by John March
“Who?” Ebryn asked.
“Duca Vittore? He's the ruler of the city,” Leon said.
“The king?”
Leon laughed. “We have no kings here. Vittore is elected. Every fourth year the electors assemble to choose the city leader, although it's usually the same person, unless they've made a complete mess of things.”
“Wait,” Sash said. “You didn't explain the bit before the carts, the men in red with the winged costumes.”
“They're supposed to be the Culvarites,” Leon said.
Teblin emptied the dregs of his tankard and wiped his beard. “The destroyers of Volane, and the ones surrounded by the Culvarites represent the band of heroes who rescued this fair city from the calamity. Naturally, they keep this part brief, to avoid giving anybody ideas, to focus attention on the powerful guilds and families of now, not some vanishing details of history. It's all theatre, do you see?”
“So what kinds of great stories?” Sash asked. “What play are you doing next? About these Culvarites?”
Teblin leant forward and laughed. “Dear me, no, I want my audiences to come back for more—”
Ebryn found his attention wandering as Teblin launched into a lengthy description of a script he'd plotted. He watched with interest as a man at the end of the table opposite packed the bulb of a pipe, and the careful process of lighting it, when he'd finished.
Ebryn's mind started to float away, as he began his seventh tankard, like the blue smoke from the weed.
A while later Ebryn woke with his cheek resting in something wet, blinking stupidly at the side of a tankard.
He felt himself being lifted, and opened his eyes again to find a pair of sandalled heels moved in and out of view. And other feet, wearing shoes and boots, all moving across a surface of smooth wood above his head.
The wood disappeared, replaced by rows of shells. Cobblestones — not shells. They were outside before he realised Addae had hoisted him over one shoulder, and was carrying him head down.
He closed his eyes, feeling he'd like nothing better than to go to sleep. When he looked again two liquid brown eyes stared back at him. The salty seaweed smell of fish on Elouphe's breath made his stomach clench.
“You be sick Eby? Eby, you be sick?”
“No … yes …”
“Eby be sick Addy.”
Addae hurriedly put Ebryn back on his feet, where he stood unsteadily, facing the entrance of the tavern.
Sash had appeared in the doorway, deep in discussion with Teblin.
“Beautiful, isn't she, Addae?”
“Who is beautiful?”
“I mean … Sashael's who I mean,” Ebryn said, struggling to join his words as he lurched sideways.
Addae caught him as he slipped, a strong arm sliding under his, hoisting him up.
“My friend, you are speaking these words to the wrong person. Be careful, you do not want to fall down here. There is much there you do not wish to have on your clothing.”
Ebryn spotted the fountain and pulled free, stumbling towards it, feeling as if the ground beneath him was tilting away with each step.
“I'm feeling fine now — gonna rest here a bit,” Ebryn mumbled, lying down on the damp paving next to the fountain.
“Wet there, Eby,” Elouphe said.
Ebryn turned his head, making the world spin. “Where's Sash?”
“I'm right here,” she said.
He looked at her blankly, wondering where she'd appeared from, trying to recall what he'd just said. Whatever it was, he knew she wasn't supposed to have heard it.
“Is he all right?” Sash asked.
“You can see now why I do not drink this ale,” Addae said from somewhere nearby.
Ebryn gripped the ground, allowing his too-heavy head to rest there, watching spirals of gold flowing out through his fingertips to form mesmerising patterns in the hard stone.
Ben-gan
FADING RED LIGHT, shining through high narrow windows, crept up the wall as the day shortened. The last of the evening's illumination barely touched the tops of high bookshelves, alcoves and arched entrances to other rooms. Three illuminated tables stood out starkly in the increasing gloom, the source-less yellow light above them produced by command or touch, the means somehow imbued directly with the wood using some long forgotten binding.
Fla stood concealed in a dark nook amongst the bookshelves towards the back of the library. He leant heavily on his metal-shod quarter staff, raising his left leg from the floor to relieve the pressure on his joints.
