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CHAPTER 1 The players are set; the game itself, though, will remain a lethal mystery. -Genesifin |
Rashel’s jaw clenched, squealing under the violent pressure of bone and teeth, and her eyes lazed into the folds of her skull, though they returned to a state of determined purpose as soon as the pain subsided. Her body was damp and stank of human sweat.
How the spirit loathed that rank scent. It caused its rushing rage to boil into greater brutality.
She disgusts me. They all do.
Yet still, the spirit had nowhere else to go. The world had swallowed it in all its concreteness and now it must live out its existence here in the baseness of the tangible.
I will make them regret trapping me here, it thought. I will turn their world into flames and misery.
“Tell me where the sword is,” the spirit demanded again.
“I cannot,” Rashel finally breathed. Her auburn hair clung damply to her cheeks and neck. A few strands lingered in her mouth. Her weary body lay supine and mangled. Crimson drenched her clothing.
“Cannot? Or will not?”
Her pupils tightened in fear, but her voice echoed out defiantly. “Is there a difference?”
“Is there a difference between your pain and your daughter’s?” he asked coldly.
Her mouth twitched.
Yes, that is your weakness, isn’t it? the spirit thought.
“It changes nothing,” she replied faintly, but her face sagged as if all her bones had shrunk at the thought.
She rolled her head heavily a few digits to gaze across at her daughter, Claera. She was just three orbits old. The child could not comprehend what was happening—or perhaps she could all too well. She huddled in the corner, whimpering with cheeks streaming. Claera’s tinny voice was racked with heaving sobs as she wailed over and over, “Mama, mama, mama...”
Claera locked eyes with Rashel, and the child nearly found a moment of consolation, but she quickly recoiled in confusion as a warm stream splashed across her face.
He was urinating on her.
The child wept and sought to avoid the putrid mess, but her uncoordinated limbs and hysteria coupled with his previous blows and kicks had certainly not improved her capabilities.
“Dadda! Stop!” she cried.
Rashel feebly held up her hand in reassurance. “That isn’t Da, sweetie.”
He smiled cloyingly. “Yes I am. I am your Da. Your mama is lying to you.”
Rashel shuddered and sank into the floorboards. “Just be done with it.”
“I will be done once you finally choose to help me.” His dark eyes bore with loathing into Rashel. Even after all the physical pain, she still cringed at the mere glance.
“I will not help you. I will not. Be done with it,” she repeated.
As morning approached, the wailing from the child pounded through his eardrums. He suddenly sickened of the entire enterprise, and his frustration seized him with hotter fury. His fists quivered and knuckles hued white.
“I will let you watch while I tear her apart like a leaf,” he hissed venomously.
She choked on her sobs but still spoke the bold words. “I will tell you nothing. Be done with it.”
~~~~
Colette woke with a start, jolting Brenol from his own world of dreams.
“You ok, Col?”
“Yes,” she replied in the dark, but her jagged breath betrayed the truth.
“What’re you worried ’bout?” he asked. His speech was slurred with sleep, but soon his mind began to stir.
He rolled over and slid his hand across her belly. It was smooth and beginning to bulge. His fingertips lingered, hoping for a movement from the growing babe. Although the skin remained placid, a warmth filled his chest: My child. The one we never thought possible. He wondered if the awe over this miracle would ever fade into accepted normalcy. He prayed it would not.
“I-I...”
“It’s ok. I’m awake now.”
“I just don’t know. It was a terrible dream.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
She sighed. “Not really.”
Brenol drew her close and enveloped her in his arms. She could feel his heart beating sturdily and his radiating heat seeping comfortingly into her skin. “You don’t need to worry. I’m right here. Jerem’s gone,” he mumbled sleepily.
Within seconds his breathing slowed and his limbs relaxed in heaviness.
It’s not Jerem I fear, she thought, shuddering despite the warmth of the bed and his body draped across hers.
She longed to brush it aside as a dream, but her nurest instincts recognized the strange flavor of intuit—even if it had been ages since she had last tasted it. There was a truth here whether she acknowledged it or not. The soil of Massada was whispering, but to what purpose she could not guess.
Colette reluctantly explored the images, and again the dark eyes of her dreams bore into her, and her spine tingled in disquiet. So dark. The eyes are so dark. Darker even than a juile’s. She bit her lower lip in concentration—and repulsion—but could not discern meaning from the hellish scene.
What are you saying to me, Veronia?
She cringed as she met silence. It did not matter that there had been only silence for seasons and seasons; it hurt as though this were the first time.
Why can’t you just let it go? Let Veronia be? she asked herself, furious again that the childish hope within refused to die. A tear trickled sideways across the lunitata’s face. She swept it away angrily. How she wearied of this unending expectation, this firm belief that Veronia was not lost and would one day awaken. It only kept her agony fresh, her hunger alive.
To be one with a broken and void entity was wrenching. Veronia was alive, but a sigh to the booming thunder it once had been. The poison of Jerem had wiped away communication, power, personality. The healing hos had done miraculous work across Massada, but not enough. Veronia was comatose, fragmented. And would never again be what it was. Never.
Yet you’re speaking to me. What are you saying?
And why now?
Colette exhaled, realizing how tense her entire body had become. Every muscle was strained and aching.
Perhaps Bren’s right. There can never be good in the nurest connection.
Calm, Colette. Calm.
The lunitata forced her lungs into long, easy breaths. The subdued snoring of the man beside her offered a gentle comfort, and her face slowly eased from its hard creases. She sought to match his rhythmic inhalations and closed her eyes as their breathing unified. The dream dissipated in the serenity of the moment, and she gently berated herself for the histrionics—all was well, or at least would be in time. One by one, she directed her neck, limbs, back, and jaw to relax, and she experienced the soft surrender as her body sank in submission.
