by Kim Wedlock
Her little lips pursed in thought. "I see. So they didn't turn into soil? And animals couldn't eat them?"
"No."
"Well...I don't really want to be eaten by animals, or turn into soil - not if I'm still alive. But..." she cocked her head, her young brow furrowing in bafflement. "I don't think I understand. If they're dead, why do they need their bodies if all they're going to do forever is dream, with or without it? Animals need it much more."
"Well they'd stopped caring about anything but themselves."
She grunted and turned away from the stone. "They sound horrible. It seems like all they did was take." She wandered back to the previous face and touched the etchings again, then soon found her way back to his side. She rose to the tips of her toes and peered over the edge of his book. She pointed to a few lines, told him they weren't dark enough, and he duly corrected them. "Where did their spirits go? Are they still here? Like their bodies?"
"No, I doubt that..." The tomb in Tarun snaked back into his mind, a memory he'd been trying to forget, particularly in the dead of night. But he could still recall that chilling feeling, a furious presence following them through the darkness - recall it so clearly it was as though he was back in that awful place. He cast a short glance over his shoulder as the hairs on his neck stood straighter. This place...it wasn't the same, but there was something here...
His skin prickled. He shoved his attention back onto the stone. "Uh...no. No, these elves were buried not long after they'd gained magic, relatively speaking. No coffins or possessions; they'd have been given back to the earth and moved on to the next world with this site alone serving as a memorial. They're at peace. There's nothing here..."
She dropped suddenly to the ground and sprawled over a spread of spongy foliage, dotted with small white flowers, where she stared dreamingly up at the sky. Anthis chuckled.
"What's the world like, do you think? Is it like when you dream? Your body stays put but your eyes and your feelings go somewhere else?"
"Mhm. Perhaps it's just like that."
"Then Nug is right?"
"He could be. None of us can know for certain until we get there ourselves."
Her lips curled into a small, soft smile. "I hope we do... Yes. I'm sure it will be fine. As long as my daddy is there."
Anthis's smile waned. He looked back to the rocks to find something he could use to distract her from her melancholy thoughts, curiously grown up though her outlook may have been. Or perhaps she really didn't understand as well as she thought she did. But death surrounded them; on every face the carvings told the story of the family who had been buried here, and of the embrace the gods had greeted them with. Zikhon was the dominant figure. Of course He was. He was the God of Death. And Eternal Peace. Acceptance. How could he and his peers have read Him so wrong?
"You have a different god, don't you?"
He blanched for a moment. "I...love Vastal. And the others."
"But you believe in one Petra doesn't. Will you go into a different dream world like Eyila will?"
He felt her eyes on him. He glanced; they were sad. He smiled softly. "My spirit will be put to good use. Of that, I'm certain. But," he looked back over the ruins, and then to the sunlight. He smiled at its presence, real or not. "It's all a long way off. For all of us."
"I hope so..."
Silence fell. Aria seemed not to notice while Anthis was simply relieved, but as he resumed his study and Aria continued to stare up at the unrelenting clouds, their downpour landing silently on an unseen roof far above them, a slight muttering gradually drifted their way.
Aria frowned sadly and sat up, her eyes falling upon her father. Anthis paused beside him as he made his way past to another stone. "Can I help?" He asked, though he already knew the answer.
Unsurprisingly, Rathen shook his head, and his pale face remained twisted in a knot of fret and indecision as he stared down into the depths of the relic that glinted in his hands. "No," he murmured distantly, "...just..."
"He's imit--intimidated."
Anthis hushed her, but Aria only looked back with assurance.
Rathen didn't deny it. Instead, he sighed and dropped his voice a shade lower. "I have an idea. But if it doesn't work..." His fingers drummed against the black, brushed metal in increasing doubt, then his eyes lifted suddenly to the historian. Anthis faltered at the force of their concentration. "The elves were very precise, yes? But they made this thing, and it wasn't to remove specific people's magic. The doll proved that; it was made to remove targeted magic - from a host of elves, an enchanted item or even, in theory, all this. The vessel itself isn't relevant.
