Perenor was grinding his teeth, fingers flexing around the shaft of his staff. Slowly, slowly, the burning left his eyes and his shoulders slumped.
Then, CRACK! A sound like thunder but deeper, from below rather than above, followed by a deafening hissing sound. I wrenched around – the main artery of Ellorian had split open down the center, and the hot spring underneath was spitting white steam high into the air.
“This city is breaking!” Soya cried over the sound. “We don’t have time to stand here and argue. Make yourself useful, Perenor, and get us out of here!”
Perenor stepped around me, staring into the ever-widening chasm opening up on the street. People were screaming – some even fell into it, along with their carts and camels and large chunks of debris.
“We can’t outrun this,” Perenor said. “Grab hold of me.”
“Grab hold—?”
Perenor grabbed me by the shoulder and hauled me to my feet. “Like you asked, Rhodan, I’m getting us out of here!”
He didn’t wait. With one hand on me and another on Soya, he glowed white-hot with Craft, and then there was a sudden pressure that started in my gut and ripped—
“… can’t possibly think this…”
Voices, fading in and out. A disorienting, churning, rocking sensation.
“… no other way, the city…”
I forced my eyes open and found myself staring into firelight. I was on something soft.
“… raze this temple to the ground if word got out!”
My senses slowly came into focus. I took stock of my body. I didn’t seem to be in any pain, though I did feel strangely nauseous, sort of seasick.
“It won’t be for long.” It was Perenor’s voice, I recognized as my mind began to clear. “Please, Scholar, you must understand the urgency.”
“Of course I do, but that doesn’t change that fact that what you’re asking—”
“He’s waking up.”
It was Soya’s voice this time, closer than the others. I gathered my strength and sat up slowly. The room was bare, spartan stone with a single window open to the air. The sound of the fire mingled with the rushing of waves in the distance. It was hard to say for sure where I was.
There were three others in the room: Soya, Perenor, and a man whose face I couldn’t quite recognize, although he did seem familiar.
They were all three staring at me as though concerned that, at any moment, I might physically explode and take the building down with me. Soya even inched away from where she’d been kneeling at the foot of the cot on which I was lying.
“Sleep well?” Soya asked, daring to break the sudden silence.
“I w-w-was asleep?” I couldn’t recall how that had happened. Although now that I thought about it—
“You weren’t asleep,” Perenor said, “you were unconscious. That can happen when you’re translocated via Craft.”
I’d never heard the word “translocated” before, but I could glean enough by the context.
“Is he…?” Soya began, but didn’t finish.
I looked sideways at her, frowning in confusion.
When I didn’t respond, she continued: “… I don’t know… here?”
“Is wh-who – oh.”
I suppose I should have known immediately who she meant, but it took the question to send memories flooding back, and when they did, they hit with a force so strong that it was almost physically painfully. The confirmation, the possession, the Queen—
I shut my eyes tightly.
“Y-y-you’d know if he w-was here,” I answered softly.
“Is he listening?” Perenor asked, expression hard and unforgiving.
“I d-d-don’t know. I c-can’t know.”
“Splendid,” said the man I didn’t recognize, looking angry. “So not only is this temple to play host to Umbrion’s Godspeaker, it’s to do so while the traitor-god may or may not be listening in on everything that happens.”
“You know I wouldn’t come to you, Scholar, if I had any other option,” Perenor said.
The man – the scholar, presumably – pointed a long, accusatory finger toward Soya. “She said he’ll be protected in Avenos. Why don’t you go there?”
“If they make that journey without protection, they’ll be found before long. Once people stop being frightened, they’ll be angry, and they’ll come for Silas long before they make it to Avenos.”
“They have adequate protection,” the scholar said, leveling Perenor with a pointed stare. “You’re the finest sorcerer this monastery has ever produced; I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of protecting them!”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Perenor answered, “but I just translocated three people fifteen leagues. I need at least a few hours to rest.”
Now that I was looking properly, and now that Perenor had pointed it out, I noticed that Perenor’s hands were trembling and his skin was ashen white. He looked awful.
I could see the scholar’s tongue rolling behind his teeth. He folded his arms and visibly weighed his options.
“Please, Jeron,” Perenor said, voice suddenly soft. “Just a few hours.”
Another moment of silence, and then the scholar sighed.
“Until dawn, then,” said Scholar Jeron, and suddenly I knew who he was. Scholar Jeron was the master of Craft at Perenor’s temple, who taught Perenor and his fellow acolytes. “But I can’t let him stay any longer than that, Perenor. I will not risk this temple or anyone in it.”
“I understand,” Perenor answered solemnly. “Thank you, Scholar.”
Scholar Jeron strode from the room, ducking under the heavy curtain draped over the doorway. The moment he was gone, Perenor seemed to physically deflate, and he staggered under his own weight as though he might collapse. I jumped from my cot and caught his wrist to hold him steady.
“I’m fine,” Perenor snapped at me, pulling himself away. “I’m fine, I just—”
Perenor sat down heavily, rubbing his shaking hands into his face.
“You look like shit,” Soya said. “No offense.”
“How could I possibly take offense to that?” Perenor grumbled.
