by T. A. Miles
Korsten followed his partner. “I won’t.”
Merran cast him a questioning glance as they moved toward the tight line of buildings, stories stacked atop one another.
“Neither she nor her mother seem overly concerned with the state of affairs here,” Korsten reminded and their conversation regarding the two may have continued, but for the repeat of the clacking.
They both drew still, studying the buildings. Korsten didn’t know whether it was he or Merran who first spied the sliver of an alleyway drawing a narrow line of night between the structures, but they headed for it at the same time.
“There’s someone,” Korsten announced quietly as a form came into view atop a long flight of stairs that presumably connected the current street and the one above.
“I see them,” Merran replied, eyes on the figure, following visually, though the both of them physically came to a halt within the shadow at the alley entrance. A few paces ahead a lantern hung from a bracket along the wall, casting a soft glow onto the lowest steps.
“Do you suspect they’ve seen us?” Korsten asked.
“My suspicion is that seeing us was their intention.”
And now Korsten’s mind was on Vlas’ insistence that the Vadryn were acting as cognizant agents in Morenne’s strategy. If ever they were going to find out, now was perhaps as good a time as any.
The top of the stairs brought Korsten and Merran to the street above, as Korsten anticipated it would. They stood at the highest step, scanning the next shadowed route between buildings.
“This way,” Merran said, and Korsten went along without question.
The buildings loomed overhead, eyes seeming to peer over the roofs at them in the form of many lanterns—light seemed something Indhovan was fond of, in spite of the fact that more light seemed to only cast more shadow. The sea air felt heavy, full of presence. There was a current beneath it…an energy.
Korsten wanted to ask Merran if he felt it, but the chase was upon them, announced only by Merran’s sudden falling into quicker motion. Looking in the direction his colleague was headed, Korsten saw what he needed to; a figure slightly bent in shape, but no slower for it, charging along the edge of the shadows.
A brief panic flared within Korsten as he reminded himself that a swiftly moving Vadryn in physical form was one with full control over that form. He prepared himself mentally and spiritually for a performance of Release and knew that Merran was doing the same. This would be twice in as many nights, but this ousting would be more delicate than the first. If the demon and the person had mingled too long in the same body, separation would be more difficult. The demon would have a firmer hold and be less inclined to relinquish its source for vitality. If they weren’t cautious and quick about it, the Vadryn would potentially elect to sacrifice its host in order to briefly gorge itself on the victim’s blood and the strength it offered.
The figure dove into a passage between buildings. A brief pause and a glance exchanged between them was all the communication required for Korsten and Merran to announce that they were taking separate paths.
Merran stayed on the direct route, following the figure, and Korsten took one of the alleyways with the hope of heading off their quarry. The passage was particularly narrow and not the best choice, Korsten soon realized. It brought him abruptly to a brief stair and a wall firmly marking the landing as the route split in two directions; another stair to his left and a windowed passage to his right. While the windows were open archways that may have looked out on the street below, it was not the direction he wanted to go in. Not yet.
Korsten took the stairs, bounding up them, past the occasional doorway marked by lantern and eventually onto an accessible area which housed more doorways facing one another along a wide course to the opposite side of the space. Small stoops and potted plants nestled in front of the doors, suggested residential and Korsten was fleetingly grateful that the majority of the city’s population had chosen to remain indoors lately.
Looking over the low wall that lined the upper level, Korsten searched the street several stories below for any signs of Merran or the figure. He continued moving forward as he did so, toward another stairway directly across from the one he’d come up. The stillness of the streets made the water rushing through them that much more apparent, a presence all its own and one that drew Korsten’s eye to it more than once. He was forced to leave his fascination with it behind as he descended the stairs.
In the corner of his vision, hanging crystals beckoned for his attention, but he resisted the urge to stop and study. He hurried down to a landing which overlooked a separate corridor. Leaning over the railing, he looked in both directions, spotting Merran first as their paths verged on intersecting. Looking again toward the water, he searched more deliberately for the figure. Shadows lay on top of shadows, making it difficult to discern much of anything.
“Do you see it?” Merran asked from below, slowing to a halt.
Korsten started to shake his head, distracted by a sudden pang of malignant warmth—the sort he’d come to associate with the Vadryn—which drew his gaze across the narrow passage.
The figure was there on the opposite side, climbing swiftly up the corner of the building and toward a railing opposite Korsten’s. There was no time for spell casting just yet and the proximity was too close for Blast. He would only succeed in hindering all bodies present, were he to cast the spell now.
Merran understood this as well and also forwent spell casting as he ran for the stairs on the opposite side.
While the figure was grasping the upper railing, and hurling itself onto the landing—performing both actions one after the other—Korsten stepped back from the low barrier in front of him and then ran forward, stepping up onto the railing and launching himself across the narrow gap. His feet found the opposite rail moments before Merran arrived at the landing.
They both gave chase, following the figure—the demon, Korsten was certain—down a lengthy, slender passage of arched windows on either side.
