“No.”
There was a sigh. “That’s too bad. I’ve nothing else to prove I am who I say. The Grooslen Empire fell twelve hundred years ago, and along with it all traces of its currency. I could only have obtained this coin by having settled within its walls, or traveling to the past and retrieving it. Either way, proof I am a Wraith Walker.”
“I believe you,” Lavery said. He believed most anyone unless they gave him reason not to. It was a good way to go through life, he held. Maybe a naive way, too, but regarding every stranger as distrustful and deceitful seemed an awful, draining attitude to have.
Also, given the circumstances—how Haren knew his name, his disposition as a Wraith Walker, and where to find him—it seemed few alternative explanations would fit.
“It’s fortunate I’ve finally found you at the apex,” Haren said. “I’d previously located you no fewer than twenty times, but each was marked by the misfortune of having been in the future-past.”
The mountain-slung gusts burned Lavery’s ears, and his eyes watered. But he paid these little mind, because he had to focus all his energy to follow along with this Haren character. And try as he might, he could not.
“Apex?” Lavery parroted. “What’s—and future-past… is that one word?”
Haren grasped Lavery reassuringly by the shoulder. “There’s a lot about Wraith Walking you don’t know. I can’t stay here long; you do, as a Wraith Walker, know that. So listen to me, and don’t forget a single word. Do you understand?”
Lavery gave a curt nod.
“You must go north, into the Ancient Lands. You’ll see a peak there grander than any you’ve ever laid eyes on. Aim yourself in that direction and do not stop until you come upon Coraen, the City of Ice. Once you arrive, Walk seventy years into the past and seek Matriarch Allamendi.
“Tell her you are the last Wraith Walker remaining, that the others have disappeared. She will help you find them.”
Lavery felt like he’d just been fed a plateful of information described not with words but strange, exotic glyphs. “What—” He stumbled over his words, unsure of which question to start with. “I’ve never heard of the Ancient Lands,” he finally said, figuring it’d be best to start at the beginning.
“You nearly died at its maw.” Haren made a stabbing gesture.
Lavery’s eyes wandered this way and that as he tried to make sense of—suddenly he snapped his head up. “The seal! In the tunnel, where—”
“Yes,” Haren said.
“That’s where the necromancer went. And all those dead things that followed him, and the dragons too.” He hugged himself, feeling colder than ever. “I don’t want to go there.”
Haren crossed his arms over his chest and looked past Lavery. “It’s not a kind place, not now. But it’s where you must go to rebuild the Order of Wraith Walkers.”
Lavery reeled back in the face of that absurdity. “I’m not rebuilding anything. I’m—I have a place here, with Elaya and Tig and—”
“Your place is not with cutthroats,” Haren said.
“They’re not cutthroats! She saved my life. Did you know that? I’d be dead if not for her.”
Haren said nothing for several moments, allowing silence to shave away budding tension. Then, “I’m aware. The future-past doesn’t lie, unlike the future-perfect.”
“What—”
Haren shushed Lavery with a finger. “I understand you care for these people, Lavery. And perhaps they care for you. But you are not a mercenary. You’ll never be one. You are a Wraith Walker, the only one still in existence. If you perish without restoring the Order, I’m afraid this world and all that’s good in it is doomed.”
Branches heavy with snow and ice croaked, and the wind whistled. Lavery was keenly aware he felt something unusual, but it was a good feeling. It was a warmth that coursed through his veins and skittered across his shoulders, pricking the hairs on his neck.
It’d been a long time since excitement had gripped him like this. But why now?
“Life is useless without meaning, Lavery. It’s a sad existence, a pathetic one, without a burning desire to push you forward. If it makes you happy, I will do my best to observe your friends when I can. I will tell you about their travels.”
Lavery considered this. Maybe Haren was right; maybe he did need meaning in his life. No one had ever depended on him before, except Baern. And when the old man had tasked him with retrieving the phylactery to open the seal, Lavery had experienced an unrivaled sense of pride and fulfillment.
But finding an object known to be in a specific place and rebuilding the Order of Wraith Walkers seemed as startling a contrast as splashing with minnows and swimming with sharks.
