Chapter 12
Quyloc was exhausted after his narrow escape from the Pente Akka. He laid down on the cot and fell into a fitful sleep for a couple of hours. When he awoke the sun was up and shining in through the narrow window. He felt groggy and disoriented. It was difficult to stand up.
Did that really happen? he wondered, rubbing his eyes. Was it just a dream?
But there on the desk was the bone knife. He walked over to the window and looked at his arm where the bird had wounded him. The purple mark was still there, almost like a bruise. It ached, though the feeling was distant. He touched the mark. The skin felt cold.
Suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought of being down there in that little room, alone, the stone pressing down on him from all sides.
Leaving the bone knife on the desk, he hurried up the passageway and the stairs, then out of the tower and into the sunlight. By the time he got outside, he was breathing hard and feeling dizzy. He stopped and put his hands on his knees. Everything looked strange. The sunlight was too bright. The world around him looked fake, two-dimensional. He blinked to clear his vision. It didn’t really help.
He needed to find Lowellin. He needed answers.
Weaving slightly, he walked toward the palace. Much of the area between the palace and the tower was covered by gardens and footpaths. He chose a path that took him around the north side of the palace. This area had once been lawns, places of leisure for the wealthy and powerful. Now much of it was taken up by soldiers training. Hasty barracks had been erected along the inside of the defensive wall that surrounded the palace grounds.
Quyloc saw Rome talking with Tairus and walked over to him. Rome spotted him before he got there and gave him a concerned look.
“Are you feeling okay? You look terrible.”
“I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep very well.”
“It looks worse than that,” Tairus observed.
Quyloc gave him a sour look. He and Tairus had never gotten along all that well. Which wasn’t all that surprising; Quyloc didn’t get along with anyone very well.
“Have you seen Lowellin? I want to talk to him.”
“Not today,” Rome replied. “Why?”
“I just do,” Quyloc snapped.
“Easy there,” Rome said, holding his hands up. “Only asking.”
Quyloc rubbed his temples. He was developing a terrible headache. “I need to ask him some questions.”
“Isn’t he supposed to meet with us today?”
“That’s what he said. But he didn’t say when, and I need to talk to him now.”
“He said something about talking to the Tenders.”
Quyloc had forgotten about that. He started to walk away.
“What’s that on your arm?” Tairus asked.
Quyloc clapped his hand over it. “Nothing. Only a bruise.”
“Not like any bruise I ever saw.”
Quyloc walked away, thinking. Lowellin might be at the Tenders right then. He could go down into the city and find out. He knew where their Haven was.
But it was too soon for that. He wouldn’t go there until he had to.
He went into the palace, ignoring the servants that bowed as he walked by. He went to his office. His aide, a middle-aged man with a strangely high-pitched voice, was sitting at his desk outside the door.
“Get me Frink. Fast,” Quyloc told him. Frink was part of the small information network Quyloc had set up since becoming Rome’s adviser. All told Quyloc had a dozen people, men and women from various walks of the city, that he paid to keep an eye on certain people, keep him apprised of the word on the street, that sort of thing. Part of Frink’s duties included watching the Tenders. He would know if Lowellin had been there.
“Don’t bother me,” he told his aide. He went into his office and sat down at his desk. There was a large pile of parchments waiting his attention. He took the top one off the pile and looked at it, but the words swam before his eyes, and he couldn’t keep his thoughts steady. He kept thinking about what had happened in the Pente Akka, how close he’d come to getting himself killed.
No, not killed.
It wants you alive.
What had he agreed to? Was it really worth it?
Was it too late to back out?
The door opened and his aide looked in. Quyloc glared at him. “I told you not to bother me, Robson. I told you to find Frink.”
The man quailed. “I sent a boy for him right away.”
“Then what are you doing in here?”
“It’s Lord Atalafes, sir. You had a meeting with him?”
Atalafes was the leader of a delegation of nobles that was always pestering Quyloc, always lodging formal complaints largely related to their hatred of having to treat the common folk like actual people instead of livestock. Quyloc couldn’t stand him. He wished the man would give him a reason to have him arrested. He would enjoy that.
