19 Coloine

Well, that was interesting.

It’s—honestly, I don’t know where to begin, so much has happened in the last two days. Except that’s stupid, of course I should just begin at the beginning, when I walked into the village yesterday morning.

I’d debated whether to enter early, when there would be fewer people around to be suspicious of the stranger, versus mid-morning, when business would be in full swing and I’d have more options for selling the hair clips and therefore might get a better price. I decided on mid-morning, because the village was big enough I figured they’d be accustomed to visitors and I wouldn’t attract as much attention.

Hahahaha.

I attracted all sorts of attention when I came strolling down the main street—unfriendly, fearful attention. The sort of attention where you can tell people are nerving themselves to accost you. By the time I realized how universal this attention was, I was a good way into town and trying to decide what I should do, other than pretend I wasn’t aware of the whispering.

No one had actually attacked me, so I casually veered over to inspect some apples in a bin outside a store, making the owner take a few steps back over the threshold and shut the door in my face, then sauntered back the way I’d come.

Or tried to. I’d only gone a few paces when I saw people moving in on both sides of me, trying to act casual, but they were really so tense I started to feel afraid. It’s true I can turn the walk-through-walls pouvra on other people now, but only one at a time, and after what happened at my nearly-disastrous “wedding” to Aselfos, I was more than ever convinced that trying to walk through a person could be seriously fatal. And there were a lot of people moving in on me, maybe fifteen or twenty, some of them much bigger than me.

I stopped walking and surveyed the crowd, looking for a place I could summon fire that might get me out of this. The group of men encircling me stopped about ten feet away, close enough that I had to keep myself from panicking. Other villagers were coming up behind them, watching to see what might happen, making me feel more panicky because they represented one more obstacle I had to get through.

So I held my hands away from my body, my hands spread wide to show I wasn’t holding anything, and I said, “I don’t want any trouble,” which is sort of clichéd, but getting eloquent in a situation like that is the sort of thing that gets people dead.

Then the strangest thing happened, and even now, knowing why they reacted that way, it still strikes me as odd: the crowd backed away, the way you do when you’re surprised; this sound like wind rushing over ripe corn rose up as everyone one of them took in a startled breath; and then they grabbed me.

I fought and shrieked and kicked, and I know I hurt at least a few of them, but there were too many for me to escape—so many that they could carry me away rather than dragging me, and now I can be grateful for not being dragged, but at the time I was just terrified. I kept shouting at them to put me down, but that only made them move faster, and in no time they’d wrestled me into a shed, where three of them held me still while others searched my pockets and took the hair clips and the books, at which point I lashed out with fire because the thought of losing those books terrified me more than the thought of what they might do to me.

This made them all start shouting, and one of them hit me hard in the side of my head, which made me lose control of the fire so it went out. I don’t remember much after that, but when I finally regained my senses, I was alone in the shed, my hands and feet were tied, and my things were gone.

I just lay there for a while, trying to become calm and figure out what to do. My first instinct was to burn my way out of there and run, but that would mean leaving the books behind, and that wasn’t going to happen. On the other hand, they now knew I could do magic, so it was possible they were out there planning my death, and staying in the shed might be a bad idea.

On a third hand, though, they hadn’t killed me outright, which meant…what? That they weren’t sure what to do with me? True, there aren’t any actual laws requiring mages to be put to death, but the fear of them is so widespread, particularly in small towns like these, that no one in authority so much as blinks if somebody executes vigilante justice on someone proven to be a mage. Assuming anyone in authority ever finds out. So it was strange they’d locked me up instead.

I decided to untie myself, at least, because the floor of the shed was mucky and smelled bad, and I didn’t feel like lying on it any longer than I had to. Manipulating the ropes with the mind-moving pouvra wasn’t too hard, though it did take time because the ropes were thin and the knots were tight. Then I got up and explored my cage.

It was about ten feet square, with a roof of wooden shingles about six feet high, no windows, just an old door hanging on leather hinges. I could see three ways of escaping that didn’t even require magic; they were probably as panicked as I was, to resort to confining me here. I sat down, thought better of it, and stood and leaned against the back wall and stared at the door and made a list. I don’t remember exactly what it included, but this is my best guess:

1. I can either leave now, or wait for them to get me.
2. If I leave now, I get away clean, but I leave my things behind, which is unacceptable.
3. If I wait for them to come for me, I might not be able to escape again.
4. If I leave now, I can search the village for my things…which could take forever, and I can only stay concealed for so long.
5. If I wait, I might be able to find out why they attacked me and why they didn’t just kill me when they saw I could do magic.

