On the morning after the divine,

Eternity continues.

  In the wake of miracles, Lynne slumped across the back end of a river canoe. Her feet rested on bushels of Ruhum grain, her arm dangled over the edge, and her head swam with mistakes.

  When Tempest and Maiden exhausted themselves, only Lynne remained to bear the hangover.

  To her left, the Plateau rose, a towering edifice of rust-red rock. The great tableau steadily narrowed as it drove inland, an arrowhead aimed for the Dragon. The tip of the arrow, only a few miles across, collided with the river in spectacular fashion not far upstream from where the angel sulked.

  To her right, the verdant bank of the Dragon hosted serpent dens by the hundreds. In the miles between river villages, the elemental beasts of water ruled. They nested in the long grass, emerging to harass the river boats for offerings like highwaymen. Chosen of the Goddess, they were bold in their demands, and wise captains made sure to carry an array of options for picky eaters.

  As the canoe crawled north, the serpents raised their heads for their passing Goddess, and none rocked the boat with demands for tribute.

  They served another use in older days, Lynne remembered. My vanguard against the Peak.

  For the raiders from the Plateau, the Dragon itself became enemy territory: an impasse of water and blood. Ever did the land seek to sever the Dragon and cut her access inland.

  Do the men of Peaks still raid in the night? Do their callow youth still throw sandstone into the Dragon, bragging that they will dam its flow?

  “Does the Goddess plan to lay about all afternoon?” asked the boatman, idly swirling his oar through the water. The old man had a face like wrinkled bark, skin burned by decades of exposure, and absolutely no sense of decency.

  “I am no goddess,” Lynne replied.

  “Ancestor spirit or serpent in human form then,” he remarked with a shrug.

  “Ancestor spirit?! There’s no such thing!”

  “I suppose the goddess would know.’

  The angel of oceans groaned, sagging into the seat. I should get out and swim.

  Maybe a crocodile would try to nibble on her. That would provide a diversion for a few minutes.

  The canoe crawled north, powered by an old man’s practiced work. He did not wear a shirt, and every strand of muscle along his shoulders flexed with each patient stroke. The Dragon ran slow as it neared the delta, and a canoe like this could make the journey north to the falls in three days.

  Almost enough time for an angel to work through her hangover.

  A barge roared past, powered by its combustion engines, and threw a wake that shook the canoe like a toy.

  The boatman shifted his weight and adjusted his stroke, riding out the waves.

  “How much does one of those cost?” she asked, gesturing after the barge.

  “Never asked.”

  “And how long does the journey to Resting Dragon take with such an engine?”

  “Shall I flag it back for you, Goddess?”

  She scoffed. “Are you married, boatman? You seem quite practiced at annoying women.”

  “Not since my wife died,” the boatman replied. “After fifty years of aggravation, she decided to return to the waters.”

  To the Black Gate and beyond.

  She dipped her fingers into the water and listened to her river. Beneath the canoe, the scars of the past lurked.

  Obsidian javelins, the favored tool of the Peak, slept buried in the silt. Their razor edge had been chewed soft by the years of river water, and fish laid their eggs in the shelter of their impact.

  Less remained of the contests against the jungle. The Verdant had once sent her vines to choke the river, but the detritus of that war had long since melted into the silt.

  This is our testament. The Peak, the Verdant, and the Tempest. Who remains to remember the names beneath the demons?

  To the west, she spied a section of cliff in rubble. The shards of the cliff lay heaped at the base, blown apart by a single, unimaginable blast of water. Scrub trees grew around the rocks, fed by a trickling waterfall.

  Earth against water. Water against earth. What did we hope to accomplish?

  The boatman slowed, steering his canoe around a particularly large obsidian spike.

  “Someone should clean this up,” she muttered, watching the javelin pass close enough to touch.

  “Is that the command of the Goddess?”

  “I am no goddess.”

  “In that case, it may be difficult to convince men to labor in the blistering heat to clear rocks.” The boatman smiled, face wrinkling and eyes knowing.

  She sighed. By the stars and the rain, I hate old souls.

  Sometimes a mortal soul descended for only a single lifetime. Sometimes it returned, again and again, like an otter diving for fish. Eventually, the accumulated wisdom began to influence the mortal mind, and flickers of something older peeked through.

  If you wish to sing your wisdom, old man, join the Chorus!

  “I could turn you into a barnacle, you realize,” Lynne mused.

  “Do you not deny divinity?”

  “Divinity is not required – merely power.”

  He contemplated her words for a few minutes. Finally, he nodded as though she spoke a great wisdom. “I suppose many things are that way.”

  The boatman rowed in silence, and Lynne let herself drift.

  An hour later, a steamboat roared up the Dragon, its deck teeming with rowdy passengers. They cheered, jeered, and toasted to the Maiden in grand revelry. They hurled streamers of azure rice paper into the river and drank themselves delirious in the name of divinity.

  “Are they still at it?” the angel groused, listening to the obnoxious, belching motor shove the steamboat north.

  “Seems so.”

  “The motor is too loud. Drives the serpents away.”

  “The serpents are merely animals…or so the young captains whisper these days.”

  Lynne bolted upright. “They are sacred!”

  “If the Goddess wills it.”

  “No, you fool!” she snapped. “Freely given, a bond forged in blood. What rises through sacrifice endures!”

  The boatman nodded. “I have heard that catechism.”

  She deflated, rubbing at her head. “They were first, you know.”

  “I am afraid I do not, goddess.”

  The bond already existed. I merely folded it into my waters. I can no more claim credit for the serpents than the sun. Yet the Verdant grew jealous of my work, and she spun forth the other beasts to meet mine.

  There had been a war. There was always a war.

  Mortals no longer remembered.

  “If steamboat and barge travel without serpents, then who defends them against the raiders?”

  “Raiders, Goddess?”

  “The men of Peaks and their cragbears.”

  The boatman chuckled. “Forgive me, Goddess, but the cragbears have not assaulted the river since I was a young man. Modern rifles make it easy to shoot the riders before the bears can raise a wall, and there is better profit in the sands. The sons of raiders smelt our Novian steel!”

  She shook her head in bafflement. Those proud raiders, hard as their master, mining on behalf of the city on ocean’s edge? To think that gold notes and luxury goods might accomplish what perpetual war could not…

  Or perhaps the tribe lost its fighting edge once their lord went to the Chorus.

  “We could not have built the lifts without them.”

  Lynne straightened. “Oh! Novia’s elevators. Yes, I would like to see those.”

  “Then you are in luck. The clear day holds, and we will arrive soon.”

  “Very well. I will spare your life for now.”

  “Most merciful, Goddess.”

  They continued north, enduring the passage of more barges in both directions. The Plateau approached, and the western bank of the Dragon melted into the sheer face of a cliff. Closer inspection revealed that the cliff was a single fused piece of sandstone, looming proud above the waters.

  Lynne’s river chewed at the base of the Plateau. That Work might be proof against the mortal waters at the Cape of Quarrel, but the Dragon stole the strength from that sandstone flake by flake. One day, the point of the Plateau would collapse just like old bluffs of Ruhum.

  Until that day, however, the waterfalls would roar.

  In the days after the Plateau rose, she had cursed that land to never know a single drop of rain. In response, the Lord of Peaks had crafted innumerable intricate wells through his sandstone land. The wells drew and purified water from her seas, creating a dotted series of oasis that sustained his people. The men of the desert grew hard and strong in a world of precious water and endless roaming.

