> “A Thaighn is a leader of the Craenen, and rules over an entire Crae, which in many cases means ruling an entire earthmote. Some writers have translated the word thaighn as ‘chieftain’ in an attempt to make the Craenen people seem backwards and uncivilized, but a thaighn is properly equal in rank to a Garanese duke, and even the least holds the fealty of many lairds and ridires.”
>
> *—*Prince Ruber of Valai, My Travels.
CAISTEAL VHANNOG
Crae Vhannog, Eärrach’s Sphere 09.06.03.10.02
“Inventory o’ the food supplies is complete, an’ the good news is we hae more than we thought. Wi’ proper rationing, we can hold nigh on five months. An’ the wells run deep an’ good.”
“Our food supplies might last that long, but the walls won’t. All they need tae do is bring up cannon, an’ I’d wager that’s exactly what they’re doin’ wi’ that airship that landed out down near Jodhrey’s Lairding.”
Thaighn Kieran Crown-Child nodded grimly as he heard a repetition of the same points he’d heard yesterday and the day before. He would have preferred to hold this morning meeting up on the Thaighn’s Tower where he could get a good view of the entire Crae, but the enemy force had sharpshooters. He wasn’t willing to die ignominiously to a sniper’s bullet while taking his morning repast, especially not when the repast in question was a boring affair of porridge and a little small beer. If a man was going to die, he should at least do it after a good meal.
“So we’ll not hold,” he predicted.
Kieran’s Ridiremarshal was a perpetually dour man named Alasdair, who in most regards couldn’t have been more opposite to the Thaighn. Alasdair was short and wiry, toughened like he’d been dried out on a smoking rack. His skin had been snow-pale once, before a lifetime spent outdoors had weathered it, but it would never take on a warm hue. Nor either would his eyes, which were as strikingly Craenen blue as Kieran’s mother’s had been. “We’ll not hold,” he agreed. “This’ll end in a pro forma surrender after, oh, ten days for the sake o’ dignity. If they have any honour.”
Kieran nodded, lips pursed thoughtfully. He knew he stood out among the men of his court for the simple reason that in looks he very much took much after his father. He was tall, broad, dark of complexion, hair and eye, quick to smile and optimistic. Sunny, as some put it.
Not that he was feeling terribly sunny right now.
“We still have no idea who they are?”
“No, thaighn. They’re a mix o’ mercenaries.”
“Expensive mercenaries,” Kieran’s steward added. Cillian was one of those men who looked stretched, like he’d been hung from the rafters with heavy weights hooked to his boots as a child. His hair had long since gone iron grey, and he wore it unfashionably short, almost shaved down, and all one length. It wasn’t a flattering look at all, but the man didn’t seem to care one bit. He was all about figures, statistics, organization and operations. Dressing well and presenting himself finely were irrelevant fripperies, no matter what the thaighn or the thaighn’s greatly esteemed father might say.
“Any elves?”
“No. All human. Mostly Storsteinner clans, I think.” Cillian consulted his papers to be sure, then nodded in self-confirmation. “This must have taken some time to plan. And many airships. That points to a guild, one of the big ones.”
“But the airships we’ve seen bore no livery,” Alasdair pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter,” Kieran declared. “’Tis the Clear Skies, I’m in no doubt of it. No’ content with murdering my mother, Civorage has come to claim revenge for the curse she laid on him.”
“It is the cleanest explanation,” Cillian agreed.
“Well he’ll have his revenge,” Alasdair declared. “And I doubt he’s a good enough man tae give us an honorable siege an’ surrender.”
“As do I.”
What Kieran didn’t say aloud was that at least Civorage wasn’t here himself. He’d inherited a great talent in the Craft from both parents, and had Nils Civorage actually attended in person, his presence would have been like the pressure of an approaching storm. Crae Vhannog was, insult of insults, an afterthought to him.
And in such arrogance lay some small hope of salvation. If only he could find it.
He moved to the window, wishing he had the freedom to go to his favourite perch atop the frontward wall. He always thought best from his seat there, which afforded a wonderful view of the entire Crae. But alas, sitting there today would make him an easy target for a rifleman with a good scope. He would have to be content with a glimpse of the open sky, and the muster yard below where his ridires were drilling the militia.
He sighed, emptied his mind, and tried to allow inspiration to flow in. Surely there was something…
“…Do you feel that?”
Cillian looked up from the desk. “I have’nae the Sight, Thaighn,” he reminded Kieran, gently.
Kieran ignored him. He leaned forward, unlatched the window and swung it open. The breeze rushed in, and Alasdair protested as his papers were nearly snatched up and thrown around…but something came in on the breeze. Something black and white and welcome beyond words, which swirled around the room before landing before the desk.
Rheannach unfolded herself in a shower of feathers and magnificent wings, about the most perfectly welcome sight Kieran could have asked for. She took his hands and hugged him while Cillian and Alasdair took an astonished step back.
“You’re alive!” she sounded just as relieved to see him as he was to see her.
“Aye, they only laid siege. We’re no’ dead yet.”
“Why didn’t you send word?”
“I did! Or, I thought I did….” Kieran’s smile drooped. “If ye did’nae come to my call, why are ye here?”
“We have…well, we were bringing somebody to safety. A former member of the Circle. Ellaenie’s draught works, Kieran!”
“Seems it still has a downside, though. Ye’re deaf tae my thoughts.” Kieran fretted, before another thought drove that concern out of his mind. “Is Ellaenie wi’ ye?”
“She’s up at the hidden path. Don’t worry, Kieran. She’s no fool and she knows how important she is. She won’t endanger herself without good cause.”
Kieran relaxed. “Aye, well. I’ve missed her. But this is no place for her. We need an army.”
“The Craenen you united were to be our army.” Rheannach sighed and looked out the window she’d flown in through. “It seems one of our advisors was right. Our enemy has a knack for moving in ways we do not expect.”
Kieran frowned at her, trying to guess her thoughts. Rheannach had always struck him as a strange goddess of love (not that she accepted the term of herself.) If he’d been asked to imagine such a being without knowing of her, he would have pictured something more…deranging. Beautiful enough to drive men mad, sultry enough to wrap the world around her finger, tempestuous enough to destroy civilizations and yet kind enough to reduce hardened warriors to tears.
What they had was Rheannach, in all her disarming normalcy. Certainly beautiful, but not supernaturally so, she’d spent decades living anonymously in Thaighn Saoirse’s court without anyone suspecting her true identity. Powerful, wise and kind indeed, and yet approachable. To Kieran she was more a big sister than an object of desire or devotion. And she was so very solemn. She could be the very archetype of feminine inscrutability when she wished, but at the same time it wasn’t like her to be obtuse.
“…What have I missed?” he asked her.
He was treated to the rare sight of her smile, despite their immediate troubles. “Somebody stole Civorage’s Word,” she told him.
Kieran blinked, then gestured to Cillian and the steward hastened to pour them whisky.
“I think,” he said, “ye had best tell me more…”
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Ellaenie was not, in fact, lying low and waiting for Rheannach to return. She’d left Dennis Beck at the hidden path, of course, but to her way of thinking there was little point in having all her finely-honed talents and not putting them to work.
And besides…there was a lot more going on than just the siege.
Vhan was the craenen word for a mine, so Crae Vhannog was literally Mining Country. Small though the earthmote was, it was so riddled with lead, copper and silver that even the rocky hill on which Caisteal Vhannog stood was shot through with colorful ores and oxides. From her position below it as she slipped through the woods to circle around the siege, Ellaenie could see why it was sometimes called “the Rainbow Cairn.”
