by Tammy Salyer
Reflexively, she gripped her tunic pocket and found the dragørfly pendant tucked inside. She wouldn’t lose it again, on her life. A grumble and huff beside her brought Tekl and Juz to her attention. Both snouzes had curled up with her and pressed against her as tightly as a cocoon.
“Hello?” she called after not seeing Salukis nearby. “Salukis?”
There was no answer, so she gently pushed against the snouzes to help her stand up. They didn’t budge, and Tekl huffed again and shifted his big head on his wide paws.
“Snouzes,” she said quietly. “Come on, you have to make room so I don’t squish you.”
Juz, on her left, raised his head and looked at her, the beast’s glittering eyes barely visible beneath thick hanging ropes of black fur. He nuzzled her hand, then pushed one horn into it. She scratched around the base of the bony protrusion and could have sworn from the way his lips curled back that he was smiling. After a moment, he started panting. Isemay realized she should have been concerned with Salukis being out of sight and hearing distance, but she found she wasn’t. The snouzes put her at ease in a way the bruhawks, though she’d spent her childhood treating them like pets, never had. It was probably because they didn’t seem to have any long talons or sharp, pointy beaks that turned flesh into dead strips of meat.
She scratched for a few more moments, then decided to try once more to reach her da through the memory keeper. After several frustrating and fruitless minutes, she gave up. Impulsively, in her frustration she wanted to chuck the pendant away, but of course, she wouldn’t do that.
Juz had lain his muzzle on her thigh, and she commenced rubbing again, though halfheartedly this time. “Where’s your master, boy?” she asked the extremely contented beast.
“She.”
Isemay startled at the voice, then relaxed when Salukis stepped from behind the tower. “There you are,” she said.
“Just went to get us some water and these.” He opened his fist to reveal a handful of what she assumed were a kind of Arc Rheunosian nut.
Juz and Tekl loped to his side and received scratches from his free hand. “I figured you wouldn’t want to be left alone, so I left the snouzes with you. But Juz is a girl. They’re from the same litter.”
“Ah. Well, at least I’m starting to be able to tell them apart.” Tekl had one horn whose tip jutted out slightly backward like a hook. And Juz’s tail was a bit bushier. Other than that, they were twins. She stood, reaching her arms over her head and emitting a long groany squeak as she stretched. “How long ago did I fall asleep?”
“A few hours,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake you up. You’ve been through a lot.”
That was far too true, and she wished it weren’t. She’d always enjoyed risks and excitement, but not like this. Not when everywhere she looked and everything she saw was unfamiliar, strange, and, worst of all, utterly devoid of friends or family. She wasn’t safe. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t safe.
Suddenly, she felt weightless and light-headed. The world swayed side to side, then tilted as she crumbled to the ground.
“Isemay!”
This time she stayed put, fighting against sudden nausea that was working its way through her guts. Her mouth filled with spit. She didn’t have much inside her, but she was on the verge of vomiting, nonetheless.
Salukis knelt by her side, his expression indicating how uncertain he was about what to do. “Here.” He passed her a hollow gourd of water. “Drink something.”
“I don’t feel well.” She groaned. “Don’t want to drink.”
“Uh…” He looked around the space, as if he’d find something that might aid her. “What can I do?”
She pulled her legs up to her chest and clutched them, like a child hiding under her bed in fear. But it wasn’t fear she felt, just a sense of overwhelming exhaustion, worsened by the nausea, and topped off by a rush of dismay. She was never going to see her parents again.
“Maybe…uh, maybe I should go get help.”
She remained silent, holding her knees. She wanted to cry. Like she had when she was six and broke her favorite wooden toy bird or when she was five and Knight Eisa had reprimanded her for touching Vaka Aster’s vessel with food-stained fingers. In other words, like a child who needed her mum.
Salukis put his warm, smooth palm on her forehead. To comfort her? A moment later, he pulled it away. “You’re running a fever. Verity’s mercy, do you have the—”
The plague. That’s what he’d been about to say. And what if he was right? What if she died, and no one in Vinnr would ever know?
