by Fiona Patton
Pulling his sword, he felt Estavia’s lien shoot down his arm and streak along the consecrated weapon like a bolt of fire. It leaped almost joyously from the blade and smacked into the mist, vaporizing the spirits hidden within it in a hiss of steam. Then, holding it before him like a lantern, Brax stepped out into the storm, following the trail of prophetic bubbles left by the abayos-priest and his three-year-old burden, moving toward a single, golden light that shone from the depths of Graize’s past now instead of from his own.
Deep in the darkness, Graize fought his own battle with the spirits of memory.
He’d been cold and hungry and desperately afraid. He’d been outside, and it wasn’t safe to be outside. The sun had been going down and the wind had been coming up and the rain had driven against his face until he couldn’t see where he was going. He’d stumbled into a doorway, crouching there until the dark-haired boy had come, leading the man in yellow who’d carried him away. He’d been too cold to struggle, too frightened to cry out, but he’d reached for the boy with his mind and his latent abilities had forged a link with him before the iron gates of the Tannery Precinct’s Oristo Cami had blocked his view of the first person who’d ever tried to protect him.
But he’d never forgotten him. He reached out for him in the darkness, year after year, feeling the other’s growing strength and taking comfort from it. It was only after he’d found him protecting another boy on the Western Dockside streets that he’d turned away from that strength to face a cold and echoing emptiness alone.
But that was not this memory, and his mind rejected it out of hand. In this memory he dozed in a corner of the cami’s shabby central chapel; five years old and charged with the evening duty of tending the few candles the priests were willing to burn after dark during the three stormy nights of Havo’s Dance. Unlike the rest of the orphans under their care, Graize had schooled himself to deny the urge to crouch beneath the candles while the rain battered against the shutters and the winds howled about outside, tearing tiles off the roofs and hurling them into the gardens beyond. He never clung to the false security their flickering lights afforded. He knew the spirits pooling outside the cami walls couldn’t get him here, and so he knew there was no real danger hidden in the chapel shadows just as he knew that some day he would have to face those spirits and defeat them. His growing prophetic abilities had told him that, but they’d also told him that he would not be facing them alone. The dark-haired boy would be facing them with him.
In the alcove, Graize’s body twitched violently as this realization flooded back into his mind.
And, standing beside him in the memory, Brax watched him remember. Five-year-old Graize’s fingers twitched in the throes of some prophetic dream, tapping a steady rhythm against his thigh, but he otherwise remained absolutely still and quiet. As gently as he was able, Brax reached out along their link to touch his sleeping mind. The scents of incense and mildewing wood filled his thoughts, but behind them, he saw himself as Graize was seeing him: as a dark-haired boy, armed with a sturdy wooden sword and shield. He watched himself draw the other boy to his feet and guide him toward the future up a narrow minaret staircase. Brax followed them and found Graize’s one safe place of prophecy that Spar had spoken of.
Watching the two boys leaning over the edge of the minaret, Brax nodded his understanding. No wonder Hisar had been unable to feel Graize in this place. This memory had been created long before Graize had screamed his oaths of possession and jealousy into the wind; long before he’d fashioned a God-child from the spirits of the wild lands, and long before those spirits had attacked four unsworn delon beneath a wharf on Liman Caddesi. If Hisar was going to reach him, Brax was going to have to draw Graize out to a place where his relationship with the young God already existed. But a place without the memory of a ten-year-old Graize coming upon his dark-haired protector standing by the side of another boy that should have been him and wasn’t. Otherwise, they’d just have to start all over again.
Far away in the alcove, he felt Graize shudder through their link and eased back carefully.
“Two figures standing on a snow-clad mountain ridge.”
Spar’s voice echoed down their lien, and Brax grimaced at it.
“I know,” he muttered back at it.
“A child armed and armored, and a shimmering tower strong and defensible, standing before a snow-clad mountain.”
“Like I said, I know. Piss off. We’ll be there. You just make sure you bring Hisar.”