They funny thing she’d noticed as she surveyed the land while Rheannach flew off to check on Thaighn Kieran was that while the largest part of the invading force was laying siege…the rest of it wasn’t doing what she’d expected. There was an awful lot of country to plunder and pillage, and yet it was mostly going unmolested, though a force of men had seized the caisteal town. Otherwise though, there was no sign of any squads going around the farms to “requisition” their stores and livestock. The common folk were apparently being left alone.
Ellaenie didn’t trust that one bit. It was too…focused. It suggested the armies didn’t actually plan to remain long enough to need the supplies. And then there were the airships landed some miles from the caisteal, around a notch in the land where she could see the rails and wheel gantry of a mine.
She darted out of the cover of the woods, sprinted as fast as she knew how over the open terrain, jumped a small stream and scrambled up a bank where her boots scrabbled and kicked a shower of pebbles behind her. Her hopes that there would be some cover along the higher ground were rewarded: not only were there a number of errant boulders, but they were interspersed with scrappy stands of gorse and nettle. A painful barrier to anyone other than a witch, those.
With a silent apology to whoever would have to clean her coat afterwards, she dropped on her belly and squirmed forward under one of the gorse bushes that grew out at an angle from the very spot where the flat ground dropped away down a sharp rocky drop that almost deserved the word cliff. With an exertion of her will and a touch of Craft, the twisted, angry branches shivered and bent away from her, turning their thousands of needles aside so that she could wriggle forward until she was completely beneath it and peering down into the bowl of the mine’s yard.
Sure enough, there were workers down there, and they weren’t oddly dilligent locals. Four of the men coming up out of the mine were stripped to the waist, and stone dust and sweat were caked on their skin, matted in chest hair and whiskers and streaking their coarse linen trousers.
She turned her ear and concentrated. The Sight could enhance hearing too, if she wished. And right now, she wished to hear what they were reporting to the taller, slimmer, cleaner figure who was waiting for them.
“—oddest stratum I’ve ever seen, right enough. ‘Tis nae the normal motestone an’ minerals, but almost like…eh. Ye’ll think I’ve gone cracked i’ the heid.”
The tall man’s clothing was an airshipman’s, but of much finer and more expensive make than most: rather than the usual leather coat with a wool or fur lining, his was of worsted wool in charcoal, worn over a matching silk waistcoat.
Absurdly, his face was hidden by a party mask. The feminine visage was made of pale lacquered wood painted with rosy cheeks, bright red lips and dark makeup around the eye-holes. A cascade of dark, glossy hair was drawn back and braided to either side of his scalp before falling to level with his cuffs, and he was resting his weight on one leg while toying with an ivory-topped cane. He looked entirely dandyish…and curiously sinister for just how much he was out of place.
The mask distorted his voice so badly, she couldn’t make out his words. She caught his laugh, though: It was soft and refined, aristocratic, and deeper than she would have guessed. She’d been expecting an effete giggle.
“…It’s like…like rivers runnin’ tae a lake. Or lightnin’ forkin’ down tae strike a tower. I swear, all th’ mineral veins down there are laid out wi’ purpose,” the miner said. He frowned when the masked figure nodded slowly as though hearing expected news. “’Tisn’t natural.”
This time, Ellaenie heard the masked man’s voice, but it didn’t help. She couldn’t place his accent at all. “Then it’s exactly what I hoped for.”
“…I see. Well, it’s hard goin’. The workers need a rest an’ a sup.”
“We have plenty of time. They can have it.”
The masked man waved a hand in a way that told Ellaenie his kindness was pure calculation. Tired men made mistakes, mistakes meant deaths and delays. The Sight was thwarted by he mask to a large degree, but there were other clues—bearing, posture, tone of voice, and more. He seemed an acutely rational man, rather than a kind one.
Rational, but driven. His patient investment in a safe excavation was at war with a lust for whatever was down there that made him half want to sprint into the mine and take up a pick in his own hands.
The foreman sent a man back into the mines, then moved away downhill with the masked figure, toward an airship anchored in the valley. A rich ship, Ellaenie noted: the bag was whole and clean, unpatched, and black, which was an expensive dye. The ship’s figurehead was a copy of her owner’s mask, and her name was painted in flowing gold script below the bowsprit: Aleator.
Boots crunched on the stones behind her and she froze. Fortunately, she’d been smart enough to pull her feet in behind her and curl up under the gorse bush, but now it occurred to her that a bush really was no protection at all. If they knew she was in here, then one bayonet thrust…
There were two of them. Stormclansmen, to judge from the kilts and tattooed shins. The impression was confirmed when one of them spoke to his comrade.
“Vas?” He sounded bored and impatient.
The other man sounded tense and wary. “Nidwis’n. Toten eg sae somen sníkin op her.”
Ellaenie grit her teeth and concentrated the Craft, concentrated on her Glamer. I am not here, she willed. Ignore me. Leave me alone. She tried to picture the power that constantly shrouded…uhm….shit. Jerl’s young man who wasn’t a man…
Whatever. His name wasn’t important right now. Focus.
The first man let out a long-suffering sigh. “Is naen op her, arse-hode,” he said, impatiently. Pain suffused his words, radiating from feet that had suffered inadequate footwear for too long.
“Arse-hode thissen! I nid saen de vindur; lok rond.”
Ellaenie scowled with the effort. No. Shut up. You’re tired, your feet hurt and you’re hungry.
“…Nae. Shod op. Is naen op her, I tart, I fot smert un I willen met.”
“Egh…” The first man paused. His leather shoes scraped through the dust as he turned and looked around. Finally, he made a grumbling noise and turned back down the hill. “…Ya. Fín.”
They trudged away before helping each other down the gravelly bank. Only once the sound of their bickering was far away did Ellaenie dare to release the long, relieved sigh she’d held onto. That had been far too close.
She glanced up at the Caisteal. Rheannach was still up there, presumably. And Ellaenie had nothing to prove to anyone. She stared at those distant windows and the tattered banners atop their cracked turrets, and formed the picture of her Mother in her mind.
And sent a decidedly sheepish update.
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> The Ordfey used language as a means of reinforcing the impenetrable barrier between master and slave. For a human to speak the language of the elves was a capital crime. Hence we have Wightidh, the root slave-tongue of humanity from which all of later human dialects have arisen, and mutated over the years until one must look closely and carefully to see the old languages in them at all. —Elas Kenvayada Molosi, Tongues.
GUNNERY PRACTICE
The airship Cavalier Queen, en route to Stórsteinn 09.06.03.10.02
“Fire!”
Jerl felt his new cannonade as a rippling series of pounding sensations in his chest as the Queen’s starboard battery spoke. He didn’t look at the guns, though: his telescope was trained on the earthmote they’d found for target practice.
This one was tiny, maybe a hundred yards across at most. A shoal rather than a proper mote, it was little more than a rough ball of rock with a thatch of hardy yellow-green grass. Nothing else lived there, neither tree nor bird nor rabbit. It was just one of those forgotten bits of rock left over from the breaking of the Crowns’ vision for a single sphere.
The perfect target for an inexperienced gunnery crew, in other words. He watched the cannonballs smash home, raising fountains of pulverized stone and shredded sod, and smiled.
“Good timing, Mister ad Sulidhan! Bang on target!”
There was a cheer from the gun teams.
“Thank you skipper!” Padrig called back. His scalp was still so smooth from his promotion that it gleamed, so he was wearing a woollen tuque against the chill air.
“Now do it again! In fact, make it three! Best time!”
“Aye aye!”
The gun crews became a blur of activity, literally. Jerl actually had to exert Time a little to follow the elves as they accelerated themselves through the process of loading. Quench, bag, ball, ram, prick, prime, set.