  Several wars later, the two of them had struck a temporary alliance to fend off the Verdant. As a sign of her goodwill, Lynne had rescinded her curse from the Plateau.

  As it ever was. Ebbing and flowing, our borders, our allegiances, and our moods.

  When the rains returned, they revived the river known in Wave’s Lament as the High Dragon. Innumerable tributaries fed down the slope of the Plateau towards the point of impact: the great caldera where the arrow buried its head in Lynne’s side.

  The Dragon continued meandering north for a thousand miles, deep into Whistler lands, though it had been renamed the Long Dragon to distinguish it from the flow across the Plateau. Where the High Dragon, Long Dragon, and Dragon met, they pooled together into a crater lake: the Waiting Dragon. On its banks, the northern edge of Lynne’s domain was, naturally, the Resting Dragon.

  “Names never were my strong suit,” Lynne muttered to herself.

  A Goddess needed to name and title every geographical bump and knob, after all. All well and good for the first five or six hundred landmarks, but the requests continued to pour in long after her creativity dried up. Thus, the official maps according to Wave’s Lament included such wonders as the Four Hundred Twenty Some Odd Peaks, the Not Another Damned Gorge, and the Coffee Stain That Rather Resembles a Turtle Forest.

  “Did you say something, Goddess?” the boatman asked.

  “Only the mutterings of an old woman. I have not seen Resting Dragon in many years.”

  “I suspect it has grown since last you visited.”

  It had been a fortress against the Lord of Peaks, nestled behind heavy walls. It had been a city of men, no place for families. One came to Resting Dragon to fence with a treacherous foe. Brave merchants would seal contracts for sapphires in the morning and endure volleys of boulders from the high cliffs in the evening – usually from the same people.

  Attempting to minimize tensions, some mayor or another had commissioned a set of rope pulleys to ferry letters and merchandise between the settlement and the Plateau without the risk of face-to-face contact.

  Curious, Lynne moved to the tip of the canoe to peer around the river bend.

  Today’s city belched steam from a thousand forges. The ancient walls were hopelessly overgrown, and the settlement sprawled from one end of the caldera to the other. Barges clogged the Waiting Dragon, their work interrupted by the swarm of steamboats claiming the wharfs. Streamers decorated every structure in sight, and a couple of junior priestesses danced the Dragon with their serpents before the local temple.

  “So many…” Lynne gasped.

  “Aye, second only to Wave’s Lament. Where would the Goddess make shore?” Rather than steer wide around the first waterfall, he drove the canoe directly into its mists.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of foamy water. In that, she could taste the rock and salt of the Plateau. Taste the Lord of Peaks, long gone.

  Hylas…

  But she caught something else in that echo – a tickle of icy waters amongst the land of desert. Blood called to blood, the song of her own cherished children somehow whispering from the dry land above.

  “Boatman.”

  “Yes, Goddess?”

  “The men on the Plateau still worship the Peak, yes?”

  “Of course.”

  And yet someone prays to me amidst the dust…

  She wiped the spray from her face. “Change of plans. We stop at the lifts.”

  “Very good, Goddess.”

  Beyond the mist of the first waterfall, Novia’s first Invention toiled night and day. Deep grooves had been carved into the sandstone cliff, one for each lift. Cables as thick as a man’s arm carried metal platforms loaded to the brim with products and men. Great wheels at the base of each waterfall and smoking engines together bore the weight, dragging the massive iron counterweights high. A dozen lifts presently operated, and workers excavated a groove for a thirteenth.

  You fought me for every grain of sand, Hylas, but you let the mortals chip away your perfect fortress for mechanical toys…or perhaps your power simply falters now that you are gone…

  A manmade pier rested across the cliff face, and a long metal bridge arched from the lifts to the city. A crowd of workers toiled in the afternoon light even as Resting Dragon played.

  “So this is where it began,” Lynne muttered.

  The tale went that Novia’s beloved uncle died in a fall from the treacherous switchbacks on the face of the Plateau. That tragedy spurred her, only fifteen years old, to experiment with metal and fire. Five years later, she emerged with new principles of metallurgy and power that would revolutionize the world.

  Like Lynne’s serpents, Novia predated the Inventor’s program. Still, without Mirielle, Novia would most likely have lived and died a local hero.

  Angels and demons, repurposing what we find to our own ends. A divine word here; a little bit of funding there…

  “How much for a ride?” she asked the boatman.

  “Oh, no, I would never charge you, Goddess!”

  “For the lift, you heretic.”

  “Two silver.”

  She frowned. Money. That useful paper still tucked in her trunk aboard the Cecille Gothic.

  “Take what you need,” the boatman offered, shifting his legs to reveal his own belongings.

  “This generosity is too much,” the angel of oceans warned. “I am perfectly capable of bartering.”

  “At least look.”

  Relenting, she accepted the satchel. Inside, she found his documentation, a small pouch with a wad of silver notes, and a photograph of a little boy. The child sat stoically for a portrait, twisted arms curled close to his chest.

  Lynne touched the picture gently.

  Straighten the children born twisted.

  “Everybody else ran for the booze,” the boatman mused. “Me? I looked at my grandson standing straight and proud as any warrior, and I said to myself, ‘What does a Goddess need?’ Certainly not material goods, and probably not a boat neither. But if she doesn’t need any of those things, I can at least offer some company on the way.”

  He chuckled.

  “The Dragon was so clogged, and chances were you’d use one of those great big barges, but…here we are. There were so many people on the pier, but they parted, and I knew you. My heart just told me.”

  She accepted two silver notes and carefully replaced the picture.

  “You say you’re not the Goddess, but I don’t know what else to call you. You have given life.”

  She forced herself to meet his gaze. To meet that adoration. “Boatman Ulan, are you aware of what grows in your belly? How little time you have left?”

  How trivial it would be for her to excise that cancerous growth?

  “I know the signs as well as any.” He sagged on to his oar a moment, face drawn with exhaustion and age. “Eighty-three years I’ve had, most of them on the Dragon, and the serpent bites to prove it. I’m ready to rest, Goddess. Death must be.”

  “Yes. It must,” she admitted. And no blessing or brand can forestall that end forever.

  There was nothing more to say on the matter.

  The boatman expertly guided the craft to the docks before the lift.

  Lynne hopped to the dock and turned back to him. “You really have no requests?”

  “You have done more than enough already.”

  A stray gust of wind sent waterfall spray across the docks. An onlooker could be forgiven for believing that, for a moment, the woman at the end of the pier wore a cloak of glittering mist.

  “Very well.”

  She touched him on the shoulder and blessed him with the only gift remaining: a swift and silent death.

  Let the cancer block an artery, and he would simply drop like a sack of flour.

  “Then be on your way, Ulan.”

  She left him to his fate and went to wait in line for the lift.

***

  The world as men knew and all of its firmaments was contained within a gemstone, dangling from strands of spidersilk beneath a great, desolate moon. This moon in turn hung suspended from three great pillars, each resplendent with spheres of their own. At the farthest heights, there was a glow that could never be reached, locked behind a singular and vast Black Gate.

  There waited heaven, offering succor for the weary.

  Thus did Gabriel, Archangel of the remnants, conceive of reality, but the map was not the territory. The sephirot eclipsed even his gaze, and he rather enjoyed hearing new visions from the mystics across human history. They dreamed of heaven, and their accounts shared pleasing commonalities. A formation of spheres; a tower vast and imperial; paths through dark or tangled places to a Black Gate.

