Book 3 Chapter 15

INTERLUDE 7D: THE TRUTH

“The Arch-Wizard represents true expression. Action for its own sake. The inner state instantiated outwards. Reversed, he represents the bottleneck of unexpected energies. The crumbling of the idea when practical application fails.”

– from ‘Tarot for Beginners’

19th Lynara, 997 NE

“Follow your brothers! Don’t let them get lost! If they get lost, it’s on your head, young lady!”

Papa always said it in a joking tone, but she always took her task seriously. They were three and four years younger than her, and her very earliest memory was Mama letting her help out with swaddling the first of her brothers, not long after he was born. She took protecting them to heart. More than once she’d gotten herself involved in their arguments with the kids from the village, and one time when her brothers got surrounded she’d even broken a twelve-year-old’s nose with a single wallop. It’d been satisfying, seeing the insolent little bully turn into a whinging mess of tears and blood, and, that night, after Papa sorted everything out with the boy’s parents, he rewarded her with an extra helping of sweet apple. He told her she was brave, and a good sister, and his favourite… but that she’d have to let the boys throw their own punches from time to time or they’d never get the hang of it.

She’d felt brave, and she’d felt like a good big sister. She even felt like his favourite – of course, the future of the family name depended on the boys, into one of whose hands the house would inevitably pass one day. She knew that the boys were more important. However, that didn’t mean Papa liked them more; if anything he seemed to find them a constant source of irritation, especially when put next to his mature, responsible daughter…

But when it came down to letting them fight – there was no way she was going to stand by if they were about to take a beating. It just wasn’t in her nature. She would start swinging, and let their opponents strike at her instead – not that they ever did. Whether it was the confidence with which she stepped up, her sternest expression on her face, or just the fear of getting slapped around by a girl – most of them decided to leave it once she got involved.

It didn’t look like she was going to need her sternest expression today. When she threw on her cloak and stepped out into the scrub-covered wheat fields she saw to her surprise that the boys weren’t heading down to the river, where the rest of their peers would be gathering under the tree-cover on a cool, rainy afternoon like this one. No, they were heading for the actual wood itself, for their secret dens and hidey-holes scattered throughout the dense bushes under the eaves. The nearside of the wood itself was basically a big playground to her brothers; Papa said there were no wolves to fear these days, and it’d been two years since they saw the bear that lived on the far side of the wood. The boys spent their day climbing trees and building a swing; she spent her morning shouting at them when they climbed too high, shouting at them when they nearly choked in the rope’s loops. When she got a minute, she’d retrieve her carefully-hidden treasure and read a few pages of the raunchy Mundic romance novel she’d bought for two pennies at the market – without her parents’ knowlege.

By the time the boys started to show signs they were running out of energy, her throat was hoarse from all the yelling, but her eyes weren’t tired.

It was only as the shadows were lengthening and she gave thought to the notion of shouting some more, getting them to come down and follow her back home, that she realised what she was hearing.

Right behind her, she recognised the sound of dragging footsteps, boots scraping leaves through the top layer of dry soil – whoever was sneaking up on her, they were trying to be quiet.

She wasn’t frightened – not here, within sprinting distance of the house – but she was surprised by the sudden, slow approach of a stranger. When she turned, she had it in her head that it was going to be one of the local kids playing a prank on her – she was already raising her hand to give them a good whack across the nose.

Her hand fell, dangling limp from a shaking wrist, when she saw the three men approaching. These weren’t kids – the one in the lead was older than Papa, his beard matted and head bald, and the two behind him weren’t much younger.

They were almost upon her.

Her shriek came dry from her throat, a fruitless attempt at warning. A croak escaped her instead.

“Quiet down now, pretty,” said the vile man in front. She could see that his beard was matted with something that looked rancid and, now he was so close to her, smelt even worse. “Nice and quiet…”

She’d been backing away, operating on pure instinct, but it was far too little and far too late – he extended his arm, his filthy fingers reaching out for her –

“Em!” yelled Dolin, crashing through the undergrowth towards her – before she could do anything he barged into the space between them, knocking the man’s arm aside. “You leave my sister alone!” he insisted, with all the innocence only youth could muster.

Yibben was on his heels, stumbling out of the same patch of bushes with a little less grace than his older brother. “Yeah!” he cried defiantly, heading to stand at Dolin’s side –

She watched all this, immobilised by her terror, the weirdness of this feeling. She knew she and her brothers were at the dubious mercy of these strangers. She knew they had to be away from here, but she was more rooted to the spot than the very trees.

“No,” she croaked – but it was too late.

Before she could tell what was happening, what she had to do, all her options had been closed off to her – except one, the worst one…

The man in the lead grabbed Dolin by the white-blond locks, while one of his two followers clawed his fingers into Yibben’s, pulling at the little boy’s scalp until he screeched.

She was fast. She ran towards home, screaming for Papa, for Mama, for Dovans the Just to descend from Celestium to save them. At first, as she ran through the trees, she heard footfalls pounding along behind her – the third of the three men must’ve been giving chase – but by the time she could see the edge of the wood and the slope of the field beyond, she realised the hammering sound following her whichever route she chose was just her heartbeat, a figment of her terror.

She didn’t slow, though, and her yells brought Papa tearing out of the house to meet her halfway across the weed-choked meadow.

Her incoherent rambling sufficed to give him a general idea of what had happened, and, two minutes after he’d passed her by, plunging into the wood with nothing but a hunting knife, she’d recovered her breath enough to follow.

Mama went to fetch their relatives, and they went to fetch the sheriff; they didn’t call off the search for almost three days.

Yibben and Dolin Reyd were never found alive, nor whole.

After the service was held, blessing their remains in absentia, cursing those who took them from their loved ones – after it was over, Linnard Reyd never, ever mentioned them again.

And Emrelet Reyd would have to live with it, her decision, her failure, the last memories of her brothers in their defiance, protecting her… she would have to live with it for the rest of her life.

* * *

11th Enyara, 998 NE

“You’re awful quiet, missy.”

The bargeman behind her kept his voice hushed, despite the clamour of the other deck passengers. Em was sitting on the lip at the stern of the boat, leaning down to dangle her hand in the water rippling in the vessel’s wake. The spring weather was warm, and the liquid pleasant to the touch.

“Yah? Vould you vont me to make as much noise as zem?” she asked, not turning.

The young bargeman chuckled, and fell silent, poling at the bank without further comment as they went around the bend; she could see his long stick out of the corner of her eye, stabbing at the walls of mud and weeds, keeping them from sliding into the tangles of thorns coating the levee.

Once again she sensed his interest in her; she’d known about the attraction for days now. The clean-shaven, pleasant-faced man had hardly been able to hide his covetous looks and, truth be told, she didn’t exactly hate it. He wasn’t bad looking, if a little short for her, and she found that it was nice to be reminded of normality like this. The way he tried to hang around near her whenever his work allowed, tried to make small-talk… A lot of the boys back home had been attracted to her, but her tough exterior had always scared them off. Now, everything was different. Now, she didn’t feel so tough.

Mama and Papa were back there behind her in their accustomed spot on the starboard side, just another pocket of silence amidst the swarm of activity buzzing across the deck. Some of the travellers making their way to Mund were small-time traders with a few bags or crates of goods, and these people looked bored, flipping through the pages of books or chatting idly with those nearby – but many were immigrants just like the Reyds, and most of these were excited, excitable people, giddy at the prospect of entering the capital city, finally making a life for themselves in the jewel of the world. The youngsters in particular were unbearable, constantly questioning their elders and refusing to take the first or even fiftieth answers they were given – a trio of giggling girls, a couple of years younger than Em, were especially demanding, daydreaming loudly together about what they’d do when they finally arrived. (Mostly seducing the heirs to vast fortunes and finding the most beautiful horses to ride…) Hence her seeking out the relative calmness at the rear of the vessel, her hand in the cool water.

Em had no such hopes as the others. Mund was supposed to be a grinder of men, and everyone knew it, as much as they might deny it to themselves. None of them onboard this barge would ever be rich or famous. None of them would ever be anything. Even Papa knew it. If it weren’t for… what had happened back home…

Papa wanted to leave, so we left, she reminded herself. As bad as Mund is, it can’t be as bad as the cannibals. It doesn’t matter the cost. Life will be hard, but it will be life.

She was young, filled with all the same vibrant energy as all the other girls in the Realm. She wanted to look to her future; select her destiny; contend with fate. She didn’t want to be rich and famous, but she wanted be someone. Maybe even have a husband and kids, someday. Her brothers… She was the only one left to give her parents grandchildren, now. The burden of maintaining the line of her family had fallen to her – and with her the Reyd name would die…

She wanted to live.

She looked at the bargeman over her shoulder and cast him a coquettish smile.

He would’ve been her type, if he were a bit taller, a bit less stout. He had a fair complexion, and nice hair, a cool, confident smile…

“So no book, today, miss? Found something else you’d rather look at?”

He indicated the Briarflow passing beneath them as he spoke, but his eyes twinkled; she understood his hidden meaning and her smile broadened.

“Perhap zere is something,” she admitted – then fate struck the first blow, destiny deciding to be a complete jerk: the barge lurched, coming to a sudden stop. This toppled her backwards into the boat, off the edge of the vessel; she banged her head on the deck and landed in a twisted heap.