“If I’m the only Wraith Walker left, then how can I rebuild the Order? I can’t teach someone to become a Wraith Walker, can I? It’s a gift.” Or a curse, he thought. He furrowed his brows as Haren’s face contorted, as if he was in pain. “Are you okay?”
“I have to go,” Haren said, giving a hard blink. “Mind each step you take in the Ancient Lands, and keep your wits about you. And—Lavery, listen! Stay away from the necromancer.”
Lavery watched wide-eyed as Haren’s figure faded into nothingness and flakes of snow fell where he had once stood. He bit his lip and looked beyond the forest, toward the ruins.
His experiences with Elaya and the Eyes couldn’t be described as the best of times, but still… there was something joyous about them. Something he’d miss.
CHAPTER SEVEN
With both hands, Oriana raised a mallet above her head and swung downward. She whacked the top of a wooden post, anchoring it into the sand. Another few wallops later, she turned back to the docks, satisfied.
A couple sorcerers were standing at the dock’s edge, shielding their eyes from the sun and peering out into the Glass Sea. Most were resting at the water’s edge, some eating fresh perch from a spit, others mindlessly fingering designs in the sand.
“Take a look at the three posts,” Oriana announced. “They mark the end of the locus. Don’t cross them unless you notify me or Gamen.” Only an illusionist like Oriana could enter—and craft—a locus, an illusionary pocket of space. Others could enter with her, but only if they were physically touching her as she passed through.
A thumb darted up, and there was a grumble that sounded like an apathetic “great.” Everyone else more or less ignored her.
Oriana had, in recent days, expressed her worries to Rol that morale was low, but she now realized it wasn’t low. It was nonexistent. Her people—that’s what she considered them—were dispirited, disinterested, and disenchanted.
She had told them they would help shape the world into a place of goodness and peace and prosperity. Instead they’d spent the past nine months twiddling their thumbs in Torbinen, with the promised change fading before their eyes.
She needed to engage them again, return their sense of worth and pride. She decided she’d start by lifting a stone giant out of the sea.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “We’re not letting that… thing”—she pointed firmly at the limb of rock jutting out of the water—“sit there any longer. Wurtic and Lamella, ready your dragons. They have quite a heavy task ahead of them.
“Sorcerers, the rest of you form a circle. Keep it wide, because the dragons will place the giant in the middle. I don’t know what to expect. Just… be ready, in case—” She waved her hands vaguely.
“In case weird shit happens,” Gamen said. “Weirder than seeing a bloody stone giant in the ocean.” He scratched his scruffy face and started her way.
“This is my decision,” she told Gamen, standing firmly by her choice. “I know we agreed to think over our options, but—”
Gamen rolled his eyes. “I don’t give a shit. I just wanna know what the plan is.”
Oriana tucked her bottom lip under her teeth and chewed. A bad habit to be sure, but also a nervous one. “Every living thing has flesh, right?”
“Not tre
es. Or shrubs. Or—”
“People, Gamen. Animals. They all have flesh. Put it this way, none of them are made out of stone.”
He plucked some old food out of his teeth with a sideways fingernail. “Not seen any animal made out of stone, no, but also not seen anything as tall as six of me and as wide as five.” He looked thoughtfully to the clouds and added, “Whales are six of me, I suppose. But I’m talkin’ about things with two feet. Anyways, I don’t get what your point is.”
“My point,” she said with emphasis, “is that we can learn if this thing—or giant, whatever you wish to call it—has flesh beneath his armor of stone. We’re going to dissect it.”
“And what if he does? Or what if he doesn’t? Either way, doesn’t tell us much, Ori.”
On the surface that appeared true. But paddling out on the boat with Gamen and seeing the giant face-to-face—or face-to-limb, as it were—had brought about a pestering thought. What if the Conclave had created this igneous monstrosity?
She didn’t know a class of sorcery that could create life from nothing, but a lack of knowledge about something didn’t forbid it from existing. Soulweavers could restore life to the dead in the opposite way a necromancer did—by allowing the soul to return to its body with all desires and its human core still intact, along with its free will—but bringing the dead back is a whole lot different than creating souls anew.
