Anadar XI/II

3

Fontal was not the only one surprised that evening.

When the first figures came into the camp from the direction of the pyramid, almost everything paused for a moment. Conversations broke off. The wounded sat up as far as they could. Mages who had just been bent over maps stepped out of tents. Guards raised their staffs, then half lowered them again because they did not understand what they were seeing.

It was the prisoners.

Not all at once. First only five. Then eight more. Then an entire group, walking slowly, exhausted, filthy, with torn robes and bandages on arms, foreheads and shoulders. Some supported one another. One carried a water jug pressed against himself, as though afraid even this last sign of mercy might be taken from him again. A young water mage was crying, but not from pain. Fontal saw that at once. Those were not the tears of someone who had escaped. They were the tears of someone who did not know why she had been spared.

Then the camp broke out of its paralysis.

People ran toward them. Names were called. Arms closed around bodies. One man fell to his knees before his brother and laughed with a sound so close to sobbing that no one could have told the difference. From’s people surrounded their returned companions with a mixture of relief, shame and hurried questions. Some immediately began checking them for curses or hidden marks. Others did not even think of it. They simply held them.

Fontal stepped closer slowly.

She was glad.

Truly.

And yet this gladness made her more uneasy, not less.

She had the first reports given to her while the joyful confusion grew around them. At their core, all told the same thing. No one had been tortured. No one had been mocked. The wounded had been treated. They had been given water. Some even spoke of conversations that had been more questions than threats. The Sondra had wanted to know why they had come, what they had been told, who Hokn`f was, what the mages believed they knew about the pyramid. No coercion, they said. No violence after they had been put out of action. An almost playful conduct in battle, yes, but afterward a courtesy that had confused many of them more than any cruelty would have.

“They said it was a sign of goodwill,” said one of Fontal’s men.

He was pale and had a bandage around his left forearm. His eyes were still searching for an interpretation of what had happened to him.

“And?”

“And that they hoped this conflict could be settled before more blood was spilled. They said they disturbed no one. They lived in the desert. They wanted no war.”

Fontal was silent.

Behind her, others murmured the same words onward. Sign of goodwill. No war. No enmity. Peaceful settlement. The more often these words passed from mouth to mouth, the more the mood in the camp changed. Not completely. There was still fear, injury, anger and pride. But something else entered among them. Doubt. And doubt was more dangerous than fear when a campaign was built on certainty.

The mages had lost the battle without being destroyed.

Now their prisoners had returned without being broken.

That did not make the Sondra harmless.

But it made Hokn`f’s story harder.

Fontal looked toward his tent.

Hokn`f stood at the entrance.

He stood there still, his hands behind his back, his face half in the shadow of the tent cloths. He watched the reunions with a gaze that made Fontal shiver. Not because he was angry. She would have expected anger. Not because he was disappointed. That too would have been understandable. No, he looked at the returned prisoners like a man receiving a gift and recognising an insult within it.

He did not like it.

Not in the slightest.

Fontal could almost see his thoughts moving. The Sondra had taken something from him by giving something back. They had denied him the dead who would have nourished his accusation. They had denied him the violated prisoners who would have justified his next attack. Instead they had sent back people who could tell that the enemy was not what Hokn`f needed him to be.

Fontal did not go to him.

Not yet.

She helped the returned prisoners, had names written down, ordered that the wounded be treated regardless of their school, and instructed two of her people to record the reports separately. Not because she mistrusted the prisoners. Because she mistrusted Hokn`f.

Later, when the light had withdrawn from the valley and the pyramid in the distance stood only as a darker mass against the starry sky, the camp remained awake for a long time. Fires burned. Quiet voices moved between the tents. People who during the day had still demanded the downfall of the Sondra now spoke more cautiously. Some said they had to negotiate at least once more. Others contradicted them halfheartedly. From sat before her tent, her head lowered, her hands clasped together. Fontal saw that she was listening, but said nothing.

Hokn`f’s tent remained closed.

Light burned within.

Fontal did not know who was with him. Some of his closest people went in and came out again. Dark figures, sparse with words, loyal in a way that did not have to be born from conviction, but from dependence. Once Fontal thought she saw movement in the sand behind the tent where no one should have been. When she looked, there was nothing there.

Or nothing living.

She stayed awake for a long time.

She did not know why.

Perhaps because the camp sounded too peaceful.

Perhaps because Hokn`f was too quiet.

Perhaps because the release of the prisoners had opened something that someone like Hokn`f could not possibly leave open.

In the middle of the night, a wind rose.

Not strong. Only cold.

It came from the direction of the pyramid and moved through the rows of tents, lifted sand, made fires shrink and for a moment brought with it a smell that did not belong to the desert. Damp earth. Old stones. Something stale. Something that had been enclosed for a long time.

Fontal sat up.

She had fallen asleep fully clothed, her staff beside her.

Outside she heard footsteps.

No panic.

No calls.

Only footsteps.

She stepped out of the tent.

In the darkness, Hokn`f’s most loyal men moved between the rows of the camp. They woke no one. They did not go to the ordinary troop leaders. They moved along the edges, to the places where no fires still burned, to the supply wagons, to the shadows behind the camp.

Fontal did not follow them.

Perhaps that was cowardice.

Perhaps wisdom.

She remained standing in the darkness and watched Hokn`f himself step out of his tent. He wore no light night robe, but a black robe that shimmered dully in the weak light of the stars. In his hand he held no staff. Only a narrow, dark sign of metal or bone hanging from a chain. He walked to the edge of the camp, to where the view into the valley was clear.

Then he raised his hand.

Fontal did not feel the spell immediately.

That was exactly what made it terrible.

No pillar of fire, no gust of wind, no visible tremor. Only a pressure in the world. A pull beneath the skin. A whisper that lay not in the ears, but in the bones.

Fontal exhaled slowly.

“What have you done?” she whispered.

Hokn`f could not hear her.

Or pretended not to.

At the edge of the valley, the night moved.

At first Fontal took it for shadows. Then for sand. Then she saw it, and she could not believe it. It did not come from the camp. It had already been outside, hidden in hollows, behind rocks, beneath cloths, perhaps even partly under sand. Bodies rose, one after another, some whole, some with movements that could never again belong to a living being. They wore old armour, torn garments, bone and leather, weapons in hands that no longer knew pain. Some were fresh enough to seem almost human if one did not look too long. Others were nothing but skeletons with remnants of sinew, moving because a foreign will commanded them to move.

They did not go quickly.

But they did not stop.

Wave after wave moved into the darkness of the valley.

Hokn`f stood at the edge and guided them.

He did it with a concentration that frightened Fontal almost more than the undead themselves. No frenzy. No visible effort. Only will. He was not the man who sent an army and then waited for news. He was the hand in every limb, the pressure in every step, the direction in every dead skull.

Fontal could have raised the alarm.

Whom?

The camp?

From?

Her own people?

And then?

Stop the attack? Fight Hokn`f’s undead while the Sondra stood on the pyramid and the next morning had not even begun?

She stood still.

Shame rose within her, but she remained still.

Sometimes one recognises disaster without yet being strong enough to stand in its way. And what she saw there in the starlight sent an icy shiver down her spine. It was already too late for her.

In the pyramid, Shara heard the bell.

It was not loud.

That made it worse.

No alarm such as humans struck when fire broke out or enemies stood before the walls. No frantic, fear filled booming. It was a deep, single tone that ran through the stone and did not cut the air, but ordered it. Shara woke before she fully understood why. The tone was in her body, in her belly, in her hands.

She sat up.

The room in which she had been offered rest lay in the pale light of the pyramid. The walls were smooth and still. Nothing trembled. No voices screamed. No feet ran through the corridors. And yet suddenly everything was awake.

Shara stood.

