Dust guided his small vessel in toward the Seven Isles as smoothly as a man might skim a stone across a pond. He kept his eyes on the central isle, knowing with the kind of certainty only he could have now that it was where he needed to be.
Things moved around the boat in the water. Ahead, a creature with the sinuous coils of a snake rose and then fell, but its presence did not deter Dust from his path. He knew it would not slay him: that was not the destiny that he had chosen for himself.
That destiny thrummed in his head like the beating of his heart. He was going to save the world from the violence that would come. He had seen the futures; if Royce got to be king, then there would be bloodshed on a scale that had not been seen before. The child that he would eventually have would ride through a world where Royce had brought the old magic back, and they would rule it with a fist of iron.
What was one life now, set against all of that to follow?
Dust continued to guide his boat through the waters around the island, looking up to the clouds and down to the waves for signs that would allow him to pilot a safe course. He picked out the points where the waves showed rocks beneath, and those where all the signs suggested that to go there was to be attacked by the creatures that waited in the depths.
None did, though. Perhaps they were satiated, perhaps Dust had picked a course that was fated not to involve that kind of attack… or perhaps they just recognized a fellow source of death for what he was.
“I’m not a monster,” Dust said, in a tone determined to make the words a fact. “I’m a hero.”
He was doing the best thing for the world, the thing that needed doing. Yes, there would still be death, but he was Angarthim, and death was what he was in the world for. But this time, it would be the right death, the death he had chosen, rather than one handed down for the purposes of the priests.
Dust guided his way between the islands, taking down the sail so he could have the control that came from oars. He ignored the outer islands. That would not be where Royce was; every sign pointed toward the central isle, and the dangers on all the others. Even rowing past the first of the isles, Dust could feel a wave of something akin… akin to love, and that was just ludicrous. He kept rowing.
Waves battered at the boat, but it had been designed for a sea voyage, and Dust was able to pick a route through the worst of it. After all, hadn’t he picked a safe route through the worst of the possible futures?
He rowed until he found a scuffed section of flat rocks that were almost the same thing as a beach. Dust dragged the boat up onto it, timing the moment when the waves were highest to slide it into place. He wedged it between rocks, tying it just to be sure, then hopped out and prepared to traverse the island.
Dust had gone barely a hundred yards before he found the slate, scratched with chalk marks. The words were in the old tongue of the priests, and as Dust read them, he knew they had been left for him.
Turn back, Angarthim, or it will cost you your life. Leave my son be. The words were accompanied by a small image of a deerlike creature, and Dust assumed it to be a seal or house symbol of some kind.
Dust read the words again, trying to consider what they meant and who had left them. The answer was disturbing, in its way. Someone, someone else, had seen this moment, and the possibilities attached to it. Someone was playing a game with him, and Dust hated games. Just the thought of it was enough to raise anger in him, and that was an unfamiliar feeling. Ordinarily, Dust felt nothing.
“I am doing the right thing,” he told himself. “I will not be deterred.”
Besides, if his own death were due to come to pass, he would have seen it, wouldn’t he?
Dust set off across the island, searching for the spot where Royce would have landed. He found it easily; one advantage of looking for signs in all things was that it made it easy to find those signs that let a man track his prey. Even before all he had seen, he had been trained to do that much.
It was easy to find the other boat, and to see that Royce had not been alone when he came to the island. There were three… no, four other people here with his prey, plus some kind of great beast. Dust considered that. Would he have to fight all of them to stop Royce?
“I will do what I must,” Dust said, but even so, something nagged at the back of his mind. He wasn’t even sure he could place it. Regardless, he checked his blades and his needles, his garrotes and his powders. There could be no mistake.
He looked around until he found what he was looking for: there, clear on a rock, the sign of a white hart. It matched the one that had been on the slate, and although it might have been intended to be another warning, Dust followed, making his way along the pathways of the island in pursuit of his quarry.
