by K. Ferrin
Seconds passed. Then minutes. The gentle rocking of the Mincon began eroding the hard lines of her concentration the way the steady drip of water erodes stone. Her body relaxed, the vibrating ceased, and she opened her eyes to stare at the door to her dingy little room, just as intact as it always had been.
The boat creaked around her, sails snapped in the wind, and rope thudded against wood as the ship sailed. She could hear the splashing of water against the hull and the cries of birds through the thin wood of the cabin. The freshness of the water filled her nostrils. Life was still happening outside that closed door, oblivious to the agony raging inside her. The world was a distant, disinterested thing. It didn’t care what it did to her. To anyone. The sun would rise and fall no matter what befell the small pinpricks of soul-light that walked about the earth or swam about the sea.
She hated the world and all the life in it in that moment. If she had the power, she would have destroyed it all. But she had no power, no magic of her own. She may be magic, but she didn’t have any of it. She wanted to scream in frustration at her helplessness.
She began pulling at her hair, plucking one strand at a time out of her scalp. They each came out easily enough, but she knew she could do nothing but pluck strands of her own hair for the next 500 years and she’d still have just as many then as she did now. She was not human, not mortal. Her hair didn’t grow—it just was. She was stuck in some perverse time loop, always staying the same while everyone and everything else around her changed.
There was only one course open to her. The same single option she’d had for all the years since Grag planted his foul magic in Meuse. She had to find him. Find him and force him to undo what he had done.
She climbed to her feet, her legs feeling loose, as if they weren’t connected to her body. The skin of her face felt stretched taut, like canvas over a drum, and hot. She wanted to cry, but she had no tears. She forced herself to move, leaving the dingy room behind in favor of the deck.
The stationary boats they passed had all manner of odd contraptions strapped to them, many just like the metallic paddles that had been on the Courser, and most of them so rusted she wondered how they’d not yet fallen into the bay. One of the boats they passed had a mast that hovered well above the deck, resting on thick legs of metal that were somehow attached to the sides of the boat. Two of the legs had rusted through entirely, and the mast leaned precariously to one side, dragging the boat with it.
Everywhere she looked was age and disuse, and the further they sailed, the more decrepit everything became. Some former boats were now nothing more than scraps of wood tied to a buoy. From the remains that were visible, it appeared that, just as the boats docked in Malach, all of these rotting vessels had glyphs painted onto their hulls much like the Courser had. Those glyphs were what had kept the sirené from attacking the Courser in the Darkling Sea. She wondered what sorts of things they protected travelers from here, inside Marique.
Again she pondered the willingness of the warlocks to allow so much of their city to rot and crumble away. Perhaps the war had taken a considerable toll on the warlocks as well. Or maybe the magic necessary for upkeep simply wasn’t there anymore. Fariss had mentioned there was less of it now than there had been before. Whatever the cause, it made her feel afraid. What would she do if their magic had waned so far that Grag was no longer able to unmake her?
Then another thought popped into her head. If magic vanished from the world altogether, would she vanish, too? Maybe this was her fate, whether she found Grag or not. Perhaps she just needed to find a place to wait it all out and forget this crazy journey.
But she knew the lie for what it was. She’d survived for five years in a place without any magic at all, and she hadn’t faded. Whatever Grag had done to make her, he’d done it well. The magic that animated her was somehow separate from the magic drifting in the world, and would sustain her perhaps forever.
She glanced at the captain of the Mincon. He stood at the bow of the ship, one hand resting gently on a wheel spoke, the other on his hip as he steered them through the wreckage. He had no stain on his chin, his clothes were the same rough-spun schor and the same cut as any other boatsmyn would wear. But who was he? Had he traveled here with hopes of becoming a warlock only to have failed in his efforts? Perhaps he had just been born here, a normal man born of normal parents, with normal magic, who’d grown up to be just what he appeared to be, a fisherman.
He studied the harbor around him with a practiced eye, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Ling knew that look well. The look of a man who knew what he was about and loved what he did. Whatever had originally brought him here, he clearly had the heart of a boatsmyn and many long years at the till.
