Shards

by James Duvall

  “That'll do it,” Bernard said, licking his lips and inspecting his work. “You want to wait for your friend to get back?”

  Willoughby had gone out to get new drinks and had been gone quite a long time.

  “No, I'm sure he's in his cups,” Timothy said ruefully.

  Light flashed inside the quartz like a distant exploding star when Bernard pressed the latch release.

  “Something is wrong,” Aebyn whispered into Timothy's ear. He was lying in a crescent-shape behind Timothy's chair, keeping a watchful eye on the man called Bernard.

  Willoughby came back through the curtain, wringing his hands and cursing under his breath.

  “Well then,” Timothy said, reaching across the table to shake Bernard's hand. “Excellent work.”

  “Of course!” Bernard said, heartily clutching Timothy's hand and shaking it vigorously. “All in a good, honest, day's work, sir.”

  “Right, I believe we had agreed on half a sovereign?”

  “Yes, that sounds about right,” Bernard said, nodding.

  Timothy pressed two silver coins into the man's open palm. They were both pressed with the Medorian Seal, the inscription showing a value of one silver sovereign each.

  “For your expedience,” Timothy said.

  Confusion crossed Bernard's face for only a moment.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, quickly shoving all the loose tools into his pockets. He scooped up his tool chest and gave Timothy an abbreviated bow before quickly departing.

  Willoughby waited until the cracksman was gone before making his announcement. “Donovan Skalde is here to see you, captain.”

  Chapter 19

  The Echoes

  Nothnor, Isla Merindi, Pendric Shard

  Their legend dating back to the foundations of the world, songshards are unmatched in their potency as a magical focus. Few have been properly measured as their owners are not often persuaded to surrender them to the university for any amount of time. Long has there been a pervasive legend of mystical creatures coming in the night to lay claim to these artifacts, which most attribute to the insidious work of assassins.

  Sapphire's skull felt warmed from within, like her eyes were replaced with low-burning coals. She stared sightless into the night. It was the dark hour, the moon had fallen behind the shard wall and for now it was black as death out there and Torch beckoned her to follow.

  Older now, but still so young, little Sapphire hurried after her brother with a spring in her step, wings fluttering as she bounced along, struggling to keep up with her adolescent brother's longer stride. She still had the feathers of her childhood, white and flapping frantically with every half-steady bound she made. It was a time in her life so easy to love, cast through the rosey glow of her love for Torch and the innocence of her youth. The memory played out before her as vivid and real as the day she had lived it, the waking world obliterated by the refuge forged by her envenomed mind.

  “Hush,” Torch whispered. He stopped at a crossroads, pressing up close to the wall before he poked his nose around the corner. Little Sapphire scampered to his side, hiding beneath the shelter of his wing.

  “Okay,” he said. “It's safe.”

  Cahen's rail yard was quiet this time of the night. A late night train chugged sluggishly into the station and discharged a hiss of steam. Tired passengers debarked, bleary-eyed and carrying sleeping children. None of them saw the adolescent drake and his little sister picking their way through piles of coal and stacks of spare rails and timbers. Little Sapphire hopped up onto a handcar to get a look at the passengers. It was cold out and she gathered her wings up around her to keep out the chill. On the platform there were humans her age, wrapped snugly in blankets and being quickly carried to carriages so warm that the window glass was fogged.

  “Torch, it's cold,” she complained.

  “You don't want to go back already, do you?” Torch answered. His bright yellow eyes shone like fire in the darkness.

  “No, teach me magic!” Sapphire answered, immediately forgetting the cold. She hopped down from her perch, fluttering her small wings. She bobbed back and forth like a puppy expecting to be fed, albeit with the dignity of her species in mind she kept her mouth closed and tongue out of sight.

  Torch grinned at her, then took a look around, stretching out his neck and scanning the yard. He sniffed the air. Sapphire mimicked him, picking up the pervasive and yet dull scent of coal and rain-soaked railroad ties. Whatever he was looking for he didn't find, which seemed to be okay.

  “Okay,” he said. “Here goes.”

