It's interesting to see all the speculation, because it's in part a reflection on my foreshadowing. Some readers are guessing along the right lines about a key element this book, so they may get ahead of the characters on that revelation. Hopefully it's satisfying when it happens instead of frustrating while readers wait... like everyone commenting about the Noveni statues, which, I again promise, are coming.
On the other hand, I see lots of people guessing wildly wrong about something else. I wonder if, when they see things go in a different direction, they'll immediately take it as evidence and potentially start guessing a major mystery of the whole series after this book. Where in the past readers didn't have enough information, after this one there are some subjects where it's at least conceivable that someone could deduce the answers.
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Chapter 34
Even though Fiyu wanted to return with a solution for her companions, eventually she had to admit defeat.
She remained in Quiet Garden for some days, consulting with the local Siatans about the Caretaker, trying to discern his intent. It seemed that he was an anomaly who had lived longer than any Siatan could remember, longer than some believed should be possible. Some thought that was unnatural, others venerated him, some thought he was senile and only cared about his gardens, others said he could work great wonders.
Unfortunately, the only practical information she had obtained was that the Caretaker was extremely idiosyncratic in how he responded to requests. Sometimes powerful Dominions were turned away without being seen, other times a child asking for a flower was received. Fiyu thought her first approach had been wrong, but wasn't confident enough to return, since the next chance might be her last.
So instead she returned to the tournament to consult with the others. It seemed that the matches had continued without any attacks, but they largely didn't interest her. Instead she went to seek her companions, hoping to create an oasis in a sea of unfamiliar faces.
Fiyu was sorely disappointed. She barely had time to speak to Friend Nauda about her difficulties with the Caretaker before the other woman needed to leave to seek out a different aeon-class force. Even though Fiyu agreed with the logic, it still troubled her: how was she to become fully accustomed to Friend Nauda as a lifemate when they couldn't journey together? Normally she would consult with Friend Theo, but she observed that he was growing increasingly obsessive over Enemy Raythe and the other complications of the political situation, and would not be receptive to relationship conversations.
There was another subject that they had no choice but to discuss, however: Fiyu's failure to make inroads with the Caretaker. Friend Theo listened carefully as their conversation passed from tournament grounds to a private room in the Blacksilver compound, then he shook his head gently.
"I don't think it's your fault," Friend Theo said, "we're simply dealing with an unusual person."
"Do you... think that he is senile as others suggested?" she asked. "Or that we should not attempt to make contact?"
"No. In fact, I'd bet that the Caretaker is just old and tired, sick of people wasting his time. What we need to do is figure out what he meant by his cryptic statements."
Though Fiyu privately thought that Friend Theo might be projecting his own emotions onto the Caretaker, she chose not to voice this.
"He said that the deadgold 'had merit', right?" Friend Theo continued, stroking his chin. "A sublime material of this tier is too weak for him, so it's notable that he didn't reject it outright. I'm not sure, but I have a theory... can you give this to Navim and ask him to work it into his academic models?"
Fiyu accepted a block of what she first thought was deadgold, then realized was oddly different. "Is this yet another sublime gold?" she asked. "Will Navim know what it is?"
"No, but I think he's better able to figure it out than we are. Maybe it will lead to something that convinces the Caretaker, maybe not, but I think that we'll learn something either way."
"Very well, Theo, I will do this."
"That said, I'm afraid I have to go." Friend Theo glanced out the window and winced. "Technically it's a day until my appointment, but given how secretive they've been, I'm planning to schedule some extra time."
"Is this yet another aeon-class organization we might appeal to?" Fiyu asked.
"No, this is the Splitblood Association. I think this is probably our best chance to trade the deadgold we have left, because Raythe is saturating the market here. I wish we could all visit, but we're spread too thin for that... I'll trade for sublime materials suited to you, if I see anything."
"Thank you, Theo." Fiyu nodded to him and then watched as he departed.
Which left her alone to mind the tournament until Friend Nauda returned. To childtend it, as they had once said. Fiyu sighed and returned to do her duty.
