by E. S. Bell
The peliteryxes all dove at once, beaks down, wings folded, like sea hawks diving for prey. Archer guessed their handler had called them back when the cloudless blue sky darkened with uncanny speed. Celestine gripped his arm with a gasp as a curtain of clouds drew across it, fat and roiling, obscuring the Guild and Isle Parish, obscuring everything in a thick blanket of gray and black. Moments later, thunder boomed and lightning flashed. Rain lashed against Celestine’s window, and they both stepped back at the storm that had formed and railed within mere seconds.
“Did you see…?”
“How…?”
An urgent rapping came at the door.
“Enter,” Celestine said, her voice shaky.
The adherent was out of breath. “High Reverent. Admiral.”
“What is it, Lanik?”
“It’s Connor, your Reverence. He’s having an episode. A bad one.”
Fear gripped the admiral’s heart. The storm was forgotten. He rushed to the door, Celestine following behind him.
“Where?” Archer asked, praying it wasn’t at the Citadel. His greatest fear was that Connor would have one of his fits while training at swordplay or archery and hurt himself. He was relieved when the acolyte told him his son was in the Temple, just leaving a meditation cell. Other adherents were with him.
“Did they put the stick in his mouth?” he demanded of Lanik as the three of them raced down to the meditation floor. The corridors were dimmed by dark clouds and streaked with rain. “He carries it in his coat pocket. Do they know to cushion his head so he doesn’t bang it on the floor?”
“Yes… and no, sir.”
“Speak plain, godsdammit!”
“Archer,” Celestine said.
“They can’t touch him, sir,” Lanik said, his voice slightly cool.
Archer’s heart rolled. His mind’s eye held an image of his seventeen-year old son convulsing with such violence that the healers could not even go near him. Gods, no…
“We’ll help him,” Celestine said as they rounded a curving passage that led down to the meditation cells. “Keep faith, Archer.”
Lanik led them to the first of a row of meditation cells. Outside the door a small group of adherents had gathered. Rage boiled up in Archer as he thought they were spectators gathered to gawk and stare while his son suffered another of his fits, the sort Connor had been plagued with ever since he was a child. But as they neared, he saw they tried to help, murmuring prayers to the Two-Faced God, and attempting to enter the room. Something was driving them back.
The air felt charged. All the hair stood up on Archer’s arms and he watched as a determined adherent attempted to enter the little cell. There was an earsplitting sound, like tearing parchment, and flash of blue-white light. The young man stumbled back out, clutching his arm. The smell of sulfur and burnt flesh filled the air.
“Stand back!” Archer ordered and pushed his way to the door of the cell. A ragged cry tore from his throat.
His son lay prone on the floor, writhing and flailing as he always did during one of his episodes. Saliva burbled over his lips and his dark eyes were rolled up in his skull, showing the whites. The violence of the seizure was no more or less than usual except that small spider webs of lightning coursed along Connor’s skin, crackled between his fingertips, and even danced in his open mouth, in his ears, in his nostrils.
“Gods be good,” Archer breathed. He took a step inside and reached a hand to his son’s booted foot but Celestine snatched his hand away before he could touch it.
“Don’t!” she cried. “You’ll be burned. Let it pass. See? It is passing.”
The convulsions eased, the writhing stopped, and the lightning burnt itself out with a few pops and a whiff of sulfur. Connor lay still.
Archer rushed to him to make sure he was breathing; sometimes he stopped for a moment or two and it was his father’s greatest fear that some time he would have a fit and stop breathing altogether. But Connor’s chest rose and fell and the admiral cradled his son’s head in his lap.
“What in the name of the god just happened?”
Celestine shook her head. The other adherents—half a dozen or so—looked as perplexed. She rose and conferred with her people and Archer heard them mutter about the sudden storm.
To the Deeps with the storm.
Connor looked peaceful, as though he were sleeping deeply. Archer stroked his hair that was dark like his, but his son’s beauty came from his mother, fifteen years gone. The admiral wiped the spittle from Connor’s mouth and checked to see if he’d cracked any teeth.
