Apostate's Pilgrimage: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Empire of Resonance Book 3)

by L. W. Jacobs

  Selwin’s eyes narrowed. “Messenger boy. Don’t want him on board?”

  “I don’t, actually, and I know it’s all just money to you. So what do you need?”

  Selwin wiped his hands on his pants. “Might be I’m doing civic duty. Don’t care about the money.”

  “Might be five hundred marks lets you do something civic in your spare time.”

  “Five hu—” Selwin’s eyes narrowed. “Awful lot of money if you got nothing to hide.”

  “We’re private people,” Tai said, mind spinning for some rational excuse. They hadn’t really bothered since their first talk with Selwin, but they’d need to tell the passenger something. “Our religion is not—well, you’ve seen what we do. We’d rather not draw attention to ourselves.”

  “Religion, is it?” Selwin rubbed his hands again. “Not believers?”

  Believers to a Yershman would mean Eschatolists, the Yersh church of the Ascending and Descending God. “We’re a smaller sect,” Tai said. “On a pilgrimage to Aran, to see the stone.”

  Tai had no idea what Eschatolists thought of waystones, but he’d heard Beal and Ilrick talk of Aran with pride, the capital that never fell.

  Selwin seemed to soften some. “Sight to see, it is. Shatters better’n Shatterbrook at least. Lend your weight to the fight, are ye?”

  That was dangerous territory. Selwin was bringing supplies to the Councilate army, but that didn’t mean he was personally rooting for them. The Yersh had been the first people the Councilate conquered, one hundred years ago or more, but that didn’t mean they liked being ruled. If the Yati Troubles and the Blacksmith Rebellion in Seingard were any measure, no people did. Still, better not to commit, in case he guessed wrong.

  “Just pilgrims, headed for the stone.”

  Selwin narrowed an eye, gazing at him. “Sure you are. Might be I earn a little favor with the whitecoats, carrying their messenger. Boy stays.”

  Tai rolled his shoulders, but there was really nothing he could do short of threatening the man, and that would just make him more likely to report them, with all the whitecoats around. Tai nodded. “Be good to have him on then.”

  Ella came back a few hands later, talking of all the Councilate soldiers in town and excited for the bakery she’d found, with fresh pear tortes. She took a huge bite of one and sighed. “The one thing the Councilate gets right.”

  Marea and Avery showed up toward sunset, the girl’s face glowing and a smile playing about Avery’s lips. They’d snuck off at the last port too, and good for them. Tai’d be doing that as well, if he could risk it.

  An echo of Ydilwen’s words came up then, and Tai shoved it down. The voice was gone. It didn’t matter.

  “Who’s the new guy?” Marea asked as they all settled in to wrapped packets of a fiery riverfish curry with fresh herbs and cassava cake.

  “Messenger,” Tai said. “From Worldsmouth.”

  Ella and Avery looked up sharply at this. “Councilate?” Avery asked, mouth full of curry.

  “Hard to tell,” Tai said. “From Worldsmouth, but I don’t know whose messages he’s running. I didn’t talk to him, just read his thoughts.”

  “I’ll go and feel him out, once we push off,” Ella said. “Whatever he doesn’t tell me, maybe you can learn in mindsight.”

  Tai nodded. “Good. But be careful, he could be a mindseye too, for all we know.”

  Avery gazed through the wall a moment, toward the captain’s room where the messenger was now staying, Selwin having moved in with his boys. “Not a mindseye. A brawler, though doesn’t look like he’s overcome any of his revenants.”

  “A normal person, then,” Marea said. “You’re all so used to shamans and yura and overcoming revenants you forget that most people up here don’t even eat enough winterfood to have uai, much less know how to use it.”

  “Except where we’re going,” Ella said, “where we’re likely to find shamans more powerful than Nauro was.”

  “Yeah. Except for that.”

  They stayed in the cabin savoring their meal as the barge bumped and jostled out of port, then Ella left to seek out the messenger. Tai told her about the pilgrim cover story, then looked intently for the thoughts streaming through the wall. Avery joined him, apparently able to use mindseye resonance too. Were all journeymen as skilled as him?

