by Alec Hutson
Keilan sipped from one of the steaming cups and found it to be hot apple cider laced with honey, a drink he’d had before while traveling across the north. Perfect for banishing a chill.
“What happened in the Oracle’s temple?”
Nel took up another of the cups and cradled it to her chest, the rising warmth turning her cheeks pink. “I don’t know. I’ve been Vhelan’s knife for many years. I’ve seen sorcery before, but nothing ever like that. We were there. In Menekar.”
“Do you think… do you think that could be the future? That horror?”
Nel chewed on her lower lip, staring into the fire. “It felt real. Didn’t she say that she saw possibilities—what might be? Not what will be?”
“So we can change what happens.”
“And maybe that’s why she showed us what she did. Even though she must have known it would kill her.”
Keilan was silent for a long moment, watching the crackling flames. “But what can we do?”
A troubled look passed across Nel’s face. “Keilan, there’s something else. In Lyr, we grow up on stories of the Oracle. And some are cautionary tales. The Oracles… they all go mad, eventually.” She sighed, and then shuddered. “I mean, can you blame them? But what I’m saying is that at some point the Oracle’s visions lose their power. They start imagining the future, instead of getting real glimpses. Kingdoms have fallen because of these false prophecies.”
“I don’t think this was false.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve seen that sorceress before.”
Nel’s eyes widened in surprise. “The silver hair… god’s blood, Keilan, could it be?”
The chamber door swung open again and the large bald servant of Lady Numil entered. He nodded at Keilan and Nel, and then stood against the wall as the old woman followed him inside, leaning heavily on her ebonwood cane. She looked much better than she had in the Oracle’s temple—even after being warmed by the paladin, her skin had been so cold and waxy Keilan had feared she’d die—but the exhaustion was clear on her face. Keilan bowed to her as she stumped across the room to a cushioned chair and sank into it.
“Ah. Much better. It feels so good to finally get off my feet.” She snapped her fingers at her servant. “Telion, bring me my sweet bird.”
The bald giant strode over to the couch and stared down at the tray of delicacies. “It’s gone.”
Lady Numil gasped. “Blackguards! I bet it was the thief.” She glared at Nel, who stared back innocently.
“Should I fetch another?” Telion asked, but the old woman held up her hand. “Not you. Girl!” she shouted at the servant waiting in the corner—she’d been so quiet Keilan had forgotten she was even there. “Run down to the kitchens and get someone to make me another sweet bird.” The girl hesitated for the briefest of moments, as if unsure what she should do. “Now!” Lady Numil yelled, and the girl blanched and scurried for the door.
When the sound of her running footsteps had vanished, Telion chuckled. “Not one you trust?”
The old woman smoothed her robes. “I think she belongs to Belimis. In any case, I don’t want anyone else hearing what’s said in here. Would you mind standing outside, Telion, and making sure no little mice are listening?”
“You’ll be all right? You’re not fully recovered –”
“Go. I’m fine.”
Her servant nodded and left the chamber, drawing the door shut behind him.
Lady Numil sighed and shook her head. “He blames himself for what happened in the temple, though of course it was I who insisted he wait with the guardsmen. Loyal fellow.” She twisted one of the jeweled rings on her finger. “A lesson there, ducklings. Loyalty and honesty are what you should look for in your friends and servants. The fawning and groveling types might burnish the image of yourself you keep in your head, and that is certainly pleasurable, but in the end it only leaves you more likely to make mistakes.”
She gestured at Keilan. “Boy, bring me the tray. I could eat an aurochs right now.”
The old woman deliberated for a moment after Keilan had done as she asked, then chose a lemon tart and waved him away. “Now sit. We have much to discuss.”
Keilan returned the tray to the table and found a spot on the couch as Lady Numil finished the tart in three quick bites. After brushing her hands clean, she set them in her lap and turned her full attention to Keilan and Nel.
