Chapter 40
40
A FTER ASSIGNING ANOTHER of the Iflelen to guide the royal party back to Highmount, Wryth fled farther from the sun. He descended a half league to the true heart of the dark god’s domain—and the secret buried there for seven centuries.
He had left Vythaas in his scholarium, where the man intended to split the prioress’s skull and pick through her brain. Vythaas intended to discern what had worked and what had failed in his procedure, all to further hone his method. The Iflelen—like all Shriven—knew knowledge was seldom gained from sudden bursts of insight, but more through painstaking failures and tiny triumphs. Few appreciated the centuries it took to gather what the ancients had abandoned and to shine such artifacts back to life.
Which was especially true for what lay ahead.
Wryth reached a set of tall ebonwood doors, inscribed with the horn’d snaken. As he pushed through, he split the sigil into halves and entered the inner sanctum of the Iflelen. It was not unlike the main hall far above, a dome of polished obsidian. The chamber was also lined by doors marked for various avenues of studies, all pertaining to what this chamber held.
The breadth of the room contained a convoluted web of copper tubes and blown-glass tanks, running and bubbling with arcane alchymicals. It stretched from the arch of the roof to the polished floor. The immense apparatus huffed, steamed, and beat like a living beast.
Four bloodbaernes marked the cardinal points of the Urth’s magnes energies. The bound sacrifices were all children under the age of eleven, stolen from the crowded streets of the city’s Nethers. Such young consecrations were the most potent for the distillation process. Each child lay limp, their chests cleaved open like little windows. Bellows filled their lungs, blowing them up and down, revealing peaks of their beating hearts.
Their blood ran through the apparatus’s pipes and vessels. Their young cylls were macerated, then purified at each stage, until all that remained was a concentration of lifeforce. According to ancient tomes, those energies were held within tiny particles freed from those torn cylls, invisible motes that the ancients called mytokondrans. The recipe for this potent fuel came from those same texts. Still, it had taken centuries of Iflelen study to refine their methods, through adaptations and advancements—including the incorporation of living sacrifices.
Each child lasted five days before succumbing, giving all their life to the hungry copper-and-crystal web. Just a century ago, the same machine had once consumed a child each day, but the Iflelen had improved their methodology over the many years, such was their progress. They also learned how to use those same distilled elixirs to extend their own lives.
Wryth stepped past a small tow-headed girl, her head lolled back, a tube down her throat. He brushed fingers through her hair, silently thanking her for her gift and sacrifice.
He remembered when he had first knelt before the great machine, shortly after swearing fealty to the god ?reyk and joining the Iflelen. That had been sixty-three years ago—but it seemed far longer.
He could barely recall his youth as an acolyte to a Gjoan mystik. He and his mother had escaped the Dominion when he was six, just before he was to be blinded in preparation for his own training to be a mystik in their mountainous stronghold. He fought down the memories of that harrowing time, being chased by Gjoan hunters, the murder of his mother by slavers, his own years of misuse, until he finally ended up at the school of Teassl, on the Islands of Tau on the other side of the Crown.
He only gained entrance to the illustrious school because a hieromonk, one who had been abusing him at a whorehouse, had noted the tattoo on the inside of Wryth’s upper lip, marking him as a possession of the mystiks. Only rare children were afforded such training. Believing such a boy to be special—and maybe wanting Wryth to be closer for easy pleasuring over the next years—the monk had gained Wryth entrance to Teassl. There, he had excelled on his own, eventually gaining his first Highcryst, that of alchymy. Afterward, he had thanked the hieromonk, gutted the bastard with a dagger, and left for Kepenhill, where Wryth earned his second Highcryst, thus becoming first a Shrive, then an Iflelen.
Even now, after so long, after achieving so much, he could still awaken that old pain and humiliation of his younger years, when he was defenseless and at the mercy of so many others. It stoked the cold fire inside him, of ambition, of the drive to never again be under another’s thumb. To ensure that, he sought power found in ancient knowledge, intent to let nothing and no one stop him from becoming a formidable force, one more potent than any king.
With a silent growl, Wryth cast aside such dark musings and focused back on the shining wonder before him. He had dedicated the rest of his life to divining the mysteries buried here. He searched ahead, to where one of his brothers waited.
Shrive Skerren had summoned him down here with some urgency, but Wryth could not answer that call until the king was gone.
To reach his brother, Wryth bowed and ducked and twisted his way through the maddening copper web, aiming toward its center—where a hungry spider waited, imbedded at its heart, a talisman of great significance.
Ahead, Skerren bent near the holy artifact.
Wryth caught glimpses of it as he worked his way closer. The sculpted bronze bust had been wired and tubed into the great machine. The countenance of the sculpture was that of a curly-bearded man with a crown of the same plait. His bronze skin roiled with the energies suffusing through it. The finest of his curls and strands of hair waved, as if stirred by invisible winds. Glass eyes of a violet blue glowed dully, blind to all around it.
