Could it truly transport them halfway across the island? Why hadn't Fier told him about it earlier? Secrets and mysteries, and Irreor was privileged to know none of them.
-We're lost if he touches us with it. Don't do it. Walk. Run. Ride. But please, for the love of everything we hold dear, don't let him take us with gentahl!-
You lost the right to an opinion long ago. It's my choice, and you simply ride along.
"Fine," Irreor said. "Take us there."
Fier cocked his head to the side. "No questions?"
"None."
"Men forge greatness from the trust in their hearts." Fier rose to his feet. "My father was great, in many ways. He had a vision. He did everything he could to accomplish it, despite the fact that it was wrong. You'll need to be great, indeed."
"But you say nothing. You explain nothing. Trust is earned by two working together, speaking together. Kipra and Bran have earned my trust, but not you. I'll use you, but I won’t trust you."
-You can't tell him you're choosing this simply to spite us, can you?-
No.
"Come with me," Fier said.
-I'll beg you one last time: don't do this.-
On the far side of the hill, the same dusty sand skittered in the breeze. The smell of the camp's slapdash stew filled their nostrils. Yet there were no people here, and near-silence filled the morning air. The Prophet could beg and beg, just as Kipra could request that he stay in the city, but Irreor wouldn't wilt for their wishes. He was his own man, and that man needed to confront his father's people.
-If only it were so simple.-
"Do what you need to d—"
"Forge greatness," Fier whispered.
Irreor twitched his face in confusion, again opening his mouth to speak.
The island rocked.
It occurred in an instant, faster than his mind could grasp. The smell of an ancient, abandoned house rose and dissolved in the same second. Rocks, bushes, dust, trail—all vanished in a burst of light. He raced through an intangible tube of brightness, careened amongst a twisting cylinder of vibrant greens and browns, blackness nibbling at its edges.
It halted.
Irreor attempted to remember what Fier had done, the feel of the man's gentahl, how it had pierced and rummaged through his thoughts. Failure. The method slipped away without a whisper or a sigh and left him with nothing but pain.
Agony.
Like a bowstring against unprotected flesh, it welted his mind, and he clutched his head and vomited. Last night's rolls, once so crusty and hard and disgusting, erupted from his gut in a wash of acidic bile. The pain passed quickly, fading like ice in a pot of boiling water, and he wrapped his fist around a clump of green leaves. They smelled of a summer day, and sunshine warmed his back.
Grass. Impossible.
-Now we remember why we locked his cage. Can't you?-
No! I see nothing but grass and dirt and puke, void take you.
-Yes, it might take us. It would've been better for us all if the void had taken us. Can't you see his face? It's splattered with mud and feces. He's terrified, oh so terrified, and yet he's furious. We've released him.-
Irreor sighed. If he'd truly released whatever the Prophet feared, then he'd add it to the list, throw a check beside it, and allow it to wait behind all the other catastrophes. He was already dealing with one voice. How much worse could a second be?
-You, my ignorant little general, don't know what you've unlocked.-
Then tell me!
-No.-
Fier sank to his knees, heaving.
"What is this?" Irreor asked him. "How is it...."
The scent of fresh flowers invaded his nostrils. A breeze ruffled their vibrant petals, and he sucked a deep, reassuring breath. He spun in a circle, eyes wide and throat dry, to face whitened peaks. Fuzzy splotches of clouds drifted as silent companions to the mountain's majesty.
"We've come twenty leagues in a heartbeat." Irreor licked suddenly parched lips, imagining what would happen if the Mad King were to move his entire force with gentahl. Farren's walls wouldn't matter. Abennak's army would appear within them. Neither word nor whisper nor sword could stop it.
If only he knew how to use it!
"Renek is an hour from here," Fier managed to say, wincing as he squared his shoulders. "We'll skip over it. We'll reach the bay by nightfall, then I'll need to rest. I'm not used to this strain, and it takes its toll."
It's your father's curse, now fallen to you.
