The Arcana: Shadow Wars, Codex I

III

Unleashed Fury

XXIX

Evil Tidings

In which they discover the enemy’s plans

In all the nations of Rasena Valentis every land was at peace, suffering no further attacks from the giants. Were they encircled in the eye of the storm? To discuss the matter, Lady Nensela brought Edana and Bessa to meet with Ziri a week after the events in Karnassus. They gathered on the Jolly Sylph, a company ship of the Star Dragons; a place where no enemy might overhear their council. Even the slaves served as agents.

Nearly two hundred feet long, the impressive cargo ship included a few luxurious cabins below deck for important guests. In one such cabin Ziri hosted them, with Halie and Leo sitting in. Unlike other cabins, this one was clearly more of a strategy room, emphasized by the long table dominating the center of the room. Viridian-green tiles made up its top, and the tiles themselves were painted with a road map of Rasena Valentis and Anshan.

Fascinated, Bessa circled the table, silently taking note of miniature flags stuck in wax by certain cities. Flags for Red Pointe, Karnassus, the Aerie, and more. Oh, and a flag where Falcon’s Hollow might be in the mid-route between Red Pointe and White Cliff: Places where giants attacked, or where Duke Gagnon’s allies operated. Edana, she observed, lightly traced the roads leading from Kyanopolis to Eitan.

Settled at the head of the table, Lady Nensela reclined in a throne-like armchair. Appropriately enough, the chair’s head was carved with the face and wings of a sphinx. Legends said the chimerical beasts with the heads of women, wings of eagles, and bodies of lions came from Ta-Seti, though they were more famously used in monuments in Athyr-ai. Plated in gold, the chair’s legs and arms were stylized to resemble the sphinxes’ lion limbs.

Below the sphinx’s head, Lady Nensela appeared no less inscrutable as she looked over the group. “Speak to us, Ziri, of my brethren.”

After the attack on her conclave, Lady Nensela took care to not know the safeholds of her fellow prophets. That which she did not know, was that which she could not be made to speak. All the same, she did keep abreast of whether the other prophets were safeguarded; a report she obliged Ziri to give to her regularly.

Not once did the master arcanus sit. Instead he paced up and down, alongside a wall with a tapestry depicting a nymphaeum, a shrine built around a sacred naiad spring. Occasionally, he took a long drink from a fancy glass cage cup. The cup turned red or green according to the angle of light passing through it. Kyane and her swans made up the cutwork of the cage portion.

Still pacing, Ziri informed them that shortly before their rescue mission to Honoria’s, Lord Senet had successfully set a trap for four Red Daggers seeking to abduct him. Further, someone threw a fireball at the estate where Lady Justinia was staying.

“I’ve had them all moved to a safer place,” Ziri assured her. More on the matter he did not say, in accordance with Lady Nensela’s rule. She accepted this claim with a small nod.

“This is the calm before the storm,” she said. “In this matter, let us believe what Honoria told Edana, that our actions have forced the giants to change their plans. Too little do we know of what those plans are. Let us see what we might divine, by examining their actions thus far.”

“On that matter I think I have something,” Edana said, reaching into a leather purse she openly kept slung at her waist, unlike the star silk kibisis she kept hidden beneath her skirts. “Have you seen anything like this, Ziri?” She placed a folded square of parchment on the table, and spread it out so they could all see it.

The men joined Bessa and Lady Nensela at the table, gathering around to stare intently at Edana’s drawing.

In sepia ink Edana had drawn a strange set of portraits, grouped as a hexagon around a central circle Bessa puzzled over. Then her eye caught the morvarc’h inside the portrait in the upper left portion of the hexagon and her heart skipped a beat.

“Isn’t this the fire-breathing horse we saw on the seal at the Rhabdo? The one slain by ‘Dagomarus the Bold’?”

At Edana’s confirmation Ziri narrowed his eyes and said, “The Rhabdo. A legitimate target for an enemy, more so than unarmed farmers the giants have been attacking. But I don’t see a wolf here for the Lyceum.”

“Which underscores their disinterest in engaging with the legions. Their disregard for the elite military school of Rasena Valentis strikes me as both contempt and a threat. They want us to know we are no match for them,” Lady Nensela said.

Waves of trepidation washed over Bessa when she considered what the giants had done to Red Pointe. While the legion officers who graduated from the Lyceum were called the Iron Wolves, they were called so by other men. Flesh-and-blood opponents who fought them with swords and shields of their own. Against lightning and Erebossi what use were either?