According to the talisman’s history, the bust had been discovered in Havensfayre two millennia ago. It had been found in a forgotten vault in Oldenmast, buried deep under the roots of that ancient tree. Since then, the bodiless head had passed through countless hands. No one truly knew what to make of it, but all appreciated the beauty of its design and workmanship. It traveled to the farthest reaches of the Southern Klashe and north to the sequestered Hegemony of Hapre. It had been studied, dismissed, and had come to adorn many kings’ halls, until it finally made its way to Azantiia.
Over time, the revelations from ancient tomes offered some hint of its true wonder, how it could be stirred back to life if fueled in a proper manner. Still, it had taken the Iflelen centuries to wake the talisman from its slumber and glean what little they could of it. The head had spoken only four times since stirring to life. Each utterance was cryptic, whispered in a language no one understood. Those four messages were inscribed in the Iflelen’s most sacred texts, waiting to be deciphered.
As centuries passed, their order had learned much. They discovered how the holy talisman produced a strange emanation, a vibration through the air. It felt like an itch on the skin when one drew near.
Even now, Wryth felt that wind blowing against him as he crossed closer.
With time, the Iflelen learned how to monitor its strength, using slivers of lodestone wrapped in copper wire. It did not take long to recognize how this strange emanation affected small animals: birds, lizards, snakes. The wild beasts would fall sway to its call, becoming docile, easily handled.
It was Vythaas who first related this to bridle-song and spent all his life trying to capture this sound and use it to control larger beasts. He eventually refined his method with copper needles inserted into key areas of the brain. After working for a time with animals, he found the dull-minded Gyn the easiest of men to manipulate, then moved onward from there.
Still, the talisman continued to radiate its strange silent song. To monitor its keening, the artifact was surrounded in concentric rings of bronze, a complicated skeletal sphere, like an orrery used to study the stars. The rings were lined by wired lodestones suspended in oil-filled crystal spheres, becoming a hundred tiny weathervanes. With those tools, the direction and strength of the talisman’s invisible winds had been mapped over centuries. And so it went for the longest time, with the talisman forever calling out to the world.
Until an answer finally came.
Sixty-two years ago—a year after Wryth had sworn his blood oath to the order, which he still deemed as providential—another wind blew the vanes straight back at the sculpture’s head. The wind came in from the east, and from its fierce strength, it was estimated to have risen somewhere near the coast of Guld’guhl. So, Wryth had overseen the establishment of an Iflelen outpost near the mines of Chalk and continued to watch for that sign again.
Thrice more over the past decades, those winds rose again, spinning the lodestones toward the bronze bust. This further convinced their order that something similar to their talisman must be buried out there. Then a moon ago, the mysterious winds appeared again, sporadic at first, then the gusts blew stronger. The rising storm drew Wryth and Skerren to the mines of Chalk—where the bronze woman was discovered, only to have it stolen by a shrewd thief in disguise.
Wryth reached Skerren, despairing at the full breadth of what they had lost, now likely sunk into the sea.
“About time you got here,” Skerren scolded.
“What is so urgent that it required me to be pulled from the king’s side?”
Skerren held a quill in one hand and a silver measuring stick in the other. He shifted aside to reveal a map on a small table. Beside it lay an open book that held an account going back centuries, charting the lodestones’ movement in their crystal spheres.
“A bell ago,” Skerren explained, “another signal stirred our instrument.”
Wryth shoved closer. “From where? From the Bay of Promise?”
He pictured the bronze woman stalking along the seabed after the crash of the wyndship from Guld’guhl.
Skerren slid the map over, inscribed with numbers and arrows. “No, not from the sea. It was brief but appeared to rise out of the northeast. I still want to review my calculations to be sure.”
“How far to the northeast?”
“I gauge no farther than the forests of Cloudreach, somewhere near The Twins.”
Wryth frowned.
Cloudreach again. Where the others had fled.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. Standing in the center of the bronze web, he felt the movement of unseen forces, bringing all the pieces of a grand game together.
Wryth swung around, hoping it wasn’t too late.
“Where are you going?” Skerren asked.
He pointed back to the talisman. “Keep watching. Send word if anything changes.”
“And what of you?”
“I’m headed to the warships. To join the prince and the legions. If that artifact is out there, I must not lose it again.”
M IKAEN SEARCHED HIS rooms at the Legionary for his boots. After soaking in a hot bath and scrubbing his body to a fine polish, he felt like himself, a shining prince of the realm. His diligence with soap and brush had less to do with removing the grime of his hard ride across the Brauelands and everything to do with ridding himself of the stench of the Shrivenkeep’s brimstan.
He stood dressed in his underleathers, like his father had been, readying for the flight to Havensfayre. He would don his armor once they moored at the forest town. He had already strapped on his sword with its silver-filigreed scabbard, along with a dagger in a matching sheath. Over his leathers, he also wore a doublet of silver with a sun-and-crown crest stitched into it. He had to maintain some decorum as the prince.
But where are my sarding boots?
