by Kim Wedlock
The soldiers didn't react as he neared, and Rathen slipped in among them like a ghost. Or perhaps, the others thought, it was the other way around. The soldiers appeared perfectly corporeal from even as close as a foot away, but when a hand, elbow or shoulder touched them, they passed straight through.
Eerily, the group melded in and moved with them towards the gate, continuing on through when the guards stood aside and opened the way with a salute.
And then, all of a sudden, they were inside the great city of Kulokhar.
Rathen stifled his sudden wash of terror and focused on following the false soldiers, until he spotted a street branching off to one side, dark and empty - almost of snow, entirely of people. He gestured, and they dove into it at the first opportunity, leaving the platoon to continue its phantom march.
Now, they were alone.
Pulling their cloaks about themselves, they moved on quickly.
The artisanal district. It was evident even before they'd set foot in the city, and it wasn't empty. But the trade district and its main gate had never been an option; the stately district would have been quiet but guarded, while the poor district was thin on guards yet always alive, and the royal district had neither gate nor forest to enter through. But while this area wasn't asleep, everyone around them would be focused. It also made the ideal place for soldiers to enter the city without causing disturbance or being hindered by the populace. The streets here were wide and the buildings generously spaced apart; while it wasn't as compact as the rest of the open districts, they were dotted with crates and carts instead - providing the perfect cover for six who may wish not to be seen.
The smells that had drifted over the walls outside had become more concentrated, and were joined by that of leather, dirt and heat, while the noise itself was almost deafening to walk through in the twilight: clanging, hissing, repetitive puffs of bellows and grinding of saws, orders barked to apprentices, and more they couldn't identify. Such early work seemed ridiculous, especially in such low light, but the open lanterns gave off more than enough for practised craftsmen to see by while paying the courtesy of deepening the shadows, and few lived this close to the workshops. There were only craftsmen and intermittent guards around, and while the former were focused on their work, the guards were weary under their shift and appeared both distracted and eased by the arrival of the phantom soldiers. There wasn't likely to be any trouble while they were close by.
They moved deeper into the district, and where the snow had been burned away from the heat of the forges, beggars and homeless sat under the feet of tolerant smiths. One or two even appeared to have been put to work, and their haggard expressions looked more relieved than those of their sleeping counterparts, huddled but warm despite the noise. But not one of them were paying the group any attention. Each of them, in their own ways, were busy.
Anthis noticed Eyila staring at each person they passed, careful to keep the light from catching the subtle burnish of her skin by pulling her hood lower. Her bemusement finally slipped out in the faintest whisper. "These people don't seem unhappy..."
"Because," Anthis whispered just as carefully, "they're not." 'Though any other district would be a different matter.' Thank goodness it had been this one.
A low growl rumbled in Garon's throat as he noticed a set of posters fixed to a dusty, smoky board, but he said nothing. Assuming Taric had done his job, they would be gone in a week.
Rathen, meanwhile, felt a loathsomely wistful pang of sorrow as he walked like a felon through the city that had once been his home, watching the snow gleam in the broader streets empty of forges, beautiful despite the clouds of smoke and dust. He imagined how the rest of it must have looked, from the towers that had once been a sanctuary. But a familiar and cruelly practical voice reminded him that this city had turned its back on him, and that his adoration was biased. Had he grown up anywhere else, Kulokhar would have been no more appealing than Mokhan or Carenna.
He pulled Aria closer and shut his longing away. She was his life now.
A figure wrapped in a travel cloak stepped suddenly out from the shadows, sending their hearts into their throats. Rathen recognised him quicker than the rest, but not before he'd pulled Aria behind him and considered a means to incapacitate him. He sighed shakily in relief. "Owan."
"Sorry," he smiled briefly. "You got in all right. Good. Come with me."
Rathen moved without hesitation; the others were less convinced.
Owan looked around at him as he fell into step beside. It took him a moment to speak. "There's something different about you." His eyes narrowed as Rathen failed to meet his stare. "What's happened?"
