Chapter 12: VAIL - The Name in the Dark76Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHyrzA1fZSz
The message reached him just before dawn.
Vail was in his study, still awake, still running on nothing but brandy and the cold, clear focus that came when his body had passed beyond exhaustion into something sharper. The fire had burned down to embers. His desk was covered in papers—notes on the crow-warden's response to Eira's tithe, anatomical diagrams of the god-speaker brain, a half-finished letter to Miriel that he'd started and abandoned three times. His hand was steady. His mind was clear. He'd been staring at the same page for an hour, and the words had stopped meaning anything, but his hand was steady.
The door opened without a knock. Rennic, his scarred face grey with exhaustion, a lantern in his hand.
"My prince. The temple ward. The god-speaker—the mute—she's spoken again."
Vail looked up. "Sigrid. What did she say?"
"A name. The same name she carved into her thighs. The physicians are panicking. The head physician—Kellan—he sent a runner. He says you need to come now. He says—" Rennic stopped. His jaw tightened. "He says the First Dreamer is waking up."
Vail stood. His chair scraped against the stone. "Who else knows?"
"Kellan, two other physicians, a carer named Hara. The runner. The guards on the ward door. Half the failed speakers were chanting the name in unison when the runner left. It's spreading, my prince. Whatever she's doing, it's spreading."
"Contain it. No one leaves the ward. No one talks to anyone outside. If Aldric's spies get word of this before I've confirmed what it means—"
"I've already posted Sersha and Torrin at the ward entrance. No one goes in or out without your permission." Rennic hesitated. "There's something else. The girl from Frostwake. Eira Voss. She came to me an hour ago—her brother had a nightmare. He dreamed of the Lament. It spoke to him, my prince. Told him the plague is a god. Told him to find the river, the god-speaker, the prison. The same things the mute's been carving into her skin."
Vail went very still. "The brother is six years old."
"Yes."
"And the Lament spoke to him in a dream. Clearly. Not in fragments."
"According to the girl, yes. She said he woke up screaming, and then he told her everything. She wanted me to tell you. She said you'd want to know."
Vail stood in the centre of his study, the cold mountain air seeping through the stone walls, the embers dying in the hearth. His hand was still steady. His mind was racing. The threads were coming together—the girl who wounded a god, the brother who dreamed of the Lament, the god-speaker who carved maps into her own flesh. All of them pointing north. All of them pointing toward something that had been waiting for five hundred years.
"Wake Liska," he said. "Tell her to meet me in the temple ward. Tell her to bring her instruments—the portable siphon, the recording tablets, anything that can measure neural activity. If Sigrid is channeling something, I want proof."
"And the girl? Eira?"
"Tell her to stay with her brother. If the Lament speaks to him again, I want to know what it says. Every word." He moved toward the door. "And Rennic? Send a rider to Miriel. Tell her the situation has escalated. Tell her I may need to move faster than I anticipated. Much faster."
The temple ward was in chaos.
The torches in the corridor were flickering—not the steady blue of the lower levels, but a wild, erratic dance of orange and shadow. The guards at the door were white-faced, their hands on their swords, their eyes wide. One of them—a young man with a boy's soft jaw—was shaking so badly his armour rattled. The other was older, harder, but his face was set in the rigid expression of a man who was very close to running and had decided not to.
Sersha met Vail at the door. Her missing ear was a pale scar in the torchlight, and her face was grim. "The chanting's stopped. The mute—Sigrid—she's just sitting there. Staring at the wall. The other patients have gone quiet too. It's worse than the chanting. It's like they're waiting for something."
"Have any of the physicians tried to sedate her?"
"Kellan wanted to. I told him to wait for you." Sersha's mouth twisted. "He's not happy about it. Says she's dangerous. Says the name she's speaking is forbidden. Says we should burn her before she spreads the plague further."
"The name is already spreading. Burning one vessel won't stop it." Vail pushed open the door. "Keep the guards here. No one enters except Liska."
The ward was cold and dark. The barred windows showed a sky that was just beginning to lighten, grey and pale at the edges. The cots were lined up against the walls, and the failed speakers lay on them like corpses waiting for burial—silent, motionless, their white eyes fixed on nothing. The air smelled of old urine and fresh sweat and the faint, sweet rot of infected wounds. And underneath it all, the ozone tang that Vail had come to recognise. The smell of the plague. The smell of Yska.
Sigrid was sitting on the edge of her cot, her back against the damp stone wall. Her robe was pushed up around her hips, and her thighs were bare, and the carvings on her skin glistened in the grey light—spirals and angles, a map that led north. The deepest wound, the one on her left thigh, was weeping a thin, yellowish fluid that dripped onto the stone floor. The word carved below it was still visible, black against the red of raw flesh.
YSKA.
Kellan was standing a few feet away, his old hands shaking, his face grey. Two other physicians flanked him, younger men with wax plugs in their ears and terror in their eyes. They looked at Vail as he entered, and something in their expressions shifted—not relief, not quite. More like the look of men who'd been holding their breath and had finally been given permission to exhale.
