The master broke off his cackling. He spoke words like spiders crawling from the mouth of a corpse, delicate, deadly. The sound that catches you unaware and wrenches your heart into your throat.
“I am amused,” he said, “because you think you have won something. You have won nothing but decay. You have used the sedos power, foolish children.
“Did you think we knew nothing of the sedos? Fools. We had good reasons for avoiding the paths of its fell might. You have cursed yourselves. You have cursed your generations to come. In the final days, the end of my world will have been cleaner than the end of yours. You have no idea what you have done.”
The Born Queen spat down upon him. “That for your curse,” she snapped.
“It is not my curse, slave,” the master said. “It is your own.”
“We are not your slaves.”
“You were born slaves. You will die slaves. You have merely summoned a new master. The daughters of your seed will face what you have wrought, and it will obliterate them.”
Between one blink and the other, a flash like heat lightning erupted behind Carsek’s eyes, then vision. He saw green forests rot into putrid heaths, a poison sun sinking into a bleak, sterile sea. He walked through castles and cities carpeted in human bones, felt them crack beneath his heels. And he saw, standing over it all, the Born Queen, Genia Dare, laughing as if it brought her joy.
Then it was over, and he was on the floor, as was almost everyone else in the room, clutching their heads, moaning, weeping. Only the queen still stood, white fire dripping from her hands. The master was silent.
“We do not fear your curse!” Genia said. “We are no longer your slaves. There is no fear in us. Your world, your curses, your power are all now gone. It is our world now, a human one.”
The master only twitched in response. He did not speak again.
“A slow death for him,” Carsek heard the queen say, in a lower voice. “A very, very slow death.”
And for Carsek, that was the end of it. They took the master away, and he never saw him again.
The Born Queen, chin held high, turned to regard them all, and Carsek felt her gaze touch his for just an instant. Again he felt a flash, like fire, and for a moment he almost fell to his knees before her.
But he was never going down on his knees again, not for anyone.
“Today, we start counting the days and seasons again,” she said. “Today is the Day of the Valiant; it is the Vhasris Slanon! From this instant, day, month, season, and year, we reckon our own time!”
Despite their wounds and fatigue, the shouts that filled the hall were almost deafening.
Carsek and Thaniel went back down, to where the celebrations were beginning. Carsek, for his part, wanted only to sleep, to forget, and to never dream again. But Thaniel reminded him of their oath.
And so it was, as his wounds stiffened, they drank Thaniel’s brandy, and Carsek sat on a throne of chalcedony and looked down upon the arena where he had fought and killed so many fellow slaves.
“I killed a hundred, before the gate,” Thaniel asserted.
“I killed a hundred and five,” Carsek replied.
“You can’t count to a hundred and five,” Thaniel retorted.
“Aye, I can. It’s how many times I’ve had your sister.”
“Well,” Thaniel mused, “then my sister had to have been counting for you. I know that after two hands and two feet, I had to start counting for your mother.”
At that, both men paused.
“We are very funny men, aren’t we?” Carsek grunted.
“We are men,” Thaniel said, more soberly. “And alive, and free. And that is enough.” He scratched his head. “I didn’t understand that last thing she said. The name we’re to reckon our years by?”
“She does us a great honor,” Carsek said. “It is the old tongue of the Vhiri Croatani, the language of my fathers. Vhasris means dawn. Slanon means … Hmm, I don’t think I know your word for that.”
“Use several, then.”
“It means beautiful, and whole, and healthy. Like a newborn baby, perfect, with no blemishes.”
“You sound like a poet, Carsek.”
Carsek felt his face redden. To change the subject, he pointed at the arena. “I’ve never seen it from up here,” he murmured.
“Does it look different?”
“Very. Smaller. I think I like it.”
“We made it, Carsek.” Thaniel sighed. “As the queen said, the world is ours now. What shall we do with it?”
“The gods know. I’ve never even thought about it.” He winced at a sudden pain in his belly.
“Carsek?” Thaniel asked, concerned.
“I’ll heal.” Carsek downed another swallow of the liquid fire. “Tell me,” he said. “As long as we’re giving lessons in language. What were you saying back there, in the trench? About you people not being the Bornmen?”
Thaniel chuckled again. “I always thought you called us that because we are so recent to this land, because we were the last that the Skasloi captured to be their slaves. But it’s just that you misheard us.”
“You aren’t being clear,” Carsek told him. “I might be dying. Shouldn’t you be clear?”
“You aren’t dying, you rancid beast, but I’ll try to be clear anyway. When my people first came here, we thought we were in a place called Virginia. It was named for a queen, I think, in the old country; I don’t know, I was born here. But our queen is named after her, too—Virginia Elizabeth Dare— that’s her real name. When we said Virginia you dumb Croatani thought we were speaking your language, calling ourselves Vhiri Genian—Born Men. It was a confusion of tongues, you see.”
“Oh,” Carsek said, and then he collapsed.
When he woke, four days later, he was pleased that at least he hadn’t dreamed.
That was the fourth day of the epoch known as Eberon Vhasris Slanon.
Prologue
The day the last Skasloi stronghold fell began the age known as Eberon Vhasris Slanon in the language of the elder Cavarum. When the language itself was forgotten by all but a few cloistered scholars in the church the name for the age persisted in the tongues of men as Everon, just as Slanon remained attached to the place of the victory itself in the Lierish form Eslen.
Everon was an age of human beings in all their glories and failings. The children of the rebellion multiplied and covered the land with their kingdoms.
In the year 2,223 E. the age of Everon came to an abrupt and terrible end.
It may be that I am the last to remember it.
In the month of Etramen, in the year twenty-two fifteen of Everon, two girls crouched in the darkest tangles of a sacred garden in the city of the dead, praying not to be seen.
Anne, who at eight was the eldest, peered cautiously through the thickly woven branches and creepers enclosing them.
“Is it really a Scaos?” Austra, a year younger, asked.
“Hush!” Anne whispered. “Yes, it’s a Scaos, and a monstrous one, so keep low or he’ll see your hair. It’s too yellow.”
“Yours is too red,” Austra replied. “Fastia says it’s rust because you don’t use your head enough.”
“Figs for Fastia. Keep quiet, and go that way.”
“It’s darker that way.”
“I know. But we can’t let him see us. He’ll kill us, but not fast. He’ll eat us a bit at a time. But he’s too big to follow us back in there.”
“He could use an ax, or a sword, and cut the branches.”
“No,” Anne said. “Don’t you know anything? This is a horz, not just any old garden. That’s why everything is so wild here. No one is allowed to cut it, not even him. If he cuts it, Saint Fessa and Saint Selfan will curse him.”