Rik had been too little to really understand that when he had lived there, but his memories of the place confirmed this to his adult understanding. He remembered the chambers with the sick and the mad and the dying, and the priests constantly coming and going, and the prayers, always the prayers.
“He remembered my mother?”
“Yes, he did. It was a difficult birth and there was something of a scandal. Poor Pternius seemed quite frightened. There was a cover up.”
Rik looked at her sharply. Her expression had not changed. It was still calm but somehow there was an intensity in her voice that had not been there before.
“A cover up.”
“Yes. The poor girl was terrified and babbling about all sorts of things. She spoke of dark sorcery, of thanatomancy and old forbidden rituals.”
“Thanatomancy?”
“A peculiarly vile form of dark magic,” said Asea. “Vampiric, forbidden on pain of death even to Terrarchs.”
“My mother knew about this?”
“She described it. Pternius reported it to the Magistrate. He was told to keep quiet, that the matter was already under investigation.”
“Was it?”
“The District Magistrate then was called Areoc. He has left Sorrow. I have instigated an effort to track him down.”
“So you are no closer to knowing what happened.”
“I found some of Areoc’s constables from that time. They were humans, mostly old men now. They talked. There had been an investigation. A woman called Ilara, the same name your mother gave Pternius, had reported a killing that looked suspiciously like a thanatomantic sacrifice eight months previously. She answered to the description of your mother that Pternius gave me.”
A strange feeling pressed down on Rik, as they discussed this woman he had never known, his mother.
“You know what my mother looked like? Tell me?” It came out sounding oddly eager and pathetic. What might have been sympathy flickered across Asea’s face.
“A young woman not much older than you are now, about 20, tall, good looking, black hair, a mole on her neck roughly where you have one. Not very well educated, a prostitute the constables thought.” Rik tried to picture this stranger and found he could not. He had half-hoped that some vague primordial memory would be stirred but nothing came.
“So young? Do you think she might still be alive?” Asea shook her head.
“She died about a month after giving birth to you. Murdered, the constable said. Same way as in the killing she had reported, same way as she babbled to the midwives about, the ritual of the Black Blade.”
“The Black Blade?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Believe me, I do.”
“The victim is gutted while still alive, tortured with small hooks attached to the sorcerer by enchanted wires. He devours her soul as she passes and feeds on the energy.”
“Devours her soul?” Rik was stunned and angry and sad all at once.
“It gives the sorcerer energy, prolongs their life, rejuvenates them.”
“It was a human who did this then,” said Rik. “I mean no Terrarch would need to do that. You don’t age.”
Asea shook her head. The look she gave him carried a complex mix of emotions. “You have a lot to learn, Rik. There are many, many reasons why a Terrarch would do this. In this place we do age, just much more slowly than you do.”
“But you…you are almost two thousand years old and you don’t look any older than I do.”
“There are reasons for that, Rik. One of them was that I was born in the Sacred Land before the coming of the Princes of Shadow. Terrarchs born here, on Gaeia, age much more quickly.”
“Did a Terrarch kill my mother then?” It would not have surprised him. It was one more tally to be added to the long score he had to settle with them.
“I believe so. Certainly the sacrifice she claimed to have witnessed was performed by a Terrarch.”
“How could she have seen such a sacrifice and lived?”
“I don’t know. It may be the sorcerer was engrossed by the ritual. It may be the sorcerer was so drugged he did not notice her. An enormous amount of potent narcotics must be consumed during such rites.”
“You seem very familiar with such things…” Asea recoiled as if slapped then she laughed.
“You do not know the seriousness of that accusation, Rik. I have had Terrarchs killed for less, and killed them myself.”
He saw he was on very shaky ground, and had not realised it. They had been talking so familiarly that he had almost forgotten who and what she was. “Still we need to understand each other, you and I. To answer your question, I am familiar with thanatomancy because I have been an enemy of its practitioners. To hunt a beast you must learn all you can of its habits.”
Another interpretation occurred to Rik but he kept his mouth firmly shut. If you thought you might die of a disease one day, and there was one potential cure, you might well seek out the knowledge of it.
“You think my mother saw the sorcerer, and managed to escape unnoticed.” It seemed best to get the conversation back on safer ground.
“I think she went into hiding when an arrest was not made immediately. I suspect the sorcerer was an individual of some power and influence.”
“Why?”
“All the records pertaining to the case save the most basic have vanished. It is not uncommon for the documents concerning old cases to be lost or destroyed. It is uncommon for pages to be torn from the watch ledgers on the days in question.”
“It would be easy enough to have done in Sorrow, if you were rich enough.” Rik knew this for a fact. Charges could be dropped, men released from cells, pardons granted if the right palms were greased. The gang lord Antonio had done it, and he had heard tales of many others doing it. Once it had even been done for him. Poor Leon, he thought. “Someone was covering their trail.”
“And they did it very well. It’s cold now.” Sadness pressed down on Rik now. He had lost someone, and he had never even known her. His mother had tried to do right, and she had been killed as a consequence. Someone who could cover a trail like that could track someone like his mother down eventually. There were places where you could hide for months, even years, but sooner or later someone sufficiently determined would find you. He knew it. It was why he and Leon had joined the army and left Sorrow behind them.
“Did you find out anything?”
“The constable thought your mother had been involved with some sort of cult. That would fit. Such sorcerers are often members of cabals.”
Another thought occurred to him. “Did she ever mention my father?”
“No, Rik, but I have my own suspicions about that.”
“How? Have you worked some sorcery?”
“I have. I did it the first time I talked to you in the camp in the mountains. Do you remember that?”
“When you asked me about soldiers selling mystical books?”
“Yes.”
“And your spell told you who my father was? That is powerful magic.”
“It told me something about you; you have something that might have come as a gift from your father or your mother. I have ruled your mother out. She was human, and this thing could only have come from a Terrarch, and most likely only from one born on Al’Terra, our lost homeworld.”
“What thing?”
“There are certain divinations that can be performed to reveal people’s surface thoughts. They almost always work. Those spells do not reveal yours.”
“Spells can sometimes fail, or so I have heard.”
