by T. A. Miles
Maybe a better plan would be to keep ahead of them and continue exploring the caves in search of answers. At the same time, Korsten loathed the idea of being stalked the rest of the night and potentially ambushed at any turn. There was always the possibility of a Reach to get them out, but would that then leave Indhovan to be attacked by the demons with nothing left to preoccupy them?
In spite of being an enthraller, Korsten couldn’t be entirely convinced that he was the primary reason for the Vadryn’s distraction. They had come into the entry by the waterfall of their own accord when chased. They were already inside the caves when Korsten and Merran discovered them. At times, they seemed to be luring them…but to what purpose?
Korsten returned to his initial ideas on trapping the beasts. “What if we tried to contain them?”
He was glad to know that Merran had already considered the same plan when his partner said, “One of us would be caught inside with them, at least temporarily.”
“A Reach would take care of that. Just to the other side of a Barrier wouldn’t be too difficult. Either of us could recover from it easily.”
“Yes, but it would be more complicated working around a Barrier, remember.”
Korsten hadn’t at first, but he did now. Of course, they would be attempting to move around magic that was meant to contain or block. Still... “It could be done, though.”
Merran didn’t argue. “It could be done. It wouldn’t hold them indefinitely.”
“No,” Korsten replied. “Perhaps long enough for us to form a better plan.”
Merran looked over his shoulder, then went to the opening at their level.
Korsten followed him to it and out the other side, onto a narrow ledge with a small wooden bridge connecting across a dark, enclosed space toward another ledge. Obviously, these caves were meant for people to move through them, though not with any ease or comfort. He wondered if they had been in a better state once. The ruins near the entrance and the earlier sections seemed to suggest they were. Considering the torches before, he wondered if Indhovan’s coven only utilized that space anymore, nearer to the surface...and if the rest had been left forgotten, ample space to be infested without anyone immediately noticing. But with such an advantage, why would the Vadryn begin surfacing so recklessly in the city?
“I think we should set the Barriers,” Merran said.
“I’ll finish the seal from inside,” Korsten volunteered.
Merran didn’t argue with him as immediately as Korsten anticipated he might, but he did say, “It could be possible to finish it on this side.”
“But we shouldn’t risk that they’ll chase both of us out faster than we can work the spell. We don’t even know that all of them will come into this space. Stragglers might get sealed out and we’ll still have to deal with them.”
“Better to deal with less of them,” Merran pointed out.
Korsten agreed, but shook his head anyway. “They’re drawn to me. I’m going to lure them.”
“Lure them?” Merran looked at him with the telltale signs of argument on his face.
“Yes,” Korsten concluded. “I’ll use the energy well this may be to emanate Allurance. I’ll be a flame for...”
“For a swarm,” Merran interrupted, but Korsten wouldn’t hear it.
“It’ll give you time to build the Barrier overhead, without them growing suspicious, and then to leave and seal the base.” The more he listened to himself, the less certain he was that he liked his own idea, but he knew it would work. He knew it would work, because he was determined to make it work.
Merran wasn’t convinced, and his frown said as much.
“If they attack, I’ll fend them off with Blast,” Korsten assured. “I’ll perform the Reach the moment you’ve finished.”
“Provided you haven’t expended all of your strength.”
“Merran, you know that you’re my strength,” Korsten said, drawing a very definitive silence from his partner. “You’ve always caught me before I could fall too far. I know that you’re not going to let me fail, and so do you.”
Whether or not Merran wholly agreed, he stopped arguing, and it was decided. Luring the Vadryn—or encouraging them to continue toward them—was their next course of action.
Projecting Allurance consciously, required Korsten to consider instances where he’d done so unconsciously. He thought about the way individuals in the past had been drawn to him, about how he was able to capture attention when he spoke to groups of individuals or performed in some way before them. He thought about what he and Ecland had done to each other, their talents overlapping and coiling about one another as they physically mirrored the movement of magic between them.
It was easier with contact, he thought to himself. Skin contact, eye contact...even a verbal connection as the sound of his voice touched the ears of his audience. It was easier with people, he wanted to conclude, but then he realized that it wasn’t always people that he had charmed.
Demons were drawn to him, because his blood called to them. With his talent that still lay dormant, and which he suspected had been threatening to Emerge since Lilende, it could also sing to them. Song was a talent he was unsure of, and consequentially, one he tried not to think of overly much. Thoughts of it would lead to consideration of the Siren spell…one that few had access to—no one who wasn’t an enthraller, of which Korsten was the only one at the Vassenleigh Order currently. The writings on it were sparse and vague. His predecessor, Adrea, had mastered the spell, Ashwin told him.
If only he could master the tone and the message of Allurance—let alone the Siren spell—and not be taken in by his own song. He came to the cusp of revelation with that thought, but turned away from it, toward the moment at hand. The demons were drawn to him, but they had to be overcome with the need to follow that lure. He couldn’t risk the Vadryn scheming along the way, as they evidently had the ability to do. His and Merran’s success in this moment relied on the demons’ inability to respond outside of what Korsten encouraged them to do. There was no room for error...and no room for trepidation.
