The Queen of Lies

by Michael J. Bode

  The dreams were of a secret realm filled with wonder and awe, a bountiful treasure of sensory delights to reward the endlessly curious. You could be inspired by your explorations, but you never could directly talk about them with anyone.

  In ancient times seal magic was considered a basic art. There were seals for every possible purpose: to season food with thoughts, to lose weight, to restore lost hair, or even to have a larger penis. Good mysterious dreams were pretty low on the list of sought-after theurgy…until Achelon had released the Nightmares. The Seal of Mystery was the only known protection from the harrowings.

  Motes of aethersprites gathered in the workshop. A few small ones. Sword whispered the words of the incantation: “Anulia zanile sintur abradaste, Amnayleth.”

  With hot white light, the sparks of light flew to his design and the dark lines of the inscription. He slammed his hand on the inscription and placed it on his stomach, transferring the bound magic to his body. Then he placed his hands on either side of Heath’s head and shut his eyes.

  Without the binding ritual and with the feeble amount of power he’d gathered, he already felt the magic of the seal start to decay.

  Heath opened his eyes and let out a bloodcurdling howl. Sword fell backward in surprise. It was the kind of scream you heard in the shadowed oubliettes of the Inquisition’s prison. His eyes were hollow and charred.

  Heath slapped one hand to his head and covered his ruined eye sockets. Light blasted from his hands, warm and steady. “The fuck happened?”

  Sword stood. “You’re one of the only men in Creation to survive an attack from a Harrower.”

  Heath pulled his hands away. His eyes were back, but they looked cloudy and half formed. He was a decent lay healer, but restoring lost body parts took a lot more Light than he could channel. He looked at Sword. “How?”

  Sword grinned. “I used the seal of mystery to give you good dreams and drive off the Harrower. You’re going to forget I ever told you that in a few seconds. The seal keeps its secrets.” Some magicians went mad trying to find ways to talk about it.

  Heath stood. “Fair enough. How could a Harrower have attacked me? I was awake.”

  “There’s no reason it can’t happen,” Sword said. “The Harrowers are a dark aspect of the Guides, the beings that made magic possible for the First Mages. They can do whatever the fuck they want. They just normally don’t give a shit about anything unless they’re possessing or interacting with somebody.”

  “I’m confused. Does this have anything to do with my mother?” Jessa inquired gently.

  “It has to do with Esme, the current Razor of Setahari,” Sword said. “After we fought at Silverbrook Manor, she must have given Heath’s name to Evan Landry.”

  “Who’s Evan Landry?” Jessa asked.

  He looked at Heath and smiled. It felt strange to do that. Maddox didn’t smile, like ever. “You’re going to fucking love this because it’s so completely absurd. Hold on to your chamber pots because you’re going to lose your shit when I tell you.”

  “Might we hurry this along?” Jessa insisted. “The thunderheads are gathering about the city.”

  “The only way into or out of that cell is an elevator, which I may have irreversibly damaged. We can spare five minutes.” Sword held a finger toward her then turned back to Heath. “Remember that sketchy dude from the Mage’s Flask who was always hanging around me? He was my old friend from school. He goes by Riley, but his birth name is Evan Landry because, get this, he’s Lord Landry’s illegitimate bastard.”

  Heath picked up on it right away. “And he goes by Riley because he hates his birth parents enough to have them harrowed and trash their library without checking the safe.”

  “Since the harrowings started, he’s using his power to clean out rich people’s houses because he’s stupid…but, like, a genius of stupidity. Stupid people have bad ideas, but his bad ideas are so terrible they’re like an art form. He’s a maestro of incompetence.”

  “My mother would say that makes him a valuable tool,” Jessa offered.

  “Yes!” Sword clapped his hands. “But not for your mom, and Guides forbid those two ever meet. The Razor of Setahari is manipulating him. It loves chaos and destruction in the same way a teenage girl loves unicorns.”

  “You shouldn’t joke. Unicorns are hateful menaces of Maenmarth.” Jessa shuddered.

