The Light That Binds

by Nathan Garrison

  But then Jasside stopped her analysis. She had allowed herself to become distracted—and so quickly!—after promising herself she would stay focused on her task. Everything her mistress said likely held more weight than a lifetime’s worth of words from a million other mouths, but today, Jasside had something of her own to say.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jasside said. “I didn’t come to compare notes on sorcerous procedure.”

  “Of course not. You came to chastise me for my naughty behavior.”

  “I wouldn’t bother. The only time you ever seemed receptive to criticism was back when we were freeing Sceptre from occupation. And then, only just. What changed?”

  Vashodia scowled. “I came to my senses.”

  “It was intentional, then?”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “I’m surprised you’d admit that. But then, not that surprised. I should expect that you, of all people, would view being wrong as a lesser fault than being vulnerable.”

  “I like to conduct experiments. That doesn’t mean I won’t end one when I see results that point towards failure.”

  “Failure? Abyss take me, you were just starting to succeed!”

  “Well then, it appears, yet again, that you and I have much different criteria for what constitutes a favorable outcome.”

  “Clearly.”

  Jasside placed her hands on her hips and began tapping a toe, searching for a way to come back to her point. Frustrated that she’d allowed herself to become distracted again.

  Just say what you have to say, then get out before she can twist your mind in another dozen directions. You have too much responsibility to try to wrangle this maelstrom.

  “Look,” Jasside began, “I know you don’t care about lives you view as pointless—I won’t try to debate that with you again—but there are still so many that even you can concede are valuable. And they need your help.

  “I need your help.

  “People are dying every day. It takes all of me to stem that flow of blood, to make it a mere sprinkling compared to the raging torrent it would otherwise be. You know me. You know this is simple fact and not a boast. And you also know that there are none better at doing the job than me.

  “None better . . . except you.

  “I know you claim to have a plan for everything, and I’m sure you think you have everything under control, but we are in a fight for the very survival of our species . . . and we are losing! I’ve tried to imagine a scenario where you’d consider the eradication of humanity—in all its forms—to be a ‘favorable outcome,’ but even the darkest part of me can’t believe that about the darkest part of you.

  “That’s why I’m asking you now to put aside your projects, your experiments, your distractions, and help us fight! Give me a break, at least, before I start making mistakes. Worse ones than I’ve already made, that is.”

  With all the haste of a flower unfolding for spring, Vashodia rose. Clawed hands began clapping as pointed teeth flashed towards Jasside in a grin; disingenuous both, and not bothering to hide it.

  “My, my, what a touching speech,” Vashodia said, mock emotion laced through her voice. “You must have spent all night rehearsing it.”

  Cold flowed down Jasside’s neck. She wondered how she could have thought there’d be any other kind of response.

  The mierothi ceased her feigned applause. “Really, child, what did you expect? I never do anything without reason, nor will I do things twice when once will do. I battled the ruvak at Panisahldron to get their measure. Now, I work to uncover other secrets they’d rather not have brought to light.”

  “What secrets? You haven’t discovered anything useful!”

  “Haven’t I?”

  Jasside furrowed her brow. “What are you saying?”

  Vashodia shrugged. “Oh, nothing. Just that I may have chewed off a morsel or two. Most delicious. Would you like a taste?”

  Jasside hesitated.

  “As I thought,” Vashodia continued. “You simply can’t stomach the fact that my methods are effective. You’ll even go so far as to refuse my information, due only to the circumstances of its . . . extraction. Pity. I once thought you had more sense than that.”

  “There is no sense in what you do. Only pain. Only . . . darkness.” Jasside shook her head. “To think I was once so naïve as to believe I could save you.”

  “Save me? Oh child, I do not want to be saved, and certainly not in the manner you envision.”

  “The very fact that you think so only proves how desperately you need it.”

  “You are wrong,” Vashodia said matter-of-factly. “Training such folly out of you is going to take some doing. I’m not sure you’re up to the challenge.”

  “I have nothing to learn from you.”

  “You think you’ve surpassed me already? In just a few short years?”

  “I’m not so vain as that. Besides, surpassing you implies I seek to follow in your footsteps. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

  Vashodia snorted. “If that is the case, then you can consider your apprenticeship terminated. To think I was once so naïve as to believe I could . . . groom you.”

  Jasside felt herself stepping back, gut aching as her own words were twisted back upon her. Coming here, confronting her mistress—she never expected things between them might come to an end.

  Not like this . . .

  “Once again,” Vashodia continued, “it appears I’ll have to do everything myself. Everything that matters, anyway. Try not to let any dust in on your way out.”

  Jasside shuffled her feet around and began trudging back towards the entrance. Even if she could have thought of anything to say, her mouth was too dry to speak.

  Too many disasters. One right after another, unceasing. How many more until I break?

  “Oh, and Jasside?”

  She stopped. Turned. Stared.

  “If I were you, I’d start keeping a closer eye on my men. They are, after all, such naughty little creatures.”

  Jasside pushed through the flap, head flaring with pain as the bright light of the sun seemed to slap her in the face. Ignoring it—just one wound among many—she energized and jumped into commune.

