Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides
Page 46
Ramita kicked awkwardly through the water, feeling the groper beside her, sensing its confusion at her ineptitude. She couldn’t ignore his concerned bleatings: to him, her movements were distressed, and they might draw danger. There were other fish he feared, and the terror was ever-present: monsters that were little more than massive tubes of teeth and appetite. She cast its fears aside along with her own and decided to have faith.
My hands are fins. My legs are a tail. I have no fixed shape, only a form that I am moving from and one I move towards … I move like … this …
Shape is an illusion. She felt the change as it shivered and shimmered through her. The core of her remained the same: a womb, a heart, lungs, a spine, a brain, a skull … but the peripheries became fluid as she filled them with the gnosis and then persuaded them that they were something else. She thrashed her tail, jetted through the water and smacked into the far wall. She shrieked in pain, sending her fishy companion into a paroxysm of anguish.
Ramita swam with the groper a while longer, before Justina persuaded her to retake her own form. For a moment she was scared she wouldn’t be able to do it, but it flowed back to her as naturally as breathing. Justina had taken days to reassure her that it would not harm her unborn children, and she prayed the jadugara was right.
She climbed from the water and wrapped herself in a towel. She swallowed twice as she tried to recall how speech worked. ‘How is it that I have done this so quickly?’ she asked eventually. ‘You told me it could take months.’
Justina was awed. ‘Most animagi can learn to visualise the shape of a creature they have chosen long before they are capable of infusing enough gnosis into their flesh to make it mutable. But it’s as if you are made of the gnosis.’ She bit her lip. ‘I think Father may have been right in his predictions. You are very strong.’
Ramita exhaled, pleased but puzzled. ‘Strength is not skill. You’ve told me so yourself.’
‘I know. But part of that skill is learning to trust your own powers. Most people are afraid of what they are doing to themselves, and hold back – even Rondian magi who believe that their powers come from Kore. But you seem to have no fear.’
‘I trust my husband,’ Ramita said simply. For it was true: ever since seeing and hearing his message, she’d felt as if his hand were upon her. She felt safe, somehow, as if he were watching over her from the heavens. Which she prayed he was.
‘Then you’re a more trusting soul than I am,’ Justina said tartly.
*
Another day, another lesson. They were sitting cross-legged inside a circle of melted silver painstakingly painted onto the surface of the landing area at the top of the pillar of stone.
‘This is a risk,’ Justina reminded her. ‘You do understand that?’
Ramita nodded, a little impatiently. Justina had said this twice already and it was beginning to get on her nerves. ‘I understand: I am opening myself up to the outside world. I need to keep that controlled, or I will lead others to our hiding place.’
‘If someone detects you, they may be able to follow you back. The circle we’ve drawn will make that harder, but not impossible. If anyone senses you, you have to stop the spell instantly.’
They’d been practising this for weeks. Clairvoyance was one of Justina’s affinities, but not something Ramita could do at all – but she had to be able to defend against it. She needed to learn how to be open to the world, to receive messages from afar without giving anything away, and to do this, Justina would have to link minds with her and take her with her as she scryed into Kesh.
Ramita held up hers. Perhaps.
They touched, and Justina’s chilly steel-edged mind invaded hers. She was used to the feel of her daughter-in-law’s mental identity by now, uncomfortable though it was. She was brittle and closed-in, not the open and soothing presence her husband had exuded. But she wrapped herself about that sharp coolness and gave over control.
They flew – not bodily, and not even their souls, which remained locked inside their bodies, but their perceptions altered utterly as they soared instantly over the seas, past the cliffs and the deserts. Abruptly they were over a city: Hebusalim, which was lying in ruins, smoking and semi-desolate.
Ramita sought the white tower of Casa Meiros and felt an acid burn behind her eyes as she saw it broken and burned out, her husband’s sanctuary, entirely smashed. She wished herself closer, but Justina’s jagged presence seized her and held her fast.
They hovered above the city a while. Then Justina turned her mental eye eastwards and they seemed to flow above the landscape, mostly in a grey mist, before reappearing in odd places, like a wrecked room in a clay-brick house, or beside a badly churned watering hole.
Ramita was awed: they were seeing the whole world, or so it seemed.
Ramita tried to take this in. A longing to see her parents filled her.
Justina shook her head. She paused, considered.
Justina sent her mind questing, and Ramita gasped as her inner eye was suddenly sent darting every direction at once. She felt as if she was being painlessly ripped apart as images flew about her, light and colour and sound and tastes filling her senses. Then with a swirling like water going down a drain-hole, she was sucked towards one image in particular. She clutched onto Justina’s mind like a limpet.
A face appeared, one that made her cry out in shock, with an immediate outpouring of emotions too strong and complex for her to deal with.
