COBALT 7.6: THE CALL
“And to her I say this: there are aspects of death that cannot be discussed with those to whom a deontology of bliss has become the measure of being. Death! It is taboo even to discuss. Do her words make more sense than mine? Yes, every smile becomes bittersweet! Have you not lived with the aches of existence?”
– from ‘Grandfather’s Open Arms’
“So what, they just up and disappeared?”
I sat on Irimar’s couch, cradling my head in my hands. He’d given me a reinvigoration elixir, which barely touched my exhaustion; when Fang arrived she gave me a booster with her magic but it was already wearing off. It felt as though someone had pumped cotton wool into my ears, the stuff pressing in on my brain in every direction, straining against my skull.
“Ostensibly, they did indeed,” he replied. “Each of them left their homes on Yearseve of their own volition; I know that much for certain. But the truth, my friend, is that I see a mist on the water – a familiar mist. I cannot penetrate it with my mind; I must dwell on it awhile longer, build my house of sticks on the ocean and pray for gentle waves. It cannot be Dream… it simply cannot…”
As he retreated into his trance and Em put her hand on my knee in an attempt to comfort me, all I could think was that if Killstop were here we could get on with the eolastyr-hunt already…
How long must the damn girl sleep for! I should’ve got some sleep. I could’ve come up with a different plan. If that tigress is really here – if she’s responsible for thirty-two kidnappings – thirty-two murders… Every death is on my head while I sit here, playing the fool.
But other than ‘Tanra had a vision’, I couldn’t come up with any credible source for my knowledge that wouldn’t get my head chopped off in the telling.
I need sleep!
It wasn’t like it’d make any sense, if I came out with it now, anyway. ‘Hey guys, it’s the eolastyr!’ It would look incredibly strange, that I’d been sitting on the information for all this time.
Unless… could one of my eldritches…?
Timesnatcher had followed my advice yesterday. He’d taken the twin sorceresses to Phanar and Kani, and after my warnings this morning about The Ten-Spoked Wheel he’d sent me over to inspect their instinctual shields. The force-barriers surrounding the adventurers’ house looked, if anything, stronger than they had at Irimar’s. There was nothing I could do to improve on their defences, no holes to shore-up; after a quick word with the mansion’s occupants to wish them a Happy Yearsend, I just set a few gungrelafor in the trees as lookouts and headed back. We even briefly discussed sending Saff and Tarr there, but putting both pairs of twins together in a single location seemed to everyone a bit of a liability, even with such an impenetrable shield in place. Tyr Kayn, if she were to return, would surely remember the slayers of the King of Dragons… She wasn’t so different from us, in all likelihood, beneath all the tons of steel-scale armour, the centuries steeped in evil magic. She would remember those responsible for the death of her chieftain.
Then it hit me. I quickly ran through the options in my head, trying to see it from Irimar’s angle, from Em’s, from Sol’s…
I didn’t have to mention the actual content of Vardae’s message… didn’t have to mention the part affecting Irimar…
“I can sense something familiar too,” I said. My voice sounded thick, almost slurring to my ears. “I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means.”
“What’s that?” Fang asked curiously.
“You weren’t there when we went into the tower in Lord’s Knuckle, were you, Sol? There was something down there that eluded his sight for a while.”
“The woman who killed Dustbringer,” the druidess murmured in understanding.
Irimar’s eyes flew open. “This… thank you, Kas, this is… ah yes. I see it.” But rather than sounding elated, the opening-up of his vision seemed only to depress him. “I shall have Bor go and wake Tanra the moment he arrives. The more eyes on the problem, the better.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“The fewer tongues dispensing solutions, too,” I murmured. “Who’s going to take the lead?”
“You would let her run the operation?” he asked mildly. “I’m speaking more of out-scrying the thing, if she is indeed in the city. With a power like Tanra’s, our invisibility increases, and our focus doubles.”
“Can’t ve just call in everyone?” Em asked.
“We will – once we know what we’re doing.”
“You take too much on yourself,” she responded. “Bring Starsight and Dimdveller, at least. Pool your power. Ve can put our masks back on if need be.”
