JADE 2.1: ARCHMAGE LOST
“Don’t look back. Don’t remember these words! And don’t believe the lies of my brethren: I tell you, there is nothing to be found in the past but mistakes. None forget the past, despite my admonishments. All they do is look to it. They say that if they forget the past they will repeat its mistakes; yet this is in itself a forgetting of the past, and a repetition of one of its many mistakes! Show me when your ancestors forgot their own! Show me when they did not repeat the mistakes! No. You cannot. You are wrong all along, a pendulum laughing at its own course as if to mock the very vicissitudes of fate, unknowingly doomed to trace the same figure over and over again. No, it is by fixation upon the past that one becomes doomed to repeat its mistakes. You remember the past and forget to find the future. And it shall be to your undoing.”
– taken verbatim from ‘The Sermons of the Unbridled’ recordings, Mortifost 909 NE
Children had to get up at the most inconvenient time for their guardians; it was some unwritten rule. You could awaken nice and early every day, and getting them going would be harder than animating a pile of spuds. A pile of complaining spuds. But the one day you wanted, you needed a lie-in – oh, they were just waiting for that day… They would get up before the sun, and come up with ingenious ways to cause as much tumult and disorder in every discrete ten-second segment of time as was physically possible.
It was plain to me that these ‘unwritten rules’ must’ve been whispered by imps down the ages into the ears of kids; that was my thought as I woke in my bed, treated to a cacophony coming from the main room, the insensate din of what I could only visualise as a visitation from Mekesta: Mother Chaos herself gracing the apartment, birthing forth many-tentacled, screaming krakens that slithered across the walls and flung around the furniture in their frantic squirming.
But no. It was Jaid, Jaroan and Xastur playing archmages. Well, the twins were. It sounded very much like Xastur was just doing what the twins told him to do.
Orstrum and Morsus were sprawled on the twins’ bed; it looked like they’d surrendered the main room at some earlier hour with me none the wiser.
I sighed, and prepared to be Kas again. Being Feychilde had been fun, but Feychilde couldn’t go empty the waste-bucket… though maybe he could intimidate some children into keeping the noise-level down to something that wasn’t going to deafen every hangover-stricken, faerie-perception-borrowing arch-sorcerer in a thirty foot radius…
Sorely tempted, I went out to battle, regretfully leaving my robe behind. No shields could protect me beyond this door.
“Alright!” I croaked at the three miniature archmages. “Who wants breakfast?”
Upon seeing the state I was in they actually quietened down; praising Celestium, I got a drink of water and collapsed on a bench. It was pretty late, but I wasn’t surprised that I was still the first of the fools who’d drank wine to get up out of bed. I’d only had a bit, admittedly, but my elders had enjoyed my newfound access to free wine with abandon. Once I’d dismissed Olbru and the kids fell asleep they’d assaulted the wine-pegasus, and what little they hadn’t imbibed was now stored in jars for later consumption.
As such it was left to me to do the basic chores: get fresh water, prepare the gruel, try to entertain the kids with the minimum of noise-making activity… I even had chance to wash some clothes and hang them on the rail outside to dry. I moved automatically, not really thinking through what I was doing, though once or twice I did get out the glyphstone – the Em-oriented part of my brain was still working fine, it appeared. If I was right, the cloudy gem would glow gently, heat up slightly and even hum if someone was trying to contact me. But, late as it might be for someone with children in the apartment, it was still only something like ten o’clock, meaning Em came off her shift just seven-ish hours earlier – she’d still be asleep, probably.
It was only gradually that the other implications of yesterday’s escapades started to catch up with me.
I’d had a prospective darkmage within the Shining Circle imprison me in the shape of a rat and sell me out to his noble friends. I’d had a powerful lord and lady of the Arrealbord sending an assassin-demon after me, while famous champions watched for a clue to the whereabouts of this ‘Facechanger’ fellow. I’d encountered a vastly more-experienced arch-sorcerer who’d ripped my shields to shreds and held me at spectre-point. And I’d seen the prospective darkmage’s memories pulled from his mind by someone who could very well have insinuated something into my own head, without my knowledge.
