City of Miracles

13. The Man Without Hope

Sigrud pilots the clanking automobile into the hills outside of Bulikov, where the low, rambling forests threaten to overtake the road. Ordinarily such a journey would have taken hours, but there were barely a handful of checkpoints on his way out of the city. It seems Bulikov now uses its roads for transportation, rather than as a security system.

Finally he sees the polis governor’s quarters on the hill in the distance, and he’s oddly relieved to see it’s more or less the same, though the guns on the walls are more advanced than he remembers.

He comes to an intersection and slowly pulls over. The road is dark, abandoned. He remembers what Malwina said: You’ll come to a crossroads, a little winding road leading off to a farm. On the northeast side of the intersection is a copse of trees. There’s a ravine on the other side. Pass through that, keep heading east, and you’ll come to it. I’ll be waiting for you at the tollbooth when you’re done.

But come to what? Some wound in reality itself? He doesn’t know. But he steps out of the auto and starts off.

At first this feels like many operations he’s done in his time: creeping through the woods with his torch in his hand and the fortifications on his left, guard towers black and skeletal in the night. He comes to the ravine, and he passes over that, and into the woods on the other side. He walks, and walks, and sees no problems, and certainly nothing extraordinary.

But then things feel…strange. The space between the trees gets bigger—very slowly, but eventually he notices it. The brush on the ground gets sparser, as if it’s been deprived of sunlight. But that shouldn’t be, as the trees this high up in the hills should be short, stubby, crinkly things….

He looks around, flashes his torch on a few nearby specimens, and sees that the forest is now very different. The trees are now tall and straight. Quite tall, in fact. He looks back, and though he can see the polis governor’s quarters in the distance, it feels as if he’s passed into someplace very far away.

That is…very odd, he thinks. Though perhaps this is a good sign, suggesting he’s headed in the right direction.

Sigrud walks on through the woods. The air changes: it grows drier, cooler. The trees continue to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger, though he steadfastly ignores this alteration.

Finally he comes to it.

He had thought that the boundary Malwina mentioned would be subtle, unnoticeable: so many Divine works are invisible tinkerings with all the rules that underpin reality. But what is in front of him is decidedly not invisible, or subtle.

A blank, rough-hewn, black stone wall abruptly splits the woods in two. It is about twelve feet high, too tall for him to climb, continuing north and south as far as he can see. It bears no mark or insignia or suggestion of who made it or why it’s here.

Sigrud scratches his chin, thinking. He reflects that this forest could be very similar to the sanctum for the Divine children, in that it might not be a part of normal reality. The idea is not comforting to him.

He walks along the walls, but sees no way in. Finally, reluctantly, he holds the torch under his left arm and pulls the glove off his left hand. The scars on his palm shine in the light. He looks at it, remembering Tavaan’s hurt face—There is something nasty living inside you—and wonders if he really wants to try this.

He sighs, and realizes he must try something—even if he has no idea what that something is.

Feeling absurd, he walks up to the wall, holds his breath, and places his left palm against the stone.

He expected (or perhaps hoped for) some burst of energy or Divine ripples in reality—but instead there’s nothing. The wall remains the wall, implacable and indifferent, cool to his touch. His hand is just a hand.

Sigrud frowns at his palm, like the scars there might hold instructions as to what he needs to do. But of course they say nothing, just as they have for so much of his life.

He grumbles. He reflects on how this was really a very bad plan; his response to the Divine has always been to hit it with something very durable as hard as he can, preferably in the face—if it has a face.

He slams his hand on the wall, hoping brute force could make a difference. It doesn’t. The wall remains solid.

Sigrud sits back and rethinks his approach. He reaches out into the air, concentrates, feeling for it…

Then suddenly the sword is in his hand again, the short little golden blade—Flame, they called it. He knows they said it would do nothing against Olvos’s works, but perhaps the sword could tell him the nature of the wall. It’s the only Divine thing he has access to.

He is immensely loath to test the blade against stone—dulling a good edge is a tremendous sin to Sigrud—so he gently pokes the surface of the wall with the sword. There is no reaction whatsoever, no indication that the two items are in any way Divine. He considers hacking at the wall with the sword, or perhaps testing it on a tree branch—but, again, he can’t bring himself to mar the blade.

Growling, he puts the sword away, placing it into that curious pocket of air that seems to be hovering around him. Then he presses his palm against the wall again, hoping in vain that it might do something—but of course it doesn’t.

Sigrud stands in the darkness, feeling foolish and frustrated. He knows the seriousness of the predicament, knows that lives rest upon whether or not he succeeds here. But what could they have expected from him? Why send the most primitive creature in their ranks up against what is likely the most advanced being in the world? It was all so idiotic, and now here he is, with a blank wall and a torch and not much else.

Something inside Sigrud begins to simmer and churn. He rubs his mouth with the back of his hand, glaring at the wall. He hates this, despises this—feeling so helpless, unable to affect the lives of those who so desperately need him.

This is what I have always been, he thinks. A savage alone in the wilderness, fearsome but worthless.

Sigrud lashes out, striking the wall with his left hand, a blind, stupid gesture of pure frustration. His hand aches with the impact, and he turns away, shaking out the pain. Then he glares back at the wall as if it’s muttered a personal insult at him—and stops.

There is a very small crack in the wall. Right where he hit it. The impact mark is slight, like someone threw a pebble at a thick pane of glass—but it’s there.

He peers at it. “How…How did I…”

A voice behind him: “What are you doing?”

Sigrud turns, expecting an assault. He reaches for the sword, fumbling at the air, but he can’t manage the trick under pressure. Instead he’s left facing the intruder—who, now that he sees them, doesn’t seem to be intruding at all.

A small, bald, oldish Continental woman sits on a stone bench under the trees, smoking a crude pipe. She’s short but broad, bordering on tubby, and she watches him with a look of quiet, detached contentment.

Sigrud sheepishly begins to realize that she might have been sitting there all along, and he simply missed her. (Though a voice in the back of his mind pipes up, saying: Shouldn’t you have smelled her pipe? Noticed its flame? Noticed the bench?)

Sigrud says, “What?”

The woman puffs at the pipe. “What are you doing?”

Sigrud looks at her, looks back at the crack in the wall, and turns back to the woman, mouth open as he wonders what to say.

“It looks,” says the woman, “like you were hitting the wall.”

“Uh,” says Sigrud.

“Is that what you were doing? Hitting the wall?”

He scratches his neck. “Yes.”

