She waited for him to finish, almost daring to look up.
“Ah,” he said instead. “It appears you are waking.”
Panic filled her veins. “No, Great Lord,” she said. “I gave them strict instructions.”
“Nonetheless. It was pleasant to see you, Lady Khon. Be well.”
The stars shimmered, and anger flooded away her panic. Fifteen minutes. She’d been assured at least fifteen minutes, and this was scarcely five. The fabric of her dress melted as the stars bled together, the darkness seeming to drink their light. The old man smiled, untouched by what was happening around them.
The pain returned in full.
She screamed, the leather bindings chafing her wrists as she convulsed. She was back in the Tower Apex, a chamber of rough-cut stone, suspended over drainage already soaked red with blood. Steel needles protruded from her chest, though it appeared the needles in her temples and jaw had already been removed. Her muscles ached, raw and sore where they’d been punctured, and burning pain lanced through her at her slightest movement.
“Grandmaster,” one of her attendants said breathlessly. “Thank the earth spirits you’ve come back.”
“Too soon,” she said, her voice hoarse and cracking. She wanted to find anger, to summon the gift of Force and smash her attendants to blood and pulp. Instead she whimpered, tears shaking her body. God but it hurt.
“Remain still, Mistress,” a man’s voice said. It took a moment to place it through the pain: Master Wen, her Master of Commerce and Coin. She’d trusted him to oversee this affair, which meant he served as Grandmaster, however temporarily, in her absence. “You are here, among friends. You will be whole again soon.”
“No,” she said, trying to shake her head and finding the pain too raw to move. “No.”
Wen nodded to the adepts, who reached for the needles in her chest. She understood their purpose an instant before they yanked the steel from her body, and she screamed again.
“Loose her restraints,” Wen said when they were finished. The adepts complied, and she sobbed as the leather was undone. Blood smeared as it ran down her skin, and pooled beneath her, trailing into the steel drains in the floor. She’d had this chamber made, when she came to understand the nature of the ritual needed to commune with God. She’d never shied away from the price of her ambition, and she wouldn’t now. But pain shook her senses, the colors around her seeming to dim, until her blood ran gray.
“You are well, Mistress,” Wen said, dismissing the adepts to stand back as he cradled her body down from the harness and straps. “We acted in time.”
“No,” she said. The word was a comfort. She’d lost something of great value. Perhaps protest could bring it back.
Wen held her, and her body shook with each sob as she pressed herself against his shoulder.
“Fetch the Bhakal healer,” Wen said to one of the adepts. “We must be certain she survives.”
Footsteps shuffled from the room, and she, Wen, and the other adept were alone. He carried her to the cushions they’d prepared for this moment, and laid her down gingerly, though every motion sent pain wrenching through her limbs.
“I saw him,” she said, her sense still clouded by fog. Reverence descended on Wen and the adept both, a sudden silence in place of her screams.
“There will be time to speak on it when you are recovered, Mistress,” Wen said after a moment. He’d knelt at her side, dabbing a linen cloth in water and pressing it against her skin. It stung, though the memory of what she’d seen had returned enough to dull the pain.
“No,” she said. “He spoke of war, of ascension. We are to be scholars no longer. War is coming. We must be ready.”
Wen froze midmotion, though the other adept continued to dress her wounds.
“His words will need interpreting, of course,” Wen said. “We cannot be certain he intended us to—”
“We can,” she interrupted. “He spoke it plain. It is time for us to come out of the shadows.”
This time even the adept stopped in place.
“Pardon, Mistress, and forgive this poor adept for speaking out of turn,” the boy said. “But are we truly meant to make war?”
“We are,” she said, letting resolution fill her voice. “We are to be captains at the head of a great army.”
“But, Mistress, the magi have not warred in a thousand years,” the adept said.
She maintained her composure for the boy’s sake. Inspiration would be the least of her duties in the months to come. And he was, strictly speaking, incorrect, though only those with access to the House’s secret histories would know the truth. It put a double burden on her. Magi were forbidden from the very sort of thing she had to drive them to do. But God had spoken. Her purpose was clear.
