Victor of Tucson-Chapter 34Book 12: : Citlalmina
34 – Citlalmina
Victor released his grip on the titanic potential of his body, expanding in size as he flew over the city-like encampment of his army. Lesh flew just ahead of him, leading him northward where, according to the dragonkin, Victor would find another titan awaiting him. She’d seemed to know when he’d arrived, so Victor was fairly confident she was a veil walker; it wouldn’t be hard for one to spot the shift in the Energy flows when he stepped out of the portal. That said, he didn’t know any friendly titans on Dark Ember, and someone like Chantico wouldn’t need to ask permission to see him.
Victor flew with Lifedrinker in his hands, just in case, and he scanned the ground with an angry furrow to his brow. He wasn’t sure why he felt angry. Perhaps it was something to do with his pride—some part of him saw this as a challenge. When he and Lesh had flown past the last row of tents and outbuildings, past the corrals of legion mounts and pack animals, they came to a well-worn dirt road that his troops had made leading north to the next city, which they’d conquered years earlier.
It was on that road that he saw the titan—a woman with long, black hair that shone in the sun’s light. She wore a loose ochre tunic over cream-colored pants, and her feet were clad in soft leather shoes. Immediately, Victor noted the golden hue of her skin and the vibrancy of her spirit; this woman was no undead—no Death Caster. Her Core, veil walker’s though it may be, was anything but impressive, though. Even Arona, still a steel seeker, could muster more Energy.
He spiraled toward the ground, his magmatic wings pouring black smoke into a long trailing cloud. She watched him approach but didn’t seem alarmed. As Victor settled before her, significantly larger in his titan form than she, Lesh landed some fifty yards behind her, watching with his keen, draconic eyes. Having felt her strength and seen her empty hands, Victor sent Lifedrinker back into his spirit space.
“Thank you for coming to see me, Lord Victor,” she said, her voice pleasant and smooth, her intonation almost musical. She reminded him of Chantico—golden skin, raven-black hair, and rich, golden-brown irises. He had no doubt that she was Quinametzin, but the mystery was how she’d come to be standing before him.
“Thank you for being polite about seeking an audience. You know my name; could I have yours?”
“I am Citlalmina, and I believe we share some heritage. I hail from the same world as these vampires you’ve been slaying, brought here against my will by the fiend who rules this dark place. I come bearing the gift of knowledge—vital intelligence for your upcoming war.”
“Yeah?” Victor tilted his head, narrowing his eyes. He was wary of Death Casters and their agents when it came to intelligence. It was a lesson that had been hard-learned back when Hector and his army invaded Fanwath. “I suppose you want nothing in return?”
“Oh, no—I want something; I want off this vile world. I want to know whence all these magnificent people you’ve brought to Dark Ember hail, for I’d grown despondent, thinking death and evil had won against life. I thought the world of my birth dead, abandoned by the flows of magic. Promise to take me to a civilized place where death doesn’t reign, and I’ll tell you what I know.”
Victor gestured to the field on which they stood. It wasn’t exactly vibrant, but the grass was recovering from the miasma that had suppressed its growth and vibrancy for centuries. “This world will be like that when I’m done. Haven’t you explored this continent at all? I’ve driven the death from its shores.” He nodded toward his army’s encampment. “Even Dragomir is gone.”
“That may be, but I still yearn for more—society and civilization. These poor thralls you rescue are ignorant and simple. Your people are sophisticated, dressed in fine armor and clothes, wielding weapons of great power, speaking words that confound the simple people of this world. I want to see whence you hail!” Citlalmina leaned toward him, speaking passionately, and Victor felt her frustration and even desperation, but he shook his head, frowning.
“You’re a veil walker. Why not help some of these poor people? You almost sound mocking rather than sympathetic—a tone that doesn’t make me feel generous.”
“A veil walker…” She folded her arms, tilting her head to look into the sky off to Victor’s left. After a moment, she nodded. “A fitting term for those of us who’ve broken through into the true realm of magic. It’s true; I was a gifted sorceress when he”—she nodded toward the southeast—“dragged me here. I was allowed to continue my studies, and yes, after enough time, I found my way through the…veil. Still, I am one woman, and my power, though vast compared to a common thrall, wasn’t enough to stand against the kings of this world.” She shrugged. “It was all I could do to slip away and hide these many years.”
A low rumble stole Victor’s attention, and he looked past the woman to a scowl on Lesh’s draconic face. His friend was suspicious, but then, so was Victor. “So you were given special privileges by Xelhuan?”
She flinched at the Death Caster’s name, her eyes growing stormy. Despite her efforts to shield it, Victor could read her Core with ease; she had a nature-attuned affinity of some sort, but it had an edge—something like poison or venom. “I understand your suspicion. The story is longer than the summary I gave you.” She looked around the sun-blasted field, perhaps trying to indicate some discomfort, but she didn’t say anything along those lines. She unfolded her arms and said, “Will you allow me to tell you more?”
