Fiction:The Worm Turns

faces the return of an old enemy.

Prologue
Rough hands jostled him in front and in back, pulling and pushing, driving him, stumbling, forward. Low voices muttered around him. He heard fragments only --

“-- going to be late --”

“We’re late already, a few minutes more won’t matter --”

“-- told the Father, you know him --”

“Did we pass it? It was supposed to be Canticle Avenue --”

Saints save me from incompetent cultists, he thought. When they’d jumped him in the park and strapped the blindfold around his head, he had expected some kind of professionalism. They had excellent coordination, but shortly turned out to have basically nothing else. Mystery cults: they had an upper limit to ability.

“Hang on, let me get my bearings,” someone said. Hooves clattered on cobblestone as the speaker jogged down the street (a narrow one, based on the echoes).

Another voice muttered in his ear. “Sorry. It’s not usually like this. I mean, the blindfold is, but you know what I mean.” “Don’t worry,” he said, dryly.

Hooves came clattering backwards. “Right!” called their owner. “Canticle was back that way, we missed it.” Three other voices groaned. Four pairs of hands began dragging their captive back, who sighed.

Back, and right: sounds of recognition and relief from his sort-of captors. Their pace slowed. They crossed a boundary. He felt it in his head and over his body, like pushing his hand through a soap bubble, and suddenly he could hear the noise. Muffled music, a lively cacophony of pipes and drums and horns. They have a counter-vibration ward canceling the sound, he thought. So there are practitioners in this mystery cult? Well, he’d fit in just fine, then.

He felt one of his escorts leave his side. A few seconds later, something ahead of him made an off-kilter series of knocks, followed by the hiss-latch sound of something sliding back.

“We’ve brought a new initiate!” shouted the knocker. Then: “What? It’s me, isn’t it? Come on, we’re not exactly a secret these days.”

A door opened. The music grew louder. As before, he was half-pushed half-pulled inside.

Warmth gusted against his face, welcome in the night’s chill. Smells assaulted him: bodies, food, fragrant incense and tobacco smoke. Laughter, chatter, raucous music. The noise was a roar. Above the roar roared a voice, deep and resonant:

“WHO COMES BEFORE THE YAHFEHRENEZ?”

A cheer went up. It nearly drowned out the response from beside him. “A new convert, hungry for joy!”

“WHO IS HE, AND WHY HAS HE COME?”

“A magus of the Vaucarne Court --”

“Acolyte!” he hissed, mortified. He was still two years away from graduating to magus.

“-- sorry. An acolyte of the Vaucarne Court, seeking distraction from his drab studies!”

“LET HIM NAME HIMSELF, SO WE MIGHT KNOW HIM!” came the reply.

Someone dug an elbow into his side. “Just like you practiced!” she hissed.

He breathed in, inhaled a gust of smoke, coughed hard, and called out hoarsely, “I’m Banesh Kirardad, acolyte third class of Seshadar College!”

“LET BANESH KIRARDAD BE UNMASKED!” bellowed the voice.

Cheers from all around. The blindfold came off. Banesh blinked wildly as his eyes adjusted. After a few moments, he recognized the common area of an apartment complex, the expansive and expensive sort that particularly well-to-do serfs lived in. Glass lanterns ensconced in the walls radiated simulant firelight, flickering off of brightly colored mosaics. They made the smoke-hazy air glow. At the far end of the room, between a pair of spiraling stairs leading to the apartments proper, rose an abstract altarpiece: a twisted triangle framed from below by a narrow crescent.

The rest of the room was full of people. So many of them! A quintet of musicians played on five separate tables, islands in a sea of faces: a mass of life, dancing, drinking, blowing rings from hookahs, skimming plates of food off of trestle tables running down either side of the room. One held court above all. A big man, seated beneath the altarpiece, his horns curled and magnificent, his beard long and braided. He wore uncommonly fine robes, the sort of quality usually found in the nobility. A magus?

He lifted a gilded chalice and shouted. “HAS HE BEEN INDUCTED?”

“He has, Father!” came an answering shout from behind Banesh.

“HAS HE BEEN INITIATED?”

“He has, Father!”

(Banesh remembered his first initiation distinctly. It had been much less overwhelming: blindfolded by his four cohorts, spun around a few times, and plunged naked into water.)

“THEN LET HIM BE CONFIRMED!”

Masked figures emerged from the crowd. They carried wands, goblets, whips, bowls. Banesh submitted himself to their attentions, internally rolling his eyes, as they carried out some obscure ceremony around him. Wine was flicked into his face. Salt was sprinkled into his mane. It was all very symbolic of some ancient king or hero or whoever, to whom this mystery cult was dedicated. Banal. Very banal.

A whipcrack signified the end of the rite, and another cheer went up. “WELCOME, BANESH!” shouted the man they called Father. “JOIN THE FESTIVITIES! ENJOY YOURSELF! THAT IS THE YAHFEHRENEZ WAY!”

His throat must be incredibly durable to survive shouting like that, thought Banesh, a little disoriented as the crowd absorbed him. Someone pushed a glass of strong-smelling cider into his hand. Join them, study their beliefs, make a full report. His first assignment as a trainee, provisional magus. Its religious aspect, anyways. No doubt his other classmates were learning how to make servitors out of flesh and metal or something, something that actually applied his thaumaturgical learning. Banesh, on the other hand, was interning for the heresy detection agency. On the plus side, I do get to party.

And it was a party. Behind the ritual trappings, the cult was ultimately a way for bored, repressed serfs to live it up a bit. A lot of them would be nursing hangovers in the morning, but it looked otherwise completely harmless. Just another mystery cult popping up the way they did among the lower classes. The Vaucarne Court indexed and examined each one regardless, just in case it diverged too far from orthodoxy and/or some of its founding members had an objectionable agenda. Certainly, this one had spread further than most -- there were chapters on every world in Miahvar province -- but that was hardly unprecedented.

