Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Nineteen

Tali

Verden, the Karhes

14th of Tournus

Tali slept for two days. By the time she awoke, her memories of the fight in Sinnis remained fresh and raw, though her body felt decrepit as a withered corpse.

They weren't in the fields surrounding the city state anymore, and the gentle rocking of her kayak on a calm sea beneath her eventually lulled her to waking. She sat up, rubbed sleep from her eyes, groaned at the persistent pain in her skull and the nagging ache in her shoulders, and looked around her.

Not her kayak.

A room, wide and opulently furnished. Far more luxurious than the room in Sinnis had been, it was illuminated by a spear of sunlight piercing the curtains to her side.

The process of rising to her feet and shuffling to the curtains proved painstaking. Her limbs moved sluggishly, her jaw throbbed, her head hurt, her breathing laboured. She'd never been drunk before but imagined it felt like this. Pulling the curtains open hurt, the movement sending a sharp jolt along her shoulder blades and down her spine. She coughed, then doubled over as her chest seized with pain.

The memories returned lazily, an image at a time, until she constructed a garbled narrative. The fight with the creature Shira labelled Novhar. The audience where Lord Indro declared war, and the mage's execution before that. The destruction of Sinnis, some of it caused by her attacker, some of it her doing. A cluster of words, as meaningless as any foreign language, swirled around her brain.

Valhir. Sudarium. Cataclysm. Ekaterina. Varkommer.

They meant nothing to her. Answered no questions, only bred more.

Outside, the sunlight blinded. When her eyes focused, she expected to see an ocean. The unceasing rocking suggested waves, and waves, if she wasn't on her kayak, meant a ship.

But no. She stood on a balcony, and beneath her spilled a city. Not the messy sprawl of Sinnis, nor anything she might recognise as Imperial architecture. From her vantage it cascaded as a settlement built on staggered levels. A collision of wood and stone and, in the distance, what looked like fields of livestock, none of them arranged in any discernible pattern.

Beyond the buildings, bleeding into the horizon, rolled an expanse of unending grassland. The Karhes.

The rocking seemed more pronounced here, exposed on the balcony. When she squinted past the glaring sunlight and focused on the city's outer limits, she realised the structure moved; an entire city crawling across the heartlands of the unmappable plains. She'd heard of such things, even spent time aboard smaller moving settlements, but nothing quite so monstrous as a cityscape.

She retreated into her room and found a fresh change of clothes on a chest at the foot of her bed. Plain shirt and trousers, not her own, though close enough in size to fit comfortably. She shrugged into them, feeling better for it. More alive, at least.

She tested the door, found it unlocked, and opened it with a frown. The last thing she remembered was sprawling in a field outside Sinnis with Shira following her brief scuffle with the Novhar. Anything could've happened during the time she'd been unconscious. Maybe she'd been captured?

She paced into the hallway beyond. Like her room, it wore an expensive veneer almost befitting of her father's estates back on Alzikanem. Skylights broke up the ceiling at regular intervals, and the midday sun bathed the stone floor in luminescence. Mounted along the walls were paintings, vivid splashes of colour enlivening the otherwise blank canvas of the bare wall. Tali didn't recognise them, though most seemed to depict the Karhes in one form or another.

The muffled sound of a shouted voice carried through the empty hallway, and she froze. When she shuffled closer, her bare feet rasping against the floor, she recognised Shira's angry tones.

"We nearly died," her mentor said. "Three times already, at least. If he knew what she was, if he knew what might pursue her, surely he would've wanted her to be protected by more than just me."

Tali paused outside the door the argument echoed from, leaning against it. She heard a male voice offer a muted reply, followed by the tell-tale smack of Shira hitting a wooden surface.

"You left us," she continued. "You thought I was enough protection, but you were wrong. You left us both so you could gallivant across the Karhes on your own. You should've been with us. She's as much your responsibility as mine."

"Seeing as we're having this conversation about Tali," the man said, voice calm and hushed, "and she happens to be listening to every word we say, should we just invite her in and have done with it?"

Tali seized up, then considered fleeing back to her room and pretending she'd never awoken. But no, that would be foolish. Whoever Shira spoke with didn't seem to be their captor.

"Come in, Tali," Shira said.

