Seth hid in an alley. Back pressed against the rough brick, he shivered, trying to keep his breathing silent, to keep still, but knew it wouldn’t matter. The fire always found him.
He knew he was dreaming. He’d been here many times, had hidden so many times in so many places, but it always found him, embraced him, and granted him a screaming, golden death.
His clothes were strange, a rough tunic that bared his arms, leather bracers, and sandals. He looked like one of the ancient heroes, like the temple statues.
The night sky above was clear, but no stars shone. The darkness shielded him, hid him. Seth shivered, but not with discomfort. The air felt silky on his skin.
He hunched his shoulders.
A Knight of Hyperion should not crave the shadows, but perhaps this once, the darkness could save him. He straightened. He would run. He’d escape.
Versinae’s towers stood lightless and thin, like skeletal trees in a burned forest.
Seth turned a corner and the fire lunged like a hulking brute. Seth threw himself aside. Landing hard, he scraped his skin along the dirty cobbles. The dream should not feel so real. And yet there was no Grief, no hungry shades. This place felt both real and not at the same time.
The fire caught up to him in a burst of light.
Squinting, Seth could see a broad-shouldered form wreathed by the flames. It lifted its arms, ready to embrace him.
Seth ran. The figure floated after him, not with haste, but with the inevitable pace of a hunter certain his prey would not escape.
The darkness gathered ahead, so thick that even the pursuing flames did not breach it. Seth dove into it. Cool and concealing, the shadows swirled around him, soothing his hurts, guiding him toward a shape—a door. Feeling his way with outstretched hands, Seth stepped through it.
He fell to his knees in relief.
He’d escaped.
The grip on his heart relaxed. He could breathe here.
In this perfect darkness he’d finally found a place the fire could not reach.
Standing, blind, he pawed at the air, but he did not start or shriek when fingertips walked across his bare back.
The touch should have surprised him, but Seth realized that he’d been waiting for it, expected it, all of his life.
Arms embraced him. He turned inside them, seeking the face of whoever held him. The touch lit a different heat inside him. Then the arms withdrew. Seth shook his head, stepped forward, and felt only the darkness.
“Where did you go?” he asked, hating the broken sound of his voice.
A spark, the barest glimmer, lit the blackness like a green ember dropped into water. It rippled, and gave Seth the slightest view of a black mirror. He saw himself reflected in the darkness, smiling back from the glossy stone.
There were other shapes there, statues. Some were broken, missing their features or upper bodies, but there had been twelve once.
He squinted, straining to see more. The fire brightened in the glass, turning red and orange, lighting around him. He felt something vital burn to cinders.
Seth awoke, bolting upright in his bed, sweat-soaked, chest heaving.
He cast about the barracks, but no one else was awake. At least he hadn’t shouted, hadn’t woken the others.
The odor of burned fabric drifted up from the bed.
He’d conjured the flames in his sleep. The sheets were singed, the fabric stiff and browned. He’d nearly lit them aflame.
Seth fought to get his breathing under control, to cool the fire inside. Sweat rose off him in a steam.
He’d nearly calmed, nearly settled the race of his heart to a normal pace when the temple bells rang, jarring him again. Seth leaped from the bed, hurried to splash water on his face, and dressed. The other knights were faster, their reflexes not slowed by dreams. He glanced once at the bunk where Sophia had slept.
The bells continued, a long song that should be joyous to a knight.
They signaled the arrival of the Hierarch, the living voice of Hyperion in the world, but Seth’s shoulders, and with them the scars from his scourging, tightened.
The Hierarch had come, but the box lay empty. Sophia and Zale were gone, dead and stripped of rank, leaving Seth alone to answer for their failure. His first instinct was to run, but where would he go? Who would have him?
No, these were cowardly thoughts. He’d face his punishment. He joined the rush of the other knights and priests, dressing, donning armor, and hurrying outside to fall in line in the plaza.
Behind them, the temple priests made a line, their yellow cassocks cheerful in the gray daylight. Father Geldar came last. Wearing a placid expression inside his hood, he stood next to Seth.
They waited as the bells continued. Seth’s eyes watered from the incense as the priests waved censers. He followed Geldar’s gaze to the Garden wall and repressed a shudder, remembering his dream of the fire and how the dark had soothed him. That cool comfort had been terrible.
“It calls you,” Geldar whispered. “Doesn’t it?”
“A little,” Seth confessed. “Maybe more than a little.”
“It is natural to seek one’s opposite. Are the gods not related, siblings and spouses? Are they not linked to one another?”
“Father?” Seth asked.
The Bishop was listening. Her eyes weren’t on them, but she stared at the plaza’s entrance, the one facing the city gate, her face frozen in an expression Seth could not read.
