Chapter Twenty-Nine
The refugee camp stretches on and on. Iolans, Suratians, Corthans, and Grimsvolders are all represented. I even spot a small
family of Dhakarans, with curly reddish hair and amber eyes. One little girl wears her arm in a sling. They gaze unabashedly
at Titus as we pass.
We’re almost through, almost free of the agony, the smell, the guilt, when a voice chases after us. “My lady! My lord!” A
feminine voice, desperate and breathless.
I twist in the saddle to see her.
She’s a young Suratian woman with black hair and dark skin. Her bare feet are covered in mud; she must have lost her sandals
to the river. I see two rings on her left hand, but they’re too filthy to make out their meaning.
“Please, good folk, do you have any use for a permanancer? All I ask is a bit of food.”
“Sorry, no,” Titus says. “There’s nothing we—”
“Maybe there is,” I say.
The woman looks up at me hopefully, her brown eyes wide. She’s barely older than I am.
“We don’t have time,” Titus says.
I ignore him. “How strong is your Gift?” I ask the girl. “Sorry to be blunt, but my companion is correct; we are short on
time.”
“I can make simple magic last for a decade. My father could make small stones glow. They’d wink out after a few minutes, but I could make them last for years. Hair color is more complicated, though. I can only make hair color last about nine months.”
“Impressive,” Titus says.
I ask, “Can you permanance a cold stone?”
She shuffles nervously. “I’ll need something to eat first.”
I glance at Titus, and he nods, so I reach into the saddlebag and offer her a rabbit haunch wrapped in leaves.
She yanks it from my grasp, and her teeth tear into it. How long since she’s eaten? Maybe not since the grootslang washed
us all onto this shore.
I slip from the saddle and begin searching the ground for river stones. I find one right away—hefty, smooth, and round, but
small enough to fit in my hand. When Titus sees what I’m doing, he joins the search and finds another. We clean them off as
best we can using shore grass and the legs of our pants.
The young permanancer is licking her fingers.
“Do you have a bit of leather or fabric?” I ask. “When we finish, you’ll not want to touch these with bare skin.”
Her giant brown eyes grow impossibly large as she pulls a faded handkerchief from a pocket.
“All right, here we go.” I take a deep breath to steel myself against this moment, because I’m about to demonstrate my Gift
to a perfect stranger. But the awkwardness I expect does not manifest. Not even a bit of hesitation. It feels right to share
what I can do.
I ground myself to the earth and call upon my magic. The first stone is easy. One touch, one pluck of that invisible-but-somehow-bright gemlike string, and the stone becomes as cold as a ball of ice. No, colder.
I drop it into her palm, atop the handkerchief.
“Oh, that’s . . . very . . . ,” she whispers. She closes her eyes and does something that I can’t see or sense, except for
a bit of shimmering in the air. Then she holds it out for me to retrieve.
I offer her the saddlebag and indicate that she should drop it inside.
The second stone takes a bit more effort for both of us, but especially her; she noticeably sways with exhaustion.
“Keep that one,” I tell her. “Use it to keep your food cool. Or sell it to someone; it will fetch a good price. Keep it away
from moisture, unless you want ice to form all over it. Don’t put your food directly on it. And never, ever touch it with
bare skin.”
“Thank you!”
“Where are you going next?”
She glances over her shoulder, as though expecting to be followed or maybe overheard. Then she says in a low, sad voice, “As
far away from Cathira as I can get.”
Titus and I exchange a glance.
I say, “If you need work and a place to stay, the Three Corners Inn would welcome a permanancer. But it’s a long journey.”
“Where is it?” She wraps the stone in layers of fabric, careful not to touch it, and places it in her pocket.
Before I can say anything, Titus jumps in with, “Follow the Iolan-Suratian border west until you cross into Grimsvold. The inn is on a bluff overlooking their meeting point.”
I add, “If you’ve been truthful, that stone will still be ice-cold when you arrive. Show it to the innkeeper and tell her
Bria sent you. She’ll give you a job and a place to live.”
“Bria,” she mutters to herself. “Three Corners Inn.”
“That’s it.”
“Sun and moons be with you,” says the permanancer.
“And also with you,” Titus and I say in unison.
As we head up the road, the breeze softens with evening, making the river seem smooth almost like glass. I startle when a
fish jumps and lands with a splash. I stare at the surface, expecting a massive grootslang to rear out, jaws gaping. But the
water remains placid. Safe looking. And a few minutes later, the trees have closed in behind us, blocking the view and smell
of the refugees. But I’ll never forget them.
