Her eyes narrowed as if she were trying to decide whether he wanted an answer or was just being flippant. Concluding the former, she answered, “Those who favor the Mother have.”
“And those who don’t?” He assumed they were supporters of the Bone Reader.
She shrugged. “You were at the Reaping.”
“And you?” There were no boxes outside his own tent, but he’d not checked her uncle’s.
She shook her head and looked back toward the smoke. “I don’t believe in dragons.”
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It was the afternoon of the second day. Quint stood on the overlook. Welloch no longer belched clouds of smoke, though tendrils still rose from the city as small fires smoldered. Not a single survivor had returned, nor had he received any word from the Shades. With nothing else to do, most of those who’d evacuated were crowded together where, clinging to hope, they watched the paths below.
Quint’s eyes, though they were also turned toward the route the survivors would follow, were blinded by his thoughts. Fights had already started to break out between supporters of the Mother and the Bone Reader. He knew he was the wrong person to unite them, and was leaning toward choosing an elder to rule in his stead. Without the Bone Reader, no one would even consider Nikla as a leader. Then a cry from the crowd shook him from his stupor. People were jostling for better views.
He pushed toward the front so he could see. The Bone Reader, in soot-covered robes, was winding up the path toward the camp. Those watching rushed to greet him, leaving Quint alone on the rock outcropping.
Nikla came up behind him. “I feared as much.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t tell me if you had anything to do with it,” she said.
“With what?” He felt as if he’d been found guilty and awaited sentencing.
“When the Mother refused to see you, I know you turned to him. I warned you. That man’s words are a sickness infecting my people.”
There was a distance now between them—a distance that, despite their differences, had not been there before. It didn’t matter that he’d been well-intentioned. When he’d acceded to the Bone Reader’s plan, he’d betrayed her. He was reminded of something Teller Salf had told him. “Betrayal can be forgiven, not forgotten.”
He had excuses ready—lies, if needed. He prepared to use them, but stopped when he looked into her dark eyes. She knows. He loved and respected the young woman beside him, but he’d underestimated her. There was a depth to her that made him feel shallow in comparison. He said nothing—his silence an answer.
“She deserved better.” Nikla watched the people greet the man. “Go to him. It will be expected. Now’s not the time to make enemies.”
This was a side of Nikla he’d never seen—confident, authoritative, cunning. He realized he respected her even more, but feared he loved her less. “But I—”
“Just go. What’s done is done.”
Quint started down the mountain, his gut churning the way it had after their first kiss, when he’d not known if she’d return. He wanted affirmation she still loved him, but asking for that, after all that had transpired, felt petty and pathetic. Ironically, their exchange had left him more, not less, comfortable with the decision he’d made. She is the Mother her people need.
The Mysts, Chapter 49
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To face death is to realize the value of life.
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—Truth (Fundamentals 8:5)
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The Mysts
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“Kutan! Whym!” Stern shouted again into the white wall ahead of him. Why would they leave their packs behind?
He’d just missed catching up to them at the edge of the Forgotten Forest. They were hiking away from the cliff bottom when he’d called to them, but his voice had been drowned out by the rushing river. Without a rope or climbing partner, he’d been forced to backtrack to find another way down. The detour had cost him two days.
After locating their tracks, Stern had followed them along the river toward Fetor. He knew of the place from stories he’d heard in Bothera, but those stories were dated. The town was on the verge of disappearing into the jungle, its inhabitants but a pack of boys. It had required most of his remaining food, but he’d bartered for the information he’d sought—his apprentices were safe and had left on a raft that morning.
He’d hurried after them, searching the river as it bent away from the town. When he reached the falls and had yet to see any trace they’d left the water, he’d feared the worst. Then he’d spied the packs on the opposite bank. “Kutan! Whym!” he’d called again and again before going downriver to find a place to cross. He’d worried they would return and leave before he reached them and had considered waiting, so he could hail them when they returned. Ultimately, he’d decided to cross.
“Kutan! Whym!” He was drenched and exhausted as he looked at the tracks leading from the packs into the fog. Why would they venture into the Mysts?
Despite his gut warning him it was a terrible idea, he intended to follow them. Then he heard a voice—Kutan’s voice. “Stern, we’re coming!”
“I’m with your packs,” he bellowed into the fog. “Are you okay?”
“Keep talking. We’re following your voice.” Kutan’s call was distant, but clear.
“I’m here.”
“We’re coming.”
They volleyed shouts back and forth, and his apprentice’s voice grew nearer and nearer. Eventually, their calls were joined by the approaching sound of sloshing water. Moments later, Kutan, soaked and filthy, stumbled into the open and fell to the ground, pulling the blond man tied to him down with him.
“Are you all right?” Stern moved toward them, then stopped. “Where’s Whym?”
“I’m so sorry!” Kutan looked up, his face ashen.
