When she caressed Trent’s face, the illusion that veiled her husband faltered, and when she handed him the stone, reality skipped, like a stream getting interrupted by a bad connection. Russ didn’t hear what she said, but he remembered it, and her lips moved in time with his memory. “Your journey isn’t over yet—our journey’s not finished.”
The dirty woman returned, skulking behind a pocket of gloom she’d pulled around herself. Russ hadn’t watched where she’d gone, but now she served no import to either him or her soul. Lillie walked away, and the dirty woman prowled after her, an evil grin across her face. They came within inches of where Russ stood, the bitch catching up quickly in long, erratic strides. Far enough away, they disappeared, as did Trent Geno, and the stone pulled them back to a hotel room in Tanvarn.
Now he waited. The soul stone’s inner topography morphed as it understood what Russ had shown it. Lillie was lost the whole time. She hadn’t found another, and based on her question to Acin, her time in the nether hadn’t matched its proper passage. It couldn’t have—she still looked years younger. But what would the nether have done to her? Could they still live the life Russ wanted for them? Or had theirs both become existences incongruous with reality? With normality. In the least he found pyrrhic peace that their separation had been uncorrectable by human intervention, that she hadn’t stayed lost by any error he committed.
One-hundred-thirty-three minutes after he began, the process finished with a final schink, and the stone’s color turned from currant and orange to scuffed tan and gold. Russ picked it up. No longer did discarded memories and parts flicker toward him. The light within remained still, as though a magnetic restraint had reactivated to hold it in place. At peace.
I am your master now, Russ thought. When I instruct you, you will kill from whom you came.
The stone didn’t speak to him, but Russ felt no resistance to his words; instead, an unreserved understanding of the order he gave broadcast from the stone to its keeper. He couldn’t have put into parlance how he knew the stone would follow his command when the time came, but he intuited beyond a dragon’s shadow that it would.
These were the pieces, Russ surmised a half-hour later while he stared at himself in his washroom’s mirror; the fruition of his forgotten dream, the rejoinder to his pleas to the Goddess Karli. He shaved the scruff from his still-unfamiliar face. He’d aged from a beating sun. It hadn’t bothered him as Trent, but now it displaced the calm Jeom had once promised would become him on the mornings of battle.
“It’s that way everyone’s first time,” the old Master had said on the morning of Russ’s first true combat. He’d stood with the young man while the latter fumbled with a brace on his right arm—extra protection against the invasive force the Order had pushed toward the pole south of Redater. “But soon enough, you’ll wake up and say to yourself”—
“This shit again?” said Russ. Water dripped off his chin. Despite what Jeom had told him, he’d never felt that way before, not like now. He patted his face dry with a towel.
While he stepped into his armor, his mind paced through what he needed to do. Only two things could he ensure that morning: giving a phrase to Grenn and an instruction to Willa. All else would happen by the will and grace of the Goddess Karli, and at that, he whispered a prayer to himself while his armor actuated fully into place. Liri’s ring fit the middle finger of his right hand, and Alpha’s scarf tucked well into the pocket of his linens. He picked up his hammer and left.
Alerix waited for him outside his door, dozing on a bench the man had dragged from the foyer. A woman waited with him, her back straight, her hands on her bouncing knees.
“Willa,” Russell said.
“Russ.” She stood and swept the front of her skirt. “Uh—Grand Master.”
“No need for that,” said Russ. Alerix snored. His armor had let him sag to one side during the night. “How long’s he been out?”
“About an hour. Said it would be a good idea to wait for you. Just to make sure, you know”—
“That I didn’t stumble my way into the eating hall?” Russ smirked. Or perhaps that I’d even stay. “Thanks for stickin around.” He nudged Alerix’s shoulder. “Wake up, ya small piece.”