  Watching a conversation with mindsight was a lot different than hearing it out loud, but Tai did his best to swim through the emotions and images and word snippets that came up, following them through greetings and pleasantries and talk of Worldsmouth. The messenger—Eyadin—was a fearful fellow, thoughts often returning to a lattice-walled stone chamber on a particularly sunny afternoon. As Ella honed in on what he was doing, some half-formed images flashed up that Tai assumed were lies he was telling her, with the image of the leather satchel coming up more and more often, secreted now between Selwin’s bed and the rough wood wall.

  Tai glanced at Avery, who nodded, but they were both too intent on watching to talk. Tai tried following Eyadin’s thoughts upstream, as he had for Semeca, looking for the deeper causes behind the fear, but kept coming back to that sunlit chamber, as though there were something there Eyadin didn’t want to see either, some dam in the flow of his thoughts.

  Two things were clear though, as Ella wrapped up in niceties that felt uncertain from her and relieving from him, to be done talking: Eyadin was no shaman or ninespear, but he was carrying a message intended for the commander at Aran. And he expected it to result in a swift and brutal crackdown.

  Tai stopped watching as Ella came back into the room. “Learn anything?” she asked, slightly out of breath from the climb up the stairs.

  Tai glanced at Avery. “He’s definitely from Worldsmouth, and he keeps thinking back to a particular place and time with fear, but I couldn’t see what happened there.”

  Avery nodded. “I’m guessing it was when he got the messages that he’s carrying. That someone threatened him.”

  “Worldsmouth?” Ella asked. “Are you sure? He said he was from the saltmarshes.”

  “He’s lying, then,” Tai said, and Avery nodded. “What did he say about what he’s doing?”

  “He said he was hoping to enlist,” Ella said. “Though now that I think about it, he could have done that at Fenschurch, or Worldsmouth for that matter.”

  Feynrick grunted. “Any outpost. The legions are always looking for fresh meat.”

  “So he’s going to join the other side?” Ella asked.

  Tai shook his head. “His orders are from someone high up in the Councilate. High up enough that they expect to be obeyed when they command the whole city of Aran be put to the sword.”

  “The whole city?” Marea asked, eyes widening. “They wouldn’t.”

  Tai shot a look at Avery, who nodded. “That’s what I saw too,” the stocky youth said.

  Silence fell on them. The Councilate had been brutal in forcing Ayugen under its control, but killing an entire city?

  “They have no idea what they’re doing,” Ella said. “The ninespears there aren’t going to go down without a fight.”

  “Unless they know exactly what they’re doing,” Avery said. “There are plenty of theories about which arch-revenants have seats on the Council.”

  “Smart,” Feynrick grunted. “Use the legions as a first line of attack. Throw the soldiers at them first and hope sheer numbers get rid of the weak ones, then clean up themselves if they have to.”

  “They may be underestimating the shamans,” Tai said. “What Ollen’s party threw at Nauro… that could take out a lot of soldiers.”

  “And the shamans at Aran are likely to be a lot stronger than Ollen was,” Avery said. “Elders.”

  “And this is where we’re going?” Marea asked. “Right when they get the message to do it?”

  A second silence descended, then Feynrick cracked a smile.

  “Sounds like a party.”

  41

  Sure, the odds are slim, and there is
only one chance at this. But as the book says, patience means little without a decisive strike at opportunity. So I will strike. Patiently.

  --Meyn Harides, personal journals

  Marea stepped off the long dock and took a deep breath, glad to be away from the stink of the tug boat. She’d gotten used to the rowers’ smell during their three-month trip to Ayugen, but that boat had at least stayed a few hundred paces ahead. Flat-fronted barges needed the sleeker tug boats to break the current, and that meant all the sweat and dirt and feces stink of the indentured servants was lashed right to the front of the ship. It was almost worse than walking the whole way herself.

  Almost.

  The good thing about tug boats was they needed to stop frequently to feed and wash the servants, which meant more chances to be alone with Avery. She squeezed his hand and he smiled, stopping to plant a kiss on her lips. It still sent tingles straight through her. She felt so grown-up walking through strange towns on the arm of the man she loved, so far from anyone she knew.

