The Priest

by Rowan McAllister

  “Okay. Uh, how about Singer?”

  They could revisit the subject of names later, when Tas wasn’t so overwhelmed.

  “That will suffice.” Singer’s mental voice was as noncommittal as his words. “As for my story, I fear much of it is lost in dream. I remember the Battle of the Rift and before. I remember singing the stones out of the ground with the rest of my people and letting go of my body, but anything after is disjointed, mere flashes. My sense of time is greatly altered since relinquishing my body. Faelir is much the same as I remember him, but the song of the world has changed. He said a thousand years has passed, but I don’t remember much of it. How long have I been with your Brotherhood?”

  “Harot returned with the sacred stones nearly five hundred years ago, after the great plague.”

  “I remember a surge of energy and being separated from the others. It hurt to be so alone. I could sing to them and feel their song, but only at a distance. I remember voices… not beautiful in true song, but a few close enough I could resonate with them… like you. I slept…. But I need to get back to the others. I must get back or I will never be freed and allowed to travel to the Beyond, as your people call it.”

  The stone’s voice had been a bit vague at first but had strengthened and sharpened at the end until Tas winced.

  “Tas?” Girik murmured behind him.

  Tas had been so wrapped up with the stone, he hadn’t heard Girik and Bayor approach.

  “I’m all right. We’re talking, that’s all.”

  “Did the wizard speak true?” Girik whispered.

  With a sigh, Tas turned to him and nodded. Girik looked pale and uncertain, but the next words out of his mouth made warmth bloom in Tas’s chest. “Are you all right?”

  Of course, Girik would think of Tas first. Tas was divided between wanting to accept the comfort offered and wishing he was worthy of it.

  His pride won, as it usually did.

  “I’ll manage,” he said with as reassuring a smile as he could dredge up. “I’m asking him about the past, but I suppose all of us deserve to hear his answers. I shouldn’t make you all wait and watch me stand in silent conversation for hours.”

  Now that he wasn’t so focused on the stone, he could feel the weight of the three strangers’ gazes on his back. The cat at Lyuc and Yan’s feet jerked its tail back and forth as it edged backward with each step Tas took toward the fire. The stone vibrated unpleasantly in his palm, making Tas’s shoulders tense.

  “Will you stop that?” Tas thought at the crystal.

  “That thing should not be here. Its song is wrong.”

  “I’m very well aware of that,” Tas snapped back irritably. “But it helped save my life yesterday, and Lyuc—or Faelir, or whatever you want to call him—seems quite attached to it, so— Wait. You said before that Faelir was much as you remembered him, like he was part of your memories from before the stones, but how is that possible?”

  Earlier Tas had thought he wasn’t capable of being shocked any more than he already had been, but with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he stared at the copper-and-gray-bearded man across the fire from him, already afraid he knew what the stone was going to say.

  “I thought you knew. Faelir is long-lived for a human. But he looks remarkably young for his age, even by Volosoi standards.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He is Faelir, the one you humans called Lyucimir, I believe.”

  “The Wanderer?” Tas choked on the name even as he gasped it aloud.

  “Tas?” Girik hurried to his side and tried to grab him as Tas slumped into an untidy heap on the blanket.

  Girik knelt on the blanket next to him and held his shoulders. “Tas, what is it? Are you okay? Is it the stone again? Do you need me to take it away?”

  Lyuc’s grimace was apologetic as he climbed slowly to his feet and carried a pitcher and cup over to them. “I think the stone may have told the brother who I am, or he figured it out on his own,” Lyuc said, offering Tas a cup of water.

  Tas took it in one trembling hand and gulped the entire cup before handing it back to the man—no, god.

  “Oh no,” Lyuc said, “Don’t get that look in your eyes. I’m just a man, Brother, a man with power no man should have ever had access to… a man who made many mistakes.”

  Anguish filled the wizard’s eyes as his gaze dropped to the stone Tas still held in his palm, and Tas’s shock slowly dissipated. Tas knew the moment Girik figured it out, because the big man sucked in a huge breath and his blue eyes rounded.

