The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (31 page)

"More people will die if we do not stop the Order. We have to protect the next vertex," Murin said.

The fifth vertex, actually
, came the thoughts of yet another person in Urus's mind.

Without warning or fanfare, a purple-haired, grey-skinned man in robes appeared, hovering just above the surface of the water. While he seemed real, he also had a ghostly visage, and Urus could still see the ocean through the man's shimmering form. He looked as if he could be the purple-haired ghost of some relative of Murin's.

"Timoc?" Murin exclaimed. "How are you able to appear like this, to a non—" Murin stopped, glancing at Urus, "To someone not like us?"

"The vertices have been destroyed, all but the last. The membranes are coming closer and the barrier is almost gone. It will only be a matter of time before those less powerful than I figure out a way to make astral projection work in this universe. In fact, agents could already be at work from across the divide even as we speak. The Order may already have help."

Murin shook his head and sighed. "The Order pulled asteroids from orbit and dropped them on three vertex sites. The fourth, Waldron's vertex, must not have shifted and was destroyed in the earthquake after we fled."

"Asteroids, you say? Well, that is unexpected. Even if they had a river of blood to fuel a spell like that, they would have needed help from compatriots on my side of the divide. Unless they had a sigilord with them. Or maybe, no…no, that wouldn't be possible."

"The only sigilord on this world is with me," Murin said, his face grim.

"And the quiver?"

"He fights for Waldron."

Where is the vertex?
Urus asked, thinking to himself and hoping this Timoc creature would understand. His throat was still tight with the pain of thinking of Kest being destroyed in a single death blow.

Timoc turned and regarded Urus with a distant expression.
Curious that you are in my thoughts. I only intended to appear to our friend Murin here, but…oh my…oh, this is rich!

Timoc burst into laughter, holding his gut and bending over. Urus wondered if the laughter sounded as irritating as the man looked.
 

Let me congratulate you on making a pet of my former teacher. This is truly a day to remember.

"A pet?" Murin snarled. "The boy asked you where the vertex is and you play foolish games?"

"Oh, this is no game," Timoc said. Urus could read his lips, despite not knowing what language the man was speaking. "The boy has made you his familiar."

"He
what
?" Murin shouted. "That is not possible. I am no one's familiar, I am Murin of the House Futanishar, Viceroy of the Second Legion of Arbitration, and Dean Emeritus of the Academy of the Magic Sciences! I am no
familiar
!"

"Nevertheless, a sigilord boy has made you his familiar. I can feel the bond even from here, and I am literally worlds apart," Timoc said, still chuckling.

"We will discuss this later, Timoc. Much, much later."

"Where is the vertex?" Urus demanded, splashing water through Timoc's diaphanous form.

It is somewhere beneath you. If my guess is right, you are floating above the remains of the ancient city of Vultara. It is the only place where there could be a nearby vertex, and the only explanation for how I could have found Murin across the divide.

"Beneath us?" Urus asked, incredulous.

"Yes, about five hundred meters," Timoc replied, the smile vanishing from his face. "Under the sea."

23

"How are we going to get down there?" Urus asked, his arms and legs growing weary from treading water with his soaked clothing and Hugo strapped to his back.

"I might be able to hold my breath to get down there," Murin said, "but even though the sunken island is more shallow than the rest of the sea, the pressure in the ruins would crush us both to death."

"You are a sigilord, a master of space and time," Timoc told Urus. "There must be a sigil you can etch to ferry you both down to Vultara. If not, you'll both drown out here and Draegon will win, and set out to bleed both our universes dry."

"Who is Draegon? I thought Anderis ran the Order."

"Draegon Asurnios is the head of the Order of the Sanguine Crystal," Murin said. "Anderis is likely just a lieutenant, though if given the chance, I am sure Anderis would kill Draegon and take the Order for himself."

"Urus, have you cast even a single sigil?" Timoc asked.

"I don't know. I might have once, the night before Murin arrived in Kest. But I don't know what I did or how."

Timoc's insubstantial form made a clucking noise. "All that power and no one to teach you how to use it."

"I could try. I could try and make a sigil that could get us to the bottom."

"No, it is too dangerous," Murin said, brow furrowed with that same paternal look Aegaz got when Urus did something foolish. "You have no idea what might happen if you cast the wrong sigil, or worse, fail to cast a sigil properly."

"Look around us, Murin. We are about to drown in the middle of the ocean with no one to help us, not a ship or shoreline in sight. I would rather die trying to help than die a slow death doing nothing."

Murin and Timoc both grinned, the expression looking alien on both men. "Your uncle would be proud, Urus."

"What do I do?" Urus asked.

"Neither of us has ever worked alongside a sigilord," said Murin. "All I know is what I have read in ancient books. First, focus on what you want to happen. Then cast a sigil in the air, imbuing it with your power."

"How do I know what sigil to use? I don't know any."

"Try something old, the older the better," Murin said, finally starting to show signs of fatigue from treading water. "Pick from the oldest signs you know in the oldest version of tradesign you can remember. It is likely that tradesign evolved from the the sigils themselves."

Urus thought about it for a moment. They needed to breathe underwater, like fish. Maybe there was a sigil that would let them swim like fish. He concentrated on an image of them swimming like fish and signed the tradesign word for
fish
in the air.

The blue light and smoke appeared, drifting from the ends of his fingertips. As he signed
fish
, the blue smoke hung in the air, retaining the shape of the symbol.
 

It's working!
he thought.

