by Nhys Glover
Redin blushed at the intense scrutiny he was under. This was not a man who wanted to draw attention to himself. I recognised that all-too-familiar need to remain unnoticed. Sitting here yesterday, with all eyes on me, had been torturous. Yet I had done it because my comforter needed me to. His survival depended on me helping these people. And it seemed Redin also had the same kind of reason for stepping out of the shadows.
“I do not know how your knowledge comes to you Goddess, but I get it as a sense of certainty. An idea comes to me, or I see something that gives me that certainty. It is never a clear message in words,” he explained anxiously.
He had likely explained his process to people before and been laughed at. I knew that experience well from my childhood. I would tell people I saw something happen—a child falling into the river, a plague of insects approaching the crops—and I would be laughed at. Until it happened. Then those same people would look at me as if I had caused those terrible incidents myself.
“That is how it works for me,” Airsha announced into the silence. “I call it Knowing, with a capital K. It is a frustrating way to receive insights. Although the Goddess can be more direct when she needs to be. As was the case when she told us all about The Jayger and The Five.”
Redin shook his head, clearly not knowing anything about either one.
Airsha saw his lack of knowledge and proceeded to address it. “A half moon ago the Goddess spoke through me. She told us a great evil was going to be unleashed into the world by the deposed Godling. That once that happened the key would need to be used. The ring or circle, which would open the way back to the underworld where that malign, primal force must be returned. Otherwise he would use his element to cover the earth with water so all air-breathing life died out.”
“So it is this that you seek across the ocean. It sounds an impossible task.” Even as he said it, Redin looked horrified, as if he expected to be condemned for his negative prediction as the buffoon had.
“Not impossible, with the Goddess’ help. The Five can do it, if it comes to it. But we are getting closer to the Godling. We may well stop him before he succeeds. The Lady Shardra has been very helpful in making us aware of the secrets of our enemies. The Devourers they call themselves, because their god The Jayger will devour the world. The Goddess is the Creator and The Jayger is the Destroyer. They fight a battle that started long before we came into being and will likely go on long after we are gone. But the Devourer will not have his way now. The end is not now!”
As I had already discovered, when Airsha spoke in this way it was as if the Goddess spoke through her and all listened in rapt awe. It was so incongruent, this powerful presence coming out of such a tiny woman. When she had helped me back from the bathing chamber it surprised me that someone who barely came to my chin could be so strong. The red-haired warrior, Flame, was taller, but still two finger-widths shorter than me. I had not known that about myself, that I was a tall woman.
“I can help. The Goddess sent me here to help.” For the first time the thin man sat up straight and tall. And he was tall, even sitting down I could tell that he was tall. And with the fire alight in his sea-green eyes he looked younger than I first thought. Not in his middle suns; but a man no more than thirty.
“Explain to us how Lady Shardra knows the way when she believes she doesn’t have that knowledge,” the dark-haired husband of the Goddess demanded, resting his hand on his wife’s shoulder directly in front of him.
Airsha seemed to have lost vitality—as if, having been used as a channel by the Goddess, she was now depleted—and her husband stepped in to take the lead. Seamlessly. It happened seamlessly, as if it had occurred this way many times before.
“I cannot. Not yet. It just came as a Knowing when you were talking before. As if the Goddess was affronted that we would assume She had not provided a way forward. Beyond that I cannot tell you. I am not sure what I can do for you, either. Walking the Nether Plane is not a useful skill. I am the son of the last Godling, the Goddess’ half brother, and I was considered to have no magic. The first of many that came after me. And, as I was physically unfit to train as a soldier, I was returned to my kinglund, to my grandfather. I do clerical work there, but I am not good at it, as I drift off too often to be relied upon.” His last statement was apologetic.
Airsha was frowning. “I did not recognise you. Well met, brother.”
“I was sent away from the harem before you were even born, so it is not surprising you do not recognise me. I am told I look like my mother though, so mayhap you remember her. I know she had a daughter and a son after me. I have never met either since leaving my mother.”
“Mayhap that can be remedied after all this is done. But for now we must ponder your purpose in all this. As a walker of the Nether Plane what do you experience?”
The man grew comfortable, as if at last he was on familiar ground. “To me it is like the sea, a colourful blend of droplets of water that blend to become one. Every droplet is distinct, but also part of the whole. Every droplet has a unique colour, though sometimes those colours are so close as to appear the same. I do not understand why that might be. Mayhap there are only so many colours. Though even my description is faulty. It is truly beyond me to describe.” He paused thoughtfully, and I took the opportunity to support him.
“That is how it seems to me too. But I see them as bubbles, colourful little bubbles all clustering together, or jostling each other to move on. But colours yes. Lots of different colours.”
“Do you know your colour, Lady?” Redin asked politely.
I shook my head. “I cannot see myself there, though I find I am attracted to certain colours. To those essences that look like the blue-green of the ocean. Mayhap that is my colour.”
“I do not know my colour either, but that is the colour that attracts me too. Mayhap it is just the prettiest of the colours.” He grinned as if making a joke. I grinned back, the gesture so unfamiliar to me that the muscles in my cheeks complained.