I didn’t wear their wheel, but I’d accepted a Magisterium glyphstone. I was linked to them now. I’d just have to try to find a way to make the sacrifice worth it, make it work for me instead of against me.
I’d broken my silence on my archmagehood to those who mattered to me. The kids weren’t saying anything about it, but I could see the way things had changed right there in their eyes staring back at me. (My brother and sister, anyway – Xastur was off in his own world, as usual.) Had I expected it to look this much like respect, though? I didn’t think they would’ve just shut up yesterday like they did this morning.
Maybe I didn’t need the robe. They knew I was Feychilde now.
Or maybe that was a bad thing… I didn’t want them to stop thinking of me as their big brother. Though I supposed it’d always been like that for them, in a way – for the last three years, at least. This was just an extension of that, wasn’t it? I was just a more-capable guardian now, wasn’t I?
But I knew the answer to that. I’d already potentially endangered them by letting the wrong people know who I was.
And now, along with three of the Bagger Boys, my conspirators included a four-year-old and two nine-year-olds.
Yeah. Yesterday had been one massive string of errors and misfortunes. But there’d been some minor victories – and some not-so-minor ones… All in all, I was convinced I’d gained more than I’d lost.
And Peltos. Had Ciraya really followed through on her assurances? For some reason I felt I could trust her, but I wouldn’t have any way to be sure, short of finding a way to contact the sorceress.
I’d distributed platinum coins to my friends last night, consumed with largesse, but did I really know for sure that it could even be spent? Wasn’t it risky?
I shook my head at myself. Wasn’t the risk the whole point? If I needed more, I’d just have to capture me some more dark sorcerers with rewards on their heads. Finding them wasn’t so hard, with a future-seeing hyper-perceptive fairy eager to be set on the case. If I spent my money wisely, I could maximise my advantages, minimise the dangers…
However much my head hurt, when my house-mates shuffled out of the bedrooms I could at least console myself with the fact that my youth let me bounce back faster than them. Even Xantaire spent what was left of the morning cradling her cranium with a gentle hand; Morsus looked like he was going to be sick (but wasn’t) and Orstrum looked like he wasn’t going to be sick (but was). I got the impression they were all hearing every squeal and collision with augmented hearing at least equal to my own.
It was close to lunchtime when I made up my mind to spare my room-mates from the torture they were all obviously languishing in.
“Okay! Who fancies a trip to the Autumn Door?”
Jaid and Jaroan were bouncing up and down by the time I got to the word trip, and, with a little (monotone) encouragement from his mother, Xastur looked almost excited about the prospect too.
I took my robe, though I figured I had no chance of actually needing it – I wouldn’t wear it around the kids unless I sent them far from me. Otherwise I’d just be painting a target on them, if the wrong person was watching us when I changed. I also took my money, more out of general fear of being burgled and having it taken without me having the chance to protect it, than out of a desire to actually spend any of it. The others breaking a single platinum coin wasn’t going to draw suspicion if they did it in the right places, but if I went and tried to break four of them (into silver, likely) then it was going to raise some eyebrows. Best I do that as Feychilde later, and not in Sticktown. I had a few copper pieces still hanging about from my day-job; enough to pay for the necessities.
I walked hand-in-hand with Xastur, and gave the twins a tongue-lashing if they got too far ahead for me to see them; the lane was filled with people. I spotted Salli Meleine, the prettiest barmaid at the Griffin (who’d been the subject of the dreams of far too many boys my age), hanging out her unmentionables – she called a greeting anyway and I did my best to respond without letting my gaze linger. The scents drifting out of Hontor and Sons were resistible at the time we passed, but after a couple of minutes of listening to the twins bang on about sandwiches (she argued in favour of cheese, he in favour of ham) I was feeling voracious – we ended up detouring to Knuckle Market to pick up a skewer of charred meat each from the fire-pits. ‘Meat’ is how it was advertised and ‘meat’ was what you got – undefined and undefinable, definitely not worth thinking too much about. Thankfully I still had plenty of the mint from yesterday in my satchel, to combat the undefined-meat-breath.
