by C. M. Hayden
“Are you okay?” Kurian said, helping her sit down.
Kadia was sweating, her eyes were bloodshot, and she looked as though she had a profound headache. “I’m fine. It’s just the quick descent, I think.” She wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “I just need to rest.” She smiled like a sunbeam, but there was something behind her expression that unnerved me.
A voice called from the other side of the deck. Teams had started to file in from the lower decks. Somehow, I hadn’t noticed that Cidrin, one of the team leaders I mentioned to you before, was within earshot. He was sitting with his team beside some strapped-down barrels. They had wide, shit-eating grins on their faces, but none was worse than Cidrin’s.
We had a bit of history together, and I did my best to avoid him in the Magisterium. Every time we were in the same room, I could feel his greasy eyes on me. How could I describe him? He was thin and lanky, with dark eyes that contrasted his light skin. He was quite pale for a full-blooded Endran, almost sickly. Everything about him was sharp and cold: his eyes, his facial features, even his voice. And he seemed to almost slither as he walked.
For all that, his skills in templary were unmatched, and underestimating him would’ve been a tremendous mistake on my part.
Cidrin laughed and nudged toward Kadia. “Maybe she should sit this one out. It’s not safe down there.”
What struck me about him and his team was how utterly calm they were, sitting back and laughing as if they didn’t have a care in the world. They must’ve known they were the favorites to win the trial.
I found myself responding to him before I knew what I was saying. “Piss off,” I spat.
Cidrin laughed aloud, looking to his friends. “Not very ladylike. I didn’t mean to strike a nerve, I was just worried about her safety.” He stood and stepped toward me, getting much too close for comfort. “You see, this is a deadly game, and I can’t go easy on her just because she’s under the weather, if you follow me.”
I put one hand on him, and pushed him out of my face. “I see. Maybe you should worry more about your own team, and let me worry about mine.”
Cidrin raised an eyebrow. He looked at me, Kurian, Kadia, and Fenn. “A gear-junky, a loner, a loser, and a bookworm. Come on, you don’t really think you stand a chance against us?” He gestured at himself and the others on his team. “Becoming a magister requires being a notch above everyone else.”
Normally, Kurian might’ve shot Cidrin down for the comment, but now that Kadia was all right, his eyes remained transfixed on the tree below. He was dead to the world. I forgot Cidrin for the moment and jostled Kurian to shake him out of it.
“Do you hear it?” Kurian said softly, in an almost sing-songy voice.
I looked at him like he was cracked. “Hear what?”
“I thought I heard…never mind.” He shook his head as if to clear it.
The airship came to hover on the farthest edge of the tree line surrounding Syseril. With the ground as soft and wet as it was, landing the ship was impossible, and it was brought to a hover a few dozen feet above the ground. The water and leaves below rippled, and all varieties of small life crept and slithered away. The artificers gathered their packs and supplies; mine must’ve weighed a hundred pounds. I packed everything that I could conceivably need for the trial. Artificing supplies, of course, inks and my inscriber, but most consisted of survival equiptment. You see, trials like this can last for days, or even weeks. If you didn’t want to be eating grubs and tainted water, you planned ahead.
Climbing down the rope ladder to the soggy ground wasn’t easy for any of us, save perhaps Kurian who barely seemed affected by the weight of his pack.
I was one of the first to touch down onto the marshland, just after Magister Ross. My foot depressed a few inches into the soil, and some leaked into my boots. I tightened my laces to keep more out while the others finished their climb down.
The marsh was worse from the ground. Fog lingered everywhere, like an ominous hazy cloud that obscured everything not immediately in front of you. Every step you made had to be careful, lest your foot get caught in a sinkhole. The entire marsh stank of fermenting matter that had collected over the centuries, made all the worse by the oppressive heat.
Yes, the capital is hot but, as they say, it’s the humidity that gets you. It seemed like there was more water in the air than there was on the ground, and after just a few minutes it felt like I’d been trapped in a sauna. I loosened my uniform’s collar and pulled up my sleeve as far as it could go as the last team touched down.
