The Zi'veyn: The Devoted Trilogy, Book One

by Kim Wedlock

  "A...sorry, a what?"

  "A portian," Garon began reluctantly, having clearly wished to keep some details under wraps, "is the highest rank of working operative. Their emotions are entirely suppressed; they feel nothing, they think nothing. All that matters to them are their orders, completing their missions. By any means."

  Anthis looked slowly back to the inquisitor. "Should someone like that be allowed to lead?"

  "No," he confessed. "He took the position by killing the previous keliceran. That's generally how the position gets passed along, but it's always pre-determined. The individual is agreed upon between the current keliceran and the Crown's liaison to ensure the reins are handed to someone suitable."

  "So the keliceran sacrifices himself?"

  "When they're no longer able to do their job, yes. They know too much to be turned loose and after a life in such service, they wouldn't be able to function as a normal person. The one who takes their place is approached by the liaison directly with a mission of assassination under claims that the Crown wants the current leader removed due to compromisation. They don't generally learn the truth until years later, assuming they give it any thought at all. But it's usually a middle-rank who takes the job, a phidipan, capable of shutting feelings away enough to give their subordinates the difficult orders, but still able to feel compassion and a desire to protect their country."

  "All right...but Salus wasn't selected...so the previous kel-keliceran? The previous one was still--"

  "Yes," Rathen said darkly, finishing Anthis's struggling. "She was still suited to the job." His eyes shifted sharply back onto Garon, his arms folded tightly across his chest and a note of accusation to his voice, though not even Rathen was sure who it was aimed at. "All this - it's on us, too, isn't it?"

  He nodded regretfully, and he clearly felt the pressure of this new weight as much as they did. "He can't be touched, and the liaison wants to keep any of this from getting back to the keliceran and provoking him into doing something rash, which is why the Arana isn't being utilised for this despite being far more suited. Something caused his conditioning to break before he took the position, presumably some kind of trauma. As a result, he's unpredictable, and though he has a genuine desire to protect Turunda, he lacks the balance brought by being able to feel and fear as clearly as the rest of us. That's why he's not averse to taking severe action on his own prerogative.

  "As such, yes: we are more or less on our own. There won't be much help from the Hall from here on out, either."

  "You mean there was before?"

  Garon ignored the mage's dry remark. "It would be best to assume that, given his resources and skills, the keliceran knows everything that we do, if not more. We can say, however, that his one handicap is that Anthis has been with us rather than him."

  "What do you mean?" He frowned worriedly. "Me?"

  "Information suggests that you were a recruitment target of theirs." Anthis's eyes widened. "Fortunately, I got to you first. But you are a leading expert and surely their first choice, just as you were mine. That's all that has given us the advantage. Otherwise, Salus's resources far out-match ours, and they include mages. Despite his feelings for them, he understands the value of having them on his side. Which means time is truly of the essence - whatever we do to obtain this artefact, we must do it quickly."

  Garon's eyes flicked beyond them towards the fire, and he straightened cautiously as they followed.

  "It seems to me," Petra said quietly as she approached on soft, silent feet, "that we're doing the same thing we always were, just with greater urgency." She came to a stop beside them, the weak light revealing her little concern. "It's just that now we know someone else is on our tail. If we keep our sights fixed on what we're doing, we will get there first, and then we can keep it out of their hands and render the matter obsolete. After all, we don't have to divide our attention between this search and waylaying ghosts, do we?"

  "You're over-simplifying it," Garon snapped. "If he gets a single lead ahead of us he could very well reach it first, and if he uses it against the Order, Turunda will be vulnerable against attack! Skilan is marching all over us right now, and there are mages among them. They wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of the situation!"

  "Wouldn't the artefact also affect them?"