Much as I wanted to run away, I decided I would have to take a chance on staying. It was reckless and dangerous, but I think I’ve said before that I hate not knowing things, and in ten years of traveling through tiny, hostile villages, I’ve never once been attacked simply for walking into town. It was strange, and it bore investigating. So I stood there and waited.

to be continued…

Probably 17 Coloine

I feel so much better now that I’m not half-naked, even though my palm is still sore where the skin is missing. Funny how quickly I’ve gotten used to using the walk-through-walls pouvra, when it used to terrify me. I mean, I’m never going to love the feeling of my bones and organs sliding through stone or wood, but I sort of take it for granted now, and not just because it seems to have saved two worlds.

But while I was rummaging through that woman’s dresser looking for something to wear, I realized I’d gone through her bedroom wall without thinking twice about it. Maybe that was just my anxiety about wandering around in nothing but my breast band, that nothing else really mattered, but I think after what I went through in the convergence kathana, it’s a pouvra I feel more or less comfortable with.

I still don’t really know what happened. I mean, it’s clear the worlds aren’t destroyed, but since this is a Balaenic village in the far southwest, judging by the stars, it’s possible Castavir was destroyed and I was somehow transported back to my own world, which was spared—but I can’t bear the thought of Cederic, of all my friends, being dead.

So I’m going to assume that the worlds came back together successfully, that the damage was minimal, and that Cederic is still, for the moment, in Colosse. What’s worrisome is that it’s going to take me a couple of weeks to walk there from where I am right now, and who knows where he’ll be by then?

Time for a list, so I can calm down and stop panicking about whether I’ll ever find my husband again:

1. I am, as I wrote, somewhere in southwestern Balaen. Probably.
2. This is where Viravon is, in Castaviran geography.

2a. Who knows what the consequences of 1 and 2 might be?

3. I have no money, but I think I can sell Audryn’s hair clips (sorry, Audryn) and get enough to speed my trip along.
4. I still have these books, though this one is filling up fast. It’s also the one Cederic gave me, so it’s doubly precious.

It took me two days’ walk to reach this town, which fortunately for me lies on a well-traveled road running north and south through the forest; I don’t want to think about what might have happened if I’d been well and truly cast out in the middle of nowhere, because it’s been a long time since I’ve had to live off the land, and this time of year it gets harder to find ripe fruit that hasn’t either been harvested or eaten by birds. As it is, I was starving by the time I reached this place.

I scouted around the outskirts, very carefully, until I found a house whose owners were out, then I did the walk-through-walls pouvra and helped myself to some food and a shirt that’s a little too big for me, but better than nothing. I waited until nightfall to do all that, since I’ve learned from experience that it’s bad to rely too much on the concealment pouvra, and although this isn’t a really big town, closer to a village really, there were still a lot of eyes that might be able to see past the pouvra’s compulsion to look elsewhere. So I’m going to sleep in the woods again, more comfortably this time, and go into town openly tomorrow to find someone who’ll pay me for these clips (sorry, Audryn).

It’s late in the season, but I might be able to find a ride at least some of the way toward my goal. But I’m not counting on it. I doubt a town this size has anything worth hauling two weeks’ east to the Myrnala River and the handful of settlements along its banks. Handful of Balaenic settlements, I should say. I wonder what people thought when Colosse appeared out of nowhere? Not that I know that’s what happened.

I think I’ll see what I can learn from these villagers tomorrow. They might not know anything’s changed, because this place doesn’t look as if the convergence touched it at all. There’s certainly no activity of the kind you’d expect after a disaster, no broken buildings, nothing out of the ordinary. It’s just a typical village like you find all over the borders of Balaen, out on the frontier: houses of wooden beams with plaster between them and thatched, peaked roofs, mostly single story except for a couple of buildings near the center of town, like the inn—oh, that’s good news, I hadn’t thought about it, but if they have a building for hosting travelers, they’re likely not as suspicious and xenophobic as some of the places I’ve been to.

This one’s also more cheerful than most because so many of the houses have brightly painted doors and shutters, and I saw flowers growing around the ones on the edge of town where I did my scouting. So I feel fairly positive about my chances of learning something valuable. And who knows? Maybe I’ll find someone heading north who’s willing to give me a ride.

unknown, could be 15 Coloine still (continued)

The th’an on my body activating had been agony. Being insubstantial while inside another object was a different kind of pain—not so much pain as the kind of discomfort you want to crawl out of your skin to get away from. It disoriented me for a few seconds as I felt my bones and my organs and my brain adjust to sharing space with something else. I hoped that the discomfort would lessen as my body adjusted, but it only got worse. Soon all I could think about was getting out of there, and it took an effort of extreme willpower to remain where I was. I’d lost count of how long I’d been part of the ruin.