Outside in the corridor she met two Sondra who moved without haste. One carried a bow. The other a long blade. Both nodded to her as though her appearance had been expected. No one told her she should stay. No one asked where she was going.

She liked that.

And she did not like it.

She followed the tone upward.

On the upper terraces of the pyramid, Sondra already stood in groups. Some with bows, some with blades, some with bare hands. No panic. No unrest. Only concentration. Zars stood several levels lower on a broad platform and looked down into the night.

Shara stepped to her.

“They are coming,” said Zars.

“Who?”

“Hokn`f’s answer.”

Shara looked into the valley.

At first she recognised nothing. Then her eyes grew used to the darkness. Below, beyond the first flat steps, a black mass was moving toward the pyramid. Not like an army in the usual sense. No banners. No ordered sound of armour, no snorting horses, no calls.

Only movement.

Silent.

Unstoppable.

The first reached the foot of the pyramid.

They did not crash against the stone like the sand vortices. They climbed. Hands reached for seams Shara could barely see. Fingers without skin searched for purchase. Bones scraped over pale stone. Bodies hauled themselves up, slipped, were pushed upward again by other bodies. Where one fell, three stepped over him. Where ten fell, they formed a slope over which twenty more climbed.

“They are building ramps out of themselves,” said Shara.

“Yes.”

The undead did not come only across the smooth sides. They found lower terraces, steps, old plant basins, narrow ledges. They cut down the plants growing on the lower levels. Small trees buckled, plants were trampled. Roots tore out of stone basins. Flowers that Shara had still found strangely beautiful the day before vanished beneath dead feet.

The Sondra waited.

At first Shara did not understand why.

Then she saw it.

They allowed the first waves to come. Not all the way up. Only far enough for the undead to spread across the lower levels, for their bodies to form ramps, for them no longer all to be gathered in one narrow point. Then Zars raised her hand.

The Sondra attack began.

Not with a cry.

With light.

Fine, pale lines shot down from the terraces. Arrows, but not only wood and metal. Some carried glowing tips. Some burst inside the body of an undead and hurled it backward as though struck by an invisible hammer. Others nailed limbs to stone. Blades flashed. Sondra leapt from one level to another, faster than human eyes could follow.

This time they did not strike with the flat of the blade.

Shara saw a head roll.

Then an arm.

Then an entire row of bodies struck by a single white arc of light and steel and breaking apart.

It was another kind of battle.

No game of restraint, no mercy, no attempt to spare the enemy or leave him a message. The undead could not be convinced. They could not learn. They could not regret. They had no pain to drive them back, no fear to break them. They had only command.

So they were shattered.

Silently.

Hardly.

Precisely.

Shara stood at the edge of an upper terrace and looked down. Bursts of fire lit the darkness, but not like human fire magic. It was brighter, sharper, less greedy. Bolts of energy struck the ramps made of dead bodies and hurled whole layers of undead downward. They fell, dragged others with them, broke at the lower edge and began, as far as they still could, to crawl again.

That was the terrible thing.

They stood up again.

Not all. Not completely. Some bodies were too shattered. Some skulls lay separated from torsos and moved only their jaws. Some arms crawled onward until the next impact pulverised them. But many rose again. An undead with a severed arm kept climbing. One without a lower jaw dragged itself over a step with both hands. One whose chest was open hung from a plant root until three more climbed over him and used him as a hold.

Shara had studied sieges.

In the Fiery Fortress, such scenarios had been discussed. They had spoken of walls, of fire, of falling stones, of mages on towers, of arrow hails, of breaking gates, of ladders and counter tunnels. She knew the theory. She knew the hardness of an attack against a fortified position.

But no one had seriously accounted for an army that did not tire.

No one had asked what happens when an enemy understands every loss only as new building material.

The night became long.

Shara stayed awake.

She did not know when hours passed. The battle shifted from level to level, never high enough to truly threaten the upper terraces, but often near enough to show everyone above what a single mistake would mean. The Sondra did not defend the entire pyramid evenly. They defended heights. Passages. Points where a further ascent would have become possible. Each time the undead layered a ramp of their own bodies high enough, a focused strike came and hurled them back. Each time a breakthrough threatened, blades went in and separated limbs until movement came to a halt.

Shara saw a Sondra fall.

It happened quickly. A blade remained stuck in a ribcage, not because she had struck weakly, but because the undead threw itself forward into the blow and trapped her with all its weight. Two others seized her. She tore herself free, lost the weapon in doing so, struck one head off with her bare hand, but the third hit her in the side with a rusty axe. Immediately two Sondra were with her. One drew her back, the other thrust light with both hands into the bodies surging upward. Ten undead flew down the steps.

The injured Sondra was carried upward.

No scream.

Not even then.

Shara felt her respect grow.

And her anger.

At Hokn`f.

At his cowardice, disguised as resolve.

At this desecration of the dead, of life, of battle itself.

Among mages there were rules. They often broke them. Bent them. Hid behind interpretations. But this was something else. To send an army of the dead in the night while in the camp the peace of the released prisoners was allowed to happen was not only tactical. It was an answer to mercy with defilement.

Toward morning, the sky grew pale.

The light did not come kindly.

It settled over the lower part of the pyramid and showed what the night had hidden.

Shara stepped to the edge and looked down.

The lower terraces were devastated. Plant basins lay broken. Earth was spread across the steps. Trunks, leaves, blossoms and roots were mixed with dark blood, dust and dead flesh. Bodies lay everywhere. Whole, halved, shattered, headless, still twitching. Some moved slowly until arrows pinned them in place or a strike finally hurled them downward. The bright pyramid was smeared across its lower levels, not damaged, but dirtied. As though someone had tried to smother a sanctuary with the contents of a grave.

And the undead kept coming.

Wave after wave.

They had no morning.

No exhaustion.

No mercy.

Zars stood beside Shara. Her garment was no longer white. Not entirely. Dust and dark stains lay upon it, and a narrow line of blood ran along her cheek.

“How long can you hold this?” asked Shara.

Zars looked down.

“Long.”

“Not long enough?”

Zars said nothing.

Shara understood.

At some distance, the mages’ camp began to move.

First individual riders. Then whole groups. Carpets were prepared again. Sand vortices formed, less boastful than the day before, more controlled, with greater spacing. Horses received protective signs. Shields were bound upward. Fontal had clearly learned. Or someone had learned. Even from up here, Shara could see that the second attack was more orderly.

That made it more dangerous.

“They are coming again,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Now.”

“Yes.”

Shara looked down to the lower terraces, where the Sondra were fighting the undead.

“You are tied down.”

Zars nodded.

“That was Hokn`f’s intention.”

Shara laughed dryly.

“So he is not completely stupid after all.”

“No,” said Zars. “Only corrupted.”

That was worse.

In the mages’ camp, they were woken at sunrise.

Not gently.

Hoknf’s men went from tent to tent, tore cloths aside, called orders, struck against poles and shields. No one was given time to continue the mood of the evening. No one was supposed to think long enough to reinterpret the return of the prisoners once more. The morning belonged to Hoknf. He took it by force.

Fontal stepped in front of her tent before one of the men reached her.

“What is happening?” she asked.

The man looked at her but did not answer. He was one of Hokn`f’s loyalists, a pale wind mage with dark rings beneath his eyes. He barely bowed.

“Mount up. Full mobilisation. Hokn`f’s order.”

“For what?”

“Renewed attack.”

Fontal looked past his shoulder toward the valley.

Where the pyramid had to stand, dust hung. Not ordinary morning dust. Movement. Battle.

Her stomach tightened.

She went to Hokn`f’s tent.

He was already coming toward her.

He looked as though he had not slept. No more than she had, though the motivation was likely different. In his eyes lay a fever that had nothing to do with illness. His voice, when he spoke, was loud enough for many in the camp to hear.

