The Silver Sorceress (The Raveling Book 2)

by Alec Hutson

  “I have stared into the future, and I have been given a vision. Look again into the depths, and I will show you.”

  Senacus willed himself to tear his eyes from the Oracle and stare again into the pool. He gasped when he saw that all the blue jellyfish had vanished in the few moments since he’d last looked; now it was a darkness so pure it seemed to swallow the cavern’s dim light, a hole cut into the fabric of the world.

  It was pulling him, drawing him down into the depths. The oily water filled his mouth, his nose, and he was drowning, sinking into oblivion…

  Keilan emerged from the darkness.

  He was on his hands and knees, retching, trying to expel the darkness clotting in his lungs; nothing was coming out, yet the pressure he had felt in his chest—that terrible, suffocating weight—was lessening. He drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

  His fingers clutched at the red dirt beneath him, but even though it looked to be loose, the ground was hard as stone. Dirt? Where was the coral of the Oracle’s cavern? What had happened? He’d looked into the dark water, as the Oracle had commanded, and then he’d felt something rush over him, dragging him away…

  To where?

  Keilan pushed himself to his knees, his head spinning, and shielded his eyes from the harsh daylight. He blinked away the spots in his vision as the world around him slowly resolved.

  The first thing he noticed was the sky. It was a dull white, like during the coldest days of winter, without a cloud to be seen. But it was not empty. A gash of deep red resembling an open wound spread across the sky, as if the dawn itself had been smeared across the heavens. And from this stain more red was trickling, a lighter shade but still vivid.

  The sky was bleeding.

  Keilan stumbled to his feet, swaying. He saw the paladin standing with his back to him a few paces away at the edge of a cliff, staring at something below. With great effort Keilan took two staggering steps, and when he stood beside the Pure he steadied himself by laying his hand on the taller man’s shoulder.

  Senacus turned. Ever since the paladin had abandoned him at the gates of Herath, Keilan had seen guilt and pain when the Pure looked at him; now, though, his face was empty of those emotions. Empty of all emotion. Something had shaken him greatly.

  “It’s Menekar,” the paladin said softly, inclining his head slightly to indicate what was before them.

  Keilan looked. They stood on the lip of a rocky cliff that plunged down a thousand span or more. Spread before them were the ruins of a vast city, an expanse of tumbled white stone that gleamed like bleached bone in the light of the broken sky. Keilan couldn’t see a single intact building among the devastation—everything had been reduced to rubble, even the walls. Beyond these low mounds stretched an endless sea of white grass.

  “The city is gone,” said Senacus, his voice hollow.

  Keilan tightened his grip on the paladin’s shoulder. “It’s not real. It can’t be. The Oracle is showing us something.”

  “But what could do this?” Senacus said softly. “An army wouldn’t destroy everything. This isn’t a sack by a Qell horde, or a great fire. It’s like the city has been wiped away.”

  Keilan pulled at Senacus’s arm, and the paladin allowed himself to be led from the edge. “We need to find the others.”

  He saw them immediately: Nel was helping the Lady Numil to her feet, while a young woman with long golden hair stood nearby, watching them. The Oracle, Keilan realized, although she looked different: her skin was unblemished, and she was dressed in robes similar to what the child-priestess in the temple had worn. Behind them was another tumbled pile of white stone, the shattered remains of some great building. Unlike the city below, though, there seemed to be something still standing deeper within the ruin, a twisted dark spire stabbing at the sky.

  “The Selthari Palace,” Senacus murmured as they moved towards their companions. “The empire has fallen.”

  “Where are we?” Nel was asking the Oracle as Keilan and Senacus approached. She glanced over and saw them standing side by side, and her face tightened.

  “Menekar. This is a moment that came to me etched clearly. It is one possibility that might be, though how far downstream I do not know.”

  “Then we are not truly here?” the Crone asked, jabbing the red dirt with the butt of her cane. It left no indentation.

  The Oracle shook her head. “No. I am sharing with you my vision. You cannot affect this place, or what will come.”

  “What happened?” Senacus asked, his voice still heavy with shock. “There are a million people in the city. They cannot… they cannot all be dead.”

  The Oracle turned to him. In her coral temple she had been blinded, her sockets empty, but here she had been restored. Her eyes were a beautiful shade of pale green, glimmering with flecks of gold. “They are all dead.”

  “Then where are the bodies?”

  At Senacus’s question the Oracle raised her arm, indicating the structure rising from deeper within the destroyed palace. “Some are there. Come, I will show you.”

  They picked their way through the debris, following the Oracle as she seemed to glide across the toppled pillars and tumbled slabs of stone. Senacus was right, Keilan realized—this kind of devastation could not have been caused by men. Perhaps the earth had shaken the city to pieces? But if so, where were the dead?

  When finally they emerged from the ruin, they found themselves at the edge of what once must have been a lush garden. Cracked ceramic paths twisted between copses of dead trees, and from a few of their skeletal branches hung broken windchimes or blackened, gnarled fruit. Beneath the trees the rust-colored dirt was mostly bare, though here and there the withered remnants of flowers were scattered. Recessed within the garden was the strange building; it was not so large, Keilan realized, but with the rest of the palace so utterly destroyed it loomed over everything.

