PYRITE 10.6: VICTORY
“The fine line disappears into the vanishing-point and is finally eliminated. Being is a form of Doing for almost all forms of life. Yet there is the rarest kind of creature. The one who can answer the question with another. The one to whom the symbol does not merely occur but in whom it reoccurs, time and time again, a manifestation of existence in its most primal essence. Then there is no more Doing – only Being, and the Inescapability in which it floats at peace and unhindered.”
– as spoken by the Recaller of Illodin
The azure cracks in the three-sided tower shed an eerie light across its ruined surroundings. Weeds taller than children waved in the breeze, casting blue shadows that curled and contorted like a fiend’s illusions. Tumbled walls, their lonely stones lying where they fell in some unimaginable, long-lost conflict. No one had moved these time-worn artifacts. No one had cut back the encroaching vegetation bursting up through riven paving.
No, nothing had changed. Whatever we lost, Illodin remembered.
Evidently the first to arrive had decided to mill around in front of the Tower of Mourning’s doorway, and there was already a clot of magicians some hundred-strong standing amidst the footprints of forgotten buildings. As I’d anticipated last night, there were going to be far too many of us to fit comfortably in the Ceryad chamber. Better that the initial Gathering of Champions occur out here, under the bright Blind Eye of Kaile, especially with so many newcomers. It was a warm-enough night for it; we came sinking down through the sky, and none of the magic-users I saw arrayed beneath us were wearing their cloaks despite the incessant sea-breeze.
“I’m nervous.”
I looked across at Ciraya.
“I wouldn’t be able to tell if you didn’t say.” I noted that her fixed, fierce expression didn’t change, so I said the only other reassuring thing that came to mind. “I’m nervous too, you know.”
She finally met my eyes, and smiled. “I do know. It’ll be fiiiine.” She really drawled-out the word, even more than her usual, then sighed. “I’d rather be back in that abandoned apartment.”
“Really?” I tried not to grin, to keep the thrill from my voice, but it was difficult. I’d had my fill of epic adventure; the prospect of returning to our tryst was far more exciting than handling a Gathering. “I mean, I’m in.” I halted us there, fifty yards off the ground, letting us hang motionless in the night wind. “You think I can scrap this whole thing? I’ve just had a far more-tempting offer.”
“A bit late for that now.” She leered, no sympathy on her face. “I’m pretty sure the apartment’s still going to be there later.”
“Oh, it is, is it?”
Something in my voice broke through a boundary inside her mind, and I saw a flash of the nervousness in her eyes before a more powerful force took hold of her, enflaming her within; her mouth found mine and I closed my eyes.
I didn’t need to see her eyes to feel the same fire.
The ghosts had merged us, but only in one way. The kiss was a kind of magic older than archmagery, older than death. For a few moments I was the kiss, the centre of my being constantly reborn in that meeting of lips, only to die and be reborn again…
The gentle breaths escaping her nostrils. The way I felt her chest swell. Her hands at my neck, in my hair.
It had been too long since I’d had this. Too long, in cold Telior. I’d missed it more than Mund. More than the champion’s calling, even. For the very first time in my life I considered what would come after. Even with Emrelet, when we’d been discussing buying our own place, there was no consideration of retirement. Having kids. Being something other than what I was.
And now here I found myself, wondering what came next.
She broke the kiss but I didn’t let her pull away, chasing her lips back, until it became obvious she really meant it.
“Cool down, my dragon.” She tossed her head back, teasing me with the word, and raised a finger to my lips to wipe the purple away. “You’ve got a job to do, and I’m pretty sure a couple of them are looking up here now. Hey, aren’t those the Shadowcrafters you pointed out earlier?”
“Fiiiine.” I laboured the word right back at her. “But don’t you go complaining when I make sure it’s the quickest damn Gathering in the history of Gatherings.”
“I just want to see the tree,” she croaked. “After that – I’m all yours.”
The crooked sidelong smile she cast me sent shivers flooding through my body once more. I tried to concentrate on the task at hand, focussing on the champions already gathered as I resumed our flight, bringing us closer and closer to our fellows. Those who would be our brothers and sisters in the battles to come. I recognised many of them just by their chosen apparel but there were so many more that I’d barely even spoken with, never mind learning their names, their powers and personalities…
It’ll all come, in time.
We landed, welcoming (and being welcomed by) all those we met. Both Nightfells were already here, though I hadn’t spotted them from above – perhaps they chose to appear at the very moment me and Ciraya showed up. It was a trifle disconcerting, seeing two identical Tanras side by side again, each effortlessly communicating their Tanra-ness with every sly expression, every knowing word. But I was making my peace with it, bit by bit.
