Chapter 19
The march north was long and dull, the kind of monotony that left Rook searching for any scrap of distraction, even if it lived only in his own head. For two days, he and Theron trudged onward with the rest of the advance battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Roberic. New boots softened quickly against the brittle morning frost and the sucking gray mud beneath it, and the only thing that broke the rhythm of marching feet was the occasional order drifting down the line.
Roberic did not bark often. He didn’t need to. The man rode near the front like a figure carved from the ironwood pines of the North, tall in the saddle, shoulders squared against the cold, every movement deliberate. His hair was cropped close and flecked with gray, and his eyes were sharp and steady, always watching, never missing a thing. When he spoke, even the wind seemed to quiet itself. Orders came in short, clipped phrases, delivered with a calm certainty that made men straighten their backs and tighten their grips on their shields. In Duskweld, there were officers who shouted themselves hoarse to get half as much obedience, but Roberic achieved it with a single look.
Soon, the battalion reached the Audurn River, flowing down in a gorge so deep and violent, the wind sounded like it was being murdered on the rocks below. Rook had expected a ramshackle crossing. Instead, he found an iron bridge mortared into the canyon walls, a narrow span hanging impossibly high above the churning water. The horses wanted nothing to do with it. Even Roberic’s mount snorted and jerked its head until the lieutenant colonel slid from the saddle, took the reins, and led the animal across himself without a hint of hesitation. One by one, the rest of the company followed his example, blindfolding their horses and gripping the rail with white knuckles while the stone shook faintly beneath their boots.
On the far side, men let out breaths they hadn’t realized they’d been holding. More than a few muttered that they’d gladly take a group of Sylphar over another crossing like that. Roberic only surveyed the near-thousand men, nodded once as if taking silent measure of who had cracked and who had not, then gave the quiet command to move on.
Rook pretended heights didn’t bother him. What unsettled him more was the way he had noticed Theron moving during this march. How he stepped onto a frost-slick ledge that had sent two others scrambling for balance and simply walked it as if the stone had steadied itself beneath him. No hesitation, no adjustment. Just a quiet certainty, like the mountain had chosen not to betray him. Or the moment the day before at camp, when a practice volley from the rear company loosed an errant bolt. It should have struck someone. But Theron had subtly raised a hand, and the bolt was flying in a completely different direction. No one else seemed to notice. But Rook did.
And then there were the words. Soft, half-formed sounds muttered under his breath. They were not prayers or curses, just strange syllables that made the hairs on Rook’s arms rise, as if the world itself strained to recall a language it had buried long ago. He was usually holding the strange medallion he kept around his neck while he spoke, turning it slowly between his fingers as if it helped shape the sounds. It sounded like some form of an ancient language, but one that Rook had never heard before.
That night, with the tents shivering in the wind and the mess pot stewing little more than onion peel and beef sinew, Rook finally brought it up.
He waited for the rest to bed down, for the fire to shrink to the orange bones of coals. Theron was sitting on a log by the embers, drawing patterns in the dust with a long stick. Rook took a seat across the fire from him and stared him down.
He began lightly. “You know, Theron, a lesser man might take it as an insult how you keep making the rest of us look like children. I could almost swear you don’t even try.”
Theron smiled but didn’t look up. “I don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re blathering about.”
Rook grinned, “Sure, yeah, okay. So what’s your secret? I’ve known you for a while now, and I’m convinced you’re not quite what you claim. You’re somehow faster and more skilled than the swordmasters, stronger than you have any right to be, and you talk less than a mute with a grudge. I know a lot of stories, you know. Used to be the unofficial storyteller on my caravan routes. We’d sit around a fire, just like this one, and I’d tell the men stories. Stories about men like you. Men blessed by the gods. Or cursed, depending on the story.”
Theron froze, the crackle of the fire the only sound between them. Then he lifted his gaze, slow and deliberate, those dark eyes catching the flames and turning sharp as a drawn blade. “You believe in that sort of thing?” he asked, his voice low, edged with something between amusement and warning. The words hung there, testing the air, pulling Rook in closer without meaning to.
“I believe in anything that gives a man an edge,” Rook said. “Especially if it’s against the rules. But there’s more to you, and we both know it.”
