The duelist 11, p.14
The Duelist 11, page 14
“Are those vella blossoms?” she asked eagerly, and when I looked over my shoulder to meet her gaze, she grinned at me.
“Maya loves gardening,” Anwaar explained from where she was walking with Horus.
“I do,” the oryx-woman admitted with a laugh. “It was the only time I was able to get away from all my stuffy studying. Even if I found it interesting sometimes, I didn’t like being cooped up all the time.”
“Who does?” I asked with a shrug, and I couldn’t help but smile at how fascinated Amaya looked as she gazed at the blossoms. I immediately resolved to have more flowers planted, as many as she wanted, so she could garden to her heart’s content.
Lined up outside the manor, in front of its enormous doors that had heavy metal crests of the Tas family hanging on them, were a group of Alemic people that I supposed had to be Tas’ servants. One of them, a man with spiral-shaped kudu horns, stepped forward as we approached.
“Asher Brightwood,” he said, and he gave a short, stiff bow. “I am Janis, head servant of this estate. My family has served the Tases since the days of the Sacred Sixty-Four and Tessen Tas. Now I serve you.”
“Nice to meet you, Janis,” I said, but I could tell the kudu-man was little short of enraged that his family’s history had been uprooted because I’d killed Teivel.
We got through introductions, which was basically an exchange of names, and I tried to remember the names of the servants as Janis told me them, because I didn’t want to be that asshole who just said ‘you there’ all the time. Then Janis led us into the family room, and several of the servants awkwardly offered things like tea, which we refused.
Once I was sure we were alone, I turned to Sha-Kane.
“So they hate me, right?” I asked. “Because I killed Tas.
“I don’t think they’re your biggest fans in Aventoll, no,” the osprey-man admitted with a frown. “But everyone is resistant to change at first. Give them time.”
“But why would they be loyal to him?” I asked. “He and his entire family were entitled assholes who just thought about themselves. I saw what Teivel was like in the Heartcave, that wasn’t the type of guy who treats servants politely.”
“Perhaps not, but even if the people at large don’t like the attitudes of the Ashers, they are dependent on the hierarchy set in place. A servant of a Councilman is a prestigious position for someone who cannot hope to become an Asher themselves.”
Frankly, I didn’t care for a system of society that only stood on top of people. The people at the bottom would be better off without it. But I knew I was getting ahead of myself, and we needed to figure out how the Council was controlling the Scourge and stop them before we implemented any radical reforms to the government.
“Alex,” Shay then said, and I looked over to see she and Amaya had been sitting with their heads bowed together, like they were discussing something private. “You’re sure we’re alone?”
“I told the servants to go, so I guess so,” I said, because even if they didn’t like me, I was still their new master, and I was willing to bet their commitment to obedience was greater than their dislike of change. “What’s wrong?”
“We sensed some strange magic when we were in the Council Hall,” Amaya said, and she clasped Shay’s hand, not quite like she was nervous, but like she was seeking strength from the phoenix-woman. Shay sat there, and she looked confident, powerful, and regal despite her and Amaya’s concern. She looked more like a goddess with each passing day.
“What kind of strange magic?” I asked the oryx-woman.
“I’m not entirely sure,” she admitted, and she looked over at Anwaar, who had her lips pursed. “But it got stronger when we arrived here.”
“I didn’t feel anything in the Council Hall,” the ibex-woman said. “But there is definitely something peculiar here. I didn’t want to say anything in front of others, though. Not when we don’t know who we can trust.”
“Wise,” I remarked with a nod. “So, what do you think it is?”
“That’s just it,” Shay said in a grim voice, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I could see her knuckles had gone white from how tightly she was holding Amaya’s hand, I would have thought the phoenix-woman was totally calm. “It feels a lot like the magical disturbance that occurs when there’s a Red Sky.”
Chapter 9
“What?” I asked as I blinked in shock.
