The Arcana: Shadow Wars, Codex I

Chapter VI

Letter of Marque

In which the trail begins

A tension settled over the room. They searched quietly, but their calm pushed against a thin veneer. In silence they fanned out, Sheridan taking the bookcases lining the left wall, and Serafina took the cases along the right wall. Alia took the central wall directly across from Junius’s desk, which was in the middle of the room.

In the center of the center shelf, just above eye level, she saw it.

A tall cylinder, fashioned of obsidian, emitted a faint blue glow. Twelve hexagonal rings stacked top to bottom made up the cylinder. Each side of the hexagon featured a glyph subtly carved into it. Undoubtedly this was a puzzle cylinder, designed to keep something stored inside. A fashion amongst sorcerers, and those non-sorcerers with the means to hire artificers to construct them.

And true to form, the cylinder included a deterrent to thieves: a grotesque figure of an eyeless, razor-fanged creature capped the device. Spikes covered the creature’s hide, starting with a pronounced sagittal crest all the way to its tail, which terminated in one enormous flail.

Alia shuddered. In doing so she jerked up her Ellura.

Shrieeeeeek!

The Ellura screamed insistently, and Alia jumped back. Startled, she dropped the wand. It rolled away, stopping only when it hit the cabinet below the fifth shelf.

Serafina and Sheridan rushed over.

“What happened?” Sheridan’s brow furrowed as he stared down at Alia’s wand.

Alia pointed to the cylinder.

Serafina recoiled. “Ugh, that looks like a flayer’s pet. If flayers were the type to have pets, I mean.”

Casual yet determined, Alia forced herself to look away from the device, and focused on Serafina instead. “You weren’t surprised the flayers were sapient. Yet they still eat people. Why is that?”

You don’t fear what you understand. Right?

Supposedly. But Alia found sometimes that the more she understood something, the more she feared it.

“Cannibals eat people, yes?” Serafina asked. “From what the lorekeepers of my people say, the flayers believe if you’re not one of their own, you’re prey. If they can kill you, and you wield no power over them, then you’re dinner. The dryads have power over them and are nigh unkillable, at least for a flayer. But those of us born to men and women—your kind and mine—are easy enough prey, and we wield no particular power over flayers. So, not worthy of personhood in their minds.”

A horrifying insight, suggesting she might require a show of overwhelming power before attempting to negotiate with flayers. Hopefully, she need never deal with them again after this current situation.

Lights of every color insistently flashed on Alia’s Ellura, prompting her to retrieve it. Flashing multicolor lights indicated the wand was locked on to a spell, specifically the one sheathing the cylinder.

“A summoning spell,” Sheridan observed, looking over her shoulder as the light turned copper. The copper glow bounced off the black glass of the cylinder, as though reflecting fire. “You want to guess that if you don’t have the right spell sequence, that thing is going to appear?”

Alia glared up at the obsidian device. Of the glyphs visible from her vantage point, she recognized at least half of them.

“The top ring has the golden eagle, a drakaina, and a gryphon on this side facing us. So, the sun zodiac with the sign of the Huntress, the shadow zodiac with the she-dragon, and one of the paradox beasts,” Sheridan noted. “From this side the bottom ring has the Hound—the last sign in the zodiac, and the signs before it and after it, the moly flower and the shadow wolf. Since the rings have six sides and two of them have zodiac signs, I wonder if this is related somehow to an oraculum?”

“Oraculum?”

“Remember I said I knew people from Rasena Valentis?” he began. When she nodded he continued, “In their house they have this room called an ‘oraculum.’ The room is like a giant walk-in call-globe, except they needed two huge machines. Also the room has six walls, and the zodiac is carved above the walls, along the ceiling.”

“And did they use this thing to communicate?” Alia indicated the hexagon cylinder.

“No. An oraculum works by directing sun or moonbeams onto the zodiac, but you need two signs I think, and you use two machines to direct the beams. When the beams converge a third beam is created, and hits either a mirror or a globe, which are stationed along the walls. Or, sometimes the light hits the scrying pool in the middle of the room.”

