by Alec Hutson
Useless, most of them, destined to be little more than fodder for the demons and their Skein allies. Perhaps if she was lucky they would prove distracting enough in a battle that she could land a mortal blow on one of her enemies. The Dymorian rangers, at least, had demonstrated their worth. Leaning forward, she turned the stick in front of her so that the other side of the scrawny bird skewered on its tip could crisp. She’d already torn apart one of the birds they’d brought back to camp, its greasy bones now scattered on the snow.
The Lyrish girl was watching her from across the flames, her chin glistening with the grease of her own dinner. The sounds she’d made as she consumed the pigeon had driven little spikes of annoyance through Alyanna; she’d gritted her teeth with every smack of the fool’s lips, and she’d started to think that Nel was cracking the bones and sucking the marrow so loudly on purpose. Alyanna considered trying to find a way to dispose of the girl; along with being disrespectful, she was also dangerous while she carried the fingerbone of Tethys. But if Keilan discovered what she had done then she’d lose one of her greatest advantages in the coming battle. Also, the relic of Ama should be just as effective in inhibiting the power of the Chosen and the Skein sorcerer.
Beside the Lyrish thief sat the younger of the two magisters that had survived the calamitous battle. Seril was pale and fine-boned, with large dark eyes and a nervous habit of brushing aside her honey-colored fringe. Alyanna found that endearing. Seril was very shy and soft-spoken, and hadn’t even managed to meet Alyanna’s eyes when Vhelan, had introduced them. She reminded Alyanna of a lover she’d had in Mahlbion before the cataclysm, a junior artificer in the Palladia. The resemblance truly was uncanny, in both appearance and demeanor. Sometimes Alyanna wondered if existence was a wheel, and if men and women were all fated to be reborn again and again down throughout the ages. Many times she could have sworn she’d encountered the same person centuries ago – though, if that were true, she supposed she had broken her own wheel.
Or at least caught it in a rut for a good long while. Alyanna’s fingers drifted to the corner of her eye. A few years ago, nothing had been there; now, she could feel very slight wrinkles. The souls that had preserved her youth for a thousand years had apparently been exhausted. Disturbing, but that was a problem for after she had dispatched her old servants back to the abyss.
Alyanna nodded at Seril, and the pretty magister offered back a slight smile, then ducked her head, as if embarrassed. How charming. Alyanna would have been tempted to try and relive those pleasant memories she’d once shared with the Palladian artificer, if she wasn’t certain that this sorceress’s chances of surviving what was coming were anything but vanishingly small.
Alyanna’s gaze continued to drift around the fire. The senior magister, Vhelan, sat between Seril and Keilan. His gift was potent, stronger than his attractive colleague’s, but still his power was only a tiny fraction of a true Talent. He could prove useful, though she would have to watch him carefully. Vhelan cultivated the persona of an incompetent fop, but Alyanna could see the calculations that were going on beneath this guise. Cein d’Kara must have recognized this as well, to elevate him to the position of senior magister at his age. Vhelan flashed an easy smile when he noticed her gaze lingering on him. I see you, she thought, wondering if he was thinking the same.
Keilan was staring blankly into the dancing flames, his face drawn. Whatever darkness the black dagger had poisoned him with weighed on him constantly. She had seen how he winced in bright sunlight and massaged his temple like he was suffering from a headache. Alyanna wondered if destroying the Chosen would cleanse their taint from him, or kill him as well. She hoped he could be saved – so much was possible when the power of Talents was combined, and he was young and malleable. Dangerous as well, though. He had slain Niara Lightspinner, perhaps the greatest sorceress Alyanna had ever encountered, and he had also badly wounded her own genthyaki servant. She would be wise not to underestimate him.
Alyanna pulled her bird skewer from the flames and stood, then began to make her way towards the boy. A burst of laughter came from one of the other fires, and she glanced at the silhouettes of the soldiers as they celebrated being under the open sky again. Alyanna had thought the survivors traumatized by their crushing defeat on the battlefield, but it seemed it had at least partially been the weight of all that stone pressing down on them while they hunkered under the mountain. She was always surprised at the resiliency of the human spirit.
Beyond the light cast by the fires lurked the dark wilds of the Frostlands. The soldiers were in good cheer tonight, but that would likely change after a few days of travel through the frozen wastes . . . and certainly if they survived to reach their destination. She knew better than anyone what dangers waited to the north.
Keilan glanced up at her as she came to stand over him. His face looked so open and innocent she had to keep herself from rolling her eyes.
“Come with me,” she said.
“Where?”
She gestured vaguely into the dark. “Not far. You need to learn some simple spells if you’re going to survive what’s coming.”
That intrigued him, she saw. Good. But still he glanced at Vhelan, as if asking if he could go with her. A true Talent, looking to a mere sorcerer for permission? Galling.
The magister glanced up at her as he stripped meat from a wing. He shrugged, and though he did it carelessly, like it mattered not what Keilan did, she saw the tension in his face and the quick look he threw towards the girl who carried the relic of Ama. Alyanna bit the inside of her cheek so her smirk wouldn’t show. They did not trust her, but what could they do? She was their only hope to defeat the Chosen.
