She clenched her teeth. She thought about not giving it to him. Instead, she reached into the pouch around her neck, took it out. Bright rainbow colors swirled inside the stone.
Orem gasped.
“The colors,” he whispered, wide eyed and captivated. He reached out a shaking hand for it. “May I...?”
His reaction to the stone spooked her. She grabbed his hand and pushed the stone into it. “Take it. I don’t want it.”
The stone went black.
“What did you do?” she asked.
He stared at it ruefully. “Nothing. This stone is black. You are the one who fills it with colors.”
“I didn’t fill it with anything!”
“It’s called a laughing stone,” Orem said. “A quicksilver’s toy. The quicksilvers made them for their children, who would slowly learn to bring out a single color in the stone. Every child had her own unique color. With practice, they could change the shade and brightness of the stone with the sound of their laughter.”
“Well, take it. I don’t want to see it ever again.” Again, it was a lie. She longed to grasp the stone again. It scared her, but at the same time it was like a link to her brother. It felt like him. It reminded her of him.
Visions of him leapt through her head, of when they killed him. Little Dorn, smiling at the group of refugees who had gathered around. He’d made colors brighter than the laughing stone. He’d made them leap through the air, made the colors dance. Dorn had been so proud of himself. But it was GodSpill he was using. She remembered the hairs raising on her arms, the power in the air. Everyone could feel it. It felt like terror.
She had screamed when the first rock hit Dorn in the head. She had thrown her body over his, but they’d pulled her away. Big men. Angry women. She tried to stop them, but they had been so large. The stones hit Dorn, over and over again. With stones gripped in fists, they beat him until he died.
“Mirolah.” Orem broke her reverie, his voice earnest. “I spent one hour every single day for a year trying to affect this stone. After all that time, all I could do was change it from black to gray.” He paused. “But it bursts into a rainbow when you touch it. A rainbow.” He seemed awed. “I’ve never seen that. I’ve never even read about that—”
She slammed her arms on the table. “You promised! Now go!”
She heard a footstep behind her, and she turned to find Lawdon standing in the kitchen doorway. He had a tile-shaping tool in his hands, a long steel rod with an edge. To Mirolah’s left, Tiffienne stood at the bannister, and Mirolah’s nine sisters were stacked up the stairs like birds, each one peeking through the rails.
Orem drew a slow breath. The wrinkles around his eyes were pained. He set the black stone on the table next to her hand and let it go. Dull colors began to swirl. She snatched her hand away, and the stone faded to gray.
“There are real heroes in the world still, Mirolah,” Orem said softly. “Not just phantoms in the rain. And we need them more than ever.”
She held her chin up high.
He nodded, then stepped back from the table, deftly hooked a finger under the collar of his cloak and slipped it off the rack. “I know that truth can be frightening,” he said. “But ignorance can be deadly.”
Without another word, he swung the cloak over his shoulders, opened the door, and disappeared into the rainy night.
She waited for a long moment, then snatched up the stone, ran to the door and flung it open. The rain was falling heavily now. She could barely see the bakery on the other side of the street. Reader Orem was gone.
She hurled the stone into the mud with all her strength, turned, and slammed the door, leaning her back against it.
Her breath came hard as she looked at her family, who were all staring at her with gazes of wonder, surprise, or compassion. She tried to force the thought of the laughing stone from her mind. She had wanted to throw it farther. She had wanted to lose it in the rain.
But she could picture the exact spot where it had splatted in the mud.
5
Medophae
A raven cawed at the top of the cliff, disturbed from its slumber as Medophae pulled himself over the lip of the cave, a hundred feet above the roaring surf. Even in the dark of night, the jagged cliff offered plenty of handholds and footholds, and the climb had not been difficult. He unslung his pack, unstrapped his sword, and buckled it around his waist. Next, he withdrew his flint and steel, and a torch. In a moment, a tongue of flame flowed upward from the thick, pitch-covered stick, sending light and sharp shadows stretching down the tunnel.
He stooped and started forward. It twisted this way and that, sometimes narrowing so severely that he was forced to crawl, pushing the torch ahead of him.
His memories hovered around him, memories as old as Bands, memories from another age. He was close now. Whatever had killed Galden was ahead, and if it wanted to try its hand at killing Medophae, he welcomed it.
He stood as the passage opened into a huge cavern. Air flowed past, carrying the smell of rotting flesh. Just within the perimeter of his light, he saw a human arm, torn meat at the shoulder, decaying fingers curled in pain long past.
Perhaps this was from a vagabond from the abandoned kingdom of Diyah? Or a Teni’sian fieldworker not reported missing? He moved closer, found half of another human body. The sweet, cloying stench thickened around him. There were also the corpses of a deer and a lyonar. This hunter was no surf dragon. This hunter was fast, and it killed for sport. Most of these corpses were barely eaten.
He pulled a length of rope, a slipknot tied in each side, from his pack. Something scratched the ceiling overhead, the faintest whisper of claw on rock.
Medophae threw his shoulder to the cavern floor, leaving the torch behind. A purr tickled his ear as something large flew over him, striking the torch where he had been a moment ago. The torch skittered across the floor and hit the wall. Medophae rolled to his feet and drew his sword from its scabbard, steel ringing in the quiet. He held the length of rope in his other hand.
