18. Our Choices Define Us
Chapter 18
Our Choices Define Us
7 th Day of the Blood Moon
Berona – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
Trusil whinnied as Rist ran the hard brush over the horse’s flank. Trusil had been well cared for at the imperial stables while Rist had journeyed to the Burnt Lands, but the guilt of leaving him still gnawed at Rist a little. He’d never considered himself a lover of animals, but the horse was changing that. Rist had amassed a total of six brushes and combs for the horse, which was, as he thought about it, more variations of the same thing than anything else he’d owned in his life.
One of the books he’d brought with him from Berona, after they’d last stopped there before the Burnt Lands, had been Of Horses and Men, and Why the Former is Better Than the Latter, by Olga Unimi. The title was a bit long-winded so he abbreviated it in his mind to ‘ Of Horses and Men’.
The book had spoken at length of the importance of keeping a horse well maintained and cared for and had outlined the specific needs for each brush. It might have seemed excessive to some, but Rist enjoyed the specificity of it. Each tool had a purpose and a place, each uniquely crafted to fulfil that purpose. Not only that, but he enjoyed the routine, the methodical repetition. And the fact that Trusil’s hair was soft as silk only added to that enjoyment.
“Shhh,” he whispered, running the thumb of his free hand across the horse’s cheek as he brushed. “I’ve heard we’re being given leave to spend the day and night in the city before marching east. I’ll bring you back apples.”
The horse nickered, shaking his head side to side and stamping his front foot.
“And carrots too, yes.” Rist rubbed Trusil’s cheek again with his spare hand as he brushed a particularly stubborn piece of caked mud from the horse’s shoulder.
“I don’t like carrots. Bring me pastries and cheese.” The voice came from behind, high-pitched and mocking.
Rist smiled, turning his head just a little to see Neera approaching, Lena at her side. He doubted that if horses could speak, they would produce a tone and pitch even remotely similar to that voice, but he’d learned enough to say nothing.
“If Trusil doesn’t want the pastries, I’ll have them. And the cheese.” Neera brushed Rist’s shoulder with her hand before scratching at Trusil’s muzzle affectionately. “If we work together, we can get pastries and apples. Viara will share them with you. Fair deal?”
Rist stepped back, watching with a smile on his face. Tharn Pimm had once told him that how a person treats an animal is a fine judge of their heart. Even those who are scared of animals could still be tender.
“Do the horses ever answer you when you talk?” Lena folded her arms, green robes falling just short of her ankles. She’d not been in Ilnaen during the fighting. Her, Brother Halmak, and the other consuls had remained at a rear camp some ten miles north, along with many of the Healers, infirmerers, and apprentices.
“Only if you speak horse,” Rist said with a smile.
“Was that a joke, Rist? You’re getting better at those. Tommin will…” Her voice trailed off. “Tommin would have liked that one.”
Rist gave Lena an awkward smile. He had a feeling that even if he knew what words to say, they wouldn’t have helped. Words were pretty but often ineffectual when it came to loss.
An elbow prodded him in the ribs and he looked to see Neera standing beside him and inclining her head towards Lena, who had grown silent and was now staring off towards the city.
He’d lost his focus again.
“Tommin would have liked it.” Neera linked arms with Lena, then stroked Trusil’s muzzle. “In fact, I think Trusil bears a striking resemblance to Tommin.”
Lena let out a soft laugh, squeezing Neera’s arm closer to her ribs, then scratched under Trusil’s cheek.
“Why the long face?” she whispered, and both her and Neera burst out in hysterics.
“Don’t try and understand it, lad.” Rist hadn’t heard Magnus approach. “Women are a different species. They’re smarter, stronger, and they feed off our confusion like mosquitoes do blood. If anyone tells you any different, they’re lying.”
Rist looked up to see Garramon and Magnus, the latter attempting to fold his arm across his chest, only to frown when he realised the other arm wasn’t there to leverage against.
Magnus looked at Rist then shrugged. “Like I said, still feels like it’s there. Anyway, you lot, gather what you need and piss off into the city. You’ve been given relief for the night, along with the Fourth Army. The Eighteenth and the Seventh will hold watch before they march east in the morning.” A look of visible irritation crept onto his face. “Taya Tambrel has instructed the First and the Fourth to remain at Berona for a while longer.”
