by T. A. Miles
After hours spent searching the interior of the constabulary and the neighborhoods immediately around it for evidence of further escape—be it means or route—Vlas and Imris had come back to the prison itself and stood directly below the section of the constabulary where Vaelyx Treir had been kept. At first he had hoped to find some other design like the one on the blanket … like the other side of a door—he really couldn’t say precisely how the witches’ system of magic operated without more study. By now, he’d likened it more to leaping out a window … a more direct through and out. So, leaping haphazardly out of a window, more or less, he would have come to ground level in the general vicinity of where Vlas and the constable currently stood. Would he have been disoriented? Would he have required rest? Why would no one have seen him, of all the guards present?
Vlas repeatedly traced the distance visually from the cell windows to the ground and over the immediate street area. One direction would have brought Vaelyx further into the city’s center. The other would have taken him toward the ocean. Looking at the imposing structure of the building itself, Vlas asked, “Where’s the nearest watch post?”
Constable Imris pointed at two locations. “There,” she said in her rich, accented voice. “And there.”
Vlas followed her direction to each place. One post was atop the outermost wall, and it was several seconds before a guardsman came into view, his shadow pushing out as he passed beneath a lamp mounted on an iron pole. The other location was a more literal post, a buttressed circular section that jutted out past the outer wall and over the street. It was two stories with narrow windows at each level, providing a reasonable radius for viewing, however….
Vlas walked toward the watch post and stepped into its shadow, then looked toward the guard wall, the visible length of which was now greatly decreased. The fact that a man was there at all was obscured by the ramparts and in such a way that the obscuration was plainly mutual for the observer as well as the observed. “There’s a blind spot here,” he said to Imris.
She walked over to see for herself and her ensuing frown stated that she agreed with the evidence at hand.
Vlas continued. “A Reach from any one of those cells directly down here would be simple, even for the most basic of amateurs. Presuming, of course, that the spell-casting was similar to a Reach.”
Imris nodded, again agreeing and again disliking the facts as they appeared to be. “Where would he have gone?” she wondered aloud.
“And perhaps with whom….” Vlas considered the type of person who might be in league with a professed rebel. A rebel against progress, who had previously been an activist in favor of it. What had changed his mind … or his perspective? He knew they were dealing with a member or members of the resident coven, whether they had helped Vaelyx or he was simply going back to them. But who precisely? Who would have been convincing to Vaelyx and why did they seek to convince him? Vlas would have been lying to say that he wasn’t greatly intrigued by the mystery, but his impatience tended to override intrigue before it could carry him too far. The situation was too important and none of them had time for elaborate social and political puzzles, or games. Merran believed that the coven knew something in relation to the Vadryn’s presence, Vlas suspected. It almost wouldn’t make sense for Merran to have displayed any interest at all otherwise. The man had been hunting his entire career as a mage. It was his calling and his priority. Vlas’ priority was devising a strategy as well as circumstances allowed and the Vadryn attributed largely to the circumstances more often than not. The Vadryn were always a common factor among mages, so learning what Vaelyx knew and what the coven knew were as key as convincing the local powers to open their eyes and begin actively working toward the only favorable end. They’d worked a long time rallying a key part of the political population to the cause. Vaelyx had been a significant player up until the last twenty years. His abandonment was both curious and potentially critical.
Knowing that, would the man have left Indhovan? Did he simply want out of it altogether? Vlas didn’t think so, and he believed strongly that Vaelyx was still within the city.
“What exactly did Treir do that got him arrested?” Vlas asked his current partner.
“The incident happened before my time,” Imris let him know, which he accepted with a nod. “What I’ve heard of it seems ignorable.”
“Which it obviously isn’t, else there wouldn’t be all of this fuss over it.”
The woman nodded as if she agreed and again her expression was particularly severe and dissatisfied. Her features were very interesting … maybe accidentally expressive; she didn’t seem an overly emotional person thus far.
“What did you hear?” Vlas asked her.
“That he was drunk when he interrupted a public address by the governor, flinging accusations.”
“What sort of accusations?” Vlas looked over the impressive fortification that was the constabulary once more. Imris’ next words drew his gaze back to her immediately.
“That Governor Tahrsel was in league with Morenne,” she said, meeting Vlas’ gaze.
“Betrayal of one’s own country and people is ignorable?” The words came out somewhat flatly.
Imris’ expression said very plainly that it wasn’t. That stated, “Governor Tahrsel is known for his belief in isolation and neutrality. Abandonment and betrayal are not the same thing.”
“No, they’re not,” Vlas acknowledged. He considered what he knew, which now seemed to include the possibility that the governor and Indhovan’s activists weren’t far off from one another in their perspectives. The activists were only less stubborn in acknowledging that complete ignorance on the topic of war greatly threatened their future. The future was their goal. The purists embraced the distant past. Maybe the Seminary was representative of transition, then … a link between both. He believed he was beginning to better understand the situation. Still….
“Twenty years is a long time to detain a man over public disruption charges … and to save face.”
