The Key to Creation (14 page)

Ammur Sonnen vomited on the ground outside of his burning house, utterly exhausted. He rubbed his stinging eyes. Tears continued to flow, washing away the soot, but he still couldn’t see. Vicka had been right behind him. Where was she?

He called out for her, but only incomprehensible sound scraped out of his throat. His neighbors and apprentices poured water on the fire. Men from nearby houses came with shovels and buckets.

Ammur rasped out her name. “Vicka…she’s in there!”

The young apprentices and journeymen shouted her name—all of them had been smitten with beautiful Vicka—but no one dared go inside where the flames were too high, the smoke too thick. Then with cracking sounds like repeated lightning strikes, the ceiling collapsed.

Ammur lurched to his feet and tried to charge into the house. Somebody had to save her! It took four young men just to hold him back. He shouted, and railed, and wept, but they wouldn’t let him go. Even though his eyes finally cleared, he never saw Vicka emerge from the burning building.

Calay Castle

In the private eastern courtyard of Calay Castle, a previous king had created a contemplation garden surrounded by lilac shrubs (the king’s favorite) as a peaceful spot where the Tierran ruler could think.

In the center of a marble platform stood the ornate prime Captain’s Compass, the central instrument to which every Captain’s Compass was twinned. Its needle had been drawn from the original block of iron and sympathetically magnetized; the needles in all other Captain’s Compasses pointed back to it—an arrow home for every sailor who voyaged across the oceans.

Even as those twinned Compasses were drawn to this primary spot, their own sympathetic threads pulled
this
needle in random directions. While the queen sat in blessed isolation on a cool bench regarding the Compass, its needle wandered to and fro, indicating no clear direction. She would have to make her own decision.

Anjine sat in preoccupied silence by the lilac bushes whose flowers had long since faded away with summer and autumn. The fresh news weighed like an anvil in her chest: Mateo’s wife Vicka had been killed in a fire at the Sonnen forge. Anjine had no one in whom she could confide, and she felt absolutely heartsick.

Sen Leo na-Hadra entered the courtyard with a determined gait, but when he saw her sober mood he hesitated. “My Queen? Guard-Marshall Vorannen told me I would find you here. Am I interrupting?” He took a cautious step forward. “May I have a brief word with you?”

She answered automatically. “What is it?”

“We’ve received another bonded
rea
pigeon from the
Dyscovera
.”

Anjine raised her head as if lifting a heavy stone, trying to concentrate on business that mattered little to her right now. “And what news does Captain Vora send? Has he found Terravitae yet?” This was the fourth report from the
Dyscovera
.

Sen Leo took a seat beside Anjine on the stone bench. “The bird arrived at the coop exhausted, but the message tied to its leg was intact. Quite a tale, Majesty—not at all what we expected. I’m afraid there are heavy consequences.”

Anjine couldn’t bear much more bad news, but she had to listen. She was the queen of Tierra. “Tell me the full details.”

Sen Leo gazed at the wandering needle of the prime compass as he told her about the discovery of the lost Saedran race and their sunken continent. Anger seemed to boil from him as he continued. “But the ship’s prester led a mutiny against Captain Vora and attacked the king of the mer-Saedrans. Those people could have been great allies to Tierra, and could have helped the
Dyscovera
find Terravitae. But Prester Hannes ruined everything.”

Anjine narrowed her eyes. “How did Captain Vora deal with it?”

“The mutineers were stopped, but too much damage had already been done. Several crewmembers were killed, including First Mate Kjelnar. The mer-Saedrans abandoned the
Dyscovera
and refused to offer any further help.” His sinewy hands knotted. “I am greatly distressed by these tragic events.”

A pounding pain echoed inside Anjine’s head. “I am distressed as well, Sen Leo.” From such a great distance, though, she was helpless to do anything to aid them. “But the
Dyscovera
remains intact? The ship can sail on?”

“Yes, Majesty. I visited the sympathetic model only this morning. Sen Burian na-Coway has seen no indication of damage to the ship.” The old scholar paused, but he was not finished. She dreaded hearing what else he might reveal to her.

