It was summer, and they’d had no meat to cook, so she hadn’t bothered with a fire—there was nothing to burn in the temple, in any case. As she relayed the story, Darya wished for one. The warmth would have helped with the memories, and she could’ve stared into the flames. She rubbed her hands against her thighs instead, watching her fingers, pale against the dark cloth of her pants. They made her think of the plants in the city, and of dead things.
“The priests and the wizards did what they could, multiplying food and giving people protection from the cold, but there were limits to their power.” Without thinking about it, she fell back on the wording of the official histories, as her tutors had told them to her when she’d been barely a woman. “And while Thyran’s armies had scattered, the monsters endured the storms better than most humans. Death made others. So did desperate actions, or vicious ones. There were many threats in those days.”
Amris was silent.
“Some fared better than others. It wasn’t as bad in the south, or in places that could get food from the sea. Hills blocked the wind, and that helped too. But my teacher told me, when I was training, that there were half as many people living then as there were in your day. That was fifteen years ago, after a couple generations of breeding.”
She didn’t say: They ate the food, they ate dogs and rats and horses, they ate the candles for tallow, they ate the bark off the trees and the leather of their boots. She didn’t say: By the end, many of them ate one another, and it didn’t help.
All of that had been history before: sad, and horrifying to think about, but distant, and so well known that neither she nor Gerant had needed to speak of it. Now, Darya saw blood on the snow, faces that were half skulls, bodies burning in the streets, and those who wanted to live unable to move away from the stench.
A hand—large, warm, and callused—settled on top of hers. Darya looked up into Amris’s face and managed a quick, guilty smile. “I think I’m supposed to be comforting you, considering.”
“You have, and will again, but—” He shrugged. “Shock and memory are each their own sort of pain, and they strike at different times. Just now, I have reserves.”
He was speaking to her and Gerant both, Darya knew, and she spoke for them both when she replied, “Thank you,” and laced her fingers through his.
“A year, you said,” he prompted her.
“Yes.” This part was easier. “After that, the storms started getting milder, and further apart. Winter’s still worse than it was, they say, and longer, but we have the other three seasons again. The wizards and priests developed some magical techniques, too, or improved on what existed—stored light, different crops, city defenses, that kind of thing. Travel is still very risky, though, especially when it’s not summer, and there are plenty of places like this.” With her free hand, she gestured around to mean the city, then rethought. “Not exactly like Klaishil, that is, but…lost.”
I’d already died, Gerant added, before we knew that Heliodar or Nerapis had survived, and it wasn’t until halfway through my first Sentinel that a person could trust a map for more than five miles.
Darya repeated that. “Most live and die no more than a day’s journey from the place of their birth, even now. The Sentinels are different, but we were made to be.”
“I recall your founding,” said Amris, “though not the swords. You were always intended as a”—he stopped himself from saying breed, obviously—“a force apart.”
“Good work, then,” she said.
* * *
In truth, Amris wasn’t sure how strange the Order was, at least not as represented by Darya. Her appearance aside, the quickness of her speech was alien, and the casual hardness she displayed had been rare in his time—though that had been his time, before half the world had perished—but in action, she felt like one of his own comrades, and he’d not hesitated before taking her hand.
Some of that was Gerant’s presence, but not all.
“What remains?” he asked, and the pressure of her fingers in his helped him get the words out and listen for the answer. He hadn’t been lying earlier: she was a comfort. “Kvanla, you said, and Heliodar and Nerapis too. Did Silane survive?”
In a sense, it was academic; nobody he’d known would still live there. At best, his father’s house would stand, and those in it might have heard of Great-Uncle Amris, who’d disappeared in the war. Still, he felt his heart lift a little when Darya nodded. “Smaller than it was, but not by very much. The south did better than most—warmer, and there are those caves in the mountains, with heat and mushrooms. Kvanla, too, as I guess it’s harder to kill fish and seaweed, but we were never much of a kingdom to start with. Silane and Criwath are the only real kingdoms left. And Heliodar, in fact if not in name. Nerapis is just the main city these days, and the Myrians…well, they have their towns and their fortresses. The barbarians up here—”
“Many went over to Thyran, by force or by will. Those who resisted had fled south before he and I met, or been put to the sword, at best.” Amris pictured the map of the world, like a moth in shape. Klaishil had been in Criwath, with the deep forest and the nomads to the north and the Serpentspine Mountains making a western border. Heliodar lay beyond the Blue Hills to the south, in the other section of the “wing,” cradled by a bay, and the Arenthan River cut it off from Silane. From there, seabound Kvanla straddled the “tail” where the mountains flattened into scrubland, and Nerapis had held the territory from the Pramath Harbor all the way up to the chain of lakes where the Myrian families had squabbled.
Nobody had gone to the far northeast, not since the battle between Gizath and Letar had scarred that section of the land. There’d always been forests and hills scattered around, claimed by one land or another but really belonging to no king or council. They’d been islands of darkness in the golden web of civilization. Now, Amris saw bigger patches of darkness around a few points, like campfires at night.