From Lord’s Knuckle it was even more straightforward to get to the Lowtown Road, follow it down to the Giltergrove. Or would’ve been straightforward, if not for the fact it was Sunday. The last day of the week; the day of trade. About half the various occupations only employed staff for the first five days of the week, meaning Starday and Sunday were the busiest days for retail businesses; many of them employed extra staff to cover the weekend shifts. With work starting again tomorrow, on Moonday, there’d be the usual rush to get the shopping done in preparation for the new week.
All this meant that it was incredibly busy out. The crowds of pedestrians mingling with the backed-up carts on the street soon got too thick for me to spot the twins, even if they were only twenty feet away, so I got them to walk right behind me, Xastur’s hand still in my own. I’d have ordinarily wanted them in front of me so I could keep an eye on them, but they had this habit of charging off into gaps in the crowds that only they could fit through, moving with the uncanny simultaneous motions of twins whose bodies followed the same instincts – even if they had very different minds.
Unfortunately, putting them this close to me meant I was treated to a snippet of their current discussion.
“So if you could be one for real,” Jaroan was saying, “but you couldn’t be an arch-druid, what would you be?”
“An arch-druid. Like Leafcloak – or Fangmoon.”
“But if you couldn’t pick that one.”
“You don’t get to pick anyway.”
“I’d be a diviner, like Timesnatcher.”
“You always say diviner.”
“But you’re saying druid, and you always say druid.”
“Just because druids win.”
“No they do not!”
“Yes they do and you know it.”
“If I knew it, I’d want to be a druid, not a diviner, wouldn’t I?”
“But you do know it, and that’s why you said, not an arch-druid…”
My life.
“Fine, not a druid.”
“Then what?”
“Kas, if you could be one but you couldn’t be a sorcerer, what would you be?”
I kept my fortify-face as I glanced back at them, but I grit my teeth.
These were my confidantes.
This was all going to end well.
“I would be an enchanter,” I replied.
“Oooh.” Jaid didn’t sound disappointed. “Like Lovebright!”
“Really?” Jaroan sounded slightly sceptical.
“I could make sure the two of you don’t say the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place and get Mud Lane turned into a battleground…” I let that sink in for a moment, checking they looked fittingly uncomfortable. “But enchanters are completely overpowered, anyway. Everything people do is governed by their minds, right? So mind-magic trumps all. Imagine it… if I woke up a skilled enchanter I could make you think you’re a druid,” I inclined my head at my sister, then at my brother, “and you think you’re a diviner – and invent all these interesting memories for you, with you never even knowing the truth.”
Their wide eyes and mouths told me they’d never really thought-through the ways magery could mess with people’s heads. Well, they were getting older. They’d have to start facing certain realities about the world we lived in.
“There’s no end to the mischief magic can cause, and it’s better to be forewarned than surprised when something shocking shows up.”
“But what if I was…?” Jaid didn’t seem to know how to finish the question, twirling a finger at her temple as if to suggest bewitchment.
“Well, most people aren’t going to get their mind invaded by just any enchanter. The reagents alone would make it worthless; that’s what makes archmages so dangerous…”
“So how do they stop them just taking over?”
I shrugged a little. “Those with cause to believe they’d be under attack have precautions in place.”
“But if you just put memories in my head, and I tried to test my powers, they wouldn’t work,” Jaroan mused.
“But how long would you get to remember that for? Until we next crossed paths? And would you think to blame me if your magic suddenly ‘disappeared’? Next time, I could include some kind of resolution in your memories, to not access your divination unless you’re in a life-or-death situation. Then you wouldn’t even test them again.”
“Then he’d go out and get himself killed,” Jaid pointed out.
I only nodded gravely in response, leaving them to ponder the ramifications.
“Anyway, you’re going to see some druids here,” I said after another minute of weaving through the crowds, waving an arm as the golden trees came into view, frozen in their gleaming perfection. “Not the kind you’re talking about though, not arch-druids. Just the regular kind.”
