“All right, all right, I’m coming!” a man hollered from the other side of the door.

Braga stopped her knocking. “That’ll be an improvement on last time,” she said. “So you got that course of leeches from the physiker to fix your flaccid little maggot, did you?”

“Braga?”

The door swung open and a huge man stepped out. Hrothyr had a ruddy, round face and a thick, curly beard. His eyebrows were bushy and singed black, and his ginger hair was so far receded it was basically a tonsure with a fringe of greasy ringlets that fell to his shoulders. When he gave Braga an uncertain smile, the gap in his teeth was revealed—or rather the teeth in his gap, for he only had two front teeth, both of them yellow.

He glanced at Anskar and Zek, then widened his eyes when he saw Brother Bonavir. “What are you doing here?” But before the priest of the Elder could answer, Hrothyr focused on Braga once more. “You came. After all these years, you—”

“Don’t waste your breath, slug-crotch,” Braga said. “I ain’t forgiven you.” She stepped aside and nodded toward Anskar.

“What do you want, waking me up at this hour?” Hrothyr said. He wrinkled his nose. “Are you a Niyandrian?”

“Waking you?” Zek said. “But you’re fully dressed.”

Hrothyr had on a stained once-white shirt, thick-weave pants, and long socks riddled with holes. Over his clothes he wore a leather apron that, like his eyebrows, had been burned at one time or another.

“He’s always dressed,” Braga said. “Save when he’s doing it, and that ain’t a pretty sight, I can tell you. Other than that, the filthy bastard sleeps in his work clothes, which is why he stinks like something that slopped out of a mule’s ass.”

“I’m waiting, boy,” Hrothyr said, pointedly ignoring Braga’s insults. “Why did you wake me up?”

Anskar held up his arm and pulled back the sleeve of his shirt. Hrothyr shielded his eyes against the glare. Beneath the silvery light of Chandra and the red of Jagonath, the vambrace rippled with an oil-sheened brilliance.

Hrothyr reached out a hand but stopped shy of touching the metal. “It can’t be. How did you get hold of this? I made it. Twenty years ago, give or take.” A pained look passed across his face, and he glanced at Anskar. “You’d better all come inside. Some things it ain’t safe to talk about in the open, and certainly not in the moonlight.”

He led them into the house, where they were met by the feeble glow of grime-smeared crafted globes set into the ceiling.

The place was cramped, almost claustrophobic, and there was far more furniture than seemed necessary. Every wall had a sideboard against it or a chest of drawers. Stacked on top of every piece of furniture were wooden crates and boxes that contained everything from rivets and nails to earthenware casks and clear-glass bottles of solvents, oils, and acids. There were wooden handles for tools, iron heads, whetstones, blocks of river stone of various grades, ingots of iron, copper, and bronze. The whole house stank of grease and oil, reminding Anskar of the smithing hall at Branil’s Burg.

The blacksmith guided them through the organized clutter to a kitchen-cum-dining room, the walls of which were also lined with boxes all the way up to the low ceiling. There was an island of space in the center, where a butcher’s-top table stood, along with a single chair.

Hrothyr didn’t have guests often, he explained, and Braga muttered something under her breath. He slid four crates across the floor as seats for the others, then plonked himself in the chair.

“I would have offered you a hot drink, only…” He cast a look toward the stove, which was buried beneath yet more boxes.

Anskar, Zek, and Brother Bonavir seated themselves on the crates, but Braga remained standing, her head almost brushing the ceiling beams.

“You really made ass-wipe’s vambrace?” she said.

Hrothyr glanced at her. “I never told you all my secrets, Braga.”

“No. Some I had to find out for myself.”

“And I’m sorry for that.”

“That just makes you a sorry turd,” Braga said.

“Show it to me again,” Hrothyr said, and Anskar rolled up his sleeve once more, this time revealing only the bare skin of his arm. Hrothyr reached out, and his fingers touched the invisible metal of the vambrace. “Just wanted to be sure,” he said. “But you’ve still not answered my question. How did you come by it?”

“Can you remove the vambrace?” Anskar asked.

“I could. And I probably should. I’ll fetch my tools.”

“No, wait,” Anskar said. “This is all happening too quickly.”

He frowned, not sure exactly what he should and shouldn’t tell them. That he was Queen Talia’s son? Probably not a good idea. The fewer people who knew that, the better. How he had found the vambrace? Maybe. He looked at Zek, who was watching him through slitted eyes.

“How about I start?” Hrothyr said. “I told you I made the vambrace. Well, I put together the alloy too, though I scarce remember how. Twenty years flies by in the blink of an eye, but it’s still a long time.”