Throbbing pain in his hips had started to spread to his back and thighs in muscle cramping waves. Focus on work and unyielding stubbornness were his best defences when the pain grew bad, but when it pressed on him hardest, he still found himself gasping for breath, drenched in sweat, wiping away the black ichor that leaked from his left eye.
Fla had dressed in the dark maroon of the Aremetuet order, with his hood pulled forward over his face. He preferred to wear black for concealment, but the Aremetuet colours allowed him unquestioning access to the library, and once inside he became just another member of the orders, rummaging through piles of mouldering books for valuable nuggets of information.
The glow around the nearest table dimmed as old Hoi Helha lurched to his feet and shuffled off towards the exit, nodding at the occupants of the other tables as he went.
Sketik remained, sitting with his back to Fla, the hood of his brown robes thrown back to reveal long greasy black hair. He leant forward talking to his companion in a low voice, so Fla could see nothing of his drawn cadaverous face, and only occasional glimpses of his white long fingered hands gesturing animatedly.
Opposite Sketik sat Sevoi Phlecur, formerly Elector and master of the dissolved Exemetuer order, now a prisoner under an arrangement which restricted his freedom to the area around the library. Sevoi's eyes, barely visible in the deep shadows of his face, flicked from side to side as he listened to his former student. His lips, thin to the point of invisibility, barely moved when he spoke.
At the far end of the room, near the doorway, Hoi passed Tuk-myrr and Suru Hava in their own little pool of light, with their heads down over books.
They looked up as the old man passed. Tuk-myrr, long faced with mouth turned down at the corners, and a balding patch on top of his head reflecting the light. Suru with long dark hair growing wintry, and lines of resignation etched permanently into her features. Like Hoi and Sevoi, they wore their own manacles of sevyric iron, more effective than any cage for a caster.
Only freaks, outcasts, and criminals remain, Fla thought sourly. With Hoi gone, Fla turned his attention back to Sketik and Sevoi, struggling to make out their conversation. His experiments with the black substance he'd stolen from Sketik's laboratory had yielded nothing useful, yet he was certain a man of Sevoi's reputation would hardly waste time, even that of a lackey, pursuing meaningless research.
He'd found a hidden place as near to the two men as he could, but they both spoke so quietly he could barely hear more than one word in ten, and Sevoi hardly moved his face when he spoke, giving nothing away with his expression or tone.
Each day, he imagined hurting Sketik, making the man grovel like a squirming slug, his patience eaten away a little more by a boiling frustration. Only the certain feeling he'd miss a vital secret held him back.
With not much to be gleaned from the back of a man's head, Fla allowed his attention to stray. The library was a waste of precious time, perhaps better consumed investigating Sketik's work-room again, or completing his own studies with the black liquid droplets taken on his first break-in.
A glint of light on metal at the far side of the room drew his eyes, and there stood Ben-gan, the greatest of them all. For a moment he thought his tired eyes must be playing tricks on him.
He watched as Ben-gan placed the second of his manacles noiselessly on a small table in an alcove just beside the entrance, then stepped away into the deep shadows near the bookshelves, his lips moving s
ilently, hands performing wide slow-waving motions at the floor.
Fla's mind raced with the implications. Ben-gan's manacles were still visible, lying side by side on the table, reflecting light unevenly from their edges. Perhaps, he thought, Ben-gan's guards had failed to secure them properly last time they'd released him to complete one of the tasks for the city only he knew how to perform.
The space around Ben-gan seemed to ripple and flow, and Fla felt something move in the air, expanding outwards to engulf the room.
He reacted without thought, hands lunging spasmodically as he attempted a defensive casting, but a heartbeat too late. Mid-way his eyes lost focus, and his hand drifted away. His head reeled at the power, drawn from awareness of his surroundings, like a small boat riding a gigantic oceanic swell.