At least, that was how it was supposed to go. They had only just started step two when Padrig jumped on a mistake Jerl hadn’t seen. “Halt!”
Activity ceased.
“Third gun number two, front and center!”
The spongeman grimaced and jumped to stand as instructed.
“Do you understand the purpose of quenching the gun?” Padrig demanded of him.
“Yes chief!”
“Explain it to me!”
“To damp any embers so they don’t set the charge off when we load it, chief!”
“Why?”
“So the loader won’t get blown to bits by our own gun, chief!”
“This is a job to do thoroughly, then?”
“Yes, chief!”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“No excuse, chief!”
Satisfied, Jerl turned away and left him to his work. He headed for his cabin, intent on updating the log. Today’s date, ’gunnery practice at an unnamed small mote. Crews performing well, Mister ad Sulidhan continues to impress in his new role.’ Short and simple.
Instead, when he pushed his cabin door open, he found a man standing at his desk, reading the log. Not one of Jerl’s crew.
Jerl stopped and gawped at him, too shocked to even think of reaching for a weapon. The man’s presence was impossible. “You’re—who—?”
The man beamed and stood tall before bowing with a flourish. He was an elderly Alakbiri in appearance, his skin sun-baked and lined, but his dark eyes twinkled with knowledge and mischief beneath a flagrantly colorful turban. He wore a long beard drown out into three neat points and accompanied by a truly splendid mustache, which curled upwards as he smiled a wide, white, toothy grin.
“You never came to visit me, Captain,” he chided.
“I…”
“Really, you spent so much time at the Oasis, and not once did you think to yourself, ‘maybe I’ll go sit down and share a smoke with the Shisha?’ Most impolite. I had thoughts I wished to share!”
“…Lord Herald.” Jerl recovered his wits somewhat. “Ah. Would you, uh, like a drink?”
“Not for me! I don’t touch alcohol. But you smoke, don’t you?” A twirl of his fingers produced a long-stemmed pipe seemingly from nowhere and his grin, somehow, grew even more sparkling. “I have the best leaf in the worlds!”
Well…why not? The log could wait.
“I…yes. Thank you.” Jerl went fishing inside his coat and produced his own pipe. The Shisha smiled and made bold with his desk chair, sitting back in it and stretching out his long legs. He stretched and curled his bare toes like a man who’d been standing too long, then produced a bag from somewhere and thumbed a pinch into his pipe.
“You were busy, of course. I understand, really. Powerful people with much to do are often so full of purpose they neglect their manners.”
“Forgive me, but last I checked, it’s Prince Sayf’s palace, not yours.”
“Heh! Why, because he’s older and more powerful? Feh!” The Shisha snorted, and flicked a hand in a display of curious disrespect for his Crown. “Wisdom is not a function of age and power, nor is it one thing. My wisdom is different to his, is different to Rheannach’s and Dragon’s and Yngmir’s and Haust’s…and yours! And your crew’s!”
“Is it wise to consider yourself wise?” Jerl ventured. He’d read about the Shisha before, who was a figure of considerable scandal and debate among Heraldic scholars, but the one piece of advice they all seemed to agree on was that he preferred prickly questions. People who hung on his every word, they ventured, seemed to lose his respect and become the victims of his pranks and jokes.
It certainly seemed to work. The Shisha chuckled, finished lighting up, and sipped some smoke with a pop-pop before blowing it out around a wide smile. “It’s a curve,” he said. “Down here, you have the fools who think themselves wise. Up in the middle, you have the average man who is wise enough to think himself a fool…and down here at the end, you have the very wise who know themselves well.” He pointed the stem of the pipe at Jerl. “And you are very average, yes?”
“…Thank you?”
“Good answer.”
“I…hm. Uh. Not to be rude, but why are you here? Surely you’re not that put out by me not coming to visit you at the Oasis?”
The Shisha smiled warmly and blew a smoke ring. “Light up.”
Jerl pulled a face as the smell of it hit him. It was…unfamiliar, and not actually pleasant. when he took a sniff of his own pipe bowl, he found it matched. “This isn’t the herb I’m used to smoking.”
His guest chuckled. “No. But, fine. If you will not light up yet, perhaps a little thinking first. Have you ever wondered why we Heralds exist?”
“Well…it’s in the name, isn’t it? You’re the Crowns’ messengers.”
“Yes! But what message?”
Jerl shrugged and spread his hands. “Please, enlighten me.”
“Hah! Exactly!” the Shisha had a round belly-laugh, quite like Sayf’s, and somehow Jerl’s words seemed to have tickled him greatly. “Enlighten you! That is the message!”
He laughed a ltitle more, sipped smoke from his pipe and leaned forward as though conspiring. “We enlighten. We all have our ways of doing it. Yngmir has his hall full of books and his stultifying cerebral conversation…feh. Dragon has her poetry, her art, her meditation on mountaintops. Rheannach has her mushrooms and dancing naked in the woods…”
“That one does sound fun,” Jerl admitted. “But what about Maicoh and Maingan? or Faun and Satyr?”
“Oh, the hounds have their method too. The thrill of the hunt, the baying of the pack, the rushing of the blood, the steaming of entrails in the snow…and as for the twins? Oh, perhaps they are the very best at their job of all of us.”
“Really?” Jerl perched on his desk. “All I ever heard of them is that they’ll invite you to drink wine and fuck until you pass out.”
The Shisha’s eyes gleamed. “Then you haven’t heard half the story. Their goal is to be a mistake. Something you regret, even though it was so good the night before. The headiest wine, the most incredible sex, the dancing and singing and joy of losing yourself in them…and then, the consequences.”
“What? A really bad hangover?”
“That is the first consequence. Then there is the scorn of those who know what you did and don’t approve. The gossip. The jokes. The feeling of having experienced something wonderful that will never come again….” The Shisha’s smile turned sad. “…And finally, the child. There is always a child. Either she who dallied with them becomes pregnant, or he who dallied with them finds the babe waiting safe and warm in front of his hearth one morning. Either way, the payment for that one wonderful night is the greatest consequence and responsibility most people can ever know.”
For a moment, there was silence except for the faint woody creak of the hull, and the ticking of Jerl’s clock. The Shisha sipped smoke, blew another ring, then smiled into his pipe, distantly. “And they all say the same thing,” he added. “That the coming of this burden into their life is the best thing that could have happened. The responsibility is what transformed a shameful night of pleasure from a meaningless dalliance into the most wonderful thing they ever did. I think even you can see the Twins’ lesson now, yes?”“
“I have responsibilities,” Jerl pointed out. “To my ship, and my crew.”
“And you have Time, Wordspeaker. And that is a responsibility far beyond these boards and bags. Trust your quartermaster, navigator, engineer, rigger and gunner to keep the ship, and let me, as you requested, enlighten you.”
Jerl waved his pipe. “This is your method?”
“Mhm. Like Rheannach’s mushrooms. Don’t worry, you won’t have to get naked. Unless you want to, heh!”
Jerl watched him a moment, then sighed and struck his match. “Fine…”
The smoke’s taste was strange, and he didn’t much like it. But it was quite relaxing…calming, really. He exhaled, and sampled it again. “Not so bad…” he admitted.
“Not at all,” the Shisha agreed. “Now, as for why I went to the effort of joining you here on your airship…I am here to tell you you’re doing well. Very well. Too well, really!”
“How is it possible to be doing too well?”
“Ask Satyr and Faun.”
Jerl frowned at him, then smoked a little more when the Shisha gestured for him to continue. “…I don’t follow.”
“You will if you think about what I just said of them.”
“You think…I should…making mistakes?”
