Short story written in September 2016 for ThinkerX's Top Scribe VI Challenge.
6100 words
Vienne woke to blackness where there should have been moonlight. A great shape crouched over her bed. She could not breathe under its numb weight, nor could she move, for none of her limbs would obey. She could only stare into the golden eyes of a panther, gleaming in the darkness.
A daemon. Its paws felt solid on her chest, tangible as velvet, the huff of its breath warm and damp on her neck. But unearthly power emanated from it, and seeped under her skin.
Paralyzed and mute before the worst of her fears, Vienne fled in the only direction she could—inward.
The pool of her magic lay before her inner eye, shining like glass lit from within. She dashed power into her hands, trying to shape with panicked thoughts the right sigil to banish a living nightmare. But as the ripples of her effort spread across the surface of the pool, shadows stirred in the surrounding void.
One by one, glowing eyes blinked up in a ring around the water. Soft panting met her ears, then snorting, whining, growling, the cry of a kestrel… Pairs of eyes scattered and bobbed as the daemons crept towards her.
Vienne leapt back into her senses with magic clutched in both hands. The unshaped power sprayed up in a glittering arc around the waiting panther. “Ashtet!” she croaked—no spell, but an old word of banishment.
The creature closed its eyes and melted into the darkness, and the strange oppression lifted from her chest. She surged up in bed as the mist of spent magic twinkled out around her, and gulped for breath. Her hands clutched her nightdress, pinched her shoulders painfully.
The daemon was gone. Her room was empty now, and silent save for the hum of wind outside, muffled by stone and thick glass. Steam-heat creaked in the walls. Strange shadows fell from her bed-curtains, but none of them moved. None of them breathed. She watched long enough to be sure.
Sick to her stomach, Vienne lurched from bed and put a hand against the cool magelights. Brightness blossomed above the door and the windows over her desk, scintillating through beveled glass and flinging back the night. The sigil she had drawn in chalk around her bed had been smudged by her bare feet—little good it had done her while it was whole. Chalk was a poor medium, but she could sweep it away before anyone came in and saw the evidence of her paranoia. Or was it justified fear now? The beasts had never seemed so real before...
She slumped into the chair, pushing back the tangle of her dark hair with shaking hands. No sleep would come to her after this. In the back of her mind, she heard the echo of rough and wild sounds. The belling of a stag, too distinct to be imagined, too faint to be real.
She could not escape them.
Her throat began to ache, and she swallowed fiercely. There was always something she could do, even in the face of madness. Tomorrow. She only had to make it to the morning.
Slowly, Vienne reached up and dragged the Libruan Dorrea down the desk, slipping her fingers beneath one of the many ribbons that marked its pages and opening it to read from a random place. Her bleary eyes fixed upon the architectural figures to banish the flickers on the backs of her eyelids; she whispered the familiar lines aloud to shut out the growling in the recesses of her ears. This was not the earnest study she should have devoted herself to, on the eve of her tower’s Founding—it was closer to prayer.
Sunlight flooded through bands of blue glass between the helix pillars of the east atrium arc, turning the dark robes of students lounging there to a wash of violet.
She’d waited until the tinnabulum rang for breakfast, but glances and opening mouths still followed her. Her back was straight as ever, her chin up against the weight of her pinned hair, but all the nights of fractured sleep were written in shadows on her face. She didn't dare go through the Atrium proper, where the other Mage Adepts gathered between practica. Nurie, Bellonel, and the others hadn't seen her in days; they knew she would be studying for her Founding, but they also knew how Corim had been before he went mad, and the cautionary stories of Adept Parinhar before him. Familiar eyes would be too hard to meet.
There was someone she would have sought out a long time ago, even in this sorry state, but Magister Llewyn was traveling in Invernia, and even if he were resident at Ascalon, she was no longer his apprentice. She shouldn’t need his advice this badly now...
