by Alec Hutson
Vhelan was pointing at the Skein sorcerer and screaming something, but his words were lost in the crash and rumble of the spells erupting from his fellows. A few magisters did turn their attention to this new threat, but their attempts at piercing the dark shell enclosing the sorcerer proved fruitless.
Willa saw the shadow slash the air with his arm violently, and a wave of glistening black energy billowed from the sphere.
“Down!” Telion cried, grabbing her and pulling her farther away from where the magisters were clustered at the edge of the ridge. Still, she saw what happened as the dark magic reached the sorcerers of the Scholia. Prismatic barriers flashed into existence around the magisters in the path of the sorcery, but most of these wardings immediately popped like soap bubbles as the blackness overwhelmed the defenses. When the sorcery hit the magisters, it made their skin bubble and smoke, and several dropped to the ground, clawing at their flesh as it sloughed from their bodies.
A few of the magisters had been successful in repelling this darkness, including Vhelan, though the blue shield hovering in front of him was now riddled with holes like it had been splashed with acid.
Screaming to be heard over the cries of the wounded magisters, Vhelan again gestured at the sorcerer encased within the dark jewel. “Everything! Give everything! Empty yourselves of every drop, but slay that Skein!”
Before the magisters could regroup, Willa saw the figure make another cutting motion with his arm. No visible energy flowed forth this time, but pillars of stone erupted from the ground around where the magisters stood, sending several flying into the air. Willa was lifted as well, but not because of the heaving earth; Telion was carrying her, his great arms wrapped around her like she was a child. From over his shoulder she saw a haze of falling earth and dust, magisters stumbling through the devastation. Then Telion ducked behind a boulder and set her down gently.
“We stay here,” he told her, his wide eyes smears of white in his grimy face. She imagined she didn’t look any better.
The magisters were shouting to each other. She heard Vhelan trying to rally them, while others were crying in pain or fear or anger.
One hysterical voice cut through the din. “She comes! She comes!”
The rock Telion had sheltered them behind was on the southern edge of the ridge, and Willa had a clear view of the fighting below. She scanned the churning masses of men, her heart in her throat. Where? Above the Skein horde, the sphere containing the sorcerer was still, a black pearl set in the white of the sky. No more sorcery flowed forth, as if the one inside had decided that the magisters of the Scholia were no threat, and now he waited for the true challenge.
And there she was. “The queen!” Willa cried, clutching at Telion’s arm.
Behind the Dymorian ranks, Cein d’Kara was ascending into the sky. Her unbound red hair flowed behind her, rippling in the wind made by her passage. She wore the same fine white armor that Willa had seen in the queen’s tent during the council, and though it was hard to tell from this distance she thought she also bore the glittering sword of the Min-Ceruthan sorcerer. From somewhere below, an arrow lofted towards her; Willa’s breath caught in her throat, but the shaft vanished in a puff of flame and smoke when it struck some invisible barrier.
Cein d’Kara arrived at the same elevation as the Skein and then arrested her flight. Far below the two sorcerers, the battle continued to rage, but Willa thought its intensity had slackened, as many eyes had turned heavenward to witness what was about to happen. Willa shivered. It was as if the patron gods of two peoples had descended into the mortal realm to settle this war, like in the old sagas.
The black sphere sheathing the Skein melted away. Willa was shocked to see how young he truly was, barely older than that boy Keilan she had sent into the south. Despite his youth, his face was almost like a skull, skin stretched taut over his sharp-boned features. He did not smile, nor did the queen. They stared at each other with an intensity that unnerved Willa, as if some contest was taking place that she could not see. Nothing about their appearance was similar – he was thin and emaciated, dressed in ragged black robes, while the queen was flushed with radiant life and power, her immaculate white armor shining.
The air around both sorcerers shimmered, strange colors leaking into the sky beyond them. An unnaturally warm wind gusted, rippling the furred hem of Willa’s robes. She glanced at Telion, and saw the fear she felt mirrored in his eyes.
