by Ken Scholes
Vlad regarded the man he’d killed and thought about the hope he’d seen on his face. It was transformative in the midst of so much grief.
He’d heard the wailing now for days as the Y’Zirites mourned their lost. And as word spread slowly and as the group suicides and riots had grown in frequency and number, he’d felt a growing satisfaction laced with sorrow. Sorrow that his own daughter believed, with the rest of them, that he’d murdered the children, and sorrow that he could do nothing to change that belief without jeopardizing the work he knew would save them all from this madness. Still, despite the grief, the satisfaction was real. He’d traveled far from the days of his imprisonment upon Ria’s table, his suffering beneath her knife as he watched her cut his family away from him, child by child, grandchild by grandchild. And now, he’d shaken that great tree of blind, bloody faith to its roots. He would keep shaking it until he brought it down.
No, not me, he reminded himself. The staff. He’d accomplished more in a few weeks with this terrible tool than he’d ever imagined possible, and this from a man whose family had leveraged vast change over the course of its history in the Named Lands.
He couldn’t think about the staff without thinking about the blue-green ghost who’d brought him to it. His first sight of her, twisting and writhing in the water, and his last sight of her, suspended above him in the basement of the Ladder, filling the room with her light. “Thank you, my love,” he whispered.
Then Vlad Li Tam straightened, took up the slender silver rod, glanced once more at the dead magister, and let himself out into the darkening night.
Chapter
2
Neb
A cold night wind moved over his silver skin and Neb’s nostrils flared, taking in smells both familiar and unfamiliar, as he flew the skies above the Named Lands. Overhead, a scattering of stars pulsed, and the lights from occasional villages and farms marked the landscape below.
Ahead of him in the distance, the Dragon’s Spine Mountains spread out across the horizon, and to his right, the Keeper’s Wall made its steady march south from the Spine down to the tip of the Fargoer’s Horn. Below him, the First River, wide and shining in the starlight, crept down from the mountains to meander slowly south to the Entrolusian Delta and waiting sea.
Neb twisted and turned in the air, dropping in altitude as he adjusted the speed of his secondary wings to compensate. He was still learning exactly how the kin-dragon worked, and he was confident that he’d barely scratched the surface of what the great metal beast was capable of. Still, he’d learned quite a bit beyond the fact that he could suddenly fly fast, as fast could be. His senses of smell, vision and hearing were enhanced to the point of becoming overwhelming, though along with it he found he also had the focus to filter the flood of stimuli. On his first morning, he’d narrowed down his sense of smell to the point of identifying baking bread from a chimney from a league above and fifty leagues south. And his eyes had followed his nose, picking out the cottage with relative ease.
Of course, the woman he sought—Amylé D’Anjite—likely knew far more than he did about what the kin-dragons were capable of. And as much as he hoped that he wouldn’t need to find out, he was confident that the beasts had strong offensive and defensive capabilities. Petronus had even speculated that the kin-dragons were likely responsible for the attack on the antiphon, crashing them into the southern lunar sea.
Neb hung suspended in the air, savoring the dull roar of his beating wings. He’d spent a few days now with the kin-dragon, flying the skies of Lasthome but never bringing himself to land. Not for the first time, he was plagued with uncertainty.
Of course, the ground hadn’t stopped shaking beneath his feet for over two years now. Not since the day Windwir fell. From then, he’d buried a city, fallen in love, joined the Foresters, been captured in the Churning Wastes by Y’Zirites and discovered that his adopted father wasn’t dead after all … and that his real father was actually a Younger God.
And then I flew to the moon. At every point along the way, the uncertainty had plagued him. Now was no different. He needed a staff—the administrator’s rod—to finish his work in the Firsthome Temple, whatever that work was, and he had no idea how to find it. And he was confident that Amylé D’Anjite sought the same staff, though he was equally convinced that her intentions for the artifact were dark.
