A Secret Atlas (60 page)

“I suggest we leave now, Keles.”

Keles nodded, and Rekarafi led him back to the stable dome where the others waited.

Tyressa’s wanderings had turned up several groups she assumed might be the bandits.

With Ciras’ aid, she narrowed it down to one, then set about learning all she could. They

had stabled their livestock at another dome, but were preparing to head into Ixyll the

moment the storm passed Opaslynoti.

As nearly as could be determined, they had no map to provide them direction, which gave

Keles heart. He himself was setting out lacking anything more definite than his knowledge

of old tales and a variety of rumors in which he set little store. Jorim would have been able

to ferret out the truth from the locals, or at least could have mined their stories for a useful fact or two. Keles settled for having a variety of stories from which he could draw

correspondences.

Even in the dome, their protective clothes took on an unearthly blue glow—quite faint and

the color of flameheart. Their horses, with canvas boots and caparison, shied uneasily as

wind howled and dust rasped against the dome’s shell. Borosan held some device in his

hand, the purpose of which Keles could not discern, but the
gyanridin
watched it intently, then looked up.

“It’s building beyond any scale I have ever heard of.”

Keles glanced at him. “Old-timers said the cycle was reaching a peak this year.”

“Yes, but it scales up arithmetically. This is building geometrically. It’s bad. It’s really bad.”

Suddenly the wind’s shrieking tightened to a painful squeak, then became inaudible. Its

high-pitched vibration shook Keles’ teeth, but he felt no pain. He glanced up at the dome,

expecting to see it vibrating, but instead it had become transparent. A sheet of dust

washed over it, obscuring the heart of the storm for a moment, then cleared again.

Keles studied the storm, barely aware of Ciras clawing at his coifs as he doubled over and

vomited. Above him, the heavens opened and revealed a silvery ball shot with black

highlights, spitting out lightning and deep crimson tongues of flame. The surface roiled,

becoming a network of eggshell fractures. A piece of the mirrored ball would break away,

then sink beneath a viscous, bloody fluid that would then turn black. Lightning would leap

away, and suddenly the surface appeared smooth again.

Then the boiling of the ball’s surface stopped and a round hole opened in it. Keles had the

impression of an eye dilating in surprise. It watched him closely, then the pupil focused.

Bloodred fluid filled the hole, then burned brightly before a jet of flame shot out and

splashed over the dome.

The flame hit hard enough to shake the ground and topple Keles. Thunder blasted through

the valley, and pieces of the dome’s interior began to fall. Keles looked up, found the

dome opaque again, and quickly mapped the spiderweb of cracks in his mind.
Just the

inner surface spalling off.
There was no threat of the dome’s collapse—and no hope of

survival if it did.

The dying echoes of that blast took with them the wind’s howling. The dome’s doors no

longer rattled, the shuttered windows ceased clattering, and dust slowly floated to the

ground. Tyressa calmed horses, Moraven knelt at his retching aide’s side, and Borosan

again studied his device. He smacked it once with his hand, then shook his head.

“The storm is over. It can’t be, but it’s over.”

Keles strode purposefully to the nearest door and threw it open.

The storm had ended, no question of it, but the dome itself glowed brightly enough to put

the dying sun to shame.
Thaumston
dust covered everything, drifting into corners and

against the door like snow. Even more impressive, the Well had been filled—and a

rainbow riot of color splashed at the edges of the lowest level, threatening to flood the

residents out.

Over on the other side of Opaslynoti, two dozen horsemen led a string of packhorses out

and began the trek north. Among them would be the bandits looking for more weapons,

corpses, and
thaumston
. What they had already stolen they’d likely cached, so if Moraven and Ciras could not find them and stop them in Ixyll, they had one more chance to deal

with them—provided they could track them back to their hiding place.

But we’ll stop them.

Then Keles’ head came up.
Did I think that?
That was the sort of thing Jorim would think.

Keles’ job was to find a route through Ixyll and, if possible, find burial sites others had

been despoiling. Adventuring was not for him.

But why not?
Ryn was his father as well as Jorim’s; the same blood ran in their

veins.
Perhaps I’ve allowed myself too narrow a focus. Maybe what I need and what the

world needs is what Jorim does, and what our father did before him.

With that insight burning anew in his mind, he turned back and smiled at the others. “Our

competition is already heading into Ixyll. If there is something out there, we’ll find it first, I guarantee you.”

Moraven nodded. “We may need more haste than your survey requires.”

“No matter, Master Tolo.” Keles waved a gloved hand to the northwest. “As you have

labored to get me this far, it will be a pleasure for me to get you to your goal. I do believe it takes precedence—and, though my grandfather would not like it, I am completely at your

service.”

3rd 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

Anturasikun, Moriande

Nalenyr

It had to stop. Nirati knew things could not continue to go as they had been with Junel.

She looked down at her wrists, the purple bruising bleeding out into yellow. The marks

had remained even though he’d been gone for half a week. She’d covered them, but she

was certain the servants had noticed.

They noticed. They told my mother.

The result had been easy to see. Her mother had offered to lis-ten to anything she had to

say. The invitation had come openly and even casually. She and her mother had often

spoken frankly of many things, even things sexual. Her mother was the one who prepared

the draught that kept her from getting pregnant. Even so, Nirati could not discuss what she

was doing with her mother.

I hardly needed to, however.

