Sourcethief (Book 3) (52 page)

"Well done. Much better plan," Rashan
said, giving a slight bow.

"You think this is a game?" Jinzan asked.

"You think it not?" Rashan retorted.
"Play at chess, and wonder at what those pieces represent. It is a war,
this—all this about us—rendered in miniature. But this is the true game. Unlike
chess, these sides are not equal; you are nothing but an obstacle, not a
threat."

"So you think," Jinzan replied. He raised
the Staff of Gehlen, prepared to unleash a spell from aether stored within.

Rashan was quicker. He raised a hand and a shock of
lightning arced between the two men. Jinzan bore the brunt with his shielding
spell, but was lifted off his feet and thrown the length of the corridor. The
corridor ended in a 'T' intersection; Jinzan was driven clear through the wall,
making it an 'X.'

Jinzan had broken ribs—he knew this in the manner of
a physician examining a patient, not as one feeling the sensation of pain. His
shielding spell was worn eggshell thin, but that was a secondary concern. The
first was freefall.

The corridor had turned because the Wellspire ended
there, and Jinzan had been blasted out into the city beyond. He fell not far,
but splashed into one of the aqueducts that ran from the Wellspire. He bumped
against the bottom of the channel and bobbed back to the surface, swept along
by chest-deep waters.

Jinzan craned his neck, and saw that Rashan Solaran
was standing in the hole through which he had been jettisoned. Knowing that he
had little time to prepare himself, Jinzan struggled to get his feet beneath
him. The current flowed at a walking pace, and Jinzan found he could hold
himself against it, once he stopped himself being carried along and found firm
footing.

Rashan hopped down from the Wellspire, falling two
stories to land deftly upon the side wall of the aqueduct. He scurried along
the maintenance walkway, comfortably wide enough to keep thoughts of an error
of balance or a gust of wind out of Jinzan's hopes. Jinzan instead tried to
create his own misfortune for the demon.

A simple telekinetic shove was all it should have
taken, but Jinzan found that the demon's Source was too slick to keep a hold
on. In trying, he lost valuable time—all the while, the demon closing in.

"I think I owe you this," Rashan called
out, still well out of the range where that wicked sword of his could be
brought to bear.

The water around Jinzan hardened in an instant,
forming a block of ice that encased him like a tomb from the chest down. It
also formed a dam, forcing the aqueduct's flow over the sides and over him as
well. The flow froze, and before Jinzan could even think of a counter, he was
held fast, just as his trap had held Rashan.

"I know you cannot talk in there," Rashan
shouted through the ice to muffled ears. "So if you survive the fall, you
can repay me with a pithy comment then."

Fall?

Jinzan had already thought to heat the ice with
plain aether, inefficient but obvious, when he saw Rashan lift his sword.

The demon thrust his blade into the stone side wall
of the aqueduct, driving it deep. It was an astonishing show of brute force,
swordsmithing, or both. Cracks spread through stone and ice alike, but not
enough to free Jinzan from his captivity.

Rashan scampered across the shattered section to the
far side, where Jinzan lost sight of him. He recognized the strike by its
sound: the same awful crack that had accompanied the first strike into the
aqueduct.

The sound of stone grinding against stone drowned
out Jinzan's own desperate thoughts. The ice was melting, but not quickly
enough for his liking. The whole section of aqueduct shifted and slid, finally
falling free of the rest. Jinzan had seen Whitefield from the sky; he knew how
far up he was, some seven stories above the city streets.

He knew he had little time. Jinzan drew, using the
Staff of Gehlen for all it was worth, pouring every bit of that aether into his
shields. He knew a spell for light landings, but it would have availed him
little with several tons of stone and ice dragging him along with them.

The segment of aqueduct hit the ground with a force
Jinzan had never expected to experience, let alone survive. It felt as if the
world had rebounded. Jinzan tried to take stock of himself. He was buried
beneath shattered ice and misplaced bits of stonework. The Staff of Gehlen had
survived, but he had fared poorly. He had several broken bones, from feet to
skull; one arm was dangling loose, no longer responding to his commands.

Jinzan dragged himself to his feet, sensing around
him what he most desperately needed: aether. Much was freshly dead—the corpses
in the homes that the aqueducts had collapsed atop were of the splattered
variety, not the reusable sort—but they had aether and it was plenty for his
immediate needs. Jinzan looked up to the aqueduct as he replenished himself.

