QUARTZ 9.3: ASCENDED AND ANCIENT
“Do not look to me for guidance. I am everywhere. You stride in my shadow, in the echoes of my footfalls on forest avenues, the empty places I have already trod. Yes! I am everywhere yet you find the emptiness! In emulating me you must abandon pretence, identity, all particularity. And then already you are no longer following me. You too are everywhere at once. You follow only yourself. Then and only then will you know true fear! Look to where the footprints lead!”
– from ‘The Book of Kultemeren’, 1:153-163
We passed over what looked like a sapphire the size of an island, seeming more like the tip of some incomprehensible protrusion from the seabed than a floating object, so still it was upon the surface of the now-calm ocean. I tried to call it out but my breath caught in my throat. Noting my strangled gestures, the wizard informed me in a derisive voice that it was merely an iceberg, flipped over by last night’s storms.
Whatever he wanted to call it, the beauty of the giant sapphire was hardly lessened. The tips of its crags were frosted white, but the majority of its jagged facets gleamed azure, like the world’s most complex shield-structure. The frozen waters clung to its razor-sharp coasts in a sheet, perfectly still, a black mirror extending out around the iceberg as a cloak.
It wasn’t an easy journey. Despite the speed with which we travelled, we could’ve moved faster, I was certain of it. The wizard had done little to improve the comfort of the rock upon which we were draped, soaring across the ocean. Orcan Finfaltik, old and hale, spent most of the time thumbing through a very advanced-looking spellbook. Kirid Oanor, Emrelet’s mirror-image, had thankfully replaced her hood, hunkering down on the edge of the flying rock we rode, and was staring off into Northril’s depths as though she regretted her decision.
Does she? I wondered. Volunteering to leave Telior and come to Mund seemed out of character for her – not that I knew her, I supposed. A choice made in haste – and reverted without difficulty, for one of her particular persuasion. Orcan’s magic was doubtless better equipped to devour distances, but I had some idea of the wingspan she could reach. Returning home would always be on the cards for her.
“Well?” I raised my mental voice.
“Why not ask her?” the twins prodded in response, not even looking my direction.
Why don’t you just tell me?
“Because we know why you won’t ask her. She isn’t Em, you know, Kas. She’s –“
I know that! I flared. She’s –
“She’s not that old.”
It’s not just that!
“Hahaha! Oh, we know… But you have to get over it. So what if she looks like Emrelet? Do you still care about her?”
No!
The lack of retort this time told me all I needed to know.
Maybe! I don’t know!
“But you aren’t going back for her.”
… No.
“We know. But you need to know it too.”
I shook my head, then curled up in my robe, pulling my cloak about me like a blanket. Orcan was doing little to adjust the gusts of wind, it seemed, content to suffer the flicking top corner of his page – but I didn’t really mind the breeze as I tried to drift off. Its constant physical presence was almost soothing. My distractions were altogether internal in nature.
I’d expected the legion faces of strange ghosts to haunt my imagination. The tortured screams of my last remaining blood-kin. The wreck of Telior. Nafala’s unidentifiable body, floating in the bay.
No. What most held me from slumber was the claw of Mal Malas. Its descent into my flesh. His behemoth head with its hideous eyes, its gargantuan black crown. His hidden city of bone he’d summoned and shaped on a whim while waiting for his hapless prey to come sauntering along –
I couldn’t consider it now without shuddering, recoiling away from the memory, stumbling back like a drunk in a tavern only to reel into the same thought, same sequence of events, replaying before my conscious mind like the sick joke of a demented god.
Because he knew, he knew, he knew! He predicted my choices! He knows me – he moved me, like a Minion! I’m just a link in a chain he’s wrapped around the world. I ran from my destiny, and he knew it! He knew I’d be weak – he knew just where to find me. And I say I’m not a Minion – I think I’m a piece with power, a Master of the board – and I do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants… How? How did he know? What eldritch predicted my decisions like that? He came to Telior within a matter of hours… he had to have been on the way when I interrogated the vampire… A link in his chain… What he’s doing – what he’s seen…
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Ulu Kalar.
I swooned. It all tied in together.
Mal Malas is just Ulu Kalar’s… agent. He’s Heresy wrapped up in a corpse’s skin.
My mind was a black stone hurtling down a hillside into darkness, too heavy to be stopped as it churned through the earth, ripping up the sod as it span. Yet as we sped on across the seas in silence, finally it happened. Sprawled back on the cold rock, I succumbed to the stupor, entering what should’ve been a nightmare.
And awoke, hours later, feeling deliciously numb. The Blind Eye of Kaile was almost fully-open, but he could barely peek through to the world below, the silver face of the moon obscured by endless flowing clouds.
I managed to pull myself together enough to croak my thanks for my nightmare-less slumber, but as I glanced over I found them both asleep, curled up next to each other.
I stared at them for a moment. Still only human. Still just children, as lost in the web of destiny as any of the rest of us.
