by Tammy Salyer
Jaemus stood. “You know that’s a fact.” Taking a deep breath, hoping to absorb whatever it was that gave the Dyrraks such boldness, he said, “Okay. Three days, then you have Ulfric work his starpath magic if I’m still not back. Oh, and did I forget to tell you? I love you, Captain Illago.” With courage he definitely did not feel, he finished, “Time to slip into a world less comfortable.”
The door to the Himmingazians’ ward was the hardest he’d ever closed. But as he wound his way through the citadel toward the main hall’s entrance, slowly he began to feel lighter, more assured. Perhaps it would be as simple as he’d made it sound to Ulfric. Nothing so far had given him any reason not to think so.
He walked a few hallways before he realized something was missing and took a step into the main hall before he knew what. The citadel was almost preternaturally quiet. He met no guards in the halls, heard no sounds of the city outside coming through the windows, and saw no Dyrraks.
When he passed through the entrance hall to outside, he saw why.
The arena before the citadel was shaped like an amphitheater, with seating that rose easily ten levels high directly in front of and to either side of the wide steps leading to the column-lined upper yard. Thousands had assembled and now sat and stood among the seats everywhere he turned.
He remembered the dais Eisa had mentioned from their arrival. However, it took him less than a heartbeat to know he was not about to walk out to it before such a mass of people. The dais lay at the end of a long landing that resembled the prow of a ship, and everyone in Elezaran—indeed, the huge assembly appeared to be everyone in the empire—would have wondered what in the worlds he was doing loitering before them. Instead, he stayed in the shadows of the columns and moved a bit closer, then tucked himself behind one to keep an eye on the dais and wait for Eisa.
The unfamiliar smells of the city wafted to him as he waited. Unknown foods cooking, fires from forges and homes, but most unusual was the bitter dry dust that seemed to be everywhere. Himmingaze barely knew the meaning of dry, and it seemed Dyrrakium existed in perfect opposition to their home.
Jaemus grew more fidgety with each passing moment. Eisa had not shown up. Rising due south from the amphitheater’s wall was a towering pole with a crescent lying on its side at its point. Halla would lie directly in the crescent’s center at midday, and the sun was just beginning to touch the edge of it now.
He had to face it, she wasn’t coming. And he needed to get that last Fenestros shard before whatever event she had planned kept her from ever getting it to him.
“Guess it’s another trip into the earth,” he mumbled to himself in exasperation. “Don’t these Vinnrics know nothing but worms should live underground?”
The concept of “underground” was unique to Jaemus, in that the only underground Himmingaze’s floating cities had was submersion in the Never Sea. Of all the marvels Vinnr held, the tendency to bore into and under the dark, close soil was one he didn’t think he’d ever find he liked. Especially after he’d learned the Vinnrics also buried their dead in it.
After reentering the main hall, he wended his way from memory toward an inconspicuous doorway near the citadel’s heart. It wasn’t locked, and after a quick look to see if anyone was watching, he stepped in. Before him dove a narrow tunnel and staircase that seemed to drop endlessly down into the ground. No sound carried up from it, and the air felt damp. His skin suddenly tingled as if he’d been brushed by the cold, wet, rough skin of a fleech. He didn’t want to go down there. But he had to.
Once he closed the door, the darkness swamped him immediately. Pulling his Mentalios over his head, he held it out and imagined it brightening as Safran had shown him, speaking the simple incantation that would illuminate it. It lit the stairs enough to see his way down, and he sighed in relief. Then he noticed the way the light glittered against red seams of a different type of rock to the main stones comprising the citadel. It looked uncannily like the walls were bleeding. His relief evaporated.
“Now, remember to count your steps and mark your turns,” he told himself. “Stay in the main tunnel.” He stopped talking to himself for a moment, wondering if he’d heard something. After listening for a few seconds, he couldn’t detect much, perhaps a slight whispering sound. “A breeze?” he asked himself. “Maybe there’s an exit down there.”