"Will you teach me?" Irreor asked, anticipation rising like a grim wave. "Abennak can use it, you know it as well as I. What if he places his army behind our walls, or somehow brings the stones low with a thought? It would be—"
"Abennak is wild and furious and untrained. Would you allow fire to consume a chunk of your house?" He reached down to pluck a yellow flower from its stem, tore away its petals, and allowed them to flutter back to the dirt. "He's like you, and I'll teach neither."
So little explanation. So many questions.
"I didn't want this," Fier murmured. "You know my sister?"
Irreor clenched his jaw. They both knew the answer.
"She thought to stop my father with gentahl. She thought she could force him from hiding. I told her using the power was a poor idea, and in the end, she failed. Gentahl isn't the answer here, nor is my father's book."
-She succeeded.-
"What's the answer, damn you! Why am I here, alone with you, when my city is about to be forced beneath a siege. When Bran is forced to kill. When Kipra is so close, yet so far. When my father's people... my father...."
"Gentahl is a poison. I'll not spread it, even if the entire island falls. So what will you do with me?" Tension lived in Fier's question, like a man who feared the answer but couldn't resist asking. "Somehow you know what my sister did. I saw your hatred when we met atop the Spire. Will you kill me for what she did, or because I refuse to teach you?"
"Gift horses don't have mouths." Irreor gestured to the other's feet. "They have hooves, and those hooves carry men from city to city. They'll plow fields and feed families. They're useful."
"I'm a gift?"
"Killing you wouldn't solve anything, especially when I can use you. You're a horse, and you'll carry me where I wish. As for your gentahl, your twisting and twirling and manipulation... you can choke on it."
Tension bled from Fier, and laughter rumbled from deep in his chest. "Well, the first shift is always the hardest, and you've already vomited. The next will be easier, but colder."
Flowers swayed at Irreor's feet, grazing his ankles with soft kisses. Only the faintest hints of dust speckled their leaves, as if the flakes that covered the southern kingdom hadn't yet made it into the foothills.
-These flowers are how we originally intended our world. They're complete, but the people.... We couldn't find the last piece of what made a true person, so we did what we could. We pieced them together from our memories and hoped for the best.-
Then you failed.
-Yes, we failed.-
The flowers tore away mid-breath, yanked by another twisting cylinder. Irreor blinked and, with a fluidity the first shift had lacked, the cylinder expanded, collapsed, and abandoned him. Snowy flecks drifted to his shoulders as he sucked in crystalline, frigid air. The temperature shift burned his lungs, and he pounded his breastbone, hacking out a cough.
It was one step closer to Kiln, to his father's—
No! Think of something else. Anything else.
"I should've warned you about that," Fier whispered, his voice tight and raspy.
Two whitened boulders barred their path, and a snow falcon's shriek ricocheted down the canyon. The bird flapped through a blue and white sky, the color of its wings matching the mountain's snowy peaks. It vanished into a low cloud.
"Why not simply take us to Kiln?" Irreor asked. "We've more important things to do than skip through the snow and clouds."
"Horses don't have mouths."
-He'
s not strong enough. The thought of shifting all the way to Kiln is too impossible, so he breaks it into more manageable segments—fifty miles here, fifty there. It's easier for his mind, and ours, to digest.-
Irreor repeated that to Fier, who jerked around to glare at him.
-We shouldn't have told him.-
Why should you decide what we can or cannot tell hi—
-A puzzle without pieces is impossible to arrange. But we can see his eyes and watch the way he flips our pieces around, searching for how they fit. We're a puzzle to him. Don't give him more pieces.-
"How do you know that?" Fier demanded.
"Whips don't have mouths, either. How long until we're in Kiln?"
"I'll need to rest tonight and attempt the last shift in the morning. It's farther than the others because of the mountains, and we don't want to find ourselves in the middle of a boulder." He lowered his head. "This is more difficult than I'd thought."
