Ioth, City of Lights

by D P Woolliscroft

  To take her mind off it she stopped at a stand that was giving out toffee-coated apples on sticks. She took three, one for her to munch on the way home, and the other two for her children. Thinking of Iob and Dillie brought a smile back to her face. She was so excited to see them, to have a few hours extra after leaving her post early to see the festivities at the campsite. She would just have to make sure they steered clear of any further displays by the Department of Expansion.

  She left the campsites and stepped back into the every-day world of the city she was accustomed to. Quiet, peaceful and content. People went about their business and waved hello as Gwil wandered down the southern spoke to her house, licking at the sticky toffee that now coated her fingers. She considered the mess her children would be in just moments, how their sticky fingerprints would soon cover the whole house. She didn’t care. It would be wonderful to see the looks of joy on their faces.

  Turning onto her street, she was greeted by the sight of Ronelle, the young woman—little more than a girl, really—who had moved into the house next door to her own. She was married to Gareth and they did not yet have children of their own, but she knew from her own experience that they’d soon be spending a lot of time with a few little tykes.

  “Good afternoon, Gwil,” said Ronelle as Gwil paused to talk with her. “How goes everything for the pilgrimage? I don’t know how you manage everything, it’s all so complex.”

  “Things are good, thank you. And it’s what I’m suited to.” Ronelle was a researcher at the Department of Schooling and Science. Apparently extremely bright, and Gwil looked forward to her own children being exposed to understanding how the world worked. That was part of what made Pyrfew work. Everyone was good at something, and the various institutions were good at identifying what that was.

  “It’s exciting that you’ll be attending this year. Are you nervous?”

  Gwil laughed. “Not at all. I am honored. As will you be one day.”

  Ronelle nodded earnestly. “Is tonight still good to come around and meet the children?”

  Gwil hid her disappointment as she remembered that she had invited Ronelle to join them that evening. She had been hoping for some time alone with Iob and Dillie, but she knew there wouldn’t be another time to arrange it given her responsibilities. “Yes, of course. I was thinking of taking them to the campsite. Would you like to join us?”

  Ronelle agreed that would be a splendid thing, and Gwil said her goodbyes before heading to the door of her home. She seemed like a nice girl. Gwil almost turned around to thank Ronelle for looking after her children when she was gone. But she knew she didn’t need to do that. That was the way Pyrfew worked too.

  Chapter 20

  Puzzle Pieces

  Neenahwi’s eyes hurt. Deciphering the spidery hand-written scrawl within the books was creating a pressure behind her eyes and in the back of her skull. The lack of sleep was probably not helping either. She’d only had one nap, sprawled out on the bare floor, when she just couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. The problem was there were too many books, and she wasn’t sure how much time she had left to figure out what Llewdon was up to. It was an odd situation—because she hadn’t found the tower too long after the Pyrfew agents, it gave her more of a pressing concern to work out her next step than if they had been there years ago. She was close to catching them, and maybe she was starting to sense what it was that they might have planned. Or at least where something might be planned.

  To begin her research, Neenahwi had pulled books at random from the shelves and started to read. The contents were varied; many being quite mundane journals of what Myank had done that particular day, including lists of tasks or ingredients that he needed to procure; others featured treatises on the economic workings of the northern duchies. The random approach was going to take too long. The Librarian. She surmised that he must have had that name for a reason. She had been deliberately avoiding talking to him. The length of time it had taken him to answer simple questions before had made her wary of wasting time, but she acknowledged that had probably been a false economy. Returning to where she’d left him, Neenahwi asked the disembodied head which works were Myank’s latest. He responded with a sniff that it had taken her long enough to think of him.

  Unfortunately, the Librarian couldn’t really pull the books off the shelf for her, or search through the piles of scattered pages on the floor, or for that matter even move himself around. So Neenahwi held him by his top knot, his head dangling rather like the largest, ugliest conker that any of the children of Kingshold had ever seen. She chuckled to herself when she thought the Librarian would be at least a ten-er. She moved the Librarian’s head so he could scan the titles on the shelves, until he called out one of the tomes that she sought.

  It still ended up being quite a stack to go through. Myank was prolific, even if his handwriting was not any better than her fathers. The Librarian was adept at translating the sections she couldn’t read, but she refused to have him read entire pages to her. Not least because she didn’t want to have to keep turning the pages for him, but also because she had a feeling that the severed head was judging her.

  The contents of Myank’s last writings, at least, seemed to have a couple of underlying themes; the gods and ley lines. There were many pages detailing the studies of various higher powers by the long-dead wizard, most of whom Neenahwi had never heard of. Deities from the countries to the east of Jabruacor that seemed to be highly specialized; did they really need a goddess of avalanches? Gods and idols of various tribes of creatures, from goblins to spriggans. Of course, there were the well-known deities, such as Mother Marlth; Atarah, goddess of seas; and Eanallion, god of decay; whose names Neenahwi recognized, though many of them weren’t openly worshiped anymore. At least not in the Jeweled Continent, since Arloth had cornered the market. In each of Myank’s studies of the gods he noted an assessment. In some cases, they were written off as being normal mortals or magical creatures. For the god of one particular goblin tribe, he even described it as being nothing more than a gigantic pile of trash. But in most cases Myank drew a connection from one of god of fire or body of water to another, pointing to a smaller number of true celestial beings.

