The travel back to the docks was an oddly pleasant one, helped considerably by the fear that motivated the two oarsmen. Soon enough, Efrain stepped off to the northeast dock corner, seeing a group of lights converging on the rock of Nethub. He turned back to his two unwilling helpers.
“Now,” he said, clapping his hands, “what you two are going to do, if you value your lives, are going to turn and row as far north as you can. Fortunately for you, I haven’t heard your names. If you keep your heads down and serve loyally, I won’t remember your faces either.”
The two men took off at an exceptional pace and soon vanished into the gloom. Efrain set off towards the lighthouse, his boots slapping against the flat stones. In under a half hour he’d made it to the gate, and had something of a humorous realisation. The first was that he’d never, in all his days in Karkos, actually been to the ancient lighthouse, only seeing it from afar. The second was that it consisted of glimmering black stone. That was yet another mystery, hopefully one that wasn’t actively trying to kill him.
He quietly made his way up to the back, noting with discomfort the ratio of legionnaires to household guard. The legionnaires were theoretically independent and answered only to the matriarch, or so he hoped. The household guard, as had been recently proven, was another matter. Surely not all of them were on Azio’s side, but he couldn’t be sure.
There was some residual shouting from the front, so Efrain circled around the group. Attracting stares from the guards as he crept around in the briars. He finally made it to the front, and the shouting resolved itself. There were a handful that were distinct from the group - Azio, a slender woman with an unpleasant look, a quartet of Legionnaires, two of whom were holding down a squirming boy, and the others…
His heart shot into his pelvis when he saw Aya, pale, crumpled and rigid in the arms of a legionnaire, her grandmother stooped and calling her name. Azio was declaring something about how the boy had poisoned her, his hand sneaking to his belt. The boy was staring with open hatred at the man, and Sahadra was reaching for something within the sleeve of her robe.
That was enough to glean the broad strokes. Efrain strode through the briars, drawing a inhale from the legionnaires, and stepping in front of them just in time to feel something glance off his shirt. The glint of metal flying away into the dark put the last of the pieces together.
“Hello!” he said, staring directly at Azio, who blanched, “you should really have ordered your men to cut off my head. It’s a much more certain way of killing a mage.”
“Sahadra!” the man’s voice quaked, and Efrain staggered.
Magic, yes, magic washed over him. It was such a rare occurrence that it actually gave him pause. But it was clumsy, inefficient, lacking potency, and a whole host of insults that Efrain could’ve hurled their way. As it was, he righted himself, looked at the stunned woman, and waved a hand to her.
“No,” he said.
The technique he used on her was a nasty one that had spawned from Carnes' mind. The flesh lord, noticing that water vibrated when exposed to loud sounds, had theorised that certain frequencies could disable different parts of the body. They’d spent months testing it on various corpses, generating sound waves of various intensities and frequencies. It was a more precise, but still quite wasteful extension of the ability to generate pure force. He’d be running low on capacity until he could regenerate more naturally.
It worked very well however, the woman staggered, then fully toppled over with Azio and several other guards. Satisfied that they wouldn’t be rising for at least a few moments, he turned to the fallen Aya. He pushed the matriarch to one side, and regarded his student. The woman’s face was stony as she looked back on her fallen family members.
“She’s still breathing,” Efrain said, laying a hand to her chest, “barely, but it’s there. We might have time if we can get her to Clar-”
The first of the shouts from the back of the group, and Efrain shot up. As if called for, a troop ploughed through the assembly, he recognized the bald head of Clara, as well as the armour of the paladins.
“Huh,” Efrain said.
There was an odd sensation, a subtle buzz in his bones, and almost a sound at the edge of his hearing. Efrain pushed this impression aside, accepting the serendipity of the moment so long as it quelled his anxiety for his student. The first one to come rushing forward were the paladins, crying for their charge, nearly throwing the mercenaries aside. The second was the children, with Claralelle and Innie of all people staying back.
“Clara!” he shouted, “she’s been poisoned. I need whatever you have. Now.”