Keilan rose and followed her into the night. They had camped in a wide, snowy field, and away from the warmth of their fires the wind rushing across the emptiness was bracing. With a flicker of sorcery, Alyanna wrapped them in a blanket of soothing warmth. She did it slowly, twisting each strand with careful precision, hoping he was watching.
After they had gone a few hundred paces, she stopped and turned back to Keilan, summoning a small sphere of wizardlight. The boy watched her with that look of quiet concentration she’d grown accustomed to seeing. So much like his grandmother, and yet he’d known Niara for only a few short days. The blood ran true.
“Sit,” Alyanna commanded, gesturing at the snowy ground.
He settled himself cross-legged, and she sank down beside him.
“You know some sorceries.”
He hesitated, and then nodded. “Just a few. Niara taught me on the island.”
“Show me.”
He licked his lips, furrowing his brow, and then a second wizardlight sprang into existence beside hers. His weaving of the strands was slightly fumbling, but no more than she would expect from a new apprentice.
“And?”
The light vanished. “I can summon blue fire.”
Alyanna sighed, remembering how he had immolated the cloth doll. “Yes, unfortunately I know that.”
“I can also do another thing with fire, but I need a flame already. I can twist it into the shape of a man and make it walk about. I saw a Kindred sorcerer do it.”
A simple cantrip and largely useless. But there was something intriguing about what he’d said. “You watched him and then recreated what he did?”
“Yes.”
“He did it several times?”
“No, just once.”
Interesting. With a thought, Alyanna withdrew her cloak of warmth from Keilan. He blinked in surprise as the freezing cold rushed in to seize him, then looked at her questioningly.
“Recreate my sorcery. I saw you were paying attention to what I did.”
Keilan swallowed, rubbing his hands together. He shivered as the wind gusted, though to her it felt like a warm breeze. These elements should be an adequate spur.
His brow furrowed, and Alyanna saw
him reach for the squirming strands that welled up from within. Of course he would fail this first time, but after a few more demonstrations she hoped—
The spell blossomed, hotter than her own weaving; his control was not so fine, and she felt a buffeting surge of warmer air from the sorcerous cloak as he settled it around himself.
She fought to keep the surprise from her face.
“Very good,” she said calmly. “Though the binding is rough, and that’s why the edges of the sorcery are leaking.”
He bit his lip, and she saw him smooth out the imperfections in his weaving, tightening the strands. The warmth from his sorcery receded from her.
Her heart was beating fast. All Talents could learn sorcery simply from observing, but at his stage of development, to recreate a spell so well after seeing it woven only once was impressive. Extremely. The only other Talent she could remember doing the same was her opponent in the finals of the Gendern’s tournament a thousand years ago, back when she was still an apprentice. It had been a young savage girl from the grasslands with silver hair, the pride of Kalyuni’s Star Tower. That had been the first time she’d encountered Niara.
Yes, the blood ran true.
“And you can summon dreadfire,” she said lightly, as if that too was no impressive feat. “You burned my genthyaki.”
Keilan shook his head, still distracted as he continued tweaking the strands of his sorcery. “I did. But I don’t know how; the monster was going to kill Nel, and I brought it forth by instinct.”
“Perhaps for the best,” Alyanna said. “Dreadfire is a dangerous substance. It is also incredibly draining, and if you fail to slay your enemy with the first strike then you likely won’t have the strength to protect yourself from the counter.”
“You speak of protection . . .”
“Wards, mostly. Have you tried to summon one?”
Keilan finally finished fiddling with his sorcery and let it be. Inwardly, Alyanna marveled at how elegant his weaving now appeared.
“No.”
“Then that is the other sorcery you will learn tonight.” Alyanna brought her wards into existence with a thought. This time she manifested them as a translucent blue shield.
“Your ward is the most important spell you will ever learn. You must be able to summon it in an instant, and infuse it with so much of your power that it can stop most any attack.”
Keilan reached out, hesitating before his fingers brushed her shield of blue glass. He glanced at her questioningly.
“You may touch it,” she said, and his fingers splayed against the barrier.
“It feels like metal.”
“A ward will stop nearly any physical attack. Swords and arrows and the like. The more force behind the strike, though, the more likely it will crack. A common sorcerer like those magisters back by the fire might not be able to resist a strong warrior’s blow. But Talents like us can survive an avalanche.”
“An avalanche,” he whispered, and she could feel his senses exploring the intricacies of her weave.
“Wards are also capable of stopping sorcery. The weakest magical flame would be deadly to the unprotected, so if you suspect that another sorcerer wishes you harm, you must raise a warding.”
Keilan’s face grew distant, as if he was remembering something.
“The more sorcery you pour into your ward, the stronger it will be. But if you devote too much of your strength to it you’ll have little left over for anything else.” Alyanna cocked her head to one side, considering again what she had just said. “Hm. Perhaps you should focus on making your wards as strong as possible. You have little in the way of offensive spells, and they take longer to learn how to use effectively. If we find ourselves in a magical duel, I want you to hunker down and keep yourself safe. Do you understand?”
