Victor of Tucson-Chapter 24Book 12: : A Guided Tour
24 – A Guided Tour
At Vesavo’s pronouncement, the crowd erupted again, but Victor only had eyes for Roil. He watched as the sorcerer’s smoke-filled cowl drifted slightly to his left, in Dar’s direction. The man had no face to read, but Victor swore he could see an excitement in the tilt of his shoulders, the way he leaned forward and immediately growled, “It’s settled, then!”
Lady Rexa played her part well, holding up a hand, perhaps adding her aura or Energy to the enchantments in the room—whatever the case, silence fell over the space again, and she turned to Arona. “Lady Moonglow, we’ve yet to hear from you. It is this Consul’s opinion that your argument for freedom is sound. Do you wish to allow these two lords to battle over your debt, or would you like the Council to come to a decision on the merits of the case?”
Arona unclasped her hands and stepped forward, her gaze drifting over the line of thrones, evidently considering how each of them might rule. Victor knew she was putting on a show; they’d already discussed the fact that, as the Council now stood, Vesavo had the votes. Still, she was convincing in her deliberation. In the end, she turned to Lady Rexa and said, “I will put my faith in Lord Victor. My debts to him are clear, and I believe his cause is just.”
Her emphasis of the word didn’t go unnoticed. Victor smiled as he watched the various consuls absorb the implication, many of them scowling, though Lo’ro openly grinned. Rexa tilted her head, studying Arona, but her face betrayed no emotion. After several seconds, she nodded. “Very well. I propose the duel between Lord Consul Vesavo and Lord Victor Sandoval to take place ten days hence in the Coliseum of the Champions.”
“Absurd!” Vesavo growled. “He challenged me today! Let us do battle today!”
To Victor’s delight, it was Duvius Black, heretofore silent, who leaned forward and objected. “I’m afraid I have travel plans today. Besides, I’m sure there are many who would enjoy the spectacle. Arrangements must be made so that people of note may attend. In any case, where would you do battle today? If the young steel seeker is half as strong as he thinks he is, you’ll need a secure venue with the appropriate safeguards.”
Rexa nodded, turning her head left and right to ensure no other consuls were going to object. When Vesavo only muttered, turning away, his face tilted down to hide his frustration, she said, “Then it’s settled—the duel will take place ten days hence. Lady Arona, please approach.”
Arona glanced at Victor, her eyes full of doubt—this wasn’t part of their plan. He nodded to her, trying to look confident, and she stepped forward to stand before the fae woman. “My Lady,” she said, bowing respectfully. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚
“Stand still, dear. Don’t resist, else you’ll find this an uncomfortable process.” As she spoke, web-like filaments of light extended from her palm by the thousands. They wove around Arona, covering every part of her, and then contracted, seeming to sink into her flesh. “This is a temporary measure, one that will ensure you don’t leave this world. Once the matter of your debt—and your future—is resolved, I will dispel it.”
Arona visibly swallowed, licked her lips, then nodded. Before she could speak, Vesavo barked, “And the upstart? Will you not bind him as well?”
Rexa indulged Vesavo with a brilliant smile. “Why would I do that? Should he depart Sojourn, he will forfeit his claim. Please control your emotions, Lord Consul—it’s unbecoming.”
Victor couldn’t stifle the snort of amusement, and Vesavo’s glare said he’d taken note of it.
Roil might have been eager to get Victor in his crosshairs again—a sure way to diminish Dar’s influence—but he’d had enough of the public assembly. As Arona stepped back from Rexa’s throne, the smoke-clad sorcerer stood and announced, “All matters are resolved. This public meeting of the Assembly is adjourned.” Without another word or any fanfare, he burst apart into a cloud of gray smoke that streaked away, seeming to pour through the ceiling, though Victor couldn’t discern a gap.