Then I realized that when I became substantial again, I’d be a permanent part of it.

I began struggling to move, trying to keep track of what was me and what was stone as I walked in what I hoped was the right direction. If there was a right direction. I needed to get out of the ruin; touching it from the outside would be enough to keep it insubstantial. I couldn’t see, because I didn’t have enough concentration to spare to make my eyes work.

I was having to remind my body with every step that my muscles were connected to a brain that could make them move, all the while fighting the tide that threatened to make me part of the ruin. The air I’d inhaled before I did the pouvra…it wasn’t like I could tell it was running out, but it was becoming more difficult to convince my body that it was separate from the stone.

Then I was out, first my legs, then one arm, and I had to move more carefully so as not to lose contact with the ruin. Finally I was at a point where my palm was the only thing resting against the stone, but I could barely remember what I was doing or why I had to go on doing it. And then I went unconscious.

I woke up at some point and lay looking up at the sky. It was late afternoon (it’s nearly evening now) and there were big, puffy white clouds trailing across the sky. I was probably still a little light-headed, because I lay for a while imagining shapes in the clouds: a shell, a crab missing a leg, a dragon. The th’an had disappeared from my body. My left hand hurt a lot, and when I looked at it I discovered it was missing all the skin of the palm and fingers where I’d rested it against the ruin.

Oh, yes, the ruin. It’s not a ruin anymore. I think the original buildings were split in half—not evenly, not down the middle like cutting a cake, but like a brick wall, jagged where it’s missing bricks—and the merger put the pieces back together to look the way they had before the original disaster. Well, not perfectly. I suppose you could still call it a ruin, because large chunks are lying on the ground, but it’s not nearly as destroyed as it used to be. I think you could live in it if you didn’t mind the mess, though it’s not much more than a couple of rooms with a roof.

I wonder why there were books there, if the buildings were only made to be part of the th’an. Just one of the many things I’d like to ask its builders, though “What the hell were you thinking?” is at the top of that list.

But it seems the worlds are one again. I don’t know how much destruction has happened. I also don’t know where I am. I thought, though now I realize Cederic never said this, that the kathana would take me to where I needed to be and then return me to the circle. I’m trying not to panic over the fact that it didn’t, that I’m sitting here in a clearing in a forest (I forgot to say it’s in a forest) next to what used to be a ruin, with no shirt and my only possessions being Audryn’s hair clips and these two books that I always keep on me. I’m grateful it’s the end of summer, and still warm, rather than midwinter, but I have no food and no money and my stores of gratitude aren’t very high.

I’m going to wait for nightfall and hope it’s a clear, moonless night, so I can find my bearings by the stars—it’s been a while since I’ve had to do that, but I still remember how. Then I’ll start walking. If I’m really lucky, the mages will have some way to track me down, but if not, I’ll have to find a town and hope I can convince them to be friendly. Then I’ll make my way to the Myrnala River and see what happened to Colosse. Cederic and the mages might stay there, or they might go back to the Darssan, depending on whether that desert wasteland is still there. Who knows how many other changes there might be? But I’ll find him. I’ve faced worse than this and survived.

unknown, could be 15 Coloine still (continued)

The mages were done scribing th’an, the inert ones, in black ink rather than chalk, and there were so many of them they made a thick pattern around the black circle. They outlined two more circles, one only a few inches across, near the northwest point, the other about two feet across, centered on the south point.

Three mages were walking around the room, slapping the walls or stomping their feet. “Right here,” one of them said, and the others came to sit on the floor with her, making a loose circle around a spot that didn’t look very special to me. Then each of them took off one shoe and began tapping with the heel on the wood, as if testing for sound.

“Sesskia,” Cederic said, and I turned to face him. His face was so emotionless it looked as if it had been carved of marble. “It’s almost time.”

“What’s going to happen?” I said. My voice didn’t tremble. I’m sure I looked as emotionless as he did. He was already under enough stress without seeing me burst into tears.

“The binding kathana is simple enough,” he said. “And we have found a th’an that connects the ruins, as many as we can identify, in a way that will reverse what the original kathana did. We will make a correspondence between the ruins in each world so they will be drawn back together. Binding the worlds at those points will allow all the other places to merge, not only in Castavir but over all three continents and all the oceans, though any manmade constructions that overlap that are not one of the ruins will be destroyed. It is the best we can do.”

“That doesn’t explain why Terrael used me as a slate,” I said.

Cederic looked away from me. “The ruins give shape to the th’an; they are like instructions for how the worlds are to fit together. If the ruins in each world are simply drawn back together, they will destroy each other, and the worlds will also be destroyed. So the ruins must be made to slip together, to occupy the same space at the same time. To be insubstantial just long enough for the worlds to merge completely.”