Someone bumped into him. His glass slopped, spilled -- hung. Banesh exerted his will further, and the free-floating cider slid obediently back into the glass. He breathed out. He looked aside. He met the eyes of the very pretty woman who’d bumped into him, staring at him in unconcealed amazement.

“Hello,” he said.

“You’re really a magus,” she said.

“Yes! Well, no. Acolyte. Still training. That’s what I said.” He took a sip.

“I thought you lived in palaces, giving orders to the nobility.”

“For me, one day,” he said. “For now… nothing but study, study, study.” He shrugged, with a what-can-you-do sort of smile.

“So why come here, then?” she asked. She was getting really quite close to him. “What's a man like you doing here in Miahvar? Don’t nobles throw their own parties?”

“Oh, you know them. Bunch of stuffy old men and women. Nobody there knows how to have fun.”

She giggled. “Not like us, you mean?”

“Definitely not like you,” he said, grinning. “And they don’t have you, either.” He downed a gulp of cider, trying to be suave, and proceeded to choke on its fumes.

The next half-minute involved a great deal of coughing and wheezing while she pounded his back. His cider bobbed safely above his head.

“You’re not really good at fun, are you?” she asked, as he recovered. Her eyes were alight with laughter.

“Stronger hhhh than I gckk expected,” he gasped.

In response, she slid up to him, wrapping her arms around his body. “Oh, you. Let me teach you.” And she kissed him.

The cider fell to the ground and shattered.

Nice, he thought. Wait a second slow down I don’t even know your name he thought, at the exact same moment. But she tasted like apples, and her tongue was on his, and something hard-shelled and many-legged was crawling from inside her mouth into his, and mandibles were piercing the back of his throat and into plunging into his spine, and Banesh Kirardad ceased to be Banesh Kirardad and became instead a hollow shell housing the child of an alien god.

Every person in the gathering noticed. Every single one of them had already been similarly infected. They felt the spark of a new mind bolster their group consciousness, and rejoiced.

A week later, he will mail his report to the magi of Seshadar province. It will say that this cult of King Carran is neither heretical nor noteworthy. It will be written in his handwriting, make the same small errors in spelling and grammar that he does, and will be signed by his unique thaumaturgic seal. Nobody outside Miahvar will realize that he did not write it until the aftermath.

Banesh Kirardad is dead. The moves his body now.

Chapter 1
Behold the Court of Khidar. The assembly of the most powerful people in the realm of ancient Khidar, one of the thirty-six vassals allied to the Holy Realm and member state of the Tenet Domain. They are the noble rulers of Khidar. They are its most powerful sorcerers, its most cunning schemers, its most fearsome warriors. Their will is law, and the law is absolute.

What cold thoughts are calculated within this dread palace? What far-reaching decisions are made here, day after day? What is it like to have so many vast powers enclosed in such a small space?

Mostly, it’s very boring.

“They are, in a word, uninteresting,” finishes High Prelate Arisaxa Mandara, Cardinal of Khidar. “My conclusion is that the Yahfehrenez are like any number of other mystery cults before, and any number that will come after. They are well within margins of compliance and exhibit no deviant tendencies. It is my belief that they will dissolve within the next few centuries.”

It’s not actually a small space. The council chamber is actually quite airy. It is the simple presence of so many great powers that makes it feel small, especially to those sensitive to the immaterial. Shafts of sunlight dapple the carpets and tapestry, shining from between pillars of white marble in the hypostyle ceiling overhead. Dust motes dance in the light. Green-and-gilt drapery softens every corner. A long wooden table occupies the center, its length carved ornately and filled with heroes, angels, and monsters. Chairs are lined up along each side, only a handful of which are empty; an elaborate throne is positioned at its head.

Arid Anuk, Baron of the Third Order, does not sit. It is his privilege to stand, armored, armed, and eternally watchful, beside the thrones of Khidar. Besides its supreme ruler.

She rests attentively on her green throne, statue-still, statue-calm. Fehari Ashazdes, Last of Her Line, the Blind Seer, Archon of Khidar, the single most powerful magus of all assembled. She wears the robes of office, green and yellow and white and black. The emeralds sewn into its sleeves and collar glitter in the light. The hood that covers her eyes shifts as she inclines her head towards Arisaxa.

“Thank you, High Prelate,” she says. Her voice is soft, but it carries. “We shall leave the matter of the Yafehrenez alone, then. Are there any who object?”

A chorus of murmurs.

“Very well. Arbiter, who holds the next item on the agenda? Ah, First Treasurer Herdaz…”

Arid is only halfway listening. Arid is not interested in the political workings of Khidar. Arid is extremely bored. Arid is also on edge, as being near Archon Fehari always puts him on edge. Which is unfortunate, because as Right Hand of the Archon, his duty is to be her champion and bodyguard. The latter is a largely ceremonial function. She can take care of herself. She radiates power the way light shines red and dim through a hand covering a torch. To threaten her is to face that torch uncovered.

Being near her makes it feel likes his teeth are vibrating in his skull. Arid does not complain. Arid never complains. Arid endures, because honor tells him to endure. Just as honor tells Arid to endure standing for hours, motionless, bored out of his skull, while the Khidar Court holds session.

...

Later.

