1Where we last left our librarian…
Book I - Seeker (Sinnifer and the Vulture) - North
When I was fourteen years old, my family scattered to the winds and I became the librarian at the wizard's school of Seven Stars.
With the help of a very useful book, I taught myself magic. Things spiraled out of control after I began tutoring a struggling apprentice, Louis.
My employer, Master Narien, tried to murder me, but a mysterious vulture led me to the Seekers. I swore to serve the Guardians for the Price of reuniting my family, and discovered that I was bound by blood to the House of Wells, a lineage of powerful wizards who'd once ruled the whole world. The xiaoshin Sinnifer, Servant of Leviathan, was assigned to "supervise" me. I got in lots of trouble mastering my powers and learning to be a Seeker. With Sinnifer and my fellow Seekers, I recovered the Sword of the Warrior from a monster, but the Sword cost us the life of one of our own. I invoked the Great Pact, hoping to return Assimya's final Seeking to its rightful owner, the Warrior's successor, Tarran "The Bold".
Book II - Wanderer (Tarran the Bold) - South
Sinnifer abandoned me in the South where I was found by merchants led by the enigmatic Master Beetle. At the Watchtower of the South I accidentally freed my half-brother, James, who robbed the absent Guardian's servant, Malcit, and left me to deal with him. To survive the desert, I found myself working at a horrible roving tavern crossing the desert, run by a monster called Hippo. My mother and I were reunited in Hippo's prison, where I learned that she was a Tessar spy, that Master Beetle was really Tarran, and that my father was Darilyn Wells "The Old King"
After we escaped from Hippo, Master Beetle challenged me with proving the House of Wells should rise again. Because I had invoked the Great Pact, it became my responsibility to deliver four xiaoshin eggs to each of the Watchtowers. When one of our friends betrayed us, Master Beetle finally took up the Sword of the Warrior. I summoned Malcit, now the Guardian of the South, and gave him the first egg. Doing this nearly killed me. Shortly after we arrived in Dun Ibak, a bandit army came to the city gates. My half-sister, Miranda, the former Queen of the East, had become a necromancer. Defeating her cost Master Beetle his life.
Book III - Wizard (Leviathan) - East
My mother accepted the Sword of the Warrior on behalf of her Captain, but I could see her struggling. In Sunder, we encountered Kisrel the Enchanter, and Master Narien looking for him. We continued on to Donander, the Watchtower of the East, and discovered there was something wrong with Leviathan. When he attacked us, Dak took up the Sword and it began to glow, showing that it had chosen him. I fled with the eggs, following the vulture once again. Unexpectedly, I reunited with my Seeker friend Hugh. We learned the Watchtower of the North was under attack. A unicorn, Astaril, offered to take me there. Along the way, we encountered some of our enemies; my grandfather Menenan back from the dead again, his dragon companion Ciwaldyr, and my father's sister Vashra Sirgas leading a landing party of dark elves. Our airship was destroyed, and I survived because the egg I was carrying hatched and the young xiaoshin which I now call "Pistachio" saved me.
Reaching the War, I was reunited with other friends and family, and also met some more of my relatives, notably my cousin Cirat who began teaching me more powerful magic. At Windward Pass Cirat defeated Vashra Sirgas in battle, and the dark elves retreated with the arrival of the Old King's roving (and also notably bloodthirsty) mountain. I was warned to steer clear of the mountain but I went inside anyway and found the fourth and final egg in the arms of what seemed to be my father, turned to stone. Taking the egg caused the mountain to collapse. I discovered that my father was the vulture all along, leading me for his own selfish reasons.
