by J. S. Morin
* * * * * * * *
At the edge of the practice field, greedy, immortal eyes fixed hungrily on Kyrus. Conversations broke out all about him, discussing what they had just seen: a raw talent that had just given Iridan, a fine duelist in his own right, all he could handle. But Rashan had watched more carefully.
“You noticed too, I assume.” Caladris kept his voice low, so that only the warlock heard him. Rashan nodded slowly. “Nice enough lad, that Brannis, but I would not want to cross him. I certainly would not step in against him in a draw after seeing that.” Caladris chuckled softly. “Think you could best him?”
Rashan did not respond.
* * * * * * * *
Juliana’s fingers caressed the page as she read. The book was well over one hundred summers old, and not preserved at all by magic. It felt old, much more so than the heavily protected works that were given to the children studying at the Academy. There were treatises on basic aether theory and the early history of the Empire that were over a thousand summers old. They had been handled by ten-summer-old boys throughout their entire existence, and yet they did not seem so old as the book she perused.
The Warlock Prophecies, its title proclaimed it. It was a simple enough description but that was not what had drawn her to it. It was the book that Illiardra had been reading, the one she left floating in the air when she vanished the previous night. Juliana had no way to be sure, but she suspected that it had been left for her to take. Though she had flipped through it, and read several sections, she had marked the page Illiardra had left it on.
Four tongues Wise,
Four tongues Foolish,
Four tongues False.
False whispers in Foolish ears will doom the Wise,
And the False shall rule with a crown of chains.
Juliana was not sure what was meant, exactly, but if it was left as a message for her, she suspected what it might. Twelve tongues in total probably meant the Inner Circle, especially if the author truly was a warlock. If the prophecy was meant to tell about Rashan’s return to the Empire, it implied that the three conspirators he executed were among the “Wise.” It would also seem to say that he was one of the “False,” though the crown of chains was still a bit opaque to her.
A knock on her door startled her, and she hastily shut the book, leaving it facedown with the spine toward the wall so that the title was not easily seen.
“Come in,” she called out.
“My pardon, Sorceress Juliana,” one of the palace messengers apologized. “The regent has requested your attendance in the lower levels.”
“Tell him I shall be down directly,” she replied.
Gut that demon! I had thought that Iridan returning and Brannis’s condition would be enough to distract him. Rashan has entirely too much attention to spread around if he can still spare it in my direction.
“I will wait outside. I am to escort you there personally. Please be prompt; the regent is waiting,” the messenger instructed, then excused himself, closing the door behind him.
Juliana sighed. She took several books off the bookshelf, and hid The Warlock Prophecies in the rear, placing the removed books back in front of it. She stepped back and gave the shelf an appraising look. She pulled a few more books off the shelf and replaced them as well, just so that the one section was not the only one to have been disturbed.
She moved to the mirror to see whether she was fit for public viewing. As she smoothed her hair into less of a tangle, she saw a disheveled bed behind her in the reflection. It was a testament to the fact she had not yet left her chambers that morning, for as soon as she left, servants would sneak in and tidy everything up properly.
Iridan had returned the prior night, quite late. She had been asleep but awakened when he entered the room. It was dark, so she just remained motionless and listened, not even turning to the aether to see him properly. She heard him change out of his travel-stained clothes, and realized he was planning to stay. He had not even realized she was awake until he climbed into bed next to her. He did not seem surprised, just shy. The only thing he said was “I am sorry,” to which she had answered, “Me, too.” They had curled together as they fell asleep, sharing each other’s warmth in an unspoken agreement that they would both try to make things work between them, though it was rather likely Iridan and she had different ideas of how that would play out.
Since she was going to see the warlock, it was likely she would be seeing either Iridan or Brannis—quite possibly both of them. She wanted to look good in any event. Once she was satisfied she had done her best toward that end, she swept out of the bedchamber, trailing the messenger in her wake.
“Where are we meeting the warlock?” she asked, not bothering to slow her pace or look back. The messenger was just an annoyance.
“The dungeons,” was the reply.
Juliana’s stride faltered but she kept on following the messenger.
* * * * * * * *
“What are we doing down here?” Kyrus demanded.
He, Iridan, and Rashan were in the lowest level of the palace dungeons, a desolate, deserted warren of stone passages, lined with cells. It was lit with a dim, angry, red glow that Kyrus knew to be magical and not the light of the demonic furnaces it tried to resemble. The world Brannis knew looked so different to Kyrus’s eyes, with the added depth of seeing all that was magical for what it truly was.
“We are waiting for one more,” Rashan replied, looking at neither Kyrus nor Iridan as he stood with them.
“And then what?” Kyrus pressed. He was not liking his surroundings and liked being kept in the figurative dark more than he disliked the actual shadowy darkness he found himself standing in.
“I would like to say that you have learned a little patience, but she is almost here,” Rashan commented dryly.
Iridan said nothing. He was not in a mood to be stepping into an argument involving the warlock, even if Brannis was one of the few to ever come out on the winning side against him.