  The realm of endless white surrounded her instantly. She turned north and flew, casting her metaphysical self through fields of dark stars, across a gap where none existed, then into another black cluster: the fifth war group, where the reinforcements had been sent. She looked about for the ones she sought.

  But did not find them.

  With the weight of inevitability crashing down upon her mind, she peered even farther to the north, into what would be, in the waking world, the land she had liberated what seemed an eternity ago.

  Into Sceptre.

  And found, at last, her quarry.

  Chapter 12

  Mevon tore a chunk of meat off the bone. The fire before him sizzled as a Sceptrine woman turned the spit and her husband cut off slices from the pig to ready another platter for any of the dozens seated eagerly nearby. Two full days since they’d last seen a ruvaki force, though not for lack of trying. All five skyships were currently roving, and hundreds of native citizens had volunteered to act as scouts, guides, and rangers. Mevon savored each moment where the innocent were not in danger almost as much as he did each greasy bite.

  Almost.

  Too much of him still yearned for action, for taking the fight to the enemy before they had a chance to regroup. But despite another round of Imperial Guard to reinforce them—along with the thousands of locals who’d chosen to fight rather than flee—there weren’t enough troops with him to truly go on the offensive. To drive deeper east into Sceptre would leave those behind them exposed. Instead, they’d been coming slowly west.

  “It’s late.”

  Mevon peered over his shoulder to see Ilyem standing behind him. He quickly chewed and swallowed, washing his mouth out with a swig from his waterskin. “So it is,” he said. “But this couple here told me th
ey make the finest roast pig in all of Sceptre. I couldn’t pass up the chance to test their claim.”

  “And?”

  Mevon smiled. “I’ve yet to taste better. Want some?”

  In answer she sat beside him on the log. The husband brought her a plate piled high with steaming meat, smiling and bowing enthusiastically. She ripped a piece from the slab with her fingers and plopped it into her mouth.

  “Very good,” she said half a mark later. “But I’m not sure it’s worth losing sleep over.”

  Mevon grunted, flipping his wrist. “I’m too stirred up for that right now. I want be ready in case there’s a sighting.”

  “All the more reason to get rest while you can.”

  “Maybe. But we’ve only had the upper hand so far because we’ve struck hard, leaving none alive to tell of our tactics nor allowing them a chance to rest. I don’t like this quiet.”

  “Is that what has you so antsy lately?”

  Mevon hesitated. “Of course.”

  “Really. So it has nothing to do with your upcoming . . . reunion?”

  After a long pause, Mevon sighed, then dipped his head in acknowledgment. “That might also have something to do with it.”

  Two weeks was the estimate. Two weeks until all the refugees and war groups, those from Sceptre included, would at last gather at the mierothi colony.

  Two weeks until I see Jasside again.

  “I don’t even know what I’m going to say to her,” he said.

  “Is that your way of asking for my advice?” Ilyem said.

  “Well . . . no. But if you’re offering—?”

  “I’m not.”

  “I didn’t mean . . . that is . . .” He sighed. “It’s rude, isn’t it? To ask one woman how to deal with another?”

  “Probably.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’m not most women.”

  Mevon grunted, smiling. “My apologies anyway. I’m . . . no good at this sort of thing.”

  “That much is obvious.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But you are not alone among our peers when it comes to struggling with such matters. When you expend every effort towards making hearts stop, it becomes difficult to treasure them.”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Though . . . I don’t know how that helps me.”

  “I didn’t say it would. Just trying to establish how rarely our kind make such connections.”

  “So, the more unique something is, the more it should be valued?”

  She shrugged. “You’re the one who keeps looking for a point. Make of it what you will.”

  Mevon turned back towards the fire. Stuffing his mouth as he stared into the dancing flames, he found himself obsessing over his future choice of words to a woman he could only hope held no hate in her heart towards him. Coming up empty, time and time again, he soon had to contest with terror that threatened to set him trembling.

  You, Jasside, seem to be the only person capable of doing that to me.

  When he heard the call to battle, sometime later, fear vanished in an instant.

  The force loaded up over the next several marks as the skyships returned one by one: Hardohl to their harnesses beneath, Imperial Guard pressed close together on the deck, which they had since modified to contain more space. Weighed down far past their designed intent, the skyships lumbered through the air, heading—to Mevon’s surprise—south. Only a few dozen leagues lay between their current position and the Suwanea Mountains, which formed Sceptre’s border. He had thought the place well clear of enemy presence.

  “What do we know?” he asked Ilyem, as treetops scraped by just paces below them.

  “A mass of human civilians are fleeing a ruvak fleet,” she said.

  “That isn’t exactly news.”

  “No. But the fact that both groups are larger than anything we’ve encountered before is.”

  “How can that be? The ruvak I can understand, but wouldn’t we have noticed a group of refugees that large? Where did they come from?”

  “The east.”

  “That . . . isn’t right.”

  “I know.”

  Mevon let the winds of Sceptre’s autumn chill flesh and mind alike as he fought the clenched feeling in his gut.

  Such instincts, unfortunately, had rarely failed him.