Magister Ross did a quick count, with her eyes, and nodded. “Good, everyone’s here.” She pulled a furled map from her uniform pocket, and tilted her bifocals down to read it. “Excellent, we’re not far. Let’s move.”
“Where are we going, exactly?” Fenn asked. The heat had begun to affect him, and he was sweating like he’d just run a marathon.
Ross smirked. “Why, to supper, of course. And it would be rude to be late. Stay close, young artificers, we won’t be turning back for stragglers.”
We marched, single file, through the bog. Kadia held on to my pack, and Fenn held on to her’s, and so on as to not get split up. Venomous snakes hung from the canopy of trees overhead, and mosquitos buzzed in swarms larger than I had ever seen. I swear, some had suckers as big as toothpicks.
What sort of supper could we possibly be going to? What sort of people would live in a place like this? If I’d been smart, I would’ve turned around, climbed back onto the ship, and gone home. Unfortunately, while I pride myself on my general mechanical brilliance, I’ll admit I don’t always make the best decisions.
We walked for what was probably only a few minutes, but felt much, much longer in the dank, humid environment. We talked of small things to pass the time, having long since given up trying to get Magister Ross to tell us exactly what our trial would entail.
“Patience is a virtue, young artificer,” she’d said.
Kurian was bringing up the rear, and I slowed down in order to walk beside him. He wasn’t his normal, bright-eyed self.
“You doing okay?” I asked dumbly.
He glanced sideways at me, then down at the ground. “I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Dragons aren’t supposed to come here,” Kurian said reluctantly. He slowed down a bit. “It’s one of our oldest laws. I might only be a half-breed, but even I know the stories about this place. How could the Magisterium not know?”
I shrugged, which came off as more dismissive than I intended. “You said your grandfather planted the tree to contain evil. What kind of evil?”
For the first time since I’d met him, Kurian’s eyes became cold, deadly serious, and hard as iron. “A demon of the Old World. Older than time itself.”
“Does this demon have a name?”
“If it did, I wouldn’t say it aloud.” He paused, allowing the others to get slightly farther ahead. He stopped me, held my hand, and motioned for me to crouch. He slipped my hand into the bog water below until it brushed against the algae, mushrooms, and creeping things living a few inches down. I didn’t pull away.
“Do you feel that?” he asked, taking his hand off mine.
“The water?” I asked dubiously.
He shook his head, briefly glancing at the artificers getting farther away from us. “I’m not asking what your hand feels. Close your eyes. Open your templar. What do you feel?”
I did so, closed my eyes, and waited. Seconds passed, but I didn’t feel anything, except for the slick muck around my fingers. Then, it all came at me like a tidal wave. Like a brush of dark wind that sent a chill through my soul. I felt…something. It’s hard to describe exactly what. Something deep beneath the soil, but at the same time all around us, in every tree and rock and branch and insect. It felt as though I was in a den of snakes, and their slithering, creeping, wriggling mass covered every part of me.
Kurian pulled my hand from the ground. I fell backward, and he caught me b
efore I landed in the water. I panted, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and looked at him like a wounded animal.
“What the hell was that?” I said, pulling myself up and trying to stop my body from shaking.
Before Kurian could speak, Fenn’s voice called to us from a few yards ahead. “Guys!” He waved his arm, pointing aggressively forward as the others trotted on ahead. “Get off your asses and move!”
At his insistence, we caught up, and Fenn practically dragged us through the muck toward the group. “Of all the idiotic, irresponsible bullshit.” He turned his flat hand sideways and pointed forward. “I don’t mind if you get lost out here and starve to death, I really don’t, but for some reason the Old Gods have cursed me with being on your team. Could you at least pretend to care?”
I was too shaken to give an appropriately snarky response, and instead just nodded. “Sorry.” My voice sounded thin, and I could feel a slight tremor shaking through my throat.