At this prompting, she raced forward, leather sewn pouches already falling open with tools and ampules. While the girl was being examined, Efrain turned to walk over to the fallen mutineer and his consort, and planted a light foot on the chest of the crawling consort. The effects of the blast of sound should be wearing off now, but Efrain waited a moment for the woman’s hearing to settle.
“You are going to tell me,” he said, every word measured, “what poison you used and how to cure it. You don’t want to know what’ll happen if you don’t.”
Some of the guards put their hands to weapons, but the captain from the building stopped them. Either he was not privy to the scheme, or he was smart enough to realise that it had fallen through and was washing his hands of it. Efrain didn’t particularly care which, as he pressed down hard on the woman’s chest. He might not be particularly heavy, but pressure on the stomach was not pleasant.
“Don’t keep me waiting for much longer,” he said, “and don’t think magic will save you. I wrote the notes you learned from, girl.”
There was terror on her face as the words sank in, her eyes flitted to her fallen consort, and back to the soulless mask staring down on her.
“Wait,” came a weak voice from behind him.
It sounded like…?
Aya had sat up, quite unannounced, looking pale and weak, but very much alive. Apparently, confusion was not an expression that the baffled Clara had lost. Each person present exclaimed her name and wondered how and why she managed to circumvent the poison. Aya waved all the questions away, propping herself up on Lillian as she pointed an accusing finger at Azio.
“He planned all of it,” she said, “Syoiza’s innocent.”
The matriarch turned, and even Efrain, who was furious, blanched at the woman’s expression. Old stories of terrible demons and angry gods were nothing compared with the look she gave to her nephew. He tried to protest, to appeal to her sense of goodwill as she strode forward. All of that was cut very much short as she hauled him up by the collar of his robe, and smashed his face with a blow that echoed across the hill.
Her knuckles came away bloody, and Azio collapsed to the ground for a second time.
“Tie them up,” she snapped to the legionnaires, who jumped to work.
The woman sat glumly, Efrain quickly fishing the device from her pocket. It was an elongated oval, similar to the pen design he’d seen, but clunkier. Still, it was more or less exactly what he’d hoped for, minus the excited gasp that issued from Sorore.
“That’s it!” she said, pointing at it wildly “the thing, uh, the one that shot the dart!”
“Sounds like you have some explaining to do,” Efrain said quietly, looking at the group bunched up together around the sickly Aya.
Innie quickly relayed the account of the hall of the dead, the search for the key hole in the screen door, the attack. Apparently, the beast that had attacked them, one of the monsters, was a man who’d gone delving in the Miram ruins not long before. That explained the footprints, Efrain thought as he listened, tapping the device carefully against his palm. That raised far more uncomfortable questions than it did answers, unfortunately.
There had been a short battle, during which Niche and the wisp-mother had managed to destroy the creature. As corroboration, Niche presented the shards of black crystal he’d found in the things hand. Clara also supplied the man’s dumb, almost catatonic condition before he transformed. Efrain’s mind was churning rapidly, as soldiers began to disband and return to the house on the matriarch’s orders.
Perhaps the old Miram patriarch hadn’t acquired his madness as naturally as Efrain would prefer to believe. But that was a query for another day.
Finally, they all turned to Aya, who’d been quietly listening to the conversation.
“Now, Aya,” he said, “I think we have some questions for you, young lady. I think first is how exactly you got here, and what happened with the boy over there.”
He gestured lazily at the young man, apparently named Syoiza Carim. Aya related her part of the tale, and Efrain finally got the last pieces of the puzzle he thought he needed. Syoiza filled in additional details as for his part in the conspiracy.
“Well,” he said, turning to the matriarch, “I think I can provide a brief account of what happened.”
The matriarch, her rage cooled enough for her to not beat her nephew to death, crossed arms.
“I don’t know what to think. Apparently that scum-sucking bottom feeder wanted to attempt a coup,” she said, “and he tried to kill my own granddaughter to do it.”
“Oh, scum-sucking perhaps, but opportunist better than bottom feeder,” Efrain said, “he simply saw the situation of the young boy, used it for leverage. You taught him business after all.”
There were no more than two dozen legionnaires on the hill now, as well as their party.
“I’m not in the mood for jokes, mage,” she said darkly.
