In the middle of the night I felt a hand on my shoulder and woke from whatever dreams had occupied my mind. A face blocked out the stars as it loomed over me, though it took me a few seconds to make out that it was Lugwin’s. “Something’s wrong with Rosédan,” he said, and of course upon hearing this I was fully awake.

Rosédan was lying on her bed, trembling and shaking, sweat running down her face. She was mumbling to herself, words that I could only catch intermittently. “It’s a dream. It’s all a dream. I can’t see you, Kësil. I can’t see you, my love. It’s all tearing apart, tearing apart.”

Feeling helpless, I put my hand on hers (it was cold and clammy). In response to Lugwin and Hárasônan’s question, I could only say, “I don’t know what the matter is.” In truth, however, I suspected that it was the fault of the resin that the Lord of Dreams had given her. I remembered the old saying, that the Lord of Dreams gives with one hand and takes away with the other. Now he was taking away with both of his hands, it seemed. “Water might help,” I said, more because I felt I had to say or do something than because I knew anything about what would help Rosédan.

She did fall asleep eventually, although even then she seemed troubled. As for me, I was awake all night at her side, entrusting her to the Flame but unable to do anything but worry. When light first began to shine through the room’s one window and illumine Rosédan’s face, she stirred and reached out a hand towards me. I took it. She smiled, told me that her stomach hurt, and then she vomited.

Rosédan was sick for perhaps a week, perhaps a little more. For me days and nights blurred into an anxious vigil at her side. But towards the end she was clearly improving, sleeping better and regaining her color. Later she would tell me that she had been dreaming of climbing down the surface of a gloomy mountain, the rocks crumbling under her hands as she grasped at them. “But I made it down,” she said. “I made it back to you.”

In the evenings Lugwin often told the stories of his people, which he said were different in many ways from the stories of the Ghadári. “They regard this mountain as holy because it was here that the first great magicians practiced their work. But we regard it as holy because it was here that the first man and the first woman lived. They cultivated gardens on each level of the mountain, but near the top there grew a certain gourd that was forbidden to them by a word from heaven. Here they led a happy life until it happened that as the woman was walking in the higher levels, one of the basilisks came to her.”

“The basilisks?” I asked.

“Don’t say their name too loudly. They are spirits of the waste places, always seeking new homes to corrupt as soon as their old home has rotted away. But the woman didn’t yet suspect the nature of the voice that spoke to her and told her that if she ate one of the gourds she would bear children to her husband, children who would be so wise, beautiful, and strong that they could be called gods. Believing the voice, she went and cut open one of the gourds to eat from its flesh.

“In time the woman’s body swelled as if she were a gourd herself. The time came for her to give birth, but the creatures that emerged from her womb were not human children, but a swarm of horrors. There were dragons and manticores, hydras and lemures, a hundred different kinds of monster, and they have plagued mankind since.”

“You regard dragons as evil?” I asked in some surprise. It didn’t seem to fit how Rosédan approached dragons, nor with my own experience.

He didn’t answer me directly, but said, “There is another story. According to the second story, dragons and basilisks were tied together in the beginning, so that each dragon had its basilisk rider and each basilisk its dragon steed. There was a war long ago between the basilisks and mankind, in which the basilisks and dragons came out of their lairs in the south to lay siege to the holy mountain. We were nearly destroyed in that last battle, and all the land around the mountain was laid waste, but it was mankind that won the victory. The basilisks were torn from their dragon steeds and buried deep in the hills, so that the dragons became our servants instead. But there is a prophecy that a day is coming when they will return to their old allegiances.”

I admit that afterwards I regarded the dragons flying overhead with a certain degree of suspicion, but as the days passed and they showed no sign of revolting against mankind, I dismissed the prophecy. In my home there are countless mountebanks producing prophecies every time they open their mouths, few of which ever come to pass.

Another of the topics I had discussed with Lugwin and his family during Rosédan’s convalescence was magic. So far I had been disappointed by the lack of magic in what I had expected to be a sort of wonderland where even the most mundane-seeming item was possessed of arcane power. “Maybe things are like that in the schools of magic,” said Lugwin, “but most of us aren’t magicians and most of us can’t afford to buy many magical trinkets. We only have a sympathy and a few minor tools to help me in my studies.”

He showed me one of these tools: a round glass that, when tapped on the edge, began to spin and recite words. Interestingly enough, my Bird didn’t bother translating the words for me. I can only assume that as far as it was concerned, the words spoken by the glass were much the same as words written on clay. Only what passed directly from mind to mouth was food for the Bird. Or that was my guess, at any rate. I had no intention of exposing my Bird to the prying eyes and hands of the magicians in A’ula Zölkhöh, and the same is true of the magicians in Nusgwéden. For one thing, I doubt the fair folk would be pleased.

“As soon as we find a Table, I’ll be able to show you something truly marvelous,” Rosédan told me, placing a special emphasis on the word “table.” But Lugwin and Hárasônan were insistent that she stay and rest a while longer. So she spent much of her time with the sympathy, which I should describe at this point. It was a spire of silver whose point was capped by a golden sphere, the entire object being about half my height. Rosédan would place her hands on the sphere and carry on conversations with whoever was on the other end of the sympathy, though I only heard what she was saying. As far as I could tell, she was trying to get in contact with the Césalh family, though without much success.