Jaid wrinkled her face up. “It’s not the same,” she opined. “They paid for it.”
I tried to hide my smile. The twins were well-trained, at least.
We moved at a snail’s pace past the stalls hawking cheap Giltergrove-related merchandise, and somehow the kids only needed telling once that I didn’t have enough money to get them anything before shutting up. They didn’t even mention the platinum they had to know I had! Perhaps I should’ve been more trusting. Not that these traders would’ve had change for a plat anyway – you’d be lucky to get change out of a gold off them.
There was a steady flow of visitors to the Giltergrove, those entering and leaving carefully managed by a team of six gold-rope-belted druids. We queued up, and after ten minutes of waiting we were admitted onto the path, flowing with the rest of the crowd across the grass towards the golden trees. The crowd coming back the other direction was just as clogged as our own.
After another ten minutes of inching our way along behind a group of meandering tourists, country-folk from Arlbrowtain up north, we finally entered the treeline. And after ten minutes in there we passed the place where Belexor had led me off into the woods…
Belexor. I wondered whether he was still chained up, waiting for his next mind-purging session with Henthae, or if they’d finally set him loose of his bonds and given him a comfy chair.
Well, this was a good way to waste the early part of the day; at least it was free. The kids enjoyed the place more than I was able – I kept thinking my glyphstone was getting warm or emitting a low noise, only to find nothing when I surreptitiously checked it…
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Try as I might, I couldn’t get Em off my mind, and it only got worse as we entered the meadow, where the scents of a thousand different blooming flowers washed over me. I could smell her on the air; there was some fragrance here that matched her scent. For a second I thought she was right behind me – then a handful of dragonflies distracted us all by fluttering right through Jaid’s hair, eliciting a series of delighted squeaks from my sister.
Xastur almost froze at the sight of the Door, the huge curtain of emerald-green flames looming over everything here, sorcerous waves hemmed in by the giant-size frame of white stone, its posts and crossbar etched with runes and sigils that spoke to me of opening and closing. It was only the pressure of the crowd moving behind us that forced him to keep pace; I hefted him up and carried him for a bit. He was getting too big for it, really, but I’d done it often-enough over the last few years to have earned his trust – he clung to me when I picked him up, compliant.
Our crowd was entering the shrine through the opening in the dome of silver-birch Belexor had used yesterday, flanked by pedestals bearing lanterns that emanated a soft white glow. The exiting crowd was leaving through another similar opening twenty feet away.
The closer we got, the louder the hum became.
At first the crackling was no worse than when I opened a portal to the otherworld – it was the same sound, almost, but subtly distinct. It was like a crackle, on top of a crackle, on top of another crackle… Like listening to four musicians play the same piece with less than a tenth of a second difference, just enough to notice but not enough to disrupt the harmony… except this was no harmony. It was as though something were broken. A piece of music that went for eight seconds, stopped, then started over, over and over.
As we passed inside the domed, silvery-bark shrine, I could see the base of the Autumn Door, and the incessant noise actually started to become irritating, intruding on every thought until all I could set my mind on was wishing it would go away.
Curse these sorcerous senses.
There was nothing I could do about it, however, except grit my teeth again and hope I could endure the buzzing in my psychic ears for as long as it took to get out of the damn place.
Note to self: next time, stay outside, send them in.
I put Xastur down and held him by the shoulder instead of his hand, so that he wouldn’t have to put up with my excessively-sweaty palm. The old couple in front of us and the thirty-something couple behind us were all ooh-ing and ahh-ing. Jaid and Jaroan were babbling on about teleportation and whether you could use it to fly – something I filed away to discuss with Zel later, even if I fully expected her to shoot the idea down with zero ceremony.
“… you’ll be fine! Enjoy your day!” A distant voice from the far side of the portal echoed, just loud enough for me to pick out over the crowd’s collective din.
