But had he been able to commune in time?
Maybe Loukas was deluding himself, refusing to see the truth. Lazar certainly seemed to think so. But Loukas couldn’t get past the belief that if Tannour was truly gone, he should’ve felt...different.
Once he’d been Tannour’s tether. Tannour had always said that this meant something. Loukas didn’t really understand it, but even if he wasn’t Tannour’s tether anymore, they still had an earlier bond that definitely meant something—at least to Loukas.
Granted, he hadn’t shown it in a long time. He hadn’t been able to forgive Tannour for what he did and had spent years punishing him for it. But in the face of losing him forever....
Loukas lifted his gaze to the room at large. Determination was suddenly in him like he hadn’t felt since the night he snuck out of his father’s estate, the night he chose Tannour over—fethe, over everything.
“Gods damn you, Tannour,” Loukas growled under his breath. “You’re not dead. I know you’re not.” He got to his feet. “Tannour!”
His words echoed in the dim chamber, bouncing off broken stones.
“Tannour!” Loukas shouted into the empty air. “Get back here and take form!”
Fiera’s breath, they were going to think he was mad. And he was supposed to be in charge now. But he’d be damned if he was going to lead this company without Tannour’s fethen help.
Loukas pushed both hands through his hair and then flung open his arms, baring his heart and soul to the room at large. “Tannour! I know you can hear me!” He lifted his gaze to the shadowed ceiling. “I know you’re out there. Congregate, damn you!”
Silence, save for the echo of his own voice in his ears.
Loukas paced a tight circle. Footsteps from beyond the chamber drew his gaze as Lazar hal’Hamaadi appeared in the opening. Loukas cast him a warning look to hold his tongue.
“Tannour Valeri!” Loukas scooped up a piece of broken stone and flung it at a column. It broke into shards against the obsidian skulls. “Tannour, get back here now!”
“N’Abraxis—” Lazar said softly.
Loukas shot him a scathing glare before looking to the ceiling again. He heard the al-Amir coming towards him but had no attention to spare for Lazar, for he was summoning every ounce of will he possessed.
“Tannour,” he growled into the seemingly empty air, “the wielder took Trell! He needs you—Fiera’s ashes, I need you! There, you see? I’ve admitted it finally. Now, if you don’t congregate, I swear I’ll make a blood offering to the Ghost Kings in your name!”
Silence.
Lazar placed a hand on Loukas’s shoulder. Loukas shoved it off.
“N’Abraxis...”
“Not now,” Loukas growled, still staring at the ceiling.
The al-Amir posed a powerful presence beside him. “Loukas...Valeri’s gone. The warlord saw the wielder cut his throat. You’re standing in—”
“Respectfully, al-Amir,” Loukas ground out, “you have no idea what he’s capable of.”
Lazar shook his head, though his gaze offered compassion. “No man evades Death when He’s staring him in the face.”
“...I suppose...I’m not a man then...hal’Hamaadi.”
Loukas spun with a sharp intake of breath.
Tannour was standing a few paces away—which was fortuitous, as it happened. If he’d been closer, Loukas wasn’t sure if he would’ve hugged him or punched him.
Lazar said something very unbecoming of a pious man.
Loukas took three steps and grabbed Tannour into an embrace.
“Fethe, Loukas...” the Vestian pressed his forehead against Loukas’s shoulder, and for that split second it was like...
Then he took a step back and pushed a hand through his dark hair, looking around. He wavered unsteadily and his expression was ragged, but his neck, his clothes...nothing about him indicated he’d lost a battle for his life.
Tannour’s ice-pale gaze found Loukas’s again. “Did the wielder really take the A’dal?”
“To a place called Ivarnen, according to the warlord.”
“By the Two Paths...” Tannour pushed palms to his eyes. He was clearly out of sorts and not yet himself. “How did you get me back?” He dropped his hands to stare hard at Loukas. “You shouldn’t have been able to summon me. They severed our tether.”
“You said they lie about everything. Maybe they just made you think they severed it. But we can’t worry about it now, Tannour. You’ve got to go save Trell. The wielder left with him hours ago.”
