Chapter 1:
A Theft of Years
The Tyvolian Autumn had not yet lost its battle to winter, but was hard beset. The browning oak leaves held a fiery red edge, and the leaves of poplar trees glowed a vibrant orange. Those already loosed from the branches decorated the trail ahead in patches like little carpets of flame. The air was rich with their musky sweetness, and the sharp, clean scent of pine needles.
Hanuvar and Antires worked to avoid the swish and crunch of the leaves they passed, even though they were deep enough into the woods they were unlikely to be overheard by humans. They were trespassers on this land.
The old knee wound was stiff in the chill, an intermittent, angry bite in Hanuvar’s stride. He’d thrown an ebon cloak over his dark, long-sleeved tunic, pulled on leggings, and switched to boots, but his hood was down. His slate-colored eyes narrowed in concentration. His gray-threaded, black hair was worn short, cut straight across his forehead, and his face was clean shaven, accommodations to modern Dervan styles to better conceal his identity. If a little darker than the average Dervan citizen, his skin-tone was hardly uncommon, even among the ruling class, who spent far more time indoors than their social inferiors.
His companion continually fiddled with his own hood, indecisive about whether he wished to be shielded from the breeze, or to see along his periphery. Antires lowered it once more and scratched the side of his face. Hanuvar knew he was unused to the feel of the fringe beard and thin mustache he’d grown. Like the thick hair that topped Antires’ head, his facial hair was dark and tightly coiled. He was younger than Hanuvar by nearly a quarter century, with fine features and smooth brown skin.
Antires addressed his friend quietly. “What’s your backup plan if we can’t get this land? Do you want to try for a different site?”
Hanuvar shook his head, no, and answered softly. “This little cove is ideal. Deep water. Well forested, which permits privacy as well as building materials, and it’s just beyond the village’s existing harbor.” That would make the transportation of any additional supplies that much simpler, not to mention the movement of future passengers for the ships they would be launching.
“I thought you’d say that. But how are you going to get the old woman to sell?”
“First, we’ll see the shrine. Then we’ll see what we can do. It’s not the owner who’s the real problem. It’s the priest.” Alma herself had sounded amenable to selling the coastal portion of her land, but the priest, Eloren, had dissuaded her with an admonition that the gods would better bless the shrine if all the land around it was left inviolate.
The path beaten through the forest detritus by Alma’s litter bearers extended in a mostly straight line from her villa and was impeded only by intervening oak and pine. It ended in a tiny clearing. A small stack of firewood had been piled beside a blackened cookfire. Leaves to the other side were flattened as if some large rectangular object had rested there—her conveyance, almost certainly. A fallen tree bole nearby had been carved repeatedly with a knife, providing a canvas for crude, silly faces with staring eyes and broken noses. “One of Alma’s slaves has a lot of idle time,” Hanuvar said.
“And he’s a latent master, judging by this portraiture.” Antires’ attention wandered with him as he stopped at a set of stone stairs vanishing through a dark square beneath the earth. A fresh coating of leaves dusted them in red and yellow, but they were curiously clean of dirt and sticks and weeds. “Looks like the old woman’s had her slaves clean this place. Can you imagine being ordered to see to the maintenance of some haunted stairs in a dark forest?”
“I can imagine a lot of things.” Hanuvar moved off, scanning the ground around the stairs. Antires followed.
“It’s hard to believe she’d want to come here every week.”
“Three times a week, lately,” Hanuvar corrected.
“Do you think there’s any chance she really is speaking to her dead son here?”
Antires smirked at Hanuvar’s skeptical return look. The Herrene opened his hands, in an admission of his own uncertainty. His inflection, though, suggested he wasn’t ready to outright dismiss the story. “I’ve seen some of the things you have.”
“It took an immense expenditure of resources for my brothers to be reached from the dead lands,” Hanuvar reminded him. “Once. And they barely spoke.”
“That’s not to say it couldn’t happen.”
“Anything’s possible. But some things are more possible than others.”
Having a poet’s soul, Antires was always credulous about the fantastic, though he strove to adopt Hanuvar’s more measured outlook, at least in his friend’s presence. He watched as Hanuvar finished walking the area, then voiced his conclusion. “You suspect that the priest is up to something.”
“That goes without saying.”
“But Alma contacted him.”
“The priest might have set up a situation then conveniently made himself available. It wouldn’t be difficult for someone clever to get a sense of what Alma’s son looked like, since his image is all over her villa. And if Eloren and his associates have designs on the lady’s property, they might be poisoning her. Some poisons will tire a person out, and routine exposure will make them look older than they really are as they’re dying.”
Antires’ eyebrows climbed his forehead. “You think Eloren would poison an old woman?”
“I don’t know that he would, but some people are capable of such a deed.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Antires said, with a young man’s subdued outrage over the callousness of humanity. “So what are you waiting for? Don’t you want to take a look down these stairs?”
“In a moment.” Hanuvar preferred to get a good sense of the ground before he advanced. He was shifting his attention back to the stairs when he heard someone treading across the leaves along the path from the villa.
He’d been informed the widowed landowner was scheduled to visit hours from now, so the intrusion was unexpected. He motioned his friend to retreat, then lay beside him, his belly against the cool forest floor. They watched from under a juniper across the clearing from the carved tree trunk.
Those nearing the shrine made no attempt at stealth. There were two, crushing dried foliage underfoot as they advanced. Calleo, the aging house slave who’d conducted Hanuvar into his fruitless meeting with the Lady Alma Dolorosa, bore an unlit lantern, and a second young slave shouldered a pack and carried a lantern of his own, as well as a pair of brooms.
Once they arrived at the stairs, the younger one dropped the brooms and set down his pack. He pulled his patchy cloak tight. He was a slim youth with close-set eyes.
“We’d best be quick about it.” Calleo adjusted his own cloak on his shoulders. “The mistress will be here soon.”
“I am being quick about it.” The younger man’s voice twisted into a complaining whine. “Why did she want to come early?”
“The mistress is growing more and more . . . changeable as she ages.”
“Changeable, or snippy?” the younger slave asked.
“Watch your tone.”
