Harbinger

ONE Return of the Wanderer

Smoke blew off the once-admired canals of the capital of the Empire of Arkaym. Several times the geistlord, who wore a coyote shape, had to backtrack as he found bridges broken before him and houses tumbled down everywhere. The Fensena sniffed at the bodies left to rot in the alleyways of Vermillion, but unlike a real coyote he did not pause to dine.

The fact that a five-foot-tall coyote was wandering the byways of the heart of the Empire in broad daylight would have been impossible to contemplate even just a few months before. Yet here he was with the run of the place, and not a Deacon of the Order or a soldier of the Imperial Guard to give him pause. The Emperor of Arkaym had very little care for his capital, and had chosen instead to chase after the Princes who had risen in rebellion against him—and it turned out there were quite a few such Princes.

Papers rustled and blew past the coyote in the sharp wind. He caught one as it spun by him, his lightning-fast paw pinning it to the ground. Through gleaming golden eyes the geistlord read—a skill he had taken pride in developing. It was the offer of a bounty; one on the head of Sorcha Faris. She was accused of sedition, treason and murder. More telling was the title they were giving her. “Arch Abbot of the outlawed Order” was written beneath the badly drawn picture of her. The Fensena had no love for the Deacons, but he knew what awaited him on the Otherside and had no desire to see this world burn.

As these dark thoughts filled him with dread, he moved on through the city and finally made it to the Bridge of Gilt. The canal that ran beneath it was clogged with all manner of dead and decaying things that made his nose twitch. Someone had tied offerings to one of the small gods on the railings: fruits, dead birds and something bloody and unidentifiable.

Still, the bridge was intact, and so he padded over it toward the Imperial Island. The coyote’s ears pricked forward as they traced running footsteps up ahead among the shops that lined the bridge. Though most merchants had long since abandoned their businesses for whatever safety they wrongly perceived elsewhere, a few brave held on. He could smell them huddled in their little shops, and hear them whispering.

A young woman was running along the bridge toward him, clutching something to her chest. The odor of fear was overpowering to the Fensena’s sharp senses.

It was a baby. She was cradling a baby to her chest as she ran. In the lowering light of sunset, her eyes were wide with terror. Finally, she saw the huge coyote standing in the middle of the bridge and skidded to a halt.

The wind ruffled the coyote’s brindle coat, made for deeper winters and more northerly climates. He felt a clench of sympathy for the woman and her child. The Rossin, the great geistlord who wore many shapes and all of them terrible, would have snapped her in half in an instant. The Fensena himself could have at least bitten her and leapt into her body to use her energy to keep his toehold in this realm for another few days.

The woman glanced behind her, and the Fensena could feel it now; the swirling approach of one of his kind. A geist eager for a host was sweeping down from the island. It tasted to him like a broken soul, perhaps one that had in life even worn the robe of a Deacon. Certainly, something that had been twisted by the Otherside and chewed into dire form.

The Fensena tilted his head, considering, and then placed one paw before the other to perform a slight bow in the woman’s direction.

“Run while you can,” he whispered through jaws made for cracking bone and tearing flesh.

That beasts should open their mouths and speak in the language of men had not been so strange in the first days, generations past, when the geists first came into the world—but humans had such very short memories and did not read very much of their own history.

The woman pressed her lips together and took her chance. She darted forward, and past him, so close that her skirts brushed against his fur and the perfume of her skin reached his nose. The coyote did not watch her, but his ears tracked her progress.

The geist was on her heels, and it was indeed as he had suspected. The torn and desecrated figure of a Deacon of the Order of the Eye and the Fist floated down the bridge. Once water would have prevented the geist from crossing, but the Otherside was very close to this realm now.

The geist did not acknowledge the Fensena’s existence. It floated on, making even the weeds in the cracks in the pavement wither as it passed. He knew what it would do to the woman when it caught up to her—and it would eventually.

It was not his concern, and he could not let it make him miss his appointment. Moving faster on its small, neat feet, the coyote crossed the bridge and trotted up the hill toward the seat of government. He did not like being in this city. However, just like the last time he’d been here, he was on a mission for the Rossin; the great and powerful geistlord whom he was tied to—like it or not.

The coyote raised his nose and sniffed as he approached the burned shell of the Mother Abbey. The odor of rotting human flesh was easily discernible here. When the roof collapsed, there had been none about to pull the bodies from under the stone, and now the ruins were a graveyard. This place had been full of beautiful gardens, dormitories crammed with Deacons, and a massive library.

