The Core

by Peter V. Brett

  “Everam must’ve been sleepin’ on watch, waitin’ so long to do what needed doin’.”

  “Peace, sister,” Shanvah said, not taking her eyes from the prisoner.

  “Even I cannot speak for Everam’s Plan,” Jardir said. “Only the dama’ting can do that, and even they can only offer the barest glimpse.”

  Shanjat laughed at that, but said nothing in response to Jardir’s glare. Jardir looked back to Renna, and bowed. “If our words have offended you, I apologize. I have known many warriors to enter sharak carrying the weight of a father’s shame. Shanvah and I will not utter his name again.”

  Renna grunted, her aura still hot.

  “Nevertheless, it does not change our situation,” Jardir said.

  “Ent swimming in that.” Renna nodded toward the lake.

  “Won’t have to,” the Par’chin said. “Gonna make a bridge.”

  Jardir looked at him. “How are we supposed to do that, Par’chin?”

  “Same way we’re gettin’ past the mushrooms.” He stepped out to lead the way. “Form up.”

  Shanvah wrapped her veil around her nose and mouth three times, producing a second silk and handing it to Renna.

  “Got my own.” Renna produced a pristine veil of white silk from a pouch at her waist, wrapping it around her nose and mouth as Shanvah had. “Wedding gift from Amanvah.”

  “Everam sees all ends, and guides us as He can.” Jardir put up his own night veil, and the Par’chin took Shanvah’s spare to cover his own face.

  Shanvah pulled her father’s white veil over his face, as well. He looked at her. “The drone may have this scant protection, but I—”

  “Had best keep your mouth shut and stick close,” the Par’chin finished for him.

  Jardir took the rear, Shanvah and Renna on either side of Shanjat in a diamond formation as the Par’chin began drawing cold wards in the air, freezing spore and stalk alike. The moisture in the air only aided the effort, and a thick rime of ice formed on everything as they began.

  Understanding his plan, Jardir and Renna began to do likewise, trapping the deadly spores. Their feet crunched the frost as they made their way to the water’s edge.

  And then they were under attack, creatures bursting from the cover of the stalks on all sides. There were demons, a nightwolf, a pair of stout, muscular lizards the size of clay demons, and even a human man, his eyes dead, skin pale and dark-veined, with mushrooms sprouting from his ears. Their auras were strong, but blank, blending in perfectly with the surrounding colony. There was no thought to their actions, no feeling.

  Shanvah yanked the chain to bring Shanjat to his knees, dropping the shield off her shoulder and onto her arm to cover them both. The demon did not resist the defense she offered as she slid her glass spear from its harness.

  “Don’t cut them!” the Par’chin warned, but he needn’t have bothered. The daughter of Shanjat was no fool. She kept her shield out, driving back the foe with push-kicks and shattering blows of her spear shaft, breaking limbs to cripple pursuit.

  The others kept to their cold magic, freezing the creatures and preventing them from releasing their deadly infection.

  When the first wave was driven back or frozen in place, Shanvah took up the chain again, leading the way to the water. Twice more they had to stop and fight, but they were prepared now, and the mindless foe not so great a challenge for a ready defender. Even the alagai were weak, their cabled muscles rotted from the inside by the consuming fungus. The water drew closer…

  “Ware above!” Shanjat called, and Shanvah got her shield up just in time to block a great mass of slime that sloughed from a stalactite overhead. Instinctively she protected her father first, her glass shield turning the attack from him, but the spatter struck her arm and back, smoking and hissing as it burned away at her silks and seeped between the plates of her armor.

  She did not cry out or stop moving, her glory boundless in the face of what was no doubt an agonizing attack. Instead they quickened the pace to the water’s edge, where the fungal colony thinned and finally ended, replaced by rock covered in more of the caustic slime.

  This, the Par’chin burned away, and his jiwah froze it after, clearing a path to the water.

  Shanvah was weakening. Jardir could see it in her aura, the slime burning, liquefying her skin as it ate her alive. There was magic to it, feeding and multiplying at an incredible rate. Untreated, she would be dead in moments, dissolved to nothing in an hour.

