“It's quite a tale.”
“I'm not going anywhere.”
“Neither am I,” said Blaise somewhat contritely. She leaned on the bar, pillowing her chin in her hands. “Tell us of your heroic cowering in basements.”
“Blaise…” I said warningly.
“Don't mind her,” Aber said. “No one else does.”
Chuckling, he drained the rest of his stout, then motioned for Jamas to refill his tankard. With a new drink in hand, he cleared his throat, leaned back, and launched into his story.
After I left you and Dad at the Pattern,” Aber began, “I returned to our home in the Beyond. A week or more must have passed while we were away. The house was strangely quiet—it had that echoey, empty feeling a place gets when there's no one left alive. Even the torches had gone out.
“'Hulloo!' I called several times. I got no answer. Where had the servants gone?
“I used a quick spell and sent several balls of light spinning toward the ceiling. Their glow revealed a dozen corpses up there—on the ceiling. Each one had been beheaded. From their uniforms, they all belonged to the household guard.
“After that, I moved cautiously through the house, looking at all the damage. Every piece of furniture had been smashed, and every door had been torn from its hinges—even the magically protected doors. That took a lot of power. Uthor's men—at least, I assumed it had been Uthor's men—had not been fooling around.
“I counted thirty-nine headless bodies on the ground floor. The second and third floors had also been trashed. In my own rooms, someone had poured all the paints, pigments, and inks onto the floor, then smashed the empty jars against the walls. It made a huge sticky mess. Of course, I could replace it all; what really hurt was the loss of my storage trunks—and, with them, my most treasured possessions, including hundreds of Trumps I'd painted over the years. Those Trumps showed places I'd been, friends and classmates, and, most of all, relatives. I could easily imagine Uthor's men using them to round up our family.
“Dad's workshop had been cleaned out. Everything, from the largest of his inventions to the smallest scrap of notepaper, had been taken away. Not so much as a piece of lint remained. That didn't particularly worry me, of course—Dad hadn't looked at any of those things in decades. His last ten years of work and research had taken place in Juniper, after all.
“Finally I made a methodical search of the building from attic to basement. It didn't take me long to determine that nothing of value remained anywhere. I counted ninety-four bodies in all, all guards. None of our servants lay among the dead—they must have either run away or been taken prisoner… or, considering how hard it is to find good help these days, perhaps they were, ah, shall we say—forcibly hired away?
“Finding a mostly intact couch in one of the spare bedrooms on the fourth floor, I flopped down and tried to rest. I didn't know what else to do. From the looks of things, the lai she'one had gone through the house so thoroughly, they wouldn't need to come back. I felt safe enough for the moment.
“Exhaustion overcame me. I fell asleep.
“When I finally awakened, hours must have passed. But instead of feeling rested and refreshed, a strange uneasiness settled over me. I had never felt anything like it before. An odd pressure filled my ears. My nerves jangled in warning. The very air itself seemed curiously charged, almost as though a lightning storm were about to break. More than anything else, I wanted to crawl into a hole and pull it closed after me… and yet I could not have told you why.
“Something was coming. Something bad. I felt it in my bones.
“It took more courage than I thought I still had, but I forced myself to go downstairs. Cautiously, I crept to the front doors—one lay flat on the ground; the other hung off its hinges at an angle—and I peeked out.
“The sky looked strange. Clouds boiled and churned, lit from within by constantly striking bolts of blue lightning. All across the courtyard, balls of fire rained down, smoking and smoldering. The air shimmered with odd hues of blue and gold. Then, as I watched, the ground shuddered and rippled like a lake in a windstorm. The rocks lay still.
“When I looked up, beyond the outside wall I saw a shimmering yellow-gold curtain of light slowly moving toward me. It must have been a hundred and fifty feet tall—maybe taller. I stepped outside to see better. Through the open gates to our estate, I saw the ground beneath it churning and breaking apart as it advanced.
“This was my first glimpse of a storm from the Shadows. I had heard tales of them before—they hit Chaos many years ago, I assume when Dad drew the very first Pattern and first created all the Shadows—but I had never thought I would see one this close.
“I backed up in sudden panic, then turned and fled into the house. The walls and floor shook; corpses slid across the ceiling. Colors bled like ink in water, and that sense of pressure building in my head grew so bad, I could barely see straight.
“I fled deeper inside, looking for a place to hide. Small balls of light appeared everywhere, rolling across the floor and walls and ceiling, pooling in the corners. Where could I go? Underground, maybe?
“As I ran toward the kitchens and the nearest staircase to the basement, the walls started to bubble and dissolve. A rushing, ripping, grinding noise rose to deafening levels. I would never make it—the storm had caught me.
“The walls started to peel away and fly into the air. An odd tingling began in my hands and feet. When I raised my arm, I found my flesh had grown translucent—I could see through it. If I didn't do something fast, I wouldn't live through the storm.
