OFF TRIANTHIA
The great-room was brighter this time, the rising sun streaming in through the wide gallery window in the Swiftsure’s stern. They’d spotted the Schkretlich’s running lanterns just after midnight, but since meetings at sea could even prove tricky in broad daylight and good weather, she’d stood off at about a mile to wait out the dark. The tall Teurond ship had closed to a hundred yards by the time they’d awakened, had their boats in the water by the time they’d breakfasted, and now Darauf and Cerven were finally coming aboard. More than a week of waiting, uncertain of whether the plan had succeeded, had not improved anyone’s temper.
However, even as the door to the great-cabin opened, Ahearn knew the substance of the news they brought. One glimpse of Darauf’s face and he knew what the two had learned. “So, none of the osmotia on the list will work for us, eh?”
Darauf shook his head, sat wearily at the twinned tables that Firinne had returned to the center of the cabin. “Rather a disappointment,” he muttered, “given how smartly the plan came off. Presented my credentials, was feted, and in the course of watching which sacrists were most eager to play the part of the doting host, even learned which temples are the ones most suspicious of the secular leadership. Successful and informative in every way—except the reason we went to Tlulanxu in the first place.”
Cerven had slipped into the chair next to him. “I failed to find what we needed.”
“Or it was not there to begin with,” the dragon corrected. The others looked at him. “While I was in contact with Shaananca, she shared some of her misgivings across our mind-bridge.”
Varcaxtan crossed his arms irritably. “And you only think to share that now, you beastly wyrm?”
R’aonsun glared at him. “I would have done so gladly. It was Shaananca who prevailed upon me to desist. I don’t recall the specifics, but it involved some typically human, weak-minded mewling about it being best for you to hear and ponder the results as a group. Now, to resume: Shaananca had come to fear that even the most complete repository—the one upon which the Hidden Archive was founded—is not so encyclopedic as we, and no small number of scholars, had hoped.”
Elweyr nodded bitterly. “No detailed explanations or expansions of how the osmotia were made or how they should be altered—if, that is, they can be.”
Cerven nodded his morose confirmation of Elweyr’s synopsis. “Now that more have been deciphered, it seems that repositories are not expansive archives, but rather, vaults in which to store a narrowly focused collection of reports, lists, and even correspondence. Furthermore, some are written in other languages, only one of which I recognized. There are also words in those languages I can translate that are utterly meaningless. I saw hints of etymological roots and what might have been abbreviations, but I would have needed weeks, maybe months, to have formulated any guesses at their meaning.”
Varcaxtan stared at the dragon. “Did Shaananca foresee those difficulties, as well?”
It was Darauf who replied. “I think she did. When I arrived, she used words and tones which suggested that, in the process of collecting the sources you asked for, she’d become less rather than more hopeful about the outcome of Cerven’s work.” He smiled. “Also, it is a pleasure to finally meet you… Varcaxtan, is it not?”
“It is, and the honor is mine, Crown-Lord.”
“Have your friends not told you that here, I go by Darauf?”
“Yes, but it would have been disrespectful to do so without your leave.”
“As if I would stand on ceremony with a friend of my father. Who sent his greetings, on the hope that our paths would cross.”
“And please bear my regards back to him.”
Darauf smiled. “He foresaw that reply. This is his answer to it: ‘Come bring your regards yourself!’ He may have said something about not using me as your errand boy… ”
Ahearn continued to smile at the indirect reunion of friends, but realized, Hey-oh, so Shaananca seems to know the Teurodn king, and Uncle Varcaxtan certainly knows the king’s son. So maybe it might have been intention rather than chance that put Darauf out on the Graveyard to rescue Druadaen. Aye, just as it might be true that bunnies crave carrots.
Cerven had resumed sharing the list of disappointments. “And what I found most aggravating was that what the coordinates actually signify was utterly beyond my ability to discover.”
“You mean they are yet another form of code?”
