Time's Demon

by D. B. Jackson

  I sing for my love, of longing and sorrow,

  And pray for a homeward wind on the morrow.”

  She’d sung the tune often in recent days. Shonla coveted songs, almost as much as Tirribin did riddles, and Tresz seemed to enjoy this one in particular. Droë liked it, too, mostly because it spoke of love in all its verses.

  As the last strains of her singing died away, the distant cloud began to drift in her direction, its movement revealing the unfortunate vessel. The fog didn’t appear to move quickly, but within moments it had surrounded her, replacing the warmth of Kheraya’s storm with its bone-numbing chill.

  Droë shivered and crossed her arms. She had been journeying with the Shonla for nearly two turns now, but had yet to grow accustomed to the cold of his mists. As her sight adjusted to the haze, she spotted Tresz, a solid, dark form at its center. Hairless, gray, with glowing eyes that always reminded her of stars peeking through cloud cover.

  “I have eaten well,” he said, the voice viscous, his thin, formless lips curved in a smile. “They had but one torch – easily obscured – and they were most vocal in expressing their fear. Quite satisfying.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “And you? Was your hunt successful?”

  “Yes, it was fine.”

  “Fine,” he repeated, drawing out the word. “A human expression that implies contentment without actually meaning it.”

  She shrugged.

  “Do you care to try again? I will wait.”

  “No, it’s all right. I fed.”

  “Very well.”

  He waved Droë forward with a squarish hand, stooped low so she could climb onto his back. His skin was cool and smooth, reptilian in its dry, silken feel. She settled in her usual position, clasped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist.

  “Ready?” he rumbled.

  “Yes.”

  As much as she disliked the cold, as slow as had been their progress south from Trevynisle, she couldn’t deny that she loved the sensation of flying with him in his cloud of mist. She felt weightless, free. Wind whipped through her hair and chilled her cheeks.

  “If I may say so,” Tresz said over the rush of air, “I sense in you… restlessness, discontent. Do you tire of our travels?”

  She opened her mouth, closed it again, taken aback by the question, unsure of how to answer.

  “I will take your silence as confirmation.”

  “It’s not that I’m–”

  He raised a hand, stopping her. “I do not take this as an affront. You grow weary of mists and meanderings. In many ways you are young still, impatient. I understand.”

  Tears blurred her sight.

  “You came this way because of me,” she said. “I don’t want to abandon you so far from… from familiar waters.”

  The Shonla’s growl of laughter tickled her chest.

  “I have been pleased to journey beyond the familiar, and I have enjoyed your songs and your company. I am Shonla. I go where the wind takes me, and for centuries, before these past turns, I have done so alone. Do not weep for me, friend.”

  They drifted, wordless.

  After some time, Tresz asked, “Shall I leave you at the next isle?”

  “Not yet. Please. Soon, but I’m not ready.”

  “That is well. Soon. Whenever you wish.”

  She nodded, though she knew he couldn’t see.

  “In the meantime, I would enjoy more verses of the song you used to summon me. If I can trouble you so.”

  “Of course.” She held him a little tighter and sang to him. The cloud they shared carried them over the Inward Sea.

  They journeyed and hunted together several nights more. Now that she and Tresz had spoken of parting ways, she balked at doing so. The leisurely pace of their approach to Daerjen – a source of frustration not long ago – felt precipitate in the wake of their conversation.

  As they neared the isle where, according to the woman who had spoken to her on the promontory overlooking Windhome Inlet, she might find the Walker, Tobias, other emotions surfaced. Excitement at the thought of meeting this human whom she might love. Fear of what that love could mean for her. Uncertainty as to whether she had made a mistake in leaving Trevynisle.

  She wasn’t accustomed to having her feelings roiled so. Each night, Tresz set her down in the streets of a different port town so that she could hunt while he enveloped another ship in his mists. Her hunts rarely lasted long. Mostly she wandered the lanes, hoping to find other girls like the one she’d spoken to in Rooktown. She had much to learn about human love.

