by Matthew Ward
Elzar tapped a dull lantern. “Something wrong with this?”
“These days I find candlelight easier on my thoughts.”
“I find being able to see easier on my toes.” Yet the candles took the spark readily enough. Silvered moonlight retreated before murky orange.
Elzar squinted at the nearest table, and the book spread open atop. “Is that Kendrial’s Vitsimar?” Illuminated letters shone as the pages curled beneath his fingers. They were cold to the touch, despite the tower’s warmth. “I haven’t seen a copy since the provosts seized Abitha Marest’s library.”
The provosts, at least, were an institution he didn’t miss. Too swift with accusations of heresy, and too cruel in their investigation. They’d been fortunate only to be disbanded at Viktor’s command, rather than dragged to the gallows.
The last candle lit, Viktor set tinderbox aside and leaned across the table. “A copy, and incomplete. Our forebears were too scrupulous in scouring the Republic of the heretical.”
“They probably thought better of leaving temptation lying around.” Elzar eased Vitsimar aside and peered below. The apocryphal Tzalamourn. Three volumes with illegible, water-damaged spines. And at the bottom, a slender volume whose title was undamaged, and whose block script was nothing but gibberish to Elzar’s eye. Viktor might have failed to recover Konor Belenzo’s treatises from Darkmere, but he’d apparently uncovered a good deal else. “Hysteria’s one thing, but we both know it wasn’t wholly unfounded.”
“There’s nothing of concern in those pages,” said Viktor. “Old men opining on topics beyond their experience.”
“Nothing worse than opinionated old men.” Elzar let an edge creep into his tone. “Apart from impatient old men.”
“The Republic is fraying. We haven’t the strength to defend what remains, let alone reclaim what was taken.”
“We went over this yesterday. The foundry can’t help. I wish it could. But even if you empty the city of constructs, set the Reveque girl to marshal them in battle…?” He sucked at his teeth. “Now, if you’d found Belenzo’s testament in Darkmere, maybe even his schemata? That would be different.”
“There was never much hope of that,” said Viktor. “From the very start, Shalamoh was convinced Konor Belenzo’s testament burned years ago.”
“Shalamoh?”
“A historian, of sorts.”
“That’s a frustrating profession hereabouts.”
“He’d likely agree,” said Viktor. “If a copy of Belenzo’s testament survives, it would hardly be in Darkmere. He fled Malatriant with little more than the clothes on his back. She’d surely have destroyed any trace of him left within her reach.”
“You lied about your reasons for going?” Elzar said uneasily. “What were you really looking for?”
“This.”
Viktor set a small chest between them and hoisted back the lid. The air cooled. Candleflame lost vigour. Inside the box sat a curved hunk of black stone, or perhaps glass. The longer Elzar looked, the more translucent it seemed, the pale green lines sparking and cracking beneath the surface. He wanted to turn away, but the stone called to him, and not in a manner he cared for.
“What is this?” he breathed.
“A vranastone, or part of one. It’s a bridge between our realm and Otherworld, for it belongs wholly to neither. Malatriant used it to pluck souls from the Raven’s grasp. Shalamoh found passages referring to how she’d rip them apart and scry the future in their screams.”
“Delightful.” Elzar shuddered and looked away, dark spots dancing behind his eyes. “I thought you’d sworn off meddling with the dead. After Govanna—”
“This is different. At Govanna, I compelled corpses.” Viktor tensed, his brow set. “You’ve no idea of the strain of fracturing yourself across thousands of unwilling vessels. Even then, they couldn’t fight. The old tales are wrong. Malatriant never commanded the dead – she hollowed out the living. I haven’t the stomach for that.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Elzar said feelingly.
“You?” Viktor smiled without warmth. “You who always urged me to embrace my shadow’s bounty, and never to fear?”
“To everything there are limits, my boy.” They loomed closer that night.
“Are there? Or is it simply that the act should always be proportionate to the need?”
Elzar met his gaze, careful his eyes weren’t drawn again to the stone. “And what act calls you, Viktor?”
