Chapter 32 – Departure

The letter bore the seal of the Grevue dynasty, a crowned griffin on midnight blue wax, so flawlessly embossed that Shaelith could see the individual feathers in the imprint of the signet ring.

Laenre had already opened it. The parchment lay before her on the obsidian table, and the Matriarch was anything but enthusiastic.

Benderast stood upright next to Shaelith and was, for once, relatively quiet, for which she was grateful. Behind them, leaning against the wall, was a banner pole hastily fashioned by Grimbart, from which Honor hung proudly, fluttering slightly in a non-existent breeze.

“King Gelsevier asserts in his letter,” said Laenre with a raised eyebrow, “that he is deeply grateful for the rescue of his daughter, Princess Obelaine. He reaffirms the friendship between Tulvia and Myzelemaerlazin, and in particular with our house. He expresses his admiration for the heroism of ‘Princess Shaelith’ and the hero Benderast and their companions.”

She tapped on the latter. “But.”

“The banner ‘Mine Honor Is My Life, Both Grow In One,'” Laenre continued, “is an heirloom of the Grevue dynasty, he writes, and its loss has dynastic implications.”

Honor rustled. The embroidered griffin seemed to tighten its chest.

Laenre looked up at the banner with displeasure, presumably annoyed that she could not poison an object.

“King Gelsevier requests that his son, Prince Gwilet, be given the opportunity to regain the favor of the banner in accordance with Tulvian tradition through a knightly contest.”

“A CONTEST!”

Honor unfolded in all her glory, as if a gust of wind had swept through the room. “Oh, what a NOBLE endeavor! Alas, oh, it is hopeless! For I have looked into the heart of Prince Gwilet, and found as much virtue there as in a BRIMMING LATRINE!”

“Honor,” Shaelith admonished.

“BUT-” The banner paused dramatically, which might have been more impressive in front of a larger audience. “Tradition is tradition. I will allow this contest. The Great Symbiarchic Charter grants the house of the former bearer the right to a trial.”

Laenre folded the letter. “The Tulvians are valuable allies. I don’t want dynastic resentment over a flag.”

Honor rustled indignantly, but Benderast tugged at one of its corners and hissed soothingly at it.

“Shaelith, you will take care of this. Take this banner to Tulvia, hold this contest, whatever they want, and maintain good relations.”

Shaelith nodded. “We were planning to leave for Cobalt City anyway. Tulvia is on the way.”

Laenre’s eyebrow rose slightly. “The thing about the Warlock’s companion?”

“Exactly. He’s a mage at Cobalt Collegium, at least if he’s still there.” Shaelith deliberately held his gaze. “I can handle both on one trip.”

“Good.” Laenre stood up. “I”ll have all your diplomatic credentials prepared and see to it that travel provisions, letters of credit for the Sunveil caravanserais, and the usual things are provided for you. When do you want to leave?”

“In three days.”

 

~

 

Vyriz sat upright in bed when Shaelith entered his room. He had started braiding his hair again, carefully. The braiding patterns were simple and he wasn’t signaling anything in particular, he was just practicing the fine motor skills in his half-new finger.

“Where are you going?” he asked after glancing at her hair.

“Tulvia, then Cobalt City,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know how long.”

“Months?”

“Possibly.”

He nodded and let the half-braided strand fall. His eyes still had that shadow that hadn’t quite disappeared since the fortress and that couldn’t be treated with healing magic and good meals. Well, maybe with good meals it could. But it was getting better slowly. His humor was returning, and with it the warmth that made him the Shaeravyn closest to her in this world.

“I want to ask you for something,” Shaelith said.

“Anything I can give you.”

“It’s about Ryzinre.”

“Your servant while you were away on diplomatic service?”

“She was a little more than just my servant.”

“I see.”

“She was in the goblin breeding kennels,” she said quietly.

“And you think it would be practical for your two broken friends to be there for each other while you’re away and can’t take care of them yourself?”

“Yes.”

He nodded again without hesitation. “You can rest assured, I’ll talk to her and take good care of her.”

Shaelith raised her eyebrows and waited.