“We attack again. Immediately. The Sondra are tied down. Their lower terraces are under pressure. Today we break their defence.”

Fontal looked at him.

She knew.

Not everything. Not enough to accuse him before all of them. But enough.

“What is already fighting down there?” she asked.

Hokn`f turned his head to her.

“An opportunity.”

“I asked what is fighting there.”

His gaze hardened.

“Something that opens the way for us.”

Fontal felt all words gather inside her.

You sent an undead army in the night.

You used the mercy of the Sondra to answer them with the dead.

You are leading us into something that no longer has anything to do with what you claim.

She said none of it.

Not here.

Not before his loyalists.

Not before people who in the next moments would come under arrows and spells.

She knew when it was wise to keep silent.

And she hated herself for it.

From joined them, pale, her mouth pressed into a hard line.

“We are not fully recovered yet.”

“Then recover on the way,” said Hokn`f.

From’s gaze flickered.

She too said nothing.

Within a short time, the camp set itself in motion.

This time the preparations were better. Not good enough, Fontal thought. But better. Horses were protected. Carpets received reinforced edges. The mages who had spread too far apart the day before were bound into smaller groups. Protective fields were to be directed upward, not only forward. Some groups received clear tasks. Others at least pretended to.

Fontal took charge of her people herself.

She went from group to group, looked each person in the face.

“You stay together. No one hunts a Sondra alone. No one casts a great spell without a clear target. Shields upward and to the sides. If you are attacked, no matter by whom, Sondra or undead, separate limbs or push them away. No heroics.”

A young mage swallowed.

“Undead?”

Fontal looked at him.

“Yes.”

She said no more.

When they rode into the valley, the sight that met them silenced even those who had still tried to talk themselves into courage.

At the foot of the pyramid, an army was already fighting.

From a distance, one might have taken it for an ordinary force. Dark masses surging against pale terraces. Movement, waves, dust. But the closer the mages came, the clearer it became what was fighting there.

Bodies without life.

Bones.

Flesh that should no longer have been standing.

Armour in which there was no breath.

Fontal heard someone retch behind her.

Another cursed.

From whispered something in a language Fontal did not understand.

Hokn`f rode on.

To him, this was no horror.

It was a tool.

The Sondra stood on the terraces of the pyramid and held back the undead. Fontal saw white figures between dust and dark bodies. She saw bursts of energy shatter whole ramps of corpses. She saw blades separating limbs. She saw arrows that barely stopped undead, but were very dangerous indeed to mages.

Then they came into range.

The hail of arrows began.

This time it came from above.

Not from the rocks. Not from the hollows in the sand. From the pyramid itself. From terraces, ledges, arrow slits Fontal had not seen the day before. Arrows fell steeply, fast and heavy, and between them flew pale projectiles that did not merely pierce on impact, but released pressure.

“Shields up!” shouted Fontal.

Her people reacted.

Not perfectly.

But quickly.

Force fields formed above the groups, curved like invisible roofs. Arrows bounced off them, slid sideways or broke. Others penetrated partway, remained trembling in the magical surface and then dissolved into dust. Carpets flew lower, then higher again, searching for angles where the shots hit less easily. Riders pressed closer together, almost too close, but better than the day before.

The mages advanced.

Slowly.

With difficulty.

Under fire.

Ahead of them, the undead continued fighting against the lower terraces. That made the advance both easier and more terrible. The Sondra were distracted, yes. Too much to oppose the mages with the same complete resistance as the day before. But they were not helpless. And their restraint had vanished.

Fontal saw the difference at once.

A mage on a carpet tried to glide between two lines of fire. His protective field flickered when an undead body was hurled upward from below against the carpet. In that tiny moment, a gap opened. Three arrows struck him. One in the shoulder. One in the chest. One in the throat.

He fell without a sound.

No Sondra came to bind him.

No one pulled him beneath sand.

He simply fell.

Another mage raised a force field over himself and two companions. A pale sphere struck it, tore the field open, and before he could close it, a second projectile hit him in the head. The body remained standing for a moment, as though it had not yet understood death, then sank into the sand.

Fontal felt her throat tighten.

“No gaps,” she shouted. “Overlap shields. Overlap, damn you.”

Again she reached for the minds of her people.

Not deeply. Not brutally. Only guiding.

Close left. Second group lower. Carpet three back. Do not aim at the Sondra while the undead are between you. Throw the bodies away. Do not cut, push.

The battle became something Fontal had never experienced before.

Not two sides.

Not even three.

It was a mesh of enemies, tools and errors.

The undead pressed against the pyramid. The Sondra defended the heights and shot at everything that threatened the lower levels. The mages tried to get through this horror to the pyramid without being struck by arrows, undead or their own spells. Hokn`f’s commands echoed over the sand, but they were torn apart by the noise, by impacts, screams, breaking bones and the dull collision of dead bodies.

Fontal saw an undead lunge at a mage who had just been working magic against the pyramid. The man struck with his sword. The blade sank into the ribcage and stuck there. For one breath, the mage looked confused. Then the undead seized his arm. A second came with it. Fontal hurled a pressure blast at both, tore them back and threw the mage over with them.

“Let go of the blade!” she shouted.

He did not understand.

“Let go!”

He released it and crawled back while three of her people covered him.

Above them, a protective field burst.

Scream.

Blood.

Sand.

Fontal had no time to look.

She felt the order of her group waver and pressed it back together.

At the foot of the pyramid, the first mages reached the lower walls.

Not many. But enough for Hokn`f to believe once more that his plan was beginning to work. Dark lines ran from him across the sand, joining with signs his loyalists burned into the earth. He no longer wanted only to attack the surface. Fontal saw it. He was searching beneath it. Feeling for inner cavities, for passages, for cracks in the law of the place.

The pyramid remained still.

Yet this time it did not answer with indifference.

A tone ran through the stone.

Deep.

Vast.

Fontal did not only hear it. She felt it in her chest.

The Sondra on the terraces paused for one heartbeat.

Then their attacks became harder.

Light came from above.

Not like sun.

Like judgement.

A broad strike hit the area where undead and mages had come too close to one another. The undead were shattered, whole rows of them flung back, broken, thrown into the bodies following behind. Two mages were caught as well. One died instantly. The other was hurled against a rock and lay still.

Fontal understood that the Sondra no longer had time to distinguish cleanly.

That was Hokn`f’s true success.

He had dirtied the situation so thoroughly that mercy became harder.

Shara saw it from above.

And this time she understood the mercy of the previous day better.

Not because she shared it.

But because she saw what happened when it ended.

The Sondra killed.

Not out of passion. Not out of joy. Not out of revenge.

They killed because Hokn`f had left them no other form of communication.

Zars stood a few steps below her, hand raised, her face hard with concentration. Around her, Sondra moved in clear paths. Bow, blade, light strike, retreat, new stance. Below, the undead surged upward. Behind them the mages pressed forward. Farther out, sand vortices, carpets and riders rose.

Shara laid her hand on the grip of her weapon.

She was no longer an observer.

Not truly.

Not after this morning.

“How long can you hold this?” she asked again.

Zars turned her head.

For one moment their eyes met.

“As long as it must be,” said Zars.

Shara did not smile.

“At last, a clear answer.”

4

Morgut needed several days before he could even sit properly again, to say nothing of walking.

Fontal had done what lay within her power, and her best had been more than he had dared hope for in the first feverish hours after his rescue. She had closed what was most deadly, set right what was worst, joined what was broken as far as haste had allowed. The worst fractures had healed, the internal injuries had been dampened, the deepest cuts tended. But healing was not wholeness. Beneath the skin, the pain lived on. Bruises, haematomas, smaller tears, strained muscles, torn tendons, all of that remained for the body itself, and the body was tired.

Morgut lay in Gnok’s tower and healed.

Or rather, he lay there and tried not to think of everything inside him that was louder than the pain.