  “This was the emperor’s pleasure garden,” Senacus said, reaching up to try and pick a rotten fruit from a low-hanging branch. His hand passed through it, as if he was a spirit. “What is causing this corruption?”

  No one answered, but Keilan found his eyes drawn to the twisted structure. There was something wrong about it, something unnatural. They were still too far away to see it clearly, but it didn’t seem to have the clean lines of buildings made of stone or wood—it bulged strangely in places, as if something was bubbling up from within.

  The Oracle started on the ceramic paths, and they fell in behind her. The silence was unnatural: there was no birdsong, no rustle of animals moving through the dry grass. Even the chimes hung motionless, as if the wind itself had perished.

  Details became clearer as they neared the building. Its surface was black and oddly ridged, though the color was not uniform. In some places it shaded to gray or was speckled with scraps of white.

  The path they followed emptied into a large clearing; trees must have grown here once, but now the ground was pockmarked with holes where they had been uprooted. They had been removed to make space for the building, which hunched brutal and monstrous. There was no symmetry to it, no reason: part of it slithered almost organically deeper into the garden, while another section bulked partway up the height of the spire at its center, its top studded with oddly bent crenellations. Strange, those battlements almost looked like…

  Keilan gasped, and beside him Nel cursed, her voice raw.

  “What is it?” Senacus asked, striding forward, his hand on his sword. “What—oh, by the Father.”

  The building was made of corpses. Twisted, their flesh blackened, twined together like reeds or stacked like stones. Dozens were contorted unnaturally to form an arched entrance, beyond which was darkness. Some of the bodies were turned inward; others stared out sightlessly. In places, limbs or hair had slipped free to dangle down. What Keilan had thought were battlements above were actually arms, clawing at the sky.

&nb
sp; “This can’t be,” Nel whispered.

  “Why have they not rotted away?” asked Lady Numil, taking a few shuffling steps closer to examine one of the many faces in the closest wall: it was a man, his mouth open in endless frozen agony, his eyes wide and glassy.

  “Sorcery,” Senacus muttered, his voice seething with anger. “This is worse than the cataclysms. Something terrible was unleashed here. Something monstrous.” He whirled on Nel, his fists clenched. “Your queen must have done this. This is her revenge.”

  “She would not do this,” Nel retorted, her eyes flashing. “Nor would those who follow her!”

  Senacus turned to Keilan. “You see? You see what horrors sorcery can bring into the world? A city… a people, dead by the hand of the Crimson Queen.”

  “No,” interrupted the Oracle calmly. “Sorcery this is, but not from her. What did this came from the Empire of Swords and Flowers.”

  “The Shan?” Senacus exclaimed in surprise, and then his face hardened. “Those cowardly dogs. They could not defeat Menekar on the field of battle, so they resorted to this?”

  The Oracle shook her head. “If I was to bring you to their land, it would look the same. A dead waste. As would Lyr. The archon’s palace has fallen, my own temple ground to dust.”

  Lady Numil sucked in her breath.

  Senacus blinked, confusion in his face. “What? Then who –”

  “Look,” interrupted the Oracle, pointing at the shadowed archway. “This is what you must see.”

  Keilan sensed some movement deep within the darkness, coming closer, and fear tightened his chest. What was it? What horror could have done this?

  It emerged into the light, a small child with unnaturally pale skin veined with spidery black lines. Its dark hair was tangled and matted, falling nearly to its waist and covering more of its body than the torn gray rags it wore.

  Such malice and dread emanated from the creature that Keilan wanted to turn and flee. He was rooted to the ground, though, his legs frozen as the child’s empty gaze passed over them without stopping.

  Relief flooded Keilan, making his legs weak. It couldn’t see them!

  Senacus drew his sword and started forward, but the Oracle held up her hand. “You can do nothing except watch.”

  Three more of the ragged children filed from the darkness after the first. They all looked similar, but Keilan noticed small differences: two of the children’s hair was shorter, though still unkempt, and the others had been blinded, their eyes removed so that only gaping black holes remained. They arrayed themselves into a line perhaps two dozen paces across, standing what looked to be an equal distance apart.

  With eerie precision they lifted their faces in unison, staring into the sky.

  Keilan followed their gazes, but saw nothing. They seemed to be concentrating on a slice of sky that was merely a wash of white, far removed from where the scarlet lesion leaked blood into the heavens.

  As the moments dragged out the unnatural children remained motionless.

  Something glinted in the sky, a momentary flash.

  A sibilance that made the hairs on Keilan’s arms rise started among the creatures, swelling as the light in the distance grew larger. The hiss was like the sound a coiled snake might make before it struck… when it felt threatened.

  Something was coming.

  No, not something. Someone.

  It was a woman in blue robes, limned with crackling power, her long silver hair streaming behind her as she descended.

  Keilan’s breath caught in his throat. It was her. The sorceress he had seen in the memories of that ancient bard, Jan. He remembered her face, contorted with the pain of channeling the surging energy from a million doomed souls into the crystal that would unlock immortality, her cheeks flushed from the tremendous effort.

