Bejia moaned. Her stomach grumbled audibly as she doubled forward.
Lyta’s lips curled slightly into a smile before she put on a mask of concern. Enjoying your pastry, sister?
Bejia let out a bellow of agony as the poison worked its way through her gut. The toxin caused excruciating agony if ingested. Bejia’s brow scrunched as she gritted her teeth.
“Fetch a healer,” Lyta said. “She may not have long to live.”
Safina waved her arms frantically at the servants. “Don’t stand there. RUN!”
The hall cleared out as two of the sisters helped Bejia to the floor where she could lie on her back. Her body shuddered in agony as the women rushed to make her comfortable, placing pillows under her head and bringing carafes of water to cool her brow.
Bejia screamed and placed her hand against her stomach. Golden Light spread from her fingertips, washing over her stomach. Bejia’s face relaxed, and she let out a heavy sigh. The daughters backed away fearfully.
“What have you done?” Safina demanded.
Bejia sat up and pointed at Lyta. “It was her! She poisoned my pastry!”
“Liar.” Lyta leaned across the table and grabbed the uneaten remains in her hand. She shoved the whole thing in her mouth and chewed angrily.
The women’s gaze flickered between Lyta as she devoured the pastry and their sister who had revealed that she had the power to heal.
Safina and the other wives whispered.
Lyta swallowed the last of the pastry and raised her arms. “It was not poisoned, sister. Ohan chose to punish you for practicing in secret what is forbidden to daughters.”
Bejia cast her eyes about the room, looking for a sympathetic face. She found none. Ohan’s gift of Light was reserved for men and virgin priestesses. Bejia’s revelation condemned her to cloistered life. And Lyta was fine.
“I am here. Where is she?” First Son Jad burst into the dining room, servants in tow. The sisters hastened to cover themselves.
Safina placed a hand on Jad’s shoulder. “We need to speak with your father. It’s about Bejia.”
Bejia stood and pointed at Lyta. “I don’t know how she did it, but she did this! It was her!”
“Then why is she not sickened?” Laria challenged.
“I don’t know!” Bejia cried desperately.
Safina may have revealed a fatal flaw in Lyta’s plan, but at least the day wasn’t a total waste. She should have gotten rid of Bejia ages ago. Lyta knew from Shannon’s visions that Bejia practiced healing in private. The poison was never deadly, but it was uniquely painful—and poorly guarded in the Confessors’ rooms.
Lyta licked her lips. The pastry was delicious.
SEVEN
Diviner
MADDOX
Remembering the frustrating tone of a lazily blasphemous dream, I prostrated myself before the hypnotic tome that stood before me. At long last, the unknowable history of the vile servant was revealed!
It was an egg, but now I had no choice but to accept the fact that its un-sanity was indeed ancient as well as feverishly incarnated!
Some opulent madness sucked the life from the library with a soggy mucous howl. The great beetling monstrosity crept into the corner of my trembling vision, three heads and too many faces. I was to be the abomination’s tool, body and soul, and my skin shivered for its corruption.
If a vile servant thoroughly viewed the macabre offspring of my brain—
—then the creatures writhing within laugh like a man insane.
—LELAND BUCKMINSTER (WRITING UNDER THE NOM DE PLUME OF C.L. WARREN), HIS ARMS & HER HONOR
[Editor’s note: The book starts out as a typical romance and degenerates into a stream of fragmented purple prose toward the final third when the handsome protagonist becomes obsessed with a hooded horror and abandons his love.]
THE DIVINER’S PARLOR was a cross between a bookstore and a temple. The octagonal building was covered in bookshelves from floor to ceiling. Books were crammed into every free inch of space, sometimes sideways, other times with a second row of books buried behind the first. The center of the parlor held an ornate stone altar covered in colorful figurines representing hundreds of gods and deities, like an insane chessboard.
“Hello?” Maddox strolled in and looked around. The bell on the door jingled, but no one attended him. The place reeked of recently burned incense. His keen sense of smell detected frangipani, sandalwood, and white rose. This town and its fucking incense.
