Sword shrugged. “See? You’re getting angry. Your emotions are coming back.”
“The point of almost every emotion is to make it go away,” Maddox said.
“What about happiness or love?”
“Wouldn’t know from experience.”
Sword rolled his eyes. Maddox could be
so
melodramatic.
Maddox continued, “I’m better off not feeling anything. The knowledge I gained from the Guides makes me a danger to Creation itself. Daphne wasn’t wrong with what she did. The less I feel, the less likely I use that knowledge to fuck everything up. And I
would
fuck things up.”
“What Daphne did to you wouldn’t last, not for eternity,” Sword said. “I can’t keep you locked down forever; it’s a full time job, and I need excitement once or twice a century. Fact is, the more years you live in this world, the greater chance a bird will crap on your head. It’s not a reason to spend eternity locked indoors.”
“A bird?” Maddox asked incredulously.
“I’m not good with words now. And it happened to Soren the other day.”
“When
my
bird shits on me, it levels continents,” Maddox said.
They really needed to get off this metaphor. Sword said, “You have an education and friends who care about you. That’s more than most people get.” He flashed back over Soren’s memories and felt that keenly. The boy was barely literate and had been tormented as a weakling.
“They care about you… not me.” Maddox turned away, but Sword knew Maddox was glowering.
“I care about you… you stupid shit,” Sword huffed. “And if you’d stop being an asshole, for just a second, maybe more people would. Heath turned down a bounty to warn you the Inquisition had you on their list. He may not say it, but leaving money on the table is his equivalent of taking an arrow to the knee. And Jessa? She’s actually a better person than all of us combined. Of course she cares.”
Maddox shook his head.
“People hurt you. Your father hurt you,” Sword said. “But if you don’t let yourself feel anything, you will drown your life in loneliness to avoid some hurt feelings. It makes no sense. You’re bigger than the pain you’re afraid of. I know you better than you do, and you’re not a weak person.”
Maddox puffed his chest a little. “Whatever.”
They continued down the tunnels in silence. They were marked with pictograms and Sarn script, which Sword could translate. It took them a good thirty minutes to make it to the top level. The remains of human bones and shattered machinery in the corridors told the story of a bloody conflict. Lying atop the shattered remains of a metal octopus was a skeleton, a rock still clenched in its hand.
They hastened through a room dominated by shattered columns of heartstone. The gem had turned gray and chalky during the Long Night, when all of Sarn’s collected wisdom was destroyed by waves of psychic madness. The archives would have likely held the personal memories of the citizens, their most private secrets lost forever.
Seeing a light ahead in the tunnel from one of the side passages, they froze.
Sword asked, “How do you want to handle it? This brain is not so good with making plans.”
“The fuck should I know?” Maddox shrugged and walked toward the light.
Sword ran to catch up as Maddox rounded a corner through a stone archway into a vast chamber. A mural of a pastoral lake was painted on the wall, faded and flaking off in chunks. The trees in the image still moved as if by a gentle breeze, and the sun rose over the horizon, providing soft illumination. It was likely enchanted to match the time aboveground.
“Whoa,” Maddox said, surveying the room. Workbenches were laden with instruments. Skeletons wearing shining mechanical limbs were strapped to tables. Segmented insectile arms and legs were attached over the bones like armor.
“It’s a lab,” Sword said.
“No shit.” Maddox leaned over a skeleton with an artificial arm and leg. He tapped his finger on the metal. “Is this the same alloy you’re made out of?”
“It’s probably a more flexible alloy,” Sword said.
“Why are they all dead?” Maddox asked.
“Do you have to ask?”
Maddox shook his head. “These were your people, right?”
“I was forged in one of these rooms for House Crigenesta. They were a valiant house of warriors… once. We fought the Patrean armies on the proving fields. Beat them more than they beat us.”
“What did you fight over?” Maddox scrunched his brow. “Both civilizations had theurgy that could provide for everyone’s needs.”