“Exactly!” the Shisha sat back, and blew a smoke ring. “See there? Can you do that?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“How many times did you try and fail, before you first got it right?”
“A lot, I suppose. As with any skill.”
The Shisha grinned and wagged a finger at him. “Exactly,” he repeated. “Mistakes are how one learns.”
“Or how good people get killed,” Jerl reminded him.
“Ahh, yes. An airship captain who makes mistakes is a bad captain, and one who goes actively looking for mistakes is a terrible fool. But you are no ordinary airship captain. You are a Wordspeaker. You are the Timespeaker. And to you therefore is afforded the unique opportunity to make unlimited mistakes without anyone suffering the permanent consequences.”
“Except myself,” Jerl retorted. “These are my friends we’re talking about, not playthings. I have a duty to them.”
“Playthings? No. Of course not,” the Shisha replied, becoming suddenly serious. “That is the mistake the elves and Civorage already made, and you have their example to learn from. You don’t need to go down that path. But there are other paths where no-one has walked, and you must.”
“Why?”
“Because you will not win by always doing what seems best. Your enemy will predict your every move if all you do is the sensible thing. Remember, even though you took the word from him, he still has spoken Mind. He knows how people think, just as you know how time flows. You must, at some point, follow your inspiration and take risks. And there is only one way to become good at that.”
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“Fine!” Jerl’s irritation was strong enough to burst through even the soothing smoke that was slowly cuddling his mind. “I agree! But those are my friends!” he pointed out the door. “Weighing time in like it’s an anchor doesn’t change the fact I watched them die that first time around. It was…I don’t want to go through it again. Because either it’ll never stop being so painful, or it will. And like you said, I’ve seen what’s down that road.”
“And what if that is what saving the world requires?”
“And what if it isn’t?” Jerl stood up and put the pipe down, deciding he didn’t much like the Shisha’s leaf after all. “I have Time to guide me, Lord Herald, something even you don’t have. There’s lots on my crew think I made a mistake in taking Ekve aboard without making him swear an oath, but premonition told me otherwise. I don’t need to explore the mistaken paths to find out what they hold, I can see them.”
“Not clearly enough,” the Shisha replied, evenly.
“Clearer than you.” Jerl shook his head. “And I’ve heard you sometimes give bad advice to test if the one you’re advising is smart enough to see it. I think this is one of those times, whether you mean it or not.”
The Shisha stared at him a long moment, then rose to his feet and bowed. “Perhaps so,” he said, evenly. “Or perhaps you are following my advice and making a mistake right now.”
“Time will tell,” Jerl replied, equally even-keeled.
“…Heh!” the Shisha chuckled, then chuckled again, then laughed. “Aha! Haha! Oh, yes! You of all people can say that, can’t you? Hah! Very well! You have heard my advice, and given that you deem it stupid advice, you are choosing not to heed it. I respect that. And I hope you are right. If not…you will be following my advice after all.”
He grinned and bowed. “Perhaps we shall meet again, and we can discuss other matters.”
“Perhaps,” Jerl agreed, though privately he suspected there’d be a thaw in Talvi’s sphere before he tasted that pungent leaf again.
The Shisha smiled. “Or perhaps not. You’re an interesting man, Captain Jerl, but I cannot entertain myself with every interesting person in the worlds, can I? There are far too many!”
He grinned and, before Jerl could reply, blew out a particularly large smoke ring right in Jerl’s face. Jerl blinked, recoiled and waved it off; when he looked again, the Shisha was gone, leaving only the faint sound of laughter.
“…Prick,” Jerl grunted, and tidied up.
He was starting to get sick and tired of everyone coming to him with advice and tests.
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> “Here is a surprising truth for you that I solemnly swear is true: most of the world does not exist at all. This floor we’re sitting on may seem solid, but in actual fact it’s proportionately just as empty as my hall would be if it contained nothing but a child’s marble set upon the floor. The evidence of your eyes is no evidence at all.” —Yngmir, quoted by Prince Ruber of Valai, Conversations with Heralds
HIDING UNDER A BUSH
Crae Vhannog, the Craenen 09.06.03.10.02
It was dawning on Ellaenie that she may have overlooked a detail.
At first, her word to Rheannach had been met with long silence, not even an acknowledgement. So she’d tried again. And again. And she knew Rheannach well, there was no way she’d just ignore her, not now, not over something like this…
Which meant Rheannach wasn’t receiving her thoughts. Which meant something was blocking the Craft.
Something like, say, a particular brew Ellaenie had invented for the specific purpose of interfering with telepathic powers, and which they had both recently drunk.
Shit.
The potion’s development had been long, difficult, and full of setbacks. She’d learned whole chapters of the Craft, and written one or two herself, in perfecting it. She really ought to have expected it would have a few last surprises for her, but…well. There was nothing to be done about it now.
She had, she guessed, no more than an hour or so before the miners came back from their break. The last of them trailed away down the slope just a minute ago, and she could hear laughter and singing around a small, smokey fire away and out of sight. The scent of lobscouse drifted up on the breeze. But then what? She could be half-way to the castle by the time they finished their meal and returned to work, potentially leaving them to achieve their goal
…Or she could risk taking a look for herself, and trust to her own powers and talents, and perhaps thwart them in the nick of time.
She slipped out from under the bush and dropped from stone to outcrop down the cliff with her heart pounding so hard it nearly deafened her. Willing all who might look her way to not see her, she slipped in through the mine’s open entrance, and trotted down a shallow slope blasted out by dynamite and “smoothed” with picks until it was at least relatively straight and even. Her boots tapped so loudly on the stone it made her flinch, but no challenging call came up to her as she plunged out of the daylight and into a darkness that shocked her not just for its depth, but for the stunning disregard for safety it represented. Crae Vhannog suffered eclipse a couple of times a year on average, and one could never be sure when a passing Wandering Isle or free mote might flicker its shadow across the landscape. The odds of it happening at any moment were tiny. But the consequences if it happened right now…
Her nerve broke. With trembling hands, she stooped, swept up a couple of small stones and lit them, as bright as she could. Fragments mined by human tools wouldn’t hold a charge much more than half an hour, but she didn’t need them to be long-lived, just bright. She reached over her shoulder, tucked one into the thin cloth pouch on the back of her collar, and the other into the matching pouch on her breast.
She was now standing in the middle of her own private pool of light. So much for stealth. But people she could handle, if they found her. Shades…
She pushed the dread aside and forged on, tracing her fingers along the walls, following the veins of knobbly silvery crystalline ore in the wall. Still, nobody called out to challenge her, and as much as the clicking of her footsteps echoed in the hard stone tunnels, there were no echoes from up ahead. no sound of tools, no voices. She was, it seemed, alone.
The foreman had spoken truly, she quickly found. The ore was dense here, fractured lines of it running through the stone in such density and randomness that it reminded her of the times her daughter had scrawled on the wall.
Pickle…
The thought of how dangerous this was hadn’t stopped her for her own sake. But the thought of what it would do to her daughter to suddenly be motherless…that nearly stopped her and sent her back. But she was in too deep, now. Too committed. And her destination was just ahead, to judge by, at last, a glow around the bend.
She emerged into what seemed, at first glance, like a natural cavern. Earthmotes were riddled with such voids. Over on Alakbir, she knew, some such had even been commandeered as sheltered, cool havens to build underground. Long Drop City, for instance. On lower motes, the threat of Eclipse was too great, but mines frequently broke into them.
This one was too regular, though. The walls were, if not smooth, then at least flat ands quare. Opposite the entrance, silver ore veins shot through the floor, the walls and the ceiling to converge in a single vast knot which surely represented enough silver to buy a whole fleet of airships.