  The actual town of Clearspont was a few hundred paces away from the docks, connected by a long series of boardwalks through tall reeds and the keening wail of cicadas. The ground was bare here, far enough north that snow rarely stayed and plants grew year round. Marea breathed in again, smelling marsh and alfalfa and sweet clover from the fields ahead.

  “Can you imagine living out here?” she asked him. “Just raising a family and working the land and never having to worry about the stuff we do in the city? Doesn’t it sound great?”

  “Maybe we can for awhile, after the stone,” Avery said. “Just you and me.”

  The thought of it turned her knees buttery.

  If there was an after, that was.

  “You’re not worried about Eyadin?” Marea asked, swatting at one of the giant blue-black flies buzzing lazily through the reeds. It’d been two days since they started up the Oxheart, but they hadn’t really talked about the messenger or what he meant for their mission.

  Avery shook his head. “It doesn’t change what we have to do. Honestly, I’m surprised Tai and his crew aren’t excited about it.”

  “Excited?” Marea asked, looking up at him. “Why would they be excited?”

  “Less competition,” Avery said. “If they were smart they’d let the messenger get through, watch the army do its work, and then slip in afterwards. Not all the shamans would get killed, but some of them surely would. The rest would be easier to deal with.”

  Marea gave a little laugh. Was he joking? “And just let the city of Aran die?”

  He glanced down at her, breeze ruffling his peppered locks. “A lot worse could happen if someone else opens the stone. Sometimes you have to accept your losses.”

  She squeezed his hand. He was so confident. “Where did you even learn all this stuff?”

  He shrugged. “Here and there. You learn a lot, growing up in the ninespears.”

  Ahead of them Clearspont’s Shrine of the Ascending God rose up, steep roofs and ornate windows in stark contrast to the single-story buildings and cobbled streets beyond. “What if we just stayed here? Let the whole thing blow over.”

  “And lose my chance? Lose our chance? We’ve talked about this. What if one of Ollen’s friends ended up taking the spear? He would find out about me, find out I betrayed their cell. Come after us. No. This is the only way that we’re safe. For good.”

  Marea sighed. She hated it, but he was probably right. “Well, at least we have the afternoon. Selwin said we wouldn’t shove off until sunset. Where shall we go, my love?”

  It would be a lie if one of her first thoughts wasn’t the copse of goldbark they’d found outside Fenschurch, and the things they had done there, finally alone. She blushed, but Avery just said, “It looks big enough to have a bakery. Maybe we can get some real food, and practice your walking.”

  “Sure.” This was another thing they had been doing with their private time, practicing fatewalking. Turned out it was not as simple as wishing bad things would happen to people, though that was the heart of it. Avery had been showing her concentration techniques, and ways to focus her resonance to make more particular things happen.

  The amount of things he knew was amazing. Her parents had kept up with her education, but Avery must have been reading nonstop when he wasn’t working the docks.

  Clearspont did turn out to have a bakery, with a few simple Yersh-style stools out front, built of bent and braided wood with three legs and a straight back. Avery ordered them a pair of apricot tarts and glasses of honeyed chamomile. They sat out front, inhaling the aroma of baking bread and watching the slow-moving traffic on the street.

  “Something bad,” Avery said in a low tone, though he always used his shamanism to make sure no one could understand what they were saying. He was watching a stout woman with baskets on both arms, delivering eggs to nearby houses. “Bird droppings, maybe. Remember, don’t strike until you’re focused.”

  Marea nodded. This was one of the techniques he’d shown her, to not strike her resonance until her mind was focused, until she was imagining the thing being real, in this case the bird swooping down to meck on the woman. On one of her baskets, Marea decided, though it often didn’t go exactly as she wanted. Still, she imagined the look of the bird, a blue-winged marsh jay, the smell of the air, the sound of the meck landing, all the fine details he’d said would focus the resonance, focus her desire for it to be real.

  Then she struck, resonance whining in her bones, eyes boring into the woman.

  A jay squawked and swooped, leaving droppings half a pace from the woman. The woman startled and cursed, then made the rising sign of the Ascending God and hurried about her way.