Around him, fire and water billowed up with almost equal vigor, bursting from the ground and spraying down around Dust. He stepped in the spots where the fire would not fall, letting it spatter around his feet before moving on, keeping his eyes on the next white symbol ahead.
The earth began to rumble beneath Dust’s feet, and he recognized that sign for what it was. He threw himself forward, rolling clear before the ground beneath him could give way, a whole section of path sinking down into fire and destruction. He wouldn’t be able to take that route back.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I am good at finding paths.”
The one ahead of him certainly didn’t slow him. Distantly, Dust could remember a time when he had not been so inured to pain, or so fast, or so coldly strong. The memories seemed to be coming back more strongly now that he was free of the priests’ influence, and he could remember a time when he had just been a child, looking up at the gray-skinned priests and unable to understand what they were.
As he walked, Dust started to remember more than that. He remembered the lessons that had been designed to teach him to ignore pain. He remembered another child screaming, that scream cut off by the sharp, cold blade of an older Angarthim.
“The world does not care how much you cry out,” the man had said, not in a cruel tone, simply that of a man who did not care about anything but the priests’ orders. “It only cares if we follow its signs.”
Dust had taken that as a sign that he must be silent, no matter what followed. He had also sworn that he would never be a puppet of the priests like that implacable man, but he had been. He had been everything they required of him.
“Why now?” Dust asked the world as he climbed the island’s slopes. “Why am I remembering this now?”
There was no answer beyond more of his memories, with the flicker of the first time he had read a sign. There had been three cups, all identical, two with poison. There had been no smell to give it away, no difference in color or in temperature. It had seemed little more than a guessing game, where one might survive only by chance.
He had been about to drink from one cup when a leaf had turned this way instead of that. That falling leaf had saved his life.
Now, it almost killed him, because Dust was so busy thinking about it that he didn’t notice the black-scaled creatures sneaking up on him until one was already leaping for him with an obsidian-tipped spear. Dust twisted, and that spear struck his side, the pain blooming, but quickly discarded.
He drew short blades, each barely as long as his hand. Dust sidestepped, avoiding a second attack, and then threw one of the blades, watching as it embedded itself in one of the creatures’ throats. Dust was already moving again, kicking out to knock one of the beasts back before stabbing another a half dozen times. Abandoning his short blade, he grabbed one of the spears, spinning it as he waited for the others to come at him.
He struck with the haft first, knocking one of the creatures over the edge of a sheer drop. He lanced another of the beasts, ripped the spear out, and then stamped down on the knee joint of another. Hefting the spear, Dust threw it, and it plunged into the chest of the last of them. Almost calmly, he moved to the creature he had wounded and snapped its neck.
“How many others have I done that to?” Dust asked himself as he recovered his weapons.
His memory couldn’t supply a number, but it could supply faces. There were too many to count, too many moments that blended together as death followed death. He had broken necks and stamped through spines, sliced through throats and stabbed into hearts. By this point, Dust suspected that there was no method in which he hadn’t killed someone.
“I’m doing the right thing,” he reminded himself. “I’m saving people.”
He kept following the path, clambering where it was needed, ignoring the way the obsidian cut into him. His hands had been red with blood before, and he’d been wounded almost as many times. Ahead, he saw a gouge in the landscape where lava sat at the bottom, but it was not opening under him, so he was able to stride around it. When the landscape became precarious, Dust clung to his determination and kept following the white harts. He had to do this.
He saw a cavern mouth ahead, and the flicker of a fire within it. Without even thinking about it, he approached. Perhaps he would be lucky enough to find Royce here, even though he could see more of the stag signs continuing on around the volcano’s slope.
Dust was almost at the cave when he heard a growl, and a blade dropped into his hand automatically. A creature was there, large and wolf-like, but Dust recognized the more than human intelligence in its eyes.
“You are a bhargir,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. The creature was healing a wound in its side, but only slowly. Dust suspected it might have something to do with the stone of the island. All creatures had their weaknesses.