Oriana thought that if the giant was natural—and she hoped it wasn’t, although the alternative wasn’t very pleasing, either—then it would have flesh beneath its rugged, stony exterior. If it’d been created by the Conclave—or worse, someone or something else—then it’d likely be made entirely out of stone, or at least flesh that wasn’t entirely real. Nature, after all, is always more precise and perfect in its creations compared to man’s.
So, yes, this called for a dissection. First order of business, though, was lifting its enormity out of the ocean and onto land. A pair of dragons from the Iron Clutch would provide the muscle. Their names were Click and Clack, twins who’d officially moved on from youth training to adult training three months ago.
Click belonged to Wurtic and Clack to Lamella. The two sorcerers blew into whistles around their neck—each whistle a unique tone that corresponded with the respective dragon—calling down their beasts from the skies high above the Pinnacle. Dressed in the color of burnt steel, Click and Clack spun downward in a tight spiral, their silvery gray scales gleaming in the sun.
“Click!” Wurtic shouted. “Enough of that.” Click stopped chewing on his brother long enough for Clack to strike back with a solid jab of his foot to Click’s head.
“Go on,” Lamella said, “show your brother who the alpha rea…lly… is.” She smiled uneasily at Wurtic. “Er, what I mean is… stop that.”
The twin dragons fanned out their wings, slowing their momentum. They landed on the sandy beach with unusual grace; their previous landings had involved a broken tooth, a shattered talon, nostrils clogged with sand, and multiple face-plants.
Lamella guided Clack over to a wheelbarrow of stone blocks. “Here, Clack. Eat this.”
Clack—and dragons in general, but especially Clack—never needed to be told twice to eat. He lowered his triangular head, licked the air and then ate both the wheelbarrow and its contents. The consumption of stone and iron augmented an iron dragon’s strength, allowing it to crush steel with a single snap of its jaws or punch through a fortified wall. Or, in this case, haul ashore a massive giant made of stone.
Gamen looked like a man defeated as the dragons made a meal out of the wheelbarrows, his hands at his hips and shoulders slumped. “Sure, eat the stone that I spent two hours breaking apart to build the foundation for a new whelp house. That’s lovely. Bloody lovely.”
Oriana dragged a finger down his arm as she walked toward the dock. “Come on. A boat ride will make you happy again.”
Gamen stood in place. “Am I ever happy?”
“I know it’s only an act.”
With a scrunched-up face, he said, “No. No, it’s not. I truly am a jaded, bitter, grouchy—”
“Come on,” Oriana hollered over her shoulder.
Gamen swore under his breath and trudged after her. “Where’s Rol at, anyhow?”
“Sleeping, I imagine. He’s not an early riser. Where’s the rope?” She looked up and down the dock. “I know I saw some sitting here.”
Gamen went behind a makeshift workbench, ducked down and came back up with a fat spool of rope dangling from his wrist. “Good idea; I hadn’t thought of how they’d pull the big bastard out.”
“We’ll see if it’s a good idea,” Oriana said. “Hopefully it doesn’t snap.”
She and Gamen set out on the small flat boat, a paddle in each of their hands. Prismatic splashes of emeralds and topazes darted into and out of sight beneath the water as fish came to investigate and just as quickly fled. Oriana almost hit several with her paddle.
If simplistic boats were this interesting to them, she wondered how they’d react when a massive stone giant came tottering through. Probably they’d think it was a bigger and complex version of a simplistic boat.
“You mind gettin’ out in front?” Gamen said as the giant drew near. “I’d rather not smash this little lady to pieces. I’ve got plenty else to build.”
Oriana lifted her paddle out of the water and scooted up to the front edge. “It’s a little lady, is it? I’ve always said girls are better.” She could tell Gamen was cooking up a return jab in his mind, but whatever he had up there fizzled out, and he simply rolled his eyes.
Gamen ceased paddling, allowing momentum and wind to carry them the rest of the way. He joined Oriana up front. With their paddles stretched out, they poked the giant’s limb and slowly turned the boat sideways, idling it as if they were docking.