Neither will Titus, if his somber face is any indication.
“I plan to push us hard,” Titus says after a while. “I’m sorry, Bria, but I suspect we have a terrible time ahead of us.”
“I understand.”
His hand rubs the furrow of his brow, as though his thoughts bring actual pain. “I wish we could have helped those people.”
“Me too.”
“I felt awful for helping that little girl in Khefrita. Now I feel awful for not helping.” His frown deepens. “Maybe I’m just destined to feel awful.”
“I take back what I said. I don’t understand.”
“What do you mean?” he says, looking up at me.
The question that’s been churning inside me boils over. “Why you? Of all the people in the Sunderland, why did Cerastes choose you? And why did you have to say yes?”
His lips press tight.
“I don’t mean any disrespect,” I hurry to add. “You’re a good choice. It just seems like you don’t want it. It makes you feel
awful. All this effort, all this danger, for something you don’t even care about.”
“I do care,” he mutters. It sounds almost like a growl.
I’m not sure what to say to that. Maybe I’ve been reading him wrong this whole time. He cares about people, sure. But he doesn’t
seem to care one whit about his own power or glory.
So, as the shadows of the trees stretch long, and frogs begin their nightly serenade, I decide to keep my mouth shut and let
it go.
The slope grows steeper, the river grows louder, the moons grow brighter. Night deepens, but instead of calling a halt, we
press on. It wasn’t too much trouble to make those cold stones, but it was enough of an expenditure that my stomach growls
and my eyes feel heavy. This is what I can expect for the next week or so. Pushing forward through hunger and exhaustion.
I’m wilting over the saddle by the time Titus finally leads us off the road and into a grove of trees. My dismount is clumsy,
my foot slipping in the stirrup, but Titus’s warm hands wrap my waist and keep me from falling to the ground.
“Thank you,” I murmur.
His hands linger a moment before letting go.
Together, we stare at the ground before us, most likely thinking the same thing about missing our bedrolls.
“Could be worse,” he says.
“At least you found a place with lots of dried leaves.”
“Better than grass, right? Fewer bugs.”
“I’ll reserve judgment until I wake up and count my bug bites.”
We unsaddle Blackwind and give him a thorough rubdown with our hands. If he’s going to be our only transportation between
here and Cathira, we’ll need to take the very best care of him.
That done, we sit cross-legged in the leaves and split the last of the rabbit. It’s icy from sharing space with our cold stone,
but I’m too ravenous to care.
I’m stretching out, making peace with the prospect of sleeping on cold, hard ground, when Titus says, “I have to do this.”
I sit back up. I thought he had dismissed our previous conversation.
“I have to,” he repeats. He stares into the darkness of the trees, the moonlight making amber sparks of his eyes.
“I believe you,” I say softly. “I just don’t know why.”
“Because, around five hundred years ago, the gods chose poorly.”
I lean forward. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Five hundred years ago, a man named Ishtareth Alamandron won the godsmoot. He was a professor, a dual-Gifted royal bastard
like me. He was obsessed with the magical manipulation of creation, was always experimenting—with his own Gifts and those
of others. The people around him passed it off as scientific curiosity.”
“Why does Alamandron sound familiar?” I ask.
“You’ve heard of the Alamandron cataloging system?”
“Yes! That’s it.”
“He was one of the founders who began the great work of studying magic as an academic pursuit. The college would not exist if not for him.”
“A great man,” I observe.
“And an evil one. A monster.”
It’s late enough that the frogs have gone quiet. One tiny, determined cricket presses on, though, creaking, creaking, creaking.
It falls silent when Titus adds, “One of the gods—I’m not sure which—chose Alamandron as their champion. And by the time the
godsmoot came, Alamandron had hunted down and slaughtered all the other candidates, ensuring he was the only one left to stand
for the trials.”
“Wait . . . the gods still chose him? Still elevated him? Even after he murdered everyone else?”
Titus is nodding. “They were impressed by his focus and determination. So Alamandron ascended to godhood. And then he went
absolutely mad with power.”
“What did he do?”
“First he combined humans with beasts to create magical monsters. Banshees, mistwraiths, dragons . . . they are all the work
of Alamandron, who fancied himself the ultimate creator.”
“I thought magical monsters rose from the abyss after the Sundering.”