The creature was still, but the growl was still there, low in its throat. Instinctively, Dust looked around for signs of death, but then he shut his eyes against the instinct. He would decide what happened next, not the creature.
“You cannot stop me from entering this cave,” he said. “And if my prey is within, you cannot stop me from killing him.”
The creature’s mouth widened slightly, baring long teeth. If Dust were capable of finding anything terrifying, he supposed that he would have feared that.
“Gwylim? What are you growling at?”
A young woman came out of the cave then, holding an obsidian blade in her hand. Others followed her, some limping, some barely standing. Dust knew who these people were: they were friends of the one he was hunting.
“I know who you are,” the girl said, looking fierce. A Picti girl behind her put a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“Careful, Matilde, he is—”
“I know what he is, too,” the girl said, but there was no give in her tone.
She lunged forward at Dust, and Dust supposed that he should have killed her in that moment. It would have been so easy, and it was nothing that he hadn’t done a thousand times. Instinctively, he moved aside from the blow, striking down on the nerves of the forearm so that she lost her grip on her weapon. He spun her, wrapping one arm around her neck, the other with a blade pressed against it.
“Let her go,” a man said. He was wounded, but even so, Dust knew he would be dangerous. Dust knew who he was, too.
“You have come a long way from the fighting pits,” Dust said. “I sought out your friend there, but he was gone.”
“Let Matilde go,” another man said. He barely seemed to be standing at all, but he held an obsidian-tipped spear the way a knight might have held a lance, ready to charge.
Dust knew he could kill them, wounded and tired as they were. He could kill them as easily as breathing; as easily as he had killed so many in his life. Above them, the signs among the rocks hinted at death, hinted at all the ways he might have killed them in moments. He increased the pressure on the blade he held to the girl’s neck almost imperceptibly, a bead of blood welling to the surface.
“No,” he said to the signs. “I will not do what you say. I will do what I choose. He must die, but only him!”
He shoved the girl away from him, into the arms of the Picti girl. The others looked at him as if he were mad, but Dust could understand that. They didn’t know all that he knew. They couldn’t see all the ways that what he was doing would benefit the world.
“Where is Royce?” he asked.
“He’s not here,” the one from the fighting pit said. “You’ll not catch him.”
“I will,” Dust said. “I must. Everything depends upon it.”
The man started to step forward, but Dust raised a hand, and that was enough to make him hesitate, and in that moment the other man was able to catch a hold on him.
“Do not,” Dust said. “You cannot stop me. You can only die.”
“You think we won’t die for our friend?” Matilde shouted at him.
Dust smiled at that, and it was strange that anything in the world could make him smile. He picked up a rock, seeing what he had to do now. He threw it, and the rock sang out like a bullet from a sling, striking the rocks above the cave’s entrance, dislodging just one.
It was the important one, though.
More rocks fell, and the others had to dodge back to avoid being crushed. Even so, they fell in a tangle, half pinned by the falling rubble. It would take them minutes, at least, to dig themselves out.
“I think you would die, but I choose not to kill you,” he said. “When this is done, my boat is on a shelf of rock a little way from yours. It is larger and has more supplies. Take it. Live your lives. There may even be hope for you, bhargir, if you find someone who can replace your lost skin.”
Dust didn’t wait for a reply, but set off along the path again, following the signs of the stags until a black tower came into sight. The only way to it was across a stone span less than the width of his hand, but Dust practically danced his way across. He hadn’t killed them; he didn’t have to.
He climbed the black stone tower, all the way to the top. There was a bird there, sitting watching him carefully. Dust knew instinctively that this wasn’t its home. He held out an arm, and it briefly hopped on, claws gripping tight enough to hurt. Words whispered in his mind, distant though, because this kind of connection was not his power.
You do not have to do this, Dust. Going on will mean… more than you think. You could walk away.
“I could,” he said. He cast the bird away from him and it took wing while he began the walk down into the depths within the tower. “But I choose this.”