“And this hexagon-thing came from Rasena Valentis?”

“The oraculum did. I don’t know about this blasted thing.”

“Any guesses as to what’s inside this?” Serafina jerked her thumb at the cipher. “Awfully cocky of Junius to leave it in plain sight.”

“Would anyone dare to touch a strange artifact in a sorcerer’s house? Without his leave in particular?” Alia stared at the Ellura’s indicator again. Unfortunately, she couldn’t use its spell-breaking abilities to open the cylinder; the lock was not magical. Furthermore, the spell would only activate when someone input the wrong sequence.

She would have to make a dangerous mistake before the Ellura could negate the spell.

If her reflexes were fast enough to initiate the Ellura before the monster appeared.

Would bullets stop the monster? Or was this one of those beasts requiring special weapons to kill? Vile as Junius was, he would not have been above selecting a guardian killable only by a gryphon’s tooth dipped in the blood of a naiad.

“Let’s see what the cipher sages at the station make of this device,” Alia suggested. “If they don’t know how this works, they may put us in touch with the artificers who specialize in making these. I’m not going to risk bringing a monster into this world that I can’t kill.”

If you can’t take responsibility for your problems, don’t cause them.

A lesson she learned early in life; Samara did not tend to rescue Alia from troubles of her own making.

Sheridan and Serafina nodded their agreement with this decree. Serafina, being the tallest, reached for the cylinder. Her fingertips barely brushed the cold glass when a blinding light flashed. Both Alia and Sheridan instantly covered their eyes. However, once the light vanished they found Serafina flat on the floor.

Her eyes were wide, unseeing.

“Serafina!” Alia dropped to her knees beside her. Steeling herself, she pressed two fingertips against Serafina’s neck. The slight rhythm throbbing against her skin cheered her, but failed to make her own pulse stop racing.

“Ironwing!” Sheridan shouted.

Alia looked over to where he was pointing. Her heart leapt into her throat.

A nimbus of blue light radiated above Junius’s desk, exactly across from the hexagon device. Small as a fist, the nimbus nevertheless served as warning to the spell’s intentions.

Slowly she rose to her feet. “Everything you know. Now.”

Sheridan protested, “Shouldn’t we get out of here?” He was already bending down to scoop up Serafina.

“The door, Sheridan.”

Now he saw it. The door they came through was gone. As were the windows. Smooth stones covered the places either egress had been.

Sheridan swore softly. He carried Serafina over to one of the two guest chairs in front of Junius’s desk. Alia strode over to Junius’s desk and gripped his chair, hauling it over to the bookcase. The chair became her step-stool. Now she could see three of the cylinder’s sides.

Right away Alia concluded the cylinder wasn’t exactly analogous to the call globe, or the oraculum Sheridan spoke of. Twelve rows was too few by seven for the convergence cycle, and too many by six for the Seeker’s Alliance.

Alia tamped down firmly on the panic rising in her chest. Inhale, exhale. Long inhale, long exhale. Once more, and a cold calm settled over her. Here her diligence must pay off, for she knew the most minute details about Junius. Everything from the name of his gardener’s dog, to which flowers he gave to one mistress versus the jewels he gave another mistress, depending on his transgressions.

The cylinder would not defeat her, she vowed to herself.

“Sheridan, fetch me the mirror on the desk over there, please.”

A concave mirror made up part of a display on Fellrath’s desk. The mirror’s position suggested Junius had used it to detect anyone coming at him from the window behind his desk.

Sensibly enough, in addition to the mirror Sheridan grabbed the last chair and dragged it over before stepping onto it to stand opposite Alia. He positioned the mirror, allowing her to see the other sides of the cylinder.

At last she had enough information to get an idea of the lock. Each hexagon ring in the cylinder was independent, not related to the next ring. So, the rings may be turned in a specific order. But did she need to start at the top, middle, or bottom? She considered.