“After I became the Incarnate, I began to feel magical… signatures,” the phoenix-woman explained to me with a shrug. “And the feel of a Red Sky is similar to what I can feel now. Worryingly similar.”
“I can’t feel specific signatures,” Amaya then clarified, and she glanced over at Anwaar, who shook her head. “But I can tell something is wrong. It’s not natural magic.”
“What do you mean, ‘not natural magic?’” I asked. “Magic is a force of nature, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s not being used… right,” the oryx-woman said, and she grimaced at her use of the word ‘right.’ “Imagine… a river. It flows in one direction. This is like someone trying to make it flow in the other direction. Using magic in a way it’s not supposed to be used.”
“Like the machine on Eng?” Horus suggested. “It did something to the magic of the Curse, made the Engish more feral.”
“I suppose,” Shay said. “But I never saw this machine. I didn’t get close enough to get a sense of its magic, so I can’t say for sure.”
“Neither can we,” Amaya added, and she gestured to herself and her sister with her free hand, because her other hand was still clasping Shay’s tightly.
I could see how this peculiar magic was setting all three women on edge, which only made it more imperative that we found the source and dealt with it.
“Is it coming from the house then?” I asked them, and all three women nodded their heads. “Can you say where?”
“Not… really…” Amaya said slowly.
“It’s been here a long time,” Anwaar added. “It’s permeated the very stones of this place. Or… more than that. It’s peculiar. Like the house was built to accommodate the magic specifically.”
“Like a… conduit?” I asked with a frown. “Accommodate how?”
“A conduit might be quite apt, actually.” The ibex-woman nodded slowly. “Something to channel the magic in a specific direction. But I can’t imagine why.”
“Well, this is Alem,” Horus scoffed, and he leaned forward in his seat so he could put an arm around Anwaar’s waist in comfort. “They’re doing something to the skies and the Scourge here. This must be related.”
“What should we do about it, though?” Zoie asked. She had sat down next to me, and I could feel how tense she was, not just from our conversation but because this was a new space she hadn’t grown familiar with yet, and she hadn’t had a chance to make a mothering nest. “Alem has been exerting its control over the rest of Aventoll for so long, can this ‘magical signature’ even be removed?”
“Magic has a tendency to linger, but it’s not permanent,” Anwaar said. “Shay healed the Heart of Aventoll, and with it, the other Islands’ Hearts, but it’s not necessarily permanent unless we take other steps to purge the corruption that made the Hearts sick in the first place.”
“We treated the symptoms, but we haven’t yet treated the cause,” I said with a nod. “So we can apply the same logic here. The strange energies you guys can sense are a symptom. We need to find the cause.”
“And it will almost certainly be related to whatever the Council is doing to cause the Red Skies and control the Scourge,” Sha-Kane added. He was sitting beside Sera, because the official story for the sake of propriety was that she was his wife, but the older Lakuna woman was perched stiffly next to him on the couch with her teal eyes focused straight ahead.
There was no telling how many unpleasant memories haunted her while in this house.
“Sera,” I said to her gently. “If you prefer, you can go back to the Manta and stay there. You don’t need to be in this building.”
“No,” she told me in a firm voice. “I vowed I would not be haunted by the deeds of dead men. This is just a building. But… I, too, can sense some of the malevolent magic here. I have never experienced what you call a ‘Red Sky,’ though.”
Of course. Aventoll had gone over seventy seasons without a single instance of a Red Sky. They’d only started after I’d come to Aventoll, which would have been when Sera was already a prisoner in this manor. She wouldn’t have seen the skies from wherever her cell was.
“It’s fairly literal,” I said. “An attack of demons is predated by a Red Sky. We think the Council are somehow responsible for both as a way to keep the population in check.”
“It would explain why we went so many seasons without seeing one,” Sha-Kane said. “The Council was comfortable with their lot, and they didn’t want to do more work than they had to, so they kept the Red Skies and the Scourge at a relative distance, unless people began to get restless and uppity.”
