Anadar VI/III

13

Gudi woke with a pounding headache.

Not the dull, heavy ache of bad sleep, but a sharp drilling hammering that seemed to press her eyes outward from the inside before she even knew where she was. It was hot. Dark. Her throat was dry as dust, and when she tried to move she felt at once that something was wrong. Metal bit into her skin. Her arms were pulled up. Her wrists pinned fast. She was not in a bed, not on a bench, not even on a blanket, but on bare stone.

Slowly she understood.

A cell.

She had never seen one, only heard of them, in stories, in half threats, in the darker versions of what adults told children when they wanted them afraid. Now she was in one. Chained to a wall. Wearing rags instead of her clothes. Who had undressed her. Who had changed her. Why she was here.

She tried to shout.

No sound came.

Only a raw, painful croak from a throat too dry to give even fear a proper voice.

“Hello,” she managed at last.

Nothing answered.

No voice. No step. Not even the scurry of a rat. Only her own breathing and the pulsing in her head. She tried to sit up, but the restraints cinched her and held her in a posture that allowed neither sitting nor lying down. Every muscle hurt. Neck. Shoulders. Knees. Back. And above it all the thirst, the burning, tormenting thirst that soon became worse than the pain.

Hours passed.

Maybe days.

She did not know.

Down there, where no light shifted and no sound from outside found its way in, time quickly lost any shape. All she could cling to was the last thing she still remembered clearly: how she ran out to press the Moon Drops into Morgut’s hand, how she cried, how she stepped through the violet arch the way Gnok told her, and how the world in the next moment was torn out of her grasp.

Where was Gnok.

What had gone wrong.

It had to be a mistake. Yes. That was the only reasonable explanation. Something had gone wrong, but it would be cleared up. Someone would explain it. Someone would realize she did not belong here.

If only her brother were here.

After an eternity she finally heard something.

First a door far away. Then footsteps. Measured, clear, coming closer, until they stopped right in front of her cell door. A key turned. The door opened a crack. Light spilled in, so bright it hurt her eyes. Then it opened fully.

And in the doorway stood Hokn`f.

Tall. Upright. Immaculate as always. The scent oils and herbs he wore hit her at once, and for a moment it almost made her sick. The smell was so strong, so pressing, that it felt even more foul in this stifling hole.

“Master,” she rasped, hopeful.

Relief was in her voice, thin and torn, but still there.

“You have come to free me.”

Hokn`f did not answer.

He only tossed her a waterskin. Gudi grabbed it as quickly as her chains allowed, pressed it greedily to her lips, and drank. The water was warm. Bitter. Stale. Awful. She drank anyway, as if it were the only good thought left in the world.

Hokn`f waited.

He waited until she had drained it. Until the drug he had put in it took hold. It came fast. Her stomach was empty. She had swallowed everything at once. Her body was weak enough that the poison, or whatever he used, did not need long to climb through her.

First she grew hotter.

Then colder.

Then the stone floor began to turn beneath her.

She gagged. Vomited onto the stones. A last desperate act of the body against something that was already working.

It was too late.

“Child,” said Hokn`f.

He stepped to her.

“You are accused of acting in concert with the renegade. Now confess.”

Then he struck her.

Not like a man exerting control. Like a man who has been waiting for an excuse to use the hatred he has carried all along. His hand hit her face hard enough that her head cracked against stone. A sharp pain burst behind her eyes.

“Where were you.”

He struck her again.

No hesitation. No restraint.

Straight into her face.

Gudi reeled as far as one can reel when hanging from a wall. She tasted blood. Her mind was no longer fully there. The drug ate order. Pain cut every attempt to hold on to anything.

“We,” she stammered. “We were in Tandor. With my brother.”

He pressed in at once.

Question. Blow. Demand. Blow.

Where. With whom. Why. How. Again and again.

He drove her until there was no resistance left, until she was only a battered, bleeding bundle that could not even tremble properly under his violence. And she told him everything. Not because she tried to stay silent and failed. Because the drug, the thirst, the fear, and the pain tore the words out of her. She spoke of Tandor. Of the Sondra. Of Gnok. Of the vortex. Of the Moon Drops. Of the hidden access beneath the garden. Of the Tri Moon. Of things she would never have given away so carelessly under any other circumstances.

And even though it likely was not necessary, even though she would have told him much even without the violence, he kept hitting her.

This was not only interrogation.

It was envy.

Frustration.

Hate.

How dared they slip his city. Under his law. Under his gaze. How dared they travel to Tandor and share in things denied to him. The world seemed to reorder itself above their heads, and he, Hokn`f, had to watch others stand at the center.

When she had nothing left for him to wrench from her, he stopped.

He left.

And he left her bleeding, half dead, barely conscious on the stone.

Outside the cell stood Tzadier and Okom.

Tzadier a step ahead of Okom, so that Okom could not fully see his face. That might have been for the best. Okom had noticed before that Tzadier found something in the pain of others that went beyond duty. He enjoyed it. Not always openly. But truly. Okom was different. More sensitive. Perhaps weaker, depending on who judged. What had happened shook him more than he could admit. The girl’s pain echoed in him, and it took effort to keep his mind on the task.

Hokn`f marched past them and signaled with a curt nod for them to follow.

“And how much of that is fantasy,” he snapped, still half in his agitation.

“Nothing was false,” Tzadier said quickly.

“We will see,” Hokn`f growled.

He led them through corridors, stairs, and courtyards, straight toward the gardens, until he stopped before the girl’s overgrown plot. The plants, the wildness, the disorder, everything Gudi had made with her stubborn tenderness, was now only a riddle to be solved.

“It must be here somewhere,” he said.

He almost shouted with excitement.

It did not take long to find the mechanism.

A dry click.

Then hidden stone slid aside and revealed the staircase.

All three went down.

And as Gudi had described it, they soon stood in the hall beneath the garden. Before them the device that caught the Moon Drops, the basin, the hidden work, still and yet filled with a force you could feel at once.

“And now, sir,” asked Okom. “Should we destroy it.”

“Destroy it.” Hokn`f turned on him so sharply that even Tzadier paused. “Destroy it. If she is right, the key to power lies before us.”

He paced around the machine, studying it from every angle, as if sheer will could make it his.

“The drops,” he said. “I want them.”

“She said they are with her brother,” Tzadier put in. “And that seems to be true.”

“But the Sondra have more.” Hokn`f turned back to the basin and the device. “I will not wait ten years.”

“The girl gave only a rough direction,” Okom said carefully.

“Then watch the city until a Sondra comes again. I want to know. Send everyone. If I do not have to wait, I will not wait. And search the fool’s tower. I want the scrolls with the vortices. That is a far more powerful weapon than these fools understand.”

“What about the girl,” asked Okom.

Hokn`f looked at him as if he had asked about a mouse.

“What about her. We have everything we need. Let her die.”

Okom lowered his gaze, gathered courage, lifted it again.

“But sir, what if we overlooked something.”

Hokn`f thought for a moment.

“I do not care,” he said at last. “If you think she is still useful, then do not let her die yet. Leave her in the cell.”

Then he went.

Not back to the dungeon. Deeper into his own cravings, straight to the machine, as if standing before it long enough would force its secret out. There was more important work now. Such an apparatus in his city. The Sondra. That secretive people. Morgut had to be lured to Ashambrat. He also had drops. And he would contribute more to the vortices. All of it could be used. The old man was gone. At last. But what other secrets had he hidden, and how could Hokn`f use them best for himself.

Marabar, meanwhile, was almost intoxicated with joy.

Gnok in captivity.

He had not expected that. He had not thought the old magician was even alive. And now he had him. Not some remnant. Not only a name from old stories. The man himself. Hoknf had no idea what he had let slip from his hand. Or perhaps he sensed it and simply did not grasp its true scale. Men like Hoknf changed their minds too quickly when a new advantage appeared. So Marabar wasted no time. He took Gnok away, as far from Ashambrat as possible, before anyone could even form the thought of revisiting the bargain.

He had the old man chained carefully, gagged, searched, forced into new clothing. None of it out of mercy. It was preparation. Order. Taking possession.

He knew Gnok would wake with a headache.

The trap they had fallen into had been brutal. It had killed more than one. But Gnok was tough. Old. Durable. The sort the world only got rid of with effort.

And then, at last, the eye opened.

Marabar waited until Gnok was fully conscious. Not out of consideration, but because he wanted him awake. Present. Understanding.

“You must be thirsty, old friend,” he said.

He held out a cup of water with a thin reed straw set into it, and loosened the binding at Gnok’s mouth. Gnok drank. Not greedily, but deep enough to show how much he needed it.