He was filthy, shrewd, and would no doubt fleece her of every bit of coin he could, but his clear competence at the wheel made her feel better nevertheless. She could deal with a thief. A poor sailor was something else altogether.
The farther they traveled across the bay, the fewer and fewer wrecks they were forced to weave around until all that remained were scattered buoys. The emptiness of the docks continued here, too. She saw no other ships moving across the water at all, in any direction.
She turned back and found she could see nothing of the docks nearest the sea wall now. The sea wall itself was still visible in the distance, a towering pale shape barely distinguishable in the haze and stretching as far as she could see. In front of her, far on the other side of the open expanse of the harbor, she could see nothing but a solid mass of green. The man in the Registrary had said she’d be able to see the Colli Terra from anywhere on the island, but all she could see was the solid mass of trees, the wide open expanse of blue sky, and the broad stretch of pink beneath them. Colors came in thick lines here. A wall of pink below a wall of green, which hovered below a wall of blue.
The Mincon unfurled its sails fully, and the wind lifted Ling’s hair back from her shoulders, caressing the back of her neck. Despite its color, the murky water, smelling of rotting plants and fecundity, reminded her of home. The processes of birth, death, and rebirth were the same everywhere.
She sat on the bow of the ship, legs dangling over the edge, head resting against the rail. The wind was a steady hum that filled every empty space inside of her. It was cool and refreshing and heavy with the scent of living things. The grimoire sat open on her lap, but she paid it no mind. A thick smear of black smoke stained the sky directly ahead of them, an orienting pin on an otherwise homogenous expanse of coastline. They seemed to be heading for the point at which the thickly forested coastline met up with the towering sea wall, though she could detect no gap through either at this distance.
As they drew closer, she could just make out more homes held snugly in the arms of the vast trees so common here. These, too, were in advanced stages of disrepair. Collapsed roofs, teetering walls, and even gaping holes in the floor were everywhere she looked. As they passed, she could see all the accouterments of normal life, all crumbling away now, left behind as if the residents had headed off to work one day and simply never returned.
Other structures seemed as if they’d been bored into the trunks and the branches of the trees themselves, leaving nothing visible but a dangling staircase winding up the trunk to the remains of a door. She could see nothing of what might be inside of course, but many of the trees housing these structures looked as if they were decomposing from the inside, the trunks collapsing in on themselves as the trees slowly tumbled into the still pink water below.
The black stain in the sky was massive now, and it seemed to be moving. Ling sniffed at the air, searching for the scent of burning wood. As the Mincon came around a slight bend of coastline, Ling sagged, grasping the boat’s rail to keep from tumbling over the edge.
An enormous stone house perched precariously on a narrow spire of rock. No stairway or platform led up to the door of the house. The door and every window she could see were tightly closed against prying eyes and the elements. The bl
ackened stones that formed the house gave the massive structure a dangerous look that sent shivers chasing up and down her spine.
The house was far outside Malach, but, although gloom hung over it like a heavy fog, it was untouched by the destruction that seemed to affect every other structure outside the immediate area of the grand thoroughfare of Malach.
The black smear encased the house in a thick sheath that gleamed with a malevolent wetness. It towered above the house in a wildly twisting column, snapping like a loose sail caught in a heavy wind. She had no idea what it was, but it certainly wasn’t smoke.
The gleaming dark mass writhed and twisted like an animal caught in a trap. Fearsome and disturbing shapes formed in the shifting darkness, swelling and bulging as if they sought escape, only to disintegrate an instant later, sucked back into the deepest, darkest pinprick of night. A vibration filled the air, as if some beast screamed in agony, the sound of its voice too high or low for her to make out, but the force of its cry violently shaking the very air they traveled through.
That house was wrong somehow. Ling felt it in her very skin. It felt like worms burrowing just beneath the surface of her flesh, leaving itching tunnels in their wake. It shouldn’t exist, that house. Strangely, the twisting darkness that encased it seemed to belong. It was almost like a scar covering a wound sliced deeply into the flesh of the world itself. An attempt to heal a profound wrongness.