She nods, as if she’s heard of this quaint pastime before. “Doesn’t seem like a very productive activity. But perhaps productivity isn’t the point. Is it?”

“Is what?”

“Are you hitting the wall,” says the woman, “because you want something?”

“I…suppose.”

“Oh. Well then, no, hitting it doesn’t seem productive.” She puffs on her pipe, contemplating the issue. “At least, not to me.”

“Who are you?” says Sigrud.

“I am an old woman,” she says, “wondering why this big man is out here in the dead of night hitting a wall as if it kissed his mother on the mouth.” She looks at him keenly. “What are you here for?”

“I…I want to get through the wall?”

“Oh.” She sits up. “Well then. Why didn’t you try knocking?”

“Try what?”

“Knocking,” she says, but this time much slower, as if trying to explain a math problem to a student. Then she points down the wall with the stem of her pipe. “At the door.”

“There’s a door?”

“I hope so. Otherwise something is wrong with my eyes.”

He shines the torch in the direction she was pointing in and sees that, yes, there is indeed a door: a short, round wooden door, one low enough he’d have to duck to get through.

That is odd, he thinks faintly. I was sure I looked there and saw only more wall….

Sigrud looks back at the woman. Some part of his mind is vaguely wondering why he doesn’t feel pressed to ask her more questions, such as what she’s doing here, why she stayed quiet for so long, or how she knew where the door was. But though he wonders these things, he feels a curious but powerful urge to simply accept the woman’s presence, much as he would a tree or a rock in this landscape.

“Just…knock on the door?” he says.

“It seems easier than knocking on the wall,” she says. “Less painful. And louder, so someone inside can hear. Come. Let’s try it, shall we?”

She hops off the bench and walks with him over to the door. Feeling quite awkward, Sigrud lifts his hand and knocks at the short wooden door three times.

Silence. Nothing.

“Oh,” says the old woman. “That’s right. I forgot. I’m supposed to be over there….Whoops! One moment.” She clears her throat, twists the knob, opens the door—Sigrud glimpses nothing more than dark woods on the other side—steps through, and shuts it, leaving Sigrud alone.

Her voice comes floating through the wood of the door: “All right—try again.”

Sigrud blinks, feeling confused and very stupid. He lifts his hand and again knocks three times.

The door opens just a crack. One bright eye peers out at him. “Yes?” says the old woman.

“Can I…come in?” he asks.

“Why?” demands the old woman. “Why do you want to come in?”

“I…” He awkwardly looks around, like he’s worried he might be overheard. “I need to speak to Olvos.”

“Is that so?” The eye narrows. “Why?”

“It’s…It’s a matter of great importance.”

“That is a tremendously subjective term. What would you hope for? What do you hope to accomplish?”

Something in her voice changes. It sounds deeper, more resonant. There’s a glimmer of firelight through the crack in the door. And her eye gains a curious orange sheen to it….

Things feel strange. Dreamy. Odd. Sigrud blinks, trying to focus. “We need her help,” he says. “To save us. To save everything.”

“You say these words,” says the old woman’s voice. “And this might be what you feel obliged or compelled to do. But is this what you hope for? If so much were not at stake, would you still be doing it?”

“Are you going to let me in?”

“In the sanctum,” whispers the old woman, “what did they name you?”

“Name me? What do you mean?”

“They gave you a gift. They made you think of a memory. And in doing so they named you.”

He frowns as he tries to remember. Everything suddenly seems very thick and close and very loud. Thoughts drip through his mind like they’re made of molten lead, and his tongue feels swollen and hot. “They did?”

“That they did. There was a name that went with that memory. What was it?”

“A…A refugee,” says Sigrud. “A lost child.”

“That is what you were,” says the voice. “But it is not what you are.” The door begins to open. “Not what you truly are, in your deepest heart. You know that name, mortal creature. You are the man without hope.”

The door swings open. There is no one on the other side. All he sees is a small glen. In the center of the glen is a huge bonfire with four logs serving as benches around it, and beyond that a stone table. Shadows leap and caper in the trees with the flick and flash of the flames.

Sigrud walks in. The door shuts behind him. He barely notices.

He keeps walking toward the fire, drawn to its radiance, its warmth. He must go to the fire, because it’s suddenly so cold in here, isn’t it? Yes, it is—he can see snowflakes pouring through the trees in the distance, turned into shifting white pillars by the light of the distant moon.

Sigrud steps over one of the log benches and holds his hands out to the fire, eager for warmth. His right hand grows hot, yet he notices his left does not.

A voice echoes through the glen, low and purring and warm, coming from no specific place as much as from everything, as if the glen itself is speaking: “Welcome, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson. I’ve looked forward to meeting you for some time—the man who has been touched by darkness twice, the man who lingers without hope. This, I think, will be a most interesting discussion.”

Sigrud looks through the flames and sees there’s a woman sitting on the log bench across the bonfire from him. She is short and thick and bald, naked from the waist up, wearing a skirt of firs and nothing else. She smokes an old bone pipe, long and skinny, which she lights by holding it over the fire.

“And it was nice of you to knock,” she says. She sniffs and takes a puff from the pipe. “None of the others did.”

Ivanya Restroyka tries to stifle a yawn as she stares at the mirror before the window. It’s a trick Sigrud taught her before he left: you put a light veil over a window, set up a mirror before it at an angle, and that way you can look out the window while making it very hard for anyone outside to see you. Currently the window faces the main path up through the Votrov estate—but this is but one of many ways of accessing the main house, which might be why Ivanya is gripping the rifling in her lap very tightly.

Taty sighs across the room as she reads her book. “I can’t bear it.”

“I know,” says Ivanya.

“What are we waiting for?” she says. “It’s been hours. Will he call? Will he send a messenger? How long should we wait?”

“He said he didn’t know. I believe him.”

“Believing him isn’t the problem. The problem is that he hardly knows what he’s getting into any better than we d—”

She pauses. Ivanya keeps her eye on the mirror, determined not to look away. “Taty?” she asks.

Silence.

Ivanya looks over her shoulder at the girl. Taty is seated in the chair in the corner, book in her lap, but she’s not reading it: she’s staring straight ahead, eyes dull, mouth open.

“Taty?” Ivanya says again.

Still nothing. The girl slowly blinks.

“What’s wrong? Taty? Say something!” Finally Ivanya stands and walks over to the girl. She kneels before her and shakes her shoulders. “Are you all right? Taty? Come on now, girl, don’t do this to me now….”

Taty takes in a rattling breath. Then she softly says, “Fox in the henhouse…”

“Fox? What?”

