Ioren stood alone behind a section of wall that had long ago fallen into the house next to it, its surrender to the forces of time having given birth to a new lean-to shelter between the two structures. To his right was the steep rocky wall of the ravine, the counterpart of the hill he had walked down earlier that together formed a tight embrace around the village within. In his hands Ioren held a small, soft white ball that he could comfortably cup in two hands. It squished in his grip as if it were filled with padding, like a gambeson, but otherwise it was unremarkable. He suddenly realized he had never asked Alastair how to use it; his face flushed as he felt foolish.
Ioren rolled the ball around in his hands, hoping to find an implement of some sort - a button, something to twist or pull or push - but the sphere was perfectly smooth and nondescript all around. Frustration began to set in as Ioren worried about being caught out here, hiding, attempting to report his observations to his royal handler with a mysterious artifact nobody had ever seen before.
Having given up on careful examination, Ioren squeezed the sphere as hard as he could. It squished into a surprisingly tiny ball before illuminating itself with a red glow from within.
"Curse you Alastair…" Ioren whispered absently. How was he to know that the only way to activate this device was to try and destroy it? It was exactly the type of chicanery one could expect from an emissary.
At the mention of Alastair, the sphere now glowed a deep blue color. Small crystals in the cliff wall reflected the blue light like ocean waves in the sun, flickering in and out of existence at just the right angle to hold a twinkle of light.
"I was beginning to think you had forgotten about me," Alastair's voice emitted calmly from the glowing sphere. Ioren nearly dropped it in shock. "Your first time using a communicator is shocking, I know, but please take care not to damage it."
Ioren turned the sphere all around once more, looking for eyes that he may have missed. He looked up at the walls around him, but there was nobody. How did he know?
"What have you to report?" Alastair asked in his characteristically stately manner. Ioren stared at the white sphere, unsure of where to direct his voice.
"Um… can you hear me?" He asked into the sphere.
"As if you were standing beside me," Alastair answered. Ioren scratched his head as he stared at the strange glowing sphere. It felt awkward speaking to an object instead of a person's face; it was as if they were writing one another letters, but they arrived instantaneously.
"We were ambushed by siccs in a village early on in our travels, so I have not had a chance to speak to Ardenel about his father's intentions. It seems his goal here is to attain notoriety by clearing the way across the Barrier River," Ioren reported.
"That's all you've ascertained thus far? A seasoned detective you are not, I suppose," the emissary mused through the communicator. Ioren winced slightly at the disappointment in his voice, but he couldn't tell if it were merely his way of speaking to peasants or if he truly expected more.
"Well, all the same, thank you for your communication," Alastair continued. "Ah, yes, I also wanted to mention something to you. I've an acquaintance that left for Riverstop recently. If you encounter him in your travels, please give him the communicator." Ioren raised an eyebrow in confusion, but quickly realized Alastair wouldn't be able to see it.
"How will I know him?" Ioren asked.
"If you are to meet, he will let you know he is a friend," Alastair answered. The blue glow faded from the sphere until it returned to its original pale white. Ioren assumed that meant their conversation was over, and returned the communicator to his backpack before returning to the resting group in the ravine village.
---
"How…" Ioren whispered as he gazed out of the window hundreds of feet above Riverstop. He turned to once again face the robed child and the skull-faced man. "How did we get up here? Into the keep?"
The pale, skull-faced man pulled a wide grin across his taut face and revealed his long, misshapen teeth within, like a tarp stretched too tight over a wagon of swords, tearing to reveal the weapons beneath it.
"The people of Havan have not yet discovered the moving sands, I take it?" The man asked the robed child over his shoulder. The child took a break from his cowering in the corner to shake his head. Turning back to Ioren, the skull-faced man answered the question. "Little One used a tool of our civilization to bring you here. It utilizes the divine energy he receives through his bond with Cantimorelius. Many things are possible with Danetian tools when combined with divine energy."
"You both have met Cantimorelius?" Ioren asked.
