Angel of Storms

  He nodded. Then I will go to her world next.

  Taking a deep breath and some magic, he propelled himself away. Reaching Yira’s world meant retracing his steps for a few worlds, then striking out in a direction that took him closer to Liftre. The arrival place was atop a stone platform carved into the top of an enormous rock, but Tyen didn’t stay there for long. He skimmed through the edge of the world. The streams that skirted the rock converged to form a river, which wound back and forth through forests and fields before fragmenting into several tributaries. At the convergence of two of these lay a sprawl of white-tiled roofs sheltered by the canopy of huge trees.

  Descending to an open space of stone arches filled in with iron bars–the only place a sorcerer was allowed to arrive within the city–he emerged into the world. A guard in a small room built into one of the arches called for his name. Remembering the protocol he’d been taught, he turned his hands palm upwards and dropped to one knee.

  “Tyen Ironsmelter humbly seeks entry,” he said, eyes fixed on the ground. “I have come at the invitation of Yira Oni.”

  “Yira Oni left instructions…” the woman said, consulting a book. Tyen read from her mind that his friend had left a list of names of people to be sent to her home if they sought her out, though she was no longer in her home world. The guard instructed a man standing in the deeper shadows of the room to take Tyen to his destination.

  The gate was unlocked and the guide set off through the city streets. As Tyen followed he noted all over again the oddities that struck him whenever he visited Yira’s home world. A well-groomed young man stood in a doorway, baby on his hip and another child clinging to his leg. He watched Tyen with open curiosity and wondered how a man with so little care for his appearance could ever attract a woman. A pair of merchants discussing trade paused to openly discuss Tyen’s pale colouring and whether a woman had already claimed him for her own.

  He had often wondered if Sezee’s island home had been like this, before the Leratian Empire had conquered it. The women here were so sure of their superiority over men, and few men ever seemed to do more than grumble about the unfairness of this. Because of her assumption that all worlds were like hers, Yira had struggled to fit in at Liftre at first. Only Tyen had understood her, pointing out to those who thought her arrogant that she behaved no differently to men from worlds where they had most of the advantages. He had been relieved, too, when she had begun to see that the men in her world sometimes had good reason to complain.

  Many of the houses were large, sprawling and communal. Women often claimed more than one husband, who looked after all their children regardless of parentage. It was afternoon and warm at street level, and women were enjoying the breezes that cooled the balconies of the upper floors.

  “Tyen Ironsmelter. I remember you.”

  He looked up to see the matriarch of Yira’s house, Mirandra, leaning over the balcony above him.

  “I am honoured that you do, Matriarch,” he replied. “May I come in?”

  She nodded. The guide had stopped by an open doorway. Tyen thanked the man, earning a startled but pleased smile and bow, and passed through a corridor into a courtyard. One of the city’s enormous trees grew in the centre, its limbs heavy with large green fruits. A servant met him, handing over a bowl and cloth. Tyen suppressed a sigh and followed the man up two flights of stairs to where Mirandra waited. Emerging onto the balcony, he knelt before her and washed her bare feet. As an extra gesture of goodwill and servitude, he drew magic to still the air around them, reducing its temperature.

  “What news of the worlds?” she asked.

  He smiled. Most women of Yira’s world would never ask a man such questions, assuming he did not pay attention to such matters.

  “They are in upheaval, since the return of the Raen,” he told her, though he read from her mind that she already knew.

  “Have you met anyone who has seen him?”

  “No.”

  She sighed in disappointment. “So strange, to think one man could be so powerful.”

  “It is,” he said, in heartfelt agreement. “I could not believe it at first. Within just a few hours of the news arriving, Liftre was abandoned.”

  She frowned and looked away. “At least Yira completed her training. Little good it will do us now she has gone away.” She shook her head, then looked down at him. “She left a message for you. You’ll find it in her rooms. Tal will take you there. Tal!” The man reappeared, dropping to one knee before her. “Take Tyen Ironsmelter to Yira’s house.”

