Anadar VII/II

9

Marabar did in fact stay with him in the tower for a few more days.

It was a peculiar companionship Slonda had fallen into. Outside, it rained almost without pause, day after day, as if this era itself wanted no sharp outlines, as if it meant to hold everything in dampness, grey light, and slow motion. Inside, a time mage and a summoner sat in a tower room, drank tea, ate whatever could be prepared without much art, and carried on conversations that sometimes drifted into harmless digressions, and sometimes sank so deep into theory, codex, and definitions that hours passed without either of them noticing.

At first it was Slonda who remained cautious. Not out of fear, but out of a kind of mental waiting. Marabar was courteous, very much so, yet his courtesy was never soft. It had edges. It always let you feel that any friendly word could just as well be a touchstone. And yet Slonda soon realized that there was something in these talks that drew him in. Marabar did not speak smoothly in the manner of a vain scholar. He thought. Truly. And more than that, he liked to think in opposition.

One evening, when the rain struck the window panes so hard that the tower itself seemed to stand under water, they sat facing each other again, each cup already refilled for the third time, and Marabar held one of the codex books Slonda had handed him from the shelf.

The summoner ran two long fingers over the cover, as if honoring not only the work, but also its weight in the world.

“Master of Time, Slonda,” he began, “the longer we speak of this work and the orders laid down within it, the more I am seized by the alluring sense that it is not so much the sentences themselves that the world stumbles over, but rather the manner in which those sentences are carried through hands, offices, schools, and vanities, and invested with meaning.”

Slonda raised his brows slightly.

“Student of Sahretûn, Marabar, that is not poorly put, since it does indeed seem that a sentence written without malice begins to act differently in the interpretation of a malicious man than the writer could ever have meant.”

Marabar’s smile was thin.

“And yet,” he said, “a work that claims to give order should not rely too greatly on future readers being guided by goodwill and acuity, since both, as history teaches us abundantly, exist only in limited supply.”

“Then,” Slonda replied, “every codex would have to be written from the beginning with such narrowness that no misreading would be possible at all.”

“Which, as you know yourself, cannot be done.”

“Precisely.”

They fell silent for a moment.

Then Marabar tilted his head slightly.

“Master of Time, Slonda, may I dare to place a question in the room that may sound simple and yet, if I am not mistaken, contains far greater depths than its first shape would suggest.”

“If it sounds simple,” Slonda said, “it is probably dangerous.”

“For that very reason,” Marabar answered, “it should be asked.”

He laid the book on the table.

“What,” he asked, “is power.”

Slonda let out a breath.

“That,” he said, “is large.”

“And yet,” Marabar countered, “the codex writes around it without cease, as if it were an object everyone recognizes the moment they see it, as if one would not stoop to name it precisely.”

“Perhaps,” Slonda said, “because everyone who knows power recognizes something different in it.”

“Or,” Marabar said calmly, “because many who use power do not like to hear what it is they are actually doing.”

Slonda leaned back a little.

“Very well,” he said. “If we do not want to set this great question aside out of cowardice, I would provisionally claim that power is the ability to produce an effect that would not have been produced without the bearer of that ability.”

Marabar nodded slowly.

“That is clean,” he said. “And insufficient.”

“Of course.”

“For by your definition,” Marabar continued, “a man would already possess power who opens a door, since without him the door would have remained closed.”

“In that moment he does possess power,” Slonda said. “Only little.”

“Then power would be distinguished only by measure and reach, not by its nature.”

“Perhaps it is so.”

“Perhaps,” Marabar said, “that is close to the truth. Yet then another question presents itself. Is the capacity to bring about a great effect already, in the codicological sense, that grasping for power viewed with suspicion. Or is it only its use.”

Slonda looked at him.

Now they were at the core.

“Student of Sahretûn, Marabar,” he said slowly, “if that is your reading, then it is the use that troubles you, not merely the possibility.”

“So it is.”

“And yet,” Slonda went on, “within the possibility there already lies an intention of the world, or at least of the maker, since an object or a knowledge fashioned for a particular purpose does not lose that purpose simply because it lies still for the moment.”

Marabar lifted his cup again.

“A sword,” he said, “is at first an object.”

“A specially fashioned object,” Slonda replied.

“Certainly. Yet as long as it hangs on the wall, it has harmed no one.”

“And yet it was made to be able to harm.”

“Possibly.”

“Not only possibly,” Slonda said, a little sharper now. “Likely.”

Marabar gave a small amused sound.

“You take pleasure in reading things toward their hard consequence.”

“And you take pleasure in leaving them, at the last moment, an escape route.”

“That,” Marabar said, “is useful, since the codex is rarely satisfied with the brutal truth of the first sentence, but always needs a second, third, and fourth, so that it does not itself become a weapon.”

Slonda leaned forward.

“Then let us take another example. Not the sword. Knowledge. A spell. A summoning rite. If a man writes down a rite that can call, bind, or fetter a demon, has he already grasped for power, or only the one who performs the rite.”

“Well,” Marabar said, “this is simpler. The writer ordered knowledge. The doer applies it. It is the application that truly alters the world.”

“That seems clean,” Slonda said. “And yet it is not enough for me. For the writer knew what the written thing is for. He does not merely establish a neutral order, he creates the possibility that others will intervene later.”

“That is correct.”

“And if he does this knowingly, with full awareness of the purpose, is that not already a grasping for power.”

Marabar was silent longer this time.

Then he said, “Master of Time, Slonda, I will answer you openly. We of Sahretûn tend to let the grasping for power truly begin where thought touches the world, already in mere capacity, already in mere possibility. We read every possibility as guilt, since every knowledge can be abused. The use of knowledge with a particular intention is seen as the crime.”

“And yet,” Slonda said, “knowledge itself is never entirely innocent.”

“No,” Marabar said softly. “It is not.”

Again the rain struck hard against the panes.

It was one of those conversations in which neither spoke out of courtesy any longer. Both had long since entered that state Slonda knew well in himself and always valued in others: they defended positions with seriousness and precision, even if they did not necessarily hold them to be final. It was no longer about being right. It was about reaching the edge of what could be said.

“If you,” Slonda said after a while, “see the application as decisive, then a man who holds all means of devastation in his hands, but never uses them, would remain unobjectionable in the light of the codex.”

“So long as he never uses them with a particular intent,” Marabar said.

“And yet the mere possession already changes the behavior of others.”

“Only then,” Marabar said, “if those others know of the possession.”

“Then let it be hidden,” Slonda replied. “Is a hidden threat no threat, since it has not yet been spoken.”

“That depends,” Marabar said, “on intention.”

“Intention,” Slonda repeated. “So there is yet another swamp.”

“Quite so.”

“For intention,” Slonda continued, “is rarely pure. A mage can learn a rite because he only wants to protect himself, and next year he uses the same rite because he wants to strike first. Was the power already in the first learning, or only in the later act.”

“Both,” Marabar said.

Slonda looked up.

Marabar smiled.

“Master of Time, Slonda, you see. It does not suit me to only contradict you. In truth the difficulty likely lies in this: power does not begin only with the blow, but neither does it begin already in the bare existence of a capacity. It begins somewhere between. Perhaps where possibility, will, and readiness first seriously meet. That, and the morality and intention of the user.”

“That,” Slonda said, “would mean the codex can never entirely do without interpretation.”

“For that very reason,” Marabar said, “those who helped write it must constantly hedge themselves, since others would otherwise readily ascribe to them what is not.”

Slonda smiled faintly in return.

“You mean your codex rigidity is not merely scholarship, but self defense.”

“Master of Time, Slonda,” Marabar said with visible pleasure, “that is hardly surprising, since we must be very careful that things are not attributed to us that others would like to believe, but that do not withstand close examination of codicological order. We therefore set interpretations as narrowly as possible. Also because we ourselves helped write many parts of this work.”

“That,” Slonda said, “makes you not only readers, but advocates of your own interests.”

“Certainly.”

“And that does not trouble you.”

“Why should it.”

“Because the writer,” Slonda said, “falls under suspicion of formulating the order so that it favors his own conduct.”

Marabar laughed softly.

“Master of Time, Slonda, if you believe anyone ever wrote a codex without also thinking of himself, his school, his world, his fears, and his hopes, then you are either charmingly naive or dishonest in this matter.”

“Then,” Slonda said, “the codex is never entirely pure.”

“Just as no man is entirely pure who interprets it. Morality and intention of the user.”

“And yet we need it.”

“For that very reason.”

Thus the days of the two filled with conversations.

Sometimes they circled the same question for hours. Whether power is a relation or a substance. Whether the disposal over life and death begins already in healing or only in killing. Whether the prohibitions of the codex must be strictest where power is most visible, or rather where it hides under the cloak of usefulness. Whether it is more dangerous to call a demon or to be able to bind it. Whether transgression lies in the act itself or in the heart of the one who prepares it.

Slonda would never have thought he would enjoy these conversations.

And yet he did. Very much. Marabar was a skilled rhetorician, and just like Slonda he possessed the art of defending a position with full seriousness that was not necessarily his own, simply for the sake of discussion, simply to see how far a stance holds before it collapses. And so it came to pass that Slonda spent days with a bald summoner in a tower, in a time when it rained almost without pause, disputing with him about power, application, limitation, and the theoretical pitfalls of the codex, until even the grey weather outside felt less unpleasant to him.

