image [https://i.imgur.com/4gxaUpD.png]

Before Durrin and Halorn left the circle of farm buildings, Halorn ducked inside a barn and emerged with two strange-looking implements: wooden poles, about as long as quarterstaves, with rectangular pieces of metal mounted on one end.

“What are these?” Durrin said, taking one and examining it. “Some sort of weapon?”

Halorn raised an eyebrow. “You mean you’ve never seen a hoe before?”

“Hoe?”

“It’s for weeding.”

Now it was Durrin’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Weeding?”

Halorn started down the path, the hoe over his shoulder. “I figure we can walk and talk or we can work and talk. Come on, it’s not as hard as city folk make it out to be.”

Durrin shrugged and followed. Soon they left the path and plunged into a field of plants. Durrin looked around. “Which ones are weeds?”

Halorn pointed out one of the long green stalks. “Do you see this? Tall, straight, with giant green leaves growing out of it? That’s corn.” He gestured to a scraggly plant near the stalk’s base. “Anything else is a weed, and it goes.”

“But why weed now, if the corn is already grown?”

Halorn began scrapping his hoe through the dirt, catching and uprooting two or three weeds with each pass. “Because every weed now turns into ten next spring. Now, are you going to stand there and keep asking questions about horticulture until the four World Anchors crumble and Zenitha cracks like an egg, or . . .” He gestured toward the hoe.

Durrin heaved a sigh, heaved the hoe off his shoulder, and started pushing the end through the dirt. It bumped and jounced along the ground, doing nothing to the weeds in its path. Halorn made it look so easy.

“Don’t push,” Halorn said after a moment. “Pull. Pull toward you, then take a step forward and pull again.”

They worked in silence for a minute as Durrin got the hang of it. A cool breeze blew across the field, rustling the corn all around them.

“So,” Halorn said. “You have a story seven years long to tell. Last I knew, you were running missions for High Vizier Salidar, representing his interests in Elandria and Mitria. Then you disappeared.”

Representing was a judicious word for it. Durrin had traveled throughout Elandria undercover, gathering intel for Lord Salidar and performing the occasional act of strategic arson. His frequent trips to the Mitrian Mountains were in a more official capacity, building a relationship with tribal leaders that Salidar had hoped could pave the way for future alliances.

Halorn continued. “I also know you had reapplied to the Guild Council for guild mastership, to no avail.”

Durrin yanked his hoe through a particularly hard clump of dirt. “Three times, Halorn. I applied three times. That was after I had won the Kymar championship, the Sable Hunt, and the Mancery Mayhem cup. But they still rejected me.”

“They feared you,” said Halorn. “They knew you were better than any of them. Guild mastership was the only thing they could keep back from you.”

They didn’t want me to get my hands on Kymar’s sixth scroll, Durrin thought silently. They knew it would have made me unstoppable.

Durrin began to get into a rhythm with the hoe. It was easier work than it had first looked. “At the time, Lord Salidar had the clout to help me gain guild mastership. He and I struck an agreement. If I completed a dangerous mission for him, he would make sure I joined the Guild Council.” And gain access to the Council’s vaults, he added silently.

Halorn paused, looking over at him. “What was the mission?”

For a moment, Durrin considered telling Halorn the truth. He needed to share it with someone, needed to unload the growing guilt he felt.

No. The mission for the emperor had been top secret.

Instead, Durrin used a variant of the story that the Elandrian leadership had fabricated. “Salidar sent me on the trail of a spice merchant who had swindled him. After several months, I finally caught up to him in Elandria. But he caught wind that I was on his trail. As I was breaking into his manor to gather evidence, he swarmed me with guards, then turned me over to the Elandrian courts with claims I had come to assassinate him. They locked me up for seven years.”

Durrin fell silent, working his hoe rhythmically. Memories of Irongate Isle bubbled up, trying to break out. The freezing winters and the scorching summers. The backbreaking labor chopping logs or making bricks in the courtyard. The suffocating darkness.

“I’m sorry,” Halorn whispered.

“I survived,” Durrin said. He tried to say more but couldn’t without his throat constricting.

Finishing their row, they pivoted and moved on to the next.

Finally, Durrin cleared his throat. “After seven years, they released me.” He detailed his adventures getting back to Calamar, including his narrow escape in Wyvern Way, which prompted a laugh from Halorn.

“Always one to dance at death’s edge!” Halorn said. “Now I have another story to add to my bedtime arsenal.”

He grew more serious, pausing and looking at Durrin intently. “Have you been back to the Academy?”

Durrin shrugged. “Technically yes, but I didn’t exactly use the front door.”

Halorn shook his head. “I’m not surprised. So the Guild doesn’t know you’re back. Does Lord Salidar know?”