“Yes,” Imris said, frowning that deep frown of hers.
There was more to it than that. Vlas didn’t press it yet. Instead, he said, “Let’s find Vaelyx and see for ourselves what he’s really about.”
Imris agreed to the idea with a nod and Vlas began a course deeper into the city. “Are there any representatives of this coven whom we could speak with? Do they have an individual—or individuals—who speak out often on their behalf, preferably in public?”
“They have a meeting site for the public,” Imris offered. “We’ve been to it a few times already looking for Vaelyx.”
“So it’s unlikely that he’ll show himself there,” Vlas deduced. “However, there may be someone there who knows of him or of his situation.”
“That’s possible,” Imris replied in the tone of ‘That’s likely and we’ve had little luck with it’.
“We’ll start there,” Vlas decided.
Imris helpfully stepped into the lead. “I will take you.”
The door at the end of the wall lining the canal was indeed quite small. Not small as if it were intended to disallow people to utilize it, but small as part of a structure that was quite old and quite left alone. The street and the wall seemed almost built around it, as if a portion of the door remained hidden beneath; remnants of a ruin from a past era. There was a narrow stone compartment at the base. The ground sloped down to it with a rough progression that suggested steps might have been intended at one time. The door itself was metal and adorned with a simple latch.
“Was there a lock on it?” Korsten wondered as Merran pushed it open, onto an uneven slope that carried on from where they currently stood.
“Yes,” Merran replied while they both stooped to pass beneath the narrow arch that was ill-fit against the canal wall. “I removed it.”
“So they don’t want just anyone to have access,” Korsten said, not
ing it to himself mostly.
Merran answered anyway. “Either that, or it’s been in place for quite some time and forgotten.”
“That may be so,” Korsten allowed, looking up as the spray from the fall misted his skin—fortunately he’d put his jacket on that morning. His gaze traced the water downward, and he saw that the rushing canal itself was only a few uneven steps away. So too was a narrow ledge with what may have been the remains of a stone balustrade worn down along the rim; only low nubs had survived time’s abuse. The opening they’d spied from the top of the wall sat along that worn path, a peculiar gaping mouth in the rock face. Strings of water tapered down one side, like a tattered curtain.
Merran climbed up to the entry with Korsten close behind. The stone at the rim was smooth and slick, but they both managed to keep their footing. At the mouth, a deep world awaited, darkened by the light’s stunted reach. They each performed a simple Lantern spell, looking to each other briefly before heading into the blackness with pale orbs of light hovering near.
Within only a few paces, Korsten felt the separation from the outside. The moonlight stayed at the entrance and as he and Merran moved forward, the darkness closed around them and their Lanterns. Korsten fixed his sights for a moment on Merran, noticing the concentric rings of symbols that tended to be visible on his hand whenever he performed spells. They were the remnant traces of Emergence, something that had shown on Korsten only when the transformation happened and for a span afterward, like dark spots in one’s vision after looking too directly at the sun. They’d vanished over time, however and had never been seen since. At least, not to Korsten’s knowledge. Magic inspired different responses in everyone, he’d learned … both physical and emotional.
“I wonder if the coven utilizes this access at all anymore,” Korsten said, speaking quietly. In spite of the roaring fall behind them, it took little more than a whisper for his voice to carry to Merran.
“I’m more concerned with what it may be access to,” his friend replied, looking about as if he also wondered about the acoustics of the cave.
“It feels ancient,” Korsten murmured. Of course, the cave itself must have been and perhaps it was his empathy with nature—owed to his gods’ given connection with brown on the Spectrum—that had the earth around them speaking to him of its ancientness. He had grown more alert to the physical world that surrounded him while he studied and worked, but it was far less deliberate than his honing of both red and white. White, he’d unconsciously chosen for himself—he suspected he knew why. Red had been selected for him by his predecessor; a woman who had never met him in life, but who had chosen him to carry on in her absence. In death—or at some length after it—she had transferred her chosen talent onto him and in the event of his own death, he would somehow do the same, bestowing white upon whomever that unsuspecting soul might be. The system was so complex, but it didn’t defy or deviate from nature as much as one with an outside view might think. Korsten understood that the Spectrum was nature itself—human, animal, and elemental—and that the mage system was a thread spun to parallel it, existing within a harmony that fashioned itself in the shadow of nature’s melody. The Vadryn’s tune, on the other hand was discordant and conflicting. They had carried themselves outside of nature’s intended range and seemed determined to forge a new one, one which surely tilted the balance. The gods could not have intended for such creatures to drain the vitality from the world, replacing none of it as they went. The demons gorged themselves and sat with swollen bellies on the emaciated corpses of their victims. If the gods favored that course, then the world was cursed.
Wandering deeper into the mouth of darkness was probably not the place to be entertaining such dismal thoughts, Korsten chided himself. He didn’t believe they were cursed, besides. He believed that he had cursed himself years ago and that this path with the Seminary was his salvation … and Renmyr’s.