Hokn`f had ruined him. Not only with blows, not only with his blades, not only with that cold, precise cruelty that took its time because it could. He had left devastation in his mind as well. Morgut slipped down into a deep sadness, almost into despair. There were days when continuing to live itself seemed like a crude imposition. He ate when his body forced him to, and slept when exhaustion pressed him down, but between those things lay something dark, heavy and motionless.

Only one thought kept him upright.

Revenge.

He did not know how.

He did not know when.

He only knew that.

The image of his sister would not release him. How she had shuffled through the dungeon with that empty gaze, with the wound that no longer bled, pale, cold, half human, half something that had already left the world a little. That image had burned itself in. It was no longer memory. It was a brand. Morgut knew he would never lose it again, and he also knew that it must not fade. It had to remain, so that his rage would not grow tired too soon.

That Hoknf had left the city with his henchmen suited him very well. Morgut knew this state would not last forever, but for the moment it meant air. Hoknf had marched out to carry the conflict to the Sondra. Morgut was almost indifferent to that. Let them kill one another, he thought in his darker hours. Let them tear one another apart, as long as enough of Hokn`f remained in the end for revenge still to reach him.

When he could walk halfway properly for the first time, a need more ordinary than hatred made itself known.

He needed food.

So he wrapped himself in a cloak, pulled the hood deep over his face and slipped into the city. Ashambrat was no longer the same city it had been a few days before. In some places it seemed emptier, in others more restless, as though a rumour had been scattered through the alleys that everyone knew but no one quite dared speak aloud. People talked more softly. They stood closer together. Looked over their shoulders more often. And whenever Hokn`f’s name fell, it almost never happened loudly anymore.

Morgut first went to the bread stall in the lower market, where an old man sold flatbreads from a cloth basket and argued with his daughter over whether flour had become more expensive or people had simply become stingier.

“Stingy?” said the daughter. “They are afraid.”

“Afraid of what? Sand?” growled the old man.

A woman being served before Morgut cast a glance over her shoulder and bent closer to the stall.

“Not of sand,” she whispered. “Of the things seen at night. My brother in law swears they came from the dry riverbed. Rows of men who were not men. Some without faces. Some only bones in armour.”

The old man snorted, but his snort sounded hollower than he probably intended.

“People see many things at night.”

“Then tell me where Taren is,” hissed the woman. “He has been gone since yesterday. And two from Smith Alley as well.”

Morgut listened, paid silently and moved on.

At the spice stall, the air smelled of cumin, dried citrus peel and bitter resin. There a merchant with a yellow stained beard told a small circle of listeners that he had the truth from the first hand.

“They followed him,” he said, raising a finger as though speaking of a prince or prophet. “The black clad one. The great mage. Like dogs, only quieter. Not one step too many, not one sound. He raised his hand and they walked.”

“Nonsense,” said another voice.

“Nonsense is what you still believe,” replied the merchant. “Kara from the north gate saw them. She says there were eyes without life and mouths without breath, but they walked all the same. Some with open bellies. Some with broken necks. And yet they walked.”

A young man in the circle hastily made a warding sign, like someone who no longer knew exactly to whom one should turn in such matters.

“My cousin is a guard at the east gate,” he said. “For four nights now, people have been missing. No noise. No robbers. Just gone. And in the morning there are tracks in the sand as though heavy loads had been dragged.”

Morgut felt the hairs on his arms rise.

He moved on.

At the meat stall, a fat woman with red hands claimed they had not been dead at all, but cursed mercenaries from the lower lands. At the potter’s, people said Hokn`f had broken an old pact and now an army from graves served him. In front of a water basin, a man with a split lip swore he had seen a head without a body crawling by moonlight. Two children told one another with wide eyes that the great mages could lead the dead like puppets. An old woman hissed at them that they should not say such things, or the night would hear.

From stall to stall, the embellishment changed.

Only the core remained the same.

Again and again there was talk of walking bodies, of men without life, of empty armour, of the missing, of a black power that had followed Hokn`f or obeyed him. Not everyone believed it in the same form. Some played it down, some exaggerated, some pretended they were merely repeating what others claimed. But Morgut recognised that fine hardness a rumour gets when truth lies within it.

What he heard was uncanny.

And yet he drew his conclusions quickly.

Hoknf must have found a way to create an army from the dead, or at least from dead things. A host of servants made not of flesh or will, but of obedience. Morgut did not know how that was possible. He only knew that Hoknf would hardly possess a power and leave it unused. He would deploy it in the desert. Morgut did not doubt that for a second.

When he returned to the tower, one thing had become clear to him.

Gnok’s tower was not a safe hiding place in the long run.

Ashambrat certainly was not.

As long as Hokn`f was outside in the south, the city might appear calm enough, but he would return, and when he returned, Morgut’s air would run out. His old hiding place high above the city had not yet been discovered, of that he was almost certain, but to get there he first had to be able to transform again. As long as even walking still hurt, a long ascent was out of the question.

So he waited.

Not idly.

The sheets of music still lay where he had last seen them, and at first he had barely looked at them because his thoughts had been too heavy and his body too sore. But in these days of enforced stillness, he reached for them more often. He read them, at first without any real purpose, then with growing interest. The signs, the sequences of beats, the repetitions, the swellings and descents of the melody, all of it was not foreign to him, he had merely never considered it in this form. The longer he occupied himself with it, the more he understood that a sequence of tones was not merely art. It was order. It was guidance. A way to direct magical energy without using the usual vocabulary of the schools.

That occupied him more than it comforted him, and yet it drew him a little out of his dull blackness.

There was a connection here.

There was something he could understand.

There was perhaps even something that would become useful to him.

A plan ripened in him, still indistinct, still hardly more than a promise to himself, but it began to take form.

After several more days, he could finally do it again.

In pain, yes. His body protested with every gathering of strength, his bones seemed to remember how easily they had broken, and sometimes his skin itself seemed to stand in his way. But he could do it. He took the shape of a bird. That of a raven.

When the transformation succeeded, he did not laugh.

For that, the relief was too quiet.

He flew.

Not far at first, only through the room, once along the ceiling, then to the opening, then back again. But the wind beneath his wings was answer enough. Two days later he set out.

He flew south, out into the desert, and from far away he already saw the disaster standing over the world.

Where the pyramid was, the sky hung differently. Dust, flashes of light, smoke, whirling lines, movement on a scale that even from a great height did not look like ordinary unrest. The battle had long since broken out openly. At the foot of the pyramid, something surged against the pale terraces, and above it spells flickered. Morgut did not head toward it. The battle did not interest him. He saw enough to know that Hokn`f had carried the war there and that this war had long since become dirtier than any of them would have suspected only days before.

He had something else in mind.

From above, he searched for the mages’ camp, and he found it quickly. It lay at some distance from the valley, large enough not to be overlooked, and astonishingly carelessly guarded. Morgut circled it several times. There were guards, yes, but far too few. Some at the edge, some on the paths between the tents, a few restless figures near the supply wagons. That was not security, Morgut thought. That was arrogance.

Hokn`f had stolen from him.

Now he wanted to do the same to him.

The largest tent was easy to recognise. It stood somewhat apart, wider and higher than the others, with heavy cloths, dark banners and a forecourt that even from above looked like a claim of possession. No guards directly at the entrance. None at the rear edge. None inside the ring. What arrogance, Morgut thought. What a foolish belief that war was dangerous only where one looked at it oneself.

Anadar had trained him in combat and battle. Not as completely as Morgut had wanted at the time, but thoroughly enough for him to recognise this as a mortal sin. One left neither one’s own supplies nor the heart of one’s own camp unprotected as long as an enemy still breathed. Hokn`f did it anyway. Morgut resolved to punish him for it as soon as he had found what he needed.

