Khato frowned. “Unlikely,” he murmured after a moment. “Ailments like the fire pox are more random than that. If she survived the first illness, it’s unlikely she would have contracted it again. And if she did, it wouldn’t have left its mark on the bone the exact same way.”
Right. I knew this.
“But, it’s always worth taking a closer look. Would you sketch them?” he asked, handing me a roll of parchment.
“Water Witch,” Khato said, turning to Vienah. “I understand you’ve mastered the sky.”
I glanced up from the skull I’d begun to sketch, and Isla froze. Thesky? Vienah blinked.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Vienah murmured, cocking her head to the side.
I had to give her credit. She was a better liar than I was, but that didn’t stop the slow smile that spread on the ancient elf’s cracked lips.
“Come now,” Khato huffed through his laugh. “I am Lotrennia’s Master of Spells. I am seven hundred years old and have been a mystic for half that time. There is not much that goes on in this land I don’t know about.” He raised bristly eyebrows at her.
Vienah straightened, glancing at us.
“It is a rare gift,” he continued, sitting back, “to influence the rain.”
The rain. Ithadrained quite a bit since our arrival. I’d thought it was only because of the arrival of spring, or maybe my ignorance of the Lotrennian weather. And it had beensohumid.
“Our forces need to eat,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Vienah’s power is a welcome gift to those in Lotrennia,” Isla said, pulling Khato’s attention away from the water witch. “We are lucky to have her for the short while she is on our shores.”
Soft paper slippedthrough my fingers as I shuffled my sketches, stepping to where Khato sat hunched in the corner of the room, reviewing a scroll that looked more ancient than him.
Seven hundred years, he’d said. To live that long… He raised his tawny eyes and nodded his head in thanks. I lingered for a moment, scanning the withered text in front of him.
“Why aren’t there texts on the Bellators?”
Isla casually stepped to my side, and Drystan glanced up at the movement. The master’s eyes softened as if he expected the question. As if he understood the desperate need for information about the foreign powers living within me.
“I’m sure your friends have already filled you in,” he said softly, angling his head toward Isla.
“They were lost during the War of Ruin, after the demise of the Bellators. But how?” I motioned with my hands to the walls, the living structure that seemed sentient, protective, even.
A strange, glassy look coated his eyes for the briefest moment before he shook his head and shrugged his hunched shoulders. “It is a mystery we’ve spent hundreds of years digging for answers. Our best guess is that the texts were either lost or stolen during the war.”
The corner of my lips hung in disappointment, and his gray eyebrows tilted up.
“These powers are new to you, Bonder. And having spent your entire life shadowed from the truth of the world, my guess is that they’re overwhelming on a good day, suffocating on a bad one. But even if the Bellator texts remained, I am doubtful they would give you the answers you seek.”
My brows pinched, and he offered a reassuring smile.
“What is transformation, but rebirth? Creation itself? It has pushed its way into a place clouded in darkness. There are two extremes now attempting to coexist in the walls of your inner being. Dark and light, death and life. They are to the other as oil is to water. And how do you mix the two?”
“Flour,” Vienah piped in from her desk.
My lips twitched as Khato huffed a laugh.
“You need something tobindthem,” he explained, turning to me.
“I don’t know what that is,” I replied.
He gave me a sad smile. “The universe is cunning. It has a way of leading us to our fate on broken roads, over impassable mountains, and through treacherous waters. Trust it. Allow the universe to lead you to yours.”
My heart stilled. He removed his spectacles, his penetrating eyes scanning the air around me as if tracing some invisible web.
“The gods certainly do have interesting ways of leading us to where we need to be,” Isla added.
The master’s eyes flicked to Isla. “It’s not the gods, my dear. The threads of the universe…” he mused, eyes darting back to open air around my head. “Endless possibilities exist. Curious links and connections…”
I swallowed, the weight of my crumbled identity and crushing responsibility pressing down upon my shoulders, leading me blindly toward an unknown fate.
