Anadar IV/III

XII

It was almost textbook, and precisely for that reason it did not frighten her. It merely confirmed what she had suspected all along. One day Unda did not come alone. Two strong men accompanied her, both dressed in white, too clean, too uniform, too faceless to be servants. The dark watcher remained, as always, behind the door, almost invisible and yet possessed of that motionless presence that filled the room without ever entering it.

They pulled a sack over her head.

Her hands stayed bound.

She did not resist. What would be the point?

Out.

Left.

Five steps.

Left again.

Twelve steps.

Right.

Twelve more.

A door.

Wait.

Then on. Thirty steps. Right. Another door. Finally, they sat her on a chair.

And then, for a long time, nothing happened.

Quiet. Silence. Darkness.

An hour, perhaps. Less. More. Long enough to make time turn sticky. Long enough for the body to cramp into tension. Long enough for impatience to curdle into fear if you did not know what was being done.

She knew what was being done.

They left the prisoner sitting in the dark, without action, without stimulus, without any measure of time, until your own mind began to work against you. Until you grew grateful for any voice at all, even the enemy’s.

Then the door opened.

Heavy steps.

Someone sat down opposite her.

“Your name is Xian, correct?”

She nodded.

A pause.

“Please answer.”

“Please take the mask off,” she said.

The man stood, stepped behind her, and pulled the sack from her head.

Xian exhaled audibly. Not performed enough to ring false. Just enough to look grateful. She wanted to play this game. She wanted to be the frightened one, the exhausted one, the panicked one, slowly becoming thankful for any recognizable scrap of humanity. Secretly, though, she analyzed.

The room was plain. Cold. Too empty to be empty by accident. The man in front of her was not the one Nigk had mentioned, but he belonged to the same kind: controlled, clean, direct. No needless ornament. No wasted gesture. And again the same sequence of questions began.

Only sharper.

More direct.

And threaded through it, again and again, was threat.

Not open. Not clumsy. The kind calibrated for effect. That something could happen to her companions. That Unda might be in danger if Xian did not cooperate. That cooperation protected lives and silence raised the price. Here, too, Xian played along. She let herself look shaken, vulnerable, concerned, allowed small flickers of fear to show, just enough to remain believable.

But in truth it was all transparent.

Another stage.

Pressure through attachment.

Pressure through guilt.

Pressure through the attempt to turn care into blackmail.

Almost the way she herself might have learned it. Only, Xian thought, with more hardness. More violence. More time pressure, if the case were urgent enough, or if the people under him were less disciplined. What surprised her most, secretly, was that they were not using physical stress. No blows. No sleep deprivation. No visible torture. Not yet. That meant either they truly needed her, or they were convinced time was on their side.

So Xian stayed with her story.

As close to the truth as she could afford.

Every nuance, every hesitation, every wrong emphasis would be recorded. Every dent in the narrative would become a place they would drill into later. There would be time enough to introduce variations if she needed them. For now, consistency was her best shield.

When they brought her back to her cell, they chained her to the wall again and locked the door.

That night Nigk signaled that the same had happened to him.

They still had control.

Not over Xiodri, perhaps, but over everything else. And Xiodri had heard from them only what they repeated here. The witch had not believed them, not a word, but she had kept her doubts to herself, and that would have to be enough.

The interrogation continued like a script.

Only perhaps with less brutality than Xian herself would have chosen. That did not make it safer, merely slower. In the gaps she kept trying to work her restraints. It did not succeed. They were locked with care, opened only when they took her to the next interrogation, and checked again every time. Always the same dark eyes at the door. Always only watching. Never intervening. Never speaking. As if this being was not a person at all, but part of the house itself.

So the days passed. Or what she took for days.

Until one evening, at least she assumed it was evening, Nigk did not answer her tapping.

Not even late.

Not even with a wrong rhythm.

Nothing.

At first she told herself he simply had not returned yet. Then that perhaps he was asleep. Then that he was injured. Then panic came. Not fast. Not as a scream. More like something cold that slowly filled the belly and climbed from there into chest and throat.

And then she heard a click at the door.

She turned her head.

The door opened carefully.

And there stood her brother.

If she had not been chained, she would have thrown herself at him. As it was she only yanked at the chains, and Nigk was already with her, fast, gaunt, real. For one breath she simply held him, hard enough to test whether he was flesh and not mere hope. He smelled of sweat, metal, exhaustion, and the same prison as she did. It was the best smell in the world.

But Nigk was already at her restraints.

“We have no plan?”

“Run,” he answered.

“We need information first,” Xian insisted. “We have nothing.”

“You still have the band?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how it works?”

“No. He only said…”

She stopped.

Out of the corner of her eye.

To the door.

Had she imagined it?

Those eyes.

She snapped her head around and surged toward the door as far as the chain allowed. Looked out. Nothing. Only the dark corridor. Only emptiness.

But they had been there.

“Xian. The band.” Nigk all but barked it, too quiet to be a real shout, too urgent to be anything else. “How does it work?”

Xian came back, fumbled beneath the amulet, pulled the band out, still tightly folded, still hidden against her body all this time.

“No, I only—”

She broke off again.

Abruptly.

To the door.

There they were again.

Those eyes.

Not imagined.

Not memory.

There.

And in the same instant reality tore.

Pain.

Noise.

Stench.

The world suddenly hung crooked, or it hung over her, she could not tell. A spike of headache drove into her skull. In front of her: a face black as night, broken only by eyes and white teeth. Pointed ears. Skin that barely separated from the darkness behind it. It smiled.

And that smile revealed long, sharp canine teeth.

In the background something like laughter rang out. Several voices, perhaps. Or the same voice from different angles.

Dark fingers slid almost tenderly over Xian’s face.

Then words, close at her ear, in a language she did not understand, followed by others she did:

“This one. She’s strong and clever.”

Then it went dark.

XIII

Hokn’f was beside himself.

With rage, yes. But almost more with disappointment.

Those fools.

Every last one of them.

Grot, Roto, and Kolnidranooora. Though by now, with that last name, he was not even sure whether to consider the man a fool or a corpse. Where was that idiot anyway? They had had a mission, one single, clear mission: remove Anadar from the board, or at least press him so hard that he could no longer wriggle out of it at the Conclave. And what had they made of it? A ridiculous kindergarten farce. An improvised shouting match of accusations, with no preparation, no coordinated testimony, no clear line, not even a trace of the discipline it would have taken to truly catch a man like Anadar.