She gritted her teeth and set her hand on the door handle, pushing it down before she could rethink her options. The room she stepped into resembled her father's office, though far less cluttered. Shira stood at one side of an empty desk, a chair pressed against the far wall as if she'd kicked it back in anger. Her dark skin had paled with the lingering exhaustion of having used her magic back at Sinnis, and her eyes drooped. Standing opposite her, leaning casually against the desk, was Helleron Boratorren.

Uncle Heller was so like her father, yet so different in all the places that mattered. The same dark hair and olive skin of central Imperials, the same strong jaw, the same intense green eyes beneath heavy brows. Yet he slouched with a complete disregard for formality and wore an easy smile. There was a touch of premature grey at his temples, not there when she'd last seen him, and the fuller beard he now wore afforded him a nomadic appearance. He still looked younger than his forty-one years, a result of his proficiency with shadowmancy.

It had been four years since she'd last seen him, when they'd parted in the depths of the Karhes and Shira had accompanied her back to Alzikanem, where she was to hide again. Four years since she'd known the open freedom of the plains at her uncle's side. Four years of missing her only real father figure, unsure if she'd ever be reunited with him. Having yearned for his company for so long, and being so unprepared for his presence here, she almost forgot to breathe.

"Tali," Heller said, his smile widening. He pushed himself away from the desk and, without hesitating, she rushed into his arms.

His embrace was paternal, the kind of affection she'd never received from her actual father. She felt safe in his arms, as if everything that'd happened since the destruction of Alzikanem paled to irrelevance. How could even the most powerful of immortals hope to stand up against the immovable bulwark that was her uncle? She knew it was a foolish notion, but in his absence, Heller had attained mythical status in her mind.

Heller pulled away and leaned back, assessing her. "You've grown," he said, giving her shoulders a squeeze.

She stifled a snort. "Children tend to do that," she replied. "I've missed you. You don't understand how horrible it was, trapped on Alzikanem. All I wanted to do was come back here."

"I know," Heller replied, features softening. "We thought you were safest there." He shot a glance over his shoulder at Shira, and her answering scowl suggested they'd been having this argument for some time now. "How's my big brother doing? Does he know where you are?"

She shrugged. "He left for Empyria before I ended up here," she replied. "He wouldn't care, regardless."

"Your father cares, Tali. In his own way."

She shrugged his hands off, looked across to Shira. Her mentor kept her eyes trained on Heller, her frown dark and hostile. Tali shouldn't be surprised; during the time she'd spent with Heller's cadre on the Karhes, he and Shira had often seemed at odds. Tali knew her uncle had once been Shira's mentor in the Fensidium, and that they'd been friends too long for any disagreements to seriously fracture them. But still, it was disheartening to see them already at each other's throats, despite only having just reunited. They were, for all intents and purposes, her parents, and no child likes to watch their parents squabble.

"Where are we?" she asked, hoping to distract them.

"Verden," Shira replied. "You remember the Shifting Cities?"

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Vaguely," she said.

"This is one of the bigger ones," Shira said. "Its route was close enough to Sinnis for us to climb aboard." She spread her arms to encompass the room. "This is one of our safehouses."

Tali nodded to her uncle. "Where are the others?"

Including Shira, Heller's cadre numbered only four. The other two, Tornjak, a Vasipan geomancer, and Mariska, a Drasken thundermancer, had been, during the time Tali had spent with them, part of their strange family unit. Not as prevalent as Heller and Shira, but she missed them all the same.

"We split up after learning you were in Sinnis. Risk and Torn thought to get themselves a thundership to cover more ground, and I ended up on Verden. Shira dragged you aboard about the same time I was planning on heading off for Sinnis to find you." His smile became boyish. "Good thing, too. I heard what you did to the city. Fucking impressive, kid."

An answering smile rose unbidden to her mouth, but Shira was unimpressed.

"No, Heller. This isn't how this is going to go," her mentor snapped. "You don't waltz in here acting the hero, handing out praise for fights you didn't see. We have been through the Abyss—almost literally!— and now we both want answers." Shira jabbed a finger in Tali's direction. She seemed to regret the accusatory nature of the gesture, because she lowered it with a sigh. "No one told me she was a Valhir. No one told her, either. Do you know where we ended up before we came to Sinnis?"

Heller shook his head, turning now to give Shira his full attention.

"Shaeviren," she seethed. "You remember that desert planet your brother was tortured on for months? The one where the natives look like monsters? Tali couldn't control her magic, because she didn't even know she had it, and she took us there."