Strangest of all, the house stood out clearly against the trees behind it one moment, then faded out the next, becoming nothing more than a shadow on a cloudy day.
“You feel it too.”
It was not a question, and when Ling turned, she saw the captain standing just a few steps away, staring up at the dark mass.
“What is it?” she asked him. His eyes were open wide, with none of the usual sarcasm or harshness in them.
“It’s doom,” he said. “It’s death. All because of a man named Fariss.”
Fariss.
“What…” Ling’s throat was too dry for speech, but he seemed to understand the question anyway.
“It’s the foulest bit of magic ever done. Fariss and his ilk. Never was enough magic to satisfy them, so they opened a portal hoping to siphon it from some other place. Only it didn’t work, did it? Instead of pulling power in, it leaked it all out. It started this war, and it’ll be the death of all of us.”
His face hardened until it took on the look of chiseled stone, and his hands were white where he clasped them against his chest. He peeled his eyes from the looming shape and moved back to the wheel.
Ling shadowed him, her eyes following Fariss’s house as they drifted by. “But the war…they said it’d been raging for centuries. How could Fariss—”
“They don’t age like you and me. The Tovenveran are mortal, but their magic corrupts the natural order of things, bends the rules that all the rest of us live by. It’s an abomination, it is. Its study should never have been permitted.”
His face remained as still as stone, but his words flew from his mouth with the force of a blacksmith’s hammer on steel. Ling didn’t know what to say, could barely wrap her head around what she was hearing. Fariss was old, and far more dangerous than she would ever have suspected. He had claimed the drain of magic was because of something the Mari had done, but he was the one who had caused it in his greed for more power.
“What of the Mari? Could they have—”
“We’ll never know. He’s killed them all off over the years. Either through outright murder or by the siphoning of their powers.” The man glanced up and caught his breath. Ling followed his gaze upwards until she met the cool green eyes of Fariss staring down at her from a balcony she was certain had not been there only a moment before.
She stopped breathing. Fariss watched her as the steady wind pushed the Mincon past the house. As she stared back, several more people came into view on the balcony. They didn’t walk out onto it so much as they just appeared, as if a curtain were slowly being pulled back to expose them. They all wore purple robes, all had purple-stained lips, and amethysts sparkled in their chins. Four, eight. Ten. She lost count. Men and women both, they all stared down at the Mincon. At her.
She imagined the ghostly shapes of the Mari as she’d seen them along the crumbling pathway in Malach. Killed them outright or siphoned off their power...
“He knows you,” the man said, eyeing her warily. “You are acquainted?”
“He was on the Courser when I came over,” Ling choked out. “He helped me, but we are not friends.”
“You’ll stay away from him, from all of them, you know what’s good for you,” the captain said quietly, turning his gaze back up toward Fariss. “That man is a monster, and the others…Well, they just follow along.”
A flash of gold caught her eye, and she shifted her gaze to see that Treantos had appeared on the balcony as well. The sole glint of yellow in a sea of purple. He stood back from the others, separate. His arms were crossed on his chest, his face grim as he stared down at them. On the Courser, the two men had quarreled. She’d written in the grimoire that she thought the two were not on friendly terms, but here he was. He was the only warlock from another discipline among those on that balcony. She didn’t know what the significance of that might be, or if there was any significance to it at all.
Ling turned to the captain; his eyes were focused on the balcony, face ashen gray. Heavy lines creased his forehead and sprayed outward from the corners of his eyes. He seemed much older in that moment than he had when she’d boarded that morning.
She turned back toward Fariss, and as she did, he raised a single hand in a wave, his lips curving in a tight smile.
Ling desperately hoped she found Grag at the far end of this boat ride. Whatever the captain of this boat was, he was right about Fariss. She never wanted to see those dark, curling ringlets and vivid green eyes again. She had a feeling that if she did, her journey would end with them.
~ END BOOK ONE ~
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Table of Contents
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN