“One of the dumbest parts is no one called me stupid for wanting to try—some even called me brave, that I should put so much faith in my ability and Karli.” Jeom puffed. “My friend said to me, and he spoke honestly as far as I’m concerned, ‘Goddess, Jeom, even now I can’t see how any of us could possibly live up to you.’ Couldn’t back out then.
“So after the first day, when I’d lost sight of the shores behind me, I made sure to keep Kuikyopi to my back and just swam. I’d stop to float and eat, to let the sun beat against my face. It felt good to get away, just me, the world, and the sea. The water stretched away forever, endless blue, and I lost myself for the strokes. When my shoulders burned, I’d kick harder; when my chest tightened, I’d take deeper breaths; and when I ran fresh of resolve, I’d close my eyes and pray. It took months.” He smiled. “At least that’s what I told people.
“I’ve never revealed this to anyone. Costs me nothing now, of course, plus it helps me prove my point. After four and a half weeks, I ran out of food and got bored. A few days of eating surface-fish starts to bother the stomach, mine at least. Had one of those fancy straws for water, but it got grimy after a while. And creature comforts were—sparse—out there, I’m sure it’s not hard to imagine. So I made a little raft out of Light, and propelled myself toward those distant shores I’d promised. Might as well have been blowing Light out my ass at that point, but the Goddess didn’t strike me down, so onward I went.
“Not far from the Karhaadin shore, when little more than a green line shone on the horizon, it was like I suddenly understood everything, and the world exploded in a mass of color and comprehension. As I neared the sands, I crossed a barrier of sorts, and a skyline materialized from nothing. Great pieces of stone rose from the dirt and stretched toward the heavens, stacked atop one another until they pierced the great sky.
“When I landed, women aplenty flocked to me with grapes, slices of pineapple, agave, and mango, seared meat pulled red from its bone. And the nectar—oh, the nectar—sweeter than licking honey off a woman’s breasts. Gifts, entertainment, women, they provided, and I didn’t even have to ask for it. Might as well have been their king. I asked myself why no one had ever told me about this place, and I surmised that those who knew wanted to keep it a secret.” Jeom whispered what he said next: “Because it was a damn good secret.
“They taught me a strange game they played with their feet where they tried to get a ball into another team’s net—kind of like Liscerring, except completely different. I fell in love with a woman there”—he scratched his right ear against his shoulder—“started to, at least. It was all so real. Even now, I can see the trees disappear into the fog up a mountainside, feel the breeze off the southern waters, hear the children play their games. They’re perhaps the best memories I have.”
Trent waited while Jeom silently reminisced.
A perturbed timbre contorted Jeom’s voice when next he spoke. “It was a lie, and this time not one of my own making. I was high—as fuck. There’s a reason they call that place the Badlands and why the ancient Karlians eventually left permanently. If you read the archaic texts—if you even can; I had to have a Leynar translate them for me—Karlians would leave the Badlands for a couple months every year. No one knew why, and no one found out because only those of Karli’s sacred chosen could step foot within its borders. But a plant grows there, something more like a weed than anything, incredibly invasive, likes to climb, and when it can’t, it just grows in little shrubs. Its flowers are beautiful, without a doubt, their petals like blue milk sheened on metal. Went back there a few years later, out of season that time.
“You see, Russell, when I started my journey across the channel, had I held up my end of the deal, I would have missed that plant’s blooming season. My inability to look past me nearly killed the same. When they found my body, I was nothing more than a starved husk of who I’d been, which is what they expected—my friends thought I’d been swimming for the past few months. So I let them fill in the blanks, and my journey across the channel became legend.
“The Goddess taught me an important lesson, one I never forgot.” He sighed. “Then eventually the War came, and that was the only time in my life I never grew bored. It’s where I was meant to be, and as morbid as it sounds, I’m glad I’m not living in its aftermath. And that leads to my question for you.”
Trent said nothing, kept his face plain.
