‘That’s the plan,’ said Ori, and my spirits rose. ‘I passed everything. The Summoner Guild tried to recruit me, but I told them I had a higher calling.’ He grinned at me, and I grinned back.
‘Of course you passed everything, and of course they did. I am glad they didn’t prevail. We need you.’ I hugged him by way of congratulations. He has spent months working diligently to pass all his Summoner exams, and he deserves his success.
Though I don’t know why he did that, just as an aside. The Summoner Guild and the Sorcerer Guild in Waeverleyne are… well, it is a bit hard to explain. Summoning and Sorcery are the only magics we’ve got as humans, and they used to be all-important. I suppose they still are, but since we learned that they are merely diluted forms of ancient draykoni arts messily spread around in the human bloodlines, everything has seemed a little different. Ori was a Summoner prodigy, of course, before his draykon heritage was discovered; a Summoner of average talent might have only a tenuous link to a draykon ancestor, but Ori’s as close to full-blood draykon as it gets for a human hybrid. But he’s a draykon, so he has access to all of it — everything. All the things we call Summoning and Sorcery, only much more powerful, and a hundred other things besides. Why did he need a qualification in Summoning?
I asked him that, later, and he said it was because he wanted the training, not the qualification. ‘It’s all very well having the power, but you have to know how to use it.’ That makes sense as far as it goes, but I have to express my doubts that human Summoners know better how to use these arts than draykoni. Ori’s been learning primitive, diluted human methods. If he wants to learn — if we want to learn — we need to go the ancient draykoni for instruction.
Which is how I persuaded him to join us up here. Hah.
I introduced him to Meriall and Nyden, both of whom took to him at once. Who doesn’t? I also noted that he and Pense greeted each other with marked friendliness, which relieved me. Pense can be a bit possessive sometimes — oh, not to the extent of trying to control me, or anything like that. But he seems to be under the mystifying impression that people are practically queueing up to steal me away, and a display of mutual affection like the one I had just exchanged with Ori might be supposed likely to set him off. I am glad he appears to be comfortable with Ori, because there is no way I am going to distance myself from him!
Ori wanted to see the grave. Typically, he appeared to feel no particular dismay or alarm at the prospect of an unexplained and permanent draykon death. He is a very, very clever man — much more clever than me, if we are going to be honest here, and I did promise that I would. He isn’t prone to worrying about things, either, so he saw it as an interesting problem and was instantly alive with curiosity.
We were too tired to take him out there right away, though. There was some question of his going out to the grave with Ivi or Damosel, but he declared himself unwilling to go without me (to my secret but intense gratification), so we deferred the expedition until first thing on the following day.
Which is tomorrow! It is late, now. Pensould is sleeping beside me, draykon-shaped and delightfully warm. I am curled up against his side with my journal in my lap, competing for space there with an equally slumbersome Siggy. I knew I would have to write everything down before I slept, as I have no idea if I will have time tomorrow. Are you happy, journal? What tyranny you wield over me! But I have done my duty; Lady Eva can have no cause to scold me. Now it’s time to sleep.
Goodnight.
18 VII
In which we are vindicated.
I am beginning to think Ori takes a ghoulish delight in dead bodies.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be a detective?’ I asked him. He had taken charge of the scene the moment we arrived at the grave, and kept us all back while he conducted some kind of meticulous examination of the body.
We flew as draykoni — Ori, Pense and I, that is — and I am sure he probed the site the way Pense and I had done before. But then he turned human, and busied himself with puttering about, looking closely at everything and touching the bones and saying “Hm” a lot. I stood several feet away with Pense. We folded our arms and watched in silence, because the one time I tried to say something, Ori raised his hand without turning around and I was duly hushed.
I exchanged a glance with Pense, whose expression was so bemused that I had to laugh.
What is he doing? Pense asked me silently.
Investigating, I replied.
