Part One

COREY WAS A mage of both the light and dark persuasion. They had told him that the first time he’d been strong enough to leave the warm bed he had spent so many endless hours tucked into. He had always had strange eyes, but the idea that he could wield the same powers the Sentinel’s Mages could was preposterous. Corey was a farmhand living with his aunt and uncle, working for the lord who owned the land. He was nothing more than that.

At least, that was what he’d thought until the day Aunt Lorie and Uncle Tim had stolen one of the lord’s many sleds, bundled him up, and took him on a journey. He was newly eighteen—that was all that had changed in his life—yet Aunt and Uncle had insisted that traveling to some unknown place was absolutely imperative.

They hadn’t been his real aunt and uncle, either, just two otherwise childless people who were kind enough to care for the baby a strange woman had died giving birth to in the hayloft of the lord’s stable. He thought now they must have somehow known he was different. They had pointed the sled in the direction of the Tower and hadn’t looked back. They were gone now, and the hole in his chest reminded him of that fact every single day. His new situation confused him constantly, and he desperately wished for his aunt’s gentle smile or his uncle’s sound advice to help him get through every bewildering moment. His emotions were jumping everywhere—one moment he was brooding in a corner, thinking about his aunt and uncle, the next he was excited at the prospect of his untapped magic. He was in a strange kind of limbo where he didn’t know how to feel or act.

All he had was Light Mage Elda. She reminded him of the elderly woman back at the lord’s manor who had watched over the children too young to lend their hands to work, except Elda was barely thirty years old and could wield light magic like it was a living toy. She insisted that he come to every meal and always asked him questions about how he was feeling even though he couldn’t really answer. There was also Dark Mage John, Elda’s counterpart, and the teachers John had arranged to sit with Corey for a few hours each day.

It was all too confounding. He still felt ill with new powers thrust upon him, new people constantly introducing themselves, new this and new that every single moment. All he wanted was a chance to sit and figure out which way was up. He wanted to take a minute to mourn and then get his own damned feet underneath himself without Elda or John popping in every other second with someone or something new.

Which was why he was hiding in a back staircase of the Tower instead of making his way to his room. Corey was supposed to slowly walk the halls of the Tower in order to rebuild his sickness-sapped strength. Elda had no doubt expected him to stick to the heavily populated areas of the Tower when she told him to explore and learn his way around on the walks. The Tower itself was huge, much more than a single tower; it should have been called a fortress, really.

An hour of slow movement every day over the last few weeks had at least allowed Corey to gradually explore his new home. Corey didn’t know how many floors were completely underground, but he guessed at least ten. They included all the living spaces for the Dark Mages as well as storage and training rooms. Above ground were another six floors set aside for the needs of the Light Mages. The building didn’t take the shape of a tower either, sprawling widely across a large portion of the tundra. One of the courtyards in the center of the building had been enclosed by the Light Mages in some sort of protective and warming dome that was large enough for all the farming and growing. That courtyard had grazing land for sheep and cows, fields of grain and vegetables, and a small orchard full of fruit trees. Corey had also found five staircases leading up to towers and turrets, and he had only explored a small portion of the building.

The staircase he hid in was another new one. He had tried exploring a different set of hallways on this exercise walk and the stairs he eventually discovered were a convenient place to sit and rest his legs for the journey back. Although, he never tried climbing the stairs. Maybe he would find something interesting up there.

A welcome distraction from his swirling thoughts, so Corey levered himself to his feet and started climbing, hoping to find an interesting room or niche to explore, but there was nothing there. The Tower was apparently entirely comprised of stone stairs. There weren’t any rooms or alcoves, just spiraling steps leading upward, and it took Corey a while to reach the top. He had to stop twice to catch his breath and relieve the shaking in his legs. When he finally did, he stepped into absolute glory.

The top of the Tower was all one room. The stairs let him out on one side of the room, but it didn’t matter where he stood. The entire space was encircled by large windows. Corey had a perfect and endless view of the tundra in all directions. Sun Season was just starting, and the brilliant sun shone from far overhead. Although there were places where the tundra revealed smooth and fertile ground for farming, none of the snowpack outside the windows was the least bit melted, which meant the snow was more than a few feet deep here. It reflected the sun beautifully, sending up rainbows and sparkles in every direction.

Corey could have stood watching for the few scant hours the sun stayed up this time of year, and he would have returned when the sun rose to watch some more. He could imagine that on Sun’s Day, the first day the sun didn’t set at all during Sun Season, the snow must be glorious.

“I can never stop looking at it either,” a voice said gently from behind Corey. He spun around, squinting, still blinded by the bright sun. In the middle of the room was a dormant firepit, which explained why it was so cold. Next to the fire was a mound of what looked like blankets and pillows. A head was just barely visible between it all.

