Antiphon

Chapter 29

Neb

Neb heard the sound of the tree cracking as he struck it, then held his breath as he fell with it. His skin prickled with heat as the silver fluid that somehow encased him absorbed the force of his impact.

Blood of the earth made to serve me. And how was it that he knew? He shook away the thought and pulled himself up from the snow, turning as he did. The Watcher bore down on him and would have reached him again, but Isaak intersected with it, tumbling them both away from Neb. The other mechoservitor joined in, hands and feet flailing for purchase on the Watcher’s ancient, pitted metal surface.

They had joined the fight how long ago? He’d lost track of time, but it felt like hours ago. The two metal men, at first, had seemed to turn the tide, but the Watcher adapted quickly and now held his own against the three of them. Neb had managed to turn the battle north and east, away from the more populated area. It wasn’t until now that he realized he was also moving them toward the Watcher’s cave.

And toward the bargaining pool that lies beneath it. He’d found the cave after climbing the ladder and opening the hatch. He’d seen the cutting room and the blood-still along with the bird station. It had been recently ransacked, and a pile of gospels still burned just outside the entrance beside two bloody but neatly folded kin-wolf skins.

I am slowing down. He was winded, now, too. The silver sheath that swam over his skin seemed sluggish, and his muscles were beginning to ache. Its brightness vacillated, moving between white and gray.

You are losing your strength, his father whispered. It will burn out soon.

Yes, Neb realized. He’d first felt it when he’d healed Winters. And now, with each blow the Watcher landed-and each blow Neb returned-the blood of the earth burned hotter over his skin.

He forced his attention away from his father’s whispering and back to the Watcher. The metal man flowed in combat, moving with far more grace and precision than Rufello’s re-creations, brought back to life by the Androfrancines.

It was taking a toll.

Even now, Neb watched as the Watcher’s fist came down on Isaak’s companion, shattering a jeweled eye and denting the metal skull. As it reeled away, Isaak threw himself at it only to be tossed easily aside.

“Abomination,” the Watcher said, “do not make me dismantle your metal playthings. I hold the final dream.” He chuckled, and it was colder than the winter’s night they fought in. “Come take it from me.”

And Neb knew it then of a certainty: I can’t.

The blood of the earth was failing. It would not sustain more than a few more impacts before it burned off utterly. Without it, he would be broken like kindling over a metal knee. And the mechoservitors were no match for their older cousin.

I cannot beat him.

No, his father answered. You cannot.

Neb dodged north just ahead of the Watcher’s charge.

What do I do?

The image of the bargaining pool flashed before his inner eye. You are the Homeseeker, Nebios. Leave this to your hand servants and go to the antiphon. Time is of the essence.

He’d forgotten about the antiphon, and he cursed. He squeezed the kin-raven in his fist, feeling the bite of it in his palm. “Petronus,” he said.

The old man looked up from where he crouched in the cave. The song flooded the cave, drowning out the sounds of the fight that raged there. There were bodies piled, both magicked and not, as they fought in the dark. “Neb?”

“How do you fare?”

The old man didn’t answer the question, shouting one of his own instead. “Where in hells are you? We can’t hold out much longer.”

Behind him, Neb heard the crash of a metal man colliding with the Watcher. “I’m coming,” he said.

No, the Watcher whispered, you are not.

When the metal mass struck Neb from behind, it felt like a building falling upon him, and he fell to the left, careening into an evergreen, hearing it crack as it dropped its load of snow upon them. The breath went out of him, and for a moment he felt the bite of bark in his cheek and saw bright flashes of light. A metal fist connected with his other side, and then a metal foot lashed out to catch his thigh.

The two mechoservitors fell upon the Watcher. The ancient mechanical shrugged off one, but Isaak clung to it, tugging at the Watcher as his gears groaned. The steam poured from his back and from gaps that were opening in his joints and from the tear ducts beneath his eyes. Neb heard a high-pitched whine from deep inside Isaak’s chest cavity.

He pulled the Watcher away and threw him.