Loukas took Tannour’s arm and made him look him in the eye. He wasn’t sure all of Tannour had returned yet. “Are you with me?”
Tannour seemed to suddenly reconvene in that moment. His expression turned wondering, then rather infuriatingly triumphant as he focused on Loukas again. “Do you realize what this means?”
“Yes, I realize it,” Loukas growled at him. “Now get out of here.”
Tannour gave him one of his brutally handsome smiles—the one that always left Loukas devastated and desirous. Then he vanished before Loukas could strangle him.
Lazar grunted. “I stand corrected.”
Loukas looked resolutely to him. “Come, al-Amir.” He picked up Trell’s sword, which he’d found beneath the rubble, and started for the door. “We have an army to gather.”
Thirty-seven
“Which is the weaker link? The mortals recycling
endlessly through the tapestry, or the absentee landlord
who is supposedly their god?”
–The zanthyr Leyd
Baelfeir walked the crowded stalls of Tambarré’s Shadû el-Fnaa, following the path of the gold thread of his interest, observing the denizens of Tambarré and wondering what had brought the golden thread named Ean val Lorian to this cosmopolitan city, mankind’s smelting pot.
He let a little girl sell him a confection from a tray nearly too large for her thin arms to carry and turned a gang of well-dressed thieves upon each other when they tried to lure him into a trap. The people of Tambarré thought him just another nobleman strolling the market. How little they understood of their own origins.
Free will. It was the mortal ruin.
Those thieves were exerting their free will in terrorizing the good travelers of Tambarré, bearing guile and treachery beneath silk robes and attractive smiles.
Compulsion would not exist as a word without its counterpart, free will, yet no one had compelled the thieves into their larceny, unless it be said free will itself had done so.
The concept was so adulterated by the inhabitants of the Realms of Light that it had come to mean do whatever the hell you bloody please, while simultaneously demonizing compulsion into the devil’s work...the Demon Lord’s work.
Well, he admitted that his enterprise to that end had somewhat misfired.
He supposed he shouldn’t harp so upon the matter. The Realms of Light had been reopened to his race. And yet, this very fact niggled at him.
Was his return a result solely of his own causation—his intricate game carried out across the eons to achieve final fruition—or had his opponent had a hand in orchestrating his return? And if so...to what end?
Baelfeir strolled the market, pondering the mystery.
The gold thread he was following through the tapestry led him across the city, past numerous sidewalk cafés boasting identical menus, down broader boulevards with storefronts of sparkling glass, along cobbled lanes bound by the high walls of riads overflowing with foliage, whose dry droppings littered the stony streets.
Occasionally he would plant his name in a mortal’s head to see what fruits the subject would bear. He was rarely pleased by what he tasted. His legacy had lost its flavor through the eons. No one delved deeply into the vat of his legend anymore. They seemed content to partake only of the bland yield floating at the top.
The juiciest topic instead concerned the city’s mysterious Prophet Bethamin. Baelfeir hardly encountered a conversation that didn’t
somehow find its way around to this Prophet. The denizens of Tambarré were especially electrified by the apparent mass suicide of many of Bethamin’s disciples. Yet for all of the widespread rumor, few words describing the event rang with any truth.
Whoever the Prophet Bethamin really was, he commanded the power to alter the tapestry. So dark and twisted were the threads woven around Tambarré that the fabric was practically pitted.
Baelfeir suspected that this maelstrom had drawn his gold thread there, but to what end, he didn’t yet know.
The path of the golden thread eventually led Baelfeir to the acropolis known as the Prophet’s alcázar and its crown of temples, where Bethamin apparently made his home.
Baelfeir would’ve liked to have questioned this Prophet Bethamin to find out what sort of being made such a mark on the mortal tapestry, but the hum everywhere from the markets to the upper city said the man had left his alcázar many moons ago, with no word of when he would return. This rumor rang of truth.