“We don’t need divination,” I said, then sighed. “This is for me, and Netherhame and Shallowlie. And – and…” And who? There was no one else. “Together, we can overcome her shields, I’m certain of it.”
Was I? Why would I be certain of a thing like that? I was half-asleep, that was why.
“Look…” I leaned forwards and heaved myself to my feet. “I need to go get a few hours. Can you guys sort out some kind of plan? Or at least somewhere I can search when I’m back on my feet.”
“Dear me, what have you been doing all night?” Irimar murmured, watery eyes suddenly becoming deep oceans.
“Research,” I said blithely. “You know, Ten-Spoked Wheels and all that malarkey…”
I turned towards the garden door, and Em rose to see me off, but he continued:
“Then why am I getting a big maelstrom on your past, Kas? Were you with Tanra?”
I sensed Em’s faltering footstep, and faltered on my own; instead of stopping I cast him a sidelong glance, forcing myself to keep moving. “Don’t waste time on your hidden agendas, diviner. You can’t drive us apart.”
I reached the door, opened it, but Em had halted halfway.
“Vot is zis?” she asked in confusion, looking from me to him and back again.
I had to get out ahead of him.
“Oh, our pal Timesnatcher has it in his head that I should be with her, or something. Just another sad old scheme.”
It should’ve been obvious that if I was willing to give this much detail, there was clearly nothing going on between me and Killstop; I was gratified to see Em cast her scathing glare not at me, but at our leader.
Distract them from the fact I was with both her and a heretic last night…
“You agreed with me, when I said it,” the slimy, smiling seer gloated.
“I did not!” I laughed, and shook my head. “Unsoothsayer… who’d have thought it.”
“Not in words, you didn’t. But you knew I was right and –“
“And last night,” I shouted over him, “Em, look at me – last night, was I in love with Tanra?”
I looked her square in the face, unflinching. Her eyes were hard, sharp steel – and as I stared into them they melted. Her frown cracked into a smile, and she shook her head.
“No, Kastyr. No you vere not.”
“Try your games, Irimar, meddle all you want.” I opened the door. “I’ll be back later, once you’re done playing and we can get down to work.”
I stepped outside into the bitter breeze, spreading my wings and looking up at the sky. It wasn’t snowing at the moment, and the clouds over Treetown were little more than white wisps, moving quickly against a soft blue background.
Em followed me, as I’d hoped she would, and once I’d taken a few paces onto the paving stones I turned to face her.
“You staying, or going? I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to hang around.”
She shrugged. “I vill see… I don’t know if I vont to leave Sol alone viz him, if he’s being like zis… But if he’s wrong, vhere vere you, Kas?”
I shrugged back. “How am I to know if one of the people giving me directions around the place last night was an arch-diviner? I have no idea how many people I spoke to.”
That much was true, at least. Right now I’d have had trouble counting the fingers held up in front of my face, never mind the number of mages I had run into at the library.
She just smiled again, and shook her head sheepishly. “I’ll fly you home,” she said, linking her arm through mine and lifting us both into the air. “I don’t trust you to get zere safely, in your current condition. Ve could do vizzout ze Liberator of Zadhal needing rescuing after a collision viz a chimney, and I can take some time to think about vot I vont to do.”
I pulled her arm tight in my own, acting as though I were feeling dizzy. Really I just wanted the closeness as we soared away. It was that, or the wraith-form.
I didn’t want her to come back here. I didn’t want them to compare notes. Maybe Tanra was a better match for me, but they always said that opposites attracted and Em – Em was clearly my opposite if that was the case. There was this ineffable quality to the way I felt about her; the way her mood could move me, the way her delight filled my soul with pure bliss –
No, Irimar was all wrong. The last thing I wanted was for him to mislead her, make her think something that wasn’t true. But it would be even worse if I artificially constrained her options – if I asked her to stay away. I had to let her make the right choice, freely. All I could do was say my part and let it be.
Yet through it all, I was lying through my teeth to her. I knew perfectly well why I had a huge gaping hole in my history.
And as much as I might’ve tried to ‘get out in front of him’, I couldn’t help but wonder whether I’d simply moved into the exact spot Irimar wanted me in – whether he’d just been pushing me with my own hands all along.
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