Grail of the Summer Stars (Aetherial Tales)

by Freda Warrington

  Mist hesitated. Even now he was reluctant to name his own sister. “Someone tried to summon Qesoth.”

  “Qesoth?”

  “There’s no time to explain. If you help us search, I’ll explain as we go. Where are we?”

  “On a boundary between Sibeyla and Asru, but the structure of the Spiral is dangerously unstable. We’re under siege. If we stay in the open much longer, we’ll succumb to worse than the cold. The end is closing in … so I tell you, if Qesoth were to appear, I’d welcome her.”

  Mist and Rufus exchanged a glance. Mist said, “Is this fog Albin’s doing?”

  Vaidre Daima’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know?”

  “Because we encountered him not long ago,” said Mist. “‘Fanatical’ is an understatement. We sent a messenger to warn the Spiral Court. Iola?”

  Vaidre Daima waved a command at his guards to lower their weapons. He began to guide the party downhill. Mist hoped he knew where he was going in the thick grey pall.

  “Iola reached us, but there was nothing we could do. Albin wove this fog some five nightfalls ago. It smothers everything.”

  “I don’t understand. When we met him, which was only a few days ago, or so I thought, he had control of just one small island with a tower and few hundred elemental servants.”

  “Well, now he has control of nearly the whole Spiral. We’ve no idea how he became so powerful so fast, nor how to stop him. Aelyr refugees have flooded into Asru from the other realms to warn us, too late. It was a stealth attack. This stuff has swamped the whole Spiral. Every realm.”

  “It’s only fog,” Rufus said uncertainly. “Isn’t it?”

  Vaidre Daima’s expression was stony. “No. It’s a pernicious force that sucks out Aetherial life force and turns us into—I hesitate to use terms like ‘ghosts’ or ‘shells.’ Let me say ice elementals, who become Albin’s slaves, with no will left of their own.”

  Memories rose of Sam, Rosie and Lucas, turning to frozen statues. “Every realm?” Mist’s voice was raw. “But … he captured three friends of ours. One of them is the Gatekeeper himself. The entire Spiral?”

  “Only Asru holds out. In fact, only Tyrynaia. That’s our last refuge.” Vaidre Daima swept his hand through the vapor, stirring it into whorls. “This substance—we’ve called up all our powers, woven every possible web to push it back, but there’s no defense. It creeps everywhere. Even the Spiral can’t defend itself.”

  “You’re saying that the Otherworld is effectively … dying?”

  Vaidre Daima paused, struggling. “Or being held hostage.”

  “So why the fuck’s he done this?” Rufus put in. “Come on, I was accused of all sorts in my time, but I never tried to poison the entire Otherworld, nor to rip the Earth apart. I get blamed for everything, but I’m a rank amateur alongside this! What the hell does Albin think he’s doing?”

  Vaidre Daima’s eyes glazed with rage. “What he’s always wanted: to sever the Spiral completely from the Earth. In trying to persuade others to his cause, he lost the argument. So he’s taken matters into his own hands. He has overwhelmed us with a force that we never anticipated and cannot seem to fight.”

  “He’s out of his bleeding mind,” said Rufus. “I always thought so.”

  “Rufus is right,” Mist said softly. “When we met him, he’d isolated himself. He was full of crazy but calculated plans to change the cosmos.” Like Aurata, he thought. “Do we all end up mad, if we live too long?”

  “I should hope not,” Vaidre Daima retorted. “But, as with the human world, it takes only one or two maniacs to cause havoc.”

  “Oh, this is priceless.” Rufus gave a raw laugh. “You always think you can leap into a fast car and escape. You never think you’ll be forced into a corner where everything’s fucked, no one is going be rescued and we’re all actually going to die.”

  “Rufe, shut up,” said Mist. “You’re not helping.”

  “He is being realistic,” said the court leader. “And this is my fault. I made a huge miscalculation, the greatest mistake of my service upon the Spiral Court: not in releasing you, Rufus Ephenaestus, but in letting Albin of Sibeyla go free.”

  “How could you have known?” said Mist.