“Of course I’ll listen.” Victor locked eyes with Lesh over her shoulder and nodded almost imperceptibly. The huge scaled figure rumbled another growl, but then snapped his wings and launched himself aloft. Victor and Citlalmina both watched him glide back toward the army. Victor turned back to the strange Quinametzin woman. “Go on.”
“It’s a long story, but the summary may suffice: I knew the one you named earlier when he was young—before his obsession with death. He courted me, but I resisted; my heart was fixated on another. He began his rise to power far from the city of his birth—of his family. When I realized he had never moved on from his desire to have me, it was too late; his army was at our door and the greatest among us were off, fighting another war. He killed my husband and took me. More than one war followed as my family raised armies to rescue me, but by then the veins of magic that fed our world had grown thin. The greatest among us were gone, and none who remained could stand against…him.”
“And he brought you here?”
“He did, aye. I was given the freedom to pursue my magic studies, but only because he and the other kings of this world were so vastly more powerful than I. If you mean to insinuate that my life was naught but pleasure while his thralls suffered…” She shook her head as tears welled in her eyes. “You’d be right, I suppose. I suffered, but my pain was…minuscule compared to most of the poor souls he brought to this world.”
“But how are you here?”
“Partly because I refused to give my heart, he grew morose and bored with his life of death and domination. After a century on this world, he withdrew for months, then years, and then decades, slumbering in his great casket atop his ziggurat, dreaming of his youth—of life before death. During one of those times, I made my escape.” She touched a silver scarab inlaid with softly glowing green gemstones. “I built this. It hides me from the eyes of death’s servants.”
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It was Victor’s turn to fold his arms, slowly shaking his head. The woman seemed too…sane. “Alone? For how many years?”
“You think I’m not wild-eyed and feral enough? Would it help to know that I’ve been aware of your presence for years? That it took me that long to muster the courage to speak again? That I rehearsed this meeting in my cave, trusting the waterfall to drown my voice as I fought my tongue’s reluctance for words? I am not a well woman, sir, but I am your ally in that we both want to see him defeated.”
Victor weighed her words against the feeling in his gut. He opened his veil walker’s senses wide and studied her Core and the flows of Energy circulating her. Her story about the scarab checked out; he could see the thin veil of spirit-attuned Energy shielding her, rebuffing any stray currents of death-attuned Energy. More than anything, though, he didn’t feel any threat from her, nor would she be a threat against any of the Great Masters of Sojourn.
“All right, then. Tell me what you know, and if all works out, I’ll introduce you to some people on a civilized world.”
She licked her lips, darting her eyes left and right, and for the first time, Victor saw the haunted shell of a woman lurking beneath that healthy exterior. “I have your word?”
He nodded.
“Thank you. Oh, thank you, Victor. First, you should know that he has three other allies—each as strong or stronger than the one you slew here.”
Victor shrugged. “I knew about the Great Masters—the five ‘kings’ who settled this world.”
She nodded. “He’s awake now, though. Your victory here saw to that. He’ll be sure the others come to his aid, and though you slew one, are so confident that you’ll be successful against three of them in addition to him, whose strength is a match for them all?”
“Why don’t you say their names?”
She shook her head, tapping her scarab. “This veil is fragile. I won’t risk being noticed—not yet.”
“Not yet?”
She nodded, her tongue darting out to lick her lips again. Again, her eyes darted left and right, and she practically pleaded. “Is there not someplace we could speak out of the open? He has many eyes, and though I’ve protected myself from scrying, I’m not invisible to the odd raven or rat.”
Victor thought about it for a moment, then he shrugged and reached into his spirit space, summoning his miniaturized fae-crafted vault. He took a step back, and after twisting the key, set it on the grass. It vibrated and hopped around, steaming heavily as it expanded. When it was done, though, the vault barely reached Victor’s knee. “Do you have mastery over your flesh?” he asked.
“Master my…flesh?”
“Can you reduce your size?”
“Oh. I can.” She closed her eyes, and Victor watched as she clenched her jaw and fists, trembling with the exertion as she slowly manipulated the potential in her cells, forcing it to contract with a tremendous effort of will. When she stood a “mere” seven feet tall or so, Victor rapidly matched her and then unlocked his vault.
He gestured to the opening. “Come inside; no one will spy on you here.”
He’d long ago taken his more valuable objects from the vault; they were safely stowed away in his spirit space, so when she hesitantly peered into the spherical chamber, she saw only an empty vault. “Is…is this a prison?”