Embarrassment swept over her, igniting every parcel of her exposed skin with burning fire. She did her best to laugh as she started to disentangle herself from her dress and the bit of rope her foot got caught in. It was important, to be able to laugh at yourself; that was what Mama had always told her.

At least I didn’t fall into the water, she thought ruefully – and when she caught a glimpse of her would-be-suitor, she felt even better about her predicament. The sudden lurch had unbalanced him too, and the young bargeman teetered right on the very lip, one foot in the air to help him find his equilibrium as he leaned into the riverbank with the tip of his pole –

“Trolls!” someone howled.

At first it didn’t sink in – Em scrambled to her feet and moved across the deck towards her parents without thinking her actions through, knowing only that she had to come close to them: Papa would know what to do; Papa always knew what to do –

Then, over the milling, teeming crowd, she saw them.

The trolls were unthinkably tall; they were lean and stringy-looking except for their protruding bellies, their knotted muscle, the overlarge heads. The flesh covering their bodies was hairless, silver-black like fish-scales, the surfaces of their limbs marked with ridges similar to tree-bark. And, by the looks of things, they were damming-up the river – they’d hauled trees from somewhere, and were throwing them sidelong into the water’s course.

Right here the Briarflow was cutting through a wide, featureless moor, with some low hills she didn’t know the names of sitting on the horizon whenever it came into view over the riverbank. Sources of cover like groves and hollows were few and far between, from what she’d seen of her surroundings. There was no house to go to, nowhere to flee to, no escaping their doom.

Papa wouldn’t know what to do. There wasn’t anything anyone could do. They’d fled Onsolor, running from the cannibals straight into the clutches of creatures that wouldn’t even cook them first. They would be eaten alive, squalling child and roaring adult disappearing alike into those monstrous, fang-lined holes…

She watched as the front of the barge buckled under the weight of the first troll, the monster leaping fully onto the deck, swiping out with all its limbs.

People were hurled, screaming or already comatose from injury or sheer shock, into the waiting arms of the trolls on either side. They chewed their captives, looking on while the one on the barge made its way up from the prow towards the stern, knocking the travellers off into the water by the dozen. Fanged mouths split open across their faces, maws stretching ear to ear closing down on the heads of men, women and children.

Everyone ran for the back, except Em, who struggled against the flow of panicked flesh instead. Bit by bit she was approaching the lead troll but she didn’t even see it, trying as she was to find Mama and Papa in the crush of moving bodies –

A massive hand crunched down on her forearm, the pain of lacerated skin making her wrist burn and itch.

She swung her head up, taking in the titanic troll that’d jumped onto the deck of the barge right beside her. The titanic troll that was standing on two corpses, people who’d been alive until three seconds ago, when it decided to leap across from the riverbank.

It was flexing its arm. It was going to lift her into the air, consume her right then and there, or hurl her aside. Either way, she would be dead in seconds.

The unfairness of it all seared her mind. Dovans the Just had never answered her cries when her brothers were… when her brothers were taken, and she didn’t expect the god to change his –

The troll’s grip tightened; he raised her up, lifting her kicking and screaming into the air – and the world burst into colour.

That was what it was like – it was as though she’d been going around seeing in black and white until this moment. It wasn’t just the earthen walls on either side of the Briarflow calling out to her, or even the water beneath the barge – the air itself was alive, a pulsing, trembling entity, like she held a bird of unbelievable size in her hands, feeling its chest rising and falling.

For all of an instant, Em thought it was the god doing it, Dovans finally responding to her desperate prayer. But then she realised: Dovans wouldn’t have filled her heart with such hate, such a driving need for vengeance.

This is all me.

The air was too soft between her fingers, needing a more-delicate touch than she could apply, for now at least – and the earth was too heavy, too solid, too unresponsive at this stage. She could sense the fire, the unquenchable heat of wizardry, but only in abstract; it wasn’t there in front of her for her to grab, mould, wield.

The water. The water responded.

The elemental rose from the river, instantly depleting it, the barge sinking at least three feet in the blink of an eye. It must’ve been that sense of inequity, injustice driving her: when the watery creature rose from the Briarflow it used its gargantuan ‘arms’ of solidified fluid to pick up the troll holding her.

When the monster dropped Emrelet, she didn’t plummet, didn’t break her ankle when she fell back to the boat – there was no thump. She floated, a silken ribbon of breeze softening her descent. And before her feet even touched down lightly on the boards, the troll was trying to escape.

The elemental she’d instinctively conjured had a mind of its own; whether it was feeding off her unconscious thoughts or a separate, alien intelligence from the Plane of Water, she had no idea. Either way, it wasn’t letting the troll go without a fight. She found that it responded to her, its constituent river-water still at her command – when it reached out its vast, shimmering arms and squeezed the struggling troll she was able to tighten its dark grip, shear the monster in two.

But its blood fell, not as a fluid but as a rain of chips of red glass. She’d torn it in half at the stomach – its pelvis and legs landed on the edge of the deck, the upper body and head falling onto the bank – yet it was already healing. The legs withered away in seconds, shrinking to black twigs, like the severed legs of a frog left for hours in the sun. But the upper body – the troll dragged its massive, snapping head about and already the bleeding had stopped, pale, crablike flesh regrowing and hardening…

Before the two little fleshy sticks could fully-transform into new legs, she had her elemental reach out, take up the troll once more.

She cast about.

So many people were dead. So many more were doomed to die. Mere heartbeats away. Admittedly, some of the trolls were drawing away – those that’d noticed the gargantuan water elemental amongst them – but at least four of the trolls were facing the wrong way, too fixated on the kill to notice how to tables had turned.

No more.

Her mind worked its magic, and the river had an arm for each of them. Even the one that’d sprung clear off the barge onto the embankment, running away as fast as its loping legs would take it – the watery coil stretched out, far faster than even the monster could move, snaring it by its throat and reeling it in.

It made it look like the banks were growing on either side of the boat, the way the river-level sank down when she was calling on its reserves. More water came rushing in, of course, and she knew the earth wasn’t rising up – not because such a thing was impossible, but because she now knew that if it did, she’d be able to feel it.

Then the water flooded back. The elemental arms retracted. All at once the barge rose up to its previous level, and there were no trolls anywhere to be seen.

Perhaps she couldn’t see them, but she could feel them fighting it. They were dying down there, trying to thrash, failing to escape her grip.

Succeeding at drowning.

She found Mama and Papa – they were safe. Startled, but safe. Afterwards, she looked for the bargeman, expecting to find him amongst the dead – she was surprised to discover that fate had spared her that insult. He was there, alive and well, one of the many she’d saved with her miraculous new powers. He lined up like the others to thank and congratulate her.

She didn’t tell anyone it took a full five minutes, five long minutes before the last of the trolls ceased its futile writhing. She went about the barge, trying her hardest to ignore what she was doing with her power as she spoke to people.

Trying to ignore the question, hitting her mind like a hammer, relentless:

Why now? Why now? Why now?

And despite his gratitude the bargeman never looked at her the same way again; by the time they reached the immigrant-camps of Mund the taste of her newfound wizardry had already begun to sour.

* * *

29th Enyara, 998 NE

“Mistress Keliko Henthae,” she repeated.

“Your pronunciation is very good, child. Please, take a seat.”

The old woman slid into her chair with a surprisingly-athletic grace, but Emrelet remained standing. She managed to keep the disdain from her voice, though.

“If you please, I am no longer a child.”

“That only becomes clearer each time you speak.” Henthae sighed. “And it is, after all, the reason you’re useful to us. We don’t employ actual children, you see, yet you’ll forgive me if I think of you as young. Very few of our employees are undergraduates. You will be able to shake things up, so to speak. Please, do sit down, my dear woman. I’ve been on my feet all day and it’s tiring me out just looking at you.”

The chair, its headrest carved into the likeness of a hippogriff or some such creature, was cushioned in dark blue leather. Emrelet sat, a small smile on her face, and found it to be surprisingly comfortable. She faced the magister again, noting for the first time the strange painting on the wall – a flying forest, burning as it fell into a desert.

“We aren’t in the business of letting those with power like yours roam around unchecked. The things you’ve done –”

“I saved zose people,” she murmured. “Do you say zis to all ze prospective champions?”

“Prospective champions rarely utilise such extreme methods in the pursuit of justice.”

The hair on the back of Emrelet’s neck bristled. She’d condensed the water-flow right out of the air over the man’s head, forced his chin back, pouring the fluid into his lungs.

He took a child, she wanted to growl.

But she reined herself in. She knew where she was. She knew what the risks were.

Henthae seemed to have been waiting for her to conclude her thoughts before continuing: “You are smart, Miss Reyd. I’ll give you that. Committed. Productive. Ruthless.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t interrupt.

“Our tests don’t lie,” the magister continued. “The truth is, you’re needed for something bigger. Something better.”

“Bigger zan being a champion? I can imagine no such thing.”

“You’re living it. Life, Miss Reyd. Here, I give you freely the most precious gift conceivable. Take my advice: do not become a champion if you wish to live.”

Emrelet raised an eyebrow. “You’re offering me –”

“A danger-free life? No, Miss Reyd, don’t you be alarmed; you’ll have your fair share of excitement if you choose to join us. A share of tedium too, of course – it isn’t my intention to deceive you. But the risks are measured. Many of our arch-magisters retire after decades of diligent service, with full pay and honours. Our champions… let us just say that they are far more prone to workplace fatalities. In some instances, even in the midst of an Infernal Incursion, demons of abhorrent power have been known to seek them out in person and scatter their remains.”