“When I woke up this morning I had no idea what the day would bring. Usually I can see these things coming, you know. Wars and plots and assassinations take time to develop, and somewhere along the way someone will spill a secret. I’m very rarely caught unprepared.” She picked at the embroidered hem of her sleeve, frowning. “So imagine my surprise to find out I would end up taking a swim in the Oracle’s pool. Or, for that matter, that the Oracle of Lyr would sacrifice herself to allow me a glimpse of the world’s end.”
Nel shared a glance with Keilan. “Lady Numil, do you think the Oracle might have been… mad?”
The old woman dismissed Nel’s question with a wave of her hand. “I’ve seen Oracles spiral down into madness before. That one seemed as clear as crystalwine. No, I believe we must accept what she showed us. What I want to know is why she showed it to you?”
Keilan glanced furtively over at Nel, but she wasn’t looking at him. Should he share that he had seen that silver-haired sorceress before? Could they trust Lady Numil?
“Did she want you to carry a message to Cein d’Kara? If so, why not send a summons to Herath so the queen could come to the coral temple herself? Cein’s no fool. She would not have refused.”
Keilan swallowed. Would the queen be angry if he spoke to Lady Numil before her?
“Or do you have some insight into this coming doom? Something to help avoid it?” The old woman eyed him shrewdly.
Perhaps he should wait and tell Vhelan first when they returned to Herath. He was wise and knew much about these sorts of things. Perhaps –
“Out with it, boy!” she barked, and Keilan jumped in surprise. “I can see you know something. By the Silver Lady, you’re as easy to read as an unrolled scroll.”
Keilan felt a hot flush of guilt. “I… I… ”
Lady Numil’s eyes narrowed. “I have less savory ways of making you speak than plying you with pastries, boy. And don’t think I won’t do it when my city’s fate hangs in the balance.”
“Tell her, Keilan,” Nel said. “You won’t be able to hide anything from her.”
“That wasn’t the first time I’d seen that sorceress,” he said in a rush. “The one with the silver hair.”
The old woman settled back, lacing her hands in her lap. “Interesting. She’s from the Scholia, then?”
“No, no. I helped Queen d’Kara with a great sorcery the same night the assassins came to Saltstone. I saw that sorceress in a vision from long ago. A thousand years in the past.”
The old woman’s brow arched, but she did not interrupt.
“She was part of a ceremony that granted immortality to a secret group of powerful sorcerers. They had somehow orchestrated events so that the old sorcerous empires in the north and south would destroy each other… and then through dark magic captured the souls of those killed in the cataclysms to fuel their spell.”
This was the first time he had told Nel the whole story of what he had seen in Jan’s memories, and she was staring at him with a strange expression. “She sounds monstrous. They all do.”
Keilan licked his lips. “Yes… but one of the sorceresses, Alyanna—she was the leader of them—she tricked some into participating. Jan didn’t know what he was doing. She might have fooled others, or not told them what was necessary for the ceremony to succeed.”
“So you have seen this sorceress before,” said Lady Numil. “We know she’s alive now, I suppose. And that she can kill the demons that seemed t
o be what brought down this doom. But that doesn’t tell us where to find her.”
“She looked like my mother,” Keilan said, and the old woman blinked in surprise.
“She’s your mother?”
“No. She looked like my mother. So similar. They had the same hair, and the face… it was just a little different. They could have been sisters.”
“And where is your mother now?”
“She died. And she never told me where she came from. My father was a fisherman and he found her in the sea after a storm had sunk her ship.”
Lady Numil shook her head. “Boy, have you fallen into madness?”
“No. It all seems like a strange dream, I know. But that sorceress was the reason I followed the Pure to Lyr. In that vision of the past I saw a man with her, another sorcerer. And that man was a companion of the paladin when they tried to take me from Saltstone. I thought the Pure might know something about these ancient sorcerers, and where I could find the woman who reminded me so much of my mother.”