~
Using the compass didn't turn out to be quite as easy as Nauda had hoped, but it was still a tool designed to be understood. From her work locating weirkeys, she understood that the different hands each measured some sort of disturbance between worlds, it was just a matter of triangulating a very particular disturbance.
The path it suggested took her through many completely desolate areas, some of which looked as though they hadn't been disturbed for centuries. Yet the Demonstalkers were supposed to be an active organization, so they couldn't be that obscure. Whenever she lost the path or grew frustrated, Nauda sat down to soulcraft until her head was clear again.
Eventually the compass took her to a desolate peak in a region of Noven she'd never visited before. As she wandered around, trying to isolate the signal, Nauda thought back to Isorales and everyone in the city of Ugustial. She hadn't visited since the Wakespire, though it had occurred to her multiple times. Theo was convinced that going there now would waste time, and she had to admit that he had a point, because she hadn't even finished a room to store the sublime statue they'd earned there.
Just what was she supposed to find on this featureless mountaintop? Nauda was resisting the urge to throw down the compass in disgust when she realized that the pattern on the ground wasn't merely random cracks. She frowned, then flew into the air to observe the flat mountaintop from above.
From that angle, she could easily see that lines had been cut into the stone to write something, though she wasn't even certain she was looking at it the right way. She rotated slowly, examining the deep-cut letters as they tickled at the back of her mind.
Normally soul translation adapted the Tatian languages she had learned to whatever the local languages of her destination were, and since becoming an Authority she had almost entirely ceased to have any problems with languages. But this... it didn't feel quite like a normal language, and what would be the language of an abandoned place like this? Instead, it almost seemed to pull together other pieces, not just from one world but many.
If she hadn't traveled so far, and stretched her mind with communication methods like Ichili whistles or Slescan pheromones, Nauda didn't think she could have deciphered the strange text. But eventually it clicked, as if she had been reading upside-down all along, and she realized that the text was coordinates.
And those coordinates were in Aathal, one of the worlds they completely lacked a weirkey for. She didn't think even Guchiro had an Aathali key; maybe House Blacksilver owned one, and it occurred to her that she could probably petition the entire Norron Alliance, but that would take a lot of time and effort. To have gotten this far, only to be brought up short here...
"Why are you seeking us?"
The voice took her completely off guard and Nauda's body tried to jump in midair, which just resulted in an odd twitch. When she pivoted, she saw a ghost of a Noveni man behind her. His presence was completely obscured, equal to Fiyu's technique, and she realized that he was likely projecting himself from another location.
Nauda took a deep breath and ran over her plan again. They didn't know much about the Demonstalkers, which was clearly by design, but one of the few things they knew was that the group wanted to eradicate demons.
"Plutalgion and the empire of Tymetron are one of the largest armies in the Nine Worlds that use demonic materials systematically," she began. "We have military intelligence that this involves raising and harvesting demons, which is reckless b-"
"I don't need the speech." The Noveni man's ghost cut her off with a swish of one wing. "Why are you seeking us?"
"Because Tymetron will win unless we find allies."
The man sighed and shook his head. "I'm going to pass you on to Aathal because I don't want to deal with this. Think through what you plan to say, though. We're tired of factions trying to use us in their little wars."
Folding space closed around her a second later and, though it rubbed her the wrong way, Nauda didn't resist. She was pulled away from Noven and then released, less carried by a weirkey than hurled by one. It was massively disorienting, and it got worse when she arrived.
Because she was hovering over an ocean. Her mind looked around for the familiar trees of Aathal, even though she logically knew that the entire world couldn't be forests. The horizon was mostly empty blue, though she saw a massive algal bloom in one direction. Beneath her, however... yes, that was her destination.
A rainbow mountain lay beneath the surface, spikes and mounds merging into one another and forming a small fortress. Except... it all blazed in her life sense. She realized that what she'd mistaken as stone was actually alive, and there was a lot more of it beneath the surface. The murky water hid a far larger fortress beneath her, completely different from any Fithan underwater city she'd ever seen before.