Taking the first step, he counted, “One…”
Seven hundred steps and three turns into new tunnels later, Jaemus began to doubt himself. He’d passed a handful of passages, ones he had expected upon memorizing Eisa’s map, but the consuming darkness unnerved him so much that he kept losing count and had to stop to think through each step of his journey again. Nothing else in the tunnel differentiated from what came before and what he could see ahead. Endless stone, darkness, and silence. Occasionally, maybe a slight whisper of air. After a while, a little voice in his head was warning him to turn back before he got too far to find his way.
“Nonsense,” he told the voice. “I should be close now, and I have the Mentalios. If I get well and truly lost, I’ll simply call Stave—no, Safran, and ask her to come find me. Ulfric has the map, after all. Oh, I forgot to tell them about Eisa—”
As if he’d cursed himself, Jaemus suddenly lost focus and stepped awkwardly, stumbling on an uneven divot in the floor. His Mentalios lens dropped from his hand and went dark. “Water and lightning,” he spat. “Where did that—”
He heard footsteps. Most definitely footsteps. Every drop of water in his mouth evaporated. Even his eyes suddenly felt like hot, sandy balls rolling painfully inside the soft meat in his skull. He couldn’t have said why the sound frightened him, but he could definitely say that it did.
He froze. The footsteps were getting louder, and he could hear more than one set. Two, maybe more. But how could he judge? The darkness was total, almost like a weight that shrouded him, and the tunnels were endless, causing echoes to echo each other. As he listened, the sound grew and grew. More than a dozen, definitely. A hundred? Two?
He was panicking, he knew. Get a grip, Jae. It’s just other Dyrraks. Maybe they’re on stair-sweeping duty.
The cold sensation crawling over his skin, however, didn’t agree with that guess. He didn’t know what to do. He had to call the Knights. Through the Mentalios. He was alone down here, but he wasn’t alone in his mind. They’d hear him, send help.
Frantic, he dropped to his knees and began sweeping the stone floor with his hands, searching for his wystic ornament. Then, a muted light bloomed some distance down the stairs, bouncing up the red veins of rock to him, giving them a fluid, blood-like appearance once again. He heard a voice, a man’s, but it was too distant to make out the words. In response came a sound that was low, sibilant, like a hiss. A sound he’d heard before, hadn’t he? From the gangly minions on Balavad’s ship. The sound of a Ravener.
Fleetingly, Jaemus wondered if the burst of sensation in his chest was his heart exploding in fear.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“That settles it,” Stave stated when the Ecclesium had left. “I’ll be the first to congratulate Eisa when she puts that cur down.”
Ulfric ignored him, too troubled by the Ecclesium’s veiled threats and vague statements to tell him to calm down. “Safran, what do you make if his comments?”
Her face remained impassive, and after a few moments she spoke. Whatever specific intentions he has, I think Eisa would have warned us in plain terms if she suspected any kind of imminent threat. Ulfric was about to expand on her statement, but she went on: However, it would be a mistake for us to discount that fleet of ships we’ve all seen. She waved her hand at the window and the field outside where hundreds of sky ships were amassed. Waiting to be put to use.
Ulfric retrieved the ewer of syke liquor delivered by the Ecclesium and poured himself a healthy gobletful. As he started to agree with her, she turned back to them.
But whatever the outcome of today’s fight between Eisa and the Dyrrak leader—if we d
on’t stop it—I think we have to be prepared to leave Dyrrakium. The Ecclesium wants a war, and though he is devout, he is also shrewd. The more cunning and dangerous a mind, the easier for it to persuade itself that what it wants is a right, perhaps a moral imperative. In the end, he may come to think his will is yours, Ulfric, whether you agree with him or not.
Running his thumb over the goblet’s lip, Ulfric said, “Whether Eisa realizes the danger she helped put us all in or not, we’ll let them fight. It’s their custom and—” And what? Did he think it would be best, as Safran had said, to have Eisa rule Dyrrakium? Perhaps. Perhaps it would bring a stability the current Ecclesium seemed intent on undoing.
“Maybe you should use your sway as Vaka Aster to intervene,” Stave suggested. “The warrior with the biggest ax has the fewest enemies, you know, and no one has a bigger ax, so to speak, than a Verity.”
Ulfric shook his head. “I’ve thought of that, but I fear it would give the Dyrraks more doubts than it would subdue them. Vaka Aster simply doesn’t bother with the affairs of her creations. History has born that out. If she—I were to suddenly take such intimate control of things, they could be tipped off that there is something different about this vessel than others.”