“I pulled out the first place-Trump I could find—it showed Triffiq Square in the Courts of Chaos—and used it to jump straight there. I barely made it in time. When I came through, I collapsed and couldn't get up for a few minutes. My arms and legs wouldn't work. I must have been babbling incoherently—I remember strangers helping me up and asking me questions I couldn't understand—but everything else is jumbled and fragmentary.
“Someone there must have recognized me and reported my arrival to Uthor's spies. By the time I came to my senses, the lai she'one were on the lookout for me. I spent the better part of a day losing them. Of course, the Shadow storm helped—between earthquakes, lightning storms, and squalls of destruction like the one that hit our house in the Beyond, not even their urhounds made much progress that day.
“For two days, I hid out and watched and tried not to attract any attention. The storm-darkened sky continued to show spectacular light-effects. Now and then the ground shook—a lot more than it should have, anyway—but the storms that reached the Courts were nowhere near as bad as the ones in the Beyond.
“Over the next few days, I tried repeatedly to reach family members. I managed to contact Conner and Freda. Conner was in the Beyond, safely ensconced with Titus at their Uncle Clengaru's keep, which had been spared from the worst of the Pattern storms; Freda had taken refuge with one of her aunts in the Courts. Neither could take me in, so that left me in something of a quandary. With the Shadows gone, our ancestral home destroyed, and the lai she'one searching for all of us, I didn't have many choices left.
“Finally, in desperation, I returned to the Beyond. Our home had been devastated; what the lai she'one hadn't destroyed, the storm had. The walls had melted, the roof had been ripped away, and little remained beyond a misshapen puddle of melted stone, wood, and glass. Only one wall still stood from the main building, and at its tallest, it couldn't have been more than six feet.
“For a while, I searched among the debris, but found nothing of any possible use. Everything had melted and run together. It was a complete loss.
“I took shelter in one of the small guardhouses that had been part of the wall surrounding our keep. Miraculously, it had escaped unharmed—though I couldn't say the same for the three men whose bodies lay inside. The lai she'one had beheaded them and left their bodies rotting on the ceiling. I dragged them outside, released them, and let them drift into the sky. That took care of the worst of the stench.
“I stayed there for a week, hiding out and waiting to be discovered. Using the Logrus, I snatched food and drink—along with books and anything else I needed for comfort—from nearby Shadows. I talked with Freda several times a day. The one time I reached Conner, he told me he didn't think he and Titus would be alive much longer… people in his uncle's household were giving them strange looks, growing silent when they entered rooms, or just refusing to talk to them or dine with them. He said they blamed Dad for the Shadow-storms. He didn't know what to do or where else to go.
“Of course, I offered to bring them both through to join me, but he wouldn't hear of it. Better dead than living like an animal, he told me scornfully.
“Every day I watched as new storms came through the Beyond, each a little less severe than the last. Fortunately none of these hit near me, and I waited them out in relative comfort and safety.
“Two weeks passed. The towering Shadow-storms had all but ceased, though tiny squalls continued. When I tried to reach Conner, I suddenly got no response. Freda told me she feared what might happen if she ever left her aunt's house. An angry mob had tried to drive her out the day before.
“That was the last time I talked to her. The next day, I couldn't reach her anymore. I assumed she had been killed or arrested, too, like Conner. I would probably be next.
“Another week passed. Loneliness finally got the better of me, I couldn't hide in the ruins for the rest of my life. I had to go out and see what had happened.
“Shapeshifting has never come easily to me, but I changed my features as best I could. Disguised as an old man, I returned to the Courts to see what I could learn.
“When I arrived, a strange mood hung over the streets—anxious, apprehensive, and most of all afraid. People in the streets and plazas stood in small knots, talking and looking around apprehensively. I half expected guards and soldiers to appear, dispersing the crowds, but none did.
“And, as I walked, I couldn't help but notice all the damage. Many buildings had collapsed from the force of the earthquakes and the storms. Giant stones—the kind normally found in the wildest parts of Chaos—nosed among the wreckage like grazing cattle. Women cried and men searched among the debris for loved ones.
“I wandered slowly through the Courts, pausing now and then as I caught interesting bits of conversation. Everyone seemed to be voicing the same thoughts:
“'Dworkin betrayed Chaos.'
“'How many more storms will Dworkin send to destroy us?'
“'Dworkin must be stopped.'
“As I got closer to the palace, I noticed a distinct change in the tone. Instead of 'How will the king stop Dworkin?' it became, 'The king can't protect us anymore. Someone else must!'
“At any other time, such words would have been treason. And to hear well-respected citizens openly saying such things in the streets! Incredible!
“When I got to the palace, I found the gates shut and barred. Grim-faced guards stood at all the entrances, swords out. I tried not to stare, but they were so preoccupied with watching the crowds that they wouldn't have noticed me anyway.
“Then I noticed two severed heads hanging from the spikes to either side of the gates… Mattus and Titus. Signs hung from both—BORN OF A TRAITOR. A coldness touched my heart. King Uthor must have executed them to try to appease the crowds. Only it hadn't worked. Everyone wanted Dad's blood. Nothing else would satisfy them at this point.