by D. P. Prior
“This pendant isn’t the only thing you’ve stolen,” Snaith said.
“I have no idea—”
“My father’s book.”
“In my bag. Let me up and I’ll give it to you.”
“No need,” Snaith said. “I’ll take it when we’re done.”
“Done? Snaith, whatever this is about, we can work it out. I’m sorry I took the book. I was wrong to do that.”
“And my parents,” Snaith said. “Are you sorry about them?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Snaith chuckled, a low, gurgling noise, dark and intoxicating. He feinted another blow with his clawed hand, and Theurig screamed. That only made Snaith laugh more.
“Tell me about Hélum,” he said abruptly. “About what happened to your master, Kardish.”
Theurig squeezed his eyes shut. After a while, he opened them again. They were moist, and he blinked rapidly to regain focus.
“Hélum is a barbaric city, Snaith. A retarded empire. You think some of the clans here are superstitious, but that is nothing compared with the mainland. Ours is a smokescreen, a game, a means of maintaining control.” His voice was reedy, distant, as if he’d transported himself someplace else in his mind. As if he couldn’t face the reality of his predicament.
It was sad to see. Pathetic. It made Snaith ashamed to be associated with the sorcerer. A warrior would not hide from danger so. A warrior would have put up some sort of a fight.
“The Wyvern of Necras,” Theurig continued. “It is a cult in Hélum. They worship it in blood-drenched temples. That’s what Kardish told me. And they believe, Snaith. They believe in magic. Attribute their ascendancy to it.”
Theurig looked up and forced a chuckle of his own, as if they were sharing a joke. As if they both looked down on the idiot Hélumites together. Only, lying prone as he was, with Snaith’s weight keeping him there, the sorcerer was in no position to look down on anyone.
“They have power, right enough,” Theurig went on. “Martial, and something else. Like my… the pendant. Crafted objects. Items forged from metal, inscribed with patterns. Somehow they work in concert with the user’s mind. I’ve discovered a little of how the pendant works, but you’ve seen for yourself how much it drained me.”
Snaith was nodding, piecing it all together. Certain keys, the Archmage had said. That Theurig lacked. Well, he’d given Snaith one of them.
“Go on,” Snaith said. “You were telling me about Hélum.”
Theurig licked dry lips. “Kardish took me there, to the capital, during my apprenticeship. It’s a rare thing for a sorcerer to leave Branikdür, let alone an apprentice. Anathoth Xolor had not long been Archmage at the time. He did not approve of our journey. He and Kardish had been friends once, shared secrets with each other. But when the Seven decreed Anathoth was to succeed Archmage Sutech, who had displeased them in some way, the friendship cooled. I don’t know what happened, but I do know Kardish was furious about something, and that the point of our trip to Hélum was to register his complaint with the Seven. I now suspect he had designs on replacing Anathoth as Archmage.”
Theurig paused to gingerly press the bridge of his nose. He winced, sniffed up blood, and continued.
“I was not permitted to enter the compound of the Seven with my master, but from the outside it is an imposing edifice, made from the obsidian that once formed the Citadel of the Wakeful. Seven-sided, with seven stone doors, each as thick as a buttress. Kardish went in a forceful, virile man. He came out haggard and hollow. He could walk only with my assistance. Midway across the sea from Granygg he was dead. His last words concerned the Wyvern of Necras. The Seven, he said, had accused him of disparaging its cult. He was certain Anathoth had gotten word to them in advance of our visit, filled their heads with lies.”
“Is that why you inked me with the Wyvern? To convince the Seven you’re onside if your squabble with the Archmage boils over?” Was Theurig playing the same game as his master, after all these years?
“Squabble? I do not squabble. I was trying to protect you.”
“From whom? The Archmage?”
“He’s not the friend you think he is, Snaith. To any of us.”
“And are you?” Snaith said. “A friend?”
Theurig nodded. His bloodied-up nose and beard lent him an air of sincerity.
“To my parents? Is that why you gave them the rot?” Before Theurig could deny it, Snaith went on: “Tey saw you poison Vrom. You denied it. Said it was something else. I don’t believe you. I think you did give him the rot, and that there’s a cure. An antidote.”