“If I may,” Brother Bonavir interjected. “You were granted access to the Scriptorium’s restricted shelves?”

“I was.”

“That’s a relief,” the priest said. “As far as I know, the instructions for smelting—is that the right word?—divine alloy exist nowhere else, not even on Niyas. The necromancer Tain left nothing behind save the notes we have here in Wintotashum, which no one can access without the express permission of the King.”

“What I did back then,” Hrothyr said in a faltering voice, “ain’t something I’m proud of.”

“Here we go,” Braga said, folding her arms beneath her massive breasts.

“But I had my reasons.”

“Course you did.”

Hrothyr shifted uneasily on his chair, a grimace that could have been pain or annoyance crossing his face. “They accosted me in the street one night after I’d had a bit too much to drink. Niyandrians they were, which was strange in these parts. I later learned they were agents of Queen Talia.”

Anskar held his breath and leaned forward.

“They said they could hurt my family,” Hrothyr said. “Told me the names and addresses of my ma and pa, my two sisters.”

“Those fat slappers,” Braga said.

“They gave me instructions, from the Queen of Niyas herself, they said. One word to anyone and they would kill my family and then kill me. So I cooperated. An agent of Queen Talia’s broke into the Scriptorium and found what we needed.”

“The necromancer Tain’s notebook,” Bonavir said.

“The agent didn’t steal it,” Hrothyr said, “just memorized the parts we needed: the instructions for making divine alloy. It took me a while to get the ratios right, and I’ve forgotten half the ingredients—copper there was, and iron, astrumium, and half a dozen other ores. Some of the ingredients came by way of the Ethereal Sorceress. And the forges… Bloody darkness, them forges had to be hot. Singed more than my eyebrows back then, I can tell you.”

“But you managed to make the vambrace,” Anskar prompted.

“Aye, I made the damned thing right enough, and the bloody Niyandrians paid me well in gold for it.”

“And to think you was always grumbling about having no money,” Braga said. “Turd.”

“It was before I met you, Braga. Nine, maybe ten years.”

“Eight,” Braga said emphatically. “A man with his head screwed on would’ve invested all that coin, maybe bought a decent home.”

“Nothing wrong with this place.”

Braga looked away in disgust.

“And it was you who made the vambrace invisible?” Anskar said, sharing a look with Zek.

“There was another ingredient I was told to add to the alloy—something not mentioned in Tain’s notebook. One of the Niyandrians spoke words in a foreign language, and the vambrace faded away before my eyes.”

“Void-steel,” Anskar said.

“Maybe. If I knew what that was.”

“So did they take the vambrace back to Niyas?” Brother Bonavir asked.

Hrothyr nodded. “Took it to their queen. They was supposed to come back for more—said she wanted the entire suit of armor, exactly as Tain had made it—but no one ever returned.”

“Probably because of the war,” Bonavir said. “There would have been a few years yet till the liberation of Niyas by the mainland allies.”

“I’m certain Queen Talia is your ghost lady, Braga,” Anskar said.

“I figured that out for myself, ass-wipe,” she said. “And now I think I’ve figured out why she came to me.”

Hrothyr met her gaze. “Because of the skills I taught you when we—”

“You taught me nothing I didn’t already learn from my grandpa,” Braga cut in.

Hrothyr looked about to object but thought better of it. “And perhaps because she knew I was the one who made the vambrace in the first place, and she somehow knew that we were related.”

“You and Braga are related?” Zek said. “Like brother and sister?”

“We’re married,” Hrothyr said.

“Were,” Braga corrected.

“Hrothyr’s your husband?” Anskar said incredulously. “You didn’t tell me you were married, Braga.”

“Because I’m not. Not any longer.”

“Nothing that the Five joins together can be sundered,” Brother Bonavir said.

Braga turned on the priest. “He joined your teeth to your gums. But that’s about to change if you don’t shut your trap.”

“I’m sorry, Braga,” Hrothyr said. “I was a fool. I made a mistake. How many times do I have to say it?”

“So did I, marrying a slime-covered piece of dripping shit like you.”

“You could make the full armor?” Bonavir asked.

“I could not,” Hrothyr said. “A vambrace is one thing, but a full suit of plate…”

“Then give me your notes,” Braga said, “and I’ll bloody well do it. But I’ll need your forges.”

Hrothyr stared at her for a long while before he replied. “Even if I let you, how will you smelt enough divine alloy? The components aren’t easy to come by. And as for this other stuff, this void-steel…”

“If its only purpose is to render the armor invisible,” Zek said, “would we even need it?”