And then the storm broke.
Golden energy shot forth in twisting braids from the Crimson Queen just as bile-green strands of shadow erupted from the outstretched hand of the Skein sorcerer. Shimmering wards flared into existence to obstruct these sorceries: the golden light fractured into countless cutting blades that tried to slice through the dark sphere before finally dissipating into glittering motes, while the grasping strands oozed along the outside of the pale red barrier that protected the queen, as if searching for an opening. Another blast of sorcery emanated from Cein d’Kara, slicing through the attenuated green strand at its thinnest point, and, once severed, the Skein’s magic evaporated. Each of these spells sent concussions of sound rolling over the battlefield and those crouched on the ridge; Willa’s head was ringing as if lightning had struck just beside her.
Tides of sorcery surged and retreated in the air between the two hovering figures, seeming to split reality open along its seams; in the ragged wounds fissuring the sky, Willa glimpsed swirling colors and glistening darkness, like she was peering through a pinhole into other, alien realms. At times the flashes and explosions were too bright to look upon, but each time her vision cleared the queen and the Skein were still there, hurling crackling sorceries in a fractured sky. These two sorcerers did not merely resemble gods, Willa thought, silently amending her previous observation. They were gods, at least compared to the rest of mankind.
It was enough to drive her into the arms of Ama – she understood, at last, why the Pure and the mendicants had attempted for so many centuries to keep sorcery from returning to the world.
Muffled shouting came from elsewhere on the ridge, and moments later a dozen different sorcerous attacks rippled towards the Skein sorcerer. Each of these blasts appeared pathetically small and thin compared to the massive energies being wielded by the two hovering sorcerers, but together they seemed to be having some effect. With the bulk of his power focused on repelling the queen’s assaults and forming his own counterstrokes, it appeared that the Skein could not divert enough attention to what the magisters were doing. Shimmering silver cracks were appearing on the outside of the black jewel that protected him. A shard of glittering darkness even fell away, though it vanished before tumbling to where the armies fought below.
Screams came from the other side of the boulder they sheltered behind, where the surviving magisters were gathered. Not cries of triumph as the Skein sorcerer’s wards flaked away. No; Willa heard terror. She shared a quick glance with Telion, and then crept to the edge of the rock and peered around it.
The fat magister whose seat she’d stolen was sprawled on the ground a dozen paces away. His face was turned towards her, his eyes wide and glassy, blood trickling from his open mouth. Crouched on his huge belly was one of the ragged, pale-skinned children Willa had glimpsed in the Oracle’s vision; the demon’s arm was plunged up to its elbow in the magister’s stomach, and as she watched in horror, the creature pulled out a handful of glistening entrails. Most of the other sorcerers of the Scholia were still on the lip of the ledge, sending waves of sorcery towards the Skein, but a few had noticed the unnatural child and had redirected their attacks. Coiling blue snakes lashed at the demon, blistering the corpse it perched upon and igniting the dead magister’s bloodstained robes, but the sorcery slid across the child like water, dripping down to sizzle upon the ground.
Cries of alarm went up as more and more of the magisters turned to confront this new threat. Suddenly there were more of the
demon children, loping with an unnatural, ape-like gait, leaning forward and using their hands to propel themselves. The magisters’ spells shattered the pillars of stone thrust up earlier by the Skein sorcerer and sent rock and dirt exploding upwards; a veil of dust and smoke settled over everything, and Willa couldn’t see farther than a few span in front of her face.
More anguished cries, trailing into silence. Willa drew back from the edge of the boulder, trying to keep her breathing steady. She started as Telion leaned closer to her.
“We need to get out of here,” he said. His voice was somehow calm, damn the fool.
Willa could only nod jerkily. Her hand scrabbled in the dirt for her cane. She would have to run down the side of a hill, fleeing demons, and find refuge somewhere in the battle swirling below. She had a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to start giggling at the absurdity of it all, but she swallowed it back. Telion would think she’d gone mad.
