by NS Dolkart
She didn’t have long. She tried to think, to breathe – and that odor made her dizzy. Hold on. What if…?
Atella sat up and unstoppered the skin again. She took a gulp of the liquor, and the resultant sputtering and coughing made her spill even more on herself. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe the elves wouldn’t bother searching too thoroughly with their eyes and noses if they heard no minds calling out to them. She tried to stop thinking and just drink, but oh how it burned!
There, that must be enough. She didn’t want to drink all of it, in case it killed her. She had heard stories of men who’d died of drink, though she’d never seen such a thing herself. If it was possible, it was worth watching out for.
On the other hand, she hardly felt any different than before. Maybe she should drink some more after all. It was all she could think of to save her children.
She fumbled with the skin and ended up dropping it. “No, no,” she mumbled to herself, picking it up again and finding it empty. Oh, no. She couldn’t afford to run out now, not with her mind still so loud! Should she try to get into one of these barrels?
She reached for the mallet but couldn’t find it. How could it have disappeared? Had it fallen again?
Atella sat up further, and that was when the dizziness really struck her. Oh. It might be working, then. It had better be, because this was awful. The dizziness was overwhelming, and the sick feeling in her stomach… maybe she should lie down instead.
No, no, lying down only made it worse. She had to hold perfectly still, except that she couldn’t. She was swaying back and forth, she could tell that much even though she couldn’t see the room moving. She couldn’t see it, but she sure could feel it.
She gave up and fell back behind the barrels, her head pounding. She was going to throw up. She was going to die. How could she have thought this was a good idea? The elves would probably laugh if they ever found her. In her attempt to escape them, she had poisoned herself.
She put her hands on her head and waited for this nightmare to end.
23
Psander
Psander did not speak the whole way back, for all that Phaedra kept giving her questioning glances. She had too much to think about, besides which, her feet were killing her. By the time her home appeared on the horizon, Psander was hobbling a good deal worse than Phaedra was. It was obvious enough that her companions kept looking at each other as if to ask whether someone ought to help her, though clearly nobody wanted to be that someone. At last Hunter, perhaps feeling particularly gallant, volunteered.
“Do you need help?” he asked.
“I have blisters on both feet,” Psander told him. “Unless you plan on carrying me, I don’t see how you can help with that.”
A childish part of her hoped he really would carry her the rest of the way, but of course he just said, “Oh.”
The gate was on the ground when they arrived, its hinges having somehow melted. “Oh God,” Phaedra said. “Oh God.”
Psander let the others rush in ahead while she staggered along behind, inspecting the damage. There were scorchmarks where her defensive wards had lit the periphery of the fortress aflame, a worthless defense against ladders the elves hadn’t bothered to bring. The secondary wards, the ones beyond the gate, hadn’t even been triggered because Psander hadn’t been there to set them off. Once the gate had been breached, the elves must have walked in unmolested.
While the others cried and rushed about searching for their loved ones, Psander hobbled over to the casks she had left by the tower door. They were entirely drained. Good. She turned one of them over and sat on it, pulling off her boots so she could gingerly touch at her blisters. They were large, and painful, and unsightly. What a nuisance.
“They’re all gone,” Hunter reported, his face blank with shock. “The elves took them all.”
“They’re going to eat them,” Phaedra moaned, leaning against her staff beside him.
“That would be very unwise of them,” Psander said, trying to decide whether she ought to pop the blisters.
“I should have known they’d do this,” Phaedra sighed. “The queen knew it would take us time to get to Illweather and back. She knew they’d be here, unprotected. Even if she hasn’t given up on us, she only needs us to keep this world from ending. We should have known they would attack while we were away.”
“I did know,” Psander said, deciding against intervening further with her feet. “Or at least, I suspected. But I didn’t have a good way to protect those we left behind, and it made no sense to take them with us. So I did the next best thing.”
Phaedra and Hunter only stared at her blankly, so Psander clarified. “I poisoned them.”
“You what?”
“I poisoned them. You remember my blueglow and calardium pendants? I dissolved them in fluid and instructed the villagers to drink it if attacked, which they clearly did. As you will recall, those pendants were designed to siphon magic away from the bearer and redirect it to my wards. Humans, especially untrained ones, produce only small magical fields, but the elven anatomy is highly dependant on magic. Any elf eating the flesh of the poisoned will soon sicken and die. They will regret their raid.”
Psander had misjudged the situation, badly. Rather than admiring her ingenuity or taking solace in the fact that the villagers would be avenged, Phaedra looked furious. Thankfully, she was not the type to be physically aggressive, or so Psander thought until Phaedra advanced on her. She did not strike the wizard but put the end of her staff against the cask between Psander’s legs and pushed with all her might. The cask toppled and Psander toppled with it, landing hard on the ground and hitting her head against the tower wall.
“Ahh,” she moaned, holding the back of her head.
“You promised to protect the villagers,” Phaedra cried, “and then you poisoned them?”
“It wouldn’t have killed them,” Psander said, “not for weeks.”