Rashan Solaran looked down, watching him. Jinzan's
eyes went wide as he saw the demon step off. Down, down the demon plummeted,
landing with a crash just a few paces distant. He seemed unharmed, unconcerned,
and still armed with a blade that Jinzan began envisioning buried into his own
chest.

Jinzan knew that he had still not overmastered
Rashan Solaran, bitter though the thought was in his mind. His trap had proven
insufficient. His attempts to destroy the demon's body were not enough.
Loramar's techniques for attacking a victim's Source had proven futile. His
only option was escape.

"Like Loramar, I will return," Jinzan
promised.

Jinzan had never attempted a transference spell
silently before, but a serenity of mind gave him confidence.
Loramar failed
twice against Rashan Solaran, and gathered himself once again. I shall do
likewise
. The words and gestures of the spell played through his mind. A
sphere of aether formed around him, blotting out his view of Rashan and the
Kadrin city of Whitefield. Unlike every other time he had used the spell, his
thoughts did not escape into the deep aether. Something struck the outside of
the sphere, straining against it. Jinzan could feel the spell weakening, the
aether draining off.

When he finally managed his escape, Jinzan found his
reserve of aether for the journey all but depleted. He reemerged immediately,
only a dozen paces away. The rubble that had been at his feet collapsed to the
ground around him, spilling him onto the street. He turned about and saw Rashan
fall into the hole he had just left, poised in a kneeling position, blade stuck
down below him.
That madman attacked my transference spell and broke it? How
is that even possible?

"You worried me for a moment there, when you
reached the deep aether," Rashan said as he hopped from the rubble pit.
"All well in the end though. Looks like you lack the aether to try that
little trick again." Rashan leapt for him.

"What are you?" Jinzan called out in
despair.

"Loramar's unbeatable foe," Rashan
replied, slamming Heavens Cry down on Jinzan's shield. "To follow his path
was folly." Another blow hammered at Jinzan. His mind was out of ideas; he
kept his draw feeding into the shield. "My Source has no flaw. I became a
demon in search of a way to protect myself from him." Rashan pounded
against the shield once more, seemingly intent on nothing more than to wear him
down. For Jinzan, there was no hope of victory, no hope of escape. "My
first day of immortality was his doom." Heavens Cry sliced down again and
cut cleanly through the Staff of Gehlen which Jinzan had thrust up at the last
moment.

There was no flash of light, nor explosion of
uncontrolled aether let free, not even a thunderous crack. It snapped like a
dry sapling under the force of the demon's sword. "All that craftsmanship
... wasted," Rashan opined, granting Jinzan a moment's reprieve from his
onslaught.

Jinzan felt something else: the demon's draw. Bereft
of the staff's aid, the aether belonged to Rashan. Jinzan was no weakling
himself, but he was no match, battered and broken of body and spirit, to draw
against the demon.

"Better no one has it, than you," Jinzan
said. He collapsed to his back, staring up at his executioner. "Without
it, your days are few."

"Fine, you can have the rest of your little
unlife to explain that one, but make it quick. You have ruined my mood
already," Rashan said, holding Heavens Cry poised ready to strike. He
kicked the broken fragments of the Staff of Gehlen free of Jinzan's unresisting
hands.

"In Zorren, I saw true power one night. I knew
at the time, it had to be either you or Kyrus Hinterdale. I have taken your
measure twice since then, and I now know you have no power to match what I saw
that night," Jinzan said.

"You promise me death by the hand of the one
friend I know? I should leave you for the crows to pick at, but I grant you one
final honor, in Loramar's own footsteps, you will be consumed by Heavens
Cry."

With that Rashan impaled Jinzan through the chest.
I
feel nothing. The wretched demon was not lying after all. I was already dead.
The dead feel no pain
. Green vapors poured forth from Heavens Cry until
nothing was left of the body.

* * * * * * *
*

Starlight shone down from the heavens, illuminating
a clearing ringed in ancient pines that the mid-day sun deigned not to visit. A
pond in that clearing served as a gathering place. Immortals, demons, creatures
whose lives spanned ages, stood, sat, or floated about its periphery, rapt at
the images that played across the pond's shining surface. One of them knelt,
palms pressed to the muddy banks of the water, guiding their view.

