by Fiona Patton
“So, the three of us are here,” he said, his voice sounding strangely disembodied in this place. “Now what?”
Spar wordlessly lifted his black net, and Brax raised one eyebrow in sudden amusement. “You’re going fishing for Graize?”
Dropping the cowl onto his shoulders, his kardos shook his hair from its confines before shooting Brax one of his familiar dockside glares. “Just shut up and stay alert,” he grated. Shaking out the net, he cast it into the water, watching as it slowly sank out of sight. He waited a moment, face tight with concentration, than began to slowly haul it back up from the depths.
Beside them, the tower seemed to shift its base more securely in the sand, then Hisar’s voice, made much more resonant in this place, echoed across his mind.
“BE READY.”
“For what?”
“FOR BATTLE.”
“With who?”
“WITH GRAIZE. HE’S COMING.”
15
The Cistern
THE FIRST SENSATION THAT reached Graize as his mind kicked upward out of prophecy was the sound of dripping water. He scrabbled through his memories, trying to identify its source. At first he thought he might be back in Dar-Sayer’s cavern in the Petchan Mountains, the crippled oracle’s soft, intrusive voice dredging up things that were best left forgotten. But there were no accompanying odors of damp clay and lamp oil. He was not in Dar-Sayer’s cavern.
The dripping water became the rhythmic pounding of waves against rocks and again he struggled to identify the source. The waves of the northern sea had beat against the rocks of Volinsk. But there was no accompanying sound of crackling fire and low, murmured conversation between Illan and Panos. He was not at Cvet Tower either.
Nor was he lying among the Yuruk listening to the waves splash against the shores of Gol-Bardak, or huddled together with Danjel and Yal as the rain beat against the sides of their sheep’s hide tent in the midst of the wild lands. He was in no safe place of quiet respite.
As the pounding of waves became the crashing of surf, he opened his eyes and saw a black sand beach with a cold, white moon in the sky. With a scream, he flung his mind backward out of prophecy.
“Watch it!”
In the dark place, Brax leaped forward as the net tore from Spar’s hands, shredding under the force of Graize’s reaction. The water at their feet exploded in a gout of spray, and as Brax jerked his kardos from harm’s reach, it slammed into the beach, then sucked back to become a churning maelstrom of waves and power. Deep within its center, Graize rose on a column of gray smoke, his eyes blazing as white as Spar’s were black.
Spar’s power hit him in midair.
The force of their meeting sent violent shock waves pulsing out in every direction. Brax went flying as if he were still wearing a physical body, and Hisar rocked backward, as a slap of heat and steam followed in Its wake. The dark place buckled, split, then, as a huge rent tore across the beach, Graize punched a hole through into the physical world, reconnecting with his own body with a speed that made him gasp.
The pain of his injuries slammed into him, causing his body to jackknife in reaction. He felt arms around him, and for a single instant he almost gave in to the safety of their physical embrace, yet as he recognized who held him, he tore his mind away. But the damage was done. With his focus split, he lost control of the maelstrom. Waves of prophecy crashed over him, and he was swept under once again.
In the dark place, Graize disappeared under the waves. Hisar leaped forward, the tower seemingly disintegrating under the young God’s distress.
“SPAR!”
“I see him!”
The remnants of his black net arched across the water, then fell, descending faster and faster through the waves until it found its target.
The net caught him up, entangling his arms and legs. He fought against it with every ounce of strength and ability he still possessed but, half in and half out of the physical world, he quickly began to weaken. The cold white moon of Spar’s prophecy became the dawn sun of his own, but then he saw water sparkling in a cavernous darkness and, with a sudden shout of triumph, twisted his mind from the black net’s grip and plunged into the spirit-filled waters of the great cistern.
The shock hit him like a blast of frozen air. A swirl of silver rushed toward him, and he stared, mesmerized, as it quickly coalesced into a swarm of surface spirits, razor-sharp claws outstretched toward him. He waited until they almost touched his cheek. Then, taking a great breath, he sucked them into himself, using their tiny allotments of power to rebuild his focus. Revitalized, he hurled them at the dark place with a wild shout of laughter.
A huge flock of spirits came streaming through the rent, and Hisar reacted at once. Screaming in outrage at this invasion of Its territory, the young God exploded into the air, taking the form of a vast and turbulent electrical storm. The sky filled with black, pendulous clouds, lightning streaking from one to another. Thunder crashed and the skies opened, rain and hail poured down, shredding the lead spirits into a fine spray of silver light, and driving the rest back through the rent.
The spirits tumbled back, torn almost beyond recognition, but Graize was waiting for them. Once more he caught them up, and sucking their power and their prophecy into his own, he flung them at the rent again.
Another swarm of spirits boiled through, and now it was Spar and Brax who reacted. Catching up a handful of black sand, Spar hurled it at the waves. The sand became a force of defending militia. With Brax in the lead, they slammed into the invading creatures, and once again the spirits were driven back.
Only this time Hisar followed them through the rent like a bolt of avenging lightning.