After being thrown off like that, Nauda half-expected the living stones themselves to talk to her and tried to keep her mind open. It turned out to be unnecessary: when she drew close, a muscular Deuxan man emerged to meet her.
"So you seek out the Demonstalkers, do you?"
He was completely different from any Deuxan she had ever seen, wearing shabby brown robes and with messy silver hair. The most striking thing was that more of the living rocks seemed to be growing on his body, covering one arm with gleaming colors and forming a spiky bush on one shoulder. His eyes stared at her not with Deuxan superiority but a weary cynicism.
Appealing directly hadn't worked, so Nauda tried a new tactic: "Is there anything I can say to convince you to help me, or did you just bring me here to scorn me?"
"We'll see." The man chuckled humorlessly and crossed his arms across his chest. "You used an old method to find us... one that was lost. I think someone found it, someone we might not be happy about working with."
"You seem like an aeon-class soulcrafter," Nauda said, though she was guessing because she couldn't see through his multicolored shielding wall. "If you don't like me, you can just throw me out."
"No, that isn't what I mean. You see, the Demonstalkers protect the Nine Worlds from outside threats, which take many forms. The demons are the most obvious, yes, but intelligent outsiders are a greater risk. It seems to me that, if one of them knew that, they might send someone else to convince us."
"I am a daughter of Tatian and a citizen of Fithe. Are you telling me that Plutalgion and his empire aren't a threat? They use demons for crying out loud!"
"Bah. Are you telling me that you don't have contact with outsiders?"
"I'm telling you it doesn't matter!" Nauda's temper flared and she flew close to glare the man in the face. "My home is going to be destroyed and I'll work with anyone who will fight to save it. If you're going to ignore me, then you aren't protecting the Nine Worlds in any way I care about."
For several seconds they stared at one another and Nauda caught her breath, wondering if she'd made a terrible mistake. Then the Deuxan man's face split in a grin and she realized that she had been right: the Demonstalkers weren't like so many of the dispassionate organizations they'd met, they wanted to see some spirit. It was possible that he suspected her of working with Theo or Dave, and just as possible that he simply wanted to test her.
"Forgive me, there are some outsiders who turn others into their tools," the man said. He stopped standing with eerie stillness and scratched at a growing stone on his left arm. "While we remain suspicious, I respect what I just saw in you."
"But will you help us?" she demanded.
"Let me speak plainly to you: we would love for Tymetron to be wiped off the Fithan map, but it isn't that simple. Plutalgion has two powerful underlings he usually holds in reserve, ones who would support him if another faction attempted to ambush him. And it's worse than that... there are shadowy forces moving in the Nine Worlds, infecting and manipulating, dark names that are rarely spo-"
"Are you talking about Vistgil?"
The man's eyebrows rose sharply and he regarded her with a new look before he nodded. "You know more than we thought, then. Yes, Vistgil is our enemy, though he rarely takes a direct hand. But he has many others who could harm us... the Salebrante are increasingly growing across the Nine Worlds, for example."
"And they'd show up to help Tymetron?" Nauda asked. "I know some about them, but hardly anything. I had the impression that Tymetron and the Salebrante weren't actually allies."
"Truth be told, we aren't sure either." The Demonstalker scratched at one of the stones over his shoulder, his eyes on something deep under the water. "It isn't a straightforward relationship, but we've seen that Vistgil will always strike opportunistically. For that reason, we cannot offer our direct support."
"Then..." She took a deep breath and considered that anger probably wasn't the right path anymore. "What are our options, against an aeon-class enemy? We tried to ask the Orphic Cabal, but..."
"Bah, they're a bunch of tedious scribblers."
"We have an invitation from a place called the Mercury Court..."
"Powerful, but untrustworthy. They have an outsider manipulating them."
"Do you know of a Siatan called the Caretaker?"
