The difference was negligible. In either case Cyron would be distracted and forced to act. His nation would be torn apart and his dynasty would become weakened. It would collapse of its own accord, or Prince Pyrust would descend and crush it.
The seeds of Nalenyr’s destruction had been sown.
Chapter Eight
17th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat
9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Muronek, Erumvirine
Dunos shivered, hugging his good arm around his skinny chest. Goose pimples rose on his flesh, and he would have given anything to pull the barest scrap of blanket over his naked body, but even that comfort had been denied him. He had to sit on the rickety wooden stool and stare at the fat black candle guttering at its center. It gave off weak light and no discernible heat.
Nor was he shivering just because of the cold. The crone’s gnarled left hand and the way her thick, uneven talons scratched at the sheet of rice paper puckered his flesh. Her bony fist knotted around the brush in her right hand and, despite her tremors, she managed to paint words that were as beautiful as she was ugly. Dunos could only read a few of them-the ones with a half dozen strokes at most-but the words made no sense, scattered over the square sheet as they were.
Part of Dunos wanted to run from the witch’s hut. After all, he was ten years old now, and barely a child. He’d made the long walk north to Moriande. He had met a Mystic swordsman and undergone a healing in the Naleni capital. He’d been touched by the magic of the last of the vanyesh, Kaerinus. If that master of xingna could not heal his arm, how could this woman do it? She was nothing compared to a sorcerer who had survived the Cataclysm.
But he didn’t run. Just as with the people of Muronek, his fear of her tightened his chest and made his legs weak. She was hated by many, and yet they came to her in times of need. With a potion or tincture, she could bring down a fever or ease pain. As much as people feared her-forcing her to live on the outskirts of the town, in the dark woods-they needed her.
More important to Dunos, his parents wanted him to remain. His father had been hopeful when they’d gone to Moriande, but Dunos’ left arm had remained withered even after the healing. With their greatest hope dashed, his parents had turned him over to the ministrations of Uttisa, the witch-woman who had haunted his mother’s dreams since her childhood in Muronek.
What Dunos dared not tell his parents was that, as they had grown more desperate that he be made whole, he had become less worried about it. Moraven Tolo, the swordsman he had met, had been at the healing. Dunos’ distress that his arm had not been cured was obvious, but the swordsman had calmed him. “The magic promised only to heal us, not to give us what we wanted. It gave us what we needed.”
That remark had confused Dunos, but he had thought hard about it on the long walk back to the mill his family operated. True, his left arm was fairly useless. If he had to haul water from the well, he could only carry one bucket at a time-but the simple fact was that he could make two trips, and the difference mattered very little.
It had hurt that his infirmity meant he could never be a swordsman, as he had once dreamed, but it hurt even more that his father now thought he could not even be a miller. Moraven had said that perhaps he could become a swordsman, but to his father he seemed doomed to a life of beggary. They’d even taken in another boy as an apprentice, valuing his oxlike strength, even though it came with oxlike stupidity.
And so Dunos sat there, cold and afraid, in a hut steeped in magic, hoping his father’s wishes would come true-and determined to show that even if he couldn’t be all his father wanted, he could be loyal and obedient.
The crone laid her brush down and blew on the paper to speed its drying. She turned to look at him, her right eye squinted almost shut, the left preternaturally large. Wrinkles scarred her face like cracks in muddy earth. Her hair had become brittle and crinkled, its unruly white locks escaping the leather-and-wood clasp.
A thick tongue wetted her lips, and when her mouth opened, the few teeth he could see were mottled with decay. “You have a busy mind, boy.”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
“Can you read what I have written?”
“Some, Grandmother.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s good that you can’t.” She lifted the paper and extended it toward him. “Take it.”
Dunos’ right hand came up, but the witch hissed. “Not that hand, stupid boy. Your left hand! You can use it a bit, can’t you?”
Dunos slowly raised his left arm. He didn’t like looking at it, for it looked inhuman. His bones were twigs, and the flesh rough old leather. He concentrated, forcing his hand open and his elbow to bend. He pressed his lips firmly together, determined not to cry out no matter the pain. But it doesn’t hurt as much as it has, does it?
He didn’t let the idea that maybe his arm was getting better distract him. His thumb and forefinger closed on the white sheet and she released it. The document’s weight alone started his arm dipping. A corner of the rice paper dove toward the flame, but he managed to pull it away, his eyes tightening with the exertion.
The crone nodded slowly. “Very good. Now you are to crumple it. Make it a ball, with your left hand. Do it, boy. Now!”
Her sharp bark jolted him. He began to comply, wondering how all that paper could fit into the palm of his hand. As he gathered it, however, he felt a tingle in his arm. The sensation echoed what he’d felt during the healing, and what he’d felt over a year before, when he’d found a glowing blue rock. He’d reached for it, stretching, and touched it. He’d remembered nothing after that until he awoke, a mile downstream from where he’d found the rock.
His fingers slowly gathered in the rice paper. It felt dry to the touch-as dry as his skin. His fingers brushed the words and crumpled them. The paper crackled. Though the tightness never loosened, his fingers seemed to possess more power as he worked. Gradually the paper disappeared into his fist-that pathetic, withered fist-and he tightened it down as hard as he could.
He said nothing. The only sound came from the rustling of the trees outside and the crone’s wheezing. He hung on, willing the paper to get smaller and smaller-smaller than the rock, smaller than anything. He wanted it to be so small it disappeared.
“Open your hand, boy. Give it to me.”
His fingers snapped open as if they were mechanical devices. The paper dropped into her waiting hands. She picked at it, slowly teasing it open. Dunos let his hand fall to the table and left it there, no longer hiding it by his side.
The crone smoothed the paper against the table, nodding and mumbling as she did so. With a dirty fingernail she traced the wrinkle lines, pouncing first on triangles, then linking them to squares and diamonds. Her nails skittered faster over the document, sounding like dry leaves scuttling over paving stones.
She looked at him again, both eyes wide and rimmed white. “What are you, boy? Why will you kill a god? Why have you come to destroy us all?” She punctuated her questions by pounding a fist on the table. The candle tottered for a moment, and wax spilled onto the paper.
Then it flowed over the paper, up through the wrinkles. The black wax added strokes to some of the words and erased strokes from others. Dunos could read very little, but one mark-the month mark-stood out clearly.
The mark of Grija, the wolf. The god of Death.
“Answer me, boy!”
“I don’t know what you mean!”
She reached out, grabbing him by his hair, forcing his face toward the paper. “Look, the death god’s mark! The lines, all conflicts. Triangles within triangles, disasters all, squares showing no resolution! It is all death and destruction. Death, ruin, for everyone.”