by T. A. Miles
Korsten considered the manner of his mother’s death briefly, but didn’t relate it to the mythology he was currently reading. He doubted that his mother was lured to her death by faeries and what he wanted to know had nothing to do with that besides. He wanted to settle his mind on what the Siren spell had likely been named after.
Naturally there would be variations to the lore throughout Edrinor, but the essential theme, based on his very knowledge of the spell itself, would undoubtedly be the luring aspect. Also, whether intentional or not, control appeared to lay in the hands of the singer. That aligned with his knowledge and experience thus far where both the Siren spell and Allurance were concerned.
Of course, that would be the circumstance—there would be no point in it being a talent developed within the Vassenleigh Order otherwise—but Korsten wanted to settle it squarely in his mind, as a sort of cornerstone upon which he would begin to consciously build his understanding of the spell. He had to master it. He couldn’t allow it to overwhelm him at a crucial time, as it almost had in Indhovan. But what was he to do with demons drawn to him so ambitiously as to nearly counter the guise his soulkeeper offered? He had destroyed the ones from Indhovan. He had fed them to the sea.
A twinge of irony brushed across his mind and nearly caused him to shudder, but he banished the sensation with a shake of his head. Regardless of how that had played out, he couldn’t be expected to Reach to a body of water after every such casting of Siren. That had nearly cost him his own life as well. He considered that perhaps that was the danger of the spell, but at the same time, he couldn’t leave it there. It didn’t seem logical enough and something he had learned about the Vassenleigh Order’s system was that it relied on logic and a harmony of logical thinking and balanced feeling. For that reason, there had to be an order and a balance to the Siren spell as well.
His mind went back to a term the book used; the Unseen. The Unseen was more archaic than the Malakym, which was often considered another and less frequently used term for the gods who held a near reign over the mortal world. More aloft, were the Welkyn. His analytical mind helplessly wondered if the three were in fact one and the same, or if they were three entirely unique types of being. But if all referred to the gods, then essentially the magic inspired by such myth as sirens, or from which such myth derived, was in reality just one of the many gifts, or curses, the gods had given to the mortal world. Before they abandoned it.
Korsten’s mind was half settled on that, but helplessly, he considered his dream of being in the sea with spirits, whose words surely alluded to a war between greater factions. The voices and what they had said remained clear in his memory. He could not set the matter down.
“Korsten,” came a voice that was immediately familiar.
He looked up instinctively, in time to see the visage of his mother walking toward him in all the layers of silk and lace her station afforded and her otherworldly elegance demanded. For but a moment she appeared solid and there with him, to the point that he could do no more than stare as she closed the distance between them. Her lit eyes met with his and her delicately pursed lips affected a melancholy air upon her words when she spoke.
“Come home,” she said, and there was nothing tangible to her hand as it lifted to caress Korsten’s face in passing.
He turned to watch her walk between the shelves, the ends of her skirts noiselessly brushing the floor. She was gone before her image reached the end of the bookcases. The silence that carried afterward was absolute. Korsten did not even hear the book slip from his grasp and drop upon the floor.
Five
AS THE SUN SET, a glorious cloak of amber and rose spread over the water, as a gods-woven robe would settle upon the blessed shoulders of nature. From a low dune risen among glistening stones and twiggy bramble, Korsten watched the fall of evening. A comfortably cooling breeze that would be chilled before the night had matured caught his curls and flaunted their rebellious length directly in his face. There’d always been a stubborn one or two among the forelocks that refused to obey order, no matter the length, but now those few scarcely stood out.
How his lifestyle had changed. The days of worrying over every tidy detail, of class standards—of unbridled vanity—were as far away as childhood. The folly of his pursuit to exist both hidden and adored within a structure that excluded him by its very nature, and his, was over. On his path to understanding that, he had come back to the beginning. How cruel and how kind were the gods, to offer such things?
These ruminations played through Korsten’s mind as the gently tumbling waves of the sea caught the last rays of daylight, breaking them into glistening gems that were passed along toward shore at a pace that could only entrance the viewer. Would the siren song of the sea draw him in now? Or did his own Song negate such charm, rendering him and the sea helplessly neutral toward one another? Were they in allegiance with one another perhaps? His mind cycled through considerations that he imagined long after the fact scarcely mattered. Where he stood in relation to nature, or the spirits thereof, or the gods themselves was moot by now, surely. Or was it?
As the evening terminus drew shut the winking eye of day, opening the view through night’s ever-shifting lens, he came to the determination that it was a far greater burden to stand at the border of knowledge than to be adrift in the waters of ignorance. Priesthood had been his vessel to these very shores. Instead of glimpsing a mystery from the distance, he stood with fragments of a picture in his hands. Setting them down now would be neglect. He had already glimpsed enough of the details to understand the importance of the whole.
What is it that you want me to know, Mother?
Zerxa did not answer, but then she had already done so. She wanted him to come home. And where was that, if not Cenily and her husband? The home of her childhood, perhaps.