And then Sinadie.

Hokn’f’s mouth twisted.

That little brat.

He had underestimated her. He had to admit it now, teeth clenched. He had assumed she could be steered the way young deans can be steered when they still believe that an older, experienced man from Ashambrat must surely know what is best for the order of the schools. Instead, the doll had developed a will of her own. And not even stupidly. That was the infuriating part. She had not opposed him loudly, had not barked openly, had not chosen the wrong form. She had blended in, only to slide the knife between the ribs of the plan at the decisive moment.

That had to be stopped as quickly as possible.

As far as he was concerned, she had been dean of the Water School for the last time. He only needed to apply his influence correctly. With a little skill and the right pressure, the stories around the sea monster could be bent in her direction easily enough. A sloppy school. A renegade master. Forbidden practices under her oversight. A monster that could grow unnoticed for months, perhaps years. The guilt was practically lying there, neat and ready. One only had to fasten it at the right point.

He only had to contact his own people on the Islands of the Winds.

Not through Roto.

And certainly not through Grot.

What a pair of incompetent fools.

Grot, at least, could be used. He was vain, easy to needle, reliably hateful, and possessed of a mental heaviness that made him predictable. Men like that were not valuable because they were clever, but because they would run, again and again, exactly where you placed them, as long as you let them feel as if they had chosen it themselves.

But Roto.

Hokn’f snorted.

Roto had had a simple task: go to Gontar, speak to Fontal first, then travel with her to the Islands of the Winds. It was not hard. It was not even particularly subtle. Any moderately gifted schoolboy with a scrap of ambition would have carried it out more cleanly than that puffed up bag of wind. Instead, in their arrogant delusion they had attacked Anadar head on, without proof, without cover, without a prepared echo in the room. And the fire mage had shaken it off as easily as if crushing a fly on a wall.

Hokn’f slowly ran his thumb along the armrest of his chair.

Slowly, he began to see that three schools in alliance were too few.

Too few to keep control of all the schools in the long run. Too few to truly shape the interpretation of the Codex. Too few to push the Conclave in the direction that was necessary. The fire mages stood almost solidly behind their dean. That was their old strength, and the danger at the same time. The whole command structure of their training was built to hold the line. Rotsch had understood that perfectly. Rotsch had been nearly immune to influence and had played the schools like a puppeteer plays his dolls. A master of a kind that appeared only once every few generations. Manador was nowhere near as deft. Not even close. He did not like meddling in the affairs of others, clung too much to his own house, was too direct, too little devious. He would make mistakes. Of that Hokn’f had not the slightest doubt.

The Mother?

Impossible.

Not recruitable. Not catchable. Not even reliably readable. She was the only one who was truly dangerous, precisely because she did not wield her power the way others did. With her, one never knew which side she stood on, only that she never stood where one would have liked to place her.

That left Tandor.

And there, opportunities presented themselves.

Slonda was gone. For months now. Without a trace. The man who would naturally have taken the role in the question of succession to Tranda had disappeared. Isidre was not there at the moment. Tranda himself was old. Ailing. Visibly weaker than he had been not long ago. And in Tandor there were friends. Men and women who did not say no immediately if one chose the right words, if one showed them how much weight there was to gain once the right succession had been secured.

Hokn’f relaxed a little and leaned back in his chair.

The situation was not so bad after all.

It was not even a true defeat. A battle, yes. They had lost a battle. Through dilettantism, through wounded vanity, through men who opened their mouths too early. But time was still on his side. And among the schools, time was a weapon most underestimated.

With quiet confidence he let his head sink against the backrest and began again to run through plans and intrigues, to arrange alliances, to sort names, to reassess questions of succession. In the end, he remained convinced, he would emerge from this story stronger than anyone now believed.

He already saw himself as the man who would steer the fate of the schools for decades to come.

Gnok and Gudi had been sitting in his tower for days now.

Again and again they went through everything.

In this time Gudi had learned infinitely more about magic than in the last years combined. Gnok took apart every layer of the whirlwind spell with her, every line, every sign, every small hook, every seemingly incidental syllable. He explained to her the origin of individual words, the depth of their meaning, the kinship of certain signs with older formulae, the way in which wind was not only movement but relation. He spoke of pressure and emptiness, of direction and inner pull, of the question why some spells worked not through force, but through correct ordering. And Gudi drank it all in with a feverish attention that surprised even her.

They worked on the formula for the whirlwind.

Not merely on a description of what had happened to her, but on a theoretical version that could be repeated. That was the real aim. Not to marvel at a miracle, but to tame it. To put it on paper. To chain it to signs. Again and again Gudi tried to place herself back into that instant of panic, into the movement of her hands, into the sequence of the signs, into the inner tear where everything had suddenly come together. Again and again she thought she had grasped something, only for it to slip away from her in the next sentence.

And as soon as they had a version together that at least made sense in theory, they went into the desert.

Not directly outside the city gates. Not by day. Not where curious eyes could see them and ask questions to which one needed better answers than they currently possessed. Gnok’s tower had a direct exit into the desert, one of those old, cleverly hidden passages you only know if you have lived somewhere for a very long time, or if you have spent a very long time ensuring that others do not. So they could come and go whenever they wanted, without having to pass the guards. No one took notice of them. Or at least no one who let it show.

How many days passed, Gudi soon no longer knew.

Again and again they returned with failure.

And again and again with new ideas.

With new assumptions.

With new formulae.

With discarded lines that perhaps had not been entirely wrong. With signs that were too heavy. With others that remained too light. With the question of whether her panic back then had been not only the trigger, but an essential part of the structure. That unsettled Gudi and fascinated her at the same time. Because if it was true, then perhaps the spell could not simply be thought. Perhaps one had to feel it at a boundary where the body was faster than the mind.

Gudi neglected her plot entirely.

She knew it. Every evening she resolved to take care of it tomorrow, and the next morning she forgot again as soon as Gnok stood before her with a new approach, or as soon as they returned from the desert at night, full of sand, full of exhaustion, full of failed possibilities.

But her plot kept growing anyway.

Without further watering. Without care. Without her doing anything.