The messenger departed with a bow as soon as Juliana had gotten within sight of the warlock. Kyrus had studiously avoided paying her too much attention as he lay in his supposed sickbed, but now he had no such excuse. She looked like every dream Brannis ever had of her, with her reddish-gold hair and bright, mischievous eyes shining green. He had to shake himself mentally to stop from filling in the missing details that her clothing hid. She is Brannis’s, or Iridan’s now, I suppose. She is not for me. There is a book in Rashan’s office that tells of the eligible sorcerers for marriage and I was ruled out. I cannot be hers, could never be hers, will never be hers. The thoughts rang hollow; he could not deceive himself. Those decisions had been made when Brannis had shown no signs of talent—of magical talent at least.
“What is this all about?” Juliana demanded to know. She was among the scant few to dare using that tone with the warlock. For whatever reason, he allowed her continued transgressions to pass unchallenged.
“Well, now that we are all here, I only have to explain this game once,” Rashan began.
“Game?” Juliana asked. “What game?” She had saved Kyrus the trouble of asking the same thing.
“I have before me the three best, unrealized talents that I know of in the Empire. I am not saying the most talented, mind you, but rather the ones whose ultimate potential I am least sure of. Today we are going to take a step closer to finding out just what I have in the three of you,” Rashan explained, sounding like a lecturing instructor from the Academy, which Kyrus supposed he was, or at least once was.
“You don’t have me at all. I told you as much already, or don’t you remember?” Juliana snapped.
“This is different. That was for my personal service, this is for the Kadrin Empire, and there is no refusing such service, unless of course you would prefer to live elsewhere,” Rashan informed her, darkly.
Kyrus (largely via Brannis) had never been able to quite round up the way Rashan could put such a dreadful weight behind his words. He wa
s like an actor or an orator; when he wanted to convey an awful fate, he needed no awful words by which to do it. All three of them understood thoroughly that refusal was not an option.
“So what is the game?” Kyrus asked, trying to get them back to the task at hand and away from veiled threats and apparently unsettled old arguments.
“A simple one to explain,” Rashan told them, beginning a slow walk down the cell-block corridor. “And a less simple one to succeed at. I believe you all have the potential for success, though I suppose it is unlikely any of you will achieve it. You will each go inside one of these cells.” Rashan had led them down to where the doors were no longer made of iron, but of stone, hinged with magic.
“Wait a moment, thove are the—” Iridan objected, or began to.
“The warded cells. Yes. Step inside a moment and I will explain the rest. One to a cell, mind you. I do not care who goes where. There are five cells and three of you, so take your pick.”
Rashan handed a waterskin to each of them, and shooed them in. Iridan went in sullenly, resigned to yet another hopeless task set before him by his father—and after his morning had begun so well. Kyrus paused a moment, and considered objecting, but his mind was already working at the problem before it had even been explained. He stepped in warily but without complaint.
“No way. I’ll take a failing mark right now, if you please,” Juliana protested.
Kyrus had never seen her look so apprehensive—he had never seen her at all actually; it had always been Brannis, but he had not seen such a sight, either.
“Oh, nonsense.” Rashan grabbed her by the arm, and marched her inside. His grip was like stone. Kyrus knew he was a demon, but it always seemed incongruous how strong he was, and it had caught him off guard again. Scrawny as she was, Juliana looked like she ought to have been able to shrug off the boyish warlock. She did not try to follow him back out, but Kyrus heard her breath coming quickly even from his own cell.
“Now all you need do is get out after I have sealed the doors,” Rashan said. “You all have given me some reason to think you might manage it. Juliana, you have a strange way with drawing aether that may help you deal with the runes’ own draw. Iridan, you are excellent with runes yourself, and you have the most control among the three of you. Brannis … Well, let us just say that I think you just lack the motivation to show your capabilities. This ought to motivate you. Now if any of you manage to get out, just come find me; I will not stand here waiting. If any cannot manage their own exit, I will return in five days’ time.”
At that, three doors slammed shut and sealed, the runes that kept sorcerers trapped springing to life.
* * * * * * * *
Five days? He cannot mean that, Iridan thought. This is a test of patience. I can wait him out. Iridan had heard about the secure cells in the dungeons, though he had never worked on them personally. He sat himself in the center of the cell, where he knew the pull of its draw to be weakest, feeling it gnawing at the edges of his Source and trying to keep from his mind that it felt like flies swarming about him, drinking his blood a fraction of a drop at a time.
* * * * * * * *
You deceitful son of a whore! Juliana had made a leap for the door at the last moment when Rashan told them that it would be five days before he came to release them. She beat a hasty retreat when the draw of the walls began to claw at her Source. She had never felt anything so powerful from so close. She had kept well back from Jadefire, but it was like what she would have imagined a dragon’s draw to be like. Even the Staff of Gehlen had not felt like it was trying to burrow into her Source to drink from it, the way the cell's runes did.
Planting herself on the floor in the middle of the room, she was able to reduce the effects on her Source enough that she could meditate. It was something Soria had done rarely since leaving the Temple of the Sun. Juliana had meditated in the Tezuan manner only a few times ever. Still, calmness and ease of mind were things she badly needed to recover. Tezuan techniques were all she could think of to manage that.