“You need the walk-through-walls pouvra,” I said. “That’s how my magic will be part of the kathana. But I have to touch things to make them insubstantial. How am I supposed to touch all those ruins, let alone quickly enough to make a difference?”

“The th’an on your body will draw all the ruins into one place, symbolically, so that what you do to one, you do to all,” Cederic said.

“What if you’ve missed some of the ruins? Won’t the kathana fail?” I said.

“The th’an connecting the ruins is what matters,” he said. “So long as enough of those ruins are part of the th’an, the worlds will still come together. Any of them we miss will be destroyed, as any two overlapping structures will be. We have done our best.”

“You—” Another tremor, putting me at seven places throughout Colosse and in two places I didn’t recognize, and it felt like having my heart and lungs ripped out of my body to be pulled back together. “You aren’t telling me everything,” I said when we’d both recovered.

Cederic looked away from me again. “You will need to maintain the pouvra for almost three minutes,” he said.

I felt my stomach churn. “I can’t hold my breath that long,” I said.

“You will have to,” he said, still looking away. Now I know he was trying to keep his composure, but at the time I felt abandoned. But then he looked back at me, and said, “I cannot even touch you without ruining Master Peressten’s work. I wish I had thought of that before I told him to begin.”

“I understand,” I said, and he leaned down and kissed me, gently. It felt so much like a farewell that tears came to my eyes, and I had to duck my head so he wouldn’t see them. “Can we do it now? The kathana?” I said.

He nodded, and took my hand to lead me to sit in the larger of the th’an-described circles, with my back to the rest of the circle. I crossed my legs and rested my hands on my knees, forcing myself to breathe normally and relax so I could fill my lungs as deeply as possible when the time came.

From somewhere off to my right, the three mages began tapping a beat, then pounding it with the heels of their shoes. The wood resonated, making a hollow sound: thump, thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, THUMP. Mages moved past me, and I could hear their bare feet brushing the wood as they moved with the rhythm, finishing the kathana.

Then Cederic knelt in front of me, hand raised to my forehead. I didn’t dare break the rhythm by speaking, and that was when I realized I hadn’t told him I love him. But I think he knew what I wanted to say. The cool ink of the writing tool brushed across my forehead, once, twice, and then I sucked in a deep breath—

It felt as though I were being branded over my whole upper body, everywhere Terrael had drawn th’an. I let go that breath and screamed—I couldn’t help myself, it hurt that badly. Cederic was gone. The room was gone. I was in a white void that spun so fast some of my hair came loose and whipped past my face, stinging, and I had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up from dizziness.

Pale gray shapes lunged at me through the whirlwind, though none of them struck me; it was as if I were already insubstantial, though I knew I wasn’t because I could breathe easily. Then a darker shape loomed up in front of me, rushing hard and fast toward me, and I sucked in a deep breath and worked the walk-through-walls pouvra just as I would have collided with it, and turned it insubstantial with me.

to be continued…

unknown, could be 15 Coloine still (continued)

I only intended to give the mages a few more seconds by keeping the God-Empress from commanding her soldiers to attack. They’d probably act on their own initiative if she didn’t give the order. Instead, all the soldiers suddenly looked confused, as if they didn’t know what they were doing or even why they were in the room.

That was all I had time to observe before I had to use all my strength to subdue the God-Empress. I was able to make out the outline of her face before the pouvra’s compulsion for me to look elsewhere took effect, and I jammed my arm into her mouth so she couldn’t shout. She ground down with her teeth, but my sleeve protected me enough that it was just a dull pain, though not an insignificant one. I pressed harder and tried to ignore it.

Gagging her with my arm left me with only one hand to fend off her attacks, but her greater height didn’t give her any advantages while we were on the floor, and I both outweigh her and have experience with fighting dirty. I learned a long time ago that the only technique that matters, for someone my size, is the one that gets you away from your assailant.

So we punched and clawed and elbowed, neither of us able to see the other, and I was able to smash my forehead against her chin, which stunned her for a moment, but not as long as if I’d hit her nose, which is what I was aiming for.

She rocked, trying to roll me off her, and I got my knee up to give myself a stronger position, and that’s when I realized Cederic was standing nearby, shouting my name in a way that told me he had no idea where I was. So I released the pouvra while still keeping a grip on the God-Empress, and then hands were taking her from me, and I pushed myself to my knees and let Cederic help me stand.