The figure was bolting now, disinterested in confrontation. As it moved through a patchwork of light and shadow, Korsten contemplated the oddness of its gait; not suffering or awkward, but merely peculiar. The legs seemed overlong and bent more like a dog’s legs, or a cat’s…yet it was the size of a man. The arms appeared normal, though strong. The hands perhaps were unnaturally large. It also didn’t appear to be fully clothed, if it was clothed at all. The form seemed only loosely a man’s body, but at the same time it wasn’t an animal’s. The Vadryn had been known to inhabit either or…but something in between…
Korsten wasn’t able to extend his chain of contemplation any further. The Vadryn abandoned the corridor, leaping onto one of the arched ledges and toward the street with fiercely abrupt movements. Korsten felt particularly driven to the task at hand, as if the escaping figure were vital words on the edge of his lips, threatening to lose themselves forever. He veered toward the nearest window, his foot touching the ledge lightly as he vaulted into the air, heedless of the drop.
Merran gave a brief verbal protest that Korsten didn’t fully hear while he concentrated on the hand gestures necessary to perform a Wind spell.
It was a theory of his he’d been working on; that he could use the Wind spell to manipulate the air around him to be more than a single directional force…that he could provide enough current and movement of that current to essentially float. It had worked in practice on books and small articles of furniture.
He felt a dismal rush of failure as he too quickly pursued the demon toward street level. The initial arrival of the spell may have even hastened the Vadryn’s descent. It wasn’t until he began to slow marginally and drift off a direct path to the ground that Korsten realized the spell might be working at least somewhat in his favor as well. Unfortunately, he helplessly envisioned himself hurled into the rushing canal, rather than carried to the street.<
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His body met with a loosely solid sensation not long before disaster. The intangible force buffeted him back toward the street and he felt it a few more times on the way downward, seeming to guide him, as if he were being passed from one hand to another toward the ground. That was not his own doing, he knew, and he would thank Merran for what he presumed to be hasty Barriers later.
The Vadryn reached the street quicker and more directly—and perhaps with less sensation of bruising—than Korsten, who made a gifts-granted graceful tumble onto the cobblestones not long after the demon hit squarely on all fours. In the moonlight Korsten could see more clearly now that their quarry was not a man, but decidedly only manlike. The face held sparse features and small, almost non-existent ears. The jaw was oddly strong, juxtaposed against the subtlety of the rest of its bald head. It looked like an unfinished sculpture. Its skin was even the color of clay, blended with deeper red hues.
The thought trailed Korsten’s movement as he pursued the once again running Vadryn. Presumably Merran was finding his own way to street level and one that was assuredly better thought out than Korsten’s had been.
The Vadryn loped across cobblestones, darting in and out of shadow. It made small looks over its shoulder that had Korsten wondering if it wanted to be followed, or if it was overly concerned about the fact that it had engaged a pursuit. He decided to test its behavior, taking a moment when the demon was focused on its course to alter his own.
He ran toward the wall that lined the canal. With a quick planting of his foot into one of the oval portals, he gave himself enough height to reach the top of the wall and quickly lofted himself up onto it. He held himself low on the wide rim, his legs tucked under him and his hands grasping the edges to either side.
Water raced by to his right, ridges of white crashing over one another beneath moon and lamplight several feet below. He could feel the wetness of the water as its violent rush created a thick mist above it.
He couldn’t recall a time when he’d been particularly nervous over heights or water, though there had been plenty accounts in the last thirty years when he’d panicked exquisitely over a demon. His deep fear of them was perhaps not quite so deep anymore, though he still felt a chill to watch this creature, which moved half-draped in the shadow of the wall, still casting glances behind it. It was not stopping, so Korsten rose and moved quickly along the wall.
He came to a sudden halt and crouched down once again when the Vadryn performed a hasty turn around. The reason why became apparent when a brilliant flash of light doused the street and wall, like a sudden crash of water, rinsing back the shadows for a lingering few seconds, during which Korsten averted his eyes enough to avoid being blinded.
Blast, performed properly, was not as burdensome on the caster, which provided a small window in which to follow up with another spell or whatever further action was required. Merran must have Reached to a point that put himself in the demon’s path. As a result, the beast’s path was hastily altered.
With ease, the oddly proportioned demon hurled itself onto the wall. It crouched at the top, matching a statue’s stoicism for a fleeting instant before its gleaming eyes located Korsten. Apparently, the time for confrontation had come; the beast was coming across the wall at a pace that didn’t allow for fear of heights or water.
Korsten rose and threw himself backward in one motion, flipping his body over. His hands met the wall briefly as he carted his legs above him and swiftly returned his feet to the top of the wall. He held his perch only briefly and repeated the backflip twice while the demon took heavy swings at him with its large hands open to grab or claw; Korsten couldn’t determine which while he concentrated on keeping himself out of reach.
Merran cast a Binding spell from below, holding the demon in place, proving that the body was, in fact, a physical form and subject to physical influences.