  She bent and offered him a hand. Though he could have got to his feet easily without her help, it would have been impolite to refuse.

  “Thank you,” he said, bowing. “May your tree grow well; may your tree grow large.”

  She nodded approvingly. “You may go.”

  Yira’s room was not far away on the same floor. As the matriarch’s protector, she was supposed to stay close. The main door was open. As Tal entered he spoke, and another man replied. Three children sat playing on the floor, two who looked so alike they must be twins. Yira’s children. The other man was one of her husbands. His eyes narrowed as he saw Tyen. “Another one,” he thought, and he waved a hand towards one of the walls.

  As Tyen looked where the man indicated, he had to swallow a laugh.

  White banners hung from the walls around it. Elegant writing covered each. So she isn’t as dismissive of Tarren’s artistic practice as she pretends to be. He moved from one to the next. Each was a rhyming poem. One for each of her friends? He examined them all with equal interest and time in case singling one out would reveal to an onlooker which clue was his, and somehow ruin her efforts at secrecy. Only then could he be sure his initial guess at which was for him was correct.

  All but one made no sense to him.

  “I named our twelve children. One black, one red, ten white. Where you watered the tree, bring my words to light.”

  He pushed out of the world.

  The children had to be the moons of a world they had visited when they first became lovers. She’d given them all names. The sun there had been small and dim, only the heat of the ground keeping it from freezing. She had given him her water bottle and instructions to pour it on the ground. A tiny tree had sprouted from the sand, growing rapidly in the hours they’d spent there. Flowers blossomed, glowing with an inner light, before shrivelling and falling. By the time they’d left, the tree’s life cycle had ended and it had collapsed onto the ground, scattering seeds.

  Had the rebels gathered there? He doubted it. The world was too inhospitable to live in for long. People had attempted it before, but the lack of light and unpredictable rain meant crops did not grow well. Mineral resources had been mined from time to time, with food supplies brought in, but once the source was depleted the world was abandoned again.

  It was also in a less-frequented cluster of worlds, so the journey was convoluted and took many hours. Though he was in no danger from the Raen now, he could not help watching for shadows in the place between as he travelled. His thoughts returned again and again to his encounter with the ruler of worlds, lingering on the man’s instruction not to seek him out. How would the Raen know where and when to meet Tyen? Was he going to be watching Tyen constantly, or did he have other spies for that?

  At the midpoint between the world of twelve moons and the world before it, Tyen sought signs of previous travellers. The only path he found hadn’t been used in a long time, and he began to doubt his interpretation of Yira’s verse. When he was about to arrive he crossed a fresher path and backtracked to follow it. He imagined he could sense something of Yira in it, as faint as a lingering fragrance. It circled about before taking him to the place they had camped previously.

  Low, ruined walls were all that remained of an abandoned building. The air he sucked in was dry and warm. He took his water bottle from his pack and explored the ruins, finding the place they had camped before. The arch had collapsed recently. It had spanned the plac
e where the tree had grown, he remembered. Moving over to the pile of stones, he drew magic and pushed them aside. He unstoppered the bottle and poured most of the water on the ground, then sat down to wait.

  It had happened so fast last time, but then, they had been there to entertain themselves in other ways. Now, with nothing to do but watch, hours seemed to pass with no sign of growth. He sipped some of the remaining water and waited.

  When the ground did finally move it was not to allow a shoot to appear. Instead, the sand bulged, then cascaded away to reveal a hard surface. He moved closer and swept more sand away. Beneath it was a fragment of the stone arch. He lifted it to reveal the growing shoot, bent from where it had struggled against the stone’s weight. He was about to throw the stone away when he noticed the underside was glowing.

  Turning it over, he exhaled in relief and appreciation of her cleverness. A symbol had been painted there with the juice of a flower that had bloomed earlier, fading slowly as he exposed it to the moonlight. It was a circle with a glyph inside, the symbol of Worweau, one of the largest markets in the worlds.

  He’d never seen the Worweau Market. It’s time I did.

