by T. A. Miles
Korsten looked up to see Lerissa making a mildly beleaguered expression.
“Shar,” the blonde sighed. “We’ve discussed it, and discussed it. Breaking long term is favorable to imposing exile on ourselves. For the sake of others, who rely on all of us.”
Sharlotte rolled her eyes, holding onto a tight frown, but didn’t argue any further for the moment. Instead, she took aim at Korsten. “What exactly have you been doing all of this time?”
She asked it as if she verged on catching him in some manner of lie, and she only required him to condemn himself with his own words. He hoped that his expression let her know that she was not only thoroughly taxing, but she made no sense.
“I’ve been performing my duty as a mage,” he told her. “I haven’t been avoiding Ashwin, if that’s what you’re driving after. One, he’s my life-mentor and it requires us to speak to one another. Secondly, I love him very dearly—and not, I’ll add for your benefit, as a lover. Truth be told, I don’t know if Ashwin has taken anyone since you’ve been gone.”
“Don’t patronize me,” Sharlotte snapped, but as she was only being abrupt and not aggressive, Korsten didn’t bother himself to get further agitated.
“I think what actually needs to happen,” Korsten continued, “is that you need to go back to Vassenleigh and speak to Ashwin yourself.”
“There’s nothing that we have to talk about,” Sharlotte murmured.
Korsten wondered if that was true. It occurred to him immediately after the thought finished that Ashwin probably did know of Sharlotte’s past trauma. It very likely had been Ashwin who helped her to cope with it, much as he had helped Korsten … and maybe that was when she fell in love with him, and insisted on being his only love. Or maybe it wasn’t. Korsten had no actual idea, but he could see that Sharlotte and Ashwin plainly had suffered some form of oversight in their relationship where trust was concerned. She trusted him to not be a danger to her physically, but somehow she or they had overlooked emotionally.
But Sharlotte wasn’t the only victim in this. Based on what Korsten had lately learned of Adrea, she had passed away relatively recently. Much as it would pain anyone to know, it was possible that Sharlotte was as much a comfort to Ashwin in his grieving as he had been to her during her trauma. Once again, Korsten found his mental tone more sarcastic than he cared for and once again, he came to the conclusion, that the two of them may simply not have been for each other. It was nothing for either of them to be ashamed over. Misunderstanding was an unfortunate situation of being alive in this world. Unfairly, Ashwin’s abundance of years had better-equipped him to overcome these situations. Sharlotte was young compared to Ashwin, and Korsten was near an infant compared to them both. So, it would seem to make some logical sense, then, that Sharlotte could have come to these conclusions ahead of Korsten.
But you’re far too stubborn, Sharlotte.
He tried not to consider how he might respond to someone lauding themselves to him as Renmyr’s lover, after all of this time spent away from him, devising a way to help him—devoting his extended life to that cause. Being replaced was damaging just in idea. He understood where Sharlotte was coming from with that. He truly did. But what more could he do? It wasn’t his responsibility to take care in Sharlotte’s comfort where his own relations were concerned, least of all thirty years beyond it being a relevant point. She and Ashwin had parted ways, on Sharlotte’s insistence. She was being unreasonable.
“We know that the three of us are going to Indhovan,” Lerissa said in the rigid silence between Sharlotte and Korsten. Korsten nodded and Sharlotte didn’t disagree, so Lerissa continued. “We’ll know better what needs to happen next once we’ve arrived there, I’m certain.”
“Yes,” Korsten said. “We’ve a contact there. A man by the name Treir. Presuming the city hasn’t been toppled by the sea, his doors will be open to us.”
“That seems fair enough,” Lerissa replied. “When should we like to be on our way?”
Both women settled their eyes on Korsten in that moment. Sharlotte at least respected the fact that this was his family home, perhaps recognizing that it was an opportunity many mages were not granted after committing themselves to the Seminary. He appreciated that, and he did also know that the state of their country and ensuring its future afforded little time for reunion with the past.
“Tomorrow,” he promised them. That would allow him the remainder of the evening to spend in his father’s library before attempting sleep and hopefully finding some semblance of closure with Sethaniel the following morning.
A lengthy stillness settled in the library—perhaps the entire house—after Sharlotte and Lerissa had withdrawn for the evening. Korsten wondered if Darlevan and his wife kept a schedule to match the elder of the house, or if they retreated from the indoors altogether in the still warm southeastern autumn. It certainly felt as if not a soul were awake or present to Korsten’s exaggerated perception. The longer he himself remained awake and away from his dreams, the more honed his senses seemed. Or they were sensitive rather; honed felt a bit too deliberate for all that he had undergone as of late. He was still not in full control of his talents, and at this late hour that could only count for recklessness.
He’d overexposed himself to demons. Pondering the matter drew him to the conclusion that the amount of Allurance he’d been projecting along with Song and finally paired with the casting of Siren was as crying out from hiding in a dense thicket. The beasts looked in his direction now. They knew the vicinity of his nest, but they could see neither it nor him. How long before they tracked the magic to its source? How long before they made true contact with the vessel and, through exploration and attempts to possess it, would they locate the rest of him? Had his spell undermined the safeguards of the mage’s way? Or was that not what had happened at all? Would the Vadryn remain ignorant, as insects to firelight, flinging themselves mindlessly at the heat of his blood’s being until they’d managed to destroy themselves in the process?
