The Eighth Warden Bk. 05 Ch. 15-16

Interlude

Twenty-third year of the Burning...

Hera crafted a shield out of nothingness to block Pallis's blast, then reversed the direction on her protection spells to pull in the power from his attack to replenish her own reserves. Renewed, she struck back, weaving elder and arcane magic together into one spell and channeling it through a tunnel of totemic magic.

The dark beam shot out but Pallis deflected it. Here, in his own domain in the totemic realm, he could nearly match her in power, and he had thousands of years of experience. The spell ricocheted, boring a hole through the wall of the fortress he'd created.

But it didn't stop there. Boundaries were fluid in the totemic realm. There was no real substance other than that which was created by the residents, and there was no difference between up and down or left and right. After cutting through the wall, the magical attack tore a hole in the barrier between the totemic realm and the mortal world. To Hera, the sensation felt similar to teleporting from one realm to the other... but teleporting across the barrier didn't rip open reality.

The breach sealed itself almost instantly, but not before she received a vision of the damage her wayward spell would cause, the magic somehow magnifying in power as it crossed between worlds. It was a level of destruction she'd seen equaled only once before. Realizing what she'd done, she shared a look of horror--and recognition--with Pallis.

He faded from view, leaving her alone to deal with the fallout. The battle was over, it seemed, but Hera had no way to stop what she'd set in motion. She fled from the totemic realm, not wanting to watch it happen.

Seeking a safe refuge, she teleported to her old apartment in Tir Yadar. The remains of the great city still stood like a silent tomb for those who'd once walked its halls.

The Chosar hadn't been able to return to their former home since the tunnel road had collapsed. Even the elder mages among the stoneborn children had failed to rebuild the fallen section, plagued as it was by the proximity of the more severe wildstorms nearer to the city.

The overland route remained impassable as well. While the mundane fires across the continent had burned out long ago, the firestorms yet raged in central Van Kir, fed by power slowly leaking from the conjunction of magics the wardens had attempted to take for themselves. Allos thought it might take decades before the hole was sealed for good.

Nothing of interest remained in Hera's old living quarters--in the months before the tunnel road had been lost, scavenging crews had emptied most of the apartments of anything useful. She left her barren rooms behind and wandered aimlessly through the West Tower residential district at first, but eventually Fortress Central beckoned to her, as it always did when she visited.

There, at the totem walk, she bowed her head in front of Owl's statue, offering a moment of regretful silence. The People had lost Wisdom that day, and not just Owl's. The other totems had all but disappeared from the world, offering no explanation for their absence. The most powerful and capable mages among the Chosar had died when Fortress West melted, and the rockfall which buried the military complex had killed many of the most seasoned and experienced soldiers.

It was a loss from which Hera suspected The People would never truly recover. She, Iris, Boreas, and Demea had managed to save the children from the wildstorms, altering them to fit their new environments, but the Chosar empire was shattered. Their remaining settlements were a shadow of what they once were. How many of Hera's friends in the High Guard had survived the war only to die soon afterward, killed by the wardens' quest for more power?

There was one bright spot, though. The intact section of Fortress East housed the medical facility with the stasis room where the Mage Knights still slept. Other than the mindless walking dead in the undercity, the knights were the last remnant of The People within Tir Yadar.

And there they would have to remain.

Hera couldn't open the stasis pods without a physical body, and even if she did, the wild storms would seek out the knights and the firestorms would prevent them from leaving the city.

She checked in on them from time to time, though, making sure they were safe. There were twelve stasis pods in use. She stopped at the last one to stare through the glass at the newest member of the Order. Ariadne. What sort of world would the girl wake up to? How much more would change before it was safe to free her?

A flash of darkness crossed through Hera's mind, then another and another.

Visions of potential futures. It was difficult to interpret the visions and nearly impossible to control them, but this sequence was clear enough. Ariadne had no future. She would either sleep forever or die soon after awakening, before doing anything of note.

More flashes of darkness, and then one single, hazy vision of the young woman awake and smiling, with a warden's sigil on her brow. A sigil in the same shade of blue as Hera's own weapon enhancement spells.