She clasped her ring-laden fingers together, sitting forwards with a shrewd look on her face. “Wouldn’t you rather tell your parents you have the weight of the Magisterium at your back? A secure job – one you’ll even find fun, I’ll warrant. I can ensure you have a splendid career, Miss Reyd. If you’re half as smart as I think, you’ll agree to take our glyphstone, mull it over.” Henthae sat back once more, smiling now. “You should visit again – we could tour Magicrux Altra, the very apex of the Maginox, and discuss your duties.” She seemed to notice Emrelet’s sceptical expression and waved her hand. “Potential duties, of course…”

Have I been enchanted? she wondered later, when she was flying back through the night air towards the tent in which they’d been sleeping for the past eight days. The word ‘enchanted’ in her native Onsoloric, the form in which she thought it, was ivienach; enchantment as a type of magery was inseparable from its connotations of witchcraft, black magic. Yet Henthae had been… what was it? What made her so likeable? Could it be that she was working spells over her? Surely the Magisterium would find out – such a thing would be incredibly illegal… Wouldn’t it?

She didn’t know – yet – but she had the means to find out.

Lying under the sheepskin blankets with dozens of others, buried in the scents of so many unwashed bodies, she opened the book Henthae had given her and, by wizard-light under the covers, whiled away the hours reading.

* * *

23rd Orovost, 998 NE

“How much longer, do you think?” she asked, still staring at the huge stone steps that started the spiral, looking between the bodies of those joining the staircase to find those descending around the bend.

“It’s Mistress Henthae,” Ciraya said in her usual droning, raspy voice, leaning on the pillar next to them. It was like she was simultaneously inflecting every single word for emphasis, and none of them at all. “You know what she’s like. This might take some time.”

Emrelet moved forward against the crowd to quickly peer up at the clock. The lengths of crystal representing clock-hands, up there high on the wall overlooking the crowds, were suggesting eight-fifteen.

We have to go, she thought. What was Henthae playing at, sending me away? Does she intend for me to be faced with a disciplinary?

She’d just faced off against Dustbringer himself, but she was experiencing more turmoil right now, trapped in her indecision. Everything that had been drummed into her over the last months told her that she and Ciraya needed to get on back to Sticktown, yet surely Mistress Henthae knew that she wouldn’t leave without Kastyr – without Kas…

Everything had moved so fast over the last twenty-four hours, she hardly knew what to do with herself. Meeting a champion on his first real excursion into the wider world of his chosen profession had fired her up inside, reawakened dreams that she’d thought long forgotten. She might’ve only been in the city for a matter of months but being the perfect magister, the perfect student… it was her life now, her new reality. She’d created a new self out of the ashes of the failure of a sister, the freak of an archmage, and she was useful here, needed for Incursions, for dealing with the serious threats. She could be somebody… Wasn’t that what everyone wanted, most of all? To matter? To make a mark on the world?

For all that Henthae said otherwise, she’d seen magisters die in battle. She knew the true stakes, nowadays, and if anything she was still with the Magisterium due to inertia.

She hadn’t realised the face she was pulling, but then of its own accord her tongue clicked, making it sound like she was tutting.

“It is time ve don’t have,” she said, to cover for the noise.

“Relax. We’re late, some idiot takes us in the room for a chat to ask us, ‘Do you realise how your lateness affects the Magisterium’s ability to police the streets?’ Blah blah blah…” Ciraya was grinning. “I think it goes a little deeper. You pining for your new boyfriend?”

“He’s not – vell, votezzer he is to me – zat’s none of your business!”

“Mmmmm,” the sorceress purred, “I never thought to see our brave leader so confounded. Distracted, even, I’d say. You got it bad, girl. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. He’s alright.”

Emrelet scowled, looking back at the spiral staircase, and Ciraya just chuckled, which only made it worse.

Would she talk like this to an archmage who didn’t come from Onsolor, one who wasn’t dirt-poor?

Ciraya was older than her by a year or so, and more experienced in many ways… she was almost a role-model to her, in spite of everything. Emrelet was doing her best to catch up to the spoiled brats from other lands, those sent here on scholarships, not immigrant wagons… But they were so far ahead of her, their every word and glance took on a double-meaning, a mockery the likes of which she’d never thought to encounter. The sorceress wasn’t highborn, wasn’t special, but her easygoing attitude – the familiarity of it – could grate on Emrelet sometimes.

“Look… boss… You know what they say about foresight. Things still look different in hindsight. I really am sorry about that business before on Mud Lane.”

She turned back to the black-robed mage and was surprised to find there was no smirk twisting the painted lips.

Ciraya coolly returned her gaze, not going any further in her explanation. The silence was awkward.

“So… Belexor… again,” Emrelet said, by way of peace-offering. “I couldn’t believe he vould use ze strength-enhancement just to humiliate ozzers –“

“Called it,” Ciraya murmured.

“– but to kidnap a champion, to change his shape like zat… Vot voz he thinking?”

“This is the end of the line for the boy, if you ask me.” The smirk was back now. “Good riddance, too. Fe never liked him, not one bit.”

“It’s ze feazzers. It gets right up your nose.”

“Ha-haaah… maybe. Or the reek of cowardice.”

Then she saw them, and stepped away from the pillar, beaming.

At last… and he’s not in bindlaces.

Henthae came over to the edge of the space with Kas at her side, and, just from the tone of her mentor’s voice, Emrelet obtained the answer to her question before it was all spelt out.

He’ll not do their bidding.

“This is an interesting one you girls found last night.” She looked at Kas, then back at Emrelet and Ciraya. “I don’t think he will be signing up any time soon, but he has promised to consider it, and I think we can work with him either way.”

She smiled, hearing this, and went to take his hand. He still looked nervous.

“Could I have a word, Emrelet?” Mistress Henthae asked as soon as she had hold of him. “I realise the time.“

Emrelet met his eyes under the hood, his gaze still a bit wild. “Feychilde – vould you go on ahead? I can catch up.”

“Sure,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze before releasing it.

“I’ll walk you out,” Ciraya said to him. “Fe needs a run. Em, I’ll meet you at base.”

There it is. Not ‘boss’ this time. Not ‘Emrelet’, even.

She fought back the scowl that threatened to reclaim her features because Kas was looking directly at her – then she turned away, bowing her head to listen to Henthae. She followed her into the crowd while Kas and Ciraya turned aside and made for the exit.

“Thank you for your efforts today, mingling with the local champions.”

“That’s not exactly vot I voz doing…”

Henthae laughed warmly. “Oh, don’t worry, I know you’ve become infatuated with our new arch-sorcerer there –“

“Mistress! Zat is not –“

“Please, Emrelet, don’t insult my intelligence. No, I do not need my power in order to recognise this; I was young once. If you were trying to hide it, take from this the lesson that you are inept at such games and should avoid them in future, or improve your skills, if you wish to present a believable face to your audience.”

The wizard stopped dead and the enchanter wheeled about, looking her directly in the eyes.

“If you want to cuddle up with a champion, go ahead. You want to hold his hand through the cold nights and fight the forces of hell with him, do your worst. But I will leave you these words of warning, my dear, for I do care about you: do not fall for him?” It was strange, the inquisitive nature of the phrase. “Don’t expect to wear his ring or take his name or bear his children. This one is – champions are dangerous, in love. Enemies sharpen their blades. When friends cut you, the knife is blunt; the pain is worse. You can’t see it and neither can he, but this one is covered in razors. His fate is full already. Heed my words.”

Mistress Henthae patted her fondly on the arm, then took her leave, heading back to the stairs. Emrelet turned on her heel and left the Maginox – within a minute she was taking Feychilde up into the purple darkness, up into the winds that patrolled the emptiness, beneath the constellations burning bright.

She heeded Henthae’s words, but she thought all along that she took from them a message Henthae hadn’t intended.

She wanted to be with Kas, at least to see how things went between them, if he would have her. She still wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was interested in her – he’d been looking at her the same as the bargeman on the Briarflow, the same as Elkostor and Belexor… but there were differences. His eyes were harder to read. There was less lust in his gaze, more… something. Something wistful, bregabor, perhaps. It was entirely possible she’d make a complete fool of herself if she made the first move, but she was tempted to anyway.

Emrelet didn’t think he’d connected the two – the way she’d taken to him when he’d caught the Cannibal Six, and the story of Onsolor’s descent into the starving-madness. She understood the connection quite clearly. If there was ever going to be a sign that a man was right for her, it was this. It might’ve seemed superficial to someone else, but she didn’t care. She was herself.

Henthae was wrong. He was what she needed. Even if he did cut her she would welcome the pain, welcome the change in herself again like she had done with the last. If she kept changing, chasing, she could flee it, outrun what she had done. Forget what she’d let happen.

Be someone else.

She was about to kiss him, but he kissed her first. She held onto him like they were each two halves of a whole, once separated, now together again.

She changed. She forgot.

Yet forgetting carried its own perils. It wasn’t his death that would cut her, but his own tumultuous change – and when he did the pain of the blade would be unlike anything she could have ever imagined. It would reopen the old wounds, scars deeper than the skin, hidden from his sight. Henthae would speak the words that would shatter her self-image.

And she would cut him back, twice as savagely.

* * *

6th Illost, 998 NE

“Ah me!” The weasely man in armour raised his visor; the prop helmet might’ve looked convincing at a distance, but Emrelet could tell with her power that none of it was real metal – just painted wood. “How couldst thou think the Grand Marshal highborn, Low Motty? Forsooth I am so crude in mine eye e’en as thou!”

