Cascade
Chapter One: Shadows Of Things To Come
The great capital city of Grado was awash, drenched by a rainstorm that had been assaulting the city for three days, and was onto its fourth night. The street was a shallow canal, but so old that subsurface aqueducts had been built under it by some thoughtful emperor decades ago – the water sluiced off the rooftops like a waterfall, splashed onto the sidewalks, into the streets and down the drains to join some distant river. During the day, most people kept to the narrow shelter under the eaves, a corridor walled on one side by the buildings and on the other by a curtain of water.
Franz was in that space, and the unoccupied part of his mind was wondering about the people inside the tavern, the knights and civilians celebrating nothing in particular. Franz didn't drink, simply because he hated the flavours. Obviously that made for a memory without curious blank spaces and a lot fewer idiotic stunts to his name, but the poetry that had been put to wine sometimes made him wonder. An ancient philosopher had once said that wine was sunlight held together by water, and that sort of thing could make a paladin feel rather left out.
A second's further reflection convinced him that he didn't really care after all, since the taste of Amelia's lips pressed to his at that moment had all those poems matched and then some. She hummed a rippling note of contentment and pulled away, immediately saying "It's not that I care or anything, but they are eventually going to wonder where we went."
"You really think they'll notice?" Franz asked automatically, his mind on the warmth of her in his arms. "Forde's never learned any of the Grado tavern songs, and you know how he can hold a crowd."
"We should at least send in a reconnaissance team. What do you think, knight-sergeant?"
"I'll take it into consideration, knight-sergeant," Franz agreed with a grin, and leaned in again.
"AAAAIIIIIGGHHHH!" The scream, unidentifiable as human or animal, let alone male or female, ripped through the rain-drummed streets like a brick through a picture window. The young knights spared only a moment for a pained glance at each other before they took off down the street at full speed, boots splashing.
"This had better be an armed robbery at least," Franz growled, the rain instantly soaking him from head to toe. Neither of them were armoured or armed, since this was supposed to be a night off, but swords were easy to come by in the former military Grado Empire, and after the months of training since the Gorgon incident back at Renais Castle, Amelia was deadly with anything that looked remotely like a lance. The only trouble was going to be finding the screamer to begin with; the city's winding streets were like an echo valley tied in a knot.
"Left or right?" he asked as they came to the intersection.
"Left, I think," said Amelia, skidding but not slipping on the wet cobblestones. "You take right, just in case."
"I'm not leaving–" Franz began to protest.
"Don't start."
"I'm going," he corrected himself, taking off down the other way. Say what you would about Franz's chivalrous ideas, but he was learning to accept that his sixteen-year-old sweetheart was capable of kicking his plate-mailed tail around the practice ring six times out of ten.
Amelia scanned the houses on either side as she went, looking for a telltale open door or lamp-lit room with struggling figures. For some reason, no one ever left a sign out for their rescuers. Just once she'd like to see a citizen in distress standing outside their house with a pair of torches, signalling to nearby heroes in semaphore, but no, they never thought ahead.
Mind you, she recalled, I'm the one attempting to charge into danger without weaponry and all the protection afforded by a tunic and some good boots.
She did get a stroke of luck this time; only one house around the next corner had a front door hanging off its hinges and smoke billowing out of the window. Sprinting so fast she left a wake in the street, Amelia was only stopped by her grab at the doorframe – and the jolt of the scene inside, where a pair of sisters were huddled against the far wall, separated from her by a growing blaze. The strange thing was that they weren't staring at the flames, but the walls and the rippling shadows cast by raging firelight.
Compared to hostile wyvern riders, hordes of monsters, and that little episode with Fomortiis, the never-dying King of Demons, a house fire didn't have much to ward off Amelia. In fact, if not for furniture and carpets, it wouldn't have been a problem; the house was mostly stone. Nevertheless, she immediately moved in around one side, vaulted over a writing desk, and hefted one girl under each arm (Amelia was older than both of them combined, and the same probably went for weight), looking for an escape route.
