That, he couldn’t be so sure of.
Suddenly aware of where he was, Raz stopped again, looking around. He hadn’t realized it when he’d mapped the job, but he was so close…
It had been almost a year since he’d seen them. His last visit had left a bad taste in his mouth, and he wasn’t sure he could deal with it again.
Still… maybe things had changed.
Making up his mind, Raz ducked into a nearby alley. Leaping high, he caught the wooden ledge of the nearest building’s second floor, swinging himself upward. It took a minute to make his way up the wall, hurdling onto the rounded roof and pausing to get his bearings.
Then he leapt over the ten-foot gap to the next building, rolling to his feet smoothly as he started to run.
She hadn’t changed in the year that had passed. Her clan-chain was gone, removed not long after they’d arrived in Miropa, but she still had the bronze elder’s ring piercing her eyebrow. Her hair was more white than silver, but even so Raz could only see the woman she’d been in his youth.
It made him sad, clinging there to the side of the five-story estate of a wealthy gem trader named Yvin Gors. It had been years since the shell Raz beheld now, sitting at her usual place on the balcony of the three-story home across the street, had been Grandmother Arro.
She hadn’t spoken a word since the day he’d pulled her out of the burning wagon with Prida and Mychal. Their few mutual acquaintances, unaware of Raz’s relationship to her, called the old woman senile and dead inside, which he was hard-pressed to deny. She always had that little half smile on her face, even in her rare moments of sleep, but her eyes were distant and empty.
There was nothing left behind them. The wise elder she’d been was long gone.
Raz’s free hand curled into a fist, his white cape catching the desert wind behind him. Another thing he could do nothing about, although to be fair there was nothing anybody could do about it. When he and Mychal had still been on speaking terms, his cousin had told him he’d taken her to every physician in the city with no success. At the time, Raz hadn’t doubted him.
Now, though… He wasn’t so sure. The world was a different place, and Mychal was living proof that all things changed.
Raz’s eyes shifted to the window directly above where the Grandmother sat looking out across the road. Light outlined the expensive diagonal glass panes, and he could barely make out Mychal’s figure seated at his desk, scribbling at a bit of parchment with a feather quill.
So, dear cousin was still toiling away. It wasn’t hard to guess who those papers were meant for…
Mychal’s change had been progressive at first. He and Raz had had the occasional dispute about money and how the four of them lived. It was Mychal’s belief that Raz’s actions put them all at risk. He would argue they should be working to find an easier method of survival. They barely made by scrounging on the meager pay he had as a baker’s aide and the fees Raz collected from the rare paying client. It hadn’t been easy, and they’d been forced to move several times, but Mychal had wanted to look for employment with the local government.
Raz, though, forbade it.
Mychal was older, but Raz had been the one to take things over once he, his cousin, Prida, and the Grandmother had finally been able to escape Karth. He’d gotten them back on their feet, doing his best to take after his father and find them a new life.
And his decision had been final.
“Working for them would be working for the rings, Mychal!” he’d screamed the last time they’d had a bad argument. “I won’t let you get that kind of blood on your hands!”
For a while he thought Mychal had forgotten about it, because the subject wasn’t brought up again. Then, one day, his cousin came home announcing that he’d received employment as an adjunct accountant in the city treasury.
He’d left that night, taking the Grandmother with him.
For the next two years Raz and Mychal had remained in touch. Raz’s rationale had been that he couldn’t blame the man for his actions. Mychal didn’t frequent the worst of the crowds, the kind of people Raz dealt with every day. He probably wasn’t as aware of the reach the Mahsadën had, or the corruption he was employed by.
And then word leaked that Mychal’s talent for numbers had been noted, and that his loyalties had shifted from the pseudo-legal systems to a different group altogether…
Raz hadn’t spoken to his cousin since, and in the last two years he’d had to bear the whispers of how the man had risen through the ranks like fire took to a dry crop. Eventually he found out Mychal was working as the personal banker of Ergoin Sass, one of the group’s most infamous—and therefore powerful—šef. Sass was responsible for the vast majority of assassination contracts that were filtered through the Mahsadën channels.
And Mychal was his right-hand man.
Not only that, but Raz’s cousin had even abandoned his real name. Mychal Arro was listed as dead in the city archives, left a corpse of ash, along with the rest of his family, in the caravan fire seven years ago.
Adrion Blaeth had taken his place.
Raz could still remember the day he’d heard the news, when he’d returned to the small house he’d been hiding out in with Prida.
“No,” was all the woman had been able to say, repeating it over and over again. For two days she’d refused to sleep or eat anything. Then, on the morning of the third day, she’d finally looked at him again.
“What happened, Raz?” she’d asked quietly. “Where did our family go? Where did they all go?”
With nothing to answer her with, Raz had left for a job. The next morning he’d returned to an empty house, Prida having gone without leaving so much as a note.
