Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead. Robert Hood

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      “I’m sure someone has misplaced the documentation, that’s all. It’ll get sorted out. But until it does, you must refrain from practicing your Art commercially. I’m sorry.”

      Argument was useless. In a rage, she went to the Faen-Hassur Shas’torarb, which housed the Seminary and had been for so long her only home, and told the Dean her story. He was sympathetic, but it was clear that neither his jurisdiction nor his outlook extended much beyond the walls of the school. She talked to some of her teachers to the same end. It was her problem, they said. If she chose to resist the system, there was little they could do to help her.

      It made her isolation all the more apparent. What friends she’d made during her years of study were scattered across the world now; only one had remained in Koerpel-Na—Seran, a young woman born far outside Vesuula and adept at various minor commercial magics. Accordingly, Remis sought her out and they went for a drink together, but already their paths had separated. Their talk was superficial, emotional connections weak. It left her feeling morose. More and more she thought of the family she’d left behind many years ago in the mountain plains just outside the northern Vesuulan border. Her father hadn’t wanted her to go, had instead wanted her to marry the son of a local landowner and thus cement the family’s local fortunes. “What else are girl-children for?” he’d yelled. They’d fought about it, long and hard; Remis had left home in a storm of argument and regret. She hadn’t seen either her father or his wife for over five years, though once her mother had written—a tense, clumsy missive which Remis had too easily discarded. To whom or to what was she connected? She’d abandoned her bloodline and the society she’d adopted was abandoning her. Perhaps it had been a mistake to place so much hope on a vision of the future. Of what real worth was it anyway?

      “You must ask yourself what it is you want out of life, Remis,” one of her old teachers offered her. Right now, she didn’t know.

      Walking home that afternoon, she passed the forge of a smithy whose skills she’d used on occasion when her own non-magical technical abilities hadn’t been up to the metal-working required for some particular object she was devising. The smithy was named Arhl Mogarni, and his ultra-pale skin and borderland accent branded him as much an alien in this cosmopolitan city as she was becoming herself. Koerpel-Na wasn’t as open a place as it pretended to be, she reflected. It was closed-off and unfriendly, greedy for foreign trade but subtly exclusive in its practices, even to those it had beckoned into the fold.

      As she approached, she saw that the smithy was standing in his front yard, leaning against the large open door of his workroom—obviously seeking momentary relief from the interior heat. He noticed her and waved. On an impulse, she veered closer.

      “Hello, Mogarni,” she said.

      He acknowledged her with unexpected eagerness. “Please, it’s Arhl,” he said. “No formality necessary.”

      “Taking a break?”

      “Not entirely by choice.” He smiled a touch wryly. “Work is scarce.”

      “For me, too. It’s hopeless.”

      The look of concern that spread over his pale, bony features seemed overstated—she should have been more careful what she said. He had always adopted a fatherly air in her presence.

      She shrugged. “It’s all right. I’m just feeling a bit sorry for myself. I’m finding it harder than I imagined. Independence, I mean.”

      He nodded dumbly, as though he’d been close to revealing too much and had suddenly realized the fact. “You deserve better,” he mumbled.

      “I’m sure things will improve.”

      She wished him well and continued on her way, vaguely disappointed. What had she expected? There had been some sort of connection between Arhl Mogarni and herself, but it had felt distant and awkward. They hardly knew each other—and not personally—so how could it be otherwise?

      * * * *

      Her nights, lying alone in her rooms, filled with dreams and omens. These gnawed at her incessantly, like rats at a hessian grain-sack. She shivered in her bed, desperate to throw them off. But they gathered about her mind in ever-thickening clusters, finally coming together into shapes of terrible significance.

      One night a few days after her abortive meeting with Lanaris House’s lackey—finding herself on the verge of acquiescence—Remis lay on her bed in the semi-dark, staring at the ceiling, wishing she could find some resolve. After a while the shadows seemed to move toward her. She blinked to steady them, but they only drifted closer, wrapping themselves around her.

      She was standing before a creature of corrupted flesh, a death-being whose eyes were black and lifeless in their sockets. Its limbs were shrunken, but the muscles on them were bound like thick twine about its bones. Fearfully she offered this creature a bronze-edged coffer and watched as it took the offering in its hands. It stared mutely at the object that lay inside: a spiky, jagged-limbed artifact that made her think of a candle-gleam caught in stone. Although she only vaguely recognized the shape, it created in her a strong urgency and a sense of awe. There was greed, too. She indicated for the creature to place its hand upon the object.

      At that moment the skin of the creature’s face tore like volcanic ground splitting apart under vast subterranean pressure; its hand became a knife that cut out her heart in one bloodless stroke. She screamed as pain twisted her muscles. The candle-gleam artifact sprang from the cut and its pointed, undulating arms grew swiftly, flowing outward and around, engulfing her, binding her, one with her body and spirit, utterly consuming her every thought. Then the artifact began to rise away from her and it drew her life with it, leaving her crying out in despair and torment. There was fire in her chest and it supplanted the hollowness of her body, flowing through her like blood. Desolation overtook the world. She cried out: “Where are you going?” but the evanescent artifact gave no reply. Its departure left the world ablaze.

      Remis was tossed into wakefulness. She stared up at the ceiling still, re-living the nightmare in an effort to secure it in her memory. She was a student of the Deep Power, and in the philosophy of the Magic Arts dream-imagery held mysteries it was worth making an effort to solve. The meaning of this one escaped her.

      The night was quiet, and her surroundings suddenly unfamiliar. Her wooden casements had been transformed into threatening alien relics.

      A storm pelted heavy rain drops against her tile roof, creating a rumble that vibrated through the baked-clay walls. Wind swept over her. She shivered and dragged herself from her bed, realizing that a door or window must have been blown open in the sudden tempest. Sure enough, as she emerged from her room into the central corridor, she could see along it to the square of liquid dark that should have been the closed front door. She cursed. Her feet padded across the gritty sandstone floor toward it.

      Lightning flared, cracking the night apart. There was something there, in the doorway. Two vivid green eyes, low to the ground, pierced into hers, surrounded by a compact gray shape. A cat?

      For a moment, while storm-light lingered in the air, and as the building trembled with the concussion of lagging thunder, she stood as though paralyzed, staring at this specter. Then darkness engulfed her.

      She moved forward again. The cat was no longer there. Remis leaned out into the storm, glancing up and down the street. Nothing but the detritus of the night.

      She shut and locked the door and in the resulting stillness went back to her bed.

      iv.

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