Marabar watched his face.

“I wonder,” he said, “how you managed to hide so long without being noticed. I truly thought you were dead.”

He spoke almost cheerfully, and the eagerness in his voice spoiled every friendly note.

Gnok did not answer.

“And then among the wind mages,” Marabar went on. “With that zealot pack.”

The haze in Gnok’s mind cleared slowly. Pain remained. Weakness remained. But the reality of his situation sharpened. And with it the recognition of who sat before him.

“Marabar,” Gnok said sharply, despite his dry throat. “Where is the girl.”

Marabar shrugged.

“Is that of interest, old man.”

Gnok looked at him, and the look alone was answer enough.

“That Hokn`f,” Marabar said. “A deeply unpleasant fellow. He wanted her. And he wanted you dead. But I cannot simply kill someone like you. You are far too valuable.”

He smiled.

“You hid all this time.”

Gnok held his gaze.

“And you,” he asked. “How did you survive the Inquisition.”

Marabar’s smile widened, darkened, almost intimate.

“I had help, Gnok,” he said. “I had help.”

14

Zoordak did not take long to reach.

After only a few days they were back in the domed city and although the journey had been long enough to give their thoughts room, it had not been difficult. The road was quiet, the weather mild, the streets good enough, and even the conversations they had along the way, or chose not to have, did not carry the weight that had spoiled other travels for weeks. It was as if Zoordak already sensed their return and, for the last stretch, slid a gentler world in their path.

Before they were properly settled, Pildara declared that her time had come.

She did it the way she did almost everything, without a long preface, without unnecessary softness, without those half measures other people use when they want to avoid words at the edge of parting. She said goodbye briefly, but not coldly, and anyone who looked closely could see that behind the straightness of her manner there was more than she usually allowed to show. Then she turned away, stepped out, and went toward her own road.

A little later, she was gone.

Shara found herself almost grateful.

Not from lack of affection, but because for the first time in days, perhaps in weeks, she had begun to long for something that was neither conversation nor task nor an outside gaze. Retreat. Warmth. A closed room in which she did not have to explain anything. She had settled into one of the rooms and had decided that she would visit the baths that same evening. She felt drained. Not ill. Not weak. Rather, filled to the brim inside. In recent nights, dreams had returned, and her unconscious worked with that ruthless thoroughness that never cares whether a person is tired or not. It was still trying to sort what they had lived through. Not only what lay behind them, and there was plenty of that, but also what lay ahead, unshaped, already tugging at her thoughts without yet having a name.

So many impressions were still fermenting in her.

That was why, in secret, she was glad that Anadar and Mother wanted to occupy themselves with other matters first. She needed this short while for herself.

So she sat naked and alone in one of Zoordak’s muted baths, in that warm, damp half darkness where even thoughts seemed to slow. Steam hung soft in the air. Water beaded on rounded stone. Light slid over smooth surfaces and lost all harshness as it moved. Before her lay one of those mirrored planes where the water stood only as a narrow film and every touch instantly left a sign, lines, circles, patterns that slowly smoothed themselves again.

Shara played with it.

At first without thinking. With one fingertip. Then with more. She drew signs into it, erased them, let new ones appear, murmuring half to herself, without being able to say at what point play became something else. At first she did not truly notice what she was doing. Her conscious mind clung to other things, the last days, Anadar, the child, the quiet unease the book had left behind. But another, smaller, deeper part of her knew very well that she was weaving a spell there.

The patterns became clearer.

They linked.

They answered.

Shara paused, looked at her hand, and before she could finish the thought she used a fingernail to open the skin of her palm. A fine, clean split. Just enough for blood to surface. Not much. Only a few dark drops. She let them fall onto the mirrored plane.

The light flickered.

Once.

Then again, weaker.

For a blink it grew darker in the bath, as if the room had held its breath. Then, formed out of a small cloud that smelled of sulphur, a little demon appeared.

It was perhaps the length of a forearm, too small to be frightening at first glance, and for that reason unsettling in another way. It had pointed ears, red eyes, a mouth too wide with small fangs, and a thin tail that twitched nervously behind it. Its skin shimmered from dark red to brown black, as if made of half cooled burning. No sooner had it fully appeared than it bowed as deeply as its little body allowed.

“Mistress,” it said in a bright, slightly rasping voice. “At your service.”

Shara looked at it.

Then she stroked its face with a finger, almost tenderly, and smiled. Not a startled smile, not a hesitant one. A satisfied one. As if something in her had been waiting for proof and had now received it.

The small demon reacted at once to her mood. It sprang onto her palm, danced there with an almost comical vanity, and, at her barely spoken instruction, performed little tricks. It spun, bowed again, let the tip of its tail whirl in a neat circle, hopped from place to place without scratching her even once. It was intelligent. Not deep, not great, not wise. But awake. Ready. Obedient in that dangerous way in which lesser demons often seem most pleasant, as long as they are not allowed to grow.

At last, Shara bound it again.

Not roughly, not in haste. Almost carefully. As if she were storing something that might still be useful.

“That could still help,” she murmured to herself.

Then she sank deeper into the warm water and closed her eyes.

The book had given her its knowledge.

Or something that felt like it. It had chosen her, for reasons she did not know. Almost like back then, when Mother had given her that other gift that had reached deep into her perception and opened a new space of working within her. Only this time it was different. Much quieter. Much more inward. It did not feel like something foreign laid on her. Not like a second presence, not like a чужд will breathing beside her own, as Anadar had experienced with Naaarstr. Shara sensed clearly that this was something else. She was not being influenced. Not pulled. Not undermined. She was still herself. Only expanded. Slightly shifted. With a new hidden room inside her, one that might have been there all along and was only now being opened.

She wanted to get to the bottom of it.

But not here.

Not in Zoordak.

Mother had that unpleasant habit of listening even when she was not in the same room. And hiding simple things from her was rarely simple. By now Shara knew how it could be done. Lead with surface thoughts, keep what mattered deeper and to the side, think in feeling rather than in clear language, avoid finished terms where images would do. It was possible. But exhausting. And Zoordak was not the place for that kind of inner test of strength.

She would tell Anadar.

Certainly.

But not here.

Not now.

She sank under the surface, let the water close over her head, and stayed for a long time in the muted, warm silence, as if she could wash away the past, the last weeks, the roads, the fights, the looks, the book, everything. When she surfaced again, water ran down her face, neck, and shoulders, and for a moment she felt almost light.

Later she left the baths, threw a cloak over herself, and returned to her chamber.

Anadar was there too. He had taken off his armour and, as almost everyone did sooner or later in Zoordak, made himself at least a little more comfortable. Even that small looseness in his clothing made him softer, more human, less like a blade that still did not know the fight was over for the evening.

Shara lay down on the bed and looked at him.

He returned her gaze.

After a short while she lifted her hand and beckoned him closer. When he came, she pulled him down to her without another word, and what happened between them needed no explanation. It was not an outburst, not a desperate clinging, not an attempt to set something against the unrest of the world. It was more a finding again. A deep, quiet confirmation in touch, breath, warmth, and in the matter of fact certainty of two people who had stopped thinking past each other.

Later, tangled together, Shara fell asleep.

And for the first time in a long time, she did not wake in the night from a dream.

Meanwhile Mother remained mysterious about the visitor, or visitors, she had announced. She would not commit herself. She only said that it would matter. Not when. Not how. Not who. And precisely because she was so sparing, Anadar and Shara almost grew used to this state of waiting without knowing.

That was why both were all the more surprised when a servant came to summon them to Mother.

They followed her through Zoordak’s rounded passages into one of the antechambers, where Mother was already waiting. She looked at them and smiled with that knowing gentleness that at once revealed she knew more than she claimed.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked.

Shara felt heat rise into her face. Anadar said nothing.

“Come in,” Mother said, as if there were nothing remarkable about it, and gestured toward the next room.

Then she stepped closer to Shara.

“How are you?” she asked softly. “Was the bath pleasant yesterday, my daughter?”

She sought closeness, and Shara gave it to her without hesitation. Perhaps because she truly felt lighter. Perhaps because Zoordak woke old patterns in her, some of which had remained whole to this day.

The room they entered was, as was customary in Zoordak, a domed chamber. Soft. Round. Without sharp corners. The floor was covered with many cushions in warm colours, deep enough that every movement became slower, more casual, less worldly.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Mother said. “While we wait for our guests, I still have a gift for you.”

The door closed behind them.

They sat with her on the cushions. Then Mother began to speak.