Huriya Makani. Justina had chosen to scry Huriya.
She gaped at her adopted sister. Huriya was sitting cross-legged, unknowingly in the same posture as Ramita, with something large and feathered in her lap. Ramita’s nose wrinkled in revulsion as she realised what it was: a dead crow. Huriya was stroking it as if it were a pet.
The last time she’d seen Huriya had been the night Kazim murdered her husband. Huriya has welcomed the Hadishah into the house
with the blood of Jos Klein, Antonin Meiros’ bodyguard, all over her. She’d known what was coming. Something vile had been lurking behind her eyes.
She was just about the last person that Ramita wanted to see.
Then Huriya looked up.
She saw them.
‘Ramita?’
*
Justina clutched Ramita’s hands unconsciously, squeezing them painfully. She seemed utterly unnerved. ‘That’s not possible. Huriya Makani isn’t a mage. She’s not pregnant, or at least not far gone enough to manifest … It’s impossible.’ Her white face looked more corpselike than ever.
‘You should have told me,’ Ramita told her. ‘I didn’t want to see her. Not ever.’
‘How was I to know? I just wanted to scry someone we both knew.’ Justina complained. ‘You and the little slut were thick as thieves.’
Ramita shook with fury and guilt. ‘She aided those who killed your father – I’ve told you that before! Why would you even think I might want to see her?’ She tried to conceal her own shock. What had happened to Huriya? How could she too have the gnosis?
Justina closed her eyes, rubbed her temples. ‘Well, I think we got away without being followed. The spirits don’t like large bodies of water. This place is almost un-scryable. It makes it hard to scry from also, but even harder to view. That plus our protective circle should have thrown her off.’ She scowled ruefully.
Ramita felt the chill close about her beating heart. Huriya-didi, what has happened to you?
*
‘What is it?’ Sabele rasped.
Huriya sat up from her prostration and told her mentor, ‘Mistress, I was outside when I felt myself being scryed. They were surprised to see me, I think, because they revealed themselves.’
Sabele’s eyes narrowed to slits in her wizened face. ‘Who was it, child?’
Huriya could feel her chest thumping. ‘It was Justina Meiros, with Ramita.’
Sabele’s eyes lit up. ‘You are certain?’
Huriya nodded eagerly. ‘I saw their image in the aether – but they fled when they realised I’d seen them.’
Crack!
She reeled as Sabele’s hand smacked her viciously across the face.
‘You fool! You let them realise they were seen? Empty-headed harlot!’ Sabele shrieked in fury. ‘What have I been teaching you?’
Huriya hung her head, her cheek throbbing painfully, the skin burning. ‘I am sorry. It was the shock.’
Sabele hissed in exasperation. ‘Damn you girl, you could have hooked into them then followed them home.’
Huriya hung her head. ‘I am sorry, mistress,’ she murmured in a small voice. ‘It won’t happen again.’
‘It better not.’ Sabele chewed at her lip, her face contorted into a caricature of disgruntlement. ‘Very well. If she tries to scry you again, you must be ready. Bring me my lamp. I must confer with Jahanasthami. This is an opportunity.’
*
Justina would not let the scare with Huriya prevent them from pressing on with Ramita’s training. Under her daughter’s guidance, Ramita lured in birds flitting above, mostly broad-winged gulls, and captured them. She didn’t like them – they were as vicious as rats – and flying held more fear than yearning for her. But she learnt their shape, though she refrained from taking it as it was dangerously different and she feared for her unborn children if she crashed. She released the groper and caught other fish, taking their shapes increasingly easily, ignoring her growing desire to dive from the pinnacle of the Isle of Glass and swim away.
She grew a tree from a seed, and a crop of wheat, replenishing their stores in a week of concentrated communion with the seedlings, enveloped in the tangle of roots and their slow pulse. Justina taught her a little healing. Meiros’ daughter had not much affinity herself, even though she had founded a healing order – she’d just seen a need during a rare period of her life when she was willing to contribute to society. Where she was most animated in her instruction was Thaumaturgy, and especially Earth and Fire, where their talents overlapped. Though she was not an aggressive person, Ramita was taught how to use these elements, and protect herself from them. Soon she could douse a fireball in midflight if she was aware of it, and even if not, her wards could largely protect her. She collected bumps and burns along the way, but she also continually surprised Justina with her sheer strength, which pleased her enormously.
The most difficult lessons involved the gnosis studies she had little affinity for: like learning to hide from scrying by wards alone, or banishing a spirit or ghost. Justina would conjure them, making a dead bird rise and fly at her or a daemon appear, a little spirit of limited potency but enough telekinetic power to pull hair and poke eyes. Ramita had to banish them, and that required fastening onto their nasty little minds and sending them away. It was difficult and unpleasant, but it was necessary, as Justina constantly reminded her.