“…and let her take care of me too, if she wants to,” he added with a smile and a feigned sigh.

Shaelith placed her hand on his and squeezed gently. He squeezed back.

“Thank you.”

“Take care of yourself. I don’t trust that foolish human to understand how valuable you are.”

She leaned forward, nibbled briefly on his earlobe until he giggled, then pressed a quick kiss on his mouth and stood up. At the door, she turned around once more. He had loosened the strand of hair and picked it up again, slowly and intently braiding a simple message into his hair. Waiting.

 

~

 

Grimbart had made a list of all the things they had to take with them. Shaelith knew this because he had read it out twice to her and everyone else and checked that they had not forgotten anything.

“Provisions, tools, ropes, tents, blankets…” he listed as he sorted bundles into his backpack. Thaelon, standing next to him, silently handed him the right items in the right order. The two reminded Shaelith of an old married couple cooking together.

“We’re walking,” Grimbart said energetically when Benderast cautiously mentioned the possibility of faster means of transportation. “On firm, solid, reliable ground. I’m not getting on anything that has wings, legs with joints that point in the wrong direction, or-“

“Grasshoppers have joints that point in the right-“

“WE’RE WALKING.”

Thaelon, who had looked like an overwintering plant since their arrival in Myzelemaerlazin, seemed alive for the first time in weeks. He stood somewhat fidgety at the entrance to Vyrnara Palace, as if he could already smell the sky and couldn’t wait to get out.

Mirrsoss fluttered through the room, wrapping objects in her Pilgrim’s Shawl, which now featured a new section in deep shades of purple and violet. Shaelith noticed that she had packed three decorative spore lights, a mycelial ink brush, and something that looked suspiciously like one of Shaelith’s earrings, but no change of clothes.

“Mirrsoss.”

“Hm?”

“My earring.”

“Oh! Sorry. It was so pretty, I forgot it wasn’t mine.” She handed it back without a trace of guilt.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this Umilari concept of non-possession.

Benderast stood in front of the mirror and attached Honor to the banner pole, which Grimbart had made with perfect craftsmanship, albeit a little annoyed by the banner’s constant babbling.

“WHAT A MAGNIFICENT MORNING!” proclaimed Honor. “The beginning of a noble adventure! The road calls, glory calls, and my brave bearer strides forward into history!”

“We haven’t even left the building yet,” said Shaelith.

“EVERY LEGEND BEGINS SOMEWHERE!”

Benderast grinned. He had regained his determination, had a direction to move in again, and that seemed to have finally brought him out of his gloom. 

Maybe he just got a new quest. It’s possible. I’ll have to ask him about it.

Laenre was waiting for them at the exit of the Palace.

She handed Shaelith a sealed bundle of documents. “Diplomatic credentials for Tulvia and Cobalt City. Money orders and an official recommendation to the Archwizard of the Cobalt Collegium.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

Laenre looked her over for a moment. Then she reached for Shaelith’s hair.

Shaelith stood still. Laenre loosened one of the front strands, rebraided it, and added a few small loops that Shaelith recognized immediately.

Loved by her mother.

The last time Laenre had braided this pattern for her, Shaelith had been a little girl who hadn’t even mastered the Illumination glyph yet.

Shaelith swallowed hard. Laenre took a step back.

“Come back safely,” said the matriarch, and not for the first time, Shaelith was in awe of how inscrutable her mother’s expression was.

“I will, Mother,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.

Laenre nodded briefly and turned away.

The climb out of the grotto took an hour. Grimbart, Thaelon, Mirrsoss, and Benderast wore the mycelium masks again, obscuring their vision, while Shaeravyn scouts led them out of the city. Shaelith walked behind them, one hand on Benderast’s shoulder to guide him, the other on her bag.

At the exit of the cave, where the tunnel opened up and the first daylight streamed in, she turned around one last time.

Myzelemaerlazin and its violet glow in the depths, warm and familiar and full of beauty, lay behind her, and with it the people who had made her what she was. Her home.

I’ll be back.

Then she stepped out into the light.