Whenever she occasionally threw a glance at it, it had grown even more lush. Denser. Fuller. Perhaps a little too good. Perhaps so good that soon others would have to notice that something there was not quite right.

XIV

Weeks and months passed, and Slonda grew ever better at understanding the connections.

At first he had believed he would have to comprehend time like a book, something you read once from beginning to end and then, at last, you understand it. Very soon, though, he realized it behaved more like a weave, like a river system of movements, resistances, nodes, probabilities, and those fine tensions that were almost impossible to name, the tensions that decided whether a passage was merely conceivable or could truly be entered. And the more he understood of it, the less time he spent in the library. Or rather, none at all. The books had not vanished, they had simply slipped into the background behind what Pildara showed him.

He hung on her every word when she spoke.

Not out of reverence alone, though there was enough of that in him, but because she possessed the rare gift of explaining even the hardest things in a way that neither belittled you nor lectured you. She led him through the structures of time, through its currents, its folds, its corridors and fractures, and slowly Slonda began not only to understand the theory, but to live inside it. He grew steadily more confident at finding possible constellations, at seeing transitions, weighing risks, and recognizing those narrow bridges that could be walked at all between two positions in time. Sometimes he was even more deft than his teacher, or at least faster. Pildara noticed, of course, but she never made anything of it. Whenever he needed support, she was there, precise and patient. Otherwise she held back and let him work, as if she knew exactly that some abilities only truly grow when no one keeps taking your hand.

One day, when it had already grown cooler beneath the oak and the first leaves were yellowing at the edges, Pildara told him they should go to the school now. An important event was approaching.

She did not specify what.

That was her way. She never gave away more of the future than the next step required. She merely mentioned, as if in passing, that they would soon leave Tandor and set out toward Gontar. On horseback. Conventionally.

And that was exactly what they did.

Slonda was almost childishly excited to see the region he knew from his own time, now in an age that lay long before everything familiar to him. And very quickly he had to admit that, in truth, he knew nothing at all. There was a river, yes, the same course, the same movement of water between valley and coast, but its name was not Bricht, as he knew it, it was Krucht. It would be the same one, Slonda assumed. Or rather, the Bricht of his time was probably the Krucht of this world, worn down by centuries, dialects, wars, and the slow shifting of human tongues.

The road ran differently.

The plants along the verge were different.

Some of them Slonda would have expected much farther south, others he did not recognize at all, and often the only thing that felt like an anchor was the chain of mountains on the northern horizon. Yet even there he could not be sure whether they were truly the same, or whether his mind was merely reading sameness into them out of habit, when in truth the distance of centuries already sat in the stone.

So they rode down toward the coast, and as Slonda soon had to learn, the Great Market did not exist yet.

Or only in such a meager, early form that one would hardly have wanted to use the same name for it. Where in his time there were stone warehouses, quays, paved ways, great storehouses and the crush of trade, here there was little more than a fortified road, a few early clusters of workshops, stables, and small market spaces. The road that ran through it was broad, unusually straight, and built with such sober purpose that it almost felt unmagical.

Pildara called it the Legion Road.

And she explained that at this time a great empire ruled these lands and built roads like this, not for beauty, not even primarily for trade, but for control, speed, supply, armies, and order. She spoke of it in a way that made it feel like history and present at once, as if the birth and decay of an empire lay so close together in her gaze that it scarcely seemed worth distinguishing between them. For the first time Slonda had the thought of asking Pildara directly what time she herself truly came from.

She smiled.

And answered that one does not ask a lady such a thing.

That settled it.

As they rode, Slonda received an outline of human history, at least as far as Pildara considered it worth mentioning. And since human affairs interested mages only to the extent that they collided with the schools, their domains, and their room to maneuver, the outline was brief, but not uninformative. An emperor here. An emperor there. Dynasties. Successions. Wars. Peace. Plagues. Betrayal. Rise, splendor, collapse. Progress and regression. An empire is born. An empire falls apart. In between, always, people who believe their present is the center of all history, and then they die, and the road remains, or it does not.

What remained, Pildara said with a dryness that was almost cruelty, were the schools.

Institutions.

For millennia.

And something else had remained the same as well: all mages were born with the Mark.

This Mark.

A sign that made them special, singled them out, identified them, before they had learned a single word of the Art. A reddish spot at the nape of the neck, visible at birth, so clear that even peasant women and midwives knew what it meant. A child with this Mark was destined for the schools, or at least for the testing of whether it was fit for them. No one had ever been able to predict reliably who would receive it. No family, no line, no reckoning of blood ever held true. The Mark came where it wanted. Or where the world wanted it.

The first rite of the schools, Pildara explained, was initiation.

After that, the Mark vanished.

Not because it had become meaningless, but because it had fulfilled its task. It had chosen. After that the mage belonged to the school, and the school marked them in other ways.

That too, Slonda noticed, had hardly changed in thousands of years.

And so, in autumn, they finally rode to Gontar.

This city had changed greatly.

The old Gontar was not a stinking mud pit, not a later city cramped into something unpleasantly narrow, but a carefully laid out, almost bright city with broader ways, more order, better stone, and the feeling of deliberate planning. Above everything stood the School of Life, large and clear in its design, and to Slonda’s quiet surprise it turned out that the School of Time had its place here as well.

Or rather, its small corner.

Pildara told him, with audible amusement, that time mages never truly mattered. Never more than a handful. In almost any age. Though one could not determine that quite so precisely, she added, and laughed, bright as a bell, at her own little relativization, as if this old joke still delighted her.

They rode into the School of Life and withdrew into the small area assigned to the time mages. Pildara showed him the rooms. The great library of the School of Life, which in truth seemed rather modest by Slonda’s standards, perhaps ten shelves at most, plus a small reading room in a tower that the time mages were allowed to use. Knowledge had always been hoarded chiefly in Tandor, Pildara remarked dryly, and Gontar had never been vain enough to claim otherwise.

There she finally left him.

She excused herself with an urgent matter she had to handle and disappeared without further explanation, something Slonda now found almost comforting. He began to rummage through the books and quickly lost all sense of the hours. Now and then a servant came, brought tea, later something to eat, later tea again, and so time passed the way it always passes in libraries, not noticeably, but simply by closing itself behind you.

He sat deep in an armchair, a book on his lap, so absorbed in what he read that at first he did not even notice when someone entered the room.

The person waited patiently.

