by Ken Scholes
Again.
Eyes closed, he gulped in the warm night air and listened to the kin-wolves howling in the distant Wastes. His hand moved along the rough skin of his neck, then moved to the scar over his heart that burned even hotter. Forcing his eyes open, he reached for the cup of tepid water on his nightstand and drained it with one long gulp.
Outside, the Gypsy Watch on the Keeper’s Wall whistled the last all’s clear before dawn. Standing, Petronus groped for his robe and pulled it on.
The dreams were harder now, more urgent in their demand to be heard.
But I can’t hear them. They were all light and shadow without sound, vague moving images, ending finally in one burst of sudden noise that drove him awake, shouting and sweating ahead of the dawn.
Walking to his cabin’s door, he cracked it open and looked out on the small compound he and the other Androfrancines shared, huddled against the Keeper’s Gate where Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts could watch over them. Of course, the only true threat against them lay within the Named Lands, on the other side of the locked and guarded gate that barred entrance to the Churning Wastes. But still, what remained of the Gray Guard took their turn at the watch, and a makeshift wall of tall pine logs stood nearly finished around the perimeter of the Androfrancine camp.
Petronus moved out into the predawn morning. Cool air from west of the Keeper’s Wall stirred his wet, tangled hair, which he pushed out of his eyes as he moved forward, barefoot.
“Chai’s nearly ready,” Grymlis said in a low voice when Petronus approached his watch fire.
Petronus chuckled. “You’re expecting me now.”
Grymlis shrugged. “You come each morning at the last whistle. How were they this time?”
Petronus moved to a round stone near the fire and sat, noticing the two mugs set out within reach of the boiling kettle.
How were they? He closed his eyes and let the memory of that light wash over him. He winced at it, his hand moving again to his breast as if it were enough to quell the heat that rose from his scars. Then, the roar of cacophony-the voice of many waters-and the terror it raised within him as he clawed his way shrieking for wakefulness. He swallowed and opened his eyes, forcing them to meet Grymlis’s across the fire. “About the same,” he said.
“I wonder what your Franci dream mappers would say about these?”
Petronus wondered the same. He had at least two dozen volumes scattered around his small cabin, books he’d asked Isaak to send with the regular supply wagons. But dream interpretation relied on knowing enough of what was dreamt to identify the images and archetypes within it. Still, he parroted what he did know. “They’d say it was brought about by the trauma of the event, that it was a deeply planted anxiety response that will work its way out in time as my body and mind gradually accept what happened to me.”
Grymlis chuckled. “And what do you say?”
His eyes went to the edge of the watch fire’s light. “I’d say it was most likely a side effect of whatever blood magick they used to bring me back.”
It’s what he told himself. Because in truth, he felt no trauma from the act. The memory of it unfolded for him upon request-her hand moving slowly up, the cold ache of the blade as it opened him, the added layer of cold when the winter air touched his open wound. He could smell the blood, could hear the heavy indrawn breath of the surprised room, the slow wail of Rudolfo’s son Jakob, and could feel his need for reckoning pulsing out onto the sawdust floor with his blood after his legs gave out and he fell.
Then, there was a consuming light and then nothing and, just beyond, a choking, gasping return.
But no trauma. A miracle, to be sure, and certainly not a comfortable one. But apart from the discomfort-and the dreams-his life felt normal enough.
Still, Petronus had not expected his life to go in such a direction.
To be a testimony in their blood-loving gospel. And more than that: to be used to compel Jin Li Tam, daughter of his old friend, to beg their aid for her dying son.
A new voice joined them, and Petronus jumped. “You would not be far from the truth,” it said. “Exposure to blood magick had a similar effect upon the boy.”
Blood magick? Boy? He looked up, but Grymlis no longer sat across from him. And he no longer sat at the fire. Instead, he sat in his study. The windows were open and afternoon sunlight poured in. He looked out of one window and saw the massive spires of Windwir’s Great Library. He looked back to the speaker but did not recognize him.