Closing his eyes, he stepped forward into Graize’s image of the dark-haired boy, feeling a strength and a confidence that he himself had never possessed at that age. With a sweep of his wooden sword, he laid out the vision they’d shared in the cold waters of Gol-Beyaz the day Hisar had taken His first steps into the physical world; the vision Graize himself had denied until today. It streamed out between them with an eerie double-visioned quality as both of them relived the memory for the first time together, seeing it through the clarity of their childish eyes, untainted by the rivalry that was to come.
The enemies of Anavatan rose up before them, and Brax saw himself a man, armed and armored, taking the field against them.
The enemies of Anavatan rose up, and Graize saw the dark-haired boy, armed and armored, taking the field against them.
Brax saw a figure on a white pony raise his hand in battle and knew it to be Graize, but Graize as he’d never seen him before, clear-eyed and armed with steel and stone.
Graize saw himself on a white pony raise his hand in battle, but himself as he’d never been before, clear-eyed and armed with steel and stone.
The vision steadied to become a snow-capped mountain ridge overlooking two fleets of ships while a man in a red tower moved wooden figurines on a painted board of mahogany and mist and a woman with golden hair danced in the surf below.
Graize’s later memories bubbled up around them, drawn forward by the instability and anger of his adulthood, intent on filling in the preceding years. Brax felt his grip on the vision slipping as he scanned the mountainsides for any sign of Spar and Hisar, but the horizon remained dark and empty. As the vision began to fail, Graize’s later prophecies forced their way to the surface. The ridge disappeared behind a crimson mist, the air felt heavy and portentous, smelling of blood and salt as the dawn sun rose above them like a fiery insect, revealing its true prophecy: the discovery of their plans by Prince Illan of Volinsk.
Brax pointed his small, wooden sword at the image as steadily as he could manage and behind it, he saw the future—saw the present—the faintest image of a child with hair the color of ripening wheat and a shimmering tower battling an army of spirits in a cavernous darkness. Alone.
Brax threw his hand to them at once, but before he could reach them, the spirits rose up, a terrible roaring filled his ears, and the image winked out of sight. The mountains disappeared into an enveloping fog, alarm bells sounded, a woman’s warning echoed in his ears, a man with eyes as fathomless as the sea moved flocks of birds upon a painted table while a white-clad king sailed ever closer to four figures surrounded by water sparkling in a cavernous darkness. As the roaring became screaming, the fog became a rain-splattered doorway, and he and Graize clutched at each other as they might have done years before. The sound of wings became the snap of sails against the wind and both boys pressed their hands against their ears to keep out the present as much as the past.
A mile away out on the water, Illan stood on the forecastle of the Volinski flagship, a faint smile playing across his lips. Behind him, the blue-gray cliffs of the Bogazi-Isik Strait fell away while before him, the fog lifted slightly to reveal the watchtower of Gerek-Hisar at the southernmost tip of the Northern Trisect. One third of the fleet broke formation at once, heading in that direction, while the rest carried on south. As the sound of alarm bells echoed across the water, he could just make out the distinctive forms of Anavatanon penteconters moving to intercept them.
Seconds later, a scout in the flagship�
�s fighting top sang out a warning that was quickly taken up by the rest of the fleet. Archers hurried past him into position on the forecastle as their bow officer made for the fire urn, a pot of glowing coals held protectively in his hands. On the sterncastle, the fleet’s commander, Prince Pieter of Rostov, stood surrounded by court sorcerers, listening with his head cocked to one side as they spoke their prophecy for the coming battle, the pilot and captain awaiting his word.
Illan gave a soft snort before calling up the image of his atlas table, the silver-and-blue-painted Gol-Beyaz situated in the exact center now that they were across the sea. Under his control, the pieces began to move in the complicated dance of present and future possibilities, each one taking on a more appropriate symbolic form than the carved wooden tokens that represented them in the physical world.
