A compulsion seized him, and he thrust his hand into the hot mass of liquid. He felt the fire of it travel up his arm, and he screamed the anguish even as he uttered the single word that went out from him and into the blood of the earth.
“Isaak,” Neb cried out, and the word rang loudly in the room with a tone of command that surprised him.
The ceiling fell now, large chunks of rock splashing into the pool or landing upon the cracked floor. Fissures deep below had opened, and already the pool was draining as the quicksilver followed gravity and the path of least resistance in the aftermath of the explosion.
Neb pulled himself out onto the boiling surface, feeling the heat of it as it burned what little remained of his robes. He willed it to bear him, and he gave himself to the network of veins that flowed east, letting the hot light swallow him, leaving only his screams behind to mingle with the sound of stone upon stone as the caves collapsed.
When Neb felt the metal hands upon him, he kicked and thrashed against them, unable to see in the dark place he found himself in. But the hands were cool and they stilled him.
“Lord Whym,” the metal man said, “the antiphon awaits you. I will bear you to it.”
He felt himself being lifted and felt his awareness graying. He heard the quiet whisper of moving gears and spinning scrolls as the metal man moved quickly through the dark cavern. His hand throbbed from where he’d thrust it into the boiling pool, and he felt the kin-raven still clutched in it. With his last conscious thought, Neb cast about within the aether.
“Isaak?”
But there was no answer as the gray became a dark that swallowed him. And this time, when Neb dreamed about the moon, the Watcher waited for him there, laughing down at him from the pinnacle of a tower that remained closed to him.
Vlad Li Tam
The old man danced with abandon and poured his body into the blade. Three times he sliced, three times he punctured, the faces of his children flashing across his inner eye as he brought edge and point home to his grandson’s flesh, a steel traveler too long on the road. The young man’s surprised cries were the welcome of an innkeeper and the wideness of his eyes, a lantern-lit window.
As he danced, he laughed low and savored the jarring of his arm and wrist each time the knife found purchase.
When he finished, Vlad Li Tam wiped his grandson’s blood from the knife and stooped to recover the shining staff. The boy tried to move, his mouth opening and closing and his chest whistling from the wounds that punctured his lungs. Vlad stepped carefully around the pooling blood as he moved back and squatted on his haunches to watch.
Mal Li Tam’s eyes rolled, a mumble on his lips that gradually took form. “My. last. words.”
Vlad shook his head, never looking up from the staff. “Lord Tam hears the last words of his kin. You are not my kin.”
More muttering, and in the wet-sounding words, Vlad thought he heard something about love. He scowled and was not going to answer, but suddenly words found him as image after image of his family upon the cutting table flashed before his eyes. “What would you know of love?”
The voice was a whisper, and Vlad leaned forward to hear it. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for love.”
He felt the anger first; then it resolved into something calm and quiet. He did not know if it was the exhaustion and last dregs of the scout powders that made him so or the hypnotic way that the blue-green light danced the room, bent through crystal and water. Regardless, he sighed. “Perhaps you have,” he said. “And perhaps you’ve loved the wrong thing.”
Then he stood, placed his foot on the neck of his fallen grandson, and let his full weight settle upon his heel as he crushed the boy’s windpipe.
Child of Frederico.
It was a woman’s voice. He heard her clearly above the moving crystalline room, and the radiating stone hummed. Vlad looked around, feeling gooseflesh rise on him. Then, he realized he was not hearing the voice with his ears.
It spoke again. My love.
He looked to the d’jin that throbbed and twisted, captured in the stone. When he found his words, they were a whisper. “Is it you?”
She continued, as if she hadn’t heard. You have drawn the Moon Wizard’s staff from the heart of the ladder and can now make right that which he has made wrong. It must return to the tower before Lasthome falls or the Continuity Engine of the Older Gods will fall with it and the light will be extinguished. Seek the heir of Whym and place the staff in his hands; he will know by his birthright how to wield it. Find Shadrus’s children. Bid them follow the song home.
Vlad stretched out a hand toward the stone. It hung above him just out of reach, and for a moment, he was tempted to tap the stone with the staff he held. But something in him resisted.
Use the staff to aid you; but use it with care. For the tools of the parents are not made for the hands of their infant children.
He recognized the quote but had thought it was P’Andro Whym’s, possibly from one of the earlier gospels. Another question arose and he asked it, though by now he suspected perhaps this wasn’t a conversation as much as it was words rehearsed and now reproduced. “Who are you?”
Frederico’s Behemoth will bear you to the Barrens of Espira. I have hidden my father’s spellbook there. The staff will lead you to it. It too must return to the tower and be locked away in the Library of Elder Days. My family stole both when they took the tower and raised their fist against the Engine of the Gods.
There was a pause, and it was so long that Vlad thought perhaps she was done speaking. When the voice returned, it was quiet and low. My love has called you forth and will continue with you, Child of Frederico. We have bargained in the Deepest of Deeps that the light once more be sown in the darkness that contains us all.
One of the silver lines broke free and moved, slow as a python, and its tip touched the end of the staff. Light moved through it, and he felt the steel grow warm in his hands as it vibrated. The surprise of it caught him off guard, and when he tried to release the staff, he found that his fingers would not move. The vibration increased as the rod burned first white, then blue, then green.
But it wasn’t only the staff the light penetrated and suffused. He felt it moving over his skin, then moving into it through his pores and beneath his nails, entering him through his ears, his nose, his mouth and every other orifice on his body. Stronger than the heat of the guttering scout magicks, it crawled into him from the point where the tendril touched the staff, and he resisted.
Another silver vein detached itself and encircled his waist, anchoring him in place as his scars began to itch and then burn. He opened his mouth to cry out and swallowed it as yet another and then another line reached and pulled at him.
Vlad felt himself lifted up and carried closer to the glowing stone and the d’jin-the light-bearer-that blazed within it.
She fills it like she fills my heart.
Yes, the voice said in his mind. And I power the ladder even as my love powers you.
The room spun faster now, and Vlad heard the song beyond its crystalline walls reach a crescendo as a sea full of d’jin danced in the waters above and below him.
He opened his eyes against the light. “Who are you?” he cried.
I am the Moon Wizard’s daughter, the voice whispered in his mind. I am Amal Y’Zir, beloved of Frederico, the Last Weeping Czar.
And then that light became darkness, and when Vlad Li Tam awoke, he lay in the belly of a metal serpent that ground and clanked its way across deep waters. He lay still and clutched the shining staff, taking his breath slowly like kallaberry smoke as his tears dried, the memory of a song echoing in his ears and the sharp ache of love in his very bones.