Commandment (43 page)

“Can we? Is the fruition of our dreams at hand?” Lakif added, “I don’t feel any different than before. In sooth, I didn’t know what to expect. But I thought I would somehow feel different following the Stone’s destruction.”

She was not exaggerating. Lakif felt not a little crestfallen at the ritual’s outcome. She had dreamed of a dramatic, sweeping change, the kind promised by the nursery tale. She envisioned lightning springing from her fingertips, sleeping gas venting from her nostrils, and sights a league away presented to her eyes as if on the opposite corner. But she felt the same. She now felt a little embarrassed by her silly expectations.

“As did I,” Bael nodded. “I feel that the ritual didn’t grant us any immediate power. Instead, it was a key that opened a door to us, a door that had henceforth been sealed closed.”

“But what
is
Arcanum?” Lakif now felt as baffled as ever.

“The ritual threw open the gates to an endless terrain—the country of magic. Now we must explore it alone, hill by hill, brook by brook, to find out what it has to offer. It will be an arduous exploration. With luck, we will be able to map out an acre of that endless nation in our short lives.”

“How do you think the power will manifest itself?” Lakif hoped Bael would have all the answers.

“It is beyond my fathom. If Poseidon and Medusa can birth a flying horse, then anything is possible.”

Lakif stifled a sigh of displeasure. She instinctively knew that the Kulthean was right. After all her labors, she was now only at the beginning of a long road. She would have to discover her magical destiny on her own, one step at a time.

“There is more…” Lakif equivocated. “I have had this foreboding since leaving the Lucent. I feel that we are being closely watched.”

“I don’t know what you speak of. But there is a life to the city that I was previously blinded to. I can faintly perceive silent, wraithlike movements. They are akin to the illusion of distant water on a blistering day’s pavement. They shimmer in the offing, but when I draw close, melt away. It seems they are all around us, in the stones, the road, the earth, even the air. Perhaps you perceive how they are watching us at this very moment.”

Lakif reflected carefully on her friend’s words. Clearly, they were each experiencing the aftermath of the ritual from vastly differently vistas. But what could it mean?

“So what happens now?” she asked.

Bael didn’t immediately respond, but after a minute, he stopped and looked up into the sky.

“You’re leaving.” Lakif could clearly read the expression on her friend’s face.

“Yes.”

“So soon? There’s much to do!”

“One needn’t travel to Maladomini to find dragons. We, Lakif, are the renascent dragons of Maldiveria. And dragons soar alone.”

“To reach what heights?”

“To soar through the clouds of distant memories, the very stuff of dreams. There’s something I have to do.”

“What?”

“Going through the ritual forced me to confront an issue. I don’t know why I can’t remember our time at Rhoan Oak clearly. By all accounts, I was old enough. I feel that something very special happened there, something now threatened to be lost forever. I’m setting out to search for the others.”

“From Rhoan Oak?” Lakif couldn’t be sure she heard the confession correctly.

Bael nodded. Lakif was taken aback by the revelation. “It’s a foolish gesture. You’re not going to explore your newfound magic?”

“Of course I will try to develop it. But there was a magic among us there—a magic just as worthy as that of the Stones. It was forged in another type of furnace, the crucible of our youth. Rhoan Oak was the magical anvil from which the swords of our lives were hammered out. That magic teeters on the edge of oblivion, soon to be extinct without concerted intervention. We’ve already seen the fading of one—Vassag! Know you this, Lakif. Rhoan Oak, our distant past, is the unknown future waiting to be explored.”

Lakif listened keenly to the Kulthean’s impassioned commentary. If indeed Rhoan Oak was the genesis of something, what fruit would it bear? What garden would bloom from its seed? Lakif found she did not share the Kulthean’s optimism.

“How on earth will you ever find them?” Lakif asked. “They must be scattered throughout the city, inextricable from the masses.”

“It will be challenging, without a doubt.”

“Do you even remember them?”

“Only a handful, I’m ashamed to say.”

“It would be a chore to locate just one. To find more than one would require a stroke of luck. And several? Divine intervention.”

“We live in a time of miracles, Acaanan. When stars fall, great men rise. Is there nothing we cannot achieve if our will so directs us?”