More magic-users arrived. Mages and archmages. Not all of those who’d come to the Giltergrove came to the Gathering. Some who didn’t come to the Giltergrove came to the Gathering. I’d been expecting more of a Magisterium presence – the crowds we’d drawn with our afternoon antics represented a significant percentage of the city’s population, and a part of me worried they’d all want to follow us here. But there were no magister-bands holding back throngs of curious city-folk. I hadn’t even seen them patrolling – manpower was an issue for them right now and maybe it was just that they no longer saw that duty as necessary. Perhaps Ghemenion expected us to police the crowds ourselves…
Whatever the cause, we’d been spared that awkwardness. I was on the verge of asking Tanra, then decided against it. It wasn’t just the matter of picking which Tanra to ask. I didn’t really want to know if the enchanters were doing something extra-legal. I chose to believe the people themselves knew better than to come here to do their gawping. Even if they didn’t, in the wake of the worst Incursion in history they had more-important tasks to be cracking on with. Real life. Feeding themselves and their kids. Burying those of their dead that could be found and recognised. Rebuilding. Resting. Getting blind drunk and doing their best to forget.
This was the worst place for that, for sure. The Tower of Mourning had a way of bringing home just how long had passed; how little I knew – how little I understood our shared history. The sheer scope of the past, all its tidal events washing our way, their full force crashing into this narrow channel, the eye of the needle that was this foreboding location, these slim seconds slipping by.
In my mind’s eye I saw it again, like it was yesterday.
My foot strikes the gravestone; the page he was reading was lost, and only Illodin remembers the number.
The last word he read.
Only Illodin can feel what I feel.
I blinked, and diverted my thoughts before tears filled my eyes. Ciraya was off interrogating the former Shadowcrafters, but I had Glimmermere and Greenheart to keep me company. Orcan showed up, and the four of us exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes. The others seemed just as pensive as me, and after a while conversation fell away, each of us consumed with private thoughts.
Just being here reminded me of Kani’s words. It bothered me – the way the Mundians of the future would remember us. If, as they all seemed to be saying, these really were the end times… if the death-knell of the Era was ringing out in the minds of seers and priests all up and down the lands… then what we did, how we reacted – it mattered. The trials the champions of the past faced, the battles they fought, the brutal ends many of them met… those were just skirmishes. It would be up to us, here and now, to win the war.
‘We are preparing for War.’
On the cosmic scale, maybe even these struggles against dragons and demons and liches meant nothing. Or, at least, close to nothing. The Realm had, eventually, brought peace to even its farthest-flung territories: if it cast shadows, that was only a result of the light burning here in my city, a bright unwavering beacon created by the Founders to guide the world across time’s storm-wracked seas. But even if it cost the lives of every man and woman and child within Arreath and Wyre’s proud white walls – the lives of every living creature in the Known World, and the Unknown too – our true contest was spiritual in nature. Our physical bodies were meaningless. If the dragons wanted to rule the earth and sky and ocean, their victory would be in vain. Burn us. Melt us in pools of acid. Enslave our souls. They couldn’t prevent us from existing. All chains turned to rust in the end. One day, we would be free. Free, to join the Lords of Light in their eternal guardianship of the planes.
Ironvine came flying in from the north, the wide loops of metal circling her lazily, glinting in the moonlight; clearly even she didn’t want to risk disturbing the sanctity of this hallowed ground by uprooting its paving slabs.
So she’s another one that wants to carry on being a champion, without doing any of the heavy lifting, without helping us fix the real problems. Fabulous. Not like we could use you for, oh, I don’t know, building a huge dropping tower. Training hundreds of new wizards almost from scratch. Oh no.
I had my moment of consternation, then I very deliberately put Ironvine’s reappearance from my mind. It didn’t matter what Dirk had told me – the last thing I needed right now was any lingering reminder of Emrelet. How stupid, how lovesick I’d been, to associate the new champion with my lost girlfriend. You couldn’t treat a new acquaintance like an old lover just because they both happened to be able to throw lightning-bolts, could you?
She was just another fighter. Another weapon in my arsenal. If that was the way she wanted it, that was how I was going to have to use her. I could only hope she’d throw herself back into the fray with all the vehemence she’d hurled at Abstraxia.
She came to a soft landing beside Mountainslide, stepping down from her little floating disc of stone and gesturing at it, instantly turning it to dust; the breeze took the near-invisible particles and lifted them high, carrying them far from the Tower of Mourning.