I raised the question of whether it was possible for us to return through the portal. After a moment’s consideration, Rosédan said, “Not yet. We’re still too close in time to the egress we came from. But even without a Table I think I can put together something that will let me measure the span between worlds. That’s what Enikkhe Konahu called it, though I think it’s a little misleading. We’re not traveling between distinct and separate worlds.”

“Like the beach of the gray lords,” I said.

“Maybe, though I have my doubts. There was something peculiar about that place.” She didn’t clarify what she meant, but I’m used to that.

I remember another time when we sat outside Lugwin’s house watching people pass by in the street, and she remarked how strange it was. “In what way?” I asked her.

“I suppose you’re accustomed to it by now, but it’s hard for me to imagine that in the place I was born, all these people are long dead.”

“Oh,” I said. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”

“It’s all mixed up together in my head. When I was young I had a kinswoman who, as she advanced in age and her memory failed her, began to find the past more real than the present. And now I’m like that, aren’t I?” She laughed without much humor.

One morning I was awakened by something heavy resting on my shoulder (I was lying on my side). I swatted at it with my other hand, still half captured by my dream, which had been vivid at the time but of which I now remember nothing. When I felt something warm and covered in scales, my dream vanished and I sat upright in alarm. The scaled thing sprang off my shoulder and I was finally able to see it clearly. It was the size of a songbird, but it was covered with shimmering green-black scales and its neck was long like a heron’s. It stared at me with great dark eyes, then twisted its head sideways and spoke in a human voice.

“Raumuréh sarán rai jútlun radá dará tálat xon.” (I have done my best, with Rosédan’s help, to render what I heard.)

I stared at the thing until it repeated the same message. It occurred to me that it bore a vague resemblance to the very Bird that I wore on my head, and even as I thought this, the Bird gave a cry that I had never heard before, a mournful sound that somehow made me envision a lonesome traveler far from home. It may be that the Bird too recognized some kinship with this scaled creature.

“I don’t understand,” I told it. But as it showed no inclination to begin conversing in my own language, and as my Bird refused to translate, I went to find Rosédan. When I knocked on her door, she emerged after a few minutes, looking charmingly bleary-eyed.

I told her what I’d seen in a few brief words, to which she replied, “You’ve been dreaming, Kësil.”

“I swear by the Flame,” I said, “it was no more a dream than you are. But I don’t understand what it’s saying to me.”

“Your friend wasn’t any help?”

“No,” I said simply. I remember that when the fair folk first bequeathed their gift on me, I had tried to think about it as little as possible, overcome by a sort of shame whenever I was reminded that it crouched on my head. But over the years I had become actually rather fond of my companion, and it stung to hear Rosédan speak so dismissively of it.

But then she said, “That’s a shame,” in such a sympathetic voice that it could wash away any possible sting. “Let’s see what this messenger of yours has to say.”

As it transpired, we didn’t have to take a single step. The scaly messenger appeared in the window, its claws digging into the stone of the sill, and repeated its words. “Raumuréh wants you to go to his heart,” Rosédan said in a puzzled tone.

“Me?” I asked.

“Both of us. But I don’t know who this Raumuréh is, and I’ve certainly never seen anything like this before.” She reached out to touch the thing, but immediately it spread its wings, casting the room into darkness, before it flew away.

We informed our hosts of the apparition at our morning meal. Rosédan had hardly finished speaking before Pikuln made a curious high-pitched noise and exclaimed, “Raumuréh!”

“You know who he is?” I asked.

“Why, he’s the greatest magician who ever lived! If he wants to meet with you, you must be something different than what I thought at first.”

“Oh? What did you think at first?”

“Well, an old-eyed Césalh and an Amikni; it is awfully suspicious, isn’t it?” I didn’t think so, but it was no time to press the point. “You have to go see him.”

“Raumuréh is a very dangerous man,” said Lugwin quietly. “But that’s why I agree with my daughter. If he’s summoned you, you should go see him indeed. Raumuréh has no family in Nusgwéden, and you won’t be able to contact him with the sympathies, I’m afraid, but every child in the city knows where the great Raumuréh lives. You’ll find him on the second level, in the workshop with the marble sphere above it. It’s his symbol, or the symbol of his philosophy. I’d go as soon as possible, if I were in your place.”

“I don’t want us to find out what kind of messenger he’ll send next,” said Hárasônan in a low voice.

Duly warned, Rosédan and I went up to the second level, where we wandered around for a while looking for the building Lugwin had described. We considered asking for directions, but Rosédan pointed out that we should probably be cautious about making known our association (no matter how loose) with Raumuréh. “With your hat and my accent, we’re already conspicuous enough,” she added, which seemed reasonable. Certainly we were getting more than a few curious looks of a sort with which I had become familiar over the past several years.