The two men lit their lanterns, then descended the stairs. The younger one emerged very soon after, his hands empty and a warm glow of lantern light rising from the space below. He busied himself sweeping leaves from the upper stairs, then retreated. Calleo climbed into sight a little while after, his wrinkled face twisted into a frown.
“I needed help lighting the candles.”
“You don’t want to be down there any more than I do,” the younger slave said stubbornly. “You just don’t want to admit it.”
More people were crunching up the path. Hanuvar shifted his attention from the bickering slaves to the priest Eloren, who arrived wrapped in an ankle-length blue cloak. The slope-shouldered dedicant to Lutar, lord of the dead, kept his hands in his sleeves and stepped to one side, a measure of pride in his manner that suggested a proprietary interest in his surroundings. He looked like an aristocrat walking the grounds he’d purchased for the construction of a new tenement. After Eloren came a similarly garbed younger priest bearing a basket of tinder. His face was smooth and rounded, his nose upturned at its tip. Two muscular blond Ceori slaves brought up the rear, supporting a small, curtained litter between them.
The younger priest knelt near the logs close to where Hanuvar and Antires lay, seemed to ponder adding some to the half-burned fuel in the dead camp fire, then arranged his tinder and pulled a stone from a pouch at his waist.
The litter slaves gently sat their burden down, and Eloren bent forward to open the litter’s low door and offer his arm.
A veiny hand reached out to clasp it, and then Alma Dolorosa leveraged herself into sight, a small, pale, silver-haired woman in a black stola, wearing a black scarf under her black cloak. Her eyes, too, were black, as had been her expression when Hanuvar had met her this morning. Now, though, her face was bright with yearning. Locals claimed she was only in her fifth decade, though she looked and moved like an octogenarian.
Alma adjusted the heavy cloak on her spindly frame, and then the priest spoke with her in a low voice. They headed for the stairs, Alma walking swiftly, head thrust forward, face fixed in expectation. Together they descended into the earth.
The litter bearers stretched, greeted the two slaves who had tidied the place ahead of their arrival, then stepped over to the tree near the carvings. Hanuvar was momentarily puzzled by all their sideways and sometimes even backward movement until he realized that none wished to put their back to the stairs. They spoke in low voices, agreeing that Alma was looking worse. Her death was on their minds. One of the Ceori wondered aloud whether they would be manumitted in her will.
Closer by, the young priest sat on his knees, laboring a long while with his flint before he produced a spark to light his tinder. He’d just succeeded when Eloren returned from the shrine. The slaves barely glanced over. Apparently, they were accustomed to their mistress being left alone.
The younger priest made room for the older and showed his palms to the flames as the fire spread. After a moment, he spoke quietly. “Did you suggest she spend less time there?”
Eloren’s reply dripped scorn. “She’s an old woman, Moneta. There’s no changing her mind.”
“Not if you don’t try there isn’t.”
Eloren sniffed then spoke dismissively. “The gods set her on this path. And they’ve shown me what to do. If they wanted something different, they’d have spoken to you.”
“So that’s your decision?”
“You’ll stay quiet,” Eloren said.
The younger man pressed his lips together in disapproval.
Eloren pulled a wineskin from his belt and drank slowly, looking into the fire and ignoring his companion. Hanuvar wished Moneta would object further, so that more might be learned, but the younger man remained silent.
A quarter hour later the old woman called to Eloren, her voice weak and raspy. He capped his wineskin then walked for the stairs and down them. He returned with Alma on his arm.
She looked utterly drained, although she smiled dazedly. Before long she was loaded into her litter and was being carried back to the villa, the priests following. Calleo and his assistant put out the fire, then descended once more, returning with lanterns and brooms and pack. The younger was complaining again. “I hate this place. I feel like those faces are watching me the entire time.”
“Nothing’s gotten you yet,” his older companion responded. As they walked away, the younger could be heard grumbling about the underground chamber until his voice faded with distance.
Antires was ready to rise soon after, but Hanuvar held a hand for silence, then waited another long while before finally climbing to his feet.
Antires swore about being cold, then asked Hanuvar what he thought of what they’d heard.
“The young priest thinks the visits are bad for the old woman.”
“That’s it?” Antires sounded scandalized that Hanuvar had deduced nothing more.
And so he shared a few more observations. “The young one’s a weak point that may give us leverage. Eloren is unmotivated to help her, likely because he’s gotten her to leave this land to his order, or to himself personally, after her death. And we need to see what’s down there.”
“I didn’t see that last part coming at all,” Antires said, rolling his eyes.
Hanuvar rummaged his shoulder pack and withdrew a small brass lantern. He discovered the Herrene eying him in admiration.
“How did you know we’d need a lantern?”
“It was a lucky guess.”
“You don’t guess, you plan,” Antires said, which wasn’t entirely accurate.
“I’d walked a lot of the land east of her home. I had seen no above-ground shrines or temples. The woods are thick enough that there might just have been one hiding here, but—“
“—but the odds were that it was below ground.”
“Yes. But then even the inside of a temple would be dark.”
“So, you’re not quite as clever as I’d assumed.”
“Or maybe I’m the one who packed the lantern.” Hanuvar pointed back toward the villa. “Keep an eye out.”
“Wait. You’re going in alone?”
“Yes. Signal me if you hear anything. Can you mimic bird calls?”
“Oh, yes. Many confuse my dulcet tones with those of the heron, or an owl.”
“Neither of which would be helpful.”
“Neither of which I can actually imitate.”
Hanuvar lit the lantern, shielding it with his body as he carried it in his left hand, and walked for the stairs. “Some time you’ll have to remind me why I bring you along. Watch as well as listen. And not just for sounds—“
“—but the sudden lack of them. I know the routine. I’ll just sit over there on the log and contemplate the local talent.”
“No one likes a critic.” Hanuvar started down. He took each step slowly, watching the edge of the lantern light as it fell upon each stair ahead. His gaze shifted to the ceiling, rounded above him. He saw then that he was advancing into a natural cave to which these steps had been added.
About halfway down he experienced the sensation that he was being observed. His skin prickled as hairs stood upright on his arms. He had anticipated the place would be disquieting from what Alma’s younger slave said, but this was far more than that; the chamber toward which he descended radiated menace, and every one of his senses urged him to run.
