The Rifts of Psyche

by Kyle West

  Lucian scanned the rift on both sides, but so far, it seemed they were the only ones here.

  It was getting noticeably harder to breathe. It wasn’t just the hard trek. The air was getting thinner, and much cooler and drier. There were also fewer waterfalls, and the greenery clinging to the rift’s sides was all but gone. The wind blew harder, chilling him to the bone. While the cold weather was nothing compared to the Isle of Madness, Lucian hadn’t felt that cold for months. He suppressed a shiver.

  “Can’t be much farther, can it?” Lucian asked. “I could swear her cave wasn’t far beyond the pass.”

  It was another half hour before the trail branched off to the right. This landscape gave Lucian the creeps. It only reminded him of the wyverns he’d fought off, and it seemed they could be lurking in every crevice and cave they passed.

  “This path leads to the Upper Reaches,” Cleon said, fearfully.

  “It’s where we need to go,” Fergus said. “Lead on, Lucian. And be quick about it. We can’t be caught out here in the darkness, and we need to get a fire going.”

  Lucian led them up the trail, which was rougher than he remembered. In fact, there were multiple trails, leading to varying heights in the rift. It was impossible to tell which one he had followed to get to the Snake Pass.

  When Lucian paused at a fork, he frowned.

  “Lost your way?” Cleon asked.

  “I don’t remember this. It was dark, so I guess that shouldn’t be surprising.”

  “I’m not sensing anyone near,” Fergus said. “No mage, anyway. Of course, they might be warding themselves.”

  “The cave has to be close,” Lucian said.

  “Take the path that looks most correct,” Fergus said. “And don’t take too long about it.”

  Lucian fought to remember that night. He had been blinded by fear, and the darkness had made it impossible to know where he was going. He considered the two paths before him. One went straight, not changing in elevation, while the other snaked its way up the righthand side of the rift. Surely, if the trail had been that steep, he would have remembered going down all those switchbacks.

  “It’s straight,” he said.

  “You sure about that?” Cleon said, his fiery red hair whipped by the wind. “I’m not ready to die yet.”

  “We’ll know if I’m wrong after ten minutes.”

  Cleon shook his head, and they took the trail.

  Lucian remembered then that he had failed to tell them about Ramore. “She’s living with another fray, too. A Burner named Ramore. He almost killed me with Thermal Magic.”

  “And you’re just telling us now?” Cleon asked.

  “A Thermalist,” Fergus said. “Cleon, you must make sure we’re warded before we go in there.”

  “Sure thing, Cap.”

  A few minutes later, they rounded a bend to see the entrance of the cave, on a ledge about a hundred meters above them across a narrow gulley.

  “That’s it,” Lucian said.

  “As forlorn as forlorn can be,” Cleon said. “This land has the feel of wyverns. See all those caves up there? What was Serah doing here?”

  “Escaping notice,” Fergus said. “Some of the Deeprift villages make a practice of hunting frays. It’s safer for frays to live in the Upper Reaches or even in the Darkrift.”

  “That’s a sad life.”

  “Indeed.”

  Without another word, Fergus started forward. Now that he knew where the group was going, he wanted to take the lead again.

  Within minutes, they were fifty paces from the cave mouth. Fergus held up a hand.

  “I sense no mage in there,” he said. “But she may just be a good warder. Be cautious and spears ready. And keep an eye out for the Burner.”

  “Maybe I can go first,” Lucian said. “She knows me.”

  “She knows me, too, though it has been a few years,” Fergus said. “We go together. It might take all three of us to bring the Burner down if it comes to it.”

  “If you kill Ramore, she will kill you.”

  Fergus laughed bitterly. “She has reason to already. It was I who led her out of the valley when Kiro exiled her. That wasn’t easy on anyone, but least of all Elder Ytrib.”

  By now, they were close to the cave entrance. Close enough for Lucian to notice that something was amiss. It was a sight that made his heart drop.

  He pointed at the entrance, where a body lay sprawled on the ground, almost completely lost to the darkness.

