Anadar IX/III

7

Hokn`f did not like it.

Already the way Tzadier brought him the news displeased him. The man did not step before him with his usual cold brevity, but with dust on his face, sand on his shoulder and that cautious expression subordinates wear when they know the news itself is more dangerous than any guilt.

“Speak,” said Hokn`f.

Tzadier lowered his head only slightly.

“The camp was attacked.”

For one moment there was nothing.

No anger. No word. Not even a thought Hokn`f could grasp. Only a complete silence within him, as though the world had taken in the sentence and decided to fill it with meaning only afterward.

Then the meaning came.

The camp.

His camp.

“By whom?”

“We do not know yet.”

Hokn`f looked at him.

Tzadier did not hold his gaze. That was wise.

“How badly?”

“Badly.”

That was all Tzadier said, and precisely because of that, it was enough.

Hokn`f turned away without another word. Behind him lay the pyramid, pale and unharmed in the unbearable light of the late day. For days they had been wearing themselves down against it. For days they had thrown power, blood, anger, dead bodies and living stupidity against its walls, and still it stood there as though the war before it were merely some discourtesy of the weather.

He had believed he had arranged things.

The silent army had taken the lower terraces, then lost them again, then taken them once more. The mages had fought under his pressure, not beautifully, not wisely, not with the devotion he would have demanded of them, but they had fought. No one had been able to step back cleanly anymore once the dead bodies stood between them and the pyramid. No one had still been able to tell himself he was merely an observer, mediator or messenger of the Code. Hokn`f had shaped the situation so that it knew only one direction.

Forward.

And now the camp.

When he returned, he saw the extent of it from afar.

At first only smoke. Then dust still lying over the ground in flat veils. Then overturned tents, broken wagons, scattered crates, fluttering cloths and men working with the useless haste of those who had understood too late that order does not return by itself merely because one longs for it.

Hokn`f rode slowly.

The horse beneath him sensed his anger and still did not dare shy. Even animals learned when they spent long enough near him.

The closer he came, the clearer the disgrace became.

Not the damage. Damage could be replaced. Supplies could be procured anew. Tents could be raised again. Humans could, if necessary, be made useful in one way or another. No, it was not the damage that struck him.

It was the insolence.

Someone had been here.

Someone had entered his camp, through his rows, past his guards, into his tent, into his possession. Someone had reached out a hand toward things that belonged to Hokn`f and had left again.

This was not an attack.

It was an insult.

When he reached the place where his tent had stood, the men around him froze. No one stepped too close to him. No one spoke. They all apparently knew that the first one who found the wrong word might be the last who would need words at all.

There was scarcely anything left of his tent.

The heavy cloths lay torn in the sand. A support beam was half charred. A table lay with broken legs slanted across a crate. Scrolls were scattered, many burned, others carried by the wind into the dirt. Where the floor of his inner chamber had been, a dark, smooth surface shimmered.

Glass.

The sand had melted and hardened again.

Hokn`f dismounted.

Slowly.

He went to the place, did not kneel, only bent slightly forward. His fingers touched the dark glass. It was still warm. Not hot. Warm enough.

Fire.

A fire mage.

His first thought was Anadar.

The name rose within him like poison.

Anadar.

Of course it would have suited him. Not in the execution, perhaps. Anadar was dangerous, but not secretive in this way. He was more likely to break gates down than crawl through rear walls. And yet, who else would have had enough power to destroy two guards, tear his tent into a vortex and devastate an entire section of the camp?

But Anadar was no longer there.

Marabar had him, of that Hokn`f was certain.

He knew it, and yet he did not like the thought. Things connected to Anadar rarely stayed where one believed one had nailed them down. The man was an error of the world who misunderstood himself as a hero.

Or another fire mage.

A student.

An ally.

A messenger.

Someone from the Fiery Fortress.

Hokn`f’s hand moved involuntarily to his neck.

Beneath the black fabric of his clothing lay the chain. He felt the small sealed container on it, cool and smooth against his fingers. The last moon drops were there. Safe. Always with him. He had not left them in the tent, not in a chest, not beneath binding signs, not in a hiding place others could have found. There were things one possessed only as long as one wore them against the skin.

Good.

At least that.

“What is missing?” Tzadier asked behind him.

Hokn`f did not turn around.

“That is precisely what I am asking myself. It is difficult to judge amid this devastation.”

Hokn`f’s gaze remained fixed on the melted ground. Tzadier hesitated.

“Where is the black travelling chest?”

Now he turned around.

Tzadier was wise enough not to step back, but not wise enough to suppress that tiny reflex entirely.

Hokn`f drew in one slow breath.

Then another.

Of course the thief had taken the book. He was certain. The book was no longer necessary. Not in the immediate sense. He had read what he needed to read. He had copied out the decisive passages, as anyone did who did not want to depend on a single object. Every usable spell lay on its own scroll. Several had been duplicated. A complete copy of the most important material was hidden in Ashambrat, in a place none of the ordinary searchers would ever find.

So the book was not decisive.

And yet it was gone.

And what was no longer in his possession could be used against him.

Not by everyone. No. Most who opened it would see hardly more than old script, warnings, circles, terrible descriptions, perhaps a few formulas they would not dare carry out. But a fire mage with enough will, enough anger and enough despair was something else.

“Who was in the camp?” asked Hokn`f.

“No one who should have been able to enter.”

“That was not my question.”

Tzadier pressed his lips together.

“The guards saw nothing. Some claim a sand vortex came from inside the tent. Others speak of a man with his face covered. Others swear it was only fire.”

Hokn`f took a step closer.

“They saw nothing until my tent burned?”

“So it seems.”

“And then they let him escape?”

“In the chaos it was difficult to recognise who or what was moving.”

Hokn`f smiled.

It was not a pleasant smile.

“In the chaos.”

Tzadier was silent.

Good.

Silence was, in that moment, one of the few abilities Hokn`f valued in others.

He walked slowly across the glassy place. Splinters crunched beneath his boots. The attack had been strong, but not without haste. The tent had been searched. Not completely. Not with cold calm. The intruder had searched for something and found it. Afterward he had not used the vortex to kill as many as possible, but to create confusion and destroy supplies.

Someone had thought.

Not cleanly enough.

But thought.

Hokn`f liked that even less.

At the edge of the devastated place stood several guards. Humans. Dusty, frightened, some injured, all with that silent hope that a catastrophe might be lost among the number of the guilty. Hokn`f looked at them, and they lowered their eyes.

“Tzadier.”

“Yes.”

“The guards of this section will be executed,” he said, so that only Tzadier could hear.

“Lord,” said Tzadier softly, “now?”

Hokn`f looked toward the tents where Fontal and From had to be somewhere. Both would ask questions. Both would put that laborious moral gravity into their voices. Both would raise objections, as though war were an exercise in pure intent. Fontal with her wounded gaze that constantly saw more than she was entitled to. From with that stiff dignity that recognised guilt only when it was not her own.

“Not yet,” said Hokn`f.

Tzadier looked up.

“Delay it until I have gone. Fontal and From need not be present. They react too sensitively to such necessities.”

A hint of understanding passed across Tzadier’s face.

At last, thought Hokn`f, one of them understands the value of obedience.

“Dead,” said Hokn`f, “they will make better soldiers.”

He turned away.

The guards were finished. Not physically, not yet, but in every meaning that mattered.

He found Grot a short time later among the water mages.

The man stood over a shallow bowl in which no clear image would hold. His people were exhausted. It could be seen in their shoulders, in their skin, in the way they moved their hands. The desert devoured them more slowly than the battle, but more thoroughly.

Grot looked up when Hokn`f came.

“You are back.”

“As you see.”

“The camp?”

“Damaged. Not broken.”

Grot nodded slowly.

He was no fool. That distinguished him from many. He did not ask the questions others asked only to show they cared.

“And the pyramid?” asked Hokn`f.

Grot looked down toward the depression.

“No breakthrough. In the morning we reached the third outer level and lost it again by noon. Two accesses we believed to be real openings were not. Or they were only as long as we came close enough to them.”

“The Sondra?”

“They bleed.”

That was the first pleasing news of the day.

Hokn`f lifted his head slightly.

“How many?”

“Difficult to say. Some certainly dead. Several wounded. They carry their fallen away quickly when they can.”

“When they can,” Hokn`f repeated.

There lay the core.

The Sondra were not immortal. That was important. All their dignity, all their alien grace, all their contemptible calm did not change the fact that steel could open them, fire could burn them and a dead body could tear them from a step. They died. Perhaps harder than humans. Perhaps more beautifully. Perhaps with less noise. But they died.

And every dead one was material.

Friend.

Enemy.

Human.

Sondra.

It made no difference once one knew how to remove the last remnant of will from the flesh and replace it with obedience.

“My silent army?” asked Hokn`f.

Grot looked at him, and for a moment there was something in his gaze that might almost have been disgust. Then he lowered his eyes.

“It is losing substance. The bodies are breaking apart. Some cannot be raised again if they have been smashed too badly. The Sondra have learned to separate limbs and remove heads from the field.”

“Then we need replenishment.”

“Yes.”

Grot did not like saying it.

That did not matter.

Hokn`f looked across the camp toward the north, where Ashambrat lay. A city full of humans. Full of bodies. Full of fear, ambition, curiosity, weakness, guilt and useless life. Humans who believed their worth lay in making decisions, raising voices, owning houses, begetting children and dying when it pleased them.

So much potential.

Until now he had kept measure.

Not out of mercy. Mercy was the virtue of those who could afford not to think other people’s dangers through to the end. He had kept measure because too early an exhaustion of resources woke attention, created resistance, left traces. But perhaps the time had come to no longer regard Ashambrat merely as a place of power.

But as a supply.

In three days there would be Conclave.

He had to return.

He had to take Fontal and From with him. That was annoying, but necessary. If he left them here, they might begin to speak with one another without fearing his presence. If he took them with him, he could control their voices, place their objections within the frame he provided, use their uncertainty against them. Besides, he needed witnesses. Not honest witnesses. Useful ones.

The Fiery Fortress would ask questions.

Tandor would make itself important.

And he?

He would confront them with accomplished facts, with the necessity of a decisive counterstrike. A pyramid that rejected every order. Sondra who killed mages. A threat that could only be broken by united power.

Yes.

The raid was irritating.

But perhaps it was also a gift.

Hokn`f felt his anger cool and become something better.

Use.

“Tzadier,” he called without turning around.

The man stepped closer.

“Lord.”

“You and Grot will hold the position.”

Grot raised his gaze.

“You are going to Ashambrat?”

“To the Conclave.”

“In three days.”

“I know when it takes place.”

Grot was silent.

Hokn`f looked at him.

“During my absence, you will undertake no further major advances. The valley will be surrounded. No attack on the interior. No waste of living troops. The silent army will be withdrawn and led in a ring around the valley.”

Tzadier nodded.

“Order to kill?”

“Anyone who wants in dies. Anyone who wants out dies. Sondra, human, messenger, refugee, it makes no difference. Nothing leaves the depression without my permission.”

Grot folded his hands.

“That will not break the Sondra.”

“No,” said Hokn`f. “It will enclose them.”

“They might still bypass us.”

“Then show me that you are more than a tired man with water in a bowl.”

Grot accepted the insult. He had learned. That too could be useful.

“And the human troops?” asked Tzadier.

Hokn`f looked across the camp. Across wounded, exhausted mages, lost animals, half burned supplies and men who did not yet know whether they should fear the enemy or him more.

“I will speak to them.”

He did so shortly before sunset.

Not in his tent, for his tent no longer existed, and in this case that was even useful. He stood on the glassy surface the attacker had left behind, as though it were a speaking place created especially for him. Around him gathered the troop leaders, the mages who could still stand, some riders, many wounded in the background. Fontal and From stood to his right, both with that visible exhaustion humans often mistook for moral depth.

Hokn`f waited until enough eyes rested on him.

Then he spoke.

“You have carried much.”

His voice was calm. Not hard. Not now.

“More than some schools ever taught you to carry. You have faced an enemy that hides behind old walls, foreign cunning and cowardly secrecy. You have suffered losses. You have seen how little these beings are willing to submit to the order of the world.”

No one contradicted him.

Some looked toward the pyramid.

Others toward the destroyed tents.

Good.

“Today our camp was attacked. Not in the open field. Not with an honest sign. An intruder crept into our midst, burned our supplies, destroyed our property and tried to break our resolve.”

Fontal looked at him.

