| "What do you make of it?"Lyahr glanced at Corridan, who kept his focus on the sleeping Acharya. The Mage had fallen into a deep sleep from which he would not be awakened. "It means nothing," Corridan shrugged. "He is more than he seems, but we've always known that." Acharya lay on his back, still wearing the clothes he'd donned when he killed Vincent. A thin coverlet had been set over him by one of the servants, and was now lightly stained with blood. Red blood. Corridan had come to speak with the Acharya, to watch his movements and listen to his speech; to determine the import of the deep nothing in Acharya's eyes. He wanted to understand what Acharya had become. After locking Felanya in "the Box," Lyahr had returned to his room. It was well past nightfall, and the Mage said he wanted sleep. Corridan disliked being in his own room, it gave him too much time to think and - worse yet - remember. Upon entering this room he had found Acharya unconscious and bleeding. "So he cannot heal," Lyahr circled the four-poster bed. No blood marred the thick sheets upon which the Mage leader slept. Simple patterns of lilies from the Old World - symbols of power, only known to a handful of people - were embroidered in pale white against the dark blue fabric. "But he can make it seem so," Corridan tilted his head curiously. "And that may be even more unique." Corridan found it awkward trying to hold a meaningful conversation with Lyahr. It was not something he had tried often. He remembered too little about the people around him to trust them, for the most part. So much of his mind felt as if it had been eaten away, and he could not be certain of the accuracy of what he thought he remembered. "Why lock up the girl?" Lyahr had never considered Felanya a threat, by any name she'd been called. To him she was... there. "To make a point?" Corridan shrugged. It didn't fit, but there had to have been a reason. Acharya never did things without a reason. He had ideas, but they were as of now irrelevant. "Something in him has changed," The warrior-Mage was not stupid. He simply projected to most people that he preferred a sword over words. "Yes, something. But as of now, there is no way of knowing what." Corridan remained motionless, simply watching Lyahr watching the Acharya. Again, he had theories, but no proof. "Torankhayel may be all there is now," Lyahr phrased it like a question. As he finished staring at the bloodstains he moved to stand next to Corridan. "I do not know. I know what he has said in the past," Corridan countered. "He has said that an end will come soon, now that we are all Awake." "An end." "An end," Corridan nodded. "Always more than there seems." He exhaled slowly, running a hand through his hair. The onyx had begun to fade to a more subtle black. It made him look more real, but no less dangerous. Lyahr shook his head, agreeing but unsure of what to say. "One of these days," he muttered. "I'll find the idiot that promised us rest after death, and I'll take him apart." "People like us don't get to rest, I suppose. There is always new evil," Corridan rolled his eyes. So many people had said that, and now he said it too. Lyahr drew a long breath, nodding unenthusiastically. "Speaking of," he reached into his robe and produced a crumpled note. "This was in my chamber. I'm not sure when, or how it got there, but it has never mattered before. We may have orders." There was a long pause, full of silence except for Acharya's soft, sleep-slowed breathing. "Well?" Corridan held his hands open. "Sylvae isn't in the Tower anymore. We are supposed to go and find him." Lyahr handed the note over to Corridan. The handwriting was patient and exact, black ink in plain script on pale parchment. Corridan read it over, committing each perfectly formed word to memory. Acharya's instructions were that Lyahr and Corridan should find Sylvae. He was to be returned to the Tower, though there were no specifications as to whether the vampire-Mage was to be returned dead or alive. Technically, Corridan mused to himself, the only real choices were dead or more dead. "Perfect," Corridan smiled. "What?" Lyahr squinted, not seeing how a missing Tracker turned Mage turned Monster would be occasion to smile. "Did you know," Corridan folded the note and held it out to Lyahr. "Acharya had the Cerdaiya moved to Rehn'acet? Five Trackers were sent along with it, no Magi. Acharya had asked me to come in and look at it before he had it moved." The statement had very little to do directly with the situation at hand, but relevance had never factored much into the sequencing of Corridan's thoughts. "What does that have to do with anything?" "Have you ever seen the Cerdaiya? No, it doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with anything," Corridan lied. "I just had a thought." He stared into space, trying to remember the words on the stone that he had understood. "I'll need some books before we leave," he began turning around, but paused. He peered at Lyahr. "Will we be leaving?" Officially, Lyahr had more command than any Mage beneath the Acharya. More than that, Corridan was not fool enough to hunt Sylvae on his own. "Do you think we should?" Lyahr's focus returned to the Acharya and on odd look played on his generally stoic face. It took Corridan an instant to recognize it. Doubt. Corridan shrugged. "I still trust his orders, as much as I would trust anything else in this world." Lyahr nodded, not certain that he agreed. "There is something I've been wondering," Lyahr asked clumsily. Stealthy interrogations were never his area of expertise. If he wanted to know something, he simply said so. This world was too full of intrigue and undercurrents, in his eyes. "Ask whatever you want, I won't promise you any answers." Lyahr nodded in understanding. "You were carried back to your room, laughing and screaming in the same breaths. Then you just... stopped. Now you seem to be fine. When Dalnek Woke-" Lyahr winced. The carnelian-haired Mage had only challenged the Acharya because he was the first to remember. He'd confided in Lyahr, and died the same day Lyahr Awoke completely - awoke to the sharp pain of grief. His Awakening had been slow. "He snapped. Felanya is nearly useless, the way she wanders as if she's lost in some deep, dark wood." He sneered slightly. "Varesh... well, I suppose the Awakening lets us be what we really are. And I..." Lyahr shrugged. He hadn't quite made up his mind what it had done to him. "But you are fine. How, and why?" Corridan nodded, wearing a very thin smirk. "I remembered something from Dayollah Akar, that is all." "Oh," Lyahr didn't understand, but Corridan never said more or less