"I'll explain it all later. You don't need me to cast anything, do you?"
The man's brow knotted tighter. "No..."
"I thought there was a prohibition against magic," Garon said suspiciously.
"The grand magister declared this an exception."
The inquisitor glared unhappily. The mage had brought the matter to the grand magister's attention after all. He should have been more explicit in his message. He glanced towards Petra as she brushed her shoulder silently against his, and found a brief, reassuring look. He managed a flicker of a smile in return, but it did nothing to quiet his concerns.
They moved through empty streets, dark alleys and dusty lanes, encountering few souls as they went. A beggar or two sleeping in wagons, choosing soft hay and cloth-filled sacks over the warmth of forge fires, and a cat that followed them for a few turns until a mouse caught its flighty attention. From others, however, Owan could not conceal them, but he could at least cast a distraction. When they weren't waiting patiently for a patrol to round a distant corner, a simple spell could open a path around a watchful guard.
They waited until the illusory thief-child ran off around a corner, laughing mischievously while the guard dutifully chased it down with only minimal swearing.
Anthis watched curiously. "What happens when he catches it?"
"He won't catch it," Owan assured him. "Children have a way of vanishing through small spaces. He knows that. He won't think anything else."
"What about the soldiers?"
"They'll march back out through the North Gate."
The smells and noise thinned out as they moved deeper into the city, the buildings drew in, and the darkness grew heavier. They tightened together, looking over their shoulders, jumping at every sound. Owan frowned at them, but the equally anxious look on Rathen's face explained enough that he decided not to ask - not out here, anyway.
Mercifully, the streets soon began to widen again, and ahead loomed the three immense towers that bore the city's namesake: Kulokhar, Ebon Star Rise. Though they'd been visible from the approach beyond the walls, now so close, neither Eyila nor Aria could help but gawp, and Anthis and Petra noticed features they never had before. Notably that the famed Twisting Towers were only vaguely coiled, an optical illusion cast by the gold and silver four-point spiral that twisted around them in the opposite direction, making the architecture as a whole appear much more dramatic.
The black faces were dotted with tall, arched windows and finer gold flourishes, but above all were the invisible details revealed only in a shift of the light: washes and whirls that seemed to ripple over the onyx surface with every step they took forwards, backwards, left or right.
Eyila frowned with a touch of disappointment when she saw the holes and notches along the otherwise pristine spirals, cut very precisely as though it was quite intentional vandalism, until Anthis explained the musical intent behind the design, coaxing rainfall into beautiful melodies. Half of the group looked hopefully towards the sky, but if anything were to fall from those clouds, it was certain to be snow. The chill was relentless.
"These towers are bound to be watched."
"The Order took care of that some time ago," Owan assured Garon with ease, just as he had his every other thinly-veiled suspicion.
"And what of the Arana's spies?"
"They'
re known to the grand magister. They've been redirected."
The area took a sudden shift, and they knew they'd passed into a new district. Gone were the tightly-packed homes and store-houses, dusty streets and fulfilling sense of purpose; instead the cobbled stones became abruptly smooth, clean and uniform, laid to elven standards, the roads themselves had widened, and the buildings, though smaller, were no less opulent than the towers themselves.
Domed roofs, gilded facades, arched windows and ornate, oversized doors; meticulously tended gardens and trees, a pond so vast it verged on a small mere, a miniature rock bridge over a stream that trickled across a turquoise glass bed which, had it been day, would have been exquisite in colour as it wound its way among the classrooms, training grounds, dormitories and kitchens. Or so it would have been had every leaf, lily pad, and drop of water not been frozen solid.
Again, Rathen pushed aside that mournful ache and continued along the main road, leading straight to the towers.
"What's in there?" Aria asked, staring straight up at them with giant eyes. "Books?"