Among the immortals, few had ever been to war, and
those who had bore only faded memories so old they might have been from another
lifetime, experienced by another being. They were scholars, philosophers,
explorers of the world and worlds beyond. Warmongers seldom had the breadth of
mind to also seek out something more than death. They all watched as one such
reveled in his awesome fury.

Rashan Solaran had confronted the wielder of the
Staff of Gehlen, and the shaking in the aether had roused the immortals'
attention. They watched the conflict as would theatrical patrons of a certain
rude bent. They whispered to one another, gasped aloud. Some speculated on the
outcome, but that pastime grew stale quickly once they realized that the
necromancer had no tool with which to break the demon's shell. Without such,
his stolen mastery was good for naught but culling the mortal herd. In the end,
none of them were surprised to see him laid down.

"It is done," Illiardra announced as she
watched the last of Jinzan Fehr's body dissolve in the mist of Heavens Cry. She
allowed the spectators to linger a moment over the image before she dismissed
it, and in that moment Rashan looked up. He gave a sheepish smile and a little
shrug, and she knew that it was meant for her. She gasped, realizing she had
either been caught at her eaveslooking, or he had guessed her nature. The image
disappeared.

"One threat is gone," Illiardra
proclaimed, recovering her dignity.

"The wrong threat," Vijax shouted, ever
the indiscreet one. "Who cares if the mortals are swept aside once in a
while? Necromancers are like forest fires among the Source-weak cattle; it does
them good in the long run to keep their numbers down."

"The staff, not the man," Illiardra
clarified. "Few are the threats to us, but that was among that scant
number. It was the most unpredictable of threats as well, for any sturdy
sorcerer would have become a deadly adversary by possessing it."

"What good is one fewer threat? Do so few
remain to us? Always we have the dragons to concern ourselves with, and the
worry of Xizix and the mad ideas he gets. He taught magic to assassins that
sought after Rashan. What if they had implicated Xizix? Would Rashan have
thought us culpable as well?"

"Rashan is a threat, of course. The dragons,
they know their place, and value their scaly hides. Xizix prefers his bluster
over violence, for all that he pretends otherwise," Illiardra replied.

"You still worry about that mortal
sorcerer," a new voice accused. There were mutters of agreement.

"He is our greatest hope, and our greatest
worry. Gods willing, he kills Rashan before Rashan’s mania consumes us all, and
then he dies of age."

Kyrus listened to the echoes of his own footsteps as
he climbed the dungeon stairs. He counted them. He wanted something to keep his
mind from what he had just done. Faolen's Source had been such a flimsy thing,
a porcelain cup he dashed against the floor in a moment's temper.

What if Varnus was wrong? Was
being a tool of Rashan cause enough to kill him?
Kyrus felt dirty, carrying the
last of the illusionist's aether about inside him. He tried to tell himself
that he had burned away the stolen remnants by enabling the wards that sealed
the cell, but he knew he had taken far more than the simple locking magic had
required. He said not a word to anyone he passed as he made his way up from the
dungeon and through the palace halls. When he reached his own chambers, he
poured aether into the wards until the runes glowed in the light. While those
runes spelled out the terms of his personal protections, it seemed like he was
posting Faolen to guard over him.

Kyrus stalked over to his desk and threw himself
into the chair. He shuffled his notes about until he found a nagging fact with
depths he had not plumbed. He read, willing the words into his mind at the
expense of all others. He examined one of the passages from
The Warlock
Prophecies
.

Broken vase spills blue-white
blood

The missing pieces are keys that
lock the final door

What if Rashan discovers Faolen
behind that locked door, and knows that it was me, and not the cell, that
killed him?

Patch the wholes that are only
halves

Kyrus took a deep breath, and rubbed at his eyes. He
tried again.

Broken vase spills blue-white
blood

There was no blood, except on
Varnus's neck.

The missing pieces are keys that
lock the final door

Patch the wholes that are only
halves

Kyrus stood, and paced about the room. He looked at
the notes accusingly, as if they put those thoughts in his head. Glaring at
them, he settled himself and sat down once more.

Broken vase spills blue-white
blood

The missing pieces are keys that
lock the final door

Patch the wholes that are only
halves

Rashan knew what he was missing. The Source analogy
was the key.

One vase, filling fast, spilling
faster

To see another, no mirror may
reflect it

Where to find its shadow, an
absence not a copy

Seek a way among the spirits

Kyrus had been so caught up in the final line that
he had brushed too lightly by the middle lines. The only vase that could empty
faster than it was filled was a broken one. It might as well have been a part
of the other verse. "No mirror," "absence,"
"shadow"—they all seemed to indicate an inverse, perhaps a
mathematical complement.