  One way or another, the last journey any man would take.

  Craning his neck, he watched the distant glimmer of heaven. When was the last he skirted the edge of the abyss to hear it? Not since the day Alisandra was born. It was beyond his reach.

  His duty – the duty of every angel – waited in the world below.

  Gabriel beat his wide, white wings and soared closer to the moon’s surface. The craters across the silver sand repeated, spaced evenly – footsteps rather than impacts.

  For giants walked this place.

  He landed with a tiny puff and smiled wryly. His own footprints could hardly measure up.

  “I am here to see what may be shown,” he told the emptiness. His voice echoed for miles, the only sound to be heard.

  The air stirred, kicking up a sheen of dust. When it settled, a Foundation rested in each crater.

  White as bone, frozen in the breath of motion, and immense beyond the eye’s ability to grasp, the Foundations marched in procession beyond the horizon. No matter how one flew, they would remain vast beyond ken, a shape only glimpsed.

  “Thank you,” he offered. Not that they would hear.

  He leaped into the sky and briefly relished the stars. Even after the millennia of service, he felt his pinions thrum with the joy of this freedom. A sky unending, and he could touch it.

  A Foundation suddenly loomed before him. A mountain, strength unyielding, with snow carved from its bone across the peak. Yet the rock, on closer inspection, turned to a horde of men, backs bowed outwards and arms clasped, finding unity. These, in turn, resolved to individual strands of muscle in the legs of a man holding up the world.

  “I will hear.”

  He dwelled on the mountain, the men, the man. How would they speak if they were flesh?

Let the bonds of men resound through the heavens, given and received.

  Did he think or the Foundation whisper? In this sphere, the line between one’s thoughts and one’s reality grew thin. Flying higher, the line would dissolve entirely.

  So easy to mistake his own ego for insight.

  Inhaling, the Archangel reached inside for peace.

  For a moment, he slipped beyond the noise of thought.

  The mountain, the men, the man. Bound arms – both grasping and offering. Surrender and terror, admiration and love. The unmoving shifting crowd revolved around a single man, lynchpin in the center of bone. All relied on him, and he in turn fed everything back to those who grasped for him.

  Leader and men, knit together to form the whole.

  Loyalty.

  “Gabriel!”

  The Archangel jerked from his meditation. He found himself perched atop the side of the Foundation, resting in a nest made of interlinked arms.

  “There you are,” Sebastian whispered. The sound carried from the void between spheres easily.

  “I was meditating.”

  “I could not hear your mind.”

  Gabriel was not sure his mind always made noise anymore. Something of the silence lingered in him these days, absorbed from this mausoleum.

  “I have found a new name,” the Archangel announced happily.

  Sebastian floated into sight a moment later. The angel of witness, by virtue of his aspect, could share in Gabriel’s own vision of the cosmos. A gift both of them took for granted after the centuries of friendship.

  Only one other person ever shared this vision, and she was forever beyond his reach.

  The angel of witness smiled. “You have? Speak then.”

  “Loyalty.”

  A quake rocked the moon.

  Words spoken just beyond hearing.

  The movement of titans.

  Sebastian beamed now. “Wonderful! Loyalty.” The angel of witness knelt to the sand and clasped his hands. “We witness your gift.”

  Dead and undying.

  Silently singing.

  The wind kicked up again. When it settled, the two angels stood alone on a smooth lunar field.

  “What quest brings you?” Gabriel asked his old friend.

  “Lynne has assumed the Maiden once more. She means well, but…”

  The Archangel crossed his arms and tucked his wings. “Will you show me?”

  “Of course.” Sebastian extended his arm.

  They clasped arms, a soldier’s greeting.

  In a heartbeat, Gabriel witnessed as Sebastian had. Wave’s Lament rejoiced – and feared – from every corner. The world shivered, recognizing the return of a power. Lynne smiled as a mother must smile – a soothing mask that did not reach her eyes.

  Here, in this mausoleum of silence, I can hear myself. No futures, no pasts. I hate that I am tempted to remain.

  Gabriel released his friend’s arm. “Sebastian, you should not feel compelled to return to Malkuth.”

  The angel of witness soured. “I meant to keep that to myself.”

  “Alas, a little of the witness has rubbed off over the last couple thousand years.”

  “Really? All I ever got from you was trench foot.”

  They chuckled together at the unspeakable past. Yet what else could they do with the burden? Time could not be unwound, not so long as the first and greatest Foundations held vigil.

  By sacrifice, death undying, let the world be one thing. One time. The flow would only ever be forward.

Let there be endless gardens. Man will sail, and wherever his vessels alight he will find a cornucopia.

Let the holy words fade. Man shall speak a tongue of gentleness. No more will his oaths sunder what was bound.

Let the vast reach of stars separate all the children of man. No one soul shall again threaten the whole.

  Foundations stretched, silent and frozen, across all the moons of Yesod.

  They who bore the world.

  “In the beginning…” Gabriel hummed.

  “There was Light, and there was a Gate,” Sebastian agreed.

  “Yet by Will and desire…”

  “More.”

  Yesod was a place of dreams, and the mind tended to wander.

  Sebastian waited patiently.

  Finally, the Archangel marshalled his thoughts. “Lynne has always been a creature of powerful currents. Do we deny this?”

  “Today, the Maiden. Tomorrow, the Tempest.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Love and rage, inseparable.”

  “It may have been a mistake to entrust this task to her.”

  He reviewed a fragment: Lynne the Maiden knelt before a twisted child. She laid gentle glowing hands across the boy’s face, and his flesh mended. He flexed his fingers for the first time in his life and grinned in pure joy.

  Lynne could have let that transformation hurt. Instead, she harbored pains so that the child might not.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Yet was this not her Maiden’s nature? The rage would follow in time, for no child could be perfect.

  “We have failed her,” Gabriel mulled. “We sought to draw her into our world. To show her a place of contemplation and peace. Yet dominion sings in her heart, the throne abandoned and yearning.”

  In the silence, both heard the Archangel’s next thought. If only Alice was here…

  Both heard the sharp pain of mourning that followed.

  Sebastian gently laid a hand on the Archangel’s shoulder and squeezed.

  Patting his hand, the Archangel continued. “We thought to save Mirielle and Thea from their folly as well.”

  He brought a young, bright angel to a mausoleum to gaze upon eternity. He forced wisdom down her throat. Was it any wonder she gagged?

  Gabriel drew his wings close. “I ever desire to encircle those I treasure from the world beyond. I offer shelter; I offer knowledge; I offer plenty. May they lack for nothing…”

  “There is more to your aspect than feathers,” teased his friend, no judgement in his voice. “There is no power that does not shape the hand that holds it.”

  “But Lynne only ever stayed for one reason.”

  For one woman.

  “Sooner or later, she must leave the shelter of my name. What right do I have to stop her?”

  “What right did you have to stop me?” Sebastian challenged.

  The Archangel sighed. “Fair, old friend, fair. Where is Lynne now?”

  Sebastian offered the insight of the Witness.

  Gabriel drank once more of memory and then frowned. “She still chases the diary?”

  “More or less. I do not know I would call a brisk walk a chase.”

  “Then she runs mostly from herself.”

  A Goddess on the run. Both men could easily envision the disasters that could entail.

  Gabriel considered the risks. Weighing the costs, he ordered, “Angel of witness, show me futures.”