The actor’s seriousness was perfect – not just his face and voice, but the foppish way he touched his clothes, adjusting and readjusting them constantly.

“Yer right, me lord,” said the second man. “Yer gonna eat that there rat or yer savin’ it?”

The Oldtown crowd roared with laughter. Emrelet joined in despite her frustration, and when she looked at Kas in the seat beside her she was gratified to see he was in stitches.

“Oh, oh, owwww,” he moaned, clutching his sides as he stared down over the rail at the stage. “Twelve Hells, this is better than weaving. Thanks for this.”

“My pleasure.” She put her hand on his knee and he covered it with his own.

Mistress Henthae was always going to the theatre, and Emrelet had longed for months to see what all the fuss was about, but she’d had no idea where to start – then Ilitar had recommended the play to her when he overheard her grumbling, and said she ought to take Kas. She understood his meaning, now. She didn’t suppose it was the kind of thing she could talk to Henthae about, though. She got the impression the theatres Henthae attended were a little more ‘highbrow’. She doubted the Tale of Low Motty and the Grand Marshal’s Weapon was of much historical significance, outside of the opportunity it presented to ridicule the upper classes.

“Then behold, Low Motty, this most fantasmalous of inventions, the chamberpot.” The armoured weasel was gesturing enthusiastically. “Lo, should it be filled thou canst leave it be, and ere the morn dawns it shall yawn agape, empty once more!”

“Where’s it go, d’yer suppose, me lord?”

The ‘highborn’ looked shocked at this. “Best man of all men; I know not!”

His expression unchanging, completely devoid of any trace of slyness, Low Motty pressed: “Then, doth tonight not present yer with an opp-tunee-tee unlike any other?”

“My good man indeed!” The weasely face was fixed in cunning aspect as he brandished an upraised finger in the direction of the bucket. “Prithee awake shall I stayeth this night, and watcheth the potteth with both eyes unclosedeth!”

She sighed, then caught Kas looking at her with an appraising glint in his eyes.

“Vot?” she murmured, nestling closer to him.

“Oh, nothing… I was just, you know – thinking.”

“Yes?”

“You know – maybe we should get out of here. Get changed…”

“Kastyr,” she said reproachfully, thumping his chest lightly with the heel of her hand.

“Not like that! I mean – you know…”

Ahh. She recognised his smile.

Now that was an offer she couldn’t refuse. She nodded, and followed him up the aisle, out through the lobby, and into the nearest alley.

It didn’t take Kas’s fairy long to find them a spot of trouble. Feychilde and Stormsword interrupted some dark druids trying to poison the drinking water where the Blackrush came flowing down to Sticktown out of Hilltown. While the arch-sorcerer interrogated the leader she put on her gloves of stone, gave the others a well-deserved clobbering, then transported the captives to Magicrux Jelix. And when she was finished talking to him, the local magister-captain hailed her as Stormsword.

It was the first time someone she didn’t already know had used the name, and she liked it. For the first time since arriving in the city, she was a champion. It wasn’t just some dream. It wasn’t theoretical, as it had been when she’d attended the Gathering. This was real. She received recognition from someone who wasn’t an archmage.

Soaring back up over the jail, she closed her eyes, let the coldness of the night blanket her. She couldn’t feel anything.

Stormsword. She loved it; she loved hearing it – it sounded just right in the watchman’s mouth. Just like she’d imagined, since the twenty-seventh, since the Incursion.

Since she died, and almost shied away from her destiny.

Feychilde was fluttering over to her a little unsteadily, his azure wings flapping – more for show than out of necessity, she believed. Or maybe it just came instinctively to him now, to flap, as though the wings interacted in any comprehensible way with the air…

She was smiling, probably deliriously, given the way his own smile seemed cautious, almost nervous.

“Ahhh, Feychilde – you know the way to a girl’s heart.”

“Better than the theatre?” he asked, putting his arms around her.

“Beating up bad guys was never so much fun!”

“Then my pleasure.” He sank down a couple of feet in the air, awkwardly placing his hand on her knee through the folds of her robe.

She laughed, sank down with him, kissed him.

Once they parted, he spoke huskily. Her head was against her own; she couldn’t see his expression but the touch of the wind on his face told her he was no longer smiling.

“So… Zadhal.”

“Kas.” She almost growled his name.

“I know – we’ve been over it…”

“Isn’t it obvious zat I vont to come? You really ought to know, you know.”

“No, Em – no, because if it was that obvious, you’d just come. You’re not only her employee, you know. You’re one of us now.”

But do I want to go?

She hadn’t even asked herself the question, till now.

Isn’t it obvious that I’m glad I don’t have to? That I don’t have to tell Mama and Papa that I’m going to through a portal into a city filled with things that want to eat me…

Isn’t it obvious that I want to pass my test? That I want to have Mistress Henthae smile her usual pleased little smile, when she congratulates me on my score…

“One of ‘us’…” she said at last. “Because you’ve been a champion for so long!”

“Fine – fine. It’s just… Of course I don’t actually want you to come with me, but…” He sighed, looking down at the round magicrux far below them. “Zel’s pointed out something we passed on the way here. Want to take a look?”

She nodded, lips pressed together firmly, and she let him take the lead, guiding her back towards Oldtown.

It was always the same thing with Kas, always the Magisterium versus everything else – and every time he was pressed he backed down. How could she continue the argument when he reverted back to his ‘fine, fine’ chatter? How could she stay angry, when he voiced his little, non-judgemental sigh, frowning in that incredible cute manner, displaying all his vulnerability right there on his face?

But this is what he does, she said to herself. He wears me down – just look at me now.

Yet as she split the air in his wake she couldn’t help but feel that he was right, fundamentally. Henthae was in the wrong, for once. There wasn’t enough of a difference between disintegrating rays of light from a tiger-woman’s hands and the claws of imps tearing through arteries. Not enough of a difference for it to matter.

Death was death.

She sensed the disturbance ahead of Kas.

Another wizard.

She put out her hand to the skies and they reacted, filling her palm with the energy of her namesake, the crackling, blinding blade which she would wield as one of the legendary defenders of Mund.

She was a champion. And she was home.

She was Stormsword.

* * *

2nd Yearsend, 998 NE

“Then why am I getting a big maelstrom on your past, Kas? Were you with Tanra?”

Emrelet almost stumbled as she followed Kas to the door.

“Don’t waste time on your hidden agendas, diviner. You can’t drive us apart.”

“Vot is zis?” she asked, looking between the two of them. Kas reached the door and opened it, but she’d halted halfway. She felt the usual swiftly-surging panic, and squashed it back down again by rote. She wasn’t about to start getting jealous over Tanra, not after the way she’d embarrassed herself on Yearseve. So what if he kept hailing her the saviour of Mund, so what if he somehow always seemed to be carrying her when she was unconscious… If it had been someone else other than Kas – if their relationship had been something else – then maybe matters would’ve been different.

But she knew she had nothing to fear.

“Oh, our pal Timesnatcher has it in his head that I should be with her, or something. Just another sad old scheme.”

Now that was something altogether different. She fixed her fiery eyes on the arch-diviner.

“You agreed with me, when I said it,” the seer noted.

“I did not!” Kas laughed tersely, and shook his head. “Unsoothsayer… who’d have thought it.”

“Not in words, you didn’t. But you knew I was right and –“

“And last night,” Kas yelled over him, “Em, look at me – last night, was I in love with Tanra?”

She looked him square in the unflinching face, and almost wanted to laugh at herself.

I’m being a stupid little baby.

She smiled, and shook her head.

“No, Kastyr. No you vere not.”

“Try your games, Irimar, meddle all you want.” The sorcerer opened the door. “I’ll be back later, once you’re done playing and we can get down to work.”

She followed him outside, casting a final glare in Timesnatcher’s direction before crossing the threshold onto the back step.

Kas turned to face her, and she could tell something was wrong.

What if I’m not being stupid?

“You staying, or going? I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to hang around.”

She shrugged. “I vill see… I don’t know if I vont to leave Sol alone viz him, if he’s being like zis…”

Made my excuse – now deflect, deflect.

“But if he’s wrong, vhere vere you, Kas?”

He just shrugged back. “How am I to know if one of the people giving me directions around the place last night was an arch-diviner? I have no idea how many people I spoke to.”

That was a lie. She knew it, the way he said it – the way he couldn’t keep the terse warble from his voice.

But she just smiled again, and shook her head sheepishly. “I’ll fly you home.” She linked her arm through his and raised them both into the air.

Once they were aloft she said it aloud, having to test the words on the air: “I don’t trust you to get zere safely, in your current condition. Ve could do vizzout ze Liberator of Zadhal needing rescuing after a collision viz a chimney, and I can take some time to think about vot I vont to do.”

What I want to do… I know what I want to do.

He pulled her arm tight, clearly feeling dizzy again. She smiled to herself again, a genuine one this time. Even if he were lying to her, there was a chance it wouldn’t be out of malice. He’d just be planning some fifth-of-Yearsend celebration, or an extra surprise present, or something…

But that was just it, wasn’t it? It was the something that was worrying her. She couldn’t help but feel something was off with him. Ever since Shadowcloud and Winterprince were taken from them – ever since the heretic battle, the Tyr Kayn shenaginans…

But she was a more competent liar than him; she knew from the outset that she was going to speak again with Irimar and get to the bottom of things. Once Kas was safely tucked up in bed, she stormed back to the seer’s, opening the door with tendrils of wind before she reached them, before she landed –

“What did I say?” Irimar asked Sol.

