“The Handsisters seem to agree,” Keltin replied slowly, suddenly concerned again. “What aren’t they telling me?”
Ryna busied herself by checking a few of his bandages, then she sighed and met his questioning gaze. “This fever will kill you if it doesn’t break by nightfall,” she said softly. “Don’t do that to me.” Without another word, she leaned down and kissed his forehead before turning to follow Eyrie. Keltin felt a buzz beneath his skin as he watched her leave—perhaps it was the fever, perhaps it was something else entirely—whatever the cause, he vowed to live long enough to understand it.
---
Keltin awoke after a fitful sleep filled with dreams that focused on the worst moments of his torture. His skin ached and a cold sweat clung to the bandages that covered most of his body, but the crippling pain was gone that had accompanied every breath. Hands were busy lifting away the old bandages and applying fresh ones, and he was pleased to see that those hands belonged to Ryna. As he stirred, her eyes met his for an instant before she refocused on his injuries. “Your fever is gone,” she said, and an almost imperceptible smile darted across her face. “It’s a good thing, too, because we’re preparing to leave.”
Now Keltin was fully awake. “Leave? You mean for Aldhagen?” he asked. He realized with a start that it was nearing dusk outside the tent and that Ansund’s bed was empty.
Ryna nodded. “The Council reached a compromise and the vote was unanimous. We begin the journey to the Deadlands tonight.”
“What finally convinced them?” Keltin wondered.
“Supplies, I think,” Ryna said, leaving Keltin confused. “As Leomar explained it, even if we chose to hide in Cynmere and wait for the Cultivators to come to us, we don’t have enough supplies to fight them for long. The battle with the Penitent Faithful drained much of the food stores, and now we are left with the added burden of so many injured. With winter approaching, we’re at a distinct disadvantage since we rely on food and shelter, whereas the Cultivators have no need for such things. That, among all the other reasons, is why we must end this fight now.”
It made sense, and it was a factor that Keltin hadn’t even considered: keeping a force of this size adequately supplied took incredible effort and put an immense strain on all resources. If the fight pushed into the cold months, the supplies would eventually be exhausted, and then there could be no hope of survival. Only one question remained in Keltin’s thoughts. “What about Wyand?”
“Tilia asked us all to pray for his return,” Ryna replied quietly. “Still, she pointed out that we were able to liberate Dism Slyde without the use of the Thoughtcaster or the Stormheart, so why wouldn’t the same work in Aldhagen?”
Keltin understood, but it felt wrong. “He’ll be there,” he declared with forced certainty.
“Let’s hope so,” Ryna said as she secured a final bandage in place. “For now, we need to get there. Can you walk?”
Instead of answering immediately, Keltin eased himself upright and placed his feet onto the canvas floor. After two unsteady steps, he regained his balance and was satisfied. “Yes,” he said proudly, just before a tremor in his right leg nearly sent him to the ground.
Ryna shook her head before pulling his arm around her shoulder. “Come on. The nysk carts are just a few strides away.” Outside, Keltin was amazed by how quickly the scores of tents had been dismantled, leaving little evidence that the Cynmeren camp had ever been there. Scrid scuttled between groups of people while cages were filled and everyone donned the heavy armor Keltin had come to know as “Sreathan Plate.” The pale yellow of Cynmeren helmets glowed alongside torches that sputtered and flared in the swirling gusts of frigid wind.
Instead of the five nysk carts that had initially arrived from Dism Slyde, there were now more than twenty of them in the process of loading all the wounded. As Ryna and Keltin neared the line of nysks, a familiar voice shouted from the upper level of a nearby cart. “Finished with your rest, Sleeper?”
In spite of the frustration of hearing the unfortunate name again, Keltin smiled when he realized who had spoken. “I’m sure I won’t get any rest with you at the guiding posts, Tir,” Keltin called back. Tir laughed and disappeared from the railing. An instant later, he rushed from the rear of the cart towards Keltin with his arms outstretched. Upon seeing Keltin’s bandages, however, Tir slowed, his smile turning to a look of surprise and horror.
“There were rumors that you’d been injured, but this…” he trailed off as he looked Keltin over. “You’re alive, though, so that’s better than the alternative.”
