How in Blazers was Kir supposed to fight the beast? She had brought down a few second-class kaiyo on her own, which were impressive feats in themselves, but a first-classer? Kir wasn't even sure it was possible. Ulivall was directing the warriors with their spears, harpoons and nets. Kir sheathed the dagger, figuring it no better in this fight than her fingernails would be. She toyed for an eye-blink with fetching Scilio's longbow from the cabin. While she was a decent hand at archery, the bolts were not likely to make a dent in thick kaiyo hide, and Kir didn't have the specialized boomy technique Scilio had mastered. Might as well brandish her fist at the thing, for all the good it would do.
As the kaiyo's head swooped to avoid a spear, it tangled up in the rigging. Tentacle-like arms wrapped around the lines and the ship listed sharply as the beast struggled to free itself. Kir grabbed for any handhold she could snatch. She found one in the rigging line, which kept her from sliding across the deck.
Rendack missed his own hand-hold. He slipped down the deck, about to skid overboard. Kir cried out and reached, barely grabbing Rendack's wrist as he slid by. There was no way Kir could hold his weight for long, so she used his momentum to swing him along the deck. His boots seemed to understand her intentions, moving on the sideways along the decking until he found a stable perch on the winch. Just as the ship righted itself, Kir let loose of Rendack's hand. They scrambled for Ulivall, practically falling over themselves.
“Should I sound the retreat?” Rendack asked.
“We can't turn back now. We're a day from Kestih port,” Kir argued. “If we can just bust through—”
“Nessertaums are territorial,” Ulivall reminded her grimly. “I don't think anyone is docking in Kestih again. Not for a while.”
Kir danced on tenterhooks. They were so close, so spitting close she could taste it. “We have to get through.”
“Even if we make port, the kaiyo will follow and smash up the docks before we could disembark. We can't usher it in. It will sink us whether we're in the straight or in the harbor,” Ulivall explained.
“Believe me Saiya Kunnai, I'm in as much of a hurry to get to Hilihar as you are, and I want to ram a big fat harpoon down that thing's gullet, but we're not kaiyo-slayers,” Rendack said. “We're ill-equipped to handle this. For the sake of speed, we stripped the galleon of extra weight before we left Balibay, so we don't have artillery. The royal navy does, and they have a specialized task force. They're probably on their way now, since merchant ships can't get through the straight. We don't want to be here when they arrive. If you're captured, it's all been for nothing.”
Kir watched the warriors facing off with the nessertaum. They looked like ants trying to swat an elephant. “But, how will we get to Hili?”
“We'll find a place to anchor further north, maybe near Sandbridge,” Ulivall assured her. “We can make another pass when the nessertaum is gone.”
Master Kozias was always a proponent for running when you must, which was polar opposite what the warrior class taught. Kir had never really figured out whether Kozias was just a coward, or unusually smart for a warrior. He was an elder, and Kir didn't imagine warriors lived to be rotten old men without a timely bit of running in there somewhere. Men of honor died young, and often not gloriously. They died as warriors with their honor intact, even with their innards and blood spread across the blade of their less-honorable opponent. Kir didn't fancy herself a smart one, and she didn't imagine herself dying comfy in bed with white hair and wrinkles, even if Kozias did. Running wasn't Kir's style. She often defied Kozias outright by barreling into a fray when she should have been skinning out.
Of course, that was when she held her own personal safety on her shoulders and was not leading a caravan of weary pilgrims, children included. One good whack from that nessertaum's tail could very well rupture the hull, sending hundreds of good, innocent, honorable non-warrior folk to the bottom of the straight. Kir's own personal honor and glory wasn't worth that.
Someone screamed out a warning as a tentacle crashed through one of the lines, sending splintering beams and ropes whipping wildly about. Ulivall and Rendack ducked over Kir to shield her from the debris that whizzed by their heads.
They were right. There was no way to fight the creature with their limited arsenal. They had to run.
It was the hardest command Kir had ever forced from her lips. “Withdraw.”
Ulivall wasted no time, jumping to command with no more order than that. He called the ship to come about and Rendack sounded the retreat.