  “Find the girl, find the Thunderstone, and stop Evan Landry,” Heath said. “Not a bad day’s work. Jessa, are you up for this? We could really use your help.”

  “I am.”

  “I keep a wide assortment of reinforced chain mail and leather armor in that trunk over there. I never know what Sword’s going to need on short notice. Take whatever you want from the armory, and we’ll head out.”

  “I’m ready now,” Jessa stated. “Stormlords don’t play with steel.”

  “Me too,” Sword said. “Wizards don’t need to fuck with armor. Besides I’m immortal.”

  The sound of thunder shook the house. A few throwing knives clattered off the wall. The three of them shared an uneasy glance and hurried down the steps.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Maelstrom

  HEATH

  THE PATH AHEAD of us seems uncertain because we are always looking backward as we stumble toward destiny. The road ahead is no less certain than the one behind us.

  —The Harbinger, Traveler Proverbs

  HIS NEW EYES stung as the rain lashed. His vision was passable, but he’d have to cut them out and heal them again properly. The memory of the nightmare faded from his thoughts, like a dream he couldn’t recall. He remembered an unending hungry abyss of fear, and even the attempt at recollection made him shudder.

  Jessa walked in front; she wasn’t bothered by the rain at all. Sword levitated a stone bench from Heath’s garden in front of them to block the worst of the rain, but the wind made the rain’s direction unpredictable. The torrential downpour soaked them either way. At least it was during Whitemoon, when the rains were cool but not frigid.

  He had to stay shoulder to shoulder with Sword as they walked. It brought up a host of confusing memories and feelings. He had liked Maddox’s wiry body and eager disposition, but he had found himself more attached than he’d intended, and it had been difficult to see the guy destroy himself. There wasn’t room for love in Heath’s life.

  “You want a drink?” Sword asked cheerily. It was unsettling to see him carefree and smiling, holding a half-empty bottle of wine in the middle of a crisis of apocalyptic proportions. The Harbinger had said the towers would fall. Heath wouldn’t let that happen if he could, but Rivern was more than its two towers.

  “You don’t have to adopt all of Maddox’s traits.”

  Sword took a swig. “I used to hate the guy. But we have a lot in common. We don’t mince words, and we’re hedonists, albeit for different motivations. Plus since he had his personality sucked out by Luther, I kind of feel morally obligated to keep the party going. I like to be a good guest and accommodate my hosts.”

  “Luther…How was he…?” Heath had convinced Luther he would be a valuable asset to the Inquisition on one of his first jobs. Daphne had imprisoned the man in a lightless dungeon and threatened his family to ensure his cooperation. She had used Heath to lie to a man who could read thoughts.

  “She killed him,” Sword said, offering him the bottle. “My head is chock-full of the worst kinds of magical secrets, and she couldn’t risk him knowing them too.”

  “Damn.”

  Sword put his arm around Heath’s shoulders and squeezed. It felt…natural.

  “Sword,” Heath said, “you’re wasted.”

  “We’re good together, Heath.”

  “No, we weren’t. You would come to my home blind drunk and sobbing at obscene hours of the night. Catherine was right—”

  “No, I mean you and me, the Sword, are amazing together. We’ve been with each other through thick and thin. Fuck, we argue like an old married couple. And this body
still has feelings for you. I know it couldn’t work with Maddox, but he wasn’t a part of this life. I’m your fucking partner and the guy you used to fuck. I—”

  “Jessa, are you okay?” Heath asked, clearly looking to change the subject

  “Capital.” Jessa glanced back. He couldn’t tell, but in the flicker of lightning, she might have been smirking. She continued walking.

  “I love you,” Sword whispered in his ear. “I’m in love with you. Maybe I always have been…but I’ve never had the psyche to express that through any of my bodies. Guides…this is kind of a headfuck.”

  “We have a job to do,” Heath stated. His body struggled with its desire. His best friend’s mind now resided in his hot crazy ex. Was that a dream come true or the beginning of another nightmare?

