JET 8.1: HAUNTED
“It is those who walk ever in the light who have my pity. They never know fear. They never know horror. And yet they look to the side, into the deep blackness that blankets their safe road – and they hear us wandering here, our footfalls echoing back across the worlds. They do not know for what they long – they cannot – and yet they long for it all the same.”
– from ‘The Book of Kultemeren’, 2:3-7
I craned my head back at first, watching, waiting, until the tiny speck of torchlight disappeared far above me, swallowed up by the incomprehensible distance that now loomed between me and the world. The walls of the wide, vertical tunnel whipped past me as I fell, featureless and dark. Then, when the void was complete, a jet-black smoothness, I closed my eyes and sighed.
Goodbye, everyone. You never let me say goodbye. I’ll never forgive a single one of you for that. Irimar. Borasir. Emrelet. When I die down here, my ghost is coming to haunt you.
Was that how I’d end up trapped on Nethernum? Imprisoned by my hatreds, forced into a shape of bitterness and spite? Or would I be able to let go? Would I be capable of transcending the next plane, stepping from the shadowland into the otherworld without leaving behind an imprint, a smear of soul-stuff on the nethernal winds?
No. Not if I went when I was feeling like this. I’d be a spirit of anger forever.
I opened my eyes again, looking down. My future was ascending to meet me. There was colour down there – red.
Terror hit me then, the enchantments insufficient to counter the brain-tearing horror of the reality – I was about to enter Magicrux Zyger, and it was red, blood-red like a hell-portal, like the eyes of a demon – and I seemed only to fall faster, faster and –
The waywatchers had been right. Their flight-spell spent itself, almost stopping me, and as I descended through the roof of the cavern and the spell fully dissipated, I fell into waist-high water, at such a perfectly-judged speed that I barely caused a splash.
It was a good job – the iciness of the liquid made me quake all over, causing me to lose my breath.
My arrival immediately caused commotion, though. Savage yells were ripped from a dozen chests, and most of those vocal ones started wading out into the pool towards me, pointing and shouting.
Before they reached me I unslung the bag, holding it out above me and sinking deeper into the water, gritting my teeth against the shock of its brittle coldness.
I kept my eyes above the surface – not studying the men who were seconds from falling on me, but studying it. It was a mighty distraction from my dreadful situation.
I immediately understood – everything. Beholding the huge tree of crystal on the water’s edge, its knots of roots – the whole thing made sense. Where the Ceryad resembled a tree in the full vigour of its maturity, with a kind of purity and healthiness to its shape, this tree most certainly did not. It was withered. It was ancient. It was a mess of gnarled branches, leafless and gaunt.
The Inceryad, I thought in tones of awe. I’d read about it, in the Maginox library. Also known as the Deceryad, and Inciryad. Another ‘lost’ wonder of Mund – the Eighth Wonder. Hewn, so they said, from the heart of a demon-realm using the spider-sword Crixar in the Age of Nightmares.
In use all along. In use as an archmage-trap.
And it wasn’t glowing crimson. That’d just been my fear talking, my senses deceiving me. It was refracting firelight, multiplying the orangey radiance a hundredfold. No light-globes were going to work in here. It was the wood burning, the larger and smaller bonfires scattered around, those strong-enough or intimidating-enough to get their fair share huddled up to their heat sources.
I had no more chance to stare at the glowing branches, the firelit waters pouring from the colourless limestone ceiling high overhead – the first of my assailants was upon me, and, too late, I realised my mistake.
I might’ve gotten away with it if I’d stood my ground, thrown a punch at the first guy to get to me. They might’ve backed down if I’d avoiding making myself a target, a victim… but it was instinct. I had no shields, no special strength. I was – just me.
I took at least four or five fists to the face – not great ones, but heavy blows, plenty enough to do the job. I reeled, rippling away half-submerged, and suddenly bodies were piling on top of me, wrestling for the supplies – from the way some of the firewood was left to float on the water’s surface next to me I quickly figured it was mostly the food they were fighting over. Hunger overrode all.
Nursing my re-broken nose, I stumbled towards the nearest shore, half-crawling, knees on the sharp rocks at the bottom of the basin. My eyes were half-blinded, streaming tears, and I had trouble making out where I was going – was I going to reel straight into someone else, get another few punches for my trouble?
I realised by the illumination that I was heading closer to the tree. When I glanced up I saw that there were none of the shapes I’d expected to see near it, none of the prisoners clustered beneath the crystal branches. It was only then that it occurred to me: approaching too close to the cursed tree could spell death, on top of powerlessness.
I turned about, circling the shore, blinking and shivering.
Need to… get out of… clothes…
“You! Boy!” cried an old man.
“Who are you?” cried another.
I recognised that snooty voice… Shadowcrafter, whom I’d almost crushed to death beneath a yithandreng.