“Whereupon they just broke out the Red Skies again to scare the Peoples into submission, and so the Council themselves could be lauded as heroes,” I said with a nod. “I bet they haven’t been too strict on that, though. A small, sneaky demon attack without being predated by a Red Sky… I bet it’s happened before, we just haven’t encountered anyone who saw it because everyone who saw it was killed.”
“It does seem like too useful a tactic for them to have only thought of it recently,” Zoie agreed. “They used it against you because you became a large enough problem. Only, you survived.”
“Only because I had you fighting by my side,” I said with a smile, and I kissed the cat-woman’s forehead.
She relaxed incrementally but still looked uncomfortable.
“Though,” Horus then interjected. “Are we so sure the Council is responsible for the Red Skies? That insane cleric didn’t say the Council was. They said Alem was. And the Wolfmen Tribes spoke of the Moon cutting himself to appease the Scourge’s bloodlust.”
“Maybe that held some truth to it, once,” Shay suggested. “Maybe whomever caused the Red Skies was initially trying to warn people about the Council’s ability to control the Scourge, or they could sense when a demon attack was imminent.”
“The Council didn’t create the demons,” I agreed with a nod. “The Moon did, from Aventollians who abandoned his worship. The Council just eventually figured out a way to control the Scourge, after several generations turned the Sacred Sixty-Four from noble heroes fighting a legitimate threat into a bunch of self-centered hedonists.”
“The question is when,” Zoie said.
“I’m willing to bet it was something like seventy-five seasons ago,” I said. “I know it sounds recent, but how else would it explain such a huge gap between Red Skies? All the history books speak about them like they were… well, not common, but certainly more frequent than once a century.”
“Which would mean the Council… ‘turned off’ the Scourge,” Amaya said. “So they could party?”
“I’d like to think at least some of it was to protect the Peoples, but at this point, I’m pretty sure it was mostly for their own benefit, yeah,” I said with a nod. “Not to mention, whatever technology or magic is allowing them to do this… it would have to be pretty new for no one else to have recreated it, or figured it out.”
“And whatever they implemented to cause the Red Skies and control the Scourge is the magic you three can sense here,” Horus said with a look at Anwaar, Amaya, and Shay. “Do you think you can pinpoint where?”
“This place is large,” Anwaar said with a frown. “And like I mentioned before, it’s been here for so long that it’s sunk into the stones. I don’t even know if this building is the actual heart of the power, or if we’re just closer than we were at the Council Hall.”
“I think we’re at least close to the center,” Shay said. Her face had a look of intense concentration. “But Anwaar’s right, it’s… cloudy. There’s a lot of strange magic here.”
“Then we do this the old-fashioned way,” I said, and I got to my feet. “Split up and search. Amaya, you and Shay come with me. Anwaar, you go with Horus and Nova. Zoie, you go with Sha-Kane and Sera.”
I didn’t especially want to put Shay or Horus with Sha-Kane right now, since they were both working through the revelation that he was their father. They both needed time to adjust, and they needed the opportunity to approach the osprey-man on their own terms.
“This manor has four floors, not including the basement,” I went on. “Zoie, your group should search the ground and first floors. Anwaar, you guys take the second and third floors. Shay, Maya, and I will check the basement.”
I had a sneaking suspicion the basement would be where Sera’s cell had been, and probably where Teivel’s ‘tinker-shop’ was, too. I didn’t want the Lakuna woman to be anywhere near the source of so many painful memories, but I also wanted answers about just what the ‘Tinker Tas’ family were-- or had been-- capable of.
The nine of us split up, and Shay, Amaya, and I made a beeline for the double doors nestled under the stairway in the entrance hall. The stairway was actually two stairways that curved around the walls and met at the top in the center of the entrance hall. In the center of the room was a statue of an Alemic man, and against the back wall underneath the staircases was a pair of handsomely carved doors that, as it turned out, were locked.
“Damn,” I muttered, though I supposed it made sense that Teivel wouldn’t have left the basement unlocked if it did contain dangerous or compromising information.