A webwork of patterns surrounded the acropolis. The dark harmony of these patterns pleased him, yet it was the patterns tattooed upon the Prophet’s followers that truly captured Baelfeir’s fascination.
These patterns were not germane to the Realms of Light—nor to his own dimension, for that matter. Unless someone had invented some new form of magic while he was biding his time in Shadow, these had to be patterns of Chaos.
Could he be crossing here the path of another Malorin’athgul?
Baelfeir had never asked Shail about his brothers. Shail would only be forthcoming in whatever way best served Shail, and it was safe to assume that this would not best serve Baelfeir.
He knew that at least one other Malorin’athgul had found his way into Shadow and into the fancy of Rafael. Baelfeir had heard of them building universes together, though the three of their universes had never aligned.
He filed all of these observations for later speculation and coalesced in the Prophet’s residence.
The patterns there were startlingly elegant, an alignment of purpose and intent so perfect in their construction that they could only have been fashioned innately. This supported his theory that their originator was another immortal.
In fact, no sooner had he coalesced than he became aware of the presence of one such, whose life pattern he was surprised to recognize.
Baelfeir dispersed and re-coalesced in a pavilion atop the residence. The afternoon sun, hitting the pavilion’s columns, was casting long shadows beneath its roof. Baelfeir felt the star’s warmth on his face as he walked from shadow into light, but he cast no darkness himself across the limestone tiles.
The immortal of his interest was lying on a lounge chair soaking up the sun, apparently asleep. Two men—ostensibly the Prophet’s servants—were kneeling on the stones nearby, looking miserable.
It never would have occurred to Baelfeir to suspect a zanthyr had created the patterns he’d seen. Zanthyrs played a specific role in the order of the cosmos and to his knowledge were bound to the Realms of Light as surely as the Malorin’athgul had been bound to Chaos. Yet a zanthyr conceivably could have designed those patterns, for they could swim the tides of unmaking just as Malorin’athgul could.
Baelfeir cleared his throat to make his presence known.
The zanthyr shot to his feet, already dragging the fifth into a daggered thought, but he dropped it as his green eyes widened.
“Baelfeir?” He shoved a hand through his raven hair and ran a slicing gaze across Baelfeir’s form. “Stars, it is you.”
The zanthyr looked honestly surprised to see him—and pleasantly so, if Baelfeir was reading him correctly. Quite a change of pace to meet someone genuinely fain to see him. How suitably ironic.
“Hello, Leyd.” A half-smile hitched one corner of Baelfeir’s mouth as his eyes swept the zanthyr. Three millennia, and the creature still looked as though he hadn’t once managed to bathe. What else could it be but the outward reflection of his inward malcontent?
Leyd turned his head and pinned a flat stare on the kneeling servants. “Beat it.”
They fled.
As the two Adepts were disappearing down the steps, the zanthyr sprouted a grin that was one part friendly and nine parts condescending, which was one part more amiable than he generally offered.
He waggled a finger at Baelfeir’s shell. “This is a new look for you. Can’t say I’d have gone in this direction with the face. A bit too ‘all hail the blessed angiel,’ but to each his own.” He shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I always thought the bull’s head suited you.”
“Thank you, I think.”
Leyd pushed hands in his pockets. His white shirt was unbuttoned, and loose pants hung low on his hips. The sun was making shadows beneath the planes of his chest. His teeth were very white behind his grin.
He rocked back and forth on his heels. “Back to inspect the old digs, eh?”
“I’ve been hearing so much about this city’s prophet.” Baelfeir tilted his head to the right. “It cannot be you.”
“Stars, no. This disaster is all Darshan.” He aimed a dismissive look around. “Last I heard, Shailabanáchtran had tossed our illustrious Prophet Bethamin into Wylde. Must’ve been about the same time you returned. Hell of a coincidence.”
“Indeed.”
Leyd ambled over to a table where a decanter of wine sat among a forest of dirty glasses and a half-eaten tray of antipasto. “Wine?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Leyd hunted around for a clean glass, gave up and summoned one into his hand instead. “So what are you doing here—in Tambarré, that is?”
