55: THE SECOND PARLEY

Xivan’s story The Monastery at Devors

The hallways split outside the library. Xivan took Sheloran and TalonKihrin with her, while Senera left with Talea, Galen, and Qown. Kalindra headed off on her own, deeper into the fortress in search of her son and, potentially, her father-in-law.

“Be safe, Red,” Galen said as the group split.

“Will do, Blue.” Sheloran smirked at her own silly rhyme.

“House D’Jorax you ain’t,” Fake-Kihrin said, shaking his head.

“Shut up and pay attention,” Xivan ordered. “We have company.”

The first group they encountered consisted of three Quuros soldiers maddened by Drehemia’s influence. The frenzied soldiers fought viciously, with little thought to their own safety. Xivan sliced one through the gap between his helmet and cuirass. Kihrin performed an elaborate double feint, neither of which his foe fell for, before saying, “Fuck it,” and simply stabbed the man through the eye. Sheloran flicked her fan, and her opponent fell to the ground, choking and bleeding for the moment before the D’Talus woman recalled her metal slivers.

No sooner had the men died than they started to rise again, powered by proximity to the Lash and Grimward.

Xivan cocked her head. “Are you seeing this?” she asked the others, gesturing.

“Yes,” Sheloran said. “They’re rising. Which I should point out they’ve been doing since your former employer arrived. Now shall we hurry along before we’re forced to reduce them into chunks too insignificant to animate?”

“No, I mean…” Xivan frowned. No one else seemed to be aware of the wispy black filaments that stretched from each of the newly animated dead. She couldn’t see where the filaments led, because they passed through walls, but she’d have bet significant metal they connected the undead to Grimward.

“Hang on,” she said. She approached one, sidestepped a clumsy blow, and swept her hand through the space the black tendril occupied.

It snapped. The corpse fell to the floor, dead once more.

“Huh,” Xivan said.

And so it went, Xivan disrupting Grimward’s hold on the dead, while the others handled the living ferals with deft swordplay or pinpoint metal control.

They emerged from the monastery and ran down to the docks. Much of the area that hadn’t been destroyed by the Lash was now on fire. Bodies were piled everywhere, most of them unable to even stand before Xivan had laid them back to rest again. She found that the more she used the ability, the greater her range and capacity for multiple exterminations at a time.

“Hey, Lash!” Xivan yelled. For a moment, she worried if the entire plan was doomed to fail because of the simple, prosaic, and overlooked reality of just how loud it was while standing on a burning dock in the middle of a raging storm surrounded by screaming people while a massive kraken thrashed about. The war engines had ceased firing, but the din was equal to any battlefield Xivan had ever witnessed. So where was Boji during all this? I have no idea. Certainly he’d been with Xivan when she first arrived, but she lost track of him. It’s possible that he’s dead, but also possible he took advantage of the chaos to escape.

She needn’t have worried; the Lash heard her. “Xivan,” the kraken’s voice thundered, “why have you returned?”

Xivan wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or worried that the Lash was able to recognize her personally. Given the size difference, it was akin to recognizing an individual bee in a swarm.

“I’ve come to propose a bargain!” Xivan shouted. “I know how to cure Drehemia.”

The Lash stilled. One giant, milky eye turned toward Xivan. All the undead that they could see stopped also, but sadly, this had no effect on the men and women rendered lunatic by Drehemia.

“Go on…”

“Here’s the deal: You stand down. Recall or destroy your dead. And we will cure the dragon.”

“Of all the creatures for whom the phrase ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’ might apply…,” the Lash drew herself partially out of the water. “You expect me to believe you’d honor such an arrangement? Tell me why I shouldn’t simply destroy you where you stand?”

“You can kill us.” Xivan nodded, although in truth, she wasn’t sure that was true of herself anymore. “But you should know my friends have cast a ritual sympathetically linked to the entire library complex. If you don’t agree, if you don’t withdraw, they’ll finish the ritual they’ve already begun, which will destroy the entire library and every book in it.¹ You won’t get what you want. Your entire reason for this attack will go up in smoke.”

The Lash let out a sound that vibrated Xivan to her very bones. The noise was so loud and deep it took her a moment to identify it as a growl.

“I don’t mean to cause distress,” Talon Kihrin said, “but, um…”

“I see them,” Xivan said.

“Them” were four enormous, spiked tentacles roughly the size of pine trees, lifting from the water and falling toward them fast.

“Should we—” Sheloran started to ask.

“Wait,” Xivan said. Her gaze never left the Lash’s clouded eye, but she could feel Sheloran and Kihrin exchanging worried looks behind her.

The tentacles stopped mere feet above their heads. The Lash had reconsidered.

Xivan looked at the monster, calm in spite of the spiked death dripping cold seawater onto their heads. “You’re running out of time,” she told the kraken. “If you agree to our terms, we will cure your dragon, but we’ll need your help. Drehemia’s treatment won’t be instant. Someone—that is to say you—will need to keep Drehemia still long enough for us to do what needs to be done.”

“And what, exactly, needs to be done?” asked the Lash, although her voice seemed a fraction less enraged than it had been moments before. Xivan knew they had her. “How will you cure her?”

Xivan smiled grimly. She glanced away, toward the top of the cliff where a flash of Drehemia’s wing, or perhaps tail, moved. Screams, shouts, colored lights all came from atop the plateau. She turned her attention back to the Lash.

“We’ll cure her the only way you can cure a dragon’s madness,” she said. “We’ll reunite her with her Cornerstone.”

Qown’s story Under the ocean near Da’utunse

“Beautiful,” Senera said as she swished her hand back and forth through the water. Her voice sounded slightly muffled, but then Qown imagined that they all sounded like that.

Senera and Thurvishar had spelled them up with every bit of magic they could think of to protect them at the bottom of the ocean; from the old standby of Senera’s air-bubble glyphs to the glyph that prevented the incredible pressure of being so far underwater from crushing them the moment they stepped from the gate into Drehemia’s underwater lair. They even had their own light sources; each of them clutched a softly glowing coin in their hands. It was the play of this light on the water that had briefly entranced Senera.

“Are we sure this will work?” Qown asked.

“If it doesn’t, at least we’ll be incredibly rich for however long we have left before the world ends,” Galen said. “I’m looting this entire place. It’ll be a good learning experience for the old girl.”

“This will work,” Talea said absently as she looked around the cave. “Ninety-eight percent chance.”

“Yeah, that’s getting old really fast.” Senera shook her head with a scoff. “What our dear friend Taj-alea is trying to say is that dragons love their hoards. There’s effectively no chance at all that Drehemia won’t realize that you’re messing around with hers the moment you touch something, and she will come flying back here. Well, swimming. You get the idea.”

“We’ll start with those,” Talea said, pointing to a line of caskets near the back wall.

“Oh, yes,” Senera said. “I imagine Drehemia will be very upset if you mess with her favorite toys. Good luck with that. In the meantime, I have an appointment to keep.” She cast the intricate knot of tenyé necessary to open a gate, but paused before stepping through. “I’ll pick you up when I’m done. And, Galen?”

“Yes?”

“Legends say that a dragon can sense their hoard, even the smallest piece of it, anywhere in the world. And while it may just be a story, it also may not be. I can think of at least two different ways such a feat might be accomplished. So resist that temptation, would you?” She stepped through without waiting for a reply.