When Cassian left to go deal with the Benthic Adalai blocked him out of his mind. Gaining impressions from an object wasn’t normally difficult but nothing he’d seen in the dragon’s lair qualified as normal. He started with the obvious. Water was terrible at retaining impressions from people, it flowed past too quickly for anything to be left behind. Even when bottled and held by a single person for a long time the liquid itself was generally sterile, although the bottles that held it might pick up a ghost of intent. The water in the small depression was no different.
The ring of stone around it also lacked any traces of human purpose. The six empty spots for pearls were mundane, as far as he could tell, as were the seven spots occupied by the precious stones. It was only the pearls themselves that had the glimmer of human intent to them. What purpose the gems had he couldn’t determine, which wasn’t exactly surprising. Most jewelry didn’t have a purpose beyond decoration. He’d handled several rings, a few bracelets and a necklace and all had a vague sense of purpose but they weren’t like swords, which would freely tell him what kind of drills the previous owner favored or whether they fought with fear or bloodthirst in their hearts.
However there was one vague impression he got from handling the pearls. They didn’t want to be near one another. So, as he put them back down after examining them in turn, he changed the spacing so that there was an empty space between each rather than putting them back in the crescent moon shape. As he put the last pearl in its new space they suddenly lit up and the water briefly flickered. Then it turned reflective, showing Adalai his own face with a clarity he hadn’t seen in a mirror since he’d come to Nerona.
He wasn’t a fan of the way he’d changed since his first death. He’d never been one for a beard but the quality of razors in the southern marches was poor enough he’d given up shaving for his own health. But more than the facial hair it was the deep lines around his eyes and mouth that bothered him. The Kings at the Corners had sent him here three years ago but he looked like he’d aged a dozen instead. Annoyed at himself for focusing on such trivial matters, Adalai reached out and swiped his hand through the water to break the reflection.
When the tip of his finger connected with the tip of his reflection’s finger the world shifted.
With a stomach turning lurch Adalai felt as if he was suddenly falling upward, then sideways, then finally down into the water. Except the reflective pool was suddenly three times as wide as before. His head broke the surface and he caught a glimpse of a bottomless expanse full of drifting shadows and distant points of light. He thought he spotted seven of them, arranged like a crown, somewhere in the infinite distance.
Gravity continued to shift and he felt his feet catch on something. He fell sideways onto the ground, his feet hooked on the edge of a shallow puddle sloshing in a field of porous rocks. Confused, he scrambled to his feet. The landscape around him now had a dreamlike quality to it. He was definitely above ground as the sky overhead was full of twinkling stars but the rocks around him seemed to fade into mists just a dozen feet away.
Yet the mists were not so close as to obscure the three living beings seated or reclining around a massive slab of coral that grew in a low depression to his left. The pungent smell of seawater stung Adalai’s nostrils. He sneezed, the sound oddly rough and sharp in the cottony, slow moving atmosphere of the vision.
As if thinking it tore the veil away Adalai realized that was exactly what this was. The water in the lair was a scrying pool and he’d activated it. The question was why the pool had shown him this vision. More pressing, who were the three creatures by the coral? Whatever they were, it seemed like they were aware of him because two of them were getting to their feet, looking in his direction.
“Not quite a vision, is it?” Adalai muttered to himself, backing up a step and nearly tripping over the uneven rocky terrain. By the time he got his feet under him again he noticed something odd.
One of the three creatures watching him was a Benthic, which did not surprise him at that point. What was surprising was the other two, which were both human. One was wearing the brown robes of an Omenspeaker, the self proclaimed clergy that served the Kings at the Corners. The blue trim on his sleeves and collar marked him as serving the King of Stars. The other man was dressed in a rich tunic and hose, marking him as a wealthy and important man, if one who was very behind the times in terms of fashion.
Cassian would not have approved.
“Who are you?” The unfashionable man demanded, his hand coming to rest on the hilt of a broad bladed sword.
“Adalai Carpathea. Who are you?”
“Porphyrio del Torrence.”
Adalai’s stomach did a little flipflop when he heard the name. Ever since the Emperor of Lome had died fighting Old Lum the nation of Nerona had been without a unified government. The Torrence and Reniece lines both had claims to the throne but neither one had earned legitimacy from the Omenspeakers or the other nobles. A stray thought crossed his mind and he turned to the Benthic. “Does that make you Lum the First?”
“Lum is my name,” the Benthic replied, holding up one of the familiar speaking pearls, though it was smaller and dimmer than those he’d seen before.
“Not the First yet?” Adalai looked at the Omenspeaker. “What about you?”
The robed figure tilted his head up enough that he could see under its hood revealing not a face but a deep, almost endless expanse of stars.
Adalai sucked in a breath. “Don’t tell me I’ve died again.”
“Not at all,” the King of Stars replied, his voice surprisingly human compared to the last time they’d met. It was a mellow baritone that seemed to come from somewhere inside the hood. “You’ve wandered into a vision. Like all omens, visions fall under our jurisdiction so I am here. Although I have to admit this was not what I thought they would choose to show you given the opportunity.”
Adalai had heard the Kings ruled over prophecies as well as death although he wasn’t sure why that was the case. “So this wasn’t your idea?”
“No.”
“Then who’s was it?” He looked at Porphyrio and Lum. “Theirs?”
The human and Benthic leaders stared blankly at him, his question having no apparent effect on them. “You’ll have to forgive them,” the King said. “They are just shadows of what was, they cannot hear your words or even recognize your presence.”
