You have known naught else, the stag realized. It is normal to you. But I promise, the Pulse ails. Your Stormsign is a symptom of its struggle. It is unstable, and in time, these symptoms will worsen. Imagine if the sun forgets to rise—not for a day, but a year. Imagine all grain and fruit retreating into the earth, instead of just a stray plant here or there.
All would die, tall-walkers and beasts alike. Deprived of the Pulse's surety, eventually the Earth would become a barren nightmare. The longer the Pulse remains hobbled, the greater this risk becomes.
There are other reasons, of course. The rocks still sleep, and the trees are not themselves. All of us yearn for the comfort of Mother Ordlan. But more than all of these, an erratic Pulse threatens all life and creation. It must be restored.
I had no idea, Iggy breathed. Ciir-goath's explanation made perfect sense—Stormsign was so named because it had begun after the first Storm, and each one since had made it more frequent. How much danger do you think we're in? How much time do we have?
The stag's great head swayed. Impossible to say.
And you think the Stormsign will end when the last wardbook is opened?
If that fully lifts the Seal, and if that leaves the Pulse fully restored, yes. We can only hope there is no permanent damage to it from such vile mistreatment.
The stag yawned. The hour is late, friend. I will make good on my word to your chanter, though it pains me, and I've more to discuss with you regarding the dragon's dark—but in the morning. For now, rest. His tone grew gentle. It is your first night in Ordlan Green, pup, and likely your last for some time. Relish it.
Thank you, Iggy returned, for everything. But the massive animal was already withdrawing into the trees.
Much in Ordlan Green troubled him. Ciir-goath's stories left him unsettled. The way the stag had borrowed his voice was disquieting, and the looks on his friends' faces more so. Remnants of the fears that had driven him to keep his abilities secret rattled around in his head, vague intimations of alarm trying to catch purchase. And yet the Pulse was so strong here, the sense of being home so powerful, that it simply swept away these other concerns.
In the morning, he thought. Seth's suspicious gaze and Syntal's true nature; all of it could wait.
He lay down without bedding or pillow, cheek bared to the dew-kissed grass. It was past midnight and the air held a lingering spring chill, but the cold respected him. It kept its distance. As he passed into dreams he heard the fireflies humming.
He had never been any more religious than he'd had to be. His family had made sure to stay on Abbot Forthin's good side, but beyond that he'd spared little thought for spirituality during his years growing up. Even the singing of the trees during the first Storm had been primarily a marvelous curiosity, and his night of horrors in Keldale had been more nightmarish than revelatory.
That night, though, the wood became a cathedral.
Somberness hung from every bough, thick as fog—a palpable melancholy visited upon the forest by millennia of suffering. A song of mourning rose from the soil, amplified by the beating of bats' wings and echoed by every trembling dewdrop—a deep song, a hymn uncoerced by ritual or dogma.
It passed into him as he slept, infusing him with the forest's grief. He became one with it, his own blood joining its euphony and swelling toward the stars.
But his voice changed the song. It sent a shudder of recognition through the melody, as Ordlan Green became aware of him; a recognition that gelled first into respect, and then—to his wonder—a thrill of hope.
The bass of the soil grew thunderous, indomitable. The owls' anguished mourning gave way to the vibrance of sparrows and tulips. The seed finds a way, Ciir-goath had said, and as the speaker's voice joined the song, the forest remembered.
By turns, in the swirling of the wind and the fireflies' looping dance, the song's vivacity swelled. It became a psalm of healing. Of endurance.
He felt it in every tickling grass blade, down through to the soil, in the souls of grubs and rocks. He felt it shivering in the air and reached upwards for it, yearning to break the Deep-Tree's canopy and drink in the moon. He imagined the night giving way, the sun bursting over the horizon in an explosion of heat and hope and life.
The seed finds a way.
Reaching and reaching, every nerve ablaze.
So long as one tree lives, a forest may rise.
Branches swaying in the wind like an act of worship.
We are not undone. We are inevitable.
Ciir-goath's voice. His own voice. And between them, infusing them, the All-Mother's voice.
