

### The Compendium of Raath

Book 1: The Chosen

by Michael Mood

Copyright © 2016 Michael Mood

All rights reserved.

Distributed by Smashwords

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Contents

Prologue

1. A Fox in a Trap

2. A Man of Few Words

3. A Woman of Faith and Scars

4. The Orphan Savant

5. The Lonely Ship

6. An Ape in Chains

7. The Tournament

8. Murder

9. The Thief

10. Three Visitors

11. A Mouse in the Cellar

12. The Hunt

13. By Candlelight

14. Devotees and Servitors

15. Protectors

16. A Bird in Flight

17. Life With Allura

18. Potter

19. The Skull and The Sword

20. With Abandon

21. Wren at the Dryad Tree

22. Otom at the Dryad Tree

23. Lofty Goals

24. To Save a Life

25. In Depths and Darkness

26. Alone and Traveling

27. New Legs

28. Of Songs and Legends

29. The Black and White Rescue

30. Reinforcements

31. It Begins and Ends

32. Of Love and Power

33. Memories

34. Living Weapons

35. Brothers

36. Written in the Tome

Acknowledgments

Prologue

-1-

400 Years Ago

"Something's wrong!" Kollista was shouting. "We've made a terrible mistake! Raath forgive us! God forgive us!"

Dharm looked up to see the sky darkening. The clouds were parted as if shoved aside by huge hands and the sun was blotted out by _something_. The something was gigantic. Dharm could only see the shape of it. He couldn't tell what it was made of or what color it was, but he knew it was huge: many-armed, many-legged, swirling appendages stretched out, poised to strike as it roared towards the earth.

"What have we done?" Dharm whispered to himself as he stared heavenward.

It was his Familiar that finally broke him from his trance. The little lemur dug his claws into Dharm's shoulder and the man winced. He took a quick breath, his fear finally outweighing his shock.

The other four mages were already in motion.

Kollista was walking slowly backwards, a look of disbelief on her young face.

Thaan was sprinting towards where the creature would land, his sword drawn. The weapon was almost twice as tall as he was, but the man held it with ease.

Mareth, likewise a fighter, had her fists wrapped in Fire. She ran with Thaan, agile legs keeping up easily with the swordsman.

Prenson was standing still, surveying the situation, a thoughtful look on his face. He wasn't scared; he wasn't even worried.

"Prenson!" Dharm yelled to the calm man. "We've gotta get outta here!" He turned to his Familiar. "What _is_ that thing?" he asked the lemur.

"I don't know, master," the lemur replied. "But it is certainly not God."

A shockwave expanded outward as the thing from the sky hit the ground with a deafening boom. The wet and muddy earth of the southlands rolled outward in a wave. Dharm watched Thaan crest the wave, running forward with confidence over the uncertain, roiling ground. _He must be using his magic to keep him upright._ Dharm was still amazed at the powers that a mage like Thaan possessed. The man was strong, impenetrable, resolute, brave.

Then Dharm watched Thaan die.

The swordsman's body exploded, one of the sky-creature's giant limbs smacking down on top of him. Blood flew ten feet in either direction. One instant Thaan had been charging forward, huge sword held defiantly, the next he was obliterated. Erased.

The creature was massive. Bigger than anything Dharm had ever seen. Or had even imagined. It towered over the trees, making them look like saplings. The cloud of debris was still obscuring the details of the creature. Dharm thought maybe that was for the best.

The creature turned its attention to Mareth. The Monk girl was able to dodge a few strikes before she also ceased to be, obliterated and mashed down into the mud, her Fire snuffed out.

Dharm gagged. The lemur tightened his grip on Dharm's shoulder.

"We need to be away," the lemur said in a panic. But Dharm couldn't move. His body refused to respond to his mind. His legs were water. It had only been a few seconds since the mages had completed the ritual, and everything they had worked for years to create was coming unraveled in mere moments.

Prenson was yelling at the sky-creature now. He pointed at it and gestured, no doubt trying to use his magic to control it. It gave Dharm hope for the briefest of moments. _If anyone can get us out of this mess, it's Prenson._

But he never got a chance to see what happened.

The initial shockwave finally hit Dharm and he lost his footing. Suddenly he was underneath the rolling wave of water and earth, wetness enveloping him, filling his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. He scrambled to right himself, the elements battering against his body. He couldn't break the surface. Spots swam in front of his eyes as he groped in the darkness. He felt a hand and he gripped it for dear life.

Kollista pulled him out.

Dharm spat mud from his mouth and wiped the muck away from his eyes. He desperately wanted to see that Prenson had survived.

He didn't get his wish.

"Damn it all!" Dharm cursed.

The creature turned its face to Dharm then. He saw a thousand eyes, myriad limbs. The thing undulated, humming horrifically.

"You need to ride away from here," Kollista begged him. "You're the swiftest. Go to the citizens of Coraline! Tell them to run! Tell them what we did here! Tell them... how we have failed. I'm going to hold it off."

"Don't be ridiculous," Dharm said. "You'll be killed!"

"There's no time!" Kollista pushed him away with surprising force. He stumbled backwards and tripped, sprawling on his back in the mud.

Kollista's feet were pounding against the sloppy ground towards the creature. She was screaming.

When Dharm found his footing again he Called around him. He found Prince, his horse, nearby. He felt waves of fear coming from the animal.

Dharm Commanded the horse to run to him and the animal came. As Dharm mounted, he fought the urge to gallop after Kollista. He saw the girl covered in mud, her skinny legs bringing her ever closer to the writhing creature.

If I try to help her I'll die and her sacrifice will have been in vain.

Dharm gritted his teeth.

"Goodbye, my friends," he said. "And God forgive us all."

Then he wheeled Prince in the opposite direction and Commanded the horse to run.

The animal had no problem complying.

# Chapter 1

### A Fox in a Trap

-1-

Present Day

The sun was starting to set and Wren Hartfield shivered in the cool spring air. She could smell - almost feel - the storm that was coming from the west, but she had decided she would walk the world for as long as she could before it came.

This forest was a far cry from the corn fields she was used to. The shadowy ground played tricks with her vision, at the same time exciting and terrifying her.

When the storm came she would have to race it back to her house. Her guts twisted when she thought of going back home, but she couldn't live outside on her own forever. _Girls can't survive on their own at fifteen, can they?_ Wren wasn't sure. But she'd been told that the world was full of ghastly dangers and despite how much she hated her house she was almost more terrified of being devoured alive by Foglins, flesh ripped from her limbs slowly and painfully, her death drawn out over many days or months.

Or so she had heard that was what the Foglins would do.

Maybe the ugly creatures didn't exist at all. Wren had never seen one, but her father was convinced they were real. She wasn't sure her father had ever seen one either, but his belief stemmed from Wren's mother's beliefs, and Wren's mother \- even though she was dead thirteen years now and Wren did not remember her - still had an impact on her life.

Wren had worn her work boots today. They were tough-leather and came up to her knees. Her legs were too skinny for them so they had an odd clunky look, but it was either that or her moccasins, and she hadn't known what the terrain was going to be like. She'd had to sneak the boots from the back of the house, being careful not to bang them against any walls as she exited.

Her heart beat faster this far out in the forest. She knew she was scared and exhilarated, but the feelings were muted somehow. The rest of her life tended to dampen things. This momentary vacation was the only disobedience she had ever allowed herself. She would deal with the punishment later if she was caught. _But... how much worse could it really be?_ She decided that that was something she would consider more deeply later.

For now she would walk. For now she would be free. Or at least pretend to be free.

She heard the call of an animal over the breeze and swiveled her head to find the source. Her heart jumped when she saw something squirming in the shadows not fifty feet from where she stood. Images of Foglins from stories flashed in her head, but this animal was not a Foglin. It was a fox. She had only ever seen a handful of living foxes in her life, and never one up this close. As she approached it she found it odd that the animal let her get so near.

Then she realized that its leg was caught in the brutal metal teeth of a trap. Her father had one old rusty trap hanging on a nail in the shed, but the device this fox found itself in was polished, without a spot of rust. A new, gleaming trap. The blood on it was bright red, standing out against the golden metal. It was a beautiful combination.

Wren knew instinctively what she had to do.

"Just hold still," she told the fox, which was now close enough to pet if she had wanted to. "I need to find a stick."

She kicked aside piles of leaves and had to reject several branches before she was able to find a long, sturdy stick with a pointy end.

She went back to the fox and set her work boot down hard on its neck.

"It won't hurt for long," she said.

She brought the stick up high and then drove it down through the fox's eye with a powerful stab.

The fox shuddered twice and was dead.

-2-

The storm did come. Wren had intended to race it back, but some of the fox's blood had spattered up onto her shirt, and the red stood out harshly against the beige. It bothered her. She didn't want her crimes to be known. So she walked in the rain with the intent to have the water from the sky clean the blood from her shirt.

She carried the bloody stick with her. _My trophy_. This vacation had been good. She felt relieved. She knew the feeling wouldn't last long, but every minute of that elation was worth it. Killing animals worked better than cutting herself. That had left terrible scarring on her right arm. _Very obvious. Very noticeable. Can't do that again._ _Mustn't let anyone know: not the farmhands, not travelers, not my father, not anyone._

She looked down and saw how her clothes were wet and plastered to her body by the rain. The sight of her breasts pained her. She didn't appreciate that they looked like they did. Her father had taken to touching them long ago.

She brandished her stick at the sky to take her mind off her body. It was a gesture of defiance; possibly at the universe, possibly at nothing. It didn't matter. It felt good.

Wren was beginning to get cold and cursed herself for not grabbing her spun cloak, but it had been hanging too near the table that her father had passed out on and Wren hadn't wanted to take the chance of grabbing it and waking him. She cursed herself for not planning this better.

The rain came down harder. Lightning flashed behind her.

She looked down. _Is the blood coming out or is it just smearing around?_ Her shirt was a stained mess. _What am I going to do?_ There were plenty of animals on the farm that bled, maybe she could make up some sort of story. But her father always seemed to know. Even when he was drunk, breath reeking, he could look in her eyes and just _know_. She was already going to have an impossible time trying to hide this whole trip, she didn't really need extra lies piled on top.

Thunder rumbled and the sky grew darker, the rain turning from downpour to torrent. _I have to get back, blood or no blood._ She ran as fast as her feet could take her, boots sloshing at every step. She was panic brought to life. Suddenly, gripped by the emotion of the storm, she felt her old feelings rush back.

The adventure was over.

The stick dropped from her hand, a forgotten symbol of her temporary relief. Her wet hair slapped her in the face and she realized how she must look as if she had just gotten out of the bath. Her father loved to leer at her the most then, and no matter how she tried to cover herself he always found a way to see.

Tears streaked down her face, mixing with the rain. She considered just laying down in the mud and giving up. Just laying down and dying. But her father would be so hurt. He had already lost her mother, as he reminded her time and again.

_What would it do to him to lose me too? I have to get home. Maybe I can beg for forgiveness. He might respond to that. He'll be there waiting for me. How long have I been gone? Oh God, he's there waiting for me._ She would open the door and he would be drumming his fingers on the table, his eyes dark. There was no escaping.

I'm an idiot!

Panicked, jumbled thoughts crashed into her as she started to stumble through one of her farm's large corn fields. It was still muddy, not having been planted yet, and she had a hard time getting traction, her heavy boots sucking down into the mud. Lightning illuminated her voyage a split-second at a time. Her farmhouse sat in the distance, a hulking thing that the shifting lightning strikes brought to life. She could see the barn and shed, rainwater splashing off their rusty roofs.

She reached the back of her house a few moments later, but was hesitant to step onto the porch. _I have to hide. Begging for forgiveness won't work. I can't go in like this. He'll look at me. He'll see me._ Her clothing clung to her. She looked down in horror. She choked back a sob.

Wren ran to the barn. There was a pile of blankets for the horses that would be dry, and with luck she could find a place to stash her shirt, pants, and boots until she could retrieve them later.

When she entered the barn through the big door some of the horses whinnied, their storm-scared eyes following her.

"What are you looking at?" she shouted at them, ashamed of herself, trying to cover her chest, to conceal herself even from the horses. She used one blanket to vigorously rub her hair dry and then - in one of her braver moments - stripped off her bloody, soaked clothes and wrapped them in it. She stuffed the whole wet mess deep into a pile of straw, getting a few small cuts on her hands in the frenzied process. She reached hastily for another blanket to wrap herself in.

This blanket - with its pattern of red and gold checks - would have to be her armor as she went back into the house. She wrapped it up and around herself with shaking hands. It came down to her ankles and covered everything. It served as a dress and didn't cling to her body as her wet clothes had. She was still shuddering as she headed back into the storm.

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing!

Wren sprinted to the back porch during a brief break in the rain and then, summoning every ounce of courage she had, reached slowly for the doorknob and grasped it. She stood still, trying to calm her panting, shuddering, and sobbing.

He'll be asleep.

No. He's waiting.

She couldn't face him. She could. She had to. She wouldn't.

She would.

Just before she started to turn the knob it turned in her hand from the inside and suddenly she felt warmth running down between her legs.

-3-

Her father opened the door and stared at her for a brief second.

Wren stood frozen in place, her muscles turned to wood. She had the urge to flee, but could not.

Then her father got a strangely concerned look on his face.

Wren's heart lurched.

"Where ya been?" he asked softly. "Ya been out?"

"I was out in the woods," Wren gasped through her sobs. "Please. Please." She didn't know what she was begging for, but he must have understood.

"In this storm? Ya need ta come in and keep warm. You'll catch your death." His strong arms scooped her up and carried her inside the house. He brought her to her room and laid her down on her bed, then went to the next room. Wren heard a few clanking noises and realized he was fetching the lantern.

"You been out?" he asked again, coming back into the room. He seemed confused. His face was now lit in the orange glow of the lantern. "I don't like you going out into the world like that. Somethin' coulda happened to ya. Ya coulda been _killed_."

"I know," Wren said. She knew now that she could have stepped in a hunter's trap, been eaten by Foglins or wolves, or maybe even fallen down, broken her leg and died of starvation.

Feelings of grief and guilt collided. Perhaps her father had had a vision while he was sleeping. A vision from God telling him that what he was doing was wrong. The looking, the touching. Wren didn't know much of religion, but she knew enough to believe that sometimes, maybe if you were lucky, God would save you.

God could help you if you were broken.

"I wasn't supposed to be out and I won't do it again," Wren said through chattering teeth. "I went to check on the horses and got curious about the forest." It was only a partial lie. She _had_ initially been going out to see if she could muster the courage to harm one of the horses. She hadn't been able to do so and had gone farther afield, looking for a smaller target.

"Ya look like yer mother," her father said, hanging the lantern on a hook on the wall. His eyes were sad as he came to her bedside, gripping at the ends of the horse blanket.

It was now she truly saw the look in his eyes and smelled the alcohol on him.

"Please don't," she said, her throat tightening. She had been a fool to think it would end. That was why she hated herself the most.

Her weakness couldn't hold him back. He picked at the places that held her armor together, and the blanket came undone.

He'll touch and leave.

Wren's flesh stood cold with goosebumps. She stared at the ceiling, fixating on a point - on anything but what was going on in this room. Her first reaction was confusion as her father lowered himself onto her. She felt him part her legs and then felt something much more horrible.

Everything went blank.

# Chapter 2

### A Man of Few Words

-1-

Crack!

The whip fell hard against Otom Aldenburg's back. He willed himself to not cry out. He took his punishment silently as the lashes echoed in the stone room. The walls of this place were covered in beautiful murals, painted by some of the most talented artists Otom had ever known. All of Raath might have known them if the world had cared to look this far up in the bitter, frozen north.

Crack!

His bare skin was cold. It was always cold in the north. The biting winds flung snow and ice through the air almost every day of the year. Otom always told himself that if a Southerner moved up here he would die within a few days, unable to handle the bitterness of the climate. This island in particular was frigid. The wind whipped west, driven by some maniacal force that was hellbent on flattening everything in its path.

Crack!

Otom drew upon a tiny string of power within and Calmed himself. It wasn't something he liked to do too often. Punishment should be taken without the need to use magic on yourself, but Otom was feeling vulnerable today. Normally the whip didn't bother him this much. Normally he could withstand it, but today was different. Today was the anniversary of his failure.

Crack!

That was the last stroke he could handle right now. He stood up and placed the whip in the drawer of a simple wooden table. That table and the small bed next to it were some of his only possessions. He had built them himself from the wood of the tall pines that grew near the Monastery.

He tucked his wool pants back into the tops of his fur-lined boots, then grabbed a brown robe from a peg on the wall and secured it around himself with a rope belt. Otom turned and kindled his Fire, letting the magic flow from his hands to the hearth. Life could be arduous for a Monk, but Otom would never complain about being able to create his own Fire. It burned in the hearth, the flames a physical manifestation of the power within him.

He had sacrificed his world and gained that power.

-2-

Otom sat on the edge of his bed with his eyes closed, recovering from his flagellation, which he had not technically completed for the day. He would have to come back to it later. For now, however, he needed a moment to reflect and then he had an appointment to make.

His room was one of the biggest in the Kilgane Monastery, with decorated walls, eight foot ceilings, and an ornate fireplace. At least, ornate for Otom's current standards. Candles burned with normal fire. Otom mostly put his own Fire in the fireplace. It was difficult to control tiny amounts of it. A healthy blaze was easier to produce. The powers of a Monk were stable and reliable. As long as he was Sacrificing - which he always was - he would have magic to draw on.

There was only one other Monk in Kilgane Monastery that had even a glimmer of the magic that Otom possessed. The man had trained him when his powers had bloomed. It wasn't a sure thing, getting that power from God. Many good men led lives of Sacrifice never to have magic bestowed upon them.

Otom was a rarity.

Kilgane Monastery had few allures about it: it was constantly freezing outside, the days and nights were of odd lengths, and the food was tasteless. Otom knew for certain that there were worse things than isolation and penitence. He hadn't left the island in thirteen years, and he wasn't planning on going anywhere anytime soon.

Here he had camaraderie, escape, purpose.

There was a small fishing village on the southern shore of the island and the people there mostly regarded the Monks of the Kilgane Monastery as a mystery, not really frightened of them, but not really wanting conversation either. Of course, Otom couldn't have given them that anyway. To talk would be to break one of his Vows, and to break a Vow was to give up a piece of your Sacrifice. He sometimes wondered what his voice would sound like. He remembered that it was deep and steady, but the last time he had talked was at the age of seventeen. He supposed his voice would sound different now if it even still worked.

He talked mostly in hand signs for unavoidable essentials. On every First Day he would make the trek down to the village to trade for fish and cloth and other things the Monks might need. Sometimes he would trade wood, beads, or furs, but oftentimes he would simply trade Fire or Calm.

Monkish Fire didn't consume wood, and could last a good long time, depending on how much magic was poured into it. There wasn't a person in the village who could turn down such an offer, even if they regarded the Monks with wary eyes.

Calm was more subtle magic, but just as desirable. If someone had nearly died from falling through the ice, Otom could Calm them and wash away their fears, saving them years of fear and doubt. If a fight was about to break out, Otom could stop it most of the time. These were the kinds of services that only a Monk like Otom could provide.

Otom walked over to the door and pulled it open, the heavy metal knocker on the other side clacking once. The dormitory hallway wasn't much colder than his room. The Monks kept the entire Monastery lit most of the time, Otom's magical Fires joining in with their normal ones.

Otom walked quickly down the hall so he could arrive on time for another scheduled Vow. The Vow of Bondage. He was actually going to be a bit late even if he ran. Everyone would probably be already waiting for him there. It was fine. Forgiveness was easy to receive here.

He had to pass through the cloister in order to get to the chapel and as he stepped outside the wind whipped at him, threatening to blow his hood off. He reached up and tugged it back down so that it covered his forehead down to the top of his eyes. His bushy brown beard took care of warming the lower half of his face.

It was snowing. The fat flakes drifted down out of a gray sky.

_Thirteen years since my failure,_ he thought.

The cloister was silent as he padded through the snow, his fur boots would have been excellent for hunting and tracking, but today they were ceremonial. The chapel door had much the same design as his room's own door and fires burned around it, making a glorious arch that kept away the snow and warmed the wind. Otom swung it open and went inside, closing it heavily behind him.

It was quiet, but that was to be expected.

But not this quiet...

-3-

Something fell on him from above and Otom dropped to his knees on the hard stone floor, cursing silently at the pain. He could feel some sort of claws pressing through his hood and thought at once of the Coraline Beast from The Book. But this creature wasn't the Coraline Beast, for the Coraline Beast was much larger. Whatever it was, it let out an otherworldly screech as Otom reached up and grabbed hold of a thin leg, tossing the creature away. It smashed against the stone wall.

Otom threw his hood back now, balancing the advantage of its claw-stopping thickness against the way it blocked his visibility. He decided it would be better to be able to see.

He glanced around the room to find a macabre scene. At least thirty Monks - almost the entire population of the Monastery - were laying scattered about, bodies looking badly beaten within their brown robes. Blood pooled around some of them, limbs sticking out at odd angles, faces crushed and slashed.

Otom stripped the robe from his shoulders, not knowing if he could still move the way he had been able to thirteen years ago. But he felt the need now, staring down the monster he had thrown from his shoulders. The top half of his robe now hung on his waist by the thick rope belt, dangling down to look more like a martial arts Skada: loose, unrestricting.

Otom hadn't always been a Monk.

His body still rippled with muscles he had built before his time at the Monastery. He had maintained his form, often losing sleep and exercising late into the night to do so. Old habits died hard and Otom was stubborn. But he hadn't fought, really fought, in ages.

Otom's attacker looked more bird-like than anything else, but it had no wings. It was about five feet tall and had some kind of a beak-like protrusion, but it had teeth where a bird would not. Its beak and claws were wet with red blood and its tongue, a disgusting purple thing, lolled out of the side of its mouth like a dog who had finished running too hard. The creature skidded, claws scrabbling awkwardly on the stone floor, giving Otom more time.

Otom gathered Fire and although he couldn't attach it directly to the creature (it was impossible to attach Fire to another living thing, even an abomination like this), he let it sit hidden in his fists, burning there. A Monk could not be physically burned by their own Fire, but it still felt horrible, like gripping hot coals.

Otom reached out with yet another branch of his power. A wave of his Detection radiated outward. He could feel the presence of other beings this way. He couldn't feel this creature, though. It wasn't registering the same way human's did. _What trickery is this?_ He did feel one other living thing behind him. Likely another Monk, wounded and clinging to life.

The creature reached Otom, and it struck out with a thin limb that looked disproportionately long for its body. It whizzed through the air, but Otom raised a forearm to block its path. Another strike came, this time a kick, and Otom caught the bird's ankle with his own, using the creature's momentum to pull it off balance. Then he opened his hand, revealed his Fire, and slammed his palm into the creature's stomach. He heard a satisfying crunch and sizzle followed by a surprised shriek as the thing reeled backwards.

Otom leaped forward, powerful legs closing the distance quickly. This time the creature stabbed forward with its beak, all the while gasping for breath. Otom saw the attack coming and, while turning just enough to avoid it, delivered a quick chop to the thing's neck. The creature reeled backwards again.

Otom didn't feel fear, only exhilaration. It felt good to be who he had been all those years ago, if only briefly. Friends of his lay dead on the ground here, but Otom felt alive. Had this been in God's plan? No, probably not. God wouldn't send a creature like this. Was it some sort of Foglin? Otom remembered whispers about Foglins, but he had never been sure he had actually seen one.

The creature was slowing and Otom didn't have a hard time knocking it to the ground. He delivered a powerful blow to its head with both palms, cracking its skull and putting it down for good. He thought he heard it mutter a word near the end, but found it difficult to believe that the thing had been capable of human speech.

He kept his Detection up but let his Fire fade. He only felt that one presence, so he headed towards it to see if it was someone he could save.

-4-

The Monk he found was propped up against one of the prayer benches. A deep wound on his neck was turning his brown robe crimson. Otom began to tear a piece of his own robe off to try and form some sort of bandage. He knew he at least had to stop the bleeding somehow. The fabric ripped loudly in the quiet space. He'd seen fighters with wounds like this. They usually didn't live.

"No need to bandage me," the injured Monk's voice grated in a whisper.

He's talking!

Otom started to open his mouth but the injured Monk held up his hand. "Don't speak," he said. "Don't break your Vow as I am. I have been quiet for so long I just... I just wanted to speak before I died." He coughed. "I have lived with you for ten years and I... I don't even know your name. Names," he scoffed. "They are of no consequence, but mine was Umden. Umden." Tears ran down his face. "Is it all _worth_ it, Monk?" he asked. "God has betrayed us here. He has forgotten us. After all we have tried to do."

Otom shook his head and tried to communicate what he was feeling. He could not. Without words he was powerless in this situation. He had listened to God and communed with Him here. God was working to absolve him of his sins and now... now Otom wasn't sure what to think. _Am I being tested?_ The Book spoke of trials. Things sent to test just _one_ person. Otom could be that person.

Or I could just be a normal man caught in horrifying circumstances.

"The pattern," the wounded Monk said, gesturing. "I can see it from here."

Otom looked around the chapel. The creature had killed so many men, but each one had died in a specific spot. Otom stood up to take a better look. He squinted his eyes. He was in the middle of twenty-nine corpses that littered the ground around him. If he connected them in his mind with lines...

A fish.

It was a strong symbol, and one the Monks held dear. Salmon, specifically. Otom hadn't understood it until he had read about it in texts, but salmon were a powerful symbol in the Kilgane Monastery. Many salmon would sacrifice their lives attempting to swim upstream to continue their life-cycle, dying by the thousands to hungry bears and fishermen.

Otom's mind raced to try and comprehend what this meant. How had that creature known to slay these people in such a pattern and how exactly had it accomplished such a thing? There was a more powerful force at work here, and the doubt in God that Otom had felt only moments ago was washed away.

_I'm a Chosen,_ Otom thought. The fact hit him harder than it should have.

"Your arm," the dying Monk said, his eyes widening as more blood pumped down his neck. He pointed at Otom's bare arm.

Otom looked down to see orange and brown glows just below the skin of his right forearm. The colors slowly crawled to the surface. The glows formed the outline of a fish: a salmon. It was about two fingers long and was bright enough now that it hurt to look directly at it.

"A Chosen in our own Monastery. You must travel to the Temple of Sin'ra!" The injured monk was yelling now, voice free from its shackles. "They say that the truly devout scribe the word of God there. Something about that place... there are texts that say it's a hub... a nexus of power... You must go there if you are Chosen! You mustn't let anyone know! It's dangerous to let people know! I have read that part of The Book over and over and over through the years! It is clear! I knew when you came here, when the Chaplain discovered your powers, trained you... you-" He was unable to finish as he died.

Otom stood in a room of thirty dead Monks and one dead creature. How the monster had gotten there, what exactly it was, and what it wanted were questions he would have to get the answers to another day. Right now he had to travel south for the first time in a long time. He had been Chosen by God. There was no denying that.

The glowing symbol on his arm now marked him as surely as the scars on his back did. He belonged to God.

Maybe I always have.

-5-

His Detection was still silent, but Otom was wary. His old fighter instincts came rushing back to him. _There are more beasts here somewhere. I know it._

A moment later he thought he heard them scrabbling on the stones just outside. His stomach turned. He slowly backed away from the dead Monk. _Umden. His name was Umden._

Otom turned towards the door, once again summoning Fire into his palms. If he was going to take this journey to the Temple of Sin'ra there were only a few things he would need, but he would have to get back to his room to get them. _Please let me be wrong_. _Please let those noises be the wind, the ice._ He expanded his Detection radius, pushing it to its limits, feeling himself sweat with power. It encompassed the whole Monastery, draining his magical reserves at a frightening rate. There was not one Monk left alive save himself.

The scrabbling outside was getting louder.

Otom burst through the door without bothering to pull up his robe. Cold air blasted him, making his hair stand on end. Five more creatures waited for him out there, and they were horrific. They all had shapes that vaguely resembled animals, but every single one was grotesquely formed. One creature pointed at him and squawked something. Apparently it meant 'attack' if it meant anything at all, for the others rushed towards Otom, snow flying from the ground in their wake.

Otom dropped his Detection and washed himself with Calm, trying to settle his nerves. A stone walkway ran around the perimeter of the cloister, with the courtyard in the middle. The door to the dormitory was on the opposite side. Otom had two choices: go around the perimeter or go right through the center of the creature mob.

So he turned to his left and threw his Fire down to the right, creating flames that stuck to the stone and burned. He increased their intensity quickly until the Fires were licking the roof above him, then he began to run, making sure Fire streamed from his fist to the floor. The result was a blazing wall on his flank. Sweat poured off of him as he ran.

He could hear the creatures through the roar of the Fire, claws scratching and throats screeching. They rushed to cut him off, trying to gain a more advantageous angle of attack. Otom was simply faster. They scrambled to get to him, passing willingly through the Fire. Two of the hairier creatures were charred instantly and died screaming, but the other three, covered in carapace instead of fur, found their way through and gave chase. Otom started to set Fire down behind him, but the awkward motion slowed him down and the monsters were gaining.

The dormitory door was in sight and Otom surged towards it, palms and legs burning. He wrenched the door open and hurled himself inside, leaving the inferno he had created behind him. He raced into his room and flung open his wooden cabinet, hands digging shakily at the bottom panel. It was a secret compartment he had built himself. It contained only one thing.

The branch of the Dryad Tree was still exactly where he had left it. It was about as long as his arm but it was light, the wood incredibly strong. It still had red leaves clinging to it, even after all these years. He felt a faint power from it as he picked it up and it almost seemed to respond to the glowing fish on his forearm. Magic would react with magic, he knew.

The branch was his deepest sorrows incarnate, and when he held it he felt sadness wash over him. For a moment the emotion eclipsed everything: panic, fear, excitement.

He pulled up his robe, grabbed his whip and his pack off the wall, and pounded his way out of the Monastery. Hopefully the creatures had all died in the cloister inferno.

Otom wouldn't even be able to warn the folk of Kilgane Town, for The Book was strict on the behaviors of a Chosen. He had to stay safe, stay anonymous until he reached Sin'ra. From there he would find out what to do next.

He looked down at his glowing forearm and covered it with his robe.

Maybe he was blessed.

But he sure didn't feel like it.

-6-

Otom knew that as he traveled to the Temple of Sin'ra he would relive his past no matter how hard he tried to keep it out. Thirteen years. He didn't forget. He had only buried the thoughts. He would have to pass through Kilgaan. That place would dredge up memories from him like bodies from a lake.

He would also have to travel past Pakken, the place where he had grown up. He would have to be reminded of his parents.

And he had no doubt that thoughts of _her_ would come rushing back to his head.

He had been fooling himself for a long time, tricking himself into thinking that he could run from the past.

No.

He could never forget _her_. Could never forget Allura Finny no matter how hard he tried.

And he could never forget how thoroughly he had failed her.

# Chapter 3

### A Woman of Faith and Scars

-1-

Cleric Domma walked down the dimly lit hallway, her slippered feet making no noise. She had been to this hospital many times in the past, and she was always sad to see that not much ever changed. It was cold and shabbily build, the structure cracking and falling apart. The city of Haroma could certainly afford better than this, but the money always seemed to go to other places. _There are always more exciting ways for the rich to spend their gains._ She chastised herself for thinking that way, but couldn't help it when she saw this place.

Domma pulled her hood lower so that it fell halfway over her eyes, leaving just the lower half of her face visible. She had found that the art of the reveal was the most important part of helping unwilling patients.

Her robe was blue with golden borders and was the standard garb of a Sunburst Cleric. Underneath it she wore a simple shift and, under that, bandages that wrapped her from stomach to neck. Without her robe on she would have looked somewhat like a hospital patient herself. The bandages weren't because she was injured, though; they were part of the trappings of her Order.

"But I don't want to see her!" someone shouted from a side room.

"Cleric Domma is different," another voice asserted. "She-"

"I don't care if she dances naked for me!" the other person screamed. "I don't want a woman of God in this room with me! Prayer won't help me! Nothing can help me!"

Domma winced. _So it's another case like this._ Through all of her work with the mentally ill she had come across almost every scenario one could think of. She had been threatened numerous times, screamed at, cried to, attacked, sexually assaulted, and even proposed to.

She peeked her head into the room. She'd never been in this particular one. It was dark, but a few torches allowed her to see a rickety bed that was fitted with chains, the thinnest and most tattered of sheets stretched across it. The walls were padded with some kind of straw or grass, probably to keep the room's occupant from harming himself, but also possibly because this hospital had been converted from a barn. The sweet smell was rather pleasant.

The patient sat on the edge of the bed, not chained up at the moment, although Domma had dealt with patients who'd had to be restrained for her safety. A Warden in a brown robe stood in front of the patient, blocking his view of the door. The patient had not seen Domma enter. That usually worked to her advantage.

Now that she could see a part of the patient she was able to Delve him, spending the tiniest bit of her power to give her a slight advantage. The tiny snippets she could learn from his mind might give her the edge she needed to build rapport with him. Delving was random. Images and phrases would stream into her mind, most of them nonsensical, impossible to comprehend or grasp onto. But sometimes, if she used her gleanings cleverly, it could be enough.

Gzzt.

The sound, like a static shock, let Domma know that her Delving had begun. The thoughts flowed into her brain. Small, small things. Pieces of the patient's mind. Random. Unsorted. Mostly irrelevant.

She stepped fully into the room.

"Oh, shit!" the patient yelled, clearly startled.

"Please, Stipson," the Warden said. "Cleric Domma is a woman of God and does not need to hear such words."

Now that Domma was inside she recognized the Warden. His name was Potter and she'd worked with him a few times over the years. He was a man in his mid thirties, making him just a bit younger than her. He had a handsome face and dark brown eyes, still kind and understanding even after the abuse he took from his patients on a daily basis.

"It is quite alright, Potter," Domma said, her voice silky. She tilted her head to the side, giving Stipson a quizzical look from inside her hood. "Stipson," she said. _Gzzt._ "A dockworker were you?"

Stipson looked at her dumbfounded. The thin bed covers that he had been clutching in defense fell from his hands. "How did you know? I haven't told the Warden... I..."

Domma took a step forward. "That is a proud lineage; the name Stipson. I know most of the family lines of the docks. Haroma would be crippled without our sea trade."

"Yeah, I used to work for my da' on the docks."

Gzzt.

"A ship called Seastorm Blessing?" Domma took another step forward. "She ran cargo up and down the coast and even, very very rarely, to the island nation of Trirene. Have you ever been there? To Trirene? I hear there are very few that have."

"Look, I don't know what you're doing," Stipson shouted, "but I don't want you to come any closer!" He scuttled back on the bed.

"Stipson, please," said Potter, ever the polite one. "If Cleric Domma is bothering you-"

"I am not bothering him," Domma said firmly, giving Potter a look that she hoped would tell him to stay out of this one. "I know so much about you Stipson because God has told me." _Gzzt._ "You love cats. Admirable, for they are important creatures."

"Warden could have told you all that! Wait. No... You're a spy! A witch of some sort!" She hadn't lost him, not yet. He was just taking a moment to drop his guard.

"Come now," said Domma. "Witches are a fantasy. I assure you my powers are very real, granted from God himself so that I might do work on this earth. If you could relax a bit, and with the Warden's permission, I think we should pray together."

Stipson frowned. "I don't know," he said, but he seemed to waver. Domma said nothing more. She stood silently in the center of the small room.

"It's what she does, Stipson," said Potter. "If you try it and you do not like it, you don't have to continue with it. I simply asked her to come because I thought... you could benefit from her guidance."

"I never needed no God before," Stipson grumbled.

Domma took one more step and then she saw it. On the side of Stipson's head there was a gross indentation. The hair around it was just starting to grow back; some of it probably never would. The poor man was suffering from some kind of massive head injury. It wasn't a wonder he had ended up here.

There weren't many that did what Domma did. If Domma and her sisters hadn't fought for these hospitals to be put up, people like Stipson would most likely have led painful lives, possibly never fully recovering from their ailments. Stipson only looked to be about nineteen. He had many years ahead of him and being in this condition was no way to spend them.

"That's a nasty wound," Domma said. "Did Potter here patch you up?"

"He did. I been here a few months, I guess. Time's funny. Slips in and out."

"In and out like the tides."

"Yeah," Stipson agreed. "Like the tides."

"Warden," Domma said, turning to Potter, "you may leave us and attend to anyone else you see fit. You do have other patients, do you not?"

"You know that I do, Cleric," Potter said. His eyes met Domma's as he left and there was something in them that Domma recognized. She heard his footsteps retreat down the hall.

_He's quite taken with me_ , she thought. _I will have to be careful with myself around that one._ But he wasn't bad looking. He always kept his beard trimmed and his head shaved so clean. And he had always done incredible work here.

"May I sit?" Domma asked, abandoning her thoughts of Potter.

Stipson almost jumped to oblige her. It was odd how a few well-placed and much-loved facts could put someone almost under your power. Domma and Stipson shared the bed, she at one end and he at the other. Domma almost never got nervous anymore.

"You are a woman of God?" Stipson asked.

"I am," she said.

"How do you know, though? When I was younger I think I used to believe. I don't know." Stipson put his hand to his head. "Sometimes it hurts so much I just want it to stop. How do you know He's real? Can you... can you... or can He... help me?" He had a pleading sort of look on his face, his words coming out slowly.

Domma reached up slowly and lowered the hood of her cloak. She revealed a head that was completely devoid of hair. In truth her entire body was like that: no eyebrows, no eyelashes, nothing under her arms, or below her waist. The hood worked for the reveal. That was one of the reasons she always wore it.

Other times she was simply ashamed.

In the center of her forehead was a large, round, swirling scar. There was no skull in that spot underneath the scar. Her head was soft there, much like a baby's soft spot. She'd had a tattoo inked to outline the scar: a Sunburst, the symbol of her order.

"I know God is real," Domma said, "because He has healed me. And yes. He can help you."

-2-

"That scar," Stipson breathed. "There's men on the docks got cut by knives and swords and such, but... what the he-... what happened to you?" He swallowed hard.

Domma smiled gently. "A childhood injury. I remember little of it, myself. But those who witnessed it tell me that I was shot by a bandit. The crossbow bolt stood out a good foot from my head."

"And you didn't die outright to that sort of attack?"

"It seems obvious that I didn't," Domma said. "And, though I remember a lot of pain, I survived. All but my hair."

"Where did it all go?" Stipson asked, taking a drink of water from a clay mug that he kept on the floor near the bed.

"The physic thought the bolt was poisoned," she replied.

"There is such a thing? I never heard o' no poison like that on the docks."

"I'm sure it meant to take my life. The fact that it got only my hair is a notion I'm fine with."

"That's horrible," said Stipson. "You've had a... lot of problems?"

Domma nodded. "The worst part is how the wound has affected my memory. A lot of my past is a blur. No matter how much I talk to God he won't tell me what my past held. I can remember my early, early childhood, then there's a large, patchy gap, then it fades back in on the steps of the Sunburst Temple."

"God won't tell you?"

"If you've ever talked to Him, Stipson, you would know it can be exceedingly frustrating."

Stipson frowned again, a face that Domma was now starting to associate with him thinking. "How come we don't all have the powers of a... what are you called?"

"I am a Sunburst Cleric of the First Grace," she said, "but I think what you are referring to is the fact that I am a Devotee. We are sometimes called Faithful Mages, but we don't prefer it. And, of course there are many other names, some nasty like Prayer Witch or Godswhore. I prefer Devotee over those."

"Yes," said Stipson nodding his head. "Devotee. How did you get your powers?"

"Would you really like me to explain? The details - the good stuff - may take a while and I want to hold prayer with you before my time here is done. I have many others to attend to."

"Maybe the prayer would be best. But don't you think it's unfair that you have powers and... and I don't?"

"I don't think you honestly believe in God at this point," she said. "That makes a huge difference. And besides, not everyone who is truly Faithful turns out to be a Devotee. I don't know why I was selected to gain these powers, but I will use them to the best of my ability. There are things you can do that I can't, you know?"

Stipson frowned.

"I am talking, for example, of knowing how to load a cargo ship," she continued.

"You could learn," said Stipson, pointing a relaxed finger at her.

"I might be able to," Domma conceded. "But I didn't grow up with it. And besides, I am weak. Look at the arms you have." Domma smiled. "I hear some of those ships can hold some seven-hundred fully packed crates. I would never be able to keep track of them all or even help lift a single one." She held up her skinny arms and shook them gently.

Stipson smiled. That was better.

"We need you to get well," Domma said, "because you have skills, Stipson, and you can be much more than just a bed-weight. May I lay my hands on you?"

Stipson closed his eyes and leaned forward towards Domma. She placed her hands on Stipson's head and began to draw power from God. Now that she had physical contact with him she could Mend him a little, but it took incredible amounts of magic and drained her quickly. She began the process anyway, reaching into the web of his mind.

Mending allowed a Devotee to find glitches within a consciousness. Domma found plenty within Ormon.

Pieces of his thoughts were wrapped and twisted about, looped tightly many times over like an incredibly complicated series of knots. This was something she found sometimes, and it was never easy to deal with. She began to whisper a prayer as she pulled a few of the easier knots apart.

"Praised is God," she intoned. "We who are so like him. Cast in his image and formed from clay and air. Help Stipson to find himself again, Lord. He is lost at sea and only with Your light - with a Sunburst - can he find his way back home."

"And a strong wind," added Stipson, with his eyes closed.

"A strong wind," Domma agreed. It was always better when the other person got into it. "And an abundance of cats. Til'men."

She had only untied seventy of the thousand or more knots in his mind, but Stipson would notice the difference, even if just barely. He would feel more balanced, might even be able to sleep easier.

She stood up.

"Leaving so soon?" he asked.

"I am afraid so," said Domma. "There is little rest for a Cleric, and our visits are always too brief. I will be back to see you, Stipson."

"Please," he said. "Call me Ormon."

Something twinged in Domma's brain, but she didn't know what. There was something familiar about that word. "Ormon it is, then," she said. "I hope you are feeling better." She smiled as she pulled her hood back on.

"I am," Ormon said. "I am." His eye twitched and he held his hand to the side of his head. "Just a little pain sometimes," he explained.

Domma nodded. She would have to trust Potter to take care of this one until she could visit him again. She would mull over his knots on the way back to Sunburst Temple, perhaps try to really lay into them next time when she had more power.

"You are beautiful, Cleric Domma," Ormon said suddenly. "Even without any hair."

"We are all beautiful," she replied, with a gentle smile and a wave. "Until I next see you."

Domma turned to go. She felt good. It was good to help people. Her eyes watered a little as she left.

_He said I was beautiful_.

-3-

I _nnnnnnnnnn Nonnnnnnnn_

The voice grated and churned. The words were distorted and sometimes made her teeth hurt. The noise was sometimes infuriating, but it was part of her world.

Domma knelt in a darkened section of the Sunburst Temple. Night had fallen and it had been several hours since she had been with Ormon Stipson. Ormon. Ormon. Ormon. Something. Something.

Grazzzzzzzzz Nonnnnnnnn

She had built up some power during her Healing of Ormon. Devotees could do that sometimes: if they used their power to do something good they could build it at the same time that they spent it. Domma chose now to put that power towards Communicating with God, but it was little better than trying to talk to a stone wall. People often believed that the powers of a Devotee put them in direct contact with the Lord, but it couldn't have been much further from the truth. Domma sometimes felt no better off than anyone else who was trying to make God talk to them. The sounds she heard as answers were creepy sometimes, actually making her skin crawl as she prayed alone.

Isssssssssssss Nonnnnnnnn Korrrrrrrrrr

That was Him. Her. It. She concentrated harder, the power she had built ebbing away in the effort of contact. Sometimes she could glean tiny things out of the astral babble, and sometimes she couldn't. Today, like most other days, was one of the latter times.

Ormondomindominormonon

Domma looked up at the high ceiling of her room. "His name is Ormon Stipson, Lord. I am praying for him and for myself. I visited a few other patients today, but none that touched me as he did. Why... why do I put myself through this?" Domma wasn't nervous in the presence of the ill anymore, but she still felt a powerful sadness. She began to weep as her power dwindled to almost nothing.

Helping others meant you had to see their pain, and that could be hard, especially when you had so much of your own to cover up.

Fivvvvvvvvvvvvve Sunnnnnnnnnnnnnzzz

"Five suns?!" she shouted. "Five suns?! That's all you have for me today? Instead of babbling nonsense how about you heal those who are sick! Save all the orphans! Help me feel the comfort I seem to be able to instill in others! Help me remember who I was!"

Her voice echoed, bouncing five times off the walls, and God was silent.

The story she had told Ormon today - about her baldness and her scar and the bandit's poisoned bolt - was a lie. Domma couldn't remember for the life of her why she was broken and lost.

# Chapter 4

### The Orphan Savant

-1-

Krothair Mallurin moved like lightning, his sword twirling in front of him.

The Foglin danced left and right, firing flames from its mouth at Krothair. The wind of it whipped his hair back and forth and the heat from it dried the sweat on his face the instant it formed. Krothair held his sword, Battlestir, in his hand and a large silver shield in his other. The crest on the shield was a raging boar, and Krothair felt every bit the animal.

He charged in close, whirled around a gout of flame, and stuck his sword into the Foglin's guts up to the hilt. Then he slashed upwards, severing the thing in half.

His heart dropped, for as the creature fell to the ground he saw what was behind it. It was an entire army of Foglins; all different types. Every grotesque iteration he had ever imagined was standing before him, waiting for him and Battlestir to fell them all. He hadn't known Foglins could make it past the Vaporgaard, but here they were a thousand strong in the royal palace of Hardeen Kingdom. It was up to Krothair to defend his King. He was the only one left!

The Foglins let out a battle cry that shook the walls of the castle and Krothair set his feet, preparing to meet them head on. The first of them reached him and then-

-2-

C _lank!_

The practice sword whistled towards Krothair's head, but he deflected it easily. The clanking sound of metal on metal had snapped him from his daydream. There were no Foglins here, there was only the boy he was fighting against today. The kid wasn't very good and Krothair had no trouble forcing him to yield, bashing his shield and weapon away through a series of fast cuts and slices. Well, his practice sword couldn't really _slice_ , per se, but it could leave lasting bruises with its dull edge.

The boy he had been fighting was on the ground now. Krothair hadn't even learned his name.

"Enough!" Germon shouted from the side. He ran up, laughing a little. "Let the poor guy up, Krothair."

"Fuck!" screamed the boy on the ground. His face was beet red. He had recovered his sword and was repeatedly slamming it into the hard-packed dirt.

"I told you, Irving," said Germon. "Krothair's our best. Don't get pissy now, just get up off the ground and shake his hand."

Irving looked as if that was the last thing in the world he wanted to do, but he did it anyway. You listened to Germon when he told you to do something. He was jovial until you didn't follow his orders. Krothair said not a word as Irving shook his hand, then the kid ran off to the guardhouse probably to complain to the others how Krothair had cheated somehow.

"He hates me," Krothair said.

"Skill has that effect on people, sometimes," Germon replied. "Better get used to it." He turned to leave the field. "We're done out here for today, Krothair," he said over his shoulder. "But there's something I want to talk to you about. We'll talk in my office." Germon motioned.

Krothair raised an eyebrow. He had almost opened his mouth to say _he_ wanted to talk to Germon. He'd had something on his mind as well.

Krothair sheathed the practice sword which at this point, after being used numerous times, was basically just a beat-up piece of metal with a handle. The Western Watch had never been privy to the kingdom's best equipment, but these swords were getting pretty pitiful.

The shabby equipment never seemed to affect Krothair, though. He could beat almost anyone with any weapon, quality or no. He had been able to do that ever since he'd turned twelve, five years ago. The first time he had fought had been with the handle of a broken hoe on a farm he had been working on. The wood had spun and sung in his hands as he bashed a loud-mouth farmhand in the head, ending that fight quickly and getting himself expelled from that job in the process.

He walked across the dirt towards what Germon referred to as his office which was really just a hut, more or less. The Western Watch was grand in title, but low on style. A few buildings squatted here and there on this border of Hardeen Kingdom, and they made up the infrastructure of the Watch. There was the guardhouse which was also the bunkhouse. Then there was Germon's office, which Krothair was pretty sure used to be a large outhouse. There was a small fence and barricade that the men here had built, and there was sort of a kitchen-slash-dining room where the men ate.

Krothair never complained. Perhaps that's why he had ended up out here. He had wandered his whole life, roaming wherever work and food had taken him. When he had come to Hardeen Kingdom he had run into the Western Watch, proven his skill, and joined on the spot. Krothair knew that it wasn't as glorious a job since the war had ended, but still _someone_ had to watch the border, and the free, wide-open lifestyle had fit him at the time.

The whole encampment was situated on top of a large hill with a fantastic view of the surrounding area. An attack from any direction could be spotted. Any pesky trees that had tried to grow and block the view were cut down and used for firewood or lumber to patch the dilapidated buildings.

Krothair took a quick scan of the area. Nothing out of the ordinary.

He knocked on Germon's door.

"Come in," Germon said.

-3-

Krothair reached nervously into his shirt pocket as he shut the door behind him. His hand grasped clumsily for the small scrap of paper he kept within the pocket. Paper wasn't necessarily a rarity out here, but this scrap had actually blown onto the hill last fall. Krothair couldn't read fantastically well, but he knew enough to be able to decipher the blurry word that was written on it: Kingsguard.

The paper wasn't meant for Krothair, of course, but even so he had taken it as a sign. This scrap, clearly separated from a larger sheet, had somehow made its way here. His sharp eyes had noticed the tattered thing amongst the leaves on the ground and when he had held it in his hand he'd felt that it had belonged to him his whole life. Of all his possessions it was his most dear. He thought maybe that was kind of sad.

But he knew that all young boys dreamed of being on the Kingsguard - that elite group of warriors, the men of legends. They said that Kelin Lightbearer had killed thirty mounted men using a dinner fork. They said that Telin Lightbearer - Kelin's twin brother - had barely survived a fifty foot jump from the ramparts of Haroma castle only to pop right up and behead the Shailand general. And Krothair wasn't sure whether or not to even believe all the things he had heard about Trance Raynman. _Did the man really rise from the dead?_

A spot in the Kingsguard didn't open up very often. You had to die to relinquish it, and the men in that service didn't fall easily.

"What you got there, Krothair?" Germon asked. He was seated behind a makeshift desk which had a few scattered papers and a candle on it. Scant things, and even so they were unorganized. Germon had heart and could inspire and teach men, but Krothair had learned that the man couldn't keep any other part of his life under control.

Krothair laughed nervously. He felt that it was now or never. "Well, sir," he started, trying frantically to remember what he had wanted to say. He licked his lips which were still chapped from the winter that had just recently departed. He drew out the paper. "This is going to sound stupid but this paper... this paper blew into camp last year."

Germon sat passively with an impartial face. "Paper?"

"It's only a little scrap," said Krothair, starting to sweat worse than he did during his most vigorous workouts. "It says... it says 'Kingsguard' on it. It got me to thinking. I'm as skilled as anyone here. I need a recommendation. Something. Anything. I don't know how it works exactly. I'm meant for more than this." He blurted the whole end out, feeling the words burst forth.

Germon slowly steepled his hands, elbows on his desk. "More than the Western Watch?" he asked, his expression impossible to read.

"I don't mean that it's bad," Krothair said quickly. "It's noble work, this watch is. But the boy I just beat, Irving... well, he knows it as well as I do. I don't belong here. I don't... fit in."

"Seems you don't fit in anywhere, Krothair. A wanderer you are. Farm work, orphanages, a bit of small-time thievery, and then the Western Watch."

"I have wandered," Krothair said. "My whole life, I've wandered. Some of my tasks were... less noble than others. But I have seen much of the world."

"You seen the Vapor?" Germon asked.

Krothair's heart lurched. "Not with my own eyes. Heard enough stories, though."

"Stories don't do it justice," Germon said. "They're recruiting down there again. Hard. They need men there and they need them quickly."

Krothair scrunched his forehead in thought, eyes on the floor. _The Vapor needs men? Since when? Did I overstep my bounds by bringing up the Kingsguard? What was I thinking?_ Krothair had always been an orphan. _Don't you have to be born to a family that means something to become a Kingsguardian?_ A family. That was something he'd never really had.

Germon stood up. "Not many here know this," he said. "Don't even think most of the men here have guessed it. I'm old, Krothair. I've been around the world fifty times if you've been around it once. I've been to the Vapor." He lifted his shirt to reveal a scar across his ribs. The thing was jagged like a lightning bolt and the hair that seemed to grow everywhere on Germon's chest pulled back from the scar as if it were poison.

Krothair's eyes widened.

"Rumors would have you believe that this gash from a Foglin claw gives me magical powers. That's horseshit. What it's given me is pain every day for the last forty years."

"Why are you showing this to me?" asked Krothair. For a moment he completely forgot about his Kingsguard paper. _Germon has been to the_ Vapor _?_

"I'm showing you the consequences of what happens when lesser men try their hand at the Vaporgaard." Germon sighed. "You're a better fighter than I ever was Krothair and that's hard for me to admit, especially considering your age. A position in the Kingsguard is admirable. Shit, you won't find anyone more revered than those twelve. But they don't need you, Krothair, and I say that with as much respect as I can. Yorn Darmon once took eight arrows to the chest and laughed about it the next day, showing them off like trophies _still stuck in his flesh._ "

"I've heard that story," Krothair said. Despite his best efforts his eyes began to water and his throat tightened. The hope he'd had was draining away. "So. Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?" he asked. "Serving on the Vaporgaard?"

Germon shrugged slightly as his shirt fell back into place. "You're looking for your place. I can see it in your eyes every day. And let's face it - we're not as important out here as we used to be. The hill is quiet. We get the occasional thief to catch, the occasional animal gone bat-shit crazy, the occasional territory dispute to see to. But the war... the war is over for now. You've never even seen true action here. I've forgotten what it was like. I've been ordered to lighten our personnel. You are one of the ones that I am going to let go."

"More wandering?" asked Krothair. "Should I just wander down to the Vapor and have at it?" He couldn't tell if he was mad or not. He knew he was hurt, but couldn't tell what type of hurt. A father: that was something Krothair had forgotten about long ago. But Germon had been... close. And now, as much as he had wanted to go gallivanting off to the Kingsguard he was now frightened of the prospect of leaving this place.

Germon had taken him in. Germon had shown him off to the others. _Like he was proud of me..._

"No," Germon said. "They don't take untrained wretches down there on the Vapor. No, if you didn't get proper training you'd be Foglin food within the hour. Even with training it took me little over a month to get slashed. Anyway, I pulled some old, fraying strings and arranged for you to train with Ti'Shed Hawkethorn in Haroma. You can leave within the hour if you like."

So Germon had set the whole thing up already. Krothair had always been able to choose his own path, and he supposed he still was able to, but something about the name Ti'Shed was familiar. "Germon," Krothair said, realizing. "Ti'Shed was the one who trained both Kelin _and_ Telin Lightbearer."

"Well, not exclusively, of course, but the man was definitely involved. He also trained me. He still owes me a few favors so I'm calling them in. I want you to be careful, though. I've told him of your prowess and he may push you incredibly hard, but if you come out of the training, you will be ready to serve the Vaporgaard with honor." Germon set an envelope on his desk. "Directions to Ti'Shed's house along with my seal."

"Do you have a horse for me?" the boy asked, stepping forward to grasp the envelope in a sweaty hand.

"I do," Germon nodded. "You've taken to this idea quickly. But I knew you would." The older man's brow wrinkled. He stood, came to Krothair, and laid a heavy, rough hand on his shoulder. "Don't give up on your dreams, Krothair. If you do, your hair turns gray and your eyesight fades. The men of the Kingsguard can't live forever, you know, no matter what the stories say. They are just men. But, for now, the Vapor is the best place for you." Germon smiled. "I know Irving thinks so, anyway."

"He's truly awful," Krothair said, letting a small laugh escape his lips despite his sadness. "You might want to teach him to parry a bit better. Or at all."

"You leave him to me," Germon said.

Krothair tucked the Kingsguard paper back into his shirt pocket and nodded his head while backing slowly towards the door. "Thank you," he said quietly.