At that, Hunter abruptly threw down his spear and marched past Psander into the tower. The wizard appreciated his repressed nature now, especially as Phaedra couldn’t seem to help screaming at her.
“You betrayed them! They relied on you to save them, and you poisoned them! All these years you’ve done nothing but manipulate these people! You took their food and their work and their lives, and gave them nothing but deceit! I’ve admired you all this time, when you’re completely, completely evil.”
“I don’t particularly care what you think of me, Phaedra,” Psander said, “but I do think your anger is misplaced. I’ve done the best I could with the tools I had. I had no way to save those people, not if the elves came for them. I told them to drink the stuff only if the elves came, so if the elves hadn’t made their decision to attack, the villagers would still be here, alive and unpoisoned. That the Goodweather queen sent a raid here at all means that those people would have died whether I gave them the poison or not. Their deaths are not my fault.”
“I’ll bet you told them the poison would protect them. You gave them false hope.”
Psander shook her head. Phaedra was calming down now, but she still stood over her menacingly, and her commotion was attracting the remainder of Psander’s bodyguard.
“Our resources are stretched thin,” Psander reminded her apprentice in low tones. “There is no time for all this sentimentality. Do you want to save your world, or not?”
She had thought Phaedra would see reason, but that only set her off again. “I don’t care how thin you think your ‘resources’ are! I’d never stoop to such low, disgusting, atrocious means to–”
“I never asked you to,” Psander interrupted. “I’m not a fool; I know quite well which tools are suited to which tasks.”
“I’m not a tool!” Phaedra shouted. “Nobody is a tool! We’re people, Gods damn you!”
Psander gazed at the crowd surrounding them, more than a little dismayed. The others had heard enough by now to understand the basic gist of their argument, and they were looking on Psander
with a mix of hatred and horror.
“You killed our families,” Ketsa stated.
“The elves killed your families,” Psander answered, “if they’re even dead yet. I only did my best to avenge them in advance.”
“Poisoning people isn’t avenging them!”
“In this particular case, it is.”
Thankfully, at that moment, Tritika came running out of the tower. “Atella’s alive!” she panted. “They’re in the cellar!”
The team of bodyguards rushed into the tower after her, leaving only Phaedra standing over her teacher. “Think what you are doing, girl!” Psander hissed at her. “Those people may well kill me if you keep inciting them like that. You need me to remain alive and well, or our worlds will be destroyed. Are you incapable of controlling yourself? Incapable of prioritizing?”
“I’m not a girl,” Phaedra answered, “and I’m capable of recognizing evil when I see it. Tell me your plan. After that, may the Gods smite you a thousand times.”
“We will leave such determinations to Them, if They can reach me. They may be able to soon enough.”
“I hope so.”
Psander sighed. “I can see that I need to give you some time before you’ll be civil. That can’t be helped, though I hope you will at least attempt to see my side of things. Now did you happen to note what Illweather said about the worlds coming together?”
“The same thing Goodweather said.”
Psander shook her head. “Illweather made an important distinction, one I had always known about, but hadn’t properly considered until the moment I heard Aviaste’s words. Illweather said that we couldn’t prevent it from drawing the worlds together, and that the mesh would destroy us.”
Phaedra clearly didn’t understand. “We knew that already.”
“But we’ve been trying to find our solution on the wrong side of the equation! We don’t need to prevent the worlds from combining, we only need to prevent the mesh from shredding us! Your work over the last years bought us time, but it was the precise opposite of what we ought to have been doing. You were patching up holes, strengthening the mesh, when what we need is to unravel it altogether.”
Phaedra stared. “You want to unravel the mesh between this world and ours, and combine all three parts of the Yarek without destroying either world. That’s… bold. You think God Most High would allow it?”
Psander was about to say that she didn’t care what any Gods thought, but at that moment they were interrupted by Hunter, who came to report about how Atella and her children had survived. “None of them drank the poison,” he added pointedly at the end of his story.
“Help me to the library,” Psander said, reaching out to him from her spot on the ground. “We need a place where I can lock the door and confer with Phaedra in peace.”
She did not need to add “and security” – they all understood what she meant. Soon enough the villagers would come looking for her. She would need a locked door to hide behind.
Hunter helped her up, and Psander braved the agony in her feet to hobble up the stairs behind Phaedra. Hunter took up the rear, holding his elvish sickle. He was a good man, that Hunter. He took his duty to protect her seriously.
When they reached the library, Psander closed the door behind her and Phaedra and threw the bolt.
“I’ll stay outside,” Hunter called. “You figure this out and let me know if you need anything.”
“Good,” Psander answered. “We shall.”
She turned to her apprentice and was glad to find that Phaedra’s fury had cooled during their ascent. Her expression now was steely and businesslike, the very image of a woman determined to work hard in unpleasant conditions.
“So,” she said, “how would you unravel the mesh?”
“Firstly, it would behoove us to think of it in the plural. We will need to unravel the mesh on both sides of the gate, because there are in fact two meshes, one on each side. I expect I’ll be able to tap into new reservoirs of power once the poison takes its effect, and I will likely have help from Goodweather too, if not from both castles. What I believe we need to do is to open the gate and keep it open, and to have the Yarek work at the opening until it is so large that this entire world is pulled through. I am sure that such a thing is possible. What I fear are the repercussions, so many of which are unknown. But the worst that could happen is that everyone dies, and that was already the conclusion should we fail to act.”