“Isemay, I’m going to carry you back to Maerria. You need to see Deespora. She can help.”
Deespora? She hadn’t bothered to try helping Isemay before. Why would she now? His hands found her wrists, and he began tugging her up. It was annoying. She just wanted to lie here. But as she began pulling away from him, a strangely adult realization washed over her. Fighting him would be silly. He was kind, and nice looking, and he just wanted to help. And besides, she was going to be a Knight someday. She had to be tough. And if things got too hard to do alone, she had to be wise enough to accept help when it was offered.
She relaxed her arms and sat up. “I’ll try not to retch on you,” she promised meekly.
“It isn’t the Waste making her ill,” Deespora said to the brave three who’d joined Salukis and Isemay at Deespora’s home. These included Mura and her mother Lysis. No one knew the third was there but Isemay. It was the young girl Neeka, who stood outside peering in through the open window frame, the child’s curiosity stronger than her fear. Deespora added, “She is very sick, but she has no plague symptoms. None need fear.”
Isemay lay on a hastily created bed of blankets and pillows near the hearth, which was wood- and ashless like the one in Mura’s home, shivering. Memory of the flight back from the edge of the Churss was spotty. She mostly recalled the cool wind blowing against her, which had been simultaneously a relief from her fever and had grated at her like ice pellets, and occasional glimpses of the snouzes keeping pace below. She remembered Salukis had stopped once or twice to catch his breath high up on ledges in the Churss towers, and the silhouettes of the three moons in the sky above fading behind the brighter daystar.
She sat up and coughed and someone patted her on the back. When the cough subsided, she asked, “Do you know what it is? A cold maybe?”
Deespora’s heartmatch was also present, or so Isemay assumed him to be, and he leaned down and handed her a stone mug. He was a shortish man with a belly that pushed against his thin, loose vest. She could barely see the striped markings it seemed all the Arc Rheunosian men had, their color blending almost perfectly with the mellow brown hue of his skin. His wings and hair, which were both a black-streaked gray, stood out against his youthful smooth skin. Otherwise, she’d have guessed him to be much younger than their color suggested. The only wrinkles he had were around his eyes and mouth, which looked like it never went a day without laughing.
She took a cautious sip of whatever the mug contained and immediately followed that with a deep swallow. It was thick and warm with a sweet, milky flavor, and reminded her of hot chocolate but tasted even better.
Oh. Ugh. Don’t retch, don’t retch, don’t do it. Not in front of…them. You’ll die of embarrassment. She’d managed not to lose her stomach contents on Salukis during their trip, and had even forgotten about the nausea for a bit, but now it reared up once more, and black spots peppered the backs of her eyelids. She almost didn’t set the mug back down in time before sinking back to the floor. “This doesn’t feel like a cold.”
“No, it isn’t,” Deespora said, her voice sounding hollow and tinny in Isemay’s fugue. “It isn’t even what we’d ordinarily describe as a sickness of your body, I fear.”
“It most definitely feels like it’s my body.” What did the Archon mean? This was too awful to be just something in her mind.
“Isemay, you were not created for this realm. You’re n
ot adapting to it. I don’t think you can. Your body fights our world, and our world fights your body, the same as either would attack any foreign matter.”
“What does that mean?” Mura asked.
“Think of it like this,” the Archon said. “What would happen if you stuck your hand in a bizzle hive?”
“They would get very cross and sting me until I pulled my hand out.”
Salukis cut in. “So you’re saying Arc Rheunos is a bizzle hive, and Isemay is a hand?”
“She is foreign to us. I can see she is a woman of some strength, but she is not strong enough to win a fight against the rules of the Cosmos,” Deespora said simply.
Isemay let out a mix of a moan and a half-swallowed sob as another flash of heat spread over her. Sweat broke out on her forehead, behind her ears, all along her back and chest.