“The kind for which I have ever striven. The necessary.” He rested a hand on the stone. “Izack claims the experience of centuries is buried at Govanna. He’s wrong. Only their bodies are there, and those are worthless. The Raven took everything of value. I mean to reclaim it.”
“Viktor,” Elzar began carefully, “the spirits of Otherworld are at peace. They walk the mists until Third Dawn.”
“Can those taken before their time ever truly be at peace? And what if there is no Third Dawn? Lumestra is dead. Whatever hope we are to have, we must make for ourselves.”
Elzar’s cheeks stung at his bluntness. “Anastacia put this foolishness in your head?”
“No. But she’s the key.” Viktor lowered his voice, the words gaining fervency. “When I bound her to clay, she was but a spirit, shattered in the fall from Lumestra’s realm. What was a prison for her can be salvation for others.”
“Salvation? She loathed that body. I nearly wept with joy to see her today.”
“And what if that gift can be shared with others?” said Viktor. “All this time, I thought I’d made her a prison, when it was a chrysalis! Seven years, and she’s flesh and blood once more. What if that could be seven years of service in the army, thereafter free to live a life renewed? We demand ten of our conscripts, and I dread to think how few will live to see them out. Think of it. You know what Anastacia was capable of. As formidable as a kraikon. More! Imagine what we could achieve with an army like that.”
Elzar scowled to hold temptation at bay. “The Lady Anastacia was a serathi. Divine. You’ve no surety what worked for her will do so for ephemeral souls.”
“Lumestra crafted us all from clay, serathi and human. We are all after-images of her light.”
“Scripture is no more a guide to the past than history. It’s interpretation, not truth.”
“Your whole career, you’ve sealed light into bronze and called it life.” Viktor leaned closer. “Just as Lumestra did with clay at First Dawn. I’m proposing nothing different.”
It made more sense than Elzar cared to admit. The foundry was in disarray precisely because no one understood its craft. Generation upon generation of proctors, following the form of what they were taught, and never truly comprehending. “Kraikons are little more than slaves. You’d have us inflict servitude on the souls of our dead?”
“Kraikons serve thus because they haven’t the wit to do otherwise,” Viktor replied. “They only mimic life. Tell me, has Anastacia ever struck you as one labouring under bondage?”
Elzar snorted. “Not lately.”
What if the kraikons and simarka were witless not because they weren’t souls, but because they were fragments of souls, stolen from Otherworld through imperfect means? Was that why proctors felt drawn to give them names? To read quirk of personality in a faceless construct? The more Elzar lingered on the thought, the more troubling it grew. Light and Dark were so often mirrors of one another. Were Malatriant and the foundry so different? Konor Belenzo had once been her closest disciple, the foundry his bequest.
“The Raven,” he said slowly. “He will permit this?”
Darkness writhed at Viktor’s shoulder. Or perhaps it was a trick of the light. “I don’t intend to give him a choice.”
Elzar rubbed his brow and sank against the wall, more drained than he’d felt in years. “And you want what from me? My approval?”
Viktor skirted the table and laid a hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t something I can do alone.” A faraway look came into his eyes. “I tri
ed, once before. I patched the threadbare soul as best I could, but my gift is born of the Dark, not the Light. It proved… It was not the balm I intended.”
Elzar bowed his head. He’d heard rumours, of course. That Viktor had somehow drawn his beloved Calenne Trelan from Otherworld. Matters had ended poorly, but they’d never spoken of it. He’d never found the words to try. “I’m sorry.”
Viktor shook his head. “Don’t be. Today, I have hope, because today I beheld a woman of clay restored to flesh and blood.”
“What you did to Anastacia, you did without light. That was your shadow alone.”
“But it wasn’t. The artist who smithed her body was once a proctor. He folded light into the clay as part of his art. A spark only, but it was enough.”
Doubt slid away. But then, Viktor was always convincing when roused to passion. He could have talked the stars from the sky. “The dead are at peace. We haven’t the right.”
“Then why do cyraeths roam the mists where the world runs thin? Why do we mourn?”
