“I f-f-f-forgive you, you b-bastard, n-n-now please stop t-t-talking—”
“I stopped singing and I lost a brother—”
“You d-d-didn’t lose m-me, I’m r-right here!”
There came a look of vague, delirious joy on his face then, after a moment’s pause. I could see blood welling behind his lips, and no, no, no, please no, please no, not now, not after everything.
“You are,” he said. “You are, you’re here. I’m glad, before the end—”
“It’s n-n-not the end!” I was past the point of trying to pretend that tears weren’t pouring down my face. I held him tightly by the shoulders. “It’s n-n-n-n-n-n-not the end—!”
“I’m glad I could be a brother again,” he said, “I’m glad I could sing to you—”
“Stop,” I begged him, “d-d-don’t, don’t d-d-do this—”
“Brother, I have to,” he said. “I told you, I told you. There are things worth dying for.”
Talking, seeing, thinking – it was all so far beyond me. This was dying, he was dying in my arms, and despite everything, I couldn’t stop it. My hands fisted in his leathers and I fell forward into ugly, broken sobbing.
“I give everything I have to protect you, to protect this city, this world,” he said, and his voice was getting fainter, and to the left of me I could see a growing source of white light. “I give it gladly, I give it all gladly. I love you, brother-mine.”
“I l-l-l-l-l-l-love y-y-you—”
“I’m glad I remembered…”
The light was building brighter. My vision was foggy with tears, but I could see the runes burning brighter than the sun on his runed staff, blazing, trembling with mounting energy, the sum total of everything Perenor was building into one point of light and heat and Craft, growing and growing until—
—there came a great cataclysm of light and sound, blinding, deafening, ever-expanding around me. I was reminded of that day, half a season and ten lifetimes away, where Perenor’s Craft domed over the Queen’s Ring and saved Ellorian from the falling star, but this was so much brighter, and so much stronger, and I was breathless, falling back.
I could hear the demons all around us, shrieking and sizzling and turning to dust, and the dome of light grew ever wider, screaming out in an impenetrable wall of light that eclipsed the mighty Silver City. And I knew, without looking, without thinking, in a deep and visceral way, that he was dead, my brother was dead, having sacrificed everything for this victory.
I lay still and silent, and the sounds of battle faded, though whether it was to the sudden triumph or to my own fading consciousness, I cannot say. I lay staring at the sky, rain falling on my face, and I dropped away.
Perenor. Ay, gods, the wound still cuts.
If I had time, brother-mine, I would write your eulogy. I would sing your praises in a thousand pages. If I had time, I would tell stories of our youth, of the sunlight and the sand, when we two were so young and inseparable, and close as two brothers were ever meant to be.
And in this eulogy, I would not shy away from how we had drifted. I would tell every gruesome detail of your cruelties, of my withdrawal, and when I came to the end it would make our rekindling, those final weeks together, seem all the sweeter.
And it was, brother-mine, in its own way, despite the circumstances. I would not have traded those last few weeks for any treasure. I had not realized how terribly and all-encompassingly I had missed my brother until, for those brief moments, I had him again.
I know that time will write your eulogy for me, Perenor. You are now, always were, and ever shall remain a hero of Andelan. They will write songs about you, whisper legends of you, you who saved Avenos in its darkest hour.
You fell into some great perhaps, a long and cold sleep, and since I cannot wake you, I can only bid you sleep well, sleep well, brother. You have earned your respite.
I don’t think I’ll be long to join you.
By that point, I had seen death. I’d tasted it, choked on it. But this was the first time I had felt it.
It was a bitter draught to swallow, but edifying. There is no better way to truly understand the nuances of death than to outlive someone you love.
I spent the next few days sequestered in my room as the city struggled to put itself back together. From my window I watched the scene below – the bodies of the fallen picked up and carried away in carts, roofs patched, walls rebuilt.
Every now and then I would look toward the door and think, I should talk to Perenor. Then, oh.
And then I would go back to looking out the window.
No one bothered me. Every day, a servant would come by with a meager meal, which more often than not went back uneaten. I had lost my brother, and along with him, my appetite, my desire to sleep, my drive, and much of the goodness left in my life.
And then, on one day rather like the rest, Soya appeared in my room without knocking.
She was silent for a while; I didn’t even notice her until I shifted and caught her reflection in the window.
We stared at one another for some time. She hesitated there in the doorway before she finally spoke:
“They’re rioting,” she said.
I knew, of course. I’d seen them out the window, heard their screaming. They were pooled by the front palisade circling Silverwatch, growing every day in number, screaming obscenities about me.
Perhaps I should have felt something, but I did not. There was an ocean of grief inside me that felt no noticeable change at the rains of fear.
“They saw you,” she said.
I didn’t know what she meant, and my grief prevented me from caring.
“I saw you, Silas,” she continued, voice rising. When I didn’t look back at her, she said, “Silas.”
I reluctantly turned my head away from the window. She was standing just inside the door, looking frayed and weak and heartsick, face full of betrayal.