He hadn’t looked for her.
Letting go of the roof’s edge, Raz dropped a floor, catching hold of a windowsill below him. The last two floors he didn’t bother stopping himself, leaping out and landing stooped on the stone before looking up. The Grandmother’s eyes didn’t move, didn’t flinch downward from that distant place she always seemed to be looking to. Even though he was standing in the middle of the Moon-lit road, she didn’t look.
It was a minute or so before Raz turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 25
“While there are a few segregated factions of Laorin Priests and Priestesses who brave the harsh weathers of the North and travel the lands giving aid where it is needed, a majority of the faithful work out of home temples, of which there are dozens. Cyurgi’ Di, the High Citadel, is by far the largest, but in total it only harbors a fraction of the faith’s numbers.”
—Studying the Lifegiver, by Carro al’Dor
The trailing line of figures could be followed for nearly half a league, a snaking thread of black against the white and gray of the snowy cliffs. At its head, four men trudged resolutely forward, careful not to tilt the wide litter rested upon their shoulders. No one wanted to disturb the body lying atop it, the man’s still form surrounded by gifts of silver and gold trinkets to be carried with him into the beyond.
Talo limped along only a few steps in front of them, murmuring his prayers to Laor and using his free hand to mark the mountainous horizon with an upwards half circle, the sign of the rising sun, the sign of rebirth and new life. He had gloves of black fur to match the dyed cloak around his shoulders, and he leaned heavily on his staff as he walked. For once he ignored the pains in his knee that had gotten so much worse in the last few years. He could barely move around Cyurgi’ Di comfortably now, much less make this long trek through the snow along the mountainside without some difficulty. Healing spells and rune binds had helped for a time, but there was only so much the arcane could do for any one body. Carro had offered to aid him to the Giving Grounds, but Talo refused. Carro was a good man, a kind man, with every good meaning at heart. But leading this line was something Talo had to do on his own.
Eret Ta’hir deserved to have someone who could stand on his own two feet at the front of his funeral procession.
> Talo’s prayers caught in his throat for a moment, but he kept moving, reaching the first of the stone steps leading up to the Grounds. Carefully he moved, glancing over his shoulder to see that Carro, Jofrey al’Sen, Ambrose Finn, and Willem Mayle started the ascent safely. From a few steps up he looked down at Eret’s aged face, white hair and beard catching in the cold wind and whipping around his closed eyes. His hands were clasped over his chest, his steel staff nestled into the nook of his left elbow, as was tradition. Talo had to force himself to look away from his old mentor, keeping his gaze on the horizon while they climbed.
It took ten minutes to make it to the top of the mountain. Once he made the first step onto the great circular platform, Talo moved aside to let the litter pass. The bearers treaded carefully, not wanting to disturb the bodies and bones that lay everywhere, scattered over the stone. The Giving Grounds of Cyurgi’ Di were high enough that the old Laorin funeral traditions could still be followed. Burials and cremation piers were common enough in the temples closer to the southern borders, but in the reaches of the mountains such practices were never needed. The dead were left to the elements, offered for the wind and rock and rain to take back what they had given, thus preserving Laor’s gift of life in its purest form. There were thousands of them, lined in circular rows around the flat Grounds, the oldest at the edges little more than pieces of bone and tattered cloth. Even as he watched, Talo saw the wind dislodge what might have been the remains of some ancient cloak and toss them over the edge of the mountain.
It was a natural process.
But the dead were always to be remembered. In the left-most corner of where each body lay, a steel staff was hammered into the ground like a thousand silver needles pointed at the sky. There were five full rings of them, the fluid circle broken only by the path the procession took through the dead.
Carro and the others placed Eret down in the next open patch of stone, placing him beside the desiccated form of a young convert who had fallen to his death from the cliffs only the summer before. They laid the body to rest, then stepped back, falling into the ranks of mourners who’d made their way into the ring behind them.
For a long moment the Grounds were silent but for the hungry murmur of the wind, whistling through the cliffs.
“For those of you too young to remember,” Talo began softly, coming to stand over the old man’s body and looking into the crowd, “Eret Ta’hir will first and foremost be remembered as the High Priest of Cyurgi’ Di, a great leader who even in his failing years still fought to bring Laor’s light to the darkest places of this world. Despite all hardships, this man”—he motioned to Eret’s body—“still leapt on the chance to do anything and everything he could, for whoever he could.”
There was a general nod from the crowd, and tears ran free on more than one cheek to burn streaks in the icy wind.
“But to the rest of us,” Talo continued louder, looking to Carro, who gave him a sad smile, “Eret Ta’hir was even more. He was a man always in his prime, if not physically so. He was a mentor to the most fortunate of us and, to the rest, a master they were proud to learn from. He was the incarnation of Laor’s good will, and sought to live and teach by example, modeling his life in the shape of that will. We would all do well to take what we can from his great character, even as his soul is carried into Laor’s embrace.”
