“Mistress…” Brant said, knowing what she intended. “Don’t.”
Her eyes flicked to him as she took another step back. “One last kindness, then. So you might hate me more fully.”
“I don’t-”
“I killed your father. I sent the she-panther that killed him.”
Brant sought some way to understand what she was saying. “Wh-why?” he stammered through his shock.
“I was already sliding into madness. But perhaps deep down I knew and lashed out.”
“Knew what?” Tylar asked for him.
“Rylland brought me the wrong gift. A curse, instead of hope. Corruption, instead of my name.”
Brant understood.
His father had brought her Keorn’s skull, instead of the stone. Without knowing the power in either, the choice had been pure misfortune. Her first words returned to him. We’ve both been fate’s bone, gnawed and left with nothing.
Her eyes returned to the distant forest.
They had been left with worse than nothing.
She whispered to the forest. “Until it’s all too much.”
She took one last stride and stepped into the open crack behind her. Molten rock consumed her bone and flesh. She gasped but didn’t scream. The agony in her heart was far worse than any flame. Her face turned to the mountain, to the source of the fire that swallowed her.
Instead of pain, Brant read the love in her face.
“Thank you for protecting these last few…” she whispered, her words rising like steam toward the distant mountain. “I want to go home.”
Spreading her arms, she fell forward into the molten rock, as if into a welcoming embrace. The stone flew from her fingertips, no longer needed.
The piece of black rock bounced and rolled, coming to rest at Brant’s knee. He reached down and took the gift. For the second time in his life, a god burning with fire had passed this stone into his fingers.
But now he knew the truth.
It wasn’t just a rock.
It was the hope of a lost world.
As the sun sank toward the horizon, Tylar climbed with the others toward the Divide. The twin peaks of the Forge burnt with the last rays of the sun. No one had spoken for the past full league. And the silence wasn’t just the steepness of their climb, nor even grief.
It was an emotion that transcended numbness. An attempt to reconcile all that had happened, while still placing one foot in front of the other. If they stopped, they might never move again. The day had held too much horror, framed by the rising and setting of a single sun. It was a day they had to push past.
Yet some still tried to make sense of it.
Rogger mumbled through his beard. “The stone-it explains much.”
Tylar glanced to him. He didn’t ask for an elaboration, but Rogger gave it anyway.
“The Huntress-”
“Miyana,” Tylar corrected. She had paid a heavy price for that name. Tylar refused to let it be lost again. “Her name was Miyana.”
Rogger nodded. “She claimed that the stone allowed those parts of her that were sundered to return to her.”
He nodded. Miyana’s words echoed inside him. A piece of our old home. Just large enough for one god to balance atop.
“Here in Myrillia, the gods are split into three,” Rogger continued, ticking them off on his fingers. “An undergod in the naether, the god of flesh here, and that higher self that flew off into the aether. But with a piece of their original home in hand, it must be like returning home, becoming whole again. When Miyana held the stone, her naethryn and aethryn parts must have gathered back to her. Like moths to a flickering flame.”
“So it would seem,” Tylar said.
“Then that goes a long way toward explaining what transpired here.”
Drawn by the conversation, Brant and Dart drew closer. Perhaps there was another way of moving past all this. Through some manner of understanding.
The thief nodded toward Dart. “Do you remember Master Gerrod’s explanation for why Dart’s humours don’t flow with Grace?”
Tylar silenced Rogger with a glare. Not all here were aware of Dart’s nature. “I remember,” he said tersely.
Though birthed of gods, Dart was born in Myrillia. Born unsundered. Gerrod had come to believe that the Grace of the gods arose because they were sundered. It was the stretch of their essences between the three realms, flowing across them, that sustained their flesh and imbued their humours with power. Back in their original kingdoms, whole and intact, the gods had borne no Grace.
Rogger changed the tack of the conversation. “After Miyana took the stone, did you notice any change in her? Any lessening of her powers?”
Brant answered. “It did seem the Grace in her eyes dimmed.”
“Exactly! As the stone made her whole again, her Grace died away. And since seersong only works on those Graced…”
“She broke free,” Brant finished for him. “The song had no hold.”
“Or at least less of a hold. I suspect the stone does not make a god fully whole. They still reside in Myrillia. But the stone draws their other selves up close. Look at Keorn. He was carrying that stone, but still got trapped in the song for a long spell. Though eventually he did resist it well enough to escape.”
Tylar’s interest grew. “If you’re right, then we can use the stone to free the rogues. Bring each rogue in contact with it.”
“Perhaps. But there’s a snag. Remember, Keorn’s skull was still black with seersong; the stone held it in check. But he had to be holding it. Like Miyana. I fear that once you move the stone from one rogue to the next, the first will succumb anew to the song. It may be one of the reasons Miyana destroyed herself. Perhaps she knew this truth.”
“So we’d need a stone for each rogue to keep them all from becoming enslaved again.”
Rogger nodded. “Good luck with that.”
Tylar pondered all this. It was better than thinking about the horrors behind them.
“It makes you wonder about Keorn, though,” Rogger said, lowering his voice and motioning Tylar aside.
“How so?”
“I don’t think he just happened upon that stone. What’s the likelihood of a raving rogue chancing upon a lost talisman of home?” Rogger continued without leaving time for Tylar to respond. “I wager Keorn arrived here with that chunk of stone. And because he had it all along, it kept him mostly whole, weakening his Grace. And being so weak from the start, he probably never suffered the ravenings of his more Grace-maddened brothers and sisters.”
“A rogue god who does not rave.”
Some measure of disbelief must have rung in Tylar’s words.
Rogger dropped his voice even lower. “It’s probably why he chose to live in the hinterlands. With no wild Grace to calm, he had no reason to settle a realm. Why give up the world and freedom if you didn’t have to? And didn’t the Wyr sense something odd about him? Didn’t he escape their trackers? And what about Dart?”
“What about her?”
“A god’s seed rarely takes root in a belly. The Grace burns such fragile unions. But Keorn’s seed took root.”
It made a certain horrible sense, though Tylar would prefer to discuss it with a tower full of masters. For every question Rogger answered, another two arose. Why did Keorn have a child? Why keep the stone secret? Why remain hidden in the hinterlands for four thousand years? Why not reveal yourself? Mystery atop mystery remained.