“I saw you, do you hear me?” she said. “Everyone saw you. They saw you commiserate with the demons, they saw you hold him down. They saw you try to kill your own brother.”
My mind was still heavy with anguish and slow to pick up on her meanings. Was that what they’d seen? But then, in the eyes of those who already had reason to hate me, I could see how such a conclusion would be the most obvious. They’d been too far to hear me speak, to see what I was doing when I was bent over my brother before he died.
If it were me, I’d likely have been convinced, too.
“And every bone in my body denies that you would ever do something so black, Silas, but I watched you do it! I saw you over him before that burst of Craft knocked you back and saved the city. Tell me I’m wrong, Silas!”
I stared at her in silence.
“Answer me!” she bellowed.
There may have been some part of me that wanted to reply, but there was no voice left to say it.
And Soya, poor Soya, was staring at me with furious tears in her eyes.
“No words?” she asked, voice thin.
I slowly shook my head.
“No words,” she said. “How convenient.”
The words stung like needles, but what was a needle when my chest was ripped open?
“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “You give us warning for an imminent attack, and then you stain your hands with the blood of your own brother. I can’t fathom what twisted game this is, Silas, but I can no longer be part of it.”
I could only answer with more silence. It seemed to infuriate her.
“The Court Sorcerer is coming up with something to… bind you,” she said. “I do not know what it is, but she assures us that it will contain whatever foul magic you have in you.”
I dropped my head against the window, feeling nothing.
“It will have to be ready for the moot,” she continued, “because we cannot let you leave this room again without some measure of protection from the evil that follows you.”
Further silence. I had nothing to say, so
I stayed quiet and stared out the window, where the city struggled to rebuild itself, where the rioters were still gathered, and I listened to the pulses of their chanting.
“We’ve have word from your mother.”
I’d though that perhaps there was nothing left in me to feel anything at all, but that managed it. I looked back at her again.
“They’re going to be at the moot,” Soya continued, voice flat. “Your mother and grandmother are two of six surviving members of the Queenscourt. They sent you a letter.”
She threw a letter down onto my bed. For a while I could only stare at it, searching for some way to feel about it. How did they survive? Were they safe? How much did they know about what had happened to me since the breaking of Ellorian?
“If you want to respond,” Soya said, “give it to the guards.”
She turned and swept from the room. When the door closed behind her with a resounding sound, I went back to staring at the letter. It took more courage than I thought it might to pick it up and slowly unfold it.
Silas, are you hurt?
We hope that you will respond by crow if you can, but regardless, we will see you at the moot, my dear. After everything, all we want is to see you again, you and your brother both. There is nothing we want more.
I covered my mouth with one hand. I didn’t even realize there were still tears in me left to fall, but as I finished the note, I doubled over myself and fell to pieces, sobbing and screaming until emotion hollowed me again and exhaustion took me.
Grief dragged on, ceaseless, limitless, a great and swallowing dark. I remained sequestered in my gilded prison cell. At night, I could hear only rain, and during the day, only the chanting of the rioters calling for my death.
I slept little, but when I did, I dreamt of Perenor, smiling and laughing as though nothing had happened, strong and brave and singing our song. And it was wonderful until that inevitable end when the truth came back like a blow to the stomach. Still, I didn’t begrudge myself my dreams. They were one of the few things left that brought me any comfort.
I knew that there must have been preparations for the moot underway, but only because I could hear – and, to some degree, see, through my rain-streaked window – people moving equipment and supplies into large carts lined up along the inner side of the palisades surrounding Silverwatch. I suppose that I should have been eager for the moot to come, as the only hope left in the world would be waiting there, but that creeping numbness swallowed whatever hope there was in me.
One day rather like all the others – I couldn’t say when, as I’d long ago stopped trying to remember – the door to my room opened again. This time, it was one of the guards posted outside my door.
“Your presence is requested,” he said to me, and I stared blearily at him. “You’re being summoned to the council chambers.”
I’d barely moved in days, certainly no further than the length of my bedroom, and I was sure that I was by no means presentable to the Council of the Lord-Regent, though I couldn’t find the will in me to care.
So I pulled myself to my feet, ignored my own swaying, and followed the guards out of the room. They kept their eyes forward and their hands on their swords as they escorted me down into the castle.
When I arrived in the council chambers, it was to a markedly smaller number of councilors than there had been before. I wondered if it was because they were frightened of me or if it was because they were dead.
There were at least two familiar faces: the Lord-Regent and Soya, both regarding me with various intensities of distrust.
“Godspeaker,” the Lord-Regent said, the first to address me after several lingering moments of silence, “It seems that your god’s attempts to snuff us out have not worked, at least not entirely.
If he expected me to feel some sort of shame, he underestimated how numb I had become to everything around me. He sat waiting for an answer for a while, but when none came, he slowly continued:
“In six days’ time, we will all of us be leaving for the moot. Every politician and diplomat and statesman and priest of station will be meeting us in Andwelum, a little fishing village about two days from here. You can imagine our apprehension at bringing you with us, after everything that’s happened.”
