A Season of Rendings

by Adam J Nicolai

  Four days later they emerged into a world of green and waving grass: the eastern foothills of the Scar. A few days after that, they came to a small town called Twosides, which straddled the Nightwhisper River.

  "Reminds me of the Narrel," Angbar commented as they took the bridge across. Despite their grueling pace, getting distance from the Waste seemed to have helped him. His lisp had all but vanished and the tic in his eye had finally stopped. He'd spent extra time every night studying the fire spell that had nearly destroyed him back in Kesselholm, and last night, he'd reported that he actually mastered it and moved on to another. This news relieved Helix; the eerie symptoms had unnerved him, especially considering the lightning he had felt in his friend's body the night they had opened the fourth Seal.

  "Not as pretty," Lyseira said of the river with a sad smile.

  When they reached the village's east side, a sign pointed on to Keswick.

  "Almost there," Angbar said. "Last chance to think better of it."

  "I'm working on another new chant," Syntal said, "that should help us find Harth when we get there. It works like Spellsight, except instead of letting the chanter see spells, it lets them see any lingering impressions from Ascension—and those impressions show up from miles away, like a beacon. In other words, since Harth should be the only chanter there, I should be able to hone in on him once we get through the gates."

  "You're sure that's going to work?" Helix asked.

  "Well, no—but I've been able to sense Angbar with it, and the principle is sound: Ascension affects the chanter somehow, or it wouldn't affect their eyes like it does. I still don't know exactly why that happens, but I don't need to for this. I was able to reverse-engineer some of the components in Marlin's old spell to mask his eyes, and use those to give me something to zero in on. It's essentially a combination of that spell and Spellsight."

  This went clear over his head. "M'sai," he said. "I'll just follow you."

  Helix had heard stories of Keswick's wonders. As it came into view in the distance, the reality didn't measure up.

  The city was draped across the Ley River, much as Twosides had straddled the Nightwhisper. But the Ley was legendary, even back in Southlight—an immense boulevard of rushing water that tumbled out of Moshun Dar in the distant north and ran all the way to the Tairen Sea. Three and even four cargo ships could travel it abreast. It made every other river Helix had seen look like a Pinewood creek by comparison.

  Beyond the thrill of the Ley River, though, there was little to see. The city, vast enough to encompass the river, had a port inside its walls which could be opened or closed via the Great Gate. It was supposed to be a marvel of engineering, but it was on the southeast side of the city, where the river entered, and they were approaching from the west. The other great landmarks—the royal palace, Basica Majesta, the statue garden—were all equally obscured.

  It didn't really matter. He wasn't going there to sightsee.

  On the final morning of their journey, they woke to Stormsign: the sun vertically bisected by a clean, black line. To the left of the line, the sun was yellow, as usual; to the right, the bloody red of sunset. He couldn't look directly at the sun to see this, of course, but the effect was pronounced enough that he easily noticed it from the corner of his eye.

  The occasion was marked by a grunt from Iggy and a mutter of "That's a weird one" from Angbar. Stormsign was too common—and, now that they understood its origin, too mundane—to be interpreted as some kind of omen every time it happened. Still, it unsettled Helix. He hoped it always did.

  They made their way the final few miles to Keswick's west gate, dodging a goatherder and his flock making his way back to Twosides, and a number of merchants and smallfolk on wagons. Their days of solitude were over; the closer they got to Keswick, the thicker the roads became. His old, familiar anxiety about being recognized began to rouse itself.

  "We need to find a place to lie low first," he said, trying to keep any quaver from his voice. He wasn't backing out of his plan; he just wanted to exercise a bit of caution. "You know, a sort of headquarters. To work out of, while we find Harth."

  "Harth may know a place," Syntal said. "It would be better to find him first."

  "Yeah, but I don't want to roam the King's city, showing my face to every passing cleric, while you look for him."

  "It won't take long."

  She pulled them off the road a mile from the west gate so she could work her spells: one to disguise the ethereal mark of the pulse in her eyes, and one to find Harth's "aura"—for lack of a better word, she explained. Helix just waited. He didn't understand what she was doing, and that was all right.

