The politics of immortals, Colivar mused. After the first few centuries of life one came to commiserate with the ancient gods, who were said to have bickered and connived and cheated like a household of spoiled children. Why should a mere human do better than they? There came a time when all your lovers had died, your family was long gone, and your most treasured projects had sparked briefly and then descended into the abyss of the forgotten, and all that was left was those who were equally powerful, equally immortal, and equally bored.
Had Sulah’s teacher been anyone but Colivar, his loyalty would have been seen as a weakness and he would have been used, abused, and discarded in his first few centuries. But Colivar preferred more constructive projects, and was faintly amused by the fact that his idealistic young charge had managed to survive with his optimism intact for so long. Setting obstacles in his way—a traditional Magister sport—would have been poor answer for such a rare accomplishment.
“There was a boy you wanted me to see?”
Sulah nodded. He was a blond man, light-skinned in the way of the north, tall and lean but with a strength and agility that defied the Magister stereotype. Of course he might look like whatever he wanted, now that he had the power of the athra to draw upon, but he had always preferred his natural appearance. Yet another facet of his varity.
“In the town,” he said, nodding toward the settlement below them. “Easier to bring you to him than to bring him out.”
“Very well.” Colivar nodded. “Lead on.”
Sulah didn’t wear black, Colivar noted. Not that it was needed here. The chill northern wind posed a dangerous trial for merely morati flesh; only someone with the power of souls to draw upon for heat would dare to walk in it as they did, protected by no more than a single layer of clothing. The simplicity of Sulah’s garb was as much a sign of power and rank as any trick of color.
Still, it was . . . disconcerting.
There were houses scattered along the valley. Sulah led him to one of the larger ones and knocked on the door. A man passing by looked up at the sound of the noise, saw who had made it, and managed a hurried bow that nearly had him tripping over his feet.
How quick they are, Colivar thought wryly, to grant respect to those who feed upon them.
The door opened partway and a ruddy-face woman peered out. She held a ladle in her hand, and it was clear she was less than pleased at having been interrupted. “Yes? What do you—” Then she realized who—and what—stood before her. “Oh—” She drew in a quick breath. “Forgive me, my lord, I didn’t realize it was you. And with Magister company, too! Come in, please.”
The house was pleasantly warm, with a low-banked fire in the common room to sustain the heat. Cooking smells wafted toward them as their hostess shut the door: nutmeg, cinnamon, the aroma of fresh bread. “You weren’t waiting long, I hope? I’d never forgive myself if I kept a Magister waiting.” She was trying to look straight at Sulah, to ignore Colivar until he was introduced. It must be some local custom, the Magister mused. Nonetheless her curiosity was evident, and the bright blue eyes, rimmed with lines of age and hard work, kept sneaking glances at the black-haired visitor.
“Not long at all, Mother.” Sulah said the word as if it was some kind of official title, and Colivar took note. “I hope we do not disturb you.”
“Never a disturbance, never a one!” Another glance at Colivar. “I’ve got fresh bread coming out of the oven, if you want some . . . you and your visitor . . .”
Sulah nodded. “Colivar, Magister Royal of Anshasa.”
The woman’s eyes grew. “Oh my. I am . . . honored, sir. Will you break bread with me? My husband is out working or I would call him in to meet you, and the children all off on errands . . . what can I do for two such distinguished guests? Please forgive my humble abode, and I’ve no table set for you . . .” The worry lines about her eyes scrunched in dismay. “Magister Sulah, how could you bring me such a guest without any warning?”
The blond Magister smiled. There was a genuine warmth behind the expression but the edge was forced; whatever had moved him to call Colivar to this place, it did not lend itself to congeniality. “Your house is fine, Mistress Tally, and your table is not what we came for.” He glanced toward the farther reaches of the house, hidden behind closed doors. “I should like to show Magister Colivar the boy, if that is all right with you.”
The color fled from the woman’s face, as did her smile. She recovered quickly and forced the smile back into place, but the paleness remained. “Of course, my lords, of course. Whatever you want.” She fumbled with flour-stained hands at her apron, withdrawing a key at last from somewhere in its depths. “Maybe you can do the boy some good—the gods know we have tried, I tell you that. Tried over and over again, my husband and I, and he not a patient one on the best of days . . .”
She seemed to be chattering to herself, Colivar noted, not to them, and so he was silent as she led the two to a narrow door at the back of the house. “We would have kept him upstairs if we could,” she went on, fumbling with her key in the lock, “but you see he tried to break out again and again, so it was really this or a closet. Or make him a room of his own without windows, to which my husband said no, this is too much for such a mad creature—”
The door swung open. Beyond it, steps led down into the earth. A dim light glittered from somewhere below, not a pleasant light but enough to see by. The smells were earthy and damp, but clean; whatever was in the cellar, the place was well maintained. There was something else besides, in the scent of the place, that it took Colivar a moment to identify. A human smell, normally masked by other things, but a clear note here, rising up from the depths.
Fear.
He glanced at Sulah, who nodded grimly and moved to lead the way down. Colivar followed him. The woman muttered something about how she would follow them were the bread not rising, but the oven needed tending to . . . and there was fear in her as well, Colivar observed, though this time he heard it in the voice rather than smelling it.