“As you wish,” Efrain said, crouching before Azio, who glared at him, “to sum it up, I suspect that he intended to take your position for a while now. Even if he didn’t, he used the situation of the Carim and Madros, which looked more or less natural, to his advantage. Syoiza comes to him, having a love of the docks and knowing Azio to be influential and friendly. He inflames the war between the houses during a time he knows you can’t focus on it.”
The man’s face darkened with every additional word.
“So, the whole city knows about it. ‘Why won’t the Eisen and Poutash do anything’? Is the common refrain. Perhaps he was willing to let it stew for a little bit more. Make the people desperate as he held onto the Carim boy. Then he’d produce them where you could not and have a bid for leadership, or at least a stepping stone to build off on his way to challenging you.”
Aya at this point was looking well, which nearly prompted Efrain to turn and ask her how on earth she’d cleansed her body of the toxin. But he needed to finish off his case against the glowering administrator.
“In fact I suspect it was the latter. Until an heir came along and made you desperate. What was it you said, ‘desperate men do stupid things’? Maybe you even planned to let the boy live. But you needed a scandal, didn’t you? A minor house declaring Umtau? Where would they’ve gotten knowledge of such an exclusive ritual, or the specific wording for the rite? It was the specific wording, I assume?”
“Close enough,” Aysatra nodded, her eyes narrowed, looking as if to go in for another swing.
“So you manipulated a house into extinction,” Efrain said, “ironically enough, that Madros fellow did curse the right house, albeit the wrong member. I hope the daughter lived, she seemed a good woman.”
“Efrain,” snapped Innie.
“Right,” Efrain said, “so you murdered the boy, drove his family to ritual suicide, and then planned to use those houseguard to murder me, probably Aya and the matriarch as well, and blame it on the boy. Who would no doubt die in the mayhem, unable to present his case to the city at large.”
He stood back up, the man said nothing.
“As coups go, mediocre,” he said, “you should’ve read more history. I think restudying some of the theories on General Stroe’s activities during the Sunset War would’ve done you good. Some clever points, but too elaborate in some areas and too simple in others, and all-in-all too risky. Aya completely threw you off, didn’t she?”
The man’s spittle hit Efrain’s boot, who promptly rubbed it on the grass.
“And that’s all the confirmation I need,” he said, turning to the matriarch, “what about you?”
“You’re really not going to say a single word in your defence?” said the matriarch quietly, “after all I did for you? The things I gave you?”
She sounded less angry, more tired and sorrowful. The man’s face screwed up in a mask of rage as he quite literally spat out the next words.
“What did you say when you sold us to Angorrah? ‘I did what we had to’,” he said, “and now, when it’s your own granddaughter on the line, you refuse to give her up. Just as you did for Ayserria. Hypocrite!”
“One more point I’m not clear on,” Efrain ventured, staying clear of the man’s mouth this time, “what role does Avencia have in all this?”
“That sloven coward?” sneered Avencia, “went through all the trouble and expense to make us a weapon. Lent us his boats when we didn’t want to be noticed traveling. All it took was a promise that the Academy would be supported, then as soon as you turned up, he turned yellow. Backed out without a word. Didn’t even have the conviction to own up and expose us, the coward.”
“So that’s why there were other academy boats were at the hall of the dead. Would you respect him more if he had?” Efrain said mildly.
“At least that would’ve meant accepting the consequences,” he said.
“So this is all a grudge?” said Aya from behind, “all because of what Angorrah did to you?”
The man didn’t offer a response other than angry eyes.
“Efrain?” said Innie.
“At least we kept our grudge, and didn’t kowtow to the empire that pillaged our city’s youth,” said the man, Sahardra nodding in contemptuous agreement, “did you know what they did to us over there? The ‘lucky’ ones got put to work as scribes, or other noble menials. Always a guard at our back, and if one got a little too bored and decided to stab a child, the church was all too happy to look the other way. And those were the male children.”
“And the unlucky ones?” Efrain said, not particularly surprised.
“The ones from the lesser houses? Or proved themselves trouble makers?” he chuckled, “got sent to the Farthest Lands. Most never returned. But why are you asking me about it? You have that precious commander after all.”