He felt it.

She was clever enough to hear the gaps. Not clever enough to close them before everyone.

“I know many of you are exhausted. I know many of you need a pause.”

He let the words take effect.

He could almost feel relief moving through some of those present. Arms lowered. Faces softened. Humans were so grateful when one merely named their weakness that they often forgot what one used them for afterward.

“And this pause you shall have.”

A murmur.

Fontal narrowed her eyes.

From looked suspicious, but tired.

“The fighting will be interrupted. No further advances against the pyramid until new orders are given. We arrange our forces. We secure the valley. We take the enemy into a ring and wait.”

He raised his voice slightly.

“Not because we are beaten.”

The murmuring fell silent.

“But because a wise commander decides when he strikes and when he closes his hand.”

He paused.

“I will return to Ashambrat for the Conclave. There I will set out what has happened here. There I will demand support. Not for myself. For the Code. For order. For every school that does not wish to wake one day and discover that foreign powers in the desert decide which laws apply.”

That was good.

He felt it in their faces.

Not all believed him. They did not have to. It was enough if enough of them did not dare openly contradict him.

After the address, Fontal and From came to him.

Not together. They merely came at the same moment, because humans with similar accusations often believe simultaneity is strength.

“A pause?” asked Fontal.

“You heard it.”

“That is not a pause if the valley is surrounded and everyone who wants to enter or leave is killed.”

Hokn`f looked at her.

“Yes, it is. It is a pause for our troops.”

“And for the Sondra?”

“I do not provide a recovery service for the enemy.”

From folded her arms.

“What about the dead you have marching around the valley?”

A few bystanders pretended not to be listening.

Hokn`f smiled thinly.

“What designation do you prefer?”

From’s face grew rigid.

“I prefer none.”

“Then do not ask as though this were a matter of naming.”

Fontal stepped closer.

“You are forcing your own people into a fight many no longer want to fight.”

Hokn`f turned to her.

“I force no one. I show them that the fight has long since begun and that looking away is no defence.”

“You created the situation this way.”

“I recognised facts you wished to keep observing until they asked your permission.”

“That is not the same.”

“No,” said Hokn`f. “One wins wars. The other later writes sad reports about why one lost.”

Fontal was silent, but her gaze remained firm.

Hokn`f did not like that gaze. It was not obedient enough. Not broken enough yet. Perhaps he would have to attend to her before she began to think herself brave.

But not now.

“You both will accompany me to Ashambrat,” he said.

From lifted her head.

“Because the Conclave should hear reports from more than one school. You will confirm that the Sondra resist order, that they attacked our troops, that they kill mages and that a breakthrough is impossible without reinforcements.”

Fontal said, “And if I confirm that they released prisoners on the first day?”

Hokn`f looked at her for a long time.

“Then I will not prevent you.”

She seemed surprised.

That pleased him.

“Say it freely. Say that they released prisoners. Say also that our camp was attacked. Say that the pyramid uses every attempt at negotiation as an opportunity to gain time. The Conclave will decide for itself which facts weigh more heavily.”

Fontal understood the trick.

Too late.

He saw it in her face.

Mercy as cunning. Release as distraction. Raid as proof of betrayal. Every truth could be turned if one forced it into the right order.

From was less easy to read.

“And if the Conclave gives no reinforcements?”

Hokn`f looked toward the pyramid.

In the distance it lay in the evening light, still, pale and hated.

“Then later it will have to ask itself why it rejected the last opportunity.”

That same night he withdrew the silent army.

He stood outside the camp and raised the sign that hung on the chain beneath his clothing. Not the moon drops. Something simpler. Harsher. A bone ring whose surface was cut with small signs that looked unremarkable by daylight and gleamed like wet wounds in moonlight.

The bodies came.

From the lower terraces. From the hollows in the sand. From the edges of the pyramid. Some walked. Some crawled. Some were scarcely still useful, yet even fragments could hold orders if one bound them correctly. The sight would have horrified others.

Hokn`f inspected it like a craftsman inspecting his tool.

Too many damaged.

Too few fresh.

That had to change.

He arranged them in long, dark lines around the valley. Not narrow enough to form a storming attack, but wide enough to make every escape dangerous. They would not sleep. Not doubt. Not grumble. Not ask why they marched in the night. There lay their beauty.

When the last rows began to move, Tzadier stepped beside him.

“The executions?”

Hokn`f did not look at him.

“When we have departed.”

“All guards of the section?”

“All.”

“And the bodies?”

“Preserve them well. I want to be able to use them when I return.”

Tzadier nodded.

“Understood.”

“Grot is to keep the water mages ready. No heroics. No unnecessary losses. If the Sondra dare a sortie, withdraw behind the dead lines and let them wear themselves down.”

“And if they try to negotiate?”

Hokn`f looked into the dark valley.

“Then listen.”

Tzadier looked at him in surprise.

“And afterward?”

“Then kill the messenger if he tries to leave.”

The next morning Hokn`f set out for Ashambrat.

Fontal and From rode with him. Both silent. Both tired. Both still convinced their thoughts belonged to them alone. Behind them remained the damaged camp, together with Grot, Tzadier, the human troops and the silent army marching in a wide ring around the valley.

Hokn`f did not look back.

He did not need to look at the pyramid in order to hate it.

Three days until the Conclave.

Three days to use the raid.

Three days to force the Fiery Fortress finally to move.

Three days to look at Ashambrat anew, not as a city, not as the seat of the school, not as a place of teaching, but as a storehouse of possibilities.

He touched the chain at his neck again.

The moon drops were safe.

The book was gone.

The thief was somewhere out there.

The pyramid still stood.

The Sondra still lived.

But his situation was not bad.

Not if he thought it correctly.

Not if he was willing to use everything others in their weakness still called humanity.

Hokn`f rode north, and as the sun rose over the desert, he swore that after the Conclave he would return with something that would finally open that pyramid.

Even if he had to march all of Ashambrat through the Valley of the Dead to do it.

8

They had no more opportunity to speak with one another.

Not with words.

Not with thoughts.

Not even with glances.

Anadar did not see Gnok again after the demon had pushed their blindfolds back into place. He did not hear the old wizard, did not hear whether he was led away, whether he stumbled, whether he resisted, whether his newly awakened will was already in danger of breaking again beneath Marabar’s hands. He heard only footsteps, fabric, the creaking of heavy doors and, eventually, the calm movements of those two silent twins with the empty eyes who came to take him from the room.

They did not speak.

They did not breathe.

They did not smell of fear, not of sweat, not of life in the ordinary sense. Their hands were cold, like those of a dead man, their touch without any intention except the foreign one that had been implanted in them. They took Anadar beneath the arms, lifted him with that even strength that came neither from anger, haste nor effort, and carried him out.

He tried to pay attention to sounds.

To Gnok’s voice.

To a second door.

To the sound of a body being moved as well.

Nothing.

Only stone beneath feet. Then air. Coolness. The smell of dust, leather, animals and old wood. A carriage. He was lifted inside, not thrown, not shoved, laid down almost carefully, and that care was worse than raw violence would have been. It meant his body still had value to Marabar.

Still.

The carriage door was closed.

Anadar sat in darkness.

The blindfold was tight. His mouth was bound too, not so tightly that he could not breathe, but tightly enough to turn every word into a meaningless sound. His hands were bound, his legs secured, and opposite him sat something he did not need to see in order to know it was there.

The demon.

He felt it.

Not as warmth. Not as smell. More as a disturbance in the space. As though the air in one place were too dense, too attentive, too filled with gazes. Now and then Anadar heard a soft, wet blink, a rustle, a minimal shift of weight that hardly suited the creature’s size. The demon sat with him in the carriage like a guard who needed no words, because his mere existence made every thought of escape a ridiculous gesture.

The carriage began to move.

He did not know whether Gnok was in a second carriage. He suspected it. Marabar would not have left him behind. Not after what Gnok was. Not after what Gnok knew. Not after what Anadar had just told him. Perhaps the old man was now sitting in another wagon with his eyes covered, his mouth sealed, his body bound and his own guard beside him. Perhaps he sat in darkness and repeated the same thought soundlessly.

Maraà lives.

Anadar held on to that.

Not for long.

To hold on to it too long was dangerous. Hope could warm, but it could also make one careless. Marabar would return. He would ask questions. He would smile. He would act as though everything were a conversation between educated men, and every word would be a blade hidden beneath silk.

And so it happened.

Not at once.

First came hours in which there was only the rolling of wheels, the creaking of axles, the snorting of the draft animals, the dull jolting over uneven ground and the breath in his own mouth cloth. Sometimes the carriage turned. Sometimes the ground became smoother. Sometimes it jolted through deep ruts. Anadar tried to infer a direction from the movements, but soon gave up. Marabar would not take the most obvious road anyway. And even if he did, what use would that knowledge have been?

In the quiet hours, Anadar began to listen inwardly again.

Not as deeply as before. Not in calm. Not in safety. But the darkness almost forced him to it. When eyes and mouth were bound, when hands and feet did not obey and the world consisted only of breath, pain and wheels, the mind remained the only territory not yet completely occupied.

To become a wizard.

The word returned.

He went back again to his first memories. Not with force. Force tended to close them. He searched for the moments in which magic had not been technique. Not script. Not circle. Not spoken syllable. He searched for what Gnok had shown him without being able to explain it, for that difference between a mage who forced existing power through forms and a wizard who worked with the world as though it listened to him.

He thought of the first fire in the Fiery Fortress.

Of the flame above his child’s hand.

He thought of the stable in the nameless village.

Of Slonda, freezing and hungry in the hay.

Of that tiny spark that perhaps had not been fire at all, but answer.

Something had answered.

Not to knowledge.

To need.

To nearness.

To the wish that his brother should not freeze.

Anadar tried to find that feeling again. Not the memory of it. That was easy. The memory now lay open like an unfolded book. But the feeling itself was buried beneath decades of discipline. He had become a master. He had learned to order every stirring, to test every current, to bind every force before it could bind him. Perhaps in doing so he had also learned no longer to hear when the world answered before he had asked.

The thought was unpleasant.

So he stayed with it.

Whenever Marabar was not with him, Anadar continued searching. Carefully, feeling his way, at times almost angrily, because within himself he felt like a student standing before a door and unable to find the handle. He listened for the small movements of magic inside him. For what was not prepared. For the place where will arose before it became word.

Then the carriage door opened again.

Light fell in.

Anadar lifted his head involuntarily.

Hands loosened the cloth from his mouth, then the one over his eyes. He blinked. The light was not bright, only the dull glow of an overcast day or late afternoon falling through the small carriage window. Even so, it burned briefly in his eyes.

Marabar sat opposite him.

Of course he sat there as though he had never been anywhere else.

His robe was smooth. His face was calm. Not a trace of dust lay upon him, not a sign of travel, not the slightest hint of that bodily disarray that eventually overtook every human who sat in a carriage long enough. He wore that light smile that never quite ended and never quite began. A smile that belonged only to himself.

The demon sat beside Anadar.

Now he saw him again.

Too many eyes. Too many small movements. Too many places in his body where something looked, blinked, twitched or waited in stillness. The demon had tilted his head slightly, as though listening. Perhaps he truly was listening. Perhaps he only saw with eyes located in places where eyes should not have been.

Marabar folded his hands in his lap.

“How do you find yourself today, Master of the Fiery Fortress, Anadar?”

Anadar cleared his throat. It was dry.

“Are we beginning the same discussion as yesterday, Marabar?”

He left out the title.

Deliberately.

Marabar noticed it. Of course he noticed it. His smile widened by a barely visible degree.

“Probably,” he said. “Unless you have changed your mind.”

“Probably not.”

Marabar laughed softly.

It was not a warm laugh. It was a sound of satisfaction, as though Anadar had fulfilled a small prediction.

“Good. You are right. It makes little sense if the conversation always turns around the same point.”

“That does not stop you.”

“No,” said Marabar pleasantly. “But it lessens the appeal.”

Anadar was silent.

Marabar studied him. It was not a hurried examination. He let his gaze rest on Anadar as though he could read layers in his exhaustion, defiance and silence.

“So you still remember the spell in full.”

Anadar knew what he was getting at.

Naaarstr.

The sword.

The binding.

The moment in which he had forced the demon into the blade.