“Will you even be ready to leave by dawn?”
“Not much of an option, is there?” He lowered his hands. I slowly sat down on the cot across from him. “How long is the Long Road?”
Soya frowned. “At the risk of redundancy, long,” she said. “We’ll be lucky if we get there before the monsoon starts.”
Perenor looked up at her. “Forty days?”
“I didn’t make the cursed maps,” she returned. “Why can’t you just translocate us once you’ve got your strength back?”
“I can only translocate to places I’ve been,” he said. “Besides, forty days’ travel is way too far. That would take an amount of strength I just don’t have.”
She sighed. “There’s always a catch with Craft.” She rose to her feet and crossed to the window, just as the breeze off the ocean caught the long strands of her mahogany hair.
For several moments we each sat in silence, each preoccupied with our own thoughts. The weight of everything we weren’t saying was heavy, weighing down on the room like fog.
“Y-y-you’ve got a little…”
I reached up and pressed my thumb over Perenor’s upper lip, which was coated in dry, brownish blood. He jerked away from me.
“No shit I’ve got a little,” Perenor growled at me, “I think you broke my nose.”
“Oh,” I said. “S-s-sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No, n-n-not really. You d-d-d-did have your s-staff to my throat—”
“It’s taking a long time to heal,” Soya interjected. “It’s been nearly an hour now. Does it still hurt?”
“Yes,” Perenor answered, glaring at me. I refused to feel bad, of course. If he didn’t want to get punched he shouldn’t have pinned me to a wall.
“Do you think—” Soya hesitated a moment. “Is it possible – wh
at he said during the confirmation, and the Queen—”
The image brought a fresh surge of nausea. I willed away the images of ripping flesh and spurting blood, screwing shut my eyes.
“He killed her,” Soya said, slowly. “And he said the Light won’t protect us. Do you think he was talking about the Worldmother’s Light? Is it possible he made us…”
I hadn’t really considered it before, but now that Soya brought it up…
I looked up at her. Soya was hunting for the right word; it wasn’t one that was in common parlance.
“… mortal?” she finished, anticlimactically.
“I’d say it’s not possible,” Perenor answered slowly, “but if it is, it would only be possible through the will of a god.”
“Perenor, you studied religious history, didn’t you? Isn’t it required as part of a sorcerer’s curriculum?”
“I did,” he said, pressing his fingertip against his nose and flinching.
“What is it that the Worldmother’s Light does, specifically?”
“It’s kind of nebulous,” he answers. “People often mistake it for the physical sunlight, but it’s more like an energy. It burns away creeping age and shields us from damage and disease. The Worldmother’s Light comes from the Worldmother’s Flame, which people usually mistake for the sun but which is actually the flame of courage, another gift of hers to us.”
“Priestly knowledge is always so wishy-washy,” Soya sighed. “What even happens to a thing when it dies?”
“I don’t think Sol ever intended us to find out,” Perenor answered.
There fell a lapse of silence. I spent a while worrying my lower lip.
“We’ll make for Oberine as soon as the sun rises,” Soya said. “We’ll all be safe in Avenos; my father can protect us.”
“We can make the first leg at dawn,” Perenor added, “but then we really should only travel at night. Someone will recognize him, and since we’re apparently mortal now…”
“I’m s-s-s-sorry,” I said suddenly.
The conversation stuttered to a halt; they both looked at me, but I kept my eyes low.
“B-b-b-before the confirm-m-mation, I w-worked it out,” I said. “I told G-G-Greatmother Amira, b-b-but I sh-should have d-d-done more.”
“What more could you have done?” Soya asked. “What could you have possibly done against a god’s will?”
“Something, perhaps,” Perenor answered, voice deathly quiet.
“Perenor,” Soya snapped at him.
“I don’t claim to know the details,” he continued, “and I know that true blame can only rest with Umbrion, but at the same time, I don’t believe in fate or inevitability and I never have. There’s nothing that has ever happened or ever will that couldn’t have been changed. Perhaps this particular event could have been avoided.”
“Watch your mouth,” Soya growled, storming toward him to shove roughly at his shoulder. Perenor glared at her. “It’s easy for you to be all high and mighty when it wasn’t you. What could he, or you, or anyone, have possibly done to defy a god?”
His glare only intensified, but he had no answer.
“I don’t blame you, Silas,” Soya said then. “Others might, but I don’t. I know you too well to think you’d ever be party to something like this.”
“Th-th-thank you,” I said, slowly, “b-but your words d-do little to assuage m-m-my guilt.”
“There’s no time for your guilt,” Perenor snapped.
Soya rounded on him so abruptly that her long hair fanned as she spun. She shoved at him again, this time with both hands, and he would have fallen from the bed if he hadn’t grabbed the wall just in time and staggered to his feet.
“How can you possibly be so callous to him after everything he’s been through?” she demanded. “He’s your brother, or do you only acknowledge that fact when it’s convenient for you to do so?”
I looked over at Perenor, and Perenor looked back at me, and something like remorse was in his eyes.
But that expression, if it was there at all, only lasted a moment.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. “Wake me at dawn.”
He made for the door. There was no strength left in his stride; the weariness had weathered him down.
