At once he understood how humankind had long ago gazed into the starry heavens and seen the celestial palaces of the gods.
“Is this where you live?” he whispered, wonderment defeating his pledge of silence.
The woman turned to him, her hand white-knuckled around the hilt of the dagger strapped across her chest. Her stare was nothing shy of deadly, and for a few terrifying seconds Niel watched her struggle against what his every intuition told him was her desire to open his throat then and there.
Instead, she spun away and strode in the direction of the lights.
***
Beneath the colossal trees that formed the foundation of the city, Niel stared into the eerie half-night above, delighted, as if his travels had brought him to the mythical place where giants bore the world upon their backs. He tried to conceive the heights the treetops reached, but the only lucid assessment he managed was that they were much, much taller than the trees at which he had marveled in the Forest earlier.
He and the Galiiantha stood in a mossy valley between a pair of mountainous roots that spread out like great, gnarled fingers. The woman reached into a deep crag of bark, and a doorless entryway appeared where the two roots met. A large wedge of white light tinted with gold spilled out to reveal the brilliant green of the grass beneath their feet. She motioned with her head, and the Galiiantha nearest Niel shoved him through the portal.
Impossibly, the tree’s interior seemed ten times more enormous than its outside. The sweet, pleasant aroma of raw wood pulp hung in the air; Niel breathed it deeply. A narrow staircase cut into the round, smooth walls spiraled upward and out of sight. The stairs had no banister which struck him as odd, but more curious than that Niel noted along its bottom an engraved ocean motif of dolphins and mermaids similar to the one back at the Ragged Rascal.
One of the Galiiantha pushed Niel toward the stairs. Niel hung his head with a loud sigh of resignation and began his ascent, wondering if he would make it to the top, assuming that was where they were going. Still woozy, Niel feared he would pass out again, which meant either he would have to be carried, or he would fall to his death. And given the vengeance with which the pain in his head had returned, the latter sounded not all that bad.
As he climbed, Niel discovered the walls of the great tree were not smooth at all. Tiny carved symbols crowded the inner surface like a vast, living book intended to take a lifetime to read. Despite everything, he had to bite his lip to keep from asking his captors everything he could about the symbols.
Even more extraordinary than the carvings, though, was Niel’s amazed realization that in an absurdly small amount of time and with an absurdly small amount of effort they had reached the top of the stairs.
He stood at a landing immediately preceding two tall doors identical to the many others they’d passed on their way up—vertical planks stained in rich, reddish tones and bound by horizontal studs, all displaying carved symbols similar to those along the walls. Niel wondered whether the doors led to rooms, or to passageways within the very branches of the tree.
The woman in charge pushed past from the rear to stand beside Niel. The doors parted with a dull click and swung gracefully inward. Beyond them, a void of perfect black.
The woman pointed inside. Rather than waiting to be shoved again, despite this disconcerting notion of simply walking into the apparent oblivion that awaited inside the room, Niel crossed the threshold. The woman followed, and the doors closed and latched behind, separating them from the others.
Within the blackness Niel saw neither walls, nor furniture, nor even the outline of the doors through which they had just come. He did see himself, though, and the Galiiantha woman as clearly as if they stood in the bright light of noon.
The woman gestured for Niel to walk. Reluctantly, he did. Not being able to see the floor upset his equilibrium further, forcing him to close his eyes a few steps at a time or risk losing his balance and falling over.
From the dark distance emerged a small shape glowing deep, foreboding amethyst—the unmistakable shine of something magical, but nothing like Niel had ever seen. He stopped, but the object continued to grow and sharpen into focus as if he still moved forward.
A stomach-high pillar coalesced, bearing the rich, banded appearance of burnished wood. Niel quickly discerned arms, legs, even a stylized face—not a pillar, but a sculpture of some sort. Beneath anguished, distorted eyes gaped a wide, misshapen mouth. The longer he studied the form, the more distinguishable and disturbing it became: the rendering of a man, kneeling with one arm thrust out in a mute plea. In the open palm, casting off rays of violet, spun an ebony sphere the size of a walnut. It didn’t actually spin in the figure’s palm, though, but rather a few thumbwidths above it.
