It didn’t take me long to backtrack and find a way into the crystal chamber. I spent a few minutes in there, examining the central part in closer detail. From above, I’d missed the ring of thirty-two crystals holding land spirits, a few of which I’d seen before when I visited the room before. Those didn’t matter; they were just collectors. Theoretically, I supposed that I could probably drain the spirits inside them, but I felt fairly certain the heltharvis could replace those pretty easily with ones from her valskab.
The center was the important part. I spent a little time examining the flawless crystal, but it didn’t really interest me, either. If I was right, it only had ancillary importance to the woman’s plan. Again, I could probably smash it, and that would set her back, but it would only last until she found, created, or grew another one. I felt certain she’d done one of the latter. Simply finding a perfect crystal when it seemed that the entire Oikie species hadn’t in the past few centuries defied the bounds of coincidence. It might take her time to replace it, but she could always try again in a year or two. I needed to stop her permanently, and that meant that I had to make some preparations of my own.
The sample of silver paint I’d grabbed from the Oikie ship was still in my storage, and I decided to take a page from Kamath back in Puraschim. It only took me a few minutes to mix the paint up a bit, move aside the stone of the floor, paint a diagram on it, and then recover it so my efforts were hidden. Hopefully, I’d done it correctly; thanks to my Savant rank in Ritualism, I thought I had a pretty good shot, at least. I went as quickly as I could without rushing, knowing that by now, the heltharvis had to know that I wasn’t trapped where she thought. I didn’t know if she’d realize where I’d gone, but she’d probably guess that I was here, and guards were no doubt on the way. Once I finished, I slipped out, erased the evidence of my entry, and headed back into the tunnels.
My next destination was Aeld and the others, but before I went to them, I interrogated the guard spirits for the location of the nearest bathing chamber. It was true that I was somewhat bloodstained and dirty, and I was certain the smell of blood wafted out from me, but that wasn’t the reason I was looking for a bath. The heltharvis might be able to track me by my smell depending on how advanced her Tracking skill was, but I doubted the guards could, and I hadn’t seen anything in this world like bloodhounds. That was a good thing since Earth dogs would probably have run me down by this point, and contrary to what movies showed, taking a bath or splashing in moving water wouldn’t deter one of those in the slightest.
No, I had a more immediate and fundamental problem. With the growing heat and the loss of my Temperature Adaptation ability, my thirst steadily increased until it wasn’t easily ignored. I could push through it, but I didn’t see a reason since the baths I’d been in before had fresh water, and I doubted the heltharvis would bother guarding them. After all, what escapee would take the time to go clean up when the spirits hunting him certainly weren’t doing so with their noses?
However, when I reached the bath, to my surprise, a pair of guards stood outside it. I froze as I peered at the two from the shelter of an intersecting tunnel with a sudden sense of doubt. Had the heltharvis predicted that I’d need water and set up a guard here? I couldn’t see how she would have, but if she did, I was in a lot of trouble. Anyone who could guess my actions that well might also work out what I’d done and what I planned to do and act to stop me, and that meant I was likely screwed.
As I watched the pair of guards, though, I became less sure that they were here for me. They stood at the entrance, but their bodies were turned more toward the door than the tunnel, as if they were watching over something or someone inside it—or keeping them in there. They never once looked down the tunnel; all their attention was on the mossy curtain that served as a door. I could probably slip close enough to them to kill them both without difficulty, and if it hadn’t been for the silent communication the valskab used, I probably would have. I didn’t want to give away my location, though, so I slipped back through the tunnels and made my way around to the side of the bathing chamber, entering it through the wall. I really was thirsty, after all—and I kind of wanted to see what the heltharvis was guarding inside the room.
The bathing chamber was empty when I slipped inside, and I quickly made my way to the cooler end of the pool, lay down on the floor, and drank deeply. The water had a fairly strong mineral taste to it, but I ignored it as I quenched my thirst. When I’d had enough, I sat up with a sigh, wiped the water from my face, and looked around. Spirits swirled around me, glowing the orange of fire, the cloudy white of wind, and the ivory of steam, while tawny lava spirits flowed through the floor and walls. All shone with the coppery sheen of a spirit tied to the valskab, meaning despite my temptation to claim a couple, I couldn’t touch them without risking alerting the heltharvis. I ignored the wispy things and examined the room’s details more closely.