  Sebastian bowed. “As you command.”

  The angel of witness offered both arms, head bowed, and the Archangel accepted.

  They submerged together into the roaring chaos of that which might be.

Boys will once again ride the camel in search of oasis.

Phi. Let’s call her Phi.

Did I always know that I was to Bloom?

  Those and a thousand other visions raged through the duo. Futures blended into pasts, stories fading into memory into echo, revived by dream, whispered in the dark…

  Gabriel felt something stirring in response to their attention…

  He snatched his hands back.

  Sebastian sagged to the sand, panting.

  Gabriel knelt, offering a hand. “I am sorry, old friend.”

  “For…what…?”

  “For indulging in your aspect instead of relying on my own wisdom.”

  The angel of witness laughed weakly. “I rather find it refreshing to share the torrent for a change.”

  “The futures offer no insight.”

  “They rarely do.”

  Helping his friend to his feet, Gabriel felt his way through the jumble of visions. He saw the usual destruction, ten thousand variations on Armageddon, but that was the nature of mortality. If this planet fell, there were others.

  The Foundations saw to that.

  Yet he felt an unease beyond the usual echoes of disaster. A weight, some terrible burden, and his wings whispered of two candidates who might bear it…

  Heaven damn his soul, but he knew which he chose.

  “You have come to a decision,” Sebastian noted.

  “Lynne has chosen her path, and we will not bar her way,” Gabriel said. “If we denounce her as a demon, all we will accomplish is driving her back into the Tempest.”

  Is this my reason or my excuse?

  “As you command.”

  “We tried to give Lynne time enough to see beyond her two warring halves. Perhaps she will find strength in love and find a new peace.”

  It is my rationalization. My pretext so that the future might fall to Lynne and not…

  Sebastian bowed, hiding the flicker of doubt across his face.

  “Beneath her undertow, she harbors veins of gold.”

  The Foundation of Loyalty appeared again, vast and interlinked.

  This one, at least, agrees. Lynne deserves her chance.

  “In this matter, we pin our hopes on Lynne. She will rise to meet them.”

  And Alisandra will remain safe.

***

  Lynne invaded the Plateau for the first time in many years. She hesitated on the first step, afraid that the stones would rebel at her touch.

  The man behind her on the lift shoved her forward, muttering about tourists.

  Her heel hit the dirt, and no dragons of gemstones and sand erupted to assault her.

  Exhaling, she began to explore her enemy’s domain.

  This town, War’s Point, was almost identical to Resting Dragon. The same architecture, the same smithies, and the same beer! Street vendors offered a strange fusion of desert and tropical cuisine, and charms for the Spring rains mingled with ones for miners’ luck.

  The Harvest wind brought a fine layer of red dust from the west, heavy enough with salt to season meat. Pressurized pipes drew water from the Resting Dragon rather than the mineral-heavy High Dragon, and flowers bloomed out of season on window sills.

  Rock and Water mingled…

  A sudden attention buzzed across her back. Lynne scowled, shame welling in her throat.

  Hello, Sebastian, she called to him. Go away.

  She did not answer to the Archangel. What she did with the folk was her own…

  No, that was the old Lynne. The Tempest.

  Privately, she reminded herself, If you alienate them, you won’t be able to see Alisandra anymore.

  Thankfully, the angel of witness turned his attention away.

  “Judgement deferred,” she muttered to herself. They might still decide that her act of charity was dominion and thus brand her a demon. Yet she could deny neither the need nor the act.

  That reckoning could wait a few more days.

  Shrugging, the angel of oceans hunted the whisper of dark waters through the streets. On the dry Plateau, she could follow the scent with ease, and she soon entered the poorest outskirts. Here, the squat, clay houses faced the desert rather than fraternize with sinners, and what little water they accepted rested in sealed pots with charms against the evil Tempest.

  Not that such charms had any power with the Peak gone, but humans maintained the form of ritual long after all power ebbed. He was consigned to the Chorus and the Foundations; Aure was vanished without a trace; the Verdant had not stirred beyond her jungle in lifetimes…and yet all remained targets of ardent worship.

  As did the Stormmother herself.

  Lynne found the shrine to water erected in a sandy clearing at the edge of the sands. Three jugs sat opened atop a rock, their contents slowly evaporating. At the center of their triangle, a rune had been sketched from droplets of water. Despite the arid air, the droplets remained moist.

  She read the rune in puzzlement. Wave, it read in the old tongue.

  Beneath the obvious magic, she heard different prayers altogether.

  Save me. Save me. Save me.

  Lynne felt for the waters of the woman who whispered such things, but she found nothing at all.

  “They remember this much at least,” she muttered in distaste.

  Cut the woman’s throat over a jug of hardened clay. Catch every last drop – let not a single droplet touch the sands or suffer Tempest wrath. Then consign the body and the tools to the hottest kiln in reach.

  Leave no water for the Stormmother to follow, or vengeance will be swift.

  She tipped the jug, spilling the stained water across the rune and onto the sand.

  The slums were silent as a coiled snake. A stray mongrel approached, head low, to lick at the fresh puddle, but no mortal men stirred.

  “If this is to be my greeting,” she hissed, turning, “then so be it.”

  Five men emerged from the surrounding buildings. Old and worn, darkened by their labors under the Plateau sun, they wore the steel armlets of Hylas’ priesthood. They carried ceremonial daggers in one hand and tablets engraved with long-lost words in the other.

  The dog tucked its tail between its legs and growled.

  “The Peak will not hear you,” Lynne warned. “He is gone to stone.”

  “Then we will avenge him,” vowed the oldest.

  As one, they hurled their tablets to the ground. The clay shattered, five points to the circle, and the power of the raw desert poured forth like merciless noon. Blinding blue fire swept the square, the few weeds turned to dust, and the thin clouds in the sky above evaporated. The stray mutt managed a sharp yelp against the flames before it too collapsed in a shower of ash.

  Lynne staggered before the flame, flinging up her arms. The skin across her palms desiccated and cracked as the flames sucked moisture from her flesh. She was the water, and water burned to nothing in the endless, burning desert.

  “The gifts of the pure?!” she gasped in disbelief, sagging to one knee. Even in the depths of madness, I knew better than to teach such things to my children!

  Indeed, the fire hungered for the men as much as her. Ghostly licks of blue flame haunted them, sizzling against fresh wounds: a missing arm; maimed lungs; blinded eyes. These men had dared to breach the walls of the garden of wisdom, and the guardians had branded their sins for all to see.

  A man might waste his life straining for a glimpse of that garden. For five elders to have found the way – and then the runes of fire perfect for an assault on the angel of ocean – beggared belief!

  Lynne laughed weakly. “Oh, foolish mortals. The guardians of the garden have absolutely no sense of humor!”

  “Pretender! Demiurge! Your words are lies and filth that fall away before our faith!” preached the eldest, his blackened fingers smoking like fresh beef.

  Demiurge? Oh, my. That’s a high-level word for an illiterate priest. I wonder where you learned such a term. Perhaps from a thief…

  “Turn from this folly while you can,” she rasped.

  The divine arcana could turn lead to gold and empower men to match an angel’s blow, but that power was reserved for the pure.

  Unfortunately, mortal men were stuffed to the gills with impurities, filthy as a mud puddle, and most of those bits were required to survive.

  The fire nipped at her flesh; her soul hungered for water and found only salt. Waters within; waters without. Amidst the flame, she struggled to conjure her mists and form her lance.