“Oh, my boy,” Elzar shook his head. “We mourn for our sake, not theirs. The dead are beyond such things.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Viktor paused, a man readying for another sortie. “If there are those in the Raven’s keeping who’d seize the chance to return? Who’d readily shelter their countrymen and their kin? I’m not asking you to help me forge an army. Not yet. One willing soul. Help me prove that it can be done, or that it cannot.”
It was all probability. The fruits of success set against the consequence of failure. And beneath it all, the cruel possibility that Viktor asked nothing Elzar hadn’t already spent a lifetime pursuing. He could refuse, but what would that make him when armies marched and the bodies piled high? The young sacrificed on the stubbornness of an old man?
And just like that, Elzar realised he’d already made his decision. “When?”
“When else? The year is dead, and Otherworld draws nigh to claim it. We will never have a better opportunity.”
Sixteen
“What are you doing?”
Altiris started, the cloth-wrapped roast chicken falling the last inch into the box. Turning his back on a dining table strewn with half-eaten platters and other makeshift containers, he found Sidara staring at him from the servants’ corridor.
“I thought you’d gone to bed.”
“Plainly.”
“And everyone else?”
“Constans left with Viktor and Elzar. Izack a few minutes ago, bellowing a song whose lyrics I won’t repeat.” She stepped closer, more silhouette than substance with the lanterns lowered to conspiratorial flicker. “Josiri’s helping Ana to bed.”
“It’s strange, seeing her drunk.”
“I’m just glad she’s still here,” said Sidara, voice thick with pent-up emotion. “I cried myself to sleep last night, for fear she’d be gone when I woke. So let her be drunk. Let her be anything she wishes. I think it’s a new experience for her.”
“But not you.”
“My blood’s magic.” She drew closer, defiant tone more convincing had she not stumbled and grabbed at the table for support. “I don’t get drunk.”
“Good grief, no. That table walked clean into you.” That by itself was no proof. Sidara had never quite left the clumsiness of girlhood behind and could readily snag toe or heel on a completely unblemished surface.
“There’s no need to crow. Just because you’ve barely touched a drop.”
“I didn’t want to make a fool of myself.”
Despite everything, Altiris had enjoyed the afternoon more than he’d expected. It was impossible to stay intimidated by Izack for long, and even the Lord Protector – or Viktor, as he’d insisted on being named – was much less terrifying when unshielded by formality and armour.
Sidara closed the last distance, eyes on his and flecks of gold glinting amid the blue. “Looking foolish around me never seems to bother you.”
“If you must know, it bothers me more.”
Altiris silently cursed the admission, teased forth by a combination of perfume, proximity and old memories far headier than the sparing sips taken in toast.
“I wish it didn’t,” she said softly. “It shouldn’t.”
He blinked, taken aback as much by the sympathy in her expression as her voice. For the first time, he wondered how large a part his pride had played in their estrangement. That perhaps it wasn’t just Sidara who’d changed with her responsibilities.
She drew closer still. Close enough for wine-laden breath to contest the perfume. “Altiris?”
“Yes?”
“Where are you taking the food?”
He deflated, half-formed fantasies dissipating. “Sothvane. So many folk there have nothing. I’d make a difference, if only for one night.” He paused, gathering words to match uncertain feelings. “Some of what I saw yesterday… I’ve forgotten where I came from.”
Sidara pursed her lips. “Does Josiri know?”
Altiris suspected Lord Trelan would approve, but he hadn’t actually asked. Lord Trelan had been so distracted of late, worn down by his duties to the point that Altiris feared he took in little of what he was told. And one way or another, Anastacia likely had his full attention now. “Most of this will spoil long before it’s eaten, even if we divvy it up between everyone on the estate.”
“So he doesn’t know.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” She shot him a sly smile. “What’s it worth?”
“What did you have in mind?” he asked carefully, wary of ice creaking beneath his feet.
“You could kiss me.”
Treacherous heart skipped a beat. He could, he really could, but for the suspicion that what began sweetly would sour by dawnbreak.