  “Rot it,” Fergus said. “How did I miss that?”

  “Too busy running your mouth, Captain,” Cleon said. “Should we investigate?”

  Lucian had a bad feeling about this, but what else was there to do?

  “Looks dead to me.” Fergus said.

  The only question was whether the body belonged to Serah, Ramore, or someone else entirely. There was only one way to find out.

  Since the other two weren’t moving, Lucian took the lead. He reached for his Focus. If this were some sort of trap, it would be better to be prepared for it. Remembering Serah bragging about her Gravitonic Magic, he streamed a Gravitonic ward around himself, using Psionic Magic as his shell. To his surprise, the ward set fine. It seemed Elder Erymmo’s lesson had stuck.

  “You streaming?” Fergus asked. “I thought I told you—”

  “—Serah is an accomplished Gravitist. We need to be defended against that.”

  “Yes, do that,” Fergus said, somewhat testily. He seemed annoyed he hadn’t thought of the idea first. “Can you extend your ward radius?”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Reach your Focus farther and commit more ether.” His eyes watched him, appraising. “That is, if you can handle it.”

  Lucian nodded, and expanded his ward about five meters, which should be enough to cover everyone. His ether pool constricted, making him feel momentarily lightheaded. It was hard to say, but he probably only had half of his pool left to stream. That made him uneasy, but they weren’t here to fight. They were here to talk.

  Lucian watched as Cleon set a Thermal ward, while Fergus’s concealment ward was still active. With each of their wards, protecting them from Gravitonic, Thermal, and Radiant magic, they were as well-protected as they could be. Lucian’s heart pounded at the thought that Ramore could be lurking within, ready to strike.

  “I’ll take point,” Fergus said. “If the Burner is in there, Lucian, Bind him and let me take care of it. I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”

  “And Serah?”

  Fergus paused for a moment to think. “Cleon will deal with her.”

  That settled, the three men strode toward the dark entrance of the cave.

  What hit Lucian first was the smell. Burned flesh had to be the most disgusting stench in all the Worlds. It took holding his Focus for Lucian not to heave the contents of his lunch.

  The sight of it was almost as bad. The body was a charred husk, to the point where it was impossible to tell who it was. Size alone wasn’t enough of an indicator, since so much had burned away. Bone showed through the blackened skin of the arms.

  Whether this death had been self-inflicted, or the result of a fight, Lucian couldn’t say.

  “Search the cave,” Fergus said. “She might still be around.”

  Lucian’s stomach churned at the thought that Serah might have met the same grisly end. He refused to believe it. As a frayed Thermalist, Ramore could have done this to himself out of his own madness. It seemed the most likely explanation.

  Little could be found in the cave. Either Serah had packed up and left, or the cave had been looted by somebody. Or somebodies.

  The three stood near the cave entrance again. The sky was darkening. It would be night in just a couple of hours.

  “Cleon, thoughts?” Fergus asked.

  Cleon was poring over the cave entrance. “Plenty of footprints here. Fresh. No more than two days old. Most point to and from the Upper Reaches.” He pointed in the direction Lucian had w
andered from three days ago.

  “Can you pinpoint a set of footprints that might be smaller than the others?” Fergus asked. “Belonging to a woman, perhaps?”

  “Hard to say,” Cleon said. “Plenty of larger footprints, though, made by boots from the look of it. The tracks tell a story. Could be that Serah and her unlucky friend here were ambushed in the dead of night, and all their stuff looted. The one here was burned to a crisp while the other was taken prisoner. We already know the Queen is interested in the Snake Pass. And only mages would have the ability to take another mage hostage. That tells me there’s a level of organization here that few but the Sorceress-Queen have. The prisoner would have to be Serah since the Queen would want nothing to do with a Burner. And since Serah’s companion was a Thermalist, it makes sense he met that end. Perhaps with a misdirected stream.”

  “Is there another option?” Lucian asked.

  “Pretty much the same thing as the first, except Serah got away and the Darans are chasing after her.”

  “You don’t think this could have been one of the Rift villages?” Fergus asked.