He flew beneath the awning of the great tent, waited for a moment, listened, and when he was certain he was alone, transformed back.

The return into his human body hurt like a blow into open wounds. For a moment he had to stand still against a tent pole simply not to sink to his knees. Then he forced himself onward. He slipped into the tent.

Hoknf’s command tent was orderly in a cold way. Maps lay spread across tables, weighed down with stones and small metal figures. Crates of material stood along the sides. Scrolls, sign chalks, sealed containers, water basins for seeing spells, everything had its place. Morgut left it where it was. Neither the maps nor the materials interested him. Those were tools of the present war. He was looking for something else. Something Hoknf had not only been using since yesterday.

He crept farther into the rear part, into Hokn`f’s personal chamber.

There it smelled less of dust and more of oils, wax and old leather. A travel chest stood half open. On a small table lay two cups, beside them a knife with a black handle. Cloths hung along the sides, behind which more chests and racks were hidden. Morgut began searching them quickly and silently. He opened compartments, lifted fabrics, felt over boards and hinges, pulled out drawers and put them back.

It had to be somewhere.

Something that explained how Hokn`f had come by this power.

Something that betrayed him.

Morgut’s senses saved his life.

At the very last moment, he felt the movement behind him, far too late not to be startled, just early enough to avoid the blow. A blade cut through the air where his throat had been. He tore himself aside, struck a chest, turned and saw them.

Two figures stood in the half darkness.

At the first fleeting glance, he had taken them for suits of armour that had merely been set down there. Now they had awakened. Silent guards in metal and rotting flesh, bodies in which there was no life anymore and which moved nonetheless. The eye sockets of one lay deep beneath a dented helmet, dark and empty, yet its head followed Morgut with uncanny purpose. On one side of the other’s face, skin still hung over the bone. Its mouth stood half open, but no sound came from it.

They came after him.

Fast.

Not quite as fast as a human, but fast enough to put him in real danger without a weapon.

Morgut had no blade. No sword. Nothing with which he could have parried blows. So he dodged. He ducked beneath the first strike, leapt aside as the second stabbed from the right, crashed against a table, caught himself again, felt the pain in his ribs flare white, and jumped backward. The guards followed silently. That was almost the worst of it. No panting, no anger, no curse, no cry of triumph. Only metal and movement and the will of another that was lodged within them.

He needed distance.

Only a moment.

Only enough to gather himself.

When one of the guards pressed him too far, Morgut took half a step in the wrong direction, lured the strike, turned beneath the arm and shoved the table between himself and the two of them. The table tipped. Cups fell. Wood splintered. The moment was there.

Morgut needed no more.

He gathered the strength that was already lying hot within him anyway, because the thought of Hokn`f had long since burned through his self control, and thrust both hands forward.

The blast of flame that struck out of him was not only fire.

It was rage.

It was pain.

It was the gathered refusal to become prey in this tent for a second time.

The heat was immense. It swallowed the two guards, ate across wood, cloth and metal, burned everything before him to ash and melted the sandy ground directly in front of him into dark, gleaming glass. One of the guards staggered another step, half in flames, then collapsed. The other fell apart even as it dropped.

Morgut breathed heavily.

He knew at once that all secrecy was over now.

Outside, voices rang out. First a few, then more. Alarm, confusion, fear. Footsteps approached. Somewhere someone called Hokn`f’s name.

Morgut abandoned caution.

Now he searched Hokn`f’s chamber with force. He tore out compartments, overturned chests, flung cloths aside and broke open with an iron fist a locked chest heavy enough that it would have escaped him before had haste not now driven him in the right direction.

Inside the chest, between wrapped objects and two smaller boxes, lay a book.

Dark cover. No ornament. No title in gold or silver. Only embossed letters, matter of fact and cold.

On the Nature of Necromancy.

Morgut paused for a moment.

Then he smiled.

It was not a happy smile.

It was brief, cold and narrow.

“There we are,” he murmured.

He seized the book. Since there was truly no longer any reason for silence, he pulled a scarf over his face, stepped from the rear chamber back into the larger tent and began a vortex in its midst.

Sand rose from the ground, first circling, then climbing. Cloths fluttered. Papers were ripped upward. Tables tipped over. The vortex grew quickly, higher and denser, and when the first guards pushed through the entrance, they did not encounter a man, but a growing column of sand, scraps of fabric, splinters of wood and fury. Morgut stood in the heart of the vortex and raised it higher.

The tent burst.

Poles cracked. Ropes tore. Heavy cloths were ripped away like dry grass. The sand vortex broke out of Hokn`f’s tent and ate into the camp. Guards were thrown to the ground. Crates burst open. Two smaller tents tore loose and were dragged across the ground. One of the supply wagons overturned and spilled its contents in a cloud of flour and cloth.

People screamed.

Horses broke loose.

Spells flickered up, too late and in the wrong places.

Morgut knew that his revenge would only have true meaning if he escaped. So he did not surrender to the childish intoxication of total destruction. He concentrated on what mattered. Important parts. Supply. Order. Trust. He tore paths through the camp, struck wagons, crates, connecting points between tents, broke a breach into the place where the reserves were stored, and then relented. More would only have delayed him.

Then he steered the vortex in the direction of Ashambrat.

After only a short time he realised how much strength it had cost him. His sight shimmered at the edges. More than once the core of the vortex wavered because his body was touching limits that rage had almost made him forget. Shortly before the city, he let it fall.

The vortex collapsed in on itself.

Morgut stumbled as he continued on foot again. He almost fell. His legs were soft, his chest tightened painfully with every breath, and his head pounded as though the transformation into the raven already wanted to present its bill in advance.

He had to get away.

Not later.

Now.

But he could not flee as a bird with the book, not like this, not without preparation. So he slipped back into Gnok’s tower, this time no longer out of caution, but out of haste. There he searched for what he needed, and finally found the pouch in which there was more space than its size promised. He stuffed the book inside, then the sheets of music and a flute. Then he tied the pouch firmly to his leg.

He did not wait any longer.

The transformation into the raven succeeded this time more harshly, more jaggedly, accompanied by exhaustion, but it succeeded. For a moment he sat on the edge of an opening in the tower and looked once more at Ashambrat.

At the roofs.

At the alleys.

At the place where so much had begun and so much had gone rotten.

Then he pushed himself off.

As a black bird, he vanished toward the north.

5

Anadar was still looking into Gnok’s eye.

It was only a narrow piece of reality that remained to him. An eye, half beneath the slipped blindfold, old, red rimmed, exhausted, and yet still deeper than any well Anadar had ever looked into. Everything else was shadow, stone, bonds, pain and the motionless waiting of a demon that looked through too many eyes.

Gnok was there.

And yet he was gone.

Anadar no longer felt him as he had felt him only moments before. No stream of memories opened. No world of light, dragons, cloud cities and created humans still stood between them. No Folndtaka, no first demon, no bloody beginning of all shame. Only Gnok’s eye, moist, heavy, tired. The old wizard had said what he had to say and had sunk back into himself again, deep into those layers where even pain eventually no longer screams, but only remains.

Anadar did not immediately try to reach him again.

Perhaps he could have.

Perhaps not.

But his own thoughts were too loud.

To become a wizard.

Those words stood inside him like a foreign tower.

You must become a wizard.

He did not understand them. Not truly. He understood the surface. He understood that Gnok meant something older than the schools, older than the Code, older than that bound art which Anadar had learned, practised, loved and driven to its outermost limits all his life. But what did it mean? How did one become something whose reality had vanished for ages? How did one surpass an order when every thought, every movement, every piece of knowledge, every trial and every habit was built on exactly that order?

For Anadar, magic meant form.

Sign.

Word.

Breath.

Gesture.

Preparation.

Channeling.

