[fan] fourth talisman 01 - nocturne

by Kat Ross

  “A roll between the sheets would probably do you good. If not Katrin, how about one of the others? You always had a little harem hanging about as I recall. I can round them up for you.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Enough, Mina.”

  He rolled to his side. The chair creaked as she sat down.

  “Do you really have to stay here?” he demanded. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  “Eirik says so. You can argue with him if you like. I don’t care either way.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  He fell asleep to the sound of the wind. The dream was vivid. He stood in a large square at the center of a magnificent city. The buildings were made of some polished material that looked like colored glass, each a different subtle hue that caught the sunlight. Graceful spires stood against the sky and he could hear the rush of water through a multitude of fountains and canals. Tall statues ringed the square itself. He saw the stern features of the Valkirins, the curly hair of the Marakai, the stocky build of the Danai and others he didn’t recognize. Each had distinct faces, as though copied from life by a skilled artisan who managed to capture the subjects’ personalities in the smallest details of their expressions—the curve of a mouth accustomed to laughter, the stubborn set of a jaw or intensity of a gaze.

  Culach turned to the man standing next to him. He had bright red hair and large pale eyes fringed with reddish lashes. A gold circlet nestled amid his curls, plain except for a jeweled serpent above his brow. Ranks of similarly red-haired men and women stood at a respectful distance behind him, and although they carried no weapons, Culach knew from their bearing that they were soldiers, some kind of honor guard.

  “The clans have come to parley,” Culach said, although it was not his own voice. This sounded raspier, with an eager, obsequious quality he despised instantly.

  “So they have,” the other man replied lazily.

  He gazed across the plaza at a group of perhaps twenty daēvas standing on the opposite side. Their faces were set in grim lines.

  “Come forth!” shouted Culach—or whoever it was he seemed to be inhabiting.

  Two women and a man stepped out of the crowd, the first silver-haired and pale, the second with olive skin and a long dark braid, and the last with broad shoulders and skin of the richest ebony.

  “We demand a truce,” the woman with the braid called out. “We offer you a final chance.”

  The man with the circlet laughed. “How generous of you. And what are the terms?”

  “You keep to your lands. We keep to ours. But you must stop this madness.”

  “And if I refuse?” He sounded amused.

  “You will be trapped here forever,” said the broad-shouldered man.

  Culach’s companion turned to him.

  “How shall we answer their terms, old friend?”

  “Burn them,” Culach heard himself say.

  The shorter man raised his hand. A single flame danced there, hovering above the palm. He stared at it in fascination for a long moment, then closed his fist. A wall of fire swept across the square. Culach felt a fierce satisfaction. Burn them all. Every single one.

  He’d expected the daēvas to break, but they stood their ground. The Valkirin of the three who had come forward threw her head back. Her mouth opened. Culach heard the roar of a terrible wind and the flames leapt even higher, then began racing back toward him, an inferno a hundred feet high. He threw himself behind one of the statues as it broke over the plaza in a molten wave and continued into the city. He smelled charred flesh, heard screaming. Culach stumbled for the nearest way out, his robes smoking, and then he was in the desert, running toward that hidden sinkhole, the gale howling at his back….

  He jolted awake with a gasp, pulse throbbing in his temples.

  “I’m here.”

  It was Mina. Unlike Katrin, she didn’t attempt to touch him. He found himself almost wishing she would.

  “Another nightmare?” Mina laid a cold cloth across his forehead. “That’s the third time this week. Sometimes you call out in your sleep.” She hesitated. “I can’t make out the words though.”

  He couldn’t always remember the dreams, but Culach knew they were becoming more frequent. As though a door had opened in his mind and he couldn’t close it. At first, they had been fragmentary images of fire and yellow sand and intense blue sky. He’d heard of the sun, but its blinding brightness was still overwhelming. Those always ended in smothering darkness.

  But recently, the dreams had changed. He no longer floated bodiless but inhabited a particular person. The man with the rasping voice. Worst of all, Culach was becoming convinced the man was not mortal but a daēva.