But as she approached the sweet precipice of sleep, the evil orbs flared alive and glared at her again in vivid clarity behind her closed lids. She gasped, her entire body stiffening in rigid terror. Colette’s hands trembled as she raised them to shield her blanched face, yet the image was seared in her mind.
He wants to hurt me.
He wants to hurt everyone.
Brenol stirred, and a bizarre impulse to hide overcame her. She felt like a child—afraid to whisper the dark things of the dream world lest they stir alive and rush in to snatch away her life with the speed of a spark: present in one moment, gone the next. Colette did not think, she merely succumbed to the insane sentiment to conceal herself. She exaggerated her breathing and willed her body into limpness. Brenol—still half-drunk with sleep—shifted, wrapped his fallen arm tenderly around her, and returned to his repose. Colette waited for his deep breaths to even and then circled her arms protectively around her belly.
Three watch over our child. Our miracle.
She closed her eyes again. The eyes were now but a memory, yet still she cradled her stomach as though they could see the vulnerable creature inside. Her lips quivered, but she eventually forced even them to a death-like still as she feigned sleep.
~~~~
After several moons, Colette no longer responded with visceral intensity to the nightmares. Her eyes opened with a pained agony, and at times her body was drenched in a feverish sweat, but rarely did she cry out or thrash. But it did not mean she had grown accustomed to their foul flavor.
She inhaled softly and gently brushed Brenol’s arm from her side. It landed heavily upon the blankets, but he did not stir. She lumbered her awkward body sideways until she could slide to her knees and labor up to a stand. Her swollen feet elicited a hushed creak from the floorboards, but Brenol slept on soundly. The child within was eerily still, as though it alone knew the gravity of her experience.
In the main room, Colette paused. Upon the wall rested a looking glass—a gift from her mother on the day she vowed soumme. It was an elegant square, about the breadth of two hands, edged with turquoise mosaic tiles and glittering opals. As she creaked forward towards the glass, she experienced a mingling of disappointment and unsurprise at the person staring back. Her exhaustion was marked. Her shoulders sagged and her cheeks were gaunt and colorless. Her thick golden hair was mussed from tossing, and her emerald eyes were joyless and shrouded with dark circles. Her jaw was clenched tight and lips thin in agitation.
Another, she sighed.
The dreams came frequently now—almost nightly. But she was never given the same scene twice. Each was a fresh horror. The villain’s face fluctuated like the phases of the moons—different in appearance, yet undoubtedly the same. It puzzled her, for although the skin and features waxed and waned, the eyes never changed. They were sinkholes of evil.
Is this real? Is it just here in Veronia or across Massada? How could it possibly be?
The soil might as well be dead beneath her toes for all the response she received.
She walked the cool floors to the next room, grateful they made no groan under her load. Brenol knew her nights were troubled, but she had evaded his probing glances and questions with idiotic persistence. So many times she had parted her lips to speak to him, to finally break the dam of long-held secrets, but each time her voice had failed her. And his pained eyes affirmed his knowledge of her suppression.
Colette shook her head as if to dispel the demons. “You are being mindless, lunitata. Has this babe made you lose your wits?”
Her voice had been quiet, but the silence of the house magnified her words.
Enough.
She settled herself to the desk and placed ink to paper.
There’s only one way to know...
~~~~
Brenol rose, sleep still heavy in his veins. He was surprised he had slept this late, even at the close of harvest. He stretched and with furrowed brow wandered to the other room in search of his soumme. He was not worried for her safety, but other concerns had been sprouting over the last several moons. Colette woke regularly with hooded eyes and limbs as cold as the dreams that chased her. She insisted upon silence, but every word unspoken had left her more strained.
He did not think it could be Jerem that still haunted her. And when he named the old ghost to her with the hopes of drawing out the truth, reticence had prevailed. So Brenol was left to guess and brood.
Brenol craned his neck around in a cursory glance. The room was empty, and a sigh began to form on his lips, but then he stopped and found his face instead quirking up into a smile; she had been here not long ago. He entered fully and brushed his hand lovingly atop the smooth wooden desk resting against the wall. He had crafted it for her last season, and her pleasure had been evident in the burst of light from her glowing face. His own features relaxed, and he rested his hand upon the chair’s back. The seat had been pushed aside for her belly to evacuate with greater ease, and the habitual pen clippings lay in a neat pile beside a thin stack of paper.
Not long at all, he thought. She had not written her mother in some time, and he hoped this was nothing other.
Brenol strode out the back doorway, his body contracting in the cold, but smiled faintly as he spied his soumme. He hugged his arms and breathed white as he shuffled out toward her. Colette sat on a rock facing away from him, eyes toward the dawn, with the morning light encompassing her in its amber curtain. Her once-dark hair was now the shade of golden wheat, for the lunitata grow blond from conception until their birthing. It sparkled like moving waters despite her motionless frame.
I cannot say which shade I love more.
In these moments, he did not loathe living in Veronia with its closed, limp eye and did not regret living without the conversation of a terrisdan. In these moments, there was Colette and there was love, and that was enough. It was the other moments that stung.
“Col?” he called. His voice sounded thin in the frigid air.
At her name, she arched her neck sideways, and Brenol perceived the strain in the emerald eyes. Her face was stretched thin across her cheeks in a troubled expression. She was disturbed to her core.
Brenol swept the distance between them quickly and kneeled before her seated figure. His knees soaked up the morning condensation, but he gave little notice. His hands slid to rest on her thighs, and he gazed at her with tender concern. “Col, what is it? Please, tell me... You can’t carry it alone anymore.”
She shook her head, but still spoke. “I can’t say what I don’t know.”
“Please. We can’t go on like this... Is it the growing winter? The icing?”
The wind rustled around them as if in agreement, but Colette did not respond—not even to shiver against the frigid morning.
Finally, she swallowed. Her eyelids closed as she leaned in to her soumme’s ear. She whispered almost inaudibly, “There’s a killer in Massada.”