Notions of the distant woods of her stories came to mind yet again. Glimpses of forests deeper and greater than the dense growth surrounding the towns and villages of northern Edrinor passed across his imagination, painting brief impressions of the animals upon the tapestry in his bedroom. In the many months he had been actively working alongside Merran, they had been near that border only a few times. They’d not been back to Haddowyn, but they had verged upon the borderlands in the region.
Incidents of the Vadryn were many, both in rumor and in fact. As well the scruples of men in the vicinity of Morenne’s annexations had warped. There were too many willing to make themselves the instruments of demons. When they weren’t deliberately seeking out allegiance, they were far too susceptible to the Vadryn’s seduction. Months hunting in the north had been a harrowing experience. Indhovan had followed. Indhovan was waiting and in that light the recent phantoms seemed less tangible.
He brought himself back to the present. Darkness had settled deeply along the fringes of his awareness. A screen of blue-black hovered above the water in his adjusted view. There was a storm coming…a day or so out. They would be well on their way to Indhovan by then. It would follow the coastline, swell in temper, then head back out to sea. A more inland route would be the better option for travel. He suspected Sharlotte was already aware, given that they met at brown on the Spectrum. Korsten was decided he would make a safer path toward her by treading the ground they shared as colleagues. Their personal similarities he would regard as the thorny bramble along the roadside; he would avoid it until they were both better equipped to navigate it.
Turning from the water, Korsten performed a Lantern spell and let the irregular orb of light accompany him back to the house. He encountered no more spirits, however sleep was not to be had. He spent the night in and out of consciousness. What small moments of genuine sleep he managed were made uncomfortable with visions of the Vadryn clinging to the edges of a Reach portal, as if they hovered just beyond his perception, awaiting magic’s invitation to remind him of their presence. Those moments might have been more nightmarish, had he been deeper asleep. His state of wakefulness allowed him to quickly ration
alize and put away such visions.
As to not sleeping, he could only conclude that he had slept too long while healing and that, paired with thoughts of travel to Indhovan and lingering matters concerning his parents, had made him restless. He was out of bed and prepared for travel before night had fully relinquished the sky to day. Of course, travel for priests required considerably less than it did for others and under the circumstances, he had even less to his person. Presumably, Onyx waited for him in Indhovan, else the animal had been returned to Vassenleigh. That meant that he would have to borrow one of his father’s horses.
The prospect inspired him to consider a Reach, but the circumstances would require him to perform the spell for Lerissa and Sharlotte as well, presuming neither of them had been to Indhovan lately and would be able to target it with the spell. That in itself would not be too difficult. However, considering how his last Reach had gone, he wondered if he should risk it. It also seemed a tad reckless from the strategic sense. He had no idea what state the city was in. Reaching to the home of Irslan, in the event of a siege or worse, could quickly turn to disaster.
While he loathed to consider the time involved with traditional methods of travel, there seemed no preferable options. He wondered if they might be able to commission a ship. A jaunt up the coast via water may have felt like an eternity to a bored child, but it would certainly be faster than riding or walking. He would bring the topic up to the ladies and if they were all agreed, perhaps Darlevan would know of an available vessel with a willing captain.
With that decided, he thought he might return to the library to wait out the very early morning with some reading, but the aroma of baking caught him at the stairs. He let it carry him to the source, not because he was hungry necessarily, but because the scent meant that someone else was about at such an hour. Of course, his overly willing memory from childhood reminded him that such an hour was prime, if not essential, for preparing some of the day’s staples. Considering how the population of the house had dwindled, that scarcely seemed necessary now, however.
Regardless, the kitchen clearly had a cook at work, one who presumably had a sound purpose for it, as became evident when Korsten entered the dining room and saw his father seated at the table.
“I see you also keep the hours of an old man,” Sethaniel said directly.
“No,” Korsten said, perhaps too reflexively, though it wasn’t usual of him to not sleep through the darker hours, given the opportunity. “I can’t sleep.”
Sethaniel looked at him, seeming to simultaneously question and assess his son’s health in the moments it took him to eye his child up and down. Whatever the verdict, he kept it to himself and Korsten saw himself to a chair. Instinct or habit had him at first select one several seats from his father, but he changed his decision before he’d drawn the article from the table. Sethaniel was once again eyeing him while he very consciously took a different seat, the one adjacent to the head of the table and its occupant.
Under such scrutiny, pulling the chair out and sitting down became a far more awkward affair than was required. Memories of defiance and dramatic behavior darted from memory with the haste of rabbits from the baying of hounds on their scent. One not as old as the others made itself especially apparent; the night he and Merran had arrived in the village of Bersiene. Under the mistrusting eyes of emotionally beleaguered strangers, he’d resorted easily and immediately to an eccentric performance. It was meant to hide truth behind farce. It seemed to have worked well then. It had probably worked too well throughout his young years…or perhaps not at all. Either way, Korsten realized now that he didn’t want anything more to do with performance of that nature.