For a long time, Theron said nothing. He stared into the fire instead, watching the flames twist and snap as if they had secrets of their own. Then he let out a slow sigh, the kind that carried years of weight, and leaned forward to drag a finger through the dust at his feet. He drew a rough circle there, simple and small, but his hand lingered on it as if it burned.
“Once I was just a man,” he said, voice low around the edges. “Nothing special. Then something happened. I got handed a gift that was supposed to make me better. Stronger. Longer-lived. All the things men dream about when they’re young and stupid.”
Rook poked at the embers with a stick, sending up a spray of sparks that died quickly in the night air. He kept his tone light, but his eyes stayed sharp on Theron. “Doesn’t sound like much of a gift if it’s got you looking like the ghosts are riding your back every night.”
Theron grunted his agreement and let the words settle, then began, in that slow, deliberate way he had. “You’re right about the gods. All those late-night stories you told the men back in Duskweld. The Celestial Concord, or the Ascended as they once were called, whatever you want to name them, they left pieces behind. Sometimes a man finds one, or it finds him. Sometimes it’s a gift, sometimes… not so much.” He glanced sideways at Rook. “You want to know what I am?”
“I want to know if I can count on you to watch my back mid-battle,” Rook said. “That’s all.”
Theron looked back at the fire. “You can count on me. Always know that, please.”
The silence stretched, the kind that made you feel the age of the world. Then Rook laughed, and it came out sharper than he intended. “So you are Gods-blessed. I knew it. I never lose a bet, and this one was easy. Mostly because I made the bet with myself.”
Theron chuckled. “It’s not as great as you think.”
Rook threw a stick into the embers, watched it flare. “It never is. Back in Haelmont, I met a man who claimed to be able to see the future. Never got a single thing right except for the day he’d die. That one he nailed down perfectly.”
“Maybe the gods only care about endings,” Theron said.
“Maybe that’s the only part that matters,” Rook replied, then thought for a moment and leaned in. “What is it, then? What can you do?”
Theron picked up a twig and snapped it into three pieces. He laid them in a neat line on the dirt, then brushed them into the fire with a slow sweep of his hand. “Each Grand Shrine can offer something to whoever kneels there. A gift or a curse, depending on how you look at it. Speed, strength, healing, or stranger things.”
He stared into the flames for a moment, the glow painting hard lines across his face. “Every blessing shares one thing. Time stops caring about them. They don’t age. They don’t fade. You can still end them with a blade or fire or something worse, but they won’t slip away in a bed with quiet breaths. The world doesn’t get them back that easily. Beyond that, the Shrine decides the rest. Each one leaves its own mark. Some gifts seem like strength or healing on the surface. Others twist how you see things or how things see you. No two Gods-blessed turn out the same, even if they knelt at the same stone. And every single one pays a price no one else can see.”
Rook whistled low. “And which gift do you have?”
“I don’t know anymore,” Theron said, and that was the first time Rook had heard doubt in his voice. “Maybe all of them.”
Rook went quiet, chewing the thought over. Hunched on the log with his elbows on his knees, he worked his way through a stolen wedge of cheese from one of the quartermaster’s carts, taking slow, deliberate bites. Under the shadow of his brow, he watched Theron with an expression that balanced mockery and earnest concern in equal measure.
“So,” he said, without bothering to lower his voice, “when are you going to tell me how it works?”
Theron poked at the embers with the end of a stick. “What do you want to know?” The words were somber.
“You know what.” Rook made a dramatic sigh. “Don’t play the fool, Theron. Everyone’s seen you do things. Little things at first, and then bigger things. Also, I’m convinced you did something to Houlis. He hated you, and then he didn’t hate you. I can’t help but feel you did something there.”
Theron’s mouth twitched at the corner. “I saved his life. You saw a man change his mind.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I’m pretty sure I saw you make him change his mind.” Rook’s voice was a hiss, though no one else in the world seemed awake enough to care. “So, how? How are you able to do things?” He grinned. “What can you do?”
Theron let the stick rest on the stone rim, letting the bark catch and flare. “What do you know about Influence and Will?”
Rook shrugged, cramming another bite of cheese into his mouth. “People talk about them sometimes, in taverns. Old men mostly. They say Influence is something like a current, or the gods’ breath, and that Will is what lets you ride the current, if you’re born the right way. Or sometimes, they say Influence is just what happens when a lot of people believe in the same thing for long enough. Then someone important dies, or a priest gets stabbed, and the Influence snaps back and all the believers get sick or angry or run away into the hills. I’ve heard them mentioned, but I heard never heard nothing that made any sense. They sound like words for things that don’t really exist.”