Darya’s hand was a rope, pulling his mind forward into the present. “The other peoples?” he asked.
“Retreated. Mostly. Kvanla’s ports trade with the waterfolk at high summer, but they’ve gone far under the sea otherwise. The stonekin helped Silane some, but they don’t come out of the mountains.”
“And we’re still in Criwath?”
“In theory. Oakford is a few days’ ride back, and it’s only been occupied again for thirty years. We are rebuilding,” she added. “But that’s as far as we’ve gotten. Thyran’s leftovers, and the other things, are thicker on the ground the deeper into the forest you go, and nobody has the people to spare for an expedition, let alone to try to take ground and hold it. Even the Sentinels only come on missions, and generally we get in and out as quickly as we can.”
“I’m sure I’ll think of more questions to plague you with. But just now—” He spread his hands, illustrating emptiness.
Doing so meant letting go of Darya’s hand, which he did with surprising reluctance, then a shade of guilt about that. Neither he nor Gerant had expected the other to be celibate in times of long separation, particularly when he was on campaign, but a living lover far away was a different matter from one who was present and dead, or dead and present. Amris wasn’t sure which was worse.
“I’m not surprised. In your place, I think I’d be walking into walls and forgetting my own name.” With her now-free hand, she pulled out the flask of lignath, took a swig, and held it out toward Amris. “Here. Should keep off the worst of the nightmares.”
He drank, then paused. “If you use this for wounds—”
“Yes,” said Darya, after swallowing more hardtack, “better not kill it. It also burns very well.”
“Far from startling news.”
Between food and spirits, the day’s exertions settled quickly on him. As Darya finished up her own meal, he pulled off his boots, stretched out on the floor, and tried to remember how best to make a pi
llow of his arm.
“Hey,” said Darya. “Take the altar cloth.” She was pulling it out of her bag as she spoke. “Not as if Sitha will mind, if you can stand the dust.”
“But you—”
“My armor won’t stop an arrow so well as yours, but I can sleep on it without breaking my neck.”
“Sound reasoning. Thank you.”
“I’m known for it—and you needn’t bother snickering,” she added, obviously to Gerant.
In the faint green-and-silver light, as magic and the moon blended, Amris watched Darya fold up her tunic. Her sword, with Gerant in the hilt, she lay down between them like a maiden preserving her chastity in an old tale, though Amris doubted the intent was the same.
“May I?” he asked, and reached out a hand toward the sword by way of indication, though he didn’t yet make contact.
“Wha—Of course,” Darya said, embarrassed. “Sorry, should have thought of that.”
“These aren’t circumstances any could anticipate. I hadn’t thought it either, until now. And I thank you.” Amris laid his fingers on the gem.
It felt as any other polished stone would have: smooth, hard, and cold. Had he not known Gerant was in there, nothing of it would have called to mind the gentle, scholarly man Amris had known, the one with nimble fingers, sure lips, and bright eyes to match the mind behind them. Yet he did know, and while it was an incomplete balm for the ache in his heart, it was balm nonetheless.
“Good night,” he whispered toward the gem, and thought that the emerald shone back at him for a heartbeat.
All the world was new and strange. Yet, he thought as he watched Darya lie down and let his own eyelids slide shut, he wasn’t sure there were two better people to introduce him to it.
Chapter 10
Almost always, on waking, Darya’s first thought was grudging acceptance: Yes, all right. All right. What she was allowing changed from day to day, but the feeling of well, fine, then was essentially the same whether she faced the breakfast dishes in the chapter house, the remnants of a previous night’s celebration, or in this case, the possible end of the world.
In the light, Sitha’s temple was more beautiful, and sadder. Dust motes spun through the air, and patches of green and red and blue light splashed across empty pews and an altar where nobody had stood in three generations. The smile on the carved face above it looked wistful now, though maybe it always had and Darya just hadn’t noticed the night before. Sitha and Poram, the priests said, had both wept when their children fought, and since the Traitor God had never stopped fighting—
“Oh, yes,” she muttered, “dwelling on theology’s absolutely the smartest thing to do first thing in the morning.”
She hadn’t forgotten Amris. She couldn’t forget Gerant. But her companion had long since stopped responding to most things Darya said when she woke, save to poke more-or-less gentle fun at her, and Amris’s sincere “Theology?” made her jump a bit.
“Oh. Um. That.” Darya indicated the carving.
“Sleeping under her gaze does encourage such thoughts,” Amris said, nodding, but he didn’t pry, just continued putting on his boots.
It encourages many thoughts, Gerant put in. I’ve been considering it, and I think I can expand my powers enough to talk directly with Amris—though that assumes you’re willing to help me.
Happy surprises were all the more surprising. “And skip the translation? Of course, as long as I’ll be in decent shape afterward. He says—” she began, turning to Amris.
He didn’t interrupt her. But the incipient joy on his face let her know that he’d worked out what was happening, and after seeing that, Darya wouldn’t have thought to say no even if she had been inclined.
“He always did his best work in the middle of the night,” Amris said, and she laughed.