As an Adept, the closest thing she had to a mentor was Grand Magister Oriolanis. A distant and lofty figure to ask for help, one she had met only a few times, but that was what she had come to. The door to his tower lay at the far end of a vaulted corridor, ornate with obsidian and marble. The path of this wing had been shaped by his power and influence and that of his students, a story told in branching corridors carved from the mountain of Ascalon.
Her hand shook as she reached for the silver knocker. She clenched it, dropped it for a moment, and took a sharp breath. Only when her face was smooth and hard as the carvings on the alabaster door did she let the knocker fall.
“Come in!” A thin tenor voice rang out inside.
Vienne stepped through the door, into the warm gleam of a high fluted room in burnished mahogany and amber-veined marble, lit by eternal flames in tiny glass bulbs. Grand Magister Oriolanis sat behind an edifice of a desk, writing on a lux-wax tablet, crystal spectacles on his nose. The light glimmered on his burgundy embroidered robe and picked out the white in his salt-and-pepper beard—his dark hair was long and only a little thinned by age. Lifting his head from his work, the magister looked at her with surprise, and then his lined face lit up.
“Adept Vienne! Come in, my child, and sit down. I look forward with great pleasure to the sight of your tower—think of it, in a day you will be our youngest magistrix in almost a century. Is there anything I can do for you on the eve of this accomplishment?”
Vienne sat in the too-comfortable chair he waved to, swallowing the sourness in her mouth. “It is about the Founding, Master Oriolanis. I know it is unconscionable, but I must ask if it could be delayed for a week, or...or perhaps more.”
A furrow appeared between his brows. “Delayed? I am sorry, Vienne, but that cannot be done. The stone has been transported, arrangements with the ideal magisters have been made, and the alignment of the planets alone will not be so fortuitous for years… Every effort has been made to ensure your success.” He leaned back and peered at her, bemused. “From what Magister Llewyn has told me of your dedication, I would be most surprised if you have not been preparing for this.”
“No, I have prepared as much as possible. I—” She closed her eyes a little too long, so she did not have to see his face. “I have been hearing things, Master Oriolanis, at night or when I am tired…” And she was always tired, now. “I hear the sounds of invisible creatures, baying at the gates of my mind.”
The words felt dragged from her, ill-birthed, and faded to a whisper. She couldn’t lift her eyes to his face; sweat pricked the back of her neck.
His hands folded his spectacles, set them down on the desk. “This is serious,” the magister said quietly. Vienne stared at her trembling fingers, and hid them in her sleeves. This would be a great blow to her pride, had desperation not already crumbled it.
“I must ask you,” Grand Magister Oriolanis said after a moment, “Whether you have been performing any ritual or saying any cantrip of the peasant faith, no matter how small? The beasts of the underworld need only an invitation to cross into a deep well of power such as yours.”
“No.” Her eyes flashed up to his. “I have left the Bosque behind, Master Oriolanis, I promise you.”
As she said this, a flush of shame washed over her at the memory of standing at the edge of the forest with her baby sister, chanting old rhymes to coax the sylphae, as they called them, from the shadows. Utterly ignorant of the risks.
“Well. I trust your discipline, Adept. But if you are truly hearing daemons...something has called them, even if only an unconscious desire,” he mused, his gaze boring into her. “Remember poor Corim of Suyonne…”
Vienne did not want to think of Corim, nor what the deeps of her magic might hide. “Then there is no spell or protection you can give me against them?” she asked, unable to keep her voice steady. Long hours of research had turned up nothing effective, but if anyone would know, it would be a great mage…
Grand Magister Oriolanis shook his head. “Nothing can come between a man and the wellspring of his power. In that dark place, we are all alone.”
She looked down to hide the panic in her eyes.
“Come now. Perhaps this is not so dire as you think.” His voice was kindly, but she could not believe the reassurance. “The mind can play tricks on us, particularly late at night. One’s Founding is a trying time, when fears and worries rise to the surface. After all, you have not truly seen any daemons?”
Vienne swallowed. If she told him she had seen not only their shadows at her wellspring, but manifestations in the waking world… It would no longer be merely worrying, but dangerous. She did not know if she would be barred from raising her tower, confined to her quarters, or worse.