  Cleon shook his head. “No. This cave is far outside the bounds of the lower Deeprift, and they wouldn’t risk coming this high unless they had a score to settle. And we already know the Queen is out in force. Maybe these men came seeking information. But it’s hard to imagine it being the same men from the Greenrift. It’s too far. So this has to be another group.”

  “Seems far-fetched,” Fergus said.

  “I’m working with incomplete information here,” Cleon said. “If we want to find out what really happened, we need to follow those footprints.”

  “That’s the strangest part,” Fergus said. “Why would they go up rather than to the Snake Pass if they were trying to find us?”

  “At the time, they didn’t know I was down in the Deeprift,” Lucian said. “They do now.”

  “So that means they might be headed back this way.”

  Everyone looked back outside, but so far, there was no sign of hostiles.

  “If they were trying to get to Snake Rift, then they couldn’t use the pass,” Lucian said. “It’s buried.”

  “Even so,” Fergus said. “The Upper Reaches are a death trap, especially for outlanders. It seems strange.”

  “It’s a puzzle to be sure,” Cleon agreed. “And it tells me that Serah most likely got away rather than being taken prisoner.”

  “How do you figure that?” Fergus asked.

  Cleon shrugged. “If she wanted to lose those men, she would have gone up rather than down. As you said, they are outlanders. They don’t know the Upper Reaches like she does, and being from the Golden Vale, they don’t have the lungs for it. And she would know all the hidden caves to shelter in. All she’d have to do is outlast them.”

  “Well, if she can hide from them, she can probably hide from us, too,” Fergus said. He sat on a nearby rock, next to the ashes of the fire Lucian had sat around not three nights before. It was a surreal feeling.

  “One other thing,” Lucian said. “She would have never left Ramore unburied. That means she was forced to leave, or she was taken by force.”

  “That too,” Cleon said. “I didn’t say as much because the point was obvious.”

  “Thanks,” Lucian said, sarcastically.

  “The question is,” Fergus said, “what do we do with the information we have?”

  “Other than hope I’m a better tracker than the Queen’s men?” Cleon shrugged. “I’ve got nothing.”

  “Assuming it’s the Queen’s soldiers,” Lucian said, “then how is it possible that they came from above? You said there’s nothing up there of interest.”

  “The final piece of the puzzle,” Cleon said. “The Zephyr.”

  “Of course,” Lucian said. “If the confrontation in this cave took place two days ago, then the Zephyr must have dropped those men off somewhere close to this cave.” It suddenly came to him. “They were placed by my drop pod! Of course, that’s where they’d want to start looking. From there, the men tracked me to this cave, where they found Serah and Ramore. There was a fight. Ramore died while Serah escaped. They decided to chase Serah, figuring she probably knew something about me. This was before the Sorceress-Queen learned my true location from Morgana.” He nodded. This had to be the complete picture. “Serah must have escaped, otherwise she probably would have told them where I am by now, and that group of soldiers would be at Kiro’s gates.”

  “Bingo,” Cleon said. “Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  “The only thing I don’t understand is this airship,” Lucian said. “How big is it? What is it capable of?”

  “Her airship is guided by mages,” Fergus explained. “Binders can pull it every which way across the face of Psyche. It floats through the efforts of her court Atomicist, Nostra. She creates the helium that makes it float. The ship itself is rather large if reports are to be believed.”

  Cleon nodded. “The Zephyr is a doozy. And Mage-Lord Nostra is largely responsible for building Dara itself, creating material that simply wouldn’t exist on this planet otherwise. The Zephyr is her crowning achievement, though. Granted, the ship is of limited use in the Riftlands. It can only go so high before the air becomes too thin, and the rifts themselves are difficult to navigate. Still, it can move faster than people on foot.”

  “It’s hard to believe such a thing exists,” Lucian said.

  “Well,” Cleon said, “it does. I’ve seen it, for rot’s sake. But try convincing Rifters it exists when Dara is over a thousand kilometers away and most haven’t seen the Golden Vale. There are many here who don’t believe anything exists above the sky. They think things like the Hundred Worlds and the Mage War are only stories told to children. Another fifty years of isolation, and not even the old ones will be around to keep things straight.”

