Anadar V/II

VIII

Gnok was not pleased.Gudi could see it at once, even though he hid it in his usual way, as well as he could. She had told him everything the moment she returned to his tower: the encounter with Hokn`f by her parcel, the invitation to the Citadel, the remark about Morgut, the friendliness that had not been friendly enough to truly please her. Gnok had simply looked at her in silence at first, as he always did when she told him something important. But this time there was something else in that silence. His brow was furrowed, and that was new. It was as if he was not looking at her at all, but at two points somewhere far behind her words, between which a line was already tightening in his mind.

Only after a long while did he speak.

“This is not happening without reason,” he said calmly.

Gudi leaned forward in her chair. “Do you think he knows something about the vortex?”

She could hardly wait to discuss with him what it all meant. Gnok fell silent again, but this time it was a different silence, heavier, testing. At last he shook his head slightly.

“No,” he said. “It is not that. Certainly not.” Then he looked at her with piercing intensity. “Hopefully not for a long time yet.”

She held his gaze, though she wanted to speak at once.

“If you want to do yourself a favor,” he continued, “you will not mention the vortex. He would steal it from you.”

“He mentioned news about my brother.”

“Ah. Morgut.” For a moment his face softened. “I wonder what the boy is living through right now. I heard he is with the fire mages now, with Master Anadar. I have met him. A truly outstanding mage. Excellent. A pity there are not more of his kind. Hungry for knowledge and modest.” Then he raised a hand slightly, as if reminding himself to stay on the subject. “But that is not it. No.”

He sank back into thought.

“The moon drops?” he asked half aloud, more to himself than to her. Then he shook his head again. “Gudi, whatever he wants, you know things he should not know.” He paused. “Or rather, he has only a suspicion and wants to probe.”

She sat very still.

“I would rather not warn you,” said Gnok, “but I probably must. He will question you. About me. About what we do together. He will begin with harmless questions, then he will become more specific. He will want to know why you suddenly became so much better. Be careful what you say.” He paused again. “And what you think, I ask you to be careful about that as well.”

Gudi lifted her chin and inclined her head. “Do not worry, Master. I will.”

But when she entered the Citadel, little of that certainty remained.

She waited in a vast hall, cold to the bone, and this inside a citadel in the middle of the desert. Gudi was not used to Ashambrat being cold at all. The walls were thick, the stone pale and smoothly polished, and somewhere high above the heat of the day was being drawn out of the room and turned into something alien, controlled. Everything about it was meant to impress. Size. Order. Power. And it did.

Hokn`f made her wait.

She noticed it very well. This was no accidental delay. He made her wait so that time itself could work on her. And she was visibly nervous. Again and again she went through what she was allowed to say and what she was not. Again and again she prepared sentences, discarded them, replaced them with more harmless ones, forced herself to think about entirely different things, only to end up at the same questions again a moment later.

Do not let anything slip.Do not think about the vortex.Do not think about the Sondra.Do not think about the moon drops.

Precisely because of that, she grew even more nervous.

Her thoughts sprang back like startled animals to exactly the things she wanted to avoid. The vortex. She forced herself quickly to think of something else. Gnok had shown her a technique to redirect thought, not by forbidding something, but by giving the mind something else to hold onto. So she pulled herself back into the present. She forced herself to take in her surroundings: the chill of the hall, the light falling from far above, the fine grain in the stone, the footsteps of the servants who moved so quietly it seemed they were gliding.

They served her fruits she had never seen before.

Pale skins, a thick reddish fruit, something yellow with a soft rind, small pieces of something that smelled of honey and blossoms. She did not even know how to eat them, much less what they were called. And she was so nervous she had no appetite. Not all day. She could not swallow anything.

Again and again her thoughts returned to the vortex and to her parcel. Again she forced them away. She pictured her brother’s face the way Gnok had taught her. Not as memory, but as an anchor. Morgut. Calm. Smiling. Strong. It helped for a moment. Then it did not.

Only after a long time did Hokn`f appear.

He entered the hall, spread his arms as if she had not been waiting for him, but he were the host of a long awaited meeting.

“I ask your pardon,” he said. “Important matters I had to attend to.”

He smiled that smile.

Not broad, not oily, not unpleasant enough to make it instantly suspicious. That was what made it dangerous. It seemed as if he truly noticed her, as if he meant it, as if her presence were a small pleasure in an overcrowded day.

He motioned for her to follow him into another room.

This one was smaller, cozier, almost intimate compared to the great hall. A window looked out into a shaded inner courtyard, cool air came from somewhere, and the room was arranged so that you would not feel lost in it, but chosen. Hokn`f gestured to an armchair by the window. Gudi sat, a little stiff, trying not to show her nervousness. He took a seat opposite her.

Then he began to speak.

Not at once about her. Not at once about Morgut. Not about Gnok. First about the school. About the responsibility that rested on a dean’s shoulders. About the wind school as one of the supporting pillars of order. About the Conclave. About the importance of balance between the schools, and that in times like these people with overview, experience, and foresight were needed.

He spoke with that calm self certainty that came from believing he was such a person.

“Many believe,” he said, pressing two fingers together as if holding a thought visibly in the air, “that politics is something low. A game of influence, vanity, and seating order. That is a childish view. Politics is the art of preserving order where the nature of man always wants to drift apart. Without the Conclave the schools would not speak with one another, they would act against one another. Each would hold its art to be the highest, each school would place its interests above the others, and within a few generations we would not have order, but the old fragmentation again.”

He smiled at her as if opening a world to her, a world she might now be allowed to share.

“In some circles I am considered strict. That may be so. But strictness is only the outer form of responsibility, when you cannot afford for others to think sloppily.”

A maid entered and brought a silver tray with two glasses. Tall, delicate stemmed glasses, with a pale golden liquid shimmering inside. Tiny bubbles rose from below.

Hokn`f took one.

“Ah,” he said, almost pleased, “have you ever tried champagne from Dastania?”

Gudi shook her head.

The tray was held out to her, and a little awkwardly she took the glass. It felt foreign in her hand, fragile, far too fine for her.

Hokn`f lifted his toward her and with a small motion indicated she should do the same. He tapped her glass, barely audible, and drank. Gudi copied him and sipped carefully.

It prickled on her tongue.

Sharp at first, then sweet, then dry in a way she had never tasted.

“Ah,” said Hokn`f as if something important had just occurred to him, “of course there should be strawberries with that.”

He rang a small bell. Shortly after, another maid appeared with a second tray. On it lay red fruit, glossy and marvelous. Gudi had never seen anything like it.

Hokn`f gestured for her to take one, and took one himself.

“Dastania,” he said as he lifted the fruit, “is one of those lands that bears no school, and for that very reason keeps believing it can imitate order with kings, merchants, and petty intrigues. They produce excellent champagne and otherwise concern themselves mainly with fabrics, festivities, and jealousies. One must not despise everything that is trivial. Some trivial things are very well made.”

He ate the strawberry. Gudi did the same.

The fruit fell apart on her tongue, sweet, soft, cool, and so utterly unlike anything she knew that she closed her eyes without meaning to. Hokn`f noticed, of course.

So he continued.

About the schools. About alliances. About earlier deans. About the difficulty of keeping an overview in a Conclave when so many vanities spoke at once. About the responsibility of the wind school not only to teach its own art, but to help carry the balance of the whole. About travel. About cities. About people who reached offices they were not equal to. About the art of patiently enduring what was unpleasant when the greater whole was at stake.

It was a Hokn`f monologue in its purest form.

Long, smooth, trivial, and yet constructed so that each sentence made him appear the center of reason.

At first Gudi only noticed that she was slowly relaxing.

Then, after the second glass of champagne and several more strawberries, she hardly noticed it at all. Warmth rose into her cheeks. Her tension was not taken away, but loosened in a deceptive way. She suddenly felt light. Not foolish, she would have noticed that, but unbound. The words flowed past her more pleasantly than she had expected. Hokn`f’s voice had something slick and lulling, and he gave her time, real time, or something that felt like real time to her.

He spoke about Morgut.

How proud one was of his progress. How impressive his path seemed so far. How rare it was that a young mage could so quickly find his way in responsibility, practice, and multiple disciplines. That he was now allowed to learn from Master Anadar himself, the master of all six circles, was something that would undoubtedly rub off on him positively in every way.

