by D. P. Prior
Theurig squeezed Snaith’s knee, gave the slightest shake of his head. He put a hand over his mouth as if rubbing his beard; spoke behind it. “The digging at the tumulus…”
The gauntlet, Snaith realized. The horror Tey had led him to. He could see it now, pointing at him in his mind’s eye, so vividly he recoiled.
“Snaith,” Theurig muttered under his hand. “What have you done? What did you find?”
Snaith’s mind raced in a dozen different directions. Had he been wrong to explore beneath the burial mound? What would the implications be? The punishment? Wasn’t Tey the guilty party? Was that why she wasn’t here? And what exactly was the gauntlet? How had news of its discovery reached Hélum, when only Tey and he had been present?
Despite Theurig keeping his eyes on the Archmage, Snaith could feel his anger palpably. He’d jeopardized the sorcerer’s position somehow; undermined his need to always be the one in control.
What did you find?
Snaith opened his mouth to respond, but the words had not yet formed. What should he say that wouldn’t make him the focus of the Archmage’s ire? He was about to say something, protest his ignorance, when a disturbance passed along the sorcerers and their apprentices, and everyone turned to look behind at the aisle they had come down.
There, at the top, was a sunken-faced man in a long black coat, with a leashed dog at his side. A man who looked like a living corpse. Behind him… Snaith half stood from his seat as he recognized Vrom Mowry of the Malogoi.
So, Theurig wasn’t lying. Vrom’s alive. He never had the rot.
Snaith glanced at Theurig, the one to afflict Vrom with the disease, according to Tey. The sorcerer’s face was a mask of indifference; not even a hint of “I told you so.”
Then, following Vrom onto the top of the aisle came Tey Moonshine. Snaith didn’t even attempt to disguise his shock at her appearance. The task would have been beyond him. Black dress frayed and stained, hair matted, chin crusted with dried blood. She looked a crone before her time. Beneath the hem of her dress, the foot of her maimed leg was swollen and black, the toes curled like talons—or were they talons?
“Pheklus,” the Archmage said. “Glad you could join us. Where is Slyndon Grun?”
The cadaverous man stood aside and gestured to Tey. “Excellency, may I present his successor, Tey Moonshine, Witch of the Valks.”
Gasps from the sorcerers, followed by animated conversation.
Slyndon Grun’s successor? He’s dead? Does that mean Tey—
“Killed him?” Theurig muttered to himself. He licked his lips and glanced at Snaith.
The Archmage gave Tey a sharp look. His milky eye widened, giving the impression it wasn’t fully blind. The yellow one narrowed to a slit. “Tell me later,” he said, switching his gaze back to Theurig. “First, I have another matter to deal with. I would speak with you, Theurig Locanter. Join me.” With that, he pushed himself out of his throne and strode for the tunnel he’d entered by.
Theurig swallowed thickly, then stood. “I hope for your sake, Snaith, this goes well. And while I’m gone, stay away from Tey. Don’t even speak with her till I can establish what’s going on.”
Snaith barely noticed as Theurig left. He couldn’t take his eyes from Tey and Vrom as they seated themselves three rows back, along with Pheklus the Clincherman and his dog. Snaith’s heart quickened as Tey turned her head his way, but her eyes were unfocused, and she looked right through him. Vrom gave a surreptitious waggle of his fingers, no more than an acknowledgment. He immediately dipped his chin to his chest.
Had Tey lied about Theurig giving Vrom the rot? Why would she do that? Snaith drummed his fingers on his thigh as suspicions started to coalesce. What if she’d been right? What if the rot wasn’t what people thought it was? What if there was a cure? Hope for his mother and father?
Snaith stood, intending to ask Vrom what had happened, when Theurig’s instruction forced him back down. Too much was going on here. There were too many things he didn’t understand. He needed to wait. Do as he was told. Keep gathering information.
Many of the sorcerers got up and started to mingle, talking in hushed voices. The apprentices exchanged nervous glances, overawed by the situation, too scared to move.
Pheklus the Clincherman lifted his dog into his lap, where it fell immediately asleep. The black-coated sorcerer stroked its broad head absently as his unnerving pink eyes roved the cavern.
