by T. A. Miles
But the well currently lay beneath a considerable mound of rock. At least they had that assurance.
Irslan murmured something in consideration and Vlas abandoned his ruminations. He walked across the parlor to take a seat upon a sofa near to Irslan’s chair.
“Did you learn something new?” Vlas asked him.
Irslan paused over his reading material. A moment to gather his thoughts yielded words. “There’s another present.”
“Another what?”
“Another traitor.”
Assuming the first traitor was their missing Master Ossai, Vlas asked, “Who?”
To that, Irslan raised his shoulders mildly. Finally looking up from the book in his lap, he said, “A man to whom Konlan referred as his messenger.”
“A messenger?” Vlas echoed, then quickly connected thoughts and added, “A spy.”
Irslan nodded slowly in agreement.
Vlas was half standing while he spoke his next words. “That could mean that someone has been…that someone is relaying our plans of defense to Morenne.”
“What can we do?” Irslan inquired, half-closing the book while he sat forward.
“You stay planted in that chair, Master Trier,” Vlas told him. “Look for any clues as to this ‘messenger’s’ identity. I’ll return to the governor’s manor and see if Cayri has any insight into this possibility.”
Irslan gave a nod and spread the pages open once again. Before the man had fully returned to his reading, Vlas was on his way to the door. As his hand settled on the knob, he glanced back at Dacia, who seemed not to have noticed anything of their conversation whatsoever. Her fingers continued to work with thread as if that thread were all that existed in the world as she knew it.
Vlas let her be, and hurried from the room. Flushing out a traitor would be a difficult and delicate task at such an hour. Such an adversity had not crossed his mind, and of course, it should have. Of course, Konlan had not worked alone in Indhovan. There would have been times when he would not have been able to make meetings without rousing suspicions. And for those moments, there would have been someone else…someone easily overlooked.
“There’s something about Jahcery that I dislike,” Lerissa expressed with a tremendous amount of ease, which was the typical nature by which Lerissa expressed anything.
“He’s peculiar,” Korsten offered without paying the matter too much mind for the moment. They were waiting to board a vessel north and Korsten couldn’t help that his thoughts were half preoccupied with the prospect of a brother.
That was when Lerissa gave his arm a merciless pinch. “I recall you a better listener,” she stated with false hauteur.
Korsten looked at her, and down at the reddening mark at the back of his hand. He’d been too mentally preoccupied to even flinch at the assault, but now that he was looking at it, the blunt pain was beginning to blossom. “I recall you precisely as you are,” he said in return, then saw it fit to apologize, though he wasn’t smiling and perhaps for that reason she wasn’t either. Or maybe it was that her misgivings about Cenily’s governor were deeper than Korsten had credited them.
Finally, Korsten gave the subject his full attention. “I detected sincerity from him…sincere concern for this city, though I will admit that he held back considerably on his point of view beyond disliking that the resources here have been so generously tapped by allies.”
“So, he does still hold himself an ally of the Vassenleigh Order?” Lerissa pressed.
“The Vassenleigh Order specifically?” Korsten shook his head. “He didn’t proclaim any loyalty, but he exhibited no animosity and no distrust, both of which have been significant factors in dealing with anyone too far along the borders of Edrinor.”
“I suppose so,” Lerissa conceded and settled herself to silence, standing with the top of her head level with his shoulder, wispy blond strands fluttering across her brow and at her temples in the salty breeze.
Sharlotte was perched several paces away on a mooring post, one leg draping the stout wooden pillar while the other was braced against it. Her brown hair sat in a long rope over her shoulder, her attire a silver-blue shirt with wide sleeves paired with darker blue trousers and knee-tall boots in the same tone as her shirt. A thin sword was slung at her hip and she looked more as if she were waiting to assault the ship than to board it. In spite of her aggressive posture, she was actually quite pretty. Her features were delicate and her eyes gleamed of intelligence and passion. Of course, Lerissa loved her. Of course, anyone could if she would let them.
Korsten understood now why she wouldn’t, and he took his mind from that subject by continuing the conversation with Lerissa. “What is it that you dislike about Governor Jahcery?”
Lerissa looked at him sidelong. “He thought you were lovely, didn’t he?”
Korsten couldn’t help that his brow lifted at that, but he nodded. “I believe so.”
Before he could ask what relevance such a thing bore, Lerissa lifted her face with clear indignation, and said, “He thought Sharlotte was as well. The lecher.”
Korsten refrained from smiling—it wasn’t truly as amusing as the moment tried to make it. He said to Lerissa, “One’s social predilections do not necessarily dictate their political views or conduct. I honestly believe that he will take heed.”
Lerissa offered only a simple nod in response and Korsten let her be. However, he did glance again in Sharlotte’s direction and he wasn’t able to help the small smile that drew to his lips. Even at the surface, she couldn’t force people to dislike her. He understood that she probably would have viewed the nature of Jahcery’s admiration as dangerous, and it certainly could be, but what she shouldn’t believe was that any eye on her was one of potential malice. No one should have ever believed that, but least of all one who had been harmed by someone’s lust. That only empowered their enemies; the personal ones as well as the Vadryn.
