by Jeff Seymour
But not me, he thought. Never me.
He’d seen the death many times. The skin grew sallow and rubbery. The eyes bleared. The bones became more and more pronounced, until one day a Sh’ma simply did not wake up.
It didn’t seem painful. Those in the grip of the love-death had a halo of joy around them. Like there was a happiness and a completeness to their lives that he would never know.
The nar’oth alone could not procreate. The nar’oth alone could survive forever.
Tsu’min got up and walked deeper into the forest, toward the camp he and Maegan Heramsun had set up in the trees. Tyash would return to the garden the next day.
She was still her and yet not her. His veins coursed with the curious, potent brew of first love. He was getting to meet her all over again. Getting to know her for the first time, see her follies and curiosities and fall in love with a new person who was still, somehow, someone he had known for centuries, thousands of years ago.
And he had rarely felt so blessed.
***
He seems like a different person.
Maegan Heramsun’s pen scratched across the parchment in her lap. Tsu’min was seated on a hill overlooking the bay below, staring at the waves. He still hadn’t allowed her to see Mi’ame, but Maegan had managed to overhear their conversations several times, hiding behind a hummock just above the spring.
She hadn’t understood the words, but there had been other things more meaningful.
Like laughter.
He laughs now. Often when he is with her, and even sometimes when he is not. It feels like watching the cone of a pine, cauterized by flame and ground underfoot, sprout after lying dormant for years. I understand the stories so much more clearly now. The way his eyes light up when he speaks of her—the way they seem like old friends, though they have just met in this incarnation. It is a remarkable thing to watch.
She paused, dipped her quill in ink and held its feather to her lips, then continued.
Even now, with darkness threatening everything, love finds space to bloom.
There was a gentle snap in the forest outside the camp. A rabbit probably, or a squirrel or a bird.
Still, one of these days, he must return to the others. I have not asked him whether he means to take this new Mi’ame with him. I do not know whether he is yet certain himself.
She heard his feet move over the carpet of fallen leaves that covered the floor of Soultholenash. He was walking quickly and purposefully in the direction the snapping twig had come from.
Very carefully, Maegan blew on the ink and closed the pages of her book.
She had just poked her head out of her lean-to when his voice split the forest like an axe.
“You!” he thundered.
Maegan hurried after him. She ran down a gully, leaped across a stream—
And found him standing in front of the necromancer Soren Goldguard.
Maegan’s heart chilled. The necromancer wore his patched and faded robe. He held his hands in his sleeves and his head high. Golden sunlight spilled over him like the benevolent arms of Yenor Hirself.
Somehow that felt very, very wrong.
She had learned to dislike Soren Goldguard during the weeks she’d shared cooking and cleaning duties with him on the great green mother volcano of the Sh’ma. He was a cold man, given to dark jokes and violent sarcasm. When he looked at her, she saw echoes of the darkness he had let into the world, left across the depths of his eyes like black claw marks.
“She’s lovely, Tsu’min,” the necromancer said.
Tsu’min took a deep breath through his nose, and Maegan slipped partway behind a tree. Tsu’min’s back was to her and Soren wasn’t looking at her, but they would both know she was there, she was almost certain.
She felt safer with something between her and them. They didn’t like one another. And they were terribly powerful.
“What are you doing here?” Tsu’min muttered.
Soren cracked his neck and stood. The breeze shook the leaves above him and sent bits of dirt and dust and leaf skittering over his feet.
“I came to ask you the same question,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
Maegan’s heart hammered.
“That is not a question I must answer to you.”
“Maybe not. But it still stands.”
Soren crossed his arms and gestured toward Emeth’il. The city was hidden by the trees and the hills, but still close enough that when the wind was right, they could smell the smoke of its fires.
“The dragon will burn it all. Murder them all,” Soren said. He pulled some kind of leaf from his pocket and began to chew it as he spoke. “You aren’t warning them. You aren’t helping them prepare. You’re indulging yourself with a child a fraction of your age. Aren’t you embarrassed? Aren’t you ashaaack—”
Tsu’min closed his hand around Soren’s throat and yanked the necromancer into the air.
Maegan stepped out from behind her tree then froze, unsure whether she should intervene or not.
The anger, she thought. The anger had always been there in Tsu’min, lurking under the surface—a festering growth twining forth from the things he’d forced her to see that first night on the barge; the nightmares and terror he’d brought into her life for a crime no worse than irritating him.
I thought he’d be different now, whispered a childish voice in her mind.
“You know nothing,” grated Tsu’min.
Soren gasped for air. His legs kicked impotently.
“Leave!” Tsu’min barked.
He dropped him.
The necromancer didn’t quite land on his feet. His knees buckled. He tumbled backward and sprawled in the dirt on his elbows. He coughed and gasped and wiped spittle from his face.
And then he chuckled.
And then he laughed, and when he looked back up, his eyes glittered dangerously.
“There it is,” he hissed. Even lying at Tsu’min’s feet, in the shade of the trees of Tsu’min’s homeland, the necromancer looked like a viper, coiled to strike.
Once again, Maegan Heramsun shuddered. Her chest closed in on itself.