He kept on.
A wide oval room lay at the bottom of the nine steps. The ceiling curved gently above to a high point of about three spear lengths. The chamber extended some sixty paces from side to side, and its ceiling dipped lower on the right edge before dropping raggedly to the floor, which was level apart from a rise on the left. Dirt and leaves had been swept into a neat pile to the right of the stairs.
The most interesting features faced the entryway. Just beyond a chest-high, square stone altar, a flat wall stretched the entire cave length, decorated by paintings of curiously unemotive faces with unnerving, pupilless eyes. He did not care to contemplate any of them at length; perhaps it was imagination, but it was from them that the spiritual malaise seemed to radiate.
The writing incised everywhere about the pictures was of a much more precise character, like that of an architect or professional scribe, though it too was curious, composed of a mix of Hadiran and Turian symbols.
He understood very little of the complex classical Hadiran language, with its bird-headed men and hundreds of symbols, but he had learned some Turian, and considered what the messages left here might mean. He then gave his attention to the life-sized image painted in the dead center of the wall just beyond the large stone altar, that of a sad-eyed, beardless youth in a sleeveless summer tunic, one hand offered to the viewer. The other held a bouquet of wildflowers and thyme. By those plants, Hanuvar recognized the image for the god Kovos, whom the Turians believed guided the dead to their final resting place. His depiction would not have been out of place in some cave in the southern hills, or in adjacent lands, for the Turians had been a power in the peninsula before Derva waxed large. They had survived long enough for some of their aristocracy to marry into that of the city-state before Derva expanded across the peninsula. But here, in the uttermost north of Tyvol, just south of the Ardenines, a Turian shrine to the opener of the ways had little precedence.
He turned his scrutiny upon the altar standing before the image. Once it had been copiously plastered in red, but much of that plaster had crumbled, exposing plain stones of the same sort composing the cave walls, shaped and fit closely together. Dripped yellow wax stained the altar’s center, where some red plaster remained, along with the golden outline of a hand.
Hanuvar heard steps behind him and turned to find Antires descending with a pretense of stealth.
“This place is worse than a tomb,” the playwright said.
“I told you to stay above.”
“And I did. And now I’m here. Gods. This place is terrible. How can you stand it?”
Hanuvar started to chide him, but decided it might not be a terrible idea to have the younger man posted closer, especially because Hanuvar wasn’t sure what might happen when he exposed himself to the sorcery.
“Stay on the stairs. Try to listen for activity above as well as here.”
“The art’s a better cut here, but hardly monument worthy. The god in the center has striking eyes, though.”
Hanuvar set the lantern on the altar and fixed his attention on the unfamiliar symbols, trying to jar any additional information free of his memory.
“Can you read any of that?” Antires asked.
“A little.”
“Prayers?” the Herrene suggested.
“I’m neither a magical scholar nor a Turian one, but I don’t think these are prayers. There’s a lack of formality and the emphasis isn’t upon the god, or glory.” Hanuvar pointed to one lengthy stretch of text. “Kovos isn’t even mentioned at all.”
“Kovos?”
“The Turian lord of the dead.” Hanuvar contemplated the golden handprint and knew he would have to place his palm there.
Assuming that there was any possible chance that this worked, which of the countless he had known and lost might best advise him? His brothers? His father? His brother-in-law? His even longer lost elder sister?
He had loved and respected them all, and each might have guided him in different ways, but as he continued to study the Turian writing he realized there was only one whom he should try to reach.
Still he hesitated. He had never wished for a moment like this. Not with her. What might he say to Ravella now, except that he missed her? Would they resume their final argument, or were the dead beyond such troubles?
He reminded himself that Ravella was unlikely to appear before him. Probably this old shrine was simply the basis for an elaborate deception played by the priests.
He put his hand upon the imprint and whispered a prayer to the opener of the ways.
His expectations had been low, so when the eyes of Kovos took up an amber sheen Hanuvar’s own eyes widened in astonishment. A moment later a humanoid shape formed of light drifted from the god.
Antires murmured in awe. Hanuvar’s breath caught in his throat and his heart quickened. The shape drifted toward the altar, and him, blurry and uncertain at first, then broadening at the hips and narrowing at the waist. Long curling dark hair drifted down and past a graceful neck. Long black eyelashes blinked and full red lips opened before him even as the transparent figure floated but a sword’s length out. She didn’t wear the stola she’d been buried in, but the light green dress that had suited her so well.
“You have thought of me, and I have come.” Ravella’s voice was a whisper, with her remembered accent. They had spoken sometimes in Dervan and sometimes in Herrene and often, once they had become lovers, in her native Turian. Today she spoke in Dervan.
“Is that your wife?” Antires asked, breathless in wonder.
Hanuvar answered without looking at him. “No. Is this truly you?” he asked her.
“It is me, beloved.” As Ravella spoke, her image sharpened. He saw the individual hairs upon her eyebrows, and the pupils of her dark eyes.
Feelings he’d thought long resolved constricted his throat. Sometimes she’d scolded him for avoiding the difficult in their talks, as he did now, shifting immediately to the present. The past was too painful. “I need your help. Do you understand the words on the wall behind you?”
She turned her head and shifted her body, drifting the while in an invisible wind, so that her dress and hair streamed languidly behind her.
“I can see so little of the living world.” She turned back to him. “Only you are in clear focus.”
He burned to ask if she had deliberately taken the poison, or if it had been the accident he’d told her brother. He thought he knew the answer to that, though, just as he understood why she hadn’t wanted to leave her homeland, and why she could not have lived in Utria after his retreat. The Dervans would have taken their vengeance upon her.
“What do you wish to speak of?” Her smile was open and warm. He found himself hoping that any resentment she’d harbored had faded with her death, and that all that was left between them was the love they’d shared.
She sounded like Ravella, and she looked like her . . . But he had long ago been taught to see what was truly before him, not what he wished, and not what he hoped. After a moment of consideration, he decided how he might best test the veracity of what he was experiencing. “I want you to sing,” he said. “That Turian folk song about the winding road. I can no longer recall the words, just snatches of the melody.” And even that, now, had faded from his memory.