Something was different about Tir, but Keltin couldn’t at first discern what it was. He still had the same infuriating habits—usage of the name “Sleeper” being foremost among them in Keltin’s mind—he still had the same dark face and hair; then Keltin suddenly noticed what had changed. “Your Vessel Guard robes!” Keltin exclaimed. “Why are you wearing a set of Sreathan plate?”
Tir’s grin returned and he lifted his head with an air of pride. “Because I belong to the Order of Blood now! I showed the Cynmeren my skill with animals and they’ve had me working with the scrid ever since. When I heard they needed someone to guide a nysk cart, though, I volunteered in an instant.” He leaned in close to Keltin and spoke just above a whisper. “The scrid are decent enough, but I missed my nysks. I’ll be glad to cross the desert with them again.”
“I—that’s wonderful, Tir,” Keltin stammered, stunned by how much time had passed and all that had changed since he last saw the former Vessel Guard. Ryna helped Keltin up into the cart and set up a bed for him near the front of the lower level.
As Keltin settled into place, Tir pointed suddenly to Keltin’s waist. “You still have the spike?” he asked incredulously.
“Not exactly,” Keltin replied. He shifted uncomfortably until the blade was free, then he presented the handle to Tir.
The now-Bloodbrother whistled softly. “I told you that would make a fine blade,” he said as he studied the intricate patterns embedded within the black knife.
Keltin nodded. “You were right. And trust me when I tell you it’s sharp.” His hand drifted tiredly from one bandage to the next, causing Tir’s smile to disappear for the second time that evening. Embarrassed for accidentally bringing up such painful memories, Tir hurriedly returned the knife, wished Keltin well, and resumed the tasks of preparing the nysk cart for travel. Keltin sighed. “I didn’t mean to make him leave.”
Ryna shrugged as she pulled a blanket towards Keltin’s chin. “It’s for the best—he needed to focus.” Before Keltin’s arms were completely covered, he reached forward suddenly and took hold of Ryna’s hand. The same energetic buzz surged beneath his skin as he gazed at her, but Ryna pulled her hand away quickly. “We all need to focus,” she said sternly. “When this is finished, then you and I will discuss…everything.”
Crestfallen, Keltin lay in silence as Ryna climbed to the upper level; secretly, he still enjoyed watching her leave, though. As daylight began to fade, Keltin heard the light directors swing into place just before the nysk cart lurched forward. He closed his eyes and decided to try counting each of his burns by sensation alone. Keltin knew the total—one thousand, six hundred eighty-eight—but he wanted to see if he could feel each one. After all, he reasoned, they’re not likely to be gone any time soon.
49
Wearing nothing more than nightclothes, Wyand stumbled out into the darkness and blistering cold of Crolun Raigh. His head reeled from awakening so suddenly and nausea quickly began to form in the pit of his stomach. What had driven him to leap from his sick bed in the depths of the night he didn’t know, but the sensation was irresistible: he needed to move, to do something, yet the details eluded him. There was a feeling of anxiety, almost an itch within his mind, that could only be eased whenever his feet were in motion. So, Wyand walked.
His route was aimless at first, but he soon found himself drawn towards one of the neighboring huts. From the narrow doorway, surges of
blue and green light spilled past the edges of the door. The colors beckoned to him—they were mysterious and captivating, yet oddly familiar. A dream? he wondered idly. The itch grew stronger and his journey continued.
As Wyand slowly pushed open the door, he suddenly recognized the beautiful lights, but his wonder turned quickly to worry when he discovered their source. In the center of the room stood Stormsister Laersi, rigid and fixated on a point along the southern wall of her hut. Her eyes blazed with the light of the Guided more fiercely than Wyand had ever seen before; their intensity forced him to lift a hand to shield his own eyes. After first calling to the Stormsister and then touching her shoulder with no response, Wyand felt the need to move again and so returned to the night.