But then I spotted the white ball Lugwin had described. It rested on the top of an oval building in a way that did not seem possible by the laws either of architecture or of physics. The building was raised up several steps from the street, and as we climbed the stairs I observed that the air around us seemed to be getting warmer. At the entrance we found hanging strings of fabric, threads of many colors woven together in patterns that detained Rosédan for a time. Lest my readers misunderstand me, I hasten to add that they were not the elements of some magical spell that froze her where she stood, but that their pattern was symbolic, communicating something to those who were able to interpret it. So Rosédan told me later, though she admitted that she had not been able to read these patterns.

“Come in, come in,” said someone in a pleasant high-pitched voice. Rosédan and I passed under the strings and went inside. I said there was no magical spell on the threads, but as they trailed over my neck and shoulders, I felt a chill run from my skull to my groin, and the Bird gave a shrill song of warning.

We were in a small intimate room centered on an object that I assumed at first was the stump of a tree cut cleanly across. It was quite dark, the only light coming from a softly glowing ring of glass that hung over our heads, and so it took me a few seconds to see that we were not alone. A man, or perhaps a woman, was kneeling on the other side of the stump. “Hello?” I said.

“Hello,” he replied, reasonably enough. “I am Raumuréh.”

“You called for us, I believe.”

“So I did. I welcome you both to the Gardens of the Sun.”

“We’ve heard a lot about you,” said Rosédan, which was perhaps stretching the truth for someone about whom we’d heard nothing before that morning.

“No doubt you have. I am, after all, one of the greatest magicians in Ghadáreim.” If the qualifier “one of” had been intended to make him sound humbler, it was a failure. “But I certainly haven’t heard of you. According to the dragon riders, and my own eyes and ears agree with them, you and your white dragon appeared out of thin air. According to the Inquisitors, you were evasive when asked where you were from.”

“Evasive?” I protested. “We told them the simple truth.” Well, perhaps we had left out a few relevant facts.

Raumuréh took hold of a staff that lay by the stump and used it to lift himself to his feet. Still it was difficult to tell his sex from his appearance: his garments were loose-fitting robes that concealed most of his body. His hair surrounded his shoulders and, like most of the Ghadári I had seen, he had no beard. “But I can see farther than most, and in the mornings and evenings I hear voices telling me things that few others know. You passed through a gateway like the Rela of old, to see the final glory of the Gardens of the Sun.”

“The Gardens of the Sun?” asked Rosédan. “That’s a name for Nusgwéden I haven’t heard before.”

In the dim light I thought I saw Raumuréh smile. “It is my own invention, though I’m pleased that many others have adopted it.”

“What did you mean when you said final glory?” I wondered.

“Is not the reason you came here over such a distance because you wanted to see it with your own eyes?”

“I came here to return home,” said Rosédan. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” I was pleased that there wasn’t any note of irritation in her voice, as there had been before her illness. It seemed that the Lord of Dreams’ resin no longer was pulling on her mind.

“I was misinformed, then,” said Raumuréh, and there was definitely a note of irritation in his voice. “But you are, both of you, very far from her homes. That is something I can see without any doubt. You admire the glory of Ghadáreim, but you are unaware that it is its final glory. Never again will we or any kingdom reach these heights of magic. This is humanity’s peak, and Heaven, if you believe in Heaven, is closer to us than ever before. Look, and behold what I am able to do!”

He raised one hand and the room filled with light from some source I couldn’t identify. It was clear to me now that the stump wasn’t the remnant of a living tree, but was carved from a dark stone to resemble the base of a trunk with roots spreading out on every side. The ceiling was higher than I had thought at first, the space above the glass ring filled with images that I did not and cannot make any sense of. Winged serpents fighting each other and swallowing their tails, maybe, or rivers of fire joining on their way to an icy blue sea. It made my head hurt to look on that constant motion, and yet it took immense effort for me to turn my gaze back down to Rosédan and Raumuréh.

Rosédan was watching Raumuréh, and she was clearly quite skeptical, as was I. Impressive this show of lights might be, but it hardly compared to the things we had seen in Alka’ales, or for that matter what Rosédan herself had shown me. But Raumuréh raised his other hand, which I saw had many rings on its fingers, and a hush fell over my thoughts.

He held it up for a moment, then brought it down, and with it came every single one of the incoherent images that swam above us. They surrounded us, serpents and rivers alike, and my vision underwent a curious change, twisting like a sack being turned inside out. When it cleared, it seemed that the room had been left far behind us. Instead it seemed that we were, the three of us, standing on a plain of ice that stretched to the horizon in every direction, illuminated by a sun that was little larger or brighter than a star.

“I am very proud of this place,” said Raumuréh. “When I was younger I studied among the northern dissidents, but I have greatly improved on their methods, transforming what was merely a trick into a genuine art.”

“It’s very cold,” said Rosédan, demonstrating her words with her shivering.

“It can be a pleasant diversion when the hot winds blow from the south. I refuse to let the heat have any power over me. But both heat and cold are evils that I shall remove when I have the power. Day and night, male and female, pain and pleasure, all are illusory in the end. My will shall no longer be bound by such foolish divisions, and then I shall heed the voices that whisper their secrets to me.” His fingers traced a circle in the air and he whispered something that was too low for me to hear, at least with my ears. But I heard words in my mind, or at least that is the only way I can think of to describe it. “Then I will be in all and all will be in me. There will be no bounds between light and dark and no bounds on my will.”