One morning Marabar finally told him, “Master of Time, Slonda, I have greatly enjoyed exchanging with you and hearing your stance and views regarding the codex and its interpretation. For me, however, the time has now come to join my brothers again, since we must consult and come to a decision.”

It was as if he spoke of something long decided that had merely found its formal hour.

Without further ceremony, Marabar pulled the hood over his head, went down, and stepped out into the rain.

And Slonda was alone in the tower again.

Alone.

He could not quite help it, but something about all of this immediately felt missing. Not Marabar as a person, of whom he had not yet formed a final judgment. But the conversations. That nearly exclusive, day long occupation with a single theme. Power and its use. The boundaries of the codex. The possibilities of its interpretation. He missed that.

He had expected to receive word from Sahretûn, or from Marabar, quickly.

But time passed.

At first he was still impatient. At every sound at the door he nearly ran the whole way down the tower in the foolish hope that a decision had finally been reached. But little by little it slid into the past, and Slonda was caught again by his earlier routine. He spent much time in the library, especially with transformation and necromancy. He grew better at anatomy, in animals as well as in humans. And he took up the codex again, only to find that the versions of this era differed little from those he had read a few hundred years earlier.

To his displeasure, the rain barely eased.

And so Slonda remained enclosed in the tower that, across the centuries, had become almost a home to him. At least his language adapted more and more over the weeks. He could now speak with the mages of the School of Life without sounding like an unpolished stranger in every second sentence, and he could continue to train himself here and deepen his knowledge.

Time passed.

And from Sahretûn no message came.

10

Hokn’f was raging with fury when he returned to his city.

The fury did not sit only in his face, not only in his voice, not only in the way he swung down from his horse and barely gave the people around him a glance. It sat deeper. In his pride. In his idea of order. In the firm, unshakable belief that under his sky nothing was allowed to happen that was not willed by him, tolerated by him, or at the very least foreseen. And now exactly that had happened. A people he had, until recently, regarded as little more than useless shadows under the sand had humiliated him before the eyes of his own mages. Had driven him back. Had risen out of the ground, in his desert, in front of his city.

How could something like that happen.

How could they have dared.

Already during the flightlike ride back Hokn’f had reordered everything in his head. He needed a plan, and he needed it at once. Above all he had to prevent Ashambrat, his city, from being overrun in the coming days or weeks. After that, once the defense was in place, he would erase whatever had come out of the ground out there in the desert. Root and branch. Level it and drive it back into the sand it had climbed out of. For that he needed magic. Many mages. As many as he could get his hands on.

He had them all assembled.

Truly all.

Everyone who could cast even a single spell. In the courtyard of the school they formed up, in clusters and rows, poorly ordered, because haste and rumor had been faster than clear commands. Students. Acolytes. Masters. Members of other schools who happened to be in Ashambrat. Hundreds stood there, faces tilted up, while Hokn’f looked down on them from the balcony.

He knew he had to calm himself.

Above all he could not look panicked. Not now. Not in front of them. He had to bring them behind him, had to steer the shock into a direction before it turned into fear, doubt, or stupid talk. So he stood there in the same clothing he had worn riding back from the desert, marked by dust, sweat, exertion, and an agitation he now forced into shape.

They had lost people.

Mages.

Wounded.

And by whom. By what. By those creatures that had hidden for so long under his eyes.

He gathered himself.

Then he raised his voice.

“Brothers.”

It carried far, and in the same instant quiet settled over the courtyard. Word had already spread that something had happened in the desert, and that one word was enough to turn excited murmuring into tense stillness.

“Brothers,” he began again, heavier now, as if he himself carried the weight of the news, “I bring terrible tidings. We were attacked.”

An audible ripple ran through the ranks.

“We have found indications that the Sondra, this desert people who have dwelt beneath us for centuries, received gifts from us that we had safeguarded, and that, against the Codex, magical rituals have been held here in our city. We rode out to investigate. And we were attacked. From a cunning ambush. By hundreds.”

He paused.

Theatrically measured to the breath.

“And because we did not reckon with such deceit and treachery, it caught us unprepared. Brothers were injured. Brothers fell. Victims of a perfidious ambush.”

The muttering below swelled.

Anger.

Outrage.

Curses.

Exactly as he had envisioned it. He stayed close enough to the truth to sound believable, and bent every detail just far enough to serve his purpose.

He raised his arms again.

“Brothers.”

Silence returned.

“In the coming time we stand alone. Until help arrives from our brothers and sisters of the other schools, to wipe out this aberrant people, we must be vigilant. Above all I fear an attack. A perfidious, treacherous attack.”

Again he let the words sink in.

“We must prepare for a war that may come. For an enemy who will proceed against us with all their treachery and baseness. Brothers, we must be prepared.”

This time louder agreement rose from below. Individual fists thrust into the air. Some faces were pale, some furious, some merely fevered, because fear sometimes gives people the feeling of being part of something larger.

Hokn’f was no warrior.

He did not know how to organize an efficient defense, and he did not care. He was no fire mage, no field commander, no one who had ever planned ramparts or led war columns. But that did not matter for the moment. They would figure it out. His loyal followers had already received instructions. From this mob they would now shape fighters, for his purpose. Quickly, crudely, but enough.

“Brothers, please,” he said again, soothing now, until he had all attention fully on him again. “We must be swift and organized. Report to your masters. They will give you tasks.”

That was enough for now.

The crowd began to disperse, hesitant at first, then in clearer streams, each seeking a place, an assignment, a direction. Hokn’f looked down on them and already felt his fury turning into something more usable. Planning. Use. Instrumentalization.

He did not truly expect an attack from the Slonda.

And even if.

Then he would have the machine under the gardens destroyed at once. That was his pledge against this people. The core of his entire plan rested on it. They would not attack. The machine was too important to them. So they would wait, and he would buy time. Time to strengthen his mages. Time to call others. Time to shove the dirty work onto the fire mages later, if it became necessary. What were those people for, if not for a situation like this. He would use them. Perhaps weaken them at the same time. Perhaps sacrifice them. In every crisis, Hokn’f thought as he withdrew from the balcony, there lies a chance.

He smiled.

Then he sent for Danndi.

Above the scene a raven circled.

It saw everything from above, took it in, sorted it, and began to shape it into a plan. Morgut knew his first duty belonged to Gudi. Her situation. Her wellbeing. He could not simply pull her out of the prison, as much as everything in him screamed to do exactly that. But he had to see her. Had to know how she was. Had to have certainty.

Only he was not infinitely durable.

He knew that.

So, as the gathering began to dissolve and each of the mages went to one of the masters below to be assigned, he made his way to Gnok’s tower. Perhaps there was something there. A trace. A clue. A tool. Or at least a room where he could briefly be human again.

The tower was empty.

Abandoned.

No one at home.

As he slipped in through an open window, he carefully transformed back. But the moment he stood in his own body again, his legs and his balance failed him. He collapsed, unable to move at once. He had been a bird too long. Had guided the foreign body too long, carried the foreign perception too long, and now at first he did not even remember properly how one uses a human body in orderly fashion. It took time until he could straighten up. To move forward he kept spreading his arms without meaning to, as if wings were still there, until it slowly returned to him to use his legs. It was confusing and degrading.

At last Morgut simply lay down.

Just for a brief moment, he told himself.

To arrive back in his body.

But before he could form a clear thought, he fell asleep from exhaustion.

Meanwhile Danndi came to Hokn’f.

He sat in his chair now, and outside the preparations had already begun. Groups were formed. They were drilled in spells and weapons. Guards were placed at the gates to control everything that wished to enter or leave the city. Patrols were sent out. Mages were stationed on the battlements. Under the cloak of a possible defense, the war readiness of the entire city was increased.

Danndi stood before him and waited until he turned his attention to her.

“We need the help of the other schools,” he began without preface. “This is clearly a matter for the Conclave. Magic is being used by others. It must be investigated and stopped.”

Danndi listened in silence.

“We need a convocation of the Conclave,” he continued, and in that moment he cursed Mother once again for having changed the cycle back. “And we need the help of the fire mages. That Anadar. And this is where you come in.”

Danndi raised her eyes.

“I am sending messengers to the other schools,” Hokn’f said. “But I need you to bring the fire mages here. Anadar. And above all Morgut.”

The fool still had not accepted his invitation.

Then it would be this way.

He would throw them into the furnace. They should die in the fight with the Slonda, and he would rid himself of that problem.

“Bring them here. Immediately.”

Danndi nodded.

She grasped the seriousness of the situation. And she grasped that there was no choice, if one wanted to survive near Hokn’f, except to make oneself useful first.

“I will not fail,” she said.

Then she was already gone.

Good, Hokn’f thought. Everything was proceeding according to his plan. According to a new, improvised plan, yes, but improvised plans could become tools if one used them decisively enough. He would laugh if he could not arrange everything so that it ended to his advantage.

He began to pace in his study.

Then his gaze fell on the book Marabar had given him.

He picked it up.

“On the Nature of Necromancy,” he read.

Slowly he opened it and leafed through it.

Then he smiled.

“Interesting,” he murmured.

A new possibility.

Right before his eyes.

And so he began to read.

11

When he arrived, exhausted, he slid down from the saddle.

His feet caught him, but they trembled. He had scarcely rested these past days, driven by that inner unrest that knows no fatigue as long as it is still allowed to hope, too late perhaps, but not too late yet. It was as if something in all of them had suddenly gone silent. Something had been missing, and only in the moment it was gone did they understand that it had always been there. A presence. A quiet knowing. A love that did not press, and yet ran through everything.

