The taste of bitter greens in my mouth.
A slight dark boy squatting by a snake hole, eyes alight with enthusiasm. “He’s a beauty!”
Taurina riata seya… Taurina barata veya…
“You need eilendi… we all need eilendi…”
And as I sift through these glistening, broken shards of life (my life? Or someone else’s?), a Seeing seizes hold of me, clamping my head with steel bands, pushing my body against the stone, holding me in place.
The bones of the world, a pattern of golden strings, thrumming with urgency, stretched almost to the breaking point. The ones nearer to the salt plains are knotted like wire, with stiff, sharp ends. And the ones closest still…
Dear Taurin.
They’re in shapes I don’t recognize, in colors I can put no name to. They’re changed beyond my knowing, and I can almost hear the mountains groan as the basic nature of them is twisted into something… alien.
I reach for those shapes, with a quick light touch.
And a mountain explodes.
Mehmet and I return to the window, time and time again. It’s been an hour since the explosion.
Rocks still hang in the air, orbiting the livid light in the east.
Mehmet curses under his breath. Flutter is a drooping, grey figure at one side of the room. Her head is bent, long hair covering her face. She hasn’t said a word since.
Daral calls me over to an opposite window. “Look.” He points down the valley to the city of Tau Marai.
There’s a beacon above it.
It’s not made of light.
A column of darkness rises above the Dark Masters’ prison, stark against the night sky. It twists, almost like a living thing, and as we watch, dark tentacles stretch out from it towards the salt plains.
My heart turns to stone. A leadenness drips down to my feet.
The very air holds me in place.
I say, slowly, moving my thick, heavy tongue. “Something got out.”
Daral looks a question at me.
“The Gates were open,” I close my eyes and behind the lids I see Sera once again vanishing in the savagery of light, the bronze Gates swinging open. “They were open. And something got out.”
How long had I pushed against the Gates, forcing them shut? It had seemed like an eternity, but it was only a few minutes at most. Not long enough for the Dark Masters to escape.
But there was that dark tendril wrapping around my wrist. There was that moment when an appendage of the Dark Master was outside Tau Marai.
“A message of some kind. A signal.” I open my eyes, and Daral is pale, watching me out of narrowed eyes. He’s thinking about killing me, I think, distant, remote. Flutter comes to herself with a shiver of wings. I know she’s watching us from behind her hair. “A signal that awoke… that.” I look over my shoulder. Mehmet is silhouetted against the distant light, taut as a bow.
“What can we do?” Daral whispers.
I shrug. “You’re the scholar. What do the tales say about the Shivering Times?”
His lips peel back from his teeth in a grimace. “Angels and demons fought across the world, gouging craters and plowing up mountains. The people cowered in caves, tried not to get in the way. We could neither survive the fight, nor even look upon the radiance of our angel protectors. Fires burned without fuel and light itself splintered into weapons.”
“The very laws of nature were overturned,” I murmur.
We look back at the ring of rocks that went up and never came down.
I think I feel the world shredding under my feet.
“What do we do now?” Daral asks.
“Take the angel craft in Makai Crater by force. Or,”—my smile is mirthless—“beg Highwind for help.”
Mehmet starts violently. “Those desecrators—”
At the same time, Flutter begins, voice buzzing, “No, Kato! They want too much in return—”
I raise my hand, and they stop. “Our world is in danger. This is a battle not only for the itauri lands, but for Highwind as well.”
“Going to desecraters is not the right way to do this!” Mehmet breaks in. “Taurin will keep us and protect us! Trust in him, not in the defilers!”
The message in the dark weighs down on me. Fight on, it said.
With what?
“I can do nothing against the salt demons. I have lost the transformation.” There, I’ve said it.
Daral looks pointedly at my iron hand.
I raise it up, clench the fingers. “This is all I can manage. There are not enough of the spiders in me to do more. Will this one thing suffice to stand against the demons?”
“The eilendi,” Flutter says. “The salt demons twist and corrupt the strings of the world. Get the eilendi and have them make a Seeing…”
“Will they have power enough to fix the problem?” I ask her.
She shrugs, a fluid ripple that goes right through her body. “They can only try. Send word to them, at least, I beg you.”
I turn to Mehmet. “Where are the nearest eilendi?”
“A day’s ride away, in the Light Wells.”
“Take a small, fast group of riders. Flutter will go with you.”
“The Highwind abomination?” Mehmet draws back, makes a warding sign. “You would—”
“Tauria vey lasati!” hisses Flutter. “Itauri dia itauri, eilendi dia eilendi!” Her eyes are wild, changing colors, and the words fall from her lips. Eilendi chants, eilendi prayers. Her arms flow from gesture to gesture, her feet sketch out the dancing circles.
Mehmet is speechless. He looks at me, as if to say, What is this strange eilendi puppet?
“She goes with you,” I say.
“I would like to go as well,” Daral says quickly. He’s watching Flutter with an expression I can’t quite read—puzzlement, but oddly enough, a wary hope.
“I could use you in the negotiations,” I say to him, expression and voice blank.
He hesitates, then nods.
“We’ll leave at dawn,” Mehmet says.
“No.” Flutter’s voice rises. “We leave—now.”
A flash of light in the night, like a green firework. A sizzle in the air, a belated siren call from a cloak
