She strode from the now mostly quiet market, moving to the place where the Sister’s Tower had stood, a firemoss lamp held in her hand lighting the way. The water-soaked luminescent moss, stuffed in the glass sphere, gave off a comforting, pale amber glow. Despite the light, if she had not known where she was going, she would have become lost without any of the usual landmarks to guide her. Moreover, the dense, gritty fog still pervaded the air, obscuring clear sight of anything.
When Ellonlef came to the farthermost scatter of rubble where the Sister’s Tower had stood, she halted, gazing about in stunned wonderment. The remains of the tower lay before her like the carcass of some giant whale washed up on the shore by an angry sea. In the darkness, one might have guessed the fortress wall was still intact, if only a third its normal height, but she knew that it had been reduced to a ragged heap. The Isle of Rida experienced tremors on occasion, but she had never seen or imagined so much destruction. Even seeing it with her own eyes, she had trouble grasping the magnitude of what had befallen Krevar.
Moving to one side, she scanned about, calculating the best place to begin her hunt. Searching by daylight would have served her better, but many days would pass before she was afforded the luxury of using a day to her own purposes.
Before digging in the rubble, she walked back and forth, holding the lamp high by its woven hemp handle. Her guess proved accurate, for soon after she began searching she found the crushed wicker chair she had been sitting in before the first tremor had shaken the tower. Moving closer to the chair, she tried not imagine that she would have looked the same, crushed into a nearly unrecognizable pulp, had she not escaped.
As easy as the chair was to find, she searched over an hour for what she sought without luck. She was thinking that perhaps some passerby had found it already, when a man cleared his throat. Standing atop the heap of shattered stones, she turned to see Magus Uzzret regarding her from the safety of flat ground.
“Looking for this?” he asked, holding up her tattered journal.
Ellonlef scrambled down off the debris and moved to within arm’s reach of him. “Yes,” she answered guardedly. She had never written anything damning in the book, but an uninformed reader might come to a very different conclusion upon skimming her honest assessments of the people she lived amongst.
Uzzret handed it over without a word, then looked eastward. “Nothing will ever be the same,” he muttered, voicing her earlier thoughts.
Holding the journal in her hand, Ellonlef could not judge whether or not Uzzret had read her words, but it was not a stretch to believe that he had. “No, it will not,” Ellonlef agreed, running a palm over the journal’s battered leather cover.
“As you know, the Magi Order is enlightened enough not to hold with the existence of gods,” he said in tones mingled with conceit for his order’s wisdom, and pity for all the wretched fools who disagreed. “Yet we recognize that others do. The destruction of the Three is and will continue to be a colossal blow to the minds of common folk.”
Ellonlef looked up. “The faces of the Three may be destroyed,” she said, “but that does not mean the Three are dead. As well, the Creator of All, Pa’amadin, will heal both the lands and the hearts of men. He will guide his children, even if the Three cannot.”
“Your blind faith is astonishing,” Uzzret said, incredulous. “Can you not see that it is as my order insists, and that no gods exist? We are but beasts, though some few of us are beasts with considering minds.” The old magus stroked his small white beard, his dark eyes studying her.
Ellonlef imagined snatching hold of that ridiculous tuft and yanking it out by the roots. She was instantly mortified by the thought, knowing it was beneath both her and her order. “In that, you are wrong.”
“Perhaps … perhaps not,” he countered smoothly. “Perhaps, as you say, Pa’amadin-a god of notable indifference, among other questionable attributes-will indeed rescue the world. Though it would appear that, as usual, he has abandoned men and the world. How can you put your faith in a being that can so readily turn away from his creation-hide his face, as it were?”
“Perhaps,” she said tiredly, “we can speak of this later.” To her mind, it was not a surrender to his argument. There simply was no reason to waste her breath trying to convince him of the ultimate goodness of Pa’amadin, or that of any of the gods. They could argue back and forth for many long years and never reach an agreement, so to try was a fool’s errand.
“To be sure,” Uzzret said with a self-satisfied smirk, obviously feeling he had won the argument. He walked away, leaving her alone.
Ellonlef sat down on a block of sandstone. She stayed there until the ruined face of Hiphkos rose over the eastern horizon. As what was left of the Goddess of Wisdom climbed into the sky, Ellonlef wished she had not remained out of doors. Instead of a cool, comforting blue, Hiphkos’s light shown down upon the world through a face of boiling fire and ash. Of Memokk and Attandaeus, there was no sign they had ever existed, unless it was the scattered aura slowly expanding like a band of stars away from Hiphkos.
“All is changed,” Ellonlef said, fearing that what had happened the day before was only a beginning of an end to all things.
As if to mark the moment, a fiery cascade of falling stars slashed the night. The tears of Pa’amadin, Ellonlef thought, wondering if the god she held in the highest esteem actually wept, or was merely sending further signs of his wrath, portents of some greater destruction yet to come. Unable to bear the sight any longer, she looked away.
Chapter 8
“You look terrible,” Hazad said when Kian came into view, escorted by Ishin, the leader of the Asra a’Shah.
“So I don’t get a welcome kiss?” Kian said with a weary grin, clasping the big man’s hand. To be back among friends filled his heart with an indescribable gladness. There had been times on his long march when he felt he was the only living man striding the torn face of the world.
Hazad vacated the rock he was using as a seat and pushed Kian down in his place near a smoldering bonfire. The smoky fire was not meant to ward against cold, but rather to drive off the swarms of stinging insects. The stone was not shaped for comfortable sitting, and the fire’s acrid smoke burned the eyes, but Kian welcomed anything that resembled comfort after trudging for days through the swamp. Where the company had cut a trail on the way to Varis’s temple, the quaking had changed the face of the marshes completely. Bogs had appeared where there had been none, and where they had been, wide mudflats studded with slabs of jagged bedrock now dominated. He did not want to think on the countless fallen trees he’d had to scramble over, or go under, or skirt around, all without even the meanest provisions. Kian was absolutely certain that the last few days had been the most trying of his life.
Azuri shoved a plump skin into Kian’s hand. “It’s-”
Kian gulped what he thought was fresh water, but liquid fire filled his throat.
“-jagdah,” Azuri finished with a sardonic smirk.
“Damn me!” Kian rasped, coughing. He made to hurl the skin away, but Hazad snatched it out of his hand.
Leveling a fierce scowl at him, Hazad said, “Are you mad? Men have been killed for lesser offences than tossing out perfectly good spirits.” To quench his affront, he took a long pull.
“Water would have been better,” Kian said. “I’ve been running through this damned swamp for three days now, living off black water, slime, and grubs.”