“This is home,” said Henryk. “And if we can’t stop Deathweed here, it’ll follow us seaward.”
The hood of his wall-patcher’s cloak hiding his face, Cesylle listened to the officers as he waited at the foot of the stair that descended from the marketplace to this grim platform. As he gripped his bandaged wrist and fought to remain conscious, he watched the inlet’s wavering surface.
Fire archers held a constant vigil around the rock, but the Bel Amicans’ way of life was destroyed. The maze of wooden walkways and docks was gone. Seabulls, grawlafurrs, tidehounds—so many remarkable sea creatures had vanished, either snatched by the scourge or escaping to safer waters. His suspicions that the Seers controlled the Deathweed were growing into certainty.
“I hear that you can get everything on the islands,” said the officer. “They’re covered in fruit-bearing trees. Clouds of game birds darken the sky. We can live as we please. Might not even need any laws.”
“I don’t trust any society where people live as they please,” muttered Henryk. “When people strive for such indulgence, they’re speaking in greed—not out of concern for the crumb-pickers. Our new rulers are different. They know what we need.”
“Some say Bel Amica’s new rulers aren’t fit for the task. Partayn’s not training armies. He’s helping beastmen and Abascar stragglers.”
“Some say? Or you say?” Henryk rigged the cord of his arrowcaster. “If you want a fight, I’ll give you one.”
Their casters whipped up as a rootlike tentacle burst from the water. Unseeing, it lurched toward the harbor caves. A heartbeat later, it recoiled in spasms, scorched where the arrows had struck.
I should get myself on a boat and disappear, Cesylle thought.
Fingers of fierce cold burned his shoulder. Disguised in a sailor’s raincloak, face wrapped in a scarf inside the cloak’s hood, Malefyk Xa sat down beside him.
“I’ve no patience for delays,” the Seer hissed. “I’m expected in the Keep. Did you recover the mawrn from the tower?”
“It was gone.” That much, at least, was true. Cesylle pondered the lies that lay ahead. Malefyk Xa had a reputation as the most powerful and difficult of the six Seers. The others called him “the Rider,” for he traveled the Expanse, making secret bargains. But here, deprived of the mawrn dust, he seemed weaker, anxious. The Keep would be full of mawrn.
“I serve my moon-spirit,” said Cesylle, and this time that old refrain was bitter in his mouth. “And she won’t let me forget—you promised me a winged steed. I told Emeriene we would fly. And I haven’t failed you.”
Malefyk’s unblinking eyes searched him for dishonesty. “We’ve caged thirteen such creatures. One more remains. Our mawrn will spy it eventually. When we have them all, you might yet see the world from the clouds.”
Cesylle clenched his teeth. “You failed to take Bel Amica’s throne.” His audacity was a gamble. He hoped to convince the Seer that he still clung to vain ambitions. Perhaps they would keep him alive like an old but dutiful dog.
Malefyk actually patted his head. “Come. See what I’ve captured in the wild. You’ve earned that much.”
With discs of mawrn glass pressed to his eyes, Cesylle could see in the Keep’s cold dark. And so he could discern the cold outlines of the Seers’ laboratories. He felt as if his bones had turned to ice.
No fire or light was allowed in the Keep. The Seers hated fire, and light disrupted the distillation of their potions. The surfaces within this structure absorbed illumination, and he guessed they were stealing what they needed to maintain their mysterious adherence, then pushing out what was left. That would explain the nightly shimmer of the Keep’s outer shell.
Cesylle, feeling bloodless, stumbling and afraid, followed Malefyk Xa through a high-ceilinged chamber that held nothing more than a spiky iron pole like an empty coatrack or a leafless tree.
Beyond this empty room, in a large vault of echoes, a great splinter of crystal floated like an icicle in a glass of water, suspended in the gloom by an invisible thread. Beneath it rested a dark, wooden box wrapped in wire.
Malefyk pushed him through into this space. Cesylle pulled the discs away from his eyes. Here, tepid light fell from a moon that appeared to seek escape from the fangs of a jagged window in the distant ceiling.
Malefyk Xa gestured to a facet of the crystal.
