of place. Noting the coordinated bunch of crystals hung above the frame, Korsten knocked before entering. The door opened onto a small space with almost no furnishings. The walls were roughly hewn as well, a replica of the interior of the caves. Perhaps this setting was the start of the series of meditations that would eventually place Ersana where the coven’s former head priestess had been. Perhaps this was where the crone had had her beginnings.
Ersana was sat upon a stone platform set into an alcove across the room, alone. Though her long hair was neatly combed and her simple dress clean, he couldn’t help but to think of the form in the caves that had been covered in damp dust and bramble. He also couldn’t help but to envision the expression that would have been on Merran’s face had he been witness to this.
A pang of longing attacked him, but he put it aside, ushering Dacia into the room ahead of him.
Ersana noticed them and stood, stepping toward away from her place of meditation.
“I found her,” Korsten said of Dacia. “Or rather, she found me, out in the streets very near to battle.”
“I wondered,” Ersana said, and it seemed lacking, given the circumstances.
Korsten understood that Dacia was an exceptionally unique ward for anyone to have to keep track of, but the manner in which Ersana dealt with her frequent disappearances was far too tolerant for his tastes. It bordered on enabling.
“She must not leave here again, unless it is with you,” Korsten enforced. “There must be a better way to keep her from wandering.”
“No,” Ersana said. “There isn’t. Perhaps you haven’t realized that Dacia is scarcely lucid. She has moments, but often….”
“I did realize that,” Korsten admitted, feeling defeated in his attempt to better motivate Ersana.
“Then you know it hinders her ability to process both fear and judgment. And when she wanders … at times the manner in which she does would defy physical bonds if I were to employ them.”
Korsten listened, disliking the seeming lack of option.
Ersana hesitated, perhaps reluctant to give the information she delivered next. “She appears more stable … at least she is better able to anchor … in the presence of her cousin, Irslan.”
Korsten considered that. “The blood connection, perhaps.”
Ersana conceded to the possibility with a single nod.
“I can take her to him,” Korsten offered, watching Ersana’s features stiffen and her hands tighten over her daughter, but in the following moment she relaxed her hold. Korsten attempted to assure her. “Irslan is currently located within the governor’s manor. There can be no safer place for her in the city, so long as she stays there.”
“Then take her,” Ersana permitted. She almost pleaded, “Keep her safe.”
“I will do all that I can,” Korsten promised. He reached out for Dacia’s hand and received it. “We’re going to have you stay with your cousin instead,” he said to her.
“Yes, I believe Cousin Irslan enjoys visits,” Dacia replied.
Korsten recalled that about Irslan and so offered her a small smile. “Yes, he does.”
The waterfront was completely inundated by the enemy. From the balcony of one of the east guard towers, Oshand could see their ships gathered along the piers as if the city was already their own. Their forces appeared to have strategized similarly for land as they had for water; with penetration. They were driving primarily up the most direct street that would take them to the city’s center, and the governor. If Indhovan had more men, they might have been able to organize a counter-flanking tactic that would bring them around to the rear of the Morennish troops. That considered, even if they had more soldiers to spare, they would likely lose several to the enemy’s fire tactics. It looked as though the entirety of their own strategy would consist literally of blocking Morenne’s path. Somehow that felt like waiting for an inevitable doom.
A sudden burst of sound and light emerged from the central point of conflict in just that moment. Oshand had been witness to one previously and taken it for the fire tactics, but there was something about it that didn’t seem the same. “What in the hells is that?”
“I’ve been wondering myself,” the man nearest him said. A ranked soldier by the name Bhen.
“It’s a mage,” another soldier told them, stepping nearer to the railing. The man appeared somewhat spent. He was dusted with powdered stone and ash. Both had made the air unnaturally thick since the start of Morenne’s barrage from the ships. Mild burns and blood smudged the soldier’s skin, but he didn’t carry any noticeably dangerous wounds. He must have been designated to run word back from the battle.
“What’s a mage doing out there?” Bhen asked. He was senior to both of them in age, in spite of Oshand’s higher rank.
The informant soldier looked over at them. “She’s helping us stand our ground.”
At the notation of gender, Oshand pictured Mage Cayri, though he hadn’t anticipated her becoming involved quite in this way. Perhaps this was what she meant when she and the red-haired mage went to look for possessed troops. Perhaps they’d found them.
“Was there another with her?” Oshand asked.
The young soldier nodded. “With red hair. But he stayed back when we began to gain. I don’t know what became of him.”
Oshand accepted the information, for whatever use it may have been—he legitimately didn’t know at this point. “Is there anything else?”
The question had barely finished forming when an airy shriek ripped through the sky, followed by an explosion of bursting stone and splintering wood. Oshand and his men were almost shaken from their places by the vibration that assailed the tower. Oshand fell against the railing. Bhen was better braced and put a hand out to help him steady himself.
“Where did that come from?” Oshand wanted to know, searching the ships in the harbor. Their reach had not previously come as far as the east tower. It seemed impossible.