Book IV - Rebel (Tessar) - West
In Bel Kaba, I was assigned to train a new Seeker, a dark elf, Kanen. I also accepted the task of delivering a broken pysanka made by Kisrel to my "Uncle Cory", the King of the West. Kanen and I traveled to High Reaches, avoiding traps set by fairies along the way. We participated in the Games and I was reunited with Dak, my mother, and James who had (thankfully) escaped Leviathan. I trapped my father in a pysanka when he attacked me, trying to get me to surrender the egg to him. Dak and I took the final egg to the Watchtower of the West, and the Guardian nearly killed me. James went to Seven Stars, intending to repair the pysanka so that we could use it to (potentially) trap Leviathan. To buy us time, my uncle took Master Narien to an important diplomatic meeting between the rulers of the Four Kingdoms. Dak and I meant to help James with the pysanka, but Master Narien, working for Leviathan, did not fall for our ruse and disguised himself as Master Rale (whom I'd thought was an ally). He sabotaged James and his spell failed. James was either killed or lost on the Ways, half of Seven Stars was destroyed, and the Sword of the Warrior was shattered. Even still, hope remains. I think I now know where to find the Warrior.
The trouble is… I might have to raise her from the dead.
PROLOGUE
Six Months Ago
"Eight," I said. "Pay the raven."
The wizard with the red hat grimaced, but he was just being dramatic. If he didn't lose occasionally, his opponents would notice how much he was actually winning. He put his coin on the raven, and passed the dice to his left.
The woman next to him had the worst teeth I'd ever seen. I didn't think she was a magic-user, but she hadn't left the tables in at least two days, so it seemed smartest to watch her carefully.
King's Keep had been costing the house more than usual, and Dak thought we had some sort of rat. A cheating, gambling rat of the human-ish variety, that is, not one the dog-sized scavengers that were always underfoot. Of course, most of the Last Chance's usual patrons knew better than to play any game against the porter, so Dak had freed me from my usual duties of coal and water to see if I could successfully root out whoever it was that was getting too lucky.
"Four. Drink," I paused.
Lady No-Teeth gave me a look I didn't like and took her shot, nasty piss-smelling liquor that the Southerners made from some sort of cactus. She could read her own dice, and I probably shouldn't have said anything. I wondered if she knew I was cheating.
Red Hat definitely knew that I was cheating, but he wouldn't say anything. He was cheating himself, and I'd let him know I was wise to that by idly drawing Blaise's Misdirection in beer on the table. If he dared to reveal what I was up to, I'd call him out, because he was doing the exact same thing I was. As a professional courtesy, the two of us wizards weren't mucking with eachothers' rolls, only the rolls of the ignorant scoundrels we were playing against.
I passed Red Hat a bit of silver wire under the table, a useful reagent and good incentive to kindly ignore my next move. Air wasn't my strongest element, but giving an already rolling die a little more "oomph" wasn't too hard. Any hack could've done it, and in the time I'd been working for Hippo, I'd dedicated myself to mastering the Fetch. It was the only magic I knew that didn't require words or reagents. Anything else would've immediately given me away.
Lady No-Teeth the dice passed to another suspicious regular, a birdman I heard called "Sticky". He was known for quietly helping himself to the contents of his opponents' purses and pockets while pretending to invested in whatever game he was playing. Even still, Sticky was getting too brave. I'd seen him try to steal from one of Hippo's ladies, and that was going to get him dead.
Sticky rolled himself a seven which I flipped once more over to six, and he took two coins from the board. There was a lot of coin on seven, and that was mine.
Technically, wizards aren't supposed to gamble. They can't at any reputable establishment. Of course, the Last Chance was not a reputable establishment. Not remotely. In fact, it's infamous for being the worst hive of scum and villainy in the South, if not the whole word.
It was my turn. I cracked my knuckles, blew on the dice, and rolled my seven.
"Hah! Yes!" I exclaimed, pretending to be excited by my "luck". I moved to scoop up all the money, but not fast enough. A huge, grayish hand thunked down on the table in front of me, scattering coins across the entire board. Sticky caught the one that almost hit the floor. I saw it fall, but I didn't hear it land.
"And just what are you doing, coal girl?" Hippo demanded.