It was Mother.

She had always been with them.

Now she was gone.

He handed the reins to one of the lads and went straight into the heart of the temple. No one stopped him. No one asked questions. They could probably see it in him, that there was not much left in him at that moment that still registered politeness as its own category. He had himself brought to her at once. She was still alive, that was the first message, and that alone struck him with a relief so deep it almost hurt.

Then he walked the corridors and stepped into the chamber.

He did not know what he expected.

But not this.

Before him did not lie the golden beauty he knew. Not the woman of light and warmth whose presence could change a room before she even spoke. Before him lay an old, gaunt woman. Small. Fragile. With long white hair, mottled skin, and that narrow, almost translucent face that looked more like lived time than power. Wrinkles. Pallor. Weakness. She looked like nothing of Mother.

And yet she was.

Isidre sat on a chair beside the bed. Xiodrie stood at the head, as if she had grown into the floor, because she had clearly hardly moved in hours. When Anadar entered, Isidre rose and looked at him. She smiled faintly, and that small smile was already hope enough.

“Anadar. I am glad you are here. That will give her strength.”

He looked from the old woman on the bed to Isidre.

“What happened?” he asked without preamble.

To his surprise it was Xiodrie who answered.

“I found her bleeding in her favorite hall. A deep wound in the belly. We do not know who or what. Only that poison was involved. And that we had to do far too much just to keep her alive.”

Anadar swallowed.

“Poison. Which.”

Isidre took over again.

“We do not know exactly yet. Likely a mixture. Something that acts quickly and causes paralysis, and something else that works more slowly. We have not been able to analyze it properly. There was too much to do.”

She paused.

“She is stable now,” she said. “She is in a coma. But she is not getting stronger, Anadar. And I fear we could still lose her.”

He said nothing.

He went to the bed, sat down, and kissed the woman he loved so much on the forehead. Then he reached with his mind toward her. Carefully at first. Then deeper. He searched for her, for that inner space he had so often felt as wide, bright, and full of love, for that graceful presence that never pushed itself forward and yet filled everything.

He found only emptiness.

What had once been so beautiful, so noble, so rich now felt abandoned. Silent. Not dead, not yet, but hollowed out, thinned, as if almost everything that had made her who she was had retreated far back to fight in a place even he could no longer enter. So he did the only thing left to him. He set something of himself into that emptiness. A bright presence. Something that said: You are not alone.

Then he stroked her cheek.

It had once been soft, warm, and full. Now it was sunken, thin, almost like paper. He took her hand in his and simply held it. A tear ran down his cheek.

“I love you,” he said.

For a brief moment he thought he felt a faint pressure in his fingers. So weak it might just as well have been desire or exhaustion. Had she squeezed his hand. He did not know. But it was enough to kindle hope in him, just strong enough that it did not go out at once.

He lifted his gaze.

“You said poison.”

Isidre and Xiodrie looked at one another.

“We kept samples of the blood,” Isidre said.

“I will stay here,” Xiodrie said. “And watch.”

The two mages left the room. For an instant that could not be measured, Xiodrie thought Mother had opened her eyes. She was not sure. Perhaps it was only the flicker of the light. Perhaps something else.

In the adjoining room Isidre drew a small vial from her bag.

“I do not have the equipment here to analyze it better,” she said, and handed it to Anadar.

He held the phial up to the light. The blood had separated. A yellowish serum below, and above it a dark, oily film, black and shimmering, with subtle color plays on the surface, as if it did not belong inside a human body.

“Do you see the top layer?” Isidre said. “I let the blood clot, then separated it as well as I could.”

“Have you ever seen something like this?” Anadar asked.

“Not in this exact form. But it is not unusual for poisons to be poorly soluble in water, or only partly so. That can slow distribution. Perhaps that was her luck. Perhaps only a delay. The quantity was large. Whoever did this wanted to be certain.”

Anadar looked at the vial again.

“What do we know about the attacker.”

Isidre shook her head slightly.

“Almost nothing, other than that a knife was used. We do not even have the weapon anymore. It is as if the attacker came, struck, and left with the entire piece of evidence.”

“Then it must have been someone she knew,” Anadar said quietly. “Someone she trusted. Otherwise no one would have gotten that close.”

“I suspect that too.”

He thought briefly.

“Do you need to know which poison it is to treat her?”

“Sooner or later it matters,” Isidre said. “Right now she is stable, but it is still working in her. I can feel it again and again. And I would like to remove it from her.”

“Are there other ways to cleanse the blood.”

Isidre looked at him, and a shadow of fatigue and frustration passed over her face.

“There are. But they are dangerous. And if I do something like that, I usually do it in Tandor, with preparation, with help, with instruments, and ideally with a precise understanding of what I am fighting. A body is not a hose you can simply rinse. It is a system. If I cleanse the blood and the poison is already lodged in the liver, what have I gained. If I pull it from the serum and it has already settled into tissue, then I may lose time, strength, and in the end also her.”

Anadar nodded.

“I understand.”

Then he was silent for a moment.

“How can I help.”

Isidre’s face softened.

“I think your presence alone will give her strength. I am quite certain. She still has the will to live. She is fighting. Weak, yes. But she is fighting. Stay here. I cannot ask more of you right now.”

She lifted the vial slightly.

“And I will try to work with this. With the means I have. First I should probably separate it.”

Then she already began to drift into finer alchemical considerations. Solvents. Separation. Heat. Herbal reactions. Ways to learn at least something about the structure and behavior of the poison without a proper laboratory. Anadar listened only halfway, more out of courtesy than real interest. As soon as he could, he excused himself and went back to Mother, to give Xiodrie a break.

He stayed with her all night.

He held her hand. He laid his presence into her mind. He spoke no more than necessary. There were hours when only her breathing and his watching filled the room.

“Master.”

Anadar startled.

He must have dozed after all, even if only briefly. He still held Mother’s hand.

“Master.”

He looked up. A young student of the School of Mind stood in the doorway and looked at him hesitantly.

“Master, are you awake.”

“Yes,” he said, rubbing his face. “What is it.”

A few days in the saddle and then a night on a chair at a sickbed were not ideal even for him.

“Master,” the student said, “I think we have a guest who wishes to speak with you. Since Mother cannot receive him.”

Anadar blinked.

“Who.”

“A guest from the North.”

Now he was fully awake.

He rose, looked once more at the old woman on the bed, and said only:

“Send for Xiodrie. She is to stay while I am gone.”

Then he went.

When he entered the domed hall where Mother usually received guests, he saw him at once.

Elegant.

Dark.

In fine armor.

Prince Zarad stood there with that quiet self possession that was his. The black sword at his side looked more like a sabre than an ordinary blade. His tail barely moved. His bare feet, almost more like hands, rested soundlessly on the floor. His pointed ears rose clearly. White, narrow teeth flashed between dark lips when he spoke or breathed. Everything about him was otherness, dignity, and danger at once.

“Prince Zarad,” Anadar said, inclining his head slightly. “Forgive me for making you wait.”

Zarad ignored the second half.

“Master Anadar,” he said in his old, strangely beautiful speech. “It pleases me to meet you again.”

Then he glanced about the room.

“May I ask where Mother is.”

Anadar looked at him and sighed. There was no reason to lie.

“An attempt was made on her life, Prince. We do not know by whom or what. But she is suffering the consequences. She is very weak.”

Zarad held his gaze.

“These are restless times,” he said at last. “Which brings me to what I came for. We agreed that we would inform you if the presence in the city you called Sontor moved.”

Anadar grew still.

“Yes.”

“She is gone,” Zarad said. “No longer there.”

Anadar looked at him sharply.

“Simply vanished.”

“Suddenly she was no longer there. I checked myself. She cannot be found.”

“These are not good tidings,” Anadar said.

Zarad inclined his head slightly.

“That is what I thought as well.”

“Do you have any guess where she went.”

A small shake of the head.

“She did not move through space. Not in any way we could perceive as movement. She was simply no longer there.”

Anadar thought.

Fantor could be dead, yes. That was possible. But the presence was Naaarstr. And the sword, or what was bound within it, could not die so easily. Not like this. Not without a trace.

“When did you notice it,” he asked.

“Some days ago.”

They both fell silent.

In Anadar possibilities ran, one after another, and none of them were good. In that moment he wanted Shara at his side. Or Mother. Someone with whom he could share these thoughts at once, without having to force them into language first.

Then he heard Zarad’s voice again.

“Tell me, Anadar. May I see her.”

Anadar raised his head.

“Whom.”

“Mother.”

12

“What a demon tells you is a lie,” said the man opposite him, his hollow eyes so still and piercing that Fantor felt as if they were not only waiting for his answer but already measuring the intent he tried to hide behind it. “They always lie. Not sometimes. Not only when it suits them. Always. They lie to get what they want, and what they want is not freedom, not balance, not retribution, as they like to call it. They want unconditional destruction of everything living. They want to erase and rule. When they were created, they were created with an intent, and no limits were set upon them.”

The man sighed.

“A mistake. Perhaps the greatest. They are the evil of creation.”

Fantor was fascinated and almost paralyzed at the same time.

He listened to the words of this man with an attention that felt as if it moved against his will. The bald man called himself Olven, a master of Sahretûn, Olven, and Fantor had long since lost any sense of how long he had been here. There were no days in this place. No sun rising. No evening settling into a reliable rhythm. Only phases in which one slept or did not sleep, in which one spoke, ate, was led somewhere or left alone. No cadence a body could learn.

