by T. A. Miles
When the opportunity came, Korsten hesitated only a moment to ensure that Laxhymel had freed himself from the mob as well. The white stag danced a graceful, yet violent dance, and threw itself clear of opponents. It and Onyx both took off at a powerful run across the valley.
Korsten took but an instant to look behind them, only to see that the mob of possessed was following, and at a remarkable pace. He decided that they would outrun them. He could not envision them crawling up the slope out of the valley fast enough to catch up.
He decided that, and then he looked back again when they neared the hill leading into the forest. What he saw had him turning back around in horror, to observe morbidly as demons abandoned bodies from the back of the mob, and proceeded to tear through the others while they were running forward. A cloud of crimson swelled above the valley, blending with the snow rising off the ground beneath their feet. Amid the mist of life fluid and ice were the shapes of the Vadryn. They came at Korsten and Laxhymel with a hunger that Korsten could feel, completely incensed by what they had already stolen…what may have been their first real taste.
It occurred to him that these beasts may have been those lately born out of Zerxa’s tomb. It occurred to him also that they, like the demon afflicting Laxhymel at the village, had not been touched by the Siren spell. The ones in Indhovan had been the remnants of Serawe’s horde. That must have been why they submitted to him so immediately whenever he encountered them. These beasts were drawn to him through Allurance and Song—perhaps through spiritual relationship—but they had not yet been brought to him. Right now, they wanted to take what tempted them just with its existence. They felt no allegiance based upon a simple blood connection—not unless they felt fear or…love. They would only submit to a master they feared or loved. Siren sang to them of both.
The dawning of that revelation emboldened Korsten’s spirit, dragging him from his weariness, giving him the strength to look upon the violence of demons gorging on bodies that tumbled to a sudden death in their wake, and to call to them with no words or voice, but only with blood.
The strength of the spell surged through his being, and Korsten felt it wash the presence of several others off the banks of his soul. They were Serawe’s…they were his. They had never gone. They unfurled from their hiding places, tucked in the invisible spaces between the waking world and dream. As the new demons approached, they were met with passion. Those that Korsten had been carrying with him dove through the mist of blood and snow, like falcons to prey. Empowering themselves with blood, both groups began to fight each other. It was Serawe’s lair all over again.
Korsten watched them disrupt each other’s energies, dismembering the spirits of their fellows. A part of him went oddly apathetic to the view, a part of him that was suddenly as looking into a mirror and seeing Xelonwyr looking back. The rest of him felt cruel, and then troubled by the scene, by the fact that they were killing each other.
“Stop!” he shouted suddenly, vehemently enough that he felt the cry would have been heard and felt leagues away.
The demons shrunk away from each other, like scolded children. They alighted on the valley floor and began to crawl toward him, scurrying like a disheveled nest of rats.
Korsten watched them with both disdain and pity, and with something else that he was not prepared to label. He said miserably, “Leave.”
The beasts continued to scramble forward, though not as surely.
“Leave!” Korsten ordered them again.
One by one, they folded out of view.
That was when Korsten felt a flutter at his cheek, and looked quickly to the drifting form of not Analee…but Eolyn. With stress and dismay, and relief, all spiking in his chest, Korsten looked behind him, past Laxhymel’s stag form, and to the top of the hill, where Merran sat atop Erschal, watching and probably having seen everything.
The relief fell to the wayside of stress and dismay immediately. Why did you come?
Twenty-four
KORSTEN MET MERRAN at the top of the hill, and though he had not wanted to see him there in those moments that he arrived, he hugged him for a long time. Merran held him with the same sense of reunion, but it could not last long. Time was not their ally.
An abandoned cottage nearby sufficed for temporary shelter out of the freezing air. Laxhymel elected to wait out of doors, maintaining the form of the hart. As well, Onyx and Erschal were left near the leaning door of the small structure. Korsten took gradual steps across the dirt-floored room that someone had once lived in while Merran promptly took up his brooder’s stance not far from the door.