A man from the constabulary rushed into the doorway behind them, speaking urgently enough to have all of their attention. “They’ve begun bringing their weapons onto shore!”
Oshand was speechless for an instant, faced with yet another unexpected assault from the enemy. His next decision was sudden and more instinctive than derived from any consciously rational thought. “Clear the tower. Everyone out!”
The soldiers around him moved at once.
Oshand followed them through the door and down the narrow staircase which followed the close walls of the structure’s interior. “To the next defense post. Go!”
What men were at the base of the tower heard the instruction and went with varying degrees of delay. Most of it was minor and probably owed to the shock of such a near strike beside them, but no delay was tolerable under the circumstances.
Oshand shouted at those not moving quickly enough. “Get out of the building! Leave!”
The ground floor was near deserted by the time Oshand reached it. He jogged quickly to the short corridor and alcove-like rooms edging the base of the structure, ensuring that no one was left behind to be crushed and burned by another strike. When he saw no one, he hurried to the exit and was glad to see none of his men lingering near the building. He was in motion behind the fleeing troops when the hideous wail of the enemy’s weapon tore over his head.
In a moment of unreality, he caught sight of a roundish shape turning through the air, trailed by smoke and dust, some of which it had likely dragged from the air it was rolling through … like a bull commanded by the gods themselves. He was taken with the glimpse of this phenomenon enough to slow and turn, and witness the gods’ beast, expressed in
a mundane form by the hands of men, careen into the tower, and through it. With an abrupt belch of dust as stones were instantly powdered, the structure collapsed. Part of it went in on itself, parts of it onto the street, onto neighboring buildings, and into the air.
Oshand stood in momentary shock, though he had bent somewhat and shielded himself instinctively. Even as he recaptured his senses through a few careful moments of breathing, he felt the dangerous pressure of futility. He’d seen both of Morenne’s best weapons inside of a period of a few short hours. At this rate, Indhovan would be lost within only a few more, mages or no.
The sound of Morenne’s fire tactics resounded in the governor’s office so brilliantly that everyone paused and unanimously looked to the windows. After several moments of silent observation of what was still nearer to the waterfront than it was to the manor, gazes were brought back into the room.
“That was nearer, wasn’t it?” Deitir eventually said.
Cayri believed that it was, and nodded to communicate as much.
Others offered various answers of speculative agreement and promptly resigned themselves to the new scenario; that Morenne had devised a way to maneuver their weapons onto land.
Emalrik offered Deitir a cup. “For the stress,” the man said, and Deitir allowed the concoction to be placed upon the table, but did not drink it.
“What will we do when they arrive at the doors?” Alledar blurted, eyeing the physician’s offering as if he might request it himself. Evidently, he had resigned himself to the point of panic. An attack on the manor was not only possible, but in his mind perhaps it had now become imminent.
“We’ll do what we must,” Fersmyn answered with little patience. It appeared that the strain of the city’s conflict had heightened what may have been a common tension between the two officers.
It appeared so common that Cayri had begun to reconsider Alledar’s nervous manner. She no longer suspected it was owed to duplicity, but rather to an innate fear of losing the comfort of the position and the life he had known before the attacks on the city began. Observing him as closely as she had been seemed to indicate to her that he was not a man of daring, but a man of security. Whomever might have been assisting Konlan….
Cayri’s thoughts drifted to Raiss Tahrsel. He knew the betrayer, yes—he knew every person of station in the manor. Most importantly was that Tahrsel was aware of their betrayal. But when and how had he become aware? Cayri wondered if he had known before his attack and had been too unfocused to be able to say anything. His words and actions had been at times taken over by another. His words and actions, but what of his thoughts? Any form of possession left the opportunity for the host, unwilling or otherwise to witness what went on around them. The possessor suppressed them and their ability to act autonomously. What might Tahrsel have witnessed, even while he was sleeping his unnatural sleep? Could it have been that he had lain there able to feel and hear life moving around him, but was himself unable to move? Might it have been hearing the voices of his wife and son, and of the officers discussing war that provided him with enough will to force himself awake?
“You should rest, Ilayna,” Emalrik advised.
“Later, Emalrik,” the lady replied
The exchange drew Cayri’s attention to it and Emalrik was prepared to receive her attention with his kindly smile.
His smile … which was not quite sincere as Cayri had previously been convinced.
She felt it like a bolt through her flesh, that this man was the only one in constant enough company with the governor to have assisted Konlan, and to have been witnessed by Tahrsel. It was the term ‘messenger’ that had thrown her off his trail. He was a messenger, not of words, but of….
Cayri looked quickly to Deitir, whose hand had drifted toward the cup. “Don’t!” she called out, and everyone looked to her as they had the sound of the enemy’s destructive assault moments before.
Deitir held his hand in limbo while he made eye contact with her, trusting that she had an explanation for her outburst.
