by Dorian Hart
Go with them to certain doom
Step into the lightless room
For all to thrive you must contrive
To shine within the last of five.
Kibi looked as though he could hardly contain himself throughout Step’s recitation. “Time is right and world is wrong?” he exclaimed when Step had finished. “You sure that’s what it says?”
“Quite sure, yes.”
“Two nights ago,” said Kibi. “It was two nights ago. I had a dream ’bout the Eyes a’ Moirel, and one a’ them said somethin’ just like that. ‘When the world is wrong and the time is right, return our brother to us.’ That’s what it said.”
“We’ve all heard those words before,” said Aravia. “Don’t you remember? When the Eyes spoke to us through Eddings. It was after they had talked about the Ventifact Colossus—the second part that made no sense.”
“That’s right,” said Grey Wolf. “What exactly was it they said?”
Aravia, of course, remembered every word. At the time, Horn’s Company was much more interested in the parts of Eddings’ telling that concerned the colossus. They had briefly talked about the rest in the subsequent weeks but not beyond the shoulder-shrugging and perhaps-someday-that-will-make-sense stage.
She spoke while the others listened intently.
“You have the focus, in whose veins runs the blood of Santo, and you have the talisman to preserve your integrity. But there is one more thing. Our creator did not fully understand us. We are not all required. To travel nowhere, you will need only three who are willing. To travel nowhere, we will need our last remaining brother. He is in the house of Het Branoi, beyond the arch of fire, and he cannot return on his own. The canary has encircled the cat. When the time is right and the world is wrong, return him to us, so you might walk in the footprints of Moirel.”
After the death of the colossus, during their weeks of downtime before the archmagi had sent them on their current quest, Morningstar had asked her Chroniclers for help, but the Ellish library contained no mention of either Santo or Het Branoi.
Certain Step looked at her in wonder. “What does that mean?”
“I think it means—” Tor began, but Dranko cut him off.
“Step, would you excuse us for a few minutes? We need to have a private chat; I’m sure you understand. Here, take a min-mirac and buy yourself a drink downstairs. Keep the change. We’ll come get you when we’ve decided what to do.”
“Of course.” Step calmly pocketed his book, took the coin from Dranko, and left the room.
“So,” said Dranko. “What do we think?”
“I think he’s destined to come with us!” said Tor. “We’re going to some place that’s the ‘last of five,’ and he needs to be there!”
“Ain’t no such thing as destiny,” said Kibi, “but it’s a right sure thing the gods are meddlin’ again. Question is, which ones?”
“It could be a Black Circle trick,” said Grey Wolf. “Lapis could have set this whole thing up somehow.”
“Not without predicting the future,” said Aravia. “And if they can do that, there would be more efficient ways for them to kill us.”
“Like hiring assassins or enchanting rats,” said Dranko. “If our friend Step is a trap, it’s awfully elaborate. But don’t discount the Black Circle’s ability to know things.”
“It’s not a trap!” Tor looked exasperated. “The Eyes of Moirel, Kibi’s dream, and now a book of prophecy from a Kemman priest, all saying the same thing? There’s no way the Black Circle could have arranged all that, and like Dranko says, they’ve shown that they’re much more direct. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful, but I say we take what Step is saying at face value.”
Aravia agreed with Tor. “I’d like to take a closer look at Certain Step’s book,” she said. “If it’s a trap the Black Circle put together recently, the ink of that poem will be fresher, or the whole book will be recently penned.”
Grey Wolf rocked from one foot to the other; there wasn’t enough floor space in the crowded room for him to pace. “Let’s assume for a minute that we do trust Certain Step, and his book is accurate. Between that poem and what the Eyes of Moirel told us, what does it all mean?”
No one spoke up; they were all looking at her. Aravia considered all of the words from both sources. Like so many things, this was a logic puzzle, albeit one set by gods and sentient gemstones.