Germon smiled sadly and went back behind his desk. "Show me one of your medals someday," he said. He bent towards his papers, quill in hand.

Krothair willed himself through the door, deciding to move on despite whatever he would lose or gain from it. He could always come back here.

But he wondered if he would ever see Germon after today.

-4-

It wasn't far to the city of Haroma. It would be three or four hours' hard ride at most. Krothair had been many places in his life, but never into the heart of a city as big as Haroma. The paper that Germon had given him rested in the same pocket as his Kingsguard paper now.

_Perhaps they will call me the Paper Soldier_ , he mused.

The countryside whizzed past him. The gray mare that Germon had given him wasn't the best horse in the world, but Krothair knew her from his time in the Western Watch and the horse liked him.

It hadn't taken him long to gather his things because he didn't _have_ many things. He and Germon had gone through the Western Watch's supplies and picked out the best sword they had, stuffed it into a sheath, and hung it from his waist. It swung there now, in time with the mare's hoof beats. Likely Krothair would be given a new sword, but he might have to earn it as well. Germon hadn't known how Ti'Shed would operate or what exactly Krothair should expect, despite the fact that he had trained with him. Germon had described Krothair's new master as fluid and slightly quixotic.

Houses started to appear with more regularity: low little things all made of wood with fields around them. The early indications of a rough road began to appear, and the horse had a much easier time walking on the even, hard-packed ground. The sun was just beginning to drift below the horizon and the day was just giving way to the coldness of night. Krothair didn't feel it at all.

Then something started to _rise_ over the horizon. The city walls of Haroma were massive. Torches blazed their contention to the approaching night. Krothair could see the road winding all the way up to the walls, and for the first time in his life he could smell what could only be the ocean. It was a sensation he had never really prepared for. The salt tang hit him full on; even the mare snorted a little bit.

Haroma was set with its eastern side to the ocean. Krothair had heard stories of the Golden Fleet, but had never seen a ship in his life. He had been to a few cities, but this was to be the largest by a wide margin. A full half-million people lived here. This number was almost too big for Krothair to comprehend.

-5-

Ten more minutes of hard riding brought him to a bustling crowd trying to get into the gates. As Krothair brought the gray horse up, he took a moment to let himself be overwhelmed. Everything had become like a dream. Details were completely lost in the grandiose feeling he had.

Someone was talking to him, and he said something, but he couldn't remember what. Someone bumped into his leg and swore at him to get out of the way. He obliged. He dismounted. He wasn't sure if that was what he was supposed to do, but he didn't feel right riding the horse into the city. He didn't see anyone else riding horses. And anyway, he wanted to go in on his own two feet. It seemed even more grand that way.

The colors began to pierce his vision now. Vibrant costumes of every hue: bright blue shirts, red dresses and cloaks, yellow shoes, even. Krothair had never seen yellow shoes. A fat man wore no shirt at all despite the cold. His skin was hairless and scarred. Most women were bundled in soft furs. There were carriages, horses, people, a few dogs - coming, going, coming, going. Conversations: yelling, arguing, laughter, apologies, excuses, the occasional scream.

He was lost in the crowd.

A guard looked down from the top of the wall, but Krothair wasn't sure that the man could actually be of much use. _One guard for all these people? One guard to keep order at the gates of a city like Haroma?_

Germon had once told him: "A man alone can be more effective than two. Where two men are reckless, one is careful." That didn't seem to fit this situation, though.

His eyes betrayed him and he knew it. He looked harder and found a few more guards blending in with the citizenry. A few more peering out of arrow slits. Then he saw the heavy metal doors. He wondered how many men it would take to close them and knew there must be even more guards around somewhere.

And, just like that, while musing about the guards, he was inside. Sundown was a busy time, apparently. People were leaving, their business done for the day. Where theirs was ending, Krothair's was beginning.

Finding where Ti'Shed lived wouldn't be so hard. With the reins grasped tightly in one gloved hand, Krothair led his horse through the streets.

"A boy with a sword that size could have any lady he wanted," some woman yelled to Krothair. She stood outside of a dilapidated looking house. Krothair could see more women through the dimly lit windows. He looked at the woman who had yelled at him, nodded politely, and kept walking. There would probably be lots of whores here. No sense in getting distracted. _Does Kelin Lightbearer get distracted by women?_ _They're probably always bothering him about_ his _sword, Warbreaker. It_ is _a really great sword._

Krothair turned left at the Finch Tavern, a place Germon had labeled on his crudely drawn map. He could smell the ocean more strongly now, and as much as he longed to look at it there would plenty of time for that later. He didn't want to stray from his goal.

The house he eventually came upon was smaller than he would have expected. It was in a nice section of town, lush with plants and gardens that looked like they had been tended. Yet the small abode he stood before now didn't look like the dwelling of a sword master. _Where will we train? In some adorned courtyard?_

Krothair tied his horse to something he thought might have been a hitch and knocked on the door. It opened almost immediately.

Inside stood an old man, but Krothair didn't for a second think that it wasn't Ti'Shed Hawkethorn. The boy wouldn't make an embarrassing mistake and say something stupid like, "I'm looking for Master Hawkethorn. Have you seen him about?"

For starters, everything about the man was dangerous: the way he stood, the slight scowl he wore, even the speed with which he had opened the door. And then there was the grip he had when Krothair shook his hand. The boy felt his eyes widening in shock at the iron force that was crushing down on his fingers.

"You're Krothair Mallurin," Ti'Shed said. His voice was smooth as ice and didn't sound as old as he looked. "Am I saying that right? Mah-loo-rin?"

Krothair nodded.

"Slight accent on the 'loo', then? Places your birthplace farrrrrr west of here. Ah, yes, but you've been orphaned. So perhaps whoever named you simply has a western sensibility. Around here it would probably be mal-yoo-rin, with the 'mal' accented. Come in. Didn't expect you so late, but here you are."

"My horse," Krothair said clumsily. He felt like an oaf in front of Ti'Shed.

"We'll take care of her," Ti'Shed said, peering out at the beast. "Has a gimp leg."

Krothair didn't think she did, but Ti'Shed had probably been around warhorses all his life and was certainly a much better judge of horseflesh.

"A little," Krothair said.

"Ah," Ti'Shed said. "That's our first lesson, then. If you think someone's wrong, tell them you think they are wrong. Your horse looks fine." He stepped into the house.

Krothair followed him, his face hot.

-6-

"Not much light left today," Ti'Shed said, gazing out a window. The old man walked over to a wood-burning stove and retrieved a kettle off the top. "I've heard much about you," he continued. "The wandering swordsman, yes? The orphan savant?"

"Something like that," Krothair said. "Germon told me to give you this. Has his seal on it." Krothair started to dig in his pocket but Ti'Shed stopped him with a gesture.

"No need. Germon always was a little too caught up in formalities for my taste, even in his training. I believe you are who you say you are, and I believe you have come here for the reasons Germon said. You wish to train with me."

"More than anything."

Ti'Shed chuckled lightly, but he still had a hard look on his face. Even when he was being jovial he looked that way. _It's just part of who he is._

"More than anything," the old man echoed. "More than you'd like to don the crest of the Kingsguard?"

Krothair was silent.

"Another lesson. Exaggeration is a dangerous thing. It is entirely too close to lying for my tastes."

"I would like to train with you," Krothair said quietly.

Ti'Shed set the kettle down on the table. "I hate tea," the old man said, "and that is no exaggeration."

"Then why drink it?" said Krothair.

"Drink it?" said Ti'Shed, looking amused. In a split second he had the kettle back in his hand and in one smooth motion flung it towards Krothair's head.

The boy's hand was on his hilt in the blink of an eye. The dull training sword screamed out of its sheath and caught the kettle in the side, deflecting it with a loud ping. It clattered to the ground spilling not a single thing.

Because it had been empty.

Ti'Shed nodded as Krothair stood incredulous.

"You used your sword when dodging might have been easier, but your reflexes are as fast as any I have seen on one your age, save for those who would become master thieves. I like to encourage goodness. You may train with me starting tomorrow." Ti'Shed smiled just a tiny bit. "Now, you look hungry. Do you want something to eat?"

-7-

The house had four rooms and Krothair's bedroom was one of them. He had a bed that was almost too small for him, a table, and a trunk. He had hung his sword on a peg and put his clothes in a trunk. Moving in had been an easy task.

Supper had consisted of sourdough bread, crab meat, and coconut milk. He had never had any of these things before and had felt like a king dining there with Ti'Shed. The old sword master had turned out to be something Krothair never would have expected. He was wise and solemn, but trickery danced just behind his eyes. It was hard to see it through the scowl that seemed to have frozen itself in place, but Krothair still noticed the jester within his master.

Now, under the thin sheets of his bed, Krothair shuddered, excited for his training and excited that he had passed the tea kettle test. But he was on guard. _Are there going to be tests in the middle of the night?_ He shifted under the blankets and they made a soft swishing noise. He could hear the faint noises of the city outside. Its never-ending bustle would take some getting used to.

A knock at the front door.

Krothair froze for a moment and then got lightly out of bed, but before had taken two barefooted steps towards his bedroom door, he heard Ti'Shed open the front door. Had the old man even been asleep or was he just that fast?

Krothair sneaked over to his door and opened it silently. He could see out into the larger room where the tea kettle still lay on the floor. Ti'Shed held a candle, and the light it threw gave the scene a sinister look. Had Ti'Shed been expecting the door-knocker?

_No. He's wearing nightclothes. He looks half asleep._ His white hair - what little was left - was disheveled. He had either been asleep or was going to great lengths to look like he had been. Krothair was jumping to conclusions.

This isn't a test, Krothair. Just the odd midnight caller.

He had a hard time hearing what was said, if anything. The person outside the door held something through it on his upturned palms. The slant of his arms told Krothair that the person was kneeling. Ti'Shed reached out and grasped the long thin object: a sword in a beautiful scarlet sheath.

Ti'Shed stood perfectly still, the candle in one hand, the scarlet sheathed sword in the other. All was stone for a moment. Only the candle flame danced, seeming more like liquid than flame. The door-knocker's arms withdrew out the door and it closed with a click.

Krothair saw the candle flicker and heard a slight hiss. Had water fallen onto the flame? He traced a vertical line up, but directly above it were Ti'Shed's eyes.

Not water.

Tears.

The sword master was crying.

# Chapter 5

### The Lonely Ship

-1-

"Here it is!" Halimaldie shouted, running down the beach.

The ocean breeze whipped his long brown hair into his face, pieces of it tangling in his close-cropped beard. Was there a storm coming? He scanned the horizon, but it was too dark to tell anything much. He liked to make it his job to know everything, but sometimes that just wasn't possible.

But he had found the ship just where the scout had said it would be.

_The_ _Lucky Maid_ wasn't supposed to be washed up on some faraway beach. It was supposed to have been at the Haroman docks three days ago. Halimaldie had been there waiting for it. Normally he didn't show up for the loading and unloading of his vessels, but this was quite possibly the largest and most profitable shipment he had ever been a party to, and when it hadn't shown up he had feared for the worst.

Now he stood on the beach in the wavering torchlight. Twenty sell-swords stood behind him. He had hemmed and hawed briefly on the correct number of people to bring. He wanted as few eyes as possible on this debacle. Rumors were dangerous, and a botched operation could undermine his empire. _Especially an operation of such importance._

The gangway lowered to the beach, slamming down with a loud thud, causing Halimaldie to jump. It was too dark to see much else so he grabbed a torch and moved farther forward, the sell-swords walking slowly behind him, their weapons clinking quietly.

"Tell yer boys to stay back," a voice hissed, making Halimaldie jump again.

Halimaldie squinted into the darkness behind him.

_Telin Fucking Lightbearer,_ he thought with a silent groan.

The Kingsguardian stood just a few steps behind Halimaldie, but even in the torchlight it was hard to pick him out. Something about him wavered and seemed to reject the light. Halimaldie had heard that Telin was a Servitor, but had to admit he really didn't know much about those powers, or even if they were real. _Some Servitors have the ability to bend time? Is that true? Seems like an exaggeration._ In Halimaldie's business he had always appreciated the benefits that exaggeration could bring to the table, and certainly didn't begrudge others the same luxury.

But now the Kingsguard was involved in this. _Damn. What interest does the crown have in this shipment other than skimming their taxes off the top? And how did he find out, anyway?_

"You have authority here?" Halimaldie asked. Now he was rubbed completely the wrong way.

Telin nodded. "Aye, D'Arvenant."

It rankled him that Telin had addressed him by his surname, but Halimaldie turned to his sell-swords and gave them the signal to back off. A few of them looked confused, but they obeyed.

The water rolled along the shore in its rhythmic pattern as the men retreated into the night.

Shh shh shh.

Shh shh shh.

Shh shh shh.

"I don't understand. I hired the best crew for her," Halimaldie said, looking at the ship.

"Ah, yes," Telin said. "The best crews are always running ships aground."

Halimaldie actually found himself getting nervous as he waited. It was a sensation that he didn't feel often. Nothing was happening. He feared the worst. There should be someone. Anyone. A person from the crew should be coming down that sloping gangway.

"The hell," Halimaldie muttered. He heard Telin sniff the air behind him. "Telin, do you see anything?" As long as the Kingsguardian was here, Halimaldie might as well use him. But when he looked where the man had been, Telin was gone. _Silent as a shark in the water._

The gangway creaked as Halimaldie stepped onto it. He wore two daggers - one on each hip - but he rarely used them. He wasn't even sure if he _knew_ how to use them. His plan had always been to thrust them at whatever he wanted to die, but he knew there was much more to it. One dagger had an ivory hilt with a silver blade, the other had an ebony hilt with a gold blade. He was convinced they had saved his life on one occasion, but mostly he wore them because they were from his father.

They didn't look half bad either.

At the top of the gangway Halimaldie had to resist the urge to vomit. Body parts lay scattered about. Halimaldie couldn't really think of them as corpses. The scattered limbs and torsos would have to have been attached together for these things to be corpses. The remains were definitely human. The breeze blew the smell directly into his face.

Halimaldie paled and turned around, waving his torch and calling his sell-swords back to him. He didn't care what Telin Lightbearer had told me. This wasn't something he could deal with alone. "Search the ship," he said to them as they approached. "Make sure it's safe. This reeks of pirates."

"This is probably something to report-" one man started to say.

"Do as I say!" Halimaldie snapped. He'd already gone to great lengths to keep this a secret. He wasn't reporting to anyone. "In the morning you go back to doing whatever it is you wish, but for tonight I'm paying you and if you don't do as I say you'll _wish_ you were these people." He indicated the body parts. "Start with the deck and work your way down. Find the cause of this."

Halimaldie had many questions. His brain always surged with questions. _Who did this? What happened? Why? How can I cover this up with a Kingsguardian poking his nose around in it?_ But most important to him: _is my shipment still intact?_

-2-

"No one?" Halimaldie asked.

"There's nothing alive on this entire ship," the sell-sword said. "Most of the... er, mess... is up here on the deck, but there are a few corpses in the cargo hold as well."

Halimaldie scowled. He took a handkerchief out of the pocket of his heavy jacket and held it up to his face. "Stay up here and don't let any of the men off the ship yet," he said from behind it. The smell was getting to him. "I'm going to check the cargo hold myself. If the manifest is undamaged we'll need to transport it ourselves."

"But these people..." the sell-sword began to say.

"They're not going anywhere."

Halimaldie started down the stairs to the hold, passing a few sell-swords coming up. He said nothing for now, but gave them a look. He didn't trust other people to do a good job, especially not this sort, but he had hired who he could on short notice.

Everything beyond the reach of Halimaldie's torch was menacing darkness. He felt claustrophobic. Storerooms and basements were tight quarters and as he walked he felt as if the walls were a thousand bands thick on each side of him. If he would have thought about it he would have realized there was open air just twenty feet in any direction. But here in the belly of the ship his chest tightened.

He knew the layout of the ship. Despite almost never unloading these things, Halimaldie always made it his business to know everything he could about his operations. He knew the dimensions of each ship by heart, planning routes and cargoes using raw math and logic. Sailing was for the men who loved it. The details were for Halimaldie.

In two more corners he would turn into a cargo hold that would contain tens of thousands of crown notes worth of gems. The war was over, trade with Shailand was open. Many merchants had jumped at the opportunity. Halimaldie had been one of the ones who had jumped highest, using his family's name and resources to buy, convince, and connive his way into his current position.

He walked into the tight cargo hold. It held many things: food, wine, beer, lumber, supplies for sea journeys. It held other crates of trade goods as well, but these were far less important than the gems. He quickly located these most important crates. They were stashed near the back under an unassuming tarpaulin.

He set his torch in a sconce on the wall and hauled the massive tarpaulin off. The top of the nearest crate fell just below his chest. It was then that Halimaldie knew even _he_ had underestimated this shipment. It was the first of many, but it was the largest by far. It was important to flood the market early to deal with the ravenous demand of the people, then keep the flow maddeningly underwhelming as the demand burned like embers just below the surface of peoples' hearts. That was his plan anyway. But the volume here... how had the workers mined so _much_? He would have to see their pay increased slightly.

It would probably take a crowbar to open the crates and Halimaldie didn't have one on him, but a quick inspection told him that nothing was out of place. _Well, except this corpse anyway._ _How the hell did manage to wedge himself under the tarpaulin? Did he run here for cover?_

Moving the corpse was difficult; not physically but mentally. Grabbing the dead flesh felt awful, but Halimaldie was able to tip the poor fellow (who was missing a good portion of his head) forward. The corpse ended up slumped over in an incredibly unnatural position. Something squelched out of some orifice, but Halimaldie wasn't going to check exactly what.

Something wasn't right about the section of the crate that the dead man had been covering. The wood was broken away and Halimaldie could see inside. He reached his hand in and felt around for what should have been his precious cargo, but instead was so slimy that Halimaldie almost retched. He forced himself to grab a handful of the stuff anyway.

He withdrew his hand from the crate and looked at it in the torch light. The things he held _looked_ like gems, but they were black and oily, not red and lustrous like they should have been. They also stank. He could almost see the impurities swimming in them, as if the stones had been tainted by something.

Halimaldie had never heard of anything that could cause gemstones to react this way, but he suddenly had a feeling in his gut that this had not been a routine pirate job.

A thought occurred to him. Halimaldie had heard stories of magics - even of magic that could be wielded by rich men, somehow - but the stories were so contradictory that he hadn't really believed. _But this isn't natural._ For Halimaldie, seeing was believing.

And now he was seeing. And smelling. And...

One of the other gem crates shuddered slightly. Halimaldie heard a muffled scraping sound coming from within it. Before he could grab his torch from the wall, before he could even move, the side burst open. A slimy cavalcade of cracked wood and oily-black gemstones skittered onto the floor and something man-sized tumbled out.

At first Halimaldie took it for a slimy black sea creature of some sort, but as it unfolded itself he knew it was something else. Eight appendages - it was hard to tell what were arms and what were legs - stretched out long and thin in the small cargo hold, and then a head on a stalk of a neck folded up silently. Eyes that were somewhere between human and animal peered at him.

For a moment it appeared the thing was stunned, or at least blinded, perhaps adjusting to the brightness of the torch. It was this pause that Halimaldie would later credit with saving his life. In this brief moment of time a few things happened: Halimaldie reached for his twin daggers, the creature did something akin to cracking its knuckles, and Telin Lightbearer arrived.

Well, arrived wasn't exactly the right word. One minute he wasn't there and the next minute he was.

_The unnatural is hitting me in waves today_ , Halimaldie thought.

Telin had a small shield and a short sword. The smaller weapons looked odd in his hands, but Halimaldie realized that anything larger would be useless down here. A long sword would just as likely stick into a wooden beam than your enemy. _These Kingsguardians know their shit, that's for sure. Even if they do jam their noses into everyone's affairs..._

Telin surged forward, a gust of air whipping up around him. He dodged one thin black appendage that streaked through the air and blocked another with his shield. The arm went straight through the wood and became stuck there. Telin allowed his shield to be ripped away, maneuvering in even closer as he shed it. His sword became light in his hands, whipping so fast that Halimaldie couldn't even see the blade. Two long, thin arms fell to the ground and something that looked like tar poured from the severed ends.

The creature shrieked. It was deafening in the small hold, but it was cut off quickly as Telin's sword - basically just a flashing beam of light now - streaked from top to bottom, cleaving the creature in half and then becoming imbedded in the floor of the cargo hold.

In that time, Halimaldie had been able to draw only one of his daggers, and he didn't even have a very sure grip on it. "Holy hell," he said.

"Unholy, more like," Telin said.

"The fuck _was_ that thing?"

"Foglin." The Kingsguardian wrenched his sword from the floor, wiped the coffee from it, and sheathed it in his belt. "We burn this ship. Tell your men that pirates have taken the most important cargo from under us. You understand cover stories, I assume."

"F-Foglin? I'd never known... I'd never seen..."

"Think the Vaporgaard just mess around down south, do ya?" Telin grabbed the torch off the wall. "Get everyone off this ship. Now. This has become a matter of kingdom security and is well beyond a simple luxury goods delivery."

"My gems," Halimaldie said.

"If you would like to open these other crates, be my guest." Telin gestured to the three remaining boxes.

Halimaldie shuddered. He breathed deeply as he slipped his silver dagger back into its sheath. He looked at the creature on the ground. "You knew the whole time," he said.

"Knew? No. Suspected? Yes. We Kingsguard don't mess around either, do ya see. Hard to get one of us involved in a merchant operation - even one so big as this - less we ken something. There've been attacks that don't make sense. Come from nowhere. Many people slaughtered." The Kingsguardian lit one of the crates on fire.

"I never heard of any attacks," Halimaldie said.

"Not everything sees the light of day." As Telin lit the body of the creature on fire it crackled and withered in the heat. The smoke it gave off smelled terrible. "Not everything _can_ see the light of day, if ya catch. Leave, Halimaldie. You are swept up in this now, like a feather in a storm. Expose this and likely your business will go down with it. No one likes to know that the merchants of Haroma are aiding Foglins."

"But I haven't been! Is that a-"

"Yes," Telin said sharply. "It's a threat." The room was starting to fill with smoke. "Someone, perhaps myself, will be to your mansion to speak with you regarding all you have seen tonight. There are ways in which we can benefit each other, Halimaldie." Telin gestured to the door.

"How do I explain the burning of this ship?"

"You will find a way. If all else fails, deny that the ship is burning at all." Telin smirked. "The greater the lie, the more readily will people devour it."

"Don't burn yourself to a crisp down here," Halimaldie said.

The look that Telin gave Halimaldie seemed meant to inform him that Kingsguardians couldn't die by mere fire.

One of the crates shuddered and Halimaldie turned and ran for his life.

-3-

When Halimaldie was younger, he had never quite envisioned he would be in the situation he was in right now. As an overweight man of forty-odd years, he was panting through the hold of a burning cargo ship having just been attacked by a Foglin. _A Foglin!_

"Some sort of incendiary trap," Halimaldie said as he came up on deck, coughing and wheezing. "The gems are lost. We need to get off this ship immediately."

The sell-swords ran down the gangway and - as the great vessel burned - that was the last of the ship's problems.

But only the beginning of Halimaldie's.

# Chapter 6

### An Ape in Chains

-1-

It had all gone so badly last week. The more Wren thought about how she had handled things, the worse she felt. Her plan had been idiotic at best. If she would have just stayed home. If she wouldn't have gone to get that stupid horse blanket. If she hadn't come in the back door. The ifs piled on top of one another in her head. And to top it all off she couldn't release the shame that burned inside of her.

A few days ago she had trapped a mouse under a wooden pail, then carefully reached under and snagged it. Holding it in her hands, she stretched its neck until it was just about to pop. But something stopped her. She had dropped it and let it go. Her pain, her shame, remained lodged in her heart.

And her pain reminded her how disgusting she felt.

Wren remembered laying on the bed, too disturbed to move at all. She might have slept naked that night. She couldn't remember clearly. Maybe she'd had the strength to pull the blanket back over herself. That was how she _liked_ to think about it.

At least it hadn't happened since.

It was time for planting at the Hartfield farm. Spring was the right time to be sowing seeds. Her father had been out in the fields from the first hint of sunlight to the last for the past week, working with horse and plow. Farmhands were around to help, too. Mostly they made nice with Wren. They called her 'little lady' and all sorts of other things that made her skin crawl. Her father was always joking with the farmhands out in the fields.

So he hasn't had time for me.

It was a wet day out. It was always wet around this time of year. Wren's boots squelched in the mud, getting sucked in and almost coming off, just as they had a week ago.

Shhhhluck.

Shhhhluck.

"Dammit," she swore under her breath.

She had many jobs, but right now it was bringing water for everyone out in the fields. The heavy buckets sloshed in her strong grip, one in each hand. She had spit in the bucket she was planning to have her father dip from.

She could see the men just off in the distance now. Mud made things tough going for them, but planting time was planting time and the weather didn't wait for anyone. It wasn't raining right now, but it had been drizzling earlier.

She would deliver these buckets and then go see what she could do about dinner. Stew wasn't hard to make: slop a bunch of different ingredients into a pot and hope for the best. Stew was all she could do on her own for a crew this large. Maybe cornbread, if she really worked at it.

Other farmers had mothers, wives, and sisters to do this kind of thing, but Wren was all alone here. Last year some women had shown up to help with things, but not this time. Wren wondered why, but wasn't really too concerned. She would do what needed to be done and then get out of the way by scampering back into the kitchen.

She reached where the men were plowing and planting. There were ten altogether, including her father. There had been more on other days, but her father had known they would finish the planting today, so yesterday he had sent the other men on to do work elsewhere.

Wren set the buckets down and the men came over.

"Thanks, princess," said a tall man Wren had never seen before.

"She is, isn't she?" said her father. Wren's eyes went dull at the compliment. "Hard worker, too."

"Can tell," said another man she didn't recognize. One of his eyes was totally white.

Don't look at me with one eye. Don't look at me at all.

In fact, there was only one man that Wren recognized. His name was Jon Hatfeld. He was maybe forty years old and his face was weathered. Deep cracks and crevices ran in his skin giving him the illusion that he was always smiling. She didn't feel any enmity towards him. _Good for Jon Hatfeld_ , she thought. _He can have the trust of Wren Hartfield, for what it's worth._

She actually found that she had some good memories of Jon. As far back as she could remember he had been coming here in the spring. He had a deep voice and didn't say annoying things. He had lost his wife, too, just like Wren's father had. Seasonal help came and went, but Jon Hatfeld was almost always there.

The men took turns drinking from the dipper and soon they had sucked down all the water Wren had brought.

_He drank the spit-water!_ Wren felt excited that at least one of her plans had worked. She felt... she felt...

A wave of nausea and dizziness swept over her and she fell to her knees. The world spun and twisted around her. Suddenly every smell was magnified. The stench of the earth, the men, the air itself. She dry-heaved a few times, her sides aching from the effort, tears forming in her eyes. Jon Hatfeld and her father rushed over to her.

"You alright?" her father asked, hauling her up by her armpits.

She resisted the urge to shove him away because she didn't want to cause a scene in front of the men. "I think so," she managed to mutter.

"Been workin' her too hard," Jon said. "Wren needs a break."

That was another thing she liked about Jon. He used her name.

"Tell ya what. We're almost done here," her father said, looking around and pushing his hat back from his forehead. There was a streak of mud where it had been sitting. "Another hour more and we might finish this. Hat, take her back to the farm and make sure she's alright."

Wren started to protest, then her stomach contorted and she vomited.

-2-

"There's a carnival near the outskirts of Marshanti," Jon said. He was slowly stirring the pot that bubbled over the fire. Tasty smells wafted out of it. Soon the men would be in from the field and they would be hungry. Jon had helped Wren make the bean stew, doing all that she had asked of him.

The bout of nausea had passed once they had gotten near the house and Wren had been able to drink some water. Planting time was hard on her. Hard on everyone.

"A carnival?" she asked.

"Yeah. If your father and the men finish the planting, well... maybe we could go. You, me, and your dad. Love to take a little vacation 'fore I have to head back to my place in the south."

"Who would look after the animals?"

"We'd find someone, Wren. It's obvious you and your father both need to get away from here. It's the look in your eyes, you know? Farmers know."

Wren almost confessed everything right then and there to the man in the field-filthy clothes, but something stopped her tongue. She had never been near Marshanti. _I've never been near anywhere. Especially not the largest city in Shailand! And a carnival... don't they have animals that do tricks?_ She'd heard stories of giant things called Graybeasts. If she could get her hands on one of them...

"Think you can convince my dad?"

"Hell," Jon said. "That'll be easy. Cole used to love them things - carnivals, I mean - back in the day. That was twenty years ago, maybe. Way before you were born, Wren."

Her father rarely spoke of his past. And the time period around her mother's death was very off-limits. Wren didn't remember her mother, so naturally she had been curious. She had started asking questions when she was six years old, but her father had dismissed them very quickly and had let her know with a whupping that that time in his life was not to be talked about.

"If he loved it back then, I'm not so sure he still will," Wren said.

"Sure he will," Jon said. "I know your father's hard on you Wren, but he loves you in his way. There's a lot you don't know about him." Jon started ladling soup into individual wooden bowls and setting them on the table. "For example," he said, raising his eyebrows, "did you know that Cole used to be a champion rider?"

Wren was shocked. "I didn't." _But it doesn't change how I feel about him... does it?_ "We only have plow horses now... I've never seen him up on one."

"It's true," Jon said. "When your mother died, he gave up so much of what he had been. I always tried to cheer him through it, you know? But another thing about Cole was that he was always so stubborn, ya know. And he always... liked the drink."

Wren hadn't known how deeply Jon Hatfeld's relationship with her father had gone. Jon was always around during harvest, but... they were _friends_.

The house smelled of soup and cornbread when the other men came tromping in from the fields.

"Take your boots off before you come in here," Wren said, immediately falling into the appropriate role. It was a fine thing to hide behind.

"Yes ma'am," they each replied.

The respect felt good.

But her heart still ached because she hadn't been able to kill that mouse.

-3-

That night, as Jon had predicted, Wren found herself sitting in a wagon drawn by two large brown horses. Her father drove the horses with Jon next to him. Wren sat in the back. It was a rough ride, but the wagon had served them faithfully for many years despite the fact that its wood was marred and broken in places. They had also had to replace the axle a few times.

Marshanti was at least a good day and a half ride from their farm. _Plenty of time for something to go horribly wrong._ Wren had seen her father grab a jug of something and stash it under a blanket up next to him. She couldn't be completely sure it was booze, but she had learned to be realistic the hard way. To not get her hopes up.

Wren was only along for two reasons. One was because Jon Hatfeld was going. The nervousness she felt around her father was balanced out by Jon's calming presence. Besides, she doubted her father would try anything with Jon around. At least, that was how it was supposed to work, wasn't it? All sorts of disgusting images flashed through her head but she quickly banished them. If she continued down that path her chest would tighten up and panic would set in. She couldn't afford that.

The other reason she had come along was to see the animals at the carnival. She was interested from a more innocent perspective, of course, but this could also lead her to the release she would need: hurting a Graybeast. She smiled at the grim prospect of her quest. This wasn't what heroes in stories did \- go on journeys to hurt animals - but that's what she felt like. A hero, surviving against all odds to accomplish her goal.

The wagon wheels sloshed through puddles as they rolled along on the vague road that would lead them to Marshanti, and Wren's destiny.

-4-

Sleep was non-existent for Wren that night.

The trio had found a good spot and built a fire. Jon and her father were sitting on blankets talking and laughing while Wren pouted on the other side of the blaze in her shoddy sleeping bag. Was her father really two different people? Looking at him like this, under the stars beside a fire, joking with Jon Hatfeld, he almost looked human. How could he have done the things he had? Was it the same man? Had it been a dream?

No, it hadn't been a dream. She had ached down below for three days afterward, and she had had to clean away blood that morning. She began to tear up, praying that the orange light of the fire and the black of the night would mask her crying.

Maybe if I just jumped into the fire right now...

No. No. Have to keep going. Have to get to the carnival. I'll find a sword and jump up and plunge it into the side of a Graybeast. Then I'll ride the sword back down to the ground as it tears the beast open, warmth spilling out.

It was really quite poetic, actually.

But she couldn't sleep.

She was suspicious, and suspicion was not a friend to sleep.

So she stayed up and was still up when the sun rose.

-5-

They would arrive by midday and Wren had already noticed an increase in traffic. Jon and her father would nod at other farmers as they passed and Wren wondered if they knew them or if they were just being polite. She had heard somewhere that all farmers knew each other. _Can't be true, can it?_

Wren was wearing a large sunhat, green gingham shirt, and a pair of her heavier trousers. It was warm dress for this day, but she had specifically worn these things because they wouldn't reveal any part of her. Her long brown hair was the only thing spilling out from under her hat. She had even wrapped her chest with rags to keep it from spilling out as well. The binding was slipping though and she found herself sweating with nerves as she tried to casually adjust it. But that was just drawing more attention to herself. So she took to biting her nails instead.

There were a lot of people around now. More people meant more safety, but in the back of her mind each person she saw was leering at her. She tried to numb herself to it and was almost successful.

She remembered the first time she had felt... she guessed it might have been love, she wasn't sure. It was during one of the harvests, five or more years ago now. There was a boy whose name she couldn't recall now. He was traveling from farm to farm helping out for food and shelter. He had been strong, but she could tell that he was lost. Looking for something.

Maybe I was lost, too, and looking for someone to reach out to.

Her stomach had sunk every time he had looked at her and she'd had an intense urge to kiss him, but she wasn't sure how to go about it. She remembered how embarrassing it had been even though nobody knew about it. Her face was red all the time and not from the usual sunburn she carried around during spring. She felt engorged with blood in every part of herself. Full of red life and aching.

The boy had left eventually, of course. He had moved on. And he had never known.

That was the part of herself she was trying to kill now. The part she had to deaden. Her passion. If she thought of herself as a passionate being then everyone became a predator. If she thought of herself as a sack of meat - a creature \- then it wasn't as bad.

"Look at that," Jon said, incredulity in his voice. He was pointing just ahead where a large red and white tent poked up over the horizon.

"Mm" Wren's father grunted. "You were right, Hat. I did-" his voice broke. "I did need this, I reckon."

"It reminds me of our fifteenth summer, Cole. You remember that?"

Her father's voice dropped to almost a whisper, barely audible over the wind. "This's where I... where I proposed to Lia."

Jon only nodded, but Wren's jaw dropped. She had only heard her father mention her mother's name three times ever, and all three had been when he was drunk and touching her. For it to come from his mouth so freely was shocking.

Wren was not a stupid girl, but it took her a few moments to put into perspective what was happening. Her Graybeast release - the one she was waiting for at the carnival - was similar to what was happening to her father right now. Everything about his life that had been pent up over the years - things he had tried to release on Wren - was going to come flooding out.

Wren wasn't sure she wanted to be around when it did. She didn't want apologies, she didn't want her father to hug her and smooth her hair and tell her everything was alright. She would throw up all over him if he did that.

Fortunately nothing like that was happening, at least for now.

The three sat saying nothing as the world bustled around them.

_I can't even enjoy the new sights,_ Wren thought.

Jon and her father were whispering to each other, but she didn't care to hear what they said. The crowd swelled around them now that they were very close to the tents. Wren was unfamiliar with people, having been isolated most of her life. She almost couldn't believe how many there were. As she looked around she realized that her own clothing was beyond shabby. Fine smooth dresses of all types were on display here. There were beautiful hats with ribbons, delightful jewelry, and shoes that would have been terrible to wear out in the field. Some of the women she saw had a good portion of their breasts showing, unashamed and unafraid to be linking arms with a man.

_I will be one of them someday_ , she promised herself meekly.

The smells hit her next: the smell of hay she knew well, the smell of people she didn't. The whole thing started to overwhelm her.

"You doin' okay back there?" her father asked.

Wren grunted her approval.

"It does take some getting used to," he answered. "But we... well, we shoulda done this years ago." He took a swig from the jug next to him.

They drove up a bit farther until they found a place for hitching up their team.

"Gonna hafta leave the horses here," Jon said.

There were long horizontal fences set up for this purpose. Horses and wagons lined them, their masters already somewhere in the carnival. Wren's father dismounted from the wagon and walked up to a man wearing a yellow vest. Wren noticed the red falcon of Marshanti inked crudely on the fabric.

The man and her father exchanged words and coins and then the yellow-vested man took the reins.

"Alright," Jon said. "We walk from here." He got down and stretched his legs, then grabbed his pack from the wagon. He picked a long piece of grass from the ground and stuck it between his teeth. "Farmers in the big city," he said, smiling, and Wren couldn't help but smile too.

Wren's father came over, grabbed his things (mercifully, he left the jug behind - but perhaps it was empty), and led the way towards the carnival grounds.

If Wren had been any younger she would have wanted to hold someone's hand. She could envision herself getting swallowed by the crowd and for a panicky moment she imagined everyone was looking at her, the clumsy farm girl in shabby, out of place clothing. But when she forced herself to look around - really look - she realized that no one was paying her any attention, they were all pointing off somewhere or talking to one another or trying to look after their own children.

She didn't stick out, she blended in.

"I didn't bring any trade, but I brought coin," her father told Jon.

"Good," said Jon. "There's a few things for sale here."

That was an understatement. Over the next few hours Wren walked from shop to shop drinking in everything that was there. Jewelry: necklaces, bracelets, earrings, mostly rope and bead, but a few metal. Clothes: fabrics she had never before, soft to the touch and eye-poppingly colored. Weapons: big swords, small swords, other things she didn't know. She was familiar a little bit with weaponry, but not much. Mostly from stories. Food: pies, candy, meat, even some kind of fruit called an orange. "Up from near the Vapor," said the man who was selling the orange fruit. "My boys risk their necks bringin' 'em up. Won't grow up here. Only got a few left."

Her father turned the fruit around and around in his hand and spent a silver oplate on it. He split the thing open and gave some to Jon and Wren.

"I'll save it for later," Wren said. To an odd look from Jon she wrapped it in a kerchief and stuffed it in one of her pockets. She wasn't going to eat it ever. She didn't want it because her father had touched it. And, when he had handed it to her, he had smiled.

After the shops Wren was always on the lookout for where they kept the animals, but it was hard to see anything with all these people around.

"When's the show with the animals?" she asked Jon.

"Should be starting soon. Having fun so far, Wren?"

Wren nodded.

"If we make our way to the big tent we might be able to get good seats."

"That would be good," Wren said. "Good seats."

"You don't mind sittin' there for a bit do ya, Cole?"

"Nosir," her father said. "Gives me time to eat all this candy." He held up a heaping double handful.

He's drunk.

-6-

Wren's heart beat quickly as the show unfolded in front of her. Her stomach seemed to be flipping around and she was so excited that her leg was constantly shaking. It was hot in the huge tent but she didn't care. She was fixated on the creatures that were being paraded in front of her. Huge cats called lions roared and danced and someone rode something that looked like a horse, but had large humps on its back. There were Marshanti falconers whose birds dove through flaming rings and would even grab talons and somersault with each other in the air. Some animal called an ape - all the way from the lands near the Vapor - swung gracefully through the air on netting.

There were tumblers, jugglers, contortionists, and other sorts of entertainment Wren had never dreamed was possible.

The crowd would erupt every time something happened. And things happened all the time. Wren's head began to ache, but she barely noticed it. The Graybeasts had to come out soon, and just as things seemed to die down she got her wish.

The show was seemingly over, but the crowd began to chant. Wren couldn't pick up the word at first but Jon and her father were on their feet chanting it, too.

"Is it a Graybeast?" she asked excitedly to no one in particular.

Then the massive animal made its way onto the hard-packed dirt and the crowd went wild because right behind it was another one, and another, and another. Four of the animals walked holding each others' tails in their... noses? Wren wasn't sure. Each one had a brightly colored blanket draped over its back, each bearing the image of the Marshanti falcon.

The Graybeasts took commands from a man with a gigantic whip; he cracked it once and they let go of each others' tails and stood on their hind legs, their noses sticking straight up in the air. They let out a massive sound that drowned out the crowd.

The whip man cracked it twice and the Graybeasts stomped back to the earth, shaking the ground and sending ripples of dust out from underneath them. Wren's stomach sank with the powerful shockwave. She would have to improvise. There was no way she could harm these animals - she was actually scared of them now that her initial wonderment had worn off. They had long tusks, a lot like a boar, but absolutely huge and gleaming white. One good stab from one of those and Wren would be going home dead.

She was weakened and demoralized. The rest of the show was a blur to her and as she made her way out through the crowd she found she had to bolster herself. _I won't fail. I'll do something else. I've come all this way. I'll see this through._

Somehow.

-7-

The sun was just beginning to set as her father said, "Should prolly head out and find a place to sleep."

"Could stay in an inn in Marshanti, Cole," said Jon. "Ain't a long ride."

"Need to be gettin' back," her father said with a strange look on his face. "City's just another huge distraction."

"Last I knew, you needed distracting."

Jon was persisting awfully hard on this point for some reason. Wren noticed an odd look to his eyes as well.

Her father took off his hat and ran his hands through his hair. "And I've had distractions," he said. It seemed like he was almost fighting with Jon. "Things'll be different now." Wren knew he was looking at her, but she wasn't looking at him.

"I have to go to the bathroom," she said, gazing off into the distance.

"Well, let's get on the road and-"

"No," said Wren, clenching her legs together for emphasis.

"Saw some pit toilets dug around back there," Jon said, pointing. "Meet us back here, Wren, we won't move."

"Be careful," her father yelled after her.

Wren listened for the sounds of the animals, straining hard in the boisterous crowd. She walked quickly through the area trying to make a mental map of it so she could get back in a timely manner. Was this just another plan that was going to backfire? To her, at this point, it didn't really matter.

She followed a trail of hay that was coming out of the back of the big tent and it led her right to where she wanted to be. The place where they kept the animals was fenced off, but she easily found a gap she could squeeze through. The whole place was filled with crates and rope and hay and little tents with blue and white patterns on them. But there were so many people. This would be tough.

Wren took a deep breath and scampered behind some crates, trying to keep herself hidden as she sneaked towards the animal noises she now heard. Along the way she snagged a rusty tent stake that was laying on the ground. She flipped it around in her hand so she was holding it like a sword. It would have to do. This was going to be a fast mission.

She continued her run, keeping to the shadows that the setting sun was casting. As she wove her path, keeping as far away from people as possible, it led her to the most curious darkened corner.

The animal she found wasn't a Graybeast, but rather the ape.

It was sitting in a pile of straw with shackles around its wrists. The chains clanked as it shied away from Wren, moving farther out into the light and away from the shadows she was in. She couldn't get at it in the light and she had already decided that this was the animal. It was now or never.

Ape from the Vapor, fruit from the Vapor.

Wren took the orange fruit out of her pocket and held it out, making a soft clicking noise with her tongue. The tent stake was behind her back, gripped in a sweaty palm so tightly that she could have sworn she was crushing the metal.

The brown-furred creature lumbered slowly up to her and reached out its hand for the orange treat, but it couldn't quite reach. Its shackles weren't long enough, and as Wren stepped forward something about its wrists caught her attention. Where the shackles were, the fur was rubbed away and there were scars.

For a moment she forgot to breathe. The scars were so much like those on her own arms, cut with sharp rocks or bits of metal to release tension. Something clicked in her brain.

_These animals. The fox. The mouse. The ape. I'm making them the victims, just like I am._ It was a relatively simple realization, but one that shocked Wren thoroughly. She fell to her knees as the ape took the orange and stuffed it, peel and all, into its mouth. It let out a soft grunt and lightly shook its shackles.

Wren took the stake from behind her back and looked at it, suddenly repulsed by what she had been meaning to do. Not knowing why, she handed it to the ape. The ape gripped the tool in its hand and bent to the ground.

Clink.

Clink.

Clink.

The shackles started to give way as the ape hit them.

Clink.

Clink.

Clink.

The shadows began to fade around Wren and for a moment she was baffled that the sun could be coming back up. Wren searched for the source of the light.

It was coming from her.

A red and gold pattern was burning on her forearm, shining out even through the long sleeve of her shirt. She jumped back and tried to scrub at it with her hand, but nothing happened. _Some kind of magic. Some kind of curse._ She panicked as it grew brighter. Red and gold lights danced around her.

The ape looked at her, the red and gold lights reflecting in its eyes and flashing off its pupils.

" _Flee."_

The voice came to Wren from nowhere, colliding with her already shaken consciousness. It felt sickening to her mind. She could barely understand the word, but there it was.

" _Flee,"_ it came again, hissing with a gravelly sound. The voice was coming from the ape.

His shackles fell to the ground and he leaped away.

Wren turned to run and she heard chaos behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to watch the ape destroying things; knocking over crates and barrels, pulling up stakes, and uprooting smaller tents. Graybeasts and lions trumpeted and roared, dogs and cats and birds ran and flew in all directions.

These victims were free and so was Wren.

And so, with her world drenched in red and gold, she ran, not knowing where she was going. Then there was a blinding pain in the back of her head, and everything turned from red and gold to black.

# Chapter 7

### The Tournament

-1-

The cold couldn't quite pierce Otom's traveling clothes, and he counted himself lucky that it wasn't the dead of winter. He was getting a good view of Kilgaan as the ship approached it. The large port city stood dark against the white snow and cloudy sky, looking rather like an ink blotch on paper.

Otom had clung tightly to his meager belongings as he'd silently bartered his way onto the boat. Relatively few questions were asked of him. Most people understood that most Monks didn't talk, and coin was a universal language. The timing was impeccable: the ship had been leaving just as Otom had arrived at the docks of Kilgane, out of breath from a ten minute sprint.

The voyage had been rough after thirteen years of not riding the sea, but he'd made it through with relatively little vomiting.

The wind whipped harder and Otom drew his brown robe tighter around himself. He had wrapped his forearm in three layers of cloth which was what it had taken to cover the light of his glowing symbol.

He had very little knowledge of what it actually meant to be a Chosen. The glowing symbol was a calling directly from God. Legends of Chosen were passed through the ages, but Otom tended to be wary of all stories, as facts could twist over the years. Each mouth that spoke a legend would add a new verse from the corner of the speaker's mind. Maybe only bards and minstrels had more of the truth of it. But maybe they had even less.

There were writings in The Book, as Umden had said, but they were as scattered and difficult to translate as legends were. Sin'ra, though. That was the commonality.

He knew where the Temple was, generally. North of Haroma in the Frost Mountains. It was a long range that extended down into Hardeen Kingdom, and somewhere in its heights the Temple of Sin'ra hunkered against the cold, thin air. Only the most devout mages - Devotees and Monks chief among them - kept their vigils there.

The boat eased its way home and Otom slung his pack onto his back. He'd actually gotten luckier than he'd thought with what he had grabbed. He had another robe and set of clothes, his whip, his branch, various oils and tonics that the Monks used for medicine, various scraps of fur and cloth, and his copy of The Book: half his own writing and half holy scripture. All these items were slung up in the bulging pack that he wore.

It was really all he needed. Probably he _needed_ even less.

The city pained him more than he thought it would have. He saw that it had grown in size. The docks from his past were almost twice as large. _Apparently the sea trade is picking up around here._ Snow still covered everything, so that hadn't changed. The buildings, trees, roads, and rocks were frosted in white, and they would be for most of the year except for a very few brief months in the summer. Smoke rose from myriad chimneys.

As Otom made to get off the boat, the captain stepped up to him.

"Right nice to have you on the ship with us, Monk. I won't ask your name." The captain chuckled at his own joke. Otom smiled politely. "We all thank you for the Fire you've made. That warmth was worth more than you'll ever know. I'd like ta give ya back yer coins if ye'd take 'em." The captain held out a handful of tiny silver bits.

Clearly the man has decency in him.

Otom held up his hand to deny the offer, then traced a holy symbol in the air.

"It's all the same ta me," the captain said, pocketing the coins. "Be needin' a return trip?"

The question saddened Otom, but he shook his head, waved politely, and set off into the town.

He had been to Kilgaan a few times in his life. When he was younger, he had fought in a tournament here, and that was the day he had met Allura Finny.

He made his way south along a thick main road ignoring as much as he could, but the past kept hitting him. He recognized a tavern he passed. The Frost Bear. Of course it hadn't been called that fourteen years ago, but the building was the same if a bit more worn.

Otom longed to see the place inside where he had first seen Allura. She had chosen a booth facing the door as she had liked to do.

-2-

14 Years Ago

The room buzzed with life as Otom sat alone at a table in the corner. The smell of food wafting through the air just barely covered up the smell of the patrons. Meat cooking on a spit dripped its tasty liquids onto the flames below. Fires were always burning up here in the north, especially in a place like The Fool's Heart Tavern.

"You waitin' for someone?" said a blond girl in the next booth. She was leaning over the top of the divider and staring at Otom. She had flawless skin and her hair was a light blond color that spoke of many hours in the sun. There was something angelic about her that captivated him. She held a blood-red drink in one hand and twisted at her hair with the other, weaving the silky strands around slender fingers.

His eyes were drawn to her chest just before he answered her, then he quickly darted his eyes up to her face, hoping she hadn't noticed.

"Me? No. Not waitin' for anyone," Otom said.

"I like your colors," she said smiling. "Are those from the Isola region?"

"Yeah." Otom scratched his head nonchalantly. He was still wearing his Skada from the activities before the tournament. The uniform was purple with golden trim on it. "You must know 'bout the tournament, then."

"You could say that," said the girl. "My name's Allura Finny."

"Pretty name."

"Thanks! You're wearing tournament colors and wrist wraps and that means you're a fighter. I love fighters."

"Yeah. I'm Otom Aldenburg."

She popped out of view for a second and then came around to stand at his booth. She wore fur boots that came to her knees and a blue dress that fell just above them. The material was very, very fine as far as Otom could tell. _Some rich person's daughter, maybe?_ She would be alright in the warmth of this tavern, but once she stepped outside into the freezing dusk she'd have to bundle up.

"How old are you?" she asked.

Otom thought about lying, but decided against it. "Sixteen," he said.

She whistled. "That's young to be fighting in the Kilgaan tourney isn't it? Could have a good beard on ya for sixteen, though. If you let it grow out, ya know?"

"I shaved it close so I could fight. We grow 'em big up in the north, though." Otom shrugged coolly. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen. But I'm not fighting. Some girls do though, right?"

"Yeah," said Otom. "Seen a few." He adjusted himself in his seat so he could face her better.

"Can you see me in the arena?" Allura giggled. She made some mock punching gestures, sloshing her drink a little too hard.

Otom could think of nothing more exciting, but the second he opened his mouth to attempt to say something witty, a man walked up to his table.

"Making friends, I see," the man said. He was a few fingers taller than Otom, and he stood like a fighter. His forearms were layered with muscles and he carried himself in a relaxed manner that said he was ready to move in any direction at any moment.

"Ris!" said Allura, throwing her arms around him. "You found me!"

_He's too old for Allura,_ Otom thought, desperately. _Maybe he's her brother._

"Course I found you. Name's Ris," the large man said, extending his hand to Otom with Allura still clinging to him.

"I gathered," Otom said, taking the grip and squeezing pretty hard. It was actually fairly even. "I'm Otom from Pakken."

"Isola region," Ris said. "Some good fighters come outta there."

Otom nodded, making sure not to say the first dumb thing that came into his head.

"He's young, dontcha think, Ris?" Allura asked.

Otom was indeed young to be fighting in the Kilgaan Tournament. The tournament was organized into weight groups, with Otom fighting in the thirty-stone group. He wasn't sure if there was another sixteen year old in the tournament. He had come to this tavern after weighing-in at the arena. He hadn't noticed Ris at the weigh-in, but his head had been full of sights and sounds.

"Tournaments are organized to shit up here," said Ris, moving his hand dangerously close to Allura's hip. "Had to rush to the weigh-in. Almost didn't make it. You knew about this weigh-in bullshit, Otom?"

"Yeah," Otom said. "It was in the rules."

Ris shook his head. "Times used to be you'd trust a man when he told you how much he weighed. Could eyeball it, ya know? Now they got these 'stone' weights goin' on. Must be some Northern Kingdom measurement. We don't have it in Marshanti."

"How did they pick the stone to use?" Allura asked in mock jest.

"See, that's what I mean," Ris said, taking the question entirely too seriously for Otom's taste. "It's arbitrary. Can't even see any fuckin' stones under all this snow. You northmen have an advantage up here. Come fight in the south. You'll sweat to death!" Ris laughed. "It's so cold up here that my nuts are in my stomach!"

Allura laughed. "Hardly!" she said.

Otom's heart sank. That wasn't the sort of thing you said in front of your sister, and not your typical sister-response. Otom's hopes for anything involving Allura began to dwindle. She had her strong man here, she didn't need Otom. But she had walked over to him...

"-fighting in the thirty-two stone weight, just barely," Ris was saying.

Otom was about to respond, but was cut off.

"Do we really have to talk fighting all night?" Allura pleaded with Ris. She turned to Otom. "He loves to talk about fighting. He'll go on and on and on if you let him."

"I thought you liked fighting," Otom replied.

"Like to watch. Like to touch. Don't like to talk." She took a sip of her drink and then raised the glass a bit higher into the air. "This tastes fantastic!"

"What did you get, Lura?" Ris asked.

"Some kind of cherry... snow cherry something or other. I don't even know."

"Otom, you don't have anything to drink," Ris said.

"I don't drink the week before a tournament."

That was apparently Ris's invitation to sit down in the booth. "You know what?" he said. "I don't either. Some of these brawlers'll drink themselves all to shit and when they fight the next day they lock up. Muscles won't work. You hear their breath all raspy and you can hear their tongues smackin' in their mouths."

Otom knew. He had fought against men like that. He nodded.

"You're built," Ris said. "And you got a good head on your shoulders, Otom." He lowered his voice to a whisper as if he were divulging a great secret. "These men that fight with weapons... swords, you know. Shields. What if your sword is on the ground, man? What if your shield gets stuck in... stuck in a fuckin' tree? Ya gotta know how to defend yourself with _nothing_. Ya gotta know how to fight naked."

"Riiiiis," sang Allura. "Don't go into this, please. You'd do everything naked if you could. I need another one of these," she said, staring into her mostly empty glass.

"Cuz there are bad men out there," Ris continued. "You know the kind. A knife's just a tool. It's not pure. If ya can't brain someone with your bare hands, what kinda man are you?" Passion shone in his eyes and he seemed to be awaiting a response, but Otom was busy watching Allura walk away. She had a way of moving through the crowd that almost looked like a dance. She dodged drunken patrons and serving girls with ease, swishing the hem of her dress from side to side.

"Who did you study under?" Ris asked, undaunted by Otom's lack of participation. Otom noticed how much deeper Ris's voice was than his own.

"I call him Silence," Otom said. "He doesn't talk at all during training. And he's completely blind."

Ris leaned forward and squinted. "You're shittin' me."

"No I'm not," Otom said, not knowing what else to say.

It took a moment for Ris to absorb the weird information. "Huh," he said, leaning back against the booth divider. "I trained under a man named Screaming Grizzly. Probably a much different method of teaching."

"Lots of yelling, I'm sure," Otom said.

"Gotta have a war cry. Gets the blood up, ya know?" Ris slapped his hand hard on the table. Otom was embarrassed that he jumped a little at the sound. "If you can't get angry, how are you supposed to throttle some guy?"

Allura was back with another sloshing snow-cherry-something-or-other. "It's all ale down where we come from," she complained. "Ale, ale, ale." She took a long, healthy swallow of her drink and then looked through the side of the glass at it. "I thought I ordered a full one!" she exclaimed, then plopped herself down next to Ris.

"Did your master come with you?" Ris asked Otom. "Silence?"

"No," Otom said. "Made the journey myself. Pakken isn't that far away."

"It's gotta be thirty bands at least, Otom!" Allura said with wide eyes. "You rode all that way? You didn't freeze to death?"

Otom shrugged. "Didn't ride. Walked. I grew up in the north. My dad says we're almost immune to the cold."

"No one is immune to nature," Ris said, a serious look on his face. "Nature is the greatest adversary of the naked fighter."

Otom couldn't tell if that was a joke or not, so he half-smiled.