Moments passed, but nothing happened. Urus sighed and was about to try something else when a small fish leapt out of the sea, shot water from its mouth, then splashed back below.

"Try again," Murin urged.

Urus thought about the problem again. They needed more than to be able to swim, they needed air to breathe and to withstand the pressures of the deep that would otherwise crush them below. He focused on the need for a bubble of air, pictured it in his mind, and signed the oldest tradesign symbol for
air
he knew.

The sigil hung in the air, floating above the water, little droplets of blue ooze leaking out of the symbol and into the water. Gusts of wind buffeted them from all directions. The sea churned and heaved, and they rode up and down on foamy waves.

A swirling gust sucked them both out of the water, hurled them into the air and dropped them down hard against the sea. Urus marveled at the pain in his back from hitting water. How could something as soft as water hurt so much?

Timoc shimmered and reappeared above them, looking concerned.

"I am unharmed. Urus?" Murin asked.

"My back hurts, but I think I'm all right."

"The wind was a good idea. Now you need to control it, make the air into something that surrounds us so we can go below."

"I am starting to see why the blood mages hated the sigilords so much," Timoc said. "Magic with no reagent? They would covet that kind of power above all else."

"Just because we cannot see it does not mean there is no cost," Murin answered. "There is always a price to pay for power. Energy, magical or otherwise, cannot be created, only repurposed. That power comes from somewhere, and that is what the arbiters feared most about sigilcraft."

Urus thought about the problem again. He pictured him and Murin floating in a sphere of protective air, descending into the black depths of the ocean. He took a few slow, deep breaths, hoping that his own calmness and sense of control might transfer to whatever the sigil conjured.

This time he remembered an even older word, a sign that referred not to air in general, but to one of the four elements once thought to be the stuff of which all things were made. After one more breath, steadying himself by keeping the kicking rhythm with his legs, he cast the sigil.

The sigil hung in the air over the water, and this one did not drip or leak. It had clean, crisp edges and seemed to glow brighter than the others.

The ocean dropped out from underneath them, as thought someone had pulled the plug on a bathtub in Kest. They fell toward the hole and the hole fell ahead of them, so they kept falling.

Down they went, falling as though through nothing but air. It reminded Urus of the leap from the top of the palace in Kest; his stomach rolled and his insides felt like they would fall out through his mouth. He flung his arms and legs wide, like he had with the windrunner's cloak, trying to keep from flipping over.

The water continued to recede before them. Urus risked a glance behind him and saw the ocean closing in above them. Finally his stomach settled and the falling sensation stopped. The water still churned above and below, and they yet raced toward the ocean floor, but he no longer felt like he would end up splattered into pieces on some coral reef.

We should slow down
, Murin thought.

I don't know how to—
Urus started to reply, but cut short when they landed on the ocean floor, standing up straight and unharmed.

They stood on a plateau of rock. To their left the ocean dropped off into pitch darkness, while to their right, the broken stone remains of an ancient city spread out farther than they could see. Judging by the height of just the broken towers and pillars, the city must have been magnificent in its prime, taller and bigger even than Kest or Waldron.

A stop that quickly should've killed us
, Urus thought.

Not if you weren't moving to begin with
, came a thought from Timoc, who reappeared before them.
 

What does that mean?

"Have you ever—" Murin began, a look of pleasant surprise on his face. He gazed up and marveled at the dome of air extending around them, sea water rippling softly around the edge. "Have you ever taken a carpet or blanket and whipped it, just to watch the wave ripple through it?"

Urus nodded, still taking it all in. He was on the bottom of the ocean, breathing air, admiring the ruins of an island city that had sunk before the earliest history book was written.

"Sigilords were masters of space-time," Timoc continued, finishing Murin's example. "Rather than moving through five hundred meters of water, you bent space-time and simply sat on top of the ripple in the carpet until you reached the end. You didn't move…space did."

"Why did it feel like I was falling then, at the beginning?" Urus asked.

"Because you are like a baby playing with knives and torches," Murin continued. "You have had no guidance, no teacher. You are stumbling blind in the darkness."

Urus wondered if that was how he had survived the fall from the roof of the palace. Maybe he hadn't fallen at all, but instead, bent the space between the roof and the ground, folded it like a piece of parchment.

Precisely
, remarked Timoc and Murin's minds in unison.

There are only a handful of people in this world who can even hope to grasp that concept after years of instruction,
Timoc added
, and you understood it within seconds. You have inherited your forebears' innate grasp of space and time
.

"Anderis and Draegon no doubt know how powerful you can become," Murin said. "They will seek to convince you join them, or simply take your blood and give you no say in the matter."

"Timoc, since you have no body, you can search the ruins faster than we can," Urus said.

"Indeed I can, young sigilord," Timoc said with a bow. "I will start at the perimeter and work my way in and meet you two in the center square. There is a lot of stone to search here, worn and softened by thousands of years underwater."

"I don't think the writing on the vertex stone will be worn," Urus said. "It looked freshly carved on both of the stones we've seen so far."

"An excellent point." Timoc shimmered and then disappeared.

Urus turned to Murin. "Let's go. The air dome should follow me. I think."

"How reassuring," Murin replied, mustering a smirk.

They walked along a broken cobblestone road, making their way through the darkness around wide rectangles edged with marble that could have been gardens or the foundations for homes, Urus couldn't tell which.

They came upon a stone pedestal along the side of the road. A red crystal hewn into a diamond shape sat atop the pedestal. Etched into the column were four little dots that came to a tapered head. They looked like the little flames from the tips of candles.