However, Edana vigorously shook her head. “Perhaps, especially since we are ‘motes’ to them. Take a look at what’s in this seal: the kraken, the winged tiger, the falling stars, the dragon, and the sphinx. All fearsome in their way. In your vision, didn’t the giants set the sky on fire and shake the ground? Maybe the sky will burn because the giants can call down stars to annihilate us. Like the Night of the Falling Stars, but worse because maybe it will happen for more than three days and nights.”

“Didn’t the Night of the Falling Stars unleash the Third Cataclysm? Oh by the gods, could the giants really cause a fifth Cataclysm?” Bessa visibly shuddered.

“Exactly what I’m getting at,” Edana agreed. “I think this six-around-one seal is meant to be a threat: these are the horrors they will unleash on us. We’ve focused on the Erebossi for obvious reasons, but all of these threats are either right here on our world, or can directly threaten us.”

Bessa tapped the central portrait inside the hexagon, which showed six individual claws arranged in a circle. “And it looks like the Erebossi are accounted for, if you take these claws into consideration.” She paused, and her blood ran cold. “We’re besieged. In the living world, and by the shadow world, we are besieged.”

Without a word Edana clasped Bessa’s shoulder, steadying her as she had done when they were children. In turn Bessa placed her free hand over Edana’s, and tried to keep calm. What were they to do with such enemies surrounding them? Even Leo, the cocky young sorcerer, was staring off into the middle distance. He shuffled over to a table where Ziri’s slaves had set up refreshments.

Then her gaze landed on Halie, who sat serenely on a luxuriant bench in the center of the room. The Sea Lord’s daughter. Proof—by the gods, let it be so!—that the gods had taken notice of their situation and felt compassion for them.

But compassion alone could not be the reason for Halie’s presence. The demigoddess was not precisely suited for the role of a shoulder to cry on, to give pats on the back and make soothing noises. However, before Bessa could formulate her question Ziri spoke up.

“With respect to those flesh-and-blood threats, something is brewing. And it’s not confined to Rasena Valentis. I’ve dispatched people to Lyrcania to investigate certain reports,” he said.

“Lyrcania? Just how widespread is this?” Bessa asked.

On the map, letters scrolled across Anshan’s easternmost border spelled out Ghandar. A vast land made up of several kingdoms, Ghandar was a good eight or nine months away from Kyanopolis by road. Lyrcania, she knew, was still an ocean away from Ghandar, across the Gold Sea.

“The whole of the world is my guess, with Lyrcania involved,” Ziri answered. “Your Grace—Lady Nensela—you thought the dryads were unscathed, but what I’m hearing about Lyrcania suggests otherwise. At this time saying more will be premature. But count it a factor for now.”

“That I will. What of the Fire Lords?”

“Let’s come back to them,” Ziri said. “Right now I’ve been concerned with the Presence, as Cingetissa called it. Or the Interceptor as Her Grace, Halie, calls it. Either name, we have a problem.”

Upon Bessa’s arrival to the meeting she gave Halie a codex of Pelasgian folktales. Intrigued, Halie had retired to the bench and began perusing the tales. With childlike delight she had caressed the spine of the volume, and its parchment pages. At the mention of her name; however, she snapped the codex shut, all business.

“Brace yourself for evil tidings: The night we went after Honoria the Presence moved,” Ziri said. “Previously reports were that the Presence was passive: watching, observing. Hence ‘the Presence.’ Now? A Restorite in my service grew suspicious of an illness in the town where he was visiting. Aristides was trying to talk to the spirits to point him in the right direction, when he saw something. In two beats of his heart, he perceived a malevolent force reaching out to snatch him. He struggled to barely pull back in time. Now he won’t risk talking to the spirits again.”

“But he’s a Restorite. Why does he need the spirits at all?” Edana asked. “How I understood it was that Oathtakers call upon the—Nasiru?—to do what they need to. A Restorite calls upon the Restorer, the corrans call upon the Reaper. Or are you saying he was cut off from the Restorer? Cingestissa said she needed the spirits to scry the keystone, because it was beyond her ken as a reaper. Otherwise, I thought only illusions, enchantments, and shadow powers required assistance from spirits and fellshades...or blood spells for compulsions.”