"Why, of course. All of Danet was bonded to Cantimorelius at one point. Through his bond he channels divine energy into our beings, and all he asks for in return is knowledge as nourishment," the skull-faced man answered.
Ioren stared down at the black band that circled his finger. "Is this the bond?"
"No, that is but a remnant of your agreement, like the signature of the divine etched into your body as proof of your contract. Your bond is formless and stretches through time and space to connect you to Cantimorelius, wherever either of you may be. Even beyond the realm of the living," the skull-faced man answered again.
"Cantimorelius mentioned that the more bonds I accumulated, the more powers he would grant me. How does that work?" Ioren began to relax and feel more comfortable in his questioning. It seemed clear that the child did not bring him here to be murdered. Once he had a better understanding of his situation - and whether those in front of him were friend or foe - he would worry about returning to the group below.
"Ah, so you spoke with him when you visited his realm? Very lucky indeed. He is a capricious god, Cantimorelius, and does not often amuse idle talk. Yes, by accumulating the bonds of others you may strengthen your bond with Cantimorelius, allowing you to receive more divine energy through the bond. If his power is a lake, vast and deep and immeasurable, your bond is a stream fed by the lake. The wider the bed of your stream, the more volume of flow you can accommodate. Take in too much, and your streambed washes away in a flood." The skull-faced man leaned against the back of the couch now, finding a comfortable position as he dictated his lengthy explanation.
"I get it," Ioren said, still seated on the floor. He raised himself to his feet, the eyes of the skull-faced man tracing his movements as he stood, and crossed his arms as he leaned against the wall in the space between two of the giant windows. "How exactly does one accumulate these bonds though? The white smoke?" Ioren thought he caught a twinkle in the dark, beady eyes of the skull-faced man as he mentioned the white smoke, though he could have imagined it.
"White smoke means Yashan bonds, black smoke means Cantimorelius bonds," the man continued. "Anyone killed by the hands of a man bonded with Cantimorelius can absorb all of the bonds the dead man had accumulated in life, including his. Yasha, on the other hand, does not allow the consumption of bonds by her subjects. To be resurrected by Cantimorelius, you must still have your bond intact; if your bond is consumed by your killer, there is nothing even a god could do to revive you." Ioren shivered at the thought of someone breathing in his soul through their nostrils as he had done to the siccs from before. It somehow seemed… vulgar.
"So Yasha really exists?" Ioren asked. It would be a blasphemous question to ask anyone in Havan, especially a pious individual like the islanders of Iv. However, hearing the man refer to Yasha as if she were as concrete as the crab god of the white void that had sent him back to that alley in the Step felt too strange to ignore.
"Yes, Yasha exists. Has it really been so long?" The man mused to himself. "Unfortunately, I long ago forgot the story of Yasha's leaving Danet. Perhaps Little One can recall the story as he shows you to your room." The skull-faced man gestured to an ornately carved black door at the end of the room.
"My room? Why are you doing all of this?" Ioren asked, surprised. The room was a kind offering, though it seemed he was unable to decline. Perhaps he was a prisoner.
"The entire population of Danet was bonded several hundred years ago. In that time, nearly all have been inflicted by the curse of insanity - or worse - that Cantimorelius has levied upon us. We need the help of someone without these ailments to break this curse and free our people," the man explained frankly.
Ioren was still trying to process all of the information that he had received when the last piece dropped onto his lap like a bomb.
"Insanity?" He asked, his voice dripping with dread.
"Oh, yes, it comes for us all after a time. Every time you die and provide Cantimorelius with your knowledge, you edge that much closer to the brink. And there is no coming back from a broken mind. If you'd like an example, try asking Little One about the sun during your stroll. Should you require anything while in the keep, please seek me out. I am Chernicotl."
"I will do that," Ioren answered Chernicotl. "I am Ioren, by the way. Ioren Cedars."
The child, apparently dubbed "Little One," made his way across the ostentatious room and stood before Ioren.
"My apologies for the suddenness earlier. I thought you would be too wary of a stranger if I had not hidden myself. Please, come with me to your room."