Alerix stirred and batted around his face. “I don’t want to. Just take ya damn walk without me, woman.” He settled his head on his fist and snored a couple times before his eyes lazily opened. “Fancy seeing you from down here,” he said and wiped his cheek with his right hand. “Cripes, how did I do it back then?” Slowly, he stood and stretched out his back. “Grand Master, good to see you’re awake. I was just waiting here with, uh—with, uh”—he waved his hand over itself.
Willa finished for him: “Willa.”
“Willa,” Alerix said, and he pointed at her. “Knew it before you said it.”
She flicked her right temple.
Alerix laughed, but when he turned his attention to Russ, his joviality melted for staunch duty. “Wanted to be the first to let you know what happened while you slept.”
“Rested,” said Russ. “Where’s Grenn?”
Though he’d asked the question of Willa, Alerix answered. “Your squire accompanied the main party to our staging area.”
“Squire?” Russ said. “That’s what you’ve all decided? Leadership had the same idea.”
“For now, at least. He’s not a terribly sharp boy, but he’s a hard worker when he wants to be.”
“He’s not stupid,” Willa said, her tone plain.
“Didn’t say he was.”
“Sometimes that depends on your teacher, too,” Russ said. “Give him some credit.”
“He’s been with the Grand Master for the last couple years. You’d think he’d have learned something in that time.”
“He didn’t know who I was ‘til—what?—a week ago.”
“Sure he didn’t,” said Alerix. The skepticism in his voice nicked at Russ’s nerves. He considered the Warden and whether he should correct him.
Willa whistled, and Burth peeked his head around the corner off to their right. “Come on,” she said, waving him toward them. While Burth hopped down the hall, she answered a question Russell hadn’t asked. “I told him to keep watch down there in case anyone came this way. He wanted to help.” She knelt and scratched Burth’s head as he yawned. “That’s a good boy, isn’t it?”
The serren leaned into her touch, and his ears raised from his back. Willa ran his left ear through her fingers, after which he shook his head and yawned again. Alerix scowled at the creature.
Russ, too, knelt and spoke to Burth. “Think you can stay here and be good?”
Burth stared up at him, his eyes slits, then he sighed and nodded. “Good boy, good boy. That what I do.” Russ’s door slid open to allow the serren inside, and he climbed onto the bed, where he tipped onto his back and promptly fell asleep.
Russell gave Willa a quizzical stare. “How’d he do that—just walk right inside?”
“Kendra told people he was yours,” Willa said. Her voice morphed into a perfect rendition of Kendra’s: “Because he sure as hell isn’t mine.”
Outside, a taxi waited to ferry them through the outskirts of the Lower City to the Order’s staging area.
“… I’m just saying,” Alerix went on, having spoken since the other side of Unily, “we talk all the time about demons being a threat to humanity, but the population on Coroth just crossed over nine-eighty-billion—we’ve recovered well since the Greatest of Wars. We’ll be at a trillion by the end of the decade if this one doesn’t cause too much issue, and the largest threat to our survival on this planet is food-product sustainability. Serrens account for ten-point-seven percent of natural destruction to not just crops, but wild and domesticated animals as well. Don’t let their would-be-cute demeanor deceive you, they make deals just the same as humans, but they cut them with all manner of fauna—birds being their main ingress into anything they can’t get through their Underground. Now science has come a long way,
but don’t fool yourself: the only good serren is caged or killed”—
“You sound like me about demons,” Russ said. “But I’ve just treated what the serrens take as a sort of tax. When did you become an expert on the finer points of cropping?”
“Had time, didn’t I? Opportunities came along I didn’t pass on. Own a few dozen peanut farms.” Alerix waved his hand at unasked questions. “Over in Yarnle, south the equator—just over four-million acres of land, nice and humid. Got a great view of the Bay of Bartholomere.”
“And everyone’s gettin on me about being a pumpkin farmer.”
“I own farms. Didn’t say I worked the crops.”
Russ hmph’d. “Warts and all.”
The old Warden smiled, but it looked like it took him far away rather than keeping his mind here and now.
“So what about the demons?”