  She tried to hide this from the Shonla, and when he asked about her hunting, she always said she’d been successful. She didn’t understand her mood well enough to explain it.

  Before long – too soon – they crossed the waters from Ensydar to Daerjen. There they followed the coastline, scouting for cities and ships.

  “There are many places I might leave you,” Tresz said, the first time either of them had spoken in some time. “The human you seek, do you know where he is?”

  “No. He’s a Walker. I gather he was summoned to a court from the palace back in Windhome.”

  “Summoned when?”

  “A hard question to answer. In a future, one that’s already been altered.”

  A rumble sounded deep in his chest. Not laughter this time – something harder. “Your kind confound me.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “And yet you continue to do so.”

  “Isn’t that what it means to be confounding?”

  This time he did laugh. “Well argued.” After a fivecount he asked, “Do you know where the royal seat is found in this future of which you speak?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “It is no matter. Allow me.”

  They slowed, coming to a halt a few hands above the swells near the mouth of the Gulf of Daerjen. As alien as it still was for her to fly with the Shonla, this sensation was even more strange. They hovered, motionless, suspended only by a cloud of vapor. A gibbous moon lit the Shonla’s mists, but Droë could see nothing beyond them. The gurgle of the swells, the far-off slap of waves against land – these gave her some vague sense of where they were, but that was all. She would not miss this feeling of dislocation.

  “My kind tell me that power in Daerjen is in flux at this time. A recent attack by the Sheraighs on the Hayncaldes. Surely this will be resolved in your future. I should take you to Sheraigh.”

  He started forward again, wheeling to the south.

  “No,” she said.

  Once more, he slowed. “You wish to go elsewhere?”

  She didn’t respond. Something in her memory… What had the woman said? There was a misfuture, changes wrought by the Walker after he went to Daerjen. Which suggested that rather than being in Sheraigh he might be where the old sovereignty had been seated.

  “To Hayncalde,” she said. “Please.”

  “The misfuture of which you have spoken.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Very well. To Hayncalde. Though…” He faltered, and she knew what he would say. “Sheraigh is close, and I would feed before we cover this final expanse.”

  He left her on a dirt lane fronting the coastline, within sight of Sheraigh’s wharves. Droë fed on two sailors, a man and a woman. She took little pleasure in either, but she did feel better afterward. To his credit, Tresz made quick work of his meal. Soon they were soaring above the gulf, cold wind bespeaking the swiftness of their approach to the city. The Shonla did this for her, she knew. He preferred to journey with less haste. She almost told him not to hurry for her sake, but that would have invited questions she didn’t care to answer. She clung to him, tasting brine in the air, her cheek resting against his cool back.

  “There,” he said, some time later.

  She raised her head and gazed over his shoulder. He had parted his mists for her and he pointed at a scattering of light ahead of them. Torches. A great many, in a city larger t
han Sheraigh.

  “Where shall I leave you?”

  “Near the wharves is fine,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He lowered his arm and the gap in his cloud began to close.

  “No, please. I want to see.”

  “Very well.”

  The opening broadened again.

  The city came into relief: the formidable battlements on the outer walls, the tumble of homes and shops surrounding the castle and the sanctuary, the wharves stretching into coastal waters, and the warehouses behind them. They passed a good number of vessels as they neared the piers. She was sure Tresz would feed again before leaving.

  “The lane to the north of the wharves,” she said, pointing. “Before the city wall.”

  He veered in that direction. They passed the wharves and followed the contour of the city wall to a deserted stretch of rutted road. Tresz slowed and floated down to the dirt and grass.

  She climbed off his back, stretched cramped muscles in her arms and shoulders. A gentle rain fell, cooled by the Shonla’s mist.

  “You’ve been kind to me,” she said, looking up into those luminous eyes.

  He chuckled. “You grow diffident as our farewell approaches. Are you doubting your decision?”