Ris was waving to someone across the tavern now. "Hey," he said turning back to Otom. "Some friends from Marshanti just tracked me down. 'Lura, we gotta go mingle, ya know? My advice to you Otom: get into the camaraderie of the whole thing. Meet people. Get to know your fellow fighters."

Ris pushed Allura out of the booth firmly enough to miff Otom, but gently enough that he didn't say anything about it.

"Bye Otom," she said. "It was nice to meetchoo, even if't was brief." Her words were slurred ever so slightly. She couldn't have weighed more than seventeen stone, and those snow-cherry-something-or-others were probably pretty strong.

"See ya, Aldenburg," Ris said, grabbing Allura's wrist and tugging her off towards whomever he had waved at.

Otom wasn't sure if he liked Ris. There was something very weird lying just below the surface of that man. He didn't think he'd ever met anybody like Ris before, but he decided to put his mind squarely on the tournament now that Allura was out of sight.

But Ris had called him "Aldenburg". Ris hadn't been there when he had told Allura his last name. Something sank in the pit of Otom's stomach. He had been scouted. He'd heard of it happening. _I'm in over my head._

Ris now knew Otom's region, town, age. Small facts, but then...

Otom had divulged his master without thinking. If Ris knew the styles he could counter them.

He had let Ris watch him jump at the slap of his hand on the table. They had shaken hands. The strength of his grip. The man had been feeling him out.

And what did he know about Ris? Nothing, really. He couldn't know if he was really from Marshanti, or if his name was really Ris, or even if he studied under a master named Screaming Grizzly. It sounded like a dumb, made-up name now that Otom thought about it.

He knew Ris would be in his weight group, regardless of what he had said about fighting in the thirty-two stone group. That was probably a lie, too.

Otom had been so off guard the whole time, gawking at Allura and her beautiful face.

And that's when it really hit him. It hurt to think that maybe the blond-haired angel had been a planned distraction, and that she had been in on the whole operation.

"Get to know your fellow fighters, indeed," muttered Otom. He laid his head in his arms and tried to shut out the world.

-3-

The hard-packed dirt came up to meet Otom's back, but he spun his legs in the air and regained his footing almost immediately. Ris was on him, rushing up to greet him with a large open palm slap to the side of the head. Otom barely got his arm up in time to even half-block the blow and then Ris danced into another combination.

Fists flew quicker than Otom had ever encountered, coming in so many places that he had to concentrate entirely on blocking rather than launching an attack of his own. He blocked his neck, stomach, shoulder, other shoulder, jaw, and somehow - through a miracle of reflex - his groin. All of that had happened in the space of a few heartbeats.

Otom felt blood trickle down his face. The fist wraps they were forced to wear would protect against the worst of it, but he still got cut up while fighting, skin splitting from impact.

The crowd roared around them making it hard for Otom to hear. Hearing the scrape of a foot on the dirt could mean the difference between blocking a kick and never seeing it coming.

His master had taught him to listen; always listen. Listening in combat had been the core of his training. Silence's students had been required to block punches while blindfolded and to be able to hear the sound of a piece of straw being dropped into snow.

Silence once said that a man gained more from one minute of listening than he did from an hour of talking. Otom had forgotten that lesson, and now he was fighting Ris in the semi-finals and having a bad time of it.

The Arena was ablaze with sound and heat and Otom couldn't imagine fighting like this in the south. It was near freezing outside, but in the ring he was sweating, breath coming from him in white clouds. Ris had been right: Otom would have passed out long ago in Marshanti's warmer climate.

Otom swept his foot down to the ground, but Ris jumped over it, slamming a fist directly toward the side of Otom's head. The blow connected with his ear, sending a jolt of pain through his head. The impact made him shudder and he scampered back to a position of safety. He faced Ris with his hands out in front of him.

_He's going for my ears._ One was already ringing from the barely deflected open-hand slap and now the other one felt like it was filled up with liquid. _More blood_ , he realized morbidly.

But Ris would have known those moves wouldn't matter in a strategic sense. Otom couldn't hear over the frenzy of the screaming crowd anyway. This was a morale tactic.

Otom opened his mouth and let out a scream. His voice wasn't deep like Ris's, but it was powerful. The crowd reacted to the energy of the youngest fighter in the tournament, filling the arena with even thicker noise.

Otom charged at Ris, not sure what to do, but knowing, deep down in his gut, that he had already lost. _Am I simply getting it over with?_ Right out of the gate Ris had been faster, stronger, and better prepared. He had come at Otom with a frightening level of aggression. It had made his muscles feel weaker just to see Ris's face.

The two fighters came together with a smack that was lost in the roar of the crowd and then, as Otom struggled and twisted, Ris was on top of him on the ground.

All fights end on the ground.

Ris tucked his head right up next to Otom's, the man's legs and arms curled around the boy and Otom could swear he felt nine or ten limbs instead of just four. It was some hold he didn't know, and didn't care to know. Ris hissed in his ear, "War cries are my thing, Aldenburg. So's fuckin' Allura."

Otom struggled underneath. The darkness of Ris's hair blocked his vision and turned the world black, but he could see silver stars crawling across that blackness. The pressure Ris was putting on him was immense. He felt like he was trapped under a boulder, all his limbs bending in amazingly painful ways, his chest unable to draw breath.

Otom tapped his hand against some part of Ris's body to signal that he was finished.

Ris had won this fight.

-4-

S _ilence hadn't wanted me to come._

That was what kept repeating itself in the back of Otom's head. This tournament was too large, this tournament was too skilled. The crowd was too large and loud. It was more of a brawl than a technique fight.

Silence had known, and Silence had tried to warn Otom, but Otom hadn't listened. That's why he had made the journey alone: Silence had refused to go with him. Otom's master had set the whole thing up, but had refused to go along. If he had thought that might have deterred Otom he had been wrong.

"If he just would have come," Otom said to himself as he slammed his belongings into his pack one by one. His small room atop The Fool's Heart Tavern was just barely big enough to hold him and his things, but rooms were scarce during the tournament so he had taken what he could get. "He could have helped me. He could have done... something... " Otom trailed off. His ear was leaking blood again. Not too painful, but there it was: some kind of damage that would have to be seen to. His other cuts were healing nicely and his bruises had faded a little with the help of some packed snow, but that ear had something wrong with it.

"Well, dammit!" Otom yelled in a frenzy. He was probably bleeding all over his wolf-skin coat. He didn't even check the room to see if he'd left anything as he slung his pack over his back. He took off down the stairs determined to get as far away from Kilgaan as he could before anyone looked at him or, God forbid, talked to him.

He threw some coins on the bar, being sure to leave a little extra because he was certain he had bled on _something_ , and he pushed through the front door and into the rising light of the morning.

The worst part was the fact that in the two days since he had met Allura he hadn't stopped thinking about her. His anger could not outweigh his attraction to her and he punished himself repeatedly in his head for it. _Don't be such a stupid fool. You'll never see her again_.

Otom checked the position of the sun and started to trudge southeast towards Pakken. It would be a few days of walking, but it was spring here and the wind couldn't get at him inside his furs.

Hurried footfalls behind him made him stop and turn his head. It was early for most people to be up yet.

Allura was running towards him.

His first instinct was to run towards her, his second was to run away. He did neither.

"Otom, please!" she yelled, still a good distance away. Her boots were slapping the hard-packed ground, the sound was naked and alone in the morning world.

He turned and began trudging sullenly away from The Fool's Heart Tavern and Allura Finny.

A tense moment passed where Otom fought with himself. He didn't know what to do or how to handle this. What could she want? Could she want him? No, certainly not. She was coming to rub it in. Even though Ris had lost in the finals, he'd gotten to pound Otom.

Otom sighed.

It might have been the beauty of the morning \- crystal skies under a reassuring sun - or it might have been that he caught the smell of her on the wind - clean and perfect - but whatever the reason, Otom stopped walking.

She ran up behind him and stopped a few fingers away, panting. He didn't turn his head to look at her, instead deciding to stare into the sun. It hurt his eyes but he didn't care; he couldn't catch a glimpse of her this way.

"I just want you to know," she said, "that I wasn't scouting with Ris. I tried to get him to stop talking. I tried to get him to shut up and leave you alone, but he's a maniac about that type of thing. If he doesn't know a majority of the fighters in a tourney, or enough about them, sometimes he'll cancel out."

"That's dumb and your boyfriend is an idiot," Otom said nonchalantly, hoping to anger Allura with his bluntness, but hoping at the same time that she wouldn't stalk off mad. Just having her near to him sent a tingle through his body.

"I know it's dumb," she said. "Please. Don't think I'm involved in it. I saw you sitting there with your wraps and Skada on and I knew you were giving yourself away too easily, but before I got around to warning you, Ris came. Is that how you pronounce it? Skahhdahhhhh?"

"Close enough."

"We're not even from Marshanti," Allura said.

"I don't care where you're from," Otom said. "All I know is that Ris doesn't play fair and you like him. I don't even know why you're wasting time talking to me." He started walking away, trying to will his feet to turn around, trying to force his mouth to say something - anything - that would bring Allura to him. But he couldn't. A part of his brain was holding him back, keeping him stubbornly on his path out of the city.

He pulled his hood tight around his head just as Allura yelled something behind him, but the comment was lost in the wind, fur, and his injured ear.

The battered fighter walked. He assured himself for the thousandth time that he would never see her again.

He would be wrong about that.

-5-

Present Day

Otom sighed and turned his back to The Frost Bear, even though to him it would always be The Fool's Heart Tavern. His head hung heavy with memories and wishes. Wishes that perhaps he could go back to that day and turn to Allura and start things then and there. Start things on the right foot, instead of how their relationship would eventually blossom.

But there was no going back now. The sights and sounds of Kilgaan hung on him like a yoke as he walked toward the gate, the same one he had passed through fourteen years ago.

With every step he took he hoped that her footsteps would crunch behind him in some sort of weird dream moment. Somehow God would bring her back here, transport Otom back in time, or some other equally ridiculous thing. It was a fantasy. If he did somehow truly relive that moment right now - the perfect morning, that tragic girl - the emotions would crush his heart and snuff out his soul.

She had eventually told him what she had yelled to him that morning. He almost whispered it now, just under his breath. It was a phrase that had stuck in his mind for so many years, despite its maddening implications. He wanted to whisper it, to bring a piece of her back to him...

No. His Vow of Silence held him.

He would not speak today.

Sometimes it was less painful to be silent and alone.

# Chapter 8

### Murder

-1-

Her room was alive with light and the beams bounced and jostled as Domma poured the last heavy metal pail of water into her bath. Steam rose from it as she let her robe drop, stripped her shift off, and then took a hand at unwinding her bandages.

She gripped the edge of the tub and stepped gingerly into the hot water. Her room's eastern view let the sun stream in at this time of day and she could hear the sounds of the city through the open window. She smelled bread from the bakery just down the street.

It had been five days since she had seen Ormon Stipson, but it wasn't him that kept popping into her mind: it was Warden Potter. The life of a Cleric could be incredibly frustrating sometimes and it wasn't always easy to be so constrained. With her chest bound and her full robe on, Cleric Domma couldn't be seen for who she really was. That was part of the uniform. But deep inside of her something burned, as she was convinced it did in everyone.

Sometimes, even at the expense of heresy, it was good to acknowledge that she was a woman.

She let her hands - and an image of Warden Potter - remind her of that fact.

-2-

An hour later, Domma stood in front of her congregation. The sanctuary was lined with full-length stained glass windows and sun poured through them. Rainbows danced on wood and stone.

"It isn't enough to _want_ to be good," she said, her voice carrying through the massive hall. "You must actually _be_ good. To God, and in fact to all of us, actions speak louder than words."

She saw someone in the congregation nodding. _Always a good sign._

"If we are good, we will be rewarded. The Five-in-one will judge us, deem us worthy, and we will transcend. The passage we just read - the one with Gustus and his followers - reminds us that no one is above that judgment, not even a son of God."

Domma ran her hand down the smooth page of The Book that sat on the podium in front of her. She had translated this one herself and hours upon hours of her recovery had been spent writing the characters that filled it. This Book had given her life meaning when she had hit a dead end. Her Devotee powers had come at the completion of it. She hadn't truly expected that, but she certainly had hoped for it.

"No one wants to be Gustus," she said, looking up with a half-smile. "Reborn on another world devoid of God, devoid of all that is good. Here we have families. Love. Compassion. We sing in harmony with each other not only in the flesh, but beyond into the spirit as well. Please join me in singing 'The Soul's Walk'."

As Domma's voice rose, the others in the congregation picked up on it and began to sing the familiar tune. The sanctuary echoed with a hundred voices and, as she sang, Domma lit the tall candles that would burn for seven days. Today was the fifteenth of Aphril, and it was the start of a new year for the Sunburst Clerics.

The last notes of the song faded away and Domma walked back to the podium.

"I want to thank everyone for praying with us here at the Sunburst Temple for the past few hours. Remember that faith in God is seldom rewarded directly, but certainly never punished. Your time could not be spent more wisely than to follow the teachings of The Book."

With that, Domma raised the hood of her robe and strode down the tall steps, away the tall platform she preached from. She felt her magical power grow and fill her as it always did after leading others in prayer.

She felt refreshed and ready to take on anything.

-3-

Domma heard a light knock on the door of her study not ten minutes later. She sat at her small desk where she read The Book and took notes for her sermons. She had a quill in her hand already because she found that if she procrastinated she would rush out next week's sermon too hastily. Even if she wrote one sentence she at least had a start on it, and that made it easier to finish.

"Come in," she said, inserting the quill into her half-empty bottle of black ink.

Her study served as many things: sleeping quarters, bath, office, and meeting room. This could be someone coming to talk about the sermon. Sometimes that happened. She always welcomed it when it did.

The woman that opened the door and entered was mousy, short, and nervous looking, although Domma perceived - by the lines on the woman's face and the way she walked - that nervousness was her natural state. There was nothing out of the ordinary going on here. But, just to make sure, she Delved quickly, using a tiny portion of the power she had gained from leading mass.

Gzzt.

"Muriel?" Domma asked, not rising from her small desk. She steepled her hands in front of her, waiting for a response from the nervous woman.

"She said you would likely know my name," the woman said. Her voice suited her well.

"Another Cleric said this?" Domma asked.

"Yes. She said you were the best."

"Well," Domma said, "I've been told that I'm good at what I do. But there really is no 'best'. I excel at the things God has blessed me with." Domma gestured to the chair opposite her and Muriel sidled over to it, examined it, and sat down in a different chair.

"It's about the sermon."

"It can be a confusing passage," Domma said.

"Why did God banish his son? How could he do it?"

"To the point," Domma said, raising her brow. "I like that. Let's not tiptoe, then." _Gzzt._ Bakery. "You say 'God's son', but in the things Gustus did, and the pride that he had, you should refer to him God's failed son. If God and Gustus were both bakers... do you know about baking?"

Muriel nodded.

_Yes, I knew you would._ "Right, then," Domma said. "If God and Gustus were bakers and Gustus decided to take that knowledge and open up his own shop, his bread would never compare to God's."

Muriel nodded. "But his shop would still exist," she said, tilting her head slightly.

"For a time," said Domma. "He may be able to fool passersby that his fare was worthwhile, but while he was selling flawed bread, God would be giving away the perfect loaf for free. The only problem with God's shop is that it's hidden away where it's very, very difficult to find. Perhaps Gustus's shop is right out in the open with a tacky sign painted in blood: bread - three oplates. That's a high price for mediocre bread. Do you understand what I mean?"

"There's another world somewhere?" Muriel asked.

"Yes," Domma agreed. "But you might not want to go there. The Book is not without its mystery. There are meanings wrapped in meanings wrapped in meanings. But the important tenets are very simple: God is above all. Gustus failed. We are, all of us, being judged."

"I am... struggling with these beliefs." She was agitated still.

"We all do. That is why God hides his shop away. He doesn't want people to find it unless they _really_ like bread."

Muriel smirked at this. "Once everyone finds it, Gustus's business will dry up completely. I would feel bad for him."

"As would God," said Domma. "Correction. As _does_ God."

"I haven't been coming to the Temple long," Muriel said. "Only the past few weeks or so. My son... was taken from me about a year ago... and I needed something. I was hoping that this could be it."

Domma nodded. "I am sorry. It is sometimes impossible to explain why certain things happen, no matter how deeply we believe. We can usually look only for solace. It is rare that we find explanations."

Muriel nodded slowly and sadly. "The story of Gustus, well, I'd heard of it. But to banish your own son... it struck a chord with me and I don't understand how God could..."

"He is not a mother," Domma said, laying her hand on Muriel's. It was the first wrong move she had made in a long time.

"Neither are you, Cleric," Muriel said. The woman stood up and walked away. She turned her head just before she left. "And I have to say that I don't much care to follow a deity who would treat his family like that." Then she exited without closing the door.

Domma sat thinking. _Muriel has some sort of point. I will have to think on it._

While she sat, debating whether or not to start her sermon off on a note that would address what Muriel had said, another Cleric walked in.

Her name was Metta. She was young and new to the Temple. She had beautiful blond hair that Domma was jealous of. The rest of Metta was rather unremarkable, but that hair shone when the sun hit it.

"Metta."

"Domma," she said in her light way. Her lips were pursed as if she were troubled. "Are you busy?"

Domma glanced down at the parchment she had started writing on. So far she had written just one sentence, but she supposed that was her start. "Nothing that can't wait."

"They need you down at the fourth district hospital."

"Need me? Usually that's a voluntary thing." Something was amiss. She Delved Metta, but nothing she gleaned was useful.

"Someone named Ormon Stipson is dead," Metta said. "Murdered. A Warden came to the Temple to try and give you the message while you were in mass."

Domma stood up slowly. Sadness rang through her. "It could be suicide," she said. "Sometimes these patients talk to me about it. Ormon didn't specifically, but..."

Metta shook her head and her blond hair - which was always to be tied back during prayer and holy hours - bounced from side to side. "Not the way they found him, I guess. Doesn't look like it, anyway."

Domma grabbed her holy symbol from the wall \- a replica of God's shield inset with tiny gems - and put it around her neck. She didn't always wear it, but in times like this it gave her courage and made her feel safe. "I'm on my way," she said. "Which Warden told you of this?"

"Warden Funary, I think he said his name was. I didn't really recognize him. I think he's relatively new to that hospital."

"Alright," Domma said. "Pray for Ormon and myself. We will both, I think, need it."

"I will," Metta said.

Domma ran out of her room, through the giant doors of the Temple, and out into the hot and humid day.

-4-

Ormon's arms and legs were chained to the four corners of his bed and most of his head was gone. A good portion of his skull was simply missing. The place where his head injury had been didn't even really exist anymore. Brains had leaked out the side and been smeared on the filthy bed. There was blood everywhere.

"Could be an axe wound," Warden Funary said. He was pacing nervously back and forth. He was obviously made of tougher stuff than Domma, for she had already vomited twice: once just after she had entered the room and once again after she had removed the sheet that had covered Ormon's body.

"Didn't you hear him screaming?" Domma asked. "God's Shield, Funary, someone chained him up and hacked his head apart." She winced at her own words.

"He was chained for his own safety before this all happened," Funary said. "I did it myself. He was having fits, Domma. My quarters are far from Ormon's and this straw on the walls absorbs sound. Honestly it's one of the reasons we put it there in the first place. Men like this can pitch a fit at all hours of the night."

"Shouldn't you want to attend them, then?"

"If we attended to everyone who was pitching a fit we'd get no sleep, Cleric. You must understand this."

Warden Potter burst into the room. "My God! Ormon!" He clapped his hand to his mouth, his eyes wide. "I came as soon as I heard! Funary, what happened here!?"

"I don't know," the newer Warden moaned.

"And on your watch?" Potter said. "You need to leave this room. Your first week has not been kind to you." Potter was wringing his hands. "Go home for the evening. I will do what I can here."

Funary backed slowly out the door.

_Probably his first and last week,_ Domma thought.

"I never asked for help here," Potter said. "Not once. But they sent me that idiot who can't keep my patients from being murdered!" He was angrier than Domma had ever seen him, a fire radiating from his eyes.

"We need to bring the Guard in on this before it happens again, Potter."

Potter scoffed at the idea. "These people aren't even considered citizens, Domma. If you truly believe the Guard will give a shit about this, you're delusional." He visibly calmed himself. "My apologies, Domma. My tongue is... too free sometimes."

Domma didn't mind Potter's anger, what concerned her was that he was right. The Guard was spread thin enough as it was. They had no interest in the murder of a mentally ill person. The hospitals _had_ been partially funded by King Maxton about ten years ago, but that didn't mean they had the full support of everyone in the kingdom. If she made a plea to the king would he send a Kingsguardian to follow up? _Probably not._ But Domma had met the king once and he had seemed nice.

Of course, even if someone did come, and did care, what difference would it make? The Guard weren't detectives, they were muscle, and Domma wasn't sure most of them could even count to ten let alone solve a murder. There was no arrest to be made here.

"I might be able to use my Devotee magic on... his corpse," Domma said.

Potter held up his hands defensively. "I know so little of that magic. If you think it will help you may try. Oh," Potter moaned. "Ormon reminded me of myself when I was younger. Energetic, hopeful, scared. I wanted to... to help him."

Domma cocked her head. "When you were younger? You're in your thirties, Potter. You talk as if you're seventy."

"But this job wears on me," he said. "Some of my hair is graying."

Domma had a powerful urge to touch his stubbly head, but she quelled it and focused on the task at hand. Her gaze fell back onto Ormon who she had talked with only five days ago. Something was odd about the grizzly scene.

"That part of his head is missing," she noted.

"Yes," Potter said, seeming unimpressed.

"No," said Domma. "I mean it's _missing_. There should be a chunk of... of his head somewhere. Who would chop it off and take it? Shouldn't there be a blood trail to the door?" She shuddered. "While I work on him you need to check the other patients' rooms."

"Alright. We've only got about twenty others here right now. Pox claimed a few of my weaker patients and other than that we've just been lucky not to get too many injured people coming in. It won't take me long."

"Search empty rooms, too," Domma said.

Potter ran to the door and then turned around. "You don't think Funary could have done it, do you?"

"He murdered Ormon and then came to get me?" Domma asked.

"Riiight," Potter said. Then he left.

Domma delved into Ormon's mind, or what was left of it.

It was disastrous inside.

For the most part Delving was extremely random. Domma had learned long ago to simply let the information flow into her, rather than to try and look for specific things. Ormon's mind no longer danced like a living person's, however. His thoughts were still there, not yet taken by time and decay, but it was as if they were suspended in a thick sea.

Memories jutted out like shards of glass, fragmented and strange. Some thoughts went down shattered paths to dead ends, others looped around in an impossible pattern. The remnants of Ormon's brain housed a bloody sea of driftwood ideas.

_Maybe something will rise to the surface_ , Domma thought as she sifted.

She Delved hard, expending the greatest amount of power near the area where she had just recently worked. Something was wrong there. She remembered the tangled mess she had run into those five days ago and that's when it struck her. The area of Ormon's brain upon which she had worked her influence was missing. Had it been specifically targeted, or was it coincidence?

But the murderer had _taken_ it. Away. There was a void around that area both physically and mentally. A word floated close to the edge of that void. The word glowed a harsh white in her mind. Now that she had seen it once she saw it repeated a thousand times as if it had collected at the edge of that mind-sea, swept by a tide to the shore.

FOGLIN

Domma's stomach sank.

"Did you find anything?" Potter asked, startling Domma.

"No," she said weakly, not knowing why she lied.

"Me neither," he said. "Alright. What next?"

-5-

Domma and Potter sat in a shabby room at the hospital. They had been talking for at least an hour and Domma was exhausted.

"I have a small cleaning staff sometimes," Potter said, his head resting in his hands. "Funary was a new addition and certainly _not_ my idea. Other than that it's just the patients. Usually I'm one man trying to do the work of five."

"This still makes no sense at all," Domma said. "I really need to pray for guidance on this."

She hadn't told Potter the word she had seen in Ormon's mind. It had shaken her to her core to see such a powerful statement, and Domma's instincts - on which she heavily relied - told her that now was not the time to bring it up. Domma didn't want to believe that Foglins were real. She knew about the Vaporgaard, but had never really needed to know about what they did or why. Foglins were things that you heard about in whispers, not something you found shouted out in the mind of a dead Haroman man.

"I don't know what the next step is," she admitted. "I think all that is left may be to pray for Ormon and bury his body. I can help you with that."

"Domma," Potter said, "I can't thank you enough for your help. Having you here in my life is such a reassurance. This isn't the best time to speak of this... but there is never going to be a right time."

"Then let's not speak of-"

"Let me," Potter said. "You and I have worked on and off for years here and... there aren't many that bother thinking about these people, let alone someone who will come here and sit with them as they rave. You are one of the most caring people I have ever met." He leaned forward and met her eyes. Domma braced herself for what she knew was coming. She thought about standing up to break his gaze, but couldn't bring herself to. "I don't know the rules of the Clerics, but I do know I would like to see more of you. My devotion to these people allows me little rest and even less solace, but I think I could find the time. Religion is, I must admit, much of a dead end for me. But you... you are not. You represent things that I have given up on, and have been meaning to rekindle."

"The Clerics are strict on relationships," Domma said, falling back on rote instead of what she actually wanted to say. She began to sweat. "There can be nothing between us, but I am sure you suspected that."

Potter's face fell. And it truly hurt Domma. "I did suspect," he said. "There is no one else in my life. My heart aches. I don't know what to say. Words fail me." He stopped and sighed heavily. "I feel foolish."

Using her magic on Ormon had left Domma drained of power. She was alone in this conflict, unable to Delve for guidance.

"We can never be more than friends," she said, but she definitely did not feel the conviction in her words. Her mind echoed the truth. _This could work. This could really work._ "If we pray together, perhaps some of your feelings will abate. God can sort this out."

"I doubt it," said Potter. "But He's welcome to try. Shall we hold hands while we pray?"

Domma smirked. "I seriously doubt that would be a good idea."

-6-

P _ozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ninnnnnnnnnn_

"He has feelings for me, Lord. And I think I have feelings for him. This is very, very bad."

No response.

"I don't know what to do about Ormon, either. He was dead with Foglins on his mind. They did this to him. Whatever they are. However they got here. I don't want to believe they are real. I don't want to have to believe in nightmares."

Warrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr warrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

"Yes," she agreed. "The Warden is a problem."

Her power ran out then.

"I can't handle this alone," she said to the air. "I must confide in another sister."

She knew who it would be.

# Chapter 9

### The Thief

-1-

Ti'Shed hadn't come out of his room since the person with the red-sheathed sword had showed up at the door. It had taken Krothair only four days to eat all the food in the house. He was looking through the cupboards when he realized he would have to go buy something to eat.

"Alright, Krothair. This is weird, but what else are you supposed to do?" he muttered to himself as he gathered a few things from around the house: a cloak, his sword, a small pouch filled with coins. This last item he had found stashed away. There were enough crumpled crown notes and silver oplates in it to buy provisions for quite some time.

Krothair had already used some of those coins a few days ago to stable his horse nearby. He figured that was probably what Ti'Shed would have done, so he did it himself. It had been a relatively short excursion because there was a stable right near the house. No one had asked after Ti'Shed and Krothair hadn't said 'Isn't it odd that my sword master won't come out of his room?'

He'd had no visitors in the past four days.

Krothair had knocked on the door several times, both times he got a muffled yelled as a response. So Ti'Shed was alive, but angry, telling Krothair to go away. That was fine for now.

Krothair was quite used to taking care of himself, so there was at least that familiar aspect to this situation. But everything else was awkward and beyond his understanding. He was technically still apprenticed to Ti'Shed and the old man was still his master. That relationship would not change until Ti'Shed said otherwise. And it was hard to say otherwise when you barricaded yourself in a bedroom.

_I should probably just go into his room, despite his protests_.

That thought had occurred to him a few days ago as well, but Krothair had been incredibly intimidated and overawed by Ti'Shed for the brief moments he had known him. If the sword master wanted to come out, he would come out. It even lingered in Krothair's mind that this might be another test, but he was beginning to doubt that.

Something had happened that first night, and Krothair couldn't understand exactly what. What could that sword have meant to the old man?

He opened the door and immediately a wave of city air hit him. He wasn't used to the smells yet, that was for certain. He blinked his eyes at the morning sun. He tried to smooth out his hair, but it had always been a bit unruly so it refused to comply.

He began to wander the wide streets of Haroma with the intention of finding some food, but found he couldn't help being distracted by the sights. When he'd been on his way to Ti'Shed's his nerves hadn't afforded him the chance to look around, but now his eyes couldn't stop wandering.

The morning was foggy as the sun hadn't quite had enough time to clear it, but that gave everything a mystical look. The cathedral that loomed large in the distance was a stunning monument to religion. Krothair admired the design and realized that it had been built so that when the sun was at just the right level the giant window halfway up the front face - which was shaped like a gigantic sun - would catch the light and splash it everywhere. The effect was starting to happen already.

Krothair walked a bit further and came to a spot where he could really see down onto the city. The buildings were so closely packed that it was hard for him to believe there was any space in between them. Smoke rose in great clouds from some of them. _Probably forges of some sort._ He looked for people gathered in the streets as he felt that this might indicate some sort of a market. He saw bright colors and movement not a tenth of a band from where he stood.

Water splashed him as a noisy cart drove by, swerving to avoid him. Someone's hand gestured at him out the window. "Get outta the way, ya dumbass," shouted the helpful driver. Krothair realized he _was_ standing in the middle of the street gawking at everything.

He shook his head and took a deep breath, making his way back to the edge of the road. He wasn't used to the bustle here, and this wasn't even a busy part of the city from what he could tell.

He took off in the direction of the crowd and when he arrived he found he had been right. Tiny stands lined the street here, packed together so tightly that it was hard to tell where one ended and another began. But they had everything: fruits of all different kinds, dead animals hanging here and there waiting to be cooked up, and fish of course. It was the fish that impressed Krothair the most. Ocean fish were huge. One of the gigantic ocean fish even had a nose that protruded out a few feet, looking sharp and hard as a sword.

_Probably be a better weapon than the one I got right now,_ Krothair thought, glancing down at his sad brand.

He thought about buying the sword-fish. He had enough coins, but he didn't know how he would get it back to Ti'Shed's or what he would do with it once he got it there, so he abandoned that idea and settled for some smaller things that he could fit inside his cloak pockets.

He was thoroughly lost in the crowd and the experience of it all as he gathered his feast. He doled out coins without even thinking that he was spending Ti'Shed's money and soon he'd overdone it, his cloak lumpy and overflowing. He stuffed his shirt and pants pockets as well. It wasn't a terribly long way to Ti'Shed's house, but it would now be a rather uncomfortable walk back.

-2-

He was almost back to Ti'Shed's when he heard it.

"Help!"

The woman's shout came faintly from an alley. Krothair swiveled his head, his heart suddenly thumping. A chunk of the most delicious apple ever was still in his mouth. He swallowed it and strained his ears, listening to make sure he wasn't crazy.

"Someone! Help!"

Something was definitely wrong down that alley. Krothair quickened his pace, cautiously on guard as his boots crunched on the hard-packed dirt.

He saw someone lying on the ground at the back of the alley. Her clothing was dirty and stained. The woman lifted her head up to look at him, her eyes half-shut and her long, red hair spilling in every direction.

Krothair walked ever closer, slowly, slowly. "What's happened to you?" he asked, looking around.

The woman coughed and struggled up onto her knees. "I was robbed and dragged down here. Not sure I can stand up. Could really use your help." She lifted her hand, long fingers extending towards Krothair. "Can you use that sword if they come back?"

Krothair nodded as he glanced behind him. He didn't see any signs of anyone around so he grabbed her hand.

Something happened. The air shifted and her grip twisted in his. Suddenly her hand was around his wrist pulling him down. He tried to catch his balance, but his cloak flung out, heavy with food, and dragged him over. He landed on his sword-side and felt the ground punch a hard apple into his ribs. The woman was moving over him then, spry and powerful. Before Krothair could react she zipped her hand down and grabbed his coin pouch, tearing it loose from his belt with a jerk that made Krothair's hip bob.

He rolled onto his back and sprung to his feet. He drew his sword and pelted after her down the alley. He reached his hand up and untied his cloak, letting it and its tasty cargo drop to the dirt. He could return to it later once he caught this thief.

She was able to keep just ahead of him, her bare feet getting traction where his boots had trouble. Her red hair streamed out behind her, dust flying from it as her feet pummeled the ground. She vaulted over a low railing and Krothair followed her. His toe caught on it as he vaulted and he went down, but turned it into a roll.

When he came up from the roll he found that the woman had stopped running and was standing facing him. Then his world sparkled as a blow connected with the side of his head.

Krothair sank to his knees, this new alleyway suddenly spinning. Apparently city thieving was different from country thieving. He understood the ploy immediately and realized he had been duped.

"You are persistent," said the first woman. "But dumb." She kicked him in the chest, sending him onto his back, his worthless sword falling from his hand and landing with a dull thud on the dirt. "Did these deceive you?" she asked, grabbing her breasts and pushing them up. "Oh no! A damsel in distress!"

Another female voice laughed behind Krothair. "Yeah, yeah," the second woman said, walking slowly around to the front of Krothair. "Don't waste time rubbing it in, Katya. Should we cut just one of his balls off and leave the other? He's kinda cute."

The first woman, Katya, spat in the dirt. "Yeah he is. I was just gonna steal his coins, but he had to be all tough and manful about it. That's rough for him, I guess." A knife appeared in her hand and the second woman jumped on top of Krothair.

He thrashed as best he could, but he was still dizzy, unable to decide what to do. The second woman's body snaked around him, pinning him.

"Cute is only skin deep anyway," Katya said as she moved towards Krothair. "Gotta see what's underneath to know for sure."

"He's got somethin' crunchy in his pocket here," said the second woman, feeling around on Krothair's chest. "Might be more crown notes."

"Don't get greedy," Katya said. But her accomplice had already loosened her grip slightly to dig in Krothair's pocket. He knew what was in there: his Kingsguard paper. The thought that this woman would steal it - or worse yet take it out, find it meaningless, and throw it away - cleared his mind for a brief moment.

He took a deep swift breath and did the hardest, most determined sit-up of his life. His forehead crunched into the side of the second woman's face and he felt her jawbone shatter. She stumbled off of him but then Katya was on him, thrusting her hand, of all places, into his mouth. She used his jaw like a handle and whipped his head back down to the ground.

"Hold still. God, you're strong," she said, actually seeming impressed. Then she straddled him and the knife was back in her hand. "You gonna be alright, Zin?" she yelled to the woman behind her.

There was a very muffled reply from that direction, making Krothair feel good that he had accomplished something. _Probably won't be talking anytime soon._ And then Katya was digging around below Krothair's waist and he really did not like where things were going.

Something swished through the air and Katya flew off Krothair as another shape jumped over him. Krothair righted himself and tried to focus on what was happening. Metal met metal. Katya's small knife was parrying blows from a much longer blade. She was totally silent as they rained down on her, concentrating hard to block and parry every single one.

Krothair watched in awe as Ti'Shed whirled and swiveled, using sophisticated forms and complex motions.

And suddenly Katya was gone, disappearing in a whirl of dust around a corner.

Strong hands gripped Krothair and hauled him up from the ground.

"Damn fool of a country boy," Ti'Shed hissed in his ear.

The sword master slung Krothair over his shoulder and hauled him back home.

-3-

"My sword's back there," Krothair said quietly.

"Your gonads could be back there, too," Ti'Shed said. The sword master looked terribly haggard. He was dirty and seemed tired, his face streaked where he had been crying. "That sword was garbage anyway." He had a different look in his eyes now, separate from the crying.

Krothair sat weakly in a chair, still struggling to regain his thoughts.

"We should begin our training today," said Ti'Shed with a cock of his head. "And we need to work on more than I thought. You are too new to the city."

"I just thought she needed help."

"And she wanted you to think that."

Krothair exhaled. "I failed."

"Failure only comes from a fair fight. You need training. We start today."

Krothair thought for a moment. "When I first arrived here you told me honesty is the best policy."

"It is," Ti'Shed said.

"You sulk in your room for four days and then I almost get gelded and now it's back to business as usual? I want an honest explanation."

A dangerous look swam behind Ti'Shed's eyes. They hardened into slits. His powerful hands twisted into Krothair's shirt and his face drew very, very near. "I understand what you have just gone through," he said. "But do not presume you are entitled to know anything of my affairs. My _sulking_." He bit the words off with a tone that warned Krothair not to go down that path ever again. The sword master backed off then and covered his face with his hands, his mood changing swiftly. "I fear something inside of me has broken," he said through his palms. "If you wish to continue with me, it will not be easy. It might be better if you were taught by someone else."

"No," Krothair said, and found that he meant it. "Not after I saw you in that alley. You were blurry to me, but I saw the skill of your strikes."

Ti'Shed still spoke through his palms. "I had to be fast to fight a Servitor like that. A woman Servitor." Ti'Shed squinted. "Never heard of such a thing."

"What's a Servitor?" Krothair asked.

"It is one who possesses the magic of service. Don't they have knowledge of these things in the country? Their powers are physical skill enhancements, near-endless stamina. A dangerous, dangerous enemy to have made. And a woman to boot."

"She's not too keen on men," said Krothair.

Ti'Shed nodded and lowered his hands. "I have to get clean," he said indicating his clothes and body in general.

"Me too," Krothair said. Katya's touch was still on him.

But she was a Servitor. There's a term I've not heard of. How to I get to be that? Maybe, if I was a Servitor, I could be on the Kingsguard!

Something occurred to him. The stories he'd heard of the Kingsguardians seemed impossible for men to do. But maybe not... maybe not if magic was real. Krothair had heard rumors of magic in his travels but had never met anyone who had the powers. Now Ti'Shed was talking about it like it was common knowledge.

And it dawned on him that every single member of the Kingsguard was probably a mage.

A Servitor.

"Damn," Krothair whispered. "No wonder Germon steered me to the Vaporgaard."

As far as Krothair knew he didn't have a lick of magic in him.

-4-

The blows fell around Krothair and he suddenly understood how Katya must have felt yesterday. Ti'Shed had attacked her relentlessly and he was doing the same thing here. The sword master backed up and stopped momentarily.

Training had begun in the field behind the house. A quick breakfast of what little of Krothair's food had survived, then it was right out into the yard.

"I could have a better grip on that hilt with my asshole," Ti'Shed said, indicating Krothair's sword.

Ti'Shed was different during training. He turned from someone that Krothair liked into someone Krothair didn't like. The sword master had warned him about his moods, but Krothair wasn't going to let that stop him learning from this man.

"Quit staring off into space and look at your hand," the old man barked.

Krothair looked down at his fingers. He couldn't see anything wrong. He looked back up helplessly.

Ti'Shed looked off to the side and smirked to himself. "You've got to rotate your hand at least twenty degrees to your right or you couldn't kill a crippling kitten, let alone a Foglin."

Krothair tried to do as he was asked and must have succeeded because Ti'Shed said, "That's better." The sword master's weapon started slashing through the air again and Krothair met it, steel ringing on steel several times in quick succession.

"Congratulations," the old man said. "You are now dead."

Krothair looked down to see a small knife in Ti'Shed's hand, the tip poking just below his ribs.

"We're sword fighting!" exclaimed the boy.

"Is that what you will tell a Foglin? Let me test it out. Excuse me you daft fucker, but we are sword fighting! Likely they will be your last words if you ever breathe them at all. First we must unlearn your reflexes. From this point on you will not be having sword fights, you will be having _fights_. You must know what every single part of my body is doing at every moment. Of course, that's true in a sword fight too, but it is even more imperative here. Foglins can have as many as twenty different appendages, each capable of ending your life."

Krothair's mind was already overwhelmed. In his travels it had always been easier to fight. His opponents hadn't been especially clever and there had always been rules.

"So far this has been damn disappointing," Ti'Shed said, sheathing his weapons. "You're fast, but fast alone won't do it! Your instincts are all wrong! Blocks my tea kettle with a sword," he said to the air. "I should have known just then!"

"You're not giving me a chance," Krothair protested. He braced himself against whatever would come.

Ti'Shed nodded. "You're right. I apologize. I told you. Something is off... it..." His throat choked. "We are done for today. Think about what I told you. You will never sword fight again. Understand that and embrace it. The sword is only a tool in the arsenal of what you will become if we continue. It is the most easily understood, and the one we will start with, but it is only a beginning."

The sword master turned then and went into his house.

The sun was beginning to set, so Krothair followed him, not really knowing what else to do.

-5-

It was the middle of the night and Krothair awakened from a nightmare.

The walls of his room felt as if they were closing in on him so he went out to the kitchen to get a bit of reprieve.

An odd metal tin he did not recognize rested on the table. Krothair picked it up gently and looked inside. A white powder sat in the bottom of it. He sniffed at it and his heart sank as he recognized it.

His sword master was using Duller.

# Chapter 10

### Three Visitors

-1-

"The shipment was supposed to be here a week ago," Polk said, a vein bulging in his fat forehead.

Halimaldie sipped a bit of his rum. The only other sound in the room was the ticking of his clock as he dealt carefully with this situation. "Surely you understand that in an operation of this magnitude there will be obstacles."

"You shoulda stuck to trading crab, spices, and pearls, my friend." Polk _said_ friend, but it was likely that he didn't mean it.

"The gems will arrive."

"I've heard rumors, D'Arvenant. Some say your ship disappeared. Taken by a ghost crew or some such."

"Ah, yes. Rumors. So reliable. Shall I build a business plan around them?" It was good that Halimaldie was slightly drunk. _It gives me the courage to prove this asshole wrong. Even if the asshole is right._

"My customers are getting antsy."

"You're getting antsy," Halimaldie said, pointing an accusatory finger. "Your customers will drag on a line as long as you tell them to."

"This could be bad for you, D'Arvenant. Promise people the world and they get angry when you can't deliver. The gem trade has been on the black market since the war and people are getting tired of it. I deal in luxuries, not some kind of back alley addiction. This needs to be on the up and up and I thought you would be the man to bring that back to us."

Halimaldie stood up from his large chair. "I understand the situation Polk. I _made_ the situation. I've got men risking their lives in the mines near the Vapor for my cargo. It's hard enough keeping them paid and alive in those harsh conditions, let alone dedicated to the task of mining. Their salaries are _double_ that of normal laborers. You disrespect them when you hound me." He tapped the glass front of his Trirenese clock. "I have other things to do if you're done berating me." He didn't have other pressing matters at the moment, but he was quite done with this. There was no explanation that Polk would find truly acceptable. Halimaldie was in a stalling pattern.

"Your word falters," Polk said, standing up and gripping his cane.

"So be it," said Halimaldie. "I won't be bullied by someone to whom I owe nothing monetarily."

"There are things more influential than mere crown notes," Polk said.

Halimaldie gave a wry smile. "I am sure you will be disappointed to find out that you are mistaken. Tobbs! Jak! See this man out, please."

Two of Halimaldie's house servants came into the room and escorted the fuming Polk out quite handily, leaving Halimaldie alone again. That was the fourth disgruntled intermediary he had dealt with in the past week and he was getting quite good at it, but also quite tired of it. Halimaldie didn't believe there was anything he couldn't handle; those type of thoughts simply weren't in his consciousness.

But this was certainly bad.

He had promised so much to so many people in what he now reflected was probably not a very good idea. It was helpful to get the customers talking about something long before you obtained it, but something this large...

The war had put a stop to many types of trade. Hardeen Kingdom and Shailand used to mingle together in a complex, ever-changing grid. It made trade a little easier when the lines were loosely held. The war had changed that. Suddenly everyone was incredibly territorial and new statutes and laws sprang into being like weeds. Halimaldie had needed to look for other sources of goods.

The southlands weren't ideal, but he'd heard rumors of gems down there, so he'd set up an operation at the start of the war: scout, establish, dig. There was no government in the south. Halimaldie had once mused about the type of person who would want to rule over thousands and thousands of square bands of hot, mucky swamps. He didn't come up with anybody.

Halimaldie had used his family's vast fortune to set up the fire ruby mine. Money could accomplish almost anything.

But unfortunately his words to Polk just now had been false. Halimaldie _knew_ there were things that were more influential than crown notes. Reputation was everything, but he hadn't been about to let Polk know that he had scored a point there. And that garbage about the black market? Of course Polk was dealing with addicts. There was no other explanation for people's actions.

Once the war had gotten underway, the Shailand gem had trade dried up, and this made the merchants more desperate. Halimaldie had been among the ones who were willing to risk the capital to fill the gap in the market. King Maxton had outlawed gemstones of any kind to try and stop the needless waste of time and resources. The men that were mining were told to come back and join the army against Shailand. Halimaldie's operation hadn't been public knowledge, so he had continued his plans.

The instant the war was over Halimaldie was leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else, because he had never really stopped at all.

Halimaldie walked over to a large bookshelf and selected a tome, levering it from the rest with his pointer finger. He ran his hand over the cover and took it back to his desk. It was entitled 'Koppler's Guide to the Rarer Medical Afflictions'. Halimaldie opened to the contents.

He was just starting to skim the page when his door opened silently. He only caught the motion out of the corner of his eye. _It usually squeaks,_ he thought. _I made it so it squeaks._

"Tobbs," he said. "What the hell is going on with my door?"

"Nothin'," replied a voice that did not belong to Tobbs. "Had ta see ya again, do ya see."

Halimaldie slammed the cover of the book shut with a loud clack. "Telin," he said. "What a... pleasant surprise."

-2-

"I told you our paths would cross again," Telin said. "So here we are."

"What is it that you want?" Halimaldie asked. "Rum?"

Telin turned up his nose at the offer. He was dressed in a silver and purple tabard over lighter purple clothing. He did not have armor or a shield, but he definitely had his sword. What was that thing called again? All the Kingsguard had such stupid pet names for their weapons. _Warbeater? Warmeat? Something like that._ Of course, some of these weapons _had_ been forged through some complex process that people said involved magic. Halimaldie had always intended to learn about it. Mostly just so he could debunk it.

"Not rum, then," Halimaldie said. He poured another glass for himself anyway.

"I want the full details of your mining operation."

"Oh? Which one?"

"You know full well which one, D'Arvenant. The general population may be blind to your methods but do not believe for a moment that the crown is. So do us both a favor and get to the point."

"That's gonna be difficult," said Halimaldie. "There are many things I don't write down."

"A man like you has ledgers."

"Don't pretend to know me so well, Telin." He did have ledgers.

"So hostile all of a sudden. Perhaps I shoulda let that _Foglin_ get your ledgers, if ya catch."

Halimaldie didn't want the minutiae of his operations falling into the hands of the crown, but he wasn't entirely sure there was a way out of this. He had to think.

"Do you plan on going down to the mine?" he asked.

"It will likely come to that," Telin said, idly picking at one of his fingernails. "I need to know exactly where it is so I don't waste time wandering around the southlands."

"I have certain rights that protect my business, you know," Halimaldie said.

"Not when the safety of the Kingdom is at stake, D'Arvenant."

He well knew that. His mind raced. Stalling with Telin wouldn't get him as far as it had with Polk. The Kingsguardian's threats were very real.

The clock ticked.

"Can we compromise perhaps?" Halimaldie asked.

"I am not sure you are in the position to do so."

"Well, the way I figure it, we both have each other by the balls. You could expose me as aiding and abetting the enemy, and even though it's not true, that would probably put the kibosh on my fun little entrepreneurial bent. But on the flip side I doubt the crown would be very well loved if the people knew what a fantastic job you were doing of not keeping Foglins out of the most secure of cities."

"I don't think the balls you've got me by are as small as the balls I've got you by," Telin said. "Hard to get your hand all the way around ours." A smug smile followed. 'Ours' was definitely meant to remind Halimaldie that he wasn't dealing just with Telin here, but the entire Kingsguard and all it entailed. Which was, admittedly, twelve near-immortals with godlike combat skills and a far-reaching respect throughout the entire kingdom and beyond.

Alright. So.

"Well," Halimaldie said, "that's why you're gonna get the heavy end of this bargain."

Telin nodded. "I'm always up for an interesting bit o' negotiating. The Kingsguard's not all steel, ya know, D'Arvenant. Men like you can be very, very important to us. As could anyone in the kingdom at any given time, I suppose."

You're in the same business as I am, Telin. We both steer the kingdom.

"I am hesitant to commit too much to paper," said Halimaldie. "Paper makes things too real. _I_ will become your resource. I will share with you all I know if you will let me accompany you to the mine on your excursion. I have a bit of a problem, you see. My reputation is faltering in the light of these missed deliveries. If I become your resource into my operation, it will give me an excuse to leave this place for a bit."

"You won't be allowed to tell your clients that you went to the mine with the Kingsguard. How many ideas would that put into people's heads?"

"No," Halimaldie agreed. "I will tell them something that will serve both of our purposes."

"And what is that?"

"Simply that I have gone to oversee the retrieval of the gemstones myself. People like it when you take responsibility. Rise to the challenge, as it were."

Telin nodded. "You are clever. I understand your success, at least a little."

"And I understand yours," Halimaldie said, feeling pleased. "I have seen you fight."

"You have but seen the tip of my sword."

_Let's try to keep it that way,_ Halimaldie thought.

-3-

"Your hair's getting too long," Tellurian said.

"And yours is falling out," Halimaldie replied.

They embraced, thumping each other on the back.

"Tell, it's been a hell of a day so far. Hell of a week, really." Halimaldie noticed that his brother's clothing was even plainer than usual: tones of brown everywhere, plain types of cloth, no decoration. "Come and sit down. I've been working all day. I need a break and someone I can trust."

"That's me," his brother said.

"I know."

They moved over to a pair of plush leather chairs. Halimaldie had gotten the furniture from Caltas Bend, a village known for the most supple leather and the finest woodworking.

Halimaldie opened a small wooden box and took out two cigars.

Tellurian held up his hand. "I don't have a taste for that stuff, Hal. You know that."

Halimaldie shrugged. "Both for me then, I suppose." He lit one and puffed on it into the silence.

"Your fortune got you down again?" Tellurian asked.

"Don't start in on me with that," Halimaldie warned. "Not today. I got assholes and Kingsguardians both breathing down my neck. I need your insight."

"About assholes or Kingsguardians?"

"You're an expert on both," Halimaldie said. "But it's more about the Kingsguard. You work for the crown, so I want to know... I want to know about trusting them. I never have, you know."

"I do. Know, that is."

"So... can I? Trust them?"

Tellurian shrugged. "There are good men and bad men everywhere, Hal. You know that as well as I do. The bad men muck it up for the good and the good muck it up for the bad. Just what in the hell have you gotten yourself into?"

Halimaldie told him everything.

Tellurian stood up at the end of Halimaldie's tale. "Seven hells, brother," he said. "You were attacked by a Foglin and saved by a Kingsguardian? That's like something out of a story."

"So do you think I should cooperate with the crown on this?"

Tellurian shook his head. "I'm not sure you have a choice. See, _I_ would never have this problem."

"Oh no," Halimaldie said, standing up to join his brother. "I don't want to hear this."

"But you need to. Give it up, Halimaldie. Leave it all behind."

"As you did?"

"As I did. We talk like this every few months. It's always like this. You think that this time is unique, and it is, but only by the slightest of degrees. Come see what I do. Come see how you can escape all of this."

"You don't have problems? Your work at those underground hospitals doesn't cause you stress?"

"First of all, the hospitals aren't underground," said Tellurian. "Well, some of them are dug underground for extra room, but I know you're speaking metaphorically. They're mostly just underused and misunderstood. And secondly, it does cause me stress, but what you have to understand is that once I solve a problem it benefits someone else, not only myself. I work with a team, you work alone."

"Anyone else spoke to me that way, they'd be outta here in a few seconds."

"I've tiptoed for too long, Hal. Look at yourself. You're fat, unhealthy, your eyes look like you haven't been sleeping, your posture is awful, and you've always got whiskey on your breath."

"It's rum."

"Whatever it is, father drank the same stuff at one time or another."

"Don't bring father into this," Halimaldie said, his neck hair bristling. "He taught me everything he knew."

"Then you'd be wise to filter that knowledge! There are better ways, Halimaldie. This world is killing you! I don't want to come upon you clutching your chest and gasping for breath. Work poisoned father and it's poisoning you!"

"You don't know the half of it!" Halimaldie shouted. "Some break this is!" He threw down his cigar and began to pull the long glove off of his right hand, sliding it down his forearm with care.

"The hell are you doing?" Tellurian asked. "You gonna challenge me to a duel?"

Halimaldie held his bare hand up in front of his brother's face. The skin on his palm was black and festooned with sores. The malady spread out towards his fingertips and a little way up his arm.

"Hal," breathed Tellurian. "What is it?" He reached out his hand.

"Don't touch it," Halimaldie said, pulling back. "You daft idiot, it's some kind of disease. I got it from touching those tainted gemstones on the ship. Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"No," his brother replied. "The look of it makes me sick."

"Imagine the _feel_ of it. It only hurts a little, but the damn thing pulsates with the beat of my heart."

"You need to come to the hospital," Tellurian said.

"Oh wouldn't that be poetic," Halimaldie spat. "The hospital system - which you donated your share of the fortune to - is going to save poor - and I say that sarcastically - Halimaldie."

"It might be your only hope at this point. You know you're considering it or you wouldn't have showed me this." Tellurian rolled his eyes. "Look. It's ' _underground_ ' enough that it won't cause a stir in the public eye and we've seen some intense things there. People who've run out of hope or get told to simply suffer by regular sawbones come there and find healing."

"I am a busy man," Halimaldie said, somewhat sobered. "I will try to stop by when I can."

"Hal, you need to go immed-"

"When I can," he said firmly.

"You know where to find me," his brother said. "Fifth district. You don't need an appointment. Come any time. I'll see what I can do..."

"And if I have to go away with the Kingsguard?"

"Concentrate on now," Tellurian suggested. "I don't know what kind of foul magic we're dealing with here, and I doubt you do either. We have a few Protectors in our service."

"Tree witches?"

Tellurian cocked his eyebrow. "I'd prefer if you didn't refer to them like that when you come. Keep that thing covered up," he said, indicating Halimaldie's hand. "I have to start my research on this right away. There are implications that..." Tellurian shook his head. "Nevermind that. And please, Hal. Think about what I said. If I mean anything to you, don't disregard my advice. About your money, I mean. You could live as I do. There is reward in it."

Halimaldie sighed, but said nothing more. He had talked all day it seemed, and so he merely shrugged his shoulders.

As his brother exited the room, Halimaldie's clock ticked off even decands.

He listened to it until he felt he would go mad.

# Chapter 11

### A Mouse in the Cellar

-1-

Wren couldn't be sure how long she had been in here, or even where 'here' was. A small cellar, that much was for certain. The glowing symbol on her arm was very dull at the moment, but it gave her enough light to see a little. Her eyes were bleary from crying and they burned horribly because of the dry air.

She'd gone to the bathroom in a corner six times, so that was some way to measure time, however inaccurate.

Right now she was simply lying on her side on the hard ground. It was freezing and she was still wearing the same shirt and pants she had been wearing at the carnival, but now they were stained and rumpled. She had thrown up on her shirt twice: once when she had briefly recovered consciousness on the wagon after the carnival, and once when she had awakened here.

I'm in trouble, God. Where are you?

The hours went by silently and she didn't try to cry out for help. The trapdoor above her was thick and it hadn't moved the slightest bit when she'd butted up against it. The lock was too strong for her. _Something strong to keep the witch in._

Wren stared at her glowing forearm. She knew it was magic. God's magic. She'd heard enough rumors from farmhands through the years to recognize magic when she saw it.

"Just what's happened to me?" she asked the air in a scratchy voice. She started coughing then and it took a while to recover from that.

Tears ran down her cheeks, taking with them some of the dust that covered her face. She hated herself for wasting her liquid this way, but there was nothing she could do about it.

More hours passed. Wren faded in and out: from blackness to redness to blackness again. Sometimes she couldn't really tell if she was awake or asleep.

She started having nightmares, gasping for breath when she woke from them.

"Oh," Wren sobbed finally. "If there's anyone out there. Anyone at all. God. I need... I am... in need."