My eyes were watering because she’d managed to claw my face, just at the end, but I looked around the room and was stunned to see no soldiers left standing. Some of them had blood running from their eyes and noses and ears, and others had faces tinged blue from asphyxiation, and some lay in heaps next to the walls as if they’d been flung into them, hard. I still haven’t seen mages use th’an in a fight, and I know they’re useless if someone has a sword to their throats, but give them enough space and they’re deadly.

“Are you all right?” Cederic said, touching my cheek; I winced away from how his touch made the wounds sting. I’m glad I didn’t think, at the time, that they might have been poisoned, since the God-Empress is the kind of person who might paint her nails with poison just to have that extra weapon. I was already on edge and that would have been more strain than I needed.

“I’m fine,” I said, wiping my eyes. The God-Empress stood a few feet away from me. No one was holding her—I figure a lifetime’s habit of revering her as God couldn’t be broken easily—but there were at least five people between her and the door, so it’s not like she could go anywhere. (I thought. We all thought.) She looked awful. Her golden crown of hair was completely disordered, she had bruises forming on her chin and at the corner of her mouth where I’d gotten in a lucky punch, but she looked as self-possessed as if we were all in her pavilion and she were about to pronounce judgment on us.

“You’ve disappointed me, Sesskia,” she said. “You were God’s choice and you rebelled against her. You will have to die.”

“We’re all probably going to die thanks to you ruining the kathana,” I said.

She shrugged. “I told you God won’t allow that to happen,” she said. She looked at Cederic, then back at me. “You don’t appreciate your gift,” she said. “You will watch as I peel the skin from his body, and then you will die, screaming.”

She raised her hand as if to point at me, but instead she began doing that complicated salute she’d done at the honey day ceremony, only rapidly, and I could see amber light outlining her fingers just as Cederic said, “Th’an!” and lunged at her. It was too late. She…sort of flattened, like dough being rolled out, going thinner and thinner until she was a mist that dissipated and was gone.

“What was that?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Cederic said. “It’s not—”

That was when the biggest tremor we’d ever felt struck. I was in five places at once, only one of them in that room, and it hurt when I pulled back together, enough that I had to stand and breathe deeply so I wouldn’t faint. Everyone around me was doing the same, leaning on each other, and I saw Terrael supporting Audryn, whose robe was bloody along the front.

Then an actual tremor sent shockwaves through the room, staggering everyone. Cederic reached out to grab my hand, and I held onto him until the room stopped trembling. Then he let me go, and said, “Clear the circle. And move quickly.”

I don’t think anyone needed to hear that last part. We all began dragging bodies to the sides of the room, mostly soldiers, a few robed mages we didn’t have time to mourn. The circle, which had been drawn in ink, was intact, but the th’an scribed in and around it were ruined. Mages dropped to their knees and began scrubbing what was left of them away, while others began writing new ones, these more permanent. I stood to one side, watching, but then Terrael grabbed me and tore off my shirt before I could protest.

He began drawing on my chest and shoulders with his fat writing tool, and then I squeaked and began batting at his hand. “Stop it,” he said, and slapped my hands away. “I don’t have time to explain, Sesskia, just hold still,” and he kept on scribing.

I obeyed him, praying that he wasn’t about to remove my breast band too, but he secured my hair messily on top of my head using the clips I’d last seen Audryn wearing, then turned me around and began drawing on my back, th’an after th’an. The ink was cold and felt wet, as if it were trickling across my skin.

Another tremor struck, and I was in the throne room and my bedroom and the observatory and somewhere down in Colosse, where I saw people screaming, and then I was back in my body, aching everywhere as if I’d been beaten. Terrael was crouched on the floor, one hand holding himself up, the other still clutching his writing tool. I reached down and helped him stand while the earth shook. “Thanks,” he said, and made a few more marks on my cheeks. “Sai Aleynten will tell you what to do, when it’s time,” he said. “I think it will hurt. I’m sorry.”

“If it will help save the world, I think I can endure a little pain,” I said, but I was starting to feel afraid, because I don’t like not knowing things. I wished he’d been able to explain—though I think, now, if I’d known what was coming, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.

to be continued…

unknown, could be 15 Coloine still

Now that I’ve recovered from the kathana, I’m going to write everything down because, as is often the case, writing helps me stay sane when everything around me is confusion and strangeness. And then I’ll figure out what to do next.

As I wrote, I went to stand where I was the first thing visible to anyone coming through the door. Soldiers entered, silent except for the sound of their boots on the fancy wooden floor. It was eerily like the way they’d made a double file in the circle chamber, just before Vorantor was killed, and I think everyone felt the same way, because the mages all drew in together, into a loose clump near the middle of the room that put them behind me. Cederic came to stand beside me, not touching me, but his presence was a comfort—not enough to dispel all my anxiety, but still a comfort.