“No, the opposite. Apparently, their use was so routine and their referents such common knowledge that what they actually stand for was not explained anywhere. But inasmuch as the first two coordinates match the locations that persist today, it is only the third coordinate that remains a mystery. But this was our last hope for gaining any additional insight into it.”
Elweyr sighed. “So as far as we know, the third string might not contain any properties of the osmotia at all. And even if it does, we have no better idea of the nature of that information, how to extract it from the numbers, or how it should be used. Assuming I had the thaumates and the skills to do so.”
Darauf signaled for and was handed a book by his junior aide. “This may start you on the path of gaining those needed talents, Elweyr.” He passed the narrow tome to the thaumantic. “Shaananca copied it herself, immediately after R’aonsun allowed us to converse with her, the last time we were in this very room—er, compartment.”
Elweyr took it carefully. “I presume the topic is osmotia?”
“Yes, but rather focused, if I understood her correctly. Cerven understands more and will explain when we discuss the choice before us.”
“Ah, now we’re upon it,” Ahearn sighed. “The choice that means we’re out of choices: the Nidus. Must say I’m still puzzled why a portal so troublesome as that one wasn’t on the list.”
“In fact,” Cerven admitted with a sigh, “it was.”
“But—why didn’t yeh plot it, then?”
Cerven’s voice was flat and bitter. “Because I didn’t know it was the Nidus. It wasn’t one of the few that had names. In fact, it was the entry for which all three coordinates were not fixed values, but ranges of them.”
While Ahearn was still musing on the strange irony of that coincidence—or is it?—Varcaxtan, S’ythreni, and Elweyr began peppering the hapless scriverant with questions:
“Could that be a sign that it does have more than one osmotia?”
“Or that it only has one, but it changes its connection of its own accord?”
“Or that the osmotium changes both its location within the Nidus and its connections to other worlds?”
“Or perhaps that coordinate range is where it has been known to exist? That perhaps it has even been out upon the ocean?”
“Or maybe there was land in that place before the Cataclysm?”
“You mean,” Ahearn said, exasperated, “the opposite of how Saqqaru just popped up from the waves? Except most of the Nidus’ island sank beneath ’em?”
Cerven nodded at Ahearn. “As good an explanation as any, I suppose. It certainly has a very, very long history. As I remarked, some entries were written in an old language with which I am familiar. Many of the notes on the Nidus were written in one of the two precursors of that language: a very ancient tongue called Mrelnorasi.”
The dragon perked up. “I know of that speech, but I never learned it. Even in my earliest years, it was barely spoken except as a secret language.”
Umkhira nodded at Cerven. “And what language is it that claims roots in Mrelnorasi?”
“It is now mostly a scholarly language, rarely spoken today: Tsostzasos.”
“That word sounds familiar,” muttered Varcaxtan, head lowered as he searched his memories.
“That is logical,” Cerven agreed, “it sounds very much like a word in the language that evolved out of Tsostzasos. The term can mean either ‘scribe’ or ‘observer.’”
“What modern dialect is that?” Varcaxtan asked, frowning.
Cerven blinked, clearly having expected the Dunarran to have already made the connection. “Why, S’Dyxan, of course.”
The table grew very quiet. “Of course,” Ahearn echoed, his stomach knotting.
S’ythreni’s query sounded like it had to fight up out of her throat. “Are you telling us that those dsejtoq S’Dyxan bastards made these moon plates?”
Cerven shook his head vigorously. “Of course not! The Mrelnorasi lived long before the Cataclysm, possibly alongside the Uulamantre. Very little is known of those epochs, but there is nothing to suggest that there are any parallels between the extinct Mrelnorasi and the present-day S’Dyxoi.”
The dragon’s voice was casual, even cool. “These Mrelnorasi addenda to the listing of the Nidus: could you discern what they referred to?”
Cerven frowned. “I cannot be sure, but I believe it was an ordinal ranking of conditional alternatives.”