Through ears that felt stuffed with straw, she heard Lysis say, “Is there anything you can do to help her?”
Robes rustled and footsteps receded to a far corner of the room. Whispers slipped to her, but she was too miserable to even try to understand them.
Deespora returned and settled beside her. “Isemay, there is one thing I can do to assuage the discomfort you’re in, but it will only be temporary. The only thing that will help you is if I send you back home. You cannot stay here forever without eventually succumbing.”
She pried her eyes open and looked into Deespora’s face, close to her own, the Archon’s eyes shining with sympathy. “But my mum…”
The Archon nodded but said nothing.
“Is my mum sick too?”
Deespora’s brows creased and she took a moment to think it over. “I can’t say, but she is not like you, child. She carries the spark of a Verity, and I believe that will protect her. All the realms are safe to those who’ve received the celestials’ touch directly.”
Relief must have shown in her face, because Deespora went on. “You do not have to worry about your mother. She is powerful. She saved many in this room already, and I’m sure she can save herself as well.”
“If we could help her, the way you’re helping me…”
Instead of the exasperation Isemay usually caused in adults with her relentless debating, Deespora’s expression smoothed into kindness. “Quiet now, let me use the Fenestros to make you feel better. Then we’ll talk about what to do next.”
Nodding—anything to make this illness bearable—she closed her eyes and slipped her hand into her tunic pocket to grip the memory keeper, as though it were a lone tree limb keeping her afloat in a vast, deep lake.
Moments later, a slight weight settled on her chest and a blazing warmth began at her sternum, spreading up and down her body, a feeling like slowly sinking into a hot bath. It was the most soothing sensation she’d ever experienced, and her hand tightened even more on her pendant as she felt the warmth push away first her nausea, then the aches that had begun to sink into her muscles and bones. The feverish heat of her cheeks grew milder. Deespora spoke over her, but she barely heard the words as her body slowly began to feel not just normal but stronger, healthier, infused with an uncommon vitality. She began to feel as if she could stand up and rush from Maerria to the Aktoktos Gate in a single unbroken run.
“Open your eyes.”
She did. Deespora was sitting cross-legged beside her still, examining her with an avid, questioning expression.
“I feel like I could compete in every sport in Ivoryss’s annual Aster Games and win them all,” Isemay marveled.
The Archon smiled pleasantly. “You must remain calm. The less you do, and the less you worry and fret, the longer you will feel better. But it will wear off.”
“You mean I’m to sit still until I’m sick again?”
“Or until you go back to Vinnr.”
She shook her head vigorously, not wanting to defy the Archon but adamant that she had to stay in Arc Rheunos. “But I can’t.”
“Yes, I know. You can’t leave your mother. But, Isemay, you must understand, I can’t do this for you forever.”
“I-I am grateful.” She tried hard to remember to be polite and show the gratitude that was very much owed, adding meekly, “Then just for a bit, please, help me stay well. My mum will free herself, I know it, and she’ll come find me.”
Deespora dipped her chin, indulging Isemay once more, then rose and went through the doorway to speak to the others, who waited outside. Isemay caught sight of Neeka at the window again. When the child saw her looking, her face flushed a light lavender and she smiled, then gave Isemay a small wave.
“You glowed like a Churss boulder full of Znopho light,” the little girl whispered. “It was so pretty!”
Isemay couldn’t help but return her exuberance. “Well, it felt as brilliant as it must have looked.”
Neeka disappeared as fast as fish snapping up a gnat as soon as Alvar, Deespora’s heartmatch, entered, followed by the others.
“Feeling bouncy, bloopie, and full of bizzle nectar again, young one?” he asked her.
When it was obvious she didn’t know what to say, Mura supplied, “He means are you feeling better?”
“Yes, very much.”