The bronze-cast dromon galleys of Volinsk moved into position in a double wedge of power, while the polished white marble Skirosian triremes spread north, their beaklike rams glittering just below the waterline. Caught between them, the shallow-drafted, onyx-carved penteconters of Estavia struggled to hold two lines of defense at once. Meanwhile, hundreds of tiny horse-backed figures made of twisted grass thundered down upon a force of mounted warriors on wooden horses and stone-carved militia stretched too thin along the western shoreline.
And from one end of Gol-Beyaz to the other, the six silver figures of Anavatan’s Gods winked in and out, Their strength divided, as Their followers called to Them from every front to help defend their homes and lands. Just as Illan had predicted, he thought with a chuckle, the might of the Gods negated by Their own followers.
With one last glance to ensure himself that the God of Battles in particular had been called away from the northern strait by the danger to the south, he set this prophecy aside, and called up the image of a fogenshrouded cavern, ringed by mountains. Four pieces moved across the board in their own, prophetic dance. But no less predictably, he noted as he studied them, his upper lip curling in disdain.
The golden tower had taken its turn prematurely and, unseasoned and immature, the youngest member of Anavatan’s pantheon had swiftly found Itself surrounded by enemies. It would soon fall and Its unrealized potential would wash into Gol-Beyaz to be consumed by Its own kind.
With one motion, Illan knocked the tower on its side.
Its black-clad champion would fare no better, he mused. Heedless of anything save his own prophetic strength, Spar had failed to recognize the thread of weakness in his past—a thread Illan himself had exploited years ago—his terror born on the mist-covered cobblestones of Liman Caddesi. All spirits, be they storm-formed creatures of the wild lands or lake-fed Gods retaining thousands of worshipers, recognized this kind of weakness and preyed upon it.
It would be no different this time.
The black-clad piece was knocked down in its turn.
On the mountain ridge, Hisar’s silver champion sworn to another God had already fallen, unable to master the skills needed to fight in a prophetic war. Only one move would save him as it had in the past, but Brax was afraid to make it, afraid to call on Estavia for fear his own weakness would turn Her gaze away from him.
The silver piece joined the others on its side.
That left only Graize.
Illan chuckled to himself. The hidden element that was only hidden from itself and the piece on which every other outcome hung. Illan’s final move.
Graize’s madness blazed like a beacon in the night, warping his prophecy and hiding all but the single path that led to retribution. If the golden, black, and silver pieces did not defeat themselves, the gray piece would be brought in to finish the endgame. It hardly mattered that it would destroy the gray piece as well. All that mattered was the destruction of Anavatan’s power base.
Illan turned and, as the flagship’s bow officer gave the order to fire, he swept the image of the atlas table away and concentrated on the coming battle. All was as it should be. The endgame would be no different. He had seen it all.
16
The Mountain Ridge
IN THE CISTERN, IN the seeming of a huge, golden shark, Hisar thrashed the waters into a churning froth as Its frustration grew. The upper sprits had fallen so easily; all It’d had to do was suck them up in much the same way as It had the spirits in the aqueduct trough above Havo Cami. But, where those spirits had fed Its hunger with a bright, sparkling power that made It want to soar into the clouds, these spirits just made It feel bloated and sluggish; as waterlogged as they were. The more It ate, the emptier It felt, and the angrier It became. It was not supposed to be this way; Its vision had showed It eating them; It was supposed to eat them. Slapping Its tail back and forth across the surface of the water, It flung a new spray of upper spirits against the walls, all the while roaring in increasingly impotent hunger.
Below, the under spirits began to rise in response to the violence above them. Sucking up the shattered bits of their lighter kindred, they used the extra power to move silently toward the young God, their fine claws outstretched and their mouths agape to reveal rows and rows of glittering teeth. Coming together into one vast school, they picked up speed, then attacked.
Hisar caught sight of them at the last moment, Its golden eyes silvering in surprise, but before It could react, the swarm was upon It. A dozen struck Its face while the rest rushed toward Its body, striking here and there, then breaking off—trailing long, thin lines of the young God’s power in their wake—before regrouping to strike again.