  “The Wanderer,” Girik repeated in an awed whisper.

  This time, it was Yan who offered Girik a cup of water. “I know. It takes a bit of getting used to, but he is a man, not a god. I should know.”

  While both Girik and Tas watched in astonished silence, Lyuc threw Yan a sour look and gave his companion a gentle shove. Yan laughed and shoved him back. The black cat gave them all a disgusted growl, turned its nose up, and sauntered away.

  “Can we get back to the matters at hand? I have answered your questions. Now I have some of my own,” Singer cut in, giving Tas the slap on the face he needed.

  The stone hadn’t answered even a tiny portion of the questions Tas had swirling inside him, but since he was still struggling to understand the answers he had so far, he wasn’t going to argue the point.

  “Tasne—Singer has questions for you,” Tas said, and Lyuc sobered quickly.

  “Singer?” Lyuc asked, frowning.

  “He’s asked that I no longer call him Tasnerek. The name offends him. He wouldn’t give me another, so I chose Singer for the time being.”

  “I see. And did he confirm what I said?” Lyuc looked like he hoped Tas would contradict him, but Tas nodded reluctantly. All humor and lightheartedness died as Lyuc moved back to his position across the fire and slumped onto the blanket again. “I see,” he repeated quietly.

  Yan and the Spawn moved to his side, and the group was quiet for a time.

  “Ask him how the Stones fare. I can still feel them, but this far away, the song is not clear. If I am thirteen of thirty-six pieces that have broken off, how bad was the damage?”

  Tas jerked at the voice. Would he ever get used to it?

  Gods, he hoped not.

  “He wants to know about the Anchor Stones. He’s worried about the damage caused and the loss of the thirty-six pieces.”

  “I have been to the Rift since the damage was done, and the stones still held. I think it was a lightning strike that broke the shards free before Harot collected them. You don’t need to worry about that at least. In fact, from all I’ve seen in the last several decades, the Rift appears to be closing. Fewer Spawn come through with each passing year, and the land is healing.”

  “Really?” Tas asked as the stone hummed relief in his head.

  Lyuc gave him a weak smile. “Yes. I’ve encountered some troubling things more recently that have kept me from returning directly to the Riftlands, but every indication is that it won’t be too long before the blight is ended.”

  “May the gods make it so,” Tas intoned aloud.

  “What troubling things?” Girik asked from his spot beside Tas.

  Lyuc’s smile fell away as he shot a quick glance at Yan before reaching inside his multihued robes and pulling out a stone box.

  “Is that blackstone?” Tas asked nervously. His hand involuntarily clenched Tasnerek tighter. Blackstone blocked anything magical, including the sacred stones.

  “Yes. I hadn’t originally intended to show this to you, but in light of everything I’ve learned, I cannot, in good conscience, keep it locked away any longer. Brother Tasnerek, are any of the brothers who are still close by sensitive?”

  “Sensitive?”

  “Can they feel magical energy, sense its presence? I assume no other members of the Thirty-Six are near, else they would have joined you in the Hunt or come hunting Bryn since.”

  “You mean are there any Finders? No, the annual choosing circui
t is only in spring and summer, when the weather is kinder. Their talent is rare, so they stick to the cities and ports or the keep the rest of the year.”

  “You spoke of others of the Thirty-Six possibly being sent for, would they be closer by now?”

  “No. They shouldn’t be. Even if Brother Saldus sent for them after the Hunt returned to the village without me, it will be days before any receive the message, let alone make the trip. Why?”

  “My magic use yesterday was all earth magic, nothing unusual, so any sensitives in the area could have chalked that up to you and your stone. But this will possibly draw more attention. Thankfully, the Great Barrier has enough magical energy stored in some of its mountains to confuse and block any eyes from that direction, so I’m mostly concerned with Rassans. We’re close enough that we can disappear into the mountains fairly quickly. I just don’t want to have to rush before we’ve learned all we can from each other.”