  "Is it working?" he murmured when they were all back on the road.

  Syn swept her gaze back and forth, eyebrows furrowed. She looked confused.

  "Syn?" he pressed.

  "Yeah. Yeah, it's fine."

  Helix was relieved to find the western gate open; doubly so when the disinterested guards asked for no toll. But as they drew into Keswick's milling crowds, Syn's confusion grew even more evident.

  "This can't be right," she muttered.

  "What?" Seth asked.

  "There's . . . more than one. A lot more than one."

  "What?" Seth said again. "How many?"

  "I don't . . ." She ducked out of the street and under a storefront awning, then panned around, taking in the whole of the city like a scout with a spyglass. This weird behavior caught the lingering gaze of more than one passerby.

  "Syn," Helix whispered from the corner of his mouth, "you look like a lunatic."

  She ignored him. "They're everywhere," she breathed.

  "What?" Iggy and Seth both snapped the word this time.

  "Well not . . . everywhere, but . . ." She rattled off a quick count, just under her breath. "There's at least a score of them—just that I can see. Just around here."

  "Twenty chanters?" Angbar blurted, and Seth shushed him.

  "Yeah." She glanced left, right, up. "Yeah. Well—maybe. The spell detects recent Ascension, technically, not chanting, but—yeah."

  Damn it, Syn, everyone's watching. Someone's going to recognize us. "All right, so that plan's shot," Helix said, trying to be circumspect. "Now we need to get out of the street before you get us all killed."

  "Wait." Syn squinted eastward. "Hang on. There's one that's . . . brighter." She glanced left and right again, then refocused to the east. She appeared to be staring directly into the next building's wall. "Yeah—a lot brighter. That's him. I'll bet you anything."

  "But how do you―?" Helix started, but she took off without waiting for him to finish. Syn! he almost barked, but realized just in time how stupid that would be.

  They fell in behind her, weaving through the crowds. So many people, he thought. Keldale had been the busiest city he'd ever seen, and Keswick put it to shame. There was an electric feel to the place, an urgency, as if every last person had an agenda.

  Finally, it really struck him: this was the seat of the kingdom. Home of the royal court. Every shell of taxes his father had ever paid had eventually made its way here. It humbled him, took his breath away.

  Then, something Harth had said last year recurred to him. If you wind up knifed because we came in through the wrong gate, don't complain when I rob your corpse. Like Keldale, like Tal'aden, Keswick had to have good parts and bad parts. He wondered which they were in now. Syn's breakneck pace through the streets didn't afford him a lot of time to take it all in, but he hadn't seen a lot of beggars, or many crumbled buildings; Angbar had said both had been in great supply in Tal'aden's rundown slums. At the same time, though, he saw few temples and little ornamentation. A merchant district? he wondered, then realized how ridiculous it was that he was even thinking about this. He had seen one city, once. He was a country bumpkin who had no business even hazarding a guess.

  All the same, even he could see the improvement as they pushed east. More temples. Fancier clothes. The odd gilded fountain. Harth's got
good taste, Helix thought, if he's really holed up around here.

  "There!" Syn said. Helix followed her pointing finger to a hanging sign: The Damsel's Rest.

  "All right," Angbar breathed. "So maybe just one of us―"

  But again Syn surged across the street, earning a shout and a glare from a passing wagon driver. They rushed after her, Lyseira calling out apologies. But before Syn reached the front door, Harth burst out of it.

  He crashed into her, nearly bowled her over. "Hey!" he started. "Watch where you're―" As recognition dawned, his face went from irritated to mortified. He stumbled backward, pushed a palm through his hair in distress.

  "Bitch's tits," he finally spat. "You shouldn't have come here."

  27

  i. Harth

  "There's nothing for you here," he said after he had rushed them upstairs to his room, hoping against hope that no one had recognized them in the common area. The idiots hadn't bothered with disguises. They weren't even wearing hoods, for the love of winter; Helix's hair blazed like a star. "I was just about to leave. The Tribunal's ramped up their hunting—they bring in anyone who speaks against the Church. For 'witchcraft,' they claim, but it doesn't matter if they're witches or not." Why was he explaining this to them? God, why did they have to show up now? Now? In the literal last hour of his time in Keswick? "They're cracking down—hard. It's more dangerous every day."