Slowly, she shook her head. There was always something she could do.
“There. All you need is a good night’s sleep. Once your Founding is behind you, that will come easier. But you will tell someone if this becomes worse?”
“Yes, Master Oriolanis,” Vienne said quietly.
A lake of black marble surrounded her. Ethereal magelight shimmered from the crystal sconces in the ribs of the chamber. Here in the meditation rooms she was wrapped in silence, insulated from the reverberations of others’ magic. Awareness pulsed with shimmers of energy through her blood. Cold and weariness had receded. Every breath and heartbeat was under her control.
Yet she could still hear the panting of wild beasts. The scraping of their hooves. Then and again, a low unearthly call. The hunt went on.
Vienne’s eyes slid open. She stared at the dull sheen of the dome wall, a headache throbbing in her temples. After hours of focus practica, down to the simple breathing exercises she had learnt as an apprentice, the wellspring of her magic would be smooth as glass, shining brightly all through its fathomless depths. But she didn’t dare go near that pool, for fear of the creatures lapping at its bank.
The taste of failure filled her mouth as she gripped her hands together and forced her burning eyelids shut again. She could control her power, she could ignore her weakness, dictate every rhythm of her body, smother every impulse that distracted her from her studies. But somehow she could not control this, and it would destroy everything she had worked for.
Deep down, she feared something in her soul did call to them, some Bosque-born seed she had not rooted out, nourished in the well of her magic, burgeoning with terrible rotten fruit in the depths… And the more powerful she became, the closer she climbed to mastery, the greater this innate sin had swelled.
Vienne clenched her aching jaw and called up power, without dwelling too long in the darkness within her head. She would conquer this, as she had conquered every spell set before her, every trial by magic. The shining arc of a sigil of protection spilled out into the dim chamber around her. To this she added one of defense, one of repulsion, and one of true clarity, flowing in orbits around her.
A high humming warred with the growling mutter in the back of her mind. Needles of pain ran through her head. In her haste, she foundered at the edge of her well, laboring to draw up power.
The darkness stirred, a living thing of velvet skin and bunching muscles, low glinting eyes and twisted horns.
Vienne dragged herself back to the surface, doubled-up with her hands flat against the floor. As she lifted her head, dizzy, she saw movement beyond the shining rings of her protective spells. Sinuous shadows padding around her, slipping in and out of sight. A warning growl shivered through the stone.
It was no use. “No,” she moaned, rocking back on her heels. “No, no, please, no...” For a moment everything slipped from her control: her words were unbidden, her fear unbridled, her shoulders trembling.
One of the shapes drew closer. The panther. Vienne clenched her fists and shouted, “Ariademus ashtet!”
As the echo of that cry rebounded, the worst of the shadows sank from sight, though their clamor did not fade. So they understood the old Bosque tongue. She didn’t know if it was a terrible mistake to speak to them thus, but she knew she could sit no longer in the silence, on a battleground of defeat. The bright sigils were dissolving as she lost focus.
She stood and the headache squeezed her skull; her stomach pitched. In a cold sweat, she ran, and the daemons followed, hissing in her ear.
There was a small, neglected terrace garden behind the meditation domes, and Vienne reached it in time to vomit her meager dinner into the acacia bushes. When she straightened, steadying herself against the wall, she felt too exhausted to think.
Lowering herself onto a stone bench, she faced out over the terrace towards the distant silver horizon of the ocean. The susurrus of the waves and the whistle of the wind drowned out the whine in her head, and the hazy glow of the sun banished all shadows. For now. Not enough to sleep. Not enough to practice for tomorrow.
She had asked for help at last, and found none. She had fought with all her might, and achieved nothing.
Vienne sat with empty, half-curled hands, loose strands of hair dancing around her face. The scents of acacia sap and the early spring flowers rose in the air.
Homesickness, buried so long ago, seized her with yearning like a vise. She remembered following her mother through the haymeadow on a bright day, carrying baskets full of wildflowers. What she would give to be so happy again.
For a long time, she could hold onto no other thought than that.