Mura smiled, and Isemay could see her worries lifting away. She was touched at how concerned Mura must have been about her, and realized again how much she had to be grateful for. These people had taken her in without argument or hesitation, they’d provided all she needed to survive, helped her get back her memory keeper, saved her life more than once, and had asked nothing of her in return. As reluctant as she was to admit it, the adult side of her mind recognized that Deespora had her reasons for not wanting to step into the Zhallahs’ enemy’s lands and sacrifice her own people for one foreign woman, even a Knight. The Archon had to keep the Zhallahs safe, and yet she’d taken Isemay in. Isemay needed to be patient and do whatever she could to repay their unearned kindness. She needed to put aside her selfishness, and her loneliness, trust that her mum had probably faced harder challenges and gotten through them without Isemay’s paltry and inexperienced contribution, and start pulling some weight in return. To become a Knight, she would need to learn gratitude as well as wisdom.
She pushed herself to her feet, paused as the last lingering flush of Fenestros-induced warmth rushed away, and said, “While I’m waiting for Mum, is there anything I can do in return for all you’ve done for me?”
Chapter Fourteen
It was the sixth time the sun had risen while Symvalline was in this world, the sixth day that had passed since she’d seen her daughter, and the seventh since she’d seen her husband. She didn’t know which of these was the most burdensome to her heart and nerves, but she would soon be pushed past the edge of reason and into making desperation-driven choices.
Each time she sat, her skin felt as if it were igniting in a million tiny fires as her restlessness spread. Each time she paced, she grew frantic at her whirling, repeating thoughts that were getting her nowhere. Only the strange little journal gave her a reason for hope, a thing to focus on that gave her a glimpse of how she might escape.
Within its pages were many passages discussing the Equifulcrum and historical accounts of the dealings of the Archon. Whoever had kept the journal had chronicled the events of hundreds of past turns.
One doodle was drawn in random margins over and over. A tower with some kind of orb or lens atop it whose crystalline nature had been perfectly captured by a skilled hand. Its use or reason for being such a focus of the artist wasn’t clear, however. More disturbing, several of the book’s final pages seemed to be an in-depth study of a spell combining all five Fenestrii. One drawing showed them spinning around an ill-defined figure, as if holding the figure inside. Was this the cage that the journal’s first words spoke of? Only the maker can unmake the cage. Her attention was drawn back to this spell again and again, though she could see it was incomplete. But why would the book’s owner have been so interested in the idea of holding someone captive through the use of the celestial artifact
s?
Symvalline suspected the book had once belonged to an Archon. How it had wound up forgotten on a shelf in the healers chamber was something she would never know, but she scoured every word, every diagram, looking for clues that would reveal Arc Rheunos’s secrets and perhaps lead her to the celestial artifacts, the Scrylle and Fenestrii, she needed to get her and Isemay home.
After Tulla’s death, her first day and night were consumed by pacing, reading, pacing, and more reading. No amount of pleading or arguing with the Deathless Guards, who acted like stones, or the servants who brought her food and water, got her any closer to a meeting with Akeeva. So, she soon reasoned she would have to find another way to escape this prison. Through force. Or rather, through the healing arts that she could use in her own secret ways.
A new idea had occurred to her. The powder she’d attained from the sympathetic wagon driver…
Late on her second afternoon in Everlight Hall, acting with as much nonchalance as she could contrive, she put aside the mysterious journal and paced to the stacks of medicinal books, hunting through them for the recipe to make the sedative powder. The guards would assume she was doing as she’d been told, creating more of the toxin Tuzhazu wanted. With enough of the sedative, and crucially with the right ingredients to enhance its effects, she may be able to knock out her Deathless watchers and begin her escape from this dungeon. She’d already ruled out trying to beat them in a hand-to-hand attack. Her first encounter with one of these Verity-enhanced fighters above the starpath valley had more than illustrated why they were called “deathless,” and she doubted she could overpower two of them. Before they’d been changed, they’d seemed reasonable. But one look in their lifeless gray eyes, and she knew hoping for reason from them was a dangerous indulgence.