Tey seemed withdrawn, but that was nothing new. After what Snaith had learned about her recently, he recognized it as something essential to her survival. He called to mind Slyndon Grun, who had come for her in the Copse. Pictured all manner of things the fat sorcerer could have done. Tried to create the scenario in which Tey might have killed him and how. A dozen vignettes, each bloody and repugnant, and yet strangely arousing. He kept flicking looks at Tey, reminding himself of how filthy she looked. How ruined. But still he pictured himself lying with her. Longed for the touch of her hand.
Theurig returned far sooner than Snaith expected, red-faced and trembling with barely suppressed rage.
“He wants to see you next,” the sorcerer said, plonking himself down on the rock-carved bench and crossing his arms over his chest. “Alone.”
As Snaith started to rise, Theurig put a hand on his shoulder and said, “He already knows about the digging. I was going to deny all knowledge, but there seemed no point. Someone must have told him. But who?”
“Slyndon Grun?” Snaith suggested. “He did come to the Copse to collect Tey.”
Theurig wrinkled his nose. “No. Slyndon was no friend of the Archmage. Unless… Unless he was.” The look on his face said, “Unless he was playing me all along.”
“Chief Bellosh?” Snaith said. A man who knows a thing or two about betrayal.
Theurig scoffed. “That buffoon? But he didn’t see the digging.”
“Unless he’s been to the Copse since?”
“Maybe,” Theurig said. “Unlikely. It’s beside the point. Anathoth Xolor has eyes and ears everywhere. More so than I had imagined. Whatever you found in the Copse, Snaith, you must tell me. The Seven of Hélum are involved. I may not be able to protect you.”
Snaith nodded. He didn’t know what to say. The living gauntlet he’d seen below ground—Vilchus, Tey had said; she called it his hand—what was it exactly? Why was it important to Hélum? He thought about asking Theurig then and there, but that might give away an advantage.
“Remember, say nothing you don’t have to,” Theurig said. “Whatever you know, feign ignorance. Later we will talk, and then I’ll work out the best course of action.”
Snaith nodded, shrugging free of the sorcerer’s hand. “Don’t forget,” he shot over his shoulder as he headed for the marble floor of the cavern, “Tey knows.”
Theurig’s eyes did a frenetic dance, flitting this way and that. Blood leached from his face, and he clenched his jaw. “One more thing,” he muttered through gritted teeth.
A Lakeling armed with a glaive met Snaith behind the onyx throne and led him through a warren of cylindrical tunnels bored through the rock of the mesa. Snaith wanted to ask how they had been made, but doubted he would get an answer.
The Lakeling brought him to an oval door set into one of the limestone walls. It was made from the same shiny black stone as the ruins of the citadel. He rapped his glaive against the door and stood aside.
“Come,” the Archmage called from within.
Snaith reached for a handle, but there was none. He gingerly touched the surface of the door, and it dissolved into thin air. He stepped back, heart thumping wildly in his chest. The Lakeling shook his masked head, then peered at Snaith through amber eyes. A shake of the glaive was all the incentive Snaith needed to enter. This time, he rapped on the jamb three times. He couldn’t help himself.
In contrast to the passageways outside and the rough-hewn cavern of meeting, here was a chamber of exquisite construction: seven-sided, with walls, ceiling, and floor of glistening
black. It felt like entering a void, and Snaith braced against falling till his body registered the darkness beneath his feet was solid. He swayed in place for a moment as nausea washed over him.
Then he noticed a bulge in the wall opposite: a cabinet of the same dark material, as high as he was tall. Beside it, a blackwood bookcase packed with the spines of hefty tomes, all somber-colored and merging with the surrounds.
Gaining his bearings with the bookcase, Snaith slowly turned his head till he found twin pools of violet staring at him out of a patch of coagulating shadow. They immediately winked out and a ring of flames sprang up, illuminating the Archmage seated at its center. A prickling sensation ran across Snaith’s skin, this time from dread rather than some unseen sorcery. Heat from the circle of fire drove him back a step.