6100 words
THE INNER ABYSS
Vienne woke to blackness where there should have been moonlight. A great shape crouched over her bed. She could not breathe under its numb weight, nor could she move, for none of her limbs would obey. She could only stare into the golden eyes of a panther, gleaming in the darkness.
A daemon. Its paws felt solid on her chest, tangible as velvet, the huff of its breath warm and damp on her neck. But unearthly power emanated from it, and seeped under her skin.
Paralyzed and mute before the worst of her fears, Vienne fled in the only direction she could—inward.
The pool of her magic lay before her inner eye, shining like glass lit from within. She dashed power into her hands, trying to shape with panicked thoughts the right sigil to banish a living nightmare. But as the ripples of her effort spread across the surface of the pool, shadows stirred in the surrounding void.
One by one, glowing eyes blinked up in a ring around the water. Soft panting met her ears, then snorting, whining, growling, the cry of a kestrel… Pairs of eyes scattered and bobbed as the daemons crept towards her.
Vienne leapt back into her senses with magic clutched in both hands. The unshaped power sprayed up in a glittering arc around the waiting panther. “Ashtet!” she croaked—no spell, but an old word of banishment.
The creature closed its eyes and melted into the darkness, and the strange oppression lifted from her chest. She surged up in bed as the mist of spent magic twinkled out around her, and gulped for breath. Her hands clutched her nightdress, pinched her shoulders painfully.
The daemon was gone. Her room was empty now, and silent save for the hum of wind outside, muffled by stone and thick glass. Steam-heat creaked in the walls. Strange shadows fell from her bed-curtains, but none of them moved. None of them breathed. She watched long enough to be sure.
Sick to her stomach, Vienne lurched from bed and put a hand against the cool magelights. Brightness blossomed above the door and the windows over her desk, scintillating through beveled glass and flinging back the night. The sigil she had drawn in chalk around her bed had been smudged by her bare feet—little good it had done her while it was whole. Chalk was a poor medium, but she could sweep it away before anyone came in and saw the evidence of her paranoia. Or was it justified fear now? The beasts had never seemed so real before...
She slumped into the chair, pushing back the tangle of her dark hair with shaking hands. No sleep would come to her after this. In the back of her mind, she heard the echo of rough and wild sounds. The belling of a stag, too distinct to be imagined, too faint to be real.
She could not escape them.
Her throat began to ache, and she swallowed fiercely. There was always something she could do, even in the face of madness. Tomorrow. She only had to make it to the morning.
Slowly, Vienne reached up and dragged the Libruan Dorrea down the desk, slipping her fingers beneath one of the many ribbons that marked its pages and opening it to read from a random place. Her bleary eyes fixed upon the architectural figures to banish the flickers on the backs of her eyelids; she whispered the familiar lines aloud to shut out the growling in the recesses of her ears. This was not the earnest study she should have devoted herself to, on the eve of her tower’s Founding—it was closer to prayer.
—
Sunlight flooded through bands of blue glass between the helix pillars of the east atrium arc, turning the dark robes of students lounging there to a wash of violet.
She’d waited until the tinnabulum rang for breakfast, but glances and opening mouths still followed her. Her back was straight as ever, her chin up against the weight of her pinned hair, but all the nights of fractured sleep were written in shadows on her face. She didn't dare go through the Atrium proper, where the other Mage Adepts gathered between practica. Nurie, Bellonel, and the others hadn't seen her in days; they knew she would be studying for her Founding, but they also knew how Corim had been before he went mad, and the cautionary stories of Adept Parinhar before him. Familiar eyes would be too hard to meet.
There was someone she would have sought out a long time ago, even in this sorry state, but Magister Llewyn was traveling in Invernia, and even if he were resident at Ascalon, she was no longer his apprentice. She shouldn’t need his advice this badly now...
As an Adept, the closest thing she had to a mentor was Grand Magister Oriolanis. A distant and lofty figure to ask for help, one she had met only a few times, but that was what she had come to. The door to his tower lay at the far end of a vaulted corridor, ornate with obsidian and marble. The path of this wing had been shaped by his power and influence and that of his students, a story told in branching corridors carved from the mountain of Ascalon.