  “No. But I know you didn’t want to do this. You didn’t want me with you, and you’ve carried me a long way.”

  “It has been my pleasure,” he said, bearing blunt teeth in a smile. “I will miss your songs.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Go? Why would I go anywhere?” He waved a hand in the direction of the gulf. “Did you see how many ships we passed? I can feed here for a century.”

  “And what will you do when word of the hungry Shonla spreads, and every captain orders a dozen torches mounted on deck?”

  “I shall journey to Sheraigh and feed there until the sailors and captains of Hayncalde grow lax. They always do, you know. Humans are like that.” This last he said more pointedly.

  “I know.”

  His brow creased, and he made a sound halfway between a sigh and a growl. “Very well. I leave you.”

  He extended a hand, palm facing her. She pressed her fingers to his.

  “Hunt well, Tirribin. May you find what it is you seek.”

  Droë blinked back a tear and had to bite her lip to keep herself from asking him to stay. She had grown used to his company, to not being alone. Which was strange, because she had spent centuries alone.

  “And you,” she said. “Feed well. May every ship in Islevale run short of torch oil.”

  She would miss the rumble of his laughter.

  Droë lowered her hand and started away. Before she left the cold of his mists, Tresz spoke her name, making her turn back to him.

  He walked to her, reemerging from the fog.

  “I meant what I said. I will remain in these waters for some time. You know how to summon me. If I am near enough to hear you, I will come.”

  “Thank you, Tresz.”

  She walked free of the mist, stepping into warm, damp air, dirt and sand beneath her feet, rain on her brow. Pausing, she watched Tresz glide beyond the wharves and toward a small vessel that bobbed on the gulf’s surface. A single torch burned on its deck, mounted near the prow. Not nearly enough to ward off the Shonla.

  “Fools,” she whispered, and smiled as the vessel was swallowed by Tresz’s cloud.

  She followed the rutted road toward the gate. Already she sensed the guards there. Young men, all rich with years. Despite having eaten so recently, she felt a pang of hunger but thought better of trying to feed on them. All these men would be armed, and determined to stay together. Getting past them would be simple enough, given her powers. She would feed later, on others.

  Within sight of the gate, she slowed, reached for her time sense. She stepped into the between, and out of it again a blink later on the far side of the gate, in the middle of a dark cobbled lane. She took in her surroundings and set out for the castle at Tirribin speed. She reached it in a dozen strides, perhaps a tencount.

  Another stone wall blocked her way. A gate, and more guards. If the Walker – Tobias – was here in Hayncalde he might well be within. Yet she sensed no Walkers. None. She would have, had he been there.

  Droë stared at the walls for a long time, casting her time sense through stone and over grass and tile. Nothing. Disappointment warred with relief. Yes, she wanted to find him. Curiosity about this human she might love drew her like the promise of a child’s years. Yet she feared that encounter as well. Perhaps it was good that it wouldn’t happen so soon. She needed to adjust to this place, to being on her own again. She needed to think about what she wanted from the Walker, and from herself.

  She started back down the deserted lane, walking at human speed. After a time, she heard distant footsteps. Many of them, walking together. She soon spotted a cluster of soldiers, all bearing weapons, all dressed in pale blue. Of course. It occurred to her that she’d seen no other humans since the city gate. Garrisoned cities often had their own laws – times after which people couldn’t be abroad in the streets. Feeding here at night might prove difficult.

  She hid from the soldiers, waited as they passed, and snuck to the lower lanes closer to the gate, where the homes and shops were less polished. There, among the ramshackle buildings and befouled byways, she was more likely to encounter humans after dark. Soldiers wouldn’t care as much about what happened in these streets, or who they happened to.

  Droë didn’t know what exactly she sought, or why she wandered the lanes. A court Walker wouldn’t be in this part of the city. He would have been in the castle, and since he wasn’t, he could be anywhere. In Daerjen, in Aiyanth, somewhere at sea. For all she knew, he was back in Trevynisle. That thought brought a thin smile. Though agitated, she wasn’t immune to the irony.