  "Possibly," Rathen replied, "but we have little idea what the spell within it actually does, by detail, nor how far its range is. And if it did only affect the Order and not invading mages, any spell I fashion in its place certainly won't be able to rebalance the field." He sighed and rubbed his temples, feeling the tensions that had finally fallen away when he'd turned the water blue return in force. "Elven or not, it simply couldn't nullify the magic of every mage in existence - if it did it would have left the elves who used it powerless, too - and if other countries learned that we were magically defenceless, we would become a very large and far too tempting target. The world is a mess right now. We wouldn't need to provoke an attack."

  "Not to mention what would happen to the mages themselves once powerless," Garon added. "A man that frightened wouldn't take their magic and leave it at that. He'd incarcerate them for life, at best, but with the idea that the Order has rebelled, he'd put them to death, and then there would be no magic when we needed it."

  Petra nodded slowly. "And yet, after all that..." She smiled earnestly. "What has actually changed?"

  Garon hung his head and shook it in defeat while Rathen turned away, his face twisted in disagreement and increasingly painful thought.

  Anthis, however, spoke up. "To be honest, she's right." Neither reacted. "We've not gained anything useful from this and neither have we been hindered in any way. And, regardless of what resources the Arana has, we've got all this in here. So unless we're being followed and we've led someone straight to it - and I'd be surprised if even a ghost could have followed us through that sand storm - we've still got the upper hand."

  "Now you're over-simplifying it."

  While Anthis rolled his eyes and turned to reply to Petra, Garon watched Rathen wander a few steps away. Whether he was looking to escape the conversation or just lost in thought, Garon moved after him anyway. But he suspected he knew what was on his mind, and it was another matter he'd been keen to address for quite some time.

  But he said nothing as he stopped beside him, their backs to the fire, and neither did Rathen look at him. The inquisitor waited patiently.

  "They don't understand," the mage said at last, quietly, gravely, confirming in his tone Garon's assumptions, "but to continue with this...we will be going up against a very serious force..."

  "All the more reason we need you with us."

  Rathen sent him a brief but calculating sideways glance, but again neither spoke for a while. The doubts about his involvement in this expedition had quietened over the past month after all he'd seen, heard and felt of this magic, silenced by the necessity of his role, but all of a sudden he found himself facing them once again, and they had multiplied at least tenfold. The inquisitor must have known this; he'd read his thoughts down to the letter.

  If he'd known before he'd set out that the Arana would be involved in this, he would have shrouded his house in any number of spells so that, should the inquisitor come knocking a second time, as indeed he had, he wouldn't have been able to find him.

  But now...now he was already neck-deep...

  Aria giggled in her sleep, and though he jolted to look around towards her, his fear, he discovered, had paralysed him against even that.

  "It's too extreme," he said before he realised he'd spoken, his tongue apparently still loose. "Too dangerous."

  "Rathen--"

  "I need to keep Aria safe. I have responsibilities."

  "Yes, you do, as a former--"

  "As a father!" His head snapped towards him, and he only just managed to rein his voice into a choked snarl. Garon, however, did not flinch. He simply stared right back at him.

  "What about Elle?"

&nbs
p; Rathen's expression dropped as if he'd been physically struck and dazed.

  "I told you," he said quietly, "I know everything I need to know about you. I wouldn't have risked coming to you otherwise. And now, it seems, I am coming to you again." Garon took a half-step closer. "We still need to remove this magic, which means we will still need to use the Zi'veyn ourselves. You said yourself the spell would have deteriorated, it will need patching, and you are the only one who can be trusted to do it, soldier or not. Now that the populace are retaliating against the Order, there may well be some mages who have had enough and decide to stand their ground, and then a genuine rebellion will ravage the country. We cannot take the artefact to them in your place. If a discontented scholar gets his hands on it he could potentially work out how to use its raw power for other means, and then it truly will become a weapon." His measured eyes pierced Rathen's, though the mage's had become glazed and distant. "The original task is still there, Rathen, and very much still a priority. You said it yourself: this all has something to do with the magic."

