The Zi'veyn: The Devoted Trilogy, Book One

by Kim Wedlock

  His jaw knotted again and his spine turned rigid. He could almost feel their pursuers breathing down his neck.

  Somewhere in this forsaken place, the Zi'veyn, the elven relic impossibly capable of directly affecting magic, was waiting for someone to collect and use it, possibly for the first time since its creation. And while it should have been a comfort to know that only one of elven blood could bend its power to their will, it seemed suddenly to be a curse. He was more painfully aware now than ever of the fact that it fell to him alone to repair its spell and turn it upon the magic that ravaged their world. If Salus managed to get to it first - and with the help of his captive mage and those magic-users under his command, he may well have better instruction than what Rathen had alone - he was just as likely to muddle through and repair it himself. And then...

  He didn't dare to think. He knew only that they had to find it first, if just to keep it out of his hands.

  But there was too much damned ground to cover to find the accursed thing, and that ground was too unstable and suspended for them to chance splitting up...

  A long shadow shifted. Anthis stepped up beside him, his scrolls still open in his hands though he'd been paying them less and less attention, and surveyed the area himself. "Let's throw some logic at this," he began, clearly fighting against his wandering curiosity. "This place was built as a 'testament to elven power', yes? And its existence and location were kept a secret from almost every elf. The ones fortunate enough to be in the know would have been of the highest social status, which is always accompanied by some degree of arrogance. It's not a big leap to assume that they would have been arrogant enough to think the secrecy of the place was enough to make it safe - safe enough to store a mass weapon."

  "We've already been told it's here," Garon reminded him.

  "Yes - and likely not very well hidden, if even hidden at all."

  The inquisitor blinked in realisation. "This place would have been enough..."

  "That still doesn't tell us where we should start searching," Petra pointed out irritably, but Anthis only smiled. She sneered. He ignored it.

  "We don't need to search. We need to go to the heart."

  "And where would that be?"

  The young historian pointed, far beyond the visible reach of any of the spilling paths and off towards a twisting spire, a structure that seemed in the sunset to be gilded in more gold than the surrounding onyx. But, like everything else in 'Khry's Glory', this 'testament to elven power', it was far from in one piece. In fact, almost a full quarter had broken away to float in the air alongside it, like the shards of the winding roads.

  "A rickety old tower?"

  Rathen grimaced. "I'm having flashbacks."

  Garon, however, stepped past them and started down the path that seemed to head in its direction, stubbornly steeling himself against his limp and straightening from his sideways hunch. "Let's go."

  Anthis was immediately behind him, releasing his dutiful hold over his focus, and though Petra and Rathen cast each other dubious looks, they could offer no alternatives. But Petra didn't remain quiet. "Something's been bothering me. The information about the artefact was scattered over at least two ruins - what if the artefact itself isn't here? What if these rebels got to it and stole it away? Or destroyed it? And that fact is stashed up in another ruin?"

  But Anthis shook his head, even as his starry eyes returned to drinking in the strange world. "It's here," he replied absently as he watched four young women of varying completion enjoying a needlessly messy dessert in front of one mirrored parlour. "The rebels didn't get it. If they had, they would have left a much bigger mark on history; their legacy would be more than a few notes and scrolls locked away in dark holes..." He frowned for a moment and raised his hand to his temple. His head throbbed. The air was growing thin.

  They struggled onwards, puffing as every step became suddenly more taxing than the last, as though in a single moment they'd travelled from the foot of a mountain to its peak and gained none of the visibility. But there was still no time to think on it.

  Rathen looked up again to the burning sky. No time. And yet this place was timeless; nothing changed, but somehow grew ever stranger. He had no idea how long they'd been inside, nor how far behind them the door now lay, but with every passing moment the urgency of the others failed. Gasps began to rise more frequently with every turning they took, and Petra soon began to hum. Softly and absently, she sang along the incessant music that rotated in their heads like a never-ending music box, and Garon, too, eventually joined in. But Anthis fell further: three times he had wandered away from the group, twice for the lure of voluptuous figures and the perfectly sweet scents of fruit tarts, and once for a boutique filled with ornate trinkets, the magical functions of which were anyone's guess. If Eizariin had stashed a map within his scrolls, or directions, or even a nugget of advice, he wasn't going to find it.

