by T. A. Miles
That made sense to Cayri. In fact, she felt a little better about Indhovan’s situation knowing that.
Ilayna continued, “They ventured many times to the Islands, coordinating consistent trade and helping what was tantamount to a handful of free-floating towns and villages to become a single, joined community. Raiss’ cousin, Ossai, came here to be an ambassador and quickly integrated himself, taking a mainland name as well. Konlan established rank and presence in both places and Raiss earned a reputation as a benefactor to his people and an inspirational leader among the coastal cities. Indhovan began to look ahead, as did the Islands. The war fell further into the background. Vaelyx fell away with it, which is what I believe began the rift between him and my husband. I’m also certain that’s when Vaelyx and Konlan began to view each other as rivals.
“Maybe it made matters worse that Konlan and Irslan were also becoming friends. Vaelyx may have felt abandoned and after the loss of his brother, it may have been easier for him to arrive at such a conclusion. I can’t say. I’ve never had the opportunity to sit and speak with him about it. He began making frequent visits to the Islands on his own, spending long hours at home otherwise, keeping to himself. Irslan, at the time, reported him somewhat depressed and stressed by his continuing endeavors to end the war, but otherwise well. I thought it might help to introduce him to people I knew from Cenily, who were actively involved in their own efforts against Morenne.”
“Did it?” Cayri asked her, though she suspected the answer lie in the fact that Vaelyx had wound up in prison.
Ilayna shook her head slightly. “Some of them were active and former soldiers volunteering for the Alliance, whom he had already met or heard of. He seemed to want very little to do with them and wanted nothing to do with their activities that involved leaving the region. He appeared a man anchored by some obsession. And then came the public outbursts….”
Cayri watched the lady’s features take on a weary hue as she brought forward a memory that was perhaps in actuality sitting constantly out in the open.
“Claims that my husband was aligned with Morenne and planned to allow Indhovan to be taken over by demons,” Ilayna was saying, again her head turning from side to side, as if she still struggled to believe the road Vaelyx had taken. “I imagine many people didn’t take him seriously, especially where demons were concerned, but Raiss took his behavior quite seriously and eventually decided to have him arrested and detained until he recovered his senses. I think Raiss assumed a few months, maybe even a year, would be enough to settle him down. The years accumulated quickly, with Vaelyx growing more and more antisocial.”
“Yes,” Cayri said. “The Seminary tried to intervene on his behalf, but it was Vaelyx himself who rejected our help.”
“I have no explanation for his change in personality, except what I’ve told you. Though I will note that it was during that long period when Raiss began to show changes in his own personality. He seemed to also want to clear his mind and wash his hands of everything, especially in the last few years. The activists established themselves almost as a contingency. Their governor and his staff were seeming to do nothing, so they would gather information and rally ideas, prepared to act if the need arose.”
“A rebellion,” Cayri offered.
“Not as aggressive as that—not for most of them—but yes … in the lack of a better way to put it. It surprised me that Konlan had taken such a prominent role with them, but it occurred to me that he was helping to keep them manageable and once again, acting as an ambassador. His relationship with another activist and founder—Irslan Treir—enabled him to communicate ideas and concerns back and forth between the two.”
“When did you take an interest?”
“I began attending their meetings from time to time to better understand their point of view and eventually to play a similar role to Konlan’s,” Ilayna replied. “Deitir’s always disagreed with it and only ever attended for my sake. They’re a very civil lot, however. I don’t believe they’re a true danger; they only want to have a voice. As it turns out, through them—namely Irslan—the Seminary is also represented. Unfortunately, Irslan doesn’t hold enough sway with my husband or with Konlan, in spite of their friendship, to make your concerns heard. That’s why I agreed to meet with you. The nature of the activist meetings has shifted from the city’s welfare as it grows and even from the war to topics of disappearances, murder, and the reality of the Vadryn. If the war is here already, then we must respond to it. I don’t know why my husband won’t. Twenty years ago—maybe even ten—he would have at least listened, as he listened to the concerns of Indhovan’s coven, who he now also chooses to ignore. He’s dismissed them as harmless irritants.”
“What do you think of them?” Cayri ventured to ask.
“I think they’re harmless, yes. Pacifists. They protest Indhovan’s growth, but as far as I know, there hasn’t been even one incident of aggression or retaliation from them as a group at any point throughout Raiss’ time as governor. His adoptive father had also never claimed to have any problems with them. They convene in peace and when they complain it’s never violent. I think some wanted to attach the recent murders and disappearances to them, but with Irslan’s bringing mages into it, everyone who’s aware seems to be digesting the fact that the Vadryn are the present enemy, and no one else.”
