Matabar

Book II. Chapter 69 - Tears and stars

Chapter 69

Ardan watched as the night itself came alive and slowly drew near. Its cold caress carried with it the promise of warmth slipping away, and he felt it on his face as a whisper of wind and a touch of light rain. Allane’Eari, who’d been born on the coldest summer night, straddled the boundary between the two halves of the City on the Hill. Though she was a trueborn daughter of the Queen of Winter, she also had the right to enter Summer. Perhaps it was foolish to call the daughter of someone who ruled half the City on the Hill a half-blood, but that was the word that came to Ardan’s mind.

That word, and a sentence:

“I am not your betrothed, Princess,” the young man said in the Fae tongue.

The living night drifted toward him with a silhouette so feminine that only a poet or a painter could’ve captured the depths of its primal, otherworldly beauty. Dark blue robes of cold wind-silk billowed behind her, while her hair floated like the tattered ribbons of liquid ink amongst the stars swirling around her.

And yet, the instant Ardan blinked, a young woman was standing before him. She was perhaps twenty-two years old, statuesque, slender and tall enough that he didn’t need to tilt his head to look her in the eye. Her face was whiter than porcelain and lovelier than the masterpiece a sculptor would spend his whole life toiling over.

This was not an illusion. Not a mirage. Not some trick of the mind. Allane’Eari had desired flesh, and so she had claimed it. As wild, wondrous and unsettling as that might sound, such was the nature of the Fae. These immortal beings could don and shed the shackles of flesh as easily as mortals drew breath.

“This kiss...” Her long fingers—so soft they made velvet feel coarse by comparison—encircled Ardan’s left wrist and lifted it. Beneath his father’s watch, the imprint of icy lips was revealed. “...says otherwise, my betrothed.”

“I am betrothed, Princess, but not to you.”

Allane’Eari laughed. It was a light, lilting sound, like a gentle summer drizzle at twilight. She walked barefoot among the withered grasses of the earth that was already slipping into winter’s sleep.

“You are betrothed to a mortal, my fate.” She moved to stand back-to-back with him, and Ardan still did not move.

Every story, legend, fairy tale, and parable Ardan had heard since his childhood was screaming at him: “Run, run as fast and as far as you can. Run to the very edge of the world. To a place where you will barely find any Ley. Find such a place. And hide. Lie low until your spirit leaves you and travels the paths of the Sleeping Spirits.”

In each of those tales, whenever a hero had dealt with the Fae, it had never ended well—only in pain, tears and tragedy.

“What are mortals, blood of Aror?” She approached Mshisty where he lay by the cold, motionless fire and nudged his head with her toes, rolling his face from one cheek to the other. “Your appearance in this world is so brief. Your path so fragile. One moment, you exist, and the next, you do not. You may do as you wish with your mortal woman, my betrothed. When her spirit returns home, you will still be here. And so will I.”

This was a mighty Pink Star battlemage. A Grand Magister. And yet, he slept, snoring softly, and noticed nothing as the fire beside him transformed into orange and yellow glass. He didn’t even know that the lovely figure of one of Winter’s Princesses loomed over him.

“I love her, Princess,” Ardan said. The mark on his arm kept him from simply sending this witch back home as he had in the summer. Winter was nearing, and with each passing day, Allane’Eari’s power only grew. “And in my heart, there is room for neither you, nor your words.”

She released Mshisty and, circling around him, came to stand before Ardan. Reaching out, she touched the young mage’s motionless face. The longer she held her fingertips against his cheek, the more they smoldered, until at last, they burst into bright white flame.

Allane’Eari snatched her hand back and smiled. This was a smile that was at once sorrowful and feral. It was a smile no beast, no human, not even a Firstborn could ever imitate.

“Aror promised you to me as payment for a bargain,” the Princess reminded him. “Your fate, my betrothed, was bound to mine even before the father whose seed begot you was born, and before the mother whose heart welcomed you into the world met him.”

With each word the Princess spoke, with each second he spent under her gaze, Ardan could feel strong fetters winding more tightly around his body. Like living parasites, they burrowed under his skin, piercing muscle and bone, trying to reach even deeper—to a place unseen by Corporal Rovnev’s microscopes, a part of him no scalpel could ever cut out and preserve in a jar of formalin.