  The symbol had vanished. He set the stone down, stood and pushed away from the world of twelve moons. A weariness began to steal over him, his body reminding him it needed sleep. His stomach growled. He ought to stop in a world where evening was about to begin to buy a meal and bed for the night, but he pushed on.

  As he neared the market he had many routes and well-worn paths to choose from, though some had not been used for days. He chose one that had been travelled in the last few hours. The arrival place was a paved circle, the glyph symbol of the market inlaid with darker tiles at the centre. Rows of market stalls radiated outwards from it, and they looked as crowded with goods and customers as he had been told to expect, despite the Raen’s return heralding the end of inter-world trade.

  A man strode onto the arrival place. He wore a plain belted robe stretched over his generous belly and the market symbol as a large gold pendant. Looking down his nose at Tyen, he lifted a board on which sheaves of paper had been clipped.

  “Name?” he demanded in the Traveller tongue.

  Tyen eyed the stranger. From his manner and the pendant he guessed this was an official of some sort. “Tyen Ironsmelter.”

  “Tyen Ironsmelter.” The man scrawled this down. “Buying or selling? Or both?”

  “Buying,” Tyen decided. To say neither would draw attention, and the man might want to inspect goods if he claimed to have some.

  “How will you be paying the fee?”

  “Fee?”

  “For using the arrival place.”

  Nobody had ever mentioned a fee, as far as Tyen could remember. He looked into the man’s mind. He saw that the official was a sorcerer, and considered himself strong enough to deal with most visitors. His job had been easy before, mostly directing visitors to the area of the market they wanted to find, but since the Raen had ordered that all visitors’ names and purpose be recorded, his workload had doubled. Yet the number of arrivals had shrunk, as had the income from tips and bribes, so he was hoping to trick Tyen into thinking the fee was a lot higher than usual.

  “I have a green stone.” Tyen said. “The one you call ‘aemera’ in your native tongue.”

  The man paused as he realised Tyen had read his mind. He looked up, licked his lips then nodded. “Ah… let me see?”

  Taking his pouch of semi-precious stones from his pocket, Tyen selected the smallest green ones and placed them on his palm. The official nodded. “One will do,” he said honestly. Tyen dropped it into the man’s palm. “And I wouldn’t keep them in your pocket, if I were you. Not without protecting them with magic, at least. We would like to keep the market free of thieves, but with so many people coming and going it is impossible.”

  “Thank you for the warning.”

  Tyen stepped off the arrival platform and moved into the crowded street. A mix of smells both appealing and repellent teased his nose, the better ones reminding him he hadn’t eaten in some time. He bought some meat and vegetables grilled on a stick, and had just finished eating when a child stepped into his path, looked up at him with an intent expression, then tapped her forehead. He sought an explanation from her mind.

  Go north, to the ice, she told him. He understood that she was deaf, and could read lips. She’d been hired to watch the arrivals for people on a list of names she’d been given, then deliver the message. He nodded and she quickly slipped back into the crowd.

  Once out of sight of the arrival platform, he pushed far enough into the place between that he wouldn’t be easily seen by anyone in the market. So many others had done this recently it was impossible to tell if one path was used more than another. As he moved northward, he noticed other arrival places within the market. From each, several streets radiated, forming a beautiful pattern of interconnecting lines. On one was a circle of wagons pulled by pairs of huge beasts, the line slowly uncurling as they trundled into a market aisle. The rest of them were empty, and as he passed the furthest reaches of the market he noticed aisle after aisle of empty stalls.

  The Raen’s return was already having an effect. How long before the entire market was abandoned? Or would it be? The Raen had ordered that all visitors’ names and purposes be recorded. He had not left orders for the market to be closed, or the official would have been worrying about losing his job–or not be there at all.

  Perhaps the Raen knew the group of potential rebels was here and did not want to frighten them into relocating somewhere he couldn’t find them.

