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No warning would turn back King Mudt.
He entered Kayenna Vezz’s villa alone, insistent that he face the sorcerer in a proper duel. His three lieutenants—Bello, Carver, and Grime—did not protest. To question King Mudt’s valor was to invite his wrath. And perhaps, even though they had taken the mark of his champions, these men were ambivalent about the result.
King Mudt was unmatched with a blade, and the gods had further bolstered his skill with their Ink, but Vezz was a formidable sorcerer with command of the elements and the ability to summon monsters to her aid. The gods themselves had made her fifth renown—King Mudt’s equal. But, in those early days, the mages felt the changed world more acutely than anyone. Sorcerers like Vezz found only some of their power preserved by the Ink, and they soon learned that the gods of magic, the ge’chan, were slow to answer when called upon to honor their arcane bargains.
We have little record of what occurred within the villa. Only that the battle was short, and was perhaps not a battle at all. In the courtyard, under the sun, King Mudt cleaved Kayenna Vezz’s head from her shoulders. Then, he stomped on her face until she stopped smiling.
“Bitch went mad,” King Mudt told his men when he emerged. “Already half dead.”
Kayenna Vezz, it was said, took a knife to her own throat before King Mudt arrived. She took the blade to her chest, and her shoulders, too. She flayed herself. She burned her flesh with fire, with acid, with poison meant to kill plants. She carved herself again and again, and still, the gods refilled the channels of her flesh with their Ink.
Her body was never recovered.
--Record of the First Granting and Dawning of the Second Age
Lyus Crodd, Scribe of the Dead Kingdom of Orvesis
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--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—
Uicha de Orak, a young man of no renown or loyalty, somewhere he doesn’t belong
Kayenna Vezz, sorcerer of the old Kingdom of Orvesis, somewhen she doesn’t belong
Ahmed Roh, Archmage of the 15th Renown, the Magelab, the sound of doom approaching
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Now and then
Here or there
882,102 memories until brain death
Uicha's fingers grazed the stalks as he trudged through the field. The sun beat down with the heat of deep summer, baking the top of his head. Behind him, his dad ran his thumb down a wheat spike, and clucked approvingly.
“A good harvest this year,” he said. “We are rich men, Uicha. Rich men.”
“I don't feel rich,” Uicha muttered.
“Aha. And such is the problem with rich men. None of them ever do.”
Uicha frowned and said nothing more. Engaging with his dad and his nuggets of wisdom would just make these chores last longer. All he wanted was for this day in the field to be over. The work was worse than school, although not by much. Uicha glanced back at his dad—short, muscular, somehow swaggering even when standing still—and watched skeptically as he massaged the stalk, whispering sweet things to the leaves in the language of the Islands. Trick Longblossom had his father absolutely convinced that speaking to the grains made them grow taller.
A silly, pointless ritual. Uicha remembered rolling his eyes. Except, in that moment, he felt a swelling in his heart, seeing his father’s crooked smile. It felt like it had been a long time.
Uicha turned and kept going, even though he didn’t want to. He’d stopped to look at his dad, but he hadn’t lingered. He’d rolled his eyes and kept… and kept…
The wheat field parted in front of him and Uicha shielded his eyes. A woman stood in the grass ahead—a woman that wasn't his mother, a woman who didn't belong there. She was squat, with flowing black hair, and startlingly pale skin. Despite the summer heat, a cold mist curled from her mouth.
“You will wake up soon, Uicha,” she said. “When you do, you need to focus. See the room.”
Uicha took a stumbling step back. “Dad? Who is that?”
“None of them ever do,” his dad replied. “None of them ever do.”
Uicha squinted at his dad, his grinning face gone blurry. The elder de Orak took a step forward, a step back, rocked in place, as if time itself batted him back-and-forth like a cat with a mouse. Tears filled Uicha's eyes.
“You are not this boy anymore,” the woman said, her voice a chill whisper right against his ear. “You are far away.”
A bitter taste rushed into Uicha’s mouth. He remembered standing in his darkened dining room as a clumpy gunk crawled down his throat. But that hadn't happened yet, had it? That was later. Or was it before?
“You are confused. But you must focus,” the woman said.
“Kayenna?” Uicha half-turned toward her.
“Yes, good,” she replied. “For a moment, you will come awake, Uicha. You have to see where he holds us, and how. Remember everything you can and—”
Something came crashing through the wheat—huge, like a bull—and Uicha bent his knees to run. The strange woman was gone and so was his dad. The sky had grown darker and Uicha remembered running through this very field as lightning sheared through the sky at his back.