Alerix’s brow bounced. “The Lycans found them first. I’m not surprised I hadn’t heard of them before. They’re an extrinsic bunch. Wouldn’t surprise me if it came out they were actual werewolves with how well they can track—almost seemed able to sniff them out. You hadn’t been resting twenty minutes before they reported a small lot of them gathering in the woods north of the eastern flats.”
“Is that where we’re heading?” said Russ.
Alerix nodded. “Aye. Removed from town, just like you wanted.”
At the desert’s end, where Tanvarn’s Upper City still towered behind them, Russ caught an odor in the air, even through the cabin’s shield, and at first he couldn’t be sure he smelled it. But as they climbed, the stench of Fel, of smoke and tar and acrid sulfur, bit into the back of his throat and stung his nostrils. At times it came in suffocating clouds. The rune in the crook of his left elbow grew cold.
Alerix mentioned a quick nap, and he crossed his arms and tucked himself as well as he could into his seat.
“We’ve not spoken much about Kendra—at all about Kendra,” Russell said quietly to Willa. “She left me a note, and I’ve gleaned what’s happened with her, but did she tell you anything before she left?”
Willa shook her head. “Other than keeping you safe and making sure you woke up. But we surmised the gist of what she intended, at least in part. Grenn was ay—ang—angry, to put it in a word. I told him what I knew, but it wasn’t enough.”
“Grenn doesn’t like bein outta the picture.”
They crested the highlands, their cart retracing the steps their albunes had made days before. The ground leveled out, and a mile away, tents, some as tall as the black trees of the forest, lit the otherwise dark countryside. High-command’s Light beamed against the wood’s soldiers in spotlight-like glows and reflected toward the heavens as Order members swarmed between the pavilions in bustles of planning and coordination.
The cabin’s shield came down as they approached. The night air remained crisp despite the Fel’s grasp and carried the buzz of many gathered in one place. They’d splintered into groups, each deliberating different topics, their distinctions lost for the whole.
“You can understand it, can’t you?” Willa asked. Her ears flicked against a blither of wind.
“Course I can, but”—
“I mean, he reveres you. I’ve not known him a week, and I can tell he strives to live up to you. Your greatness.” She scoffed. “I mean, ev—everybody at Karhaal does. You’ve been gone twenty years, and still Karlians compare themselves to you.”
“What people think of me isn’t my business.” He and Willa stepped off when the cart stopped.
Alerix stirred. “Cripes, here already?” He yanked himself up for his aging joints and followed them, after which the cart pivoted and headed back toward the Lower City.
“And don’t act like you’re tellin me somethin I don’t know,” Russell went on. “Happens every generation after a War. I wanted to live up to Jeom. That’s something I can’t do. Grenn and many others will try to live up to me and find themselves unable. That’s life. It’s a good thing, trust me, to not live up to your heroes. If you can, they’re just”—
“People.” Willa’s gaze dropped to the ground in pause. “If you’re just a person we can all be like you, gods forbid.”
“Better, probably by far,” Russ said, ignoring her sarcasm if any she spoke. “Just in your own ways.” They headed toward the main prop-up. “Take you, for example. With the way you handled that demon at Karhaal, I’d almost think you’d faced ‘em before.”
Willa shook her head, but she didn’t disagree. “Of sorts.”
Russell didn’t press her for more, and they followed Alerix, who’d already stepped inside the makeshift temple.
A Karlian held the tent flap open for them and bowed when Russ neared. “Grand Master.” Russ recognized him from the streets in Karhaal and the convocation.
“Karl,” Russ said as he passed inside.
“… Priests will form the front line,” said a woman. “Here”—she stopped when she saw Russ, and for a second, so too did all movement inside. The gathered Order members bowed in conspicuity. A few caught on late and did so out-of-time after eyeing their compatriots.
Russell had no idea what to do. He nodded. “Thank you all for being here. Continue.”
“And here,” the woman finished. She wore the armor of a Priest. Her cloak hemmed high against the back of her thighs.
Willa went to join a group of Priests in an alcove off the main room.