Not clearing their throat, not coughing, not making themselves known, simply standing there, as if they knew Slonda would look up sooner or later. And when he did, he startled so deeply, so completely, that the book nearly slipped from his hands.

He was looking into his own face.

Older, certainly.

Perhaps not much older, but enough that age was no longer interchangeable. The same face, only drawn harder, more knowing, with lines around the eyes that spoke less of fatigue than of long living and long thinking.

His older counterpart cleared his throat and smiled.

“It’s always a bit strange when we meet ourselves,” he said. “We actually try to avoid it.”

Then he laughed.

The older version smiled. The younger sat there with his mouth open.

“Especially,” the elder went on, “because the older version knows how dumb and ignorant it truly was at this meeting.”

Then he laughed outright.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell you anything.”

Slonda tried to pull himself together. “You? You are me?”

“So it seems.”

“This is the meeting Pildara meant?”

“Exactly.”

The older Slonda stepped a little closer to the table, studying the younger with a mixture of affection, mockery, and that peculiar embarrassment that likely only arises when you have to look at your own earlier face.

“It’s necessary now,” he said, “you’re almost at the point where you move from theory to practice.”

Slonda looked himself in the eyes and found something that unsettled him even more than the resemblance: familiarity. The man before him was a stranger, and yet not a single movement was truly foreign.

“In the time you live in,” the elder said, “these are wild times. And they are becoming more and more unpredictable.”

Slonda smiled uncertainly. “And that’s why you’ve come?”

“I haven’t come because I think it’s wise,” the older Slonda said. “I’ve come because it’s necessary.”

He grew serious.

“It is essential that you do a few things, Slonda. I cannot help you with them, not in the proper sense. You will make the right decisions. Only let it be said that your brother, our brother, needs our help. He stands at a very dangerous precipice, and he must not tip over.”

Slonda stared at him, uncomprehending.

“He needs information,” the older Slonda said, “that no longer exists in his timeline. And he needs it quickly. You must find passages that bring you back close to him, and then away again, to the information he needs. And then that information must find its way back to him. I can’t say more than that.”

“But you’ve already lived through all of this.”

“Yes.”

The older Slonda nodded.

“But we are only human, too. And our life is long. If I tell you, it may be wrong, or not right. You must trust your own judgment in your now, not my memory. That matters.”

He set a hand on the arm of the chair, as if he needed to fix the next sentence in place.

“Seek passages that bring you back to your brother. As close to him as possible. But it’s important that it be after the time when you last saw him. He has, let’s say, gained new experiences and friends.”

Slonda still looked at him as if he were listening to a language whose grammar he knew, but whose meaning refused to settle in his head.

“It’s important,” the older Slonda said again. “Do you understand? Your brother is living linear events that are all leading toward something. Toward an event beyond which none of us can see. And that event comes closer and closer. In his time. The passages there are limited. The passages with reduced risk. The older he becomes, the more uncertainty is added.”

“You know the theory,” he continued. “Now you have your assignment.”

Then he smiled crookedly again.

“Remember that once you’re in his time, you’ll have to orient yourself, find where your brother is, and then also find that place at the same time. It sounds simpler than it is.”

Slonda sat there, still completely overwhelmed.

The older Slonda saw it, and for a moment his face softened.

“I know how confused you are,” he said. “I was, too.”

Then he burst out laughing again.

“And do yourself a favor. Never eat crab in Trodsing. Don’t do it. Not at any time. Never.”

The older Slonda was still laughing as he left the chamber.

And the younger remained behind, bewildered, the book forgotten on his lap, his gaze still fixed on the door through which his own future face had just disappeared.

XV

Time. Anadar had none left.

He felt his patience slipping, felt the inner pull that had already been driving him forward since the encounter with the kraken and the images of the ancient world turn finally sharp. The Conclave was over, the decision spoken, the voices faded, the whole slow machinery of the schools once again poured into form, and he knew that now, at last, he had to begin dealing with the things that truly pressed.

He left the Conclave almost as the first.

Not in flight, not openly rude, but with that straight, unyielding purpose that told anyone who knew him that he had no time left for further words. He crossed back through the hall by which the water mages had entered the Conclave, because one always left the assembly by the same passage one had come through.

Shara and Morgut followed when they saw him pass through the door again.

Both threw questions at him, first with looks, then with words, but Anadar did not answer at once. He did not want to be held up by anyone now. By none of the masters. By no last courtesy. By none of those half conversations in which you hear the same things wrapped differently one more time. So he marched with the two of them in tow as quickly as possible away from the island of the Conclave.

“How far are the preparations?” he asked as soon as they were far enough from the others.

“The ship is ready,” Morgut said. “We can sail whenever we want.”

“Who will accompany us?”

Morgut threw Shara a quick look, but Anadar answered fast.

“Only the three of us,” he said with a certainty that allowed no contradiction. “Only the three of us. We travel fast. We travel quietly.”

“Will you finally tell us what was decided in the Conclave?” Shara asked impatiently.

“In a moment.”

They reached the island assigned to them, where Miene and Sindra were already waiting. Both looked as if they had sensed something coming before anyone had told them anything. Anadar looked at them, smiled briefly, almost kindly, and then went straight to them without detour.

He looked them deep in the eyes.

“We will have to leave you here.”

No preamble. They were about to protest at once. Of course they were. The no was already written across their faces before they even drew breath.

“It is to protect you,” Anadar said, lifting a hand to cut off any reply before it could be born. Then he let a pause hang, just long enough to place the real blow cleanly. “And it is not my decision alone. Speak with your mother.”

And with that he left them standing there.

Not cruel, not deliberately rough, but with that abrupt finality only someone can muster who truly believes he has no time left to lose. Their protest did not die, it merely shifted its direction. He knew exactly where they would go now, and that was enough. He turned away, went into his chamber, and took Shara and Morgut with him.

Once inside, he closed the door.

“The two of them are busy protesting somewhere else,” he said dryly. “They will not be listening at our door.”

He sat down on the bed, rested his forearms on his knees, and gave them a rough summary of the Conclave. Not every word. Not every intervention. Only what mattered. The accusation. Grot’s attempt to pull him into the center of it. Sinadie’s entrance. The decision. The calling of an Inquisition. And above all, that they themselves were listed only as witnesses, not as the true object of the inquiry.