“You’re sure that’s the worst that could happen?”
Psander gazed at her apprentice thoughtfully. “How do you mean?”
“Well,” Phaedra said, “as it is, we all die, but the Yarek also gets broken. If we follow your plan and everything goes wrong, we all die and the Yarek destroys the Gods and the underworld too.”
“Hm. Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“I should speak to the Yarek on our side, shouldn’t I?”
“You’ll need an interpreter. Bandu should be able to help you.”
“I’ve asked an awful lot of her already.”
“Do you have someone else in mind?”
Phaedra sighed. “No, of course not. I’ll have to ask.”
“Now, I do understand your concerns,” Psander said. “If we unravel the mesh, the Yarek will be able to unify itself in its entirety, and it may well bring the heavens down around us. A reprise of the ancient battle between the Yarek and God Most High is unlikely to end well for any of us on the ground. I only suggest it because the alternative is certain death.
“Conversely, I have very little certainty about anything under this set of circumstances. There are too many unknowns, too many questions that no one has ever had to study before, so that there is no precedent to research. Is it possible that Goodweather’s seed will maintain its independence from Illweather, and their rivalry will simply move to our world? Yes. That is probably the best we could hope for. But there is no knowing, at least not until you have consulted with that branch of the Yarek.
“Another question: while attempting to unravel the mesh from that other side, should you position yourself near the gate on Tarphae, or near Goodweather’s seed? I have no idea. Perhaps the Yarek will know. If not, you must make your own best guess and we must charge ahead blind.”
“Just traveling from Tarphae to Bandu’s house, and from there to the Yarek, will take weeks,” Phaedra pointed out. “How much time do you think we have?”
“Essentially none. As soon as we are finished discussing what we do know and can control, I suggest that you leave for the other side. Only leave me Hunter – otherwise, some short-sighted fool might prevent my part from going forward. I plan to turn all the power at my disposal toward destroying the mesh, and if I don’t have the space or safety to do that much, this will all come to a very disappointing end.”
Phaedra accepted that without argument, to Psander’s pleasant surprise. They spent the next hour discussing theory and strategies, followed by another hour discussing logistics. Psander still had plenty of coin left over from her wandering days, all useless to her now, and she bequeathed it to Phaedra so that her travel might be faster and easier. There were other items too – a few texts on continental eschatology, and a single, dangerous book called Prayer Magic: Uses and Limits.
Phaedra stared at this last codex for some time before taking it. “I never knew this existed. You had this all along.”
“Its previous owner died by lightning strike. I didn’t want to encourage you. But under these circumstances, it may well be worth studying.”
“You always wait until the last minute to tell me things,” Phaedra said tersely. “It’s a very dangerous habit. When do you think I’ll have time to read this now?”
“I imagine you can start it while sailing back from Tarphae to the continent. After that, I’m not sure.”
Phaedra made an annoyed sound and opened the book, scanning a few pages to make sure it was worth her time. Psander knew better than to take too much credit for Phaedra’s deve
lopment, but she was nonetheless pleased. Phaedra had grown into a capable wizard; Psander had heard her report on the naval battle at Tarphae and appreciated her creative approach to the problem, the way she had confused her divine enemy by renaming and relabeling her surroundings. She had managed to stretch a single technique into a complete arsenal, a testament to her resourcefulness. Given more thorough training, there was no telling what she could accomplish.
She was also right: Psander was too secretive by nature. It had served well enough to protect her library from the Gods, but a library was useless if no one had access to its books. In that one vital way, Psander had not been nearly ambitious enough: she had made no attempt to revive academic wizardry, only to preserve its last remnants. With her power, she had built a private library. Phaedra would have built a school.
Well, maybe she would get that chance someday. Nobody could live forever, and Phaedra seemed to have at least one God on her side, which was more than Psander could ever have claimed for herself. She could leave Phaedra her library, if everything went well. With divine blessing, especially from God Most High, a school of wizardry might well thrive.
It was good to find something to look forward to, in the midst of Psander’s worst disaster yet. How much of her life had been spent staving off some catastrophe or other? More than half of it, at this point. She had known no peace since the mob of Parakas made its surprise attack.
She had been very lucky to survive. Had it not been for her particular course of study at the time, she might easily have perished in the tower with her mentor. Instead, she had been out that night conducting an experiment on Godly boundaries, measuring the comparative influences of Mayar, Atel, and Atun at different points along the oceanside road from Parakas to Atuna. A group of young men had sought her out, their knives flashing in the moonlight, but Psander had escaped them and fled down the cliffs toward the sea. She’d been a good runner back then, and a decent climber. She had hidden herself among the crags, cloaking herself in shadow, and sent a projection of her fear running onward. The men had chased her projection until it ran into the waves, and she had heard them argue over whether they ought to keep a lookout or leave it to their God to drown her. To her relief, they had chosen the latter.