by Nat Russo
North Bank was the city’s commercial center, and docks lined both sides of the great triangle for mooring riverboats and barges of all sizes. The Sea of Arin was too treacherous for commerce, only navigable at certain times of the year, and then by only the most knowledgeable captains. The Orm provided a safe alternative for merchants to transport their goods.
A great signal tower at the point of the triangle was the largest feature of North Bank, standing several stories higher than the tallest buildings in the city. Men in the tower carried flags of various colors to regulate the flow of water traffic.
The trip from Agera had been a long one, and Mujahid had grown tired of keeping a close watch on Tithian. He was sure the man was up to something, but conversation had been minimal. Whenever it was unavoidable, however, Tithian would warn Mujahid against traveling to the Pinnacle. Mujahid wasn’t sure what to make of it, but he had to admit Tithian looked genuinely concerned about him. The man had more layers than a Turian onion.
“Make ready,” Captain Roberts shouted from the wheelhouse, and deckhands darted about. The boat drifted away from North Bank, heading toward the docks on what the locals called East Bank.
“You can’t put in here,” Mujahid said.
The captain gave him that nervous look again. “Ship took a battering in Agera, and it’s still a long way to Dyr Agul. I know a shipwright on East Bank.”
Mujahid swore.
“What is it?” Tithian stepped out onto the deck.
“I’m grateful for the help, but this is where we part ways.”
A look of worry appeared on Tithian’s face. “I’ve told you. The Pinnacle isn’t going anywhere, and your chances may be greater in the future.”
Mujahid shook his head. “If I could will myself into Kagan’s chambers we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Tithian sighed and tapped his lower lip with his index finger. After a few moments of silence, he clasped his hands together. “I can still be of use. There must be a ship leaving for Dyr Agul today.”
Mujahid considered refusing, but the more time he spent with Tithian the more curious he became. Tithian was an oath breaker and a traitor…but he was also an old friend. Part of him hoped the man was sincere in his offer of help.
The ship came to rest and several dock workers secured the mooring lines, but they were clumsy for a port this busy. Mujahid wasn’t an expert, but the workers were making mistakes that an apprentice would have avoided. One of them struggled to untangle himself from a line, narrowly escaping the fate of that poor soul in Agera. Another pulled a breast rope tight to the point of snapping. He shook his head and wondered if any of them had ever spent time around water at all.
Tithian stopped before they reached the bottom of the gangplank. “There is still time to reconsider.”
“I can’t sit idly by and—”
“I’m not suggesting you do nothing. Just do nothing for now. You’re all action and no plan, old friend. This isn’t like you…not the Mujahid I knew forty years ago.”
“I don’t know which is worse…bad men doing evil, or good men doing nothing.”
Tithian sighed and rubbed his forehead. “All right. We’ll do this your way.” He nodded to one of the dock workers.
Mujahid turned to respond, but quick movement caught his attention. The dock workers had burst into a flurry of activity, but one of them stumbled over a mooring line and fell to the dock. As he fell, his jacket opened and Mujahid’s stomach clenched.
The golden helm of Arin was emblazoned across the man’s shirt. The dock workers weren’t dock workers at all. They were Pinnacle guard.
Mujahid cursed. His dagger was in his hand and slicing toward Tithian’s throat in an instant.
When the blade was a hair’s breadth away from biting into flesh, an invisible force seized it in a vise-like grip. Foreign energy entered Mujahid’s mind and wrapped around his well of power, coating it in an impenetrable oily residue. His power was unusable.
Tithian nodded toward Captain Roberts.
“Now,” Captain Roberts shouted, and the dock workers converged on Mujahid, binding his arms and legs together and guiding him to the ground without a struggle.
Mujahid felt as if all the fight had left him. There was no longer any doubt that Tithian had set him up. Certainty was like a blade in his stomach, twisting and wrenching.
“I’m sorry about this, old friend,” Tithian said. “But I tried to stop you. I hope you understand in time how I’ve helped you.”
“Tithian,” Mujahid said. “Whatever you’ve become…it’s not too late. The gods would welcome you back if you reached out to them.”
Tithian knelt beside Mujahid and whispered. “I have a secret for you. The last time you saw the gods was the last time I saw them. Kagan is the only one they speak to now. And his power is absolute.” He adjusted his robe and turned to one of the Pinnacle guards. “Prepare him for the trip.”
Mujahid sat in stunned silence. What Tithian said wasn’t possible. The gods appeared to the Archmage and Prime Warlock every year during the Rite of Manifestation. If the Prime Warlock didn’t witness the event, there was no one to confirm the authenticity of the god’s words.
Mujahid shuddered at the implications.
Four guards placed him in the back of a wagon. Within minutes they were away from the docks, leaving the city of Three Banks behind them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The power began as a trickle creating a tiny pool of energy in his mind. Consciousness brought the pain back, and with each drop of energy his existence solidified, until at some point between two moments he became self-aware.
I…exist.
He was about to inhale when something stopped him.
I’m Nicolas Murray. Son of the archmage. Heir to the Obsidian Throne.
The memories came flooding back in a burst of images and emotions until all confusion vanished.