Then he drew out the letter Manador had slid under the table and handed it to Shara.

“Can you read it? Manador seemed to think it was important that no one overhear this by accident.”

Shara took it, looked at Anadar briefly, and asked, “You have not read it?”

“No,” he said. “I want to keep a few secrets from our unpredictable friend a little longer.” He flicked a brief glance toward the sword. “Read it. And you decide whether I need to know.”

Shara read the letter attentively.

Then again.

Her face barely changed, but Anadar knew her well enough to see that the contents carried weight.

“May I give it to Morgut?” she asked.

Anadar looked at the young mage. “Of course.”

Morgut read.

Then he let out a soft whistle and lifted his eyes to Shara. For a moment the two of them looked at each other, and Anadar knew at once that they were understanding each other without words. He nearly burst with curiosity, but held himself in check. It pleased him, strangely, not to feel entirely transparent yet.

“And?” he asked at last. “Does it change our plans?”

Shara and Morgut exchanged another glance. Then Shara turned back to him.

“That can wait. First we have to find a solution for your most urgent problem.”

She smiled, folded the letter, and tucked it away.

“That will have to wait.”

The next morning the three of them were already down by the tower.

Miene and Sindra were there too, both visibly chastened, in that silent way that told you they had just endured one of those unpleasant talks with the mother from which no one walks away a winner, no matter what was said or decided.

And there were others.

Not many, but enough.

Grot was there, and with him several mages of the water school. They had sensed a departure, and they had come to prevent it. Their posture was grim, their faces shut tight, and the little gathering smelled from far away of anger, uncertainty, and that half borrowed feeling of authority people get when they believe they are the majority.

Grot spoke first.

“You will not leave the islands, Anadar. You are the subject of an Inquisition.”

Anadar only looked at him.

“No, Grot,” he said calmly. “The water school is. And the circumstances that led to the sea monster. I am only required to appear as a witness.” He let a small pause hang and added in a deliberately mild voice, “And think of me as a marginal figure. After all, it was you who defeated the monster. And it was one of yours who created that monster. Or was it himself?”

Several of the mages around them stared at him.

Not hostile anymore, but startled. He had just revealed something to them that, apparently, they had not known. It seemed Grot had shared information very selectively. That was always dangerous. Not because it was morally wrong, but because people hate being caught, in front of an audience, realizing they were given only half the truth.

“You will stay here,” Grot said with all the stubbornness and borrowed authority he could muster.

“Says who? You?”

Anadar’s patience snapped for real. Not out of fear of the decree, but because this posturing fool was stealing his time again.

“I am summoned as a witness. The inquisitors are welcome to question me. For that, I do not have to remain here.”

Then a grin spread across his face.

It was not a friendly grin.

It was that narrow, almost dangerous brightening that showed a part of him suddenly wanted to vent his frustration on someone who deserved it. Grot saw it. And he took a step back. Only one. But enough that the others noticed. The support around him began to waver.

“Stop.”

The voice came from behind them.

Everyone turned.

Sinadie stepped out of the tower. Leaning on a staff, pale, moving with visible pain, yet upright. Isidre was at her side, angry enough to heal and strangle three people at once. To Anadar’s surprise, Roto stood with them as well.

Sinadie looked at Anadar first.

“May I have a moment of your time, Master Anadar?”

Her gaze was steady.

“Before you start a quarrel here that no one in their right mind wants.”

Then she turned to Grot.

“And you?” Her voice cooled noticeably. “Is this the hospitality with which you treat guests who came to our aid in our need? You should be ashamed.”

With that she simply turned around.

Not hurried, not triumphant, but with the exhausted inevitability of a woman who had decided the room must bend to her, because she no longer had the strength to bend to anyone else. With Roto and Isidre accompanying her, she went back into the tower.

Anadar, Shara, and Morgut followed.

Inside, Sinadie waited until the door was closed, then looked at the three of them in turn, especially Anadar.

“You care nothing for diplomacy? You would have marched straight through him just to get off this island?”

“Perhaps you should have let it happen,” Anadar said dryly. “That would have been one problem less.”

Sinadie pressed a hand to her side and sank with an audible slackening into a chair. The movement pulled at her wound; Isidre cursed under her breath, knelt at once, and began to adjust the bandage with practiced hands.

“I will not remain dean here much longer,” Sinadie said, before Isidre could force her to be quiet. “And I think my freedom of movement will be restricted very soon. They will try to pin this whole mess on me.”

Anadar said nothing.

“You will sail today,” she continued. “With Roto and Son and Indra on board.”

Anadar already started to object, but this time it was Roto who cut in.

“Wait.”

It was the first time in a while that his voice did not sound like self importance, but like someone who had understood how tight things had become.

“It is clear to all of us that you have other matters to pursue,” he said. “And that you have no time left. It is also clear that you do not want me, or anyone else, to follow you. So please listen to the end.”

Anadar fell silent.

Roto nodded to Sinadie and went on.

“On the way, I will stay on the ship while you three will transfer. We have prepared everything. Indra and Son will accompany me. We will search for Kolnidranooora. There is still no trace of him. None of us will know where you go ashore. None of us will know where you truly go next. But everyone here on the islands will think everything is proceeding in an orderly way, and that you are leaving under my escort.”

Anadar stayed silent a heartbeat longer than necessary, then looked to Shara, then to Morgut. Both nodded.

“Good,” he said at last. “Then we do it that way.”

Sinadie drew a shallow breath.

“When you step back outside, Anadar, at least look as if you are contrite. That would help convince the people out there that everything is proceeding by the book.”

She reached for his arm.

“Please.”

Then, after a small pause, with a weariness that suddenly sounded more honest than any sharpness before it:

“And whatever it is you must do, I wish you success.”

With that she sagged a little. Not unconscious, only exhausted to the bone.

On the way out, Isidre intercepted them.

More precisely, she intercepted Shara, though she did not ignore Anadar and Morgut.

“I would like to come with you,” she said, “but Sinadie needs me more urgently right now. I would rather support you in your condition, but it is also the most natural thing in the world. You will manage.”

Shara looked at her, confused.

“Isidre, I do not understand what you mean.”

Isidre froze.

Then she looked at Shara for a long, almost disbelieving moment.

“You do not know? You truly do not know?”

Shara frowned.

Isidre’s face softened, unexpectedly.