Cesylle had quietly studied the Seers’ hatred of sunlight, their welcome of moonlight. It was why they valued him—his capacity for connecting one idea mechanically and usefully to another. Still, he remained mystified by the mawrn crystals and how they spoke to one another, invisibly connected so that the Seers could draw from one fragment the details of what occurred around another, as if every chip and fragment were an eye.
“A piece of the moon, our old watchtower,” sighed Malefyk Xa. “We’ve created life, Cesylle. A living thing that obeys our laws and responds to our codes. We can cut it into pieces, crush it to dust, cast it across the Expanse, and absorb all that is worth knowing to increase the reach of our power.”
A piece of the moon fallen to the Expanse. What a sight it must have been. Burning a hole in the Cragavar forest the size of that crater.
He looked at the Seer, then averted his gaze. They are not like us. They are from somewhere else. Predators. Invaders. Bound to this, the source of their power.
Malefyk Xa tapped the brightening facet with a fingernail. “I told you.”
For a moment he had the strange sensation that the Keep had moved, settling in some faraway land, and this was a window opening onto a bizarre and unfamiliar scene. He saw the bars of three great cages. Behind them, three tremendous creatures—winged, horned, and wildly maned, more complex than any artist’s speculation of ancient dragons—raged against the bars, striking them with their heads, breathing flame against them, clawing at the stone that anchored them above and below. One was serpentine, one lithe as a bearcat, and one scaled like something from the sea.
“We’ll ride on their backs,” said Malefyk Xa. “We’ll rule the Expanse from the sky.”
Cesylle forgot the pain paralyzing his arm. His imagination awoke, making connections as if it were made of shifting magnets. These fearsome shapes were familiar to him. He’d been made to feel ashamed of his childhood dreams, and he’d sought to stifle such visions in his sons.
“They fly above the clouds.” There was awe in the Seer’s voice. “They can appear as trees, as long grasses, as fire or storm. They are something altogether strange.”
“Did you … make them?”
“We will,” Malefyk whispered as if to himself. Then he growled, “We hunted them. We’ll tame them and make them serve us. They’ve been nothing but a taunt. A scare. A nuisance. Interfering with our progress. He’s just a braggart, sending these into the Expanse.”
Who sent them? Cesylle’s throat went dry. They’re going to kill me. Otherwise, he’d never reveal such things.
“When we unleash our next surprise,” said Malefyk Xa, grinning down at the box below the crystal, “those who live in the Expanse will wish they could go back to the days of the beastmen.”
Cesylle would have asked about the box, but he was distracted by the scene within the crystal facet. A tiny shape had stepped into view—a hunchbacked figure, hands raised high, small as a beetle before the caged creatures. The creatures calmed, folding their wings, swallowing their fire.
“Who’s that?”
The Seer shrugged. “Strongbreed. Such obedient beastmen, guarding our pests.”
“Then why is he loosening the cage bars?”
Malefyk leaned in, teeth first, to breathe coldly against the crystal. His eyeballs swiveled, seeking focus. Ghastly laughter, devoid of all amusement, sputtered from his throat.
“Stonemastery,” said Cesylle. “That fellow’s letting the cage bars fall. He’s releasing—”
His voice stopped. He stood immovable, his feet feeling glued to the floor. He saw the silver cap of Malefyk Xa’s staff shining as i
t scorched the floor beside him. The air went out of his lungs, and he folded to the floor.
10
IMITYRI
he vawn slowed to a trot, then jerked at the reins in annoyance and stopped. Jayda Weese sensed the approach. “Is the Aerial sending a welcome party?” The bartender strapped on his belt with the old Defender’s sword. Then he quickly threaded two cast-arrows into the braid of his yellow hair so he could reach them with ease. “I’m keeping my end of the bargain. Let’s see what’s left of their honor.” He took a deep breath and stepped down from the small carriage onto the cool sand, where the world had been reduced to shadows and silver in the moonlight.
A distant lightning flash gave him details of the approaching horse and rider. The man was frail, no better than bones, slumped wearily forward so that his black, braided beard wagged before him. His desert horse was enormous and proud.