The chamber was empty, as I’d thought, but another curtain of golden moss hung at the back, probably leading to one of the hot rooms we’d used to adapt to the warmer temperatures of the Haelendi way back in Fifa’s valskab. I rose to my feet and crept toward the curtain, crouching low and stopping before it. A pink plant spirit swirled within the curtain, but beyond it, three brownish mortal spirits glowed weakly. I stared at the spirits curiously; something seemed odd about all three of them. They looked unusually flat and pale, translucent where most mortal spirits were opaque and misty where most felt solid. Thinner spots appeared and disappeared in them, and they honestly looked like they might tear or fade away at any moment.
“Sara, any idea what’s wrong with them?” I asked.
“They’ve been damaged, John. How, I don’t know, but the damage looks extensive and severe.”
“If they were regular spirits,” Kadonsel said quietly, “I’d think they’d been tapped too heavily, maybe to the point that they’d never recover.”
“So, it’s not likely that they’re a threat,” I guessed.
“No, not really, John,” Sara said. “I’d be surprised if they could walk around, much less attack you.”
I hesitated for only a moment before opening the curtain and stepping through. As I suspected, a wave of heat washed over me the moment I entered the room beyond, which was oblong and dark, lit only dimly by a yellow-white spirit overhead. A waterfall at the far end of the room pattered noisily down the wall into a pool in the floor, while stone ledges ringed the walls at about the height of a chair or bench. Three figures sat on that ledge, all looking old for Menskies, with thin fur turning white, frail, stooped frames, and thin, spindly shoulders. All were nude, as well, displaying that one of the figures was male and the others were female. All three sat with their eyes closed, and none of them opened them as I entered, even though they obviously sensed my presence.
“Is it time to return to our chambers?” the man asked in a reedy, toneless voice that felt flat and lacked any emotion at all. “Or does the traitor need us for something?”
“By ‘traitor’, I assume you mean the heltharvis,” I guessed.
“Of course. Who else could I mean?” The old man opened his eyes and sighed tiredly, then froze as he saw me. “Wait—you aren’t one of our captors. Who are you?”
“Just a visitor of sorts,” I shrugged. “Who are you?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed as he looked at me, then widened slightly. “You—you aren’t part of the valskab, are you? If you were, you would know who we are. Are you the rogue letharvis the traitor spoke of?”
“Probably. And no, I’m not part of the valskab.”
“Leave this place, child,” one of the women croaked, her voice just as listless as the man’s. “The traitor wants you, which means the best thing you could do is flee as quickly as possible.”
“She’s right,” the old man sighed, closing his eyes once again. “Leave here, letharvis. Deny the traitor what she wants; that’s the best thing you can do for our people.”
I crouched down, putting myself closer to the old people’s height, and examined the old man a little more carefully. His body was lean and frail, and his hands showed no signs of callouses, meaning he probably hadn’t done any sort of manual labor in a long time. His voice, despite being weak and quavering, still held a note of command, and the way he dismissed me after speaking suggested that he was used to his commands being obeyed. It only took a moment for understanding to hit me.
“You—you’re all part of the rashi, aren’t you?” I asked.
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“We were, yes, letharvis,” the second woman said in a tired voice. “No longer, though. That has been taken from us, along with everything else.”
“John, they don’t have any spirits attached to them,” Sara said softly. “And their spirits don’t seem to be connected to the valskab the way the guards are. In fact, their spirits aren’t interacting with the spirit energy field at all, as far as I can tell.”
My eyes widened. “The Ritual of Chaining—she used it on you?”
“Yes,” the man said flatly.
“How?”
“Does it matter?” the first woman sighed. “It was done, that’s what’s important.”
“It might,” I countered. “After all, if she did it to you, she might try to do the same to me, and if I know how it happened, maybe I can avoid it.”
“I suppose,” the man said without inflection. “Perhaps if you know what happened here, when you leave this place, you can spread word to the valskabs.” He took a deep breath, then opened his eyes and looked at me with a gaze filled with pain, sorrow, and despair.
