by Alec Hutson
“No,” Keilan croaked, and then coughed. “I saw him from before.”
“You mean, when you were in your village?”
“No. The queen . . . we used sorcery. I helped her to catch a glimpse of the past. The deep past, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Before the cataclysms.”
Senacus let go of Keilan, realizing that he was gripping the boy’s arm too tightly. “You are not well.”
“He is a sorcerer.”
“No,” Senacus whispered, “that is not possible.”
“How can the paladins of Ama ally themselves with sorcerers?”
“He is not a sorcerer!”
Keilan coughed again, wet and hacking. “I remember . . . I remember his name. From my vision. Demian. He was a swordsinger of the Kalyuni Imperium. And a wizard.”
“He is a shadowblade now,” Senacus murmured numbly, his thoughts whirling. Suspicions that he had fought to suppress since their assault on Saltstone rose again, demanding to be heard. Demian scaling the walls like a spider. Demian in the courtyard, opening a shimmering portal to somewhere else, where his dark brothers waited. Demian holding Nel and that swordsman immobile, as if he had turned the very air around them to stone. The mysterious powers of a shadowblade . . . or a sorcerer?
“But I could feel nothing,” Senacus said softly.
Keilan was quiet for a long moment. “Where is your holy light? Perhaps just as you can hide your power, so can sorcerers.”
The lightning-strike of this truth exploded in Senacus’s mind, and suddenly the events of the last few months seemed clearer, etched stark against the darkness through which he had been struggling.
The Crimson Queen had learned how to hide the power of her servants from the Pure. Why could another not do the same?
But if Demian was a sorcerer . . . the thought was almost too horrific to entertain. The High Seneschal, the High Mendicant, could they be unwitting pawns in some unfathomable game between wizards? Was he delivering Keilan from the queen to another sorcerer far more wicked, one who employed such vicious servants as the kith’ketan?
His hand had gone slack on the reins, and his horse slowed its pace, cocking its head as if it sensed its master’s uncertainty.
One of Herath’s night gates loomed in front of them. There were only a handful of these set into the city’s walls, kept open for the caravans or travelers who arrived after the last blush of twilight had faded from the sky. Barely large enough for a wagon to trundle through, and guarded at all times.
The soldiers flanking the door regarded him curiously as he approached, but none hailed him or questioned his purpose for leaving at this late hour. Senacus stared into the deep blackness beyond the gate, trying to order the feverish rush of his tumbling thoughts. His palms were cold and slick.
Why would a shadowblade serve the will of Ama?
The High Mendicant had seen Demian in a dream, and then he had appeared the next day, as if summoned.
A sorcerer. Could it be true?
Green fire in the night. That is our signal, I’m sure of it.
But who had sent the signal?
Always spinning your webs, Weaver.
Webs . . . Senacus felt the old cuts upon his legs begin to itch. Spiders, an endless horde rushing out of the darkness, razor-sharp mandibles slicing his flesh, black ichor splashing his armor and trickling beneath his mail to burn his skin . . .
Senacus nudged his horse closer to one of the slumping, half-asleep guardsmen. Then he gripped Keilan and lifted him from his horse, handing the limp boy down to the surprised soldier.
“The boy is an apprentice in the Scholia. Return him to Saltstone.”
The guardsman gaped at him. “Who . . . who are you?”
Senacus clutched the relic of Tethys hanging upon his breast. “I don’t know,” he said, then kicked his horse’s flank and plunged into the darkness beyond the walls.
We burned him this morning.
Nel’s voice, echoing in the darkness.
He’s with his brothers now. He’s whole again. Or I hope so; I never believed in an afterlife, to be honest. The Abyss. The Golden City. The Pale Fields. Just fictions to give comfort for weak minds. But Xin . . . he was so certain that he could still feel them out there, in the beyond, that I almost started to believe they were really waiting for him.
Keilan groped towards consciousness.