He rubbed his forehead. Where had he been just now? “I’m sorry? Which boy?”
“Nebios,” the man said. He was an Androfrancine but not one Petronus recognized. His crest of office was unfamiliar to Petronus as well, which surprised him. He thought as Pope he’d known every office under his shepherd’s staff. “He did not become sensitive to the dream until after he was exposed to the blood magicks at the fall of Windwir.”
He remembered the dream the boy had about the Marsh King riding south, remembered also the dream about his proclamation of Petronus as Pope there in the ruins of the garden of consecration and coronation. His throat and chest itched. The light around him grew brighter. “Is this a dream?”
“No,” the man said. “This is not the dream. This is about the dream. You are resisting it.” Their eyes met. “Don’t.”
“I don’t intend to resist,” Petronus said. The scars burned now.
The man shrugged. “Intentions aside, learn to hear what the dream has to say. You’ve been chosen to hear it.”
Outside, the light built and the sound of a metal voice, singing, reached Petronus’s ears. There was a mighty roar building beneath it, a voice of many waters and-
Petronus blinked and it was dark again but for the dancing of the watch fire.
Something different, he thought.
Grymlis looked up as if he’d spoken. “Father?”
“Nothing, Grymlis,” Petronus whispered, closing his eyes. The white light of Windwir still blazed behind his eyelids. Something different indeed.
One last kin-wolf howled as the sky moved from gray to purple. Then, the water hissed and burbled in its kettle, announcing that a new day could begin in the Churning Wastes.
Winters
The city outside her office window, now being called Rachyle’s Rest by the refugees from the south, stirred to life as Winters sipped her second mug of tea and looked at the day’s work that stretched ahead of her. She’d initially been provided quarters at the manor, but after that first month she’d chosen quarters in one of the completed sections of the new library, near Isaak and the other mechoservitors. Truth be told, she’d also spent her share of hours sleeping near the book makers’ tents while the mechoservitors reproduced volume after volume through the warm summer nights. Somehow, their proximity soothed her.
And their simplicity, she thought, though she knew it was a misconceived notion. There was nothing simple about Isaak and his kind, though they presented a childlike innocence, a simple obedience to task, that made her envious.
She reached for the next report in her stack and paused, noting the back of her hand, her slender wrist, her long slightly tanned forearm. After all of these months, it still felt unnatural, and she still started when she saw her face in the mirror. She did not seem herself without the mud and ash of her father’s faith-her own former faith-upon her.
And it goes deeper, beneath the skin. Once her dreams had ceased-both those pleasant dreams of Neb and home and those darker, more violent dreams of blood and iron-she’d discovered something hollow within her that she filled with work. And when she did not work, she read or helped Lynnae in the refugee quarter. Until they’d set out to ride the Nine Forest Manors, she’d spent a goodly amount of time with Jakob as well. It was the life she could forge for herself in this new home she’d chosen.
At least until Neb returns. She’d cried the day Aedric returned without him, though she’d kept that hidden and secret from the others. The first captain had pulled her as
ide as soon as he’d made his report to Rudolfo, and she’d read the message on his face before he gave it. Tell her I am called to find our home. That was all; nothing more. No words of love, no promise of a swift return. It had been yet another loss on top of so many others, and though she’d sent a dozen birds telling him that the quest was fruitless, that the dreams had misled them all, each had come back with her coded note untouched.
She heard the solid thud of metal feet in the corridor and took comfort in the gentle wheeze of pumping bellows, the whistle of steam, the whir of gears that accompanied it. She looked up at the tap on her door. “Yes?”
The door swung open, and Isaak’s jeweled eyes blinked at her as the shutters opened and closed over them. “Good morning, Lady Winters.”
At one time, he’d called her Winteria. All of them had, but in the days since her supposed sister’s return to the Named Lands, bearing the same name, Winters had insisted she be called by her less formal nickname. And when she thought of the woman who supplanted her-a woman who looked too much like her to not be kin-she forced herself to think of that usurper as Ria, though part of her knew that along with everything else, even her very name was lost despite the clever shell game she played with it.
