Realm of Ruins

by Hannah West

  “I don’t remember. I was wounded and unconscious. I didn’t even know I should use this language until you addressed me first.”

  “So what do you know about the Lord of Elicromancers?”

  He massaged his forehead. I could see him shoring up the will to speak about what he’d endured.

  “In my time, he established dominion over the north from his court at Mount Emlefir,” he began. “One day, he was nothing, no one of import. Before we could blink, he had overtaken the Brazor Mountains and was well on his way to dominating the whole realm. Mortals suffered under his rule, and the magic-kinds he captured were worse off. He would twist and torture them, make them his servants and set them against their own kind. He made elicromancers perform dark magic on his behalf until they decayed from the inside out. Many killed themselves when captured.”

  Mercer faced the sea again. The moonlight harshened the rigid set of his jaw. “My elder brother, Tilmorn, was one of the first elicromancers he took. We didn’t know much about the threat at the time. Travelers and rangers said the Emlefir Pass was no longer safe and that the villages closest to it were like towns of ghosts. But we didn’t put a name to the danger until a gang of ragged soldiers came to our village to bid Tilmorn visit their king’s court. They bore a royal summons, though I had never heard of their king, nor did I recognize his sigil. His name was Emlyn Valmarys, and he had declared himself ‘King of Nissera and Lord of Elicromancers.’ His soldiers carried a gray banner with a white moth emblem. It was almost comically presumptuous at the time. Tilmorn laughed and called him the ‘Moth King,’ but agreed to answer the summons in order to gauge the potential enemy and strip him of his power if necessary.”

  “Strip him of his power? What do you mean?”

  “Tilmorn’s elicrin gift allowed him to take and bestow other elicrin gifts, but he used it carefully. Sometimes, he would conduct mutual trades or take from an elicromancer who abused their power. He made a trade with an Omnilingual so I could understand and learn the language from my visions—the one we’re speaking now. I couldn’t hold both gifts at once as Tilmorn could, so he made me an Omnilingual after each vision, taking my power of prophecy upon himself—which was a relief. The visions could be frightening….” He trailed off and shook his head. “In addition to possessing his extraordinary gift, my brother was a skilled warrior. He feared no one, especially not a handful of soldiers with dull blades and cracked shields. So he answered the imposter king’s call. And soon after that, the terrors began.”

  The mournfulness in his voice was beyond what anyone could muster for a ruse. My suspicion deserted me. Of their own volition, my fingers encircled Mercer’s forearm. “Did Tilmorn die?”

  “Far worse. Tilmorn’s power was the only one he couldn’t trade. It was his and his alone, but the Moth King subjugated him. By either manipulation, torture, or both, the royal impostor turned a noble, fearless man into a servant who would strip any ‘disobedient’ or ‘traitorous’ elicromancer of their power and bestow it on his overlord.”

  My heart thudded in the base of my throat. I thought of my mother’s gift, the way her commands influenced the actions of others and the harm it could do if wielded without restraint. And she was just one elicromancer.

  “Every attempt to overthrow Valmarys failed,” Mercer went on. “Mortal armies snapped like arrows on boulders against his forces. Elicromancers would secretly invade his fortress at Mount Emlefir and never return, and then his power would wax greater. Elicromancer leadership forbade me from trying to save Tilmorn, knowing that if I attempted a rescue mission without a foolproof plan, I would only become a tool to help Valmarys crush more innocent creatures.”

  “Did your prophecies not warn you what would happen when Tilmorn answered the summons?”

  Mercer shook his head, turning away from me. “They tried. The frightening visions that came when I was young depicted Tilmorn’s torment in brief, startling flashes. There was no detail, no context, unlike many of my other prophecies. But they were horrifying. He took the burden on himself, enduring them without complaint. And then he gave me back my power and went on living his life as though he had never seen these hints of his fate.”

  “He must have been very brave,” I whispered. “And the Moth King very strong to subdue someone like him.”