Siatsi never had been a stupid woman, and her skill as a
bhotadina
was not

inconsiderable. She easily deduced that Junel had been providing Nirati with draughts to

beguile her. Siatsi added things to her own potions to counteract the Desei’s work.

That is part of it, but I also think that whatever he gives me has worn off. My body is so

used to it, greater and greater amounts are needed to keep me under its influence.

Nirati knew that Junel’s potions had been losing their power over her. But she had liked

that. It was not whatever drug he gave her that created her desire to be with him; the drug

had only given her the fiction that she could not control herself. She was thereby freed to

submit to his desires.

And his desires became my desires.

Junel held a hypnotic charm that built as his darker side was revealed. He could be

forbidding and even remote, disciplining her where others would just indulge her. He

showed her the limits of her endurance. He took her to the edge and held her there,

teetering on the brink of oblivion, then dragged her back. The next time he would take her

further, carrying her to new heights that threatened even greater crashes were she to fall,

and she began to hunger for the thrill of those journeys.

She fingered the bruise on her left wrist, increasing the pressure until she could feel true

pain. It hurt, but not as much as she would have thought. Certainly that pain was nothing

on the scale she now knew herself capable of enduring. Junel had praised her tolerance

for pain, noting that her real skill in life had been undiscovered until she began to explore.

He even suggested she might be
jaecaixar
—capable of entering the realm of magic

through pain.

Myriad thoughts had raced through her mind when he’d said that. First, she felt a burst of

joy rip through her. The healing had worked. She
had
found her talent, and she wanted to push further and discover more. If she was good at something, she wanted to discover

how good at it she was.

Flowing quickly behind that joy, however, doubts assailed her. What if he was wrong?

What if she had clutched at the first thing that appeared to be a talent and prematurely

ended her search? She’d spent her whole life rejecting possible talents, and if pain was

not her talent, she would once again be good for nothing.

She might please Junel, much as she proved a comfort to her grandfather. That did give

her some purpose, but what good would it be if it meant she never truly found her talent?

The question begged an answer. Junel had a need to control her, to make her do what he

wished, to be able to do with her
as
he wished. And it pleased her to let him do so. She gave him pleasure by surrendering herself to his control. He showed her things about

herself she didn’t know—and had not even guessed at. She certainly never would have

discovered them without his guiding hand.

But is Junel guiding me to my destiny, or leading me astray?

She thought her life was simple. Junel showed her that was an illusion. She was as mortal

as everyone else, but she had an inner strength. She could endure more than others, and

might well reach magic through it. She might well have found her means to realize her full

potential. She could be
jaecaixar
!

Yet her pride in that accomplishment also seemed absurd. Of what use was someone who

was Mystic of pain? Would the Lady of Jet and Jade have a use for her in dealing with

difficult patrons? What other possible use could her skill have? It would create nothing.

Perhaps if there were a way she could take away another’s pain it would be useful, but

that would treat symptoms, not diseases. Her mother’s skill with tinctures could blunt pain

and even begin to affect a cure. But even at the height of her powers—
if
she ever attained such heights—she could do none of that.

Another darker thought raced in. Just as these last bruises had lingered longer, and Junel

had given her less of his drugs to increase her ability to feel pain, so had his need to inflict pain cycled higher. He would still be tender in the aftermath and attend to her needs,

salving her wounds and caring for her. His tenderness even came in inverse proportion to

his savagery. At some point, he would do something he could not soothe. He might lose

control—the control she ceded to him—and do her irreparable harm.

That’s why it has to stop.
For the one thing the drugs could not shield her from was fear.

She had been able to handle him being stern and even cruel, but when his face became a

bestial mask, his eyes narrowing and face flushing, he no longer seemed human. She

wondered if he might not be
jaecaixar
in his own right, having mastered the art of inflicting pain. The very idea sent a shiver down her spine.

Plus, the insanity of what she had been enduring had brought another insanity with it.

Often in the aftermath, and more commonly now during her sessions with Junel, part of

her escaped to Kunjiqui. Her own whimpers grew faint as she rested in her paradise. Cool

waters soothed her flesh, and when the gentle wind no longer brought the sound of her

own pleas for surcease, her physical body would slumber and she would remain there in

her dreams.

Sometimes Qiro joined her, but neither of them needed to speak. Kunjiqui had somehow

become their sanctuary from the world. Both of them felt betrayed: she by Junel and the

unfairness of life, he by his son, grandsons, his Prince and—on any given day—a host of

others. Somehow, through his visits with her—where they both dangled their feet in cool

streams and let rainbow-colored fish nip harmlessly at their toes—his incipient paranoia all

but vanished.

Without suspicions and hatred driving him, he was just a tired old man. It wasn’t his fault

that the world had thrust upon him the responsibility it had. The two surveys currently

ongoing were expanding and redefining the world, allowing him to fill in huge blanks in the

map and his knowledge of it, but there was still so much unknown.

She came to understand that it was not out of fear or hatred for Jorim and Keles that Qiro

acted so coldly toward them, but a fear that all the pressures he endured would crush

them inalterably. To protect them, he had to toughen them. This love formed the core of

his being, but he only shed the layers in Kunjiqui. Only she knew the truth.

I have to tell them. I have to live to tell them.
Nirati resolved to confront Junel when he returned from talks with inland nobles. She could no longer endure his depredations. It

didn’t matter if she would never learn if pain was her talent.

“I
may
have a talent, but I do have my
responsibility
. Responsibility to my family.” She raised her wrists and kissed the bruises. “They do everything for me, and I shall do no less