  “Very well,” she snarled. “If this is how we shall play.”

  They understood enough of aspects to become a nuisance.

  “Rune against rune, then!”

  She swept out the ancient name for strength in the sand with her heel. It was a raw, throbbing, brutish power, but the flames ate at her hair. Style was a secondary concern at the moment.

  Lynne surged across the burning sands and pounded the blinded elder into the ground. His bone, sinew, and spirit all broke in the sand.

  “We cannot allow her to leave!” roared an elder, and he whistled sharply.

  Leave?! So next time I might face a dozen young warriors instead of five old men?!

  The sand shook, and four cragbears burst into view. The elemental beasts of earth were molded in the form of bears, but they weighed as much as ships and rattled windows with every step. The creatures never stopped growing, and these were the size of wagons.

  “Where’s Alisandra when I need her?” Lynne growled, charging the first bear. Her head sang with the pain, the dryness, the burning sun.

  Cragbear and angel collided at the center of the square, shaking the foundations of slum buildings. She slugged the bear on its jaw, and it returned the favor with claws of obsidian.

  Lynne staggered, her face rent from jaw to forehead. Her blood evaporated on contact with the air, denying her even that slight source of water.

  The Tempest would have laughed.

  The rage began to build.

  I will not be that monster. I will not renew that legacy!

  She drove a new rune into the dirt, barked a word in the lost tongue, and shattered the cragbear into meaty chunks. Grabbing the nearest unidentifiable chunk, she hurled the gristle into the next elder.

  Quickly now, before…

  Yet the laws of the garden remained the same, angel or mortal, and her own sins rose into view.

  We stand in our worlds: I in my river and he on his Plateau. I assail his foundations with the waters hidden deep beneath the ground, dragging his fortress ever lower, and he spears me with obsidian spikes like a fish.

  She was told the divine fire was harmless to the pure and penitent, but how was she to know? She was neither.

  Her sin boiled in her veins, a fire within as dangerous as the fire without.

  The cragbears sensed her distraction and pounced from either side. One feinted from the right, and his companion to the left snagged her leg in its crushing jaws. It bit down, shattering bone.

  She bit deep into her tongue to suppress the scream. To smother the rage.

  The bear shook her like a toy and hurled her across the square.

  Lynne twisted midair and landed on her good leg. Forcing her weight onto the shattered one, she left a rune in the sand and danced backwards.

  The third cragbear charged straight for her.

  Straight across the rune.

  A concussive force worthy of any bomb hurled the creature into the sky.

  We can fight until the stars wither to no avail. He is ponderously slow in power and thought, and he cannot truly hit me. I am grace and ease, but his mountains rise as fast as I can devour them.

  A specific sin floated up like a bubble: I find a way around. I figure out how to dry his wells for a year. Ten thousand people die on the Plateau that summer.

  Their thirst became her own. Her tongue was sand and her breath fire.

  Ah, but she could have as much water as she wanted. She could be a force to withstand the desert. The seductive whisper lilted in her ear. Without the Tempest you are doomed. By storm we will drown them so deep none will remember their names!

  She would not. She would not!

  At the very least, the wages of sin were impartial. Even as she stumbled, the one-armed elder released a keening wail. He gripped at his severed elbow, smoking with blue fire, and convulsed. “No more! No more!”

  It was not his body that broke, though the fire consumed that too. Only his face was left untouched, expression drawn into an agonized mask.

  “You will share his fate if you persist!” Lynne cried to his brothers. “The magi of old only brought ruin!”

  If they required proof, they need only witness the blood steaming from her torn face.

  The remaining two elemental beasts stopped short of the angel and began to prowl a predator’s pace. Their prey wearied herself. They would not need long.

  “We do not fear death!” the leader called. His blackened nails peeled away from his charred hands, and he addressed some other presence as much as the Stormmother before him. His sweat began to run red.

  “It is not death you must fear,” she corrected, “but judgement.”

  Even a droplet of water, the very idea of rain, and she would knit together her shattered body and conjure her black spear.

  Or find all that and more in Tempest clarity. Little human mages with little human tricks should learn to fear their Goddess.

  Another of Lynne’s sins bubbled into view. I rest on my divan, watching the petitioners grovel. Why shouldn’t I? They are temporary things, fragile and small. Children, really. I am their benevolent Goddess. There is nothing higher than me.

  Lynne clutched at the sand, pressed low by the weight of her own hubris. She called herself an angel, but she would always be a tyrant.

  What was the point of trying to deny her true self? Why did she tolerate this farce? It would do nothing to remove her sins of old!

  Why not let the Tempest dance?

  It will feel so very good.

  Sebastian and Gabriel would express disappointment and concern. They would tut from their high tower, send stern missives, and brand her a demon.

  To the icy hells with the angels!

  Alisandra would find out what Lynne really was.

  The Tempest hesitated.

  “She grows weak!” the eldest cried hysterically to his remaining brother. “For our Lord, for our people, we will give our lives to see her bound!”

  Lynne pushed to her feet, two fingers tapping at the ragged mess of her face. “We are all called to account.”

  The cragbears circled, pawing at the dirt.

  The man’s bloody sweat ran into his eyes, and he started to tremble. “No!” he whimpered, addressing a private vision. “It is not finished!”

  “Did you think you could grasp fire and remain unscathed?” she asked softly.

  His stomach split like a fish. He sank, clutching at his guts, and exhaled for the last time.

  The hungry fire shriveled his corpse to a mummy.

  The final elder spared a glance at the dead. “Then I will carry the rest.”

  One foolish mortal and two old cragbears. Easy picking for the Tempest. She could drag the priest deep into her waters and demonstrate what power actually looked like…

  Our enemies vanish to the Chorus, and the Archangel is weak. None can stand against us. The storm conquers all!

  “What does your guardian have to say?” the angel of oceans asked between numbed lips. “Does she approve? Does she find you pure?”

  It had been a very, very long time since Lynne had been able to ask such questions.

  Nearly as long since she lost sight of the shore. As if the angel of oceans had any insight into the comportment of a pure soul. Any idea what good actually meant.

  She mucked about, guessing, and hoped that God was forgiving.

  The final elder abandoned his post, drew his dagger, and charged.

  The cragbears followed.

  Drown them!

  Lynne closed her eyes.

  The elder leaped and buried his knife in her chest. A moment later, the cragbears crashed into both of them.

  Weight of mountains and purity of purpose. Cragbear corpses became her tomb, and their blood her chains. Their bodies fused together, rock pure and strong.

  This killed the priest, of course. His heartblood sealed the Work.

  What rose through sacrifice endured.

  As for the angel? She fell into an endless place.

***

  The endless mountain knew neither base nor summit. Its caverns ran in a labyrinth of abandoned mine shafts and vast chambers, replete with gems and veins of gold. Chasms, caves, and fissures twisted in loops, and the air never stirred with the slightest hint of fresh air and salvation. Here was a microcosm of stone, dirt and sulfur, eternally blazing at furnace temperatures.

  Lynne opened her eyes. She lay against the collapsed rubble of a mineshaft, pebbles digging into her back. The rocks beneath her burned like irons, and the air sizzled against her skin.

  “Here once more,” she muttered.

  A durance of metaphor, little more than dream.

  Yet she was a creature of Light and Will, and this was a binding of Light and Will.

  “I have escaped this prison before,” she said. Neither bravado nor melancholy. Just another turn of the wheel.