“A what?” asked Osanric, with a bemused smile.
“Erm, a sequence of preference among different options. So, it seemed to be a list that set forth something akin to: ‘if not x, then y; if not y, then z,’ and so forth.”
Varcaxtan leaned forward, hands folded but so tense that the veins stood up from them more than usual. “You also gathered accounts about the Nidus, reports, did you not?”
“I did.” Cerven stared. “But I presumed you would be the least interested in them.”
“Why?”
“Well… ” The scriverant’s pause was agonizing. “Well, you’ve actually been there.”
Varcaxtan shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. Specifically, I’m interested in any sources that have been added since the rescue of the Hidden Archivist, and any from over a year before.”
“The most recent you must already know; they were the basis of the information given to you and the rest of the rescuers. Two have been added since. But those from long before: why are you interested in them?”
“Because what I saw when I was there, I should not—cannot—expect to see again. As I said, the Nidus changes.”
“In what way?”
“Before we shipped, I’d scrounged about to find other accounts, some kept as heirlooms in families I knew. It might be more fancy than fact, but over time, many have claimed that its exterior has been altered, but there are never any signs of construction. And the interior? I fought through tunnels not so different than those we saw on the way down to Zatsakkaz. But some write that in the Nidus, they fought through passages that were more like an oversized rat warren, or a nest built by insane ants, or the inside of a supragant’s guts—or made up from parts of each and more besides. All the hells, no one is even sure that the osmotium itself has always been in the same place.”
Cerven nodded. “That is consistent with the accounts and reports I brought back. Some also mention messages scrawled on or carved into the sides of the passages, written in languages that have not been spoken on Arrdanc in tens of thousands of years. Or ever.
“The two recent reports were, I am happy to say, terribly misfiled: Shaananca’s way of keeping them away from unauthorized or unfriendly eyes. They mostly concerned what the Hidden Archivist had seen and committed to memory while a prisoner there. Never before had so skilled an observer had so long an opportunity to study the details of that place.
“It appears that the Nidus is no longer, or never was in its entirety, a S’Dyxan stronghold. More recent conjecture suggested that it was not so much a place where their ward-pacters recruited infernal allies, but some kind of truce zone between them and whatever was on the other side of the portal. What the Hidden Archivist was able to discern was that there was an ebb and flow in the various beings which came through the osmotium, both in terms of their numbers and tractability. In his final assessment, he felt that S’Dyxan control of the Nidus was not simply complicated by that unpredictability but that there seemed to be an increasing trend toward conflict rather than cooperation and that the S’Dyxoi were losing what control they had.”
“That may be the first good news we have had,” Umkhira said with a sharp nod of her head. “A divided foe is a foe half-conquered.”
Elweyr shook his head. “Still, we don’t have the strength to press through a bear pit like that.”
The dragon folded his arms. “No, perhaps not. Yet Shaananca was of the opinion that a few more companions might bring you to the point where your chance of success is optimal.”
“A few more?” repeated Sut-Uldred. “I’d say a few hundred more!”
The dragon raised an eyebrow. “Shaananca projected—and I agreed with her—that if our numbers were much greater than they are now, our odds of success would be lower, not higher.”
Darauf leaned forward, curious. “Why?”
Varcaxtan was staring at the tabletop, his voice unfolding the logic of those limited numbers. “If we are too few, then even a small enemy force could undo us. But if we are too many and attract greater attention, a larger force will come—and again, undo us.”
The dragon nodded at its human friend. “Exactly her reasoning. And mine.”
Ahearn nodded, turned to Cerven. “I was too much of a pillock to see what Corum and Talshane meant when they said you’d be the best possible help to our company. I don’t profess to know or understand what clockwork contraption is always whirring between those ears of yours, but it has helped us puzzle our way through more unusual twists and find more hidden clues than I’d ever bargained on encountering. In a whole lifetime.” Ahearn smiled, genuinely sad for what he had to say next. “We’ll miss you in the Nidus, Master Cerven.”