  “I should have paid closer attention. Our best theory is that Albin is more than an individual. He represents the Cold Force that emanates from Brawth. He’s become the avatar of a particular ideology that is opposed to the Spiral being connected to Vaeth, and worse: a force opposed to the way Aelyr and Vaethyr live, opposed to humans and even to life itself. And his solution is to flood all but the highest peaks of Sibeyla with this deathly miasma.”

  His words were drowned by thunder.

  High above, the sky exploded. Balls of flame rolled through the clouds, roaring. The storm boiled until the fabric of the Spiral itself began to tilt and shudder.

  Vaidre Daima looked flatly terrified. “What is that?”

  Rufus grinned, hanging on to Mist’s arm for balance. “I think you’ll find that is Aurata, trying to clear the fog.”

  “A cosmic battle,” said Mist. “Qesoth against Brawth.”

  “Come with me!” Vaidre Daima shouted, and they all ran, seeking shelter that did not exist because the storm raged everywhere.

  * * *

  “Mist?” Stevie called as she made her way uphill, blind in the moisture-blanket and deafened by the rumbling chaos far above. “Aurata?”

  She wasn’t quite alone. The souls trapped inside the Felixatus thrummed frantically against her chest. She felt like a goddess with a whole world in her embrace; and at the same time like a lost child, half-dead with terror. Her fylgia drifted in front of her, a tiny dappled leopard.

  She was so cold now, she felt she was drowning in liquid nitrogen. Had this happened to the specters around her? There was nothing left of them but amorphous ice entities, presumably extensions of Albin’s will. Numb, she could only follow her fylgia, the part of her subconscious that was supposed to know best.

  She stumbled on jagged rocks and paused, shaken. There was still nothing to see but fleece layers in all directions. She might step over a cliff, for all she knew. The thought made her stomach twist. Once was enough.

  Storm flashes from above thinned the murk enough to reveal hints of alabaster landscape. In the cloud ahead, a shape firmed up; a featureless grey spire that remained stable as she edged closer.

  Albin’s tower.

  What a relief to find a landmark, even one so hostile.

  She looked up. Flares swept overhead like gigantic fireballs rolling through thunderclouds. The ground lurched. The substance of the Spiral was warping, stretching and snapping back in ear-splitting sonic booms.

  The greatest unearthly power of Aetherials was to alter the very fabric of the realms. That’s how we shaped the Spiral in the first place, and why it’s always in flux, Mist said in her memory. We’re spinners and weavers of reality.

  Destroyers, too, she thought. Her dizzy moment alarmed her fylgia. Balking, it tried to guide her to the left, but she kept going straight ahead. The tower was her only anchor point in the chaos.

  There were no waters of Melusiel anywhere—even without sight, she would have sensed or smelled their distinctive character—only rock. That meant the tower must have moved.

  The slope grew steep and treacherous as she neared the tall thin spire. Pausing, she took off what was left of her ritual robe and knotted it to form a sling to hold the Felixatus. With it hung over her shoulder, she now she had both hands free to climb. She still wore smoke-stained jeans, a sweatshirt, and a dewy hint of Fela’s fur yet clung to her hands. Changing form was about entering a different realm of reality, so she hadn’t burst out of her clothes like a werewolf. However, she was so chilled that she might as well have been naked.

  The farther she went, the thicker and heavier the fog grew, slowing her down as if she waded through water. She could barely breathe.

  She reached a flat area like a courtyard where she stood
shivering and panting for breath. Directly ahead was the tower’s entrance, its narrow triangular shape an echo of the spire itself. Pale figures solidified around her. Albin’s army, coming to capture her? No. Nothing was moving. She was in a small forest of statues, featureless and translucent like resin: Albin’s victims. Were they Aelyr who’d come to challenge him, or supporters he didn’t need anymore?

  “Can you hear me?” she called out. She caught her breath at the knowledge of who must be among them. “Rosie? Sam?”

  No answer.

  Warily she wove between the figures. They all looked the same: ice sculptures in human shape. Yet she could still see blurred hints of faces, obscured behinds masks of thick frosted glass.

  With growing urgency she worked her way between then, going recklessly close to discern individuality. Yes … the harder she looked, the more she saw remnants of personality. Most had Melusiel faces. Outrage brought her to tears. How dare Albin do this?