It didn’t take us too long to catch up with Magister Ross and the others. They’d stopped in front of a cluster of rocks laden with twisting, thorn-covered vines. There didn’t seem to be anything but more marshland as far as the eye could see.
Magister Ross was poking at the air in front of her, and murmuring to herself in a way that seemed more than a little manic. The other artificers were watching her as she drew strange patterns in the air with a swirling motion.
“Magister?” I said, coming just short of actually touching her.
She glanced back, put one finger to her lips, and shushed me like one shushes a dog. I slinked back and sighed.
“I guess we’re just supposed to wait,” I said.
Kadia was nearby, still looking slightly ill, and noticed us. She looked to Fenn. “You found them,” she said.
“I should’ve let them get lost,” Fenn grumbled.
Kadia swatted a mosquito away from her face. “Why did you guys break away from the group?”
“My foot got stuck,” I said lamely.
Fenn rubbed his temples. “Gods below, you even suck at lying. We’re all going to die.”
“Quite possibly, Mr. Fenn,” Magister Ross said, loudly enough for us all to hear. “But not right now. In fact, you’re now in the safest part of the Syseril marshes. The great hidden monastary of Liatou.”
Fenn glanced around. “Well, it must be well-hidden, because I don’t see a damned thing.”
Magister Ross smirked. “That’s rather the point, isn’t it?” She took a full step forward and the air rippled as though she’d passed through some invisible veil. For a brief second, only half her body was visible, as though she’d been chopped in half. Then she disappeared completely.
We stared dumbly at the empty air for a long moment, before Kurian moved first. He prodded his forefinger at the invisible veil, and the tip disappeared. Apparently feeling no pain, he took a deep breath and barreled through in one step. I followed close behind.
- 7 -
Liatou, The Hidden Village
A chill swept past my body as I stumbled onto the other side of the veil. Before, the area had looked like a thick tangle of vines and rocks, but these things had vanished. Instead, the marshland tapered off into a deeper body of water intermixed with skinny trees. Not far off were several rickety wooden boats. I turned around to inspect the veil. It was much more solid from this side, and I could see the ripples where the magic started.
The veil was being emitted by dozens, possibly hundreds, of small magistry devices staked into the ground. They were very old, caked in moss and wet soil from their years in the marshes. I knelt near one and wiped some of the muck from the top.
It was sturdily built. The casing was solid steel, the magistry runes were encased in glass to prevent erosion, and it had all the telltale marks of something designed and built at the Magisterium. I looked to Magister Ross, intending to ask her why they were there, but she’d already climbed into one of the boats and was rowing down the still water.
We hurried into the leftover boats and followed close behind.
I’d been to many towns outside of Endra before. Whether traveling with the Magisterium, or with my father when I was younger. This one was unlike any I’d seen before. The entire town was built on the water. The houses and buildings were built atop wooden beams, and almost seemed to float on the water’s surface. With no canopy of trees overhead, it was brighter than it had been elsewhere, and Syseril loomed in the background, larger and more intimidating than ever.
We rowed slowly through the hidden village, hardly breathing. It was unsettling; there were doors creaking on their hinges, smoke coming from some chimneys, fish wriggling in open barrels, and I could feel eyes on me, coming from all directions, but I couldn’t see anybody.
At the end of the waterway was the largest building in the town. It seemed as though it was made of driftwood and was only two stories tall. I could see candlelight coming from the inside and, for a brief moment, I saw the figure of a man standing in one of the glassless second-floor windows.
When we tied off our boats and approached the main door, two men greeted us at the door. They were tall, slender men with bald heads and pale skin. They wore orange and yellow robes that were remarkably clean, considering the environment. There was something off about them that I couldn’t quite place at the time, but looking back, I think they were afraid of us.
Magister Ross spoke to them in a language I didn’t recognize.
“Omen daole,” she said.
The taller of the two answered. A scar crossed his face, and a large chunk of his nose was missing. “Modaoshi Ross.Omen hin gaoxing shou dao ni, wo de nushi.” His eyes gazed heavily over us, and he spoke in heavily accented Amínnic. “Laoshi is expecting you.”