She spoke of the School of Spirit and the School of Illusion, which had once been independent and later merged into the School of Spirit, not as a loss but as a joining. She drew boundaries and then dissolved them. She explained how the two schools differed, not on their surfaces, not in what outsiders assumed was similar, but in their inner direction. Spirit worked where consciousness itself was touched. Illusion worked where perception was shaped, where senses, imagination, and the inner image were shifted. Both bordered each other. Both touched. But they were not the same.

And while she spoke, Mother did not rely on words alone.

Images moved across the dome wall, patterns, examples, reflections, rooms within rooms. At the same time, more came. Thoughts. Transfer. Knowledge that was not merely explained but passed on. Not raw heaps of information, but ordered relations that settled directly inside them, as if Mother had not taught, but reminded.

So the two received more than a fragment.

Not merely a lesson. Not only theory.

But all the knowledge of Zoordak, as far as Mother wished to give it in that moment, anchored. Not as a dead archive, but as a living structure that opened in their minds and created rooms that had not existed there before.

Yet as always when Mother did something truly significant, more happened.

She did not wrap them in manipulation. Not in coercion. It was not an intrusion against their will. Rather, she deepened something that was already there. Trust. Affection. The certainty of not betraying one another. The bond between them grew, not only in knowledge, but in love. Not in the narrow sense of familial tenderness, and not only in pupilhood, but in that deep form of connectedness people feel when they share the innermost room of their thinking and do not flinch.

It was like a ritual.

And like a cleansing.

And like growing together.

The three did not merge in the mind into a dissolving of the self, but into a unity in which each self remained clear, and precisely in that became more complete. Mother as the calm centre. Anadar as bright, alert sharpness. Shara as deep, sustaining space. And then there was something else.

A fourth awareness.

Small. Young. Curious.

Not awareness in the full sense, but clearly present. It was drawn in, not violently, more like something already bound to Shara that was now taken into this net of trust and knowledge. A small becoming being, not yet with a place outside her and yet already responding. To warmth. To closeness. To order. To love.

So in that dome, it was not only knowledge that was conveyed.

A foundation stone was laid.

For something far more important than the mere passing on of teaching.

How long they remained in that state, none of them could later say with certainty. Time there lost its usual hardness. It no longer flowed in hours or nights, but in layers, in deepening, in movements of the mind that are not easily measured by the sun. Yet it was, as Anadar later realised with quiet astonishment, probably several days.

And when they finally came back to themselves, nothing looked different.

And yet everything had shifted.

Formularbeginn

Formularende

15

Mother announced the visitors for the next day, but still did not say who they were.

Shara and Anadar were both curious, yet they held it down. Neither of them dared to speculate out loud. With Mother, that was usually the wiser choice. If she carried a secret, it was not for whim, but because she knew exactly when knowledge would be useful and when it would only create unrest.

So the two of them spent the rest of the day in their chambers.

They practiced what they had newly learned. Not with grim intensity, but with focus and with that quiet ambition that takes hold of two people when they sense that another room of their ability has just been opened. They shaped small illusions and likenesses, simple at first, then bolder. Quickly they discovered what came easily and what resisted. Simple images were almost effortless. A flame that did not truly burn, a blossom made only of light and thought, the impression of a bird on a window ledge, all of that could be formed well. But the moment motion entered, or even spatial depth, it became harder.

The third dimension demanded more attention.

Shadows as well.

And sound was different again.

Again and again it happened that an image stood beautifully, yet remained silent, or that a step could be heard though the figure did not move. Then the shadow did not fit, too long, too flat, or gone entirely. Or a noise suddenly leapt too loudly into the room, so that both of them had to laugh, because the spell gave itself away. The smaller the illusion, the fewer details it carried, the better it worked. But as with everything, it was a matter of practice, fine measure, and the willingness not to take the first failure personally.

So the day passed quickly.

The next morning began early.

Mother had recommended official appearance. So they both put on their armor. Weapons were not welcome in Zoordak, and so they did not take any with them when they were finally summoned. A servant led them through the quiet, rounded corridors of the domed city into the official hall.

They were admitted at once.

Mother was already seated in her raised position on the divan. She looked composed as always, yet Shara was the first to notice that she was more tense than usual. Not restless in the ordinary sense, rather a little tighter, a little more alert, as if she were already listening for a note that had not yet sounded.

With a small gesture she indicated that the two of them should sit down to her right.

On the other side of the room stood several chairs, still empty.

Anadar waited until they were seated, then said with that dry patience he tended to show when he was really forcing himself to behave.

“Will you tell us now whom we are going to see today. Who are these guests you are keeping such a secret.”

Mother looked at them both.

“Prince Zarard,” she said. “And Tokra.”

She spoke the names as if they should explain themselves.

Shara and Anadar looked at each other.

It did not help either of them in the slightest.

There was no time for further questions, because at that very moment the door opened again. Xiodri slipped in first. She gave Mother a shy smile, almost relieved, then positioned herself unobtrusively at the edge of the entrance, as if she were simply glad to be present without being in the center of attention.

What came in after her made the mouths of the other three hang open.

The dark elf and the dwarf entered side by side.

Not cautiously, not submissively, not aggressive. Rather with that taut calm of two men stepping into a room they know might receive them with hostility, and who nevertheless refuse to make themselves smaller. Zarard was tall, lean, and possessed of a dark, strangely supple beauty that held the eye without seeming soft. His movements had something silent about them. Nothing in him lost strength, nothing in him felt accidental. Tokra, by contrast, was shorter, broader, heavier built, with that density of posture and limb some dwarves carry like a private weight of the world. In both of them it was obvious that they were not human. Not only in face or stature, but in the way they understood space.

They stopped at a respectful distance.

Mother rose first.

“Zoordak welcomes you,” she said with a formal warmth that was polite, yet did not sound like an ordinary audience. “I thank you for accepting my invitation.”

The dark elf inclined his head.

“Prince Zarard,” he said in a language close enough to the imperial tongue to be understood, yet every second sound revealed roots deeper and older. “Brother of King Neida.”

Then he indicated to the side with a brief, respectful motion.

“And Tokra, of House Tokr.”

Tokra stepped half a pace forward and said in a rougher voice.

“Not king. Not brother of king. But close enough that he sends me.”

For the first time a small movement touched Mother’s face, almost an amused flicker.

“Then I welcome you both,” she said.

She gestured to Anadar and Shara.

“This is Master Shara and Master Anadar.”

Anadar lifted his chin slightly.

“You have traveled far,” he said.

Zarard looked at him, and something in his face changed.

“And you are the one who made the amulets,” he said.

Anadar nodded.

Zarard’s gaze warmed, not soft, but clearly appreciative.

“Then I thank you for that,” he said. “Your work was not small.”

Shara introduced herself as well, calmer, and Tokra inclined his head toward her with a formality that felt almost old fashioned. The conversation began haltingly, because both guests spoke in a very archaic dialect. Their words were understandable, yet every sentence felt as if it came from a deeper layer of the same language, from a time when terms were harder, images more immediate, and courtesies less ornamented.

It became a first meeting.

A cautious measuring of each other.

Not hostile, but careful.

Mother guided the conversation at first with great prudence. She explained at length that this was not an official meeting and could not be one. She even said openly that the conversation must remain secret. Not out of shame, not out of cowardice, but because among the magi there were enough voices who would call the very idea blasphemy or treason. If it became known that representatives of the old peoples had met human magi here in Zoordak, there would be consequences.

“Not only for us,” Mother said quietly. “For you as well.”

Zarard nodded.

Tokra nodded too.

Mother then laid out the present situation, or at least the part of it she was willing to state openly in this circle. There would be upheaval among the magi once it became known that two magical peoples stood behind the aversion and the emptying of the North.

“Not everyone will want to understand why you acted,” she said. “Many will only see that humans were driven out. They will read that as war, even if none was declared.”

Anadar, who had been carrying the question the whole time, cut in exactly there.

“Why.”

Mother glanced at him briefly, but let him speak.

“I am not asking out of politeness,” he said to Zarard. “I am asking because I have no desire to rise against a people whose reasons I do not know.”

Zarard studied him for a moment.

Then he answered.

He spoke of the waking of other beings in the deep. Of pressure from the lower regions. Of things one had watched asleep and that now began to move again. Of displacement, not only spatial but existential. Of the necessity to push upward, because the underground itself was becoming unsafe for dwarves and dark elves. And of the decision not to meet humans with open war, but to drive them away, to scatter them, to make them abandon the North before bloodstreams and campaigns set a spiral of revenge and bindings in motion that no one could contain again.

As Zarard spoke, it only confirmed for Anadar what he had long suspected.

None of this was chance.