And Winters. He felt the loss and shame. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been terrified of him. And not just because he’d been clothed in light and fresh from baptism into his heritage. No, she’d seen beyond the surface, into the deeper places. She’d seen in that moment how he’d changed, how he’d been changed, by everything that had transpired since he’d kissed her goodbye in the Ninefold Forest. In that look of a moment, Neb knew he’d lost her love and gained her fear.
He wasn’t certain that showing up now in the form of a massive silver beast would help reverse that, even if he knew where to find the girl. He’d last seen her in the north, but that had been weeks ago.
The ache to find her, to somehow make things right, was a constant with him. As constant as the fear of what he would find in her eyes again when he did. Still, he was her Homeseeker, and she was the queen of his heart.
Neb hung in the sky, his mind racing as his wings beat time. He couldn’t continue to just fly about and hope to find whatever clue he needed in order to chart his course. He turned his snout north and took in the scent of evergreen and snow, then turned it to the northeast to take in the smell of the Prairie Sea and its nine island forests.
Neb surged forward, dropping in altitude even as he built speed. He’d tested the beast over the past few days, pushing it to speeds that dizzied him. He did so now, speeding over the Western Steppes and across the wide expanse of snow-covered prairie. He found himself wishing he’d paid better attention to the geography of the Named Lands as he tried to remember exactly where Rachyle’s Rest, the recently appointed capital of the Ninefold Forest, was located.
It took the better part of an hour to find it, and in the end it was the library that gave it away. Its windows stood lit against the night upon a hill that overlooked Rudolfo’s Seventh Forest Manor. In the dim light it cast, Neb saw it had grown considerably since he’d left it for the Churning Wastes to chase down Sanctorum Lux.
Neb gave the library and the city that rose up around it a wide berth, circling twice before settling into the forest not far from the road into town. He wriggled about, still unsure of exactly what mechanism separated him from the beast. He only knew it when it clicked into place and he found himself spilled out into the snow and mud, suddenly aware of how cold it was. He stood and tugged at the strap of his leather satchel, yanking it free from the crowded interior.
“Stay nearby,” he told the kin-dragon. “But stay hidden.”
The beast lifted off and vanished, leaving Neb to shiver alone in the darkened forest. The thin clothes he’d been wearing when he’d been taken into the dragon were better suited for running the lunar jungles, and they were already worn.
“Clothe me,” he whispered, and felt the blood of the earth moving up over his ankles, spreading over his body to form a snug layer between him and the cold. He slung his satchel from his shoulder and turned north for the road that would bear him up the backside of what was now called Library Hill. It took a few minutes of navigating the wet branches and muddy puddles of melting snow to find it, and when he did, he saw the lights of Rachyle’s Rest to his right and made for it.
His hand fell to the battered satchel, and he opened it, digging around inside. His fingers found the cloth-wrapped dreamstone but moved past that artifact to the silver crescent. It no longer played the canticle that had ultimately taken him to the moon; now its mate rested with Petronus where he waited in the Firsthome Temple. He pulled it out and held it to the side of his head.
“Petronus, are you there?”
He waited, then heard an answer from far away. “Yes, I’m here. Where are you?” Neb still
couldn’t get used to the subtle change in the timbre of the man’s voice after shedding nearly forty years of age.
“I’m in the Ninefold Forest,” he said. “I’m hoping to learn what’s happened in our absence. I don’t think I’ll be back tonight.”
The last three nights, he’d flown back through the Seaway to continue his exploration of the Firsthome Temple, sleeping in a small room he’d set up there for himself near the library’s grove of bejeweled trees. Still, his mind pulled constantly to whatever work it was the dreams had called him to, and he’d spent hours flying aimlessly, crisscrossing the oceans and continents of Lasthome. At first, he’d reveled in it, staggered by the wonder of the wind moving over him as he raced across the skies, testing the kin-dragon’s speed and maneuverability. And then the uncertainty had returned.
“Be careful,” Petronus said.
“I will,” he said. “And I’ll be back in the morning.”
He slid the crescent back into the satchel and continued toward the light. He was half a league away when he heard the faintest of footfalls and paused.
“Hail, traveler,” a muffled voice whispered in the dark.
