5

Cineste, northern Khale

THE FIRST RESPECTABLE INN Winter and her companions found in Cineste was the Wolfanger Inn, which lay near the merchants’ quarter of the city. Spring was quickly becoming summer, and she welcomed the late afternoon sun on the streets instead of ice and snow.

The sounds of musical instruments, singing, and loud conversation drifted out to them from inside the inn, but Galce hesitated before entering.

“My garice, I am not sure I am comfortable with this plan.”

Winter turned to regard him. “This is our best option, Galce. We just need to get settled in, then I’ll leave the two of you here with our belongings and find the tiellan inn.” She didn’t intend to stay there, of course. This would be her base of operations while in Cineste. But if Gord, Darrin, and Eranda were in the city, that was the best place for her to start looking for them.

Galce closed his eyes, and Winter rolled hers. “You’ve consulted Chaos a dozen times now.” An exaggeration, but not by much, if Winter had gotten as good at reading the man as she thought. “Chaos approves. It’s your turn to get on board.”

“Very well, my garice.” Galce nodded, and Winter opened the door, allowing both Galce and Urstadt to enter first.

Winter immediately saw why it was called the Wolfanger Inn: dozens of mounted wolf heads decorated the walls, and wolf pelts covered the floor. She grimaced. She wouldn’t have batted an eye at a few pelts or heads, but this was just excessive.

Galce approached the bar, where an innkeeper was pouring ale into a set of mugs on a tray. Winter followed behind him, doing her best to look meek. She drew a few glances, but most humans in the inn apparently still didn’t mind a servile tiellan.

“We’ll take two rooms,” Galce said.

“I’ll take two silvers, then,” the innkeeper grunted. He didn’t look up at Galce until he’d handed the tray of ale mugs to one of his servers. When he saw Winter, the corners of his mouth turned down.

“She a friend of yours?” the innkeeper said, regarding Winter with narrowed eyes.

Galce looked back at Winter.

Bloody stick with the plan.

“Course not,” Galce said, turning back to the innkeeper. “She’s a servant of mine. The extra room is for her and my guard.”

Good. Just as we’d practiced.

The innkeeper nodded. “As it should be,” he said. “Two silvers, then.”

Galce paid the man, and Winter and her companions were about to walk up the stairs to their rooms when the common room’s commotion quickly died down, and the entire inn grew eerily silent.

Winter turned to see a young couple that had just entered the inn. A husband and wife, she suspected. They looked very young, maybe even Winter’s age, but they had three children. Two girls stood between them, and a little boy at their feet. Winter could not imagine such a life. To have three children at her age? Such a thing seemed impossible. She had married late, and then her husband had been killed. That had changed much more besides.

The man was human, but the woman, Winter quickly realized, was tiellan, and each of their children bore the pointed ears of the tiellan race—slightly smaller than their mother’s, as was the case with most mixed-race children, but prominent all the same. She hadn’t even realized the woman was tiellan because she wasn’t wearing a siara, and her dress was much more stylish than that of a traditional tiellan.

That could have been my life, Winter thought. She had married Knot, a human, in the hope of making her life better than it might have been otherwise. Based on the reaction of the people in this inn, however, Winter began to doubt whether it actually would have made anything better at all.

“Bloody elf-lover,” someone in the common room muttered. A few grunts and shouts of agreement followed.

“You aren’t welcome here!” someone else shouted.

Winter was about to turn and usher Galce and Urstadt up the steps when the next comment arrested her.

“Look at those mongrels,” someone laughed. “Those brats are somewhere between human and tiellan. Probably the worst of both.”

Winter turned. They were just children, for Canta’s sake. But she felt a firm hand on her shoulder.

“You wanted to keep a low profile,” Urstadt whispered. “Getting involved here will not help with that.”

Winter clenched her jaw, torn between intervening, somehow, and leaving it all behind her. She hadn’t come to Cineste for this. But was it really possible for her to stand by while it happened?

Winter closed her eyes, and Chaos shone white in her mind. She swore under her breath. What did Chaos know about this, anyway?

“I… we just want a room,” the husband said, stepping in front of his family protectively. “Just arrived here from Triah, and—”

The innkeeper stepped forward. Winter’s core tightened; she had no confidence this man would help things, and her instincts were correct.