Enraged, Hisar spun about in the water, Its seeming changing to that of a huge water snake. Sucking up a great mouthful of spirits as Graize had taught It, It drove Its teeth into their ethereal bodies, then snapped Its head back, spitting their allotments of prophecy out in a spray of silver light.
Some of the under spirits followed the line of carnage, but hundreds more swarmed up to take their place and Hisar felt Its seeming warp under the pressure of their assault. It resisted, fighting the almost overwhelming urge to take on the same shape as Its attackers, until a sharp pain snapped Its attention down to a tiny spirit—all teeth and shimmering copper claws—with its head buried in Its flank like a leach. Hisar tore it away, watching in growing horror as a fine, twisted tendril of gold-and-copper droplets trailed off behind its shattered body.
The under spirits fell on it at once, tearing it into the finest shreds in their frenzy to lap up this bright, new power, then spun about, seeking their copper-speckled kindred and driving them toward the young God in a single, solid mass.
Hisar jerked back in fear. Its rising panic caused Its seeming to warp still further and, as Its physical manifestation began to come apart, Its mind shot from the cistern, separate for the very first time and desperately seeking help.
In the dark place, Spar was knocked to the ground as a tower of golden fire exploded into the air, painting the sky with a blast of crimson flame and fusing the black sand beach into a mass of onyx glass. Struggling to his feet, he gathered up his power and flung it down the lien toward Hisar, then followed, diving headfirst into the boiling surf.
And plunged into a frigid world of froth and violence. Silver-and-copper lights swirled all around him, teeth and claws flickering in and out of their midst too fast for him to focus on. He saw Hisar enveloped in a cloud of spirits and, as he reached for Him, the nearest turned toward him, their silvery gaze awash in feral hunger. For an instant they hung frozen in the grip of Spar’s prophetic ability, then, as Hisar’s need shot down the lien, they followed it.
Spar went down under their onslaught and, as the first of the spirits tore into his mind, he fled down his original lien with Brax.
They collided with a force that flung Brax off his feet with a cry of pain. As Spar and Hisar’s combined peril caused an involuntary pulse of red-and-orange power to shoot from his chest and down the lien, his grip on Graize’s prophecy snapped. Graize was thrown down one side of the mountain path to slam into a future of fog and rain, while Brax was catapulted backw
ard down the other side to land, sprawled and insensible, on a night of violence and death, four figures struggling on the stormlashed cobblestones of Liman Caddesi.
In the alcove, Brax’s physical body jerked in reaction, a fine welling of blood rising between his lips to spill out and down his chin, and as he slumped, Graize’s eyes snapped open, the left significantly more dilated than the right.
Graize’s vision swam in sickening circles as his mind fought to maintain a single time frame. One moment he was three, crouched in a doorway with the dark-haired boy in a memory that had never been, then five, standing beside him on Oristo-Cami’s single minaret in a memory that had.
He was fifteen, being dragged from the waters of Gol-Beyaz by Panos of Amatus Then he was ten, watching Brax put his arm around Spar’s shoulders on the western docks.
He was nineteen, raving and screaming in the wild lands.
He was thirteen, ignoring Drove who glanced nervously up at a sky filled with dark and ragged storm clouds.
In the alcove, His twenty-year-old body shook with a combination of shock and damp, his head injury throbbing up his temple, while on the streets of memory, a three year old’s terror caused his heart to pound painfully in his chest.
The years piled onto each other, then pulled apart like twists of wool, the earliest entangling in the later, but throughout, a roaring, scream of pain and need hammered at his mind. He followed it to a place of power and obligation, created on the plains of the Berbat-Dunya, and stumbled back onto the mountain ridge before a shimmering tower that shifted from gold to silver to gold again.
He shouted Its name into the rising wind.
“HISAR!”
The word echoed all around him, throwing up a host of memories to spin around him in a swirling maelstrom of images and feelings and, as he sucked them back into his mind, he felt them reattach themselves in proper order.