Efrain felt his blood run chill as Naia was brought up.
“Efrain,” Innie said, more urgently than before.
“In a minute,” Efrain said, “what do you mean? You know Naia?”
“Of course. It took me some time to recognize him,” he said, “but I remembered him. He was one of those taken from the Miram. Barely more than a toddler.”
Efrain was about to press the man for details, for everything on the mysterious commander.
“Efrain!” shouted Innie.
Efrain turned to look at her, finding her gazing out towards the darkness of the sea.
“Yes, what is i-”
Something like the sun rose in the distance, only in magic, with shadow and coldness instead of light and heat. The subtle ambient gradations of magic went from light to dark as utter terror gripped his heart. In terms of ordinary sight, it was like watching a great black maw appear on the horizon, and grow steadily larger as it rushed toward you. The others all felt it a moment later, the colours draining from their face and their breath starting to plume in a sudden, unnatural chill.
“To the city! Run!” screamed Efrain as he grabbed Aya, and sprinted down the hill to the docks.
He did not turn to see if the others had followed, but the panting breaths and the clank of armour told him that they did. The smooth stone of the dockyard promenade raced under foot as the clambered across the canal drawbridges. Then the rumbling began.
It wasn’t so earthshaking that they were thrown off balance, but they could definitely be felt underfoot as the sound of waves sloshed higher against the promenade wall. Efrain picked up his pace, racing for the angled jut of the yard entrance into the city. There was a blast from behind them, the sound of water cascading down, and then an almighty crash.
This time, Efrain and the others were thrown to the dock, mercifully avoiding sliding into a nearby canal, or worse, the open ocean. As Efrain struggled to get up to his feet and turn around to look at whatever had made the horrific sound, he heard a growl that started at his toes and coursed up his very being. Aya next to him puffed white fog from her mouth, and Efrain watched as sparkling ice crystals began to form on the now slick surface alongside him.
There was nothing for it.
Still backing away, and even doing so seeing the first tendrils of fog whisper past them, Efrain turned.
The travel back to the docks was an oddly pleasant one, helped considerably by the fear that motivated the two oarsmen. Soon enough, Efrain stepped off to the northeast dock corner, seeing a group of lights converging on the rock of Nethub. He turned back to his two unwilling helpers.
“Now,” he said, clapping his hands, “what you two are going to do, if you value your lives, are going to turn and row as far north as you can. Fortunately for you, I haven’t heard your names. If you keep your heads down and serve loyally, I won’t remember your faces either.”
The two men took off at an exceptional pace and soon vanished into the gloom. Efrain set off towards the lighthouse, his boots slapping against the flat stones. In under a half hour he’d made it to the gate, and had something of a humorous realisation. The first was that he’d never, in all his days in Karkos, actually been to the ancient lighthouse, only seeing it from afar. The second was that it consisted of glimmering black stone. That was yet another mystery, hopefully one that wasn’t actively trying to kill him.
He quietly made his way up to the back, noting with discomfort the ratio of legionnaires to household guard. The legionnaires were theoretically independent and answered only to the matriarch, or so he hoped. The household guard, as had been recently proven, was another matter. Surely not all of them were on Azio’s side, but he couldn’t be sure.
There was some residual shouting from the front, so Efrain circled around the group. Attracting stares from the guards as he crept around in the briars. He finally made it to the front, and the shouting resolved itself. There were a handful that were distinct from the group - Azio, a slender woman with an unpleasant look, a quartet of Legionnaires, two of whom were holding down a squirming boy, and the others…
His heart shot into his pelvis when he saw Aya, pale, crumpled and rigid in the arms of a legionnaire, her grandmother stooped and calling her name. Azio was declaring something about how the boy had poisoned her, his hand sneaking to his belt. The boy was staring with open hatred at the man, and Sahadra was reaching for something within the sleeve of her robe.
That was enough to glean the broad strokes. Efrain strode through the briars, drawing a inhale from the legionnaires, and stepping in front of them just in time to feel something glance off his shirt. The glint of metal flying away into the dark put the last of the pieces together.