The words dripped like venom from Shira's curled lips, making Tali's heart jolt. Her mentor, usually so composed and quiet, didn't often lose her temper like this. The stresses of the last week had broken Shira's veil of control, and Tali only wished she comprehended events well enough to react similarly. As things stood, she didn't yet understand their predicament enough to be scared or stressed or angry.

"Heller, we need to address this. Does Sudarium know what she is?"

Her uncle nodded slowly. "He knows everything about everything, more or less."

"Why has he not involved himself, then? Why send you, the self-proclaimed one-man-army?"

Heller snorted. "I never proclaimed myself anything of the sort," he retorted. "And you said there was a Novhar chasing you?"

"It threw a building at us. It wasn't just chasing."

"That would be why, then," Heller said, thundering right over Shira's hisses. "This Lord Indro named Sudarium specifically as an enemy. Indro and this Novhar must be working together. If Sudarium became involved, they'd know where to find him."

"He named the Varkommer, as well," Shira said. "This isn't just about the Fensidium. Drasken's at risk too."

Heller shifted his shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. "If I get chance, I'll warn the Jalin. I'm thinking it might be best we take Tali to him anyway. She'd be safer with him in Drasken than with Sudarium."

Tali slashed her hands outwards. "Hold on," she said. A deadly mixture of fear, confusion, and anger made the words louder than she'd intended. "I'm right here. Can someone please tell me what's going on?"

Shira and Heller shared a look, and eventually her uncle drew out the chair he'd neglected to sit in and gestured for her to take it. After a brief hesitation she accepted, feeling like a misbehaving child about to be scolded.

"Do you know what a Valhir is?" Heller asked.

"The Novhar in Sinnis called me one," Tali said. "I don't know what it means."

Her uncle leaned back against the desk and folded his arms across his chest. His expression had become severe, more befitting of her stern-faced father than her amicable uncle. "The Novhar are incredibly powerful mages, as you've seen. Humans, not so much. Sometimes, we make decent mages,"—he hooked a thumb at Shira then pointed at himself—"but not often. We're also made of different stuff."

"What stuff?"

"Everything is made of aasiur. It's the fabric of the universe," Heller said. "But not Novhar. They can master it so well because they're outside it, beyond it, made of something other. It's why they can manipulate the physical world and human mages can't."

"And Valhir?"

"Getting there." He raised placating hands. "When you combine a mortal, made of aasiur, with a Novhar, who isn't, you get a Valhir. They're still made of aasiur, but they can manipulate it as well."

"Sounds like a regular mage to me."

"Not so," her uncle continued. "Shira and I both only know one strand of aasiurmancy each. We could try to learn more, but it would take a bloody long time, if we ever managed it at all, because our minds just don't work that way. Drasken's rulers have done it, which is why they live so long, and the Arisen Godkings once did it. For a Valhir, aasiurmancy comes naturally. All the strands are open to them at once if they choose to hone them. To be made of aasiur, and to have that Novhar component that removes you from aasiur, gives you untold mastery, if you're taught correctly."

Tali noticed the shift in his wording at the end of his explanation. The Valhir were no longer 'they', but 'you'.

"I'm not Valhir," she insisted. "I wasn't sired by a Novhar."

"Not sired," Heller said. "My brother's mortal as they come. Your mother, though."

Tali remembered then what the Novhar in Sinnis had said about her mother. How he had referred to her as being one of the Novhar, how her mother—Ekaterina, he had named her—had been considered a traitor for having a child with a mortal man.

She didn't know her mother. How could she deny anything?

"I think my father might've noticed if the woman he courted was ten feet tall with wings," she said, lacing her words with sarcasm to conceal her shock.

Heller raised a brow. "I suppose he might, had your mother not worn the guise of a Tharghestian Dontili. The Novhar can do that; shift their physical appearance."

Tali clasped her hands together, then remembered the destructive magic she'd wrought with them in Sinnis and snapped them down to her sides. "I don't understand any of this."

How foolish she felt now, having spent so many years rankled by her captivity on Alzikanem. How very much she'd wanted to escape into the world, to visit the places on her father's map and marry up his sketches with reality. How sorely she'd wanted to re-join Heller and live an untethered life alongside him. Not knowing what she now knew, having no awareness of what she was and what hunted her, she'd have embraced any dreamed freedom with childish naïveté. She'd have been found, by Indro, the Novhar, or someone or something else, and been helpless to defend herself.

Even now, with her magic awoken, she remained helpless and unable to defend herself.