“Tell him I’m busy.”
Robson’s eyes grew very large. When he spoke next his voice was so high-pitched it was nearly piercing. “He insists, sir. He says he won’t be denied.”
Very calmly, Quyloc said, “Tell him if he comes through that door today, for any reason, I’ll put my spear through him. Use those exact words.”
“But, sir—”
Quyloc simply stared at him coldly. Robson squeaked and backed hurriedly out of the room.
A door in one side of his office led to his private quarters, three rooms and a balcony with a clear view of the sea. Quyloc went through the door and locked it behind him. He didn’t want to be disturbed and there was a good chance that others would show up and intimidate Robson into bothering him. He should replace Robson. Frink would know enough to knock.
He went out onto the balcony. It had a small table and two chairs on it. This corner of the palace was closest to the sea, which was the main reason he’d found it empty and unused when Rome took power. From the balcony he could look down over the edge of the tall cliffs—easily four hundred feet high—that lined the back border of the palace. He could almost see the waves breaking on the base of the cliffs when the tide was in. To the left he could see Bane’s Tower. To the right, down the slope a bit, was the castle wall, and beyond that the city.
People were afraid of the sea. It was an old fear, going back to the ancient wars between the gods of the land and the gods of the sea, when humankind was still young.
According to the legends, the sea gods resented Life from the moment Xochitl—who was one of the gods of land—created it, and threatened many times to destroy it. Despite their threats, they tolerated Life until Xochitl created humans. In time, they made war on the gods of the land—the gods of the sky stayed neutral—and tried to exterminate the humans.
During the war, the gods of the sea created droves of new sea creatures, monstrous things whose sole purpose was to kill. Most were confined to the sea, but some were capable of coming onto land and they did a great deal of damage during the war.
Traveling across the sea became impossible, every boat crushed and its crew destroyed within hours of putting out on the water. Even living near the sea became untenable and all coastal cities were abandoned.
With the end of the war, the sea gods withdrew, but first they warned that any who went into their domain would be ruthlessly killed.
In the millennia since, humans had gradually reclaimed the coasts of Atria. But they still did not go out on the sea. As for the people who lived beyond the sea, it was not known if any of them were still alive, or if they had all perished during the war.
Personally, Quyloc didn’t fear the sea. What happened, happened millennia ago—long before Melekath’s prison was created—if it actually happened at all. Nothing had attacked from the sea within memory. There were no records of such an event in the official histories of the Kaetrian Empire that he’d seen.
Further cementing his belief that the sea was no longer hostile was the Sounders. The Sounders were a cult who worshipped the sea. They were thought to be extinct, wiped out by the Tenders during the days of the Empire.
But Quyloc had found one a few years ago. The man was pitiful, the last of his order that he knew of, but he swore to Quyloc that the sea gods—he called them shlikti—no longer sought to kill the humans they encountered. He claimed to even have a small watercraft which he swore—this was too much to be believed, but still—he had gone out onto the sea in many times and communed with the creatures he called forth there. Quyloc didn’t believe much of what the man said, but clearly he did not fear the sea.
All of which led Quyloc to believe that one day ships would put forth on the sea and those lands beyond would be recovered.
Not very many people believed as he did. Most still feared the sea.
That was why Quyloc had chosen these rooms. He liked that most people were uncomfortable from the moment they saw the balcony. Some wouldn’t even go near it.
Those men Quyloc found especially irritating, like Lord Atalafes, he liked to invite to sit with him out on the balcony. On a windy day, a man could feel the sea spray on his face.
It made dealing with them much easier.
There was nothing to do now but wait for Frink to report. Quyloc went back into his rooms and lay down on his bed. There was very little furniture in the suite; two of the rooms were completely empty. Quyloc cared not at all for more than the bare minimum. Luxury held no appeal for him.
It seemed he had barely closed his eyes when he had a sudden sense of wrongness, and he opened them again.
He was no longer in his quarters.