  The writings on ley lines was more difficult to understand, as they compiled working notes with some thoughts half complete, though the outputs were certainly more illuminating than the limited knowledge that she had gathered from her father’s journals. Myank expressed a similar opinion to Jyuth, that there were certain places in the world where magical energy was magnified; but he had gone to the trouble of painstakingly mapping out where he thought many of these lines were. Neenahwi read of one task that he gave his students of going to different locations and creating the same small amount of magical fire, a flame no bigger than the palm of their hand. In each instance they had to use their own lifeforce as the source of their mana, repeating the same experiment as they traveled each day. On occasion the flame would be higher than usual, and on those days Myank had his students provide as good an idea of where they were as possible. Apparently, from this series of plot points, Myank had extrapolated and came to the conclusion that these weren’t isolated places where magic was amplified, but rather they were lines of magnification that crisscrossed the world. She knew that this much he must have shared with his students, as that is what Jyuth knew, but she was amazed to see that Myank actually had these lines mapped out.

  On a simple hand-drawn map of the Sapphire Sea the ley lines lay across it at a variety of angles, many of them converging in a single spot. Ioth.

  “Shit! Of course. Ioth,” she exclaimed, the tumblers falling into place as she could sense the key of awareness turning.

  “Ioth was a subject of intense fascination for my master,” mused the Librarian. “It was his final destination after he left me here.”

  Suddenly it all made sense. The visions from her Quana. Pyrfew’s new-found business associations with Ioth. Did they even really want the ships? “Libr
arian, do you know anything about Arloth?”

  “I have never heard of that person. Are they a wizard? I have not been out of the tower much in recent years.”

  “Not now at least,” muttered Neenahwi in answer to his first question. “Arloth is a god. Or at least, millions of people believe so. Actually, he’d have been discovered roughly the same time as your master disappeared. In Ioth.”

  “Interesting,” said the head, an appreciative smile appearing on his face. “Well, it seems like he did it.”

  “Wait, did you know all this?”

  “Young lady. I have been in this tower for a thousand years. I have read every book in this place many times, committing their knowledge to memory. I know everything Myank transcribed.”

  Neenahwi gave the head a stern look. “Then why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “You never asked the question. You just said you needed to stop Llewdon, and that you wanted to read Myank’s later writings. Don’t blame me.”

  She snorted. What a useless Librarian. Then again, she never did have much luck with librarians. But at least now she knew that perhaps she didn’t need to read through all of these books after all. There could be another way.

  “You know what? I need to stretch my legs. Let’s go for a walk.” She picked up the head of the Librarian and descended quickly down the stairs from the mezzanine.

  “Wait!” shrieked the severed head. “The magic might not work outside. I might die!”

  Neenahwi chuckled as she threw open the door and stepped out into the winter sun.

  It turned out that the Librarian didn’t stop yapping once he got outside, which was both a blessing and a curse. At first the Librarian wouldn’t shut up from surprise and happiness to be outside the tower, but that quickly changed to outrage at the recklessness that Neenahwi had shown by taking him outside when he could have just turned into a severed head. Initially she’d shrugged it off, but he was getting annoying; so, still holding him by his topknot, she flung the head over her shoulder where he could continue his diatribe in the direction of where she’d just been. At least now she could take him with her, but the thought of having to hear the constant reedy drone of his voice for longer was not something she looked forward to.

  The walk did her good. Moving her muscles and getting some fresh air in her lungs gave her an opportunity to think. To strategize about what she needed to do next. It seemed obvious, but she knew that Jyuth had counseled her to show some patience. She hadn’t done much of that of late.

  But before she flew off to Ioth, she needed to share her hard-won knowledge with the others. They needed to be prepared, for whatever Llewdon might be doing, and she knew how she would have to do it. Even though it was probably her least favorite form of magic.

  Back at the tower, she left the Librarian with a book downstairs (even though he’d only be able to read the two pages in front of him) while she went to the attic to find a comfortable patch of floor to sit upon. Neenahwi sat cross-legged and closed her eyes, her breathing became even and measured as she walked through the simple meditation exercises that she learned from her father. Her body became at ease, and all of her being existed in the small space just behind her forehead. The usual exercises would progress through splitting her consciousness, enabling the different versions of her to coexist simultaneously, but for what she was going to do she had to be whole.

  She created a thin thread of mana from the demon stone, linked to her own heart, and tied it to the little ball that was Neenahwi existing in her mind’s eye, giving it a double knot for good measure. The small glowing ball rose to the top of Neenahwi’s skull, pressing against the surface, but instead of bursting, after some initial resistance, it popped out of her head.