A harried-looking man in long multicolored robes and glasses emerged from the back room, carrying a bundle of scroll cases under one arm. He had a long black beard and a balding crown, with the rest of his long hair wrapped into a braid. “Sorry. I’m closed for the day. But if you’re here to learn about Kondole, I’ve had some literature printed. It’s five ducats and includes twenty prayers and offerings.”
“I’m Maddox.”
“I’m Quillian. It was very nice to meet you, but I have to close up.”
“As in Archwizard Maddox, Champion of Rivern.”
Quillian’s eyes widened. “The Stormlord’s assistant. Ah, yes. Has Heath agreed to my request to endorse my literature? Would he mind if I put his endorsement on the shingle outside?”
Maddox sighed. “Assistant would be a step up. I’m his roommate.”
Quillian threw the scroll cases onto a chair. “Thank the Host. You have no idea how exhausting it’s been. Ever since the Father Whale appeared over Rivern, people have been going nuts trying to invoke his aspect. A god can only listen to so many prayers I tell them—and there’s plenty that no one prays to who are probably bored out of their minds. Demios, for instance, was a—”
“Patrean god of egalitarianism,” Maddox finished. “Fat lot of good he does for his culture’s only living descendants. I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear my prayer, but I don’t need a divine matchmaker to hook me up with a dead god. I need your expertise on something I saw in an alley a few nights ago.”
Quillian narrowed his eyes. “I don’t offer free consultations—especially during my mid-afternoon meal time.”
“Whatever.” Maddox rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You can have Heath’s endorsement for your shop.” Heath wouldn’t give a shit if he found out, and even if he did—it served him right for putting Sword on a strict allowance.
Quillian smiled and led Maddox over to a table with a crystal sphere set on an ornate brass stand. “Do you know what star you were born under? You seem like a Scholar, but you have some of the temperament of the Kraken. I sense that is not correct, however. You certainly aren’t a Virgin—”
Maddox sighed. “The Cow. What’s your sign?”
“My brother and I were aptly born under the sign of the Twins. What year were you born?”
“On the third day of the rising star in 543. I’ve done my chart before.”
“That’s a bad year to be a Cow.” The Diviner frowned slightly. “With that kind of star chart, you should be dead already.”
Maybe he’s not full of shit.
Maddox recounted the creature he had seen in the alley, omitting the details of his resurrection and the nature of the Sword. He even produced a detailed sketch he’d made of the thing.
Quillian raised his hands over the crystal ball, and it flickered to life, probably a glamour. He waved his fingers portentously. He was missing the end of his left pinkie finger, which Maddox tried not to stare at.
“The fuck happened to your finger?” Maddox blurted out.
Quillian narrowed his eyes. “A Diviner must sometimes make sacrifices. Now hush. I must concentrate.”
After a time, Quillian began his communion with the Host. He nodded. “As I suspected. You were inebriated when you saw this thing?”
“Did the Host tell you that?”
Quillian laughed. “No, but what you’ve described is a character from a book called His Arms & Her Honor, a rather tawdry and disturbing novel.”
“Do you have a copy?” If this
was fiction, then how the fuck did my body end up torn to pieces in an alley?
“Most assuredly not.” Quillian rolled his eyes. “It was awarded the dubious honor of the Worst Book of Creation by the Publisher’s Guild. It’s become something of a test of will in literary salons to read it aloud without laughing. Surely you overheard someone discussing it at some point.”
Maddox asked, “Do you know where this guy lives by any chance?”
“Leland Buckminster lives above his printing shop on Leader Street. Look under the shingle for Buckminster & Daughters.”
“Thanks.”
Quillian called out, “Just out of curiosity, what do you intend to do with this creature if you do find it?”
Maddox put his hand on the hilt of the Sword. “I’ve never decapitated anything with three heads.”
