The trees ended, but the road continued across a field to a pair of gates set in fortified walls. Her captor stopped beside the last curtain of cerrenil limbs. “We wait here.”
Branches limp as hair knocked softly together. Wineyll crept into the folds of the old mother’s trunk and peered through her leafy hair at the meandering star—god or spacecraft, He was indifferent. She pressed her check against white bark and prayed for comfort and calm. Why, when she thought of the former Relmlord, did she remember his caresses more than his cruelties? Whatever he wanted now, she should refuse. A hero would refuse, just as Ashel had in Olmlablaire. But she was no hero.
The pirate’s shoulders snapped straight, and men flooded out of the forest. Forming ranks, they trotted across the clearing, feet silent on the grass, swords hissing out of scabbards.
Shouting, banging, creaking drifted from the prison walls.
“Captain.” Her captor saluted a new arrival and joined the men advancing on the prison.
The newcomer hoisted Wineyll to her feet. “The view will be better if you stand.”
Arrows rained from ramparts. Caleisbahnin fell one after another until bodies littered the clearing, but other pirates hunkered under shields and flooded right up to the stone. Grappling hooks whistled in rapid circles, whooshed as they flew toward ramparts, clinked and grated as they caught stone. Men scurried up as nimbly as insects, but the defenders tossed down hooks and ropes faster than anyone could scale the wall.
“Looks doomed to fail, doesn’t it?” the captain asked. “But just you watch, miss.”
Staccato clicks snapped, and a Kragnashian charged out of the woods. Arrows flew, bounced off chitin. The warrior barreled up to the gate and flowed over it, disappearing inside. Moments later it appeared atop the wall, and guards flailed off the ramparts. Lines flew once more, hooked over crenellations, and the pirates swarmed up the edifice. Shouts and screams echoed. The portcullis groaned upward, and the rest of the attackers rushed inside.
Shrieks wove a bloody tapestry, and many long minutes passed before the last scream died. A man waved from the open gate. Surrounded by seamen, Wineyll followed the officer as they picked their way through the bodies. A few pirates roamed the field, checking their fallen brethren. Whenever they found a man alive but unable to rise, they kissed his forehead and sliced his throat.
In the prison, bodies were scattered across the yard, limbs torn off, heads smashed like crockery, packed dirt muddied with red. The Kragnashian slurped loudly at a bundle of its legs, its blood scenting the air with a pungent spring that covered the human stinks like lye over the charnel pit. Horror welling, Wineyll choked and swallowed, remembering carnage worse than this. In the nomad village, the stench of children’s burnt flesh had been worse.
A gap-toothed officer approached and pressed a fist to his shoulder. “All clear, captain.”
“Thank you, commander. Have you found him?”
“There, sir.”
Men emerged from the prison building. Lornk’s hair was a smudged beacon over the dark heads around him. Wincing, Wineyll shrunk back. A matted beard beneath bruised and swollen eyes, his shoulders and knees bent, he scraped weary feet across the ground. The captain spat and shook his head, but he knelt as Lornk halted. “I am at your service, Citizen.”
Swaying, Lornk scanned the yard. His eyes passed over Wineyll, moved across the pirates surrounding him, then met her own again. “Well done, captain.”
“Done we’re not, not yet, Citizen. The guards knew we were coming; we must be away.”
Standing straighter, the former Relmlord resumed the air of nonchalance and mastery Wineyll remembered. A hand on the back of her neck, he tugged her close. He stank of the dungeon, but beneath the filth was a scent she could get drunk on. “Are you glad to see me, Songbird?” he whispered.
Cursing the warmth of his fingers, she nodded.
Repetitions
Light pried at Vic’s eyelids, and she rolled over, away from the dawn, snuggling down under warm blankets and the soft pillow cupping her face. Fine linen—the weave silky smooth—caressed her cheek, urging her back to sleep yet pricking her awareness that she wasn’t in her bed at the Cobblestone. The sheets were not so soft there. Bleary eyes blinked open, took in a lamp shaded with glass flowers. She was at the Manor.