The druidess shrugged, only meeting his eyes for a moment. “Even I knew she’d be back.”

“Tell me – vot is going on, Irimar?”

“You tell me.” He crossed his legs and spread his hands as he sat back, his narrow, scholarly face showing some self-directed scorn – showing defeat. “It’s not always easy for a man like me to admit what I don’t know. Give me a bit of credit, at least, Emrelet.”

“He consorted with an arch-diviner, for certain?”

“It’s stronger than inkatra, stronger than Zakimel… but Tanra… Duskdown…”

“Duskdown?” she repeated in surprise.

“I don’t know… the heretics, perhaps.”

Emrelet’s eyes narrowed. “Zis Everseer.”

“Perhaps.” He passed a hand across his face, his watery-looking eyes spilling a trace of moisture upon his cheeks in its wake. “Perhaps. I should’ve – no.”

Sol gave a small, humourless laugh. “Someone like you doesn’t start a sentence without meaning to finish it, though, do you? I am learning, you know.”

Irimar glowered at her, and when he looked back at Emrelet she saw through the watery eyes, to the hardness, the hidden ice beneath the waves. “I should’ve never let him have the book. It was my fault, and I only tried to be his friend –“

“You are saying – you did zis? If you –”

“No.” Voice like a glacier. “You did this. I did it. Even Sol did it, in her own small way. You cannot hope to comprehend the course of history, the intermingled motions of time’s substance, without my gift. You need to stop trying to place blame. Ah… such a fine line we walk. We need Kas.”

“Wait – are you saying Kas is a heretic?” Sol blurted.

“I do not think he vould be zat foolish.” Emrelet turned her gaze back to the diviner, feeling the electric aura of her power, knowing her eyes would be burning like orbs of liquid lightning now. “Not Kas. You.”

His sad smile was disarming, annoying.

“He isn’t a heretic,” Irimar said, “yet.”

* * *

Kas left her to die, but that was okay. It was okay, because he was going to rescue his brother and sister. He was going to do what she should’ve done, all those long months ago – all those lifetimes ago – and if she died because he left her, so long as they were safe, it was worth it. Mama and Papa would understand his decision.

Copperbrow poured a slick sheen of molten flame atop the surface of the Greywater, and she infused it with electricity, pulling a living lightning-bolt down from the sky and attaching one end of it to the centre of the fire-pool. The other end stayed in the clouds, and a constant series of thunderclaps – ka-boom-doom-ka-boom-doom – started pealing down from the heavens.

She noted the gnome’s jubilant body language as he started sweeping back and forth across the ranks of the river-fiends, taking them on in closer quarters now that their numbers were reduced – they were already half-dead by the time they reached the surface of the river.

“Can you hold it?” she cried. “I have to get to – to Feychilde!”

“Uhhhhh – I hope so!”

“I hope so too,” she said. “Glancefall, I’m moving to Sticktown.”

“I’ll… I’ll get Copper some cover,” the enchanter responded.

It was good enough for her. She put forth a final detonation, setting it to ripple through their foes, then she fled north-east.

The thought of Jaid and Jaroan being hurt – were Xan and Xassy in danger too? And while the prospect of Orstrum being hurt was less worrying, the old man had made an impression on her. She couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to any of them, but especially the young ones… and especially Kas’s young siblings…

They will be fine. Kas will get there before anything bad can happen to them. They’re surrounded in shields – ah, that’s how he knew. He could feel them being damaged, maybe? But he didn’t feel anything when they were being attacked by the Bertie Boys… No, he only feels a detached shield when it’s…

When it’s gone, broken…

She redoubled her speed, slashing down into the pits of Helbert’s Bend like the bolt of lightning she wielded in her hands.

And from afar she spotted it, even as Mud Lane itself came into view – the figure in his doorway, looking out. The shapeless robe of a heretic.

Was Kas trapped in there? Was he too late? Was everyone dead already?

There was no way to contain it. The sword swung itself.

“No!” she screamed, her hate propelling the blade of electric light into the figure – she sliced through him at head-height, uncertain as she was of his archmagery. She only noticed after the stroke landed and she retracted the sword that she’d cut grooves into the walls, the door, making the wood smoke and smoulder –

A small price to pay, for vengeance.

Trembling at the thought of what she might find inside, she started to sink, approaching the door warily. Her blow had been true. The head toppled, the body crumpled –

“No!” came an anguished cry – Kas’s voice, echoing her own – from inside the apartment.

She saw him thrust himself forwards with inhuman reflexes, but he nonetheless landed awkwardly on his elbows and knees, catching the body before it struck the floorboards. She came to hover near the rail, staring in shock.

Kas was lowering the heretic to the ground.

It had been a day to end all days, and now she knew it. She felt the history of these fateful events unfold about her, upon her, like a deluge of cold rain she couldn’t just turn off at will. An arch-diviner might’ve recognised it for what it was – it felt like the pull of time itself, somehow. She knew she would look back on this night in wonder and bitterness for the weeks, months, years to come.

The night it all ended.

Everything that had happened with the eolastyr, and afterwards… she’d felt she’d finally found her match. Her perfect mirror. The man she would be with forever.

And now he is this.

‘He isn’t a heretic, yet.’

Oh, Irimar… if only you knew how wrong you were about that.

When Kas met her gaze, his jaw was set in rage.

“What are you doing?” he wailed.

“Me?” She felt her lip curling in derision and fought against it, but then nausea reared its ugly head; she blinked desperately. “What? Kas! We fought the demons – while – what, Kas? I thought you were saving them? What it zis? Look at you! Get avay from it!”

“It’s Nighteye!” he growled. “Nighteye! You killed Nighteye, Em! He’s dead.”

N-N-Nighteye? Nighteye is a heretic?

“What?” she muttered. “What? No, no, zat can’t be right, zere is no –“

Weird fey-light fell from the sorcerer’s hand to shine on the room, the corpse –

She couldn’t make out the features on the hooded face, but the hair was loose, and she knew he wasn’t lying about this.

“You killed him…”

– but I killed him I killed Nighteye I killed him and now he’s there and he’s dead and –

“… he just saved them. He was going to leave Mund, he wasn’t –“

“He voz a heretic!” she cried, as much to cut off the inner accusations as Kas’s protests. “Vot – what are you? Kas!”

The realisation on his face made it plain for her to see. Perhaps not just anyone would be able to tell, but she could. The top half of his head was obscured but it didn’t matter. The shudder that ran through him made his lips wobble, his jaw clench, and she knew.

The tears she’d been holding back started to fall.

“Ze book…” She felt sick; she was going to be sick… “He told me – zis morning – he should’ve never have let you have ze book…”

“Em –”

Then she was there, and avenues of understanding opened up; flooded highways of meaning cleared, made as dry as a bone in one second of pure sunlight. Emrelet focussed her glare on the seeress.

Tanra is a heretic.

So much clearer now.

“Oh – oh no,” Killstop whined. “Why? How did this happen, Kas? Why didn’t I see it?”

“Everseer sent him, to save them. Save me from it.” Then he growled again: “Don’t you see. It’s all over now.”

Tanra mumbled something, and she used the wind to snatch the sounds, bring them up to her level:

“She saw it, then. She could’ve come herself. She gave him a death-sentence.” Killstop turned to look up at Kas. “She did this to us.”

“I understand now,” Emrelet said quietly, floating back.

I understand what I must do. Henthae must know about this. She was right all along. I have to make a full report, in person, immediately.

But that wasn’t what she wanted to do.

She harnessed the light, and it answered. Simultaneously, she had her winds surround them, snare their spells and strip away their enhancements.

“Both of you, is it? How voz it I could have been so blind? You vere vith her, veren’t you? Last night.”

He just looked at his feet; then Killstop came to a standing position, knives in her hands.

Emrelet merely smiled inside her cocoon of light.

Try it, witch.

“No,” Emrelet said, unperturbed by the seeress’s motions but moving a bit farther away all the same. “You should know zat I have removed your flight-spells. You cannot stop me from leaving.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Killstop snapped.

“Tanra, no!” Feychilde put out his arm as if to block her.

Like he could block her.

“There’s a way to stop you without killing you; you know I would never do that,” Tanra said, heedless of his response. “You don’t need to tell them about this. You don’t need any of this. There are ways I can help you…”

People were coming out onto their balconies, even though the demons were still loose across the city. They were willing to risk death in order to witness Emrelet making this momentous decision.

Can Tanra be telling the truth? Can she help me?

No. She has to be lying. She’s a heretic, plain as day. Kastyr is no better… or just a little better. It’s my job to take her down, and bring him in. She can’t be imprisoned – diviners are too slippery – but when it comes to Kas, I can bind him without having to –

She loosed a little involuntary gasp of pain and surprise as an invisible wall struck her, punching her away through the air.

She glanced down – saw him raising his hands, shouting something at her –

Without thinking, without feeling, Emrelet struck back. She couldn’t even sense an iota of warmth on the wind as she smashed him with the ray of pure sunfire. It was all the same coolness to her.

Within mere seconds he was down to his final shields.

Instinct had taken over, and she saw an enemy.

A lover.

An enemy.

