20. [Uicha] The Old Ways (Patreon)

--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—

Uicha de Orak, a young man of no renown or loyalty, finally getting to see the world

Kayenna Vezz, sorcerer of the old Kingdom of Orvesis, locked in Uicha’s head

Battar Crodd and Hunn Megeer, Death Knight and Ritualist of the Orvesian Witnesses, blessed by an assault of the old ways

Petra Reatz, a young woman of no renown, Orvesian Witnesses, meant to be keeping an eye on things

And, at the end, an unexpected visitor

***

10 Frett, 1538 on the old calendar

Plunder Ridge, Colonial Orvesis

2 years until the First Granting

The Orvesian horde rode west in loosely organized columns. Hundreds upon hundreds of warriors on horseback crossed the rocky plain, their black standards whipping in the cold air. The horses kicked up flurries of snow as they cantered so that, from Uicha's vantage point in the cliffs above, the army periodically disappeared from view.

Uicha could almost picture them disintegrating, a thousand bodies broken down into particles and swirling away on the chill wind.

“Where am I?” Uicha asked aloud. The answer came to him instinctively, even as his words were still turning to mist in front of his face.

He stood on Plunder Ridge. The broken cliffs ran across the eastern coast of the northern continent. This had been one of the first regions conquered by the Orvesians during their great expansion. Riches once flowed from these cliffs back to the capitol city—veins of gold and clusters of diamond—but the Orvesians were careless with their extraction. After only decades, Plunder Ridge had become depleted or otherwise unstable in areas due to the careless use of geological sorcery. That seemed to be the way of Orvesis—they were gifted conquerors but lackluster stewards. Now, Uicha watched as the armies once assigned to secure Plunder Ridge marched west, deploying for the towering forest that Uicha could just see on the horizon.

How did Uicha know this? He was no scholar of Orvesis. And anyway, so much knowledge of the dead kingdom had been lost during the annihilation. He doubted anyone remembered the particular economics of Plunder Ridge.

Perhaps a more pressing question was: why wasn’t he freezing to death?

Uicha stood on the cliff in the same tunic and pants he’d been wearing back in Ambergran, in the spring of his own time. The last thing he remembered was the ritualist Hunn Megeer dancing around him as he lay at the center of a chalk drawing. The whole experience felt silly, but it had obviously triggered something. Or else he’d slipped into a particularly vivid dream.

“I remember watching this,” said a woman’s voice. “I remember thinking how wasteful this deployment was.”

Uicha was unsurprised to find a dark-haired Orvesian woman standing next to him. Her presence felt natural. Of course it would—this was her memory. She was unexpectedly short, her squat frame wrapped in heavy furs. Her long hair caught in the wind, snapping about her face. Uicha judged her to be in her forties, although deep stress lines creased her face so she may have been younger. Her throat, Uicha noticed, was smooth and unmarked. She didn’t have the blackbird symbol of the Orvesian Witnesses because this was before—before Witnesses, before Ink.

“Kayenna Vezz,” Uicha said.

“Uicha de Orak,” the woman responded with a nod. “My gracious host.”

“Why have you brought me here?” Uicha asked. He had a hundred other questions for the mysterious presence that had turned his life upside down, but he decided to start there.

“I feel how you pine for the world outside your village. I thought I might show you a view that I always found stirring.” She lifted her hand, as if to obscure the columns of riders. “If you can ignore the army spoiling it.”

Uicha took a moment to gaze across the plains as he’d been instructed—swirling snow and vast scrubland, jagged peaks to either side of him, the sun hazy and golden—he’d never been to such a dizzying height before, never seen so much of the world at once. He still hadn’t, Uicha reminded himself. This wasn’t real.

Even though he didn’t truly feel the cold, Uicha still rubbed his skinny arms. “Thank you, I guess. If we have to do this, though, I think I’m built for warmer places.”

“I see,” Kayenna said. “I remember watching this. I remember thinking how wasteful this deployment was.”

Raising an eyebrow, Uicha turned to look at the woman. “You said that already.”

Uicha flinched and stumbled backward. A great gash had open across Kayenna’s throat, dark blood spilling down onto her chest. She turned to meet his gaze and half her face was missing, smashed in, skull fragments bursting through skin.

“By the ashes, your face!” Uicha cried. He tripped over his own feet and ended up sitting in the snow, staring up at the dead sorcerer.

“Apologies,” Kayenna said. In an instant, her face was whole again. “I am still in the process of rebuilding myself. My death remains the most vivid piece of me.”

Uicha clambered back to his feet. As he did, he noticed footprints in the snow leading away from their position. Kayenna hadn’t come up here alone; there had been someone else, although they had since turned back and left her. Uicha wondered at that, and his companion seemed to sense the path of his thoughts.