The mammoth force careening through wheat slowed, stopped, and then an old man in a wine red suit stepped into view. His eyes were cold and black as he sized up Uicha.
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“She hides in your memories, boy,” Ahmed Roh said. “Sacrifices yours to save her own.”
Uicha gasped. He felt a tickling, twisting pain in his chest.
The archmage sighed. “But you're young, and have lived so little. I’m afraid that your mind is not a palace, with hundreds of dusty rooms to scuttle into. Your mind is a sad little farmhouse.”
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A pore opened on Uicha’s chest, and a curl of thick, black blood oozed free. It dangled in the air for a moment and then fell.
Uicha’s eyes felt heavy. They stung from the strange smoke in the humid room, the piney aroma doing little to cover the stench of his piss and shit. Uicha wanted to close his eyes, but he knew he was supposed to see something. He couldn’t remember what, though, not exactly.
Uicha’s blood transformed as it dripped down from his chest; it hardened and clumped and landed in a capsule of pure silver that sat positioned below him. He’d seen one of those before. An urn’chan, Battar Crodd had called it. His parents had been hiding one in the wall. They were made to hold the memories of the dead.
“But, I’m alive.” Uicha barely managed a whisper. His tongue felt stuck to the bottom of his mouth, like a boat in a dried up lake.
He was hanging from the ceiling, facing down, parallel to the rickety wooden floorboards. Straps bound him at the wrists and ankles, stretched him in an ‘X.’ The burning pain in his muscles and joints felt only slightly worse than the humiliation of his nudity.
Soft footsteps approached and Ahmed Roh came into view. The archmage’s bald head was slick with sweat, his beard matted and tangled. He looked older and thinner than the last time Uicha had seen him—although, when was that? He couldn’t exactly remember. It was too hot in the room for Ahmed’s fancy suit, so he had stripped down to just the slacks and a mask of ward-weave that covered his mouth and nose. Ink swept across his torso—some vivid black, some faded gray, and some harsh crimson.
Ahmed didn’t look at Uicha. He picked up the urn’chan and tipped it over, smacking its side, so that the dust that had been Uicha’s blood came sprinkling out. Then, he wiped the inside of the urn’chan with a handkerchief and set it back down.
A memory of Uicha working the fields with his father, now just grit between the floorboards.
Uicha lifted his head up as high as he could manage. The small room didn’t have any windows that he could see, but there was nonetheless a brazier in the corner emitting the strange smoke. There were runes everywhere—on the walls and on the floor—some of them glowing, some of them not, some of them scrawled in chalk and others in stretched out entrails. There was a desk against one wall, cluttered with open books. Set carefully beside the tomes was a rack of vials, each stoppered and filled to the top with what Uicha thought was blood.
None of this made sense, but he did recognize one thing. Propped in the corner was his mother’s scimitar. He tried to reach for it—all the way across the room, no feeling in his fingers. He was delirious.
“Please,” Uicha moaned.
Finally, Ahmed glanced up at him. He waved his hand and—
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How many memories was it before she could awaken Uicha again? Hundreds? Thousands?
Afterward, Kayenna would never tell him. Eventually, he decided it was better not to know how much he had lost.
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Uicha’s mother had painted her nails a shade of light green that matched her eyes. The color flashed in the candlelight as she slapped her hand down on the table.
“Four queens!” she shouted.
“No!” his father bellowed. “Impossible! I tossed one of those little harlots away.”
Uicha’s father reached for the discard pile, but his mother’s hands moved much faster. In a blur, she had scooped up both discard and draw and shuffled them together, fanning the cards in one hand before seamlessly flipping them to the other, pausing only to wink at Uicha. He clapped giddily, kicking his legs.
His feet didn’t touch the floor? That wasn’t right. He’d sat at that very table with Battar Crodd as the Orvesian explained what a hell his life was about to become.
“Uicha, we’ve been cheated!” His dad sprang up from his seat and dove across the table. “Stop her before she escapes with our angles!”
The wind blew cold outside, but it was warm in here and still smelled like cinnamon bread pudding. His mom’s laughter was light and musical. His dad buried his face in her neck and nipped at her, hands around her waist, and Uicha knew that he was meant to scamper around the table and tickle his mother—that’s how it happened. He felt the memory pulling him along.