She blinked her long lashes and her voice rose in song. She began strongly, singing in her native tongue of a shepherd boy readying for his trip, but then she faltered. The melody died, and the words trailed away.
And sadly, then, he knew he witnessed a lie. “You’re not real.” He’d thought himself sad when he said it, but his lips twitched into a snarl.
“I am real, beloved.” Her eyes rounded in sorrow. “You see me before you.”
“You know only what I know of you. And nothing more. What are you, really?”
“I am your love, for now, and always.”
He shook his head. “You lie. What are you?”
She extended her arms to him.
He lifted his hand from the altar. The moment he broke contact his breath left him; he felt as though he’d run miles in full armor. Ravella smiled sadly, then her image blurred, though she hung in the air for a while longer, like the afterimage of a snuffed candleflame. Finally she was gone.
Antires swore softly. “Who was that?”
“No one I know.” Hanuvar labored to catch his breath.
“Are you well?”
“I’m fine.” Oddly, the chamber itself no longer troubled him. He sensed the eyes upon his back as he turned to Antires, but their regard now was welcoming. The change in his perspective disturbed him more than the previous dread.
He shook his head, striving to shake off the lure of illusory serenity. He paced the area, lantern light pointed against the wall. On closer inspection, it looked entirely too flat to be natural.
“Who was that?” Antires asked. “I mean, who was it supposed to be? You never mentioned another woman.”
“Her name was Ravella.”
“She called you beloved. Did you have a mistress?”
“You sound shocked.” Hanuvar ran his hands along the wall, over a pair of wide-eyed faces, feeling for an opening or seam.
“Well . . . I suppose I shouldn’t be. I just thought . . .”
“I was in Tyvol for more than a dozen years. Did you think I’d be celibate that entire time?”
“I never gave it much thought,” Antires admitted. “Couldn’t you have sent for Imilce?”
Hanuvar stepped to the left edge, running his hand along the juncture where the two cave walls met. “We exchanged letters on the subject, but there was much to do in Volanus in support of the war, and Imilce didn’t want to leave Narisia with relatives. And I’d vowed not to raise my child in an armed camp like I had been.” He discovered a crack, but it appeared to be completely normal.
“What are you looking for?”
“Some kind of entrance. You could help. Feel along the right edge there.”
“An entrance to what?”
“There’s obviously something very strange about this shrine. I think there’s more to it.”
Hanuvar retreated from the wall. Antires ran his fingers along the right edge. “Did you love her?”
“You’re getting rather personal, aren’t you?”
Antires glanced back, then bent to rub fingertips along the floor seam. “I’m supposed to be your chronicler. I should know these things. Did you love her?”
“Imilce, or Ravella?”
“Both. Were there others?”
“Yes.”
“Yes to the others?”
“Yes, I loved them both.”
Antires sighed in frustration. “You’re being deliberately obscure.”
“My love life isn’t germane at the moment.” Maybe the wall had no more secrets. Hanuvar turned his attention to the altar.
“How could you love both? At once?”
With extreme care he inspected the altar’s front with his hands, mulling the notion to tell the young man to be quiet. But then he remembered his own vow to be open with Antires, who had again and again proven his loyalty, and answered. “Imilce and I were young. She, younger than me. Not long after our marriage I had to assume control of the army, and only a few years after that, I was marching across the Ardenines. I expected to return to her, or be able to send for her, but the war dragged on.”
“And you sought a mistress when you got lonely.”
“Sought?” He’d been too busy to seek a paramour. “No. Ravella and I stumbled into one another. She was a widow and witty and irreverent and . . .” Thinking of her opened up a tide of memories he was in no mood to examine at present, or to share with Antires. He shifted his search to the altar’s narrower left side and sought a swift way to explain. “It was a relationship of older people. A deeper one than I’d formed with Imilce. Not because I loved my wife less, but because I wasn’t mature enough to love her more when I was with her. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. There’s no opening in this wall.” Antires joined him at the altar. “Any luck here?”
“Not so far.”
The playwright watched his efforts. “What happened when you met Imilce again?”
“A long time had passed. Imilce and I were almost strangers. Our relationship was difficult for a while, because I was used to one woman and she was used to someone else as well.”
“She had a lover?”
“Yes.”
“And you weren’t bothered by that?”
“Each of us consented to the arrangements. She was as human as I.”
Antires tried to digest that information, then shook his head. “You Volani are strange.”
“Eventually we grew close again, but it was . . . tricky for both of us.” Hanuvar was starting to doubt there was anything to be found, but he slid his fingers along the altar’s right side.
“How did Ravella die?”
“She was poisoned.”
“Gods. That’s terrible. Did the Dervans kill her?”
“I suppose you could say she was out of good choices. Wait a moment. There are large seams in the floor here.”
Antires bent to examine what Hanuvar had discovered. A fingernail’s breadth of space lay between the altar and an irregularly shaped slab roughly two hand spans wide, cleverly worked into the floor beneath where he had stood before the altar. He tugged and found it unyielding.
“What do you think it is?” Antires had at last found something else to absorb his attention.
Hanuvar searched for leverage, finally finding a divot opposite the altar. He pulled harder and lifted the covering piece away. Green light splashed up from inside the dark space. Hanuvar set the stone slab against the altar’s side. He motioned for Antires to bring the lantern.
His friend focused the beam, revealing a cavity a gladius length deep and nearly as long. And it was plastered smooth and painted over with small, precise Turian characters of red and black. They ran in straight lines upon the space’s walls, then circled the glittering emerald that lay in its center in a precisely carved hollow. Part of the gem’s glow owed to the lantern’s reflected light. But something deep inside changed slowly, now lighter, now darker, like the pulse of an ancient heart.
“That stone—how does it glow like that?”
There was much about sorcery Hanuvar didn’t understand, but he could answer that question. “It’s a focusing stone. Only the most powerful spell users can employ them to store magics.” He looked up at Antires. “I saw one once before, when we overtook a cadre of magicians the Dervans were trying to use against us in the war.” He gestured to some flakes of paper lying near the emerald. “I think our priest must have found this cache. Some papyrus was stored here and removed. And there should have been built up debris or dirt hiding in the gap between the panel and the altar. He’s opened it.”