  Heath blinked against the rain again. A lone figure stood on the roof of one of the mansions, his robes billowing wildly in the wind. Probably just an Invocari. Although Heath’s vision was blurry, he caught something in a flash of lightning that sent chills down his spine and stopped him in his tracks. He pointed at the shepherd’s crook in the man’s hand.

  “Fuck,” Sword whispered.

  Jessa stopped and glanced up. “What is it?”

  “The Harbinger,” Heath said, “and he’s looking at the towers.”

  “You want to talk to him?” Sword asked. “Hold on. I’ll get his attention.”

  “Maddox, don’t.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Someone very old and very dangerous.” Heath grabbed Sword’s arm, but it did nothing to stop the stone bench from flying toward the Harbinger’s head. It missed by a good couple of feet, but the man’s head snapped in their direction. Even in the darkness of the storm, his white eyes shone like slivery lamps.

  Silence fell on the empty street. Around them the rain slowed until the shimmering droplets quavered in the air, inching along slowly toward earth. The bench Sword had hurled at the man rotated in a lazy, tumbling arc over the house where the Harbinger perched.

  Heath shoved Sword. “What the fuck?”

  “I wasn’t trying to hit him,” Sword said. “He knows that.”

  “We meet again,” the Harbinger called warmly to Heath.

  He appeared in front of them, leaning on his crook. “Don’t fear. I’ve altered the flow of time around us to give us opportunity to speak so we won’t miss our respective appointments.”

  “Please,” Jessa implored. “You’re clearly powerful, and we’re in need of aid. My mother plans something awful for this city and its people. They’re good and innocent of any crime that would merit this retribution. Simply name what you want, and I’ll grant it willingly.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Would you offer your life to save these people?”

  “Jessa,” Heath whispered, “don’t bargain with him.”

  She raised her chin and said, “Yes. I’m but one person, and if it’s to be my life or the lives of thousands, there can be no question.”

  “I was merely curious whether her selflessness was sincere, priest.” The Harbinger shook his head. “The power of the Stormlords is locked by the most ancient of theurgies to any who don’t carry the blood. My wyrd doesn’t allow me to alter the course of events in any matter.”

  “If you do nothing, you’re complicit in my mother’s evil,” Jessa declared.

  “It is evil only from your eyes,” he replied. “The world is rife with injustice and suffering. For one creature to nourish itself, another must give its life unwillingly. For one kingdom to flourish, another must languish. For one to be elevated, others must be oppressed. The solution isn’t to change nature but to find balance in the greater pattern of history.”

  “Bullshit,” Sword said. “You can stop this. I’m a fucking Architect—I know how magic works.”

  “Then stop it,” the Harbinger challenged.

  Heath nearly lost his stomach as his vision scrambled. When he recovered himself, they stood atop a tall tower. From the shape of it and the skyline, he judged they were on top of the Lyceum’s observation tower. He lurched forward and recovered his balance. Sword fell on his ass. Jessa swayed for an instant but kept her footing.

  “Do you remember this place, Architect?” The Harbinger motioned to the surroundings with his crook. The rain remained slowed in freefall, but it somehow became more transparent, almost invisible. The two towers—that of the Invocari and the Assembly—spanned the waterfall of the massive Trident River tributaries.

  “It rings a bell,” Sword said, picking himself up off the stone. “You want to throw me off the roof? Because that doesn’t work so well.”

  “I’m one of a handful of beings in this cosmos who can permanently kill the mortal flesh you inhabit, Valor of Crigenesta,” the Harbinger mentioned casually. “That isn’t my reason for bringing you here. You’re here to bear witness to the fall of the towers.”

  Jessa protested, “This is madness. If you can bring us here, you can bring us to the Thunderstone, and you can take us to my mother. You have the power to prevent this.”

  “It already has happened.” The Harbinger sighed. “It happened as you walked toward your destination, minutes before you discovered me. The crash of thunder and pounding of rain prevented you from hearing it. Behold.”