The nessertaum didn't know what that all meant. It kept pursuing, knocking its thick skull against the hull even as they turned tail and headed north. The warriors shifted to the poop deck, Kir with them, to cover the stern. She manned a spear and stepped up to the rail, ready to aim for an eyeball, since that had always seemed to work against upper level kaiyo in the past.
A bear paw closed around Kir's forearm and the spear was wrested from her grasp. A wall of blue tabard blocked her view as animated arms hustled her away from the rail. Kir shoved at Malacar's chest, all the while trying to tug the spear back. “Give it, Lunchbox! He's still coming—”
“Bolts and Blazers, Kir! Must I chain you to the bulkhead?” He was fuming.
“Ulivall needed a replacement with Eshuen out,” Kir argued. She braced against his arm for balance as the kaiyo smashed against the hull again. “I'm not in any more danger topside than I would be tumbling all over the cargo hold below.”
“You can still be swept overboard, or your lungs punctured by broken ribs,” Malacar barked, waving his hand backward like Eshuen was standing there. He was angrier than Kir had seen him since they had first faced off in the Mercarian woods when he was aiming to kill her. He looked about to now, and if he wasn't so hellbent on protecting her, he might have tried. “We've already talked about this reckless streak of yours. You could have been killed. Again.”
“But I wasn't, and I'll thank you to know I sounded the retreat. We're running with our tail twixt our legs,” Kir returned, feeling her own fluster on the rise in her cheeks as she tugged against his firm hold on the spear. Malacar had this way lately of taking all the thrill out of the fight. He was getting good at stopping her blade before it ever left the scabbard. “Seems like all we ever do is hightail it anymore.”
It might have been funny to an onlooker: Kir and Malacar bickering in the foreground and fussing over a pointy stick while the warriors faced off with the giant kaiyo in the background. Somehow, it didn't feel all that giggle-worthy to Kir. She shoved the spear at him, admitting he'd won the tugging match, then turned to watch as the warriors called up some Frost Elementals. They cast together at the drag waters behind. It would take a lot more than that to freeze much of anything, but the temperature difference slowed the kaiyo up. It began to drift further behind the ship. They had left its territory. It was satisfied with its display of domination and unwilling to brave the cold to keep chase.
“I'll run all the way to Hili with you draped across my shoulder if that's what it takes to keep you safe,” Malacar said belatedly. He seemed to be losing the edge of choler that lined his voice, but it was still chock full of tension.
“You're not my Guardian,” Kir said sourly.
Even though Malacar said a lot of nothing, he was thinking a lot of everything. Kir could almost see the smoke steaming from his ears, both from the wheels grinding in his brainworks and the anger that was boiling away. He suddenly looked very hurt. He sulled up, thrust the spear back into her hands and walked away without another word.
Kir realized too late that she hadn't asked after Eshuen's condition, but her stubborn streak forbade calling Malacar back now.
-6-
Stuck in the Twisted Sheets of the Fabric of the Universe, To Share Eternity with Those Closest Kin and Closest Enemies
Where do you go, Oh me, Oh my,
Where do you flow, Oh flee, Oh fly,
To where are you bound, my conscience
lie,
I'm off to play with pixies.
- Insanity, a poem by Toma Scilio, age nine
Madness is relative. Every mind is fixed in its own insanity, believing its truth to be the absolute. The world is but a complex fabrication of the routinely insane. Vann was only now coming to terms with that fact.
He had lost track of time. Had it been eternity, or merely a day? He was no longer certain of his own existence. Perhaps he was merely a dream in the mind of another. A floating wisp of a prayer. The punchline of some sick god's joke. He felt himself washing away, floating like bits of flotsam upon a riffle.
“Come now, little brother. Don't drift away like that. It's only been four weeks. I cannot have my fun if you are not awake and lucid enough to weather it.”
Tarnavarian. It was Tarnavarian's voice. That lilting ring of charm that was inlaid with so much hate and wit. It was an insanity of its own.