“Come,” the Archmage said. “The flames will not burn.”
Snaith hesitated. All his senses screamed that the skin would be melted from the bone if he drew too near.
The Archmage sighed, and he twisted his staff upon his lap with impatience. Clenching against the expected pain, and shutting his eyes against the glare, Snaith lunged forward and crossed the threshold, feeling only a pleasant coolness as he passed through the flames.
The Archmage raised an eyebrow and tilted his head to one side. “Of course, they could burn, if I so wished. Like most things, it’s simply a matter of will.”
Snaith swallowed, eyeing the perimeter of fire that surrounded them.
“Keeps us safe from prying eyes,” the Archmage explained. “And eavesdropping ears. A sorcerer can never be too suspicious of his fellows. Did Theurig not tell you that?”
Is he bluffing? Can he really control whether the flames burn or not? More smoke and mirrors? Or does he have real power?
Snaith shuffled away from the fire toward the Archmage’s chair—padded and black, made from some kind of ensorcelled fabric with the texture of shadows.
“Well?” the Archmage prompted.
“No.”
A frown.
“I mean no, Theurig did not tell me… Excellency.”
The Archmage settled back in his chair with a satisfied nod. He fixed Snaith with his yellow eye. The white one looked straight through Snaith, as if it saw into another realm.
“Coldman’s Copse, I believe Theurig said the place was called. Some sort of sacred ground blistered with burial mounds. He says he does not know who is interred there, and I’m inclined to believe him. Older than the most remote ancestors of the Malogoi, he tells me.” The Archmage pursed his lips and shrugged. “That wouldn’t be unusual. Branikdür is littered with the vestiges of lost civilizations. But you know this, of course. Theurig lent you Cawdor’s book, did he not? The Four Invasions of Branikdür.”
Snaith started to reach for the clasp of his satchel, but the Archmage held up a staying hand.
“Don’t show me. I have a copy of my own. They are two a shekel in Hélum. I take it Theurig procured yours from Slyndon Grun?”
Snaith nodded. “That’s what he said, Excellency.”
The Archmage stroked his beard, a pensive look on his face. “That girl who deposed Slyndon: you know her?”
Snaith’s mouth felt suddenly dry. If he denied knowing Tey, the Archmage might find out he was lying, and what would happen then? He might already know. Theurig could have told him. Wincing internally, he said, “Tey Moonshine. She is of our clan. I was to…” Too much. Don’t say too much. Only what I have to reveal, Theurig said.
The Archmage leaned forward. “Yes?”
Drawing in a deep breath, Snaith said, “We were to be married.”
“What happened?”
Snaith raised the misshapen lump of his arm. In response to the cock of the Archmage’s eyebrow, he said, “A bear attacked her at the Proving. I tried to save her. It’s why I couldn’t compete in the circles.”
The Archmage nodded slowly, as if he understood. As if he cared. “You wanted to be a warrior. Have a wife. Raise the next generation of Malogoi. You feel cheated. Angry.”
Snaith felt the rush of heat in his veins. A tic began to pulse on his cheek. He covered it with his good hand.
“Understandable,” the Archmage said. “The Weyd’s gifts can easily be misconstrued as cruelty.”
Snaith locked eyes with him then. “The Weyd…”
“Go on.”
“Theurig said the Weyd was no-thing.”
“And he’s right,” the Archmage said.
“But not nothing.”
A nod of encouragement.
“It has intelligence?”
The Archmage smiled.
“It knows us? Acts in the world?” It punishes transgressors?
“What does Theurig say?”
“I’m not really sure. Sometimes I think he deliberately confuses me.”
“He is your master,” the Archmage said, a harsh edge returning to his voice. “Follow the path he has set. I will say only this on the subject: Theurig’s is one way among many, a facet of the infinite truth. But back to the Proving. Something happened just after the other clans left. I am told there were emanations, and Theurig does not deny that there was digging in this Coldman’s Copse. You were there for the night, he says, with the young lady you were so wise in not denying that you knew. Talk about it.”
Told there were emanations? Told by whom? Hélum? Did that mean the Archmage hadn’t detected anything himself?