She expected her words to be met with nothing but stillness.

Instead, she heard the tiniest of rustlings.

-2-

Something furry brushed against her hands. Wren rolled weakly onto her stomach and then rolled onto her other side to try and see what had touched her. But whatever it was, it was gone.

"Who are you?" Wren asked.

Silence.

Maybe I'm going crazy.

Then she saw movement and heard someone talking right next to her.

"I would suppose I am your savior," the voice said. "Although I don't know why I would help you. You nearly pulled me into pieces about five sun-turns ago. Mistress, I feel that you have a lot of anger for a human so young."

Wren tried to understand what was happening. The truth dangled on the edge of her mind, but she couldn't bring herself to believe it. _It's a mouse. I'm talking to a mouse._ She felt its whiskers tickling her hand now. _It's the mouse I tried to kill all those days ago._

"You can talk," Wren said.

"I've always been able to talk," the mouse said. "The fact is that you could not hear me, mistress. Oh, how I begged for you to spare me when you were pulling at my head."

"I'm... sorry about that. I stopped, didn't I?"

"Just in time."

"Do you know what's happening to me?" Wren asked. "Why I can hear you?"

"A simple mouse such as myself only knows the root of the wheat. But there are those that may know more, and I will bring you to them, mistress."

"You will take me away from here?" Wren asked, her eyes watering.

"I will do my best. Admittedly I am small, but everyone has their uses."

"Do you have a name?"

"A name would not serve my kind well. So numerous are we that it would be impossible for our minds to remember everyone's name."

Wren nodded. She could see the little thing now, her eyes adjusting. "I will have to give you a name," she said. "Are you a boy mouse or a girl mouse?"

"Girl mouse."

"How about Tessa?"

"It matters little to me. I will likely not be using it at all, mistress."

"Why do you keep calling me that? Mistress?"

"It is the way animals address all humans, I am told. Master and mistress and the like. I will do your bidding if you like. You have dominion over me."

Wren found the strength to sit up. The little mouse was giving her hope. Her shoulder muscles screamed and cramped as she pushed up off the ground. She propped herself up, panting. Tessa climbed up Wren's shirt and sat on her chest, cleaning her paws. The mouse was just as Wren remembered her: gray, with an interesting white mark on her head.

"You are the first human I have met that I can communicate with," Tessa said. "It is refreshing. I suppose all animals know it's possible to communicate. Deep down in their being they know, mistress."

"My name is Wren, Tessa. You needn't call me mistress."

"Likely I will never use your name," Tessa said. "It is not in my nature. Mistress."

"Alright," Wren said. She sat up further, feeling returning to her body. Tessa scrambled up to her shoulder.

"I would assume that you would want to get out of here," the mouse said.

"Yes," Wren said.

"You cannot squeeze through the cracks as I do. We will have to find another way."

"That trapdoor is the only way out for me, I think," Wren said. She picked Tessa up and set her gently on the ground, then stood up on weak legs.

"Seems like odd human behavior," Tessa said, peering at the trap door. "To lock things, I mean."

Wren only shook her head, unable to voice anything more on the subject. She felt insane, but knew that what was happening was real. This was no dream she would wake from.

"We will likely need more help," Tessa said. "Can you bear to be alone again for a while longer, mistress?"

Wren eyed the tiny mouse. "Please don't leave me," she said.

"I must, mistress. You Called to me, but I was close. You seem new to your powers so I doubt you could Call much farther. I will return to you." And with that, Tessa scooted up to the trapdoor and squeezed through the tiniest of cracks in the wood.

Wren was alone again. To stop her mind from worrying she glanced down at her forearm.

The symbol was of glowing red vines with beautiful golden leaves. The lights were just under her skin. She rubbed her other hand on the design. It felt only slightly warmer than the rest of her skin.

"Red and gold," Wren said.

She had no idea what magic was at play here or what this marking meant. _Perhaps I'll be able to find out. Maybe my father would know... With any luck I'll never see him again._

Wren began to feel a bit claustrophobic waiting for Tessa to return. The walls closed in on her again and her stomach churned from hunger. She took a hand at cleaning herself off, but it didn't do much good. She was filthy. What had the mouse said? That Wren had tried pulling Tessa apart five days ago? It had been two days before the carnival when she'd tried that. The carnival took a day, two, three to get back... _I've been down here for three days._

She began to pound her fists lightly on the floor to release some of her anger. They made a dull thud, but then they began to make huge pounding sounds that shook the room. She stopped, but the loud thuds continued. It hadn't been her, it was coming from the trapdoor above her.

Thaboom.

Thaboom.

The whole door shuddered and bits of dust shook off of it every time a thud fell. Something massive was breaking through. Wren scuttled away from the door and waited, heart beating fast in her chest. What had Tessa brought back with her?

Wood began to splinter off the trapdoor now, falling down to rattle on the floor. The thuds fell faster and harder, gaining intensity and becoming incredibly loud. The metal hinges of the door twisted and creaked and finally the door fell inward with a crash.

Tess jumped into the cellar and skittered over to her.

"Come, mistress," the mouse said. "Up through the large hole."

Just then a large muzzle poked through the hole followed by a huge, round fluffy head. Two beady eyes stared quizzically down into the root cellar. A halo of daylight surrounded the thing's head.

"Tessa, you brought a bear," Wren said weakly.

"And didn't he do a fine job?" the mouse said proudly. "Pick me up. The bear will escort us to the Dryad Tree. Is that alright, mistress?"

"Anywhere but here," Wren said. "Absolutely anywhere."

The bear withdrew its head and Wren carried Tessa up and out of the cellar on shaky legs.

The cellar had been - to Wren's surprise - in her own house.

Her father's heavy dresser was tipped over. _Maybe the trapdoor wasn't locked, maybe the dresser was covering it up. Was I... hidden?_ She had never looked under that dresser, and so had never been aware of this trapdoor. _Or did he put me down there to die so no one would know I'm a freak? A witch._

The bear had crashed through the window to get into the house and shards of glass were strewn about the floor. Wren had to step carefully. There was no sign of her father. It was daytime so he should have been around. Even if he was sleeping he couldn't have slept through what had just happened. And, sadly, she didn't see his corpse anywhere.

Wren opened the door and stepped outside with the bear right behind her. It had a hulking presence that terrified her, but she had no choice but to trust it.

"Why won't he talk to me the way you do?" Wren asked Tessa.

The mouse shook her tiny head. "That is not something I know. Perhaps your Calling is not great enough to pierce his mind. Or - and don't tell him I said this - perhaps he is too stupid. I am but a mouse. My life is grain and bugs. We will try to find answers to your questions when we reach the Dryad Tree, mistress."

The bear laid down on the ground in front of her and looked up at her expectantly.

"Am I... am I supposed to ride him?"

"He seems to think so," Tessa said. "Although I myself am not too keen on the idea."

Wren picked Tessa up and carefully put the mouse in her shirt pocket. "It'll be faster," Wren said. She climbed onto the bear's back and grabbed two handfuls of his shaggy brown fur. "Giddyup?" she said.

The bear made a sound almost like a laugh and then took off at a fast pace, Wren bobbing up and down on his back.

-3-

The water in the forest stream was freezing, but Wren didn't care. She guzzled it until she felt sick and then splashed it all over her body, rubbing vigorously at her skin. She dunked her head under and came up gasping. The moonlight shone down and bathed everything in a silvery light which was only interrupted by Wren's glowing red and gold mark. She scrubbed at that hardest of all, but it wouldn't come off no matter what she did.

"Mistress, are you almost done?" Tessa asked. She was sitting on a small rock on the river bank, cleaning herself with neat, efficient little motions. "We really should keep riding the bear if you can."

Wren sighed. _What have I gotten myself into?_ Every part of her body ached from riding on the bear and she was already so weak. "I need to walk, Tessa," she replied, ducking behind a tree to retrieve her clothes from the branch she had hung them on. She was frantically pulling her shirt over her head when Tessa spoke again.

"You cannot wear those filthy things, mistress."

"Well I don't have any other clothes, Tessa."

"I took care of that when I found the bear. You need an outfit befitting a queen!"

"What do you know of queens?"

"Termites have them," the mouse replied. "Bees have them. Humans have them. Please just follow me." The mouse nodded her tiny head towards the trees.

Wren followed, stepping carefully on the wet stones of the stream bed. She pulled her pants on as she walked, the cold fabric sticking to her legs. She pushed her brown hair back from her face and it cascaded down her back, sticking there as well. She blew some water from her lips and stepped onto the dirt.

She probably should have been terrified to be alone. Or felt helpless or weak. Or been ashamed. But she didn't feel anything of those things. At least, not strongly enough to bother her. _I escaped death. Now where did my little savior get to?_

It was difficult to see Tessa in the darkness, but Wren swore she could almost feel her presence if she concentrated. _Probably has something to do with this 'Calling' that Tessa keeps referring to._

Wren followed Tessa until she came upon a strange sight. Six raccoons sat in a semi-circle all staring up at her. In front of them, folded very neatly, was a pile of clothing she recognized all too well: the shirt, pants, and boots she had killed the fox in. And there, with them, was the red and gold horse blanket that had been her armor on that dreadful night.

Her stomach dropped.

"These clothes have power on them," Tessa said proudly.

"I won't wear them," Wren said, backing away. "I'd rather be naked."

Two of the raccoons looked at each other.

Tessa's ears dropped and her whiskers twitched. "We thought... we thought you would like them. The raccoons cleaned them in the stream and I... Well, I picked them out. They called to me." The mouse looked so sad that Wren felt simply awful.

Wren looked down at herself. She had tried to scrub her clothes clean, but they still looked rancid, full of her vomit and other things. The clothing the raccoons had brought shone in the moonlight, seeming to radiate their own light, cleaned by experts.

"Could you turn around?" she asked the animals.

Tessa and the raccoons did as they were asked.

Wren pulled her clothes off and put them on the ground. She tenderly picked up the new pants and pulled them on over her wet legs, cinching the rope belt around her waist. She grabbed the shirt and donned it, pulling it down over her lean torso. Then she stepped cautiously into the boots. They were soft on her feet and felt amazing.

Lastly, she picked up the horse blanket. Its colors matched her glowing vine marking almost perfectly. She stared at it, trying to quell the nerves in her stomach. She looked down at Tessa and the raccoons and slung the blanket over her shoulders like a cloak. It hung nearly to the ground, just brushing the leaves that adorned the forest floor.

Suddenly she was warm when she had been cold. _Cold for so long. Now warm._

"Alright," she said. "I'm ready for you to see me."

The animals turned back around.

Tessa nodded her tiny head. "Mistress, it looks very fine. They will be impressed when we reach the Dryad Tree."

"Who will?" Wren asked.

"The people who have answers for you, I would assume" the mouse said.

The bear lumbered out of the forest with a fish in his mouth. He came up to Wren and laid it at her feet.

"Probably need to cook it for me," she told the bear.

"That is a task for you," Tessa said. "Animals don't know fire, mistress."

"You eat it, then," she told the bear. "I don't know how to make fire right now." Her flint and tinder were back at her farm. There was some method where you rubbed sticks together, but that took forever and she wasn't sure she had the strength. "I'll have to eat berries."

The bear looked at her and then laid down in front of her, prompting a ride.

"Mistress wants to walk," Tessa explained. "Lead the way, bear."

And they were off, Wren both comfortable and uncomfortable in her new clothing.

Their party had grown. All six raccoons were scampering after them.

# Chapter 12

### The Hunt

-1-

Otom had traveled far in the past week. He could have made the journey much faster in his youth, but he was finding that his survival skills were rusty. He had to take it slow. No need to push himself. _My glowing symbol isn't going anywhere._

It should have been getting slightly warmer as he worked his way southeast, but it was not. The wind howled as furiously as it had on the shores of Kilgaan and Otom was beginning to wonder if winter would ever fully give way to spring.

It was the middle of the night but there was a bright moon; the kind that wolves called to and thieves cursed. Otom sat silently rubbing his hands near the Fire he had made. He'd dug himself a little place to sleep in a snow bank and was bundled in all the clothing he had brought, but for now he didn't feel like sleeping. He was too close to Pakken to sleep.

The town he grew up in couldn't have more than two bands to the southwest. He almost felt as if he recognized some of the trees in this area, but he couldn't be quite sure. He had also seen signs of the war that had shaken Hardeen and Shailand, and had apparently touched even this far north. A few days ago he had unearthed a corpse while digging a place for himself to sleep. The dead man had been wearing full armor with Hardenic markings on it. The symbols had made Otom shudder. During his nightly flagellation he added an extra stroke. After that he'd salvaged a few well-preserved things from the dead soldier and then been on his way after a quick prayer.

He was a man of God, after all.

Pakken pulled on him and Otom resisted. If he went back there now what would it prove? Nothing would be solved. Nothing would change.

He heard a wolf howl. The hunter he had once been stirred within him.

He drew from his power and Calmed himself while adding a bit more Fire to the blaze in front of him.

Then he let his mind drift back.

-2-

14 Years Ago

Otom lined up the shot carefully, holding his breath to steady himself. The arrow's long feathers tickled his ear as the wooden shaft waited to be released. Just before the buck bolted, Otom let his fingers slip off the string.

The arrow shot almost silently into the side of the animal, driving in and sticking there deep. Right on target; right near the heart. Probably in it. The buck sprang forward with a kick.

Otom was still fairly sore from his fight against Ris at the tournament, but he tore off after the buck, nocking another arrow as he ran. The animal was huge with a massive rack on top. _Da will be so proud!_ This animal would last Otom's family a long time. He had to take it down. He lost sight of the buck itself, but the trail of red on the snow was easy to follow. The animal didn't get far. It lay dead on its side when Otom finally caught up with it, blood leaking from its mouth.

He bent down to inspect the beautiful animal when his ears - one of which was still battered from Ris's assault \- barely caught the sound of something crunching in the snow to his left.

Crrrrunch.

Whump.

"Hello?" Otom called.

He stood up cautiously and squinted towards where he had heard the sound. It probably wasn't another deer; that wouldn't make any sense. He was doubtful it was a wolf, and people were a rarity around these parts. Perhaps a bird had knocked snow from a branch as it took flight.

Otom stalked closer to the source of the strange noise, scanning, all senses on full alert.

It was his sense of smell that informed him first, as was usually the case. A gust of wind pushed the fragrances at him in a flurry. His mind flashed back to the Fool's Heart Tavern and what he had smelled there. Her scent brought her rushing back to him, but it was mixed with sweat and blood.

Otom took a few more quick steps and found Allura Finny face-down in the snow in front of him.

"What the hell?" he said to himself. He slung his bow on his back and gathered her up. Her head flopped backwards as he cradled her. She was like a rag doll. He had to put his face by her mouth to make sure she was breathing at all. Her blond hair was falling out of her hood and had blood in it; not a lot, but enough to concern Otom. "Allura?" he asked.

No response.

He began to stumble back through the snow, carrying her dead weight in his already tired arms. She wasn't dressed well enough to be out doing whatever it was she was doing. She was wearing a warm coat, but no boots, only thick socks. Her pants weren't thick enough for this kind of cold, either. Her face looked very pale.

Even had he been able to ask questions of her he wouldn't have. _No time to waste. Have to get her to safety._ The buck would have to wait. Otom briefly memorized the trees so he could find his way back later.

Allura began to mutter about five minutes into Otom's half-walk half-run back to his house.

"My savior," she said. "My fire." She kept saying it over and over.

"Allura?" he tried again.

"My savior. My fire."

Her eyes were still closed and she began to writhe in his grip.

"You have to hold still," he said. His arms felt like they were going to fall off and he almost dropped to his knees right where he was, but he could almost see his house. The small cabin slowly became visible over the hill and Otom used the sight of it to fuel his body.

Just a little farther. Just a little farther.

Allura's eyes fluttered open. "Otom," she said.

"Yes. Yes. It's me," he grunted, panting mist into the world.

"I made it to you. I made it." One of her eyes was bloodshot.

"Yeah, you did. I'm taking you to my house so my ma and da can take care of you."

"Oh, no," Allura moaned. "I don't want anyone to see me like this."

"Look," Otom puffed, "I don't have much of a choice here. Not to be insulting, but you're getting very heavy."

"I might be able to walk," she suggested. "But please don't take me to your house. I promise-" She coughed for a few breaths; deep hacking coughs. "I promise I'll explain what's going on, but don't take me to see anyone else. I don't want anyone to see me like this."

Otom closed his eyes and took a massive breath. A weight dragged his foot to the ground with each step. _What the hell was I thinking going hunting in my current state?_ He hadn't realized how drained he still was from his tournament beating. He might not have even been able to drag the buck back on the sled that he'd-

He hadn't even thought. "Ohhhh," Otom moaned.

"Wha?" asked Allura.

"Better if I don't tell you," he said. Had he carried her without thinking simply because he had wanted to gather her into his arms? He knew the answer was yes. He'd left a perfectly good sled out in the woods somewhere. He would have to go back for it later, but for now... He abruptly changed course then, turning sharply to his left and away from his house. If Allura didn't want to go there that was fine with him. He would take his beauty somewhere else.

"Where we goin'?" she slurred, becoming incoherent again.

"A place I built a long time ago. You think you can climb a little way?"

"I prolly can," Allura said. She balled herself up a little tighter and shivered. "I like to rest in your arms."

Otom didn't have a reply to that.

He trudged up to the base of a large fir tree and knelt down, setting Allura gently onto the ground. She struggled to get up and ultimately, with Otom's help, was able to stand with some wobbling.

"I'll go behind you," Otom said. "The handholds aren't what they used to be, but it looks like everything else is sturdy enough."

Hand over hand Allura went up the trunk of the tall tree. Otom carefully followed behind feeling only slightly embarrassed when he to put his hand on her backside to push her the rest of the way.

They both tumbled out into a plain, square room. It had two tiny windows that faced opposite directions and branches had grown in and through it, cutting at odd angles through the place. It blocked the wind, though, and that was what was important right now.

Otom's treehouse had been heavily used when he was younger, but now not as much. It had begun to seem a boyish thing to him. Now it was anything but. Now it seemed a very serious refuge indeed.

Allura lay panting on her back a few feet from where Otom now sat. He slung off his bow and quiver and then began to take off a few of his tertiary layers of clothing and laying them on Allura's feet and legs. Frostbite was uncommon among northerners, but Allura had never claimed to be from around here.

"You can still feel everything, right?" he asked.

"I can," said the girl. "Hurts like hell, but I can."

"Fine," Otom said, laying his cloak on her legs. He started to push her hood back to try and determine where she was bleeding from when she grabbed his face in her icy hands. She pulled his face down and pressed her lips against his. They were ice, too, but it didn't really matter to Otom.

She pulled away. "My savior," she said, and resumed the kiss.

-3-

"What exactly did I save you from?" Otom asked, his voice cracking. He had stopped the kiss despite how it had made him burn. His need for information was stronger right now and the girl was making his head reel. _Something doesn't sit right about any of this._

Allura looked up at him from the floor of the treehouse. "So very many things, Otom. Well, to start... I think God led me to you."

"He did, did he?" Otom asked. He was skeptical, hadn't thought much about God.

"Yes." Allura nodded, then winced.

"Let me look at your head while you talk, at least," Otom said, making a second attempt at pulling back her hood. This time he succeeded. "Looks like you took a blow here," he said. There was a large lump under her hair. Otom didn't think it was life threatening.

"Yeah," Allura said. "Ris did that to me."

Otom stood up quickly and smashed his head into the ceiling of the treehouse. "Damn," he said, rubbing it. "Ris is involved in this? I thought that idiot would be."

"You were right, Otom. In the brief moments I knew you, you were always right. You're everything that Ris is not and that's why you can save me."

"Me specifically," Otom said flatly.

"Yes."

"Because God led you to me."

"Yes."

Otom wasn't sure what he believed, but what Allura seemed to be saying was that Ris had hurt her and then she had come to Pakken - where she very vaguely knew only one person - instead of to wherever she lived.

"Well," Allura said timidly, "If you want to be technical, Ris led me here."

"Ris was coming to Pakken? Why?"

"I don't know," Allura said. She was on the verge of tears. "But I begged him to stop. Pleaded with him. He got this wild look in his eyes and just said we were coming here. When we got close I tried to slow him. We fought and I tripped him into some sort of ditch in the snow."

"A drift?"

"A drift," Allura agreed. "I got as far as I could and I heard some sounds and then I saw you and then I passed out."

"Was Ris... coming here to see me?" Otom asked, squinting and rubbing his forehead.

"Something snapped in him," Allura said. "He really wanted to win that tournament. I think he blames his loss on you. I don't know."

"Blames his loss on me? He pummeled me within an inch of my life, Allura!"

"I think you put up more a fight than he expected. He was too weak to win afterward. I don't know. He raves, Otom!"

"We need to get out of here," Otom said. He sidled over to a small window and looked out. He didn't hear anything, but that didn't mean much. The wind might cover their tracks in a few days, but right now there was a trail that Ris could easily follow. "We gotta get someplace safe and we have to get your head looked at."

Allura tried to sit up, made it halfway, and then fell backwards with a heavy thud. Some snow and pine needles flitted down from the ceiling.

"Don't do that," Otom hissed.

"Dizzy," Allura said. "I'm so dizzy. Something in my head. Making me dizzy now." She was out of it again, her eyes fluttering open and closed, ice still frozen on her long lashes.

"It's your wound," Otom said. _I've underestimated the damage._ "Let me go get a few things from my house. No one has to know you're here if that's what you want."

"No one," she echoed.

"You stay here," he said, tucking her in.

No answer from Allura.

Otom needed to hurry, and he knew he probably couldn't get Allura down from the treehouse in this condition without injuring one or both of them, so he struck out again on his own. He careened down the gentle slope to his house, using a good deal of energy in the process.

Allura probably needed food and water and maybe some kind of poultice. Otom knew a few things for bruises and infection that he could probably whip up from supplies at home. Being a hunter and a fighter had taught him how to deal with injury. _I just hope my knowledge is enough._ The hard part was going to be lying to his parents. There might be enough food and supplies in the shed, except for the water, which would be on melt near the fireplace inside. That was the least suspicious of the items, however. Otom could claim a lack of luck with his hunting, grab a new skin of water and be on his way. It was still early enough that it wouldn't seem suspicious. He would 'take one last try before dark.'

The door to the shed creaked open and Otom eyed the windows of his house for any movement. The shed held plenty of dried meat so he picked a few tasty items and began to pile them up, taking a bite of jerky for himself.

He rummaged through the herbs and had to settle for a few he knew would work, even if they weren't ideal. He carried his spoils behind the shed and stacked them there for the moment.

Then he braced himself to go into his house, hoping he didn't look like the nervous, disheveled mess he felt like.

He clicked the latch and stepped inside. He was greeted by a blast of warmth.

"Hail, Otom," his da said. The older man was sitting by the fire with his leg propped up. He'd twisted his knee while hunting. He hadn't wanted to talk about it when he'd come limping home; Otom's da had always been a proud man.

"I'm goin' back out there, da," Otom said. "Just stopped in for some more water. Need more than I can melt and it's not getting any lighter out there."

"You look beat," his da said.

"Yea," agreed his ma. "I know you're trying to fill your father's shoes for now, but don't get yourself killed in the process."

"I won't, ma," Otom said. His teeth wanted to chatter as he walked over to fill his skin with water. It really was empty. He'd drank it all, so at least that part of the story wasn't a lie.

"Where's your bow?" his da asked.

"Left it outside," said Otom. It wasn't entirely a lie. It was in the treehouse. Short answers were better right now.

"Bah. In the snow?"

"Only for a second."

His da grimaced.

"I don't see what difference it makes," said Otom. "It's out there all the time anyway, da." He'd almost finished funneling the skin full of water.

"There's blood on your sleeve," his da said.

"It's not mine, da. Little bit on a trap, but nothing in the trap."

"Bah."

"Don't waste his time, Pa," Otom's ma said sternly. "Otom, supper will be on the table when the sun just sets. Don't ruin it with that mouthful of jerky."

"I won't," Otom promised.

And just like that he was back out the door.

His legs quaked as he picked up his pile of rations from behind the shed. He had to piss with a vengeance, but didn't feel he could afford the time.

He trudged back up the gentle slope to the treehouse, forcing his legs to work. All in all he had probably been gone no longer than ten minutes, but when he got back he felt something was wrong. Then he heard a shout that confirmed his feelings.

"I know you're up there, you bitch!" Ris shouted. "Come down or I'm comin' up!"

-4-

The tall man stood at the base of the large tree, craning his neck up and panting. He looked even worse for wear than Allura had, except that he, unlike her, seemed to be able to stay on his feet despite it. His hands were definitely in the early stages of frostbite and he flexed them and winced as he stood there.

Ris sniffed and paced a bit more. Otom hadn't been noticed yet, and that was probably a good thing, but he knew he had to do something.

"I can't believe this," Ris shouted up at the treehouse. "You slut!"

While Otom was debating whether or not to sneak away and get help - from _whom_ he wasn't exactly sure - Ris turned and saw him. The man's eyes had a deranged look to them. They were both bloodshot and they seemed to point off in slightly odd directions.

Otom held up his hands. "I don't want trouble," he said. "Just leave this place and no one will get hurt."

Ris said nothing, but flew at Otom, snow spraying up in his wake. His hand grappled Otom's wrist with a surprisingly strong grip, but the rest of his attack wasn't particularly impressive. He fought less like a man and more like a raving animal. Otom's clothes were too bulky to offer him much room to move and so Ris had a vast mobility advantage despite his debilitated condition.

Otom crouched low, the squalling Ris on top of him. Otom tried to hurl his attacker off of him but it was no use. As he pushed with all his might he felt his leg muscles give way and suddenly he was face first in the snow, struggling for breath.

Something hard and painful - possibly an elbow or maybe even Ris's skull - slammed into his back repeatedly. Otom tried to shout, but his voice was muffled by the snow. The blows continued to fall on top of him, sending his back into a spasm of pain. His vision crawled with black specks and he could no longer draw breath.

And suddenly everything was quiet.

Otom shrugged Ris off his back and stood up in disbelief. Ris tumbled onto his side, an arrow protruding from his back, his blood running into the snow.

Otom looked up at the treehouse just in time to see Allura slump back from the window. He stumbled over and began to climb.

"Fuck," he said to himself. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

Hand over hand he went up, forcing the rest of his strength into the task.

As he crested the floor he saw Allura passed out by the window, bow in hand. She had crawled out of her warm little nest, the elements now able to ravage her again. It was possible that she had cracked her head as she fell back from the window, or maybe she had just passed out again. Otom scrambled over to her and pushed her hair back from her face. No new injuries, at least for now. It took him a few moments to get her comfortable and covered up again.

Her skin was very blue.

Otom sat panting heavily in the treehouse, trying to think straight.

Bury the body. No one has to know.

He was dizzy and weak. He guzzled some of his water and then he tried pouring some down Allura's throat. She choked a little, but he thought enough went down.

Otom put his hand on the floor and pushed himself up only to stumble and have to try a second time. As he wearily trudged down the handholds on the trunk he still only had the vaguest of ideas of what to do. He supposed it was the fault of his weary mind.

Simply go to his house, grab a shovel, and then bury the...

Ris was gone.

Otom followed the trail of blood that Ris had left all the way to his parents' house.

He opened the door in an exhausted rush and fell to the floor when he saw what was inside.

-5-

Present Day

The knife Otom had gotten from the soldier's corpse was reasonably well-preserved. Not much rust on it. The blade flashed silver as Otom cut lightly across his fingertip. He squeezed three times and three drops of blood hissed into the Fire in front of him.

One for his ma.

One for his da.

One, even, for Ris.

Ris had pulled the arrow from himself and driven it through Otom's ma's eye. He had simply strangled Otom's da, wounded as the old man had been. Then Ris had bled to death on the floor. Otom squeezed his fingertip once more.

A drop of blood fell into the Fire for Allura Finny.

# Chapter 13

### By Candlelight

-1-

Domma went to call on Metta in the dead of night. There were no eyes at this late hour. The Sunburst Clerics had been done with their day for a long time now. Domma knocked on Metta's door and the blond girl answered. _Too quickly for her to have been sleeping._

"Domma, it's late," Metta said. The girl's hair was unbound, long and flowing, gorgeous in the candlelight.

"I know it's late," Domma said. The candle she held made just enough light to see by, illuminating Metta's face in an eerie glow. "I need advice."

Metta raised her eyebrows. "From me?"

"Yes. Can I come in?"

"Of course, Cleric."

Domma entered Metta's small room and pulled the door shut behind her.

"I was just up reading The Book anyway," Metta said. "It's supposed to relax me but sometimes it doesn't. Do you know what I mean?"

"I do."

"Haunting images. The Coraline Beast descending from the sky during the apocalypse. Men with the bodies of animals, slavering and gnashing their teeth and eating their young."

"I find it best to stay away from the Carnage parables at night," Domma said, setting her candle on the nightstand. The flame wavered. "Those passages don't tend to be jovial."

"You're probably right. But I'm drawn to them."

"You're young yet, and relatively new to the order," Domma said. "I remember the thrill of such things." She did, almost. "The reason I'm here, well... the reason the Warden came to ask after me was... there was a murder at his hospital."

"How awful," Metta said.

"And... I think the work was done by a Foglin."

Metta paled, tears coming to her eyes. Domma was taken aback by Metta's reaction. The news was disturbing, yes, but it certainly shouldn't have had such a strong effect. She feared what she had stumbled into.

"A Foglin this far north?" Metta asked, her voice strained.

"Yes," Domma said carefully. "I know you were researching them when you first came here. That's the reason I came to you. I wanted some insight if possible."

Metta shook her head. "My advice is very simple," she said. "Run from this situation as if your life depended on it. I... lost my father and brother to the Foglins, Domma."

"Oh, Metta, I'm so sorry," Domma said. _I should have Delved her first!_ "I didn't know. I-"

"It's alright," the girl said, wiping at her tears. "I didn't tell anyone _why_ I wanted to know about the creatures. My father and brother were two of the strongest fighters I have ever known. Might have made the Kingsguard someday. The Foglins tore through them like they were made of paper." Her eyes looked haunted in the dark room.

"I really don't want to ask you any more questions about this," Domma said. "I don't want you to relive it. I had no idea, and I'm sorry. But... if something serious is happening - if the Foglins have somehow made it to the north, even one - then I need resources."

"You should inform King Maxton," Metta suggested. "Petitions are easy enough to get. I could go with you. Anything."

"I don't know. I don't really have any solid information to go on. I can't prove anything. My suspicions are based solely on my Delving of Ormon's corpse."

"You Delved a _corpse_?" Metta had probably never thought of doing such a thing.

"Yes," Domma replied. "His brain wasn't quite dead yet. Very close to dead, yes, but I could still get into it and search. Death makes a mind go stagnant."

Metta made a disgusted face. "That's gross."

"It was unpleasant."

Metta pushed a lock of her hair back over her ear. "Listen, Domma. I gave up my search for answers when I couldn't handle how it haunted me. There are only two places I can think of that might have the answers you seek. You could go talk to the Vaporgaardians themselves. I don't think that's probably good idea as you'd have a long journey to the south. The other place is the Bibliofero. I wasn't able to tease much from it, but I can write down some titles to look for if I remember rightly. They are obscure and probably will have been reshelved in the Depths." Metta opened the drawer of her nightstand, took out a small piece of paper, and began scribbling on it with charcoal.

While Metta wrote Domma thought.

Bringing up the other topic that was on her mind was getting harder by the second. If she didn't breech it quickly she would lose her nerve and end up back in her bed lying awake. "I am also having trouble with a man," Domma said through gritted teeth.

Metta stopped scribbling and looked up at Domma. "Someone is harassing you, sister?"

"No," Domma said, trying to give Metta a look so that she wouldn't have to explain further.

"Love," Metta said, nodding.

"Urges at least. There is a man who I can't trust myself near, that is for certain."

Metta was silent for a long time. She stood and paced back and forth, fidgeting with a corner of her nightgown. "I know what you are doing," she said.

Domma squinted in the light. The girl's eyes were watering again. "What am I doing?" Domma asked.

"You're testing me. They sent you to test me."

"No, Metta, honestly I-"

"Well it's all true," the girl wailed quietly.

"What's true?"

"I have a lover."

Domma's eyes opened wide. "Metta!"

"I know by telling you, you could expel me," she cried. "I know by not telling you I am a liar like Gustus. I'm no better than him." Still she paced. "I am young. I am so young. I don't belong here except for the fact that I'm a Devotee. Will I lose my magic over this?" She was weeping again.

"You and I both know that's impossible. Or, at least, unheard of. God granted you your powers and he won't take them away just because of some dalliance. And this wasn't a test, anyway!"

Metta looked at Domma, her eyes changing from miserable to hopeful. "You're serious about this yourself, aren't you?"

"I am," Domma replied.

"Oh, God, but yours isn't full blown like mine is," Metta moaned, throwing herself flat on the bed.

"Who is it, Metta?"

Metta moved closer to Domma until they both sat in the tiny warmth of the candle flame. "His name is Tristo. He works in a district hospital."

Domma's heart jumped. "Are you Delving me?" she asked, pulling back slightly.

"No!" Metta said. "Honest! Why?"

"The man I love-" Domma shook her head. "The man I am having trouble with works in a district hospital, too."

"There's something about them isn't there?" Metta asked.

"It would seem so. Metta, you know what I am going to tell you about your affair."

"And you know what I am going to tell you about your feelings. You weren't looking for disapproval. You were looking for approval from someone young and not as ingrained. Well... I think you've found it."

She's wise beyond her years.

"Metta, I... I don't know why I am the way I am. But I promise I will keep your secret if you keep mine. Even so, I think we both need to pray on this. And you know what you are supposed to do, deep down, as do I. You should end your affair or relinquish your robe and all that you stand for as a Sunburst."

The girl sighed. "We almost always know what we _should_ do."

Domma smiled and kissed Metta's forehead. "You know where I am if you need to talk further." She took the candle and stood up, heading towards the door.

"I wish I could have Delved them," Metta said.

"Hm?" Domma asked, turning around.

"My father and brother. After they died. From where I was hiding. I wish I could have Delved them to find out... to find out if they blamed me for their deaths because I hid."

"I am sure they did not blame you."

Metta sighed.

"You must try to sleep, Metta. I am sorry to have put you through this. I honestly didn't intend for this to be so... traumatic. But I think this has worked out for the best for both of us."

"Maybe," the girl said. "My answers may be somewhere in The Book. Perhaps I am drawn to the stories in Carnage because they have something to tell me."

"Yes," Domma said. "It may be so. If you'd like, you can help me write this week's Sermon. We could do one on Carnage. Not often brought up, but perhaps the time is right."

"Perhaps. Goodnight, Domma. My advice is to follow your heart." Metta's eyes closed, but Domma doubted the girl would sleep much.

Sometimes the curse of Devotion was empathizing with the struggles of everyone around you. I _know the ins and outs of so many people's lives; their dark desires, their failings, their fears. But I barely know myself._

Domma quietly closed Metta's door and made her way to the Bibliofero.

-2-

The Bibliofero was deep beneath the earth, down a set of large steps at the back of the Sunburst Temple. There was some speculation as to how it had ever been built at all. It was a commonly held belief that the Temple had been built over it the already existing magical underground library. Some, however - Domma included - believed that it was done during the religious wars that had happened five hundred years ago; perhaps as a hiding place, perhaps as a bastion of knowledge. According to the histories, magic had surged during those times, making the construction of such a place not out of the realm of possibility.

But whatever the reason for its existence, the Bibliofero housed the largest collection of knowledge currently available anywhere that Domma knew of.

And only a Devotee could access it.

The stone door that granted entry must have weighed a thousand stone at least, not to mention the endless columns that stood supporting the place. The architecture was brutally heavy, but there wasn't a crack in any of the stone, even after all these centuries.

Domma stood in front of the stone door now with the same candle she had used in Metta's room. It was about halfway gone, the wax melting down the sides, but Domma was pressed forward by her thirst to solve the puzzle and hadn't bothered to pick up a new one. She held her hand to the door and began to Delve.

The technique was fairly simple, but the door had always prompted a question in Domma's mind. Why could she Delve an inanimate object? What living, thinking thing could be housed inside of the door that was reacting to the magic?

_It had better not be filled with brains,_ she thought.

It was true that many techniques had been lost over the years. Devotee magic and the other four types had waxed and waned, powers and techniques gained and lost. The past might have held millions of ways of using her power, but as of right now she had knowledge of three.

Finally she found the door's mind and twisted until it gave way, sliding by unseen force. It made almost no sound as it traveled slowly inward, revealing a single room that was as big as the entire Sunburst Temple.

Claustrophobia was rare in such a large place, but Domma felt it here in the vast silence.

There was no light in the main room, and no sound either. No odor emanated. Domma and many of the Devotees had trouble breathing down here, making the time they could spend sometimes rather limited. Even the candle had trouble holding its flame.

Domma looked at Metta's list. The girl had said the books were likely in the Depths, so Domma cupped her candle's flame and began moving towards the shadows at the far end of the Bibliofero.

She passed shelf upon shelf that held books of all sizes, colors, and conditions. Some were, in fact, totally useless, the ink completely worn off or the pages fallen out, but still they were kept, because once a text went into the Bibliofero it didn't come back out. The magic made sure of that.

It was odd to think of such a vast resource seeing such little use, but this place wasn't spoken of outside of the Temple. The main problem - even for those that knew how to access the Bibliofero - was that there was no real method of organization. A collection of this size required upkeep that the Devotees simply didn't have the time or numbers to deal with and it had, as far as Domma knew, always been a disaster.

There had been sisters through the ages that had cared for it, but not nearly as well as they should have. Their system seemed to have very few rules. They shelved and organized by what they felt to be relevant, putting the more usable tomes on the closest shelves at eye level, and everything else progressively farther back until they were in the Depths.

Domma found herself there now. There were no cobwebs as one might expect in the back of giant library. Nothing lived down here.

Her candle burned almost too dimly for her to see, but she began to extract books from the shelves very carefully. She turned the first one over, trying to find a title, but couldn't see one. She sat down on the ground and opened it. The script inside was written in a language that Domma couldn't translate, so she decided to place it back on the shelf and take another. On and on she worked, becoming increasingly frustrated that nothing she picked seemed relevant. It was impossible to find the books Metta had written down. There were thousands upon thousands of unrecognizable volumes.

An entire bell had passed and still Domma had found nothing.

"God," she prayed in the darkness, "please guide my hand. Help me find what I am looking for." She expended the tiniest bit of power to send the words with more force, and with her next choice she thought she felt her hand being pushed gently in the proper direction.

She selected a blue tome with gold edging on it and ran her hand over the cover. She opened the book, her candle a mere stub at this point. The text inside was in a large, hastily scrawled, uneven script and the lines were not quite straight. The ink was faded and Domma squinted as she read. The language was of the ancient south, but she could translate most of it and so she began to read, becoming more and more enthralled as she did:

My name is unimportant and my journey has been long, and made longer still by my wounds. But the creature that attacked me had certainly been neither human nor animal. I was wandering near the misty barrier that separates our world from... from what, I am not sure. I have never heard of anyone entering it and coming back alive. Perhaps God wants to keep us from knowing, or perhaps the world simply ends there, fading into mist for eternity.

It makes little difference either way, for leaping from the misty area came a creature of hideous design. The claws of a crab, elongated and dripping with toxin, tipped its arms. The rest of it resembled no creature that I have encountered and I therefore find it difficult to describe here, especially since writing is so painful.

_It screeched at me in a foreign tongue - if one could even call it a tongue - and quite before I knew it I was under assault. I tried to_ (a word that Domma did not recognize) _it, but it was to no effect as it ran towards me. It swung at my leg as I dodged away, calling for peace. Of course you must know that it did not listen to my plea. I begged it to return to the mist as I backed away, asking forgiveness for disturbing it as I must have done. To no avail._

_I drew my_ (probably some kind of a sword) _as it lunged at me again and the metal made a harsh sound against its_ (skin?) _but accomplished nothing. It was only when I fell backwards, rolling down a hill, that I ceased to be under attack. I may have fractured my skull and hand in the fall, but I got up nonetheless, stumbling blindly through the daylight for some escape._

_I ran until I thought I would burst. It was ninety_ (some measure of distance) _to the nearest town, and when I got there they assumed me drunk. Leave it to the citizens of Youskirk to think the worst of a man. I was ridiculed for what I told them I had seen; after all, the people of that town had lived there their whole lives and I was a stranger to them. I must have looked awful._

I began my journey north to inform people who might listen to me. I had seen something frightening in the mist, and I was sure it was coming for us all. I got to the northernmost town in the Southern Kingdom - that of Fisher, where the Ein river forks \- and finally I was taken seriously. For a time.

When a man is different from others he can only conceal it for so long. I stayed at Fisher for weeks, gathering supporters who would rally with me, but one of the men who joined to my cause knew me, though I did not know him. He must have hunted me, is my only guess. He knew my past better than most and slowly the rumors about me began to spread.

I'd had the power inside of me my whole life. Like the five. The ones that caused this mess. I could use my power in various ways and it seemed to grow through prayer to the God of the North. When I was on my pilgrimage to the Southern Kingdom, my power had ebbed and flowed as if it was interrupted by some other forces, but still it remained within me.

Some called me a wizard, others a liar, but my infamy - word of my uniqueness: the first of my kind since the mist came - spread like wildfire. As I write these words I am certain that the whole world will be sorry they weren't able to heed my warnings.

I am writing this in the vain hope that someday, someone will see this document. It has taken me three years - all of them spent in this jail of an infirmary - to get the quill and paper necessary to write down even this small portion of my plight. My caretaker is gentle. Perhaps if my writing is not seen as a warning, it would be alright if it were seen as a joke. At the very least it must be seen.

-1570 A.C.

Domma's candle guttered as her eyes swept over the last of the words. There was more in this tome, but she would not be able to read it this night. As the flame died she was left in utter darkness to ponder what she had just absorbed.

There was a lot lurking in this text. She was certain it had been recopied; the condition it was in was too good for anything else. The text was supposedly over three-hundred years old. Had this been the first recorded sighting of a Foglin? Had the creatures not existed until then?

Domma stood up quietly and felt her way along the shelves until she reached the giant stone door. She had never much been afraid of the dark, but the Bibliofero had a strange way of getting to one's sense of calm. By the time she unlocked the door, her knees were shaking.

Taking the book with her was out of the question, as the Bibliofero's magical workings disallowed this sort of thing. She remembered it fresh, as easily as she could memorize passages from The Book, or an entire sermon.

She made her way back up the twisting stairs towards the dim light of the Temple's main floor all the while going over what she had just read. She was certain that God had helped her find what she was looking for, and he was trying to tell her something, but meanings were often hidden in layers. She would have to puzzle this out herself.

She went back to her room and sat down to think.

-3-

The thing that tugged at the back of her mind was a contradiction in the writing. The narrator had been under attack, but then he fell, tumbling down a hill and somehow that had saved him. He seemed to say that with a fractured skull and hip he was able to escape where he otherwise would not have been able to. It didn't make any sense. His injuries should have hindered him, rather than saved him.

Movement should have been difficult on his broken hip and thought should have slowed...

With his broken skull.

Something with skulls.

The section missing from Ormon's skull had been the place where Domma had Mended him.

The Foglin was after the magic.

The narrator of the story had said people were frightened of his power. Once he hurt his head, the Foglin ceased its pursuit.

He'd damaged his head, a source of his power?

Do Foglins feed on magic?

Magic was as scarce a thing as Domma knew of. Out of all the Sunburst Clerics of Haroma - of which there were easily ninety - only five of them were Devotees, herself and Metta included.

And three of them had developed their powers within the last year.

Is the rise of magic drawing the Foglins farther north?

Something wasn't adding up here, and Domma couldn't be sure that she wasn't just confusing herself. She resigned to think more about this tomorrow and then she lay down slowly and went to sleep.

# Chapter 14

### Devotees and Servitors

-1-

Krothair was sitting on the ground tending to his wounds. His lip was split in two different places and he could have sworn one of his pinkies was broken. As he rested his back against the harsh bark of an old tree, he cursed silently. If he hadn't been learning he would have left weeks ago.

But the things Ti'Shed was showing him, even if they were delivered in insulting, abusive ways, challenged his mind and body in a most satisfying way. Techniques of sword forms, two-weapon fighting, unarmed combat, rope grappling, and other things he had never even thought of before all mingled in his mind, fighting for space and understanding.

Krothair realized the delicate balance within himself; the fight between his thirst for knowledge and his tolerance of pain and emotional torment. He had been worried about Ti'Shed for these past few weeks: worried that the sword master would hurt him and worried that he would hurt himself. Krothair didn't want to disappoint, but it seemed that no matter what he did or how hard he tried, Ti'Shed saw him only as a failure.

"Get up," Ti'Shed said. The sword master's eyes were bloodshot, but still intense. He wore many wounds himself, and Krothair knew that somehow the Duller was keeping Ti'Shed from feeling as much of his pain as he probably should.

"I thought we were done for the day," Krothair said, his heart sinking.

Ti'Shed's face was frighteningly passive. "We were going to be. But that last combination you attempted would have let any Foglin cut both inches of your cock off with a single slice. If we don't drill it, you will die on your first day at the Vapor."

"And when will that be?" Krothair asked. He put his hands on his bruised knees and pushed himself to standing. "I certainly hope it's soon."

"Not the best idea. If you find _me_ too harsh, the men down there will eat you alive."

"I can't do anymore," the boy said. "I can't even hold onto my weapon right now." He heard Ti'Shed's grip creak on the two mallets he was holding, fists tightening on leather grips. "If you're going to kill me, just kill me now."

Silence and then a bird tweeting.

The sun was blazing in the sky and Krothair could feel the heat of it through his clothing. It made his already warm wounds even hotter. "I'm going to go into the city," he said, not knowing what else to do.

"Last time you did that, it didn't end well," Ti'Shed reminded him. "We're going to drill that last combination, Wind in the Stones."

Krothair tucked his shirt in as best we could and slowly ambled away from the old man. Turning his back on him was a lot more difficult than he would have thought. _And not just because he can kill me. I feel as bad for him as I do for myself._ Krothair had never given up on anything easily, but right now he felt the gentle equilibrium inside of himself slip and knew he needed to get away.

And so, filthy and beaten, Krothair left Ti'Shed standing in the training yard, openly disobeying him for the first time since he had arrived.

"I don't want to push you this hard!" the old man yelled after him. "But I have no other choice!" His last words echoed down the street.

-2-

The avenues of Haroma were as busy as they always were, and Krothair felt ill at ease among the throngs. It was for the first time in these crowds that he realized the extent of his injuries. He had taken some his wounds with a grain of salt until people started brushing against him. But now, even the slightest of contact sent his skin to howling. _Had the excitement of training really been able to mask this much pain?_

"This is hopeless," he said to himself. He wouldn't have even minded running into Katya or Zin or any other thief, vagabond, or idiot at this point. He had a strange, violent energy building inside of him; all the frustrations of the past weeks coming to the surface and bristling to be released on someone. Anyone.

Something was wrong with Ti'Shed. The old man had warned Krothair himself, but the boy had been too enthralled to listen and now it was too late. Emotions churned within Krothair: respect, fear, worry, loneliness... the love of a son. "Maybe I'm the crazy one," he said again to no one. He was scared to be right about that, but he was also scared to be wrong. If he was insane, then at least he had identified the problem, but if he wasn't insane then, well, that would mean that this was what normal people dealt with all the time. And maybe he _was_ just weak after all.

"Get the hell away from my cart, ya grungy fuck," said an especially surly merchant.

Krothair realized he had been staring blankly at the stack of fruit the cart contained, and he didn't want any trouble so he slowly shambled on. He didn't blame the merchant. Krothair's clothes were a mess with dirt and blood because he hadn't been paying any attention to his appearance. His mind wandered as he wandered, letting his training slip to the back of his mind as his old senses tried to take over.

I've been wandering my his entire life. Why do I suddenly feel so lost?

He walked with his head down.

"Sir," said a timid female voice. "Sir?"

Krothair looked up and into the pleasant face of a girl who might have been somewhere around his age. "Hm?" he said.

She was wearing a blue robe that seemed too clean to be on the dusty streets of the city and her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, giving her skin - which was flawless and already smooth - an even tighter look. Her eyes were small, but contained a depth that surprised Krothair.

"Sir," she said. "You look lost."

Krothair nodded slowly. "I suppose I am," he said.

The girl reached into the front of her robe and drew out a pendant. It was in the shape of a shield and Krothair knew at once he had run into someone belonging to some religious order. The idea didn't terrify him, but he wasn't thrilled either.

One of the orphanages he had been in had been run by a religious order, and their teachings, while nice and non-threatening, had never captivated Krothair. Something felt different about this girl, though. She was a compelling sight, all ordered, together, and prim.

"These look like cuts from a sword," she said, running her hand gently along Krothair's forearm.

_A shotella,_ Krothair thought, correcting her silently. _A hooked sword fantastic for stabbing around shields and not at all relevant to fighting Foglins, thank you very much._

"Swords and shields are symbols for us," the girl continued, "but sometimes I forget what they're really capable of. If you need someone to talk to, well, that is what I am doing at the market today." She nodded her head, indicating a small tent that had a sunburst design on the side.

Krothair followed her as she turned her back on him. Her steps were small, but he found that in his condition he really couldn't have walked much faster. She drew back the flap of the tent and held it open for him as he shambled inside.

The tent was somehow a pleasant temperature despite the heat outside. The smell of dirt and sweat had become so all-encompassing to him that the herbs burning in the tiny brazier inside the tent seemed to waft the fragrance of heaven directly into his nose. He sank down onto a small stool that creaked under his weight.

"It's not the finest accommodations," the girl said apologetically, "but we of the Sunburst make do with what God grants us."

"It's a nice tent," Krothair said. He meant it.

The girl sat opposite him, and looked up at him with concerned eyes. There was no falsehood in her gaze, but genuine empathy. "Where should we start?" she said.

"Isn't that a question I'm supposed to ask you?"

"It's mostly a question we both ask to God."

"Look," Krothair said, holding up his hands and wincing at the pain, "I'm not exactly looking for God right now. I'm just looking for someone to talk to."

"There are many people in the world who don't _think_ they're looking for God. But they are. You're looking for someone to talk to, but God could be that someone all the time. I'm just a port in a storm to you. God is the whole shore. My name is Forstina, Cleric of the Third Grace, emissary of the Sunburst Temple."

"I'm... Krothair."

Forstina gave him a look that seemed to mean that she expected him to go on with his description.

So he poured his story forth to her. "I'm an orphan," he said. "But it's kind of pathetic to think of myself that way since most people would view me as an adult now. Over the years I've done everything from petty thieving to protecting the western border of this kingdom, but I've never found my place. Then I thought I found my place. I am training with a sword master right now for a spot on the Vaporgaard, an elite group of soldiers that patrol and protect the Vapor. Do you know of such a thing?"

"I don't know much about fighting," Forstina said, blushing a bit. "You certainly have the muscles to be a fighter, but you don't look so much like you're in training as you are... being abused."

Krothair fell silent. "My master would say you have an uncanny intuition."

"Do you believe in the magics of this world?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," said Krothair. "There's stories, rumors. Maybe the Kingsguardians can use magic. Servitor magic. I don't know. I'm only vaguely sure what to believe between all the myths and legends."

"Most people are confused," Forstina assured him. "The magic of this world is real, and growing stronger by the day. For example, I am a Devotee. My intuition is a part of my power, but there is more to our art if you would let me work it." She held her hands out to him, palms up.

Krothair placed his hands gently on top of Forstina's, not really knowing what else to do. He was entirely caught up in this. Forstina wasn't beautiful, but she was intriguing.

"I will heal your mind as best I can," the girl said as she closed her eyes. "It helps if I say a prayer while I am working. Will you be offended?"

"No," Krothair said, "but please be careful of the pinky on my right hand."

Forstina adjusted her hands slightly. "Is that better?"

Krothair nodded and then, realizing Forstina's eyes were closed, said, "Yeah."

Something began to happen to Krothair as he sat in that isolated tent. Forstina began to speak, but he wasn't really listening to the words so much as the rhythm of them, and he began to feel things release inside of him that he couldn't quite put his finger on. The burning herbs soaked his senses and suddenly he had an intensely powerful urge to lean forward and kiss the girl. He probably would have done it, too, but something stopped him.

He felt watched by a presence greater than himself for the first time in his life. His brain surged between belief and disbelief. He'd heard of revelations like this happening to others.

Krothair's faith in everything wavered. Suddenly stories he had heard - things he had initially dismissed as wishful thinking and faulty faith - became more than stories. They became possible realities he had never fully considered.

He wanted to know so much more about the world he had shut out. If he went back to Ti'Shed maybe he could learn how to become a Servitor. He couldn't give up and dismiss it as fantasy just because he couldn't do it.

"Til'men," Forstina said. That seemed to end her deluge of words.

Krothair stood up in the tent and Forstina followed his lead. "I don't have any money," he said.

"Few we help do."

"I wish I had something to give you for what you have done for me."

"It wasn't so hard saying a simple prayer like that," the girl said, a hint of innocent mischief in her voice.

"You have restored something to me. A drive I had lost."

"Remember the magic of the world, Krothair," she said. "And remember that no matter how dark it gets, the sun will always rise again." Forstina dusted off her robe despite the fact that it was still spotless.

"Yeah," Krothair said. "Yeah. Thank you." Forstina exited the tent Krothair followed her into the brightness of the afternoon. His eyes took a while to adjust, and just as they did, he saw Forstina resuming her emissary duties on the street. She approached a man who was covered in sores from head to toe.

_Oh good. She's finding other poor wretches like me,_ Krothair thought.

-3-

The sun was setting. Krothair had stayed all day in the city, simply walking around taking in the sights, sounds, and experiences. He had misjudged his experiences in the past. _Thought I knew the world. Bah. Germon must've thought I was an idiot to talk like I did._ Krothair began to think about himself as a very small fish in a very large pond.

Forstina was also fresh in his mind. She had possessed a confidence that had made her seem much older than her years and much bigger than her frame. Krothair wondered how he could have that sort of power for himself. _I was probably closer to getting it weeks ago._

He was reluctant to reenter TiShed's house, but he girded himself and pushed through the front door, dying to know the answers to his questions about magic.

The sword master sat at the table with his head down on his powerful forearms. The tin of Duller sat before him, the top askew and some of the powder smeared on the grainy wood. Krothair breathed in and told himself that it was none of his business. He knew that whatever emotions Ti'Shed was covering with the Duller were frightening indeed.

Krothair sat in the chair across from Ti'Shed and the second he did the sword master whipped the cover onto the Duller tin and made it disappear. Krothair was amazed at the old man's reaction time even through the haze of drugs and exhaustion.

"We need to talk," Krothair said.

"'Bout what?"

"About something you told me last week. About that woman Servitor. Are all the Kingsguardians Servitors too?"

Ti'Shed looked up at him, face rather dull. "You wanna know about magic, then? I suppose our training can continue in that way, although I believe that may be a distracting waste of time for you."

"Why is it a waste of time?"

Ti'Shed sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. "Magic is a rare and unpredictable thing. If you don't have it by now, I would be very surprised if you developed it at all. The secrets of how to use Servitor magic are heavily guarded as you might suspect. Even if someone with the spark is found, they aren't necessarily trained immediately, or ever."

"That was part of your surprise when you fought Katya."

Ti'Shed grunted. "When I was working with Kelin and Telin-" Here Ti'Shed paused abruptly as if he were trying to remember back that far. "They were so young. When I worked with Kelin and Telin they weren't Servitors yet, just incredibly skilled swordsmen. Then, once they became Servitors, their powers were erratic and impossible to control."

"How did they become Servitors in the first place?"

"It takes a true act of Service to feel the spark of that magic in you. Defending someone, saving a life, carrying an incredibly heavy burden, giving someone just what they need right when they need it. It might be all, one, or none of these things that sets off the magic, or it might just choose its own time. God grants things in mysterious ways."

"Katya's only service to me was going to be making sure I couldn't have children," Krothair said. "How does she possess such powerful magic if she can use it to try and accomplish such awful things?"