  “Then I will guard every gate,” vowed the elder from the walls themselves.

  Lynne grimaced. A bound soul, a binding soul. A prison imbued with the Will and ire of a man.

  “Donovan taught you this much so quickly?” she asked, resting her scalp against the stone. Oh, for a cup of glacial water…

  “The thief with glowing stones? No, he merely offered us a path to our birthright.”

  “You have bound your soul to this spell. Do you understand the price?”

  “No price matters. I hold the Tempest captive, and there is no higher service for my eternity.”

  “A noble intention,” she replied softly. “The world is safer without her, isn’t it?”

  “Do you think pretending to self-pity will sway me?”

  Oh, he’s going to be great conversation.

  “Truthfully, I cannot blame you,” she sighed. She attempted to stand, but her maimed leg refused to take her weight. “Oh. Right. I must rebuild my body. I would appreciate if you would refrain from crushing, impaling, or immolating me in the interim.”

  No response from the darkness.

  She grasped for the image of her body whole. Wounds were flesh, and this was a prison of dreams. She built the picture of herself as healed, and she became whole.

  Still her throat burned, dry as the desert.

  Lynne tested her rebuilt body and found it sturdy enough. Sighing, she struck out into the labyrinth. At each intersection, she chose randomly. When the paths changed to seal her way, she backtracked to the last juncture and chose again.

  Walking helped. Waking vented the rage and humiliation in tiny, manageable doses.

  She had needed quite a few walks when Alisandra grew from a sweet, curious child into a self-important teenager.

  The stones sizzled against her heels, and the maze continued forever. The binding soul offered no attempt at parley, safe in his righteousness.

  “What was your name?” she asked eventually.

  “I am Vitruvius, elder of Seven Rock Bluff, and loyal priest to the old ways.”

  “The Lord of Towering Peaks is long gone to the Chorus,” she replied. “Where will you direct such loyalty?”

  “His ideal.”

  “And that is?”

  “Men, bound by word and deed. Our honor in every utterance. Our strength in unity. Not scattered and sycophantic like the swollen people of Wave’s Lament.”

  She paused, detecting a distinct note of resentment in that statement.

  “With the Tempest bound, my people will be able to return to the true ways. Boys will once again ride the camel in search of oasis instead of sipping on foreign water and complaining!”

  “If children do anything skillfully, Vitruvius, it is complain,” she remarked.

  “You enforce infancy on your people! Grown men meekly petition for your blessings like lost lambs!” Vitruvius spat the words, shaking the mine shaft. “They do not seek to grow; they do not seek new water! Instead they sit about and whine, water-soft and self-absorbed!”

  The quake grew with every word until Lynne clung to a support beam lest she be thrown into a chasm. She held until the shaking quieted, and then she pointed out, “I have been gone a hundred fifty years, Vitruvius. How will binding me for another century change matters?”

  That only restarted the quaking. “Yet still the blind fools teach their children to pray for your blessings! Our god is gone, but we carry on in his legacy with pride and valor! Wave’s Lament sees the power in what we build and seethe with petty jealousy. Unable to act as men must, you attempt to…to seduce our young away with gold notes and water pipes!”

  The ceiling collapsed, burying the angel of oceans beneath a million tons of basalt.

  She pulled herself back together in an empty mineshaft. “Feel any better?”

  “How?!” Vitruvius exclaimed.

  “What is death here? We are no longer in Malkuth.”

  The mountain stilled for a long moment as the man finally attempted to understand his surroundings.

  “There is only darkness beyond,” Vitruvius admitted. “But no matter! It is better here, where no one can reach you.”

  Where no one can suffer Tempest wrath.

  Shaking her head, Lynne started another walk. “I tried to bring them kindness,” she murmured, as though she could outpace her own sins.

  “You made them crave you, man and woman alike, in unseemly dependence!”

  “Can I be blamed that they would go so far?”

  The penitents would wound themselves and present the pains for her care. They would fight to offer the best gifts. They would revolve around her like stars in the sky, caught in her gravity, and she would kiss all their worries away.

  “You encouraged their sycophantic weakness!”

  The Lynne who once ruled snarled at this impetuous mortal, but the Lynne who lived a century in the presence of wiser beings paused.

  In that pause, a chance to reflect.

  “You are right,” she admitted. “I wanted them to…I needed them to need me. I wished them to smile for only me. As long as they needed me, then I knew I was good. After all, what could be better than a loving mother?”

  But the Tempest ever lurked. Children could be so disobedient.

  “After my storms passed, I kissed them twice as hard to make them forget the fury.”

  She emerged on a ledge above a bubbling lake of magma. The air already burned, so a little extra heat hardly made a difference.

  Vitruvius snatched away the rock under her feet, and she plunged into the cauldron.

  A moment later, she brushed hair from her head at the start of the maze. “Is it satisfying?”

  He growled in frustration.

  Clearly, he expected me to be shocked and broken.

  But why? She had tasted bindings before. Hells, she usually deserved them!

  Like a drunk in the morning, she felt the tug of self-pity – a seductive bed in which to wallow for the next few decades. A place where all faults could be escaped and all blames assigned.

  Lynne caught the slide of her mind and sighed. “Alice would chide me. I should not be so glib.”

  “You might act the Maiden, but I will not grant respite whether you beat at the bars or weep crocodile tears.”

  “There is no respite,” the angel of oceans corrected. “There is only this place and this time. The Foundations yield for neither man nor angel. When we reach heaven, you will understand.”

  “I do not require heaven. I will fulfill my duty!”

  “Now you remind me of him. Hylas obsessed over duty.” She paused, turning ancient insults over in her head. “Though perhaps he was wise in his own way. Mortals can often be a touch too eager to embrace paradise in the name of God.”

  Did Vitruvius understand the magnitude of his task?

  Only one way to find out.

  “What do you know of gravity?” she probed. “Do the scholars of Peaks teach the potential energy of water held high?”

  What did this man understand of celestial anatomy? A man, a soul – these were but reflections of a higher and greater thing. They would be drawn to their origin, and there was no force – angelic or otherwise – that could ultimately prevent that fate.

  This was the blessing of mortality.

  “The lands between Malkuth and the Gate are cold, dark, and still,” she noted. “The lure of gravity is easy to miss…at first.”

  There was no such lure for Lynne, of course.

  Vitruvius scoffed, but it was hard for him to avoid talking to the only other being in his new world. “If I am drawn to my fate, I will carry you as well. If I should meet heaven, I will arrive to crown and title for my service. The Peak will clasp me by the arm and announce my name.”

  “Incorrect.” She sighed, kicked her feet up on a burning rock, and leaned against the jagged wall. “Angels forfeit heaven.”

  The Black Gate reunited what lived below with what endured above. It accepted only mortal souls.

  “Speak no lies, Tempest!”

  “A man as strong and stalwart as yourself would know truth from fiction. Surely, you do not feel a strange longing drawing your gaze away…”

  “He is my God,” Vitruvius reaffirmed, mostly to himself.

  A faint tremor of doubt ran through the shaft.

  “Have you ever actually seen a God, Vitruvius?”

  No answer.

  “You have seen me, have you not? Am I a God, Vitruvius?”

  “You are not!”

  “Feel my soul, elder. Does it feel so different from your own?”

  “I will not sully myself!”

  She smiled to herself. Too late for that, my dear. Here we lay, entwined like lovers.

  “You blaspheme, but my faith is a rock. My family waits to sing my glory!”

