by Colin Taber
Anton followed, exhausted but ecstatic. He was side by side with Matraia, who stumbled with rasping breaths as all three left a roof of cut rock for a softer ceiling of spring leaves.
The three friends made their way forward, onto what had once been the road.
Wordless but happy, they took in their surroundings.
This was Kalraith! They had made it!
They were in a world of green, a lush place of moss-carpeted ground and towering trees. Behind them, a rocky hillside arose over the exit, and beside the tunnel mouth they’d just left was another, half of it covered over by an ancient rock fall.
More ancient wonders!
Sef and Anton continued walking away from the tunnel, marvelling at the light and space that enveloped them in an exhausted daze. They were still following the road now buried under an age of leaf litter and broken by colonising trees, as it ran into the surrounding woods.
Sef was the first to speak, “I don’t plan on going back that way, not at all, not ever.”
Anton nodded. “Yes, wouldn’t you agree, Matraia?”
Silence was the only answer, causing both Sef and Anton to slow. A moment later they heard something collapse heavily into the leaf litter.
Sef turned, just as Anton did.
Matraia had slumped to the ground, pale and listless, fallen amongst the moss and leaves.
The two hurried to her side.
Her skin was hot and damp, and her breathing fading, but occasionally rattling as a wheeze.
Anton grimaced as he checked her. “It’s the poison!”
Sef looked back at the dark tunnel that yawned open nearby. “Yet we’re still too close to danger.”
“She needs to rest!”
“She’ll die if she stays here, and us with her. When night comes, we won’t be safe, we’ve got to keep moving.”
Anton reluctantly nodded.
Sef noticed the former inquisitor’s lip begin to tremble.
The Outleaguer said, “Moving her now will kill her!”
The big Flet put a hand to his friend’s shoulder. “I know, but we don’t have a choice.”
Anton looked up, tears in his eyes. “I’ve spent so much of my life hurting people and sending them to their deaths, but now I’ve turned from that road. I don’t want to see someone like Matraia fall to her mortality, not if we can help it.”
Sef nodded. “Do what you can for her, but watch the tunnel. I’ll have a quick look around and see if there’s somewhere better we can move her to.”
“Don’t go far.”
Sef got up. “No, I’ll be within ear shot.” He then grabbed a water bag from his pack and handed it to Anton. “Give her this. I’ve been saving it. It’s the last of the water from the blessed stream. I don’t know if it holds any power to heal her now, so many days later, but it can’t hurt.”
Anton took it gratefully. “She’s already had so much divine healing run through her, I think her body is burnt out from all the gifted power. Regardless, I’ll try the water and also seek a blessing from Juvela. Maybe I’ll think of something else that can help.”
Sef nodded and turned to check out their surroundings. By the tree shadows, it looked as though it was already past noon. They needed to find a place to wait out the night, and somewhere safe from the vermin.
Chapter 21
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Empty Streets
-
Ba Er Kaan, The Northcountry.
I walked alongside the Prince as we made our way through the ruined city’s streets. It was a place of wild yards and overgrown gardens, as much as it was of faded, cracked and tumbled ruins. Homes, workshops and towers sat next to each other, all with empty windows and collapsed roofs. Amongst them grew ancient pines, sprawling shrubs, and creepers that had overtaken entire buildings.
There could be no mistake; Ba Er Kaan had been abandoned for centuries.
The street we followed was wider than those we passed, heading uphill as it followed the stream running through the heart of the high valley.
Eventually, we reached a market square edged by stone buildings several floors high.
The space was not a square, more a very long rectangle that ran the full width of the narrow vale. Each of the far sides ended with steep slopes of stone that had been carved into facades for buildings dug into the back of each neighbouring mountain.
Both facades were impressive, tall and grandiose, but in truth, so was the sight of a square so long and empty that it split the mountain city in two.
I stopped to take in the sight of cracked paving, uplifted in places where trees had begun to spread or covered over where some of the surrounding buildings had collapsed to spill slate and masonry into the square. Finally, I said, “This is remarkable.”
The Prince answered, “Grae ru.” His tone was heavy with sadness.
I nodded, embarrassed that I hadn’t chosen better words.
This was a graveyard for his people.
He soon turned to me and said, “Thank you for accepting this journey and what it entails.”
“I just want answers. If walking mountain roads and sleeping under the stars are what I have to do to get them, then I will do it.”
He smiled, satisfied at my response. “We have some daylight left, though just enough to settle into where you shall stay and learn.”
I looked around the square. “Is it one of these buildings?”
He pointed. “At the end, carved from the mountain.”
I turned and looked at the structure, a grand facade of five levels carved from stone, complete with large windows, now darkened, balconies, and a grand set of steps leading up from the square. “It will be easy to find.”
He laughed at that. “You can wander the ruins, but I think you will have little spare time. Still, if you do, I would suggest you take great care.”
“Care because of what?”