  In front of the tower’s entrance, three figures stood in a close, familiar group. She looked into their blurred features, half-closing her eyes for clearer definition. With a silent cry, she recognized them. Rosie, Sam, Lucas.

  “I came back for you,” she whispered. “Can you speak? Rosie, Luc? Do you know me?”

  There was no reaction from any of the three. Tears froze on her cheeks.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said softly, “but I’m not leaving. I’ll be with you, whatever happens.”

  She set down the Felixatus at her feet. As she straightened up, a hand gripped her wrist.

  She jumped with violent shock. It was Lucas who’d moved. His fingers felt brittle, and so cold—dry-ice cold—that his touch made her gasp. She gladly endured the pain, letting him take her warmth. She eased around until she could hold Rosie’s hand too, the four of them forming a circle. Then, with all that was left of her Aetherial strength, she willed the heat of her body into theirs.

  This is where it ends. If I can’t save you, I’ll stand and perish with you.

  * * *

  “Albin’s fortress,” said Vaidre Daima.

  He raised both arms to stop his guards in their tracks. Mist saw the familiar sight, like a grey tusk planted in the clouds.

  “I thought you were taking us to Tyrynaia,” said Rufus. “Are you lost?”

  Vaidre Daima made no answer, but his face was grim, one shade off utter panic. “Halt. We’re going no closer.”

  “Why not?” Mist asked quietly.

  “No one who went there has returned. We’ll retreat.”

  “And the tower will probably follow us,” said Rufus.

  At this offhand remark, Vaidre Daima’s face blanched. He’s no warrior, thought Mist. He was an administrator: chairman, judge or mediator, at home amid the coils of the Spiral Court, but a hopeless leader in the field. Few Aelyr were lovers of weapons or combat; why bother, when they had the greater power to alter reality itself? At this moment, the Spiral Court appeared to hold no power at all.

  He thought, then, that Vaidre Daima was brave even to have ventured out of the city.

  “Stay here,” said Mist. He started towards the tower alone.

  “Come back, I command you!”

  “Mist!” Rufus shouted.

  He ignored them. He heard one of the warriors speak, and Vaidre Daima answering, “No! Disarm your weapons. Let him go.”

  Mist didn’t look back. The ground lurched beneath him, and as the rocks swept steeply upward he clung on for his life, grateful not to have the additional menace of crossbow bolts flying at him. He tried to expand his Aetheric body but the press of Albin’s power was too much. The air burned his lungs.

  Overhead, the battle gave bursts of light, enough for him to see that the tower was still poised on its small island: a plate of quartzite, rough-edged as if had sheared from a slab and been carried here by the massive force of a glacier. Occasionally he glimpsed the equally pale, smooth rock on which the island sat. Then cloud swirled in again to conceal everything. Once or twice he felt the island shift alarmingly, like a curling stone gliding on ice.

  He ran the last few steps, weaving between statues. Right by the entrance he found Stevie, too late; she was already joined in a rigid dance with their three friends. They were all as stiff, white and lifeless as mannikins. The amber of her hair was vanishing beneath a thickening layer of frost.

  “Stevie,” he gasped.

  Her gaze rolled towards him. It was clear to him that she couldn’t move her head. His heart nearly gave out with despair. He struggled to hear the words from her near-paralyzed lips.

  “You … oh, thank goodness. Mist, how…”

  “Come away. You can’t help them.”

  “I have to.”

  “Please come with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  He saw then how Lucas’s hand was fused to her wrist, and hers to Rosie’s. He reached out, intending to free her using his own remaining warmth, but she growled, “Don’t!”

  “I’m not leaving you like this.”

  “Mist,” she said, her eyes swiveling in the direction of the spire. “Their fylgias. You need to release them from Albin. Please!”

  In the blurred glassy face of Sam, who stood opposite Stevie between Rosie and Luc, Mist saw the briefest flash of twin aqua sparks.

  “Hold on,” he said. With no further argument, he ducked through the narrow slit into the dim bluish glow of the tower. He crossed the floor, raced up carved spiral stairs, through the middle chamber where Albin had held them, and up the second flight towards the highest room. The climb was longer and more treacherous than he remembered.