Through the churning dust she could still see the glowing wards of the queen and the sorcerer. Something had changed, though. Only moments ago, many lines of glittering sorcery had been bombarding the Skein, but now the red barrier protecting the queen was being lashed by thick ropes of twisting black power.
“No,” Willa breathed as the wards protecting Cein d’Kara disappeared in a muted flash and the faintly glowing figure of the Crimson Queen tumbled from the sky like a falling star. Her sorcery guttered and vanished before she fell among the warriors fighting below, and so Willa could not see where she landed.
Numbness filled her, and she struggled to comprehend what had just happened.
The Crimson Queen of Dymoria was dead.
“We go now,” Telion said, and again she was lifted, pressed against his chest.
They stumbled through the roiling dust, her eyes stinging, and several times her protector nearly fell. But somehow he kept his feet, and she realized that he had found the narrow path that descended from the ledge. The air was clearer here, and below her on the switchback trail she could see the scattered corpses of the guards she’d brought from Lyr – they had been torn asunder, as if by the talons of a great beast. Dozens of warriors reduced to bloody chunks. She felt her gorge rise.
Suddenly Telion slowed and stopped, then gently set her down.
“What are you doing?” Willa cried, unable to tear her eyes away from the carnage below.
“Get away,” Telion said simply, and she heard the ring of his silver-hilted swords leaving their sheaths.
She turned. He stood upon the narrow path, facing the direction from which they had just fled. Something was moving in the swirling dust, a shadow coming closer. It was a child, dragging behind it the severed head of a woman by its long hair.
“Telion!” she cried desperately.
“Go!” he shouted over his shoulder, and then he charged into the haze, swinging his swords.
A moment of silence. Willa felt like her legs were going to give way beneath her as she waited. Then the screams began.
Sobbing, Willa turned and began to hobble down the rocky path. Telion’s ragged, pained cries followed her, until they abruptly ceased. Her cane caught between two stones and twisted out of her grip, and her arms flailed as she lost her balance and went tumbling forward. Her face smashed something hard, and she knew no more.
The darkness slides across her skin like cool water. It swaddles her, envelops her, seeping inside her nose and mouth and filling her with the comforting numbness of the abyss in which she floats. She kicks her thin legs and feels the substance of this place roil and eddy. It summons a fragment of a memory: her, slipping like a fish through the glittering waters of a slow-moving river, Elder Brother watching her from the muddy bank.
The moment sinks again as soon as it surfaces, leaving nothing behind except a vague unease. She pushes it aside—for the thing in the dark is suddenly stirring.
It shifts, displacing great washes of cold darkness from far deeper in the abyss. She steels herself, straining to keep herself from spinning away into the black. The thing spasms, and she can feel it rising through layers upon layers of its dreams, edging toward wakefulness.
That must not happen.
In the cold and black, she begins to sing. She does not know where she learned this lullaby, though there are sensations she associates with it: warmth, safety, the smell of dried herbs and flowers.
Moonlight ripples on the lake
See the heron’s shadow in the weeds
Little frog, beware the flashing beak
The hungry fish
The crafty snake
Burrow into your muddy bed
And wait for mother sun to wake
The thing in the darkness stills. Elsewhere, in the great distance, other voices fall silent – her brothers and sisters, also finished soothing the creature that shares this abyss with them. She wants to swim to where they float, but she knows they will recede faster than she can approach.
She has tried many times before.
The darkness shivers, briefly lightening before the black rushes in again, more seamless than a moment ago. Somewhere, the door has opened. It only opens for one reason: a new brother or sister has entered this place. Another presence for her to strive towards but never touch. She sends out her awareness, curious.
