Chapter five: Prophesy

[baeraad]

Chapter five

Sablecrest Manor embraced Dara like a mother. As she walked down the hallway, she thought she could feel its ancient Witch Stone walls around her, shielding her from the dark world outside. She whispered words, and in the distance there were rumblings as gargoyles began to move - as if Sablecrest was her true body, one that lived only while inhabited by her flesh-and-blood soul.

Here, she was safe. Here, she was whole. Here, she could face anything.

"So this is your place, hmm?" Jalon said, strolling along a few steps behind her. He stopped to inspect an old painting. "I like it. It's very old school. Very 'I don't have to follow trends - class never goes out of fashion.'"

Dara facepalmed. She could face anything, except talkative Artists. If Sablecrest Manor was her body, she supposed that that made Jalon a mild infection of some sort - a case of the sniffles or something.

"Could you not?" she said. "I don't do the whole small talk thing, all right? And I especially don't do it when it's..." She hesitated. "What sort of time is this, anyway?"

"I think it's about four thirty in the morning," Jalon said.

"Is it? No wonder I feel even more homicidal than usual, then," Dara muttered.

She stifled a yawn. It really had been a long night. After the battle, she had had to stay by the western wall for hours - the military commanders didn't want one of their best witches to leave before they had finished "assessing the situation." She had spent most of that time pacing, trying to figure out what Mansuur was doing, trying to make sense of Jalon's incoherent clues. She had wanted to question him properly, but he had decided to make himself useful by singing stirring songs to the Soldiers. Finally, the commanders had sent her home, giving her firm orders to remain ready for further deployment. She had made sure to drag Jalon along - crazy as this case was, he seemed like he was involved in it in some way, and that meant that she wasn't about to let him get lost in a city haunted by evil witches and besieged by demons.

"Well, I'm glad you like the place," she said roughly, "because you're going to be a guest here until I figure out just what is going on. I've set a few of the gargoyles to prepare a room for you. I'm afraid you'll have to make do with those clothes for now - we're a little low on men's clothing around here."

"Really?" Jalon said. "I mean, don't worry about it, I'll make do. I'm just surprised. Only women live here?"

Dara shrugged.

"Only one woman."

Jalon blinked.

"You live here alone?" she said. "Only you, in a whole mansion?"

"Well, my service to the Demesne has been very valuable at times," Dara said gruffly. "The Nobles are willing to indulge me. And there is a lot more living space, these days, than people - it's not like I'm taking up space that anyone else needs, so there are no major reasons for why I shouldn't be allowed to live alone."

"Yes, yes," Jalon said. "That's not what I meant." He gave her a strange look. "I meant, why do you want to? Just you, in this great big place? Isn't it lonely?"

Dara shrugged.

"I have the gargoyles for company."

"But they're not real," Jalon said. "They don't think, they don't feel..."

"... they don't talk all the freaking time?" Dara said sweetly. "I get by just fine, thank you for your concern. This way to the small parlour."

They reached the room in question and sat down on two harsh, unstuffed wooden chairs on opposite sides of an angular table.

"So," Dara said. "Tell me about this missing girlfriend of yours."

"She likes peppered pears in red wine sauce," Jalon said helpfully.

Dara gave him the look of a witch who had been up all night and had had a number of unpleasant experiences during that time and wasn't in a good mood and could, by the way, just so you know, make the ground open up and swallow you. Jalon smiled a sheepish smile of apology.

"All right, seriously, what do you want to know?" he said.

"Start with her name," Dara said.

"Aseena of Tenchurch Abbey, caste of Servants," Jalon said. "Formerly caste of Nobles, formerly caste of Soldiers, formerly caste of Mystics."

Dara raised an eyebrow.

"That's quite a history," she said. "What does she do to keep getting thrown out of the higher castes?" She paused. "Actually, never mind that - what does she do to keep getting accepted into them?"

Jalon smiled. The sudden warmth in that smile was enough to touch even Dara's knobbly heart just a little. That was the smile of a man recalling how very wonderful he thought his girlfriend was.

"Aseena can be... very convincing," he said. "And she's a quick study. She just... I think that she mostly wants to know what everything is all about, and then she moves on with something else. She wants to understand life."

"Well, she can go read a biology textbook," Dara muttered. She scratched her head and suppressed a yawn. "I do recall someone by that name disappearing a few months back. There was an investigation, but they never found her. The theory was that she was buried in someone's back yard." She glanced at Jalon. "No offense."

"None taken," Jalon said dryly. "But only because I happen to know that she's not buried in anyone's back yard. I've seen her since."

Dara nodded slowly.

"You are sure?" she said. "Because sometimes when we really want to see someone, we make mistakes, think that someone we see at a distance, in a bad light, is the person we're looking for..."

"No, it was her," Jalon said. "She called out my name and everything."