“I am merely saying that you must be strong, Seth,” Geldar said. “No shadow can stand.”
“Against the light,” Seth finished.
“Now look elsewhere. He’s nearly here.”
Seth imitated the Bishop. He forced his gaze to the plaza’s entrance and tried to adopt her stiff demeanor.
A crowd of citizens gathered on the cobbles, rising like a tide from the lower city.
Most were commoners, dressed simply, their dull clothes worn. All were pale from living beneath Versinae’s gray skies. Many were thin. So much of the city looked hungry.
The nobles were fewer in number and easily spotted. Better dressed, better fed, they held to the plaza’s edges, close to their carriages, with guards to protect them.
The nobles had a right to be afraid.
The derelicts in Boat Town had risked their lives against the knights. They’d made it clear that they had nothing left to lose.
All of them had come to see the Hierarch’s arrival, and the air buzzed with a feeling almost as palpable as the Grief at night. Seth recognized it easily. He’d worn the same expression when Geldar had delivered him to Teshur. He’d felt that same taste of hope.
Seth was trained to fight, trained to defend, but he had no skill to calm or comfort. Was that what Geldar had meant, that he should dream for more, to feel and be more?
He’d enjoyed singing, once, had thought he would learn the lyre—where had that desire gone?
The priests looked more at ease with the throng. Perhaps they were used to Versinae’s desperation.
Seth closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sun.
Father Sun, give us light. Give us bright peace.
The buzz of the crowd was joined by another sound, the march of boots, but Seth did not stop the flow of his prayer. The gray burned away and he felt the light brighten.
Show us the road out of darkness. Heal us.
He always heard the words in Geldar’s soft, firm voice. The priest had taught him these phrases on the long trek into the desert. Seth remembered answering in a much younger tone.
The memories, as much as the prayers, eased the weight in his limbs. His breath steadied. He could face this, and perhaps he might still be of use to Hyperion. Perhaps he still might help Versinae.
Seth opened his eyes as two columns of knights, each numbering a dozen, marched into the square. Their armor was a sight better than his or the Bishop’s. It gleamed with inlaid gold. Red capes hung from their shoulders. These were the Knights Elite, those who guarded the Hierarch and served him alone as his personal guard.
The crowd of onlookers murmured, humbled by the spectacle.
Seth shared their awe.
The Knights Elite stopped marching, the final slam of their boots on the plaza cobbles a clap of thunder. Perhaps he could dream of more, but he could not dream of that. Such a lofty height, such perfect faith, was beyond his nature.
Several figures entered the plaza, carrying a large palanquin, a great box on poles that was like a whole room, a traveling house. A number of pages, young neophytes of the priestly order, preceded it. They rushed to unfurl a crimson carpet.
The box settled slowly to the ground.
The plaza fell silent, and the bustling crowd froze in place.
The Hierarch emerged.
His golden robe and crown gleamed as brightly as the temple dome. The white cape that trailed behind him was as pure as a cloud.
Most fell to their knees as he passed. Many called out prayers to Hyperion, though some sounded as if they were to the man and not the god.
In a wave, the priests and knights fell to their knees. If Geldar was a breath slower than the rest, surely it was out of awe or due to his age.
The Hierarch turned. He was not an old man, at least not as old as Geldar, forty or fifty perhaps. He had tanned skin and more gold in his hair than gray. Facing the crowd, he gave the god’s sign, bending his head and making a crown of his hands.
Still smiling, he looked to the priests and knights of Versinae.
“Inside,” he said, the terse command at odds with his expression.
A commotion in the square interrupted the faithful’s motion to obey.
“Already here,” the Hierarch said with a sniff. “You think he’d at least give me time to bathe.”
As one body, the Knights Elite tensed, but the Hierarch lifted a hand to stay them.
“He’s no threat,” the Hierarch grumbled, low enough that only the faithful would hear. “Merely an annoyance. Let him approach.”
A much smaller palanquin, this one painted a deep green with silver details, was lowered into the square. A dozen guards, dressed in teal and black livery, held a much shorter line against the red-caped knights.
A man, flanked by a pair of stiff-coated attendants, emerged from behind the curtains. He had a prodigious nose. The dark hair of his scalp was thin, yet he wore fine clothes, a coat of black velvet, and a white shirt. He carried himself with confidence and strode past the gauntlet as if the knights were statues.
“Your Holiness,” he said, bowing just the right amount. “You did not tell us you were coming.”
His words sounded pleasant, but his eyes were creased with anger.
The Hierarch squinted in kind.
“I am not beholden to you, Deslis,” he said. Lifting his voice for the people, he added, “The will of our god dictates where I go. I obey only that, only Hyperion.”
So this then was the city’s prince. Adrian, Geldar had called him. It was hard not to compare him to the Hierarch, the way they faced off, one golden and white, the other dark-clad and scowling.