He scrambled to his feet. He was on the sand, looming sand dunes nearby, the sky a weird, purple-black. His arm was hurting, and he looked down to see that the wound on his forearm had begun to bleed once again.
But it was far too much blood.
He looked down. The blood was pooling at his feet. It looked black in the strange light. The pool became a stream that ran across the sand and toward the Veil, a short distance away.
The blood touched the Veil, and a jolt ran through Quyloc. He took a step back.
The blood solidified, changed.
Right at the Veil it became a link in a fine chain. More links appeared in rapid succession, running across the sand and up to Quyloc’s arm.
Disbelieving, Quyloc grabbed the chain and tried to pull it free, but it wouldn’t come loose. It seemed to grow right out of his arm.
Slowly the chain began to slide across the sand, links disappearing into the Veil. Quyloc pulled harder on it, trying to free himself.
The chain grew taught. Quyloc was dragged forward one step, then another.
Fear turned to panic, and he fought wildly. But he couldn’t properly get hold of the chain with his free hand. It kept slipping through his fingers. He dug his heels in, but the sand offered no purchase. He was dragged closer to the Veil.
Then, a new horror.
A shadowy figure became dimly visible on the other side, pulling on the chain.
Quyloc threw everything he had into the fight, but it did no good. He was dragged closer and closer.
The Veil was less than an arm’s length away when he heard a loud series of concussions behind him.
He opened his eyes and found himself back in his quarters.
His heart beating wildly, he sat up and looked at his arm. The wound looked angry, but there was no chain.
There was no chain.
A series of loud knocks from the door leading to his office and a voice calling to him.
“Lord Quyloc, sir! Is everything all right?”
Shakily, Quyloc stood up. There was blood on his bed. He pulled a cover over it and went and unlocked the door.
Frink was on the other side, Robson hovering anxiously in the background. Frink had a dagger in his hand. “You were yelling, sir. Is someone in there?”
Quyloc fought to compose himself. “It was only a bad dream is all.”
Frink’s eyes roamed around the room, but he said nothing. Robson bowed and scurried back to his desk.
Quyloc pushed past him and closed the door to his quarters. He went to his desk and sat down. His heart was starting to slow down, but his hands were still shaking badly. He put them in his lap, out of sight.
“Have you seen a man with white hair going into the Tender Haven today?”
Frink nodded. He sheathed the dagger and came to stand before the desk. There were unspoken questions in his eyes, but he wisely kept them to himself.
“Aye, and yesterday afternoon as well. I was coming to report to you when the boy found me.” Frink was a solidly built man with curly black hair and piercing eyes that missed little. He was dressed like a common laborer in simple clothes, the kind of man one saw everywhere. The kind of man it was easy to overlook in a city.
Quyloc sat forward when Frink spoke, then relaxed back, trying not to look too eager. “Do you know where he is now?”
Frink shook his head, and Quyloc’s heart fell. “Figuring you’d want to know about something as unusual as a man going into the Tenders’ home, I followed him when he left. Both times. But each time I lost him. Each time he got into the shadows, and then he just wasn’t there anymore. Damned peculiar.” Frink frowned. He took pride in his skill at following people. He’d worked as a spy for one of the nobles before Quyloc hired him, and he knew what he was doing.
“Was it the same place both times? Maybe he went through a hidden door you just didn’t see.” Quyloc knew that wasn’t the case, but he had to ask.
“No. Different places. Nowhere he could really go. Like I said, just disappeared.”
Quyloc sagged back, deflated. “Go back and keep a close eye on the Tenders. It’s your only duty now. Learn anything you can.” He stopped Frink as he was leaving. “Pass the word onto the rest of my informants. Their highest priority, their only priority, is finding Lowellin. If anyone finds him, they’re to tell him I need to speak with him at once.”
After Frink left, Quyloc sat there in his office staring at the wound in his arm, his thoughts black.
One time. He’d only gone into the Pente Akka one time and already the place had trapped him. Worse, it had reached into his world and tried to drag him back.