“You can be proud of your brother,” Hokn`f said. “Very proud. Not every family produces such a mage.”

And Gudi, who softened at any thought of Morgut anyway, felt her whole fear of the conversation dissolve more and more.

He asked her questions.

Completely harmless questions.

How she liked her lessons. Which spells came easily to her. Whether she preferred to work alone or in groups. Which masters she found strenuous. Whether she had always taken her parcel so seriously. Whether she learned better in the morning or in the evening. Whether she missed her brother. Whether she could imagine one day carrying greater responsibility in the school herself.

Not one of these questions hit what she had feared.Not one asked about the vortex.Not one about Gnok.Not one about the Sondra.Not one about the moon drops.

And the longer the conversation lasted, the more ridiculous her earlier worries seemed. Everything was friendly. Warm. A little overwhelming perhaps, a little too fine for her, but not dangerous. No cruel word was spoken. No tone that told her a trap was being set.

When she left again after almost two hours, she felt almost ashamed of her fear.

Hokn`f had risen, escorted her to the door, and in that pleasantly paternal tone said she should please come again soon. The conversation had been so good, he had enjoyed the time with her so much, and perhaps, he added with a warm look, he might soon have real news about her brother.

Gudi left the Citadel with trembling knees.

Outside she leaned for a moment against a hot wall and breathed out deeply. The alcohol was taking effect. She felt light, almost floating, relaxed to her fingertips. She had rarely felt so good. All heaviness was gone. All worry. With a good feeling she started back toward her lodging.

Hokn`f waited until she was truly gone.

Then his face collapsed, and nothing of the friendliness remained.

“What a boring waste of time,” he murmured.

He knew himself he was far too important to spend his hours on people like that. And yet he knew just as well that the great things were made of many small things. Often you had to scratch at the wrong door for a long time to hear the right one behind it.

He lifted the remaining champagne and drained it in one swallow.

Then he waited.

A little later the door opened and Tzadier and Okom entered. Both were masters loyal to him, both trained in the school of spirit, both useful enough that their limits did not make them worthless. They had been present the whole time, concealed behind a screen of sight and those foldings of space that spirit mages could produce when they wanted to remain unseen and yet perceive everything.

They were not good at reading thoughts. That was rarer, harder, and less reliable than most laypeople believed. But they could assign feelings, sense tensions, guess at inner defenses, recognize the mind circling around certain places. Often enough, that was sufficient.

“And?” Hokn`f asked impatiently.

Tzadier spoke first. “Master, she has learned to shield herself. Her thoughts were fleeting.”

Hokn`f immediately thought: Gnok.

The old fox.

So the game of chess had begun long ago.

“But,” Okom added, “she has something to hide. We do not know what. Yet she definitely did not want the conversation to be steered toward certain topics.”

“Which?”

They exchanged a glance.

“Something to do with her parcel,” Tzadier said at last. “And” he hesitated “with a vortex.”

“A vortex spell,” Okom added uncertainly. “Perhaps linked to learning those simple spells. It may also mean nothing.”

Hokn`f looked at both of them for a long time.

Then he opened his hand.

Above his palm a small air vortex spun up, jumped down to the floor, grew briefly, whirled sand and dust in a circle, then dissolved again.

“A vortex spell is nothing special,” he said. “Nothing particularly important.”

He began to pace the room.

Separating the important from the unimportant. The small from the actual. That was always the difficulty. The parcel, admittedly impressive. A vortex, perhaps trivial, perhaps not. And Gnok. Again and again, Gnok.

“You two will withdraw,” he said at last without stopping, “and analyze your impressions. I want to know what it is she is hiding. It cannot hurt to increase our observation of Gnok and Gudi. If only to annoy the old man and restrict his freedom of movement.”

He stopped and turned to face them.

“I want a report. Soon.”

Tzadier and Okom bowed and left.

Hokn`f remained alone.

A vortex, then.And the parcel.

He pressed his fingertips together and smiled coldly.

Gudi would tell him everything he wanted to know.Sooner or later.

Formularbeginn

Formularende

IX

After they had reviewed the evidence, drafted a report, and formed a first provisional picture in Gontar, the three inquisitors crossed to the Wind Islands.

The passage was uneventful, which in these days felt almost unnatural. The sea was calm, the light pale, and over the water lay that deceptive sobriety known only to places where something monstrous happened not long ago. During the crossing Fontal stood mostly at the bow, watching the islands rise slowly out of the haze. Master Danndi of Ashambrat kept more to the background, closed in on herself, attentive, giving away little. Master Klasst of Tandor sat for a long time in silence on a bench on deck and seemed to study the islands as if he were trying not only to see them with his eyes, but to fit them into an inner system of order.

They were received at the harbor of the main island.

Not with restraint. Not with the plainness Fontal would have preferred in such a situation. Instead with the sort of pomp people stage when they believe an investigation should begin with visible submission, orderly ranks, and service performed so loudly that it becomes a performance. Master Grot stood at the foot of the citadel with a small group, all groomed, all eager, all too polished and too eager. At first glance Fontal recognized among them several of those faces that belonged to the strict disciplinary wing of the schools, the zealots, the direction that did not like to examine in order to understand, but in order to confirm. She herself was not far from that direction, and neither was Hokn’f. Precisely for that reason she saw the danger even more clearly when too many of the same sort of people wanted to turn an investigation into their tool before it even began.

It seemed that Master Form was now provisionally steering the affairs of the Water School.

Officially Dean Sinadie was not able to conduct the duties of office due to her injuries. Unofficially Fontal knew very well that Sinadie had become a thorn in the side of the doctrinal circles of Water, Wind, and parts of the Life School. Grot and Form stood on a line not unlike her own. Danndi as well. Hokn’f most of all. Where Master Klasst stood, however, was not easy to discern. The Earth School had never been deeply entangled in the alliance of zealots of the three schools. Not yet. But times changed.

It was time.

The focus of this quiet alliance was to steer the fate of the schools more strongly in a shared direction. In the way of that stood Master Anadar. He was a beacon for all those who strove for knowledge, who stood for exchange and communication and the shared together. Learning knowledge and passing it on, developing it further, for some that was too fast, too greedy, too uncontrolled perhaps, and not in the right hands. And he was too well known. He had to be made smaller, absolutely. Something had to be pinned on him. He had to be drawn into a procedure that weakened him, isolated him, and in the end made him expendable. The Earth School had never truly been a focus, because Slonda stood there as a man who was meant to take the reins one day. Now Slonda had vanished, and with that spaces opened. Fontal knew it, and she would use every opportunity.

Grot greeted the three inquisitors with so much performed dignity that Fontal almost felt like snapping at him right there on the quay. Instead she did something more effective.

“Master Grot,” she said while he was still speaking, “how wonderful that you personally accompanied our arrival. It would be helpful if you remained available later when we call for you.”

It was a clear hint.

Grot, of course, did not understand it. Men like him noticed rejection only when you struck it into their face in front of an audience. He moved alongside her, kept talking, pointed out walls, towers, paths, named people no one cared about, and finally led them up into the citadel.

There Form took over. She stood at the top of the steps, at the entrance to the largest tower of the school, and led them into a workroom, more soberly furnished than expected, with a view over the water channels between the islands, with tables, maps, and several neatly sorted rolls on a broad desk. Fontal liked the room at once. It was cool, orderly, and arranged as if someone wanted to avoid giving the impression they had anything to hide.

“Welcome, Dean Fontal, Master Danndi, and Master Klasst,” Form began once they had entered. “It is an extraordinary honor to welcome you to the Wind Islands, to the Water School, even if the circumstances are not those we would wish for.”

She turned to Grot.

“Master Grot, how good of you to receive our guests. Is the island prepared for them. Please take personal care once more that everything is truly in order.”

It was phrased politely, and yet it was a clean removal from the room. To Fontal’s quiet satisfaction Grot gave a brief bow and left, without realizing he had just been sent away.

“Forgive me, I did not want such a fuss around your arrival, but things here are still somewhat unstructured after the incidents,” Form apologized. She gestured for the guests to sit.

She herself sat opposite them at the desk and looked directly at Fontal first.