  Mist realized then that he trusted Stevie’s intuition more deeply than his own. He suspected she was the only one among them who actually understood what needed doing—and had no hesitation in sacrificing herself to attain it.

  He was beyond fear. Briefly he wondered what forms Albin and Aurata took as they battled above the ocean of fog, and if they would ever call a truce.

  Trapped fylgias. How would Albin contain them? In a vessel of some kind?

  Mist entered the chamber, recalling details from his trance-dream: a cone-shaped space with a bier of blue lapis stone across its center, with a shelf of arcane instruments beneath a narrow, open embrasure.

  All was as he expected, with one difference. It came as a visceral shock to find that the chamber wasn’t empty after all. Albin was there.

  Lofty and pure white in his feathered cloak, he stood on the bier with his eyes closed and palms raised to the ceiling as if weaving a solitary web. Light fell around him, shining, glittering.

  He was in a trance, Mist realized. Fighting Aurata.

  The wild atmosphere and warping of reality carried a taste of Albin’s thoughts.

  She came out of nowhere, falling from a dark sun in the Spiral sky—Qesoth, the primal force, the Fire of Fires. Of course she would come. By his actions, he called her.

  The frozen rock of his soul-essence contained no fear, no emotion beyond a calm feeling of triumph. Albin knew himself to be the most powerful being the Spiral had ever seen, Brawth, the end of all things …

  He rose to join eternal battle: energy forever warring against entropy.

  As she vaporized his wintry web, he rewove it with an effortless flow of bitter cold. Yet he was no more able to quench Qesoth’s fire than the ocean could extinguish a volcano on the seabed.

  Neither could win, Mist knew. They could only rage and fight until their war reduced the fabric of the Spiral to a soup of component atoms.

  Feverishly he looked around the chamber for clues. The only objects were those on the shelf; odd instruments, bottles and pieces of crystal. The anametris sphere, a small orb that resembled the heart of the Felixatus? No. Albin had said it was a key used to open portals in a different realm, not a device to hold fylgias. Mist opened a small brass box, and inside he saw three blue-white shining pebbles. Tiny shapes moved inside, like trapped fireflies. His mouth was bo
ne-dry but he knew without doubt that he’d found what he sought. He took the pebbles and slipped them into a pocket.

  “Mistangamesh,” said a voice above him.

  Albin was awake, glaring at him.

  Oh, shit, he thought, as the weight and arctic power of a furious Sibeylan lord descended and flattened him to the floor.

  “How dare you invade my domain? Did you summon Qesoth to attack me?”

  A snake head poised itself at Mist’s throat, the fangs pricking his skin, so cold they burned. The snake was Albin’s hand. His own Aetherial powers were drained, numb. He was certain this was his last moment, that he’d soon be another ice carving in Albin’s collection.

  “No, I did not summon her! I’ve spent days trying to stop her.”

  The smooth white forehead wrinkled. “Trying to stop her?”

  “She may have transformed into Qesoth, but she is also my sister, Aurata,” he rasped, forcing out the last of his breath. “You won’t win. You deserve each other.”

  He thought the blue triad of Albin’s eyes would burst from his head. With a swift, powerful move, the Sibeylan shot upright, dragging Mist off his feet as if he weighed nothing. They were floating above the floor. Albin’s cloak became wings and he was moving towards the embrasure.

  Helpless, Mist found himself pushed out into thin air, with the slender stem of the tower dwindling away below. Still holding him, Albin squeezed through and launched himself off the sill. Wings beating, he powered upwards into the fog.

  Mist caught a glimpse of deep blue sky, and the gleaming peaks of Sibeylan mountains like islands in a milky ocean.

  “Listen to me,” Mist said again. “Neither of you can win.”

  In response, Albin dropped him.

  First he felt rushing air, then, as he hit the ground—excruciating pain.

  He managed to force out an aura, producing a framework of fins that was more a broken umbrella than a set of wings, but enough to ease his landing into a long, painful slide. He lay groaning, laughing weakly at the absurdity of his situation: at the simple fact that he was still alive.

  All he could see was the side of the spire, a few rocks, the wretched fog mantle, and a lightning storm tearing the cosmos far above. No sign of Stevie. Apparently he’d landed on the far side of the tower and he must crawl around to find her, if only he could move.