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CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Captain Firinne waited until her master-at-arms had closed the door to the great cabin before scanning the faces crowded around the tables she’d had brought in. Her eyes stopped their slow circuit when they came to Ahearn’s. “Well, it’s about time.”

“You’ve been as patient as a monk,” the swordsman said in genuine appreciation. “But this is the very soonest we could tell our tale.”

She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Why?”

“Well, as mad as it might sound, it wasn’t until yestereve we actually knew how it would end.”

She frowned. “The only reason I don’t dismiss that as pure rubbish is because you obviously understand that’s just what it sounds like. And because the rest of the long faces around you look like those of mourners, not swindlers.”

“Well,” Ahearn allowed, “you’re right that we have reason enough to grieve.”

“Grieve who? You’re all here, so none of your company has died.”

“Yet,” added Varcaxtan with a sigh.

She stared at him in frank surprise, after mastering a brief look of worry. “So is it you who has the story to tell?”

“The story,” Umkhira said respectfully, “is ours, all equally. As is the path before us.”

The captain studied their faces again. “I’ve waited two weeks. You’ve spent most of them closeted away, muttering among yourselves. And you must have observed that I’m not one to pick up passengers—no matter how well known or liked—without having a full report of what kind of cargo, or trouble, is coming aboard with them.” She turned back to Ahearn. “Convince me that I haven’t been a sorry fool for setting aside a rule that’s stood me in such good stead for so many years.”

Ahearn nodded, sighed. “What did Tharêdæath tell you about why we were journeying to Mihal’j?”

“Not a gods damned thing. And I could tell that asking wouldn’t get any answers. Besides, I trusted you lot.”

Ahearn winced at the past tense: trusted. “Fair enough. And no surprise he didn’t tell you aught of our purposes.”

“Were they… unsavory?”

As Ahearn fought against a grin at her prim tone, Varcaxtan answered. “They were of a delicate nature.”

Firinne stared at him in renewed surprise. From the look they exchanged, it was clear that this was almost a professional code for a matter which the Consentium would deem both important and sensitive. “Indeed,” she said.

Varcaxtan merely nodded.

She turned back to Ahearn. “And how did you become involved in such a venture?”

He shrugged. “Trying to find Druadaen.”

She nodded. “I see,” she said, but her tone made it sound more like “Of course.” Firinne leaned forward, steepling her hands. “Given where we picked you up, I presume things did not go well?”

“Oh, they went well enough, just not the way we planned. But knowing when you were due back in Pawnkam, we also knew when and where to watch for Swiftsure’s sails. We’d only been waiting on the coast a few days before you hove into view.”

“Why there?”

“Well, it wouldn’t have done for you to go to Pawnkam itself.”

She almost smiled. “Don’t you mean it wouldn’t have done for you to go to Pawnkam, again?”

Umkhira leaned forward. “We did nothing wrong. We were ambushed, well outside the city. But there was reason to suspect that we would be held without cause and required to pay fees we did not owe and acquire pardons we did not need.” She sat back. “Pawnkam’s officials are without honor. More so than in most human cities.”

“I see,” Firinne murmured. “But I still haven’t heard anything about this ‘delicate matter.’” Her eyes flicked toward Varcaxtan for a moment.

Ahearn drew a breath: now or never. “Well, we were set on grabbing a special moon plate from the ruins of a forgotten city named Zatsakkaz.”

Firinne jerked upright as if she’d been stuck by a pin. “What do you know of such things?” Her eyes went sideways toward Varcaxtan again, but this time, in alarm.

Varcaxtan extended a calming hand. “They recovered some moonfall plaques while shipmates with the Uulamantre.” When the captain’s eyebrow rose, he expanded, “They were sailing to assist in the rescue of the Hidden Archivist.”

She looked away from her countryman and surveyed the group as if through new eyes. “Well, that explains much,” she murmured. “But I must ask, Varcaxtan: should you—or any of your group—be talking to me about these… these objects?”

“You mean the ‘objects’ for which you have explicit special orders?” He smiled at her widened eyes. “I’ve traveled on too many Courier ships, or those with similar remits, not to know that their captains have to know of them. Because you are tasked to always be on the watch for them.”

“So you will also know that I can’t speak to the accuracy or inaccuracy of those assertions.”

“Of course not. But we can speak hypothetically, can’t we? As if my words were accurate?”

Firinne looked very much like she was about to squirm in her seat, but to her credit, she didn’t. “I am not aware of any order which would preclude such a conversation. Particularly if it allows me to gather what the propretors might consider useful information.”