Dropping a rock here wasn’t something I would’ve thought constituted a crime, but her actions made sense all the same. Illodin would’ve appreciated the gesture, I was pretty sure.
Then, between one moment and the next, everyone disappeared.
I didn’t even have time to think –
“We can’t do it the same way with you, Kas. We hope this is okay.”
The words – they weren’t quite inside my mind. They were real things, projections of their blended voices, emanating from the very air beside me.
I spun on my ghostly heel, wide-eyed – and there they stood, under the black lintel of the tower’s irregular opening.
There were tears beneath the oceans and their unfathomable currents found their ways out of my eyes, tears I hadn’t even known I was holding back until they started streaming down my face. Lost knowledge sliced through the meat of my mind, its formless flesh settling instantly back into place in the wake of the magic’s passage –
All in the very moment I clapped my eyes on the Ten of them.
They wore plain white robes, cut to fit their various sizes, each marked at the breast with the Magisterium symbol – but the deep cowls were thrown back, revealing their faces.
And I remembered.
“J-J…”
Seeing them ruined me. I fell to my knees, the eldritch power keeping me from doing myself an injury.
“We’re so sorry.”
“You… you’re…”
I had no idea why they were sorry, when I was so very, very glad. I couldn’t produce coherent sounds, couldn’t tell them, couldn’t let them in to hear –
Tears of joy! Here!
Illodin’s tears!
Their voice continued: “Our identities were the only things in you we could touch, Kas. That blessed crown! The cursed crown that’ll save us all! But it stops us from sparing you the sorrow of this little reunion. After everything, everything you’ve done for all of us, we would’ve done that for you, if we could. Spared you more sorrow. But it’s okay! We’re okay! And better this way than you spending the last couple of days worrying about us. We needed the time to integrate. It may not sound like –”
“Guys,” I choked, “c-come here.”
I staggered to my feet, half-floating, half-stumbling towards them, but they didn’t need to run to meet me. A pair of smiling, teary-eyed kids at the back of the group raised their palms, gesturing – and swept them all forwards towards me, as though the distance separating me from them had itself somehow contracted.
Depositing the lot of them right in front of me.
The diviners who’d so-nonchalantly warped space itself looked like seven- or eight-year-old boys. Their complexions were not quite so dark as the sorceresses’; their expressions were mature beyond their years, kindly and sympathetic – and their eyes were shining with more than just tears, living power right there in their gazes. The druidesses were the oldest, by the looks of things – thirteen-year-olds, perhaps. Of all the same-sex twins these redheaded sisters were perhaps the most readily-discernible from one another, to my eye at least, thanks to the preponderance of dissimilar freckles covering each of their faces.
Saff and Tarr I remembered well – Arxine and Orieg too, though they looked different without a permanent mega-structure of shielding following them around. But it was the faces of my brother and sister that consumed all my attention.
“Don’t you ever,” I huffed, crouching a little to accept and return their embrace, “ever let me forget your faces. Never again. You understand. Y-you…”
I was reduced to sobs, but the way they squeezed me, I knew they understood. They wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been necessary and I couldn’t hold it against them.
I could only hold them.
And never let go again.
* * *
Once the diviner-twins took me under their spell, I was transported into the Ceryad chamber along with the others. Hundreds of champions were crammed into the dry patches of ground about the shining pools of dew, mages and archmages arrayed neatly beneath the gleaming crystal branches like overgrown fortify pieces. For that was what they were – they’d all been frozen into stasis, trapped with a power akin to that of the Sinphalamax.
Worse. It wasn’t just enchantment. The droplets were falling from the ceiling with the lethargy of snowflakes in spite of their vertical trajectories. The champions’ breathing was slower than it ought to have been, even entranced, chests rising and falling with excruciating slowness…
It was a time-bubble, vast in dimension, locking hundreds upon hundreds into a clipped series of moments.
How…?
This blending of chronomancy and telepathy was unheard of. Wide-eyed, I cast about. Most of the twins were standing beside the trunk of the glowing tree some ten yards away, their feet carefully placed so as to not mistakenly step upon the Ceryad’s gnarled roots. Only Jaid and Jaroan remained at my side.
“Wow,” I murmured, glancing around one more time at the enchanted champions and wondering at the sheer amount of protective spells my brother and sister had casually subverted. “You’ve really increased in strength, haven’t you?”