No weather.

No whim of the world.

It was intent.

Plan.

Pressure.

Decision.

“So it was you,” he said softly. “Not the cold. Not mere fear. Not mere rumor.”

“We were part of it,” Tokra replied. “Not all. But enough.”

Between Zarard and Anadar an odd understanding formed quickly. Not familiarity. Not yet. But that immediate respect two men sometimes feel when they recognize that the other is neither foolish nor cowardly, and does not think only along the usual borderlines. When Anadar admitted openly that he had made the amulets, Zarard praised him with an acknowledgment that did not sound like polite filler, but meant what it said.

“Whoever makes such a thing,” the dark elf said, “should not be overlooked.”

Of course the newcomers still revealed little. They were cautious. Very cautious. They did not speak of numbers, not of precise places, not of routes underground, not of weaknesses. But they let it show that they hoped to live in peace with humans. Perhaps one day even through trade. Tokra spoke the word as if he preferred it to any other political promise.

The magi on the other side pointed out that they were bound to the Conclave.

“And to others,” Mother said.

“And to factions,” Shara added quietly.

She spoke little that day, but when she did, it landed.

“There will certainly be those among the magi who would want war,” she said. “Some out of fear. Some out of hatred. Some out of opportunity.”

“How do you prevent that,” Tokra asked.

No one had a simple answer.

“Not in advance,” Mother said. “Only in the right moment. Debates cannot be held before they even ignite in the minds of the wrong people.”

It became a lively exchange. Tougher than easy agreement would have been, and precisely therefore more valuable. They did not merely speak to one another, they tested each other. Language. Patience. Boundaries. The ability to find the narrow path between secrecy and openness that a first conversation requires.

In the end they also spoke of Sontor.

And of what lay hidden there.

Zarard was visibly uneasy when the topic surfaced. Not panicked, but serious in a way that immediately made it clear that the watched presence under the ruins was not a marginal problem to him either.

“It is being watched,” he said. “By our people. But only from afar.”

It was Shara who suggested that if this presence changed, shifted, or behaved differently in any way, Anadar and she herself must be informed at once.

“Not later,” she said. “Not only once it has already moved. Immediately.”

Anadar nodded and added with a clarity that shut down any false heroism in the room.

“And it should not be actively freed,” he said. “If it frees itself, do not fight it. Observe. Report. Nothing more.”

Zarard held his gaze.

Then he nodded as well.

On that they agreed.

No questions that would not be answered.

And so this first informal conversation between representatives of the old peoples and human magi came to an end. Peacefully. It was no alliance. No treaty. No handshake onto an open future. Only what Mother had wanted from the beginning.

A beginning.

And sometimes a beginning was all one truly needed.

Formularbeginn

Formularende

16

At first Morgut tried his hand at the scrolls in the new library, and it was an almost daily fight against frustration and against the gnawing sense of rummaging through a language that did not want him. He forced himself there nearly every morning, only to find himself sitting over the papers again a little later, noticing how understanding slipped away the moment he believed he had caught a thread. It was not his grammar. Not his world of language. Not even his way of thinking magic. Some of the rolls described spells whose effects almost matched the known arts of fire, a whip of light for instance where the fire mages would shape a whip of flame, and yet everything was built so differently, nested so differently, foreign in the sequence of thought, that it drove Morgut to the edge of despair.

It was as if he had to unlearn everything he had learned before he was even allowed to begin learning again.

Miene and Sindra found it much easier. Together with Sinadie they proceeded systematically, like three people who had understood that unknown knowledge is not conquered by sheer eagerness, but by order. They catalogued, sorted, tested, compared, made stacks, drew lines between similar formulae, and recorded cleanly what belonged together and what only looked similar by accident. Morgut watched it more than once with mixed feelings. Before, it had been more that the two of them barely left him room to breathe, so close they had come to him in every hour, every conversation, every thought. Now it almost seemed as if they were ignoring him. Not on purpose. He could feel that. But still so clearly that it felt as if they did not want him involved in these things.

All of it together made him surprisingly relieved when a messenger arrived from Gontar.

He brought a parcel for Anadar.

Morgut knew at once what it had to contain, before he had even fully seen the seal, and so he took it himself. When he opened it, he found the carefully wrapped writings from Xoiun’s tower. There was more than he would have admitted to himself. Much more. There was a book on transformation and several rolls with it. There were Xoiun’s own notes. And along with them lay the sheet music, the pages he had held once already and that had not quite let go of him since.

Because musical instruments were rare in the Fiery Fortress, he first had to have one procured, and so he sent Saltor off with the request to find him a flute or something similar. But while Saltor handled that, Morgut turned fully to the writings of transformation.

And with those he managed far better right away.

Perhaps not at once in the fullest sense, but in a way that made him feel he was standing on solid ground again. He grasped more quickly what it was about. Much of it was written openly, almost dryly, in places so clear that it reminded him of a reference work on animal lore. There were exact descriptions of how one changed into a raven or a snake, what happened to the body, how perception shifted, how instincts rose, and above all how one returned again. That last part mattered, because as a snake you could not work spells and as a bird you did not think entirely like a human anymore. Other sections described beings Morgut did not know at all. Unicorn. Griffin. Then hybrid creatures again, minotaurs and other things that felt to him more like stories than reality. And yet they too were treated in detail, in a language that stayed so matter of fact that it was difficult to deny their reality.

So Morgut sank deeper and deeper into Anadar’s study with the writings of transformation.

He did not dare to cast the spells themselves without the older mages nearby. In theory he trusted himself to do it. He understood enough to grasp the form, recognize the parameters, read the safeguards. But without someone close who could intervene in an emergency, he felt uneasy. In almost all transformations a clear time anchor was built in as a protective mechanism, a condition of return meant to prevent someone from losing themselves forever in fur, feather, or scale. But he did not yet understand every passage of the spells completely. So he stayed cautious.

The deeper he read, the more clearly he understood what the renegade mage had truly wanted to create.

And he understood the corruption of his thoughts.

Xoiun had not merely played with forms. Not merely with transitions. He had wanted to create beings. That was clear from his papers. Creatures that could live on land and in water without having to transform. The books of transformation spoke of such new making too, but they never described openly how it could be done. In the old writings there was a gap, perhaps deliberately. Xoiun, it seemed, had believed he could fill that gap with his own boldness and with foreign flesh. The farther Morgut pushed into his notes, the more clearly he saw the cruelty of that thinking.

And so it happened that he forgot time and studied the way a mage studies when he has found something that truly takes hold of him.

After a while Saltor brought him not only a flute, but an entire selection. Yet at the moment Morgut had another project. He set the instruments aside for later, for hours when his mind might crave a different kind of pattern. For now, all his attention belonged to the rolls, the book, the transformation.

One day there was a knock at his door.

“Come in,” Morgut said, mildly surprised, because he had not expected anyone.

Manador stepped in.

“We received a letter from Ashambrat for you,” the older man said without preamble.

He handed over the sealed writing, but remained standing in the room and looked around. His gaze fell on the opened texts, on the book of transformation, on Morgut’s notes, on the different instruments Saltor had dragged in.

He stepped closer to the book, flipped through it briefly, and let the pages fall again.

“New things keep surfacing, do they not,” he said.

But Morgut did not answer.

Manador turned and saw that the younger man had already opened the letter. He read with an expression that shifted so quickly into disbelief that it alarmed the older mage at once. Morgut took his hands from the parchment and looked Manador straight in the eye.

“My sister,” he said. “There has been an accident. She is injured. Badly.”

He still seemed unable to fully take in the lines himself. Then he handed Manador the letter.

The older mage read it.

It was directly from Hokn`f.

Dear Morgut,

Unfortunately I must bring you difficult news. Your sister Gudi was found severely injured and is fighting for her life. Gnok is considered responsible and has fled and cannot be found. Come to Ashambrat immediately if she matters to you, her final hours may already have begun.

Hokn`f

Manador raised his gaze slowly.

“Young friend,” he said carefully, “my condolences. How can I support you.”

One could tell he was, in that moment, the least suited person imaginable to offer comfort, and that he knew it very well. Morgut fought for composure, but only briefly. Then he shook himself inwardly, as if the first shock had already turned into action.

“It is fine,” he said. “This happens. Perhaps I should travel to Ashambrat and see her.”

He sat down, but only for a moment, because his body already knew it wanted to leave.

Manador stood awkwardly in the room.

“Yes,” he said. “You should. Perhaps.”

He was certain he was not the right one here. But he knew who could help, or at least who understood faster than he did.

“I will go for a moment,” he said clumsily and vanished again to fetch Miene and Sindra.