“They just walked up and talked to me.”
“You arrived in the same way I did on this day. The questions they ask are those they asked of me when I came to solemnize their negotiations.”
Adalai glanced behind him and saw there was a huge number of stars reflected in the pool he’d just appeared out of. “Is that why you’re here?”
“If you are asking whether I can be here in your vision because I was here when the vision took place then yes, it certainly helped.”
He knelt down by the pool but didn’t see the circle or pearls from the dragon’s lair. “So did you make the scrying glass I came through? Or is this just the same place the dragon made its lair later on?”
“I can’t answer that.” The King of Stars knelt down by the water as well, rolled up his sleeves and plunged both hands into the starry pool. A tunnel downward appeared and Adalai caught a glimpse of himself under a ceiling of coral on the other end. Other branches of the tunnel curved away in other directions. “I can send you back to where you began. Or you could delve deeper into the visions, although I cannot say whether you will be able to return to the Nerona you know safely if you do. This is not a world made for mortals. When we cross it we do so at our own peril.”
“You can’t answer those questions.” Adalai tapped a finger against his chin, mulling that over. The King of Stars had answered him when he asked about the vision itself but gave ambiguous answers when asked about the people or mechanics behind the vision. Clearly there were certain things he could and could not say. “Why were you here in the first place? Aren’t the Kings at the Corners the overseers of mortality? You call our souls up into eternity, you don’t negotiate truces or care whether we keep our word to each other.”
“Both false,” Stars replied, turning his starry visage towards Adalai with what he took for an amused tone. “Beyond the borders of Eternity lies peace. If you are to pass into that blessed place then you must be prepared for peace. Many are the tasks that prepare you for such perfect peace and the keeping of an oath is not the least among them.”
“Cryptic as usual.” Adalai sighed and looked at Lum and Porphyrio as they returned to their starting place. The Omenspeaker and the King of Stars split apart, the man going with his companions as the King remained with his attention on the Arminger. It was disconcerting to watch. “Shouldn’t you go with them?”
“This isn’t the past, just a reflection of it. I have no particular need to play a part to satisfy them.” The King once again manifested as a man shaped silhouette filled with stars, his seven pointed crown gleaming. “Shouldn’t you return to yourself? They know you are here.”
Frustrated Adalai threw his hands wide, encompassing the veiling mists around them. “Who? There’s nothing here to see!”
“It would have been easier -” Stars paused, its crown bobbing in an unsettling pattern as the entity shook its head. “Nevermind.”
Adalai’s life had gotten much more eventful since his first untimely death but, even counting the sea dragon, he’d never seen anything that held a candle to the kind of power and presence the Kings at the Corners had when he passed through their Courts. Now here was one of those same beings clearly unable to do what it wished. His first thought was that it had something to do with the nature of the being itself. It was a creature of visions and omens so that was what it spoke about. Now Adalai wondered if it was being restrained by an outside force. How was that remotely possible?
“Do you -”
“If you’re not interested in the visions you should return to yourself, Adalai Carpathea.” Yet the King of Stars continued to ignore the three specters just beyond.
Almost as if it couldn’t bring itself to look at them. Was that the King’s choice or something else forced on it? With a sneaking suspicion Adalai moved past the King to the coral where the three others were seated. “You will grant us refuge in the Gulf,” Lum was saying. “No ship or army of Nerona will menace us and humans who trespass in our waters will be removed.”
“You would have to find a way to hold them for us,” del Torrence replied. “There is little call for us to regularly patrol the Gulf. It’s dangerous for ships and it would put us in the waters you seek to claim. Not to mention there’s very little in this compromise that favors us.”
“We will repel interlopers sent by the Matriarchs of the Deep,” Lum replied. “They are our enemies as much as yours. Few of your Gifts and fewer of your ships are suited to fighting them yet your people will feed the Matriarchs as well as ours. Give us a home here and we will keep them and the Mists in the Deep far from your shores.”
Startled, Adalai spun to look at the King of Stars, only to find that the entity had vanished. The fog had enveloped the place the King once stood. Adalai slowly turned a full circle, finding that the vapors had grown close at every point and from them came an inexplicable feeling of menace. The specters continued to discuss their treaty but Adalai ignored them. He had the feeling he’d worn out his welcome.
Which way had the scrying pool been in?
A thrumming sound echoed out of the mists, deadened by the fog but still clearly audible. Panic seized him and Adalai did a simple about face and sprinted straight forward. In the roiling vapor it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead and the pool took him by surprise. He stumbled in, smashing one shin on the edge of the pool, then found himself tumbling in freefall through the dimly lit, starry abyss once more.
This time there was no constellation of stars in the distance. Instead a much closer, larger shape loomed towards him, its silhouette like the one he’d seen in the deeps while travelling with Captain Trill that morning. It moved far faster than it should have for something of its size. Worse, it clearly sensed Adalai’s presence and headed directly towards him.
For an immeasurable moment Adalai thought it might catch up to him.
Then Cassian’s hand grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled his face up and out of the scrying pool. The Ironhand gave him a hard shake and he said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Startled by the abrupt transition, Adalai went limp with relief. Then his eye fell on the box he’d asked Cassian to look at earlier. The glass box Cassian insisted was empty but that Adali saw was full of roiling mists. “Cassian,” he said. “I think we have a problem.”