"You're back," he murmured. "Oh, it's good to see you."
"It's better to see you!" she exclaimed. "You can get around on your own?" That's so wonderful, she'd say next.
He pulled away, feeling for his chair, then sank into it. He felt his glowing smile melt into a sheepish one. "Sometimes. Ben had to go—he was sick—and since then I've had to do more on my own. I think I'm starting to understand it."
"That's so wonderful. What about the visions? Are you still having them?"
As if invoked, the churn surged, threatening to unmoor him. He would run through an empty hallway, late for a meeting; he would hear about the edge of the world; he would fight in the streets. No. Here and now. He gripped the chair's armrest, forcing himself to find an anchor. Slowly, the churn retreated. He'd lost the thread of the near-future, but at least he still knew when he was.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm still having them. But I'm . . . starting to figure out how to work around them."
"Good. I was scared."
He managed a derisive chuckle. The churn snapped at him, a rabid dog on a fraying leash. "You were scared?"
She laughed. "M'sai, that's fair." It was harder to identify an awkward silence when he no longer experienced silence, but he had a sudden, vague idea that he was in one. He took the time to fumble for the thread again, rooting through alternate futures like a man digging through his wardrobe for a matching sock.
He found it—she would sigh, a troubled look on her face—and then lost it to a flood of illusions. "What is it?" he said.
She sighed. "I . . . debated whether to tell you."
The news about my father. One of a million things he'd witnessed. He couldn't remember exactly what it was, but he knew it wasn't good. Another bit of the churn, about to come true. They didn't always, he didn't think, but this one would.
"Is it about Dad?"
"We stopped at home when we came down the mountain. Lyseira and Seth's mom came back with us, along with a few other people from the village, but Auntie . . ." Syn sighed. "I wanted to bring her back, but she wouldn't listen to me. She's not herself."
"M'sai," he said, losing patience. She didn't understand how hard every minute was for him, how he had to fight every instant not to lose himself. "What about Dad?"
"Remember how they had you working at Mellerson's?"
Of course he remembered, once he dug through the storm of future-memories and into the basement of his own mind. Mom had put him up to it, because— "Money was tight," he said.
"Tighter than we knew. Uncle Kevric's gone."
"What?"
"Some rich customer, Baron Lotney, commissioned a costly sword from him. Uncle borrowed the crowns to pay for the materials, but when he finished it, Lotney wouldn't pay. Uncle couldn't pay the lender back, a man named Elgan Tricke, so Tricke . . . took him."
Here and now. Here and now. It was harder to hold on when the present was so ugly. "So—what? They threw Dad in debtor's prison?"
Syntal hesitated. He cast about through the storm, trying to find her, but it was impossible. The effort cost him. He clung to his armrest as the visions lashed him. "Syn?"
"No. They . . . sold him."
Helix flinched, but the news blasted him off his anchor. He fumbled after it, flailing. "Sold?" he said. "What do you . . . ?"
But he couldn't hear his cousin's response.
Over the roar of scrabbling visions, he couldn't hear anything.
iv. Harth
"Try again." Harth pointed once more at the first mantra, scrawled in chalk across the blackboard on the side wall. "It's harder when you're nervous or upset, but that's also when it's most important. Don't be afraid to fall back on the mantras. That's what they're for."
He was at the beginner's table. His student, a boy of thirteen or fourteen named Clive, looked doubtful, but he did as Harth asked.
"Harth," Oster called from nearer the door. He was a Bahiri of an age with Harth, quiet but with a laugh that could rumble the walls if you just pulled it out of him. "They're out there again."
Harth glowered. These sehking idiots. We have the King's blessing, don't they get that? He nodded and stalked over to the door. "I'll take care of it. You keep on with what you're doing."
He threw on his cloak and turned up the hood, bracing for the cold. What brought them back? he wondered. Rabble-rousers and doom criers had haunted this place since the King had granted Harth leave to it, over a month ago. Harth had finally managed to drive them away a few days ago, or so he'd thought until he noticed a small crowd gathering again this morning. They'd been quiet, at least at the time—but apparently, that was done with.