Rexa met Victor’s eyes, and though she’d done well to mask her intentions during the assembly, she gave him the barest of nods before standing to walk, with most of the other consuls, down the rear steps leading to their private exit. Vesavo glared at Arona as he crossed the length of the dais, but he utterly ignored Victor.
Surprisingly, once he’d gotten Vesavo to accept the challenge, Victor had felt his rage cooling, and in that moment, all he felt was amusement. He supposed he should have been nervous or maybe some doubt should have crept into his heart, but it seemed his titanic pride was overwhelming any natural caution, at least in the heat of the moment.
Meanwhile, the green-fleshed woman had hurried to the front of the dais, not far from Victor, and was busily projecting her voice to the milling audience. “As Lord Consul Roil announced, this meeting is adjourned! Please be mindful of each other and don’t rush the exits!”
Her words were largely ignored by the powerful and elite as they made their way out of the hall. Meanwhile, Victor stepped closer to Arona and shared a quick smile with her. “Well done.” ȑÃɴổΒЁȘ
“I didn’t count on being bound to this world,” she groused, leaning into the gravelly tone of her voice.
Victor shrugged. “Only for ten more days.”
“You’re mad, aren’t you? He’s a powerful and crafty man, Victor. Are you—”
Victor held up a hand, interrupting her. “Hush now. We’ve been over this.” He looked over his shoulder, relieved to see that almost all the Assembly members were already gone, and not a single consul was still on the dais. “Anyway, I’ve much to show you. I know I’ve been holding back, but when we return to the lake house, I’ll share with you.” He offered her his elbow, and she took it. “Let’s go now. I see Tes waiting for us, and Dar is approaching.”
They descended the steps, and although many people were eager to speak with Victor, the guards that had been stationed at the doors were in the aisles to ensure the audience continued moving toward the exit. They made way for Dar, however, and when Victor waved Tes over, she merely looked into the eyes of the guard blocking her way, and he moved aside. Victor wondered if he even knew he’d done so—such was the power of Tes’s will.
Dar didn’t smile. In fact, he was glowering, putting on a show of anger as he waved for Victor and the others to follow him. “We’ll take my coach.” As they hurried toward the exit, he said over his shoulder, “Speak to no one.”
The reason for his words of caution became evident as they exited the Assembly Hall and were approached not by one or two, but by dozens of Sojourn nobles. Most addressed Dar, though some tried to get Victor or Arona to stop and speak with them. It was easy to make Dar the scapegoat for their refusal, because the Spirit Master, glowering, waved them off and said things like, “Set an appointment,” or, “We must fly—much to prepare.”
When they clambered into his sumptuously appointed coach and the coachman pushed the door closed with a solid thunk, Dar finally relaxed, leaning back in his seat to laugh. “Oh, well done, you two! I couldn’t have planned it better. Roil publicly stated his support of Vesavo; when you slay him, it will create a void, and I’ll step into it. Then the true plan will begin. Sojourn will be a different city in a year’s time.”
“True plan?” Tes asked, arching a delicate golden eyebrow.
Dar shifted to regard her. “Ah, the mysterious Tes. I’ve heard much about you.” When Tes only smiled, tilting her head as she regarded him, he waved a hand. “You have your sources and I have mine; I don’t know you—only of you.”
“Then you should know I love Victor, and you can trust me.”
“In my life, I’ve found love to be fickle. Still, I’ll leave the details to Victor to divulge if he so wishes. Suffice to say that I’m pleased with the turn of events today.”
Victor opened Dar’s liquor cabinet, retrieving one of his fine brandies. “That can wait. For now, let’s toast to Arona; I’m sure her nerves could use a little fortifying.” He chuckled, shaking his head with chagrin. “Damn. When did I start talking like such a pendejo?”