"It's true that in order to build power - once you have the magic, I mean - you must Serve others. But whatever you choose to do with the power you collect is up to you. My guess is that that woman lives a double life. She must, at some points in time, Serve others in some capacity, but then she chooses to use her powers for thieving. Or jewel removal."

"You seem to understand so much," Krothair said. "If I develop the magic... can you teach me how it works?"

Ti'Shed smirked, his eyes and personality still dulled for the time being. "Knowing how shiny a sword is does not mean you know how to swing it, Krothair. Knowing that a fish swims in the water doesn't mean you know how it breathes. Knowing that the sun is hot-"

"Alright," said Krothair. He actually laughed a little.

This easy conversation was fairly typical of this time of night. Ti'Shed was an unforgivable beast on the training field, but he was rather easy to talk to as the day wore on. Perhaps the Duller built up during the day, pouring out all of its considerable ability to mute emotions near dusk. Ti'Shed's apology for the the training that day would be coming soon, as it had most other nights.

"I don't want you to get too distracted by this topic," the sword master said. "There's no use dreaming about things you can't do. That sort of nonsense only detracts from the moment at hand."

"What if I feel the spark someday?" Krothair asked.

"If you do," Ti'Shed said, "I want you to tell me right away." The sword master sighed. "Krothair, I'm sorry about how things went today. I warned you that a part of myself is tearing away."

"I know," Krothair said. "I'm sorry I went away today."

"You were right to, I think. And you came back alive with your manhood intact. That's always important."

Ti'Shed rose slowly from his chair, wincing slightly as he did. He shuffled slowly off to his bedroom and, without another word, went inside with the tiniest opening and closing of the door.

Krothair sat at the table thinking for another half-bell, moving not a muscle, just feeling out his emotions.

An owl hooted outside. It was the first time Krothair had heard that sound inside the city. He went outside to see if he could find the bird, but it wasn't in sight. The moon was bright overhead and Krothair went to the well and sat on its low wall, content to be alone, silent, and unmoving.

Everything that had happened today had become rather commonplace, actually. In the morning Ti'Shed would yell Krothair out of bed or, if that failed, haul him out into the training yard using some new hold that Krothair hadn't yet learned. They would train until Krothair was physically and mentally exhausted, and then they would work some more, Ti'Shed swooping and diving aggressively, trying - it seemed - to bombard Krothair with so much knowledge that it was more of an attack than a tutorial. Then, by night, once Krothair was ready to walk away from everything, Ti'Shed would apologize, then Duller himself to sleep.

But Krothair knew that it would start again the next morning.

He decided that this cycle would never end unless he did something more drastic. Going away for a bit today wasn't enough. He needed to stop being passive and hoping that everything would pass. It was time to take some action.

For better or worse he had to find the thing that had started all of this, and seek his answers from there.

Tomorrow, he swore, he would find that red-sheathed sword.

# Chapter 15

### Protectors

-1-

Halimaldie wore his heaviest leather gloves despite the heat. Aside from his gloves he was reasonably attired in his least flashy clothing. He was sweating already, though, and it wasn't just from the heat. He was nervous again. _This is a feeling I don't enjoy._

He'd put off this visit to the hospital for five days already, but the promise he had made to his brother had finally pushed him to act. Halimaldie hadn't exactly been supportive of the hospitals, and the irony of needing to use one wasn't really lost on him. But his hand more now. The infection had been slowly spreading, now getting under his nails and turning them black as well. It had spread to the back of his hand and was threatening to crawl further up his arm.

Halimaldie's hands were down at his sides ready to grab his twin daggers if he needed them. He knew that back alleys were seedy, and Halimaldie's heart beat faster as he walked them.

Finally - and thankfully without incident - he stood before the fifth district hospital. It was a large building that looked as if it had been cobbled together from all sorts of materials by many different hands. Every single window was boarded over and the front door - if the slab of uncarved wood was indeed a door - was dented in the middle as if some great battering ram had struck it at one point in its history.

"What a shit-heap," he said to himself. "This is what the Kingdom's taxes pay for?"

The door grated open noisily on rusty hinges when he pushed on it and Halimaldie was immediately greeted by many strange smells, most of them surprisingly clean. From the outward look of the place he had expected dung and blood, but he was met with a pine smell and another of fragrant soaps.

"Hello?" he called into the quiet, candle-lit building.

He stepped inside and found himself in some kind of waiting room. There was a shoddy desk at one end and a few candelabrum on the walls. The flames glowed unnaturally, and he wondered for a moment if they were magical. _Here I am wondering if everything strange is magical now. What is happening to me?_ A breeze blew lightly through the place despite the fact that he could see no openings to the outside.

This was truly like another world.

A woman materialized out of the shadow and glided over to the desk, looking much like the moving branches of a willow. She was graceful and powerful and Halimaldie couldn't help but stare at her.

"Are you Tellurian's brother?" she asked.

"Resemblance that strong?"

The woman nodded and smiled gently. "It's not unnoticeable. He's out right now, but told me all that I need to know."

"I can't believe he's out. Maybe I'll come back later. I really wanted him to be here."

"Well you didn't make an appointment," the woman said. Is _she one of the tree witches - Protectors - that Tell had been talking about?_ She certainly seemed a creature of natural beauty. "He has other things that he does, you know. He doesn't just hang about the district hospital waiting for you."

"I know," Halimaldie said, blushing. "I guess it was foolish to expect him to be here all the time."

The woman laughed. "My name is Yarrow. I'll be taking care of you, Halimaldie."

Halimaldie winced. "I'd appreciate if you wouldn't just throw my name around like that."

"There is no reason to worry. We protect all of our clients, even a man of your stature."

"Especially a man of my stature."

" _Even_ a man of your stature." Yarrow smiled again. A small brown bat fluttered down out of the air and landed on Yarrow's shoulder.

"There's a-"

"A bat on my shoulder? Yes. He seems to be quite a threat, doesn't he?" Yarrow leaned her head over and nuzzled the bat. Halimaldie became aware of the disgusted look on his face and worked to correct it immediately.

He had suddenly plunged himself into a world he knew nothing about. _Why hadn't I known anything about this, though? And what are the possibilities if magic is real?_

"Society could make such a better use of us," Yarrow said, "but we are either feared, shunned, or disbelieved." Obviously she had noticed the look on Halimaldie's face. "Perhaps you will become a believer today."

"I like to think I take things at face value," Halimaldie said. He now wished he had finished his drink before coming here. _Has this world been under my nose for my whole life? Have I been too caught up in other matters to see it?_

Yarrow smiled. "Come with me," she said. She held out a hand that floated gracefully in front of her. Halimaldie took it, as he guessed he was expected to do.

"I could get used to this," he said, feeling the warmth of it.

"Oh, yes," Yarrow said, lightly. "It is peaceful in here."

That hadn't been what Halimaldie meant.

They descended a large staircase into pitch blackness.

-2-

"I understand the hand holding now," Halimaldie said. "But why does it have to be so dark?" He wasn't sure he liked this situation, but he had come this far and he was incredibly curious.

"The hospital is a refuge as much as it is a place of Healing. This keeps everyone safer. Tully here tells me where to go."

"Who's Tully?"

"My bat."

"He can talk to you?"

"Yes," Yarrow said, her voice echoing as if they were in a great space.

"Who is this place a refuge for?" Halimaldie asked.

Yarrow didn't say anything for a few moments as she slowly stepped forward, tugging Halimaldie along. "I thought a man in your position would know more of the world," she said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Protectors are hated. Perhaps you didn't hear about the battle of the Dryad Tree during the war. It was the one that ended it."

"The battle of Shai Springs ended the war," Halimaldie said.

Yarrow sighed in the darkness. "They covered it up for all these years. The battle at the Dryad Tree was the great victory of my people, and both Kingdoms covered it up, slaughtered us because of the power we'd had."

Halimaldie could tell he had made some sort of mistake so he abandoned that line of questioning. "What happens if someone just brings a candle down here?"

"You think a mere candle can pierce this Darkness?"

"My God," Halimaldie said, becoming a little frightened. "What are you tree witches capable of?"

"See what I mean?" Yarrow said sadly.

Halimaldie cursed himself. "I'm sorry."

They walked in silence after that until Yarrow pulled a door open.

Two things began to happen at the same time: Halimaldie saw a room filled with color and life, and his diseased hand began to pulse and throb in time with some unknown rhythm.

-3-

Halimaldie began to pick at his glove, trying to relieve the pressure he now felt from it, and at the same time he tried to take in his surroundings. The room they had entered wasn't huge, but it certainly felt that way. Murals had been painted on the ceiling that mimicked the sky so perfectly that Halimaldie had to convince himself it wasn't real. Plants grew in abundance and there was also a faint breeze down here, just as there had been in the reception area upstairs.

There were beds and hammocks lining the walls and Halimaldie saw people who must have been patients lying on most of them. Other women - very much like Yarrow in their demeanor and dress - moved about the room tending to one person or another.

All in all the room probably held two-hundred people: mostly patients, a scant few Protectors, and still others who looked like they fit neither role.

"There's a whole other world down here," Halimaldie said. "Who would want to harm this? It's beautiful."

Yarrow bowed her head. "Most people simply fear what is different, or what they don't know. Seeing with your own eyes is a start, but for most people that's not good enough either."

Halimaldie found that he had subconsciously rolled his right glove down, exposing a bit of his disease to the open air. He could feel it pulsing more strongly as he moved farther into the room. _Is it reacting to the magic that flows through the air here?_

"Sit," Yarrow said, motioning to an empty bed. "We'll have a look at your injury. And for God's sake don't pick at it."

Halimaldie sat on the clean, white sheets with Yarrow across from him. He stripped off the rest of his glove and let it fall to the floor. She cradled his hand in hers again.

"I've never seen anything like this," Yarrow said, leaning further over to inspect it. The front of her robe fell away from her chest and Halimaldie caught a glimpse of it before her long black hair fell down and intervened.

"I got it from some sort of infected gemstones. There was... a Foglin involved."

"Lower your voice," Yarrow said. "I don't want the other patients disturbed with such thoughts. Now, where did this happen?"

"On one of my ships," Halimaldie said more quietly. "I got a shipment from the southlands near the Vapor. One of the crates held slimy black gemstones and the you-know-what was in another."

"May I use magic on your hand?" she said, looking up at him.

In the back of Halimaldie's mind he wondered if this was a ruse. A confidence show. "Yes," he said. "If you think it will help. Or if it won't take too long. I'm on a tight schedule today."

"More infected cargo to see to?"

Halimaldie chuckled. "Hopefully not infected, but cargo yes."

"Well then hold still," Yarrow said. She sat up straight and breathed deeply, closing her eyes. She held Halimaldie's hot, pulsating hand between her own smooth cool ones. Yarrow began to move her hands around Halimaldie's in a slow pattern, circling it with a rhythmic motion.

Nothing seemed to be happening and Halimaldie started to speak, but then stopped himself. He could almost swear he saw a pale barrier around his hand. It could have been the lighting or the trance he had fallen into from Yarrow's calm, repetitive motions.

"You're rotting from the inside out," Yarrow said, her voice tense. "I might be able to stem the flow of this, but this is so... wrong." She shuddered.

"That's not good," Halimaldie said.

Yarrow shushed him. Little beads of sweat were forming on her forehead despite the coolness of the room. She was definitely doing something, but Halimaldie was unsure he would ever know _what_.

"If I tie it here..." she muttered. She moved her hands slightly and made complex patterns with her fingers. She shuddered again then, taking one of her hands away to steady herself against a low table. "It shouldn't spread anymore," she said, breathing heavily. "But you're going to have to keep it wrapped in bandages. It can't breathe through that leather glove. It would be better yet to keep it open to the air, but under the circumstances I'm not sure that's the best idea."

"Would any of your... sisters have a better idea about what's happening?"

"I am the most knowledgeable," Yarrow said. "If I had some sap from the Dryad Tree I could probably do more, but that is not a possibility right now."

"Can you buy sap like that?" Halimaldie asked. "I have the means of getting most anything I want."

"And that is what you are used to, I'm afraid," Yarrow said, her eyes sad. "But that is not the way of the whole world. You suffer under a delusion, Halimaldie. But you did not come here to be judged and philosophized to, I do not think."

Halimaldie didn't know what to say. He didn't usually let himself be spoken to that way. _Perhaps Tell can get away with that from time to time, but a tree witch..._

Halimaldie realized then for the first time that he had bought in, on some level, to the same rumors as everyone else. He had never really had time for hatred, but to even think of Yarrow as something as crude as a "tree witch" was doing her, and everyone like her, a great injustice. He'd heard there were women who could steal your soul, make beasts kill your family, and even force you to fall in love with the ocean so that you might walk willingly into it never to return. He had thought it metaphor.

Now he knew that those ideas were based in reality. And also that they probably weren't entirely true.

Suddenly he very much wanted to be judged by this woman and he shuddered at the thought of how long it had been since he'd felt that emotion: wanting to be told what he was doing wrong, wanting to be instructed on how to be better.

He looked down at his hand. Nothing seemed different. _Were my eyes playing tricks on me? I swear I saw something shimmering around it..._

"Thank you," Halimaldie said.

"Oh, good," Yarrow said. "I thought you had slipped into a coma."

Halimaldie laughed. "I was just deep in thought. What can I do to help your cause here?"

"Let me get your hand wrapped up first," Yarrow said. "I think you know how to help us here, Halimaldie. Protectors can do a lot, but we can't do it all." She wound the bandages carefully around his hand, then tucked them gently in so they would stay put. "I apologize again that I can't fully heal it."

"Nonsense. You've done a lot for me. For one thing, you've opened my eyes to a situation I didn't know existed. That's beneficial to me, but it can also be beneficial to you. My brother's been telling me about this place for years, but I never came here. I never saw it."

Yarrow smiled sadly.

"And my advice," said Halimaldie, "is that you should charge for your services here. You do amazing things."

"Most of the people we help don't have any money."

"That's so strange," Halimaldie said.

Yarrow only gave him a quizzical look. Then Halimaldie said something that surprised him.

"I would like to see you again, Yarrow."

"I know," the woman said, her voice sad. "I'll do more research, I'll try and figure out what-"

"No. I mean... socially."

Tully flew from the rafters onto Yarrow's shoulder again. "You suffer from many delusions about this world, Halimaldie," she said.

"I want you to dispel them."

Yarrow laughed and turned her head to the side, blushing. "Your offer is very generous," she said. "And I must say that I'm intrigued..."

"But?"

She hesitated. "There is no but."

"That's good," said Halimaldie. "I hate buts. That came out wrong."

Yarrow smiled and indicated the door. "May I lead you out?" she asked. "I'm very busy today."

"Oh, shit, me too," Halimaldie said, pulling a contract from his inner coat pocket with his non-bandaged hand. "The pearls could be coming in right now and I'm not there. That's gonna look odd. I will call on you again, Yarrow."

"I hope that you do," she said, smiling. Her teeth were white as snow.

-4-

Halimaldie was ready to yell the praises of the hospitals and their Protectors all over the city of Haroma, but he stopped himself. He had no proof of anything yet. He thought he'd seen magic, but he didn't really know. It wasn't really proof even if his disease stopped spreading. That could be coincidence. He thought maybe he'd just been so overawed with Yarrow that he'd let himself get far, far too romantic.

He intended to think about everything further, but there was someone waiting for him just outside the hospital.

"How the fuck are ya? I'm Trance Raynman," said a gruff, burly man. He extended his right hand towards Halimaldie who had to shake it awkwardly with his left. "The hell kind o' grip is that?"

"Sorry. I'm... injured."

"Ya, I see the bandages now," Trance said. "Sorry 'bout that. You'd think us Kingsguardians would be more sensitive to injury."

"So, the Kingsguard is ready for me, eh?" Halimaldie asked. "Well your timing couldn't be worse. I haven't made any arrangements to leave just yet."

"And when were ya gonna do that?" Trance asked. "We never said when we'd come for ya. Ya aren't a dumb fuck, so I suspect you're just stallin' fer time."

"It took you five days to come get me. You're not exactly in a hurry either."

"Got caught up in crown bureaucracy. Happens from time to time."

"Well, look. I just need to write a few letters and inform some of my intermediaries of the change in plans. If we go by ship it'll take two months to get to the mines, anyway. Over land, maybe even longer. So I don't see how a few hours are going to make or break us."

"A few months?" Trance said, a smug look on his face. "You've never traveled with a group of Servitors before, have you?"

"No," Halimaldie said slowly. "But I've got the feeling that I'm about to."

# Chapter 16

### A Bird in Flight

-1-

Wren vomited into the stream she had just been drinking from.

"Mistress, I told you not to eat those berries."

"You said you weren't sure," Wren said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"That's close enough to 'no' isn't it, mistress?" Tessa asked. The little mouse was standing on her two hind legs, looking up at Wren with concern.

"I don't know. I don't think it was those berries anyway, Tessa. I've felt like this ever since... ever since... I'm just... weak."

Wren had journeyed far in the past week, but Tessa assured her that they still had a ways to go. She only found herself able to travel in spurts. She slept during the day sometimes and tried to make up for it at night. A few hours on, a few hours off. It was as fast as she could go, some riding, some walking.

The bear was still with her, as well as four of the raccoons. Two of them had scampered off. Wren had asked Tessa where they had gone, but the mouse had no idea, merely stating that raccoons were rather unpredictable creatures.

Wren stood up, wiped her mouth, and began walking through the dark night again. She felt morning would be upon her soon. Her feet were killing her despite the softness of her boots. "How much farther is it, Tessa?" she asked.

"It is hard for me to tell, mistress. Do you feel anything pulling on you?"

"Not really." Wren inspected her glowing symbol, thinking that maybe it could be some sort of compass. It was slightly brighter than it had been yesterday, but otherwise the same.

Tessa's whiskers shivered in the night. She scampered up onto Wren and settled in the breast pocket where she had been riding most of the time. "Shall we continue our journey, mistress?"

"Are we sure we know where we're going?" the girl asked.

"I am sure," said another voice, and Wren whirled toward it. It was the bear.

"I can hear you!"

"Oh, you can, mistress?" the bear asked. "I have been trying to talk the whole time, but the words wouldn't come out. Now that you have the power to hear me I have found my voice."

It was a deep, reassuring voice. The bear spoke unhurriedly compared to the mouse.

"Well, bear," Tessa said, "now that you've found your voice, tell our mistress what you know of our destination."

"It is magnificent," the bear said. "The Dryad Tree stretches so tall that it is difficult to see the top of it. It is the very hub of life itself. I do not feel a pull from it as strongly as I did when I was there the first time, but it was the height of a summer when I was last there. It is early spring and I am not sure the tree is in full bloom yet. Perhaps that is why I don't feel it."

"And there is someone there that can help me understand what is happening to me?" Wren asked.

"Oh, I think so," said the bear. "Others who share your power."

"There are more people who can do what I can do?"

"There are," said the bear.

Wren thought for a moment. "Bear, do you have a name?"

"No."

"Can I give you a name?"

"Yes."

Wren thought of the way the bear had saved her, breaking through the glass window and the wooden trapdoor.

"May I call you Crasher?"

The bear tilted his head and seemed to be deep in thought. "A nice name," he said. "It will not offend me if you call me this."

"Okay, Crasher," Wren said. A wave of nausea swept her suddenly, and she became dizzy. "Tessa, I think I'm too tired to go on right now."

All of the animals quickly gathered around Wren, then helped her find a spot to sleep. They had been in dense forest for most of their travels and today was no exception. The seven of them had just started to hunker down in a shelter formed by the trunks of two fallen, massive trees, when something caught Wren's eye. Or possibly it Called to her, as Tessa had referred to it.

A small bird was perched on a branch and it bobbed its tail up and down rapidly. Its tiny head flicked from side to side. To Wren it almost seemed that it wanted her to follow it.

"Tessa, Crasher, come with me," she whispered. She didn't know why she was whispering, it just felt like one of those times.

"Where are we going, mistress?" squeaked the mouse. "I thought we were settling down for a bit."

"Do you think that bird wants me to follow it?" She was excited by the idea of trying to use her newfound magic.

Tessa flicked her whiskers. "I do not know, mistress. Don't ever tell a bird I said this, but most of them are embarrassingly stupid. I have had a hard time communicating much with any of them. Plus they're always up in the air and I am not."

"Well, I think he wants us to follow him," Wren said. As soon as she started walking towards the bird, it flitted to the next branch. Once she was near again he flitted again.

The bird kept hopping branches and Wren - with Tessa in her pocket and Crasher padding heavily behind her - followed it. The sun wasn't quite rising yet, but there was a glow on the horizon.

For the first time Wren tried to _use_ her Calling. She had come to undertand that she could sort of feel the presence of animals - at least Crasher and Tessa - and so she tried to harness that power and control it. She quested out around herself and found success. She felt a large animal ahead of her. She followed her sense and found a horse. The animal was tethered to a tree about a hundred feet away. She recognized it.

What's Ghost doing out here?

Suddenly Wren heard talking and she froze in place.

She peered around the trunk of a tree and saw a group of three men near Ghost. Her stomach sank, fear taking hold, but the men were paying her no attention. They were focused on a fourth man that they had tied to a tree.

That man was her father.

-2-

"What are they doing, mistress?" Tessa asked.

Wren was absolutely terrified. "I don't know," she whispered, "but they've got my father." She covered as much of her glowing mark as she could so that the men wouldn't see the odd light. "Nobody move. Let me figure out what's going on."

"Where is she?" one of the men boomed in a familiar voice. It was Jon Hatfeld.

Her father stood silently, strong ropes binding him to the tree. His face was bruised in a few places and blood ran from one of his ears.

"You know the punishment for what you have done, Cole," Jon continued. "But we could let you off easy if you tell us where the girl is."

"How about you eat shit, Hatfeld?"

"I don't understand why you're so belligerent," Jon said. "Cole, we've been friends for a very long time. We've had the same goals, same ideas."

"Well that's obviously different now," Wren's father said. He let out a series of rattling coughs.

Something was very odd about this situation. Wren's gut told her something very different than her brain. She was actually sympathizing with her _father_. Something about Jon seemed different and wrong.

"Give me the knife," Jon said to one of the other men. That man handed Jon a long, wicked-looking knife of a design that Wren had never seen before. "Cole, it didn't have to happen this way. I want you to think about that at least, before you die."

Her father spat with all his might, trying presumably to hit Jon in the face, and even though he put everything behind it, it fell short.

_I can't let this happen,_ Wren thought.

She turned and whispered into Crasher's warm, fuzzy ear and the bear nodded his approval.

"This is not the best day, Cole," Jon was saying. He brought the knife high into the air and was just about to bring it whistling down when Crasher tore out from behind the tree.

The bear roared, and even though he was facing away from Wren, the sound was terrifyingly loud in the otherwise silent forest. The men scattered, running as fast as they could. Even Jon with his long, wicked knife was running away from Crasher who was charging powerfully, fur pulsing with the pounding of his massive feet.

Soon only Wren's father remained, tied to the tree and apparently unafraid.

Then he did something that shocked Wren. He said, "Hello, bear."

Crasher stopped in his tracks and used his massive claws to slash the ropes that held her father in place. Her father shook off the ropes and swung himself up onto Ghost's back. "I feel Lia's hand in this. Did you know her, bear?"

Crasher stood silent.

"Well, if she yet lives, tell her thank you." Then he cut Ghost's tether and rode the panicked beast away into the rising light of the morning.

-3-

"He said my mother's name, Tessa," said Wren. "And he tried to talk to you, Crasher."

The bear licked his own nose. "There was some kind of residual power in that one, mistress. I do not think he possessed a Calling himself, but I do think he knew something of it."

"Mistress," Tess said, "if I may ask, why didn't you want your father to see you?"

"I don't know, Tessa. I just didn't, alright?"

"Yes," Crasher said. "Sometimes we are unsure why we do things, mouseling, but we do them just the same. Mistress may have very powerful intuition about these sorts of things."

"What is this?" came a new voice. One of the raccoons had stumbled upon something lightly buried in a pile of leaves.

Wren walked over to see what the little creature had found. It was Jon's knife. _He must have dropped it as he was fleeing Crasher._ Wren struggled with whether or not she should pick it up. There was no good way for her to carry it, but it seemed too useful a tool to just leave lying around.

She picked it up gingerly and noticed the details on it for the first time. It had a twisting handle and a curving blade which was scribed with symbols she didn't understand. It was about as long as her forearm, and lighter than it looked.

"Mistress, please be careful," Tessa pleaded.

"I'm trying, Tessa, but I don't know what to do with this thing."

"You're not going to keep it, are you?"

"It needs a holder like we see on other humans," Crasher suggested.

"A sheath," Wren said. "But where am I supposed to find such a thing?"

"It might be made," said the raccoon who had found the knife. "There are animals that, with your guidance, may be able to construct a holder for it. I will let you know if I see any in our travels."

"I'll have to hold it until then, I guess," Wren said, looking over at Crasher to see if he thought that was a good idea. Wren started laughing then because Crasher suddenly had all four raccoons riding on his back. They must have scurried up for some free travel.

"Normally I would not tolerate such a thing, but they are friends of yours, mistress," the bear explained.

"Should we maintain our course then?" Tessa asked. "Or should we search for your father, Wren? Or should we rest?"

"The way he was riding, I doubt we could catch him," Wren said. "Jon once told me that my father used to be an expert rider. We should get out of here, and quickly. Crasher, may I ride you?"

"If you can move these abominations from my back or ride with them," answered the bear.

Wren grabbed a handful of Crasher's fur and swung herself up, being careful to hold the knife in as safe a position as possible. The raccoons adjusted to her presence, riding more on Crasher's sides. Wren knew they would be quite a sight this way.

"Run towards the Tree," she told Crasher. "We won't rest today. I want to be as far away from here as possible before we do." Her adrenaline had overtaken any other feeling.

"Yes, mistress."

The bird that she had followed to her father flitted onto her shoulder then.

"Treetreetreetreetree," it whistled. "Daydaydaydayday. Dododododo."

"See what I mean about birds?" Tessa whispered.

-4-

They passed the outskirts of a few small towns that Wren didn't recognize. She was much too far away from her home to be able to know her whereabouts. She had never been this far away from where she had been born, but somehow she had expected there to be more variation in the landscape.

Her arm ached from holding the knife while riding on Crasher's back, but her determination to get as far away as she could that day kept her going.

"Stop," said one of the raccoons.

"Shall I, mistress?" the bear asked.

"Is it safe, raccoon?"

"Yes," the bandit answered. "I smell the creatures that will help you build a container for that weapon."

"Go ahead and stop, Crasher," Wren said. She dismounted and set the knife on the ground. It had grown very, very heavy.

"I smell them, too," Tessa said. "Raccoons, you are smarter than I give you credit for."

The raccoon seemed to bow his head.

"What do you smell?" Wren tried to feel what they were talking about. She reached out with her power again, unsure if she could be successful again or not. She felt life nearby, but it didn't feel like one large life, it felt like thousands of separate tiny ones.

"Termites," the raccoon said. "They won't be able to do it by themselves, but with your power you might be able to help them."

"I don't know how to use my powers very well, raccoon."

"Try."

Wren reached out, trying to feel the termites as she had the horse.

"They will need to know the design," the raccoon said.

Wren felt a thread of connection with the bugs. There was something sick about it - possibly because she was trying to touch a nest of insects which she didn't really like - but it was there. _Learn my knife_ , she instructed them, trying to keep it simple.

The swarm of termites came out of a dead stump, forming a river that surged towards where the knife lay on the ground. They began swarming the blade until the whole weapon was covered in their pale bodies. Wren could feel their minds working, could almost feel the signals they were sending to each other.

" _It is done."_ The thought came from no single termite, but from all of them at once.

Wren's skin crawled, but she persisted. The ability to use her power was so invigorating that nothing else mattered. She tried to keep her commands simple. _Carve me a holder for it_ , she sent.

The termites went to a nearby stump and began to swarm it as they had the blade. Wren could hear the sound of their chewing. They worked with a singularity of mind that frightened her. Slowly, slowly, there was a pattern forming in the wood and slowly, slowly the shape they were working on fell away onto the ground.

It was a perfectly smooth wooden sheath that looked as if it would fit the blade perfectly.

" _It is done."_

Wren moved over to retrieve the object as the termites scurried away, her Calling fading.

"My God," breathed Wren. "What am I capable of?"

"I'm not sure any of us know the full answer to that, mistress," Tessa said.

# Chapter 17

### Life With Allura

-1-

Otom's journey had stalled. Pakken had too strong of a pull on his emotions, and he couldn't seem to move from its proximity. He wondered if Silence was still alive and had to resist the urge to try and find him multiple times.

Otom pulled The Book from his back and flipped through it, trying to find inspiration within. There were many pieces of loose paper hiding between the pages, many of which had been written by Otom himself. He had tucked these notes into his copy of The Book over the years. They contained everything from poetry to confessions, translations to philosophy.

He turned to the section about the marked men, a section that had always been much debated within his Monastery. It was likely the part of The Book that Umden had referred to before he had died. The original text had been poorly translated and mangled through the ages.

But he wanted reassurance. He wanted answers.

Otom read The Book by moonlight:

Being marked is a sign from God. Never Gustus. Never. There is a place in our world where such power must gather. In this age we call it Singra, but there is no telling what it may be named throughout the ages. Reach it.

Hastily. Draw no attention.

If you are chosen in this manner, do not fear, but put your faith in God. Never Gustus. Never.

That was all that it said. Very little information. There had always been trouble with this section of the Book, as if the words had been written by a much different hand than the rest of it.

Otom looked down at his glowing symbol and wondered if all of his suffering had been meant to lead him to where he was. Even though he was only a few weeks removed from the Monastery and the companionship of his brothers he found his faith wavering. Was it simply routine that had kept him penitent? Otom had always been thoughtful, and though he tried to mull over everything, his mind kept drifting back to his home town of Pakken.

Back to Allura.

-2-

13 Years Ago

Otom told the people who had known them that his parents had been murdered by a wanderer who Otom then killed in revenge. It wasn't entirely accurate, but it was a story Otom was comfortable with.

It had been three months since Otom and Allura had buried his ma, da, and Ris. Otom was actually a little shocked at himself that he had nearly recovered from the experience already. The need to keep on living, and to take care of Allura, had strongly overcome his grief within a few weeks.

He felt guilty about that, but he couldn't control his emotions. He had found love. It may have been in a tragic way, but there it was. Allura and Otom had started their new life together, thrust into it - as Allura would constantly claim - by God's will.

They lived in Otom's parent's house and Otom had become a man in the blink of an eye. He knew how to provide for Allura, and how to survive in the unforgiving north; both skills he had gotten from his da. He had also found out many things about Allura as they talked during her recovery. She'd had a falling out with her family, so they wouldn't miss her. She was from a place called Pooling Lake that was far to the southwest, near Marshanti. She preferred vegetables to meat. She could knit surprisingly well and had a natural knack for ice fishing.

Otom pitched another log into the fire and it flared, filling the house with a weak warmth. Allura stood at the oven, still having to wear warm clothing this deep into the winter, but Otom knew that her lean figure lurked just beneath them. He was constantly filled with desire for her, and found that most of the time he couldn't keep his hands off of her.

"This shit isn't turning out right," she said, blowing some of her blond hair away from her face as she worked.

"My ma used to say that if you could hold your hand inside the oven for five heartbeats, it was the right temperature for bread," Otom offered.

"Yeah, you told me that before."

Allura was a fantastic friend, lover, and housekeeper, but she wasn't a gifted cook.

"There's always jerky," Otom suggested.

"You're always jerky," she said. "I can do this, Otom. I just need more time to learn."

Otom closed his eyes and went back to relaxing, letting Allura finish undisturbed. His muscles were incredibly sore from the local tournament he had fought in yesterday. He had won the whole thing, continuing the undefeated streak he had been on since his parents' deaths. Perhaps it was time for him to take another stab at a larger regional tournament, like the one in Kilgaan. But the thought of that still made him feel weak.

Otom was so relaxed right now that he felt himself drifting in and out of dreams:

The air hung thick around Otom like a shroud. He was near a stream in a misty forest, watching salmon try to swim upriver to spawn.

" _They do that because they know nothing else," explained a voice._

" _But it's so senseless," Otom said. "Most of them die in the process. Couldn't they find another way?"_

The mysterious voice said: "Creatures will often do very stupid things for love." The last word echoed.

Otom's nose began to tingle and he rubbed at it with the back of his hand. His eyes began to water and his skin felt hot and flushed as he watched thousands of salmon swim against the current. They swam faster and faster, jumping higher and higher and higher. Events sped up till Otom felt sick at the pace. Sun. Moon. Sun. Moon. Sun-

Suddenly he was awakened by the smell of smoke. He opened his eyes to see black billowing clouds hanging thick in the air and he panicked, hurling himself out of his chair.

"Allura?" he coughed. He crouched low and walked towards where Allura had been cooking.

She was lying on the floor. Otom put his hands under her arms and dragged her outside. He grabbed a huge armful of snow and carried it inside to throw on the flames that had grown near the stove, but it wasn't enough. It hissed and melted as it made contact with the fire, but it seemed to make not a dent in the blaze.

Otom worked tirelessly trying to smother the flames with blankets and snow while alternately checking on Allura, but eventually he lost the battle, his house collapsing in on itself with a mighty thud and a rush of flame. He was barely able to throw Allura and himself out of the way of the avalanche of wood and fire.

Allura's nose was bleeding, but Otom wasn't sure when that had happened. He stood up slowly from the ground and gazed at what remained of his parents' house. It would take him quite some time to rebuild it. His heart felt like wood. He wondered - for the first time, but not the last - if he were cursed somehow. He gathered his beauty up in his arms and headed to the shed where she would be warm enough.

"Fire Kin," she muttered as he carried her.

"What did you say?" Otom asked.

"Fire Kin." The words barely escaped her pale, dry lips.

He opened the door to the shed and carried her inside. There was just enough room to lay her down on the floor and close the door. Light shone in only from the small window as Otom tried to decide what to do next.

Allura decided for him when she stood up suddenly, nearly hitting her head on the ceiling of the small space.

"Make love to me," she said, her face suddenly wild.

"Excuse me?" asked Otom.

"Fuck me," she repeated slowly, as if she were talking to a slow child.

She grabbed her coat and tore it open, exposing the cotton dress she always wore under it. She shrugged her arms out of the coat as Otom stood still, not moving a muscle, fearing he was suffering some delusion.

"Allura," he said, "you have to keep your coat on. It's well below freezing out here."

She shrugged herself free from the shoulders of her dress and quickly tore it down, leaving her torso susceptible to the open air. Her skin had goosebumps all the way from her shoulders to her waist, her skin an odd blue color.

"Something's wrong with you," Otom said.

"Yes," she said. "The fact that you are not on top of me."

Otom noticed her eyes. They looked similar to how Ris's had looked as he'd paced under the treehouse; bloodshot and oddly aimed. Allura grabbed Otom's hand and tried to pull it to her chest, but Otom resisted, not knowing exactly what was going on.

"What's the matter?" she challenged. "Tits aren't big enough for ya, Fire Kin?"

"No," he said, trying to push her dress up. "You've gone insane."

Allura put her hands to her head then, abandoning her attack on Otom's hand. He took the opportunity to try and get her coat wrapped around her again and he was able to close it over her. She wept as he lowered her gently to the ground.

"Oh, Otom," she moaned. "My head hurts... so much." A fresh bit of blood slowly trickled down from her nose.

"Something's wrong," he said. "Lura, we have to get you to... someone that knows what's happening." She was sick, and Otom had very limited options. The only person in close proximity that he would trust with something like this was Silence. "This may seem like a dumb question," he said, "but can you walk at all? Otherwise I'm gonna have to rig a sled to take you to Silence."

"Oh, please don't let anyone else see me like this," Allura begged as she had before.

"Someone's going to need to see you. Do you need a sled?"

She didn't answer, but Otom began immediately to ready what they would need. The house could be rebuilt later, if at all. He realized suddenly that in some ways it was freeing that it had burned. He didn't recognize the feeling of relief at the time because he had been in such a panic, but it was actually rather cleansing.

"Maybe I'll rebuild you," he muttered to the house as he exited the shed. "Or maybe I won't."

Between the burned and fallen walls Otom could see to the backyard where the gravestones of his ma, da, and Ris sat with a clean layer of white snow on their dimpled gray tops.

-3-

Silence wasn't silent all the time. Only during training was he totally devoid of words. He often said 'words obscure meaning' and he smiled a little when he said it.

"This the girl, eh?" Silence said as he felt Allura's face with gentle hands. His eyes were pale and never looking in the right direction. Their blind stare had taken Otom some time to get used to at first.

Allura lay on the only bed in Silence's house and she was quiet for now, breathing shallowly. She'd had another strange fit while she had been on the sled, and Otom had had to just ignore her and keep pulling.

"This is her," Otom said.

"She burnin' up." Silence laid his old, wrinkled hand on her forehead. He loomed over her, his face concerned, his eyes staring at the wall.

"She's been having fits, her nose is bleeding, and I think she passed out earlier today. I didn't know where else to take her. Don't want to travel too far with her. When she passed out she must have knocked something over or... I don't know what, but most of the place burned down."

Silence slowly shook his bald head. "Oh, Otom. A shame. Dangerous, this one."

"Something like that. But I love her. We have to help her. I know a lot of medicine, but I don't know what to do about this."

Allura coughed and her eyes fluttered.

"She very sick," Silence said. "I never quite felt nothin' like this. Concussed perhaps, but the fever burns too hotly." He tucked the blanket tighter around Allura and cracked his knuckles, something he often did when he was frustrated. "She can stay here. But she must be careful and you must stay, too. I feel something here. There is only one thing I know that might help her but it will be hard to get. You are young. Maybe up to the task."

"I'll do anything," Otom said. "Anything."

-4-

Present Day

The next words that Silence would speak to Otom would start him on the journey that would end his old life.

"She need a branch," Silence had said. "A branch from the Dryad Tree."

Otom remembered the rest of that day so vividly. He'd tried to decide what to do. Silence had never steered him wrong before and Allura had looked so very sick. That giant old tree - the Dryad Tree - really might have been her only hope.

The winter sun had streamed through the window as Otom had sat next to Allura and looked down at her. Her hair had lost its vibrancy and lay limp and lifeless around her pale head. She had looked as if she might already be dead, and he remembered that he had checked her breathing obsessively.

So he had packed provisions and set off with wild determination to save the woman he loved.

Traveling to the Tree would become a journey that would change him forever.

-5-

Otom began to pack his meager belongings. It was time for him to finish this journey and move on from Pakken because of - and despite - the memories it held.

He stuffed The Book into his pack and stood up on legs that were wearier than he would have liked. It had been both joyous and sad to see the world once more. Joyous because not much seemed to have changed, but sad for the same reason. He checked the positions of the stars and turned slowly where he stood, trying to realign himself to his course. The space he had made here for himself had become a little temporary home in the past week and a half, but the time had come for him to move on.

He extinguished his Fire, telling the flames to cease. Magic still pulsed within him, growing steadily as the power of a Monk always did. As long as he was Sacrificing, the power trickled into him at a steady pace.

And he was always Sacrificing.

His boots crunched in the snow and Otom pulled his fur hood up snugly over his bald head. His hair had started to grow back until he had found that dead soldier's dagger. He had made quick work of it.

He walked east now, traipsing through the bitter and uninhabited north. He stopped when he had to and traveled when he could.

One night, when the snapping of a twig alerted him, he sent out a pulse of Detection that confirmed what he suspected.

He was being followed.

# Chapter 18

### Potter

-1-

"Gustus had the sword, and God had the shield," Domma boomed over the congregation. "And Gustus roared, letting his voice ring through the air. 'Father,' he yelled, 'I have given everything for you and you repay me with treachery!' His words rang off the mountains, causing small stones to tumble down the sides. 'You are nothing more than an unruly child,' God said quietly, sheltering himself behind his shield, ready for what he knew must be coming."

Domma gazed out over the congregation.

"God is not all powerful. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is misguided. All things have strengths and weaknesses. The mightiest of oaks can fall to termites. Rock and bone can be smoothed away by persistent sand and water. And so Gustus knew that his cause was not lost, that he could win even if the odds were against him. The Book says he then dimmed the sun, casting his mighty hand to block its light. For Gustus was young, and his sight was better."

Domma slammed her hand down loudly on top of The Book in front of her. The sound echoed and people jumped.

"Gustus launched himself at his father, sword splitting the air in front of him. They came together with a mighty clang the reverberations of which still ring today in the halls of the universe. Again and again Gustus's sword rained down on his father's shield. 'I should rule by your side!' Gustus shouted as his sword left deep dents in his father's shield. But God knew this was not to be, and he also knew something of the cosmos. As he heard the whoosh of Gustus's sword drawing back he rekindled the sun, flames dancing from its surface.

"The shield which he held had been polished by the winds of aeons and its surface, though dented, was able to harness the light of the bursting sun and direct it into Gustus's face. God heard his son shrieking and said over him, 'You are strong enough to rule, my son. But never by my side.' And as Gustus was reeling and blinded, God banished him.

"Gustus waits somewhere, hoping to prove himself to his father by cultivating his own world." Domma closed The Book slowly. "We're ending with Gustus and God here today," she said. "There is much more to cover in The Book that is often overlooked, but it has been my pleasure to preach to all of you."

Domma stepped down from the altar and walked to her room without looking back. She had been distracted through the entire sermon, and her mind had been wandering back to what she had read in the Bibliofero.

She would have no meetings in her study today; the congregation would just have to ask one of the other Clerics.

Today was the day she would go to see Potter and tell him what she had found inside young Ormon's mind, and then, maybe, what was in her own.

-2-

Domma pushed through the heavy front doors of the Sunburst Temple and out into the hot day.

Haroma was unusually robust for a Sunday. Usually the festivities of a Saturday night would have rendered the population hungover and sleepy, but for whatever reason things were not that way today. Domma tugged up the hood of her blue and gold cloak to block the rising sun from burning her scalp.

"Domma!" a familiar voice shouted. It was Metta. The girl was waving from across the market. The young Cleric must have been out among the throng today, working her magics on the crowd in order to draw more of them to the Temple. Domma nodded at Metta, and caught a knowing look from the girl's eyes.

She smiled to herself and she looked at the ground to hide her grin. Talking to Metta the other night had changed the way she had thought about life. _Interesting that one so young could change my mind about something so quickly and easily._ Domma had essentially told the girl to end her affair, but really she had wanted to congratulate her.

She would tell Potter about the Foglins today and then... well, she would see how brave she was. He had already professed his feelings for her, so she knew there would be no trouble there, but her stomach twisted at the thought of what she might do.

Desire burned so strongly in her that she was alternately frightened and exhilarated. One minute she knew she would go through with it, the next minute she knew she would run.

Something tugged at the hole in her memory with a familiar twinge. It was always offputting when it happened because Domma could never be sure what it meant. _Am I walking into a situation that I have experienced before? Is the cloud going to be lifted? Is it a warning?_ She only wished it was possible for her to Delve herself, diving into her own mind the way she had gone into Ormon's, but that wasn't possible, and no one that had ever Delved her had been able to provide any information.

Even God was silent on the topic.

-3-

Domma heard screams once she stepped inside the hospital and Potter rushed past her, running toward the room where the sound was issuing from.

"Do you need me?" Domma shouted after him.

"Best stay there, Domma," he yelled, not turning around. "Don't worry, don't worry! I'm pretty sure no one's getting killed! Just a routine fit!"

Domma waited patiently as Potter dealt with the situation. There was some wall-slamming and thumps from within the room followed by muffled arguing. After a moment, Potter stumbled out and closed the door quietly behind him. He was a bit disheveled, his brown robe coming off one of his shoulders. It was more muscular than Domma would have thought.

_Oh, this is not good_ , she thought, casting her eyes upward.

Potter tugged up his robe and smoothed it out. He shook his head as he walked over to Domma. "You can't see that one yet," he said. "He's... unstable."

"I didn't come here on duty," she said.

"But it's Sunday," he countered.

"I know. But there's something important that I have to share with you."

"My office is free," Potter said. "Funary is no longer sharing it with me. We can walk and talk. Time may be short for us. I fear my new patient may pitch another fit soon."

"It's about what I found in Ormon's mind," Domma said as they began walking. "At the time I didn't share it with you, but maybe I should have. What Ormon had on his mind just before he died... was Foglins."

Potter stopped dead in his tracks, a frightened look on his face. "Do we need to evacuate?" he asked. "What am I saying? There's nowhere to go. Domma, are you sure?"

"I am sure. The thought presented itself too strongly for me to think that it was fluff, like a bit of a story he knew or something. He knew - knew for sure - that what tore up his head that way was a Foglin."

"Within my walls?"

Domma shrugged and nodded at the same time. She now realized she had been terrified to come here for another reason. _The Foglin could still be here._

They reached the office and Potter shut the door behind them.

"I did some research," Domma continued. "Devotees have access to many records that the world has thought lost, and much information that seems useless, but may actually contain truth. God's hand guided me to a book that told the account of an explorer from a very long time ago."

Domma repeated the text to Potter verbatim and he listened intently and nervously.

When Domma finished, Potter paced for a bit. The small office was lit by sunbeams that crept through the not-quite-closed shutters, and he interrupted them as he walked back and forth, causing the light to dance and shift.

"What do you think it means?" he asked.

"I have a few theories," Domma responded. "The explorer - or whatever he was, and now I am sure he was much more than that, but 'explorer' is how I think of him - fell, fracturing his skull. The Foglin left him alone after that, choosing apparently not to pursue him. Devotee magic comes from the brain and is inherently entwined in the mind. I think... the Foglins are only interested in magic. This would explain why, in Ormon's case, the Foglin would only attack him after I Mended him."

"I don't know," Potter said.

"Why?"

"That's just a lot to assume."

"That doesn't mean it's not true. And listen to this part. This explorer had some kind of power. He was, very likely, a Devotee. Do you think that's coincidental?"

"You're ignoring something obvious and frightening, though," said Potter. "Something I'm not sure I've heard anyone say before. You said he talked of a town called Fisher? I know of no such town."

"It was a long time ago, Potter. Geography changes quickly, towns come and go, razed in horrid wars and such."

"But other types of geography take much longer to change, barring some catastrophic alteration. He mentioned that this town of Fisher was on a fork in the Ein river?"

"That's what the text said."

"You must not know much of southern geography; admittedly probably very few do. There is no fork in the Ein river. It runs a straight path from Ein lake all the way down until it disappears into the Vapor."

"What does that mean?" Domma asked.

"What I think it might mean," Potter said, "and what I think you've ignored, is that the Vapor is slowly, slowly creeping north. Think about it. A river as big as the Ein suddenly losing an entire branch isn't very likely. What's more likely is that the branch has been covered up over time. And the town of Fisher along with it. And if that is the case, one day maybe the Vapor will swallow us all up."

"What do you think I should do about that?" Domma asked, honestly surprised. "You're saying that the Vapor has been creeping north for all these years and that no one noticed it?"

"I've never heard that theory before," Potter said. "We've gone from one unsolvable mystery into another. I almost feel ridiculous speculating on these things with you. Domma, we're both logical, religious people, and here we are delving into Foglin lore and ancient southern geography. Ormon had suffered severe cranial trauma. He seemed stable on the outside, but he was a mess on the inside. You know that as well as I do. Sometimes - and perhaps both of our lives should have taught us this by now - things go unsolved. And there's nothing we can do."

Domma sighed. "I came here worried that you would be dead; that everyone here would be torn to shreds. Whatever or whoever killed Ormon... it isn't natural. What can his death mean?"

"What does it mean?" Potter repeated. "I always try to put things into perspective." He raised his hands up into the air as if explaining things to the wind. "Stars must die every day, Domma, their flames burning for the last time. Worlds collapse in on themselves. Species come and go, never to be seen by man. And yet despite the fantastically massive cosmocity of it all, we go on with our lives. Not everything is a signal; not everything is a sign."

"I didn't know you thought so deeply about things," she said.

"There isn't much to do here but think deeply between outbursts," Potter said. "Is that a new robe? It looks fantastic on you." His smile was warm and mischievous.

Domma laughed and in a very odd gesture tried to run her hand through her hair, which of course didn't exist. The coziness of the room was getting to her. Her thoughts on Foglins and Ormon were tangled inside her brain now, nothing reconciling or making any sense, so she shoved it all to the back. She would do what she had truly come here to do.

Potter continued speaking before she could say anything. "Would you care for something to drink? There's something about you today that says you would." He walked over to a tall cabinet.

Domma smiled. "I've always been partial to anything with a cherry flavor," she said.

"Interesting fact, interesting fact," said Potter. "But our reserves here are rather limited. Your request would have been much easier to accommodate if you had requested 'something that isn't totally atrocious'."

"Yes, of course," Domma said. "I'm sorry. This whole situation has got me flustered."

"Tragedies can lead people together," Potter said as he poured two shoddy looking glasses full of a dull liquid. "When I opened up to you the other day," he began, "well, sometimes things take a while to sink in. I was hoping this would happen. I was hoping, but... I didn't want to hope too hard. How inelegant, Potter. I really should work on my language skills."

Domma walked up behind him as he was talking, and as he turned to serve her drink she let her robe drop to the floor.

"Oh," Potter said.

-4-

"He turned you _down_ , Domma?" Metta squealed quietly in the night. "It's criminal!"

Domma felt ridiculous, like some idiotic girl swooning over boys. Once evening had fallen she had come straight to Metta. _Metta, my partner in crime_ , she thought. _God, if you are watching, please don't judge me too harshly. My heart and mind are both confused._

"He turned me down," Domma confirmed. "I don't blame him. It was too much too soon."

"It was brave," Metta said in awe. "You weren't wearing anything underneath your robe?"

"I had my chest wrap on, and I suppose I was still wearing my boots. Oh, God, I must have looked like a fool. But, he did give me this." From within a pocket in her sleeve, Domma produced a folded piece of paper. "He wrote this to tell me where to meet him."

Metta brought her hands up to her mouth. "He drew a heart at the bottom of it," she squeaked. "Oh, Domma that is so fantastic. Are you going to go through with it?"

"I was ready to today, wasn't I?" she asked. "I feel so sterile here. I always have. There's always been something inside of me that didn't quite fit with this place."

"But you're one of the most revered women here. I walk by and nobody notices, but you're hounded sometimes day and night by people - other Clerics, even - wanting advice."

"And now I am turning to you," Domma said. "I know how you feel. Your Tristo... Have you decided if it is worth it?"

Metta sat taller on the bed, her blond hair bobbing joyously by the light of the candle. "You know I can't truly be the judge of that. God is. In a cosmic sense it doesn't matter what I think. But here, in my body... it feels right, Domma. I feel right. Can I be both a woman of God and myself? Does that even make sense?"

Domma nodded and reached up to idly touch the tattoo of the sunburst on her forehead. "I guess that's what I'm trying to find out, too," she said.

# Chapter 19

### The Skull and The Sword

-1-

Things had become quite bad again for Krothair. He and Ti'Shed were back at it with swords in the training field after a grueling two days of grappling that had left Krothair weak and beaten. It was amazing the amount of power that Ti'Shed possessed in his aged frame, but the techniques and reactions he knew were what made him a terrifying fighter.

Steel rang on steel and Krothair - who had been on the defensive for the past month of training - began to gain the advantage on his drug-addled teacher. He flowed through the Vasebreaker forms that Ti'Shed had taught him and soon had the old man parrying every blow, unable to form his own counter-offensive.

Krothair felt pity for the briefest moment and the emotion betrayed him, causing him to miss the next beat of his attack. Ti'Shed turned then, body whirling, sword seeming to be in all places at once. The sword master had been waiting for any opportunity, and he never missed one when it came. Krothair felt warmth on his cheek and realized his face had been cut. He stumbled backwards, feeling briefly like the untrained boy he had been when he had first come here.

"Congratulations. The top of your head is now gone, crotch-hair," Ti'Shed said. It was a nickname the old man had taken to calling him on the training field; it barely sounded like Krothair's name at all, and that only infuriated him more.

"You should admit I have gotten better," the boy said stubbornly.

That only drew a cold stare from Ti'Shed. He looked up into the sky, judging the light while squinting. "We should start doing some night combats I think," he mused. "Daylight is all well and good, but if you can't fight in the dark you may as well not fight at all."

Krothair's heart sank. To him that sounded like a terrible idea. He was exhausted, pushed completely beyond his limits, only sheer force of will was keeping him going; or so he liked to think. Or perhaps _had_ to think.

He felt himself becoming little more than a beast; thought replaced by instinct in the base desire to simply survive another day. He hadn't had a chance to find the red-sheathed sword yet, but it was a mission he now held dearer to himself than earning a spot on the Kingsguard.

He thought maybe that was a little sad.

He didn't care.

-2-

Ti'Shed was silent as they ate at the wooden table. Krothair sucked the meat out of a crayfish's body and tried to chew, his cheek wound pulling every time his teeth parted and met. It was almost time for Ti'Shed's nightly apology. He thought back to Forstina and her magic, and mused about his own path to power. Ti'Shed had not spoken another word about Servitors since the last time, and Krothair hadn't pressed it.

The sword master was rubbing at his forehead, looking as if he was just shaking off his daily drug dose, when large hooves thundered outside the small house, stopping just outside the door. The sound was so loud that Krothair jumped a little bit.

"Only one man I know rides a horse that sounds like that," Ti'Shed said. Krothair couldn't tell if the old man was happy or dejected about that prospect, but either way Ti'Shed rose and went to the door. As he reached for the handle, whoever was on the other side must have decided to matters into his own hands, as it swung open with a mighty blast.

There, on the other side, stood the largest man Krothair had ever seen. Krothair had always been tall, but this man's head scraped the door frame as he came inside. His dark eyes were sunken deep into his completely bald head. Krothair's arms were strong, but this man's were like layers of rock, overlapping with muscles Krothair had never known existed. If Ti'Shed was old, this man was ancient. He was an oak tree brought to life.

And he wore the colors of the Kingsguard: purple and silver.

"Hawkethorn," the giant grated in a voice slightly higher than Krothair would have expected. A thin smile crossed his lips.

Ti'Shed extended his hand. "Samsen," he replied.

And then Krothair realized whose presence he was in: Samsen Bashram, more readily known as The Skull. _I'm in the presence of a legend._ Krothair was struck totally dumb to see a man like this standing so nonchalantly in Ti'Shed's house.

"God and Gustus, you two look like you've been through a fuckin' war," Samsen said. "And I should know. This a new apprentice?" he asked, indicating Krothair.

"Yes," Ti'Shed said.

"You haven't brought him to the training yard at the castle, yet," the giant replied. "Haven't seen you at all around there lately. They ordered me to check on you, Ti'Shed. Is everything alright?"

"As well as it might be," the old man said, running a hand over his balding head.

"What do you think, apprentice? What's your name?"

"As well as it might be," Krothair agreed, not wanting to be contrary. "My name is... um..." He'd suddenly forgotten. "Uh... Krothair."

The giant thought for a moment. "A name I have heard only once before, many years ago. Unique, not much used. There are so many damn Samsen's running around it's getting a little sickening."

"Yes, sir," Krothair said, not knowing quite how to respond.

"Looks like Ti'Shed's been rough on you. Looks like he needs his edge taken off. Hawkethorn, come with me. We're goin' drinkin'." Samsen clapped his hands together as if approving his own plan. The sound was low and loud.

Ti'Shed let out a small laugh, as if he almost couldn't believe what was happening. "I can't leave here. We have much to learn if Krothair is going to survive on the Vapor."

The giant smirked. "If you keep this up much longer, he isn't even going to survive his training. Come on, Hawkethorn. No man ever wins a battle if he gets killed before it even happens. Except maybe Trance." Samsen laughed, a joyous sound that rattled the room.

"How are Telin and Kelin?" Ti'Shed asked.

"Still as uppity a couple of fucks as yer ever like to meet," Samsen replied.

Ti'Shed smiled a bit at this. It seemed as if his rough exterior was being chipped away by this light talk with Samsen. "The outside world might do me some good," he said after a brief silence. "Krothair and I have been holed up for too long. I... can't drink tonight, though I would like to go with you."