Pense absorbed this in silence and went back to watching Ori. But he cast me another quizzical look soon afterwards, and shook his head.
But what is he doing?
I imagine he is searching for signs of foul play. Looking for clues. That kind of thing.
Pense merely blinked at me.
It is what’s done at a crime scene, I explained. The detective examines the site thoroughly for any signs as to who was responsible for rendering the victim dead.
What kind of signs?
I had to think about that for a minute. Well… I don’t know. In the stories, it’s things like fingerprints and scraps of clothing conveniently caught upon a nearby branch, and footprints, and things like that.
What fingers? said Pense. What clothing? What shoes?
He had a point. A draykon crime could have little in common with human investigations; there might be no such clues, or they may be of a different character altogether. What traces might a draykon leave at a murder scene? I had no idea, and neither, apparently did Pense. Murder isn’t exactly a recognised offence among the draykoni — probably because it is supposed to be impossible to permanently kill one of them. There is no precedent for any of this.
I did note in passing that, in pointing this out, Pense was climbing down a little from his earlier certainty that the perpetrator couldn’t possibly have been a draykon. To my mind, it could hardly be anything else. Who but a draykon could manipulate amasku like this?
Ori was clearly enjoying himself, so I was reluctant to interrupt him. Pense and I waited patiently until he had finished, and then we considered ourselves free to approach.
‘What conclusions have you reached?’ I asked him.
Ori surveyed Pense and me gravely, and lifted a finger. ‘I can conclude…’ he began.
We waited.
‘…absolutely nothing,’ he finished, and grinned.
Pense playfully cuffed him, which drew a decidedly over-acted whine of pain from Ori.
‘Enough hilarity,’ said Pense. ‘A dead friend lies here.’
Ori sobered at once, and nodded. ‘Sorry. You’re right. I was hoping I might be able to find something useful hereabouts, but I sense nothing of use with my draykon side, and I see nothing of interest with my human eyes either.’ He frowned, and added, ‘Except for a distinct lack of life. It is… chilling.’
We discussed that for a time, without arriving at any useful conclusions. It took me far too long to realise, with dawning horror, that the three of us were no longer alone.
On the other side of the strange, bone-white clearing there stood another human: a woman, older than me, with hard green eyes and tawny hair worn loose. She stood motionless, partially hidden behind the low, eerie-white branches of a tree. Her arms were folded, her gaze fixed upon the three of us. Her face was blank, expressionless.
I touched Pense’s arm, and hushed Ori, who was in the middle of a lengthy speech on something complicated that I’d lost track of. I pointed out the woman, and we three stood looking back at her in shared amazement — and confusion.
What is a human doing up here? Ori said to us.
Neither Pense nor I replied. I could feel Pense subjecting the woman to the close scrutiny of his draykon senses, but I didn’t extend mine. I had the stomach-dropping feeling that I had seen this woman before and that I did not wish to see her again…
An image popped into my mind. The Waeverleyne war, a leader held for interrogation… draykon, tucked uneasily into a new human form.
‘I
see you have mastered your human shape,’ I said to her.
The woman responded only with a faint, mirthless smile. She neither moved nor spoke, her attention returning to the inert bones that lay, forlorn and half-buried, in between us.
Minchu? Pense queried.
It is Eterna, I told them both.
‘I see that you did not lie,’ said Eterna into the silence.
‘Of course not,’ I said, with a touch of irritation. Of course we hadn’t lied. What would have been the point?
Eterna’s green gaze flicked to me. ‘How do I know that you did not do this yourselves?’
Ori snorted. ‘Would they be foolish enough to come and tell you about it, if they had? And would we be stupid enough to stand around here chatting about it afterwards?’
Eterna inclined her head. ‘It is the most obvious explanation, from my perspective. But there is sense in what you say.’
That made me a little bit angry. With hindsight, I have to remember that I, too, had instantly felt that Eterna (or one of her people) was the most likely culprit, and I wanted it to be her, because it would justify my hatred. I suppose it makes sense that she would feel the same way about us. But at the time I just felt injured and furious.
