Miles to the east, Xian’ling sat on a heaped cumulus cloud which rose above the dispersing stratus mists beneath. She had one leg crossed over the other, on which she rested an elbow. She tapped her lower lip with the tip of a finger as she talked to herself.
“Dear Master.
“I found the thief who stole your ‘experiment’. Was about to catch him, too. But you said I couldn’t fly in front of the worldlings, and soooo…” Tap, tap, tap. “He got away.
“Oh yeah! I found your experiment too, while I was at it. The signs are subtle, I know – but your disciple is a canny one, and it smells just like the School. And my best guess is that’s it’s right over…” She took her finger off her lip to point it at the otherworldly display over the distant city. “There! It was in Tremallan all along. Who knew?”
She let out a long, exaggerated sigh.
“Now that I mention it, it seems to be causing something of a stir. I think even a few of the worldlings might have noticed it by now. And that wouldn’t do at all, would it? Well, I’d gladly swoop in and sweep it away, but – oh, that’s right. I’m not allowed to do that either, am I?”
A lone goose soaring past her shot a confused glance her way, and honked a bemused cackle, full of bluster and territoriality.
“Hmm? What’s that, Master? Your voice is a little rough – have you let your cultivation slip while I wasn’t there to look after you, and caught a nasty cold?”
Honk, honk!
“I see, Master. Unfortunately, it’s too late now. What’s it you always say?”
She mimicked her Master’s intonation.
“ ‘Cultivation is a question of patient observation – for the power of totality will always be greater than our infinitesimal impulse. Our only hope of influence is to intervene in a manner premeditated, accurate, timely, and above all, well-aligned with the subtle forces which silently direct the course of coarse materiality…’ Well, the ‘subtle forces’ are on parade and clanging cymbals with their titties out, and my–” A loud burp rang out through the skies. “–subtle forces are saying they’re bored of the whole thing by now, so I’m just going to find that goose’s nest and see how it likes people squawking at it when it’s resting and – oh my.”
Something shifted in the conflagration above Tremallan – something invisible to the eye, but almost blinding to Xian’ling’s spiritual sense. She dropped her coquettish air entirely, and asked aloud with voice aghast:
“Is that the Ten-Pillared Foundation of the Platform of Heavenly Ascension? No, it can’t be. It doesn’t have any pillars! Is it unsupported, then? And it’s flowing about like meltwater! Wait. What’s it doing? Why do I feel like it’s toying with me more than it’s trying to draw me in…”
She paled and, as she allowed the wind to blow her backwards, muttered under her breath:
“Master… What in the hundred myriad halls of hell have you been experimenting on?!”
Senior Master Yue’mu sat in meditation in a deep, dark cavern, miles beneath the hills which housed the Sunset Sect.
It was so dark that anyone who relied on the visible light of the sun and flame to see would have been wholly unsighted, and so deep that anyone who required the fresh air of the surface would have suffocated. But if anyone could have happened to chance upon it (no one but Yue’mu ever had, in the thousands of years since an earthquake had formed it), and if such a person could both hold their breath and see the world which normally lies hidden to those dazzled by the coarse light of the merely physical eye, a quite different and expansive vista would have opened up.
For Senior Master Yue’mu could also be said to be floating, cross-legged, near the bottom of a vast sea trench, many miles wide, many miles from any sort of surface, and unfathomably long. In the soundless, slow-moving waters around her floated spectral creatures of the deep. And it was just such a one – a little dragonfish, long and unscaled and hideous of face – which first sensed the signal calling from afar. It sped towards the Master, and was swallowed whole by an anglerfish who turned and sped there faster. Its savage and primaeval thoughts were picked up by the jellyfish who undulated it from one to another – from the wide, thousand-tentacled Benthocodon to the long, glasslike, Ctenophoric combs. And it was one of these which finally drifted towards the Master and joyfully dissolved itself into pure aether, spreading out to lap gently into the unplumbable depths of her Stygian submersion, and make her aware of the disturbance outside.
Yue’mu’s eyes shut open, and the deep-sea trench was once more just a cramped and airless cavern. In the span of time it takes a strong woodcutter to curl and straighten her arm, she shot through the fissures in the earth and emerged through the false wall into her airy, domed, and largely bichrome study.