  “They are not your family beyond the Gate. Furthermore, you assume they remained in heaven to wait for you.”

  “They were faithful, harlot. They sit at the right hand of the Peak!”

  “Hard to say,” she demurred. “Some souls descend once, taste mortality, and flee in horror. Others dive again and again, hungry as the osprey.”

  “Enough!”

  Thereafter, a period of pain followed. Vitruvius burned her, crushed her, suffocated her, mocked her, and burned her again.

  When his rage finally subsided, Lynne made herself a neat bed of smoldering rocks against a mineshaft beam, closed her eyes, and daydreamed. She knew what she sought, but it rested in far distant memory. Before her immortality began, before her time as a mortal woman, before even her birth…

  She had lived a hundred lifetimes, and she dug even beyond the fog of those half-excavated memories…

  So gently, so carefully, she stoked her memories to life. Not the names of her lovers or the tales of her deaths, but the rest between. A sensation waited there like golden Light caressing her skin…

  A refuge and a respite…

  Bait for mortal souls.

  “What trickery is this?” Vitruvius demanded. He could not help but see, sharing this durance.

  “Hear the truth in my words. This is no spell, priest. Merely memory.”

  If Vitruvius wished to bathe in glory, where better than the seat of Glory?

  Lynne remembered what mortals surrendered at their birth.

Timeless gardens

Intimate whispers

Sunrise behind the Throne

  What drove her from that place of comfort? No being ever asked her to descend through the needle’s eye.

  What drove her to Bloom? To unite her soul in this land, severing her anchor to the Throne itself?

  Unbidden, she saw the constellations of the unborn who orbited the Center.

Cherubim unborn

Souls in perfect infancy

Held in Song for eternity

  Lynne inhaled softly.

  She remembered a question she asked once, staring at the Throne.

Might I bear that Light too?

  Subtle notes danced through the mountain, eluding hearing and teasing at understanding. A honey golden light followed in the music’s wake.

  Vitruvius and the mountain rumbled uncertainly. “This sensation…”

  “This Song,” Lynne supplied. “The echo of creation. It is strong here in the outer darkness.”

  “I have never heard of such magic.”

  “Magic requires Will. The Song merely…is.”

  All that was and all that would be, held in one fractal note.

  Mystery cults sometimes attempted to harness the Song, but she knew of none that managed anything beyond cryptic prophecy and new uses for hallucinogenic plants. One could dwell in the Song, but the Voice did not take requests.

  “Hylas and I both encouraged that research,” Lynne said with a self-mocking titter. “We thought to breathe the words of creation. We were so young and foolish.”

  Neither ever came close to matching their young sister in her bed of boughs.

  Perhaps if Lynne had spent more time dwelling in the Song and less time preening for her reflection…

  Ah, but such things were long past.

  The priest coughed doubtfully. “It does sing of home…”

  She fought not to smile. “Yes. It does, doesn’t it? It Sings of a place that will welcome you with open arms.”

  The mountain shivered.

  “It Sings of wisdom for the curious and succor for the weary.”

  Vitruvius began to whisper to himself, mesmerized. “Young men will get the tattoos of manhood again. They will ride camels to the secret green places even you could never steal from us instead of buying their water from a pipe. They will ride with their grandfather who saw the Lord of Towering Peaks with his own eyes, and they will know the pride of endurance against the harshness of our desert life.”

  Ah, foolish mortal. The tide of progress will not reverse so easily. The mines chase Novian steel, and the raiders chase gold notes.

  “There is no use in clinging to regret,” Lynne cajoled. “There is no regret where you will go.”

  Let him remember that garden. The place of guardians and stolen knowledge was nothing but a reflection caught in the soul’s eye of that first blessed land …

  She remembered sitting in the branches of a great tree and confessing her secrets to a treasured companion, but for all her effort she could not remember to whom she spoke. Only the impression of vast, gentle Light…

  “I have fallen to such hubris in life…” muttered the priest. Then the mines shook, and the subtle golden light vanished. “No! My imperfections cannot stay my hand! The mistakes I have made are a tiny fraction of your own!”

  Lynne blinked, noticing the tears on her lashes. How odd that she could muster tears in a prison of absolute heat. Even as she marveled, the droplets evaporated. “Yes. I am a tyrant and a murderer. I have drowned sailors and soldiers, cities and islands. I have had lifetimes to build my palace of sin, and now I must dismantle it by hand.”

  The Tempest must die.

  “You admit it, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “That my Lord was right.”

  “That we were both wrong.”

  The mountain rumbled angrily.

  “I believe I understand a little more now,” she mused. Realizations brought by a soft touch of Song. “Our war could not end. We were too perfectly balanced. Understanding our prison, he chose to defect. He surrendered.”

  To the Chorus. To a higher service.

  The Song began to worm through the cracks in the mountain, a persistent and subtle music.

  You belong to that Song, mortal. Return to it.

  “He did not abandon us?” Vitruvius asked, and his voice trembled. He no longer spoke as the embittered old man.

  At the end of creation, I will answer to it.

  “No. He went to the Chorus to honor you all. He always wanted to be the shining example for his unbreakable people.” Lynne smiled to herself. “He was always so very strong. Always the last to depart the field. He would never abandon a single soldier – no matter how much I punished him for it.”

  Buoyed by Song, Lynne realized far too late that Hylas, her Lord of Peaks, had known her more intimately than any of the men she seduced to her boudoir.

  Long cracks began to propagate through the burning walls.

  “I always feared that we offended him,” Vitruvius offered, his voice slipping again – now callow and young.

  The angel of oceans squeezed her eyes shut in relief.

  A mortal that did not understand the lure of heaven was in no shape to resist it. She would be free.

  “I just wanted him to come back. My grandfather always spoke of his booming voice. His strength. A god who would grasp a man’s arm like an equal. A god you could rely on.”

  She spoke as to a child – for that was where he returned. “We cannot go back.”

  His voice softened to a lisp. “We can go home…”

  “You can.”

  The Black Gate approached, a looming silence in her mind.

  The mountain shuddered one final time.

  Vitruvius spoke in a new voice. One deep, quiet, ancient and studied – the soul’s whisper, hidden deep in the heart. “You are not what I believed.”

  The angel of oceans shrugged helplessly. “I am not what I was.”

  “You are more.”

  The Black Gate opened – but only for one soul.

  Strain as she might, Lynne never saw the Gate move.

  She was alone.

***

  On barren Yesod, Sebastian and the Archangel saw a flash from the Gate.

  Another soul called home.

  “The Tempest of old was not half so clever,” Gabriel mused. “She would have broken that binding by raw fury, and both of them would have been damaged for the act.”

  “I witness,” Sebastian agreed. He hesitated, slowing their descent to the world of matter. “Gabriel…if I may.”

  “Of course.”

  “There is another matter. Your daughter.”

  Their descent halted.

  The Archangel snapped his wings to his back defensively. Had Sebastian understood his moment of weakness?

  “Her aspect.”

  Gabriel exhaled in relief.

  “If she assumes Power, you will be the only one who can contain her.”

  “In this matter, I am a father before I am an angel,” Gabriel admitted. “You understand?”

  Whatever the consequences of that would be.

  “I witness,” Sebastian restated. Neither approval nor condemnation.

  If Sebastian saw the admission beneath the Archangel’s words, he refrained from comment.

  At that moment, the Foundation of Loyalty reverberated with a powerful roar.