"Why can't you drink?" Samsen asked, a mildly quizzical look on his face.

"I'd rather not discuss it," Ti'Shed said. "Suffice it to say that you shall drink alone. I would welcome the company, though."

"Why can't you drink?" the giant asked again. "What have you gone and done?"

"Only what I had to," Ti'Shed answered in a tone that stopped further questioning cold, even from a man such as Samsen.

The Kingsguardian's left hand had never left the hilt of his sword, and it had seemed so natural there that Krothair hadn't even paid special attention to its placement; now he did. There was something in Samsen's eyes despite his friendliness. The giant knew something was wrong about this situation, and there was a current of dangerous caution running just beneath his exterior.

_Just take him away so I can look for the sword,_ Krothair prayed. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for.

"You are too tense, old friend," Samsen said.

"And you're too ugly."

Samsen smiled and eased slightly. "Come, Ti'Shed. It has been too long."

Ti'Shed looked back at Krothair and slowly nodded his head, the wounds of their training standing out oddly in the light of the candles and the moon.

Samsen nodded at Krothair, and without another word the two deadliest men Krothair had ever met departed.

Krothair sagged when their presence was gone, not knowing how nervous and intimidated he had truly been. His body felt weak and numb, and exhaustion fell onto him like a heavy blanket. But he had work to do while they were gone. How long would they be? It looked like it would take Samsen a _very_ long time to get drunk, so at least Krothair had _that_ working to his advantage.

-3-

The house wasn't fantastically large, but Krothair was shocked at all the places he found that he had never been. There was a cellar, for instance, that he hadn't known about at all, and there were even closets that surprised him. It was sad how little he had been able to explore, so set had he been in his routine of survival.

It had been several hours since Samsen and Ti'Shed had left, and Krothair was certain he would have to give up soon. It wasn't the search itself that took so long, it was making sure that he could leave everything as he had found it that made it so mind-numbingly slow. Ti'Shed - much as his surname suggested - had the eyes of a hawk and his attention to detail on the training field certainly could carry over into everyday life.

The last place Krothair went into was Ti'Shed's room.

He knew he should have looked there first but he had hoped to find the sword elsewhere so he could be spared the journey into the den of the beast.

He opened the door slowly and entered the darkness, carrying his candle before him to light the way. It smelled like death inside, not so heavily that Krothair choked, but strong enough that he was surprised he hadn't been able to smell it from the other side. Clothes hung all over the place, some soaked in blood, others in various other weird liquids. The whole place seemed like a sort of graveyard... or perhaps a grotesque shrine.

The wooden supporting poles of the room had been carved with symbols from bottom to top and it looked as if it had been recently done. The scars in the wood were a lighter, younger color than the rest of the beam, and the curly shavings were in heaps on the floor.

Krothair padded through the room, cautious as a mouse in a barn. His eyes scanned for likely hiding places and he began by gingerly opening the drawers of a nearby dresser. It contained nothing of interest. The floor creaked as he walked along it, but digging his fingers at the boards revealed no hidden cubby. He lay down to search under the bed, but there was nothing under there except filth.

His candle didn't give him a very big bubble of sight, but he held it aloft towards the rafters and there his eye caught the color he had wanted to see.

He needed to drag over a small stool to reach, but once he did he found the red-sheathed sword resting parallel on top of a ceiling beam. Small white flowers lay around the sword, each blossom in a different stage of aging. Ti'Shed must have picked one each day and laid it up there with the sword in some sort of ritual. Krothair had never seen that happen, however, and couldn't imagine when the sword master might have done such a thing each day.

He set his candle down on the beam and carefully - with shaking hands - took the sword from its resting place. It was a surprisingly light weapon, and he could almost sense its quality and balance, even through the sheath. He grabbed his candle again and descended from the stool, heart pounding almost audibly in his chest in the silent room.

He sat on the floor then and slowly unsheathed the weapon. It came out silently and the candle flame lit the blade in an orange glow that made it dance. It was as fine a weapon as Krothair had thought it would be, and for a moment he marveled. The blade had only one distinguishing mark on it; near the hilt was inscribed the image of a hawk in flight, his talons wrapped around a thorny vine.

Hawkethorn.

Why would Ti'Shed's own sword cause him so much grief? What had Ti'Shed done to lose this sword and how had its return devastated him? Was it some sort of a death threat? Krothair had heard of objects being delivered to people which represented a bounty on their head, but why was Ti'Shed seemingly worshiping this one with his strange shrines of carvings, flowers, and clothing?

Krothair felt he would get no more answers here tonight, but at least he had seen it. He had finally laid eyes on the thing that had caused his training to be nearly insufferable. This weapon had snapped something inside of Ti'Shed, and now that Krothair had seen it he felt as if he at least had some power again.

He stepped back up on the stool and replaced the sword atop the horizontal roof beam, being cautious not to crush or displace any of the white blossoms, even with his breath.

He returned the stool and looked about, careful to make sure everything was as he had found it. He closed the door silently and walked away, the smell of the room fading as he traversed the hallway. He extinguished the candle, went to his room, and laid down on the bed.

Ti'Shed had been sicker than he'd thought, keeping a secret world of grief shut up behind the door of his room.

Krothair's thoughts drifted as he lay there alone in the silence. His eyelids fell down and the exhaustion of his training took him to sleep well before he wanted it to.

-4-

Krothair felt his door open. There was a pressure change in the room that was so slight he doubted he would have felt it a month ago. Ti'Shed's training, though incredibly brutal, had brought about a state of heightened awareness in Krothair that he now carried constantly.

There was no moon now. The room was pitch black.

"So you found it," Ti'Shed said in the utter darkness.

Krothair lay still in his bed, not wanting to respond or make any sound at all.

"I suppose I should have expected this," the sword master continued. "It is really the only logical conclusion. If I hadn't been so blind I would have seen this coming... and now you've seen my room... that side of my life. You must be quiet and listen as I speak, although it is my belief that that is your plan already, so all the better for us here.

"The sword you found belonged to my son. He fought in the war and then on the Vaporgaard. I trained him myself. And now he is dead. You are young and so I don't expect you to fully understand, but he was born of a woman I actually loved. You may discover, in time, how rare that is. And I loved him as well. He was one of the best fighters I have ever known. They say sometimes that the student surpasses the teacher and that was certainly true in his case. The medals he earned during the war... well, if he had ever worn them all at once he would have been crushed under their weight. Then again, perhaps not. He was strength incarnate."

Here Ti'Shed paused, his torrent of words pausing. Krothair couldn't smell any alcohol on the air, so could only assume that Ti'Shed had spoken truth to Samsen. The sword master was likely as sober as he had been since the first day Krothair had met him.

"They delivered his sword to me," Ti'Shed continued, his voice choked, "to let me know that he had died. I have lost my only son, Krothair, and I did love him. And he did love me." Ti'Shed paused to weep and Krothair still said nothing, praying this was all a dream.

Ti'Shed mastered himself. "By going into my room you have seen my weakness first-hand and I am embarrassed to my very core. You probably want to say something like 'don't be embarrassed' or 'it's perfectly understandable.' But I am... and it isn't. I know you listen there in the dark and now I am going to ask something of you that seems like the only course of action for either of us. And that is this: I don't want to wake up in the morning and find you here."

Krothair blinked his drying eyes, now realizing he hadn't done that the entire time Ti'Shed had been talking. And something else dawned on him. Suddenly the frenzied method of his training became clear to him.

"You're banishing me because I can't replace your son," the boy said in a whisper.

"I am banishing you because I was foolish to think that _anyone_ could," Ti'Shed said. "You are a talented fighter, but I do not want to see you in the morning... Because you are not my son." The old man cleared his throat several times and then he was gone like a shadow in the night.

Krothair wept silently, sobs wracking his body as his flat pillow slowly soaked with his tears. He didn't stop until the sun threatened to peek over the horizon.

He quickly gathered what little he had, and slowly limped out of the place he had lived for the past month.

Krothair was on his own again.

But he was getting used to that.

-5-

He didn't want to go back to the Western Watch in his condition, so he had to choose somewhere else. A place he could recover from all he had just gone through. It took him a few nights of living in the town and sleeping in alleys before he found an attic in an abandoned house. He realized that he probably belonged in the slums anyway, with his dirty clothes and beaten body.

Krothair wondered idly if this was how he would live out the rest of his life. He struggled, ashamed and broken. Deep down - in some spark of his soul - he thought he could recover, he just wasn't sure when or how fully.

The attic was cold at night, but it didn't matter. The only things Krothair had taken from Ti'Shed's house had been his terrible Western Watch practice sword, his clothes, a blanket, and his Kingsguard paper still tucked in his pocket after all this time.

He had checked at the stables for the gray horse he had ridden in on, but he had neglected to keep track of it, and hadn't been paying, and now the horse was gone.

He thought of Forstina sometimes at night, thinking that maybe he could be inside that warm tent again and be told that everything was going to be alright. He knew the Sunburst Temple would take him in, but he didn't want to be a burden. His pride wouldn't let him.

Krothair lay on the floor this night, looking up at the cobwebby ceiling, feeling the pain in his body subsiding ever so slowly. He thought back to his brush with Katya and Zin, hoping he wouldn't run into them again, but knowing inside that they probably wouldn't bother to rob him in his current state.

_Maybe one day I'll try to be something again_ , he thought.

There were plenty of places for him to go in the city to try and earn a living, but he didn't really know how to go about it. Perhaps he would just wander back out into the country. There were hermits weren't there? People who lived by themselves until they were old, dusty, and full of stories they had never experienced? _Can't be a hermit your whole life if you don't start young,_ Krothair thought.

He turned to face the wall as he heard fighting outside. It didn't concern him and he listened to the yelling die out as someone received a beating.

The slums weren't the most peaceful place, but perhaps they were where he belonged: the boy who had wanted to have a family, and had paid dearly for that desire.

The weeks passed.

# Chapter 20

### With Abandon

-1-

"We've been over this a hundred times," Halimaldie explained for the hundredth time. "If you have doubts, remember my rule of thumb: doing _something_ is almost always better than doing _nothing_."

"You've gone to check on your operations before," Tellurian pointed out. "Why do you need a surrogate this time? Don't you have a network of people? What about Tobbs? Jak? Harmen? Any of the other people I see bustling around this mansion all day? I have other matters to-"

"This is a very bad time for my operations to lack direct oversight," Halimaldie interrupted. "What I want from you is just a bit of stability while I am away. You can surely provide me with that for crying out loud. You're my brother. People remember that. It's an important connection."

"I don't know about this," Tellurian said, shuffling through the thick stack of papers in front of him. He sat at Halimaldie's desk, looking very out of place at the helm of a trading empire. "See, Hal, this is why I gave this up long ago."

"Bullshit, Tell. You're a D'Arvenant. It's still in your blood. I can't trust anyone else with this. You think I should let one of my competitors run my business in my stead?" He put his gloved hands on his brother's shoulders. "Mostly I'm doing this out of pity, you know that, right?" He smiled.

"Aw, poor Tellurian," his brother said. "Shackled by freedom."

"I knew you'd understand." He patted Tellurian on the shoulders.

Halimaldie had traveled much more when he was younger, but lately he had become accustomed to people coming to him, not him going to them. Tellurian was right: Halimaldie had done these sort of operational check-ins before. Trance had said the journey would be significantly shorter than it should have been and Halimaldie wasn't looking forward to whatever magics might be worked on him. _Although, Yarrow worked magic on me..._

Halimaldie started to move about his office, making sure everything was organized as well as it could be for Tellurian in his absence. He picked up his most prized possession from his desk and handed it to Tellurian "You have to wind it twice a day," Halimaldie explained.

"What kind of thing is this?" Tellurian asked, turning the object around in his hands.

"It's a clock."

"But it's so tiny."

Halimaldie walked over to Tellurian again. "It's technolurgy from Trirene," he explained, tracing the filigree lines on its face. "I don't know the inner workings of it, but it cost me a fortune to get it over here. Those Trirenese bastards deal hard."

"What are all the numbers on it? They're different from the ones on the water clock along the northern wall."

"It divides the day into ten separate segments. Each of _those_ segments is divided into a hundred other segments called decands."

"You can look at the sundial in the nearest town square and tell what time it is, Hal. You've got a sundial on your own property! Besides that, the numbers are all wrong on this thing! You got taken, brother."

Halimaldie sighed. "Look how small it is! It's portable! Sundials don't work at night and you can't lug them around with you. It would be a lot more practical if everyone used this kind of thing. Look, Tell, I don't have time to get into the ins and outs of clocks and life and papers and business. I'm late meeting these Kingsguardians as it is."

His brother walked over to him and grabbed his upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip. "I mean this when I say this, Hal: I want to see you return. Whatever you've gotten yourself wrapped up in here, well... Yarrow wasn't sure what to do about your hand."

"It's stopped spreading, at least for now," Halimaldie said.

"And the Kingsguardians draw trouble to themselves like a dead squirrel draws flies," Tellurian continued. "I won't lose you like I lost father, Hal, so either come back alive or... well, there is no 'or'." Tellurian embraced him.

"I'm abandoning everything I've built," Halimaldie said. "And I'm abandoning Yarrow."

"Oh, Hal," his brother said. He pulled back from the embrace. "You're already putting her on the same pedestal as your empire? Honestly I've never seen you so smitten. Aren't you afraid she charmed you with a spell? Maybe she'll get you alone and turn you into a boar."

"I deserved that. But I think... maybe I'm different now. Will you put in a good word for me? If she asks after me, that is."

"You'll be back from this," Tellurian said. Then he thought for a moment, as if trying to reassure himself. "Probably sooner than you think. These grand quests have a way of falling apart. And when you come back... we'll talk."

"Sounds good." Halimaldie turned and started to go. "Oh. If you have to deal with someone named Polk, it's alright to want to punch him in the face. There will be a shipment of spices waiting at the docks in less than an hour, Tell. Take weapons."

He glanced over his shoulder one last time before he left. Tellurian appeared so small in the large room.

-2-

The city gates were crowded with people and Halimaldie prayed he wouldn't be recognized as he walked through them. He nodded his head to the guards and they gave him faint recognition. He wasn't sure why he was nervous about being recognized. He had, after all, publicly announced this trip, although not the inconvenient details of it.

The roads leading from Haroma were wide, but they narrowed as he walked away from his beloved city. He was altogether shocked that he was about to travel by land. Not only did that make the journey twice as long - since they would have to ride around Haroma Bay instead of over it - but by sea they wouldn't have to travel briefly in Shailand territory. If Halimaldie's maps were correct (and he certainly paid enough for them to be) he and the Kingsguardians would pass directly across the border between the kingdoms. The war hadn't been over for that long, and the old tensions were still rather high. He would let the men with swords deal with that when the time came.

He wore a white shirt with long sleeves that he now wished were short, and a leather vest with malachite buttons. He wore short gloves as well, one having bandages under it. He'd tried to tie the bandages elegantly as Yarrow had and ended up just kind of wadding them inside. His daggers hung at his sides, always more symbolic than practical. He had tied back his hair with a leather cord, and kept his face shaved close.

A letter from Trance had informed him not to bring his own horse or supplies, and that the Kingsguard would take care of him. So Halimaldie had done exactly that. The letter had also given him an odd place to meet with very specific, odd instructions. About an hour into his walk he took the letter out and unfolded it.

"Stand at the point where the sycamores meet and face the setting sun," he muttered to himself. The traffic had lightened significantly here, but Halimaldie still felt kind of like an idiot following these ridiculous directions. He looked around and saw two trees that he thought might have been sycamores and they were sort of leaning over each other. He turned west and started walking.

The road gave way to tangled underbrush and rather quickly Halimaldie was walking through the woods, with nothing but his letter to guide him. "Left at the brook and cross at the log," he read. "This journey is starting off just fantastically."

He came to a small stream and turned left, following along the bank, stumbling every now and then. He came to a log that spanned it. The water wasn't deep, but he didn't want to get his boots wet and so, like a child, he walked carefully across the rotting log that seemed to be serving as a bridge, nearly falling three times and having to wheel his arms to catch his balance.

Once on the other side he consulted his letter and continued on. He went up hills and down, around strange trees and through the brush until he came to a road. He recognized it as one of the main ones that led to Haroma. He turned and stopped dead in his tracks.

There, standing in front of him, were three Kingsguardians: Telin, Trance, and another man who looked almost exactly like Telin. All three wore the silver and purple of the Kingsguard and each one had provisions and held the reins of a mount. A fourth horse was grazing nearby.

"What the hell?" Halimaldie said. "I could have just kept walking on the road I was on and gotten here."

Trance was laughing so hard that he barely made a sound, his face red. He was doubled over with his hands on his knees.

"This is why we usually don't leave him in charge of things like this," Telin said.

"His boots," Trance managed to get out between gasps of laughter. "His boots are dry. He went over the log!" He was pointing a shaking finger at Halimaldie's feet.

"Oh, we'll be hearing about this until sunset at least," Telin said, grimacing. "I apologize, D'Arvenant. It wasn't until recently that Trance told me he'd done the ol' treasure map. He gets a kick out of the most juvenile things. This horse is for you, D'Arvenant." He indicated the grazer. "For the next thing we have to do, it would be best if we moved off the road."

"Move off the road and into the woods?" Halimaldie said, looking at Trance. "But I've already spent so much time there today."

Trance fell over laughing.

-3-

They gathered a little ways off the main road, Halimaldie falling in quickly with his three escorts. He wasn't much of a rider, but he'd gotten up on the back of his horse, Bishop, with no embarrassing slip-ups.

"We have to be ready ta move once it's initiated," said the man who was nearly identical to Telin. Even his voice was similar to Telin's.

That's gotta be Kelin. Aren't they twins? I should have paid more attention to the membership of the Kingsguard.

"I can navigate it well enough," Trance said. "Stars and navigation have always been my thing, younger Lightbearer. Don't ya remember during the Battle of Kingdom Point? You were runnin' around wettin' yerself. 'Where am I? Where am I?'" Trance laughed.

"It wasn't exactly like that," Kelin said, seeming to be explaining it to Halimaldie as much as Trance. "I was trying to Force arrows out of my face at the time, ya ken."

Halimaldie didn't know what battle they were talking about and didn't know what 'Forcing' was, but he nodded all the same.

"Remember that time on Fenner's Wagon Trail when you tripped and fell over that naked woman?" Kelin said to Trance. "I mean, what the hell was she doin' out there?"

Trance laughed. "What did I say to her? Somethin' like 'I've never seen a slut in such a rut!' No, maybe that's not right. Well, whatever it was, it was clever!"

"I need you two to concentrate," Telin snapped. "I can't summon this much power alone."

Trance and Kelin stopped talking, obeying Telin swiftly. _Telin's clearly in charge here._

The three Kingsguardians turned towards each other then and closed their eyes, placing their hands on their swords in eerie simultaneity. Halimaldie sat silently upon his mount waiting for something to happen, but the only thing he noticed was that all three men had broken out into a strange sweat.

A few minutes passed.

"I hear it feels a bit weird the first time," Telin said to Halimaldie, his voice pinched.

" _That's_ what I said to that naked woman!" Trance yelled gleefully.

And then everything shifted.

Halimaldie almost fell off of Bishop, such was the twisting of the world. He felt his eyes were lying to him. He looked around at the trees and there was something wrong with them. The leaves that normally flapped quickly in the wind now moved as if underwater. The ones close to the gathering of men still moved normally, though. Halimaldie could almost see the sphere the four of them were in, but he didn't want to believe it was true.

_The Kingsguardians are somehow..._ bending time _?_

"Lock it," Telin grunted.

The three men shifted ever so slightly in their saddles. Then they opened their eyes and removed their hands from their swords.

Magic had been hitting Halimaldie in waves lately. It was odd to be so immersed in such a world, when he never had been before. First Yarrow's Healing and now this. There was so much power in the world and his brain surged already with different plans on how it could be used.

But even in the depth of Halimaldie's business-mind he knew there were things that even he should not take advantage of. Things that were too sacred to be harnessed. It was this acumen that had kept him on top for so long. It meant knowing how far you could push things before they fell apart. This magic seemed like one of those things that might be better left untouched.

"Now what?" Halimaldie asked Telin.

"Now," the Kingsguardian replied, "we ride."

-4-

"For the world, time is passing normally," Trance explained as they rode. "But for us it goes much faster. Kelin here'll argue with ya that it's the other way. That time goes slower for them and normal fer us. I'm not sure it matters."

"It does matter," Kelin interjected.

"It doesn't. If we spent fifteen days in this bubble, only one will have passed on the outside."

"That's incredible!" Halimaldie said, shocked.

"Hard as hell, though," said Trance. "We're the only three that can do this and sometimes we don't have enough power to even consider it as an option. Fucks with yer bowels, too."

"That's too much knowledge," Telin said.

"It does, though," Trance said. "I'll be in the privy for a week straight after we get back from this whole thing."

"How did you learn to do these things?" Halimaldie asked. "That is, I'm assuming there are more... things you can do."

"You can feel the magic inside of ya sometimes," Trance said. "Urgin' ya on, telling ya how to use it and what to do, but usually that's almost impossible to interpret. It makes a lot of sense once you _know_ what it's trying to tell ya, but in the meantime it's just confusing. Mostly we train ourselves, stumbling blindly through the magical dark."

"Don't let him too far into our confidence, Trance," Telin warned. "I know how friendly you get."

"Are there are other... what did you call yourselves... other Servitors out there?" Halimaldie asked, undaunted by Telin's words.

"There are untrained stragglers," Trance said. "Where do you think we draw replacements from? There's a tournament held when we need it. Anyone can possess the magic of course, but to bring it out... now that's where the trick lies. Even you could have the magic, Hal! Do ya mind if I call ya Hal?"

"You can."

"He'd more likely be a Benefactor than a Servitor," Kelin said.

"And I'd bet ya a thousand crown notes yer right," agreed Trance, "but it's not necessarily true and ya know it. Hal, magic is born of purity and truth. Ya gotta bring it out with a true act that corresponds to the magic you're trying to kindle."

"I'm... not sure I follow."

"There are five types right? Right. Us Servitors derive power from lending our time and strength to others. Lots of soldiers have the spark to become Servitors, but it's a rare man that does. Then you got yer Protectors. They work with animals and the like. Devotees, Monks, and Benefactors fill out the ranks. I'm actually surprised this isn't more common knowledge."

"And I don't know why you endeavor to make it so," Telin said. "We've had this argument before, Trance. The less people that know of the powers the better."

"Why?" Halimaldie asked. "They're... they're powerful."

"It's like this," Telin continued, taking over for Trance. "If I tell you not to think the word 'crab' while you ride, you are invariably going to think it. If you tell someone how they can become a Servitor, or a Devotee or whatever, they're _going to try to do it_. Makes their acts untrue. They are instead driven by the desire to gain power. By informing them of the possibilities you are actually making it much harder for them to achieve the goal."

"Hog-swill," said Trance. "They'll forget about it if a true need arises. I knew about it from rumors during my days as a soldier, but when I saved that man's life I wasn't thinking about it and _bam_ , I felt the magic swell within me."

"Not everyone's as brilliant as you are, Trance," Telin said. "And, not to cut this conversation short, but I think it's time we enacted the second part of our travel plan." He glanced around. "We're far enough out and I'm well enough recovered. Who wants to start?"

"Who wants to start what?" Halimaldie asked nervously.

"Ya see," said Trance, "time is distorted and slowed outside this bubble, but we're not actually moving any faster. At this rate it'll still take us the same amount of time to reach the mines, which would get incredibly boring. So we're going to speed things up a little. I'll start. Hal, you'll find a long, coiled rope attached to your horse. Hand me the end of it, please."

Halimaldie did as he was asked and he saw the other two Kingsguardians doing the same.

"Alright," Trance said, once he held the ends of the ropes in one hand. He closed his eyes and breathed out.

The world began to speed by, the horses flying across the ground. If Halimaldie had thought he was disoriented before, now was much worse. Trees whizzed by on each side and Halimaldie wondered how the animals didn't crash into anything. He held on for dear life.

"This is expending so much of my stored power," Trance complained.

"This's what we store it for, Trance," Telin said. "Lead on, and let's ride."

The party whipped across the landscape, Halimaldie unable to believe what was happening.

-5-

"Sorry about earlier with the treasure map gag," Trance whispered. "Oh but you shoulda seen the look on yer fuckin' face."

He clinked his bottle quietly with Halimaldie's. They were sitting around the embers of their dying fire sharing a few drinks which Trance had smuggled against Telin's wishes. Kelin and Telin were asleep in their bedrolls a few spans away.

"It's fine," Halimaldie said, taking a sip of whatever alcohol it was that Trance had brought. It had a very strange flavor to it, but he wasn't about to turn it down. "I kind of had fun on my little hunt. I'm just glad we stopped that time bubble fast business."

"Takes some gettin' used to. Useful as hell. But we're using up massive quantities of power for this mission. King Maxton seems to think this is top priority."

"What do you think we'll find down in the south?" Halimaldie asked.

"Hopefully nothing. Yes, it would be best if we found nothing. That way we could go back to business as usual."

"I thought this sort of thing _was_ business as usual for you," Halimaldie said, taking another swig.

"Aye. A lot of people do," Trance replied. "Foglins aren't something anyone wants to deal with, though. Except them who are bat-shit crazy enough to go right down to the Vapor. If Foglins are somehow breaking their lines and infiltrating our kingdom then business will be very much _un_ usual for a shit of a long time. But me? I'm a simple guy." Trance ticked the list off on his fingers. "I like to kill Shailanders. I like to purchase whores. I like to drink. But, I'm sworn to the King. And this is what he wants."

"How far'd we get today?"

Trance looked up at the stars. "Probably not as far as any of us would like. But a hell of a lot farther than anyone else could've!" He held up his palm and Halimaldie slapped it with his gloved hand. "You gonna sleep in those gloves?"

"Probably will," Halimaldie said. "Probably will."

"Hey," Trance said, shrugging. "We all got our weird fuckin' things."

# Chapter 21

### Wren at the Dryad Tree

-1-

Wren had been miserably wet for the past three days.

It was that persistent type of rain that drizzled and dragged on, refusing to pour and get it over with. Wren, Tessa, Crasher, two raccoons, and the bird that had led her to her father were all huddled together under some tall trees. Crasher had attempted to instruct Wren on how to build a makeshift shelter of large pine boughs, trying to model it after a cave he particularly liked, but in the end Wren had been incapable of such a physical task, so the pile sat next to them, heaped up and useless.

"Wetwetwetwetwet," the bird chirped.

"Are we almost there, Crasher?" Wren asked. She turned the sheathed knife in her hands, wondering at the power that had helped her build the wooden object.

"Mistress, we could possibly be there today if we were willing to walk through the rain. But my coat is sodden and I feel slightly ill."

Even Tessa's proud whiskers were limp, the mouse a morose little bundle. _They all look so much smaller with their fur slicked down._

Wren pushed the hair back from her face and tried to wring it out. "I never knew how important shelter could be," she said. "There aren't any caves near here, Crasher?"

"Not that I know of. These woods are altogether new to me. I must admit that they are not very bear-friendly."

"How much wetter can we get?" asked one of the raccoons. "We should press on if we are to get to the Tree."

"You're probably right," Wren said. "Maybe I could have the termites build us a shelter of some sort!" Wren reached out - or tried to - the same way she had before, but something was bound inside of her. She couldn't get the same feeling. "I can't reach anything," she said.

Tessa hopped out of Wren's pocket and shook herself as dry as she could. "I'm with the raccoon, then. I say we press on."

"Brave words, mouseling," Crasher said.

"Tessa and the raccoon are right," Wren said. "I want answers." She looked down at her arm. The red and gold symbol was dull and something inside of her was different now. After she had reached out to the termites she had felt a bit empty, as if something was missing. She was worried she had already broken her new powers.

Crasher stood up and began to plod on, his fur hanging in great hunks. His paws squelched in the mud of the forest floor and Wren's boots did the same as she followed him.

Tessa stopped to drink a little bit of water that had collected in a leaf. When she was done Wren scooped her up and pet her lightly to squeeze some of the water from her fur. "You're shaking," said the girl.

"I am cold, mistress."

Wren pulled out the collar of her shirt and tucked the little mouse between her breasts, holding her there with her hand as she walked.

She felt the nice warm bundle there, and slowly something within her began to fill again.

-2-

"This should not be," Crasher said.

The bear had stopped short, muddy legs sliding out in front of him with the abruptness of the halt. Lightning split the sky followed immediately by thunder.

In the blast of light, Wren could see a gigantic object looming up to the sky in front of them. She took Tessa out of her shirt and held her in her palm so that the little mouse could see. The raccoons had climbed onto Crasher's back, and the bird was nowhere to be seen.

"What is wrong, bear?" Tessa asked.

"Behold it for yourself, mouseling."

Wren tried to study the giant looming object. It was definitely a tree of some sort, but of a kind and scale that Wren had never seen before. Its twisting branches spiraled up into the air, looking almost like rivers as they snaked towards the sky. Wren had to crane her neck to an uncomfortable angle just to see where they ended. The trunk of the tree was bigger around than even the largest tent at the Marshanti carnival had been, and the roots drove into the ground like powerful weapons, the soil buckling and heaving up around them.

"We're there," breathed Wren. She could almost feel the tree pulsing in time with her symbol, but as Crasher had said, something was definitely wrong.

"There should be leaves," the bear noted.

He was right. The Dryad Tree looked dead.

A raccoon approached Wren, dragging something in its mouth. Wren bent down to see what it was. Somehow the raccoon had found what looked to be a badly torn coat. It was made of some thick material and had a few medals pinned to it. "Whose is that, raccoon?" she asked.

"I am not sure," said the bandit. "It has old smells on it. I found it wedged in between a few rocks. It was near another human blade."

"Another knife?" Wren asked.

Lightning cracked the sky again, drawing her attention back to the tree.

"We need to go to it," she said, and began walking.

The nearer they got to the massive tree, the more objects they found. The ground wasn't necessarily _strewn_ with them, but something large had definitely happened here in the past. _There are so many rusty, broken weapons._ "Maybe a gigantic battle," Wren said.

"A battle?" Tessa asked.

"Where men fight other men," Wren explained.

"Why would they do that, mistress?"

"I don't know, Tessa."

They walked further through the odd wasteland that they now encountered. Something white and round peeked out of the ground, but Wren warned everyone harshly again checking on what it was. Crasher was curious, but Wren knew it was a skull, half-buried in the sloppy, dark mud.

The ground began to slosh and crunch beneath Wren's feet and she saw more and more specks of white. Wren's breathed in and out quickly trying not to gag, knowing full-well that she was walking on the bones of men and horses long dead.

They were close enough now that the trunk of the Dryad Tree blocked most of Wren's vision, taking up the sky with its magnitude. The group approached it slowly and cautiously. Wren's nerves were frazzled. She shook from excitement, fear, anticipation, and chill as she reached out to rest her hand on the shaggy bark. It flaked away like dead skin, gray and disgusting.

Wren let out a sigh that turned into a cough. "I think our journey ends here," she said, tears mixing with the rain on her cheeks. "Whatever this Tree used to be, it isn't anymore. There are no answers here."

Wren considered briefly just sitting down at the Tree's gigantic base and waiting to die. She had no idea where she would go now.

The Dryad Tree - whatever it had been and whatever it had stood for - was dead.

-3-

A tiny pulse awakened her. It was tugging at her consciousness lightly and erratically, like a timid fish at the pole of a mighty fisherman. She noticed that the rain had stopped, and for a brief moment all of her troubles were washed away by that one simple fact.

"What is it, mistress?" Tessa asked. The mouse had fallen off Wren's head when the girl had sat up quickly.

"Something's pulling at my mind." Wren stood up and drew the knife. It was an odd reaction, as she didn't really know how to fight with one, but she did it nonetheless. The blade gave her an illusion of power, like a heroine from a story.

She began following the pulsing beacon on unsteady legs, climbing over huge roots to get to the place where she felt it pulling. The moon shone brightly in the sky, casting shadows over the macabre battlefield. Wren kept her eyes forward for fear that she would see the dead of the battle risen, shambling slowly towards her on this eerie night.

She came to a rent in the tree. _I might be able to shimmy in between those two layers of overlapping bark._ That's where the pulse was coming from; somewhere beyond that makeshift doorway.

"It's coming from in here," she whispered to Crasher.

"If you wish to go in there, mistress, I cannot follow. It will have to be you and the mouseling alone."

Crasher was right. The raccoons had left or, at least, weren't currently with them, presumably going off to their own business. Tessa had warned Wren that animals were subject primarily to their own whims and not to take it too personally if their journeys took them on different paths.

"Wait here," Wren said. She began to squeeze herself through the crack in the bark. She held Jon's knife awkwardly in front of her. The moonlight was replaced with the light of her glowing symbol.

Both sides of the tree pressed in on her as she snaked her way through, Tessa riding in her somewhat dry pocket. Slowly, slowly the passageway began to widen. Wren could take full breaths again and she could hold the knife down at her side. The tunnel they walked down never branched. It simply drove into the tree in a straight line. It didn't look like it had been dug, but rather like the tree had simply grown that way. Wren suddenly found herself in a small room.

The place seemed to have been crafted by the will of the tree. Something that could only have been a bed protruded from the wall, an extension of the tree itself. Decorations lined the walls, but didn't seem like scars in the wood, and there were a few low benches and chairs.

In the middle of it all, lit by Wren's symbol, was a woman.

She was lying prostrate on the ground, her gray hair fanned out in front of her.

"You have come," the woman said, her voice quiet but startling Wren near to death. She rose from her prayerful pose, her ancient face hard as wood. "You have come, marked of God."

-4-

"What did you call me?" Wren asked, her voice sounding small between the dense walls.

"Marked of God," replied the ancient woman. "I suspect you've noticed the symbol on your arm."

"This is from God?" Wren asked, looking down at it.

"Yes," the woman said. "I am so glad I stayed here all this time! We have much to do now. Much to do." The woman reached towards one of the walls and just as her hand reached it the wood parted, opening a small portal. The woman drew a few packs from the portal and set them on the ground. "It is well that you have a sword," she said.

"Where are we going?" Wren asked.

"Much debate over that," the old woman answered. "Much debate. For my purposes I think we must travel to the Temple of Sin'ra."

"I... came here for answers," Wren said.

"And you may get some from me," replied the woman. "But for the true and full answer we must reach your destiny at the Temple. You wonder of your newling powers I am sure. Do you have a Familiar yet?"

"Is that me?" Tessa asked, popping her head up from Wren's pocket for the first time.

"It might be," nodded the old woman. "Might be."

"You can hear her talk!" Wren said. "I'm not crazy!"

The old woman nodded. "There are many who can Hear," she said. "I am both surprised and not surprised that you are so young. Wisdom comes with age, but strength fleets. You are an odd pick for an odd time." The old woman rummaged through her packs, making sure they were as she wanted them. "My name is Heather."

"Mine's Wren."

"Named after a bird."

"I suppose I am."

"Any other Protectors in your family?" Heather asked.

"You mean... people with powers like me?"

"Yes."

Wren thought back to what her father had said to Crasher: 'I feel Lia's hand in this.' Wren was suddenly chilled through, her skin standing in bumps. She hadn't stopped to think about it at the time, but her mother might have been... "I'm not sure," she finally answered.

"We will learn more about you as we travel, then," Heather said. She opened another section of the trunk and took out two long cloaks made of some type of fur that Wren didn't recognize. They looked soft, warm, and light. "It will be cold where we are going."

"Can't we have a moment to rest?" Wren asked, her body shaking from exhaustion.

"Mounts will not be an issue for two such as us, Wren."

"I have a bear outside that I ride, but he's tired too."

Heather nodded. "You must learn a vast amount of information in a very limited time, so I would suggest we start." Heather walked over to her then and embraced her, a gesture that the girl took awkwardly. She could not recall the last time she had been hugged by a woman. It felt sincere and loving, but Heather pulled away from her with strange quickness.

"Oh," she said, her eyes traveling over Wren's body. "Oh."

"What?" the girl asked. She took a step backwards and tightened her grip on the knife.

"It's just that you're so young. You can't know."

"Know what?"

"The size of our party is bigger than I thought," Heather said. "It will consist of me, you, the mouse, the bear, and the tiniest of lives within you: your child."

Wren gasped for air.

# Chapter 22

### Otom at the Dryad Tree

-1-

Otom was cautious to disturb nothing as he set the trap. His days of snare-making weren't too far behind him, he had just been a bit rusty at first. After journeying for this long he felt back in the swing of things again, able to keep himself fed through trapping and hunting. Now he was setting a much different trap: one that could catch a man.

The presence that he felt with his Detection hadn't faded or grown closer, but always, always stayed more or less equidistant from himself, waiting, lurking.

Otom's snare was set, waiting to trigger swiftly and powerfully if stepped upon. He began to enact the second part of his plan. He walked through the snow now, his footprints standing out starkly in the windless world. He walked past the trap by a good fifty spans and then began walking backwards, putting his boots in precisely the same places they had been before. It was a simple trick, and known throughout this region, but he had been surprised at how many times he had heard of it succeeding.

He had been sure to walk past a tall tree and now he climbed it, powerful hands and arms hauling him into the upper branches to wait.

Being up in the branches started to stir his memory again. Not of the treehouse, for that story had already played out in his mind, but of the Dryad Tree, a place that had changed him forever.

-2-

13 Years Ago

Otom sat by Allura's bed, head in his hands. Silence's advice weighed heavily on him as he tried to decide what to do. _Should I undertake the journey to the Dryad Tree?_ He would have to leave Allura behind and travel with as much haste as possible; and that meant going alone.

Allura's skin, usually beautiful and robust, had taken on a drab color. Her eyes were always red when she opened them, and that was becoming a rarity. Her mood swings had taken on a violence that Otom couldn't comprehend, causing her to have fits that sometimes required both himself and Silence to quell.

Something was very wrong with Allura Finny, and Otom knew she would die if he didn't do something about it.

Allura mumbled something and her eyes shot open.

Otom flinched, getting ready to fight her off or put her clothes back on or whatever random action she chose to take this time. "What is it, Lura?" he asked her gently, muscles tense.

"What I said to you outside the Fool's Heart Tavern that morning," she said slowly. Her mouth was dry and her lips were cracked. "You had your hood up. You were walking away. Your ear was hurt. You never heard me did you, Otom?"

Otom thought back to that time. Over half a year had passed since then. "No, I didn't," he admitted.

"I think you can save me," she said. "That is what I yelled to you as you turned away from me. I've always felt it, Otom, from the first time I peeked over the wall of that booth and saw you. You might not see it in yourself, but anyone that lays eyes on you is frightened by your strength. I have always believed in God, Otom, and I believe he led me to you for many, many reasons, none of which I am smart enough to comprehend fully. I know that." She paused to cough. She continued, whispering, "I thought you could save me from Ris, I thought you could save me from that life. And I think you can save me now." She lay back, then, and her eyes closed. It was hard to believe she had spoken only moments before, so dead did she look.

Otom stood up swiftly and with resolve. He bent over one last time to kiss her forehead. The skin was burning up, making the gesture almost painful. Otom bundled himself up in his furs and went to find Silence. The old fighter was sitting placidly outside in the cold, his back against the outside wall of the house.

"I'm going," Otom said.

Silence nodded, staring off into nothing. "It is a risk. But your choices are simple. Go and have a chance to save her, or stay and watch her die. The problem with Isola region is just that. Isolation. The inability to call on others. Here, you must do things yourself or not do them at all."

"Yes, Silence," Otom said.

"Did you memorize the way that I showed you?"

"Well enough. Will you watch over her?"

"I will."

"Then I guess this is goodbye."

"Wait," Silence said, catching him by the wrist in a powerful grip. "The power of the Dryad Tree is great. It has a Guile on it, making it difficult to perceive for those that do not seek it. Keep your mission always in your heart so you will not miss it. You must also remember that there is a war going on. The armies fight along that border constantly. Don't get mixed up with them. Soldiers are not fighters. They've no honor, even though they claim they do; they're killers dressed in noble uniform." Silence gripped Otom's arm. "I would never wish this onus on anyone, but if you are to save the woman you love, you must be strong, smart, and quick, Otom. I have run out of options here as you well know. Your connection to Allura will allow you to access the Dryad Tree, to see it for what it really is, to get what you need from it. You are her last hope, Otom. Make haste."

Otom took a few moments to check his knife, water skin, and food supply and then he was off on what would become the most painful journey of his life.

-3-

The first night felt incredibly long and Otom went without sleep, simply laying under the black sky, only the hints of stars poking through. Honest thoughts began to crash down around him. He was completely unsure if this was the right thing to do. The Dryad Tree was a sacred place; somewhere that regular men did not tread lightly, if at all. In talking with Silence, Otom's perception of the scope of magic in the world had expanded.

Even after all he'd been told he knew that he was still woefully under-informed for this mission, and that pressed on him until he knew deep in his heart that he would fail. That promise of failure sat there like a weight, tearing him down, making his blood flow sluggishly.

But the next morning he stood up and continued on anyway. Silence had been right about the Isola region; Otom had not seen a single living soul in an entire day. He had covered much ground, long strides eating away the bands that he would have to travel to reach the Tree. Supposedly it lay at a pivotal point, in a spot that was just between the borders of Hardeen, Shailand, and the North. Silence, in addition to his technique teachings, had also insisted on a vast array of subjects, one of which had been geography. It was relevant, he had said, because you needed to know where the other fighters were from. It was important to know their landscape; their way of thinking.

Otom had, regrettably, never paid that much attention to those lessons.

_I think you can save me_. Allura's words echoed in his mind and became a mantra. When he got tired he would repeat them and he would find a new energy in himself.

He caught animals in snares and cooked them over fires that were difficult to make. But these were the types of things he had been doing all his life. Except for fighting, Otom was basically a hunter at heart, and had been raised that way by his da.

"I love her," Otom said to the air one night. "I would travel to the ends of the earth for her. Into the fiery mouth of hell itself."

It would turn out that he would have to make good on that promise.

-4-

It was his ninth straight day of nearly non-stop travel when he first began to hear noises. Up until that point it had been the birds in the trees and the wind in the pines, but now it was men. These were massive groups of men whose sounds carried familiar humanity, but also a foreign energy.

Otom slowed his pace and followed the sound, cresting a hill to find an encampment spread before him. He dropped to his stomach out of instinct and began to investigate the new situation. Blue and white striped tents dotted the valley, erected with ropes and poles. Men and horses moved about them, constantly winding their way throughout the tents. Otom knew one on one fighting. He didn't understand warfare. All at once he was intimidated simply by the sheer number of people gathered in the same spot. But more than that he cursed the fact that he would have to waste time going around them.

His plan was to swing a wide berth and avoid the camp entirely, but as he raised himself off the ground he heard a voice behind him. "Who goes there?" It didn't sound good.

Otom leaped up and took off at a dead run through the snow, for he knew he had only one hope: to outrun whoever had shouted. Tracking in the snow was easier than falling out of a tree and Otom ran until his legs and lungs burned, all the while skirting the camp and trying wildly to keep himself on target towards the Tree.

Luck shone on him as he found a small stream that wasn't frozen. He ran into it and down it, his boots becoming sodden with the icy water. It branched a few times and he took them at random. He splashed through it until his legs - which had been burning just moments before - felt like stumps instead of limbs. He then exited onto the opposite bank and searched frantically for somewhere to hide himself, dry off, and recover.

Unfortunately no such place existed. There were no hollow trees or caves or anything else, only the flatness of the land covered in snow. So he simply kept going.

They won't know which way I ran in the stream.

He forced himself to keep moving despite the protesting of almost every single part of his body. He could rest later. _I think you can save me_ , Allura echoed in his mind.

She had survived so much. Otom could survive this. Even Ris, who had been cold, starved, crazy, and shot in the back with an arrow had survived long enough to do what he had done. _I can survive this. She'll wait until I get back._

The camp of men was long behind him now. If they would have caught him they likely would have thought him a Marshanti spy and Otom could only derive bad outcomes from that. He ran his hand through his beard to jar loose the snow and ice that had formed there, and began breathing a bit easier.

The feeling in his feet and legs slowly returned as he walked. It was becoming uncannily warm the further south he traveled. He had expected that, of course, but something about the suddenness of it caught him by surprise. Suddenly the ground wasn't covered in snow. Grass and weeds poked up to greet his boots with a pleasant springiness.

Otom was completely unused to bare ground. He had seen it several times during particularly warm winters, but the concept still somewhat baffled him. The north had always been his home, and he was a winter-man through and through. His body had grown accustomed to the cold, and the lack of air in the elevations of the Northern Kingdom.

It was wet going for the next few days, and insects enjoyed Otom's company, even if he didn't enjoy theirs. Otom had clung to hope as best he could, but he was starting to slip into dejection as he traveled endlessly and accomplished nothing, all the while picturing Allura slipping into death.

And then, on the horizon, just as he was about to weep with failure, he saw the top of what could have only been the Dryad Tree.

It was a formidable sight, green and gigantic, wavering just on the brink reality. As Otom concentrated, keeping his mission in his heart, he saw it solidify and vaporize over and over again as it struggled to stay real to him.

And, for the first time on this journey, he felt that he might actually succeed. A branch from this Tree must be magical - Silence had said it was, and now Otom felt to too. He wouldn't reach it until night, though, even if he sprinted the rest of the way.

_It looks close but that's only because it's so gigantic,_ he thought. His legs wobbled. _I need rest before I face whatever I find there._

The fire that he made this evening burned so brightly that he was worried of its light, afraid soldiers from some nearby camp would find him. But his plan was only to rest here for a short time, to give him the energy he needed to finish his quest for Allura.

-5-

He must have fallen asleep for he was awakened by thunder. His heart was pounding. Once he opened his eyes and got his wits about him he knew that it had not been thunder, but the massive pounding of horses hooves on the bare ground.

Otom abandoned his fire, though it still burned low, and began to run towards the Tree, his sleepy mind driving him forward on the one path that mattered to him. He had to reach that Tree and cut a branch from it before he was interrupted or killed.

He took his knife out of his sheath in preparation for what he had to do. His legs ached. The Tree grew in his sight until it was frighteningly massive, but Otom did not stop running. He was sweating profusely, his clothes becoming soaked with it, but still he did not stop. The tree wavered, solidified, wavered, solidified. Suddenly it sprouted leaves for him, bark and roots curling up and out. It was growing more alive, just for him.

And then, all at once, chaos broke out around him. The thundering sound grew louder as a wall of horses crashed in from his left. Otom ducked and rolled under them, suddenly caught in the spray of the dirt from their hooves. Miraculously he lived, and regained his footing. He ignored this army only to have to ignore another one coming from the other side. The two forces crashed together, the sound deafening.

Otom raced towards the trunk of the Tree and leaped onto it, digging for purchase with his dagger. The tree was hard now, solid when before it had seemed illusion. Something whizzed by his left ear and struck into the trunk; an arrow, quivering. Then another. Otom dug his fingers and dagger into the rippling bark of the Tree and hauled himself up as fast as he could, using very nearly the last of his strength. From this vantage point he looked down at what was happening below him. The scale of it boggled his mind.

Thousands - maybe tens of thousands - of men shouted and surged below him. Arrows flew, swords struck mighty clangs, and horses screamed and fell. In the mire he sometimes caught sight of men and women in dark gowns. They held up their hands, making motions Otom didn't recognize, tracing symbols in the air.

There were definitely three forces at work here: the red colors of the Shailand army, the blue of the Hardeen army, and the hopeless neutrality of the men and women, who could only have been what Silence had called Protectors.

And then the animals joined the fight. Birds by the thousands - eagles, hawks, blackbirds, tiny bluebirds, colorful menageries - careened from the branches over Otom's head, darkening the sky with their numbers. He could see bears pounding across the ground, ripping open horses with their mighty claws. Men screamed and died at the hands of each other, and now at the claws and beaks of the new onslaught.

And there Otom clung to the side of the hulking tree, feeling very much like a terrified squirrel.

When he regained his mind he scrambled quickly up and onto one of the lowest limbs. The view from this high up made him dizzy, but he was driven on by Allura's need. He gripped his knife in his teeth now and slid out towards a branch that looked a likely candidate. He took his knife from his teeth and held on with one hand as he sawed at the branch. It popped free with a trickle of sap and he stuffed it into his shirt.

For a brief moment a thought tickled his mind, and he must have known how those that climbed the high mountains in the north felt. Upon reaching the summit, their journey was only half over. He shook the thought off.

The air was aswarm with insects now, and Otom smelled something familiar.

Smoke.

Fire.

Everything began to burn around him and his panic nearly lost him his grip on the limb. As quickly as he could he began his descent, his plan merely to run like hell when he hit the ground.

He knew, deep in his heart, that he would probably die. And that meant Allura would die, too.

His descent was harder and more awkward than his ascent had been, since he had to drive the knife below him and look down for other handholds and footholds. The entire Tree was quaking now as if at any minute it would come to life, uproot itself, and swing mighty arms at its attackers. Fire licked at its base. The armies still fought around it.

Otom's boots hit the ground and he rolled, coughing from the smoke and the scent of blood. He scampered like a strange opossum, staying low to the ground and hopefully out of sight. He rolled under a horse's hooves and they came so close to grazing his face that he could see each individual nail in the shoe. They struck like thunder next to his head as he shot up and onward again.

Otom reached for his knife, but was startled to find that he had lost it. _Did I drop it or did it fall from my belt?_ It didn't matter. He ran, more motivated now than by any tournament he had ever fought in. He screamed then, because it didn't matter. He screamed as loud as he could as he ran, his terror bursting forth from him, but he could barely hear his own voice through the chaos.

A score of men charged from his right, another from his left, both were shouting, both ignored him as they crashed together. A man's arm fell next to Otom, severed at the shoulder, the white bone sharp and protruding. Blood spattered Otom's face, warm and sticky. He might have vomited (he wasn't sure). He ran, barely feeling his legs.

The battle was mostly behind him now, but the ground here still burned, the grass and gigantic leaves of the Dryad Tree catching like dry tinder. Otom tripped and fell, the ground rushing up to meet him, and as he untangled his leg he turned to see what he had fallen over.

It was Ris.

Ris lay face-down on the ground, his long, black hair tangled and caked with blood. The madman tried to push himself to standing but Otom - his desire to flee completely gone - grabbed the only weapon that was available to him. He drew the branch of the Dryad Tree out of his shirt and gripped it in powerful fists. The end he had cut was slanted and sharp, and the wood felt strong enough.

Purely out of instinct, and without a second thought about anything - not Allura, not his parents, not himself, not Silence, not fleeing this terrible place - Otom drove the sharp point of the branch through Ris's back with a mighty two-handed strike. Ris sank back down to the ground, blood oozing from the wound.

Otom stared down until the blood had made a large pool and Ris had stopped moving, then he turned his victim over, his intention to laugh fully in his face.

But it wasn't Ris. It was a woman.

I'm... a murderer!

Otom was deafened by a thunderclap that seemed to come from everywhere. Something crashed into his mind with a powerful force. He staggered back as if struck by a blow.

His mouth hung open as he stared now, his thoughts tangled and painful. _I killed someone. I'm a killer. I'm a murderer._ Her hair had looked the same as Ris's. Otom could have sworn... And all the feelings he had never known he had kept inside since his parents' murders came bursting forth.

He gripped the sides of his head, digging his fingers in. He convulsed, sobbing uncontrollably. He backed up from the scene. Everything looked blurry to him now because of the tears in his eyes.

He wandered confused for days, not knowing where he was going or how he even stayed alive, complex guilt and loss mixing together. The battle, his quest, Allura; everything was a strange memory. The thoughts seemed urgent, but Otom could not force himself to act on them. His body and mind were not his own. He grieved for the woman he had murdered, he grieved for his family, and he grieved for himself.

When Otom awoke from his stupor, a month had passed and he knew Allura was as good as dead.

He gathered what little he could of himself and limped north, vowing not to stop until he reached the farthest point. Vowing to pay to God what he never could to Allura.

All the while a new phrase echoed in his mind: _You knew you couldn't save her._

-6-

Present Day

Otom had spent the next thirteen years in the Kilgane Monastery, only emerging when the mark on his arm had bid him to. Otom had lived one life, then he had lived another. Now he was on the third iteration of himself, the man who constantly reinvented himself to escape his past.

It wasn't until the Monastery that Otom had deduced, through study, what had truly happened to him on that day. The thunderclap he had felt had been the death of the Dryad Tree; it had been the magical blow that had finally ended the armies. None of them really knew what hit them, but Otom did. The battle wasn't even mentioned as major in any of the texts that made their way north. It was forgotten, written off. Few, if any, had ever known what they had destroyed that day.

And Otom had realized then just how buried the magics of the world were. After he had taken his first Vow he had developed his own powers, but there had only been one Monk to teach him, and even then not very much. He had started to wonder if he belonged at the Monastery.

Otom could have gone back to Pakken after his mind had cleared, but it would have been to Allura's unforgiving corpse, and the sad, empty eyes of Silence. Otom had chosen his path. For better or worse he had chosen his path.

And now he'd been Chosen. The faith in God and magic had led him here to be sitting in the top of a tree such as he was. An odd path indeed.

The snare Otom had set on the ground drew tight and he heard a muffled cry of surprise.

_Well,_ he thought. _Time to see who my new companion is_.

He shimmied down the tree, his descent tougher by far than the climb had been.

# Chapter 23

### Lofty Goals

-1-

Domma was free and determined. Ormon Stipson's murder was behind her, the mystery of it no longer holding her in its thrall. The theories she had come up with, and what Potter had said to her, had twisted her mind until she had simply given up. Maybe he had been right. Some things were better left untouched.

_And some things are better when they_ are _touched._

Today she strode determinedly down the street, on her way to the hospital and her meeting with Potter. The note he had written her informed her of a hospital storeroom that wasn't used anymore, and of the stairs in the back of that storeroom that led even lower.

A secret love nest in a district hospital?

But she had heard of stranger things.

She'd tried to have a conversation with God about this last night, but it had gone very much as usual. She poured her heart out and the response she got was nonsensical and frightening. She was tired of baring her soul down that avenue.

Domma walked in the front door of Potter's hospital. She made her way to the storage room. It was filled with strong smelling herbs, leather restraints, and shackles. If one looked at it in the right frame of mind it almost seemed like a small little dungeon.

She began moving things away from the back wall in an effort to uncover whatever panel was indicated in Potter's note. She was actually becoming quite excited. It was like a treasure hunt for love! This was all part of Potter's sweet little romantic game.

Her hand brushed over a section of the wooden wall that felt as if it had a small gap behind it. She put her fingers in the gap and pulled with considerable force. The wall grated open slowly, revealing an incredibly dark space behind it.

The floor had a slight downward slope to it as she ventured inside, looking for the torch that Potter had said he would leave there.

"Hello?" she said, her voice echoing oddly.

She pulled her hood back, her heart pounding wildly.

She felt a sudden, blinding pain in the side of her head and then she was stumbling sideways, hitting the other side of her head against the wall. She screamed, dropped to the ground, and passed out.

-2-

Domma opened her eyes and saw nothing. Only darkness greeted her. Her head ached terribly. The air around her was cold and dry. She tried to move her arms but couldn't. They were chained above her, and her ankles were chained too.

"Potter?" she said into the darkness.

"Who is that?" answered a female voice, startlingly close.

"Forstina?" Domma asked. The woman was another Sunburst cleric.

"Domma?" another voice asked.

"Metta?! What's going on?"

"I don't know," Metta sobbed. "Oh, God, Domma, we've been played."

"Played by who? What's happened to us?" Her thoughts weren't quite forming right, her ears still rang from her concussion.

She knew that somehow things had gone very, very wrong for her.

"My Tristo did this to me," Metta wailed.

Somewhere else in the dark room another woman coughed and started to mumble.

_How many of us are down here_? Domma thought in a panic.

"All who are down here respond to me," she commanded.

"Aye, Sunburst," said Metta.

"Aye, Sunburst," said Forstina.

"Aye," said another voice that Domma recognized as another Devotee named Disanai. "I saw them take Ursula, too."