How had they known this was here? The Thaighns and Lairds of Crae Vhannog certainly hadn’t.
Questions for later. Now, the Sight was singing like a violin string being scraped constantly, slow and high and quiet. There was something enormously powerful beyond that great plug of ore.
It could only be one thing. They hadn’t come here to take revenge against Saoirse for her curse after all; they were here for this. Conquering Thaighn Kieran was just a bonus.
The real prize was surely a Word.
With a gesture and a mental command, she collected the lantern stones scattered around the chamber. They rattled, rose from the ground, and flew into a tight, swift orbit about her head. She was going to need their power for this…and concentration. Geomancy was not her strong suit.
Ellaenie had come a long way these last eight years. Saoirse’s tutelage had been only the first few steps on the road, and with Rheannach, Eärrach, Dragon and Sayf to guide her, she’d grown great in the Craft.
But the magic of matter and inanimate objects was the Art’s domain. If not for Lokar, Ellaenie would have been utterly stuck. Now, she silently thanked her fellow Crownspouse as she stiffened her fingers, summoned up the sterile, cold, tasteless magic of the Art, and pushed her fingertips straight into solid rock.
It split and crumbled like loose sand at her touch. All the pressure was in her head, in the magical field she wove around herself. Nether clavis, first mundane form, sustained arcanum, profound. Like grabbing a cello and scrubbing out the longest, loudest bass note she could until the bow started to fray. Like taking a hammer to the leftmost key of a piano and beating on it until the ivory fractured. It was loud, painful, difficult, exhausting…but it let her scoop handfuls of solid rock aside as though she was digging into a dry sand dune.
In seconds she was elbows deep in the wall, scattering broken handfuls of gravel across the ground behind her. She kicked, gouged, tore, shoved and pulled, grabbed and flung like a mole excavating its home, unheeding and uncaring of the mess she was making of her own skin, clothes and hair. Her arms and shoulders were aching withing seconds but she pushed on, determined that it couldn’t possibly be all that thick, not when the sensation of power from beyond was so—
Her hand punched right through to the far side, and she forgot all about her fatigue as she redoubled her efforts. Before long she’d excavated a hole large enough to fit through, and she stepped back to recover her breath. A real geomancer would have slapped the wall once and opened a door-sized hole through it with a fraction of the effort and energy…but she was through nonetheless. Though, the last of the lampstones was fading, depleted by her wild and unpracticed Art. She heaved a breath, went fishing in her pocket for a charged fetish—a pinecone—lit it, and tossed it through the gap, before squeezing through after it.
She almost needn’t have bothered with the pinecone. The space beyond shone, reflecting the light in a thousand twinkling shards that would have meant she was perfectly safe even if she’d only relied on her two dim harness-stoness. She was inside a geode of sorts, its interior crusted with cubic ore like the walls were made of a million silver dice. In the space’s heart, a stalactite and stalagmite had met, fusing into a single unbroken colum, though quite thin in the middle.
She grasped it, exerting her magic just a little more, and it crumbled away. A wooden box fell into her palm in a shower of dusty gravel.
It wasn’t much to look at, really. The sort of thing one might use to store a brooch or cloak pin. Ellaenie had a dozen rather nicer specimens in her wardrobe. But there was no doubting what she was holding.
“Winter’s tits…”
She hadn’t come here for this. She’d come here to drop off Dennis where he’d be safe before returning to the Oasis. Now, here she was, some distance underground, and a Word of Creation was now…hers.
And it was clearly what the masked man sought. So why had it been left unguarded? Could he be that arrogant? That confident? Could it be he didn’t really know what he was seeking? Who was he?
And which Word was in this particular box?
Carefully, delicately, guided by some premonition whose origin she couldn’t identify, she drew on the Sight. The box’s surface was covered in shifting rune-letters, quite invisible to ordinary eyes for the moment. But to a witch’s sight, they were as clear as if they were carved into the wood.
She couldn’t help herself. For a moment, she forgot that she was on borrowed time, and played with them, dragging them around with her finger. As she did they shifted and changed. Sometimes, they seemed to merge and react to each other, as though part of their meaning was in proximity to their matching fellows. But the thing that drew Ellaenie deeper, made her deaf and blind to the world around her, was the certainty that she understood these things. Somehow…she knew how they wanted to be, and what they wanted to say. Moving them into their proper location didn’t feel like solving a puzzle, it felt like remembering the combination to a forgotten childhood lockbox she’d just dug out of a drawer.
She knew this feeling. It came from a place deep inside her that Eärrach had touched and profoundly changed in some small way, years ago on the day she’d first met him. Had he…foreseen this?
She completed the puzzle. The runes were all aligned now, and contented, if that was an apt word. They were where they wanted to be, forming a lattice of energies…
Of course. She almost laughed at the simple brilliance of it. The Crowns had wanted the words to be opened and read in due time, by one who was ready for them. All these layers of security were a test, to see if the person holding the box was the right kind of person.
And Ellaenie was. She knew what was inside this lockbox, now. And the moment the understanding reached her, it clicked in her palm and tried to open.
“No,” she told it, and held it shut. “No. I don’t want you. I have enough. I almost have too much. And you’re not the right word for me, anyway. You can be somebody else’s.”
“How very generous of you, Your Grace,” a faintly muffled voice said.
Ellaenie whirled. The masked man was leaning rakishly in the hole she’d dug, his painted white visage almost seeming to take on a mocking smirk despite its impassive, fixed expression as he tilted his head at her.
Ellaenie recoiled from him. She’d glanced at him with the Sight wide open and sensitive, and everything about him screamed menace. Here was a man with his demon uncaged and embraced; she could see his dark eyes flick up and down, appraising the curve of her figure and the tightness of her coat over her breasts. She could see the way his fingers twitched delicately, eager to draw the sword from his cane and take the pleasure of murdering her. The mask disguised his malice only a little: she wouldn’t be leaving this chamber alive, if he had his way.
The manners he displayed by using her title, the courtly bow he gave her, the polite way he held out his hand and invited her to hand over the box…all of it was a mocking affectation, the feline impulse to torment prey. Or…
No. No, the gleeful spite of a gambler slow-rolling his cards, drawing out his victory for as long as possible so he could savor it.
She saw all of this in the instant he made eye contact with her.
He saw her see it.
There was a blur, steel flashed in the glittering geode, and he drove the point of his sword into Ellaenie’s throat.
----------------------------------------
> “Shield Wall is a simple game, but popular among airshipmen. The player lays down a “wall” of four cards in front of them, and keeps two cards in their hand. On their turn, they may swap a card from hand to wall, or discard a card from their hand to “attack” another player’s wall. If the attacking card is of a suit not present in the defender’s wall, or if the defending player declines to defend, its full value is taken in points: otherwise, the value of the defending card is subtracted. Both the attacking card and the defending card (if any) are then discarded and replaced from the draw pile. In this way, the players go back and forth until the draw pile is depleted, and the player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.” —Raman Ojupta, Games and Pastimes.
AT THE DINNER TABLE
The airship Cavalier Queen, en route to Stórsteinn 09.06.03.10.02
“Seems like everyone has an opinion, nay?”
“Seems so…Derghan. Nine of blades.”
“Five of blades, four points.”
Jerl nodded, marked his score sheet, and drew a replacement card—Knight of coins. Nice. “I told him to shove it up his arse. In, y’know, more respectful terms than that. He is a Herald.”
“The Shisha’s always been an odd one,” Sin pointed out, swapping a card from her wall to her hand. “Sometimes, he tempts people with the wrong course, just to get a read on them.”
“You’ve spoken with him before?” Amir asked, likewise swapping out his wall.