Keilan nodded, still distracted by whatever memory she had inadvertently summoned.
“Focus, Keilan,” she snapped. “Now, I want you to try and summon a ward. Are you ready?”
Another nod. Keilan braided his sorcery into a weave that approximated her own, and a pale blue cocoon materialized around him. He seemed surprised to see it swell into existence, and this momentary lapse in concentration made the barrier shimmer and vanish.
“Concentration is the key to sorcery,” she said, sighing. “A mistake like that would doom you in a fight with another Talent.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, only do better next time. In fact, we’ll be traveling for a fortnight before we reach the Burrow of the Worm, and I expect you to spend every free moment refining your control over your ward. I want it seamless and strong for when you truly need to summon it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now that’s enough for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll have another lesson, and if you can perform those two spells flawlessly, I’ll teach you two more. We will persist until we find the limits of what you can learn in such a short time.”
For most students, even Talents, such a pace would have been unthinkable. But the boy had potential. Alyanna felt a little thrill as she watched him unravel and make again a section of his warding, searching for a more perfect weave.
They could do great things together someday.
Fine golden sand squirmed between her toes as the crash and hiss of waves swelled behind her. A searing blue sky burned above.
It seemed that dreaming of beaches was common, though this place was completely unlike where Keilan had brought the Chosen girl. That beach had been gray and stark and cold, drawn from his memories of growing up on the bleak coast of the Broken Sea.
This was very different. Hills covered in lush jungle rose up from the shore, a sweeping green canopy interrupted only by a barren promontory where a tumbled ruin of red stone perched, facing the ocean. The sand was warm, and almost silken in its texture. Alyanna turned, and was surprised by the color of the shimmering jade water.
This was not the Dymorian coastline, either.
Alyanna began to walk along the beach. Not far from her was a collection of primitive structures, set back near the tree line. She moved in that direction.
This was the dream of Cein d’Kara. Her attempts to draw the queen into her own dreams had been rebuffed, so instead Alyanna had gone to hers. She’d thought the queen’s mind had been sealed from her – that she’d somehow learned how to insulate herself from dreamsending after Alyanna had so rudely summoned her sleeping self – but the path into Cein’s dreams had been easy enough to follow.
Now it was just a matter of finding her here, and the huts seemed like the best place to start.
Alyanna had been in a place like this before, when she’d joined a research expedition to the jungle continent of Xi. The waters there had been the same blue-green color, the air like here swollen with humidity. They’d only dared explore the very fringes of the great dark forests, wary of the poisonous flowers and stalking plants, but that place did resemble the verdant greenery that seemed to be swallowing these hills.
Cein d’Kara had never been to Xi, surely – those lands were as far from Dymoria as anything in the known world, on the other side of the Thread and a weeks’ sail past the Eversummer Isles. The only ships that dared ply that route left from Palimport, in Menekar, and Alyanna was certain she’d have known if the Crimson Queen had ever visited the empire.
So where was this?
Perhaps it was a purely fictional construct, her retreat from the harsh reality of the Frostlands.
But Alyanna didn’t think so.
She approached the small village. Most of the huts were bamboo lashed together with vines, the roofs thatched with grass. She did not see anyone moving among the buildings, but she had the feeling of being watched.
“I knew you’d come back.”
The words were spoken just behind her, and Alyanna jumped. She whirled aro
und and found a woman standing a few paces away, watching her. She wore a dress of woven grass and a necklace of bright purple flowers around her neck. Her skin was darkened by the sun, and her eyes were a vivid shade of green. She looked familiar.
The woman tugged on a lock of her bronze-colored hair. “You said you’d return for her.” She turned towards the ocean and squinted at the rippling green water, shielding her eyes from the bright sun.
Alyanna followed where she was looking. A massive caravel was moored not far from shore – Alyanna was certain it had not been there a moment ago. Its sails were unfurled but hung slack in the dead air; she could make out a twisting red shape on a field of white, and she knew it was the dragon of House d’Kara. The ship appeared unmanned, its deck and raised forecastle empty.
What was this? Alyanna stared at the woman, trying to decide where she knew her from. The cast of her face, the shape of her nose . . . she had more than a passing resemblance to Cein d’Kara. And as much as there were physical similarities, it was also in the way she held herself, the calm command in her green eyes.
Alyanna remembered vaguely some rumor that Cein d’Kara had not been born in Dymoria. She was the bastard of the old king, the whispers had said, sired when he had led an expedition into the Sunset Lands, the mysterious realm far across the western ocean. She had appeared at court as a full-grown child, that much Alyanna was certain, and upon her ascension to the throne several of the great Dymorian houses had repudiated her.
“Where is she?” Alyanna asked, and the woman pointed into the village, at the only building built of something other than bamboo and grass. It was a low, windowless hut of ancient stone blocks scavenged from some other older structure. The door was roughly hewn of red wood and incised with a great flower. Several limp bodies were impaled upon the jagged sword-like petals of the carving. Charming.
“Why is she—–” Alyanna began, but the woman had vanished. She looked up and down the empty crescent of golden sand. She was alone again.