“We can get you a room, friend,” the innkeeper said, spreading his arms wide, “it’s your elf wife and mongrel children we can’t accommodate. My apologies. You understand, I’m sure.”

The husband shook his head, eyes darting around in confusion. Things in Cineste were apparently much worse for tiellans than they were in Triah. Winter noticed a group of human men edging their way towards the family—members of the City Watch, Winter realized—and she clenched her fists.

The poor fool.

The man began to corral his family towards the door. “We’ll just find somewhere else to—”

The violence came more suddenly than Winter would have expected. Two of the armored men grabbed the husband, one of them bringing his gauntleted fist into the man’s gut. The wife screamed, reaching out for her children, but four other City Watchmen converged on the family, and forced the woman and her children out the door.

“Where are you taking them?” the husband screamed, then gasped as the watchmen punched him in the gut again.

Winter jammed her hand into her faltira pouch and took a crystal. Urstadt’s grip on her shoulder tightened, but Winter didn’t care. Urstadt would not control her. She closed her eyes, saw that Chaos was still white, and opened them again. Chaos didn’t bloody control her, either.

“Stay here,” Winter said to Urstadt and Galce.

She charged out of the inn after the watchmen that had taken the rest of the family, frost warming her veins.

* * *

It didn’t take her long to catch up to them. She made quick work of the four watchmen, each of them dying with a look of surprise on his face as his own weapon turned on him.

Winter approached the tiellan woman and her children. The young ones were sobbing while the woman tried to shield their eyes from the murdered men that had only recently taken them away roughly from their father.

“Come with me,” Winter said, “I can get you somewhere safe.” Or as safe as a tiellan could be in Cineste, she imagined.

The woman stared at Winter, eyes wide. “Who are you?” she asked.

Winter shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. But I suggest following me. If more watchmen catch you around those bodies, things’ll get much worse for all of you.”

“What about my husband?” the woman asked.

Winter said nothing in response. She couldn’t guarantee anything on that front.

Fortunately, the woman gathered her children around her, and followed Winter to the tiellan quarter. Unfortunately, the one place in Cineste Winter knew tiellans would be just so happened to be the last place on the Sfaera she wanted to go.

The woman and her children followed Winter to the Black Eye Inn, near the center of the tiellan quarter. The same inn she and Lian had visited when they were searching for Knot, after he’d run away in the wake of their disrupted wedding. At the time she’d been so caught up in her quest that she hadn’t even noticed the inn’s name, but now that she stood in front of it, a large faded sign drew her eyes.

Her mind had been occupied by other things back then. A shiver crept up her spine.

The fault doesn’t lie with you, she remembered Kali saying. End of story.

Winter believed that, now. But that did not take away the memory of the man who had pulled her out of this place—of Lian knocked unconscious, of the tiellans in the bar who had pretended not to see what was happening. The memory of his rough hands on her, of her helplessness. She’d been rescued by a human, of all people, by Nash, her first mentor in psimancy. She wished she had not asked Galce and Urstadt to stay behind. Almost immediately, she ridiculed herself for such a desire. Why did she need their help? She had faltira. What had happened to her here, in a nearby alley, would never happen to her again.

“Is that where you’re taking us?” the tiellan woman beside her asked.

“Yes,” Winter said. Fortunately, the children were no longer sobbing. The empty way they stared at nothing made Winter think they were anything but calm. She folded her arms tightly, trying to think of something other than the terrible things that might have happened to these four had she not intervened.

And the terrible things that, in all likelihood, might still happen to them in a place like Cineste.