than he meant to. The warrior-Mage was quiet, and thoughtful for a moment before making a decision. "Will you be ready tomorrow morning, before noon?" "Most likely," Corridan forced the semblance of a smile to fade. "We'll need horses, and supplies. And weapons, pointy things. Taking this... thing down is going to be tricky. But I've already got some ideas." He stepped towards the door, scuffling his feet over the rug that he'd never noticed before. Another symbol from the Old World - a circle cut in half by curves, set in black and white - the symbol for balance, was sewn into the center of the rug. The tiny smile came back to Corridan's lips as he pushed the door open. "And make sure these animals don't drop dead on us." Lyahr shook his head, following the black-haired Mage into the hall. The two left the chamber of the Acharya, whose mouth had drawn up at the corners in the smallest hint of a smile. Trinlayra grew quiet as the night trudged on, as quiet as it had been in its long history. The silence made the Magi as uneasy as all of the laughter and howls that had long since been the norm. Silence made no difference to the Mage locked in Paersfitholn, the Box. The Box was a large room, with no less than twenty wards on its walls, windows and doors. The wards altered the perceptions of those within, depriving all of the senses and suppressing any emotion. The wards blocked out sound, made the air seem still and stagnant, the walls flat and grey. No hints of the outside world were discernable once inside Paersfitholn, though looking in from the outside bright paintings could be seen. Not many Magi had been locked up here, Felanya was exactly the twelfth. As a result, most Magi were unaware of its existence. The first nine Magi locked in Paersfitholn had died, withered away from the inability to feel. It had taken ten deaths over the span of seven hundred years for the final ward to be placed, two-hundred forty-one years ago. The last ward was a manner of unlocking mechanism that dimmed the effects of the other wards long enough for the prisoner to be collected. Once she came to consciousness, Felanya fell into a nearly comatose state. Paersfitholn was worse than the caverns beneath Rehn'acet. The caverns, though close to the Rift, had simply been a safe place for Lyahr, Felanya, Corridan, Varesh and Dalnek to sleep. In sleep they had dreamed of failures and pain, and their dreaming - their pain - shook the world. Slowly the continents of Dayollah Akar fell apart, drowned in the new seas their dreams made and Acharya watched the Old World being remade. Those five were locked in sleep by the inability to face truth, shocked into failure and withdrawn into their subconscious. They slept, and dreamt of sorrows that contorted their minds into things barely recognizable; slept but did not die because something needed them alive. Felanya's nightmares - the visions of agony that had shaped most of Taes'kenar - had centered around repeating deaths of the people she'd cared for. Not all of the people she watched die had been real, some existed only in her nightmares. Yet in her twisting mind, in the caverns, she had seen what seemed like thousands die and convinced herself she loved every one of them. It was those old nightmares, visions of a great darkness made of knives and shrieks, that flooded her mind now. Her greatest fears of being alone in a world that made grown men weep to look into the dark. So many in the Tower slept, and most dreamt dreams filled with a tenuous tranquility. The sleep of initiates was largely untroubled - they knew little of murder or the slow death of a lost Mage. Only three tossed or turned in their sleeps, three that had touched the shadow-blood - Torankh'daran - of the dead vampire hissed and cried through their dreams. Faerkesh woke in the morning to a mouthful of blood; bits of tongue muscle flapped about in his mouth, still barely attached to the bottom of his jaw. Ardaelan woke unable to see, but felt viscous, sticky... something on his hands, beneath his fingernails. It might have been warm at some point during the night, but now it, whatever it was, had become cold and slightly solid. Shadorin woke to a world of stillness. She held a bloodied hairpin, and for the life of her could not fathom what was causing the unbearable pain just inside her skull. Her initial reaction upon seeing the blood stream from her ears was to let loose a terrible wail. She saw her mouth open, felt her throat constrict, but began simply weeping upon hearing no sound. They knelt before the Acharya, who had heard the wails, smelled the tears and Called for Lyahr to find them. He was preparing to focus and Call again when the warrior-Mage had ushered the three, still dirtied with blood, into the Blessing Chamber. The three were silent as a small death as Acharya circled them, scrutinizing them with his hands clasped behind his back. "They were already calling out for help," Lyahr was explaining. "Your Magi here just aren't very helpful." "My Magi are as helpful as I tell them to be," Acharya's voice was cold. "Experience has taught them that it is their own skin that matters, and helping those who are crying would be a good way to lost that skin. I wasn't certain you would bring them to me," he looked sideways at Lyahr. "You remain the leader, and the only god this world seems to have." Lyahr paused uncomfortably at the Acharya's laughter. "Whether you are a god or not, you remain in control." No matter how tenuous, he thought to himself. "So it has nothing to do with trust?" A tiny smile played on the leader's eyes, shining in his darkened eyes. "I do not trust you as far as I can kick you," Lyahr growled through gritted teeth. "But you have the sort of power it would be dangerous to ignore." "Ah," Acharya nodded, chuckling as Lyahr's brow furrowed in confusion. "I am not a god, but this world refuses to accept that." "What does this mean?" Lyahr wanted Acharya to get to the point; Corridan was waiting outside the wall with the horses. "No meaning," Acharya smiled darkly. "Go," he motioned to the door, turning his attention back to the three before him. "Sylvae already has more than a day on you, I would hate to think what damage he has caused already." The longer the patchwork vampire roamed, the more excuses and explanations Acharya would have to invent. Lyahr nodded, not understanding, but not expecting any more of an explanation. He hurried out, eager to be away from the Tower. "A'Eranth," Acharya muttered quietly to himself, folding his arms over his chest. His smile broadened as he noticed the terror in the eyes of the three before him. "I thought they were kidding." |