At least he was safe.

That much was clear.

They treated him like someone whose life had value. They tended his wounds. Gave him food and drink. His body had for an age lived on something that was no longer truly natural, and only now, with real nourishment again, did he realize how completely emaciated he had been. Bones broken. Muscles wasted. Tendons overstrained. They took care of it. They did not ask much yet. Not everything. Perhaps not even what mattered most. But they told him a great deal, even if certainly not all of it.

They told him he was in Sahretûn.

That Sahretûn was the city of summoners.

And that Sahretûn now lay inside the dimension they called the Prison, that sealed vault once made for demons, from which there was never meant to be an escape. Only when a demon was summoned, Fantor had come to understand, could it be transferred out of this Prison into a new corset, a new captivity on the earth, where it could move only under strict fetters. Much remained unclear to him. Far too much. Whole layers of the world were missing from his understanding, layers these men seemed to take for granted.

Olven had turned out to be the one who accompanied him.

Who led him around.

Who answered his questions, insofar as he had any.

And Fantor had many, even if he often did not know where to begin, because the connections were entirely absent.

“Creation,” he said one day, after Olven had used the word again and again. “Master of Sahretûn, Olven, you keep saying it as if man created the demons. Designed them and then brought them to life.”

Olven looked at him for a long time.

So long that for a moment Fantor thought the other might not answer him this time. Then Olven slowly closed his eyes, as if forcing himself into a patience he did not always enjoy.

“That is how it was,” he said at last. “Unfortunately.”

A small clearing of his throat.

“There was a time when it was possible to create something. Truly to make. There was so much magic in the world that it could be done. And humans did it. Just as other beings also made beings. Even man himself was formed.”

Fantor stared at him as if he were fantasizing.

Olven ran his split tongue over his lips and smiled. It was not a friendly smile, rather one of those in which old bitterness mixes with a cold delight in knowledge.

“Man,” he said, “was, when he first saw the light of the world, through and through a magical being. And more creative in the handling of magic than many others. Perhaps because we do not live as long. At least we are not immortal. Perhaps because we multiply faster. Perhaps also because lack, mortality, and ambition together produce a very particular kind of hunger. There is something in us that other beings do not possess in this form. A drive to rule over things, to order them, to name them, to bend them to our will. Perhaps it is precisely this trait that we passed on to the demons.”

He paused.

“Yes. They were designed. By humans. To fulfill tasks. To fight. Humans are cruel, Fantor, and they gave their creation that cruelty. They brought forth demons and forgot to account for decisive parts. They made them too strong. Too hungry. Too chaotic. Too independent. And so they turned against their creators and wanted their freedom.”

Olven no longer smiled.

“And when I speak of freedom, I mean annihilation. Dominion. Subjugation. That is what they were bred for. That was the mistake. They were no longer harmless little creatures that granted wishes or played harmless pranks. They were weapons. Terrible and cruel weapons of destruction, created for different purposes. Some only to fight other demons. Some to kill mages. For with man came envy. And if a master died, or was not careful enough, the demon was free and uncontrolled. And once they were free, they were barely stoppable. Almost immortal. Hard to fight. Hard to destroy. And they did everything to reach their freedom. Lie. Betray. Fight. Seduce. Everything.”

Olven did not tell Fantor this story only once.

He told it to him again and again.

Of the human error. Of the guilt of creation. Of betrayal, as he called it. It was like a mantra to him. A litany that must not fade, because it was the reason this city still stood and, at the same time, no longer belonged to the world. He showed Fantor images of demons, gave him names, told him who had once created them and for what purpose, and described their cruelties, their peculiarities, their hungers. There were so many that at some point Fantor was no longer sure whether the more frightening thing was their number or the cool matter of fact way Olven spoke of them.

He told him of the near total collapse of civilization.

How dragons and angels, devils and humans, elves and giants, and much more had been forced to ally, because there was no other way. Not out of friendship. Not out of insight. But out of naked necessity. The existence of the universe and everything living was at stake. They had to join forces to bind the evil that ran free in the world and attacked everything that lived. They created a prison from which there should be no escape. As a last resort. As a final solution. And they banished every demon into this Prison with their last strength. Every one that had ever been created, no matter how powerful it was.

Olven called that the end of the first Age.

And after that, he said, the world had already been different.

Fantor was enthralled by all of it.

Deeply enthralled.

More than once he was sure this must be the full horror of the story. But Olven was never finished. There was always another layer. A deeper error. Another betrayal.

One day he sighed sadly and said:

“Magic, Master of Fire Fantor, still withdrew from the world. What once had been a river of pure energy dried up, little by little. Less and less. What had once been abundant ran away. And in the attempt to stop this lay the second guilt. The second betrayal.”

Fantor said nothing.

“What should never have been opened again was opened again,” Olven said. “At the urging of many, means and paths were found to open the Prison once more and bring the demons back. Chained. Restricted. And they were rewarded with the blood of the Old. After they had done their work, they were sent back. They were summoned cautiously, yes. But they were summoned again and again. And with their help, those were destroyed who had once helped to bind them.”

Olven leaned slightly toward him.

“Do you understand how absolute humanity’s betrayal is. Do you understand what an abyssally corrupted species we are. When all magically gifted beings were exterminated, all elves, dragons, unicorns, fair folk, everything, when everything was wiped out that was different, that was the end of the second Age.”

Fantor did not know what shook him more.

The content.

Or the conviction with which Olven spoke.

“And the third,” Olven continued, “began when man created order. Founded schools. Sorted, regulated, restricted the remaining magic, and at the same time punished those who used power without submitting to that order. That was the beginning of the third Age. And what followed was the third betrayal.”

Here he fell silent for a moment.

Then he lowered his voice.

“We withdrew to Sahretûn. A city built still at the end of the first Age to defy demons. Walls no force can penetrate. No ordinary magic. No strike. No fire. So tough, so resistant, so hard that they carry almost the same defiance as a demon itself. Stone that was not only built, but willed.”

Fantor looked up at him.

“We created our own Codex,” Olven said. “One that had to be tighter than the Codex of the others. We knew what power we possessed. And that it must never fall into the wrong hands. But it was not enough. Distrust was already in the world. We summoners had done our service. We had helped carry out the genocide of everything other. And when it was completed, we were removed from the world.”

His face did not become loud at these words.

It only became harder.

“It did not take long, and we were attacked. Subjected to an Inquisition. War was declared on us. Secretly at first. Quietly. They entered Sahretûn at night. They murdered us in our houses, in our courtyards, in our corridors. One after another. We defended ourselves. We set signs. We made examples. But they were fanatics. With magic, with weapons, with poison, with betrayal. Everything was used against us. And the summoners were decimated. One after another. A mass murder. That is how our loyalty to humanity was repaid. That was the third betrayal.”

Olven’s gaze slid past Fantor for a moment, as if he were seeing something that was still present only to him.

“We conferred. And we decided to bind ourselves. Our whole city. As a last resort. As another final solution. When another attack came, this time a final one, they had gathered their forces and meant to erase us, we put it into motion. We moved Sahretûn into the Prison dimension, to the children we had created. Similar to how you brought yourself here, though on a different scale and by different calculation. Now we are here. And we swore never to return again, and to carry our guilt in Hell forever. For nothing must ever leave this dimension and walk the world again. The danger is too great, Master of Fire Fantor. Far too great.”

The more often Fantor heard this story, the heavier it became.

They showed him Sahretûn.

How the city stood in the middle of the Prison dimension. Attacked every day by nameless horror, by rain of fire, by clawed waves, by everything hatred and captivity could produce. Yet none of these assaults breached the walls. Everything broke against them. The endless hatred of the demons drove them blind, repeating the same assault again and again, and everything shattered against the city’s defenses.

And now Fantor had brought them something they had believed impossible.

A demon.

Even if only a small one. An insignificant one, as they soon told him. But it was still a demon, trapped inside an object.

Olven examined him and his story.

He asked him everything.

And Fantor told him. About the book. About his ambition. About his mistake. That was the moment Olven smiled and gave him a long lecture on responsibility, power, and knowledge. On the exchange of roles. On how the demon had bound him because the demon itself was not powerful enough to act freely. Then on the later state, when Naaarstr returned, bound into the sword. Their interest in Anadar was great. But Fantor knew too little to truly give them anything there.

And Naaarstr was silent.

Not a single word came from the sword anymore.

The summoners told Fantor again and again that he could never have left the Prison dimension, no matter what the demon promised him. They dismissed it as a lie. A lure. The same old deceit.

It struck Fantor hard.

Because slowly he understood what it meant. That he would have to remain here in Sahretûn forever. And that was confirmed to him. Ever more clearly. Ever more calmly. Without anger. Without triumph. Precisely because of that, it was almost unbearable.

Olven told him it was necessary, to atone for the sins of betrayal.

For eternities.

In this Hell.

Fantor sat in silence for a long time after Olven finished.

Then, as if the voice in the sword deep down in the metal had been waiting for this moment, he heard Naaarstr again.

Quiet.

Hissing.

Full of cold hatred.

“They are lying,” Naaarstr said in his head. “Everything they do is lying.”

13

And once again Slonda stood at the door to the Conclave.

And once again the neck collar annoyed him.