Sword shrugged and wiggled the prosthetic arm on one of the skeletons. “They were biomancers, we were artificers. Patreans created servants, we built artifacts. Sarn disagreed with creating artificial life, Patrea felt the same way about artificial intelligence. People had strong feelings that you could only be one or the other.”
Maddox smirked. “Nice to know humanity can still find ways to divide ourselves based on arbitrary differences.”
“Moot point now,” Sword admitted.
Maddox peered at some shelves and reached toward an assortment of slim metal rods in an ornate bronze canister.
“Stop!” Sword shouted. He quietly added, “You can’t touch any of this stuff. It might still have enchantment.”
Maddox waved his hand and drew a slim metal rod tipped with a green crystal. It spun in the air above his hand and extended telescopically from four to seven inches. He leveled his green eyes at Sword. “Relax. It’s just a glyphomantic stylus. It looks incredible.”
Sword thought better about arguing with Maddox. A glimmer of childlike wonder twinkled in the mage’s eye, and for a second, he almost looked like his normal self.
Sword shrugged. “Go for it. What do we care? If it possesses you, I can cut your head off. I think the residual theurgy from your Seal of Vitae will keep me from starving till tomorrow.”
Maddox took the stylus in his hand and hefted it. The tip illuminated as he waved it in the air. “By the fucking Guides—it’s stabilizing my strokes, like a mercury core, but it anticipates geometric patterns. This is
fucking
incredible.”
Satisfied that Maddox wasn’t possessed, Sword said, “We should get out of here.”
Maddox gazed at the other implements on the shelf. “This is the archeological find of a lifetime. The lore in this room would be worth millions.”
“You already have millions,” Sword said. “This magic came at a terrible price, and the people of Sarn reaped that when Achelon unleashed the Harrowers. Do you really want to bring all this back into the world?” He waved at a ribcage that had been fitted with gleaming rivets.
Maddox pocketed the stylus. “Fine. But they’ll find this eventually.”
Sword pointed his blade at a heavy metal door at the end of the chamber. “That door is impregnable. There’s no way to the surface from any of these chambers. If it were accessible, it would have been picked clean.”
Maddox raised his hands and tried to budge the portal, but nothing happened. “I can’t open it. Maybe you could cut through it or do that thing where you disrupt magic.”
Sword said, “If I open that door, it’s open forever.”
Maddox glared at Sword. “I just want to go topside and get a nice bottle of wine that I can drink till I pass out. We can’t go back through those tunnels. We’ll be lost down here forever.”
“Your seal can sustain both of us,” Sword said. “We’ll find another way.”
“What other way?” Maddox challenged. “Either this set of tunnels connects to the surface or we’re effectively trapped here for all time. I don’t want to spend eternity with you like this. I am inches from losing my shit and inscribing the Seal of Seals.”
Sword walked over and placed his hands on Maddox’s narrow shoulders. “Help will come. Whether you want it or not.”
“What help?” Maddox asked.
They both turned when they heard a woman’s voice say, “Me.”
The Libertine reclined regally atop one of the empty workbenches. She wore a brazier and tight breeches, crisscrossed by a mesh of metallic ribbons that showed enough skin to be enticing without being vulgar. Her dirty blonde hair hung in lazy waves around her heart-shaped face.
“Libby,” Sword said.
“You seem stuck,” she remarked, sliding off the table. “It’s understandable. People weren’t meant to escape these tunnels. As you might imagine, I spent some time down here back in the old days.” She coughed for a moment.
The Libertine was a Traveler, an ancient race of mages dedicated to their own obscure agendas. Hers was to feed off misery and in its wake leave an unseemly sense of false mirth amid chaos. She was the most ancient power in the room and the closest thing to a god in Creation.
Maddox stepped toward her. “You were in Rivern. At my old bar.”