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The youngest, the one the others called Whym, had struggled, clawing at the root wrapped around his neck until he passed out. Now, the roots dangled him by his ankles above the swamp. Smeit grabbed his wrists. The visions flowed. Wave after wave crashed with an intensity he hadn’t experienced in ages. With an orgiastic moan, the imprisoned Maker witnessed destruction that dwarfed anything he’d experienced since the Stewards had unleashed the Breaking.
He compared the visions to those he’d foreseen for the Council of Truth—an inferno versus a cooking fire. For generations, he’d nurtured the destructive potential of the Council, influencing the lords as best he could from a distance. But that potential paled in comparison. Death followed in the boy’s wake with the surety of thunder after a lightning strike. He saw fields watered with blood and the boy walking among the dead, Amon’s power coursing through his veins.
Ellenrond. Smeit recognized the name—descendants of the Faerie tribe who’d renounced magic. They’d turned away from Smeit’s influence to follow instead the tenets from an ancient and unmodified version of the Allyrian Code they named the Truth—the teachings of Jah before Smeit had corrupted them. Ellenrond wasn’t their original Faerie family name. It was just one of many names assumed by the traitorous family to avoid persecution.
Smeit’s followers had hunted and killed most of the family. But a few had escaped, a fact that still rankled. It was an Ellenrond, after all, who’d led the uprising against the other Faerie and who’d helped found the Council of Truth. Smeit ached to devour the boy as vengeance, but in many of the visions of the boy’s futures, he’d witnessed a single death that meant more to him than all the others—the death of the last Steward.
Smeit had learned from his past mistakes that switching champions didn’t always pay off, even when the new champion held greater promise. First the Dragons, then th
e Faerie, had taught him this lesson. As disillusioned as he was by the Fens and the Council of Truth, he was loath to make another change. But the Steward’s death, Smeit believed, would bring an end to the Age of Amon and would remove the curse, freeing him after being so long rooted to the ground.
I must release him and the others. He’d seen the other two travelers playing key roles in the boy’s life in too many of the visions to risk taking them. Even the fourth traveler, the old man who’d followed them—first to Fetor and now into the Mysts—played a key role.
As only Makers could do, Smeit whispered into the boy’s mind so the words would remain indelibly etched into his consciousness. “Ender of Ages. Servant of Death.”
His roots carried the boy to the edge of the swamp, then rolled him out from the dense fog to where the others waited. Unknowingly, you will serve me as none other has served.
Riverbend, Chapter 50
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“You know me,” said the man with many faces.
“I knew you,” replied the boy he once had been.
“Have I changed so?” the man asked the mirror.
“No more than most,” the glass returned.
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—Excerpt from A Life Lived
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Riverbend
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A thin finger of shadow edged closer to Lapo Rask’s position as the sun climbed over the spires of the Tower of Plenary. Today, like every day, he’d occupy the monument steps until darkness gobbled up the square. Tomorrow, like every tomorrow for so very many turns, he’d reappear in the moments preceding first light. Those who lived and worked nearby knew him only as Fink. To them, he was as much a part of the monument as the obelisk in the center where the founders of the Council of Truth had chiseled their names.
“Greedy! Greedy! Greedy!” the old man clucked, and tossed another pinch of barleybread crumbs to the pigeons. “You’re nearly too fat to fly.” He tucked the bag of crumbs into the lining of the beggars hat at his feet, and frowned at his age-spotted hands. The shaking was getting worse.
“Good morning!” The clerk’s cheerful greeting interrupted his thoughts. Since the Council’s crackdown on whispers, the young clerk, who’d just finished his five turns of service with the clergy, had been his only visitor to the square. No seeker, even those who’d apprenticed under Lapo, would dare be seen in his presence.
“Morning.” With no whispers, only posts that were open to all seekers, his position served no purpose. There was no need for a middleman. He just continued to come to the square by force of habit.
Lapo supposed the clerk’s daily visits were intended by the Council as a reminder of his own precarious position. Still, he liked the clerk, though the young man was less clever than the pigeons.
“Got some new posts today.” The clerk waved a paper back and forth in front of a face covered with oozing pimples and swollen red lumps of pimples past.
“Do you now?” Lapo took the paper. Every few days, more seekers were being added to the list of those charged by the Council for executing whispers. His eyes went straight to the bottom to check the new additions:
Samael Stray
Alana Bicksher
Marvil
Three of my best. He guessed the Council had only delayed charging them so the three could first capture most of the other seekers. It’s only a matter of time before all the seekers are eliminated and Lord Fen uses the TruthGuard as seekers. Then the First Lord will have a monopoly on whispers. He assumed this was Lord Fen’s intent.
With these new additions to the list, the only seeker of any significance not to have been charged was Stern Sandoval. Lapo felt a lump form in his throat whenever he thought about the unusual assignment he’d given his top seeker. I knew something was wrong when Volos brought that post. They haven’t charged Stern because they’ve already disposed of him. And I helped!
