by T. A. Miles
“I left my gloves in the parlor,” he said, stepping around the doorman with a smile that he’d been told appeared particularly harmless.
“I’ll get them for you,” the doorman offered.
Irslan smiled broader. “No, no... I recall right where they are. Is the light still on?”
Something in that defeated the man and he gestured toward the parlor door with a slight, perfunctory bow. “Yes, it’s still on.”
Irslan thanked him, making his way casually to and through the doorway. He pushed it only partially closed behind him and swiftly set his intentions on the adjoining door to the study. He didn’t believe that Konlan had retired to bed and the two of them had more talking to do; he was decided and determined. He doubted very highly that Konlan would insist he be escorted out and he doubted as well that the doorman would be held to blame for Irslan’s stubbornness.
Crossing the parlor in a few brisk steps, Irslan opened the study door, his gaze quickly searching the room for his friend. True to the doorman’s word, he appeared to be gone. Perhaps he had gone to his bed after all. Irslan began to retreat from the door, stopping when something caught his eye. Beyond the sofa, the rug appeared to be turned up from the floor at the corner. For a space as immaculately kept as Konlan’s home, that seemed too peculiar to ignore.
With a glance over his shoulder at the parlor door—where he half expected to see the porter waiting—Irslan stepped further into the study. Along the way to the sofa he argued with himself that someone may have simply tripped over the rug and not turned it back—perhaps Konlan if he’d been in a vexed hurry after their conversation. In spite of his argument, Irslan continued to the sofa, leaning over the back of it when he arrived to peer down at the floor.
Beneath the overturned layer of heavy fabric, the polished wooden floor boasted a section that appeared stripped of its lacquer and upon that raw area of planks were engravings. The pattern of the etchings formed a circle with a smudge or char in the center. Irslan stepped around the sofa to inspect it closer, kneeling down to run his fingers over the rough carvings.
Markings of such a nature could be found in some of the older places of the city...and in some of his books. He knew it was a generally shared script among magic users. The priests of Vassenleigh and purist covens articulated them differently. But these...these were set apart from either of those groups. The crude simplicity of the core shapes was similar to the coven’s, but the somewhat decorative accents placed within or around some of the characters reminded Irslan of his uncle’s early stories and writings on the Islands. The folklore there was rich, Vaelyx had told him...and fascinating.
Irslan let himself recall now, that his uncle had seemed mildly obsessed with their legends and artifacts just before his arrest. Irslan considered with sudden clarity the fit of temper his uncle had demonstrated over Ceth’s apparent lack of interest in his discoveries. At that time Tahrsel had banned Vaelyx from his house and summarily from his presence. He’d tried going through both the deputy governor and Konlan, insisting that he had vital information.
Whether or not Vaelyx had given that information to Konlan, Irslan had been left to his young ignorance. At the time, he believed that his uncle was breaking down mentally over the loss of his brother. It may have been Vaelyx’s response to his father’s death that governed Irslan’s own reaction. He decided to become the stability in the Treir house. Shortly afterward, he stood alone in his stability, his uncle having been arrested for erratic and dangerous behavior that others believed threatened the governor and his family.
Irslan agreed, in spite of himself and Vaelyx, that his uncle would probably benefit from some time in considered isolation. He would wait for him to quiet his nerves and return to everyone as sane and steady as they recalled him. Irslan didn’t know when he stopped waiting and when the constable hall became the place where his uncle lived, requiring only a visit from time to time. The recent host of priests had begun stirring a greater interest in Irslan; a greater interest in what remained of his family and the war that affected them all.
We choose to live in such ignorance, he thought. The thought helped him to catch himself in introspection, as did the voice of Konlan’s doorman calling out to him.
With a quick look over his shoulder to see that the man wasn’t standing in the doorway, he rose to his feet. He was still alone, and so he quickly stepped back from the rug and turned for the door. Stopping abruptly, he performed a quick search for his gloves, locating them in an inner pocket of his coat. He ensured they were plainly visible in his hand and continued his path. The porter was met just into the parlor and he waved his gloves at eye level.
“Left them further in than I thought,” he said pleasantly, clapping the man on the shoulder as he walked around him. “Thank you.”
The typical pleasantries followed him to the front door and out of the house. Irslan continued down the steps to the street and made a path for home without looking back.
Dacia listened to her mother speaking soothingly to those who came in to listen, but didn’t hear the words. Ersana’s voice droned in the background of her thoughts while she looked through the gathering chamber’s entryway toward the sea. She knew better than to leave, but she’d had a strong pull to do just that earlier in the evening. She’d been thinking of the man she spoke to only in her dreams, who encouraged her to do things that she knew were against Ersana’s wishes. She did them, though she often couldn’t remember what those things were, and then she returned home.
