by Ren Cummins
Cousins’s voice was calm, somber. “You cannot have prepared us better, Goya. Not for this.”
Briseida nodded her head, placing her hand on Goya’s arm. “They will bear it, Goya. They merely need time to face their pain.”
Shaking her head firmly, Goya shushed her. “No. There is no time now, we have not the luxury of time. Evil has struck at us, and it must be answered.” Pointing at Rom and Cousins in turn, she added, “And not answered in kind, but resolved in the manner of the wise and the deliberate.”
She took a deep breath, and Rom was struck by how old she suddenly seemed; it was as if her skin was drawn tightly across her bones, and sheer will and a cane was all that kept her standing. “The time has come for you three to accept the roles which fate has decreed for you: Sheharid, Smith, and Seer. The powers of action, knowledge and wisdom, granted into your hearts and minds and carried upon the shoulders of the most unassuming and unexpected of individuals.”
Lowering her hand, she took Kari’s and helped the young girl stand before her. “I am old enough to be sorry for many things, but seeing your heart break may be the one that pains me the most, young lady.”
Kari stepped closer and embraced the old shaman. “I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed.
Goya looked from Cousins to Rom, and nodded gently. “You will know. Together,” she emphasized, “you will know.”
The other two children came closer and the five people stood in the relative silence of the apothecary, holding one another until they found the strength together to act.
Chapter 19: Seeing Things
Once outside, Rom summoned Yu, who took only a moment to smell the air.
“There are many enemies near,” he said, baring his teeth.
Rom nodded. “Take the sky,” she said. “I’ll follow along with these two,” she explained, pointing towards Cousins and Kari as they climbed on his Runabout. “But stay close.”
He nodded, lifting into the air with a mighty flap of his wings. She looked at Mulligan, who nodded and tightened his grip on her shoulder. “I’ll watch behind us as we go,” he offered.
Rom tilted her head to Cousins, who pulled his looking glasses over his eyes and pulled Kari’s arms more tightly around his waist. “We’re going to be going very quickly,” he explained, before she had a chance to protest. He pulled on the motors and cranked back the accelerator, launching them forward dramatically down the street. Rom took a last glance at the windows above the shop, bit her lower lip and launched herself into the air after her two friends.
They hadn’t gone two blocks before they were stopped by a pair of creatures from the deep wild. One was dark green with a dozen or more tendrils extending from a variety of angles, the other an orange-furred creature with a serpentine neck and six legs, with a tail ending in a large barbed spike. Yu swooped in first, engaging the orange beast, while Rom aimed her jump to land her between the green one and her friends who skidded to a halt in the entry to the intersection.
She blocked two of its tendrils, but a third wound itself around the base of her staff and tore it from her hands.
“It’s got some kind of suckers for hands,” Mulligan yelled. “Its grip is pretty strong!”
“I noticed,” Rom frowned. The creature seemed momentarily distracted by the staff, trying to wedge it into its beak-like mouth – Rom tapped the black gem on her bracelet, however, and the staff vanished. She tapped it again, and the staff returned into her hands.
She smiled grimly at the green creature, who was again moving towards her. “My staff,” she explained. She twirled it over her head and brought it down firmly against its head, but although it was a direct hit, there seemed to be nothing solid underneath its skin – ripples from the point of the staff’s impact covered its exterior, but what normally would have broken through bones appeared to have no effect.
“Hmm,” Rom grimaced. “That’s not going to work, I think.” She leaped over its next attack, spinning to land behind it. It turned with her, and she moved further from Cousins and Kari, trying to keep herself as its more appealing target. She tapped the stone again, sending back the staff.
“Something sharp,” Mulligan offered. “It’s got no bones; he’s mostly skin and cartilage.”
Her finger paused above the black stone, then tapped it once more. In her hands appeared a long sword, nearly as long as she was tall – and yet it felt perfectly balanced. The monster only blinked its single eye one time before continuing to advance on her.
She started her swing low, misjudging the length of the sword and causing it to spark along the street for several feet of its arc before rising to cleave two of the extending tentacles. As viscous black ooze dripped from the two severed ends, a high-pitched screech roared from the creature’s beak. Rom stepped in closer, making short work of the remaining limbs, and spun the sword in her hands before cleaving it diagonally through its eye. It lay on the ground in an expanding pool of the black ichor – its blood, she assumed – twitching and gurgling.
Behind her, Yu held the orange beast’s neck in his mouth while it flailed helplessly. His jaws clenched, generating a sickening crunch as he crushed its spine.
Rom took only a moment to assess the two creatures, and sensed only their bestial fear and aggression.
She sent the sword back to her bracelet. “They didn’t come here to feed,” she said. “And they weren’t here because they were trapped near death, either. Something chased them here.”
Her eyes looked in the general direction of the fields. “And they were just the fastest ones. More are coming.”
“How soon?” Cousins asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t tell, exactly. But there’s a lot of them.”
He sighed. “We’d better go, then.”