  A face that looked like an echo of his mother’s. And the hair… never had he seen its like anywhere else, in all the places he had visited.

  But that ceremony beneath the mountain had happened a thousand years ago, and this was a glimpse of the future. She had survived as well, then, down through the centuries.

  The sorceress alighted in the clearing, her blue robes swirling. She gazed contemptuously at the monstrous children before her and the twisted building looming behind them.

  “Why did this happen?” she asked, her voice high and clear.

  revenge

  The word was a hoarse whisper, many voices speaking as one.

  The sorceress narrowed her eyes. “The Weaver is not here. This is not her doing.”

  In response the children took a step forward, the black veins beneath their pallid skin beginning to twitch and writhe.

  you came to your death, old one

  The sorceress sneered, reaching inside her robes. “I came to end you, abominations.” She pulled something forth and tossed it onto the withered grass.

  It was a head, a child’s head framed by tangled black hair, its mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “You sent only one to kill me. That was foolish arrogance. I have studied you; I know your weaknesses.” A dagger was suddenly in the sorceress’s hands, long and black and curving. Runes glimmered, carved in red fire down its blade.

  The monstrous children drew back, as if frightened.

  Then they struck.

  Oily black lines of glistening power erupted from the children’s outstretched arms, flashing towards the sorceress. With a crack the sorcery struck the silver-haired woman’s wards, which flared around her, a shield of shimmering golden energy. Light exploded, blinding Keilan, and he threw up his arm as he stumbled backwards. The radiance did not subside, but strengthened, consuming everything around him, and he felt something pulling him away with terrible force…

  Keilan surfaced, spluttering.

  He kicked out frantically, keeping his head above the dark water. For a panicked moment he did not know where he was, and then it all came rushing back. Lyr. The Oracle’s temple. The demon children. He must have slipped into the pool…

  Something thrashed awkwardly in the water beside him—Nel, struggling to stay afloat. With the sure strokes of a boy who had spent countless evenings practicing for his Night Dive, Keilan swam closer to the knife and reached one arm around her. “Nel, relax.”

  “I can’t swim,” she managed between mouthfuls of water.

  “Relax,” Keilan repeated, drawing her closer. “If you keep struggling, you’ll pull us both under.”

  At that, she tried her best to stop; he could still feel the tension in her body, but at least she was no longer splashing about wildly.

  Keeping her head above water, he brought her to the side of the pool, then gave her a push to help her haul herself out. The sharpness of the coral didn’t seem to bother her at all as she scrambled over the edge and collapsed on her stomach, panting.

  Keilan pulled himself out after her, laying his hand on her back. “Did you swallow any water? Cough if you have to; try to get it out.”

  “No,” she said, rolling onto her back. Her eyes found his. “Thank you. I have terrible dreams about drowning.”

  Keilan shook his head to dismiss her thanks, hoping she couldn’t see his blush in the temple’s wan light.

  A few dozen paces away the paladin was helping the Lady Numil from the pool, lifting her like a babe from the water. She clutched at him, and with her sodden robes clinging to her Keilan could see how thin and frail she truly was.

  “Lady Numil, are you all right?” Keilan asked as he hurried to her side. She was shivering violently, and it made him realize how cold he was in his own wet clothes.

  He glanced around wildly and found the child-priestess who had led them to the temple sitting calmly beside the pool, watching them. “Fire,” he said to her. “She needs to get warm.”

  The girl shook her head. “There can be no flame here.”
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  “She’s an old woman! She could die from the chill!”

  “I’m f-fine,” Lady Numil tried to say, but she stumbled on the words, her teeth chattering.

  “Some clothes, at least?” Keilan continued, and again the child priestess shook her head.

  “We have none.”

  “I can help,” Senacus said, and with his free hand he pulled off the amulet of bone he wore around his neck. Light flared in his eyes, and the aura of warmth around the paladin appeared again. The rush of power flooding the Pure made Keilan dizzy.

  “Stay close to me, Lady Numil. My light will burn away the chill.”

  She patted his chest with her hand, her shivers starting to subside. “Thank you, lad.”

  “Look,” Nel said, and Keilan turned to her. She was pointing up to where the Oracle hung suspended over the pool.

  Her knees had buckled and she sagged forward, her tangled blond hair veiling her face, and only her arm sunk into the coral kept her from toppling into the pool below.

  “Is she…”

  “She is dead,” the child priestess said without a shred of emotion in her voice. She rose from where she sat and shrugged free of her vestments, then turned and dove smoothly into the dark water. Keilan watched in stunned silence as she swam across the pool and pulled herself up onto the far side. She did not glance at the body of the old Oracle hanging above her as she climbed the wall, using the ancient bones jutting from the coral for purchase. When she had found a ledge where she could stand, she faced them again from across the water.

  “She knew the strain of showing you what she had seen would kill her. Value her sacrifice, and act to forestall the doom rushing towards us all.” The girl reached out and gripped a knob of coral hanging beside her. For a moment, some emotion passed across her face, and then it was gone. “Leave. And tell the elders of this city to send a new child here.”