  But Eyila... The rest were so far gone that not even Petra noticed the mumbles and whispers as she staggered along at her shoulder. But Rathen heard them. And he saw the now absolute emptiness of her ice-blue eyes.

  Eyila was no longer there.

  And still he could do nothing but hurry them along. He couldn't risk casting a spell over her, not even one so simple as to discover the extent of the turmoil in her blood. He had no idea how it might affect her. And if her magic was responding to the arcanised air... He shook away the image of the burned corpse in the desert.

  If her magic was responding, he'd rather not make it worse. He would just have to keep a closer eye on her. And if her situation worsened...he would have no choice but to intervene. If not to save her, then to save everyone else.

  Despite his still-spinning head and the debilitating pressure of both gravity and responsibility, he increased his pace, and the others, when they noticed, followed suit.

  The tower loomed. It was far bigger than they had first thought, all but piercing through the false sky, and its walls and frames truly looked ready to fail at any moment. As the rest stood and stared in a disconnected daydream, Rathen turned towards Anthis. The historian took his time to drag his eyes away from the sculpted claddings.

  "You're sure?" He asked him gravely, but Anthis merely smiled and nodded before allowing his thin attention to float onto one of the strange, golden birds above them as it gave an unnaturally smooth aerobatic display, its jewelled feet and beak glittering in the unwaning light.

  Rathen sighed hopelessly and turned back to the twisting spire. "This had better not take long..." With sufferance, he started up the fifty or so steps towards the enormous doors, leading the way around missing stones that had been replaced by pools of black he thought best not to touch, and gingerly pushed his way inside, gritting his teeth against the sound of broken rubble scraping across the floor.

  Despite the reach of the low evening light, he wasn't hard for seeing. Inside, dozens of tiny flames floated at twice head height, illuminating the ostentatious decor like as many orange fireflies, and a few had drifted to engulf a wall lined with rich tapestries which brightened the atrium into day. He wondered for a distant moment if it had been burning for minutes or for years. The fire made no effort to spread, leaving the recamiers, tables and vases of freshly picked flowers untouched.

  More outbursts of awe followed the far less cautious steps of the others as they wandered in leisurely behind him, and immediately they began to disperse and indulge their childish curiosity. Rathen was just as quick to round them all back up. "You're worse than Aria." He sighed and straightened, casting over them the same disapproving eyes that she would have been subjected to. "All of you, try to focus. This is no time or place to wander off." He looked pointedly towards Anthis again. "Where in this tower is the Zi'veyn most likely to be?"

  "The top, knowing our luck," Petra muttered mildly, gazing up towards the distant ceiling which stood too far above them for their frescoes to be decipherable beyond a myriad of metallic colours. Rathen followed her gaze, cursing silently
because, of course, that was bound to be the case.

  Without warning, Anthis suddenly surged past him, evading his belated grasp as he snatched out towards his collar to pull him backwards, and barrelled across the lavish atrium with little care for the cracks and debris that tried to trip him up. Garon followed, though his pace was far more laggard than befitted him, and Petra sauntered along behind, Eyila hanging off of her as though she had become little more than luggage.

  Rathen cursed and hurried after them, silently thankful once again that at least he didn't have to keep the mischievous Aria in his sights.

  Finely gilded display cases lined the furthest wall, separated by pedestals bearing excessively large, ornate vases of the most unusually coloured and fragranced blooms, and watched over by a cavalcade of enormous, regal and distinctly contemptuous portraits. The elves' pastel eyes looked far too real, and Rathen did his best not to sneer back at them.