Brenol’s pulse lurched forward like a wheelbarrow thrown up by a divot in the soil. He could barely resist the impulse to tighten his arms around her and their child. “How do you know?”
Again she shook her head, attempting to quiet his booming voice jumping across the meadow, and whispered, “Veronia knows... Or at least I think it’s Veronia.” Her eyes clouded, and she allowed her gaze to drop upon the hard, frosted soil.
Brenol’s stomach turned to stone. Colette’s grief for Veronia had been bitter, but he had never thought it would sour her mind—yet what she said could never be. Veronia was more dead than alive, empty of its pumping vivacity and power. The antidote from the maralane had saved it from total demise, but it had drunk too much poison to fully recover the vitality it had shown before Jerem.
He pulled back to gaze into her eyes, expecting confusion or derangement, but they met his with the clear intelligence they always had—and a touch of defiance.
Brenol sighed. “Ok, tell me,” he said.
“My dreams...”
“The nightmares you keep having?”
“Yes.”
“What does Veronia say?” Brenol asked warily.
“No. Not like that.” She shook her head. “Veronia doesn’t talk. I see him. The killer. Veronia—I think it’s Veronia—shows me.”
“And how do you know he’s real? What does he look like?”
Colette’s face narrowed and she snapped curtly, “Don’t doubt me from the beginning. I need your help, not skepticism.”
It was an effective slap, and Brenol realized his mistake immediately. She was strained and needed his support. Disbelief ragged his gut, but he nevertheless worked to be conciliatory. “Ok, love. Tell me. I’m sorry.”
Colette dipped her head in the Massadan gesture of acceptance, yet it was more reflex than thought. Her eyes pinched with anxiety, and she craned her neck forward to whisper in ear. Her soft lips touched the cool flesh of his lobes as she spoke. “He changes nearly every time. Hair, height, skin, gender—it fluctuates. But Bren,” Colette pulled her face back to meet his gaze with a piercing severity, “he is the same. His eyes never change.”
“His eyes? What do they look like?”
“Black—darker than a juile’s. Evil. Stony. The look, though, is the marker. He...he loves to bring pain.”
Something in the description stirred an unease in him, like the faint vestiges of a nightmare recalled from childhood. “What does he do?”
“Kills, tortures, confuses.”
“Confuses?” he asked.
“The first one I ever had—there was a small girl... She thought he was her da... He tortured her mother as she screamed his name. And laughed.”
Brenol cringed at the repugnant image. “Why?”
“I don’t know... He seems to be after something. He’s always searching, asking, hounding.”
“For what?”
“I-I don’t know,” Colette whispered, but her lips twitched involuntarily.
“What is it?”
“It just can’t be. It doesn’t make sense, Bren.”
Brenol squeezed her hand. “Go on, soumme. I’m here.”
Her words floated out like a breeze, turning louder than she had intended. “Heart Render.”
Immediately, she wished them back into the silence of her mind, for all sounds of the day had ceased with their entrance. The sun suddenly glared brighter, and the two squinted in her starkly bright light. Colette wrapped both pale arms around herself in a fearful embrace.
Brenol’s eyebrows furrowed. “The legend?”
She nodded in the slightest of movements, and a strand of gold graced her smooth cheek. The hard lines of angst on her face did not detract from her loveliness.
“Yes, the legend,” she breathed.
Brenol knew the story. Long ago, still in the terrisdans’ youth, tournaments had been held in the lugazzi as a way to showcase the skills of the varying peoples. Carpentry, architecture, painting, metal working, sculpture, dance, athletics, stitchery, inventions, and more; the list was extensive. The competitions were called the Elitia of Massada. They were an immense success and enjoyed by all—until they were unanimously disbanded after the sixth orbit’s events.
In that last tournament, a man named Garth had overwhelmed the people in the enchanted objects arena. He had brought choice pieces—all battle themed. Swords, a double-headed ax, silver-plated chest armor. His greatest prize was Dancer, a curved blade of white with a scarlet hilt and rubied pommel. It had been forged with carctz, the newly discovered metal of Bergin, and all who saw it marveled. The blade flowed in his hands like a ribbon, graceful and rolling. Lightning rippled out with each swift swipe. Dancer was indeed beautiful to behold.
Previously, the Elitia for enchantment had been merely a source of entertainment, or an attempt at furthering an object’s utility. It had been considered trivial by most. Cookware that whistled when its contents began to burn, sculptured animals exploding into fireworks, deceptively absorbent towels, bags with hidden pockets. Garth, whether intentionally or not, turned the practice on its head when he tromped into the arena. He did not enter Dancer into any competition, but he drew eyes with his robust and intriguing calls, boasting of his accomplishment.
The enchanter claimed to have threaded spells into Dancer as simply as kneading flour into dough, and hearts trembled when he announced his work: The blade could slice through material and immaterial. Dancer, he declared, could slice souls.
Garth seemed not to perceive the danger, blinded as he was by the glory of his creation. When confronted privately, the man turned sour. He vehemently refused to melt down the blade or, more crucially, to dissolve its magic. No one forced an intervention, praying that the situation was not as grave as they imagined. But barely a season elapsed before the people of Massada saw the truth—it was far worse.
Garth owned a shed on his homestead where he housed many of his weapons, Dancer being one. He kept the little building secured, but the infamous blade had piqued interest across the land, and it only was a matter of time before some hand reached out for it.
One day, in the last breath of dusk, his son, belting a mere fourteen orbits to his girth, was retiring to the house from his evening chores when a flicker of light caught his attention. It came from the woods not ten strides from his father’s shed. He stole through the trees until he was almost upon two dark figures. They stood over a stash of the best pieces his father owned, venomously whispering about who would carry what. The reflection of the fading sun upon the metal had been what had attracted his eye.