By now he could put it on without feeling like a man willingly taking part in an especially petty ritual, but that did not mean he found it even a trace less irritating. Then there was the chatter of the others. This habit of pouring everything into an inflated form, of wrapping every simple observation in three courtesies first, and of twisting every clear statement until it sounded as if its very form were already an argument.

He would gladly have escaped this duty.

Politics had never been his. These meetings. This sitting for hours, listening, weighing, the solemn lamenting over things one could have handled far better with three straight sentences. Even in Tandor he had taken little pleasure in such gatherings. Here, though, it was slightly different. Not better, but different. The linguistic demands of this era still cost him a great deal, even if he moved through them far more smoothly than at the beginning, and on top of that the mere presence of the other schools held him.

This time, he told himself, he would observe everything more carefully.

He went through the door with the mages of the School of Life and stepped again into that hall that had become familiar to him from several times at once. The same room and yet not the same, because each epoch filled it differently. He went to the three seats assigned to the School of Time and sat down in the middle one.

Little by little the other participants arrived.

Above all, Slonda was eager to see the mages of Transformation, the animal heads on human bodies, with the neck collar covering the transition. The summoners, as usual, spoke to no one. They appeared as if they came from a corner of the world that knew no crossings, moved in their quiet black strictness to their places, and sat down without an extra glance and without a gesture that could be taken as an invitation. As always, they arrived neither too early nor too late, but exactly so that everyone noticed they were there, without being able to claim they had meant to be noticed.

And as always, Mother came last.

She entered with the same golden brightness that ordered any room even here, and took her place as if she had never done anything else, and yet as if she had the right to claim any place in the hall for herself if she had wished.

Then the Conclave began.

This time the chair went to the women of the School of Light. They ran the assembly without any incident, with a cool efficiency that even Slonda, who found their language as expansive as everyone else’s, had to acknowledge. Things were administered. Confirmed. Registered. Noted. Objections were heard, layered, poured into form, and poured into other form. A Conclave of order, not of decision.

Before long Slonda wondered why he had come at all.

Nothing was decided. Nothing truly moved. The gathering seemed not to keep the machinery of the world running, but mostly to keep it busy with its own importance. When the assembly finally ended, he stood up, inwardly half disappointed, half tired from an effort that once again seemed larger than its yield.

And his little plan failed too.

He had hoped he could intercept the summoners this time before they vanished through the door. But they were outside faster than he could even properly catch up with them. So for a moment he stood rather alone and abandoned in the hall, watched the room empty, heard the last scraps of fading formality, and then set off back.

Downcast, he climbed the stairs of his tower.

He was already thinking of simply dropping into his chair and beating the rest of the evening to death with a book, because even a bad treatise on necromancy was still better than an unsuccessful Conclave, when he reached the top, entered the room, and stopped short.

In his chair, directly opposite him, sat Marabar.

The summoner had crossed one leg over the other, his hands lightly folded, his gaze fixed entirely on Slonda. His tattoos glinted in the slanting light, now silver, now gold, and around his mouth lay a smile that went just far enough for the pointed teeth to show.

“Master of Time, Slonda,” he said, “greetings.”

Slonda needed a moment to lose the first shock.

“Student of Sahretûn, Marabar,” he replied at last, “I did not expect you.”

“Forgive me for startling you,” Marabar said with a small inclination of his head. “That was not my intention. Yet you were so deep in thought that I could not at once find the proper moment to make myself known.”

Slonda only nodded.

“It is nothing. What business brings you here.”

Marabar lifted a hand slightly, as if asking at once for patience and attention.

“Well then, Master of Time, Slonda. Your request has been examined.”

He paused.

“You have been examined.”

A second pause followed, long enough that Slonda very much noticed how deliberately his counterpart was using it. Tension was also a form of guidance, and Marabar wielded it with an almost courteous relish.

“And,” Slonda said at last, “has anything come of this examination.”

“It has,” Marabar said slowly, “produced a possibility of taking you to us, Master of Time, Slonda. Provided you still wish it.”

Slonda nodded thoughtfully.

“Provided I still wish it,” he repeated. “So you assume a certain disillusionment might have taken root in me.”

Marabar smiled.

“The possibility existed. Between desire and granting there is sometimes enough time for a person to think better of it, worse of it, or simply of something else.”

“And yet you came.”

“So I did.”

Slonda remained standing instead of sitting immediately.

“Then tell me, student of Sahretûn, Marabar, what form this possibility takes.”

Marabar touched his fingertips together.

“Like everything of weight,” he said, “this matter also does not come without a price.”

“And what is that price.”

“In an exchange.”

Only then did Slonda sit down slowly.

“An exchange,” he said. “That sounds simple at first. That is exactly why I suspect it is not.”

“You suspect correctly,” Marabar said. “Not because the exchange itself is convoluted, but because its object is of such a kind that we do well to enclose it in more precise language before either of us later claims that in a too hasty phrasing he heard something that was never promised.”

“That,” Slonda said dryly, “already sounds very much like you.”

“And no less like you,” Marabar replied mildly.

Then his voice grew a little more serious.

“Master of Time, Slonda, the exchange we can enter is one of justice.” Without further ceremony he continued. “Knowledge for knowledge. We initiate you into the secrets of summoning. In return you teach us the secrets of time.”

Slonda was silent for a long moment.

Not only because he wanted to gain time, but because he felt two movements set themselves against each other inside him. One was almost painfully clear: he wanted this knowledge. Not from mere curiosity, not to elevate himself, not even from that delight in forbidden things that some scholars find sufficient in itself. He wanted it for Anadar. For his brother. He still thought that way. He still believed that somewhere in the secrets of the summoners there might be an access to what Anadar carried, to the sword, to the demon, to that whole fateful closeness his brother had gained to things no one fully understood.

The other movement was darker.

Because Slonda knew just as well that time magic in the wrong hands was no less dangerous. Perhaps quieter, less conspicuous, less spectacular in its first grasp, but for that very reason no less corrupting. You could not simply burn cities or call demons with it, true. But you could warp duration, influence transitions, handle preservation and decay differently, touch the order of things at the seams where other schools did not even notice there was a seam. And you could take yourself out of one current of time and place yourself into another, and that was likely the most dangerous of all. So if he taught, he was not giving away harmless knowledge, but something whose reach hardly anyone could truly measure.

At last he lifted his gaze.

“Student of Sahretûn, Marabar,” he said slowly, “I want to speak plainly. Unclarities in a matter like this could prove expensive later. You have offered me an exchange, knowledge for knowledge, and in its bare form it sounds balanced. But I am not foolish enough to believe the weights on both sides are of the same kind.”

Marabar tilted his head slightly.

“You speak of danger.”

“I speak of double danger,” Slonda replied. “One lies openly in view. That I learn from you and thus come into contact with an art that is feared for good reasons. The other lies more hidden. That I teach you and thus place into your hands something which, if used unwisely, could cause harm that even I do not grasp at first.”

Marabar nodded slowly.

“Those are reasonable words. And yet you have not refused.”

“Not yet.”

“But you have not retreated either.”

Slonda let the sentence stand before he answered.

“No. I have not. And that has its reason.”

“Which.”

“Because this knowledge is dangerous.”

Marabar raised his brows slightly, and a faint smile entered his face, as if he had expected many things, but not this form of answer.

“That,” he said, “can hardly be a new realization about the knowledge of my school.”

“I was not speaking only of your school,” Slonda answered. “I was speaking of knowledge itself. Of the kind of knowledge that does not merely expand, but shifts. That does not simply put a tool in your hand, but changes how you see the order of things. Such knowledge is dangerous, especially when it is understood correctly.”

Marabar was quiet for a moment.

“Then,” he said, “you are not hesitant out of fear of our art, but out of respect for what is to be exchanged between two schools.”

“If you wish to call it that.”

“And how would you call it.”

Slonda leaned back slightly.

“I would say that a person would be foolish if he pretended the knowledge of time were more harmless than the knowledge of summoning. It is dangerous in a different way. Less openly, perhaps. Less immediately visible. But not lesser in its consequences.”

Marabar tilted his head a little.

“That is a remarkable sentence for a Master of Time. Many of your kind tend to regard their own art with such self certainty that they barely perceive its abysses.”

“Time,” Slonda said, “touches not only sequences. It touches preservation, decay, duration, interruption, binding, return. Whoever works with such things does not simply grasp for force, but for structure. And any art that touches structure becomes dangerous as soon as it reaches hands that have more desire than measure.”

Marabar nodded slowly.

“Now you speak far more clearly. Then let us be just as clear. Summoning is dangerous because it works with beings, forces, and thresholds that cannot be compelled without the compulsion itself already demanding its price, and every mistake can have cruel consequences. Time is dangerous because it does not act only on one thing, but on its relation to everything else. In that sense,” he said, folding his hands together, “we both face the same problem, only on different sides of the door.”

Slonda looked at him.

“What problem.”

“That neither of us can give the other anything harmless.”

Again they were both silent.

Marabar continued at last.

“If I instruct you in the foundations of my school, I teach you not only formulas, names, methods, but a way of seeing boundary, binding, and presence that will change you. If you, in return, grant us insight into your art, then you do not merely reveal a few technical tricks, but parts of that order by which you think duration and connection. In both cases, more is at stake than mere scholarship.”

“Yes,” Slonda said. “That is exactly the problem.”

“No,” Marabar said calmly. “That is only the beginning of the problem.”

Slonda raised his brows slightly.

“Then explain the rest.”