A gargoyle in the form of a slender young man walked into the parlour and placed a silver trey on the table, containing two porcelain cups, a creamer and a sugar bowl, and a pot of coffee that smelled like Heaven. Dara helped herself to a cup of thick, black coffee, drank it in one tongue-searing gulp and then filled another one. Jalon, meanwhile, was applying a generous dose of milk and sugar to his own cup. Dara almost smirked. Wuss.

"Tell me," she said, sipping her second cup more carefully. "Where you saw her. What happened."

"It was about a month ago," Jalon said. "I was stepping out of the Man in the Moon, which is my favourite pub."

"You had been drinking, then?" Dara said. Jalon gave her a dark look.

"A very moderate amount," he said. "I was in full possession of my senses, I assure you."

"All right, all right." Dara sighed. "Go on."

"Well, I was just turning down the street," Jalon said, "when I heard someone cry out my name, and there she was, running towards me down the sidewalk." He looked down into his cup. "I remember her expression very clearly - happy to see me, triumphant, but tense and scared, too. Like she had the Wastelands herself after her, even though there was no one else on the street except for innocent passer-bys, as far as I could see."

"And then what happened?" Dara said.

"The street collapsed," Jalon said.

Dara gave him a long, quiet, skeptical look.

"Well, it did!" Jalon said. "I took one step towards her, and there was this sound, this crack... I don't know how to describe it. It was loud, much louder than anything you normally hear - I bet they could hear it three neighbourhoods away. And I remember thinking - I didn't understand what was going on, not exactly, but part of me had already worked it out, and I thought - 'oh crap, I'm going to die. And just when I was about to find out where she's been all this time, too.' And then..."

He bit his lip.

"Then it all goes jumbled in my head," he said. "All of a sudden, pieces of the street just weren't there anymore - they were crumbling, falling into the ground. There were rains of those sparks everywhere, the ones you get when you strike two pieces of Witch Stone together. People were screaming and trying to get away, and falling into those cracks that kept appearing - and then it wasn't cracks anymore, and the whole street just caved in, taking fifty of sixty people with it.

"I was never in any danger, though, it turned out - the piece of street I was standing on was safe, I just fell on my face because the ground was shaking so much. When I got over the shock, I was lying at the edge of a great big chasm that covered most of what had been the street a moment before. The stones were still settling down there - I could hear them scraping against each other, gravel rattling down slopes. There were people still alive down there, and I could hear them screaming and crying in pain..." He grimaced. "There was a lot that came after that, of course - all sorts of people got organised into a rescue attempt, and I was one of them. I worked in a daze the whole time. And Aseena was gone. I didn't see her after the street collapsed, and they never found her - dead or alive."

"The Marble Street collapse?" Dara said incredulously. "You were there? And you think it happened because of you?"

Jalon shrugged.

"Yes," he said simply. "I think Aseena is out there, hiding from someone. I think that she found something, and they don't want her to get the chance to tell me. She got close to making contact that one time, and they got desperate enough to do something extreme."

"Did you tell anyone that you saw her?" Dara said.

"I told the Soldiers," Jalon said. "They said that they'd look into it. Then I never heard anything about it again."

Dara frowned.

"Were I of an uncharitable nature," she said, "I'd think that you were suffering from paranoid delusions, and that your happening to involve an actual murderer in your fantasy world was just a coincidence."

"But you don't," Jalon said.

"I don't know what to think!" Dara snapped. "This whole situation is insane! Therefore insane theories need to be given consideration, due to being the only ones that are left!"

"Please stop shouting at me," Jalon said.

"No!" Dara yelled. "I haven't slept all night, there is a killer witch on the loose who is leader of an insane doomsday cult, my superiors refuse to believe me, and nothing makes sense! I need to shout at someone!"

She went silent, panting heavily and rubbing her forehead.

"Do you feel better now?" Jalon said gently.

"A little," Dara said. She closed her eyes and pinched the ridge of her nose. "All right. Yes. It's not impossible. I could collapse a street, if I had to, and that means that Mansuur - and I damn well hope it's Mansuur, because the last thing I need is there being another witch involved who's as powerful as I - could theoretically do it too. It's incredibly clumsy compared to all sorts of other tools he'd have at his disposal, but if he really thought that there was something she could tell you that she could get out in the time it would take him to shape a few gargoyles, something that she hadn't dared to entrust to any messenger for whatever reason..."

She fell silent.

"Or if..." she said. "No, that's stupid..."

"What?" Jalon said.

Dara shook her head.

"Never mind," she said. "Let's get back to your amazing powers of prophesy for a moment. How did you know that something was going to happen at Ravenscar Hold last night?"

Jalon pursed his lips.

"There is a fragment of an old poem," he said. "It dates back to before the Gnostic Interregnum. The only reason anyone knows about it is because some scholar quotes it in a dusty old book, but it's moderately famous because we have so few surviving works from before the Interregnum. It talks about how 'the dance of madness now takes flight' and that that will 'bring the demons in the night.' And... that's how I knew."

Dara shook her head, frowning in confusion.

"You mean you thought it was a... a prophesy, or something?" she said.