  Tas had no idea what he expected to be inside that box, but he barely had a glimpse of milky white stone before Singer hummed joyfully in his palm and light exploded from him. Tas turned his head from the blinding light, only to see the stone in the box flare to life as well. Singer’s voice sang in his head as it emitted a clear audible tone at the same time, and a chorus of many tones, all in a strange alien harmony, rang from the one Lyuc held.

  “What’s happening?” Tas sent to the stone in his palm.

  “Family” came the joyful reply. “Please, place us all together or on the earth so we can better sing, without your human song or the blackstone interfering.”

  Tas supposed he should have been offended by that, but Singer sounded so happy, he didn’t have the heart to complain. He probably wouldn’t hear Tas anyway, as obviously distracted as he was.

  “He wants to be next to the other stone,” Tas relayed.

  Lyuc stood and set the box on the ground. Tas took the stone from the box and set them next to each other on the soft earth. The singing died to a sweet humming, like the far-off strains of some barely remembered tune.

  “Well, if there were any sensitives in the area, they certainly would have felt that,” Lyuc commented wryly.

  “You did the right thing,” Yan said as he came up to their little group, took Lyuc’s hand, and squeezed.

  Lyuc blinked rapidly and nodded, before turning to Tas. “What are they saying?”

  Tas shook his head. “I can’t hear them beyond the music. Maybe they’re speaking in their own language. I think I can only hear Singer when I’m touching him anyway, or when he wants me to, and I don’t think I want to interrupt whatever is happening.”

  The stone Lyuc had produced was much larger than Tas’s, nowhere near the size of High Brother Vienas’s, but still fairly large, and something Singer had said suddenly made sense. “Place us all together,” he murmured.

  “What?” Girik said from behind him.

  “The stone, Singer, he said, ‘place us all together.’ He said they were family. I think he means there’s more than one spirit, or whatever they are, in the other stone, which makes sense, I suppose… if any of this makes sense.”

  Quanna, Moc, and Chytel, please help this make sense.

  “How many?” Lyuc asked soberly, cutting in on his silent prayer.

  “I don’t know. I’d have to ask him. Tasnerek was the smallest of all the sacred stones. Maybe that’s why there is only one voice in my head. Where did you get that stone?”

  “A merchant caravan traveling from the northern edge of Gorazhan to Zehir. Rassan merchants stole it from another trader in the caravan during a storm, but I still don’t know how the first trader got it or how the Rassans knew to look for it… or how the bandits knew to come for it on the road either.”

  “Rassan merchants?” Tas asked in surprise.

  Did the Brotherhood know of this? The discovery of another sacred stone was huge. Why had he heard nothing? He was a member of the Thirty-Six. He should have heard something.

  “How long ago was this?” Tas asked sharply.

  “We left the caravan with the stone nearly two months ago.”

  Tas hadn’t discovered the journals when the Rassan merchants had probably left for Gorazhan, so that couldn’t have been a factor in his being left out of the loop. Were the merchants sent specifically? Did the Brotherhood even know?

  He cast a glance at the two crystals glowing faintly in the sunlight, still singing their strange harmonies, and the sight brought him up short. Did any of those questions even matter anymore?

  His earlier thoughts of returning to Blagos Keep and lying long enough that no one in Comun would be suspected crumpled to dust. There would be no hiding this.

  Quanna, Moc, and Chytel, what am I to do? Please give me guidance, a sign, anything.

  Chapter Twenty

  TAS SEEMED to curl in on himself, and his gaze grew distant, leaving Girik with stones glowing and singing on the ground next to him and a wizard god, a Spawn cat, and a man staring at them in expectation. Girik shifted uncomfortably and buried his hand deeper in Bayor’s coarse fur, seeking comfort in the hound’s solidity.

  He was in way over his head, again, but that seemed to be his new normal. Thank the gods, Tas had been there to slog through the morass ahead of him so Girik could simply follow along in his wake, up until that point. But now Tas seemed to be overwhelmed too, and Girik was going to go crazy if someone didn’t say something.

  “Uh,” Girik croaked, “Rassan merchants? Bandits? That sounds like a story.”

  “It is,” Yan replied, sharing a smile with Lyuc.