What am I doing here? she wondered suddenly. Who am I helping? She’d told herself that she wanted to shape the great events of the world, but instead she’d stood by and chronicled them. Cooking a few meals no longer felt as if it counted for much.
“There’s your hypocrisy, Tsu’min Nar’oth,” Soren spat, rubbing his neck. “There’s the darkness that festers in your heart, where you pretend that you can’t see it. There’s where the dragon calls to you.”
Tsu’min didn’t move.
“And you dare to judge me,” Soren said.
Tsu’min turned his back and began walking toward Maegan and the camp beyond.
“You can’t run from Sherduan, Tsu’min Nar’oth!” shouted Soren. He pushed himself up. “You can’t hide from it. It sits inside all of us. Human, Sh’ma, Aleani, Duennin, Wilderleng, Syorchuak—it’s the wool the world was woven from.”
Tsu’min stopped and turned around again. He was close enough that Maegan could see the tendons tensing in his neck. “Why are you here?” he asked a second time.
“Why am I here?” Soren wiped the dirt and duff from his face, his sleeves, and his tattered robe. He straightened, and his eyes took on an angry, hunted aspect. “I’m here because you came to Emeth’il instead of helping your comrades make contact with the people they need. I’m here because you broke the heart of a dreamstruck Aleani girl.”
Maegan’s heart stopped.
He didn’t, she thought. Not me.
And deeper, more quietly:
Not yet.
“I’m here because you did all that while hating me for my sins.” Soren crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I’m here to take you back. I, Tsu’min Nar’oth, am here to make you atone for your darkness.”
His eyes glimmered in the fading light. For the first time, he acknowledged Maegan’s presence. He looked pa
st Tsu’min and nodded toward her. His voice remained directed at the Sh’ma.
“I ask you again, half-blood. Why are you here?”
Tsu’min turned and looked at her. His eyes narrowed. He swept back toward their camp.
Maegan was left to stare at a very smug-looking Soren Goldguard.
You, she thought. She narrowed her eyes. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll watch you, when Tsu’min cannot.
She was the daughter of Len Heramsun. Watching one human necromancer would not be beyond her.
THIRTY-SIX
Seven hours before the destruction of Nutharion City
Litnig remembered the spider city. The round, seven-layered monstrosity of stone and wood looked little different from the northwest in the early autumn than it had from the southeast in the spring. He stood upon a bright highway, the river Stormkettle churning deep red with mud beside him. The morning sun, low in the western sky, warmed his shoulders. The golden plains of Nutharion shimmered, waving with heavy corn ready for harvest.
There were no farmers in the fields.
Nutharion felt abandoned, and Litnig wondered why.
The men and women he encountered on the road were moving awayfrom the city. They kept their distance, stared as if they wanted to know where he’d come from and where he was going.
He wondered much the same of them.
Fourteen days had passed since he’d left Du Fenlan. He’d avoided the tunnels and walked the longer, more difficult route over the browning, docile mountains instead. Raest Heramsun had given him directions and a map. Zahayr Nuhwandrahess had given him a blessing. The road had given him blisters.
Litnig passed into the long footprint of Nutharion City without flinching. His brother would be waiting there, at the heart of the spider. So would Dil, the Magister Pyell, and his future.
The weight of his sword hugged his shoulder. His shadow preceded him.
My future, he thought idly. His boots scuffed little stones along the highway. Since encountering a last party of fleeing merchants near dawn, he’d seen no one.
I should be afraid.
The sun climbed toward its zenith.
And though Litnig and his shadow walked through a land pregnant with fear, he didn’t feel frightened at all.
***
Dil woke from a long, tepid nap with a sudden twist of panic. Someone was shouting in the parlor she shared with Cole. She tried to stand, and her sheets tangled around her legs and sent her tumbling to the floor.
Cole, she thought, kicking free of the sheets and rolling to her feet. He was screaming. I’m sure of it. I heard—
And then she heard the sound again.
In the room that joined their suites, Cole was shouting, but it wasn’t in pain or terror. There was a note in his voice that Dil hadn’t heard in a long time.
Joy.
She took a deep breath and straightened her tunic. She’d fallen asleep in her own clothes; it was a day with no meetings scheduled, and she’d convinced Tyaeva to let her wear them as long as she wasn’t going to leave the suite.
Through a window near the door, she saw that the city was painfully bright in the afternoon sun.
Why would Cole—?
Before she could even finish the question, she knew.
She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and walked from her shaded bedchamber into the dazzling whiteness of the parlor.
Within it, Cole was standing next to an overturned chair and a smashed glass of orange juice, clutching a smiling, shaggy traveler with both hands, laughing and crying and shouting and pounding him on the back.
The traveler looked over Cole’s shoulder and smiled at Dil. He was bigger than she remembered. The hilt of what looked like a very large sword poked up above his right shoulder.
“Hi, Litnig,” Dil said. She leaned casually against a one-of-a-kind wire chair and tried to ignore the shocked look on Willem a’Raeth’s face. “Care for a bath?”