I have to have a look at my own
Source.

There were simple magics for doing so, he had been
told. He had just never learned any of them. He scooped up his notes and thrust
them amid a stack of books. He needed no reference to remember every line of
them; their presence was only an aid to organize his thoughts. He no longer
needed that aid.

Kyrus rushed to the Tower of Contemplation and up
the stairs to its libraries. His path opened up before him as people scrambled
out of his way. Sir Brannis Solaran was clearly on some vital errand. If only
they knew how vital it was.

The librarian on duty found him the book he was
looking for:
Aetherial Introspection: a Treatise on Source and Self
.
Kyrus dismissed the librarian from the rest of his day's duties, and bid him
return after the wedding the following day.

He sat down at one of the research tables and
remembered a time not so very long ago when Brannis had done the same. Brannis
had been desperate, lacking in focus but not in determination. Kyrus had ample
reserves of both. He flipped through the pages for the words of a spell,
finding it only a few pages in, an essential tool for exploring the book's
premises—none of which concerned Kyrus in the least, at that moment.

"
Tenmaak refu danakali vindou
,"
Kyrus chanted. There was no gesture but to close his light-seeing eyes.

The sensation was like that of the deep aether
voyage of a transference spell. His perspective was dislodged, freed from its
fleshy confines to drift about on its own. Unlike the transference spell, there
was no disproportionality of distance and time. He could raise his hand and
wave to himself, but most of all, he saw himself as a Source. In fact, he could
see little else.

He had never imagined the brightness of it, an
inferno of blue-tinged white. Most other Sources were a gentle blend of the two
colors, but his burned with visible intensity that seared away the blue tones.
There was something indistinct about it, as well. Other Sources had defined
edges, making them look like human dolls, or statues of aether come to life.
There was nothing bounding Kyrus's own Source. It kept a general human shape,
but like a child's painting.

My Source is fully open. Brannis's nearly completely
sealed. He must drip aether like a dew-blessed leaf, while mine pours from me
like a waterfall. I lack exactly what he has, and also the reverse. One Source,
split unequally between two worlds ... no, not just worlds, split between
bodies! There
is
only one Source between us. That must be the secret. Rashan did not go to
Tellurak to attempt to share the secret of immortality with his twin, nor to
finish Agga's business for him. He went there to find the missing piece of his
own Source!

* * * * * * *
*

"Just look at those things," Juliana
called out. "Pines the size of towers, oaks we could land this airship on.
I had no idea the interior of Podawei was so ... ancient." Juliana would
have named more of the trees, but had run herself out of species she could
identify.

"I shall take you at your word," Tiiba
called from halfway up the stairs to the deck.

"I think it's about time you got up here and
started helping to look. If there's something down there, I'm guessing this is
the part of the forest where it would be hidden," Juliana replied. She
spared a glance back at him, and saw that he had not moved. "Get
up
here, you craven ox. Buckle yourself into a harness and watch over the
railing."

Tiiba ignored her. He turned and went belowdecks.

Juliana activated the runes that projected her voice
to the interior of the ship. "You'd best keep a sharp eye out those
windows. I don't need ballast on this ship. Either help or I'll drop you
somewhere."

Juliana returned her attention to the viewing
screen, the glass showing an endless blur of trees speeding past beneath them.
She swept the view back and forth, the equivalent of swiveling the ship's head
as it flew.

An hour or so later, she caught a quick glimpse of a
break in the trees as they passed over. It was a large clearing of some sort.
She had seen nothing on the ground, but it was the first major break in the
tree cover that she had seen since they reached the denser part of the central
forest. If there were creatures living somewhere within, that was as good a
place as any to start looking for them.

"Did you see that?" Juliana called down to
the hold.

"No, what did you see?" Tiiba called back.
I am going to stab that good eye right out of your head, you cowardly
whoreson. I know you aren't afraid of heights, so there's no excuse to be
afraid of being on deck.
She knew her flying exploits had spooked him, but
he was carrying it too far.

"There's a clearing we passed over. I'm going
to bring us around for a slower look at it. Might even take us down,"
Juliana called back.