What she saw was the same thing that had so terrifyingly enthralled the girls, the dance of shadows around the room that became a throng of reaching hands from this angle, long clawed arms that stretched out of the darkness in a leap and dragged back out of sight to be replaced by more. In a puff of sparks a terrible face was emblazoned across the ceiling, nothing but a pair of malevolently enraged eyes and a gaping, fanged maw…
"Oh, hell no," she decided, leaping onto the same desk again and using it as a boost over the expanding blaze. She charged out onto the street, letting the rain deal with any sparks that had managed to catch onto their clothes, and made sure the girls were unhurt before charging back in. Not to see if there was a cat in danger – in Amelia's experience, the self-serving little maniacs were usually the first ones off the scene – but because the timber-and-thatch village of Silva had a certain tradition when it came to fires.
The only things burning in the room so far were a large broken table, already mostly gone, and a rug that would eventually lead it to the rest of the furniture. The knight paused for just a second, weighing the sacrifice, the gains, and the truly awful pattern, and ripped down a window curtain. Wrapping it around her hands, she rolled the remains of the carpet over the flaming debris and hauled it outside into the street.
The rain sizzled, sending up a thick plume of steam and smoke even as she ran back in to gather as many burning remnants as possible. Amelia kept her eyes on the floor the whole time, and insisted to herself that she was only ducking to keep out of the smoke, and not away from whatever shape might be on the ceiling. It was only a matter of minutes later that the last embers were soaking in the street, and Amelia was directing the children to open all the windows of their house and then wait with their neighbours.
She went back to find Franz, slicking her wet hair back and starting to shiver – the autumn wind was one thing when you weren't soaked to the bone, but now she was content to tell someone higher-ranked about the fire and get back to the castle barracks. He was easy to spot, and not just because the streets were deserted; he was the only person she knew of who could seem to gallop without a horse, and he looked cheerful in spite of the storm.
"Tough luck," he said, shaking his head with a spray of raindrops. "You'll probably get the next one."
"…What?" She was still trying to pretend that she hadn't noticed anything other than a freak fire. "You found someone?"
"Six of 'em," the paladin reported. "Four thieves after a merchant couple."
"Are you going for backup?" she asked.
For a moment, they just stared at each other as the rain roared, and then both burst out laughing. It went on for a while.
"Oh… oh, wow… hehehe… but seriously – no, seriously, they should be able to walk again in a couple of days," said Franz, when he caught his breath. "Why, you see anything unusual?"
"House fire, nothing serious," Amelia replied. "I want to let Forde or Kyle know, and hopefully someone will know where the kids' parents are." It was far too late to bother with dodging the storm, so they started down the middle of the street, back toward the tavern. The winds were picking up, and a cold gale turned the rain horizontal for a moment. "And then I think a thick blanket and a smaller fire in the barracks is going to be really central to the evening."
Franz smoothly hooked his arm through hers. "Oh, totally."
Closing the door with a soft click, Duessel the Obsidian sighed again, shook his head, and generally made it clear to the universe at large that in his day they wouldn't have stood for such things. He returned to his long walk through the castle with little hesitation; he had been walking Grado Keep for more than thirty years, from his first days as a messenger-squire. He had walked the whole route with his eyes closed more than once, just by feel and the memory in the soles of his feet and on the back of his eyelids.
Memories of days that would never be seen again.
Righteous Selena and indomitable Glen, wise Vigarde and idealistic young Lyon, too many lieutenants and brave knights, too many loyal citizens and innocent peasants… all lost, but burning too brightly in his recollections to be forgotten for even a moment. Too many times, even in just recent days, he had thought of some plan for restoring an outlying village, or an impossible, mind-bending riddle, and even started looking for Glen and Selena before he remembered that he could open a hundred thousand doors and they would never be on the other side.