Do you think he’ll wait for me?
Golden light, leaking through latticed shutters. Keilan struggled awake in sweat-damp sheets, his head throbbing. He was alone, in a richly-appointed room striped by shadows and sunlight.
But Nel had been here, he was sure of it, sitting on the edge of his bed and waiting for him to wake. As she had once before, in Vis, so that together they could go visit Xin.
Xin was dead.
Keilan knew this to be true; it was a hard stone of certainty lodged in his chest, pressing upon his heart.
Xin. His easy grin as he’d flourished a wooden sword. His laughter as Nel had used some blackguard trick to disarm him while practicing in a forest glade. The joy in his face as the mysterious squiggles on the page they’d hunkered over in the seeker’s wagon had magically transformed into a word he knew.
Keilan groaned, struggling to sit. The air in the chamber was heavy, fetid. It smelled like a sickroom.
What had happened last night? He remembered the flash atop Ravenroost, green fire rushing over the queen’s wards. Then stumbling through twisting corridors. Two men looming over him; one who was, impossibly, the Pure who had first kidnapped him from his village. The other . . .
Keilan shuddered. A pale man, wrapped in darkness. But also familiar. He had seen him before, in the memories of someone from an ancient, vanished age. Demian, swordsinger of the Kalyuni Imperium. An immortal sorcerer, who like Jan had drunk greedily of the lives of thousands. And there had been others who had done the same.
A beautiful sorceress, blazing with power and purpose. Alyanna.
A tall, gaunt man, who had healed Jan as he lay injured from the wyvern’s ambush. Querimanica.
A woman with shimmering silver hair, her face flushed as she strained to control the sorcery surging around the table during the ceremony. She had fed this power into Alyanna, allowing her to shape it into the spell that would render them all eternal.
His mother.
No, it hadn’t been. But the resemblance was too close to be a coincidence. If his mother had lived another ten years she would have looked exactly the same, he was sure of it.
Who was she?
Keilan swung his legs over the side of the bed and found a pair of gray cloth shoes waiting. He slipped them on. There were two doors in the room, and Keilan moved sluggishly toward the one with sunlight trickling around the edges of its frame. He needed some fresh air to clear his head.
Keilan opened the door, and had to blink and shield his eyes from the brightness. He stood at the edge of a sprawling garden, on a stone path that wended among sprays of colorful blossoms and carefully sculpted hedges. Scattered among the beds of flowers were statues carved into the shapes of fantastical creatures, some of which he recognized from his reading of The Tinker’s Bestiary.
Slowly, he shuffled out onto the path, the aches in his body melting away as the warm sunlight washed over him. Keilan reached down to cup a blue, bell-shaped flower that hung out over the path. He knew this flower. Sella had brought him a bouquet of them once, a fortnight after he’d lost his mother. She’d held them out shyly for him to take, tears starting to glimmer in her mis-matched eyes. Then they’d gone down to the rocks together and thrown them into the water, one by one, and watched them drift away.
Soul’s Tears. That’s what they were called in his village. Flowers for the dead.
Keilan gently twisted the blossom from its thorned stem, then resumed walking. He could hear
the faint gurgle of running water, and moved in that direction, until he passed through an arched silver trellis and found himself standing before a huge stone dragon. The beast was rearing back on its hind legs, as if poised to lunge upon some helpless prey. Water leaped from its mouth and fell into a pond of murky green water, which was pocked by lily pads and the black shells of sunning turtles.
Keilan went to the edge of the pond and tossed in the flower.
“Goodbye, Xin,” he whispered as the ripples formed by the falling water pushed the blossom across the pond’s surface. It spun slowly as it floated, until it came to rest against the huge, mottled shell of an ancient turtle.
Keilan was just about to glance away when he saw the petals of the flower shiver, as if stroked by invisible fingers. The blossom lifted from the water, dripping, and Keilan gasped, rushing to the edge of the pond. As if annoyed by the unwanted commotion the old turtle slipped beneath the surface and vanished.