  The market shrank behind Tyen as he crossed a patchwork of cultivated land watered via a network of aqueducts. He skimmed over a city. Beyond it he could see the shadow of distant mountains. He had crossed countless paths forged by passing sorcerers so, guessing the whole world was like this, he started to follow them to hide his trail, zigzagging towards the peaks.

  Hills swelled and were replaced by ridges and valleys. Snow dusted the ground. Finally he reached a great cliff and, rising to the top, found a plateau of ice pierced here and there by the mountains’ peaks. His path crossed one freshly used path, and he changed course to follow it, skimming down to one of the many smaller crags.

  It led to a dark opening in the rock. As he arrived at the base of this he instantly regretted not emerging into the world again sooner. The air he sucked into his starved lungs was bitingly cold and made him cough. Drawing in magic, he created a barrier of stilled air around his body and warmed it.

  Once recovered he approached the opening. Creating a spark, he saw an icy floor descending steeply. Stairs had been carved into one side, while the flat area was marked with long gouges. Keeping his barrier strong enough to protect him from an attack, he slowly walked down the stairs. The passage soon levelled and widened to form a cave. It was empty but for a row of sleds. No harness was attached to these, so he guessed they were either pushed by hand or propelled by magic.

  It was unlikely the rebels would leave paths in the space between that led straight to their lair, so there must be a leg of the journey that involved non-world-travelling forms of transportation. The sleds might be it.

  But if he was in the wrong place he could be taking sleds from locals who needed them. He looked around the cave but found no clues as to their owners. Emerging from the cave again, he considered the surrounding landscape. No tracks in the snow led away from the entrance. If he took a sled, where should he go? Though he suspected that nobody was close enough for him to find and read their mind, he tried anyway.

  And immediately sensed someone behind him.

  Spinning around, he faced the cave just in time to see a young man dressed in a padded coat emerge. The man frowned and looked him up and down.

  “What’re you here for?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for Yira Oni of Roihe,” Tyen said. “She left a message that led me here.”

  A smile broke out on the stranger’s face.
“Which one are you?”

  “Tyen. Tyen Ironsmelter.”

  “Ah! Tyen. We’ve heard a lot about you. Come in. I’m on my way out, but I can send you on your way. It’s a bit of a trip, but you can travel fast when you’ve got the knack of it. I’m Brev, by the way.”

  The man walked back down the stairs. As Tyen followed he saw that another sled now sat alongside the others. The man steered it towards the back wall. To Tyen’s surprise, and chagrin for not having noticed, there was a fold in the rock that concealed a tunnel. The floor and walls of this were ice, smooth except where the blades of sleds had carved lines into it. The spark of light Brev had created did not penetrate far into the tunnel.

  Brev waved at the darkness.

  “Take it slow the first time. There are sharp turns. Look for grooves in the walls; they indicate when a turn is coming up.” He pointed at the seat. “Sit and push against the walls. Not too hard to begin with, or you’ll squish your descendants.”

  “Thanks,” Tyen offered.

  Brev shrugged and turned way. “See you soon,” he called back.

  Creating a flame, Tyen sent it ahead. The shadows shrank away from it. He climbed onto the sled, gathered magic, and pushed against the walls and ceiling. His buttocks were pressed hard against the seat, the force transferring into the sled through his groin, and suddenly Brev’s warning made sense. Descendants. Right. But the pressure receded once the blades began skimming over the ice.

  Bracing his feet, he gathered more magic, and propelled himself into the receding darkness.

  CHAPTER 5

  A long while later a light appeared ahead, setting the ice walls glittering, Tyen thought he was approaching the end of the tunnel and slowed, but it turned out to be a pair of ordinary oil lamps. Another young sorcerer stepped out of an alcove and warily asked for his name. Once Tyen gave it, the man relaxed and told him to continue on–but not too fast and to watch out for the bridge.

  He searched the darkness ahead for any change in the icy walls. A bridge must span something. Would it be an underground river? He listened for sounds beyond the scrape of the sled runners, but heard nothing. Then the walls ahead abruptly turned black.