Her hand shook as she reached for the silver knocker. She clenched it, dropped it for a moment, and took a sharp breath. Only when her face was smooth and hard as the carvings on the alabaster door did she let the knocker fall.
“Come in!” A thin tenor voice rang out inside.
Vienne stepped through the door, into the warm gleam of a high fluted room in burnished mahogany and amber-veined marble, lit by eternal flames in tiny glass bulbs. Grand Magister Oriolanis sat behind an edifice of a desk, writing on a lux-wax tablet, crystal spectacles on his nose. The light glimmered on his burgundy embroidered robe and picked out the white in his salt-and-pepper beard—his dark hair was long and only a little thinned by age. Lifting his head from his work, the magister looked at her with surprise, and then his lined face lit up.
“Adept Vienne! Come in, my child, and sit down. I look forward with great pleasure to the sight of your tower—think of it, in a day you will be our youngest magistrix in almost a century. Is there anything I can do for you on the eve of this accomplishment?”
Vienne sat in the too-comfortable chair he waved to, swallowing the sourness in her mouth. “It is about the Founding, Master Oriolanis. I know it is unconscionable, but I must ask if it could be delayed for a week, or...or perhaps more.”
A furrow appeared between his brows. “Delayed? I am sorry, Vienne, but that cannot be done. The stone has been transported, arrangements with the ideal magisters have been made, and the alignment of the planets alone will not be so fortuitous for years… Every effort has been made to ensure your success.” He leaned back and peered at her, bemused. “From what Magister Llewyn has told me of your dedication, I would be most surprised if you have not been preparing for this.”
“No, I have prepared as much as possible. I—” She closed her eyes a little too long, so she did not have to see his face. “I have been hearing things, Master Oriolanis, at night or when I am tired…” And she was always tired, now. “I hear the sounds of invisible creatures, baying at the gates of my mind.”
The words felt dragged from her, ill-birthed, and faded to a whisper. She couldn’t lift her eyes to his face; sweat pricked the back of her neck.
His hands folded his spectacles, set them down on the desk. “This is serious,” the magister said quietly. Vienne stared at her trembling fingers, and hid them in her sleeves. This would be a great blow to her pride, had desperation not already crumbled it.
“I must ask you,” Grand Magister Oriolanis said after a moment, “Whether you have been performing any ritual or saying any cantrip of the peasant faith, no matter how small? The beasts of the underworld need only an invitation to cross into a deep well of power such as yours.”
“No.” Her eyes flashed up to his. “I have left the Bosque behind, Master Oriolanis, I promise you.”
As she said this, a flush of shame washed over her at the memory of standing at the edge of the forest with her baby sister, chanting old rhymes to coax the sylphae, as they called them, from the shadows. Utterly ignorant of the risks.
“Well. I trust your discipline, Adept. But if you are truly hearing daemons...something has called them, even if only an unconscious desire,” he mused, his gaze boring into her. “Remember poor Corim of Suyonne…”
Vienne did not want to think of Corim, nor what the deeps of her magic might hide. “Then there is no spell or protection you can give me against them?” she asked, unable to keep her voice steady. Long hours of research had turned up nothing effective, but if anyone would know, it would be a great mage…
Grand Magister Oriolanis shook his head. “Nothing can come between a man and the wellspring of his power. In that dark place, we are all alone.”
She looked down to hide the panic in her eyes.
“Come now. Perhaps this is not so dire as you think.” His voice was kindly, but she could not believe the reassurance. “The mind can play tricks on us, particularly late at night. One’s Founding is a trying time, when fears and worries rise to the surface. After all, you have not truly seen any daemons?”
Vienne swallowed. If she told him she had seen not only their shadows at her wellspring, but manifestations in the waking world… It would no longer be merely worrying, but dangerous. She did not know if she would be barred from raising her tower, confined to her quarters, or worse.
Slowly, she shook her head. There was always something she could do.