Durrin had already broken Salidar’s orders by visiting Halorn. He shouldn’t push his luck with his employer further. “You’re the only one who knows. And I need you to keep this visit a secret—at least for several months. No one else can know, for now, that I’m still alive.”

“So you have seen Lord Salidar.”

Durrin kept his eyes trained on his hoe. “I didn’t say that.”

“You may as well have.” Halorn’s voice became cynical. “How convenient for him to have an agent that no one remembers exists. What mission does he have planned for you next?”

“I haven’t seen the vizier,” Durrin insisted, looking up and raising his tone slightly as if he were annoyed.

Halorn straightened, looking him in the eyes. “You’re a good liar, Durrin. But not that good.”

Durrin resisted the urge to smirk. Halorn had no idea how much of Durrin’s story had been a lie.

“Fine,” Durrin said. “Perhaps I’m working for the vizier. Not a word to anyone.”

Halorn gestured to the desolate terrain around them. “Careful. These hills are just crawling with spies.”

“Which brings up your story,” Durrin said, seizing the opportunity to change the topic. “How did you go from one of the Guild’s rising stars to a farmer in the middle of nowhere?”

Halorn spent a minute hoeing before he answered. When he did, he spoke slowly. “The same summer you disappeared, I began to question my career path. I was becoming disillusioned with pyromancy, and with the Guild in particular. There’s only so many occupations that the Guild prepares you for. Did I really want to become a bodyguard? A spy? A thief?”

“Guild members aren’t thieves,” Durrin snapped.

“Oh? And that job we did on Renner Street? Breaking into that aquamancer’s shop?”

“We were gathering information.”

“We stole his trade secret,” Halorn snapped. “And we almost burned his shop to the ground in the process.”

“I wouldn’t be too worried about the old man,” Durrin said. “I passed his shop two days ago. He looked like he’s still doing fine.”

“That’s not the point,” Halorn said. “It was wrong. And I hated every minute of that assignment. But you know how the Guild works. If you’re assigned a job, you do it. No questions asked.”

“That’s not true. You can always decline.”

“And if you decline too many?” Halorn asked. “You face Guild discipline. I know. I faced it. Twice. I felt trapped, Durrin. Trapped between my conscience and my identity. I was a pyromancer! I was literally born a pyromancer! I had given it my life, and I loved it. But it was leading me down a path that I hated more and more with each step.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Halorn began swinging his hoe with greater force. “Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. So I fled. I knew they’d come after me, but my integrity was worth more than my life.”

“Where did you go?” Durrin said.

“Everywhere,” Halorn said. “I knew all the tricks, and I knew the Guild’s investigators knew them better. My only hope was to make the chase more effort than it was worth. I hopped from town to town and city to city, covering my tracks as best I could, even drawing lots to make my path as randomly erratic as possible.

“Eventually, after a year of running, I figured they’d given up. So I settled down with some goat herders, up in the Northern Provinces. There I lived life as I had never lived it before: On the mountainside, day in and day out. Sleeping under the stars, with no more shelter than a cave or a tarp. And living with the most humble people you could ever know.”

“Sounds pleasant,” Durrin said. Personally, though, he wasn’t sure if he’d prefer Irongate Isle to that kind of deprivation.

“I got to know their lore keeper,” Halorn continued. “Her mind was a library, Durrin! Hundreds and hundreds of stories, all memorized! I would sit at her feet for hours and just listen.”

image [https://i.imgur.com/TSfquot.png]

Halorn leaned on his hoe as he looked out over the sea of corn, turned to gold by the setting Sun. “Her stories opened my understanding of the world. What do you understand about demons and angels, Durrin?”

Durrin paused, rubbing his hands where the hoe was threatening to leave blisters. “What we’re all taught, I suppose.” He quoted the common nursery rhyme:

“They who die in the day, angels speed on their way.

They who die in the gloom, demons drag to their doom.”

“And do you believe it?” Halorn asked.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Durrin had known that nursery rhyme since he was a child. Everyone had. His whole life, he had heard the horns of the Knights Vigilant or the Dawn Wardens, warning of the onset of twilight. The daily schedule of their whole civilization revolved around the timetable of demons and angels, dusk and dawn, day and night.

“No,” said Halorn, catching Durrin’s gaze. There was an intensity in Halorn’s eyes that hadn’t been there before. “Do you really, truly believe that, Durrin Rendhart? That there really are angels, all around us, during the day? And demons at night, stalking us?”

The question gave Durrin pause. He rested on his hoe and looked out toward the east. Past the fields of corn. Past the hills. Past the horizon. To the first glimpse of the Void, rising opposite the setting Sun, its pitch blackness impenetrable by the dying rays of twilight. How many hundreds of times had he seen it haunting the night sky? Yet right now, it was like he was staring into that well of darkness for the first time.

