Oathbreaker ch 9.28 - Wanderer (Patreon)

I wasted little time in making my plan and executing it. Time was of the essence, after all. I did not believe for a moment that Didikas had found me in the Campanile by mere happenstance, and my only chance lay in quick and brutal action.

In retrospect, I played quite the fool in that little drama. If Didikas had appeared at the tower to goad and threaten me, as I believed, then I was playing right into his hands. But I was angry and frightened. How could I not be? He possessed my true name and the knowledge of how to use it. There is no greater power any mortal can hold over me.

That night, I crossed the waters of the narrow bay which separated the bell tower and the city. Ember was in festival that night, one of a number of yearly celebrations that brought its citizens out into the streets in their brightest colors and loosest moods. There was music and dancing in the squares, lesser magicians using their skills to entertain the crowds and perhaps draw the attention of the old man across the water, who was always seeking new apprentices.

It was so different from Rot Voraag, and though I’d lived here decades longer than I ever did in that more ancient city, it felt strange to me still. The dark jewel of the western wastelands had held a sense of the familiar with the novel, being a place where I could act to my nature and feast as I willed on misery. Ember, on the other hand, was the child of a wholly different world. It had not been truly threatened since the last of the Urnic Crusades a hundred and sixty-three years to the day, which had foundered before its walls.

A different world, indeed. The old Magi were either defeated or subdued, Antriss left battered and sullen behinds its mountains, the dread gods who’d ruled the world before the flooding of Oroion little more than names. Those demons who remained on the earth, like myself, were forced to keep quiet and keep to the shadows, lest we be hunted.

The age of dark lords and dark gods had ended, and in my hidden thoughts I found the world better for it, though the brash succubus who once prowled the Exalted’s city would have spat on me for the admission.

I would need to become her again, at least for a short while. Then I could go back to my students and my studies, my daydream of a different self.

I had other contacts besides the High Carillonneur. My first stop was with a magistrate, the great-grandson of a warlock I’d made a pact with during my early years in Ember. That bargain persisted even through generations, and I occasionally had favors performed in return for my patronage, which accounted for no small measure of his current status. It took the frazzled politician an hour to check his books, speak to a few put-upon clerks, and provide me what I needed.

Didikas had indeed arrived at the city recently, merely a few days past and without pomp or ceremony. He’d moved some luggage into a small but comfortable house near the harbor, had made contact with several officials of middling repute, and taken an expensive lunch in a restaurant I preferred. That last detail irritated me, and by the time we finished I’d terrified the magistrate near to fainting.

“How did he present himself to the Traveler’s Bureau?” I asked, referring to the administration that handled caravans and adventurers in the city.

The magistrate dabbed at his brow with a cloth and squinted at his papers. He had to read by candlelight, for I didn’t permit him to see my face. I took my true form, so he would be able to hear the agitated flexing of my wings and the hiss of my tail in the dark. “It looks like he used the name you gave me,” he said. “A minor dignitary attached to the estates of a Count Ibrak von Kell. I’ve got nothing on him besides a seal on some caravans dating back the last ten years. Looks like he owns stocks in a few reputable businesses, most of them in the east.”

So that had been true at least. It drew some of my suspicion away from Harmodian. There was nothing outwardly suspicious about the people Didikas had made contact with, besides the High Carillonneur, who was only notable if you didn’t know they were both Magi. The rest had been shareholders in the caravan business, and one who gave patronage to theaters. That last was interesting.

I had mercy on the magistrate then and left him. My next stop was the theater noted in Didikas’s contacts, a small but well regarded troupe who’d established themselves in one of the city’s halls six years before. They reenacted imperial era dramas, mostly, and a few stories from the Crusades. Ember loved remembering the Urnic invasion, because the city garrison had routed the crusaders and driven them from the river valleys.

Of course, it was actually Harmodian Abrax who had flooded the valleys and besieged the Aureates with storms during every step of their journey. The old man might be a passive recluse in the present, but he’d survived ancient wars and was no cotton bear. Ember had him to thank for the fact that it was one of the few cities in eastern Edaea that did not live under the shadow of the God-Queen’s gilded cathedrals.

The theater was playing that night for the festival. I sat in and watched the performance, and had to begrudgingly admit that Didikas possessed fine taste. They did not shy from darker topics, and the performers were as knowledgeable of their source material as they were skilled.

Afterward, I tracked down each of the others Didikas had made congress with that evening, spying on them where they drank at taverns, drawing those they employed into dark alleys where I could whisper suggestions into their thoughts that would later give me passage into their dreams.