“Rickety walls, rotten floors, and loose paving.”
“And why stay in that building?”
“It is the old library, and while its books and scrolls will have become dust, it still holds much information – maps as frescoes, statues of past allies and gods, and much more. Each of these things will not just widen your knowledge but help you understand what is coming and why we will risk everything.”
I turned to look at the large building at the other end of the square, where a huge, carved doorway stood open to show off nothing but a dark interior. The structure was grand, but not welcoming; instead, it was coldly formal. I had a sense that it was a place of faith or a monument. “What of that?” I finally asked, pointing.
“Do not go there. Not yet.”
“Why?”
“It is the catacombs, a place of the dead interred. Not all who lay in there rest. When you are ready, I will take you there so you can test your learnings.”
“More ghosts, like on the road here?”
“Yes, like on the road. Here, they are in much larger numbers though. They are lost souls wanting either rest or Oblivion.”
I started to understand. “You have brought me here to a place full of nothing but the dead, so you can train me to use the celestial and even feed in a controlled way, at no risk to the living.”
“Grae ru.”
“I thought feeding was bad?”
He met my gaze. “You are a soul feeder.”
I blushed to hear it said so bluntly, but now was no time to deny it. “Yes, it is my addiction.”
“You were destined to be one, made that way by Life. Once you awakened, it was only a matter of time before you began feeding.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
“To be a weapon. You are to feed on souls, as our enemy does, to make Death think you are weak and falling into his ways – and then you are to turn that power around and use it against him.”
I looked at him with surprise. “To feed on souls?”
“Yes. Come with me and I will reveal how you are Death’s greatest weakness.”
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br /> Chapter 22
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At Last, Daylight
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The Varm Carga, the island of Kalraith.
Sef didn’t go far, trying not to lose sight of Anton and Matraia or the tunnel mouth. He ranged down the ancient roadway, now a green space of thick moss beds and fallen leaves, all shaded by trees that worked to take the ancient wonder back for the wilds.
He looked not just for any dangers, but also for anything that could help.
The path he took was mostly level, but to one side the land fell away in a steep slope marked with jutting lichen-covered stones and great banks of ferns under a patchy woodland canopy. From the heights of the road, he could occasionally see the distant forest basin, but it was still far away.
If the slope fell on one side, on the other it rose. Lichen and moss softened a lot of the surrounding stone, but sometimes it still showed through in stark contrast to the lush green.
It all looked vital and vibrant after their long under-mountain passage.
Sef was disappointed that they were still so high up and far from Kalraith’s dual forest-basin heart. Around him the air was thin and cool, and the soil – where it was visible – more often gravel and rock. The realisation worried him. The surrounding woods might help cloak them from gargoyles passing above, but it wouldn’t help them get Matraia the aid she needed.
He had lost count of the number times she had been close to death.
The birdwoman had joined them not fully fit, carrying unhealed wounds, and was not used to walking day after day. She had been poisoned twice, stabbed, darted, and had her shoulder raked by a gargoyle. And all that was after the wounds she’d suffered when gargoyles had originally shot her out of the sky.
If the Wildlings had not found her after her initial wounding, she would have died long ago. Well before Sef and Anton would have met her.
Since then, she had been healed by divine magic or by the waters of Dorloth’s blessed stream too many times. That celestial power worked to close wounds, fix lame wings, dilute poison and sustain her, but all came at cost – as all power did. Magic was caustic, a fiery thing not made for mere mortals. It was its own kind of poison to the soft meats, vitals, and tissues of the living. Only those with strong and old souls or those progressing into the divine could wield it safely.
Her body was not just strained, but burnt out. Sef could not see her being healed again by divinely sourced magic.
Her only hope was her people.
Sef looked around, surrounded only by a mix of rock, moss, and trees. But out here there was nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
His spirit sunk with the honest admission.
It was hopeless.
Matraia would be dead by sundown.
-
Anton worked to check Matraia, but she was pale, her breathing shallow, a sheen of sweat giving her a sickly glow. The only deep breaths she took now rattled and rasped in her throat, and more and more, the time between such breaths grew longer.
Tears welled up in his eyes.
She was dying!
He had tried the water from the Dorloth’s stream, but it had done nothing more than make her choke. Not long after, what little consciousness she had held ebbed away, fading as did his hopes.
Anton had pleaded for a blessing from Juvela, and he had even felt it come, but the tentative magic would not stick to the birdwoman, flowing straight through her and dissipating as if she wasn’t even there.
Or that her body could not hold it.
Tears blurred his vision, so he wiped them away. But as he lowered his hand, his vision caught on something – the raised vein on his wrist, the curving line coloured by the blood beneath his skin.
Lifeblood.
Blood that had power.
Blood magic.
He wondered... might that power enable a different kind of healing?
He and Sef had once used blood magic to escape their imprisonment back in Ossard.
He wondered... could it help here?
