going.”
Anguish distorted his face. He relented a little. “Self, am in bind. Have decision to make. Job to do, maybe. All would be easier if wife was out of way, safe.”
“What kind of decision? Does it have anything to do with what happened in Throyes? Is that why you’ve been unfit to live with?”
“Since Throyes,” he admitted.
“What happened there?”
He tried to share his pain. “Agent of Pracchia contacted self. Said same have Ethrian. Must do something for them, else he dies.”
“The Pracchia? What’s that?”
“High Nine. Rulers of Hidden Kingdom, secret society trying to take over world. Has members everywhere. Fadema of Argon. Lord Chin of Shinsan. Others of equal power in Mercenaries Guild, in Itaskia, everywhere. Same have no mercy upon such as self.” He spoke as a man who had firsthand knowledge.
Fear caressed her. “What do they want you to do?”
He clammed up. He wouldn’t say another word no matter what she tried. Her fear grew by the minute. “Defy them,” she insisted. “You know they won’t go through with their part. Will they? Kidnappers never do.”
She might not have existed for all he reacted. His mind was made up. He was betting the long odds, hoping to save their son. She loved him for that.
On that ground alone she allowed him to talk her into staying behind at Maisak. She shut down her fears, tuned out her conscience, and prayed the deed wouldn’t be something so heinous the shame would dog them the rest of their days. She sat in the cell-like room the garrison commander had allowed her, numbly awaiting news.
A soldier came one afternoon. A sergeant. He closed and locked the door and went away. Now the room was a genuine cell. He did not tell her why. She knew nothing for days. No one would speak to her. The men who brought food and removed the honeybuckets looked at her in a way that terrified her. As if they were building her a custom-designed gibbet.
Then Varthlokkur came. His face was long and tired. He released her under Royal parole, and when they were out of the fortress, on the road down to Vorgreberg, he told her.
Mocker had tried to murder Bragi. Had tried and failed. He had died in the attempt.
Her world, briefly reborn, had come to an end.
5
Years 1014–1016 afe
The Gathering Storm
E THRIAN SLEPT AND DREAMED. He visited the greatness that had been Nawami before the split with Nahaman. It had been a large and industrious empire, quite unlike any of his own time.
Into his dreams crept whispering voices, arguing.
“It’s not worth the risk, Great One.”
“He has to be polarized. He has to finish what he started.”
“But the Power we’d use... We have so little. If we fail...”
“If we fail, we’re lost. And if we don’t try, nothing changes. We’re as good as lost.”
The stone beast and woman in white? Ethrian wondered. Had to be. But how was he tapping their exchange?
He slept, and yet had a feeling of wakefulness, of being outside himself. He could float and gaze down on the curled form of Ethrian, lying there between the stone beast’s paws. He could be amazed. That boy had changed. He had grown.
So had the pool. It was bigger, deeper, murkier, and muddier. A few droopy reeds now grew along one side. A frog peeped out from among them. Insects swarmed. A family of dull-colored mudhens patrolled the pond’s surface. Swallows had daubed a few mud nests into cracks in one of the stone beast’s forelegs. There was a twig nest in the scraggly old acacia that had been there when Ethrian had arrived.
A turtle dragged itself from the pond and paused to take the sun.
“We’re growing. He’s opened the door...”
“It’s a crack too narrow to slide a razor through. All this time. What’s been gained? A bigger pond? Ten thousand years of this won’t restore Nawami. The door has to open all the way. We need a flood of power. Take him there, Sahmanan. Show him.”
“The investment is too big. It would leave us blind.