Fersmyn asked for it outright, after he’d looked from her to the city’s new governor, and back again. “What in the dismal remains of our beloved country is the matter now?”
“The cup,” Cayri said.
“What about the cup?” Ilayna wanted to know.
“It’s poisoned,” Cayri determined, rather more hastily than she liked to meet a conclusion, but she felt very strongly that it was true.
And now Emalrik was the subject of observation. He looked in a way that might have passed for good-naturedly around the room, his gaze pausing on Cayri. “Of course, it isn’t.”
“It is,” Cayri rebutted immediately. He was lying now. She could feel it like the wind in winter. Eyeing the physician directly, she verbalized her thoughts as they formed. “Who else could have assisted Konlan in reaching Governor Tahrsel in such a way that he might take over the governor’s mind with his wild magic?”
Emalrik’s pleasant expression faltered mildly. “What are you talking about?”
“I speak of a concoction given to relax him. A potion you might have been administering for a lengthy period of time that might have suppressed his focus and weakened him in order to enable a magic user to work an influencing spell. In the process it seemingly altered Raiss Tahrsel’s personality and staged his body for the attack on his senses that ultimately incapacitated him. You were the only one who could have done that.”
“Emalrik,” Ilayna breathed in disbelief that met competently with her quick handle on reality. She had likely followed Cayri’s logic as easily as if it had been her own.
“Anyone in this house could have done that,” Emalrik said, and the manner in which he sought to defend himself solidified his guilt, particularly when he spoke to Cayri specifically. “You could have done that.”
“She arrived,” Deitir added, his voice taking on more presence than it had since Raiss Tahrsel’s passing, “after my father’s symptoms began to worsen.”
Emalrik faltered. He almost laughed. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now,” he said. He glared in Deitir’s direction. “The soldiers are going to arrive at this house—in this very room if need be, and all of you will be dead. You have nothing to offer in this battle, except delay of the inexorable tide of destruction over this city. Surrender, and they might find some use for you beyond a blood meal for the Vadryn.”
Deitir merely glared back at the man. He seemed without words, and perhaps that was to be expected, faced with his father’s murderer; a man he had likely known from a very young age, exhibiting now a new and different aspect to his character. Deitir’s dark eyes held all of his emotion in their depths in these moments.
“Surrender your city,” Emalrik advised in the pause.
All eyes were on Deitir. Cayri wondered if Fersmyn or Ilayna would step in to answer on Deitir’s behalf, but then Indhovan’s young governor spoke.
“Constable Rahl, arrest this man immediately,” Deitir said.
Rahl hesitated only a moment, but then quickly summoned one of the guards from the corridor and both went in the physician’s direction with intent that scarcely seemed to faze the man. Cayri braced herself to protect Deitir with Barrier, in the case that an attack of some kind were pending, but then Emalrik turned swiftly about and ran for the balcony. Rahl and his man rushed after him. He was on the railing and nearly off when Cayri’s Barrier came up and knocked him back and onto the balcony floor. The guard apprehended him with professional haste.
Cayri brought her gaze in to Deitir. Ilayna had moved closer to her son in those moments and she noticed that Sethaniel Brierly had stood and stepped toward Deitir as well. With the commotion over, the elder man placed a hand onto the governor’s shoulder and appeared to be offering both approval and support.
Ilayna took her son’s hand momentarily, then ordered the offending cup Emalrik had offered be removed f
rom the room.
“Watch him closely,” Fersmyn instructed Rahl and his man.
Cayri stepped aside to let the constables and their arrestee pass, and was joined by Fersmyn.
“Thank you,” the deputy governor said sincerely. The aging man’s hand rested briefly at her back, and then he returned to the table and the governing family.
Korsten had lost count of just how many times he had performed the Reach spell within a single evening, but the casting did not seem to tax him in any noticeable way. Perhaps it was owed to the fact that majority of them had been within the same vicinity. He let the matter go as he and Dacia stepped from the forum entry, into and through the open doorway of the governor’s office. They received fewer looks than an arrival by Reach typically called for, but Korsten preferred that. Still, he wondered why the general onset of grimness upon everyone’s faces.
It was Irslan who offered explanation, standing nearest and coming nearer when he noticed Korsten present with his cousin. “You’ve just missed something of a performance,” the man said in a tone that could have been mistaken for jovial, but that it was laced with nervousness.
“Oh?” was Korsten’s reply while he ushered Dacia toward Irslan’s side.
“Yes,” Irslan said with a nod. And then, while his hand lightly cupped Dacia’s elbow in guiding her around to the other side of him, “Hello, my dear.”
“Cousin Irslan,” she said pleasantly, taking guidance as well as she ever had.
“It seems it was the house physician who might have been responsible for the loss of the previous Governor Tahrsel,” Irslan explained. Before Korsten had to ask how, the man offered a single word. “Poison.”
“But why?” Korsten asked instead.
Irslan shrugged. “Who can say? Whatever his cause, he’s suspected of aiding Konlan in his betrayal.”