 

~

 

Thaelon stood in front of the tent, tilting his head back and taking a deep, satisfied breath.

They were just setting up their first camp. The evening was relatively cool and clear. They had the stars above them, soft grass beneath them and were listening to the sounds of nature at night.

Honor hung from his pole, which Grimbart had rammed into the ground next to Benderast’s sleeping place, and commented. Everything.

“What a majestic sunset that was! Did you see the colors, bearer? How the gold melted into purple, like a painting worthy of the great masters of…”

“Yes, very beautiful,” said Benderast.

“…and the stars! Oh, the stars! Each one an eternal silent witness to our noble-“

“Honor.”

“Yes, my bearer?”

“Sleep now.”

The banner puffed itself up in wounded dignity. “I am a Tulvian war banner. I do not sleep, I keep watch.”

“Then keep watch more quietly, please.”

Honor muttered something offended about the lack of appreciation for the artistic aspects of chivalry but sank down a little and fell silent.

An hour later, Shaelith lay in her tent next to Mirrsoss, who was already asleep, making a soft snorting sound somewhere between a purr and a refrigerator. A refrigerator. The word came from another world, another life.

She couldn’t sleep.

The contents of the journals were spinning around in her head. Dalibor’s diagrams, which she couldn’t make sense of, and all his obsessive notes from decades of research.

And he had found things. Fragmentary pieces of a pattern that he had gathered over decades from various sources. From ruins, from forgotten archives, and in the magical signatures of ancient artifacts. These Brownian tree structures that he had drawn again and again and marked with question marks. Incomplete, he had written in the margin. Source unknown. Possibly engine-related.

Shaelith rolled onto his back and stared at the tent ceiling.

Of course, he had thought it was Story Engine related, but was it? When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and Dalibor’s hammer had been his obsession with the narrative entity he suspected was behind everything. But then again, she herself was no smarter than Dalibor. But something about the pattern seemed disturbingly familiar to her, even if she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Shaelith’s eyes closed and she yawned. The image of the incomplete Brownian Trees hung behind her eyelids, like veins that couldn’t find each other, branches without a trunk, knots without a connection.

And then-

She slept. But she was wide awake.

Shaelith saw the pattern.

Not the fragments that Dalibor had collected and noted down, but the whole pattern, complete, every branch, every knot, every connection burned before her with a glistening light that slowly penetrated through ancient layers of sedimentary rock.

The branches fanned out in a logic she did not understand, but it seemed to her, like something searching for nutrients, for connections, for a substrate into which it could grow. It was an organism.

That’s not the Story Engine.

She couldn’t say how she knew, but the certainty was suddenly there, as unshakeable as her knowledge that up was up and down was down.

And then, behind the pattern, around the pattern, through the pattern, was the network. Inconceivably large, extending in all directions, root-like strands of hyphae stretching through something she couldn’t even comprehend as space, for which Shaelith had no word, neither in Shaeravyn nor in English nor in any of the many other languages she knew.

She knew it was asleep. Whatever it was. Or it lay in something resembling sleep, something deeper, heavier, like a consciousness under sedation, sluggishly groping for the surface and not quite getting through.

But still, it knew she was there. How did it know?

Shaelith felt its attention so clearly and so all-encompassing as she had never felt anything before.

And then the attention changed, becoming a pull, a tug, weak but strong enough to draw her along. The pull led away from Myzelemaerlazin, away from the depths beneath the city where the oldest mushrooms grew and House Zinvere kept its secrets.

The pull led outside, to the surface. In a direction she would never have found on a compass and that made no three-dimensional sense at all, but which she felt so clearly, as if she herself were the compass needle, pointing inexorably toward this strangely directionless destination.

And then it was over. She awoke.

Shaelith lay still, her eyes wide open and her heart pounding. Next to her, Mirrsoss continued to snore peacefully.

Her mind was racing.

Dalibor had been looking at the right thing, but from the wrong angle. He had attributed the pattern to the Story Engine, but it wasn’t the Story Engine. It was something else, something that had grown rather than been built.

And whatever it was, it wanted her to find it.

It’s out there. Somewhere along the way.