“The traitor came to us as a refugee from the Oikithikiim,” he explained in a dispassionate tone. “As you likely know, some few arrive each year at the Halio, the pass that provides the only passage between the lowlands and the Haelendi, so this wasn’t remarkable. Like all such, she was placed in one of the outer valskabs and watched closely—our enemies attempt to place spies in our lands regularly, after all.
“For the next two years, the traitor was a stellar example of a refugee seeking to return to the people. She served the valskab well and faithfully, and all spoke highly of her devotion to the people. Moreover, it was quickly apparent that she had incredible potential as a letharvis, so eventually, she was joined to the valskab and began her training, completing it in a single year. She asked to return to the Halio, to fight against those who had once enslaved her, and her request was granted. For another year, she proved to be a deadly foe to the Oikithikiim, and the commanders in the pass praised her devotion to the people and skill with the spirits effusively.
“At that point, she asked to come here, to Aldhyor, to learn at our feet.” The man sighed. “We saw no reason to deny her. By all accounts, she was a true warrior of the people and a devoted letharvis, and even the most suspicious of us couldn’t find fault with her. We brought her here—and in so doing, we destroyed ourselves.”
“She turned on you, then?” I asked.
“Not at once, of course. She seemed properly servile and enthusiastic to learn from us, so we willingly taught her. Once she’d learned all she needed, though, her true nature emerged. Like a spirit of betrayal, she waited until we’d offered her our backs, then plunged a knife into them.”
“How?”
He sighed again. “She used our own vanity and arrogance against us. She served each of us and told us all that we were the greatest of the rashi, and that we each should rightfully stand above the others. Over the course of passages, we believed her lies, and we began to plot and scheme against one another. That was when she struck, luring each of us to the ritual room with promises of power that she could grant us—and instead stripping all our power away.”
“The Ritual of Chaining,” I muttered.
“Just so. She struck quickly, bringing us all down within a day. She’d turned us against one another, so we never realized what was happening until it was too late.”
“What about your guards? Surely, they didn’t just watch it happen?”
“The Harvirth?” The man chuckled, a flat and emotionless sound that sounded extremely forced. “She used their loyalty and oaths against us.”
“Meaning?”
“The Harvirth are brought here when very young, child,” the first woman explained. “When they arrive, their spirits are bound with an oath of loyalty and utter obedience to the rashi—and especially to defend it against all outsiders. Once we went through the ritual and were cut off from the valskab, that was what we became as far as their oaths were concerned.”
“But that doesn’t mean they have to listen to her, does it?”
“Once again, the traitor took advantage of our laws and customs,” the man replied. “Aldhyor is simply another valskab in many ways, and we of the rashi are its letharvisa. However, since our numbers can’t be replenished from our own children, when one of our number is no longer capable of continuing their duties, the rest select a replacement from among the most powerful of the letharvisa not of our valskab. When the traitor performed the accursed ritual on us all, it left her as the only letharvis remaining in Aldhyor, and thus the duty of selecting replacements fell to her. Obviously, she selected herself and no others. As far as the Harvirth are concerned, she is the rashi, and they are forced to obey her no matter what their personal feelings might be.”
I sat silently, digesting the man’s words with mingled confusion and concern. Honestly, my first thoughts were ones of respect and admiration for the Inquisitor. Apparently, she’d been in this world for years if not decades, and she’d been laboring toward this moment the entire time. She’d played the Menskies, the entire damn species, using their own customs and traditions against them. She’d somehow fooled their silent communications so that they couldn’t sense her impending betrayal, then spent years building their confidence and trust so she could betray them. Considering that one of the most important patriarchs among the Oikies worked with her, I assumed that she’d done the same to them, gaining power, trust, and authority among them just so she could use it against them in the end. She’d probably slipped out of that Halio place regularly to keep communications with the Oikies without ever getting caught, no doubt convincing both species that she was working for them while following her own goals the whole time.
Quite frankly, the scale of what she’d done astounded me. The amount of planning that had to have gone into this was insane, as was the depth of the deceptions she’d certainly had to employ. I’d never spent years on a mission, not even in my old life on Earth. At worst, I spent several months planning, gathering intel, and learning about my marks before killing them; most of the time, I only needed a few weeks to learn what I needed. In the Doorverse, I was always on a clock, racing to figure out what was wrong and stop it before it happened, and all my missions lasted a few months or so, no longer. I couldn’t imagine having to spend a decade on this world just to complete a single mission.