“Surely you have already outlined your approach, and I will support you to the best of my ability. I would house you in a tower on an island not far from Xoiun’s tower. The tower is large enough for three and offers workrooms as well as a room where you can conduct conversations. If you require a larger hall, we will have to use the citadel. A ferry will be at your disposal at any time.”

Then she continued.

“Sinadie is on a neighboring island. She still needs much rest to recover. She will likely be your primary witness. With her are Isidre, who hardly lets her out of her sight, as well as the two students of the School of Spirit, Miene and Sindra, who arrived with Anadar’s group.”

“Anadar himself,” Fontal began calmly, “as we heard from Roto, has traveled on with Morgut and Shara.”

Form nodded.

“We tried to suggest that Master Anadar stay here.” She lifted one shoulder slightly. “He decided against it. Sinadie gave a clear instruction to let him go, and to be honest, I do not believe we would have been able to forbid him from traveling on.”

She did not look anyone directly in the eyes while saying it.

“He is…”

She left the sentence open.

All four were silent for a moment. Each of them knew Anadar by hearsay, from the Conclave, or from brief encounters. Each knew what Form meant, and none of them wanted to put it into words. It was that unpleasant mix of fascination, mistrust, awareness of power, and unpredictability that did not lend itself to a clean label without also admitting one kept an eye on him.

Fontal nodded at last.

“I think for the moment we will manage without him. There will be opportunity to record his statements and examine his role more closely. But we would like to begin with the origin and the start of the story.”

She took out a list and handed it to Form.

“These are the people we would like to hear first. In addition, we require full access to the tower, especially to the lower areas.”

Form skimmed the names.

“That can be arranged. I think you can begin tomorrow.”

The inspection of the tower stretched over days.

The lower area in particular was examined with the greatest care, as if the three inquisitors were less interested in a story than in the traces from which it had to assemble itself against their will. Nothing down there was overlooked quickly, nothing touched without protocol.

Before a single corpse was moved, Fontal had the entire area sketched. Klasst measured the walls, the ramps, the basin, the niches, and the rows of stakes, proceeding with the dry persistence of a man who knew spatial relations often reveal more truth than witnesses. Danndi dealt with residues and traces, and searched for remnants of related magic. She had the walls checked, the fracture marks at the shattered stone slab, the entrance to the lower area, drawn, the remains of the fight marked, and the places identified where stronger cold, compression, or resonance had been felt.

The corpses of the failed hybrid chimeras were brought up into daylight piece by piece.

It was ugly work.

Not only because of the stench of decay, not only because of the torn and wrongly stitched bodies, the fused limbs, fish heads, kraken skin, and human remains. But because with every piece lifted, every mage present grasped that this had not been a single failed attempt, but a series, a practice, a method. Klasst insisted that each chimera be numbered individually, its position documented, the extent of the human and non human parts described, and those spots marked where seams, fusion, or forced connection were visible. Isidre, who was brought in at several points, did not refuse the sight, even though it visibly repulsed her. She helped to distinguish where flesh was still human, already altered, or completely unrecognizable.

The sheets of music were recovered with the greatest caution. They were handled only with gloves, both those Morgut had taken and later studied in the Tower of the Mages, and the pages that had remained in Xoiun’s own tower. Each was placed between layers of dry cloth and parchment and stored separately in boxes, so that neither moisture nor careless touch would further damage pieces already harmed.

Danndi insisted that none of the pages be read immediately. First she checked them for magical residue, for after echo, influence, and those fine resonances that often remain in material longer than in the air that once carried the craft. Indeed several pages still bore traces of it. It was as if the music that had accompanied the monster had not only faded in the room, but carved itself into the parchment. Some pages still reacted to touch with a barely perceptible trembling of magic, others carried such a dull after sound that Danndi held them only with visible reluctance for more than a moment.

Fontal had each page catalogued. Nothing remained unnamed, nothing left unordered. The pieces were sorted by location of discovery in the tower, their position recorded precisely, as well as their condition: whether burned, damp, torn, contaminated with salt, blood, soot, or other residues. Some bore marginal notes, others hurried corrections, still others signs and markings whose meaning did not reveal itself even after repeated review. This mixture of care, haste, and later editing made clear that here one had not merely composed or notated, but tested, altered, and worked toward effect.

Alongside these they found documents from Xoiun’s immediate work area.

These notes were of a completely different kind. Messy. Fragmentary. Incomplete. Nowhere a closed work, nowhere a cleanly developed theory as one would have expected from a master of his standing. Instead there were fragments, loose sheets, half thoughts, repeated attempts and broken off series of trials. There were remarks about resonance in water, about nocturnal lights to lure creatures from the deep, about binding, control, and amplification, along with hints at transitions described as unnatural or against nature. Particularly disturbing were those anatomical observations that left no doubt even on first reading that the man had long since abandoned the ground of acceptable art. Why he had taken that first step remained unclear. How he had come to it as well. But that he had taken it, even this meager splintered material did not allow to be doubted.

Precisely the thoroughness with which Danndi insisted on a complete search of the entire tower finally led to another find.

On the first floor, near the spot where several of the music sheets had been, they discovered a hidden niche in the wall. It was fitted into the masonry so cleanly that it hardly stood out at a quick glance. Only when the paneling was removed and irregular joints examined more closely did the cavity reveal itself. Inside lay further documents, stored far more protected than the rest of the material in the tower.

These writings went beyond the earlier finds.

They described the experiments more fully, more systematically, and with greater coldness than Xoiun’s loose notes suggested. A more intensive review of these documents also brought several papers and finally a book to light that neither belonged to the regular holdings of the Water School library nor matched Xoiun’s own notes in style or content. Language, structure, and material differed too clearly. The pages seemed older, the ink darker and more enduring, the formulations more coherent, almost textbook like, and the script foreign.

What they shared was the naming of the magic of transformation. Not everything could be deciphered or understood in the first days. One thing, however, was clear from the sketches and illustrations in these documents: they could represent the true origin of the experiments. The notes were also described here as a universal language between species. That much could be grasped.

Their origin could not be determined at first. Without doubt they were old, perhaps very old, and yet they were in remarkably good condition, as if they had been kept with great care for a long time. That was precisely what made them suspicious. Nothing about them felt accidental. They were not the decayed remnant of some forgotten private reading, but material deliberately hidden, protected, and apparently selected and used with intent.

The story that emerged from the first witnesses was, in its core, always the same.

There had been increasing reports of nocturnal lights and underwater phenomena around the island. Along with that, music. Not regular, not predictable, but frequent enough that multiple independent observers reported similar things. The then still new Dean Sinadie had, after the first reports came in, sent for Master Xoiun. He had appeared with the twins Tring and Tiang. All three had soothed and downplayed. They were working, they explained, on a new spell, on acoustic and light related water effects, and in the future they would take better care not to alarm anyone.

That had been enough for a few weeks.

Then new sightings were reported.

Sinadie had sent for them again.

No one came.

A second summons.

Again no one.

So she herself had gone to the tower with a small group. They had been refused entry, or no one opened. At the same time they had seen light on the upper floor and heard music. So they tried to make themselves known loudly.

But no one reacted, as if no one were there.

Yet before they could properly search the place or take the next step, the monster showed itself under water for the first time. A huge white creature with tentacle like growths along its back and large glowing feelers at its head. It attacked those present out of the water. The mages retreated into the tower, defended themselves there with concentrated magic, and during this first attack the upper part of the tower caught fire.

All described the music that came from the monster.

Uncanny tones that emanated from it, or more precisely from those two feelers at its head in which the two bodies had been. The monster then vanished, whether driven off or for some other reason none could say with certainty. Shortly afterward the first reports of sunken ships arrived. The monster attacked the islands repeatedly. The Water mages then searched the tower more thoroughly and found the sheets of music and sequences of melodies with which the monster could be calmed and driven away, but not defeated.

After the reports from the Fiery Fortress, they had finally sent for Anadar and asked him for help.

Up to this point the statements were remarkably consistent.

After that, deviations began.

That evening the three inquisitors sat in their provisional workroom in the tower to compile a first preliminary report. Outside, the waves struck the rock, and the room smelled of cold ink, damp parchment, and the long day.