“Did he put the stone in here?”
“I think it’s been in here for a long, long while. As long as this writing.”
“What does the writing say?”
This was old style Turian, and some of the letters were slightly different from the ones Hanuvar had learned. Paired with Hanuvar’s rusty and incomplete knowledge of the language and the odd angle he was forced to read at, it took him a while to understand enough to answer his friend’s question.
“I think it’s a spell, summoning some kind of spirit, or entity called a ‘gatherer’—meant to protect the ‘treasures’ here. That might mean the vanished scrolls.”
“Might it mean something else?”
It could at that. Hanuvar had already noted that there was another seam between the altar and the floor. He ran his fingers slowly along the lowest row of altar stones.
Antires had thought of another question. “If it’s a guardian, why is it practically inviting interaction? Wouldn’t a guardian try to scare people away?”
“The place is frightening,” Hanuvar agreed. “Until you offer yourself. And then it becomes alluring. I no longer feel troubled here. I think it may be a honeyed trap. It drained some of my own life force when I tried to use it.”
Antires swore in wonder. “You think if you were to keep coming here, you’d age like Alma?”
“Yes. And I’d wager the more I used it, the more I’d want to come. I just don’t know what the purpose is.” Hanuvar was about to abandon his search when the stone under his fingers yielded to pressure. The sound of stone grating on stone startled him; the altar side shifted ever so slightly toward him.
He ran his fingers over the face of the altar’s side nearest the god. It had never been plastered and on close examination some of the grooves suggesting separate stones had been carved to convey that appearance. A sturdy push sent a whole piece wider than his shoulders scraping inward as its upper third tilted out. It proved only a finger’s length thick. With Antires’ help he eased the heavy slab to the ground.
The altar itself was hollow and opened into a narrow shaft of darkness.
“Well, that looks inviting.” Antires shined the lantern into the cavity, revealing a decrepit wooden ladder covered in webs and dust. “Eloren might have found the first scrolls, but he hasn’t found this. Or didn’t want to drop into a spider infested hole. Yet you’re going to want to look, aren’t you?”
“I think I’ll have to.”
“You sound just as excited as I feel.”
“You need to stay up there, on the stairs.”
“You’re going in there alone?” Antires’ voice rose in consternation.
“Right now we’re in a hole with only one exit. Pretty soon I’ll be in a deeper hole. We’re incredibly vulnerable. Anyone could sneak up on us.”
Antires, who had just complained about venturing into the web-choked darkness, now sulked that he wouldn’t be permitted to accompany him. Hanuvar walked him to the shrine’s entry stairs, pausing on the threshold to listen but hearing only the natural noises of the woods. He exited to retrieve a sturdy branch, patted his friend on the shoulder, and returned to the altar.
He employed the stick against the webbing, then held the lantern further into the space. A rough floor lay only eight feet below. A passage opened to the ladder’s rear.
Hanuvar tested the ladder’s first rung, found that it held, dropped in the stick for further web-cleaning, and started down, lantern in hand.
When he reached the floor, he found himself in a rough stone fissure just wide enough to accommodate a single traveler. Lantern light shining before him, he advanced through the twisting tunnel and then the passage sloped gently up, opening finally into a wide natural chamber.
He stopped halfway into the area. The yellow light he bore spilled upon human teeth stretched in a mirthless grin. Two black eye sockets peered into eternity above. The man-high shelf-unit before him was crowded with human skulls, browned with age, each painted with Hadiran picture writing and cramped Turian letters. Hanuvar looked past the sightless decorations, seeing that another cavern opening lay beyond the wall their shelf rested against, then swung the light through the rest of the chamber.
More shelves stood in that cheerless place, crowded with sagging, spider-webbed scrolls. A great deal of the floor was inset with yet more pictograms and Turian writing, arranged in lines radiating from the blank wall that was the back of the surface Ravella’s image had materialized from. Playing the light further, Hanuvar discovered another shelf holding different sized vials.
He advanced at last from his vantage point, keeping well clear of the lines and their writing, stopping in the threshold to the second cavern chamber.
Someone had labored to make this area more homey. It held a sagging bed, a table, three old wooden chests, and a shelf supporting various amphora. Some of them likely contained lamp oil, for old-fashioned lanthorns stood upon both the table and the desk. He caught a flash of movement on his right and whirled, only to see a figure with a lantern, half obscured in a web covered doorway.
Hanuvar dropped hand to sword hilt and the man he faced did the same. Hanuvar relaxed; so did the figure.
He had found no adversary, only himself in a fine body-length bronze mirror fastened to the cave wall and caked with grime. Apparently the sorcerer who had kept his quarters liked to model his appearance. Judging from the dust and disrepair, however, it was easy to guess no one had walked this space for long years, possibly centuries.
“Relnus!”
That was the name Hanuvar had adopted for this province of Tyvol, and it echoed faintly to him. Antires was calling, and there was no missing the insistent quality of his voice. Hanuvar responded on the instant, hurrying to the main room and down the sloping rock and into the narrow passage.
“Someone’s coming,” Antires called, shouting in the hushed way of actors when they meant to suggest they were actually whispering.
Hanuvar reached the ladder and started up, only to have the first step break under his foot, slamming his heel against the floor. He started up again, keeping his foot to the part of the rung closest to the rails.
Antires loomed above him, waggling his fingers to urge speed. Now he did whisper. “There’s a bunch of them, really close now!”
Hanuvar handed up the lantern and threw himself over the side, scrambling clear. Antires started for the entryway, his eyes large as he looked back. Hanuvar motioned him to help in lifting the concealing slab back in place.
That was a mistake. By the time Hanuvar stooped to replace the covering to the gem cavity he heard footsteps on the stairs, and a familiar voice. “I know you’re in there,” Eloren called.
Hanuvar left the void as it was and advanced to the bottom of the steps.
Three burly dock-side ruffians were ranged along the middle and upper stairs, with Eloren just behind them. He carried a lantern; two of the others bore nail studded cudgels and the other carried an axe.
“You two!” the priest said. “I should have known. You’re not really land buyers, are you? You’re magicians . . .” That thought trailed off, and then Eloren’s voice grew more excited. “You found the gem!”