“There’s a fox in the henhouse,” she says again. Another slow blink. Her eyes widen, her pupils dilate, and suddenly Ivanya gets the feeling that Taty is seeing something she herself cannot.

Ivanya’s only seen this once before: in the train station in Ahanashtan, right before Taty somehow predicted that they were being watched.

“He’s going to get in,” she murmurs slowly. “He’s found a way in. They can’t stop him. He’s going to gobble them all up.”

“What?” says Ivanya. “Who? Who’s they?”

“And Mother,” Taty whispers. “Mother…She’s going to die. She’s going to die again….”

“What? Taty…Taty, you…” Grimacing, Ivanya rears back and slaps the girl. She’s not sure if she’s doing it to wake Taty up or because she’s scared as all hells and wants Taty to stop it.

Taty blinks rapidly, her eyes now focused, and touches her cheek. “I…I…”

“Taty,” says Ivanya. “Can you hear me?”

Taty looks around like she’s surprised to find herself here. Then she looks at Ivanya, terrified. “There’s a park!” she says. “A big park, here in Bulikov! A girl’s there, and…We have to go there, now!”

“What? What are y—”

“I don’t understand it, so don’t ask me to explain!” cries Taty. “Just listen! There’s some big park, and a tollbooth there, and a girl outside it—we have to go there, to warn them to get them out, get them out! They’re not safe and he’s coming for them and we don’t have much time, Auntie!”

“A big park? There’s so many that could…” She pauses. She knows that’s not true. There’s only one really big park in Bulikov. “The Seat of the World,” she says. “But who’s there, Taty? Who are we going to try to save?”

“Everyone!” screams Taty. “All of them! We still have a chance, but we need to go now, now, now!”

Deep in the sub-reality of their sanctum, Tavaan walks down the rows of beds, looking out on all her sleeping siblings. Some look peaceful while others look concerned, dreaming with faint expressions of pain on their faces. Tavaan looks at all of them with some sense of wonder—for though she is the Divine spirit of slumber, she herself never truly sleeps, or dreams. Much as a fish does not understand water, Tavaan has no concept of rest.

She walks up to Shara Komayd’s overstuffed chair and sees the old woman is awake, sitting slouched with her eyes half-open. She somewhat resents Komayd: it was Komayd’s idea to build this place, and while Tavaan is in many ways the god of this sanctum, she is also its prisoner, babysitting her sleeping siblings as well as this half-second of an old woman’s life that Malwina has twisted and distorted well past its expiration.

Tavaan watches Komayd for a moment. “Will it work?” she asks.

Komayd draws a rasping breath. “Olvos can be unpredictable. But she is also resolute. It will not be easy.”

“Resolute?”

“She is principled,” says Komayd. “I suppose a god can afford to be principled, if no one else ca—”

Komayd never finishes her sentence. There’s a noise from the other side of the huge wooden doors on the far side of the room: a tremendous, dreadful clanking, like some massive machinery has just irreparably broken, gears being stripped and rods snapping in two.

The noise echoes through the room. The sleepers all stir in their beds, shifting and moaning.

Komayd and Tavaan sit still, listening. No other sounds come.

“That doesn’t sound right,” says Komayd. “Is…Is that right?”

“No,” says Tavaan quietly. “It isn’t.”

Sigrud looks across the fire at the woman. She is the exact woman who met him outside the walls, yet now she looks strangely different. Besides her change in garb, looking at her feels queerly dizzying, like walking up to the edge of a cliff and looking down.

“You are…Olvos?” he says.

She smiles at him. “I am, dear. Would you like some tobacco? Or some tea?” She gestures at the stone table behind her, on top of which are a number of strange items he can’t see well in the firelight.

Sigrud considers the consequences of consuming something offered to him by a Divinity. “I think I am all right.”

She shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

“You just let me in? Just like that?”

“What, you thought you’d have to break through every barrier, piece by piece? I suppose you could have, if you were willing to spend a few decades at it. Though I am impressed. Most intruders never get to the wall. Most never even get to the glades. They get turned away well before that. Yet you barged right in, totally unaware of any hazards.” She glances at him, her bright, copper-colored eyes shining. “Curious thing, isn’t it? Here. Let me get a look at you. Why don’t you come around to my side of the fire? I don’t bite, I promise.”

He hesitates.

“I understand your previous interactions with a Divinity have not been positive,” she says kindly, “but while I am not wholly pleasant, nor kind, I have no ill intentions for you at this palaver, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson.”

Sigrud reluctantly walks around the fire, and though he still doesn’t want to sit beside the Divinity, he allows himself to sit on the log to her immediate right.

“You do have the look of the kings of old. I remember,” she says. “Bold and fierce and merciless. Had the life spans of a marsh fly too. Made lots of babies, though only a handful were produced consensually. I’m glad we’re well clear of those days.”

“Olvos,” says Sigrud, “I…I feel I must tell you the nature of my visit, which is extremely urg—”

She waves a hand. “Yes, yes, yes. You’re here to ask me to wade into your ongoing war and establish peace, yes? Swat your enemies down like flies, yes? I’m aware of all that, and you’ll get my answer in due time.”

“You knew why I was coming?”

“Oh, yes,” she says mildly.

“How?”

She looks at him like she’s suddenly worried about his intelligence. “You know I’m a Divinity, right?”

“Well, I mean—”

“I keep an eye on things, at a distance,” she says. “I’m aware of your situation. It also helps that the second you come here you’re in my place, in me, so I see quite a bit about you.”

“So you know about the children?”

She nods.

“And the enemy…He is—”

“You can say his name here,” says Olvos. “He’s not getting in here. Not yet, anyway.”

“Nokov,” says Sigrud. After days of dreading its mention, it’s odd to say the name aloud. “You know of him?”

“I do.”

“But…But if you know that, if you know how dire things are, then why haven’t y—”

“I told you you’d get my answer in due time,” she says. “I rather think I hold all the cards in this particular negotiation, dear. Please don’t rush. Are you sure you don’t want any tobacco?”

“No,” says Sigrud, frustrated. “No, I do not want any tobacco. So my coming here was your intent?”

“Not quite. I’ve been watching events unfold for a good bit now,” says Olvos. “And I must admit, things have gone largely the way I expected they would—not exactly utopia, but not another Blink. Not very good, but not very poorly either.”

“If you know about all this,” says Sigrud, “if you knew all this would happen, then…when you met Shara here, after Bulikov…why did you not warn her?”