  “Valmarys’s power seemed to have no limits. We did everything we could to stop him. All of us: the mortal kings and their armies, elicromancers, even the fay. We all fought, but our numbers were dwindling and we were abandoning hope. It seemed there was nothing our enemy couldn’t do on a whim. The fay and the sea folk began to retreat to their hideouts in the forest and the open sea. They had little interest in the fate of humans. It was only the elicromancers left protecting the realm, and we were doing a poor job of it. Half of us found ourselves serving our enemy, and those who evaded him didn’t trust one another. That’s how skilled he was at dividing us; the mere suggestion that some of us could be his servants in disguise tore us apart.”

  He clenched his hands until his knuckles turned white. I could almost hear the pulse of sorrow-tinged rage thrumming inside him.

  “And then one day, while we were gathered in our hideout in the woods,” he went on, “the leaders said they had an idea, a way to trap Valmarys and his servants in their mountain court. For centuries, possibly for all time. But the ritual would take great sacrifice. They said we would have to ‘bargain.’ It wasn’t elicromancy. But they wouldn’t tell us the nature of the ritual, for fear the Moth King would find a way to stop it. Trust had worn thin.”

  This time, when he flicked water onto his face and combed it through his hair, the act seemed desperate, an attempt to remind himself of his new reality.

  “Do you think this contract was what the leaders were talking about?” I asked, tracing the runes with my fingertip. “The bargain?”

  “That’s what I fear.”

  “But you don’t know?”

  “We weren’t supposed to know anything about the ritual beforehand. But the night we were to perform it, I received a vision. I saw the Moth King bleeding to death, the life leaving his eyes. I saw his court collapsing around him. My vision meant that someone was strong enough to destroy him, forever, not merely restrain him.”

  His voice trembled with exhilaration. A palpable sense of hope—dangerous, costly hope—set my heart pounding.

  “I tried to reason with the other elicromancers, to tell them there had to be another way, something to prevent the Moth King from tormenting a later generation. But they had set their minds. They accused me of attempting to divide the few of us who remained against one another. They thought I might be working for the Moth King in exchange for Tilmorn’s freedom. I don’t think they understood that the Moth King needed Tilmorn in order to remain strong, that Valmarys would never let him go, no matter what I could offer in return. They thought I had exaggerated Tilmorn’s role to convince them to attempt a rescue mission. I was in the midst of arguing when one of them stabbed me cold. They tied me down, spoke of disemboweling me.” He shook his head, as if he barely believed it himself. “I heard someone I thought of as a friend say what a shame it was I had betrayed them, but that at least I would be useful. I started losing consciousness….”

  “Is that the last thing you remember?”

  “I think…someone saved me. I’ve tried over and over to recall what happened, but all I remember is a skirmish in the dark, and someone lifting me onto their shoulders. The air grew brighter and warmer, and then they laid me down on the grass, cursed, and ran off. Then you found me.”

  Silence folded around us, until I drew in a gulping breath. “What happened to Tilmorn? Did he die?”

  “I don’t know, but I hope so,” he answered. “He would be free of servitude. And if the Moth King has returned, he’ll be less powerful without Tilmorn.”

  I shook my head. “Why have so few people heard of him? If he was terrorizing the whole realm and turning elicromancers into slaves, w
hy does nothing remain but tales in the north and followers in white cloaks?”

  “Elicromancers must have wiped the memories of mortals so they could recover from the devastation, so that mortals would trust them to set everything right. But it sounds as though the truth lingered through generations, possibly through the lines of the elicromancers who pledged fealty to the ‘Lord of Elicromancers.’”

  I considered this. “Do the Summoners wear white cloaks to pay homage to the moth insignia—?”

  My last word evolved into a squeal. Something latched on to my ankle with a touch so light it could easily have been seaweed snaking a path through the tides that licked my knees.

  I lurched back and found the sea maiden’s silver-white hair unfurling like a lily pad in the black water.

  HE creature trained her wide eyes on us. After a few beats, Mercer found the wherewithal to calmly reach for the tablet pieces.

  “Il samenef?” he asked. “Do you understand me?”

