Vivian could make out the edge of it, off on the side of her vision that Olvir’s head didn’t block. It bubbled, shone, swirled. Parts rose as she looked, others fell. Vivian would have felt impractical and ungrateful if she’d ever really regretted being able to see in the dark, but right then, she came closer than ever to wishing away the Reforging’s effects on her vision.
It’s no surprise that my people left,said Ulamir.The company of your kind is quite tolerable in comparison.
Vivian snorted in response to his joke, but silently. Olvir’s calm, steady praying was going on, and she badly wanted to let him concentrate without any interruptions. The more Tinival could help him, the better off they’d all be.
Should we add a third god to what’s before us, Naviallanthislikely the best choice.
He sounded doubtful. Vivian asked him why.
Two gods were responsible for that aberration. Will a third, even one as orderly as the Silver Wind, be a blessing when we’re in it? The Traitor governed harmony once.
It was a sobering notion, which was a bit unfair when she was quite sober already. Vivian drew her attention back from the scar on the world. They wouldn’t be entering it tomorrow, she reminded herself; there was the rest of the mountain to get down, and then the plains.
Thinking of those, she asked Ulamir if all the elder peoples had left that side of the Serpentspine.
As with so much, I can give you no certain answer, Death-Touched. Those who left were three generations older than mine. They kept no records. They told few stories of that time, save for what seemed necessary in warning. Some few may have remained. The land isn’t all the scar, and the scar isn’t poison, as such. People could live.
She wondered why they’d all, or almost all, left if the land could support them.
It was where their world shattered. Nothing could rebuild what was, what they remembered. Staying in such a place would be beyond my imagination.
Vivian let that sink in.
The ruins Thyran had left could be reclaimed. The problem was generally a shortage of people to clear them out and settle them again. His forces had killed many, his storms more. He’d spawned horror to haunt dreams and stories for generations—but people did die, in their time, and their cities might have fallen. Thyran had broken the world, but it could heal, even if many of its inhabitants didn’t.
Gizath had not only killed Veryon, one of the greatest among a mostly immortal race, but he’d also set in motion the events that led to the Veil of Fire. He had forever set a barrier between the gods and their creation. In no more than an hour, the world had become unrecognizable to those who’d lived there.
Most shun the places that remind them of pain,said Ulamir.
It was a concept foreign to Vivian’s life, if not her knowledge exactly. Sentinels saw sudden grief at times but rarely the aftermath when those hurt began to restructure their lives. Almost all the sorrow they themselves felt was expected—mourning for those who’d willingly gone into danger all their lives, by comrades who did the same, all of them walking side by side with the Dark Lady for years.
Veryon’s murder had been not only sudden pain but pain that nobody, not even the gods, had knowncouldexist: the first betrayal. Vivian could barely get her mind under the weight of it.
She forced herself to peer out onto the edge of the Battlefield again, taking gulps of the night air and smelling smoke while she watched the world ripple. The place itself would never seem right to her, but its existence, in a way, did. What had happenedshouldleave a scar. It shouldn’t ever look entirely normal.
* * *
Journeying inward, like any task, became easier with practice. Facing his fears and his sorrows didn’t banish them—and others always arose to take the places of those that faded—but their claws were a little blunter, Olvir slightly better prepared for them. He could anticipate roughly how they’d hurt. He knew how long it would take for him to wait and feel the pains until he could gently move them aside.
Tinival’s song washed over him again. It was complex, with subtle layers and parts spiraling off into tangents, but all of it came back, connected in a great pattern that was clear in Olvir’s soul even if his mind couldn’t pull it together.
He thought of the Battlefield and wondered what would have happened if Tinival had been among the combatants. Would the damage to the land have been as great? Would the nature of the god of justice itself have prevented such a fight?
Olvir’s vows hadn’t given him nearly the sort of divine connection that would grant those answers. That would have been the province of the Lord of Justice, Tinival’s greatest living servant, and maybe one or two of his high captains, and that very rarely. Those people were similar to Gwarill, barely living in the world as it was.
Olvir turned his attention elsewhere, to the less predictable, more opaque power of the fragment.
This time, he sent rather than reaching. First he tried an image of himself: he’d intended one from temple duty, with armor shining, but what came to mind was the man he’d seen in the mirror when he last had the chance to shave, all drawn lines and shadows beneath the eyes.Olvir, he thought.Me.He paused, remembering what Vivian had said about him and the fragment.Us.
The fragment waited, quiescent.
Next he pictured Tinival. That imagedidcome from the temple, specifically from the painted screen in the one where Olvir had grown up. A tall man, fair-haired and blue-eyed, with a tinge of blue about his skin, stood at the walls of an anonymous city gate. He raised a shield on one arm and held a glowing silver sword. Olvir sent thoughts of his first vigil, his prayers, and, as much as he could manage, the shining presence within him.
He waited. A hum, a shift, gradually ran through the fragment, subtle enough that Olvir almost missed it.
Was it a response? An invitation? He had no means of knowing, but he’d previously emerged safe and himself from every contact. Slowly, he extended a part of his mind.
Vision overcame him again, but now it was more coherent.