The boy, although red-faced and indignant, owned enough sense to seek assistance, but as he turned to leave, he encountered the third thief. Whether they intended evil or jest, it was never discovered, but they sliced the poor boy’s finger with the white blade. What would have been a trifling nick from any other weapon was unimaginably severe sliding from this sword. The group fled the scene at the youth’s piercing shrieks. The weapon was abandoned in the chaos of escape and discovered later.
The youth howled inconsolably night and day until, within a septspan, he welcomed death. It seemed Garth had accomplished what he had claimed to have. The boy had been driven mad by the slashing of his soul.
A band of men, learning of the tale, joined together to again request the destruction of Dancer. Garth adamantly refused relinquishment, but in the night the boy’s mother brought the weapon to them. She stared at the men with hollow eyes in the campfire light, and each felt fear lodge in his spine when she spoke in an empty voice. “He’s forged Dancer to melt only under his own hands... You’ll not be able to break it down. Hide it where none will go. Forever.”
She returned home with slow steps, and none knew what became of her after.
The men all swore gortei, flew to the moon—Veri—and hid the white blade upon her white face. They returned to Massada and renamed the weapon Heart Render. It was the sword that should never have been. Their oaths extended to utter discretion, and so while the tale rippled out into every corner of the land, they themselves remained silent.
The central polina, for lack of knowing what to do, banned further enchantments, arguing that the art wielded too great a power. The magic and remarkable skill of Garth was forever after shadowed by his failure and ultimate tragedy. The tale was whispered at every campfire and under the breath of nursemaids. All knew that the path to Veri was now guarded. Even Garth’s ghosted young boy stood as a sentinel, watching to prevent any from snatching the blade back for evil designs.
“This man wants the hidden sword?” Brenol finally asked.
“I-I... Yes.”
He breathed in deeply and considered everything. His mind slid back to that day in the soladrome, when he had sensed the impending doom of some undefined and great evil. He had later assumed—no, hoped—that Jerem’s poison had been this evil, and attempted to forget Pearl’s unused whistle. The little silver instrument had been stashed away in a trunk, but it remained a persistent reminder that in all likelihood things were not as settled as they seemed.
These dreams, if true, hinted of a horror too great to defeat.
But my life is here now...with Colette...
Pearl’s words resounded in his mind: Gortei is a forfeit of freedom... Honorable, but truly formidable...
“My love…that is terrifying,” Brenol finally said.
Colette nodded, her eyes echoing the statement.
Brenol stared out at the cold morning. A whisper of the long-forgotten Genesifin seemed to tickle in his ears, but not wishing to return to the book of cruel fate, he refused to let it materialize and pulled his gaze back to Colette.
“We’ll figure it out, love. We will. I’ll protect you.” He drew his arms around her rigid limbs, warming them as much as he could beneath his cool palms.
Colette’s heart thundered as unconscious words tumbled out under the cover of Brenol’s breath. “My cartess,” he muttered. “My cartess.”
~~~~
Arman paged through the assortment of leaves—a smattering of dissimilar papers scrawled upon with black ink. Over a dozen seals rested in the packet, and Arman had already pored over them for many minutes, yet still Igont waited patiently upon his haunches. Knowing the juile, a reply was forthcoming. He stood, shuffled his legs, and snuffed hot air from his wet nostrils. A cloud rose and dissipated before him. Still he waited.
A breath caught slightly in the juile’s invisible throat. It made the wolf’s yellow eyes sharpen; Arman was not prone to revealing emotion unnecessarily. Regardless, he held his silence.
Finally, Arman shuffled the papers together. The wolf’s intense eyes peered fiercely into the void where the juile stood.
“Igont, thank you for finding me. I know not every sealtor is willing to dig through terrisdans for juile. You found me quickly, too. This one is dated just yesterday.”
The wolf bowed his head graciously. “And returns?” His growl rumbled low and hard.
The invisible figure crouched to the earth and whispered in the soft, dark ear, “I cannot leave trail. May I give it to you personally?”
Igont curled his lips back in surprise. This was highly uncustomary, but then again, Arman was rarely conventional. “To where?” he asked. He knew better than to promise a juile, let alone Arman, a favor without understanding the full demands.
“I don’t know. I need to find Dresden the healer. And fast. I want to meet with him.”
“And it cannot be written?” Igont said. His eyes probed the empty space in bewilderment.
A swish of sound suggested the shaking of a head, or perhaps a hand. “No... I have my reasons.”
“What reason do I give him?”
“Perhaps none.”
Igont barked in derision. “I will not drag him to your meeting. And few trust wolves enough to heed my words.”
Arman hesitated in deliberation, but finally spoke. “I must know all he can tell me about the black fever, the icar.”
The dark wolf clenched his teeth; he now wished he had not asked. “And where do I send him, if he’s willing to travel?”
“The lugazzi outside of Brovingbune, in the village of Gare. I’ll be waiting.”
“This is no small favor, Arman.”
“You do not need to remind me.”
The wolf paused, considering. His expression was menacing. “It is that dire?”
“I would not ask it of you otherwise.”
He snorted. “Humans, juile--they all have peculiar ideas of what’s important.”
Arman stood abruptly, robes swishing in terrifying softness. Igont’s fur raised upon his neck as he sensed—and smelled—the looming figure filling the area.
“If you consider your gortei important, you might not question me like I am sending you to deliver biscuits. I grow weary of your scrutiny.” He strode from the creature with quick steps, his pedasse barely traceable in the abandoned soil.
Igont issued a vexed bark. “Bounty forgotten! Repay your debts, Arman.” A deep rumble echoed in the lupine throat until the juile’s scent had secreted away with the wind.
Juile, he thought distastefully. But he threw his body hard into a leap, speeding toward Selenia. If the healer was not currently at Limbartina, at least there his whereabouts would be known.
The wolf’s paws soared with an urgency that his soul had immediately felt with Arman’s request, despite his displayed skepticism. Determination coursed as he gathered speed and his rippling muscles found their powerful stride. This was no easy task, but he would make it appear as such.
I will outrun the very wind.