“Oathtakers need the spirits, too,” Bessa corrected her. “Let’s say someone poisoned you to weaken your heart or something. You feel weak and exhausted, so you go to Papouli—well, someone like him—to make you less lethargic. But you see the problem, right, if Papouli took your symptoms at face value and didn’t look deeper?”

Edana inhaled sharply. “Ah. So the spirits alert him to the root cause? And he was wise, your papouli, so he learned to correlate symptoms with their causes.”

“Papouli said every home or family has a guardian spirit, and those are the ones he called upon. Like Cingetissa did for the keystone; so they aren’t breaking any oaths about Erebossa. Unfortunately, it’s easy for the symptoms of one malady to mimic the symptoms of a different malady. The Great Winter Plague that killed my father acted like that. For the first three days the Plague looked precisely like your standard winter sickness. Only on the fourth day do the blisters show up on the limbs of the victims. And by then…well, Papouli never forgave himself. In his defense, he’d never seen anything like that plague before.”

At this Halie stood up and strode over to the table, joining them at last. “The bold and potent interdiction of the Interceptor has made your sorcerers cry out. To my Father. To my Grandmother. To all of the Nasiru they cry out, and all of them in their turn receive only silence. Or so they think. This strategy I understand: if the sorcerers think they have been abandoned, they will turn to someone who gives them answers. Who gives them back their power. You must beware of new priesthoods arising.”

Bessa thought again about the play she must write. In addition to giants, human traitors and eidolons, she must now add false priests to her list of warnings to dramatize? “New priesthoods. And a new god, no doubt? Do you have a name for this so-called god?”

Glittering golden eyes fastened on to her, and Bessa thought fleetingly of Lady Aelia.

“The name of this false goddess is not yet known to me. However—her followers call her ‘the Greatest One.’ In her service they will do strange and terrible things. Beware.”

Silence. Above their heads, footsteps clumped against the decks. Occasionally, a deck hand’s shout rose above the fray and floated down to them. Outside, waves lapped against the sides of the Jolly Sylph. All looked calm on the sea itself, or so the portholes suggested.

After a while, Edana said what they were thinking. “Someone is reaping the healers from the field of battle. Is Aristides certain this strange illness truly is a plague?”

“For now, the answer is yes,” Ziri said. “Especially as it ties in to the naiads and their springs. Any healer worth his salt has sacred spring water on hand. An amphora’s worth at most. But who has enough for an entire village of sick people, or an entire city? Or legion? Very few, I’d wager, which means a lot of people will make a run for those springs.”

Edana tapped a nymphaeum icon on the map. “Routes to sacred naiad springs would make the victims prime targets for ambushes.”

“Along with whatever other torments the abyssals throw at us,” Ziri agreed.

Shadowed eyes betrayed his lack of sleep. Flecks of white in his auburn sideburns emphasized the gravity of their situation; Bessa was sure he did not have those flecks when she first met him.

The master arcanus said, “There is something else I would wager: when plague victims come to the springs, they will somehow corrupt those springs. According to one, ah, source, the naiads themselves are already under attack. The attack is more subtle than the Red Daggers have shown themselves to be, so I don’t think it’s them.”

“What sort of attack? Who is your source?” Edana asked.

“My grandmother.”

“Your grandmother.”

Ziri shifted his weight a little. “Well. I don’t like to tell people this, but…”

“She’s a naiad,” Lady Nensela said.

Ziri’s mouth scrunched. “How did you know?”

“Oh, Ziri. You did not suppose chance or desperation alone led me to you, did you? My sources informed me of your ability to dive into depths pearl divers would envy. As well, they reported your particular use of water to teleport at will. Add this in with your unusually fast recovery when you’re injured or sick, and only an abominable oaf would fail to draw the logical conclusion concerning you.”

The seer’s impish smile took the sting out of her words; the others laughed.

“Why keep your grandmother a secret?” Bessa asked. “Do the Adamanteans have a taboo about mixing with anyone inhuman?”

“Against naiads, no. In my tribe people practically deify you if they know you’ve got naiad blood. Old women harry you to marry their daughters, and old lords scheme of dynasties: the blood of naiads carries longevity. And other blessings. Let’s just say I have better things to do with mine.”

“Very noble of you, boss,” Leo said. For a brief moment, mischief brightened his face.

Ziri eyed him. Unabashed, Leo poured more wine into Ziri’s cage cup.

Getting back to business Lady Nensela said, “So, if your grandmother senses this, let’s take it as fact and plan accordingly. What does she say is happening to the naiads?”