Only the scent of those flowers that bloomed by the creek in spring kept them from delving further. It burned them both—the Princess and the young mage—in equal measure. Aror truly had struck a bargain, there was no doubt about it. He had surrendered the fate of his unborn great-grandson to the mercy of the Fae.

“But that choice was not mine,” Ardan said, straining to find some escape from the labyrinth her words were dragging him into. “I did not choose to be by your side, Princess.”

She laughed again. This time, it was a touch more cruel, more bloodthirsty.

“Mortals cannot choose anything, my betrothed. How foolish... Can a spark choose where it will fly, when a moment later, it is gone, and the world remains unchanged, as it ever was, indifferent to that fleeting glimmer? That is how it is with mortals as well. You have no right to shape your own destiny because you cannot even see where you tread on your short little paths.”

Ardan glanced at the Sidhe’s scorched fingers.

“Even a spark can burn, milady-”

He didn’t get to finish speaking. Allane’Eari swooped at him like a raven and, grabbing him by the throat, hoisted him off the ground more easily than Ardan himself might’ve lifted a foolish kitten. Holding the youth at arm’s length, her face still a mask of flawless, unearthly beauty, she paid no heed to her hand that was blazing with fire.

“Do not forget whom you speak to, mortal. And do not try to act clever with me.”

Ardan choked, but said nothing. He understood perfectly well that he could do nothing against a Sidhe bound to him by laws as immutable as all the other laws that hadn’t been crafted by men, but by the world itself.

And yet, him knowing that didn’t mean that Ardan intended to meekly accept his fate and let this being drag him off to a land outside of time.

Allane’Eari, hissing in pain, unclenched her fingers and clutched the arm that had caught on fire up against her body. A moment passed and the white flames vanished, leaving the Princess looking whole and unharmed.

“When her time wearing flesh is up, yours won’t even be half over, my betrothed,” Allane’Eari intoned, her voice as devoid of feeling as a slab of ice over a lake. “You will live a long life, wizard. Will you be able to guard that flame in your hands so carefully when her flesh melts away like water?”

Ardan stayed silent. Until the Sidhe asked him thrice, he was not obliged to answer her questions. And Allane’Eari clearly had no intention of asking him twice more. That was because... she did not want to know the answer.

“Do not look at me like that, wizard,” she said, turning aside. “Do not look at me as if you understand me, as if you pity me.”

But the truth was that Ardan did understand her, and possibly even pitied her. What could’ve driven an ageless Princess born of the Cold Summer Night to strike a bargain in which she would claim a mortal life as her own? How foolish.

If the Fae had cared at all for the world of humans and the Firstborn, they would not have vanished from it the instant the war between Ectassus and Gales had erupted. Those who measure their steps by the strides of shifting continents have no regard for the clockwork ticks of mortal lives.

Then why?

Perhaps it was because Ardan had spent much of his life wondering who he was. He’d been born neither Matabar nor human, forever frozen on the border between two worlds that were so close to each other, and yet so different.

Allane’Eari, Princess of Winter, had come into the world at the height of Summer.

Before the first elves had even appeared in this world, she’d already stood upon the same border as Ardan. She’d been torn between Summer and Winter, eternally alone, a stranger among both.

“I cannot be your husband, Princess.” Some might’ve called Ardan a naïve fool for pitying the one who sought to enslave him, but so be it. “I cannot go with you to the City on the Hill and watch eternity pass in your chambers.”

She turned away. A tear rolled down her cheek, falling like a shooting star that lost itself somewhere in the silk of her night-black hair.

Fae and mortals. They were so different… And yet, pain and hope, whether one was woven of flesh or of spirit, seemed to dwell equally in every heart.

“Then you will die, wizard,” she whispered like a breeze at dawn. “You will grow old. Your sight will dim. Your body will wither. Your mind will gutter out. And you will meet your inglorious end in the shadow of an old one whose memory you carry in your hands.”

“Perhaps, Princess,” Ardan didn’t try to deny it. He had already said more than was necessary. “But it does not change the fact that I love Tess. It’s possible that I loved her before I met her. Maybe even before I was born.”

“You were promised to me as well, my betrothed…” She turned her back to him and stared off into the distance, her gaze spearing through more than just space. “…before you were born. So why, then, is it she—a mortal woman—and not me?”

As Grandfather had taught him in his childhood, Ardan shared with the lonely Princess of Winter a treasured secret. An answer that was truly honest and sincere, and thus rare and precious.