Sen Leo finally looked up. “This news emphasizes portents in our Saedran writings, in the prophecies we have kept over the centuries, and in the Tales of the Traveler. I can no longer deny that so many omens point to the same conclusion. For centuries, our people have laid the framework for the Final Days, and right now I see many uncomfortable similarities.”

Anjine brushed this aside. “If Ondun wanted to bring the world to an end, what could I do to stop Him? I can only lead as best I can.” She looked at the prime compass. “I’ve heard enough about the end of the world for now. My own sorrow is much closer to home. Thank you for the message, Sen Leo, but please leave me to my thoughts.”

The Saedran scholar wanted to serve as a sounding board, as he had done many times for King Korastine, but Anjine needed to think. He rose from the stone bench and quietly exited the courtyard.

During her reign, Anjine had dealt with epic disasters, massacres, and unspeakable Urecari war crimes, but this was a deeply personal disaster. No one in all the world was as dear to her as Mateo Bornan, and this would devastate him. After all that Mateo had sacrificed in the name of Aiden, in the name of victory—in the name of
Anjine
—this would hurt him the most.

“Personal tragedies can be just as painful as great ones,” she said aloud.

She knew she had to be the one to tell him. She could not send a messenger, would not shirk the responsibility. As queen, she had already forced Mateo to do unspeakable things. Her command to deliver a thousand Urecari heads to the Ishalem wall had burned his soul, and yet he had done it—for her.

She had so looked forward to his return, but now she dreaded his arrival. Mateo would be home soon.

The
Dyscovera

Leaving the island and the fossilized Leviathan skeleton, the
Dyscovera
sailed off under a strong breeze, following Aiden’s Compass. The needle pointed true now, sure in its guidance.

Prester Hannes and the contrite mutineers were back on board, though not quite forgiven; they behaved with delicate care, praying he wouldn’t change his mind. Sen Aldo watched the prester wrestle with the contradiction to his beliefs posed by the dead sea monster. During his dawn sermons, Hannes spoke in a subdued tone of voice and never raised the issue of the Leviathan.

Adding to his leather-bound journal of sea monsters, Captain Vora sketched details of the embedded skeleton. Years earlier, he had meticulously drawn his version of the monster alongside the other naturalist sketches Captain Shay had made during his own voyages. The long-dead creature they had seen was clearly of the same species as the beast that had destroyed the
Luminara
. Logically, there must be more than one Leviathan, no matter what the Book of Aiden said.

Lulled by the gentle sway of the sea and the background creak of wooden planks, the captain finished his notes, then used one of his clean sheets of paper to write another letter to his long-lost wife. Aldo watched him, aware of the other man’s persistent, hopeful correspondence, each letter sealed in a bottle along with a single strand of Adrea’s hair.

As a Saedran, Aldo knew the captain had some reason to hope, but the bond of sympathetic magic was not likely strong enough to pull the letter all the way around the world. The chartsman had a more direct means of sending a message home to Calay, and he returned to his cabin to prepare another note.

Though Aldo had recently dispatched a
rea
pigeon to tell of the mer-Saedran debacle, he wrote a detailed account of the island, the fossil discovery, and the fact that Aiden’s Compass was functioning again. In the bright yellow light of his lantern, Aldo hunched over with a sharpened stylus and free-flowing ink. He wrote in tight, coded letters, adding the coordinates of the island so that Sen Leo could mark it on their Mappa Mundi. With only six
rea
pigeons left, Aldo wanted to make sure each message counted for as much as possible.

His thoughts wandered to his lovely wife Lanni. He didn’t regret his decision to sail away and see more of the world than any other living person had witnessed, but on a quiet night like this, with the ship gently rocking, he could not wait to return home. He missed his children; they would be almost four and five years old now—had the
Dyscovera
really been gone that long? Little boys and girls could grow like weeds.

Though Aldo was still a young man, he had crowded his life with adventures. Back in Tierra, he had seen the Corag mountains, traveled up and down the coast. He’d been captured in a raid and taken to the heart of Uraba, where he met Sen Sherufa na-Oa. However, once the
Dyscovera
came home from this voyage, Aldo planned to spend the rest of his days with the family and lead a quiet life.

