With a flourish, Aralore sheathed her sword and hid a smile at the hostile glares Dirk's friends shot her. At least they now understood their position. Yes, she represented a religious order—one with militant roots and aspirations of civil strife. In times of crisis, people found faith. Since God did not always provide said strife, his faithful had to light the pyre and burn down the establishment for Him. All Aralore required now was that brand.
“You have two hours to get me more of this.”
Aralore withdrew a black stone from her pocket and cradled it in the palm of her hand. Its matte facets drank in the light, dimming the ever-present lumir crystals studding the ceiling. They were another anomaly, another symptom of the magic plaguing Shayari’s green miles. But they would soon be gone.
“Swear you will get what I want. Swear it on this stone.”
Shadows swelled in the corners of the room discomfiting the four men and their spokesman. Aralore held herself rigid by an exercise of will. Any good Shayarin knew darkness was not just the enemy of light but the call sign of the Adversary. Invoking it came with risks, but Shayari teetered. With one good shove, it would fall ushering in a rebirth free of magic, so technology could take its rightful place as the prime mover of the future. Holding to her belief, she steeled herself to play with the devil’s rocks.
A Ghostly Surprise
“Papa, I want to go now. I’m scared.” Ran huddled close, pressing his small body tight against Sarn’s side.
Something had changed the dynamic down here. Shadows strengthened, growing larger and bolder. They tapped gray fingers against the ceiling-bound lumir crystals, and they dimmed. But that was impossible. Once kindled by magic, lumir crystals could glow for thousands of years. Sarn stared at them. His breath misted as the temperature dropped. Ran shivered and he rubbed his hands down his son’s back. Friction warms, so did activity, so Sarn skulked around a tower of crates searching for the source of that frigid air.
While never warm, these subterranean tunnels usually stayed well above freezing even in winter, but it was summer now. Where had the arctic chill pebbling his skin come from? The same place as last month when you faced a demon. Fear gripped Sarn and shook him. No, the demon was gone, either destroyed or banished back to its realm. This chill had another cause. Had a new evil taken the demon’s place?
He’d never verified if his best friend was the only possessed person living under this mountain. Did I just spend four weeks chasing the lesser evil? Sarn shuddered at the thought, and in his arms, his son whimpered as the cold stole through his thin clothes. Let there still be time to stop whatever horror this demon was working.
Sarn stripped off his cloak and wrapped it several times around his son before clasping the cocooned child against his racing heart.
Ran snuggled into his embrace. “Can we go now?”
Sarn gave his son a distracted nod. “We’ll go as soon as I get some answers.”
Ran groaned at the delay.
If Dirk's consorting with demons, I need proof and to somehow stop it. Not a pleasant thought, but Sarn gritted his teeth and made peace with the possibility.
Unbidden, the Queen of All Trees’ call sign sprang to mind, and his fingers itched to trace those interconnected circles. Inside his heart, a pure white flame burned, yearning for release. Sarn shook himself free of the partial trance.
What was going on in the storeroom with the unknown woman? How was she connected to Dirk and company and what were they doing? Staying low, Sarn wended around pallets and towers of casks moving ever closer to the open door and the answers to his questions.
A tongue of white light licked up from the ground in front of Sarn. The luminance shaped itself into a boy of perhaps eight years who shook his head. Sarn froze and fought the pull of a gaze lock. One glance into that ghost’s eyes would tax his sanity too much, so Sarn cast his eyes elsewhere. I don’t want to know what comes next. I don't want to know.
In his arms, Ran squirmed to get a better look at the specter. All Sarn’s unanswered questions came roaring back as Ran freed a hand and extended it toward the apparition.
Before the thing could disintegrate, Sarn backed away holding his son tight. It was the ghost of the boy who’d died a month ago. The same ghost who had haunted him for three days until he’d solved the riddle of the boy’s death. But he—it—had crossed over. Why had it come back to haunt him?
“What do you want?” Sarn asked the ghost boy knowing full well any answer it gave would never reach his ears. Death hung a veil of silence between the living and the dead, one no being on either side of the divide could breach.