The interior of the shrine was a circle surrounding the foot of the Autumn Door, but few lanterns were required in here – the portal provided its own eerie, verdant illumination. We were fenced off from it at a distance of fifty or more feet. I could see I wasn’t the only one here with a kid or two clearly desperate to slip under the fence and approach the portal. Minute by minute, we meandered about the big loop, following the crowd flowing around the Door then back out through the other opening –
Seeing the sigils on the stone pillar that was one side of the Door, with the actual green scintillation right there in front of me, something inside me started to stir. Immediately surrounding the portal was a sloped section of the runic white stone, a base providing easy access to the Doorway, and the glyphs there were the easiest to read, the clearest in meaning.
Now this was a distraction.
Here was an etching of a circle. It had small lines breaking its arc at regular intervals – this was a whole thing divided so as to weaken, quite the opposite of a circle reinforced by shapes within. And here were circles with names, runes that stood for places, linked to one another by vast webs. But these were not destinations – all but one of the lines joining the circles had minor glyphs that seemed to denote a flow, a direction, leading to just one of the greatest circles.
Mund was the big circle? These were places where the power was being… drained? Fed upon to produce the Door’s magic?
And the one line leading away from Mund’s circle without a magic-flow rune – that line stretched up out of sight, out of the open roof of the shrine and beyond my ability to perceive. That line would surely terminate in a circle on the other side of the Door which denoted the actual destination, the place somewhere else in the world to which you could be transported in but an instant, if you were to step within the emerald fire.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t read the runes themselves.
At first it seemed strange to me that I could simply infer things about these arcane symbols, given their ancient and eldritch meanings, but I supposed if the stories were true, the Five Founders developed magery from archmagery. They probably weren’t the first archmages, after all, even if they’d called it something else back then. The high elves – the true elves, denizens of Etherium – had passed down traits in their bloodlines, so the myths went, enabling a lucky few humans (and thereby afterwards certain of the other races) to access the font of power supplying archmages with their gifts.
But those the Five Founders had taught – they were the first mages. The Five had come together, one of each type of archmage, and distilled the essence of that power into forms that could be recognised by ordinary men, could be learnt and taught and re-taught, down the generations… Was it so strange, then, that even unschooled I could apply my mind to these forms and see their hidden meanings?
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” came a chirpy voice, “welcome to the Autumn Door.”
I looked up to see a young Shining Circle druid, perhaps just five or so years my elder, his hood thrown back and his black hair neatly combed of any stray feathers. He was standing to the side of the crowd, a little ahead of us, on a raised, flattened section of silver-birch trunk, like a platform.
“Witness one of the four Doors created, they say, by Litenwelt Kordaine the Summoner in the last years of his life, with the aid of Arreath Ril. How many were planned, none now might say – and just Spring remains to us, for the domains which stand beyond Summer, Autumn and Winter have passed away into darkness.”
He looked like he must’ve only started his shift recently, if he had to give the same speech to the crowd over and over as its constituent people changed – his eyes gleamed with enthusiasm, and his smile looked as if he were genuinely pleased to be sharing his knowledge with us.
I was still gritting my teeth against the magical sound crackling through my skull, but I resolved to listen to his words. I couldn’t remember anything like this from when I’d been a child.
“When last did man dare step foot through the Autumn Door, I know you long to ask. We have only the report of the chaplain of Locus and esteemed chronicler, Sir Aurol Cimmeine, in the year six-eighty-two; that in the time of his predecessor five people went through, and did not return… and that those five dispatched days later to find them returned not also. It is not known for how long this state of affairs had been in place, before the ten went to their ends – for already in the time of Cimmeine’s predecessor, those ten had clearly been embarking upon an expedition of sorts. The Door was already unused.”
A creepy, awestruck vibe came over the crowd as we shuffled around. The black-haired druid still smiled, and I now got a sense of why he enjoyed his job. Even the kids had all shut up to listen.
His voice lowered slightly, adopting a more ominous tone, losing its cheeriness.
“Who then were the ten? We do not know, but we might make educated guesses; we are forced to, if we wish to understand the lore of the Doors. But we are thus forced to face a dreadful truth. There is no reason for them to have been anything but archmages. Whom else would one send upon a quest of such seemingly-daunting, lethal peril? But if they were archmages, then what awaited them beyond the Door?