The eel she had set to keep watch on the thieves’ hideout had long since turned into a barnacle, for reasons of stealth, but it had folded into its calcified plates and tried to weather the waves of hyper-refined aetherial energies passing wildly through the space around it as a loose network of amoebas. Burgeoned by a thin, cool current of its Master’s awareness, it now swelled back into a barnacle, extending the hairs on its limbs far out into the air about it. Yue’mu’s smooth and impassive face deepened into a scowl at what she sensed.
She spun and reappeared at the end of one of the rows of shelves which spread out from the dais on which her desk stood, pressing it down until the whole section of shelving sank into the ground. A long drawer pushed itself out from the wall behind her desk. In it was a pad of foam with three depressions, as if to hold three fragile spheres. The small one to the left and the large one to the right were empty. But in the middle sat a perfect reproduction of the stolen artefact which now hovered in distant Tremallan – only, about half the size. It was pulsating erratically with booming flashes of violet and gold.
Yue’mu took in a long breath, steeled herself, and touched it with the full force of her awareness in one short, precise movement. It ceased its pulsations and fell silent and cold. Yue’mu opened her eyes.
She had made three of these objects – which collectively made up the Cipher of Excavated Insight.
The first – the Contact – was small, sleek, simple, and existed only fractionally on the level of metal and stone. Its function was to be the lightest possible point of exposure to the Subject – and still lay encrusted in the stony earth where she had placed it.
The Conduct lay before her in the drawer. It passed along the raw impressions from the Contact and acted as a filter, a barrier of anonymity shielding her from the Subject.
The Construct – the largest and most physically real of the objects – was far enough down the chain that she could dare to manipulate it directly without too much fear of backlash or discovery. With it, she could process the impressions funnelled through the Conduct and study them for prolonged periods.
When the Construct had been stolen, Yue’mu had been infuriated, but was able to reassess. She had decided to leave it on the loose, and use it as a lodestone and bait – that is, to gather information on whomever it was who conspired against her. That done, she would go out and retrieve it – long before they could figure out how to use it. And she would do so alone, without anyone in the Sect knowing – even her brother or her disciple.
That had seemed a solid enough plan – until now, when yet another inexplicable thing had happened.
The Contact was meant to be a way to observe the Subject from a safe distance. That meant it was explicitly designed to go strictly one way. And yet the Subject had not only found out about it – which was conceivable, if shocking – but had somehow contrived to use it to transmit its energy and manifest itself outside its realm of power. This was like a distant star noticing an amateur astronomer’s balcony telescope, and then turning it into a tunnel through which to send a stellar flare and incinerate her drawing room.
But what was even more unbelievable was that It had bypassed the Conduct to do it – channelling Itself out the Contact and straight through the Construct. But there should be nothing connecting the two except the Conduct! That would be like burning a library and having the smoke form all the letters of all the books in perfect flowing letters in the sky. The unlikelihood of it was staggering.
Yue’mu paced alone in her vast study – now here, now there, disappearing and reappearing as she leapt from one train of thought to another. She was pincered. She still didn’t know anything about the identity of those responsible for stealing the Construct – just more useless gossip about their buffoon of a pawn, the swordsman Mikka, from the children he surrounded himself with. And now the Subject, who Yue’mu thought was slumbering peacefully within its cage, had reached out through the devices meant to observe it, and was groping its way out into the world. Had it found out who she was? Did it intend to attack her? Could it, at this late stage? And if it didn’t intend to attack her – what was it playing at?
If all that weren’t bad enough: with a display as obvious as was occurring over Tremallan, Rostnen at least would be stirred into action. If he – or, even worse, Fu’sieh – found out her role in this, she would find herself not pincered, but fully encircled.
There was nothing else for it. She would have to lie low – seabed low – and let the tides above make their pattern clear. It was still possible that none of the enemies which lurked around had anything decisive on her, and she might be able to wait it out until one of them revealed themselves or made a mistake. Why else would she have gone through the trouble of making these devices, if not to allow her to cut ties if things went wrong? The channel ran not through the veins of her own Power, but through avenues opened up around the three-fold Cipher – and none of it should, in theory, carry her trace.
