The Master of Secrets took no pleasure in his work. He had no feelings about Rhunes one way or the other. The stories about them being wild animals—vicious, cruel, and mindless—were nothing more than propaganda. He knew this because he’d created most of the tales himself. The purpose was to depict the Rhunes as ferocious but inferior. This combination would generate fear in the Fhrey population, but not despair. Motivation was the goal, desperation the enemy. Lothian needed his people’s support, not their anger. The fane was their absolute ruler, Ferrol’s embodiment on Elan, but terror tore down even the most sacred of symbols.
As always, Vasek was merely solving a problem given to him by the fane. His task was to obtain a secret from the Rhune’s mind. Had the fane asked him to extract the yolk from an egg, he would have gone about that task with similar logic. And yet in the remote alcoves of his mind, Vasek hoped the Rhune survived being cracked for the same reason that people regretted accidentally killing a ladybug after mistaking it for a mosquito.
No sound came from inside the box, and Vasek felt his stomach sink.
It has only been two hours!
Pry bars were applied to the lid, and Vasek prepared himself for the sight of a dead Rhune and possibly his own future. The lid came free, slid aside, and there she was, eyes closed, hands at her sides, her chest rising and falling, slowly, evenly.
She’s alive!
This thought was quickly followed by an equally surprising one: She’s sleeping.
Much of life fell short of expectations. Spring wasn’t as wondrous as the one dreamed about during a harsh winter, a broken bone was never as painful as imagined, and Suri strongly suspected that death would be the biggest disappointment of all. Everyone spent a good part of their life thinking about what happened when they died. Stories were told by firelight, and all of the tales were larger than life, which was pretty ironic when she thought about it. Reality couldn’t possibly compete with decades of anticipation. These were the thoughts going through Suri’s head when they put her into the coffin.
The sealing of the box had been difficult to endure, but matters got worse when they began dropping shovelfuls of soil onto the lid. Some of the dirt slipped through the seams between the wooden boards, including the poorly fitted joint directly over her face. With her hands trapped at her sides, she was forced to turn her head to keep breathing. That’s when she knew she would die. This thought didn’t come as a surprise, but the fact that she wasn’t screaming did.
At first, she’d thought, This is it. My worst nightmare finally faced.
For most of her life, Suri had been uncomfortable with walls, caves, and any confined place because of an incident that had happened when she was six years old. She had entered a hole that she couldn’t get out of, an opening dug into a sandy bluff near a riverbank. Suri was pretty sure it was a fox’s den. Being young and small, she was certain she could fit, and she desperately wanted to see how foxes lived. She’d been told they were clever, so she imagined tiny tables—miniatures of the one she and Tura used—set with minuscule cups and plates.
Do they have little beds? Candles? Formal clothes they hide from everyone else that they only wear on special nights when the forest holds secret celebrations?
Suri had long suspected that the Crescent Forest creatures held private parties they didn’t talk about when she was around. That hole had been her chance to expose the truth of it, and afterward, she planned to confront the first animal she came across and ask them why she had never been invited.
The problem, she discovered, was that she wasn’t as small as a fox. Partway in, she got stuck. When she tried to push her way out, the sandy dirt broke loose and collapsed around her. The more she tried to get out, the worse her situation became. The opening filled up. Everything became dark, and the air was thick with the smell of soil. She’d screamed until her tortured throat refused to make any more sounds. Tura had saved her. The old mystic had found and dug her out . . . three days later.
Ever since, Suri had been terrified of any small place that she wasn’t certain she could get out of. She’d lost part of herself in that fox’s hole. Left it behind, perhaps, or maybe it had died—smothered in the dirt. Suri slept outside from then on, and she only went into Tura’s house on the coldest of nights.
And so she found it odd that as the sounds of the dropped dirt became more and more muffled—as she was buried deeper and deeper—there was no screaming. The panic had failed to come.
I should be losing my mind. Why isn’t that happening? Why am I so calm?
This was, after all, number one on Suri’s list of worst possibilities, her greatest nightmare.
Except it’s not anymore.
Suri had no problem jumping off waterfalls, facing a pack of wolves, or climbing towering trees in storms, but it hadn’t always been that way. In the primordial depths of her memories, she remembered a time when she had been scared of such things. Minna had given her courage. The little wolf pup had been fearless. Suri couldn’t allow herself to be outdone by a pup, so pride had pushed her to confront her terrors, and she discovered fear was a cowardly bully—all bluster, no substance. After one successful jump off the waterfall, Suri couldn’t understand what she’d been so worried about.
Being in tight places like small rooms or the cage that had transported her to the Fhrey capital had almost been like being buried alive, but similar wasn’t the same. Fear of the real thing had haunted her, and it was the anticipation—that unknown factor—which had always paralyzed her. Suri hadn’t been forced to face the greatest fear of her childhood, not head-on, not until Vasek’s men actually buried her.
So, what has changed?
It didn’t take long to puzzle it out. Suri wasn’t six anymore, and the time in the grave taught her to see fear for what it was—a child’s terror. Suri had evolved, and in doing so, she’d learned there were far greater horrors.
Compared with making a gilarabrywn, being buried alive is nothing.
With that realization came another: It’d been days since she’d had a good night’s sleep, and since she was lying down in the dark, she took a nap.
“How is she?” Imaly asked. The Curator of the Aquila was careful to keep her voice low and her eyes on the Garden Door.
“The same condition I suspect you would be in if imprisoned and denied food and water.” Vasek, the Master of Secrets, kept his customary even tone, the one carefully cultivated to offer no glimpse into his true feelings. “She’s seen better days, I am certain.”
The two sat side by side on one of the dozens of stone benches in the Garden that formed the center of the Fhrey city of Estramnadon. Imaly sat to the left, her arm on the rest, he to the far right—close enough to speak quietly, far enough to suggest they might not be together.
Autumn was giving way to winter. The normally lush arboretum had been stripped of its leaves, reduced to naked branches of drab browns, blacks, and grays. The cultural and religious center of the Fhrey universe had also been stripped of its visitors. This was good because it granted the two privacy, but it was bad since so many empty seats prompted the question: Why are they sharing a bench if they aren’t together? Still, that wasn’t an issue since only one other person was in sight.