by Alec Hutson
They passed through a great square entrance and into a long, wide hall. Sunlight filtered down from narrow windows set the length of the building just below the peaked roof, illuminating the surprisingly homely interior. Couches and comfortable-looking chairs fashioned from wrought copper were scattered about, and beautifully patterned carpets covered much of the stone floor. Long tables held strange silvery instruments and other artifacts, and the very air seemed to crackle with sorcery. Recessed down the length of the walls and stretching almost to the high ceiling were shelves bursting with books and scrolls and even some of the Min-Ceruthan saga bones Keilan had first seen in the Barrow of Vis.
“This is my refuge,” Niara said as they walked the length of the hall. Along the way, the great cat found an appealing spot on one of the carpets and sprawled onto its side, showing its belly to the sorceress as they passed.
“How long have you lived here?” Keilan asked, stepping carefully around the cat’s lashing tail.
The end of the hall opened up onto a balcony that thrust out from the side of the mountain. Niara walked to the edge and placed her hands on the cracked balustrade of black stone, staring out at the sea. The ocean breeze played with her hair, pushing long silver strands across her face.
“For most of the last thousand years,” she said, glancing sideways to see how Keilan would react to this claim.
He affected astonishment, not yet ready to reveal that he had known how old she truly was.
“After the cataclysm, the paladins of Ama led a bloody crusade against the surviving sorcerers. I searched for a place to hide and found this island, and I wove subtle spells so it would remain concealed from all but the most determined searchers.”
“The mist?” Keilan asked, remembering the unnatural fog they’d rowed through as they approached the island.
“Yes,” Niara said. “A powerful sorcerer or the Pure would sense something amiss, if they concentrated, but my sanctuary is remote enough that there is little chance of it being discovered.”
Keilan studied her profile as she continued to watch the horizon—her hair, the shape of her jaw. Her lips and the way she tilted her chin when she was thinking. The resemblance was uncanny. He had to remind himself that no matter how familiar she seemed, he knew almost nothing about her. With some effort he tore his gaze away, concentrating on the sea far below as the dark water churned endlessly among the jagged black rocks.
“Why did my mother leave you?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her slim white fingers tighten upon the stone balustrade.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I have to know.”
There was a long silence, and then finally Niara sighed. “Vera… she was born on this island. When she was young, she played with my creations and was cared for by my servants—who, as you’ve seen, are not the most personable of companions. As a young child it was enough, for she knew nothing different. But as she grew older she began to explore the world through my library. She came to realize that the life she had here was far different than what others experienced. The island is my refuge, but for her it became a prison. She wanted to leave and travel and I forbid it. We fought and argued, and then one day I awoke and she was gone.” Keilan thought he heard a trace of anger in her voice. “She had read the sea charts and realized she could reach Ven Ibras in one of the small boats I keep on the island. I sent my servants out to try and find her and bring her back to me. But she vanished from Ven Ibras, and by the time I had discovered which ship she had taken it was already at the bottom of the sea. For nearly twenty years I have thought she died, and that there was no remnant of her in the world except for what I keep in my memories.” Keilan sensed Niara turn towards him, and her hand fell upon his arm. It was the first time she had touched him. “And yet here you are. Somehow you found me, and in a way it is like she has returned.”
Keilan swallowed away the tightness in his throat. “Niara… all my life I wanted to know where my mother came from. Even in my wildest fantasies I never imagined anything like this, though. It feels like a dream.”
“I have much to show you.”
“And I want to see it,” Keilan said, “but I have to tell you that I came here for a reason. I sought you out because…”
The sorceress made a shushing noise. “Not today, Keilan. That can wait until the morrow. Right now, I want you to share with me everything you remember about your mother, and then I will do the same.”
Demian was gone.
Cold fear washed through Alyanna as she entered the chamber where he had been convalescing and saw that the mossy dais was empty. Possibilities flitted through her thoughts—had his condition suddenly worsened while she slept, and the kith’ketan already removed his corpse? Had the daymo decided they should be punished for their failure and chosen to strike while the sorcerer was helpless? Or had Demian finally realized that binding himself to a weak abomination like herself was utter foolishness?
Calming herself, Alyanna tamped down her panic—chiding herself for such imaginings—and went to look for him.
She found the swordsinger in a large empty space not a hundred paces from their quarters. It was one of the rooms she had always thought of as ‘the ossuaries’—walls soared up into the darkness, pocked with countless small niches, each of which contained the skull of one of the wraiths that had lived here thousands of years ago. When Alyanna had renovated this mountain fastness she had decided to avoid these chambers—while she personally cared little about the empty eyes staring down, she knew others would be more superstitious about such things.
Demian, apparently, was also unconcerned about the attentions of the dead. He stood in the middle of the room clad only in loose black trousers, his back to Alyanna, and with the grace of a dancer was slowly going through his swordsinger routines. One of the glass spheres filled with glowing worms had been placed nearby on the floor, and the light gave his skin an eerie bluish cast. She watched from the ossuary entrance as his movements flowed together, his cracked metal blade flickering out to strike before returning to a guard position. His entire body was twisting to some internal rhythm—it was beautiful, in its own way. Almost hypnotic. Even with her limited knowledge, Alyanna could tell his movements represented the pinnacle of swordfighting’s art.
