Her one hope, which she clung to even more desperately than her light, was that she was too far beneath Ach’magut’s notice. Maybe the Great Elder would overlook her entirely, as she deserved, and allow her to go on her way. Even if his Inquisitors killed her, it would be better than what the Overseer could do to her.
Then his attention fixed on her, spearing her through the middle, and she knew with a bone-deep certainty that he spoke to no one else but her.
YOU HAVE FOUND YOUR HOME.
That was all, but she read volumes into that single sentence. Her body shook with an involuntary sob.
When the Great Elder said it, she could more easily doubt her own name. Her home wasn’t in the streets, where she’d spent her childhood. It wasn’t in the Guild that had rejected her, or in the box where she’d hidden for years.
She’d found it on a Navigator’s ship.
Somewhere in her mind, Petal had planned to leave once they made port at a place that felt right. She still wondered if the rest of the crew wanted her around, if they even needed her for anything.
With the Elder’s words, that possibility died.
Foster had his eyes squeezed shut, with his Reader’s senses even more tightly closed. He didn’t want even a hint of this monster’s Intent leaking through, because it would crush him to dust.
Then Ach’magut spoke to him, and Foster knew he might as well have saved his effort. He couldn’t shut out the Elder’s Intent any more than he could shut his ears against the sound of an erupting volcano.
THEY ARE GONE, Ach’magut said, and Foster’s eyes opened wide.
He stared into the Great Elder’s single, gigantic eye as though he sought clarity there. But the Overseer had been perfectly clear.
His family, his former wife and his children whom he hadn’t seen for years, were gone. He should abandon them. He may as well give up, because the future did not allow them to survive.
Foster’s heart clenched, but sheer stubbornness took over his mind. He would throw himself into the Aion Sea before he let an Elder tell him what to do. Now, he’d have to find his family again if it killed him. He would prove to himself that the future could be controlled, could be denied, and that Dalton Foster would be the one to do it. But in his soul, he knew the truth.
Ach’magut had predicted this.
Urzaia had put up his hatchets. There was no point in resisting, any more than he could resist a crashing wave with the power to capsize The Testament. Sometimes, a man faced forces so far beyond him that defiance became an absurdity.
But laughter bubbled up inside him, and he let it show on his face. The Great Elder could do what he wanted, but he could not make Urzaia Woodsman despair.
The eye focused on him, a strange bulb on a stalk rattled next to Urzaia’s ear, and Ach’magut spoke to him.
YOU WILL DIE BEFORE YOU SEE DEFEAT.
At that, Urzaia did laugh.
Andel grabbed his medallion in his fist so hard that he wondered if his palm would bleed. The Luminian Order encouraged hatred of the Elders, but he knew the truth: the Elders were not manifestations of pure evil, but so chaotic and foreign that they might as well have been. Each of the Great Elders was unique in purpose, and they would be true to that purpose.
Everything Ach’magut said would be factually correct, and Andel could rely on its predictions of the future. He knew that as surely as he knew up from down.
Ach’magut’s words would be correct. But they would not be the truth.
WHAT CAUSE DO YOU SERVE? For a moment, Andel couldn’t take a breath.
He’d given up the cause of the Luminian Order, but he had never abandoned the teachings of the Unknown God. Even this job, as an aide and supervisor to Calder Marten, gave him the opportunity to guide a young man forward. Without support, Calder would be headed for a future more destructive than Andel could imagine.
Still, Andel’s Imperial supervisors intended him to guide the young Navigator back into the folds of the Empire, and Andel wasn’t sure he wanted to. He’d seen enough in his life to know that even the Emperor couldn’t be trusted, not fully.
If the Guild couldn’t be trusted, and the Empire couldn’t be trusted, what did the God want him to do?
Jerri trembled before the Overseer, one of the two Great Elders her father had always sought to meet. Anyone in the Sleepless would give their left leg for this chance, but now that she was here, she saw how futile all her plans were. She’d dreamed of this moment before, had actually charted out the questions she’d ask and how she would interpret the potential responses.
But she was nothing more than a tiny longboat on a storm-tossed sea. She did not chart her course, she merely tried to survive until the ocean stopped.
YOUR FATHER WOULD BE PROUD, the Great One said, and every nuance of meaning flowed into her mind. Her father was dead, as she’d suspected for years. May his soul fly free. Ach’magut’s words told her that, if he were alive, he’d be proud of what she’d done. Proud of her.
And in the future, he would be proud of the woman she’d become. She would accomplish more than her father had ever dreamed.
Seconds had passed as Ach’magut turned his gaze from one member of his crew to the other, and though Calder heard the words, they meant nothing to him. The Great Elder did not speak through vibrations in the air, but through a language of Intent so subtle and complex that Calder couldn’t catch a glimpse of its mechanisms. If the Overseer did not want Calder to know his words, that was how it would be.
But now, the strange wave of Intent broadened. Ach’magut addressed them all as a crew, as he had at the beginning. His words were for Calder, but every living thing in the great library—from the human crew to the innumerable Inquisitors—served as a witness.
THE THRONE WILL SOON BE EMPTY.
Calder didn’t need the volumes of explanation that came along with the Elder’s voice to tell him what those words meant. The Emperor was going to die. Soon.
And Ach’magut was telling him.
Hope and feverish expectation surged up in equal measure, as Calder dared to resurrect a foolish dream that he had carried since childhood.
A rustle came from behind him, as of a thousand sticks falling to the floor. He turned to look, as he was sure he was supposed to, and saw fields of Inquisitors bending forward. They’d folded their first legs and pressed their jaws to the floor.
It took him a moment to realize what the hordes of Elderspawn were doing, and when he did, his breath died in his lungs.
They were kneeling.
To him.
HAIL THE EMPEROR OF THE WORLD, Ach’magut said, and Calder stared incredulously into the Elder’s one giant eye. Never, in his most distant dreams, had he ever dared to imagine this.
The crew was looking at him now, and he could feel their reactions as easily as his own. Awe, fear, disbelief, hope, and sheer, mind-numbing shock.
But Ach’magut had one more thing to say, and he delivered it with a finality that made Calder wonder if the Great Elder would ever speak again.
SHOW ME THE FUTURE.
Calder’s return to The Testament felt like his first trip to Ach’magut’s library—that is, it felt like nothing at all. It wasn’t as though he’d fallen asleep, but as though he’d forgotten the journey.