Hera froze, standing in thought. She hadn't bonded anyone before her death. Could she still do so now? Unlike opening a mage lock or a stasis pod, the warden binding spell didn't require physical touch. Could it pass through the stasis field?

She'd never attempted the spell before, but it had been burned into her mind since the choosing dream. She cast it now, and the pale blue sigil appeared on the young woman's forehead--two circles linked side-by-side.

Before Hera could consider the implications, she felt echoes rippling through the barrier, and then Boreas appeared in front of her.

It was time to face what she'd done.

"Hera!" he said, his voice terrible.

"Did I hurt anyone?" she asked. She had to know for certain.

"Hurt? You killed twenty-seven people! A hunting party of twenty-two brave souls who left the shielded region to do their duty, and five of the older stormborn children who accompanied them in case they encountered a wildstorm. And those are just the ones I know about! There's a crater fifty miles across in the Storm Heights!"

Twenty-seven lives.

"I didn't know what would happen!" she exclaimed. "We were nowhere near Tir Navis. We weren't even in this world! It shouldn't have..." She trailed off, her excuses sounding hollow even to herself.

"And the last time you fought?"

"That was Pallis!" She'd assumed Pallis had tried some sort of twisted, evil new magic against her, resulting in the massive impact on the east coast of Aravadora. She hadn't realized how easy it would be to cause the same sort of destruction herself.

"It doesn't matter who it was!" Boreas shouted. "You both knew it could happen! Iris is having this same talk with him right now."

There was nothing Hera could say. No justification she could give.

"Never again," Boreas said. "If you or Pallis attack each other again within the totemic realm, the rest of us will band together to bind your powers for all time. And if we can't do that, we'll destroy you. Arodi and Allos have already agreed--if it comes to it, they'll shed their mortal bodies and return. Don't make them give up the lives they're trying to build." Arodi and Allos were the only two who'd managed that particular trick, though Arodi thought any of them should be able to learn it.

"He's trying to bury the truth!" Hera said. "Why are you letting him get away with it?"

It had taken seventeen years after the ritual for Pallis to return, and once back, he'd refused to discuss what had happened to him or whether he knew anything about Zachal's fate.

After mastering his new powers, Pallis had set his acolytes to destroying any books or scrolls they could find which described wardens, the ritual, or the true cause behind the Burning. As he'd gained in followers, he'd begun pressuring leaders among The People to suppress that knowledge in exchange for the protection of totemic magic.

"He's right, Hera."

"How can you say that?" she asked. "How can you believe it?" Hiding the truth about the ritual was necessary, but Pallis had gone too far.

Boreas sighed. "Because we don't have a choice. Even the Chosar barely tolerate us enough to accept our aid. You've seen the visions as well as I have. The wildstorms are holding things at bay for now, but once the storms fade, the wars that come after will be worse than anything we've seen before. We can't do what we need to do unless the people trust us. All the people. If we're ever going to repay the debt we owe, the world will have to forget who we are."

"You're just making excuses to hide our crimes so we don't face any consequences."

"I don't really care what you think about it," Boreas said. "We'll spend eternity serving this world. That will have to be consequence enough. As for Pallis's plan, it won't be the first time we've rewritten history."

"What?"

Boreas shook his head. "There are things we haven't told you, and I'm too angry to discuss it with you right now, but we know how to make people forget the past. We've done it before. Don't try to interfere, Hera. I mean it."

With that, he left.

Hera stood alone in the stasis room with the sleeping Mage Knights, a hollow feeling in her gut. The other wardens would allow Pallis to continue with his scheming in the hopes that someday the people of the world would no longer remember what they'd done. Boreas's instructions were clear. Hera would have to let it happen.

She glanced again at Ariadne. Boreas hadn't noticed the girl's binding sigil. Did the world really hate the wardens as much as he'd suggested? Would the other wardens take issue with Hera binding someone? Would Boreas somehow construe it as a sign of interference in Pallis's plan?

Hera's visions of Ariadne's future were still hazy and indistinct, as if the details weren't yet known. When the girl awakened, she'd be new to her powers, unable to fully defend herself, and in a world that was far different than what she remembered.

She would need additional protection--something to ensure she wasn't punished for Hera's crimes.