“This is all supposition,” she said, “but here is my hypothesis. The Eyes of Moirel expect that sometime in the future we will want to ‘travel nowhere.’ Leaving aside for the moment the question of what that means, they assert that in order to travel, we will need several things. Two are someone with the ‘blood of Santo,’ who presumably is one of us, and the ‘talisman to preserve our integrity,’ which could be the bracelet from Ernie’s statue. Finally, we’ll need three Eyes of Moirel—and not the seven that the Eyes’ creator expected us to need. But there is only one Eye remaining that we might acquire, and that one is in a place called Het Branoi. ‘Beyond the Arch of Fire’ likely means here in Kivia, on what for us is the far side of the Kivian Arch. Specifically, the final Eye is trapped in a place called Het Branoi, and when ‘the time is right and the world is wrong,’ we will need to go to Het Branoi and retrieve it. And if Step’s book is to be believed, we will need to take him with us in order for us to succeed.”
“Succeed at what?” asked Ernie.
“At whatever it is we’ve gone there for. To ‘break apart the timeless hive,’ I suppose.”
Grey Wolf frowned. “And what do you think it means to ‘travel nowhere?’”
“I don’t know, but at least now I have a guess. We know that when you experience your ‘gut churners,’ our world and Naradawk’s prison world briefly overlap. Perhaps during one of those periods of synchronicity we can cross from one world to the other by using the Eyes of Moirel in some way, in essence traveling between worlds but in another sense going nowhere at all.”
“But why would we want to go there in the first place?” asked Ernie. “I thought the whole point of coming to Kivia was to make sure Naradawk stayed locked up there for good.”
“I don’t know,” Aravia admitted.
“And what does any of this have to do with the Crosser’s Maze?” asked Grey Wolf.
Pewter, am I missing something?
No, I don’t think so.
“Maybe nothing. We should continue on our current quest regardless of any of this, though perhaps while here in Djaw we should see if we can learn anything about Het Branoi.”
“I think we should trust him,” said Tor. “Trust Certain Step, I mean. He seems like a decent person, if a little on edge.”
“He does,” said Grey Wolf, “but if Lapis had left him as a trap for us, she’d hardly have picked some shifty-eyed bastard holding a bloody knife.”
“She did that already,” Dranko pointed out.
“I agree with Tor,” said Aravia. “We don’t have to give him watches by himself. We’ll keep a careful eye on him. If he’s Lapis’s agent, we can keep him contained. But the failure case if we reject him is worse; it could thwart some future effort to keep the world safe from Naradawk.”
“I suppose this’ll come down to a vote,” Grey Wolf grumbled. “Anyone other than me think we’ve got enough to worry about without hauling a bell-ringer librarian around with us?”
Ernie started to raise his hand but lowered it again. In the end only Grey Wolf dissented.
“Fine. We let him tag along—assuming he still wants to after we make it clear how dangerous our assignment is.”
“The last verse of his poem mentioned his certain doom, and yet he still wants to join us,” said Dranko.
“So we’re going to tell him about the Crosser’s Maze?” asked Ernie.
“I don’t see how we avoid it,” said Grey Wolf. “Not unless we ask him to cover his ears every time we talk about anything.”
Tor’s face attained the excited look that went along with him havin
g a bright idea; for someone so scatterbrained, that happened unusually often. “We just learned the Crosser’s Maze is in a city in the jungle. Maybe once there were five cities, but the other four were destroyed, so ‘the last of five’ is where we’re already heading!”
“Anything’s possible,” said Grey Wolf. “And that’s our next order of business: learning where the jungle is, how to get there as fast as possible, and whether there’s a city in it.”
Aravia conjured up a mental image of the map she had bought in Lyme; that was easier than fishing it out of her pack. “There’s no jungle on our map. So, either the map is in error, or the jungle we seek is somewhere off its edges. Morningstar, you’ve said before that you couldn’t know how far away it was from your Seer-dream, but now that we’ve crossed hundreds of miles of the intervening terrain, do you have a better sense?”
Morningstar didn’t answer. Aravia turned to her, intending to repeat herself, but Morningstar was curled in a ball, fast asleep.
“Best if she sleeps, I think,” said Kibi. “She’s been in a bad way since that business with Shreen.”
“Maybe Certain Step knows where the jungle is,” Tor suggested.
“Let’s ask him,” said Dranko. “Ernie, you want to go down and tell our friend he’s passed his interview?”