It was the same as any other seizure. I must have imagined the lightning. I must have.
Celestine reappeared at the door. “Let’s get him to the infirmary,” she said, her voice low and her eyes dark.
“What is it?” Admiral asked as he lifted his son in his arms. “What’s wrong?” he asked Celestine.
“The storm is over,” she said, and Archer heard it for himself when he stepped into the corridor. The walls were lined with windows, alternating in plain panes of glass, or beautiful stained designs in multitudinous colors. Through the plain glass, Archer saw the clouds dissipating with the speed in which they’d come. The rain had stopped. The sky was quiet.
“It stopped,” Celestine said as they walked down the long gallery, “when Connor did.”
Archer said nothing. Adherents were always looking at everything through the prism of their religion.
Sometimes, he thought, things just happen. Like storms. He looked down at his son. There was no lightning, he thought, as they came to the infirmary at the end of the gallery. It’s impossible. And if there had been, Connor would be dead by now, burnt to a crisp.
By the time he laid his son in one of the twenty beds—all empty—in the stark, clean infirmary, he had nearly convinced himself that he had not seen lightning crackle over Connor. Instead, he thought, perhaps the Two-Faced God had Heard Connor after all, and the light that burnt the adherent’s arm was his son’s own creation. When Connor opened his eyes and smiled at him, he was certain of it.
“How do you feel, captain?” Archer asked.
Connor smiled faintly. “I’ve been better.” He looked at Celestine and the handful of adherents who had joined them in the infirmary. He frowned. “Was it a bad one?”
Archer shot a look at the High Reverent and her people who were looking far too serious and pensive. “It was nothing out of the ordinary,” he said pointedly.
Celestine met his eye but he did not blink. She dismissed the others and moved to stand beside Connor on the other side of the bed. She felt his forehead, laid a hand on his chest, and felt the pulse in his wrist.
“How do you feel?” she asked as if his first answer wasn’t sufficient.
“My head aches,” the young man replied, “but that’s usual.”
Archer nodded. “He’s fine.” He beamed. “He wove light.”
Connor’s eyes widened and a smile broke his handsome face. “Did I? Did I really?”
Archer felt Celestine’s glare like knives in his back. “That is not certain,” she said. She started to say more when Lanik appeared again.
“Now what?” Archer demanded.
“My pardons, sir,” Lanik said, “but he refuses to wait outside. Paladin Jarrin tried to stop him but he insisted…”
“Who insisted? Who refuses…?” Celestine asked and Archer saw her hand land on the hilt of her sapphire-pommeled sword. He followed suit, standing in front of his son.
Paladin Jarrin entered the room. The man’s hair was more gray than brown and crow’s feet folded the corners of his eyes. The veteran Paladin garbed blue and silver—the uniform his son desperately yearned to don—appeared almost flummoxed.
“High Reverent,” he said, bowing his head. “We had thought it was Paladin Koren’s companion, the one who is by her side always, and so let him enter. But too late, we realized our mistake.”
“Let who enter?” Celestine demanded.
&nbs
p; “A dragonman.” Jarrin turned to Archer. “He insists on seeing you, Admiral Crane. He professes he bears no malice but…”
“And that was enough to convince you to let him into the Moon Temple?” Archer tightened his grip on his sword.
“The Vai’Ensai were valuable allies during the war,” Celestine said. “They are always welcome here.”
Archer knew that was true. He also knew Celestine was appalled by the lack of security in her own domain; her ears were red and her voice tight. Archer silently vowed to send a complement of guards from the Citadel that very day.
His thoughts faded as a shadow filled the door in the infirmary. A Vai’Ensai ducked his horned head under the arch and maneuvered his wings through the door. He wore a studded leather vest, trousers, and the heaviest, broadest sword Crane had ever seen was strapped between his claw-tipped wings. Rainwater dripped off those enormous wings, off the dragonman’s lizard-like snout that was pierced with a heavy iron ring, and glistened on the row of horns that began on his forehead and marched over the crown of his head and to the base of his neck in a straight line. He stood easily seven spans tall and was packed with muscles that rippled and bulged under his green-tinged skin.