“What the fuck is the matter with you? I made my peace, did what needed done, and when the world tripped, hung on the edge of ruin at the War’s end—total chaos—they looked to you. And what did you do?” Jeom’s form wavered. “You left. To become a pumpkin farmer. What?” He stood and paced in front of Trent. “I thought I’d left the world in capable hands, and then you—I counseled the Goddess to strike you down. So many times.”
“She didn’t.”
“Course not. She said your exile suited you fine.”
“You agree with Her?”
“No, but”—
“Then don’t act like you’re telling me anything I haven’t already heard from my mind’s version of you.” Trent raised his eyebrows. “Despite death, you’ve managed to haunt me.”
Jeom rounded on him. “I hope your whole life has haunted you.”
Trent waited. Jeom threw up a hand, enticing his apprentice to go on.
“Karli was right,” said Trent, “as always, as expected. Nothing took away the pain of losing Lillie—nothing could. I know that now.”
Jeom stopped, and his demeanor shifted. “I saw. The gods’ power is limitless, but even they must obey their own rules. It could invalidate everything if they don’t.”
“The gods will do as They please. But Jeom, Lillie’s alive. After all this time, I’ve seen her, felt her touch against my face. I know I will hold her again in the gods’ light.”
The incense’s smoke poured into Jeom like a siphon while he walked back and forth across the room. “Russell—gods. I’m sorry for what’s happened to you, but you know how important our work is—how important our mission is. Yet in the afterlife, all you’ve done is defied any expectations I place upon you.”
“I’m sorry I disappointed you.” Trent meant it beyond the words he said.
“Disappointed me?” Jeom glowered at him. “Hardly. Even in my graduated wisdom, with all the counsel I now have at my disposal, I couldn’t see what Karli had planned—what any of Them had planned. The Goddess saw what you would do, and your departure fulfilled events as they had to. The world is bigger than any notion I once held—can’t wrap my head around it even now. More than you, me, anybody.” He raised a finger. “But the individual, that’s where magic happens, where the gods’ pageantry becomes art instead of science.
“And that venerable note boils our counsel down to a single question, the same one I asked of myself as I recovered my strength after my little stint. Where do you go from here?”
Trent didn’t move, didn’t insinuate he had an idea. Variables stood too large for him to form an answer. “I don’t really want to do anything.”
“Only because it’s what you’ve done for so long.” Jeom tutted. “But that wouldn’t have been the case twenty years ago. This is War. Try again.”
“The world’s gotten on fine without me. I’ve been exiled so long, it’s gotten used to my absence. I have other matters that need tended.” He paused. “And I’ll be honest: I don’t want part in another War.”
“The Order has never stopped looking for you. Their position to the world is of you being alive, but they’ve fractured over it since you left. Karli’s thought the whole affair rather amusing.” Jeom evaporated and reappeared on the room’s other side. Shadows that hung low from the ceiling obscured his face. “But that’s not good enough.”
“If this ends with you telling me to go, then just be out with it.”
“I’m not going to. You need to figure that out for yourself.”
Trent parsed through his next answers, trying to fin
d a bearing for what might be right, and as he did, most of his thoughts caused him dread. But one also made him angry—one that would bring his abashment to head. “I’m needed in Karhaal.”
Jeom didn’t respond.
“Nobody’s prepared for the demonic might we now face, and if D’niqa is any indication”—Trent cut himself off. “This may be our end anyway.”
“Karli’s detected it. So have I. For them to come back so quickly can only mean one thing: Escalation, and a mighty one at that. But there are anomalies. To say it concerns me would be an understatement.”
Trent misliked the hells out of that. “It doesn’t have to be me, then. To go to Karhaal, I mean.”
“Yes,” Jeom said, weighing his words, “and no.”
“There are other priorities,” Trent said. “Abstractions that others can’t know of. I’m worried the bureaucracy will slow me down. If I could send Grenn”—
“Follow your conscience, whatever that means.”