With the power to lay hands on the sick, itinerant naiads freely healed people they encountered on their travels, or anointed worthy humans into the ranks of the Restorite priesthood. Never were the nymphs compelled to remain close by their sacred springs.

Until now.

For the past year, the naiads sensed a loss of their own powers the further they traveled from their springs. Worse, the springs themselves had weakened. Merely drinking from the spring was sufficient in times past to heal even the worst injuries, including restoring lost limbs.

But for the past several months immersion in the spring was required, and sometimes the naiads were obliged to directly heal the pilgrims themselves. Only on the previous year’s summer solstice, and the days immediately before and after, did the springs behave as they ought to.

“In light of what’s been happening, I don’t think this is a coincidence,” Ziri concluded.

Lady Nensela tented her fingers, shut her eyes, and leaned back against the chair. “So. Thus far, the giants have escalated their attacks. Without Lady Aelia’s Salamandran acid, Red Pointe would have fallen to what amounts to less than a centurion’s band of giants, not even fifty. As Salamandra do not live in large numbers in Rasena Valentis, this may account for why we have no reports of giants in Anshan, where there is said to be a sizeable population of Salamandra.

“Second, from Honoria’s lips we have confirmation that Valentis was meant to fall victim to Escamilla’s infernal stratagems. Thanks to Gagnon we knew to beware of him. Another eidolon, Justin Kellis, is a librarian at the Library of Karnassus. In Athyr-ai, which frightens me so. Thousands of years of knowledge stored in those tomes, written before most people wrote anything. What might he destroy?”

Lady Nensela shuddered, a show of emotion that startled the other humans. Then Bessa thought of Lady Nensela’s library, and how many Dark Ages the seer may have lived through, of the knowledge she had seen destroyed and lost. No wonder that out of the Five, she specifically wished to kill Justin Kellis.

“And Rozvan Lior must not be forgotten,” Halie hissed. “He who made the net that bound me when the Red Daggers captured me. I have a special fate in store for him.”

Halie’s claws, previously retracted to pass for human nails, extended now into formidable sickles. Edana clasped a hand over her mouth but Bessa shrieked, startled and horrified.

“Am I ever so glad you’re on our side,” Leo said after a long moment. He and Ziri stood closest to Halie—in arm’s reach, in fact. Frozen, Ziri held his cup in mid air. Then he slowly nodded in agreement.

“But I am not on your side,” Halie corrected. She retracted her claws, leaving them only a trifle long like a noblewoman’s. “I am here to do the bidding of my Father. It happens we are aligned, but were we not, I would not remain in your company.”

“Um. Still, though.” Leo took a long gulp of wine. “The point is, we don’t need to count you as an enemy. You’re on Team Hero.”

She canted her head at him. “Heroes are what you call the people who fight monsters and protect others from them? So let us be!”

Her childlike glee elicited nervous laughter from the younger humans; Ziri and Lady Nensela eyed her with interest.

“For now I’m still considering that someone is determined to force the gods back to Thuraia,” Lady Nensela said. “What details can you pass to us regarding this Aeternity War, Halie?”

Halie joined the women at the map table. “Your guess concerning the Nasiru worries me. My mother traveled to my father’s domain, not the other way around, but I’m not sure if that’s significant.” She ran her fingers along the blue-green border of the map, which represented the sea. “What is significant is the reason why I was conceived: two years ago, my brothers fought a fierce battle in the depths of the sea.”

Powerful forces from Erebossa had attempted an invasion, Halie said. Eldritch creatures nearly overwhelmed the sea dragons, but the dragons managed to fight them to a standstill. In desperation, they summoned their patriarch—the firstborn of the sea dragons. It was he who drove the invaders back to Erebossa. But he was severely weakened by the battle. Time did not return his strength to him, even two years later.

“Two years ago,” Lady Nensela said quietly. “Below us, in depths unseen.”

An unsettling revelation.

“There’s more,” Ziri said. “Not about the sea battle, but the battle above ground. Return your attention now to Ursinus Naevius Escamilla.”

Edana stiffened. “The Red Daggers killed Amelu because Escamilla sent them.”

“Which I let my legate in Valentis know. Amelu reported to him. My legate put a band together to trap Escamilla, but Escamilla is gone. Officially, the Watch says he deserted his post. Unofficially, I think the eidolon animating him usurped another body. A body currently unknown to us. Beware.”

“Your Grace? Can you sense if a particular fellshade is possessing a body?” Edana turned to Halie.