On the cursed day when Junius was born the sun was in the Hound, the last sign in the zodiac. Each year began with the spring equinox, when the sun entered the Golden Eagle, the sign of the Huntress.

“Tell me what you see,” Alia said.

Sheridan’s reply confirmed her hunch: the glyphs in the rings of the cylinder focused on the zodiac, the shadow zodiac, legendary beasts, the shadow bestiary, sacred and magical plants, and plants particular to Erebossa.

Light and dark, light and dark, light and dark.

That which was native to the world, and those found within Erebossa. The signs through which the sun passed, and the signs through which the moon sojourned in the heavens. The sun, which held back the darkness. And the moon, which shone in the darkness.

In a cipher, where would Junius begin? Likely with himself, Alia decided. Such a self-centered man would start with himself. But would he start with an accident of birth—the Hound—or with a symbol representing a creed he deliberately chose?

She considered the parts of the bestiary visible to her, given the rings’ current arrangement. Though out of sequence, their pattern was unmistakable. The ring bearing the manticore was stacked directly above the ring bearing the Hound. Junius signed his letters with a manticore sigil.

Of course.

Such a man as Junius would represent himself as a creature notorious for its penchant for devouring people. Every part of that beast was destructive, from its regenerative lion claws, to its arrow-shooting tail. The human head atop the lion body housed a malevolent intellect—a fitting description of Junius’s own head.

Now Alia considered the other top men in Junius’s brotherhood, and she smiled. She mentally calculated the possible arrangements, then made her move.

The bottom row locked into place as soon as she positioned the manticore above the Hound. Above the manticore Alia selected the glyph of the dragonblood trees. From the shadow class of plants, the resin of those trees yielded an unguent which staunched wounds, and in certain cases, suspended death.

Ironic, for Rav famously dispatched his enemies via copious cuts from his poisoned knives.

Because a cut from his blades always preceded death, Alia knew the Bone Devourer must follow —the sign of the lammergeier vulture within the shadow zodiac, through which the moon passed in the penultimate month, when Rav was born.

If Clawfoot was next—and why should he not be, as third in command? — then the Hart constellation marking his birth came next. And above the Hart, the leukrokotta. The arsha’tûm was a monstrous stag with a lion’s neck, badger’s head and a powerful bone in place of teeth. It lured its prey by imitating the voices of people, often the voices of previous victims, especially if those voices were known to its current prey.

Aunt Xylia used the leukrokotta in bedtime stories featuring careless little girls who ran heedlessly towards strange voices crying for help.

Not everyone who appears to be a victim is harmless, she wanted Alia to know. Mind that you don’t fall into any rescue snares. And Clawfoot was a procurer of captives, was he not? Mortal young women or boys he delivered into the hands of depraved captors.

Alia went through the remaining list, accounting for Gavin and the two captains, Reza and Zotikos.

With a loud chime the nimbus vanished, and the cylinder split open. Immediately Alia glanced about the room, confirming that the strange razorback would not grace them with its presence. Safe. She allowed herself a small smile of triumph, but only a small smile. After all, the cipher cylinder presented no challenge to her, for Junius apparently assumed no one would know the finer details about him and his inner circle.

Inside the cylinder she found a small bottle, with a piece of parchment tied to its neck. Alia seized the bottle and parchment.

“The doors are back,” Sheridan observed. He jumped down from his chair before turning back to help Alia down from hers.

“Attend to Serafina,” she replied as she stepped down. “Junius was wicked enough that he may have put a stinger in the tail of this trap. This parchment looks like a spell.”

The ink on the parchment looked and smelled like sorcerer’s ink: bone ash, cinnabar, and myrrh. Such ink was reserved for magical purposes. But it was the content of the message that stopped her short.

In the Name of the Queen of the Namtaru, you are authorized to gather as you will the Children of Thuraia. The Children will stand against none who bear this nectar in their veins. When one of the Children is in hand, summon the lord of the Obsidian Stinger. The lord will take them thither, to the Eye That Sees All.