  “Guard us while I tend to her!” Jardir called, stripping away her silks. She was his niece, and there was no dishonor in seeing her unclad, but Shanvah had not the strength to resist in any event. The flesh of her arm and back was bubbling, melting away. Renna drew heat wards over Shanvah’s ruined robes, killing the deadly parasite.

  “You must embrace the pain,” Jardir told her. “Everam is watching.”

  “Pain…” Shanvah gasped, laboring for breath, “…is only…wind.”

  “Indeed,” Jardir said, peering deep into the muck as he summoned power and began to draw wards. Shanvah thrashed, biting her thickly wound veil, but she did not cry out as he burned the slime away, taking healthy flesh as well as infected to ensure he had it all. When he was satisfied that not a bit of it remained, he altered his warding to spells the dama’ting had used for centuries to regrow flesh and stimulate new blood.

  Immediately Shanvah opened her eyes, aura colored in shame. “I apologize, Uncle. Again, I am the weakness your enemies exploit.”

  “Nonsense,” Jardir said. “Without your quick action we would have lost our guide, or had the attack strike another of the chosen. Rest a moment.”

  But Shanvah was shaking her head, already pushing herself upright. “There is no time, Uncle. I am well enough to continue on.”

  It was true, though her previously pristine flesh now had the look of melted wax, angry and red. She gave no thought to shame as she retrieved the warded glass plates from her ruined robes, dressing quickly in a spare from her pack. Another fungal demon emerged from the colony, but the Par’chin drew a heat ward with such power that it flashed white with flame and was reduced instantly to ash.

  Renna gave a shriek as a tentacle splashed from the water, reaching for her. It wrapped around her arm, but with a thought she powered the wards on her skin, and it loosed its grip. A slash of her knife severed the appendage, but others followed. In the commotion, they had lost the protection of their wards of unsight.

  Jardir looked at Alagai Ka, wondering if this was his plan all along, but there was fear in the demon’s weak aura. Trapped by the wards in its current form, it would not survive being pulled under any better than they.

  The Par’chin stepped forward, pulling power away from his wards to allow the tentacles to wrap around his arms. He planted his feet and began to walk back, hauling the beast from the water. It was a thing of nightmare, slimy appendages covered in sharp horns and suction tips all joining at a center mass that seemed entirely mouth, with thousands of snapping teeth.

  Jardir did not hesitate, launching himself at the creature and driving the Spear of Kaji deep into its throat, killing it.

  The water was alive with demons. He focused his will on the crown’s warding field, driving them back as he returned to the others.

  His patience thinned, he went to Shanjat, violence barely held in check. “How could any human swim through such an infested place?”

  “Because they carried my imprint,” Alagai Ka said through his friend, “and had a mimic to guide them and dominate the lesser drones.”

  “And Kaji’s armies?” Jardir demanded. “Is this the path they took?”

  “The lake was not here back then,” Alagai Ka said. “My kind created it to discourage further intrusion into our territory.”

  “You built a lake?” Renna asked.

  “A simple enough task, to have rock drones open tunnels to nearby water flows,” Shanjat said.

  “Ent swimmin’,” Renna said again.

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nbsp; “Won’t have to,” the Par’chin said. “Gonna freeze us a bridge.”

  “And when the water demons come at it?” she asked.

  “The Crown of Kaji will keep them at bay,” Jardir assured her. He took out the sacred bowls and shattered the frozen stone, drawing soil beneath to fill them and create food and water while the Par’chin summoned magic to build his bridge. Shanvah seemed much recovered, but she would need food and drink to replace the lost flesh, and there was little to be done for the scars. Magic could fade a clean cut into an invisible line, but this damage was too much for that.

  When Shanvah had been fed and returned to guard her father and the demon, Renna am’Bales drifted over like a fish on a lure.

  Jardir bowed. “Again, I apologize…”

  “Nothin’ to be sorry for.” Renna bowed in return. “You din’t know. Just snapped. Thought I’d got a handle on it, the flashes of anger that come from magic, but the babe’s made it worse’n ever, and I took a big dose up in that cave. Anyone should be sorry, it’s me.”