On the table lay protocols, witness lists, sketches, notes about wounds, recovered items, fragments from Xoiun’s papers, and the first notes on the music sheets, as well as the documents on transformation.

Fontal sat at the head. Danndi had her arms crossed and stared at Grot’s statement as if the very existence of the parchment insulted her sense of order. Klasst sat slightly to the side, a light slanting over his shoulder, and traced with his fingertip again and again the passages where the accounts contradicted each other.

“Let us begin with what remains the same,” Fontal said. “The existence of the lower vault. The experiments. The chimeras. Xoiun and the twins being connected to the first appearances. That is no longer disputed.”

Danndi nodded.

“Nor that Sinadie reacted early. Perhaps not early enough for my taste, but early enough that no one can accuse her of doing nothing.”

“She did not inform the Conclave,” Klasst said calmly.

“That will be held against her,” Fontal replied. “Rightly. She will have to bear the consequences. But it is something different from what Grot wants to make of it.”

Danndi pulled Grot’s protocol toward herself.

“Now to him.”

She skimmed the passage again, though she already knew it by heart.

“Grot states for the record that he saw Anadar in contact with the kraken creature when they arrived. He describes the creature clearly as a kraken. That means it has nothing to do with the dead sea monster the fishermen recovered.”

“Or only indirectly,” Klasst said.

“Yes,” Fontal said, “but in any case not as the same manifestation.”

Danndi read aloud:

“Master Anadar knelt on the ground and seemed to negotiate with the monster. I gained the impression that he aided its escape rather than attacking it. His thrust did not target the creature, but the wall behind the creature.”

She set the sheet down.

“That is, with respect, either a later interpretation or a deliberate bending.”

Klasst lifted a hand.

“Not so fast. It is correct that several other witnesses confirmed that Anadar struck the wall or the area at the basin, not the creature itself.”

“Yes,” Fontal said, “but no one else concludes from that that he was working with the kraken.”

“Roto does not,” Danndi said dryly. “Roto describes Anadar more as fighting the creature than standing at its side. Ugly phrasing, but consistent enough.”

Klasst nodded.

“Miene, Sindra, and Isidre say essentially the same. Anadar lay or knelt on the ground, caught by a kraken arm. Without his sword. That suggests pressure, not alliance.”

“Sinadie?” Fontal asked.

Danndi’s mouth tightened.

“Sinadie is careful. Too careful. She says she saw Anadar fighting one of the humanoid beings, that she herself was attacked and badly wounded. After that she remembers only fragments. That is possible. It is also convenient.”

“She was in fact run through,” Klasst said.

He pulled Isidre’s healing protocol toward him.

“Wavy blade. Deep stab through the flank. Heart and lung missed. Severe blood loss. Plus Morgut almost unharmed, and Anadar with a poorly healing puncture wound on the arm. Isidre notes explicitly that the puncture resembled a thorn and that poison cannot be ruled out.”

“Which could fit the kraken creature,” Fontal said.

“Or something else we do not know,” Klasst replied.

Danndi turned another page.

“The two strangers.” She snorted. “Everyone mentions them. No one describes them in a usable way.”

“That is not entirely fair,” Fontal said. “They are described as humanoid, slender, difficult to see, adapted to the background. One of them struck Sinadie. Both seem closely linked to the scene. But yes. A clear picture does not emerge.”

“Because no one truly saw them,” Klasst said. “Or because they fought intentionally in a way that made them impossible to see. They are also mentioned only by Sinadie. Those who arrived later describe that the two were seized by kraken arms and pulled into the depths. No further evidence, not even as a side note.”

Again the three fell silent.

Then Fontal said:

“So we have this: Grot claims Anadar was negotiating with the kraken and helped it flee. Roto does not see it that way. The spirit students do not. Isidre does not. Sinadie gives us little. Who remains?”

“The circumstances themselves,” Klasst said.

“Then we speak about the circumstances,” Danndi said.

She pulled a sketch of the lower vault toward her.

“The vault was apparently accessed by breaking open the floor slab in the tower. All accounts agree on that. There they found experiments, hybrid chimeras, the basin, stakes, music sheets, devices. Anadar, Morgut, and Sinadie went down. Later Grot and others followed. Correct?”

“Correct,” Fontal said.

“And no one hides anything at the beginning. That is interesting,” Danndi continued. “No one tries to distort the discovery of the vault. That speaks against a large prepared lie. This was due to Anadar and Morgut.”

“Yes,” Klasst said. “If one wants to obscure something, one usually obscures earlier.”

Fontal leaned back.

“As for the records and remnants, the matter is clearer. Xoiun and his students became renegades, or at least fell into practices outside any acceptable boundary. Why. Possibly these transformation experiments are related. But that they strayed from the path is proven.”

Danndi nodded.

“And the sea monster. Or rather, the sea monsters.”

The question hung in the room for a moment.

Klasst spoke first.

“The dead creature recovered by the fishermen is, with high probability, the monster that attacked ships. Accompanied by music. Connected to two human bodies in the head region that resembled the twins. That fits the tower reports. But the exact genesis remains obscure.”

“Accident?” Danndi asked.

“Possible,” Klasst said. “Or failed attempt. Or something that slipped out of control.”

“Or an act of desperation,” Fontal murmured.

Both looked at her.

“You said?”

Fontal lifted one shoulder.

“Only a thought. Not wording for the report.”

Danndi took up the pen.

“Then we record provisionally: The origin of the monster appears to trace back to Xoiun, the twins, and their experiments, even if the exact chain of events can no longer be fully reconstructed. The creature is now dead. Cause of death unknown.”

“And the kraken?” Klasst asked.

“A second creature under the tower,” Fontal said. “Presumably held by Xoiun for experimental purposes. The two humanoid figures could have been its guards, companions, or defenders. More we cannot say with certainty.”

“And Anadar?” Danndi said.

Now it grew quieter.

Fontal looked at the list of witnesses, at the names that were missing.

“Anadar, Shara, and Morgut were not questioned. That must be made explicit as a recommendation.”

“Yes,” Klasst said. “But from what we have so far, apart from discovering the vault and being present at the last events, they seem to play a subordinate role in relation to the origin of the matter.”

Danndi raised her brows.

“Subordinate is a strong word.”

“In relation to the origin of the matter,” Klasst said dryly. “Not in the weight of their persons.”

Fontal nodded slowly.

“That is how we will phrase it. Without clearing them. Without making them the center. Either would be premature.”

Danndi began to write.

“Preliminary report of the inquisitors: It is likely that Master Xoiun and the twins Tring and Tiang became renegades and over a longer period employed questionable to cruel magical practices. These practices led to the creation or release of a monstrous creature that sank ships in the Western Sea and threatened the islands. The exact causes remain unclear. The vault later discovered under the tower proves severe wrongdoing by Xoiun and his students. Writings were found that cannot be assigned to any school and require further investigation. No further measures are to be taken against the named persons, since they are with high probability dead and will remain dead.”

Klasst added:

“Further, it must be recorded that Dean Sinadie acted correctly in essential parts, in particular in early reactions to the disturbances and in later countermeasures. However, her most serious failure is that she did not inform the Conclave in time. This point should be discussed separately at the next Conclave.”

“And the recommendation,” Fontal said.

Danndi wrote on:

“It is recommended that Master Anadar, Shara, and Morgut be questioned separately at the next opportunity in order to reconstruct the last events in the vault more precisely. According to the present state their role appears secondary relative to the origin and structure of the events.”

She put the pen down.

“Done.”

No one spoke at once.

Outside it had grown dark, and somewhere beneath them the sea worked against stone.

At last Klasst said:

“It is not a clean report.”

“No,” Fontal said. “But we lack the time.”

Danndi dried the last lines.

“And it will satisfy no one completely. That is usually a good sign.”

Fontal looked at the assembled sheets before her.

Xoiun was dead. The twins as well. No traces left that could become troublesome. The monster lay as a carcass in some fishing village, and by now it should have been burned. The kraken was gone. Sinadie would pay politically. Anadar was gone. And yet Fontal was dissatisfied with part of this report in a way she could not quite name.

Something about it was finished.

And at the same time not.

As if they had found the proper surface of a story, and yet beneath it they could feel that something larger had slipped beyond their reach.