I kept my silence. It seemed to anger him somehow.
“Still, we acknowledge that your presence is… necessary. Despite the marked delay in your warning, it proved that you do have some use. So our Court Sorcerer has developed a device that she says will bind you and whatever Craft you would wield or would be wielded through you. Miara?”
A woman off to the side rose. She had a small metal contraption in both hands, and she came toward me slowly, unsteadily, like a frightened animal.
“Your hands,” she said as she came closer, and after a moment, I lifted them toward her, palms up.
She fastened two large, brass manacles around each wrist, joined by a short chain in the middle. They were heavy and snug, with runes carved into the metal. The moment they snapped shut, there was a short hiss of Craft that sealed them into unbroken bands. I stared down at them for a moment, not sure what to think.
“Sorcerers call them nullifiers,” she explained. “Often, nullifiers are used in construction, to make certain rooms Craft-proof. I took that concept and made this.”
I tugged weakly at them. They held firm. My hands could not move more than six inches apart. The chain between them, at least, rotated freely on both ends, allowing me some small amount of mobility. When I tried, mostly out of curiosity, to conjure a simple flame, nothing happened.
“Any sort of Craft that is channeled through you will cancel itself out,” she elaborated, stepping away from me. “This combined with total sequestration will, with any luck, keep you… contained.”
It might work on me, but I doubted very much they would hold back the full wroth of a god if he chose to possess me.
Still, I suspected this demonstration had less to do with me and more to do with them. I looked back up at the councilors and saw the fear in them, some well hidden and others obvious. They were terrified of me, and I could not blame them for it.
The sorcerer Miara returned to her seat, leaving another lapse of silence to stifle the room.
“You should know,” Soya said, after a lengthy pause, “that we burned your brother’s body yesterday.”
Something small and broken twisted in the back of my throat, but I said nothing.
“At first we weren’t sure what to do with the dead,” the Lord-Regent said, somewhat brusquely. “We’d never had to deal with them before, let alone in such numbers.”
I wondered how many had died, then wished I hadn’t wondered.
“Committing their remains to the Worldmother’s Flame seemed like a—” (the Lord-Regent stumbled here, though only for a moment) “—respectable choice.”
My hands twisted in the manacles.
“Despite everything that’s happened,” Soya said, “you ought to know that your brother was and forever will be honored. His tutelage of the guards, showing them how to channel Craft, saved many lives. His final sacrifice saved even more. He’ll be remembered as a hero.”
That small and broken something twisted in my throat all the tighter.
“Take him back to his room,” Soya said to one of the guards unhappily.
I was turned and marched back to where I came, shackled, hating myself for the tears now pouring down my face.
After a while, the body rejects overwhelming heartbreak and despair as a method of self-preservation and falls into a sort of emotional numbness. Where once I had been mourning my brother, hating myself, being swallowed by the void in my own heart, I now felt nothing. And while logically I recognized that this was likely the farthest thing from progress, emotionally I was grateful for the reprieve. Numbness was better than the alternative.
The monsoon raged, the riots grew ever louder, and the days ticked on. I dreamt of Perenor every night.
Four weeks int
o the season, the entire castle had packed itself up. The Lord-Regent, his council, Soya, every guard in Avenos, a fleet of functionaries, and a handful of servants all gathered a few weeks’ worth of provisions and assembled the caravan that would take us south along the coast, to the nondescript little port down of Andwelum. I had never even heard of it before, though I was willing to wager neither had most of the others on their way to it.
We set out on a dark, cold morning. The monsoon was in full force, drowning the city and surrounding moors with sheets and sheets of water.
Mine was a carriage in a line of dozens. I was covered by a nondescript black cloak. My head was down. I was unornamented – save for my new manacles, of course – and virtually indistinguishable from any of the others as we made our slow, plodding way out of Avenos.
The citizens, lined up along the street as we passed, must have recognized me through the windows of my carriage anyway, because as soon as the crowds were thick enough, I could hear them start to shout.
They screamed out things like “death to the traitor god” and “kill the treacherous Godspeaker.” They shrieked obscenities and threats, and despite what I knew to be my better judgment, I watched their faces as we passed.
I marveled at the absolute, all-encompassing hatred. They knew nothing about me past my station, but already they loathed me with such force that they wanted to kill me. And despite everything, I couldn’t blame them. I wondered how many of them had lost a spouse or a child or a parent in the attack. I’m sure I would have felt better if I’d been able to blame someone in Perenor’s death.
“You bring ruin to our city!” screamed one, a blacksmith by the look of her.
“Kill the Godspeaker!” shouted another. “Let him taste the ruin he brought on us! Kill the Godspeaker!”
“Kill the Godspeaker!” they began to chant. “Kill the Godspeaker! Kill the Godspeaker!”
There was a tingling in my fingertips, a feeling that I could not immediately identify. After a while, I realized it was anxiety. After everything, I thought myself numbed to my fears of other people – or at the very least, more occupied with a far grander terror – but there it was, raising pinpricks along my flesh. It was almost comforting to feel it again.
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