Chartomancy

Chapter Fourteen

28th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat

9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Ixyll

The moment I awoke, I knew who I was not. Moraven Tolo I had been, or, rather, he had been a part of me. He was an aspect of who I was, and perhaps a glimmer of who I could have become. He had been useful, and doubtless would yet be useful, but he and I were separate individuals.

I had no sense of how much time had passed, and the place in which I found myself served only to heighten my confusion. I had access to Moraven’s memories, but they had a dreamlike quality to them. I could not be certain which parts of them were true or which might be his dreams. I had, after all, been somnambulant while he controlled my body. Yet, even in that state, I knew time had passed.

But this place-a tomb complex clearly-showed little signs of decay, and all the signs of Imperial construction. Gathering myself, I slowly stood. I wavered as dizziness washed over me, then rested against the wall until the world stopped spinning.

When it again turned normal, I stepped forward to the nearest sarcophagus. A woman’s effigy had been raised on the lid, and the artisan had done an admirable job. I recognized Aracylia Gyrshi and caressed her cold stone cheek. Her name I knew, and her loss I felt as keenly as a fist tight around my heart. I likely could have even picked her voice out of a chorus. I definitely remembered stitching up the wound that gave her the serpentine scar on her brow.

I could not, however, remember who I was.

“Awakened, I see.”

The voice did not surprise me, though it should have. A note of the familiar ran through it, too. I looked slowly to the right and found a Soth Gloon perched on another sarcophagus. “Seven eyes do not lie. I am awake. You were once known as Enangia.”

“An old name only whispered by ghosts.” He canted his maggot-white head. “I am Urardsa now. And what shall I call you?”

“Call me the name you know me by.”

“Most recently this is Moraven Tolo.”

I refused to take the bait in his game. He knew who I was, but he would not tell me. Soth logic demanded he withhold that information, and I had neither the patience for his game nor need for the information. Names and identities meant nothing-labels at best, masks hiding doom at the worst.

“Then I shall be Moraven Tolo for a while yet.”

The Gloon fell silent, which is what they preferred to do rather than cackle insanely, as a man might in a similar situation.

“You have been trapped here for how long?”

“Long enough for empires to be forgotten and the world to be made anew.”

I shook my head. Though I did not know who I was, I did know better than to ask a Gloon questions that did not demand specific answers. I thought about the last memories Moraven Tolo had and formulated another question. “Tell me please of the disposition of my companions-their suspected locations and intentions.”

The Gloon’s gold eyes closed. “Your apprentice and the gyanridin are bound northwest on the Spice Route, hoping to find the Sleeping Empress and awaken her to save the Empire. They have no sense of what lurks out there, but one is inventive and the other desires to become a hero, so they will stumble on.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You see the future. How far do their life-strands extend?”

“Far enough for them to wish they did not.” His face tightened. “They will not emerge from their trials unscarred.”

“Keles Anturasi?”

“Gone. It is presumed Desei agents have him. Ask me not about his life-strand, for it is tangled and one loop has already been threaded through death. It is a knot I have never seen before, nor one I can untie.”

I nodded. “The Viruk and the Keru, they have gone after him?”

“As best they can.”

“And they left me with you.” I crossed from Aracylia’s bier to the small bundle of possessions that had been left for me. Rough canvas clothes meant to protect me against the magic of Ixyll had been neatly folded. Road rations, a canteen, and a small pouch of coins had likewise been left behind. All in all, it looked like meager offerings at some half-forgotten godling’s roadside shrine.

And then there was my sword.

More correctly, Moraven’s sword. I picked it up and slid the blade from the lacquered wooden scabbard. It came out clean. Single-edge, sharp, and polished until it seemed to glow all by itself, it was a pretty piece of metal. The balance was perfect, the hilt comfortable, and an unconscious smile came to my lips as I wove it through circles and loops. A single blade was not to my preference, but if I were limited to one, this would do very nicely.

I returned the blade to its scabbard and slid it into place over my left hip. “Did they leave me horses, or am I stuck here forever?”