It was Ahearn’s turn to straighten in his chair. “Wait: you mean to report us… er, this conversation? To your superiors?”

Firinne’s look made it quite clear that she had significant doubts whether, at that particular moment, Ahearn’s intelligence exceeded that of a flounder. A very stupid flounder. “I am not required to report hypothetical conversations about hypothetical topics.”

“Ah,” Ahearn said. “Right. Well, then, I reck you’d like a quick sketch of what we ran into once we found Zatsakkaz?”

“No. I want the full story.”

That unleashed a reasonably complete recounting of their underground journey. Except for a few points where she asked for details that were most properly Cerven’s province, Ahearn and the others told the tale up to the point where they started their return to the surface. “After we made our way across a bone-dry catch basin for runoff, the ramp began to show itself worse for wear. Sand had found its way in and there were cracks starting in every surface. Two were passable fissures: fortunate, since at the next catch basin, the shaft was filled in with sand. But the wettest of the fissures brought us up into some low hills halfway to the coast.” He did not include that the sai’niin ring’s meaningful pulses had dispelled any doubt about the fissure’s safety, nor that it had aimed them at a particular point on that coast. “We made that trek over three days and settled in to wait for you.”

“You are lucky you did not die of thirst.”

S’ythreni shrugged. “We filled our skins with water in the fissure, husbanded it carefully, found a small oasis just a league inland from the point where we signaled you with Elweyr’s light sphere.”

“And in code no less,” Firinne added. She looked at Varcaxtan. “You, of course?”

He smiled. “I’m old, not senile. Yet.”

She smiled back—and Ahearn saw her feeling for the Dunarran light her eyes for the briefest instant… before she abruptly extinguished it. “So, why did you not tell me all this when we took you aboard? Why the mystery and silence?”

Cerven leaned forward with a glance at Ahearn, who nodded. “Captain, as Ahearn said, the last, crucial part of our story was not yet settled. Specifically, we knew that the outcome, and our next destination, would both be dependent upon what we learned in the process of deciphering the list of osmotia. However, between trips to the oasis for water, lying in wait for game, fishing as best we could, and keeping watch for the Swiftsure’s sails, I did not make much progress prior to your arrival. And once I had the time to examine them more closely—”

“You are a scriverant?” she asked, her surprise supplanted by a settled nod even as the word left her lips.

“I am, Captain, but as my age surely indicates, I am but a journeyman in my abilities.”

“His skills proved far beyond his years,” the dragon said in a tone that established he would brook no debate.

Cerven may have blushed slightly before he rushed on. “The moonfall plaque presented unforeseen challenges. We had anticipated that many of the names would be unknown to us, but the reality was much more difficult. With only a few exceptions, the named locations are either completely unreachable now, or completely forgotten.

“But more troublesome still, the great majority of the entries were identified only by a code: three long numerical strings for which we had no key. However, after a certain amount of trial and error, we ultimately recognized them as positional coordinates.”

He ultimately recognized them as coordinates,” S’ythreni corrected with a small grin. “The rest of us just stared like dazed cows. But it’s what he did next that was truly inspired.”

Cerven, flustered, was unable to rebut her praise or continue the story before Varcaxtan took up the tale. “It seems our scriverant is highly accomplished in the high mathematics of three-dimensional objects.”

It took Firinne a moment to process that. “You mean, the ones from which our navigation charts were originally derived?”

Varcaxtan nodded at Firinne. “He knows those arcane formulae—and can calculate them without picking up chalk or abacus. In this case, while the rest of us were still trying to grasp what he’d explained to us, he scanned the list for place names we still know, plotted their coordinates, and compared those positions to their actual locations in the here and now.” He snapped his fingers. “Exact matches, every one of them.”

Firinne glanced from him to Cerven to Ahearn. “That’s why you asked to make tracings of my navigation charts. You made an overlay to confirm that it was a coordinate system for the entirety of Arrdanc’s surface.” She stared at Cerven as if he had transformed into a rare creature out of legend. “Such a detailed system was rumored to exist before the Cataclysm, but attempts to rebuild it, even by the greatest scholars of the First Consentium—came to naught. The amount of measurement required… ” She shook her head. “What you have discovered—and reconstructed—could be extremely useful.”

If Cerven heard the awe behind her words, he gave no sign of it. “Perhaps, but in their kindness, my friends have neglected to tell you where my efforts faltered. As I mentioned, there were three numerical strings for each entry. But positional coordinates only use two values. I have been unable to solve the mystery of the third.”