Neb took hold of the fabric of his sleeve with his thumb and forefinger, pressing at it and feeling it yield to his intentions. “Hail, scout,” he said. “I seek audience with Lord Rudolfo.”
“Lord Rudolfo does not grant audience to strangers in the middle of the night.” The voice had moved, and Neb turned to track it, squinting into the dark. He could feel the blood of the earth moving in him now, giving him strength and focus, opening his senses up to his surroundings. He caught the slightest hint of sweat from the man’s shirt and the warm scent of his boot leather. “And the borders of the Ninefold Forest are closed.”
“I assure you,” Neb said, “I am no stranger to Lord Rudolfo. I am Nebios Whym. Captain of the gravediggers’ army of Windwir and officer of the Forest Library. First Captain Aedric can attest to this, as can Lady Tam for that matter. I have a room in the manor.” He stumbled over the words. “Or at least I did when I left.”
The scout moved closer now. With his enhanced vision, Neb could see the slightest shimmer of the man’s body heat. “The lad that was sweet on the young Marsh Queen? Vanished in the Wastes?”
Neb nodded. “The same. Send a watch-bird back; I’m certain they will want to see me.”
The man’s tone was sober. “There are no watch-birds, lad.” Neb heard his feet now moving away. “But follow along. You’ve come calling in perilous times. The officer of the watch will want a word.”
Neb didn’t move. “Rudolfo will want to see me right away, I think.”
He heard hesitation in the scout’s silence. He is uncertain of what to tell me, Neb realized. Finally, the man cleared his voice. “General Rudolfo is on the Divided Isle, disbanding kin-clave and taking the mark of Y’Zir as our new chancellor. Captain Aedric is in Y’Zir with Lady Tam and Lord Jakob.”
Neb heard bitterness and rage, tightly controlled, beneath the words. And for good reason, it seemed. What had happened in his absence? “Then the officer of the watch will suffice,” he said.
The scout started walking again, and Neb matched his stride. When they broke from the forest, he saw the library and for a moment wished he’d simply landed, kin-dragon and all, upon its patio. But even as he thought it, he knew that moving gently through this place was in order. There was a darkness in the scout’s words that he’d not heard before in one of Rudolfo’s men—a hopelessness. But with good cause if indeed the Gypsy King was now a Y’Zirite collaborator, his family fled to Y’Zir … all while Neb was on the moon. And Rudolfo taking the mark?
It’s simply not possible.
Of course, nothing he’d experienced since Windwir’s fall seemed possible. So as he followed, he found his stomach aching as he wondered what other impossible things might have happened in the world he’d left behind.
Winters
Rain traced its way down the windowpanes, and Winters stared beyond the glass to the gray, choppy waters of Caldus Bay. The fire she’d laid to the cottage’s small stove did its part to drive the cold and wet from her bones, but it did little to help the musty smell that permeated the one-room shack. She wrinkled her nose at it, not sure it was an improvement upon the strange, stale air of the Beneath Places. Certainly the fire was an improvement after two nights of pushing through rain and snow to reach the small town named for the bay she now studied.
She’d spent her life in the north, tucked away from the so-called civilized peoples of the Named Lands, only venturing as far south as Windwir after that dread day in which it fell and traveling only as far east as Rudolfo’s Seventh Forest Manor so that her shadow, Hanric, could attend the Gypsy King’s Firstborn Feast. Both journeys—and every journey since—had been filled with violence, and she felt suddenly out of place in this cozy shack by the bay.
She looked away from the window, glancing to the two mechoservitors that stood together. The metal men were silent, shutters opening and closing rapidly even as their amber eyes grew bright and then dim in sequences too fast for her to comprehend. She watched them for a moment and wondered what they discussed. When Enoch saw her watching, she looked away quickly to Tertius.
Her old tutor sat by the fire on one of the cottage’s few unbroken chairs, his shoulders slouched from the weariness of too many leagues marched both above and below the ground, his bearded chin resting on his chest, eyes closed.
