4: BALANCED ON THE EDGE

Kihrin’s story
Inside Vol Karoth’s prison

Just after Teraeth’s vision

I came back from Teraeth’s memories to find myself still the same distance from Vol Karoth, both of us still armed and circling around each other. The city looked much the same—bleak and dry and washed with gray. Vol Karoth was the same black shape cut out of reality.

Disbelief and rage cycled through me, but I stamped down on those emotions as unproductive.

“What was that?” I asked him. “You think showing me Teraeth’s memories is some sort of gotcha?”

Oh, but it wasn’t just his memories, Vol Karoth said. It was his reaction to what you did. Because you betrayed him. You betrayed both of them with your lack of trust. With your lack of faith. With your secrets. Did you enjoy hurting them?

I shuddered and tried to retreat, but I knew too well that I’d hear his voice for some time when we were in this kind of proximity to each other, even if I couldn’t see him.

“Fuck you,” I told him. “I was protecting them.”

And now they’re here. Well done.

“Leave them alone,” I said.

I didn’t bring them here. Thank Senera for that. And let’s look at your “friends,” shall we? Murderers and terrorists. Traitors. More than one assassin. What a fine group of upstanding people.

“Better than you,” I spat. Not exactly my finest retort. He was hitting pretty close to the mark when “Yeah, but what are you?” was my big comeback.

You’re a hypocrite. Vol Karoth seemed bizarrely angry about the whole thing. He sounded insulted.

“I never claimed not to be.” I stepped away from him, trying to put some distance between us.

The thing was, I could feel the people in the Lighthouse. I mean, I knew everyone who was there: Janel and Teraeth; Galen of all people; his wife, Sheloran; Jarith’s widowed wife, Kalindra (my Kalindra,¹ which I guess just proved Vol Karoth had a point about me and assassins); Thurvishar; Senera; Qown; Talea; and Xivan. Oh, and one more, just to make it extra hilarious: Talon. Enough for quite a party.²

I felt their presence in a manner far beyond simple recognition. It’s like each of them was a book, something I could pull down from a shelf, flip through at my leisure. I wondered if this was how Thurvishar felt about being a telepath, because it was terribly intrusive. I didn’t want to go stealing through people’s memories, but I couldn’t help it. I just knew things.

Teraeth and Kalindra were both a mess. Janel was furious. Thurvishar was both furious and worried. Emotions were running pretty hot, as it happened. Hell, Xivan had been the person who’d stabbed Talea, which would have had me a little more bothered if I couldn’t tell just how guilty Xivan was feeling about that.

And Galen … wow. Galen.

But Senera was the one who had my attention the most at that moment, both because I was annoyed at her for bringing everyone here and putting them at risk but also … also, I was proud of her. Really proud.

I considered Vol Karoth. It felt like a lull just before he was going to charge again, and the dark god didn’t disappoint. I managed to block him for long enough to dodge to the side and roll, bringing me a few feet farther away when I stood.

“You want to see the people I call friends?” I smirked. “Okay, let’s do this.”

I opened the book of Senera’s mind, found the particular memories I wanted, and shoved them at Vol Karoth the same way he’d done to me.

The world changed.

Senera’s memory

Twenty days after the Battle of the Well of Spirals

The Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor

Senera closed the cover of Thurvishar’s book and leaned back. There were a few details that she hadn’t known and a few more that were uncomfortable and best forgotten. Thurvishar had delivered the account into her hands almost shyly, his expression sheepish, as if it were a damn bouquet of flowers. Most of his allies would kill him if they found out Thurvishar was handing his notes over to the enemy like this.

And Senera absolutely was the enemy. She knew this. They both knew this.

This was fact. She had the body count to prove it.

So she’d retired to the Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor to read the book. She had to see …

She had to see what would need editing before showing the manuscript to Relos Var. It’s not that she had anything to hide, because she didn’t, but she’d been certain Thurvishar had included little sabotages, subtle suggestions that Senera might not be completely loyal. Thurvishar knew the value of turning Relos Var against her, to force Senera to turn against Relos Var. She’d been right to be that paranoid, because more than a few such traps existed in the chronicle.

Senera didn’t know what was worse: that Thurvishar dared to guess at so many of her inner thoughts and feelings, or that he’d so often guessed correctly.³ She’d needed to excise large portions before the final account would be safe to pass along.

She wanted to be furious at Thurvishar for daring to tell parts of the story from her perspective, as if he had any way of knowing … but he did. Ah, he did.

She knew the nature of his witchgift.