“Why didn’t I tell someone that there was a small army of incredibly powerful, very malleable people that could be snatched up at any moment? Why didn’t I tell the one person who was about to speed to the top of the government, the one person who had the one tool that could control and destroy this army?” She laughs scornfully. “I did not think that would go well.”

“You didn’t trust her.”

“Shara is one person,” says Olvos. “One person who was going to have to engage with many large institutions of people. Not all of whom, as you’ve learned, are benevolent. I thought it wiser to let things get sorted out on their own, rather than give any ambitious up-and-comers their own little Divine army.”

“And do you think that has gone well?” asks Sigrud.

Olvos is silent. She takes a deep breath and exhales, smoke pouring out of her nostrils. “Going well or poorly isn’t the point,” she says quietly. “Those are short-term standards for short-term goals.”

“The deaths of so many Divine children? So many people? These are short-term goals?”

She looks at him. For a moment her eyes aren’t right: they don’t look so much like eyes as distant flames, burning somewhere deep within her face. “I have been in existence for a very long time. I have seen many horrible things. As much as it grieves me to say it, yes—I would permit a few small tragedies to avoid catastrophe. I have sat here and watched many things being woven out in the world, many ways the future could go. I think there is a chance, just a chance, that the way of least damage could win out. But it depends on many things. One of which is you.”

“I have done my piece,” says Sigrud. “I am here speaking with you. The rest depends on you.”

She slowly shakes her head. “No. You, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, are a person of—how shall I put this?—great momentum. You do not stop. You cannot stop. You bowl forward, charge on, wrecking many things in your path. And now here you come, rolling to my doorstep—but you won’t stop here either. You know this. I know this. I have watched you. Very, very closely.”

Something quivers in Sigrud’s stomach as he hears this. “You have watched me?”

“Oh, yes,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because you are a remarkably odd creature, Sigrud. Even if you weren’t so intricately wound up in this, I’d still watch you—that’s how fascinating you are.”

“What do you mean, ‘remarkably odd’?”

“Do you even have to ask? You have lived through circumstances almost none could survive. You have conquered things many would consider unconquerable. If this were the old days, and were I to look out on my domain, and see some strange, errant mortal carving a path of destruction through the world such as you do now—do you know what I would think?” Olvos leans close. “Why, I would think they were touched by the Divine. By another god. A person miraculous or blessed, twisting reality around them as they moved through it. I would be very suspicious indeed of this mortal. Very suspicious.”

“I was not touched by a god,” says Sigrud slowly. “I was tortured with a Divine tool, but no more.”

“Yes, that’s true. But can you think, Sigrud,” says Olvos, “if your torturers ever used that Divine tool again after you overcame it? What was it called, the…the…” She snaps her fingers.

“The Finger of Kolkan,” says Sigrud.

“Yes, of course. Awful thing. Did you ever see them force other prisoners to hold it after your brutal session? Maybe not. Slondheim was an awful place, a shifting nightmare, and it must be hard to remember how things were. But I don’t think you saw it used again—did you?”

He stares into the fire.

“It’s almost as if that little stone stopped working,” says Olvos offhandedly. “Almost as if the miracle that was in it…left. But of course this makes one wonder—where did it go?”

Sigrud’s left hand is clenched in a trembling fist.

“Such a curiosity, you are,” says Olvos. “Never directly touched by a Divinity, yet you seem strangely blessed. But—not quite. You defy the Divine, you defy death, you defy pain and suffering. That’s the cycle of your life, isn’t it? You throw yourself into dangerous, hopeless situations. These situations punish you mercilessly. Yet you overcome them, and live. But at the end of it, after all your trials and tests, you are left alone. A lone savage in the wilderness, helpless and frustrated. A creature of powerless power is what you are, strength rendered impotent by rage. And you’ve lived these past forty years like a man with one foot nailed to the floor, walking forever in circles. That’s been the pattern of your life—ever since that stone kissed your palm, that is.”

“What are you saying?” whispers Sigrud.

She smiles. The expression is far from wholly pleasant. “Do you know, back in the old days, when one of your kind showed up, we all killed it immediately? Me and the rest of the Divinities. We didn’t agree on much, but one thing we agreed on was that such things had no right to live. Things like you were too dangerous.” She stares into the fire. “We did that a lot back then. When something threatened us, we met, held a vote, and usually put it down. Odd how power has that effect on the mind, even the godly mind. Some of those choices I regretted. But for things like you—why, I had no qualms at all.”

“What am I?” says Sigrud softly. “What are you saying that I am?”

“You, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson,” says Olvos, tapping out her pipe, “are a man that a miracle mistook for a god.”

Tavaan stands before the huge wooden doors, head cocked, listening. There’s silence from the other side, but…that tremendous crash and clattering couldn’t have been nothing. She places a hand on the doors and shuts her eyes, trying to feel it out.

“What is it?” calls Komayd from the other side of the room.

“I don’t know,” says Tavaan. “I’m working on it.” She searches the many paths and devices that lie outside the doors, all the Divine constructs that, invisibly or otherwise, admit or deter entry.

She feels them falling away, one by one. Someone is blowing through all their security measures as if they were no more than smoke.

They know how to get in, thinks Tavaan. They knew how to open the hallway. Could it be Voshem? Could he be returning?

But this troubles her. If it were Voshem, he should have contacted them and told them he was returning. And moreover, why would he be returning unless something was wrong?

Tavaan grits her teeth. She is, in essence, the Divinity of this little piece of sub-reality. Its walls and floors and windows all give to her touch. If she wished, she could bring the ceiling down with but a thought, or make the furniture dance. But despite her control, there are only two means of exit and entry to the sanctum: the doors before her, and the secret exit on the far side.

She looks at the secret exit, thinking long and hard. They’ve rarely used it, since it’s far less protected than the main entrance. She could open it up if she wanted to—but what if this is a feint? What if this is the workings of the enemy, and that’s what he wants her to do?

“What is it?” asks Komayd. “What do we do?”

Then the doors start to whine and hum like cages full of nervous birds—which they only ever do if someone new is approaching them, someone who’s never been to the sanctum before.

Tavaan turns to look out on the many beds. “We start waking people up.”

Sigrud stares at Olvos, who stuffs her pipe and holds it out among the flames again. He swallows. “What do you mean?”