Eventually, I had to admit to myself that I was stalling, trying to find out what Didikas was up to and uncover some sort of conspiracy that I could sabotage. None of that mattered. I didn’t need to know what his ambitions were, and didn’t care. He just needed to die, and the knowledge he held with him.

Any defenses he might muster would require a fortified sanctum, guardians, spells worked into the fabric of threshold and hearth, as well as defenders posted in the ghost world that overlaps the earthly one. Those things take time, and he’d only been in the city a handful of days. There would be no more opportune night.

So I went to his house at the harbor, intending to have to it done with.

On my arrival, I found no dread sorcerer’s fortress. The house was two stories, well built against the damp environs, and nestled into one of the better neighborhoods. The same sort of place wealthier tradesmen and foreign dignitaries would keep their families in. There were no guardians on the outside, and I was able to steal right up to the sill of a second story window in phantom-shape without incident.

And there I was, my claws scraping the windowsill, my eyes peering into the darkened depths of my old flame’s home. How ridiculous I consider myself, looking back, a caricature of my own obsession, the starving vampire at the window.

And like the vampire herself, I ghosted through the seam of the window and manifested in the room beyond. It was unoccupied and dark, though that was no obstacle to my demon’s eyes. The room contained a desk and some unpacked luggage, including a single large trunk.

I waited and listened. There were two heartbeats, one down the hall and the other dowstairs, both marked by the distinct eddies of rhythmic breathing. Didikas was here, and asleep. I felt a thrill of excitement at my luck.

Instead of moving towards those impressions of life, I walked about the study. The trunk unlatched at a gesture, proving to be locked by merely mundane means. I went through the wizard’s papers, finding ledgers, letters, names and places with no meaning to me. I memorized all of it anyway, thinking that once the deed was done I’d dismantle whatever operation the mage had gardened and get a most thorough revenge.

Strange, how little sorcery there was in the room. No arcane lock on the trunks, no curses placed on the sealed letters, no screeching elementals caged inside the scroll cases demanding the proper password. It all seemed quite earthly.

I pressed a rolled missive to my lips, pondering. Had he not been prepared for me? He’d revealed himself to me, taunted me with our shared past, so I’d expected some kind of trap. I’d come here prepared for a confrontation, not an easy burglary.

Distracted as I was by these thoughts, I missed at first that the other occupant of the floor was no longer asleep. I noticed it when the creak of a door down the hall drew my attention, and turned just as soft, furtive steps disturbed the floorboards.

I placed the scroll down on the desk, turned to the door, and readied the means by which I intended to kill Wandering Didikas. It was a simple weapon, all told, one I’d originally crafted in case I needed to subdue Harmodian or someone else of his strength. With the earth closed to the prime afterlives, I could no longer draw on abyssal power directly from its source. This was another reason many of my kin had gone to ground after the golden waif’s ascendance.

But I was a Kandaric Scribe as well as a succubus, and I knew the ways of dark sorcery. As a precaution, I’d lain with a number of strong demons, and demonically strong mortals, before quitting my service to the king in Antriss, taking a love token from each of them. A pinch of blood here, a scrap of flesh there, dust from the heart of a dead volcano, then rolled all of it into a ball of mercury hardened by the coldness of my own breath. I’d swallowed it after, holding it in reserve for a moment of need.

I gagged it up as the scuff of feet stopped on the other side of the door, letting the ball rest on the surface of my tongue. All I would need to do was bite down. The power stored inside would be released, and I would watch in satisfaction as my enemy burned alive. It would also destroy the house and probably spread across the harbor, but my aim was singular, all other concerns less than noise.

There were certainly more elegant means in my arsenal, more subtle magics, but I wanted to be thorough. If he was still mortal, as he claimed, then immolation would be sudden and destructive enough to forestall any retaliation.

The latch on the door turned, and it began to creak open. Mingled moonlight and shadow shifted at the motion. I kept to the darkness, waiting, ready to exhale death, only for a single word to halt me cold.

“Papa? I thought you were out. Why don’t have a light on?”

A child stood in the doorway. He was a young boy, nine or ten at most, bird-boned and dark haired. He rubbed at one eye with a fist, still half asleep as he squinted into the study. When he saw no one, he lowered his hand and frowned in confusion.

I hesitated a moment, then swallowed my ball of mercury and shifted just enough to make my presence known. The boy startled and went still as a frightened animal, his eyes gone wide. If I’d doubted the evidence of that word he’d spoken, I knew who he must be at a glance. He had the dark hair and fine features, something in the shape of the eyebrows and the set of his mouth. Only his eyes were different, being blue sapphires rather than copper disks, darkened near to black in the poor light. His hair was the same sable shade as his father’s, grown long about the ears and neck and mussed by sleep.