Formularbeginn

Formularende

X

His mood had rarely been this good.

Even though nearly every bone and muscle in his body hurt after the tower collapse, even though dust still fell on them in thick veils and stones continued to clatter behind them, Anadar sat amid the rubble and laughed. Not bitter. Not exhausted. With a relief so deep that even pain could not dull it.

He braced himself with both hands behind him, lifted his face into the cold air, and laughed again.

“At last,” he said, looking at Shara and Morgut. “At last quiet. At last that thing is no longer in my head.”

The two looked at him and would have liked to share his good mood, but they still felt the impact in their limbs, and what Anadar experienced as silence was for them only the noise that had stopped. Shara had a hand on her belly, almost unconsciously at first, then more deliberately. It was the first moment she allowed herself to feel the fear with full clarity that something might have happened to the child. Morgut, meanwhile, carefully moved his shoulder, winced, and drew in a sharp breath.

“You could have told us your plan,” he said.

“Yes,” Shara said dryly. “You do not have to reveal every brilliant idea only in the moment you use it to jump through a window.”

Anadar raised both hands in a warding gesture. The motion sent a stab of pain through his back and he briefly grimaced.

“First,” he said, “that was more instinct than plan. And second, it might not have worked if my guest in my head had known about it.”

He said it lightly, almost casually, and that made the truth in it all the clearer.

They stayed sitting among the ruins for a while, breathing the dust as it slowly settled, waiting for the surge of adrenaline to leave their bodies. Then they began to tend to one another. Morgut healed with that calm, precise manner that wasted no unnecessary magic. Shara washed blood and chalk from her hair and later let the same hand rest briefly on Anadar’s forehead, only to be sure he really was as clear as he looked. Anadar endured it patiently, which in itself showed just how good his mood truly was.

“What do you think,” Morgut asked at last. “How long will that hold her back.”

Anadar looked toward the collapsed tower, now only a chaotic heap of stone, beams, and red cloth.

“Not forever,” he said. “But hopefully long enough. They are deep under the rubble. I doubt they will get out quickly without outside help.”

He paused, then added with a trace of his old sharpness, “And if they do, we should be able to follow their trail. Subtlety is not this demon’s signature.”

Shara studied him from the side.

“How could you even transfer the sword.”

Anadar shrugged slightly.

“It had to do with Fantor. He was the summoner of that thing. Something bound the two of them. I did not fully understand it, but I felt enough. That is why I knew where we had to look. The closer we got, the clearer it became to me that the three of us were entangled with one another in an unpleasant way.”

Shara looked toward the mound of debris. “Did he really try to kill you.”

Anadar laughed softly and shook his head.

“Treacherous as ever. He wanted to kill me. Or at least make me believe I had opened the way for it myself.”

“You attacked him in the same instant,” Morgut said.

Anadar laughed out loud.

“Yes. And that was probably the most decent conversation we have ever had.”

Shara snorted, though she could not quite stop herself from smiling too.

“Then give me the letter now, please.”

Shara reached beneath her bracer and drew out the writing. When she handed it to him, Anadar held her hand for a moment and pulled it a little closer. His face grew more serious.

“Are you all right.”

Shara nodded.

He did not make her say the question out loud. He did not need to. His gaze dropped briefly to her hand on her belly, then back to her eyes.

She nodded again, a little embarrassed this time. “Yes. Sure. But maybe we should not make a habit of jumping out of a tower that is several dozen metres high.”

“Several dozen,” Morgut muttered. “That number grows every year.”

Anadar grinned. “When we tell the story one day, it will be at least a hundred metres.”

Shara lifted her brows. “The heavily pregnant Mistress Shara leaped from a five hundred metre tower after she and two lunatics buried a demon and its summoner under the ruins.”

They all laughed.

It was a good laugh. Brief. Unlikely. Almost out of place in this dead city. That was exactly why it helped.

Then Anadar opened the letter.

The further he read, the more his expression changed. Not for the worse, not into the dark closedness of the past weeks. Rather into focused alertness. When he finished, he whistled softly through his teeth and read a few lines again.

“So that was found down there,” he murmured. “Interesting.”

“More than interesting,” Shara said. “There is method behind all of this. More and more secrets come to light. More and more hidden things are uncovered, as if someone…” She broke off.

Morgut looked at her. “As if someone what.”

“As if someone is doing it on purpose,” she said. “As if the world itself has started opening its hidden chambers.”

Anadar nodded slowly. “Or as if someone has been pulling at the right places for a long time.”

Morgut propped his elbows on his knees and said with exaggerated pomp, “And now, great Master Anadar. Which road do you deem fit to take.”

Anadar still held the letter, but his gaze had already moved beyond it. He gathered himself. Testing. Listening. The relief was still there, but it did not make him stupid. It made him free enough to hear what he had been forcing to the edge of his mind for too long.

“Nigk and Xian,” he said. “They are moving again.”

Shara and Morgut looked at him at the same time.

“Where,” Morgut asked.

“South. Toward the pass they used to head north. Between Tandor and Zoordak, if I am placing it correctly.” He folded the letter and tapped it lightly against his leg. “They were still for a while. Far too long. I thought Nigk was closer to death than I could bear. Then movement again. Then stillness. And now movement again. That means they found something. In any case, we need their report.”

Shara looked thoughtfully at the abandoned city. “Then to the Mother.”

“Yes,” Anadar said. “Back to Zoordak once more. Maybe my brother has resurfaced by now, or at least there is a trace of him. After that, to the Fiery Fortress. What Manador writes is too significant to postpone. A School of Light, hidden beneath the Fiery Fortress.” He looked at Morgut. “And we have a book to open.”

Morgut laid a hand on the pouch where the sealed work lay. “It can be opened.”

“Certainly,” Anadar said. “Just probably not in a pleasant way.”

They rose slowly, each of them still painfully aware of their own body. Then they went back to the stables, fetched the horses, and made ready to depart. Before leaving the fortress, they turned once more and looked toward the collapsed tower.

Nothing moved.

No stone shifted. No sound came from the ruins. Only the wind passed over them like over a grave that had not yet decided whether it would remain one.

Then they rode out.

Not in haste. None of them were in a state for haste. But with direction. Over the Great Market to Tandor. From there onward as the situation demanded. Behind them, Sontor lay silent, as if the city itself had decided to keep quiet for now about what was buried at its heart.

Deep under the collapsed tower lay Fantor with the sword in his hand.

His body was barely capable of movement. Perhaps he was already at the edge of what could still be called alive. But that was not the decisive part. The decisive part was that his mind was still there. And that he was not alone.

In the dark beneath tonnes of stone, dust, and shattered masonry, where no sound of the world could reach, a new bond began to close between him and the demon. Not out of deception. Not out of seduction. Not out of the false teacherhood with which Naaarstr had once ensnared Anadar.

Out of hatred.

Hatred for everything that lived. Hatred for the world above them. Above all, hatred for Anadar, who had outwitted them both and buried them under rubble.

Naaarstr began to speak.

Not loudly. Not with the mocking laughter that had driven Anadar toward madness for so long. Down here it spoke differently. Older. Deeper. Almost tender in its cruelty. It began to instruct Fantor in practices long hidden. In ancient bindings. In dark passages. In ways by which blood could become not only power, but an opening.

And at the centre of it all stood an unborn child.

A child whose blood would be pure and old, because it had been conceived in a night of magic by two magicians.

Deep under the rubble of Sontor, in the dark that was not finished with them yet, something new began to learn.

Formularbeginn

Formularende

XI

Roto had been held back long enough.Kolnidranooora had not shown up in Gontar either, and the longer they stayed there, the clearer it became that waiting longer made little sense. So Roto decided to move on. Son and Indra came with him. Not out of any special enthusiasm for him, at least not at first, but because searching for Kol without moving was pointless, and because the air in Gontar was slowly running out for all three of them.

On the road toward the Great Market, something began to form between them that, with a bit of goodwill, one could call friendship.Cautious, yes.Son and Indra were quiet by nature. They did not speak little, but they spoke only when they had something to say, and they rarely made a fuss about themselves. Roto was the opposite. Not quite as loud and pushy as Grot, to his credit, but still much closer to that species of mage who considers a room incomplete as long as at least part of his voice has not been heard inside it. He liked talking, liked explaining, liked presenting himself, without always noticing when he began to enjoy his own story.