“Four weeks? How can you calculate time? I have lost all sense of such things,” Vann said wearily. He had no mouth or voice with which to vocalize his thoughts, but they seemed to materialize anyway. He could keep not a single musing to his private self. His every notion was heard loudly by his brother, who also had no ears.
Their consciousnesses were trapped in this abysmal place—this layer between worlds. When Alokien's blade had sliced Vann's soul clean of his body, the gateway that was the Chamber had led him here. He could not move forward in the grip of the Soul Collectors, and he could not move back to his body. He was stuck. Apparently, Tarnavarian had been likewise trapped.
In their first days together, Tarnavarian had mentioned that Guardian Ashkorai had used the soul blade on him in the chamber a year past, hoping to save him from the Chaos Bringer's fate by killing him. Ashkorai had not guessed that the soul blade in a Guardian's hand would do exactly what Alokien wanted. Guardians, by the nature of the magic, could not kill their Guarded. Instead, the blade had severed Tarnavarian's soul and trapped it in the between, the layer between dimensions, just as Alokien had wanted.
“When one spends eternity floating in the nothing, one learns that there is no such thing as nothing. Everything is calculable. You must simply develop your own gauges,” Tarnavarian answered.
Vann did not want to know what gauges his brother used. He wanted no further insight into the twisted realm that was Tarnavarian's psyche. The immeasurable time that he had been trapped with Tarnavarian had enlightened Vann to his brother's brand of insanity. The former Crown Prince was just as warped as Kir had claimed, and perhaps even moreso than before. Certainly a whole year alone in this place had driven him to new levels. Vann had only been here for—what, four weeks?—and he was already teetering on the edge of madness. He would have preferred to sleep, but Tarnavarian was not content to allow him such peace. After a year alone, Tarnavarian finally had a playmate.
“I am intrigued,” Soventine said. “When Vannisarian and I first arrived here, you correctly estimated the year-long span of your entrapment. There must be some truth in this claim that you can determine the passage of time in this void. Of what gauges do you speak, my son? How can one calculate time in a world without change?”
Vann had almost forgotten his father was with them. The King had been quiet in the last so-long. Vann had assumed he was sleeping (if that's what one called a dormant consciousness). Tarnavarian did not seem interested in tormenting their father. His attentions had been on Vann.
“By reliving specific moments in time that you have already calculated,” Tarnavarian answered. “For example, I am remembering the tenth day of the Peach Moon in my fourteenth year. It took exactly seven minutes and twenty-two seconds for my hawk to target the badger, another three before it made the kill, and four minutes, fourteen seconds before I arrived to dispatch the quarry. Play those treasured moments back continuously, run a few figures, and you can track exactly how long you've been swimming here.”
“Surely you jest,” Vann scoffed. “I have no ability to think in such a way. My memories hold no attachment to measured time.”
“Such a shame. I'm afraid you will not be able to gauge your time here without a frame of reference. With no other means to occupy me, my memories were the only companions I have known, and they have kept me sated in their richness. Though my favorite moments were not of the hawk, but of the wench,” Tarnavarian said, with a delectation that would have shuddered Vann's bones, had he a corporeal form. He recognized that tone. Tarnavarian took pleasure in torment, and his favorite weapon was Kir.
“Yes, the little malkin holds some of my grandest memories, and therefore, it was Kiriana's time in the Chambers that have marked the passage of mine in this one. Have I told you about the moment I first pried open that pretty little head of hers?”
“Stop! I have no desire to hear more of your warped tortures. She is my affianced. I beg you to stop prodding me with stories of her agonies!” Vann cried.
“But she was my affianced first,” Tarnavarian reminded him. “I thought you wanted a means to tick time here. Since you cannot produce calculated memories on your own, allow me to give you some of mine. Think of it as a wedding gift.”
“I would rather know an eternity of oblivion than relive your sadistic tales of Kiri's torture,” Vann barked.
“Peace, Vannisarian,” Soventine soothed. “It has never been to my interest what occurred in the Root Chambers under your management, Tarnavarian. That place was your realm alone. But as we have eons to spend, I would appreciate a means of calculation, even if it is of an unsavory measure. Proceed.”