  “It is a…failing among my people, to put the father’s name first in all things.” The words were difficult for Jardir, in part because the truth of them gave lie to so much of his own life. “My own father died young and without glory. I spend more hours pondering how to win a place of honor for him in Heaven than I did on my mother, raising four without a husband.”

  Renna glanced at Shanvah. “Looks like you did all right by them in the end.”

  “Perhaps,” Jardir allowed. “The Par’chin, too, grated at being named the son of Jeph, though it was years before I learned why.”

  “His da found redemption without anyone’s help,” Renna said. “Wouldn’t be sitting here, he hadn’t stepped off his porch and faced down a demon with nothin’ but a plain old axe.”

  She sighed. “Maybe none of us would be here, my da hadn’t taken up his pitchfork and shepherded Arlen and his mam and da to succor all those years ago.”

  “Only the Creator can see all ends,” Jardir said, careful not to use Everam’s name for fear of upsetting this fragile moment. “We can spend eternity questioning the past, but it is the future we must look to.”

  “Honest word.” Renna then spoke the prayers with him, again eating more than the others combined.

  By then, the Par’chin had gathered an incredible amount of ambient magic, glowing as bright to crownsight as the sun. He began his warding, and ice crystals formed on the surface of the lake, streaking toward one another and connecting, spreading out and thickening down to form a sheet of ice that extended out from the shore into the darkness.

  Jardir waited, watching as the bright shine of his friend’s power dimmed. When it threatened to go dark, he went to him and gently laid a hand on his back. “Enough, Par’chin. Eat and refresh yourself. Let me continue your work.”

  “Ay.” The Par’chin put his hands on his knees, panting as if he had been in pitched battle, when he had only stood on the shore. “Might be that’s a good idea.”

  As the Par’chin took the rare luxury of a moment’s ease, Jardir gripped his spear and Drew as his friend had, pulling in as much ambient power as he could gather before stepping out onto the ice. The water did not conduct magic well, and he could feel himself cut off from the rich abundance felt on land. The lake shone dark even to crownsight, save for the glow of fish and water demons in the deep.

  He raised the forbiddance of his crown to keep the latter at bay as he strode out, drawing cold wards with the tip of his spear. The bridge extended almost eagerly, the water already colder than he would have thought in the humid heat of the cavern.

  The spear grew dim, but Jardir pressed on, determined to double the Par’chin’s construct in length before giving in. He felt his lungs begin to burn, his muscles ache. The bit of power used to fend off the cold became too much to spare, and his sandaled feet grew numb on the ice.

  When he began to Draw upon the power of the crown, Jardir knew it was time to retreat. Without it, he would be defenseless if some leviathan of the deep struck at him. His dignity would not allow him to rush, but neither did he linger in his stride back to the shore.

  “My turn,” Renna said. Her husband looked ready to protest, but she silenced him with a glare. She gathered power—no less than Jardir and the Par’chin—and focused a portion onto the water wards on her skin, creating a forbiddance to deter the alagai as she, too, moved to extend the bridge.

  The Par’chin appeared to watch her calmly, but Jardir could see images of him rushing out onto the ice replaying over and over in his mind. He was ready to act in an instant should she be threatened.

  Trusting in his friend’s vigilance, Jardir turned his attention to Alagai Ka, bound once more while they waited, gnawing with disgust on a fish Shanvah had speared for him. Her father, she treated with greater tenderness, cleaning and binding scrapes and blisters on his hands and feet, feeding him the holy food and drink, brushing and braiding his hair. The sadness in her aura was palpable as Shanjat stared out over the water, unseeing.

  “I can see the shore.” Renna, too, was breathing hard on her return. “One more of us can make it, I think.”

  “We may not have time to wait.” Shanvah nodded to the edge of the fungal colony, where the lifeless eyes of myriad creatures watched with the malice of whatever intelligence guided this collective.

  Jardir turned to the Par’chin. “Do we go now, or tempt fate by sending another out?”

