I wake up choking, a stream of water pouring over my face, into my mouth, as powerful arms hold me tight to something warm and firm, my legs kicking out violently, my arms flailing.
“Talia,” Fortiss yells again, upending another carafe of water over me, soaking me and Tennet behind me, who grunts with effort as I pitch and writhe.
“I saw—saw it! I saw it,” I splutter, struggling for breath, for sanity.
If anything, Tennet holds me tighter, while Fortiss grabs my thrashing arms at the wrists and pulls them in tight. The three of us are so close we could fit into our own grave, and the combined pressure of them finally quiets me. I meet Fortiss’s golden eyes, feel them searching mine as if he can somehow pry the answers out of my mind. I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out.
“Tell me what you saw,” he urges, and a wave of panic overtakes me again, images pouring through me, drowning me.
It’s too much, though, and I shake my head violently, trying to shove it all away. “What…what happened?” I finally manage. “T-tell me what happened to me.”
Some silent communication passes between Fortiss and Tennet, and Tennet’s pressure eases on my shoulders while Fortiss steps away, pulling me with him with a gentle hold on my wrists until we reach the long benches. I blink around, confused. We’re back on the stone overlook of the Eighth House, and I’m drenched to the skin.
“How much water did you dump on me?” I grumble as Fortiss slowly eases me into a seated position.
“Barely two cups worth,” he lies as he drags up a stool and sits close to me. Tennet stands at my side, legs braced wide, as if he expects me to tumble over into a faint. “You agreed to summon Gent, and then you seemed to shift into almost a running motion, but you never moved. Your right hand swept out, your left arm cocked, you leaned forward…and then you convulsed, your skin turning nearly blue, your hair, clothes, all of you suddenly drenched. Hardly any time had passed at all, butyou started gasping and flailing, and I didn’t want to smack you awake. Water seemed the better choice.”
“I guess I should be grateful for that,” I say, then feel the gorge rising inside me. I lean forward, my elbows on my knees, as Fortiss scoots back—but he doesn’t leave me. He won’t leave me, I think—just as Gent won’t.
Nausea rocks me again.
“I’m fine,” I gasp, and I feel his sure touch as he smooths my hair back, slicking its still too-short length into place behind my ears. I spend a few moments dry heaving before finally regaining my breath again.
I squint up toward them both, not trusting myself yet to sit up straight. “I saw…I understand how the Divhs found us. Mirador summoned them, yes, but they were ready to be summoned. They’ve always been ready. They’re tied to this land and to the people who occupy it—whoever they may be. That’s where it all begins and ends, with the people who take ownership of the land. We are their anchor and connection to the Fated Plane. There was another society that lived here well before us, who made their homes in the same places where we eventually founded our current houses, at least in the middle of the Protectorate and to the north, south, and west.”
I swing my gaze to Tennet. “Our houses are newer, up in the mountains of the east, but there were people there before us, in the Shattered City.”
“That was destroyed in the Great Conflict.” He nods, but I shake my head.
“I don’t think so. I think it was destroyed long before then. The explorers of the Imperium may have gone through that city, or they may never have seen it at all, at least not until after they began building the Protectorate. But there was a reason why no one rebuilt there. It had been ruined long before our originalarrival in this place, its treasures lost or buried, waiting for someone to find them.”
“Well, the army of the Imperium should have, surely.”
“Except they weren’t even an army.” I shake my head, seeing it all again in my mind’s eye. “The scouting party that the Imperium sent out was maybe only thirty riders. Some men, some women. It wasn’t the grand army that we were led to believe. It wasn’t an army at all, and some died along the way—though most of them survived, I think. They kept pushing west, exploring, raiding, but it wasn’t like they were stealing from anybody who was going to object. There was nobody here. Whoever had lived in this land before us had died out centuries before. Maybe millennia. All that they had left behind were a few simple treasures.”
I straighten a little more, scrubbing my face to order my thoughts. “One of those treasures was a crown with two flaring sides. It’s got to be the crown of wings, Fortiss. It did exist, a relic of some bygone civilization. It existed and the Imperial party found it.” I draw in an unsteady breath. “And once their leader put it on his head—that’s when they realized there was more to this land than they expected. I think that’s what gave them the ability to call their first Divhs.”
Tennet stares at me. “The crown of wings—that doesn’t actually exist.”
“Yeah, well…maybe it did at one point?”
“That’s not right, though.” Fortiss scowls. “All the old records are consistent on this point. There were people here when the Imperial army rode in to conquer this territory—actualpeople, not some lost civilization. Holdings and villages that welcomed them and let them pass. There was no obstruction at all until the creatures of the Western Realms stopped them in their tracks. Then the Great Conflict took place, and our army protectedthose who were here and defeated their enemies, and power was gratefully, easily transferred.”
He grimaces as he finishes the recitation of history that’s been taught to all of us, even me, reaching up to rub his jaw. “It doesn’t really hold up when you think about it, does it? Even if Imperial riders were allowed to pass peaceably by, even if we did prove instrumental in protecting the locals from some enormous threat, that doesn’t translate into a small army suddenly being granted the right to rule the entire land. There has to be more to it than that.”
“More…or, more likely less,” Tennet agrees. “If this traveling band was able to somehow connect with the Divhs and conquer the skrill or whatever in the blighted path they are, how much easier for them to do that if it was just a small band of warriors and a mighty army of Divhs? Nobody to protect, nobody to defend, nobody to corral into doing things your way. It’s literally like the Tournament of Gold all over again. An exhibition match between two foes off in some separate space. Whatever happens in that battle after it is done is a matter for the bards and historians to craft, because there’s nobody around to gainsay them.”
“And if there’s only thirty people whose stories have to stay straight, then that’s easier too.” I squint off into the empty plains that my mind keeps wanting to plant with grass and trees, a glimmering lake in the distance. “But how could that be possible? How could we have grown so much so quickly? We are an enormous thriving country—all of that grew from thirty people?”
“That’s at least easier to explain.” Fortiss waves that away. “We have well-documented accounts of the Imperium sending more settlers after they learned of the threat to the west and the need to create a Protectorate to ensure the safety of the Imperium. It wouldn’t take many settlers to build—a fewhundred here, another hundred there, and so on, all of them loyal to the Imperium, all of them routinely sending back tithes and tribute. Self-sufficient but loyal.”
“And they would be loyal too,” Tennet says. “It would serve no one for the Imperium to explore too closely how good we had it here—or to learn that the crown of wings was real. Because if it was, it should have been sent to the Imperator at the beginning.”
“Well, fair,” I agree. “But the Divhs could have shared all of this a long time ago. They are the keepers of the Protectorate’s past; all we had to do is ask for them to explain it.”
“You say that, but not every Divh is as easily understood as yours,” Fortiss says with a wry smile.
“I…” I blow out a breath, but he’s not wrong. “I think it’s because I won the tournament. I, um, earned the winged crown. Because the things I saw…” I blink, suddenly recalling another image.