  “Good,” Avery said, “you’re getting it. Try closing your eyes next time, once you’ve gotten the scene, to focus your imagination more. See it all, hear it, feel it, touch it, taste it.”

  Marea nodded, wanting to do him proud, wanting to master her rarest and most powerful of resonances. To be his equal in at least one way. “Who’s next?”

  They tried making a carpenter trip next, then a farmer’s cartwheel break, then an alley cat step in the path of the one of the town’s ministers. Each time something like the intended effect happened, but no matter what they tried, she couldn’t make it happen exactly.

  “I’m sorry, love,” she said, after the minister ended up kicking the cat—Eschatolists were notoriously wary of cats. “I just can’t seem to get it.”

  “You’re doing great,” he said. “It’s not easy, and we’ve only been at it a few days. You’ll get it.”

  Then he leaned in and kissed her, to the raised eyebrows of the egg matron passing the other direction. Marea smiled, not caring, wanting the woman to see. To be envious of her, who had only been an object of mistrust or pity for so many months.

  Avery broke off suddenly, eyes looking intently over her shoulder. “Ready for a real challenge?” he asked, voice low.

  “Yes,” she said. “Anything.” She would get control of her resonance. She would impress this man who knew and could do so much.

  Because otherwise, eventually, he’d realize he was too good for her. And leave.

  “Good,” he said, still looking over her shoulder. “Don’t look, but the messenger from the Argot is coming. Eyadin. He’s got his satchel with him. I want you to make it open, make his documents fall out.”

  That was a lot harder than anything they’d tried so far—a lot less likely—but she nodded, wanting to do it, believing she could do it. Marea focused on the idea of her doing it right, trying to sway the odds. Then glanced at Eyadin and started visualizing the worn leather satchel, a weak spot in the shoulder strap giving way, the flutter of papers spilling out, the gentle wind they would make as they see-sawed through the air, his startled cry, the blue sky, the smell of yeast and alfalfa—

  Avery squeezed her shoulder. “You can do this. In three.”

  Her eyes were still shut, imagining every detail of the slip as clearly as possi
ble, desiring it to happen as strongly as she could. Two. For Avery. For her. For their future.

  One. She struck resonance and opened her eyes, willing fate to bend, willing the weakest point in his strap to break, the papers to flutter out.

  And they did. Not exactly as she’d thought—the bag slipped from his shoulder and flapped open, but still.

  Avery was already there, walking casually toward the messenger when it happened. He must have stood up after squeezing her shoulder, must have started walking toward the man.

  Eyadin blanched, and Marea saw Avery stutter for a moment, as if his whole body snapped left, or as if he’d timeslipped. She’d seen Ella do something like that, when she slipped for a moment.

  “Let me help you, friend!” Avery was calling, bending to pick the scattered papers off the cobblestone.

  Eyadin protested, face still white as lime, thrusting handfuls of papers into his satchel. He looked deathly afraid—and he should be, carrying the kind of messages he did—but Marea smiled, dropping her resonance and reveling in what just happened. In what she’d made happen.

  “That was amazing,” Avery said when he came back, his eyes alight. “I didn’t think you could do it.”

  She smiled. “I wasn’t sure I could, either. And did you timeslip?”

  He nodded. Was there anything the man couldn’t do? “I wanted to know what his message said. The one about Aran.”

  “And?”

  He sat back down. “And we saw it right in mindsight. One of the Council members is ordering an attack on Aran.”

  “Is it—do you think it’s one of the archrevenants?”

  “Hard to know,” Avery said. “But at least I have names now. That’s more than any other shaman knows.”

  Marea took a bite of her pastry, savoring the mix of salt-crusted bread and sweet apricot. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Nothing, for now. But when we get the spear…”

  She nodded. “They will be your enemies.”

  “Or our allies,” he said, gazing down the street at a trio of dusty travelers, bags balanced on curved sticks over their shoulders. “As far as we know, no arch-revenant has attacked another in a long time. Possibly never. There are theories that one person can’t master more than one resonance, but others think maybe they are in some sort of alliance.”