When he’d noticed that peculiarity in Gwern, he’d at once taken action to have the chance to study it. He’d first approached Sernio, and then the boy plus the woman who’d taken him in and given him work at her inn. He’d drawn on the reputation he’d built up when practising as a chanter in Cambria. Back then he’d called himself Saite. Fifty or so years had gone by, he considered. He was pleased with how he’d managed to desert Saite’s life and step into the shoes of his grandson, Saiden. It was one and the same person, then as now. The story of the son who’d moved to Calhann, the grandson born outside Cambria and who nobody had ever seen. A well-articulated lie, that he’d carried on all those years, with the sole purpose of not stirring suspicion. He couldn’t age like other men. Time had a slackened, mellowed effect on him.
Saiden was an Aelian.
He’d been living among the Khartians for three centuries. In all those years, he’d had to change his story, name and past many a time. He would appear in one region, settle there for a few decades, and then vanish. He’d change name and legacy, he’d work his way into a human realm, then abandon it before anyone started asking too many questions about him. This time he’d used his real name, but he’d had many over the years. Saiden loved that. Changing and being born again were concepts poorly digested by his people. And it was a pity, he considered, as he stared at Gwern’s back. The Aelians had entirely lost their desire for discovery.
Mordraud and Gwern were the greatest mystery he’d ever come across. And to think that in the beginning he’d also been attracted by his fee, he said to himself in amazement. Until he’d understood the full extent of the mystery the boy held within. Gwern was worth much more than the money he’d had to scrape together in order to study.
The Aelians possessed a far deeper knowledge of reality. Much of it had been lost over the centuries. The new generations had forgotten a great deal of the sophisticated culture of their forefathers, of the era when they dominated on the Cambrian continent. But the real difference lay between the Aelians and the Khartians – it was all in awareness about the existence of the Flux. Humans understood only what they could see, while the Aelians managed a more in-depth insight. And, as a consequence, they knew how to manipulate and shape the world around them, interacting with the structures of light it was built of. The Khartians had invented chanting to achieve the same wonders. But the result was blandly similar. Saiden could alter the Flux architecture of a tree, or a man – destroying, changing or reviving it. By chanting, a human could place his Flux in resonance with that of his surroundings. The same result, Saiden mused again. Yet setting out from a radically different concept of reality.
The chanting method fascinated him. Before getting to know the Khartians, Saiden hadn’t been aware that an alternative world for interacting with the Flux could exist. Once he’d found this out, he hurled himself headlong into studying harmonies. He craved supreme knowledge of the true essence of the Flux, a secret that nobody – neither Khartian nor Aelian – had ever untangled. Where it originated from, what energy it was made up of. Why reality could be shaped by setting out from the simple desire to create. A power going beyond any god, in the hands of whoever was willing to look about with curious eyes.
Nonetheless, there was a subtle difference between chanting and the pure use of Flux. The Khartian chanters were also capable of conjuring out of nothing fire, ice and land that hadn’t previously existed. While Aelians like himself had always shaped existent Flux, without ever creating it anew. In fact, when Saiden contemplated a resonance, never did he see material appear that hadn’t existed beforehand. A flame spouting from nowhere didn’t contain Flux. That was the most mysterious and absurd aspect. If a chanter believed, through his harmonies and his intense concentration, that some fire could exist in front of him, then it appeared. And it was made up of particles of the Flux belonging to those people around him in resonance with his harmony. In practice, the effects of chanting were mainly a mass impression. Long strings of meandering light unfurled from the onlookers’ eyes, and mingled with the Flux of the chanter and the others near him, giving form and colour to a flame that hadn’t previously existed.
Indeed, at least in these terms, the Khartians were more sophisticated than the Aelians. Far more complex. Saiden recalled some of his people who knew how to use Flux in combat. They could summons to their hands long lashes of light, and use them fatally against their enemies. Flux could also be dramatically tangible. And painful. But this was nevertheless a more unrefined way to harness it. He liked chanting, even if he’d been working on how to make it abstract for many years. To meld the Khartians’ imaginative scope with the Aelians’ pragmatism. And to do so, he had studied everywhere. He’d pretended to be an ordinary man, inventing stories of distant grandchildren and journeys ending in tragedy. He had died and been reborn many times in his life. All this, just to satisfy his longing to know and to understand. Saiden lived, by no stretch of the imagination, solely for himself.