The torch guttered, illuminating an oval portion of the wall and curved ceiling. He scanned the highest perimeter of the light, edged his way backward, trying to see any movement in the blackness.
There was a light scrape on the rock wall behind him.
The creature was fast—!
Razor claws dug into his neck. The thing landed heavily on him, driving him to his knees. He tried to shake it loose, but its claws sank deep into his ribs. He stifled his scream, kept his mind on the fight. Flipping his sword around, he stabbed the thing, and the blade sank deep, hitting muscle, bone.
The creature howled, letting go and retreating into the darkness again. It had two arms, two legs, longer and thinner than a human. Medophae waited, tense, feeling the warm blood flow down his side.
“Come...” he growled into the dark, gritting his teeth against the punctures and slices.
A hiss answered him.
A dark shape flew out of the shadows. Medophae slashed...
...and his sword struck the rotting corpse the creature had thrown at him.
It attacked instead from the side, wrapping itself around him. Its hind claws sliced into Medophae’s thighs. Its front claws gripped his neck, and it sank needle-like teeth into Medophae’s throat.
A scream filled the cavern, and Medophae distantly realized that it was his own.
The teeth ripped through Medophae’s neck muscles, arteries, windpipe. A killing blow for a mortal. But not for Medophae.
The rage exploded inside him, a golden fire that blew apart his sanity and took hold of his body. The door inside him—that he tried so hard to keep closed—slammed open, and Oedandus, Medophae’s god and ancestor, awoke.
He dropped his sword. It made no sound as it hit the stones. He could not hear the purring breath of his attacker, could not hear even his own breathing. There was only the burning. It moved outward from his bones, raced through his blood, lit his muscles alight, and leaked from his pores. T
he golden fire raced across Medophae’s skin as though he had been soaked in oil, engulfing his arms and chest.
His glow lit up the darkness, and he grabbed the monster. It tore away a chunk of his neck and went for another. Medophae howled, a grotesque gargle through the hole in his throat, and he ripped the creature away, flaying the flesh from his own back as he slammed it to the ground. It hissed, tried to scramble away, but Medophae had a grip on it now. And Oedandus was with him. It wasn’t going anywhere.
Destroy it, the voice growled in the back of his mind. You are the hand of justice.
Golden fire flared from Medophae’s hands as he bore down on the beast. The creature’s arm snapped. Ribs crunched. The monster fought desperately now, scratching against rock and dirt, clawing at Medophae’s stomach, biting his forearms. He couldn’t feel any of it.
He lifted the creature and brought it down onto his knee. Bones snapped. The creature howled.
Again, the dark voice said. The vengeful fire gushed through his body, filling him with unfathomable power.
He raised it overhead, slammed the creature onto the stone.
Destroy them all, the voice said.
Medophae bent the creature, snapped it, twisted it. He was divine vengeance, and this creature was an abomination. The monster’s agony thrilled him with holy joy.
He lifted it, slammed it down. And again, and again. Finally, the beast was nothing but a limp bag of broken bones, slick with blood.
Justice... The dark voice retreated, far back into the deepest part of Medophae’s mind. The golden fire flickered and died away, and Medophae’s sanity returned. He stumbled back from the mangled mass. Black blood covered his hands and arms. His breath whistled out of his throat like wind through a broken window. He clenched his gory fists in front of his face, fell to his knees and slowly...slowly...took control again.
He knelt there a long time, waiting. The golden fire flickered about his injuries, and the blood stopped flowing. The wounds healed. Skin, bone, and cartilage knit together, returning Medophae’s body to its original state, to that eighteen-year-old adventurer he had been when Oedandus had found him and claimed him. He touched his hair, and it was long again, straight and golden down to his shoulders.
He pushed himself to his feet, walked to the torch, and picked it up. He shined it upon the broken body.
It was a darkling, one of the god Dervon’s creatures. But there were no darklings anymore. They were made creatures, reliant on GodSpill. And there was no GodSpill in the lands anymore—no threadweavers, no quicksilvers, no vampires, and no darklings.
“How are you here?” Medophae rasped at the dead creature. “You can’t be here....”
6
Zilok Morth
“Sef.”
“Yes, my master.”
“Where do you suppose that darkling came from?”
“I do not know, my master.”
“Darklings only operate at the end of a leash. Someone sent it. It is enough to stir the blood.”
“Yes, my master.”
“Metaphorically speaking.”
“Yes, my master.”
“It interests me that another like me may have risen, powerful enough to summon a darkling. It is no coincidence that the Wildmane and this darkling met. We must assume the darkling’s master hunts our prey. I do not like this, Sef.”
“Yes, my master.”
“The best-laid plans can be upset by a sloppy interloper. If we have stumbled across a ghost with a grudge who insists on flinging darklings into the Wildmane’s path, then we must account for this.”
“Yes, my master.”
“We must use him, make him a part of our plan.”
“Yes, my master.”
“Removing the Wildmane’s secret admirer in the Coreworld was our first step. Our second shall be to find this darkling’s master. Third, we must understand why the GodSpill has returned in the first place.”
