At least Bandu didn’t object. “I go where you go,” she said. They were all congregating in Phaedra’s room, discussing Criton’s plan to visit the fallen tower of Parakas. Phaedra was lying on her bed with Narky sitting by her feet. Criton and Hunter stood, while Bandu made herself comfortable on the floor.
“I don’t understand,” said Narky. “Why do you insist on going to these places? When we were following Phaedra’s lead, we went to an abbey. We visited a bunch of pious old men and talked about their religion. When it’s up to you, we climb down steep cliffs in the dark and get attacked by giant ants!”
“You can’t blame Criton for the ants,” said Phaedra.
“Well, I can blame him for the climb.”
“You don’t climb,” Bandu pointed out, and Narky glared at her.
“You’re right, it is dangerous,” said Criton. He clenched and unclenched his human hands, a nervous habit.
“You don’t have to come with me,” he went on. “Fact is, I don’t want to be safe. I want to learn about my ancestors, and their descendants, and their God. I want to find out where they all went, and I don’t care where that takes me.”
“Psander knows what happened to the dragons,” said Narky. “But she knows that learning about dragons is all you care about, so the longer it takes her to tell you about them, the more she can get you to do for her.”
“That’s why I want to go to her mentor’s tower,” Criton said. “She can’t control what we find there, or how much we learn. For once, we won’t be dependent on her to teach us what we need to know.”
For a moment, he thought he might have convinced them. But then Phaedra said, “What if Mayar sent the plague?”
The others stared. “We would be walking right into His hands,” Narky groaned.
“We don’t know that He sent the plague,” Criton objected.
“True,” said Phaedra, “but we do know that the ruins were dedicated to Mayar by the people of Parakas. It’s too dangerous, Criton.”
Narky looked horror-struck. “Wait, the ruins belong to Mayar? Even if Mayar didn’t send the plague, He wouldn’t just sit by and let us despoil His sacrifices! If there’s anything that could make a God angry, it’s that.”
Criton tried to object, but Hunter cut him off. “We’ve made enough enemies among the Gods as it is,” he said with finality. “If you go, you’ll have to go alone.”
“Criton never goes alone,” Bandu said defiantly. “I go where he goes.”
“Neither of you should go!” said Phaedra. “Let’s just ask Psander about the dragons’ extinction. I’m sure she’ll tell us all about it. She was very open with the two of us last night.”
Criton looked at her incredulously. Psander had given them some information, but very open? Phaedra’s admiration for the wizard was getting the best of her.
“We’ll see,” he said.
When they did ask Psander, the wizard gazed up from her reading with a weary expression. Had she slept at all last night? Criton had never seen her look so tired.
“The extinction, eh?” Psander said. “Well, that all depends. Phaedra gave me an interesting scroll last night, but what else have you brought me?”
When Phaedra showed her the mushrooms and the ore, the wizard became suddenly excited. She leapt up from her seat and cried, “Give those to me!”
For the first time, Phaedra looked alarmed. She hesitated, and Criton took advantage of her uncertainty. “Tell us about the extinction first,” he said.
Psander pressed her lips together in overt frustration. Her eyes did not leave the items in Phaedra’s hands.
“Very well,” she said. “The last of the dragons died nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, in the year 7385 by the common reckoning. She died in battle. Against a God.”
This was not what Criton had wanted to hear. He looked at Bandu, and found her gazing sympathetically back at him.
“Gods do kill dragons,” she said sadly.
“Yes,” said Psander. “The War of the Heavens, we call it now. It lasted for nearly a century and ended with the death of every last dragon in existence.”
“How did the war start?” Phaedra asked.
Psander sat back down again, with a sigh. “That’s impossible to know. The Gods won the war, so of course the surviving sources all claim that the dragons started it. It’s possible that they did, of course. They were arrogant creatures, without a doubt. But I’d rather not rely entirely on the winning side’s story.”
“Did the dragons’ God participate in the war?” Hunter wanted to know.
“Not in any noticeable way,” said Psander. “It is written that the dragons expected God Most High to triumph over His enemies, but the dragons’ God seems to have been conspicuously silent, even when the war was only just beginning.”
Criton finally recovered enough to speak. “So they fought a holy war for God Most High, and He abandoned them. He went silent, and the other Gods slaughtered them.”
Psander smiled wryly. “Slaughtered? I wouldn’t put it that way. The casualties were not exclusively on the dragons’ side.”
“Gods died in the war?” Phaedra asked disbelievingly. “The dragons killed Them all on their own, without help in the divine realm?”
Psander nodded. “I presume nobody told you this about the War of the Heavens. Of course they wouldn’t. The Gods do not want it thought that They can be defeated by mere terrestrial beings. But the war tore a temporary breach in the mesh, and for a time it was possible for Gods and dragons to clash openly in the heavens. The dragons were annihilated, but the Gods did not come out unscathed. Several were destroyed, starting with Hormul the Desiccator, God of droughts and the desert.”
“And there were others after Him?” Phaedra asked. “Which other Gods died? Any I might have heard of?”