  The Par’chin pursed his lips. “Don’t like either choice.”

  “Could barely see you back on the shore at the far end of the ice,” Renna said. “Anyone goes that far, they’re going alone.”

  “We stay together, then.” Jardir signaled Shanvah and again Alagai Ka was unchained and allowed to invade Shanjat.

  Shanvah took the warded chain and first secured it around her waist, then locked the far end through the loops in Shanjat’s manacle belt. “If you try to escape into the water, I will kill you, even if it be my last act on Ala.”

  Shanjat’s eyes crinkled behind his veil. “I have spent too much time flavoring your mind to die before I consume it, daughter.”

  Shanvah raised her spear. “Do not call me that again.”

  “Daughter!” Shanjat laughed, thrusting out his chest, daring her to strike. “Daughter! Daughter! Daughter!”

  The young woman bristled, and Renna laid a hand on her shoulder. “Just spit and wind, Shanvah. Don’t pay it no mind.”

  “Indeed,” Jardir said. “Leave the once mighty demon lord to his impotent barking.”

  Some of the tension left her, and Shanvah gave a tight bow. “As the Deliverer says. I will bend as the palm before this…spit and wind.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Renna said. “Those mushroom things are makin’ me itch.”

  “Renna and I’ll focus on the bridge,” the Par’chin said. “You focus on keeping your forbidding up, and hold your power in reserve in case there’s trouble.”

  “Agreed,” Jardir told him, calling the field back to life as they stepped out into the bridge in their customary diamond formation around the prisoner. He kept the field small to draw as little attention as possible, but all the armies of Nie would not be able to penetrate it while he remained vigilant.

  He cast a nervous eye behind them at the colony, remembering how the infected demon had ignored its protection. It was a reminder to vigilance he would not forget.

  Their feet crunched on the ice as dark water lapped at the edges, raised to prevent the gentle waves from washing onto the bridge. The shore grew distant behind them, and the Par’chin, his water wards glowing powerfully, stepped beyond the range of Jardir’s forbidding to complete the construction.

  That was when the leviathan struck. There was an instant’s warning, the glow of a powerful alagai coming to the surface, but it did not attack the barrier, instead slamming its great bulk against the bridge behind them. There was a thunderous crash, and cracks raced along the length, chasing them like f
lame demons. It would not withstand another blow.

  “Run!” Jardir cried, drawing cold wards to repair what damage he could. Renna, Shanvah, and Shanjat took off, racing for the far shore where the Par’chin still worked to complete the bridge.

  Again the leviathan struck, shattering the bridge and splashing out of the water like a nightmare come to life. The bridge behind was broken into great chunks of ice that flew high and rained down upon them. Jardir held his ground, drawing impact wards to deflect those that would have struck his companions as they raced away from the fissures tearing at their footing.

  The demon made another pass, this time too close to Jardir’s forbidding. It bounced away, but not before its great tail swatted the bridge one more time, sending huge pieces of ice into the air, blinding Jardir with smaller particles and the spray of water. One piece struck the bridge in front of him, and then he was enveloped in darkness.

  Jardir learned many skills in sharaj. He could wrestle an alagai with his bare hands, leap from great heights and roll away the impact, lead men in formation, and stem wounds that might otherwise have been crippling or fatal.

  But he never learned to swim.

  Enveloped in the black water, there was no sense of up or down, only the battering of ice and the scream of his lungs. The Par’chin taught him that magic could do nearly anything, but it could not replace precious breath, and Jardir had not had time for more than the barest gasp.

  He felt the crown loosen at his brow and reached desperately to secure it. If the precious item were lost, so were his own chances, and the hope of all Ala. His other hand gripped the spear in similar desperation. He did not have faith they could be recovered if they sank to the depths of this cursed lake.

  The water demons, however, had no such limitations. They were in their element, and he could see them circling. Some were great leviathans, and others smaller, tentacled abominations, but all were focused on his destruction. They struck from all sides, buffeting him at the center of the forbidding. They could not attack him directly, but in the water he felt every blow, pounding with a force he could not believe and keeping him from his bearings.