As soon as the older man was gone, Morgut gathered himself with surprising speed.

His sister needed help.

So he would help her.

He packed a few things into one of the small bags he had made together with Anadar, those practical carry bags that could hold far more inside than their outer volume promised. A change of clothes. The flute. Some of the sheet music, in case time or opportunity arose on the way. Then he went to the book of transformation, copied out quickly what he absolutely needed, and stuffed that roll into the bag as well.

While undressing, the vial of moon drops slipped out of his pocket.

He picked it up, looked at it for one heartbeat, and put it away too.

Barely dressed, he then dashed off a quick note to Anadar and laid it on the table. After that he went to the book of transformation, fastened the little bag to his leg, and began the spell.

It went quickly.

Faster than he himself expected. The reshaping took hold, the body grew lighter, narrower, denser, and within moments he had become a raven. Large. Splendid. Black feathers that carried an oily sheen in the light of the tower room. He spread his wings. They obeyed.

He hopped onto the tower window.

“How did one actually fly,” he asked himself.

Then he thought he would figure it out, and simply threw himself out.

At that exact moment Sindra and Miene stepped in.

They found the room empty.

No one there.

Only the letters on the table. One from Hokn`f. One from Morgut.

Miene grabbed the second.

I have set out for Ashambrat. Forgive the haste. Morgut

Sindra was already staring at the open window.

Then the two of them looked at each other.

And they knew they were too late.

17

The crossing went more easily this time.

Slonda was no longer so completely knocked flat by the aftereffects as he had been on the few occasions before, and yet travelling through time was still nothing a body simply accepted as if one were merely walking through a door. When he emerged, his breath caught for a moment and he had to steady himself in the wet field. The ground beneath him was heavy with moisture, the mud tugged at his boots, and the rain fell so dense and slanted from the sky that it seemed determined to pull the whole landscape into a single grey veil. It must have been going on for quite a while, because there was no dry place anywhere, no edge, no tuft of grass, no stone that did not shine darkly with water.

Slonda straightened with effort and looked down at himself. After only a few steps he was drenched through, the fabric clung to his body, and what had previously looked like the clothing of a travelling mage now looked more like the garb of a vagrant who had set out too often in the wrong weather. Mud splattered up his legs, his hands were cold, and the last traces of nausea from the crossing only slowly loosened their grip. He shook his head as if he could simply throw off the lingering daze and then set out towards Gontar.

From far away he barely recognised the city. There must have been a fire, or several. Parts of the outer districts looked as if they had burned down and were now being patched up, or already rebuilt with grim determination. Some houses still stood as dark skeletons of stone and charred wood, others carried fresh beams, new roofs, new walls. The city was the same and yet not the same. The school still lay where and how he remembered it, but the way to it had changed, and the closer he came the more he realised how thoroughly a place can lose its face in just a few years when fire, weather, and people set to work on it together.

The people looked different too. It was not only cuts and fabrics, not only different coats, different colours, different hats. It was the entire bearing, the way clothing was worn, the way one walked, the way one looked at others, or did not. Everything felt close to his world and yet shifted, as if he had not simply come to an earlier time, but to a version of reality in which familiar things carried a different gravity.

He went to the school first anyway. More precisely, to the entrance used by the time mages. He was fairly sure it would be wiser to avoid the official path while he looked like a half drowned wanderer. So he worked the spell Pildara had taught him. The seal at the hidden access moved, recognised something in him, yielded, and Slonda stepped into the tower.

Inside it was dry. Quiet. Empty.

First he washed off the worst of the mud below, pulled off boots and soaked clothing, then climbed higher. No one was present, as he soon realised, and so for a brief moment he allowed himself to forget everything else and simply enjoy the comforts of the tower. Pildara had shown him where the important things were. Clothing that fit this era. Useful items. A short brief with the most important information, names, customs, and those small differences that would give you away if you were not careful.

He memorised it all.

Then he dressed accordingly. The clothing was awkward, and the ruff bothered him most of all. That stiff, absurd thing neither wanted to sit properly nor allow itself to be ignored. He tried twice, snorted softly, and set it aside. He would put it on once he truly had to mingle with people. Perhaps.

His first official errand, after he had slept and felt like a reasonably coherent person again, took him to the shared library. He searched for information on Sahretûn. On summoning, certainly, but also on the city itself. Its location. Its history. Its boundaries. Anything that could give him a starting point.

He found nothing.

Nowhere. No scrolls. No hints. No entry. Nothing that even remotely sounded as if anyone had ever openly placed that place on a shelf. Perhaps, he thought at first, the knowledge simply was not publicly available. So he began to question individual masters of the School of Life, since they were known for orderly archives, knowledge transfer, and all manner of systematic overview.

That did not get him anywhere either.

Above all because the language of this time soon became his second obstacle. Everyone spoke more elaborately. More stiffly. They formed sentences as if each word required two layers of ornament before it was allowed to leave the mouth. Slonda often could not tell whether the empty or rejecting looks he received were aimed at his question or at his grammar. The longer he tried, the clearer it became that he had walked himself into a dead end.

It frustrated him more and more, and the days passed.

At last he sat alone in the tower of the time mages when he heard noises from below.

Not the quiet, civilised noises of an arriving scholar. No cautious throat clearing, no measured step. Instead, loud cursing that already rolled up the stairwell from the lower end.

“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.”

Slonda lifted his head.

“I hate this age and this filth,” it boomed from below, step by step.

The voice cursed and swore its way upward, and after a few minutes a visibly drenched man stood before him. Tall. Truly huge. With unkempt long black hair, an equally black full beard, and clothes dripping with wetness, as if the rain itself had decided to pursue him personally.

“Damn it, Slonda,” the man burst out the instant he saw him. “What are you doing here. If I had known you were here, I would not have had to take this road because of that damned Conclave. For gods’ sake.”

He spoke without taking a breath, and Slonda needed a moment to grasp that this enormous, wet, swearing human being was addressing him by name as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Who,” Slonda asked cautiously.

The man’s head turned toward him. He examined him more closely, and suddenly his expression changed.

“You are the young Slonda,” he said. Then he laughed, loud and heartfelt. “Tell me this is our first meeting for you.”

Slonda only nodded slowly.

“Ha,” the giant said. “Wonderful. Welcome, Slonda, my friend. Let me introduce myself. Hartra is my name. And I am one of your brothers.”

He took off his dripping hat and shook it out as if the entire situation became bearable simply by that gesture.

Hartra was tall in a way that almost felt exaggerated for a human, broad through shoulders and chest, built rough and massive without seeming clumsy. More like someone cut from a mountain and then thrown into far too many wet years. His beard was long and unkempt, his hair as well, and yet none of it looked neglected. It suited a man who was only bothered by appearances once they truly began to get in the way of work.

“This cursed age,” Hartra continued, while he began stripping off wet layers without caring in the slightest about Slonda’s careful silence. “It rains constantly. The fire mages, in their madness, blew a mountain apart, a volcano that now spews ash into the world without end, and so it rains here all the time. Or lava chunks fly through the air. One or the other. Something went wrong for those boys.”

He laughed again, the big loud laughter of a man who laughed at catastrophes as if they were first annoying and only second dangerous.

“In a few years the nonsense is over,” he added. “But someone ought to smack those lads with their paper rolls.”

Then he grabbed Slonda’s hand and shook it so hard Slonda’s shoulder nearly lurched with it.

“If I had known someone was here, I would not have come,” Hartra barreled on. “But we are still in the Conclave, which means one of us has to attend those accursed sessions, and this here is my shift. Waste of time. Pure, pointless waste of time. The next hundreds of years nothing of real interest happens anyway.”

He slapped his broad hand against his thigh as if the sentence needed physical emphasis to make it true.

“What brings you here, my friend. Oh, you made tea. Splendid. Now speak.”

Slonda was by no means sure it was time to tell this man anything, least of all whether he should trust him. But Hartra hardly seemed to need an answer.

“Does not matter why, my friend,” he said. “This age is dreadful. So indecent. So ugly. So useless. Tell me, have you already attended the Conclave.”

Slonda only watched him and let him talk. It felt as if he did not need to respond at all. Hartra could carry his side of the conversation alone, easily, for both of them.

“No. Good. Then it is time. I think tomorrow is the day. I will gladly take you with me, after that you can shoulder this tiresome duty as well…”

He slapped his thigh again, then stopped abruptly and stared at Slonda.

“Wait.”

His face brightened as if something genuinely amusing had just occurred to him.

“Now I know what you are doing here.”

He pointed at Slonda with a wet finger.

