A Season of Rendings

by Adam J Nicolai

  Both times he'd had a vision before, it had come unbidden while he slept—so he'd tried to focus on his questions before he fell asleep, too, to keep them at the forefront of his mind. All this had gained him was several hours of restless tossing; as it turned out, thinking hard about something was a good way to keep himself awake. And how could he mold his thoughts once he fell asleep? Despite resolving several times to take control of his next dream and mold it into a vision, that, too, had failed. He simply didn't know he was dreaming until he woke.

  So he'd had two visions of the future, and both of them had come true. So what? Neither of them had allowed him to prevent what he'd seen. And without the ability to direct the power, to answer specific questions or analyze particular courses of action, his prophetic dreams were worthless or even detrimental. Knowing the future without being able to influence it just filled him with impotent dread.

  Still, he thought as he watched Iggy try to wring one final drop from their water skin, it would've been nice to see this coming.

  "Get moving." Iggy tied the empty skin back on his belt, the color draining from his face. "We have to get to the next tower."

  No one argued. In the desperation of the moment, Syntal even had an epiphany: two quick chants later, she had Helix and Angbar hovering behind either horse, holding on to the rear rider's hand so they could be pulled along in the animal's wake. It was awkward and ridiculous, an experience sure to manifest in his dreams for nights to come.

  It also wasn't enough.

  The animals still had to pull the extra weight, and without Ordlan Green's magic water, their stamina flagged fast. Syntal, too, labored to maintain the chants in the punishing heat. Eventually, everyone dismounted except for her, sparing the horses as much as possible and distributing the burden for each entity's survival squarely on his or her own shoulders.

  He trudged forward. One foot in front of the other. Keep moving. He spared a glance at the next tower, shimmering in the heat, but the structure was so tall it was hard to gauge its distance—especially given the lack of landmarks in the surrounding waste. Close, he tried to tell himself. We're almost there. But yesterday it had taken two hours, under the sweltering sun, to reach the tower, and that was with the benefit of Ordlan Green's water. Today, without that—

  No. He forced the thought away and blinked the sweat from his eyes. Latched his gaze to the tower. One foot in front of the other.

  No one spoke. Their shuffling footsteps scraped dully against the baked earth. In the yawning silence beyond, he imagined he could hear the heat.

  Then even that thought slowly blanked out, as though his body were shutting down every non-essential function to preserve its strength. No thinking. No speaking.

  It walked. That was all.

  Syntal succumbed first, slumping forward in the saddle before nearly sliding off. Iggy caught her. They all paused, the sun flogging them, while Seth lashed her to the animal. Helix's first step after this respite sent a shuddering ache through the raw muscles of his legs.

  He dragged his eyes up. The tower looked no closer.

  "Can't do this," Angbar muttered, his words passing through Helix's ears like so much drifting dust.

  They went on until the horse bearing Syntal stumbled and fell.

  "Syn," Helix mumbled, as Iggy said, "Blackie!"

  Iggy scrambled to the animal's side while Seth and Helix extricated Syntal. She had gotten lucky; while the animal had pinned her leg, nothing appeared broken. The fall hadn't even woken her.

  "Is she . . . ?" Horror or exhaustion kept Helix from finishing the sentence. Lyseira felt Syntal's neck, and shook her head.

  "She's alive. But we have to get out of this heat."

  "Sehk," Iggy whined. Helix had never heard that tone from his friend's mouth. "She's almost gone, and I―" His fingers clawed at the lifeless earth. "There's nothing here—it's all dead! I can't help her!" He dug into his herb pouch, restocked from his day in Ordlan Green, and shook his head. "They can't―" He searched the ground in trembling horror, shaking his head. "I can't! There's nothing!"

  Seth cut Syntal loose, hauled her into his arms, and resumed walking.

  "Iggy," Helix heard himself saying. "Come on."

  But Iggy stayed with the fallen animal, caressing her forehead. "I'm sorry," he said. "I never should've brought you here."

  "She's gone, Iggy." Lyseira knelt next to him. "And Chuckler will be too if we don't keep moving."