“But—”
“Sorry, lad, but this is not a debate—”
“But nor is it what Shaananca advised,” Darauf pointed out.
Ahearn turned to stare at him. “Is that a fact, now?”
R’aonsun spoke softly, but also carefully. “She made the same quite clear to me, as well.”
Damn your magic auntie, Druadaen! I’ll not let her put this young fellow out as Fate-bait just to save your sorry self! But before he could frame a riposte, Darauf spoke again.
“Shaananca also anticipated that you—and possibly others—might be reluctant to take him into such peril. For peril it surely is. But, consistent with keeping faith with the role he played in the Archive Recondite, he now is truly my aide. And so, my charge. You need not carry the decision for this upon your shoulders.” Darauf’s gaze slid to Cerven. “That is how we may proceed, but only if it is met with your will, also.”
Cerven acknowledged the Teurond with a long, respectful nod, but said, “If it is all the same to you, Crown-Lord Darauf, for now, I should like to remain with my captain, Ahearn.” He looked at the stunned swordsman. “That is, if he will continue to have me in spite of his reservations.”
Ahearn looked at Cerven’s hopeful, trusting eyes—and suddenly saw only those of his tad. And in that instant, one sympathetic thought pushed all others out of the way: Keep this boy away from the Nidus and whatever hell-gate it houses!
But then he became aware of the face around Cerven’s eyes: the mature jaw-line, the resolute set of the chin, the toned arms. And Ahearn heard the same voice needling, And so, are you sure it’s really this lad you’re roiled about? Or are you trying to save him because you know what it’s like to be an orphan that doesn’t get saved, hey? But this lad had mentors, learning, and a full stomach: not the life you lived. Besides, both his body and his brains are part of why we’ve come this far, so whatever we’re fighting for or against, it’s his fight, too. And at nineteen, either he grabs that nettle or should realize he never will.
“Aye,” Ahearn muttered, looking away, “I’ll have yeh. Now, Captain, what about you?”
“What about me? You know I’m coming.”
“I do, and I am more grateful than I’ve words to say. But the Nidus isn’t the risk I’m thinking about. It’s what might come after. First there’s the nuisance of your being gone for a long sail halfway around the world—again! And secondly, it’s a surety that there are tongues among your crew which will wag for want of care—or want of coin—upon yer return. Their tales could have you sailing back to Tlulanxu, but in the brig rather than on the bridge.”
Firinne smiled at him. “You are kind to worry on my behalf, Ahearn… but it’s an insult to my abilities. See here: I’ve foreseen and handled all these concerns, and a dozen more you’d never think of.
“Firstly, this ship is secure because its crew are true sons and daughters of the sea. I haven’t needed to replace a one of them in a year and a half. Which is fortunate, because I’ve spent a good part of that time sailing outside my circuit. If they were wanting release to shore, they know they need only ask—but none have. And they already have more than an inkling of what’s going on, and that you—our almost permanent, unpaying passengers—are somehow at the center of it. Your half-known secrets are as safe with them as they are with me.”
“Well, what about the ones who are, well, are more interested in the opinions of their creeds than they are of the Consentium?”
Firinne raised a vaguely amused eyebrow. “It’s funny how few of those actually stay with this ship for very long. But I’m told they get very good promotions when they leave.”
“That sounds like the work of higher connections. Theirs?”
Firinne leaned back. “Here’s my answer to that question: what you don’t know, and even what I don’t know, can’t hurt the people who help us from afar. Such as people who can move a potentially troublesome crewman to another ship before any trouble starts—and leave him happy with a bonus for his trouble. People who are both subtle and sitting on such lofty slopes that not even the sacrists can reach them.”
Varcaxtan raised an eyebrow, glanced at Darauf before asking, “Young Alcuin himself?”