“We must change,” was all she said; all she had strength to say. Her body shook, trembling from the pain. She had survived the ordeal. There would be time to rest.
Instinct warned her before the attack came.
She’d worked with Force too long not to notice it in another. Wen’s eyes had closed for the barest fraction of a moment, and a tremor rippled through the stone floor, through the cushions, through the pain-enhanced senses of her already fragile wounds. Wen absorbed the pressure of his body’s weight against the floor, magnified and redirected it into his hand, imbuing a strong arm’s punch with the power of an anvil dropped from the sky.
It should have smashed her to pulp where she lay. But she was Grandmaster. None alive knew the workings of Force as she did.
He struck her, and the blow landed with the strength of a child’s.
“No,” Wen said, his eyes suddenly desperate. “Lady Khon, I … I only meant to … Our order is peaceful. If we give the rest of the world cause to fear us, they will—”
The energy of Wen’s attack reverberated inside her, rattling an already fragile frame. It surged through her limbs, coursing through her fingers as it sought release. It would destroy her if she tried to keep it contained. Instead she turned it on Wen, and tore his body apart.
She felt his attempt to turn the energy, as she had with his attack, and for a moment their wills collided. Hers was stronger, the relentless hunger that had driven her since she was a child. Wen’s body sheared itself in two, flung across the chamber in a rush of blood and tissue. His head struck the wall, his legs contorted and bent as his spine shattered, leaving a red stain across the stone.
The adept stared between her and the wall, his jaw open in shock.
“M-M-Mistress … I … I …” the adept said, muttering as he stared. “I … I d-don’t …”
“He won’t be the last,” she said, as a wave of fatigue rushed through her. Always the price of working with her gifts, and doubly so now, with her body already on the cusp of death. But even as she felt it, she found strength. She was Bavda Khon, Grandmaster of the Great and Noble House of the Heron. Her God had called, and she had answered. He promised power, and for that price, she was his tool, to whatever end.
INTERLUDE
REYNE
Library
Gods’ Seat
Boredom.
He thumbed through a volume on economics; an ancient tome by a man called Smith. A Gandsman, from the name, though he’d never heard of such an absurd practice as naming oneself for one’s trade. Were there men named Cooper, Miller, Baker, too? He tried to refocus his mind on the arguments, a point about measuring wealth from production and trade, rather than stocks of gold and specie. The thread carried for another half page before he realized he hadn’t been reading its words.
He sighed, and set the volume on his desk. Impossible to focus when the hunger struck.
“How long?” he asked out loud. “How long am I to remain here?”
You must have patience.
Saruk’s voice grated on his skin. He needed a kill. Or at least some passion, some intensity. Something. Instead the days droned on, blurring one into another. There wasn’t even sunlight, or any indicator of nighttim
e beyond snuffing the lamps that relit themselves when he was ready to wake. He was a God, so said every precept of the Codex. So far it felt rather like being shut in, under house arrest. He wasn’t even certain where he was.
He rose, cracking his neck and shoulders as he stretched. Another walk would have to settle it. The library would be here when he returned, all his lesser tomes left open if he intended to read them or shelved if he was done. Strange beyond reason, how the room seemed to be able to anticipate his will. But if that was the only manifestation of Godhood, it was a poor trade from a life spent leading men and women in pursuit of égalité.
He turned toward the doorway, and almost jumped back. Paendurion loomed there, unmoving. Watching him with coal-black eyes, sized to fit three men within the width of his frame.
“You,” Reyne said. “Are you going to speak to me today?”
Ad-Shi had sworn Paendurion could speak as well as any man, but he hadn’t heard a word from the so-called champion of Order since his ascension. He’d hardly seen the fellow, only heard him smashing furniture in the part of the Gods’ Seat Ad-Shi had told him to avoid. Yet now he was here, in the library, or at least hovering on the cusp.