Certain Step seemed pleased, if not excited, to be welcomed into their company. “It is said that a man should face his fate with open eyes, lest he blunder past it to the gods’ displeasure. Kemma’s poem promises me ‘certain doom,’ but I will stare it down.”
That was commendable, surely, but more importantly, Step knew where the jungle was, more or less. Their map terminated in its southeast corner at a range of mountains labeled the Stoneguards. But according to Step, who had seen larger maps of the world hanging in his church library, a huge jungle called the Tangled Green lay just on the far side of those mountains.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that neither Step nor anyone he knew had ever been there; the Stoneguards were miles high, barren peaks piled up like jagged razors, and covered with ice all year round. Rumors spoke of passes that were open for a few short weeks over particularly warm summers, but by now they’d be choked with snow. And besides, it was common knowledge that the Stoneguards were riddled with tunnels that were full of goblins, which meant that the passes weren’t safe for travelers even when they were thawed out. Finally, as if that weren’t daunting enough, Djaw was three hundred miles from the mountains’ northern foothills. They had been flying, literally, at about seventy miles a day using Vyasa Vya, but with an eighth passenger Tor would have to make half again as many shuttle trips. That put the mountains at least a week away from Djaw, assuming no mishaps or delays.
Having absorbed this sobering news from Certain Step, the company went to sleep on the floor of their single room, packed like logs in a woodbox. Morningstar, still traumatized after their confrontation with Shreen, was allowed the bed by unanimous agreement. Step himself had convinced the innkeeper to let him sleep in the commons so the others would be more comfortable. They had lent him Morningstar’s bedroll.
That night Aravia dreamt again of her heavy green woods, the seas of ferns silent beneath a riot of vines and branches. As always, she stood at the edge of a clearing, matted with leaves and rocks, carpeted with spongy sphagnum. The light, filtered and lustrous, did not so much shine upon the undergrowth as languidly drift across it. Something there waited for her, curious, impatient, worried.
Pewter purred loudly beside her. It’s the perfect place, don’t you think?
I don’t know, Pewter. It feels like a home where I’m not allowed.
Of course you’re allowed. You belong there.
Aravia wanted to believe it, yearned for that to be true. I do. But I don’t.
Boss, that makes no sense.
You’re right. It doesn’t.
Even in her dreams, Aravia hated puzzles that she couldn’t solve.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Morningstar had no choice. However she might feel—violated, soiled, cursed—she had to continue the training. A part of her wanted one night off, whispered that she could take the time to compose herself. She’d been meeting with her sisters every night without fail, and they could practice, make progress, even without her being there to instruct them.
No. Her responsibility was too great. Aktallian wouldn’t care about her feelings when they confronted him.
She reached for her rock, for that carefully built bulwark of equanimity and inner peace that had served her so well over the years, and took deep, even breaths. Would the others sense that she was tainted? That she was beholden to a vile god who was the utter antithesis of Ell and everything she stood for?
They watched her, waiting for her to begin.
“Morningstar, is something the matter?” Previa’s voice carried concern without accusation, a worry born first of friendship. Hearing it, Morningstar was overwhelmed with a surety that when this night of training was over, she would tell Previa everything about Shreen. Not even Kibi could grasp what those awful minutes in Dralla’s shrine had done to her. Only a sister of Ell would fully understand her torment, how the pall of Ernie’s oath infected her like a sickness with no cure. But there is a cure—giving the Crosser’s Maze to that thing. When it comes to it, it might be better to die than keep that oath.
She set a smile upon her face. “It’s nothing you need concern yourself with. We have plenty to do this day.” Morningstar took one more breath, filling her lungs with the crisp air of the midnight glade. “Thank you all for coming. Ell will be pleased.”
She began with those words each time, a simple mantra of support and gratitude. It was meant to put her students at ease, but today the ritual nature of the words worked to calm her own quivering soul.
Nine students stood before her. Previa, of course, her right-hand woman, stood calmly with her hands behind her back. The girl Jet bounced on the balls of her feet, idly manifesting yellow oak leaves and letting them fall to the grass. Amber stood beside her, conjuring up a wind that set the leaves to swirling around Jet’s feet.