“Any other time I would consider this to be nonsense,” Lady Numil muttered. “But… the Oracle requested you come to her temple. She let you glimpse the future she’d seen for a reason. She killed herself to do it.”
The old woman wiped her face with her age-spotted hand, and Keilan saw again how utterly exhausted she was. “And she shared this vision with me. I must have some part in what is coming.”
“What will you do?” Keilan asked quietly.
“What I have always done,” Lady Numil fairly snapped. “Protect my city however I can. The Oracle claimed these… children… were from Shan. Perhaps they were summoned by the warlocks of the bone-shard towers, some kind of weapon to use in a coming invasion. Or not. Despite what the Menekarians would have us believe, the Shan are a peaceful people. I’ve heard no rumblings that they are planning to cross the Broken Sea. But these creatures… someone must know what they are, and I will wring it from them.”
Her gaze suddenly sharpened, and a prickling crawled up Keilan’s back. “And I know what you must do as well, boy.”
“What’s that?”
“You must find this sorceress. She has the power to slay these demons. You must enlist her aid before they unleash this doom upon the lands.”
“But I don’t even know if my mother truly had any connection to her!”
The old woman’s voice softened. “The Oracle shared what she saw for a reason, and I believe it must be because she thinks you can find her. There can be no other explanation. Believe me, boy, I’d rather not entrust the fate of my city to someone who’s never even had to put a razor to his neck!”
“And how is he supposed to find this sorceress?” Nel asked, her voice hardening. “Whoever she is, she’s managed to hide for a thousand years.”
Lady Numil ignored the challenge in Nel’s tone. “You said she reminded you of your mother,” she said to Keilan. “Return to your village and find out where she came from.”
Return to his village? A numbness spread through Keilan at the thought. He remembered faces twisted in hate and fear as the Pure loomed over him, Sella screaming as she flailed helplessly at the paladin, his father bellowing, straining to reach him through the swirling chaos…
“No,” Nel said flatly. “We must return to the queen. She’s the only one who can make sense of this madness and has the power to forestall it.”
“We don’t know how much time we have,” retorted the old woman. “We could be well into the last watch before the storm. And what if the queen refuses to let Keilan search for this sorceress?”
“As well she should!” Nel cried, flinging her blanket aside and coming to her feet. “Because it’s madness! You would send him back to the Shattered Kingdoms, just a stone’s throw from Menekar’s shadow? The Pure have tried to take him twice already!”
“The boy is the key. Now sit down,” said Lady Numil firmly, gesturing for Nel to return to her seat on the couch. The knife was trembling, and Keilan suspected it wasn’t because of a lingering chill.
“I’ll send him with protection. The Iron Road from the Gilded Cities to Gryx teems with merchants and other travelers; there’s not a safer way to travel to the east. From the city of the Fettered it’s only a few days of riding to get to the western edge of the Kingdoms.”
Keilan shook his head. “My apologies, Lady Numil. You don’t understand—my mother never told me about her past and where her family had come from.”
The old woman snorted. “Ha! Boy, there’s a clue somewhere back there, if you search hard enough for it. No one could live for so many years and not reveal something. Perhaps she confided in a friend in a moment of homesickness. Maybe there’s a clue to be found in some object that washed up on shore after your father plucked her from the waves. There must be a way to find her—otherwise why would the Oracle set you to this task?”
Nel had sunk back down on the couch, but still she glared daggers at Lady Numil. “The queen will have our heads on spikes if we go haring off on this quest instead of bringing back the paladin in chains.”
Keilan glanced sharply at Nel, and she sighed.
“Yes, ‘we’. I’m not letting you out of my sight. There’s probably bands of paladins and shadowblades and shape-changing monsters roaming around looking for you.”
The old woman clapped her hands. “Then it’s agreed. You’re off to find this sorceress.”
“We said no such thing!” Nel cried, exasperated. “We’re returning to Saltstone!”
“What do you think, boy?” Lady Numil asked suddenly, turning to Keilan.