“Hello!” he said, staring directly at Azio, who blanched, “you should really have ordered your men to cut off my head. It’s a much more certain way of killing a mage.”
“Sahadra!” the man’s voice quaked, and Efrain staggered.
Magic, yes, magic washed over him. It was such a rare occurrence that it actually gave him pause. But it was clumsy, inefficient, lacking potency, and a whole host of insults that Efrain could’ve hurled their way. As it was, he righted himself, looked at the stunned woman, and waved a hand to her.
“No,” he said.
The technique he used on her was a nasty one that had spawned from Carnes' mind. The flesh lord, noticing that water vibrated when exposed to loud sounds, had theorised that certain frequencies could disable different parts of the body. They’d spent months testing it on various corpses, generating sound waves of various intensities and frequencies. It was a more precise, but still quite wasteful extension of the ability to generate pure force. He’d be running low on capacity until he could regenerate more naturally.
It worked very well however, the woman staggered, then fully toppled over with Azio and several other guards. Satisfied that they wouldn’t be rising for at least a few moments, he turned to the fallen Aya. He pushed the matriarch to one side, and regarded his student. The woman’s face was stony as she looked back on her fallen family members.
“She’s still breathing,” Efrain said, laying a hand to her chest, “barely, but it’s there. We might have time if we can get her to Clar-”
The first of the shouts from the back of the group, and Efrain shot up. As if called for, a troop ploughed through the assembly, he recognized the bald head of Clara, as well as the armour of the paladins.
“Huh,” Efrain said.
There was an odd sensation, a subtle buzz in his bones, and almost a sound at the edge of his hearing. Efrain pushed this impression aside, accepting the serendipity of the moment so long as it quelled his anxiety for his student. The first one to come rushing forward were the paladins, crying for their charge, nearly throwing the mercenaries aside. The second was the children, with Claralelle and Innie of all people staying back.
“Clara!” he shouted, “she’s been poisoned. I need whatever you have. Now.”
At this prompting, she raced forward, leather sewn pouches already falling open with tools and ampules. While the girl was being examined, Efrain turned to walk over to the fallen mutineer and his consort, and planted a light foot on the chest of the crawling consort. The effects of the blast of sound should be wearing off now, but Efrain waited a moment for the woman’s hearing to settle.
“You are going to tell me,” he said, every word measured, “what poison you used and how to cure it. You don’t want to know what’ll happen if you don’t.”
Some of the guards put their hands to weapons, but the captain from the building stopped them. Either he was not privy to the scheme, or he was smart enough to realise that it had fallen through and was washing his hands of it. Efrain didn’t particularly care which, as he pressed down hard on the woman’s chest. He might not be particularly heavy, but pressure on the stomach was not pleasant.
“Don’t keep me waiting for much longer,” he said, “and don’t think magic will save you. I wrote the notes you learned from, girl.”
There was terror on her face as the words sank in, her eyes flitted to her fallen consort, and back to the soulless mask staring down on her.
“Wait,” came a weak voice from behind him.
It sounded like…?
Aya had sat up, quite unannounced, looking pale and weak, but very much alive. Apparently, confusion was not an expression that the baffled Clara had lost. Each person present exclaimed her name and wondered how and why she managed to circumvent the poison. Aya waved all the questions away, propping herself up on Lillian as she pointed an accusing finger at Azio.
“He planned all of it,” she said, “Syoiza’s innocent.”
The matriarch turned, and even Efrain, who was furious, blanched at the woman’s expression. Old stories of terrible demons and angry gods were nothing compared with the look she gave to her nephew. He tried to protest, to appeal to her sense of goodwill as she strode forward. All of that was cut very much short as she hauled him up by the collar of his robe, and smashed his face with a blow that echoed across the hill.
Her knuckles came away bloody, and Azio collapsed to the ground for a second time.
“Tie them up,” she snapped to the legionnaires, who jumped to work.
The woman sat glumly, Efrain quickly fishing the device from her pocket. It was an elongated oval, similar to the pen design he’d seen, but clunkier. Still, it was more or less exactly what he’d hoped for, minus the excited gasp that issued from Sorore.
