by NS Dolkart
Nonetheless, the Sephan was getting more attention than Dessa would have expected. Maybe they sensed that Atuna’s prosperity was too good to be true. The city’s complacency did mask an underlying anxiety, and yet there were not many who were willing to stand in the world’s most prosperous city and declare its days numbered. The Sephans were filling a need.
“Salemica grows in prominence,” the man declared behind her, “and Ardis grows in its evil. Will you be caught between monsters? There is no neutrality, Atuna, only victory – or death!”
Dessa turned back. Was this rabble-rouser now calling for war against both cities? Her people may be far away, but she could not ignore a threat to them.
“The omen we witnessed in the sky is only the beginning!” he cried. “Your world is ending. Choose, or death and destruction will be chosen for you!”
“Are we supposed to choose between Salemica and Ardis?” Dessa asked her neighbor, a middle-aged woman in working clothes. “They’re not at war again, are they?”
“No,” the woman said. “Haven’t you been paying attention lately? They’ve been calling for weeks now for the council to hand Sephas over.”
“Both cities? Together?”
But the woman only shushed her.
“Do not accept Ravennis’ offer of ‘eternal life,’ do not let His servants go about their evil unopposed!” the man practically screamed. “There can be no neutrality in these final days! Read the works of Sephas, whose wisdom is beyond this world. Your complacency cannot save you; it will not survive the year. Believe me, for my God is dead.”
With that, the man ended his rant and began distributing the contents of his basket. Dessa took one of the scrolls too, wondering whether it would explain his stance on Salemica. The young man did not let go immediately, only stared into her eyes with his big brown ones and said, “Choose wisely, sister.”
“Sure,” she said, and backed away with the scroll.
She walked back to the hostel, waiting to read it until she was there. Work often came through the hostels, and she didn’t want to miss any opportunities of a meal. Besides, reading was a marketable skill, and it wouldn’t hurt to display her proficiency.
The scroll did not turn out to be even slightly elucidating. It took the form of a bizarre satirical play, criticizing both Ravennis and God Most High. If it was harder on one God than another, it was probably on Ravennis, but it certainly didn’t seem to be urging an alliance with God Most High against Him. On the contrary, it began from the widely-accepted premise that Ravennis was a servant of God Most High, while still depicting God Most High as jealous of Ravennis’ success. Dessa came away from her reading more muddled than before. The Sephans were clearly very angry, but what did they want?
A man was watching her. Dessa’s instinct was to keep her gaze averted – meeting his gaze would be an invitation for him to engage with her, whether in conversation or confrontation, and such interactions rarely ended well. But she had no money, and she had to survive somehow until Phaedra came back through town. So she steeled herself and met his gaze.
He was dressed like any sailor, his skin brown and weather-beaten, his beard more gray than black. He was looking at her hungrily – did he think she would sell herself to him? If so, he was wrong. Dessa hated sex; she had always hated it. She would rather risk another burglary than subject herself to that again.
He rose and approached her. “What’s that you were reading?” he asked. His voice was lower and more resonant than she had expected. She had a sudden desire to hear him sing.
“Just some Sephan trash,” she said. “A play, supposedly.”
“Are you an actress?”
“No.”
“Would you like to be? Reading is real helpful.”
Oh good, so he wasn’t after sex. That relaxed her a bit. But could he really be an actor? He didn’t look like an actor, and his walk had too much of a roll to it. He looked and walked like an old sailor.
“How is the pay?”
“Better than you might think. I have friends who’ve done well in that life.”
So he wasn’t an actor himself. That was a relief – it made more sense, and Dessa was wary of things that didn’t make sense.
“Who are your friends?”
She didn’t know any actors by name but didn’t want to look ignorant.
He rattled off a few names that meant nothing to her. “I can introduce you,” he offered. “They’re always complaining to me about needing more competent actors, and I’d like to do them a good turn. They’ve bought me a lot of drinks over the years.”
She took his hand and let him help her stand up. If there was money to be made in acting, that could be a good way to bide her time while she waited for Phaedra.
The sailor led her away from the hostel, chatting amiably as they walked. “They rehearse outside the city,” he said by way of explanation. “I hope you don’t mind walking.”
“I’m fine.”
“Where did you learn to read?”
“From my parents.”
“Do they live ’round Atuna?”
“No. My father is dead, and my mother is far away.”
“Aye,” he said thoughtfully, “you don’t sound exactly Atunaean, come to think of it. They might not like that, but we’ll see. It’s worth a try, eh?”
He kept falling a bit behind her, that sailor’s walk slowing him down. Dessa tried to match his pace, but kept misjudging it. He would speed up sometimes, as if making an effort not to waste any time, and then inexplicably fall behind again. She had felt almost at ease for a few minutes, but this made her uncomfortable. She tried to keep an eye on him even when he wasn’t talking.
They reached the outskirts of the city and made for a grove of trees. “They have a bit of an amphitheater,” the sailor said. “Have you seen The Fall of Laarna?”