Keilan watched, dumbstruck, as the flower drifted over the pond, borne by a wind he could not feel. He turned to follow its path as it floated past him, only a few span from his head. Then it was plucked from the air by the slim white fingers of Cein d’Kara.
The queen leaned against the silver trellis, studying the flower in her palm. She let it fall, watching it flutter to the ground with a thoughtful expression.
When it had come to rest, she raised her head and met Keilan’s surprised gaze. The realization of what he should be doing struck Keilan like lightning.
“Your Majesty,” he cried, dropping to one knee.
“Rise,” she said, motioning for him to stand. “Get up.”
There was an edge to her voice he hadn’t heard before. She sounded almost . . . frustrated?
He stood, and she pushed herself from the trellis, coming closer. The queen looked so young, barely older than Nel. She hadn’t applied whatever it was that she usually used to whiten her skin, and her hair, always perfectly brushed when he’d seen her before, now hung in tangles. It seemed like she had just awoken. Keilan realized with a start that he probably looked the same, and had to fight back the urge to smooth down his hair.
“I am sorry about your friend, Keilan. He was one of many we lost last night.”
Keilan swallowed away a lump in his throat. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“They wanted you,” she said, reaching up to brush away a red curl that had fallen across her face. He noticed that she had been cut above her left eye, and a bruise darkened her cheek.
“I’m so sorry if this is my fault.”
She waved away his words. “Do you know why they came for you?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t. But do you think it could be related to what we saw in that man’s memories? The terrible sorcery they did?”
“You remember that.”
“I do. Your Majesty . . . I saw something when we were in his mind. There was a woman, with silver hair. Did you notice her?”
The queen nodded, her eyes narrowing slightly.
Keilan knew he must sound crazy, but he pushed on anyway. “She looked almost exactly like my mother,” he blurted, and then the words came tumbling out. “I never knew her family, where she’d come from. My father pulled her from the sea after a storm. But that sorceress in the man’s mind must be related to her. Has Jan recovered? I want to ask him about her.”
Something flickered in the queen’s eyes. “Keilan,” she said softly, “Jan . . . he did not survive.” Her words were like a blow to his stomach. No, I must know!
“His mind was destroyed by the sorcery unleashed, and though he did live on for a while last night, in the end his body couldn’t endure by itself. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Your Majesty.” His voice seemed to come from very far away.
“But it is,” the queen said bitterly, running a hand through her tangled hair. She let out a shuddering sigh, glancing down – and for the first time, Keilan thought, she looked like the young woman she truly was.
“I brought him into Saltstone. My desire to know, to understand, made me push caution aside. How I’ve wanted to know the secrets of the glorious past! All these deaths are on my head, so many of my old friends . . .”
“You couldn’t know, Your Majesty.”
Cein d’Kara looked up, her eyes blazing. “I am the queen, the mother of all my subjects. They pledge their lives to me, and I pledge my life to them. Never again will my weakness cause them harm. This I promise.”
Keilan found Nel in the stables saddling her horse. Several bulging travel bags lay beside her in the straw; it looked like she was prepared for a long journey.
“Nel,” he said, and she turned. Her eyes were red, her mouth set in a thin line.
“Keilan, you’re awake. How do you feel?”
“All right. My head still aches, but the rest of me is much better.”
“Good.” Silence stretched between them for a long moment. “Did you . . . did you hear about Xin?”
“Yes.”
Nel blinked away tears, wiping at her cheeks. “He died fighting to save us.”
Keilan took two steps toward Nel, then hesitated. “I know that’s how he would have wanted to die. And he did save you – and me, as well, because if that man in black had lived I’m sure he would have met up with the Pure later, and the paladin would not have abandoned me at the gate.”
“I’m not sure if Xin killed him,” Nel said, sniffling. “I think he did. He put a span of steel into his side, but we never found the shadowblade’s body.”