Hippo is at least ten feet tall and half of that wide. He has the head of his namesake beast, a mouth big enough to crush a whole pumpkin, and a body that's equal parts man and crocodile, all covered in fine lines of silver stitches. He's more than a thousand years old and by all accounts unkillable, mostly because he's not actually alive. He and Dak are both gumbles, ancient necromatic constructs painstakingly sewn together by the Needle Witch herself. If they're damaged by anyone particularly bold or stupid, they just heal themselves by draining the life out of whatever happens to be closest.
I felt all the blood in my body pool somewhere around my ankles. Every coin I'd been about to take, I left it right there on the board. I didn't dare to breathe.
Where was Dak? If he didn't step in fast, I was going to lose my head.
Anyone with an ounce of sense is terrified of Hippo. It isn't just that he looks monstrous. He's a thoroughly awful person and has a reputation for killing anyone he doesn't like, quickly and brutally. That's why in the old days he was called "The Butcher".
I didn't have to answer the Master, thankfully.
"Oy, Hippo! Let er' be! C'mere," Dak gestured from behind the bar. Hippo's eyes went from me, to Dak, back to me, and then to Dak again. He said nothing, but he let me go.
The entire table stared at me in horror. Then they stared at Hippo lumbering away, and decided that our game was over. The birdman, while everyone else was distracted, had cleaned more than his fair share from the table, but no one protested. Causing a commotion would only bring Hippo back over, and nobody wanted that.
I'd "won" about twice the coin I'd started out with, and that was good enough for me. Red Hat had also given me a petrification spell, which appeared to be a harmless acorn, and a small steel mirror "under the table".
I started to make my exit, heading for the coal cellar, but I didn't get there.
"Coal girl," Hippo was sitting at the bar, and he motioned to an empty stool between himself and Dak. That was no space at all, considering how huge both of the gumbles were. I felt like I was being crushed just sitting there, but I didn't dare protest. Deaf Thogin, the bartender, poured me a beer. It wasn't good beer, but it was cold and my throat was always raw from coal dust. If I was getting a free drink, I wasn't going to complain.
"So Dak tells me that you were in the process of catching our rat," Hippo observed.
"Rats," I corrected, though telling the Master he was wrong was never a good idea. "Lady No-Teeth counts cards. Sticky picks pockets, and Red Hat is a wizard."
I wasn't going to betray Red Hat to the other gamblers, but if it was him or me getting Hippo's cleaver… it was going to be him.
"Oh? Is he now?" Hippo looked surprised, and maybe even pleased by my succinct assessment. The Master had good ears and a sharp eye. He usually knew all of the goings-ons of his establishment. He'd already suspected exactly what I'd told him, though maybe not that last part. It was a lot easier to detect wizards when you were a wizard yourself, and that was something Hippo did not know about me. Or Red Hat either, it seemed. "You're fairly clever, are you? And here I thought we brought you on for your strong back?"
I did not want Hippo thinking I was "clever", although I knew I was.
I was the kind of clever people were rightly terrified of. Not just anyone could be a wizard. I'd grown up thinking I was a dunce, but at Seven Stars, the Masters quickly realized that I simply needed eyeglasses. When I could see properly, I learned to read just fine… and once I could read without struggling, I discovered that I could do anything I set my mind to, including things that were, for most, impossible.
"No, Master," I said. "Not particularly. But I learned cards from my Ma. I can catch a cheater."
"Can you?" Hippo smiled slightly. It was not a comforting expression on his awful face, but I preferred it to him being angry at me. "Would that be because you are one? Empty your pockets."
I did as I was told. Hippo counted the coin. "Mm," he observed, putting it in his own purse. "Not bad."
"I just did what Dak told me to do," I said in my own defense.
"Back to work," Hippo ordered.
I didn't argue. I ran from him like I'd been set on fire. As soon as I was down in the cellar where I expected to be alone, I kicked the wall as hard as I could. I knew from experience that I could scream in frustration down in the belly of the beast and no one up the ladder could hear me. The guts of the Last Chance, the ancient machinery that kept it rolling across the desert, made enough noise to drown anything out, murders and me included.