“I’m sorry for intruding!” Corey gasped. “I didn’t know this was someone’s room.” He took a hasty step backward. He was so blinded from the sun he couldn't find the stairs to retreat.

The mound of pillows shifted and a young man slowly sat up. “You’re the boy they rescued from the tundra,” the man stated, seeming not to care that Corey had invaded his private space.

Corey nodded. “I’m Corey,” he said politely. “I’ll get out of your way now.”

The man tilted his head slightly, studying Corey. Corey felt almost frozen in place, like he had been magically ordered to freeze while the man figured out what he thought about him. Corey knew what dark and light magic felt like, thanks to his new teachers, but he didn’t think any was in use. The force of the stranger’s personality shining from his eyes was enough to keep Corey still. The stranger slowly looked up and down Corey’s body, as if searching for a flaw of some sort.

“I don’t get a lot of company up here,” the man finally said. “Elda will stop by every day and scold me about letting the fire go out.” Corey couldn’t help rolling his eyes. He knew very well how overprotective and invasive Elda could be. The stranger laughed. “Yes, Elda can be annoying, but her heart is in the right place. Come closer, Corey. I think your company might be a welcome distraction.”

Corey obeyed. His eyes had adjusted to the bright light, making it easier to see his way across the room. The man sat up, the blankets falling away from his shoulders to pool in his lap when Corey drew close.

“Who are you?” Corey asked curiously. He had pitch-black hair, so dark it almost looked blue. His eyes changed color as every shifting beam of sunlight moved the hue from gray to blue and every shade in-between.

The man let out a startled bark of laughter at Corey’s question. “Who indeed,” he murmured. “You may call me Ward.”

Corey didn’t miss the fact that Ward said “‘you may call me” instead of “my name is.” There was definitely something strange about the man hiding in the cold Tower. The fact that he wouldn’t tell Corey his real name only added to the mystery. Still, Corey didn’t feel threatened by Ward. He was so much more interesting than Elda’s and John’s near-constant smothering.

Ward rustled around underneath his blankets for a moment. A hand eventually emerged and peeled one blanket off the pile. He held it out to Corey.

“Come out of the cold,” he insisted. Corey took the blanket from him and tentatively sat on a corner of the thick mattress. He wrapped the blanket over his shoulders and leaned back against a pillow. Ward leaned forward and draped a second blanket across Corey’s legs.

Although the fire was cold, the blankets were soft and warm. Corey couldn’t help relaxing into a pillow, absorbing the heat that was so rare in their environment. They sat in comfortable silence for a few long moments. It was a welcome change for Corey. Even when he was alone in his own room, Elda or John invariably sent someone to keep him company for some reason or another. He didn’t know why they insisted on keeping such a close and careful eye out for him. While it was certainly heartwarming, it was also unbelievably annoying.

Corey was a farmhand. During Sun Season, he was used to working in the fields. Harvesting was tough work, and before he had nearly frozen to death on the tundra, he had been strong and healthy. During Star Season, he lived in the heated barn and made sure all the animals survived the cold and the snow. In the Tower, he was a novelty of sorts. He hadn’t been raised with them, which made the people who had lived in the Tower all their lives curious about him. They never left him alone for very long.

There just wasn’t a way to sit and figure everything out. Or there hadn’t been until the quiet of the room began to soak into him. Corey’s shoulders slowly relaxed and the spinning in his head slowed. For the first time since he had opened his eyes in the Tower, he could actually breathe.

He was sad, he was confused, and he was overwhelmed. The weight yanking at his heart, pressing against his chest, making him feel like tears were only a mere breath away hadn’t changed. Yet he was also calm here in this room, in the quiet.

The tap of footsteps sounded on the long stairs leading up to the Tower room, but Corey was so relaxed it took some time to understand what the rhythmic thump meant. His shoulders tensed immediately, and he sat up. He wasn’t willing to lose this space and time with the silent Ward just because another person wanted to intrude on Ward’s room. He squinted over at the steps, hoping whoever emerged wouldn’t immediately report his whereabouts to Elda.

“If you drape yourself under the blankets, no one will know you are here,” Ward said softly, as if reading Corey’s wish. His worry was probably plastered all over his face, of course, but it was still startling to hear. Corey hurried to obey, curling up on the edge of the bed with both of his blankets covering his entire body. He felt Ward shifting around and then the heavy pressure as what felt like an overstuffed pillow or two were added to complete the illusion. Ward’s bed was huge. Corey had originally thought it simply looked big thanks to all the blankets and pillows. Instead, it was large enough that he couldn’t feel Ward’s body at all.

The footsteps came to a stop, and Corey heard a very familiar, exasperated sigh. “The fire’s gone out again!” Elda snapped. Her feet stomped closer, and after a few seconds he could hear the snap of flint and the crackle as kindling caught. “Did you at least leave your bed today? Walk around a bit to get some exercise?”

