by Alec Hutson
“– They were thought to have been hunted to extinction,” Garmond finished. “I wonder if the one you struck down was the last of its kind, or if there are others out there.”
Nel leaned forward. “We have to assume the monster was allied with the shadowblades and ancient sorcerers who tried to steal Keilan away from Saltstone. And that it was not the only one. Which means—if these creatures can truly mimic humans so perfectly—we must be suspicious of everyone we meet.”
They were all silent for a long moment, lost in their own thoughts. Keilan was remembering the horrible night of the ambush, Xin striking down the wraith as it flowed towards them in the long grass… the bloody glow of the Shan’s lanterns in the small clearing… how the shape-changing monster had lifted Cho Yuan like he was a child and the sound his neck had made when it snapped, like a branch breaking.
The Shan.
“Master Garmond,” Keilan said, and the seeker surfaced from his own thoughts, blinking. “We came to you because we need the Reliquary’s help.”
“Something new? Unrelated to the monster or the attack on Saltstone?”
Keilan and Nel shared a glance. “We don’t truly know,” he said slowly. “It would seem very different, but perhaps there are some connections of which we are unaware.”
Master Garmond settled back in his chair, and Keilan explained what had happened since the failed attempt to kidnap him. He recounted the frantic pursuit of the Pure as he fled south from Dymoria, how they had caught up with the paladin outside the gates of Lyr, the archon council and the summons by the Oracle. He told Garmond of what she had said, and of the vision she had shared with them. And how this doom and the dark children they had seen had come from Shan.
When he had finished, Garmond leaned back, tugging on his white beard. “Fascinating. You realize, of course, that Oracles are never infallible. Sometimes they can misinterpret what they see, or conjure their visions out of whole cloth, if the madness has finally seeped into their souls.”
“Lady Numil believes this Oracle is still sane,” Nel said. “She thought enough of this prophecy to send us on this ridiculous hare chase.”
“And what would this threat be, exactly?” Garmond muttered. “Perhaps we should consult an expert in the matter of the Shan.”
Keilan’s heart leapt: this was exactly why he had wanted to visit the Reliquary. If there was any place in the world that might be able to shed some light on the mysteries they were fumbling towards, this was it. “An expert?”
“I have a colleague who owes me a favor. He’s a bit prickly, but he is also recognized as one of the foremost authorities on that strange southern people. Let me send him a summons.” Garmond heaved himself from his chair and threaded his way between the piles of books and apparatus littering his office. He took down a small tarnished bell from a hook and held it in front of the flared opening of a silver tube that snaked up the stone and vanished into a chink in the chamber’s wall. Garmond rang the bell in front of the tube’s mouth and a few moments later came a tentative knock on the door.
“Come in,” the seeker said, and a small boy slipped into the room. He might have been the twin of the apprentice who had first gone to fetch Garmond.
“Halin.”
“Galin, sir.”
“Yes, yes. Halin-Galin, dash over to d’Verin’s quarters and implore him to come meet us here. If he hesitates, remind him of the small debt he owes me for giving him the Blightwood mooncap mushrooms he needed to overcome his… personal problems.”
As the boy scurried out the door, Garmond turned back to his guests. “Powerful aphrodisiac,” he said simply.
Nel coughed to hide her smile.
“The Shan… the Shan… ” Garmond murmured as he returned to his chair. “An interesting people. A mysterious people.”
“What do you know about them?” Keilan asked.
“More than most and less than some. They arrived in our lands a thousand years ago, shortly after the cataclysms obliterated the Mosaic Cities and the holdfasts, refugees from some mysterious disaster in their own homeland. A fleet of ships unlike any had seen before, boats as large as castles, accompanied by turtles the size of dragons. They settled south of the newly-formed Broken Sea, in the ruins of the Imperium, and quickly forged an empire that rivaled Menekar in size and strength.”
“What happened to their old homeland?” Nel asked.
Garmond shrugged. “I don’t know. I believe even the scholars who study the Shan are uncertain. Some say it was a great sorcery that slipped the control of Shan’s warlocks—they have a proud magical tradition as well, I’ve heard, like the ancients of our own histories—while others suggest something more natural: a volcanic eruption, a terrible drought, an invasion by yet another migrating people.”
Nel’s brow crinkled. “Surely it’s easy enough to ask a Shan what happened. Merchants and emissaries from the Empire of Swords and Flowers are constantly traveling to and from the Gilded Cities.”
The seeker held up his hand to show that he agreed with her. “Of course, of course. But the truth of what happened a thousand years ago seems to have been suppressed among the common people. Most have only a vague knowledge of the doom that pushed them into the sea. And the scholars and mandarins who have been exposed to the actual histories are remarkably tight-lipped—the Shan are a private and secretive people.”
Keilan started as the door to Garmond’s chamber suddenly slammed open. He twisted around as a young, gaunt scholar burst into the room. Colors swirled and settled around him: unlike most of the other seekers, who dressed in drab vestments of gray or black, this scholar wore a shimmering silken robe that flashed red and green and yellow. It reminded Keilan of the clothes he had seen Cho Yuan wearing while the Shan had traveled with their caravan along the Wending Way.