“I don’t know, Princess.”

He truly didn’t. Ardan rather doubted that it was even possible to know, to calculate, to measure, and then find out the answer to the question: why do you love someone?

The Princess stood there for a time without moving, frozen in the midst of the night. She was so close, almost touching him. And yet, at the same time, she was somewhere far away, as unattainable as the stars overhead, which danced in time with her breath.

She reached up toward them. She tangled distant starlight between her fingers and whispered Words over it that were brimming with mystery and sorrow. She looped these long threads into circles until she held out two rings on her upturned palm. Plain, small rings of yellow metal.

“Take them, wizard,” she said softly. “Take them. I will say it thrice so you will hear me thrice: there is neither any danger, nor deceit, nor trickery in them. They are my gift to you and your beloved for your wedding day. I give them to you to honor the memory of how I spent a few mortal moments dreaming I would get to be in her place.”

Ardan, not even knowing why he did it, took the rings. By taking them, he violated the foremost law of fairy tales—never accept anything from the Fae, especially a Sidhe. Neither as a gift, nor as payment.

“Thank you, Princess.”

“So long as you both wear these rings, wizard, none in this world will have the power to sunder you, save death,” Allane’Eari whispered. “And when death visits your halls, the rings will dim. Just as even starlight dims when the time comes for the stars themselves to cease shining.”

Ardan clenched his fist, feeling the skin of his palm warmed by a gentle, yellow glow. It didn’t feel like he was holding metal, but starlight itself.

“Why, Princess?” was all he could ask.

Allane’Eari smiled a third time. This time, it looked like an autumn forest’s smile as it sheds its last reminders of summer.

“You ask too much of me, wizard. How am I to explain my soul to a mortal? There isn’t enough of what you call time for that,” she said, extending a hand toward him only to let it fall before touching him. “When you carry out the order. When you remain steadfast, though you will wish to run, and winter meets spring, then my mark will melt and nothing will hold the Lost Ones back any longer. One day, they will begin the hunt for you. And for her as well. In the west, my betrothed, where the sun goes to sleep, is the home of one of the First. Seek out his voice. He will tell you how to Hear what mortals do not. That is my second gift to you. And the third…”

Treading through the grass so lightly that her feet didn’t bend a single blade of it, she stepped up to him and gently kissed his cheek. She didn’t do it like he was prey, or a lover. Nor did it feel like she was kissing a friend, but like she’d just kissed... someone who was dying.

Ardan watched the Princess vanish into the darkness, her tears streaking across the night sky in a shower of falling stars.

“Time flows differently for you and me, little Speaker.”

The words Atta’nha had once spoken now sounded entirely different to him. Ardan had already seen people dear to him off on their final journey, and so he could recognize when someone else was doing the same. That night, four months ago, he had perceived Allane’Eari as a threat. As something dangerous that wished him ill.

But how could a mortal possibly understand a Fae?

“Farewell,” came the whisper of the last warm night of the year. “My betrothed.”

Ardan, who was clutching the two rings in his fist as he watched the stars fall, understood with perfect clarity that he was seeing the Princess of Winter for the last time. He was seeing the one whom neither Summer nor Winter, nor, least of all, he could comprehend, for the last time...

He’d thought that she wanted to enslave him, to drag him off to the City on the Hill and make him her plaything, but she… had only wanted to save him the only way she knew how. It was possible that, by the time she turned her gaze this way again, not even dust would remain of Ardan.

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Just a spark lingering for a moment in the eyes of an eternal Princess. Like a little shooting star that, for half a heartbeat, had scorched a line across the night sky.

“Why so sad, Corporal?”

Ardan flinched upon hearing Mshisty’s voice behind him. The man had already risen to his feet and, leaning on his staff, was standing nearby and smoking.

“I got a letter,” Ardan fibbed, tucking the rings into the inner pocket of his jacket.

“From whom?”

Ardan didn’t answer immediately. In fact, he waited a long moment before replying.

“From a friend...” he finally murmured. “One I didn’t even know I had.”

Mshisty stood next to him, smoking in silence. Overhead, the stars were still falling. Only now, as he was standing shoulder to shoulder with the newly-appointed member of the Empire’s Grand Magister Lodge, did Ardan notice that the man didn’t even reach his shoulder. Mshisty was a man of rather short stature and, as some people would surely say, of equally-low principles and morals.