As Neera and Lena made for the tents, Garramon grabbed Rist’s arm. “Not you. We have other plans.”
Dilapidated tents and hastily constructed wooden shanties sprawled outside Berona’s white walls, creeping for miles like tendrils of fog. Dark smoke pumped upwards from shoddy chimneys and a discordant din of hacking coughs, stamping feet, and clashing voices filled the air.
The people who occupied this makeshift city outside a city – and there must have been tens of thousands – looked as beaten and bruised as the soldiers who’d fought at Ilnaen. Some of them wouldn’t have been out of place in the triage tents.
A child no older than ten passed with bloodied bandages wrapped around the stump of his right leg, a crutch made of tree branches keeping him upright. A woman stumbled across the street from one tent, her entire face scarred and blistered, her eyes nothing but knotted flesh, and what looked to be her two daughters guiding her path.
Rist could have gone on listing the injuries in his mind, but he would have stood there for months. It would have been quicker for him to list those who appeared unharmed. Whatever state they were in, whatever limbs remained, every last one of them looked to be firmly in exhaustion’s grasp, their skin caked with dirt, their eyes sunken.
Imperial soldiers and cavalry marched through the wide main street in groups of eight, swords belted at their hips, the crowd parting before them. At first, Rist had thought the show of force too much, but the more he watched, the more he understood: Berona was a tinderbox ready to ignite.
These people had lost everything and most had marched hundreds or thousands of miles. They were tired, broken, hungry, and in pain. He counted at least six brawls within the space of two hundred feet. One man had thrown a rock at a mounted rider, resulting in him vanishing beneath a swarm of black and red leather.
“If you’re ever wondering why we fight,” Garramon said, leaning in, “this would go some way towards explaining it. It’s been months since the elves destroyed the cities on the eastern coast, and still the refugees pour in, their lives razed to the ground, their loved ones left to burn in piles.”
A man bumped into Rist’s shoulder, apologising profusely, his hand covering his mouth with a cloth. The man’s eyes were bloodshot and weeping, yellow crusts forming along his lids. Dark lesions cracked outwards from behind the cloth.
Rist had read about illness and squalor in The Art of War . There were entire chapters dedicated to the collapse of cities without the swing of a single blade. The logic had been sound. If you forced enough of your enemies into a single place where the infrastructure could no longer contain them, collapse would ensue. Space would vanish, food would be consumed faster than it could be produced, and illness would spread. When you finally marched your armies through the gates, the city would already be crumbling, more akin to a tomb than a fortress.
The way Sumara Tuzan had written it, it had seemed almost poetic. Intellect over brute force. A masterful method of taking a city without losing a soul. But this was not poetic or masterful; this was brutal, and cruel, and horrid.
Two men passed, dragging a woman in a barrow lined with straw. Both men stared at the ground, their hands bloody and cracked around the wooden handles.
The woman was dead. Her legs had been shattered from the knees down, bandages and splints failing to hold the broken bones together. Had Rist not seen battle, he wouldn’t have known she was dead just by looking. But he knew what dead bodies looked like now. Her skin was too pale, her chest had no rise or fall, and she was far too still.
“If the Uraks or elves attack, all of these people will be slaughtered…”
Garramon didn’t answer. It hadn’t been a question. There was no other outcome. If the city’s gates were already closed, then Berona was close to bursting. If the guards opened the gates and let these people in, their fate would be sealed. Sure, they would avoid a quick death beneath Urak or elven steel, but disease would spread like wildfire, starvation would kill within weeks, and then the corpses would pile.
Rist did not envy the man or woman who would be forced to make that choice. Open the gates and invite a slow death to all within, or leave the gates closed and watch these people die at the walls.
“Is this what it’s like in the South?” Rist stared at a motionless man who lay on the ground by a tent as a blend of sunlight and pink-hued moonlight crept in through the gaps in the shanties. His hands, feet, eyes, and mouth were marred by deep black stains. Consumption.
“From what I hear, no,” Garramon answered. “Though some places are faring worse than others, the Uraks seemed to have focused a large portion of their efforts in the North.” Garramon looked to Rist, slowly understanding the true meaning behind his question. His mouth formed a grim line, and he hesitated before continuing. “I’ve not heard word from The Glade or the other villages. No new letters, no new reports.”
Rist stared back at Garramon before shifting his gaze to the faces that peered from shanty doorways, dirty and disheveled.