As his legs surged beneath him, unsettling thoughts were at the forefront of his mind.
How does Arman know I’ve made the oath of gortei?
And why must he learn of the black fever?
How the spirit loathed that rank scent. It caused its rushing rage to boil into greater brutality.
She disgusts me. They all do.
Yet still, the spirit had nowhere else to go. The world had swallowed it in all its concreteness and now it must live out its existence here in the baseness of the tangible.
I will make them regret trapping me here, it thought. I will turn their world into flames and misery.
“Tell me where the sword is,” the spirit demanded again.
“I cannot,” Rashel finally breathed. Her auburn hair clung damply to her cheeks and neck. A few strands lingered in her mouth. Her weary body lay supine and mangled. Crimson drenched her clothing.
“Cannot? Or will not?”
Her pupils tightened in fear, but her voice echoed out defiantly. “Is there a difference?”
“Is there a difference between your pain and your daughter’s?” he asked coldly.
Her mouth twitched.
Yes, that is your weakness, isn’t it? the spirit thought.
“It changes nothing,” she replied faintly, but her face sagged as if all her bones had shrunk at the thought.
She rolled her head heavily a few digits to gaze across at her daughter, Claera. She was just three orbits old. The child could not comprehend what was happening—or perhaps she could all too well. She huddled in the corner, whimpering with cheeks streaming. Claera’s tinny voice was racked with heaving sobs as she wailed over and over, “Mama, mama, mama...”
Claera locked eyes with Rashel, and the child nearly found a moment of consolation, but she quickly recoiled in confusion as a warm stream splashed across her face.
He was urinating on her.
The child wept and sought to avoid the putrid mess, but her uncoordinated limbs and hysteria coupled with his previous blows and kicks had certainly not improved her capabilities.
“Dadda! Stop!” she cried.
Rashel feebly held up her hand in reassurance. “That isn’t Da, sweetie.”
He smiled cloyingly. “Yes I am. I am your Da. Your mama is lying to you.”
Rashel shuddered and sank into the floorboards. “Just be done with it.”
“I will be done once you finally choose to help me.” His dark eyes bore with loathing into Rashel. Even after all the physical pain, she still cringed at the mere glance.
“I will not help you. I will not. Be done with it,” she repeated.
As morning approached, the wailing from the child pounded through his eardrums. He suddenly sickened of the entire enterprise, and his frustration seized him with hotter fury. His fists quivered and knuckles hued white.
“I will let you watch while I tear her apart like a leaf,” he hissed venomously.
She choked on her sobs but still spoke the bold words. “I will tell you nothing. Be done with it.”
~~~~
Colette woke with a start, jolting Brenol from his own world of dreams.
“You ok, Col?”
“Yes,” she replied in the dark, but her jagged breath betrayed the truth.
“What’re you worried ’bout?” he asked. His speech was slurred with sleep, but soon his mind began to stir.
He rolled over and slid his hand across her belly. It was smooth and beginning to bulge. His fingertips lingered, hoping for a movement from the growing babe. Although the skin remained placid, a warmth filled his chest: My child. The one we never thought possible. He wondered if the awe over this miracle would ever fade into accepted normalcy. He prayed it would not.
“I-I...”
“It’s ok. I’m awake now.”
“I just don’t know. It was a terrible dream.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
She sighed. “Not really.”
Brenol drew her close and enveloped her in his arms. She could feel his heart beating sturdily and his radiating heat seeping comfortingly into her skin. “You don’t need to worry. I’m right here. Jerem’s gone,” he mumbled sleepily.
Within seconds his breathing slowed and his limbs relaxed in heaviness.
It’s not Jerem I fear, she thought, shuddering despite the warmth of the bed and his body draped across hers.
She longed to brush it aside as a dream, but her nurest instincts recognized the strange flavor of intuit—even if it had been ages since she had last tasted it. There was a truth here whether she acknowledged it or not. The soil of Massada was whispering, but to what purpose she could not guess.
Colette reluctantly explored the images, and again the dark eyes of her dreams bore into her, and her spine tingled in disquiet. So dark. The eyes are so dark. Darker even than a juile’s. She bit her lower lip in concentration—and repulsion—but could not discern meaning from the hellish scene.
What are you saying to me, Veronia?
She cringed as she met silence. It did not matter that there had been only silence for seasons and seasons; it hurt as though this were the first time.
Why can’t you just let it go? Let Veronia be? she asked herself, furious again that the childish hope within refused to die. A tear trickled sideways across the lunitata’s face. She swept it away angrily. How she wearied of this unending expectation, this firm belief that Veronia was not lost and would one day awaken. It only kept her agony fresh, her hunger alive.
To be one with a broken and void entity was wrenching. Veronia was alive, but a sigh to the booming thunder it once had been. The poison of Jerem had wiped away communication, power, personality. The healing hos had done miraculous work across Massada, but not enough. Veronia was comatose, fragmented. And would never again be what it was. Never.
Yet you’re speaking to me. What are you saying?
And why now?
Colette exhaled, realizing how tense her entire body had become. Every muscle was strained and aching.
Perhaps Bren’s right. There can never be good in the nurest connection.
Calm, Colette. Calm.
The lunitata forced her lungs into long, easy breaths. The subdued snoring of the man beside her offered a gentle comfort, and her face slowly eased from its hard creases. She sought to match his rhythmic inhalations and closed her eyes as their breathing unified. The dream dissipated in the serenity of the moment, and she gently berated herself for the histrionics—all was well, or at least would be in time. One by one, she directed her neck, limbs, back, and jaw to relax, and she experienced the soft surrender as her body sank in submission.
But as she approached the sweet precipice of sleep, the evil orbs flared alive and glared at her again in vivid clarity behind her closed lids. She gasped, her entire body stiffening in rigid terror. Colette’s hands trembled as she raised them to shield her blanched face, yet the image was seared in her mind.
He wants to hurt me.
