The line of knights continued to block the street, their cloaks billowing in the breeze. The parrot chittered in agitation.

“I trained this boy. Awk! Know how unstable he is. Unstable! The hammer should be as far from him as possible.”

Arrad’s mouth drew a hard line. “I should warn you that the last group who faced Glim is halfway towards being compost. I'd think you of all people would know that, Master Willow.”

Arrad’s words stung Ruetessa, who reddened and stared at the ground. Glim shoved Gerard’s arm away and walked forward, glaring directly at his former tutor. Gerard felt the warmth draining from the air as ice swirled around Glim in a spiral. Glim raised his sword while Master Willow held a brass device aloft like a weapon.

Gerard tried to take in everything that happened next. The whirlwind intensified around Glim. Master Willow's arrogance wavered. Ruetessa collapsed and screamed in agony. At her pained cry the Knights Essentiæ reacted, urging Master Willow to drop his device. “Plying this way is forbidden!” one of the knights warned him, her voice thick with fear.

All of them were interrupted by the path warping. It collapsed in on itself as a sphere of silvery light shimmered into place between the two groups.

Gerard tugged Glim’s sleeve, momentarily disrupting his focus, just as the knights convinced Master Willow to put his artifact away. The sphere flickered and diminished.

Glim hardly suffered the delay. He leapt over the sinkhole and charged the knights.

Despite his loathing of violence, Gerard found himself impressed when Glim rolled right under the swinging staves of two of the knights, found his feet again, and caught up with the next. Gerard's tenuous enthusiasm vanished when Glim neatly and precisely skewered the woman from beneath her armpit, then cleaved the next man's leg nearly in two. Their screams filled the street.

By now the remaining Knights converged on Glim, penning him in with a circle of staves and daggers as Master Willow fled down a side street. Fear etched their faces and their daggers flickered with red flame. Glim ran at the closest knight and readied to strike when several silver spheres formed in the air. One of the Knights was sucked in, silently screaming as he disappeared. The other Knights Essentiæ sheathed their daggers and the spheres diminished. They backed away from Glim, hands in the air.

Gerard sensed that Master Willow had fled, and Glim knew it too, for he kicked the ground in frustration. The knights parted to let them pass, glaring at Glim in mixed awe and ire. The two wounded knights moaned and their blood trickled in rivulets between the cobblestones of the street.

Ruetessa had no tolerance for the delay and headed straight for the harbor. Gerard and the others followed. As she’d predicted, the harbor had become crowded. She ran to the longest dock, dodging workers hauling crates and sacks. At the very end of the pier, she hopped into a primitive boat. Its two long kayaks had a platform of logs lashed between them, with two low huts of dried grass in the middle. Strange fruits in twine nets hung from the sail masts.

When Gerard approached the peculiar craft, eight men and one woman came out of one of the huts. The crew's skin had been darkened deep brown by a lifetime in the sun. Shell and bone wove through their intricately braided hair. As Gerard drew closer he saw tattoos, brands, and piercings all over their faces and torsos. The men towered over the woman, nearly seven feet tall, and very strong.

The woman stepped forward and invited the group to board the raft. When Arrad stepped onto the boat with Clapping Hand, the men behind her cried out. Forming a defensive line, they drew sickles from pouches at their backs.

Ruetessa spoke to them in a language Gerard did not recognize. She pointed at Glim and said a word over and over. The men looked at him with a mixture of awe and respect. They put their sickles away and allowed the group to board.

Before the group had even gotten settled, the rowing crew hopped into the kayaks. The raft began to move at a decent clip. When they had rowed into the harbor, the crew chief raised a sail and unfurled it, lashing its corners to the deck. She wove her hands in the air. A stout breeze kicked up and the sail snapped full. She pointed the ship towards the sun, which sat low and orange over the water.

The crew chief sat on the deck and sang. Every so often the rowers responded. The boat flew across the water.

Gerard watched as the siblings and Glim got situated on the deck. Their drained faces advertised their fatigue. He looked at the woman who now guided them.

“You seemed well prepared to leave,” he said.

“Fortune favors the prepared.”

“You also didn't seem very surprised to find us in Fsisbon, or to hear our tale.”

“I'd hoped you would be in Fsisbon. But as I said before, nothing is certain.”

“You seem more certain than most. What are you not telling me? What are we caught up in? Why do you bear that symbol around your neck? Why won't you tell me your name?”

“Slow down, lest you break something in that overactive mind of yours.” She smiled as she said it, then beckoned him to the empty hut. Inside, it was lined with heavy wool. It muffled the sounds from the deck. When she pulled the door shut, it thudded closed and no sound at all came to them. As if they’d fallen into a snowbank or stuffed cotton into their ears. Absolute silence closed in on them, and his eyes could see nothing.

The woman struck a flint and an oil lamp flared. She lowered the flame as much as she could. Her face took on a haunted look as shadows flickered across her face.