Then Isaak looked to Neb. “You must listen to your father,” the metal man said. “You must leave this to us, and if we fail, you must find another way into the tower.”

Neb saw the Watcher lifting itself from the snow and glanced again at Isaak and his companion.

Then, he turned and ran north and east as fast as his feet could carry him. The blood of the earth that wrapped him felt the pull of the bargaining pool and poured the last of its strength into him as he flew over the snow.

“Coward.” Neb heard disdain in the metallic voice, but he pushed it aside and poured his attention into the run.

Isaak was right. His father was right. It was past time to leave. More than that, he realized, it might’ve been a mistake to come here. He’d gained nothing, really, other than alleviating Winters’s pain.

And seeing her again. It was hard to believe a year had passed between them, most of that time spent beyond one another’s dreams during his time in the Churning Wastes. When he’d seen her both with the kin-raven and there in front of her, she’d looked different. She’d grown taller, her body taking on the curves of a womanhood she grew awkwardly into. But what had changed most about her was her eyes. They were darker, sadder, and when she’d first opened them upon him when he’d burst into the room, he’d seen something else in them that unsettled him now.

She was afraid of me.

Neb couldn’t blame her. The events of the past year-the past two years, really-had changed him into someone else. And now, his true parentage and the legacy that came with that had changed him even further.

A realization struck him, and he found himself suddenly choking back a sob as he pushed his feet harder to carry him even faster. I don’t know if I am even human.

He heard another collision of metal behind him, but no matter how badly he wanted to cast a glance over his shoulder, he resisted the urge. Instead, he squeezed the kin-raven.

Isaak?

The metal man was in the aether, the song playing around him. Yes, Lord.

Are you okay?

There was no answer at first. I am functional for the time being.

He reached for the other, his stomach lurching as he looked into the aether and ran at the same time.

Isaak’s companion was no longer with them.

Neb saw the meadow ahead and the last traces of the fire that marked the cave’s entrance. He raced over the wide open space and willed the dark opening to swallow him. He slowed slightly as his eyes, enhanced by the quicksilver, adjusted to the diminished visibility. Still, his feet flew as he pushed his way back into the cave, to the small door he had smashed open when he’d first arrived in this place.

He reached the shaft and climbed down, pulling the hatch closed over him even as he heard the sounds of fighting in the caves he’d just left.

He took the rungs as quickly as he could and heard the hatch torn open overhead as he went.

The sheath of silver hummed now, and the heat of it was unbearable upon his skin. He could smell the hairs on his arms and legs and head as they started to singe from it, but he pushed himself even harder, taking the twisting passage of the Beneath Places farther down. His own footfalls were quiet compared to the metal ones that followed him.

He returned to the aether. I am nearly there, Isaak.

But Isaak didn’t answer. The Watcher did. You are going nowhere, Abomination. The tower will remain closed and the antiphon will-

Neb roared and left the aether behind. Two more turns and the room would open to him on the right. As he rounded the corner, he saw the glowing moss that marked the ceiling and saw the shimmering pool. This one was larger than the others, a river feeding in and out from it, a thick vein carrying the blood that sustained a world and served the Younger Gods it was made for.

“Clothe me,” Neb cried out as he entered the room.

Nothing happened.

He opened his mouth to utter the command again.

It serves you, his father said, but it does not necessarily obey you. It knows what your body can and cannot sustain.

Will it carry me? He moved toward the pool now, suddenly aware of how tired he was, how sore he was.

It will.

Metal hands laid hold of him then, lifting him back and away from the pool, tossing him easily into the stone wall. The last of the silver burned out with the impact of it, and Neb groaned as he fell to the stone floor. Another metal hand gripped his ankle, and he felt it break beneath that viselike strength.

“Your time upon this earth has passed, Abomination.”

Neb twisted onto his back and looked up. A metal fist rose, and in that instant, he squeezed the kin-raven again. “Isaak!”