Korsten crouched beside a years-dead and disused fire pit, and prodded it absently for a moment.
“Why did you leave?” Merran asked, just ahead of Korsten’s question, which was issued in almost the same space.
“Why did you come?”
Merran may have wanted Korsten’s answer first, but it may have been that his was simpler. So, he said, “Ashwin sent me.”
Ashwin…
Of course, he had.
“I’m sorry,” Korsten said, and whether it was to Ashwin or Merran, or both, he didn’t dwell on it.
“Why did you leave?” Merran asked again.
Korsten looked up at him finally, into his blue eyes. They were the eyes of someone Korsten loved very much. Merran deserved to be told, and it wasn’t all that complicated besides. “I needed answers.”
“Answers to what?” Merran said, then came to his own conclusion. “To Song? Why would you look for them here?”
That was a fair question, given the lack of information Merran undoubtedly had.
“I fear there’s too much to tell,” Korsten replied, rising to a stand. “When I cast Siren onto Serawe…it started something. It opened up passages in my soul that up until then had been blocked to me. One of those paths was to my family. My heritage.”
“Ashwin mentioned an artifact.”
Korsten nodded, and looked for it. His intact pocket was empty. It only occurred to him then that Renmyr had probably only been able to open the door by forcing his near-dead hand. He supposed the pendant scarcely mattered anymore.
“What was it?” Merran asked.
“It was a key to unlocking a terrible inheritance,” Korsten said. The statement of that unhappy truth made him feel cold. “I realize that I should not have come.”
Merran’s expression indicated that he did not completely understand what was being said to him of inheritances and keys. He seemed displeased with that, but it was also quite likely that he was upset with more than a lack of understanding.
“I didn’t feel that I had time to wait for you,” Korsten said, and because it reminded him of Merran’s own struggle, he gave visual notice to his hand. It looked, in its way, like a glove. “How is it?”
“Serviceable,” Merran answered succinctly, returning them to what he would rather discuss. “What happened out there?”
Korsten looked to the wall of the cottage, in the direction of the woods and valley beyond it. “That was part of my inheritance,” he said, then returned his gaze to Merran. “Both from my family and Adrea.”
“So, it was Siren,” Merran said.
“Yes, and newly born demons, kept in a tomb with my…with my ancestors, and held to unleash deliberately onto the world as a death plague.” Speaking of it reminded him that he was both stressed and exhausted. He brought his hands to his face and drew in a deep breath.
“You inherited demons?” Merran said, and by his tone seemed to believe that Korsten was exaggerating.
“Yes,” Korsten answered, lowering his hands to meet Merran’s gaze, hoping to relay that it was not merely the stress speaking.
They simply looked at each other for a long time. The weight of their silence was fast becoming unnerving. Throughout it, Korsten could only replay events. Xelonwyr’s grim determination for what sounded like apocalypse…Renmyr’s overpowering darkness…his mother’s entombed ghost…
“I’m relate
d…by blood and by soul to demons.”
Merran glared immediately. “No, you’re not.”
“It’s true.”
“It isn’t.”
Korsten drew a breath, but was not given time to form further words.
“It isn’t!” Merran’s jaw was clenched, his form and posture tense.
“Merran,” Korsten said evenly. “It is true. You, yourself, pointed once to the stark difference between my red hair and that of anyone else bearing the color. I’ve always been set apart in appearances, even before the blood lilies. Seeing the Wyrr, remembering my mother, has explained why.”
“What are the Wyrr?” Merran asked, beginning to pace the small room. He held his eyes momentarily wide, as if it would relieve some of the tension he felt, though his expression fell quickly back to glaring.
“They are my ancestors, and the creators of the Vadryn,” Korsten told him. “They formed the demons of their misery and have been forming them for millennia, in retaliation against the powers that condemned them. The gods, Merran.