“The rest,” Marabar said, “is trust. Because once we grant each other that both arts are dangerous, any simple feeling of superiority collapses. Then only the question remains whether two men trust each other enough to receive such knowledge and also to limit it.”

Slonda let his gaze flick briefly to the window, where rain slid down in narrow streams.

“That means,” he said, “we are not negotiating only knowledge for knowledge.”

“No,” Marabar said. “We are negotiating trust for trust.”

“And if one of us miscalculates.”

“Then,” Marabar said, “the mistake will likely be large enough that later generations will still cite it as a lesson. It will be a betrayal large enough to write history, whenever it happens.”

Slonda almost had to smile in spite of himself.

“You know how to make things sound heavy without surrendering them entirely to heaviness.”

“I am from Sahretûn. We tend to conduct the same conversation as warning and invitation at once.”

“I noticed.”

Marabar regarded him openly.

“Then you understand your dilemma.”

“Yes,” Slonda said. “I believe I do.”

“Say it.”

Slonda was silent for a heartbeat, as if he wanted to hear how the sentence sounded inside him before he spoke it aloud.

“Knowledge for knowledge,” he said then. “Trust for trust. And on both sides something large enough to be abused and to shake the foundations.”

Marabar nodded.

“Now we have finally arrived at the true negotiation.”

Marabar’s gaze rested on him for a long time.

Then he inclined his head slowly.

“Then, Master of Time, Slonda, I too will answer plainly. Under these conditions and with these limits, we are prepared to reach an agreement.”

Slonda exhaled. Not relieved, not entirely. More like a man breathing out who has just agreed to something he knows will change him.

“Then we are agreed.”

“We are.”

The room fell silent again.

But this time it was different. No longer testing, no longer probing, but with that peculiar weight that comes when a thought stops being only possibility and becomes action.

Then Marabar stood up.

Slowly, orderly, as if he were not merely making a movement, but already taking the first step into a new situation.

“If you remain with this decision, Master of Time, Slonda,” he said, “then tomorrow we will set out for Sahretûn.”

Slonda looked up at him.

And only then did he fully grasp that the door had not merely been opened.

He had just agreed to walk through it.

14

He was sure he had been here before. The birds. The current. The smell. If you had been at sea long enough, you no longer needed land to know where you were. The sea had its own signs, and for men like Kral, who had spent more years on planks and salt water than anywhere on solid ground, those signs were clearer than any map. He was completely certain they were right. So he signaled the ship’s captain to reef the sails and slow the pace. He sent a man to watch for shallows and reefs, and indeed it did not take long before the first islands came into view.

Small wooded islands at first, with low hills in their centers, pale sand beaches, and reefs all around, turning the water in some places into greenish glass and in others into a treacherous line of white foam. They tacked onward with care, from the smaller islands to the larger ones, and the longer Kral looked, the firmer the knowledge became inside him.

He had been here before.

After a few hours of cautious searching, he finally found what he had been looking for.

The island.

The island where they had been stranded.

They had finally arrived.

And now, Kral thought, what next.

He had spent surprisingly little time thinking about that. Finding the place again had been one thing. Knowing what to do once you truly reached it was another. While he was still turning it over, he noticed the mages preparing. They gathered, traced signs in the air, murmured words that always sounded to Kral as if people were negotiating the terms of a quarrel with something unseen. Then a small boat was lowered into the water.

The mages climbed down.

Only the mages.

And every eye on deck turned toward him.

“Oh no,” Kral muttered.

Of course he had to come along.

He would have been far happier if the ship could simply turn away from here, without mages, without island, without any further memory of those strange beings he had taken aboard back then. But fate had never shown much concern for his wishes, and so he climbed into the boat as well, unwillingly.

At first he thought they had brought him along for the oars.

But there were no oars.

No sails either.

Only three pairs of eyes fixed on him.

He stared back.

“Where to now, Captain Kral?” one of the women asked, Son, if he remembered correctly.

Kral raised his hand and pointed at one of the islands in the distance.

In that same instant the boat began to move.

No oars.

No sail.

Just like that.

It glided over the water like a ghost, as if it had not been built to travel but to obey. Kral made an effort not to show too plainly how much that unsettled him. Instead he watched the other islands, the beach, the water lines between the reefs. Whether he could recognize anyone. Anything. But nothing revealed itself openly.

And that was precisely why he knew they were being watched.

From far off he saw them waiting on the shore.

Impatient.

Armed.

Like tigers, Kral thought, unsure whether they should tear the intruder apart now or whether it would be more fun to let him come a few steps closer first. Spears stood in their hands. The way they held themselves said enough. When Kral looked down into the water, he saw other movements among the fish. Something sliding alongside them, too blurred to be certain, yet enough to send a sick feeling creeping down into his stomach. He was convinced they had been followed for some time by the beings he had taken aboard back then.

Any moment now, he thought, something will leap from the water and cut my throat.

But nothing of the sort happened.

Not yet.

When they landed, they were met by a pack that looked anything but friendly and made it very clear through gestures, raised weapons, and the tension in every body that the intruders should leave.

Roto was not impressed.

Of course not.

The fool.

With his hands raised, he walked toward the islanders. Slowly. Without haste, with that stubborn calm that in this moment almost angered Kral more than the spears did.

“We are here,” Roto said slowly and glanced, almost pleading, toward Kral, as if hoping the right words might somehow fall out of the sailor’s face. “We are here because we are looking for someone. Two figures.”

He lifted a hand above his head to indicate their height.

“You will not find Kaula here,” said the old man Kral already knew. “Go again.”

Roto smiled.

He was genuinely pleased that someone understood him.

With a patience that bordered on sheer obstinacy, he began again to explain his purpose. He did not let the old man’s dismissal drive him off. He spoke calmly, slowly, kindly, almost like an adult speaking to a stubborn child.

“Go away,” the old man said again.

Then he pointed at Kral.

“And you. Broken promise.”

Kral stared at him and lifted his shoulders in a defensive shrug, as if that gesture could weigh anything against old grievance.

“We are looking for large beings,” Roto began again.

But Kral already knew what was coming.

The islanders suddenly withdrew.

Not in panic.

Not fleeing.

More like animals pulling back to close a wider circle around their prey. Son and Indra spun around at once. Even Roto stopped and watched the old man retreat. Kral stood between the mages and felt the skin along his spine draw tight.

Then they came.

From the water.

From the forest.

From everywhere.

At first they were almost indistinguishable from their surroundings, so completely they fused with water, shadow, and motion. Then they became clearer. Blue skin. Complete nakedness. Wavy knives in their hands. Long, slender bodies. Spines rising above their heads. Kral could not even tell whether those were ornaments, bone protrusions, or something else entirely. In any case they stood around the mages now.

“Mages,” one of the beings said. “Why are you here. If you want to kill us, you are too few.”

Roto understood at once this was no moment for pride.

He straightened and held both palms forward.

“We have come in peace,” he said. “Not to kill anyone.”

“Maybe not you,” the being said. “Then those who come after you. You cannot trust mages.”

Then a second figure emerged from the water.

Bigger than the others.

Clearly bigger.

And at once it was obvious it held a special position. The others gave it space without a word. Its posture was calmer, its gaze clearer, its presence heavier. It stepped closer, and Kral felt even Son and Indra tense inwardly.

“Mages,” the larger being said. “Why. Is it not obvious. You want to kill us, to wipe us out, to take what is ours. You have always hated us and hunted us. For thousands of years you have tried to exterminate us, with your demons, with your fire, with everything you use for killing. You are our enemy.”

Now tact was required.

Diplomacy.

Roto knew that.

At least Kral hoped he did.

“We did not come to erase you,” Roto said. “We came because one of our friends, Kol, was killed. I would like to understand why.”

The beings hesitated.

Not relaxed, not calm, but a heartbeat less set for immediate attack.

Then something unexpected happened.

A second, smaller figure suddenly appeared beside the larger one, grabbed it by the arm, and hissed something to it. Kral recognized her at once. It was one of the beings he had taken onto his ship back then. Female, no doubt about that, and his stomach tightened at the thought that she had recognized him as well.

The larger being hesitated.

Looked at the smaller one.

Then back at the mages.

And when it spoke again, its voice sounded different.

Not soft.

But heavier.

“Out of fear,” it said. “Out of fear your friend Kol was killed.”

It searched briefly for the right word and did not find it at once.

“Out of pure fear of being discovered.”

The beings around them lowered their knives.

Not completely.

Not fully.

But enough to show the balance had shifted.

“We are not a warlike people,” the larger being said now, openly angry. “But we defend ourselves when we are attacked.”

Then something entered its voice that Kral had not expected from such a creature.

Worry.

“My daughter,” it said. “She was there. She and her man.”

It no longer looked at the mages like enemies, but like tools one might have to use, unwillingly.

“He needs help,” it said. “He is dying.”

Formularbeginn

Formularende

15

Anadar and Prince Zarad spent several days together in Zoordak.

The Dark Elf kept postponing his departure, and the reasons he gave were as polite as they were flimsy. A conversation that was not yet finished. An observation that still interested him. A question he would have liked to ask Mother, if she had been well enough. In truth it was something far simpler. Curiosity. Zarad wanted to learn the world on the surface, the mages, their schools, their order, their weaknesses and their pride. And he wanted to get to know Anadar as a person.

Anadar could have claimed the same of himself.