The young God hit the waters of the cistern in a great spout of steam and spray. Enraged from Its battle in the dark place, It thrashed about like an angry whale, churning the water into a silvery froth, destroying what spirits It did not consume and hurling the fragments of their prophecy against the walls without bothering to heed what they foretold. In the streets above, water exploded from fountains and wells all over the city, flooding into homes and shops alike while within, Graize’s mind was snapped back into his body with a force that nearly tore him from Brax’s arms.
Darkness rushed over Graize, gutting out all sensations save a great roaring in his ears that threatened to drown what remained of his sanity. He struggled to catch hold of any sight or sound that might anchor his mind, and very slowly the sound of dripping water came to him once again. He focused on the echo of each individual droplet until they became a single, golden light shining in the distant past. He fled toward the light, and the roaring grew fainter and fainter until it disappeared from his perception altogether.
“He’s gone limp!”
Shouting to make himself heard over the roar of Hisar’s anger, Brax struggled to his feet on the black sand beach, his eyes half closed against the wind that howled from the rent. “I can feel it in the alcove! Do you think it’s killed him?”
“No! He’s gone to ground again,” Spar shouted back.
“So, how’re we supposed to get him again? I thought Hisar was supposed to reach him from His temple site?”
Spar gave his familiar one-shouldered shrug as the roaring changed pitch to become an undulating screaming, much like a battling tomcat might sound. “That was the plan!” he replied with heavy sarcasm.
“So what do we do now? Go fishing for him again?”
Wordlessly, Spar held up the tattered remains of his net. “You’ll have to go after him!”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because he saw you!”
“He saw me here!”
“And he saw you in a doorway and he saw you on a mountain ridge! All his life he’s been seeing you, but he’s never been able to bring his visions into being! It’s just about driven him mad! You have to go after him, find him, take him to that mountain—drag him if you have to—and make his vision come into being!”
“How? I don’t even know where he
’s gone?”
“Start in the doorway!”
Brax shook his head in frustration. “You know I don’t remember that!”
“You will when you go looking for it!” Spar’s upper lip pulled up in a half-sneer, half-snarl. “And before you ask me how; you know how! Practice stillness, concentrate on one image, and grab the answer like a weapon! Simple!”
“Right, simple.”
“Go back to the alcove!” Spar continued. “It’ll be easier if you aren’t trying to do two things at once! You share a prophetic link with Graize; it’ll be stronger if you can feel him in your arms! Once you get hold of the link, just follow it right to him!”
“What will you be doing?”
Spar winced as the young God’s screaming became shrieking and then roaring once again. “Bringing Hisar!” he shouted, clamping his hands to his ears with an impatient expression.
“Right.” Brax glanced down at the rent boiling along the waterline with a tense expression. “Any other way to get back into the alcove?” he asked. “Other than going through that?”
“That’s how Graize came in! That’s how you go out!”
“Great.”
“Just go!”
“Right.” Stepping into the surf, Brax resisted the urge to shiver. The black water was just as cold and wet as he’d expected, even though a small part of his mind noted that neither the waves nor his body were actually physical so it shouldn’t be either.
“Right,” he muttered for the third time as the water reached to midthigh. “And I won’t actually drown either when my head goes underwater.”
Through the lien with his kardos—a lien he’d always felt but had never consciously thought about until now—he sensed Spar’s disdainful amusement and, recognizing his own distraction, he shook it off with a disciplined gesture. He was going into battle now, however strangely he might be entering the field; now was not the time to be focusing on anything except duty.
Estavia’s lien glowed warm and familiar inside him as the thoughts of battle aroused Her interest as always. It steadied his mind, and as the lien with Spar faded back to where it belonged, he returned his attention to pushing through the water. The waves reached his chest, his throat, his mouth. He forced himself to take one more step then, as they closed over his head, he threw the image of a ship’s line out toward his physical body, following his oaths back to the real world as quickly as he was able.
The sound of Hisar’s roaring grew louder and more substantial as, one by one, each physical sensation returned to him. He tasted salt on his lips and smelled the odors of damp brick and stone in his nostrils. His hands and feet felt numb at first. Then, as a sharp biting tingling shot up his arms and legs, he jerked convulsively, almost dumping Graize off his lap. He caught him just in time. As the other man gave a faint moan at the movement, Brax peered down at him in the murky darkness.
Graize’s face was almost translucently pale, his cheeks spotted with sweat and dried blood. He was shaking despite the cloak wrapped about him. Through his clothes, Brax could feel an unnatural warmth growing in his body. He shook his head. He’d seen enough battlefield injuries to know that Graize was slowly going into shock. If they didn’t get him out of here soon, it would be too late.
He glanced over at Spar. His kardos sat peacefully, eyes closed, back against the wall, hands clasped loosely in his lap, maybe the faintest tracery of silver lights traveling across his features as if the spirits in this place were slowly building a caul about him . . .
A new tingling traveled up Brax’s spine, and he shook the feeling off abruptly.
“Get a grip on yourself,” he snapped, starting as his voice echoed across the alcove. “You’re not a delos anymore and neither is Spar. He’s sworn and just as capable of defeating these buggering creatures as Hisar is.”