Cayri considered all of that. She could see no reason to doubt, but there were still some details that nagged. “According to Vaelyx—according to journals of his Irslan lately discovered—the murders and disappearances have been happening for years. Somehow they went without notice?”
“Without special notice, perhaps,” Ilayna permitted. “Indhovan is a large city. Its safety is not granted, but achieved.”
That was reasonable. “When did people begin to retreat indoors after dark? In large number, I mean.”
“The curfew was set at an advisory level earlier this season,” Ilayna said easily. Watching Cayri, she was inclined to add, “But you believe it’s been happening longer, don’t you?”
Perhaps. “The city has almost complete compliance to an advised curfew … not an enforced one.” Cayri paused as she continued to process all of the information she had received. She met Ilayna’s gaze as she concluded, “I feel as if the people of this city have felt unsafe for a while now.”
With eyes locked on Korsten, the chanting continued. It was such a strong gaze—grasping insistently—that even when Korsten glanced to Merran for his response, he felt as if the individual had come forward, taken his face in spidery fingers, and insisted he look at them. For a moment it seemed that the indecipherable syllables were meant for him, that the individual was putting them urgently on him … that he might listen and respond in some way. At the same time, the words and the person felt remarkably detached and in no way concerned with or answerable to any forces outside of their nested perch upon the cave floor, wrapped in sheaves of shadow and errant twines of water and light.
I am the Mother.
The words slithered out from beneath the gravel of the chanting, not actually spoken but heard all the same. Korsten looked upon the figure anew; a crone, ancient in the way that many of the Mage-Superiors were and aged as none of them would ever be. It was fascinating to look at her, but also somewhat intimidating. He could feel the ancient weight of her aura the longer he looked at her. He could feel it leaning toward him, again with the sensation of her overly thin fingers reaching.
Korsten drew himself back from her with effort. Noticing that or feeling her imposing presence himself, Merran laid a hand on his arm.
“She said she’s the Mother,” Korsten told him.
“I heard,” Merran replied and Korsten was glad of that.
You cannot stop us, the crone continued. They came before you, and now it is too late. Too late to escape the fate of the corrupters. The tide will wash the stain of your violation from our shores. Die, con
sorts of shadow.
The crone’s wizened lips spread broader and a laugh cracked to life beneath her chanting.
Die.
Aspects of the room seemed to shift in that moment. Korsten felt as if he could see bodies in the corner of his vision and instantly considered the Vadryn. Were there still more of them? With what the crone had conveyed it would make no sense for them to be aligned with her. It felt different than demons, though.
Merran pulled Korsten physically out from beneath the crone’s overbearing aura, in the same instant something thick and heavy whipped through the air and drove sharply into the floor. The tendril of wood now between himself and the crone was close enough that he could smell the damp earthiness of it. Finer strands dangled limply, streaming water and bits of dirt.
This was what the coven had left in these caves. How connected were the witches in the city above to this ancient woman? Korsten suspected it was more than any of them would care to realize and he feared also that surrounded by what empowered her—wrapped and thoroughly inundated with the magic that channeled through these caves, through nature—that she was generating a mass flow. Korsten had felt that since entering above, and so had Merran. These caves … the water coursing through it and the elements within the rock itself were the source that the witches of Indhovan drew from, and which sustained this old woman beyond natural years, and which more than likely was being worked in her incantation.
Another root took on life, gliding toward them as if the forearm of some giant creature. Korsten cast a Barrier reflexively, covering his face with both arms when the limb splintered wetly against the slightly lit air in front of them.
“Let’s go,” Merran decided and as Korsten lowered his arms again, he saw what may have prompted the decision; spikes of wood pushing up from the cave floor, everywhere except where the crone sat.
Korsten hopped backward before one of them rose through the bottom of his foot and he and Merran both ran to the stairwell. Merran ushered Korsten past him in the entry, then cast Fire onto the floor at the bottom step. A low layer of heat and flame slid across the floor several paces out from the entry. The oversized thorns in the spell’s path caught fire and shriveled to limp black coils. New ones tried to crop up aggressively, but were caught in the lingering heat and withered or became as spent torches. Merran’s and the crone’s efforts combined had succeeded in putting a barrier between them.
“I feel that if the Vadryn were loose again it isn’t us they’d be after,” Korsten said, watching the chamber blanket with a layer of steam as the water and fire mingled.
“I think you’re right,” Merran said.
“So, they’ve been here combatting the witches. Perhaps that was the inspiration behind the attempt to possess Dacia Cambir.”
“As a way inside,” Merran replied, giving more attention to their environment and undoubtedly their next course of action. “Maybe.”