Theron watched the fire for a long time, as though the answer might come out of the coals if he left it unspoken. When he spoke, it was flat, the way a man might speak of a wound he has learned not to feel. “Influence is real,” he said. “And so is Will, but most people never notice either one. It’s not a gift, or a curse, or even a trick. It’s a… it’s a way of seeing how everything in the world connects. And then, if you can see the strings, you can pluck them.”
Rook frowned, but he was listening hard, eyes bright and quick. “So you’re like, what… a puppeteer?”
Theron shook his head. “Not a puppeteer. It’s more like… a current in a stream. You nudge the flow just a little, and the water bends around a stone or log differently. But the stream was always going to move, but now it just now takes a shape that suits your need.”
He traced a slow spiral in the dirt with his stick, eyes distant. “You can’t control people. You don’t force outcomes. You simply make it easier for the world to lean in the direction you’re already walking.”
Rook spat into the dirt. “That’s not what I saw with Houlis. He seemed to completely flip his opinion of you.”
Theron chuckled and nodded. “Don’t mistake me. A lot of that was because I saved his life. Completely by accident, by the way. Carpen wanting to murder Houlis was not in any way my design at all. But afterwards, I nudged him a little bit. He was able to do something that I wanted him to do, so I pushed him in the direction I wanted him to go. And when someone is pushed that way, it’s possible that they will think it’s their own idea, their own impulse. In this case, I wanted Houlis to… not hate me so much. Especially because I wanted him to help me.” He looked up. “Like you, before you sat down by the fire tonight. You could have gone to bed. You could have played cards with the others, or sneaked off to try your luck again at the food wagons. But you sat down here instead, and you asked your questions.”
Rook sat up a little straighter. “Are you saying you made me do that?”
Theron smiled and shrugged. “I nudged. You wanted to ask anyway. I just… made the thought louder.”
Rook laughed, but it was brittle. “I’ll be damned.”
Theron looked at him, and for a moment there was nothing cold or remote about him, only a weariness so complete it bordered on mercy. “Nobody can make anyone do something they don’t want to do. You cannot take away someone’s agency or choice. You would have asked eventually. It’s who you are. I just made it easier for you to be yourself.”
Rook chewed that over, silent for longer than usual. The only sound was the pop of resin in the firepit. He put his cheese down and stared into the embers, eyes reflecting the gold.
“What’s it feel like?” Rook asked. “When you use it?”
Theron set his hands on his knees, fingers knotted. “I hate it. It feels like… like heat in your skull. Like a fever. If you use too much of it, or if you force it, you lose yourself. Or it skips and misses, and you black out. I once saw a man try to turn a whole mob. He commanded them to settle, and they all looked at him, and then he started screaming, and blood came out of his ears, and he fell down dead. The mob never even knew they’d been touched with Influence.”
Rook exhaled, then laughed a little, without mirth. “You’re full of good stories, Theron.”
Theron smiled but didn’t answer.
Rook went on, “So, can you teach me? Or is this one of those things that only comes to Gods-blessed? Do I need to fast for a week, or get hit on the head by a falling star, or drink some old bastard’s blood? How does one become a chosen like you?”
Theron grinned. “No stars or blood. Every single person alive can access Influence and Will, but Gods-blessed just have the ability for… more. A simple person is likely never to do anything at all. A high-ranking Luminarch priest, though, can do some pretty incredible things. But only after a lifetime of practice. Really, only two things matter though. You have to be able to notice the strings, for lack of a better word, and you have to want something badly enough to pull them. The rest is practice. And pain.”
Rook reached into his coat, pulled out a battered deck of cards, and fanned them idly. “Suppose I wanted to make the quartermaster give me double rations. What would I do?”
“First, you’d find the string,” Theron said. “You’d listen to the man talk, watch his eyes, see how he moved. When he mentioned his daughter, did his face get soft, or hard? When he measured out flour for the bread, did he take pride in the work, or did it bore him? You have to learn how he thinks. You have to know him. Then, you wait for the right moment. Either when he’s tired, or angry, or in pain, or feeling any other powerful emotion because his defenses will be down, and then you give the idea a push. Not a shove. Just a suggestion. Maybe you remind him of his daughter, or of how cold it is, or of how the officers always treat him like filth. Whatever works. The trick is not to force it. You let him think he came up with it himself.”