It was with these questions in mind that Korsten carried himself to Sethaniel’s books and began to look for the more fantastic writings the elder may have been hoarding amid volumes of history, political culture, and social structure. While it was no easy assignment, it was not as difficult as he might have previously imagined, given his lingering perceptions of a dry scholar with little tolerance for dreams of fancy. It was then, as he pulled down a mythological bestiary from an upper shelf, that he reminded himself that his own pragmatism, allowing such views as the essential relationship of myth and history, was likely inherited.
Cradling the book in one arm, Korsten turned through the pages of the volume’s contents until he located an entry titled: Waterborne Serpents, Sirens, and Sea Folk. He bypassed a detailed illustration of a coiling serpent with a beaked head terrorizing a ship and instead ran his forefinger down the text on the adjacent page until he located the topic of sirens. No illustration was provided, but given the information offered, it may have been largely preferred to leave appearances a mystery. The entry stated that along the eastern shores of Edrinor sirens were regarded as bodiless voices on the wind over fitful waters; storm singers was a term that came to mind from childhood. Korsten recalled that as a child he’d likened them to ghosts … perhaps of those who had died at sea. However, the book was quick to dash his childhood theory of restless spirits, labeling them the Unseen, and also faeries. The songs of these creatures would charm and lure susceptible men and women, leading them often off course if they were aboard a ship. But more precisely, they would entice an individual into the water, whether from deck or from shore. The victims would then drown, thus feeding the sea and its inhabitants.
Korsten considered the manner of his mother’s death briefly, but didn’t relate it to the mythology he was currently reading. He doubted that his mother was lured to her death by faeries and what he wanted to know had nothing to do with that besides. He wanted
to settle his mind on what the Siren spell had likely been named after. Naturally there would be variations to the lore throughout Edrinor, but the essential theme, based on his very knowledge of the spell itself, would undoubtedly be the luring aspect. Also, whether intentional or not, control appeared to lay in the hands—or lack of them—of the singer. That aligned with his knowledge and experience thus far where both the Siren spell and Allurance were concerned. Of course, that would be the circumstance—there would be no point in it being a talent developed at the Seminary otherwise—but Korsten wanted to settle it squarely in his mind, as a sort of cornerstone upon which he would begin to consciously build his understanding of the spell. He had to master it. He couldn’t allow it to overwhelm him at a crucial time, as it almost had in Indhovan. But what was he to do with demons drawn to him so ambitiously as to nearly counter the guise his soul-keeper offered? He had destroyed the ones from Indhovan. He had fed them to the sea.
A twinge of irony brushed across his mind and nearly caused him to shudder, but he banished the sensation with a shake of his head. Regardless of how that had played out, he couldn’t be expected to Reach to a body of water after every such casting of Siren. That had nearly cost him his own life as well. He considered that perhaps that was the danger of the spell, but at the same time, he couldn’t leave it there. It didn’t seem logical enough and something he had learned about the Seminary’s system was that it relied on logic and a harmony of logical thinking and balanced feeling. For that reason, there had to be an order and a balance to the Siren spell as well.
His mind went back to a term the book used; the Unseen. The Unseen was more archaic than the Powers, which was often considered another and less frequently used term for the gods. His analytical mind helplessly wondered if the three were in fact one and the same, or if they were three entirely different types of being. But if all referred to the gods, then essentially the magic inspired by such myth as sirens, or from which such myth derived, was in reality just one of the many gifts, or curses, the gods had given to the mortal world. His mind was half settled on that, but helplessly he considered his dream of being in the sea with spirits, whose words surely alluded to a war between greater factions. The voices and what they had said remained clear in his memory. He could not set the matter down.
“Korsten,” came a voice that was immediately familiar.
He looked up instinctively, in time to see the visage of his mother walking toward him in all the layers of silk and lace her station afforded and her otherworldly elegance demanded. For but a moment she appeared solid and there with him, to the point that he could do no more than stare as she closed the distance between them. Her lit eyes met with his and her delicately pursed lips affected a melancholy air upon her words when she spoke.
“Come home,” she said, and there was nothing tangible to her hand as it lifted to caress Korsten’s face in passing.
He turned to watch her walk between the shelves, the ends of her skirts noiselessly brushing the floor. She was gone before her image reached the end of the bookcases. The silence that carried afterward was absolute. Korsten did not even hear the book slip from his grasp and drop upon the floor.
As the sun set, a glorious cloak of amber and rose spread over the water, as a gods-woven robe would settle upon the blessed shoulders of Nature. From a low dune risen among glistening stones and twiggy bramble, Korsten watched the fall of evening. A comfortably cooling breeze that would be chilled before the night had matured caught his curls and flaunted their rebellious length directly in his face. There’d always been a stubborn one or two among the forelocks that refused to obey order, no matter the length, but now those few scarcely stood out.