“He came to me a lot, in the bad old days. At the time, I thought he enjoyed watching me work. Looking back, he was pretty clearly trying to get me to see what I was. The Shisha’s one of the good ones, even if he has his weird ways.”
“Even Heralds can get it wrong, though…” Derghan pointed out, before laying down a card. “Jerl, two of shields.”
“No block.”
“Dammit,” Amir had a terrible game face, and Jerl’s decision not to block with his high card had clearly just thwarted his plan. “…Sin, Duke of Crops.”
“Ten of Crops, three points.”
“M-hmm. And…yes, Heralds can get it wrong. But not often. I should give his words more careful thought, Jerl.”
“His words were effectively that I shouldn’t worry too much about it if I get you all killed,” Jerl pointed out, swapping a card out of his wall.
“I don’t think that’s quite true,” Amir disagreed. “There is always that difference between what the speaker thinks he means, and what the listener thinks he heard, is there not?”
“I don’t know how else to interpret ‘go ahead and make lots of mistakes, you can always undo them,’” Jerl replied, while Sin and Derghan exchanged a couple of low-value attacking cards.
“Oh, I agree. Even if I don’t remember dying over and over again, I would still very much prefer not to,” Amir nodded. “After all, if one of your future courses involves my death, there is a non-zero chance it will be the one where we win. I for one would prefer to live to see our victory.”
“Everyone dies,” Derghan pointed out.
“And I would much rather do it at, say, the age of a hundred and four, surrounded by grieving great-grandchildren.” Amir flashed a small smile Derghan’s way. “Not unreasonable, surely?”
“Suppose not…Out of cards. Who won?”
“Sinikka, by two points,” Amir replied, promptly. “Another hand?”
“Sure.” Jerl handed the deck to Sin, who riffled and shuffled them with hands so practiced not even Mouse could match them.
Speaking of Mouse, he was sitting the game out over on Jerl’s bunk, reading a book. They’d tried to include him in card games, but Mind granted too unfair an advantage. He looked up as the first cards were dealt. “He does have a point, though,” he said.
“Who, The Shisha?”
Mouse gave him a level look. “No, Jerl. Whopty Flopty Bunny, the beloved children’s book character.”
Jerl snorted, and aimed a vulgar finger at his lover while the other three chuckled.
“What point?” Sin asked.
“That Civorage will always see us coming if we don’t so something a little bit mad every so often. I certainly could.”
“You could?” Derghan asked.
“Oh yeah. Easily. Mind is like that. You may as well try and outrun your own shadow. So long as we always do what’s carefully planned out and rational, he’ll be several steps ahead. The Shisha’s right, the only way we’ll get around that is…”
“By doing dumb shit,” Derghan grunted.
“Not dumb shit. Just non-obvious shit.”
“Okay, so…examples?” Jerl looked around the room. Sin shrugged, Derghan shook his head, Mouse’s face creased into a thoughtful scowl, and Amir twisted the point of his goatee between thumb and index finger. He gave them a minute, but no-one seemed to have an answer.
“…Right. It’s a lot easier to talk about than to actually do, isn’t it? I don’t plan on being predictable, don’t get me wrong. But coming up with an unexpected play is something you do when the moment’s right. You don’t plan to ride weatherfronts, you grab the wheel and feel your way once one arrives. Besides. We came up with the plan to steal Mind didn’t we? And it succeeded!”
“We got caught, if you remember,” Amir pointed out. “Civorage laid a trap for us. And we fell into it completely. The only reason we escaped was because you somehow knew the safe combination.”
“Time beats Mind,” Derghan mused. “…Fuckin’ poetic, that.”
“It’s not a giant game of stone-sheaf-shears, Derg,” said Mouse.
“No,” Jerl agreed, “but in this case he’s right-ish.”
“Hey?” Derghan asked.
“Well, Amir just mentioned the real reason I’m not going to listen to the Shisha—his advice is redundant. I’ve seen time like a landscape from high above. I’ve seen the way its paths branch and merge. I don’t really remember the details now the Word is gone, but in that moment of vision and clarity? I left myself enough clues. Clues like the combination to the safe, and like not swearing Ekve to Chal-an-chal. I don’t need to practice making mistakes and doing unexpected things, because…”
“Because you’ve already charted a course.”
“Right. The thing to do now is hold the course, come what may, and trust my own plan. Even though not knowing all the details is part of the plan.”
He blinked, then looked out the window. “…Oh.”
“What?” Sin asked, tensing.
“…Deja vu. Or…hmm. No. A moment just arrived. I remember being here, and saying those words. It’s a significant moment.”
“I’ll say…” Mouse agreed, going wide-eyed all of a sudden. “Can you feel that?”
“Not like you can, I bet. But yes.”
“Feel what?” Derghan asked, frowning back and forth between them. Jerl and Mouse shared a private smile, and Jerl took up his pipe and lit it, puffing with a certain satisfaction.
“There’s a new Wordspeaker,” he said.
----------------------------------------
> On Crae Baragh can be found the circle of Hertemcof (Feydh: long-time-knowledge), a set of standing stones carved deep with the very oldest runes. Four great ones bearing the runes of Eärrach, Talvi, Haust and Sayf…and three attendant stones per Crown-stone.
This implies twelve Heralds, yet only eight are known today. What has become of the other four?
And why do the Crowns not speak of them? —Anoloa Nwodike, The Heralds
THE WORD CHAMBER,
Crae Vhannog 09.06.03.10.02
Ellaenie stared into the masked man’s eyes. She watched them widen, first in confusion, then disbelief, then anger.
She raised her hand and, very gently, pushed the sword’s tip aside, feeling it scrape across skin that was suddenly as hard and unyielding as chainmail. In her hand, the Word’s vault clicked as she willed it to close again.
“…That shouldn’t be possible,” he croaked. “I have luck! **You’re not supposed to—to…”
“There are other forces besides luck,” Ellaenie told him. It wasn’t just an idle rejoinder, it was…so utterly, profoundly true. Crowns, was this what the world really looked like? This tenuous net flowing through everything, even through the ground, the crystals, the tree roots.
Energy surged through the masked man as he became apoplectic: he drew back his sword and brought it slashing down with a cry of thwarted rage, but though the blade’s razor edge slashed straight through her jacket and blouse, it glanced off Ellaenie’s skin with a sharp click, stinging no more than a willow branch.
Utterly furious now, weeping with frustration, he grabbed her by the wrist and tried to drag her off her feet, throw her to the ground. Crowns alone knew what he had planned, but Ellaenie was having none of it.
“No.”
She put all the force of her Glamer and Craft behind it, and something else surged along for the ride. Something like a lightning strike that sparked off her and threw him across the room and right through the tiny entrance she’d excavated.
Somehow, he rolled through the landing and sprang to his feet with an agility that would have shamed an elf, even though his clothes were smoking from the blast. How?! That should have killed him!
Except…Oh. Shit. He hadn’t said he had luck. He’d said he had Luck.
He was a Wordspeaker.
“You might be able to harden your hide, duchess, but I will have what I want!” he declared, stooping to pick up a stone and throw it at her. Before Ellaenie could react, it had hit her in the eye. She recoiled and clutched at her face, startled rather than actually hurt, but he darted forward and smacked at her hand, trying to jar the box loose. She willed it to not leave her, and felt it adhere to her skin as though glued to her palm.
Then his hand was on her throat, squeezing tight. She hardened her skin, made it stiff and rigid, but that came with its own problems, and even though he was skinny and tall he still had the startling strength of an enraged man. She swatted at him, struck his jaw, tried to claw his face with her fingernails, but his long arms held her at bay and the lightning strikes she summoned all seemed to miss him by a hair. They flashed wildly around the chamber leaving glowing streaks and glassy patches on the walls.