Reyne held his place for a long moment. “Can you speak at all, you dumb brute?”
If the insult bothered the man, he gave no sign.
“Why are you here?” Reyne said. “Why am I here? What is this place?”
More silence.
Ordinarily he’d have composed himself. It wasn’t of any use, betraying your emotions to men who might be your rivals. But the hunger ached beneath his skin. Saruk was no help. Even Ad-Shi, who had tried to burn him to cinders and only begrudgingly offered any company at all in the weeks since his coming, had been absent. He hadn’t seen her at all for days.
He pounded a fist atop the table, cracking the book he’d left open there down the spine.
Paendurion gave him a half smile, but said nothing.
“Amusing, is it?” Reyne demanded. “Either tell me why you’re here or leave off. Or did you finally snap and kill the tribal woman in one of your tantrums? Are you here to finish me as well?”
“Ad-Shi is Vordu, not one of your tribesfolk.”
The words stunned him. He took a step back, rubbing at his forearm where he’d struck the table, and waited for more.
Nothing came.
“Where is she?” he asked. “Have you injured her?”
“She is gone.”
Once more the reply surprised him; until now the giant had given him dark looks and little else.
“Where has she gone? Are there places we can go, from here? What is the nature of this place? Saruk tells me only to wait; Ad-Shi promised more would be made clear with time.”
“Time has passed,” Paendurion said. “Come.”
Paendurion turned, leaving the library entrance behind.
Reyne followed, trailing through the halls. They strode past the living quarters Reyne had claimed, and another fork in the hallway leading to the meditation chambers, and the stone passage whence he had come after his ascension. If there was some other way he’d never found it, and he’d explored the twists and turns of this place half a hundred times since he’d come here. Only the wings of Paendurion’s chambers had been declared off-limits, and perhaps that was the reason why. If there was some means to leave, some way the tribeswoman had taken, perhaps the secret lay there. But they didn’t veer toward that section of the halls. Instead they went toward the center, the wide circular room covered over with stone and ringed with pulsing light. The Goddess’s chamber, with her crystal enclosure running floor to ceiling at the center of the room.
He shivered, crossing the threshold into her presence. Pain leaked through the glass, the dull ache that kept his hunger from becoming madness, a slow drip to charge Saruk’s stores of Red, Yellow, and White. More emotion than any one person could hold.
Sarine.
The girl who had been a thorn in his shoe, whom Saruk had always cautioned him to avoid. Somehow she was here, trapped within crystal, covered by ribbons frozen in patterns around her half-naked form. Had the ribbons moved, since he saw her last? Ad-Shi had refused to speak of her, as firmly as Paendurion had refused to speak at all. Yet here he was, in her presence, at Paendurion’s side.
“Ad-Shi has told you your place,” Paendurion said. His voice was as deep and booming as one might have expected, from a man the size of a bear.
“She tried to kill me,” Reyne said. “And never told me much of anything, beyond that this was the Gods’ Seat, and our place is here, waiting.”
“The waiting is almost finished. Soon we return to the world, to reclaim the Soul.”
“And what is that? What does it mean?”
Paendurion eyed him with loathing, but said nothing, returning to face the Goddess’s crystal.
The gesture stung. It felt as though his hold here were precarious, as though the wrong move might send the giant back to ignoring him. Best to try a different tack.
“Why do you two seem to hate me so?”
The question drew Paendurion’s attention again, but with a look as hard as the one he’d given before.
“Because we two were once three. Your presence here was a mistake, and it cost us more than you could know.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Reyne said automatically. “But I had nothing to do with it.”
“You have no idea of what you speak. Axerian is not my loss. It will fall to you, to stand against the champions of Death in his stead. What will you do, when the skinchangers of Fox appear as your closest allies, knifing you in the back? Will you face a blade-dancer of Crane, or a Force-magi of Heron? Heavens help us if a Dragon ascends this time, or a Lotus.”