“I am certain of some things. A certainty born out of decades of study and centuries upon centuries of preparation by my forebears. What am I not telling you? Books are not thick enough to hold it all. As for what you are caught up in... you are playing out The Candle Proclamation, spoken to us long ago by one of our sisters. Although it doesn't mention you, I have to say.”

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She let him absorb that before she continued. “As for my symbol... have you heard of the Faction of Symmetry, or Incantus Troix?” Gerard nodded. “Exactly. You've not heard of us, and I'm not going to change that now.”

“Not even your name?”

“I don't know yours, so we're even.”

Gerard thought it through and realized he'd never spoken his name aloud to her. He smiled. “Gerard. Speaking of names... twice now you witches have reacted to Glim's name.”

“Glim means 'candle' in the old tongue. It means that his bearer believed this child would be The Candle.”

Goosebumps popped down Gerard's arms. “That is too great a coincidence. Which I do not believe in, if any other explanation presents itself. I also do not believe in prophecy, by the way. Centuries ago, someone predicted what would happen now? It is too far fetched. I refuse to accept it.”

“I can see that your mind is even more acute than I gave you credit for.”

“But my patience is worn thin, and you are trying it now. A beautiful, mysterious woman offering aid does not change that.”

She flushed at his words. “Beautiful, you say?” She unconsciously touched the scar above her eye, and looked away from him.

“Please. Please give me straight answers. Tell me this proclamation. Prepare me for what is coming. I need to protect them.”

“We have only just met, Gerard, and I know I ask much. But if you fear Certe as you should, then try to accept that my sisters and I are fighting that threat with all that we have and all that we are.”

She sighed and looked at him directly. Gerard recoiled from the intensity that blazed from her eyes.

“If the Candle Proclamation has begun, then thousands of years of theory and debate have come to a head. There is nothing I can say to you now to satisfy you. It would take longer than unthreading the spindle of our lives. Certe, or Algidon as you call him, is a frost giant of immense physical and essentiæl power. He has been asleep, but now he is awake, and we fight him. If I answer your questions with any more specificity, that fight is lost before it begins.”

Gerard slumped his shoulders and resigned himself to defeat. Some small part of her yielded and her eyes softened.

“My name is Isotta. It means both ice and battle.”

“Does the name fit you?”

“I haven't yet tested it.”

“Stick with us and I wager you will.”

⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱ⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅

Glim trembled with rage on the prow of one of the kayaks while the others lay down to rest in one of the huts. The rowers sang together and propelled the raft through the waves with powerful strokes of their paddles. He felt Lhani’s hand on his back and turned to face her.

“He got away from me! Again!” he thought to her, his mind consumed by the heat of anger.

“I know he did, Glim. But you weren’t prepared for him. How could you know?”

They sat in silence for a long time, watching the waters pass beneath the raft.

Water. Supposedly his element. The one that characterized and constrained what he could do with essentiæ. He’d been taught to seek it. To feel it. To understand it. As ice, water could sit undisturbed almost forever. He’d felt that recently, his mind trapped in a frigid cage. But surrounded by water as Glim was now, he saw another side of it: an immense, sloshing force that could rip anything in two given enough time. In that moment Glim realized that water was possibly the most destructive force in Æronthrall. All water required to destroy anything was patience. Time would do the rest.

“But,” Lhani asked, “would it have made you happy to kill him?”

The question surprised Glim. “He deserves it.”

But even as he thought the words, Glim felt their falsehood somewhere inside his bluster. Yes, water could destroy. But it could also buoy others and sustain them. Flames surrounded him, right now. Fourteen of them, to be precise. Nine Pelutians. Gerard. The three siblings. And the other. The one who’d led them here. He hated to admit it, but she reminded Glim of Ryn so much that it pained him. Both in her assurance and grace, and in her maddening unspoken challenge. Ryn had been reticent to share. This woman was a gray stone in the dark.

Each and every one of them, whether they knew it or not, were at his mercy. He could douse their flames with a flick of his wrist. They’d sink into the waters and be lost to the world. Any who stood in his way.

“Is this really what you want?” Lhani pressed. “To be killing people you don’t know in the streets to get to a man who no longer has any power over you?”

“He left us all to die!”

She held his hand and kissed it. “I know what a coward he is, and how he treated you. But I also know you. You detest violence. And we have found each other now. We can support each other. Are you going to let him sully your future as well as your past?”

And just like that, Glim’s anger dissipated. Lhani was absolutely right. Facing Master Willow again had provided Glim a focus and clarity he’d not had since awakening Certe. Now that the confrontation was past, the clarity remained. And he didn’t want to waste another moment’s thought on that man.

After all, water had one more property. Perhaps the most important of all: it took the shape of its container. Would Glim give it the shape of a sword? Or a calm lake? Would he let ice freeze his heart, or allow Lhani to warm the waters?