‘We dealt fairly with your people during the war,’ I hissed at her. ‘We returned every one of your slain comrades to you for revival, when we could have kept them from you. We could have destroyed their bones — few would argue that we were justified. How dare you now accuse us of such a crime, and call us the obvious culprits?’
That sharp, green gaze settled upon me. I knew her to possess a temper in excess of my own, but I detected not a trace of anger in her eyes or her demeanour. She was coolness itself. ‘You would have destroyed the bones, would you?’ she said, instead of answering my question. ‘How would you have done it?’
I was brought up short by that, and had to take a moment to think. ‘I do not know,’ I had to admit. ‘But did you not…? When we talked, before, at Waeverleyne. You appeared to think it possible, then, that we might have destroyed the remains of your missing colleague.’
‘It can be done,’ said Eterna calmly. ‘I assumed you to be aware of the means, but perhaps you were not.’ That faint, faint smile appeared again and she said, ‘I think I will not tell you.’
I swallowed my irritation. ‘You said this was impossible,’ I reminded her, gesturing at the inert heap of bones before us. ‘Was that a lie?’
‘Let us be clear.’ Eterna moved at last from her semi-concealed position across the clearing, and took a few steps nearer to the grave. ‘It is possible to interfere with the revival of a fallen comrade, if for some reason one wishes to do so. The rejuvenation of the body requires a complete and largely undamaged skeleton, of course. If the bones are scattered or too badly damaged, the rejuvenation cannot be completed. In such a case as that, the spirit is sundered and a return to life is no longer an option. That is the nearest way I have yet heard of to permanently kill a draykon, and it is absolutely forbidden among most draykon clans. Even today.’
‘But that is not what has occurred here,’ said Pensould.
Eterna shook her head in agreement. ‘It is not. After your departure, I thought about your story. I felt there were two possibilities: either that you were lying, or that something of the kind I have just described had occurred. The latter would not be nearly so grave as you claimed, but it would be, as I have said, an offence. I came to investigate.’ She stopped speaking, and stared at the grave in silence, no longer expressionless. I detected a hint of anger in her hard eyes, and a deep sadness. ‘Imagine my dismay to find that you spoke nothing but the truth.’
I felt a sense of foreboding. ‘Is this… someone that you knew?’ I asked.
She said nothing, but at length she inclined her head once.
‘I am sorry,’ I said, truthfully enough. I didn’t want to care about her, but the depth of her sadness could not help but affect me.
Eterna sighed deeply. ‘I cannot be certain, for there is barely any trace of her left. It is all ripped away — drained, suppressed, devoured? I cannot tell.’ Her jaw tightened, and she looked colder than ever. ‘I do not know how it can have been done, or why anybody would have done such a thing to her.’
‘Who was it?’ That was Ori, because I lacked resolution to enquire further. I had a bad feeling about the probable answer.
Indeed, for a little while I thought Eterna would give no answer at all. But eventually she roused herself from her dark reverie enough to say: ‘My mother.’
With that, she turned from us and disappeared into the trees. A moment later I felt a sudden rush of energy as she abandoned whatever arts cloaked her nature even from our senses, and regained her draykon form. I caught a glimpse of green-and-white scales through the tree canopy as she flew away.
None of us spoke for a while. I think we were individually struggling with how to feel about this development. Nobody wanted to sympathise with Eterna, but how to help it? For us, that forlorn and lifeless shape was chilling enough. For Eterna, it was the worst kind of loss.
At length, Pensould sighed and turned away. ‘There is nothing else to be achieved by lingering here,’ he said.
I had to disagree, for a strange thought struck me at that moment. ‘Wait.’
Pense stopped, but he frowned at me with faint impatience. That was unlike him. I realised that he was still deeply disturbed by the place, more lastingly so than I’d known.