“As you should,” the prince said. “But your visits would sow less chaos were you to inform us in advance.”
“I believe you said the same last time,” the Hierarch said. “Did he not, Geldar?”
“I believe so, Your Holiness.”
The Inquisitor’s face had gone blank. None of the warmth or laughter Seth got to see in private leaked through his mask.
Seth had asked Geldar, when he’d been brought to Hyperion, why he could not follow in the Father’s steps. He admired the man, wanted to be like him.
You have no guile, Geldar had said. Inquisitors must be able to lie in order to do the god’s quieter work.
But Hyperion is the god of truth, of light, Seth had said.
He is, Geldar had agreed.
And he hadn’t explained any further, never reconciled the contradiction, but Seth was glad that he’d become a knight and not followed in Geldar’s footsteps.
“As you can see, your knights have caused quite a stir in the city,” the prince said.
The Hierarch’s eyes followed the prince’s gaze over the square, the press of the masses, and the assembled faithful.
He landed on Seth, just for a moment, and something Seth could not read, pleasure perhaps, danced in his eyes.
“I am here on the god’s business,” the Hierarch said. “When that is done, I will tend to the soul of this viper’s nest you call a city.”
“I must insist—” the prince started.
“You will insist on nothing,” the Hierarch snapped, his voice deepening to a growl. “As I have always made clear, as I have already said today, I do not answer to you.”
The temperature rose. Seth blinked. As far as he knew, Inquisitors like Geldar could not conjure the fire as the Knights of Hyperion could. The Hierarch had been an Inquisitor before he obtained his title, but perhaps his elevation to the head of the temple had brought that power.
The prince’s expression went stony. The man might be everything Geldar had said, but he clearly was no coward. He straightened, rising to the challenge.
“What will you do, Deslis?” the Hierarch asked, voice low. “You have nothing to threaten me with. The only ones who might have offered me a challenge died when last we came here. Do you not remember opening the gates to us?”
The prince smiled. It was a sly, cunning expression. Seth did not like it.
“You misunderstand, Your Holiness,” the prince countered, his voice lifted for all to hear. “I did not come to insist you or your knights leave Versinae. I came to welcome you.”
The Hierarch lifted an eyebrow.
Deslis lifted a hand. Behind him, a thin man stepped forward. He wore a tidy suit coat of gray and green. Kneeling before the Hierarch, he offered an envelope in his raised hands.
“An invitation,” the prince said. “I am hosting a ball, you see. Hyperion must have guided your arrival to coincide with tonight’s event. You and your entourage are most welcome.”
The Hierarch seemed confused.
“Do bless us with your presence,” the prince said, looking around the square. “Not all of you, of course. My house is not as grand as the god’s. My masquerade could not accommodate all of his knights.”
The Hierarch’s face pinched. Several nobles had filtered into the crowd. They watched the scene from the sides like spectators at a sparring match.
“This is most gracious of you,” the Hierarch said, smiling. Lower, so that only those standing near might hear, he added, “Scurry away, you rat. You’ve won this round.”
The prince withdrew, beaming, his head held high.
Seth blinked, uncertain how what had transpired was a victory, but no good could come from angering the Hierarch.
“Inside,” the Hierarch repeated his earlier command. “Now.”
Seth was swept up in the tide of robed and armored bodies hurrying to obey. The thick walls muted the buzzing of the throng as the Knights Elite held them back.
Seth had never seen so much armor. Whatever the Hierarch wanted in Versinae, whatever Geldar’s purpose, it was of prime importance to Hyperion, but Seth could not help but wonder what such a force would mean to the city’s common people.
They were already afraid. They were afraid of Hyperion.
The Hierarch turned to Father Geldar when they’d reached the altar.
“Well?” he asked, his voice deep, thick, and commanding.
“Your Holiness,” Geldar said with a slight incline of his head.
“Report.”
“The box was opened. We do not know how.”
“Someone had a key,” the Hierarch said.
His eyes flashed again, not with anger, but something else.
“The contents were stolen,” Geldar confirmed. “A young man, by Zale’s report.”
The Hierarch’s eyes narrowed.
“Zale is dealt with, as ordered.”
Seth blinked. What did that mean? Was Zale dead? The Bishop had said he’d been stripped of his rank. Had Geldar killed him at the Hierarch’s command?
“And Sophia is dead, lost to the Grief,” Geldar continued.
“Which leaves you, Seth,” the Hierarch said, turning in his direction.
“Yes, Your Holiness,” Seth answered. He tried to sound strong, but his voice faltered.
“Approach us,” the Hierarch ordered.
Seth obeyed. He knelt and kissed the offered ring. The cold of the stone floor seeped through his armor and breeches. The fire within him writhed. He pushed it down, but knowing that Hyperion’s light was still inside him was a kind of comfort.