A strange sigil of six claws arranged in a circle served as the letter’s signature.

A frisson of terror kindled inside Alia as she forced herself to re-read the letter.

“What did I miss?” Serafina asked, as Sheridan helped her to her feet.

Alia read the letter aloud.

“The queen? The Namtaru? The lord? The Eye? The Children? What is this madness?” Sheridan wondered.

“This is a letter of marque,” Alia deduced. “Issued by this so-called queen, against my mother and aunts. And perhaps others.”

“And the lord of the Obsidian Stinger?” Sheridan pursued. “What could that possibly be?”

“That’s how the Pelasgians refers to a ship’s owner. Not necessarily the captain,” Alia said. Inspiration struck, and she hurried over to the cabinet in the wall to the right of Junius’s desk. Learning from Serafina’s experience meant she pointed to the model of the ship on display, instead of touching it.

Sheridan and Serafina joined her. The replica was an exact likeness of a junk, one of hundreds of square-sail, bamboo-masted ships sailing in and out of the port of Ebon Cove at any given hour. The model used authentic sail cloth, and was finely wrought of polished teak, emitting a faint scent of the tung oil used as a sealant.

Alia ran her wand over the model again, and was rewarded with a sharp ding. The crystal on her detector flashed orange, alerting her to an active concealment spell.

“The name is missing,” Alia said. Smiling slightly, she reached into the satchel at her hip and pulled out a small vial. Before returning to Junius, Alia had made another trip to the Counselor. By the prescience common to a khrestai of her rank, the Counselor had left the vial on her doorstep. Tied around its neck was a note written in an elegant script: Unveil unlawful secrets.

The message made Alia smile; the Counselor would never aid her in uncovering that which the Counselor believed ought to be hidden. The khrestai were ever careful about their gifts, and the conditions by which they gave them.

A dropper stoppered the vial, and just a drop was all Alia needed to tear away the spell. Light around the ship warped for a moment, and in the blink of an eye the ship’s appearance suddenly shifted.

Obsidian Stinger.

Exultant, Alia cried, “Ahh! So this is how they’re doing it!”

“Doing what?” Sheridan asked.

Serafina answered before Alia could. “Any sorcerer worth his wand can create facsimiles of certain objects or creatures and manipulate them. What happens to the facsimile happens to the real thing. So if Jonas sets the ship model wherever he likes on a model map, he’ll transport the real ship to the real place on the map.”

Excited, Alia rushed over to a corner of the library. A fountain there escaped her notice before, as she assumed it was merely for scrying. Junius kept a scryer in his inner circle, after all. Opaque and reflective like a mirror, nothing below the surface of the water was visible. Which earned a once-over with the Ellura wand. Shimmering haze gave way to revelation: the water itself contained a scale model of a dragon’s-eye view of the coasts and islands of the Gold Sea, from Lyrcania to the East to the Isle of Katabasis to the West.

Heart pounding, Alia stared at the miniature ship. The Isle of Katabasis. Famous as the place where the Sea Lord departed from Thuraia. Was this where her aunts were taken? A place where the Sea Lord Himself once trod, a place sacred to Him, would hold power. Power that dark forces may have availed themselves of where the daughters of the Huntress were concerned.

Sheridan came up beside her. He whistled at the ship’s model. “Oh. So Junius puts this toy boat near a replica of whatever port he wants them to go to, and the real ship is transported there instantaneously. My grandfather said a legendary sorcerer did things like that, ages ago in Athyr-ai. I never heard of sorcerers doing that in our time … but this might be the kind of power Rav and Clawfoot said they were getting from the dryads.”

The Ellura did not reveal any further spells in relation to the ship. Alia took it and the cylinder, carefully placing them inside her satchel. She suspected the cylinder still had more to tell her, and she still wanted to have it assayed by a sorcerer or a priest.

“I think—”

“HOW! DARE! YOU!”