* * * * *
They managed to arrive at the shop without further incident, but found several members of the defense guild at the shop. Rom sent Yu back away before the guards noticed them, and Cousins pulled up in front of the building, extending a hand to help Kari from the back of the seat. Fortunately, one of the guards was the oldest son of one of Cousin’s aunts or somesuch, so they were able to remain as close as they were to an investigation zone. Even so, the man shook his head when the children approached him.
“I’m sorry, Cousins,” he said, “but the Ministers have forbidden any unauthorized people from being inside the building until we have completed our investigation.”
“We’re not here to interfere, Galder,” Cousins said soberly. “Though I’ve been told that a friend of ours was involved – additionally,” he added, pointing a thumb in Kari’s direction, “I believe this young lady may have been acquainted with the suspects.”
Kari hadn’t taken her eyes from the front of the store, but managed to nod her head shakily. “I knew the men who ran the shop,” she said. Rom stepped closer and put a hand on her shoulder, though she suspected she felt as bad as did her friend. “Marcos and Jondal.”
“Miss?” The constable stepped closer to Kari and began to slowly ask her a few basic questions about the men from the store. While she answered, Cousins slipped the Looking Glasses back onto his head, looking around the street. He’d spent a good deal of time with the glasses over the past few months and had learned a few ways to adjust the lenses so that they showed more than just what a person might need - - through Briseida’s lessons in scrying, he’d come to understand that the lenses in the Looking Glasses functioned as they did by concentrating the perceptible energies that connected people to the paths of their life. For example, when they had used the Glasses in Goya’s library, it drew them visually to the objects which most closely related to their near future, in effect simply helping them see the items which they were going to choose.
He had asked her how that was possible – because the odds of them picking their respective items were so small if they hadn’t first used the glasses and thus be directed to them.
Briseida explained that it was impossible to s
ee a path and not be changed by it; so the simple act of using the glasses decided a course of their lives, in a manner of speaking. At first it hadn’t made sense to him, but the more he used the Glasses, the more he understood it.
Additionally, the apertures of the lenses could be focused in a way that allowed him to see the path a person had followed – essentially, allowing him to look into the past, with limited clarity. He was still learning how to do that, however, with any kind of consistent success.
Suddenly, however, an image blurred to life – for just an instant, and just as quickly vanished. He struggled to readjust the lenses, taking him several attempts to refine it completely. At last, it stood before him, translucent like vapor in the autumn night. He could almost touch the figure that stood, pausing, one hand on the door’s handle, and staring right at him.
There was no mistaking the figure. It was Ian.
He was staring right at Cousins, somehow, squinting as if he could see the boy watching him.
The constable looked over and noticed Cousins. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Cousins raised his hand. “I can see him – Ian – standing right there,” he pointed. “I think it’s just an afterimage, though.”
The constables of the Defense Guild were well-schooled in a broad understanding of science as well as the arts, even if they didn’t practice much beyond the basics. They did, however, know how to understand the use of them when they saw it. The constable waved to the other guard who was stationed at the door. “Step aside, Lieutenant; I think we might have a Vision being tracked here.”
Kari and Rom ran to stand beside the constable.
Aside from acknowledging that it was Ian, however, Cousins wasn’t entirely certain what to do next. But as he leaned back on his heels, the image of Ian began to move slightly in reverse – taking his hand off the door handle, looking away from Cousins and taking a half-step backwards. Cousins leaned closer and the image moved forward again, gripping the handle and looking once more at Cousins.
He took a slow step ahead and the transparent Ian pushed the door open and moved inside. Cousins followed him. As he walked, the image of Ian played out in conjunction with his steps – when he paused, so did Ian.
They followed Cousins through the shop, Galder waving away the handful of other constables who were examining the building’s interior. The boy led them into the back storage area, pausing in the doorway before turning to his right. Reacting to Ian’s sudden change of expression, he jumped back.
“He’s been shot by someone!” he yelled. He turned around towards them, waving his hands. “Move! Move, you’re in the way of….” They split apart, creating an unimpeded line of sight between him and whatever it was he was seeing. His expression turned from one of mild frustration to palpable rage.
“I should have known,” he growled. “It was Molla.”
One of the constables stepped forward. “Who’s Molla, young man?”
Kari turned to the one who had asked, and began to give a basic description of what they knew of her, but Cousins waved his hands again. “Shhh!” he said. “She’s saying something, and I can’t quite make it out.”
Galder stepped closer. “You can hear her, too?” he asked.
“No,” whispered Cousins, “but I can almost read her lips. She’s saying something to the two men over there” – he pointed to the far corner where no one was currently standing – “telling them to send some kind of report to…to the Queen.” He pointed again to the corner. “There’s a panel in that wall hiding a communications system they use to send and receive messages,” he explained.
He rocked slowly back and forth, causing the images to go back and repeat over and over until he was sure he understood what they were saying – or what they had said, he mentally corrected himself.
Frowning, he repeated the words to the rest of them, as best as he was able to comprehend them.
“’Tell her that the girl has two friends’,” he mimicked. “’One is a smith and the other may be a seer’.”