“So when you say you walk the Nether Plane, it doesn’t sound like you actually have legs to walk with,” the dark husband said, bringing us back to the point.
“Yes, that is correct. It is more like I drift, conscious of those around me, able to connect with some and know their stories. But no actual walking is done. Swimming perhaps?”
“So the problem we have,” the dark man went on. “Or Lady Shardra has, is that a very powerful seer, or soothsayer for the Devourers, draws on the essences on the Nether Plane to fuel her visions. Those visions are of us and our activities, present and future. Lady Shardra became that source of fuel for her some suns ago and she’s been slowly drained of her vitality ever since.”
Redin glanced my way with true concern. I warmed at his regard.
“The advantage to us has been that, while her essence is drawn in to fuel these visions, Lady Shardra has been able to witness the activities of the Devourers and experience the memories and thoughts of their seer. But the reverse is not true. Until yesterday the hag, as we call her, didn’t know who Shardra was or where she could be found. She has stayed hidden in a cave all these suns. But by coming here to share her knowledge with us she has inadvertently allowed the hag to see her here with us.”
The dark man paused as if trying to get the information I had told him clear in his mind. To aid him, I went on in his place. If this Redin could save me, he needed to understand.
“The hag has drawn on many like me before. Most do not last long. I have lasted far longer, and because of that she became complacent and did not begin to search for a replacement until recently when I finally began to succumb. She has not succeeded in finding another essence yet, so if she ends me now she will be blind and useless to her consort at this critical time. She believes The Jayger considers her his consort and she will be at his side when the world comes to an end.
“But she now knows that I can provide valuable information about her activities to her enemies so she cannot allow me to re
main here. Either she captures my body so she has both my essence and my body, or she must end me so I cannot continue to have access to her plans through her scrying pool.”
“And she has no sense of the physical bodies of the essences she draws on?” Redin clarified, his sea-green eyes drawing me in until I felt lost in them. Pleasantly lost.
“No. She only recognised me when I appeared in her scrying pool. She connected us then. And now I think on it, she may not necessarily know what I know of her. When she saw me it was a present time vision. Not a future time one. So I was simply lying in the white man’s arms. I was not speaking of what I know.” My heart lifted. I had jumped to a terrible conclusion. I assumed she’d know I could report on her, but... Then I remembered the way I engineered the rescue of Flame and the nightmare man. Laric?
But did she know it was me? Or did she simply suspect it? Mayhap she thought I could foretell the future on my own. It need not be her visions I had drawn on.
I felt relieved. Her need to get to me would not be so intense if she did not know for certain I could inform on her.
“Whether she knows you have told us all her plans or not, we have to try to break her hold on you. While ever she has that, she can see our actions—even our future actions—and she can drain you dry. That is unacceptable,” the dark man said.
“Can you walk on the Nether Plane at will?” Airsha asked us both.
I had never sought to do so, but it might be possible.
Glancing at Redin, I saw him nodding confidently. “I have done so often, and I can find the essence of someone I want to know better. It is invasive, to touch on their essence and read their human thoughts and memories, but I started doing it at an age when I did not consider personal boundaries were relevant. I do not do it anymore as a rule.”
“How can you claim that your magic isn’t useful? Had the Godling known, he would have used you to spy on his enemies. He might have used you to spy on me!” Airsha exclaimed in horror.
Redin frowned, as if considering his magic in another light. “I never thought to tell anyone what I did on the Nether Plane. I just told them that was where I went, and about the droplets of essences there. I think they thought I was imagining it all. That all I was was a dreamer. I have heard myself called that more times than is comfortable. Even now my grandfather is likely wringing his hands in distress that I have come here to bother you with my nonsense.” He spoke apologetically, as if that was exactly what he had done.
“All I can say is that I am very glad you told no one. And I think we might need to keep your gift between those that are here today. The Five, my husbands and myself, and Lady Shardra,” Airsha said in soothing tones.
“So you can find Lady Shardra and... what? How can you break the link?” This was the black man, his eyes almost ablaze with his pent fury. He was like a furnace, always tamped down but ready to flare to life when air was added. What must it feel like to live that way? Always ready to explode.
“I am not sure, but mayhap I will have a better idea once I have explored a little. May I enter your memories if I need to, Lady?”
I nodded. It would make me uncomfortable having him know my deepest secrets. To have him know about my most intimate moments with my comforter and the terrible way I had lived for so long. But it was necessary.
“Then let us try. I do not suppose I actually need to have you consciously walking the Nether Plane with me, but it might help.”
“I will try.”
He smiled his encouragement. We lay down with our hands joined in the centre of the circle, while the others sat silently watching. It would be less embarrassing to pass out when I was lying down, I decided irrelevantly.
I let myself relax and drift, conscious only of the stranger’s hand in mine. Then, faster than I would have expected, I found myself somewhere else. Not with my comforter, not with the hag, but in the Nether Plane, surrounded by jostling bubbles of energy and light. I liked it here. I had always felt freer here. More accepted. I was one of many, I was part of the greater whole.