  Both angels turned to listen. Gabriel spread his wings, and Sebastian squeezed his eyes shut.

Duty assumed

Sins earned

Debts paid

Seek mercy and be free

  A Foundation of bone shouldered the world but carried no regret.

Let our battle end

The covenant wakes

What was broken must be reforged

  Then, a moment later, the return call roared in force from every quarter of creation.

  For the Chorus sang of harmony.

  Gabriel chuckled warmly. “Do you require any further proof? Lynne will suffice. This talk of aspects is premature.”

  The angel of witness wept like a leaf in a gale.

  “My apologies, old friend. Sight can be a double-edged sword.” He laid his hands on his companion’s quaking shoulders. “Tell me what you hear. Share the burden.”

  The angel of witness sniffed hard several times. “There are so many, Gabriel. So many. We have catalogued only the tiniest fraction of the whole.”

  “We stand on their shoulders.”

  Sebastian regained control of himself, wiping at his nose. “My apologies.”

  “None needed.”

  The angel of witness nodded. “This task belongs to Lynne.”

  “That’s more like it,” Gabriel agreed. “Shall we?”

  A movement of thought as much as distance, and Sebastian returned to the Mishkan manor.

  The Archangel lingered in the void. Spinning in flight, he dipped a wing in salute to the Foundations on parade across Yesod.

  “Rest well, my friends.”

***

  Lynne awoke in rubble to the smell of slums and the chatter of a crowd. She stared at the sky a moment, remembering the heavy taste of the waking world, and listened to the soldiers in her heraldry shove back the onlookers with their lances.

  A child priestess peeked into her line of sight. “She wakes! Our Goddess wakes!”

  Half the crowd cheered; half watched, wary and curious.

  The officer spun and raised his lance high. “Lead us, Goddess! Our spears hunger for battle. Let us crush the Peak once and for all!”

  The angel of oceans rubbed at her face. “What day is it?”

  “Fifty first of Harvest,” the young priestess offered. Doe eyed, flat chested, and scrawny, the poor girl did no service to her bandeau and skirts yet. Her teeth were terribly crooked, a nightmare in the making when her permanent teeth finished growing.

  Lynne instinctively reached up to cup the child’s chin. Only a touch, just enough to fix those teeth. “It is alright. I’m awake now. Thank you.”

  The girl broke into a relieved smile, her tongue probing at her remade teeth.

  Three days, then, in that binding.

  Praise be to the ignorance of mortals. If the elders had spent a year to solidify their knowledge instead of leaping into the fray, she would not have slipped away so easily…

  “How did you find me?” she asked aloud.

  “The signs were clear,” the officer offered. “Cragbears falling from the sky, giant boulders covered in blood, and all that. Didn’t take too long to find the associates of those elders and wring the story out of them.”

  Lynne grimaced. “So you invaded the Plateau, seized foreign men, and tortured them?”

  The officer coughed. “They refused to cooperate.”

  “They are to be brought to me. Now.” She needed to know how far this contagion had spread.

  If they are dead, you will wish you could pass half as easily.

  No. That was the Tempest, fearful even in attempts at compassion.

  The officer barked fearful orders to his men.

  “Let them suffer!” someone shouted from the safety of the crowd. “They’re heathens!”

  Other voices rose in agreement.

  Wars had started for less than this.

  I remember this. They are my children, and I am their Goddess. Slights against me are slights against them. For the sake of my honor – as though I retained any! – they would march against the Plateau again.

  The faithful amongst this crowd yearned for the terrible purpose of revenge. They yearned for their Goddess on her throne. For them, certainty and belonging; for her, prison.

  A durance to rival the one she just escaped.

  She raised her hand to forestall the crowd. A few among the faithful had brought urns with water, and she drew that to herself with a sigh of relief. Blessed water flowed through her. As her mists spread, she spoke. “Hear me, children.”

  The crowd sagged to the ground in a flurry of knees. The poor priestess child alone remained standing, glancing back and forth in obvious confusion.

  A strong child, then, who stands against the crowd.

  Lynne smiled for the girl. Then she turned to her congregation and drew in a contemplative breath.

  Thread the needle. Guide my people without dominion.

  “I have visited the heart of the mountain. I have felt the pain of the Peak’s eldest servants. Their grievances were well founded, and their people deserve recompense. I have been responsible for so much senseless war against their people.”

  Her words eviscerated her own dogma like a knife through a tapestry.

  I will leave you the image of the Maiden like a guiding star. The Tempest must die.

  “I refused to see the Lord of Peak’s strength. His unyielding loyalty. I required that all bow before me, and all the men of this land have paid in blood for that hubris. Amends must be made, and we will begin with a simple tribute: knowledge. The Lord of Peaks did not vanish; he has not abandoned us. He has risen, transfigured, to a greater service. His shoulders bear the weight of worlds.”

  No one threw rotten fruit. That had to be a good sign, right?

  “We who were given this world to guard must resume our vigil. Let all the temples of water accept the rites of rock, fire and wood. Let their holy days be remembered alongside our own. Welcome them, my children. We will hear their wisdom and grow stronger for it.”

  Oh, her priestesses were not going to be happy about this one.

  “There will be peace and water on the Plateau.”

  Would her church even abide such a decision? Easy for the elder priestesses to discount the testimony of a few dozen from the edge of Waves territory…

  The angel’s eyes fell to rest on the child priestess.

  I might send them a herald.

  “What is your name, child?”

  “E-esmie! Esmerelda! But usually Esmie!”

  “Where is your mentor?”

  “D-dead, Goddess.”

  The one taken by the elders for their trap…

  The Maiden shuddered sympathetically. A child left adrift; her anchor shorn…

  Once upon a time, had Lynne not wondered, Might I gift that Light?

  “I mourn with you, Esmerelda. If you would have me, I would guide you.”

  Let me wash all your hurts away.

  Agape, the girl stuttered, “Y-yes?”

  “Then you will wear my colors. By my blessing, you will be known.”

  Stroking the girl’s scalp, Lynne offered a taste of her waters. Beneath her fingers, a wide lock of the child’s chestnut hair stained to brilliant cerulean.

  The waters flowed into the girl’s mind like morning rain, and she gasped a cold mist.

  “Very good, Esmie. Such a strong vessel. You will bear my words to the temple in Wave’s Lament. You will be strong and hold fast in your testimony.” A sharp glance at the guard captain. “Your honor guard will see you safe at all times. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, ma’am! I mean, holy one. I mean, Goddess!”

  The angel kneeled to whisper to the girl. “My name is Lynne.”

  “Yes…Lynne.”

  “Good. Run along then.” Lynne released the girl.

  Wobbling like a drunk, the girl curtsied, wheeled on a heel, and sprinted for the elevator.

  After a moment, the guard captain realized he was meant to follow. He snatched up his lance and raced after, shouting, “Make way for the Azure-blessed!”

  Oh, how cute, the angel of oceans thought wistfully. If only Alisandra had not been in such a rush to grow up… Childhood was merely another expression of a greater pattern, after all. Perhaps I could convince her to return to that age for a costume ball. We could go as mother and daughter…

  A dangerous daydream that threatened to lead Lynne to things she could never claim.

  Remember your place and your mission, nursemaid. Donovan remains.

  A younger man arrived, shoving his way through the crowd, and saluted to the angel. “Goddess! As commanded, the prisoners are here for examination!”

  “Let’s see what they have to say.”