Rook riffled the cards. “But how do you actually do it? Is it a word, or a look, or a…” He made a gesture, wagging his fingers like a stage magician.
Theron smiled, with the barest hint of teeth. “Sometimes a word helps. Sometimes a gesture. But it’s always the Will that matters. You have to mean it. You have to focus every part of yourself on the moment until there’s nothing left except the thing you want.” He tapped his temple. “If you can’t do that, it doesn’t work. That and the fact that it’s a once in a generation ability to be able to even notice the strings.”
Rook leaned back and stared at the sky. “Well, I’ve never been very good at being serious about things. Not really.” His voice carried a note of surprise, as if the thought had only just occurred to him. “I just drifted. Sold what I could, kept what I found, never stayed anywhere long enough to bother with plans.”
Theron weighed that, then said, “Maybe that’s why you notice things. You’re not so focused on chasing what you want that you miss what’s right in front of you.”
Rook nodded, then picked up a stick and drew a lazy circle in the dirt. “So, if I wanted to learn this, how would we start?”
Theron looked at Rook and then nodded toward a half-burned log settled in the coals. “Alright. Try something simple. Move that.”
Rook squinted at it. “With what?”
“Your Will,” Theron said. “Just focus. Make the log the only thing that matters. Picture it shifting. Don’t try too hard. Most people never manage even a twitch.”
Rook leaned forward, elbows on his knees, suddenly earnest. “Fine. But if I set myself on fire doing this, I’m blaming you.”
Theron squinted his eyes, watching him. Rook inhaled slowly. His brow knit. His jaw clenched. He stared so hard at the log it was a wonder it didn’t burst into flames on its own.
Nothing happened.
Then the log scraped an inch across the coals.
Rook jerked upright. “What was that? Did you see that? I did that, didn’t I?” His voice cracked halfway into a shout. “Theron. Tell me you saw that.”
Theron let the silence hang just long enough for panic to bloom in Rook’s eyes. Then he broke. A laugh tore out of him, loud enough to make a few soldiers grumble in their sleep.
“Rook,” he said, wiping a tear from his cheek, “you absolute idiot.”
Rook blinked, offended. “What? What?”
Theron lifted the long stick he’d been holding. One end was still poking through the coals, in perfect reach of the log. “I moved it,” he said. “With this. You were too focused on trying to set the world on fire to notice.”
Rook stared, then his face scrunched into outrage. “Are you serious? I almost passed out. I thought I was—” He cut himself off, then groaned. “You’re the worst.”
Theron only laughed harder.
Rook tried to hold the glare for a few more seconds, failed, and finally cracked a grin. “Fine. You got me. Enjoy it while you can. I’m getting you back.”
“I’m sure you will,” Theron said, still laughing and tossing the stick aside.
The fire snapped softly between them. The rest of the camp slept in uneven circles, a chorus of snores drifting in the cold.
After a moment, Rook pushed to his feet and stretched. “I’m going to my tent before you decide to teach me how to fly or breathe lightning.”
Theron nodded. “Good night, Rook.”
“Yeah. Night.”
Rook trudged off through the rows of bedrolls, still muttering to himself. Theron watched him go, a smile ghosting at the corner of his mouth, then banked the fire and headed for his own tent.
“Why are you here, Rook?” Theron asked. The conversation from a few nights ago still settled heavily in Rook’s mind as they marched with the rest of the battalion.
The question caught him off guard. “What, you mean besides running away from three upset, fair maidens?” He attempted a laugh, but Theron’s gaze pinned him in place.
With a sigh, Rook said, “Because I was bored, and I wanted to see the world. But mostly because there’s a war, and someone has to fight.”
Theron looked at him, and for a moment Rook saw the ancient weariness behind his friend’s eyes, the sense of a man who had already outlived every reason to care. After a long stretch of silence around the cookfire the previous night, Rook finally worked up the nerve to ask Theron how old he was. Theron had only smiled and said, “Old.”
“Well, I’m glad you were bored.” Theron said with a laugh.