Far above the sheltered valley, the wind pulled a rolling bank of clouds southward, its rapid movement made visible in the blackness by unnatural light reflected from the city below. It was a mesmerizing display of shifting colors and textures that would’ve held Wyand’s attention had he not felt so ill and been so concerned by the bizarre situation before him. As he wandered past the simple mud dwellings and larger storerooms of Crolun Raigh, Wyand found the glow of the Guided pulsing everywhere he looked. Structures were bathed in light from within just as Laersi’s hut had been, but the strangest sight came from the scores of Cultists who stood in the open air.
It looked as though the men and women of the Cult of the Guided were frozen where they stood, all motionless as stone, all staring south and west. Their expressions were serene beneath the unbearable brightness of their eyes, and though Wyand tried everything from shouting to shaking, no one responded to his presence in the slightest. The clouds flew faster above as Wyand struggled to understand what was happening. Then the mountains in the distance began to emit a deep hum as the wind scraped over their peaks, and Wyand’s worry escalated into panic.
In his dazed mind, teetering between fascination and terror when faced with the chaos that surrounded him, Wyand thought he could hear undertones of whispers lurking within the furious gusts above. He strained to listen, but each time he tried to focus on the sound, it receded beneath the next surge of the droning hum. All at once, a single word became clear: Go.
The voice—if it could be called that—was born of the wind itself, and it grew louder and more insistent the longer Wyand listened. Go. Wyand felt a sudden burst of heat against his stomach; when he checked his waist pocket, he found the Stormheart glowing so vigorously that it burned both touch and sight. Strangely, though, he couldn’t bring himself to let it go or to look away from the blinding stone. Its light merged with that of the Guided and of the clouds overhead, until Wyand’s body was enveloped in a column of radiant green and blue. GO.
The clouds descended in a spinning vortex of darkness, stained at its core with the pulsating light of the Guided. When it reached the ground, Wyand was suddenly flung into the frozen night sky, far above the clouds, far above the safety of Crolun Raigh. He tumbled upwards, paralyzed with fear, until whatever force propelled him ceased without warning. Just as the feeling of weightlessness arrived, a gust slammed against Wyand’s back, sending him hurtling across the sky. His lungs finally found the courage to scream, but the speed of the air rushing past his face confined all sound to his throat.
The clouds dissipated, revealing far below a mountainous wasteland of ice and snow that stretched on as far as he could see. This gave way unexpectedly to gentler terrain, and Wyand realized he was now soaring above the Eastern Hills. In the next blink, the Plateau Desert rushed beneath him. He felt himself accelerate again and again until the darkened desert was nothing more than a grey blur, but he also felt himself beginning to descend at an alarming rate. Lands broken apart by untold thousands of fissures rushed up to meet him, and then at last a great river appeared, its waters teeming with the deathly yellow glow of the haugaeldr.
It was then that Wyand knew his destination. Farther and faster he flew with impossible speed to the southwest, the winding course of the river flowing beneath his own path. There was no pause, no deceleration, and as the towering plateau of Aldhagen at last came into view, Wyand spotted the Hall of the Venerates the instant before his body slammed against it. Then all was darkness, and only the voice of the wind remained. GO.
The sensation of such a sudden stop caused Wyand’s body to lunge forward, but as his eyes leapt open, he found only the dimly-lit wall of the mud hut standing in front of him. Struggling to catch his breath, Wyand jerked his head from one side to the other as he accepted the fact that he was somehow back in his sick bed in Crolun Raigh.
It took several minutes before Wyand had calmed enough to think through what had happened, not to mention the time it took for him to make certain every part of him was still intact. Was it a dream? A Vision? Something else? he wondered. It had seemed far too real to be a dream, yet he had awakened from it unharmed. He knew there were no answers to be found within the hut, so after stretching away the last of the stiffness in his muscles, Wyand climbed out of his bed and opened the door. Darkness enveloped Crolun Raigh, but though the hour was early, an unusual number of people moved throughout the city. This fact in itself lent credence to the idea that what he had experienced was real; regardless of Wyand’s confusion, it was clear that something had happened during the night.