“You passed on.” Or at least Sarn thought the ghost had when it disappeared with the Queen of All Trees. She was a psychopomp or something. Sarn swallowed the knot of grief choking him and blinked back tears. She had taken Shade too.
Memories rose from their graves lit by her silver radiance, and her proud trunk ushered the slayers and slain alike toward a luminous wavy line. Beyond it lay a far green country set aside for the dead. Or so Nolo had claimed, but was he right?
Sarn blinked and the memory receded leaving him with a chest constricted by sorrow and an unhappy child squirming in his arms. He shifted his grip to keep his son from falling. Ran shot him an annoyed glare and kept right on struggling, determined to touch the ghost.
The ghost boy spread his thin arms to block the storeroom where Dirk and company conducted their mysterious business.
What's going on in there? Sarn had to find out.
“What don’t you want me to see?” And why? A month ago, the ghost had driven Sarn crazy until he'd figured out what was going on. Why now did it advocate ignorance? What had changed its mind?
Far from deterring Sarn, the ghost boy’s visit cemented Dirk and his goons’ guilt. Whatever they were mixed up in had to be awful to drag a ghost back from the Lands of Ever—if that’s where the ghost boy had ended up. Confirming his guess, the ghost boy’s washed out green eyes implored Sarn to leave this place and let this mystery go.
How could he when he knew something nefarious was afoot? Sarn shook his head. Ignorance was more dangerous than knowing especially here. Sarn crouched behind a tower of crates but hesitated before freeing a hand. Would another attempt result in a loss of consciousness? Blacking out now would risk not just his safety but his son’s too.
But the mystery won. Sarn lowered his hand until it touched the ground and knew on contact he’d made a mistake.
Magic rushed out of his core, down his arm and out of his hand so fast his sight dimmed. A black tendril curled around his magic and yanked on it. Sarn’s knees hit the ground and he fell sideways into the darkness draining the green light inside him. For a moment, a black pinpoint somewhere inside the storeroom floated as it drank his magic in, ripping it out of his blood and bones. What the hell is that thing?
Under him, the mountain shook, and someone screamed at him to get up. Sarn met the startled eyes of the ghost boy staring over his frightened son’s shoulders then the world blackened.
“Papa wake up!” Ran shook him, but he stayed unconscious. “Why won’t Papa wake up?” Ran looked to the ghost boy for an answer, but the ghost had gone away when he wasn’t looking—just like mama.
“Mama.” Ran wiped hot tears from his eyes. She would know what to do, but Mama wasn't here. He had to save Papa on his own. Ran squared his shoulders and looked for a way.
Papa’s magic snaked across the floor in fat green ribbons, moving too fast and too bright to be right. All the magic flowed out of his hand. Breaking that connection might turn off the magic and doing so, might rouse Papa.
Relieved he had a plan, Ran pried at Papa’s fingers until he broke the connection. Green light stopped pouring out of Papa, but he didn't wake up. Instead, convulsions wracked him.
Ran held tight until Papa stopped thrashing. He touched Papa’s forehead, but his skin was cool and clammy—no fever.
Ran bit his lip. Papa had these fits often, but n
o one ever said why—not even Papa who didn’t know he had them. Was Papa dying?
Mama had gone away in March, but Papa was a lot younger than her and magical. Still, the question haunted Ran as he buried his head in his unconscious father’s chest. Was Papa dying? If so, why would no one tell him?
Thoughts of death weighed Ran down, bowing his shoulders until they shook with silent tears.
Papa shifted, and his arm curved around Ran gathering him tight against a heart still beating with love but not magic. Why wouldn’t Papa wake up?
“Swear it!” Aralore bellowed. Her shout echoed off the stone walls of the storeroom.
Dirk glared at her over the black lumir stone clutched in her hand. A flaw cut the stone in half lengthwise hampering its ability to drain and contain magic. She needed a pure specimen. One capable of stripping miles of magic then begging for more.
“You’ll get your stone as soon as it’s ready.”
Aralore shook her head, “not good enough.” The word ‘now’ reverberated in her chest growing louder and more insistent with each repetition. “I need it now.”
