Byre glanced over his shoulder, but he didn’t need to ask Pelanor if she recognized any of the Caisah’s dress, because her expression was just as baffled as the one he felt he was wearing.
His many dire thoughts were interrupted when at Byre’s feet, the Caisah moaned, his eyelids fluttering madly.
“Why don’t we just kill him now?” Pelanor whispered, her fangs now visible and lying against her full bottom lip. Perhaps she was thinking of drinking from the most powerful being in Conhaero. What would happen if she did? It was an interesting question.
For a moment, Byre’s hand rested on the handle of the long knife at his hip. The greatest enemy of his people was lying completely vulnerable before him. Only one thing stopped his hand from striking: Ellyria Dragonsoul had told him he had to watch. He could only observe. He was merely here to learn the nature of the Caisah, to see the Harrowing with the eyes of a grown man and not a frightened child. The temptation to do more was pressing down on him like a physical weight. He found he was having difficulty breathing.
Finally, Byre let out a long, tortured breath. He could barely believe what he was about to say. “No, Pelanor, we can not do that. This is the past, it has already happened. If we disrupt its progress then unintentional consequences could—”
“You are living this,” she said, snatching his hand up and pressing it against her chest. He could feel his blood within her, racing hard and fast. “You have a chance to slay the originator of the Harrowing, and you will not do it?” She was looking at him with something verging on disgust.
He could see in her eyes that she couldn’t understand what he was thinking.
Maybe he couldn’t either, but he was trying his best to see the larger picture.
“If I spill his life here and now,” Byre said, locking his fingers around hers, “then the ripple of such a mighty change could tear the future apart. We are here as observers only.”
She glared at him, her fangs evident, and along the grip he had on her he could feel her trembling with desire to use them. Yet for all her excitement, this was not Pelanor’s Harrowing. It belonged to the Vaerli.
“Do you understand me?” Byre said, keeping his voice hard and grim. He twisted her arm a little, knowing that her strength was far greater than his. She could have broken his grip at any moment.
Pelanor looked very young to him, standing there ready to defend a people she didn’t know from a threat she didn’t understand. It reminded him of his own distant youth. Quick action was the privilege of the young; the time to repent it that of the old. Byre kept his gaze steely before her. He could not afford her to run free on her instincts.
“Yes,” Pelanor finally returned, yanking her hand free of his with a flick of her wrist. “I want you to remember this moment, and remember I counseled death for the tyrant. I think you shall regret it later.”
It was only when the Caisah shifted on the ground before them that they realized he had been listening to them. Some time in the middle of their argument he had awakened, and had lain very still while they discussed his life and death. It seemed very unlike the Caisah Byre had encountered previously, or the one that was whispered about in hushed tones throughout Conhaero.
When Byre turned his attention once more back to their soon-to-be ruler, he realized that something else was different; looking at him was no longer a simple thing.
Byre blinked twice, and took a step to each side, just to make sure that it was not some weird trick of the blinding light of the Salt. It was not.
The air was bent somehow around the Caisah, as if every beam of light needed to touch him. Among all the whiteness of the Salt Plain, he was its brightest feature.
Byre wanted to ask him about this curious phenomena, but when their gazes locked all questions were suddenly answered. Behind the Caisah’s eyes the memory of the White Void lingered. It had touched him, and made him its own in a deep way that reached beyond what he was. A sound tore at Byre’s ears, though he was not sure if it was audible. Its screams demanded bone, flesh, and mind bend to its will. Now the white of the Salt paled to nothing as the real white seemed to wash over them both. Dimly, the Vaerli realized that he and Pelanor had crashed to their knees before this call. They were dazzled and undone by it.
Then the Caisah blinked; just once, long and hard. Then he shook his head, and the White Void was no longer with them. His eyes were now merely a clear, unremarkable blue—perhaps clouded with uncertainty, but nothing that far from mortal.
While he looked across at Vaerli and Blood Witch on their knees before him, Byre struggled with yet another fact. Only the scions that had seen and beaten the White Void kept it beneath their eyes. The distance between worlds was not travelled idly, and without the guidance of a scion none of the tribes that now inhabited Conhaero would have made it to safety.
He had never heard of the Caisah being a scion. His people revered scions, and when they had retreated from the world there had been much despair. The Caisah had only ever caused despair with his presence.
“Where . . . where am I?” the new arrival asked, and he sounded nothing like the man that Byre had faced over the body of his dead father. Uncertainly was written in every inch of his body, while his face resembled nothing more than a child who had lost their favorite toy.
It felt strange indeed to know that he was giving information to destroyer of the Vaerli, but Byre knew he would have to tread delicately.
“This is Conhaero,” he said as calmly as he could manage. At his back he could feel Pelanor’s lust still beating—perhaps now more than ever. The blood of a scion had to be a tempting target.
“Conhaero?” the Caisah repeated, raising a hand to his head as if he expected to find blood there. “Yes, Conhaero, of course. Conhaero.”
So many questions raced through Byre’s mind that he simply couldn’t choose one. So many scholars had debated where the Caisah had come from, and how he had appeared on the sacred Salt of the Vaerli. Now that the Vaerli had managed to remind himself that he was an observer only, he realized that he should at least try to learn more about the tyrant of Conhaero.