Paendurion’s words slid past him, beyond his understanding. He knew enough to recognize the threat behind them, but the Codex had promised nothing past his ascension. He had followed its path here, expecting Godhood, the power to effect a better world, and found only bitter solitude, and waiting. Yet to hear Paendurion tell it, there would be more.
“You’re right,” he said. “I know nothing of this. But I can learn. Will you teach me?”
Paendurion barked a sharp laugh, full of scorn. “Not for your sake. But yes. Where the enemy’s Houses have had thousands of years to pass down their traditions, I will teach you the ways of Balance, and the kaas. I, who have never held one of their bonds. Surely my tutelage will lead you to greatness, when I know nothing of your gifts.”
“I know some part of what Saruk can do.”
“You know less than nothing.”
The dismissal cut him short. Fair enough to suppose he was ignorant of whatever conflicts Paendurion seemed to take for granted. He hadn’t risen to power through arrogance, and proximity to the Goddess was enough to sate his hunger and have him thinking clearly. He could be humble, and learn whatever the giant had to teach. The first part of mastering a new mode of thought was recognizing that there were patterns to know—that much he had from the Codex—and the second part was admitting to ignorance, to avoid anchoring bad habits and false knowledge in the way of progress.
“I know less than nothing,” he repeated. “Teach me, and I will learn.”
Finally Paendurion gave him a look without scorn, or at least, with less.
“It starts here,” he said. “From the power of the Goddess you know as the Veil.”
It took a moment to realize he meant the girl. “Sarine. The girl from—”
“Be silent,” Paendurion interrupted. “First, you must learn there are many systems. Order, Balance, Wild—these are only three. There are many, many more. Over time they develop affinity for one another, some grown subservient to others, and others given mastery over the rest. Life and Death are the apex; all systems serve one, or the other. Do you understand?”
Reyne kept silent. Paendurion would know he couldn’t have given enough information for Reyne to understand. But the patterns would reveal themselves, if he
listened and waited.
It seemed to serve. “The Veil holds the reins of Life magic,” Paendurion continued, “and through it, she calls Order, Balance, and Wild to be her champions. The enemy wields Death—he is known as the Regnant, and he in turn calls on the strength of the Great and Noble Houses of his lands. There will be time to study their strengths, to attempt to prepare you not to die as soon as you meet one of their ascended. First, you must learn to wield Life magic for yourself.”
“Life?” he asked. “The bindings the priests use to heal?”
“A perversion. The proper name for that tether is Growth. Life is beyond the leylines. Life stems from the Soul of the World, channeled through the Goddess herself.”
Paendurion took a step toward the crystal enclosure at the center of the room, raising a hand toward it. In an instant an arc of blue light shot out from the crystal, meeting his fingertips. Reyne stared. The same energy had bound him here, after his ascension. The energy coursed and sparked, dancing between the crystal and Paendurion’s fingers.
“This is the essence of Life magic,” Paendurion said. “It is everywhere, but we gain its power here, from—”
The crystal cracked.
A ripping sound, like metal torn in half, with shards of glass shattering and falling to the floor.
Paendurion whirled to face the crystal, and the arc of blue light vanished. Liquid flooded from the crystal as it broke at the center, spiderweb fissures tracing outward from the focal point of the break.
“What’s going on?” Reyne asked. “Is this part of your demonstration?”
The Goddess remained suspended as her prison shattered around her. Chunks and shards of crystal broke, falling around the ribbons, somehow still hanging in the air.
“No. No. Please.” Paendurion’s voice, odd as it was to hear his thundering baritone making pleading sounds.
The Goddess opened her eyes.
“Zi! They can’t … Where are … d’Agarre?”
A ray of light erupted from her body, a blinding flash so bright he had to raise a hand to block it out.
A thud sounded, and he opened his eyes to find the Goddess’s body fallen amid the broken crystal shards. Her eyes were open, but lifeless, her mouth half-open in shock. The ribbons fell around her, painting her body with strips of black cloth.
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