Someone sobbed from the back of the crowd.
“It is for this… for this reason”—Talo couldn’t help his voice from cracking, and another muffled wail joined the first—“that I would ask something of you now. I take it upon myself to do so, because I know Eret never would. If there was anything wrong with the man, it is that in life he was too modest. I-I would… I would…”
He paused again, taking a slow breath to steady himself before continuing in a strong voice that rose above the wind.
“I would ask that we all, each and every one of us standing here now, strive to follow our High Priest’s actions and words, even though he is no longer with us to provide them. Remember the things he told you in life, that we might pass them on to those who will follow our bodies beyond the boundaries of Laor’s gift.”
Every head Talo could see nodded resolutely.
“Let us pray.”
A few knelt, some on two knees, some on one. There were a couple that prostrated themselves on the flat stone, but most stood or sat, doing whatever was comfortable, as the prayers decreed. Whatever the choice, no one spoke. There were no texts to be read, no phrases to be memorized. The prayers came from the people, Eret had often said. They should be organic, should have life. Let prayer be a fluid thought, not a signed and sealed letter.
Let it be from the heart.
Lifegiver, Talo prayed, gripping his staff with both hands and closing his eyes, feeling the mountain air whisper through his graying hair and beard, I would ask that you hurry this man into your arms, for he has wanted nothing more for as long as I knew him. If you would treat him half as well as he treated the rest of the world, you would be favoring him above all your other followers. He deserves no less than the highest place of honor in your rebirth.
Talo opened his eyes, turning to look out over the edge of the Giving Ground.
And please, he continued, bring Syrah home… I’ve heard no reply since the beginning of the freeze, and I fear for her. I would ask this boon of you.
His prayer at an end, Talo looked back to the crowd. Most were opening their eyes, a few already regarding the others, waiting patiently. When Ambrose Finn finally climbed to his feet, Talo held out a hand.
“Jerrom, if you would.”
The elder stepped forward, leaning heavily on a younger Priest’s arm and a thick wicker cane. The last of his generation to have outlived Eret, Jerrom Eyr was bent and half-blind, his thin frame swathed in thick gray and black pelts. His eyes, though, were red and puffy, tears tracking wet lines across his face.
When he was close to the body, the elder thanked his aide, who stepped away to follow Talo back to the crowd.
It was a long while before Jerrom did anything. For a time he just stood over Eret, sharing a last moment with an old friend.
Then he lifted a hand above his head, and a white light flared along the tips of his shaking fingers.
Slowly, as though pulled by a careful puppeteer, Eret’s staff rose from the litter, sliding from under the man’s arm. It turned as it did, revolving so that when it finally hung free in the air it was perfectly vertical to the ground.
For another span it hung there, suspended. The mourners looked on, some watching the staff, some watching Jerrom.
And then there was a flash of light, and with a deafening crack the staff shot downward, piercing the floor of the Grounds and sending flecks of stone and earth in all directions.
Jerrom sagged, and at once the closest men and women rushed forward to help him. Behind them, the rest of the crowd looked on.
The faintest traces of pale mist hung in the air around the base of the staff, the remnants of the old magic that would seal it there forever. As the wind picked up, the mystic tendrils were whisked away, leaving the steel to shine as a thin pillar, forever marking the final resting spot of Eret Ta’hir, High Priest of Cyurgi’ Di.
CHAPTER 26
“The criminal rings were an evolving thing, an organic faction of the South’s culture. If they didn’t learn and adapt, they would eventually fail, falling either to the limited groups of moral crusaders or to their own kind. The Mahsadën were the pinnacle of this process, rising from the ashes of a weak underworld. They thrived by entwining their lives with the very existence of the ‘law,’ working the ‘honest’ government like a marionette.”
—The Cienbal, by Adolûs Fenn
“Apparently your message wasn’t as clear as we would have liked.”
Raz paid no heed to the voice behind him, feigning excessive interest in the great bowl of lamb stew that had just been set on his table in the White Sands’ common area. Truthfully it was less ste
w and more a warmed combination of broth and raw meat, but it was just the way he liked it. Raz plunged in uncaringly, ignoring the splatterings that stained his cloth shirt and pants. He didn’t bother with the dingy copper forks the matron had brought out with the food, preferring to use his hands to rip at the shank and tip his snout directly into the broth.
“Ahh,” the voice continued, coming around to the side before the creak of a chair told Raz he’d been joined at the table, “so it even eats like an animal. How appropriate.”
Raz looked up, mouth dripping. The man across from him was attired in dark-blue clothes of rich silk with white trimming, accenting the ice-chip irises of his eyes. He was tanned from his time spent in the South, but despite all those years his skin was still several shades lighter than any true Southerner’s. A neatly trimmed, blonde goatee adorned his jaw and chin, and a single pale crystal hung from the lobe of his left ear.
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