With a dispirited shake of his head, he handed the paper back to the clerk. “That’s quite the list. You’ll soon run out of room to add more names.”
The boy shrugged. “I guess they’ll use a second page.”
“There’s an idea.” Lapo returned to his sitting spot, and the clerk made his way back to the offices across the square. Definitely not as clever as the pigeons.
“Maybe it’s time to retire,” Lapo mused to the bird pecking near his left foot—a handsome white and brown cock with brilliant orange eyes. He figured it was only a matter of time before his own name appeared on the clerk’s list. It wouldn’t be his real name, since no one in the city had ever heard the name Lapo Rask—at least, not from Lapo’s lips. To those in Riverbend, he was known only as Fink, the seekers’ intermediary.
Even though he’d begun to speak about retiring to the pigeons, Lapo knew he’d never retire. The thought of being nothing scared him more than the prospect of reading his name on the list. It was probably part of the reason he didn’t try to break the habit of coming to the square. He’d been Fink so long he sometimes thought of himself by the name—too late to turn a new page.
As a young man, he could never have imagined how his life would turn out when the Voice in Bothera had sent him to Riverbend to spy on the Council. Who would have predicted that, while seeking access to the Council’s inner workings, Lapo would ingratiate himself to several lords to the extent they’d consider him their own? And then there was Salazar and the Faerie. One didn’t refuse such a man, particularly with what he offered in return. All sides in the brewing conflict had used him—for securing intrigue, for assassinations, and for other assignments. But since his childhood with the teller in Fetor, he’d only had one master—Smeit, the God of Death, the Master in the Mysts.
In everything Lapo did during the day, he served Smeit. But when the shadow finished its journey across the square, he was accountable to no one. The darkness was his alone. With the coin he earned, he could have assumed any identity. Instead, he chose anonymity. He’d simply disappear into the flow of people in the Maze.
He had no family, nor anyone he considered a true friend. He had no home nor property of any kind. He had only money, and that he’d entrusted to Salazar so that each night, after he was through wandering the streets, Lapo could return to the Cache. He used the secret entrance—not the small door used by clientele, but the hidden one inside the old tannery a block away.
It had been many turns, though, since he’d last lain with a woman. What started as a lack of desire had become a lack of capability. But, even though he no longer benefited from all the amenities of the brothel, he still enjoyed the company of those who would not ask his name as he would not ask theirs. Company, he’d decided, when it was clear he had no other option, was all a man could hope for at his age.
Still, there were days when he considered his legacy and thought it would have been nice to leave something more substantial behind. Such thinking never lasted long. The cure, he found, for such unsettling thoughts, was simply to turn around. There, on the obelisk, was the indentation where Luka Ellenrond’s name had been chiseled away. He didn’t know which was more ironic, that a tool could erase a great leader like Luka from history, or that the Council he’d sacrificed so much to create was now led by the likes of Artifis Fen. Though Lapo’s commitment to Smeit was unflinching, he often wondered why the god tolerated the man.
Lapo turned away from the chiseled indentation where Luka Ellenrond’s name had been. Despite the cure’s efficacy, he still regretted that only the pigeons would mourn his passing.
Colodor, Chapter 51
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The Tenth Faerie Family
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The stories tell of couples nine,
Who sacrificed a child,
To Unum make, then Faerie bi
rth,
Abandoned and reviled.
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But strong in power the nine did grow,
Across the land they spread,
And oft between these Faerie nine,
Were mixed-blood children bred.
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To fathers’ blood should Unum bond,
Custom, by law contrived,
But the tenth Faerie family,
Without the Unum thrived.
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These mixed blood spawn who bonded twice,
The children they begot,
A tool to access Amon’s power,
They found they needed not.
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But access to the Unum had
Kings and queens created,
So those who Unum needed not,
Were by those rulers hated.
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To stay their spread, the law decreed
Swift deaths the Tenth should meet.
So each was hunted, captured, killed.
The purge was thought complete.
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But rumors claim that some survived,
Or newly made have been.
In secret they await the day
The Tenth will rise again.
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—Excerpt from The Rise and Fall of Magic—The Faerie Histories
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Colodor
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“Lily, hand it over. Swords aren’t toys.” Seph extended his arm toward his daughter.
At first, she clutched the thin strip of metal against her chest, but soon relented. The small sword looked like a knife in Seph’s thick blacksmith’s hand. He set it on the bench without even a cursory inspection. “Who made this for you?”
The courtyard smelled of late spring, a hot, decaying fragrance. The early flowers, wilting and browned at the edges, had started their decline into summer. The summer blooms awaited the rains, which had yet to arrive. It was a bridge period, stagnant, but with the promise of coming change.
Birthrights_Revisions to the Truth Page 32
