by Alec Hutson
Alyanna snorted and withdrew her hand. “That is the problem with our species. Tradition binds us as tight as any chains. We must break those bonds if we are ever to realize our true greatness.”
“And you can do that, Alyanna?”
The hint of playfulness vanished from her face. When she spoke the intensity in her voice sent a shiver through him. “I can, and I will.”
Jan gradually gained strength over the next few days. To his slight surprise, he was allowed to wander freely through the mountain redoubt Alyanna and her mysterious cabal had constructed. It seemed to have been built over the ruins of an ancient wraith nest – the passages soared nearly twice the height of a man, curving and twisting in upon themselves in the distinctive labyrinthine style wraiths employed to keep their king and his harem safely hidden in the deeps. But workmen had obviously spent quite some time here, carving human-sized steps where needed, setting doors at the entrances to chambers, and furnishing those same rooms in the lush style of the Mosaic Cities, with pastel strips of knotted silk hanging among chairs and tables of finely-wrought copper and glass. Jan found himself wondering what had happened to the workers who had made this secret fortress so comfortable – but, knowing Alyanna, he had his suspicions. She wasn’t one for leaving any loose ends untied.
In his explorations he occasionally came across one or more of the other Talents. Some he had met before, while others he knew only by reputation. He stumbled upon the Eversummer Islander Hepheus in the redoubt’s well-stocked library, poring over some ancient text. Jan had greeted her warmly; ten years ago he had traveled to the great tree-towns of her homeland and spent a month singing fortheir lords and drinking her people’s famous numbing sap as he sailed from island to island. Hepheus had been but a girl then, the apprentice of the legendary sorcerer-vizier who advised one of the archipelago’s kings. Jan had sung for the court and danced with her in the slow style of Min-Ceruth, and as he had held her close he had seen in her adoring gaze the glimmer of a girl’s first love.
He couldn’t find that same spark in her eyes now when she finally dragged herself from the tome she was reading. Hepheus had regarded him coolly, then stood and offered him a formal greeting. They had talked of the islands and the north, but skirted any topic that might shed light about how Alyanna planned to accomplish her impossible task.
Jan had also sought out Querimanica and offered him thanks for his healing magic. The gaunt Visani had accepted Jan’s words with grace, but he had also been coy when Jan tried to turn the discussion toward what had brought him to this forsaken corner of the world, in the company of those he once had considered his bitter rivals.
The swordsinger Demian practiced for hours each day in one of the empty great halls, and Jan spent some time watching the Kalyuni’s flashing routines. He had fought and bested his share of warriors from the Mosaic Cities, but he had to admit that the technique and ferocious speed of the swordsinger would make him a dangerous opponent. Jan had thought himself hidden in the shadows, but at the end of one of Demian’s spinning attacks he had suddenly stopped, staring at where Jan stood in the upper galleys. The swordsinger had not moved or said anything for a long, tense moment, and then abruptly he had turned on his heels and strode away.
On the third day inside the mountain, the world changed forever. Jan was inside his quarters, idly plucking out a tune he’d been toying with on his lute, when something happened very far away that made him clutch at his chest, gasping. It was a reverberation, like the tolling of a distant bell, but with such strength and power that he felt like one of the vibrating strings of his instrument, his bones thrumming with the echoes of some distant sorcery.
He stumbled from his room, reeling against the wall to try and steady himself before he toppled over. Jan pressed his face against the cold, rough stone, his thoughts scattered.
He wasn’t sure how long he slumped there, half-conscious. Finally he felt someone pulling on his arm, and slowly, he surfaced, blinking to try and focus on his surroundings.
It was Alyanna. Her eyes were wide and her black hair hung in tangles, as if she had just been pulled from her bed. “Jan! Wake, curse you! We need to go now!”
“What . . . what is happening?” he slurred, pushing himself from the wall.
“It has begun! What we’ve been waiting for!”