“I might,” he managed, on second attempt. “If you ask me again in the morning.”
The smile faded, though Sidara’s tone remained more playful than offended. “You think this is the wine talking, don’t you?”
“I hope it’s not.”
“There’s only one way to know.”
“Aren’t you always chiding me for being reckless?”
The old year was dying. Maybe it was better to look to the future than the past. Encouraged by a faint gleam of teeth beneath perfect lips, Altiris leaned in.
“Cart’s hooked up,” said Kurkas. “We can go whenever you’re… Not interrupting anything, am I?”
Altiris straightened. His gaze shifted from Sidara to Kurkas, the one suddenly a long stride further down the table and shoulder tilted away; the other propped against the doorway, wearing a thick outdoorsman’s coat and a wholly unconvincing expression of innocence.
“Nothing at all,” he said wearily.
Kurkas nodded to Sidara. “Evening, miss.”
“So you’re part of this, Vladama?”
“Quite sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, miss.” The parade-ground stare was back, Kurkas’ eye fixed on the wall somewhere behind her.
“She knows,” said Altiris.
Sidara nodded. “She knows. She’s coming.”
What? More worrisome than the prospect of Josiri’s disapproval was the uncertain reception to be had in Sothvane. Altiris had no assurances of safe passage, only hope. And if that hope was mislaid? Well, he was willing to take the risk. And he knew better than to try talking Kurkas out of joining him. But to gamble Sidara alongside…? “It might not be safe.”
“If it’s safe enough for you, it’s safe enough for me.” Her defiant stare wavered. “Bad enough that Josiri and Viktor don’t trust me to know my own mind. Prove you know me better than that.”
Altiris frowned, certain now wasn’t the time to ask what she meant by that. He glanced at Kurkas, and found no help in the steward’s carefully immobile expression. Sidara watched him intently throughout, her pleading no less evident for going unspoken.
“All right,” he said at last, “but on one condition. Viktor left the
Lord Protector behind at the palace. I need you to leave the Lady of Light here. No magic. No simarka. No judgement of anything you see. Agreed?”
She nodded, and offered a grin Altiris hoped he’d not soon have cause to regret. “Agreed.”
No danger waited on Sothvane’s streets, at least. Cold, or perhaps fear of year’s-end spirits, kept most folk inside. Those remaining offered the cart barely a glance as they shuffled along, a manner Altiris remembered well from his time on Selann, where curiosity too often earned an overseer’s beating. It didn’t do to show interest in things that didn’t concern you.
Little by little, the tumbledown structures of the flooded shore replaced built-up streets. Seacaller’s church stood proud amid the leaping ghostfires, boarded-up windows ablaze with light. Altiris dropped from the bench seat and eyed the lychfield gate. Half a dozen bulky figures, bundled tight against the cold, stood gathered around bonfire’s fading light. What had seemed a fine idea in the warmth and safety of Stonecrest grew entirely other.
He glanced up at his companions. Sidara had exchanged lustrous blues for drab greys, unplaited her hair and scrubbed makeup away. Only the most suspicious soul would have recognised the Lady Reveque. Kurkas always looked like he’d crawled out of a gutter.
“Let me do the talking,” Altiris murmured.
“Whatever you say, lad,” Kurkas said airily. “I’m just along for the ride.”
For all his nonchalance, Altiris noted that Kurkas’ hand had fallen level with the bench seat’s overhang, where three swords sat bundled in an old cloak. He nodded, and started towards the lychgate.
A hooded head rose from the flames. Others followed, the attention more curious than belligerent.
“Who goes?” bellowed one.
“A friend.” Altiris tugged his glove free, baring the southwealder’s rose-brand.
“You think that mark buys anything?” sneered another. “Plenty carry it on their skin but not their soul.”
The wind bore notes of fiddle and flute from within the church’s battered walls. Watchmen shuffled closer, line spread wide to forestall flight. Altiris gritted his teeth. Intimidation or actual threat, it wouldn’t matter if they jarred Sidara into breaking her promise.