That had always made Demian an anomaly among the great wizards of the Imperium. The pursuit of power was so consuming and exacting that it was very rare for a sorcerer to achieve mastery in a discipline not related to sorcery. And yet he had been recognized as not only one of the greatest Talents of the Star Towers but also as one of the preeminent swordsingers of the Imperium.
“I thought you had abandoned me,” Alyanna said with an affected playfulness, and Demian turned, lowering his sword.
“I would not do that,” he said simply, returning his blade to its sheath and pushing back the sweat-damp curls that had fallen across his face.
Alyanna entered the ossuary, her slippers whispering upon the stone. She stared up at the pockmarked walls rising around them, wondering how far above into the gloom they extended. “You seem better.”
“I am. I did not feel any sorcery when that physicker was attending to me, but the results are impressive. There is stiffness and some pain, but far less than I expected.”
Alyanna moved closer to one of the niches set in the wall and tried to pick up the skull inside, but it crumbled to dust between her fingers.
“I was always curious—did you consider yourself first and foremost a sorcerer or a swordsinger?”
“Swordsinger,” he answered without hesitation.
That surprised her. “Truly? But it is your Talent that made you one of the most powerful men of our age.”
Demian went to where his black shirt was puddled beside the light sphere and bent to pick it up. “The reason is simple—we are born into our magic. Yes, we must work to develop unique spells, but tha
t is simply a matter of lashing the sorcery already within us together into novel combinations. We cannot change the amount of strength we draw from the Void, since that was determined at our birth.”
He slipped the shirt over his head, grimacing as it settled on the wound at his side. “Swordfighting is different. Everyone begins with nothing—it is only through discipline and willpower that one can achieve mastery. And it is this distinction between the two pursuits that helps explain the weakness of sorcerers.”
“Weakness?” she scoffed.
“Yes. Those born with sorcery in their veins never had to struggle for their power. It was innate. And because of this, they do not truly appreciate what they have. They believe they are superior merely by virtue of their birth and the vagaries of fate. Everyone without sorcery becomes little more than a tool for their ends, and even other sorcerers can only be rivals in the pursuit of more power.”
An accurate sentiment. The sorcerers of the Star Towers had been in constant competition. The strongest ascended, and the weak either served them or were destroyed. It was, in Alyanna’s opinion, a perfect representation of how the world functioned. One was either a predator or its prey. She had promised herself long ago that she would never be prey again.
“The swordsingers,” Demian continued, “they were a brotherhood. We learned the routines from those who had come before, bettered ourselves by practicing against each other. That kind of life fostered loyalty. Respect. A swordsinger would fight to the death to defend his brothers. What sorcerer could say the same?”
Any wizard of the Star Towers who had conducted themselves like Demian had just described would have been thought a fool, Alyanna knew. She certainly would have considered them one.
“In all the years we’ve known each other, Weaver, you’ve never asked me why I joined with you under this mountain to remake the world.”
“I assumed you wanted what we all wanted: immortality.”
Demian shook his head slowly. “No. You chose to believe that we shared this motivation. I will admit that the thought of having the time to explore the great mysteries unencumbered by the fear of death was liberating. But above all else I wanted to destroy the society in which I had grown up. I knew firsthand how the powerful of the Imperium treated the weak as mere objects, as only ends to their desires.”
Alyanna sighed. “Revenge, Demian. However you are trying to justify what you did, in the final tally you were punishing an entire society for the actions of the few who abused you and your brother when you were slaves in the House of Hyacinths.”
Demian smiled, but there was no humor in it. “My experiences as a child were not unique. It was the guiding principle behind the glorious Imperium—it has been, in truth, the principle behind every sorcerous empire, from the Warlock King’s Menekar to the Mosaic Cities. The strong take what they want from the weak. But power unearned by suffering or discipline corrupts the soul. The Imperium was an ancient, dead oak in the forest, its rotten limbs blocking the light. Better to chop it down and give another tree the chance to grow and see if something more healthy can thrive.”
“What you see as a flaw in sorcerers,” Alyanna countered, with more than a trace of bitterness, “I see as a flaw in mankind. Sorcery is just one advantage men are born with. Are the kingdoms that have arisen today any more just than the old empires? No. Wealth and nobility have taken the place once occupied by sorcery.”
Something like sadness flickered in Demian’s eyes. “Perhaps you are right, Weaver. But I have chosen to reject this flaw and hold other things to be above base self-interest. And I suppose you should be grateful of that.”
His words were like a slap. Yes, he had risked his life to save hers—just as a swordsinger would have done for another of his order. “I… thank you. I don’t understand why you came for me, but I am grateful.”
Demian accepted her thanks with a slight nod. He opened his mouth to say more, but a shadow suddenly filled the ossuary’s entrance.