A path along which power was guided so that it did not break, did not run out, did not strike back, did not devour the one working it. He had learned to gather energy and send it through predetermined courses. He had learned that an error in a sign could cripple a spell. That a wrong syllable could turn an effect. That a badly placed circle did not protect, but invited. That power without form was only danger.

And now Gnok said he had to surpass all of it.

Not forget.

Not despise.

But surpass.

Anadar did not close the visible eye. He could not know whether the demon would interpret that movement as an attempt to hide something. So he let his gaze rest on Gnok’s eye and withdrew inward nonetheless.

He faded out the room.

The stone beneath him.

The bonds.

The smell of dust and cold air.

The demon standing beside them and looking down at them from its unevenly blinking eyes.

Gnok, who sat opposite him and at the same time had become unreachable.

Marabar, whose absence did not feel like freedom, but like the taut moment before a return.

Anadar let all of that sink.

He went into himself.

Not into a spell. Not into an exercise such as he had learned in the Fiery Fortress. More like groping. Searching. Like a man in a dark room looking for a door when he is not even sure that it is there.

If Gnok was right, then there had to be a difference.

Mage.

Wizard.

Bound art.

Free working.

Anadar began where he would always have begun.

With the foundations.

Gather energy. Hold energy. Channel energy. Form gives direction. The sign gives measure. The word opens. The will leads. Inner order prevents power from running wild. All of this was so self evident to him that he hardly had to think it. It was like breathing. Like walking. Like reaching for a weapon one had carried for years.

But perhaps that was precisely the problem.

He followed the thought back.

Not to the great trials. Not to his sixth circle. Not to the hours in which he had stood before younger mages and shown them how not only to call fire, but to command it. Not to the battles in which magic had obeyed him because it had to obey.

Further back.

To the beginnings.

He saw the Fiery Fortress.

Not as it was now, wounded, full of hidden rooms, lost truths and newly found guilt. He saw it as it had appeared to him as a child. Enormous. Black. Red in the sunset. Half fortress, half world. A place that did not ask whether one was afraid. A place that tested you simply by being there.

He saw himself, much younger, thinner, with eyes too large, too much defiance and too little understanding of what he was to become. He remembered the first year. The sleeping rooms. Voices in the corridors. Brothers who were no brothers and yet became more family than he had known before. Rough laughter, strict masters, burned fingers, pride that came far too early and was often punished just as early.

He saw the first exercise.

Creating fire.

Not throwing fire. Not shaping fire. Not taming fire. Only a flame. A small, safe, simple flame above the palm of the hand.

The master had shown them.

Breath calm. Gather attention. Do not think of the heat, but of the form. Do not want fire to come, but open the path on which it can come. Do not speak the syllable as though asking, but as though confirming. Do not draw the sign as if it were ornament, but as if it were the bed of a river.

Anadar saw his own small hand before him.

He saw how he held his fingers.

Wrong at first.

Then better.

He saw how he traced the sign in the air.

How his breath faltered.

How all the others were too fast or too slow or tried too hard not to look nervous.

And then a flame came into being.

Small.

Trembling.

Weak.

But there.

He remembered the feeling. Not the heat. Not the pride. Something else. A brief instant before his mind said that he had worked a spell. An instant before the name. Before the explanation. Before the master’s judgement. Something had answered.

Anadar tried to grasp that instant.

It slipped away from him.

The memory wanted to move on. To exercises. To praise. To mistakes. To punishments. To further spells. But Anadar held it fast, tore it back, searched for the moment before form.

Nothing.

Only the known course.

Sign.

Breath.

Word.

Flame.

He went further back.

Tandor.

He did not remember it well. Not everything. He had been too young, and much of what had happened then had later buried itself beneath other memories. Yet he saw the city in outline. Tall buildings. Air damper than in the lands around the Fiery Fortress. The smell of paper, herbs and rain on stone. Slonda beside him, not yet the calm healer and seeker he would later become, but a boy with alert eyes and a seriousness that seems sad in children because it comes too early.

Tandor had taken Slonda in.

Anadar still knew that.

He did not remember the moment clearly, but he remembered the feeling afterward. A farewell that was not spoken like a farewell, because adults sometimes believe children suffer less when important things are gently kept silent. Slonda stayed there. Anadar went on.

Zoordak.

The temple.

He remembered that too only in fragments. Dark halls. Voices growing quieter when the brothers passed. A cold floor beneath bare feet. Someone had looked at his mark. Someone had spoken with the mage who led them. There had been days, perhaps only a few. Then they went on.

To the Fiery Fortress.

To the place where he finally found not only shelter, but direction.

But before Tandor, before Zoordak, before the Fiery Fortress, there had been something else.

A village without a name.

Or without a name in his memory.

Perhaps it had had one. Surely it had had one. Every village had a name, even if it consisted only of huts, stables, a well and a few fields. But Anadar had lost it. What remained were smells. Smoke. Manure. Sour milk. Damp wood. Hay. The warm breath of animals in winter. The sharp cold in his fingers. The feeling of never quite belonging.

He and Slonda had been orphans.

Raised by an entire village and yet truly at home in no house.

They were given food when something was left. A place to sleep when no one else needed it. Old clothes that two or three children had already worn. Soup that was thin, but hot. A corner by the hearth. A place in the stable. A heap of hay. A piece of bread so hard that one chewed it longer and could believe for a moment that it was more.

No one had been cruel enough to simply let them die.

No one kind enough to truly make them their children.

For a long time, Anadar had believed he barely remembered it. But now the images came more clearly.

Slonda, smaller than he was, with a serious face and far too thin arms.

Anadar himself, defiant, always with the feeling that he had to defend something, even when no one was quite attacking.

The two of them passed from stable to stable, kitchen to kitchen, from one sullen woman to the next silent farmhand. Sometimes someone was kind. Sometimes not. Sometimes they were told stories. Sometimes only a bowl was pressed into their hands and they were told not to get in the way.

The mark had been discovered early.

On both of them.

A mage had seen it. A man from a secluded tower nearby, not young, not old in Anadar’s memory, more a figure of grey cloth, beard, leather pouches and dry patience. He had taken the two of them with him. Not immediately to the Fiery Fortress, not immediately to Tandor. First to his tower. There they had been given food. Real food. Warm food. More than once a day. He had taught them to read. To write. Back then the first letters had seemed to Anadar like small fences in which adults locked up meanings.

The mage had not been tender.

But fair.

And fair was more than Anadar had often known until then.

But even that was not the beginning.

Anadar searched deeper.

Not for the story others had told him. Not for the mark. Not for the mage. Not for the schools.

For the spark.

Something in Gnok’s words had led him there. Wizards did not work because they knew paths. They worked because magic answered. Because thought itself could become form. Because power was not called, but present. If there was anything in Anadar that understood that state, then perhaps it was not in the man who had mastered six circles.

Perhaps it was in the child before that.

The memory shifted to an evening.

Cold.

Hay.

Darkness.

He and Slonda lay in a stable, too far from the bodies of the animals to be truly warm, but close enough to hear their breath. Somewhere water dripped. Wood cracked in the wind. Outside, voices had faded. No one would come again to check on them.

They were hungry.

Not a little hungry. Not in the way a satisfied person calls hunger hunger in the evening. Hunger sat inside them like an animal. It gnawed not only in the belly. It made thoughts slow, limbs heavy, tears close. Slonda was trembling. Anadar had put his arm around him, although he himself was freezing. He could not do much, but he could pretend he could do something.

“Tomorrow we will get more,” he had said.

That was a lie.

Perhaps not even a conscious one.

Slonda had not replied.

Anadar remembered the smell of the hay. The scratching on his skin. The cold coming through holes in the wall. The feeling that the world was large and no one in it was truly responsible for them.

And there was something.

Yes.

There.

He held the memory fast.

A spark.