Strangely enough, it worked well together.Roto talked when silence threatened to become unpleasant. Son and Indra often just looked at each other and let him talk until he tired himself out. Sometimes they tossed in a sentence, so dry and precise that he stumbled for a moment. Then they laughed, quietly, and rode on. So three separate people slowly became a unit. Not a close one. Not a trusting one. But a unit that had already begun to get used to each other.

When they reached the Great Market, the usual life was in full swing. Carts rattled across the square, merchants shouted their goods, goats stood where they should not, children ran between them, and over everything lay that peculiar mixture of dust, smoke, herbs, animal smell, cheap beer, and warm bread that made the Great Market what it was.

But this time, something else was in the air.Rumor.People were already talking about the dead monster. News like that spread faster than lice and almost as stubbornly. Perhaps Roto himself had contributed his share. Not intentionally, as he would have claimed. Only in that innocent way in which a man with a lively voice and little inner resistance against interesting stories mentions what he has seen in two or three places, and the world then decides to turn it into an event.

In one of the better taverns of the market, they finally sat down. Better did not mean fine, just cleaner than the others, with fewer fleas in the benches, thicker soups, and beer that did not taste like punishment right away. Son and Indra ate in silence. Roto was already complaining for the second time that the fish was too dry, but he still ate it completely.

At the neighboring table sat a thin, gaunt man, drinking his beer in silence.He had already been sitting there when they arrived. And he was still sitting there when they were long done eating. In front of him stood two empty mugs and a third that was still half full. Maybe he had been there a day. Maybe two. With men like that it was hard to say whether they had only just fallen apart or had already grown firmly into their misery. He wore an old coat that might once have been useful, and his hair looked as if it had decided long ago to stop complying with social expectations.

More than once he glanced over at them. Not openly hostile. Not curious in any friendly way. More suspicious, as if he were trying to read from their faces how much trouble they might bring him.

Roto noticed the looks, of course.And because Roto liked talking, he decided to make something of it.He turned halfway on the bench and raised his mug toward the stranger.

“You seem to have an interest in us, friend.”

The man looked at him with red rimmed, drunken eyes. For a long while he said nothing. Then he asked with that brutal directness that only drunkards, children, and truly dangerous people possess:

“You are a mage.”

“Quite right,” Roto said with visible pleasure. “Master Roto of Ashambrat. And these are Son and Indra of the Islands of Wind.”

Son briefly closed her eyes.Indra drank.

The gaunt man blinked. “Do you always have to do that.”

“What exactly.”

“Introduce yourselves.”

Roto grinned. “It usually helps.”

“That can end badly,” the stranger muttered.

Then he stood up, swayed, caught himself on the edge of his table, and tried to bow. In the process he bumped his forehead against that same edge he had just used to steady himself.

“Permit me,” he said with offended dignity while rubbing his head, “to introduce myself as well. My name is Captain Kral.” He paused, thought, then waved his hand in front of his own sentence as if he could wipe it out of the world. “No. Strike that. Just Kral.”

He sat down at their table without asking, pushing Roto aside with his backside as if the master of the Wind School were a sack of flour.

“No captain anymore,” he said. “Too dangerous now, that sea business. Full of monsters.”

Son lifted her gaze.Indra did too.Roto slowly set his mug down. “Sea monsters.”

Kral nodded with great seriousness, only slightly undermined by the fact that his head dipped too far and nearly landed on the tabletop.

“Big and small. All monsters, sir Master Mage.”

“Well,” Roto began, throwing the two water mages a quick look that clearly said he knew exactly he was about to say something they would not like, “the sea monster is dead. We saw it with our own eyes.”

Son and Indra almost rolled their eyes at the same time.

Kral, however, sat bolt upright in the next instant.It was such a startling shift that Roto briefly wondered whether the man was not drunk at all, but simply crooked by nature and had, by coincidence, just assembled himself correctly.

“What did you say,” Kral asked. “Dead.”

“Dead,” Roto confirmed.

“White.”

“Yes.”

“Enormous.”

“Yes.”

“Two glowing feelers. Tentacles on its back. Strange music.”

Now Son and Indra were fully attentive too.

“You are describing it correctly,” Indra said. “Have you seen it.”

Kral waved it off. “Bah. Seen. It has…” He paused, blinked once, and pulled the words back as if they had nearly revealed too much. “I heard stories.”

“Stories,” Son repeated in a tone that made clear what she thought of stories when a man delivered them with that face.

Kral ignored her. His gaze stayed on Roto.

“Dead, then,” he muttered. “And what are you looking for now here at the Great Market, Master Roto of Ashambrat.”

Roto leaned back slightly. He liked being asked.

“I am looking for Master Kolnidranooora of Ashambrat. A friend. We were traveling together.”

Kral raised his eyebrows. “Tall. Broad. Thin hair. Lisped a bit. White cloak.”

Roto sat up immediately. “Yes. You describe him correctly. Have you seen him.”

Kral took a long swallow of beer.

“No.”

The silence that followed was so complete that even the innkeeper at the counter glanced over.

“Never met him.”

Roto stared at him. Son looked at Indra. Indra looked down at her plate as if the world were predictable in a way that tired her.

“No,” Roto said slowly. “You have not seen him.”

“No. Completely unfamiliar.”

“But you were just able to describe him.”

“Really.”

Kral set down his mug and looked at Roto, his head wobbling as he tried to keep speaking to the mage in the middle.

“You just explained him.”

“I did not explain anything.”

“You did. Master from Ashambrat. Friend. Someone named Kol nose or something. That is enough. Not that many of those around.”

Roto opened his mouth, closed it again, and seriously considered whether he should feel insulted or impressed. Both were plausible.

“That is not enough at all,” Son said.

Kral turned to her. “For most, no. For me, yes.”

Indra set down her cutlery. “So you are no captain anymore, you never saw the monster, you do not know Kol, but you describe him correctly.”

Kral thought about that.

“If you put it like that,” he said, “it sounds like I know something.” A hiccup seized him. “I heard stories.”

“Stories,” Son said.

Roto raised a hand. “One moment. I think our new friend is either a complete idiot or more useful than he looks.”

“Why not both,” Indra muttered.

Kral gave a weak smile, as if she had just paid him a rare compliment.

Roto leaned forward. “All right. What do you know.”

Kral looked into his mug. “That the sea is full of things that should have stayed down below.”

Kral leaned back, looked up at the ceiling, then toward the door, then back at the table, as if he had to decide how much he was willing to say for how little money.

This time none of them spoke.Outside on the market a vendor yelled something about onions. Somewhere a clay mug shattered. In the taproom someone laughed too loudly. But at the table of four it had, all at once, gone quiet.

Roto studied Kral anew.The man looked again like a washed up drunk with bad balance and even worse manners. But under the grime, under the beer breath, and under the slightly crooked way he sat, there was something else. Not greatness. Not dignity. More like a habit of noticing things others missed.

“So you do know something,” Roto said.

Kral raised his mug. “Of course I know something. Otherwise I would hardly have sat down with you.”

“And what do you want for it.”

“One more beer.”

Indra stared at him.Son snorted.Roto, however, began to laugh.

“Fine,” he said. “One more beer you can have.”

Kral nodded. “I think what I have to tell you will not please you. Your friend is dead.”

Formularbeginn

Formularende

XII

Sinadie had long known that no one meant her any good.

She had trodden on too many zealots toes for that. Not because she had been incapable. Not because a renegade mage had worked within her school, as if she had personally seated him in the tower and asked him to carry on. No, what they truly blamed her for was something else. She had brought Anadar in. Directly. Without first placing herself beneath the sluggish wheels of the Conclave and begging for permission until one monster might well have become two. That was her offense. She had sought help by the fastest route. And that help had, however some now wished to frame it after the fact, been successful.

The monster would still be out at sea.It would still be sinking ships.It would still be keeping islands in fear.

That thought made her angry. So angry that the tears rising into her eyes did not come from pain and not from weakness either. They came from helplessness, from rage at how cowardly people became the moment danger had passed and they could reinterpret another person’s courage as a breach of rules.

She lay in her bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time before taking up the letter again.