All of my money was gone! And I'd been so close to having enough to get away from the Last Chance!
I slumped to the ground. I wanted to smash everything I could, and then curl up in a sad little ball and feel sorry for myself. But Hippo had said "back to work", and I knew better than to test his patience. I started shoveling coal into my bucket, channeling my anger and frustration into effort. I was about ready to come up the ladder to feed the boiler when Dak, surprisingly, descended.
He didn't usually set foot in the coal cellar. That was what he had me for, and the countless coal-fetchers that had preceded me over who knew how many centuries? Big as the gumble was, he had a tendency to whack his head on the ceiling when coming up or down.
"Sorry about that," he said.
"Sorry about what?" I wondered.
"I meant to keep em' off of you," Dak said. "But some fool got into it with Lacey."
Lacey was the queen of the castle, Hippo's favorite whore. Upsetting her was always a mistake.
I nodded. "It's fine. It's just money," I said. A lot of money, but I'd kept my head, and my secret. That was more important.
"What are you still doin' here anyway?" Dak wondered. He looked me over with a strange expression on his face, like he was trying to sort out the various parts of my story that he knew, and figure out just what he'd hired, because I was evidently not what he'd expected.
"Trying to stay alive," I replied.
"You know what I mean," Dak snorted. "You could get out of here. I know you could. You could get out of here in a day if you wanted it bad enough."
"Dak, I'm not that good of a gambler," I laughed slightly.
"No, you ain't any kind of gambler! The dice seem to like you, but you're shit at cards," he informed me. "That's not what I'm saying."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I'm old as dirt," he reminded me. "And you don't live like I've lived without gettin' a sense for how folk are. Some people, they walk. They know where they gotta go, and it don't matter to them how long it takes to get there. They get a good map, good boots. Plan it all out. Some people run. Walking is… safer, I spose' you might say. When you're runnin', you don't always see what's ahead. You may get to places faster, but… you also get lost. Trip over your own feet. Hurryin' is like bein' too greedy when you're tryin' to cheat. It's a tell that you ain't got any idea what you're doing. You know, I figured you for a runner when you first came. But that ain't what you are."
He took my hand and pressed two coins into my palm. It wasn't nearly what I'd lost, but Dak had never given me any money before. He was part-owner of the Last Chance, but it didn't seem that he got paid for his responsibilities, not even the more gruesome ones, like hauling out the dead.
"You ever seen someone fly?" He asked.
"That's only in stories," I protested, though truthfully I had done a bit of "flying", or rather, abuse of a Featherfoot Spell, which was close but not really the same.
"Heh," Dak smiled slightly. He moved to climb out of the cellar, and offered a hand to lift my coal bucket up for me. I passed it to him. "Yea, you probably think that. But back in the old days, there were scores of Tessars what could do it. It was really somethin' to see. Bright white lights, streakin' across the night sky. Like stars just fallin' everywhere, and then whuppin' you the minute they hit the ground."
"I'm not a Tessar, Dak," I told him. It was one of my oldest lies, and I was sticking to it.
The thing about being a Tessar, though, was that it had nothing to do with what you were born. It was what you believed above all else… and I'd wanted to be a Tessar from the time I'd been knee-high to a grasshopper, long before I'd learned that I was bound by blood to the House of Wells. The Tessars were the foundation that the House of Wells had been built on. The Old King, before he'd ever had a crown or throne, had been a Tessar himself. Some thought that was where things had really gone wrong. Darilyn Wells should never have been a king. That was too cruel of a punishment for such a magnificent Tessar.
My thoughts drifted to the Sword of the Warrior. I knew where it was, up in Dak's little room on the fourth floor. Sometimes, when he was kind to me, I wondered if I could tell Dak the truth. Still, with Hippo always so close by, that felt like too much of a risk. Dak could also kill someone in a heartbeat. I'd seen him do it.
"Yea, I know you ain't a Tessar," Dak replied. "But you let me know if you ever want to be."