Grail of the Summer Stars (Aetherial Tales)

by Freda Warrington

  “It goes deeper than you think. She was planning to do something like this with Veropardus in the old days. That’s why she was so keen to help weave the web that brought down Azantios—they hoped they could unleash the soul-energies from the Felixatus and blast a way into Naamon, but the process failed.”

  Mist thought of Aurata’s Promise. The crystal sphere held aloft, and the yellow fissure in the earth—that was her message. I have tried this before and next time, I will succeed.

  Rufus went on, “Do you know why Aurata’s studied geology, seismology, volcanoes and all that stuff? She wants to get it right. She’s obsessed. The mere mention of an earthquake practically gives her an orgasm. All those tectonic plates sliding into each other, molten rock bubbling out of the Earth’s core, geysers squirting steam…? We’re Felynx, Mistangamesh. The fire of Naamon runs in our veins. Aurata is planning to take it to the absolute limit.”

  Mist leaned back on the rail, looking at Rufus. “How?”

  “Come on, she’s powerful. These folk around her—they’re adepts who can form eightfold, tenfold webs to distort reality.”

  Mist remembered the horrifying ritual; ten Aetherials, spinning a pattern of energy so powerful that it shook Azantios to rubble. Much of that power had been composed of his own parents’ soul-energies. He shuddered.

  Rufus went on, “I’ve had a go myself; it’s not that hard, and Aurata’s a hundred times more dedicated than I ever was. She even claims the ability to weave webs without help.”

  This woke another echo of Lord Albin in his solitary tower. Mist hadn’t told Rufus about Sam, Rosie and Lucas’s plight. Rufus would only use the knowledge as a fresh weapon against him. “If this is a game, stop now.”

  “It isn’t. I’ve changed,” Rufus’s tone was fervent. “I’ve seen you horribly killed in front of me—twice, at least. D’you think I could watch that and not be devastated? I confess, I’ve behaved diabolically in my time. Now I want to do one good thing. I love Aurata, but she needs to be stopped. I love you too. As for the loss of your Helena, and Adam, and our parents—what can I say?”

  “Don’t say anything!” Mist backed into the corner of the balcony, although this gained him only three feet of distance from his brother. “Don’t speak their names. They were nothing to you but collateral damage.”

  “Not true. I’m…” Rufus stopped, visibly struggling. “I’m sorry.”

  Mist could not speak for a while.

  “Gods,” he said at last. “I never thought I’d hear those words from your mouth. Still…” He felt moisture gathering in his eyes. “All those deaths were my fault as much as yours. More.”

  “What? The only thing I didn’t do was to harm Fela. You were the good guy. Why blame yourself?”

  “Because I should have taken better care of them.”

  “Oh, I get it.” Rufus slapped his own forehead. “You feel responsible because of your noble nature.”

  “Not noble. As guilty as you.”

  “Idiot! Don’t start being a martyr. You see, this is what’s wrong with you! So scared of putting a foot wrong, letting Poectilictis down, of being anything short of perfect. I had to dislodge that broomstick from your backside, don’t you see? That’s why I couldn’t stop baiting you. I wanted you to fall off your pedestal—the harder the better. I wanted you to stop trying to be so fucking perfect.”

  “You should be happy, then,” Mist retorted. “No wonder you were laughing while I was trying to squeeze the soul-essence out of you. I was hell bent on killing you, but I couldn’t. I expect you’re thrilled to find me with Stevie, even though I tried my damnedest not to put her in danger by caring about her.”

  “Brother dear, you don’t have to care about her to give her the seeing-to of a lifetime. Which I trust you did, judging by the look of soporific bliss on her face. She’s lovely. Where did you find her?”

  Mist ignored the question. “I’m not like you. I don’t have to seduce everyone I meet, just to prove I can. And I do care about her, which is why I should have been stronger. Rufe, do you think if I was a tenth of the Aetherial I should be, I would have to try so damned hard?”

  “You know all this crap is your problem, not mine?” Rufus sniffed, and leaned on the balcony rail with loosely crossed arms. “So, why did you come and find me, really?”