Korsten took the moment his partner provided them and planted his feet, carefully going through the motions required with his hands to perform a Release. The air rippled and surged between his hands and the held demon, which Merran unbound in that moment. The force of the spell knocked the body back. Korsten prepared himself for the emergence of the corrupted spirit within it, summoning the material embedded within his hand and forming a long, narrow blade with a simple grip.
Below, Merran had drawn his own sword.
The Vadryn’s vacated body tumbled awkwardly along the top of the wall several paces and began to slide off in the direction of the water. Korsten was less interested in where it should end up and searched the night air and the surface of the wall for the smoky traces of a disembodied demon. His eyes abandoned the search and went back to the demon’s vessel when it caught itself with a fierce grip on the edge of the wall and swung itself back up.
Korsten opened his mouth to protest what he was seeing, but his breath wedged itself between the forming and the speaking of the words, losing them to the moment. The moment itself was lost when a force abruptly grabbed hold of Korsten at the shoulder and dragged him aggressively toward the water.
He quickly drew his blade back into his hand as he fell, catching a glimpse of a form identical to the Vadryn who had defied Release hoisting itself onto the wall with overlong arms. Korsten managed to grip one of the wall’s open carvings on his way down, the skin on the underside of his fingers objecting to the rough edging while his shoulder and elbow pulled in unison. He was unable to see Merran. However, the beasts didn’t seem interested in attacking either of them now.
The second loped along the wall to join the first, Korsten’s gaze following until a hand set down on his own. He knew by touch that it was Merran’s and looked to see evidence of the other priest’s black coat through the wall’s open space above him.
“Is there any way to climb up on that side?” Merran asked through the opening, arranging his grip around Korsten’s wrist.
Korsten looked along the smooth, wet wall and down toward the water, bracing one foot against the stone in the process. His view was primarily of water and the constructed barriers that kept it in place and channeling toward the sea.
While he studied his inside perspective of the canal, he said to Merran, “There’s nothing to climb on.” He spoke loudly enough that his voice would be audible above the sound of the water, letting his voice drop somewhat while he considered aloud the possibility of a spell. “I could chance Wind again. Though…maybe I’d better not, considering the activity already in the air, with thanks to the water and its confines.”
Merran knew him well enough to distrust his muttering, or his silence, whichever it may have been to Merran with the wall between them and the water crashing over itself below. “Korsten,” he said firmly.
“Maybe you ought to climb up and throw down your coat!” Korsten called to his partner, lifting his face to project his voice.
Merran agreed by squeezing Korsten’s wrist and withdrawing his hand.
Korsten maintained his braced position on the wall, reaffirming his grip on the stone. The spaces weren’t far from one another. Merran would be able to use one of them for a foothold, same as Korsten had and he was easily strong enough to pull himself onto the top of the wall.
As long as the Vadryn didn’t return and shove Merran into the canal, their current predicament would shortly be behind them and they could concentrate on where the Vadryn may have gone. More importantly, Korsten wanted to know just how many of them were in the city. In all their experience—even as recently as Endmark—the Vadryn had remained true to their territorial nature, scarcely tolerating one another within a close proximity.
What Korsten had not anticipated, in spite of Vlas’ warning that the Vadryn were becoming more deliberate agents to Morenne, was a third demon assisting the second rather than inciting a conflict. Their peculiar forms were unexpected as well.
While he pondered the current state of affairs, Korsten let his gaze wander
the canal once again, looking toward the waterfall.
The cliff hovering over Indhovan disgorged the water from a wide point high along the face. The river flowing toward the sea from deeper inland was brought to submission by a dam that really was a feat of architecture in Edrinor. So was all of Indhovan, for that matter. Korsten visually followed the great sheaves of water plunging toward the massive canal, his eyes catching on a line of earth where the natural wall met the manmade one. There were several natural shelves there, and a…
Korsten narrowed his eyes as he focused on the exposed space of the cliff, descrying what appeared to be an opening…a cave?
A swath of black moved through the corner of his vision. He looked to see Merran’s coat slapping the wall just above him. The priest it belonged to was perched on top of the wall, one hand braced against the rim.
“Grab hold of it,” Merran instructed needlessly—Korsten was already reaching for it with his free hand, even as his gaze stuck on the waterfall and the rock face behind it.
Taking a fistful of the dark fabric, Korsten raised his other hand up to do the same, bringing his previously hanging foot up to occupy the opening in the wall as he pushed himself toward the top, assisted by Merran’s pulling.
When Korsten was within reach, Merran helped guide him up the rest of the way and Korsten seated himself on the wall, one leg draping it while he folded the other in the space between himself and his partner, which was also occupied by Merran’s coat.
Merran knelt free of his heaviest physical layer, a close-fitting black shirt, and equally dark trousers providing a portrait of a more casual Merran, one rarely observed. While Korsten had seen his colleague even further dressed down, the rare appearance did still earn Merran a second glance and a brief moment stolen to admire his strong-boned features before the current situation summoned him back to it.
Korsten nodded toward the waterfall. “There’s a cave.” While Merran looked for it, Korsten added, “It’s situated low, adjacent to the wall on this side of the canal.”