“If,” Brother Bonavir said. “From what I read in my colleague’s thesis, void-steel has many properties, so long as you know the cants to coax them out of the metal. Of course, finding void-steel may be beyond us, but the other ingredients…”

Anskar flashed him a look. Why was the priest of the Elder so invested in all this?

“This is an unparalleled opportunity,” Bonavir said, as if he had intuited Anskar’s question. “The lore of the ancient civilizations that preceded our own is the most sought after, the most prized, among those of us dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. That this vambrace, made according to ancient sorcery retrieved by Queen Talia, should present itself in this manner tells me that Menselas has willed that such forgotten knowledge be brought back into the light.”

“And you think that’s a good thing?” Anskar asked. “My…” He almost said “My mother” but caught himself. “Queen Talia wants this Armor of Divinity for herself. I’ve seen it in a dream.”

“My people view the Niyandrians as demons,” Zek added. “Obsessed with immortality, and with bringing the dead back to life.”

“Then we shall proceed with caution,” Bonavir said. “Let me make some enquiries with Sheelahn, the Ethereal Sorceress. She’ll know where we can obtain the necessary ores—at a cost, of course. On second thought,” he said, “you should go to her, Anskar. She’ll want to see the vambrace and make a note of it, and I’m sure there’s good advice she can give you… about any number of things. And you are probably better suited to pay her price.”

“And if I don’t want to?” Anskar said. “What if I just want Hrothyr to remove the vambrace and destroy it? Maybe I want to forget all about the Armor of Divinity.”

“You can’t,” Braga said. “She’ll be angry.”

“So what if she is?” Hrothyr said. “It ain’t like you to be frightened of anyone, Braga.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Zek said. When everyone turned to him, he added, “The instructions?”

“The necromancer Tain’s notes?” Brother Bonavir said. “I’ll speak with the King and see if he’ll grant me access to the Scriptorium.”

“You think that’s likely?” Hrothyr asked.

“I do not.”

“Well, if you’re looking for someone with the skills to break in…” Zek said.

“I’m not sure about this.” Anskar realized he had gone from being totally against the idea to being on the fence about it.

He had to admit that the mystery of the vambrace and the myth of the Armor of Divinity were oddly compelling. A series of thoughts rose unbidden to mind, all of them persuading him that there could be no harm in finding out more before destroying the vambrace. After all, the vambrace had saved his life several times already. And did it matter that Queen Talia desired the Armor of Divinity for her own ends? Maybe history had been unfair to her. Maybe Wiraya needed her again, to restore some sort of balance, to oppose the corruption Anskar had witnessed within his very own Order, not to mention elsewhere on the mainland.

“I don’t suppose it will do any harm to find out more,” he said. “But not now. I have to sleep. I have a meeting with the king in the morning.”

“I’ll be at the meeting too,” Bonavir said. “But perhaps…” He cast a sly look at Zek.

The Soreshi waggled his fingers in a parody of a sorcerer casting an enchantment. “I’ll get the notes, don’t you worry. And no one will have a clue they’re gone.”

“And I’ll copy them by hand so you can return them as soon as possible,” Bonavir said.

The priest was a little too invested for Anskar’s liking. Was there more to him than met the eye? Or did his enthusiasm, like Zek’s, really stem from a desire for ever greater knowledge?

“A moment, please,” Hrothyr said as his visitors stood up to leave. “Braga, could we—?”

“No,” she said, already heading for the front door.

“I am concerned about you, my friend,” Zek said.

He was once more seated on the top bunk in their shared barracks room, and all Anskar could see of the Soreshi from the bottom bunk were his bare feet, the soles hardened with calluses.

“What’s to be concerned about?”

“You have—for a non-Soreshi, at any rate—a significant sorcerous mark.”

“The priests say the same about my god’s mark. Others say they are one and the same thing.”

“Though viewed from different angles,” Zek said. “I have heard this too.” He slid from the bunk and landed gracefully on the floor, where he seated himself cross-legged so he could look at Anskar. “Sometimes, I think, they overcomplicate things that are straightforward and natural.”

“Priests?”

“Not just priests. The lowlanders, as my people call those whose ancestors conquered the mainland all those centuries ago.”

“Conquered? I thought they were native.”

“Those with gray skin, or dark—even the green-tinged Ilapa—you think they all came from one and the same place?”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

“My people believe there were seven invasions of the continent, some from the east: Niyas, the Plains of Khisig-Ugtall, even the Orgols of the Jargalan Desert—though they did not settle here, as they prefer hotter climes. Others came from the north, from across the Trackless Ocean: a fierce people who relished warfare and slaughter.”