  Twenty marks later, they crested a hilltop, and the sight before them filled with a vast plain that swept towards the mountains standing dark against the stars. Fires glimmered on every patch of ground he could see.

  “There’s got to be two . . . three hundred thousand at least,” he said. “Far too many for us to even attempt to protect.”

  “We won’t have to do it on our own.” She pointed to the far end of the human mass. “Look.”

  Mevon peered across the distance, seeing little but shadows at first. Then, something else: torchlight flashing from steel in too regular a pattern to be anything but a military formation.

  “Who the abyss is that?” he said.

  “We’ll soon find out.”

  Their skyships swept over the sprawling encampment, which showed signs of rousing: tents fell as figures around them yanked on ropes and pulled up stakes, campfires were doused, spitting steam towards the sky, and figures scrambled with more haste than night and the press of bodies could safely permit.

  They should have known better than to expect the ruvak would give them a moment’s respite.

  At last they came over the far side to a gap between the civilians and the military force. The pilots nosed up to hover and begin landing. Mevon released his harness twenty paces from the ground. The rest of the Hardohl followed suit.

  Marching closer, he could finally make out the brown-and-black uniforms worn over dull, stone-like armor, and saw the bear flapping on banner poles all across the formation. Though he hadn’t see it before, he’d been in this country long enough to recognize the marks of its own flag.

  Before he’d covered half the distance, one of the Sceptrine soldiers broke away from the rest. Taller and fairer than most locals Mevon had seen, the man bore a greatsword strapped to his back and carried himself with authority as he strode out to meet them.

  He came to a stop. Folded his arms as he flicked narrow eyes between Mevon and Ilyem. “You must be the soldiers from the Veiled Empire.”

  “We are,” Ilyem said. “I am Ilyem Bakhere, commander of the empire’s Hardohl.”

  “Hardohl?”

  “Voids.”

  The man’s eyes widened as he scanned those fanning out behind them. “All of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how can there be so many? I am one of only twelve known in my nation. Does your empire breed our kind like horses?”

  “No. But our previous ruler knew how potent a weapon we could be. He wasn’t one to let good tools go to waste.”

  “Not good enough, it seems.”

  “Strong words from a man who hasn’t even told us his name,” Mevon said.

  The man sneered. “I am Daye Harkun, Prince of Sceptre. And I am here to do what you could not.” He gestured over Mevon’s shoulder, towards the encampment. “I came to save my people.”

  “A noble cause, were we not doing just fine at the task . . . and were it not against your orders.”

  “How would you know what my orders are? Just who are you anyway?”

  “I am Mevon Daere. Son of the current emperor. Slayer of the previous one. I was sent here by Jasside Anglasco, at whose side I fought during our empire’s revolution, to hold off the ruvak as much as our small force could. The real question, then, is this—what the abyss are you doing here?”

  Daye dropped his arms to his sides. “You are Mevon Daere?”

  “Yes. What of it?”

  The prince studied him, scrutinizing every detail, lingering long on the Andun poking up over his back, and longer still on his face. He must not have liked what he saw, for he shook his head and said, so softly Mevon knew he wasn’t meant to hear
it, “Of course it had to be you.”

  Before Mevon could even begin trying to figure out what that meant, a hand on his arm drew his attention.

  “Incoming,” Ilyem said.

  Mevon looked past Daye to see the ruvak approaching, over a hundred small skyships swarming like locust.

  “Do you feel that?” Draevenus said.

  “Feel what?” Vashodia replied. “This is commune, dear brother, an unreality occupied exclusively by our minds. The only sensation to be had here is what you want to feel. What you expect.”

  He scanned the unbroken white around them, unable to shake the itch that told him something was wrong. “I know that, but this is different. I can’t help but feel like I’m being watched.”

  “I feel nothing.”

  “And I suppose you think your perception is the only one that matters. That it might as well be reality.”

  “Will is reality, for those strong enough to shape it. Perception only confirms what you already ought to know.”

  “And that is?”

  She smiled. “That I’m never wrong.”

  “Never wrong isn’t the same as always right.”

  “Thus spake the fool.”

  “We share the same blood, sister. If I’m a fool, you can’t be less than half one, as well.”

  “Why, brother, that almost sounds like wisdom . . . if only it weren’t utter nonsense.”

  “Right. Next you’ll try telling me blood has no bearing on a person.”

  “Oh, it plays a part in potential, probability, and predictable behaviors, but it’s the experiences you have and the choices you make that truly define who you are.”

  “Well then, maybe I’ll choose to give my reports to Mother, or Jasside, from now on. How would you say that defines me?”

  “I’d say you’re a man no good at making threats. Not with words, anyway. If I were you, I’d stick to making them with knives.”

  Draevenus sighed. “I’ve been doing more than enough of that recently, and even Tassariel hasn’t objected. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Discovered something tantalizing, did you?”

  “You might say that.”

  “Do tell!”

  Draevenus ran a hand through his hair, almost surprised to find that he’d remembered to conjure it. His first few times in commune, he’d summoned the old version of himself—scales and claws, and definitely no hair. “We captured a ruvak a few days back. Found him in a room full of human corpses—his test subjects—disposing of the last of them after Tassariel and I took out his guards.”