For a few seconds more, I held out hope that it was Aselfos, that I’d be able to reason with him or at least threaten him with more of the walk-through-walls pouvra, and then the God-Empress came through the door, and the hard, cruel look on her face dispelled any hope that this might end well for anyone. I tried not to look as despairing as I felt and waited, because I didn’t think I had any chance at tricking or manipulating her with words.

“Sesskia,” the God-Empress said, “you are God’s choice. Do you understand what that means?”

“No, Renatha, I don’t,” I said.

“Your magic is God’s gift, direct from her without need for all this scribbling,” the God-Empress said. “You should have been most high priestess from the beginning.”

“Thank you, Renatha, it is a gift—” I began.

“Do not waste my time, Sesskia, we all know no one deserves my gifts,” the God-Empress said. “And I have been especially generous with you. You are God’s choice. You will stand by God’s side today.”

“I—all right, Renatha,” I said, though I could sense Cederic going tense beside me. “How can I serve God?”

The God-Empress smiled. “We have rebellion,” she said. “There are fools who have chosen to fight against God. My army is going to war, Sesskia, and you will use your magic against the enemy, you and every mage here. Bring what you need, scribblers, and we’ll leave this place now.”

“The convergence is upon us,” Cederic said. “If we do not perform this kathana now, the world will face destruction that will make your battle irrelevant.”

“Your excuses are what’s irrelevant, Cederic Aleynten,” the God-Empress said. “God will not allow her world to be destroyed. Do you really want to disobey God?”

“You must surely have felt the signs of the convergence,” Cederic said. “We need more time.”

The God-Empress turned her mad eyes on me. “You gave me everything in exchange for him,” she said. “Command him. You are God’s choice.”

“No,” I said. “And he wouldn’t obey that command anyway.”

I don’t think anyone’s said no to the God-Empress in her life. For a moment, her eyes went wide and her jaw slack. Then she said, “Take them.”

I was too slow. So were the mages. Before I had time to do more than circle the God-Empress with fire, several of our mages were grabbed by soldiers and pinned against the walls or held tight with knives to their throats or hearts. One of them was Audryn.

Terrael brought his slate up and raised his stubby piece of chalk as if it were one of those sharp knives, and I shouted, “No!” though I had no idea what he intended to do with those unlikely weapons. “Let them go, Renatha,” I said, making the fire blaze hotter.

“Burn me, and my soldiers kill every one of them,” she said with a cruel smile. “You always were the soft one, Sesskia. How you can wield such power and still be so weak baffles me. Command them, or they die.”

I felt weak right then. I could have killed the God-Empress, and ended that threat, but some of our mages would have died before the rest could defend themselves—at the time I didn’t know how effective that defense could be. Maybe I should have killed her. It would have changed everything.

But all those deaths…like I said, I felt weak, unable to condemn people I cared about, especially Audryn, to death. I dismissed the fire and said, “Let them go. We’ll do as you ask,” thinking that we’d find a way out of it, that Cederic would see a solution I didn’t.

Instead, he raised both his hands and began rapidly scribing th’an on the air. Several soldiers screamed and dropped their weapons, their hands turning red like the coals of a blacksmith’s fire. “Get out!” he shouted, and I turned to use the fire-starting pouvra on the rest of the soldiers while some of the mages began to move and others, those holding their boards, began scrawling on them.

A few more soldiers shouted in pain as their skin began to smoke. But there were too many of them, and we were all weary from lack of sleep, and we still weren’t fast enough. Two mages screamed as knives found their mark, more soldiers tackled Cederic and immobilized his hands, and still more soldiers went to block the exit, their swords drawn. More mages went down to those blades, and the rest of us fell back, away from the carnage.

“Stop, stop!” I shouted. “If you kill them all, who will fight for you?”

“I don’t need disobedient priests. God will raise up others,” the God-Empress said. “Your gift tried to fight me, Sesskia. I’m not happy with your inability to control him.” She turned her gaze on Cederic. “Kneel before me, Cederic Aleynten,” she said, and the soldiers holding him kicked his knees so they folded, and he landed on the floor with a grunt. “No, I think you had better bow instead,” she continued, and they forced him to bend until he was prostrate in front of her.

“You gave him to me, Renatha,” I said. “I’m responsible for his actions. It’s me you should punish.”

“Sesskia—” Cederic shouted, and one of the soldiers kicked him in the face, making him cry out at the same time I did.

“I still need you, Sesskia,” the God-Empress said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “I don’t need him.” To the soldiers, she said, “Remove his hands.”