"Old, and not as strong as you'd want unless you need flowers grown." The Demonstalker raised his hands in a defensive gesture. "Now, I know you're going to ask what good it does for me to tell you this, when we won't help ourselves."
"I was thinking it," Nauda said with a grin she didn't quite feel.
"Wait."
Something white shot up over the Deuxan man's eyes and Nauda realized that it was a second eyelid, a filmy white substance she'd never seen before. For a moment he seemed very distant, and her life sense tickled, but whoever he was speaking with, they didn't show themselves. Once it was done and his eyes returned to normal, the Demonstalker refocused on her.
"You're facing an existential threat," he said, "and not the one you're thinking. There's been elevated demon activity in Tymetron, and we believe the Demonweaver may be about to move. Where she'll strike, we can't be certain."
"The Demonweaver? Who is that?" She had more info from the Orphic Cabal through Theo, but there was no sense in tipping their hand.
"One of the strongest serving under Plutalgion. Now, she can't control demons directly, no one can do that. But she soulcrafted multiple chambers that manipulate them, including potentially generating armies in enemy territory. If Plutalgion is getting frustrated, it makes sense that he'd send the Demonweaver in."
"Which is bad for us." Nauda folded her arms and stared back. "Do you have more than a warning?"
"If you do manage to survive the attack, the Demonweaver will be weakened, and thus Plutalgion will lose his backup. If that happens, we'll strike Tymetron, and in a way they won't soon forget, believe me. That will buy you a lot of time, maybe even enough to make the war winnable."
"We just need to survive the battle first." Nauda took a deep breath and made herself smile at him. "That's better than we've gotten from most, so thank you."
"Thank us by winning." Having said that, the Demonstalker retreated into the fortress of rainbow stone without another word.
There was nothing stopping Nauda from lingering or even entering their fortress, but she had the feeling that she had already pushed her luck enough. One of the most reclusive aeon-class forces in the Nine Worlds had offered a degree of support, which was more than anyone expected of her.
She just hoped it would be enough.
-
Chapter 35
It had been a long wait, but it was finally time for Theo to make his appointment with the Splitblood Association. After so long dealing with the highest and mightiest of the Nine Worlds, he was glad to meet with merchants, albeit not ordinary ones. Their behavior might be uncommon - having a hidden shop open only via prior appointment didn't seem like a good business model - but in theory there were no lives at stake for this meeting.
He'd also planned some contingencies, just in case he'd jinxed everything by daring to be optimistic for once.
The first thing that made him nervous was that the destination was in the lower half of Tatian, where he'd never spent any meaningful time. He needed to borrow Nauda's weirkey to prepare for it, and when he arrived on the other side, he immediately felt the difference in the air.
Where in the upper half of Tatian every breath carried a vibrant energy, in the lower half he practically choked on smog. He stood on a cracked black plain, utterly unable to support life, and could see at least three columns of smoke belching from over the horizon. It seemed that even lower Tatians didn't want to live here, because he didn't see any sign of civilization.
"Hello there!" The voice came along with the sound of a squeaky wheel, and Theo turned to look, then stared.
A brightly-colored wagon creaked through the landscape, swaying alarmingly at times, as the upper half was absurdly overstuffed. As it wobbled toward him, he realized that it was bigger than he had expected, the size of a modest house. There was a man driving the front via cantae controls, but Theo was distracted by a person waving from the side. They pulled a switch and suddenly the wagon sprang apart, one side opening to reveal a shop window.
"This branch of the Splitblood Association is officially open for business!"
Theo deployed a defensive smile as he considered the two, because they threw off his instincts. It had been a long time since he'd traveled the Nine Worlds and run across someone who seemed so ambiguous to him. These two were Authority-tier soulcrafters who wore robes slashed with red and blue, but that was about all he knew at a glance.
The man who had been driving the wagon, and now stepped down from it, had metallic eye rims like some Deuxans, yet his hair was a limp brown. Something about the tone of his skin was different, too, making Theo realize for the first time that Deuxans weren't exactly human like he knew. It was possible that this was simply an ethnicity he hadn't seen before, yet he instinctively doubted it.