“Could it be elevation?” Firinne wondered aloud.

Cerven nodded. “That was my first thought also, but after much trial and error, I cannot find any way to make it successfully function as such. Besides, there is a fundamental impediment to checking any such conjectures.”

“Which is?”

“All coordinate systems must have a zero value. On the sphere, deriving that from the coordinates of the known locations was fairly simple—”

Umkhira and S’ythreni both rolled their eyes at his dismissal of that feat. The dragon just smiled.

“—but if the third numerical string is indeed a third axis value whereby elevation, volume, or curvature can be measured—”

Ahearn rubbed his eyes, fearing the onset of another of the headaches brought on by Cerven’s explanations.

“—it does not conform to the distance scale of the first two coordinates.”

“Wait; what?” Firinne said.

Elweyr sighed. “You’ll see what he means. Eventually.”

Firinne nodded. “So… so, you arrived at a distance scale by plotting the known locations on the maps, and comparing the separation between those coordinates to the physical distances between them.”

Cerven nodded encouragingly. “Yes, but it made no sense when applied to the third coordinate set. None at all. In fact, some of the third set of values were negative.”

“So… a subterranean location, perhaps?”

“Again, that was my first thought, but more problems intruded. Firstly, the two dimensional coordinates that I plotted on the globe follow the convention of all such calculations: they presume a perfect sphere. However, if one adds a third axis, what would the zero value be?”

“The level of the sea?” Firinne postulated.

“I thought that, too. So I calculated the elevation based on that assumption, and using the same distance scale. That is where I encountered impossible results. There was so little variation among those third axis values that no change in elevation was greater than four hundred yards: a mere fraction of the height of most mountains.” He frowned mightily. “No. I am missing something, and we should not proceed until I have determined what it is.”

Firinne leaned forward. “But does that third string of numbers truly matter? The first two have shown where all of the osmotia are located.”

Elweyr raised a finger. “Cerven’s concern is not unwarranted.” Firinne’s gaze invited explication. “I’m the source of his worry. It’s a mantic matter that is either one of the most confounding—or well-guarded—secrets of all the arts.”

“And it is—?”

“Changing connections between osmotia, or any other kinds of portal.”

Firinne looked around the circle of faces. “I wasn’t aware there are other kinds of portals. And I never imagined they could be, er, changed.”

Elweyr nodded. “It is not undertaken lightly.”

“It must consume a great deal of… what do you call it? Manas?”

The thaumantic tilted his head. “That is more a problem with creating a portal. Changing one requires great knowledge and precision… and the price of failure can be considerable.”

“And how does this relate to the mysterious third string of numbers?”

Elweyr leaned forward. “Most portals have very precise properties. The most delicate of them indicates how they are situated in both the physical world and those which may lay beyond. The few mantic constructs designed to change their connection by altering those properties. They are also the most elaborate of constructs, requiring centuries or millennia of research, followed by exhaustive testing by trial and error. Which is often fatal. So is learning to use them, even once a construct has been proven to work and remain stable.

“Much of the danger lies in our imperfect knowledge of the cosmos and how its various domains interact with each other. But it is possible—likely, even—that when all these osmotia were created, knowledge of their properties was more complete.” He shrugged. “So it’s possible that the third string of numbers may refer to factors that are not restricted to the physical world, or may not refer to it at all.”

“Well.” Firinne’s frown had deepened. “What else could it be?”

Elweyr sighed. “I suspect it’s actually a… a compressed record of the properties of each gate, properties one would need to know in order to manipulate them.” Elweyr paused, raised his hands as if seeking an answer from above. “If so, trying to change them without that information might be impossible… or worse.”

Firinne frowned. “Wait: you do not mean to merely use the osmotia, but change them? I mean no disrespect magister, but are you… adequately prepared for such a task?”

“No, and that’s what worries me, because from what I have read, these older osmotia seem to be more complicated than the ones crafted with today’s cognates. That’s likely to make them much more dangerous.”

Firinne nodded, re-steepled her fingers. “So, I hear two reasons why you feel the list has not given you a clear path forward. Firstly, all of them have a third set of values which could mean that they are not exactly where the first two coordinates indicate. And secondly, you cannot determine if it is safe to attempt to manipulate any of them without understanding exactly what that third set of values refers to.”

Ahearn leaned forward. “That’s the main of it.”

“So why did you plead for me to set a northerly heading? Happily, I was already bound that way, but it was unsettling when you wouldn’t tell me why you were making that request. Or why you couldn’t tell me ‘for a week or two.’ If it was anyone but you lot who’d asked me to take it all on faith, I’d have surely said no. And maybe put you overboard.”