He didn’t want to run barefooted to the war docks.
He checked under his bed, spotted them, and yanked them out. Before he could pull them on, a firm knock on the door interrupted him. From the loudness of the rap, he sensed he had best not ignore such a demanding summons. Despite being the prince, he remained an eighthyear at the Legionary, and his high standing only afforded him so much leeway here—which at most times was none at all.
He dropped his boots, swore, and crossed to the door. He pulled it open to discover a crimson mountain at his threshold. Anskar vy Donn wore light armor, as if he had been born into it and never removed it. He carried his helm under one arm.
“Prince Mikaen, I wish a word with you before we depart.”
Without asking permission, Anskar pushed inside. He shoved past Mikaen and slammed the door behind him.
“What’s this concerning?” Mikaen asked, trying to sound firm and princely, which was hard to pull off when bootless.
“I want you to beseech the king on your brother’s behalf.”
“On Kanthe’s behalf?”
Anskar lifted a brow. “You have another brother I’m not aware of?”
Mikaen felt his cheeks warm. He glanced over to the box still resting on his desk, holding the bit of pottery of two boys locked in an embrace, the betrothal gift from his twin.
Had Kanthe been plotting against the realm even back then?
“I don’t understand,” Mikaen said. “You know the betrayal that Kanthe has committed. As much as I love him, treachery against the crown, conspiring with insurrectionists, it cannot go unanswered.”
“But I don’t think your brother’s flight was an act of insurrection—it was more one of survival.”
Mikaen frowned deeply, trying to mimic his father’s stern demeanor. “What do you mean?”
“Just this past bell, I learned of a plot to assassinate Kanthe in the swamps. Upon the order of Highmount. To be carried out by men under my command.”
Mikaen stumbled back. He found his bed with the backs of his legs and sat down heavily. “Surely you must be mistaken.”
Anskar followed him and dropped to a knee to let Mikaen read his earnestness. “I believe it was that assassination attempt that sent your brother fleeing. I come to you now, to help sway your father from this bloody path.”
“I don’t think I can. While my father holds me in a favorable light, the same cannot be said of Kanthe.”
“I understand, but during this past sojourn, I saw a worthiness in your brother. A steel long hidden behind drink and carousing. But it is there. I believe this deeply. With war threatening, two princes flanking the king will serve the realm well.”
Mikaen sighed, weighing what to do.
Anskar hung his head, clearly struggling with words that would convince him to appeal to the king. The vy-knight lifted his face to try again.
Mikaen already had his dagger out and slashed the Vyrllian’s throat.
The man fell back on his rear, his face stunned. Ironhard hands clutched at his neck, but they were not strong enough to stop the blood spurting between his fingers. He gurgled more of his life past his lips.
Mikaen looked down at the crimson spray across his own doublet and underleathers. He would have to change again. As he stood, Anskar looked up at him, still in shock—not at the attack but at the realization.
“Yes, I ordered my brother to be killed in the swamps. My father could never commit such an act. He has too generous a heart.” He tugged his soiled doublet over his head. “In a king, such a charity of spirit might be a boon in times of peace, but it’s a detriment with war now threatening.”
He undid the hooks on his upper leathers. “Look at what such kindness has wrought my father. A second son who threatens chaos. Whether Kanthe does so willingly or unwittingly, it does not matter. Then there’s the bastard daughter who should have been slain as soon as her mother’s belly first began to swell. Even the mercy of my father’s friendship with the knight Graylin now invites more broken oaths to the detriment of our kingdom.”
Anskar gurgled his dissent as he slumped to the stone floor.
“From here on out, I will be the death of such mercies.” Mikaen remembered his earlier promise to his father. “I will be the lightning to my father’s thunder. I will strike where death needs to be dealt. I will spare the king the necessity of cold ruthlessness. That is the son I shall be to my father.”
As Mikaen struggled out of his uppers, he recognized he was soliloquizing to a dead man. He stepped around the pool of blood as another hard knocking sounded from the door.
He closed his eyes with a groan and considered his options when a voice shouted from outside, “Prince Mikaen, it’s Haddan. I come with Shrive Wryth, who brings urgent word from the Shrivenkeep.”
Ah…
He crossed and opened the door. “Then it seems we all have urgent matters to attend to before we depart.” He stepped aside to reveal the body on the floor. “Anskar caught wind of what we planned for my brother.”
Haddan hurried inside with Wryth and rubbed his chin as he stared at the spreading pool of blood. “A shame. Anskar was a good man and a better soldier. I had hoped one day to sway him to our cause.”
Mikaen did not care. The matter had been settled. Instead, he eyed Wryth. “The general said you have something urgent to address.”
Wryth found his voice after the initial shock. “Yes. Word has just reached me, of a lost weapon that might yet be retrieved from Cloudreach. And Vythaas readies another set of weapons to aid us in our cause.”
Mikaen frowned. “What weapons?”
Wryth told him.
Mikaen paled and stared back at Anskar’s body.
And here I thought I was ruthless.