“Don’t ask him,” Nel said. “This is not his decision. He’s just a –”
“Boy?” Keilan finished for her. He stood, nearly upsetting the silver tray. “I’d be a man in my village if the Pure and the queen hadn’t come hunting for me. I’ve been pulled by my ear across half the world.” He was surprised at the anger he heard in his voice. “With no say in any of it. Nel, I think Lady Numil is right. The Oracle wanted me to find this sorceress—she killed herself to tell us that—and the only place to start would be where my mother lived for so long. That’s where I have to go.”
Nel flushed crimson, but she said nothing.
Across from her, the old woman smiled like a cat who had just swallowed a mouse, lacing her fingers in her lap. “Very good, Keilan. You’ll leave on the morrow.”
Cho Lin sat in the courtyard of her family’s compound in Ras Ami and watched the moths dance. They swarmed the copper lanterns the servants had hung from the eaves when the sky began to darken, pale white wings as large as her palm fluttering like falling leaves. Her finger traced the rim of the cup set before her on the small stone table, slicked by the steam rising from the freshly poured tea.
It was a beautiful night, a poet’s night. The Cho compound was set far enough back from the busy streets of the port that the sounds of revelry from the eating houses near the docks were drowned out by the hum of the cicadas crouching in the branches of the small, gnarled trees scattered about the courtyard. She would miss moments like this, she suspected, when she journeyed into the barbarian lands.
She would certainly miss the tea. Almost two years atop Red Fang with only water from the mountain streams to drink, yet she had fallen back into her old habit immediately. A servant had started following her in the compound, a container brimming with hot water ready to be poured into her teapot whenever she refilled her own cup. She sipped her drink, savoring the slight taste of honey imparted from the dried and crushed jasmine petals.
The buzzing conversations of the cicadas abated as the sound of hurrying sandals disturbed the night. Cho Lin motioned for the servant waiting silently in the shadows to approach, and the slight girl stepped forward to place another teacup on the table and fill it from the spouted copper flask she carried.
Kan Xia entered the courtyard in his usual state of d
ishevelment, his robes flapping and his sash half-untied. “Mistress,” he said, pressing his hands together and bowing.
Cho Lin gestured for him to sit, and he slid onto the stone bench across from her, wiping his flushed face with his sleeve.
“Good evening, Kan Xia. Have you eaten?”
Her family’s servant bobbed his head. “Yes, Mistress.”
“Have some tea, then. It’s delicious.”
Kan Xia smiled gratefully and picked up his cup, blowing on the tea to cool it.
“You have news?” she asked as he drank. The worry lines on his brow and at the corners of his eyes smoothed away as the tea worked its sorcery. How was she going to survive in the north without tea in the evenings to wash away the day’s troubles?
With a satisfied sigh, he set down the cup. “I do. I’ve just come from our office down on the docks. None of our ships are in port, but there’s a captain who has worked with us before who plans on setting off for the Gilded Cities tomorrow morning on the early tide. He’s agreed to continue with us to Herath after he delivers his goods to Lyr. The ship’s name is the Loyal Gull, and the captain and his crew have a good reputation.”
“A fast ship?”
“Our contacts at the dock assure me it is. Built with an ice-hold to bring fresh-picked winter melon and dragon fruit into the barbarian lands without any spoilage. We can be in Herath in a fortnight.”
We. Cho Lin swallowed away a small frown, not wanting to start this argument again. Kan Xia was insisting that he accompany her to Dymoria, along with a squad of elite Cho warriors. But Cho Lin was quite certain it would be impossible to remain inconspicuous with such a large group. If this Crimson Queen had truly allied herself with the Betrayers, as the warlocks of Tsai Yin suspected, she would move against them as soon as they arrived in Herath. Kan Xia seemed to think they could disguise themselves as a merchant delegation, and he had convinced her brother of this plan. Cho Lin wasn’t so sure, though.