There was a whir and a high-pitched whine that hurt Neb’s ears. When the mechoservitor burst into the chamber, he saw in that brief moment that smoke-not steam-poured from gaps in his plating. Isaak’s jeweled eyes guttered, and his chest cavity glowed white-hot as he hurtled himself at the Watcher with a feral cry that sounded like steel grinding on steel. The room filled with the smell of ozone. With both metal arms locked tightly around the Watcher, Isaak’s momentum carried them forward and into the pool. Neb kicked himself back with his good foot as the two mechanicals tumbled into the thick quicksilver, thrashing as they sank beneath the surface.

He rolled over onto his stomach and crawled to the edge of the pool. Isaak?

A single word found him. Flee.

Then, a white light built at the heart of the pool, and the floor began to move-first a tremble and then a wild shaking. There was a loud roaring noise from beneath the surface, and the bargaining pool swelled upward and outward, a sudden hot and rising sun contained within it as it did. Neb felt his hair catch fire even as the pool fell back in on itself. Boiling silver rained down even as the ground continued shaking, and he heard the crack of stones breaking in deep places.

A compulsion seized him, and he thrust his hand into the hot mass of liquid. He felt the fire of it travel up his arm, and he screamed the anguish even as he uttered the single word that went out from him and into the blood of the earth.

“Isaak,” Neb cried out, and the word rang loudly in the room with a tone of command that surprised him.

The ceiling fell now, large chunks of rock splashing into the pool or landing upon the cracked floor. Fissures deep below had opened, and already the pool was draining as the quicksilver followed gravity and the path of least resistance in the aftermath of the explosion.

Neb pulled himself out onto the boiling surface, feeling the heat of it as it burned what little remained of his robes. He willed it to bear him, and he gave himself to the network of veins that flowed east, letting the hot light swallow him, leaving only his screams behind to mingle with the sound of stone upon stone as the caves collapsed.

When Neb felt the metal hands upon him, he kicked and thrashed against them, unable to see in the dark place he found himself in. But the hands were cool and they stilled him.

“Lord Whym,” the metal man said, “the antiphon awaits you. I will bear you to it.”

He felt himself being lifted and felt his awareness graying. He heard the quiet whisper of moving gears and spinning scrolls as the metal man moved quickly through the dark cavern. His hand throbbed from where he’d thrust it into the boiling pool, and he felt the kin-raven still clutched in it. With his last conscious thought, Neb cast about within the aether.

“Isaak?”

But there was no answer as the gray became a dark that swallowed him. And this time, when Neb dreamed about the moon, the Watcher waited for him there, laughing down at him from the pinnacle of a tower that remained closed to him.

Vlad Li Tam

The old man danced with abandon and poured his body into the blade. Three times he sliced, three times he punctured, the faces of his children flashing across his inner eye as he brought edge and point home to his grandson’s flesh, a steel traveler too long on the road. The young man’s surprised cries were the welcome of an innkeeper and the wideness of his eyes, a lantern-lit window.

As he danced, he laughed low and savored the jarring of his arm and wrist each time the knife found purchase.

When he finished, Vlad Li Tam wiped his grandson’s blood from the knife and stooped to recover the shining staff. The boy tried to move, his mouth opening and closing and his chest whistling from the wounds that punctured his lungs. Vlad stepped carefully around the pooling blood as he moved back and squatted on his haunches to watch.

Mal Li Tam’s eyes rolled, a mumble on his lips that gradually took form. “My. last. words.”

Vlad shook his head, never looking up from the staff. “Lord Tam hears the last words of his kin. You are not my kin.”

More muttering, and in the wet-sounding words, Vlad thought he heard something about love. He scowled and was not going to answer, but suddenly words found him as image after image of his family upon the cutting table flashed before his eyes. “What would you know of love?”

The voice was a whisper, and Vlad leaned forward to hear it. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for love.”

He felt the anger first; then it resolved into something calm and quiet. He did not know if it was the exhaustion and last dregs of the scout powders that made him so or the hypnotic way that the blue-green light danced the room, bent through crystal and water. Regardless, he sighed. “Perhaps you have,” he said. “And perhaps you’ve loved the wrong thing.”

