Cartomancy

by Michael A. Stackpole

  He ran down the forest trail toward Muronek, thinking that he could raise the alarm. Then, as he neared the forest edge, the light of multiple fires alerted him to greater danger. The town was under attack, and somewhere his mother and father were in danger.

  Or are already dead!

  No! Dunos poured his anxiety and fear into his running, and sped through a ruined gate. All around him monsters abounded, dragging shrieking people from their homes. Many bled from small wounds, others had lost limbs. People collapsed in the street, their lives pumping into puddles, screaming until death took them.

  Fierce fires lit the town. Burning people ran through the streets until they fell and roasted. He could feel the heat, but it remained distant somehow. He ran on, leaping human pyres, rejoicing as one of the vhangxi staggered from one inferno, the beast’s upper body on fire. He’d named the creatures after a demon from the Third Hell, and darted aside as the burning one reached for him.

  Up Green Dragon Road he sprinted, then cut north on Seamster Lane. He refused to look west, toward the home his grandparents inhabited, but as he turned west on Gold Dragon, nothing but fire remained of the houses on either side. He continued running, his gait faltering only when he came to a body lying in the roadway. The fire’s heat had already scorched the gold robe, and the person’s head had been ripped clean from her body, but there was no mistaking his grandmother.

  He stared at the golden-white flames blazing through the house. The fire roared and wood popped loudly. Somewhere within lay his parents. A lump rose into his throat. His knees quivered and he would have fallen, but then he heard another sound. It came from within and, though it could not possibly be, he heard his mother calling his name.

  Heedless of his own danger, Dunos dashed into the fire. On his third step into the building, a floorboard gave way beneath him. As he fell into the shallow space beneath the house, timbers above cracked. The last thing he saw as he looked up was the house’s main beam splitting in half and crashing down upon him.

  Dunos had no idea how long he lay in the ashes that had been his grandparents’ home; the ashes that had been the town of Muronek. Night had flowed into day, and he guessed several days had passed, since the ashes from which he emerged had long since grown cold. Ash tiger-striped him in grey and black.

  He moved cautiously through the ruins at first, then more boldly. Skeletal dogs and feral cats skulked through the town. More majestic, and more numerous, carrion birds perched on the highest points available, descending in flocks to chase dogs away from the choicest bits of food.

  Dunos didn’t want to see what they were eating. As he explored he picked up a battered pot here, a blackened knife there and, toward the outskirts, he stripped robes and sandals—all oversized—from half-eaten corpses. He washed the clothes and himself in the river outside the town, then dressed and started walking.

  He had no more idea where he was going than he did why he survived the attack and fire. All he knew was that he had gotten away, and had to get still further. He had vowed he would not be Grija’s pet. The more distance he put between himself and such slaughter, the closer he’d be to keeping that vow.

  Chapter Nine

  20th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat

  9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

  163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

  737th year since the Cataclysm

  Ixyll

  Though barely a week and a half away from the tomb complex in which he had awakened, Ciras Dejote found himself faced with yet one more challenge. The ever-changing land that was Ixyll made many demands on him. He scarcely dared sleep, lest his concentration slip for an instant. Even the most benign-appearing scene could hide virulent peril, and always having to be alert wore on him.

  But no hero would shrink from a quest such as ours!

  He glanced out over the lip of the bowl-shaped valley. It stretched off to the north in an ellipse, the dying sun reflecting warmly off the fluid gold flesh coating the whole of the landscape. The muted forms of trees and bushes pushed up from beneath it, but remained as hidden as if thick snow covered them.

  The only anomalous bit of color in the valley skittered about from bush to tree to boulder like a ball sliding on ice. Borosan crouched at the valley’s edge, watching his thanaton try to find purchase with its spidery legs. When it finally bumped up against something, slowing its momentum, it could raise its spherical body on its four legs, but would only manage a step or two before its wild sliding would begin again.

  Borosan shook his head, then made a note in the book opened in his lap. “This is not good. The measurements Keles wants will be useless. Pacing out the distance won’t work here.”