Ioren nodded, accepting the apology, and followed Little One out of the room and into a brightly lit corridor. The entire hallway was illuminated by a line of windows at head height that ran the length of the hall. From outside Ioren could see that they were exiting one of the six columns at a point of the six-sided keep. This walkway connected the column to the main keep.
"I do remember the story of Yasha, if you are still keen to hear it," Little One spoke from ahead.
"Yes," Ioren answered, still flipping through the vital information Chernicotl had given him before.
"Some hundreds of years ago, the Last Prince sought a solution to his paralyzing fear of death. He would lie awake for entire days in his bed, soaking through his sheets with sweat as he contemplated returning to the primordial soup from whence he had been molded. That was the prevailing belief of the time," Little One said as an aside. "Finally, his wife convinced him to commission an exploratory crew to travel the lands to collect the myths and legends of the afterlife from all of the cultures of Danet. She thought this endeavour would at least soothe his intense panic by giving him an outlet for his energy." Little One pulled open the door at the end of the hallway and the two entered the keep proper. Gilded tapestries lined the walls much the same as Chernicotl's room. Glowing orbs containing some sort of frozen fire hung from the stone ceiling in symmetrical lines across the room. A walkway wrapped the large room around a hole in the center that reached hundreds of feet down to the ground floor. On one side of the walkway was a staircase down to the landing of the floor below, which also had a staircase to the next landing. This pattern continued all the way down.
Little One headed down the staircase to the next landing and continued his story. "One day, a Grand Historian, the title the prince had given his collectors of myth, entered the prince's quarters in a flurry of excitement. 'I've found it!' The Grand Historian shouted. He had found Epthel, the cavern to the Deep Gods, hidden by a single clan for generations. Seeking fortune, one of the young men of the clan had sold the information to the historian and betrayed his clan. The prince sent his entire personal army to the cavern, and despite heavy losses as they fought the clan, they finally broke through and established a foothold at the mouth of the cavern. Nobody knows what happened within, but the Last Prince came out with a black band around his finger. Over the next few decades, the prince and his armies spread the black rings throughout the land of Danet. He became a god to his subjects immediately; he was known as the 'Vanquisher of Death'. Then things started to go wrong," Little One said with a drawn out sigh. The pair had descended two more floors and now entered the door on the landing, returning out into an identical hallway to the one they had gone through when leaving Chernicotl.
"Unsatisfied by the power given to them by Cantimorelius, some turned to murder to suffuse themselves with bonds. Men murdered their wives, children their families. Losing all memories of their loved ones to Cantimorelius made their deeds easier. The incisors were created to combat the growing violence, though even they eventually succumbed to the effects of the bond. To avoid the complete collapse of Danetl, the researchers at the Royal University, men dedicated to the study of the bond, created a substance that artificially expanded the bond. 'Star Light,' they had called it because of the glow it gave off as you drank it. The researchers hoped the murders would stop once the power-hungry received the Star Light. It didn't work. Eventually, those who accepted the Star Light became mutilated beyond recognition by its dilation powers. In order to save the people of Danet, a Deep God who had escaped Epthel, Yasha, led a pilgrimage of her bonded followers across the Continental Divide into what she called 'Havan.' Everyone assumed they had all died, until a few years ago when Redden visited us through the passage," Little One finished his story as he opened the door to a small bedroom the same shape and size as Chernicotl's room.
A single bed sat at the end of the room opposite the door atop a brown woven rug. Next to the bed sat a small dresser. It was a plain room, but Ioren marveled at it. It would be his first time in a bed in many years.
"Thank you for the story," Ioren said, still bewildered by the bedroom. "Yasha is a Deep God just like Cantimorelius… that will surely upset some people in Havan," he said with a smile. Little One merely nodded and backed away toward the door, his handle on the knob. Ioren started as he remembered something Chernicotl had said. "What was it I was supposed to ask you about? The sun?"
Little One raised an eyebrow and cocked his head at Ioren. "Sorry, I've never heard of such a thing," he replied. Ioren felt the hairs on his arms raise as the child shut the door.