“Yeah? Well, now that we’re marching off to battle, I’m not so sure I made the right choice,” Rook chuckled. “You know exactly what’s in store for us, right?”
Theron nodded. “We take and hold the Pass. We draw the Sylphar in and make it look like we’re committed. Meanwhile, the major force under Lord General Jarkeb sweeps up from the Divide and tries to cut them off from the Temple. If it works, we hit them from both sides. If it fails…”
“We get turned into dog meat,” Rook finished.
Theron gave a one-shoulder shrug. “At least we’ll know we tried.”
Rook barked a laugh. “You have a strange sense of what matters, Scarecrow.”
“You have a strange sense of what’s funny,” Theron replied.
“Aye, that I do,” Rook said.
He continued walking, dusted off his coat, and glanced over at Theron. “You’re a mad bastard, you know. But I think I’d rather stand with a Gods-blessed than anyone else.”
Theron smiled, small and private. “Likewise,” he said, and clapped Rook on the shoulder.
So, about these gifted powers of yours,” Rook said with a smirk, “what’s to stop you from just becoming a one-man army and wiping all the Sylphar out?”
“Well, remember the story I told you the other night of the man I knew who killed himself, thinking he could control all those people?” Theron asked, eyebrows raised. “There is always a price. Always.”
“A price, eh?” Rook replied. “What kind of price, exactly?”
Theron thought for a minute. “It isn’t something you pay all at once,” he said, then raised a finger. “Unless you try to use too much of it at one time and essentially cook your mind to a pulp. No, it’s mostly slower than that. Quieter. Every time you use your Will to change the natural Influence of something, you’re nudging the world out of its natural balance. And the world… it doesn’t punish you, exactly. It corrects you, or rather it corrects itself by restoring some semblance of that balance that you upset.”
He glanced at Rook, eyes catching the sunlight. “Sometimes it’s a memory that slips away. A feeling that goes dull for a while. You might forget why you were angry, or who you were grieving. It comes back, usually. But not quite the same. Like a song you remember the tune of, but not the words.”
“The Elyvari say it’s not just about us. Every time we push too hard, the world ripples. Things unravel. Storms last longer. People forget what’s true. Cause and effect start to blur.”
He bent down and picked up a stick on the side of the road, idly twisting it in his fingers. “Using Influence and Will is like borrowing from the world’s balance. You can do it. But the debt always comes due. And if you’re not careful, you won’t even notice what you’ve lost until it’s already gone.”
Rook frowned as he pondered that. “So, every time you use your Influence, you pay a price? One of these things happens to you?”
Theron gave a thin smile. “The more Influence you have, like me, the more you’re able to… nudge the world into exacting the price that you choose to pay.” He looked away, thumb brushing the medallion at his chest. “But I am done paying. Every use takes something from me, and my memories are all I have left. Good ones and bad ones. I would rather fight with steel and muscle than give up one more piece of myself.”
Rook stared at him. “So you’re able to, what, just tell the world, ‘Hey, today I want you to take my memories of this terrible story I heard last night in the tavern?’”
Theron laughed, “Yes, something like that.”
Rook sighed. “I wish I were Gods-blessed.”
Theron looked sharply at him. “No, Rook. You don’t.”
Rook, still smiling, “Why not?”
Theron stared straight ahead and didn’t respond for a full minute. Finally, he said something once more in that strange, beautiful language.
“What did you say?” Rook asked.
Theron looked at him seriously. “Some gifts are actually curses in disguise.”
That night, as they went to their separate tents, Rook found he couldn’t sleep. He lay awake, listening to the wind claw at the canvas, thinking about the Grand Shrines, about the Gods-blessed, about what kind of world could shape men like Theron into believing they were cursed. It occurred to him that perhaps the gods had left for that very reason, that those they had blessed felt they were cursed instead.
In the blackest part of the night, Rook made a silent promise. If it came to it, he would watch Theron’s back just as his friend had watched his. They would likely die on this campaign, but there was no law that said you had to go out alone. The thought settled in his chest like a warm coal amid the cold, a small defiance against the dark road ahead.
When the first hint of morning split the sky, Rook rose and made a pot of terrible tea over the ashes. Theron joined him without a word, and together they watched the sun crawl over the razor edge of the horizon. In that light, the world looked almost clean.