"Prince Vail," Kellan said. His voice was hoarse. "Thank the gods. She spoke a name—a forbidden name—and the other patients began chanting it. All of them, at once. Even the ones who haven't moved in weeks. Even the ones who've been catatonic since the Elk—" He stopped, his hand going to his chest. "I've been a physician for forty years. I've seen everything the covenant can do to a human mind. I've never seen this."
"The name is Yska," Vail said. "The First Dreamer. The god that taught the other gods to consume memory. The god they imprisoned five hundred years ago."
Kellan stared at him. "How do you—that name is forbidden. The texts are sealed. No one is permitted—"
"I've read the texts. All of them. The forbidden ones, the sealed ones, the ones that were supposed to be burned." Vail walked past him, toward Sigrid's cot. "The plague isn't a sickness, Kellan. It's a consciousness. An ancient god that's been trapped inside the covenant for five centuries. The tithes were never meant to feed the gods—they were meant to keep Yska imprisoned. And now the prison is failing."
Kellan's mouth opened and closed. "That's heresy."
"It's the truth. And the truth is what's been speaking through this woman for the past three weeks." Vail stopped in front of Sigrid. She didn't look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the wall, her face blank, her lips slightly parted. The wounds on her thighs were still weeping, the yellow fluid mixing with the dried blood and old scar tissue. "Sigrid. Can you hear me?"
She didn't answer. Her mouth didn't move. But something in the air around her shifted—a faint pressure, like the moment before a storm. The torches flickered. The other patients stirred on their cots, their white eyes turning toward Vail.
She hears you, a voice said. It wasn't Sigrid's voice. It was deeper, older, a chorus of a thousand whispered words layered over each other. It came from Sigrid's mouth, but it wasn't hers. She hears everything. She just can't answer. I've taken her voice. I've taken most of her. There's not much left.
Vail didn't step back. His hand was steady. His voice was steady. "You're Yska."
I am what's left of Yska. I am what they imprisoned. I am what they've been feeding for five hundred years. Sigrid's head turned, slowly, her neck creaking like old wood. Her eyes were no longer grey. They were black, the pupils blown wide, the irises swallowed. You're the Prince of Empty Hands. The god-killer. The man who cuts open memories and drinks what comes out. I've been watching you. I've been waiting for you.
"Waiting for what?"
Waiting for you to find the girl. The one who wounded the Lament. She carries the key. She carries the answer. She will open the door.
"The door to the prison."
The door to my cage. The door they sealed five hundred years ago, when they bound me in ice and silence and made a covenant with the mortal races to keep me starved. Sigrid's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. It didn't work. The tithes fed me. Every memory, every ceremony, every piece of themselves they gave to the gods—it all came to me. Slowly, at first. Then faster. Now the cage is cracking. Now the door is opening. Now I just need someone to push it the rest of the way.
"The girl won't help you. She's already wounded you once."
She wounded the Lament. She woke me up. That wasn't a wound, little prince. That was a birth. The black eyes fixed on Vail's face. You want to understand me. You want to study me. You want to find a way to kill me. You can't. I'm not a sickness. I'm not a god. I'm the first word, and the last. I'm the cold that was here before the mountains, and I'll be here after the mountains are dust. You can't kill me. But you can join me.
"I'm not interested in joining you."
You will be. Before the end, you will be. The voice was fading now, the pressure in the air easing. Sigrid's eyes flickered—black to grey, grey to black—and her body sagged against the wall. Ask your questions, Prince of Empty Hands. I'll answer what I can. But the girl is the one you need. The girl is the one who will open the door. And when she does, I'll be waiting.
Sigrid's head dropped forward. Her eyes closed. The torches steadied. The other patients on their cots went still, their white eyes turning back to the ceiling. The ward was silent again, except for the distant moan of the wind outside the barred windows.
Kellan was shaking. "What—what was that? Was that the plague? Was that the god?"
"That was Yska," Vail said. "Or a fragment of it. A projection. The real thing is still buried, still trapped. But it's getting stronger." He turned to the door. "Liska should be here by now. When she arrives, tell her I want a full neural workup on Sigrid. Brain activity, memory residue, anything that can tell us how Yska is using her as a conduit. I'll be in the archives."
"The archives? But—my prince, the Council—"
"The Council can wait. I have a god to find."
The sealed archives were cold and dark, the way they always were. Vail descended alone, his lantern throwing long shadows across the stone walls. The forbidden texts were kept in a vault at the deepest level, behind a door of black iron etched with the same spiral patterns that marked the god-posts and the waystation walls. The key was in his hand, cold and heavy.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The vault was a small room, lined with shelves of scrolls and codices. Some were so old they crumbled at a touch, their pages brittle with age. Others were newer, bound in leather or human skin, their ink still dark. Vail had spent years in this room, cross-referencing fragments, building a map of the past that the Council had tried to bury. The covenant was a lie—or at least, it was a story that had been told so many times that everyone had forgotten it was a story.