She paused, then glanced at Varcaxtan, even though her voice remained pitched toward the whole group. “But you knew I would trust you.”

He nodded. “I did not know, but I hoped.”

“More to the point,” Ahearn added, “from the very start of our hopping from continent to continent and back again, you’ve always been a fast friend to us. Even when we didn’t ask. Even when it meant altering your route to help us on our way to find Druadaen, which must have earned a few frowns from the high and mighty back in Tlulanxu. Bloody hells, how could we not trust you?”

“Fair enough,” she replied, “but answer me now: why northward?”

Ahearn shrugged. “Because we’ve but one person who might be able to solve some of the mysteries before us: Shaananca.” And because the damn bloody ring is pushing in that direction.

Firinne’s eyes had widened at Shaananca’s name. “Well, from what I know of her, if she cannot answer your questions, I doubt anyone can.” The captain frowned. “But I do not know how you plan to contact her. Surely you do not mean to go ashore, given your association with Druadaen.”

“Or my own extended absence,” Varcaxtan added with a rueful grin.

“If you’ve no orders, there’s no law against it,” Firinne objected in a tone of finely honed irony.

“Yet,” he amended.

She nodded as her eyes moved slowly around the faces ringing her. They stared back quietly. “Well,” she muttered after a long moment, “don’t keep me waiting.”

“For what?”

“For the other shoe to fall.” Her smile was genuine if weary. “So now I know that you came aboard unwilling to tell your tale because until you finished deciphering the moonfall plaque, you wouldn’t know how it ended. Then you let slip that you’re mourning your own sorry selves in advance.” She shook her head. “There’s something missing. So the moonfall plaque has stymied you and you have to see if you can get that untangled in Tlulanxu. Hardly a surprise, but more important, hardly any reason to be mourning ourselves. You’d be fools for sure to walk right up to the Archive Recondite in broad daylight, but it wouldn’t be the death of you. So I ask again: what thing is so mournfully grim that you couldn’t reveal until now? Where’s the other shoe?” She settled back, arms crossed. “Let it fall; I haven’t all day.”

Ahearn nodded. “Fairly said. Here’s as fair an answer as we have. As you say, in the last two days, we’ve had to accept we’ve naught but questions about the list on the plaque. Common sense tells us we’d be fools to still cling to the simple hope with which we started: that it will simply show us which one portal will lead us straight to Druadaen and Indryllis. Fact is, there’s every reason to doubt such a thing is possible.

“But as we felt ourselves drawing closer to that conclusion, we began asking, ‘if there’s nothing useful on the plaque, then what?’”

Firinne’s glance flitted toward Varcaxtan for a moment, too briefly for their eyes to meet. Never had Ahearn seen the bluff, redoubtable captain appear so tentative, let alone anxious. “There is a point,” she began carefully, “at which one must consider the possibility that the failure to find a way forward is because there isn’t one to be found.” She paused, resumed as if trying to step around snares. “It can be difficult to mark that moment when one’s dogged search for a solution is only a way to avoid accepting that all reasonable hope is gone.”

“Well, as it happens, there may be a new solution,” Varcaxtan replied.

“Which,” Ahearn added, “has been right in front of us, unnoticed, from the very start.” Firinne folded her arms, waiting for him to make his cryptic words more plain. “When we sailed from Shadowmere, we were set on finding folk who could educate and advise us in the matter of portals. Just the day before, Druadaen had traipsed through one, and Varcaxtan brought news that Indryllis had been left behind in the Nidus: home to the most lively of all osmotia—as well as a damned undesirable spot to be stranded.”

Firinne held up a hand as she glanced at Varcaxtan. “What happened there?” she murmured, her voice barely raising above the sound of the sea on the sides of the ship.

Varcaxtan would not meet her eyes as he shrugged. “Don’t know, really. Some of them got behind us. Don’t know how they did that, either. The Nidus is… well, there seem to be more ways into and out of it than it has doors. So it may have more than just one osmotium in it. But to make a sad story brutally short, a few of those with us—the Guides and the mantics—were very familiar with osmotia. And since I didn’t know that, I had less than no idea that they’d been sent along as a special reserve to ensure that we got the Hidden Archivist back home.”

“Then why didn’t everyone come back through the osmotium?”