“Commensurate with your own,” Jaroan said, ducking his head and smiling wryly. “We just started with a bit more juice than normal, if you get me. We’ve taken the time to get some perspective before showing our hand. But you’ll know all about that, won’t you?”
“Ciraya?” Jaid said teasingly, right on his heels. “Really? You’re interacting with everyone’s destinies, of course, but hers is a proper knot right now. So we hear.”
I blinked. They weren’t talking in tandem anymore? Their offhanded confidence, their sly mannerisms… they were those of sages, a man and woman far beyond their years.
Oh. Of course.
A wave of grief struck me, biting clean through all my mental defences like infernal acid through flesh.
They aren’t just enchanters. They’ve shared the minds of their counterparts. They’ve seen the world, the way only seers of their calibre can see it. The future. The past.
They aren’t children anymore. They lost… I lost… seeing them grow…
And there’s no taking it back.
‘One day I’ll look back and wonder when exactly it was that everything went back to normal’…
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The wave of emotion passed me by and, though I was able to harden my heart against the pain, keep my head high and gaze unwavering – the acid took a layer off that granite organ. I knew I’d never get my brother and sister back. Not the same way. I’d never find out who they were meant to be. They would always be my siblings, but there was always going to be an aspect of strangerhood about them – a gulf between us I could never hope to cross.
But who were you meant to be, Kas? What would you be, without the Spellgod’s essence? Is this the first gulf between you?
They trusted you with the crown. Let them be.
I gritted my teeth.
I can’t. Who are they? I don’t know them… how can I trust them?
“You’ve messed with all their minds, though,” I chided them, wanting to push back at them a bit, see how they reacted. “What about your destinies? If I didn’t have this… crown-shadow on me… you’d be doing the same to me.”
“It’s okay,” Jaid said, not sighing and rolling her eyes like a ten-year-old but smiling patiently, almost pityingly, at me. “We’ll do everything we have to do to make the future turn out right. Why do you think no one turned up to watch the Gathering tonight? That really was a trifle rash of you, you know, Kas… blurting the location out like that.”
“I thought –”
“Your reasons are obvious. We just tapped into the local ley-line and excised that part of your message so it didn’t reach anyone you wouldn’t intend. We weren’t sure how you were going to react to Dreamlaughter…”
“And of course you’ll be sceptical – we’re being judicious with the truth,” Jaroan cut in. “There’s things we want to tell you… things we want you to hear, you understand… that you simply can’t know. We can’t even let others tell you. We comprehend the consequences of many of our actions and inactions, even as they concern you, in spite of the crown you wore. You have a light in you – we’ve seen it – a million times stronger than the darkness. But it only takes a single thin wall to block the light of the sun. That wall – is fate. You dreamt of what we speak. You against yourself, Kas. Your nightmare. Tyr Kayn showed it to you.”
I remembered it well. Trapped inside, listening to the other me outside, breaking down the unbreakable door.
I shivered.
“There’s a way forward, a path you could tread, if we guide you carefully. But we must be quick. You must run, run as you ran today! And you can only tread this path, this line of light, blindfolded. To open your eyes to the walls on either side is to careen off course, break into pieces. You think you’re broken now? You must recognise – we’re only acting to protect you. Protect Mund, and the world. Our entire reality, this fragile plane upon which we play out our lives.”
“I…” I wasn’t sure how to react to this portent of doom. “I can’t see the gods sanctioning such flagrant mind-control,” I said, still feeling rather uneasy. “I don’t like having things hidden from me, sure – that’s one thing. But this?” I glanced around at an unmoving Winterprince, a paralysed Glimmermere. “I don’t care how laudable your goals are, Nentheleme would pitch a fit.”
“Illodin and Glaif let us in, didn’t they?” Jaroan said gently.
I raised my eyebrows. “They let Direcrown in, even after he just murdered a thousand people. They let Redgate in.”
“Those two were willing to give their lives for Mund, even then,” my sister murmured.
“We know why Redgate was willing to die,” I growled.
“But Direcrown? And they wouldn’t allow Aramas inside,” my brother went on. “We’ve got him paralysed too, just on the other side of the threshold.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the entrance to the chamber. The rune-inscribed doors were still thrown open. I hadn’t spotted my old enemy outside when the diviner-twins blurred me past, but my vampiric eyes caught the vague dark shape against the greater darkness of the tunnel beyond.
Jaroan’s gaze followed my own.
“But once we’ve double-checked him we’ll let him go, before you or anyone else can stop him. He has another part to play. We can’t explain it. We can only let it happen.”
My brother sounded sad.