Seth had played this game often at Teshur during penance. The monks would command him to sit for long stretches. He would try to push the fire into the floor, to see how much of it he could warm before they released him.
It had been one of his small comforts. The other had been to sing, usually in the cistern, the underground cavern where they stored their water. His praises would echo off the stone, his voice low and pleasant in his ears.
“What did you see of the thief, the one with the key?” the Hierarch asked.
“Nothing, Your Holiness. Zale was unconscious when I found him. The box was open and the thief was gone.”
Seth would never forget the moment, Zale lying in darkness, the light of his sword extinguished.
“We must be vigilant,” the Hierarch said, looking over the assembled faithful, lifting his voice so all would hear. “This city lies. It hides from the light. Go to your duties. Prepare the temple. We shall let the people in and grant them blessings. As they come, listen to them. Question them, learn what they may know. Perhaps that will cast some light into the shadows.”
Dismissed, shaking slightly, Seth rose to his feet. The Hierarch had not even chastised him. He hadn’t been berated or expelled from the order. He did not understand.
The other knights went to their duties or drills. The priests drifted into the chapels. Geldar vanished, slipping away in that mysterious manner of his.
“Attend me, Seth,” the Bishop called his name.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” he said, following her through the temple.
“Sophia caused a panic. The city feared us before. Then the Hierarch arrived with an army. Fear, especially from the common people, does not serve Hyperion.”
That hadn’t been what Seth had meant, but he did not mention it. He would pray as soon as he could.
“What must the Hierarch now do?” the Bishop asked.
Seth knew this tone well. The monks had also liked to test his wits.
“The Hierarch must show Hyperion’s mercy,” Seth said. “Show them that the god is good.”
“Yes,” the Bishop said. “And the prince forced him to show that he is a man, to lower himself, lest the nobility withdraw their support of the temple.”
“So he won? The prince, I mean. He won.”
“I do not know that,” the Bishop said. “But this invitation, forced so publicly, will delay the Hierarch’s purpose here. The prince is surely aware of that.”
“Is he our enemy?” Seth asked.
“He is a politician, as to a degree, is the Hierarch. That is their work. We have our own.”
They reached the courtyard where Seth performed his penance, where the knights practiced with their arms. He wished they’d gone to the one where the hounds were kept. Seth expected the Bishop would demand something of him, likely more penance, more punishment for his questions.
She might lash him. The monks had done that, whipping him when he lost control. They’d bid him to whip himself when he was old enough.
The monks had always called for witnesses, but the courtyard was empty. Seth’s shoulders lifted a little so that others, Lathan especially, would not see his shame.
The Bishop pulled a short blade from the weapon rack.
She nodded for him to take a blade as well.
“Show me what you can do.”
“I do not understand.”
“You know to stay ahead of me, to shield me, I saw that in the slums, but your training has been with monks. You know your weapons, but did they teach you to be part of a cadre? I must know how you would fare as part of a larger group. Arm yourself, and show me.”
He obeyed, taking a stance. She moved beside him, holding her own sword and shield.
“Copy me,” she said. “Advance!”
She took a step. Seth followed.
“In one breath, each time. Again!”
He matched her better the second time.
They repeated this, again and again, crossing the courtyard. The round shield was mostly metal, but Seth had no trouble lifting it. The lack was not in his body.
“Now backward,” she commanded. “Go!”
They took several steps, her calling out and him reacting, matching her movements as best he could.
“Good, Seth. The key to fighting as a cadre, to your survival, is formation. Never break it. There is no more important command I can give you. If you break formation, the entire unit is at risk. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Bishop.”
“You will practice this. With Lathan. Every day.”
“Bishop?”
“Every day, Seth,” she said, setting her shield back on the rack with enough force that it clanked. “With sword and shield.”
“Yes, Bishop.”
She left him there, alone.
Shoulders slumped, Seth returned his arms to their rack.
It was what he’d wanted, to be a Knight of Hyperion. He’d wanted it since Geldar had taken him to Teshur, speaking the entire way of the faith and the roles within it.
Yet Lathan had made his feelings clear. To be in the cadre, the Bishop’s cadre, meant Seth would have to work with Lathan, fight beside him. Disdain or no, they would have to trust each other.
His spirits lifted. He could see the Bishop’s intent, and he could accept this price. His need to be part of something was stronger than his embarrassment or the hurt he’d felt.
This too was a kind of sacrifice.
Geldar had seen his loneliness, how it plagued him.
Seth would practice with Lathan. He would find his place within the cadre, if the Bishop wanted him. That would have to be enough. He would not find friendship there.
If he wanted that, or more, what he’d felt in the dream, then he’d have to look beyond the order.