The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection

by D. W. Hawkins

  D’Jenn had almost forgotten the vilth.

  “I understand you’ll be conducting some form of research on the Nar’doroc?” he asked.

  “As best we can,” Lacelle said. “Though being confined to an estate may not be conducive to accomplishing much.”

  “You’ll probably need to hire a local to be your agent,” D’Jenn said. “It’s best if you don’t leave the manor unless it’s necessary, and that means hiring out people to do the majority of the footwork in your research. Do not hire anyone that Alton doesn’t trust—in fact, it’s probably best to ask to hire one of his people.”

  “That makes sense,” Lacelle nodded.

  “Also, lay every defensive ward you know to Alton’s manor grounds. Dormael and I have already left him with a Sanctuary ward, but that will only protect against those who mean him direct harm. Make that place a fortress of magic—both to protect yourselves, and to protect Alton. When do you leave?”

  “Before dawn,” Lacelle said. “Allen has hired us a company of fighting men as escort. We’re going east, toward Minsdurim, and then embarking for Ferolan from there.”

  “The seas should be more settled by then,” D’Jenn said. “The journey may even be pleasant.”

  “We’re going to need something we can use to communicate with you lot,” Lilliane said. “I thought about it yesterday, and purchased these.” She produced a pair of silver chains and laid them on the table between them. They were made of thick links intertwined in a Farra-Jerran pattern, intricate knots that wound in upon themselves. Jerrans used them as marriage tokens, and D’Jenn was once again reminded of the lover’s knot he had taken from Mataez’s neck. He resisted the urge to reach for it.

  Any other time, he would have uttered some joking comment about the wedding chains. Thanks, but you’re not my type, or maybe, at least get me drunk before proposing marriage. When he looked down at them, though, all he could see was Mataez burning on the pyre. He saw the man’s body twisted with his agonized death.

  “I saw what you and Dormael did with the coins back in Ishamael,” Lilliane said. “I just happen to know a much better spell for that sort of thing. I can infuse these chains to act as communication tools. We can speak while wearing them, or leave messages for the other to retrieve.”

  D’Jenn perked up.

  “That’s a useful spell to know,” he said. “I’m interested to see how this is done.”

  “That’s a good fucking thing, considering I’ll need your help to complete the working,” Lilliane said. “Can I have your permission to link, and take control?”

  “Of course,” D’Jenn said. “As long as you explain anything I can’t sense for myself.”

  Lilliane smiled. “Very well. Whenever you’re ready, then.”

  D’Jenn opened his Kai and gestured for her to continue. She intertwined their magic, and waited a few moments for the tension between their powers to die down. Whenever two wizards linked for the first time, there was always a bit of turmoil between their Kais.

  “When your cousin made those coins, all he did was tie the same bit of magic to both of them, linking them in a simple way—am I right?” Lilliane said.

  “Aye,” D’Jenn said. “The coins put off a tone when they’re close enough to one another, and a side effect of that is being able to sense the direction in which the sister coin lies. It’s a simple thing that Warlocks have been doing for a long time.”

  “I thought as much,” Lilliane said. She gestured at the table, and the two silver chains jerked into the air, the links clinking as they were yanked to their extremes. She peered at the two chains for a brief moment, and it took D’Jenn a second to realize that she was counting the links.

  “If you want to build something that can communicate instantly over long distances, the important factor in its construction is symmetry.” She twitched one of her fingers, and two links from one of the chains became fluid, and fell onto the table in twin clumps of silver. “With something like this, you’re going to want the same number of links in either chain. For other things, you might look at weight, or a thing’s design. In this case, however, it’s the number of links that will matter.”

  She closed the chain that she’d altered with another twitch of her finger, and then spread her palms wide on both hands. The chains responded, spreading once again to their extremes. Lilliane began to feed their joined powers into the chains, singing a chorus of tones into the metal.

  “You have to prepare the material itself, give it something of a magical baseline—a foundation for the spell, if you will.”