“There are no horses.” The Gloon leaped from the bier and stood upright. “You will not be here much longer.”

“Have you foreseen that I’ll walk, or something else?”

The Gloon looked hard at me with all of his eyes. A flutter began in my stomach, but I refused to let my nervousness show on my face. His eyes narrowed, then opened again. He frowned heavily.

“There are simple people whose lives are a single, slender strand. Others have knots, or become interwoven with one or two others. Still others have many strands, many years. You have pieces. Broken pieces that pick up and leave off. They tangle with others, foul them, and there are points where your life makes the future incomprehensible. There is no predicting for you.”

I would have made to question him further save for a glow that began deeper in the mausoleum. It started as a dark blue spark, violet even, then cycled down to red. It vanished for a moment, then reversed itself, growing larger with each cycle. After five or six cycles it had become a sphere twenty feet in diameter within which I began to discern the shape of a man.

The sphere collapsed to reveal a man standing on an oblong wooden platform rimmed with gold. Around its circumference a railing ran about three feet high, and gold disks attached to the sides of the base, one at each of the eight cardinal points. Most remarkably, in front of the man sat a large globe on a gimbaled stand. While I could not see the six-foot globe clearly, I knew it had a map of the world spread over its surface. This told me I’d seen it before and, as if in confirmation, the man on the platform looked at me and smiled.

I bowed to him, respectfully, and he returned it. “I am Moraven Tolo, and though we have met, I do not know your name.”

“When we met, you were much worse for the wear. I’m glad to see you’ve recovered from your injuries.”

“Yes, the scar on my chest and back.” My left hand brushed over it. “Then the last time we met was over two hundred and fifty years ago?”

“It depends upon how it is measured.” He stepped toward me, then kicked one of the disks down parallel to the wooden base. “This time, I think you can hang on to ride.”

“Ride?” I questioned his comment, but still scooped up the coins and the traveling rations. “Obviously you got in. Presumably you can get out. Where will you be going to?”

“Where doesn’t matter quite as much as when.” He kicked another disk down on the other side and nodded to Urardsa. “You’re coming, too.”

The Gloon eyed him with a bit more consternation than he’d looked at me. “Who has told you this?”

“You did, or you will.” The man took my bundled goods and set them on the platform at his feet. “I’m Ryn Anturasi, by the way. Just hang on tight. This won’t take long.”

I grabbed the rail with my right hand.

“Try holding on with the other one. When we get to where we’re going, you’ll want your sword free.”

I nodded and shifted the blade to my right hip.

Urardsa got on the other side of the thing. He held on with both hands and winced.

Ryn fiddled with the globe. I recognized some features on it, though the map of the Empire had been split into many different nations. I knew of that from Moraven’s memories, but I still found it disconcerting. The regions themselves were represented by inlays of stone and wood, each bit of which, I assumed, was native to the location from which it came.

Ryn removed two carved bits of stone that appeared to be the front and back end of a dolphin. They must have been made of lodestone, for they stuck together and, as he put them down, they adhered to the globe itself. The front half he placed in Ixyll, roughly where we were now. The other piece he planted in the Empire. He slipped a lever to the right of the globe and slowly began to spin it. The rotation he imparted would have had the sun rising in the west instead of the east.

“Brace yourself.” He spun the globe so quickly the landmasses became blurred splashes of color, then he drew back on the lever and locked it into place.

From Moraven’s mind, I pulled the memory of the ball of wild magic exploding, and this felt much the same. Instead of a thunderous detonation, however, a wave of magic pulsed off the globe and took my breath away for a heartbeat, then two. A shifting sphere of red and blue surrounded us. All of a sudden the sphere evaporated and the wild magic moved back through me, canceling the vibrations it had started.

And even before I was certain our journey had begun, it had ended, and the familiar sound of battle again rang in my ears. I leaped away from the disk, bringing my sword to hand. Turning toward the sounds of battle, I found myself on a modest landing halfway up a small hill strewn with dead. The Soth Gloon crouched on a pile of bodies, and a new, diminishing glow heralded Ryn’s departure.

