by T. A. Miles
He stepped over to her, recalling vividly the first time they had met in the streets of Indhovan. “What won’t stop?” he asked her.
“The dreams,” she said, as simply as if he’d asked her the color of the sky they both stood beneath.
It crossed Korsten’s mind to explain to her that their situations were not the same, but he realized that it might be an untruth. At the core of it, for their own reasons, they had both been intimate with demons. Their blood had been connected with the Vadryn. They could see on both sides of what was no dream. This was a reality for each of them, but the important difference was that Korsten was a willing agent. He entered this darkness of his own volition, even before becoming a priest, and it was his duty to control himself and to control its effect on him, if he couldn’t control the darkness itself.
“How did you get here?” he finally asked Dacia.
“I saw you in my dream and followed.”
Korsten believed her. The girl had not only been touched by a demon’s magic, but she’d been exposed to the manipulation of magic by both her father and her adoptive mother. She understood well more than she knew. She was an incidental practitioner. He wondered if sheltering her was enough, or if Ersana should have been educating her instead. A passive form of control seemed to be Ersana’s goal, and that had been the avenue by which the crone had used both her and their coven.
But now was not the time. Korsten reached out and lightly touched the girl’s face, letting his hand settle on her shoulder while he regathered his bearings. It seemed that Morenne was being held near the waterfront so far; the fighting had not penetrated beyond the point where Sharlotte had joined and regained Indhovan some ground in driving the enemy back at least a short space. That meant that the forum should yet be safe.
“Let’s get you back to your mother,” Korsten decided. And he turned Dacia around, away from the waterfront area.
Thirteen
THE FORUM WAS INDEED still a safe location. Korsten didn’t expect it to be otherwise, but the hour was anything but certain now that Morenne had arrived. Dacia had walked with him as easily as she had the first time he had brought her back to her home. She had a notable lack of fear, or perhaps of awareness. Korsten couldn’t decide which it was and he supposed it didn’t actually matter just now. The important thing was for her to stay protected, and away from danger. That meant she could no longer follow whatever or whomever she envisioned in a waking dream. Whether she had performed some manner of Reach or literally taken steps in Korsten’s direction, she would only get herself into trouble doing so.
“Stacen,” Korsten called out when he saw someone that he recognized; in this case, the onetime house servant of Irslan Treir. The man was slight of build and long in the features, and quiet in a way that still seemed notable to Korsten.
“Master Priest,” the dark-haired man replied, stepping in their direction, but not quite over to them. He even performed a small sidestep upon seeing Dacia, maintaining distance between himself and the girl.
Korsten recalled that he had been assaulted by Serawe, through Dacia. He understood the man’s caution and decided that it would probably not do to have Dacia escorted to her mother. It would be better to take her back to Ersana himself. “Could you tell me where…”
“Ersana is in the study chamber behind the main floor,” Stacen directed, as if aware of the task he narrowly avoided.
“Thank you,” Korsten said to him, and turned Dacia in the proper direction. He didn’t see her make any notice of Stacen at all, but he supposed that detail would not have mattered much to someone who had been a victim of such unfortunate circumstance as Stacen had. The precise circumstances were unknown to Korsten, but knowing them was not essential to understanding the man’s position.
“He thinks that I’m a monster,” Dacia said after a few steps.
Korsten slowed to a stop, drawing her to a halt as well. “Dacia.”
She faced him and nearly smiled. “Mother was a monster. She tried to hurt you, didn’t she?”
“Hush, Dacia,” he told her, in a tone that insisted that she do so immediately.
She did, and he squeezed her arm lightly to let her know that he wasn’t angry—if she even required such assurance.
“Dacia,” he began again while she continued to look at him. “It’s probably better if you don’t think about such things right now. You should give attention to Ersana and to the shelter she’s providing for others. It’s very important that you stay here, with her. Can you understand that?”
“Yes,” Dacia answered. “But I leave anyway.”
“Well don’t leave anymore,” he told her firmly. “Do you remember what happened before? Do you recall being chased by a shadow through the streets?”
“No,” she said.
Korsten studied her. His gaze passed over the blunt honesty of her expression and then the crystal she wore on a rope around her neck. It served a similar purpose to the mark put upon Korsten’s neck; to put off infection and the influence of the Vadryn. At least, she still had it. Even so, it had not proved a difficult thing for her to lose and, given her helpless state of being, she might again attract a demon in search of a body to either occupy or feed upon.
“Stay here with Ersana,” Korsten eventually enforced, then started for the back of the central space once again.
Beneath a series of pillars, there was a wooden door tucked. It was dwarfed by the height of the rest of the room and seemed almost out of place. Noting the coordinated bunch of crystals hung above the frame, Korsten knocked before entering. The door opened onto a small space with almost no furnishings. The walls were roughly hewn as well, a replica of the interior of the caves. Perhaps this setting was the start of the series of meditations that would eventually place Ersana where the coven’s former head priestess had been. Perhaps this was where the crone had had her beginnings.