However, what he was looking for was not here. Nothing was here.

The Fensena moved on, his nose twitching. Ahead lay only the Imperial Palace. However, a little caution was called for here. Like the shape he wore, the Fensena knew he had to exercise a care; he had a body, he could be killed, and lose his grip on this realm altogether. Unlike the Rossin, his bond with his host was not a permanent one. So he lowered his head and kept to the shadows of the buildings that looked out onto the Imperial Square. His nose told him that unlike the Mother Abbey, there were living people inside—people who would probably not like a large coyote having the run of the place.

He nosed his way around the large square, which faced the palace, eyes darting every now and then to where the pale stone wall ran. His fellow geists had not let the palace alone, despite the cantrips and protections laid down by Deacons over the centuries.

The coyote stopped and let out a faint yip as the thought occurred to him; those Deacons had for much of Arkaym’s history been the Circle of Stars. The newer Order that Sorcha Faris had served might have laid their cantrips over the top, but if the earlier foundation had been torn aside then it was all for naught. He sensed that was what they had done as soon as the Mother Abbey was destroyed.

At last, near the rear of the palace, the Fensena found what he was looking for; one section of the wall and the cantrips that had protected it had given up its structural wholeness. The crumpled heap of red stone was a welcome sight. The Fensena needed to get within and soon, since his master was not the most forgiving of creatures.

He entered the pleasure garden of the palace, and realized that no pleasure was ever likely to be found here again. It looked as though a small whirlwind had passed through the ordered rows of plants and topiary. Everything was ripped up and thrown about, and he suspected that mist witches had once again taken to the Ancient paths that the building of the palace had displaced. Though the island was no longer a swamp, the witches would traverse their old paths, and thanks to the thinness of the veil between this world and the other, their powers would be greater.

The Fensena disliked the lower geists and their chaotic nature. He preferred logic, since it usually meant a greater chance at survival. A low rumble started in his chest, and his brindle tail tucked instinctively closer to his body.

The mist witches were still here.

Robbed of any chance to lead travelers astray, drown them in the swamp and take their essence for their own, they would instead be quite happy to rip apart a human. Or indeed another geist or geistlord. Energy was energy after all.

The Fensena snarled, but the mist witch was a mindless thing; designed only to tear apart and feed. It was no geistlord capable of thought, reasoning and plotting. It was drawn to whatever living thing was about. Before the Circle of Stars, the recently returned Native Order, had done whatever necessary to rend the barrier between the Otherside and here, the mist witch might have only lured people to their deaths, or scrabbled their wits. Now however it was far stronger.

Like a Deacon, the Fensena saw its shape completely; the spiraling patterns that looked remarkably like runes that held together this spiderweb of hunger. When it came at him, howling and flinging its icy fingers at the Fensena’s flesh, he snarled and leapt.

He might have been one of the lesser geistlords, but he was still more than a match for a simple mist witch. His teeth connected with the strands of the geist, and his own power was transferred to the knot of runic, shifting shapes. With a jerk of his head, the Fensena pulled the thing apart as if it were the ripe flesh of a caribou that had been sitting out under the sun for days.

It dissolved in on itself howling, leaving only a bitter taste in the coyote’s mouth. Regrettably there was no way to get rid of that, and generally why he avoided skirmishes with geists when he could.

The Fensena inclined his head and directed his senses to the building, which lay beyond the gardens. It smelled of death and there was fresh blood throughout every corridor. Whereas once, in his early days in this realm, he had reveled in it, now it disturbed him.

His long pink tongue lolled from one corner of his mouth, and the huge pants that he needed to draw air were quite distracting. He knew why too; this body had not much more time to run.

This was why the coyote geistlord no longer liked to travel to Vermillion; too many bodies were already occupied by other geists. His connection with human blood was tenuous at best, and it was very hard for him to take a host when there was already one of his fellows within. Another reason to dislike recent events.

With a long canine sigh, the Fensena trotted up what had been a well-manicured gravel path. Up ahead there were humans; he could smell them as well as sense them with his geist-sight, but they were in such disarray.

The coyote nudged open a door that should have been barred and guarded, and wandered into the corridors and hallways, where once the business of the Empire had been conducted. His nails clicked on the stone floor, and the smell of piss and desperation filled his nostrils.

