CHAPTER 2

The Godtouched. Of course.

Their visits to Reach are the most important event in our calendar – especially since it could be the last one ever noted down in it. The shining robes and magic swords are pretty to look at, and make anyone wearing them seem magnificent, but they also instill a hopeful kind of respect. As in, if we respect the Godtouched, if we bow and scrape, there’s a hope they won’t kill us all. It has happened in the past, in other villages. Stories manage to find us, in the roundabout way of stories, no matter how removed Reach is from the big places of the world. But that was a different time, and the world is more civilized now. Or so they say.

We're lucky the Godtouched don't visit us much.

Except in days like today. When the Challenge looms.

There used to be other important days, Dala says, joyful days and somber days, and days whose meaning had long since been forgotten but which we celebrated all the same. But that was before. Before there were Godtouched, when levels and power were rare and meant something. Those days seem a long way away. I barely remember something before this.

Our suzerains, the Black Sword guild, are not too bad. Since my father, Medrein, is the big man in Reach, I’ve been in the welcoming committee before, lined up with Rev, Dala, and father. I’ve shaken their hands and offered them drink, which they took with polite sounds while looking around with a calculating look, taking everything in. Wondering, maybe, how much effort they would have to expend to turn Reach into a smoking crater. I don’t think it would be a lot. There’s no one in Reach who has ever attained a level. The old powers in the world couldn’t resist their onslaught. What chance would we ever have?

For a moment, I can’t believe I forgot about it, this visit, and in the next instant realize I’m right: I didn’t forget about it. I couldn’t possibly forget about it, so I tried to put it from my mind. Provoking bullies and having them chase me halfway up a hill is a good way to miss appointments.

“Dala will be pissed,” I say. We have started back down the path, treading on the footsteps left by Bago and his entourage. With just the two of us, the hills have gone back to their usual noisy silence, dappled with sun and animated by a summer breeze. It’s a shame that we have to go. The day truly is wonderful.

“Medrein will be more,” Katha says.

“It’s not like you to be too bothered by what he thinks.”

Katha shrugs.

“It’s a special day,” she says. “I wouldn’t want anything to go awry.”

I turn my head to look at her calm walk, her usually happy expression somewhat thoughtful. Her bare feet pick their place carefully as they step, and as she moves she never makes a sound that doesn’t blend in perfectly with the noises of the woods. Maybe it’s her Gift, but I’ve never met one this strange. It’s one of the reasons I have no trouble at all seeing why people are afraid of Katha: she wears her difference easily, almost a stranger to the thought of hiding.

“He won’t say anything in front of the Godtouched,” I say, shrugging. “He’s always at his calmest during Challenge times.”

“At his most controlled, you mean.”

“Do I?”

“You do,” she assures me pointedly. “He’s anything but calm, though he tries to hide it. It must be hard giving people away like that.”

The thought of Medrein nervous or unsure makes me uncomfortable, though I can’t exactly say why. I change the subject, grasping for the easiest theme in reach.

“Who do you think they’re going to take this time?” I ask.

“Maybe someone will volunteer,” she says, noncommittally.

“After Graed and Itea?” I press. “Temma and Ogaro?”

Katha doesn’t answer. All the names I mentioned were young people from Reach who had taken their place at the Challenge in previous years. After, family and loved ones had gone to Black Sword City to hear news, to know what had happened to their children and friends. Temma’s parents had come back with a body. Nobody else had gotten anything. There hadn't been enough left.

That had somewhat robbed those who dreamt of power and riches of their inflated courage. Not all of them, but enough that there is fear this year that no one will volunteer to go, and behind that worry rides the larger, real problem: if no one volunteers, what will the Godtouched do? Their displeasure will be Medrein’s problem to solve.

Perhaps Katha is right, I grudgingly conclude. My father has a lot on his plate.

“Hey,” I pipe up. “Maybe this year Rev will finally get her chance at a level. He can’t stop her forever.”