  She tilted her head and emanated a whistle that dove to a hum. The sound was similar to those Devorian had expressed when reading the tablet, but far more graceful, like a bird’s song.

  Mercer fit the tablet halves together and held them for her to see. As she read the runes, her pale eyebrows shot together in a rather human expression. Then her starry eyes latched on to mine with sudden fierceness.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  Words in her language bubbled forth, melodic but urgent.

  “What do we do?” I asked Mercer. “She can’t speak to us.”

  The sea maiden propped her torso on the rock and gripped my wrist. Cords of strength ran under the pale, silvery skin of her arms. She seemed docile, but with one effortless yank she could send me to sleep in the depths.

  Yet she merely opened my hand and set a silver feather on my palm—my feather—giving me a long, knowing look. Then she opened her other hand, and inside it lay a smooth pebble. After a pause, she plucked the feather out of my hand and set the pebble in its place.

  “A trade?” I asked.

  Her small fingers traced the arch of my bare foot before sliding up my calf and thigh, bunching up my skirt around my hips. I jerked away and she jerked away in response, sending ripples to caress the stones.

  Considering that gestures were our only form of communication, she was likely illustrating her desires. I smoothed my skirt back over my legs. “I can’t. I don’t have that kind of power.”

  She furnished the feather again, a rebuttal to my argument. And then she swept her eyes toward Fabian’s balcony with such longing that I understood why she wanted this.

  I gestured at the balcony. “Fabian is betrothed. He’s going to marry my friend.”

  She blinked at me. I scooped up Mercer’s hand, interlaced our fingers, and jabbed them in her direction as a demonstration, but a silent plea remained in her blue eyes. I shrugged defeat.

  She ducked back underwater. “Wait!” I started, but she resurfaced and plunked a larger pebble down on the crescent-shaped rock where we sat. Prying my hand open, she took the small pebble from me, touched it to the large one, and held it to her chest. Then she passed the feather over the large pebble and gave it to me.

  “What? What does that mean?”

  “The trade requires a third party,” Mercer said. “She knows you can’t do what she wants on your own, and she can’t translate the tablet for us. You need a sea witch to broker the trade.”

  “A sea witch?”

  “Their version of elicromancers. Except the sea witches deal in bargains and they usually charge a tariff for their services.”

  “I’m not going to agree to a bargain if I don’t understand the terms.”

  “Then I suppose we won’t know for sure that Emlyn Valmarys has returned until he takes over your city and calls himself king.”

  I scratched at my hairpins, which were by now in disarray. “What sort of tariff?”

  Mercer slid his knuckles along his chin in thought. “You could offer something sea people can’t easily obtain.”

  “You mean like silk or jewels?”

  He snapped a finger. “I know just the thing. Agree to the trade and I’ll be back soon.”

  “Oh…all right,” I said as he dashed off, leaving me alone with the sea maiden.

  She waited, those blue eyes like raindrops on bluebells, patient and pleading. I twisted the shaft of the feather between my fingers and chewed on the inside of my lip. Then, forcing myself to think of no consequences besides saving lives, I offered her the silver feather and held out my hand for the pebble.

  Joy beamed in her eyes. She plopped the pebble down and gave me a sign to wait here—just then I noticed tiny pale webs between her spread fingers—and dove back into the water, the lissome blue and violet tendrils of her flukes scattering droplets on my face.

  Mercer returned and sat on a little bulge of rock above me, cradling a hefty jug of brandy. My eyes had started to feel heavy when he whispered, “Here they come.”

  My sleepless joints creaked as I stood up. I looked and saw amid the gulping black tides one silver-white head and one golden-green drawing near. The familiar sea maiden approached first and gripped the edge of the rock. The witch kept her distance, narrowing pale eyes at us. A tattered gray-green fluke coiled out of the water, and a frayed strip of fishing net held colorful shells in her hair. By the time she drew near enough for me to see a necklace of human foot bones strung together, I’d taken an instinctive step back.

  “Stay calm,” Mercer said. “As long as we can give her something she wants, she won’t hurt us.”

  “Such as our bones?” I whispered.