As the Fensena moved through the palace, he thought about how it had come to this. The Rossin had been a ferocious force on the Otherside; devouring many of their kind. However, since he had taken up with the royal family he had been much subdued. The Fensena had found he had not needed his protection. Indeed, in this realm, the coyote had been quite free to wander, as he preferred. It had only been the shift in currents, the fractional thinning of the border between this world and the Otherside, that had signaled a change.

That powerful fool Derodak had made this happen when he decided the time was ripe to complete his plan to harness the geists, and take this world finally for his own. That in turn had set in motion a series of events that could bring the realm to an end. It would make the destruction heaped on this palace seem like a drop in a bucket.

It was amusing to the Fensena that the Rossin was now the one to try and save this realm, well . . . save it and cut a slice for himself; a particularly leonine slice. His jaws split in a canine smile. He would see the proud Rossin brought down from his high-and-mighty perch before this was all over—provided there was an opportunity to stop the Maker of Ways ripping reality open.

The Fensena turned his mind away from these dire thoughts and padded on up the hallway in the direction his nose was leading him. A few times he was forced to hide in shadows, and duck into damaged rooms to avoid people, but considering this was the center of the human Empire it was ridiculously easy.

The coyote found the stairwell that lay at the heart of the palace. This was part of the original fortress that had stood long before Emperor’s vanity built pleasure gardens and golden rooms above it. The deeper down the Fensena went the cooler and quieter it became, but the less he liked it. The faded murals on the walls were deeply etched and told stories of his kind and the humans that had sought to control them.

Many things had been buried down here beneath the palace; things that the various Emperors of Arkaym had wanted hidden. Some had broken loose over that time, but there were still plenty of others that remained.

The Fensena stopped and paused at a smashed section of wall. His nose told him a geistlord had once been imprisoned here. His memory was not good for names, but he recalled a beautiful winged creature—one that had been very good at pretending to be what she was not.

The floor was now sloping down even farther, and the cavern walls were transitioning to rough from polished and carved. The flickering weirstone lights were also now few and far between. It didn’t matter; he needed no lights to see by. He had both animal and geist-vision to guide him.

The Fensena stopped at the place where all pretense at building ended, and the Ancient caverns began. The roots of the palace were down here. His ears flattened on his head as he looked up at an image carved above the entrance. That it stood open was yet another sign that the Emperor was losing his grip. This place had always been sealed as long as Vermillion had an Emperor to sit on the red throne high above. Now Kaleva had gone mad, the locks were all sprung—just as the Rossin had told the Fensena they would be.

The image above the passage, however, would have been enough to scare away any curious adventurers who came down this deep. The Murashev, the bright deadly female-shaped geistlord danced around a terrible figure, one that was very far from human. It towered over the entrance, clasping the edges of it with muscular tentacles. The Maker of Ways had been depicted in the very moment of tearing open the world to the Otherside. It was a cataclysmic event that the first Emperor had warned against. Many thought this was a depiction of the Break, but the Fensena knew that the damage this powerful geist would do was so great that that earlier event would seem but a bruise to this realm.

With his head lowered and his ears pinned flat, the coyote slunk under the terrifying arch and into the Ancient belly of Vermillion. It was a small circular room with a wide sandy floor, unmarked and unpaved by anything made by humans. Yet it smelled old and felt warm. The coyote slunk forward and sat down at the center of the room. In the human realm there were sacred places; some were venerated by the gods and their worshippers, some were home to Ancient legends, and still others were marked because of terrible things that had happened there.

This place was known to very few—but those few were very powerful. Where the Fensena now sat was the very spot where the Rossin had come into the human world. Here was where the first Emperor—who had also been the very first Deacon—had sealed the pact with the terrible geistlord and given him a toehold into this realm.

The Fensena looked up at the ceiling. He marveled at how the rock above was as smooth and polished as glass. Great heat had bloomed once in this room, and the rock still spoke of that.

The sand beneath the coyote was special too, and definitely not from Arkaym . . . it was from his home. A deep chill settled into the great coyote’s bones as he recalled the Otherside. It was either all burning or all freezing, and there was no rest to be found there. It was why all geists wanted to be on this side; in the human realm where there was choice and hope. He had no desire to return there—nor to see the geists of hunger and revenge come to the human realm. They would lay waste to it as they mindlessly had the Otherside. They feasted on the human souls that passed through that place, because that was all they had. The Fensena, and the mighty Rossin, had other plans.