“Yes, and so I will search out if this Escamilla is still on Thuraia.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Ziri said. “But you can’t be everywhere at once, and it looks like your brothers are hemmed in for the moment. We have to start planning what to do if the sea dragons, the dryads, the naiads, and the sorcerers are taken down. They may be the servants the giants keep referring to, unless they’re talking about the gods. Edana?”

Edana’s expression had caught his attention. After a slight hesitation she said, “For my part, the Nasiru are servants. Not gods, but celestial beings who serve the Speaker in designated capacities.”

Ziri’s eyes flashed. He started to say something, but broke off in surprise when he saw Halie nodding.

“The Nasiru were appointed to serve as celestial guardians for this world, Thuraia,” she said.

“Appointed by whom? The Sower?” Ziri used the Rasena Valentian epithet for the Great Speaker.

“It did not occur to me it could be otherwise, so I did not ask.”

“Discount not the possibility of the Sower,” Lady Nensela warned. “I lived for some time in Eitan.”

“Honoria fled from me when I spoke His Sayings against her,” Edana pointed out. Her eyes became unfocused.

Only Ziri and Leo looked perturbed by the idea, but Ziri rallied and said, “Let’s assume Lady Nensela’s instincts and the giants’ chants are congruent in meaning. Some way or other the giants intend to strike at our pantheon. How does what has happened so far contribute to that goal?”

The question set them all to thinking, and they lapsed into silence again.

Venturing to answer, Bessa said aloud, “Well, one plan they likely changed was attacking Red Pointe. Granted, I don’t pay much attention to this sort of thing, but Red Pointe wasn’t a ‘high-prestige’ target. Destroying it carries no glory; the giants only attacked because Gagnon summoned them to make good his escape. On our way there, Edana thought Gagnon intended to lay his actions at Tarkhana’s feet. Then she found the speech Gagnon wrote, where he did do exactly that. What if Gagnon meant to destroy some place like the Aerie, and painted Tarkhana as complicit or negligent?”

“Yessss,” Ziri drew out the word. “Everyone Tarkhana sent to investigate the giants’ attack on the Cloudwalk village disappeared. This you can lay at Gagnon’s feet; his Red Dagger lackeys acted on his orders. Sowing discontent against Tarkhana, as well as fear for how poorly he might protect everyone from the giants. And Gagnon was supposed to visit another fortress next month. A fortress that happens to be near an aqueduct that supplies water to Valentis.”

Glancing at Lady Nensela Bessa added, “What I can see is how the giants’ actions affect matters politically. What I can’t see is why the gods should directly return to Thuraia over what the giants are doing. Yet Claudius said Gallo expected an end to the prophets.”

“A vexing question,” Lady Nensela agreed. “Speak to us now, Ziri, of the Fire Lords.”

“My legate in Karnassus made inquiries. The Salamandra community there is small, but helpful.” He met Nensela’s eyes and dryly added, “You’ll be shocked to know they advise us to speak to the Fire Lords of Elamis, in Anshan. I’ve dispatched arcana to go there.”

“As you say; though I suspect we will need to journey there ourselves.”

“We cannot open a new front, or travel to the east, with the Four loose behind us. So let’s consider a plan of attack,” Ziri pointed out.

“To that end, I think we have one already,” Lady Nensela said.

Thus she spoke of the plan she made with Bessa and Edana, to have Bessa write a play aimed at the ones they now knew to be the Four. The play would emphasize how to fight the giants and face the eidolons, and alert people to the presence of both in Rasena Valentis. For the rest of the evening they fleshed out the details.

Before the meeting broke up, Ziri took Bessa aside. “Are you ready to do your part in this?”

Hoping the churning in her stomach wasn’t visible on her face she said, “I will not fail.”

For the first time some semblance of youth returned to the spymaster’s features. “No, I don’t think you will. Not after what you’ve done so far.”

“Thank you.” She took a deep breath. In times past she met vital challenges by reminding herself of her lineage: her grandparents defeated the Furi, her father overcame the catoblepus, and her uncle Morivassus destroyed pirate fleets. With their blood in her veins, she did not have it in her to fail, or be found wanting when a trial came.

But now, as Ziri reminded her, she had her own victories to call to remembrance. And in this matter, where the stakes were high, what she must do now was far less dangerous than what she had done before. So, it served her little to waste energy fretting over whether she could handle her task. All that was left was for her to get it done.