“Damn it. Damn it, you dog. You want to go to Sahretûn.”

He laughed out loud.

“You reckless dog, you are looking for the city of the hopeless damned. You are in the right place.”

Then he glanced around as if, in the same instant, something far more urgent had occurred to him.

“Do we have anything to eat?”

18

Anadar had thought he would ride back to the Fiery Fortress alone.

In his mind it had already been settled that Shara would want to stay in Zoordak, to rest, to be careful, to give the child inside her a quieter beginning than the Fortress could ever offer, and for that very reason he had spent the entire evening trying to prepare for a farewell without truly knowing how to shape it. He was clumsy when it came to the things that mattered most to him. When danger, conflict, magic, or decision were on the table, he usually knew at once what had to be done. With tenderness, separation, and the fear of saying the wrong word, even he sometimes lost his form.

So he sat with Shara in their chamber and fumbled around the subject for a long while.

She watched him.

He said nothing.

She waited.

He still said nothing.

At last she lifted her brows and looked at him with that irritated, almost challenging expression she always wore when someone dragged out something obvious for no reason.

“What is it?” she asked. “Say it. You are not usually like this.”

Anadar looked at her, drew one slow breath, and finally said it.

“I will leave tomorrow.”

“Good,” she replied at once. “Then we leave tomorrow.”

He stared at her for a moment as if he had understood every word but not its meaning.

“You are coming with me.”

“Of course I am coming with you. What did you think?”

He visibly searched for a phrasing that would not sound wrong, and almost immediately hit the core of the problem.

“Did you not want to stay here, for the child…”

He did not get any further.

“To raise it,” Shara cut in. “At least at first. I am pregnant, Anadar. The child is still inside me.”

She did not say it gently, but she was not truly angry either, more with the clear impatience of a woman who had just realized the man in front of her had already held several conversations in his head without letting her take part in any of them.

“I am coming tomorrow,” she stated. “Make sure everything is ready. And later we say goodbye to Mother. We ride out early.”

The next morning everything was ready.

Anadar was already in the saddle when Shara stepped into the courtyard with Mother. The two women walked slowly, not because Shara could not have moved faster, but because a farewell that carries weight becomes slower on its own. They spoke quietly together, and although Anadar could not hear them, it was instantly clear to him that Mother was speaking in that way of hers that was comfort and instruction at once, and that almost no one but her could wield so effortlessly.

Then they parted.

Shara climbed into the saddle a little awkwardly, and the moment she was seated a soft sigh escaped her. The next days would be tiring, she knew it. Not impossible, but uncomfortable, no, unpleasant. Anadar studied her briefly.

“Are you sure you do not want a carriage?” he asked.

She did not even look at him.

“I am pregnant,” she said. “Not ill. Come on.”

He rode over to Mother once more, leaned down from the saddle, and kissed the top of her head.

“Until soon, my dear,” she said.

“Until soon.”

Then he looked to Shara, who was already sitting there with a sharpened impatience and no desire to wait for sentimental gestures.

Mother smiled narrowly.

“That will not get better in the near future,” she whispered to him.

Then they rode out.

They made surprisingly good progress.

Shara, in particular, soon noticed that she felt far better in the saddle than she had expected. The fresh air, the movement, the routine of riding did her good. At last she was on the road again. Fewer voices, fewer people, fewer unrelenting eyes. And at last, almost only the two of them. Again and again her gaze slid to the man she loved, and every time she smiled a little without meaning to.

This is how it should always be, she thought more than once.

After a few days they reached the Fiery Fortress.

Both of them were surprised by how well it had been restored. When they had ridden away, much of it had still looked battered, damaged, or only hastily secured, but now nearly everything stood again in its old splendor, as if the school itself had decided it would not let its wounds define it. Walls had been reset, courtyards cleaned, paths cleared, facades repaired. What had been destroyed already carried dignity again.

Word of their arrival spread quickly.

Almost the entire school gathered to greet them. Anadar, above all, was received with a warmth that seemed too large to be mere admiration. For many he had become an example, a guiding figure, almost a living proof of what a mage could become when skill, will, and a certain readiness to step beyond limits came together in one person. You could almost have called it a mild fanaticism beginning to form around him.

Manador did not mind that at all.

He knew how such a thing could be used.

So he did not miss the chance to lead Anadar around in full view of everyone, to show him the progress, and to receive praise from him in the same public way. The people of the school wanted to see Anadar, to hear his voice, to have him confirm that the Fortress had not only been saved but had become once more something that could carry a future.

Shara, by contrast, was glad no great commotion gathered around her.

Almost unnoticed she slipped away into the tower she shared with Anadar. There Sinadie met her and looked after her as if she had already taken it upon herself as a matter of course. Shara went to the window and looked out. Below, the great crowd of students, mages, and attendants moved through the grounds with Anadar and Manador, voices, motion, laughter, gestures. Shara slowly pulled off her riding boots and loosened the straps of her armor while Sinadie helped.

“Where is Morgut,” Shara asked. “And the girls.”

“The girls are in the new library and studying diligently,” Sinadie answered. “They are doing well. And Morgut…”

For a moment she glanced up at the ceiling as if the better answer were written there.

“I think we should wait with the rest until Anadar is here.”

After the first noise around Anadar’s return had eased, he finally came to gather himself in his tower and speak quietly with Manador, Sinadie, and Shara. He looked relieved to have these few still minutes. Together they weighed what to do about Morgut, whether they should follow him, whether help was needed, whether silence meant wisdom or negligence. In the end they concluded that if Morgut had truly needed help he would have said so. At the same time, the haste of his departure did suggest a certain recklessness. Miene and Sindra seemed annoyed that he had left them behind without speaking to them one last time, but both threw themselves into their work instead.

So they left it at that, trusting the young man to look after himself and to reach out if he needed help.

After that Anadar was unsure what his next steps should be.

So first he asked to be shown the Library of Light.

He took the scrolls in hand and began to work through them, and he too found it difficult to read them, quite independent of Morgut. He said so openly. Sindra only looked at him, and a small almost mocking smile appeared on her face.

“Morgut had the same objections,” she said.

“Yes,” Miene added. “He also struggled with the writings at first.”

Then the two of them pulled out the scroll on the light whip, of all things the very one Morgut had wrestled with for so long. Together they walked Anadar through the crucial passages, and the difference was striking. Fire mages, when shaping a whip, began with the available potential energy, which was then guided and limited. The Light scrolls began with limitation, with space, with geometry and definition. First the frame, then the force. Not the other way around.

It was a fundamentally different approach.

Shara only looked at the scroll and smiled.

“I know why this is harder for you.”

She glanced toward the other women in the room, and all four of them smiled.

“Light magic seems made for women,” she said. “The spells are built the way women would approach something, far more cautiously, far more controlled, perhaps more effective, while you men simply set the maximum energy first and then hope you can keep it properly contained afterwards.”

Anadar let them explain it.

And again.

And again.

“When we learned fire magic,” Miene said, “we struggled too. It is not intuitive for us to set spells that way.”

Anadar let that settle.

He could cope with the grammar and language of the spells being different, and he could cope with a new magical language not coming easily at first. He had taken a long time to truly master the School of Life, far longer than others, and he had learned that patience was not weakness. What occupied him far more was something else, that there were apparently two fundamentally different ways to reach, in principle, the same effect, not merely different words, not merely different signs, but a different way of thinking.

That would not let him go.

He began looking for Light spells that corresponded to Fire spells he already knew, and he found them. In this way he worked out an entirely different entry into Light magic than the women beside him. And as Shara knew him, he became far more obsessed with mastering it than the others. She noticed it at night, when he slipped out of bed quietly, convinced she would not notice, and sat down in the library to keep reading. By day he left the hours there to the women. By night they belonged to him.

He made rapid progress.

Very strong progress.

Shara soon suspected he was using something his brother had left behind for him, a small time bubble spell that could stretch hours so he could work longer on a problem without the world noticing at once. She saw it in the mornings when he returned to sleep a little, his beard usually grown more than a single night could account for. She smiled silently at that, because she too had her secrets.

While Anadar studied the Library of Light, she immersed herself more deeply in summoning.

She became more adept at bringing things through from the other side and sending them away again without losing clarity or calm. By day they studied together, the Book of Transformation and the notes that had come with it. All in all, they were instructive weeks for both of them, weeks in which they learned a great deal, worked side by side, understood some things together, and enjoyed the other’s presence without needing to say everything.

They did not have to.

Because something bound them more strongly than words ever could.

That endless trust in each other to do it right.