  His eyes darted to the last standing animal, who whickered gently. "Right." He pushed to his feet, licked the ruins of his lips with a dry tongue. "Right." He stared at Chuckler just long enough for Helix to begin wondering if they'd lost him. "He says he can carry Syn. If we need."

  "I've got her," Seth called back. "Spare the horse." He was already twenty paces ahead of them.

  Somehow, Helix forced himself to follow.

  An hour passed. Angbar fell next, pitching face-first to the unforgiving earth. Iggy lashed him on to Chuckler.

  Another hour passed. Helix's own vision dimmed. He felt his awareness spiraling away, upward into the ravenous sun. Can't make it, he said, or would have, if his tongue had had any strength. His feet were anvils. He couldn't lift them anymore.

  They tangled over each other. The ground leapt at him, a jackal finally claiming its prize. He didn't care. He wasn't moving anymore—that was all that mattered.

  Lyseira shouted his name. Iggy took his arm. Words swam into his head like a desert mirage.

  Almost there, Iggy's voice said. And Lyseira's: Look!

  His eyelids, livid with sunburn, scraped open and saw the tower. Seth and Syntal had already reached its shade. Chuckler bore Angbar in as Helix watched.

  Pain sizzled down his arms as Lyseira heaved him up by one armpit and Iggy the other. He told his legs to walk but they ignored him, dangling uselessly as his friends dragged him the final steps into the shade.

  The sun's glare abated. The air scouring his lungs turned bearable. Iggy and Lyseira set him down, and he felt the earth—hard but cool against his cheek. He imagined the ice of Pinewood Lake in winter.

  He didn't realize he had stuck out his tongue, trying to drink the cracked terrain, until his friends told him later.

  ii. Lyseira

  This is Your fault, she prayed as she crouched in the tower's shade, her back to its cool stone. Helix, Angbar, and Syntal had passed out; even Seth napped against the structure. Iggy was the only other one awake, tending to the last remaining animal despite his severed connection to whatever mystical source drove his magic.

  Lyseira wanted to join them. Her face felt like it had been scoured with sandpaper. Every muscle quivered as she panted, helplessly, against the wall. She couldn't catch her breath. Her vision swam. She ached to sprawl in the shade and release her awareness—to forget her pain and her fear.

  And if she did, none of them would survive another day.

  They all needed food, rest, and healing. She could provide two of those, maybe, if she had the strength to work the necessary miracles. But without water, even that wouldn't matter.

  This is Your fault, she prayed again—and immediately, the answering attacks came from her own thoughts: Hardly your most humble prayer, Lyseira, and How dare you speak to your God that way? and Who do you think you are? But she shoved past the old knee-jerk protests. She didn't have time for them.

  You can do anything, and You know everything. So You know we're here, and You have the power to save us. If either of those things isn't true, You're not God. It was less a plea than a dare.

  It's not that simple, her old faith argued. We chose to come here. We're responsible for—

  And if we die, she prayed, it's because You chose not to help.

  She didn't expect an answer. She didn't know if she expected anything at all. Akir had answered her in surprising ways before—in Keldale, parting the crowd and granting her protection from the flames, and on the road outside Southlight, granting her the power to heal for the first
time—but she had never even heard of a cleric creating water.

  That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that there's no story about it—You make the rain. You made the entire world. You know every moment of it. You knew what I would do when I heard Helix's death sentence. You knew when we needed manna and You knew who would die for eating it. You know we die here if You don't help us.

  A revelation struck her. The Abbot had always told her that evil came from mankind, a natural consequence of man's free will. But if God was omniscient, didn't He also know that man would bring evil to the world? Didn't that mean that, really, He was responsible for the existence of evil?

  She shook her head. Theology was reflexive to her, but that didn't make it relevant.

  Maybe it's relevant if it means God is not as loving as I always thought He was, she thought. Maybe it's relevant if it means He's ignoring my prayer right now because I've done something wrong, something I don't even realize, and He means to punish me for it with my death.