My half-sister Rev, Medrein’s heir, is one of the few left keeping the flame alive for levels, power, and a life beyond Reach. Every year since her fifteenth birthday Medrein has stopped her from volunteering, and every year their rows grow more enraged. Bodies and bereft parents don’t faze her, and I know for a fact that every travelling merchant that passes through our village is subjected to her bribes and insistent questions.

“He’ll stop her this year too,” Katha says with certainty.

“What if the Godtouched insist? Rev’s the only one still dreaming of levels.”

“Rev and you,” Katha answers with a smile.

I roll my eyes at her, but I can't deny she's right. I do think about it. Levels, magic, the big wide world. Childish dreams. I forgive Katha her chiding only because I know she'd never tell a soul.

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As the path nears its final curve and an exit to the woods proper, a large, knife-like piece of rock jutting out of the ground looms into view. A narrow hole in its middle, dark and ominous, leads to a twisty passage inside, filled with damp and mosquitos. This is Raven’s Beak, the closer of the hundreds of tunnels and caves that pierce through this soil.

We stop a moment. In Reach we call these the hill doors, and have made them the subject of our wildest legends, many of which can be reduced to: an uppity woman, man, or child delves into the earth and finds dead kingdoms, treasures, and wish-granting earth spirits. Before they can make it out of the depths with their new riches, they encounter some fell beast of the underworld, which scares them into leaving everything behind to escape with their lives and a story. All lies.

When the Godtouched arrived, the hill doors were what interested them the most about our little village. They gave them up after a few attempts at exploration discovered nothing but that which our ancestors had known for ages – that the tunnels lead nowhere but to each other, and you are as likely to die lost in the dark than to find your way out again. Stories of monsters waiting in the deep, of generations of lost travelers feasting upon each other, of the throne of Hell waiting for a king to sit upon it, those were as present in our lore as tales of treasures beyond imagining. Nothing ever came from the tunnels. To my knowledge, the only story about something climbing out of the earth is Katha’s. But that we never discuss.

“I don’t have any coins, but I’ll give you another flower for your thoughts,” I tell her.

“Keep it and give it to Dala,” she answers. “But I’m not thinking about anything. Only…”

I wait. Katha glances at me out of the corner of her eye, uncharacteristically shy. Finally, she shrugs.

“I think Rev would miss Reach if she left.”

“You think she would?” I ask. “Personally, I think she would beat the Challenge, sit in a pile of gold, and never think of us again.”

“You don’t think that,” Katha says, rolling her eyes. “Your sister loves you, Mal.”

“She likes swordfighting better,” I say with a shrug.

Katha just shakes her head.

“It’s not... If I ever left, I’d miss it. That’s it.”

“Well, don’t leave until you can hear the Godtouched ask for volunteers and not get a peep in response.”

I say it as a joke, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I want to bite them back in. What is going to happen? A sadness creeps between us, throwing a thin, cold sheet over the late-summer heat. Even the birds sound distant and shy. And now I can't keep the thought out of my mind. Does Medrein have a plan?

“Maybe the Black Sword will be all right with that,” Katha says eventually.

“They won’t be,” I say seriously. “They’ll tax us more, or give out some punishment, or just level every inch of Reach to the ground.”

Katha turns to me, a worried furrow in her brow.

“It’ll probably be taxes, though,” I add with fake cheerfulness. As if that wasn’t bad enough.

She doesn’t answer.

“What do you care?” I ask. “All they ever do is taunt you and call you names. So what if they pay more taxes?”

Katha turns again, and for the first time in ages I see a flash of anger in the gray of her eyes.

“They’re just people, Malco,” her tone is measured, level. “It’s not fair that they get to either send their children to die or see them starve here.”

I’m not surprised by the sentiment. Kind, compassionate Katha. Even towards those who think of her as a cursed foundling hailing from the bowels of the earth. But there’s something else there, an edge that I’ve scarcely seen before.