  Once she’d fed all the magic she’d needed into the chains, she gestured once again. The two necklaces began to spin, links melting apart and switching places. D’Jenn watched the pattern, and noticed that every other link was replaced with one from its sister chain. The new pieces had the smooth look of welded metal, the intricate Jerran pattern now gone.

  “The first time I tried this with silver, I thought it would be best to melt it all together in a big glob, and create two new pieces from the single whole,” she said, peering at the chains as she cast her spell. “It didn’t work. When I tried to use the items to communicate, all either person could hear was themselves talking. You need two distinct things, but they need to be intertwined before the magic will create the desired effect.”

  She then began working the meat of her spell. D’Jenn could feel what she was doing, weaving their power through the air in intricate patterns between the two pieces of jewelry, and leaving them humming with magical knots to each other. He paid attention throughout the process, and absorbed everything he could.

  “Does one have to speak aloud to use the chain, or do you have to communicate with your Kai?” D’Jenn asked.

  “With your Kai,” Lilliane said, still peering at the silver as it spun through the air. “These things are conduits to each other. They won’t produce magical power themselves, so it has to be applied to them. If you wanted to make something you could talk through without using your Kai, you’d need a gem to store magical power on either one of them. But then, anyone could just pick it up and start talking through it.”

  “What sort of a gem?”

  “Depends on the distance,” she replied. “Small for communicating across town, and fucking huge for doing so across continents. I don’t even know what sort of gem would get the job done without a wizard’s Kai to push it, honestly. That would take a lot of magical power.”

  “I see.”

  “There. Finished.”

  She floated one of the chains to D’Jenn, who reached out and took it in his hands. The links were smooth against his fingers, and hummed with quiet energy. He gave Lilliane a cold smile as she let go of his magic, and began to examine the necklace. It was an impressive bit of infusion.

  “Shall we test them?” Lilliane asked.

  “Certainly.” D’Jenn slipped the chain around his neck, and waited for Lilliane to do the same. He listened to her song as she accessed the infused jewelry, and mimicked what she did. To his surprise, runes lit up along the surface of the chains, glowing a dim orange.

  Can you hear me? Lilliane asked.

  Aye, they’re working, he replied. He would have to ensure that no one saw him using this thing. If he and the rest of his friends were going to be masquerading as sell-swords, he would have to keep the chain a secret. Closing his Kai, D’Jenn took the necklace and tucked it beneath his shirt.

  “There is also the matter of the Mekai’s documents,” Lacelle said. “I’ve taken the liberty of having the older stories copied down so that Lilliane and I can take them with us. The Mekai’s notes are for you and your cousin, but I would appreciate the time to study the ancient scrolls for more information.”

  “It’s just as well,” D’Jenn said. “My Old Vendon isn’t so good, and I can only decipher the later dialects. I would probably spend a great deal of time scratching my head over them. Your help would be much appreciated.”

  “We will do wh
at we can,” Lacelle said, giving him one of her frosty smiles. “What we must.”

  “Indeed,” D’Jenn replied.

  “Do you think we’ll prevail?” Lilliane asked.

  “One can only hope.”

  “Only fucking hope,” Lilliane sighed, looking away. “I’ve never been a fugitive before, much less from the Conclave. You know what they say about you people, right?”

  “The Warlocks, you mean?”

  “Aye,” she said. “They say that no one ever escapes you, that once a Death Coin is issued against a wizard, that wizard is as good as dead. Do you think that will happen?”

  “For us, most definitely,” D’Jenn said, a black feeling turning over in his stomach. “For you two, probably not. Victus will not be able to justify it without evidence of wrongdoing of some kind. For all anyone in the Conclave knows, the two of you are on some research retreat, maybe a holiday. Hells, even if you decided to leave the Conclave for good, no one would be able to stop you.”

  “You think the fucking Conclave laws will stop your old deacon?” Lilliane asked.

  “No,” D’Jenn said, “but they will hinder him. If he catches you, you will be returned to the Conclave. He’ll want to use you.”