  He held out an upturned paw and wiggled his fingers over it like mom did when she was adding crumbled bits of herbs to a brew or the evening stew. Little sparks fell from his digits, collecting on the pad of his paw-hand. The glowing fragments coalesced like water until he had a piece about the size of a caterpillar. He threw it across the ground. It spun while it bounced, casting colorful sparks of blues and reds and oranges in fans as it whirled and bounced. After a few seconds it popped loudly, disappearing in a silver flash. Little Sapphire giggled in delight.

  “Do it again!” she cheered, and he did. This time producing two of the fireworks in parallel, making them dance a dance of sparks with each other, ending in twin flashes of starlight.

  “You like that huh?” Torch asked, smiling down at her.

  She bounced up and down. She did. Oh she did.

  “Want to learn how?”

  “YES! Yes!” Sapphire answered, loud with youthful exuberance.

  The older Sapphire Nightsong watched in silence from afar, taking comfort in these specters from her past. The two visions practiced until the rail yard became hazy, streaked with the light of day breaking through from behind. A shadow fell across Sapphire's face. Someone that was not part of her past was trying to get her attention, calling out to her.

  “Miss?” the voice asked. Sapphire blinked away the delusion. The heat in her skull had cooled in the night. It was her host. Hosts, rather. A drake and his dragoness stood watch over her, both of them equally concerned. The male was sunflower yellow, with a crimson mane and horns. His mate was a pale aquamarine with verdant markings as bright as a spring meadow. Whatever flight they called their own, it was not the Nightsongs. Another reminder of how far she was from home...

  “I'm fine...” Sapphire said, convincing not even herself. She stretched her legs and stepped out of the nest of hay and rags they'd put her in.

  Her hosts exchanged worried looks.

  “Is there someone we can get for you?” the dragoness asked. They wanted her gone, of course. Having only the testimony of her own fevered thoughts that she was not a risk to them both. Looking into the dragoness's eyes, Sapphire recognized the lines of worry creased into her brow. They would abandon this place if they hadn't already, for fear of her affliction spreading to them and their young.

  “I am here alone,” Sapphire confessed. She felt the empty weight around her neck, the bare spot on her breast where the Dawn Shard should bounce a little with her every step.

  “You were saying someone's name...” the drake said, hesitantly. “Shouting it, actually. Torch? Who is he? We could get him for you...”

  Sapphire hung her head, feeling her knees tremble with weakness.

  “My brother,” she said. She shuddered bodily as her eyes welled up with warm, wet tears. “He died a few years ago.”

  This new bit of intelligence did little to comfort her already ill-at-ease hosts. They excused themselves and Sapphire could hear them having a quiet argument just out of earshot. This far out they might not have heard of the Nightsong flight, but she knew these whispers. She was gone by the time they came back.

  Sapphire felt better being back in the alchemy lab. The long walk had given her time to clear her head and collect her thoughts. She remembered the dusk tracer. The silver-eyed luminarian had been there also. They had spoken, but she could not remember the conversation. When she tried she could hear muffled voices, as though her e
ars were jammed with cotton and her vision was drowned in white light. Like finding pages torn from a book, her memories would only come in disjointed pieces.

  Mostly she remembered the man. He had taken Isaac Faralon's journal from her.

  “A trade,” he had said, with a smile on his face. Sapphire remembered the smile most of all. There was a reassuring quality to it that made her want to relax. He would protect her from the dusk tracer's cruel talons. Aelengy, that was the gryphon's name.

  For the book he had given her a small bit of candy, which she had angrily thrown away. Then the smile was gone. He glowered at her, lifting her by the scruff of her neck.

  “I am not some sugar-hungry scavenger!” Sapphire hissed.

  For a moment of confusion Sapphire thought the words had come from her own mouth.

  Talking to myself?

  Movement drew her attention to the doorway, where the empty marble columns neatly framed an image of herself held in Donovan Skalde's grasp.

  “You would have done better for yourself to play the part,” Donovan answered, bemused. “You could have been a happy little fruit bat if you had only remembered your place. After all, none of them are having nearly as poor a day as you, are they?”