If healing magic sourced of the divine could no longer help Matraia in any meaningful way, might power sourced by his own life blood work?
Could he offer Matraia some of his own vitality?
They needed her, not just as a guide in this unknown land, but to introduce them to Dorloth. Without her they would most likely die in the high valleys, either through exposure or at the hands of the vermin.
In front of him, Matraia began to tremble, a gasping breath escaping her throat, and then she tensed and choked, still unconscious.
He knew her time was running out.
Anton didn’t know if he could control blood magic well enough to achieve what he wanted, but he was willing to try. With a shake of his head, knowing they had no good options left, he swallowed and drew his own blade.
-
Sef decided to turn back, worried he was ranging too far away. Anton had a knife to protect himself with, but little else, particularly against a swarm of gargoyles or a pack of vermin.
The walk was easy enough and even felt good under the leaves. Before long he could see the Outleaguer, his friend kneeling beside where Matraia lay.
Anton looked like he was checking over her, as though something had happened.
The big Flet furrowed his brow and began to jog. He knew he brought no good news as he had found no sign of any Dagruan, nor anything of use as a safe haven, but there was something in the way Anton tensed over the birdwoman that put Sef on edge.
He glanced at the tunnel entrance, the opening just beyond his companions.
Nothing there, just the dark.
And then he caught sight of a celestial spark, the light flaring, half hidden by Anton’s body.
A bright red spark.
Blood magic!
He sprinted for his friend.
-
Anton drew his knife from his belt and made a cut along his wrist. He was careful to not release too big a flow. As he did, he tried to focus on what he knew of this forbidden magic and his past experiences with it when he and Sef had used it to escape their imprisonment.
His blood welled up rich and red, and then ran around his wrist to fall on the moss that carpeted the ground. As it did, he reached out with his other hand and spread his fingers over the puckered and discoloured dart wound on Matraia’s bicep.
Anton wanted to heal the fallen birdwoman, but first he needed to remove the source of her ills.
He needed to expel the poison.
With a furrowed brow, he watched as his blood ran from his wrist, dripping free in a fast rhythmic drum roll. He used that to focus his thoughts on both his work here and in the celestial as he sought the poison out.
Anton let himself drift, his perception straddling both this world and the next. There, in the celestial, he looked upon Matraia and watched her lifeblood sluggishly pulse through her body, driven by a heart grown heavy with fatigue.
Her blood sparkled red, marked by the failing power it held. Entangled within it were wisps of a darker presence, a blackness. The poison was like a whisper of cursed smoke that rode the currents of her body, touching all it could and working to kill.
With his perception astride both worlds, he began to spend the lifeblood dripping from his wrist. He drew upon the power the vital liquid held to manipulate what spread before him.
Anton thought of blood, rust and death, of darts, poison and yellow gel, of flame, venom and traps. He thought of dragging the vileness from her body like a fisherman would gather a catch in a net. He wove knots in the celestial, creating a tight weave, and then he dragged it through her body and caught everything under her skin that did not belong there.
And that was just for starters.
Back in the real world, the red sparks grew in strength. They began to circle both his fresh wound and her bicep’s sour puncture, binding them together in his forbidden casting.
Frost appeared around Matraia’s bicep, mostly on her clothes, but also on the mos
s she lay upon, coloured pink where it met Anton’s dripping blood.
The flaring red sparks were growing brighter, like a fire’s coals. Clear chunks of ice also began to catch the light as they materialised around the magical focus, joining the orbit of crimson sparks.
Anton worked harder as he continued to spend his blood, the flow pattering out to form a pool in the moss. And with that power he gathered up any poison his net had missed, chasing it again and again through her veins. He drew it from her wings and limbs, and then brought it back through her heart, lungs and other vitals, also banishing it from her brain. As he collected the toxin, the wisps of black gathered, growing in depth and size, but he continued to push them, forcing them this way and that, wherever he needed them to go.
He found the work relatively easy when it came to her veins, although he was forced to go back and collect wisps that lay half hidden where they had settled in her vitals, hiding in their complications and folds. Regardless, he persisted, driving the substance back to its original entry wound.
Each time he finished a search, he would go back and do another check.
While he still found knots of the stuff evading his hunt in some corner or other of her body, with each pass they were fewer.
On his last search there was almost nothing, until he found a lone thread of black and followed it, guessing it would lead to another cluster of toxic dark. Sure enough, he discovered a nest of poison, but what surprised him most about this last sour outpost was that it had covered an all but hidden organ like a web, gathered near her navel, and in the shape of a perfect sphere.
A sphere.
No one had organs shaped like a sphere...
He paused, stunned.
... No one except Lae Velsanans.
Anton worked to collect the poison and reveal the truth. And there, like he was dusting an ages old lamp miraculously still burning, he stripped off the corruption and revealed the blue light of a living naskae.
A soul pearl.
The Dagruan were related to Lae Velsanans.
But he could not delay – she needed help and he was still bleeding.