“Shara,” she said, “you are pregnant. Congratulations.”

The sentence dropped into the air like a stone into still water.

For a heartbeat, nothing moved.

XVI

At least her brother was alive.

That alone kept Xian from losing her mind completely in the first hours, perhaps days. Like her, Nigk was captive. He was beside her, close enough that she could hear his voice, tell his breathing apart from the others, sometimes even sense the quiet, controlled tightening of his muscles when he tried to free himself from the device that held them both.

Xiodri was in the same place as well.

Or in the same cavern.

Because this was not a room, not one built by human hands. Everything was too skewed, too irregular, too grown instead of constructed. The ceiling was low, almost pressing down, and at first, when Xian was still half dazed, she had believed she was hanging upside down. That impression had not been entirely irrational, because their guards seemed able to walk along the walls, even across the ceiling, as if up and down did not mean for them what it meant for ordinary living beings. More than once they had appeared suddenly right in front of her face, hanging there, silent, those black features and those white fangs so close she could feel their breath.

She and Nigk were both locked into contraptions that made any real movement nearly impossible. Her whole upper body, up to her chest, was encased, warmly held by a material that did not feel dead, not like metal or stone, but almost alive. It gave slightly beneath her ribs where her breath moved, adapting without loosening, and precisely because of that it held her all the more firmly. Her hands were fixed behind her back. The rest of her body protruded from the prison, but even there the margin was so narrow that escape felt like a joke. She could move her head. Her neck. A little bit of her shoulders. That was all.

And yet she was not cold.

That was almost the most unsettling part. The cavern was dark, damp, full of shadow, and still that living casing carried its own warmth, just enough to keep the body from stiffening. It was a considerate kind of captivity, and that was exactly why it disgusted Xian.

The cavern itself was enormous, or at least that was how it felt. She could not see far. Too much darkness, too many ledges, too many movements that vanished into half light. Only sometimes, when a dull glow flickered somewhere deeper in, or when one of the black figures ran along a wall, did she catch a sense of breadth and depth, of a vault stretching far beyond what human sight could reliably grasp in the dark.

Everything about it was confusing.

Again and again their guards came to her, always the same black faces, the same dark eyes, the same white teeth that stood out more sharply in the gloom than anything else. Again and again they asked the same questions. Sometimes in an archaic dialect, rough, deep, full of sounds that rubbed against each other like stone on stone. Sometimes directly inside her head, and then the same questions sounded completely different: modern, clear, immediate, as if the meaning were being placed into her mind without detour.

Two things, above all, seemed to matter.

The amulet.

And the Band.

Or more precisely, the Band’s function.

In front of them, on a rack like table, lay the rest of the belongings taken from them. The bows. The bag. The spectacles. The knives. Everything laid out neatly, everything visible, everything within reach and still unreachable. None of it seemed to interest these beings much. They asked about it only in passing. Their true attention was on the amulets, on their maker, and on the Band that Xian had almost at the right moment pulled from her clothing before reality tilted again.

It was not a problem that the three prisoners spoke with one another. Their guards did not forbid it. On the contrary, sometimes it almost seemed as though they listened with greater interest to the conversations between Xian, Nigk, and Xiodri than to the direct answers to their own questions. As Xiodri remarked once, pale faced and with that brittle matter of factness of hers, it was probably the getting to know one another that mattered. Not their individual abilities. Not Xiodri’s shape shifting. All of that seemed secondary. Only the getting to know one another.

Something about their connection was more important.

When one of those beings approached again, from the ceiling this time, and hung there with its white fangs directly in front of Xian’s face, it lifted the amulet once more and asked the same questions again.

“Which master made jewelry for you?”

“Who give it to you?”

“Why?”

This time Xian began to turn the tables.

Not openly defiant, not foolish enough to provoke them for its own sake. But sharp enough not to simply let the game happen to her.

“Why don’t you tell me why this is of such interest to you?” she asked. “If you like it, then just take it.”

She was met with a white smile that was not laughter.

Almost the opposite of laughter.

“If it were that simple.”

The voice did not come from the figure in front of her.

It was deeper. Much deeper. So deep and rough that Xian barely understood the words at first. It sounded like a boulder speaking to her, one that had learned at some point that language could be useful without ceasing to be stone.

“Who?” she asked, looking around, but she saw no one.

Then she heard it.

A sound as if heavy stone were rolling over stone.

And something truly did roll out of the darkness.

It stopped in front of her prison. For a moment it was only a strange, low mass, barely distinguishable against the ground. Then it straightened.

It was a little fellow.

Almost broader than it was tall, with two legs, two arms, and a face that really did look as if it had been carved from stone, not merely rough or wrinkled, but mineral, as though skin here were made of the same matter as rock. In the weak light Xian could not make out every detail, only that the being would hardly have reached above her knee if she had been standing free.

The voice boomed again.

“These artifacts you wear around your neck protect you from the Aversion. And they give the one who gave them to you information about your condition. Whether you wear it or not. Whether you are alive or dead. Whoever gave it to you is a true master. And he is clever.”

At once, movement stirred in the background.

Hissing.

Excitement.

Sounds from the darkness and from the ceiling, sharp, quick, furious.

The little stone being almost rolled its eyes, if a creature of stone could do such a thing.

“What,” it rumbled, now clearly louder, “are they supposed to do? Who are they supposed to tell? What that person does not already know.”

One of the black figures dropped from the ceiling and planted itself in front of the dwarf. Taller, slimmer, more dangerous in the way it moved, it gestured violently while hissing loudly, as if every word were a knife stroke.

The little one did not retreat by a finger’s width.

“Really?” it growled. “You want to threaten me?”

As it said that, it reached toward its belt where, Xian guessed, a weapon hung.

More hissing. More agitation.

For a moment the air itself seemed to tighten, as if someone had crossed a line that did not concern the prisoners at all, but belonged among their captors.

Finally the little one rolled away again.

Just like that.

Back into the darkness it had come from.

The black figures withdrew as well, reluctant, even quieter than before, until only the restless echo of their movements along wall and ceiling remained.

“What in hell is that?” Nigk asked at last.

More to himself than to the two women.

Xian had no answer.

She looked to Xiodri.

And saw that the witch had turned pale. Truly pale. Not only exhausted, not only unwilling or silent, but with the expression people wear only when something from stories suddenly becomes flesh.