Of course, “some people” typically included Milar, Alexander, Alice, Dagdag, and any other Cloak whose path had crossed Mshisty’s. Even Din Arnson, who had saved Mshisty in the Dead Lands on the Empire’s border with the Enario Theocracy, where the Grand Magister had lost his left arm and, along with it, the ability to kindle a Black Star, spoke of Mshisty in rather unflattering terms. And Din, it had to be said, could come up with a sincere, pleasant compliment for a lamppost. That was the sort of man he was.

“I thought it would bring me pleasure.”

“What?” Ardan started, his mind still ablaze with the words Allane’Eari had left burning in it.

Mshisty tucked his staff under his one arm and his cigarette between his teeth, then pulled a Grand Magister’s medallion from his coat pocket. It was a simple disk of forged iron stamped with an antique conical mage’s cap and a book.

“The title,” Mshisty explained, stowing the medallion again and blowing out a cloud of smoke.

He was gray-haired, wiry, with a hawkish face and a keen gaze. He reminded one of an old eagle—the kind that would choose a nest among high cliffs over a cozy hollow or a den beneath gnarled roots, however warm and dry it might’ve been. Under the thrashing blows of endless storms and razor-sharp winds, that eagle would proudly survey its boundless hunting grounds. And just as those below, in their comfort and ease, could never understand him, so, too, would he never be able to understand those dwelling below while gazing out from some distant, unwelcoming height.

Or so Kaishas had said.

“I’ve loved competitions ever since I was a child, Corporal,” Mshisty said, drawing on his cigarette and exhaling a thick plume of smoke. “Ever play hockey?”

Ardan nodded.

“There was a small lake in Evergale,” he answered. “Or an overgrown pond, really. In winter, if we managed to get there before the older kids, my friends would spend ages fussing with skates, sticks and a puck.”

“Your friends? And you?”

Ardan only smiled modestly. Mshisty raked an appraising gaze over him and flashed him a predatory grin.

“I wouldn’t have been bothered by the difference in build, Corporal. If anything, it would’ve made winning easier.”

Ardan just shrugged. Everyone had their own idea of what made a game enjoyable. And besides, while Neviy and the others had been off playing hockey, he and Anna had been able to sit quietly together and pass the time with their schoolbooks.

Curiously enough, that might’ve been why he had found common ground so easily with Elena. She reminded him of Anna in some ways. And Boris... Boris, now that he thought about it, shared many character traits with Neviy.

Those were thoughts for another day.

“Yes, Corporal, it would have been easier...” Mshisty murmured almost wistfully. “I remember when I was twelve, we often faced off against the graduates at Sandy Pond. They were sixteen, and all of them were as big as trams. And we were smaller. Much lighter. If one of them crashed into you, it was like getting hit by a horse-drawn cab at full tilt.”

Ardan listened and, to his surprise, realized that Mshisty must have grown up in the Metropolis. Sandy Pond was a small pond in the only park in the Tend. And yet Mshisty, in addition to his rank of Major, possessed the hereditary title of Baron as well! Perhaps he was one of those aristocrats whose families hadn’t weathered the Empire’s transition from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, and had ended up ruined?

“The older boys took advantage of that,” Mshisty continued. “They would tear toward us like a hound after a bitch in heat, eyes blazing. I swear they had steam snorting from their nostrils. Naturally, we all had to run. All of us… except me. I earned so many bruises, Corporal, scrapes, a few fractures, and my face was constantly bloody. My teeth—those I protected. I’d stuff cotton from home in my mouth, and that’s how I kept them. But I never ran. Not once, Corporal. Do you know why?”

Ardan stayed silent. The question was clearly rhetorical.

“Not because I was brave. And not because I didn’t feel pain,” Mshisty said, closing his eyes and tilting his chin up a little as he calmly smoked. “I just always wanted to feel what it was like—being strong. Stronger than everyone else. And how can you know that you’re strong unless you’re still standing on your skates while that big lug lies on the ice before you, unable to get past you? He couldn’t do it. He failed. I kept waiting for that moment, Ard. And one day, it happened. And that feeling”—Mshisty inhaled sharply through his nose and thrust out his chest—”is the best feeling in the world. Your body trembles. Your heart pounds so wildly that you can’t even distinguish its beats. There are no thoughts at all, just a drumming in your temples. Because you’ve won. You’ve proven yourself to be better. Nimbler. Smarter. Stronger. More resourceful. It doesn’t matter which. You’re simply… better. More alive. It’s a drug more potent than Angel Dust.”