His current path with Merran carried on in nondescript darkness, the walls becoming rougher and less wet the further they proceeded. In spite of that, the rock still shone with bolts of metallic gray shooting through it and creating a glittery veil in the half-dark. The space remained vast enough that Korsten could feel the openness of the air. He had wondered at first if they would come to a narrower, more confining space before long, but maybe not. A minor chill of anticipation moved through him.
“There are steps here,” Merran warned and Korsten made sure to look where he was walking.
The step he raised his foot onto was rough and could have been as incidental as those that had led into the mouth of the cave. He flared his Lantern gently, giving himself a short-lived glimpse of the wider view. The steps spanned a good distance in either direction, bookended with more rounded sections of stone. It gave the ascent—which was only about four shelves tall—the effect of having been crudely cut and not nature’s accident.
“I’m assuming you’ll speak of it, if you detect a presence of any kind,” Merran said.
It was the sort of statement that Korsten had often misinterpreted for bastard behavior in the past. By now he had come to realize that it was simply Merran’s way. “You assume correctly,” he said to his friend.
Afterward, his thoughts drifted to what Merran had meant by ‘of any kind’. He gave his Lantern to the nearest shadows, assuring himself that his current lack of detection was truly for a lack of presence and not a lack of awareness. The Lantern revealed nothing but stone … undecorated, unadorned, rough-hewn walls. Several minutes of walking altered that with the addition of a deep orange glow—that of fire.
“Torches,” Merran announced as two metal baskets came into view, mounted on thick stone posts that were situated athwart one another before a massive archway.
“Look,” Korsten said as they drew to a pause, directing Merran’s attention to the top of the tall arch, where an artistic bundle of crystals were situated. That wasn’t the most interesting aspect, however. What he really wanted his partner to take note of were the symbols carved into the rock, following the frame of the entryway.
Korsten visually traced the emblems down to the floor. He doused his Lantern with an opening and closing motion of his right hand as he stepped nearer to the arch. He studied the characters, considering those he’d come across during his time as a mage and how these were very similar … the same, really, with the exception of the style in which they were presented. Those he was familiar with through his studies and practice were smoother, utilizing rounded curves versus distinct corners. The differences were really more like the variance in penmanship from one individual to the next.
“They really aren’t so different from us, are they?” Korsten mused. “In philosophy and practice, yes, but the foundation is the same.”
Whether or not Merran agreed with the observation, he said nothing, stepping into the archway and over the threshold of the chamber beyond. Korsten let his fingers run across one of the symbols embedded into the stone before he followed after his partner. Merran dismissed his own Lantern now. While the torches rendered them unnecessary at the entrance, the many more torches and hung braziers in the new area ensured that their environment would be remaining well lit for the time being.
Korsten marveled at the sheer size of it. The main space was sunken compared to the rest, which consisted of tiers and rises that systematically carried the room and the eyes on it upward. The ceiling was perhaps as high as the cliff itself, cloaked in shadow beyond the highest hung basins of fire and bracketed sconces. “Do you know what this configuration reminds me of?”
“The city itself,” Merran answered, making it clear that they were seeing the same idea.
“Vassenleigh also resembles the Seminary in architecture and layout,” Korsten pointed out, venturing up the first and centermost section of stairs. In three long steps, he was in the middle of a collection of wide platforms and stout balconies, all arranged of the rock supplied by the caves. The Sem
inary also had its inner sanctum, the original structure from which it and the town around it sprang. Again, Korsten was marveling. “They’re so like us.”
“But rather than organize a system and work to accomplish something for society, they choose to remain undeveloped and wild, detached from civilization.”
Merran delivered the words as simple fact and nothing more.
He did that too often. “Do you disagree with it?” Korsten asked while he looked over simple carvings in the stonework around him.
“No,” Merran said plainly. “Nor do I agree with it. They live how they choose. If no one suffers directly for their lifestyle, then I’m inclined to think it doesn’t matter.”
Korsten looked over his shoulder at him. “Ceth is concerned about them, mostly about not knowing what their agenda may be, or if they have one.”
“Edrinor is in a delicate state,” Merran said, the words and his tone—or the lack of one—seeming to justify Ceth’s concern.
Korsten nodded in reply and turned back around, further exploring the site around them. Yes, it felt ancient … and private, like some dark and exciting secret meant to lure the curious. Lure them to what exactly? Their doom? Their enlightenment? Perhaps something more mundane.
A tug at Korsten’s senses, pulled his attention sharply to his right, toward a steeper stair topped by another stone platform and a torch-lit doorway. It felt very similar to what he’d felt when they were in pursuit of the Vadryn the night before. “Merran,” he said, moving quickly to the steps and up them.
Merran made a swift path after him. At the doorway they each halted. There were torches in sconces lining the path on one side. Still roughly carved out, the passage was narrower than the route they’d taken into the caves initially. While they could see no visible evidence of demons, they each knew that didn’t discount the presence of the Vadryn. And so it was with caution that they stepped into the corridor together and left the vast chamber behind.