Then he stood, placed his foot on the neck of his fallen grandson, and let his full weight settle upon his heel as he crushed the boy’s windpipe.

Child of Frederico.

It was a woman’s voice. He heard her clearly above the moving crystalline room, and the radiating stone hummed. Vlad looked around, feeling gooseflesh rise on him. Then, he realized he was not hearing the voice with his ears.

It spoke again. My love.

He looked to the d’jin that throbbed and twisted, captured in the stone. When he found his words, they were a whisper. “Is it you?”

She continued, as if she hadn’t heard. You have drawn the Moon Wizard’s staff from the heart of the ladder and can now make right that which he has made wrong. It must return to the tower before Lasthome falls or the Continuity Engine of the Older Gods will fall with it and the light will be extinguished. Seek the heir of Whym and place the staff in his hands; he will know by his birthright how to wield it. Find Shadrus’s children. Bid them follow the song home.

Vlad stretched out a hand toward the stone. It hung above him just out of reach, and for a moment, he was tempted to tap the stone with the staff he held. But something in him resisted.

Use the staff to aid you; but use it with care. For the tools of the parents are not made for the hands of their infant children.

He recognized the quote but had thought it was P’Andro Whym’s, possibly from one of the earlier gospels. Another question arose and he asked it, though by now he suspected perhaps this wasn’t a conversation as much as it was words rehearsed and now reproduced. “Who are you?”

Frederico’s Behemoth will bear you to the Barrens of Espira. I have hidden my father’s spellbook there. The staff will lead you to it. It too must return to the tower and be locked away in the Library of Elder Days. My family stole both when they took the tower and raised their fist against the Engine of the Gods.

There was a pause, and it was so long that Vlad thought perhaps she was done speaking. When the voice returned, it was quiet and low. My love has called you forth and will continue with you, Child of Frederico. We have bargained in the Deepest of Deeps that the light once more be sown in the darkness that contains us all.

One of the silver lines broke free and moved, slow as a python, and its tip touched the end of the staff. Light moved through it, and he felt the steel grow warm in his hands as it vibrated. The surprise of it caught him off guard, and when he tried to release the staff, he found that his fingers would not move. The vibration increased as the rod burned first white, then blue, then green.

But it wasn’t only the staff the light penetrated and suffused. He felt it moving over his skin, then moving into it through his pores and beneath his nails, entering him through his ears, his nose, his mouth and every other orifice on his body. Stronger than the heat of the guttering scout magicks, it crawled into him from the point where the tendril touched the staff, and he resisted.

Another silver vein detached itself and encircled his waist, anchoring him in place as his scars began to itch and then burn. He opened his mouth to cry out and swallowed it as yet another and then another line reached and pulled at him.

Vlad felt himself lifted up and carried closer to the glowing stone and the d’jin-the light-bearer-that blazed within it.

She fills it like she fills my heart.

Yes, the voice said in his mind. And I power the ladder even as my love powers you.

The room spun faster now, and Vlad heard the song beyond its crystalline walls reach a crescendo as a sea full of d’jin danced in the waters above and below him.

He opened his eyes against the light. “Who are you?” he cried.

I am the Moon Wizard’s daughter, the voice whispered in his mind. I am Amal Y’Zir, beloved of Frederico, the Last Weeping Czar.

And then that light became darkness, and when Vlad Li Tam awoke, he lay in the belly of a metal serpent that ground and clanked its way across deep waters. He lay still and clutched the shining staff, taking his breath slowly like kallaberry smoke as his tears dried, the memory of a song echoing in his ears and the sharp ache of love in his very bones.

Petronus

A momentary quiet fell upon the caves, and Petronus closed his eyes in the dark, drawing in a deep breath. He could no longer count the hours or the dead, though he knew there had been plenty of the one and too much of the other.

Most of Rafe’s crew and Grymlis’s Gray Guard had fallen early. A handful of Rudolfo’s scouts somehow held fast, their bodies fortified by scout magicks and the black Waste root, knife-fighting as low whistles counted off their kills in the narrow tunnel. Still, their numbers were dwindling and their lieutenant was down, lost somewhere in the pile of bodies, magicked and unmagicked, that made the floors first slick and then sticky with blood.