She walked over to the drawer behind her desk, picking up a thick, cotton sheet along the way. Taking the dormant Conduct, she wrapped it in the sheet and tapped the drawer shut. The row of shelves slid back up to its original position, and she flew out through the false wall and into the branching tunnels of underground fissures. When she arrived back at the narrow cavern in which she had been meditating, she lay down the bundle in her arms and splayed her arms out widely.
As soon as she did that, she was not underground but underwater – and the trench stretched out unfathomably far out in front of her.
She sang a silent song, and from the depths, a great frilled shark responded – heart cold as an iceberg and a thousand paces wide. It swam over to her, fish fleeing and jellies gathering to drink in the life force suffusing the waters around it – an energy ancient but not yet rigid.
It stopped in front of Yue’mu, its hundred gills flaring, the maze of lines around its eyes mirroring the fissures beneath the earth. She reached out a hand and caressed the tip of its snout. It dipped low, swallowed the bundle at her feet, and descended through the rock beneath, brushing her with its dorsal fin as its length passed under her feet.
With it went the jellies, then the fish further afield, and then the sea itself. Finally, Yue’mu too shot upwards, leaving the chamber once again small, and dark, and empty.
Fu’sieh had lain out all the notes of the previous few years in a large study in his private chambers on the barren mountainside. They floated before him in loosely thematic clusters. The scrolls which struggled most with neat classification weaved around, trying positions on for size and forging new connections.
And yet, after laying them out so painstakingly, Fu’sieh had not even cast his spiritual sense in their direction. He spent the afternoon reading biographies instead, dwelling in particular on the lives of a prolific cosmologist and a reviled pretender to the leadership of a minor, ancient sect. As the day drew to a close, he was visited by the sick and almost nostalgic sensation that he had not spent it wisely.
He ruminated for some time: about long-term trajectories and short-term difficulties; about lives looked at from the outside or the inside; about truth and peace and ambition and self. But when the underlying frustration grew almost noticeable, and his keen senses were at the peak of their capacities to find something – anything – to engage with other than his work, he noticed the distant echoes of the conflagration over Tremallan.
A moment later, and he was a mile up in the air, gazing at the monolith of cloud to the north. For the span of time it takes strong incense to suffuse the air of a small, enclosed prayer room, his heart grew truly tortured. His mind turned to the Founder, and after a blinding pang of grief, he dragged it back. It turned towards Yue’mu, and he dragged it sadly back again.
Finally, it turned toward Xian’ling, and he shot off toward Bertaèyn’s northern shore.
On the Eastern end of Tremallan stands a grand building which dominates the square at the city’s largest gate. It is through here that the vast majority of inland travellers from the rest of the island pass as they enter the city. Those of them who go straight through the gate and the square and enter the building through its enormous doors – open at almost all hours – find an hall so ample it seems almost like a courtyard, with four flights of balconies running around three of its walls and stairs weaving up and down between them.
Many dozens of people now rushed about the great hall in a state of semi-organized panic: even those with nothing clear to be doing made sure they were seen to be walking very briskly, or else engaged in urgent-sounding discussion. In the heart of the hubbub – at the very axle of the wheel mosaic in the centre of the hall – stood a woman with white hair, youthful vigour, and a coat of ermine over her form-fitting, jewel-encrusted gown. She shouted orders and redirected anyone who looked either free or suspiciously busy into a more useful direction with a few words and a firm hand on an arm or a shove between the shoulder blades, almost like a foreman at a cattle auction.
“And you – down to the Western docks. Make sure no one is taking advantage of the chaos to go through our storehouses. Why yes I expect you to go in person. If your escort isn’t enough, rouse the sailors. Well, I’ll just go with you then, shall I? In case you should like to have someone to consult on the finer points of phrasing.”
The auditor she spoke to hurriedly slunk away, his personal guards trotting beside him. Itronne Varta, Convener of House Celadon and quite possibly the most powerful person within the land walls of Tremallan, arched her eyebrows to the top of her high forehead in contempt thinly disguised as disbelief. She marvelled at the softness and ineffectuality of her current crop of subordinates – but a moment later, she had put the whole encounter behind her. She swivelled over to the lizardfolk androgyn who stood at the ready in military-style salute.