Not visible. Not like fire. Not even like magic, as he had later learned to name it. More like an instant of warmth that did not come from the body. A quiet lighting up between two children who had nothing except one another. Slonda had stopped trembling. Only briefly. Anadar had opened his eyes, although he did not know why. Around them it had not grown brighter. No hay had burned. No spell sign had stood in the air.

And yet something had happened.

Something had answered.

Not to a word.

Not to a sign.

Not to knowledge.

To need.

To nearness.

To the wish that his brother should not freeze.

Anadar reached for it.

The memory flickered.

He saw Slonda’s face in the dark.

Saw his own breath.

Felt the cold.

Then warmth again.

Tiny.

Real?

Or only the imagination of an exhausted child?

He tried to hold the instant. Not interpret it. Not shape it. Not force it into the language of later magic. Only look. Only allow.

The spark was there.

Almost.

Almost.

Then a thought tore him away.

Not even an important one. Something banal. A distracting remnant of the body. Pain in the wrist. The feeling of the bond against the skin. The thought of whether the demon noticed this inner movement. A ridiculously small doubt, and yet it was enough.

Anadar was back in an instant.

Stone.

Cold.

Bonds.

Demon.

Gnok.

His heart beat faster, as though he had physically moved. Sweat stood on his brow. He stared again into Gnok’s eye.

And suddenly he understood something that had nothing to do with wizards.

He understood what tormented the old man.

Not completely. Not in all the depths a life of such age contained. But enough. He no longer saw the pain in the eye before him only as grief for a lost world, not only as guilt over the creation of demons, not only as the weariness of a being that had lived too long.

Gnok believed Mother was dead.

Not simply dead.

Because of him.

He did not know.

No one had told him. How could they? Here, in Marabar’s captivity, in the midst of all these old threads and half truths, no one had told the old wizard that Maraà lived. That she was not only memory. Not only guilt. Not only a figure from Dioneè’s valley, over whom a never ending farewell had closed.

She lived.

The thought struck through Anadar so strongly that he could not find his way back into meditation.

He reached out with his mind.

This time not waiting.

Not invited.

Not cautiously enough.

He reached for Gnok.

The old mind was closed.

Not like a wall. Walls could be tested, searched, sometimes broken. Gnok’s mind was more like a being that had curled in upon itself, old, wounded, unwilling to be touched once more. Anadar rebounded. Not violently. But clearly.

He tried again.

Gnok.

No answer.

He pressed harder.

“She lives,” he threw at him, first as thought, then almost as a scream. “Gnok, she lives.”

Nothing.

Only the eye looking at him and at the same time not looking at him.

Anadar pressed his mind further against it, clumsy, almost brutal, because urgency inside him displaced every subtler art.

“Mother lives.”

Again he rebounded.

He should have stopped. Perhaps. The demon stood beside them. Marabar could return at any moment. Gnok had not invited him. Everything about it was dangerous. But Anadar could not remain silent. Not with this. Not before a man whose guilt perhaps rested on a lie for decades, centuries, longer than whole empires.

“She lives.”

At last something stirred.

Not opening.

Irritation.

A sharp, agitated movement in Gnok’s mind, so sudden that Anadar would have flinched back if his body had been free.

What?

The word was not spoken, but it struck him like a voice.

Then Gnok let him in.

So abruptly that Anadar almost cried out.

This time he did not plunge into images. No world of wonders opened. No millennia. Only a narrow, dark space in the mind of an old man, filled with weariness, guilt and a grief that had circled within itself for so long it scarcely had a direction anymore.

Anadar held fast to what he had to say.

“She lives,” he thought.

The words were clearer now.

“Mother lives.”

Silence.

Not outer silence. Not that of the room.

An inner one.

Complete.

Gnok froze.

Anadar felt something in him fail to understand the words, then refuse to believe them, then recoil from them, because after so long hope does not come like comfort, but like danger.

“Maraà lives,” Anadar said in Gnok’s mind. “I have seen her. She lives.”

An image rose within him, and this time Anadar deliberately pushed it toward Gnok. Mother. Not as a memory from Gnok’s past. Not young in Dioneè’s valley. But as Anadar knew her. Powerful. Old. Beautiful and terrible. Wounded by history, but not broken. Alive.

Gnok said nothing.

Yet Anadar felt something change.

At first it was hardly more than a trembling. Then a crack in a layer of guilt. Then a breath that Gnok did not take with his body, but with his whole being.

Despair did not simply give way.

Such a thing did not yield like mist when the sun came.

It was too old.

Too deep.

It had roots in millennia.

But for one moment it lost its dominion.

And beneath it lay something older than Gnok’s guilt, older than his weariness, older than the shame of humans, older perhaps than the war against the demons.

Love.

It did not rise brightly. Not rejoicing. Not pure. It came like a current that had lain beneath stone and suddenly found an open place again.

She lives, thought Gnok.

Not directed at Anadar.

At himself.

At the world.

At everything that could still hear him.

She lives.

Anadar felt how the old wizard fought to believe the words and not break under them. Hope in him was not light. It was painful. It forced him to open places he had long sealed with guilt.

How?

The word came fractured.

Anadar wanted to answer. He wanted to tell what he knew. Zoordak. The meetings. What Mother had become. What she had done. What she knew. What she perhaps concealed. He wanted to give everything at once, because he sensed that in Gnok a will was returning that only moments before had almost gone out.

A will to keep living.

A rebellion.

Not strong enough to break the bonds.

Not yet.

But strong enough that the air around Gnok changed inwardly.

Then the demon moved.

It was not a hurried movement.

That was precisely what made it so terrible.

One of its arms slid forward, long, supple, with fingers that seemed too careful for such a creature. Anadar felt his own body freeze. The demon bent down toward Gnok. Its many eyes blinked in uneven rhythm, some directed at Anadar, others at Gnok, still others seemingly at things that lay in no visible space.

The arm lifted toward the old man’s blindfold.

Anadar expected violence.

A tearing.

A blow.

Death.

Instead the demon slowly and carefully pushed the cloth back over Gnok’s eye.

Almost tenderly.

In the same instant, Anadar was torn out of Gnok’s mind.

Not drawn back. Not released.

Torn.

He returned to his body so abruptly that nausea rose in him. His visible eye now stared directly at the demon. The creature stood motionless in its place again, as though it had never moved. Only the cloth over Gnok’s eye now sat correctly. The old wizard was hidden again.

Then another of the demon’s arms turned toward Anadar.

Anadar could not move.

He began to sweat.

The finger came closer, slowly, carefully, unbearably precisely. It touched the slipped blindfold on Anadar’s brow. The cloth was rough. The finger was cool. Anadar held his breath, although he knew it was pointless. The demon pushed the blindfold back over his eye.

Light vanished.

Gnok vanished.

The room vanished.

Anadar sat in darkness again.

Only his hearing remained.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears. His breath came too quickly. Sweat ran over his temples, neck and back. The bonds cut into his skin. He waited.

One heartbeat.

Nothing.

A second.

Nothing.

A third.

Then he heard a door.

Heavy stone or metal opening. Steps. Calm. Measured. Without haste. The steps of a man who did not have to come in order to rescue a situation, but returned because the situation had ripened according to his will.

Marabar’s voice filled the room.

“I hope my absence did not seem too long to you.”

Anadar heard at once that something resonated within it.

Triumph perhaps.

Or relief.

Perhaps both.

Marabar came closer. His steps hardly echoed. He was one of those people who made little sound even in large rooms, as though the world did not wish to impose upon him the need to announce himself.

“They were a few very instructive days,” he said. “Instructive and successful.”

Anadar said nothing.

He sat in the darkness and still felt Gnok’s inner rebellion echoing within him. Maraà lives. Hope in an ancient mind. The spark in the stable. The difference between mage and wizard. Everything lay tangled inside him, too large, too fresh, too dangerous.

Marabar stopped before them.