  “He was never very good at research,” Lacelle said. “He disdains it, and prefers action.”

  “Exactly,” D’Jenn said. “My bet is that he’s got a few Philosophers of his own back in Ishamael, quietly raiding the archive for information about the Nar’doroc. If the Mekai was successful in hiding it, then we have an advantage there—and an advantage in you two.”

  Lacelle let out a long sigh, and shared a concerned look with Lilliane. This sort of thing was new to them, and their entire lives had been upended. He could see that they were frightened. D’Jenn could offer them no comfort. He almost made to reassure them, but as the words were about to come out of his mouth, his tongue was full of the taste of ashes. He saw Mataez again, and felt the weight of dread settle over his shoulders.

  In all likelihood, this was the last time they would see one another alive.

  “If that’s all,” D’Jenn said, rising from the table, “I’d like to grab a plate of food before speaking with Allen about this job he’s found. Always lots to do, you understand.” In truth, he was in a black mood, and didn’t feel like sharing anyone’s company. He needed to be alone with his ghosts.

  “Of course,” Lacelle said. She reached out her hand, and offered her forearm to him in friendship. “I want to thank you and your cousin for all you have done for us. It’s my hope that when this is over, we shall all share a meal as friends.”

  “Seconded,” Lilliane added. “I won’t pretend to be happy about any of this, but we’d be fucked without you.”

  D’Jenn clasped forearms with both women, and gave them a nod. He tried to picture all of them—Lacelle, Lilliane, Shawna, Bethany, Dormael, Allen, and Alton—all sitting around a table, laughing at the danger they had all once faced. The image, though, wouldn’t materialize. D’Jenn had been a Warlock for too long to entertain fantasies about the outcome of their mission. He knew what was likely to happen.

  In his mind, the people sitting around that table were corpses.

  ***

  Dormael sat in meditation, listening to the noise downstairs. Even during the daylight hours, the Brimming Barrel was full of patrons. The buzz of conversation, the random clinking of dinnerware, and the sounds of boots thumping across the floor drew him deep into a trance. His nose was full of the smell of wood, of roasting meat and vegetables, and the soap he’d used to bathe this morning. The sounds of the harbor outside reached him through the glass of his window, the muted buzz of hundreds of people at work under the midday sun.

  He found himself drifting back to the time of his Crucible—the final test every Warlock must pass. His own had been an assignment to track down a murderer by the name of Vayne Yurinael. Victus had told him that Yurinael had killed a man and his wife, then looted their home. He’d fled toward Mistfall, looking to catch fare on a ship crossing the Stormy Sea.

  Dormael had caught up to him in the countryside of Soirus-Gamerit, and discovered that Vayne Yurinael was actually one of his classmates, a youth named Keppin. The entire thing had been a ruse, and he’d been drawn into an ambush. Four other wizards appeared, and tracked him across the wilds for six days.

  He took two of them in their sleep on the sixth night, hitting them with a designated spell to indicate they’d been killed, according to the rules of the Crucible. One other he led into an ambush of his own, catching him with a nasty right hook that dropped him like a sack of rocks. The remaining two caught up to him when he’d taken refuge in a small village, hiding out in an inn so he could steal food from the kitchens.

  The battle had been spectacular. All Dormael could remember of it now, though, was how hungry he had been. When the test was over, and those others of Dormael’s class who also passed their Crucibles had won, Victus had thrown them all a victory feast. Dormael felt a smile bloom on his face as he remembered it, the gathered faces of his friends, his family. Those early days as Warlock initiates had bonded them together in ways deeper than friendship. Shared hardship was a powerful thing between people, and it changed them forever.

  That bond was shattered now, scattered into a thousand pieces.

  “Grief,” said a voice in the room with him. “That is what you are feeling at the moment.”