“Did . . .” he paused to clear his throat. These next few moments could mean everything to his quest to return the Gifts of the Vaerli. “Did you come far?”
The man, who looked so young despite what he was, looked at him strangely, but did not answer his question.
Instead, he shifted slightly. “I have a message to deliver,” was all he said, then he levered himself upright, and brushed the salt from his strange costume. When he finally got to his feet he was a little unsteady, but Byre did not move to help him. He was afraid if he touched the tyrant, he might be tempted to throttle or stab him.
Also, he didn’t know what to say to that. If he assisted the Caisah, he was helping the man who had murdered and enslaved his own sister, but he couldn’t just walk away, either. While he thought quickly about what answer to give, Pelanor raised her hand slightly to get his attention. While the Caisah turned slowly around, taking in the expanse of the Salt, she pointed out what she had found to Byre.
It was a staff, as tall as a man, made of some strange deep colored wood, and surmounted with a great golden eagle with spread wings. Byre had no time to tell her to leave it, because like all Blood Witches, she moved fast. Pelanor pried it upright and turned it this way and that, examining it in the bright noon sun.
The Caisah—who had apparently regained his strength quickly—moved as swiftly as a pouncing cat, grabbing hold of the staff and thrusting the Blood Witch aside as if she were a mere mortal. A normal woman would have fallen off her feet, but Pelanor darted backward, and glared at the man with rage that might turn to blood if the Caisah wasn’t careful.
“No woman can touch the eagle,” the newcomer said, his shoulders straightening, as if suddenly realizing he did possess pride.
Byre thought of the Swoop, the worshipers of the Lady of Wings. Their symbol was a bird, too, and in his time the Swoop was used by the Cais
ah to enforce his will. This could well be the answer to how that particular outrage had happened.
He ran his eye over the man once more, taking in the sword sheath at his side. A warrior then, wherever he had come from—but he looked so young. A scion, a friend of the Kindred. None of these things had he been aware of.
Yet, what person had ever known the Caisah? Not even the women he shared a bed with. However, all that lay ahead of him. For now, he was very new to Conhaero. He swept his cloak around him, and unnervingly turned his face toward the gathering.
“I must give my warning,” he said, as if they were his underlings. “I gave my solemn oath to deliver it.” With that, he set off walking toward the Vaerli meeting place, in a strange military step that Byre had only ever seen on the Rutilian Guard before. Another puzzle piece dropped into place.
A solider that had come through the White Void. If this was purely an intellectual exercise he might have been delighted, but for Byre this was far more than that. This was the end of his people.
The Caisah was walking toward history, and all Byre could do was watch him, mesmerized.
Pelanor tugged on his arm, her smaller size completely irrelevant to the pull she could exert; his blood in her veins gave her plenty of strength. “We must follow him,” she hissed impatiently.
He did not want to. He had no desire to watch the wounding of his mother, the Harrowing of his people, and the flaming deaths of his kin. Yet, Ellyria Dragonsoul had endured far worse for the Vaerli.
Byre hastened his own footsteps so that they trailed the Caisah only by a little. Byre shivered at the thought that to an outside viewer it might look as if they were acting as an honor guard to him.
They approached the gathering again, and this time there was no guard to come out to them. Instead the Vaerli themselves came out. Perhaps they had felt the disturbance through the Kindred. Byre pulled up the hood on his cloak reflexively, and shot a glance across at Pelanor. She took the hint and jerked hers up, too. It would bring shame and danger on her people if a Blood Witch was recognized traveling with the Caisah. Byre certainly did not want his face associated with the Caisah, especially with what was to come.
The ranks of the Vaerli came out from their tents and wagons to watch with dark eyes as the man the Kindred had brought approached. He leaned only slightly on the staff with the eagle surmounting it, but his bearing was erect. He walked toward them, with Byre and Pelanor trailing unhappily in his wake. Luckily, he did not acknowledge them at all.
When he stopped only feet from the first of the Vaerli, they did too. Silent sentinels to what they knew was coming.
Immediately Byre was grateful that he had put up his hood, for his father Retira stepped out from the crowd. He was as he had been when Byre was a child, though he had not observed how much his father had changed when he had rescued him from the Caisah’s prison. Retira had a thick mop of jet-black hair, and his beard had only a few strands of silver to mark it. His eyes, as all of the Vaerli’s, contained endless points of light. Stars that the Vaerli had put there to mark the Pact.
“You are not Vaerli,” Retira spoke directly to the Caisah, and Byre was grateful for that, too. He did not know how he would have reacted to his father acknowledging him. “I do not know how you have bested the sacred Salt, but you must turn back.”
Several of the Vaerli wore dark looks, and many hands were on the hilts of swords. They were ready to defend what was there, and a ridiculous hope sprang in Byre’s chest. What if the Caisah was killed before the Harrowing could be released? It would not be his fault if that happened. Maybe time could re-write itself?