I don’t know whether my readers will be able to be make any sense of this, but to me it was all so much gibberish. I looked at Rosédan, who was shivering harder than ever. I put my arms around her and said to Raumuréh, “We’re ready to go back now.”

He looked at us with pity in his eyes. “Yes, I suppose you are.” Slowly he lifted his staff, and with it the environment around us lifted too, so that we were back in the small room where the glass ring glowed. The images above were gone.

“When I left Ghadáreim we had all kinds of tricks to amuse ourselves with,” Rosédan said, “but nothing remotely like that.” I could tell that she was deeply moved as she stepped closer to the table and brushed her fingers against its surface. “You’ve used this table to make things I can hardly even name.”

Raumuréh smiled at her. “Welcome home, Rosédan Césalh. I believe I know who you are now, even if your companion still puzzles me.”

I was, I decided, quite content to leave Raumuréh puzzled. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my adventures, it’s that someone who demonstrates enormous power while babbling on about it is probably up to no good.

“A lost child returns home to her family and finds that they have become gods in her absence. It is one of the oldest stories in the world, though you may be surprised to hear it. When the world was but newly divided, or so the voices tell me, there was a man who came back from a long journey. The voices tell many stories about those days, and perhaps some are true. This man found on his return that his brothers had all ascended to thrones in the heavens. He called out to them, but they wouldn’t answer, so at last he fashioned a rope out of his own entrails and dragged them down to their deaths. The worms fed on their bodies and there they began to speak.”

“A gruesome tale,” I remarked.

“It’s a gruesome world. We are born from division and we die in division. But the time is rushing towards us when the division will be no more. The weaknesses of humanity will be no more.” Then Raumuréh put a hand to his ear and said, “But one of our friends has arrived looking for you. Perhaps I shall talk with you both later.” As soon as he had finished speaking, there were the sounds of footsteps and rustling fabric behind us.

“It’s an honor to stand here,” said someone, in words so rapid that my Bird could barely keep up and expressed its irritation with a series of sharp trills. “I’m grateful for your permission to enter your workshop.”

“But I didn’t give my permission,” said Raumuréh. “Go and feed on your prey somewhere else.”

“But, Master!”

“Are you my apprentice? Go!”

Finally I turned around and saw a thin narrow-faced man standing in the entrance, the threads hanging rather awkwardly over his head and shoulders. “Ah,” he said, still speaking exasperatingly quickly. “I heard that strangers were visiting—well, it doesn’t matter. If Master Raumuréh wants us to talk elsewhere, then we’ll talk elsewhere.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“But who are you?” I asked as we passed back under the threads into the open air, where the sunlight stung my eyes and forced me to look down at the stone under my feet.

“Ah. I am Sílveu, of the Guild of Sympathies. I had hoped to question you about various matters if I had the good fortune to track you down, and by Heaven’s mercy I have.” Sílveu squinted his eyes at us. “There is a pleasant restaurant not too far from here, or if you know somewhere else we can talk, I have no objections.”

“Who said that we would talk with you at all?” asked Rosédan.

Sílveu shrugged and said, “That’s your right, of course, but then I’ll just have to present what little information I’ve managed to gather about you, with whatever regrettable errors can’t be corrected.”

“What do you mean, present?” I wondered.

“Well, I told you I was with the Guild of Sympathies, didn’t I? It’s my duty to help inform all the sympathies across Ghadáreim. And at least in Nusgwéden everyone’s curious about you. You went into hiding as quickly as you appeared, and the whole city’s been buzzing like a beehive.”

I was not personally inclined to go off somewhere for a pleasant conversation with Sílveu, whom I trusted little more than I did Raumuréh, but Rosédan surprised me by nodding amiably to him and saying, “Your restaurant will be fine.” Well, I was parched anyway, what with the sun beating down on me relentlessly. I forget the reason that learned men give for the differences in climate as one travels north or south, but my guess would be the sun is simply larger in southern regions. Hence the heat here in Nusgwéden, which was almost as bad as it was in Dūrī.

Sílveu had a curious way of eating, plucking morsels with his fingers and dropping them into his open mouth. He asked us his questions between bites, a smile fixed on his face. But he began by speaking of Raumuréh. “Master Raumuréh is the wonder of Nusgwéden. Of all Ghadáreim, really. His work is the future of our people.”

“What little we saw of it was very impressive,” Rosédan remarked.

“Whatever you saw, I promise it was only the smallest fraction of what Raumuréh can do. Other inquisitors have reported the most marvelous things. Like I said, he’s the future. You can forget the archon. He’s forgotten his office. He’s chosen to spend his days messing around with ships and dreams rather than deal with the problems of modern Ghadáreim. And speaking of those problems, I hope you understand how much trouble you’ve stirred up in Nusgwéden! All kinds of crazy rumors are flying around, which is why I hope that you’ll be willing to clear some things up.”

He seemed to be looking at me with particular significance. I made a noncommittal noise, or at least I hope I did. I am never certain, relying on the Bird as I do, how such things will be interpreted.