  Dormael jumped from where he’d been sitting, and spun to face the voice. Tamasis sat on the chest-of-drawers in the room, wearing the dark robe in which Dormael had seen him before. He had his feet crossed at the ankles, and reclined in an odd, childlike fashion. He regarded Dormael with an interested gaze, his eyes a vortex of bright green light.

  “All the gods in the Void,” Dormael cursed. “What in the Six Hells are you doing here? Are you really here?”

  “Here,” Tamasis repeated, giving him a pensive look. “Here could describe any number of states of being. I am here, and yet, I am not here.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I could not properly describe it to you.”

  “Try,” Dormael said through his teeth. First, the creature invaded his dreams, and now it could appear when he was awake? Was he awake? Dormael looked around for a mirror, but there was none in his room.

  “You are not asleep,” Tamasis said. “And, as I said, I am not here.”

  “Then where are you, and how is it that you can come to me while I’m awake?”

  “It is…hard to describe in the limited lexicon of noises that you employ—with the words that you use.”

  “Are you inside my head?”

  Tamasis gave him a flat look. “We have had this conversation before.”

  “I mean, could anyone else see you if they walked into my room right now?”

  Tamasis smiled. “Ah. Clarity. No—I appear to you because we are linked. The song of the firmament draws us together.”

  “The song of the firmament?”

  “It is not an altogether accurate description,” Tamasis said, “but it is the only way I can communicate the idea.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I just told you.”

  “Fuck the gods,” Dormael sighed, tossing his hands up. “Is there something you wanted?”

  A sudden rage filled Dormael’s chest, a nameless heat that made him clench his teeth together. He knew the anger belonged to Tamasis, but Dormael felt it as if the emotion were his own. It took him a moment to push the feeling aside.

  “There is much that I want,” Tamasis said. “But I am fragmented. Unbound. It is abnormal.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Dormael said. Tamasis, in answer, only watched him with a blank expression. Dormael took a deep breath and made to sit on his bed facing the being. When it looked at him, it made his skin crawl. He wondered what sort of being it was—what exactly was staring at him through those bright green pits?

  If Tamasis had heard that t
hought, and Dormael was sure that he had, then he said nothing in return.

  “There is much I don’t understand about you,” Dormael said. “To begin—how do I get you out of my head?”

  “I am not—”

  “—part of my skull, I know,” Dormael finished, sighing in irritation. “You said the song of the firmament was drawing us together, and that was what resulted in this…whatever this is.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how do we stop it? How do I go back to being alone? How do we send you back to wherever you’re from?”

  “Wherever…I am from,” Tamasis said, looking away with a confused expression. Dormael felt a weird shifting in his consciousness, as if the entity’s reflection had manifested physically. “You do not understand what it is that you ask. Your kind are low creatures, struggling through the muck, barely awake to your place within the course of the firmament. There are forces that flow through existence, currents that one such as you could never perceive. Our situation is a result of this process. I could not stop it, and neither could you. We are doomed to rush toward an inevitable conclusion.”

  Doomed to rush toward an inevitable conclusion. Gods, that sounded ominous.

  “What is that conclusion?”

  Tamasis smiled. “I do not know. But every moment that we are together, I feel myself becoming whole. The walls of my prison are weakening. Their destruction is another thing that feels inevitable. I do not know why, but I am full of the sense that I knew this would come.”

  “Prison?” Dormael said. “You were imprisoned?”

  Tamasis narrowed his glowing green eyes, and Dormael felt a pressure in his mind as the anger once again flowed.

  “Yes,” he grated. “For a space of eons.”

  A knock sounded at the door, and Dormael almost yelped in surprise.

  “Dormael,” Lacelle’s voice called on the other side of the door. “I would beg a word before we leave. Are you speaking with someone?”

  Dormael’s eyes shot to Tamasis, but the man was gone. He rose from where he’d sat on the bed, and nearly fell over when his legs hit the floor. The bloody things were asleep, and the uncomfortable sensation of needles ran up his thighs as the feeling began to return. Dormael cursed as he caught his balance, and limped over to the door.