He did indeed remember it very precisely. Too precisely. He could trace the inner structure of the spell, the necessity of turning Naaarstr’s attack against himself, the connection of blood, will, name and steel. At the time it had not seemed particularly difficult to him, not in the technical sense. Dangerous, yes. Bold. In another moment perhaps foolish. But not difficult. The difficult thing had not been the form. The difficult thing had been not to hesitate.

“I remember many things,” he said.

“That is not an answer.”

“Yes. Only not one you like.”

Marabar inclined his head.

“You possess the rare gift of remaining impolite even in a situation such as this.”

“You possess the rare gift of making even torture sound like table conversation.”

“Torture?” Marabar looked almost saddened. “I have spared you.”

Anadar looked at the demon beside him.

“You call this sparing?”

“Yes,” said Marabar simply. “And you should hope I keep to that decision.”

For a moment there was no smile on his face.

Then it returned.

“But as I said, this conversation has become tired. Soon you will meet my brothers. In a few hours we should reach Sahretûn.”

The name fell heavily into the carriage.

Sahretûn.

Anadar had heard it. He had known it in stories, warnings and half torn truths. A city of summoners. A city that should no longer have existed. A wound in the memory of the world. And now Marabar spoke of it as though they were travelling to an old family seat.

“I am already looking forward to your face when you behold it,” said Marabar. “Yours especially. And Gnok’s.”

Anadar let the words take effect without showing too much.

So Gnok still lives, he thought.

Good.

“Tell me, Marabar,” Anadar said after a while, “how is it that Sahretûn is back now?”

Marabar’s eyes brightened.

He clapped his hands together once, softly, almost delighted.

“That, my friend, is finally a good question.”

“I am not your friend.”

“Not yet.”

Anadar did not answer.

Marabar leaned back.

“Sahretûn was never destroyed. Never annihilated. That is one of history’s many little impurities. Humans love simple endings. A city falls. An enemy is defeated. An age closes. It makes for a good tale. It is only rarely true.”

He looked out of the window, yet Anadar had the impression that Marabar was not seeing the landscape. He was looking further back.

“Sahretûn was displaced.”

“Displaced?”

“Shifted, if you prefer the word. Into the Dungeon Dimension. To all the demons. As a last resort by those who believed they were sealing the end by doing so. There was no other path left for them. One must praise Mother, Gnok and the many others. They had prepared it excellently. Secretly. Thoroughly. Cruelly.”

His smile narrowed.

“And yet they forgot something.”

“What?”

“That humans betray.”

Anadar was silent.

“That is their nature,” said Marabar. “Not of every individual, of course. I am no fool. But as a species. As possibility. As a law of history. Where a secret touches too many shoulders, one of them grows weak. Where an alliance carries too many fears, one voice sells the others. Where power threatens to be destroyed, there is always someone who would rather survive than remain pure.”

He looked at Anadar again.

“We were prepared.”

Now it was no longer a calm report. Something in Marabar began to heat. Not anger. Enthusiasm. Memory.

“Long before that unholy coalition struck, we had forged plans. All of Sahretûn was designed to survive. No.” He raised a finger. “I must correct myself. All of Sahretûn is designed to survive.”

The carriage jolted over a stone.

The demon barely moved his head.

Marabar continued, and his voice gained that fine vibration of a man who was not merely telling a story, but becoming intoxicated by his own telling.

“The blood price, Anadar. You cannot imagine it. They were ready to sacrifice everything and everyone in order to banish us. Not only warriors. Not only summoners. Not only the guilty, if that word still held any meaning in that time. Whole lines. Whole houses. Beings whose names no one dares pronounce anymore. They paid with blood, memory, cities, children, stars, perhaps with parts of the world itself. Only that made success possible.”

He was silent for one breath.

“And before they erased us, we withdrew.”

“Into the dimension from which there is no escape,” said Anadar.

Marabar no longer smiled.

“Yes.”

The word was hard.

“From which there is no escape,” he repeated more softly. “Unless the passage is opened from outside.”

Anadar looked at him.

Marabar returned his gaze.

“And that, Master of the Fiery Fortress, was my task.”

Now Anadar understood another piece.

“The Lord of Sahretûn sent you out.”

“He did not simply send me out,” said Marabar. “He entrusted me with the continued existence of our city.”

There it was. The pride. Not loud, not crude, but down to the bones.

“I worked in concealment. I hid from your mages, from your schools, from your ridiculously self satisfied archives. Above all, I hid from Mother. She would have recognised me immediately. She would have smelled my scent in the magic before I had even opened a circle. So I waited.”

He smiled again, this time thin and cold.

“Waiting is an underestimated art.”

“You waited a long time.”

“Longer than many empires live.”

“And my brother?”

Marabar laughed.

Anadar did not like that laugh. It was the laugh of a man pointing at a door but not yet willing to open the room behind it.

“Your brother,” said Marabar. “Yes. I once had the pleasure with him. He helped me shorten the time, let us put it that way.”

Anadar’s hands tensed in their bonds.

Marabar noticed.

“Do not worry. I will come back to that in a moment. But first the larger movement.”

“Of course,” said Anadar coldly. “The history lesson first, then the threat.”

“You underestimate the elegance of a good order.”

Anadar fell silent again.

That was better.

Marabar continued.

“When we were certain that the time again stood toward return, when we were certain that so much time had passed that hardly anyone remembered anymore, when we were certain that magic was returning and the signs in the sky stood in such a way that the passage would become possible, I began to act.”

He watched Anadar closely.

“You know the story almost completely.”

“Not from your mouth.”

“Then listen well.”

Anadar listened.

Not because he believed Marabar.

Because even lies reveal form when the liar is vain enough.

“I chose special specimens among you mages,” said Marabar. “Not by chance. Never by chance. Fantor, that abomination.”

Marabar’s face twisted, and for the first time his contempt sounded almost honest.

“Even demons grow sick at the sight of him. That is how degenerate he is. So small in his greed, so proud of his filth. A disgusting tool, but useful, because the disgusting often believe their own corruption makes them untouchable.”

Anadar thought of Fantor.

He said nothing.

“Then Xioun,” Marabar continued. “Another flavour of corruption. Colder, more methodical, with students already very far along the path of shedding their own will as an inconvenient memory. You have met the two of them. Splendid servants, are they not? Empty enough to be filled.”

Marabar looked at the demon beside Anadar.

“And of course Hokn`f.”

Now he laughed aloud.

The demon blinked in several places at once.

“Hokn`f,” said Marabar with visible pleasure. “The fool. Who thinks himself lord of lords because a few zealots bend their knees before him and because he has learned to make dead things march. You would not believe what he is attempting at the moment.”

“Perhaps I would.”

“No,” said Marabar. “Not in its full beauty.”

He laughed again, but more softly this time.

“He reaches for power and does not understand what true power means. He gathers tools and thinks himself the builder. He tears corpses from their rest and believes he thereby rules the future. He sees a pyramid and thinks of siege. He sees ancient beings and thinks of annihilation. He sees fear and mistakes it for obedience.”

Marabar leaned slightly forward.

“Men like that are useful. Until they are not.”

Anadar thought of Fontal, of From, of Shara, of the pyramid, of what he could not know.

“So you used them all.”

“Of course.”

“And they believe they are making their own decisions.”

“They are,” said Marabar. “That is the beautiful thing. A good plan does not force every step. It only creates the world in which others go of their own free will in the direction one needs.”

For a moment, no one said anything.

The carriage rolled on.

Then Marabar’s face changed.

The mockery did not vanish entirely, but something serious appeared beneath it. He no longer looked at Anadar as a prisoner, no longer as a tool, not even as an enemy. But as a riddle that had occupied him for a long time.

“You are different, Anadar.”

He said it without a title.

Anadar liked that less than the exaggerated courtesy.

“Entirely different.”

Marabar leaned back, but his gaze remained on Anadar.

“As is your brother.”

Anadar held his breath a moment too still.

Marabar saw it.

“You do not know, do you?”

“What?”

“Your brother was a student in Sahretûn.”

Anadar did not move.

The words were too large to allow an immediate reaction.

Slonda.

Sahretûn.

No.

“Lie,” said Anadar.

Marabar smiled sadly, almost pityingly.

“You humans cry lie very quickly when truth has the wrong shape.”

“Slonda was in Tandor.”

“Also.”

“He is a healer.”

“Also.”

“He is not one of you.”

Marabar inclined his head.

“What do you think we are? Only summoners in black halls? Only servants of demons? Only what your schoolbooks leave behind so children can distinguish more easily between good and evil at night? Sahretûn was knowledge, Anadar. Knowledge without fear of its own shadow. Knowledge without the need to immediately put every dangerous thought in chains and call it Code.”

Anadar felt anger rise within him.

“You corrupted him.”

“We allowed him to learn.”

“At what price?”

Marabar’s smile turned cold.

“Ah. Now the brother listens more carefully.”

“What price?”

“Not every price is paid in blood. Some are paid in doors that never close again. Some in truths that can no longer be forgotten. Some in a seed.”

Anadar stared at him.

“We placed the seed in him, Anadar.”

The sentence settled slowly.

Marabar let it work.

“And yet,” said Anadar softly, “he is not yours.”

“Another human comfort. Possession. Belonging. Purity. As though a soul were a house with a single owner.”

“What did you do to him?”

“We gave him knowledge. And a direction. That he later tried, out of guilt, love or cowardly humanity, to take other paths changes nothing about the fact that a part of him knows us.”

Anadar pulled at the bonds.

Not strongly enough to break them. Strongly enough that the ropes creaked.

The demon beside him moved one finger.

Only one.

Anadar stopped.

Marabar looked at the demon and then back at Anadar.

“Sensible.”

“If you used Slonda,” said Anadar, “I will kill you.”

“If?” Marabar laughed softly. “Anadar, you are sitting bound in my carriage on the way to Sahretûn. Your brother bears our traces. Mother has hidden behind legends for millennia. Gnok sits once more near the city he believed he had banished. Hokn`f plays with the dead, Fantor and Xioum have fulfilled their roles, and the passage is open. Perhaps it is time to use the word if more sparingly.”

Anadar was silent.

Marabar leaned forward.

“We would offer you the same honour.”

Anadar looked at him.

“What honour?”

“To learn. Truly to learn. Not the pitiful, mutilated craft of the schools. Not the magic that apologises for itself before it acts. Not this miserable veneration of limits.”

His voice became softer.

“Sahretûn could receive you.”

Anadar felt the space grow narrower.

“Master of Sahretûn, Anadar.”

Marabar spoke the title slowly, as though savouring it.

“Think about it. You would become Lord of Sahretûn without difficulty. Perhaps more. Perhaps one day Prince of Sahretûn. You possess power your schools scarcely understand. You have will. You have already bound a demon without knowing which doors you touched by doing so. And you carry something within you that is older than your training.”

Anadar said nothing.

Marabar’s gaze grew sharper.

“Yes,” he said softly. “You know I am right. You are searching for it. I see it, something in you is moving.”

Anadar felt cold inside.

“You know nothing about that.”

“I know enough.”

Anadar wanted to strike him in the face.

He could not.

That was probably intentional.

Marabar continued, now calmer again.

“Imagine the world we will create now that magic is awakening again. No more decaying schools reciting old rules without knowing their origin. No more Conclaves of men and women speaking of power as though power were a burden one must carry as slowly as possible. No princes, no temples, no little masters guarding their tiny truths like beggars guarding a piece of bread.”

He raised his hand, and for a moment the air between them seemed to grow darker.

“Control, Anadar. True control. Over demons. Over magic. Over life and death, as far as they can be grasped. Over those who stand in the way. Over those too weak not to be led. The world is tired of disorder. It is tired of fear, of chance, of betrayal without form. Sahretûn will give it form.”

“You call enslavement form.”

“I call it peace.”

“No,” said Anadar. “You call it peace because the dead do not object.”

Marabar smiled.

“Hokn`f’s mistake. Not mine.”

“Your city created demons.”

“Humans created demons. Sahretûn understood that one cannot simply undo them.”

“So you serve them?”

“No.”

For the first time there was sharpness in Marabar’s voice.

“We rule over them.”

The demon beside Anadar blinked.

Anadar did not look at him.

“You believe that,” he said.

Marabar looked at him for a long time.

Then his face relaxed.

“That is why you are interesting.”

“Because I contradict you?”

“Because you do not contradict stupidly.”

Anadar was silent.

Marabar leaned back.

“As we offered it to your brother, so we offer it to you as well.”

“My brother left you.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.”

“Then ask him, if you get the chance, whether one ever truly leaves Sahretûn.”