“Do you know what a miracle is?” asks Olvos. “I mean, what one really is. Very few do. Most Continentals didn’t even know back in the days when the world was practically swimming with them.” She puffs at her pipe. “It is like a living thing, a tiny, thoughtless Divine creature, working away below reality like a termite under your floorboards. It lives its life in cycles, just as you do. You wake, you eat, you defecate, you sleep, and so on, and so on….Just like the flora and fauna of a great forest, the background of the world was once thriving with tiny Divine creatures feeding one another, doing things, making things. But the thing about living things is that they change. Rapidly.”

She stands with a grunt, walks over to the stone table, and begins preparing what looks to be a rudimentary pot of tea. “We’d see it occasionally,” she says. “A rogue miracle, one might say. Usually these just showed up as mistakes in reality, sometimes colossal ones. There was one miracle Taalhavras made to create roads, only it got overexcited and overlaid thousands upon millions of roads in one place, just a giant tangle of roads hovering in the air. But other times…Other times, it was dangerous. Like when a miracle got a hold of a person.”

She walks back over, and delicately hangs the crude pot over the fire. “What do you know about the Finger of Kolkan?” she asks.

“I know it hurt,” says Sigrud.

“Besides that, I mean.”

“I…I think it was a test of some kind.”

“Yes. It was just like most of Kolkan’s miracles, which were usually quite punitive. Through pain, through pressure, the miracle was meant to coerce human beings into becoming strong, and pure—but the standards were set so high that no human ever actually passed this test. The pain was too much—they either failed, or perished. Until you came along, that is.

“When you touched the stone, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, it was a curious moment in your life. You hated yourself. You hated your failures, your impetuousness, your brutish thoughtlessness. These things, you felt, had cost you everything. So you did something the Finger of Kolkan did not expect—you embraced it. You invited it. You felt you had earned its pain. And in doing so, you defeated it.

“The horrid miracle in that stone was not prepared for this—when Kolkan made it, in his utter ignorance, he did not tell it what to do if a mortal actually passed the test. So the miracle, being small and simple, made an assumption: the being that had just defeated it had to be no one but Kolkan himself. So it changed: it migrated to you, thinking you to be its maker. And ever since, it has been bound to you, worshipping you, giving you many things and altering your very reality. And it has changed in turn.”

She sits, reaches out, and snatches Sigrud’s left hand. Though he’s much larger than her, he finds he can’t resist her strength.

She points to his palm. “Do you see? Do you see this part?” He can’t see what she’s pointing to, but she keeps talking. “Punishment. Excoriation. Despair. And through these elements, power. This miracle takes what pain is inflicted upon its bearer, and transmutes this into furious, desperate, righteous anger. A mechanism of terrible retribution. But you knew this already, didn’t you?”

Sigrud sits hunched on the log. The warmth of the fire is a distant memory.

The pot of tea begins to bubble. Olvos reaches forward, plucks it off its hanger, and places it on the log beside her. “Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, you are a person who has held his torments very close to his heart,” she says. “You believe, somewhere deep inside of you, that such pain gives you power—perhaps the power to inflict a crude justice on the world, retaliation for all the wrongs that have been done to you. From suffering comes might. And the miracle, which slavishly worships you, rewards that hunger for suffering with all the tools it has available. It is trying so very hard to give you what you want. And the miracle will allow nothing to violate this—not death, or age, or the Divine itself. The miracle is like a jealous lover, preventing all others from touching you—and you encourage it.”

“You’re lying,” says Sigrud softly.

“Am I? How many times have you been injured yet recovered? How many times in your life have you fled civilization? How many times in your career with Shara did you hide in isolation, drifting at the edges of society? And why do you know how to do a great many nasty things, Sigrud, more than anyone else alive?” She smiles bitterly. “I know. It is because everyone else died learning them. Perhaps it’s luck that Shara found you, or maybe it’s fate. Working with her put your dark blessing to somewhat good ends. It made you the perfect operative. Such people live very short lives—except for you, of course. What an exception to every rule you are. And at what terrific cost. You survive, yet have no hope. Only torment.”

“It…It rewrites reality,” he says quietly, “to punish me?”

“Yes. That is its nature. That is what it thinks you want. In your secret heart, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, you think yourself terrible and pure in your despair. You believe you reflect the cruelty of the world back upon it, and you think this just. This dark blessing is simply giving you the fuel you desire.”

There is a long silence.

“Then…my daughter, Signe…Was her death…” He looks at her, trembling. “Was it natural? Or was it yet more punishment?”

Olvos is quiet. Then she finally rumbles to life, saying, “It is…difficult for me to see that. The miracle often nudges reality very, very slightly. And there were many Divine currents alive and raging in Voortyashtan. But you feel it was punishment, don’t you? You feel that, because you are a man who has done so many wrongs, it was justice for you to lose the best thing you had ever produced. Don’t you?”

Sigrud stands. He’s too furious to do the trick with the sword, so instead he pulls out his knife. He holds it just above his left wrist, which he extends above the fire. “I’ll…I’ll cut it off!” he snarls. “I’ll cut it off and be done with it!”

Olvos shrugs. “Then do so.”

Sigrud lowers the knife. He grits his teeth, readying for the blade to bite into his flesh, to saw at the bone—yet he hesitates.

“You can’t do it,” says Olvos. “The miracle will not be gotten rid of that way.”

Sigrud shuts his eyes, weeping. “I’ll do it. I will. I will!”

“You won’t,” she says. “This is not a matter that will be resolved with the marring of flesh. You are a creature of constant warfare, Sigrud. You have made a weapon of your sorrow. You have put this weapon to terrible use for many, many years. Only when you set it aside will this miracle release you. Only then will you have any chance of freedom. Freedom to live and die as a normal, mortal man.”

Sigrud bows his head and lowers the knife. “So until then…I am cursed to keep living, keep suffering.”

“Probably. You are very hard to kill, Sigrud. You can take abominable punishment. But you are not immortal. If you were to, say, jump off a cliff, or catch a bullet in your skull, I doubt the miracle could do much to save you. And a true Divinity could kill you if they really wanted to. I could do it now, for example. But I won’t. I try very hard not to intervene in such things. It’s not prudent, not anymore.”

“Can you remove the miracle?” he asks.

She glances at him. “I could.”

“Then…will you?”

She lifts her pot of tea and takes a long slurp. “I just said why I would not. Because my interference is not prudent.”

“Not…Not prudent?” says Sigrud. “Not prudent? This, this curse is ruining my life, destroying me! Will you not give me aid, will you not save me?”