Behind him, the roaring in the cistern grew louder and he resisted the urge to crane his neck over the wall. Hisar was Spar’s problem, not his. His was finding Graize.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to still his mind, concentrating on a single image: a doorway in the mist; a doorway he didn’t remember, but had to remember, and slowly his limbs grew numb once again. As he reentered the black waters of Spar’s prophecy, the roaring in his ears grew distant then finally faded away altogether. He sank quickly, a line of past experiences whispering along his face and through his hair like a trail of bubbles. He studied them carefully as they passed.
The earliest memories he’d ever been able to recall were those of rats scurrying about in the walls above his cot and the odors of raki and the damp, half-cured wool of a threadbare blanket that had never seemed to keep him warm enough. Although he would soon shove both memories into the farthest corner of his mind, he would never develop a taste for raki, and the sound of rats would always make him feel cold and anxious.
He followed these memories, ignoring the growing undertow that tugged against his legs, feeling the faintest understanding of another’s presence laying beside him in the cot; smaller and warmer than he was. Too much smaller and too much warmer. He’d known that even then, although he’d welcomed the extra warmth.
The other had cried a lot. It had stirred something deep inside him that made him want to comfort and protect it; to drive away whatever was making it cry so that it could sleep in peace and safety. So they both could. But then the other had stopped crying, its presence had faded from his understanding, and he’d shoved its memory to the same far corner with the rats and the raki. So far that even when he’d had a second smaller and warmer presence to comfort and protect—Spar—he hadn’t really remembered the first one. He’d just remembered being cold and anxious and failing someone and feeling them die.
He’d tried to comfort and protect every other presence that had come into his life since then. Sometimes he’d succeeded and sometimes he’d failed.
Newer memories bubbled past him. A dim and grimy room smelling of mold and blood. Their abayos, Cindar, standing over Spar; the man drunk and desperate, the boy feverish and in pain. Brax stood between them, fists raised, feet planted on the grimy floor like a shield wall made of strength and anger, the first hint that his lien to Estavia was both natural and almost predestined, blazing from his eyes.
Cindar had backed down, and Spar had recovered. Brax had won that fight.
Another memory: a bright and crowded street. Hiding behind the wall of a confectioner’s shop, holding Spar, one arm across his chest, while Cindar, drunk and belligerent, faced down an abayos-priest and a troop of garrison guards. His choice loomed before him: if they moved now—right now—they could still get Cindar out of there, but it might put them—put Spar—in danger. His disgust at Cindar’s drunkenness and his fear of Estavia’s guards made a bitter taste in his mouth, but the fierce protectiveness that drove nearly every decision he’d ever made held sway. As Spar tried to dart around him to help the only abayos they’d ever known, he made his choice: he pulled the younger boy back and let Cindar die to protect Spar.
The undertow grew more insistent, and he let this trail of bubbles pass; they were not the memories he was searching for. Farther down lay the cold and frightening night he needed to remember. With a deep breath, he reached out for the latent tie that bound his destiny to Graize and followed it into the depths.
And found himself frightened and alone. The air was full of rushing wind and spattering rain, and the streets were covered in a gathering mist that harbored creatures of hate and hunger. They swirled along the cobblestones seeking the unwary with teeth and claws outstretched like knives.
At age four, Brax already knew how to keep the creatures in the mist from getting him. You never went outside at night during Havo’s Dance. And if you were caught outside one night when your abayos, drunk and raving, had sent you out for more raki, you ran until you got inside again. You ran and you didn’t look back and you didn’t look down. You never looked down. If you looked down, you would see them and they would see you, and that was how they got you
. That was how they killed you.
So he’d run for a rag-and-bone shop he’d known was never locked. The owner was a drunkard like Cindar and never remembered to close his door properly. A man had seen him running, an abayos-priest of Oristo, protected from the creatures in the mist by his oaths to the Hearth God and driven into the storm by another God, Incasa. Brax’s twenty-one-year-old eyes could see that plainly now, and far away, he felt Spar’s recognition as well. But then he was swept back into the past. The priest had called out and given chase, but taught to fear Oristo’s people even more than the creatures in the mist, Brax had kept on running.
He’d felt another child’s presence in the doorway before he’d seen him, felt his desperation and his fear and the stirrings of an unnatural and familiar warmth growing in his body. Brax had nearly run right into him. But then he was past, the door was open, and safety beckoned. He’d turned to drag the other child inside, but then the priest had been upon them. The boys’ eyes had locked together, the image of two figures standing on a snow-clad mountain ridge had flashed between them and then the other child was swept away and Brax had slammed the door and bolted it, safe for another night.
The memory had sunk down to the same corner with the rats and the raki, its effects trickling into his actions like a line of bubbles unregarded in the darkness.
Brax stared into its midst, locking it in his adult memory, then deliberately turned and walked out the door again. He was not a delos anymore, he repeated to himself. He was a man, a warrior, sworn to the God of Battles and like Spar, fully capable of defeating the spirits that lay harbored in the gathering darkness. Most especially the spirits of memory.