The Vadryn made themselves personal, by burrowing to the roots of their despairs and suckling, like children from an unhealthy mother. They grew, like twisted caricatures of family, roosting in the heart, cluttering it with debris, sending poison out to the rest of the body. Sickness and depression, lethargy and weakness, desperation and insanity; those were what the Vadryn brought to men. They truly were as a plague.
Korsten’s smile was long dissipated as the thoughts carried. His gaze had traveled to the water, where he envisioned himself, far out from shore…death clinging to him in the form of demons and the inexorability of the water itself. He envisioned them again, falling off as the ocean’s immense current of energy literally drained them of life.
“I could love you,” Serawe had said, and as Korsten heard the words again in his mind, a note of sympathy replayed itself. His eyes felt immediately wet, and the notion that the reaction had been inspired by not only a demon, but an archdemon—one of the grand conspirators against Edrinor’s survival—struck a chord of terror in him as well.
“I cannot despise him,” Korsten had once said of Renmyr. Now he wondered; had he been speaking of his once-human lover, or of the demon? Was that the true hazard of the Song talent, or of casting Siren; to become emotionally intimate with demons? To feel them beyond an inherent human fear and the latent fascination men could have with darkness? Again, he considered the possibility of Adrea having been overwhelmed by her own talent.
The sea of recent memory churned around him, bubbles of red boiling to the surface, carrying many black arms, all of them reaching for him. “Master!”
Korsten shut his eyes tightly and forcefully took his gaze from the water, moving it tersely to the ship they were waiting to board. He blinked at the complex construction of the merchant vessel, ignoring the moisture that ran down his cheek, and looked over the men preparing The Song of the Coast for her journey north, and dared not consider the sea again for the time present. He could not help but to wonder now, if he had chosen an ill path for the return to Indhovan.
Seven
WAT
ER PEELED AWAY FROM the bow of the Song of the Coast as if a gray-blue flower offering its crystalline blossom to the sun and then fading in an instant, then doing it all again, over and over. Korsten watched from the deck railing, considering the delicate and intricate beauty of water. The thought gradually transmogrified to what may lay beneath now. He had put the demons there himself, that much he knew to be fact. He had full recall of the circumstances occurring within the caves in Indhovan. It had been his decision to draw Serawe from her battle with the crone to her lair, for lack of a better term for it. His Reach had taken him out to sea, where the energetic currents had expunged the consciousness and cohesive forms of multiple demons, including the archdemon leading them. But what would become of their dark essence? Had they already found passage to some other place…to other bodies?
While Korsten’s gaze followed the steady and rapid flow of water turned by the ship’s course, he envisioned the sketchy forms of many within its rolling folds. They passed through his vision as shadows beneath the sunlight glinting off the ever-changing surface. They were long and thin, the equivalent of phantom swimmers tumbling in the waves. But their forms were scarcely human.
It was when he envisioned them grasping for the side of the ship’s hull and gaining purchase with narrow, clawing fingers, that Korsten decided to break his concentration. In that moment, he noticed a form standing beside him. While his waking state of nightmare had him expecting to see the red-doused form of Serawe, he had managed to look calmly over, and felt relief in the action as well as the realization that the presence belonged to Sethaniel.
Irony poked at the back of his mind—a more personal demon he was lately keeping—but he did not succumb to its taunts. He offered what probably felt more than looked like a smile to his father, and the aged Master Brierly held fast to his dignity, casting a stern eye on the more distant waves. Korsten determined not to harass him, though there were many questions that crossed his mind. Most of them had to do with himself, which may have appeared vain or dramatic, though such an interview would have been primarily to confirm the revelations his memory had served him since returning home and perhaps to apologize.
Of the two, apology seemed less appetizing than confirmation, and he knew that was his own pride coming to the surface. He’d spent decades fashioning a monster while in the presence of a beast. The monster he was making was of himself, yes, but the emotional response was real, regardless. Truth manifesting as it had been, he yet dreaded a satisfied response from Sethaniel were his father to receive an admission of wrong from him. Worse than satisfaction, Korsten feared rejection. Though he had for years convinced himself that he had been rejected by his distant parent, he was not so distant from that parent now and to have him walk away…
“I wonder if the storm will catch up to us?” Korsten decided to ask, though in actuality he knew the answer. The weather had yet to satisfy its course to Cenily, its helpless destination before following the current up the coast. They were hours ahead of it.
Sethaniel reminded himself of the cloud line by looking toward it, his gaze skimming the horizon to the very evident seam that lay between a bright day and a dark one. His father did not dignify Korsten’s idle talk, stating plainly, “I was of the impression that priests could predict the weather.”
“Only—” Korsten began, then stopped when Sethaniel looked at him directly. Only those whose talents fall within certain areas of the Spectrum, he was going to say, but he decided to avoid such explanation. “Only some,” he said, and wondered if he had indeed just discounted his father’s curiosity so readily. The man was a scholar and the source from which he—Korsten had no doubt—had drawn the majority of his own inquisitive nature.
“Only some,” Sethaniel echoed, his tone and expression remaining taut. “And you’re one.”