So I went to him and put my arms around him. He is more responsive to physical closeness than anybody I have ever known. It can be remarkably effective in altering his frame of mind, and I believe he suffers if he goes too long without it. He readily returned my embrace, and I felt him relax a little bit right away. ‘What is it, Minchu?’ he said, more patiently.
‘This place isn’t Changing.’
Ori snapped his fingers. ‘That’s what was bothering me. I knew there was something weird going on.’
The trees beyond the ghostly clearing were not trees anymore, strictly speaking. The forest had shifted, and everything outside of the circle had become a patch of damp, marshy woodland. I could see glimpses of dripping, spindly, putrid-green branches beyond the vicinity of the grave, and the air felt cooler and unpleasantly moist. But the grave site was unchanged; still deathly white, crowded with brittle, unearthly trees, and quite dead.
Pensould extricated himself from my embrace, leaving a kiss on my forehead as he went, and paced the outline of the clearing. Then he began stepping from the drained, white space into the marsh, and back again.
After watching this for a little while, I realised what he was looking for. I made my way to the border and stood there for a moment, eyes closed, trying to use only my other senses. I find it hard to do that. Focusing exclusively on the draykon part of me still doesn’t come easily. I covered my ears as well, which helped a little, but not enough.
I gave up, and Changed.
Sometimes it feels like I am wrapped in swaddling, as a human, and everything is muffled through it. Shifting draykon feels like ripping it off. It can be disconcerting, as though everything around me has suddenly been amplified — colours, sounds, sensations. Overwhelming. I stood for a minute, struggling to bring it under control. When I felt more accustomed, I turned my attention to the ground beneath my feet.
This part is difficult to explain. I can only say: Imagine if you walked into a room and found it oddly, eerily silent, and for no discernible reason. Not just silent, but deeply, resonantly so, as though it has never known sound before and never will. As though something about that room takes all sound and swallows it without trace.
That is what I felt in that clearing. Or perhaps it is fairer to say that I absolutely failed to feel, or sense, anything at all in there.
But when I drew nearer to the edge of that strange, drained patch of land, I sensed a change. Energy was beginning to flow back in, but sluggishly. And there was something off about it, too. It did not
feel whole, as though a budding sickness lingered somewhere just beyond my perception. It troubled us all, but we could find no explanation for any of it.
When we arrived back in Nuwelin, we found only Meriall and Larion at the meeting glade.
‘The others are off being productive citizens of Iskyr,’ Meriall informed us as we turned human and sat down on the benches. I was weary, though I don’t know why. I hadn’t done anything unusually challenging. ‘We thought it would be more fun to lounge,’ she added with a beaming smile.
And they were lounging with enviable commitment. Meriall had laid a thick blanket over one of the benches and had subsequently stretched out full-length upon it with a pillow under her head. She hadn’t risen when we approached, merely waved at us. Larion was similarly prone, wrapped in a blanket on the floor. I couldn’t imagine what they had found to talk about before we appeared, but it looked as though they were having a cosy heart-to-heart. Which I think is a little bit interesting.
‘What did you think?’ Meriall said then, turning a curious look upon Ori.
Ori sighed and ran his hands over his hair, making it stick up. ‘I don’t know what to think, except that it’s horrible.’
‘Eterna came back,’ put in Pense.
That roused Larion from his half-slumber, and he and Meriall stared intently at Pensould. ‘Tell us,’ said Larion.
So we did. It took a little time to cover everything.
‘What about the other draykoni?’ said Meriall. ‘Have they noticed anything similar going on downstairs?’
I stared blankly at her. ‘The other ones? Downstairs?’
‘Mm.’ She nodded slowly. ‘The other ones. In the dark, creepy place.’ She grinned.
And I felt a little sheepish. In my defence, I haven’t set foot in the Lowers for some time. I may have forgotten about it. How many other draykoni are down there, and what have they been doing with the place? We have no idea.
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