Anadar felt that Marabar wanted to strike exactly there. Between love and mistrust. Between past and brotherhood. Between the child in the hay and the man who might have learned things of which Anadar knew nothing.

He did not allow it.

Not visibly.

“You believe you can offer me power,” said Anadar. “But everything you say sounds like fear.”

Marabar’s smile remained, but something behind it became still.

“Fear?”

“Of Mother. Of Gnok. Of what was forgotten. Of what returns. Of Anadar, otherwise you would not ask me, you would break me.”

The demon moved.

Marabar raised his hand almost imperceptibly, and the creature stopped.

For a moment, the carriage held only the rolling of the wheels.

Then Marabar smiled again.

Slowly.

“Very good.”

Anadar hated that he made it sound like praise.

“You will have time to think about it,” said Marabar. “Not much. But enough. Sahretûn loves decisions, especially those humans make after they believe they no longer have any.”

He reached for the blindfold.

Anadar did not draw back.

Marabar paused, as though amused by it.

“The question is simple, Anadar.”

He leaned closer.

“How will you decide, brother?”

He spoke the last word softly.

Not mockingly.

Not tenderly.

Worse.

As a claim.

Then the blindfold was drawn over Anadar’s eyes again.

The world sank into darkness.

Shortly afterward his mouth was bound again as well, and Marabar’s presence withdrew. The carriage door opened, closed, and Anadar was alone once more with the rumbling of the wheels, his breath and the demon sitting beside him, keeping watch in the darkness with too many eyes.

But this time the darkness was not empty.

Sahretûn lay ahead of him.

Slonda lay between them.

And somewhere deep within Anadar, beneath anger, fear and the temptation simply to cast away Marabar’s words as a lie, that small spark from the stable moved.

Something had once answered.

Not to power.

Not to control.

Not to dominion.

To love.

Anadar held on to that as the carriage drove on.

9

The offer stood.

Marabar had spoken it, not casually, not as an empty temptation, but with that calm certainty that made his words more dangerous than any threat. Master of Sahretûn. Lord of Sahretûn. Perhaps one day Prince of Sahretûn. Power, control, knowledge, a city that had not fallen, but waited. A city that had returned from the Dungeon Dimension like a thought the world had suppressed for too long.

Anadar had not answered.

Not truly.

He had contradicted Marabar, yes. He had provoked him, tested him, pushed him back with brief sentences. But the offer itself had not vanished. It still hung between them, even after Marabar had loosened the blindfold, even after the carriage had stopped, even after the summoner had risen with an almost courteous movement.

“As a sign of my good will,” said Marabar, “I will now have you untied.”

Anadar looked at him.

The demon beside him did not move. Only its eyes continued to blink, irregular, silent and attentive.

“Your good will,” Anadar repeated.

“Yes.”

“How generous.”

Marabar smiled.

“You will not attempt to flee, Anadar.”

“No?”

“No.” Marabar gestured toward the demon with one hand. “We have Gnok. And we have him. He will hunt you if you choose a foolish moment.”

The demon inclined its head almost imperceptibly.

It was not clear whether the movement was a sign of understanding, expectation or hunger.

“That is why I ask you,” Marabar continued, “no magical tricks. No attempts at murder. No theatrical outbursts of wounded pride. If you behave sensibly, you may remain unbound.”

“And if not?”

“Then you will not enjoy the answer long enough to learn anything from it.”

Anadar did not reply.

One of the silent twins stepped into the carriage. His eyes were empty, his face smooth, his movements precise. He loosened the bonds at Anadar’s hands, then at his feet. Not roughly. Not carefully. He did it with the same perfect expressionlessness with which a scribe copies a line already fixed.

When the ropes fell, Anadar moved his fingers.

It hurt.

Not strongly enough to show it. Strongly enough to remind him that freedom sometimes at first meant only feeling one’s own injuries more clearly again. His joints were stiff. The skin at his wrists was raw. In his shoulders sat a dull hardness from being held tense too long.

Marabar opened the door of the carriage.

Cool air came in.

Not the air of a green landscape. Not the dry heat of the desert as Anadar knew it from the lands around the Fiery Fortress. This air smelled of stone, ash and something metallic that was not quite blood and yet recalled it.

“Come,” said Marabar.

Anadar climbed out.

Or tried to.

His feet did not obey him at once. His legs were numb and stiff, and as he stepped down the few stairs, he had to hold on to the carriage frame for a moment. The twin looked at him as though it were a factual observation, not a weakness. Marabar waited. The demon slid out of the carriage behind Anadar, far too soundlessly for a creature of its size.

Anadar stood in sand.

No.

It was sand, but not only sand.

Beneath his boots lay fine pale grains, shot through with black dust, with splinters of dark stone, with tiny gleaming particles that shimmered in the dull light. When he looked around, he saw the trace of their journey behind him. Two carriages stood there, but not on wheels. They rested on broad runners, darkly shod, smooth along the undersides. That was why the ride had been so even. They had not rolled over the ground. They had glided across it.

Behind them lay the desert.

Not wide and open as Anadar would have expected, but already passing into another landscape. Black stones jutted from the sand. Flat lava flows, long since cooled, lay like frozen rivers between paler stretches. In the distance rose the rim of a crater, vast and dark, a jagged wall of old fire. The sky above it was pale, yet the light seemed to possess less power here, as though even the sun lost a little of its right as soon as it touched this place.

There were two sled carriages.

On each, one of the twins had sat and guided the vehicle. The second carriage stood a few paces behind the first. Its sides were covered, denser than Anadar’s carriage, as though the prisoner within was meant neither to see nor to be seen.

Marabar went to it.

He raised his hand and signalled something to the twin.

The twin stood and began, with calm movements, to remove the outer covering. Wood or a wood like material was taken away. Dark panels were pushed back. A narrow opening appeared, then a larger one.

Gnok emerged.

At first only his head.

The old wizard sat upright, bound, his mouth still covered, his eyes blindfolded. His white hair hung in disorder along the sides of his face. He looked exhausted, but not as empty as before. Anadar saw it at once, even though outwardly almost nothing was different. There was tension in Gnok again. A resistance, quiet, deep, heavy. The thought of Mother had not healed him. How could it have done that. But it had awakened something in him that Marabar apparently had not yet understood.

Behind Gnok stood a demon as well.

Smaller than the one accompanying Anadar. Shaped differently. Lower, narrower, with long arms and a head that was too smooth until one realised that several dark slits opened and closed within it. It had fewer eyes, but they were larger, deeper, almost black, with narrow golden rings around the pupils. It was less overwhelming than Anadar’s guard, but by no means less deadly. Its alienness was quieter. Closer to a knife.

Marabar stepped up to Gnok.

“Well, old friend,” he said.

Gnok barely moved his head.

Marabar removed the blindfold, but not the cloth over his mouth.

Gnok blinked.

He needed a moment to endure the light. Then he saw Marabar. Then Anadar. For the fraction of a breath, his gaze held on Anadar. No greeting. No word. Not even a visible sign. But Anadar understood enough.

He lives.

I live.

Still.

Perhaps Marabar saw it. Or perhaps he allowed it.

“You will now witness the triumph, Gnok,” he said. “The glorious city of cities. Sahretûn in all her splendour. Before your eyes once more.”

He stepped a little aside so that Gnok could look past him toward the black crater.

“You have had this pleasure once before.”

Gnok did not answer.

The mouth covering made it impossible, but Anadar was not sure whether he would have answered even if he could.

Marabar waited for a moment, perhaps for a tremor, for a recoil, for the first crack in the old man’s face. When he received nothing, he turned back to Anadar.

“My friend,” he said loudly and deliberately, “follow me.”

“You use that word stubbornly wrong.”

“Still,” said Marabar.

He climbed onto the driver’s bench of the front sled. The twins moved to the second, one to Gnok, one to the reins. The demon guarding Anadar remained beside him, not close enough to touch him, not far enough to be forgotten.

“You may sit,” said Marabar. “Or stand, if you value a more dignified posture.”

Anadar did not sit at once. His legs hurt anyway. He climbed onto the front carriage, but not back into the interior. Instead he remained on a low side step from which he could see. Marabar noticed and allowed it.

Then the sled began to move.

The runners glided over the black sand.

It was not a fast ride. They moved slowly toward the crater rim, over hardened volcanic rock that emerged more and more often from beneath the sand. The ground grew darker. At times the runners scraped over black glass stone. At times they crossed surfaces smooth as frozen waves. To left and right lay stones that looked as though they had screamed in the moment of their creation and then solidified.

Anadar looked upward.

The crater rim was larger than it had seemed from a distance. Not merely a wall. A whole landscape of black rock. Torn, split, thrown up. Here the world had once burned. Perhaps it still burned, deep below.

Marabar was unusually silent.

He drove the carriage himself. He did so with a certain joy he did not entirely conceal. Now and then Anadar heard a soft chuckle, not loud, not open, more a breath catching on a thought only Marabar knew. Sometimes he looked over his shoulder at Anadar. Sometimes at the second carriage, at Gnok. As though he wanted to be certain that both were awake enough to see.

The path climbed.

Only a little at first, then more clearly. The sled glided up a shallow slope, and Anadar saw a huge crater before him. He had already sensed it from outside, but only now did he understand that they were not approaching the rim in order to look over it. They were heading toward a place in the black wall.

He saw the opening very late.

Too late, really.

For a long time the rock seemed closed. A surface of shadow, cracks and dark stone, in which every line looked like every other. Only when the sled was almost before it did an even darker outline detach itself from the wall. An opening. Tall, narrow in relation to the immense rock face, and yet large enough for the sled to glide through upright. No gate. No wings. No guard post. Only a hole in the black stone, like a mouth that did not breathe.

The sled glided in.

Darkness settled around them.

Not completely. Along the sides of the tunnel, faint lines glowed within the stone, red and deep, as though embers were enclosed somewhere below. The air grew cooler. The sound of the runners changed, became tighter, nearer. The second carriage followed behind them, and the sound of its movement echoed in the tunnel as though it came from several directions at once.

Marabar said nothing.

Only once he laughed softly.

Anadar hated that he had to wait.

The tunnel led downward.

Or upward.

It was hard to say. The ground moved in long, gentle sweeps, and the walls were so dark that direction showed itself more in the body than in the eye. After a while Anadar saw light ahead.

At first only a grey shimmer.

Then an opening.

And in that opening, still far away, something angular.

Shaped.

Not rock.

Not nature.

The sled glided onward.

The opening grew larger.

Slowly. Steadily. With every heartbeat.

Anadar involuntarily stood straighter.

Marabar noticed.

“Open your eyes wide now,” he said. His voice had become soft, almost reverent. “Soon you will see her.”

The tunnel widened.

The light at the other end grew.

The angular shape within it became walls. Towers. Edges. An order that did not belong in the stone, and for precisely that reason emerged from it all the more powerfully.

Then they left the tunnel.

And Anadar saw Sahretûn for the first time.

The city lay in a black crater.

Vast.

Much larger than he had expected. Not large like a city grown through trade, not from districts, markets, chance and generations. Sahretûn seemed planned. Willed. Raised from the crater by one single dark will. Black walls drew themselves in broad rings across the crater floor. Towers stood like spears of obsidian, high, slender, angular, some joined by bridges that looked so narrow they seemed more like signs than paths. Streets ran in straight lines and broken angles toward squares whose patterns Anadar could not interpret even from above.

Everything was black.

But not monotonous.

There were matte black stones, shining ones, deep grey ones, stones with red veins, stones that did not reflect the light but seemed to swallow it. In some places, pale fire burned in high bowls. In others, columns of smoke or steam rose upward. A light hung over the city that did not come from the sky alone. It was as though Sahretûn had brought its own twilight back from the dimension in which it had lain so long.

The crater itself was like a bowl of solidified night.

Buildings, terraces and stairs clung to its walls. In the depths stood the city itself. Enormous halls. Domes too sharp to be beautiful. Pyramidal roofs. Towers whose tips inclined inward as though listening for a command from the centre. There rose a complex larger than everything else, a black citadel or palace made of several structures pushed into one another, with tall windows glowing red.

Anadar felt something in him contract.

Not only fear.

Not even primarily fear.

It was the recognition that this city was real.

Not legend. Not warning. Not an image from Gnok’s memory. Not a fragment of old guilt kept dark in books because no one could see it anymore.

It was there.

Sahretûn had returned to the world.