The archon’s estate within the palace complex that is Khidar’s capital is, naturally, palatial. Every wall is studded with alcoves for paintings or statues -- every corner groans beneath the weight of gilding and ornamental plants -- liveried servants patrol its length at regular intervals, bearing brooms and mops, fresh sheets for the bedchambers, platters of food and wine from the kitchens. To walk its halls is to be drowned in opulence. Arid always feels out of place here. Arid also always feels disoriented in the Archon’s private chambers, which is built to similar proportions but bare of all decoration that isn’t already built into the architecture.

New rulers have, historically, refurbished the palace when they moved in to better suit their tastes. However, Archon Fehari is blind.

“You are growing bored again,” she says. She paces a slow circuit in front of him, alone, unsupported, confident.

The Hall of Meditative Contemplation stretches out to either side of them, flanked by dusty statues of angels. Twelve thousand years ago, an Archon who believed he thought better when pacing back and forth had it constructed. Now another walks its length. It is quiet here, but Arid’s unnatural senses feel the buzz of her power -- it’s seeped into the very foundations of the place.

“My lady,” he says, noncommittal. He is still where Fehari walks: still armored, still armed, still stiff in his bearing. It’s like he doesn’t know how to relax.

“You are bored,” she says, gently chiding. “How fares the Emerald Host, my Knight-Marshal?”

“There will be no matters requiring my direct attention for the next fifteen days,” he says. Besides her right hand, Arid is also master of Khidar’s military.

“Hmm,” she says. She stops and faces him. The hem of her robes swish quietly on the tiled floor. “It would do your heart well to be away from the palace for a time, I think.”

“If my lady wishes it.” Arid stares fixedly at a point somewhere between her horns. This close, he can see the beginnings of the massive scar she wears her hood to conceal, hairless and raw-looking.

“If my knight desires it.” She reaches up, slowly, and feels his face with her fingers. He does not move. “So many weeks without purpose have drawn you as tense as a bowstring. I have a suitable task in mind for you, should you accept.”

“I am at your disposal,” says Arid.

“It involves terrorizing hapless noblemen.”

“You know me too well, my lady,” says Arid, stone-faced.

Fehari smiles and lets her hands fall. She begins to pace again.

“My allies, the Duke and Duchess of Miahvar, have just delivered their third child. A son. Congratulations are in order, especially in light of their many centuries of support. The usual protocols apply.”

She raises a delicate finger. “However, my Eyes tell me that, of late, they have not been as loyal to me as I could expect. That they, in fact, have been considering switching sides. Of leaving the Northern Sky Fraternity and joining an opposing power bloc. They have taken offense at my support of the Count of Talannar in a local dispute, whose noble house once… well, I’ll spare you the details. Your eyes are glazing over. Their feud is older than you are, anyways.”

“You know my left hand is away on business. You, my right, shall deliver the traditional well-wishes instead,” she continues. “You will not be bored. There will be feasts and entertainments aplenty. And the whole time, my champion, your presence will remind the lords of Miahvar that I am watching, and that treachery has consequences.”

Gears inside Arid’s head turn.

“How long will I be away?” asks Arid.

“Two days of travel at most,” says Fehari. “Four for the actual ceremonies. You will return in time for your other duties.”

Arid hammers his chest with a fist. “I will accept this task --”

“Wait,” Fehari interrupts. Arid blinks, bemused.

“I am not sending you to Miahvar simply to threaten a wayward ally back into line,” she says. She steps closer to him. “I am also sending you to investigate the Cult of Carran.”

But the prelate said they weren’t a problem, thinks Arid. But he says nothing, because he has served the Archon for over seven centuries now, and he knows a little about the way she thinks.

“I do not have the same resources or agents the Vaucarne Court does. I cannot investigate in the same detail. My own Eyes tell me the same things Arisaxa does.” Her voice is cold and urgent. “All my intelligence tells me they are nothing to worry about. All I have is intuition, and mine says that something about this Cult is wrong.“

Her hands dip into the folds of her robes, and emerge holding a plain emerald necklace.

“When you go,” says Fehari, “keep this on your person at all times.”

Arid takes it from her. His fingers twitch involuntarily when they close on it; the thing is powerful, and touching it is like touching a live wire.

“You will wear it when you bathe. You will wear it when you sleep. It is mine, and it will protect you.”

Arid nods and slips the necklace over his head. The jewel seems to thrum against his chest.

“And Arid,” she says. Her sightless gaze bores into him, filling him with numinous dread. “When you go, trust no one.”

Chapter 2
Fanfare!

Trumpets blare. Drums rattle. One thousand Miahvar guardsmen, five hundred to each side, thump their spears on the ground once and salute at perfect attention. Ahead, the royal transatmospheric skiff, its silver hull wrapped in gossamer banners of Khidar green, lowers its boarding ramp.

Arid Anuk, armed and armored, takes his first steps in Miahvar province. His steel-shod hooves clatter down the Processional Avenue. An emerald necklace sits hidden beneath his arming tunic. He is followed by a column of eight mounted knights of the Emerald Host, forty armsmen, and a multicolored throng of magi, poets, scribes, cooks, and other minor court functionaries. This escort is smaller than would normally warranted by such an occasion, but then the Archon is displeased with her Duke.

Miahvar, he thinks. Three stars, eight worlds. A small province of a small kingdom, neither wealthy nor impoverished, part of the larger Chidarm canton, which included Seshadar, Ahisbos, and Mispat. It’s not so bad here.

Certainly, from his first look at its capital world of Vatax-Ises, what the Miahvar Duchy considered luxury is much more tasteful than he is used to seeing. He walks on intricately tesselating marble bricks, beneath high white arches hung with the banners of Khidar, Miahvar, and Chidarm. Rows of guardsmen and instrument-bearing heralds run down each side, in front of short fences cordoning off the adulant crowds, tens of thousands strong. There is a distinct lack of golden ornamentation, elaborate tapestries, and improbably proportioned statues.