That impression was enhanced by the other merchant, who was even harder to place. They had skin that looked at home on Tatian, yet their hair was undeniably green and shaped like leaves, similar to an Aathali. Theo thought "person" because they had a distinctly androgynous appearance, though he didn't particularly care about that.
More concerning was the fact that they were leaning out the shop window to wave at him.
"Hey! You're the one who contacted us, right? Pleased to meet you too! My name is Khilua."
"Charmed," Theo said instinctively. He gave a generic bow to Khilua, and was about to do the same to their partner when the man surprised Theo by stepping forward and shaking his hand. Firmly, like he'd just taken a business class on Earth.
"Name's Paerk," the man said.
"We're not the entire Splitblood Association!" Khilua explained enthusiastically. "I do hope we'll make a good impression, because we don't find many customers who appreciate us. The big organizations could use powerful materials, of course, but we operate in more unusual spaces. That necessitates a mobile structure, you see, as well as our unusual schedule."
"We work in pairs," Paerk added.
"Glad to finally meet with you both." Theo looked between them and then eyed the huge collection of sublime materials spilling out from the wagon window. "I was led to understand that you might have materials I could use... am I supposed to browse?"
"Nonsense, nonsense!" Khilua pulled open a new section of the wagon and began rooting through it. "We offer our clients a customized service, don't ya know. Even though we don't know everything about your soulhome yet, we want to impress you. Here's one of my best, look at this!"
Theo had a vine thrust into his hands. It was a potent sublime material, but the strange thing was that it seemed to have been artificially grown into door shapes. Each door-like bud had some sort of spatial distortion to it, the individual pieces were just too weak to have an effect. If it was planted in a soulhome and grown to a larger size, however...
"This is a doorvine!" Khilua explained. "Grow it up properly and it will produce real doors, but each door opens into a new room. You can fit multiple chambers into a single room that way!"
"How?" Theo asked, his eyes narrowing as he considered that this might be the soulcrafting equivalent of snake oil. "Packing a larger amount of space into a soulhome would seem to violate the basic principle where volume equals power."
"Ah, but the doorvine cannot contain materials of an equal tier to itself! Instead you can pull together materials of a tier or two lower, either fitting in materials that you couldn't before, or fusing together several materials into a single stream of cantae. Imagine the mergers!"
"That's an interesting concept," Theo said as he handed the vine back, "but at the moment I'm struggling to find enough materials at my current tier."
"Oh, poor doorvine." Khilua stroked the vine as they pulled it back, though they didn't seem truly put out. "One day someone will appreciate your beauty, your elegance, your glory..."
"Been trying to sell it for years," Paerk commented.
"But that is not the end of our wares! If you desire materials, this is only the beginning!"
What followed was a dizzying array of unusual sublime materials, almost all of them crafted in some way. They ranged from the clearly useful to strange experiments to a few that he could only think of as performance art. The ability required to soulcraft materials that were actually at his level, however, was impressive.
One of the most clearly valuable was something called a lifetangle, an Immortality Conduit material that grew across a soulhome, naturally carrying cantae with it. It grew seamlessly into itself, and the effect seemed so powerful that Theo would have taken it for himself if he didn't have a black thumb.
The only apparently natural material they offered was something called boundaryspite, a dark stone that Paerk revealed from a drawer built into the base of the wagon. It was allegedly from the cliffs between the sides of Tatian, and it created a clear pressure around itself. If Paerk's brief description could be believed, it tried to create new space, allowing for a room that was bigger on the inside, at the cost of applying great pressure to the surrounding walls.
Though he was a man of few words, Paerk looked satisfied when he introduced a pair of "affixing" tools, which he called darkgain and livingcore. Theo wasn't sure if the soul translation fully communicated the concept, but he managed to grasp their purpose: they melted the outer layer of a sublime material, forming a coat that could actually be more durable than normal. With their outer layers transformed into a smooth shell, materials could be more easily be made compatible with others.