It was brief. Formal. Cold. They had first informed her that, due to her state of health, she was not able to carry out her official duties. Therefore Form had been appointed to lead the School of Water on an interim basis. Then she received this letter, written as though it were a reasonable and temporary measure. Between the lines, what had really happened was clear. Her office had been taken from her. Not later, perhaps. Not after a hearing. Not after a conversation. Already. And now that her removal from the leadership of the school had been carried out, they were taking the next step. She was being excluded from the school. Banished. She would be given time until she had fully recovered, the letter said. After that, she was to leave the Isles of Wind.

It was phrased cleanly.Almost politely.

That was precisely why she most wanted to burn it.

Instead, she laid it on the blanket, folded her hands over it, and breathed long and calmly until the first fury transformed into something more usable.

Because if Sinadie had never done one thing, it was to let anger drain away unused.

She would not have been herself if, in that moment, she had not also seen the possibilities. Free of obligations. Free of meetings, of concessions, of that painstaking balance between dignity, school, and politics. Free also of certain expectations that had bound her hands until now. What she had not been allowed to do before, she might now be allowed to do precisely because no one could forbid her anymore.

The wound in her side still hurt, but it had healed noticeably better by now. Isidre’s prescribed bed rest had done its work, however unpleasant Sinadie had found it. Isidre herself still watched over her like a guard dog over its territory. She had also been the one to tell her about the Conclave. About the preliminary report of the three inquisitors. About the finds in the tower. About the documents concerning transformation, whatever that word might mean in its full depth. About Form as the new dean. About the quiet unity of three schools that was beginning, ever more openly, to determine the fate of the others.

Isidre had recounted all of this without embellishment, the way she recounted almost everything. Precise, concise, honest. And it was precisely that dryness that made Sinadie understand she had to act.

Especially when Isidre spoke of Master Tranda.

At the Conclave, the School of Earth had effectively been represented only by Isidre. Tranda had not appeared, Slonda had vanished, and the longer that lasted, the more dangerous it became. Isidre wanted to return to Tandor. Had to return, strictly speaking. Things there might still hold for now, but they would not hold forever if no one with an overview kept watch.

That had been the spark.

Sinadie clung to the thought like a grip in cold water.

She would go with her.

Recovery or not.

There was little on the Isles of Wind that still held her now. She packed what she needed quickly. Not much. A few clothes. A few notes. Things she did not want left in other hands. Miene and Sindra stayed close as always. The two did not really know where they wanted to go, only that they wanted to go on. Since Morgut had left, they had become even more inseparable, united in grief, worry, and that silent, young form of longing that does not admit what it is even when everyone else can already see it.

Sinadie smiled at the thought.

To be that young again.

There was something touching about how clumsily two clever young women could suffer over the same man while pretending it was about everything else.

One day after the Conclave, the four women left the Isles of Wind without a grand farewell, without looking back, without any need to owe politeness to those who had not shown it to them. The boat cut calmly through the water, and as the towers behind them grew smaller, Sinadie felt not grief, but rather that cool clarity that arrives when a cut has been made and the blood has not yet fully realized it should flow.

At the mouth of the great river they went ashore. They wanted to travel the rest of the way on horseback. That was easier, and Sinadie had no desire at all to use a boat from the Isles of Wind any longer. She wanted a clean break. Not only outwardly. In the small things too.

The quay was livelier than she had expected. Ship traffic was picking up again. Not nearly as it had been before, but visibly. One or two larger ships, several smaller boats, traders, fishermen, carters, a few sailors with the expression of men who mistrust the sea and step onto it again every morning anyway. The rumor of the dead sea monster had done its part. People returned quickly when they believed the worst was over.

Getting horses was expensive, but not difficult. Half an hour later the four women stood with their animals at the harbor, considering which way to take through the crowd, when an old acquaintance walked straight into them.

Master Roto.

With Son and Indra in tow.

Roto looked almost pleased by the encounter, which meant little with him, since he could be pleased even by bad weather if it gave him an excuse to talk about it longer. Son and Indra, by contrast, looked like two people who had decided not to lose Roto as long as he might still be useful.

The greeting was brief, then they traded stories.

Roto spoke first.

On the Great Market they had met a drunk sailor, a man called Kral, whose relationship to the truth had been unstable, but who at least claimed he had heard how a mage had been killed on a ship. Throat cut. Supposedly by two unusual attackers, very slender, foreign, different. Without warning. On a ship that had come in only a few weeks ago.

“And that is why you are here,” Sinadie said.

“That is why we are here,” Roto confirmed. “We spoke with the harbor master. The ship came in a few weeks back, the first in a long time. Badly damaged, patched together in a hurry. And around that ship there was apparently more commotion than they wanted to tell us at first.”

He spread his fingers. “But the man would not say more.”

“Where is the ship now,” Sinadie asked.

Roto shrugged. “Either he did not know or he did not want to say.”

Sinadie looked at him briefly.

Then she turned away and marched without another word toward the harbor master’s little hut.

Roto stopped. Son raised her eyebrows slightly. Indra smiled, barely. Isidre said nothing. Miene and Sindra looked at each other as if they had just seen something that did not surprise them and yet pleased them.

Not even three minutes later Sinadie came back out.

Now she wore that satisfied, cold grin people got when they had finally grabbed a particularly stubborn animal by the throat.

“The crew left the ship,” she said. “After someone was killed on deck. Throat cut. They brought the body off the ship and buried it here in the cemetery. Later they cast the ship off, raised anchor, cut the lines, and left it to fate.”

Roto blinked. “That is…”

“That is apparently not even unusual here,” Sinadie said. “The harbor master said it in the tone one uses for wet fish.”

She was already back in the saddle. “The cemetery is back there.”

And without hesitating she set off.

“Where are you going,” Roto called after her, though the answer was obvious.

Sinadie turned only halfway in the saddle.

“To dig,” she said. “Unless you do not want to know for certain what happened to Kolnidranooora.”

That settled it.

Kral, meanwhile, woke from his stupor.

His head hurt. Not in the pleasant way of an evening that had simply run too long, but dull, burning, miserably punishing. His throat felt as if someone had poured sand into it during the night. He sat up in bed, closed his eyes again at once, and tried to arrange the fragments of last night.

Beer.A tavern.Mages.Too many mages.Then Roto. Then words. Too many words.

And then, as he realized with growing horror, he had in fact sat down, drunk, at a table full of mages and said more than was healthy for his future.

“Oh, by all tides,” he muttered, and dragged his hands through his hair. “The mages.”

He had wanted to be done with it. Away from the sea. Away from old stories. Away from dead captains, dead cabin boys, and everything that rose from the water at night on deck. And then he did the one last stupid thing still available to him. He sat down, he thought dully, no, wrong, the mages had sat there, he himself had been pathetic, so he sat down pathetically with mages and bragged that he had seen, or heard, or nearly seen, how one of them was no longer among the living.

He groaned.

And there was something else.

Yesterday on the market he had seen two faces he never wanted to see again. Men from his old crew. Or from what was left of it. They might not have noticed him. Maybe they had. Either way was bad.

Kral stood, staggered to the window, and looked out.

Market. Noise. People. Carts. A woman with a basket full of fish. A man who apparently believed onions sold better if you shouted at them. And somewhere out there, perhaps two former sailors who knew who he was, what he knew, and what it might be worth to either silence him or pull him back into old stories.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Then on.”

He had wanted to begin a new life anyway. Somewhere else. Only where.

Where were there no sailors.

That was easy.

Further inland.

Where were there no mages.

Kral stared out the window for a long time.

Then he cursed softly.

On this continent, he thought, they were everywhere.

Formularbeginn

Formularende

XIII

Mother knew that, in the coming days, many separate threads would run together.

She did not know it only from that quiet hunch which people of her age and rank often mistake for wisdom, simply because they do not understand how much of it is experience. She knew it because she had steered some of those threads into the right directions herself, months ago, and in some cases years, or centuries ago, and because she could now see how everything that had long been running side by side, separate and apart, was slowly tightening toward a single point. Not orderly. Not peaceful. But inevitable. Events were gathering speed.

The Conclave.

She still had to smile when she thought of it.