He threw open the door.
They were just across the street, crowded into the wide alley between Bailey's Better Boots and a sweet roll bakery closed for the season—the same place they'd been all month. Shouting threats and gesturing. People walking by on the street tried to ignore them.
"Go back!"
"We don't want you here!"
"Hey!" He gave a shout of his own before he realized they weren't looking at him. He followed their attacks and saw Syntal—wrapped in furs, that ridiculous, oversized pack bulging from her back—paused at the block corner. His heart did a sudden somersault.
"Syn!" He waved and loped over to her. "You're back!"
"Yeah." Beneath her hood, she'd fixed her gaze on the hecklers. "Angbar told me you were out here."
"Yeah! Yes, we're—you won't believe this. You know that chant you made, to find people who had Ascended? We were finally able to get them to come in. It was the blood fever! People were Ascending in their sleep!"
She chewed her bottom lip, still watching the agitators.
"The Witch of Southlight!" one of them shouted. "The Witch of Southlight is back!" A few passersby glanced at Syntal before hurrying past. "Get out of here, witch!"
Harth growled. "Just ignore them. Here―" He turned to face the alleyway. "We are here by order of the King!" he shouted. "Now, I told you all to get out of here!"
"You're worse than she is!" a pale man of Harth's own age returned. "What are you teaching them in there? What are you doing to them?"
"Nothing the King hasn't sanctioned!" Harth threw back. "Now get out of here, or tomorrow you'll have the Blackboots to contend with!"
Their jeers fell to murmurs. They pulled back from the alley's mouth, but not far. Harth sighed and turned back to Syn. "Sorry about that. They've been here the whole time, but they're all bark and no bite."
"No, it's all right," Syn said. "I can stay at Majesta. Angbar said my old room is still―"
"What? No! Why, because of this lot?" He waved the hecklers off. "They're just a few people, they're nothing—look around, nobody else cares." Now that he'd shooed off the protesters, everyone else in the street had, indeed, gone back to their business.
"I'm not . . . I don't like mobs."
"They're not a mob! They're nothing! Sehk, Syn, we could blow them all up if we wanted to." He gave her a crooked grin, but she didn't return it. "Oh, come on. I'm not serious. It's just a little chanter humor." He took her hand. "Here. You have to see this. It was your idea."
With a last, pensive glance at the alley mouth, she let him pull her down the block.
"It was an old Church-run school, a place for initiates. With the Church out of the picture, King Isaic gave it to us once we figured out what the blood fever was."
"And it was . . ." Syntal shook her head. "You said people were Ascending in their sleep?"
"Chanters, Syn." Harth couldn't keep the smile of pride from his face as he threw open the door. "Chanters."
He watched her take it all in: a wide open classroom with five tables and a dozen people of all ages, gathered in groups or working singly, practicing minor chants or simply how to Ascend to the Pulse. A wide blackboard spanned an entire wall, displaying Lar'atul's mantras and a scrawl of complicated notes.
The air hummed with Pulse magic. Every time he entered the room, the hairs on hi
s arms rose.
"You said you wanted to start a school," he said. "Well, here it is." She had fallen mute; he ushered her in the rest of the way and closed the door. "Everyone!" he called. "Everyone!"
Quiet stole over the room. All eyes turned to them. "For those who haven't met her, this is Syntal Smith." He stepped aside and gestured toward her. "She was the one who opened the first wardbook and reawakened the Pulse."
A murmur of awe rippled through the room. Then the students started clapping. Harth beamed at Syntal and joined them.
She flushed and looked at the floor, braving only an occasional glance at the applause. Finally, though, Harth caught a hint of a shy smile. He waved the applause down.
"All right, all right—I know, she's a legend. She's had a long journey, though, and I'd still like to show her around, so get back to your practice. I promise, everyone will get the chance to meet her."