“Wizards. I’ve never met one that kept normal hours. Well, what do we need to do?”
First, kneel facing each other.
The floor was tolerably hard on the knees, which actually pleased Darya. It was a distraction from Amris, with his hopeful face and sleep-mussed dark hair, the clean, hard lines of his shoulders and chest, and his ability to somehow kneel in parade stance, good gods.
The sword goes between you, held upright. Each of you needs one hand on the hilt, and you clasp the other’s.
Clasping hands felt surprisingly easy, even given their contact of the night before. Getting both of their hands on the hilt of the sword was a different matter, and required a fair amount of adjustment. Their fingers ended up intertwined there too, with each of them resting the tip of a thumb on the emerald.
Darya always felt magic before she saw or heard it. On her, it was little rivulets running over her skin, almost like raindrops but keeping to steadier and more distinct patterns, and not quite wet, though she kept expecting them to be. For this spell, they were cool and wispy, starting at the thumb on the emerald and spreading out across her skin in an orderly grid of lines like a fisherman’s net.
The emerald was glowing, alternately brighter and fainter in a rhythm like a heartbeat. Darya didn’t speak—she knew better than to interrupt Gerant during a spell. She watched the light illuminate Amris’s face, felt the heat of his fingers in contrast to the cool threads of magic, and knew that he, like her, had started breathing to the beat of the emerald’s light. He was enough taller than her that each breath stirred her hair faintly, a sensation on the pleasant side of ticklish, and Darya knew he must be able to feel hers on the side of his face.
She hoped it didn’t smell too awful.
As the web of magic flowed over Darya, it took a part of her with it—nothing too large nor too vital, just a bit of what made her herself. She felt it go out, without any more pain than a gentle tug on her hair might cause, and so she knew when the web expanded to cover Amris, settling itself over his body and then farther in. Sitha wove all souls, just as her daughter cut their threads. The spell found threads in Darya and tied them to loose places in Amris: not the tightest binding she’d ever heard of, but a binding nonetheless.
Once before, she’d felt her spirit woven in such a fashion: when she’d knelt before the Adeptas, knock-kneed and cross-eyed from a four-day vigil, and balanced her blade on her outstretched palms while they joined her to Gerant. This was less, and different, and to a man who yet lived, but Darya held to what familiarity she could. It seemed the safest path.
Breathe steadily, they’d told her in training. Don’t try to resist. Hold back nothing of yourself. You trust the soulsword, or you die.
Already Amris had proven worthy of her trust—many times, since he’d slept beside her and not knifed her and taken the sword. Besides, sometimes she just had to jump and hope she landed more or less whole.
She looked into Amris’s eyes, waiting for him to hesitate or pull back, but he was in as fully as she was. Of course, Darya thought, and she didn’t let herself be flattered; of course he trusted his lover, and he had more to gain by going through with the ritual than she did. Still, it was nice that she wasn’t an unthinkable price to pay.
The web spread outward, then inward, until it finally knit itself completely together around Amris and Darya’s linked hands. By then, she was feeling his presence—fainter than Gerant’s, with no coherent sense of his thoughts, but an awareness of his being that went bone deep. If she closed her eyes and went to another room, she’d still know where Amris was. If he was masked and in a crowd, she would have picked him out instantly.
Hello, love, said Gerant.
Amris smiled and gaped at the same time, mouth open and eyes crinkling at the corners. His astonishment resonated within her. So did his joy, as much keener than any Darya had experienced, as Gerant’s pain had been. She thought of how the temple must have looked in the halcyon days of its use: joy, love, one human hand in another, all forming a greater pattern.
Her hand wasn’t
the right one. Gently she disengaged it, and then the other, leaving Amris holding her sword. “You two talk while I pack up,” she said, raising the barriers in her mind. She’d done it often enough for her own liaisons. It felt odd to be the one on the outside now, but it would likely do her good, as Adeptus Brannath had said of many things. “You’ve a lot to catch up on.”
* * *
They did, and Amris had no notion of where to start. By Gerant’s silence, neither did he.
Then, rueful, You look well.
“Evidence of your arts, I think,” Amris said. “You could exhibit me in front of a committee, if you wished.”
From a few feet away, where she was sharpening knives, Darya snickered. Then she started humming a song. Amris didn’t recognize the tune, and didn’t know if there was one, or if it was only an obvious effort at tact.
I think I’m rather past the need for fame, said Gerant. But thank you.
“Did you end up at court, in the end?” It was as innocuous a question as Amris could think of.
For a while—such as there was a court. After a while I threw myself into the magical aspects of the Order. There was enough there to occupy a man for a lifetime. Or three, considering. A moment of silence followed, where the scrape of whetstone on steel was the beat for another wordless melody. I thought you’d perished, Amris, and within my life there was no chance of reaching Klaishil. And they needed me.
“I understand,” he said softly. Sincerely too. It had long been his job to decide where to spend men’s lives, to abandon some as beyond rescue, and to go on with the larger mission. There were times when people had to put their hearts away from them, like the warlords of legend, and hope that they would still be intact when that chest opened again.
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