  Impatience tightened Ciras’ belly, but he slowly exhaled and calmed himself. “Perhaps, given the hour, we should make camp.”

  Borosan scribbled another note without looking up. “Perhaps this will be like the plain two days ago. At night it will change.”

  “Gods forbid.” Ciras shivered. That plain had been a paradise while the sun had shone. They’d been able to eat their fill of fresh fruit, the water ran sweet in small rivulets, and small animals—related to rabbits as nearly as Ciras could make out—gamboled peacefully. They’d decided to spend the night there, but the moment the sun went down, everything had changed. A wave of wild magic pulsed up from the ground, as if the land were shrugging off the day’s warmth. With it went the glamour of the place, revealing a dark land full of corruption. The half-eaten apple in his hand suddenly writhed with worms. The streams ran with blood and the rabbits became rabids.

  They’d sacrificed one of their packhorses to them and barely escaped with their lives.

  That incident had been just one of many along their journey. There would be more because they were in Ixyll. Over seven hundred years before, the forces of Empress Cyrsa fought and defeated a Turasynd horde from the northern wastes. That battle had unleashed enough magical energy to warp the land and trigger a Cataclysm that nearly destroyed humanity. While the wild magic had retreated from civilized land, here in Ixyll, it still held sway.

  So much variety, and so much to see, made it impossible to catalogue it all, but Borosan Gryst seemed determined to do just that. Though he was a practitioner of gyanri—the mechanical magic that Ciras found an abomination—he’d adopted the role of a cartographer, too—continuing the work that Keles Anturasi had begun. His painstaking devotion to exact measurements reduced their progress to almost nothing.

  And impatience to find the Sleeping Empress rose in inverse proportion.

  Abandoning Borosan, Ciras descended the hillside, relishing the crunch of gravel beneath his boots. He reached the small grassy circle they’d use for a camp. It and the nearby tree to which they’d tied the horses were the only relatively normal bits of landscape they’d seen in the area—and the tree sprouted clusters of crystal acorns that chimed as a light breeze shook the branches.

  He moved to the circle’s center and closed his eyes. He listened to the chiming and the way it shifted. At times discordant and at others harmonious, he sought the core pattern. It had to be there, since the branches were limited in the distance they could travel and the breeze remained fairly constant. Listening as intently as he could, he found it. And, once he had it, he slid his sword from the sash at his waist.

  Still blind to the world, he moved through all the sword forms he had learned. He flowed from Scorpion to Wolf as he imagined a sharp peal as an overhand stroke. He parried it, then thrust beneath a subtle chime into what would have been his foe’s heart. A twist and flow into Dog, then a Cat leap and slash took him above another desperate attack and beheaded his foe at a stroke.

  As the sounds were limited, so were the abilities of foes. The human form could only move in so many ways and do so many things. The men he’d faced before had all had their limits. Speed and strength, the length of a limb, and the knowledge of forms made them different, but there were some things none of them could do. In those li
mitations lay the opportunity for victory.

  And then there were those who had reached jaedunto.

  He had seen some of those very special Mystics, whose skill with a blade transcended the natural. Normal limitations did not apply. The Mystics were able to go beyond what any other mortal could manage.

  Ciras hoped he had the seeds of such greatness in him. He’d arrogantly assumed it to be true when he’d come to Moriande and Serrian Jatan, demanding to be trained. Phoyn Jatan had apprenticed him to Moraven Tolo, which Ciras had first taken as a dismissal. But slowly he learned that Moraven himself was a Mystic, and the lessons he had for Ciras encompassed more than the Art of the Sword.

  Again Ciras had taken this as a dismissal, but contemplation—for which he’d had plenty of time in the last week and a half—had led him to consider that what he was being taught were the disciplines he’d need if he reached jaedunto. Enduring patience seemed to loom large among them, and he fought daily to embrace it.