The room's gentle murmur resumed. Harth led her to a side door. "The dormitories," he explained. "There's a room back here for you, if you want it. I've been staying on site because it just makes it easier. A few of the other students have bunks, too, but most of them just go home at night, so there are a lot of extra rooms." He showed her to one of them, where he'd cleared out the extra cots and moved in a desk for her. She blinked, taking it in, her face unreadable.
His nerves got away from him. "I know the walls are bare," he started, "and the window's a little grimy, but we can―"
"I love it," she breathed. She stepped in and dropped her pack with a dull thud. "By God, this is . . ." She turned around. "Harth, it's amazing. This is mine?"
"By order of the King." He grinned despite himself; he still couldn't believe the words. "You're sure you like―?"
She kissed him, green eyes bright with daring. Oh, he thought. Suddenly every other notion in his head vanished.
"Let me change," she said, "and clean up a little. Then I want to see it all."
"M'sai," he said.
She pushed him out of the room and left him standing in the hall, grinning at the closed door like an idiot.
Suddenly, somehow, everything felt like it would be all right.
6
i. Iggy
Forty days.
Forty days since Seth's eyes had narrowed at Iggy's mention of the nebulous darkness, the stench of wrongness, that glared like a pustule from somewhere on the open plain. Forty days since he'd convinced his friends that he had to follow it, that he would be faster without them, and finally become a hawk and left them behind to prove his point.
He'd promised to catch up to them on the open sea, rejoin them on the Talon once he'd figured out what that awful presence was and how to dispel it. He hadn't expected the hunt to take long; his quarry had been close enough, at the beginning, that he should have been able to reach it in less than an hour with the wind beneath his wings.
But he'd gravely underestimated how elusive his target was.
That first day, as the others set out for the Talon with Lyseira's mother and a few of the other Southlight villagers brave enough to accompany them, he had flown north. At the time he'd thought that even his promise to catch up to them on the Talon was overly pessimistic. He'd secretly hoped to have this mystery figured out in a matter of hours. But when he reached the place where he'd sensed the presence—maybe six miles north of Southlight, along the road up to Coram—he found nothing. No festering darkness, no scent to the air, not even fresh tracks in the snow. He'd returned to his own form and meditated again, reaching into the frozen earth to share its thoughts and perceptions as he had back in Southlight, but the presence had vanished; he found only the slow breaths of the sleeping trees, the barren howl of the winter winds.
He could have left, then—and in fact he pretended to. But he returned after nightfall, again extending his perceptions all through the Pulse around him, and that time he'd found it. Like a dead possum caught twitching. Just a whiff, again, hardly anything—but still farther north, still along the road.
It was moving.
He repeated this process over the next few days. Always, when he was right on top of it, he couldn't find it. The whole thing faded like a forgotten memory; a few times he tried to convince himself he was imagining it all. But when he kept his distance, when he reached out through the Pulse at range, it couldn't hide from him. Again he thought of the prey in the spiderweb: somehow, he could only sense its tremors at a distance.
He considered abandoning the search. There were no doubt countless creatures and phenomena that would emerge as the Seals opened, and surely not all of them would require his immediate and complete attention. He also thought of flying up to Ordlan Green, telling the Ciirs there and asking if they knew what it was.
But something about this particular presence wouldn't let him leave it alone. Its evasiveness was too perfect, too deliberate, to be an accident. And if it could somehow obfuscate itself even from detection through the Pulse, it was uniquely dangerous.
So he tracked it north, along the road to Coram. He couldn't remain the hawk the entire time, because when he became something other than himself for long stretches, he found it hard to leave the form behind. Last year, before the long winter had hit, he'd flown up to Ordlan Green, then flown back and scouted out the Fatherlord's army in Tal'aden. When he finally returned to Keswick, he had barely remembered who he was. He had nearly lost himself.
When he was the man, his time as the hawk felt like a dream—but when he was the hawk, it was the other way around. His true form became less and less important to him, slipping slowly away. He didn't want to risk it happening again.