The Archmage was watching him closely through his yellow eye, but it was the blind one that gave the sense it was looking deeper, studying the possible paths of Snaith’s fate.
A complex network of lies festooned Snaith’s mind in vivid pictures, each with its own accompanying phrases. Each sending out roots in search of antecedent causes, should he be forced to justify them. It didn’t sit right with him, how swiftly his allegiance to honesty had been betrayed. It was the difference between a warrior and a sorcerer. Deception was a tool of the trade.
But what if the Archmage’s blind eye possessed the sorcerous ability to discern the truth? Snaith should have tested him, lied about some inconsequential detail. But what would be the point? Why was he even considering taking such a risk?
Because Theurig had told him to be evasive, that’s why. Because the sorcerer wanted to be the one in control, until he could determine “the right course of action.”
And so Snaith told the Archmage the truth, about how Tey had dug with her fingers into the soil of the tumulus. How he’d fetched a shovel to help her. How they had uncovered the burial chamber. What they had found inside. At mention of a living gauntlet that scuttled through the air, the Archmage stiffened.
“You know what it is?” he whispered, as if he feared his fiery perimeter could not contain the words. “You know what you found?”
“The Hand of Vilchus,” Snaith said.
The Archmage let out a long exhalation. Turned his face to the perfect dark of the ceiling. Studied it for a long while. When he returned his yellow eye to Snaith, he said, “Did Theurig tell you that?”
Snaith shook his head.
“I’ll ask again.” The Archmage stood from his chair and rapped his staff against the ground. A feint dweomer encompassed the wyvern at its tip, and the Archmage’s eyes excoriated Snaith with their violet blaze. “Did he tell you what it was called? Does he know what you discovered?”
Invisible hands pressed either side of Snaith’s head—hands of iron that threatened to crack his skull like a nut. His vision narrowed to a tunnel of incandescent violet. All he could hear was the echoing slam of his heart.
“No,” he gasped. And then louder, “No!”
The glare died down. The pressure relented. Snaith sighed and dipped his head.
“So, Theurig wasn’t lying,” the Archmage said. “When he said he didn’t know what was found. Vilchus! The Named, the Shedim called him. The Architect. Do you have any idea how long he has been hidden from the world? How hard the Seven searched for his Hand before they left Branikdür?”
“Since the end of the Fourth Invasion?” For that’s when Cawdor said the Seven had driven the Shedim from the Dark Isle, banished them to whatever region of the Nethers.
“Centuries!” the Archmage said. “For a thousand years or more, the mightiest sorcerers of Hélum have failed to find the Hand of Vilchus, and yet you, barely into manhood, an apprentice to a skeptic whose only faith is in what can be empirically observed and measured, you just happen to stumble across it?”
His eyes were back to yellow and white now, but the intensity of his glare was just the same. He expected an answer, but Snaith had no idea what to say. What more was there?
“Those Shedim captured by the Hélum invaders confessed under torture that Vilchus possessed a hideout,” the Archmage said, “an impregnable bunker with the most secure mode of access. They revealed it as a taunt. All of them died before giving up its location. So, how did you get inside?”
Snaith let his expression go blank. Tey’s blood, spilled on the stone of the entrance. But why that had worked, and how, was beyond him. Would any blood do, or was it just Tey’s? And if he told the Archmage, what would that mean for Tey? More blood to gain access? Would she be handed over to Hélum until the burial chamber was opened? And then what would become of her? He thought of her descending the aisle in the cavern, pictured once more the filthy hag she’d become. Why did he even care? His lips parted, and the Archmage’s yellow eye sparkled in anticipation. But then Snaith clammed up and shrugged.
“I see,” the Archmage said. He resumed his seat, settling his staff once more across his knees. “We all have at least one secret, don’t we? I don’t blame you. These are treacherous straits we inhabit. Better than I expected. Your performance. Better than Theurig’s. But to build a fuller picture of what has transpired, a third voice is required, don’t you think?”
The Archmage nodded toward the chamber’s entrance. There, standing in the doorway, face half hidden by a thatch of lank and greasy hair, was Tey.