Marabar guided the sled to the side of the tunnel mouth and let it stop. The second carriage came to a halt behind them. Anadar remained standing and looked down.

Marabar did not turn first to him.

He turned to Gnok.

That was what he had been waiting for.

A face.

An old enemy.

The horror in a witness who had seen Sahretûn once before, back then before the banishment, before the fall, before the Dungeon Dimension. Marabar did not only want to show. He wanted Gnok to see. He wanted Gnok to understand that his sacrifice, his guilt, his grief, his entire terrible history had not been enough.

Gnok looked at the city.

His face remained almost unmoved.

Almost.

Anadar saw it nonetheless.

Only for a brief moment. A tiny crack. The breath of horror in the old wizard’s eyes, closed again so quickly that Marabar might have missed it if he had not been all but starving for it.

But Marabar saw it.

He smiled.

“You do not want to give me the satisfaction, do you?”

He spoke to Gnok, but loudly enough for Anadar to hear every word.

“You will yet do it. You will yet do it when you realise how many of your old friends are with us.”

Gnok did not move.

But Anadar saw his hands tighten in the bonds.

Marabar laughed.

This time loudly.

The laughter rolled out of him and across the black vista as though even the crater belonged to his voice. Then he set the carriage in motion again. The path led along the inner rim and then downward, in long arcs, toward the city.

“You know, Anadar,” said Marabar while the runners glided over the dark ground again, “when Sahretûn was transferred into the Dungeon Dimension, many of the attackers were still inside the city.”

Anadar kept looking at the city.

“Trapped.”

“Yes.”

Marabar spoke the word with visible pleasure.

“They had reached us. Some deeply. Some as far as the inner districts. Some were still fighting when the passage happened. Some believed they had already won. And then they were there with us. In the dimension from which there is no escape.”

The sled glided past black rock walls. Anadar saw the first figures on distant terraces. Some stood still and looked up at them. Humans perhaps. Or something that stood like humans. Too far away to be certain.

“What happened to them?”

Marabar smiled.

“We made them a generous offer.”

“Of course.”

“To become one of us. Or be thrown to the demons as food.”

Anadar looked at him.

“And you call that generous?”

“It is more choice than they granted us.”

“They came to kill demon summoners.”

“And discovered that they were in a city full of demon summoners, with no way back, no reinforcements, no sky, no sunrise, no comforting illusion that their side must win in the end simply because it considered itself the right one.”

Marabar laughed again, more softly this time.

“Without exception, they all accepted our offer, Master Anadar.”

Anadar sensed that Marabar was lying.

Not necessarily in the matter itself.

Perhaps all who had survived had indeed agreed at some point. But the words without exception were too smooth. Too proud. Too carefully made to strike Gnok. It could mean that the others were no longer counted among those to whom an offer had been made. It could mean that those who refused had become demon fodder quickly enough not to count later as exceptions.

“How many?” asked Anadar.

Marabar looked pleased.

“Enough.”

From behind came no sound from Gnok.

The second demon remained with him.

The city grew before them.

The deeper they came, the more details emerged. Gates without wings. Arches of black stone leading into courtyards. Channels in which no clear liquid flowed, but something dark, slow, reflecting red light. Statues at the roadsides, not of kings or gods, but of figures in long robes, some with raised hands, some with lowered heads, some without faces. Above several squares hung circles of metal in the air, motionless, freely suspended, covered with signs Anadar did not know and yet did not want to look at without protecting himself inwardly.

Beings moved in the city.

Not many on the outer roads, but enough.

Humans.

Summoners.

Perhaps.

Some wore black or grey robes, others armour that could not have come from the forges of the present world. Some walked alone. Some in groups. Once Anadar saw a figure accompanied by two demons as though they were dogs or servants or shadows. Another creature crouched on a roof and spread wings as they passed, wings too thin and too long.

The demon beside Anadar made no sound.

Marabar looked at the city like a man returning home after a very long absence and forbidding himself to grow soft because of it.

“Do you know,” he said at last, “that time has no meaning in the Dungeon Dimension?”

Anadar did not answer at once.

The question was not a question. Not really. It was a door Marabar opened before him only to push him through it.

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” said Marabar, “that waiting is different there. That a year and a century are not reliably separated from one another. That some break in moments and others endure ages in a single thought. It means that decay has no line. That memory stretches. That hunger does not end merely because time says it should. That guilt does not grow old. That loyalty is not rewarded. That madness sometimes lasts a shorter time than hope.”

His smile had disappeared.

For a moment he did not look proud.

Only old.

Then the expression was gone.

“For us,” he continued, “Sahretûn had never passed. She was enclosed. Besieged by an eternity without direction. But not dead. Never dead.”

“And the attackers?”

“Some learned quickly. Others needed longer. Some screamed for a very long time. Others fell silent early. Some clung to Gnok’s name, to Mother, to their alliances, to the idea that rescue had to come. Rescue did not come.”

Now he looked back at Gnok.

“Did it?”

Gnok sat motionless.

Marabar seemed to warm himself at his silence.

“Sometimes the cruelest thing about a victory,” he said, “is that it does not kill the defeated at once. One lets them live with the knowledge that their sacrifice was not enough.”

Anadar looked at him.

“Is that why you are showing us this?”

“Partly.”

“To torment Gnok.”

“Also.”

“And me?”

Marabar smiled again.

“To show you that I am not offering you a ruin.”

The sled reached a broader road. Black walls rose on both sides. Anadar felt the city taking him in, not like a place one entered, but like a system of gazes, signs and foreign laws in which every step was already noticed.

“Sahretûn is not memory,” said Marabar. “Not legend. Not the shadow of an ancient power. She is a city that survived the end. And now she returns to a world weaker, more ignorant and more divided than the one that once feared us.”

He turned to Anadar again.

“Do you understand better now what I offer you?”

Anadar looked at the black towers.

At the bridges.

At the red lights.

At the demons on the walls.

At Gnok in the second sled, whose eyes were not broken despite everything.

“Yes,” said Anadar.

Marabar looked at him expectantly.

“I understand better what you are.”

The smile remained on Marabar’s face.

But it grew colder.

“Good,” he said. “Understanding is always the first step.”

The sleds glided farther down into Sahretûn.

And above them, the black walls of the eternal city closed like a thought that had waited too long to be forgotten again.

10

They treated him almost kindly.

That was perhaps the most unsettling thing about it.

No one struck him. No one shoved him through corridors. No one dragged him on chains through the black city. When they had brought him to Sahretûn, he was not taken to a dungeon, not to a pit, not to a torture chamber, but to a room. A proper room. Bare, yes. Windowless. Enclosed by black stone and furnished with a heavy door that was bolted from the outside. But there was a table, a chair, a low bed, water, bread, even a bowl of fruit whose origin Anadar did not know and whose colour in the pale light of the lamps seemed almost unnatural.

It was not a prison that made an effort to look like a dungeon.

It was a prison that did not need to lower itself by looking like one.

Marabar had explained the conditions to him himself.

“You are not bound,” he had said. “That is more than many in your place could expect.”

Anadar had moved his hands slowly, still sore from the ropes, and looked at him.

“And that is meant to produce gratitude?”

“No,” said Marabar. “Reason.”

Muurgha stood in the corner of the room.

Since Ashambrat, the demon had not once left Anadar’s side. He had been there during the journey, during the entry into Sahretûn, during the first passage through the city, at every meal, at every conversation, at every hour of silence. When Anadar slept, Muurgha stood there. When Anadar woke, Muurgha stood there. When Anadar stared at the wall and pretended to think of nothing, Muurgha stood there and saw with too many eyes things no human should see.

Marabar had pointed at him.

“The smallest spell,” he said calmly, “and you die.”

“You have already said that.”

“Then I will say it more precisely. The smallest spell, and Gnok dies as well.”

Anadar was silent.

Marabar smiled.

“I considered that addition important.”

“Where is he?”

“Safe.”

“Yours?”

“Ours.”

“That answers nothing.”

“Yes. Only nothing that comforts you.”

Anadar had looked at Muurgha. The demon did not stir. Some of his eyes lay closed, others blinked in slow alternation. He did not look like a guard waiting for an order. He looked like a judgement that had already been passed and was merely seeking the right occasion to carry itself out.

“No magical tricks,” said Marabar. “No attempts to test the door. No signs in the dust. No breathing exercises that accidentally bring too much order into the air. No memory of old fires that suddenly slips through your hands. I know who you are, Anadar. I know what a Master of the Fiery Fortress can do to a room if one gives him time.”

“Then it is unwise not to bind me.”

“No,” said Marabar. “It is courteous.”

“You confuse courtesy with control.”

“I rarely confuse anything.”

Since then Anadar had been unbound.

And yet his freedom of movement was scarcely greater than before.

The room had no window. No view. No orientation. The lamps burned in an even cold light that did not reveal whether outside it was day or night. The door was opened when it was meant to be opened. Food came when Sahretûn determined it. Visitors came when Marabar wished it. He did not see Gnok again. No one told him where the old wizard was, in which part of the city, in what condition, under which guard.

Anadar was free enough to walk when he was led.

Free enough to sit when he was permitted.

Free enough not to hang like an animal on the wall.

But he was completely isolated. Without orientation. Locked in the centre of a city that did not belong in the world, guarded by a demon whose presence turned every rash step into suicide.

Anadar too knew when it was time to fight and when it was not.

That was a lesson many young mages learned only too late. Courage was not running headfirst against stone simply because one was angry. Sometimes courage meant remaining still when every muscle strained toward attack. Sometimes survival was not cowardice, but preparation.

So he waited.

And observed.

Sahretûn did not present itself to him all at once. The city revealed its power in layers.

First came servants, if one wished to call them that. Silent people with lowered gazes, some with signs on their wrists, some with empty eyes that reminded him of the twins. Then younger summoners, who looked at him as prisoner, curiosity and danger all at once. Then masters.

Master Nodra was one of the first to enter.

A narrow, old figure with almost translucent skin and a face that seemed to have been held together for many years by duty alone. His robe was black, lined inside with dark grey, the sleeves embroidered with fine signs. He spoke little, but when he entered the room, the younger summoners stepped back of their own accord.

“Master of the Fiery Fortress,” said Nodra.

“Master of Sahretûn,” Anadar replied.

Nodra inclined his head almost imperceptibly. Perhaps it was acknowledgement. Perhaps only an observation.

Then came Zts.

Shorter than Nodra, broader, with a standing collar and a gaze that seemed to count every object in the room. Zts seemed less like a mystic than the administrator of a very dangerous order. His fingers were stained with ink, although Anadar saw no writing implements on him. He studied Anadar for a long time, said nothing, and then stepped aside as though he had made an initial classification and filed it away within himself.

More masters came with them.

Master Varkhûn of Sahretûn, tall, with an angular face and stone coloured eyes, who held his hands clasped behind his back and looked more often at the walls than at Anadar.

Mistress Serephat of Sahretûn, entirely in black and silver, with severely braided hair and a mouth that barely softened even when she spoke. Her voice was quiet, yet everyone listened. She did not ask about the spell. She asked about conditions, about terms, about the exact form of promises. A summoner of oaths, contracts, bindings.

Master Orlakh of Sahretûn, massive, dark bearded, with a scar across his left cheek, who looked at Anadar with open hostility and made little effort to hide his contempt.

Mistress Vaorissa of Sahretûn, whose beauty was not young, but smooth and cold, like polished bone. She did not step close to Anadar, yet his body tensed when she entered the room. There was something of knife, needle and opened flesh in her nearness.

Master Tschevran of Sahretûn, a gaunt man with long fingers and a voice like dry paper. He wore several small keys at his side, not made of metal, but of a dark material Anadar did not know. He looked at Anadar as though he were not searching for the man, but for the place in history where this man was to be entered.

They all came.

They all looked at him.

And Muurgha always remained in the corner.

Then came Olven and Fantor.

Anadar noticed before they entered that something changed. The masters stood differently. Not submissively, not crawling, but with a clear, almost instinctive order. Conversations fell silent. Space appeared. Even Nodra, who looked old enough to have no need to wait for anyone anymore, took half a step aside.

The door opened.

Olven entered first.

Lord of Sahretûn.

The violet lining of his black robe was visible at once, a dark, deep violet that did not adorn, but distinguished. It was not a loud rank, no gold, no crown, no splendour. For precisely that reason it was more effective. One glance was enough. Olven was taller than Anadar had expected, upright, calm, with a face that was neither friendly nor hostile. He seemed like a man who had lived long enough inside a hierarchy that he no longer needed to display it.