  “You know what they say. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

  “Are we enemies, Mistangamesh?”

  “I honestly don’t know what we are.”

  “Yes, I’m evil, and the rest—tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Not evil. You’re like a stupid, impulsive child who can’t see the consequences of his actions even five seconds into the future.”

  “You’re calling me stupid?”

  “I’m not sure there’s a scale on which your stupidity is measurable, Rufus. You destroy everything you touch. Even Stevie—you couldn’t bear seeing us together for five minutes without trying to drive a small wedge between us, could you?”

  “Yeah, that—it was habit, that’s all.”

  “Exactly. Habit, to get Helena and me slaughtered. Habit, to torture poor Adam for decades because you think your own ends justify any means, however depraved.”

  “You talk about torture? You’ve no idea how I felt when I thought you were gone for good! Okay, I’m depraved and dumb beyond measure. Yet, guess what? I have feelings. I can still love my own brother and sister beyond all that’s rational, can’t I?”

  “Ah no, you can’t use the thin old excuse of love for any of this.”

  “You despise me. You’re furious with me. Fine … yet you’re here. Why?”

  “Because I was frightened of you,” Mist said simply.

  Rufus gasped. “Frightened?”

  “I can’t forget what Adam went through. And I can’t live for hundreds more years, constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting to hear your laughter in the shadows or feel your breath on my neck. I knew you’d find me eventually. So I decided to find you first.”

  “And kill me. Or not.”

  Mist looked away. “Well, it was close. As soon as I knew I could, the fire went out of me. You laughed. Our reunion went exactly as I could have predicted, yet I walked into it regardless. Which makes me a step down from you on the stupid scale, doesn’t it?”

  “Look at me,” Rufus said. “You are an idiot, Mist, if only for not seeing how drastically you’ve changed. You’ve grown. It’s the way you carry yourself, as a proud Aetherial again. You have a shine around you that I thought I’d never see. You were so close to extinguishing my wretched life, but you chose to stop. Now I’m the one who’s scared of you. Always was, if you want the truth.”

  Guarded, Mist met his gaze. “Nice words, if it wasn’t too late for me to swallow anything you say. Still, let’s try to be adult about this, shall we? Now that I’ve found you, I’m not afraid of you anymore. So, do you really still want me around? Do you want us to be orbiting each other for eternity like two sad, aging planets?”

  “Mm. Put like that, it doesn’t sound so attractive. But, Mist, it needn’t be like that.”

  “How else could it be?”

  “The three of us. If only we can calm Aurata down, we could be a triumvirate to conquer the world.”

  Mist groaned. “What’s the use of conquering the bloody world? You wouldn’t know what to do with it once you had it, Caligula.”

  “Don’t knock Caligula. He was a friend of mine.”

  “Naturally.”

  “But the three of us: we could be something again…”

  “Wishful thinking. You’re not serious. Let it go.”

  “Fine.” Rufus gave a quick, fierce grimace. “At least believe I’m serious about this one thing: the small problem of preventing Aurata from melting the world. What are we going to do?”

  * * *

  Stevie couldn’t sleep. She got up, slipped into jeans and sweatshirt, and began to pad through the carpeted passageways beyond her r
oom. There were several doors, all closed. She sensed the house breathing. Not all the Aetherials were asleep … murmurs of ecstasy could be heard from behind more than one door. She sensed watchfulness in the air, a rustle of movement and voices barely above the threshold of hearing.

  Stars glowed through the skylight above the large central stairwell. She went down one flight to the main living areas, then down a second to the lower floor where she’d met Daniel.

  She wanted to see if he was working all night.

  The only light in the studio came from the night sky, and from a small door in the far right-hand corner. She heard the whine of a metal drill. Daniel’s icons shone with enigmatic scenes from Felynx history, starlight sliding across them as she walked to the half-open door.

  The room beyond was a small workshop, with a long bench lit by a single bright desk light. A figure with his back to her was bending over the workbench, which was set up with lathes like a modern, heavy-duty version of her clockmaker’s station at the museum.

  The figure was Oliver. Light glowed through the tips of his hair, glinting on his panther earring.