“So!” he said, and his jaws shut on a slice cut from some type of fruit I couldn’t recognize. I rather hoped that Sílveu would be paying for all this food: certainly he was consuming the majority of it. “You look like you might be Amikni, but why would you be wandering around the Gardens of the Sun? It’s a long way from anywhere that might be helpful for the war. Even our archon, useless as he may be, is up in the northwest.”

“I’m not Amikni,” I said. A flat denial seemed safe enough.

“Well, I’ll take your word for it, personally. But you know I have a responsibility, being one of the Guild and all. The people of the city trust me to give them the truth, you understand.”

Despite myself I was overcome by the temptation to argue with this man. “Do I sound like one of the Amikni?” I asked, thinking of my Bird and the way that everyone I met took me to be a perfect speaker of their own particular dialect.

Sílveu shrugged and said, “I’m not an expert in languages.” He reached into one of the pockets of his coat and took out a glass much like the one Lugwin had owned. Tapping it at several spots around its circumference, he set it down on the table between us. His smile grew even wider as he said, “Now why don’t you both tell me everything.”

I looked at Rosédan and she looked at me. We were in agreement, I think, even without exchanging words. There was nothing we had to say to Sílveu. I was preparing to stand up, bid him a polite but firm farewell, and walk away, when Rosédan said, “Everything would be quite a lot, don’t you think? What do you want to know?”

“Not me, but the people of Ghadáreim, from the lowly fisherman to the great magician. They want to know why you’re here among us.”

“This is my home,” said Rosédan, but I picked up on a tone in her voice that made her sound less than convinced by her own words.

I suspect Sílveu must have picked up on it too. He nodded and said quietly, “I see. But you were away for a time, weren’t you?”

“I was, though not by my own choice. I’m happy to be back.”

“You almost sound like Narasíben,” said Sílveu.

“Who?”

Sílveu’s eyebrows danced upwards. “Just how long were you away?”

I asked Rosédan later, with all my usual tact and circumspection, why she had spoken so freely to Sílveu. Her answer, after some silent introspection, was that she had been thrown off guard by what Raumuréh had shown us. “It wasn’t rational, I know, but I felt like I wanted to tell someone, anyone, what I’d been keeping to myself. It was like a spring that had been blocked off by boulders and had just been opened again.”

I hesitate to record my own far-fetched theory, but it has occurred to me that this may have been the result of a spell cast by Raumuréh during our encounter with him. I haven’t yet had opportunity to mention this theory to Rosédan. It is a troubling thought, that not only our bodies and our eyes might be under the sway of such magic but also our passions and our reason. I hope that I will never meet Raumuréh again and learn whether my theory is true.

But I return to my narrative. Rosédan hesitated before answering, long enough that I began to think that perhaps she had changed her mind about her openness, but finally she said, “I can’t be sure, but I’d say some centuries.”

It was a mistake. I knew that right away and I’m certain Rosédan must have known it as well. Sílveu’s eyes widened and he leaned forward towards us, cupping the glass in his hand as if it were a precious jewel. “Centuries, you say? Really, do you expect us to believe that?”

“It’s the truth,” she said.

“And does your companion support you?”

Well, I still thought it was a mistake, but I certainly wasn’t about to leave Rosédan stranded, so to speak. “I do,” I said. “We’re telling the truth.”

“You say you were in Ghadáreim centuries ago?” asked Sílveu again.

“Well, she was. I wasn’t,” I said, wanting to clarify things.

“A lot of people will be worried that you’re not míkra.” My Bird sang softly in my head, a single prolonged note.

“I’m not worried about what they think.” I felt Rosédan’s hand squeeze mine as I said this. Emboldened, I went on and said, “In fact, I’m not especially worried about what you think either, and I have no idea what míkra is supposed to mean.”

“Do you deny that you’re old-eyed?”

“No, because I don’t know what that means either.”

“Your refusal to use the word only confirms its truth.”

“I think we’re going to be leaving now.” Strong words, I admit, but I was fed up with Sílveu and his insinuations.

“That would be a mistake. People would begin to think that you’d chosen the wrong side in the coming battle.”

“We’ve chosen neither side.”

“To claim neutrality is to give away your true allegiance.” Sílveu’s eyes flashed as he spoke. Perhaps that my readers have never seen eyes flashing, and while I admit it is true that the human eye lacks the virtue of shining like a star or a firefly, Sílveu could almost have persuaded me otherwise in that moment. “Trust me when I tell you that if you don’t take pains to clear yourself now, it will be the Guild of the Inquisitors that tells your story a hundred years from today. The archon will be remembered as what he is: a backwards-looking fool who clung to fantasies while the world changed around him.”

“Regardless,” I said as Rosédan and I stood up together, “we will be leaving. Thank you for the meal.”

“It’s your choice,” said Sílveu, his smile becoming more pleasant as he looked up at us. “I’ve warned you what’s likely to happen. The consequences are on your own heads.”

As we descended in to the lower levels of the city, a sudden thought occurred to me. Thus far a heavy silence had hung between us, but I, possibly still emboldened from earlier, asked her about the possibility of invisible spies. “I remember that ring of yours very well,” I remarked. “It was, after all, the occasion of our first meeting. But if there are many rings with its virtue in Ghadáreim, should we perhaps be on our guard?”