Another arch-wizard of discernment and wisdom present at the scene would’ve perhaps been able to note the way her power fluctuated, keeping the beam of furious white heat from its maximum intensities, its most awful temperatures. She knew it, but she didn’t dare sculpt her mind into that killing-aspect which had taken Nighteye’s head. Killstop, she liked and despised at once; the girl’s death would hurt, like Nighteye’s, but killing Kas… It wasn’t something she could countenance, even now.

She broke away, flipping around and using the tornado-force to send herself hurtling towards Hightown. Even as she moved she dug out her glyphstone but at first it wouldn’t respond, her thoughts too chaotic to obtain access to the network.

“Come on, damn you, si garam pestron!”

She was over Hilltown before it responded correctly. Henthae was never too busy to answer. She was in her base of operations high in the Maginox, serving as a telepathic conduit for hundreds of magisters, scores of magister-bands linked through her mind.

“M-Mistress Henthae, I have news.”

“Stormsword. Do the champions fare ill?”

She noted the coldness in Henthae’s voice, and started to cry again.

“Miss Reyd… Emrelet?” The enchantress’s stiffness slowly melted away. “What’s happened? Tell me.”

“It’s – it’s K-Kas… T-Tanra… I mean, Killstop –“

“Mmmm.” Henthae made a little non-committal noise. “Let us pretend you didn’t just say that. I haven’t been permitted to look at her record in the registry. So… he has betrayed you?”

“Yes! No, not – not that! Kas, Kas and Killstop, they’ve become heretics! Mistress – M-Mistress –“

“Calm down, Emrelet, please! You’re scaring me.” Henthae took her seat – she’d stood up to receive the communication but now, looking decidedly paler, she almost collapsed, all her usual nimbleness deserting her. “How do you know? What did you see? Speak to me – speak plainly, and I’ll see it through your eyes if I can. You are on your way to me, I assume?”

She nodded frantically, shedding her tears into the hurricane pulling her to the Maginox. “He – he left me, in Rivertown, and he said it was the twins…”

She related it all, her psychic mouth babbling away with far greater facility than her physical one would have been capable of. Memories and thoughts and worries and doubts, they all flooded from her, snagged and teased-out by the probing questions, the unblinking eyes of the powerful enchanter.

And when she landed on the Maginox grounds, Henthae was already down there to meet her, stepping off the bridge between the waywatchers in front of Zakimel, hurrying forwards to catch her up in the supple old arms and smooth her hair as she sobbed.

* * *

The glass of mulled wine in her hands, she sat on the couch in one of the Magisterium’s private lounges. It was located high in the tower, letting them look out on the city through a red-tinted window. The Mourning Bells had stopped a few minutes ago, and she and Henthae were sitting in silence for a while, just looking down.

Just mourning.

The word would be out already. Zakimel had gotten his people involved and now everyone would be hunting Feychilde and Killstop. Despite the arch-diviner’s logically-sound arguments, Henthae had vowed she wouldn’t let rule thirty-two apply in Kas’s case, and Emrelet believed her. Kas would be brought in – he wouldn’t be killed. Not by her. Not by anyone. He just had to be… chastised. Cleansed, somehow.

Deep down she knew it wasn’t going to happen, knew it wasn’t true, knew that fate was twisted and reality had a dark side – this wasn’t just some story, this was her life and it was unravelling one thread at a time – but she had to cling on to her hope. The gods had failed her in the past because she’d failed them, because she hadn’t stood up for what was right, hadn’t defended her brothers like she should’ve done – but they’d rewarded her too, given her the strength to fight back against evil. She couldn’t abandon them now, couldn’t accept the lengthening shadows of the doom rising up before her. There would be a way out. She could have Kas back. He would be hers again, and she his. The fire between them wasn’t extinguished – embers such as those were undying, coals burning bright beneath the soot for a thousand million years. Eternity was a blink to such a love. The eolastyr had been given one taste of the flame that they could create between them when their bodies, their minds made contact – the eolastyr had been given a taste of it, and had been consumed.

It would come back. It had to.

“I love him.”

“I know you do.”

Emrelet looked at her, tears welling up again. “It won’t go avay, Mistress – Mistress Henthae…”

“My dear…” The older magister put a weathered old hand on top of hers. “Call me Keliko, when we’re alone, please… It will go away. There’s a chance you’ll forgive him, one day. Forget him? Never. But the love… the pain you feel… that could go away, my dear, if you let it. One day.” Keliko patted her hand and repeated, in what was supposed to be a reassuring tone: “One day.”

“I don’t – don’t think it vill ever go – I think of him, of vot he looked like zere, holding Nighteye’s body, and I can remember how angry it made me, how –“

“Do you trust me, Emrelet?” the Mistress asked suddenly, a twang of concern – real worry – there in her voice.

“Of course I do, Mistress.”

“I can’t read your mind, not with that thing around your neck…”

Emrelet looked down unconsciously, touching Bor’s amulet with her fingertips.

“… but I can imagine what you’re going through. I have a – a thing to admit to you now.” A harrowed expression crossed Keliko’s creased skin, suddenly making her look ninety. “Remove the pendant.”

The wizard licked her lips, staring at Keliko for a moment before moving her free hand to do as she was told.

“But – vhy do you need me to –“

Keliko wasn’t smiling. “You’re a smart girl – figure it out.”

She froze, the amulet and its chain in her hand.

To bewitch me? No!

“I need to remove something from your mind. Something I – something Tyr Kayn made me put there.”

She felt sick again all of a sudden, and put the amulet and wine-glass down on the small table by her knee. “But… my mind, it voz checked, given ze all clear –“

“This would’ve required a deeper examination to unearth. I am good at what I do, you know. But… it’s about Kastyr. You were never meant to love him, Emrelet. It was all a lie, right from the beginning.”

The world collapsed, peeling away into the void at the edges, rushing past her until she was falling, falling without moving, plunging into the maelstrom upon her couch – she gripped the edge of the seat as though she were riding it into the endless depths, the eye of the whirlpool that would swallow the land.

Drag it all down into the Twelve Hells with her mind.

“In Tyr Kayn’s designs, you were the hammer with which she forged a blade, Feychilde, to do her bidding, her killing. You were the lynchpin of her control over him. Exactly why, I’m uncertain, but your place in it was sealed from the very start, I’m afraid. This only became apparent afterwards, of course… Oh, my dear. You never loved him. I relieve you of the burdens you were never meant to carry.”

As Keliko spoke the truth settled in, mental wounds scabbing over in seconds.

Gods – the touch of an enchanter was more than a miracle. It was a boon without measure, to go in one instant from seething depression to a normal, rational state – it was enough to make her weep tears of joy now.

“Careful, Emrelet.” Keliko looked away, eyes twinkling with tears of her own. “You can’t go too far the other way either. Let’s find a middle ground.”

She sat there, wordless, and looked down at the table, empty but for her wine-glass.

Strange. She’d had the urge to pick something else up.

Never mind. Wine will do.

She lifted the drink, raised it to her lips once more, and looked out through the blood-hued window at the blood-drenched city, deep in a thoughtless reverie. The Mourning Bells had stopped a few minutes ago, and she and Henthae were sitting in silence for a while, just looking down.

No longer mourning.

Tranquil.

Decided.

* * *

3rd Yearsend, 998 NE

He cried out for her, and the sound of his voice still had the power to move her. It was pathetic, and she was pathetic for caring. She knew she no longer felt anything for him – in fact, the thought of him, being close to him, repulsed her – but he was still human. He’d been mistreated in the same way by the dragon.

The second time he called for her, projecting his voice into her room this time, she just crossed to her waste-bin and retrieved the little chalk-covered square of tile Xastur had given her, that first day, when she’d fallen for Kastyr. She sat on the bed, looking at it again. An ogre, a fanged orange blob, chomping down on a unicorn, a yellow blob with a sharp stick on top.

Why am I still crying? she thought. She knew it had all been one huge deception on Tyr Kayn’s part – she knew it was all over now.

So why do I still feel this way?

She moaned, the air pulled from her lungs in a long, voiceless sob – she fought against it, straining to hear the words coming now from the front doorway –

“I’ve changed? It’s your daughter who changed. You know she’s a killer, don’t you?”

She clenched her fist, and Xastur’s tile shattered into fifty pieces.

“Whose fault is zat? You made her zis – zis champion!”

Oh gods… oh gods…

She went to her bedroom door, intent on throwing it open, barrelling down the stairs at him – but she was paralysed at what she heard next:

“It was before that! Maybe if she let me tell you when she died –”

“Vot?”

Oh, Mama…

Papa’s initial disbelief, his sheer astonishment; that was the worst thing.

“You let her die? You – let – her – die!”

Thwack.

Panic gripped her at the sound of a fist smacking into flesh; she tore open the door.

Crack!

She was at the top of the stairs when Kastyr Mortenn struck down her father. When her mother screamed, terrified.

When she made up her mind to strike back, with everything she had.

She flicked a trail of electricity at him from her hand as a distraction, simultaneously pulling down half a thundercloud from the sky to fry him where he stood.

He evaded both attacks and took the fight into the air. She hurled a healing potion to Mama and followed, not meeting her mother’s eyes, knowing what she would find there. Accusation. Bewilderment.

The look of someone staring upon a stranger, a stranger they thought they once knew but never in fact did.

She burned into the night air, and she was in her element. Literally.

Now he will die.