"Five of us?" Domma said. Her heart sank. _That's the entirety of us. Every single mage of the Sunburst Temple._

"What do they want from us?" Metta asked.

"I don't know," Domma said, "but Potter will put a stop to-"

"Wake up, Domma!" Metta yelled. "Potter's gotta be in on this whole thing!"

Domma was silent, feeling her wrists and ankles pulse with blood. Her faith came to her in a flood. She had sinned, and now she was paying for it. "No," she said, squeezing her eyes shut as tears leaked from them. "I'm sorry, Lord. If you free us, we will never stray again." She tried expending some energy to Communicate, but God was silent, probably watching and judging.

"Til'men," Forstina said.

_As for me_ , Domma prayed silently, _I am old enough to be wiser than this. If you save me, I will do your bidding for an eternity, your most loyal servant from now until I die_.

The room began to lighten then, the source of it coming from above Domma's head. She looked up into the blinding light and noticed it was coming from her own arm. Her sleeve had fallen away and there on her skin was a glowing blue and yellow symbol of the sun in the sky. She could only look quizzically, her mind unable to puzzle out what was happening.

She looked around the room with the help of the new illumination. Metta, Forstina, Disanai, and indeed Ursula - the fifth Devotee - were chained to the wall in a semi-circle.

"Oh, Domma," breathed Metta. "What is that?" Her face was etched in the shadows of the strange new light.

"Fantastic," Potter said as he entered the room. He laughed. "Oh, I couldn't have hoped for anything better! Domma, that mark is your salvation. However, I'm afraid for the rest of you it spells death."

-3-

Potter came into view with four other men.

"Tristo!" Metta begged. "Tristo, please!"

A tall man came towards Metta. He brandished a knife. "It would be best to be quiet, Metta." He didn't say it violently, but with maddening serenity.

"But I don't understand what's going on," the girl wept.

"Metta, pull yourself together," Forstina said. "Let us go," she said to the men.

One of the other men walked up to Forstina and cuffed her hard. Her head snapped back and she was silent.

Tristo then walked very close to Metta. The girl was struggling at her bonds, her face a pitiful wreck of emotion. Tristo grabbed the front of her robe and began to drag his knife down it, cutting through the cloth without a care in the world.

"Don't, please," Metta sobbed. Her robe lay around her ankles and Tristo began to play at her chest wrappings with the tip of his knife.

Domma began to feel around at her shackles, bending her wrist down to try and find some latch she could pull. There was nothing on either side. She glanced back at the situation. Forstina and Ursula were passed out, heads hanging down, long hair draped over their bodies. Disanai had said not a word, fear overtaking her. She was conscious, but not lucid. Metta's eyes leaked tears. She stood petrified as Tristo tickled at her with the knife.

"Potter, please," Domma begged. "Whatever you desire from us, don't let this be part of it. This can't be what you captured us for."

"She's right, Tristo," Potter said, holding up his hand. "You're wasting our time here. And, quite honestly, you're sickening me."

"Please don't touch me anymore," Metta whispered. She dry heaved once. "Oh, God."

Tristo sighed, stepping back from his victim. "You all could have had her," he said to the other men. "After me, I mean."

"That's disgusting," Potter said. "Domma would like us to get on with it. She is the one who is marked, so I guess we'd better listen to her for now."

Domma didn't like the tone in Potter's voice. Buying time now seemed like an incredibly appealing idea, no matter what the price.

Potter pulled something out of his pocket, holding it carefully in his hand. It was very hard to see the object in the dim room. The shadows from Domma's glowing forearm mixed with those of the single torch the men had brought. It made the thing that Potter held look alive.

_The thing in Potter's hand_ is _alive._

FOGLIN, Ormon Stipson's mind had said. Foglin, Domma's mind told her.

She recoiled as Potter stepped towards Metta with the squirming insectoid. "Sometimes the little ones need help getting inside," he said.

Metta's face had gone terribly white. Her eyes were wide open and focused directly on the tiny Foglin in Potter's hand. She was shuddering.

Potter!" Domma shouted. But it didn't stop his slow advance on Metta. "Potter! Leave her be! Can't you see she's just a girl?"

Metta was trying valiantly to close her legs, but her metal bonds wouldn't let her.

"Oh, they don't like to go in that way," Tristo said. "Don't worry, Metta. I'm something of a sawbones in my free time. For what will always be ours, my love." Then he grabbed Metta's neck, jammed his knife into her eye socket, and began twisting as Domma gagged and had to turn away.

Metta let out a strangled scream that filled the room. Domma heard the girl pounding her head against the wall in sharp, hard knocks that eventually became more sickening than her screams.

Suddenly the sounds stopped and Domma forced herself to look back. Metta was dead, or at least Domma hoped that she was. Blood ran down from her left eye socket, down her shoulder, breast, and thigh in a red river.

"What in the seven hells have you done?" Domma asked weakly.

"We've been experimenting with new vessels," Potter said, rather conversationally. "Magical ones."

"You lied to me," said Domma. "I thought you loved me."

"I do love you, Domma."

"Can you at least cover her up?"

Potter nodded and picked up Metta's robe, putting it back on her as best he could. "I really do apologize for that. Tristo can be most unpleasant at times, but I'm afraid you can't always choose your associates."

Tristo smirked.

"Well," Potter said. "Better do the other three."

Domma drew quick rapid breaths, steadying herself for the inevitable.

-4-

"Our organization is rather roughshod, I'm afraid," Potter said.

Domma was still chained to the wall, but she and Potter were now the only living things in the room. Except perhaps the four incubating Foglins.

"Organization," Domma scoffed. "Ormon _was_ killed by a Foglin, wasn't he?"

"He was. It was an accident on my part. I thought I had control of certain experiments and I didn't. You found incredibly good information which I quickly had to distract you from."

"Oh, you're so clever, Potter. You must have been surprised when I discovered the truth." _Keep him talking. That's my only option._

"Nothing brings people together like a tragedy, Domma. When you discovered what had truly happened it was... a minor setback. Had to check with the authority to see what to do about you."

"Were you keeping tabs on all the Devotees?" she asked.

"Yah," Potter said. "The ones in the Temple at least. There are more out there. Faith Rebels and the like. Something you may not know much about. I tell you, Domma. Magic is confusing as hell these days." He sat down on the ground, a pool of Metta's blood just fingers away.

"Are we just going to stay here and talk?" Domma asked. "It's pleasant and all, but I really feel quite sick and my ankles and wrists hurt." Her body and mind were mostly numb, but Domma had to know as much about what Potter had done as she could. Partially she wanted an explanation for herself, and partially she wanted to be able to take him down if she ever got out of this. "The Ein river branches doesn't it?"

"I have no idea," Potter said. "I don't know a thing about southern geography, Domma. All I did was try to insert elements of confusion into what you discovered. Buying time. Always buying it. Never selling it. You really are beautiful, you know. If I didn't have my own ideals I honestly could have been very happy with you."

"These aren't the ideals of God," Domma said looking around. "He doesn't reward murderers and members of insane cults. You're _aiding_ the Foglins! Are you trying to rain destruction on us all?"

Potter slowly shook his head. "You make one terribly false assumption, but most people make the same one. This precious land that we live in isn't God's world. Tell me, Domma. How goes your communication with the so-called divine being?"

"It's fine."

"It's not," Potter countered. "And I know it. Devotees like to say they can communicate with God, but they can't. It's a waste of power. Does he spout nonsense, this God of yours? Have you ever gotten anything useful from him? I suppose you believe your magic is derived from him. How curious."

Domma was silent because Potter was right.

"We are on Gustus's world, Domma. And we have been all along."

Domma breathed slowly, trying to calm herself against this blasphemy. But could she really prove Potter wrong? Her faith said it wasn't true... but the situation she was in right now - being bound in a room along with four dead sisters - seemed almost too macabre to exist in a truly just world. "You won't waver my faith," she said.

"I know that," said Potter, leaning back on his hands, for all the world looking casual in the bloodbath he had helped create. "The glowing symbol you have is what my superiors are looking for. Why, I don't know. My task was merely to find the one who had it and keep her safe."

Well, I'll be alive at least.

"Didn't know the symbol would be brought out when we captured you all, but our orders were to move quickly and hope for the best. We'd been informed that the time-line had been accelerated, and the glowing symbol was secondary to some of our other plans."

"And what would those be?" Domma asked.

Potter clucked his tongue. "No, no, no. Can't know it all, Domma. Hell, _I_ don't even know it all."

"Can you bind me on the floor?"

"What an odd request."

"I can't be held like this, Potter. My arms are losing circulation."

Potter's face took on a thoughtful look. "Wouldn't be good if your arms fell off. I will arrange to have your position shifted. I owe you that at least."

He stood up and turned to go, but Domma called after him. "Are you trying to ruin the world, Potter?"

"Me?" Potter said, his back still to Domma. He laughed slightly. "I'm not going to ruin the world. The world's already ruined. We rape and pillage. We murder. We fight wars that end in disaster. You must remember the last one; it destroyed the Tree. That was really the last straw for me."

"Are you a Protector, Potter?"

The man said nothing, but Domma suddenly knew it was true.

Finally Potter turned around and talked. "I often forget how perceptive you are. I _was_ a Protector," he said carefully. "But that title has meant little to me for many, many years. I don't even use my powers anymore. They sicken me. The thing about our magics, Domma, is that once you get them and once you build up a reservoir of power... you can use it however you choose. For what the world considers good, or what the world considers ill."

"I see you don't share the popular beliefs of what that means."

"Good and evil are so closely related as to not even exist," Potter spat. "Evil can come from good, good from evil. The dance is maddening, Domma. The righteous sit on one side of it, and the rest of us sit on the other, growing angry at the whole situation. Like most people in the world - whether they'll admit it or not - I'm simply looking for power."

"But the Foglins are evil!" Domma yelled. "We send brave men to fight them and keep them away from us! And here you are bringing them into the city and... and _nursing_ them!"

"The Foglins are only creatures, Domma. They can be controlled by the right people. In the right hands they are not monsters, but tools. I know you won't understand this, but I'm trying to make this Godless world as pleasant as possible. I'm going to be honest with you and say that I don't understand the full scope of our plans. I owe you that at least."

"Stop saying that," Domma said. "You don't owe me anything. You're a coward and a liar Potter, and God will judge you!" Her final words rang out in the large room.

"He won't," Potter said quietly. "But I appreciate the deluded sentiment." And with that he turned, took his torch from the sconce, and left.

Domma hung in the silent room, the only light emanating from her forearm. She heard the tiny living sounds of the four creatures that were moving within the skulls of her former sisters and she wept until she had no more tears.

"Please, God," she said through a dry throat. "Don't let it end like this."

# Chapter 24

### To Save a Life

-1-

Krothair's face itched from the scraggly beard that was growing there.

The past few weeks had seen him living in his little abandoned attic, resorting to stealing food and fighting for territory among the scum of Haroma. He knew he couldn't live like this forever, but for now it felt right. It wasn't honest and it wasn't respectable but he didn't care.

Krothair lived how he could, the wounds from his training with Ti'Shed slowly closing. His pinky bone never fully knit, and he retained a few scars on his arms and legs, but for the most part he was whole again.

Today had been a particularly rainy and depressing day, the busy streets of Haroma turning from hard-packed dirt to disgusting brown slush churned up by the constant feet and hooves of the massive population. Krothair trudged through it, his boots layered with mud, his hair plastered to his forehead, his clothing heavy with the rain.

Night had just finished falling on the busiest city in Hardeen Kingdom and Krothair was out for a walk to clear his head. He was still deciding what to do with himself. He knew he had life left in him, even at this dead end, but he couldn't summon enough energy to do anything about it. A carriage wheel splashed him with water. He didn't flinch.

He still wore his rusty training sword at his waist. The weapon elevated him slightly above the average street ruffians, most of whom used daggers for the close-combat options they gave. Krothair's sword was garbage and he knew it, but it was his only possession. He wouldn't give it up easily. And woe to the urchin who tried to take it from him.

He heard laughter coming from inside a few of the taverns and he gazed inside, not longingly, but with interest. _There's people living,_ he thought. He saw well-dressed men and women laughing and talking to each other, cavorting and dancing, warm and alive.

"The Duchess's Dog," Krothair said to himself. "That the best they could come up with?"

Krothair continued his walk, uncaring and cold in the rainy night.

He came to a part of town where the traffic was much lighter and soon he was rather alone. He came out of his stupor and looked around, itching at his face. To his right stood another tavern, this one much smaller than The Duchess's Dog, and he peered through the warped glass window.

It wasn't bright inside, but there was a fire going. It had a very homy look to it with large stones instead of bricks for a chimney, and only a few tables instead of hundreds. It was called The Meeting Place.

And then Krothair saw him. Ti'Shed sat at a table in the far corner, chin resting on his hands with his eyes closed. The boy's breath caught in his throat. He hadn't seen his master since he had left the house. _Here he is just sitting around as if nothing has happened!_

Krothair knew he had to do something. Walking away simply wasn't an option. _Do I have anything left to say to him? Do I need some kind of confrontation?_ He wasn't sure, but either way he opened the heavy door of The Meeting Place and silently shuffled over to a table in the opposite corner from Ti'Shed. He needed time to think before he acted.

A commotion to his left caused him to turn his head.

A gruff bartender stood behind the large wooden bar and a tavern wench stood in front of him, her back to Krothair.

"Ya fucked up again," the bartender said dangerously.

The girl stood quietly, her head bowed.

"Look at me! I told ya one more time and you'd be back on the streets selling yer tits fer coins. I hope it's a warm night, 'cause yer nips are gonna need ta be out plenty."

The few other patrons seemed to be paying no attention, and Ti'Shed hadn't lifted his head either. Krothair started to stand up and then stopped himself. _Shouldn't someone defend her?_ He didn't know if that was his place. He sat down again and watched, the flickering flames casting their red glow on the bartender and the wench.

"I barely got the order wrong," she said.

"A man like Lord Yellowsworth comes in here for a drink, ya don't fuck it up. Not in the slightest."

"Yeah, I probably shouldn't have pissed in it," the wench said.

The bartender slapped her then. Hard. His arms were incredibly thick, most likely from years of carrying kegs and drinking their contents. The wench's head whipped to the side and Krothair saw her face for the first time.

It was Katya.

Her cheek was already reddening from where the man had hit her, a trickle of blood running from her nose.

Krothair's heart raced. Now something was definitely wrong.

"I've had enough o' yer strange lip," the bartender said, turning his open palm into a thick fist.

"I'll go," Katya said quietly, not turning back to face the bartender. She untied the ragged thing that had been her apron and placed it gently on the bar.

Krothair put his hand on the hilt of his sword, feeling the metal and leather under his fingers. His eyes followed her as she walked across the room and disappeared behind a wall. The bartender came out from behind the bar and began to take orders himself. All seemed to be back to normal.

Ti'Shed had said he believed Katya had worked some sort of lowly service job. Had he seen her in this place and come in to catch her? Was it possible he wanted to exact some kind of revenge on her?

Ti'Shed was gone.

Krothair had stopped looking at him for only a few moments and he was gone. Behind where Ti'Shed had been sitting was a small door that must have led to the alley in the back.

"What'll ya be wantin', sir?" the bartender asked Krothair, suddenly blocking his view. He was an entirely different man than he had been a few moments ago, mouth in a wide smile.

_It's an act_.

"Was meeting a friend here," Krothair said. "He didn't show."

"A shame, sir. Ale on the house?"

Krothair didn't know what to say, so he simply headed for the door.

"We sure get 'em in here sometimes," he heard the bartender say.

Then Krothair was out the door and into the stormy night.

-2-

Krothair made his way to the back of The Meeting Place. Rain splashed off the eaves in waterfalls. Lightning periodically lit the world. Flash.

Flash. Nothing.

Flash. Nothing.

"You stupid old bastard!"

Flash. Katya flew through the air towards Ti'Shed, landing a powerful roundhouse kick into the sword master's gut. Ti'Shed let out as much of a sound as he was probably capable of at that moment and he sunk to one knee with an audible squelch of mud.

"Katya!" Krothair yelled through the rain.

Flash. His sword was in his hand, the dull blade coming out of the soaked sheath with a disgusting sucking sound. He saw Katya turn towards him. She took her eyes off Ti'Shed. The old sword master swept his leg out, but it must have gone slower than he would have liked, perhaps getting stuck in the mud. Katya jumped over the move and did a handspring, landing directly behind the old man, who fell over sideways.

Flash. Suddenly, something red was in Katya's hands and she drew a weapon that was dazzling even in the darkness. Krothair's throat choked. It was Ti'Shed's son's sword. The old man must have brought it with him and now Katya had it. She charged through the rain as Ti'Shed struggled to get back to his knees.

"I should be calling you The Nadless Soldier!" she yelled.

"I'll save you the trouble of thinking of a more clever name than that," Krothair said, "and kill you right now."

Flash. They came together and everything Krothair had learned in his month of training kicked in. Katya's blade whirled through the air with vicious quickness and Krothair immediately fell into a stance more befitting this type of a fight. One on one with questionable footing; he had done that before.

Flash. The blades rang together in the rain, beautiful weapon pounding terrible practice blade. Krothair gave ground because he had to, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. Katya's hair whirled around her, heavy and wet with rain, and just when it slapped her across the face Krothair lunged. His sword darted out like the tongue of a viper, aimed at the shoulder of her sword arm, the only opening he had.

Flash. Krothair stumbled back, his sword feeling lighter in his hand. He glanced down to see the blade a good foot and a half shorter than it had just been. His shoulder blow had been deflected, and his weapon had been broken. The end of it was no longer pointed, but rather a blunt, worthless thing. A crack ran vertically through it.

Flash. Katya was on him again, faster than before. _Don't let her use her magic_ , he prayed. _Don't let the Servitor kill me_. He switched his thoughts, then. He wasn't a sword fighter anymore, as Ti'Shed had told him he never truly would be. Now he was a broken-sword fighter, and he fell into a dagger stance. He was an urchin now. He began to parry blows with the hand-guard instead of the blade, feeling the cuts get closer and closer to landing.

Flash. Her sword was coming down through the air in a powerful two-handed grip. A slice meant to cleave the skull. Krothair attempted to dodge but his foot slipped in the muck, and in a last attempt to live he raised his sword above his head. Katya's beautiful sword slipped into the vertical crack in Krothair's broken sword and the boy twisted with all his might, praying his weapon didn't betray him. Katya's weapon went flying off into the darkness, while Krothair's fell out of his grip.

Flash. Katya landed wrong and her feet flew out from under her. Krothair scrambled on top of her as fast as he could, managing to catch hold of her legs. She fought ferociously, and she was slippery with mud and rain, her body an impossibility to hold onto. He tried to grab her waist but she changed the direction she was moving and instead of trying to slide up and out of his grip she slithered down towards his feet.

Krothair squeezed his arms together with all his might. He heard something crack and Katya yelped. It could have been one of her ribs or an arm breaking. Her fingers dug into him then in a very unfortunate place. It was his turn to yelp.

Krothair suddenly remembered one night of his training very vividly. Ti'Shed had told him there were theories that women were overall better combatants than men because they had one glorious advantage: a woman's genitals were mostly on the inside.

Krothair pushed away as hard as he could and managed to free himself.

"Damn you stupid men!" Katya screamed at the top of her lungs.

Mud blurred Krothair's vision, but the last thing he saw was Katya running away. She was holding her side with one hand, her long red hair slapping wetly back and forth. There was a red sheath in her hand, the hilt of a sword protruding from it.

"Bring that back, Katya!" Krothair yelled as he righted himself. But he knew it was no use even if she had heard him. She had picked up the sword - it had become _The_ Sword, Krothair realized - and had made off with it. Even though Krothair had won the fight, he had lost something he hadn't bargained on.

It was getting lighter, but it couldn't be morning already. Silver and purple lights danced in the back alley and Krothair looked around to see where they were coming from.

They radiated from his forearm.

The boy tried to back away, in horror of what he saw. There, on his own arm, just below the skin, was a glowing symbol that looked like a broken sword. The hilt glowed silver and the two almost-connected pieces of the blade glowed purple. _Purple and silver. The colors of the Kingsguard._

Ti'Shed groaned and coughed. Krothair turned around, brandishing his forearm. "There's something wrong with me," the boy said, his voice shaking.

"On the contrary," Ti'Shed said. "There is something exceedingly _right_ with you."

And there, in the rain, Ti'Shed bowed in the mud at Krothair's feet.

Then the old man collapsed.

-3-

Fortunately it was night and Krothair now knew the less-traveled paths of the city rather well. Even so, it took him a long time to carry Ti'Shed back to his house. Katya's kick had brought the powerful sword master low. _She attacked him when he was drunk._

Krothair laid the old man, still wet and muddy, onto the bed in his old room. He didn't want go back into Ti'Shed's shrine, feeling that that area still held a terrible power.

"You look like shit," Ti'Shed said, his eyes still closed.

Krothair laughed a little, the pain of the past not affecting him as much. Perhaps his finding The Sword, his leaving, had wiped things away more fully than anything else could. The symbol on his arm glowed bright in the darkness of the room. "I've been through a lot," he said.

"Haven't we all," Ti'Shed said. "You are marked, you know."

"Is this some kind of magic?" Krothair asked, indicating his arm.

"Oh, yes. That of God Himself."

Krothair knelt by the bed now and looked - really _looked_ \- into the face of his former teacher. It showed an age that Krothair had never seen during his time in training. Ti'Shed looked so, so tired.

"I must sleep soon," the old man said, "but what you must do now is clear to me. No more wandering. No more running away. That symbol means a few things. One thing it means is that you are a Servitor."

Krothair's heart dropped, not with sadness but with joy and fear. "I am?" he managed to say.

"Yes," Ti'Shed said. "I am old, Krothair. I know my fair share of things, but there is little I know of these marks, save that they are only given to mages. It may be that when you saved my life you awakened something within yourself. I wish there was time to train you in your new powers."

"Why isn't there?"

"Because you must travel. You are used to that, are you not? Only one Servitor gets a mark like that, and you are he, Chosen of God for better or worse. You must travel to the Temple of Sin'ra."

"Where is that?" Krothair asked, suddenly scared. "Can you come with me?"

"It is in the mountains to the north of this city. And no, I cannot. I am in no condition to travel. I will be able to take care of myself well enough, but I would only slow you down. No, you must go quickly and alone. Tonight would be a fantastic time to leave."

"But I just got back," Krothair whispered, tears forming hot in his eyes.

"Our paths may cross many times, Krothair," Ti'Shed said. "Never underestimate life's ability to surprise and trick. Don't weep here. Go and fulfill whatever duty you have been Chosen for. The symbol on your arm - that of the broken blade - is as ancient and rare a thing that is ever whispered about in rumors."

"How do I find this Temple?"

"Go into my room. Yes, you have permission this time. Go into my dresser and fetch a piece of paper with a black ribbon tied around it. It is one of the only maps I have ever kept. It will give you the best notion of how to get where you are going."

Krothair stood up and bowed to his master in the dark, then he turned to go, though his legs were exhausted.

Just as he was leaving the room Ti'Shed said, "That bitch got my sword didn't she?"

"She did. But I will return it to you."

"Oh, no, Krothair. You must abandon that path."

"A wise man once told me that you should never underestimate life's ability to surprise and trick."

Ti'Shed chuckled a little, and coughed. "Do what you must do, Krothair. Your life is about to change in innumerable ways. You may find you have little time to give me another passing thought."

"I assure you, that will not be true."

"Take a sword with you," Ti'Shed said, as if it weren't the most obvious thing in the world. "And get some supplies to take care of it."

Krothair took a brief moment to gather things for his journey, grabbing whetstone and oil cloth and food that would keep. Then he went to Ti'Shed's room and rummaged through the drawers until he found what he was looking for. He tucked the map into the same pocket as his Kingsguard paper (his most sacred artifact, still undamaged even after the past few weeks), grabbed a sword he remembered well from the training yard, and left the house; not with shame, but with purpose.

One hope burned in his mind, brighter than the symbol on his arm.

He was a Servitor. The magic was alive within him.

And with it, the chance to one day become a Kingsguardian.

-4-

Getting out of Haroma wasn't problematic at this late hour, but Krothair felt like he should at least cover up his glowing forearm. He'd had to wrap his cloak around his arm three times to fully cover the glow. He supposed he sort of looked like an idiot, but sometimes he had seen people wearing their cloaks this way. Was it for some sort of ritual? It didn't matter. His symbol was hidden.

The sword he had taken from Ti'Shed's house wasn't fantastically good, and not much of an upgrade from his practice sword, but at least it was sharp. He drew it now to inspect the blade. It was ably-made, with a curving hand-guard and a longer than average blade.

Krothair sheathed the sword and exited Haroma through its north-western gate, following the stars he had so often followed as a youth. _From place to place. From life to life._

The mountains loomed large after only a few days of travel, and he studied the map furiously to try and maintain a proper course.

The map was an aged thing, scrawled on yellowing paper by Ti'Shed himself.

Landmarks were circled and had their names scrawled next to them. There were some places he had never heard of: Night Hill, The Undergrul, Toxic Mill. _Sound like fun places to visit_ , he thought. There was Haroma. Here were the mountains just above it. And drawn in large bold ink was the Temple of Sin'ra, its name scribbled next to it. There was nothing to distinguish its exact location.

"That's not the most helpful thing I've ever seen," Krothair said to the map. "What am I doing?" He unwrapped his arm then and stared at the symbol glowing there. "What are you?" he asked it. "And where exactly are you taking me?"

# Chapter 25

### In Depths and Darkness

-1-

The days of riding were getting to Halimaldie. Long hours on a horse had worn his muscles to the bone, if such a thing were possible. The Kingsguardians, however, seemed tireless, and it was merely Halimaldie's desire not to disappoint them that kept him in the saddle.

A few days ago he could have cared less what they thought of him, but his new circumstances had left him feeling differently. There was something about Trance Raynman that Halimaldie admired. The Kingsguardian spoke to him as if they had been childhood friends. Halimaldie found that he liked that. He'd only ever felt it with one other person, and that person happened to be his brother who _had_ been his childhood friend.

"My Well is almost empty," Telin said.

"Your what?" Halimaldie asked.

"He means he's almost used his reserve of power," Trance said. "You pussy, Telin! Hang in there!"

"We're almost there," Halimaldie assured him. "If my navigation is any good, we're close to the mine entrance." It was hot this far south and Halimaldie was sweating profusely. He couldn't be sure, but probably he had lost a good stone of weight on this trip. "We should slow down or we might miss it," he said. He was indeed afraid that they would whiz right by the mine and off into the wild wilderness.

"You're right," Telin said. "Let's let our powers go."

Halimaldie almost fell out of his saddle with dizziness and exhaustion as the world crashed back to real time. Now everything felt slow and lazy; the pace of normal life was a terrible drag. Halimaldie took a moment to look around.

"Strange trees and plenty of moisture," Halimaldie said. "We're definitely close."

"Your navigation has been impeccable, Hal," Trance said. "I expected to be doing a lot more of the work around here."

"When your business is spread out over the continent, you tend to know how to get around in it. My travels aren't extensive, but they've been common enough. I've even been here once in the very early stages, but that was by much longer and more arduous means. I never expected to travel like this."

"Aye. No one does."

"There's a distinct slant to these trees here," Halimaldie said, pointing ahead of him. "If we follow that we should come to a ledge. The entrance to the mine is carved into the face of that ledge, and not too far off should be the small mining town of Dunne."

The Kingsguardians fell in behind Halimaldie, following him down the slope and out of the swampy forest. The horses had no trouble navigating the tricky footing, fine stock as they were, and before long Halimaldie saw small buildings off in the distance. A few minutes more brought them to Dunne.

The air was quiet. Not even a birdsong broke the silence. No one was coming or going from the town of Dunne.

"This isn't right," Halimaldie said. He scanned the town, an eeriness creeping into his gut.

"Did you really expect it to be?" Trance asked.

The place was devoid of people.

Flock animals roamed the town, escaping their man-made barriers to search for food now that their masters were gone. Buildings stood silent and empty, some with doors and windows open. Even the foliage around the town seemed limp and lifeless, grasses bending over, trees hanging heavy. Halimaldie felt a gripping terror that made it difficult for him to breathe. The horses blew and danced nervously in the stillness.

"It's only been a month since someone loaded those crates onto my ship," Halimaldie said. "This is recent."

"We're not going to get to the bottom of anything by standing around," Telin said. "We need to head into the mine itself." He put his hand on the hilt of his sword.

"I don't know if that's such a fantastic idea," Halimaldie said. "Don't you think we've seen what we've come to see? Something's amiss. Now we go report this and someone sends the Vaporgaard, or whoever deals with these situations."

"You know better than that, D'Arvenant," Kelin said. "I won't ask ya to come with us, but we need ta get into that mine and check it out."

Trance and Telin nodded.

They kicked their horses and took off, leaving Halimaldie to decide.

It wasn't long before he knew he couldn't stay in this town alone, so he gritted his teeth and rode after them towards the mine entrance.

Halimaldie and the Kingsguardians tethered their horses outside. The animals would be useless in the tight confines of the mine, and they were frightened besides. The animals' nervous noises made Halimaldie all that much more tense. He'd never been this scared in broad daylight before.

"Ya don't have to come down with us D'Arvenant, but it would be best if you did."

"It's my operation," Halimaldie replied. "I'll go." He did not feel the conviction of his own words.

And with that, the small party set off down the dark throat of the mine.

-2-

Trance grabbed a dusty torch from a very rudimentary sconce and began to work with oil, flint, and tinder to light it. Finally it caught and burst into violent flame. The mine looked like any other that Halimaldie had been in. The stone and dirt walls were thankfully dug a little wider than normal, as he had always felt a touch claustrophobic when checking on other operations.

Halimaldie suddenly realized that everyone, including himself, had their weapons out. Trance, Kelin, and Telin had beautifully wrought blades that danced in the light. Kelin and Telin were both holding shields in their other hands. Kelin's shield bore a painting of some kind of multi-limbed beast, and Telin's had a crest that resembled a horse with eagle's wings. Trance held the torch in one hand and a glittering sword in the other; his shield was still slung on his back, the surface too marred and scratched to make out the image. And there stood Halimaldie, holding his gold and silver daggers, feeling like a joke considering his present company.

They edged along, Trance in the lead. The ground was smooth save for a few ruts. _Could've been made by the wheels of a cart,_ he thought. But his mind kept conjuring up images of Foglin claws scratching through the dirt as they moved, and he felt more and more certain that they were all making a huge mistake.

The tunnel branched and Trance looked back at Halimaldie. "Do you know which way, Hal?"

"I don't know the inner diggings," he said.

"We should have searched that town for a map," Kelin suggested.

"Oh, I love diggin' around in dead people's stuff," Trance said sarcastically.

"We're goin' left, do ya see," Telin said. "We'll keep followin' the left-hand wall until we're satisfied that we've scouted this place out or it leads us back to the entrance. It's simple. An old trick to get out of mazes that my grandmother taught me."

They moved down the dimly lit passages, Halimaldie constantly fighting the urge to turn back. He could feel his own heartbeat in his diseased hand, and that certainly wasn't helping matters. No... the beats seemed to come in a different pattern. It wasn't his heartbeat, but something very similar to how his hand had felt when he had been at the district hospital with Yarrow. It pulsed in rhythm with _something_ , but Halimaldie didn't know what.

"Something's happening with my hand," he said, breaking the silence. "It's pulsing. I can feel it. I don't know. Is that important? I think it's getting worse the deeper we get."

"What do you mean?" Telin asked.

Halimaldie felt like he probably shouldn't have spoken of it, but the pulsing in his hand was becoming eerie and he didn't like it. If he was going to die in here, which seemed very likely, the smallest advantage could help. If his hand was trying to tell him something, he would be foolish not to listen.

"Something happened to it. Before we left. After the boat, Telin, my hand started rotting, acting strangely."

The Kingsguardians looked at each other.

"Take off your glove," Telin said. "Let's have a look."

Halimaldie sheathed his silver dagger and peeled the glove away from his skin. Then he carefully unwrapped the thin layer of bandages. The skin was still mottled with blackness. Trance held the torch above it, but Halimaldie couldn't see it pulsing from the outside. It just looked like a diseased limb.

"What the hell is it?" Kelin breathed.

"It's like no disease I ever seen," Trance said. "No wonder you were wearin' your gloves, Hal. It's gross."

"The last time it felt this way was when I was in the district hospital," Halimaldie explained. "That place was underground as well." _Maybe something about the elevation?_

"Let us know if it changes," Telin said. "To tell ya the truth, I'm growing kind of bored down here."

"Don't listen to my brother," Kelin warned. "His boredom will serve him ill if we get ambushed. Stay vigilant."

The initial fear had start to wear off as they traversed span after span of the abandoned mine. So far there hadn't been any sign of the residents of Dunne or of anything else that even looked mildly suspicious. Halimaldie started to wonder if everyone from the town had just plain left.

"It's a dead end," Trance said, his torch illuminating the wall in front of them. "Nothing more to see here, gentlemen... and Kelin."

Halimaldie's hand was pulsing quite badly, feeling as tight and puffy as a sack stuffed with too many coins. His skin seemed ready to tear from the bone. He was glad to be turning around to go in the other direction: up and out of here.

But then he felt a pull on his hand. For a moment it was as if ghostly fingers were drawing at it, urging him back towards the dead end. The pounding was so powerful that Halimaldie was unaware of any other part of his body as he walked over to the bare wall and rested his pulsing hand on it.

"Hal," Trance said. "What in the seven hells are you doing?"

The wall pulsed, alive. It pulsed just like his hand, the two rhythms reverberating off of one another. "Something's back here," Halimaldie said, half in a daze. He took his gold dagger and plunged it into the wall as hard as he could, suddenly becoming obsessed with his task.

He dug.

Dirt began to fly off in great chunks. It came off easily. Too easily.

The wall began to fall away, clods of dirt littering the ground.

"Hal," warned Trance, holding the torch closer so Halimaldie could see what he was doing. "Be careful."

Halimaldie's hand pulsed infinitesimally more and more as he inched forward. Finally his dagger punctured empty space and the rest of the wall crumbled, falling to the ground as dust.

"What did you find?" Trance asked. He held the torch ahead again and what Halimaldie saw made him retch.

The ground was piled with human bones, lit orange in the fire of the torch. If they wanted to walk through this room, they would have to walk on top of them, since the floor could not be seen. The smell of death didn't greet him like he expected. There was _some_ odor, almost like moss, but somehow more pestilent.

Halimaldie could just barely make out the odd growths that protruded from the walls and ceiling. They almost looked like giant seed pods... or some kind of huge, thick hairs...

A noise issued forth from the room. It was a clicking, starting soft and slow at first and then speeding up, becoming a frenzy.

Telin turned around, his face totally white. "You three must leave here. Tell them what we saw."

"What did we see?" Halimaldie asked, his hand pounding in time with the clicking noises.

Telin didn't answer. He grabbed the torch from Trance and touched it to the wall of the room. Immediately it caught, flames licking the walls and their strange protuberances. Halimaldie knew what they were the instant he saw them in that flaring light. _They're eggs._

"My brothers," Telin said. "I will see you on the other side." He handed the torch back to Trance, then jumped into the flaming room, sword and shield swinging wildly at lithe black shapes that were bursting forth. There were so many of them. Far too many. Foglins filled the room.

Or rather, the nest.

Telin's sword became a blur in the air, whistling in and out, cleaving heads and limbs wherever he put it. But it wasn't going to be enough; even Halimaldie could see that. The fire and the sword could not cleanse that whole nest. He doubted all three Kingsguardians at once could stop the number of Foglins he saw inside it. The black shapes were trying to converge in on Telin through the flames. There were too many.

Telin was merely buying time.

Halimaldie's mouth went instantly dry and Trance grabbed him by the shoulder, turned him around and ran, tugging him through the tunnels.

Halimaldie heard the clicking of the Foglins behind him now and he could hear Telin's screams buried within the cacophony. He couldn't tell if they were screams of victory or defeat.

"Lightbearer!" Kelin yelled as they ran, but whether out of pain or glory Halimaldie couldn't be sure. Probably it was a bit of both. "Lightbearer!"

The thought of that many Foglins behind him made Halimaldie run faster than he ever had in his life. His legs felt like those of a wild animal, driving him onward with immaculate precision. He vaulted every crack in the ground and hurled himself over every abandoned mine cart. He burst out of the mouth of the mine and back into blinding daylight. Without a word the three men were back on their horses, leaving Telin's there.

They rode hard to the north for a few moments, putting distance between themselves and the mine.

"Damn it, Kelin," Trance cursed. "We're clear. Help me with the bubble will ya?"

The other Kingsguardian shook his head as if to clear his mind and suddenly the world shifted. The trees beyond started to move in slow motion and Halimaldie and his companions were speeding along again, almost as fast as his heart was going.

"Aren't we going back for him?" Halimaldie asked in a panic.

"Can't do that," Kelin said. "He knew what he was doing."

"Shit," Halimaldie said, something dawning on him.

"Losses happen," Trance said. "We know the price of our duty."

"No, not that," Halimaldie replied. "My hand led me right to those Foglins. That means..." The hair on the back of his neck stood up. "There's a nest under the district hospital. Everyone in Haroma is in serious trouble."

They rode like the wind.

-3-

"We have to stop," Trance panted.

Halimaldie was barely hanging onto his horse, bouncing around on its back, riding with the same level of prowess a corpse might display. "Yes," he managed to grunt out.

"We ride until we get there!" Kelin said. But he didn't sound much better off, and soon they slowed and stopped for the night despite his words.

The three sat on the hard ground around a small fire.

"I'm impressed with you, Kelin," said Trance.

Kelin looked up at him, his white-blond hair almost transparent in the firelight. "Why?"

"You didn't stay with him."

"I will wear that scar for the rest of my life, Trance. I know that already. But, part of me feels that he isn't dead down there."

Trance smiled sadly. "Hope can be one of the most painful emotions, Kelin. I'd urge you to let it go sooner rather than later. Mourn when we return, when you have time."

Kelin sat silently for a moment then threw his head back and yelled into the night with a voice almost inhumanly loud, the veins and cords on his neck standing out. "You have taken my brother from me! I swear on the tombs of all who have come before me that I, Kelin Lightbearer, born first and older by seventy-three heartbeats, will not rest on these putrid laurels! You may think you know great deeds, world! But know this! You have seen but the hilt of the sword of Kelin Lightbearer! If I do nothing else in this life I will see Telin - brother and friend - avenged!"

Halimaldie let the words hang in the air. Apparently Trance felt the same way, for he also said nothing more.

Just before his eyes shut for the night, Halimaldie heard Kelin whisper: "He was my little brother, God. And I did love him."

Halimaldie had a hard time falling asleep. He was sad for Kelin and terrified for Tellurian and Yarrow.

# Chapter 26

### Alone and Traveling

-1-

Krothair had never been susceptible to cold, and he was suddenly glad of that. Up here in the heights of the world the air was thin and the temperature was low. Krothair climbed, his sword at his hip and the map tucked safely into his shirt.

He was hungry much of the time because it was a lot harder than he would have thought to catch food up here. He had survived on his own before, of course, but more often in places where game was plentiful. Sometimes he'd even had a bow and arrow.

His stomach was rumbling by the time night rolled around. Krothair was sharpening his sword by the light of the small fire he had managed to build, wondering idly if he would ever be able to reach his destination or if he would just wander alone and forgotten, his skeleton lost to eternity in the mountains.

A noise in the trees made him think perhaps there was prey there, and his stomach urged him to try to take it. So Krothair stood up and inched through the dark with his sword in front of him, listening for the sound again. He held his glowing forearm out in front of him for light, feeling a little ridiculous.

There it was, a low sort of breathing sound that stood out in the otherwise silent night. It sounded like big game, possibly a deer. Krothair tightened his grip and prepared to pounce.

Suddenly the bushes to his left rustled and Krothair's brain instantly settled on the image of a Foglin. The creature would jump out and tear his arms off. Krothair's insides turned to liquid as he brought his sword up, instinctively swinging at the place he knew the creature would emerge.

What came trampling through instead was a horse, but Krothair didn't have time to turn his blow. His sword connected with something sharp that protruded from the horse's forehead, and then the metal bit through whatever it was. Krothair barely had time to dive out of the way as the horse thundered past him. He watched it tear off into the night, leaving a trail of blood behind it.

For the first time he felt terribly alone in the frigid, dark night. _What have I done? Wounded some poor animal in my foolish terror?_

He looked down at the ground and there in the snow he saw something smeared with blood. Krothair bent down to inspect it more closely.

It was a horn about as long as Krothair's arm, but anatomically that made no sense. _I cut it off the horse's forehead,_ he thought. _Since when has there ever been a creature like that?_ It looked like the long end of a lance, but it had a twisting pattern to it that shone beautifully in the light. Krothair picked it up, feeling the weight of it in his hand.

"What are you?" Krothair asked.

Krothair held it like a weapon, feeling the balance of it. He held it by the thicker end, like a spear with no handle, then he flipped it around and held it by the pointed end like a long, thin club.

Eventually he wandered back to his fire, his hunger replaced with curiosity. He slid the horn into his backpack, letting the pointed end stick out the top lest it stab through the leather at the bottom.

-2-

The plateau stretched out before Krothair as he huffed in the thin morning air.

"Should train up here," he said out loud. "Get used to this lack of air and you could fight for hours and hours down south." The northern folk were supposed to be tough as nails, perhaps for just this reason.

Krothair's breath came quickly through his ragged lips as he traveled. He was still following the trail of the horse's blood when he finally found the animal. His plan had been to eat it, for he knew it couldn't have lived after bleeding that much, but now his plans changed. The animal was dead, certainly, but there were a lot of different hoof prints in the snow around it as if some large and varied pack of animals had communed around it.

And there, on the horse's shoulder, was a human hand print scribed in blood.

Krothair knew then for the first time that he wasn't alone up here. The thought was as terrifying as it was reassuring. He wasn't the only desperate fool wandering hopelessly in the mountains.

He stood there and looked about, his breath fanning out in front of him.

In the distance was the forest that was marked on Ti'Shed's map.

It looked ominous and dark, but Krothair had been trained to fight by one of the best teachers in Hardeen Kingdom, and possibly in the entire world. He had Servitor magic flowing within him; he could feel it now. He knew, deep in his heart that if he applied himself - after this was all over - that he could become a member of the Kingsguard.

He could become part of that elite group that gave everything to protect the Kingdom.

And so the boy walked onward into the forest. Things were looking quite bright for him as he came upon a small group of people standing in front of a massive stone building.

Krothair Mallurin would embrace his destiny with open arms.

# Chapter 27

### New Legs

-1-

Wren sat by the river, carefully watching her reflection in the water. It danced as snowflakes fell softly into it. Crasher sat next to her, sheltering her against the wind with his huge body. She could smell his oily fur and a musk that was uniquely his own.

The girl ran her hands slowly over her stomach, still unable to believe that she carried life within it. But it felt like sickening life. _My father._ Her tears fell into the water then, mixing with the snowflakes, rippling everything and making it impossible for her to distinguish her own face, her brown eyes, her hair which hung over her shoulder in a braid that Heather had made for her, tied with a bit of cord made from a vine.

Heather's training distracted Wren from thinking about the sick thing that grew within her, but there were always moments like this - here by the rushing water - that drew her thoughts back to it.

Would it be easy to drown in that water? Is it deep enough? Certainly it's cold enough to freeze to death in...

"Mistress," Crasher said behind her in his deep, slow way. "You have become distracted. Heather wanted us to be working on Shielding."

"I know," said the girl. She didn't want to sound sulky, but couldn't help it. The woman had been working her incredibly hard, teaching her what she knew of being a Protector as they traveled north into the mountains. It was a terrain that was altogether new to Wren.

Things got colder the further up they went and it became harder and harder to breathe as the elevation changed. Heather had been prepared for this, though, packing all sorts of warm things made from pelts, which Wren became confused about. _How can a Protector - someone who is sworn to protect nature - use the skins of animals for their own purposes?_

Wren stood up and wiped her eyes. "I can feel the power within me now," she told the bear. "But I still don't really understand how it works. If I do something that benefits nature I gain power. That's probably what happened the first time. With the ape."

"This is all very interesting, mistress," Crasher said, "but if you aren't going to try and Shield me, I'd rather resume my fishing."

"Hang on," Wren said. She reached deep within as Heather had taught her, grasping inside herself for her Well of power. It was a little like trying to find a new part of her body. Her symbol seemed to be an indicator for her power. The more she held, the more brightly it glowed.

She felt the power contained within her Well, like a single drop in a large bucket. _How much power can I hold?_

She reached her hands towards Crasher, trying to force the power out of her body. But nothing happened. She reached again, willing a Shield to form around the bear, trying to make it take the same shape she had seen Heather doing: a pale blue shimmering sphere.

Nothing happened.

"Oh, this is stupid!" Wren yelled.

"Mistress?" Tessa said groggily. The little mouse popped her head out of Wren's pocket. "Is everything alright?"

"I don't want to be a marked woman, or whatever Heather keeps calling me, Tessa. I don't want any of this to be happening at all."

The sword that Jon Hatfeld had dropped still hung from Wren's waist in the termite-made sheath. There she sat next to a bear, had a mouse in her pocket, and was in the mountains. The situation suddenly overwhelmed her.

"I'm only fifteen," she sobbed. "I shouldn't have to do any of this."

"You don't want to go back to the cellar, do you mistress?" Tessa asked, her tiny whiskers shimmering.

"No, I don't want to go back to the cellar!"

"Because you didn't seem very happy down there."

"I don't know what I want, Tessa! But I know what I don't want. I don't want my father to touch me like he did, Tessa! I don't want to be cold all the time! I don't want to go to the stupid Temple of Sin'ra!"

"Things are what they are," Crasher said. "Do you think I wanted to be a bear? Do you think Tessa wanted to be a mouseling? Relax, child. You are safe here. There are many in the world who are not as lucky as you."

"If this is luck, I want no part of it," Wren said. "Some girls my age have other _girls_ for friends."

Neither animal seemed to know how to respond to this, and both fell silent.

"How is everything going?" Heather asked. She had approached silently, her boots making no noise in the light covering of snow. With her were at least nine deer, a white goat, and a small flock of persistent birds.

Wren sighed at the entourage and looked away.

"I see," Heather said, nodding her head slightly. "It is time to move on from here if you think you're ready."

"Well, I don't want to stay here," Wren said.

Heather nodded. "As you wish."

It annoyed Wren how Heather treated her. _Like a queen or something._ Always the woman was asking her permission and ordering her around at the same time. She had some kind of knack for it.

_God,_ Wren thought, _if You're up there... and if my mother truly believed in You... I trust that You know what you're doing._

She was girded inside again. She didn't like the way her emotions vacillated back and forth from trust and optimism to fear and hopelessness.

But something inside of her had swung back to hope and so Wren, with her mouse and bear, continued their journey. They walked up, ever up, hiking the mountains to Sin'ra.

-2-

"Where did we leave off?" Heather asked.

"I don't know," Wren panted, gripping another handhold.

"The death of the Dryad Tree. And the dissolving of our people, Wren."

"They're not my people. Stop saying that."

"They are yours even more than mine."

"No," Wren said stubbornly.

"Believe what you will."

Wren growled a little in her throat. Her emotions were running rampant again. She felt dizzy, weak, and nauseous.

"When the Tree died, the world around it wept," Heather continued, not giving any indication that she had heard Wren growl. "There are prophecies. There are always prophecies. It will be revived. It won't be revived. It is not truly dead but rather hibernating. Every theory exists. When the Protectors lost control of it, we lost something of ourselves. Ultimately, even though the soldiers and the armies had no true understanding of what had happened to them, magic was blamed. They knew it was some type of nature magic that had been their undoing And the Protectors started fighting among themselves."

"Why?" asked Wren.

"They could not accept that the Tree was gone. There were many who believed it immortal. All we'd gone through to protect and hide it, all the beliefs we had about it, all the ways in which it had helped us understand our powers, everything was broken in an instant.

"The Protectors broke then, too. The community became fractured. They lost their focus and could find nothing to rally around. And you must understand what you have been hesitant to know this entire time." Heather took a moment in the cold air. "You are the thing that we can rally around now, Wren."

Wren's hand slipped off the section of rock she had been gripping. She flailed for a moment.

"I can't do what you're asking of me," she moaned.

"I'm not asking anything of you, Wren," Heather said. "I'm telling you what will happen. Preparing you. The sooner you accept the future the easier it will be for you when it happens."

Wren said nothing as she finished hauling herself up the wall of rocks. She looked out over the welcome sight of a plateau. Stubby grasses and shrubs grew through a light coating of snow. The animals had rejoined them at the top, Heather's flock returning to her. Crasher was there, Tessa clinging carefully to the bear's fur.

"We've got to be close," Wren panted.

Heather nodded. "Do you feel the place? I hear it is holy beyond most buildings."

"I don't feel it," Wren said.

"There is something up ahead," Crasher said, his tiny eyes staring into the distance.

"I don't see anything."

"Do not see, mistress. Smell. Listen."

Wren knew that her sense of smell could never be what Crasher's was. Instead she heard something in the stillness of the air. There was a strange kind of bleating like that of a sheep, but somehow she knew it was different. Something about the noise pulled Wren's heart towards it.

She Called out and felt pain in return.

Without hesitation she began careening over the flat land, running as fast as her legs could take her. She heard Heather and the animals running behind her, but Wren's legs carried her over the ground with a frightening speed she had never possessed before. She could feel each muscle pumping, her fur cloak whooshing behind her. Then she came upon what was making the bleating sound.

A beautiful white horse lay on its side on the ground, red blood running from some sort of massive wound on its forehead. Its belly was swollen and Wren knew immediately that it was pregnant. _Just like me_. She knelt beside the creature. Its eyes were frightened and it gasped for breath as it looked at her. Its fear turned slowly to curiosity as Wren reached deep within herself for her Well.

"Don't be afraid," she said. "I won't let your baby die." She had only done this once or twice on the farm.

She thought she felt a small communication from the horse, but she couldn't make out what it said. _She's probably too weak to talk to me,_ Wren thought.

Heather and the rest came up behind Wren, but she barely noticed them. The girl already had her hands inside the mother, feeling around for the baby that was trapped within. "Its shoulder is stuck," she said to herself. Her hands worked quickly, feeling the bones, the tissue, the blood.

"This is no natural wound," Heather breathed, bending down to inspect the horse's forehead. "We aren't alone up here, Wren. Be quick."

Wren could feel the animals around her - the deer, Crasher, Tessa, the birds, a few squirrels, two goats - go on high alert.

Wren's hands slipped and she cursed. The horse whinnied and tried to get up, but Wren clicked her tongue and Called to her. _Relax._ She dug again, getting her fingers right where they needed to be and freeing the foal. It came out in a gush, sliding in so much liquid. As it stumbled confusedly to its feet, Wren felt power pour into her Well.

She sat back, her whole body sweating.

"You did your best," Wren said in tears. She patted the mother horse's shoulder. It left a bloody palm print there, the red standing out against the stark white fur. The mother horse lay her head down and Wren shuddered as she felt her die.

The scene became disturbing to her: the foal suckled milk from a dead mother. She reached out her hand to stop it, but Heather was there. "Let it take what it can, Wren. We're going to have to figure out how to take care of it ourselves."

The foal was as white as its mother and despite how young it was it looked incredibly strong. There was a strange shape to its forehead as well. It looked as if a part of its skull was sticking out in the middle of it.

"What do we have here?" Heather asked, noticing the same thing. She squinted and reached out her hand to touch its forehead, but the foal danced away from her touch. It ran then, leaping the corpse of its mother, its legs pumping with great speed and power for their age.

"Hey!" Wren yelled. She took off after it and chased with all her might. "Get back here! You're gonna get yourself killed!"

The foal entered a forest and Wren did the same, following right in its steps, pouring the rest of her energy into the pursuit. Trees whizzed by on her left and right as Wren jumped over logs and brambles, dodging roots and low branches.

She stopped short in front of a large building that seemed to come out of nowhere. It was made of stone and seemed as if it had grown out the earth itself. The large single door in front was easily forty feet high. The roof was supported with ornately carved pillars.

The foal had stopped just in front of the building as well, its head tilted quizzically.

And Wren Hartfield, bloody from fingertips to elbows, stood in front of what could only be the Temple of Sin'ra.

The white foal turned and looked back at her expectantly.

# Chapter 28

### Of Songs and Legends

-1-

"Let me out of this thing!" the woman shouted. "My damn foot's gonna fall off!"

Otom looked with interest at what he had caught. The woman must have been in her early twenties and was dressed in tight-fitting, brightly colored clothing that probably wasn't as functional as it could have been. At least she wore thick boots, gloves, and a fur-lined vest so she wouldn't completely freeze. Her thick black hair was cut to her shoulders with straight bangs that ran just to her eyelashes. Her hair moved when she blinked. She had an oddly shaped case strapped to her back. It was about the size of her torso and was made of leather with a golden clasp.

The Monk knelt on the ground beside her, offering his hands slowly to help her undo the complicated knot of his snare. This certainly was nothing like what he had been expecting. He had been expecting Foglins. Evil things. Men with ill intentions. Not this woman. That would have been last on his list.

The woman pulled her foot out of the snare and stood up, brushing herself off. "Well," she said. "Not one of my most competent entrances, but certainly one worth writing about!"

She had a perkiness to her that made Otom smile. He suddenly realized how much he had longed for a companion out here.

Otom spread his hands. _Who are you_?

The girl nodded, a small smile on her face. Her teeth were very white and straight. "I'd heard you Monks take those vows sometimes, but you know, I never truly believed it. I suppose I'll have to make enough talk for both of us. My name's Raven Icehall. We can talk as we walk, my good Monk."

Otom faced his palms towards the ground and shook his head.

"What do you mean 'no'?" Raven asked. "I follow you all the way from Kilgaan and now you're telling me 'no'? Sorry, pal, that's not the way I operate. Now that you've trapped me I'm your responsibility. I could get hurt or killed or mugged or raped on the way back and then you'd feel just awful if you heard about it. So 'no' to you. You caught me, I'm yours."

Otom sighed and looked down at his forearm. He hadn't been doing a very good job of keeping it covered since he had been alone and traveling for so long. It shone out in the open, right where Raven could see it.

"Yup," she said. "That's part of what drew me to ya. As my name suggests, I like shiny objects, Monk. You're someone important. I can tell." Raven adjusted her gloves and boots, her shiny black hair looking quite fetching as it hung about her face.

Otom shrugged and turned to walk again. It was either that, tie up the girl, kill her, or try to outrun her. None of those seemed like incredibly appealing options to him. _Maybe she'll leave on her own,_ he thought.

"Where are we going? Oh, but that's right. You can't answer. It's alright. It's the story I'm interested in, you know? The events that unfold. Sometimes, I'm told, words can get in the way. Don't believe it much myself, but it might be true. I'll bet you're wondering about this case on my back."

Otom nodded, scanning the landscape in front of him.

"It's a harp, Monk. Do they have music in a Monastery?"

Otom nodded again.

"Let me just lay it all on the table right now. I'm looking for someone to write songs about. Oh, I know what you're thinking. 'Great. Another laze-about bard.' Your cynicism is well placed. Most bards' songs are made up; they're about things those stupid assholes have never seen. Mine won't be. I want to know important people. Go on quests. Doesn't sound too lazy does it?"

Otom shook his head.

"I've always had a lot of energy," Raven said. "I'll tell you what, Monk. If I play something for you and you don't like it you can send me away. Forget everything I just said about raping and crotch-pillaging and breast-looting and whatnot. I can make it back alright. If you can hear me play and turn me away, I will leave. Honest bargain, right?"

Raven slung her case off her back and set in gently into the thin layer of snow on the ground. She clicked open the latch and opened it, revealing a silver harp with gleaming strings. She took off her gloves and reached for it. Otom noticed her fingers were incredibly long and slender, the perfect things for plucking this harp.

He began to get excited about this whole prospect. He had envisioned his journey going in many directions, but never in this one.

Raven nestled the harp in the crook of one arm and readied herself.