He knew instinctively what needed to be done. He could feel the right—even the natural—course of action to take. A part of him was rallied to do it, pressing outward, waiting to be unleashed. He realized as he searched himself this way that it was fear holding him back. He was afraid to make that connection between himself and the enemy.
Perhaps it was knowing that he’d done so once before, and that connection had been squandered through his own inaction, and ultimately used against him. It was as watching something valuable—something vital—float on the surface of a pool, taking on water, sinking slowly out of reach...and letting it do so with scarcely a thought except to lament the fact that it was getting away. He had refused to go into those waters, afraid of the depths, afraid of drowning though he was already being smothered by his own ignorance and by the enemy he refused to see. He’d been such a fool.
“How near are they?”
Merran’s voice at the perimeters of his awareness almost drew him out...to safety, but he held himself within his sphere of self and did not answer. Instead he sought the answer by gradually reaching from his sphere, prodding the darkness with the fingers of his mind...the tendrils of his soul that channeled from its keeper, like the tail of a butterfly flitting through the shadows. He felt Analee literally moving away from him, and he felt that he had her vantage as she flew back up the tunnel and into the corridor above, where a small population of demons clung to the walls, ceiling and floor. Some shifted toward the hole Korsten and Merran had climbed down while others lingered in wait for what their scouts might discover. This was what Korsten had to change before they grew wise to what he and Merran were planning. He had to entice them all forward at once.
I have what you want, Korsten thought, considering the demons very directly, as if he could literally address them with
his thoughts. There was a sway in the atmosphere that he could feel as he did so, like a pull in water. He envisioned himself above a dark sea, drifting like a cloud...descending onto it...touching it...
In his mind...in his soul, he lay himself down upon the water and let himself sink. The coldness of liquid shadow folded around him, brushing across his skin and through his hair. He was floating in a sea of hands that rushed to claim. An instinctive fear of drowning jolted through him as he tried habitually to consider himself the victim taken. Whether against his will or through some naive desire, he began to submit.
He thought of Renmyr and nearly opened his mouth in a gasp that would have brought the dark waters directly into him and fortified his end. In those moments, with the bitter taste of the darkness ebbing upon his lips, he could have convinced himself that Renmyr was watching him, and reached his hand out for Korsten to take.
The intensity of the lure was disarming. Korsten’s lips parted and he nearly breathed in the temptation, but he opened his eyes instead, and looked upon the darkness of the water...dark with a thickness and a warmth that was not water, but blood. A crimson tint rinsed across his vision and the bitterness of dark memories. A waking death became the sweetness of living, of a passion to do so that was so long forgotten it seemed almost foreign to Korsten.
It was in the transition from death to life...from past to present...that the confining cloak of despair and isolation the demons would wrap and drown him in fell away. A power lit within him in its absence, one that radiated from him, like extensions of his arms and fingers, giving him an incredible reach and an incredible desire to influence with that reach...to bring the shadows to himself, to cleanse them in his own blood and cast them out again, as new creations of their former selves. Creations that would be his, ultimately and forever.
In the midst of the notion forming, the presence of the demons began to embrace his spirit, like lost children to a benefactor whose power over them they both feared and trusted. There was a certain intoxication to the sensation, one that marked it a danger and that he was tempted to flee from.
“Korsten!”
Merran’s voice...lightning across a stormy sky.
Korsten rose up toward it from the waters of his mind. Shadows clung to him, like schools of fish caught up in a wave, neither knowing nor caring where they might end up. He opened his eyes in the waking world, seeing black above him...a pitch darkness that moved against faint threads of light, which traced random details of the demons’ forms. They were writhing against a Barrier, one which Merran had succeeded in casting. While some explored the blockade both puzzled and frustrated, others were moving downward, seeping down the walls of the vertical tunnel.
Korsten looked quickly toward Merran, who stood outside of the space, a Barrier spell cast between them. He looked as if he might take it down at any second to physically come in after Korsten.
I’m coming, Korsten assured him in thought and with alert eye contact. He heard the scrambling hands and feet of the Vadryn and could feel their encroaching forms descending all around him. An urge to panic was suppressed and he quickly began working his hands in the casting of a Reach. Looking at Merran made it easier and placed him at his partner’s side within moments, a single step through a gate that stitched the two locations together.
One of the beasts dropped onto the ground behind him, making a grab for his ankle that had Korsten turn around in the same moment the gate fell out of existence. He expected the demon to lurch through and attack, but instead his gaze fell upon the creature writhing angrily behind the Barrier, its arm missing above the elbow. The forearm lay at Korsten’s heel and he kicked it away instinctively, repulsed in that instant. He found himself strangely bemused in the next when he looked upon the demon again, missing a part of one limb and yet not bleeding. It barely looked affected beyond aggravation.
“Do you think this is all of them?” Korsten eventually asked.
“I don’t know,” Merran answered, his gaze momentarily stuck on the limb, which twitched erratically. “The Barriers will weaken with time and distance. We should search the area quickly and decide what to do with them.”