He would probably appreciate it more if he wasn’t so exhausted. He blinks bleary eyes. Interstellar jet lag. A day and a half’s worth of travel wasn’t long enough to adjust to Vatax-Ises local time, nor to the fact that its days are five hours shorter.

At the end of the Avenue waits the Duke of Miahvar. Vaneb Faidaras, of the Second Order. To his left is his oldest son Tarim, to his right, his daughter Eshiah. Behind them, his own assembly of guards and courtiers.

Arid halts ten paces away. From behind him emerges a green-clad herald, who bellows:

“Announcing Arid of House Anuk! Right Hand of the Archon, Sword-Baron of the Third Order, Knight-Marshal of the Emerald Host…”

The titles roll on like a wave. It takes most of a minute to read them all. Arid endures. When the herald finishes, the Duke and his entourage kowtow as one.

“I, Duke Vaneb of House Faidaras, welcome you to our world, Baron Anuk,” he says. “Please accept our humble service and hospitality.”

"Rise," says Arid. House Faidaras stands. Arid raises his right hand, palm outward. The Duke meets it with his own. Fingers interleave and close around each other -- a sharing of affairs, so the symbolism goes. “I, Baron Arid of House Anuk, accept your welcome,” he rumbles, squeezing. The Duke winces. Arid physically outclasses him in every possible way: he’s bigger, broader, and above all stronger.

“How is the child?” asks Arid, letting go.

“He has very healthy lungs,” says Vaneb, trying to massage some feeling back into his hand. He turns, and begins to lead both their groups away. “Rayeh is with him now, still recovering. Twelve hours’ labor it was,” he says.

Beyond the Processional Avenue is the Plaza of the Sun, and beyond the Plaza the gates of the Ducal Palace. Cheering onlookers throng the entire path. Archon Fehari is popular with the serfs, and therefore so is her Right Hand, despite his descent. Under their eyes, the royal visitors enter the palace.

Only one does not.

Meyian Zduda, Eye of Zeyyd, loyal spy of the Archon, is last down the boarding ramp. Everybody else is already well away. Hundreds of people are looking in her general direction, their gazes aimless and wandering. None see her. She has orders to treat this entire planet as hostile territory, and she has tuned her arsenal of covert enchantments to match.

Silently, she slips away. She has a mission to do.

Chapter 3
Earlier.

“One Eye for the entire city?” asked Knight-Captain Yaned.

“Yes.” said Arid.

The Knight-Captain looked at Meyian dubiously, who gave him a blank look.

“Well, it’s not for me to doubt her,” he said, shrugging. Unlike Arid’s formal gear, Yaned wears full plate as his uniform. Only the parade colors it currently bears and the green cape wrapped around it signify his ceremonial duties.

The three of them stood around a narrow conference table aboard the Joyous Voyager, one of several luxury starships owned by the Archon of Khidar. Arid and Meyian stood on one side, Yaned the other. Together, they made time through demon space, guarded by eight warships of the Emerald Fleet, with arrival in Miahvar expected within ten hours.

They laid plans.

“It seems to me that Eye Meyian here will be doing all the work,” said Yaned.

“Our duties are no less important,” said Arid. “We are a sun, drawing every eye, and she will move in the shadows we cast.”

“Generally, people don’t look directly at the sun,” said Yaned.

Arid stared at him.

“But I get your point,” said Yaned. “Anyways, Arid, let’s go over the itinerary the Duke’s set for us. What are the best times for Eye Meyian to report back to you?...”

Now.

Before any gifts can be given and well-wishes can be conveyed, the Archon’s chief representative must first be fêted with a welcoming feast.

Hundreds of lesser nobles are in attendance. Dozens of courses are promised. Thousands of servants serving, pouring, cleaning. Acrobats twirl and tumble hypnotically between tables, a riot of gaudy colors and flowing silk scarves. A trio of musicians play lively accompaniment, but their efforts only serve to add another layer of noise to the morass of conversation and clinking utensils.

Arid is a guest here in the palace of Miahvar, and royalty besides. Therefore, he sits at the front of the hall with the Duke’s own family. They are a unit: Vaneb and Rayeh together, their newest son Abrad swaddled at her breast, the son Tarim on their right and daughter Eshiah on their left.

Arid sits in a fifth chair next to the daughter. He feels uncomfortable and out of place, but it’s an old feeling, and easily ignored. Harder to ignore is the way his eyes feel full of needles and his limbs feel full of lead. Down the hall with the rest of the Khidar delegation, Captain Yaned catches his eye and nods knowingly. Jet lag can overcome even the most robust constitutions.

“Are you feeling well, lord? You look tired.” says Eshiah from beside him. Like from what else Arid’s seen of Miahvar, she is elegant in a restrained sort of way: mane neatly braided, gown sharply cut and tastefully ornamented.

“It’s nothing,” Arid answers. He waves away a platter of intricately constructed canapés, sending them down the table. He is entitled to first pick of the food as it arrives, fresh from the kitchens, but right now he has no appetite.

“Long trip?” she asks.

“I’ve had better.”

“I’ve taken a few courses in thoughtbinding, lord. I could help you if you’re fatigued.” She blinks up at him, all earnest hopefulness.

“Stop flirting with the Archon’s Hand, sister,” calls Tarim, from three seats away. Duke Vaneb twitches.

“I’m just trying to help!” she pouts.

“Daughter, please,” says Vaneb, a little desperately. “Forgive her, lord, she’s of an age and somewhat indiscriminate in her attentions --”

After the meal is the dance. Its purpose is twofold: first, to settle the stomach for the next round of courses; second, to demonstrate social status.