A temple free of ache, a stomach devoid of nausea meant Elekia had shared her Woern again, but heavy muscles told of soporific medicines. Groggy, she swung her legs out of bed and stumbled against the bedside table, rocking the lamp. “Shrine, don’t break it.” She settled the lamp, looked up, and snapped awake. What medicines had the healers given her, that she’d slept through this? Red-brown gore splattered the walls. Gooey green and brown smeared the carpet, obscuring the weave depicting a battle between humans and Kragnashians in the jungles of old Direiellene. She knew that land as a desert wasteland, but a thousand years ago it had been a thick rainforest where the Wizards Council had fought a sorceress named Meylnara and her Kragnashian minions. With all the blood, it looked as if the figures had sprung out of the rug’s warp and weft to savage each other.
An attack here inside the Manor, and the Cobblestone set ablaze. Heart thudding, she rushed to a window—and sighed in relief. No smoke or other signs of strife marred the pale sky. Undisturbed, Kiareinoll Fembrosh flowed down Manor Hill, a leafy channel between Manor and city. The sun broke over the Lathalorns, and the giant crystal atop the Senate flared to life, refracting light into a rainbow. In the garden, a cerrenil shivered with dawn’s first touch. Leaves unfurled in sunbeams, and one by one, the old mother’s limbs rose to meet the light.
There was a knock, and Elekia barged in. “I’m glad you’re up.” She shut the door. “The Relmlord escaped last night.”
“What?”
“At least one Kragnashian and several hundred Caleisbahnin assaulted the prison and broke him out. They killed everyone, guards and prisoners.”
Vic sank to her knees and pressed her palms into the bloodied carpet. Within her, a girl hardly grown gibbered in fear as if Lornk would spring out of the closet and drag her off. But the wizard and the warrior took a deep breath and looked at the queen. “They went west?”
“Olivet has teams in pursuit. I need you to find Ashel.” A sound cracked out of the queen, laugh or cry Vic couldn’t tell. Her foster mother slid to the floor. Dried blood rimmed Elekia’s nails, dark circles her eyes. “I need you to find Ashel again.”
“Why?” Vic asked, dread seizing her breath. Geram had said he was in trouble last night, right before the commotion began.
Elekia’s eyes and mouth pinched, then collapsed into a composed mask. “You may stop pretending you don’t know Ashel and Lieutenant Geram are . . . connected. Selcher has Heard them speaking to each other, and last night she Heard them talking about some sort of jeopardy Ashel had found himself in, but she couldn’t discern the details.”
Vic’s eyes darted between the blood staining Elekia’s fingers to the rust-splattered walls. Her heart quailed. “And there’s a reason you can’t ask Geram?”
The queen’s mask twisted into anguish, her palm muffling a sob. She blew her nose and hid her face in a handkerchief. Vic patted her shoulder, feeling helpless and baffled. Elekia’s haughty serenity almost never broke, and Vic had no idea what to do or say. Awkwardly, trying to copy what Beth would do, she put an arm around the queen.
“I’m sorry.” Elekia shrugged out of the embrace. “I’m not myself.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, breathing deeply, and composed herself. “We know this much: your inn was set on fire, probably to force you to come here for the night. At least two Kragnashians came through the Device. One or more assaulted the prison, with support from the Caleisbahnin, freeing Lornk Korng and killing everyone else. The other came to this room, to kill you or take you, we do not know. Geram was severely wounded defending you. Which brings us to the last piece of the puzzle: something happened to Ashel, but we don’t know wh
at, and the lieutenant won’t be able to tell us for some time, if at all. I need you to go to Mora and find out what happened.”
Heat prickled Vic’s skin, a mixture of dread and longing. Rising, she found some trousers and tugged them on. “I should go after Lornk.”
“No.”
“Majesty, I can find him and bring him back in a day’s time.”
Elekia’s fists balled. “Four guards died and three were wounded last night, keeping you safe from a Kragnashian. I will not have you waltz into the clutches of another.”
“And how many troopers will die recapturing Lornk?”
“The answer would be none if you’d killed him in Olmlablaire!”
Blood pounding up her throat, Vic glared at the queen. “He deserves to rot at Mirkeldirk. Killing him was too quick a death.”