As I floated in the pleasurable flow, I became aware of an essence coming closer. Not swimming through the other bubbles, but floating past them as they broke from their clusters to let this other bubble through. None seemed to mind.
His bubble was blue-green like his eyes. I recognised him as soon as he was close. I probably recognised him the moment he started moving toward me, I do not know. Once he reached me I felt us cluster, like the other bubbles did. It was new to me, this clustering. Always before I remained separate.
He pressed in even closer to me so our bubbles melded into one. It was the oddest sensation. I knew him intimately. I knew him in the way I knew the hag, and yet the experience was so much better. Redin was a good man. Kindness was his nature. If someone needed his help he gave it freely. Just as he was doing now.
I saw how difficult his life had been. How they had made him a youth-in-training and how the other boys tormented him and bullied him because he was vague and harmless. The idea of getting angry or resorting to any kind of violence was beyond him. In the end, after he had been beaten almost to death, he’d been sent to his grandfather in Sousealund. The man had been both understanding and gruff, although he sometimes seemed embarrassed to have such a useless grandson. He had expected to get a magical son to help with the running of his holdings. Instead he got Redin, not even useful in a commoners’ role. But Redin had been loved even so. And that was all that mattered to the thin man.
While I had been absorbed in his life, Redin had been doing something inside me. I had no idea what.
Suddenly I felt different. Freer, even while I remained part of Redin. When he gently pulled away and we separated, I felt a loss so deep I wanted to cry. It was as if he had always been a part of me, and we had only now found our way back together. Now we were apart once more, and I grieved his loss.
In the next instant, I was aware I lay on the carpet in the royal apartments and my hand was held by the stranger who was anything but.
He reclaimed his hand first, sitting up and looking around as if unsure where he was. I sat up then and smiled at him. Knowing him. When he glanced my way he seemed relieved, and he smiled back at me. His smile was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Then he frowned.
“A daemon? You consort with a daemon?”
My eyes opened wide and I struggled to find words. What was he talking about? Daemon? What was a daemon and what did he mean that I consorted with him, as if it was some dirty secret. Some obscenity.
Airsha interrupted his attack. “Redin, you are frightening her. What has happened?”
How had I thought him kind and loving? I felt more bruised and damaged than ever before.
Redin shook himself, as if throwing off the thought of me with a daemon.
It made no sense. Was he talking about the Devourers? How could he be, when we had already told him about them and their evil hag? I did not mean to consort with them. I was made to. He knew that!
“I found and blended with her. There was a parasite attached to her. That is the only word I can use to describe it. I nudged against it with my power and it removed its suckers from Lady Shardra and took me instead. It was the only way I could think to rid her of it.”
I stared at him, open-mouthed. He’d sacrificed himself for me? I was free of the hag, but now she had him? No! That was not acceptable. He could not do that for me.
“Now you will see her visions?” the scar-faced man asked intently, bright-blue eyes flashing.
“I imagine so. I cannot stop her seeing what she will, but I can alert you to it. I assume it will work the same way for me as it did for Lady Shardra.” He was avoiding looking at me. As if I had suddenly become abhorrent.
How could he be like this after we had... found each other?
“What do you mean by this daemon talk? They are creatures of myth and legend. They do not exist,” the black man said.
“I have never heard of t
hem. What are they?” the too-handsome husband asked with interest.
“At the beginning of time when the Goddess and her consort ruled in harmony there were other primal beings, made from the elements, that shared their world. One such was the daemons of the fiery underworld. They were creatures of great malevolence and wrought harm whenever they found their way to the surface. They raped and brutalised any other elemental beings they encountered, and twisted halflings were born from the couplings— halflings that belonged nowhere. The Goddess sent the offending daemons back to their home, but the halflings had no home, and they died out.”
I listened to this tale. It made no sense. I knew no such malevolent being. I certainly had never been raped by one.
“What do these daemons look like?” Laric asked, speaking up for the first time, although I had been aware of his intense interest from the moment Redin started talking.
“There are mixed descriptions, as you can expect from myths. But they were usually described as having wings and looking human, except for their fangs, which were as huge as any wild beastlings and their talons that were as sharp as blades. Oh, and their skin was as red as the fire that was their element.”
My blood had gone cold at the description. My comforter? The black man was describing my comforter? It was just what he looked like, except that instead of being red like fire he was tarnished silver, or pewter coloured. And his eyes were the colour of the sky.
Consort with daemons?
I must have given him his name without realising it, because Airsha was looking at me in concern. “You didn’t know?”
Shaking my head from side to side, as if trying to dislodge the possibility, I still found myself putting the pieces together. Shockingly together. Only last night he had told me that his nature was cruel. I had denied it, as he had only ever been kind to me. But he seemed sad when I said that, and unwilling to talk about himself.
Because he was a daemon from the underworld? Had he been waiting in the darkness for me because I was going to help the hag and the Godling release The Jayger? Was he expecting to be freed then too? Had I been tricked into co-operating in the same way as the hag had been, won over with promises?