“You lied!” the fane shouted when he saw her.
The guard, who had previously grabbed her, caught up. He began to pull her away but stopped when he saw the gory scene.
“No, I didn’t,” Suri said as calmly as she could, but in the presence of that dead body, she was struggling. “You didn’t listen!”
“There’s no dragon! No gilarabrywn! Nothing happened. Nothing! I did everything you said and I almost felt it, but I couldn’t move the deep chords.”
Suri jerked hard and tore her wrist free of the guard, who made no further attempt to stop her. Looking at the body, Suri took only a single step forward. The Fhrey lay prone, her arms and legs spread out. She didn’t wear an asica, just a simple pullover shirt and a vest with pretty needle-worked flowers. “Who was she?”
“What?” Lothian asked.
“The one you killed.” She pointed. “Her. Who was she?”
He shook his head. “What difference does that make?”
“It makes all the difference. I told you, but you didn’t listen. Did you even know her name?”
The fane looked back at the dead body and shook his head. “Amidea, I think.”
“You think? So, you didn’t love her?”
The fane looked lost.
“I told you, it needed to be a sacrifice!”
“It was! I killed one of my people!”
Suri shook her head. “How much of a hardship could it be if you barely knew her name?”
“How dare you—”
“I’m sure it was unpleasant, but the power that’s needed to make a gilarabrywn is greater than the total output of Avempartha. You don’t get that from discomfort or regret. I told you it had to be heartbreaking. You can’t get that from killing a stranger. You don’t get that from sacrificing an acquaintance. Doing it right . . .” Her voice cracked and her hand flew to her mouth as her throat tightened. Her lips quivered and her sight grew foggy as tears gathered on the sills of her eyes. “It has to kill both—all of them and a little of you. You are sacrificing part of yourself in the making. You won’t ever be whole again because you had to cut off part of what you were to make it. It’s the loss that matters. The sacrifice is just as much you as it is them. To make the weave work, to give it the required power, you have to kill someone that matters to you. Someone you love—someone you would otherwise die for. It has to hurt worse than anything you’ve ever experienced, and it has to be so painful that you’ll never want to feel that way again.”
The fane continued to stare at her, but the hateful glare was gone. The distrust, the suspicion, the anger faded. His gaze shifted across the plaza then down to his bloodstained hands. Slowly he began to nod. “Yes . . . yes . . .” He continued to bob his head. “That would do it. The death, the pain, the anguish—of course.”
There was no joy in his discovery, no victory to cheer.
The snow increased, flakes falling on a windless afternoon. The world where the fane and Suri stood became a silent place.
The fane focused on Suri. For the first time, he looked at her as if she was a person. “There aren’t that many people I care about that I can afford to lose.”
Suri nodded. “Now you know why you only face one.”
Chapter Twenty
In the Presence of Legends
Tesh had always been brave, determined, and invincible in battle. But he had never gone against a god before. Of the five, Ferrol—third-born daughter of Eton and Elan, Empress of the Dark, God of the Fhrey, Lord of the Damned, and Queen of the White Tower—was the last god anyone would want to face, and that included Tesh. — The Book of Brin
“The victory will come at a price.”
Outside, the trumpets blew again, and Tesh imagined that the Fhrey were fighting in the lower courtyard. “We can have this talk later, can’t we?”
“No, we can’t. Tesh, when—if anything happens to me, you’ll be the last Dureyan. You should make sure that our people don’t die with you. You like Brin, don’t you?”
“I really don’t think now is the time—look, I need to get down to the—”
“Now is the perfect time because I don’t want you anywhere near the fighting.”
“What? You can’t be serious! You stopped me last time—and I can help!”
“You can help more by living through this night.”
“What do you want me to do? Cower somewhere?” Tesh exploded. “You’re being stupid. I can—”
“I want you to go to the Kype and protect Brin.”
Tesh remembered his dream and lost some of his anger.
“And when this battle is over,” Raithe said, “I want you to start a family, raise children, and live a good and happy life—someplace safe and green, like on a high bank overlooking the Urum River. I want you to do what I never could.”
Why is he telling me all this now?
Tesh noticed the others watching them, Suri and Malcolm especially. The tattooed girl had tears glistening on her cheeks. “Why are you—?”
“You have talents, and you’ve learned to use them, but don’t let that be your whole life. Dureyans have always been known as warriors, but you need to change that. Promise me you’ll do something good, that you’ll make your life worth something more than killing.”
“What’s this about?”
“Promise me.”
“But I don’t understand why—”
“Promise me.”
When Tesh opened his eyes, he didn’t know where he was or where he’d been. A reality, clearer and more real than the one he found himself in, was slipping away. He’d been talking with Raithe. A memory. Yes, that’s all it was.
But why that one? Of all my years and experiences, why that strange conversation? Maybe because I never saw Raithe again.
He didn’t have time to ponder because he wasn’t alone.
Tesh lay on a hard, white floor. He was cold, downright freezing—a strange but familiar feeling. He’d only experienced it once before—on the morning after he’d witnessed his family being butchered. Back then, Nyphron and his Galantians had moved to the houses and dragged out those who, like Tesh, were cowering in the shadows, hoping to go unnoticed. The only difference between him and the others was that his hiding place was better. He’d watched as the few survivors had been found and murdered. They screamed with animal-like panic until a sword or spear silenced them. After that, they weren’t animals, nor people, nor his friends. All that remained were piles of flesh and bloody clothing.
When the Galantians left, Tesh had been too frightened to move. He stayed hidden, mostly buried in the dirt beneath his home. He woke to sunlight, smoke, and a terrible cold that owned his whole body. No cold before or since had ever matched it—until he woke on the white floor in the throne room of the Queen of the White Tower.
“That didn’t take too long,” Ferrol said. At least Tesh assumed it was her, and that she wasn’t talking to him. There were others in the room. Tesh didn’t look around, didn’t need to. He sensed a group watching him, five, six, ten maybe, not a multitude, but plenty. None of them was his friends. He sensed that, too.