“Don’t you think it odd?” he heard Gwern say to his brother, quietly. Saiden smiled. ‘Oh yes...’ he thought. ‘I find it very odd...’
“Whatever could we have done, just the two of us?” the boy went on.
Saiden once again witnessed that occurrence that had so undermined him the first time he’d seen Gwern and Mordraud together. When the boy spoke to his brother, a fine thread of Flux span out from the youngster, a slaver of light that floated in the air and tried to break inside Mordraud’s empty shell. As if it wished to fill it.
Or, more likely, invade it.
‘Something ties those two... but it’s not blood. It’s something much greater. That’s not a bond between brothers.’
Saiden had the distinct sensation that the thin yarn of light was not at all friendly.
“...Many even believe this winter’s the work of the Gods,” he picked up, hearing half of Mordraud’s sentence. Gwern’s small ball of Flux suddenly puffed – an involuntary response to those words.
“An idea you reject...”
“Of course,” Mordraud replied impulsively.
A tress as thick as a finger stretched out from the mass of light and shot towards Mordraud. Saiden saw it fly, passing through Gwern’s breastbone and hitting his brother’s stomach. The twine melted into a web of light. But instead of dispersing with no gain, its threads unexpectedly penetrated Mordraud’s casing. They dissolved inside him, and began flashing feebly.
Dozens of tiny white lights, hovering inside Mordraud’s empty chest. For an instant, Saiden recognised a certain undulating rhythm in those weak gleams.
Suddenly, the lash was sucked back within Gwern. At such a speed and with such brutality that Saiden wondered if Gwern himself had noticed, unwittingly, what his Flux was up to inside his brother.
It was attempting to eat him.
Gwern’s Flux devoured the world to keep him alive.
Saiden stumbled and fell to the ground in shock.
***
“Don’t you think it odd?”
Mordraud shrugged his shoulders.
“Whatever could we have done, just the two of us?” Gwern went on.
“I’d have come up with something...” Mordraud answered.
“Yeah, but we wouldn’t have known how to put it into practice. I wouldn’t have been able to help you, Mordraud. I’m sorry... but your plan was impossible. Instead, here we are with my teacher.”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
Gwern pointed behind him.
“It almost seems as if it was supposed to go this way... as if it was the only thing that could have happened.”
“No, that’s a load of shit,” Mordraud replied curtly. Gwern looked at him, sniggering. His brother sometimes spoke as if he were at the front with his companions.
“In the whole of Eld, nobody knows how chanting works. Many even believe this winter’s the work of the Gods.”
“An idea you reject...”
“Of course.”
> Behind them, Saiden stumbled on the snow and slipped to the ground. When Gwern approached him to give him a hand, the man rolled on the white blanket and turned on his back, eyes wide and a strained half-smile on his face.
“Everything alright?”
“Yes... I was daydreaming,” Saiden stammered, caught off-guard.
They pulled him up and carried on walking. Mordraud went ahead a few paces to get further away from the tutor. Gwern trotted after his brother.
“But do you really think he can help us?”
“If he can’t, who can? You and I don’t even know what to look for.”
Mordraud sighed nervously. Saiden was behind them again. “At the first opportunity, let’s try to head more north. We’re veering off the right track slightly.”
“So should we be making more that way?” Mordraud asked, lifting an arm to point north-west. He could see nothing but trees, a hill not far off, and the ever present snow. The horizon was black and depressing.
“Exactly.”
“But what is it you hear?” Gwern inquired. “I’ve tried to pick up on some resonances, but I haven’t managed it yet...”
“Hmm, perhaps you just need to concentrate harder...”
Saiden half-closed his eyes for an instant. He was witnessing yet another unexpected occurrence. Two more strands had spun out from the ball of light hovering in Gwern’s chest. They were slowly creeping up towards his head, from inside his throat. The boy wanted to see the world’s Flux. But he wasn’t consciously capable yet.