But Grado still stood, and it was his responsibility as the last of the Imperial Three to see it returned to glory. He owed it to Selena and Glen, who had no more time available to them. But he would not forget, had no interest in forgetting. This life was borrowed time now, not a gift or luck. He did not belong in this new world, but would go on as long as necessary, as long as he could have his solitude…
"General Duessel," said a quiet voice behind him. The Obsidian was quiet for a moment before relenting to reality.
"Your Majesty," he replied, pivoting and standing to attention.
"That's probably stretching things, this late at night," said King Ephraim, surveying the greatknight. "Especially since you've known me since I was about as tall as your knees."
"I will show you the respect due to the ruler of Grado, regardless of other conditions," said Duessel.
"Throwing you in the stockades is still an option," Ephraim murmured, looking dissatisfied. "Look, General, I know you don't want me here, and I don't blame you for any part of it."
"It was the unanimous vote of the monarchs that you be made emperor, and I would rather fight all the beasts of Lagdou than go against Frelia, Jehanna, Rausten, Carcino, and, not least of all, your sister. That said, I can think of no better choice than yourself," Duessel stated.
"As much as that means to me, what I meant is that you want Vigarde or Lyon in my place, and I know it. And you've been my teacher for, what, eleven years? I like honesty more than formality."
Duessel relaxed his stance somewhat, unfolded his hands from behind his back and instead crossed them with mock sternness. "What do you want, Ephraim? I was busy."
The king-by-royal-committee began to laugh, but quickly stifled it for fear of waking any of the knights in the barracks around them. "That's much better, at least when there aren't any diplomats around. Something is on my mind, but I'm more curious why you're still up."
"I like to make the rounds after dark," said Duessel. "It does me good to see warriors at peace. And, of course, I can keep track of the younger knights." He nodded at a door down the hall, the one he had shut himself not long ago. "Do you know why your sister hasn't imposed any discipline on those two? They're asleep in the common room."
Ephraim's gaze intensified into the beginnings of a glare. "Together?" He spun and would have marched down the hall with an aura of overwhelming royal prominence if Duessel hadn't laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.
"At opposite ends of the sofa in front of the fire, milord. When last I looked, Franz was using his head as a pillow for a book." Ephraim settled a little; if kings had hackles, his would have smoothed out again. "Now, they weren't even on duty tonight and I understand up to a dozen people may owe them their lives, but this, this fraternisation, is a destabilising force. They necessarily unbalance any unit we might try to put them into."
"Knights-Sergeant Amelia and Franz are on loan from Eirika," Ephraim reminded his general. "If she doesn't object, then it's no business of ours to interfere with. Besides, can you really say it's the first time you've ever seen… 'fraternisation' like that?"
"I am being mocked," Duessel stated.
"By a king, no less," Ephraim added.
"In my time, the subcommanders would be more likely to allow free border passes for barbarian invaders every Sunday than risk the unity of a contingent on–"
"Okay, I see where this is going. Well, you'll have to put up with them as well as me, then."
"Indeed," the greatknight agreed amicably. "And what business does Your Majesty have in the barracks this late at night?"
"Getting to know my castle, since I'll need to know it better than you do, soon enough," Ephraim replied. "And it's hard to get a night's sleep when the ordinary insurmountable problems of rebuilding a kingdom are playing tag-team with inexplicable occult forces."
"You don't strike me as the kind to lie awake at night, Ephraim," Duessel remarked. He remembered the king as a ridiculously intent student, the kind who always got right to sleep so that he could be up and lance-fighting again as soon as possible.
"I don't. I sit at my desk by candlelight until Tana's glare becomes so intense that it pins my arms behind my back and hurls me out of the room. She has this curious idea that people aren't meant to get anything done at night. Plus there are the… moods…"
"Those I am familiar with," said Duessel. He noticed the look Ephraim was giving him. "From my sister, I mean. She went from being my equal or better in sensibility, calculation–"
"Stodginess?"
"–To trying to concuss me with a rug," the Obsidian finished sharply.
"Well, how much damage could–"
"Rolled up? It was like stopping a battering ram with my nose."
"What do you think we should do?" Ephraim asked, changing the subject.