“He wasn’t a shadowblade. Or at least, that’s not all he was.”
Nel shuddered. “Yes. He used some sorcery on me so I couldn’t move. I’ve never felt so helpless.”
Keilan gestured at the bags she’d piled in the straw. “You’re leaving?”
Nel lifted one of the bags and secured it to the horse’s saddle. “I’m going after that paladin. He must know more about what happened last night. I want to know who ordered the attack, and where I can find them.”
“And then?”
Nel flicked her wrist, and Chance appeared in her hand. “Then I’m going to show them a bit of Warren justice.”
“I want to go with you.”
Nel snorted. “The queen would have my head on a spike. Whoever is behind this attack tried their best to get you out of Saltstone. You’ll be vulnerable outside these walls.”
“I’m vulnerable within them, apparently.”
Nel shook her head. “You can’t come.”
“They know I’m here. Can the queen protect me if the shadowblades return? Or another sorcerer? I would be safer with you, on the road.”
Something wavered in Nel’s face, and Keilan pressed on.
“I think the paladin knows something about my mother. The shadowblade he was with, I saw him in a vision with a woman who looked so much like my mother that they could have been sisters.”
Nel eyed him skeptically. “Your mother? A vision? Keilan, is your head addled?”
“A sorcerous vision. The queen summoned me to Ravenroost last night to conjure it forth. What I saw was true, I’m sure of it.”
The knife chewed on her lip, considering what he had said. Finally, she reached into one of her travel bags and tossed him a cloak.
“Wrap yourself in that and pull down the cowl so no one can see your face. The queen dispatched rangers this morning to hunt down the paladin, and I want to catch up with them before they reach him. Go saddle your horse – we have to ride now.”
A door creaked.
Shadows moved behind the cloth covering his eyes, and his jaw ached from being forced open by the piece of metal shoved between his teeth.
Footsteps, coming closer.
He shifted, trying yet again to lift his manacled hands and remove the thing in his mouth. But the c
hains connecting him to the wall went taut before he could reach far enough.
A vague shape loomed over him.
He thrust within himself, scrabbling for his power, but the sorcery trickled through his cupped hands like water.
Fingers touched the edges of his blindfold and lifted it off. The Crimson Queen squatted beside him, her face impassive. There was no warmth in her eyes. No mercy.
“Jan,” she said. Her long red curls were tangled, and a bruise was spreading over her cheek.
He tried to ask her what was going on, but with the bit in his mouth his words came out as gibberish.
She pursed her lips. “You must be asking why you are bound like this.”
He managed a slight nod, the thick metal torc around his throat cutting into his chin.
“It is because you are an assassin. You were dispatched to kill me, with a weapon hidden inside your mind.”
He tried to think back, but the last thing he remembered was drinking the cup of moonblossom tea the queen had handed to him atop Ravenroost. What had happened after?
“Nearly a hundred of my subjects died last night, including some of my closest friends. That creature Alyanna nearly killed me.”
Alyanna had come to Saltstone? If the queen was still alive, did that mean that she was dead?
“I know your great crime, Jan. What you wanted to forget. I saw it in your memories.”
And he knew, too. Jan moaned as the images came flooding back. Liralyn on her throne, crying out in agony as the ice rushed up to claim her. Her soul, her life, dragged across the world by Alyanna’s monstrous crystal, then twisted and driven into the sorcerers around that table.
They had fed on her. He had fed on her. Jan slumped to the stone floor, a hollowness spreading in his chest.
The queen stood. “The torc around your neck is an ancient artifact from the Imperium. It was called a collar, I believe, and I’m sure you know of it.”
He did. Sorcerers accused of crimes had been bound by them. He would not be able to reach his sorcery while wearing it.
She lingered for a moment, looking down at him. “Perhaps one day I will trust you enough to free you. But that will not be soon, I think.”