Psander raised an eyebrow. “As a matter of fact, yes. Caladoris the Mountain God was the first general of the divine army. When He fell to the dragon Hession, His body became the Calardian range. Accounts from before the war describe the area as hilly country, with the occasional true mountain, but also vineyards and even farms. All that changed in 7320, when Caladoris came crashing down to earth. The mountain clans live on the corpse of the very God they worship.”
“But then Hession’s cave…” said Hunter.
“Is the deathblow that the dragon Hession inflicted upon the God.”
Criton lightly slapped his forehead. “I assumed Hession had lived there. The mountain men might even have said so. I thought we would find some relic of the dragons, some kind of remnant of their lives–”
“–When in fact you were stepping into a gaping wound,” Psander finished. “You climbed down into it then, searching for evidence of dragons?”
“That’s where I fell,” Phaedra said, nodding. “I nearly died in that cave.”
Psander nodded. “Yes,” she said impatiently, and held out her hand. “Now if you don’t mind, I will take those off your hands. I have work to do with them, after which there will be plenty of time for us to converse further. You are welcome to stay here for as long as you like, and I will give you access to my library. You may read any text that you can reach, provided you put everything back when you have finished with it.”
When she had gone, Narky whistled. “A dead God,” he said. “What do you think calardium is, then? Caladoris’ blood? I guess they don’t call it a vein of rock for nothing.”
Hunter nodded along thoughtfully. “Do you think the mountain men know? They called the calardium ‘sacred stones,’ but they did sell it to us. I can’t imagine anyone knowingly selling his God’s blood for white quartz.”
“They didn’t seem like very thoughtful people,” Phaedra pointed out. “They certainly didn’t look like the type of people who would study history or theology. They might not even know why the calardium is sacred to their religion. They probably believe their God is still alive.”
They considered this silently for a time. Criton could see now why Psander had wanted calardium ore: a God’s blood must contain a tremendous amount of power. What new ward could the wizard make out of such power?
“Phaedra,” Criton asked, “why do you think she needed the mushrooms? The calardium seems obvious now, but what’s so special about blueglow mushrooms?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” Phaedra admitted, “but they were growing on a pile of dead bodies. There were all these dead people down there, rotting and sprouting mushrooms. It was awful. One of the farmer ants came right by me, to harvest the mushrooms.”
She shuddered. “I’m lucky to be alive.”
She had never spoken about her fall into the ants’ nest before. Now Criton knew why. Her experience had been even more horrific than he had realized.
“Did you say farmer ants?” asked Narky, realizing, at the same time as Criton did, who the clansmen’s mysterious ‘farmers’ were. “Those inbred bastards.”
“And the mushrooms were growing out of dead bodies?” Hunter asked. “Human bodies?”
Phaedra nodded.
Criton drew in a sharp breath. “Psander said earlier that people all have their own fields of magical energy. If the mushrooms draw that out… you don’t think Psander’s going to kill the villagers, do you? Just to harvest their latent magic?”
“No, of course not!” Phaedra snapped, looking horrified. “She wouldn’t do something like that! It doesn’t even make sense!”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” said Narky. “It would explain why she wanted all these people here.”
“No!” cried Phaedra. “She invited them here for their protection, and because she can’t go outside to buy food or supplies. She needs them so that she won’t starve, that’s all.”
“Are you sure she can’t just summon food with magic?” Hunter asked.
“I’m sure,” said Criton. “Magic exhausts her too. Even if it’s possible to summon food, it would be a huge waste of energy.”
Hunter’s hand fell instinctively to his sword. “Would you bet all the villagers’ lives on that? Who knows how Psander’s magic works? We have to make sure she doesn’t kill anyone.”
“She’s not going to!” Phaedra insisted.
“How you know?” asked Bandu.
“I just – she wouldn’t –” Phaedra sputtered.
Criton let his body revert to its natural state, his claws emerging once more. “It can’t hurt to check with her,” he said.
But when they looked for Psander, she was nowhere to be found. Their climb to the top of the staircase yielded only a locked door, and as much as Hunter knocked, it never opened. They stood there a moment, unsure of what to do. Criton exchanged a glance with Hunter, both embarrassed to have been stymied by a closed door.
“Do you smell something?” asked Narky.
A wisp of blue smoke curled up from beneath the door. It smelled foul.
“Oh Gods, let’s get out of here,” pleaded Phaedra.
They retreated to the library. “There’s got to be something in here about blueglow mushrooms,” Narky said. “Maybe we can find out what she’s doing with them ourselves.”
Phaedra glanced from him to the walls with a sarcastic look, but soon she was limping from bookshelf to bookshelf, checking titles and gathering a steady pile of manuscripts. Hunter did not seem the least bit interested in this task, but he went to help Phaedra carry her load. Narky sat down in a chair.
“Do any of those really look promising?” Criton asked. “I don’t even know where to start looking.”
He turned to Bandu, who was walking beside him. “This is ridiculous,” he said.
She was not even looking at him. “Bandu?” he said, trying to get her attention. But rather than acknowledging him, she suddenly turned and began to run.
Phaedra had collapsed onto the floor. Hunter dropped his pile of books and knelt over her. “Phaedra! Are you all right?”
