Now, as he moved past the reverence and downcast eyes of his subjects in the halls, he could feel their eyes fixing on his back as he passed; could imagine the fevered whispers that would fill the halls as soon as he had gone. They knew something was wrong. A shameful urge rose in him to retreat to his room, to weep in the dimness there for all he had lost.
But his reign had never been marked by timidity.
Reaching the corner, he stopped and turned back. His four Preservers halted with him as if the decision had been planned.
"I see you watching me," he said to the people in the hall. They stopped at once, heads down, hands clasped. "I know your fears, and I would do nothing to allay them. They are valid. We are in the end times, and even I am assailed by darkness. Such darkness none of you can comprehend, such evils that I must fight them alone, in meditation and prayer, for days on end."
None dared look at him. That was good. He still commanded their respect and fear; both were critical to keeping control of his Church. "Devils plague us, my children, devils both visible and spectral. I do all I can to fight them, and I will not fail. I never have. But know that my fight is emblematic of everything we face now, together, as a Church and as the people of Akir. With each Rending God's plan draws closer to fruition, and the end draws nigh. Your eternal reward for perseverance in the face of tribulation will come, if you only maintain faith."
A shudder passed through the crowd, a whisper of awe or horror. An instant of fierce relief seized him. My words have moved them. They believe me. Then he realized their veneration had nothing to do with him at all.
In the southeast, far beyond the Tears, the Fifth Rending unfolded like a shattering of the skies.
No. The same thought, every time another Rending appeared—defiant, originally, but now pleading. Despondent. No, no . . . ah God, Akir, please, no—
And the presence reared like a tidal wave. Seized him, hauled him backward through his own mind to a cell in the rear—a space he had never visited or imagined. His face fell slack as he fought back, screaming, against the monster in his mind, struggling to keep some piece of control. But in the strobing brilliance of the fifth Rending, it had grown in strength once again. It overwhelmed him, shoved him into that prison, and slammed the door.
His tongue moved. His voice spoke. "Fear not, my children," it called, with a feigned warmth and compassion he could never have managed. "Each Rending is merely another moment closer to victory."
His mouth smiled. His feet carried him away.
And he pounded on the door of the prison in his mind, screaming.
The presence took him, surprisingly, to the library, where it opened the same books he had pored over in the past years, starting at the beginning with Gilleus and the mark of salgo. It read the first passages, describing the heathen Ethaniel's betrayal of Akir and ultimate execution, with great interest—then skipped ahead, chapter by chapter and book by book, the words flowing past his eyes like gnats buzzing beyond a clouded window.
Looking for something, Caleph thought. But what? Why?
Darius, his personal assistant, found him late in the afternoon and asked him about the appointments he had missed. "Not today," his voice said. "Cancel them."
"I already have, Your Holiness," the man said as Caleph silently screamed his name. "I merely wanted to . . . confirm Your wellness, and inquire whether You wished me to reschedule―"
"Schedule nothing," the presence answered with Caleph's voice. "Give me time."
"Perhaps in the morning, we can―"
The presence glared at him. "I will come to you when I'm ready. Now get out of here, or E'tal will throw you out." Caleph's lead Preserver tensed, ready to act on his charge's command.
Darius left.
The presence remained in the library through the evening and long into the night, finally ending its research sometime in the early morning. It bore Caleph back upstairs, to his bedchamber.
The guards, Caleph realized at once. Normally there were two Scarlet Guard on the door at all times. Now they were gone. He thought to shout a warning to the presence, in case it hadn't noticed or didn't realize the danger, but froze, torn and uncertain. The presence passed into the bedchamber without hesitation. In the gloom of dawn, Caleph saw a man seated in one of his chairs—Deacon Breer, a pudgy, dawdling waste of a man whose name Caleph only remembered because of his innumerable failures. A reflexive outrage exploded in him, as consuming as it was impotent.
What are you doing here? he wanted to demand. You've no right to be here.