Elekia’s glower softened. “Vic, the Kragnashians’ purpose in freeing Lornk may have been to lure you into a trap. A backup plan, in case their attack here failed.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know, except they have an uncanny interest in you. I made a bargain with them long ago, and part of the price I paid was to give them news of anyone I met named Victoria of Ourtown.”
Fury sparked. “So you did sell me to them?”
“No! It was your idea to go through Kragnash to reach Olmlablaire. But I thought they might make you take the Elixir if you went there.”
The Elixir, another name for the Waters of the Dead. “And why didn’t you warn me?”
Elekia sighed. “Because the Center assured me they’d leave you alone. I hoped it would keep that promise, even as I expected it wouldn’t, and it didn’t, because here you are, a wizard, just like your namesake.” She waved at a pair of blood-soaked figures in the carpet, flinging woolen lightning at each other. “The Kragnashians first asked me about you when Ashel was in my womb, years before you were born. They asked me again and again over the years, as if they expected another Victoria of Ourtown to appear. When you did turn up in our throne room, alone and desperate for asylum, Sashal and I were terrified for ourselves and for you. We vowed, the two of us, to keep you close because we didn’t know what your arrival meant.” Tears streamed again, and Elekia let them run. “I’d never say so publicly, but like you, I am a heretic. Elesendar is nothing more than a vacant hulk of a spacecraft. I do not believe in prophesy or portents—yet here you are, Victoria of Ourtown, also known as the One. And here I remain terrified for you, for myself, and for this nation. I do not know why the Kragnashians are obsessed with an orphan Oreseeker, so I want you as far away from Kragnash and their infernal Devices as I can send you.”
She took Vic’s face between her hands. “Ashel was in my womb when I took the Elixir. Bethniel or I, we can help you survive. With Ashel, you can live. Go to Mora. Find my son. Help him out of whatever mess he’s in, and this time, don’t let him go.” A smile caught one corner of her mouth. “Wizardry isn’t outlawed in Semeneminieu.”
A sob clogged Vic’s throat. “I abandoned him! I found him the day before Lornk butchered his hand. I could have saved him then, but I panicked and fled because Lornk was there and—” she gasped for breath. The mingled hatred and desire she once felt for Lornk Korng had been subsumed by shame for that moment of cowardice, but the feeling was just as intense. “Ashel lost his fingers because I failed him. I cannot have either his forgiveness or his love, not after that.”
She expected to see wrath and hatred written on Elekia’s face, but she saw only inscrutable dark eyes above smooth, dry cheeks.
“Isn’t that for Ashel to decide?” her foster mother asked.
“No.”
Elekia grasped Vic’s chin, and she fought the urge to shrink away.
“Consider your commission reactivated, marshal. Now go find my son.”
* * *
Geram lay in a room near the kitchen, drugged senseless by Healers. Drak looked up from clasped hands and saluted when he saw Vic’s uniform. “Marshal. You going after Korng?”
She frowned at the red-stained bandage wrapping the captain’s head. “The queen’s sending me on a different mission. How is Geram?”
“That monster nearly cut his leg off. They said the bone’s not broken, but it’s cracked, and the flesh around it . . . It took the Healers a long time to stitch it all back together. The Ruler helped.” His shoulders hunched. “They said she kept his heart beating. Didn’t know you could do that.”
She shrugged and slipped her hand into Geram’s. His breath wheezed, his features pained even as he slept. “I’m glad she could. Thank you both for saving me. Again.”
“Spears,” he muttered. “Spears, Vic. Pikes with great long blades and thicker hafts. That’s what we need to fight those things. Our daggers couldn’t penetrate the shell, and it snapped our regular pikes like kindling. Geram got underneath it—that’s how he killed it, and how it almost killed him.”
“How did they get through the Device? Wasn’t it locked?”
“Olivet said there’s a master Device in Direiellene.”
Her breath gushed. “That means—”
“They could waltz into the throne room any time they please. The Ruler has tripled the guards and ordered the doors barred from the outside.”
“Shrine, even during the war there were never more than two guards in that room, unless the Ruler was holding Audience.”