Saiden turned his gaze north-west. To his eyes, the landscape was the mingling of reality’s colours with an enormously dense Flux web. Towering like an embedded column joining earth and sky was the channel of Flux that Cambria’s chanters were concentrating through their work. A startling tuft of spiralling light that invaded the clouds, and bent the weather conditions of the entire region to its will. And it was the fruit merely of a straightforward Khartian choir, he considered in amazement.
An alliance between Flux and harmony that could leave anybody speechless.
Impossible for him not to see it. He’d find it even with his eyes shut.
It was a pity to break it off, he mused. But he was ready to do anything to have the chance to carry on investigating that astounding mystery shaped by those two brothers. Even to put an end to as remarkable a demonstration of power as the Long Winter was.
“I’d like to know how you can be so sure of yourself,” Mordraud burst out. Saiden smiled. “Maybe you should just have a little more trust.”
***
A bureaucrat. Nothing more than a mere bureaucrat. Dunwich couldn’t believe he’d fallen so low. The lounge was choked with pipe smoke and dripping onto the white marble floor were the dregs of wine from the bottle he’d just drained. It wasn’t the first. Dunwich was paralytic, and had been since the afternoon, since he’d finished marching with the other Lances stationed in Cambria for the usual commemorative parade. Such a shallow and hateful event as to always make him want to down copious amounts. His poor luck was that the Empire staged dozens of them.
Since being sent home after the assault he’d declared on the Rampart of his own accord, his duties were restricted to tending to his wounds and to pushing paper upon paper. Requests from the front for food, requests for horses, requests for troops, requests for anything at all. The usual answer he was supposed to send, after validating the Imperial sealing wax with the stamp was: We’ll do our best. Triumphant methodical disorganisation. Viewing the bureaucracy monster from close up was devastating for his frame of mind. Then the parades suitably rounded off the picture.
“Why does nobody ever listen to me?!” he grumbled, swigging a large gulp of wine directly from the bottleneck. It tasted of dirty acidic water, yet he, in that precise moment, couldn’t care less. “They packed me off because I know what I have to do! If they were to let me lead the army... Instead, they waste time and do nothing...”
He didn’t know if it was down to drunkenness or his gloom, but that evening Dunwich felt right in the mood to believe in a phantom Imperial conspiracy. Someone wanted to waste time, was endeavouring to protect the rebels – or who knew what. Cambria’s army could count scores of captains capable of manoeuvring very sensitive plots. Even among the Lances. Asaeld found himself always having to train new lads, while the veterans were sent to all four corners of the Empire to sort out every kind of trouble. Or they were left to organise parades. It was easy to point a finger at the guilty party in that fiasco.
Loralon.
From incompetent ruler to sordid instigator. An evolution that wasn’t even very unlikely. Dunwich had heard a few Lances discussing in hushed voices outside the council chambers. Rumours went that it was the Emperor himself who’d summoned him back to the city – a request Asaeld had tried to oppose, until he was forced into the inevitable surrender. Asaeld had reprimanded him severely, but what more could he do? He was following his superior’s orders, and besides, he’d been frightened out of his skin when he saw Dunwich head off on his wild charge. He only had murky recollections of what had happened after the raid. But the facts were more than clear. He’d carried through a superb attack, with staggering results, and had then been moved away. The blueprint was complete. Loralon had a greater plan, besides the war. A malignant scheme of domination, which included wiping out the Lances.
Or was the wine perhaps talking in his place?
Dunwich tapped his pipe on the small table to free it of ash, but he did so with such little art that the briar stem snapped in his fingers. He really had drunk too much. He couldn’t even stand up.
A hand appeared in front of him, to assist him.
“You need to be more careful, my boy. Just as I came in here, others could do the same. And you’d already be dead.”
“Asaeld?!” Dunwich asked, squinting. The world was spinning about him far too fast.
“Of course. Who else if not?! I dropped in to see how you’re feeling. Does your shoulder still hurt?”