His heart hurt.
After Ilnaen, he would have given anything just to hear his mam’s over-enthusiastic voice or have his dad spend hours explaining how the pollen of different flowers affected the taste of honey and, in turn, mead.
“There are several armies stationed in western Illyanara,” Garramon continued. “I’m sure your parents are fine. Between the Uraks and the elves, news from the South has grown scarce. The best we can do is keep fighting here and trust our forces in the South to do the same.”
“I wouldn’t be allowed to go back even if I wanted to, would I?” Rist knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it spoken aloud. He needed to hear it from Garramon’s lips.
Garramon hesitated, then shook his head. “Not unless you were instructed to do so. You would be branded a deserter.”
Deserters were killed. He knew this from Orduro Alanta’s The Forging of an Empire , but The Art of War had also recommended the execution of any deserters from a standing army. He understood the principle: if soldiers could abandon their duty with no repercussions, an army would quickly crumble and wither at the first sight of hardship. The overarching threat of repercussion was what kept society from collapse. It was practiced by mothers and fathers to keep children on the correct path. And it was often the only deterrent from theft or murder – which was a sobering thought in itself. It was a sound principle for the moral framework of a society. But just because he understood it didn’t mean he liked it.
It was something he was finding to be true more often than not recently: the written word had a distance from the reality of things. A way of focusing on cold, hard logic with no allowance for the humanity of an act. Logic had always been something Rist cherished. It was essential and inarguable. But his recent experiences were tarnishing his love of logic.
“Rist?” Garramon leaned forwards, meeting Rist’s gaze.
Rist gave him a weak smile, nodding. He didn’t want to talk on it any further.
Over a hundred spearmen were arranged in two blocks on either side of Berona’s main gates, their backs stiff, eyes watching. A number of Varsundi Blackthorns stood at the ready, towering over any refugee who dared approach the gates. Above, archers lined the parapets.
Soldiers of the First and Fourth armies marched through the assembled guard and into the city, the spikes of the iron portcullis looming overhead.
“Where are we going?” Rist asked as they pushed through the crowded streets. The stench of piss blended noxiously with what should have been the sweet aroma of fresh-baked bread, the acrid sting of vomit dulling the scents of lavender and rosemary that Rist was sure would have been beautiful in a time before the war.
“You’re asking that now?”
“I wanted to change the subject.” Rist hadn’t asked the question when he and Garramon had first set off from the camp. It hadn’t seemed important. Wherever Garramon was taking him, he wouldn’t have had much choice in the matter either way. He may have earned his colours, but Garramon was still an Exarch and he was still Rist’s mentor. Besides, he trusted the man.
Garramon laughed at that, shaking his head. His expression sobered. “You’ll see soon enough. Come, we’re late.”
As Garramon led Rist through the Beronan streets and past the enormous keep at the city’s centre, it didn’t take Rist long to realise where he was being brought.
A tower rose in the northeast of the city. Carved from white stone, it stood three times the height of all else around it, a low cloud obscuring its peak. Sweeping bridges and broad walkways sprawled from its base as though the tower was the centre point of all life within Berona’s walls. Not even Al’Nasla’s palace pulled the breath from Rist’s lungs the way the High Tower did. It was easily hundreds of feet wide with markings and symbols etched into the stone, red and black banners flapping in the wind. Balconies and plateaus stretched outwards from arched openings, overlooking the city from impossible heights.
But more than what he could see with his eyes, the closer he drew to the tower the fiercer the air rippled with the energy of the Spark. In Al’Nasla, Emperor Mortem had spoken of how Berona – like the capital – was one of few cities where the very fabric of the world resonated with the Spark’s power for those who could feel it.
Rist had spent so long in Al’Nasla that the sensation had become little more than background noise in his mind, like the burbling of a river or the chatter in an inn. It had been the same when he’d first stepped through Berona’s gates, but with each step towards the tower, that thrum rose and deepened until it became a tangible thing, a sound rushing in his ears, a sensation burning in his blood. Al’Nasla was a trickle, a meagre drip, in comparison.
He stopped and pressed his fingertips into his temple. The sensation had grown to the point that it roared in his ears and clouded his thoughts.
“It will balance out.” Garramon rested a hand on Rist’s back, guiding him past two women arguing over a loaf of mouldy bread.