“Is he still my enemy?” I asked quietly.
“Oh, yes,” he whispered.
“And you won’t tell me what he has planned for me?”
“We can’t,” Jaid said. “No one can. We’ve seen it, and said these words to you, and let him go. We’re to blame, if you have to blame anyone. It’s the only way to bring him to the light.”
I turned to look into her old, old eyes.
They’re the new Timesnatcher.
“But we won’t be here,” she continued. “We won’t make you forget us again – everyone here will remember us, in fact. All the same, we have to stay out of your hair.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; my voice shook. “What do you mean?”
“We have to go, Kas.”
“But you can’t go. Go where? You can help us – help me. Fix everything. Fight the Dracofont –”
“There are other planes,” Jar interjected. “Other worlds. We have so much to see, so much to learn, before we’ll be ready for that particular fight. There are still many gaps in our visions. Many things just about Mund that we can’t grasp.”
“Don’t try telling us you don’t think you can hold down the fort without us.” Jaid’s smile had returned, at full pitying power. “You were going to do it when you didn’t even remember we existed. We’ll be back in time for the big battle, don’t you worry.”
I shook my head, and glanced over at the other, patiently-waiting twins to ensure they realised I knew I was addressing all Ten of them.
“I was never confident about ‘holding down the fort’! This… it just sounds like an excuse to me. You need to go off, ‘find yourselves’? I tried that already! We tried that! It’s an excuse to not actually use your abilities, for the greater good. You could accomplish in the blink of an eye – I – there’s still so much to do –”
“And you’ll do it!” Jaid cried, cutting me off as my words started to stumble. “We have no mandate, Kas! The people know you. They love you. We didn’t do that. We won’t! Don’t you see it yet? How can we be trusted, when even you won’t trust us?”
“I never said –”
“You don’t have to!” She held up her hand, and my voice rang out from the very stones beneath my feet, the cavern roof overhead:
“I’m sorry, both of you… you know, there was a time back at that Gathering you attended, when I thought you were as bad as Timesnatcher. I didn’t know if I could trust you. Forgive me, before it’s too late.”
In the silence that followed I looked between them, stunned.
“We don’t need to be able to read your mind,” Jar said calmly, “or even read your fate. Echoes of visions, futures that may never come to pass, still carry their own fragments of the truth. You’re a whirlpool, Kas, but we can taste the waters of destiny as they circle you. And it’s only right for you to mistrust us. You don’t know us anymore. Can we trust ourselves? It’s not ethical for us to be here, not now. This time of crisis… if we let ourselves meddle we’ll find ourselves taking all the big decisions. We’ll make you reliant on us. Not just to do the heavy lifting – but the decision-making, Kas. It’s too dangerous. We’ll make you our willing slaves and that’s not what we want. We can’t afford to neuter mortalkind when it’s on the cusp of its ascension! No, Mund already has its leader – and already we have offended him.”
“Offended? Please, Jar, I’m not…”
He gestured blandly at the crowd of dull-eyed, motionless champions. My voice fell away into a protracted sigh.
“Just in holding your companions at our leisure, we demonstrate the reason we need to leave. We didn’t mean for it to turn out that way, but – there we have it.” He lowered his hand, slapping it against his leg as if to thereby punctuate the finality with which he spoke. “We just knew the best way to have this chat with you was to do it alone. And look! Our very first overt act – a mistake! In spite of our intentions, in spite of our desire to serve the ‘greater good’…”
His argument churned in my mind; I searched for some seam by which to unravel it, dismiss it out of hand, and came up with nothing.
What if the only reason they did this was because they knew it was the only excuse I’d take for them abandoning me again?
“So… that’s it?” I asked, feeling the fear clutching my heart suddenly. Even if they’d changed – who hadn’t? How could I let them up and leave? “You’re just… going?”
“We’ll be back.”
I stared between them, studying their faces once more. Their maturity was increasingly overt the longer I stared.
Our roles reversed.
Finally I knew what to say.
“You promise?”
Jaroan grinned savagely. “How’s it feel, now the glove’s on the other hand?”
I barked laughter, and almost involuntarily I swept my arm about him, pulling him into a hug. Jaid clasped her arms about us both.
I closed my eyes on the tears. The time for weeping was over. They were making the mature decision to remove themselves from the situation, reducing the risk of the Ten puppeteering the Realm with no oversight, no possibility of removal.
They truly were champions.
“You’re the story’s real heroes,” I managed to squeak. I sounded miserable, but I really wasn’t. Not deep down, on the inside.