She felt inexplicably abandoned currently, and like she had no purpose. It was difficult to describe—the sudden emptiness. She’d caught herself earlier thinking of the blond man who had gone to the Islands in her dream. Ersana didn’t want her to think about that man, or any men. According to her mother, she was to wed nature. Like the elders of the coven, she would become an attendant of natural order, a sister of the land, the sea, and the sky by marriage to that order. Ersana had long told her that her paths were only two; one of preservation or one of destruction. Dacia let most days go by without thinking about it at all, but tonight she felt isolated and restless.
A man entered the chamber and looked at her. She looked back at him. Stacen seemed ignorable, as most of them did...as the Ancient Mother advised that they should be. The Ancient Mother...the core of their spiritual leadership, always heard but rarely seen. She wondered if Stacen had ever looked upon her. She wondered many things about Stacen in the moments that followed, some things she ought not to be wondering.
She smiled at him, and he looked away. She was left to smile to herself. She fingered the crystal hung from her neck while she did so. Before long the necklace found its way to the floor and she stared at it lying there, like a dead and useless thing. She suddenly wanted it gone from her presence. She stared at it and stared at it, until it eventually left.
Nearby Stacen began to cough. It was sudden, and insistent, as if he were trying to dislodge something. That something wouldn’t be budged and, in fact, it kept sliding further down his throat, creating a blockage.
Dacia stepped through the entryway and left the gathering hall. She was tired of doing nothing. She was going to see the Ancient Mother. A sudden, urgent voice tried commanding her back, summoning her home, but she no longer felt concerned with a home as devoid as Ersana’s presence. There was nothing fulfilling about it, or about Ersana...as there was nothing fulfilling about Stacen and he could choke to death for all the care she had.
Vlas sat upon a neat stack of crates covered over with a tarp, studying Vaelyx Treir. The man stood across the deck from him, looking rigid and stoic to some extent, but his gaze habitually searched, like a man who felt watched.
“How much do you suppose he’s hiding from us?” Vlas asked Imris without taking his eyes from Vaelyx. The man attended to the boat like a seasoned sailor, which he may have been, if he had close and frequent association with the Islands’ in
habitants.
“Whatever he’s been hiding, I believe he honestly intends to share it with us when we reach our destination.”
Vlas nodded while the lady constable spoke. “I think you’re right, Imris. It makes me more eager to get there, but I can only hope that his secrets are as valuable as he believes them to be.”
“I believe they will be,” she said.
Vlas looked at her. From what he knew of her, she was not readily convinced...perhaps of people more than of things or ideas. “How long has it been since you left the Islands?” he hazarded to ask.
Her gray-green eyes viewed him askance momentarily. With her ever present frown, she said, “I have not been back since I was a young girl. My parents brought us to Indhovan so that we would have a safer life.”
“Safer?” Vlas echoed, helplessly thinking of the danger that every person in Edrinor lived with as a daily staple, thanks to their now century long war.
Imris simply said, “Yes.”
Vlas raised his eyebrow in blatant pressing of his question. He insisted silently that she explain herself.
Imris must have viewed that insistence in her peripheral view. “People disappeared often from our home, especially children. It was said that they were taken by the sea...by...”
“Serawe,” Vlas guessed.
Imris nodded. “The Islands coven was said to be in her service. Many believed that they abducted children to sacrifice in her name.”
Vlas’ thoughts halted before she was finished speaking. “The Islands coven? A different one than Indhovan’s?”
Imris turned her face to look at him. That look gave him his answer.
“Are they related?” He asked next.
“No,” Imris said with a shake of her head and a briefly passing look that very nearly berated him for even suggesting it. “The coven from the Islands serves the Dark Mother.”
“And what does the mainland’s coven serve?”
“Nature,” Imris answered, confirming what Vlas and his colleagues had already been told by others. “Serawe exists to upset the gods’ balance and would destroy nature.”
Vlas considered this information in silence.
Imris took the opportunity presented to add, “Some believe you would as well.”
Vlas’ response came immediately. “Well, they’re wrong. The Vassenleigh Order exists in support of balance, and for the sake of mankind as a part of that balance. We’re here to help.”
Imris studied him, moreover she studied his answer, as if she’d been waiting for him to give it that directly. And then she nodded once and looked away.
Vlas hoped that she was convinced, because he had no other means by which to convince her, save through action. He wished for a little less skepticism, but he supposed it was unfair of him, considering how careful they’d been in their movements. Morenne and the Vadryn had certainly succeeded in cracking the foundation of Edrinor. It would take a maximum effort on all of their parts to keep it from crumbling away altogether.
The vessel came into reach of a small, craggy bit of land risen out of the sea. The lights of Indhovan were still visible as an illumination against low clouds. Those clouds seemed thinner and to sit lower in their current location, that and the night obscuring the size of the island.
In spite of a cloudy night, they hadn’t drifted into a complete lack of light. The ocean beat itself against rocks that were scarce silhouettes before a bonfire Vlas didn’t particularly like the look of. Apparently Vaelyx didn’t either; he steered the boat clear of the light.
“I’m assuming no one is expecting us,” Vlas said to their guide.