“Just following some footsteps in the tapestry.”
Leyd eyed him over his shoulder. “Then you’ve seen what a shite-show it’s become. I’ll take some solace in that at least.” He looked back to the wine he was pouring. “I have to say, it took you bloody long enough to get back here. You have no idea how bored I’ve been.”
“Not much interests you in any case.”
“Not since you left.” He crossed the roof to hand Baelfeir a glass. “You know, I was on your side during that whole debacle.”
Baelfeir’s gaze imperceptibly tightened. The zanthyrs were the cosmic referees. Things went badly when they chose sides. “Yes, well...I admit, it didn’t end as I’d anticipated.”
Leyd snorted. “Cephrael was pissed. I wish I could’ve been there to see that mountain come down on his head.”
Baelfeir sipped his wine and pondered the host of perceptions he was gaining from sharing the zanthyr’s starpoints.
Leyd waved airily with his goblet meanwhile. “So...now that you’re back...?”
Was that a spark of hope he perceived in the creature’s universe? The highest hope Leyd seemed capable of manifesting was a vindictive resentment.
Baelfeir looked up under his brows. “Now that I’m back...”
“You’re following a thread.”
“That’s right.”
“A gold thread, I suppose?”
“You seem to have a handle on the facts, Leyd.”
Leyd snorted. “It doesn’t take much to guess who you’re after. Ean val Lorian. Björn’s golden boy.”
“Björn?”
“The Fifth Vestal.” He snapped his fingers a few times. “Oh-oh, right, you missed that whole Council of Realms shite. Or...I suppose, not all of it. Didn’t they have something to do with kicking you out?”
Baelfeir traced the line of one eyebrow with his forefinger. “By extension.”
“Look, something’s got to be done though, right?” Leyd searched Baelfeir’s gaze with his own. “That’s why you’re back? Stewarding the realms out of the shite? That’s your purview.”
“I thought stewardship was all of our purview.”
Leyd threw open his arms. “Have you seen the tapestry, man? Maybe once when there were wolves aplenty harassing the sheep, it took a number of us to keep them corralled, but the worst that happens now is the sheep bite each other’s
tails and who gives a bat’s fart about that?”
Radiating agitation, Leyd scooped up a handful of olives and shoved them into his mouth. He wandered to the roof’s edge, where a low wall demarked a thousand-foot drop. “Let me ask you something.”
Baelfeir arched brows inquiringly.
“If Cephrael actually cares for these fools...” Leyd paused to spit an olive pit out over the abyss, “why the hell doesn’t he do more to care for them, to oversee them, to do what a god’s bloody supposed to do and put some order into the fecking universe?”
Baelfeir tugged at one ear. “Is this a rhetorical question?”
“You and I both know the answer.” Leyd spat another olive pit over the wall. “Clearly he doesn’t care one solid feck, because he lets these fools do whatever they bloody want, and lo and behold, they’ve made a gods-damned thunder mug out of the tapestry!”
Baelfeir eyed him amusedly. “A touching sentiment. I never knew you cared.”
Leyd hopped up onto the low wall and stood there with his bare feet curling over the edge, wavering back and forth. “Take that one down there, for instance.”
Baelfeir idled closer to the wall and peered over. A body lay brokenly upon the rocks at the base of the acropolis. It looked like it had been there for quite some time.
“He called himself a servant of the Prophet. All hail his godliness.” Leyd snorted. “In their god’s absence, I offered the fool and his cohorts the choice of serving me or getting up close and personal with the rocks at the base of the mountain. That’s the only fool who chose the mountain. Such is the extent of a mortal’s loyalty to his gods.”
“What’s your point, Leyd?”
Leyd sat down, straddling the wall. “My point, Baelfeir, is that Cephrael—stars, but he can be a self-righteous prick, can’t he?—had no bloody right to be wroth with you. So you turned these fools away from self-determined action. So you used them as pieces in your little art projects. Who bloody cares? Clearly not Cephrael, or he would’ve done something to stop you.”
“He did, in point of fact.”
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