He wants to hurt everyone.
Brenol stirred, and a bizarre impulse to hide overcame her. She felt like a child—afraid to whisper the dark things of the dream world lest they stir alive and rush in to snatch away her life with the speed of a spark: present in one moment, gone the next. Colette did not think, she merely succumbed to the insane sentiment to conceal herself. She exaggerated her breathing and willed her body into limpness. Brenol—still half-drunk with sleep—shifted, wrapped his fallen arm tenderly around her, and returned to his repose. Colette waited for his deep breaths to even and then circled her arms protectively around her belly.
Three watch over our child. Our miracle.
She closed her eyes again. The eyes were now but a memory, yet still she cradled her stomach as though they could see the vulnerable creature inside. Her lips quivered, but she eventually forced even them to a death-like still as she feigned sleep.
~~~~
After several moons, Colette no longer responded with visceral intensity to the nightmares. Her eyes opened with a pained agony, and at times her body was drenched in a feverish sweat, but rarely did she cry out or thrash. But it did not mean she had grown accustomed to their foul flavor.
She inhaled softly and gently brushed Brenol’s arm from her side. It landed heavily upon the blankets, but he did not stir. She lumbered her awkward body sideways until she could slide to her knees and labor up to a stand. Her swollen feet elicited a hushed creak from the floorboards, but Brenol slept on soundly. The child within was eerily still, as though it alone knew the gravity of her experience.
In the main room, Colette paused. Upon the wall rested a looking glass—a gift from her mother on the day she vowed soumme. It was an elegant square, about the breadth of two hands, edged with turquoise mosaic tiles and glittering opals. As she creaked forward towards the glass, she experienced a mingling of disappointment and unsurprise at the person staring back. Her exhaustion was marked. Her shoulders sagged and her cheeks were gaunt and colorless. Her thick golden hair was mussed from tossing, and her emerald eyes were joyless and shrouded with dark circles. Her jaw was clenched tight and lips thin in agitation.
Another, she sighed.
The dreams came frequently now—almost nightly. But she was never given the same scene twice. Each was a fresh horror. The villain’s face fluctuated like the phases of the moons—different in appearance, yet undoubtedly the same. It puzzled her, for although the skin and features waxed and waned, the eyes never changed. They were sinkholes of evil.
Is this real? Is it just here in Veronia or across Massada? How could it possibly be?
The soil might as well be dead beneath her toes for all the response she received.
She walked the cool floors to the next room, grateful they made no groan under her load. Brenol knew her nights were troubled, but she had evaded his probing glances and questions with idiotic persistence. So many times she had parted her lips to speak to him, to finally break the dam of long-held secrets, but each time her voice had failed her. And his pained eyes affirmed his knowledge of her suppression.
Colette shook her head as if to dispel the demons. “You are being mindless, lunitata. Has this babe made you lose your wits?”
Her voice had been quiet, but the silence of the house magnified her words.
Enough.
She settled herself to the desk and placed ink to paper.
There’s only one way to know...
~~~~
Brenol rose, sleep still heavy in his veins. He was surprised he had slept this late, even at the close of harvest. He stretched and with furrowed brow wandered to the other room in search of his soumme. He was not worried for her safety, but other concerns had been sprouting over the last several moons. Colette woke regularly with hooded eyes and limbs as cold as the dreams that chased her. She insisted upon silence, but every word unspoken had left her more strained.
He did not think it could be Jerem that still haunted her. And when he named the old ghost to her with the hopes of drawing out the truth, reticence had prevailed. So Brenol was left to guess and brood.
Brenol craned his neck around in a cursory glance. The room was empty, and a sigh began to form on his lips, but then he stopped and found his face instead quirking up into a smile; she had been here not long ago. He entered fully and brushed his hand lovingly atop the smooth wooden desk resting against the wall. He had crafted it for her last season, and her pleasure had been evident in the burst of light from her glowing face. His own features relaxed, and he rested his hand upon the chair’s back. The seat had been pushed aside for her belly to evacuate with greater ease, and the habitual pen clippings lay in a neat pile beside a thin stack of paper.
Not long at all, he thought. She had not written her mother in some time, and he hoped this was nothing other.
Brenol strode out the back doorway, his body contracting in the cold, but smiled faintly as he spied his soumme. He hugged his arms and breathed white as he shuffled out toward her. Colette sat on a rock facing away from him, eyes toward the dawn, with the morning light encompassing her in its amber curtain. Her once-dark hair was now the shade of golden wheat, for the lunitata grow blond from conception until their birthing. It sparkled like moving waters despite her motionless frame.
I cannot say which shade I love more.
In these moments, he did not loathe living in Veronia with its closed, limp eye and did not regret living without the conversation of a terrisdan. In these moments, there was Colette and there was love, and that was enough. It was the other moments that stung.
“Col?” he called. His voice sounded thin in the frigid air.
At her name, she arched her neck sideways, and Brenol perceived the strain in the emerald eyes. Her face was stretched thin across her cheeks in a troubled expression. She was disturbed to her core.
Brenol swept the distance between them quickly and kneeled before her seated figure. His knees soaked up the morning condensation, but he gave little notice. His hands slid to rest on her thighs, and he gazed at her with tender concern. “Col, what is it? Please, tell me... You can’t carry it alone anymore.”
She shook her head, but still spoke. “I can’t say what I don’t know.”
“Please. We can’t go on like this... Is it the growing winter? The icing?”
The wind rustled around them as if in agreement, but Colette did not respond—not even to shiver against the frigid morning.
Finally, she swallowed. Her eyelids closed as she leaned in to her soumme’s ear. She whispered almost inaudibly, “There’s a killer in Massada.”
Brenol’s pulse lurched forward like a wheelbarrow thrown up by a divot in the soil. He could barely resist the impulse to tighten his arms around her and their child. “How do you know?”