Winter pulled her eyes away from the family and looked around. Here in the tiellan quarter, Winter saw traditionally dressed tiellans for the first time in nearly a year. Her unusual attire had already drawn some questioning glances. The tiellan women wore floor-length dresses and the traditional siaras— wide, thick scarves wrapped around the shoulders and neck; the men sported loose-fitting trousers and long-sleeved shirts, along with their wide-brimmed araifs. Winter could recall, at the edge of her memory, a time when she had found such sights comforting. Their effect was different now. Winter had not worn a siara since she had crept through the Blood Gate of Navone with Knot, Lian, and the others. She no longer cared to wear one, let alone the hot, oppressive dresses that were traditional among tiellan women. Instead she wore the dark leather outfit Galce had tailored for her in Izet. Sleek, form-fitting, utilitarian. Very different from the garb of any other tiellan woman Winter had seen in Cineste. Her hair didn’t help, either; she’d woven both sides of her raven-black hair against her skull in tight braids that snaked behind her ears, while she’d made the braids and twists at the crown of her head looser and more voluminous. All of the weaves opened up at the back of her head, falling down past her shoulders in untied locks. Tiellan hairstyles were never so intricate.

Her discomfort stemmed from more than appearance, however. As much as she disagreed with some of their traditions, most tiellans she had known were good folk. Kind, trying to do right by those around them. Winter had no idea what she qualified as at the moment, but “good folk” did not seem high on the potential list.

Taking a deep breath, Winter steeled herself. She was glad she still felt frost in her veins. Recently she’d been taking one every other day, even though she rarely needed to use her telenic powers. But if she didn’t take faltira, she just did not feel like herself. The drug did not burn or freeze her the way it used to; now, she felt only the slightest warmth, the hint of a chill.

“Come on,” Winter said, and led the family into the inn.

Her first order of business was to see the tiellan family off. She grabbed one of the servers as she walked in, and nodded toward the woman and her children.

“They’re not in good shape. They need help. You’ll see that they get it.”

The server, an older woman, looked from Winter to the tiellan woman and her children. Her face creased with empathy, but not surprise. Helping tiellans in need must be something she did often, lately.

Winter did not look back at the family as she walked away and further into the common room. The inside of the Black Eye Inn looked just as familiar as the outside, although Winter had only seen it at night, in the middle of winter; the light of the setting sun made for an odd change. She recognized immediately the round table where she, desperately searching for Knot, had approached the human nobleman. How naive she had been, then.

And there, a few paces away, was the table at which she had sat with Lian.

Winter did not allow her gaze to linger. Instead, she walked straight to the bar, asking after the innkeeper.

“That’d be me, darlin’,” the tiellan man behind the counter responded. “What can I do for ya?”

“I’m looking for—”

“Winter?”

Winter turned at the sound of the voice behind her. A deep bass voice, one she recognized immediately.

“Gord?”

The huge tiellan man rushed forward immediately, wrapping his arms around her, and the two of them embraced in silence for what felt like a very long time. How light she felt in his arms—he lifted her like he had when she was a child. But soon, the weight of how much she had changed crashed down on her. She resisted the urge to squirm; as uncomfortable as she felt, she wasn’t willing to let this moment go.

When Gord released her, tears were streaming down his cheeks and into his beard. Gord was of an age with her father, but his shoulders were still broad, his arms thick with muscles. Last she’d seen him, he’d been gravely injured after the Ceno monks had attacked her wedding party. She smiled to see him looking so strong now.

“Goddess rising, girl.” Gord placed his heavy hands on Winter’s shoulders. “Where have you been all this time? Is Lian with you? And Knot?”

The mention of the two men opened a chasm in Winter’s belly she had almost forgotten was there. She ought to cry at this moment, at having to tell Gord that they’d both been killed. She should feel sadness. But, beneath the dull burn of frost, she didn’t feel anything at all. She only shook her head.

“Oh, Winter.” Gord embraced her once more, but he must have sensed her stiffness this time, as he released her much more quickly. “My apologies if I’m bein’ overbearing,” he said, his voice husky. “It’s just… I thought I’d never see you again.”

“I am happy to have found you,” Winter said. She meant it. As awkward as she felt, she wanted to be accepted by Gord, to return to whatever semblance of life she could muster.

But she could not stop one hand from straying to the faltira pouch at her waist.

“I looked for you in Pranna,” Winter said, finally able to muster her thoughts. “Why did you leave?”

“Had to, child. Things in Pranna… life in that town ain’t what it once was. Goddess rising, it ain’t been that way in a good long while.”

“Did anyone else come with you?” She inquired after all of her friends from home, of course, but again fear rose in her as she thought about informing Lian’s parents of his death.