“No,” she says firmly. “No, I will not. You are asking a very dangerous thing of me, Sigrud. For me to flex my Divine will is no small thing. It would make me vulnerable to a number of mortal influences. When I intrude into the world, when people notice me, pay attention to me, believe in me, I…change. Shift. Conform to their beliefs. That is extraordinarily, extraordinarily dangerous, especially right now. One sole Divinity on the Continent, with nothing to keep me in check? I won’t allow that. That is why I left the mortal world in the first place.”

“But it is just one little miracle,” says Sigrud. “Surely it would be no more than swatting a fly?”

“To destroy the work of another Divinity takes great effort,” says Olvos. “Almost as much work as it would take to harm or even destroy another Divinity. And the greater the effort, the more vulnerable I become.” She slowly looks up at him. “And that is partly why I will not intervene to help Shara and Malwina.”

It takes him a moment to process what she said. “What?” he asks.

Olvos sips at her cup of tea again.

“You will not help?” he asks. “You won’t fight him?”

“No,” she says. “No. I will not.”

“But…But he’s killing them,” says Sigrud. “Nokov wishes to destroy them. He wishes to, to bring final night to all the world!”

“I know that,” says Olvos softly. “He’s done horrible things. Many, many horrible things. And I’ve told you one reason why I will not intervene. But you of all people should understand the other.” Her orange-red eyes are wide and sad. “You’ve lost a child. Even if they had done horrible things—could you bear to take your child in your own hands, and destroy them yourself?”

Sigrud stares at her. “You…You mean…”

She sighs deeply, and suddenly she looks very old and tired. “Yes,” she says. “He is my son. Nokov is my son.”

Ivanya tries to focus as she pilots her auto through the streets of Bulikov. She hasn’t driven in the city in years, so she jumps the occasional curb. Taty sits beside her in the passenger seat, grimly staring ahead.

Every block or so, Ivanya asks the same question—“You’re sure?”

Every time, Taty gives the same answer—“No. But I know it’s true.”

Finally they come to the Seat of the World. It’s a mostly empty space, as the original temple was completely destroyed in the Battle of Bulikov, and the remaining park stands as a monument to the tragedy.

Taty and Ivanya park and climb out. “Where?” asks Ivanya. “What do we do now?”

“This is it,” Taty says, staring around herself. “This is what I saw, just for a moment. But I’m looking at it from the wrong angle. It was…” She spies something, some landmark, and her eyes light up. “There! Over there! To the right of that tree, I’m sure of it!”

They sprint off, running through the park, dashing over the concrete paths until finally, just ahead, they see a small, shabby, abandoned tollbooth. Someone is standing outside it, hands and face buried deep in their coat, and they keep glancing over their shoulder at the two women running over.

As they get closer, Ivanya’s mouth drops open. Because the person standing outside the tollbooth is Taty.

Well, not quite—this girl isn’t as well fed and her hair is longer, though it’s stuffed up under a boyish cap, and she has an angry look on her face that looks somewhat permanent. But her face, her mouth, her size…all of it is so much like Tatyana it’s dumbfounding.

Ivanya stops walking. “What in hells,” she gasps.

“What?” says Taty. “What is it?” Then she looks up and sees. “Oh…Oh. Ohhh, my goodness…”

The girl glances sideways at them suspiciously, then turns away, as if trying to avoid attention. Taty simply stares at her, thunderstruck by the sight of this girl.

“Hey!” shouts Ivanya. “You! Hey, you!” She struggles in vain to recall the girl’s name, then blurts, “Malwina Gogacz!”

The girl freezes. Ivanya can tell she’s debating whether or not to run.

“You’re in danger!” says Ivanya. She glances at Taty, wishing she would say something, but she’s still staring at the other girl, openmouthed.

The girl turns around, eyeing them suspiciously as they stagger up. “What? Who in hells are you? What are you talking ab—” Then she sees Taty. Her jaw drops. “What the fuck?” she says softly.

The two girls stare at each other with expressions of faint horror for a very long time.

“It’s…It’s like looking in a carnival mirror,” says Taty softly.

“Enough,” says Ivanya. “Tell her what you told me.”

Taty licks her lips. “He’s…He’s going to get in,” she says. “He’s going to get into your place you made, and kill all of you, all of you. And Mother.”

Malwina goes pale. “How did you…You can’t be serious….”

“We are,” says Ivanya.

“That can’t be right, that can’t be,” says Malwina. “He can’t…Wait. ‘Mother’? Who?”

“Komayd,” says Ivanya. “This is Tatyana Komayd.”

Malwina’s eyes couldn’t possibly go any wider. She steps back and rubs her temples as she tries to take all this in. “This is…This is all too much….How do you know that? How do you look like me?” She keeps rubbing the sides of her head as if the sight of Taty has stupefied her.

“What do we do?” asks Ivanya.

Malwina keeps rubbing her head. She looks like she’s about to be ill.

“Well?” says Ivanya.

Nothing still.

Ivanya stamps her foot. “Listen, you,” she snaps. “I’ve got no idea what in hells is going on here, but I know you. You were a patron of my organizations for years. I’ve probably personally paid for your trousers and your bed and your meals and your damned toilet paper dozens of times over. So as bewildering as all this is, you owe me. Why don’t you return the favor and focus a bit, and do whatever it is we need to do to start saving some damned lives, eh?”

Malwina shakes herself. “How can she know that we’re all in danger? I mean, how?”

“She just does,” says Ivanya. “Apparently. Trust us on this.”

Malwina’s eyes dance around as she thinks. “We could go in the back way. It’s dangerous, I don’t want to draw attention to it, but…There’s no other choice.” She sighs. “Fuck it. Let’s go.”

“Go where?” says Taty.

“Don’t you know?”

“Not…not really…”

Malwina points at the tollbooth. “In there. Come on. Are you with Sigrud? Is that what this is?”

“Something like that,” says Ivanya.

“Well. I hope you have some experience with the Divine. If not, this is going to be really weird for you.”

“This is already pretty weird for us,” mutters Ivanya as they walk into the tollbooth.

They keep walking. It takes Ivanya a moment to realize they seem to be walking far farther than they ought to be—the tollbooth was only six or so feet wide, wasn’t it?

Then she sees it ahead. A small square of blue light, not the right size for a door. But beyond it are…

Beds. And windows. A huge, grand room that just seems to be hanging there, suspended in the darkness.

“Okay,” Ivanya says. “That’s weird.”

Tavaan feels it before it happens. With her eyes shut and her hand on the door, she feels it flying up the stairs outside, hurtling through the air, rocketing toward the doors with all its strength…

The boom is like a crack of thunder. The force of the blow reverberates all the way up Tavaan’s arms and into her shoulders. She doesn’t need to see the doors to know they were nearly blown off their hinges.

