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Blackice pt1

Blackice pt1

JET 8.7: BLACKICE

“In this the symbol is made plain. The halo of the saint is the rope of his noose. But the descent is arrested. They are no longer falling. Do you understand the meaning of their redemption? They are condemned yet they are no longer falling.”

– from ‘The Syth Codex’, 19:121-125

I broke down the tent – a task I was miles better at than I was at putting the damned thing up, it seemed – then stowed the pegs, ropes, poles and canvas back in the bag. The whole lot got dumped back with everything else in the chest.

“The water is boiled, master.”

“Thanks, Pinktongue.” I moved the bat-like demonoid aside then used the towel to grab the pan’s handle as I scooped off the scum. We had more water from Mund in the chest but I was acutely aware of how quickly we were going through the stuff. I was going to have to learn how to do all this stuff for real sooner or later, rather than just reading about it in books. We were camped in a secluded location, a floor of dirt surrounded by wind-smoothed rocks and tall aspens, within two minutes of a stream as the imp flew. A whole bunch of the imps had the ability to throw small fireballs – getting a fire going was as simple as asking for it. With the water, at least, I was determined to do it properly.

“How does this look, master?” snivelled the scissor-clawed imp I had working on the rabbits. “Has the Cutterking kept his name?”

I’d only named him last night, when his ability to neatly snip branches of wood came to light.

I eyed the pair of rabbits critically.

“What were you going for, exactly?” I asked.

“I – er –”

“You’re lucky I don’t traumatise easily.” I shooed him off and sat down by the plate. “Fetch me the knife, will you? The non-ensorcelled one, this time.”

He mumbled dejectedly to himself as he half-hopped, half-flapped his way over to the trunk.

“It’s good you left your brother and sister down on the hillside.” Zabalam, the mouldy gremlin, stumped over to me from the treeline. “She would have been most traumatised.”

“You can see that in her head?” I took the knife from Butcherking and started doing my best to recover the artistically-arranged meat.

“I don’t need to see in her head for that, but she wasn’t best-pleased when you told her what was for breakfast, no.”

I grunted, busy sawing at cartilage.

“Have you sorted out where we’re going yet?” the gremlin asked. He didn’t seem very interested in my answer, but my indecisiveness appeared to amuse him.

“I’ll let the sea make their minds up.” I got one chunk of meat free of bone and gristle, as far as I could tell, and I skewered it. “If they want to take a boat, we take a boat. If they want to keep flying, we keep flying. If they want to hire horses…” I shrugged. It wasn’t like Jaid had experienced any ill-effects from my powers, not after the first time – and those problems I suspected were emotional, rather than magical, in nature.

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We were a few hours’ walk from the town at the bottom of Blackice Bay – a matter of minutes flying. Our hidden spot was on the crest overlooking the ravine and its quarries that led down to the boulder-strewn beach. We had a great view of the vast, churning grey ocean stretching off as far as the eye could see – all of it. From our screen of aspen trees we could gaze out at our future.

I’d left them there and returned to supervise, unable to bear the sight for too long. It was too open. I’d seen the ocean before, of course – we’d swum in it – but that had been with Salnifast’s white-walled harbour at my back. With Mund in the distance behind me. With no possibility of crossing it. Now – here – I felt none of the same assurances. I felt lost, even if I could point to our exact location on the map. If I sailed on a boat and we got into trouble on the open sea, how could I use my powers to aid us? Sure, I wasn’t an enchanter, but I wasn’t a wizard either. There’d be any number of problems that could arise which my magic couldn’t fix.

No. Easier to focus on the problems with immediate solutions – slicing the rabbits, getting them on the spit – packing up, purifying the water –

The truth was, I was homesick. It was amazing to finally see the world – I’d spent so many years reading stories about epic journeys, fantastical wanderers in fantastical landscapes, that it almost felt like the tales had leapt off the page and into reality. But there were only so many times you could put on clothing that wasn’t quite dry, only so many times you could look out on the drab wilderness, without missing what you’d left behind. In exiting the lands of House Sentelemeth’s vassals we’d crossed into the lands of House Wenlyworth’s, from Fornolost to Ullerland, and the towns and villages stretched across the prairies looked so peaceful – everyone knew where they were and who they were, what they were doing with their time on the material plane… I envied them the simplicity of their way of life, but, even more, the sense of belonging they seemed to possess, ants going about their tasks in the fields. I knew where I belonged, but it was gone now, left far, far behind. Even if Xan was keeping the apartment warm for me, what would happen when I sent for her? Peltos would finally get his wish and rent it out to some idiot for a vastly-inflated amount…

The meat was cooking – I’d cut it thin, it wouldn’t take long – so I headed back to the twins.

They were sitting apart, a solid fifty feet of even solider silence between them. But both of them were doing the same thing, picking at the wet blades of grass between their legs, looking out in pensive poses, beholding that monstrosity between the trees, that immense nothingness of waves and wind ahead of us.

They were out of one another’s lines of sight, if they’d been looking for each other – there were three huge trees standing like wrinkled towers between the twins, their gnarled roots host to dozens and dozens of rain-soaked bushes. Doubtless they each knew roughly where the other was located, but they’d chosen this, this isolation from one another.

I stayed at the very crest of the rise and called down to both of them in my most-confident voice:

“So, do we stay or do we go?”

Stay didn’t strictly mean stay. We were definitely moving on from Blackice Bay, whatever was decided, following Rathal’s final instruction. But left unspoken was the assumption: stay on the continent, head farther north, or east, or north-east; or leave, set sail on the Northril, the dark northern oceans of the world. It was a broad question, the first of many if we were going to nail down an actual destination.

They both looked around at me, heads and hair swinging in almost the exact same manner.

Whatever happens, they’ll always be twins.

“Stay,” Jaid shouted.

“Go,” Jaroan shouted.

And against my better judgement, I knew what we would end up doing.

* * *