  A scream yanked her from her musings, froze her in mid-stride. It had come from nearby, a few streets to the south and east. She covered the distance at speed and paused at a shadowed corner. Several people, all in tattered clothes, whispered in a cluster at the mouth of a nearby alley. Keeping out of sight, pressed to a crooked wall, she listened.

  “…Soldiers might come.”

  “Does anyone know him?”

  “Never seen him before. Not that I’d recognize him in this state.”

  “I’ve seen ’im. But as you say, not like this.”

  “You seen him with anyone? Family? Friends?”

  “Nah. Always alone.”

  “That don’t mean nothin’. No claims yet. Not until we’re sure there’s no one else. Rule of the lanes.”

  “Rule of the lanes.” This last, all of them said in unison.

  In time, the humans moved off, heading in different directions, many of them casting furtive glances over their shoulders and down the lanes they passed.

  When they had gone, and Droë could no longer hear their voices or footsteps, she edged closer to where they had been. She knew what to expect. Already she saw the rumpled form prone on the street, its contours clear in spite of the darkness.

  Nevertheless, as she neared the corpse she stopped, swaying in the shadows, her breath caught in her throat.

  The dead man’s cheeks were sunken, wrinkled, dried out skin clinging to bone, eyes bulging from their sockets.

  A Tirribin had done this. On the thought, she heard a footfall behind her, and then a voice.

  “Good evening, cousin.”

  CHAPTER 8

  23rd Day of Kheraya’s Waking, Year 634

  Droë wheeled, a snarl in her throat, teeth bared, fingers as rigid as a hawk’s talons.

  “It’s not very friendly.”

  “Not very at all.”

  Two Tirribin stood a few paces from her, near enough to kill her, far enough apart to prevent her from attacking both at once.

  A male and a female, both dark-haired, he with pale blue eyes, she with green. Her hair was longer, but otherwise they could have been twins.

  The female bega
n to circle Droë, hands clasped behind her back, her steps as light and sure as a timbercat’s.

  Droë watched her, but her gaze returned repeatedly to the male. She felt exposed having them on either side of her, having to guard against an attack from left and right, or front and back.

  “It’s pretty,” the female said. “I prefer black hair to yellow, but still…” She looked past Droë to the other. “Don’t you think it’s pretty?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You’re afraid to admit it. You do think so. I can tell.”

  His eyes raked over Droë. “It looks like other Tirribin. We’re all pretty.”

  “True. Very true.” The female continued around, passing the male to begin a second circuit. “I haven’t seen it before. I think it must be new here.” Her tone was mild, yet mocking.

  “Yes. I wonder why it’s here.”

  “So do I. This is our city, after all. We hunt here, feed here. We have for centuries. Why would it come here now?”

  “That’s for me to know,” Droë said.

  The female paused. She was opposite her brother once more, flanking her. The two shared a glance.

  “Not friendly,” the female said again. “Rude even.” She resumed her orbit.

  “Still,” he said, scrutinizing Droë but addressing his sister, “it would be helpful to know its name.”

  The female wrinkled her nose. “Ew. Why?”

  “Just to know. Maybe it will be friendlier if we give it our names.”

  “Would you please stop calling me ‘it,’ and speaking about me as if I’m not here? That’s more rude than anything I’ve done.”

  His brow creased. “She’s right.”

  “I suppose she is.” The female joined her brother and together they faced Droë.

  “I’m Teelo.” The male indicated his sister with an open hand. “This is Maeli.”

  Droë regarded them both, wary, sullen. But they had done as she asked. Denying them her name would have been rude as well. “I’m Droë.”

  “If we choose to fight you,” Maeli said, “you won’t stand much of a chance.”

  Droë blinked, then realized she was still crouched for battle, her hands clawed. She straightened, let her hands fall to her sides.