“I remember feeling disappointment,” Kayenna said. “Something started up here, I think. I haven’t found the rest of the memory.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Uicha said.

“Neither do I,” Kayenna said sadly.

Uicha waited for a moment, expecting her to say more. When she didn’t, he rejoined her at the edge of the cliff and cleared his throat.

“So, you’re in my body,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And this is one of your memories you’ve dragged me into.”

“Yes,” Kayenna said. “I am nothing but memories now. Not a woman anymore. Snatches of memory and years of knowledge, all jumbled together. Ideas of power. Remembrances of pain. I am not a person. I am an archive.”

Uicha nodded as if he understood more than every other word. “The Orvesian named Battar Crodd would very much like access to your archive.”

“I know. I can tell by his ritualist’s clumsy probing. I brought you here to deliver a message to them.”

“What message?”

“Leave me be.”

“Oh.” Uicha’s shoulders sank. “Instead, you could tell them how to free you from my body. You could be with your own people.”

“They are not my people,” Kayenna said. As the wind picked up again, she emphatically brushed some loose strands of hair out of her face. “Shaving their heads. Dressed like perpetual mourners. Coating themselves in the dead. They disgust me.”

Uicha rubbed the back of his neck. “You want me to tell Crodd that?”

“No. We may need him to protect us,” she said. “How did they become this way? The once mighty Orvesians. There is so much of the last sixty years I do not understand. Your knowledge is limited, Uicha de Orak. I would have you read more.”

“Oh, would you?” Uicha asked bitterly. “Crodd says he used to be a teacher. He probably knows anything you could want.”

Kayenna turned to study him. “You want me out of your body.”

“Yes.” If this hadn’t been something like a dream, Uicha would never have been so blunt. Even so, he felt inclined to add, “Please?”

“I cannot be moved to one of these Orvesians, no matter that they might prove more welcoming,” Kayenna said. “They have the curse of Ink upon them. That would destroy me.”

Uicha touched his own throat. “But my Ink could come back at any time…”

“It won’t. Even should your heart find loyalty, I keep the Ink away from you. This, at least, I remember how to do.”

“But…”

“I was meant for another,” Kayenna continued. “The urn’chan could only have opened for someone without Ink. Unfortunate for you, I suppose. Unlucky for both of us.”

“Okay, well, where is this other one?” Uicha asked, feeling a surge of hope that he might yet get out of this grim predicament.

Kayenna squinted at the horizon. “I do not remember. I might not have known. Those who constructed the urn’chan might have some idea. Perhaps they had plans for me.”

“So, you want me to find them?”

“Not you. I want you to do nothing. Go about your small life, pining after thwarted adventures, frolicking in the bedroom with your little friend…”

Uicha swallowed. “You, uh… you see all that?”

She ignored the question. “I need time to piece myself back together. I do not wish to be disturbed. If my misguided kinsmen truly wish to be of service, tell them to seek the creators of the urn’chan. Tell this Battar Crodd that he should quench his desire for power elsewhere. Mine is not for him.”

Uicha snorted. “Yeah. I'm sure he'll listen.”

Kayenna Vezz slowly turned to him. “If he will not listen, we will make him obey.”

***

29 New Summer, 61 AW

Uicha did not remember waking up. He did not remember standing.

Uicha found himself at the center of Hunn Megeer’s chalk drawing, the lines all blurred and broken as if a great force had swept across them. The ritualist himself sat against the far wall—where he’d been thrown—picking shards of clay out of his bony forearms. The figurines that he’d arranged at the edges of his arcane symbols had all been shattered. Hunn stared at the boy from Ambergran with a mixture of fear and awe.

At first, Uicha didn’t quite understand why. His arm was extended, open palm pointed toward the ceiling. Arcane force flowed from Uicha’s core, through his vibrating shoulder, and out through his hand. He couldn’t fathom the mechanics of the spell—the way he had warped the world to his will. That power had come from Kayenna Vezz. But Uicha did understand the result.

Battar Crodd was pinned against the farmhouse ceiling, his legs dangling, and eyes wide. His hands groped at the empty air in front of him, as if trying to shove away the invisible hand that held him there. Uicha sensed that he could tighten his grip on Crodd by closing his fist and did so, thrilling a bit as the Quill of the Orvesian Witnesses groaned in pain.

“Kayenna Vezz says to leave me alone,” Uicha said. “And to bring me some history books to read.”

Message delivered, Uicha dropped his arm. Upon doing so, Crodd fell to the floor in a clatter, crashing through the chair he’d been sitting in. Uicha felt the power he’d gathered leave him then and knew that he wouldn’t be able to use the spell on his own, not unless Kayenna Vezz decided to once again work through him. He felt suddenly exhausted, like some of the color had gone out of the world. The next time he looked in the mirror, he would be surprised to find a few gray hairs sprouting at his temples. He noticed how the fingernails on the hand he’d used to attack Crodd had whittled themselves back toward his knuckle, painfully short and raw.