“And they all settled on the continent?” Anskar said.

“Over time. They came in waves in their longships, and little by little drove the indigenous people west into the Ymaltian Mountains.”

“The Soreshi?”

Zek nodded.

“But where are these savages now?” Anskar asked. “These warriors who love to slaughter.”

“They stayed and bred with those who had invaded before and those who came after. They learned to farm the land. They built homes and villages and towns and cities. They are you, Anskar, and the people of Kaile, the City States, the Pristart Combine. They are King Aelfyr and his subjects.”

“But we’re not all the same.”

“Indeed you are not. But the blood of the conquerors is in a good many of those who call the mainland their home. The only thing that differs is the degree. It is those who rule, I think, who have the greatest portion of that savage blood. Some, I have heard—the elite among the nobles of Kaile—claim they are pure blood. It matters not. What matters is that you are all lowlanders to my people. You stole our lands, brought your strange religions, and imposed your ways on us.”

“Strange?” Anskar echoed.

“A god with five aspects? Don’t you find that strange? I do.”

“Menselas is all about balance,” Anskar reminded Zek.

“When it’s convenient. But then why do his followers revile the dusk-tide and not the dawn? Why is one deemed good and the other forbidden?”

It was a good question. The answer Anskar had been taught was that the dusk-tide was destructive. It made use of the dying light, and therefore brought dissolution and death. The dawn, on the other hand, was a growing light, the rebirth of the day after the darkness of night.

He said as much to Zek, who shook his head.

“Does not the entire world of Wiraya act in the same way? Do not plants grow, then wither and die? Do not their seeds spawn new life? There is an ebb and flow to all life in this world. People are born, they grow, they die. If they are fortunate, they leave offspring behind to continue the cycle of death and rebirth. Do your priests condemn a wilting flower, or an old man inching toward the grave? Do they believe it an act of evil for a person to age and die?”

“It’s not the same thing,” Anskar said.

“It is the same thing. You cannot embrace one tide and deny the other. That would be like breathing with only one lung or fighting with just one arm.”

“Something happened when we fought the mulag,” Anskar said. “Something changed within my repositories.”

“I know. May I take a closer look?”

Anskar nodded, then stiffened as he felt invisible threads of awareness penetrate his mind.

“As I perceived earlier,” Zek said, “your dawn- and dusk-tide repositories are braided, though crudely, as if they have been crushed together.”

“And that’s not good?”

“It is better than it was. How your so-called sorcerers function with two distinct repositories is a wonder to me. We Soreshi are born with ours separate, but the more we embrace the tides, the more they weave together and work in harmony. Wait—what’s this?”

Zek closed his eyes and fished deeper with his tendrils of awareness. He jerked and his eyes snapped open, and his senses recoiled from Anskar as if scalded.

“That,” Anskar said, “is the dark-tide.”

Zek eyed him warily. “I knew you had—” He broke off then started again. “I have never before come so close, felt it for myself.”

“And now you have, you don’t approve? Is not the dark-tide from the same source as the dusk and the dawn?” Anskar said sarcastically. “Is it not the same sunlight dimmed?”

“No,” Zek said. “I don’t think it is. It is the absence of light. The dusk and the dawn are both positive forces drawn from the same source, but the dark… the dark is pure negation.”

“Is it? And you know this how?”

“As I told you before, there have been sorcerers among the Soreshi who went further than they should have.”

“Who’s to say how far they should have gone? Isn’t this the same thing you were criticizing us lowlanders for—denying one of the tides?”

“That is not my intention,” Zek said. “But to my people, the dark is unwholesome. It is emptiness, a bottomless pit. The stuff of the abyssal realms.”

“Then why do we have a dark-tide repository?” Anskar asked.

“Most of us don’t.”

“But these Soreshi sorcerers you spoke about…?”

“It’s there, sometimes: a latency. A very few have the potential for the dark-tide, but most are never aware of it, and the rest are usually too sensible to cultivate it.”

“But not you?”

“It fascinates me. Draws me. But now that I have felt it…”

“You’re not so sure,” Anskar finished for him. “I never asked for it, and sometimes I think the dark-tide influences what I do—a temptation. But I have used the dark-tide. I used it in the fight with you and your people.”

“Perhaps we should save this talk for another time,” Zek said, standing and climbing the wooden ladder back to the top bunk. “You have a meeting to attend in the morning, remember? And I need to think about what we have discussed.”

“Good night,” Anskar said, his voice coming out colder than he intended.

And then he just lay there, pondering, feeling the throb of the darkness welling within him.