Kashur

The time lapse broke. Moyshec ran to him, dropping the empty baskets. “What happened?” He brushed the gray mop of hair off her forehead and checked her pulse. “She’s dead.”

Kashur staggered backward, tripped over a potted plant and landed on his tailbone. “She made me do it.” A sob wracked him. “She killed herself with me!”

“Why would she do something like this?”

“She said there’s no hope.” He wiped a sleeve across his face and glanced up at the bright zig zag of planets in the indifferent sky. “The crystals are poisoning Terris. She said we’re doomed.”

“Surely Terris will protect herself. And us.”

Kashur glanced sideways at his friend. “Have you seen any Elementals since the Council?”

Moyshec stood, a worried look on his bulbous face. “Mol Morin has been scrying for them to no avail.”

Kashur laid his head across his knees. Perhaps he should tell Moyshec what Yelora had done. If she had killed the one-and-only Elemental, they would need the Wizards’ help. Stars, they would need more than that! Perhaps the Sky Engineer was right, and it really was hopeless.

“Kashur, ye need to tell me exactly what happened here,” Moyshec said. He was looking at him in a funny way Kashur didn’t like.

Kashur spoke into his folded arms. “You don’t think I did this, do you?”

“I don’t want to think ye did.”

“Then don’t!” Kashur pushed to his feet. His gloves were hanging from the loops over his wrists, and he worked them back on before shoving through the overgrown plants back into the barge.

Moyshec followed him. “What are ye doing?”

“I’ve got to find Mol Morin!”

He ducked through the fetid, musty hallways, pushing open closed doors and startling the other Wizards. “Where’s Mol Morin?” he demanded, voice cracking.

A frightened Disciple pointed to the stern. Kashur broke into a run, Moyshec on his heels.

“He’s working on something! I don’t think ye should disturb him.”

Kashur ignored his friend and charged forward, briskly moving aside anyone who got in his way, heading for what looked like the door to an interior cargo hold in the abdomen of the great, metal beast. He spun the wheel, and the heavy door whined as he heaved it open to reveal a dimly lit room and Mol Morin’s bent back.

It was the smell that made Kashur flinch. Like putrid seawater mixed with burning rubber. He lifted an arm across his face.

“Summoner!” Mol Morin’s dark eyes lit up, and he waved him in. “Come here. Come here, my boy. I’m so happy you’re here. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Kashur exchanged a confused look with Moyshec as he stepped over the threshold into the dank, revolting space.

“Are you drunk, Sir?” Kashur asked.

“Of course not!” Mol Morin replied, almost laughing as he pulled Kashur into an awkward but enthusiastic embrace. “Moyshec, close the door. Kashur, you’ve come just in time.”

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Kashur watched Moyshec pull the heavy door closed, heard the scraping sound of the wheel lock turning. “Just in time for what?”

He followed the Alchemist’s shuffling steps deeper into the hold, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. It was quiet as a tomb here in the bowels of the ship. Mol Morin had set up a laboratory. Every once in a while, something dripped.

“Did you bring the Elf Queen?”

“She’s here. Somewhere. But, Mol Morin. Something terrible’s happened. A Sky Engineer—” He choked a little. “She—she forced me to kill her. She said she didn’t want to live through what’s coming. Do you know what she meant?”

The Alchemist’s eyes darkened. “Yes, but fear not. I have a plan. We must ally with the Elves, as I’ve insisted from the beginning. We must control this new magic.”

“But I think this new magic is the problem,” he protested. “The crystals are destructive. They’re poisoning Terris, and I think they’re doing more.” He lowered his tone; he did not want Mol Morin to think him panicked. “The Sky Engineer spoke of a new enemy coming. What if the meteorite was some sort of supply drop before their invasion? Or a vanguard to weaken us, turn us against one another?”

A scoffing laugh escaped Mol Morin as he stopped in front of a row of bubbling beakers. “War isn’t coming, Kashur, it’s already here, or haven’t you been paying attention?”

“This is different,” Kashur insisted.

“Suffering is the same no matter who’s delivering it. You’ve never had to live through a war, but I have.”

“Were you really alive during the Rift War?” He’d heard such rumors.

“Extended life does not come without a price.” Mol Morin leaned over the beakers, peering inside each one as he tapped them with the long end of a spoon. “The memories being the most costly.”

It was so dark back here in the ship’s bowels. Kashur found a lantern and blew on it to light it. It made the room look like pea soup. He peeked at the beakers. Something was floating in one of them. Was that a finger? Never mind. He didn’t want to know.

“What was it like? Living through the war?”

Mol Morin turned from his work, face ghastly in the unnatural light. “I learned the importance of never being on the losing side. Did the Elf Queen agree to ally with us?”

“I think so. Now that the Imperials and Dwarves have allied against us, what choice does she have?” Kashur trailed Mol Morin deeper into the cargo hold as the Alchemist puttered with his potions. “What do you mean on the losing side? The war ended in a ceasefire. A lasting peace.”

“I was captured, held prisoner for five years in a Dwarven dungeon. We were starved, sick, overrun with rats and insects. They tied our wrists to rings in the ceiling so we couldn’t cast spells, not even to heal our wounds. Then the Imperials took the mountain. We thought we were being saved, but things just got worse. The Dwarves were uncaring, but the Imperials were downright sadistic. There are still nights I wake up in a sweat from dreaming I’m back there...”

He trailed off, and Kashur was glad of it. He’d seen enough horror today. He didn’t need to hear more.

“Does the Sky Engineer’s prediction not alarm you, Sir?”

Mol Morin’s rheumy gaze found Kashur’s, and he took comfort in the certainty he saw there. “No, it does not. All people fear suffering, Sky Engineers no less than anyone else. But you need not worry about enemies, old or new. I have a plan. Once we are allied with the Elves, and with this new magic, we’ll be unstoppable. Come! I need your help with something.”

“Wait.” Kashur held up his gloved hands. The Sky Engineer’s dying face still replayed in his head. “I have to be rid of this,” he choked. “I can’t do it anymore.”

“Now, now.” Mol Morin put an arm around him. It was an uncharacteristic gesture for the Alchemist, but at the moment it felt like a lifeline, like that day in Mol Morin’s office; Kashur could almost smell the leather and tobacco. “Wartime is not the time to reduce one’s powers; it is the time to increase them.”

Kashur began to protest.

“Nevertheless,” Mol Morin interrupted, “I have found a way to help you.”

Kashur’s heart thumped like a bird against the bars of its cage. “You have?”

“I know this is your heart’s wish. And who knows how much time each of us has left, am I correct? A man your age should, at the very least, be able to touch the woman he loves.”

“What woman? Do you know something I don’t?” Kashur’s pulse pounded in his throat, his temples, his thumbs as Mol Morin guided him even deeper into the cargo hold, to a large trough filled with dark liquid and smelling of sulfur. A layer of steam teased its surface. “What is that, the fishtank of doom?”

Mol Morin’s smile was eager and strange. “Get undressed.”