Not a casting, a distant part of his mind realised, with all that sevyric iron in the room, but some kind of a summoning — something Ben-gan must have prepared in advance. He could feel it wrapping itself around his thoughts, marvelling at the skill, realising he had been overtaken by it, yet not caring as it carried him along.
As abruptly as it had arrived, the feeling of rising fell away, drawing him down, dragging on his eyes, a numbing, drowsy feeling, like sliding from the crest of a vast wave into the trough below.
Through half-open eyes he could see Sketik and Sevoi sliding forwards, until their heads rested on the table, mouths open, breathing peacefully. Fla fought against it, as if swimming against a relentless invisible tide, but he could feel himself drifting away.
His staff fell from his hands, his foot slipping from where it rested on the chair, head dropping as his eyes closed, and he slipped forward onto his knees. Pain exploded inside him, like two white hot spikes driven into the bones of his thighs. Instantly awake again, he bit into the flap of cloak across his mouth to stop himself screaming. Whatever Ben-gan had set on him was gone, driven out by the agonising stumble.
Struggling to his feet, using his staff for support, as soon as he felt his legs could support him, Fla emerged cautiously from his hiding place, trying to see where Ben-gan had gone. He stepped carefully between the tables where the other four had their heads down, eyes shut.
He passed the table-filled lobby, following down the avenue of books into which he thought he'd seen Ben-gan disappearing, when he heard a muffled clapping sound. A moment later the world skin around him convulsed, the shock rushing outwards from a point nearby, striking him like a punch to the stomach.
Fla staggered forward, gasping, navigating through the maze of shelves to the place he thought the noise had come from, guided in part by a cool blue glow from the source, reflecting from the ceiling and tops of shelves.
He found a translucent sphere of blue-toned quicksilver brightness hanging in the air inside a well concealed, narrow alcove. Half again as high as a normal man and twice as wide, the surface seemed to flow in a perpetual soundless cascade.
Fla extended the tip of his staff, and pushed it into the space the sphere occupied. It passed through without resistance, but assumed a silvery appearance as if dipped into liquid metal.
He spoke the words of a sense casting almost inaudibly, extending his other hand.
The far-sensing flowed outwards like an impossibly refined, intangible extension to his own skin, allowing him to touch everything within a dozen paces at once. He pushed the leading edge forward carefully, until it overlapped the sphere, but it seemed to encounter nothing, as if the sphere lacked physical form or shape and merely existed as some kind of extremely sophisticated glamour. He glanced backwards over his shoulder. He detected no sign of Ben-gan.
Fla withdrew the staff, examining the wooden haft and metal head, running a hand over its entire length. The surfaces felt, and looked, perfectly unmarked. He realised he must be looking at something like the egress point of a traveller, a walker of the between, somehow extended and held open. A portal — but to where?
Part of his mind ran ahead, trying to deduce how such a thing could be created, while another part boggled at the possibilities. Overwhelmingly though, he desperately needed to find out who, or what, lay on the other side.
If the usual laws followed, he would be stripped bare of shields and ward, incapable of any casting the moment he touched the surface of the blue void. And on the other side, who knew what? Fla didn't find the idea comforting, and yet here lay an irresistible mystery. He took a deep, painful breath to steady himself against the sensation of falling, and stepped into the sphere.
He looked back quickly to be sure the portal remained behind him. From this side it looked altogether more sinister, a sucking black void, a pulsating angry scar rupturing the crystalline beauty of the interior.
The place he found himself in was unlike any he had seen, or anywhere heard described. He seemed to be in a small space, like a narrow cavern, made entirely of a partially transparent substance much like pure blue ice. In spite of this, the air felt pleasantly cool, rather than frozen.
Near at hand, the surfaces appeared insubstantial, almost vaporous. Further away they seemed to become solid, but suffused with a pure sourceless light which made it impossible to determine how closely he might be confined. He found walking here easier, yet still painful.