“Garmond!” exclaimed the seeker, his face dark. “I have explicitly stated that I am never to be disturbed during the third watch.”
“D’Verin,” Garmond replied mildly, gesturing at another stool half-submerged in his room’s clutter. “Please, have a seat and greet my guests.”
The scholar of the Shan spared a cursory glance at Keilan and Nel, then returned his attention to Garmond. “I was making real progress in my meditations today! I felt the Nothing within my Self –”
Garmond waved away his words. “You felt nothing? What are you complaining about, then?”
D’Verin’s face flushed a deep red. “No, I felt the Nothing, the emptiness that fills our deepest –”
“Yes, yes, congratulations on feeling your nothing. I’m sure you’ll touch it again in good time.”
Keilan imagined he could hear d’Verin’s teeth grinding. Suddenly a tremor passed across the scholar’s face, and his anger seemed to melt away, the lines in his brow vanishing and his jaw unclenching. He breathed out, slowly and deeply.
“I am releasing my emotions. I am mastering myself in this moment.”
“Excellent,” Garmond said. “Too much anger curdles the blood. Unbalances the humors.”
Keilan thought he saw d’Verin’s eye twitch, but the scholar’s expression remained tranquil.
“Why am I here, Garmond?”
The elderly seeker gestured at Keilan and Nel. “Old friends are visiting me: this is Nel, an assistant to a senior magister in Herath, and Keilan, a student in the Scholia. They need answers about the Shan. You are the most learned among us in these matters.”
The compliment mollified the scholar somewhat, and he offered a curt bow. “Greetings. I am Naskal d’Verin, the Khamorian scholar here at the Reliquary, specializing in the history, culture, and language of the Shan people.” He glanced at Nel and Keilan, and then twisted around, as if he must be missing someone more important. “Emissaries from the Scholia arrive with questions about our southern neighbors? How intriguing. What has happened?”
Nel cleared he
r throat and sat forward. “The Oracle of Lyr. She gave an odd prophecy and we need to know if what she said has any relevance to someone well-versed in the history of Shan.”
D’Verin cocked his head to one side, his curiosity evident.
“The Oracle warned of a terrible threat coming from Shan.”
The scholar waved his hands, as if to dismiss her words. “Unlikely. The Shan people are not conquerors. They are quite content with the knowledge that their empire is the most brilliant and refined in the world, and that everything worth owning already exists within its borders. The few times the Empire of Swords and Flowers has been drawn into battle, the aggressor was clearly the emperor of Menekar.”
“It wasn’t an invading army the Oracle saw in her visions. It was… children.”
“Children?”
“Yes, they… they looked like street urchins, ragged and starving. Perhaps they were –”
The scholar’s mouth fell open. “Gods… ” he whispered, and he reached out to steady himself on a teetering pillar of books. The pile collapsed, nearly taking d’Verin to the ground as well, and Keilan leapt up to catch him before he could fall.
“The Betrayers,” the scholar muttered, clutching at Keilan’s arms.
“What are the Betrayers?” Garmond asked, leaning forward, his eyes bright with interest.
D’Verin pulled himself from Keilan and collapsed onto the chair he had just vacated. His gaze was distant and empty.
“Demons… or something else. The harbingers of the Raveling.”
“What is the Raveling?”
D’Verin glanced at Keilan, his face pale. “The Raveling was what destroyed the ancestral homeland of Shan. The Betrayers summoned it or woke it. The texts are vague as to what exactly it was: one account speaks of a darkness in the sky that reached down to scour the lands of life. Another describes endless coils that moved like living hills, crushing cities and squeezing mountains to dust. But whatever the Raveling was, all the sources agree that these demonic children brought about that destruction.”
“What happened to them?”
D’Verin acknowledged Garmond’s question with a slight nod. “That, at least, the scrolls are clear about. A hero of Shan, the wielder of a demon-slaying sword, hunted down the Betrayers and slew them. But their essence could not be destroyed fully, and their souls—or whatever passes for souls among creatures like them—were trapped inside a chest constructed by the greatest warlocks of Shan. They were imprisoned, but this did not stop the Raveling from continuing to destroy all it touched, until the tattered remnants of the Shan people were forced to launch their great fleet from the last port still standing on their shores. They abandoned their lands forever. What happened to the chest containing the Betrayers was never revealed, though I suspect the warlocks kept it in Tsai Yin, within the towers they built from the bones of the great turtles that accompanied their ships across the ocean.”
“So if the Oracle has seen these children in her visions of the coming doom… ”
“Then they must have escaped their prison,” Nel finished for Keilan.
A moment of silence passed in the room. Finally, d’Verin ran a hand through his wild shock of red hair. “If this prophecy has any truth to it, I must inform the Light of the Lore.”
Seeker Garmond turned to Nel. “Will you return to Herath and tell the queen of this?”
She glanced at Keilan and shook her head. “The Oracle… she claimed that a woman has the knowledge of how to avert what is coming. A woman who could destroy these children. A woman who Keilan has seen before.”
Garmond’s brows lifted in surprise as he shifted his attention to Keilan. “Truly? Who?”