“No Kragnashian had ever come through. When something’s never happened before, people think it never will.”
Geram mumbled something.
Vic squeezed his hand as garbled whispers slipped past his lips. It was odd that he spoke aloud, as if it were important. “What did he say?”
Drak’s frown deepened. “He keeps saying ‘surf’ and ‘herder.’ In Alna, for a lark we’d paddle planks into the surf and ride the waves back to shore. Geram was pretty good at it. And there’s a sort of fish we call a herder, which drives other fish into shoals. Some fishermen keep and train them. Maybe Uncle Arnan had some.”
Vic kissed Geram’s forehead, hoping he drifted through happy memories. “My dear friend,” she whispered, her lips at his ear. “When you wake, tell Ashel I’ll find him.”
Kiareinoll Fembrosh
A strange giddiness skipped alongside Vic as the road wound east through the Kiareinoll. Worry for Ashel shadowed her steps, but each footfall took her closer to a second chance. Despite all the ways she’d failed him, her heart thudded in anticipation of his dark eyes and the smile that would light them up. Whatever his trouble, they’d settle it, and then they could start over. She had the means now. When she had stopped by the Cobblestone to say goodbye, Helara had surprised her with a Guildbond.
“That should buy you a good-sized house.”
Her eyes widen. “I’ve only been your apprentice for a few months!”
Helara winks. “Innkeeping isn’t magic. Keep the sheets clean, the tankards filled, and the books straight, and you’ll do fine.”
With the bond, she could buy an inn and a life. With Ashel. Anxious to reach Mora and find him, she searched the road for travelers. It was empty. Her feet left the ground. Warmth spread through her blood. Eyelids fluttered; her tongue kissed the edges of her teeth. The sweet decay of humus, the sharp tang of cerrenil flowers filled her lungs. The hues of the sky deepened, like a summer ocean overhead, and she rose above the canopy. A blue-green sea spread before her. Butterflies flitted among leaves and blossoms. The wind whispered a music of leaves, drummers, and gizzards. She felt alive, and she wanted a life. She shot forward, skimming treetops. Roosting birds squawked out of hidden nests, and her laughter whirled among the leaves in her wake.
The miles fell swiftly behind. She flew until a temple throbbed, walked until the pain eased, then flew again, straight across the expanse of Fembrosh, reveling in the unhindered use of her power and the speed it gave her. On the third day, a fiery dawn revealed the distant edge of the Kiareinoll and the yellow grassl
ands beyond. At this pace, she’d arrive in Mora in another day, two at most. A bank of storm clouds rolled toward her from the plains, but the Woern thrilled through her nerves, and she flew straight into the iron-colored mist. Thunder boomed, and lightning branded white shadows into her vision. Wind bailed rain. Clothing clammed to her shoulders, but the hairs on her arms stood straight and her cells brimmed with elation.
That the source of her power was an infection, not some mystical empowerment, reinforced everything she’d learned as a child. Humans had not emerged from an absurd union between a god and his harem of trees, but from the spacecraft Elesendar, the name nothing more than shorthand for the ship’s registry. Their arrival here the result of sabotage, the marooned Ancients had regarded their future with despair. Over time, the machines they brought from the spacecraft broke down and couldn’t be repaired. The technology disappeared. But the words—quantum mechanics, micromolecular manipulation—remained. In her youth as a Logkeeper, Vic had memorized them in hundreds of documents—her purpose to preserve them, not to understand them. As she rose now through the cold, blinding mist, electricity crackled around her. Quantum mechanics, micromolecular manipulation. Now she understood the words’ magic, if not their meaning.
Bursting into the sunlight, she sailed through a shifting maze of charcoal-colored hulks. It was cold as death, and each silver claw that jagged out of a thunderhead jolted pleasure through her flesh. Thunder shattered her ear drums, but the sizzle down her spine numbed the pain. She flew all day, fed by the storm, delighting in the electric thrill. Only when the sun slipped below the easternmost clouds did she descend to the forest floor. Suffused with bliss, she curled beneath a cerrenil and sank into oblivion.
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