"I don't understand," she repeated.

Heller rested a hand on her shoulder again, and she didn't move. "I know," he said, softly. "We're going to find the answers, though. We'll help you through this." He looked to Shira, who nodded affirmation. "We'll get you to safety, we'll find out who's hunting you and why, and then we'll make sure you're free of it all."

She wanted to believe her uncle, for so many years the ultimate voice of reason in her life. But his words rang empty, for no reason she could discern, and his promises didn't comfort her.

―

Maybe it was a dream, but her recent history of transporting herself to places she should never be able to encounter left a kernel of doubt in her mind.

It was dark, wherever she'd found herself. Deathly, inescapably dark. The dark of the Abyss itself. She looked down and saw herself, though no light source existed for this to be plausible. The ground beneath her feet was firm enough for her to know it existed, but black enough to be indistinguishable from everything else.

Her footstep, when she moved, rang hollow, as if she stepped on glass that echoed with the might of a struck bell.

The blackness snapped away with blinding suddenness. Her new surroundings, by no means bright, presented such a stark contrast she had to shield her eyes with an instinctive arm. When she blinked herself slowly back into comprehension, she saw she stood in a stone chamber. Foetid light stained the floor, the source a weakly flickering torch affixed to one wall. She looked down, her eyes snagging on a bound and bloodied figure chained to a block of stone that had been crudely carved to resemble a chair. Blood already puddled around his trembling legs, and crimson spatters on the wall attested to the violence of whatever attack had recently befallen him.

He looked up, eyes blurry with pain and starvation, though didn't focus on her. Even as the object of his attention invaded the room behind her, Tali's eyes fixed on the victim's face. Close enough to her own to be recognisable, though so unlike how she knew him. The same heavy brows, the same squared jawline, the same harsh green eyes, so capable of snaring a gaze and holding it there.

Her father, as he'd been four years ago during his torture.

This was Shaeviren, then. Only inside the tower she'd landed herself and Shira outside of.

She couldn't see the figure he cringed from, not even when she looked behind her.

He was pitiful. She felt the words reverberate in her own throat, though she hadn't opened her mouth to voice them. We made him more.

If a mountain could speak, it wouldn't be half as immense and endless as that voice. If the Abyss that encircled everything could open its throat and shares its thoughts in the language of men, it wouldn't have been nearly so dark and sinister. She knew that the voice, even as she listened to it, understood it, wasn't a voice at all. She couldn't hear it so much as know it, and the whispers of it trailed clawed fingers over her flesh.

It continued in her head. We broke him. Until he was no longer what he had been. Each word seemed to take a century to pronounce, so heavy was the voice in her mind.

She moved without willing it, lunging forward, her arm extending without her permission. A line drawn into her father's bare chest flashed blood as she reclaimed her arm, her fingers clasping a blade she hadn't known she held.

He will know what we did to him. You will all know, when the time comes.

"What did you do to him?"

We broke him. Took him apart and re-built him. We made him whole.

The fresh wound on her father's flesh leaked blood black as shadows. The disordered map of veins on his chest, engorged with whatever possessed him, stood out against his skin and pulsed a diseased black. His eyes, even the whites of them, shone black.

"You made him mad," she croaked.

He was our first success.

The creature speaking through her was the monster she'd briefly spied at the tower before her panic had sent her and Shira tumbling into Sinnis. She knew this now, without a doubt.

We will reclaim him.

A shiver along her spine, the feeling of something malicious standing behind her, readying a killing blow. You smell of him. He is your progenitor. His line is strong. You can be more, like him.

"No," Tali said, though it sounded weak even to her own ears.

You can be powerful, the voice insisted. More powerful than anything before you. You will have no fear of those who pursue you, no need for your myriad protectors.

The monster had looked upon her with a shattering aura of destruction, back at Shaeviren. She'd felt its intent for her, its desire to tear her asunder, to drag her into the tower's recesses and pull her apart as it had her father. Its promises were empty, a predatory veneer to lure her in, to keep her calm and believing as it ensnared her.

"No," she repeated.

It is only a matter of time before our influence is known in your progenitor. Then you will see.

Her father seeped away into the darkness. The monster that held her relinquished its influence, and she tumbled back into the void from which this nightmare had spawned. She remained there, as trapped as her mad captive father, as much a part of the darkness as the monster, until she jolted awake with a gasp.

Dread clung to her, a second skin, even as she tried to calm her trembling heart.