She recoils, shocked. The darkness around the stranger seethes with hate and anger. And power. The brother – and she feels it is a brother – rages and thrashes. Fear washes through her, and she wills a message to her new sibling. Calm, brother! Do not wake the thing in the dark! She does not expect her plea to be heard. It never has been before. But the distant presence quiets. And then she hears an echoing reply, carried to her by the swirling black.
Why not?
Keilan opened his eyes.
Something was touching his forehead. He reached up groggily, still half asleep, and swatted at whatever it was. His hand found a finger lightly pressed to his brow, and he twisted his head around to see who was there.
Alyanna was sitting behind him, cross-legged, her full lips drawn down into a frown. She blinked when their eyes met, as if she too was surfacing from somewhere else. Pink dawnlight had just started to fill the windows, though once again the two farm-boys had already risen from their pallets by the hearth to attend to their chores. Senacus was snoring softly, turned away from Keilan to face the cold ashes of last night’s fire; he did this so that the trickle of light spilling from his eyes would not keep the rest of them awake.
“What are you doing?” Keilan whispered, raising himself up on his elbows and turning to face the sorceress.
Alyanna’s face was troubled. She chewed on her lip, studying him in the early morning gloom. “What did you dream about, Keilan?”
Dream? Had he been dreaming? Keilan reached back to see if he could grasp any recollections before they squirmed away. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t remember anything in particular. There was a hollow ache lingering in his chest, though, like he had brushed against some great sorrow.
“I don’t know.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Truly?”
Had he been swimming? Floating in a dark sea? He couldn’t be sure, so he said nothing.
“You were dreaming,” Alyanna said. “And not only were you dreaming, you were dreamsending, of a sort.”
“Dreamsending?”
“A sorcery I have some experience with, though I am not a master. It is . . . bridge building. Reaching out to create connections between minds. Although, in this instance, the bridge is already there.”
Keilan swallowed. “Where does the bridge go?”
Alyanna gripped his arm, then turned it over. Black lines were etched beneath his skin, as if his veins carried something other than blood. Keilan sucked in his breath, frightened.
“To something that is no longer human.”
“The . . . the children?”
“One of them. A girl. It was hard to perceive what was happening. There was darkness, cold, and something vast and terrible swelling in a great abyss.”
“I don’t remember,” Keilan said softly, though now that Alyanna described the dream he could sense the truth in her words. “You could see?”
Alyanna nodded. “It was easier than I thought it would be, to be truthful. I slipped a tiny part of my awareness onto the bridge, so small I don’t think either of you noticed. And it is my memory now. I can share it with you.”
Keilan pushed aside the lingering dread of the dream he could not recall. His fingers lightly brushed the swollen veins in his arm, which to his relief seemed to already be dwindling, their darkness fading. “Yes. I have to know.”
Alyanna returned her fingers to Keilan’s forehead. “Relax. You should try to be open to what I’m about to share. Let me pour my memories into you.”
Keilan calmed the nervous flutter in his stomach. Be open? What does that mean? Then he felt it, a prickling sensation in his head like a spider scurrying along the inside of his skull. It was unnatural, invasive, but he tried to keep from pushing it aside in disgust. Sensations flashed in his mind’s eye – drifting in a cold darkness, the presence lurking below – and then these solitary moments were replaced by a tumbling cascade that gave him the sense that he was experiencing something half-remembered for a second time.
“Is this . . . is this the child’s dream?” he asked between gasping breaths. The sadness and fear and loneliness permeating these memories brought tears to his eyes.
“No,” Alyanna replied, pulling her hand away. “I don’t think so. I doubt very much that these creatures need to sleep at all. I think the bridge that was made is allowing your dreaming mind a glimpse into the deepest recesses of the once-child’s consciousness.”
“So that really happened? Floating in the dark trying to keep a monster from waking?” Keilan shuddered at the thought.
“I believe so,” Alyanna said. “Though remember we are only experiencing the child’s perception of what occurred. Maybe its mind had become untethered from its physical body and was drifting. I don’t know what was truly happening. But I have my suspicions.”