Luck. He’d claimed Luck. Fortune would always turn out in his favor, maybe. And though Ellaenie might be impervious to harm now, that still left capture, unconsciousness or being buried alive as real and terrible possibilities. She kicked her booted feet up at his belly and struggled as he drove her back against the wall.
Rheannach! Help!!
He had her pinned now, and all her struggling didn’t seem to achieve a jot. His mask was still serene, its painted lips looking almost like he intended to kiss her…but the dark eyes behind it were mad and murderous. He raised his sword and leveled its point at her face.
“Let’s see how tough you can make those pretty green eyes…” he hissed.
“Let go!” she snapped in the voice of suggestion and bewitchment, drawing on the only fetish available to her: the box in her palm.
Incredible, uncontrollable power surged up and out of it. Terrifying, dangerous, overwhelming power. She could feel it try to shrivel her, feel it try to destroy her. She’d made a terrible mistake and activated one of its safeguards.
But Ellaenie was a witch trained and blessed by the Crowns themselves, and a Wordspeaker now. Though the power bit and fried her, she rode it, diverted it, converted it, used it and turned it against her foe instead. The words lashed out of her mouth with a staggering psychic force that even his luck and the protections of a Wordspeaker couldn’t resist: his grip on her throat loosened, his sword clattered to the ground. Ellaenie scrambled away, but the masked man’s gloved hand caught her collar before she could rise.
“Give! Me! The! Box!”
Ellaenie fought like a terrified cat. She writhed, clawed, would have bit if she could. It didn’t work. He couldn’t hurt her, but she couldn’t win, and—
He struck her hard in the back of the head with a rock, and for all that her skin was now impenetrable, the blow cut out all thought, all ideas. The world swam, her ears rang, darkness tried to flood in through her eyes and drown her. She fought it back, willed herself to remain conscious, but her legs were jelly and her arms refused to work.
She landed in the dirt and looked up in time to see him raise the rock again.
There was a sound like doom landing. With a splintering, geological crunch, the chamber roof parted and something black and white and terrible smashed down and left cracks in the floor. Rheannach straightened, furling her wings and extending a hand to her side. There was a sizzle, the air seemed to shriek, and she drew her sword out of it as though empty space was her scabbard.
There were songs about that sword, Ellaenie’s dazed and abused brain supplied inappropriately. Its name was Scorn. Legend said its blade would only cut hearts and inflicted the pain of betrayed love, but right now it just looked like a clean, straight, very sharp piece of excellent steel.
Rheannach wasted no time with threats or demands. She lunged and thrust, going straight for the kill. Somehow, the masked man twisted aside at the last second, throwing Ellaenie in the dirt as he did so. Seemingly by accident his boot caught his dropped blade and made it leap ringing into the air to almost fall into his hand.
Ellaenie dragged herself away and fought to recover her wits as the duel began, but she was too concussed to think about the right things. The thought that loomed up stupidly to eclipse all others was that the masked man was no swordsman at all. Why, Ellaenie herself had achieved better form as a little girl playing with sticks! His footwork was horrific, his balance nonexistent, his grip completely wrong…
And yet, though he flailed his sword completely at random like a man trying to ward off a swarm of bees, he perfectly parried and evaded every one of Rheannach’s strikes. Though the Herald was a flawless duellist, despite her millennia of perfecting this art and despite her superior speed and strength…he bested her. In a confused moment that left all three people in the room blinking in shock, his random waggling of the sword somehow became an absolutely textbook parry, riposte and thrust. The blade sank half-way deep into Rheannach’s chest, right through the heart.
“Huh.” The masked man looked the stricken Herald in the eye, then giggled softly and pulled the sword out again. “Not so terrible after all, Lady Raksuul!” he crowed.
Rheannach just flashed a small, cruel smile, with ice in her gaze. Without deigning to speak, she raised her sword again and took her guard. The wound had closed immediately when he withdrew the blade, leaving only a tiny rip in her tunic and nary a drop of blood to stain skin, steel or cloth.
The masked man paused. “…Ah.”
Rheannach attacked again. This time, she abandoned niceties like defence, accepting every sting his blade could give her as irrelevant—no matter how grievously he cut or stabbed her, the wound vanished as quickly as it was made. Scorn flashed and rained down, and though the masked man danced and parried and dodged and blocked every single stroke in his utterly hapless, off-balance, untalented way, it was clear to Ellaenie that Luck could not triumph over mounting fatigue and an unwoundable opponent.
The same thought clearly occurred to him. One second, Rheannach was lunging in with a stroke that should have slain him, but the instant Scorn touched him, he…simply wasn’t there.
Rheannach came up short, whirled, looked around, but he was entirely gone. There was not even any sound of footsteps running away through the mines. It was like…
“Like he’s…used the old paths…” Ellaenie muttered, dazedly. Rheannach was at her side as she spoke, her face full of worry.
“Ellie…why did you come here alone? That was stupid!”
“Necessary…” Ellaenie replied. “Couldn’t hear you. Couldn’t…the potion, it…stops us from…” the words came slow, as though she was having to pull them up out of thick treacle or deep mud. Though, they grew easier when Rheannach put a hand to her brow and exerted some healing magic. The world became crisper and clearer again, the fog cleared from her rattled brains. “Okay. Okay, thanks. That’s better. I’m okay.”
Rheannach sat back and exhaled. “Is that—?” she indicated the box.
“I spoke it.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be a Wordspeaker?”
Ellaenie shook her head. Even with the healing, she still felt shaky, sick, and jittery. But she was, at least, healed enough for the rational voice that always seemed to float above and behind her thoughts to remind her, that was normal for somebody who’d just been desperately fighting for her life a minute ago. “It was that or die,” she said.
Rheannach hugged her tight.
“…Please don’t scare me like that again,” she whispered, kissing Ellaenie’s hair and shivering.
“If it’s any consolation…I just got a lot more difficult to hurt,” Ellaenie replied around a hiccup.
It was a weak joke, but it made Rheannach laugh, sort of. She sat back and looked at the box again.
“Which one is it?”
“Four-Current.”
Rheannach blinked at her, nonplussed. “What?”
“That’s…as close to its name as I can get it Garanese. It’s not like Time or Mind or Luck. It’s…something deeper than that. Or…more distant. Something that’s hidden from normal experience.” Even as she considered it, the box opened again, and she saw she had only lightly brushed against the outermost surface of the Word’s potential. Hardening her skin? Winter’s tits, she could have done so much more! She could have stopped his sword and jammed it dead in the air, immobile. She could have reduced that ridiculous white party mask to dust. She could have flung gravel at him like rifle bullets.
She sighed, frustrated. “It’s the power of electricity,” she said. “But also light. And magnetism. And the hardness of things, and the forces acting on them, and more that I don’t have the words to…they’re all the same thing.”
“How did you know that was in the box to open it?”
“I just…looked with the Sight, and knew.”
Rheannach pursed her lips thoughtfully, then laughed. “…Pan.”
“Huh?”
“My husband. He’s the only one who could give you that power, he must have done it when he initiated you.” She shook her head and grinned fondly. “Even I’m fooled by the big meathead-of-the-woods look, sometimes. He’s far more cunning and foresighted than he likes to pretend.”
“…I think you’re right,” Ellaenie agreed. “Pan? I’ve not heard that name for him before.”
“It’s my pet name for him. It means…everything. All-encompassing. In a very old language.”
“Fitting,” Ellaenie murmured, still feeling a bit rattled in the head. Now that the concussion was past, it was dawning on her how close she’d come to death, and a shiver ran through her as she remembered the wild hate in her foe’s eyes. That had been too close, much too close.
