Chapter Nine

20th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat

9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th year since the Cataclysm

Ixyll

Though barely a week and a half away from the tomb complex in which he had awakened, Ciras Dejote found himself faced with yet one more challenge. The ever-changing land that was Ixyll made many demands on him. He scarcely dared sleep, lest his concentration slip for an instant. Even the most benign-appearing scene could hide virulent peril, and always having to be alert wore on him.

But no hero would shrink from a quest such as ours!

He glanced out over the lip of the bowl-shaped valley. It stretched off to the north in an ellipse, the dying sun reflecting warmly off the fluid gold flesh coating the whole of the landscape. The muted forms of trees and bushes pushed up from beneath it, but remained as hidden as if thick snow covered them.

The only anomalous bit of color in the valley skittered about from bush to tree to boulder like a ball sliding on ice. Borosan crouched at the valley’s edge, watching his thanaton try to find purchase with its spidery legs. When it finally bumped up against something, slowing its momentum, it could raise its spherical body on its four legs, but would only manage a step or two before its wild sliding would begin again.

Borosan shook his head, then made a note in the book opened in his lap. “This is not good. The measurements Keles wants will be useless. Pacing out the distance won’t work here.”

Impatience tightened Ciras’ belly, but he slowly exhaled and calmed himself. “Perhaps, given the hour, we should make camp.”

Borosan scribbled another note without looking up. “Perhaps this will be like the plain two days ago. At night it will change.”

“Gods forbid.” Ciras shivered. That plain had been a paradise while the sun had shone. They’d been able to eat their fill of fresh fruit, the water ran sweet in small rivulets, and small animals-related to rabbits as nearly as Ciras could make out-gamboled peacefully. They’d decided to spend the night there, but the moment the sun went down, everything had changed. A wave of wild magic pulsed up from the ground, as if the land were shrugging off the day’s warmth. With it went the glamour of the place, revealing a dark land full of corruption. The half-eaten apple in his hand suddenly writhed with worms. The streams ran with blood and the rabbits became rabids.

They’d sacrificed one of their packhorses to them and barely escaped with their lives.

That incident had been just one of many along their journey. There would be more because they were in Ixyll. Over seven hundred years before, the forces of Empress Cyrsa fought and defeated a Turasynd horde from the northern wastes. That battle had unleashed enough magical energy to warp the land and trigger a Cataclysm that nearly destroyed humanity. While the wild magic had retreated from civilized land, here in Ixyll, it still held sway.

So much variety, and so much to see, made it impossible to catalogue it all, but Borosan Gryst seemed determined to do just that. Though he was a practitioner of gyanri-the mechanical magic that Ciras found an abomination-he’d adopted the role of a cartographer, too-continuing the work that Keles Anturasi had begun. His painstaking devotion to exact measurements reduced their progress to almost nothing.

And impatience to find the Sleeping Empress rose in inverse proportion.

Abandoning Borosan, Ciras descended the hillside, relishing the crunch of gravel beneath his boots. He reached the small grassy circle they’d use for a camp. It and the nearby tree to which they’d tied the horses were the only relatively normal bits of landscape they’d seen in the area-and the tree sprouted clusters of crystal acorns that chimed as a light breeze shook the branches.

He moved to the circle’s center and closed his eyes. He listened to the chiming and the way it shifted. At times discordant and at others harmonious, he sought the core pattern. It had to be there, since the branches were limited in the distance they could travel and the breeze remained fairly constant. Listening as intently as he could, he found it. And, once he had it, he slid his sword from the sash at his waist.

Still blind to the world, he moved through all the sword forms he had learned. He flowed from Scorpion to Wolf as he imagined a sharp peal as an overhand stroke. He parried it, then thrust beneath a subtle chime into what would have been his foe’s heart. A twist and flow into Dog, then a Cat leap and slash took him above another desperate attack and beheaded his foe at a stroke.

As the sounds were limited, so were the abilities of foes. The human form could only move in so many ways and do so many things. The men he’d faced before had all had their limits. Speed and strength, the length of a limb, and the knowledge of forms made them different, but there were some things none of them could do. In those limitations lay the opportunity for victory.

And then there were those who had reached jaedunto.

He had seen some of those very special Mystics, whose skill with a blade transcended the natural. Normal limitations did not apply. The Mystics were able to go beyond what any other mortal could manage.

Ciras hoped he had the seeds of such greatness in him. He’d arrogantly assumed it to be true when he’d come to Moriande and Serrian Jatan, demanding to be trained. Phoyn Jatan had apprenticed him to Moraven Tolo, which Ciras had first taken as a dismissal. But slowly he learned that Moraven himself was a Mystic, and the lessons he had for Ciras encompassed more than the Art of the Sword.

Again Ciras had taken this as a dismissal, but contemplation-for which he’d had plenty of time in the last week and a half-had led him to consider that what he was being taught were the disciplines he’d need if he reached jaedunto. Enduring patience seemed to loom large among them, and he fought daily to embrace it.

Tolerance seemed to be another, and being paired with Borosan Gryst demanded he learn that as well. Magic was a great and powerful force in the world. Only through studying a subject and perfecting one’s skill at it could magic be touched. A Mystic would have the wisdom and strength to be able to handle such power. And with magic limited to those who had worked so hard to achieve it, civilization was safeguarded from another Cataclysm.

Gyanri defied this logic and, therefore, seemed an abomination to Ciras. A gyanridin created devices that obtained their motive energy from thaumston, a mineral charged with wild magic. A gyanrigot could do anything. On far Tirat, his home island, he’d seen the blue gyanrigot lights that had become fashionable among the merchant class. Borosan’s thanatons, which came in a variety of shapes and sizes, could crawl about, measuring things, carrying things and even killing things-that latter trait making them even worse in his mind.

Of course, Ciras did prefer to have a thanaton slipping and sliding about in that valley to doing it himself. And the fact that you could set one of the smaller ones to kill and fetch edible game did make travel easier. And they could even be made to stand watch and raise an alarm if something odd was happening.

But while he wanted to hate the creators of such machines outright, Borosan really wasn’t that bad of a person. He had no concept of physical discipline, but he wasn’t one to quit or complain when put to a physically demanding task. His wide-eyed wonder at the world was something Ciras found almost childlike-and though he’d not have admitted it even under the most dire torture, it was something he regretted having lost during his own childhood.

If I had it, I’d not be so impatient.

“Ciras.”

The swordsman spun to a stop, crouching in Fourth Scorpion, with his sword above his head, pointed forward. Sweat dripped down his face, but he did not wipe it away. It soaked into the beard he’d grown on the road and the breeze cooled his face. Slowly he opened his eyes and glanced up the hill toward Borosan.