“How can anyone function…” He squeezed the bridge of his nose to the point he thought the bone might snap. “It’s… deafening.”
“Not all Spark wielders can feel it as viscerally as you and I, and the vast majority barely feel it at all. You’re more sensitive to the Spark than others. As your strength grows, so too does that sensitivity. It takes time to filter it. Give yourself a distraction. Focus on your breathing. Slow in, slow out. Feel your lungs and chest expand.”
Rist did as he was instructed, focusing on the air as he pulled it in through his nostrils. He closed his eyes for a moment, continuing to walk forwards with Garramon’s hand on his back.
People knocked into him, bumping his shoulder or clipping his leg. He heard dull voices, admonishing shouts. He ignored them. He had no choice. The thrum had grown so intense it had consumed all else, a storm raging in his mind.
“ Druids, a Magic Lost ,” Garramon whispered in his ear. “Page two hundred and eleven.”
“What?” Rist grunted, moving his hand back to his temple and pressing in his fingers.
“Read it to me. Tell me the first line.”
“I…” Rist made to argue, but all logical thought abandoned him. His mind was chaos. He pictured the book, flicked through the pages, and settled on page two hundred and eleven. “ From the collected research of Angmiran Skarsden, Katja Landira, Indinam Muhdeeb, and other admittedly less reliable sources, I have composed a list of over one hundred and twenty-nine druidic gods. Some older texts suggest there may even have been more, but much of the pages are worn and frail, the ink blurred beyond legibility. Some have been transcribed, but I trust their accuracy as much as I do that of a blind goat. It appears that the druidic bloodlines began to dwindle somewhere around the year four hundred After Doom, taking many of their gods with them. By the year one thousand After Doom, the number of recorded gods had plummeted to no more than fifteen, and by the end of the Age of Honour, accounts of druidic histories had all but vanished. The only mention of the druidic gods are of Dvalin, the Stag; Bjorna, the bear; Vethnir, the hawk; Fenryr, the wolf; and Kaygan, the kat. ”
Rist paused, realising he had just spoken three full paragraphs aloud. But the sound had dulled to the edges of his mind, the thrum of the Spark ebbing, his pulse slowing. He opened his eyes to people flooding past him and Garramon smiling.
“Better?”
“Much.” Rist drew in a calming breath. His mind still thumped with a dull ache and a thin whistle sounded in the back of his head, but he could think. “Thank you. I’ve never felt anything like that… Even in Al’Nasla.”
“That’s because Al’Nasla doesn’t have the High Tower and all the mages within. The first time I came to Berona, I curled up in a ball near The Leaping Salmon in the western quadrant of the city,” Garramon said as they carried on through the street ahead, which was full of hawkers peddling everything under the sun. “I lay in that alley for hours, people stepping over me like I was a diseased rat. Some of the initiates taken in at the same time barely felt a pin prick in the air, others could feel it tickling their skin. Most felt nothing at all. Once you get used to it, it changes… transforms. If you had felt the power at Ilnaen before it fell, by the gods, the air in that city was like breathing lightning. It was something special, something beautiful.”
A few moments passed as Rist weighed his next question, mulling it over in his head. “I’ve sat through Brother Pirnil’s lectures, and I’ve read eight different books on the liberation – though that still feels like a strange word – but if I’m honest, it all feels… curated. It’s too simple, too black and white. I enjoy black and white. I enjoy numbers and rules. But if the past year or so has taught me anything, it’s that human nature is as grey as stone and murky as mud. Why did you make the choice you did? What actually happened?”
It was a question Rist had wanted to ask for a long time. He had hoped to find more honest answers in Orduro Alanta’s The Forging of an Empire , but it seemed to him that the original volume had clearly been destroyed after the man had been sent to work the mines at Dead Rock’s Hold, an edited account left in its place. There were only three people Rist would have trusted to tell him the truth. Anila was dead, and Magnus had a tendency to exaggerate far past the point of believability. That left Garramon.
Garramon’s step faltered and he turned his shoulder, unable to avoid crashing into a giant of a man with a thick beard, the chest of an ox, and a bloated, hanging gut. Garramon held up an open palm, apologising as the man rolled back his shoulder and made himself seem as large as possible.
It was only when the man gave Garramon a second look and glanced at Rist, his eyes falling to the lionhead pommel of the sword at Rist’s hip, that he stood back and carried on his way.