"Yes," Owan chuckled, "books. Libraries, archives, offices, meeting chambers, elders' dormitories--"
"Are we going in there?"
Rathen squeezed her hand in affectionate warning, but as she turned him an apologetic smile for her volume, a shadow broke away from one of the frozen gardens and moved out in front of them. Panic befell them all again, but the figure quickly dropped into step beside Owan, who hadn't broken his stride. After a few quiet words, the figure looked suddenly around to Rathen, who shrank back from the force of the awe in the man's eyes.
He returned briefly to Owan for another exchange, then moved off and disappeared around a corner.
The rest of them watched him leave uneasily.
They were so very close to the towers - closer than any but Rathen had ever been - and well within the range of any entrapping spells that may be lying in wait. If Owan was going to betray Rathen's trust, it could come at any moment.
Rathen was quite aware of this, and moved back up beside Owan, watching his old friend closely as he assured him he was only clearing the way.
When the towers stood just ahead atop a twenty-step dais, he stopped, turned, and looked them all over. None could tell what he was thinking. Rathen cursed himself for the failing of this friendship, until he realised that there was no longer any single person in the Order he could read completely.
His fingers loosened, and his heart began to race. He hadn't a clue what he could do. The memory of his last debilitating attempt to use magic shackled his imagination, but he had to be ready to do something, even if it was just throwing a punch.
Each of them tightened when Owan's eyes fell and lingered upon Eyila, as though he'd only then noticed her. But shrouded in a cloak as she was, and surrounded by magic all the time as he was, why would he notice her at all?
He considered her for a moment, then looked quickly back to Rathen. But Rathen had guessed what he was about to say. "Yes, and she's my responsibility. She's coming with me. They all are."
Owan looked across them all again before nodding his understanding, and it seemed to them that a brief glimmer of faith shone in his eyes at his old friend's resolve.
He turned and gestured for them to follow him around to the back of the dais, assuring Garon once again that the matter of spies had been taken care of.
"I'm sure all this mystery is very exciting, but I'm beginning to tire of vague answers."
"I apologise, but I'm sure you can appreciate that I'm not permitted to explain, Inquisitor."
"Actually, since you're the one who has been sent to meet us, no, I can't."
They were escorted through a small and unassuming door that almost vanished into the ebon facade. But, as they stepped over the hidden threshold, there was nothing within of the exterior grandeur. It was not a meeting hall, modest or otherwise. It was a small kitchen, dark, lit only by a few candles set upon a table, and occupied by a shadow. Garon's hand finally moved towards his sword. Petra's swiftly followed.
The door closed behind them. The figure moved into the light from the far side of the room. Blades were drawn. Aria was shuffled back into Anthis's care. And Rathen was hit by a sudden punch of nostalgia. But the panic that came with it was not that which the others shared, and this man, he was forced to remind himself, no longer had cause to invoke it. He was no longer his superior.
Rathen forced himself to straighten. The task was needlessly difficult. But the old man smiled not unkindly for it. "Sahrot Koraaz."
"Grand Magister." Rathen bowed his head on instinct, then looked around to the others and saw, with horror, the points of their blades angled towards him. He pulled Aria back to his side and demanded them to sheath. When he turned back, he found the old man looking down at the young girl with unconcealed surprise, while Aria peered back at him first in fear, then with growing curiosity. Finally, her eyes flicked back to her father, and the grand magister composed.
"I'm glad you're here, Rathen," he said in his kind voice, a voice that had thinned and weathered over eleven years, yet still had the power to render him contrite without reason. "There is a matter I'd like to discuss with you."
Rathen sobered. This time, it seemed he had reason. He straightened again and nodded. "And I, you."
"I don't doubt it. But my matter can wait." The grand magister smiled apologetically. "You didn't come here to answer a summons. Your own business is far more immediate." He looked across the others, lingering first upon Eyila with Owan's same curiosity, then upon Aria in another flicker of shock. He composed himself quickly once again and swept them a warm and hospitable smile before formally taking introductions. "It is a rare honour to have one of the tribes among us," he said softly to Eyila, who looked back at him with obvious surprise from beneath the concealment of her hood.