The countryside again lurched, but any discomfort quickly vanished as they appeared in a green valley. To the south, the peaks they'd once stood amongst rose to the other side of a lake’s sparkling waves, several leagues away. Stout huts sank into the ground near the shore, burrowed deep to protect against the region’s biting winters, and boats dotted the water, each occupied by an efficient group of fishermen.
The odor of salted fish drifted from the community.
Tranquil Lake.
Irreor had traveled here three times in the past year, and each trip had aroused conflicting emotions. Tranquil Lake was far too close to Kiln. To the north, only a narrow range of mountain peaks separated this place from his father's people.
He couldn't remember. He didn't want to.
-But all places come with memories.-
Indeed.
Fier said, "I've been here twice be—"
-Sometimes we don't choose ourselves. Sometimes the boy peeks from the cracks of his hovel, waiting for the whip to crack his skin. He didn't choose that. And the door, ah, that door. We opened it.-
I see no door. I feel no boy. You're wrong, just as you've been wrong so many time—
-He'll wait. He'll make sure it's safe. It's his way.-
Irreor shoved the Prophet's voice to the back of his mind, where it continued to ramble. Fier also spoke, telling some worthless story about the time he'd visited Tranquil Lake with his sister, but Irreor ignored that as well.
His father had brought him here once. Long before he'd traveled with the merchant, long before he'd started to train with a blade, his father had led him through the mountains between Tranquil Lake and Kiln. These mountains. He and his father had stayed beside the lake for three days, then traveled onward to Farren.
It had been a trip of sorrow. It had been a trip of anguish.
His mother had died in the days preceding their journey. The memory was faint, hazy, little more than the remembrance of a child. His father had never explained what had killed her—she hadn't been sick, and she was known as one of the best blades in the village—yet she'd died all the same.
"Have you ever watched the life fade from someone's eyes?" Irreor asked.
Fier halted his story midstream. His skin turned ashen.
And they said no more.
Irreor tossed his pack beside a gnarled stump, then stumbled to the shore and plunged his face into the waves. It stung his eyes and mouth, and he whipped his head up. Water dribbled down his back, invigorating lethargic tissue and forcing a shiver through his muscles.
He retreated inland, plopped down a pace beyond the water's reach, and peered to the north.
Kiln lay beyond.
Chapter Sixty-Three
-I didn't design the people of Kiln for mercy. I wanted their blood to be wrought with fury and emotion and violence. I imagined them attaining notions of honor and kindness, but I planned for those ideals to dwell beneath layers of tenacity.-
You'll not even allow me a full night of sleep?
-I haven't slept for a century.-
Dawn hadn't yet nudged darkness from the island, and their fire burned low amongst sooty coals. Irreor tossed on a fist-sized log and stoked the flames until they licked bark. The blaze forced away the lake's chilling breath, but the Prophet's thread chilled Irreor more than any breeze or wave or storm.
He rose from his bedroll, a ragged, threadbare thing, and approached the shoreline. Far in the distance, lost amongst the waves and the wind, a jagged flash of lightning lit the sky.
He dug his nails into his forearms, tearing away the scabs to watch blood pulse and drip. "Kiln is beyond these mountains, you bastard. They see the same peaks, the same flash of lightning. Are you proud of what you've done?"
-No.-
Irreor harrumphed, jabbed his nails deeper and deeper, but pain couldn't wash the desperation from his chest. He'd avoided Kiln his entire life. The reasons seemed so flimsy now—his father wouldn't have wanted it, he couldn't bear to meet his mother's people.
Loneliness.
He sat there, watching waves crash against the shore as his heart crashed against his chest. Neither time nor darkness nor solitude could defeat bitterness. It invaded his mouth, tasting like a lemon's rind.
As a child, I wanted to hear tales of her. I wanted to live amongst her people. Then my father died. He'd wanted me to stay away from Kiln. He wouldn't even speak of it.
-So we honored his wishes.-
So we did.
-Do you remember your mother's face?-
In fragments, like the sparkle of sunlight across the waves, the smoothness of a hilt in my hand. She was like that, I think, smooth and sparkling, and yet violent. She held a fury like Kipra's.