The difference between what is simple and what is right, for rarely do the two converge. “Goddess, why won’t You give me Your counsel.”
“Because She doesn’t have to. The Council won’t allow Her to interfere. Doing so would invalidate the project.” Jeom lowered his voice and spoke to himself: “But the agents are already in the field.”
Trent stayed quiet for a few minutes. Jeom strode before him, muttering to himself and laughing at intermissions in his self-talk.
Even if he recalled all Karlians—he surmised he’d do that regardless of his intended presence at Karhaal—Trent didn’t know what opposition he’d face within the halls, whether anyone would even believe what he told them. If the circumstance arose, what would he need to go the War alone? The removal of his enchantment, his secret-kept, and to vitiate the demons’ new power, they might finally need what the ancient Karlians had sealed away so long ago in—“The Tomb, I’ll need what’s inside.”
Jeom stopped. “Perhaps. Can you still reach it?”
In his mind’s eye, Trent made it half way, to a cliff that overlooked a tranquil valley, but his journey clouded in obfuscation over the contract with his secret-keeper. He knew he must seek it, and therefore he must seek her. Where she went, though—as good as anyone’s guess. As he settled on his plan, he thought of the words his wife had told him. “Lillie told me to fulfill my Call.”
“Did she? In the nether?”
“Yeah.” Almost no one else—not even Karli Herself—might have convinced to go back to his old life, but the day’s circumstance had thrown him into this hole and quickly left him with nowhere else to go. Perhaps he should head to Karhaal. A recall would honor-bind him anyway, and it would be a good place to start—better than most. “My Call takes me to Karhaal.” Dim regret and resignation scoured across his mind. “First thing.”
“You will do what you must, as you always have,” Jeom said. He leaned against the desk. “At that, my time here is almost over.”
Trent saw the incense through him, its embers burned almost at its quick.
“One question,” said Jeom.
“Shoot.” Trent couldn’t help but smile against Jeom’s pale gaze. He considered all that had happened, particularly about Lillie in the passabridge and the master he’d just faced in the nether. “I have none.”
Jeom stayed quiet a moment, then stepped toward him and knelt. The piece of glass that should have rested solitarily in the desk’s drawer laid instead on Jeom’s palm. “I can’t tell you what’s right and wrong.” His voice wavered, as did the incense. “I’m dead. The livings’ world has no purpose or place for me. But I am counsel when sought, and though I won’t always appear when called, when your time becomes most saturated with need”—
A tiny dint stamped through the room, and Trent opened his eyes. Morning’s twilight had replaced the night. He exhaled against the numbing silence and caught his breath. Despite his dis-ease at what he intended to do, his spirit had lightened. Words from The Word of Karli sprouted from his mind: True freedom can only come when one has no other choice. For it is in the jeopardy of bondage that our greatest desires make themselves manifest.
And Jeom had finally shown up. The old Master hadn’t before—Because I’d have needed it then. Trent knew, and he wondered if that had been the point of his exile: irony upon irony until everything strange looked normal.
The tattoo on the inside of his arm itched, still cold to his touch when he ran his pointer over it. You better be right, old friend. In the serenity of his meditation room, Trent called the Light and traced over the rune, unsure if he still held the authority he once did. But at its apex, the rune lit a luminant gold and warmed against his skin.
“What the fuck?” Grenn said from the door’s other side.
Trent stood and looked at the piece of glass in his hand. Already his mind surged to find the Leynar, but she could be anywhere—dead even. If that became his reality, the secret would die with her, and Trent would truly be lost. He squeezed the monocle in his fist before he pocketed it. “Sieku,” he said as he opened his back door. “Prepare for my departure.”
“Where for, sir?”
“Arnin, first thing. Afterward depends on how well a meeting with the king goes.” Trent walked into his washroom and rifled through its drawers.