“What is this place?” Niel whispered.
“For you, it is a place of beginning,” came the reply, but not from the woman beside him.
Beyond the statue a pale figure drifted toward them. In the same manner the statue had seemed both far away and close by, the ghostly image made Niel’s senses teeter. In the blink of an eye the shape solidified into an elderly male Galiiantha, a head taller than Niel.
“For me,” he said with a gentle smile, “it is finally a place of ending.”
He wore a simple white robe. Despite the silver of his straight, shoulder-length hair, he bore no wrinkles on his skin, no gnarling of his fingers, no weariness about his posture. His voice resounded bright and strong; his beige eyes glistened clear and sharp as he regarded Niel with what could only be considered a grandfatherly kindness.
“My name is Lleryth,” he said. “And I have waited a very long time to meet you.”
The moment threatened to overwhelm Niel. “How could—”
Elbowing Niel aside, the woman interrupted with a harsh string of words.
Lleryth nodded. “Yes, of course.”
He held out his hands and glided toward Niel.
Niel raised an arm, backed away. “Wait, what—?”
“With your permission, a small matter of practicality.”
Frightened, Niel remained where he stood.
Lleryth lowered his hands. “Right here and now, child, you are farther from harm than ever shall you be again.”
The quiet words poured over Niel like a salve. The soft, strangely familiar aura of magic surrounding Lleryth brought comfort and ease, and any idea of resistance drifted away.
Lleryth placed his fingertips over Niel’s eyes; his hands felt feverishly hot. His fingers slid to Niel’s ears, pausing briefly before continuing down to Niel’s mouth.
Lleryth then folded his hands at his waist. “That should do.”
“Then if you don’t mind, Keeper,” the woman said with gruff impatience, “perhaps we could get on with the matter at hand.”
Niel whipped around to face her, and then stared again at Lleryth.
Lleryth smiled with polite amusement. “It will expedite things, as we have a great deal to discuss.”
The woman moved toward Niel. “After which, you and I have a great deal to discuss.”
Lleryth frowned. “That will be enough, Riahnn. We’ve plenty else to do without making matters even more complicated.”
He reached out to his right, and from the nothingness a door swung open—the same one through which they had entered, even though that door should have been far behind them.
With an angry sidelong glance at Niel, Riahnn dipped one knee to the invisible floor, then rose and marched out to where the other guards waited.
The door didn’t so much close as simply cease to be.
Lleryth gestured toward a pair of spindly, high-backed chairs Niel couldn’t remember not having been there the entire time. When Lleryth sat, so did he. The elderly Galiiantha produced a slender, curved pipe—already lit—from either a pocket or from thin air. With it he puffed a thin halo of smoke that ringed their heads and smelled of lavender and cloves.
“Now,” he said, “something tells me you’d appreciate an
explanation.”
22
In a famous dissertation on the inherent perils of magical study, the philosopher Rosrice analogized that once begun, avalanches rarely followed the direction of one’s choosing. As a student, Ennalen had been amused by that comparison. Now, as she lay fetal on the floor, she had a decidedly fuller appreciation for the ancient scholar’s counsel.
She’d spent another fruitless evening toiling to repeat the events of the arboretum in even the smallest way. Her disgust at failure after failure gouged at her; even her frenzied enthusiasm from no longer needing direct contact with the cantle to call upon its influence had run tepid. Exhausted and dejected, she had paused in the workshop entryway to collect herself before leaving, and leaned against the wall.
The instant her bare hand touched the cool stone it seared to the surface like meat to a hot, dry griddle, with an agony so glorious she could not draw breath to scream.