How his lifestyle had changed. The days of worrying over every tidy detail, of class standards—of unbridled vanity—were as far away as childhood. The folly of his pursuit to exist both hidden and adored within a structure that excluded him by its very nature, and his, was over. On his path to understanding that, he had come back to the beginning. How cruel and how kind were the gods, to offer such things?
These ruminations played through Korsten’s mind as the gently tumbling waves of the sea caught the last rays of daylight, breaking them into glistening gems that were passed along toward shore at a pace that could only entrance the viewer. Would the siren song of the sea draw him in now? Or did his own Song negate such charm, rendering him and the sea helplessly neutral toward one another? Were they in allegiance with one another perhaps? His mind cycled through considerations that he imagined long after the fact scarcely mattered. Where he stood in relation to Nature, or the spirits thereof, or the gods themselves was moot by now, surely. Or was it?
As the evening terminus drew shut the winking eye of day, opening the view through night’s ever-shifting lens, he came to the determination that it was a far greater burden to stand at the border of knowledge than to be adrift in the waters of ignorance. Magehood had been his vessel to these very shores. Instead of glimpsing a mystery from the distance, he stood with fragments of a picture in his hands. Setting them down now would be neglect. He had already glimpsed enough of the details to understand the importance of the whole.
So … one piece at a time, then. What is it that you want me to know, Mother?
Zerxa did not answer, but then she had already done so. She wanted him to come home. And where was that, if not Cenily and her husband? The home of her childhood, perhaps.
Notions of the distant woods of her stories came to mind yet again. Glimpses of forests deeper and greater than the dense growth surrounding the towns and villages of northern Edrinor passed across his imagination, painting brief impressions of the animals upon the tapestry in his bedroom. In the many months he had been actively working alongside Merran, they had been near that border only a few times. They’d not been back to Haddowyn, but they had verged upon the borderlands in the region. Incidents of the Vadryn were many, both in rumor and in fact. As well the scruples of men in the vicinity of Morenne’s annexations had warped. There were too many willing to make themselves the instruments of demons. When they weren’t deliberately seeking out allegiance, they were far too susceptible to the Vadryn’s seduction. Months hunting in the north had been a harrowing experience. Indhovan had followed. Indhovan was waiting and in that light the recent phantoms seemed less tangible.
He brought himself back to the present. Darkness had settled deeply along the fringes of his awareness. A screen of blue-black hovered above the water in his adjusted view. There was a storm coming … a day or so out. They would be well on their way to Indhovan by then. It would follow the coastline, swell in temper, then head back out to sea. A more inland route would be the better option for travel. He suspected Sharlotte was already aware, given that they met at brown on the Spectrum. Korsten was decided he would make a safer path toward her by treading the ground they shared as colleagues. Their personal similarities he would regard as the thorny bramble along the roadside; he would avoid it until they were both better equipped to navigate it.
Turning from the water, Korsten performed a Lantern spell and let the irregular orb of light accompany him back to the house. He encountered no more spirits, however sleep was not to be had. He spent the night in and out of consciousness. What small moments of genuine sleep he managed were made uncomfortable with visions of the Vadryn clinging to the edges of a Reach portal, as if they hovered just beyond his perception, awaiting magic’s invitation to remind him of their presence. Those moments might have been more nightmarish, had he been deeper asleep. His state of wakefulness allowed him to quickly rationalize and put away such visions. As to not sleeping, he could only conclude that he had slept too long while healing and that, paired with thoughts of travel to Indhovan and lingering matters concerning his parents, had made him restless. He was out of bed and prepared for travel before night had fully relinquished the sky to day. Of course, travel for mages required considerably less than it did for others and
under the circumstances, he had even less to his person. Presumably Onyx waited for him in Indhovan, else the animal had been returned to the Seminary. That meant that he would have to borrow one of his father’s horses.
The prospect inspired him to consider a Reach, but the circumstances would require him to perform the spell for Lerissa and Sharlotte as well, presuming neither of them had been to Indhovan lately and would be able to target it with the spell. That in itself would not be too difficult. However, considering how his last Reach had gone, he wondered if he should risk it. It also seemed a tad reckless from the strategic sense. He had no idea what state the city was in. Reaching to the home of Irslan in the event of a siege or worse, if the city had fallen, could quickly turn to disaster. While he loathed to consider the time involved with traditional methods of travel, there seemed no preferable options. He wondered if they might be able to commission a ship. A jaunt up the coast via water may have felt like an eternity to a bored child, but it would certainly be faster than riding or walking. He would bring the topic up to the ladies and if they were all agreed, perhaps Darelvan would know of an available vessel with a willing captain.
With that decided, he thought he might return to the library to wait out the very early morning with some reading, but the aroma of baking caught him at the stairs. He let it carry him to the source, not because he was hungry necessarily, but because the scent meant that someone else was about at such an hour. Of course, his overly willing memory from childhood reminded him that such an hour was prime, if not essential, for preparing some of the day’s staples. Considering how the population of the house had dwindled, that scarcely seemed necessary now, however.
Regardless, the kitchen clearly had a cook at work, one who presumably had a sound purpose for it, as became evident when Korsten entered the dining room and saw his father seated at the table.