But the presence saw the man, too. Instead of making any demands, it fell quiet. Caleph felt his heartbeat quicken, but in trepidation, not affront. "Good morn," it finally said—cautiously, using his voice.
"Good morn," the deacon answered. "I apologize for the intrusion, but I had a question that couldn't wait."
Caleph felt his brow arch, inviting the man to continue.
"What are your thoughts on the Raving Witch?" the deacon asked.
The thing inhabiting Caleph's body gave a sigh—relief mingled with dread—and replied, "She will bring a scalding dawn."
Deacon Breer settled forward, his eyes intense. Caleph now noticed a longsword resting across his lap. "Baltazar?"
Caleph felt his head nod. "Faerloss?" his voice returned.
Breer smiled and held up his right hand. A black ring shimmered into focus on his third finger, then vanished. Caleph recognized it—it had belonged to Syntal Smith, the witch from Southlight who had escaped Sanctaria last year.
Caleph's body sighed again, this time in resolution. "D'haan," it said.
Breer switched to the tongue of the First Clerics, in a dialect Caleph didn't recognize. "Faerloss will be along soon, I'm sure. I can feel him again. Whatever Lars did to him, the Sealing broke it." He smiled. "Let me be the first to congratulate you, Baltazar. It would seem your plan worked better than even you expected."
Caleph's voice answered in the same ancient language. "So it has."
Breer's smile broadened. "You had hoped I wouldn't be here, didn't you? That you would inherit the whole of Or'agaard, and your compatriots in the effort would be lost to time. Unfortunate victims of the Sealing."
"Of course not."
"You're a good liar, Baltazar, but not that good. It is well. I'd have hoped the same, in your position. But you took an oath, as did I, and we will fulfill those oaths."
Baltazar. Caleph knew the name well—it belonged to the first Fatherlord, the founder of the Church. Modern parents never named their children with it; while not forbidden, the practice was considered gauche.
The first inklings of understanding took root in Caleph's mind.
"I never thought otherwise," Baltazar said.
"Faerloss will want to forge the plan, of course, but I'm sure he'll appreciate any details we can offer him when he arrives, so let's start at the beginning. Clearly it's been longer than two weeks."
Baltazar took a deep breath. "That's our largest failure."
Breer's eyes narrowed; he braced himself. "How long?"
"I can't say for certain. Assuming modern timekeeping is accurate, more than three thousand years."
Breer fell silent, absorbing this information. "Three thousand," he eventually breathed, tasting the number. "By the dawn." He made a sound that was half laugh and half moan. "She will not be pleased."
"She is dead, D'haan," Baltazar said. Caleph felt a desperation rise in him, thick and choking. "Long dead. Not even a memory. She doesn't need to know of our failure—She doesn't need to know anything."
Breer peered at him with suspicion or consideration. Maybe both. "Can you still bring Her back?"
"I―" Caleph felt Baltazar perched at the edge of a cliff, weighing his options as the sheer drop waited.
"You can," Breer said.
"I don't know. Possibly. But the altar isn't here, nor is the Allgem."
"What do you mean, the altar isn't here? Where else would it be?"
"I
don't know. I only just gained control of this vessel yesterday afternoon. I'm nearly as deep in the dark as you are."
"Nearly." Breer glared. "You take me for a fool."
"No." Baltazar shook Caleph's head. "No, I take you for the only one smart enough to consider all options."
"You'd have us leave the Queen for dead. Turn our backs on Her, after all She's done for us."
"She already is dead. More ancient than ancient history—the Church's oldest books don't even mention Her." He took a tight, urgent step toward Breer. "If the altar is missing, and the Allgem is gone, we can't complete the plan. We don't even have Her remains. If you and I exhaust all possibilities before Faerloss arrives, if we present a united front to him―"
"You know I can't do that."