“You—you said two hours,” sputtered the fat one. His teeth were impossibly white compared to his compatriots.
“And she’ll get it within two hours,” Dirk put in. He cut a glare at his comrade which shut the red-faced man right up.
Can I wait two hours? Aralore turned the flawed stone in her hand, and its pale gray inclusions sparkled in the flickering lumir light entrancing her audience. Her lips turned down at the sight. They were the sour notes jangling her nerves. A song thrummed through her hand as she tapped a nail-bitten down to the quick against those imperfect facets. The stone’s influence swelled as it reached for the right pitch to shatter the glass house magic had made of their country.
But it broke instead of resolving into that perfect, nullifying harmony. Her fingers convulsed, squeezing the imperfect rock until its vibrating vertices dug into her palm. It wasn’t strong enough to break the magic’s hold on Shayari. But she was. She just needed more of the rock purported to be antithetical to magic. And she needed it now.
How she hungered for a perfect specimen blacker than the space between stars—a nadir to the magic’s apotheosis, so she could do God’s work.
“It must be straight from the earth. Rip it from her very roots. It must be raw and free of inclusions. It must be pure,” Aralore insisted. As she fondled the rock, an old saw ghosted back to her and her knees flexed readying for that first jump.
The past reached out for Aralore. Small hands calloused from the bowstring, clasped her upper arms and turned Aralore toward the gray mist curling around two pallets stacked high with boxes of all sizes. They mutated into trees. The mist crooked a gray finger inviting her to come as it rolled back revealing a hopscotch board.
Aralore shook her head. This wasn’t real. Not the mist, nor the tree-shaded copse nor the gay laughter of girls knocking off after their afternoon chores.
“Give us two hours and you’ll have your rock.”
“Swear it!” She shoved the crystal under Dirk’s nose. His startled breath misted its uppermost facets. She was done bartering.
His lips curled back from his yellowing teeth. “I swear it. Get that thing out of my face!”
Dirk raised a hand to knock the crystal aside then froze, his eyes widening in horror as gray tendrils extruded from the stone. Letters floated past in a runic script, symbol by symbol, stacking up like the boxes towering over them until it had spelled out the terms and conditions of their bargain. Shadowy tendrils wound around them binding Dirk to his word. The promise flashed once, crystallizing into a thing with substance and consequences that dropped around their necks. Then the fivesome receded into a gray haze. A thin black cord connected their promise to the stone in Aralore’s hand darkening its occlusions.
Before Aralore could crow with delight, the obdurate past surged forward knocking her back to her childhood. It refused to be denied a moment longer.
“Witches and woe,” sang the little girl she’d once been as she hopped onto the first square on that fine summer’s day so long ago.
“Witches and woe,” agreed the six blurry girl-shapes—her sisters once upon a time—as they took up the chant. They stood in a line outside the board traced into the mud clapping their hands and stomping their feet to the beat of the odd little tune. Sunlight dappled them, shining in their braided hair and smiling eyes.
“The adversary knows!” They clasped their hands to their stricken faces and faked a swoon.
Aralore landed on the second square. “The Adversary knows.”
“Its eye unseen, sows,” said her sisters pointing now to their wide-open eyes.
“Discord in those,” Aralore supplied as she skipped the next square and picked up the water-smoothed river rock in time to add, “non-glowing stones.”
Her sisters feigned horror at the very idea of lumir stones that didn’t emit some form of light. “Beware, in darkness grows,” they intoned, striking a haunting harmony.
“Treachery where blood flows,” Aralore finished as her sisters and the board faded into the ill-lit storeroom.
The fingers of her free hand twitched, seeking the ceramic box her oldest sister always held out at the end of each round, so she could toss a pinch of salt over her left shoulder to blind the Adversary. But this wasn’t a silly game children played. And those blurry girl shapes were morphing into the even blurrier woman-shapes of the sisters she had left behind a decade ago. Then they, in turn, changed to the fleeing shapes of five men hustling out of the storeroom as if their arses were on fire.