In the short moment Ennalen had been in contact with the wall, the suffering of dozens, the suffering of hundreds, tore through her. The raw panic in their eyes as they scratched and chewed through one another to escape torment, the horrid cacophony of their cries when they realized their doom, wrenched Ennalen into a heap and left her gasping and flailing like a fish out of its bowl.
The event had been so vivid, so palpable, Ennalen became certain she would also die amongst those anguished masses. But just as in the arboretum, in the next moment the assault ended and left her where she’d fallen—curled, shuddering, cradling the hand that had been charred to a blackened claw.
When she finally convinced herself she might actually have a chance of doing so, Ennalen struggled to her feet, clutching her hand to her stomach. No sooner than she stood, three short taps sounded at the door.
She forced herself steady. “What is it?”
“Forgive the intrusion, Mistress,” came Rass’s familiar, vacant voice, “but you asked to be reminded of your appointment this morning.”
Morning. When she had gone to leave the workshop, it had been just past midnight. She had lain in the entryway for hours.
Ennalen moved toward the door, but a sickening blossom of pain stopped her after a single step. She closed her eyes and mustered the sum of her reserves just to keep a whimper from her voice.
“Have you news on the matter I asked you to take care of?” she asked.
Rass hesitated only a heartbeat. “There’s been no development on that front as of yet.”
Ennalen gritted her teeth. She first had thought it fortuitous that Rass could search for the freshmen Willam and Geral while laying groundwork for her Apostate inquiries. Days later, though, he still could find no evidence of where the two had gone. She cared nothing for the boys’ well-being. Indeed, their being dead would be no small convenience, provided their bodies hadn’t reappeared atop someone’s dinner table.
Conjecture said that if a mere sliver of gemstone had permanently muted a pair of magicians, as the story from the Black Plains expedition went, then her cantle might very well have let her rob a pair of apprentices of their very existence.
But one way or another, she had to know for sure.
“Keep at it,” she said. “I’ll be out in a moment.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Ennalen shuffled to the wardrobe on the far side of the room. With her good hand she pried the front doors apart and let them swing open, revealing the mounted looking glass and the series of drawers within. She stared into the mirror, relieved to find no marks on her face or neck that might have invited inquiry. Granted, the pallor of her skin gave ghoulish contrast to the purplish swelling around her eyes, and no doubt itself would have caused notice, but there were ways around that.
Ennalen steeled herself, then peered down to examine her perfectly ravaged—
—perfectly fine hand.
She scoffed and stared in astonishment. No hint of injury. In fact, the pain had vanished the instant she’d looked.
She turned her hand over several times and marveled, then quickly dug a pair of elbow-length, black velvet gloves from a drawer at the top of the wardrobe. She slipped them on, padded quietly back to the entryway, and placed her palm gently against the stone wall.
Nothing.
Ladies in the aristocracy wore similar gloves. Anyone bothering to notice hers would likely think the ferocious Magistrate Ennalen as susceptible to the lures of fashion and have a laugh at her expense.
As she removed her hand from the wall a final, fleeting wisp of the awfulness she beheld wafted across her senses. Only, something more lurked amidst the miasma of horror—something she hadn’t noticed earlier; something even more significant and more tangible. Vague and foreboding, but it had familiarity. A shape, maybe. A presence, perhaps.
Ennalen bore down, tightening her focus, but the harder she concentrated the more elusive the sensation became until finally it danced beyond her reach completely.
She exhaled, surprised she had been holding her breath in the first place.
Anger rose. She went to yank her gloves off again so she could—
Three more taps at the door.
“My apologies, Mistress,” Rass said, “but you asked—”
“Yes!” Ennalen snapped.
She clenched her fists as tightly as she could and let her frustration tremble its way out through her arms. When she finally stopped quaking she took another long, deep breath to center herself, then cast a simple but imperceptible glamour to freshen her appearance.
