“I could help,” Shamil said, “if I had some notion of what to look for.”
Rignar barely seemed to hear, replying with a vague shake of his head. “Smooth as sun-kissed ice, black as a raven’s eye . . .” he murmured, continuing his survey without pause, the shining crystal he held painting the uneven stone in a shifting collage of bizarre shadows.
“Is this why you chose to become a sentinel?” Shamil persisted. “Just to find this thing, whatever it is?”
“Choose?” Rignar said, coming to a halt, voice riven with amused bitterness. “All my choices were made for me long ago, lad . . .” His voice died as his eyes alighted on something in the cave’s floor. Crouching, he lowered his crystal to allow the light to play on something that contrasted with the surrounding rock in the clean, narrow gleam it caught from the glowing stone.
“Onyx.” Rignar’s voice was soft as he traced a finger over the smooth surface of his discovery. “Black onyx to be precise. But bigger than I’ve ever seen before.” His gaze snapped to Shamil, a thin but triumphant smile on his lips. “Time to pay me back for those gifts, my young friend, with sweat.”
Chipping away enough stone to free the onyx from its granite prison would have required many hours, perhaps days of labour if Shamil’s efforts with hammer and chisel hadn’t been augmented by Rignar’s magics. Taking an apple-sized piece of dark grey rock from his satchel, he played it over the stone surrounding the onyx. It emitted no light, but Shamil heard a dull thrum followed by a harsh, grinding hiss and multiple dust plumes as a web of cracks appeared in the granite.
“Lodestone,” Rignar explained, returning it to his satchel. “I once brought down a castle wall with one of these. Have at it, if you please.”
A quarter hour of chipping and scraping away displaced rock was all that was needed to free the onyx, revealed as an irregular sphere about the size of a man’s head. Its smooth, unscarred surface was veined with silvery white swirls that glowed as Rignar extended a hand to it, a hand that trembled before the mage clamped it into a fist and drew it back.
“What is this?” Shamil asked him, disturbed by the fear he saw on Rignar’s face. Suddenly, the mage appeared far older than his years, his bearded features sagging and a deep, sorrowful weight dulling his eyes.
“Something I was told to find, as I said,” he replied in a preoccupied mutter.
“Told by who?”
Rignar’s eyes flicked up at Shamil before shifting to focus on something beyond his shoulder. “I think you know.”
Turning to regard the great statue rising above the wreaths of smoke, Shamil let out a sigh of realisation. “Sharrow-Met.” He recalled the mage’s fascination with Lyvia at their first meeting, the sense of a man looking upon a ghost. Then there were the fitful nightmares on the mountain when he would speak in archaic riddles. “You believe she speaks to you. In your dreams.”
“Believe?” Rignar voiced a short, caustic laugh. “You think me deranged, don’t you? Beset by delusions that have led me all the way to the Eyrie on a madman’s quest. No, Shamil, I don’t believe it. I know it. And they aren’t dreams. I’d call them nightmares, except they’re real. I don’t just witness them, I live them, as she did. I wasn’t much older than you the first time it happened, young, cocksure, arrogant in my power and greedy with it. It wasn’t a pleasant combination. I had a valuable gift, one I barely understood but fully intended to sell only to those who could pay, and pay well.”
He lowered his gaze to the onyx, extending a finger to hover within an inch of the surface, the silver veins pulsing white in response. “I was quick to forsake the chilly, feud-riven land of my birth when the mage gift rose in me, journeying south and finding a lucrative niche for myself in the port cities to the west. Opal, like lodestone, amethyst, and onyx, is an element stone, one that can exert power over water, enough to quell fractious waves and see ships safely to harbour, along with their very valuable cargoes. I only had to sell a dozen stones before merchants were beating down my door with fat purses in hand. It didn’t take long before I became rather wealthy. A mansion in every port, all the fine wine and food I could eat. Years of indulgence made me rather fat, it must be said, but since I had fine carriages to take me wherever I wished, it didn’t matter. But a rich man can swiftly become poor when fate comes knocking.”
His face clouded as he continued to stare at the stone, shadows rising and falling on the creases of his face as the glowing veins pulsed. Shamil watched Rignar’s hand grasp the emerald pendant dangling from his neck, holding it up with a rueful arch of his brows.
“Ignorant as a stump,” he said. “That was me in my greedy youth. I bought this from a travelling dealer in gems, as I was always keen to add to my collection. I knew emerald was linked to the mind somehow but didn’t fully comprehend just how. It’s a singularly alarming thing to go sink yourself into a large and very soft bed only to wake up and find yourself in the midst of one of the bloodiest battles in all history. Memory, you see? That’s what emerald holds, and this one had sat around the neck of a long-dead fellow who had the misfortune to witness Sharrow-Met’s final victory over the Voice, fought only a few miles from this very mountain.
“I saw it all, Shamil. The combined armies of the Treaty Realms surging like a mighty wave against the Voice’s malign horde. Suffice to say, it didn’t look like any of the paintings, tapestries, or murals would have you believe. War is all ugliness, and glory is a lie we tell ourselves in order to keep coming back for more. I heard the screams of thousands, smelt the blood and the filth that rises from sundered flesh, saw as much terror and grief as I did fury and courage. It would have been enough to drive me mad, had I not also seen her.”
Rignar paused, the spectre of a smile passing over his face. “She, at least, the paintings tend to get right, in the sheer majesty of her if not the details. Even then, I’ve never seen one that really does her justice. In all respects she was worthy of her legend, sweeping low over the ranks of the horde on the back of her black wing, the great bird’s talons reaping as terrible a harvest as her famed black scimitar. Despite the slaughter, I thought her the most beautiful sight I ever beheld. And she saw me. Impossible as it seems, as her black wing swept up and turned, she looked down from its back and looked directly into my eyes . . .”
He trailed off into a grimace. “I woke screaming that night, casting the emerald away, determined never to wear it again. I locked it away in a chest and spent many months travelling, buying opals, imbuing them with power, and selling them to eager customers. So industrious was I, it’s said my efforts alone were responsible for making the western ports the richest cities in the known world. But it was all a vain effort to smother the vision, quell the ever growing temptation to unlock the chest and don the pendant once more, see her once more. And, of course, like any true addict, eventually I did.
“The next time was different. No battle, no slaughter, just a barren, flat plain scoured by a hard wind. She was shorn of her armour and clad in furs, though she still wore the scimitar on her back. She was alone but for the unseen man whose mind I had momentarily stolen, but a screech from above and a passing shadow on the earth told me her black wing hadn’t forsaken her. She smiled as she looked into my eyes and said, ‘So, thou hast returned. We should talk, I and thee.’”
He fell to silence, setting his satchel down and carefully reaching to gather up the onyx, the veins flaring brighter still at his touch.