“Gurlaz. Just the person I wished to see. Make contact with whatever spies we still have left on the Governor’s Island. They are to bend all their resources to keep us abreast of Laostic’s findings. Then make the rounds of the most reliable informants – especially those with a sideline in the arcane – and see what you can get out of them. Even if every word of it is wild guesswork, still it should provide us with a sense of what passes through the streets.”
Varta looked up at the light cascading through the chandeliers above. Was it just the excitement, or did it draw her in far more than usual…? Gurlaz knew she was not finished, and waited as still as stone. Varta eventually blinked back to herself.
“Let us be sure we do not miss the finale of this capriccio as we did the prelude. Report back before midnight.”
The lizardfolk bent low, chandelier-light glinting off the scales on the back of their extended, hairless neck. Their legs turned round first, then their torso. Only when the rest of their body had already begun to walk away did the lizard’s head swing round to lead it forward.
Itronne Varta stood another minute in the centre of the hall, surveying the goings on with a steely glare. When she felt that she had made herself sufficiently clear, and any further theatrics would create more chaos than order, she readied herself to go. But in that moment, she caught sight of her chamberlain Aourwenn rushing to her with head bowed. No greetings were exchanged.
“Have you managed to find the sorcerer?” Varta asked in an undertone, mouth covered with a casual palm. The chamberlain nodded. “Excellent as ever, Aourwenn. Have him sent to my office, through the back entran–”
But Aourwenn interrupted her with a short shake of the head. Itronne Varta’s glare was incredulous, affronted, and as intense as any bird of prey. Aourwenn did not so much as blink when she met it. Finally, Varta gave a disgusted scoff and swept up the central staircase.
It was the only staircase on the wall which faced the entrance. And, unlike the many which curled around the hall to either side, it was the only one which went up straight – palatially wide at the base and narrowing until it reached a single door, ornately inlaid with jade. Beyond this lay Varta’s personal office, on a level all of its own, between the second and third storeys. Such was her control over one of Tremallan’s three great Trading Houses that there was no uproar when she had redesigned the Grand Hall like this a decade previous.
Her outrage had been mastered by the time she climbed the stairs and shut the door behind her. A man stood in her office when she arrived – though his features were so ambiguous that she would not have labelled him a man if he had not explicitly introduced himself as such. His hands were clasped behind his back while he examined an expansive landscape painting of the Brabant coast. He turned to her as soon as she entered, clasped his hands in front, and bowed.
He could hardly have stood in greater contrast to the merchants Varta usually received in this room. Even the chamberlain Aourwenn’s garments seemed frilled and ostentatious compared to his white robes, lined at the sleeves with a band of evenly and delicately faded black. He wore no ornaments to lighten his pale, plain, unassuming features. But it was in his demeanour that he truly stood out. It was if he would bow to even passing street urchins, and not let a stray cat go by without a saucerful of milk – but would show not a whit more reverence in attendance to a king.
“Your eminence the Convener.” Junior Master Elmsfrond’s voice was cool and flat, as if emerging from a chest less hot-blooded than a human’s.
Varta bustled straight past him with hardly a glance his way, and did not speak until she sat on the throne-like chair behind her massive desk.
“Can you tell me what is happening, or not?” Her tone was clipped, but skipping straight to the point was clearly the closest she could come to venting her annoyance.
“Most certainly. With general clarity if not comprehensive precision. A rift has been opened to a nearby plane of power. It is channelled through an artificial conduit, not a practitioner’s own body-mind. And the current outpouring of refined energies is spontaneous, unplanned, and almost undoubtedly accidental. I surmise that there has been a sympathetic reaction to a synchronous force on this side.”
Varta frowned. His answer was at once completely open and direct, and also nearly unintelligible. Her pride, and the habits picked up during many years of negotiations, meant that her face remained icy and still.
The man’s grin deepened slightly. It had been on his face since the start, but was so colourless that one could scarcely notice it.
“In other words, it is as if someone has dug a well to an underground reservoir, whose contents now spurt out as a geyser. Only, they did not dig – that is, did not break down any barrier between our world and this plane. It is more a resonance – as when the ringing of a bell passes through walls and bodies to shatter fine glass curved perfectly to its pitch.”
Varta’s eyes narrowed.
“This ‘reservoir’. Clearly it is not groundwater that it holds.”
“Very good, Convener. Indeed it is not. It is air. Or, at least, it used to be. At the risk of courting controversy, I would venture to call it aether.”