She led him stumbling through twisting passages, until they came upon a small chamber he had never seen before. A circular table of gleaming black ebonwood filled the room so completely that there was no space for chairs, and the seven men and women clustered around it had been forced to stand. Hovering above the table was a huge multifaceted jewel the color of a fading bruise, blemished by drifting shreds of darkness that almost looked like ribbons of smoke uncoiling in a twilit sky.
He saw Hepheus and Xillia and Demian and Querimanica, and three others he did not know – one a grossly fat bald man with copper-colored skin, another a small mousy sorceress in gray robes, and the last a beautiful silver-haired woman who –
His mother! Keilan surfaced from the tumbling rapids of Jan’s memories, gasping for air. The pale skin and silver hair, like moonlight on water . . . no, no, he realized after the initial shock had faded, it wasn’t his mother. But close, so close, the hair was the same but the cast of her face was very slightly different – the resemblance was uncanny, though, like glimpsing a ghost . . .
“Weaver, we are ready.”
It was Demian who had spoken, his voice an oasis of calm in the room. The swordsinger seemed unaffected by the roiling sorcery crackling in the air, but the others looked how Jan felt. They swayed slightly, their faces ashen and drawn.
Alyanna moved to the edge of the table and took a deep breath. “There is no time for ceremony. The moment has come when we will either seize the world, or lose everything. Open yourselves to me, and prepare to become what we were destined to be.”
Around the table the sorcerers reached out and clasped each other’s hands. Alyanna gestured for him to join them, and with a slight hesitation Jan stepped forward, completing the circle. Immediately he felt the power of the others flowing through the chain, feeding into Alyanna, whose chest heaved as the strength of seven of the world’s greatest Talents filled her.
“Jan! Join us!” she cried, her fingers tightening in his grip, her long nails digging into his flesh and drawing forth a trickle of blood.
And he did.
He unclenched his power, allowing Alyanna to siphon it from him like how a waterspout draws the ocean up into the sky. He gritted his teeth as he felt her sucking him dry, leaving him a husk of himself, every drop of sorcery wrung from his body.
Alyanna’s face was flushed, and power crackled in her eyes. Her hair writhed in the air, a nest of coiling snakes.
He gasped when he saw the spell she was weaving, its beauty streaking his face with tears. How could she do this thing? What mind could create such a masterpiece of dizzying complexity?
Across from Jan the small woman in the gray robes slumped forward, her neck lolling to one side, as if broken.
“She’s dead, Weaver,” rasped the fat man with copper skin, his face gleaming with sweat, “you’ve drained too much!”
“Close the circle!” Alyanna commanded, “or we’ll all follow her!”
The man let go of the gray-robed woman and reached over her motionless body to take Demian’s hand.
Something was approaching. A vastness, greater than Jan could comprehend. He saw in the wide eyes of the others that they also sensed its coming, a rolling, unstoppable wave as tall as a mountain and as broad as the sky –
It washed over them. Alyanna screamed, her hand spasming in his grip. Jan held on, desperate to keep the chain intact, knowing that if he let go – if any of them let go – that their minds would be shredded, just like the poor, dead woman slumped across the table.
The tendrils of darkness within the jewel
hovering before them pulsed, swelling larger. It was drawing this great force like a lodestone, and Alyanna was deftly manipulating the energy as it filled the jewel, fashioning it into something else and feeding it back again into the gathered Talents.
It rushed into Jan, the terrible power that Alyanna had drawn here, until he felt like he might burst from the strain. What was it? Not raw sorcerous energy like those with the gift drew from the Void; it was something else entirely, although equally as powerful and magnificent. He drank greedily.
A flicker within the flood, a glimpse of another place through the eyes of someone else. Jan was a woman standing in the doorway of a sod house somewhere in the far south, wisps of clouds uncoiling in a mauve sky. A girl – the woman’s daughter, he knew – was playing in the long grass with a wooden horse her husband had carved. Jan watched as a great shadow fell over the small girl, and she looked up curiously, squinting into the distance. Something was building beyond the treetops, a mountain where there had been no mountain before. With a numbing shock he – no, the woman – realized that it was a wave approaching them, a wave even though the sea was hundreds of leagues away.