I didn’t answer, kept moving towards the shore, shaking almost uncontrollably as the excitement wore off and the sheer cold crept in more and more. The water was shallow now, only up to my knees, but my clothes clung to me, a horrible death-grip. My nose was incredibly sore, and I kept one hand over it as I sloshed up the rocks, instinctively trying to hold it in place – blood was pouring out everywhere and there was no sign it was going to stop soon.
When I finally emerged from the pool, the three nearest residents of this patch looked at me grimly. I could tell, even in the tangerine gloom, even with my eyes half shut, that these three didn’t want to fight. They weren’t leaping to their feet, shuffling backwards instead, putting their backs to the cavern wall. And when I sat down in their midst, lowering my backside onto the coarse rock without saying a word, the adjacent ones drew aside slightly, away from me. They didn’t want to end up involved if a group came over to harass me, that was my guess. They looked weak, slumped down in resignation.
There had to be around thirty people in here, I decided, casting about with slightly less-clouded vision. Thirty of us, sitting here in the blood-lit darkness, waiting to die. A few were women, but they were gathered together in a gang. Now that I looked more intently, I could see that everyone else sat alone.
Darkmages bad enough to… end up in here… don’t make friends easily…
I saw a few dwarves, and one that might’ve even been a gnome. Elves were too difficult to distinguish from humans, but I didn’t see any that stood out with strangely-coloured hair or pointy ears.
Is Neverwish… still alive?
I wasn’t the only one quivering from the cold. There was an old man a couple of places around; the way he was wheezing, I could’ve been persuaded he had a punctured lung. Some of the younger blokes were staring my way, but most were mesmerised by the tussling going on in the centre of the pond. I joined them in watching while I pulled off my Magisterium-supplied pants and wrung them out. It wasn’t far off watching Sarcamor and Sarminuid wrestling, that first day I saw them in Etherium.
The scuffle, if one could call it that, looked to be mostly one-sided. There was this particular man who, despite being lithe and wiry and massively outnumbered, seemed to fare better than most of his opponents – as I looked on I saw him slip out of a head-lock and use his legs to lever himself away from his foe, coming away with two packs of nuts and a pack of meat.
As the lithe man started heading towards my edge of the pool, recognition flooded through me. The thinning blond hair, receded hairline, the deep brow…
Duskdown.
He scooped up some of the slowly-drifting firewood under his arm then nodded to me as he came sloshing out of the water.
“You.” His Lowtown accent was completely different from his darkmage-voice, but the same silky softness was present. “You know who I am, right?”
I nodded back mutely. The tension stilled my quivering muscles, and I was suddenly barely shaking.
“Come with me.”
He skirted the water’s edge, heading towards one of the bonfires on the edge of the pool farthest from the Inceryad-tree. A bonfire located on higher ground, where no one was currently crouching.
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I understood immediately and, groaning, scrambled to my feet. I carried on wringing out my pants, following him with my head down, letting my nose drip blood and trying not to fall – the rocks were rough, and a single mistake could leave me with an injury twenty times as painful as a broken nose.
An injury which I’d have no means by which to heal – no simple medicines, no access to a herbalist. A sliced-open knee would take days to mend, and a broken ankle would leave me seriously considering ending it all, even if it meant Infernum.
Ahead of me, someone slipped ahead of us to block Duskdown’s path – and when the ex-diviner moved I blinked furiously, trying to discern his motions –
The attacker tried to hit him three times, and received a chop in the throat from Duskdown as the only consequence of the assault; he didn’t even lose a single one of the nuts in his hand when he struck the man.
And then it was that I saw for myself the reality of my fears.
The throat-chop took the man down and it was ugly: I stood there, unable to help as he cracked the side of his head on a sharp bit of a boulder – not only was he choking, he was now bleeding, dark fluid wandering down across his face and dripping in his eyes.
He didn’t try again – moaning and panting and holding his head gingerly, he hobbled off back towards the water once we’d passed him by.
“Dry your clothes,” Duskdown said, sitting in front of his fire and immediately pulling off his own vest to reveal a slender, toned chest, stringy arms. He threw on some spare clothes – I had a suspicion I didn’t want to ask where they’d come from – and tossed me a set.
By the time I’d settled myself, he was holding his wet clothing up on two sticks, simultaneously drying the wood and the fabric. I struggled to copy him, my arms jerking around too much – it felt like my heart was being enclosed in a block of ice, and each breath came to me like a miracle.
“How d-did… you do that?”
“You get used to the technique, and the cold, after awhile,” he murmured, not looking up at me.
“No… no I mean… how did… how did you move like that?”
“I don’t know,” he said with some difficulty. “I think… The powers of an arch-diviner transcend time and space. That’s what they’re good for. To a degree, we can’t lose ours. The world gets confused, and keeps supplying us with magic. Maybe.”