Everything Tenet nobility does is wrapped in ritual and ceremony and hierarchy. Married couples take the floor first, in descending order of rank. They dance a slow and intricate ballet. Image is everything. Graceful footwork, measured speed, every single aspect of the dance is observed with predatory focus by the other nobles. By such things do they prove their social predominance, and the right to remain at their rank. Only Duke Vaneb and Duchess Rayeh are exempted: the Duchess is still recovering from childbirth. (She is weak, and wan, but radiant over her calf.)

Unmarried nobles come next, paired up and ordered by rank, as always. Arid is one of them. There is a whole mental algorithm involved in matching noble to noble, rank to rank, and as it turns out, the only eligible woman of remotely similar status is the Lady Eshiah.

“My father doesn’t seem to like you very much,” whispers Eshiah, leaning in.

“He has good reasons,” says Arid. He tries to concentrate. He is a tolerably good dancer -- bladework involves many of the same principles -- but he is quite taller than Eshiah, and he has to be mindful of the difference when moving.

“Like?” she asks.

The corners of his mouth tighten. “Birth,” he suggests. This is an old wound, but it goes bone deep.

“But you’re a noble, now,” she says. “You’re not a slave any more, you’re the Archon’s right hand!”

Arid’s stratospheric ascent is well-known. And well-despised. He can almost hear the whispers. And the looks some of the other nobles are giving him right now... “To some men, I will always be a slave.” And, to be honest, he isn’t too comfortable with his nobility, either. He feels like he’s betraying his blood.

“Well, I’m not a man.” Eshiah smiles.

Arid looks away.

After the dance comes the second meal. Then a rest of several hours, which Arid will spend settling his people into the palace’s eastern wing, and then the gift ceremony at sunset. Sleep will be a long time coming.

He wonders what Meyian is doing.

Elsewhere.

Meyian is sitting on a rooftop with her eyes closed.

She’s in an urban district, a serf neighborhood, all narrow streets and close-packed apartments. She sits in the middle of a chalked white circle, scrawled with incantations and lined with tiny jeweled ears and eyes. She murmurs a mantra under her breath. She casts her senses outward.

After a while, she stands up. She wipes the chalk away, collects the little props she uses to define the ritual, and leaves. Nothing here, either. At least, nothing that she’s specifically looking out for. There’s a certain type of thought -- a certain type of mind --

It is the same technique Tenet uses to fight noopathic threats, things that ride and infect the mind and leave everything else untouched. It is the same technique that Tenet used to fight the Worm in ancient times.

It is not working.

That could mean plenty of things. Some of those things are boring. Some of them are deeply alarming. Meyian is aware of all of them. Meyian does not let any of them affect her emotional state or judgement. She knows better than to draw any hard conclusions at this stage of the investigation.

She’ll keep looking.

Chapter 4
The gifting ceremony takes place in the nave of the Temple of Zahak, whose sphere encompasses such matters. It is a thing harmoniously built, white marble banded with flecks of some glittering, light-catching mineral. The ceiling arches high into the air, hung with lightweight chandeliers of glowing crystals and silver chains. Acolytes line the walls, chanting benedictions from prayer books.

When they finish, a gong rings out.

“In the sight of the Zakir, bring forth the offering!” calls a voice.

From the back of the nave, Arid steps forward. Beside him walks some anonymous magus. An accredited ritualist. Normally there would be a priest shouting instructions, but the Archon, and the Right Hand of the Archon, are commanded by none but the Holy Realm.

The Duchess Rayeh sits in the back of the cella, holding the baby Abran, accompanied by the usual complement of guards and minor nobility. Arid’s own line the other end.

He stops ten paces away from her. Miahvar magi hammer a gong once, twice, thrice, four times. When its echoes die away, Arid walks forward five more paces, then stops. The magus keeping pace with him kneels and thrusts out the silver-chased bowl he holds in his hands.

“Incense for the child Abran, may he live in glory,” says Arid.

“May he live in glory,” echo the other magi.

The magus sets the bowl on the ground and kowtows.

“It is fit,” says Rayeh.

“In the sight of the Zakir, the offering is fit!” calls a voice.

Two of the magi take the offered bowl and carry it back towards Rayeh. The incense symbolizes something or other, Arid knows, but he doesn’t care all that much. He struggles not to yawn. Jet lag still has its claws in his brain. It is his second day in Miahvar, the second day of ceremonies, and the rest of the ritual passes in an indistinct haze.

He finds himself, hours later, on top of the palace battlements. He looks out over the city in the shadow of an enormous parapet gun. Ducal guardsmen salute him as they pass. The day is bright and warm, but the light is subtly different from what he’s used to in a way he can’t put into words. It’s disconcerting.

“What are you looking for?” says a voice.

Arid turns. “Lady Eshiah,” he says, nodding a greeting.

“Me?” she smiles. “I’m flattered, lord Arid.”

“Forgive me, no,” he says. “I am only thinking.”

“About what?” she asks, coming up next to him. “Our beautiful city? I’ve always thought it was beautiful, in its way. Like a painting.”

Arid knows the kind of labor that goes into making Tenet beautiful, but he doesn’t let it show on his face. “Where are your guards?” he asks, instead.

“What guards?” She shrugs. “If I can’t be safe in my father’s palace, then where?”

“You would be safer behind its walls.”

She smiles again. “I would say I am safer next to you than behind any wall.”

She’s probably not wrong, Arid has to admit. He’s broken down his fair share of fortress walls in his time. He says nothing, and looks out over the city. There’s some kind of parade going on down a thoroughfare -- it’s a ragged thing, more of a moving crowd than an actual parade. He can hear drums and horns from here.