His focus had incidentally become the thick, scored edge of the dining room table. He made it his father instead, and spoke in a quiet, level tone. “The ladies and I have decided that it would be best to go to Indhovan.”
Sethaniel nodded, as if he’d known or as if he’d reasoned their options out himself already and arrived at the same conclusion.
“I wish that we had more time,” Korsten said next, and hoped that the sincerity behind the words rang through. He was a tad disarmed by the way Sethaniel continued to nod.
“I’m going with you,” Sethaniel said, completing the disarming. The elder folded his hands beneath his bearded chin while leaning upon the table and continued, “We’ll have the duration of the journey, at least.”
Korsten remained at a loss for words. Indhovan had been a city on the verge of invasion, the last he knew. A man Sethaniel’s age placing himself in a situation of such likely risk seemed ludicrous. What reason could he possibly have for wanting to go there? Nostalgic whims were not adequate for such endangerment, especially not where the Vadryn were concerned.
Sethaniel must have read Korsten’s thoughts in his expression; pride charted a brief, but distinct course across his heavily lined features. In spite of that, his words were very sober, and final. “I have political acquaintances in Indhovan whom I’ve been meeting with regularly over the years. I will admit that it has not been quite so frequent in recent years, but, as you know, the situation grows increasingly direr. Distance is our only excuse for ignorance in Cenily, and it’s not so great an excuse as some might deem it.”
Korsten digested that with a helpless dose of bitterness and shame for the distance that had been cultivated between them, by each of them, and that Sethaniel may have been subtly referencing. He was stumbling over that distance in his mind getting to his misgivings regarding the current circumstances. “There were many Vadryn present in Indhovan,” he reminded his father. Simultaneously, he reminded himself…of the horde within the caves, of the crone, and of Serawe. The sea’s cold touch traced a path through his blood.
“There are many men in Indhovan.” Sethaniel did the reminding now. “Many more there than there are here. If Indhovan falls, Cenily will fall afterward. At my age, I fail to see what it matters where I finally come to rest.”
It was clear in that moment that Sethaniel’s body had betrayed the determination of his mind, and that—in the tradition of the Brierly family—he intended to remain active in this world until he literally could not. Korsten could only respect his father for that, and if any amount of such a trait had passed to him, he was both grateful and ashamed. Grateful, because it may have helped him to survive this long and ashamed for the moments he’d acted in defiance of it.
Korsten decided to accept his father’s decision, for it was certainly not his place to challenge now. He had not witnessed his father aging, but was only witness to his age. The year Sethaniel had come to mattered little against how he’d come to it.
The elder appeared strong of mind and his body managed better for that strength. In the event of Indhovan’s attack, Sethaniel would be as protected as any of the city’s other inhabitants, by the priests present as well as the soldiers and what other defenses Indhovan had. If Indhovan had been taken at some point between their arrival and Korsten’s leaving the city, then Sethaniel would be protected by the priests in his company and if the danger became too insistent, one or all of them could escort him to a safer location.
Korsten justified it all very neatly and topped it off with the fact that they could now depart for Indhovan as soon as the journey had been arranged. He and his father could establish the closure Korsten hoped for in the time it would take to travel.
A ship was not difficult to arrange. Korsten would have believed that it might be somewhat complicated, given the circumstances in the north, but as it turned out, there existed a stalwart coalition of merchants assigning themselves to Edrinor’s eastern coast who prided themselves supporters to the Old Kingdom and the war effort. They were well aware of the conditions further up the coast, more aware than officials in Indhovan had taken any interest in being at the time of Korsten and Merran’s arrival there. It was disarming and impressive simultaneously.
Though supplies and manpower had been steadily depleting, the coastal merchants frequ
ently transported individuals with political interest in the war as far north as Vynndoran. More recently, Indhovan had been the destination of choice and the captain of a trading vessel, ironically dubbed The Song of the Coast, dutifully accepted the proposition put forward by Sethaniel. It was in evidence that the elder and the merchant were reasonably familiar with one another and, though the merchant captain seemed not to have been from Cenily originally, he spent some time during the meeting with Sethaniel and his priest company drawing a persistent visual line between Korsten and Sethaniel.
Possibly, he descried some resemblance, though Sethaniel did not introduce Korsten as any familial relation. Korsten had also settled himself to addressing his father by his given name since departing from the house that morning. It was not uncomfortable, though Korsten couldn’t say whether or not he was in any way comforted by the ease of their public manner; to behave as associates over blood relations.
He decided it was for the better not to dwell on it. The ship had been secured for that afternoon, but there was still much to do before departure.
Tasks for the following few hours included a visit to the governor of Cenily. Korsten contemplated the appointment while he and Sethaniel were carried to the manor by way of a semi-enclosed carriage. The cart was small and ornate, painted white and canopied with a soft, pale gold canvas. The material was treated to beat back the sun’s rays, as well as rain, should any fall. In Cenily, storms approached suddenly and tended to depart in a similar hurry. It benefited the city’s residents to always be prepared.