Again she shook her head, attempting to quiet his booming voice jumping across the meadow, and whispered, “Veronia knows... Or at least I think it’s Veronia.” Her eyes clouded, and she allowed her gaze to drop upon the hard, frosted soil.
Brenol’s stomach turned to stone. Colette’s grief for Veronia had been bitter, but he had never thought it would sour her mind—yet what she said could never be. Veronia was more dead than alive, empty of its pumping vivacity and power. The antidote from the maralane had saved it from total demise, but it had drunk too much poison to fully recover the vitality it had shown before Jerem.
He pulled back to gaze into her eyes, expecting confusion or derangement, but they met his with the clear intelligence they always had—and a touch of defiance.
Brenol sighed. “Ok, tell me,” he said.
“My dreams...”
“The nightmares you keep having?”
“Yes.”
“What does Veronia say?” Brenol asked warily.
“No. Not like that.” She shook her head. “Veronia doesn’t talk. I see him. The killer. Veronia—I think it’s Veronia—shows me.”
“And how do you know he’s real? What does he look like?”
Colette’s face narrowed and she snapped curtly, “Don’t doubt me from the beginning. I need your help, not skepticism.”
It was an effective slap, and Brenol realized his mistake immediately. She was strained and needed his support. Disbelief ragged his gut, but he nevertheless worked to be conciliatory. “Ok, love. Tell me. I’m sorry.”
Colette dipped her head in the Massadan gesture of acceptance, yet it was more reflex than thought. Her eyes pinched with anxiety, and she craned her neck forward to whisper in ear. Her soft lips touched the cool flesh of his lobes as she spoke. “He changes nearly every time. Hair, height, skin, gender—it fluctuates. But Bren,” Colette pulled her face back to meet his gaze with a piercing severity, “he is the same. His eyes never change.”
“His eyes? What do they look like?”
“Black—darker than a juile’s. Evil. Stony. The look, though, is the marker. He...he loves to bring pain.”
Something in the description stirred an unease in him, like the faint vestiges of a nightmare recalled from childhood. “What does he do?”
“Kills, tortures, confuses.”
“Confuses?” he asked.
“The first one I ever had—there was a small girl... She thought he was her da... He tortured her mother as she screamed his name. And laughed.”
Brenol cringed at the repugnant image. “Why?”
“I don’t know... He seems to be after something. He’s always searching, asking, hounding.”
“For what?”
“I-I don’t know,” Colette whispered, but her lips twitched involuntarily.
“What is it?”
“It just can’t be. It doesn’t make sense, Bren.”
Brenol squeezed her hand. “Go on, soumme. I’m here.”
Her words floated out like a breeze, turning louder than she had intended. “Heart Render.”
Immediately, she wished them back into the silence of her mind, for all sounds of the day had ceased with their entrance. The sun suddenly glared brighter, and the two squinted in her starkly bright light. Colette wrapped both pale arms around herself in a fearful embrace.
Brenol’s eyebrows furrowed. “The legend?”
She nodded in the slightest of movements, and a strand of gold graced her smooth cheek. The hard lines of angst on her face did not detract from her loveliness.
“Yes, the legend,” she breathed.
Brenol knew the story. Long ago, still in the terrisdans’ youth, tournaments had been held in the lugazzi as a way to showcase the skills of the varying peoples. Carpentry, architecture, painting, metal working, sculpture, dance, athletics, stitchery, inventions, and more; the list was extensive. The competitions were called the Elitia of Massada. They were an immense success and enjoyed by all—until they were unanimously disbanded after the sixth orbit’s events.
In that last tournament, a man named Garth had overwhelmed the people in the enchanted objects arena. He had brought choice pieces—all battle themed. Swords, a double-headed ax, silver-plated chest armor. His greatest prize was Dancer, a curved blade of white with a scarlet hilt and rubied pommel. It had been forged with carctz, the newly discovered metal of Bergin, and all who saw it marveled. The blade flowed in his hands like a ribbon, graceful and rolling. Lightning rippled out with each swift swipe. Dancer was indeed beautiful to behold.
Previously, the Elitia for enchantment had been merely a source of entertainment, or an attempt at furthering an object’s utility. It had been considered trivial by most. Cookware that whistled when its contents began to burn, sculptured animals exploding into fireworks, deceptively absorbent towels, bags with hidden pockets. Garth, whether intentionally or not, turned the practice on its head when he tromped into the arena. He did not enter Dancer into any competition, but he drew eyes with his robust and intriguing calls, boasting of his accomplishment.
The enchanter claimed to have threaded spells into Dancer as simply as kneading flour into dough, and hearts trembled when he announced his work: The blade could slice through material and immaterial. Dancer, he declared, could slice souls.
Garth seemed not to perceive the danger, blinded as he was by the glory of his creation. When confronted privately, the man turned sour. He vehemently refused to melt down the blade or, more crucially, to dissolve its magic. No one forced an intervention, praying that the situation was not as grave as they imagined. But barely a season elapsed before the people of Massada saw the truth—it was far worse.
Garth owned a shed on his homestead where he housed many of his weapons, Dancer being one. He kept the little building secured, but the infamous blade had piqued interest across the land, and it only was a matter of time before some hand reached out for it.
One day, in the last breath of dusk, his son, belting a mere fourteen orbits to his girth, was retiring to the house from his evening chores when a flicker of light caught his attention. It came from the woods not ten strides from his father’s shed. He stole through the trees until he was almost upon two dark figures. They stood over a stash of the best pieces his father owned, venomously whispering about who would carry what. The reflection of the fading sun upon the metal had been what had attracted his eye.
The boy, although red-faced and indignant, owned enough sense to seek assistance, but as he turned to leave, he encountered the third thief. Whether they intended evil or jest, it was never discovered, but they sliced the poor boy’s finger with the white blade. What would have been a trifling nick from any other weapon was unimaginably severe sliding from this sword. The group fled the scene at the youth’s piercing shrieks. The weapon was abandoned in the chaos of escape and discovered later.