First, she would spend no small amount of time impressing upon Rass her severe dissatisfaction with his lack of progress in finding the two boys. Then she would send an acolyte to inform the backwoods mage Biddleby that their meeting would be postponed several days at least; it was the last of her official duties before taking leave to oversee Thaucian’s inane pet venture, so she would likely pass him along to whomever the doltish Tamias chose to handle her caseload. Once those banalities were tended, she would return to her workshop to pursue the presence now enticing her from the farthest boundaries of her awareness.
Ennalen pulled open the heavy workshop door. As she did, a subtle corollary occurred to her, one she wondered whether wise old Rosrice had considered: Avalanches may not go in the direction one chooses, but once side-stepped, they generally left a conspicuous path to follow.
If she presumed correctly about the direction in which she was headed, she hoped beyond hope the journey would be exceedingly short.
***
Suffering. Bedlam. Everything, red.
Drowning in gore, choking in the deep madness of a terrified sea of flesh, she watched the crowd rip one another into shreds of meat in their frantic search for a way out—but she knew there would be no escape. Not for any of them. She fought to turn around against the tide of bodies, to face the danger bearing down on them—and then she saw him, looming over the wailing masses, blotting out the fiery sky. Black sludge burbled from his nose and mouth as his lips moved in a vile mockery of speech. His arms stretched to a horrific length as he reached over the crowd and scooped her up like a rodent in an owl’s talon. Her, and in his distant opposite hand, one other too far away to see.
She rushed with sickening speed toward his widening maw. And Ennalen—
—screamed.
She shoved up from the floor like a panicked animal, heart racing, still searching for a way to escape... until reason seeped back sufficiently for Ennalen to remember she was locked safely in her workshop.
She tottered once as she stood, then picked up from the floor the glove she had removed and slipped it back onto her hand. She gave a shudder, then pushed her sweat-damp hair from her face.
The vision remained unchanged despite her numerous attempts to delve more deeply, which confirmed there remained nothing further to glean. Because she’d been better able to prepare herself, this most recent effort had not been as terrifying as previous attempts—but it most assuredly had been bad enough.
At the same time, thou
gh, it also had been more than worth it. The avalanche had indeed left a wide swath to follow, and she knew exactly where it would lead:
Back to where she had started.
23
The city of Chael had long existed since well before the need to give it a name. It had been the pride of the Galiiantha for ages, built not long after the Great Tree dropped the seeds from which the First Tribe had sprung. As the Galiiantha flourished they built many more cities throughout the Forest, but Chael remained their center of commerce, politics, study, and worship.
After countless generations of isolated contentedness within the sheltering trees, a single day brought the Galiiantha’s idyllic existence to a terrible end. Lleryth had not yet been born that day, when a man from the outside—the first any Galiiantha had actually seen—appeared in Chael and demanded in their own language an audience with their most learned elders. The city’s ablest hunters met the intruder instead.
Incensed by their show of resistance, the intruder unleashed a brutal attack of savage magic, slaying each of the hunters. He then flew into a fit of destruction, murdering any he deemed useless as he went about searching for those he claimed to need.
Once he gathered the learned elders, the man insisted they teach him a secret magic he believed they possessed. The most highly regarded of the scholars stepped forward and defiantly proclaimed none there would help him, that he should go back from whence he came and may his gods damn him for his wretched deeds.
In response, the stranger reached out and—without touching him—crushed the old man to death in a horrid, bloody display. One after another, the same demand was put to those who remained. Each refused, and each met with a similar, torturous demise.
When the mangled body of the final scholar had been cast aside, the intruder let loose upon the battered city the full measure of his rage, leveling Chael with his foul magic. No person, no animal, nothing within the reach of his power remained unscarred. And as Sediahm—or hated one, what the Galiiantha now called him—left Aithiq, he bellowed to those scattered few left hiding in the Forest that one day he would return, and when that day came their sorrow would know no end.
A Mage Of None Magic (Book 1) Page 17