On further reflection, Varta decided it was best for him to skip the technicalities.
“Is it dangerous?”
The man glanced to one side with a look of almost affected pensiveness – brow creased and mouth awry.
“Dangerous? Not exactly. At least, not as such.”
“Could you venture to be a little more specific?”
“Oh, the aether itself should be quite safe. It is being directed skywards at present, and is at any rate so delicate, so subtle, so… ethereal in nature that it would hardly interact with the coarse matter of stone and flesh. Unless released in far greater quantities. And even then, it should be largely harmless.”
“I’m hearing a lot of ‘shoulds’ and ‘woulds’ and ‘largelys’.”
Elmsfrond’s eyebrow flickered but did not quite rise. He shrugged.
“The town will be quite safe. It will suffer from little more than moderately heavy rain, delivered an hour early. The real danger will be indirect – from the scavengers who will no doubt gather to feast on the unexpected windfall, like carrion birds to a fallen stag.”
“Scavengers?”
“Oh, the wards of your great walls will keep out the minor vermin. Have your caravans take close care crossing the sandflats for the next few days, by all means – the piskies will be out in force and liable to unclasp harnesses left, right and centre. And the reaction of the local ghosts will be… interesting, to be sure. But the scavengers I refer to are rogue cultivators. Mortal practitioners. Sorcerers, so to say. Most of the respectable ones will know not to act out brazenly so close to our School. But there will be bravos unable to resist such naked temptation.”
Convener Itronne Varta leaned back against the head of her chair.
“And you?”
“What of me, Convener?”
“Are you, and your School, tempted too?”
Junior Master Elmsfrond grinned even more widely, but demurred in silence.
“So this aether is clearly a valuable resource of some sort,” Varta continued after a time. “Would you give me a sense of how valuable?”
“It is frankly hard to say. Perhaps we have merely stumbled upon a bubble, as it were. A pocket of warm air. But if energies of such… majesty could be harvested in any usable quantity, and harnessed stably, then it should be a small matter to turn this entire island – from the mountain peaks to the most minute grains of sands – into unalloyed gold.”
Varta’s eyes were very wide. She did not know how to take in this statement. But it never even crossed her mind that he might be exaggerating, let alone joking.
“Yet…” She had to clear her throat to speak. “You’ve no intention of seizing the conduit to this vast trove?”
“We will not commit ourselves now, amidst so much uncertainty. I have been given clear orders merely to observe.”
“But if I were to somehow obtain it, and hand it to you…”
Elmsfrond’s eyes disappeared into a wide but bloodless smile.
“Then we would not only be willing, but quite able, to fulfil your request. To the precise requirements you specified. After all, where mud can be turned to gold…”
But he too left the exact consequences unspoken. “Will that be all?” he inquired instead.
Varta was drawn back from a reverie, her gaze on the subtle plays of light of the office’s chandelier against the priceless paintings lining her walls. For a moment, she seemed to have forgotten where she was.
“One more thing. Given time, do you think you might be able to estimate the rough location of this conduit?”
“The conduit?” His expression was innocent and interested, as if it had never occurred to him to consider this. “Why, yes, of course I could. But perhaps you might prefer the exact location, now. It’s on the top floor of a largely abandoned tenement building in the northwestern end of town. Golden Prince district, I believe it is called. It’s the only one whose entry arch is all of gneiss, and houses more than the usual number of crabs on its lower floors.”
And with a nod of the head and a bow, he was gone.
“What do you mean he won’t see me?”
“The Count is currently out on the grounds of the estate – and as soon as he returns, he has meetings arranged through the evening.”
“Meetings? About what?”
“Surely as accomplished a covert agent as you cannot expect someone to give a straight answer to that question. In any case, they will in all likelihood themselves be cancelled, due to the urgency of current events which I am sure you–”
“But this is an urgent event!”
Tristran was in the manor of the Count of Valdoc – twenty miles eastward and inland from Tremallan. The Count’s chamberlain Evezhius had taken him to a side chamber lined with family portraits – most prominent among them, a squat and dead-eyed young woman holding a red ball, standing on a stag’s pelt, and giving every impression that the intricacies of aristocratic symbolism were entirely lost on her.