Beside him came Fantor.

He too wore the violet lining.

Lord of Sahretûn.

Anadar had not known how much the sight would strike him. Not because Fantor lived. He knew that. Not because Fantor possessed power. He had expected that. But because the rank was visible. Because the masters made room for him. Because Sahretûn had not only used this repulsive human being, but elevated him.

Fantor smiled.

Slowly.

With that mixture of mockery, satisfaction and old offence that Anadar recognised immediately.

“Since I last saw you,” said Anadar, “you have changed, Fantor.”

Fantor inclined his head.

“The last time I saw you, you jumped out of a window.”

“And you were buried beneath a tower.”

Fantor’s smile widened.

“I cannot say I am pleased to see you, Anadar.”

Olven cast him a cool glance.

“Lord of Sahretûn, Fantor. Anadar is our guest, as you surely know.”

Fantor laughed softly.

“Olven, a cultivated antipathy does not exclude hospitality.”

“It should not stain it.”

“Then I will endeavour to keep my dislike clean.”

Anadar looked from one to the other.

The hierarchy in Sahretûn was strict. Almost as in the Fiery Fortress, only differently coloured. There strength had weight, circles, achievement, age, recognition. Here it was rank, binding, knowledge, nearness to the inner core of the city. The masters stepped aside for the lords. The lords did not speak louder than the masters, but no one interrupted them without thought. Marabar had worn the same violet inner edge. Anadar had noticed it then, but now he understood it better.

Marabar.

Olven.

Fantor.

Lords of Sahretûn.

“Where have you left our mutual friend, Fantor?” asked Anadar.

For a brief moment there was silence.

It was not long. Not even noticeable to someone who had not been watching for it. But Anadar was watching everything.

Fantor’s gaze slid to Muurgha.

Only fleetingly.

Only a twitch of the eyes.

But Anadar saw it.

Naaarstr.

The sword.

Fantor knew something. Or feared something. Perhaps both.

Olven answered in his place.

“That is why we are here, Master of the Fiery Fortress.”

Fantor found his smile again.

“Lord of Sahretûn, Marabar said you would be very happy to hand the spell over to us. As a sign of good will, so to speak.”

“Marabar overestimates my generosity.”

“He rarely does that.”

“Then you all have a problem.”

Master Orlakh snorted softly. Serephat looked at him immediately, and the sound ended.

Only now did Marabar step closer. He had been standing at the edge, not in the centre, and yet it had been clear that the room belonged to him. He held a paper scroll in his hand.

“We have already negotiated, Anadar.”

That was true.

They had negotiated.

Not about his release. That had been Marabar’s first clean cut. Anadar had tried it, not out of hope, but because one had to test a boundary in order to understand the shape of the cage.

Marabar had smiled.

“No.”

“Then there is no bargain.”

“Yes, there is. Only not that one.”

They had spoken about Gnok.

About his survival.

About the conditions under which Sahretûn would not kill the old wizard, not hand him over to the demons, not break him, not display him as a public sign of a victory that mattered more to him than to anyone else. Marabar had tested every word. Serephat had later proposed formulations. Zts had made marginal notes. Nodra had hardly spoken, but when he did, sentences changed.

In the end the bargain stood on paper.

Not freedom for knowledge.

Not mercy for remorse.

But knowledge for survival.

Marabar had called it that himself.

“An honest designation,” he had said. “Harder to misunderstand.”

Anadar had nearly broken the quill.

Now the scroll lay on the table.

Sahretûn received the spell with which Anadar had forced Naaarstr into the sword. In return, Gnok remained alive. Not untouched. Not free. Not safe. But alive. Anadar knew that every word was missing that he had not been able to negotiate into it. He also knew that every word written there counted.

It was not a good bargain.

It was the only one he had.

“How about,” said Anadar slowly, “you bring me the sword? Perhaps the two of us can first remove the mishap that has befallen us both.”

Fantor raised his brows.

“Mishap?”

“Yes.”

“You call it that?”

“I am adapting to the courtesy of this house.”

Marabar seemed amused. Olven, by contrast, grew attentive.

“What exactly do you propose?” he asked.

Anadar did not entirely know why he proposed it.

Not completely.

Part of him acted tactically. If the sword came here, Naaarstr came near him. If Naaarstr was near him, perhaps he could learn more. Not only about the sword, but about Sahretûn’s grip on demons, about its safeguards, its fears, its blind spots. Another part of him, deeper and less ordered, told him that this path mattered. That in the way they treated Naaarstr there lay something he had to understand if he wanted to grasp what Gnok had meant by wizard.

He began to explain.

But Olven spoke before him.

“This is an excellent idea, Master of the Fiery Fortress, Anadar.”

Anadar looked at him.

Olven continued calmly.

“We will discuss this while you go within yourself and try to remember the spell.”

Anadar smiled.

He did not have to go within himself.

Not for that.

He had not forgotten the spell. He had inscribed it in himself back then, when he developed and applied it. Morgut and he had created a technique to anchor complex spells flawlessly in memory, not only as a sequence of signs, but as an inner framework of memory, rhythm and mental position. Since that day, this spell had lain in his mind like a sharp blade in a sheath. He only had to reach for it.

He did not say that.

Instead he inclined his head.

“I will do that when the time has come.”

Fantor studied him.

“You are very composed for a man who is trading his life for a scroll.”

“You are very satisfied for a man who last jumped out of a window.”

Fantor’s smile flickered.

Only slightly.

Good.

Marabar ended the conversation.

“We will return.”

Anadar did not know how much time passed afterward.

In Sahretûn, time had become uncertain anyway. Not as in the Dungeon Dimension, perhaps, but in this windowless room there was no sun, no night, no sounds of streets to distinguish day from evening. It could have been a few hours. Perhaps more. Perhaps less. His body was tired enough to be wrong.

When the door opened again, Marabar came first.

Then Olven.

Then Fantor.

With them several masters. Nodra, Serephat, Zts, Varkhûn, Tschevran. Vaorissa remained at the edge. Orlakh looked as though he would rather be elsewhere and at the same time was too curious to stay away.

Two servants carried a long, dark casket.

Anadar sensed the sword before he saw it.

Not as a voice.

Not yet.

Rather as tension in the room. As though an old dispute were holding its breath.

The casket was placed on the table and opened.

Anadar’s sword lay within it.

The blade seemed unchanged. Too calm. Too physical. Anyone who did not know what was bound inside it would have taken it for a dangerous, perhaps powerful weapon. Not for a demon made of form, hatred, hunger and memory of blood.

Muurgha stood in the corner.

Marabar looked at him.

Then pointed to the door.

“Outside.”

It was the first time the demon did not guard Anadar in the same room.

Muurgha did not stir at once.

Several of his eyes opened.

Marabar did not repeat the order. He merely looked at the demon. Between them lay a moment in which Anadar could almost physically feel that obedience among demons was not the same as among humans. It was not trust. Not service. Not the will to please. It was binding. Violence. Contract. Coercion. Something held, remembering its own form.

Then Muurgha moved.

The demon glided out through the door.

It closed behind him.

For the first time, Anadar was without demonic guard.

Not alone. Far from it. The room was full of summoners, full of lords and masters of Sahretûn, full of people who were all dangerous in their own way. But no demon stood between him and the air.

Marabar looked at him.

“Do not get any foolish ideas. There are many of us, and the demon stands outside the door.”

Anadar slowly looked around the room.

“You think it is better if he is not in the room while we do this?”

No one answered at once.

Anadar looked at Marabar.

“You do not trust your servant?”

Marabar smiled.

“Betrayal is not only a human trait.”

Anadar laughed softly.

“At last you say something true.”

Marabar wanted to answer, but Anadar barely heard him anymore.

Another voice was in his head.

Do not give it to them.

Naaarstr.

The voice was not loud. It did not have to be. It was near, smooth, dark and unmistakable. It did not come from outside, not through the air, not through the ears. It lay directly inside him, as though the sword had found an old door whose lock it still knew.

Do not give it to them, Anadar.

Outwardly, Anadar showed nothing.

I have missed you too, he thought. Not really. But here you are again.

Naaarstr’s answer was a hiss that almost seemed like laughter.

We could kill them.

Of course.

Summoner blood, Anadar. So much of it. So near. We could simply erase them. You and I. Now.

You are still bad at negotiating.

I would not trouble you afterward.

Anadar almost smiled.

That is one of your weaker lies.

Do not give it to them, Naaarstr repeated. It would only make them more unpredictable.

Anadar did not answer that.

Because this time the demon might be right.

“I assume,” Anadar said aloud, “that you have learned how to make him compliant.”

A soft smile moved through the circle of summoners. Not the same on all of them. Fantor’s was open. Olven’s barely visible. Serephat’s almost absent. Marabar’s was that of a man who hears a good question and does not immediately want to give the whole answer.

“Compliant,” said Fantor. “A beautiful word.”

“An imprecise one,” said Olven.

“But pretty.”

“If I take him out of the blade,” said Anadar, “can you banish him? Because I cannot.”

The summoners looked at one another.

Not uncertain.

More professionally.

“Banishment is not the problem,” Fantor said at last. “Not anymore.”

“What is the problem, then?”

Olven answered.

“How we get him back out of the sword.”

Naaarstr laughed in Anadar’s mind.

They fear the door because they do not understand the room.

Anadar sat down.

He pulled a paper scroll toward him. Beside it already lay a quill, carefully cut, and a dark inkwell. Sahretûn had prepared without being certain that he would write. Or precisely because it was certain that he had to write.

He took the quill in his hand.

For a moment he let it hover above the paper.

Gnok lives, he thought.

Still.

Then he began to write.

The first signs came without hesitation. He did not simply set down letters. He laid structure. The outer lines first, then the inner branches, then the places where an ordinary banishing circle would be wrong, because this spell was not a banishing circle. His hand moved calmly. Perhaps too calmly. The summoners stepped closer, one after another. No one spoke. Only the soft scratching of the quill filled the room.

Naaarstr was silent.

That too was unsettling.

Anadar continued writing.

Several minutes passed. Perhaps more. He noticed how the mood around him changed. First expectant control. Then attention. Then something that was almost admiration, even though none of them would have been foolish enough to show it openly.

A soft murmur moved through the summoners when he set the central connection.

Zts bent forward.

Serephat’s eyes narrowed.

Tschevran murmured something that sounded like an old technical term.

Varkhûn forgot the walls for the first time.

Fantor said nothing more.

Anadar wrote the last sign, placed a final small hook at a point that would have seemed incidental to an outsider, and laid down the quill.

Marabar stood over the paper.

For a long time he said nothing.

Then he breathed out audibly.

“We never thought of that.”

No one contradicted him.

Marabar bent lower over the scroll.

“You do not truly banish the demon into the sword.”

His voice had changed. The smooth mockery was gone. There was real interest now. Sharp. Bright. Almost greedy.

“You do not even bind him in the ordinary sense.”

Olven stepped beside him.

“No,” he said slowly. “He does not anchor him to the matter. He forces him into a material relation through a change of form.”

Marabar raised his gaze to Anadar.

“You shape energy into matter.”

“Not entirely,” said Anadar.

At once they all looked at him.

He could have remained silent.

Perhaps he should have.

But the bargain required the spell, and every ambiguity could later cost Gnok dearly. Besides, false knowledge in the hands of summoners was sometimes more dangerous than correct knowledge. Or more useful, depending on whom it harmed.

“I do not shape the entire demon into matter,” said Anadar. “That would be impossible. Not for me, not in this situation. I force his active form into material liability. The sword does not become a prison, but a share. Naaarstr is not in it like a prisoner in a cell. In a certain sense, he becomes the sword, as far as his present form allows it.”

Marabar smiled slowly.

“That explains it.”

Olven nodded.

“That is why our ordinary banishment tests reacted incorrectly.”

“Because you were looking for a door,” said Anadar, “where there was no door.”

Naaarstr whispered in his mind:

You are enjoying this.

Anadar remained silent inwardly.

Marabar picked up the scroll as though holding a precious discovery.

“Brilliant,” he said softly. “Refined. And dangerous, because it does not work like a banishment. The demon becomes the sword. Not completely. Not finally. But enough to bypass the usual orders.”

Fantor looked at Anadar.

“You developed this alone?”

“Yes.”

The word came faster than Anadar had expected.

Morgut.

His name did not fall.

Not here.

Not in this room.

“Alone,” Anadar repeated.