She smiled at me. “No, there are many talismans with the power to pierce a cloak of invisibility. Sílveu was carrying one—did you notice the jewel hanging from his ear?—and so am I.” She held up one of her hands and showed me a ring with a setting of quartz or some such mineral. I am no expert in the matter of gems and jewels. “But it was a good thought, if belated. It isn’t the invisible watchers we need to worry about, but the visible. There’s a reason the two of us are speaking in the language of Edazzo.”

I hadn’t realized we were speaking the language of Edazzo, so for a moment I was thrown off balance, as I always am when I am reminded that the words I hear aren’t really the words that are spoken. It’s as if a man is reading a book and when he attempts to turn the page, he realizes that he’s been looking through a lens the entire time. It’s as if two worlds have suddenly been created in the place of one. It is, all told, extremely unsettling and makes me doubt my perception of everything, not just the spoken word.

Did I ever really leave the caverns of the fair folk?

Well, if I did, then that means Rosédan and I returned to Lugwin’s home, where Pikuln was waiting at the entrance. She practically begged us to tell her what Raumuréh had said to us. We did our best to answer Pikuln, though she asked a number of questions that I found it difficult to understand, Bird or no Bird. Technical magical questions, no doubt, though Rosédan seemed as baffled as I when Pikuln asked if Raumuréh had transformed our eyes.

Her earlier hostility towards us seemed to have disappeared, which was all to the good as far as I was concerned. It is not pleasant to share a domicile with a person who regards you as at best an enemy and at worst a demon in human form. Indeed, Pikuln was downright pleasant to us that afternoon. Rosédan returned to the sympathy and her attempts to contact her family, so I found Hárasônan where she was weaving and asked her if there was anything I could do to help her and Lugwin. I was obliged in this not only by gratitude for their hospitality but also by simple boredom. If we were to be confined to this little house for the time being, I’d prefer to have my hands occupied.

“I suppose you can bring some water from the canal,” said Hárasônan. “You saw it, I assume, on your way here.” There was a note of irritation to her voice that I ignored, thinking at the time that it was only to be expected given how busy she was. I wasn’t aware at the time of her argument with Pikuln, and if I had been perhaps I would have said or done something differently, but how could I have known? As I turned to leave, she called, “Wait a moment. I should have mentioned this earlier, but it might be best if you wear this. You could pass for an especially light-complexioned Zamara, but this would probably be better.”

The item she handed to me was a piece of fabric that I looked at in some confusion before asking what I was meant to do with it.

“Put it over your hair, of course. It’s a common thing for mourners to wear.”

I was about to tell her that no one in my family had died recently (in fact, no one in my family had been born yet) but then I realized she wanted me to hide the color of my hair. I thanked her and went out on the errand.

It took me a little while to figure out how I was meant to get water from the canal. In fact, I only managed once I observed how some of the women operated the rods and buckets to lift water up and over the marble walls. And as I observed, I listened to their conversation. I can only acquit myself from the charge of eavesdropping by pointing out my hope that by listening I might obtain a better idea of what they were doing with the machines.

But instead of their task they were, it seemed, talking about the archon, the enigmatic king of Nusgwéden who wasn’t in Nusgwéden at all. “It’s a shame,” one of them said. “Abdication of duty is what it is.”

“Exactly!” said another. “He’s looking backwards while the world’s collapsing around him.”

“The rest of us don’t want to live in his dreams, playing with toy ships. And you know the Amikni are up to something. They need to call him back is what they need to do. He’s not the voice of Heaven. He’s not even a magician!”

“You know, they say he destroyed all the sympathies in Mexesnód. Now why would he do that if he wasn’t up to no good? What is he doing that he doesn’t want us to know about? Sometimes I think the rebels have the right idea.”

“You’ve heard about the strangers, haven’t you?”

“The man and the woman, the ones on the white dragon?”

“Of course! But I just heard that they were sent by the archon, and they’re just the beginning. Soon the sky will be filled with white dragons, enough to overwhelm even the magicians and the rebels. It’s all part of the plan he cooked up with that High Temple bore to keep us from finishing Raumuréh’s work.”

There seemed to be a contradiction in the picture of the archon that had been painted for me during this conversation, though I had to fight the temptation to remark out loud on it. Instead I quietly filled my bucket and went back to Hárasônan.

I found her and her daughter engaged in a family quarrel, so tactfully I left the bucket and went to see if Rosédan had made any progress. I am still not totally certain what Hárasônan and Pikuln were arguing about, though from the bits I heard, I gather it had something to do with the magicians.

At the sympathy I didn’t find Rosédan as I was expecting. Lugwin was there instead, his dark hands enclosing the silver sphere as his lips moved inaudibly. I hesitated on the threshold, wondering what the proper etiquette was for use of a sympathy and whether I should leave. Then Lugwin shook his head and laughed loudly. He pulled his hands away from the sympathy, still laughing.

“Ah, forgive me my mirth. I was just listening to the latest word from the inquisitors.”

“I think I heard a little of it while I was at the canal,” I said.

