by T. A. Miles
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.”
“There’s no other choice,” Vaelyx said, as if he’d deeply researched potential options. And, if Vlas didn’t understand the importance of the situation, he added, “She’ll kill all of us.”
“I’m not going to be cornered by your point of view or your paranoia,” Vlas told the man directly. “I have almost nothing to go on save for the mystery of you. And who’s to say that you’re not an agent of Morenne, set out to distract me from my previous task and fellow mages?”
With a nearly imperceptible shake of his head, Vaelyx said, “No one.” He continued to stare at Vlas with an expression that more aptly resembled apathy or the lack of focus of an already preoccupied mind. The weight his incessant staring put onto Vlas felt almost like an afterthought. His matter-of-fact way of speaking was becoming unsettling.
And then, disarmingly, Vaelyx said, “I don’t expect you to destroy her. I don’t suspect that’s even possible. You’re here to dam the flow.”
“Of what?” Vlas demanded.
“Of blood, Mage Vlas,” Vaelyx answered. “A well of blood.”
“We have to know what she’s doing,” Merran said.
Korsten agreed. “In other words, we can’t assume she’s uttering peaceful prayer to the gods.”
Merran didn’t dignify his sarcasm with a response, not a noticeable one at any rate. His gaze moved between the crone, the steam hovering in the air, and the stone surrounding them.
Meanwhile they had a clutch of demons nesting against their collective will along what may have been their only route back. Korsten doubted that after he thought about it. There were many passages that ran through this underground lair, routes carved by human hand as well as by water.
“She doesn’t want us anywhere near her,” Korsten said. “That much is obvious. And at the same time, she’s not attacking us further.”
“So long as we remain at a distance,” Merran considered aloud as well. “The tide will wash us away….”
As his friend quoted the crone, Korsten could only nod. He should have been better at riddles, all things considered, but maybe her words were no riddle.
The silence between he and Merran grew very deliberately in that moment, as each of them held back their thoughts. Korsten could tell by the nature of the silence that they had come to the same or very similar thoughts in the same moments. It inspired him to wonder when they might begin reading one another’s mind.
Merran looked at him, their eyes meeting since Korsten was already watching his friend, waiting for the inevitable. “She’s summoning.”
Not quite what Korsten expected to hear. It had him pause a moment longer before responding. “Summoning? The same as casting?”
“No. In this sense it’s more literal. At the Seminary, we ceased the practice some centuries ago. The spells were far too complicated, requiring long hours and immense amounts of energy from the mage. The labor wasn’t worth the end results, which could be singularly catastrophic if done wrong.”
“In error … or without the right frame of mind?”
Korsten didn’t have to ask it. They each knew the answer and what they may have actually been witness to.
“If she meant the tide literally, she has to be stopped,” Merran said.
Korsten agreed. However, “She said it was too late. My intuition tells me that she wasn’t bluffing.”
Merran nodded slowly, his frown deepening. “So does mine.”
And Merran’s gift of Foresight was far more reliable than Korsten’s intuition.
“We have to stop her,” Merran said to him.
If Korsten hadn’t known that, the weight in Merran’s words ensured that he did. And now he wondered precisely what Merran sensed in the moments just past. They knew that they’d already lost time through the confusion and drop in communication between Indhovan and the Seminary. Just how much of that time was irretrievable? Before the thought could flare chords of panic, Korsten steeled his determination. He did so by reaching across the stairwell and taking Merran’s hand.
“What do we have to do?” he asked without breaking their gaze.
It was Merran who found another focus briefly in their joined hands. And then his attention went to the crone and the surrounding chamber. “Damn,” he muttered acidly.
It was in that moment that Korsten felt a sudden shift in the air, or in his mind … through his blood. Merran didn’t have to announce that the Barriers had dissipated or been broken, which he must have surely felt like the snapping of a thread that had previously been pulled taut; Korsten could feel the Vadryn themselves, leaving their temporary prison.