He was fascinated by this stranger who was completely different from him in so much, and yet startlingly similar in some things. Zarad carried a kind of dignity that never needed to be loud, and was therefore all the more tangible. He did not have to prove anything. He simply stood there and was what he was. Anadar respected that. And Zarad, in turn, seemed to value in Anadar that mixture of hunger for knowledge, strength, and restlessness that kept driving him toward new boundaries, even though he did not yet know whether those boundaries would one day save him or ruin him.

So they got to know one another.

They had long conversations that often began with a simple question and soon branched into things that had nothing to do with everyday life or politics alone. They spoke about rule, about responsibility, about memory, and about what holds a people together, if not merely blood and ancestry, but shared loss. Anadar learned of the history of the Dark Elves, of lines of succession, of old alliances and even older enmities, of those threads of loyalty and grievance that never fully vanish in such ancient peoples, but only sink deeper into their stories. In return Anadar gave account of the schools, their currents, the actors, the vanities of the Conclave, the more open conflicts and the more hidden ones.

Again and again the question of magic brought them back to each other.

Because Zarad’s way of working magic differed fundamentally from the approach of human mages. Dark Elves did not work with scrolls or those external aids that were considered self evident in the schools. They worked magic more freely, more directly, more from a connection of ritual, movement, and inward gathering. The energy was not seized from outside, but condensed, guided, and ordered within the body itself.

Anadar had truly observed this for the first time when Zarad stood at Mother’s bedside.

The Dark Elf had cast a spell only to support her, to give her a little strength, cautiously and with measure, almost probing, because he did not know human physiology well enough to dare more. The spell had shown only limited effect, but it had not harmed her, as Isidre had put it with dry seriousness, and under the circumstances that alone was reason enough to respect it.

And so in the spring of Zoordak the two men learned to know each other and to respect each other.

Anadar, wholly a mage and hungry for knowledge to the core, kept steering his questions back to the use of magic and to what could be achieved with it. Zarad answered some things readily and deflected others just as politely as he did firmly. In return he was very intent on hearing which arts were still practiced among humans and which were no longer.

One day they came back to the subject of summonings.

“I am glad,” Zarad said, “that summonings are no longer practiced in your time.”

Anadar did not answer at once.

“Not in our time,” he said cautiously. “The knowledge was lost for a long time. But for some time now there have been phenomena again and again that suggest old knowledge is resurfacing.”

Zarad looked at him.

“That is suspicious.”

“Yes.”

“Is there a system behind it. Or is it arbitrary.”

Anadar thought briefly.

“That question has been on my mind for a long time. We were able to secure two books from two different schools. Well preserved. Too well preserved. And both contained knowledge that should not really exist anymore in our time. More troubling still, both were in the hands of people who were not using them responsibly. That does not sound like chance to me.”

“A pattern, then.”

“Perhaps. I still cannot see it clearly enough.”

Zarad was silent for a moment, then asked, “Can you see an object’s past.”

Anadar looked at him, puzzled.

“There is a method,” Zarad said, “that we use to make the past of a place visible. We use it in tunnels, caves, and old passages. You cannot always tell what earth shocks they have endured, where they have weakened, what movements the stone has already undergone. It is useful. It can save lives. When you do not know what may be hidden in a cave, whether something has lived there or still does. Some of those devils are cunning, and some of the lava dragons are very inventive when they are hungry.”

Anadar frowned.

“How does it work.”

Zarad lifted his brows slightly.

“What do you mean by that.”

For a heartbeat they only looked at each other.

Then they understood at the same time that the question itself revealed how fundamentally different their approaches to magic were.

“It is like this,” Zarad said. “Every body, every substance, leaves a signature behind. An aura. An echo in a space. Not strong enough to be visible without effort, but strong enough to be bound and drawn out, if one knows how.”

Anadar watched him closely.

“Wait,” Zarad said. “I can show you.”

“You are clever.”

A narrow smile appeared on Zarad’s face.

“Let us go.”

They went to the room where Mother had been stabbed.

When they entered, something still hung in the air that went beyond mere memory. The silence there carried a different weight than in the other halls. Even Anadar, who since then had scarcely been able to enter the room without his insides tightening, felt again at once how closely love, violence, and loss had been pressed together here.

Zarad had the windows covered and darkened the room further until only a muffled remnant of light remained.

Then he began.

At first he only gathered himself. He murmured softly, barely audible, and Anadar saw how a small blue glow rose in his chest. Not as a flash, not as a spark, more like an inner ember that collected and concentrated. The Dark Elf stood still, with that peculiar closed posture that showed that for him magic was not merely an act of casting, but a state of gathering.

When enough energy had grown in him, something changed.

The voice changed. Quicker now. Harder in rhythm. At the same time his arms and fingers began to unfold into movements whose meaning Anadar did not understand, but whose precision seized him at once. Between Zarad’s fingers blue threads of energy formed, fine as spider silk at first, then clearer, denser, taut.

With words Anadar did not understand, Zarad released them.

The threads stretched through the room.

They laid themselves over walls, floor, and air, as if drawing a net of shimmering blue over everything that had ever happened here. The room was bathed in this cold, gentle light, and then it began.

It ran backward.

At first Anadar saw only blurred shadows, silhouettes of people entering or leaving the room. Movements without sharpness. Only breath and direction, barely person. Then long stretches of nothing again. Only emptiness and quiet light. Now and then someone flickered through, too indistinct to carry meaning.

Then the images thickened.

He saw Mother being carried on a bier. In reverse. He saw Xiodrie fighting for her life with a ferocity that impressed Anadar anew, now that he saw it not only from stories, but as an echo in the room. Everything remained unsharp, frayed, only suggested. No faces. No clear hands. No single instrument. And yet it was made vividly clear what this woman had accomplished there.

Then came the moment.

He saw the figure.

He saw someone stab Mother.

Not sharp. Not clear enough for a face. Only a silhouette. A body. A motion.

The picture ran backward, and the figure went out of the room, not in haste, not in ordered calm, but in a halting, hesitant gait that struck Anadar at once. Something about it was familiar. He could not say to whom it belonged. Not with certainty. But he knew this gait.

Of that he was sure.

Anadar took a step closer without meaning to, as if he could force more out of the blue echo. But the image stayed indistinct, and soon it dissolved again into fleeting shadows.

The room fell silent.

Only the blue net still trembled faintly before it too gradually faded.

Zarad lowered his arms.

For a moment Anadar stood motionless and stared at the place where the figure had been.

“I know this person,” he said at last, quietly.

Zarad looked at him.

“You recognized a face.”

“No.”

“A posture.”

“Not that either.”

Anadar shook his head slowly.

“Something in the gait. Something in the movement. It was wrong. Halting. Hesitant. But not foreign.”

Zarad was silent a moment.

“Then you know more than you did before.”

Anadar exhaled.

“Yes. And still not enough.”

He looked again into the emptiness of the room.

Now it was not only clear that Mother had been attacked by someone she had let close. It was also clear that this someone had not moved naturally. Something had broken the motion. Something had disturbed the body, guided it, or made it work against itself.

And Anadar did not like that at all.

16

They took him in.What else was there to do. He was there. He had found the way into their city in a manner they had no longer believed possible, and now he stood among them, half a stranger, half proof that even the unthinkable could still occur. So they welcomed him and made him one of theirs.

Fantor was instructed in the arts of the summoners.Olven became his teacher.

The first rites were not of power, but of form. Initiations in which his head was shaved until not a trace of his former appearance remained, and from then on he was allowed to call himself aspirant of Sahretûn, Fantor. It began with wards and the Codex. Not with glory. Not with demons. Not with greatness. With conduct, practice, duty, boundary, responsibility. At first Fantor had the impression that everything revolved around how severely these people restricted their art, yet little by little he understood that their aim was not, in the first place, to forbid for the sake of forbidding. It was something else. That if one did something, one had to answer for it in light of the Codex.

That was what everything came down to.Not that something was impossible, but that the one who did it had to be able to carry the weight of that act before himself, before the others, and before the work itself.

Time was not a meaningful concept there.At least not one Fantor could have used sensibly in Sahretûn. Again and again they told him the prison dimension lay outside time, or perhaps more accurately, beyond what ordinary beings perceived as time. The concept slipped away from him. He did not care. He ate when he was hungry. Slept when exhaustion pressed him down. Learned when Olven called him. That was enough.

After the Codex came the wards.All kinds of protection. Not as ornament, not as an accessory, but as the true core of the training. Protection in case a summoning went wrong. Protection in case another demon slipped through. Protection in case a limitation did not sit cleanly. Protection in case the binding failed. Protection in case the call reached too far. They taught him what was necessary for the moment something failed. Everything was geared toward limiting damage. First toward preventing collateral harm, only second toward the personal safety of the summoner.

Then came the next step.After some time he was allowed to call himself acolyte of Sahretûn, Fantor.

That initiation was more painful.For then his teeth were sharpened. Slowly, carefully, with a cruelty that in Sahretûn was not even perceived as cruelty, since pain rarely counted as an argument there as long as it had form. It was a very painful procedure. Later Fantor barely remembered the individual motions, only the pulling, the heat, the blood in his mouth, and the strange dignity with which everyone involved behaved as though this were not mutilation, but refinement.

Then the summoning itself began.

In the prison dimension it was, in some respects, simpler. Sahretûn was surrounded by demons. They did not have to be called across immense distances, but were summoned into a designated space, one from which there was no easy escape as long as the binding held. That did not make it harmless. Only more immediate.

Everything was built on caution.On utmost caution.