When we were smaller, and the boys made fun of her, Katha would often hide in the hills. One day, when it was clear she wasn’t coming back for supper, Dala and me went to find her.

It was the hour when the setting sun hits fully upon the hills and appears to set them on fire by the brilliance of its oranges. We took Katha’s favorite path up. Dala acted unconcerned, as if she was taking me in one of our alchemical lectures. She would point out specific plants, and I’d be expected to name them and their applications. My mother is a knowledgeable healer, as her father was, so naturally, slowly at first, and then more insistently, she began to impart her knowledge onto me. Years later, when Katha came to us, she began partaking of it.

That day, I got half of the answers wrong on purpose to express my displeasure at being forced to search for a sister I didn’t want and that nobody liked. But Dala didn’t care, didn’t correct me. That’s how I could tell how deeply, horribly concerned she really was.

We trudged through the woods, hugging ourselves against the mounting cold. We searched deep into the path, so long that there was barely any light left when I thought I heard a song. I passed under a bush, following the jumbled, discordant notes, and found a crevasse between two boulders. Not even a proper hill door, more like a hole.

Maybe that’s why I was so bold as to duck into the little passage and follow the music. I didn’t have to go far. Katha was sitting after a bend in the tunnel, illuminated by a wispy little fire she’d made herself. She was singing to a small form in her lap, her eyes cast down, her hair, which was shorter then, barely able to obscure her eyes.

I made some noise. To let her know I was there, I suppose, and that it was high time she stopped the nonsense and came home. But when she turned on me, I didn’t see Katha. Her face was locked and angry, and her eyes seemed to shine with their own light. Her body was tense, her hands half extended to me, and for a moment I really believed everything people said about her. She was a witch from the depths, a waif from the underworld, with dark powers and appetites. But she stopped when she saw it was me, and after a moment, without a word, showed me the owlet in her lap. Its eyes were wide as plates and its wing wasn’t right. Katha asked me if there was anything I could do to help.

That day was the first I saw Katha’s kindness and her rage, and an unseen, unspoken barrier broke. It was the first step towards our one day becoming friends, and a little later inseparable. I still see the owlet around sometimes, now a proud and clever owl, though he only seems to appear when I’m with Katha.

And there’s some of that here, now, as Katha stops in her tracks and turns to me.

“You should care more about them,” she says. “You may come to lead them one day.”

This annoys me.

“No, I won’t,” I say. “Rev will. She’s the heir, not me.”

“Rev won’t stay in Reach,” Katha says, blunt and quick as a sparring staff. “Everyone knows it except Medrein. She’s too ambitious for that. And then who will take over when Medrein can’t?”

“I don’t know,” I say, searching the ground for a stone to kick. “Someone else, I suppose.”

Although I know the conversation is silly, that it makes no sense to discuss such things, I find I can’t look Katha in the eyes.

“Malco,” she says. She’s very still now. The trees have parted to the sides of the path. Just a little more and we’ll be able to see Reach just a short distance away in the valley. It will be milling with people, overflowing with voices. Everyone will have come down to see the Godtouched.

“Malco.”

Finally, I turn to look at her.

“If we couldn’t be together,” Katha says haltingly. “Some day, for some reason. What would you do?”

“I would go after you,” I say without hesitation. “You know I would.”

There’s a sad smile in Katha’s face now. She nods, then takes a step forward and hugs me tight. I hug her back reflexivly, a quick press against my chest, but she doesn’t let go.

“I do know,” she says. “But I wish you wouldn’t.”

When she steps away, unlacing her arms from my back, she’s smiling without a trace of worry or sadness. The flower I gave her is a little smooshed from the hug, has wilted a little further. The hills are ablaze with the setting sun, and Katha is shining with their light.

“Come on,” she says. “Dala will be worried.”

And she walks away, bouncing down the path to Reach. I follow a moment later, ignoring an indescribable turmoil, a sense of impending doom.