“You worked it out!” Theurig said. “I knew you would.”
“You were testing me?” Do I look like an idiot?
“Just as I did at the Copse.”
“So, you’ve administered the cure? My parents are all right?”
“They will be, once Meldred prepares the antidote. That’s her specialty: gathering fungi and herbs, drying and grinding them. The minute we arrive home, I’ll set her to it.” At Snaith’s frown, he added, “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time. Weeks it takes, the rot. Weeks. And she knows just where to find Bas and Jennika.”
“Meldred, you say?” Snaith said.
“That’s right. Meldred. You’ve met her…” Theurig trailed off as Snaith lowered the pendant toward his face. “I’ve said too much, haven’t I?”
Snaith couldn’t resist a smug smile.
Theurig shut his eyes in resignation. “You don’t need me.”
“Shrewd of you to realize,” Snaith said.
Theurig’s eyes shot open. He’d had an idea, it was obvious. He started to babble, but Snaith clubbed him on the temple with his bad hand.
“A warrior can make a weapon out of anything,” Snaith said, trying once again to move his rigid fingers. The failure only heightened his resolve. “Could this be a weapon?” he asked, twirling the pendant above Theurig’s broken nose, so close the sorcerer’s eyes crossed. “How did you say it works?”
“Concentration,” Theurig blurted. “On the patterns. I don’t know. Forge a connection. Mentally. With the mind.”
Snaith chuckled. “A bit dry, wouldn’t you say? Sterile, like your philosophy of the Weyd as no-thing. Do you want to know what I think?”
Theurig’s nod this time was pathetic, hopeful without him believing there was any hope.
“Fantasy is the ox that pulls the plow,” Snaith said.
He shut his eyes. Visualized the pendant’s pattern of lines, no need to study it again: it had been burned into his brain first time he saw it.
Nothing.
He cursed inwardly with frustration; forced himself to think. No, not think: feel. Emotion was the key, the Archmage had said. Snaith thought about his dying parents. Theurig’s guilt.
Heat on his fingers. A sputter. A sparkle that whipped his eyes open. Theurig whimpered and twisted his head aside.
It was a start, but it wasn’t enough.
This time when Snaith shut his eyes, holding onto the image of the pendant’s pattern, he summoned his simulacrum of Tey, the true one. Overlaid her scars with the markings on the pendant. Visualized the triangle between her breasts erupting with white fire. He let his inner sight linger on her nipples, then dropped it between her legs. Unbidden, he felt once more the touch of her hand, and his cheeks burned with shame.
Theurig gasped.
Heat surged along the pendant’s chain, flooded Snaith’s skin. Something ruptured deep inside of him. Fire flooded from the breach, streaked down his arm, hit the pendant, and exploded.
Theurig screeched and wailed.
Snaith opened his eyes, blinking against the fury of the conflagration that consumed the sorcerer. The pendant blazed like a small sun, its fire encompassing Snaith’s hand without burning.
But Theurig was not so lucky.
As Snaith’s shame gave way to an avalanche of shock, the pendant’s fire died down. Of the sorcerer, all that remained
was a charred and flaking husk, his bag smoldering beside him, Bas Harrow’s book visible through the disintegrating fabric.
Snaith pushed himself off of the corpse, eyes flicking between it and the pendant. He snatched the book. The pages were fire-blackened at the edges, the cover melted like wax, but it was cooling rapidly. Placing it in his bag, he backed away a step. Strength leached from his legs. He stumbled and almost fell. Tired. He felt so tired, as if he’d fought ten bouts in the circles and hadn’t slept for days.
The breach within him rippled and yawned. Corrosion seeped from its edges. His stomach clenched, and he bent double. Bile rose in his throat. It burned where he swallowed it back down. He groaned as his mouth opened of its own accord, and he vomited.
Empty, hollow, appalled at what he had done, Snaith made a fist around the pendant and stumbled away into the night. He felt blindly before him with his clawed hand, safer in the absolute dark of the forest than he would have felt with Theurig’s pearly glow. Safe from the retribution of the Weyd. Even now, with all that he’d been told since the Proving, he couldn’t shake a lifetime of superstition. Nor the sense it might not be superstition at all.