She shrugged. “It’s the only thing still standing in the Backwash. You’re welcome for that by the way.”
“What do you want?” Sword asked, blade ready to strike. He wondered briefly if Soren’s body could absorb her power and whether that would be wise.
“I want what you do,” she said. “And I’m not here as part of my wyrd. This is personal. I was down here digging through the Artifex’s shit. The man never threw anything out. Do you remember how battle cards were all the rage during the interregnum? He has all of them.”
“A Traveler has to follow their wyrd,” Sword said.
“Our wyrd and our word.” She smiled sadly. “But only if we want access to our power. As I said, this is a personal matter—I need you two to settle a score for me.”
Maddox recalled, “I thought your whole thing was to purge people of their negative emotions—a bit hypocritical to be carrying a chip on your shoulder.”
“We are all paradoxes. I had to become something else to remain myself,” she offered as a non-explanation.
Maddox shook his head. “Last time we met, I was the Sword. But I remember the Sword used my hands to choke you. I will gladly do the same if you don’t get to your fucking point.”
She ran her fingers through her hair sensuously. “There’s history. Forgotten experiences. It would be better if I
showed
you.”
Sword glowered. “No. Just fucking tell us.”
“It all started thousands of years ago…” she stated airily.
Sword sighed heavily and waited for the inevitable.
Maddox slapped his palm to his head and muttered, “I fucking hate these people.”
The room rippled as the words of the Traveler’s story draped them in history.
E
IGHTEEN
The Diving Bell
J
ESSA
THE STORM RAIDERS
sailed the Glass Sea, ravaging villages for food and cities for gold, until they came upon Mazitar. The Wavelords commanded the wind to leave their sails and the water to still until not a current remained. The Wavelords shared willingly of the sea’s bounty, for they had never known hardship. The Raiders took all they could carry and departed in peace.
And for a time, things were good.
But Kultea, deep in her lair beneath the blackest depths of the ocean, saw her chance. She sent her six-finned offspring, whom she had grown to love more than Noah’s children, along with chests of gold from ancient shipwrecks and whispers of secrets long forgotten. And among her treasures were the Thunderstones, forged from water that the depths of the ocean turned to blue glass within the rock.
And for a time, things remained good.
—LEGEND OF THE KONDOLE,
ORAL HISTORY
PISCLATET STUFFED HIS
fish face with the last of his whale sausage, which he carried in a red and white plaid basket that matched the checkered pattern of his eelskin coat. The stale air in the diving bell stank of the oily meat, and Jessa wished she could open a window or at least get into the ocean. A luxurious purple velvet sofa surrounded the edges of the giant brass bell. The center of the floor was open to the lightless depths of the sea below, the water kept at bay by air pressure.
Her circlet of gilded coral was wrapped securely in her hair. Pisclatet had crafted her a marvelous dress made of fine abraevium leaf, waterproof with structural elements that resembled waves. He was a genius, albeit one who did not smell good in a confined space.
“The delegation arrives,” he announced ominously.
Finally. I’ve been waiting here nearly an hour.
Jessa closed her eyes and reached out with her senses into the water. She felt the movement of fifty or so swimmers a half mile below her. Her senses lacked the range underwater that she enjoyed under open sky. “Shall we meet them?”
“We must not appear overly eager. The first maiden to fill her plate at the buffet is always the last one to dance,” he explained, casually tossing an empty casing of sausage into the water.
“Are you calling me fat?” Jessa asked playfully.
“Never,” Pisclatet exclaimed. “While you are no longer as shapely as you were before your offspring ravaged your body, it’s nothing that cannot be hidden with proper tailoring.”
Jessa glanced down at her stomach, the mirror-like fabric reflecting a distorted version of her face. She pondered it for only a moment before she saw dozens of lights in the water. As the shapes swam closer, she could see they were men, with long fish tails and angular horned faces. In the depressed sockets that would have been their eyes, they had six bluish bioluminescent dots.