Lakif reflected on Bael’s words. As potent as they were, she still felt that what he proposed was a fool’s errand. Yet, if any of the children of Rhoan Oak could surmount the insuperable, it was Bael. But she harbored no illusions that Bael would remain a lone vehicle for long. She imagined that in no time at he would be commanding legions of followers, for he was the shining star of them all.

“Thank you.” Lakif placed her hand on Bael’s shoulder.

“How so?”

“For finding me. I couldn’t have imagined going into that dark place alone.”

They reached a parting in the road. One fork sprouted a bridge spanning the Fornix. It led to the eastern reaches of Grimpkin. The other led toward the Leviathan and back into the heart of the district. Bael looked in the former direction.

“I must go.” Bael spun his hands in dramatic fashion. “But before that, I perform my first act: I grant thee power of invisibility that you may flourish without detection by the Seekers, or other enemies. Goodbye, Lakif. We bury part of ourselves where roads divide, the part that dies when we say goodbye. Wherever your own road lies, and whatever happens, one thing rings true. We will always be friends, Acaanan.”

“Forever!” Lakif cheered.

The two hugged a warm goodbye. As the Kulthean turned away, he raised his hands to the sky and trumpeted.

“Remember this, Lakif! Whatever else fails, the future remains. And what a wonderful one it will be!”

With that, the Kulthean left and headed east into the blustering wind. Lakif watched him dwindle in size until he disappeared into the city.

When she turned, Torkoth was standing at hand. The Half-man had a penchant for creeping up on the Acaanan while she was woolgathering.

“Bael has gone?”

Lakif nodded. “To stake out his new kingdom in the east.”

“He’s a steeple of a man. What other could match him in stride?”

“Only his shadow,” Lakif quipped.

The Acaanan paced out a score of steps before sputtering to a stop. A sudden feeling of emptiness washed over her, as if the Kulthean’s departure had bankrupted her very self-confidence. What would she do without Bael’s guiding influence? She felt rudderless without the Kulthean captain at the helm of her destiny. In fact, she felt that she would simply drift with the wind.

“I need a moment to collect myself.” The nascent warlock sat down on the steps of an amphitheater. Meanwhile, Torkoth jogged over to a vendor.

Lakif studied the plaza fronting the drama house, studying the distance for any sign of the shimmering haze that Bael had noted. A dura lay dozing on a step nearby; a jagged bone was tucked under a paw. Across the lane, a group of men were ringing hand bells in concert.

But she identified nothing like the apparitions, the subtle alterations, her friend had described.

Why would they both experience differing sensations following the ritual? Perhaps it was to be expected, given how they even beheld the Stone’s inner light differently. Bael had suggested that magic was a country. The nation was impenetrable to normal men, but its gates were uniquely thrown open to the scions of Rhoan Oak. The land, constant and unflinching, dared the warlocks to conquer its timeless resources. Lakif never imagined that the nation would be different for different warlocks. Could the force of magic be
so
personalized? Or were the two simply looking at the same terrain from two vastly different angles? But she could not shake an unsettling suspicion—Vassag’s death was linked to the strange spectators that Bael glimpsed and she felt. She even imagined that they might directly be responsible for his gruesome end.

Torkoth returned, nibbling on a piece of fowl. Lakif eyed the drumstick voraciously. She couldn’t remember her last meal. Due to their early flight out from the Goblin Knight, she hadn’t eaten breakfast the morning of their departure. Only a slight snack had tided her over that day. If Torkoth’s account was accurate, it would mean that skimpy meal had been her only sustenance in nearly four days.

“How do you feel?” Torkoth asked. He held his short sword pointed down between his legs and was spinning the pommel with his scaly hand.

“Empty.”

“Empty? I thought you would be brimming with delight from your newfound power.”

“Power? I couldn’t pull a rabbit from a hat.” Lakif frowned.

“You don’t feel
any
different?”

“I have a strange sense, a perception of something in the air. I feel that this is the shadow of the Arcanum. But wherever the truth lies, it seems that I will have to gradually develop my power. I feel like an infant just learning to walk.”

“I know the feeling,” Torkoth commiserated. Then he switched the topic. “Why did Bael call you ‘Meanstaff’?”