  Tolerance seemed to be another, and being paired with Borosan Gryst demanded he learn that as well. Magic was a great and powerful force in the world. Only through studying a subject and perfecting one’s skill at it could magic be touched. A Mystic would have the wisdom and strength to be able to handle such power. And with magic limited to those who had worked so hard to achieve it, civilization was safeguarded from another Cataclysm.

  Gyanri defied this logic and, therefore, seemed an abomination to Ciras. A gyanridin created devices that obtained their motive energy from thaumston, a mineral charged with wild magic. A gyanrigot could do anything. On far Tirat, his home island, he’d seen the blue gyanrigot lights that had become fashionable among the merchant class. Borosan’s thanatons, which came in a variety of shapes and sizes, could crawl about, measuring things, carrying things and even killing things—that latter trait making them even worse in his mind.

  Of course, Ciras did prefer to have a thanaton slipping and sliding about in that valley to doing it himself. And the fact that you could set one of the smaller ones to kill and fetch edible game did make travel easier. And they could even be made to stand watch and raise an alarm if something odd was happening.

  But while he wanted to hate the creators of such machines outright, Borosan really wasn’t that bad of a person. He had no concept of physical discipline, but he wasn’t one to quit or complain when put to a physically demanding task. His wide-eyed wonder at the world was something Ciras found almost childlike—and though he’d not have admitted it even under the most dire torture, it was something he regretted having lost during his own childhood.

  If I had it, I’d not be so impatient.

  “Ciras.”

  The swordsman spun to a stop, crouching in Fourth Scorpion, with his sword above his head, pointed forward. Sweat dripped down his face, but he did not wipe it away. It soaked into the beard he’d grown on the road and the breeze cooled his face. Slowly he opened his eyes and glanced up the hill toward Borosan.

  The gyanridin closed his book and waved Ciras toward him. “Ciras, come here.”

  Ciras straightened up. “In a moment.”

  “No, I really think you should see this.”

  “Borosan, I need to finish my exercises.”

  “But I . . .”

  A gold apparition reared up above Borosan. A long-fingered hand closed over the man’s head and shoulders, then tugged him backward. Golden arms closed around Borosan, and metal flesh poured over him. When the apparition opened its mouth, flashing fangs defiantly, Borosan’s scream echoed from its throat.

  Ciras sprinted up the hill. Sword in his right hand, he scrabbled with his left for purchase. He tripped only once, but got back up instantly and reached the hillcrest a couple of heartbeats later.

  The apparition—flesh flapping as if a golden robe were sheathing its legs and arms—was flowing down toward a large, dark hole which had opened in the heart of the valley floor. Ciras assumed the thanaton had already been sucked down into it. Between him and the apparition, a trio of golden warriors had risen and advanced. One bore a sword like his own. A second had the curved blade of a Turasynd. The third carried no sword, but the golden flesh outlined the form of a Viruk warrior. Its claws and size alone made it lethal.

  Though it occurred to him that Borosan was most certainly lost, and that chances of his own survival were negligible, the thought of retreating never came to mind. A friend was in trouble. To know he had abandoned him would have been to live in shame. It would not have been a life worthy of living.

  Not a life to be sung of.

  Into the valley he leaped, and from the moment his heels touched the golden surface, he realized there were times it was not possible to be heroic. His feet sailed out from under him and he crashed down on his back. Somehow he maintained his grip on his sword, but he’d already begun sliding toward the hole, and his foes flowed toward his path to slash at him as he sped past.

  Ciras jammed his heels hard against the slick gold surface. His spurs dug in, ripping through it. Golden fluid welled up to heal the rifts, but he slowed. Smiling, he reversed his blade and tucked it back beneath his right shoulder. Pulling up on the hilt and pushing down with his shoulder, he used his sword like the rudder on a ship. He cut a path through the gold, steering at a large rock.

  Braking hard with his heels, he slowed enough that he didn’t slam too heavily into the rock. He scrambled about, steadying himself, and got to his feet. Then he pressed his back to the rock and crouched as the first warrior reached him, swinging its scimitar down.