"You might want to remove all the rugs from your chambers."
"I was referring to the occult forces, General. Cormag tells me another two civilians have vanished, and we still don't have so much as a suspect? You and I have fought enough in the way of evil to know that this isn't an ordinary mystery; it's got Malicious Nether Forces written all over it in vile ancient runes. There aren't any answers where we'll think to look, and Knoll still hasn't come back." The pre-eminent druid of Grado had taken off into the wilderness some weeks earlier, saying he wanted to learn more about the secrets of nature and Anima.
"That brings the total up to more than two dozen, doesn't it?" Duessel asked rhetorically. "Well… perhaps we have two solutions in one, here. We can't afford to place entire units on the case, but your sister has lent us a pair of reputedly brilliant warriors who I'd rather not mix with the other soldiers."
"You recommend I assign two teenage knights to root out and contend with an unknown, shadowy threat? Have you no mercy?" Ephraim demanded.
"I hardly ever show mercy to unknown, shadowy threats." He was grinning, and Duessel grinned like a tiger with artillery support.
Ephraim rolled his eyes. "Neither of them has any experience with using or comprehending magic. And you've seen the sigils, so don't tell me magic isn't involved."
"You'd rather not call on the royal mages for this job?" Duessel asked.
"Until we learn more about who or what is behind twenty-seven people going missing in less than a month, I'd rather not call on anyone I don't know personally." Ephraim hesitated; Grado already had city guards, and he was supposed to be concerned with the whole country, not just a corner of the capital. This was supposed to be what he was good at, seeing the bigger picture. …Well, if Eirika could live and reign at the level of regular people, so could he. "All right, if we're going to give this more attention than the Watch have done so far, let's get it right. I happen to know we've already got a visitor coming; I'll put a messenger on the road to meet him. …Oh, and have someone glue down the carpets in all the imperial chambers."
"I doubt that will slow her down much, my liege."
"It'll give me time to duck."
"Where are you going?" Franz asked, more urgently than he meant to. The fire was out, buried in its own ashes, but the morning rain had thinned to a mere downpour, so enough light was coming through the clouds and the window to read by.
Amelia shrugged, also shifting her satchel into a more comfortable position. "Out. It's payday in Grado Keep, remember?"
"I was just waiting for you to wake up," the paladin volunteered, waving his book vaguely. "I can just bookmark this and–"
"Franz, you do realise we don't have to go everywhere together," Amelia stated.
"…Well, yeah, of course. Yeah," he agreed, trying not to look like a deer in the lamplights.
"So one of us will find the other one later," she said, pausing by him on her way to the door. "Thanks for keeping my feet warm, though." She kissed him on the cheek and was out the door too quickly to notice Franz's raging blush.
The rain drummed on the window while Franz tried to figure out what had happened to the recruit who had been asleep on the sofa by the fire just moments ago.
"Okay," he said to the empty room. "That's fine." He didn't move, though eventually he remembered to put the book down. Franz's eyes scanned the room in long, slow sweeps. "Eventually, something is going to present itself." He watched the window curtains drifted lazily in some hidden draught for more than a minute before the thought finally arrived in his head. Smooth, chaotically graceful, rippling and curving through the only straight lines in all of nature…
Franz leapt to his feet, cast aside the marked book, and strode purposefully out into the hallway, immediately receiving a face full of bronze plating. For some reason, even coming up on two years since the second defeat of the Demon King, Forde was still irritatingly taller than his younger brother, and didn't mind everyone being totally aware of it, all the time.
"Hey, bro. I don't even want to know what you've been getting up to this time – the king wants to see you right away. The knight-sergeant, too; where is she?" asked Forde.
"Out," Franz echoed. "We both have the day off."
"Well that's not going to last long. You must have screwed up…" Forde paused to savour the irony of his choice: "…Royally. King Ephraim has so little free time these days he's got the laundry crews ordered to wring it out of his clothes in case he missed any, and he's still leaving a spot in his schedule to chew you out. Lucky man."