That, perhaps, was the most disturbing thing of all.

XVII

Fans was a fisherman.

He had been one his whole life.

His father had been a fisherman, and his father’s father as well. It was not a profession you gave much thought to, not a choice you made one day because you aspired to something higher. It was simply the life you were born into, like weather that had always been there. The boat had belonged to the family for as long as anyone could remember. It was old, often repaired, tarred again and again, patched here and there with different wood than it had been built from, but it still floated, and as long as it floated it was a boat, and that was enough. A few nets, not many and not particularly good, but usable. It had never been much. But most of the time it had been enough.

Fans had a wife and five children.

Seven mouths to fill, seven people who looked out at the sea and hoped it would yield what you needed to make it through the next week. Fans did everything he could. He was not a lazy man, not one to surrender to misfortune without a fight. If the sea gave little, he went farther out. If the nets tore, he mended them at night by lamplight. If the boat leaked, the next morning he was already half under it again, with resin, wood and curses.

But in the last few weeks, going out had become more and more of a gamble.

More and more fishermen refused to leave the shore.

Because of the monster.

Fans did not believe in fairy tales. At least that was what he said. He did not believe in the stories old women told children so they would not wander into the fog at night or stray too far from the beach. But he believed in monsters. Or at least in things big enough to tear a boat apart and make men vanish, leaving behind nothing but splintered wood and strips of sail. He had never seen this monster himself. Nor had he ever met anyone who truly had. But he had seen wreckage. Wood that looked not smashed but ripped open. Rope frayed like flesh. And he had heard that music.

Again and again in the fog.

Out at sea, when he was there with his two eldest boys, who were learning the trade now, too, and already had the first calluses on their hands, the way he had at their age.

That music was the worst of it.

Not loud. Not constant. Sometimes only distant, like a breath that brushed over the water and touched something inside you that you would have rather kept sealed. A strange, mournful, uncanny music that did not come from flutes and did not come from singing, and yet had something of both. Something in it made the skin go cold. Something in it told you to turn back, even when the sky was clear and the water calm.

And it only grew more unsettling.

More and more fishermen stayed on land.

At some point he did not want to go out either.

So they lived on what they had. His wife and the girls sewed, patched old clothing, traded scraps for flour or salt. Fans mended nets, repaired the boat, gathered wood, tried his hand at hunting, which had never suited him, and fished in shallower waters where you still had solid ground at your back from the shore. But it was not enough. Not really. Eventually bellies grew emptier. Faces grew narrower. The children grew quieter. It is a particular kind of misery when even the loud ones in a house stop being loud.

Weeks passed without a catch.

Weeks without real income.

And so one morning he spoke with the other fishermen. Not openly in the square, not loudly, not with the air of courage, but in small groups, in half voices, with glances over shoulders, as if even the sea must not hear that they meant to go out again. They had heard nothing for a long time. No music. No wreckage. No missing boats. The fog had been calmer in the last few days, the water still. They decided to risk it.

They would go out together.

Three boats.

Together sounded safer.

Together was always only a thin kind of hope, but better than alone.

So they went out.

In the morning the sea lay quiet and smooth. A light fog hung over it, not thick, not threatening, more like a cloth still half spread over the water as the sun rose slowly. The sails filled with only a little wind. Everything was muted. There were hardly any sounds except the soft slap of water against the hull and the creak of old timbers taking in moisture and letting it go again like bones in cold air.

They heard no music.

That did not make it better, only stranger.

The fog thinned as the sun climbed. It grew brighter. Warmer. The other two boats were still clearly visible, sometimes nearer, sometimes farther out, but always within the agreed range for signals. Fans stood at the edge, watched the nets they had set, and waited.

Then came the jerk.

So hard and sudden that the whole boat groaned and lurched sideways.

Not like a heavy catch. Not like a larger shoal tangled up. This was different. Something had snagged in the net. Something big. Something that did not pull, but held fast.

Fans tried to haul the net in.

He could not.

He cursed, pulled, braced his feet against the wet planks. Nothing. The net had set. Under normal circumstances he would have cut it loose. Every fisherman knew when a net was worth more than the risk, and when you took the loss to save boat and men. But what was normal in days like these.

He signaled his eldest son to raise the red flags.

The agreed signal for trouble of any kind.

The other boats saw it and came in. Slowly at first, then more decisively as they realized something was truly wrong. Men shouted over the water. Suggestions. Curses. Prayers, half aloud, half into their beards. In the end they split the net across all three boats, tied it off, reinforced it, and pulled together.

It was grueling.

Slow.

Something beneath them began to rise.

Not alive. Not fighting. More like a weight being reluctantly released from a depth where it should have stayed.

And when it surfaced, their breath caught.

At first some thought the monster was attacking.

Someone screamed. One man even stumbled back, as if you could retreat from the sea on a boat. But the thing did not move.

It was dead.

In their net lay the enormous body of a dead monster.

Long and white it was, or rather what remained of that whiteness. Mutilated. Smashed. Split by huge rents, as if something had torn at it from within and from without at the same time. The skin was open in many places, beneath it dark, shredded flesh, between it slime, old traces of blood, something that glinted dully in the sunlight. The body was so large it had nothing to do with a normal catch. This was no animal you sold at a market. No whale. No fish. Nothing God had made for pots, salt, and smoking.

It was the monster.

And its eyes.

Empty.

Dead.

And yet they stared at the men on the boats, glassy and open, as if something still looked out from behind them.

On its head were two long tendrils.

Or what had seemed like tendrils at first.

Then they looked closer.

And everything became worse.

In those two long appendages, human bodies were trapped.

Not washed up. Not caught by accident. But embedded, grown in, bound fast to the corpse of that dead abomination, as if they had become part of it. Two human bodies, pale, lifeless, with dead eyes that stared at the fishermen just as the monster itself did.

For a moment no one said a word.

The sea was still.

Only the ropes creaked.

And somewhere very far away, so far that no one could be sure whether it was really there or only in their own minds, Fans thought he heard a last remnant of music.

XVIII

Shara was still standing on the ship’s deck with her mouth half open.

Isidre’s words had hit her like something that did not merely strike from the outside, but shifted an entire inner order from within. She still had not truly filed the statement anywhere. She stood there with her hands on the cold wood of the railing and kept circling the same thought in new, useless loops.