“Listen, my good man,” chamberlain Evezhius cooed in his impeccably polite and soothing – if, admittedly, a little reedy – voice. “You are overwrought with the trials of the day. Take some time to rest – to recompose himself. We shall be in contact in the usual way with a list of questions. Once you have noted down the information, and we have had time to corroborate it, a meeting can be arranged in which to go over some of the more, shall we say, impressionistic points. A suitable recompense can be arranged, and plans for the future can perhaps be–”
“I’m afraid it is you who doesn’t see the significance of these things clearly. It’s not just a shopping list of names and places I have to offer. I have intimate knowledge of the inner workings of Tremallan’s ruling circles. I know the Governor’s long-term plans and mode of operation – his vision for the future of Tremallan independence, and what he judges to be the threats to it. These are matters of high strategy – to be discussed slowly, deliberately, but urgently – and face-to-face, to be sure – with the highest decision-maker available. And if the Count agrees to take me into his employ on a permanent basis, then–”
“With all due respect, sir–”
But Tristran just raised his hands in front of himself.
“Look – I understand. I might have been unrealistic to expect to meet today. If it’s inconvenient to room here, I can take lodgings in the village for the night and return on the morrow.”
“My boy,” the chamberlain said, laying a hand on the young man’s shoulder and speaking with the sort of deep sympathy and concern that would be sure to render him furious. “I bid you please take some time to take stock–”
Tristran managed to contain himself from slapping the man’s hand away, but jerked back to put some distance between them nonetheless.
“The Count will be furious when he learns you have taken it upon yourself to decide on the importance of my potential revelations, and let pass-”
“Tell me, then – how did dismissing you fit into the governor’s long-term plans for Tremallan independence?”
“…come again?”
“You say you are familiar with the inner workings of the governorship. But I wonder, frankly, how this could be so. If our sources are correct, you were never stationed on the Governor’s Fortress – and your meetings with Laostic in recent years can be counted on one finger, flashed four times. Did he confide that much in you during those encounters? I take it that you remained largely silent, and by playing into his paternal affections let him lay his burdens out on his treasured protegé…”
“Well, not exactly, but–”
“It is good, I suppose, that you err towards delusions of grandeur rather than paranoia, but you must consider the fact that ample information about matters politically sensitive and clandestine are exactly as likely to get you discreetly murdered, as a matter of reflexive precaution, as they are to get you hired. Thankfully for you, your skills are limited to the dubious knack of flirting with the neglected, middle-aged wives of court officials willing to trade a few hours of your insincere attentions for tame intimations of their husbands’ business dealings, as well as the rather suspect tendency to attempt friendships with these same husbands’ younger lovers – many of whom are significantly less naive than you seem to suppose. As a result, your voluminous reports back to Governor Laostic contained nothing but a mire of minor court trivia, whose sole significant message could be gleaned by a glance at the final words of one paragraph per page. To wit: there is little collective will at court to rein in Tremallan’s blatant flouting of His Majesty’s authority, laws, or trading customs – and perhaps that the relevant officials to be bribed should be switched around again next season.
“As a result, the only danger to your life – now that you’ve lost your sole protector – is a footpad hired by some jilted and wealthy lover more than usually taken in by your false affections. Do celebrate your good fortune in this respect – but do not presume, having far overestimated your importance to Laostic and overreached in your prerogative, to simply waltz into the Count’s rather selective service.
“Now. Do you have anything to add, or will you allow His Excellency’s footman,” A burly page stood at the doorway of the chamber and bowed in their direction. “To see you out?”
At this moment, Tristran was swaying unsteadily on his feet, pale verging on greenish, and paralyzed by nausea, terror, and nearly mortally wounded pride. All he knew was that he couldn’t allow whatever else was swelling beneath that to come to the surface – not here, not now. And so, half-blinded and reeling with confusion, he excused himself from the room, took his horse from the page at the manor entrance, and rode off, oblivious to the inexplicable displays in the skies above.
Mikka hopped over brooks and boulders, whistling a little tune about the pretty girl he had found washed up on the seashore when the shockwaves of the conflagration over Tremallan made it his way.
He jumped up to the highest branches of an oak tree – sensing its burgeoning urge to bloom again – and observed the sky turn in on itself, pull in the rainclouds from afar, and steal the glory from the horizon’s setting sun.