“Yes,” Dessa answered, “I’ve seen that one. The Youthful Servant’s lament is beautiful.”
“Aye, everyone likes that one. Here, slow down a bit.”
He put out a hand, motioning for her to wait for him, but as soon as she had slowed he dove forward and grabbed her wrist. In a flash, his other hand was holding a knife and bringing it toward her neck.
She only got her other arm up just in time to block his first thrust, but his grip was too strong for her to escape. She raised a knee toward his groin, but he blocked her with his leg and threw her to the ground. She let go of her disguise as he dropped toward her with the knife, her claws flashing out toward his face, but the surprise gave her no edge.
“I knew it,” he said, raising an arm to keep her hands at bay and stabbing at her chest. “I knew this wouldn’t be a waste.”
The sailor was too fast and too strong. She only managed to stop his knife by getting an arm in its way, and the point slid into her left forearm and clicked against bone. She screamed and blew fire, but he only grimaced and put a hand over her mouth. She buried a claw in his armpit and reached with her bleeding arm to stop the knife again, this time intercepting its point with her palm. The man grunted, and the hand on her mouth went weak. She bit it as hard as she could.
Her teeth nearly met each other before the sailor fell off her, his grip on the knife slackening. Dessa pulled the knife out of her left hand and plunged it into his chest, slipping it between the ribs. The sailor only stared at her. Dessa stood and backed away from him, clamping her bleeding hand under her other elbow.
“You wanted me because I’m Dragon Touched,” she said. “You heard I was here and you came looking for me.”
She should have known. She’d heard the rumor often enough, from those who didn’t know what she was: the Dragon Touched were as good as gold; their blood could be made into a potion for wealth.
Now what could she do? There had been others in that hostel who saw them leave together. If the man’s body was found, she could not safely stay in Atuna.
She couldn’t bury him either; not with only one working arm. It was hard enou
gh tying a rag around her forearm and her hand – she could change her shape to get the scales out of her way, but she could not heal her wounds. If she went back to Atuna injured, it was a joke to imagine she’d escape attention.
When the sailor had stopped moving, Dessa took his knife and searched him for what money she could find. That was easy enough – it was in a pocket tied around his neck along with a pair of necklaces made of carved wooden beads. She took it and stumbled off, away from the city.
She kept the bloody knife in her hand as she walked, hoping it would deter anyone from bothering her along the road. For the thousandth time, she cursed her ill luck. All she had wanted was to stay in Atuna until Phaedra came back. Was that really too much to ask?
Oh yes, of course it was.
19
Hunter
Hunter dreamt he was holding a beautiful baby – his baby, with tight black curls and skin so soft he could hardly bear the sweetness of it. He was nuzzling against the baby’s soft scalp, reveling in its sensations, when the thought came to him that Phaedra must have changed her mind, if this baby existed. He tried to remember what had happened, tried to remember the pregnancy or the birth, but couldn’t. Against his will, he understood. This was a dream. His baby wasn’t real.
The pain of it was unbearable. He clutched the baby to his chest, willing himself to stay asleep, to enjoy his child’s presence before it was torn away, but the baby’s warmth and solidity were already fading. He awoke sobbing.
His first waking moments still governed by dream-thought, he wondered if his mistake had been in failing to name the child – if by forgetting to give it a name, he had doomed himself to lose it. When, slowly, sense returned, he lay in bed with his eyes closed, unable to face the day. How cruel it was to dream this dream now, when he had already made up his mind and told Phaedra of his plan – when her love was finally within his reach. He could not back down, not without losing her, and she was more important than any dream of parenthood… wasn’t she? Why did his love for that dream-child have to be so strong?
Phaedra was right: this decision was harder, much harder, than he’d admitted to himself. It was one thing to choose her over offspring when the question was still abstract, when she was far away beyond the boundaries of the world and his yearning for her overpowered all other considerations, but now that she was here, real, willing to marry him under the right conditions… now his vision was clearer, and he could see what he would be giving up. He could feel that sweet infant slip away into the world of his dreams, and it broke his heart.
Eventually, he rose. Eventually, he dressed and went outside to join his community, to work in the fields and surround himself with activity. If he saw Phaedra alone, she would ask what was wrong and he would have to tell her about the dream. If he told her about it he might burst into tears, and she would ask if he still wanted to go through with that procedure. Her eyes would hold nothing but sympathy and acceptance, but he knew that to say no was to turn down a life with her. He couldn’t say no – but he couldn’t say yes yet either. And so, he couldn’t speak with her.
Two days ago, Phaedra had told him the news: Psander was willing to study the scroll and follow its instructions, once they had dealt with the possibility of total annihilation. That meant he didn’t have to decide yet. It also meant he had either a short time to live or a long time to obsess about his answer.
Could he imagine marrying someone else? All the villagers his age had paired up already, but he supposed Tritika would take him if he asked. He had lived without Phaedra for over a decade – could he live without her forever?
Of course he could. That didn’t mean he ought to. He would always love Phaedra, always yearn for her, always believe that he had been meant for her, and that was a terrible thing to do to any other woman. The whole point of marrying was to pine no longer, to make a family he could be happy in – not to subject Tritika or some other young wife to his hopeless love.