Pregnant?

Her?

By whom?

But even that question did not hold for long. Of course she knew. Of course there was only one possible answer. And with that realization, the Midwinter celebration in Zoordak stepped back into the foreground, warmth, light, drink, closeness, that night which had felt, then, like a distant, almost stolen happiness, and which now, all at once, no longer lay behind her, but stood in front of her.

Anadar.

She blushed and glanced over at him.

He stood not far from her, also on deck, hands clasped behind his back, gaze fixed on the sea as if he hoped to find, somewhere between the grey waves and the dull horizon, a shape he could force this new circumstance into. He looked as wordless as she felt. More so, perhaps. And it was strange, almost comforting, that he, who usually found a direction for everything, was now so visibly struggling for words.

All the other things that had mattered a moment ago, the Conclave, Grot, Sinadie, Roto, the ship, the departure, the Inquisition, receded for an instant. Not gone. Not resolved. Just farther away.

She stepped up beside him.

“What’s the plan?” she asked casually, as if nothing had happened, as if she wanted to anchor him to something that could be arranged in sentences.

He gave a soft snort, smiled, and looked at her.

“Two hours ago it was clear.” He lifted a hand and pointed to the small boat still fastened to the larger ship. “We take the boat, sail north as far as we can, ideally in a wide arc around Gontar so we do not get held up even more, then get to Sontor as fast as possible, take the book, and find a way to get rid of the guest.”

He paused, listening with that fine irritation Shara had learned to recognize the instant Naarstr pressed into his thoughts again, and then he said aloud:

“Be quiet, or we will play you a little melody.”

The sword fell silent again.

“And now?” Shara asked.

He looked at her.

“And now?”

She held his gaze.

“You know what I’m going to ask.”

“Yes,” he said. “And rest assured, there is only one person who could be. And that is you.”

Then he fell quiet.

Shara searched his face for more. For joy, perhaps. For fear. For being overwhelmed. For the first true crack in that strict inner order of his. She knew him well enough to see he was holding it back. Well enough to tell that, in his head, he was already running through possibilities, dangers, solutions, consequences, with that torturing thoroughness that so often saved him and, just as often, made him unbearable.

And she was doing the same, in truth.

She turned her head slightly away so he could not fully see her face. A single tear slid down her cheek, not loud, not sobbing, just quiet. She did not even know precisely what it was made of. Uncertainty. Being blindsided. Fear. Perhaps also a sudden, deep tenderness that left her no other outlet.

She did not want him to see.

She did not want to show weakness.

And yet all at once there was everything that would come now, like a new weight in her body. It would slow her down. It would hinder her. It would make her more vulnerable. It would make everything more complicated. And almost worse than those thoughts was her anger that her first impulse had not been happiness, but worry, about movement, about travel, about the fight, about what she might no longer be able to do as she had before.

Then she felt his hand on her shoulder.

And then, from behind, he slid an arm around her and pulled her against him.

So utterly unlike him that, for a heartbeat, it shook her almost more than Isidre’s announcement had. No quip. No half ironical deflection. No evasion. He simply held her.

And in that one moment, everything was there.

Not solved. Not decided. But present.

They stood like that for a long time without speaking, and he held her while the ship creaked softly beneath them and the water tapped against the hull. Shara felt his body at her back, the warmth, the stillness, the unfamiliar softness in a posture that so rarely softened, and she felt sheltered in a way that almost hurt, because it came so unexpectedly.

When he finally began to speak, a small eternity seemed to have passed.

“We’re going to be parents?” he asked.

Not triumphant. Not delighted. Not horrified.

Disbelieving.

As if he were still testing whether such a sentence could even fit the two of them.

Later, they spoke with Roto, Son, and Indra.

The two water mages would accompany Roto in the search for his missing brother. Roto was firmly convinced he would find him. Kol, so he called him, with a mix of affection and exasperated indulgence, was sometimes simply absent minded. Surely he had lost his way on the road, or stumbled onto something interesting somewhere and followed that interest without thinking through the consequences for anyone else. It was obvious that this explanation was more hope than conviction, but Roto clung to it.

They wanted to begin the search in Gontar.

Anadar refused to go to Gontar with them. Even Roto understood. Every mage on board knew he would find fresh stones placed in his path there, new obligations, new questioning, new delays. And even Roto, who not long ago had hardly distinguished himself by restraint, now saw that Anadar had to follow an urgent lead, even if he did not speak of it.

He did not ask where Anadar intended to go ashore.

He asked nothing at all.

If you knew nothing, you could not let anything slip.

And so it came to pass that, one night, the three mages climbed down into the dinghy and pushed off.

Son had given them a scroll of spells with which the small boat could be steered. Not a particularly noble piece of magic, but useful, reliable, and entirely sufficient for their purposes. So they cast off and sailed north in the night.

Anadar did not want to go too far up yet, not into truly wild, emptied land, but into territory still inhabited, so they could buy horses and not waste precious days on foot. And so, finally, they put in roughly twenty kilometers north of Gontar, on a lonely beach the dawn was only just lifting out of darkness.

They climbed out.

The little boat drifted away the moment their feet found solid ground, and it sailed back out onto the grey surface as if guided by a ghost’s hand, as if it had fulfilled its task and no longer wished to be connected to their story.

So there they stood.

Three mages in cold early light, in wet grass along a coast both strange and familiar, with little baggage on their backs and a road ahead as uncertain as everything else.

They looked at one another briefly.

Then they began to walk in silence toward the nearest village some distance away. Smoke was already rising above the roofs. That was a good sign. Fire meant life. People. Stables. Horses, perhaps. Food. Information. Or at least a direction.

For the first time in days, perhaps weeks, Anadar felt free of the immediate constraints of the institution.

No hall. No council of masters. No constant scrutiny. No Grot. No Hokn’f. No polite masks of the schools. Just land, morning, and road.

He exhaled, visibly relieved.

His hand sought Shara’s.

He found it, took it, and gave it a small squeeze as they walked.

Morgut walked a little ahead of them, perhaps out of rhythm, perhaps deliberately, perhaps because he was clever enough not to steal from them that narrow space between silence and closeness.

Meanwhile, Naarstr set images in Anadar’s mind.

Not of flight.

Not of danger.

But of how, together, they could bend the world beneath their will.