She sent more weak rays crackling towards him, enough to distract him from the great spell she was performing on the air, the slowly-building vacuum in which he was soaring.

“You, Feychilde, leave me vith no choice!”

“Come on, tell me you’re not enjoying this,” he shouted back. “We’ve always been waiting for this, you and I!”

She wanted to laugh. “I don’t even know you, sorcerer! And you do not know me! Henthae explained everything! Ze lie, it is over!”

His immature smile finally started to fade. “Say again?”

He stopped running, so she slowed down and finally halted. They were high-up now. His wraith would be working double-duty to keep him from the nausea.

Perhaps he just won’t notice until it is too late.

“It voz Lovebright! It voz always her! She had plans for you, plans zat never saw ze light of day… I voz to be instrumental in vot you became… and so I have been, to my regret.”

She loosed a curtain of lightning that pulled away his defences, the wind fizzing and popping where her power rippled through it, spreading through the empty space he’d been warding.

Reducing the amount of effort required to suffocate him by magnitudes.

He looked confused now, wiggling his fingers more furiously than ever. “What was Lovebright?” He gave a fake little laugh. “You’re not making any sense now!”

She swallowed, and fixed her own grimace on her face. “Lovebright, who made me love you! She – she made Henthae do it to me… Eizzer vay, I do not love you, Kastyr Mortenn. It is undone, now. I do not, and I never did!”

She was almost ready. Almost ready to kill him, circumvent all his clever little protections.

“You’re serious,” he said at last.

“I am serious,” she replied, trying to restrain the shuddering threatening to grip her. “You… you need to understand, before zis happens. Thinking of you – it is repulsive to me now. I voz never… never vith you to begin viz…”

She gazed over at him, waiting for him to accept it. She couldn’t kill him until he understood. She wouldn’t want his soul to go to the next world burdened with lies.

“Em, you must be –“

“You cannot call me zat.”

“No, listen, Em, I don’t –“

She looked back to him. “I vill be happy to meet with you at noon tomorrow at ze bank in Blackbranch Square… And yes, you may call me Em.” She said the last part rather timidly, looking down at the drop at his feet. It was the most forward thing she’d said to someone in… ever, really. If he’d been waiting for a sign she liked him, there it was.

“Do not speak to me!” she cried, screwing her eyes shut.

The storm – the Storm – it heeded her unconscious call, drowning him out.

Orovon Ovrobo, Birdlord, praised be your winds!

It was like the god’s blessing was upon her. She could feel Feychilde moving towards her, of course, but now, right now, she could sense even his expression, the aeromancy granting her near-perfect blind-sight.

She could sense his fury, his confusion.

She could answer it with her own.

“And now you are mine, heretic,” she whispered grimly to herself.

It might’ve been that Kastyr heard her, because he veered aside, but it was too late for him. His shields left her no choice but to let nature take its course. It would have to happen again to him – it had almost killed him last time, hadn’t it? – but this time it would occur under controlled conditions. No way his sylph could save him this time.

“For vot it’s vorth, I am sorry it has to be zis vay.”

He sank, between one moment and the next, dropping out of sky.

She pointed her finger, sending a tornado down, a whirling hurricane-beam to help propel him by circling him, keeping every last breath from the airless sphere in which he fell –

And he vanished into a green gateway.

Si garal!

Emrelet pulled on the Storm once more, sending a thousand forks of lightning coursing across the clouds.

Where is he? Where will he come out?

She’d been underestimating him, thinking that in his grief, his lack of preparation, he wouldn’t fight the same way he’d fight an enemy.

That’s what I am to him now. That’s why I – why his shield hit me – I’m his foe. He could be anywhere – he could kill me in an instant if I don’t spot him first –

The realisation of what she’d bitten off with this self-appointed assignment began to dawn on her.

I need back-up.

“Stormsword!”

A voice, not so far behind her, inside the cloud, lifted in challenge –

She turned and lashed out in the same motion, bringing down her arm, lightning condensing in her hand only as the blow fell, electric blade making dust of flesh and fabric and memory –

One of the welcome but unintentional consequences of her attack was the attendant burst of wind that blew aside the fog, exposing the glowing-edged parts of Copperbrow’s body, just for long-enough that she could recognise them for what they were. They fell away like Kas had done, dropping towards the ground –

These objects weren’t going to just vanish into another realm, were they?

She caught them, gusts of wind bearing them aloft.

He was dead, far more dead than he had been when the eolastyr wrapped him up tight in her whip. He was gone.

She stared at them for a long time.

Then incinerated them until every last trace of him was gone.

Another of your victims, Kastyr Mortenn.

And now you will pay.

She took out her glyphstone as she flew, and reached out to Timesnatcher.

“I believe you,” she said. “I need you, Irimar. I… It has happened.”

And his reply.

“Feychilde is a heretic.”

* * *

5th Yearsend, 998 NE

“I don’t know if I can keep doin’ this,” Bor muttered.

“Doing vot?” she asked. “It’s just a game.”

They were sitting outside Irimar’s back door, in chairs dried by wizardry. Emrelet was controlling the snow, causing it to swirl in patterns around the garden, and he was matching the shapes and consistency down to the last snowflake with his illusions. Where she made a lunging bear, his lunged back – when the snow fell like a waterfall crashing down into boulders, there were suddenly two, the ripples of their rivers converging and rebounding.

“I don’t mean this.” He nodded his head, letting his latest glamour drop away – she looked across at him in concern, allowing the snow a mind of its own again.

“Vot do you mean? You can’t mean, after all zis – Kastyr?”

He shrugged, then took a long draught of his beer.

“Bor?”

He passed his hand over his face. “I’m still thinking about her, all the time. T-Tanra. I thought – it would just go away. I thought I could… I thought, maybe we could – me and you – but I can’t. I don’t want to. I just – it’s driving me mad!”

He threw his pint-glass at a nearby statue and Emrelet caught it by the handle with a trail of wind before it could smash, before it could even spill – he turned to stare at her, open-mouthed.

She smiled. “It’s only been a couple of days. Vot did you expect? You vill get over her.” She turned back to stare at the beautiful black sky, extending her arms over her head and using them as a pillow. “I don’t think of you zat vay, Borasir. But… who knows?”

She had to admit to herself that the enchanter was attractive, though this pitiful moaning wasn’t exactly working wonders for him. She didn’t think there was ever going to be anything between the two of them beyond the professional relationship they’d developed, but surely it wouldn’t hurt to keep the notion sitting there at the back of his mind?

“No, it wouldn’t hurt,” he growled.

She hissed, half-rising.

“Never mind.” He stood up himself and plucked his beer out of the coiled air currents. “I know what you did, Emrelet. I know what you did to Copperbrow.” He sighed, passing his hand over his face again.

She lowered her voice, closed her eyes. “And vot are you going to do viz zis information? Vot have you already done?”

“Nothin’. Ain’t stupid.”

He turned away from her, finished his beer, and then threw it back into her wind-coil – she opened a gap and let the glass shatter on the stone, making him jump.

“Nothing. You really expect me believe zat.”

He groaned. “Come on, Em.”

She opened her eyes again. “Don’t call me zat.”

“You have no idea, how much of a hero I am,” he grated, stepping closer to her and thrusting out his jaw. “How easy it would be to just own you, own all of you…”

“You think zat makes you a hero?” she sneered. “Not stealing avay everyone’s vill and identity – zis makes you a good man, does it? How low of a bar do you vont to set? Is ze man who doesn’t slit his vife’s throat vhile she sleeps now vorthy of praise? You disgust me.”

“If she was a shrill harpy of a wife, and he could slit her throat and she didn’t die, in fact didn’t even get hurt… in fact she got better, happier… without anyone ever knowin’ what he did…”

“But zat’s just it, isn’t it?” Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. “You know who my friends are. You know you’d be caught, sooner or later, and it’d be your mind on ze line… It’s fear, not heroism, zat you’re talking about. Just fear. Cowardice.”

“It’d be easy to be brave, I reckon, with the Magisterium backin’ your play. Does it feel good?”

He glowered down at her; she was still sitting demurely in her chair.

“Eh, does it?” he pressed. “Why’d you think I won’t say anythin’? Damn right, I’m scared. I’m scared of you, Emrelet, Stormsword, whoever you droppin’ are! Even if I accused you, even if they proved me right, nothin’ would happen. They’d make their excuses for you, and then I’d be out. Hated by the Magisterium, hated by the champions –”

“I am no longer a champion. No longer Stormsword.”

“What!”

“Stormsword voz in love viz Kastyr Mortenn. I no longer vont to be her. Ze champion… she died viz… viz ze gnome.”

She stared at the broken glass, twinkling in the grass beneath the statue. Something in her words or tone had calmed Bor – he sat down in his seat, looking at her intently.

Copperbrow…

She still thought of him as the last victim of the heretic Feychilde – last, but not first. She counted the others who’d died from his treachery: Haspophel and Ilitar and the others – who knew exactly why they’d died? The magisters Everseer killed at the library – one of them was Sapha, who’d lent her a spare quill on her first day in class. She hadn’t grieved, not for a moment…

Until she realised her ex-lover was a heretic. Until she realised he was responsible.

“Come on… Emrelet… let’s go in. It’ll be midnight in a few minutes – the big triple-nine and all… and, no offence, it’s gettin’ cold, don’t you think?”

“Do you think zey have already taken him into Zyger?”

“Why’re you askin’ me that? Not plannin’ to break him out, are you?”