Irslan returned home with a sense of urgency building within him. He let himself in and locked the front door behind him, took a step away, then thought about his mage guests and turned back to unlock it again. He stopped in the midst of that action, considering Konlan, considering what had been going on in the city and how much worse it was than any of them had truly known, and considering that the mages would surely make their presence known whenever they returned. He chose to leave the door locked and doffed his coat, depositing it on the bench beside the door along with his gloves before making a slightly rushed path to his library. For activists, they had all been considerably lax; he was realizing this now. Had they allowed themselves to be lulled and mollified by Konlan? What precisely was his friend up to … and was this the way his uncle had felt in regards to Tahrsel? He also had to wonder, was that Konlan’s doing, as Vaelyx had accused in his writings? Irslan was determined to read each of the journals more thoroughly, but first he was going to search them end to end for evidence of exactly what he had been looking at carved into Konlan’s study floor. Undoubtedly, there was magic involved. Undoubtedly, it had to do with what the Seminary classed rogue mages. Odd that Konlan, one of the most vocal against archaism, should be a practitioner of one of the most archaic systems known to Edrinor. Had he been misleading all of them? To what purpose? As far as Irslan knew, the witches had no political ambitions beyond waiting for politics to die and for the world to resume some form of ancient anarchy. But it wouldn’t be anarchy. The coven had its own system, its own political process, whether they chose to call it that or not. They b
oasted themselves pacifists, but as Irslan saw it, their inaction was aggression, a want for those who didn’t agree with them to fail and die … or join them. He’d been fooling himself by trying to excuse and ignore them. And now he felt he owed the Seminary an apology for not being more informative about them in his communications with Lords Ceth and Ashwin. He had cut them out, as Vaelyx had … as someone may have wanted.
His suspicions flared the more he thought about it and he determined to surrender all of his uncle’s writings to the Seminary. Hopefully, they would still find some worth within the pages. In the meantime, Irslan intended to translate what he could from them now, so that he might help the mages present in any way he could. Gods, protect them.
Korsten couldn’t begin to describe the vision of black that poured into the chamber and over the railing. It was a tide of bodies, flooding in through the opening with a solitary focus that made their motion uniform. Ready for them or not the crone responded with vigor that was demonstrated in the sudden shift and flailing of aspects of the room—tendrils of wood took on life and at times new shape in order to literally beat away the Ancient’s would-be assailants. Korsten watched with his mouth helplessly slack as the heavy roots formed an intricate dome over the crone while others of their number batted away the Vadryn, at times spearing through them. The bodies the demons inhabited remained as resilient as they had when under the assault of multiple Blast spells. Displacement of a limb through incidental means had been the only way to damage them so far and what worth that was, he and Merran had yet to learn. Korsten observed several of the demons being flailed around, stuck on the impaling roots. They clawed viciously at the wood sticking through them, but to no avail. In one instance, several of the creatures had managed to sever the tentacle, freeing their fellow, though a portion of the wood remained stuck in the body, which didn’t appear to be bleeding.
In all of his years, Merran couldn’t possibly have witnessed anything quite like this and his silence seemed testament to that, but then he nudged Korsten’s arm and directed his attention to the balcony railing. A form that was very unlike those battling the crone’s wooden soldiers stood upon it. The girl he’d last seen in the presence of Ersana Cambir crouched down with unanticipated balance, a deranged look of delight in her eyes. This was not the Dacia who Korsten had escorted home. Had the Release failed with her as well?
“What is this?” Korsten asked helplessly.
“This is the work of the Mother,” a familiar voice said.
Korsten looked over his shoulder and up the stairwell. Ersana Cambir descended it with her hands folded loosely in front of her. Merran looked as well, but his gaze was soon after drawn back to the battle in the center of the chamber. Korsten understood that it would be his task to deal with Ersana while Merran determined their course of action where the Vadryn and crone were concerned.
Korsten turned fully toward Dacia’s mother and the woman slowed to a stop several steps away. “What’s happening here?” he asked her.
“This city is falling,” the woman replied and it seemed as if she were only just coming to that realization herself. “You were unwise to come here.”
He was in no mood for debating anything with her. He wanted direct answers. “You knew all was not right with Dacia,” he accused.
Ersana nodded once. “I did, but this is not my doing. I tried to prevent it. For twenty-one years, I tried to shelter her soul from the evils that have passage to it, but those evils were too determined. They’ve overtaken her. She nearly killed a man already on her flight here. I’ve come here now to tell you to leave. You cannot stop what’s happening.”
Whether or not that was true, Korsten asked, “Can you?”
“No,” Ersana replied. “I am the High Sister of our coven, yet I have no influence on the Mother. My place is only to prepare those willing to be saved, and I have done so.”
“Your daughter seems to think she can stop her,” Merran pointed out.
Ersana calmly looked at him, though her fingers tensed noticeably around her hands. “She is not my daughter. Her mother is a demon….” She paused and her expression tightened around her mouth. “One who was betrayed by her soul sister.”
“Sister?” Korsten echoed, looking over his shoulder when Ersana nodded toward the crone. The ancient woman remained ensconced in her dome of roots and vines, her lips moving consistently even as she worked magic to deflect the relentless attack of demons. “A pact that extends well before my years, broken by the Ancient Mother in recent time. The demon wanted vessels for her spiritual kin. The Ancient Mother showed her a way to create them … bodies impervious to physical ailment and resilient to attack … resilient also to magic.”