Ersana was sat upon a stone platform set into an alcove across the room, alone. Though her long hair was neatly combed and her simple dress clean, he couldn’t’ help but to think of the form in the caves that had been covered in damp dust and bramble. He also couldn’t help but to envision the expression that would have been on Merran’s face had he been witness to this.
A pang of longing attacked him, but he put it aside, ushering Dacia into the room ahead of him.
Ersana noticed them and stood, stepping toward away from her place of meditation.
“I found her,” Korsten said of Dacia. “Or rather, she found me, out in the streets very near to battle.”
“I wondered,” Ersana said, and it seemed lacking, given the circumstances.
Korsten understood that Dacia was an exceptionally unique ward for anyone to have to keep track of, but the manner in which Ersana dealt with her frequent disappearances was far too tolerant for his tastes. It bordered on enabling.
“She must not leave here again, unless it is with you,” Korsten enforced. “There must be a better way to keep her from wandering.”
“No,” Ersana said. “There isn’t. Perhaps you haven’t realized that Dacia is scarcely lucid. She has moments, but often…”
“I did realize that,” Korsten admitted, feeling defeated in his attempt to better motivate Ersana.
“Then you know it hinders her ability to process both fear and judgment. And when she wanders…at times the manner in which she does would defy physical bonds if I were to employ them.”
Korsten listened, disliking the seeming lack of option.
Ersana hesitated, perhaps reluctant to give the information she delivered next. “She appears more stable…at least she is better able to anchor…in the presence of her cousin, Irslan.”
Korsten considered that. “The blood connection, perhaps.”
Ersana conceded to the possibility with a single nod.
“I can take her to him,” Korsten offered, watching Ersana’s features stiffen and her hands tighten over her daughter, but in the following moment she relaxed her hold. Kors
ten attempted to assure her. “Irslan is currently located within the governor’s manor. There can be no safer place for her in the city, so long as she stays there.”
“Then take her,” Ersana permitted. She almost pleaded, “Keep her safe.”
“I will do all that I can,” Korsten promised. He reached out for Dacia’s hand and received it. “We’re going to have you stay with your cousin instead,” he said to her.
“Yes, I believe Cousin Irslan enjoys visits,” Dacia replied.
Korsten recalled that about Irslan and so offered her a small smile. “Yes, he does.”
The waterfront was completely inundated by the enemy. From the balcony of one of the east guard towers, Oshand could see their ships gathered along the piers as if the city was already their own. Their forces appeared to have strategized similarly for land as they had for water; with penetration. They were driving primarily up the most direct street that would take them to the city’s center, and the governor. If Indhovan had more men, they might have been able to organize a counter-flanking tactic that would bring them around to the rear of the Morennish troops. That considered, even if they had more soldiers to spare, they would likely lose several to the enemy’s fire tactics. It looked as though the entirety of their own strategy would consist literally of blocking Morenne’s path. Somehow that felt like waiting for an inevitable doom.
A sudden burst of sound and light emerged from the central point of conflict in just that moment. Oshand had been witness to one previously and taken it for the fire tactics, but there was something about it that didn’t seem the same. “What in the Hells is that?”
“I’ve been wondering myself,” the man nearest him said. A ranked soldier by the name Bhen.
“It’s a priest,” another soldier told them, stepping nearer to the railing. The man appeared somewhat spent. He was dusted with powdered stone and ash. Both had made the air unnaturally thick since the start of Morenne’s barrage from the ships. Mild burns and blood smudged the soldier’s skin, but he didn’t carry any noticeably dangerous wounds. He must have been designated to run word back from the battle.
“What’s a priest doing out there?” Bhen asked. He was senior to both of them in age, in spite of Oshand’s higher rank.
The informant soldier looked over at them. “She’s helping us stand our ground.”
At the notation of gender, Oshand pictured Priest Cayri, though he hadn’t anticipated her becoming involved quite in this way. Perhaps this was what she meant when she and the red-haired priest went to look for possessed troops. Perhaps they’d found them.
“Was there another with her?” Oshand asked.
The young soldier nodded. “With red hair. But he stayed back when we began to gain. I don’t know what became of him.”
Oshand accepted the information, for whatever use it may have been—he legitimately didn’t know at this point. “Is there anything else?”
The question had barely finished forming when an airy shriek ripped through the sky, followed by an explosion of bursting stone and splintering wood. Oshand and his men were almost shaken from their places by the vibration that assailed the tower. Oshand fell against the railing. Bhen was better braced and put a hand out to help him steady himself.
“Where did that come from?” Oshand wanted to know, searching the ships in the harbor. Their reach had not previously come as far as the east tower. It seemed impossible.
A man from the constabulary rushed into the doorway behind them, speaking urgently enough to have all of their attention. “They’ve begun bringing their weapons onto shore!”
Oshand was speechless for an instant, faced with yet another unexpected assault from the enemy. His next decision was sudden and more instinctive than derived from any consciously rational thought. “Clear the tower. Everyone out!”
The soldiers around him moved at once.
Oshand followed them through the door and down the narrow staircase which followed the close walls of the structure’s interior. “To the next defense post. Go!”
