A voice that speaks to the patterns that underlay everything in this world.
Kato Vorsok.
I smell rain, the aftermath of a lightning strike. Pain curls through my ears, my nerves crawl away from that voice.
If it calls my name again, I shall die.
“I—” My mouth is dry. “I am here.”
Silence. Waiting. A great pressure upon my ears and my chest.
The same pressure I remember from the night I woke up and found a wounded mourning cloak behind my shop in Highwind.
“I am here, Lord.”
You are Chosen.
And then it’s gone. The voice, the pain, the pressure, the feeling of the world bowing and groaning under a weight too great for it to bear.
I sit there on my knees, heaving in lungfuls of air.
And then I reach, blindly, for the rooted night walkers close by and hoist myself onto my shaking legs.
The night walkers. They feel different. No longer smooth and hard as polished stone, but rough and ridged, bark-like. I peer closer at them in the twilight. No longer knife-cuts in the darkness, all sharpness and straight lines, but like tough, twisted trees. They’re bent into branches, and their color…
Patches of sandstone orange and red and yellow pattern their bodies.
They’re changing, too. The desert is changing them.
At their feet is the newly-dug well, smelling of moist soil.
Night walkers always find water.
I let go of the one I’m holding on to and walk stiffly down to the valley.
There’s a hard knot inside me, a knot in which I’ve twisted up all my fear and anger and despair.
All these years and now he returns to me!
But like a cooling wind, the memory of his words whisper into my heart. Kato Vorsok. You are Chosen.
Laughter bubbles up inside me. I throw my head back and let it out. It bounces off the walls, breaking the temple-like silence. The silence withdraws, watches me with disapproval.
“Do you hear that?” I demand of it, the valley, Tau Marai, and the Dark Masters within. “I am Kato Vorsok. I am Chosen.”
Great. I sound like a lunatic. I choke back my bleak bitter laughter.
Chosen for what?
To die? In one last glorious hopeless stand? Me with my one hand and the dead sword and the transformation that has lost its power?
Ironhand, Leap had called me, all because I bashed his thick skull with my left fist, and bit back the cry of pain before it escaped my lips.
I look at the dark lumps of dead golems scattered in the valley, and then I know what to do.
I kneel by the carcass of my enemy. I touch its metal skin with my one hand. Its armor is strong. I know that.
I will consume its strength, claim it for my own.
I lean over the golem, touch the stump of my right arm to its battered chest.
Then I call my spiders to feed.
I’m used to the sunburst of the transformation, the lightning-quick unraveling and reassembling of my being. But my spiders are tired, and their work slow. I grit my teeth as they split open my skin, as they break down the metal and drag it back inside me. The pain is dull and raw and prolonged.
As time trudges on, I feel every particle of metal travel into my body. I feel it bind to my bone. I feel my spiders build the framework, spin out nerves as fine as wires, overlay everything with sheet upon shifting sheet. Tremors go through my body, I taste the tang of iron and blood.
A great cold washes over me, and I’m shivering in the shadows of the valley. The pain doesn’t come in waves, like I’m used to—it builds to a high red plateau with no drop-off in sight. I can bear it no longer. I try to pull away, but my arm is fused to the dead golem’s chest, bound to it by a shapeless lump.
I can’t do anything but watch as spiders chisel and shape. Pinpricks of red-hot agony burst like stars in the midst of my dull pain, as if I’m being attacked by a swarm of angry bees.
I can’t hold myself up anymore. My head sinks till it touches metal. A black tide washes over me, and I welcome it.
I wake in darkness, with a twitch and a jerk.
My hands flex.
My… hands… flex.
I touch my right hand with my left, and run my fingers over smooth metal. I curl the fingers of my right hand, feeling the oiled movement of my joints. It’s heavier than my flesh-and-blood hand had been; the wrist has been strengthened to compensate.
They added metal to my left hand as well, for balance. I sense the strengthening bands of metal all up my arms and into my shoulders.
My spiders think of everything.
All that remains of the golem is a crumpled heap of metal flakes.
I plant my new hand in the dust. I can touch and hold again, but it feels different—less immediate.
Now is not the time to explore the features of my new hand. I’m exhausted. I get to my feet and trudge back up to the fort.
I hear him long before he comes into view. His feet are nearly soundless on the floor, he blends almost perfectly into the shadows.
He’s good, but not good enough.
I drop down from the ceiling in a rush of black smoke. My feet mist, then solidify as they find tile.
He starts forward to attack, thinks better of it, puts his heels back down on the floor, hard. He slips something back into his clothing, something darkened, but metal and sharp.
I cross my arms. I’m fed and watered, patched together by my fellow cloaks. The patches won’t last long, but for now I’m stronger and faster than he is. And my eyes magnify every movement, every play of light.
“Brother,” I say, in my cloak voice, high, sweet, and buzzed. “What are you