“Again – we do not know, but we are forced to guess, and face our fears.”
My brow was starting to seep sweat too, by now, and not solely from proximity to the Door.
They sent five archmages, I thought, and not one could even get back through to bring word?
“The Summer Door, we have learned, leads to the Sunken City of Asil’qarith, and can be explored by properly-prepared individuals; the portal cannot be opened for any protracted time, such as would be required to move a large group of people, without threatening to drown Mund alongside it.” His smile became bitter, then faded to an expression of grim resignation. “The Winter Door leads to Zadhal, the city taken from us by the undead. But this too can be explored, with the assistance of sorcerers, and indeed is only kept secured by the constant vigilance of the Magisterium working in close concert with the Night’s Guardians.”
Well… what if the Autumn Door is simply one-way?
Even if it were one-way, an arch-druid could still send a messenger to Mund from wherever in the world it opened up – an eagle, for example; any initiate druid would be capable of getting its message off it, given a bit of notice. An arch-sorcerer could probably get to another plane, and get an even-faster messenger to Mund. Yet what could kill an arch-druid, break an arch-sorcerer’s shields like that? What attack could an arch-diviner not see coming, an arch-wizard not block? What creature could sense the presence of an arch-enchanter?
What could stop them in their tracks like that?
“The Autumn Door, some say, led the people of Mund to Shirion, the crystal city of the Shifting Isles; others said Chadoath, of the Ashen Lands.” It took me a moment to parse what he said; I’d only seen ‘Chadoath’ written down, and never knew it was pronounced Shadowath.
“Now both places are lost to time and myth, and none can say whether they ever even were. But this we can say. Whether it be one of those places or some other, the far side of this portal you see before your very eyes must be an abode of wickedness, a den of fiends such that even the worst Infernal Incursion could not prepare you for the sight.”
His assumption made sense, but it was nothing more than an assumption; that much he’d made plain. And it fit with the general mood of people, especially druids, to blame demons and necromancy wherever the option existed. Sure, he’d done a good job of making it sound like he was all supportive of sorcery-schools, the way he’d gushed about the Night’s Guardians and so on – but everyone knew the pervading opinion was that sorcerers were just the worst.
Or maybe it was just that I was naive. After all, he may well have seen Incursions up close, given his magical skills. I had to accept the possibility that he was right.
His grin returned, just as cheerful as at the beginning. “However, as is plain to see, there is nothing to actually worry about. You’re not going through the portal, are you, little boy?” He pointed to one petrified six- or seven-year-old who stood as far from the fence as possible, clinging to his mother. “And as much as we have trouble remembering the last time a person stepped into the Autumn Door, we have absolutely no record of anything ever coming out of it. Just keep inside the fence at all times, and you’ll be fine!” He waved a hand. “Enjoy your day, folks.”
I noticed Jaid and Jaroan seemed to be taking the Door a bit more seriously now. They immediately stopped trying to slip under the rail, for one thing.
We’d gotten most of the way around the ring before my jaw really started to hurt from gritting my teeth against the sorcerous humming.
“You okay, Kas?” Jaid asked, looking at me with concern in her eyes.
“Fine,” I grunted.
“You don’t look fine,” Jaroan chimed in. “You’re all pale and clammy.”
“Must be something I ate.”
“You haven’t had anything we haven’t had,” he protested.
“And we feel fine,” Jaid said, nodding.
They just loved it on those rare occasions they got to play the adults.
“We all had ‘meat’, guys. For all you know we all ate completely different stuff. There’s always at least one type of meat at Knuckle Market you’ve never had before.”
Jaid turned her eyes to Jaroan’s, and something passed between them.
Both of them sealed their lips, and my sister suddenly threw her arms around me, hugging me fiercely on the side where I wasn’t clasping Xastur.
“You’re not going to die are you?” she whispered, and I could tell that, although she was deliberately exaggerating, there was something hiding in her voice that twanged with emotion.