  Silence swirled around them while he waited for a response. Petra and Anthis's voices grew sharp and clear as they continued speaking behind them, and the weak campfire crackled with the power of a pyre.

  "Nothing's changed," Rathen mumbled to himself at last, then his eyes finally flicked back to the inquisitor. "I would draw attention to you all. After Carenna--"

  "I was aware of that possibility when I first came to you. It's worth the risk."

  "Not for Aria."

  "I would think, if there was a favourable answer to this question, that it wouldn't need asking in the first place. But something tells me it isn't so simple." He looked briefly back towards the slumbering child. "We need you, Rathen. That fact is absolute. So I ask you, and answer truthfully: is there no one who can watch her?"

  Rathen followed his gaze and watched the blanket rise and fall with Aria's gentle breathing, while the deeply troubled crease returned to his misery-lined face.

  "Could Kienza not do it?"

  Undesired, names and faces rolled slowly through his mind, all belonging to people he had counted on, once upon a time. But they were not approachable now.

  Garon's eyes were fixed, unblinking. Rathen seemed to shake his head, but it could have been a twitch. He was certainly lost in thought.

  He eventually parted his lips, inhaled to speak, but something stilled his tongue. "There..." His voice was quiet, almost inaudible in his reluctance, indecisive about even finishing his sentence. Garon knew what that meant. He turned himself to face him, the firelight blinding his right eye. "There...might be someone..."

  Kienza. She only ever appeared when she wanted to - not when she needed something, just when she wanted to - and though he always sensed that she knew when he needed her, he wasn't convinced that this was one of those times. He trusted her absolutely, in general as well as a guardian, but what she did in her own time was unpredictable. If it were just for a few days he wouldn't have worried, but this could be...

  Rathen became aware of the downward pull of his lips. He forced his face to relax.

  This could be a long time. She needed somewhere stable...somewhere he knew was safe and unchanging.

  "Who?"

  Rathen didn't hear the question. His mind was still spinning indecisively. Above all else, he desperately didn't want to let her out of his sight, let her leave his side. She was all he had, and himself the same to her. She was all that was certain and constant in his world.

  But...

  'These very scowles could close up and swallow your curious little home with you still in it!'

  The knot in his brow pulled upwards a little further, and the conflicting voices of various responsibilities roared ever louder in his mind.

  Garon watched him for a long while. Regret had softened his features into the visage of another man - one, he suspected, few had seen in a decade - but as his expression took on a slightly firmer edge, he stepped around in front of him expectantly. "Where do we need to go?"

  Rathen's eyes focused back upon him. "Nowhere. We continue as we are. Kienza will find us."

  Garon searched his eyes, but the mixture of uncertainty, discomfort and resignation within them wasn't hard to spot. He looked away respectfully, belated though the sentiment was, and gave a single nod of acceptance before turning back to the others, putting an end to the matter. "If we're still to head to Enhala," he began louder, catching their attention as he made towards the bags and withdrew a map, "we should go by sea."

  "By sea?" Petra frowned. "But Enhala is why we were heading through the desert in the first place!"

  "Yes, and that was fine until the peace talks between Kasire and Ivaea fell apart. According to my most recent missive, the two countries are at war once again, but this time it's fuelled further by insult to both Crowns. It's not safe." He unrolled the map as they gathered around. Rathen took his time to join them.

  The inquisitor pointed to the western edge of the desert, bordering the sea, a narrow bay edged to the north and south by mountains. "Once we've returned Eyila we can sail out from here and bypass the Kasire-Ivaea border, as well as the worst of the fighting. Enhala is to the western edge of the country so we can cover most of the distance by boat and keep out of their affairs, but once we land, we will still be in a serious war zone."