  He also stubbornly restrained his awe as he peered briefly at the jewels and trinkets of typically extravagant design that filled each of those cases. Every piece was perfectly sized to fit in the palm of the hand, and all enrobed in spells. Even through the chaos that permeated the air, he could feel the hum and concentration of magic encased before him. Many of the trinkets were probably created entirely from spells, but what details he could pick from the mess were frivolous: music, intoxication, scents and sensations, some of which made him blush outrageously just by identifying them. But the tangle was so severe that just trying to follow a single thread quickly resulted in a headache, so he didn't waste his time for long.

  Once again, he rounded the others back up, dragging them away from the exhibitions and towards the grandiose staircase at the furthest end, ignoring their protests and reminding them all the while of just why they were there. As he ushered Garon, the last to be collected, he found that Anthis had wandered away again.

  Cursing colourfully, he stormed over to the small case the historian had returned to, standing quietly and nodding to himself as he peered indifferently through the glass with a benign purse to his lips. "This isn't a museum," Rathen reminded him, grasping him firmly at the elbow, but though he'd intended to, and quite unceremoniously at that, he didn't drag him away. He stared down at the lone, single trinket that rested inside the modest casing. The small, upturned pyramid that only just seemed to hold Anthis's flimsy attention. At the contours, accentuated by black and gold, that lured his eyes along the crown of thorns that arced into the centre of its broad, top surface. His gaze followed their points, and dropped into the golden lotus that unfurled beneath it before spilling over its dozen petals. He was quickly caught by the barbs protruding midway along each of the four edges, and guided down towards its jagged-cut tip.

  He blinked, stunned and blind-sided, while Anthis grunted thoughtfully beside him. The historian cocked his head. "Smaller than I expected."

  His irritation fled. Rathen tossed his elbow away and quickly probed the tiny trinket, and his disbelief only grew when he confirmed the nature of its surrounding spells. He shook his head as his eyes widened even further, and forcibly ignored the terror birthed by its very presence. "This is it, isn't it?"

  "Mm. Seems to be..."

  Rathen overlooked his disturbing mildness, along with the murmurs of wonder as the others gathered around them. If this was the Zi'veyn - if he could truly believe that such a small, unsuspecting thing could possibly be a weapon against all of elvenkind - then...the matter now fell to him.

  With the greatest of effort, he forced his mind to clear, shaking away the shock at what appeared to be an actual result from their beyond unlikely quest, and focused into the magic as a petrified sweat began dewing his skin.

  Dubiously, he levelled against the Zi'veyn's enrobing weave of spells, and discovered immediately that it was one thicker and more immense than anything he'd ever felt. That was not so surprising, but the extent of its degradation was. Despite the seven centuries that had led to the breakdown of almost everything else within this arcane place, each spell that protected the meagre little relic was still whole enough to function. And they were brutal, so much so that, had he not experienced the elven definition of 'helping' for himself, he would have presumed they were meant simply as a deterrent rather than actual punishment. Some boldly threatened physical pain - seared skin, blunt strikes and lacerations - while others dealt in mental torment, digging up one's most painful memories, or sucking away anything good and cheerful. But a few were far more intricate, resulting, when tripped, in a violent bio-chemical response that would cause the would-be thief's own magic to attack them. He didn't truly understand the workings of those, but something within him was assured that it was not something he wanted to comprehend, and certainly not to experience.

  But, though he hunted, he found no alarms. Instead the shroud had been woven with hairpin triggers, fatally precise and even more sensitive now that certain chains had fallen away, and were almost certainly intended both to be triggered and to make disabling the defences even more difficult. The elves had had no wish for direct confrontation, instead it seemed potential thieves were left to see to their own undoing.

  Rathen felt his blood begin to burn, and wondered for a moment if he hadn't tripped one of the snares just by looking at it. He recognised it as anxiety only when sweat began to trickle and nausea turned his stomach. But still something encouraged his hearing to sharpen and strain through the ever-present music for sounds of approach, but he couldn't decide if there was nothing, or if he just couldn't hear it.