He had observed the glow from the altar’s foot. Eloren reached up to touch his collar, raising a smaller emerald dangling here. “Little good it will do you without this.”
Hanuvar wasn’t sure what that meant, but he agreed. “You have me there.”
“How did you know we were down here?” Antires asked.
“I’ve mastered this shrine’s secrets,” Eloren boasted. “I know when its energy levels rise and flow.”
“You’re more well informed than I would have guessed,” Hanuvar said.
“Who sent you?” Eloren demanded.
Hanuvar turned up an empty hand. “This really doesn’t seem like the way two practitioners ought to discuss such a matter, does it?” He indicated the hired muscle with a tilt of his chin. “There’s no need for them. We can share secrets. I’ve just found a large one that might interest you.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?”
Eloren studied him. “You’re an old man with only an effete functionary at your back. Outnumbered. And we have the high ground.”
Apparently the priest suffered the common delusion about high ground being a superior offensive position in singular combat. The rabble grinned at Hanuvar, by which he saw that they possessed the identical misconception.
He lifted his lantern while shrugging, fiddling with the shutter that spilled light against the wall to his left, as if nervous. “I admit, we’d heard of the emerald. But I hadn’t fully assessed its powers before my associate called to me about your approach. I can show you where the hidden information is, and you can tell me more about its nature.”
For a moment he thought Eloren would relent. Then the priest’s full lips pursed. “No. I think not. If a bumbler like yourself could find it without even knowing what it is you’re seeking, then I can surely locate it.”
“So it’s death you’re after, then?” Hanuvar asked.
“For me, it’s life. I’m through with them, boys,” he said. “Take them.”
“You heard him,” the axe man said. “Take them down!”
Roaring, all three charged.
When the first reached the second stair from bottom, his cudgel lifted overhead, Hanuvar beamed lantern light into his face. The fur-draped attacker turned his head, squinting against the glare. At the same moment Hanuvar drew and sliced the thug’s protruding abdomen. Blood sprayed. The thug screamed and Hanuvar shoved him to the right, tripping the cudgel bearer rushing for Antires. Off balance, that man stumbled down the final stairs.
That was all the advantage Hanuvar could give his friend, for the third and final attacker, a hirsute blond, leapt at him with his axe raised. While still in mid-air the attacker discovered Hanuvar’s lantern flying at his face. He warded himself with one arm and managed a fair landing, but his axe was out of line, with his arms exposed. Hanuvar’s sword blow sheared straight through one forearm and halfway into the other. The axe dropped with the severed hand and the ruffian shrieked in agony.
A glowing, faceless humanoid shape streamed past Hanuvar and pressed to the axeman. Hanuvar’s skin chilled even as the flow of blood from the terrible wound he’d delivered slackened and stilled.
Eloren called out in heavily accented Turian. “Attack him—the older one! Him!”
The faceless thing abandoned the pale axeman, who toppled limp and bloodless, then, swift as the winter wind, it swept forward. Not to Hanuvar, but to the man with the bloody belly wound, whose cries of pain rose to gasps of terror as it sank upon him.
That was apparently too much for Antires’ club-wielding assailant, who gave up chasing the Herrene to dash for the stairs. His face was twisted in panic. He must have seen Hanuvar as an obstacle, for he came in with a wild swing. Hanuvar ducked and skewered him. He pulled out his blade as his opponent doubled over, then sliced again and kicked him clear. The attacker dropped, writhing in his death throes.
Hanuvar pulled his throwing knife.
“Not that one,” Eloren was shouting. “Him. Him!” He pointed at Hanuvar. But the green spirit did not depart the man who moaned more and more feebly beneath its attentions.
Hanuvar took a single long stride and hurled his knife.
The cast was true, but the priest shifted, and the blade sank not into Eloren’s throat, but his upper chest. He put hands to the blade, groaning in Turian: “Come back to me! Share the life—give me the life!” As Hanuvar charged, Eloren called out another phrase that sounded Hadiran.
The priest collapsed against the stair well, gasping as he yanked the knife free. He raised his emerald pendant like a shield. Hanuvar closed, grabbed the pendant, and yanked it forward. The heavy chain didn’t snap as he’d expected, but it did pull the priest toward him, so that Eloren seemed to dive onto the sword Hanuvar thrust through his midsection.
And then the glowing, man-sized entity was upon them. It spilled its emerald radiance, delivering warmth at the same moment, as though it were the personification of a gentle summer day.
Muscles throughout Hanuvar’s body twitched, so that he could no longer finely control his actions. He retained hold of his sword but was unable to drive it on to Eloren’s heart. His grip likewise froze upon the necklace. His quivering calves could not hold him upright, and he sank to his knees, fighting for balance with one leg resting on a higher step than the other.
And yet despite his anxiety over his inability to control his movements, the intensely tingling sensation passing over him was not unpleasant. He just managed to turn his head to observe the man-thing at his shoulder, seeing only the suggestion of hollows where eyes could be. It was otherwise featureless. The green light streaming forth blended with the being’s extended digits.
Of a sudden, the creature’s form diminished, its outlines fading until nothing was left but a glowing central core, which retained its full brightness for a moment longer until only the hands were left, shedding light.
And then that radiance too vanished and the thing was gone, its physical presence expended with its spell.
Hanuvar’s muscles ceased their shaking. He released his hold on the necklace, discovering that the stone it had framed was cracked and blackened. He flexed his free hand and looked back to Eloren.
The priest’s lantern sat beside Hanuvar’s reddened knife and a shrunken body slumped in blood-soaked robes. It was only when Hanuvar leaned closer that he saw a pale boy with a young version of Eloren’s features lying in the midst of the blood-soaked cloth. Fearful eyes in that smooth-skinned face looked up at him, and Eloren spoke with a voice pitched higher than before. “Don’t kill me.”
“I already have killed you,” Hanuvar said. “But I can make your final moments less painful.”
Boy Eloren coughed blood as he pressed his small white hands near the weeping wound in his stomach and the sword blade sticking upright from it, flaring golden in the lantern light.