Rheannach exhaled, calming herself. “Well. Four-Current? It’s not the Word I’d have chosen for you, if ever I had a choice. But it saved your life, so you’ll hear no complaint from me,” Rheannach said. She stood and helped Ellaenie to her feet. “Come on. We’d best leave.”
They took the front exit. After all, what was anyone going to do? Shoot them? Ellaenie now had impenetrable skin, and Rheannach was an immortal being. Sure enough, there was a squad of mercenaries arrayed against them when they emerged, but the moment they saw who had emerged, several of the men took a step back and lowered their weapons. Ellaenie caught them whispering Rheannach’s various names among themselves.
The masked man glanced left and right as his mercenaries wavered, then turned his impassive visage to them. “…So what happens now?”
“You tried to kill my Maiden,” Rheannach told him, taking a step forward. Scorn crackled in her hand as the righteous anger of a mother seethed along its blade.
“You can’t kill me, Lady Herald.”
“And you can’t kill me. But I can reduce that fancy ship of yours to splinters.”
“Go ahead. It’ll turn out the better for me,” he replied. “Things always do. I have Luck.”
“If that’s so, then why are you so enraged by losing this Word?” Ellaenie asked. “If things always work out the better for you, then maybe this is to your advantage as well.”
“Hmm! True!” The masked man tilted his head, then bowed with a flourish. “Until next we meet, then.”
“Wait.” Ellaenie stepped forward. “You tried to kill me, and I’m not going to forget that. But you’re a Wordspeaker. And there’s Nils Civorage out there, a common enemy. We should at least—”
“Don’t bother, Duchess. The enemy of my enemy is just another gambler at the table, and this game is winner-takes-all. I’m not interested in an alliance.”
“Stand alone, lose alone,” Rheannach warned him.
“I’ll take that chance.” Somehow, he contrived to flash a cocky smile despite his face remaining unseen.
“And Caisteal Vhannog?”
He flapped a hand. “Irrelevant. You have the prize I created that distraction for.”
“You burned crops, ransacked the land. You think you can just walk away?”
“Yes. And neither of you can stop me.” He took a step back. There was a moment when his appearance in Ellaenie’s Sight seemed to snap, stretch, double. As though he was briefly in two places at once, one of them distant.
Then the space he’d been standing was empty, and she could no longer sense him. The Mercenaries all gasped, backed away from the spot he’d just vacated and made warding gestures. After a second, the nearest of them threw down their weapons and knelt, bowing their heads to Rheannach and stammering out their contrition.
Ellaenie left them to it and wandered away a few paces. How had he done that? She knew how to step between distant places herself, by the hidden paths. But the masked man had just…decided to be somewhere else. That wasn’t Luck, was it? Surely it couldn’t be?
…Could it? She fished in her pocket and found the Word vault. It clicked open at her touch, and the power of Four-Current suffused her again, expanded her awareness and understanding. It was such a huge, important, broad thing. Reducing it down to Electricity or Magnetism or any single such word as that would be an insulting reduction. Maybe it was the same for Luck? Maybe what the masked man actually had was something far greater and more fundamental, and he was just selfish, blithe or dishonest enough (or all three) to reduce it so.
She held up her left hand and let sparks crackle between her fingertips. Lightning. She could play with lightning, now. Or shape it. With a flick of her fingers, the lightning became simple light, a cold ball of it dancing from fingertip to fingertip. With a twitch of will that had nothing to do with magical telekinesis at all, she reached out and effortlessly retrieved quite a large rock from several dozen yards away. It spun above her palm as she considered what it could become, if she only willed it to be so. Its matter was hers to play with, now. What should she do with it? She could make something beautiful, something musical, something whimsical—
She frowned, noticing her own thoughts, and wondered if this was the path Civorage had gone down. She felt giddy, almost drunk on the sheer potential the Word represented, even though just minutes ago she’d claimed to not want it. But now she had it, the desire to use it was powerful indeed. It would be so easy to say ‘why not?’ and play.
But perhaps the rock was most beautiful exactly as it already was.
…No, that wasn’t it. That was a silly thought, too. It was more that it wouldn’t serve anything other than Ellaenie’s own whim to do anything with it. Suddenly, she wasn’t looking at the rock any more, but into the distant past, visiting a memory.
She’d been twelve. It had been a frozen season in Enerlend, as Garanhir had dipped unusually low in its orbit bringing about a long several months of snow and ice. And Ellaenie, deprived of the opportunity to go riding or walking, had been going stir-crazy inside the palace. She’d visited her father in his study out of sheer boredom, looking for something to do while they waited out the freeze.
He’d been signing orders to distribute food and fuel from the strategic reserves to the poorest districts. She couldn’t remember most of the conversation now, but she remembered the way he’d explained the why of it, the duty of it.
He’d led her to the window, and pointed outwards. “You see down there? See the chimneys smoking? Each of those represents a life, Ellie. If those hearths go out in this weather, then people die. People who love their parents and children just as much as we love each other. People to whom the Crowns gave life, who deserve to live, not freeze to death.”
He let her absorb just how many thin pillars of smoke were out there, and how delicate each one was, then returned to his desk.
“You’ll have a choice, when you take my place,” he told her, little suspecting the fateful day would come all too soon. “You can indulge your power and wealth on parties and politics and pleasure, and that’s what many poor people, and many rich for that matter, believe we do. They see our privileges and imagine that the point of all this—” he waved a hand vaguely at the ducal palace and its luxurious contents “—is to jealously guard it. But that would be the selfish road. The way of parasites. You must be a duchess. And the difference is, whenever power and wealth find you—as they will, because we already have so much and like begets like—whenever they do, your first thought must always be how you can be of service with it. Sometimes, being of service will mean throwing an elegant ball in sumptuous surroundings, for the sake of alliance and diplomacy. Other times it will mean paying for a million sacks of coal.”
Ellaenie dropped the rock back into the dirt, unaltered. She would have to practice with her new powers, of course, to find their limits and how best to use them. But here and now, it would only be an indulgence. She refocused on Rheannach, who was talking softly with a mercenary officer.
Whatever they had discussed, it seemed to be to the Herald’s satisfaction. The men were already retreating down the hill toward their airships, and sending out runners to other units. Rheannach dusted her hands off with a small smile, and turned to Ellaenie.
“Thus ends the siege of Caisteal Vhannog,” she said. “The whole thing was just a distraction, buying time to dig here.”
“I figured as much,” Ellaenie agreed. “Kieran should be relieved.”
“Mm.” Rheannach looked thoughtfully up into the sky. “I don’t like the appearance of a new ‘gambler at the table.’”
“Me either. But, at least he isn’t Civorage.”
“He could be worse. I saw his heart, I don’t think there’s any chance of him coming around.”
Ellaenie sighed. She’d seen much the same thing, loath as she was to admit it. As much as her heart wanted to believe otherwise, she’d had a good look at the masked man’s eyes. And his beast wasn’t caged in the least. Whatever cage there might be in his soul contained only the gnawed bones of the rational, compassionate man who might have been. Now, there was only hunger.
“…Let’s get Dennis up to the caisteal and go home,” she said. Suddenly, she missed her daughter terribly.
Rheannach nodded, unfurled her wings, and extended a hand to offer to fly them. Ellaenie gladly accepted, and in moments they were winging high over the trampled, damaged ground and siegeworks. It would take Crae Vhannog a long while to recover from this attack…but they had arrived in the nick of time. Perhaps Luck wasn’t as much on the masked man’s side as he thought.
And that, Ellaenie decided as they angled down toward the caisteal, was an encouraging thought.