"Every time I've tried to use it, I've fuelled the spell with the assumption that it would just act on the magic around it, but because I didn't tell it where to go it just built up and fizzled out. But when I affected the doll, I was concentrating on the magic inside it and unwittingly directed the spell to the 'magic inside the doll', not the doll itself. That was more luck than judgement, but my mistake when we went back was falling into the same trap: omitting that part of the spell because there was no vessel." Aria saw the sparkle in his tired eyes and smiled. "That was wrong. The doll provided a point of focus, and by omitting that part, the spell remained broken."
"You said you'd fixed it."
Rathen straightened as Garon looked down on them from the high ridge of the overhang. "It isn't a breakage, it's intentional. The spell is so detailed and so unique that among hundreds of chains defining the element and structure of magic as a target, it's easy to get overwhelmed and miss that single fact."
"It's not unreasonable, Garon," Anthis agreed.
"All right - but what does that mean?"
"It means I've found the switch."
Silent looks were exchanged. Aria hopeful, Anthis cautious, and Garon, descending to join them, was unreadable, though Rathen knew doubt was prevalent. He didn't allow even a flicker of hope across his own face.
The inquisitor stopped and straightened. "Do it."
All eyes followed Rathen's down to the relic, but Aria was the only one to notice his knuckles turn white. She rose from her sandwort seat and strode around between her father and the two onlookers and began, quite without apology, to push them both away from him. "Maybe you should all go away and leave him alone. Petra and Eyila are over there - I'm sure you would enjoy talking to them."
Both denied the suggestion a little too readily. "It's fine, Aria," Rathen smiled, but his amusement barely landed. His gaze plummeted back to the pull of the relic, and as he took a deep, resigned breath, the others held theirs.
No one moved. Not a sound was made. All stared between Rathen and the Zi'veyn, watching, waiting for any hint, wondering in the back of their minds what he was doing, how it would work, and would they know it if it did. Once again, they turned towards their surroundings, paying acute attention, waiting to spot any change just as they had the last time, and the time before that. But after a long minute, in keeping with custom, nothing at all seemed to happen.
But just as disappointment began to set in, a soft gurgle caught Anthis's attention. He looked down at the cold touch that reached him even through his boot. His heart jumped at the sight of water, and for a moment, he smiled.
But the water quickly covered his toes, and continued to well up from the soil that not a moment ago was bone-dry. Alarm set in as it rose towards his ankles and Aria began huffing in a panic beside him, lifting her bare feet one at a time while doing her best not to distract her father. Anthis looked towards Garon, who wore identical hesitation, but was quicker to break it. "Is it him?" He asked the only witnesses to Rathen's previous success in a ragged whisper. "Is he doing this?"
"I don't know..."
"Rathen--"
"No," the mage grunted with great effort. "Shut up..."
They bit their tongues hard, watching the water rise from nowhere and faster than the tide. Anthis lifted Aria out and up onto the altar when her lip started to tremble.
&
nbsp; The sky began to grow darker, and the threat of night pressed onto their hearts. It took a long while before realisation set in. Night was not descending.
The sunbeam that illuminated the marsh-locked ruin was shrinking slowly around them, and the rain was stalking readily after it. But before either could voice another distraction, a childish gasp snatched attention right back onto the mage. His twisted expression had grown sharper, and his eyes were shut tight.
The Zi'veyn floated silently between his hands.
Surprise knocked their fret aside.
At the far side, the darkness and encroaching rain stole Petra's attention away from the outlying swamp, and at the sight of the water that swelled now beneath her own feet, she immediately set to hurrying Eyila up and into the saddle. But when she spun towards the others to shout a warning or demand explanation, she witnessed the plume growing steadily thinner, the expressions upon the others' faces and the glint of metal hovering in the air before the caster, and a smile stole in instead. "Rathen! It's working!"