“The Cult of Carran is being noisy again,” Eshiah sighs. Arid’s ears perk up.

“Are they often like this?” he asks.

“Sometimes,” she says. “No reason for it. They just decide to come together for a while. Look, that’s their sign.”

She points at the head of the group. One of them is carrying a tall standard pole, surmounted by a warped triangle atop some kind of crescent wreath. Banners flap down its length.

“They seem popular,” says Arid.

“It’s just another fad,” says Eshiah, dismissively. “You know how they catch on. Half the serfs are taken with it, but they’ll lose interest eventually. They always do.”

Arid grunts. He’s not good at this covert business thing. He’s trying to think of something about the Cult to ask her next when Tarim punches her on the shoulder.

“Hey!” Eshiah yelps. She spins and throws a jab at her brother, who’s managed to sneak up behind both of them, but he darts back before it can connect. “What was that for!?”

“Father’s looking for you, sister,” he says. He’s insouciant. “Begging your pardon, lord Arid.”

“Given,” says Arid. Mentally, he’s kicking himself for letting his guard down around Eshiah. He’s supposed to be a bodyguard!

“Come on, sis, father’s orders,” says Tarim, taking Eshiah’s hand and pulling. Huffing, grumbling, she follows. Arid listens to her complaints fade into the distance.

After a minute, Yaned comes up. Outside his ceremonial duties, the captain wears an arming doublet instead of full armor.

“She really has it in for you, huh?” he observes.

Arid shrugs.

“I saw the whole thing,” Yaned continues. “I was gonna ask about… you know, but she got to you first. I can’t decide if she’s being romantic or being manipulative. She’ll go up one whole Order if she marries you, yeah?”

Arid shrugs again. Eshiah is pretty, and sweet, and naive, and uninteresting. Arid is not a romantic soul.

Yaned laughs, and sidles in close to Arid. Just an officer confiding in a superior. “Heard back from Meyian yet?” he whispers.

“No,” mutters Arid. “She takes her own time.”

“Well, you’d be more familiar with that than I am,” says Yaned.

Arid likes Yaned. The man is competent and personable, low-tier nobility-elect, promoted from serfdom by long military service. He hasn’t been inculcated the way born nobility is. He is, in other words, a lot less stuffy than the other officers Arid usually deals with.

“This isn’t my first time working with her, no,” he says.

“I noticed. So the reason you’re blowing off the Duke’s daughter is because you’ve got Meyian, right? I saw the way you two stood together, at briefing.”

Arid likes Yaned. Arid casually rests a hand on Yaned’s shoulder. He is competent and personable, the latter of which sometimes goes a little too far. Arid casually squeezes. Yaned's whole body stiffens. Arid squeezes harder. And harder. And harder. And after a few seconds of bone-grinding, eye-popping, teeth-clenched wheezing, Yaned is released and allowed to stagger a step or two away.

“Sorry,” he gasps. “Sensitive subject.”

Arid grunts. Meyian is as formidable in her own field as Arid is in his. He has every confidence in her return and report. He knows she’ll come back, yes. But he still worries.

Down in the city.

An apartment door opens. A blue-coated building inspector steps into the antechamber and waves at the doorman.

“Foundation inspection,” she says, presenting credentials: a thaumaturgically verifiable identity badge. “Don’t mind me, I’ll just be looking around.”

“Wait, isn’t there supposed to be a notice?” says the doorman. “A week in advance?”

“Did it not go through?” asks the inspector. The doorman shakes his head. “Huh,” says the inspector. “Well, I’ve been scheduled anyways, so…”

The doorman examines her identity badge and waves a wand over it cursorily. The jewel at its hilt flashes gold: confirmed. He mumbles an assent, unlocks the door ahead with a wave, and turns back to his book. Whatever. “Thanks,” says the inspector. She leaves the antechamber into the common area beyond.

It’s a perfectly normal common area. Chairs, couches, tables. Other forgettable furnishings. The inspector makes a slow circuit of the room, sometimes feeling the walls, sometimes tapping her foot on the floor as if looking for a hidden chamber. Just an inspector, making rounds, keeping the building from falling down on everyone. Unobtrusive and forgettable.

The compulsion magic woven into Meyian’s jewelry makes sure of it.

She has enough power to keep her glamours and attention-deflectors working indefinitely. Eyes are sometimes sent on assignments that last years or decades, and their equipment is enchanted to match. The identity badge is a particularly neat bit of work that psychically convinces unprepared viewers into seeing what she wants them to see, and which also employs a zero-day exploit in the enchantment of standard verifier wands to read positive no matter what. Doing this is still a risk -- as exposing yourself always is when noopathic hazards are in play -- but she’s found nothing yet through indirect methods, and she’s reasonably confident in the counterenchantments wrapped around her head, built to fool mental intruders and empathic sensors.

This apartment was used to host a Cult celebration less than a week ago, she’s learned. The evidence checks out. She sees food particles, wine stains washed out, residue from psychotropic drugs, other uncleanliness. She can sense the emotions of the people who were present, sometimes even vague silhouettes of the people themselves. Carousing and revelry. The intensity of the party has stained this room with short-term empathic shadows, visible to anyone capable of reading such things. But she can also sense hints of thaumaturgy.

Serfs, as a rule, can’t use thaumaturgy. They can handle thaumaturgically enchanted objects just fine, but not thaumaturgical rituals. Sometimes acolytes join in mystery cults, but this happens rarely -- they have their own cliques and parties, as do magi. Unlicensed ritual is illegal for a variety of reasons, one of them being that it’s very dangerous to attempt without the proper training.