Letting the ink dry overnight, he blew out the lantern and lay back on his narrow bed, rocked by the waves as the ship sailed onward into unknown waters.

The next morning, Aldo woke early and coiled the thin strip of paper, ready to tie it to the leg of one of the pigeons. Since only Saedrans could read the message, he did not worry that someone might intercept the basic navigational knowledge. The
rea
pigeon would find its way across the seas to Tierra, following the sympathetic magic to its counterpart in Sen Leo’s coop in Calay.

When Aldo emerged from his cabin, he heard Hannes gathering the faithful for sunrise service. While the prester spoke his terse morning message to the crew, Aldo went to the stern deck where he kept his birds in a cage.

He stared in horror.

All six of the birds were dead, their necks wrung, feathers strewn about. Some had been slit open with a knife, so that blood and entrails lay at the bottom of the cage. He bent over and retched on the deck. The thin strips of paper in his hand fluttered out of his numb fingers to be lost at sea, and he was finally able to utter a rough shout. “Captain!”

Crewmembers came running, their worship service interrupted. Javian and Mia were the first to arrive at the cage. Staring at the carcasses, Mia cried, “Who did this?”

Javian looked like a wide-eyed boy again. “Those pigeons were our only way to communicate with Tierra.”

The prester strode forward with his preaching staff, a sturdy wooden stick topped with a metal fishhook. Aldo looked sharply at him, the answer obvious. “Maybe someone didn’t want any messages to reach Tierra.”

Yes, it made sense now. Hannes would try to censor the news about the Leviathan skeleton, because he couldn’t tolerate any contradictions to Aidenist dogma.

Captain Vora was furious and dismayed. “First our Captain’s Compass is destroyed, and now we can’t send any more messages home.” The captain looked at them all.

The sailors looked suspiciously at one another. Some naturally targeted Mia with their blame, but she simply glared at them; others suspected that Aldo himself might have done it, since he was a Saedran and a stranger. Silam Henner shouted in a thin voice, “It wasn’t me, Captain! Why would we do anything to jeopardize our position here? You’ve only just agreed to let us stay aboard.”

“It is the guilty who point fingers and cast blame,” Hannes said.

“Well,
someone
did this.” Captain Vora closed his eyes, as if to summon strength from within himself. “We have a saboteur on board.”

Iyomelka’s Ship

Cold spray splashed over the bow, and the tattered sails stretched tight as Iyomelka lashed the storm winds like unbroken horses to drive her vessel. The moss-covered hull boards—held together by barnacles, starfish, and a weave of seaweed—groaned under the strain. The prow of antler coral stretched forward beneath an oblong sea-serpent skull she had recently incorporated as a figurehead. Reptilian vertebrae adorned the keel like a line of ivory bosses.

She did not sleep. Somewhere out on that open water she would find the
Al-Orizin
and the reckless interlopers who had stolen Ystya. Her foolish and naïve daughter had been sheltered all her life from the outside world. The girl did not fully understand what she represented, nor did Captain Saan, who had kidnapped her.

When they encountered the Father of All Serpents, she had never expected Ystya to discover her own powers, and the girl’s demonstration only reinforced Iyomelka’s determination to retrieve her. She had to use any means possible.

As her ship pounded through the waves without regard to natural currents or trade winds, she pressed her palms against the crystal coffin that held her husband’s preserved body. “We will get her back, Ondun.”

Immersed in magical water from the island spring, the old man looked serene and placid, his long gray hair and beard forming a corona about his head. He looked so different from the time when she had hated him, when he had drowned in the deep well. Immortals had so much time to change their minds and live with their regrets.…

After her disastrous indiscretion with Mailes, Iyomelka had gone through the motions, trying to repair her relationship with her husband. But when she found herself pregnant with Ondun’s child—a wondrous occurrence for their dwindling race—she knew that her happiness would never be the same. Unable to remain in Terravitae with Ondun, especially after what he did to Mailes, she fled, seeking refuge far away on an uncharted island. But he sent their sons out to search the whole world, and eventually came after her himself, determined to find the daughter on whom so much hope rested. When Ondun finally reached the hidden island, Iyomelka begged him to stay with her and be happy, to let the world manage itself.