"Can't you? Are you certain? Three. Thousand. Years, D'haan. The bond hasn't faded in all that time? Are you certain? Because you've told me of your regrets before. I still remember. If we do this, if She returns, your only chance at freedom dies."
"Your only chance, you mean."
"Fine. Yes. Mine, too—both of ours. Just . . . think about it. Focus on it. The bond—has it weakened?"
Breer quieted, his eyes fastened to the wall. "It's still there," he finally said.
"Yes, it's still there, but has it weakened? Can you disobey Her?"
Again Breer turned inward. The room plunged into silence. Then he shook his head and glared. "It's none of your concern."
"It has." A shock of relief flooded Caleph's veins. "Hasn't it? You have agency."
Breer's eyes flashed. "I have always had agency. I make my own choices, Baltazar. I chose to take the bond in the first place, and I choose every consequence of that decision. I don't squirm beneath my regrets like you do."
But Baltazar refused to back down. "This is the moment, D'haan. Our only chance. If Faerloss returns, if we bring Her back, the moment passes. You told me you'd had second thoughts―"
Breer shot to his feet, sword in hand. "Mention that night again and we will find a new stooge for Her plan. You are hardly as irreplaceable as you once were; you've made a whole Church of stooges for us to choose from. Say it again, and let me choose one."
Baltazar licked his lips—My lips, Caleph thought—and tried again. "What makes you so certain She would even still want this? It's a different world. Her father, the Kespran Church, every person or institution She loathed is gone, D'haan. There is no one here to save the people from."
"There's you," Breer threw back. "And that is Her choice to make, not yours." He scoffed. "You know, Faerloss warned me that you couldn't be trusted. 'If he'll betray one master, he'll betray another.' You're lucky it's me that woke in your precious crystal tower and not him. He'd have already taken your head—or made you don his cloak."
"I never would've said these things to him. I thought you had more sense."
"And I thought the same of you. But I was wrong. I see now it's time to snap your leash."
A thrill of fear stole down Caleph's spine. Baltazar took two unwitting steps backward and lifted his hands, a miracle at his lips. His Preservers dropped into combat stances, restrained violence shivering in their palms.
Breer gave them a sardonic smile. "Please do. I'd love nothing more than to run this church of his." His eyes shifted to Caleph's. "Go on, then. Sic them on me. If I kill them, we'll know exactly where we stand, and if they kill me . . . well. You know they can't kill me."
Baltazar froze, despair slowly filling him. Caleph felt it like a flood of cold water.
"No? Then let me clarify things for you." He pushed past the Preservers, seized Caleph by the throat, and slammed him to the wall. The Preservers scrambled at once, limbs flashing.
Baltazar gave a strangled shriek. "No! Back down! All of you!"
Breer continued as if the guardians didn't exist. "You will find the missing altar. You will find the Allgem. You will tell me where Her remains are. You will cooperate fully with the plan you helped create. Or you will have survived three thousand years only to live the rest of your final life in the worst agony you can imagine. Say 'yes.'"
"Yes. Yes!"
"When Faerloss arrives, there will be no sign of the treachery you attempted here. You will tell him what he wants to hear, and we will proceed with your full cooperation. Say 'yes.'"
"Yes."
"Say you understand."
"I understand." The words wheezed out of his cramped throat, pitiful and mewling.
"Who is the master here?"
"You are."
"Who?"
"You. You."
Breer dropped him. He sank to the floor, clutching at his throat and gasping. "Forget that again," Breer said, "and I will annihilate you."
ii. Helix
"How long?" he asked when he saw Ben enter the room. Somewhere within the churn, he had seen his caretaker wake with a beard soaked in blood, shivering. The blood fever, they called it. "I saw you wake this morning"—or I saw you wake tomorrow morning—"and you had it. How long?" He meant both how long have you had it and how long do you have.
He endured the relentless churn as he waited, saw earthquakes and marriages and an intimate Lordsbirth dinner with a poor family he'd never meet. All of history laid bare before it happened, and in the middle of the storm he clung to a rock called the here and now, waiting for Ben's answer.