“Ah, well, I suppose there are people who will believe anything.” Lugwin began, at this juncture, to leave the room, and I wondered whether I should warn him about Hárasônan and Pikuln’s argument. I decided against it in the end, partially because I didn’t know exactly what I’d say, and partially because by that time Lugwin had gone past me.

I considered the sympathy for a little while. Did I dare attempt to use it, I asked myself? Eventually my curiosity won out over my caution and I strode over to the spire to put my hands on it. Immediately there was a loud buzzing sound in my head and I could swear that my Bird brought one of its jaws down to bite my ear. I am not slow to take a hint, so I let go of the sympathy and jumped backwards several yards. (Perhaps not quite that far, as the room wasn’t more than six feet square, but that’s what it felt like to me.)

I was becoming increasingly troubled by the way my Bird was dealing with, or rather failing to deal with, things in Ghadáreim. Was it a kind of deterioration, like the senescence of old age? Was it something about Ghadári magic that reacted poorly with my Bird’s magic? And yet I was painfully aware that I could neither diagnose nor cure any possible problem.

I realized then that I’d forgotten to ask Lugwin if he knew where Rosédan had gone. Quickly I went out into the main hall, passing Pikuln without giving her much thought. There I stopped, because I heard Rosédan singing. As usual with my Bird, I heard the music and I understood the words, but there was a disconnect between them, so that much of the song’s beauty was lost on me. It was not a pleasant tune but a fairly melancholy one, and I was able to follow it to its source where Rosédan sat on the roof, her face raised to the heavens, or to Heaven, as she sang.

She stopped when she was aware of me. Then I noticed the tears falling down her face. I realized (and alas, it had never truly impressed me before) just how alone she must have been all these years in strange lands, and even now that she had returned to a home that had passed centuries beyond what she knew. And I, I realized, hadn’t done much to help her loneliness. Even as I stared at her and my mouth began to move to say something comforting (I hadn’t quite decided what), Lugwin came up the steps behind me.

“Forgive me, but both of you should come inside now,” he said.

There was a new seriousness to his voice that surprised and alarmed me. We both followed him down, but at the doorway we met Pikuln, who pushed past us, her face twisted with anger and grief, assuming I correctly interpreted the expression I saw for only a second. Lugwin halted for a few seconds, so that I thought he was was going to stop Pikuln, or call out after her, but he did neither, and we went in the house.

“What is it?” I asked. “What happened?”

Hárasônan joined us and said in a low voice, “Our daughter betrayed you. She informed the Guild of Sympathies that you are staying with us. No doubt they’ll be here very soon.”

“And then what? There’s nothing they can do to us, is there?”

“They can make a damned nuisance of themselves,” said Hárasônan.

“Ah, they can do more than that,” said Lugwin. “Certainly, certainly, they have little authority of themselves, but plenty of people will listen to them, even among the priests. Forgive me, but your time in Nusgwéden may be short.”

“Ours certainly will be. Once I find Pikuln, we’re ready to go back south. Nusgwéden isn’t the haven it used to be.”

It would have been pleasant if we had been given the time to prepare to leave with Lugwin and his family, but unfortunately it was only about two hours before the crowd gathered around Lugwin’s house. The sympathies were to blame of course, or the Guild of the Inquisition or whatever it was called.

Although Lugwin and Hárasônan discouraged me, once or twice I went out to try and talk with members of the crowd. They were mostly Ghadári, though there were among them some of Lugwin’s people or the dark-haired folk that I had learned were Zamara. But all of them, young and old, man and woman, were convinced that I was one of the Amikni.

“I’m from a land beyond even the Amikni,” I tried to explain to them (referring of course to Edazzo; I have no idea where Tarinzar will be relative to Ghadáreim). “I barely know anything about them or what they’re planning.” But I don’t think they believed me. They kept asking me questions about the archon, of whom I was believed to be a confidant, for no reason that I could name. These questions didn’t trouble me so much as the insinuations about Rosédan, who was apparently an associate of someone called the Night King. It was all very confusing, and I soon gave up going outside. Though in the course of these conversations I did my best to figure out who exactly all these factions and individuals of Ghadáreim were, with the following rather mixed results.

The archon: the ruler of Ghadáreim and head of the priesthood. Not currently residing in Nusgwéden. Suspected by many of a lack of concern for his people.

The Guild of Sympathies, also called the Inquisition: an organization tied to the sympathies somehow. At first I thought they were the owners of the sympathies, but Lugwin made it clear that their relationship was a more informal one. Some of my interlocutors insisted that they were dedicated to the truth and to the common people of Ghadáreim. “They stand up for us against the powerful,” one said, to which Lugwin remarked later that the Guild itself was fairly powerful.

The Amikni: a western nation that was, while not actually at war with the Ghadári, not precisely at peace with them either. There was, in the voices of the crowd, a mixture of contempt and fear when they spoke of the Amikni. (I can’t help but contrast it with the views of the Parako in Edazzo, who had soundly defeated the Amikni, but that will be yet to come.)

The Night King: A ruler of a portion of Ghadáreim some centuries ago. A wicked man who had perverted magic to cruel ends. Although he was long dead, it was feared that he would return nevertheless, and that his servants paved the way for his resurrection.