“Yes, my master.”
“Every great action has a trail of smaller actions behind it. We will find this trail. We will be meticulous, Sef.”
“Yes, my master.”
“We will be vigilant.”
“Yes, my master.”
“We will see all problems before they arise, or the Wildmane will escape us again. He suffers. He broods. He wishes he was not the house for the feral god Oedandus. He wants to be mortal. He wants to die. We will help him, Sef.”
“Yes, my master.”
“We will pare him down to his quivering, mortal body, and we will settle accounts.”
“Yes, my master.”
“We will take from him what he took from me.”
“Yes, my master.”
“Now, Sef, there is reading to be done. Even the scribblings of fools can hide wisdom, if one knows how to look. We must know what has transpired during our absence.”
“As you say, my master.”
“Yes, as I say.”
7
Tyndiria
Tyndiria awoke, a light chill on her bare skin. She liked coming to the surface of a deep sleep to goosebumps on her arms, then snuggling into the warmth of her down covers. Her wooden shutters stood open to the starry night like a gateway. She liked that chill, and to feel the gradual cooling of the air night after night as the last remnants of summer vanished. The transition was so brief that she woke each night just to feel it slipping away. And when the cold finally came, it was as though her ephemeral summer had never been.
Fleeting moments were that much sweeter for their impermanence. At eighteen, she knew that lesson well. She’d loved her mother and brother, and her father especially. And their loss had only made them more precious in her mind, only made her cling to their lessons more fiercely. Nothing lasted; one must enjoy the summer before it was gone.
She turned over, looked at the man in the bed next to her.
When he commanded her guards, he was implacable, like a mountain rising from the True Ocean, immovable. When they made love, he was playful, artful; he worshipped her and she felt like a goddess. When they lay down to sleep, he was her protector, enveloping her in his arms until she drifted off.
But when he slept, she could imagine he was her own age. The mantle of his many lives fell away, and he seemed the eighteen-year-old he had been when he was made immortal: young and long-limbed and muscled and... She wanted to take a bite out of him.
She reached out a hand to touch him, but didn’t. She just let it hover over the smooth, bare skin of his muscled back. Her heart was full, spilling over. Every moment with him made her better. His lips on hers thrilled her. His quiet manner taught her presence, the ease of real leadership. His restraint taught her willpower, that it was at the core of everything a leader must be.
He was her precious summer, and she knew, like the summer, he would one day be gone. She knew it the first moment she saw him, and again when she opened the dusty Teni’sian library that had been walled off for decades and did her research. That was when she discovered who he really was. The legends of Wildmane were well known. But historical accounts of the man were rare; almost no one knew them.
Once she learned he was the demi-god from the stories, the prudent thing to do would have been to lock her heart away and look on him as a royal asset.
But she had wanted him. Oh, she had wanted him, and so she had taken him. His heart was a cracked china cup. The love and certainty that had once filled it had been drained away long ago, and his fragile heart was held together by a flagging will. He longed for his lost beloved, and she had seen his weakness. He was willing to pretend his beloved was still here, if given the chance. He was willing to pretend with another.
And so, one day, Tyndiria had stepped into that role. She filled his broken cup. She captured him, and she stole a brief season of happiness.
Now she bore her victory, twin marks on her soul. A brushstroke of ecstasy and a slice of agony, running side by side.
He would leave someday. Whether he rode away t
omorrow or held her dying, wrinkled body on her seventieth birthday, Medophae would leave her behind. But she had the wisdom to hold that hurt as precious as she held the joy.
Medophae shuddered, and she drew back her hand. The tremor was small, and if she had been asleep, she wouldn’t have noticed it.
He turned, and his eyelids flickered. Then, as if he had never been asleep, he said in his rich, compelling voice, “Diria... You should sleep, my queen.”
She didn’t speak. Instead, her fingers traced his collarbone, then the edge of his jaw. Mere hours before, he’d come to her in the middle of the night, bloody. She had called for a servant to bring water, and she had helped wash him clean. He had told her about the darkling, about what it did to him, and that he had destroyed it: a creature from the Age of Ascendance.
Now, this moment with him, it was like a breath drawn in deeply and held, waiting to exhale. Somehow, there was GodSpill in the lands of Amarion again. Medophae denied it, said it was a strange fluke, but it was the only explanation for the arrival of a darkling, a supernatural creature that had once only existed in legend..
Her season of summer was turning, and what she had stolen must be returned. The lands were coming for him.
“Were you dreaming about the darkling?” she asked.
He let out a long breath, but he said nothing.
“Were you thinking of her?”
He shook his head. “You don’t want to talk about that.”
“I want to know. Will you not share it with me?” Medophae’s loss of his beloved Bands was intertwined with his core; no history book told that tale. No one knew except Medophae.
He paused. “In truth, I am trying to forget it.”
“I watch you hold it in so tightly. To talk might release it. Try. Try with me.”
He shook his head. “I just want to forget.”
“Turning your head from danger does not create safety, only the illusion of safety.” She repeated the words he had spoken to her two years ago when she had first taken power in Teni’sia.
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