  Unlike Fabian’s savior, whose oddities were easy to overlook thanks to her glittering beauty, the sea witch was a haggard creature with hollow eyes. The burnish on her bright green scales had faded in patches to a lusterless gray, and scars marred her arms and chest. She beckoned me forward with fingers that were membranous and charted with veins.

  Reluctantly, I dropped to one knee and planted my hands on the damp, gritty rocks. I heard Mercer shuffle closer.

  The sea witch gripped my chin in her long fingers and searched my eyes before noticing the tablet next to me. Recognition washed over her features and she croaked something in their strange language, but unlike when the young sea maiden spoke, it sounded like a song spoiled by out-of-tune instruments.

  In her other hand she cupped a large shell with an iridescent inner layer bearing spiral patterns of green, brown, silver, and blue. Tiny characters like the ones on the tablet had been etched onto the surface. The sea witch released my jaw, leaving impressions from her tapering fingernails.

  “What if she wants my power?” I whispered to Mercer. “Or my legs? What exactly am I trading?”

  “It will be fine,” he said. “You’ll be none the worse for wear.”

  “How do you know? Oh, right,” I mumbled with a sideways look of resent. “Visions.”

  The sea witch offered the shell to the sea maiden. The younger creature trembled as she whistled into the hollow of the shell. The etchings of the contract glowed, and when the sea witch passed the shell to me, new ones had formed.

  “I don’t know…” I started.

  “Try repeating what she said.” Mercer knelt beside me.

  I was put off by his eagerness to surrender me to the mercies of a lovestruck maiden and a human-hating witch, but I remembered his brother and everything he had lost. I latched on to the echo of the noise still bouncing in my mind.

  “Hmmaaaweehooohwut,” I attempted, but the sea witch chastened me with a wagging finger. She repeated the sound I’d tried to emulate and pointed at the sea maiden. Then she pointed at me and beckoned.

  “Your name?” Mercer suggested.

  Speaking into the hollow of the shell, my heart aflutter, I said, “Valory Ermetarius Braiosa.”

  More runes formed on the tablet. The sea witch clamped her hand around my chin again, pried my lips open, and curled her long f
orefinger inside my mouth, drawing out a wisp of sparkling vapor. It was like when the Water had gifted me—or cursed me—with its magic. But it had produced enough fog to cloak a forest clearing, and the sea witch took just a tendril, which swirled and floated into one of two open vials clanking against the bone jewelry between her scaly bosoms. The clear water in the vial became an elixir that glistened like captive starlight, which she gave to the maiden.

  Fear shone in the maiden’s eyes as she tipped the elixir to her lips, but she drank it all. When the vial was empty, the sea witch extracted a rod of light from her yellow-green hair. As she had done with me, she gripped the sea maiden’s delicate chin and pried her mouth open. By the time I realized that the witch planned to cut off the young maiden’s tongue, the deed was already done. My scream would have cut through the quiet night if I hadn’t clapped a hand over my mouth. The sea maiden darted under the surface, moaning and trilling.

  The moist organ wriggled and glowed in the witch’s grasp. Her cavernous eyes looked upon it as a weary traveler might look upon a feast. I tasted bile in my throat. Even Mercer, who had certainly seen worse in the dark days that had befallen him, tensed next to me.

  The witch sliced the tongue in two. One half she forced into the other vial, where it disintegrated into flecks of radiant light, creating an elixir that looked just like the first. She dipped the shell with the runes into the sea and swirled the other half of the tongue inside it. It too became a glowing potion, which she swallowed in one swig. Light beamed out from her gullet and a dark smile stretched her overripe features. When she spoke the sea language again, her voice was gliding and nectarous.

  The witch snapped the second vial off the strap around her neck and gave it to me. With horror I studied the starry elixir, but the sea witch chirped something at me that was as sharp as any utterance I’d yet heard in their language. I steeled my churning stomach and swallowed. It tasted like salt and fire as it singed its way down my throat.

  “Can you understand me?” the sea witch asked.

  “Yes,” I answered in disbelief, and the sound that emerged from me was unnerving and strange.