Another stuttering image, from a balcony in a tower in a distant city. Dark waters surged through the streets below, rising to cover tiled roofs where men and women had gathered; they reached imploringly to the heavens as the sea rushed up to swallow them. With a jarring shock Jan realized that this was the great sorcery the Min-Ceruthans had fashioned, the cataclysmic spell that could obliterate their rival to the south. Why had they unleashed it now? And how had Alyanna known they would?
Then he was in a place he was familiar with, in a city of gleaming black stone crouched in the shadow of the Bones. Nes Vaneth, the greatest city of his people. He was running, his boots slipping in the snow as a terrible dark ice blossomed around him, rushing up to cover the buildings, the ground, his screaming countrymen.
Memories. This torrent of power Alyanna was drawing to them was filled with the final moments of countless lives – thousands of lives, perhaps even millions. The victims of the unimaginable sorcerous stroke and counterstroke the wizards of the north and south had long held over each other. How could Alyanna be channeling these lives into the jewel, and then feeding this river of souls into those gathered around the table?
This was how she planned to realize the dream of the Warlock King, and turn them all into immortals?
Jan felt swollen, gorged on the lives of others – he cried out, trying to pull himself from the rippling chain of power, but he could not break free now . . . and that’s when he felt it, a familiar spark buried within the onslaught of souls coursing through him, the final, radiant memory of the woman he loved more than life itself – ice was creeping into the throne room of Nes Vaneth to claim her as she sat on the dragonbone throne, and for one terrible moment she saw him, and she knew what he had done –
The queen gasped and reeled away from where Jan lay on the stone dais, clutching at her hand. Keilan returned to himself with a jarring shock, collapsing onto his knees as the room spun.
“Majesty,” he said hoarsely, trying to keep himself from slipping into the darkness. Then the queen was there, surprisingly gentle, helping him to stand.
“Keilan, are you all right?”
He glanced at her: a vessel had burst in the queen’s eye, staining it with a bloom of red. The rest of her face was bloodless.
“I’m . . . I’m . . .”
On the dais beside them Jan suddenly contorted, his back arching, as if he had been lanced by great pain. Green fire trickled from his nose, and his eyes snapped open, blazing with power. But he did not see them; instead, he stared emptily at the domed ceiling. Sorcery was building within him, faster than Keilan had ever felt before, until Jan’s body was a dam ready to burst before the surging energies –
The queen reached out towards Keilan as the world erupted around them.
A flower of green flame bloomed in the darkness.
Moments later a wash of sorcery like a great wind came rushing down from Saltstone, battering Senacus where he stood on his balcony staring out into the night. The paladin staggered, and if he hadn’t been leaning against the railing he might have fallen, such was the unexpected force of the magical explosion.
“By the Radiant Father,” he whispered, blinking away the spots the green flash had left in his eyes. What had just happened?
He peered up at the shadowy crenellations and towers picked out against the star-spattered dome of the sky, but the light had vanished completely, as if it had never been.
He heard the door open and close behind him and he turned away from the darkness. Demian had slipped inside and was hurriedly donning a shirt and pants of some shimmering black cloth.
“Did you feel that?” Senacus murmured, moving as if in a daze into the room they shared at The Twisted Serpent.
The shadowblade thrust his sword through a silken tie at his waist. “I did, paladin. That is our signal, I’m sure of it. We should hurry – it will be chaos in the fortress for only a short while.”
“The horses – ”
“Are saddled and ready in the inn’s stables. Once we have the boy we must move quickly. If we are lucky, they won’t realize he’s missing for a few days, and that will be the start we need to escape pursuit. Now, take up your sword. Every moment is precious.”
“What was that sorcery up in the fortress?”
Demian paused for a moment, his eyes passing beyond the Pure to stare at something distant. “A trap, paladin. It was a trap laid long ago, baited with something Cein d’Kara could not resist.” He shook his head, and Senacus had the sense that the shadowblade’s next words were not intended for him. “Always spinning your webs, Weaver. Games within games.”