I let my arm fall around her shoulders, squeezing her, then reached up with the same hand to awkwardly pat Jaroan on the upper arm.
They’d figured it out, all on their own, and were keeping their actual concerns quiet because we were in a public place. They knew it was something to do with my being an arch-sorcerer, and they knew they couldn’t mention it directly.
Clever and loyal. I could’ve died from pride right there.
“No, I’m not dying,” I said, my voice coming out husky. “It’ll pass once we’re out of here.”
“Did – I mean – why did you want to come?” my brother asked in a quiet voice. “Did you know that you would –“
“No! I didn’t think it’d be like this,” I muttered. “But it’s been an interesting experience.”
“Come on,” he said assertively, “let’s get out of here.”
I started: “That’s really not necessary –“
But, taking his twin by the hand, he stepped farther from the fence – linked together, Jaroan to Jaid, Jaid to me, me to Xastur, we followed in his wake as he led us around the worst of the crowd, to the point where we could jump ahead and join those leaving the shrine.
“Are you sure?”
They all nodded, even Xastur.
I tried not to show just how grateful I was, because that would’ve given away how much distress I’d been in. I nodded with what I hoped was a cool, breezy look on my face, and helped them shove into the queue.
“What does it sound like, to you guys?” I enquired softly as we made our way out of the shrine.
Jaroan frowned.
“Sound like, Kas?” Jaid asked.
“In there?” Jaroan added.
I nodded. “The Door, itself, I mean…”
“Well, it’s silent,” Jaid said with a shrug, as if that should’ve been the most obvious thing in the world.
“That was kind of the creepiest part of it, wasn’t it?” Jaroan asked Jaid, to which she emphatically nodded. “It looks like you should be hearing this swishy, swirly, burny sound,” he went on, “but there’s… nothing.”
The next sound I heard was the strangest, because he’d been silent almost the whole time since we left the apartment.
“Like isser sleep,” Xastur supplied.
It sounded even more dreadful in his four-year-old’s voice, his innocent, unknowing mouth pronouncing terrible truths about one of the Realm’s most-ancient artifices.
Like it’s asleep.
I suppressed a shudder, and looked forward to getting out of here.
As it was, getting out was slightly faster than getting in, and I apparently improved in complexion quickly enough to satisfy my siblings, who moved onto discussing other matters and playing at archmages again. It was just as we hit the street that I felt a warmth emanating from my satchel, immediately perceptible through the thick cloth of the bag and my trousers where it rested against the outside of my leg.
I drew us aside, away from the main flow of the traffic and the nearby vendors.
“Oooh, at last! Is it Em?” Jaid asked as she saw me lift the chunk of warm crystal out of its seclusion, hearing its soft tinkling sound, like the clinking of wind-chimes in a gentle breeze.
“I’m… about to find out, I suppose,” I replied, raising the glyphstone to my eyes.
The vision wasn’t even vaguely-apparent until the crystal chunk was less than three inches from the end of my nose – and then it suddenly came into focus with a startling alacrity, seeming to zoom right up through my eyes into my mind. My consciousness wasn’t fully transported, or anything – I could still tell I was standing there to the side of the roadway, Xastur’s shoulder under one hand; I could still smell the people around me, hear their mutterings – but nonetheless I felt my attention, the very energy of my spirit, pouring into the glyphstone.
I could see Em, attired now in a wine-red dress that was criss-crossed up the front with black laces – it was an elegant thing that left her arms exposed, but she wore matching gloves long enough to cover her up to the elbow. A short cape of lighter-red covered her shoulders – along with the lengths of her white-blonde hair, looking slightly wet as it rippled in the wind. I could see her clearly but her surroundings were vague, misted-over; she was standing beside what looked like the Greywater, the big river which the Blackrush and Whiteflood fed into, her back to it – holding her own glyphstone up before her face.
I hadn’t expected, of all things, this angle. I’d been anticipating looking at her close-up, as if from the perspective of the glyphstone itself. But instead, it was as though I were floating six feet in front of her, at roughly head-height. She was the only thing I could truly make out – I could tell she was leaning against a wooden rail, the river beyond her – but the faces of the people out there sailing on the water, even the shapes of the boats themselves, were nothing more than blurs and suggestions.