Fantor smiled.

“Interesting.”

“Not for you.”

“Everything is interesting to me if it makes you uneasy.”

Olven raised a hand, and Fantor actually fell silent.

Anadar noticed that.

Fantor obeyed Olven.

Perhaps not gladly.

But he obeyed.

Marabar laid the scroll back on the table.

“And now,” he said, “let us see whether we can reverse it.”

He gestured toward the sword.

Naaarstr’s voice became sharp.

Anadar.

I hear you.

Do not do it.

I thought you wanted summoner blood.

I want freedom. Not their hands on my form.

That is almost honest.

You do not understand what they will do if they master this technique.

Perhaps I do.

No. Naaarstr’s voice grew colder. You understand power. But you do not understand their hunger.

Anadar looked at the blade.

Then at Marabar.

Then at Olven, Fantor, Serephat, Nodra, Zts and the others.

There were too many summoners in this room.

Too many eyes.

Too much knowledge.

And Muurgha stood outside the door.

“Before we begin,” said Anadar, “one condition.”

Marabar looked at him.

“The bargain is closed.”

“For the spell. Not for an attempt to loosen a demon from a blade while I sit beside it.”

Serephat lifted her head.

“Formulate it.”

Anadar turned to her.

“Gnok remains alive, regardless of the outcome of this attempt.”

“That is already in the agreement,” she said.

“Then say it again. Before everyone.”

A brief silence.

Fantor laughed softly.

“You are learning.”

Marabar looked at Anadar for a long time.

Then he said, “Gnok remains alive, regardless of the outcome of this attempt, provided you do not act against us.”

Serephat nodded.

“Witnessed.”

Nodra said, “Witnessed.”

Olven said, “Witnessed.”

One by one, the masters followed.

Fantor last.

“Witnessed,” he said, and his smile was thin.

Anadar placed his hands on the table.

“Then we begin.”

Naaarstr no longer whispered.

He was silent.

And that silence was darker than any threat.

11

They were aware that this would be no ordinary Conclave.

Even the room before the portal was too still.

It lay deep within the Fiery Fortress, where the walls seemed older than most memories of the school. Black stone, red veins, heavy pillars, a floor into which circles and signs had been set, not for ornament, but for order. In the centre stood the portal, still closed, a matte surface of resting light, framed by dark metal and ancient runes. It was no gate for ordinary paths. It was a promise and a threat at once. Whoever stepped through it did not step only into another room, but into another kind of truth.

Mother stood somewhat apart.

Beside her were Manador, Loon, Isidre, Klaast and Sinadie. Not every one of them carried a voice of their own, not every one was there to speak officially, but each of them knew that presence on this day would have meaning. It was not only about rank. It was about witnesses. About stance. About the question of who, in the end, would be able to say that he had seen what happened.

Slonda was in the room as well, together with Xiodri, Miene and Sindra. They would not step through with the others. Slonda had spoken with Mother for a long time. Xiodri remained in the background, arms folded, her face serious. Miene and Sindra stood close together. Both seemed composed, yet in their eyes lay that tense vigilance borne only by those who have already understood that the world does not break in the places where one expects it.

Klaast spoke quietly with Slonda.

It was not a fleeting conversation. Klaast seemed focused, but uncertain too, and Slonda answered with that calm precision which rarely comforted people and yet prevented them from falling into panic. Klaast was an earth mage. Since Tranda’s departure he carried more responsibility than he liked, and according to the rotation, the chairmanship fell to him. He was not a coward. Not that. But he was not a man who reached for the centre. This Conclave would place him precisely there.

“You do not have to be louder than Hokn`f,” said Slonda.

Klaast looked at him.

“He will try.”

“Of course.”

“And if I cannot hold the chair?”

Slonda looked at him for a long time.

“Then at least hold the form. Sometimes that is enough until others save the content.”

Klaast snorted softly, but it was not mockery.

“That sounds like Tandor.”

“It is Tandor.”

Mother stepped closer.

“It is time.”

No one asked whether everyone was ready. They were not. No human being was ready for what had been moving toward them for days, perhaps for years, perhaps for ages. One could only decide not to retreat anymore.

The portal opened.

Light filled the surface, not bright, but deep, as though one were looking into a room that only remembered being light. Manador went first. Not out of vanity, but because he knew that the Fiery Fortress had to appear visibly today. Loon followed him, calm, his gaze heavy. Sinadie went at Manador’s side. Then Isidre. Klaast hesitated for one breath, looked once more at Slonda, then stepped through as well.

Mother went last.

Just before she vanished, she turned her head.

Slonda nodded.

Then she was gone.

The room of the Conclave was cooler than the room of the portal.

It was round, high, and filled with a light that came from no visible source. In the centre stood the great table, neither round nor rectangular, but shaped according to an order that corresponded to the old schools. Places were marked, some used for centuries, some empty, some long only memory. The air smelled of stone, old wood, dust and unspoken judgements.

Bertagnie was already waiting.

The zealot of the earth mages did not stand at his place, but in the middle of the way, as though he had saved up his outrage for so long that it could no longer remain at the edge. The moment he saw Klaast, he went for him.

“You have no right to speak here for the Earth School,” he bleated before anyone had properly arrived. “You left the school. You removed yourself without authority. There was no internal vote, no proper confirmation, no consultation with the remaining councils.”

Klaast stopped.

“Bertagnie.”

“No. You will hear me. This is no small matter. The seat of the Earth School does not belong to whoever happens to be the first to step through a portal.”

Isidre took one step forward.

“Bertagnie, this is not the moment.”

“Perhaps not for you,” he snapped at her. “For the Earth School, certainly.”

Klaast raised his hand, trying to remain calm.

“You will not open it before this question has been settled,” the zealot barked at him.

Manador looked at Loon.

Loon sighed almost inaudibly.

“A fine beginning,” Manador murmured. “The room is not burning yet, but we are working on it.”

Mother did not let it stop her.

She went undisturbed to her place. Sina and Oni were already waiting for her there. Both rose as she came, not out of stiff formality, but with that quiet respect that needs no witnesses. Mother sat. Sina and Oni took their places at her side. No word passed between them. None was needed.

Manador, Loon and Sinadie took their seats. Isidre remained near Klaast, not as a voice, but as support. Klaast was still trying to lead Bertagnie back into some form of conversation, but the zealot had found his own stage and had no intention of leaving it again.

At first, no one from the School of the Winds was present.

Nor from Water.

Nor from Mind.

That absence lay heavily in the room. Chairs remained empty, signs remained unoccupied, and precisely because of that, what was missing became tangible. The war in the desert had already reached the order of the Conclave before the first disputants had entered.

They waited.

And listened to Bertagnie’s complaints.

He spoke about procedure, about old rights, about the purity of the Earth School, about forbidden minglings, about the presumption of stretching old rules in a time of unrest. Klaast grew paler, not from guilt, but because he felt that every unnecessary dispute weakened his later authority. Isidre tried twice to interrupt Bertagnie. He ignored her. Manador increasingly looked as though he were considering whether a fireball might be admissible as a motion on procedure.

Then the door opened.

Hokn`f entered.

With him Fontal and From.

Only the three of them.

And none of them looked as though they had slept in the last few days.

Hokn`f’s face was hollow, his eyes darkly shadowed, yet his gaze burned. Not exhausted. Consumed. His robe was dusty, damaged in several places, and even his attempt to hold himself upright revealed how much strength the past days had cost him. Fontal seemed paler than before, harder and at the same time more wounded. From looked like a man walking upright because collapsing would be too visible a confession.

Bertagnie fell silent.

That alone would have been enough to change the room.

Hokn`f’s gaze fell on Mother.

For a moment he stopped.

“You live.”

It did not sound like joy.

Mother looked at him calmly.

“Yes.”

She said no more.

Hokn`f pressed his lips together and went to his place. Fontal and From followed him. Their movements were heavy. Fontal avoided the gaze of the others. From did so less visibly, but he too sought no prolonged eye contact.

Hokn`f did not wait for an opening.

He did not wait for attendance to be established, not for the chair, not for the old words with which the Conclave had begun for generations. He stood at his place, placed both hands on the table and spoke.

“I hand the chair to Klaast, the earth mage who will lead today’s session.”

Klaast looked up.

The words should have helped him. They did not. Precisely because Hokn`f said them in that way, without form, without respect, without the old rules, they sounded not like recognition, but like a knife laid down. Bertagnie immediately opened his mouth again.

“That is not proper.”

Klaast hesitated.

Only briefly.

But Hokn`f saw it.

Manador saw it too.

And this time Manador was faster.

“Hokn`f,” he said calmly, “you look tired.”

Hokn`f’s head snapped around.

“How dare you?”

The voice cut through the room.

“How dare you still not have come to our aid while we are dying in the desert? You sit here in your fortress, counting your doubts and your books, while our people fight an enemy you have not even understood. That is where you should be. Not here.”

Manador held his gaze.

“Is that so?”

He said only those two words. Then he looked past Hokn`f to Fontal and From.

Fontal could not withstand his gaze.

From held it for one breath longer. Then he too lowered his eyes.

Manador’s face barely changed, yet inwardly something drew together. Not fear. Suspicion. The two of them did not look like people carrying Hokn`f’s accusation with full conviction. They looked like people who had seen something and did not know how to say it without thereby making everything even worse.

Something was wrong here.

Entirely wrong.

Hokn`f slammed his hand onto the table.

“I demand a vote.”

Klaast raised his hand.

“The session has not yet been opened.”

“Then open it.”

“According to the order of the Conclave...”

“Order is dying in the desert,” Hokn`f roared. “We are dying in the desert. And I demand that the Fiery Fortress march at once.”

He thrust his hand into the air.

Fontal raised hers.

From as well.

Manador looked at both of them. Fontal did not do it defiantly. Not even with conviction. There was something else in it. Perhaps guilt. Perhaps fear for those still in the valley. Perhaps the knowledge that a withdrawal by the Fiery Fortress would not save the people there, but only take from them their final support.

From raised his hand like someone voting for the lesser evil and knowing that it remained evil nonetheless.

Hokn`f looked satisfied.

“Three votes for the immediate march of the Fiery Fortress.”

Bertagnie began to say something, but no one listened to him.

Manador looked at Mother.

She seemed very concentrated.

Not on Hokn`f.

Not on the hands.

Not on the table.

Her gaze moved through the room as though listening to a place beneath the words. The light in her eyes changed, and for a moment she seemed absent. Not weak. Not inattentive. Rather as though she were touching a darkness the others could not yet see.

Then she opened her mouth.

“What have you done, Hokn`f?”

The question was quiet.

That was precisely why it struck.

Hokn`f froze.

“What have you done?”

Fontal closed her eyes for a brief moment.

From exhaled slowly.

Mother looked to Manador and Sinadie.

“He has made use of necromancy,” she said. “And he wants to see you die in the desert.”

The room became still.

Not calm.

Still.

Hokn`f’s face twisted.

“Lie.”

Mother looked at him.

“No.”

“An accusation without proof.”

“I need no proof to smell rot.”

Manador stood up very slowly.

There was no surprise left in his face. Only anger, restrained by decency that was becoming too brittle to last much longer.

“In that case,” he said curtly, “I must vote against it.”

He raised his hand.

Mother raised hers as well.

Klaast hesitated no longer. Bertagnie protested immediately, red blotches on his face, but Klaast raised his hand and kept it up.

“The Earth School votes against,” he said.

Bertagnie flared up.

“You cannot...”

“Yes,” said Klaast.

For the first time that day, his voice sounded firm.

“I can.”

Three against three.

The division lay visibly in the room.

Not merely as a number. As a crack. On one side Hokn`f, Fontal and From, exhausted, dust covered, coming from a battle no one in the room yet fully understood. On the other Manador, Mother and Klaast, supported by Sinadie, Loon and Isidre, but in the vote at first only three. Between them stood all the unspoken things. The pyramid. The Sondra. The dead bodies. The fear. The guilt. The question of which of them had already come too late.

Then came applause from the door.

Slowly.

Single claps.

Not loud, but in this stillness each one sounded like a stone falling into a well.

Everyone turned.

A figure stood in the entrance.

Bald. Tall. His skin pale, his features sharp, his teeth a little too pointed when he smiled. He wore a black coat with violet lining, deeper and darker than that of the lords behind him, and in his hand lay a staff whose head was made of a material that was not quite wood, nor bone, nor stone. Behind him stood two other summoners.