Spitefully, she pulled out the Name of All Things. Senera asked the Cornerstone what Thurvishar had purposefully edited out of the manuscript.⁴

When Senera finished, she stared at the pages in shock, in dull, stupefied horror. If Thurvishar had been there, she’d have slapped him. How could he be that … that … stupid? That purely and unarguably stupid. In all the history of the Twin Worlds, had anyone else ever been that completely stupid? How could either of those fools possibly think that such an absurd, ludicrous, obstinate, demented plan would work?

Except it might work. She knew it might work. Maybe. There was the tiniest chance …

Then she asked one last question: Where is Talon now?

Senera left Shadrag Gor once she had the answer.

It didn’t occur to her until much later, until much too late in fact, that what she should have done—what Thurvishar’s enemy would’ve done—was first tell Relos Var.

---

A few hours later, she stood on the outskirts of Stonegate Pass in eastern Khorvesh, scanning the skies. She took care to stay away from any imperial sky watchers who might prove an inconvenience. The air was hot and dry. It might almost have been considered a lovely day, under different circumstances. Senera took no notice of the weather, except to be thankful it was clear enough to see.

She waited the entire day and still saw no sign of the mimic. Senera despaired that she’d miscalculated projecting Talon’s likely path. The sun set to the east, and the blanket of night reached out to cover the land, and still there was no sign of her.

Until there was.

Senera might have missed it in daytime, but she’d learned some tricks from Qown he’d never meant to teach. She’d been searching by heat as well as by sight, and Talon ran hotter than a bird should. So either Talon, or a magical adept trying the same trick, flying out of the Blight.

So: Talon.

Senera waited until Talon had flown past the line of sight of anyone at Stonegate and then made her move. As attacks went, hers was simple: she wove an invisible net in the air, a spiderweb hanging without supports, while she waited with ready glyph-inscribed sheets of paper. Talon hit the net and tumbled; Senera used the distraction to transform the glyphs into skeins of light and shoved the bundles of tenyé created toward the mimic’s flailing shape. The glyphs hit and triggered. That quickly, the fight was over.

A bird fell from the sky and landed in a glowing tangle of chain and spellwork. Talon fell just next to a clearing, surrounded by chaparral and scrub brush, the sort of place where Senera had been told they grew the most amazing olibanum. The air smelled of balsam resin and old, dried wood.

By the time Senera reached the crash site, Talon had attempted multiple escapes and had each time failed. She no longer looked like a bird. The shape she’d taken made Senera’s stomach knot.

Talon looked like Kihrin. Exactly like. The monster had copied every detail perfectly.

“What the fuck, Senera?” Talon scolded her in Kihrin’s voice. “If you wanted to talk to me so badly, you could have just asked.”

Senera bent down next to the mimic and grabbed her by the hair. “Did you do it?”

Talon—and it was absolutely Talon because Kihrin had never learned a spell to change into a bird—stared at her blankly. “Could you be more specific?”

“Did you kill Kihrin?” Senera sneered.

“Senera…” Talon looked at her like she’d gone insane. The act was so good that for a second Senera wondered herself. “I’m right here.”

“Talon, I asked the Name of All Things where to find you,” Senera told the mimic. She saw the precise moment when Talon stopped pretending, when she realized the game was done.

Talon’s eyes widened. “That … Why were you even looking for me?”

Senera let go of Talon’s hair. “Thurvishar gave your plot away.”

Talon started cursing.

Senera felt a profound degree of annoyance with herself, at how troubled she was by the idea of Kihrin’s death. They weren’t friends. They’d never been friends. She didn’t even like him.⁵ “Did you kill Kihrin?” she asked one more time.

“You didn’t ask your stone?”

“I did. But I want to hear you admit it.” She grabbed Talon’s arm and dragged the mimic to her feet. “Let’s take a trip.”

Talon eyed the woman. “Where?”

“Kharas Gulgoth,” Senera said as she started to cast the spell to open a gate. “Don’t worry. I know the way.”

Talon began struggling again, for what good it did. “Are you out of your mind? You know what’s awake in the center of Kharas Gulgoth? You can’t go there. That’s insane!”

“Well, you are the expert on insanity.” Senera pinned one of the binding glyphs in midair so she could use both hands to cast the spell. When she finished, she picked up the glyph again. “Let’s go visit Vol Karoth, shall we?”

Senera ignored the mimic’s struggling and dragged her. She had to cast another spell to manage it; she wasn’t strong enough normally. That one, she’d learned from Janel.