  Except this daēva could work fire.

  It wasn’t possible. Just a dream, he told himself. He was weaving together disparate strands into a fantasy conjured by his own tortured mind. Every child knew fire was inimical to daēvas, the one element they couldn’t work because it would boil the blood in their veins to touch it for even a single instant.

  He also knew if he told Mina all this, she would laugh at him.

  “I don’t remember my dreams,” he muttered. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ll have some lunch. I’ve decided I’m hungry after all.”

  He didn’t need her hovering over him, watching him. He just wanted to be left alone.

  “I was only trying to help—”

  “I don’t need your help.” Culach made his voice harsh. “Your position here is precarious, Mina. Don’t make it worse.”

  There was a lengthy silence, long enough for him to regret his words. He knew he shouldn’t take his frustration out on her. She had it hard enough already. He was steeling himself to apologize, but she left before he could say anything more. He wondered if he’d wounded her, but the thought was ridiculous. Mina couldn’t care less what he thought. He’d said far worse to her before. And yet Culach felt a twinge of self-loathing as he lay back on his bed, waiting for her to return with his lunch.

  He waited a long time.

  9

  Something Wicked

  Nine daēvas stood in a circle.

  Four men and five women—the strongest of those who remained at the mighty stronghold of Val Moraine. A knife made from the yellowed fang of an isbjörn passed from hand to hand. Each stepped forward and made a shallow slice across the palm, their blood joining a pool that shimmered like oil in the moonlight.

  The cavern’s mouth lay open to the shoulder of the mountain. Just below it, a winding, icy pass led south toward the great forest of the Danai. To the west was the shore of the White Sea and the harbor where the trading ships anchored. On a clear night, when all three moons had risen, one might even catch a glimpse of the barren, rocky Isles of the Marakai. But thick snow-laden clouds obscured the view this morning, wreathing the mountain in grey mist. There hadn’t been a clear day in weeks, Eirik reflected, as his third cousin Agathe handed him the knife, her face grave. Val Moraine was truly alone, an island of sanity in a world that seemed to have gone mad.

  Eirik was the last to cut himself. He watched his blood drip steadily into the pool. When he felt satisfied it was large enough, he signaled to the others.

  This was the moment. If any of them had second thoughts and refused, the effort would fail. In ancient days, Gerda had told him, thirteen were used for the circle. It might be done with nine, but no less. Eirik looked at each daēva in turn. None avoided his gaze. None left. They still trusted him, though he sensed their fear. What they were about to do had been forbidden for centuries.

  “Now,” Eirik said, drawing a deep breath and reaching for air.

  A breeze swept the cavern and the air crackled with invisible lightning as they wove their talents together. Most Avas Valkirin were strongest in air, while the Danai were strongest in earth and the Marakai in water. Gerda said all three elements were needed to make a chimera, but the balance depended on the skills of the makers.

  A thin rivulet of blood rose
up from the pool like a scarlet serpent. Chips of stone broke loose from the cavern walls and were pulverized to chalky dust that swirled and eddied around the blood, giving it substance. The daēvas joined hands, the wounds on their palms still oozing. They fed their creation with spite and malice and all the secret darkness in their hearts. Eirik thought of his wife Ygraine, who’d died giving birth, and his daughter Neblis, lost to the shadowlands. Of vicious battles won and lost, and his bitter disappointment in his only living heir. Around him, he heard teeth grinding and moans of despair as the others dredged up their own tragedies.

  Out of their pain and fear, something shimmered into being in the middle of the circle.

  It was bound together by air and thus translucent except for the blood coursing through a network of delicately branching veins and occasional clots of darker matter. Its teeth had the shape and color of icicles.

  Freeze my bones. Look at that thing!

  “Cage it!” he barked, struggling to master himself. The emotional wounds he’d gouged open still festered, but this was the most dangerous time. Before a chimera had been wedded to its quarry, Gerda said it could turn on its maker.