Hanuvar looked down at the hilt of his sword and paused, seeing that the wrinkles around his knuckles had vanished; the skin was tighter across the back of his hand. A long scar on his lower arm had entirely disappeared. His graying wrist hairs had been restored to black. Only then did he fully realize that the creature’s strange magic had impacted him as well. His breath caught in his throat. “What has the spirit done?”
“What do you mean?” The scorn was strange from such a young voice. “Why do you play act?”
Hanuvar’s voice was cool but it sounded somehow different to him. Less haggard. “I do not pretend. I don’t know.”
The boy’s look was searching. “But you grasped the pendant so you would receive the energies!”
“I grasped the pendant so you could not ensorcell me.”
The changed priest laughed fitfully, then coughed. Blood trickled from his mouth. He shook his head in disgust. “I’ve been undone by a fool. A lucky fool. You’re young now. You stole my gift! My family has been searching for this shrine for generations, and you just stumbled into it.”
Hanuvar was still wondering exactly how much of a transformation had been worked upon him. Antires stood at the base of the stairs, staring mutely. Certain that Eloren had little time, Hanuvar pressed for information.
“And what was the purpose of this shrine? To steal life force?”
“Mostly. There’s supposed to be a hidden library as well—is that what you found?”
“I did. Rotted.”
“And you really didn’t know. Gods. Yes, the shrine was supposed to make casual visitors uneasy, and then steal the life force of those who insisted upon investigating. The life was to power the magics, meant to repeatedly restore the wizard. But he died nonetheless; from what cause I do not know.” The boy’s voice grew weaker. He coughed again. “My ancestor . . . apprentice. Got the pendant. But it was no use without the shrine.” He looked up at Hanuvar. “It would have healed me of the knife wound. But you . . . stabbed right as it filled me with life.”
Having experienced the energy’s debilitating effects himself, Hanuvar knew how impossible it would have been for Eloren to have worked some other spell, even if he hadn’t been distracted by a mortal injury.
The priest struggled to level his weakening voice. “If you’re not a mage, and you weren’t after the shrine, why did you want this land so badly?”
“I’m just a man trying to help some people.”
Eloren didn’t look as though he believed him. “It doesn’t matter now. You said you’d ease my crossing.”
“I can. How long will this effect last on me?”
“How long?” the boy/man laughed. “As long as you live, you bastard!”
Hanuvar tore out his sword and brought it down across the little boy with the older man’s eyes.
He was wiping his blade on a clean spot of the dead priest’s tunic when Antires climbed the stairs and stared, speaking with shocking reverence. “By all the gods of earth and sky.”
Hanuvar gulped as he stood, fearing what he might hear. He knew he was not a boy, for he still had a man’s size. “How young do I look?”
“Twenty at best.” Antires’ voice shook with disbelief. “More like seventeen.”
Seventeen. He sheathed his sword and looked down at his hands. At seventeen, his father had still lived, and he had wished nothing more than to be a worthy officer for him, and his valiant brother-in-law. At seventeen his older sister was only recently dead, and he had still been placing flowers at her memory stone each month. Melgar, his youngest brother, had barely been nine.
He looked at his hands, turning them over and finding them almost unfamiliar.
Antires searched through his cloak and pulled out a little bronze mirror, offering it. Hanuvar took it gingerly, remembering the full-length mirror hung in the wizard’s chamber and understanding now why it rested there.
He stepped into the autumn sunlight, scanning the surrounding trees. But Eloren had no hidden reinforcements, and Alma’s villa was too distant for anyone there to have heard the battle.
He lifted the mirror, and his fingers tightened over it when he saw the face looking back at him.
He was so young.
His face was unlined, and soft to touch, and there were no circles beneath his eyes. His nose was smaller and even had a less pronounced hook. Gone were the lines upon his brow and at the outer edges of his eyes. His hair was darker and smoother.
Antires reached his side and watched with something like religious awe. “Finally, the fates themselves have been kind to you.”
Hanuvar lowered the mirror and handed it over. “You think this was kind?” How could his friend not understand his alarm?
Antires laughed in disbelief. “Don’t you see? You can go anywhere now, without disguise. You could walk through the forum of Derva itself and no one would recognize you!”
While Hanuvar had already anticipated that last point himself, it had done nothing to cheer his perception of the event. He had been profoundly altered, but Antires was so excited he seemed completely oblivious about the complications and untroubled by the mechanism of the transformation.
“And your aches and pains are over! Oh, I know you’ve had them, even if you never talk about them.” He pointed at Hanuvar’s right leg. “Like that limp you sometimes have when you first wake up. Does your leg hurt now?”
“No. Nothing hurts.” Hanuvar breathed deep. He rolled up his sleeve and confirmed that the old sword slash along his forearm had completely vanished. Probably any other scars that marked him were gone as well. He shook his head numbly at a fresh wave of loss. “Understand, Antires. This is dark sorcery. There’s no telling what further effects this magic might have. It was shaped to lure men and women and drain them of their lives. I’m young in part because Alma is old. Do you see?”
Antires looked unconvinced by his concern. “I hear what you’re saying. But however it is you came by it, isn’t this an advantage you can use to your benefit?”
“It seems I have no choice.” He did not explain that his changed appearance would also be a hindrance as he sought out former allies. And while Antires was right that it was unlikely Dervans would be suspicious of a youth, it was also true that no one would take him seriously. To achieve his aims, he’d sometimes adopted other identities, but how could he now imitate a centurion, or a senator’s aid, or a revenant? He looked barely old enough to have earned the right to wear a toga.
Slowly uncurling his fists, he turned from Antires and started down the stairs, pausing only to take Eloren’s lantern.
His friend followed him down. “You move with the confidence of an older man. You’re going to have to practice moving like a younger one.”
Probably there would be all manner of unforeseen new difficulties that he’d have to address. Antires still sounded intrigued by this staggering alteration, as though it were all just a breezy adventure. But then he actually was young, even if he was older than Hanuvar now appeared.
Hearteningly, Antires was also capable of thinking strategically. “What are we going to do about these bodies? We can’t just leave them here, can we?”
Hanuvar had already decided that “We’ll hide Eloren in the wizard’s chambers.”