“Or maybe… it’s j-just… you’re st-strong.”
“You’re tired. You should rest awhile. You’ll need your strength. I’m not the only strong one.”
I would’ve sighed bitterly at that, but my teeth were chattering too much. I tried to do as he said, to make myself comfortable on the ‘seat’ of stone I’d selected. “No… magic… No shields or sum-m-mons or portals…” I finally released the sigh, and it came out as a loud, broken groan. “Uuuh… Not strong.”
“You are strong.” His eyes gleamed in the firelight. “You having no power merely lends weight to my thesis. It’s a diviner trick.”
“M-maybe… both?”
“Maybe.” He regarded me with a flicker of doubt in his eyes, and his voice was more like the darkmage’s suddenly. “Maybe, at that…”
“See any other… ex-arch-d-diviners doing… what you’re doing?”
He grunted in acceptance of my point, still seeming to be mulling it over.
“They try,” he said at last.
I looked down at the cavern’s other occupants. No one seemed to be interested in me or my ‘friend’. Some other conversations had started, it seemed, but no one was looking in our direction.
“So n-no g-grand tour, then?”
“Grand tour?” He smirked, clearly amused, then pointed as he spoke. “Drink upriver, behind the tree – do your business at the wall over there, where the pool’s water follows the channels out of the system… Bodies go that way too. Be careful not to fall in. Lots of boulders. Hidden currents.”
I couldn’t quite imagine what he meant, and I didn’t feel the need to go right now anyway, but I was sure I’d understand once I had to relieve myself.
“B-but… bodies go… that w-way?”
There’s a way out?
“I know what you’re thinking, young sorcerer –“
“Ex.” I glared at him. “E-ex-sorcerer. F-for now.”
His smirk only deepened into a true smile. “I know what you’re thinking, and I’ve seen people try it. Two of them. Neither came back, though I suppose they wouldn’t… I strongly suspect the Magisterium wouldn’t give us a prison with a way out, though. And besides, if you got out that way –“
“Etherium,” I growled. “Infernum. Nethernum. Once out of range… C-come back with… with eldritches. Or t-take wizard… build way up, out…”
“Still,” he protested, looking surprised (and uncomfortably so, I thought), “nobody has ever returned from Magicrux Zyger, not in –“
“No… body… stupid enough not to… ch-change ident-tity when returning. Th-think. When has Magi… Magisteer… magisters ever visited? They kn-know about hole? Certain?”
He shook his head. “Don’t be like the idiots. Two of them dove in and they died! If you’d heard the screaming… But you can live, with my help. I get food and wood every single day.” He held out some nuts, and I stared at them there in his palm. “We can continue to exist.”
I shook my head, jolting it side to side, and he lowered his hand, his eyes.
It was only then that I saw it – he was barely hanging on. He hid it well, but the gods had abandoned him just the same as they had me. A shadow of contempt crossed his face, his eyelids twitching, lip curling in self-derision.
“You… you don’t care, really, do you?” I murmured.
“I thought it would be what you wanted,” he whispered, still looking down into the flames. “Hope.”
“Yune… she left me days ago. N-Nentheleme… I thought she was on my… my side. But no. I’m l-lost, Dusk-”
“Silence!” he snarled softly, jerking his head about to pierce me with his keen eyes. “Do not say the name! Don’t you see? I’m out of enemies – their souls moved on, but yours didn’t. I wouldn’t invite any correlations were I you! I am to be Rath, if you will, Kas. I don’t think those names will endanger us, now, but the monikers by which we used to operate? Those would surely kill you, and perhaps me along with you.”
“Rath… Okay, Rath.”
He turned his gaze away again.
“The truth is, our magic might be lost forever,” he said.
He sat there, unblinking, firelight flashing from his eyes, seeming almost augmented by the contact, as though he carried the Inceryad in his soul now.
Is that what… what he means? I wondered. We’re… powerless now? Even if… if we escaped? Or I am, at least, even… if he still has something… left inside him…
I chuckled, gasps of mirthless sound pulled from my lungs.
“What?” He still didn’t look at me.
“I sp-spent a bit of t-time lately thinking… how I wished I never got… my sorcery. Now?” I chuckled again. “It’s… all I want.”
“Freedom.” He said it caustically, as though it were a swear-word, scowling. “No, don’t blame the gods for the deeds of men, Kas. It’s not Nentheleme’s fault. We don’t deserve this place. Our endings ought to be glorious. I should trade my life for that of a Hierarch, or some other dark archmage –“
“I don’t… deserve this… place. You?” I grinned at him, baring all my teeth. “You killed… and killed… and killed –“
“Now is not the time for this conversation, young man.”