Hera would have to hide not just the sigil but the underlying bonds that would otherwise be visible to anyone using arcane sight. There was a time she wouldn't have been able to accomplish that, but the ritual had freed her of the limitations of a Mage Knight's magic. In the years since, she'd gained a greater understanding of what was possible. Both arcane and totemic magic could be used to craft warding spells. Combining the two would allow her to create a ward that not even the other wardens would be able to pierce.

She worked the complicated magic, then left Tir Yadar and returned to her domain in the totemic realm.

She never noticed the tiny wildstorm which had formed in the machinery connecting the pods to the stasis generator.

###

Chapter Fifteen

Present day...

"Heya, Kev," Corec said, grasping the other man's forearm. "They've got you back out on patrol already? That was fast."

"They kicked me out of the Order." Kevik kept his face stoic, but there was a heaviness behind the words.

"Oh," Corec said, the smile slipping from his face. "Bloody hell. I didn't think they'd actually do it. What was their excuse?"

"Take your pick," Kevik said. "Disobeying orders, associating with mages, getting Willem killed." He sighed. "I didn't know what else to do, so I came here. Georg's putting up the horses."

"They kicked you all out?"

"Just me, but Georg wasn't happy about how they were treating the rest of us, so he came along. He figures with the dragon gone, he'll be able to find better opportunities out this way. And Barat sent a message for you." He handed over a tiny slip of paper.

Corec read and reread the single sentence, trying to figure out if there was some hidden meaning.

"That's all he sent?" he asked.

"That's it," Kevik replied. "Warn Corec he's in danger. I thought you might know what it meant."

The paper looked like it had come from a pigeon message, which meant Kevik hadn't spoken to Barat in person.

"He's in Telfort now, right?" Corec said.

"Last I heard, yes, but I didn't have a chance to find out for sure. They wanted me out of town."

"I'm sorry," Corec said. "Maybe I shouldn't have gotten you involved, but you made the right choice going after the dragon. It had to be done, and we couldn't have managed it without you. You have a place here if you want."

"As what?" Kevik asked.

That was a good question. With his training and experience, Kevik was most qualified for Captain of the Guard, but Corec wasn't going to remove Sarette from the position and give it to someone else.

Then he had another thought. "Why not as a knight?"

Kevik gave a short, bitter laugh. "A knight? In what Order?"

"Who says you need an Order?"

"A knight without an Order is just a mercenary," Kevik said. Then he seemed to realize who he was talking to and grimaced. "Sorry--I didn't mean..." He trailed off.

"The only reason the knights operate within the Order of Pallisur is to keep them under the priests' control. It's the oaths you need, not the Order. And not their oaths, but something you can live with--a code you can follow, to help you make the best choices you can."

"New oaths?" Kevik said. "Then you're talking about a new Order. Why? You've only got, what, two hundred people here?"

"Over five hundred now, I think. It changes every day." Plus, they'd only been able to count the people nearest to the keep. They'd received word of other groups settling farther north, and rumors about the south and the west.

"Still, what could you possibly need knights for? You already have soldiers, and there's no Church for us to serve."

"Most of the knights didn't join up to serve the Church," Corec reminded him. "Osbert and the ones like him, sure, but the rest of us? You, me, even Trentin--we were there to make something of ourselves." He was having trouble finding the right words to say what he wanted to say.

"That's not a reason."

Corec tried again. "Being a soldier is a job--when you quit, it's over. But you can't stop being a knight, even if they tell you that you're not one anymore."

"You still think of yourself as a knight?"

"Not really--certainly not a Knight of Pallisur--but I'll always be what they made me. I left some of it behind, but I kept the rest. It means something. It's got to, or else what were we doing all that time?"

"Is that how you ended up volunteering to lead an assault against a dragon?"

Corec chuckled. "I guess it is. You'll find the same thing, you know--they may have taken away your title, but you'll always be you. You're still a knight in the ways that actually matter, so why not make it official? Back when Matagor had knights, they weren't particularly religious. Larso's way of doing things isn't the only way."

"You might be right, but an Order of one? I'm not going to accomplish much on my own, and Georg insists he's ready for retirement."

"You'll probably have to spend more time working with the regular soldiers than you have in the past, but we can be on the lookout for some good candidates to recruit. You should talk to Nedley when he gets back from Four Roads."