“Must not be worried about Deathweed down here,” Weese shouted to the rider, “or you wouldn’t risk the horse.”
The rider was silent.
“The password,” Weese muttered. “Right.” He made a horn of his hands and yelled, “Onvora.”
The rider lifted a glowstone, which made bright darts out of the first drops of oncoming rain.
“You know why I’ve come, don’t you?” Weese said. “You’ve made a full day’s journey to meet me.”
He heard footsteps on the sand behind him just as he saw the slingshot in the rider’s hand. In a heartbeat he saw the stone. He felt something like a lightning strike, saw the moon fly across the sky, felt the back of his head hit the sand. Pain erased all else but muffled sounds.
In time he began to recognize words.
“Why didn’t my brother greet me himself?”
This was answered by sad musical notes from a reed.
“It cannot be,” said the first man. “Ryp, you haven’t eaten since I left Jenta. And that was a hundred years ago. But then … why eat anything if you believe that all is meaningless?”
Weese blinked, then turned his head, trying to see the two moonlit figures clearly.
The rider, holding a silver glowstone, wore a robe as black as the empty caves of his eyes. Clusters of blue warts bulged from his cheeks. His fingers holding the reed had long, painted fingernails. He looked like an ancient desert tree, bleached white by the sun and withered by drought. As he tried to rasp a reply to his challenger, a yellow chip fell from his mouth. He wavered, then dismounted and knelt—a long, slow collapse—to pat the sand in search of it.
In that awkward moment, the other man—all Weese could see in the soft light was the back of his round head—said, “I didn’t want to upset you, Ryp.” His tone was different now, tender and sad. “I meant to slip past you. I meant no harm. I never guessed you’d be so afraid of me that you’d stop this driver so far from the School.”
A stowaway! Weese winced. I’m a fool. No wonder the wagon was slow. Then the wonder of it overtook him, and his eyes widened. Scharr ben Fray, the prodigal mage. He trapped the impostor on the bridge, then slipped from his carriage and concealed himself beneath my driver’s bench before I departed. Three days and he never made a sound!
Scharr ben Fray was on his knees now, his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Since my plan has already failed, let me be useful to you.”
“Useful?” hissed Ryp ben Fray, shoving the tooth back into his gum. As he staggered to his feet again, he shoved his brother away. “You?”
Scharr shrugged. “Let me cook. I’ll feed you back to the man you were.”
“You swore you’d never return.” Ryp’s voice was as rough as volcanic rock.
“I was only two hundred then, Ryp. Just a brash and arrogant boy. I’ve grown up. Deathweed changed my plans. I’ve returned to find hope for the Expanse.”
“Too late. Deathweed will pour down on the School like brine into a bowl.”
Scharr ben Fray’s shoulders slumped. “Bad poetry spreads like gossip out here.”
“Deathweed is a gift.” The older mage raised his arms as if to present himself. “It will set us all free. Reject that cage you call a body. Learn to let it go. It imprisons you. Only a few remain in the Aerial now. We are set free in greater numbers all the time.” He gestured to the faint outline of a leaning spire not far south of them. Even in the dark Weese could see the heap of gleaming white rubble at its base.
Bones, he realized.
“Throwing themselves off the Epiphany Tower, one after the other,” sighed Scharr ben Fray. “Goat brains, all of them. Why haven’t you joined them?”
“Every day I draw closer. But the colonists need my teaching if they are to learn true freedom.”
“So you stay alive to teach them how to kill themselves.”
“Compassion compels me. We were meant to fly, Scharr. Never to suffer. These bodies are the remnant of a cruel joke.”
“To look at yours, I might believe it.”
The two were distracted as the rain grew stronger. Weese slowly reached behind his head to draw one of the cast-arrows from his hair.
“You rejected us. You lost your privileges. You are barred from the histories.” Ryp turned and trudged wearily back to his horse.
“You think I want to read those sad stories? Three houses have fallen to the Seers.”
“And Jenta remains.”