Curiosity overcoming caution, Fla followed the direction of the cavern. He quickly realised the portal had opened onto a path, and not some natural formation. It veered right, and climbed gently for a few dozen paces, then abruptly cut left.
Had he been in Vergence, he would now be on the edge of the pattern chamber and approaching the weatherstone, that enigmatic artefact, which had so far eluded his determined efforts to discover its secrets.
He shuffled round the corner, moving carefully, uncomfortably aware that, should the rules of the between apply here, he'd lost his ability to perform castings as he stepped through the portal. Fla knew it would be wiser to turn back, but he needed to find out more — the nature of the tunnel, understand how Ben-gan had managed to open it, and what he wanted here. Fla guessed they must be perilously close to the great central spike.
Fla came face to face with Ben-gan, walking slowly in the opposite direction. In the strange non-light the other man had the appearance of a lifelike effigy in shades of quicksilver, and blue.
They stopped, and stared at each other. If Ben-gan was surprised, he hid it well. Fla felt a rare moment of uncertainty — behind Ben-gan he could make out a narrow passage running on for a dozen or so paces, the far end visibly contracting, and there he made out two indistinct figures, like statues embedded in the glassy blue crystalline walls. Both held the same posture, warding their faces with out-thrown arms.
“Fla? I think you have mistaken your turning and come too far,” Ben-gan said.
Fla could see two bright tracks running down Ben-gan's cheeks. “What place is this?”
“You might call this is an anteroom to the garden of the dead,” Ben-gan said after a pause.
Fla suppressed a scowl, trying to decide if he was being made a fool of. In spite of the narrow space, their voices fell flat, without echo or reverberation. “Garden of the dead?”
“Yes … and I think we will be added to it, if we do not get out now. I cannot tell you how hard it is to hold this space open for any length of time.”
Fla didn't move. “Are there others here? I see people behind you.”
“I will explain as we go …”
As Ben-gan stepped closer, Fla could make out a thin layer of silvery perspiration gathered on his forehead. This, more than anything, convinced him it might be time to leave. He stepped to one side to allow Ben-gan to pass, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever lay at the end of this strange passageway.
“You would do well to stay between me and the entrance. As I leave, where we stand now will close, and should you stray behind me you will become trapped, and I do not know when I will be able to return to free you.”
Reluctantly Fla turned and shuffled back around the corner and down the gently slopin
g passage, with Ben-gan following immediately behind. He hated having people at his back — he felt his skin crawling, as if expecting a blow at any moment.
When he took a chance to look back, he saw the passage collapsing silently directly on their heels. The crystalline walls seemed to move with the weight of stone, but flowed into, and through, each other like clouds.
“Please don't delay, holding this space open is taxing.”
“I saw people. Were they trapped here?”
Ben-gan's voice was strained. “No, not people. Do you know about the casting of metal? A clay mould is formed around a shape in wax, and when the clay is baked the wax melts away. The shapes of people you see here are the same. At the end, when Volane fell, the Culvarites converged on the last two strongholds. Tyvolare, the imperial city, the first, and Vergence, the second. You cannot imagine the forces released when this city was torn away from its world. In many places the newly formed world skin of Vergence was deep, folded like a scar upon a scar. In others so thin the boundaries bleed, and ooze. Wrapped inside these scars are shadows, empty forms, memories of the moment this city was reborn and Volane died.
“This is my garden of the dead. I make this journey when I can. I don't expect you to understand why at your age. Each day, waiting through the year, is like an eternity.”
“You mean it changes, the world skin shifts? You can only get there during the Tranquillity?” Fla asked, risking another glance back.
“Yes, it changes constantly. I think you should keep moving forward.”
When they reached the portal, the edges were wavering, with faint blue lines infiltrating the edge of the black void, like pale veins.
“Quickly,” Ben-gan muttered, pushing him along the last few paces.
Fla could feel a creeping numbness settling into his body as he stepped back into the library, and Ben-gan followed so closely they almost collided with each other.