The thaumaturgic echoes Meyian senses feel… odd. A little bit high-grade professional work, a little bit illegal slapdash amateur stuff. It’s like walking through a garden where half the plants are weedy and overgrown and the other half are carefully groomed, with no other distinctions made between them. All mixed together.

And… Meyian puts her hands on a couch and sniffs the air. And there’s a third half where the plants sprout things like eyeballs, or fingers and teeth, buried deep under the first two halves. Not remotely natural or nice-feeling.

She follows the scent of it. It’s a wavering, insubstantial thing, and she makes several false starts. But there’s a door on the side of the room labeled “BASEMENT - SEE DOORMAN FOR ACCESS” where it seems strongest.

Real building inspectors have keys. Meyian doesn’t. So she just taps the knob a few times with her ring and index fingers, and the door unlocks and swings open obligingly.

Yes, the bad-magic sense is definitely stronger below. What about the doorman, she thinks, and reassures herself that she’s a foundation inspector, she has perfectly valid reasons to visit the basement. She descends the steps.

She reaches the bottom. The basement is being used for storage, as such apartments generally do. There are crates, and shelves, and a pair of glass-walled tanks like terrariums stacked among them, full of what look like finger-sized house centipedes.

She kneels down to get a better look. There must be dozens of them in there. They cover the bottom completely, crawling all over each other and pawing at the glass. And the thaumaturgic sense she’s getting from them is something utterly wrong --

She turns. A sixth sense forewarns her.

Dark shapes emerge from behind the shelves. They are huge, misshapen, clawed and horned, and somehow her occult toolkit failed to detect them until just now. There are three, at least three.

Meyian’s mind goes flat and sharp. She lets her disguise slip away like melting wax, cold fire kindling around her fingertips.

Movement at the top of the stairs. Meyian looks up and sees the doorman. His face is utterly blank. He pushes the basement door shut.

Chapter 5
It is the night of the third day. Arid is in bed.

The bed they’ve given him is not meaningfully different from the ones they give him in the Archon’s palace. The sheets have a different pattern, the posts and headboard are shaped differently, but the whole thing is still as uncomfortably soft as always. It’s like lying on a cloud. As such, Arid harbors irrational concerns that he’ll fall through it and suffocate, which is why, back home, he sleeps on a reassuringly solid futon next to the bed.

Naturally, Arid has been having trouble sleeping. He’s adjusted, mostly, to the jet lag; now he contends with simple insomnia.

He sleeps -- tries to sleep -- face up, in a cotton tunic and breeches, for once out of his court armor, which is arranged carefully on a stand beside the bed. He keeps a sword under his pillow (an old habit) and an emerald necklace under his tunic (a new one).

He is still awake when the door opens. It opens quietly, slowly. Soft footsteps, and the door whispers closed again. Someone is in the room. Someone else is in the room.

Arid is already beyond awake. Every sense except sight in overdrive. Every muscle prepared to spring. There’s a sword under his pillow, and centuries of accumulated strength in his limbs, and Arid has survived enough assassins to know what to do next. Who is it this time? It doesn’t matter. He’ll have time to find out afterwards. Let them get close, and then --

“Lord Arid?” whispers Eshiah.

Arid’s train of thought grinds to a halt. He opens his eyes and sits up.

“Lady Eshiah?” he asks.

She’s there, beside his bed, holding a glasstorch. The little glass sphere at its head glows with dim white light. She looks disheveled and unsettled, like she’s just been woken out of bed.

“There was another person with your delegation, wasn’t there?” she says. “One you didn’t tell anyone about?”

Meyian, Arid thinks. His heart pounds. He throws off his covers and swings himself off the bed. “What… what happened?”

“I just saw her,” Eshiah says. “Just now, when I was sleeping. She told me to give you a message.”

“She…” ''Something is wrong. This wasn’t what we planned. Something is wrong.'' “What did she say?” Eshiah swallows. “She wanted me to, to,” she says, leaning in close as if to whisper. And she kisses him.

Arid’s mind goes blank for a moment, wiped clean by shock. She’s pressing herself against him, and her lips are pressed against his, and something is crawling into his mouth --

Under his tunic, the emerald flares with heat.

Eshiah stumbles backwards and falls. Arid is on his hands and knees, coughing, choking. Wisps of smoke rise out of his mouth -- he gags, and coughs again, hard, and ejects something curled and scorched and smoking. It looks like a burnt feather.

“What,” he coughs, rising. “ -- what --”

He looks at Eshiah, confused and bewildered. Eshiah, who stands back up. Eshiah, whose face is utterly blank. She raises her hands. The air around them blurs and shimmers like heat haze, and Arid feels something bleak and awful curling around his mind --

His necklace heats up again.

Fire suddenly flashes across Eshiah’s hands and forearms. They burn and blacken horribly. She twitches her head, and the flames go out an instant later, but the damage has already been done -- her hands fall uselessly to her sides, carbonized and skeletal.

Arid looks at her, wide-eyed.

“Embrace the Worm and be consumed,” Eshiah says. Her voice is a dead monotone. She hurls herself at him, eyes boring into him with laser focus, and tackles him back onto the bed.

The fall is soft, at least. But Eshiah’s elbow, jammed into his neck, is not. Choking, Arid claws at her, grabs her, summons the full measure of his strength and throws her aside as easily as a pillow. She hits the ground rolling. One of her hands snaps off at the wrist.

“What are you?” snarls Arid.

“Embrace the Worm and be consumed,” Eshiah repeats, standing. She charges at him again, trying to gore him with her horns --

-- but Arid has found his sword.

He swings once. Blood flies. It paints his chest and his blade, and where they spatter the runes worked into the sword flicker with eldritch light. Eshiah hits the ground for a third time, and this time she does not stand back up.