Another shrug. “That’s another thing I don’t know. And there’s been no great sharing of information regarding what happened elsewhere during the rescue. What I do know is that Indryllis and her group were deep in the Nidus when the rest of us were told to withdraw, that the Hidden Archivist had been rescued. When we emerged, we looked around, expecting those who’d reached him to be on the boats pulling us off the island. No sign of ’em. Not then nor later. But by the time we’d sailed back to Tlulanxu—and you know how fast that flotilla was—the Hidden Archivist had already returned.”

Ahearn nodded at the end of the tale. “It wasn’t until we finally reached Mirroskye—thanks to you—that we learned Indryllis was still alive. Unfortunately, the Iavarain puddle-gazers were confounded when it came to locating her: according to them, she was both on Arrdanc and not on Arrdanc. A puzzling bit of magical mummery, that. But we also learned why she’d been left in the Nidus: if the rescuers couldn’t bring out the Hidden Archivist through the front door, they’d sneak him out the back—by changing the connection of the Nidus’ portal.”

“So why didn’t she just run through the portal with the others who escaped?”

Elweyr folded his hands. “When we learned about what happened at the Nidus, I knew a great deal less about osmotia than I do now. But since then, I’ve seen hints that it’s also possible to change the connection briefly. Any osmotium’s parameters are a bit like gutta-percha: if you apply the right adjustment, you can stretch it to take a different shape, a different connection. But as soon as you let go, it snaps back to its original shape.”

Firinne frowned, stared at Varcaxtan. “I find it hard to believe that Indryllis wouldn’t have told you about being part of such a plan, given how much was at stake.”

Varcaxtan sighed. “It’s a sad truth that when we married, we had to promise our superiors that one of us would often be told—or do—things that couldn’t be shared with the other. Usually, that meant her. On rare occasions, that secrecy ran the other way… such as when I delivered a very special sword to this old wyrm.” He poked R’aonsun, who rolled his eyes. “But when it came to osmotia… well, no information is more closely guarded. I didn’t even know she had such capabilities, which was probably for the best.”

He shrugged. “It certainly wouldn’t have done anyone any good if I had—not that day. What I know about mancery would fit in the palm of a snake’s hand. I was there as a soldier. So if one of us didn’t come back, it was to be me.” Varcaxtan’s eyes became hollow. “It should have been me.”

Firinne waited, looked from face to face, frowning. “So what is this new solution that’s been in front of you all along?”

Ahearn shifted, hated to be the one to say it, but it was his job. “Well, at the end of the day, we still know where to find one portal that can be changed safely.” When Firinne just frowned in greater perplexity, he sighed. “Maybe more than one, truth be told.”

Her perplexity became more intense—and then transformed into horror and shock. “The Nidus? Are you mad?” As if appealing to the collective sanity of the others, she looked around at them… and saw the same graveyard faces. “You are mad. All of you.”

The dragon regarded his fingernails critically. “I prefer the term, ‘uncommonly resolute.’”

But S’ythreni was shaking her head. “Actually, Captain, I agree with you. Completely. We’re mad. But me most of all, since I can see the lunacy quite clearly, and I’m still going to the Nidus, if that’s our only option.”

“An ‘option,’ you call it? It’s a certainty—of suicide.”

Varcaxtan tapped his finger on the table: a slow, steady metronome. “Actually, we did it once. The return of the Hidden Archivist is proof of that.”

“You call it a success when you lost as many as you did—and left your wife behind?” She blanched. “I’m sorry. I… I didn’t mean it as it sounded. I meant—”

“You were speaking in the context of the mission, the cost,” Varcaxtan said quietly. “Not my personal culpability. I understand that. However, we would have advantages that our rescue mission did not.”

“Such as?”

“They were expected,” Umkhira countered firmly. “Indeed, it may well be that they were being baited.” She crossed her arms. “But now, it has been over a year, and there has been no sign that the Consentium is returning. We will be entirely unexpected.”

“And I know the interior,” Varcaxtan added. “And given that labyrinth, that will be a huge help.”

“Also,” murmured Elweyr, “we have a great deal of experience working in that kind of—irregular area. Forces trained for predictable engagements on a plain battlefield often do not fare so well.”

Firinne sighed. “And when you get to Tlulanxu, you’re in the best place to ask questions about the moonfall plaque and the Nidus.” She looked around the group. “And I suppose you’ll want a ship to get to that infernal pit,” she muttered.

“It would be very kind of you,” Cerven replied.

She nodded. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

Ahearn nodded back. “After a chat with Shaananca, I’m sure we will,” he replied, then glanced at the sai’niin ring: And if we don’t, you’d better damn well let us know… and right away!


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