by T. A. Miles
“Then what?”
Sharlotte looked at him now, directly. He thought he felt the smallest of slips of her vigilant guard against him, enough to allow her to admit that she need something from him, even if not in so many words. “The Vadryn,” she said.
And now he understood. He understood what she required of him and suspected that she might have been looking for him at the same time he had been following Analee to her.
“You want me to draw them to me instead,” he deduced easily.
“Well, can’t you?” Her impatience was returning swiftly.
“Yes, Sharlotte, but the last time I utilized that talent, I may have attracted the attention of one larger than most.”
“A Master, you mean.”
“I do mean that, yes. And if it wasn’t that, then it was my mind.”
“Which was it?” she insisted.
He hesitated, recalling the instance, separating out what seemed tangible from impossible. “I suspect it wasn’t my mind,” he concluded, in spite of how impossible all of it had seemed. The boundaries of reality from dream were too far shifted for him now.
“How can you be sure?” Sharlotte asked.
“It struck me a physical blow,” Korsten said, looking over at her. “After that, I believe much of what I experienced was more emotional than physical, and it’s possible that the beast was only trying to occupy me until it could separate itself from whatever prior engagement kept it from attacking or investigating directly.”
“Well, I need the demons away from me,” Sharlotte said. “Or I can’t have any guarantee of destroying that weapon.”
“Yes,” Korsten agreed, and there was nothing for it, save to risk drawing the attention of the larger beast. But perhaps he could take extreme care in only luring demons in the immediate area. That would mean knowing where they were, which would require a better study of the troops they were targeting.
“Find your place,” he decided, and stepped away from the edge of the roof. “I’ll keep them from you.”
Whether or not Sharlotte trusted him with that task, she was in no position to protest. She seemed to realize that and made her way to the far end of the roof. From there, she hopped over to the neighboring building, all of them situated very near to one another along this street, and throughout many in Indhovan.
Korsten made his way back down to ground level. At the bottom of the brief stair, he rounded the corner of the building, headed toward the at least temporarily stationed men responsible for the weapon. He crept along the shadow of the building, stopping long enough to cast Mist. The spell rolled along the cobbled ground, licking the base of the structures to either side of the street and slipping toward the stationed soldiers like a risen tide. The silhouetted shapes of them in the spell responded only mildly, and for the most part they remained where they’d been posted with vigilance.
Korsten had not expected them to run from it. He was hoping to seek his own target without the deliberate or overpowering use of Allurance. It took but a few moments for his methods to bear fruit. Among the lit shadows of the men was one that might have been looking very deliberately through the Mist. The individual’s head was surely turned in Korsten’s direction, drawn to the use of magic so near to it. The demon would have likely noticed Sharlotte building the magic with a casting of Blast as powerful as hers happened to be as well. It would have been a foolish risk assuming that she would succeed in completing the casting before the demon responded, perhaps by tearing from its host.
The eyes of the soldier whose attention the Mist spell had gathered lit as if to provide confirmation of the answer Korsten sought regarding his possessed state. And then the man stalked away from his post.
A few of his fellows might have noticed or even watched, but no one protested. Undoubtedly, the Morennish soldiers were accustomed to the erratic and perverse behaviors and decisions of their possessed companions.
Korsten shrunk somewhat into the shadows and watched the possessed soldier coming. It would see him with little effort once it came to the determination that a mage was there to be seen, so he had no hope of truly hiding from the demon. His hope was to distract it long enough for….
The ground took fire and thundered, reminding Korsten that Sharlotte’s spell was no mere Blast, but a coordinated working of two spells, empowering each other. The ground, the device, the men surrounding it, and even the one coming toward Korsten were thrown. The soldier who had broken off met the nearest wall with sudden jolt of force, and crunched against it awkwardly while his fellows and their weapon were ushered violently from view further down the street Sharlotte had aligned herself with for the spell’s casting. Parts of the corner buildings detached and spread through the air, inspiring Korsten to summon a Barrier just for caution’s sake.
Throughout the castings—both Sharlotte’s and his own—he kept a careful eye on the possessed soldier, watching for the telltale signs of a demon leaving the body. As one had not yet done so, he assumed the body of the man had actually survived the spell. Dropping Barrier, he stepped quickly toward him. The man was just beginning to rise unsteadily while Korsten did so. Korsten brought the man to the wall and down again with a quick casting of Release. The demon tumbled out with the force of the spell, like blood disgorged from punctured lungs.
Summoning his sword from the material stored in his hand, Korsten continued toward the fallen soldier and quickly swept the blade through its rising form. He realized only after the fact that he had given the demon no time to react. Of course, that was the only sound way to quell a demon, but he knew that alternatively his motivation was not only to dispose of it, but to deny it the opportunity to communicate with him. He didn’t know why he should feel so cruel over it; it made no sense.
