I had no faith of my own. I worshipped no sun or moon, no star or tree, but cities went to war for less than this.
“She ran chimeric in her very lifeblood,” he said. “Her rings were spun of magik with the most archaic of spells.”
A shiver raced along my skin, and I leaned forward to study the map. The RuneTree was as mythic as the Cloudgate, an ancient belief to explain present-day magik. A tree pulled from the sea and spun for the moons, whose branches spanned the stars, whose roots girded the erthe. It sounded far-fetched, but I’d not say that to him. He wasRhi’Ahr.I had no idea what he believed.
“The order of the Priestlords is nothing more than a history lesson now,” he said darkly. “Because of what your people refer to as the Abolition.”
I was only a child when the order was abolished. With the Priestlords on the Cloudgate, it was ensured that no one on either side could attack or withhold passage. But they grew too powerful, too dangerous. They chose a side, and the king took action.
“Everyone in Oversea knows why it happened,” he said, his voice low, almost soft. “But I suspect few know how.”
I glanced up at him, and for a moment, he looked old. Not in body, for in fact, he was not thatmany years my senior. No, he looked old in his mind, in his heart and spirit. Weary. No,world-weary, as if the sea had sent him more than his fair share of storms.
That was something I could understand well.
“For the abolition of the Priestlords was not done at the stroke of a pen, Ensign, but by the slash of a broadsword and the crack of a flint. The entire order was slaughtered. Every man, woman, and child. Every homani, faun, minotaur, andRhi’Ahr.Seventy noble souls murdered in one night, and the monastery razed to the stones.”
And in that moment, everything changed. This was more thanhistory or politics. This was personal for him, and painful, and he had just shared it with me.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
He took a deep breath, winced at the action, and a lock of dark hair fell across his forehead. He didn’t push it away. We sat in silence for a long moment as his words sank deep.
“When the order of the Priestlords was…abolished,” he said, “there was nothing, no one to prevent the Cloudgate from being used as a channel for war.”
“But war didn’t happen,” I said. “There was a decade of peace, I think, between the Abolition and the Second…Declaration of War?”
My voice went up with those last few words, but he nodded woodenly. I released a breath, relieved that I’d finally remembered something useful from my years at Berryburn.
“There was peace, Ensign,” he said, “because the Cloudgate began to disappear.”
“Disappear?” I asked. “How could it disappear?”
I knew it moved, but it disappeared? That was serious alchemy.
“Stormveil,” he said. “Archaic magik.”
Just like theTouchstone. And apparently, theEndorathil.
“Few could find it,” he went on, “and if they did, the corridor could collapse at any time, catching them in the Sheets or the Silence or the Dreadwall itself.”
The Sheets and the Silence, as foundational to our navigation as the Dreadwall. The Sheet Latitudes was a rim of hurricane storms that flanked the Dreadwall, and the Silence a ring of scorching heat and suffocating magik in between. Leagues deep, or so it was said. No ship was allowed to enter them for risk of shattering, sinking, or worse.
“But ten years ago, fiveRhi’Ahrships did find it,” he said quietly. “They found the Channel and made it to the island. They coveted the power of the chimeric and wanted to mine it, takeit for their own king. They thought, because of the Abolition, it would be abandoned, but when they set foot upon the island, they discovered the Tree…”
His jaw tightened as a storm gathered behind his sea-blue eyes.
“But theseRhi’Ahrdid not believe she was a goddess, for they were pragmatic and proud. And they committed the most heinous crime upon the peoples of the erthe, a scar upon the Worldrune and upon very magik itself.”
His breath caught in his throat.
“They cut her down, Ensign,” he said. “They cut the RuneTree down.”
His eyes held me in their currents, spinning, swirling, dragging me deep. I was racing yet couldn’t move.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Pride kills,” he said. “Always.”