“I don’t know how the fighting came about—maybe they were outcasts among early generations of men—but they empowered themselves somehow. As their souls grew beleaguered, they darkened. They created demons. Their demons manifested physical form, like wraiths from nightmare. The Welkyn sought to protect men from them, and inspired what we now know as the Vassenleigh Order, and priests. My existence is…”
“You were lied to,” Merran decided.
“I was not lied to,” Korsten argued, watching his partner move back and forth in the narrow space. “I saw one of my ancestors for myself. I watched him fighting Renmyr, and I saw their similarities. I saw their shared traits. They are related.”
Merran chose to ignore that. “What happened to the demon?”
“He nearly killed me, and he opened up what I refused to!” Korsten shouted it, purely for frustration’s sake. He was freshly embarrassed and angered over what had happened with Renmyr, who might well have killed him. He would have died over answers that hadn’t resolved anything. “He took what was left for me—by my Wyrr mother—to set upon the world, and he’ll bring it to Vassenleigh…to Ashwin.”
Merran’s look became freshly dark, and Korsten could only wonder if he knew. It was perhaps their least important concern, whether or not Merran suspected Korsten and Ashwin had loved each other beyond their friendship, but the dread had never left Korsten’s mind. It had only been pushed back by everything else.
In the depth of silence that renewed itself between them, a presence was also growing. A shadow, as if of the hours fading, moved through the room and lingered in the corners.
Stay away, Korsten instructed the demons. It troubled him how immediately he both recognized their intentions and gave them command, as if they were children on the brink of ill-timed mischief. It was not mischief, however. Not with demons. It was menace. They were manifesting from their hiding places, perhaps the space his own absence of soul left so long as Analee held on to that part of him.
Merran stopped pacing, taking notice of the darkening cottage room. And then he looked at Korsten. “They’re still with you.”
Korsten knew that wasn’t precisely what he had been telling Merran, but it seemed that their lingering presence should have been expected. Perhaps it only seemed that way, unfairly, to him, after all he’d experienced.
“Banish them,” Merran said. He said it, not in the tone of sending them away, but in the way priests performed such a task.
“I tried,” Korsten said, though it was only part truth, and primarily in reference to having taken them out to sea. He knew, however, that some of them were new. Some of them had come out of the Wyrr garden.
Merran seemed to know that to some degree as well. He stepped nearer to Korsten, studying his face, perhaps searching for someone he felt was no longer entirely present.
“Korsten,” he said. “Cut them away from you. Destroy them before they destroy you.”
The darkness shifted while Merran spoke.
And Korsten felt it necessary to say, “They can hear you.”
Merran continued to look at him, perhaps stricken speechless by the realizations that had finally come to him.
“And now you know that I can’t return to Vassenleigh with you,” Korsten said quietly.
In spite of demons, Merran said, “I’m not returning without you.”
Whether Merran intended to take some measures against the lingering demons, or to convince Korsten that it would be somehow safe for him…or even possible for him to enter the citadel with them attached, Korsten was not interested. “I have to find Renmyr.”
“Hunting is our task together,” Merran reminded him. It became clear in that instant, that Merran could have known about Ashwin, and he didn’t care. He cared only in that it fueled him to say what he said next. “I love you. Let me help you with this.”
And now Korsten had nothing to say. Nothing that he could say in that moment, because the truth was that he loved Merran also, in ways that he would never love anyone else. He knew that with certainty now, and he did want his help, but he could not accept it. He could not keep Merran from another duty they shared, which was to protect the Vassenleigh Order.
“Renmyr plans to take an army of Vadryn to Vassenleigh,” Korsten said, though it may not have been the response Merran wanted. “He plans to try to draw Ashwin out, so that he can murder him. I want to find him first, but if I can’t…if I don’t…”
“We’ll both look, and if he can’t be located, then we’ll both…”
“I can’t,” Korsten interrupted. “I feel that there’s more to this new generation of them, Merran. I feel that they’re somehow stronger. Renmyr deposited a group of them into a mob of people before he left here. They stayed together with an eerie sense of shared purpose and when they ran after us… These ones were yet weak, but I fear that he’ll be able to strengthen them fast…to grow them. He’s grown also. He deflected my Release spell, and absorbed Blast into the darkness that travels with him.”