‘In a duel of magi, it is the gaps in your defences that will kill you,’ Justina repeated over and again. ‘Think of it as a suit of armour we’re building, piece by piece.’
When Justina was not training her, she was showing her things, like maps of Antiopia and how the lands fitted together. They took risks, scrying towns in Kesh to plot the progress of the Crusade. One wing of the Rondian armies was in the central area, driving a Keshi army back towards Halli’kut. Another was careening into the central deserts. There were refugees everywhere and their plight tore at her heart.
As she learned to open herself, she heard the whispers begin. One day while sitting in a yogic stance, her eyes closed and inner eye wide open, she heard half-perceived almost-sounds that became whispers, words spoken in Huriya Makani’s voice.
There was much more: memories of happy times together in Baranasi, having fun together. The sights and smells of the great Imuna River at dawn, bathing and washing away their sins before the new day began. The market, alive with colour and sound, people everywhere, the pulse of life beating strong and hard.
But Ramita didn’t forgive her. So she only listened, and did not reply.
23
The Branded Mage
Silacia
Situated in the northeast of Rimoni, the mountainous kingdom of Silacia, though racially akin to the Rimoni, was a thorn in the Rimoni Empire’s foot throughout its existence. Ruled by criminal dynasties for as long as memory recalls, Silacia is still a byword for treachery. The familioso of Silacia rule through terror as effectively as any mage-lord.
MARCUS BENSIUS, BRES, 893
Silacia never sleeps. Nor should you.
PROVERB
Sagostabad, Kesh, Antiopia
Shawwal (Octen) 928
4th month of the Moontide
Ramon Sensini peered about, his eyes jaded, as a scouting detachment of the Tenth Maniple of Pallacios XIII trudged into yet another devastated village, scattering the ever-present crows. The horizon in every direction was flat, the earth brown and bare of all but for a clutch of spindly khetri trees. Most of the houses had been torched, for no apparent reason. The well was dry. In the distance, the dust of the rest of the legion could be faintly discerned. The air was still and silent and the sun was beating down pitilessly. It was the fourth week of the march, Bassaz was well behind them, and Medishar somewhere north of a crossroads they’d passed the day before. So far they’d not seen a single enemy soldier, only a thin trickle of hopeless and helpless refugees, stumbling from their path.
Pallacios XIII marched in the rearguard of Echor’s army, slogging through ot
her men’s dust and leavings. The trail of destruction was worsening: burned-out buildings and charred fields, butchered beasts, and everywhere they went, corpses piled beside the road. Refugees stared at them with hollowed-out bellies and empty eyes as they passed.
Of the twenty-one legions assigned to Duke Echor’s wing, Pallacios XIII was the only Rondian one. Eight legions were from his home duchy of Argundy, dour spade-bearded men fiercely loyal to their duke. The next biggest contingent were from Estellayne, swarthy men with olive skin and fiery tempers akin to the Rimoni. There was little love between the Argundians and the Estella, who shared a border. The rest were two each from Noros and Bricia and one from Andressea. The legions of the vassal states were all well-drilled, but Pallacios XIII was not the only punishment legion from the central Empire; Andressea VI was too. Echor’s army had no Kirkegarde; few of the intelligent hulkas to ease the logistics, and no khurne cavalry. There were no winged constructs to provide aerial support either – all of those had ended up with Kaltus Korion’s army. Apparently the duke was furious, but when he had tried to demand some, he had been simply ignored by Korion.
The Crusade had shed any remaining glamour on the march eastwards. The Thirteenth were about two days behind the main body of the army, and the trail of destruction left no room for any false illusions about the romance of war. The magi began to be truly inculcated into the grim business of the military. Ramon was compelled to lop off the hand of a ranker for theft from another soldier, though far worse crimes against the natives went unpunished. He became expert at finding hidden food stores, though keeping his maniple’s wagons full meant leaving Keshi villages to starve. He loathed the headlong march more deeply with every day, but still they went on.
Ramon spent most of his days dealing with constant messages, with his tribune, Storn, routing and rerouting consignments both legitimate and illegal across the continent. Pallacios XIII had quietly taken over much of the opium supply and as they hoarded the drug among the supply wagons, they watched the prices rise. New promissory notes were issued daily, and Ramon soon began to make his monthly payments to investors with those same notes, hoarding the gold so that the legionaries were still paid in hard coinage. He received so many requests from would-be investors, greedy tribunes begging for more, that he had to stagger entry. It was beginning to look like every logistical tribune in the army was corrupt – but Ramon was also aware that many innocents were being sucked into his scheme. He paid in gold to those he thought decent men, and gave his notes to the rest. And even the spices he had bought up and sent west were escalating in price, keeping his operation nominally profitable.