  Ciras shifted his body right and the blade clanged off the stone, ripping away a patch of the golden flesh. Even before the gold could ooze out to close the wound, Ciras whipped his blade around in a forehand slash that took the Turasynd through the neck. Its head popped off, exposing white bone. Gold covered it quickly as the head spun, the masked expression revealing surprise.

  But the body did not collapse. Instead, it reached up, caught the head and plunked it right back down on its neck. Lips peeled back in a feral grin and the jaw vibrated as if it were laughing triumphantly.

  It was in midlaugh that Ciras’ return stroke caught it again. With both hands on his sword’s hilt, he split the Turasynd from crown to pelvis, crushing each vertebra. The body sagged left and right. Gold tried to cover the bones, but they turned black after only a second or two’s exposure to the air. Their decay tarnished the gold flesh, and it fell from the bones in a spray.

  Though he might have acted foolishly leaping into the fight, Ciras Dejote had learned enough not to presume that he knew exactly how things were working—but he had enough information to make some educated guesses. As the second swordsman came toward him, Ciras pushed away from the rock and slid toward it. He dropped to his left knee, controlling his path ever so slightly, ducked a slash, then returned it.

  His cut sliced through the gold flesh over the warrior’s left thigh. When he pared it down to the bone, the femur decayed immediately. The warrior flopped over, and with a quick slash Ciras laid its face open. The black rot ate through the skull and the head collapsed like an overripe melon. With that, the gold flowed from the skeleton and the black bones melted.

  Ciras stabbed a spur into the gold and kicked back. He slid from beneath the Viruk’s slashing claws. Flipping his sword about, he stabbed it down, anchoring himself. Then using his momentum, he whipped his legs around and snapped a kick through the Viruk’s right leg. Gold splashed as the shin parted.

  The Viruk toppled, but bounced up and around onto its belly. As Ciras pulled himself up to one knee and turned to face it, the creature lunged. Ciras dodged, then drew his blade and slashed. He missed the hand, but cut deeply into the gold flesh covering the valley floor. He opened a deep, wide wound, exposing the ground and the thick mat of pale grasses that lay beneath it.

  Gold oozed to close the opening, but not before the grasses took on color and sprang up. The wound closed, but a half dozen green leaves poked up through it. Beyond them, the
Viruk came up on its knees and slashed with both claws—at the grasses.

  Ciras’ eyes narrowed, then he whipped his sword around and cleaved another gap in the gold flesh. More grasses sprang up and a flower with a brilliant red blossom burst through the opening. He bisected that cut with another and the corners of the cross drew back, opening a larger green patch. Another crossing cut and another, and he isolated a patch of gold flesh that quivered and deflated. Spiky grasses thrust up through it, and the earth below drank in the gold.

  Rising to his feet on the greensward, Ciras slashed the Viruk’s head off and sent it whirling toward the hole. He began advancing in its wake, crosscutting a green path into the basin.

  Before he could get too far, a pair of objects shot from the hole and spun toward him. The thanaton reached the path and immediately sprouted legs, checking its momentum. Borosan, who tumbled after it, rolled a bit more when he hit grass, but came up in a sitting position with his notebook still clutched to his chest.

  He coughed, then spat out a lump of golden phlegm. “I think it was alive.”

  “I think it still is, Master Borosan. It just discovered you to be about as tasty as a few of the meals we’ve had on the road.”

  The gyanridin struggled to his feet and Ciras steadied him. “On my map, I’ll mark this place as very dangerous.”

  “Or mark it as a place for farmers.” Ciras cut a furrow through the gold to open a trail back to the hilltop. “As menacing as it found a man with a sword, I think it far more vulnerable to plowshares.”

  “You’re probably right.” Borosan smiled. “We should move on. We’ve got a few hours of sunlight left and can be far from here before we camp.”

  “No, we’ll stay the night.” Ciras returned his smile. “Knowing how fast it heals is something you’d find useful. The Empress has been waiting a long time. I trust another day will not try her patience.”

  Chapter Ten