Across the Darkling Sea Read online

  “Ahem.”

  The sound startled her, and she jerked upright, refocusing her eyes on the gentleman who’d taken Grag’s name at the Search desk. “Oh!” she said, jumping to her feet in embarrassment and hurrying over to the desk. “My apologies, sir.”

  “Warlock Grag, registered, location unknown.”

  “Location unknown? What does that mean?”

  The man peered at her over the top of his glasses, the frown lines on either side of his mouth deepening to a depth that mirrored the buttresses overhead. “It means his location is unknown,” he said.

  “But, doesn’t the glyph track him? Updating any time a warlock moves about? You’re supposed to know everywhere they settle once they’ve Signed!” Ling could hear the panic in her voice, and she hated it, but she couldn’t suppress her fear. If the Registrary couldn’t offer her a lead, she was left with only one option, and it was not one she relished. “Please, sir. You must have something.”

  The man studied her, his face impassive and motionless except for the slightest twitch in his right cheek. “It is a spot odd, dearie. We’ve no record saying so, but it suggests Warlock Grag has crossed the veil.”

  The thought that Grag might be dead was far more terrifying than the idea that he simply couldn’t be found. “No, that’s...that’s impossible!” Ling said. “I know he isn’t dead.”

  “Oh? I’ve not heard of a power such as that. Are you Signed? If you’re not Signed, you must proceed immediately to the Sign line.” The man pointed to the desk on the far side of the room as he leaned forward and gave a loud sniff. Ling wasn’t sure if this was an expression of disgust or if the man had actually sniffed at her. She was rather convinced it was the latter.

  “No, no....” Ling forced herself to calm down. “I am not a warlock. I have no power. I just...He is a very powerful warlock. I just don’t believe he is dead,” she finished calmly.

  “Indeed.” The man stared at her.

  “Can I have his last known location?”

  “Last known location, the Salt Caves of the Colli Terra.”

  “The Salt Caves of the Colli Terra,” Ling repeated. “And where is that exactly? Is it here, on Dreggs?”

  The man gave a deep sigh and leaned back in his chair. “Marique,” he said, his tone clearly conveying his irritation.

  “I’m sorry. Is it here on Marique?”

  “It’s in the Colli Terra,” he repeated.

  Ling shrugged at him, eyes wide. “I’m not—”

  “The hilly lands at the center of Marique. You do know what hills are, don’t you?”

  Ling put on what she hoped was her most charming smile. “Yes, of course. Could you tell me, though, the best way to get there from here?”

  “No one goes to the Colli Terra.”

  “Warlock Grag went there.”

  The man’s eyes widened slightly, though whether at her cheeky manner or something else altogether, she didn’t know. “The only folk who visit there are those with trouble on their minds,” he said, his lips stiff.

  “Well, it turns out trouble is exactly what I’ve got on my mind,” Ling said, turning up the charm on her smile.

  The man scowled at her and sat quiet. Ling wondered briefly if he had any sort of authority in Marique and whether she’d made a mistake in claiming she was looking for trouble.

  “Look up. You can see the hills from anywhere. Go toward them if you’re so insistent on getting there,” he finally replied. He stood and slammed the book on his desk closed. “Good day,” he said, and stalked out of the room.

  Ling watched him go, surprised at his tone and manner, and a little frightened at his words. She’d replied cheekily that trouble was just what she was after, but truthfully, she wanted none of it.

  She looked at the other two clerks sitting at their respective desks. They both stared back at her over their identical wire-frame glasses, unblinking. She turned away from them and walked out of the Registrary and into the bright sunlight of late evening, where she stopped abruptly.

  The deep green of the walkway stretched away in both directions from where she stood, centered in a wide expanse of the deep pink water. To her left was a broad swath of water dotted with disks of green stone that seemed to float on the surface. The dots of stone led to a tall wall stretching so high she couldn’t see the top, with shops snugged tightly against it on a narrow stretch of more green stone. To her right, towering trees and narrow spires of stone rose from the opaque pink water, many of them holding one or more doorways of various sizes and shapes. In others, sprawling houses were cradled in the branches of the trees or balanced precariously on the stony outcroppings.

  The water was high, up to the very edge of the walkway, and so smooth it looked like pink glass, reminding her of the Mare Tenebrarum. She walked to the edge and stared into the depths. She saw nothing in there, but soft rills disturbed the water as she approached, evidence of the life that lived below the surface.

  The colors were as magnificent as she’d thought they would be, and she again felt a pang for paint and canvas. In all the stories she’d heard of this place, no mention had ever been made of its beauty, and she wondered at that.

  She turned to look back at the Registrary to find it was, indeed, housed in a vast tree. She now saw that what she’d originally thought were statuary were actually carvings made directly into the wood to either side of the door. A woman on one side, a man on the other. They faced one another, their hands stretched over their heads to clasp at the apex of the entrance. They were clothed in robes of such brilliant color that Ling wondered if they had been painted with magic rather than stain. The woman’s lips and chin were stained a deep green, reminiscent of the stone at Ling’s feet. The man had an impressive coif of hair piled high on his head and, most spectacularly, enormous wings sprouting from his back and the legs and feet of a bird. He was naked but for a thin band at his waist and brilliant fabric that draped down the outer edges of his legs.