It was too late to turn back. If he didn’t find a way to break the chain that bound him to the place, he was going to be dragged in there.
It wants you alive.
He had to find Lowellin.
He thought again about going to see the Tenders himself, then rejected the idea. He wasn’t that desperate yet. Frink would pass the message on to Lowellin if he saw him.
He took another parchment off the stack. It was a report on the stores of seed corn for the coming season. As he read it, he felt his eyes growing heavier and heavier. His head drooped. Angrily, he shook himself awake and forced himself to keep reading the report.
Suddenly he realized that his head was on the desk and he was falling asleep.
Alarmed, he jumped up. He took the report and several other parchments and went into his quarters, then out onto the balcony. Spring wasn’t really here yet and the air blowing off the sea was chilly. It would keep him awake.
He sat down and started reading again. Almost immediately his chin dropped to his chest. He slumped forward, the papers slipping from his fingers.
“Sir! Sir!”
Quyloc jolted upright. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. For a moment all he saw was purple darkness and yellow sand.
Robson was running around on the balcony, chasing papers that were blowing free in the wind. “They’re getting away!” he yelped, grabbing two of them but missing a third, which was lifted up over the edge of the balcony and blown out to sea.
Quyloc leapt to his feet, stunned that it had happened again. He was tired, but he shouldn’t be this tired. Was the Pente Akka trying to make him fall asleep so it could take him?
“I’m sorry, sir,” Robson said, his voice quavering. “I know you said you didn’t want to be disturbed but I went into your office and I saw the door open and when I looked in…” He held up the papers he’d retrieved.
“It’s okay,” Quyloc told him. “You did the right thing. Put the papers on my desk on your way out.”
“Begging pardon, sir, but you look like you could really use some sleep and this isn’t such a good place. A body could pick up a fever in this cold wind.”
“There’s worse things than fevers.” Quyloc decided right then that he couldn’t wait any longer. He had to go see the Tenders, however humiliating it was. He couldn’t stay here any longer.
Quyloc stood before the rough wooden door, his hand poised to knock. The planks in the door had weathered badly and large gaps showed between them at the bottom. The rest of the building was in no better shape. The crude plaster was peeling off the walls in sizable chunks. Tiles had come loose in several places on the roof and the shutters sagged on rusted hinges.
Unbidden, his mind turned to Arnele, the old Tender he’d known years ago. He was around fifteen or sixteen when he saw her the first time—as an orphan he had no way of knowing for sure—and he and Rome had recently joined the army. He didn’t know she was a Tender at first. She was just an old woman begging outside the barracks, her hands and feet swollen with the winter gout. The other soldiers ignored her or mocked her as they went by, but Quyloc knew right away there was something different about her.
His short time in the army had already underscored just how different he was from the others. Oh, he’d tried to be like them, spending his money on drink and women, all the foolish displays of empty masculinity that went with that age, but it never felt right to him. That world held no interest for him. He was different. It was useless to deny it.
It wasn’t just the intuitions he had about people and what they were going to do either. He also had vivid dreams. The dreams were the worst. Many of them were terrible and poisonous, Qarath reduced to a smoking ruin, the river clogged with the dead. At times they drove him from sleep with a scream. The other soldiers teased him when he did that, so that he went to sleep each night fearing that he would humiliate himself once again.
He also sometimes heard something that no one else heard. It was like a soft, gentle melody playing far in the background. It was beautiful, alluring, carrying with it a sense of peace beyond anything the world had to offer. He could find no source for it, no matter where he looked. It drew him, offering something that he had never known in his short, turbulent life on the streets of Qarath. The need for it grew with each passing year, encompassing his life.
When he saw Arnele that first time he sensed she held answers he sought. So he slowed down until the other soldiers had gone into the barracks, and then he crouched beside her.
“Coin?” she said, her filmy eyes moving to him. He realized then that she was blind. The hand she stretched out to him shook badly.
“Who are you?” he whispered. “What are you?”
A hint of smile touched her wrinkled cheeks, and she thrust out her hand again. “Coin.”