When Neb had spoken to him in the aether, they’d just fallen back for the third time. Now, they were far enough back that he could smell the pine trees and sage in the valley where the antiphon stood. Grymlis crouched next to him, and Petronus could smell the sweat and blood on him.

“What do they play at?” the old captain muttered.

“Nothing good,” Petronus offered.

Where is the boy? Certainly, there were many unanswered questions, and Petronus wasn’t convinced he would be alive long enough to get those answers. Once the scouts fell, along with the last of Merrique’s more skilled fighters, he intended to reopen the scar on his neck and let his blood join that of the others who’d given themselves for the light. The Y’Zirites might not be permitted kill him because of his role in their gospel, but he did not doubt that they could visit a worse fate upon him. It was bad enough to be a miracle for their blood-loving faith.

And I’ve already lived longer than I should. He shuddered at the memory of Ria’s knife and wondered if his resolve was such that he could carry it out himself.

“I’m going forward,” Grymlis whispered. “Wait here.”

Petronus shook his head. “I’ll go as well.”

Slowly, they picked their way forward until a low whistle stopped them.

Rafe Merrique’s whisper was loud in the darkness. “They’ve pulled back,” he said, “and not because we were routing them.”

Petronus squinted ahead into the darkness. “How many men do we have left?”

“Less than ten,” Rafe said.

Gods. They’d been whittled down. “How long do you think we can hold the cave?”

“Once they start up again? Maybe thirty minutes. But-” The man interrupted himself. “Our metal hosts are back.”

Petronus heard the whir and clack of approaching mechoservitors. Three had moved into some deeper place within the caves over an hour ago, and now he saw their jeweled eyes moving toward them like three pairs of fireflies, bobbing with the perfect rhythm of their stride. The amber light dimly illumined the enclosed space, and he saw they ran single file with the middle bearing a body in its arms.

The body groaned, and as they approached, Petronus smelled burned hair. “Neb?”

They slowed. “We have the Homeseeker,” the first said. “Lord Whym is wounded but functional.”

Lord Whym? Petronus blinked.

The boy stirred, and Petronus saw that most of his hair had been burned away from his naked body. His closed fist looked blackened and smelled of burnt meat. He moaned again.

Father.

The voice was a whisper in his mind, and as quiet as it was, Petronus felt his temples pound and his stomach seize from it. “Neb. We can’t hold them for long. Do what needs doing.”

We’ve failed. Isaak is dead. The dream is lost. The staff is lost. There was despondency in the words as they dropped into Petronus’s mind.

He did not know how to respond. So little of any of this made sense to him after a life spent resisting metaphysics and mysticism. And yet he felt in his very bones that something far greater than himself-far greater even than the Androfrancine Order whose foundation he’d loved so much that he’d been willing to euthanize it when it could no longer serve the light effectively-worked its way out in these metal men and their response to the dream. Even now, the canticle played on in the pouch he carried, a twisting and turning song of codes within codes that he could not hope to comprehend.

He swallowed and pulled the pouch from his shoulder. “I do not pretend to understand what is happening,” he said, “but you’ve not failed yet, son, if you still live. Too much blood has flowed to bring us to this moment. You will find another way. Go and do what needs doing for the light.” He handed the pouch to one of the metal men. “He’ll be wanting this back.”

The mechanical took it. “Thank you, Father Petronus.”

Then, the mechoservitors were moving again, back into the valley where the vessel awaited.

They’d been gone only minutes when the sounds of snarling and howling reached Petronus’s ears. He’d heard it before during his time in the Wastes, though distant, and every time it ran long nails of dread along the slate of his spine.

Kin-wolves. But these were not far off and in the open. These growls echoed through the caves, growing louder and louder as they sped toward them. When they intersected with Rudolfo’s men, he heard a cacophonic choir of muffled shouts and feral yelps. Then, he heard the savaging and felt the air rush out of him.