“I am here for the man whose name is like the bird,” intoned the Vai’Ensai.
His voice was heavily accented, deep, and grating. He touched the iron pendant that hung from a chain around his neck.
“Crane. I’m here for Crane.”
“That’s me,” the Admiral said, exchanging glances with Celestine. “I’m Archer Crane.”
The dragonman sniffed the air and then took a step closer to the bed. He sniffed again.
“No.” He shook his immense horned head. “Not you. Him.” He pointed at Connor. “I am here for him.”
Visions and Dreams
The pier. Ahead, the orange light, hovering somewhere over the water. Or perhaps at the end of the pier. If she could just reach it…
She walked faster, then ran. The pier stretched out under her feet but the light grew no closer. The mist thickened and it was cold. So cold. She slowed then fell, her body stiffening so she thought her bones might shatter. The orange light hung as it had, no closer but still in reach. If only she could get up and keep going. To remain here was death.
Pain followed the cold, both wrapping her in a biting embrace, as the fog thickened to fill her lungs.
“Help me,” she croaked through blue lips and a stiffened jaw. “Help…”
The cold took her until she felt nothing else but it and the agony of her desperate hope, and a voice whispering in her mind from a place deep and dark and older than time…
Find me…
Selena woke thinking some wrathful person had gripped her by the shoulders and was shaking her. She huddled deeper into the covers, clenching her fists around the soft linen, and squeezing her eyes shut against the tears that stung like needles. She took deep even breaths, willing the phantom cold to subside to her usual pervasive chill.
The pier dream. It was no better or worse than some of the others that plagued her, but for its simple, terrible warning. Find the light or die. Selena huddled deeper in the blankets.
When the vestiges of the dream slipped away, she hauled herself to sitting, and brushed the pale hair out of her eyes. The Wayfarer Inn. Her room’s large window revealed a gray and rainy morning. A late summer storm, unexpected after the perfect blue sky of the day previous, boiled over Isle Uago. Selena watched the rain lance against the glass in silver streaks and sighed.
She nearly sank back to the pillows, to bury herself under the blankets and spend the morning hours—or longer—in a half-sleep in which she could eschew the rain, the leering pirates, and the cold, if her dreams showed mercy.
There lies weakness. And Ilior worries.
Neither thought roused her. Some days, especially the long, black days when her wound was new, she stayed in bed.
The wound. Skye had promised this quest would close it.
She promised.
Selena hauled herself up and dressed; pulled on her leggings, undershirt, and tunic. She left her chainmail shirt in the small trunk at the foot of the bed. It would make her colder in the rain. As soon as she was dressed she descended to the common room and asked the innkeeper to brew some coffee.
“In this heat?”
When Selena slid a kroon over the bar, he nodded, snatched it up, and hollered for his kitchen boy to set a pot.
“You mind your pets, now,” the innkeeper warned Selena. “It’s bad enough, the dragonman—” he nodded at Ilior who was already seated at the hearth, waiting for her—“but now a sirrak too? I been real nice since yer coin is good, but…” He leaned on the gleaming wood and said in a low voice. “Don’t you think it’s about time you moved on?”
Selena stiffened. “Yes, I do.”
She left him at the bar and sat with Ilior at a table near the empty hearth. Outside the windows, the wind howled and the rain battered the glass. A sullen, skinny boy wearing a stained apron plunked a mug of black coffee in front of her. Selena wrapped her hands around the mug and let the steam waft over her face. She told herself it helped.
“I haven’t seen Svoz,” Ilior said, his voice a low rumble.
“I sent him to the wilds to feed.”
Ilior picked up a strip of limp, greasy bacon from his breakfast plate. “Don’t let him deplete the boars too much, or I might be deprived of such glorious fare.”
“That is kind of you to make light, when I know how much his joining us bothers you.”
Ilior shrugged his massive shoulders. His lone wing rose and fell. “The success of your quest is too important.”