“No. Cent Regus fell to the Seers’ curse. Bel Amica was poisoned by Seers’ potions. And you … you let the Seers’ whispers make you fearful and proud. House Abascar may have suffered, but its people remain strong. And I will help them escape the Seers’ worst invention. I’ve come for maps. Give me a few nights to study them. In my old room.”
“Your room’s an aviary now.” In Scharr’s stunned silence, Ryp grinned, and Weese glimpsed several ragged yellow teeth. Then the withered mage, like a dying soldier, struggled to climb back into his saddle. “Take the bartender’s vawn,” he growled.
Weese tightened his grip on the arrow. I shouldn’t have trusted a mage in any kind of bargain. Ryp will pay for this betrayal.
“Don’t be wicked.” Scharr gestured to Weese as if to a lost dog. “This honorable spy promised you a report of my presence. He did more than that. He brought me to your doorstep. If you’re not going to pay him what you promised, at least let him ride his animal back home. I can ride with you, as we did when we were boys.”
Ryp scowled at Weese. “I should release him from his skull. It would be the kindest thing. Look. He’s trying to decide whether to kill us or not.”
Weese felt any advantage slip from his grasp.
“How did you know I was returning?” Scharr asked abruptly.
“Your old friend, the dust-owl. Found her waiting where you used to meet her a hundred and fifty years ago. My acolyte’s stones couldn’t chase her away.” Ryp cast a glittering shower of coins onto the sand before Weese. “Twice what I offered, bartender. And worthless when it comes to things that matter.”
“Speaking of worthless tokens”—Scharr drew a pouch on a string from beneath his shirt—“I brought you something.”
Ryp leaned down and withdrew a slender red feather. “Onvora.”
“Ever filled that gap in your feather collection?”
“Where did you find it?” A skeletal finger stroked the feather’s edge.
“While I explored the Forbidding Wall, I found a lot of creatures we’d assumed were extinct.” Scharr put his foot in the stirrup and climbed up behind his brother.
Ryp kept staring at the feather as if it were a talisman. “I’ve almost perfected my wings.”
“You started those when you were forty. Still intent on learning to fly, are you?”
“I’ll soar from the tower with the feathers of all birds. That rush will be the last sensation I suffer in this punishing land.”
“Except for the crash,” muttered Scharr.
While Ryp busied himself sliding the feather into his flute and binding the flute back into the braids of his black beard, Weese rose and
staggered toward his vawn. His head began to throb again as if a heart were thrumming where his brain had been.
As he climbed onto the driver’s bench, Scharr called after him. “I’m grateful, Weese. Not that you were going to sell me to my brother. And not for the ride—worst I’ve suffered in three hundred years. But your ale. It tasted so very … Jentan.”
As dawn broke, Scharr ben Fray left the humble cell where he’d slept—the room of a recently “departed” mage—to walk the lesson labyrinth painted across the cranium of this sculpted skull.
In the Jentan School, the Aerial studied and slept in honeycombs of candlelit rooms within massive boulders. These rocks, once crafted to resemble the heads of the first Jentan mages, had eroded over the years. They were scattered across the sand within what was left of House Jenta’s stone walls like pieces scattered on a game board, staring blankly at one another. They were named for their shape—the Skull Chambers.
Scharr ben Fray had sought sleep in that dead mage’s cell but found only a heavy, haunting emptiness, a sense of hopes abandoned. Through the uncurtained windows, he’d heard the soulless song of night breezes as they played the Skull Chambers like pipe instruments. Raucous sandpickers had squawked all night from the aviary above him—the room where he’d studied as a young man.
He looked south across the grey sea, but the distant green swell of Wildflower Isle was reluctant to emerge from the haze.
Forgive me, Zhan ry Wren. It was a mistake that we ever struck sparks. We were wise to stop.
He thought of her, the only woman he had ever risked loving. She would still be beautiful more than two hundred years from the time they met as young mages in training. Envied by all for her longevity, Zhan would be the eldest of the Jentan colony. She’d still be tall and sad, hiding her beauty in the trailing gown of hair she had vowed never to cut when he left her to explore and study the Expanse.
I hope you’ve not been lonely. I hope you have loved. No, no, I don’t. I’m a selfish fool.
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