The girl’s body convulsed as Criton neared. What was wrong with her? Was she sick? Was the smoke from earlier getting to her? Had Psander somehow booby-trapped one of the books?
Bandu understood the situation long before Criton. Without a moment’s hesitation, she fell upon Phaedra and gave her an enormous hug.
“What’s going on?” Narky called out, rising from his chair.
“O Gods,” sobbed Phaedra, “not here, not in front of everyone! I’m sorry,” she said, waving impotently at them, “I didn’t mean to do this.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Hunter.
“I’m a cripple!” the girl cried. “I can’t even carry my own books!”
“You don’t have to,” said Hunter.
Phaedra only sobbed louder. “You don’t understand! I’ll never dance again – I can’t even walk properly. I can’t get on a horse by myself anymore. Psander can’t do anything, and, and, this wasn’t supposed to happen to me!”
Criton did not know what to do. He couldn’t hug her the way Bandu could, and between her and Hunter there was little room to kneel. He simply stood there, feeling useless.
“Psander must be able to do something,” Narky said, finally drawing near. “Couldn’t you ask her if–”
“We asked already,” Criton told him. “Last night. She doesn’t know how.”
“I don’t want to be a cripple!” Phaedra wailed. “I’m no good to anybody like this! My parents would be ashamed of me.”
“That’s not true,” Hunter tried to reassure her.
Phaedra laughed ruefully, tears still flowing from her eyes. “Oh, yes they would. Who would marry me now? I have no money; my family name means nothing to anyone; I’m not pretty anymore – I can’t even walk straight!”
“You’re very pretty,” Criton said, and Bandu glanced at him but said nothing.
Phaedra shook her head. “I’m nothing. I’m nothing.”
“You’re smart,” Hunter told her. “You’re brilliant and quick-witted, and you know all about–”
“Who cares?” shouted Phaedra. “What good is any of that, if even Psander can’t fix my leg?”
After that, nobody knew what to say. It was Bandu and her hug that carried the day in the end. After a few minutes of silence, Phaedra squeezed her hand and thanked her, and began to dry her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to just collapse like that, like a stupid, weak–”
“Like me?” said Hunter.
That stopped her. She blinked uncertainly up at him.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It was bound to catch up with you sometime.”
Finally, Phaedra smiled a little. “Thanks, Hunter.”
They lifted Phaedra to her feet, and Criton helped Hunter gather her books. “Take to rooms,” Bandu commanded them. “This is a bad place.”
They did as she said.
For two weeks, the clouds above Silent Hall never cleared. The courtyard became such a puddle of mud that the villagers began eating all of their meals in Psander’s great hall, and some even slept in the entryway. The islanders saw Psander only twice during this time, since the wizard only emerged from her chambers once a day to eat, and often before dawn. The second time they ran into her, Narky had the wherewithal to ask if she planned to plant blueglow mushrooms in murdered villagers. Psander only shook her head absently and muttered, “No no, that won’t do; I’d run out.” She never specified which resource she was talking about.
As might have been expected, Phaedra spent her time reading. She did not, however, read aloud these days. The boys did not have much to do until Narky discovered a shelf full of maps in Psander’s library, after which they spent their days familiarizing themselves with the landscape as best they could. There was one map that particularly disturbed Criton. It was a map of the continental cities with the territories of each God marked in a different color. On the far right edge of the map was written Mayar – the Sea. On the other three edges, it said Magor – the Wilds.
Bandu, in the meantime, seemed to have contracted some illness that left her feeling tired and uncomfortable. She ate little, and made constant use of her chamber pot. Criton worried that the Gods had heard her blasphemy after all, and had inflicted her with the seeds of this malady before the islanders could find refuge at Silent Hall. He wished he could help, but she would not even let him touch her. Like an animal, she became very defensive when sick.
Actually, the weather was oppressive for all of them. Narky seemed to be always sniffling or snorting, and Hunter had developed a cough. Phaedra rarely left her room. Only Criton, it seemed, still felt healthy, and his health belied his misery. Bandu worried him, and the clouds worried him, and Psander definitely worried him.
He wished they could leave, but Phaedra said that they should wait until the first sunny day, to be sure that the Gods were no longer looking for Bandu. He couldn’t argue with that.
At the end of two weeks, Bandu called for him. He found her sitting up in bed, looking a little better than usual.
“Sit,” she said. “Look. No blood now.” She presented him with her chamber pot.
Criton sat down at her feet, but tried not to look at the pot’s contents. “What do you mean, ‘no blood now?’ Was there blood before? Has your illness gotten that bad?”
“No,” she said, “no, is young.”
“What?” It was beyond his imagination to guess what she was trying to say.
“No blood, is young,” Bandu repeated uselessly, and strangely she smiled. “It is good,” she said.
“If you say so,” said Criton, “but what do you mean about the sickness being young?”
“Not sick, young!” Bandu said, looking exasperated. “No blood! Young!”
Criton put out his hands to stop her. “Bandu, you’ll have to calm down. You’re too excited to make any sense. You have to use enough words to make your meaning cl–”
“I make young!” Bandu laughed, slapping at him. “No blood! Six weeks and no blood!”
Criton’s heart stopped beating.