“I haven’t been back here for twenty-one years,” Vaelyx reminded and it was not quite an answer.
“But you’ve been to this particular island.” Vlas looked over his shoulder and when Vaelyx noticed, he nodded.
“Yes,” the man said afterward, almost to himself. “Yes, I have.”
Vlas took in a breath and let it go quietly.
“No one lives on this island,” Imris said to him.
Gesturing toward the orange glow along the shore, Vlas said, “But there’s a fire.”
Imris looked at him in a way that made him think that she didn’t appreciate his sarcasm, if he were being sarcastic. She said, “No one lives on this island.”
Vlas turned his gaze back in Vaelyx’s direction, where the man made brief eye contact and returned his attention to navigating their course nearer to the island. “What are we going to find here, Imris?”
Scanning the darkness ahead of them, she shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Vlas wondered if any of them did.
Silence carried them across the remaining distance, to a sloped area of shore where Vaelyx saw it fit to anchor. The final bit of water was negotiated by the simplest of skiffs, which had been stored by line against the side of the small vessel. If he had achieved any sense of stability on the boat—within a half hour Vlas had managed to ignore that he was drifting over deeper water than a bath—he felt that he was back to where he’d started with the skiff. In the dark and being unfamiliar with the ocean in general, he had no idea when the water became shallow enough for them to safely fall off the exaggerated bit of driftwood. He was moving the concern to another space at the back of his mind by the time they’d waded through ankle deep water and dragged the skiff onto ground high enough that it wouldn’t be carried back out by the tide.
They stood upon sand and loose rocks interspersed with spindly shrubs, their eyes better adjusting to the area and its lack of light. Vlas could make out the shadow of the tree line nearby and the ups and downs of the terrain. The air was damp and cooler out here, away from the fires of countless lamps lighting the streets of Indhovan. It also felt very still, peaceful with the sound of the water caressing the beach, but eerie at the same time.
“Where to, Master Treir?” he asked when the man arrived beside him.
“There,” Vaelyx answered, pointing up the slope toward the trees and rocks. “It’s going to be something of a climb.”
Their guide started off and Vlas ushered Imris ahead of him before following.
From the shore, they scaled a minor cliff to gain access to the woods. It was dark and the air felt persistently moist. Vlas offered a Lantern, but Vaelyx declined and the look on Imris’ face said they were better off without one. Better off may not have been the case, but they managed without one, once their eyes better adjusted.
The sounds around them were sparse, mostly their own footsteps and that fact alerted Vlas to the likeliness of what they might find on this island. He was not foolish enough to hope that Serawe was no more than legend, but he didn’t know if he was prepared to face what may have been an ancient member of the Vadryn, particularly one firmly rooted in a vessel. With two ordinary people present, the situation could only become a greater risk.
No... if the circumstances became too severe, he would have to insist that they retreat. Merran and Korsten were present for this reason. Vlas could deal with the Vadryn, as they all had been trained to do, but very few of them were as experienced as a priest like Merran at combating the fiercer of the Vadryn. And Korsten had had his own experience with archdemons, and survived.
The more he thought of it, the less Vlas wanted to be on this island. He wondered how Cayri was doing with more official people over a rogue who may have been slightly mad and may have sired a child with an embodied demon.
The thought halted all others. What if he had? Such children had the propensity to be doomed in one way or another. Dacia seemed as if she could have been an ordinary girl, but Vaelyx himself feared that his own toying with magic and exploitation of her mother’s half may have rendered her strange. How strange?
The questions continued to form and Vlas let them do so liberally, so that by the time they’d come to a clearing and paused for rest
, he was thoroughly determined not to proceed another step without more information.
“I can’t help you blind, Master Treir,” he said while he leaned himself against the bole of a tree and let his body consider that the slope they’d been on was a much more taxing climb than he would have anticipated to look at it.
Vaelyx stood with his forearm braced against a tree nearby, scanning the open area they’d come to. There wasn’t much to see beyond its shroud of fog and maybe it was coming to terms with that which enabled Vaelyx to acknowledge Vlas with a look over his shoulder. “You’re not here to help me,” he informed, in a tone that didn’t quite belong to a doomed man. Vaelyx didn’t consider himself dead yet, but he was obviously beyond worry over whether or not his course led to his death.
“Who am I here to help?” Vlas asked, because he wanted to know precisely what Vaelyx hoped would happen here. “What is it you want me to see?”
Vaelyx continued to look at him, his eyes eventually slipping toward Imris and back again before he answered. “The mother of darkness resides here.”
At any other time, under any other circumstances, Vlas might have assumed the man was mocking the situation—the man said it with such ease—but the graveness in his eyes cautioned Vlas to take this information very seriously.
“Serawe,” Imris said beside him, the name spat almost like a curse from the woman’s no doubt frowning mouth.
“And she would be no one with whom I am qualified to deal with,” Vlas told them both. “A power that ancient is for another matched in age and experience.”