Of course, there was no reason to believe that only the mages had been opponents of the Vadryn and it may have been that the demons didn’t anticipate a defensive response from a group of people who gave off such an air of harmlessness. Or it may have been that they did, and they had come here to eliminate the obstacle, to clear the way for their Morennish allies and be better grounded for the inevitable arrival of mages. They were better informed in this than the Seminary had been it would seem, though Korsten believed that the miscommunication between Vaelyx Treir and the Seminary had been more vital than anyone realized at the time. They could have known about this sooner. One or both sides didn’t want them to.
When Dacia arrived home, the cats all slunk into the shadows and as quickly out of sight as was possible. A part of her found that odd, maybe even disturbing, but a more adamant side of herself—the part that currently seemed to be driving her—dismissed their actions. Her route had not been very direct from the forum; there were times she felt lost, almost pushed away from where she wanted to be. But that shouldn’t have mattered. Ersana would be too busy to follow … too busy with poor Stacen. Maybe the useless fool was dead.
Dacia felt giddy for a moment, thinking about that possibility. Immediately afterward, she felt cold, verging on panic that fell away as her attention beckoned her elsewhere. It was as if a hand had touched her face and guided it in the direction of what she was meant to see.
She looked toward the balcony and stepped past the threshold of the house, where a sensation of pressure or resistance caused her to hesitate. The glowing pattern on the wall, cast by the crystals hung in the window, glared in the corner of her vision. A sudden, irrational rush of anger came over her. She lurched into the house and shrieked at the prismatic shapes as if they’d been small creatures nipping at her incessantly for days, or for years. She hated those crystals. She hated seeing them, touching them … being in their warding light.
They weren’t impassable, but how they agitated….
She forced it from her mind, crossing the front room, passing through the archway to the right and into the small library. Short shelves of fewer books than old scrolls and artifacts occupied the walls except where a deep, but low window looked out at the stairs running past the building and opposite that where a tight, spiraling metal stair offered passage to the room above. It was Ersana’s room, the one room in the house Dacia had always been told to stay out of. Mother had only brought her into it a few times, always during rituals that had to do with remaining a pure attendant of nature and the gods. Ritual was communion with the Ancient Mother, their keeper of their greatest source for magic. It was she who had always guided them and she who would protect them by appealing to the gods. She had been a conduit for generations … perched on the brink between the world as the gods would keep it, and the world as people existed in it. That was what Dacia had been taught. It all seemed very trite to her just now, and irritating.
Looking up at the open entryway at the top of the stairs, Dacia placed her hand upon the scrolled railing and began walking up. I’m coming, she thought and felt a tiny smile come to her lips.
At the top of the stairs, Ersana’s simple bedroom was laid out in two adjoined squares. In one compartment was the bed and Ersana’s personal affects. In the other—the larger—there was virtually nothing. A plain floor surrounded by plain walls. But there was an engraving on the ceiling, one in the same shape as the crystals when they were bound together to mark entryways, and to protect them. Dacia stepped across the floor feeling as though she were stalking an animal. Her eyes never left the engraving. When she began to mutter under her breath, she also felt a strange excitement move through her blood. It grew the nearer she came to the markings. When she was standing beneath them, they began to light along the edges and she almost became giddy with anticipation.
“I’m coming,” she sang and held her arms close to her body, spinning around once and giggling. She sucked in a breath afterward and held very still, her gaze lowering from the ceiling. “So is he,” she said with sudden realization.
The ancient boy. The one with the golden hair … the one who had come with the others….
She dropped to her knees, feeling panicked. She wanted to scream and cry in her sudden, overwhelming sense of frustration. The room around her seemed to darken while the engravings overhead continued to glow like stubborn embers refusing to catch fire. She stared at the floor below her as it lit, like water pooling beneath her. Several shapes formed beneath its shining surface. She locked her vision onto them, watching them form limbs and hands that reached up. Unconsciously, her hand lowered onto the floor, overlapping one ruddy and misshapen. Tears had gathered in her eyes, but she smiled.
“I’ll get you out,” she said to the figure hovering below her. Amber eyes opened and blinked, and she whispered excitedly. “I’ll get you out.”
“Dacia!”
She almost jumped at the voice, looking toward the stairs. Inured habit almost had her get to her feet and hur
ry down to Ersana, but another instinct … one much more primal, more natural … more her, had her grin. She threw her head back to look at the ceiling again and shrieked words at once foreign and familiar. The engraving lit spectacularly and she extended her arms out as the gateway fell down around her, taking her from the house and the voice of Ersana, who was not her mother.
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. 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 mage like Merran at combating the fiercer of the Vadryn. And Korsten had had his own experience with a Master, and survived. According to what little Vlas knew of the incident, it had taken him a good deal of time to recover.
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.
Had he?
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?