She gave him a critical look, but Spiritwhisper’s face was contorted with conflicting emotions.

“No… no, course you ain’t… You just want to be there, don’t ya? Twist the knife. Man…”

She shrugged. “I put ze steel in him. It vould only be fair to let me be ze one to… yank it free. And if ze blade is caught, and must be tvisted a little to get it loose…”

“Just let them do their jobs, for gods’ sakes. Where is your compassion, Emrelet? He was my friend – but he was your soulmate! You are different, aren’t you? Why’s your heart so…” His voice dropped to a whisper: “Did you take off my amulet? Even for a sec-“

“You vill have to get used to ze new me.” She cast him a beatific smile. “Or not. It’s up to you.”

“Hmph.” He hugged his arms across his chest. “So you know what happened to you? I can see a significant smear, a recent one –“

“I know vot has been done to me.”

Tyr Kayn!

She thought the name like it was a curse-word, spitting it inside her mind.

He was looking down at his feet. “I guess I’ll try, then,” he said heavily. “We’ve all been through too much… and there’s so few… so few of…”

The way he was regarding her – the strangled expression on his face… It took her a few seconds to realise he wasn’t building to something.

“Bor?”

His throat made a strange choking sound, gurgling.

“Bor!” The breeze slid her to her feet and she took him by the neck of the robe, shaking him.

She drew in a breath, entering the instinctive mindset that would capture her words within her exhalation, bear and deliver the message, winging its way to Irimar’s ear on the far side of the house –

But it wasn’t necessary. Bor seemed to relax.

And every ear in Mund heard what came next.

There was only one explanation. They’d opened a hole in the wards maintained by the Magisterium’s enchanters. Maintained in part, perhaps, by Spiritwhisper too.

They were able to project, the message amplified by their own arch-enchanters, over the Magisterium’s ley-lines. That meant they’d obtained access to the Invocatrix. The auditory illusion blared out in every pocket of the city, from bedrooms and bathrooms to public squares and shopping centres, from Rivertown to Hightown, from secluded forest glades with none to hear the message except birds and bugs, to the packed tenements with little-enough space for the humans to breathe. She heard it coming from all directions.

The voice was level and calm – not throbbing with lunatic emotion, but not dispassionate either. Invested, just shy of intense. A middle-class accent, originating somewhere in Oldtown, or Hilltown, maybe; well-spoken but not overly-so.

Emrelet didn’t recognise her, but she knew who it was all the same. When the confirmation swiftly arrived she didn’t reel in shock. Her eyes narrowed in hate.

It was the enemy.

* * *

“People of Mund. Listen carefully. I’m not going to get chance to do this again, and you need to hear every word. Many of you know me as Everseer, and for years you’ve thought me dead – those of you who know me will attest, this is my voice. I am alive. My real name is Vardae Rolaine, and since my disappearance I have dwelt within the Thirteen Candles. Yes, I am a heretic…”

The wizard imagined the horror, the confusion, the panic. Millions of people would be hearing this.

As Vardae spoke, Emrelet raised her hands to the skies and called for the thunder. When the aeromancy failed, Bor finally realised what was happening and tried to encapsulate them in a zone of silence – but it just let the voice through more clearly.

Then Irimar arrived with Soleine. The great seer, the leader of the champions of Mund, looked at them both and shook his head.

“We have to hear it,” he called over Everseer’s voice. “To help everyone – we have to know. Even if it makes us all heretics.”

“… heretics are not what you think. We are a maligned insurgency, born in a failed experiment. Chaosmakers and Rebels. Killseekers and Troubled Ones. What does ‘Srol’ even mean? Do they let their children come up with this stuff nowadays?No – it was due to a spelling mistake. Yes. The truth is that we aren’t what they thought we were going to be and when they tried to get rid of us, tried to erase their mistake, we fortified. It’s all ancient history, now, of course, but it’s relevant all the same. It’s what the Magisterium did, and does, and will continue to do until the day it collapses in on itself, burdened as it is by the grandeur of its lofty goals.”

Emrelet stared at each of the others in turn. Timesnatcher was the only one who didn’t stare back, just looking off into the trees.

“The Dracofont. The five dragon progenitors. Mal Tagar. Ord Yset. Nil Nafrim. Do you know the names of these three? Of course. But do you know their deeds?”

Emrelet frowned.

“Why are they just names? Why aren’t their feats described in the tales? Tyr Devas. Ulu Kalar. Do you know those names? Why not? Why are the histories broken? Because they fear the five dragons, and these last two especially. The Five Founders’ last act before becoming the Founders, before raising these great city walls… their last act was to defeat the Dracofont in pitched battle. Here, inside these marble bounds – this was where the Dracofont was destroyed.

“This is where they will Return, their ghosts finding form in the material plane once more.”

Timesnatcher stirred. “It was her. Everseer was the arch-diviner Kas ran into when he went missing at the library. She imparted some of this to him already. And he knew… he knew he couldn’t trust us to trust him if he even gave a fraction of a sign…”

Fang shushed him, and Spirit looked shaken at what this might imply for Tanra’s situation, but Emrelet was left to wonder just how much her own attitude had shaped Kastyr’s responses in the last days of his freedom.

Was Feychilde not truly dark?

The question, considered in a vacuum, had merit, but then:

He struck Papa!

The Magisterium still hadn’t reasserted control. Vardae Rolaine was continuing.

“… first, when the magisters realised these five, truly tremendous dragons were coming back, they put together a committee designated to explore outlandish means of countering their resurrection. The ‘great Returning’, they call it. They believe in it, as though it were written in the Book of Kultemeren. Your leaders – they are heretics! Weak ones! Ones unwilling to do what they must! They play into the dragons’ clawed hands… Traitors, all of them. Wait – they did not tell you that until recently they were under the control of Tyr Kayn? Granddaughter of Tyr Devas? They didn’t tell you Lovebright was an illusion designed to bring about the resurrection of the dragon-royalty of old?

“No. Of course not. They let it fall to me to lay the rumours to rest. You see, eventually some elements of that original committee were absorbed into other departments that still exist to this day, cataloguing the predictions of the end days. They sit there in their glass tower, scrutinising the prophecies for a loophole. They know, believe me. They have known all along that we are – all – doomed. They know, and knew, yet what news does the town-crier bring? Nothing. They said nothing.

“We were the ones who wanted to speak up. Give people the choice. Because what we know is this. The more archmages the demons kill in Incursions, the stronger the dragons are in the moment of their return. The more people here when they return – you understand me, right? The more food here when they return, I mean – the faster their powers swell afterwards. We are in a lose-lose. And yes, we’ve killed plenty of you; we’ve spread rumours, trying to get you to leave. Culling the livestock. What do your lives matter? What do our lives matter? We cause fear and spread such havoc as we can contrive. But the magisters tar our names, the champions foil our plots at every turn. We’ve concocted every deterrent in the book and you still keep coming. But who can blame you, right? Mund, yeah? Yeah. We’re all in the same boat. So here’s what’s going to happen to this boat before it breaks.

“You are going to leave. Disembark, or, gods help me, I’ll kill every last one of you myself. Your… heads… will… roll. Timesnatcher’s incapable of stopping me alone. Killstop’s gone into exile, and Feychilde has been sent into everlasting darkness – hadn’t they told you about that? They did nothing wrong. But they dared speak to one of us, you see. Their old friend Nighteye – he was one of us, until he was executed without trial – without a single – word. Did you know about that? That Nighteye swore himself to me, to my cause?

“Sensing a running theme here yet?

“Feel free to check my facts, if you don’t believe me. I’m sure your local mage-lords will want to look you square in the eye and try to bluff this one. Just try them. Trust me. All they’ll be able to do is call me mad. But you know what mad sounds like. This ain’t that. This is the real deal.

“You have until Highsummer. Come the end of summer, Nine-Ninety-Nine, I take your heads if you’re within a hundred miles of the city. Between dawn and dusk, I’ll decapitate the lot of you. It’s an oath. It’s a promise. I’m a champion, don’t you know? I swear it. By Glaif. By Illodin. You’ll die. I’ll do it with my own hands, to spare the world the dragons.

“I’d plan to be out of here by spring, if I were you. Get a head-start.

“See, magisters? Even a portent of horrifying doom can make you crack a smile, if you do it the right way. You should’ve listened to me from the beginning.

“Those of you trying to get into this room, I warn you personally now. You’ve passed the corpses of your friends already. I will kill the first twelve of you with honour. The remaining four – I will stab you in the back as you flee. All of you will die if you persist…

“Very well.

“Happy Nine-Ninety-Nine, Mund. Go in good cheer. Go with the blessings of the low gods, or of the high. But however you do it, damn you, go.”

There were a few moments of hushed silence, as they assimilated the words – then Irimar was echoing her, urging them to go, ensuring they each were linked and obtained flight-spells before sending them off, west, north-west, north…

It didn’t matter if she was a champion or not. Emrelet had a job to do.

Whatever the truth of Vardae’s words, what mattered right now was the inevitable rioting in the streets. The unrest. The many insurmountable obstacles this Heresy had raised in their path.

As the wizard flew, she felt the coldness enter her own heart. The doubt, sown by the evil arch-diviner.

Did Henthae already know? Has she known all along? It all ends in fire and blood?

Did she know and never tell me?

But the most regretful thing about it was that it never would have mattered anyway.

I would have stood by her all the same, even to the end of the world.