  With a nod, Lyuc said, “We were in a merchant caravan when I discovered the stone. Two Rassan traders had stolen it from a Gorazhani merchant. We were hit by a very bad storm out in the plains. I guess the traders decided it was too perfect a distraction not to take advantage of the confusion. I probably should have taken the stone as soon as I discovered it, but….” Lyuc shrugged, and Yan bumped their shoulders together. “Well, let’s just say I wasn’t as interested in getting involved as I am now.”

  Tas finally shifted next to Girik, and Girik was sure Tas had to be positively overflowing with questions. Tas was fast like that, while Girik was still floundering, trying to wrap his head around the fact that they were talking to a god of legend.

  If the sacred stone and Tas were to be believed—and there was no reason for them to lie—the man sitting so calmly across from them was Lyucimir the Wanderer, one of the three gods whose war opened the Rift, the infamous Three who were supposedly sent into the Rift by the other gods as punishment for their crimes. Yet here he was sharing his fire, his wagon, his food, and his story with them like any simple traveler. Girik had no idea how he was going to make that work inside his head, but the more the man talked, the easier it was to push some of that aside.

  “How did you end up with the stone, then?” Girik asked when Tas still didn’t seem ready to join the conversation.

  “The caravan was attacked by a large raiding party, led by a Spawn.”

  “What?” Tas jerked beside him, but all Girik could do was gape.

  Lyuc nodded, seeming unperturbed by their reactions. “I found it as difficult to understand as you do now. I mean, obviously, it is possible for a member of their species to retain its intelligence and reason on this plane of existence. Bryn is proof of that.” The Spawn in question simply swished its feline tail and blinked slowly at them. “But Bryn was a very special case. We developed an understanding over centuries. I’ve never met another like Bryn.”

  “Until now,” Tas added.

  “Hardly.”

  Bryn had been in animal form long enough that Girik actually jolted at the unfamiliar voice. He didn’t bother to glance in her direction. He knew she’d still be naked and laughing at his discomfort.

  “Of course,” Yan cut in with a somewhat indulgent tone. “There is no one quite like you, Bryn. We only mean, another Spawn that could talk and had taken uncorrupted human form. That’s where the simi
larities ended.”

  Lyuc leaned forward, his blue eyes intense. “I should tell you, Brother, that the Spawn I fought wielded magic.”

  “And you’re sure it was Spawn?” Tas asked incredulously.

  For the first time since Tas had revealed that his stone was speaking to him, Lyuc actually looked more like the being of legend Girik had seen dispatch a Spawn with the wave of a hand. The man lifted his chin and cocked an eyebrow at Tas as his lip twisted.

  “Young man, I have just revealed to you how long I have walked this world. Do you not think I, of all people, would be able to recognize a Spawn when I see one?”

  Movement at Lyuc’s side caught Girik’s attention in time to see Yan ducking his head to hide a smile, and Girik felt himself wanting to smile too, if only because some of the strain and worry had fallen away from the man’s face. Yan’s normalcy was all that was keeping Girik from giving up on trying to grasp this whole situation altogether.

  Tas winced and lifted a hand. “My apologies, of course. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by anything anymore.”

  He let out a sigh of such weariness, Girik swung his worried gaze back to him. He longed to wrap Tas up and hold him until all of this went away, but that wasn’t an option.

  “You’re far too young not to be surprised by almost everything,” Lyuc replied a little more gently. “Even as old as I am, I continue to be surprised. I just wish I could have a few more pleasant surprises to offset the unusual number of unpleasant ones I’ve had recently.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Yan murmured, and Lyuc smiled at him.

  “Ugh. Don’t start that again or we’ll never get any decisions made,” Bryn cut in caustically. “Most importantly, what are we going to do with those stones so they don’t have to be here anymore? That would be a good place to start.”

  Girik couldn’t exactly say he liked Bryn, but he appreciated her pragmatism. If decisions were made, he’d have something to do. He’d have a direction to go in, and he wouldn’t feel so useless.

  “I think the stones might have something to say about that,” Lyuc replied soberly. “I will do whatever they need me to. I owe them that, at least.”