The Prophet sighed.
-There was once a time when you couldn't remember her face. You couldn't remember anything about her. We'd planned that for a very specific reason, but now even that is damaged. We weren't supposed to come here.-
Why?
-Because she was beautiful.-
That answers nothing, damn you. Why would—
-Because the door is cracked. Steel yourself, my general. Clad us in armor and protect us from ourselves. An idea is simple. It can flutter through our minds like a butterfly upon the wind.-
Irreor attempted to swallow past the lump in his throat.
-Your mother was our idea. Our brightness to drown away the darkness. Our breath to lift that butterfly ever higher, until it soared amongst sun and clouds and peace. She, or at least the idea of her, armored us, protected us against yet another idea. Every armor can crack. Every butterfly can plummet. She wasn't impervious, so we snatched what we could—memories of her love, the yearning to once again see her face—and we fled. We left that idea to die.-
Irreor swallowed hard. "What did she protect us from?"
The Prophet remained silent.
Irreor stomped back to the camp. Fier's chest lifted and dropped rhythmically, and Irreor nudged the man's elbow. "I'd rather do this before winter freezes the lake."
Fier surged to his feet. "The strength of man is greatest with the dawn. Can you feel it—the life of the breeze, the vitality embedded in the sands?"
"No. I feel only a strange uncertainty, and I've no wish to speak more of it."
"Then you're at your greatest."
Chapter Sixty-Four
Irreor turned a slow circle as the last remnants of Fier's genthal vanished.
The southern tip of the Skuven Bay splashed against a rocky, desolate beach, framed within the morning's brilliance. Seagulls screeched and dove beneath the muddy waters to emerge with small fish, and the odor of cooking meat wafted from the village, which was nestled between mountain and bay.
His father's home... a place he never should've returned to.
Now it was too late.
Maybe, if things had happened differently, he could've brought Kipra here. With the tenderness she'd shown these past few days, maybe she could've helped. She would've understood a warrior's society. But today wasn’t about Kipra, and Far
ren needed her.
Better to do this alone.
-We'll not find what we want within those walls. Not every tale ends the way we wish, and some secrets are best left unknown. Turn back, lest we lose ourselves. Lest we discover ourselves.-
Fier gasped and doubled over. "Void bloody void, that was difficult."
"This was your idea, not mine," Irreor told both man and voice.
Fier pulled his hood up and thrust his hands into his robes. "Go then."
They marched to Kiln's stout outer walls. Two sentries snapped to attention, garbed in leather armor, longswords swaying at their hips. The taller of them held up a hand. "What'll you need, boy?"
-They're exactly as we'd imagined. They wear a scar at the collar-bone to signify themselves as bloodletters. And yet only an infant who clasps the blade's edge will be accepted as a warrior.-
Why does that matter?
-We never clasped the edge. We have no scars. We're a fake.-
The Prophet fell silent, and Irreor glanced at the scars etched into the guards' collar-bones. He drew a hand over his own flawless flesh, and the motion sent a jolt of tightness through his remaining fingers. The stump ached. These men wore scars, but Irreor wore scars of his own.
Nobly given. Nobly received.
Yet his father had never received such scars. His neck had been smooth, marred only by the hue of sunlight's constant years. If what the Prophet claimed was true, then....
No. It couldn't be true.
"I'm Irreor Ark, son of Eenan and Skai Ark. Take me to the Sverden."
The sentries rocked back a step. The shorter one fingered his blade, on the verge of ripping it free, but the taller man shot him a warning glance and murmured something beneath his breath.
"I'm Grimek," he told Irreor. "Follow me, but keep your cowled friend close."
The people of Kiln wore rough clothes of animal skin, but they'd tailored them to mimic the tunics and leggings of the island's cities. Homes were constructed of rough, unpainted planks, and filthy children scuttled out to peer at the newcomers. The rhythmic clang of a blacksmith's hammer, reminiscent of Bran, sounded in the distance.
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