  Helix couldn't seem to understand this, to accept it. "But the Prince's audiences―"

  "The audiences are over—they've been over for months. They never did any good, anyway. The first time his Great Royal Highness found for a peasant over the Church, the Tribunal abducted the plaintiff and no one's heard from him since. An old man. That scared everyone. Nobody would come now even if the Prince did still hold them."

  "Sehk," Angbar breathed. He sank onto the bed, his head in his hands.

  "Harth," Syntal said, "there are chanters everywhere in the city. Or at least, people who have Ascended."

  Harth blinked. She might have spoken in a foreign language for all the sense she'd made. "Am I speaking Bahiran?" he said. "Are you listening? You have to get out of here." A couple of them glanced at each other; the rest stared at him like cows in a field. "Do you even remember Keldale, last year? Do you remember racing for our lives with the arrows raining down? The angry mob? Any of this ring a bell? It's about to get worse here—far worse."

  Lyseira, ashen-faced, turned to Helix and haltingly spoke his name. Helix didn't respond. The room fell silent.

  Useless. I don't have time for this. "Oh, scorch it." He turned for the door. "The room's paid up through tomorrow," he threw over his shoulder, "if you live that long."

  "Harth." The plea in Helix's voice froze his hand to the doorknob just as he started to turn it. "Just hear us out. Please. We've got nowhere else. This was it, the last shot, there's . . . We've got nowhere else to go."

  Harth pulled a steadying breath and turned back. "Then go to Chesport. That's what I'm doing. And from there, Borkalis. Bahir. Sehk, maybe Shalda? Anywhere."

  "M'sai," Helix said. "All right. I understand. But, listen—we learned something the King has to know."

  Harth's outrage, momentarily stifled, burst up anew. He snarled. "Damn it, I told you―"

  But Helix pushed on. "The Fatherlord's not Akir. He's . . . nobody, just a man. The Church, the whole thing, it's—it's all based on a lie."

  The claim slapped Harth's mouth shut. His mind went blank. Then so much incredulity piled on to his tongue that he couldn't force it all out. "How―? What―?"

  "It was Lar'atul's sword," Lyseira said. "It showed us a vision of the past. We saw the church from the time before the Sealing. It was called the Kespran Church then. They were at war with a chantress named Revenia, and―" She must have seen that she was losing him, that he didn't care. "Look, Baltazar was there. Baltazar Godson. The first Fatherlord. But he wasn't any kind of god, he was just . . ."

  "Second fiddle," Angbar put in.

  "Right. Exactly, and after the Sealing, when the chanters and the speakers all vanished, he could still work miracles. The Sealing didn't affect that, for some reason, and he used that power to take over. That's it. He corrupted the Church from inside. Changed it into something else."

  Harth was unimpressed. "M'sai . . . ? And what's that got to do with the Prince Regent?"

  "Are you mad?" Helix said. "He has to be told!"

  He calls me mad? "Why, Helix? So it's a lie—so what? It changes nothing! They still have all the power! They can still walk in here any time, take anyone they want, do whatever they want with them. They were here last night, Helix, they were next door. I heard a woman screaming as they dragged her out. And you're gonna . . . what? Tell the Prince their power isn't real? It sounded pretty sehking real to me."

  He doesn't get it, Harth realized. None of them do. He recognized that fevered look in Lyseira's eyes; this time it was even mirrored in Helix's. They'll go to the damn palace themselves and wind up dead by sunset. He sighed and decided to try one last time.

  "Listen to me. Listen. I'm gonna say it slow. The throne. Has. No. Power. The Prince can't do anything. When the King returns, he won't be able to do anything either. They might as well be eunuchs. Do you understand?"

  Iggy scoffed. "You're talking about the King of Darnoth!"