Laughter fizzed just under the surface as Aralore shoved the rhyme out of mind. The centuries of irrational fear written into each line left a lingering unease behind. There was no Adversary only the superstition of the uneducated. But she wrapped the black stone in a square of heavy, mirror-studded cloth before placing it in a lead-lined box just in case there was a grain of truth in the age-old superstition. The shadows retreated when she closed the lid. As the room brightened, she brushed her momentary unease away.
There was no evil entity waiting on the celestial sidelines for the magical world to crack open, so it could slip through. No, there was just the teeth of the massive gears clicking together as they turned the dais in the Iron Mountain. Behind those golden testaments of humanity’s genius, her god of industry stood. And he required no magic to function.
A smile cleaved her lips as she rose. It was time she readied her acolytes for stage two of her plan. She strode out of the storeroom in the wake of Dirk and his men with her head held high and her shoulders squared. The future rested in her hands, and she would see it done.
Follow That Woman
“Why are you crying?” Sarn tried to open his eyes but leading a double life was exhausting and his body wanted to remain supine for a few hours.
“’Cause you scared me when you fell.”
“I’m sorry,” Sarn whispered into his son’s hair and Ran fought a giggle when his breath tickled the boy’s scalp.
“Can we have lunch now and a nice ad-ven-ture?”
The bells of mount Eredren tolled fourteen times. Ran’s belly gurgled reminding them lunch was way overdue.
“Okay, that sounds like a good plan.”
Sarn sat up and regarded the unfamiliar cavern crowded with crates, sacks and all manner of parcels. Where am I? Why am I here? The reason floated just out of reach, but Sarn couldn't grasp it. Why is my memory so hazy? What the hell was I just doing?
Perhaps he should sort it out over lunch. Ran might be onto something. An open crate caught Sarn’s eye. Ran noticed the box too and stuffed a handful of the half-inch metal spheres into his trouser pockets. No doubt his slingshot was in there as well since Ran never left their cave without it.
“I want to go now,” Ran said.
Sarn nodded and strained his ears, but he could make out nothing other than a vague murmur. Still, those voices echoed from somewhere
nearby, and they encouraged him to stay tucked in tight behind a wall of rolled up carpets. Symbols popped up on his head map—Dirk, Crisso, Gorfen, Villar, and Ragnes. Then it all came rushing back—the surveillance, the unknown woman speaking to Dirk and his goons and his magic recoiling from her. There was something off about her, something—
Unnatural, commented his magic.
Yeah, she was that. After the demonic madness of last month, I must find out why she registers as unnatural. Sarn shuddered.
Ran opened his mouth again, but Sarn covered it, muffling his son’s latest demand.
The group was breaking up and the unknown woman was heading this way. Her trajectory took her between pallets of goods yet to be unloaded. Sarn cursed. From his crouched position, he could see nothing of her except a flickering dot on his head map. Something about the woman prevented his magic from getting a firm fix on her. It would have to do, but he’d have to stick close to her or lose the tenuous hold. Damn it, he had to move now before she walked out of range.
Sarn waited until the six sets of footsteps faded into silence. Dirk and his goons headed for a ramp and the familiar icons of the Carters. With luck, the new shipment would keep them busy for a while. Sarn shifted his focus away from them and kept it on the unknown woman as he rose from his hiding spot holding his son. Only she was important. Where she went next might help resolve her identity and whether she was a player in Dirk's latest con.
“We get lunch now,” Ran reminded Sarn in a tone leaving no room for argument. “You promised.”
The unknown woman stepped into a staircase and ascended. Sarn let out the breath he’d been holding and nodded. Lunch lay in the same direction the woman now headed. Maybe she had the same plan.
“Good. You can carry me there.” Ran wrapped his arms around Sarn’s neck to ensure he got his way.
Sarn smiled as he hurried to a parallel staircase so echoes of his passage wouldn't give away the chase. Thank the builders of Mount Eredren’s subterranean stronghold for drilling at least fifty shafts and filling them with looping staircases. It made moving between levels easy. Best of all, his quarry would have no idea he was tracking her.
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