The Worm. The Worm. Arid knows about the Worm. There’s not an aphor in Tenet who hasn’t. The Worm, one of the nine Great Crises that have come closest to driving Tenet to ruin over the ages. The Worm, which violates the deepest precepts of the Vaucarne with its parasitism of mind and body. The Worm is here, in the noble family of Miahvar. The Worm has returned to Tenet.

A small movement catches Arid’s attention. He raises his sword.

Eshiah’s jaws open. Her lips part. Something crawls out, waving antennae inquisitively. It looks a little like a feather. It looks like a house centipede, if house centipedes had bloody, barbed mandibles half again their length.

Arid stomps on it. Meyian, he thinks again. Then he thinks about the rest of the Khidar delegation to this planet. He looks at the door.

Arid, armed and armored, bursts into the hall in a cloud of splinters. As Right Hand of the Archon, he is quartered away from his lesser servants, on the second floor of the east wing of the Ducal Palace. To their rooms he races. His speed is desperate. He kicks down doors, sends panic signals over his armor’s communication devices. To me, he calls. Come to me. We are in danger.

“Wait, wait, wait,” says Yaned, hastily buckling on weapons. He grabs Arid’s sleeve before he can rush off again. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”

“The Worm,” says Arid. “The Worm is here. The Cult of Carran may be its manifestation. The palace is compromised. Eshiah is dead,” he adds. Yaned blinks. It’s clear he’s trying to ask questions, but there are so many that he can’t figure out which one to voice first. “I don’t know when or how long, but the palace is compromised. Spread the word. Gather here.”

“You will stay here,” says Duke Vaneb. Arid turns.

Vaneb rounds the corner. A detachment of Miahvar guardsmen follow him, armed with lightning spears. Forty at least. They take up positions, blocking the hall.

“You’re infected,” says Arid, blunt.

“Well, there’s no point in hiding it after what you did to Eshiah,” he says. “Yes. The Worm is in us. It has been within us for years. And you, knowing what you know, cannot be allowed to leave until it is also within you.”

In uncanny unison, his guardsmen raise their lightning spears.

But Arid is already among them.

Two die on impact, the force of Arid smashing into their bodies at automobile speeds. Two more fall, carved open by a single swing of his vampire sword. The rest tumble aside as Arid calls on his brutal but clumsy Essence muscles and hammers them with a wave of telekinesis that sends cracks radiating through the floor and rips paintings to shreds.

Roaring beams of light finally erupt from their spears. They blast chunks out of the walls and ceiling. The instant between raising their weapons and firing them was all the time Arid had needed.

“To me!” bellows Arid. “Treat everyone as a threat!”

He runs, and his men follow.

Other guardsmen try to bar their path. Arid cuts them down almost instantly. Doors are barred and gates are lowered -- Arid breaks them down. He is the Right Hand of the Archon.

“I’m starting to think we’re superfluous!” shouts Yaned, from far behind him.

One last gate. Arid slams into it, pushes, forces it open with brute strength. Cold night air blows in. Arid and those he could save pour out.

They’ve escaped the palace. No guards rush out to meet them. No bells ring in alarm. Both are disquieting. The Worm has no need of artificial systems to spread word among its components.

“Which way is the Processional Avenue?” asks Arid. He scans the distance. The skiff is still landed there. If they can get to it… if they can signal Meyian...

Yaned says something.

“What?” asks Arid.

He feels the movement behind him. Instinct screams at him to move aside; common sense says he’s overreacting. Caught between the two, he fails to completely dodge the spear as it comes plunging down at him from behind, and its edge draws blood from his upper arm.

He whirls, sword ready. Yaned is staring at him with a blank expression, his bloodied lightning spear drawn back. And the others…

The others are the same. The ones who aren’t -- weren’t -- are on the ground, killed suddenly and simultaneously by their comrades. A single stab through the neck. All those they couldn’t infect in time. They are a minority.

Trust no one, remembers Arid, bitterly.

“Embrace the Worm and be consumed,” says the thing wearing Yaned’s flesh. The others move to surround Arid. The soldiers carrying spears and swords, the magi and courtiers barehanded but dangerous all the same.

“Damn you,” whispers Arid. And he stomps the ground, and roars, and sends a wave of psychic force hurtling towards them.

The magi catch it with their own powers. They disperse as much of it as they can. Wind buffets them. Some of them are knocked over anyways. Arid is already gone.

Legs pump like pistons. Hooves punch holes in the earth. At full speed, Arid is a black blur, almost impossible to track with the naked eye. It’s unsustainable. Arid knows it’s unsustainable, but he has to go as fast as he can as far as he can. All the while, he thinks ''how many? How many?''

The city answers him. It answers him with serfs silently marching out of their homes and apartments. Slaves walking from their barracks. Cowled magi emerging from their colleges. Every strata of Tenet society is coming to meet him. Their numbers are unspeakable. And there are other shapes moving among them, things like beasts out of strange nightmares. Arid sees people hunching over, convulsing, transforming. Flesh flowing and shifting into new and alien configurations. Every one is unique in awfulness. They have too many arms. They have too many eyes and horns, and teeth, and..

The answer the city gives him is all of them.

Arid skids to a halt, panting. He stands in the Plaza of the Sun. He can see the skiff behind the Processional Avenue ahead. He can see the Worm in its millions pouring out of every street, every building, every way, a living sea of bodies between him and there.

They are chanting something. Nonsense syllables. Three words, endlessly repeated, filling the city, filling the sky with babble.

''Rhaa. Zuor. Qarnh.''

''Rhaa. Zuor. Qarnh.''

''Rhaa. Zuor. Qarnh.''

Arid raises his sword.