Quyloc opened his coin purse and put a copper on her palm. She shook her head and said again, “Coin.” He put another copper in her hand. She closed her fist on it and tucked it away safely.
“It’s LifeSong you hear, boy,” she said in her cracked voice. Most of her teeth had rotted away and the shift she wore was little more than rags.
“What are you talking about? How do you know what I hear?”
“How do I know? Why did you stop to talk to me? Surely you didn’t stop for my womanly charms.” She ran gnarled fingers through her white hair.
Quyloc looked around, making sure no one was watching. “What is LifeSong?”
“It’s the melody in the background.”
His heart leapt into his throat. Was he really going to finally know the source he’d chased for so long? “Tell me more.”
She shook her head. “Help me to the wine seller first.” She held out one grimy hand.
Looking around again, Quyloc helped her to her feet, picked up her walking stick and handed it to her. The walk to the wine seller’s shop was agony, one slow step at a time. Several times he tried to get her to talk, but each time she rebuffed him with a shake of her head.
She clasped the flask of wine to her bony old chest like a lover and sank to the cobblestoned street with a sigh. It was on that day that Quyloc first discovered the magic that was alcohol. He’d never liked the stuff himself and could never understand why the others he knew sought it so eagerly. It dulled his mind and slowed his reactions, both deadly to survival. But as he watched Arnele suck at the flask, wine dribbling down her cheeks, he suddenly understood how alcohol could help him get what he wanted.
When half the wine was gone, she finally started talking.
“I’m a Tender, boy, or at least I was. Lost it to the drink but it wasn’t worth anything anyway.”
That surprised him. There weren’t many Tenders left. Quyloc had never met one that he knew of. “What is LifeSong?” he asked.
“It’s the energy that flows through all living things. It’s the reason you’re alive.”
“It sounds almost like music.”
“That it does.” She took another drink of the wine. “I’ll need more. My mouth doesn’t work too good when I’m thirsty.”
When he’d brought her more she continued. “You’re not hearing it with your ears. You’re hearing it in here.” She tapped him on the chest with one bony finger. “Most people are closed to it.”
Quyloc listened raptly, drinking up every word as greedily as she drank up the wine.
After that he sought her out on a daily basis, whenever his duties gave him the free time. The other soldiers inevitably saw him, of course, and mocked him unmercifully until Rome stepped in and told them to shut up or answer to him. Which they did. Even back then it was obvious to all that Rome was born to command.
Unfortunately, Rome couldn’t command them to like Quyloc and he could see in their faces how they felt about him. He understood then that his chance to be one of them was gone forever, but he didn’t care. Arnele held the secrets that he desired more than life itself. That was more important than the approval of others.
Then came the day when she told him no. It was when he asked her to teach him the method the Tenders used to go beyond and see the flows of LifeSong which, according to her, were like threads of light connected to every living thing.
“That knowledge is forbidden,” she said, and drank deeply from the flask he had just bought her.
“Why?”
She lowered the flask and fixed her sightless eyes on him. “You are a man. No man may know this. Xochitl has forbidden it.”
Something akin to panic arose within Quyloc at her words. “I don’t understand.”
She shrugged. “Gods are like that.”
“But you left the order. You told me so. Surely Xochitl’s restriction does not apply to you.”
She shook her head stubbornly and drank more wine. Nothing he said, no amount of wine he poured down her, could get her to change her mind. He went away desperate and furious. That something from so long ago, some ancient myth, should keep him from what he so badly needed, seemed the worst injustice of all.
The following days yielded no better results and his anger at the old woman grew. Finally, he followed her to see where she slept, thinking she might have a copy of the holy book she had spoken of and he could steal it. He followed her to a crumbling hovel in the Warrens, down by the Pits.
But there was nothing there. Nothing but a pile of rags she slept on and a scattering of empty wine flasks. Enraged and desperate, he threatened her. But she spat at him and cursed him so that he finally snapped.