“Maybe,” Firinne answered with a smile. “And maybe others beyond him. But that’s all baseless speculation.” Her smile said that it was anything but. “And so far as our unusual destinations are concerned, I’ll continue to relay plausible, even likely, reasons why Swiftsure strayed outside her normal circuit.”
“Such as?” Darauf asked with a frown. “My knowledge of things nautical is sorely lacking.”
“Well, take our ‘detour’ to Trianthia. In the advice pouch that will make its way to Tlulanxu come the morrow, there will be a report that on our way to Tlulanxu, we found water spoilage and headed to the nearest deep-draught port that was sure to be able to replenish it.”
“But,” Cerven said hesitantly, “is that not a lie?”
Firinne smiled. “It is not, strictly speaking. I had my quartermaster inventory our water casks. One was found to have the kind of mold that can progress swiftly to rot.” Her smile became an almost evil grin. “I grant you, it required a fish-lens to see it, but it was there.
“Next: Master Cerven, unless I am much mistaken, there’s a sealed message for me in the pouch you brought back, is there not?”
Cerven frowned. “How did you kno—? Yes, there is.”
“I’ll continue to amaze you with my powers of prophesy,” Firinne assured him. “Go ahead and open it. It will say, more or less, that Swiftsure is instructed to convey two other sealed letters to the Orex Islands. I am empowered to sail under my own authority to ensure secure delivery, even at the expense of speed.”
Umkhira’s eyes opened in surprise. “I have not heard of the Orex Islands. Are they Dunarran territory?”
It was R’aonsun who answered. “The Orexils are well to the east of us. They are not often mentioned. Which is quite strange.”
“Why? Are they important?”
Firinne laughed. “You tell me! They are one of Dunarra’s three administrative regions and the second most populous. They are also the original home of the Connyl seafarers who migrated to Ar Navir.”
“It’s odd they don’t figure more in our mercantile or diplomatic exchanges,” Sut-Uldred muttered, chin cradled in his hand.
“That may be intentional,” Osanric drawled. “Everything in the Orexils is far out of sight, and so, conveniently out of mind.” His eyes seemed to twinkle. “Makes you wonder what might be there, eh?” His tone suggested that his question was purely, even ironically, rhetorical.
Cerven looked up from scanning Firinne’s orders. “These instructions are just as you predicted, Captain. However, they specify where the two letters are to be delivered: Crysmaran and Nrulessë.” Firinne smiled, nodded as if she had expected that detail. Cerven raised an eyebrow. “Why are these ports significant?”
“Because they have no Helper temples in them,” she answered. “Which is all part of the actual objective underlying those orders: that our actions—and especially our absence—are the result of unremarkable, and very dull, duties. Those temples won’t think twice about the Swiftsure not porting in their cities and won’t have any chance to know you’re aboard, since we’ll fulfill those duties only after I bring you to the Nidus. Which gives you an advantage over almost every other piece on whatever game board you’ve now either stumbled, or been placed, upon.”
Elweyr nodded. “No one even knows we’re on the board.”
“And that is how it must stay.”
“Aye, but it comes at a price,” Ahearn objected, folding his arms. “Keeping our heads down means we’ve not been able to peer about for likely allies to swell our ranks.”
Firinne nodded. “And those ranks may be thinner than you’ve reason to hope.”
It was S’ythreni’s turn to fold her arms. “By which you mean… what?”
“By which I mean that the Swiftsure cannot be jeopardized.”
“Or involved.”
Firinne’s nod was pained. “They’re the same thing, so far as the Consentium would be concerned, and I will not and cannot put your cause above my country and my oath. The most I can do is put you down in a boat, but only if you do not tell me what you plan to do, or where, or why.”
Ahearn shrugged. “Well, seems to me it’s a little late to claim that, even now. You’ve been in on our plans from the moment we mentioned the moon plates. Putting us down in a boat off the Nidus is the same as knowing we’ve put those plans in motion.”