Weaver? Senacus started to ask another question, but then snapped his mouth shut. Demian was right – they should move quickly, and there would be time for answers later. Ama himself had set him on this path for redemption, and he was not about to disappoint the Radiant Father a second time.
Hastily, he buckled on his sword-belt, replacing the scarred leather scabbard with its ill-balanced iron longsword with the sheath of twisting filigreed silver that held his white-metal blade. Wearing his Pure armor while in the streets of Herath would certainly be too conspicuous, but if he was forced to draw his weapon in Saltstone he wanted the perfect balance of his own sword.
Demian’s gaze lingered on the blade’s copper hilt, but he said nothing. Perhaps the shadowblade realized that if they were discovered they would need every possible advantage. Senacus’s hand went to the relic of Tethys, dangling on its chain around his neck. He dearly hoped he wouldn’t have to shed his disguise while inside Saltstone; if he used his holy power it would be like a candle of bright white flame flaring in a darkened room. He doubted they could escape from a thousand elite Dymorian warriors and dozens of enraged sorcerers if their presence was revealed.
“Stay close to me,” said the shadowblade, and vanished out the door. Senacus hurried to follow him, sketching the circle of Ama in the air and murmuring a prayer imploring for his lord’s favor this night.
They left the inn by way of a small side door used by the servants; it emptied into an alley littered with clumps of nightsoil and refuse from the kitchens. Senacus grimaced as his boot heel skidded on something soft. He wondered how many other paladins of Ama had been forced to creep through muck in order to demonstrate their loyalty and faith. Very few, he guessed.
They pushed deeper into the alley, until they came to a stone wall that soared twice as high as the nearby buildings. This was the outer curtain wall of Saltstone itself, the first of three layers that protected the inner fortress and its towers.
Demian had chosen The Twisted Serpent because it was so far up the Slopes that it nearly hunkered in Saltstone’s shadow. How he planned on getting over these imposing walls he had been rather coy abo
ut, though, when Senacus had asked just that question.
He had imagined climbing spikes or some kind of grapple, but Demian merely went right to the wall and started pulling himself up smoothly, almost like a spider. Senacus gaped in surprise, hurrying over to run his hands along the smooth stone, noting how tiny the grooves were where the great blocks fit together. He concentrated, trying to ascertain whether this was sorcery, but felt nothing. Perhaps it was some strange shadowblade power, like walking between the darknesses.
It took only a few moments for the shadowblade to reach the top and vanish over the battlements. Senacus was still staring up after him, wondering if he should try and follow, when a length of black silk struck his shoulder. So that’s how he was supposed to get up. Gripping one of the knots tied into the silk he started to climb, his boots scrabbling for purchase.
By the time he arrived at the top his arms were aching, and Demian had to help pull him over the parapet. He collapsed on the walkway, breathing hard.
The shadowblade retrieved his rope, coiling it tightly while Senacus recovered. When Demian had finished, he secreted the rope away and crouched down beside him.
“Can you feel the boy?” he whispered.
Senacus cast out with his senses, sifting through the tempest of sorcery swirling within the fortress. “I can. His signature is unique, so bright and strong. The other sorcerer is here as well, the one who first stole him away from me.”
The shadowblade patted his shoulder. “Good.”
Crouched low so that he was not visible over the battlements, Demian began moving quickly along the walkway, motioning for Senacus to follow him. They had only gone a few dozen paces when there was noise ahead: a guardsman making his rounds. Light from his upraised lantern puddled around him. He appeared nervous, Senacus decided, as he kept glancing over his shoulder at the tall tower where the green flash had erupted from earlier.
Senacus tensed, his hand going to his sword hilt, but Demian turned back and shook his head curtly. The assassin crept closer to the battlements beside them, and when he passed into this deeper patch of shadows he simply vanished. Like before, there was no ripple of sorcery. Senacus gritted his teeth. How could his brothers protect the emperor and Menekar from men with abilities such as this? Where did he get his powers?