No, it could only be Phaedra. That meant there could be no children. Unless the world ended and took his troubles with it, there would always be something for Hunter to pine for.
Could he be happy with just her and no children? Hunter didn’t know. Maybe it was best to concentrate on hoeing.
The quake struck with awesome force, its wind knocking Hunter off his feet. He nearly lost control of his hoe and had to swing it with all his might into the ground just so it wouldn’t fly off and injure someone – plenty of smaller objects were already flying in various directions. He shielded his face from debris with one hand and looked up toward the sky, where the clouds were splintering. This was a bad one.
With a deafening crash, the top of Psander’s tower disappeared from view, thundering to the ground somewhere out of sight.
“No,” Hunter breathed. “Oh no, no, no.”
He jumped to his feet and ran into the tower, covering his head with his arms as the wind blew and stones fell all around him. The tower was still shaking when he entered it and he fell against a wall on his way to the stairs, but he reached them in the end and started upwards, praying that Phaedra would be all right.
She was there, halfway up the second flight, coming down toward him. When she saw him, she propped her staff against the wall and sank into his arms. Cramped and awkward as it was, they both sat on the steps, embracing, as the tower gave its last shudders and went still.
Hunter found that he had tears in his eyes. “You’re alive,” he said.
“We don’t have long,” she answered.
He didn’t let her go until he heard footsteps on the stairs above and Psander cleared her throat. Then he rose and helped Phaedra to her feet.
“The top of my tower has fallen outside the gates,” Psander said, pretending she hadn’t seen their display. “I don’t believe we can afford another quake like that. The next one may well reach the ground, and after that I expect the entire world will splinter into tiny useless fragments. We are going to have to take matters into our own hands. Hunter, I want you to assemble a bodyguard – anybody you would trust in a confrontation with the elves. We can’t wait for a response from them; we must visit Goodweather ourselves.”
“Who will we leave to defend the rest?”
Psander looked at him sternly. “I will suggest that they bar the gate. If the elves choose to spend their last weeks assaulting this fortress instead of trying to save themselves, there is little we can do to stop them. It remains to be seen whether we can defend ourselves from them without splitting our forces.”
He knew she was right; he just didn’t want her to be. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
“Whatever you do,” Psander warned, “do not let them believe that their loved ones will be defenseless. I have left several casks for the remaining villagers, and told Tarphon that they contain a potion that will render any drinker invisible to elves. Let people believe they are protected – the last thing we need right now is panic.”
“But the potion doesn’t work?”
“If we’re lucky, that won’t come up. Now go gather your people.”
It did not take long to gather everyone he wanted, because practically everyone had congregated outside the gate to survey the damage. Hunter took the four who had shown the most promise with his training: Tritika, Atella’s father Palat, and the two brothers Garno and Eskon. He added a woman named Ketsa, who was good with a bow, and stopped there. They were not much of a force to confront the elves, but after these five he had no more warriors, only more bodies.
When he told them where they were going, Palat and Eskon balked. “Psander is mad,” Palat said. “They’ll slaughter us and eat us.”
Hunter handed him one of the spears. “In a matter of weeks, the world will end. The elves’ world will crash into our old one, and the barrier that separates the two will shred us all. Psander and Phaedra are working to prevent that and save us, and as far as we know so are the elves. You and I are only coming along in case things go wrong, but if you love
your families, you’ll fight to save them. If you love your lives, you’ll fight to save them. If you love the sunshine, or the warmth of a fire, or the taste of good food, by all that’s holy you’ll fight to save them. Our only job is to keep Phaedra and Psander alive. Do you think we can do that?”
Palat’s eyes had gone wide during Hunter’s speech, but now he sighed as if he had known all along. “If that’s all true,” he said, “it can’t hurt to try.”
They armed themselves with spears and bow, and Hunter brought his elvish sickle too, just in case. There was no good way to tie it to his belt, and its haft banged against his leg as he walked, but there was a decent chance that any fight would be at close quarters, and he wanted the option of abandoning his spear. Soon the two wizards emerged from Silent Hall, and they left its shelter behind them.
They were all nervous. Ketsa walked with an arrow already nocked in her bow, the fact that they were still miles from Castle Goodweather notwithstanding. Phaedra gripped her staff so tightly, he wondered it didn’t snap in two. Hunter had relaxed his muscles out of habit and good training but could not slow his heart.
The walk was long and silent. The clouds hung broken, all shards and jagged edges, splinters of them littering the sky. And then, at last, Goodweather stood before them, the disc of ever-blue sky bright and welcoming above it. The castle was made, like Illweather, entirely out of plantlife, but even from here Hunter could see that it was not healthy. Vines had strangled one of the nearest tower-trees, and a large portion of the moss-covered walls had turned brown. Even the circle of blue sky was smaller than Hunter might have expected from the castle’s size. He and Phaedra exchanged worried glances.
“That can’t be good,” Hunter said.