  “Come in, Miss Silverwood,” Oliver said without turning around.

  “I was looking for Daniel.”

  “Contrary to your belief, I do allow him to rest. He’s asleep.”

  “I’ll go, then. I didn’t mean to interrupt…”

  “No, come here.” He beckoned. “I heard you have an interest in metalwork. No doubt you’re familiar with Felynx imagery?”

  Not knowing how to answer, she went to Oliver’s side. The tang of machine oil and solder were familiar, and made her feel oddly at home. A pang of sadness caught her. And then, to her shock and outrage, she recognized a half-dozen small carving tools as the ones stolen by Slahvin, the night he took the triptych.

  “Those are—” She turned hot with the effort of swallowing her anger.

  “Yes?”

  “I suppose all tools look alike,” she said evenly. “You’d think whoever stole mine could have afforded their own.”

  Oliver gave a minimal smirk in response. Apparently, he couldn’t care less. This made her feel even angrier, and more helpless.

  On a clear area of the bench, shapes of stone and crystal gleamed. She saw a lens the size of her palm, a spherical crystal shell in two halves intricately carved and fretted with animal forms: lynx and phoenix and salamander shapes. There was a scattering of cogs and metal pieces, bent, broken and corroded.

  And another object she knew: Frances Manifold’s “unidentified carved stone object,” the base of the Felixatus, which had been stolen from Mist.

  Fear slithered down her back.

  The most intriguing item of all was a simple sphere, the diameter of her two hands cupped together. The material looked like clear quartz but the interior was alive, glowing as if with millions of fireflies.

  With a thrill, Stevie recognized everything. This was the Felixatus, disassembled, and the sphere was its heart. It was a vessel, or a prison, filled with countless Felynx soul-sparks.

  Were they still alive, after all this time? Sentient? Or mere specks of light?

  She also noted a book that looked a thousand years old, hand-lettered in an unknown tongue on rough ivory pages. Open near the middle, the left-hand page was illustrated with a medieval-style representation of the heavens, with moon, planets and stars picked out in gold leaf and lapis. On the right was an ink sketch of the items on the bench, fully assembled; the shell mounted on the base with the crystal globe inside, the lens suspended above it, all held together by a web of curved struts, like an armillary sphere or an orrery.

  Stevie couldn’t speak.

  “The Felixatus,” said Oliver over her shoulder. “A sacred object, lost for thousands of years. Now that we have the last piece, we can reconstruct it.”

  The last piece. He meant the stolen base.

  A memory ambushed her: Fela in the chamber, so in awe of this exquisite object that she forgot even Rufus’s presence. The details were blurred. She remembered a glow like jeweled cobwebs at dawn, encasing the wild white energy of the heart. A sense of ineffable mystery. No explanation. The Felixatus had simply sat on its column, pointing up at the stars: swollen with pent-up energy.

  “Where did the book come from?” she asked.

  “It was salvaged from a ruined monastery in the north of England.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “I did.” Oliver stood uncomfortably close to her. “I always retained the instinct to protect sacred knowledge. During the fall of Azantios, I was fortunate to keep hold of the most important parts of the Felixatus; the heart, and the outer casing. It came to pass that I went into elemental form for centuries. Yet when I returned to bodily form and sentience, I remembered who I’d once been. I remembered having the forethought to hide these treasures. I was in a strange world where there was nothing for me to do but enter a monastery and set about writing all I could remember of Azantios and the Felixatus.”

  “And this was … when? The twelfth or thirteenth century? You kept the book with you all this time?”

  “Not quite.” Oliver’s lips thinned. His odd-colored eyes shone. “I was discovered. This very occult and non-Biblical text was frowned upon by the Church authorities. I was arrested, tortured, and burned at the stake for heresy.”

  “My god. Are you joking?”

  She recalled the horrifying sketch Mist had found in Daniel’s abandoned studio: a monk twisting in flames, burning, melting in agony. Had Daniel intended to paint the scene?