“Well, all of us that remained left together, of course. Eranda and Darrin and their little ones are here. I can take you to them, if you like.”

“Please,” Winter said.

* * *

Winter found it difficult to navigate the contrasting joy, fear, and shame of the next few hours. Darrin and Eranda, and their children, Sena, Lelanda, and Tohn, received Winter with tears of happiness into their small living quarters, a tiny basement area in the tiellan quarter of Cineste. Tears of pain followed, when Winter told them that Lian and Knot had both been killed. She refrained from details, for now—how to even begin to explain her journey to these people, Winter could not fathom.

Igriss and Huro were nowhere to be seen. When Winter asked after them, Gord lowered his head.

“They didn’t last long, after you and Lian left,” he said sadly.

Winter’s gut tightened. “Humans?” she asked. “Did they…?”

Gord’s eyes stared out into nothing. “No. No, for once humans had nothing to do with it. After they’d discovered Lian had left with you, they just… they wasted away. Both passed within a year of you being gone.”

Guilt pierced Winter’s chest. Lian’s parents had not been particularly young; her father had once told her they had married late, and even then had great difficulty bearing children. Lian was the only baby Igriss had carried that survived leaving the womb. Nevertheless, she did not remember them being particularly weak or frail at the time of her wedding to Knot. She could only imagine what the couple had gone through when they found out Lian had chased after her—a woman already married to another man.

And now they, like their son, were gone.

As Winter spoke with Gord, Darrin, and Eranda, her sense of dissociation increased. Where her friends were welcoming and loving, Winter felt only an aching emptiness. She attempted to return their affection, and by the Goddess, wanted to connect with them, but as the effects of faltira faded from her blood, she felt nothing strong enough to hold a candle to its fire—muted though it had become—let alone replace it.

She had hoped to rediscover herself by returning to Pranna, and that hope had remained at the thought of seeing her friends again. But, now that she was here, the hope itself seemed foolish. Even before her wedding, before she’d ever met Knot, she’d always felt a part of her was missing, different. It was no use rediscovering a person that was already broken to begin with.

Despite her disappointment, Winter did feel some happiness at seeing her friends again. Tohn and Lelanda had both grown so much that Winter hardly recognized them, and Sena was now a woman of sixteen summers. Winter could remember thinking what a beautiful couple Darrin and Eranda made, both with long hair and smooth, refined features, and while that beauty remained, the past months had clearly taken a toll. Their faces were gaunt, ashen, and creased.

Winter coasted through the conversation, like her father’s boat would skim over calm waters in summertime.

What did you expect from this reunion?

Something more than this.

Winter was contemplating leaving, and perhaps never returning, when something Gord said caught her attention.

“Did you say Druids?” Winter asked.

Gord nodded solemnly. The conversation had turned to the state of affairs for tiellans in Cineste.

“Lian spoke of the Druids,” Winter said, almost involuntarily. “He told me he’d been coming to meetings in Cineste. Trying to bring back the Age of Marvels or something.” Winter had thought his words crazy at the time, about how the tiellans should be returned to their former glory, how tiellans lived in harmony with the Elder Gods and with Canta and how things could be that way again. She had scoffed at such things.

You’ll understand, one day, he’d said. You’ll understand why this is so important.

Gord grunted. “Always suspected that boy had a rebellious streak in him,” he said. “Lian was quiet, but he had a strength to him, too. Never could stand for the injustice done to us.”

“Do you both… do you both attend their meetings?” Winter asked.

Darrin looked down at the dirt floor, silent. Instead, Eranda spoke up.

“Aye,” she said. “I do, with Gord, on occasion. We’ve yet to convince Darrin of their… importance.”

“Can’t leave our children by themselves,” Darrin mumbled.

“Sena is more than old enough to tend them for a few hours, love. That ain’t what’s keeping you from them.” Eranda glanced at Winter. “But this ain’t the time or place for such arguments. We can talk of something else, Winter, if it throws you off. If this is somethin’ that Lian—”

“No,” Winter said quickly, surprised at her own insistence. “Please, I’d like to hear more about the meetings. I’d like to attend one, if that’s all right.”