The thing was, Senera knew perfectly well how foolish this was. Relos Var had told her all about the expected outcomes of what would happen after Vol Karoth woke. But for that same reason, she knew she had a small but definite window before she faced her own annihilation.

Enough time to slip in and see for herself. Enough time to know for sure what Thurvishar and Kihrin had done. And as a consequence, decide what she would do in return.

If people were going to bandy words like insane around, it wouldn’t be because she was suicidal.

The gate opened. Senera pulled Talon through.

It wasn’t perfectly dark in the center of the Blight, but only because of magic. The buildings glowed. Only they had long ceased to be buildings. What Senera saw instead was the web of magical supports that had once outlined structures now crumbled beneath them, atrophied by Vol Karoth or age or both. The rainbow hues of Tya’s Veil washed the night sky. The air smelled of nothing.

But neither Senera nor Talon were disintegrating. Nothing was disintegrating. Not buildings, not paving stones, not flesh.

Senera looked up to the top of the main building. Seven rays of light streaked to the center from distant horizons. They would continue to do so even though four of the Immortals who powered those wards were clinically dead. The prison still held, even if it no longer trapped its occupant in a state of slumber.

But something was wrong. Vol Karoth wasn’t fighting to break free anymore. He wasn’t pulling on tenyé so hard it literally broke apart all physical matter in proximity.

Something—someone—was distracting him.

She stared at the prison, not quite able to force herself to take the next step. Then Talon started laughing. When the wizard glared at her, Talon said, “Oh, but you’ve come all this way. Don’t you want to go see for yourself?”

She pushed down her temptation to hit the mimic. Also, Talon was right. Senera did want to see for herself, because apparently, the Arric family weren’t the only ones capable of acts of extraordinary hubris.⁶ She walked inside the great hall and studied the fallen god of the sun.

The room must have been grand, elegant, once. Someone even tried to repair parts of it, which must have been damaged when nine proto-dragons had fled into the firestorms accompanying their births. Now it was a corpse, which didn’t smell of … anything. Not sulfur or fungus, not dirt or desert or decay. The wards provided light, but they just emphasized how utterly dark the figure they trapped truly was. Senera studied the god of annihilation and felt something lodge in her throat.

This was without a doubt the bravest act that she had ever seen, the most literally selfless. Kihrin had to have known he couldn’t come back from this. Even if it worked—even if everything went right, which it couldn’t—he’d stop being Kihrin. He’d return to being S’arric or Vol Karoth. He’d sacrificed his souls answering the question the Eight Immortals and Relos Var never dared.

It killed her to know it was a sacrifice utterly made in vain.

“I assume Kihrin’s in there somewhere,” Talon said. “I wonder what they’re talking about.”

Senera narrowed her eyes and didn’t dignify the mimic with a glare. “Was that the plan? Kihrin and Vol Karoth would just … talk?”

“Of course not!” Talon protested. “Kihrin’s a complete whole soul, and Vol Karoth’s a tattered remnant of one. Kihrin’s going to—” Talon stopped and stared at Senera, apparently realizing she had been about to spell out the entire scheme.

“I’ll find out no matter what,” Senera reminded her.

“Will you?” Talon no longer acted like a struggling, defiant teenager. “That sounds like something Thurvishar would say.” There was something in Talon’s gaze—Kihrin’s gaze, because she still looked like him—that reminded Senera so much of Kihrin when he had one of those annoying little moments of inspiration, of insight. Senera felt a chill. She had to keep reminding herself this wasn’t Kihrin.

But Talon had all of Kihrin’s memories, and if she really had slain Kihrin, she even had his mental map. Talon was as close to being “Kihrin” as it was possible to be without actually possessing the man’s souls.

“I’m nothing like Thurvishar.” Senera clenched her teeth. The problem was that, even without using the Name of All Things, she had a reasonably good idea exactly what Thurvishar and Kihrin had tried to do. “You thought Vol Karoth was a child,” Senera said. “You thought Kihrin would be able to just take over.”

Talon didn’t answer. She watched Senera like a fox waiting for the startled mouse to move. It felt that way even though Talon was still bound.

Senera’s gimlet eyes glared. “You idiots,” she sneered. “Vol Karoth’s not a child. He’s all the darkness and hate and malice that ever existed inside the leader of the Eight Immortals, inside the man so talented it drove Relos Var sick with jealousy. And anyway, Kihrin and Thurvishar forgot about time, didn’t they?”