  Eirik started weaving air and earth—as much as he could manage—and after a long moment, the others joined him, some with tears dampening their cheeks. The thing’s tail lashed angrily as it lunged…and slammed into an invisible barrier. Only its makers could cage it. No other magic would touch the monstrous thing.

  Let it hold, just for a few more seconds…

  Eirk approached the cage and extended a single light brown hair, taking care to keep his hand well out of reach. The chimera snuffled. Its hot breath plumed in the air, imprinting the scent in its memory. Even with his sharp daēva eyes, Eirik had trouble seeing it. The thing was a chameleon. It was like looking at a shard of glass through running water. He could only track it when it moved and those clots of darker matter shifted and bunched in its haunches.

  The chimera tossed its head back but made no sound.

  They repeated the process five more times, until a half dozen of the creatures filled the cavern with dark, unbridled energy and the daēvas themselves were weak from blood loss. The last three were given strands of dark brown hair with a slight wave to it. Eirik had no idea how his informant had obtained them. If the hairs belonged to the wrong people, they would soon be very dead. But the source had never deceived him. All his information had proved to be accurate thus far.

  Eirik’s shoulders slumped. He felt utterly drained.

  Let it be over.

  He saw Ygraine’s face, not contorted in agony but radiant as she told him she was carrying a child after so many years of fruitlessly trying. Their shared excitement when they discovered in the third month of her pregnancy that it was not one but two—twins. A girl and a boy, the midwife said. Neblis and Culach.

  One now vanished, the other crippled, and Ygraine gone to her eternal slumber in the icy crypts.

  Would she approve of what he’d done?

  He looked at the chimera, pulsing with his own grief and fury.

  Goodbye, my love.

  Eirik steadied his voice.

  “Hunt,” he said.

  The Valkirins released the cage and hastily stepped back. Hands fell to sword hilts and rested there, even though they’d been told the creatures would only attack if they stood in the way of the quarry. It was an unreasoning fear. But it was impossible to be in the presence of a chimera and not reach for the nearest weapon.

  With no power to bind them, the cages fell away to dust. The six creatures stood there for an instant, perfectly motionless. Then they surged as one into the frigid darkness. They made no sound. Chimera only howled when their quarry was within sight.

  They were living beings, Eirik knew, with hearts and lungs and brains, but different from all others on the face of the earth. They would not pause except to feed. They needed no rest. They could not be killed or even unmade with the power. They were literally unstoppable. Only when their purpose was completed, the quarry torn to shreds, would they dissolve into their respective elements.

  Outside the holdfast, it was black as pitch. The heavy cloud cover over the mountains prevented any light from leaking through. But the creatures sensed Selene in the sky above and felt a fierce joy at being newly born and having purpose. They would follow the moon to the forest. One quarry was there. The other had already moved on. That didn’t concern them. They had nothing but time.

  The pack ran down the steep mountainside, breath streaming out in white banners that the wind snatched away without a trace.

  10

  To Samarqand

  On the eighth day, Darius returned to the world of the living.

  By the light of a single lumen crystal, he saw the familiar tangle of leafy branches above his bed, the crooked gap revealing a patch of stars in the quilt of the night sky. A large moth clung to the bark, its wings like pale, delicate lace. His head throbbed. So did his leg, although it was a duller ache.

  His mother’s face floated over the bed. It split in a huge grin.

  “You’re awake,” she murmured, kissing his cheek. “I’ve been so worried.”

  “Nazafareen,” he croaked. “Where is she?”

  Delilah didn’t answer. She poured a cup of water from a wooden jug and held it to his parched lips. Darius took a sip, fighting down nausea. The room spun in a lazy circle. He remembered Nazafareen flying through the air like a dry leaf in the wind. He remembered his knee shattering and then a blackness that felt like death.

  Darius sat up too fast and nearly vomited. Delilah made a tsking sound and laid a hand on his chest, pushing him back down.