He was about to drown.
Breaking free from his bonds was impossible, so his mind turned inward. Two symbols of power, a skull and an arrow, danced around a well of energy.
I’m a necromancer.
There wasn’t enough power for the skull, and the burning in his lungs was so intense that his other injuries seemed dull by comparison. He had one chance to succeed.
He created a pathway between his energy well and the arrow, and when the power embraced it he cast it into the water, not knowing what to expect.
Nothing happened. His heart sank and he waited for the inevitable. Part of him wanted to inhale to just get it over with.
When the last bit of power touched the arrow, it leaped to the forefront of his mind, pointing down and to the front. With some effort he could guide his descent by small increments, so he angled his course in the direction the arrow pointed.
The effect was instantaneous. What had been a slow trickle of power became a torrent, filling his well to capacity. The arrow faded from his periphery.
His mind went to work, and the first thing he remembered was how he summoned the argram. If he had any hope of succeeding, he had to know what he needed. He made a mental list.
Air.
If he didn’t find air, he would be unconscious within minutes. Necropotency was reducing his need for oxygen, but it wouldn’t last forever.
Freedom.
Without it he’d never reach the surface. Not in his current condition, anyway. And that reminded him of the third thing he needed.
A damned doctor.
Without healing, the other two didn’t matter.
The skull ignited and vibrated with energy, he formed an image of himself breathing and healthy, with his arms spread like a priest at the altar. He cast the symbol through the newly-formed image and into the water. His energy well drained but was replenished by the ambient death energy that seemed to be coming from everywhere.
A series of images resembling nothing he had ever experienced before assaulted him, and once again he lived an entire lifetime in a si
ngle moment. The creature he was summoning wasn’t human…or argram, for that matter.
In some images Nicolas swam like a fish, and yet in others he walked on two legs, but he knew they represented the same person.
Yes. Person. This is a person I’m summoning.
It was a person with culture and society, strengths and weaknesses, and yet none of them made any sense. In some ways it was more alien than the argram.
A word stuck to the tip of his tongue. He’d heard it countless times in the lifetime of this creature, but he just couldn’t spit it out.
The images stopped and a mystical link formed in his mind. He had complete control over his new penitent. Cichlos.
The creature was a cichlos, whatever that meant.
And it was here.
He opened his eyes to look at it. The skeleton was humanoid, but its head was enormous, too large for its body. The eye sockets alone were the size of a man’s skull. A large, flat bone bisected the top of the skull, ran down the center of its back behind ribs that looked like thin filaments, and ended in a pelvic bone. The hands and feet had more than five fingers each, but they were more like fins on a fish than fingers and toes.
The pressure in his lungs was unbearable. He needed air.
The creature grabbed Nicolas’s wrists and the world became a blur of motion. Water rushed around his aching body, causing more agony as skin tore away from the mutilated muscles of his now-useless right arm.
He felt an odd sensation, as if his mind had formed goose bumps. It was the same feeling he felt when Nuuan and Mujahid used magic. The water rushed past his body, but he no longer felt anything against his face. He tentatively opened one eye, expecting water to rush in, but nothing happened. Instead, drops rolled down his face as if he had surfaced. He opened both eyes and saw a large, shimmering bubble surrounding his head.
He sent a mental image of the bubble to the strange creature.
A grassy plain, its blades of grass rippling and waving in a strong wind, entered his mind in response. When he tried to express his confusion, an image of a fish moving its gills came back through the link.
Breathing. The fish was breathing.
He inhaled.
It was the scent of the wind sweeping down off the Grand Tetons through a forest of pine trees. He hadn’t thought of that trip in years. It was the only time he’d been away from the orphanage for any length of time. Dr. Murray had taken him to the Rockies for his sixteenth birthday.
Nicolas turned his head inside the bubble and regretted it. He struggled to remain conscious through the pain.
An image of his bones turning to stone entered his mind. The cichlos creature was strengthening his body, making it adapt to the environment around him.
A moment ago he was floating in darkness, but now he could see as clearly as when Mujahid enhanced his vision in the tunnel.
They were moving through a vast underwater cavern, tall enough for the Eiffel tower to pass through standing on end, toward a massive underwater mountain range that spread out for miles in front of him. The cichlos took him underneath a rock structure, then turned upwards with surprising dexterity.
They broke the water’s surface in a small cavern. The cichlos laid him down among the rocks and removed the weighted chains that bound him. It tossed them aside as if they were nothing.
The creature opened its mouth, and the most beautiful singing Nicolas had ever heard filled the cavern. His pain lessened with every note the cichlos sang.
As the song came to an end, Nicolas’s back was healed.
“You summoned me, human,” the cichlos said. “This should not be.” The creature laughed. His laughter sounded like a chorus of voices singing a beautiful melody.
“Should and shouldn’t don’t mean too much lately.” Nicolas said. “What are you? Some kind of fish?”
“Are you some kind of monkey? Your speech patterns are strange, even with the bond of death between us.”
The cichlos smiled, stretching his flexible jaw bones in a wide grin.
“I saw more of you in the images. Answer my question.”
“It was not my intent to offend, necromancer, merely inform. The bond of death allows communication, but you have no connection to my living brethren.”