Eranda’s eyes widened. “I don’t think that’d be a problem at all,” she said. “You’d be welcome among them, I’m sure of it.”

Winter was as surprised as Eranda. But, considering how lost she felt around the people who’d helped raise her, perhaps she sought acceptance in something greater.

She had to belong somewhere.

Gord coughed. “Might want to find yourself a siara, though, child. Best be respectful of such things at these meetings.”

“Gord,” Eranda whispered. It was considered bad form for a tiellan man to ask about a woman’s siara, and similarly taboo for a woman to ask about a man’s araif.

“It’s all right,” Winter said. “I’ll think about it, Gord, but the siara never did anything for me before. I can’t imagine it would now if I were to put one on.”

The silence that greeted her told Winter how shocking her statement was to her rediscovered friends. She did not mind. She was done following rules just because of tradition.

“You will take me, then?” Winter asked.

Gord still seemed reluctant, but Eranda smiled. “Of course, Winter. We will take you to one of the meetings.”

“Good,” Winter said.

After they had shared a meal together—a meager thing prepared by Darrin and Eranda, but savory and filling—Winter was about to say her goodbyes when Eranda pulled her aside.

“You have a place to stay?” Eranda asked.

Winter nodded.

“You’re welcome here anytime.”

“Of course,” Winter responded, attempting a smile. “Thank you, Eranda.”

“Are you all right, Winter?” Eranda’s dark blue eyes looked into Winter so deeply that she was afraid Eranda might see, somehow, everything she was trying to hide.

Winter looked away. “I’m fine, Eranda. Things have been difficult, but…”

Eranda embraced her, and Winter was surprised to feel the woman crying softly against her.

“I’m so sorry,” Eranda said, whispering as she wept. “I am so sorry for what you’ve gone through, for all you must have had to do to survive. I am so sorry we could not have helped you more.”

Winter patted Eranda’s back softly, wanting desperately to comfort the woman but feeling completely inadequate. What could she say? What could she possibly do to help this woman? Eranda’s feelings were faulty, that much was clear. Nothing Eranda could have done would have changed anything about Winter’s life over the past year. Why Eranda felt badly for this, she could not say. But that did not change the fact that she wanted to stop Eranda’s tears, to take away her pain.

Eranda still felt her wounds deeply, while Winter’s own pain had become so dull she hardly noticed it anymore. Perhaps, somehow, Winter could do something to help Eranda. It was something she would consider.

“There’s something I want to give you,” Eranda said, disappearing into the other room.

Winter heard laughter, and turned to see Gord, Darrin, and Sena playing a game with the younger children, Lelanda and Tohn. Bridge Over, the game was called. Winter could remember playing it with Lian, Gord, and her father when she was very young.

Eranda came back out, a cloth held tightly in her hands. When Winter recognized the thing, she froze.

It was the swaddling cloth she had received during her Doting, the day of her wedding.

Eranda extended the cloth, draped over her hands, to Winter. “You left this with us, when you and Lian went after Knot. I know it wasn’t practical to take with you, but I kept it, in case you ever returned. In case you ever…”

In case I ever needed it. She could not imagine having a child in this world. With Knot, there was a part of her that had thought it might one day be a possibility. She had even dreamt such a thing, a vividly real dream, when Kali had first administered faltira to her. But those days were gone. A great dread welled up within her at the thought of even touching the swaddling cloth. She wanted to reach out and take it, just to be polite, but she could not. A consuming fear stopped her, as if she no longer had control of herself.

Eranda, after a moment, must have realized Winter could not take the cloth. Quickly she lowered it, tucking it under one arm. “It was presumptuous of me to offer it, after everything you have gone through. I should’ve waited.”

“It’s all right,” Winter said softly, tearing her eyes away from the pale swaddling cloth to meet Eranda’s eyes once more.

Eranda nodded, ever so slightly.

“I need to go.” Winter made for the door. She turned back to look at each of them, these people from her past, who had shown her such kindness. Kindness she did not deserve. “I will see each of you again soon.”

“Winter,” Eranda said, catching her eye once more. “I will keep it for you. Until you are ready.”