“There. All you need is a good night’s sleep. Once your Founding is behind you, that will come easier. But you will tell someone if this becomes worse?”
“Yes, Master Oriolanis,” Vienne said quietly.
—
A lake of black marble surrounded her. Ethereal magelight shimmered from the crystal sconces in the ribs of the chamber. Here in the meditation rooms she was wrapped in silence, insulated from the reverberations of others’ magic. Awareness pulsed with shimmers of energy through her blood. Cold and weariness had receded. Every breath and heartbeat was under her control.
Yet she could still hear the panting of wild beasts. The scraping of their hooves. Then and again, a low unearthly call. The hunt went on.
Vienne’s eyes slid open. She stared at the dull sheen of the dome wall, a headache throbbing in her temples. After hours of focus practica, down to the simple breathing exercises she had learnt as an apprentice, the wellspring of her magic would be smooth as glass, shining brightly all through its fathomless depths. But she didn’t dare go near that pool, for fear of the creatures lapping at its bank.
The taste of failure filled her mouth as she gripped her hands together and forced her burning eyelids shut again. She could control her power, she could ignore her weakness, dictate every rhythm of her body, smother every impulse that distracted her from her studies. But somehow she could not control this, and it would destroy everything she had worked for.
Deep down, she feared something in her soul did call to them, some Bosque-born seed she had not rooted out, nourished in the well of her magic, burgeoning with terrible rotten fruit in the depths… And the more powerful she became, the closer she climbed to mastery, the greater this innate sin had swelled.
Vienne clenched her aching jaw and called up power, without dwelling too long in the darkness within her head. She would conquer this, as she had conquered every spell set before her, every trial by magic. The shining arc of a sigil of protection spilled out into the dim chamber around her. To this she added one of defense, one of repulsion, and one of true clarity, flowing in orbits around her.
A high humming warred with the growling mutter in the back of her mind. Needles of pain ran through her head. In her haste, she foundered at the edge of her well, laboring to draw up power.
The darkness stirred, a living thing of velvet skin and bunching muscles, low glinting eyes and twisted horns.
Vienne dragged herself back to the surface, doubled-up with her hands flat against the floor. As she lifted her head, dizzy, she saw movement beyond the shining rings of her protective spells. Sinuous shadows padding around her, slipping in and out of sight. A warning growl shivered through the stone.
It was no use. “No,” she moaned, rocking back on her heels. “No, no, please, no...” For a moment everything slipped from her control: her words were unbidden, her fear unbridled, her shoulders trembling.
One of the shapes drew closer. The panther. Vienne clenched her fists and shouted, “Ariademus ashtet!”
As the echo of that cry rebounded, the worst of the shadows sank from sight, though their clamor did not fade. So they understood the old Bosque tongue. She didn’t know if it was a terrible mistake to speak to them thus, but she knew she could sit no longer in the silence, on a battleground of defeat. The bright sigils were dissolving as she lost focus.
She stood and the headache squeezed her skull; her stomach pitched. In a cold sweat, she ran, and the daemons followed, hissing in her ear.
—
There was a small, neglected terrace garden behind the meditation domes, and Vienne reached it in time to vomit her meager dinner into the acacia bushes. When she straightened, steadying herself against the wall, she felt too exhausted to think.
Lowering herself onto a stone bench, she faced out over the terrace towards the distant silver horizon of the ocean. The susurrus of the waves and the whistle of the wind drowned out the whine in her head, and the hazy glow of the sun banished all shadows. For now. Not enough to sleep. Not enough to practice for tomorrow.
She had asked for help at last, and found none. She had fought with all her might, and achieved nothing.
Vienne sat with empty, half-curled hands, loose strands of hair dancing around her face. The scents of acacia sap and the early spring flowers rose in the air.
Homesickness, buried so long ago, seized her with yearning like a vise. She remembered following her mother through the haymeadow on a bright day, carrying baskets full of wildflowers. What she would give to be so happy again.
For a long time, she could hold onto no other thought than that.
—
(Continued in Part Two)
(Continued in Part Two)