  Harth scoffed right back. "I know Melakai Thorn. He's the captain of the Crownwardens, the royal guard for the King. He's been protecting the Gregor family for decades. What I just said were his words. His. Not mine."

  The argument pierced the fever in their eyes. Finally. He remembered something else, something critical, and barked a laugh. "Hel, you know who does have that power? You know who's in the royal palace right now? Bishop Marcus."

  Helix turned white, then green. His gaze jerked to the floor.

  "Marcus?" Lyseira's eyes widened like Harth had slapped her. "Here? But he's supposed to be bishop of the Shientel Valley."

  Harth shrugged. "Maybe he got a promotion? He's here. He brought a dozen other clerics with him, and there are more trickling back from Tal'aden every day." He sighed, relieved to have finally gotten through to them. "Now do you understand? We need to get out of here while we still can."

  "Harth." Syn spoke for the first time since her earlier cryptic comment. "Can this Melakai get us a meeting with the Prince?"

  Oh, for the love of— "Are you serious?" he demanded. "Have you been listening to a word I said?"

  "Have you been listening to a word from me?" Syntal met his eyes without flinching. "I made a new chant—that's how we found you. It lets me pick out people who have recently Ascended. You were the brightest one in the city, but I thought you would be the only one. You weren't. There were scores of them."

  This time, he actually heard her. The argument on his tongue died. Scores? He turned the word over in his mind, trying to make sense of it. Scores. "They . . . these are all chanters?"

  "They have to be. And those are just the ones I saw. There may be more."

  "But . . ." It didn't make any sense. "How is that possible? I've never seen anyone with marked eyes while I've been here. They can't all have your spell to hide their eyes."

  "No."

  "And how did they learn?" She'd spent months teaching him over the winter. "Without the mantras―"

  "I don't know," she admitted. "I don't know, but—imagine if the King declared an amnesty. Imagine if they were all able to learn about each other, to learn they weren't alone."

  Her eyes were green steel. "What happens to the Church's power then?"

  The fight leaked out of him, left him deflated and sagging against the door. "Sehk," he managed. "Blesséd sehk."

  "An army of witches?" Seth accused. "That's crazy. Worse than the Church. Is this what you've been after the whole time?"

  Syntal ignored him, her attention locked on Harth. "Can you get us a meeting?"

  It was still madness. Like trying to reach up and pluck the moon from the sky. It woul
d never work. It could never happen.

  But if it did . . .

  He did order the Church to heal the city for free. He did challenge their authority with the trials, and again with that old man. He assembled the pieces, twisting them to fit the picture he wanted to see. He wants to fight them—or at least resist them. He just needs a weapon.

  Harth licked his lips, both thrilled and aghast at the words about to pass his lips.

  "I can try."

  ii. Helix

  Harth gave his typical litany of admonishments before leaving: don't go anywhere, be quiet, don't do anything. Five minutes after he left, Syntal said, "I'm going out."

  "What?" Helix said, at the same time that Seth said, "You can't."

  "We need to know more about these other chanters. I'm going to find one and talk to them."

  A chorus of protests went up. What if the Tribunal saw her, what if someone recognized her, what if she got caught? "We might be meeting with the King of Darnoth tonight," she said levelly. "We'll only get one chance at this. He's going to ask about these people. I plan to be able to answer him."

  She's changed, Helix realized. His cousin was no longer the shy girl from another village who would rather jump in a lake than introduce herself. I suppose mastering the nature of reality will do that to you.

  She made for the door. "Angbar, come on."

  "What?" Angbar said.

  "You can help me. You're the only other one who understands these things."

  He scoffed. "I'm not going anywhere. You heard what Harth said. We're lucky we even made it here."

  She turned back, looking honestly perplexed. "You're going to make me go by myself?"

  Angbar bristled. "I'm not your servant, Syn!" His voice cracked with the outburst.

  "Oh, leave him alone," Helix said, remembering how Angbar had sounded back in Kesselholm, the way his face had sagged, and how she'd dragged him back outside anyway to finish breaking the Seal. No wonder he's raw. "If you don't want to go alone, I'll go with you."