Travel by foot was slower, especially through the deepest snowdrifts, but his nightly meditations let him know he was on the right path. The presence was moving steadily north, and he was keeping pace with it—almost as if it, too, was on foot.
Day after day, mile after endless white mile, he tracked it. At the town of Coram it turned west, still staying to the road, and maybe a week later it turned north at Fors. It had the pace of a man, stuck to the roads like a man. But Iggy never saw any footprints in the snow besides his own.
Now, finally, after forty days on its trail, he looked up at its destination: the city of Shientel, etched into the mountains of the Tears like a vein of glittering ore.
He had been here once before, last year with Helix and the others, on their way to Tal'aden. Winter's cloak blunted its beauty some, but as human cities went it was still pleasing to look upon. Iggy wished he could just look upon it.
But the rock of the mountain ached beneath every street the city had carved into it; the stink of burning trees stained the sky with black murder. Cities repulsed Iggy, and Shientel—despite its beauty to the eye—was still a city. He entered them for his friends or out of a sense of duty. Never for himself. If it were up to him, he would never set foot in one again.
He meditated, reaching once more outward and downward, into the roots of the trees and the mountains alike—and again caught the stain of rot, so atrocious it lent the surrounding city all the glory of Ordlan Green in comparison. It's in there, he thought to himself. Somewhere.
So he steeled himself, and went in after it.
The long winter had brought the city to its knees. Soldiers in the heraldry of the clouded mountain kept peace in the streets at a sword's edge, but they looked as emaciated as everyone else. A shroud had fallen over the place, a lingering premonition of death. Everyone was starving.
He kept his hood low over his eyes and his cloak close, trying to blend in as he searched the streets. But just as he had on the roads leading here, he had no idea what he was looking for. Pulse meditation took time and was hardly inconspicuous; he couldn't just do it in the middle of town. And everywhere he went, people glared: he was an outsider, and worse, he looked like he'd been eating well. They begged him for food, accused him of planning to steal from them, or simply chased him away from their property. No one would talk to him, even if he did have any clue what quest
ions to ask them.
As the sun sank behind the Tears, he made his way into an alley between two shuttered shops. His mother—the All-Mother, as they called her in Ordlan Green—had kept extremes of heat and cold at arm's length from him throughout his life, ever since Syntal had broken the first Seal and Iggy had heard the trees sing. He knew the air was cold, he could feel it nipping at his fingertips and coalescing as frost in his moustache, but it never sank in to him, never reached his muscles or bones. He would be fine sleeping in the alley, if it came to that, and in fact the idea sounded more enticing than spending a night in an inn's room. The alley actually butted up straight against the exposed rock of the mountainside; sleeping with his head on the stone would be more comforting than any feather pillow.
It was also isolated, so he risked another Pulse meditation. Doing so in a city was an exercise in pain. It forced him to share every agony the city had inflicted upon the earth, to feel each of them carved into his flesh as if he were the rock they violated, as if he were the trees they burned. He had made the mistake of doing it in Keswick, once, and never wanted to do it again. But there was no other way to keep tracking the presence, so he closed his eyes, set his hands to the stone, and braced himself.
The clamor of the city's torment made it nearly impossible to focus on the presence he was tracking. Piled upon the violations already visited upon the natural order here was a deep, primal hunger—not only of the people, but of every living thing on the mountainside. The long winter had taken them all by surprise, and none had prepared sufficiently. The humans had failed to store provisions, the bears had failed to fatten themselves, the chipmunks hadn't scrounged enough. The winter was slowly killing all of them, and in that instant Iggy remembered Ciir-goath's warning: Deprived of the Pulse's surety, eventually the Earth would become a barren nightmare.
Breaking the fifth Seal hadn't ended the winter. Their lives might depend on the hope that the sixth Seal would. He imagined all life, worldwide, slowly strangled by the weight of eternal snowfall; imagined the dead world that would be left behind, empty and cold, its every city fallen to ruin.
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