What if Theurig had been lying about that?
Or what if he’d simply gotten it wrong?
PART 3
THE COMING OF HÉLUM
LITTLE SISTER
Pheklus pushed open the front door of his house back home in the Krosh village and was immediately hit by the stench from inside. He’d not noticed it before—well, he had, if he was to be brutally honest, but this time it was worse. Overpowering. He’d been away too long.
He and Tey and Vrom had traveled back from the Wakeful Isle overland, a much more circuitous route, but no one had wanted to risk the tunnels again. He’d left them both on the fringes of the Valks’ domain.
Gulgath yipped excitedly and strained against his leash. Pheklus released him, and the dog scampered indoors.
Pheklus paused for a moment on the threshold, taking in the dilapidated state of the house: rotting fascias, cracked masonry overgrown with creepers, missing roof tiles, and a lopsided chimney. Like all the homes of the Krosh, Pheklus’s was brick-built to last, and it had stood as long as anyone could remember. Longer, given that it had been the residence of his predecessor, the Necromancer Talis, and his master before him, Caliophanus the Resurrectionist. Not that Caliophanus ever resurrected anything, as far as Pheklus could gather from the dead sorcerer’s notes. Certainly not himself. In that department, Pheklus was way ahead of the game. Insects in the main, although the odd rodent had managed a shuddering post-mortem breath. But he was onto something. It was only a matter of time.
He entered the hallway and shut the door behind him. The hinges squeaked, just the way he liked them to. The damp of Branikdür’s perpetual rain had seeped through the walls, leaving the plaster cracked and crumbling. Black mold mottled the ceiling, exuding a dank, mustardy odor. It was supposedly bad for the lungs, so Slyndon Grun had told him on a visit, but Pheklus lacked the time and the inclination to fix the problem.
The house was more of a mausoleum than a dwelling place, but that only enhanced his reputation. Indeed, the Krosh revered such things. They were all as obsessed with death as he was, and all just as fearful of the land of shades that awaited them after they breathed their last. They looked to him to guard them from it, to come up with a remedy. Same as they’d looked to Caliophanus and Talis, who had both gone down as dismal failures. Caliophanus had died of consumption, Talis of an infection of the vile he’d sustained when he scratched his thumb on a rusty gibbet. At least, that was the story Pheklus had put about.
Talis and Caliophanus had made it harder for their successors to gain the trust of the people, dying like that. Dying at all was unacceptable, for anyone. It undermined all the Krosh stood for, all that Stygus Kroshtek, the first sorcerer to govern them, had put into place, his own distinctive take on the mysteries of the Weyd.
The cobwebs in the hallway stretched from floor to ceiling. Or was it the other way round? Each time Pheklus left home, he parted them down the center like a curtain. When he returned, the rent had been sealed. Funny thing was, he never saw the spiders—the size of the web alone dictated there had to be more than one, unless it was a particularly large spider, in which case, where was it hiding? Dead roaches collected in piles at the sides, obscuring the baseboards. Those at the bottom were desiccated, midway to dust, those at the top bloated, and some still twitching. He was never short of specimens.
Some of the stench was coming from the kitchen, he noted, as he passed the ever-closed door. It was probably overrun with maggots again. He had so little call to use a kitchen.
He caught sight of Gulgath padding toward the bedroom, frowned when the dog cocked his leg by the doorjamb, where a pile of dried-out turds had accumulated, waiting for someone to scoop them up. Gulgath had to share some of the blame for the olfactory assault.
Pheklus made a beeline for the narrow stairway leading down to the basement.
The rest of the smell, though, was Lettia’s scent.
His dear, sweet sister.
She was just as he’d left her, in the little-girl’s room he’d made for her in the basement. Amid the nest of plumped-up pillows with which he’d festooned the bed, Lettia lay, wrapped head to toe in age-yellowed bandages. He should have changed them, he knew, but he didn’t want to risk damaging what was left of her beneath.
Nine years she’d been entombed in a cairn in the Place of Many Sleepers, the graveyard bordering Krosh. The last resting place for those not supposed to die. Seven years old she’d been when the clan had put her there. After Pheklus had watched her drown.