  “It's not a trade if you beat me half to death and then take it from me.” Sapphire curled her lip back to show a little fang. It was not the wisest course of action with the dusk tracer at his side, already spoiling for her blood. His hateful eyes peered out at her from the vision. Air rushed into her lungs as though pulled by a bellows. What if he was real? What if this was just like when she thought she was talking to Dawn?

  But the image of Aelengy did not attack. Instead he joined his master at the foot of the lighthouse. It had sprang up in place of the alchemy lab, reaching higher into the sky and sparkling with starlight at its top. Aelengy sprawled out on his belly beneath it to sun himself, keeping one wicked eye on the squirming dragoness.

  “It is charity,” Donovan was explaining, enunciating every word with the practiced air of a well-spoken nobleman.. “A less generous man might simply have killed you and taken what he wanted, but I am of a more civilized breed.”

  Sapphire saw a brief flash of fear come over her doppelganger. She had sensed something in him. A great power, a dark power. She limped around to the other side to get a good look at him.

  Sapphire's doppelganger cursed in falfarren as the slow-witted man emptied her bags, taking the Codex of the Cold, her emberstones, her mists, but not the Arlorian focus. The outcome seemed so unlikely that Sapphire strode through the illusion to the small pile of her belongings and pawed through it. Her paws swept through the images like Dawn from his stone.

  “Well, that must be frustrating,” she observed, but it was obvious the focus was not among the items. It seemed impossible to believe that it had been overlooked, but she opened her torn satchel and searched through what was left. First there were the emberstones...

  “But...”

  As though in answer to her question, Harold Grumsby knelt down beside her and started scooping her belongings back up and repacking them. Objects of obvious value went into the other satchel, the one that had not been raked by Aelengy's claws.

  Sapphire shuddered at the sight of him, swiping her claws across the gryphon's hate-filled eyes. The image wavered then reasserted itself, Aelengy smiling cruelly. Sapphire turned her back on him. Why humans had ever thought to breed the dusk tracers was a mystery to her. The light blue dragoness had appeared now. She landed beside Aelengy and held her head up high so that she could look down at him with her silver eye. Kallisti's Burden rested uncomfortably against her chest, glowing green and sickly.

  “Come to pay your respects?” Aelengy asked as he eeled over to her. She did not recoil, only smirked disdainfully at him.

  “Why? Has Donovan caught someone worthy of respect this time?”

  “Sapphire Nightsong,” Donovan announced.

  “Oh do try not to look so surprised,” he said when his captive's ears drooped. “Everyone talks about the luminarian that thought to apply for entrance to Beronn University. And now you have my book. You think yourself very clever don't you. So pretty, so foolish. You're like a kitten that thinks herself a lioness before a pack of wolves.”

  “I am no fool!” Sapphire's image protested, pain forgotten in a moment of livid indignation. Her tail thumped heavily against the paving stones. She began to seethe and raised her head up high and proud. “I had every right to be there.”

  Sapphire felt herself flinching before it happened. She pinched her eyes shut when her image screamed a long, shrill wail. Blood followed in a slow trickle, oozing from where the feathers had been ripped from her wing. The muscle still ached dully when she stretched it. The remaining feathers were stained badly, marking her with a little dash of red until they were shed.

  “A wiser creature would have held her tongue,” Donovan advised Sapphire's whimpering shade. “Take her back to town and leave her on the walk, somewhere where the dogs won't find her.”

  “You're letting her live?” Aelengy asked, sounding as though he found the very idea distasteful.

  “I am a man of my word,” Donovan said, again with practiced elocution.

  Freshly laid paving stones turned to mud and bits of dirty rock as the lighthouse faded away, turning back into the alchemy lab with no one to witness the transformation but Sapphire. Tall weeds lined the doorway now and the lighthouse's sparkling jewel had returned to its former faded glory, a gryphon statue so well worn by the wind and rain as to be nearly unrecognizable were it not for the faint point of its beak that still remained.