“Subtlety will never be something you master, will it?” Garramon said as he patted himself down. He gestured for Rist to follow him as they drew closer to the tower. “That’s a conversation that would take a lot more time than we have, but one I think you deserve. For now, I will say that I came to a crossroads where I could no longer reconcile The Order I had joined with what it had become.”
In the time it took Rist and Garramon to walk from the main gates of Berona to the walls that surrounded the base of the High Tower, Rist was certain he could have walked most of the way from The Glade to Milltown. The thrum of the Spark slowly bubbled in the back of Rist’s mind, constantly threatening to overwhelm him. He moved through the pages of Druids, a Magic Lost in his mind’s eye, focusing himself.
Rist and Garramon moved through the gates in the wall, entering a sprawling courtyard that looked as though it ran around the entire base of the tower. The symbol of the Circle was inlaid in jet into the white stone ground at the yard’s entrance, black and white banners with the Circle’s insignia hanging from golden poles.
Many buildings lined the inside of the walls, with hundreds of mages, porters, guards, and tower staff moving between them. Mages of all ranks and affinities occupied the yard, from Consuls in their green robes and Lectors in their grey, to Exarchs and Master Craftsmages in robes trimmed with silver. Apprentices, acolytes, and initiates moved in groups, the brown of their cloaks mingling with the colours of their various affinities.
The crowds made Rist realise just how unique his own experience had been in Al’Nasla.
Garramon led Rist across the courtyard, greeting several other mages as he did. They passed through an arched doorway in the tower’s base that rose higher than The Gilded Dragon’s roof, two enormous golden doors framing it.
The tower’s antechamber opened into a vast hall that held as much life as a bustling village. The ceiling stood hundreds of feet above, ornamented with delicately carved panels depicting the faces of people Rist had no knowledge of.
Beautiful red carpets threaded with gold sat atop white stone, while all manner of tapestries, paintings, and mosaics adorned the walls. He paused for a moment to examine a truly gargantuan depiction of a battle, worked entirely from gold, that was set into the curved inner wall on his right. The piece stretched for at least fifty feet, dragons soaring through the air, armoured warriors doing battle on the ground, Uraks tearing through everything that moved.
Never in his life had he seen such opulence, not even in the imperial palace.
Rist stared open-mouthed as he followed Garramon through the antechamber and up a winding set of stairs on the northeastern side. Ten-foot-tall alcoves lined the right-hand wall of the staircase. Within each recess stood statues hewn from bronze, gold, marble, and all manner of other materials. Rist even spotted two carved from solid obsidian, dark as night and shimmering as the light moved.
They spent what felt like the better part of an hour traipsing through winding corridors and climbing steps. Every floor was as busy and grandiose as the last, mages hustling from room to room, gilded red carpets lining the floor, artwork and ornaments adorning the walls. Even the door handles were made from solid gold.
Garramon stopped before a large gilded door with the symbol of the Circle worked into its front. In any other place, that door would have marked the entrance to the grandest chamber in the wealthiest of houses, but there, in the High Tower, it was as unassuming as any other – simplistic, almost.
The room on the other side was dimly lit, the curtains drawn across windows, tallow candles casting soft light on the stone.
Two men stood at the chamber’s heart, deep in conversation. Even before Rist could see their faces, he could tell by the gold and red trims on their black cloaks and by the undulating waves of power that rippled from them that they were none other than Andelar Touran and Fane Mortem.
It seemed such a ridiculous thing that he would be standing in this place, in the same room as these two men. Rist Havel, son of Lasch and Elia Havel, standing in the High Tower of the Circle of Magii with the Primarch of the Imperial Battlemages and the emperor of Loria. It felt as unbelievable as one of Dann’s stories.
“Ah, Garramon. Right on time.” Fane Mortem exuded that same insouciant charisma he’d had the first time Rist had met him. He held that same focused look in his eyes, that same intensity. “Wine?”
Garramon shook his head, greeting Fane and the Primarch. “Primarch Touran, this is Rist Havel, Brother of the Imperial Battlemages.”
The older man took a step closer, the soft light of the candles illuminating the deep wrinkles in his skin. Such visible aging meant the Primarch was nearing the end of his time – but how long had that time been? He’d heard some say Touran had witnessed over nine hundred summers. From what Rist had read in multiple accounts, how long a mage lived was as varied as how long any soul lived. Some saw four hundred summers, others eight hundred. But there are some instances of mages surviving over a thousand. Rist couldn’t quite grasp the concept of watching that much time pass him by.