Rom frowned. “Is she talking about us?” she asked.
Kari nodded. “I think so.”
Cousins moved closer to the corner, watching the images of the two men sending their message, and receiving their response. He watched, horrified, as they read it aloud to Molla.
He repeated and replayed it several times until he was certain he had read it correctly. When he did, he turned to them all and said it aloud.
“The message from the queen said, ‘Withdraw immediately. We will chase the beasts to scourge the town and kill them all.’”
Kari gasped. “She’d kill everyone…just to get us?”
The constables nodded to each other. “It all fits,” Galder said. “The fires we saw that flew from the Wall towards the Wild, and the rash of attacks we’ve had reported this morning.” He turned to Kari. “We’ve had reports from the Diviners that the Queen was searching for something or someone and had sent spies among us, but we’ve been unsuccessful at finding them. But we never thought she would go this far.”
Cousins knelt down, careful to avoid a darkened stain upon the cold stone floor, his attention drawn to a flat piece of paper which lay close to a large stack of boxes. Face up, Cousins recognized the inscription from Ian’s Fatalterator spell. He touched it with a single index finger, causing it to activate and dissolve into a faint breath of dust. Slowly, he rose again to his feet and looked at the others, his lips drawn in a straight line across his face.
Rom whispered, “There are a lot more creatures coming. I can feel them.”
The other constable gritted his teeth. “More of them? Now? The barrier takes all day to recharge – we won’t have it up if they get here before nightfall.”
“Rom,” Kari asked, “what should we do?”
Scratching Mully’s head, Rom tried to think of an answer. “I’ll go and fight - - I can’t stop them all, but maybe I can stop some of them.”
“We’ll summon the full complement of the defense guild – we’ll recruit every able-bodied man, woman and child, and set up a defensive perimeter around the town,” Galder said. He nodded towards the other constable, who saluted and left quickly to follow Galder’s instructions.
Cousins lifted the glasses up onto his forehead. “I’ve got a garrison of 50 men, all trained and armed. They will help out, as well.”
Galder shook his head. “You’ll have to explain to me sometime how you wound up with that kind of manpower.”
Cousins responded with a shrug. “I know a guy.”
“I need to get to the college,” Kari whispered. It took all of her strength to stay on her feet; speaking at all threatened to knock her legs out from under her again. “I think I can help.”
Rom was closest to her, and was thus the only one in the room who heard her. “Cousins,” she said, “can you take Kari to her college?”
He nodded, and she gave Kari one more fierce hug. “You be safe,” she told her friends.
“You be safer,” Kari replied.
The young Sheharid took a deep breath. “I’ll head to the fields and try to clear out any creatures I find along the way.”
Mully looked uncomfortable as he spoke, aware of the shock his obvious sentience seemed to generate. “The three of you will be well,” he assured them. “This is not the end of your stories.”
The three children all wore sad smiles as they looked at one another, aware of the risks they all faced, but buoyed by the hope that they would be enough to turn the tide that threatened their entire town. For each of them, it was a level of faith and confidence they had never known; it filled them and made their burdens feel lighter.
They only prayed it would be enough.
* * * * *
Cousins nodded an informal salute to Galder as he and Kari sped off on his Runabout.
Galder looked to Rom. “If you don’t mind my asking, miss, do you need transportation? I can have one of the constables escort you.”
Sh
e shook her head. “Thank you, but I’ve got my own way.” She tapped the bracelet, summoning the shepherd’s crook, and, with a sad smile, launched into the air and out of his view. On her shoulder sat Mully, holding tight and offering advice.
Galder and the other remaining constables looked among one another. One of the others asked simply, “Is she…?”
Looking up in the direction she had disappeared, Galder nodded. “A Reaper? Yes, I believe so.”
The other two constables made good fortune gestures and the three walked at a brisk pace towards their local offices. Galder thought about the various prayers and incantations of good luck he had learned as a child, but the one that kept returning to him involved a promise of three children who would come to power in the last nights of the city’s strength. He’d thought it was one of those stories, like the ones about how the machines had once been human, or how the wall had grown in the middle of a rainstorm.
He shook his head slightly. There was a lot to be done, he reminded himself: far too much to do and not nearly enough time to waste it thinking back on old childhood rhymes.
Chapter 20: Surprising Odds
Rom took the most direct route to the edge of the city – rooftop to rooftop. She’d only gone a few buildings when a gut-wrenching ache erupted in her stomach. Skidding to a stop on one of the ledges, she saw a small pack of four animals moving quickly down the street near her. In their minds she could only hear thoughts of violence – predatory aggression and the thrill of the hunt. The fields were only a few hundred feet from her, but she couldn’t let these creatures move further into the town; not while the people were still unprepared.
They had paused to sniff at one of the steam-conversion stations – a massive engine which pumped out enough compressed steam to supply several of the nearby blocks. It sat in a deep rounded basin of polished steel. Kari had once explained that the purpose of the bowl below the structure was to prevent any explosive blast from a ruptured pipe from leveling the nearby buildings, instead channeling the pressure up and harmlessly away.