"Why don't I outrank you?" Franz demanded of an unjust universe.
"Because I'm a subcommander of the Grado military with thirty knights following my orders with no consideration of life nor limb, whereas you have Magvel's most capable recruit and a loyal horse. Get moving, bro." With that, Forde trotted off down the hall, whistling a Renais bolero.
"Let any backstabbing rogues in through the back door, lately?" Franz called after him. Forde's pace faltered for a mere second, followed by a gesture over his shoulder in military handsign that translated as something like 'seize the brat with excessive force'.
Wondering what he could possibly have done to attract the king's attention, Franz made his way to the throne room. It had seen some remodelling since Ephraim assumed rule of Grado, and instead of massive pillar and open spaces with no actual purpose, the great hall was now the anteroom to the office of every major official in his court. All around the walls were the desks of their assistants, and the floor in the chamber's centre was a marble map of the empire, each city and village denoted by markers for each of its major unsolved problems.
Once it would have been impossible to enter the throne room unnoticed. Now, Franz slipped inside and approached the throne, hopscotching over the markers for the villages Glaswall, Gwyrrthing, and Silva, and could tell that not only was his presence expected, but totally boring to the many bookkeepers processing reports on every flat surface.
At the far end was Ephraim, who had turned the former throne dais into a kind of miniature base of operations. Seeing Franz coming, he waved off the nearby bureaucrats and beckoned the knight forward. "Sir Franz, you're very punctual."
"Thank you, King–"
"Whatever. Let me get to the point. How do you feel about mysterious disappearances, dark Magicks and probable serial killers?"
Franz blinked and replayed the question in his head, wondering if he had missed a trick question. "…I'd have to say I'm not in favour of them."
"Then today isn't your day, knight-sergeant."
Amelia held the dress against herself and checked her reflection in the shop's biggest mirror. She wasn't sure about the pink, and that was a polite way of saying that if any object had ever had more pink on it, then it had undoubtedly been the primal source of all pinkness, from which every other pink thing was a mere pale imitation. There was such a thing as too much pink, and this was it.
"Drat. You're sure you don't have the same look in any other colour? Red, maybe?" she asked.
"Oh, a little girl like you wouldn't want to walk around in red looking like that – people would start to get Ideas," said the shopkeeper, who had the gift of pronouncing meaningful capitals. Such people should be avoided.
"One of them already has Ideas, and so far it's been working out nicely," she muttered. "And what do you mean, 'little girl'? I'm a knight-sergeant. I've slain dragons. Well, fought dragons. Assisted others in slaying dragons. You know. I think it looked at me long enough for Dozla to put Garm in its back. 'Little girl'." Amelia looked at the shopkeeper, who wore a blank expression that probably meant she had stopped listening by now.
"Perhaps something with orange lace?" the shopkeeper suggested.
"You really have no idea what you're talking about," Amelia observed.
"If she wants red, give her red," said another voice from the shop's open door. "That armor she wears most of the time is hot."
"Ewan!" Amelia blurted, recognising the little mage, especially wearing his signature grin. "What are you doing here?"
"Just wandering down the street and I heard the sound of haranguing. It's a great spectator sport," he replied. "Seriously, go for something red."
"Well, orange was out of the question, but what are you doing in Grado to start with?"
"Oh," said Ewan. "Well, that's a longer story. Come on, and remember he'll probably be back to normal in a few days." She handed the Template of Pink back to the shopkeeper and followed Ewan out onto the street, where a horse had just trotted to a halt with another familiar figure riding on its back, reading a letter.
"What? The spread of demonic powers? 'Inexplicable circumstances surrounding the numerous, unrelated disappearances may indicate the presence of otherworldly powers operating within the city'!" Saleh read aloud. He vaulted one-handed off his steed and landed in a melodramatically heroic pose. The sage raised a hand and a strong wind rushed down the street, sending his cloak streaming out behind him like a river of emeralds. "Thank the Divine Light you sent for me!"