###
Later, back at the lake house, after many more toasts and a decadent meal, Victor, Arona, Tes, and Cora sat in the underground cavern where Victor had, once upon a time, built a rudimentary cultivation chamber. Since then, on one of his visits, Victor had undone that work, returning the cave to a more natural state. He’d finished the floor with fine black marble and installed an Energy-driven fountain and some plants that thrived in underground spaces, given the right light—in this case, red crystal-moss from Iron Mountain. It was a meditation space for him, away from the sometimes-chaotic atmosphere of the lake house, and he was rather proud of it.
The three of them sat in a loose circle, and Victor looked from Cora to Tes, then to Arona, keeping his face impassive. As the silence stretched, it was Tes who broke first, asking, “Well, Victor? You said you had something to show us.”
He smiled, leaning back on one hand as he regarded the three women. “I do—for different reasons where each of you is concerned. Tes, I doubt you’ll learn anything from what I’m about to share, though I would love to hear your feedback. Maybe you’ll see something I’ve missed.” He shifted his gaze to Arona. “I want to make good on my promise to you. I know that what I’ve done with my Core and mantle won’t relate directly to you, but maybe it will inspire you with an idea of your own. I know you’re getting close to the veil; this might be what you need to make that final leap.”
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When he paused to let his words sink in, Cora leaned forward eagerly. “And me, Victor?”
“Well, Cora, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the attitude all the great masters have toward their students. Everyone is so secretive, and they hide behind excuses about not wanting to poison your mind with good intentions. They claim that every steel seeker must find the veil in their own way, and that may be true, but I don’t believe that blind ignorance and reliance on the System is any better than what I’m about to do.”
“What are you about to do?” Arona asked, glancing nervously toward Tes, who seemed to have a knowing smile on her face.
“I’m going to take you three into my spirit space.”
Arona’s eyes flew wide. “What? How?”
“Come on, Arona. Think about it. A person’s spirit space is like a self-contained branch on the spirit plane. How do you visit the spirit plane?”
She stared at him for a moment, then a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Spirit Walk.”
“Yep, but you won’t even need that spell. I’ll let you go right through my pathways, into my Core Space and—”
“Into your spirit space,” Tes finished for him. “You must trust us very much, Victor.”
“Hell yes, I do! So, you’ll each need a tether of spirit Energy.” He winked at Cora. “Now does my lesson make sense?” He’d already taught her how to pull a thread of Energy through the spirit aperture in her Core space, and, though she’d pestered him for the point of it all, he’d refused to say more than that it would come in handy, eventually.
“I think…” She glanced at Arona and then Tes. “What do I do once I have it?”
Victor held his hands out on his knees, palms up. “Everyone, take hold. Cora, use your inner eye and, when you have your spirit tether, find your way into my pathways.” As he spoke, Victor closed his eyes and turned his inner eye outward, watching for a sign of the three to breach the apertures in his palms.
Tes was there almost immediately, a bright, electrical Energy that tickled his flesh as it passed through. A moment later, Arona entered the pathway on his other palm, similarly bright, but warm—a beam of sunlight. Together, they waited until Cora, tentative at first, then with more eagerness when she felt Victor’s Energy welcoming her, poured into his pathway—hot and fluid like soup on a cold day.
“Good,” Victor said, using his aura to guide them along, toward the broader pathway that would lead them into his Core.
“It’s so vast,” Cora whispered.
“It truly is, Victor,” Arona agreed. “When I saw your battle with Dragomir, I knew your pathways must be able to handle great torrents of Energy, but it’s another thing to be inside them.”
“You’ve done good work,” Tes agreed.
“Okay, okay. I didn’t bring you in here so I could show off… Well, that’s not really true; wait until you see my Core!” He laughed, guiding them along, and soon, they emerged into his Core space, and all three of them exclaimed.
“Old Gods!” Arona hissed.
“It’s like the sun,” Cora cried.
“How different…” Tes whispered.