“Very well, Father. As I said before, I shall begin with one of my favorite memories. The day I pried dear little Kiriana's psyche open. She was quite the stubborn one. Quite the challenge. Perhaps that's why I adored her so. Psychonic magics are not yielded passively, and her Barriers were some of the strongest I have ever encountered. Minds are guarded with strong defenses, so it takes tremendous amounts of pain to break down those fortifications. It took three weeks to break Kiriana's. Her stubborn pride and willful nature kept me out, despite the Blazer whips that decorated her delicate back. But I did promise you a gauge, so I shall skip ahead.”
Vann felt his mind cringe and gasp. He instinctively tried to close his eyes and cover his ears, but there was no way to block out the horror from invading. Tarnavarian thrust him into the mental pictures, the horrid memories, as though they were living them fresh. It was the same manner of memory-sight that Vann had touched before, using his Psychonics in the embrace of the Guardian Bonding to exchange memories with the Guardians. This moment was disgusting and gut-wrenching for Vann, and it was laced with Tarnavarian's smooth satisfaction. He was acutely satisfied with himself, taking pleasure in his triumph. Extreme pleasure. He continued narrating his sick memory, although it painted a clear illustration without the proud proclamation of its fabricator.
“I place the Blazer whip along the small of her back one last time. She tries fruitlessly to squirm against the Binding spell. My incantation is too strong. The smooth skin sizzles like cooked meat. It smells delicious. I want to hear her sing out, to accompany the blue crackle of the Blazer with her fiery scarlet vocals, but she despoils my ear's desire by clenching her jaw firmly to spite me... Two minutes. When her defenses finally crumble, I thrust myself into that beautiful mind, vibrant with color. She finally screams, that song of horror and agony that chimes with ageless beauty... Three minutes, thirty five seconds.”
The witness of Kir's torture frayed the remaining threads of Vann's sanity. Kir's cries punctured the ears he didn't have. Vann added his own scream to the chorus.
Tarnavarian was ecstatic. “And thus, I have created a symphony...”
-7-
Cast Astray to Tumble, Under Boot
and Disinterested Gaze
We here sit upon our saddle blankets to keep the red Mercarian earth from lending stain to our pants. The skies are bright with twin moonshine, and the illumination of our fire adds to the ill
usion of dusk, when it has long since succumbed to night. We cannot yet see the lights of Arjo, though Malacar places his assurances that we are closing in on the coast and will shortly arrive. 'Shortly' is relative, and it implies imminence to one of my tender patience. I do not find an estimated arrival of “in a few days, give or take” to qualify. My weary bottom has tolerated chafe of saddle and rock of mattress these many weeks, and if I do not find relief 'shortly', I may shortly expire (if not by life, then certainly by good humor). These precious bones were not designed for a life of saddle and stone. They were meant for skiffs and silk. Malacar, in his warrior class upbringing, may be accustomed to the expected hardships of the lowers, but we privileged highborn are not. I have oft pondered Kir's fall from grace, how she coped and overcame so catastrophic a blow to her dignity. She rides, fights and dirties her hands without care or complaint, and in fact, seems to relish the lowly chores one would—should, rather—relegate to a servie. Such casual demeanor in duty is not behavior one would expect from a highborn noblewoman of her caliber, and I longed to know how she overcame her breeding to be content with this lesser world. When my curiosity outweighed my self-preservation and good senses, I dared ask. Much to my surprise, my contrary sister of the sword, who might otherwise have removed my tongue or my jewels for prying with so bold an inquiry, replied not with bitterness or anger, but with quiet humility.
Kir said, “It wasn't a fall, Toma. Not really. It gave me something I never had before: the means to survive. We're none of us better than the other, no matter how much magic we have, how noble our bloodlines say, or how high we hold our chins. Status is just a mask we use to go about our playacting. What I lost in status isn't worth what was returned in worldly gains. Despite what the priests teach, the nobles won't be the ones to survive another razing, even with all their magics.
Bardian's Redemption: Book Four of the Guardian's Vambrace (The Guardian Vambrace 4) Page 5