The bargain for magic ate away at the body in a way it hadn’t in Kayenna Vezz’s time. That realization belonged to the Orvesian sorcerer within him, but Uicha felt it too.

Crodd leapt to his feet and for a moment Uicha worried he might be forced to defend himself. But the death knight simply grinned at him and clapped his hands.

“Excellent!” he shouted. “Excellent! What else did she say?”

“She wants you to find someone…”

Uicha staggered backward until he found his mother’s old rocking chair and sank into it. After catching his breath, he told the two Orvesians what he had learned.

He decided to leave out how little their ancestor seemed to think of them.

***

6 Hazean, 61 AW

The village of Ambergran, North Continent

264 days until the next Granting

And so, the summer days wore on and Uicha was both a prisoner in his own home and something of a revered figure among the Orvesians. Crodd and Hunn brought him books about the world after the Granting, as requested, including one written by Battar’s own father. They treated Uicha like a promising student. He found that he enjoyed the reading—and Crodd’s discursive teaching style—and that it satisfied the wanderlust that had been boiling in him for months. Kayenna Vezz did not make her presence known again, and for that Uicha was grateful.

Life was easy. There were days, like this one that ended with him and Petra luxuriating on the porch, when Uicha needed to remind himself that these people were killers.

He felt Petra tense next to him. She stood up and moved to the porch railing.

“Someone’s coming,” she said.

“Probably just Hunn or Battar,” Uicha replied.

“They’re witnessing tonight,” Petra replied. “It shouldn’t be over so soon.”

Uicha got up to join her. Parrot came too, the puppy wedging his head in between them and sniffing the air.

A solitary rider approached on the farm’s only road. On any other night, there would have been Orvesians in the field to question anyone who came near. However, the Witnesses were all gathered in town, trying to convert the people of Ambergran to their ways. Uicha wasn’t expected to attend because Crodd had decided it was better if the people of Ambergran forgot him, an idea that Uicha agreed with.

And so, Uicha and Petra were alone when the solitary rider reined in his horse right in front of the farmhouse. He was a sunken and ancient-looking man, bald, with an unkempt gray beard. He wore a finely tailored suit the color of red wine. His attire seemed preposterous for travel, and yet was oddly spotless.

The skinnier the man, the stronger the mage.The saying popped into Uicha’s head. He wasn’t sure from where.

Sure enough, in the fading light, Uicha spotted the open tome symbol of the Magelab on the man’s wrinkled neck.

“Can we help you, stranger?” Petra called.

“The house still stands, that’s some relief,” the mage replied. His eyes were two hard, black stones as he stared down Uicha. “You’re the son, aren’t you? Weaker? Something like that.”

“Uicha,” he said.

“Fine,” the mage replied. “Did your parents survive the annihilation, Uicha?”

Uicha hesitated. “They never had the chance.”

“Meaning?”

“They died last year,” Uicha said. “Pink pox.”

“Unlucky,” the mage said. “Condolences.”

“Do you know this man?” Petra asked quietly.

“Ahmed Roh,” Uicha said, remembering the name from his mother’s letter. “Right?”

The archmage swung his leg over the back of his horse and dismounted with more grace than Uicha would’ve thought possible for a man of his advancing age.

“If you know me, then you know why I’m here,” Roh said. He knuckled his back for a moment, then started toward the farmhouse. “Your parents were holding something for me. I am here to claim it.”

Petra slid over to stand at the top of the steps, blocking the archmage’s path. “Hold on, now, sir, you haven’t—“

Roh waved like he was swatting a fly and a comet-shaped burst of energy exploded from his hand. Petra screamed as she was struck in the chest, the impact sounding like an egg splattering on a skillet. The force tossed her backward, through the ajar front door. Parrot started barking madly, darting at the archmage’s feet.

“I have little patience for animals, Orvesian or canine,” Roh said, kicking at the dog until it scurried to Petra.

Uicha.

Frozen in place by the sudden violence, Uicha felt a new presence at this side. It was Kayenna Vezz, wrapped in dark furs like he’d last seen her, with the disconcerting wound on her throat belching blood as she spoke. Her shape was partly translucent, a spirit, flickering in and out of existence.

“This man can hurt us, Uicha,” she said. “You must run.”

“Ah,” Ahmed Roh said.

The archmage’s head was cocked and, Uicha realized, Roh was no longer looking in his direction. Instead, his eyes were transfixed on the empty space next to Uicha.

“She’s here with us, isn’t she?” Roh said. “You let her loose.”

Uicha took a step backward. The archmage faced him, making a slow circular motion with his hand. Arcane energy crackled in the air.

“A mercy,” Roh said, “that your parents do not live to see what becomes of their son.”