Juliana switched grips on the ship's wheel, and the
Starlit
Marauder
began to turn. She had been flying it long enough to realize that
something was wrong when it reacted sluggishly to her command. The ship turned,
but it was having difficulty about it.

Merciful Tansha, I think we've
almost exhausted the aether in her.

Juliana had gone so long on the first aether with
which Kyrus had imbued the ship that she had imagined it might run eternally.
She ought to have known better—somewhere in the disused corners of her mind,
she did. Ancient rune-forged bits like Avalanche scrounged up enough stray
aether to keep themselves going indefinitely. Others, like Brannis's armor,
replenished themselves so slowly that they often needed supplementing. But
Soria's daggers ran themselves out in a few days' hard use, and Rakashi's blade
lasted not much longer. The
Starlit Marauder
, it seemed, had just
informed her of its limit.

She managed to complete the turn, and put them back
on a heading for the clearing, but the turn had grown slower even as it
finished. The ship was drifting slower, as well, and began losing altitude.
They were not terribly high above the trees to begin with, so any drop at all
was alarming.

"Tiiba!" Juliana shouted, not even wanting
to waste the aether to shout at him via the runes. "We're losing aether.
I've got to set us down somewhere. Grab hold of something."

Juliana's Safschan was shoddy, consisting largely of
curse words. She understood most of the invective Tiiba shouted up at her from
the hold.

They were not going to make it to the clearing, and
nowhere was there a clear path to the ground that she could see. As they
drifted lower, they brushed against branches, listing as the ship was unable to
compensate for the drag. Snapping and crackling accompanied every step of their
progress as the
Starlit Marauder
slowly crashed. Juliana had to duck
behind the ship's wheel as one large specimen threatened to swat her free of
the ship.

She searched frantically, not knowing how long she
had before the ship's aether gave way entirely. She thought back to one of her
first impressions of seeing the colossal oaks, and decided to attempt to land
among the branches. She took what little control she still had of the ship, and
steered nearer one of the trunks.

There was a crook in a branch—each fork as wide as a
man's height—that looked to be their best hope. Juliana lined the ship up as
best she could, and slowed the
Marauder
until it hovered above. With a
quick prayer to Tansha, Juliana set the ship down.

They landed with a creak and a crackling of lesser
branches. The ship leaned to the left, in the direction of a fall to an
unplumbed depth. Juliana released breath she had not realized she had been
holding. She unbuckled herself from the captain's harness, and crept over to
the ship's railing. Peering over the edge was like gazing into a leafy abyss.
There was no ground in sight for all the branches and greenery that spread
below them.

A breeze blew, not a gale or a stiff wind, but the
tree gave a gentle sway. The ship swayed along with it, and Juliana grabbed for
the railing to stay her balance on the tilted deck. When the ship stopped
moving once more, she scampered for the stairs to the hold.

"Tiiba, find all the rope you can," she
called out to him. "We need to secure the ship."

"What if, perhaps, you renewed the ship's
aether and we made our way to the clearing?" Tiiba hollered back.

Juliana rummaged through the ship's supplies,
thankful that the quartermasters in Kadris could not grasp the concept that a
ship with no rigging did not need to keep coils of rope by the dozen on hand
for repairs.

"What is your problem, Tiiba?"

He walked in behind her, and began helping to gather
the rope. "A man thinks he has passed beyond fear, until he finds a fear
beyond simple preservation of his own life. If I die, there may be no one who
can pass word along to Rashan about Brannis's death," Tiiba replied.

"You think he would believe you, or that it
would matter whether he did?" Juliana asked.

"I think if Brannis knew the truth, we could
manage to convince Rashan," Tiiba reasoned. "Kyrus could maintain the
lie."

Juliana sighed, and set down the rope coils she had
slung over her arm. She turned to look Tiiba in his mismatched eyes. There was
a desperate earnestness there.
He doesn't care about Brannis, or even
himself. He's just willing to try anything to save Safschan
.

"Fine. I had hoped things might work themselves
out before summer came, but I can't ask you to do nothing. Just do me one
favor?"

"What is that?" Tiiba asked.

"It's Brannis's age-day tomorrow, just wait
until later to tell him. I don't want to ruin it for him."

* * * * * * *
*

Tiiba relented and helped to secure the
Starlit
Marauder
to the tree's branches. Neither of them were proper sailors, and
the knots were shoddy, but telekinesis had allowed them to loop the ropes
around the limbs and get a fair hold of them.