  That didn't make any sense. Why would He finally answer her prayers and save their lives countless times over, only to let them die in the Waste?

  I don't know, she thought. Why would He let me make manna and spend weeks teaching the poor to read, only to slaughter them all?

  There were no answers. There was nothing but her need, and her fury.

  This is Your fault, she prayed for the third time, and it will be Your fault if we die here. You want me to beg? To show humility? You are the one who has something to answer for. You're the one who killed Cosani and Angna. You made this Waste. You are killing us. You—

  The flames filled her.

  This was not the raging conflagration she had felt when she'd fought the soldiers at Tal'aden, nor the divine, blissful spark of her first miracle outside Southlight. This was the comfort of a hearth fire, the whisper of heat from a loving embrace.

  It is well, it seemed to whisper. All is well. She felt its expression growing, expanding through her as it drove away fatigue and the sun's hurts. She felt her arms lift in response, her lips murmuring reflexive praise—and stopped them.

  No! she screamed. No! I am not just some . . . servant, to be used! I need to understand! I need to know why You did this! I need . . .

  Her rage broke, dissolving into sobs. Her fist pounded weakly at the ground, uselessly.

  Her tears were mirrored in the rain, suddenly falling all around her.

  Iggy, slumped over by his horse, bolted awake. His eyes searched the underside of the tower's capstone, confusion giving way to acceptance as he realized the rain came not from the sky, but manifested in midair somewhere above him. He glanced a question at her—a question she ignored, a question she couldn't begin to answer. Then he started shaking the others awake.

  "Seth! Syntal! Get your skins! Get your skins out!" Scrambling to Helix's side, laughing. "Helix! Wake up! It's raining!"

  Cool and clean, the water ran in rivulets down her temples, soaking into her hair and clothes, driving away the Waste's insidious heat. Lyseira pressed her lips together, refusing to taste it—she closed her eyes, refusing to see it.

  Please, the fire in her heart whispered. Please. I can't lose you, too.

  And for the first time, it occurred to her that Akir was as devastated by the slaughter in Tal'aden as she was. That He was as raw, as ruined, as she was. That He had loved them all as much as she had.

  That He is crying, she thought as she opened her eyes to the rain, just as I am.

  She sucked at the air, broken. The water stole between her parted lips. Why? she asked as she sobbed. Why? Why? Why?

  But His only answer was to soothe her, and slake her thirst, and weep.

  iii. Angbar

  He'd lost track of the number of times he'd been sure they were going to die. The number of times they'd been torn open, or skewered, or tortured or starved or frozen or lost in the desert. You'd think at some point I'd learn to stop worrying about it, he thought as he watched the sun sink below the western horizon. But somehow, I don't think I ever will.

  Lyseira huddled in one of the tents, sleeping off the day's exertions. The girl had healed their sunburns and called the day's manna after praying for rain, and all that after their grueling hours in the desert. How she had done it, Angbar had no idea. He only knew that, once again, they owed her and her god their lives.

  It left him reflective. His parents had raised him to believe in Kirith a'jhul, the Bahiran god of the earth, but that god had never answered any prayer Angbar had ever whispered to him. Oh, sure, sometimes his parents would argue that he had—Look, Angbar! Remember how we prayed for new winter clothes last week? And now comes a merchant selling wool! Praise be to God!—and Angbar would smile and nod along. But he'd never been convinced by these occurrences. They were rare and, he suspected, a matter of happenstance. Lyseira's god answered her all the time, not through some meandering line of coincidences, but directly. Immediately and unmistakably.

  Growing up, he'd always hated Lyseira's church, and nothing he'd seen of it in the years since had improved his opinion. But there was some kind of fundamental disconnect between the church he'd rejected and Lyseira's miracles. The Church was about control—not just control of people, but the control of knowledge and justice. They simply weren't happy unless they injected themselves into every facet of life, a goal they could easily accomplish as the sole miracleworkers in Darnoth. Everyone had to come to them, eventually, because eventually, everyone got sick or needed help.