  Swirling green malachite rained down from their joined hands above, settling into place neatly below to form the wide avenue all around them. It was beautiful, but for the harsh defacing of the male figure. Where his face should have been was nothing but a blackened hole.

  With a shudder, she turned from the Registrary and looked back along the walkway. The sea wall stretched as far along the pathway as she could see, and the enormous houses were connected to the walkway by all manner of pathways. Some were nothing more than a rope strung from one side to the other, requiring the entrant to balance carefully in order to cross. Others were linked with narrow bridges of rope or wood. In some cases, the roots of the trees themselves appeared to have been shaped to connect the estate to the walkway.

  People milled about on the walkways, but there was none of the chatter that normally accompanied groups of people loitering about. The people of Malach went about their business in silence. The few conversations she could see from where she stood were between people huddled tightly together, leaning close to one another and whispering quietly. In Meuse that kind of behavior would be looked upon with suspicion. Here it seemed the norm, though Ling couldn’t help but wonder what necessitated such secretive communications.

  Many of the people on the walkway had stained chins and wore robes of the same color as their ink. Some few had a jewel embedded in their chins or ears like Fariss had, but this seemed quite rare. Many of those without stained chins wore white robes, and Ling thought these must be warlocks in training. Many others wore schor trousers and soft, colorful tops, much like she would see anywhere in Brielle. She had no idea if these were warlocks just starting their journey or regular people who called this place home.

  Night was fast approaching, and she had much to record in the grimoire. She scanned the buildings to the side of the road as she walked along, seeking out the inn Fariss had pointed out. When she finally saw it, she knew immediately she would not stay there.

  The inn was large, with tall windows glinting in the sunl
ight every few feet. She counted ten stories. It was made of some sort of white stone and seemed to grow directly out of the stone below it. Tovensteen magic. They had the power of stone and earth and mineral. She wondered what it must have looked like, watching a massive structure grow straight from the rock it sat upon. She wondered how long it took to grow. It shone in the evening light, a beautiful sight to behold.

  The problem, however, was the clientele. The walkway leading up to the inn was wide, a color similar to that of the rest of the building, and filled to bursting with white-robed acolytes. A smattering of full warlocks in the colors of their disciplines stood out brightly among all the white, and groups of acolytes seemed to cluster around them while they spoke. It appeared the building was less an inn and more the starting-off point for those with warlock ambitions, and there was no way she was going to run that gauntlet of magic.

  She walked on, staring in awe at the spectacle before her. The avenue was grand and the houses even more so. Despite being snugged in the branches of the trees, they were larger even than her home in Meuse, and they were made of all manner of brilliant stone: malachite green, amethyst purple, obsidian black, citrine yellow. She couldn’t fathom how it was possible for such large structures to hang in those trees or to balance on such narrow spires of stone without destroying them.

  The main thoroughfare was crowded with these houses, and she knew she’d never find a place to rest. She sought for some branching roadway as she walked, and she was almost back to the Palm before she found one.

  It was winding and narrow and made of plain gray rock. It split off from the main avenue, vanishing between two lavish, sprawling houses. She turned onto it confidently, both emboldened by and nervous about the lack of other people doing the same.

  The bustle of the main thoroughfare fell quickly behind her and, with surprise, Ling saw that so did the grandeur. Behind the striking houses that lined that beautiful green roadway was nothing but ruin.

  The houses on either side of the plain, gray path had been impressive at one point, but years of neglect had taken their toll. Even those houses that still stood had busted-out windows, mostly collapsed walls, and gaping doorways.

  There were no people, either. A fact that she felt quite relieved by, in truth, but also quite baffled by. Fariss had indicated there were large numbers of warlocks, and Ling had imagined Malach as a city at least the size of Middelhaern as he’d spoke. But it appeared it was smaller even than Meuse.

  It was difficult for her to imagine such powerful people allowing so much of their city to fall into ruin. Ling wondered if this were the result of the war Fariss had mentioned, or if something else were at play here.

  More fascinating than the utter ruin such a short distance away from the main thoroughfare, though, were the statues. Spaced evenly along the walkway, there were numerous figures that defied imagination and some, she realized with absolute shock, that were quite familiar. The statues stood tall and perfect, untouched by the age and disrepair of the houses around her.

  At the Registrary, the carving of the bird-man had been defaced violently. But here, out of sight of the main roadway, hidden in a place of ruin and disrepair, someone, or a group of someones, maintained them.

  In front of her was a statue of what was unmistakably a sirené. She was tall and glorious, her fish tail curved in a swoop as it might look while driving her upward toward the surface. The tail blended seamlessly into a human torso, the brilliant silver scaling reaching up to her neck, covering the swell of her breasts and the hollows beneath her reaching arms. Her eyes were large, wide open, and swirling with light and color in a way that Ling found disconcerting. Her head was thrown back in joy, hair spinning around her face as if she danced.