“Good morning, Isaak,” she said. “How was the night’s work?”
“Two hundred twelve complete volumes,” he said, eye shutters flapping. “We will bring the work into the western basement at the end of the week in preparation for winter.” They had used the manor last winter, she recalled. The house staff had hidden it well, but she’d seen the traces of that work when she visited with Hanric for Rudolfo’s Firstborn Feast.
The first of those losses had arrived that night, and Hanric’s funeral was the last time she’d seen Neb in the flesh. “And is Rudolfo still dedicating the wing this week?”
Isaak nodded, steam whistling from the exhaust grate set in his back. “Yes.”
Winters smiled, wondering if Isaak felt proud. After eighteen months of construction, the lowest basements were in place and the first wing stood ready. Ornate shelves, built in Paramo and sent by barge, housed the first volumes brought back from the Desolation of Windwir. Thick carpets from the finest silks of the Emerald Coasts lay atop polished wooden planks. She’d wandered the wing at night, alone, her lungs pulling in the heavy smell of paper, wood and ink. It intoxicated her and made her wish she’d seen the Great Library that made up such an important part of Neb’s childhood before they met in the midst of its ruins. “Let me know if I can help,” she told him.
Isaak’s eye shutters flashed. “I will, Lady Winters. Good morning to you.” He inclined his head slightly, then turned and pulled her door closed as he left.
Winters tried to force herself back to her work but found herself restless. Instead, she turned to her office’s small bookcase and pulled down a volume of collected legends of the Age of the Weeping Czars and the Year of the Falling Moon. She turned the pages slowly, savoring the words she found there. She found the Last Weeping Czar, Frederico, the most compelling. Love out of reach, a lost throne, the end of a way of life. The resonance gripped her.
A rapping at the narrow window in the corner startled her, and she looked up to a muffled cry from outside. She’d seen the kin-ravens before, both in dreams and in the sky, but never one so close. It stood outside, filling the small window in its size, and pecked again at the thick glass. Then, it hopped back and cocked its head, regarding her with one blood-red eye.
The bird had seen better days. It was singed and missing feathers. One eye was closed over with scar tissue.
Her first inclination was the bell. Her eye darted to it and she raised her hand. Swallowing, she tasted the copper of fear in a mouth gone suddenly dry.
I should call for the guards. But something else asserted itself within her, and instead she stood slowly. “What business have you here?” she asked the kin-raven in a quiet voice.
As if hearing her, it hopped forward and pecked again at the glass. Then, it waited and watched.
Approaching slowly, she stretched up on tiptoes to reach for the window’s latch. Then, she paused as her fingers found it. What am I doing? she asked herself.
But a certainty grew within her that this bird at her window was there with intent, that it had come for her and bore some note that she must read, though she saw no colored thread tied to its foot.
Holding her breath, she worked the latch and pushed the window up. A cool morning wind wafted scents of wood smoke and evergreen into the room, but under the surface of those smells was a darker, older smell of carrion and dank earth.
For a moment, the kin-raven regarded her and then tipped its head to one side. Its beak opened, and a familiar voice whispered out from it.
“Winteria bat Mardic, my younger namesake, I send you greetings,” her sister’s voice said. “It grieves me that our meeting was not better orchestrated and that you are not now by my side working with me to establish our new home by the grace of the Crimson Empress.” Winters watched as the beak remained open and the kin-raven pulled in a deep breath. “But it is fortunate that you have remained with the Great Mother and the Child of Promise. Even now, my ambassadors approach to seek audience with Lord Rudolfo, but I fear he will not hear the dark tidings I bear. The Child of Promise is in grave danger. I have sent my kin-raven to you that you might bear word to your hosts and entreat them to take heed and accept my offer of aid in this matter.”