“Trent,” Grenn said, his voice laced with uncertainty, “did your rune light up?”
“It did,” said Trent as he headed for a dresser in the corner of his living room. He pulled the drawers open in turn, hauling out pants and socks and linen shirts, all of which he tossed aside. “We’ll both be heading to Karhaal. Sieku, the Grand Master’s recalled us.”
“How wonderful for you, sir.” Sarcasm clung to the urlan’s voice.
“Grand Master?” Grenn said. “He’s—he’s alive, then?” Food wrappers lay crinkled on the coffee table in front of him.
“Apparently. Sieku, I still need results for those queries.”
“I’m on it, sir,” Sieku said, annoyed. “It’s not like I can find this stuff with a search engine.”
“First thing, Sieku.” Trent had tucked a desk away in the corner of his dining room. Old pens and several dozen paper tablets rested on one corner. Its drawer, though full of old receipts and unfiled invoices, didn’t turn up his search, even when he scraped his nails at its back edges.
“What are you looking for?” asked Grenn.
“Shit,” said Sieku.
Trent stopped. “You haven’t sworn in years, Sieku.”
“Forgive my piety, sir.” Sieku cleared his throat. “But there’s a string of hits coming up suddenly for Hollowman.”
“Hollowman,” Grenn said. “Like, Russell Hollowman?”
“Who’s looking?” asked Trent.
“I don’t know,” Sieku said. “Officially, their signal’s coming from across the channels, but”—he hung on the syllable for a second and a half while he typed—“unofficially, it looks like it’s coming out of Tanvarn.”
“Tanvarn!” Grenn said, like it gave them all the answers they needed.
Trent frowned. “Find out who that is.”
“The Russell Hollowman, though?” Grenn’s face folded in thought. “I guess that makes sense. Who else could institute a recall?”
“Might be a coincidence,” said Trent, then he called to his urlan. “Have they found him?”
Sieku typed for seven seconds. “The intelligence seems intent on doing so. In a way. But right now, it’s just going around in circles.”
“Do what you can to fend them off. At least give us enough time to leave.”
“Is that where we’re heading?” Grenn asked. “To find Hollowman? Do you know where he is?”
“Among other things.” Trent poked around in drawers in a cabinet by his entryway. “We’ll get to him first, regardless.” He headed for a small book shelf next to the kitchen and pawed through papers on a ledge. “Goddess damn it, where’s my locker key?”
“Where you left it, sir,” his urlan s
aid.
“Sure thing, smart-ass. How about a real answer.”
Sieku sighed and a second later came from his room. His body emitted a series of clinks, and from the left side of his chest, he pulled a silver disc from where a human’s collar bone would have been. He held the piece—more of a gear—on his left palm. “Safe keeping, like you told me.”
Trent looked at him from under his brow, then huffed, remembering—had to have been eleven or twelve years before. The world accelerated around him when he took hold of the coin, and a pang of regret loosened his gut. “I’m sorry you won’t be coming with us.”
“Don’t be, sir. Someone has to keep this place running.”
Trent shook his head. “I don’t know what I would have done—Goddess alive. The last two decades without you.”
“The times were trying and unrewarding. As promised.”
Trent stared into the urlan’s eyes, then nodded. “I’ll see ya when I see ya.”
“Ha.” Sieku headed for his room. “Hopefully not too long at that. Without your magic touch, I have to wonder how the harvests will fair.”
“Do what you can.” Trent turned to Grenn. “You ready?”
A lack of surety sculpted Grenn’s face. “O—kay.”
Trent headed for the backdoor.
“And watch out for serrens,” Sieku said as Trent walked past his room.
Grenn followed. “What went on back here?”
“Dunno what ya mean.” Trent depressed the latch, and the door slid into the wall. Outside, the sun had slid into the eastern sky. “Did you sleep while you waited?” He caught the door before it shut fully. “Oh, and Sieku, find my journal entries. I can’t remember where they’re archived.”
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