“I’ve never really thought about it,” Durrin admitted.

“Most people don’t,” Halorn said. “Until death draws near. But do you think that’s all that angels and demons can do? Just stand by and wait for us to die?”

“That’s what we are taught,” Durrin said.

Halorn shook his head. “No. That’s what the Knights Vigilant teach.”

The Knights Vigilant were one of three religious orders common throughout Zenitha, along with the Dawn Wardens and the Luminant Order. In Calamar, only the Knights Vigilant and the Dawn Wardens were active. The third, the Luminant Order, had been expelled, their texts burned, when Durrin had been a young boy.

“Do you disagree with Vigilant doctrine?” Durrin warned. “You know the punishment for heresy.”

“I am not disagreeing with it,” Halorn said. “I’m only saying that there’s more. So much more. Let me start by sharing a longer version of that nursery couplet:

“They who die in the day, angels guard from the fray:

They who die in the night, against demons must fight.

Those who’ve valiantly won see the Halls of the Sun,

With the Eldest to fly to the Father of Sky.

Those with honor or fear go to moons far and near;

Those who live lives of gloom, demons drag to their doom.

Act; do not wait. Seal the scroll of your fate.

Deal rightly with all, or to the Void you will fall.”

“The lore keeper taught me that angels are around us, all the time,” Halorn continued. “They watch us unseen, nudging our thoughts, elevating our spirits. And they keep a record. It’s an ongoing account of all you have ever done: your successes, your failures, every act, good and bad.”

“Like the Academy’s codices?” Durrin asked.

Halorn nodded. “Yes, but far more accurate. The Academy can only record what they know about you. But the angels see all. Everything. This is what the poem refers to by ‘the scroll of your fate.’”

“The scroll of your fate,” Durrin repeated, pondering the phrase. “Your fate . . . when you die?”

“Yes,” said Halorn. “Your eternal destination. The halls of the Sun are not for everyone. They are only for the just and good. When you die, the angels will read your scroll. If you lived a decent life but did not prove yourself valiant enough for the halls of the Sun, they will take you to the Near Moon or the Far Moon—places of safety and rest, but far short of endless splendor.”

Durrin glanced up at the two moons in the sky. “And for those who have not lived a decent life?”

“Those whose scroll of fate is stained with acts of theft and lies, cruelty and violence, tyranny and murder—such souls the angels cannot and will not claim.”

“Even should they die under the Sun?” Durrin said.

Halorn nodded. “Even should they die at noonday.”

Durrin turned back to his hoeing, though his mind was fully fixed on the ideas coming from Halorn’s mouth. “Then what happens to them?”

“Their disembodied soul is left to wander the earth until sundown,” Halorn said. “Then, when night falls and the Void rises, they are hunted down by demons, chained, and dragged to the Void.”

Durrin glanced east again. The last rays of the Sun had slipped below the hills, leaving the earth and sky in a dull blue twilight. The Void was now fully visible, looming over the eastern horizon, its darkness as impenetrable as if a gaping hole had been ripped out of the fabric of the sky.

“What about those who die at night?” Durrin asked.

“That part all the orders agree upon,” Halorn said. “The servants of the Void will attempt to catch any soul they can find, noble or vile. Every soul they snatch is a victory for them. But that is not the extent of their ambition. They haunt the darkness, whispering corrupt thoughts into our minds, stoking our basest inclinations. Because if they can get us to become depraved—”

“Then the angels will not claim us,” said Durrin.

“And we are left in the demons’ clutches, no matter where the Sun sits in the sky when we die,” Halorn said.

Halorn’s words echoed in Durrin’s mind.

Tyranny and murder.

The angels see all. Everything.

Durrin had never truly contemplated the day he would die. While most people feared the night, he had never been able to afford to: his assignments had too often required nocturnal expeditions. As illogical as he now realized it sounded, he had always counted on dying during the day. But what if that wasn’t enough?

His breathing began to quicken. What if, by killing King Everborn, he had crossed a line that could not be un-crossed? According to everything Halorn had said, Durrin was most likely already doomed for the Void.

Unless.

Unless Halorn was wrong.

“How do you know this is all true?” Durrin said. “You heard it all from a goat shepherd in some backwater mountain valley. Not exactly the most reliable source.”

“Why not?” said Halorn.

“Truth is found in the consensus, the mainstream—not the lone voice in the fringes,” Durrin said. “Truth is verifiable and provable. Truth is found in the academies, the universities, the halls of knowledge.”

“That may be so with something you can experiment with, like mancery or farming,” said Halorn. “But you can’t experiment with death. You get one shot, and it’s a one-way trip.”