“If he’s grown so powerful, then you cannot confront him alone,” Merran argued, reasonably. “If Renmyr is on his way to Vassenleigh, then we should both return before he arrives. The Vadryn have no abilities with Reach as we do, which means that they have to make their way. The fronts yet stand, last I heard.”
“It seems that other systems require physical portals,” Korsten said, beginning to feel that there was yet some hope to the pending catastrophe. And if what he said were true, then that would mean that the Vadryn, or the Wyrr had already established portals throughout much of Morenne and what they had annexed of Edrinor. Renmyr had traveled far and quickly if he had detected Korsten in Indhovan, yet arrived here when Korsten did. Or maybe it was that he had projected his presence. It seemed that the Wyrr were capable of that.
“Korsten,” Merran summoned softly.
Korsten looked at him, in the moment Merran touched his face with his Healing hand. He might have cursed what in the past had been Merran’s attempts to pass a spell on to him, that would alleviate him of his stress and sensations of blame, or guilt. But that was not what he felt with the touch now. He felt warmth, not of skin necessarily, but something similar to the warmth which had radiated from his mother’s spirit. The hand Ceth and Eisleth had given him was generating the energy of his soul in a way that now happened at the surface. It was different than a spirit, because it did come with contact and sensation beyond emotional. Korsten turned his face toward it, and felt all the guilt he had earned with Ashwin. He still loved Ashwin. He would always love him, but Merran was a source of strength and of inspiration that gave him the will to push forward at the most unlikely of times. It forced him from safety, but not without guidance and not without requiring some guidance in return. They helped each other to grow beyond what either of them would allow alone.
It was in that moment of revelation that the presence of the demons that had attached themselves to him grew heavier.
Korsten could feel it the same as if they had all begun to paw at him, in order to separate him from a sudden source of jealousy.
Stay back, Korsten enforced.
Merran looked around at the darkness, then slowly raised his hand and cast Lantern.
The darkness shied away, tucking itself back into the further reaches of the small space.
Merran’s blue gaze found Korsten again. “You have to return to Vassenleigh,” he decided.
Korsten was in no condition to cast a Reach as distant as Vassenleigh, so it was left to Merran. Upon them coming to that conclusion and leaving the cottage, Korsten approached Laxhymel, who seemed to know that he required him to shift from the hart, so that they might speak to one another in words.
The process was fascinating to look upon, even against everything else Korsten had been witness to in the last several days. Whatever Laxhymel’s relation to the Wyrr, it was a lovelier manifestation than the Vadryn, or the grotesque sentinel Xelonwyr had created to harass his near enemies.
“I’m returning to Vassenleigh with Merran,” Korsten told the him. “I hope that you will come as well, if for no other reason than to validate my story when I tell it to my superiors.”
Laxhymel looked down at him—he was quite tall—and then at Merran. When his gaze returned to Korsten, he said, “You have no superiors.”
Korsten disagreed, but shied from any argument about anything. There were far more important tasks ahead than worrying over Laxhymel’s sense of pride on the behalf of those he might have been created to protect.
Laxhymel seemed to detect his unspoken response and his expression demonstrated some mild compunction. “I’ll find you,” Laxhymel said finally.
And Korsten had to accept that. He nodded and thanked him. Laxhymel quickly took Korsten’s hand while Korsten was turning away. The guardian held it only a moment, then let go, and Korsten went to Merran, who said nothing, even if he might have had something to say. The Reach was cast, and the four of them, including Erschal and Onyx, abandoned the woods, for the front yards of the citadel.