  “Where is she?” he asked again.

  “Galen killed the Valkirin with an arrow. She’s perfectly safe.”

  Something in her tone sounded cagey. “What do you mean, perfectly safe?”

  When Delilah didn’t answer again, he gripped the edge of the bed and forced himself to sitting. His stomach gave a slow roll but it wasn’t as bad as the first time. He gingerly touched his skull and felt a knot above his left ear.

  “Tethys,” his mother said. “She knit your bones together, but you mustn’t exert yourself. It was a serious injury. You need food and rest.”

  Darius flexed his leg. The joint was still stiff. He threw the covers back.

  “Find Nazafareen,” he said. “I need to see her.”

  In fact, he desperately wanted to touch her, smell her, hold her in his arms. If he hadn’t been unable to sleep for thinking about her, if he hadn’t sensed so much power being worked in her house—far more than Nazafareen could manage—she’d be dead now. He cursed himself for not keeping a closer watch over her. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. Whether she liked it or not, Darius intended to put a cot in her room and stay there until this matter with the Valkirins was settled to his satisfaction.

  Nazafareen had given her hand for him, although he hadn’t yet told her that story. She was the only thing that truly mattered to him in the world. He cared for Delilah, but in truth, he hardly knew either of his parents. The magi had taken him away as an infant to be raised as a soldier-slave.

  “Darius,” Delilah said carefully. “I need you to stay calm.”

  Naturally, her words had the opposite effect. His pulse began to hammer.

  “What is it?”

  Delilah took a breath, tipped her chin up defiantly. He braced himself for what was coming.

  “Nazafareen is gone.”

  “What do you mean gone?”

  “She left yesterday. She did it to protect you. The Valkirins vowed to kill us all.”

  He stared at his mother in disbelief. “And you let this happen?”

  “I couldn’t stop her.”

  Darius’s rage was a cold thing, burrowing like a blade into his heart.

  “Of course you could have. You chose not to. Where did she go?”

  Darius gained his feet. He felt a thousand years old, but he knew from experi
ence that the stiffness would pass if he forced himself to move. He’d taken worse injuries than this and he’d have to leave right away if he had a chance of catching her before the Valkirins did. Then they would leave this place and never come back. Bone-deep weariness and sorrow washed through him. Delilah knew what Nazafareen meant to him. It was a betrayal of the vilest sort.

  “You’re not fit to be out of bed,” she said gently, laying a hand on his arm.

  Darius shook it off. “Where are my boots?”

  Delilah folded her arms. “You’re a stubborn fool. She knows how to take care of herself. And she said she’d return after things blew over.”

  He gave a bitter laugh. “They won’t blow over. And I’m not waiting.”

  “You’re needed here. She doesn’t want you to go after her!”

  Darius was no longer paying Delilah the slightest attention. Nazafareen must have headed deeper into the forest. He knew how to track her. If she’d gone through the gate to the land of the dead…. Well, he’d follow. The cold air prickled his bare skin as he grabbed a tunic and pulled it over his head.

  “My boots,” he snapped. “I need them right now.”

  Delilah shook her head. There was something like satisfaction on her face as she said, “You won’t find her. She’s gone.”

  “Where then?” His blue eyes bored into hers. “Tell me, or I swear—”

  “You swear what?”

  Victor strode into the room. His father towered over him by six inches and exuded an air of brute authority, but Darius wasn’t intimidated. If it came down to it, he knew he was stronger in the power. He’d beaten Victor once before and he’d do it again, if necessary.

  “I swear I’ll tear this place apart, branch by branch, until I find out where she’s gone,” he said, locating a pair of trousers and yanking them on.

  “You can’t follow her,” Delilah cut in. “She’s gone to Solis.”

  Darius froze. “Solis? But…she can’t.” The room swam before his eyes. He remembered Nazafareen dying in his arms as the breaking magic consumed her from the inside out. Only in Nocturne was she safe from it. He bit into his cheek until he tasted blood.