19

Hokn`f was not satisfied with himself.Not really. Not deeply. Not in that way a man feels when he has worked toward something for a long time and, for a single moment, becomes still and senses the weight of what he has achieved inside himself. He had achieved nothing yet, at least nothing that was enough for him. The Sondra still slipped away. He had sent patrols into the desert, many of them, more than any sensible person would have spent on it, yet they returned with dust, fatigue, and half usable guesses. No trail. No camp. No tunnel. No telltale smoke on the horizon. Nothing he could seize.

Even the search of Gnok’s tower had not satisfied him.A great deal of rubbish had been dragged into the light. Useless rubbish. Small machines that did not work, or whose purpose remained unclear even after prolonged study. Scrolls that were never finished. Half spells. Abandoned series of trials. Complicated disorder. Evidence of a mind that had begun many things and left little behind in a way others could take up with any gain. No Moon Drops. No clear leads. Nothing of what Hokn`f had truly wanted.

At least they had discovered the vortex.And they were now studying the spell.

It was not easy to control the vortex. On the contrary. The spell was wild, hard to hold, harder still to steer, and at first it did more harm to his own people than to anything it was meant to be used against. Bruises. Scrapes. Sprains. A student once twisted his arm so badly he could barely turn a page for two weeks. More than once Hokn`f himself had been caught by the vortex, dragged along, then thrown out of the motion with a force that slammed him into stone or earth and stripped away any thought of a quick triumph.

But they were getting better.More skilled.More dangerous.

And that was where the value of the spell lay. It was powerful, difficult to predict, and precisely for that reason useful. Especially in the conflicts to come. Hokn`f knew they would come. He could already see them, lines on maps, names in reports, shifting balances of power, and the anticipation made him calmer the more concrete it became.

Once they had found the Sondra, there would be war.Of that he was certain.

So his people kept searching for traces in the desert, riding along borders, watching roads, hiding at wells and resting places, asking, listening, threatening, lying. Yet the Sondra knew how to hide. None of them came into the city anymore. That was wise of them. Fine. He had time. And means. And people willing to spend both for him. Sooner or later, he knew, an opportunity would appear. And if you could not find an enemy, then you had to possess something that would one day draw them out of hiding.

Gudi had survived.She was still in the dungeons.

She was not doing well. That was reported to him, regularly. Not out of care, but because people wanted to make sure they still had his approval, whether she should keep living or finally die. He did not care. Almost. In truth, he had more important things to do at the moment. If she suffered, then she suffered. Perhaps it would still be useful. Perhaps not. Her importance had shrunk since she had said everything she knew, and yet he did not simply throw her away. Not while others still wanted to pull something out of her.

Tandor, meanwhile, brought him no joy either.Klaast proved to be a malleable fool, one who still had not fully grasped that power must not only be administered, but pushed in the right direction. He was not firm enough on the leash. Fontal and From, by contrast, were much closer to him. Both understood faster what was necessary, and both did what they were told in essence, even if they preferred to present it as their own thought. Klaast, however, still had to be broken, guided, or if needed removed. If he did not function, then they would dispose of him. That was not a thought Hokn`f bent over for long on moral grounds. People who stayed soft in the wrong places were obstacles, and obstacles had only two states in a serious order: useful or gone.

So he sat in Ashambrat and dreamed his dream of power and influence.And the longer he dreamed it, the more satisfied he became with himself.

Danndi had returned as well.He was not satisfied with her either. He had recognized that early. She was the annoying kind of person who never stopped with one answer, always asked the next thing, always drilled where something was left behind, never quite willing to accept an explanation as simply an explanation. A capable woman, certainly, but hard to lead, because even in obedience she still needed to understand connections. Hokn`f did not like that. He was cruel. He rarely offered praise. And he ruled school and city with an iron hand, because deep down he was convinced that only hardness could hold together a structure that did not want to stand together of its own will.

He had sent the letter to Morgut.Now he waited.

He had prepared traps for the young mage. Not crude ones. Not the kind that looked like danger from far away. Clean, sensible, half believable setups, human in nature as well as magical. He did not only want to catch Morgut. He wanted to use him. The Moon Drops. The vortex. Everything Gnok and Gudi had hidden might now be uncovered through the brother.

But the young mage still did not approach. Nothing was reported. He would come soon enough.

Hokn`f leaned back in his seat.It was not a throne, not in any real sense, rather a wide elevated chair with hard lines, from which he dominated the room as if even sitting down he refused to allow the slightest doubt about who set measure and weight here. On the wall behind him hung the great map. The whole northern land, the desert, the mountains, the roads, the suspected routes, noted observations, shifted markings. Sooner or later they would find the Sondra. Sooner or later every hidden one had to make the mistake of becoming visible.

Tzadier proved, in these days, to be an extremely useful right hand.The mage was cruel, and it gave him visible pleasure to cause pain. That made him useful. Unlike Okom, who was too gentle, too cautious, too full of scruples whenever things became truly serious. Tzadier, by contrast, understood that fear was a tool. That suffering could create order. And that some people only became clear when you stripped them of all hope of mercy.

That was why it was Tzadier who took care of Gudi.Or rather, who ensured that she continued to do poorly.

On this day he was standing with Hoknf and reporting, in a tone that tried to be chillingly matter of fact, how the girl writhed under pain, how hunger weakened her, how she reacted to light, water, and voices, when she begged for mercy and when she only whimpered. Hoknf listened halfway and was already thinking of other things.

Then the door burst open.

A student stumbled in, covered in dust, breathing hard, so rushed that he almost tripped over his own feet. He threw himself to the floor at once, fought for air, and only then lifted his head.

“My lord. My lord,” he blurted. “At last. We found them. We found the Sondra.”

This was the moment Hokn`f had been waiting for.

He sprang up.Not slowly, not with dignity, but with the sudden electric sharpness of a man whose entire hunger, in a single sentence, is permitted to move. All fatigue fell away from him. The map, the plans, the patience, everything became action.

“Gather the mages,” he ordered. “Only the proven ones. Only those who can hold the vortex. Arm them. No noise in the courtyard. I want them ready before the sun turns.”

The student bowed as deeply as his trembling legs allowed and vanished again.

Tzadier smiled.Hokn`f noticed and allowed it. In such moments, enthusiasm was not weakness as long as it served the right direction.

“So,” Hokn`f said softly, more to himself than to the other. “Finally.”

What he did not notice:On the window ledge sat a raven.

Dust covered, like any bird that has flown too long through heat and wind, ordinary enough at first glance to seem unremarkable, and yet with eyes too clever, too alert, too human to fit in a common body. It had heard every word. Every order. Every undertone of expectation.

And from those clever black eyes, silent and almost invisible, a single tear ran down.

20

It was not easy to understand what Naaarstr wanted from him.

Even now it was not, not after the demon had explained it to him again and again in images, in half meanings, in that cold pressing kind of thinking that settled over Fantor’s mind like a second logic that did not care to be understood as long as it was obeyed. What Naaarstr demanded was nothing a mage would normally do. Fantor was not to pull something up from the demon dimension, not to summon a presence, not to open a tear and let power pour into the world through it. No. He was to place himself there. Himself. And with him the sword, in which a demon was housed again. The thought alone was so twisted, so contrary to every order and every caution, that Fantor still could not decide whether he held madness or brilliance in his hands.

Most likely it was both.

It was complicated.

Above all because this path was not a destination in the true sense. It was only a passage. A cut out of this world into the other and from there back again into a new place. Everything had to be calculated. Not roughly. Not approximately. Precisely. And Fantor lay beneath tons of rubble, half buried, half wedged, kept alive by what he could hardly name anymore as anything other than a little magic, remnants of will, and a malice that did not come from him alone.

He had clawed free just enough to grasp the sword again.

Nothing more.

Just enough to reach it with his hand, curl his fingers around the hilt, and feel once more the cold evil certainty of that metal. He and Naaarstr had gone through the steps often now. Not in reality, not carried out, but in thought, in patterns, in repeated calculations, in summoning logic and the perverse grammar of binding. And still uncertainty remained. Again and again. With every repetition. With every attempt to turn an idea into a plan.

The demon in his head kept telling him what could be worse than this.

Fantor was not sure.

He was very sure it could get worse. He had spent long enough with Naaarstr by now to know the demon considered possible things beside which starving and suffocating beneath ruins almost seemed like an orderly death. And yet he gathered himself. Not from hope. Not even truly from the will to survive. But from something the demon dangled before him again and again until it took root inside him.

Revenge.

Revenge on those who had put him in this state.

Revenge on Anadar.

