The Director’s nostrils flare. “That idiot woman. She’s almost destroyed the virtue of your blood. But let’s see what happens if we—”
Daral raises his hand. “I have a better idea. One not so messy. Use the Chosen’s sword.”
I slide Daral a sideways look as I’m hauled away. So, he doesn’t want the Director to drain me dry of all blood, does he?
Movement to one side, and Grip slinks into view, holding an aluminum bag, grinning in a way meant to project both intelligence and trustworthiness, and only succeeding in looking like a fool.
He upends the bag and my sword clatters to the floor. Grip crouches to pick it up. Sparks fly. Grip yelps and scampers backward, beating at himself.
My sword lies there, alive as it hasn’t been in years. Light ripples down its length.
“Get it.” The Director gestures to a soldier.
“No. Let Kato Vorsok do it. It will work for him and no one else.” Daral’s expression is cool, but I see the tautness of his shoulders.
Time for me to take a hand. “He’s right. And I’ll do it. I want to get to what’s inside here as much as you.”
Our world depends on this.
The Director hesitates, gives a curt nod. His men release me.
I take my time, rolling my shoulders and flexing my hands, working out the kinks. My right hand responds sluggishly, and I make a show of it. Better to let the Director think that I’m worse for the wear.
Finally, I stride forward, two steps, and stoop. Pick up the sword.
It sings to me, and its song pierces my heart. This is the purity of the Chosen’s sword, not the thing it had become after so many battles and so many deaths. I’d used it against my own stubborn countrymen, fighting off pretenders and other malcontents, and it’s song had become a battle anthem of blood.
After the battle at the Gates, I’d lost even that.
Why is it whole now? Is it this place, and the proximity to angel craft? I narrow my gaze at the glossy, black walls, made out of the same material as the safe road back in Highwind.
“Well, go on.” The Director breaks the silence. The soldiers shift their stances, clearly eager to get me back under custody.
I jump onto the disc, raise my sword in both hands, will my spiders to mesh with the new life of my sword.
There’s a jolt, then a backwash of energy into me.
This is what I knew in the first days of being Chosen.
I am a giant again.
I stab downwards, driving the point into the angel key.
For one perfect moment, the sword, the key, and I are one.
And then the key flashes, and the sword disintegrates into dust.
I stare into my empty hands, disbelieving. My sword… the Chosen’s sword… is gone.
I barely register Daral hauling me off, as capillaries within the disc light up.
The middle of the disc blinks, like a great eye. Its movement is fluid, organic. And then it swirls open, whorls pulling back from the center.
There’s a small pit underneath. A tiny place, a bowl-shaped hollow lined with a silver metal.
In the middle of that, a clear tube.
And within the tube are…
Angel wings.
The bubble around the basin is a pustule on the land, throbbing with angry colors. I’m in a huddle under the Horn of Reckoning, blue sigils pulsing in my wings, peering through the membrane and into the salt below. Its surface churns and heaves like a dirty sea.
I cannot look away.
The eilendi scrounged up five Circles, with four others at anchor points around them. Their song shudders through me, and as their eyes open wide with a look of deep-seeing, so do mine.
I See.
The strings of the world at that place, not stretched or corroded, but totally changed. No longer vibrating loops, but different in shape and color. They’re sickly green knots, and as they change, so does the world around them. The mountains are melted into thick sludge, yet they still hold their shape. The rocks from the explosion spiral lazily in the bubble, and light—light is crazy, bending in all directions.
I look at Jazala in the central Circle. Her face is skeletal in the lurid light. Sweat beads her cheeks and forehead, and when she sings, her mouth gapes open to reveal a black hole.
A ripple in my vision, and suddenly I’m no longer standing at the edge of the salt, but in a light well, frustration knotted inside me as I strive to untangle a pattern of yarn. I’m a child again, and my hands are small and brown, my fingers slick. I’m failing and I know it and the eilendi will kick me out of training and I’ll be sent home in disgrace and…
Cool calloused hands cover mine. A calm voice says, “Try it this way, child,” and I crane my head to stare into eyes so serene, so kind…
… there she is again, gliding to take her place as Prayer Leader, while I peer from under a novice’s arm at the woman who is such a legend that even I, a desert brat, have heard of her. And she half-turns her head, and winks at me…
… she chooses me as a disciple when I’m only fourteen, and performs the Ceremony of Passage when I go from novice to eilendi…
I blink, I am back again at the salt, and my lips shape her name. Her real name.
Did she hear me? A frown mars her forehead, she shifts, but her eyes are still closed. I bite my lip, and look around, nausea churning in my stomach.
This is bad. This is all wrong.
They sent all the others away from here: Mehmet and the rest of the baradari, the apprentices and novices who had come up to the salt. They’d have sent me away, too, had they been able to get a hold of me.
There’s a hiss and a sigh. I stumble away just in time as the Horn melts