His eyes had a knowing glint to them, and the quirk of his lips was not without a hint of mischief. But there was a vacantness there which showcased a sentiment no one on this island had ever seen evidenced in him before: uncertainty.
The gloom of twilight finally fell over Tremallan as the pillar of cloud dispersed outward. Thick pellets of rain dropped upon the upturned faces of Butcher, Tentpole, and Winky. The heavenly conflagration was finally over – but its afterimages still played out in their thoughts, behind their unobserving eyes. The last thing they remembered clearly was the dim blue light drifting up from the sea and making contact with the celestial monolith. From that instant until now, they each went their separate ways.
Winky saw her parents. They were very happy to see her, and reached out to her. When she arrived beside them, they put their hands on her back, and gestured upwards to a short flight of granite steps. She ascended them to find a wide, featureless platform. She turned back around and sat down at its edge. Despite being hard, it was comfortable to feel it on the bottom of her thighs. Her parents were gone, and the stairs numbered in the hundreds. Far below, armies met in a muddy melee – it was no longer clear where each army was advancing, and who was on each side.
Tentpole saw a manor house in the countryside – elegant and ancient. The whole crew was living there. He sat in a comfortable drawing room, with warm candles and a fireplace. Mistress was sitting by herself at a table of polished wood and gold filigree, facing the window of smoothed glass and the downpour outside. A lace collar covered the length of her neck, all the way up to her chin. Her eyes were closed, and the fingers of one hand drummed lightly on the table. A smile played out on her face.
Butcher was walking through a marketplace, far richer and more vast than the one at Tremallan’s docks, and smelling of spice and dust and animals rather than brine. Two white-clad guards with jewel-encrusted masks followed behind her. The crowds parted for her without raising a voice, and a turtle on a little floating cloud held a parasol over her head. Her gaze landed on a mirror framed in silver and inlaid with turquoise stones shimmering in shades of seaside blue and green. The stallkeeper rushed to gift it to her. She strolled along with it for some time, and enjoyed catching angled glances at the marketplace through it. When she grew bored, she left it on the head of a workman taking rest in the shade of a crate, who craned his eyes upward as far as they would go to see what she had placed there, but did not dare move and let it slip. When Butcher came to the end of the grand array of market stalls and beheld the desert before her, however, she stopped, turned around a few times, and squinted some of the sweat out of her eyes, quite lost. Her two guards gave her contrasting directions, punched each other, and rolled around the sand.
The skies sighed, the walls groaned, and with a weightless feeling, the three of them came back into their bodies. The drops trickling down Winky’s face were comforting substitutes for the tears she could not shed. Tentpole lowered himself to his knees. As the last of the daylight faded, Butcher’s face darkened into a deep scowl.
The Skylark hideout looked like a storm had gone through it. As the light the orb emitted dimmed, its spin grew slower and slower. With a whoosh, the air rushed back into the room, the light went out, and the orb dropped down to the ground. It rolled over to rest between an upended chair and an empty, platinum-lined sheath. In one corner of the room, a shower of dust erupted as Mistress, in her full set of cleaning armour, shot up to her feet.
“Oneface! …Oneface? Are you still alive?”
A long moment later, a hand popped out from a pile in the other corner and waved at her. A soft sigh of relief escaped Mistress.
“Good. Then start collecting all the top-priority valuables and ready them to be transported. Don’t even think of touching that… thing. Meet me at Hideout L within two hours. I’ll leave a message for the others.”
And with that, she tossed away the chalk she had been using to write expletives around the Idol, tugged on the rope ladder to make sure it was still functional, shrugged her left shoulder a few times for the same reason, and climbed up.
The hand blooming from the rubble stopped waving. It gave off a hesitant feeling before drooping down like a wilting flower.
“There’s no waking him. But his breathing and blood’s fine. It looks as if his soul has flown the coop.”
Loïc leant back from Sonj’s prone body and twisted his neck from side to side with a sore groan. Laostic knelt closeby, squeezing one fist in another.
“Any idea what that was? Over the city?”
Loïc peered out through the window into the stormy night. His mouth opened to speak, but he hesitated, and shut it again. He circled his wrists, first in one direction then the other.
“Suppose I’d best find out.”