“I am here to see Putorae,” the Caisah said. The seer’s name sat oddly on his lips, as if he did not quite know how to pronounce the syllables, and the emphasis was not exactly right. His words were also stilted, and Byre suddenly understood that these words were not simply chosen. This man had practiced these words many times before.
He had been schooled.
The duplicity of the Kindred grew deeper in his mind, and he almost reached for his own long knife then and there.
When he spared a glanced across at Pelanor, he caught the tiniest shake of her head in his direction. It was enough of a reminder that his weapon stayed in its sheath.
While he continued to wrestle with that awkwardness, a ripple of whispers ran through the Vaerli assembly, and he knew what they were thinking. His father’s demands were a bluff. Any who crossed the Salt could only be a Vaerli, and there were no rules to contain a Vaerli at the gathering. As for the seer, she belonged to the people, and any of the people could call on her as they wished.
The Caisah’s head turned as he examined all those before him, and then in one swift movement he bent and laid his sword out on the Salt for them.
Byre wondered how defenseless he actually was, but it was a gesture that all peoples could understand. As his eyes scanned the crowd for his mother, or even his sister, he could feel his heart hammering harder and harder in his chest. He did not want to see this.
In many respects Ellyria might have had the easier testing. It was a red-hot knife beneath his skin to see so many faces that he vaguely recognized, and yet to know that he would never see them again. He was trapped between awe, horror and trying to soak up as much of this as he possibly could.
“All may speak to the seer,” the Caisah said, and though his voice was soft, it carried.
The word magic, the pae atuae, could not be disobeyed. From what Byre knew of his own people they were sticklers for pacts, oaths and honor. Slowly, the press of Vaerli parted, and the way was clear to enter.
Byre kept his head down, only daring the occasional glance up as he followed the Caisah deeper into the sacred heart of Vaerli life. He kept his jaw clenched, lest he blurt out a warning. As they followed behind the Caisah, Pelanor drew closer to him, and her fingertips trailed against the edge of his cloak. Byre would not allow himself the comfort of her touch. It was the least of things he could do to share his people’s suffering to come. Very soon they would be alone, and he would share that with them.
As he glanced out from under his hood, he caught glimpses of the Vaerli watching this odd, small procession pass them. He tried to hang on to the little details: the weapons they carried, their confused expressions, and even the musky smell of too many bodies out too long in the baking heat of the Salt. Every one of these details was something of the experience he had been too small to hold on to.
He noted that his father did not follow the Caisah down the cut steps and into the council chambers beneath the Salt. As they walked past him, Byre held his breath and clenched his hands, least he lose control and grab hold of the man who had already died for him. What he could not control was one last look as they descended the stairs.
It was just a split second where their gazes locked together, but Byre could have sworn that his father gave a slight start. As a child, Retira had always told his son how much he resembled his mother. Since Retira had never mentioned this moment to Byre, he must have cast aside any strangeness about the hooded stranger as merely some kind of hallucination in a truly evil day.
They were soon past the press of Vaerli, and headed into the chamber of the council. Though Byre had always dreamed of seeing such a holy, sacred place, this was not how he had imagined it would go.
The Ahouri watched the sky change above them. Unlike the other times when they had been in charge of change, they did not seem to care much for it. Equo was watching his kin’s reaction to this terrifying show of lights more than the lights themselves.
“It is the White Void, isn’t it?” Varlesh asked, unconsciously edging nearer to his brothers.
“Yes,” Si replied. “It has finally returned. The Conflagration.”
“It’s beautiful,” Varlesh said, his gruff voice stained with a rare kind of awe.
Equo tilted his head back and watched the play of colors across the sky. He imagined how different it would have looked to the Vaerli while they we
re the only race to live in Conhaero. Perhaps they would have remembered the Pact they had made with the Kindred, and quailed.
A pact made in the dim reaches of time, one they had surely consigned to the back of their minds and simply dismissed as part of legend, was now coming to haunt them.
So they had run from it, tried to find a way to escape their fate. They had sacrificed their own children on the Steps, and instead of going into the Void, they had called others, like the Ahouri, to them. By adding their blood and strength, they had managed to fend off their obligations.
Now, looking up at the streaming white and blue across the whole sky, he knew it for what it was; a summons to the Vaerli. One last chance for the first people of this land to honor the Pact.
If they did not, the balance of chaos and order would be undone. It was more than Equo’s imagination could manage, all the worlds in the Between that would suffer.
Suddenly the fate of his own people did not seem as important as it had only moments before.
As the Ahouri watched, the lights in the sky gathered themselves, turned and twisted about each other, until the sky was alive with hundreds of burning, spiraling tornadoes which were now reaching to the earth below like many angry fingers.
The Ahouri answered as best they could. Leaping into the sky, they claimed the forms they had used to reach this meeting place, and would have fled. Si, however, called to them, and the voice of the conscience would not be ignored.
“Fly, but the Void will have you, and that will be the end of the Ahouri.”
Tiny dragons, birds, massive insects with whirling wings, all paused. The White Void was streaking down to earth everywhere. Some would escape, but the trios would be destroyed. By gathering together, they had allowed one devastation to hold the future of their whole race.
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