Not out of cheer. Not because anything about it amused her. It was the kind of quiet contempt people develop when they have watched others for too long, full of importance, pushing at things that have long since stopped obeying their hands. She could read many of their thoughts, their intentions, their small fears, their vain calculations, the way some carried them around like children carry their favorite stones. She knew who hoped to topple someone else. Who believed they stood on the right side. Who still thought time could be forced back into familiar shapes if one only spoke sternly enough and gave the right names enough weight.

Many of them had not yet understood what kind of time they were living in.

That would change.

Slowly, perhaps. Against their will. With pain, certainly. But it would change, and Mother looked forward to the faces some of them would make when they realized that the world had already begun to move on without asking their permission.

She was better informed about many things than she admitted.

Not only about what was happening in Zoordak or in the schools, not only about the movements of individual masters, about rumors, about journeys, about wounds, old alliances, young foolishness, and those old secrets that seemed to lie at the edge of the world and were now suddenly pressing toward the center. Mother was old. Very old. She had seen things others knew only as fairy tales, and she had lived long enough to understand that the world does not disappear just because you cut its inconvenient parts out of the chronicles.

Only a few could look back across so much time as she could.

Only a few.

And precisely because of that, Mother knew that the next true gathering would not take place in Zoordak.

It had to go to Tandor.

Not because Tandor was especially prepared for it. Not because all the answers lay there. But because some places, at certain times, stop being only places. They become knots. Focal points. Rooms in which things that have long been separate suddenly recognize one another.

Tandor was now such a place.

Before she could set out there, however, she first had to find Slonda.

She had a rough sense of where he would re enter this time. Not from magic alone. Also from knowledge, of the way he would take even an unusual path with too much reason and too little elegance. So she waited where that path would lead, and where no one would question her presence. Remote enough that time magic would not trouble those who should not be troubled.

It was a quiet spot between gentle slopes, with low grass that lay flat in the wind, and a few old trees whose trunks were crooked enough to give any place an air of the past at once. The air was cool, but not biting, and in the distance the lines of a forest shimmered beneath a pale sky.

Pildara came first.

It happened almost shamelessly clean. A brief flicker. A tension in the air that barely became visible. Then she was simply there, as if she had stepped out of another room, not out of another time. Cloak, posture, gaze, everything about her was so composed that one could have believed travel between times was, to her, little more than a slightly more annoying version of walking from one room to another.

Mother smiled when she saw her.

Shortly after, Slonda came.

Less elegant.

Far less elegant.

The transition was not clumsy, but clumsy enough to show that he could now manage the path, yet still nowhere near with the effortless certainty Pildara had. He staggered one step too far after arriving, fought for composure, squeezed his eyes shut as if his insides had to decide first which way the world was meant to stand, and only just managed to turn away from his own boots before his stomach made it very clear what it thought of such undertakings.

Mother gave him a moment.

Not from excessive kindness. More because she knew that dignity sometimes consisted of letting a young man live through his nausea for two breaths without commenting on it.

Pildara had less tact.

“If you dirty my shoes,” she said in that cold, casually spiteful tone that, with her, could almost pass for affection, “then I will make you calculate the next jump on your own.”

Slonda, who had one hand braced on the ground and was waiting with closed eyes for the world to settle back into place, raised two fingers in refusal. His stomach cramped once more. Then it was done. He drew a long breath, stood slowly, and brushed at his clothes with as much dignity as possible, though it changed nothing about the fact that, for a moment, he still looked like someone who had just exposed a weakness to time itself.

“All good,” he assured them.

The attempt at a grin did not make it more believable, but it made it more likable.

“I am glad to see you,” Mother said.

Both of them turned toward her in surprise.

“Mother,” Slonda said, almost caught out, as if he had been discovered doing something improper.

Mother, however, paid him little attention at first. Her gaze rested on Pildara.

“My daughter.”

She stepped to her and embraced her, and Pildara, who allowed most people only as much closeness as she chose to tolerate, returned the embrace with a naturalness that visibly surprised Slonda.

“Mother.”

“It has been a long time since we last saw each other.”

They said it almost at the same time, as if it were an old greeting formula that held not only words but memory. When they let go, they looked into each other’s eyes for another moment, and something passed between them, recognition, a quiet joke, an entire story that needed no language.

“You know each other?” Slonda asked.

Pildara only raised an eyebrow.

“Who does not know Mother.”

Then she looked back at Mother and sighed toward him as if apologizing for him.

“He is still so young.”

Slonda looked at the two women as if he had just been informed that an entire decade had been taken from him without consultation. He was by no means young, he knew that very well, and yet these two treated him with the calm certainty with which very old people look at middle aged men who already consider themselves settled.

“Everything needs its time, my daughter,” Mother said.

And again a smile passed between them, not loud, not mocking, more like the memory of an old unspoken joke in which Slonda, without meaning to, played the role of the one who would only understand later why anyone had laughed at all.

Then Mother grew serious.

It happened without any visible break. The smile closed, and in her eyes stood that depth others almost always noticed in her only when it was too late to underestimate it.

“Important events are ahead,” she said. “A meeting. In Tandor. Many are already on their way there, whether they know it or not. It is something that was prophesied long ago and is now coming to pass. Not fully. Not yet. But clearly enough that it can no longer be hidden only in riddles and old words. And Tandor is the place where it will now gather.”

Slonda was still not fully free of the aftereffects of the jump. You could see it in the extra heartbeat it took him to grasp the full weight of her words.

“My brother?” he asked then.

Mother nodded.

“He too will be there, friend Slonda. He misses you. As many others do.”

Something in Slonda’s face loosened at those words and tightened again elsewhere at the same time. In his thoughts he moved instantly onward, to the things between them, to unspoken conversations, to missed years, to what one called brother and what was never simply that.

Mother did not let him keep that thought for long.

“Gather yourselves,” she said. “We still have more guests to escort, and if we arrive too late, certain things will move even without us. I do not want that.”

So they set off without further delay.

Mother had her carriage brought, not because she could not have traveled by other means, but because some journeys in a carriage allowed more dignity and more invisibility at the same time than riding or walking. The wheels glided over the roads, the horses kept that even, calm pace that only long trained teams can hold, and so the three rode straight toward Tandor.

The days passed quietly.

Perhaps too quietly.

Pildara and Mother spoke little, but when they did, it was often in a way that gave Slonda the unpleasant feeling that they were speaking in several layers at once, and at best he understood the topmost one. They spoke about paths, about old places, about people who were no longer young and yet still made the same mistakes. Once they talked for half an hour about snow, without Slonda being sure whether they truly meant snow. Another time they both laughed softly at a remark about time that remained unclear to him.

Slonda himself recovered slowly. By the second day his movements already seemed steadier. By the third he could ignore Pildara’s mockery with something like dignity. And by the fourth he began to ask what, exactly, Mother expected in Tandor.

“More people than will be good for you,” she replied.

“That is imprecise.”

“Then it is probably true.”

On the fifth day Mother had the carriage stop at a point where the road ran between low hills and a long line of trees. The landscape was wide and still. A few crows sat in the distance on a fallen fence post. Wind brushed over dry grass and carried the smell of earth and a far off stream.

“We wait here,” Mother said.

“For what?” Slonda asked.

“For three of our guests from the north.”

She said it calmly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to stop in the middle of a country road because one knew that, from the north, exactly the right people would come.

“They are important.”

So they waited.

Mother sat perfectly still. Pildara looked as if she had expected it hours ago and now only had to endure that other people needed time to arrive. Slonda stood beside the carriage and looked north, first with curiosity, then with the slowly growing tension that comes when you sense that, with the next meeting, things will not become smaller but larger.

For a long time nothing happened.

Then movement appeared in the distance.

Three riders.

Small at first. Only shadows against the pale road. Then clearer. Two women and a man. Tired horses. Dust on cloaks and boots. And something in the whole way they held themselves that showed they did not come only from the north, but brought something else with them too.

Mother was the first to truly see them.

Not only with her eyes.

“There they are,” she said.

And as Xian, Nigk, and Xiodri came closer, even Slonda knew, before the first word was exchanged, that this was not a simple meeting.

This was one of those moments when the world paused for a heartbeat, because it too felt that several of its paths had just touched at precisely this place.

End of Part Two.