They led us into the building. For what it was, it was well put together. On the walls hung ancient masks and weaving that I recognized as being Shian in origin. This wasn’t surprising, given our location, but the Shians have never been particularly friendly to Endrans and are widely regarded as being xenophobes.
My father once told me the story of the Red Plague, a horrific sickness that struck Shindo before I was born. It was well-known that the Celosans had endured and cured the Red Plague, but it took over a decade for Emperor Kaun Yangchen to ask for their help. By the time he did, over three hundred thousand were dead.
With a stubbornness that strong, it’s not suprising that I’d never actually met a Shian before. Whatever their faults, their art and architecture was astounding.
Most of the monastery structure was taken up by a single room. It was dim, lit only with a few flickering candles, and smelled of burning incense. There were five monks inside, each clothed in the same orange robes. They sat at some sort of jade altar, shaped like a six-headed dragon. The man sitting, cross-legged, in the center was elevated from the others, and by all appearances seemed to be in charge.
He was in rough shape. His eyes were slate gray, and he seemed to be blind. One of his ears was missing, part of eyebrow was burned permanently off, and a cane sitting at his side implied he might also have trouble walking.
The tall monk escorting us stepped up to him and whispered something in his ear.
“Leave us,” the leader said. All of the robed men stood immediately and calmly filed out. Behind them, the doors were shut.
There was a long silence that seemed to linger for an age. Magister Ross spoke first. She looked to her left and right, admiring the finely woven tapestry hanging from the eastern wall. The image on it was of a dragon burning a field.
“You’re doing well for yourself, Magister Lao,” Ross said, sounding surprisingly casual.
The blind man smirked. “As well as can be expected. It’s not a glorious life in the Magisterium, but I get by.”
I looked at Kurian and the others; they looked back just as dumbfounded. This man was a magister?
“You brought many more than I’d thought you would,” Lao said, some concern creeping into his voice. He continue
d to stare at some random point against the opposite wall. “Artificers? Twenty of them, in fact.”
How does he know how many of us there are? I wondered to myself.
“The Magisterium has significant investment here,” Magister Ross said. “I wanted to make sure that wasn’t put in jeopardy.”
Lao nodded. “I see, and you’ve given me the dubious honor of hosting their final trial?”
Ross shrugged. “From your letters, it seemed an appropriate test. Surely you saw this coming?”
Lao smirked. “The thought had crossed my mind.”
Kurian had been quiet for a good long time, but he finally spoke up. “Excuse me,” he said, eliciting a head turn from Lao. “Could you two maybe explain what we’re doing here?”
“Ah,” Lao said, before Ross could respond. He paused, leaning his head forward as if he were listening for something. “You must be Kurian. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
“You have?” Kurian said, taking a step back.
“We’re kindred spirits, I hear. Me, the only Shian ever to attend the Magisterium. And you, well…”
I saw Kurian’s fist clench, as if he were steeling himself against Lao outing him as one of the dragonkin. Instead, Lao changed the subject rather abruptly. “When I was an artificer, we weren’t allowed to speak out of turn,” he said. “Has the Magisterium grown a bit more liberal since last I was there?”
Ross gave Kurian a glare that could’ve melted stone. “Sometimes, it seems so.”
Lao clapped his hands together, then wobbled to his feet, supported by his crooked cane. “Nevertheless, the boy is right. We’ve much to discuss and precious little time.” He stepped down to meet us. “As you’ve heard, I am Magister Laoshi Sinomori, formerly of the Magisterium. I was the first Shian to ever serve there, in fact. After my loss of sight, and with special dispensation from the Sun King, I was permitted retirement to my home city.”
“This is your home city?” I asked.
Lao grimaced. “Unfortunately, I’m no longer welcome in Shindo. Instead, I’ve carved out my niche here, at the footsteps of Syseril. Serving the Magisterium in my own way.”