"They're all the rage where Paerk comes from," Khilua explained in a stage whisper. "He'd been trying to make them catch on, but his orb-based soulcrafting just isn't popular. The potential is really quite remarkable... could it be the sales pitch bringing it down, I wonder?"
Paerk merely grunted.
After several more unusual materials, Theo noticed one that they didn't particularly highlight: a crystal prism that looked like it could have come from Arbai, yet it was set in a blue metal that he didn't recognize at all. When Theo pointed it out, Khilua beamed and thrust it forward.
"Look at this!" When the metal was twisted, the prism projected light in all directions, yet the light somehow stopped at a set distance away, creating a much larger illusory version of the crystal. Khilua waved their hand through it. "Completely ethereal, and I do use that word carefully."
"What is it used for?" Theo asked. "Decent quality, but not powerful enough to fill a room with cantae."
"Ah, but this is an etherealprism. Sublime materials placed in it have their energy transformed, just like light being reflected through a prism. So say you have a sublime material for big strong muscle, but no Corporeal Floor? You could place it inside the etherealprism and it would grant you purely spiritual strength, no muscles necessary."
"And if you put an ethereal material in it?"
"Well, the resonance would probably be too much and both would explode." Khilua stuck out their tongue. "Haven't tested that for some reason. But you can absolutely use it on other materials if you want! If you have something that would fit an ethereal design, but it isn't really ethereal enough, this can bridge the gap enough for your mind to work it out."
Theo could already see the use, and he was eager to start taking some of the materials. He realized that this could potentially be a problem, if they didn't want anything he had to trade. Some of his rarer materials had seemed obviously valuable, but given their attitude, the Splitblood Association might not be interested. Instead of any of the gemstones, he started with the obvious: deadgold.
"Oooh!" Khilua clapped their hands. "We've seen this before, but always in contaminated or adulterated form. This stuff seems like it's pure, straight from bad old Plutalgion. You're lucky you're the first person who's offered this to us, but we'll absolutely take it."
"In return for what?" Theo asked.
"Let's say... two materials. Unless I'm particularly fond of one, in which case I'll have to charge you extra."
With only two choices, the decision was made a little more difficult. Theo took the etherealprism first, of course, then reluctantly set aside the doorvine in order to take the lifetangle. Nauda really needed to get materials for an Immortality Conduit to become integrated in her soulhome, so he wasn't likely to find better for her.
"Excellent doing business with you!" Khilua said happily as Paerk took the deadgold. "We'd be happy to talk again, if you can give us more indication of what you're going for. I don't suppose you'd be willing to give us a tour of your soulhome."
"No," Theo said, then found himself relenting. "But let me explain a few things about my blueprint. The core principle is a contained spherical flow..."
When he explained the design of his soulhome, most soulcrafters were either impressed or disgusted, thinking he could never pull it off - less of the latter recently. But when he explained his design to Khilua and Paerk, they not only understood, they seemed to accept it as reasonable.
"Like an extra Transcendent Monument!" Khilua nodded in aggressive approval. "You don't see those every day, but a lot of us specialize in that sort of thing. Me, I use vines to mimic my cardiovascular system."
"Interior spatial vaults," Paerk said without elaboration.
Theo shook his head. "We might need to talk about soulcrafting more sometime."
"I'd love to," Khilua said, "but I think we'd better get along. We'll meet again, though, I'm sure of it! And next time we'll see if we can't bring you something that matches your particular type of crazy!"
Paerk gave him a nod and vaulted to the front of the wagon, which began to fold up of its own accord. Khilua was nearly squashed by the closing panels, but thrust a hand out to wave as the wagon headed over the uneven ground. Theo wasn't sure how they would deal with all the hostile Tatians in this part of the world, but somehow felt like they would be fine.
It was nice to meet someone who didn't want to kill him or demand a whole lot of politics. Unfortunately, Theo's next meeting was with the Caretaker, and that one wasn't likely to be so friendly.