  “This is beside the point,” Fergus said. “If she does have the Zephyr, and she is using it, then it would go a long way to explain how her men can be everywhere at once.”

  “I think so, too,” Cleon said. “That ship can crew up to two hundred men. And you can bet a good portion of them are mages, if only to have enough firepower to keep the wyverns away.”

  “The air is too thin up high,” Fergus said. “The Zephyr still has to fly within the rifts for the air to be breathable. She must be very desperate to find Lucian if she’s willing to risk the crown jewel of her military in the Riftlands, especially by flying into the Upper Reaches.”

  And neither of them had mentioned the most obvious thing. The Queen herself was probably on board, but Lucian didn’t have the heart to mention that. “There’s still the question of what we do about Serah.”

  “I say we move on,” Cleon said. “Even if she’s alive, it’s like trying to find a jewel bug in the Darkrift. We’re likely to kill ourselves in the Upper Reaches. No food, little water, and the wyverns can catch us in the evenings.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Fergus said.

  The very idea of leaving Serah revolted him. “Seriously? She’s in trouble, and you would just leave her behind without even trying to find her? What would Elder Ytrib say?”

  At least Fergus had the grace to look ashamed. Cleon, on the other hand, seemed ambivalent.

  “She saved my life,” Lucian said. “Without her, I would have never found Kiro. We’re going after her.”

  “What, is she your girlfriend or something? Might not want to tell Morgana.”

  “Be serious,” Lucian said. “We need her pathfinding skills. And she’s a good Gravitist. You have to admit that’s damn useful.”

  Cleon gave a noncommittal shrug.

  “Enough,” Fergus said. “Lucian’s entanglements are none of our concern. I have a choice to make. Whatever is more likely to get us to Dara and beyond is what I will decide.”

  “That’s easy then, Captain,” Cleon said. “Huff it through the pass and into Snake Rift. After that, there’s the Blue Rift.”

  “As I said
, the choice is mine.”

  “Maybe we should camp here for the night,” Cleon said. “After we give that one a proper burial.”

  “What if those men are coming back, though?” Lucian asked.

  “I’ll sense them long before they’re here,” Fergus said. “They can’t hide that many mages from me.”

  They buried Ramore, the work going fast with Binding Magic and a heavy stone to dig with. It was hard to feel anything for a man who would have killed him. But Ramore had once been sane, and not all that long ago. It made Lucian feel hollow, but he hardened himself to it. It was Serah’s grief, not his. Assuming she was still alive.

  Once Ramore was underground, Cleon started a fire with a Thermal stream, using firewood Serah had left behind. It seemed strange to eat dinner after such grisly work. Lucian tried to ignore the sickly-sweet smell of rot lingering in the air.

  They ate quickly, keeping the fire roaring near the mouth of the cave. That light would make them visible to hostile humans, but it was necessary to keep away the wyverns. As the fire burned bright and hot, the three watched outside the cave uneasily.

  “Well, who has first watch?” Cleon asked.

  “I’ll take watch,” Fergus said. “And you, Cleon, have second watch. Lucian needs rest the most.”

  Cleon mumbled something under his breath that sounded like rotting hell and some other expletive. “Fine. As if my girl didn’t keep me up all night.”

  “Sleep with your spear in hand, Lucian,” Fergus said. “You may need it before too long.”

  Lucian lay with his back to the fire and closed his eyes, the exhaustion of the day hitting him in full. But he wasn’t quite done yet. He reached for his Focus and refreshed his Psionic ward, making its range large enough to cover all of them. Once that was done, he was out like a light.

  21

  Lucian was the first to wake. Across the fire, Fergus snored loudly, while Cleon was nodding off on his perch next to the cave mouth. So much for keeping watch.

  Lucian walked over to him. “You alive?”

  He jerked awake. “Still breathing.” He looked at Lucian appraisingly. “Well, you want me to cook you breakfast, or what?”