“Hold the cave,” he bellowed, his voice ringing out over the din.

A voice was in his mind again, but this one was not Neb’s.

No, it said. Fall back with your men to the ship. The power of it set his nose to bleeding and his ears to ringing.

He winced. Who is this?

I am called Whym. Parent of P’Andro and T’Erys. Parent of Nebios.

“Gods,” he whispered.

Yes, the voice answered. Fall back with your men to the ship. I cannot go with him. You will accompany my son and save what may be saved of us.

He heard the wolves in the caves, heard the cries as Rudolfo’s men paid for each span of rock they held, and looked in Grymlis’s direction. Then, once more, the man who did not believe in faith took a leap of it.

“We need to fall back to the ship.”

The old captain snorted. “Not a likely scenario.”

Petronus closed his eyes. Dreams. Voices. A ship that sailed the moon, restored and even now rumbling to life behind him, its own growl louder than the wolves that savaged his men. “Fall back,” he said again.

Rafe chuckled. “You mean to take us to the moon, then?”

Petronus gave the whistle himself at Grymlis’s hesitation. The old captain followed it up with a shout. “Fall back!”

They moved backward at first, listening to the sounds of fighting as the scouts fought in retreat. But when they heard the first of the kin-wolves break the narrow line, they turned and ran.

Petronus felt his heart pounding in his head as he went. He and Rafe were nearly neck and neck, with Grymlis just behind. He felt the slight wind of movement but could not tell how many scouts ran alongside them. Certainly not all, because the sounds of fighting continued behind them.

A gray circle of light took shape ahead of them as they approached the entrance of the valley, and the howling behind them increased as more kin-wolves flooded the caves. In the dim predawn light, Petronus felt a large mass of stinking fur lunge past, ignoring him entirely to nip at Rafe’s heels. The pirate went down, and without thinking, Petronus thrust his short sword into the kin-wolf. The beast yelped as the Gypsy Scouts added their invisible blades to its hide.

He reached out and caught Rafe, dragging him from beneath the thrashing kin-wolf and back to his feet. Now, they were in the valley and saw the ship looming over them, its gangway down and its large hatch open as the mechoservitors as one released the chains that held it down.

Something growled deep in the vessel, and it shifted upward momentarily before hovering in place. Overhead, the moon was gone now, and the last of the night stars were fading as the sky moved toward morning.

Another wolf hurtled past, this one racing for the closest mechoservitor. It leaped, bringing down the metal man only to yelp when the metal hands closed upon its neck to snap it with mechanical precision.

The other metal men fanned out at the base of the gangway as more kin-wolves poured from the cave.

Petronus ran, his chest aching from it, and he felt the ghosts that ran alongside of him. Ahead, Rafe reached the bottom of the gangway and paused. “Get aboard,” Petronus shouted.

The last two of Rafe’s men were there now, too, helping their captain aboard, and Petronus was nearly there himself when he heard Grymlis cry out.

He stopped and turned.

The Gray Guard lay on his stomach, two kin-wolves worrying at his legs as the last of Rudolfo’s men, unseen and barely heard, moved about them, their knives drawing lines of dark blood upon dark fur in the predawn gloom. Petronus glanced back to the unmoving metal men where they awaited.

“Help us,” he said.

When they didn’t move immediately, he cursed and ran back. Three other kin-wolves had joined the skirmish, and another two had sped past Petronus, oblivious to him.

He reached Grymlis and swung his short sword at the closest wolf. It yelped, snapped at him and turned, yanking the blade from Petronus’s fingers. Grymlis had flipped onto his back, but his flailing and kicking had slowed.

Petronus grabbed up the fallen soldier under his arms and pulled at him, putting his full weight into dragging the man free from the wolves. He tried not to notice the blood that soaked the man’s shredded gray uniform, focusing instead on moving them toward the waiting gangway behind them.

The wolves closed, and the last of the scouts danced backward beside him as he pulled his friend. One grabbed at the tattered remains of Grymlis’s boot, nearly pulling Petronus over as the old captain cried out.