Dunwich pulled back his shirt and looked at the scar with dumb eyes, as if checking it was still there. His shoulder was in meagre shape but was improving. The other injury, the one on his side, was progressing more slowly. A weird wound, that one. It didn’t look like a sword cut – rather a deep clawing. The healer told him it was made by the links in his armour breaking and biting into his flesh. Even if there was no trace of infection.
“It doesn’t hurt any more. I’m ready to return to the front with you!”
“I’m sorry, but I spoke with Loralon just today. He wants you to stay here... He’s adamant about it.”
“I don’t give a damn about what he wants!” Dunwich blurted out. He’d got to his feet, but the world was swirling even faster. He had to hold on to Asaeld to avoid slumping to the floor like a helpless drunk.
“He’s still our Emperor, my boy...”
“Well, he can go bugger himself! I’m not staying here in the city while a war is fought so pathetically at the front! For love of the Gods, Asaeld...” Dunwich shook his head in despair. “Why did you let him do it?”
“What? Force you to stay here? I told you... it’s an order...”
“No, no! I meant the Long Winter! That putrid chanting will be the death of all of us!”
Asaeld let out a deep sigh and took Dunwich by the shoulders to look him right in the eye. “Don’t talk rubbish. The targets are Eldain and his supporters. You’ll see they’ll give in, sooner or later. In fact, it might not be very long now.”
“You think so?! Do you really believe that pack will give up because of this?” Dunwich chuckled coarsely, but had to interrupt it at once. He was on the brink of being sick.
“The rebels aren’t immortal,” Asaeld retorted succinctly.
“In any case, there’s a conspiracy – someone’s helping them!”
Asaeld stiffened, but Dunwich failed to notice. “There’s no conspiracy, my lad.”
“Instead there is! Trust me! There�
�s someone...” Dunwich brought a hand to his mouth and spoke in a whisper. “There’s someone preventing us from winning through his choices. Somebody powerful.”
“And who would that be?” Asaeld inquired, also whispering nervously.
Dunwich nodded in conviction.
“Loralon.”
“The Emperor?!”
“Exactly... And we should do something... to stop this conspiracy...”
“And you mean? What should we do?”
“Well... you’d be perfect... on that wretched... throne...”
Dunwich didn’t even finish his sentence. He’d really gone overboard on the wine. Without a drop of strength left in him, he collapsed into the armchair again, passing out. Asaeld picked the bottles up off the floor, placed the young man’s arms and legs in a more comfortable position and, after ruffling his hair with a hand, left with a light step.
***
“We’ll stay here.”
Mordraud indicated to Gwern and Saiden the ghost of a hut half-buried by the snow. Evening was approaching and a storm was about to break. The wind whipped their legs and bent the trees that gradually faded along the valley. They were a few days’ away from the Empire’s borders, in a combat zone. The Rampart’s southern front.
“Let’s go in. At least we’ll be sheltered from the wind...” suggested Saiden. Mordraud dug around the shack’s door, and forced it open with his shoulder.
Inside, a family had perished from cold in a corner, on a bundle of brushwood. The rest of the furnishings had been burnt in the fireplace, which had then filled up with snow. The floor was scattered here and there with excrement, but the smell was unnoticeable. The air was rarefied, unbreathable.
Gwern turned to stone in the doorway, with Mordraud in front of him, who was already busy making a bit of space to sit down.
“Let’s go somewhere else...” he muttered in a faint voice. Mordraud gazed at him in puzzlement. That hut could protect them from the storm, it was a good place. He didn’t immediately realise that Gwern was entirely unfamiliar with the Long Winter. The corpses in a corner, the misery of that home. It had become a sad habit for Mordraud. At the front, he had already come up against scenes like that. Whole villages annihilated by a blizzard, the dead heaped in hay barns, and ditches strewn with frozen bodies. Many a time he and the lads had had to dig holes in the marble-like earth and fill them with the dead, to clear the battlefield. He paid very little notice now to the horror of it. It had become a form of hardship, like all the others.
Mordraud, Book One Page 52