In the dark, wandering the avenues of her own mind, she lost all sense of time. She hungered a little by the time she felt calm enough to address her problem rationally, so she supposed it had been a few hours. She vaguely recalled the ground shaking a bit once while she had been in her meditative trance, but she could think of no daily event to match it with that could help her mark the time. They were too far down for it to have been the kitchen staff or the goings-on at court, and anything else she could think of would have been farther still. She decided to worry about it once she was free.
Her aether-vision was acute, but the runes on the walls were writ small, at least the most important ones. It was at least a three-tiered rune structure, she could tell. Large runes had smaller runes carved within their thick lines, and those in turn had runes carved within them as well. The problem was that she could not get close enough to them to make out the details of the smallest ones without hurting herself. She could fight back against the cell’s draw, but only barely and not for very long. She could easily kill herself trying, if she was not careful.
She pursed her lips, and carefully reached behind her, drawing one of her new daggers. It was the heavy one, not the fast one; she never remembered which name went with which. She held it out at arm’s length in front of her, watching to see if the cell walls devoured the aether from it. Nothing. She leaned forward, braving the milder effects of the cell’s draw to dangle the blade farther yet into the dangerous area. Nothing.
Smiling in self-satisfaction, she looked in the area of the door for a point in the runes that seemed vulnerable. Not finding any obvious weaknesses, she picked a target arbitrarily, and loosed the dagger as hard as she could. It cracked against the wall satisfyingly and ricocheted away. Juliana crawled over and grabbed it before hurrying back to the center of the cell again.
Once she had calmed herself again after the harrowing scramble into the cell’s draw and back again, she examined the wall to see what damage she had caused. Well, there is a chip missing. A day or so and maybe I can break a rune, if my aim is good and I can keep hitting the same spot. Still, that is better than five.
She threw the dagger again.
* * * * * * * *
This is my fault. Had I just drawn as hard as I could earlier, he would not have felt the need to test me—to test us—like this. Brannis had heard Rashan’s tale about escaping from the very cells in which he was now trapped, but Kyrus knew little else about them. The runes were intricate, and covered nearly every surface in the cell. They had a bit of a draw of their own, keeping the cell dry of stray aether.
Kyrus noticed initially that the cell seemed to be trying to draw from his Source as well, but he could hold it back with a bit of effort. With a chagrined chuckle, Kyrus could not help but liken the effort to ignoring the need to urinate; it was a minor biological annoyance that could be set aside with a bit of effort, and maintained without having to concentrate on it.
Unaware that his companions were having a rougher go of it in their own cells, Kyrus stood close and examined the runes in great detail. It was fascinating. He had studied the stone folk’s runes, which layered themselves within folded metal, and found the runes-within-runes concept to be a variant with similar intent. Unfortunately, without a year or three to study them, he doubted he would puzzle their workings out from the inside.
The runes keep the door closed. My task is to get out. Runes need aether. Kyrus stretched, and shook out limbs that had grown stiff as he had been largely stationary—for how long he could only guess—as he lost himself in thought examining the cell’s workings. Time to find out who has the stronger draw, Wall, me or you. While Kyrus had not worked out everything about how the runes worked, he realized that for it to have its own draw, it had to be an open structure; there were ways to pull the aether back out.
Kyrus put his hands on the wall next to the door. Taking a deep breath, he drew as hard as he could, as he probably should have when f
acing Iridan in the courtyard. All the aether that his Source normally gave off was sucked back in instantly, denying the cell its continued sustenance. As Kyrus drew, the cell groaned in protest, a low, pained resonance as its workings were abused, and aether dragged through it the wrong way as if ripping prey free from a shark’s angled teeth.
It did not take long before the glow of the wards in Kyrus’s aether-vision began to flicker and fail. When it seemed it had failed completely, he stepped in front of the door, and released the aether all at once. A few moments later, he picked himself up off the floor, dazed, where the blast had left him. He had channeled the aether directly away from him, just firehurling, with no thought to trying to harness it in any sort of spell. He knew of no spell that he could have handled with so much aether anyway.
The door was gone, along with some of the surrounding wall, and bit of the floor as well, the edges of the vaporized region still glowing red, and dripping molten stone. Gone as well was the door of the cell opposite his, thankfully unoccupied. There was a channel though the far wall of that cell, and into the unworked stone beyond. Kyrus walked across to the other cell, choking and coughing at the cloud of soot hanging in the air, and looked into that channel. He thought he could see an end to it, fifty or so paces in, but the glow was dimming, and he was not so curious as to venture in to look.
Kyrus gave some thought to freeing Juliana and Iridan, but decided against it. They’ll be happier figuring it out on their own. I would not want to free them just before they manage it themselves. I will return in the evening if they have not gotten out by then.
Following his instructions, Kyrus headed off to track down Rashan.
* * * * * * * *
“I rather suspected you might find your way free of those cells, Brannis,” Rashan congratulated him upon seeing him approach. “So tell me, what trick did you use to get out?” He was seated in his office in the Tower of Contemplation when Kyrus finally found him. He had been attended by a number of functionaries dealing with logistics of the impending coronation, but Rashan dismissed them as soon as he saw Kyrus approaching.