  Neenahwi opened her eyes. This was the part she hated about astral projection. There was her body, sitting on the floor, breathing evenly with eyes closed, and from her chest she could see the filament of blue that rose to meet the form that she had taken, which was basically the same as the one she had left behind. Seeing herself was always very weird, and one of the main reasons she didn’t do this very often. She wondered if Motega ever thought the same thing when he was in the body of his spirit animal. She’d have to ask him one day. One of the other reasons she didn’t really care for astral projection was that her body was vulnerable; while she was away from it, she would have no idea if someone was doing harm to her. In the past, when she was practicing, she always had Jyuth present to watch over her; but she had to assume that she was pretty safe in the magically hidden tower, even if the Librarian was in no state to do any protecting.

  The ghostly form of Neenahwi, visible only to herself at that moment, continued its ascent—through the roof of the tower and out into the sky beyond. She rotated to face where the sun would set later that day, back toward Edland and Kingshold. Flares of bright white light shot into the air in all directions. The souls of every living sentient thing, even further out than she could possibly see. They merged together to form a white wall; not particularly useful for finding the person that you wanted, but every soul has its own register, its own timbre, and if you know the person well enough then she knew she should be able to find them. She hadn’t known Mareth for long, but she knew he was a Songweaver, knew him well enough to have seen his natural aura at times, and so she should be able to find him.

  But she couldn’t.

  As she focused her will on finding him, all the other beams of light blinked away in quick succession. All of them, no matter which direction she turned. This was the other reason why she was not enamored of astral projection—it was one of the few disciplines that she was not very good at. She resigned herself to Plan B. Find Motega and have him convey the message. She focused on his soul, knowing the deep brown-orange of his aura like she knew the back of her hand. Still looking out to the west she didn’t see anything, and that concerned her so much she spun around in the air, scanning from the west, through the south and then east, where she saw his trace like a brilliant shaft of sunset shining down from the heavens. East? Was Motega in Ioth?

  There was only one way to find out.

  She willed her form forward, flying at an ever-increasing speed, the thin thread back to her body reeling out like a strand of silk from a spider leaping into the breeze. The sea sped below her, too fast to make out any details, her eyes focused on the light of her brother. The light drew closer and closer, until, in the space of a second or two, a city materialized that appeared to be floating on the waves. Then there was a row of buildings looking out on a canal, and then in another blink, she was in a room with her brother sitting alone. He looked sad. He stared at his hands and did not look up to see her.

  This was the final reason she did not care for the magic she was currently weaving. She couldn’t do anything. She longed to be able to hold her little brother and give him cheer, but she couldn’t even work any other magic. All she could do was try to make it so that he could potentially perceive her.

  “Motega? Can you see me?”

  Her brother looked up, cocking his head. He must have heard her voice.

  “Motega. It’s Neenahwi. I’m here.”

  He looked around, his eyes squinting as his brain told him he was alone in the room. At one point he looked directly at her before staring into another part of the room, but relief surged through her as he turned his gaze back to her again.

  “Neenahwi? Is that really you, or am I seeing things while I’m awake now?”

  “It’s definitely me. I needed to talk with you. But what are you doing in Ioth?”

  Motega told her all about what had happened since she had left Kingshold; the need for someone to come to Ioth and convince them to stop working with Pyrfew. But by the sounds of it, they were turning a deaf ear.

  “What about Mareth?” she asked.

  “We left him in Kingshold. I assume he’s still there. Do you know something?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see him, but that could just be my fault
. I thought you would be back in Kingshold, too. I should have known you’d be in trouble already.” Motega strained a smile at her sisterly jab. “I was going to tell you that I am coming to Ioth, so you could tell Mareth and the others. I think Llewdon has something planned for the church.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know precisely, but Jyuth’s old teacher was the man who became Arloth. I’m certain of it. What comes next depends on what Llewdon wants to do about it.”

  Neenahwi could see Motega was thinking; he got to his feet and paced around in a circle muttering so she didn’t interrupt. Her brother stopped suddenly. “The map! I knew there was something I needed to tell you about. There was a map in Hoxteth’s house back in the summer, and I took it. I didn’t really think about it, but then I realized that it’s the exact same map in that tower in Redpool. It must be a copy.”

  “What map? Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?” Neenahwi’s mind raced ahead. “Oh, no. You know what that means, right?” she said.

  “Lord Hoxteth was probably working for Pyrfew.”

  “Yes. Or Grey was. Is. Shit. What if Mareth has been left alone with a Pyrfew agent?”

  “I’ve been trying not to think about that, seeing as there isn’t anything we could do about it. But it’s not good. Can you check it out? Oh, there’s more bad news too, I might as well just tell you it all at once.” Neenahwi paused as she was just about to interrupt to reiterate her intention of joining him, but she knew there must have been something else bothering her brother. “There are Alfjarun in the Pyrfew army.”