“Doubt it,” Stave said. “They’re so blinded by fanaticism that they’d think it was just Vaka Aster showing them the attention they always thought they deserved, they will.”
Ulfric thought it over. With a gesture at the tray of goblets, he offered the others a drink. Stave poured one, but Safran and Mallich declined with shakes of their heads.
“When this is all over,” Ulfric said, “we’ll need to do something about the rift the Dyrraks created with Ivoryss, find a way to salve the ire of Arch Keeper Beatte.” He sighed and took a drink. “Or perhaps this won’t be over for a hundred turns or more and Beatte will be long gone before Vaka Aster’s vessel is ever seen in Ivoryss, or Yor, again.”
Mallich chuckled dryly. “The squabbles of politics and politicians never seem to amount to much when viewed through the lens of a few hundred turns, do they?”
Ulfric joined him with an unamused laugh of his own. “It’s settled, then. I’ll let Eisa and the Ecclesium sort out this rulership contest on their own. Perhaps it will benefit us. If we’re lucky, it’ll mean we don’t need to leave Dyrrakium. It’s unprecedented that a Knight rule a kingdom, but then, what’s happened over the last few weeks that isn’t unprecedented? If things go awry between them, somehow, I’ll still have this”—he waved at his eyes with his free hand—“to fall back upon and take control of Dyrrak myself. If it comes to that.” With the sense of resolve that always followed a firm decision, Ulfric swallowed half the syke liquor in a long, satisfying gulp.
Something began to come over him. It started as a tickle in his throat, like a tiny hand was whisking a tiny feather against the walls of his esophagus. He forced a gentle cough, but that was a mistake. The tickle became a burn, and the burn quickly spiked into his stomach, then outward to his whole torso, growing hotter, searing him from inside out like fast-moving lava. It shot through him, growing in strength and filling him until he thought he’d burst into flame.
“Ulfric!”
Mallich’s voice came from afar, or rather, it sounded distant while competing with the roar of agony Ulfric felt ripping through his insides. He clawed at his throat, his hand hooking his Mentalios chain. A spasm shot through him and the chain broke, sending his wystic lens across the room.
He blacked out for a moment, though he wasn’t sure if it was only a moment. He wasn’t sure of anything. What had just happened to him?
He felt…different. His body seemed weightless, unattached. Not naked, just not…there. He forced open his eyes, but his vision was cloudy, gray, as if a veil lay over his face—and no longer the shifting, chromatic Verity-enhanced vision he’d finally started to get used to. There were shapes on the other side of the grayness, but it was all out of whack. He couldn’t recognize the shadowy forms.
One thing was brighter than the rest, a large square of hazy light. But it was below him, and off to the side. He reached up to rub his eyes to try and clear this odd distortion, but he couldn’t feel his arms. He couldn’t feel anything.
“Mallich? Safran, what’s happening?” he asked, then realized he couldn’t hear his own voice. “Mallich!”
Frantic and growing more so, he tried to push himself up. He had fallen, hadn’t he? The only thing that happened was the cloudiness of his sight diminished just slightly, and new forms appeared, as if he had moved. The white square of light was now directly in front of him. He gazed into it, hoping it would somehow burn away the fog.
Far away, more images began to take shape. Tall and reddish, like buildings. Off in the south lay a flatter space, like…like…the field where he’d seen the Dyrrakium military’s fighter crafts, perhaps. Was he standing in front of the window?
He spun around, and this time he knew he was moving. The shadows spun with him, and his sight cleared more. He was in front of the window. But he wasn’t standing—he knew this because he couldn’t feel any floor beneath him. In fact, he was…hovering, like a wraith.
In front of him lay his own body, Mallich crouched beside him, shaking him, saying his name. The Knight released one of Ulfric’s shoulders and grasped his Mentalios in a death grip, clearly channeling through it. But Ulfric couldn’t hear him through his own lens link. He couldn’t do anything but gasp in silent, horrified shock at what he was seeing—
Himself, supine, gray-fleshed, collapsed on the floor. Yet, at the same time, he was here, several paces away.
How can this be? Vaka Aster, what’s happening to me?