“In fact, insofar as mancery can determine, there is a difference. If I put you down in open water to comply with your unexplained request, and then return to that spot two days later, I can honestly say I have no knowledge of what you meant to do, or did, once I sailed away. Neither my crew, nor my orders, will bear upon anything you did. I am simply the ship that dropped off some passengers who may have had clandestine business of their own to conduct nearby. That is the only way to be certain that no examination of my actions, mantic or mundane, will show them to be at the pleasure or behest of the Consentium.”
“So,” Ahearn muttered, “whatever we might have to do at the Nidus, you can have no part of it. At a guess, you’ll not join us in our planning, anymore, either?” When she shook her head regretfully, he nodded. “So, we’ll be alone, come what may.”
“Not entirely alone,” Darauf said.
Osanric leaned forward sharply. “Let me go, my lord. The line of Teurodn cannot afford to lose so promising an heir.”
Darauf smiled. “Who is also a very distant heir. And redundant: if anything were to happen to me, there are half a dozen more to step forward. But here, here I can make a difference.”
Sut-Uldred’s voice was shrewd as he observed, “And in so doing, advance your standing at court.”
The older one looked at him sharply but had to nod. “I can’t say he’s wrong, my lord, once such deeds become known.”
“If such deeds become known,” Darauf corrected.
“As you say, my lord, if such deeds become known. But there are many who’d welcome knowing that a possible future king is capable of doing those deeds for honor, good friends, and a world with less evil in it.”
Darauf grinned, almost amused. “Those are wonderful words that I’m hoping no one ever has to hear.”
“Officially no one will,” the younger one said, “but my lord, you know how rumors start in barracks, and how they can spread to—”
“Not in this case,” said Darauf sharply. “It is not upon you to spread flattering rumors about me. It is upon you to make sure that such rumors are never spread, let alone conceived.” He laid his hand flat upon the table with a soft, but quite intentionally conclusive thump. “We go without fanfare and, gods willing, return as quietly as we left.” He let his eyes touch all the faces that ringed the table. “Our only pride shall reside in the new friends we make on the journey.”
Ahearn, leaning back in his chair, met Darauf’s gaze. “I’ll not lie; I’m powerfully glad for the company. But I admit, naught you said before told me that you were comin’ along fer sure.”
The crown-lord answered with a lazy smile. “I thought it was obvious.”
“Only thing obvious to any of us in this life,” Ahearn answered, stretching, “is that one day we won’t be in it. But there’s no reason to rush that day along, eh?”
Growing grins were doused by the entrance of the most trusted members of Darauf’s retinue. They were led by his armsman, who went by the single name of Wulfget. “My lord?”
“Be at your ease. What news?”
“All our cargo and gear is aboard and fit to the lay of the dunnage.”
He rose. “Then let us wave our farewells to the Schkretlich. It’s best if she were underway before the sun sinks further.” He smiled at Ahearn and the others and was out the door, his aides and Firinne behind him.
After watching him go, S’ythreni leaned against the nearest bulkhead, chortling. “I’m on a ship of the mad—and me more than any!”
Cerven frowned in perplexity. “Why do you say so?”
She smiled. “How apt that it should be you who asks me.”
“I do not understand.”
“Truly? Look at us; misfits and mismatched from the moment any of our stars began to steer together. And all the more so, the more who join us.” She gestured as she pointed from one to another. “A dragon who’s decided to travel with humans. Then a master of ancient languages who is barely ready to grow a beard. And just now, the high and mighty of Tar-Teurodn make ready to travel in concert with a Lightstrider. All bound for a doom-mouth that the Uulamantre tell us is both in and yet not in this world.” S’ythreni emitted a silvery laugh. “Is there any limit to the strangeness of our path?”
Glancing after Darauf, Umkhira’s rejoinder was gruff and dyspeptic. “Apparently not. I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”