That name alone was enough now to wake something in Fantor stronger than exhaustion. He thought of the sword. Of the loss. Of the humiliation. Of the stone grave. Of the feeling of having been outplayed by a man he had despised and underestimated. And so he lay beneath tons of rubble and focused while the demon guided him.

He hummed the words.

Not loud. Barely audible. More with what little voice dust and dryness had left him. The formula was not meant for open air. It was not even meant for a body still anchored firmly in its world. It was a detuning of reality, an inversion of inside and outside. At the right moment he gave blood.

Then darkness came.

Not the darkness he had known, not the dull burial under stone, but another one that seized him in an instant and removed every familiar weight. The feeling of being crushed was gone. Completely. In its place there was heat. Endless heat. Not merely warmth. Not fire on the skin. Rather the feeling of stepping into a world whose default state was embers.

Fantor allowed himself to open his eyes.

The stench of sulfur hit first. Then the heat. Then the sight.

He could not be dead.

And yet everything he saw was so close to what humans imagined hell to be that his mind resisted accepting it as real. Fire was everywhere. Lava ran in open streams through black fissures in the ground, occasionally hurling glowing gases upward and casting red light across the world. The sky was dark, but not empty. It hung heavy and cracked above everything as if it too were made of burnt matter, and from it fell something like rain that was made of fiery particles. Not constant, not dense, but often enough that every glance upward meant danger.

And in the middle of that chaos stood a city.

Built of dark stone.

Not a ruin. Not an apparition. A real city. Walls, towers, gates, edges, bastions, all erected from a material that did not give even in that furnace heat, only seemed to grow blacker. It stood on a plain surrounded by countless demons. Fantor needed several breaths to understand what he was seeing.

It was a fight.

A siege.

The city against what surged toward it.

Countless demons pressed against the walls, climbed them, were beaten back from above, fell into fire ditches, were torn apart, burned, and still more came. It was not an orderly war. It was a constant roaring screaming attempt to conquer and to hold. Creatures of every shape ran, leaped, crawled, flew, threw themselves forward while something answered from the city. Light. Projectiles. Dark lines. Howls. Fantor could not grasp it. It made no sense. Not at first. Not in his thinking.

Further, said the voice in his head.

It sounded sharper than before. More urgent.

Further, before we are discovered.

Naaarstr pressed him.

Fantor forced himself to tear his gaze from the city. He focused. He traced the necessary signs into the ground with the sword as quickly and cleanly as he could. His hand trembled. His thoughts still stumbled over what he had just seen, and the demon almost screamed at him inwardly to be faster. Then Fantor gave blood again.

He allowed himself one last glance at the scene.

It still made no sense.

Then another jolt.

A cut.

A fall.

And suddenly there was something above him.

No sky. No lava. No fire rain.

Only darkness and weight.

He heard Naaarstr screaming in his head, not in rage, not like usual, but with something that bordered on desperation. In that single moment Fantor knew, before he fully understood what had happened, that he had been too slow. That they had not come through cleanly. That something had struck them on the way out, or overlapped them.

Then it went dark around him.

With that certainty he sank into unconsciousness.

At first they were not entirely sure.

Perhaps they had been mistaken. Perhaps it was only a fluctuation. Perhaps the presence had withdrawn deeper, had slipped under stone or into some form harder to sense. But the longer they checked, the clearer it became. Whatever had lain beneath the rubble was gone.

Simply gone.

As if it had never been there.

The news was passed on at once.

It spread fast, faster than many expected, because things bound to real fear travel from mouth to mouth and from sign to sign without anyone able to stop them. Observers reported to their superiors. Those to the next. And so the tidings rushed through the region until it finally reached the prince.

Zarard received it with a divided heart.

Was it true. They had seen it coming. Or rather they had considered it possible. And now whatever had been bound there or at least buried there was suddenly no longer to be found. Part of him was relieved, because that immediate closeness to something nameless was over. Another part of him was far more unsettled. Things that simply vanish rarely do so in order to become harmless.

He had it checked again.

Independently. He trusted his own people, but he did not trust the situation. Not enough. So he had others look, others sense, others verify. Yet the answer remained the same.

The presence was gone.

Not weakened. Not hidden. Not shifted into some nearby side chamber.

Gone.

Zarard still did what he had been instructed to do.

He did not intervene prematurely. He sent no warriors. He ordered no search on a whim. Instead he sat down, wrote a message in concise clear words, and sent a courier to Zoordak.

Because that was what they had agreed.

Observe.

And report.

21

She knew that it would happen today.

Not how. Not by whose hand. Not at what hour. Only this one thing she knew, with that quiet, cold certainty that is not born of fear but of prophecies read too many times and of a life that had lasted long enough to do more than marvel at the language of the stars. To read it. To interpret it. Someone would come today, and that someone would want to kill her.

Precisely because she did not know who it would be, and in what way it would happen, she could not truly prepare. The stars were generous in some things and cruel in others. They gave direction, but rarely mercy. They let you sense that a blade would come, but not from which angle it would be driven.

And yet Mother had no intention of yielding willingly to what was written above her. She did not want to die yet. She still had too much to do. Too many threads in her hands. Too many doors that still had to be opened. Her story was not finished.

So she smiled as she rose.

The last weeks had worn at her. More than anyone could see from the outside. It took strength to steer and hold and carry and bind and stay silent when silence was necessary, and to speak when words had to press the world, for a moment, in the right direction. She looked down at herself, at the beautiful woman she showed the world, at the gold of her hair, at the aura, the glow, the almost unnatural perfection of that appearance, and she knew the truth beneath it. She knew how old she was. She knew what she looked like without this shell. She had shown her true face to certain people, rarely, but never without reason.

Anadar knew it.

And he loved her as she was.

Not the shape. Not the gold. Not the beauty she could wear like a garment. He had fallen in love with her presence, with her voice, with her closeness, with what lived between words, and not with the outer form she carried when she chose. And Shara as well. She too looked straight through that facade, clear, without awe before the shine and without being deceived by it.

The three of them had long been bound by something deeper than family, apprenticeship, or simple affection. No, Mother thought as she walked through the quieter corridors of the temple, now it was four. The small life growing had already been taken into that bond, and even if it could not yet speak, could not yet understand, could not yet walk, it was already part of something older and larger than any single present moment.

So Mother walked through the temple.

Xiodrie was there, and the sight of her brought something gentle out of Mother at once. What joy she took in this woman. What quiet, deep joy there was in watching someone bloom the moment they no longer had to fear for bare survival every day. Xiodrie had become more careful, yes, but not skittish in the same way. She moved differently. Spoke differently. Held herself differently in a room. It was not much, and yet it was everything.

Mother loved this woman, in her own way, and she knew that Xiodrie loved her too. Not as a figure of power. Not as a savior. But with that grateful, open devotion that comes from a heart that, for the first time in a long while, is no longer built only on fear.

Mother liked spending time with her.

Even today she savored every second of it.

It could be the last.

And yet she was not sad. Not in that simple way people mourn things that are taken from them. She only felt, very precisely, how her hour was drawing near. So she said farewell inwardly to every daughter she saw. Not visibly. Not with grand words. Only within herself. A glance. A thought. A silent gesture of the heart.

She was not yearning. Not bitter. Not even particularly soft. She thought back over her life and was grateful for every single hour of it. And there had been many hours. Countless. Full of error, power, beauty, guilt, guidance, tenderness, coldness, and love. More than any ordinary human could carry, or remember.

Later she withdrew to her favorite room.

There she waited.

The hours passed slowly, and as they passed, her life moved through her in images. Not as a complete memory, not in order, more like light on water. A face. A landscape. A loss. An embrace. A night. A mistake. A victory that later proved to be a defeat. A child smiling at her. A city that fell. A look from Anadar. A silent nod from Shara. The first time Xiodrie looked at her without fear.

Then she felt it.

He was coming.

Not with noise. Not with a storm. Not with magic that drove the room before it. Only with that one clear certainty, deeper than any sound.

He stood before her.

And he came in the shape of her old friend Gnok.

For a moment even her heart did something it rarely did. It did not stop, but it remembered. Years. Conversations. Familiarity. Old cleverness and old bitterness. A man she knew, and the horror of seeing him like this. For he stood there and looked at her without recognizing her. Not truly. His eyes were open, but empty in the wrong place, and in them there was nothing of the old man she had expected to find. Only a foreign compulsion. Something driven. Something that used him.

Mother stood.

Slowly.

Without haste.

She drew one last breath deep into herself, consciously, as if she wanted to possess even this one fully. Then she looked at her old friend as he came toward her, mechanical, unstoppable, a knife in his hand.

She waited.

For the thrust.

Ready to receive it.

End of Book Six.