As one.
ii. Angbar
A rock dug into his shoulder, waking him from a vague nightmare. He sat up, sucking suddenly at the night air as he fought to break free of the torturer in his dream. Slowly calming, he realized a storm had come in; there was no rain, but the wind rushed through the trees, transforming the rustle of their leaves to a roar. The simple, primal fear of an approaching storm gripped him, and he listened for the sound of a cyclone.
What he heard was far stranger: a cacophony of animal noises from the deep woods. Baying wolves and the screech of owls, elks' bugling and the chattering of woodpeckers, melded into a single ungodly noise that made his fear of a cyclone suddenly feel tame.
"Iggy," he whispered, but the noise of the wood swallowed his words. "Iggy, do you hear that?" He turned, seeking the shape of his friend's sleeping body in the dark. "Is everything―?"
His voice died. Iggy was gone, and where he'd been sleeping—
Angbar blinked and rubbed his eyes. That's impossible. No, I must be dreaming, I know that wasn't there.
But his eyes didn't lie. Where Iggy had been sleeping, there now stood a tree.
20
i. Melakai
The members of the king's congress disappeared down the hall. Small group today. Besides Isaic, Angelica, and Demetrius, there had been only three: Logan, the throne's treasurer, Brutus, the army's master general, and Tavost, the army's spy master. The latter had brought word that Bahir's southern border—its nearest to Darnoth—grew swollen with soldiers: a disturbing warning on its own, but there had been plenty more to discuss.
A third Rending. A continued lack of reports from Nathan Caleb, the King's Bishop. Tal'aden putting part of its city to the torch. That's something to do with that Grey Girl, Kai told himself as the topic arose—but like the Regent, he hadn't asked a lot of questions or posed a lot of answers. Angelica had done most of that.
For his part, Kai still couldn't accept the notion that Isaic even wanted him in the room. He had a small life and a small perspective, with nothing to add to conversations of international trade or the brewing storms of war, and as the congress broke he felt like a fly on the wall: aware of the happenings, perhaps, but ultimately irrelevant to them.
He stood in the hall outside the congress chamber, watching as the other members of the meeting hurried away. The true power in Darnoth, he thought as he watched them buzz around Angelica. Same as it ever was. He should be with them, showing his face and his loyalty, maneuvering in some political game he couldn't begin to understand or care about.
Scorch that. He turned back to the room he'd just left.
Simple, stark décor set it apart from the rest of the palace: a map of Darnoth graced the east wall and one of Bahir covered the west, while a bookcase stood at either end. The congress chamber was one of the few palace spaces that prioritized utility over aesthetics. It had a number of secret exits but no exterior walls, so it could serve as a fallback position in the event of invasion. Its lack of windows, though, meant it had to be illuminated by torch or clericlight—either of which leant it a cramped, dreary ambience.
Harad noticed Melakai's return immediately, but Isaic remained where his congress had left him, brooding at the head of the table.
"Your Highness," Kai said.
Isaic glanced up.
"Permission to enter?"
Isaic nodded and wave
d him in. Kai slipped the door closed behind him.
"I wanted to make a report in private, Your Highness. I've finished my assessment of the Crownwardens, as you ordered."
"That was weeks ago." The Regent didn't meet Kai's eyes.
"Yes, and I apologize for not delivering it sooner."
"If I still wanted the information I would've asked for it."
"I have it now." When the Regent didn't prompt him to go on, Kai did so anyway. "I removed two men from your service and replaced them with hand-picked loyalmen, people I know you can trust." He took a scroll from his belt and offered it to the Prince. "You'll find all the details here."
Isaic made no move to look at the scroll. "I owe you an apology, Melakai. I . . . overstepped my bounds."
"No disrespect, Your Highness, but I don't think that's true."
"The King should be returning soon. There's every chance you'll be removed as captain once he does. I admire your years of service, but they may end because of me."
The stark warning rattled him. He had been a Crownwarden for so long that he'd never envisioned losing his post. Now, for one jagged instant, he did. The very thought felt like having the stone vanish beneath his feet. It triggered panic that lashed him toward reckless speech.