  He grunted belittlingly and refocused. The spells were complex, so much so that there had to be a quick and simple means of deactivating it in case the thing was needed. But he knew he had no time to discover it, and as his heart hammered, his attention slipped desperately beneath it and onto the Zi'veyn. A resentful hiss seeped through his lips. Its time-worn damage was repairable, and certainly minimised by its shroud, but if the intricacies of those protective spells were any indication, it would take far more to achieve than his limited knowledge could offer.

  "Well?"

  Startled, he snapped around to Garon, and the inquisitor looked back with a shadow of his usual steadiness. But at least some semblance of his dull and unappealing personality was still there. "Well what?"

  "Can you fix it?"

  He blinked. "Y-well, I--maybe--" He bit his lip. "Yes." He found he didn't want to hear any other answer, himself. "But not here. And not quickly. I need to...work it all out..." He looked disdainfully back to the small, glistening relic.

  "Time isn't something we have a lot of."

  Rathen glowered back at him. "You seem to forget that no mage has ever had to reconstruct a spell before. A preserver would have trouble with this, and you've--"

  "Recruited a soldier. Yes." His grey eyes, softened by the magic's influence, sank to the Zi'veyn, and he cocked his head as distantly as Anthis had. "Will patching it not work?"

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "Because of what it has to do! Impacting magic shouldn't even be possible; to even get close would take a solid spell, no holes or patches! The Order has never been able to flawlessly patch even the city walls!"

  "All right, it's unknown ground," the inquisitor conceded too easily, "but you have elven magic. You were a child prodigy; your superiors felt your promise, felt the power in your blood. You have a better chance of achieving this than anyone else does..."

  Rathen bristled but bit back his many possible retorts. "It's not something any mage has been trained to do, least of all me. Elven magic or not--"

  "You have no choice but to do it."

  "And it would help if I knew what, precisely, the spell was supposed to do!"

  "Can you not work that out from what's left?"

  His fists tightened at his sides, increasingly provoked by the officer's dreaminess, the easy confidence with which he spoke, and the fact that he was right on all counts. "Yes," he replied through his teeth, "but it will take time. But.
..but that will be all right. As long as we have the Zi'veyn, it will be all right..." His shoulders loosened ever so slightly, and he turned away from the case and the unyielding pressure that came from the very sight of the thing.

  "Keeping it away from Salus is only part of the problem," Anthis murmured, absorbed in unreadable thoughts as he looked up at one of the paintings, an elf, gloved and adorned in outrageously ornate ebon filigree that made her moonlight skin even brighter. "I mean...the magic's only going to get worse..."

  Rathen gave him a flat look. "You're not helping. Look, I've got notes, ideas for the spell - I have no clue if they will work, so I don't know what help they could be towards this thing, but it's all I've got. You're going to have to be patient."

  "We don't have--"

  Something snapped. "Don't you dare tell me what we don't have!" His bellowing voice filled the atrium as rage finally erupted in his eyes. "I am well aware of the situation - I wouldn't be here if I wasn't! Salus is after us, and now elves are too, apparently! So shut up, keep your helpful little reminders to yourself and let me do what you dragged me out here to do!"

  "Perhaps," began Petra, untroubled by his outburst as she cast a half-wary glance back towards the enormous, carven doors, "we should actually take it first. Then we will have it, and then you can fix it."

  Rathen hesitated as she looked back and offered a chillingly calm smile. "...That's the next prob--" His eyes flicked onto Eyila, certain he'd heard the melodious lilt of her voice. "Pardon?"

  Her eyes, shockingly pale, as large as saucers and brimming with wonder and terror alike, drifted onto him from whatever had enraptured them. "Blanket..."

  "Are you cold?" Petra asked her softly, but Rathen shook his head, his own eyes suddenly alight with a jumble of thoughts that cascaded like the unearthly waterfalls outside. He spun back to the case and stared, nodding and shaking his head, mumbling all the while as he filtered the thoughts and forced them into order. Then his lines smoothed and realisation settled. Even a smile tried to tug at the corner of his lips, though it didn't manage to take hold.