“And my Lycans are already figuring out flanking strategies.” Barius’s voice boomed through the tent in his heavy accent. “When we push them back, we’ll need ways to acquisition nether ports and Ley-Light traps to keep them from escaping. We’ve set up a holo-based forward-camp. These images are updating in real time.”
“Ley-Light?” Alerix said, his arms crossed.
“Yes,” said Barius as though Alerix shouldn’t have had to ask. “You saw the recordings at Karhaal the same as I, sir. The combination is the only means we have of stopping them now. All of our tactics rely on joint powers this day.”
Alerix stared up at Barius, evidently displeased. “Luke, at least you’re pretty. Let’s hear it from you, then.”
“As I was saying,” said Luke. Her voice came with a nasally accent that left her nose scrunched. She tucked her auburn hair neatly behind her ears and went on. “And Grand Master, I’m glad you’re here for final approval. The Priests will form a secondary line here”—she pointed to a digital recreation of the edge of the forest, a special blackness just a couple miles north of them—“and set up a perimeter. The normal: wards, enchantments, widdercants, laying the base for”—and for the next hour, they discussed what would happen in the few that followed.
3
Mesiter Itharin paced a dozen steps while he spoke, then he turned and walked the other way. He spoke in crisp Plainari, his voice a stalwart tenor from low in his chest, and walked with his hands behind his back, his posture perfect as he addressed the Leynars who had gathered for the emergency convent at High Tower.
His sight had settled on one Leynar, to whom he spoke. “Understand that we’re all taking a risk here.”
“It’s unprecedented in modern history,” the other said. His voice carried in its creak, even to Kendra, who stood near the back of the Zyldeni theater. “Do you know how far in the annals we had to search to find even an insinuation of combined help?”
“I can imagine it was”—
“Seven-thousand R.D.E., give or take a few years—not since the rise of the modern demon has Karhaal called upon High Tower. Even at the height of the last War, they didn’t, much to the dismay of half a dozen Houses, and, mind you, Karhaal still has not answered our grievances. It’s madness, both then and now, to assume we would risk our lives when Karhaal can handle their ends of the Accords, apparently without our aid.”
“House Karak wishes to add an opinion,” said a woman. Her white hair hung almost to the ground and floated around her in a gossamer vale. “If it is Sonder’s finding that the last in
stance of instigated, non-incidental cooperation between the Leynar and Karlians was when the modern demon came from the nether, then there is no more proper time for us to hold the same venture. Granting what the Mesiter has told us is true, and that his word is that of the king, whose statement mirrors the Grand Master’s, there’s good reason such peril should trigger a renewed allegiance. It sounds like we’re setting up to risk our lives just getting out of bed in the morning.”
“Thank you, House Karak,” Itharin said, out of patience. A dull yellow emanated from his eyes, a stain from the sheer number of years he’d practiced magic. Kendra had a millennium before the Ley might mar her face.
Maybe two if you tried, Kendra thought, but it didn’t matter—Whatever.
“It is good to hear at least one House understands,” the Mesiter said, then he turned to the man who’d stood at the right time to voice his opinion. His concern had been—to put it mildly, Kendra thought—the ‘propensity for death’ that fighting demons often bred. “Appreciate that they can’t go on without our aid, otherwise they’d not have asked for it. I wouldn’t have called the Houses together unless we were in dire need”—
“We all know what the situation is,” the creaky-voiced man said. “The king made the world well aware, and the global collective of anxiety rose two-point-one percent in a day. That gain has doubled night-over-night since”—
“Which means fuck-all,” said another across the theater. Her robe fell off her right shoulder when she stood. She covered her exposed breast with her left hand but left the robe lilting toward the ground. Her dark hair hung in an unkempt mess across her back. “If I’d known all you’d discuss is numbers and statistics, I’d have stayed in Loth.”
“Easy for a tenant of House Propense to eschew the modesty of hard fact, but my House has seen the world turn to tumult over nothing”—
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