Ardan watched this strange mage who had decided, in the middle of a dark, cold night, to share his thoughts with him.

“But here’s the rub,” Mshisty’s smile dimmed, and a veil of sorrow fell over his hawkish face. “The second time that very same opponent falls before you, you...”—he struck his fist against his chest—“feel nothing. Nothing at all. It’s like reciting a poem to a block of wood—it makes no difference to it. The same goes for you. Then you have to seek out another foe. Someone stronger. Just to feel it all again. And then someone even stronger. And stronger still. And at a certain point, the hardest task isn’t securing the victory itself, but simply the search for someone you can defeat to get that feeling again.”

Lowering his hand, the Grand Magister clenched the pocket where his medallion lay.

“Edward was a hopeless romantic,” Mshisty went on, still staring into the distance. “You might not know this, but he proposed to his wife the day after they met. He was a romantic and an absolute genius at misunderstanding people. He told her back then: ‘We both know we feel the same thing, so why waste time?’”

Ardan filed away a note in the folder labeled “Mshisty”—the Grand Magister had known Edward long before their bloody duel at the ceremony where the late Lord Aversky had received his medallion, and before their shared service in the Black House. Given the small size of the mage community, which only grows smaller with each new Star one ignites, that was hardly surprising.

“He was always ahead of me. Both in science, and in the art of war,” Mshisty braced his one arm on his staff. He spoke slowly, with pauses, as if savoring the chance to converse with someone like this. “It was the longest duel of my life, Corporal. I made some foolish mistakes too, truth be told. Those cursed Dead Lands... If not for them, we might’ve fought as equals. But as it happened... For a while, I didn’t even know if I could ever find someone whose defeat would bring back that feeling. Next to Edward, even that Knasski that guarded Shamtur looks like nothing more than an upstart pup.”

Knasski—Ardan had heard that name at the end of the first month of summer, when he and Tess had visited her hometown.

“That’s why I was glad to learn that he’d taken on a student. Even if only for half a year. If you think about it, in those six months, he probably didn’t have time to teach you anything substantial, Corporal,” Mshisty finished his cigarette and, despite the fact that he never troubled himself with ashtrays in the city, here in the valley, he tucked the butt into his pocket. “But I like to believe that, all the same, it left some sort of link between you two. And when you grow up, ignite a few more Stars, and earn yourself at least a Senior Magister’s medallion—then we’ll meet on the dueling stage. And when I crush you like an annoying bug, I’ll be able to convince myself that I crushed Edward instead.”

If there was anything Ardan understood about Major Mshisty, it was that you could never be certain about who was talking to you at any given moment: the gallant aristocrat and scholar, or the crazed war hound with blood in his eyes that would’ve painted the whole world red if given half a chance.

“Of course, Major,” was all Ardan said.

He’d spent enough time around wild predators to know when there was no sense in taking offense or dwelling on their growls. Sometimes, a creature simply cannot express its thoughts in any other way—not because it doesn’t know how to, but because it simply cannot. That doesn’t make it worse. Or better. It just is what it is. And that was the case with Mshisty. He was a battlemage for whom unending conflict had long since become the very meaning of life. And yet...

“The rings are very pretty,” Mshisty’s words cut off Ardan’s train of thought and turned him to stone. “Enchanted... I haven’t seen true magic very often in my life, Corporal. Not Star Magic, but real sorcery... Ah well. This stupid night. Let’s go wake our precious comrades-in-arms. A simple Red Star healing seal that works on the adrenal glands will be enough. Just don’t overdo it with the rays. I don’t need a bunch of armed Cloaks jumping around the clearing, high on adrenaline.”

Ardan’s eyes went wide as he stared at the major in silence. The man was massaging his cheek—the very same one the Princess of Winter’s toes had brushed against.

“You going deaf on me, Corporal? We haven’t got all day.”

“You... you... you weren’t asleep,” Ardan managed. “But... how?”

“What do you mean I wasn’t asleep?” Mshisty snorted. “I slept like the dead. And so did these feeble bastards. The Captain and Lieutenant will pay for that blunder on the training field, and I’ll punish the rest come next quarter.”