When the madness lifted, she was lying motionless on the ground. Guilt and shame rose up in a cloud and engulfed him. Desperate to hide what he had done, he set fire to her hovel and fled into the night.
Quyloc banged on the door. Several minutes passed, then he heard a bar being lifted and the door opened a crack. A skinny woman with a lazy eye peered out. “What do you want?”
“Let me speak to the FirstMother,” Quyloc said.
“About what?”
“I need to find Lowellin.”
That seemed to frighten the woman. She slammed the door, and the bar dropped into place before Quyloc could react. He banged on the door again.
“I am the advisor to the king,” he said. “I will speak to the FirstMother or I will return with the city watch and we will break this door down.” It was a threat he did not want to carry through. He didn’t want anyone to see him here. But he would do it if he had to.
There was the sound of running feet on the other side of the door and more minutes passed before footsteps returned. The bar lifted and the door opened. The skinny woman stood there, shifting from one foot to the other nervously. “The FirstMother will see you,” she mumbled, not meeting his eye.
He followed her into the gloom. The place smelled of decay. There were cracks in the walls and spider webs in the corners. She led him to a room lit only by a guttering lamp, with a long table in the middle and a statue of what he assumed was Xochitl against the wall.
“Wait here,” she said, and scurried away before he could say anything.
The time dragged by, and the FirstMother did not appear. Quyloc drummed his fingers on the table. He paced the room and inspected the statue. By the time the FirstMother appeared he was angry.
She was a stout woman with graying hair and thick forearms that spoke of strength. She was wearing a heavy gold Reminder and a robe that was more gray than white. She took a seat at the end of the table and stared at him without speaking.
Quyloc knew immediately that she had kept him waiting deliberately. This was a bitter woman who faced him, misused by the years and determined to pass that bitterness on to others when she could.
“I do not like being kept waiting,” Quyloc said. “Do you not know who I am?”
“I am well aware of who you are, Advisor,” she replied calmly, a touch of a smirk on her features. “I was busy and could not receive you sooner.”
Quyloc swallowed the retort that came to his lips. Fighting with this woman would yield him nothing. “I need to find Lowellin.”
She gave him a calculating look. “How do you know of him?”
“He came to the palace first, FirstMother.” He said her title mockingly, emphasizing how little it meant. “You are not the only ones he has been recruiting.”
Her jaw tightened. “Why do you wish to speak with him?”
“That is no business of yours.”
“I have not seen him.”
“That’s a lie. I know he has been here twice.”
“Since you know so much, you do not need me. You may go.” She started to stand.
“If I go before you answer my question, you and all your women will be in prison before the sun sets.”
“So this is the new king’s vaunted justice,” she sneered. “You can run about the city threatening a house full of women at your whim and there is nothing we can do about it.”
Quyloc took a deep breath. This was getting him nowhere. “I need his help.”
“But you are the king’s advisor,” she said mockingly. “What help could you possibly need?”
Quyloc gritted his teeth. He held out his forearm and showed her the purplish mark. “I need his help with this.”
“With a bruise? Would not warm milk be more useful?”
Quyloc wanted to scream at her. “It is no ordinary wound. I received it in…another place. There is something going on and only Lowellin can help me.”
She frowned. “Another place?”
“Not in this world.”
Now she looked angry. “You’re not making any sense. Are you drunk?”
He ignored the jab. “Just answer the question.” He swallowed. “Please.”
She smiled as if she had won a victory. He knew she would not forget it. “Since you have finally asked properly, I will help you.”
He waited, and when she said nothing more he said, “And?”
She shook her head. “I do not know where he is. He left here this morning, and I have not seen him since.”
Quyloc fought the urge to rip the dagger from his belt and bury it in her chest. “Did he say anything about where he might be going?” he grated.
“I would not dare to question the Protector and if you are wise, you will not either.”
Quyloc stood up so quickly his chair tipped over. “You have made an enemy of me this day, FirstMother. I promise you, you will regret it.”
“Somehow I don’t think so, Advisor. Something tells me that the world is changing. Those who were oppressed are once again returning to power.”
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