“They can’t be ousted from them by spells,” Korsten said.
“Nor can they get out on their own. They’re trapped, and when….”
“When Indhovan is flooded, they’ll be drowned,” Merran interrupted. “In the death of the bodies, they’ll be freed, only to be caught by the sea’s inexorable flow and dragged to eventual destruction.”
Ersana nodded, her brow raised slightly.
Korsten’s expression must have been openly questioning the scenario; Merran felt inclined to explain further when Korsten looked at him. “The bodies still must breathe. The spirit cannot exist in a sealed void. It will eventually devour itself or waste away. Water is also one of the greater powers known to this world. It silences fire, imprisons air, and devours the earth. Demons fear the vastness of the sea and the strength of its pull. If their current vessels fill with water, it will force the spirit out.”
“And the energy current of the ocean is too great,” Korsten said, demonstrating that he understood. “They’ll be sucked in.”
Merran nodded this time. “And pulled apart.”
Suddenly it made sense that people along the coast weren’t as concerned with demons. There were probably less of them inclined to be so near to something that much greater than themselves. Nature … the tangible fury of it that was the sea. Not even demons were willing to contend with it … but they would risk it if they felt pressed by one stronger than them. Given the choice of risk or instant destruction at the hands of one of their ancients, they would do what they were instructed to do. It occurred to Korsten that they approached the Seminary with the same caution—or was it Ashwin?—else they’d have surely pressed to ensure a more thorough victory when Vassenleigh was attacked decades ago.
While the information digested, a more immediate point leaped to the forefront of his thoughts. “What about the people here?” He looked to Ersana. “Will they be sacrificed? What does the Ancient Mother gain from this pact?”
“The gods will take those who deserve to be taken,” Ersana said, letting him know that he should not have bothered to ask. “The pact ensured that the coven would be left alone by the demons.”
“Ensured that….” Korsten was beside himself with what he was hearing. “Are you totally mad? If the gods were so adamantly at your side, your coven would not have had to bargain with the Vadryn to ensure its safety. Your ‘Ancient Mother’ has led you astray. And who is she or your coven to decide who deserves to be taken and who doesn’t? Children have been murdered in your city lately, madam.”
The look on Ersana’s face—the slightest break from her implacably calm mien—suggested that she might have wanted to remind Korsten that this initial pact took place before she was born. It let him know that she may not have agreed with it, no matter how automatically she would defend the crone.
Korsten took a step nearer to her. “We have to stop her. And if you care for Dacia at all, we have to stop her as well.”
“Mother cannot be stopped,” Ersana said of the crone. As to Dacia … the woman looked past Korsten as if she could see the girl. When her eyes came back to him, she said quietly, “Dacia will die if she isn’t brought under control.”
“How do
we do it?” Korsten asked, grasping at the narrow line of hope Ersana cast him—hope that she wasn’t completely irrational and inhumane in her devotion to her philosophy and that her philosophy might be second to her love for Dacia as a daughter, whether the girl was hers naturally or not.
Ersana hesitated, but then reached into her skirt pocket. She looked at the item in her hand briefly, then showed the crystal to Korsten. “With this,” she said.
“… of blood,” Vlas mumbled to himself while he walked with his unlikely companions across the misted clearing and toward what appeared to be a thick formation of rock. Uneven pillars of stone rose from tall grass heavily populated by weeds and bramble, converging on one another in a sort of natural labyrinth. The sounds of the sea had begun to fade out of range in the woods behind them, but now it was coming back full, which told him they were returning to the island’s edge. Soon they would be entering a cave, Vaelyx had told them. A cave where an ancient demon resided … a cave where blood had been collected for foul purpose … just precisely as Imris had been made to fear as a young girl.
She wasn’t afraid now, for all anyone could tell. She’d had the same determined set on her face nearly since Vlas had met her. Occasionally she looked over at him, possibly because he was muttering to himself and had settled into his own manner of determination, paired with contemplation. This was what he and the other mages had been sent ahead for … to fully understand Indhovan’s state of affairs. Vlas was fooling himself to have believed that even if it was complicated, the extent of the complications would be in politics, between people. The politics that had transpired over decades between people and the Vadryn should not have caught him off guard, but it had. He would take this to heart … and he would resolve this as far as he could, though he still fully planned to retreat if it became too dangerous. His death wouldn’t help his colleagues, Indhovan, or the Seminary’s strategic efforts.