If Thyran did more harm to the world than the gods’ presence would, Olvir had said, then presumably the Four would step in. Once they breached the Veil of Fire, though, Gizath could too—and just a few minutes of his fight with Letar had created the Battlefield. Vivian had always known divine intervention was nothing to hope for, but watching that land-scar flex and shimmer in the sun, she felt it on a bone-deep level.
Humanity might survive a new round of storms, even one that Thyran had let build to full power. The waterfolk and the stonekin had a better chance. At the very worst, there would likely be creatures that survived and reclaimed the world once the storms had run their course—and not even Thyran’s power could last forever. Vivian had that faith.
That long view didn’t change her duty, or Olvir’s. Their loyalty was to those who lived now and who would be lost in the storms. Their lives were small things weighed against that butcher’s bill. Vivian would pay her price gladly when the moment came—but there were other balances.
“I understand Them now,” she said. “Or at any rate, I understand the Veil. There’s almost nothing worth risking another instance of that.”
Vivian didn’t point. She didn’t need to.
* * *
For the first time since he’d known Vivian, Olvir had the urge to comfort her.
He didn’t enjoy the sight of the Battlefield. He doubted any mortal could. For a good hour or so, it lay in front of them as they descended the narrow, twisting trail, rippling in the distance as though it didn’t want to let them forget they’d have to face it before too long. At times, it looked completely smooth, at other times scaled, or like grains of sand moving with the wind. It shone black and green, blue and almost white from different angles. Watching it made Olvir’s eyes hurt.
But that was the way of the gods. Even the Four, meaning the best and trying to restrain themselves, were too great for the average person. Only a very few knights, at rare intervals, called on Tinival in major ways. Sitha’s most powerful priests tended to have the same ethereal air as Gwarill, standing always a touch separate from the world and the present moment—and she, with her elder son, made up the gentler half of the Four.
The gods reshaped the Sentinels, blessed them, but didn’t live in them the way they did their priests. Vivian had spent her life in harder and more deadly fights than Olvir at times, he suspected, but she hadn’t spent it side by side with power she knew she could never comprehend or even face fully.
Olvir couldn’t give Vivian his experience. He certainly couldn’t reassure her. They were walking into the Battlefield, trying to find its heart. If their reason for doing so hadn’t been likely to end in both their deaths, the journey still would’ve been horribly dangerous. Vivian understood that as thoroughly as he did, maybe better. Besides, he’d taken a number of oaths against lying.
Tinival ruled words. Olvir took a few and flung them out, hoping they’d be a handhold. “Do you sing?”
“Wha—now?”
“No,” he said, “no, that’d be a bit risky even now that we’ve left the forest. And we could get avalanches. In a general sense, I meant.”
“I’ve been known to. I wouldn’t say it’s one of my most stunning talents, but I’ve never had any complaints about how I carry a tune.” He heard her voice softening, losing some of its wire-strung tension. “I’d say that melancholy ballads in the bath are my specialty.”
“‘The Violet Banner’?”
“It’s very suitable for scrubbing your back. ‘And they met below the staaars on the riversiiide,’ and so forth—a very repetitive chorus, nothing too distracting.”
“Important not to miss a spot,” Olvir agreed, “especially if—Ah.”
He’d rounded a blind corner, his view blocked by a stand of pines, his sword half-drawn as was his usual practice in such cases. At once, he’d seen that the blade would be neither necessary or, unfortunately, helpful.
The trailhadcontinued from that point. In the past, though, the mountains had shaken, or the winter snows had loosened rock. Now a boulder stood in their path: twice Olvir’s height, so wide that it blocked the path on either side, and far too massive for both of them to lift.
Chapter 18
This,said Ulamir,was old before the storms.
“I can’t say I’m surprised.” Discouraged, yes. Annoyed, entirely. Surprised, no, not at all. The boulder, blue-gray like the rest of the mountain, was polished so smooth that it nearly shone, and so were the mountain walls to either side. Vivian hadn’t studied stonework to any great extent, despite partnering with Ulamir, but she had the idea that a surface like that was the result of wind, water, and, most of all, time.
It also limited their options considerably. Climbing the boulder would take either hands and feet like a lizard’s or a method of making holes in stone, neither of which she or Olvir had. “I can’t see a crack in the godsdamned thing,” she said. “Can you?”
Olvir stepped forward from her side and peered at the boulder, craning his neck to see as far up as he could before shaking his head. “If there is one, it’s too far for us to reach, much less drive a spike into.”
“I can’t see any on the sides either,” said Vivian. She took a careful look around, alert for details she might have missed in her first, exasperated inspection.
The pass was narrow and winding. Below, the stone plunged straight down, ending in red grass—as a small blessing, the Battlefield was no longer visible from where they stood—and trees so far away that they resembled thistles. The mountain’s face was sheer directly above them and for a distance beyond. Two pines grew a few yards away, where the trail was a little wider, but they were short and wind-twisted, no good for climbing.
“The stone predates Thyran, Ulamir said. The nomads must have had another route across, but I don’t see it. I don’t sense it, either, or not nearby,” Vivian added after a quick internal check. Her blessing felt as it had for the last day: a sense of general direction and the now-frustrating conviction that the path ahead of her was right.
“They might have stopped crossing before he went to war with them,” Olvir replied. He put a hand on the boulder, rubbed his thumb against the shiny surface, and frowned. “The histories aren’t exact.”
“Of course not. Why would they be?” Vivian fought the urge to kick the boulder. A broken foot wouldn’t help. History, it seemed, wouldn’t either. It was possible that the tribes had asked for rides from dragons, for that matter, or had the winged horses of legend. Neither were available. “I think we’ll have to go back and up. There’s a rougher patch near those trees, and then…with luck, we’ll find another ridge. Otherwise, sideways and then down.”
