Chapter 8
A Mage’s Journey Begins
Vex padded up the three broad, white steps to the doors.
There were large golden braziers lit with golden flames on either side of the doors.
Ever burning. Ever bright. Vex placed his right hand against the center of the doors.
Palm flat against the metal. Fingers splayed out.
He lowered his head and simply stood there as if listening.
Or praying, Finley thought.
Finley remained by the obelisk and fountain. It seemed wrong to approach this tomb any closer without an invitation. He didn’t want to disrupt Vex either in his mourning.
Whose tomb is this? Finley wondered, but he thought he knew.
There was a name carved into the stones above the entranceway or he thought it was a name anyways. But it obviously wasn’t in English or Katyr. It likely was in the Kindreth tongue, which Finley could not read, but he believed it likely spelled out: Sun King Ailduin Fairlynn.
In a way, there were a million objections to this being the famed Sun King’s tomb.
After all, would not the Sun Elves have objected to their greatest leader being buried in the Under Dark?
In King Vex’s Illithor? The histories all agreed that before Ailduin’s death, he and Vex had been estranged at best, or, as many stated, enemies.
Yet Ailduin is buried here. I feel it.
Finley sat on the edge of the fountain. He realized there were fish swimming there.
They rose to the surface, mouthing the air and then dropped below.
Their orange and gold bodies darted among the dark green of the stems. They appeared to be Koi, but they were likely some other species native to the Under Dark. They were lovely and peaceful.
And sustained by magic. All of this is. For how long have these spells lasted? Millennia? Countless millennia likely. Has Vex been back here since he left? I don’t think so. But it explains why he allows no one in Illithor. This is a city of the dead.
“Finley, what is my Rahven’s favorite thing to do?” Vex asked.
Startled, Finley lifted his eyes to the Night King. Vex was no longer standing with his head bowed and his hand pressed against doors he seemed unwilling–or unable–to open and enter. Instead, he was at the base of the steps, smiling at Finley with an open, almost eager expression.
“His–his favorite thing?” Finley stammered. “Well… if I’m honest–”
“Always,” Vex chuckled.
“A good fight,” Finley answered.
Vex lifted a delicate eyebrow. “He likes violence–”
“No, no, not like that. When he fights, it’s like a dance.
He’s… he’s beautiful to watch.” Finley worried at his lower lip, trying to capture Declan in those moments in words.
“When the Leviathan came and he had only a kitchen knife to defend me and Gemma against the hordes of them, I stopped being afraid at some point. Because I was so amazed by what he could do. The sheer grace of it. Flying through the air. Gliding over the ground. Moving like silk in the wind.” He shifted a little on the cool stone, his fingers trailing into the water.
The fish nibbled lightly at his fingertips.
It tickled. “He’s completely and utterly at one with the moment.
Not in the past or future. But in the present. So there.”
“I see. His mother was like that,” Vex answered.
“His mother?” Finley perked up. “Is she with you?”
But then he realized that Vex said was. Not is. Was like that. Past tense. Not present.
“No.” Vex shook his head and gestured to the opposite side of the obelisk that Finley had ignored, thinking it was just more of the garden.
But there was something laying there. Something not so finely wrought. On a slab of stone that might have had another purpose was a long, low pile of rocks. It was the length and width of a body.
Finley swallowed and shakily got up to his feet.
He glanced over at Vex. The Night King gestured again towards the object.
He meant for Finley to go over to it. Suddenly, Finley desperately didn’t want to.
But his desire to know came over him and he was moving towards it.
His breath held. His heart was hammering.
What is this?
The stones piled a foot high were dark, black, evidently hacked out of the earth elsewhere.
They were not the clean white stone used for Ailduin’s tomb.
Above the tip of the pile was scrawled–carved really with no precision and a rather shaky hand in anguished determination–a name and below it another word.
It was etched into the stone again and again.
The lines were broken and ragged. Finley brushed his fingertips over them and snatched his hand back. They were sharp, uneven. They hurt.
“What does it say?” Finley asked.
“Lady Ashryn Zinsadoral,” Vex answered. “Mother.”
Finley turned his head to look at the Night King. “Zinsadoral?” It was the name that Declan had told him to look up. It was part of Declan’s full name. “Is this… this Rahven’s mother?”
A simple nod. Nothing more.
“But I don’t understand!” Finley protested. “No Kindreth has lived here in millennia! Why would she be buried here?”