“Undying One,” said a kith’ketan with the dusky skin of an Eversummer Islander, “you are recovered. The daymo wishes to see you at once.”
The last time Alyanna had stood in this chamber it had been in the daymo’s dreams, and the darkness had been absolute. She remembered the fear she had felt, and how her racing imagination had tried and failed to give form to the presence she had sensed before her. The truth, as she discovered now in the radiance spilling from her eyes, was less horrific than the dark fantasies she had conjured up.
In the inner sanctum of the kith’ketan an old man sat cross-legged atop a great knob of what looked to be bone. His long beard was coiled in his lap, and his fingernails resembled yellow talons—clearly, neither had been cut in years. His robe was so black that it seemed to absorb what little light she had brought into this darkness, and a silken cord dangled near his shoulder. Suspended far above, where the walls curved together, she could just discern the shape of a great bell.
“Undying One,” the old man murmured in his cracked and ancient voice. “You return to the mountain with the sorceress who brought you to my dreams. But she is a sorceress no more. Your enemies have bested you.”
Demian held the daymo’s unblinking gaze, and Alyanna could feel the crash of two great wills coming together.
“They are your enemies now as well,” Demian said in a voice shriven of the emotion he had displayed while speaking with her earlier. “The Crimson Queen will not forget that your assassins invaded her home. And your kith’ketan also failed—Cein d’Kara and her school of wizards survived.”
The old man shifted slightly, as if annoyed at being reminded of this. “Perhaps I should deliver to her both of your heads. A peace offering to settle this difference between us.”
Demian chuckled dryly. “If you truly believed that to be your best course, you would have done this before I recovered my strength. An empty threat.”
The old man leaned back, raising his face to the darkness above. He was quiet for a long time, and Alyanna was just starting to consider that they had been dismissed when he suddenly returned his attention to them. Now he looked different: his cheeks were flushed, and his dark pupils seemed to almost fill his eyes. It was not so much different, she thought, than when the other concubines in the imperial gardens had indulged in dreamsmoke.
Something had just happened, though she knew not what.
“I would have made you a gift to the red queen,” the daymo said, his voice thicker than before. “But I am not the master here.”
She felt Demian stir beside her.
“What are you saying?”
The daymo’s lips pulled back in a ghastly smile. “I am saying, Undying One, that you and this once-sorceress have been summoned.”
Niara waited for him the next day on a faded velvet divan, the great red and white tiger curled around her feet. Morning light filtered down from the high windows, drenching her sanctum in warm shades of copper and bronze. The dress she wore reminded Keilan of the spider-silk shirt he had found in the ruins of Uthmala—it seemed to have been woven from countless fine gossamer strands, and it nearly matched in color her unbound silver hair.
“Keilan, sit down,” Niara said as the shrouded servant who had brought him there turned and glided away. “Have you eaten?” she asked, gesturing at the slices of red melon and speckled yellow fruit arrayed on a low table.
“I have,” Keilan said, finding a seat in a cushioned chair. In truth, he’d only managed a few bites at breakfast—the nervous flutterings in his stomach about seeing the sorceress again had robbed him of his appetite. That, and Nel and Senacus’s questions about what he had discussed with Niara had made him feel guilty about not yet bringing up the reason they had sought her out. He’d admitted to them that he hadn’t told her about the Shan children or the vision shared by the Oracle, and although Nel hadn’t said anything about this, the annoyance in her face had been cle
ar enough.
Then, as he’d stood to leave, Senacus had gripped his arm and pulled him closer.
“Don’t forget what she did. We need her help, but she is dangerous.”
Niara used a small fork to spear a sliver of the yellow fruit from its silver tray and popped it into her mouth. “Well, what did you think? Delicious?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen any fruit that looked or tasted like this.”
A slight smile curled the edge of her lips. “That is because they only exist on this island. They were some of my first creations.”
Keilan stared at the glistening fruit in surprise. “Truly?” How did someone make a fruit?
“Yes,” she murmured, taking another bite. “Plants and fruits are much easier to work with than animals.” She reached down and scratched behind the great cat’s ear.
“And this tiger, too?”
Niara nodded, and Keilan thought he could see pride in her face. “I did. Surely you’ve noticed all sorts of strange creatures on this island. I’ve devoted myself to… improving life, let us say. Making it more beautiful. More intelligent, or fierce, or quick.” She took another piece of the fruit. “Or delicious.”
“Now, Chanevia here,” she said, stroking the great cat again, “was born from a pair of Dymorian tigers I had my servants buy for me in Gryx. I tinkered with her inside her mother’s womb, using sorcery to alter her nature.”
“I didn’t know sorcery could do such a thing,” Keilan breathed, awed by the idea that a creature’s very being could be malleable.
“What sorcery is capable of doing is limited only by our power and imagination,” Niara said, watching him carefully. “You do not share the constraints of the merely gifted. You are a Talent, like me, and we can guide the very weft and warp of life’s tapestry as it is being woven. We can remake the world to reflect our desires.” She leaned forward, staring at him intently. “If we can draw enough sorcery forth.”