"What was it all for?" he said. "The trials, the healing over the winter, taking Ben's side in that dispute—why? What was the purpose?"
This earned him a short glance. A bit of the old gleam flickered in the Prince's eyes, a hint of an ember still burning. Then he looked away again, waved a hand as if shooing a fly. "I don't know. Call it a young man's burst of fancy."
A fervent, unspeakable hope had ignited in Kai's chest during that secret meeting in Isaic's study weeks ago. He had stoked it ever since. The Church's capture of Ben Ashandiel hadn't killed it. Neither had the public's failure to continue attending the public trials, nor Isaic's eventual choice to end them. But that shooing hand, waving away Kai's willingness to sacrifice everything as if it mattered less than a dog turd, finally snuffed it out.
Maybe he'd been wrong about the elder Gregor prince. Maybe the boy hadn't learned a damned thing from his mother; maybe that gleam in his eye had been nothing more than a spoiled brat's ordinary rebellion.
Caution left him. "That's it?" he said. "You whip this city into a frenzy thinking there could be something better, you trick them into thinking you care about them and that you, too, want something better, and then . . . nothing? It was all a game to you?"
"You'll watch your tongue, loyalman." He had Isaic's eyes now.
"Why? You just said I'll be rewarded for my service to you by losing my post. That's what loyalty will get me." He took the insignia pin from his collar and held it out. "I'll spare you the pain of watching him sack me. All you have to do is take this."
Isaic's gaze shifted to the pin, but he made no move to take it.
"Do you know what they said about you, Your Highness? Do you know what they thought? Your city—Hel, your kingdom—can barely breathe. They're terrified. You heard one story—Ben's—and it moved you to act. But there are hundreds of stories like his out there." Like mine, he thought. "Thousands. They thought you would help them. They thought you cared. I heard people talk about taking up arms for you. It was the kind of loyalty you can't buy, the kind of loyalty no king before you has ever had because they've never earned it. You had earned it. And you just give it up?"
Isaic shot to his feet. "What do you want from me?" he roared. "I'm no miracle-worker—I'm not even the King! You'd have me steal the throne in my father's absence? You're a traitor, is that it?"
"Of course not!" He knew he should just shut up, quit while he still had his head. But he couldn't. "When the King returns, the throne is his—but if you gain strides for him, if you keep that loyalty you earned instead of throwing it away―"
"And what good is that?" the Prince demanded. "The loyalty of peasants. The loyalty of my guard—my own guard, by God, Kai, how hard did I have to work just to get that? And what good is it? Look at them!" He pointed at Harad, impassive as a block of stone. "He could kill both of us with his eyes closed! Angelica is right, she's always been right—the clerics are the voice of God. All the peasants in the city couldn't bring them down, and even if they did, there are hundreds more in Tal'aden." He screwed up his eyes, pinched the air in front of his face. "What―? Just―? How do you see this ending, Kai? You're picturing some fairy tale story, where the good folk win the day by the power of their virtues, is that it? They fight the throne's oppressor and win because they just have such good hearts?" Again, he threw his hand toward Harad. "They. Are. God!"
"No, they're not." Blasphemy, naked and gleaming, uttered in front of a Preserver.
Isaic scoffed. "What is that, some spineless equivocation? Akir is merciful, He can't possibly approve, is that it?"
"Brother Matthew said―"
"Oh, please, Kai, it doesn't matter what Mad Matthew said—they have the power! Don't you understand that? They could be speaking for the Creator of Or'agaard or they could be nothing more than the long arm of a madman in Tal'aden—it doesn't matter, because they can call fire from the sky! Think! They can strike you paralyzed before you can pull your sword loose, and even if you land a blow, they'll simply heal it! Whether Akir gives them that power or not, they're the only ones who have it!"
"No, they aren't."
Isaic gaped, incredulous. "What are you talking about?"