It didn't come. Ben had never entered the room. Again, Helix's eyeless sight had betrayed him.
"Sehk," he whimpered. The rock he thought he'd been clutching shimmered and dissolved, casting him back into the wild. Futures pummeled him until he lost all sense of where and who he was.
He learned first to trust his fingers, Lorna said, shivering and translucent between a sunken tower and a host of angels. They never lied.
"Yes." Helix latched on to this wisdom, refusing the churn's efforts to tear it away. "I know! With the . . . the soup." He remembered that day's lunch. Remembered it, not envisioned it. It was his own memory, his own experience. He was sure of that.
Or nearly sure.
"It's the same with taste," he told Lorna's image as it broke into slivers and drifted away. "The same . . . the same with . . ." Visions had no taste. If he tasted it, it was real. The same with touch, he realized. Of course.
Two armies, both flying the griffon and the lance. The thunder of cavalry over open plain. Screams. The ringing of steel. And in his hands: soft linen, damp with sweat.
Bed. Not a battlefield. Not a ruined tower, stinking of seawater. Bed. I'm in a bed.
The door opened, and Ben came in.
"Ben," Helix said, eager to share. "I know where I am. I know how to tell. I can―"
The door opened, and Ben came in. Did you get any sleep? he asked.
"I—" Helix began, then frustration launched him to his feet. Teeth clenched and arms outstretched, he lurched toward the door. "Let me touch you," he begged. "Please, it's the only way to tell―"
The door opened, and Ben came in. "Whoa, now. Carefully."
"Ben?"
That papery hand, that gnarled flesh. Helix could've wept when it grasped him. "You're all right, now," the old man's voice promised. "You're all right."
"I knew you were coming," Helix said. "I saw it—I saw you come in." But you didn't ask how I slept, Helix realized. You were supposed to ask—
The churn rose again, buffeting him with a classroom of laughing children, and he gripped Ben's hand tighter. Real. One of the girls, a redhead, screwed up her face and stuck her tongue out. She looked like him. She could've been his—
REAL. He grabbed Ben's hand with both of his own now, fighting the current with everything he had. Here and now. Here and now. He had heard Angbar talk about the mantras he used to touch the Pulse; now Helix had a mantra of his own.
"M'sai, there," Ben said. "You're gonna tear an elderman's arm off." He guided Helix to a comfortable chair and urged him to sit. Helix saw him take his hand back before he did it.
"No. Please."
"
I'm right here, Helix. You can hear me."
"No. It's not enough. Please. I can't. It's the only way I know you're real. Please."
Ben sighed. "All right, then. But loosen up, if you can."
Helix forced himself to relax his death grip on the old man's hand. He tried to ground himself on other things: the carved wood of the chair's armrest, the weight of his own body against its cushion, the sunrise on the morning of his forty-second birthday.
From there, he realized the churn had levels, Lorna would say. He told me he could see everything—from the instants right in front of him, to events too far out to place. Once, he thought he saw the end of the world. But those immediate instants were the most important. Once he grasped those, he learned to shut out the rest.
That's the same way it worked for me, Helix would answer. Because I saw this conversation. It taught me.
"That's better," Ben said. "See? You're all right." The old man patted his hand. "Bad this morning, isn't it? But you remembered my name! I told you you would."
"Yeah. When you're not here, I—God, Ben, it's so hard."
"I know. I can tell just watching you."
He didn't want to live his whole life this way. He didn't want to let Marcus's torture define him.
Lyseira entered a secret mountain retreat alone and faced three shadows. The King charged to his death. War and more war: battles unending. They would win or they would lose; soldiers survived and soldiers perished.
He struggled to ignore it and asked, "How long?" Somewhere within the churn, he realized the question was worthless, so he clarified: "The blood fever. You've been waking with it."
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