The youth howled inconsolably night and day until, within a septspan, he welcomed death. It seemed Garth had accomplished what he had claimed to have. The boy had been driven mad by the slashing of his soul.
A band of men, learning of the tale, joined together to again request the destruction of Dancer. Garth adamantly refused relinquishment, but in the night the boy’s mother brought the weapon to them. She stared at the men with hollow eyes in the campfire light, and each felt fear lodge in his spine when she spoke in an empty voice. “He’s forged Dancer to melt only under his own hands... You’ll not be able to break it down. Hide it where none will go. Forever.”
She returned home with slow steps, and none knew what became of her after.
The men all swore gortei, flew to the moon—Veri—and hid the white blade upon her white face. They returned to Massada and renamed the weapon Heart Render. It was the sword that should never have been. Their oaths extended to utter discretion, and so while the tale rippled out into every corner of the land, they themselves remained silent.
The central polina, for lack of knowing what to do, banned further enchantments, arguing that the art wielded too great a power. The magic and remarkable skill of Garth was forever after shadowed by his failure and ultimate tragedy. The tale was whispered at every campfire and under the breath of nursemaids. All knew that the path to Veri was now guarded. Even Garth’s ghosted young boy stood as a sentinel, watching to prevent any from snatching the blade back for evil designs.
“This man wants the hidden sword?” Brenol finally asked.
“I-I... Yes.”
He breathed in deeply and considered everything. His mind slid back to that day in the soladrome, when he had sensed the impending doom of some undefined and great evil. He had later assumed—no, hoped—that Jerem’s poison had been this evil, and attempted to forget Pearl’s unused whistle. The little silver instrument had been stashed away in a trunk, but it remained a persistent reminder that in all likelihood things were not as settled as they seemed.
These dreams, if true, hinted of a horror too great to defeat.
But my life is here now...with Colette...
Pearl’s words resounded in his mind: Gortei is a forfeit of freedom... Honorable, but truly formidable...
“My love…that is terrifying,” Brenol finally said.
Colette nodded, her eyes echoing the statement.
Brenol stared out at the cold morning. A whisper of the long-forgotten Genesifin seemed to tickle in his ears, but not wishing to return to the book of cruel fate, he refused to let it materialize and pulled his gaze back to Colette.
“We’ll figure it out, love. We will. I’ll protect you.” He drew his arms around her rigid limbs, warming them as much as he could beneath his cool palms.
Colette’s heart thundered as unconscious words tumbled out under the cover of Brenol’s breath. “My cartess,” he muttered. “My cartess.”
~~~~
Arman paged through the assortment of leaves—a smattering of dissimilar papers scrawled upon with black ink. Over a dozen seals rested in the packet, and Arman had already pored over them for many minutes, yet still Igont waited patiently upon his haunches. Knowing the juile, a reply was forthcoming. He stood, shuffled his legs, and snuffed hot air from his wet nostrils. A cloud rose and dissipated before him. Still he waited.
A breath caught slightly in the juile’s invisible throat. It made the wolf’s yellow eyes sharpen; Arman was not prone to revealing emotion unnecessarily. Regardless, he held his silence.
Finally, Arman shuffled the papers together. The wolf’s intense eyes peered fiercely into the void where the juile stood.
“Igont, thank you for finding me. I know not every sealtor is willing to dig through terrisdans for juile. You found me quickly, too. This one is dated just yesterday.”
The wolf bowed his head graciously. “And returns?” His growl rumbled low and hard.
The invisible figure crouched to the earth and whispered in the soft, dark ear, “I cannot leave trail. May I give it to you personally?”
Igont curled his lips back in surprise. This was highly uncustomary, but then again, Arman was rarely conventional. “To where?” he asked. He knew better than to promise a juile, let alone Arman, a favor without understanding the full demands.
“I don’t know. I need to find Dresden the healer. And fast. I want to meet with him.”
“And it cannot be written?” Igont said. His eyes probed the empty space in bewilderment.
A swish of sound suggested the shaking of a head, or perhaps a hand. “No... I have my reasons.”
“What reason do I give him?”
“Perhaps none.”
Igont barked in derision. “I will not drag him to your meeting. And few trust wolves enough to heed my words.”
Arman hesitated in deliberation, but finally spoke. “I must know all he can tell me about the black fever, the icar.”
The dark wolf clenched his teeth; he now wished he had not asked. “And where do I send him, if he’s willing to travel?”
“The lugazzi outside of Brovingbune, in the village of Gare. I’ll be waiting.”
“This is no small favor, Arman.”
“You do not need to remind me.”
The wolf paused, considering. His expression was menacing. “It is that dire?”
“I would not ask it of you otherwise.”
He snorted. “Humans, juile--they all have peculiar ideas of what’s important.”
Arman stood abruptly, robes swishing in terrifying softness. Igont’s fur raised upon his neck as he sensed—and smelled—the looming figure filling the area.
“If you consider your gortei important, you might not question me like I am sending you to deliver biscuits. I grow weary of your scrutiny.” He strode from the creature with quick steps, his pedasse barely traceable in the abandoned soil.
Igont issued a vexed bark. “Bounty forgotten! Repay your debts, Arman.” A deep rumble echoed in the lupine throat until the juile’s scent had secreted away with the wind.
Juile, he thought distastefully. But he threw his body hard into a leap, speeding toward Selenia. If the healer was not currently at Limbartina, at least there his whereabouts would be known.
The wolf’s paws soared with an urgency that his soul had immediately felt with Arman’s request, despite his displayed skepticism. Determination coursed as he gathered speed and his rippling muscles found their powerful stride. This was no easy task, but he would make it appear as such.
I will outrun the very wind.
As his legs surged beneath him, unsettling thoughts were at the forefront of his mind.
How does Arman know I’ve made the oath of gortei?
And why must he learn of the black fever?