  She had seen sirené before—she’d read about the experience in the grimoire. They were violent, mindless creatures, nothing like the joyous creature in front of her. Treantos had said something about them, though. She opened the bag and slid out the grimoire, searching through the pages to find it.

  Treantos had said they were neither animal nor Mari. “Not anymore,” he’d said. She’d wondered what he’d meant then, but hadn’t had the chance to ask. This statue suggested they had been more than just the raging beasts of the Mare Tenebrarum.

  She moved forward, her mind spinning. What if not all Mari looked like Alyssum? What if the bird-man she’d seen in the carvings outside the Registrary and the beautiful sirené statue also depicted Mari? Fariss had said the war between them had been raging for centuries. But if she was right, there had been a community of Mari living right alongside the warlocks. Had they lived together, in peace, before? If that was the case, what had started the war and caused the sirené to become little more than ravenous monsters? Had Fariss had a hand in it? Treantos seemed to think so.

  Ling wondered what could possibly drive people who had been friends once to such depths of hatred. She couldn’t imagine that ever happening in Meuse. She didn’t like everyone there, to be sure. But war?

  Then, suddenly, she could think of something. She thought back to the grimoire’s descriptions of her mother’s face, Laera’s face, colored with hate as Hanner twisted the fabric ever tighter around Ling’s chest. Rudy’s helpless tears, her father’s broken acceptance, the jeers and shouts and leers of people she’d known all her life as Hanner tortured her. There was something that could drive friends and family to the darkest reaches of hate.

  Magic.

  Her people were right to fear magic and despise it if it could drive people to do such horrid things. They were right to despise her, too, and to try to destroy her. They had not been strong enough, though. Not her mother, not Hanner, not her father. But she was. She was right to seek out her own undoing.

  She looked around, wondering where all the Mari had gone. Had they all turned into creatures like the sirené? And if they had, where were they now? The sirené were in the Mare Tenebrarum, but she’d seen nothing to suggest the others had gone there as well.

  The Colli Terra. The thought filled her with dread. The man at the Registrary had warned her about going there. Could the Mari all be there now, raging through the heart of Marique in new and terrible forms?

  The sun sank below the western horizon, and Ling settled into a space between two towering trees, shaken. Neither of the trees held houses in their branches, and their roots had grown large and unruly. They were tall enough to keep her dry and so large she could easily hide amongst them should anyone pass by.

  One of the trees sloped in a way that perfectly fit the curve of her back, and she settled against it, grimoire open in her lap. Birds tittered and flitted endlessly above her in the twilight, and the leaves murmured at the touch of a soft breeze.

  She forced herself to lean back into the hold of the sun-warmed tree and began to write. Tomorrow, she would find a way into the Colli Terra, no matter what might be there, and shortly after she would find Grag and her unmaking.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  There was no trace of the sun when Evelyn opened her eyes. Above her stretched massive arms of wood so heavily laden with leaves she couldn’t see the sky. There were no trees in Meuse anything like the towering canopy she was staring into now.

  As she stared, a fat drop of water formed above her, holding tightly to the leaf that had birthed it before releasing its grip and annihilating itself against her cheek. The rich, moldering smell was, in many ways, quite familiar. It was the smell of a place that was never fully dry, with a constant stream of leaves and wood being birthed and shed to decay in the water below. This was a smell she knew well. But it was also different in a way she could not clearly identify.

  She was huddled in the roots of some massive tree, her feet partially submerged in a pink liquid substance that looked and acted like water. She had no idea how she’d gotten here, or even where here was.

  She pushed herself up, pulling her feet from the pink liquid. She pressed her back against the rough wood behind her, and as she did so, somethi
ng heavy fell from her chest and settled onto the root beside her. A book. A thick, heavy book.

  She rubbed the rough bark of the tree, pressing her finger into its hard and unyielding texture, the rough feel of it reassuring and grounding. She closed her eyes, inhaling for a slow count of three before exhaling for another slow count of three. After several minutes, her heartbeat slowed, and she opened her eyes once again.

  In the far northern ports of Brielle, the ground began rising into the towering White Mountains of Vosh. There, the ground rose up out of the soggy swamp that so characterized Brielle and began to dry out enough to support trees with thick trunks and strong, reaching branches that stretched high into the sky. She had always marveled at the size of them, so much bigger than anything in Brielle. But they were tiny compared to the trees around her now.

  Evelyn could not fathom how she could have gotten to such a strange place. She’d gone to bed at home just last night. What she was seeing in front of her was impossible. There was no place anywhere in Brielle that looked anything like this. Her eyes fell on the heavy book at her side, and she flipped open the cover. Her own handwriting stared back at her.

  Read this before you do anything else. Start at the beginning.

  She shivered. Such innocuous words, but they filled her with dread. She had no idea where she was, and it was clear that aside from the birds flittering around in the trees, she was alone.

  Where are my parents?

  She flipped through the pages of the book, seeing page after page of tightly spaced words, all of it in her handwriting. She flipped back to the first entry and began to read. An hour later, she flipped the cover closed. She closed her eyes, too, and leaned back into the gentle curve of the tree.