Only then did Talon seem uncertain. “Time? What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s literally no time!” She waved her hand toward the trapped silhouette in the center of the room, which seemed to be floating. But only if one didn’t understand he had literally destroyed everything within twenty-five feet of himself, carving a perfect sphere out of the nearby physical matter, and hadn’t yet had time to start falling. “Time’s slowed to a crawl for Vol Karoth. That means it has for Kihrin too. He’ll have no chance to do anything before Relos Var is ready with his plans, before Relos Var frees Vol Karoth. And that means Vol Karoth will very much still be in charge when he’s unleashed on the world. Those idiots didn’t think this through!”⁷

Senera realized she was shouting.

Talon stared at her again. And then, slowly, the mimic smiled.

“What do you have to be happy about?” Senera said. “Do you think I’m going to let you live?”

Talon’s smile didn’t falter. “I think if you meant to turn me in to Relos Var, he’d be here right now, and we wouldn’t be having this ‘conversation.’”

Senera felt her heart stop. She felt the whole world, or maybe just her whole world, come to a stuttering, horrified, paralyzed stop.

She … she hadn’t told Relos Var.

Senera hadn’t even thought to tell Relos Var. She’d only ever thought about ensuring he didn’t find out.

Talon’s smile grew wider. “Because here’s the thing, ducky. You just looked at the big shadow man hanging up here, knowing that Kihrin sacrificed his life for the chance he could screw up all of Relos Var’s and Xaltorath’s plans, and you didn’t think he was an idiot. Naïve, maybe. A bit too quick to rush to action, sure. But not an idiot.”

“I did—”

“Don’t pretend. You’re not hard to read when you’re shouting. What you thought was: Relos Var would never be selfless enough to do this.”

Senera exhaled.

“You did, didn’t you? You don’t have to admit it. It can just be our little secret.” Talon lifted her chin. “Var’s perfectly content to sacrifice others for his cause, to have someone else pay the price, but to step up to the altar himself?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh no. Not himself. He’s too important. Too essential. A universe without Relos Var is a universe that might as well be lost, isn’t it?”

“Shut up,” Senera repeated.

“He’d have never done this, not even if he knew for an absolute fact that It. Would. Work.”

“Shut up!”

“And so the question I have for you, Senera—”

“Please stop talking,” Senera said, her voice hitching on the last word. Her legs felt like they might crumple beneath her any second.

“—is, what are you going to do about it?”

Senera wiped both eyes with a thumb. “That fucking bastard.”

Talon raised an eyebrow. “Relos Var?”

“No, Thurvishar!” Senera spat out. “That … that fucking brat! Do you really think he didn’t know I’d check? Of course he did. He knows I’m not that gullible. He did this deliberately, knowing that either I have to betray Relos Var—the man who saved me and to whom I owe everything—or I will have let this all have been for nothing. Thurvishar’s just given me his life, and made it my choice whether or not to save it. Because Relos Var will kill Thurvishar for this, kinship be damned. Relos Var will free Vol Karoth too early, and he’ll find a way to deal with what Kihrin’s done. Relos Var will win! He’ll … he’ll … win…” Senera trailed off as she realized what she was saying. What it meant.

Senera fell to her knees. She grabbed the edges of the tiles with her fingers and dug into the marble, as if the sharp edges on the cut stone might remind her of who she was. Tears dropped down to splash against the floor, which should have been covered with dust but, of course, wasn’t.

“Aww. Did somebody just realize they don’t want him to?”

“Yes!” Senera admitted, her heart breaking. “No! I want the world Relos Var promised me! I want a world where nobody is better or worse just because of who their parents were. All I ever wanted was a world where children don’t grow up in chains. I’m willing to do anything to make that world real!”

A dark emotion flickered across Talon’s face.

“But instead of freeing the oppressed, it turns out his solution is just to chain everyone.” Senera laughed darkly. “I suppose it’s a kind of equality.”

Talon walked over and crouched down beside Senera. The idea of restraints had always been absurd, anyway. “So now it comes to this. Which side are you on? Because this time, you get to choose. Actually, this time, you have to choose. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t lie. You’re not even a tiny bit sorry.”

“No,” Talon admitted. “But hey, it’s not like I’m going to judge you. I’m the last person in the whole world who would. It’s kind of my thing. You want to switch sides? I say go for it.”

Senera turned her head and stared hatefully at Vol Karoth. “Kihrin and Thurvishar want to do this? Fine. We’ll let them try. And I will show you, Talon, exactly what I’m going to do about this.”

Senera opened her satchel and pulled out her paints. She freed the brush from her hair and began to work.

The world changed.