Hebda had left to scout the town shortly after ushering them into the abandoned home. They’d seen at least one unfamiliar ship at dock, and she suspected it was an Y’Zirite vessel, which meant a contingent of Y’Zirite soldiers were likely garrisoned nearby. But the Androfrancine arch-behaviorist was confident that the Order had friends hidden here as well, and had gone to find them and quietly pick up supplies.
The thought of Hebda brought back the anger she’d held at bay since the day they’d lost Charles. What was it that he had said? We have reason to believe you will be unaffected.
Something was coming, and though it would likely turn the tide of the war they now faced, it would also kill indiscriminately anyone who’d been exposed to blood magicks. And that, she feared, included a portion of her own people in the north. Along with Rudolfo’s son, Jakob.
But not me.
The two men had refused to tell her why, and the weight of one more secret broke the dam that held back her anger. But she’d been clear: She would know before they left this place for their new home on the moon or they would not be coming. And for Tertius, who’d spent years studying the Book of Dreaming Kings and its promise of a soon-coming home, being left behind would mean missing the fruition of his life’s work.
The door latch rattled, and the mechoservitors moved with such swiftness that her eyes were pulled back to them. They took up positions to either side of the door, only relaxing their posture when Hebda entered.
Hebda put the sack he carried onto the room’s single table. “I’ve bread, cheese and smoked salmon,” he said. The man’s eyes were hollow, his face gaunt and pale from exhaustion. “I’ve also talked with some of the locals who are sympathetic to our cause. We are safe here for now … but not for long.”
Winters nodded, feeling the growl rise from her stomach as the smell of fresh bread and salted fish did its best to force out the musty odor of a house that had been empty and unheated for too long in this wet place. “Then we won’t be long here,” she said.
He looked at her differently now, since the dream they’d all shared and since the confrontation two days ago. Even now, he regarded her with something akin to respect behind his eyes. “Where will we go?”
Her voice was cool. “I don’t know where you will go, Hebda. I am going to gather my people and take them to the moon.”
She’d had a lot of time to think as they made their way through the forest, and though she had no idea exactly how they would get there, she knew that everything else her people had slowly dreamed ov
er the course of two millennia was coming to pass. The details of this last leap in faith were lost to her now, but she knew that somehow, she would know when she needed to know and they would find their way. Meanwhile, there was a more pressing matter to attend to. “You say that what’s coming could harm my people. Steering them from harm’s way before this happens is my highest priority.”
“I’m not certain that is possible, Lady Winteria.”
“What is and isn’t possible is being redefined daily,” she answered. “But we won’t know which is which until you are more forthright with me.” Then she repeated something that Jin Li Tam had told her in the Machtvolk Territories, something she’d told Tertius and Hebda two days before. “The time for secrets is past.”
Hebda sighed and looked to Tertius. The old man nodded. “I agree, Hebda. It’s time that she knows the truth.”
Winters glanced from one to the other, then to the collection of metal men. “But first,” she said, “we have something more pressing. Enoch?”
The leader of the mechoservitors opened its eye-shutters. “Yes, Lady Winteria.”
“Can I count on you and your metal cohort to shepherd my people to safety?”
The eyes flashed. “We will escort them all the way to the moon, Lady, as the dream requires.”
As the dream requires. She had not thought to ask them in their mad rush to flee the Beneath Places and make their way to Caldus Bay. But now, the question begged asking. “And how would you propose to do this, Enoch?”
“With ships, Lady Winteria. With the temple unsealed, the Moon Wizard’s Ladder will be functional. We will return the House of Shadrus to its home in the same way that its advent Downunder began. By sea.”
The idea that they might reach the moon by sea was yet another impossibility on a growing list, and she regarded the metal man for a moment. Going by sea meant bringing those people of hers in the Ninefold Forest south to the bay—that was the closest port—and she didn’t see how they could possibly reach the shore, find ships and flee under the watchful eye of the Y’Zirites. And waiting until the fruition of Orius’s plan meant the strong likelihood of losing some—if not all—of them.