“I have had an interesting day,” Ward said noncommittally.

Elda sighed again. “So, no. You’re going to do damage to your body if you stay in bed all the time.”

“I promise you, Elda,” Ward replied with what Corey thought was a touch of humor in his voice, “I won’t get hurt from a little lying around.”

“Fine,” Elda sniffed in disbelief. “Will you be joining us for dinner?”

“Not today,” Ward said.

They didn’t speak again, and a few moments later Elda’s clacking footsteps receded. Even through the muffling blankets, Corey could hear them on the stairs for a while. Only once he was certain Elda was gone did he lift the blanket away from his face.

He blinked in the sudden bright light for a few seconds, waiting for his eyes to adjust again. Ward had turned into a dark blur against the backdrop of the windows.

“Have you learned how to call upon dark magic yet?” Ward asked. Corey thought he was smiling slightly, but he couldn’t see clearly enough to be sure.

“A bit,” Corey replied. He rubbed his eyes, but the light was still too bright.

“Call it to your eyes, just a little. The dark over your eyes will temper the light from the windows. Breathe slowly,” he added. “In and out, full breaths. They must have shown you the pool of magic at your core. Tap it gently and pull a strand of power to your hands.”

It took more than a few tries for Corey to figure out how to do what Ward described. Light and Dark magic were intangible. He couldn’t feel them or hold them in order to properly manipulate them. In the bright light, he could see the dark manifest around his hands, but he wouldn’t have been able to see light magic if he called it. The opposite would be true if he were in a dark room. Figuring out how to transfer the dark he could see, but not feel, from his hands to cover his eyes was the really difficult part. The first time he got the magic to stay in place it was too dark, and Corey couldn’t see anything. He tried again, sweating despite the cold as he thinned the layer of dark.

By the time he got the dark magic thin enough, he wasn’t squinting nearly so much anymore. Still, he turned triumphantly to let Ward see the patch of dark carefully covering his eyes.

“Very good,” Ward said with a wide smile. “A bit of light across your eyes when it’s too dark will help you see too.”

Unlike his regular teachers, Ward didn’t natter on about the magic’s properties or intensities while Corey was trying to concentrate. He sat quietly and let Corey work. For all that he struggled, Corey thought he managed to accomplish his task in half the time as usual. Without the dubious help of his tutors stopping him every few seconds to “show” him how to do it properly, Corey was able to figure it out on his own.

Corey smiled at Ward, but the windows snagged his attention again. The view was absolutely unparalleled, and with his eyes shielded, Corey didn’t have to squint to see it. They were high in the air, so nothing blocked his view. Not that the frozen tundra was particularly interesting, of course, but Corey had lived on it his entire life, and seeing his new home from a different perspective was marvelous.

The snow was white as far as the eye could see, but it wasn’t uniform in shape or size. Mountains rose and fell, and hills rolled in the blowing wind. It was Sun Season, so infrequent splashes of color from something bravely growing occasionally caught Corey’s eye. Behind him, closer to the stairs, Corey could see almost the entire compound below. He could see two large farming courtyards, one of which he hadn’t known existed, which meant that he had barely explored half of the building. In total, ten towers were evenly spread along the circumference of the building.

Off in the distance, far to the northeast, where the sun never rose high enough even at the height of Sun Season to melt the icy crust, was a patch of darkness. Corey squinted and thought he could make out a cluster of trees. He knew what single trees in a protected orchard looked like, but he had never seen a forest before.

“Is that a forest?” he asked Ward. Living things with long lifespans like trees couldn’t survive in the tundra without human help. It was impossible, yet Corey’s eyes had seen it.

“It is not a forest, no,” Ward replied. “There aren’t enough trees for that.” He smiled as he spoke, but while his grin told Corey that Ward found his lack of knowledge humorous, there was an element of sadness there as well.

“If it’s not a forest, then what is it?” Corey asked, hoping to distract Ward from his melancholy.

He failed. Ward’s smile immediately dimmed. “They are the Sentinel Trees. Ten men and women who gave their lives to contain the creature that lies entombed in a cave beneath the ice.”

There were more than ten trees out there, Corey thought, but he would take Ward’s word for it. “What creature?” he asked instead.

Ward closed his eyes for a long moment, his face scrunching up as if his thoughts brought him pain. When he opened his eyes again, they were the darkest gray Corey had ever seen.

“It is an old tale,” Ward said softly. “It used to be told by the fireside on the darkest of nights in Star Season, but time has passed, and the tale has gone with it. Still, I can tell you.” He sat back against a pillow and looked into the fire as he spoke. “There were ten of us once, born from different mothers, yet siblings all the same. One came from the hottest volcano, another from the deepest sea, but they came later. First there was the Sentinel and his sister, the Oracle. In their youth, they had each other to play with. She could see the past, present, and future, but she chose to leave her powers alone because her brother had no powers of his own. She wanted them to be equals in their games. As they grew, they found friends. She had her Dragons of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Ether. He had his Mages, Light and Dark. And so they lived and the world around them began to grow. Animals and humans with no magic populated the earth and worshiped the nine as gods.