In the chamber by the Well of Arnen during Rist’s Trial of Will, he hadn’t realised quite how tall Andelar Touran was. The man’s frame was thin and bony, but he was taller than Rist by several inches.
Andelar stared at Rist, examining him. The Primarch’s cold expression gave away nothing.
“I remember you,” he croaked, his voice sounding far less indomitable now that it wasn’t amplified by threads of Air and Spirit. “Your Trial of Will was interesting.”
Rist couldn’t help but wonder why the man had said that, why he had chosen the word ‘interesting’. There was a subtlety in the word that was not lost on Rist, a subtlety that confirmed something he had long wondered: the Primarch had seen what Rist had seen.
“Emperor Mortem has told me of your exploits.” Andelar looked to Fane, who held a cup of wine in his right hand, his arms crossed. “He believes you have a unique potential. As does Exarch Garramon. I am yet to be convinced.”
Fane let out a short laugh and grabbed a second cup of wine from the table beside him. “Always so serious, Andelar. Even when I was only a child, you were the same, back in your… ‘youth’.” He offered the cup to Rist. “Wine, Brother Havel? I fear you might need it.”
“Ehm… Yes.” Rist looked to Garramon, who raised a curious eyebrow. “I mean, no. Thank you.” He hesitated for another moment, then took the cup. “Yes.”
Rist wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but he’d grown quite fond of wine and thought of what Magnus would say if Rist told him he’d refused a cup from the emperor of Loria.
“Brother Havel.” Fane gestured to a set of three black leather couches surrounding a low table a few feet away, then dropped himself languidly onto a cushion. He leaned back and crossed one leg over the other, draping his right elbow over the armrest. “Do you remember our conversation in Al’Nasla’s library?”
Rist and Garramon both took a seat on the couch opposite Fane while the Primarch occupied the third.
“I do, Emperor Mortem.”
“Please, call me Fane. You’re a full Brother now, the youngest in the history of the Circle, if I am correct? Taking the record from me.”
Rist stared back awkwardly, which drew a grin from the emperor.
“You remember, Rist, how we spoke of that thrum in the air, that rhythmic vibration? And how you said you had felt it in Al’Nasla? Did you feel it here?”
Just the mention of the thrum brought it back to the fore of Rist’s mind, overwhelming his senses. A low buzz rang in his ears, the hairs on his arms pricking. He stopped himself from closing his eyes and pressing his fingers into his temple. As he looked at the others about him, he realised he could almost ‘see’ the power pulsing from all three men, like the ripples that undulate across water when a rock is dropped. Focusing, he could see that although power flowed from Andelar Touran, the old Primarch was nothing in comparison to Garramon or Fane. If Touran was a stone dropped in a lake, Garramon and Fane were boulders.
Rist once again opened the pages of a book in his mind and settled himself with the words, the thrum fading.
“Your reaction answers my question,” Fane said, sipping his wine. “I’m sure Garramon told you of his first time in Berona. Well, some years after that, I walked through the main gates, fresh as a spring flower, and do you know what I did?”
Rist shook his head.
“I emptied my guts onto the stone after about five minutes. Then I passed out in my own vomit. I was six.” The emperor laughed, shifting back into the hard cushion behind him and taking another drink. “I don’t tell many people that story for obvious reasons. But most people can’t relate to it, can’t understand. You can, can’t you?”
Rist took a deep mouthful of the wine he hadn’t touched until that moment. He recognised the taste immediately. It was the same wine he’d been given before the Battle of the Three Sisters: the wine from Etrus. Garramon had said Fane kept some of the casks for himself. “It’s like I can’t think,” he said, scratching at his arm. Thinking of the sensation sent an anxiety through him. “…or breathe, or hear, or feel. It just… it takes over.”
“You’ve obviously found something that focuses you, judging by your current state – far quicker than I did, might I add. What is it?”
“Books.”
“Books?” Andelar Touran’s voice was equal parts curiosity and scepticism.
“Books,” Rist confirmed. “Your books are some of them. A Study of Control and The Spark: A Study of Infinite Possibilities. When the feeling gets too strong, I read the pages in my mind. It calms me, allows me to focus.”