Leader Street was easy to find and was bustling with the clacking and stamping of printing machines. The street was littered with paper: discarded handbills, dropped pamphlets, and drifting broadsheets. Children ran down the street, carrying bundles of warm paper in their ink-stained hands. Through shop windows, Maddox could see men stooped over wooden trays, carefully assembling letters. Dessim didn’t seem to use many automatons.
Buckminster & Daughters took less than a minute to pick out, with a sign prominently hung above a narrow three-story building, crammed between two large warehouses. The door to the place was shut, but a friendly OPEN FOR BUSINESS sign hung in the doorway. He tried the door handle, and it opened. This is too fucking simple. They’re probably all dead or something.
He pushed open the door and walked into a room dominated by reams of paper and a giant machine with a two-person crank on one side. The place was crowded with crates of books and cluttered desks where the type was set and proofed.
“Hello?” Maddox called out to the empty room and the quiet printing press. Nothing to worry about. The people in Dessim take their mid-afternoon rest very seriously.
He sniffed the air. The smell of ink, a hint of incense, and the acrid undercurrent of decay, like when you forgot to take out the garbage. Plenty of people forget to take out the garbage.
Maddox pushed deeper back through the print room. The shop windows were shuttered, leaving the room dark. The sounds from Leader Street seemed muted, but that was probably overactive imagination. Could anyone hear the screams of a dying man over the racket of the presses next door?
Before joining his mind with the Sword, Maddox had had visions of the future. It was a common ability for mages in the Second Era—the ability to sense things a minute or two before they happened. Maddox felt a deep sense of unease as he wandered into a cluttered back office. Desks shoved against the wall overflowed with papers, ledgers, and books. A cup of wine lay on its side, spilling its crimson contents over a pile of moderately important seeming papers. The stains were dry.
Maddox paused and removed a flask from his pocket. It was nearly empty, so he finished off the last of it before continuing farther. As he ascended a creaking staircase, he braced himself for whatever horrific scene awaited him. Upstairs was a small kitchen and long dining table in an open area. The table was set like a banquet, with trays of meat and finely sliced food artfully arranged on fine porcelain plates.
“Damn it!” Maddox kicked the door frame. He paced around the table to confirm his suspicions.
Someone or something had meticulously cut up the bodies of several adult males, pickled the meat and organs, and then put them on display like a banquet. At a passing glance, it was an appetizing buffet. Sausages made from intestine, slices of face wrapped around pieces of bone dressed as scallops. Green-colored hair was used as a garnish in place of parsley. Six halves of eyeball had been served like deviled eggs on a platter. Bits of toe and knuckle, complete with graying hair, floated in blood red soup bowls.
Maddox rubbed his temples. “Fuck.”
A number of morbid and off color jokes bubbled into his mind, but he had no one to tell them to. Pardon me waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.
No blood was on the floor or walls, meaning the bodies had been killed somewhere else, exsanguinated, and processed. The cuts on the flesh were even and surgical, meaning someone had a steady hand and training with a knife. The arrangement of food on the individual plates looked more northern in presentation—families in the Mirrored City usually ate out of communal dishes. Maddox closed his eyes and sniffed one of the plates. He recognized the smell of alchemical preservatives, which did a serviceable job keeping the rot from completely stinking up the place.
He smelled a glass filled with wine, surprised to find it was actually wine. It smelled like stale stewed fruit. Judging by the smell, this was poured within the last day or so.
Maddox grabbed the glass and walked upstairs.
He knew he had a drinking problem, but… he was immortal and the wine was on its last legs. He chugged it and set the glass on the staircase as he made his way to the bedrooms. He came to a narrow hall, three doors on either side. He waved his hand, and they flew open simultaneously.
He walked slowly, peering into each small room with its single bed and wash basin. Yes, each bed held a dead woman or child, except the last room, which looked like it had been jointly decorated by a madman and a tornado. The room was tossed and the bed shattered in a heap in the center. It looked like someone had tried and failed to burn it. The walls were plastered with pages ripped out of a book over which bloody gibberish and arcane symbols had been painted.