“Danger?” He said it in Sulah’s native tongue, which the locals would not understand.
“Not for us.” The blond Magister drew in a sharp breath. “Not yet, anyway.”
At the bottom of the staircase was an oddly shaped room that seemed to extend under much of the house. Supplies were stacked along several walls, and they had once filled the entire space—or so the pattern of dust suggested. Currently the boxes and sacks and racks of tools were pushed back from one corner, clearing a small square area not much larger than a pantry. In that space a small bed had been made up and piled with blankets, clean but worn. A chamberpot stood beside it, and a small table on which sat the remnants of a meal, untouched. There were a few other amenities as well, but Colivar had less interest in them than in the thing that was huddled under the covers, keening softly in terror as they approached.
“It’s all right,” Sulah said softly. He spoke to the mound of blankets in a northern dialect that Colivar had known ages ago. “We’re friends. Come out, it’s all right.”
A moment passed with no response. A lesser Magister might have used his power to press the issue, but Colivar knew Sulah and did not believe in using his power when other means would suffice. Sure enough, after a few moments had passed, the mound of blankets stirred. Something wriggled beneath them. A tiny hand came out, grimy and with broken fingernails, as if testing the air. Then the blanket’s edge was folded back and the whole of a small boy was revealed . . . pale, trembling, and clearly half mad with terror.
“That’s it, my boy. You see? No danger here.” Sulah sat down on the edge of the bed, and Colivar wondered if the boy might not shy away from him. But it didn’t seem as if he was afraid of men. Rather, his eyes flitted nervously about the room as if seeking something else in its shadows, and only when he had looked everywhere twice and found nothing did he relax a tiny bit and dare to look at his guests.
His eyes were terrible things to look at, young in their freshness and color
but aged whole centuries in whatever they had gazed upon.
“Not here?” he whispered.
“None of them here,” Sulah assured him. “They can’t get in here, remember? Mother Tally has seen to that.”
He nodded slowly. The motion was painful to watch.
“This is my friend. His name is Colivar. He wanted to meet you.”
The haunted eyes studied the black-haired visitor.
“Colivar, this is Kaiden.”
“I am pleased to meet you,” the Magister said.
The boy said nothing.
“I told him how brave you were,” Sulah offered.
A tear rolled down the boy’s cheek, to join the sheen of dried salt already there. “Not brave,” he whispered. “I ran away.”
“Kaiden—” Colivar began to reach out to him, but the sudden motion startled the boy and he backed hurredly into the corner, as far as he could go, jerking the worn blankets tightly about him. Colivar’s hand froze in place, but he did not lower it. After a moment had passed, he waited until the boy’s eyes met his own, and then said softly, “Sleep.”
The tortured eyes closed. The muscles of the face relaxed a bit, though the channels etched by tears remained the same. The hand holding the blanket opened slightly, but not enough to let it fall.
“He cannot tell anything useful,” Colivar mused. “That much is clear.”
Sulah nodded. “His mind is gone. Sometimes he speaks fragments of things that hint at the cause . . . enough that I was called here to see him. But mostly he is like this.”
Colivar drew in a deep breath, willing the power to come to him and do his bidding. It took a moment before the athra responded; his current consort was likely near the end of his or her life, and not able to fuel many more endeavors. He would have to take care in the future, lest he be caught between consorts at an awkward moment.
For now, however, it was enough. He willed his power to wrap itself around the young boy, and then to reflect, like a mirror, the cause of his fear.
The athra-born force came into view slowly, at first in tendrils of hesitant mist, which then it solidified into a thicker fog. In front of the boy’s eyes it gathered together then, until all of it was in that one place, and a picture began to take shape. Bits and pieces of things flickered in and out of existence, as if the power was struggling to choose a focus. Feces. Dead flies. Rats. Bodies draped over a table. Then at last it seemed to fix on something, and the image that it formed became truly solid . . . so much so that it seemed one could pluck it from the air and set it free in the real world.
Black it was, with shimmers of purple and blue along its body and wings, and it hung in the air like a dragonfly, though it was nothing like a dragonfly in truth.
Sulah’s reaction was immediate, instinctive. With a gasp he took a step back, and sketched a sign of one of the higher gods over his chest. “Is that . . . is that what I think it is?”
When Colivar did not respond to him right away, Sulah turned to look at him. The black-haired Magister’s expression was grim, and dark in a way that his former student had never seen before. The look in his eyes was daunting—ominous, fierce, haunted—as if some terrible memory had surfaced, and for the moment he could not see past it.
Then slowly his attention returned to the room, to Sulah and to the boy. For a long moment he said nothing. Then, “Yes. So it would seem.”
“I thought they were all dead. Destroyed in the Dark Ages. Isn’t that what you taught me?”
“No,” he said quietly. “Not destroyed. Gone, yes . . . but not destroyed.”
Colivar put out a hand slowly, as if to touch the thing. The illusion scattered when he touched it. Of course. Real and unreal could not be combined.
Sulah drew in a sharp breath. “It’s so small . . .”