The rocking chair by the fireplace creaked. His parents went quiet and still. The cards, which had just been knocked off the table, floated in midair. Their faces were blank—Uicha would still never know if his mom had stacked the deck.
Kayenna Vezz rocked slowly. Uicha stood up to go to her. He was the wrong size for this time and place, and he felt the memory pulling him backward like a whirlpool. But he fought against it and moved slowly through the tableau of his farmhouse as if he were an actor on a stage. From the side, his parents looked flattened and fuzzy. Decoration on a set.
“Good,” Kayenna said. “We find the skill lingers, even if the memories do not.”
Uicha dug his knuckles into his temples. For a moment, he felt restraints tight around his wrists. “I’m dead, aren’t I? This is a vision of my life, like the Crucifalians say. My soul’s being unified.”
Kayenna shook her head. “If you could die, this would have been over long ago. The archmage would have burned us down to our memories—yours and mine, together—and sifted through them at his pleasure. But your gods won’t let him kill you, and so we have had time to plan.”
“I haven’t planned,” Uicha said.
She gave him a pitying smile. “You have. In rooms like this one, in times you’ve forgotten, we have planned. Now, the time has come to act. The archmage weakens. In his arrogance and impatience, he stretches himself thin. Our narrow window of escape creeps open.”
Uicha glanced over his shoulder—at the closed front door, at his parents, at the wall-hanging that hid the safe. He shook his head in disbelief.
“You’re in there right now, aren’t you?”
“Please, Uicha,” she replied. “Focus.”
“Fine. What’s this plan?”
“First, there is a question I must ask you. A question that I always ask, but that it would be unfair for you to not remember answering.”
He stared at her. “What?”
“The escape we have devised is painful and dangerous and, perhaps worst of all, it will commit you to something. You will find yourself in a life that wasn’t intended for you. A life at the center of things.”
“You never make any sense,” Uicha said.
“You will become a champion.”
Uicha scoffed and touched his neck. He wasn’t sure if his skin was blank in this memory or if he wore the wheat stalk of Ambergran.
“For who? What idiots would give me Ink?” he asked. “How is that even possible?”
“You will be the first to represent a new faction.”
“The Granting?” Uicha laughed shrilly. “I’ll die.”
“Perhaps.” Kayenna worked the ends of her hair with her fingertips. “Perhaps we only delay your ending. Perhaps all this is for naught and we are yet outflanked by the archmage. Or, perhaps, you survive all these trials and find you wish that you had not.”
Uicha studied her for a moment. Her chest rose and fell but she wasn’t real—this woman was dead, a spirit, and had stolen into his head. He shouldn’t trust her. And yet, a sadness radiated off her that seemed hard to fake.
“Do you speak from experience?” he asked.
Her lips quirked. “I have had time to ruminate on my death,” she replied. “In truth, I did not mind it. Alas, my choices were made for me.”
Uicha swallowed. “Alright. So, what’s the question?”
Kayenna looked up at him. “Given the pain that awaits you, do you want to live?”
Uicha had a feeling that would be the question. He hadn’t prepared an answer.
His eyes drifted toward the short hallway that would lead to his bedroom. He remembered laying in there for days after his parents died. He’d lost track of time, then. Lost track of himself.
He remembered the day of Ambergran’s annihilation. Chasing down his mother’s sword because—why? Because it was all he really had left of hers? That wasn’t true at all. The farmhouse was filled with mementos, and secrets.
But the sword. The sword had represented adventure. The ones his parents had gone on without him. He couldn’t let that bastard Johan steal it from him. It wasn’t fair.
None of this was fair.
Even though the world was frozen, thunder rolled in the distance. Kayenna sat forward.
“He nears,” she said. “If we are going to do this, the moment approaches.”
Uicha glanced to the door. “You said you’ve asked me this before?”
Kayenna nodded. “Yes.”
“What do I normally say?”
She paused. “Half the time yes, the other half no.”
“Of course,” Uicha said. “A coin flip.”
Heavy footfalls battered the porch outside. The boards sounded like they would snap. Spinning around, Uicha realized that the memory of his parents had faded. Instead, there was Petra—the Orvesian girl he’d spent a few happy weeks with—stretched out on the floor, her chest smoldering, while Parrot the puppy danced frantically around her. Uicha remembered running through this scene, leaving the girl and the dog behind, fleeing like a coward.
“I don’t want to run from anything ever again,” he told Kayenna.
“That will hold true, no matter what you decide,” she replied.
“Fine,” Uicha decided. “I’ll live.”
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