“The library? Shouldn’t we take the scrolls?”
“What was back there was rotted and forgotten, like him. The ruffians we’ll leave where they fell. I’ll have to give one of them a blade to explain away the obvious sword wounds.”
The emerald’s glow had vanished, but Hanuvar wasn’t certain the shrine was done for until he peered inside the cavity where the gem had rested. The emerald had blackened and cracked into a dozen pieces.
He bent beside it. “The magic’s spent. I wonder how many lives it stole.” He looked to Antires, picking his way around the bodies to join him. “In a fairer world, we could have given some of these years back to Alma.”
“You, of all people, should know the world’s not fair. Gods, man. Be happy, for once. You’ve a gift most men dream of.”
This “gift” had been forced upon him without preparation or consent. Hanuvar pressed the panel over the opening and moved it around until he felt it lock in place. He stood, noting dourly that there wasn’t the slightest twinge in his knee. His ligaments didn’t even creak. Though he took some small satisfaction from this, he thought of the woman who’d imagined herself speaking with her lost child. “Alma already lost her son once. She’ll think that she’s lost him again. It will be a hard blow.”
“I expect it will. She’ll probably blame it on the blood spilled by these ruffians. But without Eloren, she’ll be far more likely to sell.” Antires clapped him on the shoulder. “Cheer up! This will all work out.” The playwright stared at him, then shook his head once more. “I don’t know how I’m going to get used to you looking like this.”
“Me either.”
“Come on. We need to hide Eloren’s body.”
Hanuvar nodded his agreement. “There are a few chests in the wizard’s chamber we should open. They’re probably full of dried up sorcery goods and rotted cloth, but maybe there’s some Turian gold.”
“Do you think?”
“Who knows? You seem to feel I’ve been lucky today. Let’s see if fortune’s smiled any wider.”
***
As it happened, two of the chests were, indeed, full of rotting cloth. The third seemed to be so as well, but that cloth had been two large sacks of old Turian coinage, which was a minor fortune. Hanuvar was, indeed, lucky that day. As I have probably made clear, we had a supply of gemstones he had carried with him from his family tomb, but they were not so numerous as they once had been, and we had a host of expenses before us. There was not just the land Hanuvar meant to buy, there was an entire harbor expansion, including homes and docks and a small shipyard, and, eventually, ships. And beyond that, of course, were the Volani he meant to free who would be building many of these things.
Even with this infusion of resources these goals were well beyond our capabilities, and I had tried to convince Hanuvar we should buy rather than build ships, or use some existing harbor. But Hanuvar had chosen this remote location precisely because here he would have to deal with fewer Dervan eyes. He meant to build his own ships, the better to safeguard the passage of his people. For in the Inner Sea, the ships mostly hugged coastlines and fled to shelter in heavy winds and steep waves. They were not built to endure the deeper oceans, as were Volani vessels.
And in any event, the people of his new city needed more transport of their own—they were a seafaring culture who built their prosperity on trade. Any ships he constructed would serve further purposes in the future. Such were his plans, and had anyone else proposed them, I would have thought him mad.
As for Alma, I learned that she was confused by Eloren’s disappearance, horrified by the bloody bodies desecrating her shrine, and emotionally shattered by the utter disappearance of her long dead son. Once the bodies had been cleared and the priest of the small local temple to Arepon had sobered himself up enough to ritually purify the place, she spent long days praying in the shrine.
Her son’s false spirit never returned, of course, and she eventually retreated to her villa. It was only then that I contacted her once more about purchasing her land. I never actually saw her again. She agreed through her head slave, settled for a chunk of our Turian gold, then left for warmer climes, never to return. She ordered the shrine filled in sometime before and within a season it was impossible to detect it had ever existed.
As for Eloren’s fate, the speculation in Selanto’s two small taverns held that the dead men had murdered him when he wouldn’t tell them where any hidden treasure was—whether there was or wasn’t any hidden treasure in the shrine varied depending upon who told the tale. Regardless, gossip had it that the bandits had then gotten into a fight about the treasure themselves. It seemed as likely an explanation as any.
But this is a tale of Hanuvar, and it is time I returned to him. I confess that every time I thought myself used to his transformation I had but to see him again, in the flower of his youth, and be stunned once more. I worked with him for almost a week, trying to remind him of a young man’s nervousness and eagerness to ingratiate, and how thin skinned and reckless he should pretend to be. I encouraged him to spend time among the village youths. This he did, though he applied himself more like a scholar than someone with any real love for the subject.
Hanuvar left shortly after the land purchase was confirmed. By that point we had noticed an additional odd consequence of his change. As I have probably made clear, when he was not in disguise, Hanuvar practiced martial drills every day. Owing to this and a lifetime of additional experiences, his hands had been calloused for the length of our acquaintance. But those callouses were vanished, and no matter the nature of his exercise, they did not return.
He remarked that unforeseen results were always the consequence of magic. I laughed the discovery off, not realizing that this was the first warning of a dire fate that lay before him.
Resigned to his condition, Hanuvar journeyed south. One week’s travel would see him to a little resort town where the Dervan general Ciprion, once his most effective enemy and now his friend, had pledged to leave whatever information he’d been able to uncover about the whereabouts of the Volani slaves.
To safely reach the town, Hanuvar hired on as a caravan guard, a simple enough way to reach the destination without spending any more of our dwindling funds. Keep in mind that despite our recent windfall, I lacked full capital to further his plans in Selanto, and he hadn’t even a tenth of the money he would need to pay for all his people.
The guard captain was immensely skeptical of Hanuvar’s soft hands and would have refused him on the spot if Hanuvar had not promptly demonstrated martial acumen entirely remarkable for a man his apparent age. He was then able to explain away his hands by saying he’d been sick over the summer.
But I was not to learn that tale, nor much else that befell him, for long weeks. I cannot tell you how much I wished to be riding with him. I was flattered to have become crucial to Hanuvar’s plans, but not so star struck that I failed to perceive there was no one else he had to rely upon.
And so, as I settled into my most unexpected role yet, that of a man constructing a shipping business, Hanuvar ventured south, where he was shortly to meet a trio of people crucial to his future.
—Sosilos, Book Seven