Ah, but that was a cheap trick. Darkness came not because I was dead. Darkness came because night fell. And night fell suddenly. Most nights come at the end of every day, dusk gently settling in upon itself like a winter snow. But this night came at the beginning of the day, as an avalanche of shadow crashing down onto the mountain range.
All of us locked in our mortal struggle stopped.
Something was wrong. It was so urgent, so menacing, that our attackers could not help but stop to face it. It was more terrible than my impending death. We all felt it.
But I did not just feel it. I knew it. A leak had sprung in the dam, and my mind was flooding with terrible understanding.
I turned my head—distracted even from the sight of the blade that should have been about to sever my neck—to face where the sun had been. It should have been high over the ridge to our east. But it was not there: it had never been there.
The great, vast sea of stars shone in its velvety richness all above. I am an astromancer: the stars are my oldest, most constant friends. But one-by-one, they were vanishing, like the sun had. They had never been there.
Every star that vanished took with it some of the meaning in the world. Something I understood about it. Something we all agreed was true. But soon, they were all gone.
Only one star shone, blazing at the very zenith of the nearest mountain. Miles away though it was, I knew: there Magister Akabu Ai stood, his third eye opened, the only star fixed in the perfect blackness of the night sky.
It had always been there.
Our attackers shuffled nervously, dimly but grimly aware that this awful sight was connected to their attack. They didn’t know what to do about it. They didn’t speak. They seemed to await the next developments in order to make a response.
The ground began to quake, and then it tore asunder. Our ears were pounded by roaring and grinding, and I was tossed aside with sudden force from one of the faults that had ripped through the ground. I rolled to a halt, a little worse for the wear, rolled prone, and pushed myself up to get a better view. Everyone had been tossed to the ground: the Yariagar, Gena, Hester, even my noble steed. Some of the nomads were scrambling to their feet, but then the entire mountain beneath us gave a roar and a sickening, painful heave, as if it had dropped away ten feet and then rose up to meet us again halfway.
“No!” one of the nomads cried, again scrambling to his feet. “We yield!1 We will leave!”
The mountain began to feel tense with power and horribly heavy beneath us.
“No! No! Stop! Stop! Stop! Please!”
His pleas, though shouted at the top of his lungs in desperate hysterics, sounded distant and quiet. They were drowned out by the weight of the earth.
And then our attackers began shrieking and falling dead.
“Are you all well? Good.”
Magister Akabu Ai stood over us in the gentle morning sunlight. He was offering Gena his hand.
I lay doubled over, facing away from them. Tears dampened my eyes. I didn’t know if I needed to laugh, cry, or vomit. Well, I needed to do all three, but I didn’t know which one would come first.
When Magister Akabu Ai came for me, I pushed myself up to a sitting position. Everything hurt. Muscles ached, joints creaked, my bruised skin flinched at every touch. I met his eyes: just the two of them.
“No mercy,” I observed.
“None.”
“You could have let them go. He said they would leave. Do you think he was lying to you? Did that sound like a man who was lying to you?”
“Of course he was not lying. Should he have been allowed to leave, he would have left. That does not mean he could be allowed to leave.”
“Of course it does! You killed them! Every last one of them. Those people… how many of them had spouses, children? How many parents lost their sons just now? They didn’t need to die.”
“They did, boy.” Magister Akabu Ai snarled. “You know the duty of a wizard. You know the Oath of Binding. Or do you?”
“Of course I do,” I shot back. “Don’t you know your duties to your fellow man? To the Ae’s wisdom?”
“Fool boy. The law is the law. I am disappointed.”
“Is that supposed to chasten me? I suppose you’ll tell me next you assumed Montigo would have taught me better.”
“Pah. Get up, fool. Displeased though I may be at the prospect, you must make yourself useful yet.”
“We’re off to fight a goddess, then?”
He stared back at me. He would love nothing more than to make further rebuke of me, I knew. But I had spoken too truly.
I felt Gena’s and Hester’s eyes on me2. I pressed the point. “We’ve seen it now. You, the god of this mountain range. Iltara is surely the rebel goddess of the valley.”
“Howe,” Hester said. “He’s no god. He’s a wizard of some accomplishment. Shouldn’t you know?”
“Shouldn’t I!” I shouted. “I saw it. You saw it. He willed them dead. He forged a world of his own meaning here on the Mundus and therein erased their souls.”
Magister Akabu Ai stood silently. One hand held a staff, the other touched his chin in thought.
Hester shook his head. “He’s a wizard. This is nonsense.”
“The young lord has the right of it, apprentice. I am no god,” he said. “Their souls were not erased.”
“Nonsense to your nonsense!” I bellowed. “Or I should say: if you are no god, what distinguishes you from Ae? Mere degree?”
“I am pledged in service to the lady of the house who pledges her own service to Ae. I am no god.”
“You evade the question! You could be! I’ve seen it. You cannot make me un-see it, Magister.” My mouth had successfully untethered itself from the foggy froth of thoughts in my head. I do not imagine I sounded particularly convincing in this moment.
“I cannot be a god.”
“Cannot, fine then. I get it. I only see further, now. You are the law here, no? Say no more.”
Magister Akabu Ai said no more.