* * *

The woman drifts in the Void, sometimes slowly, ripples of color circling outward at each step, sometimes levitating, sinking within herself and into the blackness of the great expanse around her.

In the Void, the woman has realized, everything is peaceful. “Peaceful” is perhaps not the right word, but the feeling comes as close as the woman can imagine to peace, short of death. The woman senses Kali’s presence nearby, as she always does, but ignores her former teacher. Kali is always close, but has not approached since Chaos dictated the woman attack Kali with her newly discovered acumenic tendra. The woman senses other presences as well, nearby and very far away, but none of them are of any import. None of them could bring back what the woman has lost.

One of these presences is close. Something large, imposing, a force the woman has never encountered before, neither in the Void nor out of it. The presence looms, a bright red light that slowly forms in front of the woman.

The woman scowls, halting her slow drift. The red starlight coalesces into a man, bigger than any she has ever seen, all muscle and sinew and unadulterated power. His face is indistinct, like Kali’s shifting visage, but where Kali’s features shift, merge, and transform between different faces, this figure’s visage is blank, a smooth blur where eyes, nose, and mouth should be.

Nevertheless, the form speaks to her, its voice hardened and sharp.

“Hello, Winter.”

The woman steps back, light rippling away from her.

“My name is Mefiston,” the form says.

The woman is not familiar with the name. And yet the way she feels, the sensation of anger welling up within her, resonates. She has felt it before, but not like this. She has felt fear like this before, but not anger.

“You are one of the Nine.”

“The Nine,” Mefiston echoes, laughing. The laugh is soft, gentle, in sharp contrast to the steely edge of his speech. “A peculiar moniker. Confusing. There were Nine Disciples, once, and they wrote Nine Scriptures. Nine Marvels of the Sfaera, and Nine Ages in Eternity. And, before there was one Goddess, there were Nine.”

Mefiston has now formed enough that his footsteps, too, ripple in the Void, though his face remains shrouded. She realizes, if she were to see him in the Sfaera, he would be the biggest man she has ever seen. Not just in height, but in girth as well, formed of muscle and sinew, with no excess to speak of.

“You are Wrath,” the woman says.

“I am Wrath.”

“And you serve Azael?”

A bright flash of red emanates from the form, and the woman takes another step back.

“I serve no one,” Mefiston says, and the woman cannot be sure but she thinks the form grows larger as he says it.

“You are associates, then.”

“Azael does not concern us,” Mefiston says. “I am here to discuss something else with you.”

“And what is that?”

“Your ascendancy.”

The woman must be cautious. She speaks to one of the Nine Daemons, to a lieutenant of Azael—the woman knows this to be the case, whatever Mefiston himself says—and that act alone puts her in great danger.

But the woman has cared little for her own well-being for some time. She sees no reason to begin again now.

“I see I will have to explain further. I would like you to be my avatar, Winter. I would like to invest in you my power, and for you to be my mouthpiece on the Sfaera.”

“Why don’t you just go there yourself?”

Mefiston paces, now, light rippling back and forth from him, extending out into the blackness. “I will, eventually. But gaining an avatar is part of that process.”

“That did not work out so well for your master.”

“He is not—” Mefiston stops, another flash of red light bursting outward. The Daemon’s huge frame is still for a moment, before he finally speaks again. “He is not my master.”

It seems to the woman that such vehement denial belies underlying truth, but she says nothing about it.

“You want me to be for you what Daval was for Azael?”

A low growl emanates from Mefiston’s frame, but he eventually responds. “Yes. That is what I want.”

She laughs, letting the sound ring through the Void. When it fades, she looks at Mefiston, jaw set.

“Are you done?”

A third flash bursts forth from Mefiston’s frame, and for a moment the woman anticipates conflict, and a thrill rushes through her, blended with anger, anticipation, and fear.

Instead Mefiston, too, laughs; the same soft, fluttering laugh she heard from him earlier.

“Very well, girl. I figured it was worth the asking. I will not force myself upon you, but the day will come when you’ll wish you’d accepted my offer.”

“Forgive me,” the woman says, “if I choose not to believe a word you say. And please, take my words to heart.”

Then the woman winks out of the Void, and feels herself rushing back to her body in the Sfaera.