“Meanstaff?” Lakif echoed. Although the word carried significance to her, she didn’t recall Bael mouthing it.

“Is that your surname?”

“It was a nickname given to me at Rhoan Oak.” Lakif searched her recall. “We all had pithy monikers.”

She realized that she had finally broached that thorny subject of her youthful home with the Half-man. It didn’t matter anymore.

Surprisingly, Torkoth didn’t respond, so Lakif felt she should elaborate.

“When I was there, I took to training with a quarterstaff. I don’t know why. It was taller than me, so I suppose I looked rather ridiculous. Thus I inherited an ironic nickname. I’d favor losing it.”

“What is Rhoan Oak?” The inevitable question came.

“An abbey where we spent our youth.” Lakif leaned back and rested on her palms. Something gooey squashed between her fingers. She felt that she had smashed a bug. Tipping her hand, she found that it crushed imp dung. Grimacing with disgust, she rubbed her palm against a pillar, smearing the feces in streaks.

“Miserable vermin those imps are!” She wiped her hand clean on her pants.

“Youth? You and Bael?” Torkoth chuckled at the sight.

Lakif nodded.

“There were others as well…” she began, but was at a loss to offer up any specific names. “There were many of us.”

“Rhoan Oak was an orphanage?”

“I suppose you could label it such,” Lakif acknowledged. “But with a very strict membership. All the children there were born with a link to Arcanum.”

“You said that such individuals are quite rare.”

“Exceedingly.” Lakif emphasized the word.

“Then how were you all culled from the masses? Who orchestrated all this?”

“The
Unseen One
of the White Hand, our mysterious benefactor.”

“He must have had vast resources.”

“No doubt.”

“Was it also a school? I know you can read.”

Lakif nodded. “We learned many skills at Rhoan Oak.”

“It sounds more like an academy than an orphanage.” Torkoth ran his nail along the sword’s blade.

Again she nodded. The former image was more complimentary than the latter.

“I haven’t thought about that place for so long.” The memories were vague, and voicing them to a stranger felt odd. “I placed those memories neatly on a shelf in the attic of my mind and closed the door.”

Lakif began rummaging through her belongings, taking a mental inventory of all she possessed. The bamboo container from the alchemist’s lab, a sooty prayer bead necklace rescued from the conflagration, a tube of red mercury, and a compartment ring were her recent acquisitions. But her pouch of coins was shrinking rapidly. With a shake, she seized up the contents. Perhaps two days of money remained. She had run nearly dry of funds. Or perhaps she was starting fresh, depending on the point of view.

“So, what is your real surname?” Torkoth asked.

“I don’t have one, or I don’t know, which I suppose amounts to the same thing.”

“What was your father like?”

“I don’t remember him at all,” Lakif snapped curtly. Torkoth’s query rang threateningly near the line of questioning begun by the psychologist.

“Nothing?”

“Not a thing.”

“So how do you know your mother was an Acaanan?”

“Pardon?”

“You knew neither of your parents. How do you know
she
was the Acaanan?”

“I just know!” Lakif growled. “But how?”

Lakif felt the bite of the questions.

“I remember her! The stone of years has dropped into the still pond of my mind, but I can see slivers of rippling images.”

“But you said she died during your birth,” Torkoth was quick to add.

“Yes…”

“It would be unfathomable for a newborn to remember even a perverted image,” Torkoth corrected her.

“You obviously don’t know Acaanans. I can’t remember what I did yesterday, but the most curious images are trapped here.” Lakif tapped her temple. “Somehow, that first sight is sculpted into this block.”

“Well, Acaanan, I was wrong.” Torkoth raised his blade and arched it in the air as if tracing a figure with its point. “It seems we’re no different after all; we’re both alien to our past.”

Lakif had confided personal details of her past, albeit vaguely, to her partner. As such, the Acaanan was forced to conclude that Torkoth had at last earned her entire trust. Although the swordsman was a mysterious figure, he had several times championed her interests. She had found herself a new confidante. The short conversation was the most candid one they had exchanged in their brief time together. On the Acaanan’s part, she was relieved to have cleared the air.

As Torkoth’s sword streamed through the air, Lakif noticed a cut across the dorsum of his hand.