“That’s what most people believe.”
I’ve been rubbing my hands together in my lap, and I stare down at them, force them into stillness. So much of what I’ve believed
my whole life has been wrong.
“Because that’s not all he did,” Titus continues.
“The blight. The great disease that nearly devoured the whole world and forced Titus the Great to sunder the planet to save us—Alamandron created it to use against anyone he deemed worthy of suffering or destruction, but then he couldn’t control it. ”
My heart is racing. “The blight, the Sundering, the magical monsters . . . all because one man became a god.”
“That’s why I have to do this,” Titus says. “Cerastes chose me. And Jeridan chose Syla. So that’s two chances. We have to
see this through and make sure the world is in good hands. Humanity wouldn’t survive another catastrophe like the blight.”
“Surely no one is stupid enough to create another blight.”
“You know what I mean. Not the blight specifically, but another power-mad god could easily enslave the whole world or destroy
anyone they disliked. Or even figure out how to murder the other gods and usurp all that power. What if we end up with a mercurial
god who wants everything to be purple? Or believes all fish should die?”
“I would look amazing as a purple person.”
He glares.
“Sorry. I understand your point. Do you think one of the candidates is that awful?”
“I do. Remember the assassin in Khefrita? How he raved like a lunatic?”
“Something about the savior of the Sunderland and a prophecy.”
Titus is nodding. “He served someone who would ‘ascend to godhood.’ ”
I gasp. “Your father didn’t send him, another candidate did! Do you know who?”
“No idea. I know about Syla because we were chosen around the same time, while I was still in Cathira. The other three candidates are likely young, like us. Highly Gifted. That’s all I know.”
It’s getting chilly. I pull my knees up to my chest and hug them. “The assassin was out of his mind,” I say, remembering the
edge of his dagger as it sliced into the flesh of my neck. My shiver has little to do with the night air. “And he wanted you
dead. He called you the pretender.”
He actually said fox pretender, but I’m not willing to repeat that.
“The way he talked, the way his eyes looked . . . ,” Titus says. “I think he was under the influence of a sway.”
I suck in air. A candidate with the Gift of persuasion could do anything, bend anyone to their will.
“I think that’s why your inn was attacked too,” he says. “An inn on the king’s road, at the border, no less? I bet the same
story has played out all over the Sunderland. Homes like yours, where unusually strong Gifts have occasionally appeared, destroyed
in seemingly random attacks. Someone is trying to flush out the most Gifted citizens of the Sunderland in order to either
kill them or control them.”
He’s been thinking about this for a while. I should have pressed him harder. Asked more questions.
“Do you understand now, Bria? It has to be me. Or someone better, like Syla. But I’m not giving up on this quest until I know
the Sunderland is safe.”
I do understand. Someone like Titus can’t not help people. It’s just how he is.
“We managed to save the world last time, though,” I remind him. “Regular humans, like Titus the Great.”
“Yes, but it was cataclysmic. We evacuated as many folks to this hemisphere as possible, but thousands still died. Maybe millions.
Cities were destroyed by the Sundering. The Corthan escarpment divided a nation. Entire species went extinct.”
In a weak voice, I say, “It was really that bad?” I knew, sort of. But there’s a difference between knowing in your head and
knowing in your heart. Maybe seeing all those survivors on the riverbank is bringing it home. Tragedy seems so distant, until
it isn’t.
“And what’s worse?” he continues. “No magic is permanent. Titus the Great had at least a dozen permanancers to help him. But
the weave will fail, eventually. We don’t know what that will look like, exactly. Will the oceans fall away into the abyss?
Will the halves of the world crash back together? And when they do, will the blight consume everything in its path? We need
gods who will help us. Lead us. Care about us. Or no one will survive.”
Blackwind gives himself a thorough shake, startling me. He’s been munching reedy grass this whole time, oblivious to the weight
of the world.
Titus says, “I think that’s our signal to get some sleep.”
I lie back in my bed of leaves, hands behind my head, and peer through bare branches at the stars. Before I let myself drift
away, I tell him, “I’ll do everything I can to help you.”
“I know,” he responds softly. “Thank you.”
“But I think you’re underestimating humanity.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Sundering was cataclysmic, but it did save the world. Without the help of the gods. And that was five hundred years ago. Seems like maybe we’d do a better job of it next time.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he says, but doubt tinges his voice.
I close my eyes and dream of oceans tumbling over infinite cliffs.