“That’s it!” she said, pointing at it wildly “the thing, uh, the one that shot the dart!”
“Sounds like you have some explaining to do,” Efrain said quietly, looking at the group bunched up together around the sickly Aya.
Innie quickly relayed the account of the hall of the dead, the search for the key hole in the screen door, the attack. Apparently, the beast that had attacked them, one of the monsters, was a man who’d gone delving in the Miram ruins not long before. That explained the footprints, Efrain thought as he listened, tapping the device carefully against his palm. That raised far more uncomfortable questions than it did answers, unfortunately.
There had been a short battle, during which Niche and the wisp-mother had managed to destroy the creature. As corroboration, Niche presented the shards of black crystal he’d found in the things hand. Clara also supplied the man’s dumb, almost catatonic condition before he transformed. Efrain’s mind was churning rapidly, as soldiers began to disband and return to the house on the matriarch’s orders.
Perhaps the old Miram patriarch hadn’t acquired his madness as naturally as Efrain would prefer to believe. But that was a query for another day.
Finally, they all turned to Aya, who’d been quietly listening to the conversation.
“Now, Aya,” he said, “I think we have some questions for you, young lady. I think first is how exactly you got here, and what happened with the boy over there.”
He gestured lazily at the young man, apparently named Syoiza Carim. Aya related her part of the tale, and Efrain finally got the last pieces of the puzzle he thought he needed. Syoiza filled in additional details as for his part in the conspiracy.
“Well,” he said, turning to the matriarch, “I think I can provide a brief account of what happened.”
The matriarch, her rage cooled enough for her to not beat her nephew to death, crossed arms.
“I don’t know what to think. Apparently that scum-sucking bottom feeder wanted to attempt a coup,” she said, “and he tried to kill my own granddaughter to do it.”
“Oh, scum-sucking perhaps, but opportunist better than bottom feeder,” Efrain said, “he simply saw the situation of the young boy, used it for leverage. You taught him business after all.”
There were no more than two dozen legionnaires on the hill now, as well as their party.
“I’m not in the mood for jokes, mage,” she said darkly.
“As you wish,” Efrain said, crouching before Azio, who glared at him, “to sum it up, I suspect that he intended to take your position for a while now. Even if he didn’t, he used the situation of the Carim and Madros, which looked more or less natural, to his advantage. Syoiza comes to him, having a love of the docks and knowing Azio to be influential and friendly. He inflames the war between the houses during a time he knows you can’t focus on it.”
The man’s face darkened with every additional word.
“So, the whole city knows about it. ‘Why won’t the Eisen and Poutash do anything’? Is the common refrain. Perhaps he was willing to let it stew for a little bit more. Make the people desperate as he held onto the Carim boy. Then he’d produce them where you could not and have a bid for leadership, or at least a stepping stone to build off on his way to challenging you.”
Aya at this point was looking well, which nearly prompted Efrain to turn and ask her how on earth she’d cleansed her body of the toxin. But he needed to finish off his case against the glowering administrator.
“In fact I suspect it was the latter. Until an heir came along and made you desperate. What was it you said, ‘desperate men do stupid things’? Maybe you even planned to let the boy live. But you needed a scandal, didn’t you? A minor house declaring Umtau? Where would they’ve gotten knowledge of such an exclusive ritual, or the specific wording for the rite? It was the specific wording, I assume?”
“Close enough,” Aysatra nodded, her eyes narrowed, looking as if to go in for another swing.
“So you manipulated a house into extinction,” Efrain said, “ironically enough, that Madros fellow did curse the right house, albeit the wrong member. I hope the daughter lived, she seemed a good woman.”
“Efrain,” snapped Innie.
“Right,” Efrain said, “so you murdered the boy, drove his family to ritual suicide, and then planned to use those houseguard to murder me, probably Aya and the matriarch as well, and blame it on the boy. Who would no doubt die in the mayhem, unable to present his case to the city at large.”
He stood back up, the man said nothing.
“As coups go, mediocre,” he said, “you should’ve read more history. I think restudying some of the theories on General Stroe’s activities during the Sunset War would’ve done you good. Some clever points, but too elaborate in some areas and too simple in others, and all-in-all too risky. Aya completely threw you off, didn’t she?”