"It is?"
"Certainly," he smiled. "Especially a caster. I am a man of arcane academia, but anthropology is a special interest of mine. I would enjoy a talk with you, if you would grant it - at a later time, of course."
She dropped her hood and nodded somewhat falteringly in her surprise.
"Wonderful," he smiled again. "Now, if you would all please follow me. There's tea waiting upstairs, and a fire burning - it's preposterous that we should need it, but such are the present...complications."
Rathen led the way behind the grand magister while Owan took up the rear, leaving the cramped and modest kitchen for the magnificent hall beyond, its deep burgundy and walnut-panelled walls lit by elaborate sconces. Vast portraits set within ornate golden frames hung at regular intervals and followed them up the great staircase, where exquisitely carved busts of mages notable only to those acquainted greeted them at every half-landing.
They rose floor after floor, increasingly unsettled by their growing distance from the exit, and their legs quietly ached by the time they stepped off of the wide and winding staircase and down a dimly lit corridor. More busts stood along these walls, but they were outnumbered by the books that lay open upon periodic stands and lecterns and the occasional display of curious trinkets, most of which broke through Anthis's alarm to draw his insatiably academic eye.
His misgivings returned, however, when they were drawn to a stop beside a pair of doors. Even Rathen hesitated.
The room they were ushered into was vast and circular, with a large mahogany table set upon a raised platform, ringed by high-backed chairs. Another collection of portraits, books and busts stood silently along the walls, with the addition of bright green plants and ivory vases between and atop the cabinets.
But the most striking feature was the room's single window, so vast that it occupied a full quarter of the encircling walls and gave a near panoramic view of the city outside, interrupted only briefly by one of the exterior golden spirals, cutting across over the top corner. Facing north-west, all was perfectly positioned to catch as much light throughout the day as it could. Despite their crippling reliance on magic, the
elves had maintained their penchant for daylight.
For now, though, the sky was brightening from indigo; the sun was rising, dawn approaching, and the dying twilight cast itself all throughout the room. The candelabra were lit, and the large fireplace flickered quietly in the corner. There was no arcane magic in their flames.
Two imposing figures moved around to the front of the table; a silver-haired woman, sublime in robes that complemented the contrast of her delicate form and powerful bearing, and a younger man in military dress, with broad shoulders, dark hair and a harsh, humourless expression. They looked over the arrivals with distinctly different intent.
The woman was the first to step forwards, but she did so with a smile even warmer than the grand magister's had been, and embraced Rathen in a gesture which shocked the group, himself no less so. "Young Rathen," she murmured affectionately as she released him, and smiled at the childish reddening of his cheeks as he inclined his head.
She looked then across the others, and introductions were given. Aria took her liking immediately. She crouched down to speak to her while giving her a surreptitiously close and appraising look, then her eyes flicked briefly up towards Rathen. But she didn't voice her conclusion. She smiled back at Aria instead. "The most beautiful young lady that has ever graced my sight," she declared softly, and now Aria's plump cheeks burned bright red, and she couldn't help the smile that pulled at her heart-shaped lips.
"And this is Sahrakh Roane Forlin," Arator continued. The man only took a few steps forwards as courtesy and acknowledgement, but did not offer his hand. Rathen made no move to, either. Instead he returned the soldier's viperous gaze and decided upon him instantly. Owan cringed, but kept it to himself. As did Delas and Arator.
The grand magister nodded towards Owan, who promptly turned to close the door, and escorted the group to their seats. Roane watched as Rathen pulled out a chair for Aria, who scrambled into it and looked about the room from the chin-high table in awe. Rathen caught his look, and the brief glance he sent back blistered with challenge. The sahrakh saw, and took it. "With everything that's at stake, you would bring a child to your summoning?"