  “Fortunately, I’d hidden the book most carefully before they came for me. And when I returned to a further life—as Aetherials do, when we have unfinished business—I was able to retrieve it from the monastery’s ruins and place it in Aurata’s safe place in Venice while I sought the lost pieces of the Felixatus.”

  Stevie was shocked into horrified sympathy. No wonder he’s deranged, she thought. And I thought I’d had a difficult time!

  “So you, er … heard Aurata’s call?”

  His face took on a narrow, knowing expression. “Loud and clear. I served her father in the glory days, but I confess a deeper devotion to my lady Aurata. I always saw that she was our future. Of course I went to her. Our reunion was inevitable: fate, if you believe in such things. I admit, I was shocked that her own brothers were deaf to her summons. Do we even need them?” He sighed through his nose. “If it’s her wish to have them here, so be it.”

  Stevie didn’t respond. It didn’t take a psychologist to work out that Oliver would prefer to have Aurata entirely to himself. And would he like to reverse their roles? Did he see himself as the rightful leader, with Aurata as his aide? Stevie couldn’t see it working the other way around, because Aurata was the natural goddess, and he the instinctive priest. Still … the smallest trace of resentment might give Oliver a reason to take his frustrations out on Daniel instead.

  Resisting a strong desire to punch him, she said coolly, “So you’re trying to reassemble the Felixatus?”

  “It’s a process that can’t be rushed. It must be perfect. I’m afraid the diagrams I made from memory aren’t as accurate as they could have been. If I’d made the instrument myself, it would be easier. But it was made by one of the Felynx founders, an Aetherial craftsman long gone. I was a mere custodian.”

  “He didn’t leave a blueprint, then?”

  “Sadly not.” Oliver gave a slight smile, which helped her see why Daniel had become enraptured by him. “Daniel’s images are more artistic than accurate.”

  “It’s a beautiful object. So strange.” Quickly she checked herself, thinking, I’m not meant to know what it is, certainly not meant to have seen it.

  Oliver gave her a deep look; she turned away. Someone was going to see Fela in her, sooner or later, and she didn’t trust Oliver one millimeter.

  “The Felixatus connected Azantios to the stars. Some say it gave a view of a different sky altogether, the one that graces the Spiral itself.” />
  “And did it? You were its keeper, so I’ve been told. You should know.”

  He sidestepped the question. “It is our Grail, in the purest sense. A stone, a dish, a ciborium: a cup filled not with blood but with pulsating Aetheric energy. The symbol of our heart’s desire; to become our true selves, the Aurym Felynx.”

  Oliver fell quiet, fiddling with the lathe. She guessed he would like her to leave, which gave her a perverse urge to stay, if only to show him how to operate the equipment properly.

  “Can you remember being Veropardus?”

  The question was impertinent, but she took the risk. The unnatural atmosphere of the Dusklands pressed on her. Certainty crept over her that she had no chance of leaving Aurata’s house alive. The feeling made her defiant. The more frightened she was, the stronger she would become.

  That was what Persephone had taught Fela.

  “Not every detail,” he answered. “It’s dreamlike, in some ways. I remember the important things. Aurata and I are the only ones who held true, all this time, to the essential nature of the Felynx. You? I’d be interested to know how you are so well informed. You are a woman of mystery, Miss Silverwood. Fascinating, the hold you have had on Daniel and Mistangamesh both.”

  “It’s not a hold. We’re close friends, that’s all. What about Mr. Slahvin?” she asked, eager to change the subject. “Did he find Aurata at the same time?”

  Oliver went tight-lipped. Stevie held her breath, aware she was asking too many questions. Perhaps she’d gone too far.

  Then he said, “Shortly after me. He was bound to appear. In Azantios, Slahvin was my close assistant. A man of few words but complete obedience.”

  Stevie frowned. Her Fela-memories did not contain Slahvin … except as one of many palace officials, a dark silent figure in the background. She said, “Are you friends with him?”

  Oliver looked sideways at her with cold expression. “What odd questions you ask. He’s useful, that’s all. Why?”

  “Because he’s dangerous. I did not appreciate being knocked unconscious. How does he do that ‘slithering all over the world’ trick?”