“If it could only begin,” Selena said. “We are no longer welcome here,” she said with a nod at the innkeeper behind the bar who watched them with a scowl twisting his jowls.
“You want me to talk to him?”
“No. This inn is the finest in Port Sylk. I’m sure some pirate boss has a stake in it. We don’t want to invite that kind of trouble.”
“What next, then?” Ilior asked. “You’ve interviewed every halfway reputable captain on the island, and more that aren’t. I hate to suggest it, but writing to the Temple might be the right thing.”
Selena sighed. “I was thinking the same.”
“Tell the High Reverent to send the Armada.” Ilior’s scaled lips curled. “Her choice of captain wasn’t too keen the first time.”
“She’s doing her best,” Selena said. She’d had the same ire for Celestine, but felt it was her duty to defend her now. “She should have left such matters to Admiral Crane, but done is done.” Selena pushed her coffee mug aside. “But your advice is sound. The rain has let up. I’ll go to the scriveners now.”
“Fair enough,” Ilior said, rising.
“No, stay,” Selena said. “I’ll go myself.”
“That does not seem safe.”
“Neither is staying here. Not for much longer. I need you here in the event the innkeeper has notions about tossing our things in the street. I can buy some time if I tell him we have a ship on the way.”
“I don’t like this,” Ilior grumbled. “It’s the pirate isle—”
Selena held up a hand. “Please, my friend. I want to be alone. For a bit.”
He nodded reluctantly as she rose and started for the door. She felt his scaled hand on her wrist.
“Be careful.”
She knew that every time she ventured alone Ilior considered it a dereliction of the duty he’d assigned himself. Since the war. Since that terrible day where she found the Zak’reth warriors hacking off his wing in the Farendus Isles. She dreamt of that day too, sometimes, but at least she didn’t wake up screaming. In those dreams, it was Ilior who screamed.
She held his hand in hers. “I will. I promise.”
Despite the hidden sun, the heat was intense—or so Selena observed as she walked along the rain-soaked planks of the boardwalk. The smell of fish was trapped in the humid air,
as were the scents of salt, sweat, and old rum.
Selena couldn’t feel the wrath of the heat, but she had another misery. It might be a fortnight before an Alliance vessel arrived. A fortnight in which the Bazira trail would grow colder. Moreover, it was a missive of failure she would be sending to Isle Lillomet. Defeat before her mission could even begin.
She strolled the boardwalk, stopping frequently to peer into shops or listen to the hawking of street vendors. Eventually, the scriveners came into view, off the walk and on the docks. Three men sat on overturned buckets, sheaves of parchment tucked under their arms and bottles of ink set on make-shift tables made of crates or pieces of planking before them. Behind the scriveners were cages with peliteryxes, cawing or sleeping, their copper beak satchels glinting dully in the gray daylight.
Selena sighed with resignation, and the scent of pungent but sweet-smelling incense wafted in the air. Without thinking, she turned into the shop from where it came.
It was a small shop, spare in furniture, but rich in wares. Trays of jewelry with gemstones of all colors and sizes were arrayed neatly against every wall. Strings of crystals and beads hung from the ceiling, and shelves of exotic old books and jars filled with unknown plant and animal specimens lined the walls. Fat candles burned low, spilling their tallow over more stacks of books and at the rear hung a tapestry in dark velvet.
A seer’s shop, Selena thought. Isle Uago was flush with them, but this shop seemed finer for its inventory, and also strangely empty.
The tapestry was adorned with stars sewn in silver thread and Selena recognized the constellations, having been taught them at the Temple. The celestial plane from which the djinn of Isle Juskara were summoned was elegantly rendered; a conical outline of silver spangles that tapered to one bright star.
The other shapes: an oval like an unblinking eye, a slant of lightning, and a flaming sword were familiar to her from her days of study as a youth. The other gods. Lesser gods to whom some island nations on Lunos paid fealty. Selena could not recall their names. I disdained learning them, she thought, such is my total devotion to the Shining face.