Then, metal hands were upon them, lifting them, and they were on the gangway. The vessel groaned again and shifted, but the sure-footed mechanicals carried them aboard, kicking at the wolves that tried to pursue.

The last moments were a blur. Petronus found himself in a large metal room stacked with crates and sacks bearing the Order’s seal upon them. He lay propped against a metal wall across from a crystal porthole, cradling Grymlis against him as the gangway was brought in and the large hatch was closed. Inside the ship, the growl was nearly a roar, and he felt the room shake and then sway.

He clung to Grymlis and glanced quickly around the room. One of Rafe’s men tended wounds he could not see on the last three surviving Gypsy Scouts while another tended Rafe. The mechoservitors had vanished up a ladder into some other part of the ship, and there was no sign of Neb.

“We made it,” Petronus whispered.

Grymlis mumbled something, his voice thick. He’d lost a lot of blood. Petronus felt it warm on his own hands, seeping through his own clothes. He leaned his ear in close to the working mouth but could not distinguish the words.

“Rest easy,” he said, then looked across the room. “I need a medico over here.”

Grymlis muttered again, and this time he heard names in the muttering. Lysias. Resolute. “I can’t understand you,” he said.

He felt the hand, weak, upon his leg. At first, he thought the old man simply squeezed it, but his mind put together the words he was pressing into his thigh.

I helped Lysias kill Resolute. Tam forged a note for us.

It was a confession, he realized, and he knew why now. “We do what we must to serve the light,” he said. “I killed Sethbert and ended the Order.” He thought for a moment. “What was it you used to say to the orphans you recruited? That it is easier to die for the light than it is to kill for it?”

And now, he held his dying friend in the belly of a ship that bore them slowly upward. Voices that called him out to serve. Dreams that pointed the way in whispers he could not comprehend. Promises of home and promises of violence. These all moved across his inner eye, going back two years to the pillar of smoke that marked Windwir’s grave.

Petronus looked up and saw the bloody sky of another sunrise over the Churning Wastes.

“Look Grymlis,” he said. “We’re flying.”

But Grymlis had already flown, and Petronus hoped his friend would find home and light awaiting him in whatever place he landed.

Weeping, he lay still and watched the porthole as the sky shifted from red to black. When they came to take Grymlis away, he let them, his eyes never leaving the expanse of night they now flew.

Rudolfo

A cold wind whistled outside as Rudolfo sipped chai made over an Androfrancine camp furnace. Sleep had eluded him, and he’d eventually given up his cot to spend the night going over reports that he’d been too drunk to read the first time they’d crossed his worktable. As he read, he’d packed those that needed to be packed into his administrative chest and fed the rest into the furnace, watching the fire gobble down the words. Once he’d finished that, he’d laid out traveling attire-doeskin pants, a heavy wool shirt, a coat made from beaver pelts that had been a gift from one of his house stewards, and his green turban of office. He laid his father’s knives and knife belt next to the clothing.

Then he’d packed the rest of his things. After, he put on the chai and settled into his chair with a copy of the Y’Zirite gospel.

Two years. Where had he been riding when his life had changed so irrevocably? He frowned and stared at the lantern. Paramo. They were turning toward Paramo, where he’d hoped to bed down with a log camp dancer or two and enjoy a Second Summer night of drinking wine from freely offered navels. That was when he looked up and saw the pillar of smoke upon the sky. He remembered that Gregoric, who never flinched at anything, went pale at the sight of it.

“I miss you, my friend,” he said as he lifted the chai mug to his lips. “I wish you were here now.” Still, he wondered now if even Gregoric would be daunted by all that had transpired.

He’d given the orders yesterday. Philemus already sped south for the Seventh Forest Manor. The second captain would follow those orders, though Rudolfo knew that trust was strained. He’d written the edict himself, carefully and in four drafts, having Lysias read each. It grieved him to write it, and a part of him knew that it was not the right path; but another part recognized that sometimes, when only wrong paths were left, one chose the best wrong path available and hoped a right one would emerge eventually.