Marabar.

And Zts.

Both in black robes with violet lining.

Lords of Sahretûn.

Mother did not rise.

But something about her changed.

Gochad smiled.

“As I see,” he said, “we have arrived at a stalemate.”

Manador involuntarily gripped the back of his chair.

Sinadie turned pale, but did not step back.

Hokn`f stared at the newcomers, and for a moment there was not triumph in his face, but surprise. Not complete surprise. He had expected something. But not this entrance. Not here. Not so openly.

Gochad stepped into the room.

“Allow me to introduce myself to you, brothers and sisters. We have not been present at the Conclave for a long time.”

He bowed slightly.

Not deeply.

“My name is Gochad, Prince of Sahretûn.”

The name spread through the room like smoke.

Mother looked at him.

Gochad’s smile became almost cheerful.

“Only your Mother, your spiritual guide, still recognises me, does she not?”

He inclined his head as though greeting an old acquaintance at a celebration.

“So the reports of your demise were exaggerated.”

Then he turned halfway to Marabar.

“Lord of Sahretûn, Marabar, she seems to be in the best of health.”

Marabar smiled briefly and bowed.

“Tougher than appearances suggested.”

His gaze went to Mother.

“I am to convey greetings to you. From Gnok.”

He laughed softly, visibly amused.

Mother remained completely still.

Only her eyes grew colder.

“You do not speak his name again if you do not know how to honour it,” she said.

Marabar placed a hand on his chest.

“How severe.”

Zts stood silently beside him. His gaze moved over the room, over the seats, the signs, the faces, as though arranging an old map back into its place.

Gochad stepped to the table.

Since there were no chairs for Sahretûn, the three remained standing. That made their entrance stronger. They did not sit among the others. They stood behind a gap that should never have been opened again in the Conclave.

“Well,” said Gochad, “as I see it, you have a stalemate. We are very happy to tilt this decision in favour of the mages of Ashambrat.”

Hokn`f said nothing.

But his hand was still raised.

Gochad looked at Mother.

“We have a voice here, do we not, Mother? We have simply not used it for a long time.”

Mother did not answer at once.

Everyone looked at her.

She could have contradicted him. She could have explained that Sahretûn had been banished, excluded, no longer part of the order. But the Conclave was older than many banishments. Older than the present contempt. Older than the stories with which the dark schools had been erased from memory. And Gochad knew exactly where the form still left gaps.

“Sahretûn once had a seat,” said Mother.

Gochad smiled.

“How kind of you to remember.”

“Once.”

“A city that has not died does not lose its name only because others do not wish to speak it.”

Klaast looked as though he wanted to say something. Yet in this room anyone who knew the old order would have felt that Gochad was not asking for recognition. He was taking it.

“I think,” said Gochad, “you have no objections, Mother.”

Mother looked at him.

“Not against the fact that you may speak.”

“How generous.”

“Against almost everything else.”

Gochad laughed.

“Then let us record it. Four to three.”

He turned to Manador, and in his smile there was suddenly steel.

“Mobilise, fire mage. Come to the aid of your brothers.”

Manador’s face darkened.

Loon placed a hand on his forearm.

Not to stop him. To remind him that the wrong anger serves the enemy.

Hoknf visibly breathed out for the first time. Fontal looked horrified. From pale. Perhaps both had hoped that a decision against Hoknf would release them. Now the Conclave seemed only to drive them deeper in his direction.

Then another voice sounded from the door.

“Not quite so quickly.”

Everyone turned again.

“Perhaps you should count again.”

Slonda entered.

He did not walk hastily. Not theatrically. He came with the calm of a man who had waited long enough to take exactly the right step at exactly the right moment. His white hair lay over his shoulders, his eyes were clear, and in his presence there was something that even halted Gochad’s smile for a moment.

Marabar saw him.

And this time his delight was genuine.

“I have not seen you for an eternity, friend of Tandor.”

He inclined his head.

“Master of Time, Slonda.”

A murmur went through the room.

Not loud. Not from everyone. But the title struck like an old name fallen from a sealed book.

Slonda stopped.

“For me, not so much time has passed.”

Marabar smiled at him.

“You have remained attentive.”

Slonda’s gaze moved over Marabar’s robe.

“You are now a lord, as I see. No longer master, Marabar.”

“Times change.”

“Or they do not.”

Marabar laughed softly.

“Whether it is a pleasure to see you again?”

“That was not a question that concerned me.”

“Nor me.” Marabar looked at him with a warmth worse than open enmity. “I missed you.”

Hokn`f only stared at the newcomer.

“What?”

The word came from him almost helplessly.

Slonda looked at him.

“It seems, Hokn`f, that there is more than you can imagine.”

Hokn`f’s face hardened.

“You have no voice here.”

Mother now rose.

Slowly.

“Yes, he does.”

Gochad looked at her.

His eyes narrowed with pleasure.

“Ah.”

Mother turned to the table, but her words were meant for Hokn`f.

“If I count correctly, it stands six to four against you.”

Hokn`f looked at her, stunned.

“Six? How?”

“I will help you,” said Mother.

Her voice remained calm, but everyone in the room felt the anger beneath it.

“Manador votes for the Fiery Fortress against you. Klaast for Earth. I vote against you. Sinadie carries the voice of Light today.”

Sinadie raised her hand.

Not hastily.

Not uncertainly.

Hokn`f stared at her.

“That is not recognised.”

“Yes,” said Mother. “It is recognised, even if you did not know it.”

She pointed to Oni.

“Oni is Dean of Illusion.”

Oni raised her hand.

Quietly.

Almost sadly.

“And Slonda carries the voice of Time.”

Slonda raised his hand.

Now the number was visible.

Six against four.

For one moment Hokn`f seemed unable to accept the order because it did not conform to his will.

“Ask your new friends from Sahretûn,” said Mother. “If you do not believe the old rules.”

She spoke the word friends as though it were something poisonous.

Gochad laughed.

“You always were quick of mind, Mother.”

He looked at Hokn`f.

“It is correct.”

Hokn`f turned to him as though he had experienced betrayal.

“You said...”

“I said Sahretûn has a voice,” Gochad interrupted him. “Not that you can count.”

Marabar smiled.

Manador slowly sat again, but his gaze remained on Hokn`f.

Slonda stepped closer to the table.

“I request an investigation against Hokn`f of Ashambrat. He has begun a war he should not have begun. He deceived the Conclave. And he makes use of an art that does not belong in his hands.”

“You know nothing,” hissed Hokn`f.

Fontal lifted her head apathetically, as though wanting to formulate an objection, but reconsidered at the last moment. She slowly shook her head.

From looked back and forth between them.

“An investigation,” said Klaast, and now the chairmanship sounded in his voice. Not perfectly. But it was there. “Will be opened.”

Bertagnie began to protest again, but Klaast turned to him.

“Sit down.”

Bertagnie fell silent.

This time he did.

Gochad did not seem troubled.

On the contrary.

He looked as though he had just received enough entertainment for a pleasant evening.

“How charming,” he said. “You investigate one another while old blood waits for us in the desert.”

Mother froze almost imperceptibly.

“What did you say?”

Gochad turned back to Hokn`f, as though Mother were no longer important.

“We will send you help.”

Hokn`f’s face showed caution. And greed.

“What help?”

Gochad’s smile showed the pointed teeth.

“The right kind.”

He placed both hands on the head of his staff.

“It has always been our task to annihilate old blood.”

Mother took one step forward.

“Gochad.”

He looked at her.

“Yes?”

“If you mean the Sondra, then remember that you are not in the Dungeon Dimension.”

“I know.” His voice became soft. “I enjoy it greatly.”

Then he turned.

For him, the Conclave was over.

Not because it had formally closed. But because he had said what he had wanted to say. Marabar and Zts followed him. Yet Marabar remained at the door for a moment when Slonda was near him.

The others heard the murmur in the room, Manador’s suppressed curse, Hokn`f’s heavy breathing, Bertagnie’s disturbed muttering. No one paid attention to Marabar’s half turn. No one except Slonda.

Marabar leaned slightly toward him.

His voice was scarcely more than a breath.

“Your brother is doing well with us.”

Slonda’s face remained calm.

Too calm.

Marabar smiled.

Then he left the Conclave with Gochad and Zts.

The door closed.

For a moment, no one said anything.

The room was still the same. The table, the seats, the signs, the old walls. And yet nothing was as it had been. Sahretûn had returned. Not as rumour. Not as a threat in the distance. Not as a memory from a forbidden book.

Sahretûn had spoken in the Conclave.

Hokn`f stood at the table, defeated in the vote and yet not overthrown. Fontal looked as though she had finally begun to understand that silence too is guilt. From seemed to be breaking under something he could not yet name. Klaast held the chair, but the room was already slipping away again from every order.

Manador looked to Mother.

“What does old blood mean?”

Mother did not answer at once.

Her gaze rested on the door through which Gochad had vanished.

Then she said:

“That they will end the war.”

Sinadie went pale.

Slonda closed his eyes for a moment.

Mother continued, quieter now, but every word fell heavily.

“They have come to erase something that has just risen again.”

No one asked what.

For in that moment everyone understood that book, war, Conclave and return had only been different doors into the same darkness.

And outside, somewhere beyond the walls, beyond the desert, beyond the pyramid and the battle, Sahretûn was moving back into the world.

No longer secretly.

No longer waiting.

But openly.

End book 9

Epilogue

Son, Indra and Roto had gathered with the Kaula.

It had not been a council as humans would have understood it. No vote, no long speech, no order made of words and gestures with which responsibility could be spread across several shoulders. The Kaula stood close together, heavy, silent, suffering, and yet everything had been said. In glances. In touches. In that deep, barely audible vibration that carried more feeling than language.

They had spoken.

And together they had decided that it had to end.

The Kaula lay before them on the stone floor of the Fiery Fortress and still writhed in pain. His mighty body jerked in irregular spasms, his claws scratched across the floor, and every time the pain passed through him, the other Kaula trembled, as though part of it passed through them as well. Perhaps it did. Perhaps they were closer to one another than humans could ever be. Perhaps that was why their suffering was so silent and so unbearable.

His wife had wanted to fight for him until the end.

She had placed herself before him, had pleaded with Son and Indra, had blocked Roto’s path and fought with a despair that no longer knew any enemy, only loss. She wanted to hold him, at any price. Even when no price remained that could still be paid. When Slonda knew nothing more. When Mother had fallen silent. When the other Kaula lowered their heavy heads.

Then she collapsed.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. Her strength simply left her. She sank down beside him, placed one hand against his body and stayed there, trembling, her head pressed against him, as though with her nearness she could still hold him in the world.

Roto stood a little way off.

The knife lay in his hand.

He had agreed to do it.

Not out of hatred.

Not as vengeance for Kol, his friend, whom the Kaula had killed. That thought had been in him, yes. It would have been a lie to pretend he had not known it. Kol was dead. And the Kaula had killed him. But now, in this room, before this creature that could no longer fight, that no longer understood, that was only pain, nothing of revenge remained strong enough to guide Roto’s hand.

What remained was pity.

And perhaps that was harder.

Son stood behind him.

Indra as well.

Both rose silently above him, tall, strange, grave. They said nothing. They did not need to say anything. Roto felt their presence like two pillars at his back. Not urging. Not commanding. Only there.

He took one step forward.

The Kaula writhed.

Roto swallowed.

His fingers closed more tightly around the handle of the knife.

“I am sorry,” he said.

He did not know whether the Kaula understood him. Perhaps his wife understood. Perhaps no one understood. Perhaps it only mattered that he had said it.

He knelt down.

The Kaula’s throat lay before him, mighty, dark, threaded with veins, trembling with bursts of breath. Roto raised the knife. His hand did not tremble. That surprised him. He had thought it would tremble. He had hoped it would tremble. A trembling hand would have proved that he still hesitated.

But it was steady.

He placed the edge against the throat.

In that moment, the Kaula fell silent.

Not slowly.

Not with one final groan.

He fell silent as though someone had taken the pain out of the world.

Roto froze.

The knife still lay against the throat. His fingers held the handle. Son and Indra behind him did not move. The other Kaula raised their heads. The Kaula’s wife opened her eyes.

Roto looked down at the creature before him.

The body no longer jerked.

The breath came calmly.

And there, where the wound had been, where something dark, foreign and incurable had eaten into his flesh, there was nothing anymore.

No open place.

No black edge.

No blood.

Only skin.

Unharmed.