“No!” I screamed, and stupidly threw myself at the soldiers, forgetting entirely about pouvrin. One of the men grabbed me and dragged me away, and then I did set him on fire, but he kept hold of me even as he screamed and tried to extinguish the flames. My mind-moving pouvra was too weak to force his hands open. I watched Cederic struggle as the soldiers holding him stretched out his arms, leaving his wrists bare, and another soldier drew his longsword and approached, raising it high for a powerful two-handed stroke. I wrenched myself free—

—and even as I set the man on fire, Cederic’s captors flew backward into a knot of mages, knocking them all down, and he reared up, his eyes wide and panicked, and with a sweeping motion of both hands sent half a dozen soldiers to the ground.

It took me a second or two to realize he hadn’t scribed th’an, that his terror had woken the magic within him and given him his own mind-moving pouvra. I had no idea it could be so powerful, though I guess he’s used to being able to move much heavier things than I can with th’an, and maybe it translates. That thought came later. At the time, though, I reacted by shouting, “Strike back!”

The mages began to move, the soldiers dropped their knives and drew their swords, the God-Empress opened her mouth to give a command, and without stopping to think I grabbed her, bore her to the ground, and worked the concealment pouvra on both of us.

to be continued…

15 Coloine, twenty minutes later

We won’t be destroyed. I can’t believe it was sitting in Cederic’s room this whole time. It seems obvious now, but I think—no, I should start at the beginning.

Cederic came racing back in here a few minutes ago, clutching some large papers that turned out to be our maps. He practically fell to his knees in front of me, spread them out one atop the other, and said, “There’s a pattern. I didn’t see it because I was so obsessed with the missing th’an—you won’t see it, Sesskia, you don’t know the th’an, but—come and look at this, everyone, and tell me what you see!”

It’s true, I was mystified, but Terrael looked at it, shoved his way to a different position, and said, “It’s the unlocking th’an.”

“The lines are not quite perfect,” Cederic said, “but even with Sesskia’s information, we knew we did not know the location of all the ruins. Knowing what th’an it is lets us extrapolate the position of the remaining ones.” He took my chalk and drew a th’an quickly, connecting the marks on the map and interrupting the line once so it wouldn’t activate. It’s an elaborate shape, and it’s surprising anyone could look at those X’s and see that pattern, but I think desperation makes everything look different.

“So what does it mean?” asked one of the mages.

“It means they bound the land to the kathana,” Cederic said. “It explains why the ruins are all so uniform, and so small; they were built specifically for that purpose. That is why Master Peressten was unable to identify the missing parts of their kathana. The ruins are the missing parts.”

He stood and brushed off his knees. “Sai Howert, take half our mages and clear the circle for a binding kathana. The rest of you, copy these marks to your boards—be accurate, but don’t worry about perfection. We need to connect these ruins in a new th’an. You are looking for anything that suggests union or coming together. Master Peressten, with me, please.”

He walked away without waiting for Terrael to respond. I followed him, Terrael trailing behind, to where the books of the Darssan library were piled on a couple of tables scrounged from nearby rooms.

“For this to work, we need three things,” Cederic told us—well, he told Terrael, and I listened. “We need a binding kathana—”

The room stretched and contracted with another tremor. Cederic fell silent until it passed. They feel like they’re lasting longer as well as coming more frequently now. “We need a binding kathana,” Cederic said, “one based on the original unlocking kathana. Sesskia—”

“It’s not the right one, is it?” I said, and I can’t describe how discouraged I was. “The one I’ve been working on.”

Cederic shook his head and laid his hand along my cheek. “It was not wasted effort,” he said. “We still need your magic in the kathana. The binding th’an are simple; you may be able to learn them in time. Master Peressten, we also need to draw a new th’an that connects all the ruins, or as many as we can find. And we need some way to attune our kathana to the landscape, to the ruins themselves, in effect scribing th’an on them the way Sesskia draws on her board.”

He drew in a deep breath, and in a lower voice said, “And I have no knowledge of how to do that. I need you to go through the books I cannot read, looking for some hint to that secret.”

“Sai Aleynten,” Terrael said, “that could be impossible. We’ve been through these books dozens of times. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“You saw that th’an on the map when no one else did,” Cederic said. “We need to look at these books with a fresh eye. And pray what we need is not in one of those books we cannot read.”

Terrael nodded. “I’ll—” Another tremor. “—do my best,” he said. “And I already have an idea.” He began shifting books on the table, making a neat stack, because even in this nightmare he’s still Terrael.

I pulled Cederic to the side, and said, “You know there’s no way I can learn a new th’an in time. What can I really do?”

Cederic sighed. “If we cannot find a way to put your magic into this kathana, everything else we do may be for nothing. And I see no way to accomplish that. What do you see?”