He would have disinterred her sooner, but only the Krosh sorcerer was permitted to enter the Place of Many Sleepers. That had been all the incentive the young Pheklus needed to depose Talis.
Young indeed! Forty-three years since Lettia passed to the Nethers. She’d have been fifty this winter. Thirty-four since he’d settled her in his home. Thirty-four years of research and experimentation, all so he could bring her back. So he could right the wrong of failing her, of being too scared to follow her into the lake. So he could fulfill the deepest longings of his people, starting with Lettia as the first fruits.
Pheklus crossed to the bed and planted a kiss on her bandaged face, right where the bump of her nose used to be. He’d noticed lately how it was less pronounced than it once was. Not a problem, he told himself before panic set in. Easily fixed.
“I’m home, Letty,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “Sorry I was gone for so long.”
Four days in all, but it felt much longer. Especially given all that had happened in the tunnels, and the Archmage’s announcement at the isle.
It was a worry, this business with Hélum. Not a peep from them in all his time as Krosh sorcerer, and now a lot of fuss over nothing. Well, something, apparently. Something that had happened just after the Proving at Malogoi. Pheklus hadn’t been there. Slyndon had tried to convince him to show his face, but he had been too busy. He stroked Lettia’s cloth-wrapped face, the bandages brittle, flaking, near-fossilized. Far too busy.
“The Archmage wants me to leave you again. Something about greeting a delegation at Gosynag Bay. But don’t worry, Lettia, darling, I have no intention of going.” He doubted he’d be missed. The Archmage was going to be up to his ears preparing for his imperial visitors.
“I met someone,” he told his sister’s mummified remains. “At Slyndon’s. A girl. A young woman, I should say. Reminded me of you. Of how you might have been, had you… had I not failed you.”
She’d been a willful child, Lettia, and gifted. She saw things others didn’t. Heard things, too. In her company, he felt in touch with the Nethers, the shadow realm of the dead, and whilst it frightened him, it was better to face your fears than to hide from them. That way you had the best chance of comprehending them. And then conquering.
But Lettia hadn’t conquered. The voices in he
r head started to frighten her, and then they commanded her. The only person she could tell was her older brother: “Do they speak to you, Pheklus? Do they make you do things?” She was shaking as she said it, riddled with doubt and fear, but wanting to hear it was normal.
When Pheklus shook his head, speechless, Lettia had run. Run to the lake.
“Letty,” Pheklus’s little-boy voice carried to him across the years, still lame, still weak, still ineffectual. He’d been ten at the time. “Lettia, you can’t swim!”
He felt the constriction in his throat, the pressure of tears that would not come.
“Should have been me,” he told the mummy on the bed for the thousandth time.
She did not answer.
She was angry with him, and she would be until the day he unearthed the secrets that would restore her to life, and after her return the whole of the Crafters’ creation to what they had intended. For he’d seen the brass rubbings of pictograms in Slyndon Grun’s most jealously guarded books—taken from the abandoned pyramids of the Gardeners in Necras. Not only had they given him the primary pattern of resurrection he used in all his experiments, but they’d hinted at a Nemus in which death held no sway, a world perfectly in harmony with the all-powerful, beneficent Weyd.
A skeptic like Theurig would have heaped scorn on the idea. The Weyd for Theurig was a reductive concept, the end of a chain of causality, or rather its unshifting starting point. Theurig’s was a bland and ultimately nihilistic philosophy. A world devoid of meaning. An infinite ocean of possibilities. Violently competing forces. Everything up for grabs. Theurig was only interested in how things worked, and how he could use the knowledge to his advantage, not why there was something rather than nothing. To him, the Crafters’ creation of Nemus was an aberration: creatures who were themselves the product of blind chance imposing their delusional order on the chaos.
Pheklus was still looking down at Lettia, moisture blurring his sight. She drew him like a lodestone, hardened the abstraction of his thoughts into purpose. The point he’d been making to himself, around which all his experiences old and new coalesced, was that Theurig Locanter was wrong. Nemus and all the life it contained was the Crafters’ homage to the Weyd they believed in, the ever-giving source of all being that lay behind the warring chaos. That is why on Nemus there had been no disease, no decay, no suffering, no death.