  But Lyseira's god didn't seem like the god of the Church. He provided without demand for recompense or service. He fed them because they hungered; brought rain because of their thirst; healed simply because He was asked. And the only cost, as near as Angbar could tell, was a physical one: working miracles took a toll on Lyseira, not because her god demanded one, but because she was mortal.

  In truth, hers was a god he could imagine himself . . . believing in? Worshipping? He wasn't sure, but it was impossible to argue against His continuous influence upon their lives.

  The last of the sun's glare vanished, leaving a lingering glow on the horizon. They weren't traveling tonight; they'd agreed to take a night off after their merciless march under the sun. Remembering it, Angbar uncapped his water skin and indulged in another drink. It wasn't the same as the stuff from Ordlan Green—this was mundane water, however crisp and delicious. But it's saving our lives all the same, he thought, and you won't catch me complaining.

  Helix and Iggy had also crawled into their tents for the night, while Chuckler slept on his feet. Syntal was awake, though, using the extra time to study the third wardbook.

  The day's brush with death had finally taken the edge off his anger with her. He walked over. "Anything good?" he asked.

  The girl jumped. "You frightened me!"

  I walked up right in front of you, he thought, but didn't want to argue, so he smiled instead. "Sorry."

  She closed the book. "It's all right. It's just . . . I realized today that we're nearly there, and I'm not ready."

  "What do you mean?" He sat down.

  "I mean I'm not ready. I don't know all the chants in this book yet, and I don't know if I have time to learn them."

  "Well, if you need more time, we'll have to take more time. Something tells me it's not a good idea to stumble across the dragon's dark unprepared." He'd meant it as a joke, but the words lingered after he spoke them. "What do you think it looks like?"

  "The dark of the dragon?" She bit her lip, thinking. "I don't know. I have no idea. But I'm sure Lar'atul set things up somehow—manipulated it, or chanted it—so that the spells in this book will be needed to get past it.

  "I think he set them up sequentially on purpose," she went on, tapping the book in front of her. "The spells in here build on some of the concepts from the second, which built up from the first. It's not just a way to keep the books safe from non-chanters. It's also a test."

  "You think so?" The idea intrigued him. "But why? Didn't you say
he wanted all the wardbooks opened? Why wouldn't he make it as easy as possible?"

  Syntal shook her head, but said, "He talks a lot about responsibility. That you have to be careful. There's a chant in here, in particular, that―" She glanced at him, once, and then away. His earlier premonition recurred to him: that she had found something in the third wardbook she felt the need to hide. "Seth wouldn't like it. Seth won't like a lot of this. It's battle magic, like I told you before."

  "Fire and lightning?"

  She nodded. "And other things. Chants for defense. Oh!" She raised a finger; a sudden spark came to her eyes. "And there was one I found really interesting. It doesn't do anything, as such—it just restores the Pulse to its natural form."

  She'd lost him. "What? Like the Waste here?"

  "No, no, nothing that strong, but—say you chanted me to sleep." A quick dart of accusation from her eyes. "You could use this chant to lift the slumber, to soothe the Pulse to its natural state. Or . . . if you were hovering, I could use it to end that―"

  "—and send me to the ground."

  Another nod.

  "What's the point of that? It's hard enough to maintain the spells as it is. If you want to end your spell, just end it."

  "Sure, if it's your own spell. But in Lar'atul's time, I think they used it more against each other."

  Right. He remembered the stag in Ordlan Green, the warnings about the Raving Witch. Of course.

  I need to learn that one, he thought as he watched Syntal search his eyes. Just in case. "I suppose that makes sense." He coughed to break the tension. Glanced away. "So. Battle magic. A dragon's ghost." He opened his hands. "The implication seems obvious."

  She sighed. "Yeah. The other trials were pretty simple. The hardest part about getting to the Safehold was that I didn't realize it was a test. But this—this will be a fight."

  The stag in Ordlan Green had said, It could sear you to ash with a thought. Angbar swallowed. What was that about learning to stop worrying about getting killed? he chided himself.