He caught himself in the midst of the lie to himself, knowing full well that he had already begun to make sense of it … too much sense, enough that it disturbed him perhaps more than their darkness or their ways. He had come too closely into contact with them, in effect opening a portal between himself and their collective being. They all were familiar with him, and he with them … all owed to a spell’s touch. It was a spell that continued to touch them, whether he was actively casting it, or not.
What use was such a spell? He could only wonder. Beyond its surface function, it was no tool against them, but rather it was a pact made with them. A pact to do what, Korsten did not yet know. He did know that he was on a path to finding out, whether he meant to be or not. The door had already been opened and worse, it had already been shut behind him.
It was in the midst of his internal debate that the Morennish soldier, now freed from the Vadryn that had been possessing him, began to come around. He rose somewhat, shakily, disoriented by the concussive forces that had been used against him on two occasions. A narrow ribbon of blood and saliva trailed down his face while his eyes sought focus. They found Korsten and locked there with him for a moment during which his expression was one of uncertainty. It appeared briefly that the man might have been in a state of awe or disbelief.
Very quickly his look transmogrified into one of offense and outrage. “Gods damned red … I’ll kill you. However you got here….”
Korsten was teleported back in his mind to the last time a Morennish soldier had labeled him ‘red’. For an instant, he felt the clammy air of the keep, the fetid stench of a group of men in the midst of the worst brutality….
He had taken the term for a simple label based solely upon his hair, but there was something else about this man’s use of the word. Now that he was not a victim in the throes of exceptional duress, he realized that the nickname he’d been granted as their prisoner was no mere nickname at all. It meant something else … something more.
“What does that mean?” he found himself asking aloud.
The man had nearly gotten to his feet, a look of murderous intent in his eyes comparable to the variou
s expressions of lust and intent to harm in the eyes of his fellows over a year ago. Their postures were of arrogance in the face of an enemy at their mercy … an enemy that was in no position to retaliate or harm them, but one they feared all the same. They feared to the point of rage and of hatred. But why? This went beyond Edrinor and Morenne. Their need to dominate and humiliate at that keep had been very nearly personal, as if in direct retaliation for something Korsten had done, other than maintain his identity as an enemy by being a mage on top of an Edrinorian. And if not Korsten, then someone connected to him personally, whose actions they felt justified in holding him accountable for.
“What does that mean?” Korsten asked the soldier again. He nearly demanded it.
In the instant his voice took on a harder edge, the man’s bravery faltered. A glint of terror dashed across his features, and then his boldness came back twofold. His hands tightened into fists and he set himself to lunge, even before recovering his weapon.
He was given no such chance. As if lightning had struck him, a Blast spell cast from the rooftops threw the soldier to the wall for the last time. It was sudden and unceremonious. The body crunched against stone and dropped in a broken heap onto the cobbles.
Korsten’s passion in the moment was snuffed out as easily as a candlelight, all in the instant it had taken for the man to expire. The calm … the apathy he felt in that moment was almost eerie to behold as he stood witness to himself. He had no sympathy at all for the man, though he had felt remorse for the equally swift destruction of the demon. Even aware of it, he was unable to bring himself out of the sudden state.
Feeling eyes on him, he looked toward Sharlotte. Her expression seemed to summarize the sentiments of his internal witness. She appeared not angry or hateful toward him, but disturbed by him. The sensation of apathy slipped out of him like twine unraveling from its brief binding around his soul. In its absence he felt remorse again, though whether or not it was over the Morennish soldier’s death, he could not say.
“There’s at least one more of those weapons out of the harbor,” Sharlotte eventually said. “We should see to it.”
“We should,” Korsten agreed. He waited until she had gone to start after her.
Alsaide’s cabin door slammed shut with force that would only have been satisfying had it erupted from the hinges and sent splinters and brackets across the room. He wheeled away from the aggravatingly intact object and briefly contemplated tearing through the room himself in order to satiate his rage, but there were his poisons to consider. His collection was not only made of rare elements, but also of unique concoctions that he had derived of those rare items. He had even added some from the Islands, and spun a special toxin specifically for the governor of Indhovan. He had even done that … and it had made no difference.
Alsaide carried himself to the table in the center of the room, eyeing that bottle in particular. “You were to make this a simple task,” he said. “We would have been done here by now had you performed your end of it properly.”
He might have been speaking to Konlan Ossai, except that the man was dead. He had died by the hand of the Master, who had pitched the man into the sea. The glass trailing after the body was still vivid in Alsaide’s memory. And then the look he had received from the Master.
For what? There was no reason why Konlan should have failed, except that he did, because he was a man and men failed. Men failed, as did boys.
But I’m not a boy anymore. I’m far too old, aren’t I?
He considered his unaged face, frozen in youth. A small laugh escaped him, abbreviated by the sound of someone entering. Alsaide formed a fist around the bottle in front of him and he was just on the verge of turning to the door and hurling it at the intruder’s face.
“They’ve compromised a second cannon,” the individual said before that happened.
The bottle was gripped tighter instead of thrown. “Withdraw the others,” Alsaide instructed immediately. “Long enough to make them believe we may not have anymore.”
“Yes, my lord,” the man replied.