“Maybe. We’ll try.”
“Our true purpose still eludes us, Kas.”
“But we’ll find it, if we can.”
“And we’ll make it all alright again.”
I squeezed tighter, then released them.
“Okay.” I stepped away from them and wiped my eyes. “Okay. You do it your way, and let me do it mine. Just… When you get back…”
“Yeah?”
“Kas?”
“Oh, nothing.” I smiled. It was impossible to put into words. “Just… make sure you know how to kick the dragons’ asses, eh?”
“Exx-cuu-se… mmmm-ee…“
Even the Ten swivelled in alarm, but it was only the Tanras. The seeresses were arm-in-arm, doing their best to counteract the spells paralysing them; they were staggering through a pool towards us, the fluid about their feet moving more like clear gel than water, clumping up rather than rippling.
“Tiii-me… sssnaaa…“
The diviner-twins cast their dazzling smiles towards the clones, and waved their hands again, a permissive gesture; the pair of Nightfells halted their struggling and straightened up suddenly.
“– tcher,” they finished, then glanced at each other.
“We’re still sanding out the bulges, sorry!” one of the boy-seers said, still smiling. “Well done, for breaking free, though.”
“Yeah, that was really impressive!”
There was a chorus of congratulatory noises from the Ten. Jaid and Jaroan cooed along with their equally-overpowered brethren.
“Great. Yeah, thanks.” The Tanra speaking didn’t seem to quite know how to respond to this situation. “Gods, so this is the Ten…”
“Had to happen sooner or later,” the other Tanra muttered. “I hate knowing I’m going to get blindsided and there’s precisely nothing I can do the stop it.”
“Your experiences are so similar to our own; and yet we are so different. You became one another. You became what you feared.” The boy-seers looked distracted, just for a moment, both of them frowning, casting their gazes to the floor – my guess was that they were engaged in a flurry of telepathic exchanges. Then they focussed on the Nightfells once more. “Yes, your intended proposition is a good one. We recognise you have probably deciphered enough of the clues by now to realise that Timesnatcher did not die to the dweonatar. However, he and Duskdown were only a hair beneath you two ladies in terms of potential power-expression. We can’t see his ultimate fate. Not yet. Perhaps his remains were dragged to the Twelve Hells by a different fiend. Or perhaps his corpse lies beneath the reeds in a Treetown mere.” The boy talking clenched his miniature fist. “I would not have it so, yet our arts will not avail us of his location.”
“I only hope his soul was not tainted, or consumed by the dragons’ servants,” Arxine or Orieg said. “His sins were few, and mild. He deserves full honours for his rectitude.”
Whichever one of them it was, she used such a familiar Sticktown accent that I was taken aback; it was like the little outlander had borrowed Jaid’s voice wholesale. Her vocabulary as well.
Of course, she probably had, along with the oratorical styling of a mishmash of book characters.
I cleared my throat. “I too wish him safe passage through the shadowland.” I nodded to the diminutive sorceresses, and received a double-nod back.
“That’s if he’s dead,” a Nightfell said in obvious protest. The other at her side just folded her arms across her chest in solidarity.
“You don’t believe so?” The boy-seer sounded curious, but their confidence was clear despite the ostensible seniority of their female counterparts. He said it the way I’d have expected my brother or sister to question the moves of a new fortify player, whatever their age. “If he’s not dead, then is he hiding? Truly?”
The other boy spoke up: “Of the Ten of us our sisters knew him best and as they say – few are the reprimands his enemies might speak fairly over his grave. Even his worst foe would not dare call him craven.”
“We aren’t saying that.” The Tanras looked at each other again briefly, then: “Tainted, you said. What if his… darkness… what if it won?”
* * *
Much later, when we were spent, entangled once more in one another’s limbs, I told Ciraya what had occurred during the extended moments she’d missed. She listened attentively, barely blinking. The Ten’s own words to the Gathering had only gone so far. I revealed much to her that few others knew, and some that no one else knew but me and the twins.
And as much as I refused to believe it, as much as I wouldn’t be able to handle it if it were true… the same chills ran up and down my flesh when I got to the end, the same shivers that’d wracked me when the seeresses spoke those final, portentous words.
Ciraya felt the goosebumps covering my bicep, and ran her nails along the little lumps, keeping her silence, eyes trained on my lips.
For my part I looked through the open shutters at the star-strewn sky, and repeated it one more time, trying to sound less convinced, trying to dispel the horrible certainty that had gripped me.
“What if it won?”
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