What men were at the base of the tower heard the instruction and went with varying degrees of delay. Most of it was minor and probably owed to the shock of such a near strike beside them, but no delay was tolerable under the circumstances.
Oshand shouted at those not moving quickly enough. “Get out of the building! Leave!”
The ground floor was near deserted by the time Oshand reached it. He jogged quickly to the short corridor and alcove-like rooms edging the base of the structure, ensuring that no one was left behind to be crushed and burned by another strike. When he saw no one, he hurried to the exit and was glad to see none of his men lingering near the building. He was in motion behind the fleeing troops when the hideous wail of the enemy’s weapon tore over his head.
In a moment of unreality, he caught sight of a roundish shape turning through the air, trailed by smoke and dust, some of which it had likely dragged from the air it was rolling through…like a bull commanded by the gods themselves. He was taken with the glimpse of this phenomenon enough to slow and turn, and witness the gods’ beast, expressed in a mundane form by the hands of men, careen into the tower, and through it. With an abrupt belch of dust as stones were instantly powdered, the structure collapsed. Part of it went in on itself, parts of it onto the street, onto neighboring buildings, and into the air.
Oshand stood in momentary shock, though he had bent somewhat and shielded himself instinctively. Even as he recaptured his senses through a few careful moments of breathing, he felt the dangerous pressure of futility. He’d seen both of Morenne’s best weapons inside of a period of a few short hours. At this rate, Indhovan would be lost within only a few more, priests or no.
The sound of Morenne’s fire tactics resounded in the governor’s office so brilliantly that everyone paused and unanimously looked to the windows. After several moments of silent observation of what was still nearer to the waterfront than it was to the manor, gazes were brought back into the room.
“That was nearer, wasn’t it?” Deitir eventually said.
Cayri believed that it was, and nodded to communicate as much.
Others offered various answers of speculative agreement and promptly resigned themselves to the new scenario; that Morenne had devised a way to maneuver their weapons onto land.
Emalrik offered Deitir a cup. “For the stress,” the man said, and Deitir allowed the concoction to be placed upon the table, but did not drink it.
“What will we do when they arrive at the doors?” Alledar blurted, eyeing the physician’s offering as if he might request it himself. Evidently, he had resigned himself to the point of panic. An attack on the manor was not only possible, but in his mind perhaps it had now become imminent.
“We’ll do what we must,” Fersmyn answered with little patience. It appeared that the strain of the city’s conflict had heightened what may have been a common tension between the two officers.
It appeared so common that Cayri had begun to reconsider Alledar’s nervous manner. She no longer suspected it was owed to duplicity, but rather to an innate fear of losing the comfort of the position and the life he had known before the attacks on the city began. Observing him as closely as she had been seemed to indicate to her that he was not a man of daring, but a man of security. Whomever might have been assisting Konlan…
Cayri’s thoughts drifted to Raiss Tahrsel. He knew the betrayer, yes—he knew every person of station in the manor. Most importantly was that Tahrsel was aware of their betrayal. But when and how had he become aware? Cayri wondered if he had known before his attack and had been too unfocused to be able to say anything. His words and actions had been at times taken over by another. His words and actions, but what of his thoughts? Any form of possession left the opportunity for the host, unwilling or otherwise to witness what went on around them. The possessor suppressed them and their ability to act autonomously. What might Tahrsel have witnessed, even while he was sleeping his unnatural sleep? Could it have
been that he had lain there able to feel and hear life moving around him, but was himself unable to move? Might it have been hearing the voices of his wife and son, and of the officers discussing war that provided him with enough will to force himself awake?
“You should rest, Ilayna,” Emalrik advised.
“Later, Emalrik,” the lady replied
The exchange drew Cayri’s attention to it and Emalrik was prepared to receive her attention with his kindly smile.
His smile…which was not quite sincere as Cayri had previously been convinced.
She felt it like a bolt through her flesh, that this man was the only one in constant enough company with the governor to have assisted Konlan, and to have been witnessed by Tahrsel. It was the term ‘messenger’ that had thrown her off his trail. He was a messenger, not of words, but of…
Cayri looked quickly to Deitir, whose hand had drifted toward the cup. “Don’t!” she called out, and everyone looked to her as they had the sound of the enemy’s destructive assault moments before.
Deitir held his hand in limbo while he made eye contact with her, trusting that she had an explanation for her outburst.
Fersmyn asked for it outright, after he’d looked from her to the city’s new governor, and back again. “What in the dismal remains of our beloved country is the matter now?”
“The cup,” Cayri said.
“What about the cup?” Ilayna wanted to know.
“It’s poisoned,” Cayri determined, rather more hastily than she liked to meet a conclusion, but she felt very strongly that it was true.
And now Emalrik was the subject of observation. He looked in a way that might have passed for good-naturedly around the room, his gaze pausing on Cayri. “Of course, it isn’t.”
“It is,” Cayri rebutted immediately. He was lying now. She could feel it like the wind in winter. Eyeing the physician directly, she verbalized her thoughts as they formed. “Who else could have assisted Konlan in reaching Governor Tahrsel in such a way that he might take over the governor’s mind with his magic?”