“It’s a fae-crafted vault. It’s secure.” He tilted his head toward her, smiling crookedly. “If I wanted to imprison you, I’d do it with or without your cooperation.”
Citlalmina looked at him, and the fear in her eyes suddenly made Victor feel guilty. Before he could apologize for his rough demeanor, though, she steeled her nerves and stepped into the vault. Victor followed behind her and pulled the door shut, but not before taking the key out and pocketing it.
“I’ve seen spatial magic. Xelhuan—” She grimaced as she said the name, and paused, looking around with wide, jittery eyes. “I haven’t uttered that name in so long… I can’t recall the last time.” Victor summoned a pair of wooden chairs, setting them near the center of the space, and she continued, “He had bags with this sort of enchantment, though they didn’t feel so powerful; they weren’t so dense with Energy.”
“You’re safe in here. No one can see or hear us in here. This vault can take a beating too. Did you say you had some sort of plan?” He gestured for her to sit.
Citlalmina hesitantly sat on one of the chairs, clasping her hands in her lap, squeezing them as though to keep them still. “Even now, Xelhuan prepares for you. The remaining Great Masters—Acheron Dysios, Nesut-Karemet, and Draugr Sveinbjorn—are there with him, building a trap. If, however, he learned you held me here, in the castle you built atop the bones of Dragomir, it might draw him from his ziggurat. At the very least, I believe he’d send his acolytes here.”
“Acolytes?”
“The Great Masters I named—the only reason they come to his aid is because he created them; each was a mighty mortal king on our homeworld. Xelhuan”—she grimaced—“conquered them and made them his servants.”
“So, you remove your little scarab and he goes crazy, forgetting his plans—forgetting his trap? You sure you’re that important to him?”
She smiled, but it was a sad smile. Shrugging her shoulders, she answered simply, but her words carried the conviction of truth. “I’m certain of it. He only ever wakes from his slumber to ask about me. It’s been that way for more than a hundred years.”
Finally, something that had been bothering him about the woman and her tale snapped into focus, and Victor shook his head, clicking his tongue. “For someone in hiding, alone and silent, you sure seem to know a lot about what’s going on with Xelhuan.”
Again, tears pooled in her eyes, and this time they ran down her cheeks. “That’s because of my father, Itzcoatl—Xelhuan’s oldest attendant. I’m sorry if I led you to believe that I’ve been utterly alone. You see, there’s a small sect of humans who…worship me. I never asked for it, but Xelhuan—during one of his madder delusions centuries ago—declared me a goddess and had temples created in my honor in some of the cities in this dark world. The priestesses who maintain those temples pass missives from my father to me. I’m sorry, Victor, I told you it’s a lengthy story, and I was trying to keep it brief.”
Victor stood and began to pace, running the woman’s story through his mind. It seemed to have a lot of holes, but she had said he was only getting a summary. The question was, did he believe her, and the answer was simple—something in his gut did. He didn’t trust her, but he didn’t doubt she wanted to get away from Xelhuan. The horror in her voice—in her eyes—was too real to fake. Still, the woman wasn’t fully sane, but then, you could say the same for most of the veil walkers on Sojourn. Being powerful—being worshipped—did something to a person, and Citlalmina had been alone, without love or genuine support, for too long.
“If we do what you suggest—lure the three Great Masters to my citadel so that I can face Xelhuan alone—then my people will be in danger. I can’t just have them leave; it would defeat the purpose of drawing the three assholes in. My people would need to keep them busy at least long enough for me to finish with Xelhuan.”
“Have you no other heroes among you? I thought with such an army—with such resources…” she trailed off, her voice growing small as her plan began to crumble.
Victor wasn’t so easily defeated, though. He sighed and walked toward the door. “Listen. You want me to trust you, yeah? Let me ask you this, then: do you trust me?”
“I…” She licked her lips, looking around the vault, scooting to the edge of her seat. “I want to.”
Victor nodded, pushing the vault door open. As Citlalmina stood, he shook his head, holding up a hand. “Then stay in here. Let me carry you to my citadel. I’ll prepare a chamber for you where you’ll be safe from spying eyes. Meanwhile, I’ve got some letters to write. It seems like I’ll have to ask for some help after all.” She looked panicked, but she didn’t object. Victor nodded, stepped outside, and pushed the door shut with a clang that rang with finality. He twisted the key, and the fae-crafted vault began to shrink.
He hadn’t been lying about letting her out of the vault, but he’d make sure the room he prepared for her was thoroughly warded first. Her story was believable—the details were too rich and too convoluted to smell like lies to him. Still, he didn’t need a spy or a saboteur in his citadel, so he wouldn’t take any chances. As he stooped to pick up the little vault and summoned his wings, he contemplated his Farscribe books. Who would come to his aid against some ancient, powerful undead kings?