They were the only thing worth looking at. No more sapphire-islands came into view, no more anything. After so long, Northril itself was monotony. A new morning came, but it was dark even in the daytime as we sped over the open ocean. Sunlight, surprising in its warmth, came spearing down at times through the thick clouds overhead, glancing off the frosty, frothy waves like the pure heat-beam of a wizard.
Like what she’d done to me, after discovering me in grief beside my beheaded friend.
But no meagre ray of light was enough to dispel the miasma hanging over us, the cloak of dismalness, of dismay.
I was going home – to do what? I was a pariah. My friends hated me… The law would come for my head… and Emrelet…
It didn’t even bear thinking about. I’d never known her. She never loved me. What Tyr Kayn had done to her, to me… It was beyond forgiveness.
Not that you got much forgiving done, or avenging, missing a head.
Poor Theor. Caught in the crossfire of a net of lies stretching far beyond any of us could’ve seen, at the time. And it was hardly like he was the only victim, hardly like Everseer was the only spider straddling the web. Ripplewhim. A lowborn champion, given over for what crimes?
I clenched my fist, imagining Henthae’s throat there in my hand.
Morning moved into afternoon. The more time that passed, the more I fancied that returning to Mund was a fascination bestowed upon me by my brother and sister, even if the thought had occurred to me before their… change. And yet, the sheer fact that they permitted me such suspicions – that meant they were okay, didn’t it?
They were it. They were the trump card. But could they protect me without breaking the law, without invading minds and changing opinions wholesale? The last thing I wanted was to install them as dictators. I didn’t help rid the city of the dragon to replace her with a different telepathic tyrant. I did it in Nentheleme’s name. I did it for freedom’s sake.
No I didn’t.
I did it out of fear. And I doubted Tyr Kayn had half the psychic strength of the twins. Their sheer genesis had held hundreds upon hundreds of dark elves in stilled stasis while my ghosts worked on them.
When they eventually came into the fullness of their power…
I laughed at myself inwardly, thinking of that hollow concept. I’d tasted the fullness of my power, once or twice. When I gave in, and tapped that hidden ocean of rage I seemed to share with every archmage I’d met. When they –
“The three of you can’t go on like this,” the twins said. Interrupting my thoughts. “We can’t do it for you – we won’t. We can help but… you’re all acting like children.”
I looked at Jaid, then from her to Jaroan. Seeing the perfect symmetry of their expressions, I shivered – not from the cold, and not for the hundredth time.
“Talk,” they said, their uncanny united voice carrying implacable undertones.
“Talk about what?” Orcan sneered, looking up with hard eyes from his spellbook. The thing was almost as weathered-looking as he was.
It only took that short, sharp sentence to expose the rawness inside of him.
“You’re upset,” I said, trying not to glance at the druidess. Whatever state the wizard was in, Kirid was clearly far worse-off.
“Upset?” He said it with a sneer. “Of course I am upset. You shall hardly capture the depths of my despair with such a mean, a meagre word. Yesterday I saw my city destroyed. You think a wound like this will scar easily?”
“Well, it doesn’t mean you need to generate a headwind.”
“I am not…” It took him a moment to master himself. “I am not generating a headwind. But we are not needing to rush, and –“
“We need to arrive before the next Incursion.”
“Which as you say yourself may have already happened, or may not happen yet for days, weeks, moons!”
I had no answer for that. I looked down over the edge of the rock at the glassy waves.
Has it already happened?
Then, from out of nowhere, the druidess spoke up, her voice barely a murmur.
“Vot is Mundt like, zere?” she asked timidly. “I have seen, ze globes…”
I looked up, met her glittering eyes, and she fell silent.
“Silv, Sin-Aidre,” Orcan said, waving a hand dismissively.
The beautiful woman instantly dropped her gaze to her hands, and twisted them in her lap. She suddenly looked as though she might start crying.
No, she wasn’t much like Em.
“I’ll answer her question, thank you very much.” I glared at the wizard but he fixed his eyes back on the page of his spellbook. “Mund… It’s a difficult one. There’s a lot you can’t see in the enchanters’ toys, a lot they don’t bother to capture…”
She knew the great white walls, the spires of the temples, the unbelievable pinnacle of the Maginox – but there was so much more. I started talking, and after a few moments the twins crystallised my words in images, fleeting but heart-rending.
The Blackrush roaring, gleaming under a midnight moon. The yellow leaves of Hightown’s avenues. The noise and laughter in the squares, the markets. The winding streets of Undernight, the busy bazaars.
Slowly, I became acclimatised to the wonder of the vision they were crafting. “I wonder if my brother and sister can do some of the smells,” I said, grinning.
But when I blinked away the amazing images, I saw that Orcan and Kirid were still under their spell, staring blank-eyed across the empty seas, and the last thing I wanted was to ruin it now.
The twins knew. They allowed the two Telese archmages a glimpse of what Mund was. What it would still be, continue to be, if we played our parts. If we let the sword of destiny loose to swing at our necks.
I joined them, returning to the vision, enjoying it for what it was worth.
Everything.
Gods, I found myself praying, not naming any in particular. O gods above… I don’t ask for our lives. I just ask… if we die…
Let it be worth it. Let it be worth something.
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