Before, he would have felt he shamed the memory of his father. But now, he questioned that man he’d revered for so very long, and feared that if he were brave enough to exhume the corpse and if time were kind enough to have left his body intact, he would find a mark over the man’s heart that would break his own.

He thumbed through the pages of the book, his eyes settling on a passage about the Child of Great Promise and the healing of the world. He’d read the gospel through several times, each time gleaning more from the patchwork words of Xhum Y’Zir’s seventh son, the one-eyed Wizard King, Ahm. What he took most from it was how carefully it was woven with just enough truth to foster a sense of trust, enough fancy to stimulate imagination and enough personal application to engender a sense of belonging and commitment. It delivered purpose. He could see why the Androfrancines, focused upon the light of human achievement and knowledge, would resist and suppress this. Making each and every individual potentially an important contributor in a faith that promised healing to the world-particularly in the midst of cataclysm and upheaval-was a potent elixir for the disempowered, disenfranchised and disillusioned.

But how different is it from Winters and the Homeward Dream of her people? He wasn’t certain, at the root of it, that they differed much, though her people’s faith had no gods to speak of. Their Homeseeker, if he understood it correctly, was more a servant than an object of worship. Still, it was no coincidence that the one people who had room in their hearts for a faith were the first to openly declare their commitment to Y’Zir.

If it had been left at that, this would all be simpler. But it hadn’t. There were secret shrines, even in the Ninefold Forest, and even his own father had been a practitioner, it seemed.

Rudolfo sighed and sipped his chai. He tried to conjure the smell and smile of his infant son to comfort him, the softness of his bride’s cheek and the fierceness in her eyes. He’d sent the bird yesterday, calling them home. Something dark crept toward them-he heard its footfalls in the changing times-and he knew now that he could not truly protect anyone whom those forces wished to harm. And he also knew now of a certainty that those dark footfalls intended grace for his family, not harm. While others fell, the Ninefold Forest thrived. What the Androfrancines once hoarded and kept hidden, the Forest Gypsies now rebuilt and made open.

The words had ridden him hard of late. We cannot win here.

Still, he would try. He would resist. But he would not bend his knee; he would not bare his heart.

Hefting the gospel in his hand, he weighed it carefully and wondered how many other gospels there were, how many prophecies and psalms, and how many more were coming.

Rudolfo took a deep breath, held it, and gently placed the book into the furnace. He watched long enough to see it catch fire. Then, he stood and dressed carefully, quickly, and slipped outside into the gray light of morning.

The stars were guttering and the moon was down. To the east, pink tinged the peaks of the Keeper’s Wall. He walked alone at a brisk pace, climbing the ridge until he found a place where he could watch the sunrise.

He could not watch it without thinking about her and the first time they’d met. In those days, he’d been more interested in pleasure than love, but something in her had struck him and struck him hard.

A sunrise such as you belongs in the east with me.

It had been a blow to him and to that fledgling love when he learned it had been engineered by her father, followed soon after by the announcement that she carried his heir. And the day that he’d watched his son, Jakob, emerge from her was a day he could never forget. Those first weak cries changed his life, and he’d wept and laughed at the wonder of it all.

Learning yet later that the betrothal and heir were part of a larger scheme had not shaken him as much, though now it did. Still, the why of it was not nearly as important, regardless of the knives and blood of the Y’Zirite faith that overshadowed his son.

Because, Rudolfo realized, he is my child of promise first and foremost. A promise that his line would continue even in a world vastly changed from the time he first saw the pillar of smoke against the sky. A promise that life and light could emerge from death and darkness.

Yes, he thought. It would be good to have them home.

The sun rose now and smeared the sky red.

Rudolfo watched it and squinted at a star where no star should be.

No, not a star. It was light reflected upon something golden and distant, rising above the Keeper’s Wall and moving slowly up and away.

What strange bird is this? Rudolfo wondered.

He watched it until it vanished from his view, and then he climbed slowly down the ridge beneath a sky that promised no snow at least for this day but offered no promises at all for the morrow.