Victor adjusted his perspective to linger near their threads of spirit and turned his attention to his Core. In the outside world, his face beamed with pride. In that metaphysical space, his Core construct was like a world-sized forest fire. A great conflagration of dancing black and blue flames with brilliant crimson ones bursting to life here and there—flaring briefly before dying out. All the while, Energy drifted from the fire, arcing upward toward the firmament of his Core space until it coalesced in a great cloud and was pulled on currents around and under to drift into his spirit aperture.
“It’s like…” Tes trailed off, but Arona picked up where she left off.
“An engine—a cycle.”
“Why is your spirit aperture uncovered?” Cora asked, her voice still hushed in awe.
“To allow the Energies to flow freely. Arona’s right: it’s a cycle. Do you feel the pressure in here?”
“You’ve been cultivating!” Tes said, the pride of a former teacher in her voice.
“Not really,” Victor said with a chuckle. “The pressure is building because my spirit feeds my Core, and my Core, in turn, feeds my spirit.”
“What?” Victor felt Arona’s aura flare as her control slipped. He chuckled while she added, “That’s impossible.”
It was Tes who confirmed Victor’s claim, however. “Actually, I can feel, second-by-second, the Energy increasing ever so slightly. In theory, I believe I understand. Spirit casters can cultivate from their emotions, and those emotions are tied to their spirit. This is brilliant, Victor. Aren’t you worried—”
“About your fear and rage affecting you?” Arona interrupted as understanding dawned on her.
“No, I’ve found the perfect construct for my situation. This wouldn’t work for everyone, but my rage helps my hope to stay ahead of my fear. More importantly, I’ve mastered my fear already. I think if I’d tried a construct like this five years ago, I might have destroyed myself. I might have ended up going mad.”
In the silence of their contemplation, he added, “My construct won’t apply to you, Cora, but the lesson of how I found it will. Many great masters, who had my best interests at heart, advised me against this. Sometimes what is known isn’t really known. My teachers had teachers, and sometimes people trust what they’re told a little too much.”
“I think I understand,” she whispered.
“Come on now, the best is yet to come.” With a nudge of his aura, he guided them toward his spirit aperture. “Just pass through. I won’t let my Energies hurt you.”
On the other side, he waited for them, smiling as he saw their spirit representations take shape—they all looked much the same as they did on the material plane. When they all stood on the polished hardwoods of his mantle workshop, he watched as they looked around, taking it in. It was new to him, too; he’d done some rearranging after building his new Core construct.
The workshop now had an open ceiling with a twilight sky above, glittering with millions of stars, nebulae, and galaxies. He hadn’t created them all, but simply opened a window of sorts into the universe of the material plane. The expanse of stars hung over the four high walls of his workshop—white marble, adorned with warm amber Energy globes.
Each wall had a massive arch in the center, and each archway led to other parts of his spirit realm—his treasury, his garden, his armory, and dozens of other little spaces that he’d already created, but that had previously been in jumbled disarray. As for the workshop itself, one wall was lined with huge tables, another with chalkboards, and vast sheets of parchment for notes. In the center were the immovable, primal elements of his spirit: his Energy well, his skein, and his mantle frame.
Those weren’t the only things there, however. Victor had thought long and hard about how best to prepare for the time when Vesavo would accept his challenge. After staring at his mantle frame, trying to imagine a way to prepare more threads to place on it without actually placing them, it had clicked: why not build more frames?
What Tes, Arona, and Cora saw, then, were a dozen additional frames, each loaded with a brilliant sparkling thread that had been woven into a dizzyingly complex pattern reminiscent of elder magic. The threads stretched back to his skein. At the center of his constructed frames was the real one. Where his were crafted from Energy to look like polished wood, the real mantle frame was nearly invisible save for the glittering pattern woven into it.
“Gods,” Arona breathed. “What am I looking at?”
Victor laughed, looking from her wide-eyed face to Cora, who was still turning in a slow circle, trying to take everything in, then to Tes, whose lips were moving in silent words as her narrowed eyes darted from one pattern to the next. “Those threads are what I use to build my mantle. We’ve spoken about this, Arona.”