The coyote smelled the arrival of the human and heard the racing of his heart in his ears long before he appeared. His golden eyes gleamed as he turned and looked over his brindle-furred shoulder at the coming of the Emperor of Arkaym.

In his own way, he was a handsome man, fresh skin and firm jaw, but the geistlord easily saw beyond that. Kaleva, the Prince that the leaders of Arkaym had called from far Delmaire to crown their Emperor, was a broken vase of a man. All the spirit had been snatched from him—but then he had never really been strong enough to hold so much. The coyote ran his tongue over his lip and swept it against his nose. He firmly believed that all the strength of that family had been placed in one female vessel. The Princes of Arkaym had not chosen well.

The Emperor was making a show of striding through the Ancient cavern, but the truth of the matter was, he had been summoned by the same geistlord that had caused the Fensena to be here.

However, he understood nothing—that was immediately apparent. He looked at the melted stonework and did not blink. When the Rossin had spared this puny human’s life at the breaking of the Mother Abbey, the Emperor had promised the great pard something from his palace . . . and he could not leave to continue his personal war until that pact was satisfied.

Kaleva in his smart white uniform reached the part of the tunnel where he could see the interior, and he visibly flinched when he saw the huge coyote crouched at the center of the room—after all he had not had good experiences with the geistlords in animal form. The Fensena’s mouth split open into a canine pant that was his best approximation of a human smile.

“You are tardy for a leader of men.” He couldn’t resist the jibe—nor the chance to make the Emperor jump with his ability to speak.

The Emperor took a step back, and glanced over his shoulder as if he expected some kind of puppet master to leap out of the darkness. The man really was a fool, and Derodak had left him barely holding on to sanity.

“You sent the dream?” Finally the Emperor found his own voice.

“No, it was not I,” the coyote yipped, getting to his feet and stretching. He was trying to convey his best impression of not caring. “It was he that we both call master.”

“I do not—”

The Fensena growled. He preferred to play the trickster, but when it was called for he could be as vicious as any geistlord in this realm or the Otherside. “He is the Rossin, the scion of the Imperial family. From him all strength comes. I believe when he stood before you in fire and dust you understood that . . .”

The Emperor swallowed hard and turned the color of parchment. The Fensena was completely sure that the image was flashing in his fractured mind. The Rossin did many things well, but chief among them was make an impression.

The coyote paced forward a step, lowering his head and fixing his golden eyes on Kaleva. “Enough of this posturing. You are here to fulfill your word and give my lord what he desires.”

The Emperor looked around at the blasted and empty room. “There are many things in my palace I could have given him, but there is nothing here that—”

The Fensena cut him off again in mid-stupidity. “You really do not see a thing do you? It is as if no story was ever read to you as a child.” He whiffed a breath out of his long snout, shaking himself as if foolishness were water and he could somehow dislodge it. He could not believe that this man had come to Arkaym to rule it yet had never taken the time to listen to the old tales and myths. Delmaire was a beautiful land, but it was not the land. Not the first. Arkaym was the more Ancient by far.

Still, he had neither the time nor the compunction to waste his breath on telling it now. If the human was as blind as he appeared, then he would have to be shown. Instead, the coyote turned on his own tail and went to the center of the room. He could feel it humming through his bones, and setting his fur on end; the most Ancient of places and also a hiding spot.

Unlike the Rossin, the Fensena could at least come to this place, but even he could not do what the Emperor was required to do. To give him the hint the coyote began digging. His blunt but effective claws made the sand fly, and though the digging set his teeth on edge, he did not cease for many a minute.

Eventually, the Emperor became curious and drew nearer to observe what the geistlord was up to. The Fensena was panting, and his head was ringing, but he had done all he could. Together geistlord and Emperor stared down at what he had uncovered.

It was a doorway—or perhaps more accurately a hatch. The palace of Vermillion had more than its fair share of such hidey-holes, but this one was far more than that. Kaleva dropped to his knees and stared at the perfectly round silver hatch. “What do the words say?” he choked out.

That he could not read them was no surprise; they were in the language of the Ehtia, which had long been wiped from human memory. “Cursed be he that takes this up,” was a fairly decent translation, but one that the broken Emperor did not need to know.

“I do not have to answer your questions, boy,” he replied, a growl darkening his tone. “It is for you to do as you are told.”