“One day the Sentinel began hearing stories about a tenth god. Overjoyed to learn they had another sibling, the nine went to meet with the man calling himself Sin. They soon learned that Sin was not their sibling but a different entity altogether. As the nine were good, Sin was bad—evil. There are stories that still exist today that would make you shiver in fear should I retell them, but for the sake of time I will simply leave the terrible deeds of Sin to your imagination.

“The nine gods tried desperately to get Sin to see the good in the world, to stop corrupting it at every turn, but if there was any good in him once, it was long gone. The humans and animals that loved their gods were dying piteously under the ravages of Sin, so the nine made a pact to save them. The Oracle gave up her body’s immortality in order to delve to the depths of her abilities. She could foresee and act to prevent any of Sin’s attacks, but each generation she would need to be reborn anew to refresh her powers. In a last great battle, with the Oracle seeing all the possible outcomes and directing her siblings accordingly, her five dragons and the Sentinel’s two mages were able to seal Sin’s body and magic in the tomb. Those dragons and mages sacrificed their own immortal bodies, thereby giving their power to select people—the Oracle’s Castes and the Sentinel’s Mages—who would then be better able to continue the fight against Sin’s allies. Only the Sentinel retained his immortal form. He remained behind, the last and weakest of the gods of old, to watch over the tomb to ensure Sin never escapes.”

It was probably the saddest story Corey had ever heard, but it wasn’t only the content that had Corey’s eyes stinging with tears. Ward’s tone wasn’t just sad—he sounded utterly alone. That loneliness made all the tangled emotions Corey was fighting seem inconsequential, and yet at the same time, there was no denying that his own pain was something Ward completely understood.

“The Sentinel has a heavy burden to carry,” Corey said softly. He hadn’t heard Ward’s story before, but he knew about the Sentinel. Most people assumed the power contained inside the Tower was that of the Sentinel’s Mages. They were well known since they traveled to the various homesteads in the tundra during Sun Season. The Sentinel was known as the leader of the Mages and was assumed to be the strongest of them all, but to learn he was actually a god was a shock.

And Corey now realized just whose bed he had climbed into. Elda worried herself with everyone in the Tower complex, but she had deferred to Ward even as she was scolding him. That, and the way Ward had told his story, the way he had made it sound so personal, told Corey he had intruded on the private domain of the Sentinel himself.

Yet Ward hadn’t introduced himself by title or position. He had given a pseudonym and had helped conceal Corey from Elda. To Corey, it felt as though Ward was hiding in his Tower.

“He does,” Ward whispered back, glancing over Corey’s shoulder at the lone dark spot on the horizon.

“I’m sorry for bringing it up,” Corey replied hesitantly.

Ward smiled slowly. “Most of it is actually a happy story. It’s only the ending that’s painful.” And the subsequent lonely centuries after, which Ward hadn’t spoken about aloud but had implied in every word. “You should go before Elda starts to get worried,” Ward continued kindly.

Corey nodded. Ward was probably right that Elda would be getting worried, but he likely also wanted some time to recover from remembering his painful story. Corey quickly untangled himself from the blankets. He shook them evenly back over the bed so he didn’t leave a lopsided layer for warmth to escape from. He hadn’t meant to make Ward feel bad, but that was exactly what he must have inadvertently done.

“Next time you escape from Elda, feel free to come by again,” Ward called as Corey headed toward the stairs. Corey paused to look back, unsure whether Ward was being honest or just nice, but Ward was looking out the window again.

Corey didn’t know how to answer or whether he even should. He descended the stairs slowly with one hand on the wall for balance. His legs were still tired from walking all the way out to this Tower and then climbing the stairs, so he had to stop a few times to shake them and to catch his breath. Still, it didn’t take too long to reach the bottom. Corey didn’t let himself rest then; he didn’t want to get caught idling at the foot of the Sentinel’s stairs. Instead, he retraced his steps until he returned to the more populated area of the Tower.

Dark Mage John found Corey resting on a bench in a nice alcove and forced Corey to lean on him for the rest of the journey back to Corey’s room. Elda was waiting by Corey’s door, and she started clucking at him the moment she saw John holding him up. Corey suppressed a sigh and allowed them both to tuck him back into bed. He would have liked to have finished walking back on his own and under his own power. He also would have preferred to relax in a public parlor with a book instead of being ensconced in his bed with John and Elda fussing over him. He missed the few minutes he’d had alone with Ward. The chance to sit and relax and just breathe had been glorious.

Corey would have to visit Ward again. That thought calmed him, giving him the patience to endure the clucking for the rest of the day.