That made Alsaide smile. He stroked the bottle with his thumb and said in a kinder voice, “Send a messenger to my brother and tell him to do his part.”
The man hesitated to respond to that order.
Alsaide’s smile fell while he dug his thumbnail through the bottle’s label. “Tell him to do his part, lest I find a way to introduce one of my poisons into his drink, and yours.” He looked quickly over his shoulder. “Now get—out of here!”
The man performed a swift nod, seizing the dismissal as a means by which to avoid the bottle thrown at him next. It erupted against the edge of the door just as it was being drawn shut.
Alsaide glared through the cabin window afterward, across the waters of Indhovan, toward the northern edge of the city. Loel was there, left by the Master to carry out a simple, explicit task. “That mindless, soulless doll,” Alsaide murmured. “What is there to appreciate about him?”
Turning back toward the table, Alsaide leaned over it and gazed upon the assorted bottles, flasks, and containers arranged over its surface. Nearly any of them would end Loel’s unnaturally extended life, if properly administered. And it would be easy. They weren’t even true brothers, after all.
“It’s that he only ever does just exactly what he’s told, I suppose,” Alsaide continued. “He can do nothing more, nor anything less. He’s strung to the Master’s hand. If only he would strangle.”
The wall connecting the cliffs to the northern parts of the city was partly arranged by man’s hand, and partly arranged by the gods’. Assorted deposits of rock skirted the base of the slope that embraced the north side of Indhovan, leading directly into water, be it the inlet or the sea. The inlet was still somewhat high, owed to the wave, but it was not so high that enemy troops couldn’t move across it, and they were. Pockets of a darker mass beneath the cover of night shifted across the area at the base of the wall. Vlas imagined it was accomplished by raft as well as by natural bridges that had likely been discovered in low spots. If only the ability to flood were in the mage’s catalog, but he also supposed that was too great a risk for the city itself after recent affairs with the crone’s summoning. And it wasn’t possible besides.
“There are a good deal down there,” Vlas said of the enemy troops.
Beside him, Captain Gairel nodded and said, “Yes.”
“There are,” Lerissa agreed. “But we’ve arbalests at enough key points and soon they’re going to have a fog rolling over them. They shan’t be able to see the arbalests until they’ve been struck.”
“We’ll count on your capabilities, Lady Mage.”
“As you should,” Lerissa concluded and turned to relocate herself further up the slope.
Gairel watched her leaving and Vlas gave his focus to Imris instead. “I trust you to take care once this begins.”
“And you as well,” the constable returned.
That drew Gairel’s attention to them, but only briefly as he seemed to think it tactful to excuse himself at that moment.
Vlas found the gesture a tad absurd; there was nothing overly private occurring before the man. He immediately set about ignoring where that incidental thought tried to lead him. And it was then when Imris raised herself closer to his height and kissed him flush on the mouth. The moment passed quickly, and Vlas scarcely had time to respond before she withdrew. She looked at him, as if she might have had something to say, but then her expression seemed to conclude that she had said all she needed to. Imris then lowered back onto her heels and turned to walk away.
Vlas’ mind raised a few citations for the lady constable which were not dignified in voice. Instead, he let the matter go. Well, he considered letting it go, but then caught it before it escaped altogether and set it aside for later. With a punctuated exhale, he looked down the slope again, keeping his focus where it was needed.
Studying the movement of sectioned mobs of armed men gathering at the base of the wall, he descried what appeared a mounted torch. It was different than those few carried by the Morennish troops in that it cast a greenish silver glow. The tint indicated magic. That it did not have the same appearance as their own Lantern spell suggested that it had not been cast by a mage. That set just fine with Vlas; he had no interest in meeting with a traitor to the Seminary. However, that did suggest that it was a practitioner of wild magic, be it of the Islands cult or the city’s coven of witches, or merely a rogue. What that meant was that they had another magic user to contend with in this battle.
“Gods damn,” he murmured, quietly enough that only Zesyl would have heard him.
In spite of that, he gained the peculiar and discomforting sensation that the individual beneath the spell-cast torch was aware, and that the individual looked at him precisely in that moment. He perceived an image of a man who would have been a young man, save for the wasted appearance of his skin and form. The sickly tone and emaciated structure reminded Vlas immediately of a ghoul, of one who had given too much of their life force to the insatiable appetite of a demon. And if that were so, that individual should not have been consciously casting spells, nor coordinated enough to stay aback a horse beneath the magically initiated fire they should not have been able to cast a spell to begin with.
The sensation of hollow eyes focusing on him became increasingly uncomfortable. Vlas turned and made his way up to the vantage from which Lerissa planned to perform her own casting.
“I detect something strange looming beneath us,” he said to her when she was in hearing range.
“Strange in what way?” Lerissa asked, stood beneath the shrouded night sky appearing as a maiden sentinel from a book of legends. Vlas imagined the effect it might have been having on morale, which was good, however….
“Strange,” Vlas said, “in the way of a ghoul who might be casting spells.”