The silence answering him was without question the deepest, hollowest emptiness he’d experienced in his long life. He was cut off—from his own body, from the vessel that bore his creator, and from the creator herself.
In the time it would take to blink, panic, despair, rage, and desperation washed through him in a hurricane gale. He couldn’t protect the vessel, or himself, if he was unable to move. But then, he was beyond being unable to move, he wasn’t even him. He was ephemeral, not physical, not…alive? Was that it? Had he died? No, that wasn’t possible. If he had died, Vinnr would have ceased to exist. Had Vaka Aster taken over? No, again, the same thing seemed to be true. She’d told him she couldn’t take over his form without taking over his mind and breaking it. Breaking it would break the world, and he wouldn’t be standing, floating here having this conversation with himself.
Try to speak with Mallich, explain what’s going on, even though I don’t understand it.
Stave, kneeling beside Ulfric’s form, brayed, “What in Balavad’s blacktrack happened to him?”
Mallich’s eyes suddenly fastened on the doorway, and they all, including Ulfric—albeit incalculably slower—turned to look.
The door guard stood there, looking inside with his brow furrowed. He must have heard Ulfric yelling and opened the door. Nothing in his demeanor had shifted from the stoic, at-the-ready pose and expression he and all the Dyrraks constantly assumed. But that made his creased eyebrows, and the confusion that danced in the eyes below them, all the more extreme.
“Bar the door,” Mallich said, almost mildly.
Safran moved to the guard, pushed him out, and quickly secured the door. When she turned back, the others watched her intently, as if she were speaking. If she was, Ulfric couldn’t hear her either.
Knights! Stave, Safran! Mallich! Listen, hear me! he yelled uselessly. One cannot yell without lungs and a mouth to yell through.
“His pallor suggests an illness or poison,” Mallich was saying. “But that doesn’t make sense. No plague or poison could affect a Knight so suddenly.”
At the mention of “poison,” their eyes fell on the shattered goblet of syke liquor that lay next to Ulfric’s body. The remaining liquid had dampened the floor in scattered puddles. Looking at it, Ulfric realized it was different from the syke liquor the Knights had
been served previously. The color was a cobalt blue and nearly opaque. He’d thought it had been the same honey brown as before when he drank it. Was there some kind of enchantment on it?
Stave hurled his own untouched goblet at the wall, deep blue liquid splattering everywhere. He muttered, “That’s…” All three of the Knights seemed to draw the same conclusion at once, but none said a word aloud.
What?! What is it? Ulfric shouted in vain.
“Balavad’s consecration elixir. He’s here,” Mallich stated as he rose from Ulfric’s side to his feet. “Somehow he’s infiltrated Dyrrakium.”
Stave stepped toward the ewer of remaining liquid and kicked it. The pottery flew directly toward Ulfric, or where he perceived himself to be, then through him, smashing into fragments against the wall as well.
The Knight turned back. “So, somehow Ulfric is now one of Balavad’s slaves? But how would that work with him being the vessel, eh? How?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand either,” Mallich answered.
They looked to Safran, then Stave said, “She’s right, she is. That guard won’t keep his mouth shut for long, and any Dyrrak who already harbors any doubts about what Ulfric is—or dare I say, was—will start talking, too. Like that Ecclesium. We’ll have a rebellion on our hands, I’ll wager, or worse. These painted zealots know a thing or two more about fighting than any Ivoryssian I’ve ever met.”
Mallich said to Safran, “She’s…attending to a delicate matter before High Halls and the Conquestum.”
“Well, we need Eisa to put aside her delicacies and get Ulfric out of Dyrrakium, we do,” Stave said. “Besides Ulfric, she’s the only one who knows where the interrealm well is. And we need to go, now. Where is she, then?”
Safran must have spoken again, and Stave said, “Good point.” He reached for Vaka Aster’s Scrylle and continued. “Maybe we should open a starpath to Himmingaze. Feed two birds with one scone and take the novice and his people back there with us. The whole lot of it may be sinking into the sea, but there may be no better reason for them to get back on their own soil, or what they have for soil, than having that bogtrotting black-breathing Verity on ours. It’ll buy us time and—ah, slag it. Does anyone know where Bardgrim is?”