“Shit,” she says quietly. She opens her eyes. “Shit.”

She can hear the sleepers muttering behind her, the ones farthest from the door sitting up and rubbing their eyes. Being lifted from such deep sleep is no easy thing, and she could help them return to full consciousness—but she knows she won’t have the energy to spare, not now.

She summons up all of her strength and presses against the doors, holding them in place. She does it just in time, as the second blow comes hurtling at her even stronger than the first.

The doors crack and splinter, very slightly. Tavaan focuses, using all of her mind to keep them whole. But she knows it won’t last.

It’s him. He’s here. And he’s stronger than I ever imagined.

“Can you imagine what it’s like?” asks Olvos. “To watch from a distance as your son drifts from family to family. To watch him get captured, tortured, driven mad. To watch him escape through murder and bloodshed, and go on to do terrible, awful things…?”

“But you could have stopped him,” says Sigrud. “You could ha—”

She turns to him, eyes burning and fierce. “Look at me. Look at me now. Look upon the burdens of power. Imagine what it’s like to know that if you flexed your will and saved your child, then the belief of this Continent might drive you mad, and so much more would be lost. Power corrupts, Sigrud. It has its own gravity. The only thing you can do is disperse it or isolate it. That’s what I’ve tried to do for so many years. If things go right tonight you will know this full well. But oh, you mortal man…” Olvos shakes her head. “You cannot know how I despise myself. Both for what I am, and for what I’m forced to do.” She wipes her eyes. “It’ll be over soon, though. For me at least.”

“What do you mean?” asks Sigrud.

She keeps talking as if she didn’t hear him. “The last night of hope. It’s been long coming, and long deserved. But such a thought is no solace to me, though, not really.” She shuts her eyes. “Not since I know what Nokov is about to do.”

When Ivanya, Taty, and Malwina all walk into the giant room of beds through what appears to be a large fireplace, Ivanya notices two things right away.

The first thing she notices is the tremendous rumbling and clanging coming from one side of the room, where there are two large wooden doors that seem to be trembling like they’re in an earthquake. There’s a small girl standing before them, dressed in sleeping clothes and with a shaved head, her hands pressed against the doors like she’s desperately trying to keep them shut—but it’s clear it’s a losing battle.

The second thing Ivanya notices is that there are people in all the beds in the room, all very young people, and several are stirring and sitting up with an air of a drugged person trying to remember where all their limbs are.

Malwina looks to the doors. Her face goes from pale to a light green color. “Tavaan!” she cries. “What’s wrong? What’s going o—”

The girl at the door shouts over her shoulder, “Malwina! Get them out, get them out, get them out! He’s here, he’s coming through!”

“What!” screams Malwina. “He’s here? I’ll help you!” She starts running over to the doors, but she halts in midair, as if she just slammed into an invisible wall.

“No!” cries the girl at the doors. “I won’t let you closer! I can’t hold him for long, just get them out, get them out of here!”

“Tavaan!” cries Malwina. “Please, I can help y—”

There’s another blow to the doors, which almost seem to shatter, though some invisible force shoves them back together. “Do as I say, damn you!” bellows the girl at the door. Her voice seems to come from everywhere in this place, from the stones and the beds. “Get them out!”

Malwina falls to the floor, shaken. She begins blinking rapidly. Her face stays stoic, but tears start falling from her eyes. She stands and turns to Ivanya and Taty. “You, and you,” she says, her voice shaking. “Get these kids up and get them over to the door. Now.”

Ivanya sprints over to the closest bed, where a young boy of about twelve with curiously scaly skin is rubbing his eyes in a stupor. She doesn’t bother introducing herself: she just grabs his arms, drags him out of bed—muttering as she does, “You are a lot heavier than a sheep”—and trots over to the fireplace, where she dumps him down like a sack of flour. She looks to Taty, who’s still dumbfounded by the sight before her. “Taty! Focus and help me, now!”

Taty shakes herself and goes to the next bed with Ivanya, while Malwina hauls one of the drowsy children out of bed like someone trying to get drunken friends home from the bar.

Another crash, another bang. The doors tremble. There’s an awful sound coming from the other side, the sound of creaking trees and cheeping insects and a high, cold wind. Ivanya’s not sure why, but she begins to feel like she’s lost somewhere deep and dark, waiting for morning….

It’s him, isn’t it, she realizes. The thing Sigrud’s been fighting all this time.

She shakes herself as they haul another child out of bed. As they carry the child away they walk by a chair, which is strangely out of place in this odd room: it’s tattered and overstuffed, and it sits with its back to them, facing the windows, like a chair at a convalescent home.

As they round the side of the chair, she sees it’s occupied.

And it appears to be occupied by a dead woman. Or, at least a woman who should be dead.

Ivanya gasps and nearly drops the sleeping child. In the chair sits an ill-looking Shara Komayd, craning her head around the other side of the chair so she can see the doors better. She seems wholly unaware that there are two people in front of her, and only turns around when Ivanya gasps. She blinks owlishly at the two of them. Then her mouth drops open.

“Oh, no,” she says. “Taty?”

Tatyana Komayd stares at her. “Mother? Mother! You…You…You’re alive? You’re really alive?” She drops the child’s feet and almost bursts into laughter. “I knew it! I don’t know how but I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”

Shara tries to stand, but she doesn’t seem to have much strength. She swallows, panicked. “You can’t be here, dear, you can’t! Not here, not now! He’s coming through, he’ll kill you! You’re not safe here!”

Ivanya looks up at the doors, which shudder again with another fierce blow. “I’m starting to think,” she says, “that we might have gotten here too late.”

Tavaan’s arms and legs scream in pain as she tries to hold the doors up. How many more blows can I withstand? she thinks. One? Two? No more than that, certainly.

Her ears are filled with the sounds of night: the crackle of leaves under invisible feet, the soft cry of distant birds, the shifting of tall grasses. It’s hard to focus now. She uses all of her power to survey the sleeping children behind her.

Twelve awake, only twelve. The rest still struggle to rise from their slumber, the one she herself placed them in.

How did it go so wrong? How did he get in? How did we let it all come to this?

Another blow. Tavaan is knocked back from the doors and sent sprawling onto the stones. The doors break open the slightest bit.

“No!” she screams. She makes the floor come rising up, shooting her back at the doors, slamming them shut and forcing all the pieces to stay where they are.

