“Yes,” Ealdor said, nodding. “I will. I have no desire to hear all the voices he has taken unto himself. Let us see if they are enough to keep him company until Aer makes an end of all things.”
Bealu must have caught some hint of Ealdor’s decision. Despite the impossibility of breaking the resonance field he thrashed and strained, his face purpling until the pure metal walls of the prison closed around him. At the last, he locked gazes with Ealdor and screamed, his throat cording with the effort as blood vessels burst beneath his skin. Though muted, his words were clear. “Behold! I have a new name!”
Ealdor rebuked the premonition that arose in him. “Then let it keep you company, however you’re named, through the endless night.”
They stood then, watching as the machines joined the halves of Atol’s eternal prison together into a seamless whole and lowered it into the pit.
After the cube had been buried, the canyon filled, and Cuman and Endela had departed to the southern continent, the three of them—priests who’d become beings of war—stood together.
“What are your orders?” the Dara asked.
Ealdor pursed his lips and shook his head. “I have none. From this moment, we are no longer priests or soldiers, but wardens. You know this and the tasks that await us.” He straightened, shouldering the burden that would belong to him. “We are the last of our kind. Our memory must pass from the earth.”
The Dara and the Trian nodded, and to their credit they paused for only a moment’s reflection before they appropriated Cuman’s admonition against long farewells, each moving to take fyrlen platforms to the duty that awaited, the Dara leaving first for the south, and then the Trian departing to the western continent, his platform shrinking in the distance.
Despite himself, Ealdor watched them recede into the sky until they were lost in the distant blue. With a sigh he turned to the first task. Though he had countless turnings to complete it, he found himself oddly eager to begin, as if the destruction of the evidence of their race was part of the price Aer had commanded.
He strode over to the machinery that had been used to lower Atol’s prison into the depths of the earth. Methodically, he began the penance for his race and commenced the process of taking it apart, reducing it to pieces that would disintegrate to nothingness before Cuman’s descendants found their way back.
The vision stopped, and I was Willet Dura once more. My companions wore the same expressions of shock as I. Tears coursed down Custos’s cheeks and Mirren wept softly. The remnant of Ealdor stood among us, his stole still draped over his shoulders, but his appearance had changed, the last impression of solidity dropping from him as though he’d become a dying memory. And it continued. My friend became more insubstantial with each passing moment. “Aer forgive me,” I choked.
He looked down through his body with no more concern than if I had told him he had a spot on his stole. “I chose to break the binding, Willet. I chose, not you. Aer told us to cleanse the earth, but we—I—wanted vengeance. We buried Atol and those he’d taken unto himself, binding ourselves with our power, constraining our actions with vows that couldn’t be revoked.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“We held eternity and power that would have made us gods among men.” Ealdor nodded to himself. “We had seen what Atol and the rest had become, and more, we knew the long dark of loneliness that awaited us. We had no intention of wasting our victory by becoming god-kings in his place.”
“The children’s rhymes,” Gael said. “You couldn’t appear unless you were called.”
Ealdor nodded. “We wanted to give you the chance we squandered.” He smiled at me. “Your intuition reminds me so much of . . .” he stopped, choking over a name that wracked him with pain. “My friend,” he said instead and continued. “We created the gift of kings for many purposes, but the summoning was one of them. You will need all six.”
I didn’t want to lose my friend. Not again. “Is there any way to restore you?”
He gave me a sad smile. “You didn’t meet the requirements of summoning. I came to you because I’m your friend and the thing we imprisoned must not be set free.”
Ealdor’s face twisted in pain again. His wraith-like hands clenched against his dissolution, struggling to keep it at bay for as long as he could. “When Cesla entered the forest, I had enough strength to stop him or save you, but not both. When he delved the prison, he left himself open to Atol’s control, but Cesla’s mind still lives beneath the weight of the Fayit who control him.”
“You should have let me be taken,” I said. But even as the words left my mouth, I shuddered in revulsion and horror.
Ealdor mustered the strength to smile. “I sensed something about you, a suggestion of my old gift. This time I chose mercy instead.” Ealdor vanished completely below the waist. “Should Atol gain his freedom, you will find yourself fighting one of the Fayit in truth. I have to return to Aer.”
The last impression of him thinned, like a puff of smoke on the air. Panic burst through me. The names! “Wait! I don’t know their names. You never used them!” I lurched toward him, reaching, but my arms passed through the mist he’d become.
“Atol’s attack on you allowed me to trick the binding,” he whispered. “Look inside your mind.” He dissipated until nothing remained. Ealdor was gone.
I sat at the table in the village of Localita north of Cynestol and looked around. Nothing had changed. The shadows cast by the southern sun were neither longer nor shorter than they’d been before Ealdor’s appearance. My friend’s last visitation had taken only an instant.
Yet my surroundings, the buildings, the jaccara trees, even the table where I sat in dumbfounded silence appeared strange to me, their easy