To his credit the Emperor hesitated a moment. He stared at the coyote for a long time, his eyes darting this way and that as if he were having a conversation with himself. Maybe he was.

The Fensena’s hackles went up, and his lip pulled back from his teeth. “Do as you are bid—as you promised the Rossin when he spared your life—or feel the consequences!”

A line of sweat broke out on the Emperor’s forehead, but he leaned down and grabbed a tight hold of the handle. This was the moment where it could all go wrong. The Rossin’s blood did not flow in this Emperor, and the powerful cantrips Derodak had placed on the door could turn and grind Kaleva to dust. However, he was the Emperor and had sat on the throne of Arkaym. That should be enough for the cantrip . . . hopefully.

Kaleva gasped, and bent over as if he’d been punched in the stomach. The coyote waited for him to catch fire, burst into ashes or melt away. None of those things happened.

Finally, the Emperor uncurled himself and yanked on the door handle. A grinding, Ancient noise filled the deserted room, and then a rush of stale air exploded from behind the hatch. Both coyote and human turned aside and coughed desperately. The Fensena’s sharp senses told him to run; it was not just stale air down there. The Otherside was close, and an Ancient seam ran here. It was closed tight for now, but it still made the geistlord nervous.

Since he did not move, it was the Emperor who leaned down into the hole. He might be nearly as empty of sense as a cracked bowl, but he had plenty of that terminal problem for humans: curiosity. The Fensena let him do what he was doing since there could well be traps in there too.

The Emperor proved the coyote right when he began to scream. Long tentacles, green and a vivid red, had appeared at the edge of the hatch, and the Fensena reconsidered; perhaps that breach was not as tightly closed as he had thought. The tentacles had already wrapped around Kaleva’s arm, thick and pulsing with power, and tearing at his flesh until blood pulsed from the wounds.

The Fensena felt a low whine escape his throat and he fought the natural inclination to flee. As the Emperor screamed and tore manically at his arm and the tentacles, the coyote bounded from side to side. He realized that the Emperor’s blood must stay in the hatch, above all things, so he lunged forward and clamped down on the Emperor’s arm, just about where the other had its grip. The Fensena braced, and made sure the human could not move.

The room stank of the Otherside. What if the barrier breached right here and now? Primitive fear—which the Fensena thought he was long past—rushed through him.

The tentacles held on, and the smell of blood filled the room. The Emperor let out a strange strangled scream, and then there was a tearing sound.

Kaleva was left rocking back and forth, clutching his arm to his body, but the tentacles were gone and so was the blood. It had been accepted. The Fensena let out a yip of relief and darted forward.

When he peered into the hole, he could see his goal inside the hatch, but he was not so foolish as to try and take it himself. He turned to the Emperor. “Reach in. Get it.”

Kaleva’s eyes were wide and terrified. “No, n-n-no . . .” he stuttered.

Foolish damn human. The Fensena had reached the end of his tether. He was so close to achieving the task the Rossin had set him. Finally, pushed to it, the coyote used his own power.

He charged the Emperor and knocked him down. For a moment he went into a frenzy; ripping and tearing at the howling man. The smell of blood drove him on, and it was quite possible that he might kill him then and there.

Eventually, the Fensena found his cool Center again. When he came to himself, he was standing over the terrified Emperor, who now had many bites to go with what the tentacles had already inflicted. The Fensena’s gaze was fixed on his throat, and he contemplated how easy it would be to tear it out. He could also take the Emperor’s body for his own—the coyote was close to burning this one out.

No, he could not do that. The Emperor was needed, and the Rossin only wanted what had been promised. He growled, deep and low. “Reach in there, and take it out. Now!”

The Emperor slid sideways, away from the coyote, and toward the hatch. Finally, the Fensena had convinced the human that he was more dangerous than whatever was in the pit. His hands wrapped around a bundle, and he pulled it out.

The smell of it was musty and powerful. The coyote immediately forgot about the human; all of his senses were focused on it. “Open it,” he growled.

The Emperor, still shaking, did as he was bid. The Rossin’s pelt was distinctive; the fur thick and luxurious and patterned with dark patches. It was wrapped in a bundle, and tied closed with a thin, red rope.

The Fensena’s eyes gleamed, and without a word he took the binding in his teeth. The Emperor he left sitting on the floor clutching his wounds. He was of no further concern. Now the coyote had to return to his master and quickly. It was time for their plan to move forward.