The bird paused again, and Winters felt the words taking root within her. Certainly, she knew she could not trust this woman who claimed kinship with her. If Lord Tam and Rudolfo were correct, her entire faith was a fabric of lies created by Jin Li Tam’s grandfather to bring down Windwir for reasons they were only just beginning to understand. She’d heard their speculation, late at night, of a foe beyond the borders of their New World.
The bird continued. “We are kin, you and I, and despite our differences I bear you nothing but deepest love. Bear this word to Rudolfo. Bear this word to the Great Mother: The Child of Promise was not saved to die at the hands of wicked men.”
The bird’s beak closed and it hopped back, away from her. For a moment, she thought she might leap up, reach out, grab it, hold it and cry out for the guards to assist. But even as the thoughts formed, the bird leaped up and unfurled its wings, pounding at the quiet morning air.
She watched it as it sped west, and then she went looking for her boots so she could climb down from Library Hill to seek out Aedric and Rudolfo.
Winters had no reason to trust this message or messenger, but the dark, cold pit of fear in her stomach was a feeling she’d learned to trust over these last years.
As she let herself out into the morning, Jakob’s tiny face and hands flashed across her memory; Ria’s words followed: The Child of Promise was not saved to die at the hands of wicked men.
Winters hurried her pace and wondered what new darkness awaited them now. As she walked quickly down the cobblestone road that led into town, the morning sun kissed the back of her neck and the top of her head with a warmth she could not feel.
Vlad Li Tam
The setting sun washed the clear water in a purple so deep that it was nearly black. Overhead, the first of the stars struggled against a sky that was still too bright for them to shine in, and Vlad Li Tam sighed.
Of late, he’d taken to fishing again, though he knew that it would be more effective if he went out in the boats with those sons and daughters of his working that particular shift. Rod and tackle from the high dock was not nearly as efficient as their casting nets. Still, Petronus had taught him as a boy that the art of it was to love the act of fishing more than the act of catching. And moreover, it gave him time alone to think.
Don’t fool yourself. It also gives you time to watch the water. Yes, he thought.
Behind him, the dinner bell sounded out from the halls of the Y’Zirite Blood Temple he and his family now called home. Rudolfo had rescued what few remained of House Li Tam from
this place in a chaotic night some six months past. Vlad Li Tam had returned weeks later to take revenge on the Resurgence that operated the island temple, but they had found it abandoned.
Still, they spent months scouring the building for any clue they could possibly find. They’d dived into the wreckage of the ships Rafe Merrique and his men had scuttled in the harbor. They’d dug through the mass graves and refuse pits. They’d wandered every last span of the island to gather what little they could about the people who’d occupied this place. They’d even established regular scouting expeditions deeper into the Ghosting Crests in search of vessels he knew must be out there-vessels that did not match the line and trim of the New World.
And while they searched, Vlad Li Tam allowed each stained stone in the temple to remind him of the last words of the children and grandchildren he’d lost beneath the cutters’ knives while Ria whispered love into his ear and left her own scars upon his flesh and soul. He remembered each cry, each stanza of every poem they screamed to him while the Machtvolk queen extracted agony from him along with his blood and the blood of his family. Blood used for magick-making, to resurrect Petronus and heal Vlad’s forty-second daughter’s son. All to establish a gospel and a strategy that his own father had helped design in a grand betrayal that left Vlad filled with rage and despair at once.
He shifted on the dock and looked to his rod and line. He’d taken no fish this evening, but it was fine. There would be plenty of food. Some of his children harvested the plentiful island while others hunted or fished, and supply ships from the Delta, financed by the Ninefold Forest, kept them well stocked with other provisions.
No, he did not care so much about the catching. Or the fishing for that matter, if he were honest. His eyes went again to the water.
You want to see it again.
He closed his eyes and tried to conjure it up. It had happened in the midst of pandemonium and madness. Rudolfo, magicked, had freed Vlad’s children from the holding cells in the tower’s basement and had taken the woman Ria hostage. He’d loosed Vlad, and they’d fought their way down the hill to the docks.