by T. A. Miles
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 else at the Seminary 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, and 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 this 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 from 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 these shadows to himself, to cleanse them in his own blood and cast them out again, recreations of their former selves … but his ultimately and forever.
It was then that 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 friend’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.
Merran was looking as well, staring with the fascination of a physician. Korsten didn’t bother to ask him what was happening because the look on the other man’s face made it plain that he knew no more than Korsten.
“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 th
at 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.”
“It’s so strange,” Korsten said thoughtfully. “I won’t claim that I’ve ever understood people, but I used to think that I understood politics. Now I’m not so certain.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Merran reminded. “Whatever the reason or intent behind what’s happening here, our task is to resolve it, as quickly as possible in order to give Indhovan a chance against the coming army.”
“You’re right,” Korsten said, because he was. 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.
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’ inhabitants.
“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 Seminary 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.
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.
“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 mages 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 were 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 him 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 he gave 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 constabulary became the place where his uncle lived, requiring only a visit from time to time. The recent host of mages had begun stirring a greater interest in Irslan; a greater interest in what remained of his family and the war that affected them all.