Will Wight - Of Dawn and Darkness

Hurriedly, Calder glanced behind him, making sure that the other Champions weren’t close enough to overhear. He wouldn’t be surprised if they punished him for simply listening to treason like this.

And some part of him sensed an opportunity here. He never would have thought he’d find someone else who saw through the Emperor’s façade. Certainly not so soon.

Calder leaned closer to the bars, lowering his voice. “How did you end up in a cage, Urzaia?”

The big man’s eyes moved behind Calder to the open cabin door, then back. His smile widened a notch. “Come back tonight, second watch. There are no longer two of them, so they cannot keep eyes on me all night. You promise to watch me, and we will speak then.”

He lay back again, resting his head on his hands. “For now, I will catch a little sleep. If we are attacked again, I don’t want to miss it, yes?”

Calder stood in the courtyard outside the Emperor’s quarters, watching the Guards hack away at gray-green flesh. Bliss ran her hands along the skin like a child trying to find her way out of a cave.

The stars were still out, and Calder didn’t remember getting out of bed.

“The bearer of Tyrfang has already given you her tour. I thought I’d give you mine.” Kelarac turned to him, the steel over his eyes glinting silver in the moonlight, and smiled.

The Great Elder looked exactly the same as Calder had last seen him: metal blindfold, decked in jewelry, thin goatee, two gold-capped teeth. Maybe the Soul Collector appeared this way to everyone, as a sort of signature.

“If we keep meeting like this, people are going to talk,” Calder said. He had already written this off as a dream when Kelarac appeared and Bliss didn’t immediately notice and attack.

Although…the Guild Head had stopped running her hands along the bulbous skin surrounding the Emperor’s quarters. She’d tilted her head as though listening for something.

Kelarac chuckled. “I have spoken with you more than anyone else this century. Some would say I favor you too heavily.”

“You and Ach’magut both. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect I was being manipulated.”

Kelarac wove his fingers together until his rings shone.

“You’re a piece on a board, Reader of Memory. A card in the hand. You know it, too. But it’s fortunate for you that you are a well-positioned piece, so that you may be lured into place rather than prodded. Your kind prefers sugar cubes to switches, don’t they?”

Calder crushed any irritation before it could pollute his voice. Before one of the Great Elders, he had to keep his Intent on a tight leash. “I believe you’re thinking of horses.”

“No…no, I don’t think so.”

Kelarac waved a jeweled hand at the flesh-covered building. “I like to show my workers the result of their labor, it helps to support a grander vision. And this…without Nakothi’s Heart, I could never have built this.”

A chill ran down Calder’s skin, as though he was wearing his real body and not just inhabiting a dream. “What have you built?”

“However imperfectly, however temporarily, I have created an organism that can control the Emperor’s Optasia.” He put his hands on his hips, smiling like a proud mother. “Without the attack on the other Navigator’s ship, you wouldn’t have ended up here. Not for a long time, at least, and by then certain windows would have passed.”

It was growing harder and harder to control his Intent. “You have the power to destroy the world, and you used it to change my travel plans?”

“I told you before, Captain, I don’t want to destroy the world. Only Urg’naut wants that, though Tharlos might accomplish it as an incidental byproduct. I like the world the way it is now, only perhaps a tad more so. You’ll understand. Bringing you here was one domino in a very long line, one note in a symphony that lasts millennia.”

Whatever else the Great Elder was, he sounded very proud of himself.

“And you’re telling me now out of a newfound spirit of fair play?” The Collector of Souls didn’t give anything away for free.

Gold glinted in Kelarac’s smile. “You can’t steer the ship unless you turn the wheel. I need you where you are, doing exactly what you’re going to—”

The Great Elder was interrupted by a girl’s pale face, popping up and staring at him from an inch away. Bliss frowned into what, to her, should look like empty space.

“Dreams are like cobwebs,” she said. “I don’t like them in my hair.”

When the Guild Head waved her hand, the courtyard vanished, and Calder woke upright in bed. Sunlight leaked in from the edges of his window, and Kelarac’s dream was nothing but a memory.

Calder shivered as he dressed himself in the early morning light. These palace rooms were comfortable but drafty, and the autumn chill was starting to make itself known. But he shivered for more than just the cold.

Kelarac had come to him last night, either invading his dreams or dragging his mind away while he slept. He wasn’t sure which possibility unnerved him more. He was sure their conversation had been real, and equally sure that Bliss had noticed them. Or at least noticed something wrong.

How much did she know? If she had seen him standing next to a figure she recognized as a Great Elder, he would be in the dangerous position of trying to explain to the Head of the Blackwatch why he was on first-name basis with Kelarac. If that didn’t end with his body in the Aion Sea, it ended with seven spikes through him.

On top of the looming threat of death, an even greater fear loomed. Kelarac had spoken clearly last night. Too clearly. Before, the Soul Collector had doled out hints like a hunter baiting traps, careful not to give Calder too much information. Why had he changed?

Above all, why let Calder know he was being manipulated? It was one thing to know he was dancing to an Elder tune, and quite another to have Kelarac tell him to his face that he was nothing more than a piece on a gameboard.

Did Kelarac tell him because it wouldn’t matter? Because Calder would play his role regardless, and he couldn’t stop it? Or maybe Kelarac knew that Calder would resist, that he would do the exact opposite of whatever he thought the Elders wanted, which would itself play right into Kelarac’s hands…

“If you find yourself thinking in circles, stop thinking.” Not one of the great philosophers of history, obviously. Calder’s father, Rojric. Calder had always found the words surprisingly wise: when thinking wasn’t productive, he had to start acting.

Which was why he’d take the initiative. He’d go confront Bliss, find out what she knew, and try to enlist her help. If she killed him…well, there wasn’t much he could do to stop her, and maybe his death would thwart Kelarac’s plans.

Why do I even want to stop Kelarac? Calder had only interacted with two Great Elders in his life, and both of them had worked for Calder’s benefit. Sure, maybe Calder was being used as part of an eons-long plot to devour the world, but it was working out for him . It wasn’t his responsibility to protect the world from Elders.

The burning handprint on his forearm itched, and he absently scratched it. No one had carried his chest of clothes over from The Testament, so he was left with only a spare outfit that the palace servants had brought him: a set of shirt, pants, and jacket in red and gold. It looked suspiciously like a cross between the Imperial Guard uniform and a servant’s livery, but at least he wouldn’t be wandering the Emperor’s palace in his skin.