Ardan didn’t even need to listen to Mshisty’s heartbeat to know that the man was lying. He truly hadn’t succumbed to Allane’Eari’s magic. The whole time, the major had been conscious, and he’d witnessed their exchange. Of course, he’d only witnessed it because he did not and could not understand the Fae tongue.

On the other hand, only minutes ago, Ardan had been equally certain that Star Mages were incapable of resisting the art of the Aean’Hane when it was performed by a Sidhe.

“Move it, Corporal,” Mshisty nearly barked, finally shedding the last of his earlier courtesy. “Or do you only gobble up forbidden books by the ton in the Grand? Can’t you even perform a simple seal?”

Ardan bobbed his head and started down the hill toward the small cluster of tents below. Halfway down, he stopped and glanced back at the major. Mshisty had lit a second cigarette and, turning to face the falling stars, was watching them with a melancholy gaze.

Ardan had never really thought about it before, but perhaps… When they’d buried Edward, maybe Mshisty had also bid farewell to his friend. Possibly his only friend.

“Cassara, sing something.”

“You know I don’t like to sing.”

“Sing anyway.”

“Alright.”

“...”

“What a stupid song that was, vampire.”

“Forgive me, Yonatan.”

Stupid song... Stupid night...

In truth, the Second Chancery was a very strange place. It seemed to be a haven for those who, for any number of reasons, hadn’t found a place in the world everyone else shared. And so it was precisely they—the ones nobody wanted and had been cast away—who guarded that world so zealously. They did so because they knew what awaited those accustomed to warmth and comfort should they ever find themselves in the midst of storms and lashing, razor-sharp winds.

Ardan shook himself.

Those were thoughts for another day.

Opening his grimoire to the chapter on healing seals, he headed off to wake the other Cloaks.

***

Lieutenant Klementiy (who, as far as Ardan could recall, had held a lower rank before the night at the vampire’s manor) was lying in the tall grass, meticulously tweaking a number of valves, tugging levers, and pressing the small keys that littered his strange apparatus. It looked like two spyglasses fused together, which made it appear like an oversized set of opera glasses—only with a Ley-crystal at the center of where they’d been fused, and so many wires, tubes, gears, levers, and buttons that it was amazing the complex contraption could even exist.

Professor Convel used to warn them in his lectures and labs: “The more complex a system, the more likely it is to break down.”

“What can you see, Lieutenant?” Mshisty, who was lying beside him, asked.

Five of them had climbed the hill: Captain Parela, Lieutenant Klementiy, the local lieutenant-investigator whose name Ardan, to his shame, hadn’t even seen fit to learn, Major Mshisty, and Ardan himself.

The rest of the operatives, concealed by a complex illusion spell, were waiting for the signal down in the lowland.

The quartet of mages plus the investigator watched their target. And if not for the nearly year and a half he’d spent studying Star Magic and the art of the Aean’Hane so intently, Ardan might not have noticed a thing. Spread out before him, in the middle of the valley, was a wide lake whose far shore one could only see on a clear, sunny day.

Right now, in the thickening autumn twilight, the last flashes of the setting sun were glinting along the turquoise surface of the cold, placid water. Along the banks, the orphaned crowns of trees that had extended their roots right up to the sandy shore swayed. Every now and then, the wind tore away some leaves and scattered them across the waters of Angel’s Tear. It was nothing supernatural, nothing that would have caught anyone’s interest—a landscape painter might’ve been intrigued, but that was it.

This was a quiet land visited only by winds and birds, beasts, and the cowboys driving their herds there to get water. This was nature that had not yet known the heavy tread of progress. Untouched and serene.

It looked that way at first glance. But if he looked more closely... Not with his eyes, but with something else, something tucked away in the depths of the Aean’Hane’s art, then…

“It’s quite a complex construction,” Klementiy answered eventually. “I can s-see four emitters at the support points of the structure. The rest is hidden under interference.”

“Power?”

“One second.” Klementiy adjusted a few more gears and flipped a couple of switches. “A-about a hundred and twenty rays of a Yellow Star at peak load. Probably powered by three generators linked into one network. Likely standard civilian models from the New City meant for skyscrapers.”