“Remember Ujali, John?” Sara reminded me. “She spent decades in Puraschim, as well. Missions like that are the norm, and you’re something of an oddity.”
“Why?”
“Because normally, you’d be getting assigned missions by your patron and sent to a world long before you needed to act. Because of your curse, though, you’re drawn randomly to worlds that already have significant imbalance, meaning you usually have limited time to act before that imbalance spills into catastrophe.”
“Great. Another reason to hate Menogra, I guess.” At the same time, though, I couldn’t really claim that the curse was all bad, at least not in this case. Spending a decade in a world and then having to leave it at the end couldn’t have been easy. That was long enough to build an entire life, to start a family, to think of the world as a home. As it was, I’d gotten close to people in each world I visited in the short time I was on them, and leaving them behind did hurt a bit. I’d gotten used to leaving people behind a long time ago, fortunately, but it still stung just a little.
“What about the Oikithikiim?” I finally asked. “When did they get here, and how did they do it without dying?”
“Over a year ago. How, I don’t know, but she must have shielded them from the spirits somehow.” The old man seemed unconcerned, but I still heard a tiny spark of anger in his words. “They simply appeared one day, bringing their profane crystals and practicing their blasphemous crafts here in the very heart of the Haelendi.” He opened his eyes again, and I saw a tiny flicker of that anger dance in his gaze. “That’s why we call her traitor; not only did she betray us, but she’s betraying the people as well.”
“Why haven’t you told anyone?” I asked.
“How? We’re no longer part of the valskabs, and the guards obey her, not us, now that we’re outsiders.” He closed his eyes again. “We should have followed the other of the rashi and taken our lives while we could, but we didn’t, and now it’s too late. Her spirits watch us, and her guards keep us from harming ourselves.”
“Why?” I asked bluntly. “What’s the point of her keeping you around?”
“Knowledge, child,” the first woman croaked. “Once, we were the greatest of the letharvisa, and while our power has been taken from us, our knowledge hasn’t. What she’s attempting is dangerous and complicated, and she brings us in regularly to answer her questions or refine her work.”
“And what is that?” I asked intently. “What exactly is she planning?”
“To break the Great Bargain,” the old man muttered apathetically. “To end the valskabs. How, we don’t know, save that it involves those accursed crystals and some sort of calling.”
“And you help her? Even though you know it’s likely to hurt your people?”
“There’s little point to resisting,” the man said. “She simply hurts us until we agree. And they aren’t our people anymore. No valskab would welcome us as we are. Outsiders.”
“And perhaps, when she’s done, she’ll no longer have need of us and will dispose of us,” the second woman muttered. “That’s our only true hope.”
I leaned back and looked at the three with a pitying gaze. The ritual had taken more than their ability to touch the spirits; it had stripped them of their will to live. They just wanted to die, and part of me wanted to grant them their wish. The only problem was that if they were right, and some of the spirits nearby were watching them for the heltharvis, killing them might alert her to my presence. I wasn’t ready for that—at least, not yet.
“Leave us, child,” the first woman said again. “Flee this place, and spread the word of our enemy’s presence. Gather the valskabs and drive the traitor out. Denying her what she wants is the only way you can help us.”
“Sara, any possibility that we can undo the ritual?” I asked silently.
“I don’t think so, John. With their spirits cut off from the spiritual realm, I don’t think another ritual can affect them. It seems that the Ritual of Chaining really is permanent.”
I sighed and rose to my feet. I wanted to give the trio some words of encouragement, but I didn’t think there was any point. I’d seen people like them before, people who’d given up on life and were simply waiting for death. Some of my marks were like that once they realized that they couldn’t do anything to stop me from killing them. They’d given into despair, and nothing I said would matter to them. Instead, I turned and walked away from them, back into the bathing chamber, leaving the three to their misery.
The heltharvis had a lot to answer for, and I hoped to make sure she did. First, though, I had to go find the others. It was time for the final act of this little play to begin—and I could only hope that I’d guessed the ending correctly.