Korsten nodded in agreement. They had a peculiar problem on their hands, one that he wished Ashwin or Eisleth could be present to help resolve.
He and Merran turned away from the temporarily trapped Vadryn and proceeded across the bridge. A matching doorway waited on the other side and he wondered if that meant an identical upward tunnel, in which case they were fortunate not to have had the Vadryn branch off into two groups and surround them.
“I wonder if the coven has been staying out of this place because of the presence of the demons,” Korsten said as his thoughts arrived at the witches by way of the peculiar architecture of the caves.
“I wonder if the coven is more than aware of the presence of demons,” Merran countered.
“You mean in league with them,” Korsten translated. And then he wondered, “How would that benefit them?”
“If they disagree enough with the way the people of Indhovan are choosing to live and grow...”
“But Indhovan is their home also. How would it serve them to have it overrun with the Vadryn and potentially taken over by Morenne?”
Merran shrugged. “Maybe they believe they’ll be overlooked for their assistance and allowed to carry on with life as they see fit. Maybe they believe that they’ll have a better time defending their lifestyle against Morenne than their own neighbors.”
“I used to think that I understood politics,” Korsten said. “Now I’m not so certain.”
“Whatever the reason or intent behind what’s happening here, our task is to resolve it,” Merran reminded, “as quickly as possible, in order to give Indhovan a chance against the coming army.”
“You’re right,” Korsten said. They had to stay on task. The politics in Indhovan were for Vlas and Cayri, and he hoped that they were both well and making better progress.
Seventeen
The governor was brought safely to his bed and appeared, for the most part, to be maintaining a stable condition. He looked to be at rest and not in pain, though he had not regained consciousness.
Cayri would have liked to ask him what he felt had happened to better make an assessment on his state. According to his son and wife, Tahrsel had no history of illness or fits that could explain the event. Unfortunately, that typically set explanation into the realm of the Vadryn. Still, Cayri did not feel that what she witnessed was the result of possession. Influence, perhaps.
A physician had come and seen to the governor’s comfort to the best of his ability, providing an herbal concoction that would help him stay physically relaxed. Along with the physician—a sturdy-framed man perhaps ten to fifteen years Deitir’s senior—came a man approximately a half century old, with shoulder-length hair that was turning silver, sharp gray eyes, and a complexion that may have been red due to stress.
The deputy governor seemed to have little interest in assuming Tahrsel’s duties long enough to comfortably transition Deitir into the position, a position Deitir also appeared to have little desire to take. If the Vadryn had designs on Tahrsel’s role as chief citizen of Indhovan, they were potentially losing their hold. And if neither the deputy governor nor Deitir were acting agents of Morenne and potential instruments of the Vadryn, then who was?
Cayri didn’t suspect Ilayna. Considering what Irslan’s uncle had written about Konlan, it seemed plausible that one of the two friends could have been such an instrument, whether wittingly or unwittingly. Vaelyx had been imprisoned for the last twenty years and was formerly an ally to the Vassenleigh Order. Ceth or Ashwin—or any of the other priests the man had come into contact with—would have detected demonic influence, which only meant that the man wasn’t possessed or being controlled by demons twenty years ago. Anything could have occurred in the time he’d spent locked away, perhaps l
osing hope or his mind.
And now he was out...with Vlas looking for him. She hoped that Vlas would be safe in these ever-changing conditions. He was smart and he was capable, but he was also headstrong.
“Do you know what’s wrong with him?” Ilayna asked.
At first, Cayri thought the other woman was addressing the physician and did not answer immediately. When she realized the lady’s gaze was settled on her, she shook her head in reply. To hopefully add some comfort, she also said, “I suspect it was the effect of an outside influence, which could also explain why his behavior was so unusual.”
“Is this influence ongoing?” Ilayna wanted to know next. “Is this going to get worse?”
“I can’t say anything for certain at this time,” Cayri replied honestly. “You and Deitir should maintain vigilance, and stay with him. I’m going to do everything within my power to help you resolve this.”
She was referring to them, as a family. Too many families had been damaged by this war and the Vadryn. It was difficult to fully realize that from her position, removed from family as most in Edrinor understood it. To a woman like Ilayna it may have seemed that Cayri had no hope of understanding it. She did, though. Her family was her fellow priests. She was a daughter in some ways, a sister in others. She’d been a lover, if not a wife or a mother. She understood the significance of connection between people and among them. This war was not only about demons or injustice, it was about people and their relationships to one another surviving it intact. She was determined to help the Tahrsels overcome this and thereby others—potentially an entire city of individuals reliant on their leadership—as well.
Irslan felt dissatisfied with his conversation with Konlan. He felt oddly disappointed, but more importantly he felt concerned. No matter what conflict of personality or politics Konlan and Vaelyx may have had, there was still a friendship between himself and Konlan, one nearly twenty years old. That alone demanded more satisfaction than what he currently felt. That, more than anything, had turned him back around before he’d gone far and returned him to Konlan’s door. He knocked and was admitted entrance by a servant who immediately tried to enforce that Konlan was retiring for the night and taking no visitors. In the face of the man’s staunch insistence, Irslan lied.