“Then when?” I leaned forward. “When will you be ready to confront what you’ve done? I s-spoke to… to a powerful arch-diviner, actually, about this. She didn’t contra… contradict me. You have to know the way you’re affecting the whole web when you start… cutting strings. You m-might’ve caused more people to turn to murder, by killing their loved ones! But once you start cutting strings you can’t stop. It’s the easy path, isn’t it? Each new… murder helps you justify the ones that came before. Wouldn’t it be harder to try the other –“
The heel of his palm under my chin, the fingers on the bridge of my nose, clamping my jaw shut painfully, my nose screaming.
I accepted the discomfort, not pulling away but gritting my teeth and leaning into the agony, unscrewing my eyes and staring at him instead. Witnessing the soul-sickness making his features flicker, a thousand emotions at war beneath the skin.
“You have no idea how difficult my life was! You… So many people hunting me, and all I was doing – finding the people-traffickers, the drug-lords, the real murderers. I was doing their job for them! They should’ve been on their knees praising me! But no. Because I saw through the irony of this! Of the life-sentence, the petty crimes being punished just the same as the heinous ones… or worse.”
I waited until he realised what I was doing and jerked his hand back.
“Eww, man… Did you just lick my hand?”
I grinned at him tightly.
“Maaaaan.” He wiped his hand on the rock.
I let my grin fade. “I d-don’t think you’ll find many in here who’re in love with the justice system.”
“Do you know a rich man who steals a guild’s coffers in its collapse into bankruptcy, impoverishing hundreds, is praised in polite circles for his foresight, but a poor lad who steals a chicken-feather gets his hand chopped off? Yes. A chicken-feather!”
I shrugged. I was hardly surprised.
“What justice is there in our system? No. Because the Ministry of Joran receives its annual tributes directly through the Arrealbord, and the Judges too. Are they going to shake the lantern? Of course not.”
“Their souls will go… to Infernum.”
He spread his hands. “Who can say for certain? The demons might lie. Maybe we just go to the shadowland, and that’s it. We’re gone, lost, forever…”
“Maybe.” I stared holes in him. “I never asked, when I had demons to ask… That still doesn’t excuse what you’ve done.”
He shook his head. “The overall effects of my actions have been good, not evil. Some of those orphaned by my acts will turn to wickedness – you’re not wrong. But many were put off, knowing all-too-well the consequences of their misdeeds. And more will turn aside from such paths because of my retribution, and I’ve prevented so many wrongs that I have no doubt – if there is a Celestium, it has a warm spot waiting for me. It’d be warmer, if not for him. If I was still out there, the world’s best deterrent for –”
“There’s no evidence for that.” I pursed my lips. “No crazy e-explosion of crimes once you got caught.”
“Once I was betrayed, you mean.”
The firelight in his flat stare was suddenly blood-red again, terrifying.
“It’s okay,” he said heavily. “I don’t blame you. I had a good idea what you would do when I showed up. But I –”
“Had to,” I finished for him in a thick voice. “You had to, didn’t you? Because Di-“
“Enough.” He closed his eyes. “Yes. I had to.”
He gave it all up, to try to save a thousand lives.
“Maybe I… maybe I allied with the wrong arch-diviner right from the start.”
He looked at me curiously. “Did he ever tell you?” he asked in a whisper. “About this place? It was always in your future, you know.”
I gave a non-committal shrug. “It went away. Timesnatcher seemed to be obsessed with the thought of me coming here, though. Pushed hard for it, instead of execution.”
“Just him?”
I shook my head. “Killstop. Everseer. They both –”
“Everseer? She lives?”
“You didn’t know? Yeah, she’s still…” My mind filled with visions, broken memories – Vardae trying to rip Tanra’s arms off – Irimar flying out of the trees with some poor guy’s ruined corpse… “She’s still doing her thing. A Hierarch, don’t you know?”
“She was tricksier than her successor,” he replied, “and that’s saying something. Came a lot closer to getting me, let me tell you.” He looked me up and down. “So, you’re feeling better now? Your nose has stopped bleeding, and you’ve almost stopped shivering.”
He wasn’t exactly wrong. Before too long I curled up in front of the fire, a thin rag for a useless pillow. I ate a few of the nuts and a strip of pork-flavoured salt, then closed my eyes.
It wasn’t that I felt particularly safe in his presence – I didn’t feel safe at all down here, and for all I knew I’d wake up with someone’s wet boot stamping on my face – if I woke at all – but it didn’t matter. I fell asleep all the same, exhaustion and stress and horror overtaking me, dragging me down into dreams too dark for me to ever remember.
It was that I no longer cared. Smash my face. Strip me of my skin. I was already dead, down here. What more could be done to me?
Sleep claimed me, consumed me. Yet when I awoke, reborn in the firelit darkness, I felt it still.
Hope.
He hadn’t been able to give it to me, but maybe I could take it.
Or die in the attempt.
* * *