There were exercises in which Fantor wove a summoning and Olven, right in the midst of his concentration, struck him with a stick against shoulder, back, or wrist, just to throw him off rhythm. To cause mistakes. To see whether his order held even when something disturbed it. He was trained to remain clean under unrest. Under pain. Under surprise. Under fear.

Every detail mattered.Every limitation was explained.Every binding line.Every formulation.And first the binding.Always first the binding.

Only then did Fantor understand what he had done wrong back in his tower with Naaarstr. He had been careless. Far too careless. None of it had been in the book, or at least not in a way a fool like him would have read as warning. He had summoned a demon without precautions. The sacrifice had bled out and died, and that meant he had released a demon into the world. Almost entirely. With life spark. With substance. Without a clean tether back. Without setting true boundaries. Without chaining it to a binding worthy of the name.

He had sent a demon into the world without a return ticket.A demon that no longer had to obey its summoner.

And that was exactly what Naaarstr had done the first instant he understood his situation. He had not served Fantor. He had replaced him. Later Fantor understood as well that Naaarstr had not been a truly great demon. Not one of the mighty. Not one of the horned whose names every summoner knew. And precisely because of that he had so quickly fallen into danger, because he had ended up in an environment foreign to him. Before he truly grasped where he was and how powerful and free he had become, Anadar had already bound him into an object.

That alone shook the summoners to the core.Each of them had been certain it was impossible. Ever since they had seen it with their own eyes, or at least Fantor’s report and the sword itself before them, they argued again and again about how it could have been done. They tried to reproduce it. Again and again. And failed every time. It would have been so much easier if they could have asked Anadar directly, yet that lay outside their world.

What Fantor also learned was the meaning of blood.Blood, and the amount of blood, were fundamental.

The more blood flowed in a summoning, the more substance crossed over with the demon. A mere breath, and you received scarcely more than a shadow, a thin, weak being that could do little. More blood, and more substance transferred. Killing the blood sacrifice ensured the demon crossed completely, fully out of the prison dimension.

Fantor understood now.Too late.

He became suddenly certain the warning had been in the book. Somewhere. In a phrasing he had skimmed, shortened, or in his pride simply disregarded. He had not paid attention. And so he learned backward what he had done wrong.

Again and again he summoned demons.With boundaries.With limitations.With bindings, tethers, emergency forms.And he soon became very skilled at it.

Olven was satisfied with his student, and Fantor rose. The third initiation brought him the rank of adept of Sahretûn, Fantor. His tongue was split, and that too was an agony he long remembered in speaking, swallowing, and even in silence. From then on it was no longer only about summoning a single demon, but several.

That was its own art.More complex.More dangerous.Far easier to knock out of balance.

More than once it went wrong. More than once too much of a demon slipped through. More than once one, or both, were unbound. More than once a binding failed that on the floor had looked perfectly clean. Yet he mastered that level as well.

Then came the fourth initiation.From then on he was allowed to call himself disciple of Sahretûn, Fantor.

The tattoos came, those fine lines close to the skin that in the light shimmered sometimes silver, sometimes gold, and with them he was permitted to approach the horned, the truly mighty, those of whom there were only a few and whose names everyone knew.

They were strong.Incredibly strong.And almost impossible to control.

Above all, they were more intelligent than anything he had called before. They influenced you after the summoning, no matter how many restrictions you laid upon them. They were in your head, not only as a voice, but as a presence. They fought without pause against attention, against clarity, against every calm order. It was frightening, and it demanded from Fantor a full concentration he had never believed possible. Yet he brought it forth, again and again. After some time he mastered that too.

And that meant the fifth initiation for him.The staff.With the white sphere at the upper end and the dark one at the lower.

From then on he was master of Sahretûn, Fantor.

17

After Anadar had gone, Shara remained behind.

The first hours were quieter than she had expected. Not outwardly. In the Fiery Fortress there was always movement, voices in the corridors, footsteps on stone, the distant clink of metal, the murmur of lessons, the crackle of hearths. Yet inside her a different kind of quiet had settled. She too missed Mother’s presence. She too only truly understood, in the moment it was gone, how much it had always been there. Not intrusive, not possessive, not even constantly felt, and yet like a warm golden undertone beneath everything, a certainty that someone was there who held the threads, or at least understood why they ran the way they ran.

Now that undertone had vanished.

At first Shara felt empty.

Empty and alone.

But that emptiness did not stay empty for long. Because scarcely had Anadar left, scarcely had the first night settled over the Fortress and she had lain alone in her bed, she felt more clearly than ever what she carried beneath her heart. Not only life. Not only warmth. Not only the distant dark certainty of a child to come. No. It was more. There was awareness. Still small. Not yet in words. Not yet in thoughts the way adults knew them. But already there. A quiet growing self that she could feel, and that remembered her, as if it had never not known her.

And so something began to form between her and her daughter that was not merely physical.

A bond.

Deep. Firm. Wordless. So immediate that Shara sometimes stopped in the middle of the day because she suddenly felt that faint inner touch, like a careful thought from a depth that was at once very close. It made her calmer than she had expected. It also made her more sensitive. Not softer. Never soft. But inwardly wider.

During the day she filled her time with work.

Either she accompanied Manador and helped him with the affairs of the Fiery Fortress, or she sat with Sinadie, and together they taught the water mage the things that were still unfamiliar to her. Everything to do with fighting and tactics. Everything to do with formation, movement, sightlines, pressure, retreat, and the inner order of a battlefield. Sinadie proved a capable student. She grasped the dynamics and statics of a skirmish almost at once, at least in theory, and she had a sober sense for balances of force that impressed Shara.

Actual combat training was postponed for the time being.

Not only for Sinadie, but for Miene and Sindra as well. There were other priorities. Knowledge that had to be absorbed faster. Structures that needed to be laid before hands, muscles, and instinct were shaped to the last detail.

Light magic also remained part of her days.

Shara did not struggle with it. More than that, she became very good at it. It suited her. Perhaps not in the searching deep way in which Anadar pulled every kind of magic into himself and took it apart. But with the precision and ease that had always been her strength. She learned quickly, executed cleanly, and within a short time much of it felt as familiar as if she had never not known it.

But what her heart truly burned for were the evenings.

The hours when the Fortress grew quieter, when the others withdrew, when there was less movement in the corridors and night settled around walls and towers. Then she turned to her studies of summoning.

At first with caution.

Then with growing boldness.

She moved into the more difficult chapters and mastered them with an ease that would have alarmed her if it had not been so intoxicating. She could summon and bind demons without much trouble, almost without hesitation, almost without the probing mistakes that usually accompany any new art. It was as if the knowledge simply flowed into her. She did not need to reread it again and again. She barely needed to open the book. It was in her head. The sequences. The restraints. The formulas. The fine differences between a call that only tests and one that takes hold. Between a binding that holds and one that merely looks like it does.

She felt certain in what she was doing.

And so she practiced every evening.

The more she practiced, the more her mind opened to it. It was not only learning. Not even only understanding. It was as if something in her pressed toward the art, as if her thinking had found, in this school, a door that had been waiting for her for a long time. She did not merely understand the basics of summoning. She penetrated them in a way she had never penetrated any form of magic before.

And not only she.

The child inside her learned with her.

Shara soon became convinced of that. Not in words, not in the form of small clear thoughts, but in that deeper way in which she had come to sense that her daughter was bound to her. Whenever Shara sank into summoning, something within her seemed to move with her. Attention. Memory. A dark, remarkably calm openness.

There was no one to hold her back.

No one to tell her this was enough.

No one to take the books away, or lay a hand on her shoulder and ask whether she truly knew what she was doing.

And so she continued.

She went from chapter to chapter, from summoning to summoning, with a certainty that would have seemed arrogant if it had not felt so wholly real. At some point she reached the end of the book. The final summoning. And when she reached the last pages, she felt almost regret. Not fear. Not reverence. Regret that this was meant to be the end.

On a quiet evening she cast the last spell.

She went out of the Fortress, out onto the headland where wind and night were open and the sky arched wide above the dark land. There she drew the summoning on the ground. With a steady hand. Without haste. She set the signs. Drew the boundaries. Laid the restraints. Everything clean, everything clear, everything with that precise awareness that no longer left her, not even in the most complicated formulas.

Then she opened her hand.

And let only a little blood drip onto the signs.

For an instant nothing happened.

Then smoke began to rise.

Not much at first. Only a dark heavy curling above the lines. Then the smoke thickened, gathered, became form, became mass, became a presence that was more than mere body. Inside the binding circle a creature took shape.

A powerful one.

More powerful than anything she had called before.

It had a single horn. Many mouths. Two arms. Two legs. Eyes were set across its whole body, and they did not blink together but one by one, in their own order, as if no part of the creature belonged to quite the same time as the others.

And all mouths spoke at once.

“Master of Summoning, Shara, what is your desire.”

Shara stared at the figure before her.

Not only because it was large. Not only because it was powerful. But because something came off it that she did not merely hear, but felt directly in her head. A force. Untamed power. Something that did not demand freedom, but waited for command, and precisely in that lay its danger.

“My name is Zwaarz,” the mouths continued. “A minor one among the Horned. And yours. What is your desire.”

Shara exhaled a quiet snort.

Startled, yes.

But not overwhelmed.

And then, to her own surprise, a smile formed at her lips.

“Zwaarz,” she said.

And in her voice there was neither uncertainty nor haste, but something far more dangerous.

Certainty.

end Part 2