  They watched the Invocari tower as the rapids of the waterfall surged past the dams. The water didn’t fall over the cliff. Instead it turned upward as if falling toward the sky. The streams of white water reached toward the stars, misty at first but liquid as they grew closer together.

  “No!” Jessa exclaimed.

  “This is the past,” the Harbinger said. “Only an Architect, not bound by wyrd or Geas, could alter what has been written. Everyone has the potential to change the course of history; a very few are given the opportunity; and vanishingly fewer have the resolve to go through with it.”

  The streams of water rising from the river waved like dancers in a line making sinuous motions with their bodies. The streams braided together, becoming pulsing blobs of water congealing into thrashing tentacles several stories tall.

  “Mother’s summoning Kultea,” Jessa whispered. “I don’t understand how. She’s too far inland.”

  Heath knew of Kultea. She was the kraken sea goddess of the Dominance. The figurehead of a religion where priests were blood mages rather than healers. The Dominance used their menacing goddess to frighten their laity into submission. Kultea didn’t offer redemption for the weak, only survival through placating her. He had thought it a different but equally effective way to enforce religion—Ohan was the carrot and Kultea the stick.

  Surely as if he bore the Veritas Seal himself, Heath knew everything he saw to be true. He saw it with such clarity it was beyond vision. He thought only absently of his impaired eyes as he witnessed the events unfold.

  Jessa grabbed his hand and held it firmly for comfort. He found himself returning the gesture. She needed an anchor; he needed it more.

  “Kultea is real,” Heath whispered. In all his years of training after his mother’s death, he never had entertained the notion that such beings existed outside of the institutionalized superstitions of the various faiths.

  Jessa turned to him. “Of course she is. They all are.”

  The tentacles gracefully lashed toward the towers, wrapping themselves around the stone like pythons encircling their prey. Even though the towers were at least a mile away, he heard the crack and groan of the stone as the watery appendages squeezed against it.

  Flocks of Invocari floated around the tower, waving their arms and freezing chunks of the tentacles; the ice fell away, and water rushed in to replace it faster than they could freeze it.

  “You proved your point.” Sword turned away and drank from his bottle. “I can’t stop this.”

  The tentacle lashed and struck the side of the Invocari tower, breaking through the stone. Then it pulled out a black sphere that absorbed all light around it. With a flexing motion, the tentacle crushed the stone and ex
ploded into a cloud of black-and-purple dust. In that instant hordes of wraithlike Invocari tumbled from the sky, screaming and flailing toward the earth.

  The tentacles around the Assembly tower tightened, and with a twist, the structure ripped apart, chunks falling to the Overlook and the Ambassadors’ District below. The crown of the tower plummeted into the Backwash. Seconds later the Invocari tower broke apart, raining its stone across the city.

  In one of Kultea’s tendrils, Heath saw a spark of light—a willowy figure posed majestically and suspended within the water. Satryn. The tentacle lowered her gently into Oiler’s Park, near the Grand Menagerie.

  The Harbinger said, “I can’t alter the past, but I can hasten the future. I’ll give you ten minutes you wouldn’t have had…”

  With a sickening blurriness of vision, Heath found himself on a cobblestone street. Sword fell again, and his wine bottle shattered on the ground. Jessa seemed unfazed by the transition. “We must find the Thunderstone,” she said. “If my mother has the power to call Kultea this far away from the depths of the Abyss, it’s our only hope of defeating her.”

  “You may have to be the person who does it, Jessa,” Heath said.

  “Nah,” Sword protested. “’S’cool. I can TK that shit right into her. Hey, look—we’re here!”

  The DiVarian estate stood at the end of Willow’s Witness Wynd. Lightning flashes all around them illuminated the decrepit estate and overgrown lawn. The DiVarians were a fallen house, their last member claimed by the harrowings. Heath had considered buying the place and renovating it, but it was a giant architectural monstrosity with sagging gables and peeling paint. Half of it was still unfinished, nearly a decade after construction had started. One half of the rusted front gate hung by a single hinge.