“Who are you?” He asked me in a steady voice, making no motion to run and drawing no breath to scream. “If you mean to rob us, the money is downstairs under the mantle. My father told me to say that, if any burglars came.”

“I am not here to rob you,” I said.

He took a step back, perhaps sensing some hint of my true nature, hidden then by nothing more than a thin veil of shadow. My tail moved, and his midnight eyes tracked the motion in the darkness.

“Where is your father?” I asked him.

Instead of answering, the boy retorted with his own question. “Do you know him? He didn’t tell me to expect anyone.”

Didikas was a wizard, and would occasionally have strange guests. But did his son know what his father was? On a whim I said, “I am an old friend of your father’s. He is not expecting me… I meant to surprise him.”

“Oh.” The boy frowned, and I watched him consider that a moment. He seemed quick for his age, and perhaps registering then that I had a woman’s voice he said, more emphatically, “Oh! Well, he’s going to be out the whole night.”

Where? I wanted to ask, but the boy-child seemed intelligent and I didn’t want to put him off with too many questions. I sighed, making the sound a disappointed one. “I see. That is a shame. Well, I did not mean to wake you. I thought I’d take your father up on an invitation, only the timing seems poor and I did not know anyone else would be here.”

Sleep faded from the boy’s face, and I watched his thoughts quicken with it. He noted how I lingered in the darkness, his keen blue eyes tracing the inconsistencies in my shape — the silhouette of horn and barbed wing, the swaying serpent. His fear and curiosity rooted him to the spot, and his tone was suspicious when he spoke again. “Why did you come through the window, rather than knock on the door, if you thought my father would be alone? And why are standing in the darkness?”

A smile he wouldn’t be able to see crossed my lips. “Because I am shy. What’s your name, boy?”

“…Father tells me I shouldn’t give my name unless I know what… unless I know who I’m talking to.”

What indeed. Didikas had been teaching the boy to protect himself. “As I said, I’m an old friend of your father’s. You can call me Shyora.” I waited for him to react to the name, but he only stared at me with that same suspicious expression. It seemed the wizard hadn’t warned him of me specifically. “Now you know me. May I know you?”

“Step into the moonlight,” he said. “Let me see you.”

Smart lad. I might have done it, only just then there was movement downstairs, an unfamiliar voice that called out with the hoarseness of broken sleep.

“Who is that?” I asked quietly.

“The house’s mistress,” Didikas’s son said. “She lives here, we just rent the upper rooms.”

That explained the lack of arcana. “Tell her that you are fine. It would be best if she did not come up here.”

He hesitated, then called down the stairs. “It’s fine, Miss Fee! I just needed to use the chamberpot.”

It took him a minute of cajoling, but he managed to get the woman to return to her room. I watched him the whole while. It was uncanny, seeing my old enemy’s face reflected on that innocent mirror. I will not deny that in the back of my mind, I ideated evils, that saliva filled my mouth as dark schemes and ill deeds swam through my thoughts. It came to me in the very moment I realized who I was looking at that this might be the better revenge, and the better shield, than any sudden act of violence. Through this boy, I could destroy Didikas utterly and ensure he would never threaten me again.

There were so many ways I could do it. I could take him hostage, possess the child and see how long it took the wizard to notice. My imaginings grew less gentle from there.

But all of that, as I say, was in the back of my mind. In truth, the brunt of my attention lay on the boy and the unexpected shock of his existence. Didikas, a father. Didikas, a man who left his son in the charge of old women, hid his money under mantles, and owned stocks in caravans.

Who was this person I’d met on the other side of these oceans of time?

“My father will be home soon,” the boy said. His brow was furrowed and his posture stiff, but he planted himself as though to keep me from threatening his housekeeper.

“No he won’t,” I said. “You told me he’ll be out the whole night.”

His face went pale, and I chuckled. Then, feeling strangely drained, I stepped back further into the shadows. He would only be able to see the gleam at the center of my eyes, twin pricks of flame lowering in thought.

I hated Didikas in that moment, hated him so badly it ached. It would be so easy to hurt the man in a way that could never be healed, far worse than the loss of a single eye.

But I took a step back from that precipice and fled from the pale face of the child as though it was an abjuring talisman.

He found me not long before dawn. I had a spot on the shore I liked, a rocky cliff overlooking a cove where galleons wrecked in the war had washed up to form a graveyard. It was still dark, the moons sunk low and the stars gleaming in their multitudes across the canopy of the night. The scuff of boots on stone warned me when I was no longer alone, but I kept my gaze upward.