"No," Jalon said. "It's not a prophesy... exactly. In the poem, those lines are just a metaphor for... emotional distress, I suppose. But it's also part of Shadowed Citadel Demesne's history and culture. It's all part of the same pattern. The same song, like I told you? Because that poem was written and preserved, something bad would happen at Ravenscar Hold - nothing else would have fit."

"Why that particular one, rather than any other old poem?"

"Because that was the right description for the next part," Jalon said.

"How did you know it was last night?" Dara said.

"Because that was the right time for the next part to come," Jalon said.

"Are you aware of how little sense this makes?" Dara said flatly.

"Painfully so," Jalon said miserably. He pulled his hands through his hair. "Look, I didn't ask for this, and I certainly can't explain it. I just keep feeling that we, as a city, as a Demesne, are heading for something. And everything that has helped shape us in the past makes it inevitable that it will happen, and that it will happen a single specific way."

"And what is it that will happen?" Dara said.

Jalon drummed his fingers against the table. Ta ta ta tum, tam-tam-tam. Ta ta ta tum, tam-tam-tam.

"What is that?" Dara said. "I mean, where's it from?"

"Children over by Northgate use it as a rope-jumping chant," Jalon said. "I don't know where they got it from. But it's the center of it. I can't get it out of my head."

"'The sky weeps blood, when he comes. The stone is dust, when he comes. The dark grows cold, when he comes. The city falls, when he comes.'" Dara rolled her eyes. "Cheerful stuff for children to use."

"I doubt they pay much thought to what they're actually saying," Jalon said. "But yes, we're certainly a cheerful people, aren't we? That's part of it too."

"When we met at Ravenscar, you said that I was the one who could stop it," Dara said. "What did you mean?"

"In all those old songs and rhymes and poems and stories," Jalon said, "there is usually... a sour note. All of them are, in some way, all about reveling in the coming end. But many of them have some kind of oblique reference to..." He smiled crookedly. "... to a big fat spoilsport who turns up and saves the day, making sure that banal old life goes on and that the romantic doom gets averted. Some of them smirk about how she can't possibly succeed, some of them are angry that she'd even try, and some of them seem to be almost on her side. But the moment I saw you, I knew that you were who they were talking about. Nothing else..."

"I know, I know, nothing else would fit," Dara said. She sighed. "I don't suppose you know what happens next?"

"Not yet," Jalon said. "I need to think."

"All right, then." Dara got up. "I've prepared a room for you to sleep. If you want a bath in the morning, clap your hands twice in front of a gargoyle - I've given them an imperative to fetch a tub of warm water when you do. And now I'm going to retire to my room, and hope that the world makes more sense tomorrow." She glanced at Jalon. "Unless there is something else you haven't told me?"

"Nothing about your role as the destined saviour, no," Jalon said. He grinned. "Though I do know something else that you don't."

"Yes?" Dara said.

"That large, bearded fellow you talked to over by the wall?" Jalon said.

"Major Rinabaar," Dara said. "What about him?"

"He likes you," Jalon said matter-of-factly. "I just thought you might like to know that."

For a moment, Dara stood dumbstruck.

"That's ridiculous," she said. "We have a strictly professional relationship."

"Yes," Jalon said. "And he hates that."

Dara crossed her arms.

"I am literally famous for being good at reading people," she said. "I would have known."

"Yes, but one, you're a little too close to this one to be objective," Jalon said. "And two, Rinabaar is hard for you to read, isn't he? He is so strict and Soldier-like all the time. The only time he shows anything is when he knows you're not looking."

Dara opened her mouth and then closed it again. The infuriating thing was, he was right about that part. Rinabaar was hard to read. If anyone could hide anything from her, it would be him.

"Like when?" she said. "Just what is it you think you've noticed that has escaped me?"

"Like when he came back to talk to you just after the main battle ended," Jalon said. "You didn't see the look he gave me. 'Curses and damnation, she's got a new boyfriend,' it said. 'And he has the nerve to be more handsome than I am, the bastard!'"

"Nonsense," Dara said. She shook her head. "And get over yourself, you're in no way more handsome than..."

She bit her tongue so hard that she tasted blood. Damndamndamndamn. That had only slipped out because she was so tired and upset! And now Jalon was had a big grin of delighted smugness on his face.

"Ohoho!" he said. "What's this? You like him too, do you?"

"That's none of your business!" Dara protested feebly.

"Madame, I'm an Artist," Jalon said. "I consider it my duty to further the cause of luuuuuuuv wherever I might find it. And I suggest that you ask him to dinner sometime. He won't actually dance with joy, because that would be un-Soldier-like, but I guarantee you that he will want to."

"You are extremely annoying and I'll see you tomorrow," Dara said and left the room.

"Think about it!" Jalon shouted cheerfully after her. "I know you like your gargoyles, but he seems to be almost as taciturn as they are, and I can almost guarantee that he'd be nicer to snuggle up to on a cold night..."