“And that may be for the best,” Nahon said, brows drawn inward. “If this is true, it could be more danger than help contacting that thing inside you.”
Gwarill glanced around the yurt, pausing at each face in turn, then reached for a metal case by his side. “That’s the other reason I’m here,” he said. “There are no mortals equipped to judge the best path forward. We must let the Golden Lady do what she can for us.”
* * *
His heart beat in his ears. Olvir listened for an off note.
That was stupid. He’d been examined many times: regularly by the Mourners as he grew, thoroughly when he’d begun training and then before he’d taken his vows, as part of his healing for every serious wound, and most recently after Oakford. Nobody had ever listened to his chest and run shrieking into the night. Nobody had said they’d heard the slightest strangeness.
What would it have sounded like anyhow? An extra beat? An evil laugh instead of a pulse?
He took a breath. That was the same too. It felt almost like a betrayal—ha-ha—that his body continued working the same way it had or that it had put in nearly thirty years of working exactly like that of a normal man.
The Sundered Soul. The Heart of Gizath.It had been sleeping within him for his entire life, if Vivian and Gwarill were right. Olvir couldn’t come up with any reason they weren’t.
Sitha’s priest lifted a small gold-and-silver cube to his lap and undid unseen latches. It happened at a distance, in a room where another man stood.
All four sides of the box opened. A gold-furred spider with a body the size of a man’s fist sat inside, raising its forelegs as if in greeting. Maybe it was saying hello. Sitha’s creatures were supposed to be fairly bright, in addition to their other powers.
“Sir Yoralth, please come forward,” said Gwarill. “Hold out your right hand.”
Aware of the others watching him, of Vivian most of all, Olvir extended his hand and kept it motionless as the spider climbed onto his open palm. Small, furred legs tapped against his skin, tickling but not unpleasant. Eight eyes regarded him, each ink-black with a tiny golden sphere in the center.
The spider was the only thing moving in the room. It held its place for a while, its legs tapping steadily as though to send a message or to judge him for some internal quality: soundness, perhaps, or ripeness. Then it scurried up his arm to his shoulder, leapt to the beam supporting the yurt’s roof, and finally dropped down on a long golden thread.
It dangled there and began to spin.
Chapter 6
Gold letters took shape, encased in a scant circle of web. The spider moved in long, slow drops and reverses, each line seeming to take considerable effort.
Prophecy is heavier than mountains. It’s a small creature to bear the Golden Lady’s burdens,said Ulamir.
Everybody is, Vivian thought.
The first word formed in the web as they watched:heart.
“Thyran’s heart? Olvir’s?” Magarteach asked. “Or is it confirming what we suspected?”
Gwarill didn’t look away from the web when he replied. “Both. Either. Neither. I have no more means of knowing than you. If she has the strength, we’ll see.”
The spider plunged down, looped around, and swung back, attaching silk in motions too quick and small for Vivian to track. ABformed beneath theH, then anA.
“Battle,” said Nahon. “The heart of the battle? Or a battle within the heart? I… Wait. There’s another letter forming.”
They’d expectedbattle, but not theFafter it. None of them were in any doubt after they saw it, however, even before theIappeared.
“Battlefield,” said Olvir. “Heart of the Battlefield.”
There were many battlefields in the war, with many hearts. There’d already been many others in the world when Thyran came back. Vivian knew which one the spider meant despite all that. From the others’ faces, she knew that they did too.
* * *
The Battlefield.
Olvir had heard the story growing up. Everyone did. There were variations, depending on what had been passed down and how much patience the mother or priest or nurse telling the tale had, but the basics remained the same.
Once upon a time, the gods had walked the earth with mortals. There hadn’t been humans yet, but the waterfolk and stonekin had been present. Letar had been the goddess of healing and love, death, and fire, but vengeance hadn’t yet entered her domain. There hadn’t been any need for it.