Korsten lifted both eyebrows in surprise that might have lent him to protest, but instead it ushered forth amusement. He looked to the ocean, rather than show his smile over the fact that he had been told what his talent was in as blunt a manner as if he had been told to stop running up and down the deck when a child on the same journey north.
“Were you trying to make idle conversation?” Sethaniel asked next.
“I was,” Korsten admitted, eyeing the frown on his father’s face in the corner of his vision.
Sethaniel nodded, then lowered his gaze momentarily to the railing, and said, “I was going to ask that same question myself.” His features squinted briefly in what appeared a rigid display of embarrassment, one which was passed expertly to renewed stoicism when Sethaniel returned his dark eyes to the view of sky and water.
Korsten continued to observe the image of vulnerability standing in his periphery.
“Regarding the storm,” Sethaniel clarified needlessly, perhaps feeling the indirect stare of the child he’d never known as an adult, whom he may have felt he’d never really known at all.
And now Korsten felt a surge of sympathy. It was pairing uncomfortably with the sensations of awkwardness he could feel radiating from his father. Korsten straightened from his lean against the railing and said, “I’ve been remiss.”
“As have I,” Sethaniel followed.
“Father,” Korsten continued, pausing on the chance some rebuke may have come, but one did not. He started again. “Father…the fact is that the gods have dealt us a peculiar and unhappy lot. I’ve made a considerable mess with most of it and I have many regrets, but at the same time…”
His voice trailed to momentary silence, long enough for him to think of those regrets, but also to think of what he appreciated from all of his misfortune. Much of it had to do with individuals—such as Lerissa, Ashwin, and Merran—and the idea of having never met them was unbearable. Second to the love he felt for his fellow priests, he considered himself prior to priesthood, yet in ignorance about the Vadryn. Yes, the beauty of ignorance was the ignorance itself, but he knew too much now to be able to entertain the notion of himself happily unaware. He would never wish for that, in spite of any and all pain. He would never wish it upon another person, and that was the rectifying factor; his commitment to informing and protecting others from the type of ignorance that very nearly destroyed him.
Looking at Sethaniel directly, he completed his words. “At the same time, I’m glad for what’s happened, and for where I am now. It’s my hope that that’s not offensive to you, because even though we’ve been distant and presumed each other dead, I thought of you frequently. My greatest regret has always been that my actions or my…way of being had turned you from me. It turned me to bitterness.”
Sethaniel nodded once again, his jaw tense. It was noticing the shine in his father’s eyes which reminded him that he had not brought himself to tears. He had no desire to cry over this, in spite of himself. He felt pity for his father that he felt upset by their distance, by his own actions or the lack of them during the years they’d been distant, or perhaps by the simple fact that he could scarcely remember any of it.
“We needn’t discuss such things,” Korsten said, and hoped that the words were taken more as a mercy than avoidance. In all honesty, he would rather forget all the complicated time behind them and contend only with their current moments. Sethaniel had led a long life, not all of it blessed, and it was Korsten’s desire now as his child to alleviate burden and to allow him peace.
“The subject is not what taxes me,” Sethaniel replied. “Truthfully, my memory of you has scarcely gone beyond your youngest years.”
“The years with mother,” Korsten guessed, accurately by the way Sethaniel paid him a glance.
The elder drew in a breath and released it slowly. His brow lifted and he took his time raising his hands onto the deck railing. “Perhaps I centered too much of my life around her.”
On that topic, Korsten was not fit to judge. He held onto his silence.
“But losing her is past,” Sethaniel continued. “Long past, Korsten. You’re her legacy, and her heritage is yours.”
&nb
sp; “Heritage?” Korsten pondered aloud. He understood that his mother was from the north and that his pale skin and the deep hue of his hair were inherited from her. Everyone in Cenily who took notice understood that. But there was something more weighted in the manner in which Sethaniel reminded him of it now.
Sethaniel looked at Korsten, then briefly let his gaze travel behind them. Instinctively, Korsten’s gaze followed. Were they concerned with incidental company? He was confused by his father’s tone just in that moment.
“Your mother was Morennish,” Sethaniel said, not quite at a normal speaking level.
Korsten had never considered it quite like that before—that his mother held a nationality different than Edrinorian—but he did understand that she was from a far upper region. That region had existed well beyond the borderlands they currently knew, and were too distant to have ever been part of Edrinor in any recent era. In a technical sense, that would make her more of Morenne than of anywhere else on their map. He did, however, like to consider that the furthest forests were unnamed country, or some distant wilderness untouched by borders. He supposed now that that didn’t really make much sense, but in any case…
Sethaniel’s next words interrupted his thoughts, and were more hushed. “She was Morennish aristocracy,” his father said, punctuating with a brief pause and a sharp breath. He glanced toward the open deck behind them again, then looked Korsten directly in the eyes in such a way that the years that had aged him were momentarily brushed back, exposing the vitality of the scholar and influencer he once had been. “Her family comprised one of the last of the ancient houses of the region. Those elder bloodlines were at odds with the common people of Morenne, but still had enough sway back then to give some of us hope that the fire of war might be extinguished from within. There were still open political channels between our countries. Marrying your mother was as much an act of diplomacy as it was of love.”