“Because she died here,” Vex answered simply.
The Night King’s expression was completely smooth and unreadable. Did he feel grief about this? Was he glad about it? Angry? Rageful? Gleeful? Had she betrayed him? Had he killed her? Or had he loved her as much as Ailduin? All was hidden from Finley.
But he didn’t bury her in a beautiful tomb like Ailduin. She’s covered by rocks and… Vex didn’t bury her. Mother… A child did. Her son buried her.
Finley took in a sharp breath and abruptly straightened. “Did Declan–Rahven–bury her here? Was he here for her death?”
“Yes.”
Finley’s heart was pounding. His breathing quickened once more. Nausea bubbled in his belly.
“There for two mothers’ deaths? Oh, god, Declan,” he whispered, anguished beyond words for his best friend. “Is that why you took his memories, King Vex?”
“I did not take his memories.” Vex’s expression was completely blank like glass yet Finley could see nothing behind it.
“So who did? And why? What was he doing here? He wasn’t with you here, was he?” Even as Finley asked the last question, he knew that Vex had not come here in some time.
Vex’s red eyes looked steadily into his. “All good questions, Finley. Complicated answers.”
“Or not complicated,” Finley answered, surprised at his own sharpness. “You don’t want to tell me.”
“I do not owe you those answers, do I?” Vex lifted an eyebrow.
Realizing that Vex was right. Declan was owed these answers. Not him. “No, but Rahven… Declan may not ask.”
“Why do you say that?” Vex’s voice was toneless. Maybe he hoped that Declan wouldn’t ask. Maybe he wanted to shield his son from this.
“Maybe he shouldn’t ask, because the answers will be painful.” Finley shook his head. “Maybe he should just forget all of this forever.”
For some reason, he kept thinking of the layers of Blood Tattoos on Vex’s skin. Remembering this might cause a few more to be added to Declan’s body. Did he want that? No. Because each mark represented some pain, some hurt, some horrible necessity.
But the truth is the truth. Shying away from it isn’t wise, his conscience told him.
But his love for Declan meant he wanted to shield his best friend from whatever had caused him to scratch “Mother” into this stone again and again and again.
“The answers to these questions are not why you are here, Finley,” Vex reminded him.
Finley’s head jerked back up to look at the Night King. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m not here for anything! I was only brought along to lead the others through the Pedway and–”
“You’re here, because you want to fight by my son’s side,” Vex interrupted. “And you cannot do that as you are now. Without certain knowledge and perhaps… materials.”
Finley’s heart raced again, but this time with sick anticipation.
The desire for magic was like a drug. Its aphrodisiac qualities overriding his system easily.
And he couldn’t help Declan’s mother. She was dead and gone and…
But he could help her son. He could be by Declan’s side no matter what danger they faced. It would be faced together.
“You brought me here,” Finley corrected, “because I’m your son’s best friend and he wouldn’t have wanted me to die.”
Vex flashed a white, sharp grin. “I could have saved you back on Earth. No, I brought you here, because… don’t you believe you have a story, Finley? A greater purpose? A fate?”
“I… I don’t know.” But Finley’s heart cried out otherwise. He found himself quickly adding, “I’ve always wanted to believe so. But that has seemed to be for others. Not me.”
Like Declan who is so special. But I’m not. Just strange and don’t really fit in.
“But what if it’s not? What if your story really takes off here?” Vex pointed, but not at the ground of the tomb, but towards a deeper spot in Illithor.
Finley found himself moving so that he could see clearly where Vex was pointing.
He followed Vex’s pointed finger. It was aimed towards a low, bulbous tower that squatted, rather than soared at the end of a twisting set of stairs and pathways.
The tower was a dark crimson color like old blood.
At first, the base of it was completely dark, but then a brazier flared to life by an open doorway.
Red flames. Finley’s heart thudded heavily in his chest. He swallowed suddenly bitter bile in his mouth.
“What’s that? What’s there?” Finley asked.
“That is the Temple of the Necrilem,” Vex said. “Where death is worshiped.”
Is? Not was? So death is still worshiped there?
“Death?” Finley thought of what Vex had said about how a human would get their power through death not life. Could this be a place where he could learn about that?
He couldn’t quite imagine how gaining magic from death would work. Draining life maybe? But that sounded wrong. That was still life. Reaching beyond life? How would he ever do anything like that?