I did not wonder at his haste to be away. A quarter turn around the hill a steady stream of hulking beasts with long arms and scaled flesh scrambled upward. They clawed their own dead and wounded down in limp piles that slithered to the hill’s base. At the hill’s zenith fought a trio of people, two of whom I recognized.

Without a second thought I entered the battle. I did so without screaming out my history or any challenge, nor did I inform those above of what I would be doing. I merely flowed into it, became one with it, and began to change the nature of the fight.

There are those who will say that to be a Mystic is to use magic to make yourself better than others. It is true that this is the effect, but the means is almost unknowable. It is not so much that I move faster than others, but I perceive them as moving slower. I see the flows of energy in the battle. I know which way they will move, which ways they can move, and by which means I can most easily stop them.

And, for me, that means killing them.

The hulking creatures stood on powerful but short legs. Their knees, a fine creation of bone and sinew, parted easily as I swept a blade through them. Because they had no necks, I could not decapitate them, but a swift stroke across the throat slashed arteries. Blood geysered and bodies collapsed. Their heads, while massive, had little in the way of bone structure to protect their large flat eyes, and their braincases proved as brittle as sun-dried mud chips.

My first pass through their line harvested a full rank of seven and brought me an unexpected prize. A man, his face clawed to ribbons, had fallen and his sword impaled one of the beasts. I kicked the corpse off him, then tugged the sword free of its belly, before turning to face the things pursuing me.

Coming about, I realized none did pursue me, so intent were they on overwhelming those above. I knew I should have felt some relief at that. Moraven would have, but I was not Moraven. I did not feel what he felt.

And what I felt was insulted.

On my return I did not sweep through their line, I strode into it, boldly, head high, defiantly. One blade flicked out, then the other, plucking eyes, opening throats. Double slashes had sufficient force to spin a disemboweled beast so its entrails could snare others. I inflicted cuts here and there, not fatal, but painful-and it took some learning to find something those beasts considered painful-so their wails would inspire fear in their companions.

It seemed, however, they knew no fear, and in that their creator had doomed them. Someone unschooled in the art of war would think the perfect warrior should know no fear, but that is wrong. A fearless warrior continues forward even though death is inescapable. The perfect warrior is not one with no fear, but one who does not allow fear to overwhelm his judgment.

I slashed and cut at them, at once happy that Moraven had taught my body so many new things, but annoyed that he had abandoned the fighting styles I so much enjoyed. Because the creatures kept coming, each so like the last, I was able to practice and regain my skills. I learned to thrust just deep enough to explode hearts and shred lungs, or to open arteries or hole their stomachs. I fought as I had not fought for ages.

The trio from the hilltop descended and joined me, stealing my prey, but I did not mind. They’d already slain many, and so had the knack for it; but they had been running and relished a chance to regain ground they had lost. The woman I knew from Moraven’s mind and the scar on her cheek. She wore no crest, just simple robes long since scavenged, and had the look of having been on the run for weeks. She used her blade well and killed without remorse.

The second swordsman I had not seen. He wore the crest of a leopard hunting, but his robe and overshirt had been a long time without laundering. Neither he nor the woman would have been thought older than their thirties, save for the age that fatigue, blood, and grime put on them.

The boy, however, there was no mistaking. A mail sleeve had been tied onto his withered left arm, and a spike thrust out where his fingers should have been. In his other hand he carried a sword that had been snapped in half, then resharpened. The hardness of his eyes bespoke much of what he’d seen despite his youth. He was just entering his second decade of life, that I remembered from Moraven.

And his name. Dunos.

The beasts-which Dunos had named vhangxi-came until there were no more and out of deference for my companions, I did not go hunting. With Urardsa joining us, we moved into the night and toward the west. They slept for several hours, and then at dawn we pushed on. When we reached a road we joined a flood of refugees. Thus began the long journey to Kelewan and what they hoped would be a stronghold that would not fall.