“I saw huge cities,” Nicolas said. “Underwater, on land, even in the air. How’s that possible?”
The cichlos chuckled. “I’m not used to speaking like this. Yes, I walk on land and swim in water. My people adapted to both environments eons ago.”
Nicolas delved back into the images, looking for the creature’s name. He could command the cichlos to tell him, but he wanted to see if he could find it himself. The word he was looking for leaped into his mind, as if on command.
“Your name is Cisic.”
“Not when it’s pronounced correctly.” Cisic laughed.
“I almost died,” Nicolas said. He reached behind to touch his back and felt smooth skin, as if the flogging never took place. “How did you heal me?”
“Few would choose to suffer what you suffered.”
“Yeah, I ran into Caspardis asking to be flogged and executed.”
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“No,” Nicolas said. He was getting tired of his sarcasm not translating well. “They lynched me, dragged me up in front of a kangaroo court, and damned-near killed me.”
“My question stands. Why would a necromancer allow himself to suffer such a thing?”
“Did you hear what I said? They lynched me.”
Cisic shook his giant head back and forth and sighed. “The language barrier is even worse than I thought.”
He saw an image of an argram folding its tarsal swords while a feeble old man beat it with a stick.
“It wasn’t like that.” He formed an image of a necromancer attempting to cast a spell with an empty well.
“What you show me is impossible. A necromancer can never be severed from his power.”
What Cisic said went against everything Mujahid taught him. In fact, Mujahid couldn’t escape from the dungeon because he had no power.
“Can you teach me?”
“I am no siek,” Cisic said, using a word Nicolas had never heard before. “And even if I were, our time grows short. I will journey to the Plane of Peace soon. What of your own people?”
“Not sure I know what that means anymore.”
Cisic chuckled. “Strange words, priest. Strange words indeed.” The laughter continued and Nicolas smiled.
After a moment, Cisic stopped laughing, and Nicolas could tell he was deep in thought.
“Perhaps…no,” Cisic said.
“What’s on your mind?”
Images resolved into Nicolas standing in front of hundreds of angry cichlos. He lifted the ocean with one hand and they welcomed him.
“I can take you,” Cisic said. “But the danger is great. If you command me to fight my brethren, I will lose. They are powerful.”
“I don’t get the ocean part.”
“You have swum with my fins and walked with my feet. I was once a great necromancer, but what do you remember most about me?”
“You were an asshole, that’s what I remember.”
“You have only lived my life, not my death. My spirit is nearly pure, and a joy fills me that I never knew in life. My people do not know this joy. They are honor-bound to ancient tradition.”
“Yeah…assholes.”
“Concentrate.”
Nicolas recalled the summoning. Cichlos people were separated into castes that were strictly segregated. There was no upward mobility possible, and any attempt to change one’s status met with punishment. Sometimes violence. Their system of honor was so well defined that a large percentage of their language and physical gestures was dedicated to the proper way of addressing people in specific castes. As a human he had no status among them at all. He understood the image now. He would have to gain their respect, and that would be an impossible task…as impossible as lif
ting the ocean.
“Take me,” Nicolas said.
“As you command. We go to the city of Aquonome.”
Cisic lifted Nicolas and plunged back into the lake. The bubble of air reformed around Nicolas’s head, and within moments the world was rushing past him.
Distant ribbons of light ran for miles along a gigantic crevasse and formed the underwater city of Aquonome. The ribbons were translucent tubes, similar to the bubble around Nicolas’s head, constructed by barrier magic to keep the water out.
Aquonome glistened in all colors of the rainbow like far away Christmas lights in a distant neighborhood. Two massive domes formed the city center, one larger than the other, and twelve barrier tubes extended from the smallest, six on each side, giving Aquonome the appearance of an underwater insect. Tiny bubbles moved between tubes at random intervals. A bubble would form in the wall of one tube and crash into the next, collapsing on impact.
Cisic led them toward the closest barrier tube, which projected out from the right side of the central dome. The scale of the place impressed Nicolas. If he laid every high rise in Austin end to end, it wouldn’t equal the length of one of these tubes. Small dots moved about, but he couldn’t tell what they were.
Power drained from him in a steady current of energy as they drew closer to the city. Except for Cisic he would be defenseless when they got there, and that knowledge tightened his chest with panic.
They passed through the barrier wall into one of the tubes and Nicolas felt the same electric shock as when he first entered Paradise. The bubble around his head collapsed and he inhaled.
He wished he hadn’t.
Aquonome smelled like a giant aquarium. All the decaying fish food and algae in the biology lab didn’t come close to this.
They emerged into a large open area that resembled a crowded mall. The barrier wall generated a bluish light that surrounded everything in a cool glow.
The small dots he had seen earlier were people—Cichlos people—humanoid fish of all different colors, each one brighter than the next, and they stood about two feet taller than Nicolas. He had been right about the webbed hands and feet, but seeing flesh on those enormous heads was a sight to behold. He had been wrong about their heads being too large for their bodies, though. That may have been true about Cisic the skeletal cichlos, but everything was in proper proportion on the living cichlos.