Of course, these events overjoyed the governors of Dareth Hlum. When word reached them that Berun was living in Casta’s capitol, they sent him an invitation to a tournament in Golna, hoping the constructed man would choose to stay. The fact that Berun himself symbolized a sort of religious extremism was inconsequential. The governors wanted him for the sole purpose of aggravating Nos Ulom.
Their efforts at seduction failed. Berun proved uninterested in creature comforts and money. Fortunately for the governors, Golna had one thing that interested the construct: fighting. He had fought in Casta, where nearly everything was legal, but had not approved of the gambling houses, establishments run by men who thought nothing of pitting a man against a lion if there was a profit to be made. If a man wanted to risk his life, Berun reasoned, he should at least be given a chance.
Violence and camaraderie compelled Berun, not money. He found himself allying with the Black Suits of the Seventeenth, though he had never found reason to hate God as they did. His affection for his new brothers and sisters grew. Their passion inspired his respect. He refused to engage in their violent arguments of faith, but he would defend their abbey and fight alongside them in tournament.
The transaction was simple. He lived on the roof of a Black Suit abbey, home of the Seventeenth Order, and protected his adopted family. He gave his tournament winnings to the abbey master, Nhamed, who then filtered the funds through to the community. In return, Butchertown loved Berun.
Gradually, the White Suits moved out entirely. During the eight years Berun had called the Vunni neighborhood home, the majority of Adrashi had defected to the Black Suits due to his association with them—this, and the White Suits had never gained much of a foothold among the violently Anadrashi Vunni population anyway.
If holding a position of influence bothered Berun, he gave no outward sign, but at rare times he wondered if his convictions were not in fact his own. He wondered if he had been programmed by his creator to act this way or that, tipping the balance in the Anadrashi’s favor, just as he had been forced to kill Patr Macassel. At his most paranoid, Berun worried he had been created as a weapon to strike at Adrash, precipitating the great cataclysm all Adrashi men claimed would come about if the Anadrashi triumphed.
From time to time he became lost in visions. He who did not sleep relived the murder of Patr Macassel as though it were a dream, brass fingers tight around a throat that turned to white stone, crumbling in his hands.
The episodes had become more frequent of late, repeating a message he could not comprehend.
‡
The street wavered before his eyes, signaling the beginning of yet another vision. Possessing no means to stop it, he relaxed and let the sensations overtake him.
Immediately, it was not as he had come to expect. He did not wake in the hallway before Macassel’s bedroom door.
He possessed control over his limbs.
He was not alone.
A mage with hands of burnished steel walked with him through the forest named Menard, a vast pine slope north of the Aspa Mountains. He knew the location well, though the trees in his vision had grown into elder-figures: Tall, impossibly thin men of purple, lustrous wood instead of flesh—demigods cursed with a thousand arms, elongated skulls, and eyes growing like berries on their fingers. Branch-tips brushed against him like insect antennae, trying to insert themselves into the crevices between the spheres that made up his immense body.
He lumbered clumsily, as if he had not drank from the sun in weeks.
The mage talked at his side, meaning lost in riddles and bad jokes, gesturing with his hands. When he rubbed his fingers together, they sounded like singing bowls. When he clapped his hands, they tolled like bells. Though Berun recognized the mage, he could not place or name him.
It seemed they walked with a purpose, but the reason for this too escaped his grasp. He spent a great deal of time avoiding branches. He found himself grateful for the mage’s constant talk. If silence descended upon them, other voices took up the slack. Quiet at first, they became louder and louder until the components of Berun’s body vibrated together uncomfortably.
“Pay attention,” the mage said at some point. “You are about to receive instructions.” The message came with clarity in the middle of an otherwise unintelligible rant, as if the man had woken from a dream to deliver it.
Berun resolved to remember the words.
In time they came to a great manor house of blackwood and stone. They arrived without warning, without a break in the forest. He recalled entering no glade, yet the building stood in the center of a treeless expanse. Though its angular facades were dark, the structure seemed to glow under the moon.
Turning to the mage, his thousands joints creaked like a carriage’s rusty leaf spring.
“Has it always been night?” he asked. His deep brass voice sounded as if it came from the other side of a wall.
His stare was met with eyes the color of wet soil.
“It will be,” the mage said, and began walking toward the house.
Berun had seen the structure before. Something about it set the spheres deep inside him spinning, jerking like animals in a packed cage. He did not want to follow the mage, but a look back revealed that the elder trees had closed ranks, denying him any path of return.
‡
The manor house’s immense blackwood door leaned forward in its frame, stretching above Berun’s head. The stoop felt slick under his feet, as if the stone were coated in ice. He fought to keep his balance.
The mage looked up at him expectantly.
Berun struggled for a time, falling and rising and falling again. When his knees hit the stone, they rang like iron nails struck with a hammer. He tried scoring the stone itself for purchase, but the landing proved as hard as diamond. Finally, he braced himself as best he could and punched the door. His right fist and part of his forearm exploded into their composite metal spheres, showering him, falling on the stoop like marbles from a child’s bag.
The door creaked open.
“It is polite to knock,” the mage said, stepping into the dark foyer.
Berun concentrated, but the spheres would not return. Strangely, this did not bother him overmuch. He examined his shattered right arm in wonder, attempting to move phantom fingers. He watched the simulated lines of sinew in his forearm, marveling at the way the broken rows of tiny spheres still moved in a detailed imitation of muscular contraction.
The mage turned to the open doorway and mumbled something. His steel hands glowed softly in the darkness, beckoning. He stepped backward, and for a brief moment light flared in his face: two pinpoints of amber fire in each eye socket.
“I’m coming,” Berun said. He stepped into the house, and the light failed completely. He turned to find the door closed. Or perhaps it was still open and someone had stolen the moon and stars. Gradually, he discovered that not every source of illumination had been extinguished. Not quite. A bluish glow ringed his vision. He considered this, confused.
Just as the realization struck, the mage spoke: “We see by the light of our eyes.”
The double pinpoints of the mage’s eyes returned, positioned before Berun, though he could not tell how close. Cautiously, he stepped forward. Solid, flat ground beneath his feet. The amber lights neither receded nor grew closer, and so he kept moving toward them. Much as he had experienced in the forest of elder trees, time lost all meaning.
Eventually radiance began to seep back into the world. He now walked down a hallway. The mage advanced several paces before him, the hem of his dark cloak brushing the purple, thickly carpeted floor. Stylized elder trees stretched from the floor, arching above them on the ceiling. As they walked, Berun thought the images became even more like elders. They took on definition until they appeared ready to step out of the walls.