Obsidia was a tall, gangly woman in her mid-twenties, only slightly younger than Morningstar herself. She had made herself a cushion, fashioned in the likeness of the one with which Morningstar started each student, and she rapidly changed its pattern between spots and stripes. Beside her was Starbrook, seventy years old but with hair still as black as coal, holding her own cushion. She watched Obsidia’s cushion intently and easily matched the quick shifts in its design.
The three newest sisters stood together in a group. Amber had recruited them out of the ranks of Ellish Shields only a week earlier, and while they were attentive and hard-working pupils, they caused Morningstar some worry. Like Amber, they continually questioned the need for secrecy, not understanding how this entire venture tip-toed along the sharp edge of the Injunction. One of them, a short firebrand named Sable, had even suggested recruiting the High Priestess Rhiavonne in order to banish all suggestions of illegitimacy. The other two, Gyre and Belle, were quieter but shared Amber’s simmering dissatisfaction. Fearing they would break their vow of secrecy gave Morningstar a constant prickle of anxiety, but there was little she could do about them.
The ninth sister was Scola. As she promised, Previa had talked her into coming back. Scola still didn’t like Morningstar and said often and loudly that she was only here as a favor to Previa, her friend. It didn’t matter. Morningstar considered herself lucky that this many sisters had deigned to come at all, to be secretly trained by the White Anathema.
The sight of Scola frowning at her, swishing her enormous hammer to and fro, snapped Morningstar to alertness. She pushed the oily nausea of her promise to Shreen to the back of her mind and made herself maintain her smile.
“I want to try something different today. Scola, Sable, Gyre, Belle, and Obsidia, please stand off to one side. The other four, stand with me.”
Starboo
k, Amber, Previa, and Jet moved to join her.
Scola gave a small bitter laugh. “Already choosing favorites?”
Ell, I’m starting to think you gave me Scola to test me. Morningstar smiled serenely. “Yes, I am. Scola, you are my favorite warrior, and for that reason I’m putting you in charge of your team. Previa, likewise. I want my best fighters to concentrate wholly on fighting, and my most adept…” She struggled for a good term. “Disruptors, to devote themselves to modifying the environment. For you, Scola, to distract yourself with changing terrain and objects may be to waste your true talents. Since there is no way to know how many hours of training are left to us before we must confront Aktallian, I’d like each of you to focus on your strengths. To that end, only Scola’s group will confront Aktallian directly. Previa’s group will keep well away and devote all their efforts to managing the battlefield. Alter the ground, change the properties of your enemy’s weapon and armor, and work to undo any similar changes wrought by your adversary.”
“What if Aktallian breaks away from our fighters and charges us?” asked Jet.
“If Scola and the others are doing their jobs, that won’t happen. But if it does, retreat as well as you can, slow Aktallian, and circle around until our fighters are again between you and him.”
Scola pointed her hammer at Morningstar. “You assume Aktallian will be alone. What if he’s doing the same thing you are? Recruiting allies?”
“That is extremely unlikely,” she said, trying to sound confident. “Our enemy expended a huge amount of effort just to move Aktallian from Naradawk’s prison world to our own. The archmagi are confident that won’t happen a second time. And Aktallian has no allies here on Spira. Who would he bring? Here, only sisters of Ell can access the Tapestry.”
“That we know of,” said Scola. “You are making a great many assumptions. Admit it. You don’t know everything Aktallian is capable of.”
“Of course I don’t,” snapped Morningstar. Her encounter with Shreen had already weakened her composure, and an unaccustomed anger rose inside of her. “Aktallian might have a hundred soldiers with him. He might be able to expel us from the Tapestry through sheer force of will. Our battlefield may be a sheet of ice, or the middle of an ocean, or falling free through a cloudbank. Maybe he can blink his eyes and set us all on fire! But I don’t have the time, and none of us have the skill, to prepare you for every contingency. All I can do is guess the most likely form our battle with Aktallian will take and train you to win that battle.” She glared at Scola. Some of the others seemed shocked, and the younger sisters, Jet and Gyre, looked scared. They hadn’t seen Morningstar angry before, and who knew what the White Anathema was capable of?