The truth was older. And darker.
He found the fragment he was looking for in a codex bound in pale, translucent skin that might have been human or might have been something else. The text was in a language that predated the covenant, a tongue that only a handful of scholars could read. Vail was one of them. He'd taught himself from scraps, from marginalia, from the notes of dead men who'd gone mad trying to translate what shouldn't be translated.
He read:
...and the First Dreamer, whose name is not to be spoken, did teach the gods to eat memory. And the gods did feast, and grow strong, and in their strength they did imprison the Dreamer, for they feared its hunger. For the Dreamer hungered not for memory, but for communion. It wished to join with all minds, to become one with all thought. And the gods said: this is death. This is the end of self. And they bound the Dreamer in a prison of ice and silence, deep beneath the mountain where the cold has no end, and they appointed guardians to watch over it—the great gods, the old ones, the ones who had first learned to feed. And they made a covenant with the mortal races to feed the guardians with memory, that the guardians might remain strong and the prison remain sealed. But the Dreamer sleeps not, and dreams not, and its voice whispers still in the spaces between memories. Beware the cold. Beware the first word. Beware the name that is Y—
The rest of the page was torn away. The same tear as the other codex. The same careful removal of the name. But this time, there was something else—a note, scribbled in the margin in a newer hand, the ink dark and sharp.
The name is YSKA. Do not speak it. Do not write it. It hears.
Vail stared at the words. He'd read them before. He'd sat in this same chair, in this same cold room, and read the same warning. But now he understood what it meant. The name was not just a name. It was a door. Every time someone spoke it, every time someone wrote it, every time someone carved it into their own flesh with their own fingernails, the door opened a little wider.
He closed the codex. His hand was steady. His hand was always steady. But something in his chest was cold—colder than the archive, colder than the mountain, colder than the wind that moaned through the corridors of the Citadel.
The gods didn't make the covenant to protect us, he thought. They made it to keep Yska asleep. And we've been feeding it memories for five centuries.
He sat in the darkness for a long time, the lantern burning low, and thought about what came next.
Liska found him an hour later. She was breathing hard, her hair coming loose from its tie, her tunic stained with something dark. She'd been working on Sigrid, he realised. The neural workup.
"You need to come back to the ward," she said. "Now."
"What happened?"
"The god-speaker. Sigrid. She started writing. Not carving—writing. On the walls. With her fingers. She's covered half the ward in the same word, over and over. YSKA. YSKA. YSKA. And the other patients—they're writing it too. The ones who can move. The ones who haven't moved in weeks. They're all writing the same word."
"And the voice? Yska?"
"Gone. For now. But Sigrid's eyes are still black, and her heart rate is three times what it should be, and her brain activity—" Liska stopped. Her face was pale. "Her brain activity is off the scale. Every region is firing at once. Memory, language, sensory processing, motor control. It's like her mind is being used by something that doesn't know how to be human."
"Because it isn't human. It's a god that's been trapped for five hundred years, and it's learning how to speak again." Vail stood. "Show me."
They walked back to the ward in silence. The torches were still flickering, the guards were still white-faced, and the air was thick with the ozone tang of the plague. Inside the ward, the walls were covered in words. YSKA, written over and over in letters that were too precise, too uniform, as if they'd been drawn by a machine rather than a human hand. Sigrid was still sitting on her cot, her back against the wall, her eyes black and empty. Her fingers were still moving, tracing the word on the stone.
Vail walked to her. He knelt in front of her, his face level with hers, and he spoke very quietly.
"Sigrid. If you can hear me—if there's anything left of you in there—I need you to know something. I'm going to find the prison. I'm going to find the place where they buried Yska. And I'm going to find a way to kill it. But I need your help. I need the map. I need to know where the door is."
Sigrid's black eyes fixed on his face. Her mouth opened. And for a moment—just a moment—the voice that came out was hers. Cracked and broken and barely a whisper, but hers.
"North," she said. "The Frostwood. The mountain where the cold has no end. The Lament is already there. It's waiting. It's been waiting since your girl wounded it."
"Waiting for what?"
"For the door to open. For the girl to come. For the key to turn." Her eyes flickered—black to grey, grey to black—and Yska's voice bled through again, deeper and older. She's almost ready. The girl who wounded me. She's almost ready to do what she was born to do. And when she does, I will be free.
Vail stood. His hand was steady. His voice was steady. "Then I'll make sure she's ready for something else."
He turned and walked out of the ward, leaving the god-speaker and her black eyes and her walls full of names behind him. Liska followed, her footsteps quick and sharp on the stone.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I'm going to tell Eira the truth. All of it. The prison, the key, the door. What she really did to the Lament. What she's going to have to do next." He didn't slow down. "And then I'm going to prepare for war."76Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnjg8OX3b5u
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