Oriana grabbed the spool of rope, leaped onto what she decided was the giant’s elbow, and climbed up its forearm. She made several passes of the rope over the wrist and slashed the excess with a skinning knife sheathed to her belt, leaving about two feet, which she used to tie a fat, durable knot.
Gamen had sidestepped across the giant’s other arm, which lay parallel to the water, and secured his length of rope as well. He pulled tight and gave a satisfied nod.
“How’d you learn to tie a knot like that?” he asked, making his way back to the boat.
“I used to run down wild hogs and tie them to trees for fun.”
He picked up a paddle and regarded her with a proper dose of suspicion. “Wild hogs?” With a quick yank on the rope, he freed the boat and stabbed his paddle into the giant, pushing off. “Wild hogs, you say? I don’t believe that for a lightning bolt.”
Oriana lifted a brow. “That’s not a saying.”
“For a lightning bolt? Sure it is. It means I didn’t believe you, not even for as long as a lightnin’ bolt zips through the sky.”
Oriana shook her head and swished her paddle through the calm waters of the Glass Sea. “Okay, I was lying, but that isn’t a saying.”
“If I get someone else to say it, then will you believe me?”
“You can’t pay them to say it.”
“Gamen and his money don’t part that easily,” he said. “So how’d you learn to tie a knot like that?”
Oriana smirked. “A girl’s got to have her secrets, Gamen.”
While that might have sounded intriguing, the truth of how Oriana had come to learn knot-tying originated from a place more embarrassing than riveting. When she was ten, her Uncle Yate had shown her a magic trick. He’d tied his foot to a bedpost with an impeccable knot. Oriana pulled the rope and yanked it and kicked it, but it wouldn’t budge. Then Uncle Tate said, “Watch this,” and a moment later—or a lightning bolt later—he was free.
Amazed by this trickery, Oriana set out to do the very same. Every day she’d tie her foot to her bedpost, first with simple knots and then, when she slunk out of them, she went for more intricate ones. This is the story of how Oriana of L
iosis, thief of dragons, illusionary sorcerer and a woman who had grand plans to alter the course of the world, had to call for her father to come cut her free of a knot that was too perfect.
She was sent to a savant shortly after, to be observed for madness.
So, yes, a girl had to have her secrets. Particularly when those secrets are mortifying.
Click and Clack, along with their handlers, were waiting for Oriana and Gamen at the edge of the dock. It was fortunate that neither dragon stepped onto the dock, else there would be no dock to speak of. While they weren’t fully grown, they each still boasted a considerable weight of over five hundred pounds.
Long goops of spit dripped from Click’s mouth, and Clack smacked his razored teeth together. Iron dragons become rather unhinged when they digest metals or rock.
Oriana jumped onto the dock. The thrust of her foot rocked the boat back, and Gamen grumbled as he had to paddle toward a piling again.
“Rope’s in place,” she said to Wurtic and Lamella. “Make sure they don’t chew it or saw it—just have them clamp down.”
“Where do you want it?” Lamella asked.
Oriana pointed to a trio of jagged rocks that looked as round as spheres. “Over there. I want its entire body on the shore.”
Lamella patted Clack’s flank. “All right, big man. Let’s have at it.”
Wurtic hoisted himself onto his saddle, white-knuckling the saddle knobs. “Bet you Click’ll pull harder.”
“I hope not,” Lamella said. “Because that’ll mean you’re sleeping.”
Wurtic’s face fidgeted as he tried to make sense of that assertion. Exasperated, he finally said, “What?”
“She means it will only happen in your dreams,” Oriana said. “Get going. We have plenty of work to do on this… well, whatever it is.”
Click and Clack slapped their tails back and forth and then launched themselves into the air with such power they created their own gusts. Oriana breathed an even sigh as she watched them hurtle downward toward the giant. She didn’t know what to expect when they hauled it onto shore. She knew what she hoped for, but hopes and expectations rarely collide.
Reign of Gods (Sorcery and Sin Book 2) Page 6