The man’s spittle hit Efrain’s boot, who promptly rubbed it on the grass.
“And that’s all the confirmation I need,” he said, turning to the matriarch, “what about you?”
“You’re really not going to say a single word in your defence?” said the matriarch quietly, “after all I did for you? The things I gave you?”
She sounded less angry, more tired and sorrowful. The man’s face screwed up in a mask of rage as he quite literally spat out the next words.
“What did you say when you sold us to Angorrah? ‘I did what we had to’,” he said, “and now, when it’s your own granddaughter on the line, you refuse to give her up. Just as you did for Ayserria. Hypocrite!”
“One more point I’m not clear on,” Efrain ventured, staying clear of the man’s mouth this time, “what role does Avencia have in all this?”
“That sloven coward?” sneered Avencia, “went through all the trouble and expense to make us a weapon. Lent us his boats when we didn’t want to be noticed traveling. All it took was a promise that the Academy would be supported, then as soon as you turned up, he turned yellow. Backed out without a word. Didn’t even have the conviction to own up and expose us, the coward.”
“So that’s why there were other academy boats were at the hall of the dead. Would you respect him more if he had?” Efrain said mildly.
“At least that would’ve meant accepting the consequences,” he said.
“So this is all a grudge?” said Aya from behind, “all because of what Angorrah did to you?”
The man didn’t offer a response other than angry eyes.
“Efrain?” said Innie.
“At least we kept our grudge, and didn’t kowtow to the empire that pillaged our city’s youth,” said the man, Sahardra nodding in contemptuous agreement, “did you know what they did to us over there? The ‘lucky’ ones got put to work as scribes, or other noble menials. Always a guard at our back, and if one got a little too bored and decided to stab a child, the church was all too happy to look the other way. And those were the male children.”
“And the unlucky ones?” Efrain said, not particularly surprised.
“The ones from the lesser houses? Or proved themselves trouble makers?” he chuckled, “got sent to the Farthest Lands. Most never returned. But why are you asking me about it? You have that precious commander after all.”
Efrain felt his blood run chill as Naia was brought up.
“Efrain,” Innie said, more urgently than before.
“In a minute,” Efrain said, “what do you mean? You know Naia?”
“Of course. It took me some time to recognize him,” he said, “but I remembered him. He was one of those taken from the Miram. Barely more than a toddler.”
Efrain was about to press the man for details, for everything on the mysterious commander.
“Efrain!” shouted Innie.
Efrain turned to look at her, finding her gazing out towards the darkness of the sea.
“Yes, what is i-”
Something like the sun rose in the distance, only in magic, with shadow and coldness instead of light and heat. The subtle ambient gradations of magic went from light to dark as utter terror gripped his heart. In terms of ordinary sight, it was like watching a great black maw appear on the horizon, and grow steadily larger as it rushed toward you. The others all felt it a moment later, the colours draining from their face and their breath starting to plume in a sudden, unnatural chill.
“To the city! Run!” screamed Efrain as he grabbed Aya, and sprinted down the hill to the docks.
He did not turn to see if the others had followed, but the panting breaths and the clank of armour told him that they did. The smooth stone of the dockyard promenade raced under foot as the clambered across the canal drawbridges. Then the rumbling began.
It wasn’t so earthshaking that they were thrown off balance, but they could definitely be felt underfoot as the sound of waves sloshed higher against the promenade wall. Efrain picked up his pace, racing for the angled jut of the yard entrance into the city. There was a blast from behind them, the sound of water cascading down, and then an almighty crash.
This time, Efrain and the others were thrown to the dock, mercifully avoiding sliding into a nearby canal, or worse, the open ocean. As Efrain struggled to get up to his feet and turn around to look at whatever had made the horrific sound, he heard a growl that started at his toes and coursed up his very being. Aya next to him puffed white fog from her mouth, and Efrain watched as sparkling ice crystals began to form on the now slick surface alongside him.
There was nothing for it.
Still backing away, and even doing so seeing the first tendrils of fog whisper past them, Efrain turned.