"Nedley? He's a good kid, but a knight?"

"He's bright--he picks things up fast. I'll admit, I haven't spent any time teaching him tactics or courtly graces, but he's done everything we've asked him to do."

Kevik nodded. "I'll think about it, but if I'm going to stick around, I need to know what I'm getting into. What's the deal with Barat's note?"

"I don't know," Corec said. "I haven't heard from him since I left Larso. If he's in Telfort, though... have you ever met King Rusol?"

"I don't make it to the capital much. Certainly not for anything important enough to be meeting with the king."

"I can't say for sure why Barat sent the note, but I can make a guess. There are some things I need to tell you..."

#

Leena ruffled Udit's hair, then knocked on the door. "I just need to talk to Ellerie first, then I'll show you around."

The door opened and the elven woman peeked out, her puzzled look turning to a smile when she saw who was waiting. "You're back," she said. "Why did you knock?" Then she noticed Leena's brother. "Oh, Udit, hello!" she said in careful Zidari. "Welcome to the free lands. I didn't know you were coming so soon."

Leena had to nudge Udit to get him to reply.

"Hi," he mumbled, looking down.

Ellerie gave him an uncertain smile, then switched back to trade tongue. "Are you feeling better now?" she asked Leena. "You don't look as tired."

"I'll be fine, I was just trying to do too much," Leena said. She didn't want to worry her lover. "I'm going to stop working for the Travelers' Posts for a while."

"Is that enough? Maybe you should stop running errands for us, too--Corec's going to hire horse messengers now that the roads are in better shape, and we're looking for a pigeon keeper."

"It's all right," Leena said. "I don't mind, and I still need the practice. I'm supposed to keep building up the northern network." That part was true, at least, as long as she didn't do more than she could handle. "I'll just only go to Sanvar once a week now instead of working there every day."

"If you're sure," Ellerie said, still a hint of suspicion in her tone. "It'll be nice to have you around more."

Leena grinned. "Yes, and that's why I brought Udit, since I won't be going home as often. I'm going to show him to his room, then introduce him to everyone. Do you want to come with us?"

"Oh!" Ellerie said. "We didn't know he was coming, and a friend of Treya's is staying in that room. Maybe he can share with Harri for a few days."

Leena nodded. "That's fine," she said. She wanted the boys to get to know each other anyway, so Udit could practice speaking trade tongue. A shared suite wouldn't bother him--he'd been living in a tent for the past year and a half.

"I'll go look for Harri and ask him," Ellerie said. "I'll be back in a few minutes, then we can take Udit on his tour." She offered him another smile.

He flicked his thumb against the side of his nose--a common child's insult in Sanvar, though Ellerie just appeared puzzled.

After she'd left, Leena turned to her brother. "Why are you always so rude to her?" she asked.

Udit gave her a sullen look. "You were supposed to come home and marry Pavan and then we'd all move back to Matihar together. Instead, you want to stay here with her."

"Who told you I was going to marry Pavan?"

"Everyone was saying it."

"Did Pavan say it?"

Udit thought for a moment. "No. I don't remember."

"Rohav and Grandmother?"

He nodded. "And our cousins, everyone."

Leena sighed. "Come with me," she said, leading him into the sitting room, to a stack of blankets piled up like a rug near the hearth. There was no fire now that the weather had warmed up, but Leena still preferred the spot over the old, rickety chairs they'd managed to save. She and her brother sat next to each other, cross-legged, and she draped an arm over his shoulders.

"They shouldn't have said that," she continued. "Those were private discussions between adults, and I never agreed to marry Pavan. You already know why I can't move back to Matihar yet. It's not safe."

"But why can't you marry Pavan?" Udit asked.

"You like Pavan, huh?"

"He's nice. He comes to the camp and teaches me Traveling when Uncle Rohav is too busy."

"He's a good man, but I don't love him. That doesn't mean you can't still be friends with him."

"But he won't come here," Udit said.

"He might," Leena said. She had no intention of telling her little brother about the actual arrangement she'd made with Pavan, but it would, by necessity, require spending time together. "And you don't have to stay here forever, just until it's safer, or until you can Travel on your own. I'll teach you for now, and Rohav's going to visit. How does that sound?"