  "You make it sound so very simple." Bewildered eyes landed upon Petra, who looked down at the map hopelessly. She tapped the parchment at open water, a little further westward from the proposed travel route. "Ships never make it through these waters," she stated. "Never. Huge storms force sailors to abandon course or wreck; sometimes they sail into a never-ending fog, get turned around inside and are so grateful to be out that they don't dare try the route again, and if the weather is with them, the rest simply sail in a straight line by sight and compass and still manage to get turned around, and wind up back where they started. Attempting the journey again always results in the same thing."

  "Maritime superstition," Garon said impatiently.

  "Sounds more like the talk of drunken sailors and inadequate captains." Anthis observed.

  "It's the same thing."

  "But how do you know this?"

  "Coastal towns," she shrugged. "Restless sailors keen for a fight. I make good money in places like that. But too many sailors have said the same thing: any who try to sail the Roquna never make it through. Most no longer even try."

  "So what you're saying is that it's quiet and rarely travelled?"

  "Yes - and for good reason."

  The words sounded unfortunately familiar, and all looked slowly towards Garon, seeing the signs of yet another poor decision they would surely only just survive by the skin of their teeth. And yet, despite that probability, not one of them spoke against it. It seemed it was either 'try to sail an unsailable sea' or 'walk willingly into a battle ground', and every one of them knew which they preferred.

  "Is it possible that it's just a natural phenomenon?" Anthis asked in the hope of settling his own mind against the concern. "Perhaps their compasses are reacting to something nearby and making them change course without realising it? Across featureless or foggy seas, I'd imagine it's quite difficult to notice a slight degree's turn..."

  She raised her finger. "There is one problem with that idea: the stars never changed."

  "Well...that's--"

  "That's our route." Garon rolled the map back up and returned it to his bag. "So unless Anthis can find us a new destination by the time we return to the tribe, you'll have to accept it. Now, get some rest, all of you. We head out come morning, and this is a good opportunity to catch up on sleep."

  "For some of us," Petra mumbled, but she didn't linger. She turned back to her bed roll, and though Garon sent her his usual flat stare, she didn't care to look back for it.

  Anthis shifted uncomfortably under the atmosphere, and after hastily wishing everyone a good night - Garon didn't reply, of course, and Rathen seemed too distracted by
his mysterious thoughts to have heard him - he equally retired to his blankets, his mind too addled with revelations to even attempt returning to work. Rathen, silently, did the same.

  Garon looked over them as they settled, then to his own blankets. He dismissed them as he stifled a creeping yawn to the best of his ability, and turned instead to look all around the central chamber, noting all possible exits and entrances. He didn't notice himself linger in Petra's direction. He then began to wander as the others drifted off to sleep, but after four more yawns managed to momentarily incapacitate him, he grumbled to himself and sent the sleeping Petra a reproachful look. Only once he was sure everyone was deep in dreams did he turn begrudgingly to his blankets.

  Chapter 42

  Salus could still hear Denek's voice reverberating through his skull. 'Don't arch your back. Breathe naturally. Relax your face.' It was enough to drive him insane, and the mage's relentless obsession with his breathing and posture was beginning to revive his doubts. If it weren't for the indisputable proof he'd been handed in that very first session, he'd have given up by now and turned him back over to Nolan to extract every piece of information he could. Teagan had already suggested he do as much. In fact, he was quite pushy about it - he'd mentioned it twice in the last four days. But he couldn't understand. He hadn't felt what Salus had, and there were no words he could find to sufficiently explain it. So he'd given up trying.

  But his patience was beginning to slip. He'd made no further progress in the week since he'd first come face to face with his magic, and he was starting to dread going down into those cells every day, knowing each time he did that he was sacrificing time that could have been spent making a real and immediate difference to Turunda's security. But he forcibly reminded himself, as he bit his tongue very hard at each of the mage's dry remarks, that this would yield better and greater results than anything within his present capabilities.

  Eventually.

  But despite that promise, he'd had to postpone that day's session. His mind would collapse under the weight of his tension if he tried to put himself through those trials again, and there was too much else to do to be able to spare the time.