But he said nothing. His focus was rigid; sweat formed on his brow.
As the bleakness marched down on them, so too did the unnatural beauty begin to fade, and behind it flooded the same ghastly paranoia that lingered in any other graveyard.
Every aspect that set the site off balance began to diminish, even those they hadn't noticed - the silence but for the rainfall, which itself had become crisp in the absence of a low and insistent hum. Until finally, one at a time, they vanished, leaving the company standing in a damp, flooded ruin beneath thundering rain, the sun once again hidden behind the iron-clad clouds and a dank misery slipping back into their hearts.
Everything fell still.
Rathen didn't open his eyes, and neither did anyone move nor speak. It wasn't until his shoulders finally relaxed and a sigh of completion escaped in a ragged puff that their suspended breath was released, and his strain against the treacherously serene charm came to an end.
Aria leapt from the altar and embraced him fiercely. "I told you," she said as the small, unassuming relic descended gently back into his palm, and though he staggered a half step back and smiled feebly, he managed to return her enthusiasm. A hand clapped his shoulder as Anthis added his congratulations, while Garon merely nodded his own in silence. "How did you do it?" The historian asked, smiling broadly.
"Puddles...no vessel, but the edges..."
"The edges of the puddles were your targets."
He nodded as he steadied his haggard breath. "It's not as easy, but it works the same way...but I have to keep track of the edges...at the same time...and they shift..."
"How did you work it out?"
"Goats, puddles, marbles..."
Garon frowned, but Aria and Anthis's grins were explanation enough.
But when Petra's voice rose from behind them, there was no hint of praise.
"Turn around!"
Petra was already in front of them when they spun, her sword raised and guarded. Garon's was alongside it in a heartbeat, and only through the barred steel did the rest of them finally see the threat.
Rathen held Aria even tighter.
An immense, bestial shadow broke away from a broad crack in the barrow-face, and even at its feral hunch loomed at least as tall as a man. Otter-like in form, but gaunt and angular, and armed with savage claws on webbed hands and feet and a mouth filled with terrible, draconic teeth. And black eyes, wild and bloodthirsty, fixed like a hunter's arrow on every one of them at once.
It lurched forwards.
They didn't need Garon's order to flee.
A mournful howl bellowed after them through the trees.
Chapter 17
The weak reach of the campfire did little to help the careful, meticulous business of untangling branches from Aria's blonde ringlets. She hadn't been hiding in the bushes and neither had she been climbing through the tightest heights of the trees. In fact, as it turned out, they'd not gotten there by accident at all.
Rathen didn't approve of her attempt at an 'ummage to Arkhamas', but he kept that to himself, strained through the gloom and struggled to unravel the mess as painlessly as possible, acutely aware all the while that after the transformation of Borer's Teeth, they were almost certainly back in the Arana's sights. A quick arcane solution was not an option.
He glanced up as Aria winced and noticed her bottom lip poking out further and further. "I'm sorry, little one, but you did this to yourself."
"Mmm. That's not it..."
He frowned in question as he retrieved the knotted jumble that had slipped from his hand as she shook her head, and continued his attempt to tease a comb through it. He rolled his eyes when he worked it out. Of course. Whatever else had been on her mind since?
"It just sounded so sad!"
"I know, sweetheart."
"There must have been something we could've done..."
"It was a rushkin," he replied, moving on to another tangle. "Aside from handing it a knife and fork and lying down on a platter, it was out of our hands."
"But if it was going to eat us, why didn't it chase us?"
"You saw how thin it was. It didn't have the strength."
"And we damned it." She turned rigid with conviction.
"If we didn't, we'd have damned ourselves. And anyway, now the magic has gone, animals will return and it'll be able to hunt again."
She frowned. "How do you know there were no animals?"
"Because we didn't hear even a bird chirp for over an hour."
"Oh... So it will be okay?"
"I'm sure."
"Are you?"