As interesting as all this was, I couldn’t ignore the fact that the situation was growing more and more tense. At first most of the gathered mob just wanted to talk to Rosédan and me, but some were growing angrier. We began to hear shouts of “old-eye!” which, although I wasn’t sure of their exact meaning, were fairly clear in their affect. Rosédan and I were not popular with the crowd.

At this point a man emerged from the mob and raised his hands. At once a silence fell over the shouting crowd, which sufficiently impressed me that I did take the risk of stepping outside. When this man saw me he kept his hands in the air, but smiled and nodded at me in what I felt was an overly friendly manner. “Heaven’s blessings upon you,” he said. “I am Dancer Táfir.” This introduction puzzled me at the time, but I’ve since learned that Dancer is a rank in the priestly hierarchy.

“Heaven’s blessings,” I replied, hoping that this was the, or at least a, proper response. “My name is Kësil.”

“Yes, I know. I imagine that there are very few in Nusgwéden or all Ghadáreim who don’t know you and your companion. That’s why I’ve come, you see. Not only am I a Dancer, but also the warden for this section of the city. I have a certain amount of authority over you, deriving from the archon himself. I’m here to judge your case.”

“Are we accused of some crime?”

“You are accused of conspiracy with the enemies of Ghadáreim, with the enemies of míkra.”

It was an absurd charge, I thought, and I said so.

“Absurd? Well, certainly you would say that. But the priests and the inquisitors are not quite so biased. Do you deny that you are strangers here, that you’ve mocked the very idea of míkra? Do you deny that you’ve conspired against the great Raumuréh and against the Guild of Sympathies itself?”

I had to think this through. “No, yes, yes, and yes,” I said when I was done thinking. “Respectively.”

Táfir’s smile didn’t waver, but he turned around to face the crowd. “He thinks he’s a joker, but he mocks everything that makes Ghadáreim favored by Heaven. He’d destroy the Guild of Sympathies, drive the magicians out of Nusgwéden, and deliver us, our bodies and souls both, over to the Night King!”

I thought this was absurd too, and I said so. But apparently Lugwin disagreed, because he took me by the arm and pulled me back inside. “Arguing with them won’t do any good,” he told me. “It’s fixed in their minds now, and what do you have to offer that can persuade them otherwise?”

I intended to comfort Rosédan (or at any rate do my best to comfort her), thinking of how I had seen her in tears, but I was startled and surprised, and I admit even pleased, when she found me first and wrapped her arms around me. “I have a horrible feeling that this is the last we’ll see of one another,” she whispered. “I wish my invisibility ring did work, so we could slip out of here and never be seen by all these people again.”

“It’s not the last,” I said rather awkwardly. “The last we’ll see of one another, I mean. We won’t be separated again, not ever.”

“You’ll go back to your home,” she said in a subdued voice. Then, taking a deep breath and straightening away from my chest, “When the old portal is far enough away, I’ll be able to make a portal back. Then you’ll go and I’ll stay here with my people. They are my people, no matter what they’ve done to my home.”

This all sounded very nice, and it certainly was what we’d been planning, but when I looked down at her face, her lips shut tightly together in her determination, her dark eyes seemingly on the verge of tears, I found that my mind changed entirely. “No,” I said. “We’ll be together. I’ll make sure of it.” I had made my decision and now that I had, it was as if I were driven inexorably on. I leaned down and kissed her.

“We…we agreed,” she said, pulling away again, her cheeks red. I kissed her again, and this time she gripped my shoulders and pressed back.

We were interrupted in this pleasantness when Lugwin cleared his throat and said, “Forgive me, but Dancer Táfir has called for you.” There was a curious emphasis in this last phrase that I still don’t understand, any more than I understood the defeated look in Lugwin’s eyes, but it was clear that we had no other choice.

We went outside again, but before we crossed the threshold Hárasônan approached us to press something into Rosédan’s hand and whisper something in her ear. Then we stepped out into the heat of the day, where Táfir was waiting.

“While you’ve been enjoying the shade,” he said, grinning from ear to ear, “I’ve been deciding your fate. Like Heaven itself, I’ve declared judgment on you, if you believe in that sort of thing. Kësil, you’re either Amikni or akin to them, so I’ve decided to send you to Mexesnód for the archon to deal with. That’s fair enough, don’t you think? But I’m afraid that you, Rosédan, have a different doom, in the words of the old rite. You claim you attended the school in Xarkív, so why don’t you go back there? Maybe you’ll meet some of your old friends there. Again, am I not the very picture of Heaven’s justice?”

He did not, in fact, bear much resemblance either to dividing Tagsis of the knife and scales or Tis on her pillar, both of whom were more solemn-faced than otherwise. But he shared with them one attribute at the moment, which was that there was no fighting his decrees. My mind worked rapidly to try and find some way for us to escape, but unfortunately all I could think of was Rosédan’s invisible ring, now moot.

I didn’t receive a chance to say farewell to Rosédan as I (and I hope she) would have liked. I only had a chance to overhear her telling Lugwin and Hárasônan to look after her dragon before Táfir touched me with a silver rod. My arm tingled at the spot, and then pain gripped my head for a horrible instant before I lost consciousness. I will resume my story with my awakening.