“Interesting.” The Primarch shifted forwards, swirling his wine in his cup. “You’ve read my works then?”
“I have, three times each.”
“Your thoughts?”
“Page one hundred and twelve of A Study of Control saved my life at Ilnaen.”
Beside Rist, Garramon leaned back, smiling.
“May I ask why I’m here?” Rist pursed his lips as the words left his mouth. Here he was sitting with the Primarch, the emperor, and the Arbiter. Each one of them could have torn him to shreds before he’d even have the time to react. He was not supposed to be the one asking the questions, and that was something he was very aware of. But he’d never been good at not asking questions.
“As I said before, I can appreciate someone who speaks their mind. I had asked Garramon not to tell you until you were here.” The emperor nodded slowly, gesturing towards Andelar Touran.
The old Primarch sipped at his cup, then set it on the low table. “Have you heard of the Arcarians, Brother Havel?”
Rist scanned through his memories, flipping pages, reading lines. He stopped on page two hundred and seventy-nine of… Druids, a Magic Lost – surprisingly. “The Arcarians were a sect of elite Battlemages formed in the year three hundred and seven After Doom. Each possessed power far beyond that of their peers, and their abilities often spread throughout all affinities of The Order’s magii. By key historical accounts, there were nine founding members. They…”
Rist stopped when he realised Andelar Touran was staring at him open-mouthed. He glanced right to see Garramon smiling ear-to-ear.
Emperor Mortem just laughed, finishing the last of his wine. He laid the cup on the table and refilled it from a decanter. “You consume information like you do air. How many books have you read since being granted access to the library?”
“One hundred and twenty-seven.”
“Pages?”
“Forty-nine thousand and fifty-one.”
“How many statues are in the yard at the base of this tower?”
“Thirteen.”
“How many steps did you climb on the way here?”
“In total? Or divided by staircase?”
“Enough of this nonsense.” Andelar shook his head. “You have an impressive memory. But that won’t keep your head on your shoulders. On the field of battle, it is power that triumphs. It will do you no good to remember every place steel has pierced your hide.” He sat straight. “The Arcarians are legend. They are the most powerful mages to have ever walked the known world. Before the liberation, they numbered twelve. Now, only three still draw breath. A woman by the name of Verma Tallissair, may Efialtír burn her soul. Emperor Fane Mortem, the youngest to have ever been inducted. And lastly, Arbiter Garramon Kalinim.”
Now it was Rist’s turn to stare open-mouthed. Garramon looked back at him without expression.
“To be an Arcarian, Rist, is to control the very nature of the Spark, to be one with it, to understand how it flows and shifts. Arcarians are not forged, they are born. Just as a man can build his strength for a lifetime and never be capable of shifting a mountain, a mage born without the raw power necessary can never become an Arcarian.” Fane leaned forwards. “In the library in Al’Nasla, I told you that Garramon was insistent that you had the power to become a hero of legend, a mage who is written about for centuries to come – an Arcarian. Now, with the elves pushing deeper into our land and the rebels causing chaos across Epheria, it is time to find the truth in that claim. It is time to find out who you are.”
Rist opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He moved his gaze from Fane to Garramon and over to Andelar.
“If you choose to walk this path,” Fane continued, “I will have you know that it will be the most difficult thing you have ever done in your short life. You will feel pain the likes of which you could never have dreamt. You will work day and night. You will push yourself to the limits of your soul and then past them. Your bones will ache, and your very soul will feel as though it has been set on fire. This is not a decision to be made lightly. You must know that very few who walk this path become Arcarians. I can feel the strength within you, but in all cases this kind of power is like the roots of a tree. We do not know how deep it runs until we uncover it.”
“What happens to those who don’t succeed?”
“Many burn themselves out, some die… painfully.” Garramon sat straight. His expression darkened, his gaze cold and hard. “Listen to me. You do not need to do this, Rist. You have nothing to prove.”
Much like with Neera, Rist had grown to understand Garramon’s mannerisms and tone. Genuine fear saturated the man’s voice.
“If it is worth anything,” Andelar Touran said, languidly running his finger along the rim of his wine cup, “I do not believe you will survive. The testing alone kills the vast majority of candidates. That is why so few are selected…”
“What happens when I succeed?” Rist turned his gaze to Fane Mortem.
The man gave Rist a broad smile. “You will become one of the most powerful Spark wielders to have ever existed.”