Much like the last time we’d spoken alone together, in truth. I wondered if it would end the same.

Didikas spoke in a hard voice. “You came to my home. Threatened my son.”

“Yes.” I tilted my head in a lazy motion to meet his gaze. The wizard’s expression was dark with anger, his hands balled into fists. His left arm was hidden by a long sleeve and a glove. I realized with a start that he smelled like Narahn still, his stolen arm confusing my senses.

“If you ever go near him again—”

“There’s no need to threaten me,” I said and turned my gaze back to the stars. “You have the power to command. Why not use it?”

A long pause followed the question. Didikas shifted behind me, and seemed to calm somewhat. “I told you in the Campanile yesterday. The past is… by all the gods, Shyora, it’s been so long. I’m not the same as I was.”

“And what is that to me?” I asked. “It changes nothing. You are what you are, and I am what I am.”

He chewed on his answer a minute. “You’re the only one left who knew me back then… knew what I was. I was a young fool, hungry for power, with no idea just how small I was.” He stepped up to the edge of the cliff to stand to my left, his gaze following mine upward to regard the firmament. “I don’t need to tell you that.”

I, who had waged wars across those stars we looked upon, let out a small laugh. “That’s true.”

Didikas shuffled again and sighed. “I guess I just wanted someone to acknowledge it, the distance I’ve traveled. A lot’s happened since we parted ways.”

“Since you tried to make me your slave?” I asked.

He winced. “As I said, I was a young fool. A proud young fool. And to be fair, I offered you a partnership before I tried binding you.”

“You did,” I conceded. “You caught me in a confused place. I suppose that I have changed too.”

Or so I liked to think. A wind disturbed the bay. Across the black waters of the Oroion, the bell tower rose high into the night, its voice silent until its master woke with the dawn and played his music to wake the tired world to a new day.

“So, you have a son.”

“…Yes. Amadán. You gave him quite the fright. He thought you were going to kill our landlady.”

“He was very brave.” I glanced at the wizard. “What of his mother?”

Didikas shrugged, his copper eye gone distant. “She passed not long after he was born. She was… well, ordinary by our standards. She did not want her life prolonged beyond its natural limit.”

I sensed pain there and chose not to nibble at it. A sudden hunger came over me. I blurted, “Tell me what became of all of them, Didikas. Arlee, Narahn, the Exalted, Fell, Tej, and Pazé… I was centuries lost in the dark, and by the time I’d returned they were all faded to stories.”

He bowed his head and thought for some time before answering. “I will admit, there’s not much I can tell you personally. I stayed in the city for only a short while after…”

After you murdered the Candrian, I thought, but held my tongue. That was a millennium and more gone now, and while I would never forgive, could never let go of my hatred, I could endure it for the sake of his next words.

“…After everything,” Didikas continued. “I left the city. Narahn survived our encounter, and he would have killed me had I stayed. There were rumors after, chasing me across every land I traveled to, but I can tell you little that you haven’t already heard yourself. In truth, I spent little of the centuries after that in these lands. A mist took me, and beyond it was… something else. Strange lands, Shyora. I wandered those for a long time, and it wasn’t easy to find my way back.”

“But you did,” I mused.

“Yes.” He smiled a crooked smile. “Or maybe something in the shape of me. Who knows? I think you and I have had similar journeys this past age.”

I turned to him and folded my wings in front of my chest, linking the claws. A common habit, but it was a veil I put between us in that moment. “I can never trust you so long as you hold my name,” I told him.

Didikas nodded. “I know. And I will not swear on my power not to use it. It would be foolish. You are Abgrûdai.”

I lifted my chin and regarded him coolly. “An impasse, then. Shall we call truce?”

He gave a single nod without taking his eye from mine. The bronze mask that covered the left made it seem as though he winked at me, though his expression remained stoic as mine. “I will be leaving this city soon. I think I shall avoid it in the future, if it means keeping the peace. Has that old man in the bell tower bound you? I can kill him, if you’d like.”

I laughed behind my wing. “No. We have a pact, but he does not hold the leverage you do.”

He glanced to the sea. “Sun will be up soon.”

The first hint of it had already brushed the horizon. I followed his gaze and felt wistful. The bloody catharsis I’d expected of this meeting had been replaced by something uncertain. Part of me was disappointed that we hadn’t fought. Part of me felt an abiding relief.

Hate was easier. I knew how to navigate hate. I enjoyed hate. Whatever this was… it frightened me.

Foregoing any parting speech, Didikas turned and started to make his way back to the city. I watched him go as the dawn came and wondered at who I’d just spoken to, and what he’d experienced.

I wondered if he had seen someone different.