  After a careful search, Sapphire was convinced that the Arlorian focus had not somehow gone overlooked in her satchel. It's location yet remained a mystery. She paced slow circles around the work bench, trying to jog her memory. She had it when the dusk tracer attacked. It was gone from her bag by the time Skalde's slow-witted associate emptied them out. The same could be said of the Dawn shard. It was somewhere in the Mistwood if Skalde's men hadn't taken it. In all likelihood it had already found its way to a pawnbroker.

  The lost the Arlorian focus could have been used as a stand in with the proper orbitals. She could trade most of the emberstones in town for those. Imaging might be too far a stretch without tuning equipment, but just to hear his voice again would be a comfort. Losing one of the gems was unimaginable, but both?

  Sapphire slammed a cabinet door with the end of her tail, rattling the hinges and leaving a cathartic sting. She needed the focus so badly! Then, just like that, it coalesced from thin air, gathering in a swirl of deep blue mist and taking solid form. Stunned, Sapphire gawked at the focus. It turned slowly in the air, an icy comet pointed toward the sky.

  Curiously she circled it. The focus drifted after her as though it were tethered to her shoulder. She stopped, and it stopped.

  “Stop following me,” she commanded in an authoritative tone. The lifeless crystal paid her no heed and followed her in wide circles around the lab. When Sapphire clambered up onto one of the work stations the gem followed, increasing its speed to avoid falling behind until it was safely perched above her shoulder on an invisible pedestal of air.

  “You are dismissed?” Sapphire said, doubting the efficacy of the words even as she said them. She felt silly trying to order around a rock, even if it was magical. The stone failed to obey, obstinate in its persistent existence.

  Gathering herself up like a great mountain dragon, Sapphire held her head high and squared up her shoulders. “You are dismissed!”

  When that didn't work she swatted it with a paw. It bounced off, floating away and then returning to its sentry as though it were attached to a spring. Sapphire had never seen a magic like this. Things didn't simply appear and disappear. They were or they were not. If they could be snapped into being from one place or another in the blink of an eye, surely someone would have tried it with a living creature by now. Then Dawn could be with her in the span of a si
ngle stride and back to the tower's respite in just as much.

  The focus had come when she wanted it. She wondered if that it might be hidden in similar fashion.

  Hide!

  The Arlorian focus spun on its axis, whirling into oblivion in a halo of thin blue vapors. Sapphire gasped, having not expected this to work. She swatted at where it had been and found nothing. Experimentally she willed it to return, and it did so in the same manner of mist coming together from empty air. With some practice she could recall it and banish it in the span of a few heartbeats.

  Without her amulet Sapphire had no outside reserve to draw from. Summoning the focus taxed her quickly, for even a pool as deep as hers did not replenish quickly even this close to such a great font of power as the Island of Glory. The Bright Haven was there. Dawn had talked about wanting to see it since the morning Sapphire had declared her intention to travel to Merindi.

  From the roof she could see the Bright Haven's glow through the rosy blue shardwall that divided Glory Shard from Pendric Shard. It was the only place in the known world where anything could be seen through a shard wall.

  “It's pretty, isn't it?” Dawn asked. He was sitting next to Sapphire on the roof.

  “You're not real...” Sapphire said, sadly. She turned her head rather than face him.

  “No,” he said, unbothered by the indictment. “I am not. It doesn't change the facts, though.”

  “No one can,” Sapphire said. “That's why they are facts.”

  “It's pretty, isn't it?” Dawn said, repeating himself.

  Sapphire lifted her head and saw that it was. She knew she was looking at the Bright Haven, even if she couldn't see the monolithic crystals jutting up from the broken land. “They used to call it the Field of Folly. Maybe they still should.”

  The Bright Haven was the name appropriated by the luminarians that had settled there. In the time that humankind had controlled the Island of Glory, it had been called the Field of Folly for all of the men that had died there in search of riches left over from the island's demise. Those foolish enough to enter would inevitably be found later, silver-eyed and unbreathing, dead of no apparent injury.