Nobody knew why, how or by whom. Jossua had his suspicions.
Soon, he thought. I’ll see it soon.
The incline of the tunnel floor suddenly steepened, and Jossua tried to hold on to the wall. Water ran by beside his feet, echoing down into the dark before him. He passed a place where water spewed from the tunnel wall, shoved through by the pressure of Lake Denyah itself, and visions of flooding came to him.
Something moved farther along the tunnel. He felt the breath of displaced air caress him, and with it came a smell. Rich and fresh, the stench of a living thing down in this darkened, dead place.
No animals down here, he thought. Nothing to eat. Nothing to hunt. That must be the Nax.
The shadows suddenly closed in. The reach of the torchlight lessened, the deep darkness drew near, and he glanced up at the flame in confusion. It was burning as brightly as ever. Breath caught in his throat as the air around him constricted, threatening to crush him. He thrust the torch forward, defying the night and willing it back, but a section of the dark reached out and closed around the flame.
It squeezed, and the flame changed color… yellow… white
… blue. And then it snuffed out into nothing.
Jossua gasped. A memory of the torch remained in his eyes for a few moments, casting a ghost of itself wherever he turned his head. He closed his eyes and the ghost was still there, so he opened them again. The echo faded away. He could hear only his breath, smell the old fear on himself, the mustiness of his great age clashing with the fresh tang of the thing down here with him.
And then something touched his face.
Monk, a voice scoffed. It was androgynous, and the only echo it gave was inside his head.
Jossua could not reply straightaway, such was his shock. That voice had sounded slick and alien, filled with hatred even he could barely fathom. “I’m the Elder,” Jossua said. His whisper sounded so loud down here in the dark.
Elder, Monk… magic-hater.
“Not hater. Protector.”
Protect by destroying. The voice was filled with disdain.
“Better than welcoming it back so that the Mages can take it again.”
Truly? We wonder.
A million fears flooded Jossua’s mind, but he could speak none of them. He had no idea what the Nax wanted. He blinked at the dark.
Your time is near, Elder.
Jossua did not feel surprised. The Nax was here for a reason, after all, though that reason remained obscure. “Where is it?” he said.
Near the Widow’s Peaks. Its taint has awoken us there.
“Did you drive the Mages away from the keep? Was it you?”
No answer.
“Show yourself.”
You have no reason to see us.
“Why do you come here?”
We know your reason for being. We have no wish for magic to return.
“Neither do we.” Jossua shivered as a waft of cool air broke against his sweaty skin. The Nax was moving along the tunnel. “How does it reveal itself? Where is the magic?”
In a male human. Deeper than his soul. Barely a part of him, but growing.
“How do you know all this?”
No answer. Jossua tried to touch the darkness, but his outstretched hand felt too exposed and he drew it in. The dark was suddenly filled with potential; a drawn breath before a shout, a hanging blade before a cut. He gasped and fell to the ground, tried to curl into a ball. His old bones ached.
We are the Nax, the thing said, and this time its voice came from outside Jossua’s mind. It echoed in the rock of the tunnel wall, vibrating the ground beneath him, shook the air, bursting farther along the tunnel in a thunderclap of sound. Jossua cried out but his voice was lost in the cacophony, swallowed by the echo of the Nax’s final, violent utterance.
His torch burst alight and Jossua screamed again, able to hear himself this time. The darkness pulled away. He tried to stand, but his legs were weak. From way down the tunnel-deeper than he had been and farther than he would ever go-there came the sound of rock being crushed, pulverized, scorched. Heat blasted back at him, stealing breath from his lungs… and then coolness rushed in once more.
Eventually Jossua found the strength to stand. He had nothing to fear; the Nax wanted him alive. And yet he, a man over three centuries old, felt humbled and lessened by this experience. It was as if this brief exchange had held up a mirror to his old foolishness, the belief he had maintained for decades that somehow he was important.
“My time is near,” Jossua whispered, and sibilant echoes came back at him from the tunnel walls. They contained humor that had not been evident in his own words.
He turned and began to retrace his steps. His time was near. There was much to be done. He had a brief but powerful recollection of standing on the beach on Mages’ Bane, staring northward, knowing that even though the battle was over his own long war had only just begun.
As he traveled back along the tunnel, climbing slowly toward the Monastery high above his head, he noticed that water had ceased spewing from rock walls and running past him into the depths. It was as if something had sucked the place dry.
HE HAD LOSTtrack of time. When he found his way back into the Monastery’s basements, Jossua was confused that there was no daylight bleeding down from above. He began to panic. Darkness, he thought, there’s only darkness. Maybe they were already too late.
“The dark,” he gasped past a tongue swollen by dehydration.
“It’s nighttime, Elder Jossua,” a voice said, and Jossua felt water dripping onto his tongue. It stung at first, but then the coolness trickled into his throat and he sighed and slumped back to the ground. He was held up, given water, touched softly by hands sworn only to kill.
“How long?” he croaked.
“Elder?”
“How long was I gone?”
“A day,” a voice said. “We thought…”
Jossua smiled and shook his head. “Oh no, they wouldn’t have let me die,” he said. “They need us to find and destroy the magic back in the land.”
“Magic!”
Jossua glanced at the Monk that had spoken, her face dancing in torchlight. The flames fluttered in a steady breeze coming up from below, and Jossua wondered how much of each waft was the breath of a Nax. “You’re surprised, Gathana?” he said. “You’re shocked that magic should live again? It’s nature, after all-life itself-and life is tenacious.” In each Monk’s eyes, Jossua could make out two emotions: fear and excitement. Their concern for him had vanished already, but he did not mind. They were not meant to be here forever, listening to him, following his words, looking after him as he grew older and older, less able to dress himself, forgetful, wont to piss the bed on occasion…
They were killers.
“Help me up,” he said. “And call the Council. You’ll all be leaving soon.”
IN THE KITCHENSmeals were left half-cooked, slowly cooling and drying, solidifying in pans that would never be washed. Monks were roused from their beds, donning red cloaks over dirty underclothes. Others were interrupted at half-finished board games. The pieces would forever be at war, victory several moves and an infinity away. In the courtyards and gardens, dogs and wolves remained shackled. They would die on the ends of their chains, starving, fading to bones and then dust. Beyond these gardens lay the vegetable fields, fruit trees and livestock pens. All would be rotten come winter: potatoes in the ground; fruit on the vine; chickens and sheebok melting back into the land. Books were left open, infrequent conversations hung unfinished, a bathtub steamed away to nothing. Quickly, efficiently and with a mounting air of expectation, the Monks converged on the Council chamber at the pinnacle of the Monastery. As the sun rose in the east, its early red light casting a pink glow on the life moon still faint in the sky, the chamber was filled with over three hundred Red Monks. As Fate would have it, one for every year of their wait. They sat in the tiered seating, their presence a bloody red smear across the ancient rock of the citadel.