“I understand that, but the mantle—why… I don’t understand it.”
Victor walked over and pointed to the actual mantle. “This is the real frame. I built these others so I could prepare more patterns without applying them.”
Tes walked around the dozen wooden frames, her eyes tracing the gleaming, multi-colored threads. “This must have taken you years.”
“In a way, yeah.” Victor gestured to his work tables. “I designed the patterns over the last few years, but they weren’t working. My mantle wasn’t getting stronger from them.”
“Until?” Arona asked, sensing he had more to say.
“Until I rebuilt my Core and allowed all of my Energies to flow into my spirit, the way nature intended!”
Cora had moved to stand near his skein and started to stretch out a finger, but Victor cried out, “Don’t!” When she jerked her hand back, he said, “Sorry, Cora. I didn’t mean to scare you, but I should have warned you—those threads represent events in my life, and some of them are very potent.”
“You have so many! You have to weave them all into—” She turned and walked toward the little field of frames. “—those?”
Victor shook his head. “I don’t think quantity is as important as quality. They need to build on each other, adding to the whole. If I used every thread, it would muddy the clarity I’m seeking.”
“This is very different from my mantle, Victor, but I still find it fascinating,” Arona said, producing a notebook. She also summoned a chair and sat down, beginning to sketch.
Victor laughed and nodded to Cora. “You should take some notes, too.” As she hurriedly began to do so, Victor walked over to Tes, watching as she studied the many patterns he’d created. “Well?”
“It’s rather fascinating. You know dragons don’t do this, right?”
“Yeah, I know. You have a different sort of relationship with Energy.”
She nodded. “It’s part of us—a lifeblood. If I don’t have any advice for you, what will you do?”
Victor ran his gaze over his many patterns. “I’ll take those patterns and attach them to the real framework. I’ll tie them into the mantle I made, and then I’ll see what it does.”
Tes walked toward one of the frameworks he’d made. “You chose each of these threads because you think they’ll complement each other?”
“Yep.”
Hesitantly, she reached toward a glittering crimson pattern. “May I?”
Victor frowned, rubbing his chin. “I suppose I don’t mind, but if you touch too many of those, you’re going to learn a lot more about me than you probably want to know. Also, you won’t just be observing. You’re going to live that memory.”
She arched an eyebrow, her hand vibrating, pulling back, then reaching forward again. After a moment, she sucked her teeth, growling softly before looking at him again. “I think… I… Why am I afraid to touch it?”
He moved closer and gently rested a hand on the back of her neck. “Because, Tes. You’ve seen some of my life. Some of these are scary fucking memories. That one’s not too bad, though. It’s the first time I went berserk. It’s pretty raw, and violent, and…” He trailed off, shrugging.
Tes clenched her jaw, nodded, and then firmly placed her hand on the pattern. Her eyes flew wide, and she gasped. Victor moved his hand to her shoulder to support her as she leaned into him. After a few seconds, she hissed, “Oh, Elder Wyrm!” Then she turned and folded against him, crying as he held her close.
“Hush—it’ll pass. Those emotions are mine; they won’t stick with you long.” Victor looked over her head at Arona and Cora, both of whom were studiously avoiding looking at the two of them. Vicariously, he enjoyed Cora’s excitement and Arona’s inquisitiveness. Even so, most of his mind was occupied with his own excitement. He knew these new patterns, crafted from proper, Energy-rich threads, were going to improve his mantle. He just hoped it would be enough. He could feel the veil. He could hear its whispered call.
He wanted to break through before he fought Vesavo, but even if he didn’t, he was ready to face him. All evening, as they’d dined, he’d felt the stirrings of doubt, but all he had to do was think of the way the Death Caster had treated Arona. All he had to do was imagine her—seven years old and sold into that psychotic abuser’s service. Victor knew his rage would be enough, even now—even without passing through the veil. He’d shatter the planet if he had to in order to crush that son of a bitch.