No – it was Em who had called me, Em whom the divination and enchantment spells that had been ensorcelled into the glyphstone would show me.
She was looking at me, smiling at me, through the crystal.
Disembodied me, floating there.
Of course. To her, she was floating here, in the street outside the Giltergrove, looking at me standing before her, with the stupid thing in front of my face…
Her mouth didn’t move, but I heard the words, inflected just as if they had fallen from her lips. “You see how zis vorks, now, Kas?”
I grinned.
“I –“ I started to speak aloud, then realised I’d be speaking to empty air –
“I th- I think I’m starting to get it, yeah!”
Zel could pick up the lightest of my mental whispers, even if she preferred me to ‘speak’ clearly – but I had to telepathically shout to get the glyphstone to catch the sounds I was intending on making. Not in that the words sounded like shouts, but in the sheer amount of effort I had to put into it.
Probably a safeguard to prevent people telling others what they were really thinking inadvertently, thus letting it work for covert operations and business dealings as well as day-to-day communication. Quite smart, really.
“I’m up – are you still free to meet me?”
It was weird, listening to her voice without seeing her lips in motion. We probably looked really strange to passers-by, standing there, almost on opposite sides of the city, with smiles on our faces, each staring at an upheld rock. At least I had the kids with me; she was alone.
“I was worried I’d wake you if I tried to contact you. Yeah, definitely. I just need to check Xantaire’s well-enough to look after the kids. She went at it a bit heavy last night. Flood Boy’s wine, you know.”
“A vell-deserved celebration.”
“That’s what we had in mind, but they’ve never had free wine on tap before. What time were you thinking?”
“Zere are no classes at veekend; I’m free all day.”
“An hour?” I’d already guessed the position of the sun on the way out of the Giltergrove. “Half past two?”
“I’ll pick you up?” She made it a query.
“My sister’s dying to see you again, I think. She’ll probably have a million questions for you now she knows you’re an archmage too.” I’d dropped her in it at some point last night; Em’s station was harmless-enough, a mere piece of trivia, at this point.
“So you told zem? Everything?”
“Almost… not the scariest stuff, obviously.”
“Of course.”
“So I can meet you elsewhere, or you can pick me up if you think you can put up with Jaid pestering you?“
“It vould be a pleasure!” she said. “I think I vill leave some of ze details to one side, however. My own ‘scary stuff’.”
Her ‘awakening’.
“Ah – yes, probably for the best. I’ll see you in an hour then?”
“See you soon!” This last was spoken with a real surge of excitement, as I caught a final glimpse of her lowering the glyphstone –
The moment she did, the connection broke, and I lowered my own arm.
“It was so her,” Jaid said firmly, “just look at him.”
Jaroan was regarding me with an assessing look on his features, and for the life of me I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.
“I’m saying nothing,” I said, as haughtily as was possible through my grin. “Come on guys, let’s get home. I’ve got to have a wash, I’m drenched in sweat…”
“Oooh, wouldn’t want to be sweaty on a date.”
I moved off, my hand still on Xastur, and I picked him up after a few steps; the poor thing had been on his feet for quite a while now, and he was starting to wilt. We’d need to stop for a drink on the way.
“It’s not a date, Jaid –“
She was ahead of me, and turned back, an eyebrow raised. “It is so a date,” she said, in the same tone she used when talking about the supremacy of arch-druids; she brooked no argument.
“Give it up, Kas,” Jaroan warned me, from where he walked behind me.
“Kassy goin’ wizze nice lady?” Xastur asked me, shock in his voice and a pensive, thoughtful look on his face, as if he’d just come up with the answer to some philosophical conundrum.
All I could do was sigh, so I sighed.
“Yes, Xassy, I’m going with the nice lady you met yesterday.”
Jaid crowed in victory.
I offered a silent prayer to Yune, hoping against hope that Xantaire’s head had stopped spinning.
After all – I was going on a date.