Anadar could not see him, but he knew exactly that the summoner was smiling.

“I greet you both.”

6

The Kaula writhed in pain as they brought him into the Fiery Fortress.

Already on the way through the halls, everyone had seen that something in him had broken, in a way that reached deeper than flesh, bone or anything their healers could usually touch. His mighty body, which normally radiated a peculiar calm and ancient strength, shook in irregular spasms, as though something invisible inside him were tearing, pulling, wounding him from within. From his throat came no sound a human could have imitated, no mere cry of pain, but a deep, lamenting vibration that seemed to pass through stone and wood and could still be felt like an echo in even the farthest corners of the fortress.

The other Kaula had gathered around him.

They did not crowd around him loudly, they did not scream, they did not fall into blind despair. And yet their whole presence was filled with suffering. They stood close around their companion, motionless, breathing heavily, their broad heads lowered, and in their large dark eyes lay something even humans with no bond to them would have understood. It was grief. It was helplessness. It was the silent knowledge that a life was ending and that none of them had the power to stop it.

Whatever Slonda tried, it did not help.

He had applied salves, given potions, changed bandages, called upon all his healing art and worked with a persistence that often brought him success, especially when others had already given up. Mother had placed her hand upon the creature’s vast body and sat there for a long time with closed eyes, as though listening to an inner song unreachable to others. Isidre had added her own strength, searching, careful, with that stubborn care that embraced everything that lived and suffered. Klaast had gone out and come back in more than once, as though movement could drive away the feeling of being useless.

Nothing changed.

The pain remained. It ate its way further through the creature, as though it were not merely suffering, but a message.

In the end they sat together in Manador’s and Sinadie’s study.

It was not an official council room, not one of those cold halls where decisions were made with raised voices and great solemnity. It was a room that, over time, had simply become theirs. Sinadie had never claimed a room of her own for her studies. At first she had only left a few books with Manador, then a few scrolls, then instruments, bowls, open notebooks, little bottles with powders and oils, and at some point no one had thought anymore that it could ever have been otherwise. It had not been a spoken decision. Rather a quiet flowing across, like water finding its way. Manador had never objected. On the contrary. He seemed to value her presence in his room with such natural certainty, as though he had long been waiting for precisely that self evidence.

That evening, a heavy weariness lay over everything.

Open books stood on the table, a few tealights burned between bowls, papers and instruments, and only the dull late light entered through the narrow window. No one spoke at first. The deep, distant vibration of the suffering Kaula seemed to seep even here through the walls.

At last it was Slonda who broke the silence.

“Perhaps we should release him.”

He said it softly, and precisely that calm made the words heavier. He rested his elbows on his knees and ran both hands over his face. He looked older than usual, not in his body, but in his eyes.

“I am at the end of everything,” he said, resigned. “I have no idea left that could help him.”

No one contradicted him at once.

Mother sat upright, her hands loosely folded, her gaze fixed on a point only she could see. After a while she raised her eyes.

“He is in pain,” she said. “He is suffering terribly, and nothing can ease it. I can feel it even here. It would be a release.”

Isidre, who usually set herself against such decisions like a bear against anyone approaching her cub, only shook her head slowly. No defiance, no anger, no objection. Only sadness.

“Do we have something that will release him quickly?”

With those words it was almost decided.

The cruelty of some questions did not lie in their being difficult to answer, but in the fact that the answer was already present in everyone before it was spoken.

Klaast stood up, almost a little too quickly, as though he needed to do something in order not to remain sitting still.

“I will find Son and Indra.”

He did not wait for an answer and left the room. He knew that of all of them, those two probably had the closest bond to the Kaula, and if anyone’s voice carried weight in this matter, it was theirs.

When the door fell shut behind him, silence remained again for a moment.

Then Slonda leaned back and looked at Manador.

“What is new in the world?”

Manador raised his brows, first surprised, then almost amused.

“Are you not the one who should be telling me news?” he asked. “I merely sit here in this fortress and wait for someone finally to explain to me what we are supposed to do now. Anadar and Shara are somewhat behind with their reports. Hokn`f is probably waiting for an answer, and the next session of the Conclave is now scheduled for soon.”

He cast Sinadie a sidelong glance, half mocking, half searching for support.

“Manador probably still needs a better reason for why it is taking so long to mobilise his troops,” Sinadie said dryly, before Slonda could reply. “As we have since learned, all of Gontar and the Islands of the Winds have set out for the desert. No one can explain logically why we, of all people, are taking so long.”

Manador raised a hand, as though defending himself against unjust accusations.

“Diplomacy,” he said with feigned seriousness.

The word hung in the air for a heartbeat, then Mother smiled.

“But we do have a danger from the north,” she said.

Everyone looked at her.

She let their gazes rest on her for a moment, and the smile on her face widened by a fraction.

“Or call it a threat,” she added, and then she laughed, clear as bells, so lightly that for a moment the gloomy room itself seemed to grow brighter. “One excuse is as good as another. Judging from what I know of Hokn`f, he has probably already created facts on the ground anyway.”

Manador snorted. Whether from amusement or irritation was hard to tell.

“That would suit him.”

“And then you would act outraged, as though you had never expected it,” Sinadie said.

“I would be sincerely outraged,” Manador replied solemnly. “Very likely for the rest of the day.”

Even Slonda had to smile briefly at those words. It was a fleeting expression, scarcely more than a small movement around the mouth, yet in a room full of worry even that felt like an exhalation.

Mother turned to Sinadie.

“How is the School of Light progressing, my dear? How are my daughters doing?”

Sinadie’s face changed at once. Pride entered her features, not vain, but warm and sincere.

“Miene and Sindra have distinguished themselves greatly,” she said. “Both have already begun taking over parts of the others’ training.”

“They showed us up quite nicely in the last exercise,” Manador thundered, and his voice filled the room with new life.

The two women laughed, and even Mother looked at him with visible pleasure.

“It is unfair to fight someone who knows exactly what you are planning and what you intend to do,” Manador continued. “Every one of your daughters is deadlier than my entire school put together.”

He laughed loudly, and his eyes flashed.

“My boys have to learn to keep their thoughts to themselves. That is good training.”

He looked at Sinadie, and in his gaze lay honest recognition. Sinadie returned it with visible pride.

“They are very skilled,” she said, “and they learn with great diligence. As you can gather from Manador’s words, they are doing very well, even if now and then they make use of means that do not have only to do with light.”

Mother listened closely.

Her smile remained, but it narrowed. Almost imperceptibly. A trace of thought entered her face, as though beneath the small joy that deeper vigilance had immediately emerged again, the one she rarely ever set aside entirely.

Then she sighed softly and looked at Slonda.

It was not a long look, not a conspicuous gesture. Rather the brief, clear touching of two thoughts that had already been waiting for one another. Slonda held her gaze, and something in it caused the others to fall silent too. Finally he nodded, barely noticeably.

Mother took this in and spoke.

“I think we will soon be facing more than only mages.”

Her voice had become calm, almost gentle, yet the room changed with every word.

“The Kaula indicates it. At least one demon is back in the world. Perhaps we must prepare more deliberately for what is coming. I suspect that with the return of magic, old evil is also returning.”

No one spoke.

Even Manador, who was rarely silent for long, said nothing. The flickering candlelight cast trembling shadows on the walls, and for a moment the distant suffering of the Kaula seemed to draw closer again, as though it wished to confirm her words.

Slonda looked deeply at Mother.

Again, there was that strange moment between them, in which no words fell and yet more was said than the others could have understood. It was as though both were reaching for the same memory, the same danger, for something that lay far beyond what most of them had so far believed possible.

In the end, Slonda nodded.

Slowly. Heavily. Decisively.

And when he nodded, it was as though something invisible had settled in the room.

Not merely a fear.

A certainty.

End part 2