I had to shake my head and say, “I don’t know.”

“Then practice pouvrin,” he said, “and think, and allow me more time to consider. We still do not know what Aselfos has in mind, nor what the God-Empress might do. If it comes to it, you may be defending us against one or both of them.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said, and went to stand near the door. I practiced pouvrin until my eyes and my chest ached, then rested and wrote for a bit, then back to pouvrin. My fire-summoning pouvra is more effective now; I think I could encircle five people at once, and I’m steeling myself to burn flesh. My mind-moving pouvra isn’t ever going to be strong enough to hurt anyone, and though I think I could drown someone by holding a globe of water around their head, that’s not practical in a fight, where the person might have fifteen friends trying to kill me at the same time.

But the concealment pouvra, and the walk-through-walls one—I figured out how to turn them outward, so I can work them on another person. I’m still not sure how useful that will be, particularly turning someone else virtually invisible, but it’s something.

Cederic and Terrael are having an intense discussion, Cederic gesturing with large swoops and Terrael shaking his head. It reminds me of the first time I saw them interact, when Terrael was trying to convince Cederic to use the aeden on me, and how much I disliked Cederic then. That seems so long ago, but really it was less than two months. Two months to go from hating someone to loving him—I think I must have been more lonely than I knew. I hope I didn’t

I was going to write “I hope I didn’t just attach myself to Cederic because I was desperate for love,” but I feel certain it’s not true. We still have so much to learn about each other, and I don’t want to be like Mam, blaming Dad for every little thing that went wrong and for not being a good provider, even though he went out on that boat every night and brought home a good catch, then had to sell it himself because Mam was unreliable. But I trust him. I feel more myself than I ever have when I’m with him. I don’t want the world to end just as my life is really beginning.

Another tremor. Cederic is pointing at a book and now Terrael is nodding. They’ve got their boards out and they’re drawing. I can’t believe they found anything useful—we weren’t able to bring the entire Darssan library here, so what are the odds that one of those books would have the right th’an? No, more likely the two geniuses saw potential in something completely unrelated. I should be practicing now, but I can’t stand the tension, I have to see if they’ve figured it out. I don’t want to disturb them, though, so all I can do is stand over here by the door

I hear someone coming. A lot of someones. Boots.

It’s soldiers. Aselfos or the God-Empress, I don’t know, but it can’t be good. I’ve called out a warning and now I’m going to stand where I’m the first thing anyone entering this room sees. Putting the book away now and hoping this isn’t my last record.

15 Coloine, breakfast (not that anyone’s able to eat)

Something strange happened. Cederic came to sit with me for a few minutes—I’m glad he’s realized that his going entirely without rest helps no one—and I leaned against his shoulder and pretended the world wasn’t about to end. He smells of fresh linen and, faintly, of old paper, which is one of my favorite smells, and now it’s doubly so. I had Terrael’s board in my lap, and Cederic picked it up and twirled it in his fingers, just for something to do, and then he stopped abruptly and held it at arm’s length to look at it.

Then he swore, and leaped up from where he was sitting, and ran out of the room before I could ask him what was wrong. He took the board with him, whether because it was important or because he forgot he was holding it, I don’t know, but it left me with nothing but this book to entertain myself.

If things weren’t so urgent, the way everyone stopped in mid-step when Cederic left would be funny. One of the Sais rallied them, but it’s clear everyone knows that if they’re going to discover a kathana that works, it will be thanks to Cederic’s genius, so him tearing out of here like he’s being chased left everyone bereft, including me, since everyone else’s leaning on him is metaphorical, and I nearly fell over when he got up. So it must be important.

Nothing else to write. I’ve accomplished as much as I can with the pouvra without actually taking part in the kathana. I don’t dare wander over to see what the mages are doing and possibly interrupt them. I’m going to look at the painting and think about what spring will look like. It’s six months away, according to my count, though I’ve said I don’t know if Castaviran seasons match up with mine. But how could they not?

Then again, how can the desert around the Darssan be grassy plains in my world? I don’t know. It all seems pointless when it’s possible both plains and desert might be destroyed.

15 Coloine, dawn

I can’t believe it. I’m starting to feel the pouvra come together! The problem is that it doesn’t seem to do anything. Sovrin told me it’s another binding th’an, but I think—this is just my instinct—that it won’t actually work unless there are specific things for it to bind. And I can’t tell if it’s supposed to work through my body, or around it—there’s a lot about it I don’t know. But Cederic closed his eyes and breathed out a long sigh of relief when I told him, so I’m accomplishing something. I’m trying not to feel too relaxed about this, because I haven’t succeeded yet.