“Don’t listen to him,” Soya said, glaring at his retreating form. “He’s a bully and a brute. Such a shame we need him, else I’d knock him out and drop him into the ocean.
“Don’t b-b-begrudge him his f-feelings,” I said.
“I’m not,” she answered, “I begrudge him his behavior, which is at best callous and at worst despicably cruel.”
“He’s j-j-just angry and f-frightened,” I said. “And I’m j-just a c-c-convenient outlet f-for it.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“M-maybe,” I said, mostly to myself. I lied down and stretched out on the cot. “But I th-think I’ll s-s-spend the r-rest of my life w-wondering if I c-c-could have s-stopped it.”
Soya didn’t seem to have an answer for that, which was fine, because I didn’t really feel like discussing it any further. Eventually, she bent down and planted a benedictory kiss on the top of my head.
“Try to sleep,” she said. “We leave at dawn.”
When dawn came, Scholar Jeron all but pushed us out the door. We had a small, insufficient meal, which matched perfectly with our small, insufficient night’s rest. I put on Soya’s long black cloak, which was stiflingly hot in the dry and oppressive heat of the Wastes, and we set northwest along the Long Road.
Once we were sufficiently far from the temple – and everything else – it became rather hard to judge whether we actually made progress or if we were just walking in place. The Wastes were a massive stretch of identical, rolling sand dunes, with no markers to judge distance. To make matters worse, they were so insufferably quiet that all the stories I’d been told as a child about travellers getting lost in, and subsequently going mad in, the Wastes did not seem so impossible.
To say that I was the least active of the bunch would have been generous. Not one of my hobbies was anything close to physically demanding. Soya, on the other hand, was a talented and accomplished rider and archer, and Perenor lived a lifestyle that I could only accurately describe as nauseatingly active, the kind of active that makes you feel bad about yourself. I was sure that, between my own inexperience and the long black cloak I had to wear, that I would be the first one to ask for a rest.
But quite to my surprise, it was Perenor, around high noon.
“Wait,” he said. “Stop. I need to stop.”
Soya, several yards ahead, slowed to a stop and turned around. The long white shawl she’d tied over her face left long strands of her hair free and tangling in the wind. “It’s another ten leagues to Oberine at least.”
But Perenor was already sitting down, collapsing heavily along on the side of the road. Granted, calling it a road at all was a bit generous – it wasn’t paved with anything, just marked every hundred yards with a large mound of stone. Perenor had collapsed against one of the mounds, folding himself into the narrow shadow it cast. Sweat was streaking his brow and he was panting.
I looked from him to Soya, giving her the just a moment gesture with one hand before I reached into my pack and produced a skin of water, which I offered to him.
“Here.”
Perenor looked at me askance but was too tired for real skepticism. He took the skin with a grateful nod, thumbed open the cork, and took several long pulls.
I scanned the road. Since we’d left, we’d past several travellers bound in the opposite direction with camels and carts, but for now we were alone. I pulled down the hood of my cloak and sank down beside him on the opposite side of the pillar.
“D-d-didn’t expect you to-to- be the f-f-first one to c-call for a rest,” I said.
“I’m still recovering,” he answered tersely between large gulps of water.
“From wh-wh-what?” I asked, a moment before I remembered. “C-Craft?�
�
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Perenor returned. “If Craft were easy, there wouldn’t be temples dedicated to learning it.” He dropped the water skin between his knees and leaned back against the sunbaked stone.
I shook my head. “I j-j-j-just hadn’t expected th-th-the effects to b-b-be quite so physical,” I said.
I heard the hollow sound of the water skin’s stopper being replaced. “One of the first things you learn when you enroll as an acolyte is the First Fundamental Law.”
I was surprised. “M-m-matter and energy c-cannot be created or d-d-destroyed.”
“Only changed,” Perenor finished.
“I d-d-didn’t expect you to-to- know anything about the physical s-s-sciences.”
“Well, you did take all the brains between us in the womb,” he said, which drew a startled laugh out of me. “I got the good looks, though.”
“And th-th-the ego, c-clearly.”
“Anyway, we learn the First Fundamental Law because Craft is subject to it, like everything else,” he said. “Your Craft is only as strong as what you’re willing to sacrifice.”
I frowned. “S-s-sacrifice?”
“Energy for energy,” he answered, shrugging. “Matter for matter. Translocating the combined mass of three people several leagues required a huge sacrifice of energy. It’s just not coming back as soon as I should like.”
I’d never really thought of Craft in such practical terms before. Like most people, my only exposure to it had been in dry, scholarly lectures and the occasional bar fight. I’d never found it a particularly compelling field of study, but Perenor’s explanation did make for some interesting thought.
“I never asked,” Perenor began. “About the confirmation…”
I worried my bottom lip. I was glad we were facing opposite directions, even if it meant I had to squint against the sunlight and he had the shade.
“What happened?” he asked finally. “I mean, I know – I saw, I was there – he possessed you, fine, but why?”
“Wh-wh-why what?”
“Why did he do it?” Perenor pressed. I heard him half-turning behind me. “He’s been in your head for weeks now; you must know something.”
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