“You’re flirting around dangerous dogma,” Durrin objected. “The moment you begin to dictate what people must do to escape the Void, you have power over them. You could tell them to do or not do whatever meets your fancy—or fills your pocket. That’s why the Luminant Order was forbidden four decades ago. And rightfully so—I’ve seen firsthand how much political power they wield in nations that still harbor them, like Elandria.”

Halorn stopped hoeing and looked at him. “So which is worse, Durrin? A philosophy that says you need to live a good life? Or a philosophy that says it’s okay to steal and lie and even kill, as long as you never kill after dark?”

Durrin froze.

The last line of the Pyromantic Code echoed in his memory. Kill if kill you must—but never after dusk.

His mind flashed with the image of his sword, wet with a king’s blood, reflecting the light of a late afternoon Sun.

Durrin shook his head and retreated to his hoeing. This was all too much for him to think about right now. “We’re off topic. Last we left you, you were tending sheep and goats on a mountainside up north.”

Halorn didn’t immediately respond, and Durrin worried he would drag the conversation back to talk of angels and demons. But eventually, Halorn shrugged. “Right. Sheep. Goats.”

Halorn resumed hoeing. “I reflected a lot on that mountainside: about who I really was, and who I really wanted to be. I decided that pyromancy was only a danger to me. I had been trained to use my powers to take advantage of others. And I lived in a society that expected such. The only way I could be free was to start over with a clean slate. So I renounced pyromancy.”

“But you haven’t truly abandoned the art itself, right? Just the profession?” Durrin reflected on how dull and lifeless he had felt when cut off from his powers in Irongate Isle. He couldn’t imagine willingly letting his talent fade.

“I meant what I said,” said Halorn.

Halorn had to be bluffing. Durrin snapped his fingers, summoning a flame into existence. He tossed it at Halorn. They had often played this game at the Academy, tossing flames back and forth with carefree abandon.

Instead of catching it, however, Halorn stepped aside. The flame sizzled into the ground, where he stamped it out with his boot. “I renounced it, Durrin. Forever. I am no longer a pyromancer.”

“But you were so skilled!”

“And that was why I had to give it up,” Halorn said. “No matter what honorable employment I found, people would always be approaching me with requests and ‘special assignments.’”

“Then you just say no to anything shady,” Durrin said.

“You should know it’s not so easy,” Halorn said. “Where do you draw the line? What do you do if you’re threatened or blackmailed? And then there’s the prestige and wealth that’s always tantalizingly within reach. No—I decided it was better to get out of the boat entirely than to keep patching leaks.

“I gave the Guild a year to despair of their search. Then I ventured back into central Calamar, where I met my wife and started working at this farm.”

Durrin thought back on the Halorn he had known: so skilled, so passionate about new techniques or stories of famous pyromancers of old. Durrin shook his head in disappointment. “I always thought you’d reach great heights. Not a humble farmer.”

“I don’t mind being humble,” Halorn said.

They each hoed in silence for a minute. They were close to the end of a row, and Durrin was redoubling his efforts to finish before it became too dark to see.

“Stay with us,” Halorn said suddenly.

“What?”

“Stay here,” Halorn repeated. “We could use another hand for the harvest, and we have enough supplies to feed you during the winter. In the spring, if you decide you’re not cut out for farming, you could get employment in Caradell. I’m sure the blacksmith would take you on.”

Durrin examined the corners of Halorn’s mouth to see if he was joking. He wasn’t.

“Leave the Guild?” Durrin said. “Abandon everything I’ve worked for my whole life? For scratching in the dirt for a living?”

Halorn’s voice was even, but it simmered with intensity. “And what has the Guild brought you thus far, Durrin? Seven years rotting in a cell?”

Durrin threw down the hoe. Reaching out his hands, he aimed a spike of pure heat at the soil in front of him, shriveling up the remaining weeds in his row in seconds. Then he spun to face Halorn. “I will become a guild master. But that’s not all. I will become the greatest pyromancer who walks the earth—maybe the greatest that has ever lived. Greater even than Kymar Roline. Because unlike you, I’m not afraid to do what it takes. Whatever it takes.”

Halorn met his gaze. There was a depth in his friend’s eyes that Durrin didn’t remember being there seven years ago.

“I cannot control your choices,” Halorn said finally. “I can only tell you what I know: if you pursue your goal”—he pointed at the orb of pure darkness hanging in the sky—“that is what awaits you.”

Durrin turned away. “You can keep your fables to yourself.”

He walked a dozen yards before Halorn called out, “Will you at least stay the night? The twins will never forgive me if you don’t tell them a bedside story!”

Durrin paused for only a moment. Then he kept walking, channeling his anger, frustration, and confusion into each footstep. “I’m afraid I can’t stay. I have an appointment back in Imperium.”