The strings sounded pure in the cold, mountain air when she plucked them, each one sending out its sound into a space that may have never known those vibrations. The music was beautiful and minor, and Raven bent her head over the instrument, bobbing it in time with her song.

Then she lifted her chin and sang. Otom did not understand the language she sang in, but his jaw dropped just the same. Her notes were perfectly formed. The two sounds - harp and voice - danced together in the still air.

Otom was a captive audience, witnessing beauty he did not truly understand.

The last notes faded then, the air sucking them up greedily.

"Wow," Raven said in a deep voice. "That was really good." She winked.

Otom smiled. He embraced himself. _Stay_.

"I knew you would say I could," Raven said excitedly. She bounced on her toes, beaming from ear to ear. She sheathed her harp and slung it over her shoulder again. "What an auspicious beginning for us, Monk! You won't be disappointed. What's the point of doing great things if no one knows the tale? I mean the whole of the tale, of course."

_You'll never know the whole tale, Raven,_ Otom thought. _You're foolish to think that you ever could._

The days passed less lonely than before. Otom had Raven's songs to listen to around the Fire at night, and it eased his tensions and fears. The Foglin attack of a few months back started to lose its sting.

He started to relax.

-2-

Otom reached his hand down and grabbed Raven's. His grip was powerful, but he was careful not to damage her beautiful fingers. She grunted as he pulled her up the face of the mountain.

"Shit, Monk," she said as she sat at the top panting. "Can't get a full breath up here, you know?" She slapped her thighs and stood up. "I _am_ going to need to know your name, I've decided. Now, I know I said yesterday that I didn't need to know, but how am I to make apt rhymes if I can't even know who you are? Should I make up a name for you?"

Otom knelt and traced his name in the snow: O T O M.

"Otom?" Raven said, scrunching up her face. "That just couldn't be worse. Your name's going to have to fall at the beginning or middle of lines, I suppose, because that just doesn't rhyme well at all."

Otom shrugged. _Sorry_.

"Every life has trials, Otom. I will simply have to make do."

Raven had proven a powerful distraction and an ample companion. Otom was starting to feel that the end of this quest was in sight. As the two helped each other along, he began to wonder what he was doing. Somewhere inside of himself he longed to simply abandon this madness and take Raven somewhere. But he knew that desires like that were best left in check.

Like Raven had said, Otom had a quest. He would not come this far - especially after enduring the memories his travel had unearthed - and stop now.

"You know, Otom," Raven said, holding his arm for support, "sometimes the choices we make are rather odd. I could have had a husband, but I hated the idea. My family had one all picked out for me, but the man they chose was a stifling idiot. He was a blacksmith, you know. Strong arms and all that, but he was so insufferably boring! Even though you don't speak, you're a hundred-fold as interesting as he was. I think that says something about your character. There's a depth in your eyes that he lacked."

Otom smiled.

"I mean it, Otom. There are volumes there. I know there are. You will tell them to me in your own way over time. You may think a man is an island. A closed book. But we are the sum of the scars that we carry, Otom. You have a few that I can see. Your build and wounds make me think you were a fighter at one point. Don't look so surprised. I knew an archer once who trained so much and so often with the bow that his spine was crooked from the weight of drawing the damn thing. One learns to recognize these signs if one looks for them long enough. My fingertips. My fingertips are calloused and you would recognize the pattern as that of a harpist, Otom, if it was your gift to do so. How does one hear a life if its owner cannot speak? It is simpler than you might think. We are the sum of our scars, Otom. Never forget that."

The wisdom in Raven's speech shook Otom. If he had had any notion that this quest could heal him it would be in vain.

_Scars aren't meant to be healed,_ he thought. _Merely carried for all to see._

-3-

Otom was paging through The Book by firelight. Raven watched over his shoulder, her bright eyes intent.

"The Monk reads his Book by his own Fire," Raven said. "This magic is incredible, Otom."

Otom pointed up to the heavens.

"From God? I don't know. I don't know how to break it to you, but I've never had much use for God."

Otom shrugged and continued reading.

"I like to see people get more credit than that. If great things happen it's always God this, God that. When bad things happen it's the fault of man. Doesn't seem fair does it? I give credit on both ends, you know?"

Otom closed The Book slowly and stowed it in his pack. He laid back and unexpectedly Raven's face was right near his. Her breath made fog in the cold air. Her bright eyes were open wide like they always were, staring directly at him. She panted lightly, and swallowed hard, coming closer.

Otom shook his head, though he found that he did burn for her. He gripped her by the shoulders and gently rolled her back to where she belonged with a finality that he hoped she understood. He would never break his Vows for her. How could he tell her that there was only one woman he would ever break them for?

"I'm not hurt," she said in the night air. "I don't know what I was thinking. I am sorry, Otom. I could have written about the massiveness of your manhood though, you know. Oh, it was two feet long and it writhed like a snake," she sang. "It was almost more than I could take, uh huh!"

Otom smiled and rolled over, his back to Raven. She sang a few more bawdy versus, but he could tell she was starting to drift off. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

-4-

They ate roasted rabbit for the next few days and just as Otom became weary of his journey the landscape changed. They were on a plateau and the sky was as radiant a blue as Otom had ever seen.

He looked down at the glowing symbol on his forearm. The brown and orange salmon had gained a bit of brightness over the past few months.

"Is that your compass?" Raven asked.

Otom shrugged. _Not sure._

"If it is, tell it to point quickly and true. I'll stay with you to the end, Otom, you know that I've promised that, but even bardesses get bored."

There was a large cluster of trees in front of them, almost oddly out of place.

"That seems like something!" Raven said. "I'd bet my stake on the Icehall land that you're going in there."

Otom nodded in agreement, and began walking again. He and Raven wandered through the trees. The branches held needles that were dusted with snow. There was a commotion to their side and Otom turned to look, pulsing his Detection. A tiny white foal ran swiftly through the trees and there, chasing it, was a brown-haired gril. Her arms were horribly bloody, her eyes full of exhilaration.

"Finally! Something!" Raven said excitedly. The woman took off at a run after the brown-haired girl and her foal. Otom had no choice but to follow her. He ran through the woods, following Raven's shock of black hair in front of him.

The air whooshed past him, cold over his shaven skull.

A building loomed large in front of him. He recognized that the architecture was similar to that of his Monastery. He pulled up short. The brown-haired girl had finally caught up to the foal and had been joined by an old woman and a myriad of other animals.

"Hi," Raven was saying to them, addressing the strange group as a whole. "I'm Raven Icehall. Who are you? Have you met my friend Otom? He's a legend around these parts. Alright, I'll be fair. He's nearly the _only_ one around these parts!"

Otom Aldenburg stood and smiled at the scene. He knew his journey to Sin'ra was at a close.

# Chapter 29

### The Black and White Rescue

-1-

"Domma."

"Domma."

The voice persisted, fluttering against her mind like a moth. Domma opened her eyes, or at least she thought she did. Reality was becoming blurred down here. She was tied up on the floor now. Potter had at least done that much for her. She lay on her side, blood all around her, but none of it her own.

"Domma."

She could hear the Foglins moving still within the skulls of her sisters, and she wanted to cover her ears, but couldn't. She could get one of them pressed to the ground, but the maddening sounds droned in the other.

"Domma."

"Domma."

All the emotions had been wrung from her. Had she been lying here for days? For weeks? It had become very hard to tell. Sometimes Potter was here, and then he was gone. Sometimes Tristo was here. Sometimes he was gone.

"Domma."

"Domma."

"Domma."

"What!" she finally screamed in reply. But suddenly she wasn't sure if she was awake or asleep; using her own voice or something else entirely.

"Do not — startled. We haven't much time. Domma the — mark. The one that —."

"Something's wrong," said Domma. "I can't understand. I don't understand." The voice was cutting in and out, her hearing fuzzing over certain words.

"LISTEN!" the voice commanded. "Temple of Sin'ra. You must —. I have Chosen you, Domma. I know you have —. You — you have strayed. Come back to me. At the Temple of Sin'ra."

"You want me to go somewhere? God? Is it... is it you? That feels so stupid to say. I've gone insane haven't I?"

The voice didn't respond.

Domma woke up.

Then she woke up again.

She gasped. This was definitely reality now. Her body ached everywhere and it was beginning to itch as well. That was, surprisingly, the more horrible of the two sensations. Her mouth was so dry that her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. She tried to swallow, but found that task to be only mildly successful.

"Sin'ra," she said to herself. She winced and rolled onto her back to stare up at the ceiling. "Like in The Book. Is that where I'm to go, Lord?" She coughed weakly. "You're gonna have to send someone for me then. Cuz I'm not getting out of this one alone."

Domma heard a new sickening sound coming from within the skulls of her sisters. She looked up at Metta. The blood had long dried on her face, but now wriggling black legs were protruding from her empty eye socket.

"No!" Domma screamed. "Potter!" She began to wriggle furiously, not wanting to be here when the thing emerged. "Potter!" she screamed, her throat ragged.

The Foglin crawled down Metta and unfurled itself on the ground, slow and weak like a newborn.

"Oh God and Gustus!" Domma shrieked, her emotions running away from her for the first time since she had been down here. Her shoulder cracked in a flash of pain as she pulled furiously at her restraints.

She could hear the other three Foglins crawling out of their hosts as well.

Domma began to inch across the floor, but it was incredibly difficult as her arms and legs were tied together in some kind of complicated knots. When she moved, a rope around her neck tightened and she began to strangle, putting a stop to her escape.

The skittering of tiny legs came closer and closer.

She felt a tug at her robe and shuddered, imagining the tiny, alien claws that had snagged it.

Suddenly the room was filled with noise. Boots struck the ground near her, crunching a Foglin beneath them. A sword swished by her head and cleaved another one of the creatures neatly in half, its black blood oozing out. A dagger impaled another creature, driving through its chest. It screamed an all-too-human scream and died.

The sword swung through her bonds, the heavy rope parting easily in its wake.

Then she was being lifted.

"Careful," she managed to say. She was dizzy.

"Nice kill, Hal," said a man's voice.

"Holy shit," said the man who must have been Hal. "What the-" But he didn't finish and began retching.

"You'll have time to tell us your story, Cleric," said the first man. "Very probably you'll want to be leaving here quickly."

From her vantage point in the man's arms, Domma recognized the colors of the Kingsguard. That narrowed down this man's identity to one in twelve. The other man, Hal, was overweight and badly disheveled. He wore dirty, stained clothing and had a good ragged growth of beard going, his long brown hair hanging lank and wild.

"There's something on her arm," Hal said in between coughs.

"Well I'll be," said the Kingsguardian. "I've heard this sort of thing talked about..." He held Domma's arm in a powerful hand, inspecting. "Who are you?" he asked cautiously.

"I'm a Sunburst Cleric," she said weakly. "The symbol... I need to get to the Temple of Sin'ra." She began shuddering then, feeling incredibly cold.

Hal took off his cloak and laid it over her as she rested in the Kingsguardian's arms. "You can keep it," he said, concern in his eyes.

A new light entered the room and Domma's heart jumped. She feared it was Potter or one of the others bringing a torch down here. Maybe they were just late in responding to her cries.

But the light was coming from Hal. The man's face contorted as he tried to back away from his own arm. He pulled his glove off and threw it to the ground. His hand was a mottled mess of disease, black patterns running up and down. The light started just above his wrist. A glowing black and white coin adorned his arm.

"Trance!" he yelled.

So that's who this Kingsguardian is: Trance Raynman.

"Don't look at me!" Trance said, obviously surprised. "What am I supposed to do with you two glowing fools?"

"You want to flee this place, too," Domma said. "Take us both to the Temple. There is important work to be done there."

"My brother," Hal said. "We have to find Tell! What the hell is wrong with my arm?!"

"Listen," said Trance. "Just because your brother wasn't where you left him doesn't mean he's down here. He could be off dealing with business elsewhere."

"But there's tunnels under this whole place! Connecting multiple hospitals! The whole thing is a sick scheme, Trance! I've seen things like this before. Okay, not exactly like this. But I mean interconnected plots and a greater plan to it all. I'm not making any sense." Hal was waving his arm about a little frantically.

Domma gasped. "It's that bad?" she asked. "Does the king know?"

Trance nodded. "We just sent Kelin Lightbearer to tell him. Hal here was insistent that we try and find his brother down here, but as you can see we failed in that. We found you instead. Tell me, woman of God, should we truly do as you say?"

"I don't know. I just had a vision. I think from God. I don't think that's ever happened to me before. He told me to go to the Temple of Sin'ra."

"Another journey?" Hal asked. "No. No. Get this thing off my arm, Trance. Just cut the whole damn limb off! I'm sick of all of this. Some of us have lives to live, lady!"

"Hal!" Trance barked. "Don't yell at a woman of God."

"Shh," Domma warned. "Let's get out of here."

Trance carried her off in strong arms, Hal huffing and puffing behind them.

-2-

"I'm trying to choose the right path here," Trance said. "On the one hand I find it hard to give up Hal, here. His hand seems somehow connected with the Foglins. Could help us find them. But his symbol... one is most unwise to ignore magics this powerful."

Trance, Hal, and Domma huddled just north of the city. With a small surge of power from Trance it had been easy and quick to get there. Domma marveled at the strength of the Kingsguardian.

"What am I?" Hal asked. "What are we?"

"We are chosen of God, Hal," said Domma. "This is a holy quest."

"Like in a damn child's tale," Hal said.

"Like in The Book," she corrected him.

"Trance," Hal said, "it's been a hell of a ride, but I have things to see to. You know that."

"This is probably more important," Trance said slowly. "That mark also means you're a Benefactor!" Trance clapped his hands together in glee. "Oh, those guys are going to owe me so much money! I bet them you would be! Didn't I say you would be, Hal?" Then he winced. "Well, Telin'll have to pay me later, I guess."

"If I go and do this I want you to promise to find my brother. His name's Tellurian D'Arvenant."

"I know," Trance said. "You don't have to remind me again."

Domma's eyebrows shot up at the mention of that name. "Tellurian's your brother? His donations were paramount in founding the current hos-"

"I know what he's done," Hal said. "I'm Halimaldie D'Arvenant. You may have heard of me as well. I run a trading empire. Or, at least, I did. Now I'm a glowing wanderer."

"I'm sorry," Trance said. "I don't know what else to tell you. I'm going to leave you two in each others' care now. I'll send one of the men north for you when I can Hal, but likely it won't be Kelin. They need him, with all he's seen. Haroma needs me. Maybe the world needs me. Ah. Telin would say my head's gotten too big. He'd probably be right, that stodgy old fuck. Pardon my tongue, Cleric."

"It's alright," Domma said. "Call it even for the rescue."

"Fair enough," Trance said. He rode away without another word.

"So," Halimaldie said, slowly. "I don't believe I caught your name in any of this."

"Cleric Domma."

"Do all clerics shave their heads like that?"

"No," she said simply. "What's wrong with your hand?"

Halimaldie drew it back. "It seems that we both have stories to tell," he said. "Perhaps it would be best if you led on and we swapped who we are on the way. I'm a man who likes to have answers. My empire has survived worse than this, it can survive a bit longer without me."

"Just like that?" she asked.

"Just like that," Halimaldie replied. "Make a decision, then do it, Domma. That's how I usually operate. If I'm going to be chosen by God, someone who - and I'm sorry to say this \- I rarely give a single thought to, then it seems best to accept my fate. I don't pretend to understand everything in the world, but I've always tried to take a rational approach to things. Someone's forearm doesn't glow for no reason, so... Tellurian can wait. Yarrow can wait. My life, as much as I hate to say it, can wait."

"Bold words, D'Arvenant."

"I'm a bold man. I'm sorry I panicked earlier down in the hospital. That's not much like me. I've found that things, when they do happen, happen very rapidly. This series of events... well, I wasn't ready for it."

"When it rains, it pours," Domma said.

"Yeah. I like that phrase. I'll have to use it sometime."

"Give me credit when you do."

# Chapter 30

### Reinforcements

-1-

"Shh," Domma said. "Hold still."

"I've never done this before," said Halimaldie.

"Get your hands ready," Domma whispered.

Domma lunged forward then, charging into the bushes. Halimaldie waited, his eyes searching frantically. Then he saw it. A rabbit bolted out of the bush and Halimaldie dove, throwing himself on top of it as quickly as he could. The thing screamed, like he had never known rabbits could do, and then his dagger was in it. He stabbed right near where he thought its heart might be, but honestly he didn't know.

"Good job," Domma said sarcastically. "It's all squished, bloody, and mangled."

"It's dead, isn't it?" Halimaldie replied. "That means we can eat it, right?" He was breathing heavily, heart pounding as hard as it had been when he had been near the Foglins in the mine. There was something exhilarating about catching his own food.

He held his bloody prize in his gloved hand and made his way back to the fire, suddenly realizing he'd never really _traveled_. He'd gone other places, surely, but always with an entourage of servants, sell-swords, and navigators.

"Now what?" he asked.

"We'd better skin it," Domma said.

"My dagger's already bloody. We could just use that."

Domma took it from him. He never let anyone touch his golden prize, but he let her take it.

"I just can't believe you've never done this," Domma said.

"Usually by the time I touch my food, this part's been dealt with already. Why have _you_ done this? You're a Cleric, right?"

"We do go on missions to other places, Halimaldie. We don't just stay holed up in our Temple for our entire lives."

"I guess I feel a bit naïve," Halimaldie said. "I've always thought I was so worldly. I've traveled extensively when I've needed to for business. But this scenario we've found ourselves in... despite its simplicity it's completely foreign to me. I've been discovering a lot of things I never knew before. Or maybe never believed in. Maybe I'm getting used to it."

Domma was busy slicing up the rabbit. "I saw four of my sisters murdered before my own eyes, used as some sort of disgusting Foglin incubators." She looked sick. "Some things you don't get used to."

"I'm sorry," Halimaldie said. "This is all new to me, too. I mean this Foglin thing. They were always just stories here in Hardeen Kingdom. The Vaporgaard seems to be slacking on the job. Or else the game has changed, I don't know."

Domma began to stab sticks through various parts of the rabbit, setting them at angles on the fire to cook. The meat started to smell incredibly good to Halimaldie, and he felt something primal begin to stir inside of him. He gazed across the flames at Domma and just the look of her brought to mind Yarrow. He had wanted that woman badly, not because she was like him, but because she was _unlike_ him. He wanted to feel the organics of her world again and vowed he would do so when he returned to Haroma.

Domma handed Halimaldie's dagger back to him. He wiped it off in the snow as best he could and dried it on his shirt, then he tucked it back into the sheath where it belonged. The daggers had been gifts from his father, just before the old man had passed from this world into whatever lay beyond.

Halimaldie's stomach rumbled audibly. "Is it done?" he asked, licking his lips.

"Not unless you want it totally raw in the middle."

Halimaldie wasn't sure if he did or not.

"What is it that you believe, Halimaldie?" Domma asked rather suddenly. "What drives you?"

Halimaldie laughed through his nose a little bit. "I'd hate to tell you, Cleric. You'll find I'm not a man of God at heart."

"Halimaldie, I know people of many Gods. I know people with none. I've heard your name before, you know. You're one of the most influential players in Haroma and you know it. It's not many that get an intimate chance to talk to you like this. So tell me. Who are you?"

Halimaldie stopped and thought. "What an easy yet difficult question. I like it. Who am I? I am a man that enjoys being successful. I enjoy challenges. I can adapt to almost any situation that interests me. I don't believe in things I can't see with my own eyes. I believe that successful men are brilliant and hardworking, but also lucky. I don't believe in failure. I don't suffer fools gladly, but who does?"

"Have you ever been married?"

Halimaldie smirked. "No."

"Ever wanted to?"

"If you're asking-"

"Oh, I'm not asking for myself," she laughed. "It's just... well, I thought I was in love. I was sure of it. Have you ever been sure of something? So sure of it that when it doesn't turn out to be true you can't deal with it and so you simply push it aside?"

"I was sure my brother would go into business with me," Halimaldie said, sighing. "Brotherly love. That's a thing, right?"

Domma nodded.

"I was so sure he would join me. We grew up privileged, you know? That's what people would say, anyway. I never thought of it that way, honestly. I was always somewhat shocked when people hated me without knowing me, but there you have it. Anyway, I expected Tell and I to rule Haroma. Not as kings, mind you. I wanted us to do what we knew how to do and do it well. Better than anyone." Halimaldie sighed. "Then, something changed in him, but not in me. I continued on without him. I left him behind. Or he left me. I don't know where the blame lies, or who failed."

"Maybe it doesn't need to lie anywhere," Domma said. "Maybe things just are as they are. Remember, you don't believe in failure." She smiled.

Halimaldie laughed. "It's easier to preach than to practice, isn't it?"

"I have always found that to be true."

"I suppose you deal with it every day."

"More than you know," Domma said. She seemed to have more secrets behind her eyes, but Halimaldie wasn't going to pry. "Don't you ever feel that something is missing, Halimaldie?"

"I honestly don't have time to think about it."

"Don't you have time right now?"

Halimaldie dodged the question. "Right now what's missing is food from my stomach."

The fire guttered a little bit under a cold breeze that blew, and Halimaldie noticed that the rabbit parts were now black.

"Ack!" Domma yelled as she grabbed for them. "Okay, they're a little blackened. It could be worse."

But Halimaldie was already eating one, burning his mouth and not caring.

-2-

They melted snow for water and Halimaldie drank it from his cupped hands, another thing he could never remember doing. Mostly he and Domma walked in silence, offering each other the odd phrase of conversation but never really committing to anything since that first night.

"You're sure you know where we're going?" Halimaldie asked for the twentieth time.

"Yes," Domma said. "I had a vision while I was down in the hospital. God told me."

Halimaldie had no other option but to trust. He'd never been this far north before. This region had vastly inferior natural resources. Unless he suddenly wanted to import snow there was really nothing of use. His efforts were better spent elsewhere.

He had to admit that the mountains were beautiful. Spring had not yet been entirely able to clear the snow from them, and it was a pleasant thing, because Halimaldie had always enjoyed winter.

On one particularly drab day Halimaldie and Domma were hoisting each other over some large sloping rocks, when Halimaldie saw something out of the corner of his eye.

"Stay still," he whispered, his hand going to his dagger.

"What?" Domma hissed.

"I think someone's back there."

The shape shifted and moved. Halimaldie couldn't follow it with his eyes. It seemed to be just a mass of swirling colors that skipped here and there. "What the hell?" he breathed.

Suddenly a man stood in front of him and Halimaldie lurched backwards, losing his footing on one of the rocks and going painfully to one knee.

"Hello," said the man. He was wearing purple and silver, and Halimaldie could tell just from the way he stood that he was a Kingsguardian. "My name is Angloriel. Trance sent me."

The Kingsguardian wore a comically large sword at his hip, but Halimaldie had no doubt that in this man's hands it was a serious weapon that had taken many lives. Other than that sword he was standard Kingsguard fare: purple and silver tabard over light, mobile armor. He looked about forty years old, but it was hard to tell. Teeth were the best indicator of age, and Halimaldie had trouble seeing Angloriel's mouth through the man's shaggy beard.

"Halimaldie," said Halimaldie, standing up and extending his hand. The Kingsguardian probably could have squeezed the blood out of it, but he took it in a measured grip. _So he's not an asshole_ , Halimaldie thought. He was able to tell a lot about a person by their handshake.

"Those symbols are incredible," Angloriel said. "I've never seen magic like that before." He leaned closer to inspect their arms.

Domma was balanced precariously between two rocks. "Could we do introductions later?" she asked.

Angloriel laughed and stepped over to her, as sure as a goat. He scooped her and carried her across the uneven field. He started to head back for Halimaldie, but Halimaldie held up his hand and did his best to cross by himself. He only fell twice.

"Manly," Angloriel said, a hint of mischief in his eyes.

Not as much of a full-fledged trickster as Trance, but certainly not as stuffy as Kelin and Telin.

"I think you may be disappointed in the length of this journey," Domma said. "We are nearly there."

"Perfect," Angloriel said. "I have many other things to do. Kingdom's not in an uproar about this whole Foglin thing yet, but secrets have a way of getting out eventually."

After crossing the boulder field they stood on a wide plateau. A mass of trees stood on the horizon and they walked towards it.

The placement of the forest was strange, and even Halimaldie could feel that there was power within it. Angloriel cut the occasional branch with his sword to make enough space for everyone to get through, and soon they saw a large building that towered over them.

"This is it," Halimaldie said, very certain of his assessment. He noticed a small group of people and animals standing in front of the building already. "Who are these people? Some kind of clerics or priests?"

"I'm not sure," Domma said, "but they have a Monk in their midst, and he glows as we do." Halimaldie could pick out three people with glowing symbols, bringing the total to five. Domma had told him about the five aspects of God as they had walked. The number seemed right. Everything seemed to be in order here.

Domma adjusted her hood so that it covered her head and the top of her face and walked over to greet the group in a slow, almost regal way. Halimaldie supposed that, for her, this meeting of Godly chosen was something special; something holy.

He decided to treat it as business as usual.

Find out what's going on. Find out the problem and what resources are available. Try to solve it. Move on.

That was Halimaldie D'Arvenant. And here he was.

# Chapter 31

### It Begins and Ends

-1-

"So this is us, then?" the heavyset man with the brown beard asked. His forearm held the symbol of a black and white coin. He smirked a little. "What a fine group of heroes we look to be."

He was right. Wren took stock of everyone who was there. They had all formed a small circle, and no one looked to be in fantastically good condition.

There was Wren herself, ragged and bloody with her red and gold vine symbol, and Heather, an old woman by anyone's standards. Crasher stood next to Wren, giving her stability while she leaned on his powerful shoulder. Tessa was nestled in her pocket. The white foal - still smeared with a little bit of red blood - danced giddily.

To Wren's left stood a hooded figure that Wren thought was a woman, but couldn't be sure as all she could see was her lips and chin. Her robe was of blue and yellow and the woman had a colored forearm symbol to match: the sun in the sky. She stood, slumped and tired.

Next to the robed woman stood the heavyset man with the glowing coin on his arm. He looked bedraggled to say the least, but had an expression on his face that told Wren he was sure of himself..

A strong, powerful man dressed in purple and silver stood next to him. The man was some sort of royal guard to be sure, but he wasn't wearing Shailand colors, so Wren didn't know where his allegiance lay.

Then there was the talkative, black-haired woman, Raven Icehall. Wren had felt an instant dislike for her when she had introduced herself, but she wasn't sure why. Something about the way she opened up so quickly to everyone, as if she were everyone's best friend. Or the way she held her chest so high, almost leading with it.

Raven was sort of hanging on Otom's shoulder. He was thick and powerfully built with a full beard and a totally shaved head. He hadn't said a single word so far. It was a good thing he had his talkative envoy there to cover for him. Otom had the symbol of some type of fish that glowed brown and orange.

The last member was someone that Wren thought she recognized in the back of her mind, but couldn't be quite sure. He had introduced himself as Krothair, and that name tickled at her, but she let it go for now. There were more important things to think about. The boy, who was probably just a little older than she, was powerfully built. He had a scraggly beard that he was scratching at. A silver and purple sword glowed on his forearm.

"It appears as if all the magics are represented," Heather said. "If there was ever a time to do something, now is that time."

The large man in purple and silver spoke. "What say you, D'Arvenant? How does your hand feel?"

The heavyset man, D'Arvenant, raised his hand towards the Temple and stared at it. "Seems to be fine, Angloriel."

"Should probably head in, then," Raven said, her voice annoying Wren immediately. "On with the quest, as they say. Well, I don't know who says that, but somebody must, mustn't they?" She laughed a little. "Come on, Monk." She grabbed his arm and began to walk with him up the large stone steps of the Temple of Sin'ra.

The white foal had already started up as well, and Wren looked at Heather who nodded her approval. Wren's heart began to pound faster as the party ascended the steps.

"Do you think we're going to die here, Crasher?" she asked the bear quietly.

"I do not know, mistress. I will protect you if I can."

"That's not very reassuring, bear," Tessa said, popping her little head up.

"But it is the truth, mouseling."

"Thank you both," said Wren. She started to get tears in her eyes but she blinked them away. She had no idea what was happening next, but somehow she was glad that her life had taken her here, as far away from her past as she thought she could possibly get.

-2-

The inside of the Temple was as dull and uninteresting as the outside. There was a large main hall with a high ceiling that was probably about twenty times the size of Wren's farmhouse. She was surprised at how large the building was inside. The trees had hidden its mass well.

Columns ran from floor to ceiling, but that was about as far as the decoration went. The only light that entered the place came in through a few windows cut into the walls. There were torches in sconces on the walls, but none of them were lit.

Otom stepped forward and pointed at one. It burst into flame. He repeated the same thing with several others. Wren had never seen the powers of a Monk before, and the creation of Fire startled her. Flames were almost always a bad thing back on the farm and her instincts to extinguish them hadn't been diminished from her journey.

The place - empty though it was now - had definitely been used over the ages. Walking paths were worn smooth into the stone floor, polished by human feet. It only added to the oddity of the place, though, conjuring images of ghosts in Wren's mind.

"Hello!" Raven shouted. Her voice echoed many times, taking at least five heartbeats to die away.

"Quiet, child!" Angloriel scolded her.

"I don't like this," Krothair said He was tense, his hand on his sword. His eyes scanned the hall nervously.

"Well someone should be here to greet us," Raven said. "I'm only trying to tell them that we've-"

She was cut off by a scraping sound that chilled Wren.

"Who's there?" Angloriel bellowed, apparently forgetting his earlier warning. His sword was out of its sheath now. It was massively long and heavy-looking, but he held it with ease.

"We're jumping at shadows," the robed woman said in a whisper.

One of Heather's deer's hooves skittered on the stone floor and then the animal was bolting back out the door, the way she had come in. Wren had just enough time to sense the fear in the animal before it exited. She knew to trust those instincts.

"We should leave," she said.

"Don't be frightened," Angloriel said. "Don't you five know what you're supposed to be doing here? Let's get on with it and then we _can_ leave this ghostly place."

"No, we don't know," D'Arvenant said, seeming a bit flustered. "This is stupid. Do we need to search? I don't care if we move as an entire awkward group, but we need to find out what's going on in this God-forsaken Temple. I am sorry, Domma."

The robed woman held her hand up as if to say it was okay.

"Wait," Krothair said. "Someone's coming."

He was right. At the opposite end of the hall a figure strode towards them. It was impossible to tell who it was in the light of the torches and small windows, but Wren put her hand on the knife that still hung at her hip.

"I know what you're thinking!" the person called to them.

"I rather doubt you do!" Angloriel yelled back.

"You're impatient," said the figure. "I even know what you'll be thinking in a few moments."

"I don't like riddles," Angloriel said. "Are you the caretaker of this place?"

"You'll be thinking 'Why didn't we see this coming'?"

Then the scratching sound got much louder and dark shapes began to fill the large hall. Wren's stomach sank. The shapes were monstrosities. All were animal in some way, but their forms had been so twisted that it was hard to recognize what type. There were legions of bears, hawks, insects, horses, crabs, turtles, so many others. Some walked on two legs, some on four, some on six, some on more.

They were Foglins.

She knew it.

D'Arvenant looked dumbfounded.

"It's always important to know your prey," said the figure. Then he pointed to the group and the Foglins rushed.

-3-

Wren only had time to worry about herself in the frenzy. Three Foglins charged her, their mouths open wide and showing rows of horrible serrated teeth. Just as they reached her, Crasher was there, pounding into them from the side.

Wren drew the long knife from the termite sheath and brandished it in a shaking hand. Her heart was pounding so hard she swore it would tear through her chest and end her life before any Foglin ever could. She moved nervously away from the small pack of Foglins that were now attacking Crasher. The bear fought valiantly, but he was over-matched. He gave ground slowly, dodging back from swinging appendages. He roared and the sound filled the hall.

I can't let him die.

Wren charged in and swung, putting all her strength behind the blow. The knife crashed against one of the Foglins, but didn't cut very deeply. The impact made her arm numb and Wren fell backwards onto the ground while dodging the retaliating strike.

"Mistress?" Tessa asked. Wren could feel the mouse shaking in her pocket.

"We're fine," Wren said. "We're fine."

She scrambled to her feet and lunged again. She was tackled from behind just as she felt a whoosh of air over her head. She fell heavily on her side, knowing that she was likely dead. She felt serenity about that, surprisingly. But she didn't have time to contemplate philosophy. She hadn't been tackled by a Foglin. It had been the robed woman, Domma.

Wren and Domma rolled away from each other and regained their footing. Wren saw that Crasher's thick brown fur was covered in blood. One of his eyes was shut as well.

Wren patted her pocket, looking for Tessa, but the mouse wasn't there. _She must have fallen out!_ A Foglin with a head like a hawk careened at her then and it was all Wren could do to get her sword up to block the incoming attack. The Foglin's arm - a disgusting thing covered with oozing sores - crashed into the blade. Wren's strength wasn't enough and the impact made her arm buckle, dragging the sharp side of the knife that was facing her across her chest. She screamed as she felt her flesh part just below her collarbones.

The Foglin drew its arm back for a second blow and then stopped. It tilted its head in pain and tried to swat at its neck.

There was a small, furry bundle running around on its shoulders.

"Tessa!" Wren cried. Blood was running down Wren's chest like a hot river, but she managed to swing her blade into the thing's head, catching it just above its misshapen beak. The Foglin stumbled back, hands now clutching at its ruined face. It let out a terrifying shriek as Wren turned her attention elsewhere.

Crasher was holding off at least five Foglins. It was hard to count as they writhed and danced. The bear seemed to be more blood than fur at this point.

"Crasher!" Wren yelled.

She saw the limb falling, but Crasher didn't seem to. Wren knew she wouldn't be fast enough to get there. She reached deep into her Well and drew the power out, aiming it at Crasher. A pale blue barrier sprang up around the bear, and the strike that had been meant to end his life skittered off the top of it.

Crasher took advantage of the momentary Shield to swipe out with his powerful paws. He raked through three of the Foglins in one massive swipe. Two more were crushed to the ground when he charged at them and he opened his powerful jaws wide to dispatch the last one.

The bear, panting heavily, fell to his side on the ground on top of the pile of Foglins he had slain.

Wren tried to make her way over to him, but she became faint and fell before she got there.

"What are these things, mistress?" Crasher managed to say.

"Foglins," she wheezed.

"Foglins," said the bear. "I shall remember that." Then he closed his one good eye and was still.

"No!" Wren screamed, but the effort cost her much.

The last thing she saw was another pack of Foglins around her. The terror almost kept her from passing out, and she struggled as blood ran from her, but the world inevitably went black.

# Chapter 32

### Of Love and Power

-1-

Otom pulled his robe down into a Skada and wrapped his hands in Fire. After so many weary months of travel he felt a surge within himself as he charged the nearest pack of Foglins. He fell into a powerful stance, low and ready. The first Foglin that came to him met a swift end, Otom's fist bashing through the side of its skull. The thing cracked open and blood and bone spattered out. Not normal blood, but the black blood of a Foglin.

Then Otom was dancing, his powerful legs taking him high and low, left and right. He whirled and tumbled, his martial arts becoming again a part of who he was. Each Foglin that came against him fell gasping with some wound inflicted by the hands of a man who had been born a fighter. He vaulted the low swing of a Foglin and kicked out while still in mid-air. His heel connected with the monster's face and Otom heard a fantastic snap. He used his momentum to handspring himself back to his feet, whirling just in time to block a series of blows from a Foglin whose arms were thick as tree trunks.

Otom would not be stopped.

He heard Raven scream and whirled to see her down on the ground and backing away from a pack of Foglins, scrabbling on her hands, her dark hair stuck to her head with blood. He summoned more power and placed a wall of Fire in front of her, allowing her time to get to her feet and run to him. She was trying to cling to him, gripping wildly at his robe, and he was trying to shake her off. She was bawling, unable to talk through her sobs.

She's going to get us both killed.

Otom spun and grabbed the head of an approaching Foglin in his burning hands, throwing it to the ground with all his force. The monster's body went limp as it connected with the stone floor.

Otom pointed to Raven and then to a nearby window. _You have to get out of here if you can_.

She nodded, her teeth gritted. She sprinted over to the window and scrambled up to it. Her slender body barely fit through, but she made it, harp and all.

_Hopefully there aren't more out there_.

Otom turned back to survey the fight. The Kingsguardian's sword was wheeling in the air, slicing faster and faster. _He seems fine._ Animals were running all over the place in a panic, but the old woman seemed to be taking care of them and herself. The girl with brown hair was holding her sword very badly, but she was still standing for now. He saw Halimaldie running towards the back of the building, daggers held in both hands. But Otom couldn't find the blue-and-yellow-robed woman, Domma, so he pulsed his Detection, worried that she might be in trouble.

She was against a wall and surrounded by enough Foglins that Otom couldn't see her. He made straight for her then, charging over the corpses of monsters as he ran. The Foglins were closing in on her, surely within reach soon. He caught sight of her.

The woman threw back the hood of her blue and yellow cloak and in what seemed to be a last desperate attempt to keep them away she yelled, "Stop where you are in the name of God!"

Otom's heart stopped. Suddenly his jaw hung slack and the Fire on his fists went out. He was struck dumb in the midst of the battle. Tears formed in his eyes.

He would have known her anywhere, in any time, in any place, in any world, hair or no hair, and the first word to pass from his lips in thirteen years came free.

"Allura," he whispered.

-2-

Otom crashed into the Foglins with such force that he carried all of them a good ten feet away from Allura. He was a man truly alive for the first time in a long time. He felt life and love surge through him, but most of all hope. He ignored the wounds on his arms and legs as he battered the Foglins with renewed energy.

His arms were powerful pillars of fire, and the flesh of the monsters burned away as the inferno that was Otom broke into them. With powerful strokes Otom separated limbs from torsos, heads from bodies. The Foglins that had been attacking Allura were barely recognizable in the small, burning pile that was left.

Allura was alive and here. He didn't know how it was possible and he didn't care. She was marked, just like Otom. Their fates were once more intertwined.

He ran back to her and his heart dropped when he saw her slumped against the wall. He lifted her in powerful, bloody arms and checked her breathing. She was still alive and still beautiful.

"Allura," he whispered again. "Allura." His voice wasn't capable of anything louder.

Her eyes fluttered open for a moment and she looked confused.

"Who... who are you?" she asked, then her eyes closed again.

# Chapter 33

### Memories

-1-

Domma stood in a world that couldn't have been real. It was completely white.

She remembered fighting Foglins only moments ago, but now she was elsewhere and in a different body entirely. This one was at least fifteen years younger with long, flowing blond hair and a more slender figure. She felt her forehead for the soft spot, but there was none. Her glowing symbol was gone too.

"Where am I?" she said, in a voice was still her own but younger, lighter.

"It is time to fill in the gaps, Allura," said a voice.

"Why do you call me that?"

"Because it is who you are. Try to remember. You have prayed to know these things. It is now within my power to make them known to you, here in this Chrysalis, at this point in history."

Allura looked around and the place changed before her eyes.

She stood in a cabin in the snowy north that she recognized. She remembered now how she had told Ris... she had told Ris that Otom had slept with her at the Kilgaan Tournament. It hadn't been true, but she had said it to him. She had been angry over something. And, oh, the wild look in his eyes. He had come to find Otom and Allura had followed him, trying to get there first. Trying to warn Otom.

Everything... Otom's parents' deaths... burning down the cabin... had been her fault. Everything.

"I don't want to remember anymore," she said. "Please, don't."

"It is already being done."

The mists of her past began to part.

She remembered a day, wrapped in fever, when she learned that Otom had gone to the Dryad Tree for her and hadn't come back. She remembered her heart breaking, and having been so sure that he would return.

But he hadn't.

Silence, in a last gambit to save her life, had hired a local sawbones to come see to her. With his drill. The soft spot on her forehead was from that operation. It must have taken her disease away... along with her memory... along with her hair. She remembered Silence's strong hands holding her down while the grizzled doctor's drill had whirred closer and closer.

And the screaming...

She had run from that house as soon as she could walk again.

"No," she said, crumpling to the floor. "I should be dead. The way I lived my life... I don't deserve..."

She remembered wandering lost and alone, reeling from her injury on weak legs, running from Silence's house, from everything.

She remembered walking up the steps of Sunburst Temple for the first time, ragged and beaten, to turn her life over to God, or at least something or anyone who would care for her.

She even relived her times with Potter, the most recent and last of her sins.

"I've been horrible my whole life!" she screamed. "Always misguided! Always selfish! Why would you choose me? Why would you even care?"

"No one... is ever... beyond... redemption."

And then her world was black.

# Chapter 34

### Living Weapons

-1-

Krothair and the Kingsguardian stood back to back. It was like a dream come true for the boy. It was just unfortunate the circumstances that it had come true under.

Krothair could hear the force of Angloriel's blows and it spurred him on to fight better than he ever had. His weapon was alive in the air and where it struck, Foglins died. There were hundreds of the beasts surrounding him and Angloriel, but Krothair wasn't frightened, he was simply doing what Ti'Shed had taught him to do. He was a living weapon.

Even when his sword caught in the chitinous armor of a Foglin and became lodged there he didn't panic. He simply reached into his backpack and grabbed the horse's horn he had stored there. It became his new weapon. It didn't matter what he held, or even if he held nothing at all. Krothair was death.

"Your left, boy," Angloriel said.

Krothair had seen it, he had just been waiting for the right time. He threw the horn into the eye socket of the oncoming monster. The flesh around its eye seemed to burn as it dropped to the ground, squealing horribly. Then he unpinned his cloak from his shoulders in one fluid motion and threw it into the face of the next Foglin. He dropped low and kicked out, breaking its knees backwards. The Foglin made a muffled sound as it fell to the ground.

Angloriel now held two swords: his own and Krothair's, which he must have dislodged from the Foglin. The Kingsguardian threw Krothair's blade up in the air and it twisted and spun as Krothair jumped for it. He gripped the hilt in both hands and came down hard, cleaving the skull of another unfortunate Foglin.

He rolled and dislodged the horse horn from the eye socket of the other dead Foglin. It _had_ burned it. Something magical resided within that horn.

"Know your prey," he said aloud, mimicking the figure who had met them here in the Temple. "But more importantly, know your predator."

He stabbed and lunged, taking the lives of two more Foglins, one with each weapon. Both of his weapons ran black with their disgusting blood. It sprayed off as he swung hard, slicing through the neck of another ill-fated monster.

There was something inside of him. He could feel it now. There was a power that burned within that he was drawing on. It could only have been part of his power as a Servitor. He wasn't getting tired, he was barely sweating. Angloriel was the same way.

Krothair saw something Angloriel didn't. A Foglin's clawed arm shot through the air, coming straight for the Kingsguardian's neck. Krothair couldn't stop it with his sword without stabbing Angloriel so he did the only thing he had time for. He stuck his left arm in the way.

The claw pierced into it and Krothair screamed, tugging it away as Angloriel whirled and decapitated the monster.

"Too many," Angloriel said.

Krothair was holding his left arm close to his body. The wound burned and throbbed. And the worst part was that he felt Angloriel was right. The hall was swarming with Foglins.

"Every army has a leader," Angloriel said. "It has to be that man we saw."

Angloriel and Krothair began to wade through the Foglins instead of simply holding their ground. They worked their way back to where they had seen the man, killing as they went.

Krothair's left arm hung at his side while he hewed through more and more Foglins. He had chosen the horse's horn over his sword, letting the other weapon rest in its sheath.

He and Angloriel danced as a team, as if they had trained together their whole lives. And then it dawned on Krothair that Ti'Shed had probably been involved with both of them. Suddenly the boy longed for the old man. He knew it was too much to believe that Ti'Shed would coming surging in, his considerable years of fighting experience turning the tide of this battle.

The old man was sick and wounded back in Haroma. Krothair would have to do this without him.

The two fighters found what they were looking for only moments later.

The robed man stood with his back to a stone wall, and in front of him stood Halimaldie D'Arvenant, his silver dagger held at the man's neck.

Halimaldie was shouting, "What the hell have you done?!"

# Chapter 35

### Brothers

-1-

Halimaldie had recognized that voice, and that recognition had chilled him to the bone.

He'd lost sight of the robed man, and as he searched for him he prayed he wasn't right. Halimaldie passed through the Foglins relatively untouched, as the creatures seemed to be busy with the other targets. His slow advance was stopped only briefly as one lumbered up to him, tongue lolling. Halimaldie held his daggers out, thinking that perhaps this was the end.

"Get away," he said to the Foglin, not feeling the conviction in his voice.

Just then Otom came tearing through, fists on fire, and utterly obliterated the Foglin.

"Thanks!" Halimaldie yelled after him as the Monk ran on to fight somewhere else.

Halimaldie saw the robed man then, across the room. The man had noticed Halimaldie, too, his eyes widening. He turned and began to run.

"Stay right where you are!" Halimaldie yelled.. He felt something within himself burn away, like the tiniest spark of energy leaving him. His coin lost a bit of its glow.

And the robed man stood still.

Halimaldie ran up to him and pushed him against the nearest wall. He brought one of his daggers up to the man's neck and pushed back his hood. He'd been right.

"Tellurian!" Halimaldie shouted. "What the hell have you done?!"

"Only what I felt was right," Tellurian responded. He winced. "What did you do to my head?"

"You think this is right?!" shouted Halimaldie, ignoring the other comment. He indicated the slaughter which was going on in the room.

"It has its purpose."

"I looked up to you,Tellurian! I looked up to you! Do you know how hard that is for me to admit? Please. Please don't let this be true."

"It is truth. Cut my throat or join me. No one will leave this place alive if you don't choose one of those options."

"Your money funded hospitals that saved lives!"

"My money built me undisturbed breeding pits. Hopefully Haroma is overrun as we speak."

"Why did you do this? Why?"

"Kill him, D'Arvenant," said a voice to his left. It was Angloriel.

"Shut up, Kingsguardian! Why, Tellurian? Why!"

"You don't remember when we were growing up. Halimaldie: the one who always knew what to do. Knew how to succeed. People liked you, Hal."

"Don't let this be about petty childhood bullshit, Tell! This is treason!"

Tellurian shook his head. The silver dagger cut him and he winced. "You'll never understand, Hal, because you've always had power. Not everyone's like you. This was _my_ power. These were _my_ operations. I was promised the world for my part. Sometimes things don't work out. So now, kill me or join me." He was silent for a moment, then his face contorted. "KILL ME OR JOIN-"

A sword stabbed into Tellurian's chest, cutting off any further words.

Halimaldie followed the sword up the arm to Angloriel. He swallowed hard, suddenly weak as a kitten.

"He was my brother," Halimaldie said.

"I am sorry, D'Arvenant."

"And I as well," Krothair said.

Tellurian slumped down the wall, red blood marking his path down the stone.

Halimaldie's voice was a whisper. "And I truly did love him."

# Chapter 36

### Written in the Tome

-1-

Wren's eyes fluttered open in the silence.

She lifted her head and found her neck to be incredibly sore. The slash across her chest was pulling, threatening to break open again.

"Shh," Heather said. The old woman was leaning over Wren, working her hands above her.

"Is it over?" Wren asked.

"It's over."

"Tessa and Crasher?"

"They're resting," Heather said. She pointed at the bear and the mouse.

"Thank God," said Wren. "They're alive." She could feel their presences now. She tried to put her hands on her stomach. "My baby!"

"All is well, Wren. You must hold still. I'm almost done."

Some kind of cool magic passed over Wren, tingling her skin as it worked from head to toe.

She sat up as Heather slumped to the floor, exhausted. "That kind of Healing can really take a lot of out you," she said quietly.

Wren looked around. Krothair, Angloriel, and Otom were all nursing wounds, and Halimaldie, though seemingly unscathed, sat in a corner, his legs drawn up tight to his chest, his face haunted. Domma was leaning against Otom's back. It looked at if she might have been weeping, but Wren wasn't sure.

The white foal limped up to Wren and started licking her face.

The room was littered with Foglin corpses. The floor was covered with their black, oozing, blood.

"What do we do now?" she asked. "Has this whole journey been for nothing?"

"I'm not sure," said Heather. "For now we recover, my child."

Wren looked around her at everyone who had a glowing forearm symbol. Everyone's pulsed with the same rhythm.

Raven walked into the room carrying a large tome in her hands. She was struggling under its weight, taking crooked steps. Wren couldn't tell if the girl was wounded or just weak.

"What have you got there, girl?" Angloriel asked, struggling to his feet.

"Found it in a side room," she said between heavy breaths. "You people really should look around more. Haven't any of you got a sense of curiosity?"

"It's been a little difficult," Halimaldie said, darkly. "What with surviving and all."

Raven set - more like dropped - the book down in a clear area of stone. "There was a dead guy with it too," she said. "Had a quill in his hand and everything. Very dedicated writer."

"Maybe we'd better not mess with such artifacts," Heather suggested.

Raven paid no heed and flipped open the cover of the tome, which was easily the size of her torso. She flipped through the first few pages. "Terrible handwriting," she decreed. "Who can read this script?"

"Let me see it," Domma said.

"Allura, wait," Otom said. It was the first words Wren had heard him say. His voice was a whisper.

"Otom! You're talking!" Raven gasped.

"It will be alright," Domma - Allura, apparently - responded to him.

Allura bent over the book and began to read, tracing the lines with her finger. Krothair was checking the bandage on his bloody arm. Halimaldie stood up and began walking over to the tome slowly.

"It seems to be... some sort of transcription," Allura said. "A great portion of it is incoherent babble." She flipped some of the pages. "Looks to be split into five sections..."

"Well, there's five of us with marks," Krothair said.

"Would seem to make sense," Allura agreed. "I think I can read it, but it might be slow going at first. This is really something that belongs in the Bibliofero at Haroma..."

"If you think we can carry that heavy-ass book back to the city, be my guest," said Raven.

"I could carry it," Krothair offered.

"Aye," said Angloriel.

"Otom could carry it," Raven said. "He's huge!"

"Quiet," Allura warned. "We'll worry about that later. I shouldn't have even said anything. There's a symbol on this page that looks like yours." Allura was indicating Wren.

"Me?" the girl squeaked.

"Yes. Shall I read what is written under it?"

Wren's heart pounded and she felt dizzy. But there was the vine and thorns at the top of the page, just like the symbol on her arm. "Yes," she said.

"To the Chosen Protector," Allura began. "If you are to undertake the next part of your quest, you must grow in knowledge and power. Your path leads you far, to new soil. Near the town of Benshar, there is nature's work to be done. Take the blade you possess, for brandishing it in the right people's presence will allow access to the inner workings of a corrupted place. You will have to pose as something you are not, in order to do what is right."

"Benshar is in western Shailand," Angloriel said. "Why would this book send you into enemy territory?"

"War's over, Kingsguardian," Allura said.

"I'm actually from near there anyway," Wren said timidly. "But... who is ordering this?"

"I guess it would be God."

"Oh, I'm so sick of him," Halimaldie said. "Get to my part would ya? I now have no idea who's been running my empire. It sure hasn't been my brother." He coughed and breathed out. "I have to get back if we're almost done here."

Allura flipped through the pages, coming upon the one with the coin at the top.

"To the Chosen Benefactor," Allura read. "Your task is the simplest and toughest at the same time. Since the beginning of time, men of power have tried to harness the world. Always grasping for more and more. You will need great power in the future. Therefore, you must find worthy causes and donate everything that you own to them. Your entire fortune must be split up and-"

"You can stop right there," Halimaldie said, cutting her off. "I don't mean to seem difficult here, but I did just watch my brother die. Now a book, written by a dead guy, is telling me to give up the only things I have left in my life."

"You have to do what it says," Krothair protested.

"No I fucking well do not, kid," Halimaldie said. "It's insanity. This is all insanity. You know I almost started to _trust_ all of this shit."

"You can't run from this. You can't scrub your mark away," Wren said timidly. "I've tried."

"I'm going back to Haroma."

"Just when we're getting so close to the answers?" Otom whispered.

"I have a lot of patience. But this is it, fellow glowing friends. We're being had. Doing the bidding of some invisible force we don't understand. It's great to pretend. It's great to think we're a part of something bigger. It's been a cargo hold of laughs. But I'm done with it now." He turned to leave.

"Please don't go, Hal," Allura said.

But it didn't make a difference. Halimaldie walked through the large main door, his glowing symbol fading into the trees.

There was silence for a long time.

"Read mine," Otom whispered. "If this is truly a divine plan, I will trust it. God has been good to me lately." He smiled at Allura.

Allura thumbed through the book until she found the page that had the fish at the top.

"To the Chosen Monk," she said, her voice wavering. "You have sacrificed much to get here. But now I will ask a greater task of you than has ever been asked before. In order for your power to grow, you must sacrifice the most difficult thing in the world. Your... love." Allura stumbled over the last word.

"What?" Otom whispered. He stood up.

"You are not to be with the Chosen Devotee," Allura continued, her voice shaken. "Your paths must diverge. You will go with the Chosen Protector, as you are in possession of something that will aid her quest."

Wren looked at Otom. His face was despondent as he looked back at her. She thought she could see tears welling in his eyes.

"Oh, Wren!" exclaimed Raven. "We're going to be the best of friends!" The woman came over and put her arm around Wren, squeezing with an annoying tightness.

"Perhaps Halimaldie was right," Otom said. "Perhaps we should abandon this quest right now."

"No," Allura said. She breathed out. "Have faith, Otom. Fate brought us together once, it will bring us together again. If we are faithful. I made a promise that I would be."

Otom stood silent for a moment, looking every inch a pillar of strength. But Wren could tell he was devastated on the inside.

"Where are you to go, then?" Otom asked Allura, his throat tight, his voice still a whisper.

Allura paged through the book until she came upon the page with a picture of the sun in the sky.

"To the Chosen Devotee. The island nation of Trirene has ever lacked faith in me and my miracles. Their inner workings are mostly beyond my sight. Bring me there. Their powers must not be wasted in the conflict to come."

"Missionary work," Otom said flatly. "Across the sea."

"It would seem so."

"I'll take care of Otom," Raven offered.

Allura shook her head. "I don't know how I feel about that."

Raven looked confused and then backed away from Allura a little bit.

"Read mine," Krothair said. The boy looked nervous, but anxious.

Allura flipped again, finding the page with the broken sword symbol sketched on it.

"To the Chosen Servitor," she read. "You are to train in the ways of the Servitor, in the paths of many of the greatest Kingsguardians, but you will not train in the city of Haroma. You will turn yourself over to the Royal Force of Marshanti. Your training will be completed by those which you have never known, in a city you have never seen."

Krothair listened to his quest with a blank look on his face. He sighed.

"The Royal Force," Angloriel said. "What a bunch of fuckin' pussies. It should be _our_ duty to train young Krothair. Oh, King Maxton will not like this in the least. I think this tome plays games with us."

"I cannot say what it does or does not do," Allura said. "All I can urge, as a Cleric of the Sunburst Temple, is that we trust it. No matter what you believe, events have led us all together for a reason."

"But now we are only four of five," Krothair noted.

"Halimaldie will come back to us," Allura said. "Like Wren pointed out, he can't escape his fate any more than the rest of us can. No matter... no matter how much he may wish to."

"What is the point of all this?" Wren asked. "There's no reasons given."

"We must grow in power to be able to complete some task," Allura said, shrugging. "I have questioned God and flown in his face too many times during my life. I am not about to rekindle my old habits. I will go to Trirene and establish his word and his teachings there. I hope, along the way, things will become clearer to me. But until then, I suggest we go our separate ways, safe in the knowledge that there are mighty hands at work here."

"This is gonna make one hell of a story," Raven said.

"If we live to tell it," Otom whispered.

The colt came and nuzzled Wren's hand, and she stroked its foreheads, feeling the nodule that grew there.

The great hall was silent as Allura slowly closed the heavy lid of the tome.

Continued in Book 2...

For more novels and more information visit: www.michaelmood.com/novels

Acknowledgments:

Thank you to my beta readers: Bryan Early, Eric Schooff, Jim Igielski, Megan Kehl, Adam Stapleton, Jenni Mood, Marsha Mood, Alan Mood, Jeff Ingebritsen, Callie Ingebritsen, Evan Riley, Becky Riley, Sara Zanton, and Jenna Mood.