Twelve awake. And Malwina, Komayd, and the newcomers.

She grits her teeth in rage and despair. Tears fall from her eyes and patter onto the stones.

What a damnable choice to make, she thinks, and what a damnable end this is.

Tavaan focuses her energy, takes a breath, and screams.

Ivanya, Shara, and Taty all jump when the girl at the doors begins screaming. “What in the world?” says Ivanya, but she doesn’t have time for another thought, because then Shara’s chair begins moving of its own accord, sliding toward the fireplace and scooping up Ivanya and Taty with it, who both fall on Shara with a thump.

Ivanya cries out in surprise, but she sees the chair isn’t the only thing moving in the room: all the beds bearing children near the fireplace are drifting toward the exit as well, as if the whole room has been tilted up, dumping the furniture to that one corner, and taking Malwina with it.

As they slide toward the exit, Ivanya can’t help but notice that many beds are staying still. These seem to contain children who are still asleep—so it’s only the ones who are awake who are moving.

Ivanya thinks, But what will happen to the others?

She doesn’t have time to wonder, because the next thing she knows, the chair is dumping her and Taty and Shara out through the fireplace, sending them tumbling down the strange passageway, back through to the tollbooth, until…

Ivanya lands on the grass outside the tollbooth, followed by Taty and Shara, who each land on top of her, knocking the breath from her. They roll to the side just as a handful of children come tumbling out, all of them ones they managed to waken.

Malwina refuses to stay down. The instant she strikes the ground she rises back up and staggers back toward the passageway, seeming to fight against an invisible wind. “No!” she cries down the passageway. “I won’t let you! Not like this, not like this!”

Ivanya can still see the distant blue square of the fireplace entrance down the passageway. The light within seems to quiver, like a candle flame brushed by the breeze. Ivanya isn’t sure how she knows this, but she can tell that something is leaking into the distant room, flooding into it like poisonous gas through the frame of a door, something invisible and terrible….

A screaming voice comes echoing down the passageway: “Tulvos! I love y—”

There’s a tremendous crash. The distant room floods with shadow. Then comes a horrible sound, a sound that carves itself into Ivanya’s mind: the sound of dozens of children all crying out at once.

The passageway goes dark. The screams are cut short. Malwina is blown backward like ten tons of explosives have gone off in her face, and she lands on a heap in the grass.

Then there’s silence.

Malwina coughs, then claws herself to her feet. “No,” she whispers. “No, no!” She runs back to the tollbooth, but is dumbfounded to find it is only four blank, wooden walls—no more, no less. “No!” she screams. “No, no, no!”

She begins hammering on the walls of the tollbooth, sobbing hysterically. Ivanya rises and physically restrains her, pinning the girl’s arms to her sides. “Stop,” says Ivanya, firmly but gently.

“She shut the door!” screams Malwina. “She dumped us out and shut the door and trapped him in there with her!”

“Stop,” says Ivanya again.

Malwina keeps struggling. “I have to go back! I have to help her! I have to, I have to!”

“Stop. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Shut up!” cries Malwina. “Shut your mouth, shut your fucking mouth!” She kicks at the walls once, twice. “Let me go, let me go! Let me go, let me go, let me go!” Then she dissolves into tears.

Everyone sits in silence, trying to understand exactly what happened.

“M-Mother?” asks Taty, sitting up. “Are you all right? Are you…Are you really alive?”

Shara snaps up into a sitting position with a surprising amount of strength. Then she grabs Taty’s arms and pulls them out, frantically looking at her wrists, her arms, her neck and face. “Are you all right?” Shara says. “Are you hurt? Taty, tell me, are you hurt?”

“Mother, stop!” says Taty. “I’m fine, I’m fine! I should be asking you if you’re hurt, since you’re the one who di—”

Taty never gets to finish her sentence, because then Shara throws her arms around her, hugs her tight, and bursts into tears. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she whispers. “I never, never, never thought I’d see you again.” Even though she’s weeping, her arms don’t stop searching Taty’s back and neck, still seeking any hidden injury.

“I’m fine,” says Taty, who sounds torn between terror and bewilderment. “But…But what just happened?”

One of the children, a boy of about fifteen, stands and walks to the tollbooth door. “Malwina?” he says. “What’s going on? We were asleep, and then…And then he was coming…”

“What’s going on?” says Malwina savagely. “What’s going on?” She makes a noise that’s halfway between a sob and a laugh. “We fucking lost is what’s going on! We lost! He got everyone else, everyone else!”

“What do you mean?” asks the boy. “What…What do we do now?”

“What do we do? There’s nothing to do,” says Malwina. “Don’t you see? We’re the only ones left now.” She blinks as if realizing what she just said. Then, quieter, “We’re the only ones left.”

Alone in the little room, mighty Nokov eats his fill. He eats greedily, lustily, with a fervor he’s never known before. To think he’d ever have such a victory, such a complete and total victory, with hundreds of his siblings laid out at his feet…

He grows and grows and grows. With each death, a new domain. With each new domain, a greater power.

Nokov changes.

He is a serpent, vast and terrible.

He is a great raven, his wings made of purest night.

He is a long, lean wolf, whose jaws devour light and life itself.

He is a tremendous volcano, pouring ash into the dawning sky.

He is many things, many ideas, many concepts all merged into one, all lost within the night.

Nokov eats. His hunger is insatiable and his vengeance merciless.

All your happy lives, he thinks as he pounces from bed to bed. All your days free of torment. I will show you what they showed me. I will share with you my pain.

When the last whimpering child vanishes into the endless abyss of the first night, he finds he is still not full, still not complete.

He needs more. He must have more.

He hears footsteps behind him. He turns around, which takes some time—he is no mere child anymore, but a creature of terrible, rippling bulk. He sees his servant at the door, his distorted seneschal.

“Silence,” he says to her. “We have won. We have won, Silence, we have won.”

There is a rippling silence in the room, and with it comes the words:

It takes him a moment to realize what she means. Then he understands—the dauvkind. He came here, that Nokov knows—he sensed the taint in the man’s body, felt its shadow dwell here. But where is he now?

Nokov reaches out, rifling the darkness for the man’s scent. Finally he finds it.

If Nokov still had lungs—and he never did, but he certainly doesn’t now—he would gasp.

Because the dauvkind now stands in a place Nokov himself could never find, never penetrate, never see. Yet now it seems Nokov is strong and great enough to do so.

And perhaps, he thinks, standing straight and tall until his head touches the ceiling, great enough to challenge her.