"Witches." Melakai could scarcely believe the word had crossed his lips. He forced his eyes to remain on the Prince; if Harad came for him, he didn't want to know until it was over. "How many are there, Your Highness? Have you ever wondered? Why do you think eliminating them has become the Tribunal's single driving purpose? Mad Matthew, this Grey Girl in Tal'aden, Hel―" He took a second parchment from his bags, laid it flat on the congress table; it sounded the alarm about a thieving witch who put people to sleep before she robbed them. "Here. In Keswick. Operating out in the open, leaving her victims alive, and the Church can't catch her." He jabbed a finger at the paper. "How many? Can you imagine?"
The Prince Regent looked green. "What are you proposing?"
Something mad. Something unheard of. But Isaic wasn't ready; Kai could see it in his eyes. "Nothing. Just making a point: they're not the only miracle-workers. They haven't been since the first Storm, and I think . . ." Insanity. Craziness. "I think the Church is scared witless by these people."
"They're witches, Kai."
"Of course. I'm not saying you should . . . I'm not saying anything. Just that if the Tribunal is bending all its power toward finding and eliminating these people, maybe the throne should take notice."
"M'sai," Isaic said. "That's enough." He pressed Kai's hand, still holding the Crownwarden insignia, back to his chest. "Keep that. You're dismissed."
"Yes, Your Highness." But as Kai left he threw a quick glance back and caught Isaic staring at the parchment.
Calculating the impossible.
He had places to be, things to attend to, but a fever of impudence now infected him. He left the room buoyed by audacity, and went where it drove him: out of the palace to the stables, where he mounted and rode north. Between his imposing black destrier and his Crownwarden's insignia, the crowds cleared out of his path.
He knew where he was going but refused to acknowledge it until he arrived, his thoughts churning darkly.
They murdered my son. They took my granddaughter. He'd had nine years for these wounds to scar over, and normally when they smarted he salved them the best he could. Reminded himself that Takra lived, at least, even if her father did not; thanked heaven that Takra's mother had died in childbirth, negating the need for the Church to have killed her, too. Cold comforts, but sometimes just cold enough to numb the pain, especially when a little ale helped the job.
Yet something in his conversation with the Prince had torn those wounds open anew. They sizzled on his heart like raw welts. He had told himself he would stop doing it, but n
ow for the hundredth time—the thousandth, the millionth—he relived everything.
Takra had seen eight summers. The Rending had happened a matter of months before, the Tribunal's kingdom-wide witch hunts still in their infancy.
Kai had invited Bastion and Takra for dinner. He'd met a young woman at the palace—he couldn't remember her name now, she'd left years ago—and he'd wanted to urge his son to court her. Takra's mother had been dead for eight years, and Kai thought, in his hubris, that it was time for Bastion to move on.
He still flinched when he remembered this motivation. So banal, so callous.
So sehking ignorant.
They'd been eating with the window open. A breeze had blown out his open lantern. Takra had thrown light from her hands to break the darkness.
She hadn't had the sense to be afraid.
All their lives had instantly plunged into a nightmare of secrets and desperation. Neither Kai nor Bastion wanted to surrender the girl to the Church. You can't keep her in Keswick, Kai had warned his son. You have to get her out of here. He had checked with his contacts, trying to line up passage for the two of them to somewhere far away. He only approached people he implicitly trusted, and he never revealed that it was his own family in need.
But Bastion thought they could keep it a secret. Eight years after her death, he still loved his wife too deeply to leave her memory behind. Even after Kai booked and paid for passage, Bastion refused to leave.
The Tribunal came in the dead of night. They took Takra—Melakai only learned later that they had sent her to Sil Tar'r to be raised as an initiate—and threw Bastion into the Majesta dungeon. Weeks of torture broke him. He admitted everything, and more. They hung him in the central square like a common thief.
Kai had always assumed that Bastion had given up his name, that his Crownwarden's insignia was the only reason he hadn't hung next to his son. He had longed to step forward, to speak the truth of his involvement even if it meant he would share his son's fate, but two things had stopped him: that insignia, as he'd explained to Isaic, and Takra.
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