His eyes slipped from her hair to regard her with a soft and quizzical smile. Where ever did she get this caring streak? It wasn't from him, he was certain about that, and even Kienza was self-concerned by comparison. And it couldn't have been from Oat...
He freed the final tangle with three strokes, fluffed her curls and embraced her fondly. "I'm sure, little one. Now come on - smells to me like dinner is ready."
"What is it?"
"Chicken."
Her eyes widened. "There are chickens out here?"
'Heron-shaped chickens.' "I know. I was surprised, too."
She hurried off to drop the comb back into her bag and smiled as she saw how tall her father walked. His bearing had changed since she'd been gone, as though he'd finally found the confidence he'd been missing all his life, but tonight he seemed to own the camp. He radiated surety. She felt a tremor of near-uncontainable excitement.
She bounded ahead of him to join the others, flashing a grin at Anthis as he glanced around at their return. He had an excited glint in his own eye, too, and it only fuelled her spirit. "What's happened?" She blurted, leaping into a spot by the fire.
"Anthis has made a discovery about the Zi'veyn!"
Aria's big eyes widened impossibly further, just as Eyila's had, so it was fortunate that the firelight rendered invisible the flushing of his cheeks at the tribal's musical enthusiasm.
Rathen spared her a brief, evaluating glance. She'd not recovered from the magic's influence when the puddles had disappeared, and he hadn't been able to work out why. She was fine now, for the most part, but again it had been only time and distance that could subdue her. "Really?" He asked, far more tempered, sitting down beside Aria and noticing as he handed her the dish Petra passed his way that he'd missed a knot.
Anthis presented the tattered and water-damaged journal recovered from the drowned ruins of Ut'hala; the book that had so firmly ensnared his attention for the last few days, that he'd always handled with the greatest care, as though it could disintegrate beneath the briefest absent breath. And he tugged from it a handful of loose pages.
Aria stared in horror. "Anthis, you've broken it!"
"No," he smiled inexplicably. "I've separated it. This," he waved the book in his left hand, "is the journal of Drekath Svol, a high-ranking elf in the qu'ulas's court. But--"
"The what?"
"Qu'ulas," he
blinked. "The king. The king's court. But this," he moved on quickly, waving the wrinkled pages in his right, "is written in a completely different hand. Do you know whose?"
"No, but no doubt you'll tell us." Eyila fired Petra a sharp look; she sighed and rolled her hand for him to continue, the closest he would get to an apology. But still, such an encouraging gesture surprised him enough that he stammered for a moment.
"Kruik Vuthal," he finally managed. But the name was met with blank stares. "The creator! The Zikrahlehveyn's creator! Look!" He raised the slender notebooks that were piled at his feet, showed them again the depiction of the relic and held the loose sheets alongside. The script on both pages were equally illegible, scrolling yet jagged, denoting by sight the harsh pronunciation, but it did appear to be written with the same considered intention.
Unfortunately, he received yet more unimpressed stares. He sighed and put the notebooks down. "All right: 'Zikrahlehveyn'. Kienza confirmed that it translates into 'Eternal Preservation', not 'Preserver of Eternity', and we presumed that that 'preservation' referred to elven superiority over humans and even gods, who we know destroyed them because of that arrogance, daring to think that their magic was stronger."
"...And you're saying that it wasn't?"
"As far as we know, that was more or less why the gods turned on them, but it wasn't what the Zi'veyn was trying to preserve - not originally, anyway. It was peace."
"Well, doesn't that sort of go without saying? A weapon as a show of power would deter--"
"No, it wasn't a weapon or a show of power. It was a last resort."
Rathen frowned. Even Petra raised her head.
Anthis's blazing smile widened. "There's never been any sign of war from the time when the elves disappeared. Nothing. No weapons, no bodies, not even any passing mention of wide-spread unrest in any uncovered writings. That's why their disappearance has been such a mystery. But: we've seen for ourselves that that isn't strictly true."
Rathen straightened in understanding. "The anarchists..."