Keilan squirmed uncomfortably under the scrutiny of everyone in the room. “A sorceress from the distant past. I saw her in a vision I shared with Queen d’Kara—she looked almost exactly like my mother. The Oracle’s vision suggested there was some connection between them, and that if I find out where my mother came from I might find this sorceress as well. So we’re travelling back to my village to search for clues.”
Garmond tugged on his long beard thoughtfully. “You told me once about your mother, I remember. A terrible tragedy.”
Keilan nodded. “Yes.” His last memory of his mother swam up from the depths where he kept it hidden. Her head had been bowed as she walked unsteadily towards the door of their hut, his uncle Davin gripping her arm roughly. The eyes of the rest of the men in the small room were vacant, almost as if they expected to wake up the next day and discover that this had all been a dream.
But it hadn’t been.
She had turned back to Keilan before they’d dragged her outside, her pale face partially hidden behind her long hair. “I love you,” she’d said, and then she had disappeared into the night. His father had held him back from running after her into the darkness.
Why had that happened?
Where had his mother come from?
And what was the thread connecting her to the Oracle’s prophecy?
Keilan’s hand slipped to the hilt of the sword the Lady Numil had given him. He would find what answers there were in his village—and he had a few questions of his own to ask the ones who had taken his mother.
There was a purity to the emptiness, Cho Lin decided, as she stood upon the raised forecastle of the junk and stared out at the dark swells rippling into the horizon. She could lose herself easily out here, in the middle of the trackless ocean, much like how she had lost herself in meditation beneath Gold Leaf Temple. The Nothing within the Self yearned to be surrounded by such a featureless waste, for it reflected the depths within.
Not that there weren’t still some distractions, at least during the day. Sailors scurried over the deck, pulling on ropes or climbing the masts like frantic monkeys, conversing and cursing in a tumbling pidgin variant of proper Shan, a sea language so different that Cho Lin understood barely half the words.
It was because of this that she had begun staying up almost until the dawn and sleeping well past midday. At night, the sea was an endless black desert stretching out to the edge of existence. And the silence. She could close her eyes and sit with her legs crossed and, save for the gentle rolling of the deck and the sharp tang of the sea air, it was like she was again in her monk’s cell, willing herself to fall towards the Nothing.
She had seen a few wonders at night, when most of the others were asleep. Once, she had opened her eyes from her meditation and found the sea around the boat ablaze with shimmering blue light. Countless small shapes had writhed together, strands gleaming in the darkness like ghostly serpents. After a while the boat had passed out of this strangeness, and gradually it had dwindled behind them before finally fading into blackness. Another time when the moon had been bright in the sky, gilding the ocean with silver light, she had seen something vast and dark break the surface less than half a li from the boat. It made no sound, but a spume of water had risen from its back, glittering in the moonlight. A whale, she suspected, though she had never imagined they could grow so large.
Cho Lin knew she made the sailors nervous. The captain had told her of the ancient superstitions about having women on board, and her presence upon the deck at night had deepened their concerns. Most of them avoided even looking in her direction, and only the captain had spoken to her since they had departed the port of Ras Ami.
This did not bother her; Cho Lin had been an outsider ever since her father pulled her from her childhood games and set her on this path. Right now, she honestly didn’t mind having more time to herself, so she could consider carefully all that had happened recently. The release of the Betrayers. The death of her father. Her brother entrusting her with the Sword of Cho and imploring her to find and once again bind the demons before they could work their malice on the world. Bai Hua’s betrayal, and how this suggested the Raveling had sunk their corruption deep among the great families o
f Shan.
After some contemplation, Cho Lin had realized that the enormity of what was happening had blinded her to details that were right in front of her face. It was a mistake the monks of Red Fang Mountain would have chided her for making.
As Ras Ami had dwindled into the distance, she’d realized it had been her brother who sent the assassins to kill her on the road from Gold Leaf Temple.
The thought had struck her so hard she’d staggered and had to lean heavily against the boat’s railing. The captain had rushed over to her, begging her to go below deck and rest until she had gotten her sea legs, but she’d waved him away with the cold disdain expected of a Jade Court mandarin’s daughter.
Of course. The ambush had been a test. If she’d been killed, she would have been proven unworthy of being given the Sword of Cho. There was some merit to this reasoning: if she could not overcome four assassins, even though one was a Tainted Sword, then her pursuit of the Betrayers could only end in disaster and death. It was just like something her father would have done—her brother had his mind, if not his body. Cho Lin’s childhood had been an endless series of such tests, and she had passed all of them… except, of course, for her first test, which her father had never forgiven her for.
She had not been born a boy.
“Lady Cho.”
The captain’s soft voice pulled her away from her thoughts. He stood a few paces from her, his craggy, nut-brown face lowered respectfully.
“Yes?”
“If it pleases you to see the Watcher, I invite you to look towards the north. We will be close enough soon that even this fog won’t be able to keep it hidden away.”
Cho Lin nodded very slightly, an almost unimaginably generous gesture. He gaped at her for a moment, then recovered and ducked his head again to show his great thanks for her kindness.