Not knowing where else to start, Wyand followed the short path to Laersi’s hut. There was no glow of blue and green around the doorframe, but instead the soft light of a torch flickered from within. Wyand knocked once, and to his surprise, a man’s voice answered. “Enter,” Carnan said with unusual softness. Taking care not to make too much noise, Wyand opened the door slowly, but he stopped abruptly once the scene within the hut became clear. Stonebrother Carnan sat on the floor in the far corner of the room, his face stricken with grief as he cradled Stormsister Laersi’s head against his chest.
Wyand was too stunned to speak. Laersi’s eyes were closed, and Carnan—the immovable paragon of the Order of Stone—was allowing himself to be seen with tears streaking down his face. Immediately, Wyand assumed the worst of the situation, but then Carnan spoke again. “I knew it would happen eventually,” the Stonebrother whispered without looking up. “I didn’t think it would be this soon, though, or this sudden. She was fine just a few hours ago. We were both asleep, and then she suddenly got out of the bed. Her eyes….” Here Carnan paused for a moment after his voice wavered, then he cleared his throat and went on. “The glow of the Visions was in her eyes, but it was too bright. She just stood there, unable to move, but I could tell she was in pain. After the first few seconds, I tried to shake the Visions away. It didn’t work.”
Laersi stirred and her eyelids fluttered open. In that brief glimpse, Wyand saw that the layer of crystalline film had spread completely across both of her eyes, rendering them useless. She wasn’t dead, as Wyand had first assumed, but the truth of her situation made Carnan’s tears no less justified. “Ready?” Laersi asked softly.
“Ready for what?” Carnan replied as he stroked her hair gently.
She shook her head with mild irritation. “Not you. You.” The Stormsister lifted a feeble hand towards Wyand. “Are you ready?” Wyand trembled as she turned her sightless gaze to him and waited for an answer. He searched for words, but they failed him. Laersi smiled suddenly. “You are ready, then. Good, good. Find Hirst.” Her eyes closed once again, and she nestled her head against Carnan’s chest with a startling look of contentment. “Go,” she whispered in a voice like a soft breeze. Still unable to speak, Wyand backed away and closed the door of Laersi’s hut.
As he made his way along the river, scenes much like what he had just witnessed were unfolding throughout Crolun Raigh; many people, however, had not fared as well as Laersi. Wyand counted seven dead being carried by somber Guided towards the path that led to the Vestry of Taerius. There, he knew they would be placed to forever keep watch over the Vision Pool, even though the cruel irony was that the Visions were what had led to their untimely dea
ths. It wasn’t long before Wyand spotted the Pathshaper speaking with a small group near one of the storerooms. At Wyand’s approach, Hirst stopped mid-sentence and the other Guided dispersed. He stared at Wyand with a calm and knowing smile. To Wyand’s surprise and dismay, Hirst’s eyes, too, were now completely obscured by the crystal covering.
“The Visions reveal their truth once again,” Hirst declared quietly. It was said as both a victory and a loss, an exhausted acceptance of his new reality and a grateful affirmation of his renewed faith. “I am among the fortunate; outward appearance aside, it’s actually an incredible blessing to be as immersed in the Visions as I am now. The path is revealed—Aldhagen awaits us.”
“Us?” Wyand said incredulously.
The Pathshaper nodded. “That’s what we were discussing when you arrived. Anyone who is able to travel will join you on your way to Aldhagen. We’re preparing the scrid now.”
“I thought the Cultists remained in Crolun Raigh, ‘never to return to the world they once knew,’ or something like that,” Wyand replied.
“That was true for many turnings. We believed we were called to this place to delve deeper into the Visions, but I see now that was merely an assumption. The Guided were called here to wait until this very moment. Now the waiting is done, and it’s time for us to help you bring the truth to all people.” Hirst smiled excitedly and took hold of Wyand’s shoulder. “The world we knew is already gone, Wyand, but it will soon be replaced by something far more expansive and far more precious.”
The Pathshaper’s words sent a surge of motivation through Wyand’s body, but a twinge of pain suddenly reminded him of his injuries. The tissues in his right arm were so incredibly sore and stiff that it was difficult to imagine attempting any task, let alone taking part in a battle. “We need to get to Aldhagen, I agree. I just don’t think I’m ready to make that journey yet,” Wyand admitted worriedly.
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