***
It turned out Litnig did, and Dil watched with a smile as Willem made sure his travel-stained black cloak disappeared and a shining white suit like Cole’s was waiting on a chair when he was clean.
Her smile faded once she saw him fully dressed.
He looked tired. Having the dust scrubbed from his skin had just brought its lines out more starkly. His eyes were worn. His hands were crisscrossed with new scars, some thin and light, others wide and puffy. He looked older, like the world had taken an adze to him, shaved off years of his youth, and made him into something new.
He carried himself differently too. He’d always been strong, but a little slouched, a little timid. That was gone. He stood straight and tall.
Cole noticed the changes as well. She watched the joy on his face tighten and cool into something more cautious.
“Can we eat?” Litnig asked, tugging at his jacket and fiddling with the buttons on its sleeves.
Willem raised an eyebrow, and Cole nodded. Tyaeva, who’d been looking at Litnig with unabashed excitement, scampered into the Cityhall corridors.
Cole and Litnig watched each other. Willem melted into a corner. He had a way of doing that which Dil envied. When he wanted to, he could become almost a part of the furniture.
Litnig and Cole spoke at the same time.
“Can we—?”
“Do you want to—?”
They sat.
They looked at one another.
And they didn’t speak.
A few minutes later, Tyaeva returned with Ymel and a spread of food—cold meat, fresh yogurt salad, a tray of fruits and cheeses, cow’s milk to wash it down with. Dil joined Cole and Litnig at the table, and the three of them ate in silence.
When they’d finished, Tyaeva and Willem cleared the food away, and the brothers sat back and tented their hands over their bellies. They both looked like they’d swallowed a fish bone.
It shouldn’t be like this, Dil thought.
But she remembered the last things they’d said to one another, and she kept silent. It didn’t seem like her place to intervene.
“So,” Cole eventually said, leaning forward and knitting his fingers together on the table. “What brought you here? Pyell’s letter?”
Litnig shook his head. He scratched at something in his hair. “It was Zahayr.”
Dil’s heart skipped a beat.
Litnig cleared his throat. “He told me you were here.”
A knock echoed from the door, loud enough that Dil turned involuntarily to face it.
Cole clenched a fist and shouted, “We’re busy!”
The knock sounded a second time. Willem materialized from the corner and cracked the door open. He held a hushed conversation with whoever was in the hallway, then turned back to them. His nostrils flared. He took a deep, solemn breath.
Dil’s stomach soured. He only did that when he was bringing bad news.
“The Magister wishes to see you within the hour.”
Willem’s eyes settled on Litnig.
“All of you. And the weapon.”
Litnig’s eyes drifted to the sword he’d brought with him. It was leaning against the wall in a pile of dust.
Litnig nodded. Cole scowled and rubbed his temples. The door to the hallway shut.
Dil looked from Litnig to Cole and back again.
Talk, she wanted to tell them. Talk now, before whatever’s about to happen happens.
But they didn’t.
***
Within the hour, Dil had been rushed into a shimmering blue dress, and her hair had been fussed and teased into a shape she didn’t even want to think about but that sure felt like a leaning tower. A step behind Litnig and Cole, with Willem and Reista behind her, she hurried through the bright, airy hallways of the upper Cityhall and across the palace’s open rooftop. Dizzying views of the Skylevel fell away to either side of her, but she didn’t bother to look.
She had other things to think about.
When they reached the achingly long staircase to Pyell’s sanctum
, Willem and Reista stopped.
Just like before, she thought. A burst of cool, damp wind from the north hit her. There was a dark line of clouds on the horizon beyond the city.
A hand landed on her shoulder.
“Good luck,” Reista whispered.
And then the stout woman walked back across the roof, with Willem at her side.
Dil climbed to the Magister’s sanctum in the company of two very serious brothers.
She shivered as they mounted the stairs. She’d come to hate the Cityhall of late. Since the evacuation, its richness and quiet had begun to feel like a tomb’s. There’d been less and less to do—Allenbee and her staff had moved to Violan at the heart of her domain, and fewer and fewer letters with information from Eldan City had reached Dil. She had the sour feeling that Allenbee was moving ahead without her, and it stung.
At the top of the stairs, the sanctum of Pyell Mehedrichsani opened up. The papers on her desk remained undisturbed, even by the ever-growing winds out of the north. The pillows seemed anchored to the stone, though their tassels fluttered south like little flags.
Dil had the uncomfortable thought that she ought to be fluttering that direction with them.
Pyell was seated at the desk, bent over her papers as if nothing more in the world concerned her. Dil stood next to Cole and fidgeted while the wind tugged at her dress and tore apart the hasty construction job Reista and Ymel had done on her hair.
The sun winked out behind the clouds. It would rain soon, and hard; she could smell it.
“Mm,” said Pyell. She looked up from the papers and stared at Litnig. “Mm-hmm.” The Magister stood in a flapping of paper, clasped her arms behind her back, and looked north at the approaching storm.
Dil felt the strength of her presence again, the potency of her power.
“Have you told them?” Pyell asked.
Litnig blanched but didn’t move.
Told us what? Dil thought, but the Magister moved on. She strode toward Litnig over the pillows with a hand outstretched.