I turned away from the doors so I was facing the back of the statue. If I’d had to guess, I would’ve said it was of Tessen Tas, but I didn’t know for sure.
“I can’t believe we didn’t notice it before,” Amaya said as she, too, gazed up at the statue. “Anwaar and I grew up here, but we didn’t notice this whole Island… its magic is so wrong.”
“I can believe it,” I replied in a kind voice. “Like you said, you grew up here. You didn’t know to expect anything different. It’s only when you traveled to other Islands and then came back that you noticed Alem’s magic was different to everywhere else. Do either of you know how to pick locks?”
“No, that was Horus’ purview, I’m afraid,” Shay sighed, and her wings drooped a little. “It’s really locked? That’s a bit strange, considering Teivel lived here alone.”
“Well, if he was keeping Sera as a prisoner down there, it was probably more to make sure she didn’t escape,” Amaya pointed out. The decorations she’d draped around her horns sparkled every time she moved her head, and they sparkled now as she frowned at the locks. “This doesn’t seem like an ordinary mechanism.”
“I supposed in the ‘Tinker Tas’ manor, it wouldn’t be,” I said. “Maybe one of the servants has the key.”
“Asher Brightwood?” a voice asked, and I turned to see Janis walking over to the three of us. “Is there something wrong?”
“We’re trying to find the source of some peculiar magical energy,” Shay told him. “Have you ever noticed something wrong with the magic of Alem?”
Strangely, Janis didn’t answer. He just kept looking at me like he hadn’t even heard Shay speak.
“Is everything alright?” Amaya asked with a slight frown, like she was concerned for the kudu-man. “Mr. Janis?”
Still, he didn’t answer. Had something happened to him?
“Janis,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Asher Brightwood,” the man answered at once.
I realized just what he was getting at, and I scowled.
“You’ll answer Shay and Amaya when they speak to you,” I told him. “You’ll answer anyone who speaks to you, regardless of their status. Don’t be rude and ignore people’s questions.”
“Understood, Asher Brightwood,” Janis said, though he raised one highly disapproving eyebrow. I knew he couldn’t say anything outright, because I was his master, and at least for now, the kudu-man had decided obeying me was the lesser of two evils.
“I ask again,” Shay said in a slightly prim voice. “Have you ever noticed anything wrong with the magic of Alem, Mr. Janis?”
“No,” the kudu-man answered, and his expression became tight with offense. “Alem is the most blessed of Mercedes’ Islands. We hold her favor most strongly, for we host the Council and the Order. The Scourge has not attacked Alem in centuries. Of course there is nothing ‘wrong’ with the magic here.”
From the way he said ‘wrong,’ a person would have been forgiven for thinking it was some kind of unspeakably rude word, but my attention was more focused on the fact the demons apparently hadn’t attacked Alem in centuries.
Sure, there’d been a seventy-five-season gap between Red Skies, but ‘centuries’ was odd. That firstly meant there hadn’t been a single demon attack on Alem after I’d arrived in Aventoll. But there’d been attacks on pretty much every other Island-- except Eng, of course, because the Curse hid Eng from the Scourge. But I had a feeling it wasn’t a Curse that was hiding Alem from the demons.
Secondly, it meant even before the seventy-five-season gap, there had been a way for the Council to repel demons from Alem. Maybe whatever magic they’d used to create that gap had initially only been strong enough for Alem.
Either way, Janis’ answer was unhelpful in terms of locating the strange magic, so I returned to my earlier plan of searching the manor, which for our group, meant the basement.
“Janis,” I said to the kudu-man. “Do you have the keys to open these doors?”
I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain details on why I wanted the basement doors open, but I knew it was futile. Sure enough, Janis’ expression became a little disapproving.
“I’m afraid I cannot open those doors for you, Asher Brightwood,” he said. “Master Teivel did not allow anyone but himself to enter the lower floor of the manor. Only Tases are allowed down there.”
