What is? She wanted to ask him, What can you see?
But he fell quiet, laying on his back on the broken mosaic – a sacrifice to the forgotten knowledge of the library.
For a moment, Jayr stared at him, panic clamouring at her, crying for release.
But she had no time for that now.
She was going to go to the palace.
She was going to understand the figments that tormented her friend.
And if the Lord of Amos didn’t help, Jayr was going to pull her city down round her ears.
PART 4: TORNADO
22: VISION
THE PALACE OF LORD NIVROTAR, AMOS
It was approaching the birth of the sun in the grubby sprawl of the Amos city state. Mist seeped out of bleak walls, lay in wait on cobbled streets, lent the dark city a pale shroud of fear.
In places, patches of disease across her shadowed face, there were battered stretches of sagging buildings, their roofs rotting and their windows cracked. And among these buildings dwelled the city’s scavengers, the derelicts, the poorest of the poor. They swarmed like rodents after every scrap of food or information.
And then fought like bweao for what they found.
There was no council in Amos, no institute, no Fhaveon-trained military, no private forces of mercantile security. In Amos, there was only Nivrotar.
Her word was law, her whim death.
And now, she faced a madman.
* * *
Ress of the Banned lay broken, a twisted figure upon the cold stone floor of the Varchinde’s most ancient building. He didn’t see the great, vaulted ceiling, the elegant figures that turned stone faces towards the Lord’s seat, or the carved, black-winged aperios that stood silent watch. He didn’t see Jayr, crouched beside his pallet, anger etched into each white scar on her skin.
In stark contrast to the artists and poets, the philosophers and performers that waited upon Lord Nivrotar’s every breath, neither Banned member paid her any attention. Ress stared into nothing as though answers taunted him. Jayr stroked his sweating forehead, frustrated and helpless.
“Ress of the Banned.” Lord Nivrotar had cast aside her gown and now wore blackened mail of real metal, a sword at her hip upon a tooled-leather baldric. Her hair was loose waves, making her complexion white and her eyes as dark as bruises. “You are a fool. And yet...” She stood to descend the steps.
Jayr watched her, resentment smouldering. She chewed on a fingernail, spat out a fragment.
As the Lord moved, the court stood with a rustle of fabric. Several people offered her a hand, but she ignored them. She paused at the foot of the pallet to stare into Ress’s thin, white face.
“What do you see?”
“How the rhez can he tell you?” Jayr’s insolence caused a gasp, a susurration of muttering. “He’s loco.”
Nivrotar glanced around her courtiers, silencing them. Her gaze settled upon one elderly philosopher.
“Can you comprehend his visions?”
The philosopher bowed, cleared his throat. “He babbles, my Lord, cries aloud, speaks to things we can’t see. He has witnessed something that has overpowered his mind.”
Nivrotar dismissed him, turned to the apothecary.
“His health is damaged?”
“He’s Banned, my Lord, strong, even with his age.” A wary glance at Jayr. “His suffering is only in his imagination.”
With a faint chink of mail, the Lord of Amos sank to one knee beside Ress.
In unison, her court sank with her.
“What do you see?” Nivrotar watched Ress’s face with a fascination torn between pity and awe.
Ress’s eyes flicked back and forth, his mouth worked as if to speak. He sprang suddenly taut, and his eyes flashed, inhuman, with a terrifying discharge of colour and energy. Then he collapsed into despair and curled up like a baby.
Baffled and helpless, Jayr was fighting to control a choking knot of emotions – she wanted to sob, or scream, or hit something until it bled. She had no idea how to help him.
“You’re the scholar!” Her mouth shook and the next words were a sob. “Help him!”
The court rustled in shock.
Ress was pale, rocking slightly, back and forth. Words still fell from him like pebbles, but they shattered as they hit the floor and were broken before sense could be made of them.
“Bring him food,” Nivrotar said. “Now!” Echoes of her order rang from the pillars. In a flurry of feet, a door opened and banged shut.
Slowly, Ress turned his head to look at them, and Jayr almost screamed.
His eyes were unfocused, both pupils huge but one larger than the other, his irises dark as blood. Shadows moved beneath his skin.
He blinked several times before he said, “I saw the Ryll, the water. Roderick... all this time.” A line of spittle trailed from one corner of his mouth and lost itself in his beard. He leaned forwards to confide in her. “We should have listened.”
Jayr shivered, tried again. “Ress? Don’t you know me?” Her voice caught on pleading with him. “Ress? Please... Say that you know me, you know who I am!”
But his face crumpled. “Mother, I hear you. How can I help?”
With a short exhalation of annoyance, Lord Nivrotar unfolded to her feet.
Jayr’s mood changed like the twitch of a curtain – seeing the Lord’s movement as dismissal, her grief caught light and burned. As Nivrotar turned away, Jayr pounced.
“What did we find? What was in that book?”
Nivrotar tapped pale fingers upon the hilt of her sword.
“My Lord.”
Jayr crossed her arms over her chest. She was unused to facing anyone at her own height – but the Lord was slender, fragile by comparison. Jayr tensed powerful muscles beneath scar-carved skin.
“Answer the damned question.”
The court cringed.
Nivrotar’s tapping fingers gained speed. She gave a short sigh, but Jayr spoke across her.
“He did find something? Didn’t he? Did find something you’ve missed? What’re you going to do, torture it out of him? Torture it out of me?”
“If I deem it necessary.” Nivrotar measured Jayr with eyes as deep and dark as an underground lake. “Find me the healer Jemara”
“Yes, Lord.” A messenger scuttled.
Ress said, “The world screams.”
With a soft, metal chinking, the Lord knelt beside the mad ex-scholar, her court echoing her movements.
Her hands touched his face, gently wiping the spittle from the sides of his mouth.
“I fear for you,” she said gently. “If you have somehow shared Roderick’s vision, if you have tried to see the world’s nightmare... You are not a Guardian, have no way to encompass what you have witnessed. I fear it has riven your mind.”
He smiled blankly at her.
“Yes,” he said. Then he clamped his hands over his ears and began to rock back and forth relentlessly, repeating, “He knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows...!”
“Who knows?”
“He saw, the only true vision.” He stopped, shouted in her face. “But he cannot remember!”
Helplessly, the Lord returned to her feet, hands knotted at her sides. Jayr didn’t move as she spoke to the apothecary. “Take him into your care. Jemara will sit with him at all times and scribe everything he says.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Each morning, you’ll bring those writings to me.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“And you.” She turned to Jayr. “You were appointed his bodyguard and so you remain, you will stay by his side. When his pain makes sense to you, you will tell me.”