“She was a girl,” Sayeed said. “Just a girl.”
“I know that!” Zeeahd said, wincing. “Do you think I don’t know that? This is the price I must pay to keep the curse at bay. He holds me between worlds to ensure I do his work and find the son.”
“Mephistopheles?”
Thunder rumbled and the darkness seemed to deepen.
“Do not say his name!” Zeeahd said in a hiss. He looked about, eyes wide with fear.
Somewhere, out in the plains, the dog, King, yelped with pain.
“We can’t continue like this,” Sayeed said dully. “I can’t.”
“We’ll have release,” Zeeahd said. “We need only find the son. Bear with it a while longer.”
In the years they’d sought Cale’s son, Zeeahd’s divinations had revealed nothing; consultations with seers and prophets had not availed them. It was as if the son had fallen out of the multiverse. But recently, Zeeahd’s divinations had pointed them to the legendary Oracle of the Abbey of the Rose.
“The Oracle will know how to find him,” Zeeahd said.
Sayeed looked past his brother to the girl, Lahni, lying still in the grass among the corpses of her family. He hoped the Oracle would know. Sayeed just wanted to sleep. He’d never wanted anything more in his life. His brother had turned into a monster serving the Lord of Cania. Sayeed had turned into a monster serving his brother.
The cats padded out of the shadows, their paws and muzzles covered in the dog’s blood. They stopped, sat, and licked their paws clean while they eyed Sayeed and Zeeahd.
Sayeed didn’t want to see the remains of the dog, if there were any. He turned back to his brother to find him staring at the cats.
“Why do we keep doing this, Zeeahd? I’m so tired.”
Zeeahd peeled his eyes from the bloody felines. “Because we must. Because my pact with him is the only hope we have. And because I’m getting worse.”
Vasen’s adoptive father, Derreg, had buried Varra in the common cemetery atop a rise in the eastern side of the valley. When Derreg died, Vasen laid him to rest beside Varra. They’d known each other only a short time, but Derreg had insisted that he be buried beside Varra in the cemetery for layfolk rather than in the catacombs under the abbey.
The stones that marked their graves were the same as those that marked all the other graves on the rise. A simple piece of limestone etched along the bottom with the spraying lines of the rising sun.
Vasen sat on his haunches before the graves. He’d plucked two of the pale orchids that grew at the base of the mountains and placed one on each of their graves.
“Rest well,” he said. “I’ll return when I can.”
He stood, turned, and looked out and down on the vale. The Abbey of the Rose sat in a deep, wooded valley, a gash hidden in the heart of the Thunder Peaks. A hundred years earlier, the Oracle, then only a child, had led the first pilgrims to the valley, telling them that it was a protected place into which the Shadovar could not see.
“We will be a light to their darkness,” he’d said, or so the story went.
And, as with all of the Oracle’s pronouncements, the words had proven true. The vale had remained unmolested by enemies, its location a secret to all but a select number of the faithful.
Ringed on three sides by cracked limestone cliffs that merged with the sloped sides of pine-covered mountains, the vale felt like a world unto itself, a pocket of light in the heart of shadow, a singular thing, like the rarely seen sun. Vasen loved it.
Foaming cascades from melting glaciers poured out of notches in the eastern and northern cliff faces, falling with a roar to the valley floor. The rushing waters joined to form a fast-moving river that bisected the vale before carving its way farther down the mountains. Smaller brooks and streams branched from the river to feed the vale’s lush vegetation. Dozens of tarns dotted the terrain, their still waters like dark mirrors.
Vasen took one last look back at his mother’s grave, at Derreg’s, then headed down the rise. When he reached the valley floor, he picked his way along the many walking paths that lined the pine forests. Pilgrims had trod the same paths for decades. Nesting cowbirds fluttered unseen in the branches; they’d head for warmer air to the south soon.
From time to time the canopy thinned enough overhead that he could glimpse the sky, the whole of it the gray of old metal, as if the Shadovar had encased the world in armor.
Despite the impenetrable sky, Vasen’s faith allowed him to perceive the sun’s location. He always knew where he could find the light. Yet he felt comfortable, even welcome in the shadows. He credited his blood for that, and it only rarely bothered him.
He had mostly reconciled himself to his dual existence. He told himself that his connection to both light and shadow gave him a better appreciation of each. He existed in the nexus of light and shadow, a creature of both, but a servant of only one.
His hand went to the rose symbol the Oracle had given him. Silver under the tarnish, light under the darkness.
“Where will you go when I die?” the Oracle had asked him.
He kicked a piece of deadwood and frowned. He could scarcely conceive of the Oracle’s death. The Oracle was the fixed star of Vasen’s existence. Vasen’s sworn purpose was to protect him. Without the Oracle, without the oath, what would Vasen have? Who would he be?
He didn’t know. He lacked family and friends. Without a purpose. .
He inhaled deeply to clear his somber mood. The air was thick with the smell of pine and wildflowers, the scent of his home.
“Wisdom and light, Dawnfather,” he said softly. “Wisdom and light.”
Ahead, a beam of sunlight escaped the cloak of the shadowed sky and cut a line down through the pines, a golden path that extended from the hidden sun to the hidden vale.
Vasen whispered his thanks and hurried forward to the boon. He placed his hand in the beam’s light and warmth. Shadows leaked from his dark flesh, the blade of Amaunator’s sun and the darkness of his blood coexisting in the light.
The beam lasted only a few moments before the sky swallowed it again, but it was enough. The Dawnfather had heard, and answered.
His spirits lightened, Vasen turned the direction of his thoughts from his own concerns to those of the pilgrims he would soon lead out into the dark.
He asked Amaunator for wisdom and strength, prayed that his light and that of the Dawnswords would be enough to see them all to safety.
A voice broke the spell of solitude. “Well met, Dawnsword.”
Surprise pulled a rush of shadows from Vasen’s flesh. He turned to see one of the pilgrims standing on the path a few paces behind him. The man had come with the most recent group from the war-torn Dalelands.
“The light keep you,” Vasen said, recovering himself enough to offer the standard greeting between believers. “Are you. . lost? I can escort you to the abbey if-”
The man smiled and approached. He wore a gray cloak, dark breeches, and a loose tunic. The compact stride of his lithe frame wasted little motion.
“Oh, I’ve been lost for years. But maybe I’m finding my way now.”
The man’s eyes struck Vasen immediately-pupilless orbs the color of milk. Vasen might have thought him blind had he not moved with such confidence. Tattoos decorated his bald head, his clean-shaven face, and his exposed neck-lines and spirals and whorls that made a map of his skin. He held an oak staff in his hand and carved lines and spirals grooved its length, too.
“I didn’t hear you approach. Orsin, isn’t it?”
“So I tell myself these days. And you’re Vasen.”
“Aye. Well met,” Vasen said, and extended a hand.
Orsin’s grip felt as if it could have crushed stone.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Orsin asked. “I was just. . walking the vale.”