He examined the door frame. It was small and narrow, like the hallway. The creature he had fought was as wide as three men and would be hard pressed to fit through it. The symbols on the wall were squiggly nonsense, as if evil snakes had rolled in ink and drawn horrifying shapes with their bodies.
Maddox looked about the room for some kind of clue, something out of place. The room was such a disaster it would take hours to dredge through. Odd that there aren’t statues of any gods in this house.
“I need more wine or… something,” Maddox grumbled to himself as he made his way downstairs. He checked the rest of the cups at the grisly feast and they were full, but he felt he’d have better luck checking the kitchen cabinets. He found a stoppered bottle of brandy in the back corner of one cabinet behind the spices. Judging by the dust on the shoulder of the bottle, it didn’t get opened very often and he heard a satisfying slosh when he shook it.
He pulled down a glass and set it on the counter.
Maddox froze as he looked down. He’d set the glass on a handbill. SHOCKING: MURDER IN THE MAGISTERIUM! On the sheet was an intricate woodcut illustration of an inverted headless body with a pair of angelic wings on its back. The wings were upside down on the suspended body, which made them right side up in the picture.
Maddox poured a shot of brandy and studied the illustration. The artist had done a faithful enough rendition for Maddox to recognize the body was displayed with careful intent. The copy was dated a couple of weeks ago and insisted on a cover up of brutal ritual murders throughout the city of Dessim. The anonymous author went on to speculate wildly on the perpetrator.
“Shit.”
Maddox paused, flicking back through centuries of stored memory. The Sword contained a ton of knowledge, but its ability to use or access it was limited by the intelligence of its wielder. Maddox was good at retrieving information, but the experience of memories was dizzying.
“The Inverted Seraph. The Feast of Exquisite Slaughter…” Maddox said with a slow and dawning realization. “Someone is recreating the signs of the Dark Ecliptic. Oh, game on, motherfucker, game on.” He pounded his brandy and went back upstairs.
EIGHT
The Song of the Sea
JESSA
The First People came from the shores of Mazitar. In that time Kondole and Kultea were lovers, and they had the first child whom they named Noah. His eyes were silver like the moon.
And for a time things were good.
The first people communed with the Dream Spirits an
d learned the art of magic. They built a thriving village and had many more children. Kondole and Kultea created clouds and fish. They spread rains to the five winds to give nourishment to the plants and trees. The first people’s children spread to all corners of Creation, bringing life and creating birds and horses and every manner of animal.
And for a time things were good.
But Kultea grew jealous and did not want to share the world with the descendants of the First People. She and Kondole fought, and a mighty storm formed over the caldera of Thelassus that rages to this day. It was Noah who put an end to his parents fighting.
And for a time things were good.
He chose Kondole, and the Wavelords inherited his gift for rain, thunder, and lightning. They lived in harmony on the sacred shores on Mazitar. Kultea, defeated, slithered to the bottom of the sea away from all mankind to seethe and plot her vengeance.
But for a time things were good.
—LEGEND OF THE KONDOLE, ORAL HISTORY
EMPRESS JESSA LET the warm pink sand squeeze between her bare toes while the water washed over her feet. On the horizon, the sun was just beginning to sink beneath a beautiful wall of distant clouds, painted orange and purple in the fading light. Seagulls cried above as people played and splashed in the ocean. The salty smell of the sea carried on the warm air current.
“Beautiful, is it not?” Sireen asked as she strolled beside Jessa. “I can’t imagine growing up so far from the ocean.” Sireen had long silver hair and a body that retained an enticing, voluptuous figure even as she entered midlife. She wore a jeweled sarong that was vivid yellow and blue, like the fish that swam amid the coral.
“Land is so empty,” concurred Pisclatet, Sireen’s footman and fashion designer. He had the head of a fish, with bulging unblinking yellow eyes, greenish silver scales, and a maw laden with needle-like teeth. How he managed to speak so eloquently Jessa could only guess. He wore a lime green petticoat embroidered with daisies and festooned with bows of the finest silk.
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