Ardan had no idea what exactly Klementiy was seeing through his Ley-binoculars. As for him... If he relaxed his gaze and imagined that he was about to look away, then right there, at the southern shore, a vision would appear for just a moment. It was difficult to describe in words because it wasn’t truly something one saw with their eyes. It was more something one felt with everything at once, with every sense capable of feeling.

Ardan sort of saw it, and maybe even heard it, he tasted it on the tip of his tongue, felt it brush the pads of his fingers. It was something incomprehensible, yet at the same time, unmistakably magical. There, on the southeastern shore of Angel’s Tear, something was happening—something very, very serious and potent. Even from here, nearly half a kilometer away, he could sense the influence of Star Magic.

“Corporal?”

Mshisty didn’t need to clarify his question, Ardan understood it well enough. As did Captain Parela, who, not bothering to hide her feelings about the matter, grimaced slightly. At their last meeting, when it had come to light that Ardan was a Speaker, he had noticed how markedly the woman’s attitude toward him had changed.

“There’s no art of the Aean’Hane there,” Ardan said, shaking his head. The cold wind of the approaching winter ruffled his hair, but he heard no whispers and no stories in it. “Either it’s hidden, or I can’t sense it.”

“A very useful observation,” Parela hissed.

“Belay that, Captain,” Mshisty snapped, and then turned to Klementiy again. “Lieutenant, what do you say about our chances of breaking in unnoticed?”

“A-almost impossible, Major,” Klementiy gave him an unhappy verdict. “If it w-were j-just a stationary shield without emitters, then maybe I c-could manage something with my tools. But the emitters... They’re linked into a single system and any external interference will send a signal to the control seal.”

“I’d like to know where they got such rare military equipment,” the lieutenant-investigator muttered. “Across the entirety of the Fatian border, there are barely a hundred emitters to be found.”

Ardan and Klementiy opened their mouths in unison, then just as quickly shut them. There was no point in explaining that emitters, in essence, made little sense—neither the military nor the civilian ones made any sense at all.

Their main use was serving as a kind of anchor point for the coordinates of a complex seal. In cities, instead of emitters, they used... the walls of buildings. Due to the properties of the Parallax field, those performed the very same function.

In the field, when setting up a small stationary shield, one could simply scatter some stones to establish solid coordinates. And so, emitters had meaning and value only in a very specific case: when a complex shield structure needed to be erected in the middle of an open field.

Thus, to the average layman, the term “Ley-emitter” sounded like something highly complex, mysterious and possibly even top secret. But in reality... In reality, it was most likely just four cement posts reinforced with steel that had been sunk into the ground and with thick cables wrapped around them. That was what this “rare military equipment” amounted to, and its “rarity” was only justified by how useless it was for most everyday applications.

The scientists of the early Industrial Revolution had been correct in saying that to the common layperson, “scientific progress is indistinguishable from Star Magic.” And, evidently, that assertion worked in the opposite direction as well.

The only true advantage emitters had over all other ways to create fixed coordinates—as Klementiy had mentioned—was the ability to unite them into a single network. This was expensive and, often enough, pointless for cities and large settlements, since those would have no trouble with Ley generation and it would be much simpler to just complicate the seal a bit rather than building a unified network. It might’ve sounded paradoxical, but it was the truth.

“Your final verdict, Lieutenant?” Mshisty urged.

Despite all his dubious qualities, the major possessed an invaluable virtue—the ability to admit that other people understood and could do far more than he himself could when it came to certain things.

“W-we’ll have to break it,” Klementiy sighed, lowering the binoculars. “T-there’s no other way we’re getting inside.”

Ardan didn’t quite grasp why, after those words were said, Mshisty’s face lit up with an almost childlike delight—the purest, most unclouded kind of joy—whereas Parela and Klementiy’s expressions became the polar opposite. Both mages furrowed their brows and seemed to be silently ticking off a litany of rather crude, dirty curses.

“On the way back, have the Corporal sign the paperwork,” Mshisty ordered, and then carefully crawled down the hill.

Also crawling, the rest of them followed him. To the gulls flying overhead, it must have looked rather comical: a group of mages scraping their bellies across the ground.

“What papers?” Ardan asked.

“Non-disclosure ones,” Klementiy replied with a heavy groan. “Because you’ll be participating in the use of strategic military magic.”

Well... Now Ardan fully understood, and agreed with, everything Klementiy and Parela had been thinking.

Sleeping Spirits...