“It will grow larger,” Colivar said quietly. “And change again. This is not its final form.”
Sulah looked at him sharply. “You’ve seen one of them. Fully grown.”
Colivar said nothing. After a moment he rose up and turned away from the boy and Sulah both, so that his student could no longer see his face.
At last he said, “The Black Sleep will come here, if this thing has . . . brothers.”
“It is already here, my teacher.”
“Where?”
“Up north, a day’s travel. This boy’s home, I gather. I’ve gotten it out of him in bits and pieces over the past few weeks . . . not an easy task. His soul struggles to forget.”
He whispered, “Tell me.”
“The whole town is dead.” Sulah’s voice sounded hollow in his own ears as remembered the boy screaming out details of the event, fevered bits of remembrance interspersed with raw animal terror. “He was away from home for a time, and when he came back . . . that’s how he found them.”
Colivar turned back to him. “All the people? Or . . . everything?”
“People, animals . . . everything alive that was there at the time. Rumor has it a few other inhabitants survived, who were abroad when it happened, but either they can’t be found, or they simply aren’t talking.”
Colivar’s expression had become a terrible thing to behold. “And those who went there after this took place. What did they find?”
Sulah shook his head. “The town has been declared cursed, and no man will go near it. Or at least no man will admit to having gone near it.”
“But you have gone.”
“Yes.” He said it quietly. “I have gone.”
“And?”
“It was as the boy described. A town of death. Where I found bodies undisturbed, it was as if they had simply lay down to sleep and died.” His bright eyes fixed on Colivar. “Like the tales you told me of the Black Sleep, the Devil’s Sleep . . . only this was more than sleep.”
“The Black Sleep doesn’t kill. Not that many. This is something else. He shook his head; his expression was grim. “It must be.”
“You’re going to want to go there yourself, aren’t you?”
It was a moment before he answered. “There is no other choice, is there? I must know what happened.”
“I have horses ready, if you want to ride.”
“Yes.” He thought of his failing consort, and how unpleasant it would be to be caught in Transition while transporting himself. He had made that mistake once before and almost been killed. “Horses will do.”
Sulah reached down to wrap the blanket more tightly around the sleeping boy. It was an oddly human gesture, the sort of casual compassion that most Magisters lost touch with by the end of their first lifetime. An odd quirk of this particular student, which Colivar alternately disdained and marveled at. Magisters who could feel for others rarely survived the ages; sooner or later their natural compassion warred with the necessary inhumanity of their survival, and one or the other lost the battle. Yet Sulah had been through a handful of Transitions successfully, there was no denying that. And the human side of him was still strong enough to surface now and then. It was . . . interesting.
They climbed up the narrow stairs silently, each lost in his own thoughts. Mother Tally greeted them at the top, chittering about poor manners and how they must forgive her for not having bread ready, or perhaps they would wait? Colivar left it to Sulah to fend off her aggressive hospitality; he was lost in his own thoughts, barely cognizant of the world around them.
After they left the house it was but a short walk to where Sulah’s horses were stabled. And a very short time to get them ready for travel, since Sulah had prepared everything well in advance.
As they led the horses out of the stable and turned them toward the northern road, Sulah finally broke the silence that had reigned since they’d left Mother Tally’s house. “How do you know all these things, from times that even the history books have forgotten? When was the last time there was a living ikata, that you could take its measure?”
Colivar did not look at him, but yanked on one of the buckles holding a worn leather pack in place, to mak
e sure it was tight enough. “You should have asked me that when you were still my student, Sulah. I might have answered you then.”
“Truly?”
“No.” With a practiced motion he slipped his foot into a stirrup and hoisted himself into the saddle. “Now no more questions, until we have seen what there is to see, yes? I am wanting answers myself.”
Sulah nodded shortly as he mounted his own horse, then turned him to lead the way out of town.
He would not forget, he promised himself. Some questions needed to be asked.
It was quiet, in the way that unwholesome things were quiet. Colivar noticed that right away. A place that the beasts of the surrounding forest might visit, but they clearly did not want to remain in.
He reined up his horse at the edge of the small town and sat there for a minute, studying the place. Sulah waited quietly by his side, patting his horse once as the beast snuffled its own discomfort with the unhealthy aura of the place.
“How long has it been?” Colivar asked finally.
“A month, as near as I can tell. The boy has no real sense of time.”
Colivar nodded. Another moment passed in silence, then he dismounted. Sulah followed suit. There was no need to hitch the animals to any tree or man-made contrivance; if they wandered off, two Magisters could call them back easily enough when they were needed.
Slowly, his eyes taking in every detail, Colivar began to walk through the town. Dark things skittered back into the shadows as he did so, save for a few that had courage enough to stand their ground. Rats. One of them stood guard over a prize he was clearly willing to defend against the intruders. A bone of some sort. Human. Colivar looked about and saw other bones in shadows, near doorways, and some just out in the middle of the street. “The beasts of the forest have been here.” he mused, and Sulah nodded. A town full of corpses might seem a fearsome thing to human beings, but to the wild things that inhabited the surrounding woods it was no more nor less than an invitation to a feast.