“Tell Vall anything she needs to know before you go. You may not be back before the morning.”
“I’ll leave with him, sir. Should be able to get a fair distance even in this weather before the night’s half over if I just walk the horse. Mind if I take this with me?”
She held a sheaf of pages with one hand – the ink on one page barely dried. In the other hand, she held half a lemon.
“What’s the lemon for?”
She turned to look at it as if she were just as surprised to see it as Laostic.
“Oh. Loïc brought it up earlier. For the mead. He didn’t use this half. Thought it’d be a waste to leave it. You’d give your left leg for a lemon when you’re out at sea.” She started to look embarrassed. “It… it was fine for me to take it. Right?”
Laostic and Loïc looked at each other. Despite everything, they smiled.
Far below the earth and sea – if up and down still hold any meaning here – there lie the Wailing Wastes.
Below them, there is a plain of glass that stretches far off, seemingly without end – for when it curves upwards, it reflects its gleaming tundras like a mirror. Not just the mountains and the valleys but the trees are all of glass, and most of the creatures who dwell here. In this place, day and night are merely names for when the glass grows bright or dim, as the phosphorescence of the forces trapped inside it waxes and wanes. These phases can last between a minute and ten years. At the height of a ‘long day’, the plain is blinding.
Below even that, there is a place perpetually shrouded in gloom – where the ground forever smoulders but never holds a flame. In this desolated landscape, there is a wide valley dominated by three tall hills known as the Three-Pronged Crown.
At this moment, the Crown was nowhere to be seen – for the three hills were covered by the mountainous carcass of an Abaddonian Titan. One of its hooves still pawed the ground, carving a crater into the soil, though its yellow eyes – like lakes of molten gold – had ceased to bubble with its fury. From its forehead sprouted one great horn, which had been snapped off and now jutted out from between its clavicles. The blood that oozed from this wound shrieked like rain falling on lava.
On one of the knobs of gristle which lay exposed in its ravaged neck, an elderly man squatted, breathing heavily through his nose. He would be considered small even were one to come across him on the streets of Tremallan; sitting on this Titan, he was a speck of dust. The top of his head was bald, and his white hair grew long from the sides and back of his head.
Senior Master Mo’ti grimaced. Sticking his little finger in his ear, he picked out some wax and cupped his hand to try and hear the distant echoes. His grimace deepened.
If he read the signs aright, his chance for revenge might be slipping from his grasp. This could not be accepted. But he was deep, deep within the Underrealms – separated from the surface world by much more than mere miles. It would take time to climb back up. How could he ensure the encirclement was not broken before he got there?
He thought, first, to contact Rostnen. But the man was coy, canny, and ambitious. And if he could be trusted, then he would be acting to reinforce the barrier anyway. Too much risk, too little gain. Then, who? Ah. Ah, yes. There was that child, wasn’t there? He owed Mo’ti, and he was a coward. His motivation was reliable and clear – for who could frighten him more than Mo’ti? He would be perfect to run a bit of interference, for a short while, at this short notice. Yes.
Mo’ti leapt away from the Titan’s throat, pausing for a moment at its abyssal maw to grumble a message into its mouth. He watched as the creature’s monumental tongue split in two, and moved on. Passing the molten lakes of its eyes as they glazed over, Mo’ti finally arrived at the base of its broken-off horn. Once there he sat cross legged, cleared his throat, and began to chant while his hands slowly alternated through a sequence of half-formed mudras.
The chant subsided. He set his jaw and pointed a finger upwards. A thin ray of white light shot out from its tip.
A stormcloud appeared in the captive sky of the subterranean chamber of the Founding Master of the School of Violet Vacuity at the Western Heavenly Boundary. It was just a ripple, at first – dark blue against the flowing golden mists. As it unfolded further, it became a spatial rift, manifested in five dimensions, turning unstably in on itself. Its lack of balance caused it to crawl unevenly across the skyscape.
The Master thought it looked very cute and a little sad, like a baby whale wiggling its way across a sandbank between deeper waters. Just as it was about to lose its cohesion entirely, she raised a finger. A silver thread extended from it, which she tossed into the spatial rift. She brought her hand up to her mouth, and set the thread to trembling with a breathy whisper. Then she bit it off and let it go.
End of Day One
David Leon 