How many times had he pondered the same question while sitting half-frozen on the banks of their river of a morning?

“His own life,” he said.

“To make his own life beautiful, what must he do?”

It came to him like floodwaters, overwhelming.

“A human being can only become truly human if he lives for others. That way, the way of love, is by necessity the way of pain. Shared pain. Co-suffering.”

He felt the dew-flames flare up around him again. A darkness of which he had never been aware lifted from his heart, and he was calm. He could not remember the last time he felt so calm.

“Where do you think Vasyllia received its name?” she asked. “The Vasylli is the one who gives his life for another. You all know it; you all repeat it endlessly. But meaning is lost in endless repetition.”

“Vasyllia was named after the Covenant,” Voran whispered to himself.

“Yes. There are few true Vasylli left, Voran.”

“Lyna, what can I do?” He felt small, like a child called to account for his older siblings’ misdeeds.

“Seek the weeping tree, my falcon, before it is found by one who has sought it for ages.” She shimmered and began to fade. “We must part now, but know that I am always with you, even if you cannot see me. You are unformed yet, Voran, only crude clay in the hands of the potter. There is risk and loss in every meeting, so choose carefully when you seek to see me again. I leave you with hope. The Harbinger walks the earth once more. If he finds true Vasylli, as he did in the time of Lassar, he may reforge the forgotten Covenant. But I fear much pain and loss must transpire before then.”

He heard the sound of wind whistling through reeds as Lyna flew up to the sun. She was gone, but her song remained in the flickering flame warming his heart.

When Voran came to himself, it was already late evening. Nowhere did he see any sign of the pilgrims; even their racket, which he thought could be heard for miles, was absent. How long had he been with Lyna? He shivered with cold and rising dread.

Then he remembered how his encounter with the white stag seemed to move him to a different place entirely. The Lows of Aer. Only entered in certain places and times, and always perilous. He looked around in consternation. Truly, this was not a place he recognized. There was no road, only an overgrown path such as a woodsman might use. The peaks of Vasyllia’s main range were much closer than they should have been and in front of him. In the dim light, it was difficult to make out much.

He must have entered into the Lows of Aer during his encounter with Lyna. Coming out of them, he must have been displaced again. He would have to be more careful about crossing that threshold in the future.

He heard something behind him. A cry or a moan. Could be an animal, but it sounded human. He ran toward it, along a path cresting to a grassy knoll. When he looked over its edge, he gasped.

As far he could see, a beech wood extended to the horizon, rising and falling gently. A mass of people labored through the trees, their number greater than he could count. Some were already rising up the hill to meet him. They were bloody and hobbled. Then he understood the sound. The wailing of grieving women.

Leading them was a tall middle-aged woman leaning on a branch. She saw him about a stone’s throw away, stopped, her expression confused, but not frightened. Next to her walked a skeletal girl no more than six years old.

“Matron,” Voran called to her. “What is all this? Who are you and what has happened?”

“Are you but the skin of another changer, come to devour what is left?” She threatened with the branch. Her voice was like dried peas rattling in a box. She had a strange accent. Nebesti, probably.

“I do not understand you. I am Vohin Voran, the son of Otchigen of Vasyllia. I bear you no ill will, Matron.”

Her eyes seemed to shift somehow, as though she had not fully seen him until now. He felt the flame in his heart surge toward her, and she gasped in surprise. When she could speak again, her voice had more power to it.

“They are all dead and burning, dead and burning. Blood, fire everywhere. Like…living torches…” She shuddered. “Son of Otchigen, we are all that remains of the ancient and glorious city of Nebesta. The Second City is destroyed.”

The world is not as it seems. You think there is only the visible world for the living, and the invisible for the dead and the immortal? You are wrong. There are many realms interweaving with each other like the threads in a tapestry. Most are invisible most of the time. But sometimes, some people fall into other realms or encounter the denizens of those places. Some of these Powers are good. Many are not…

From “A Primer on Nebesti Cosmology”

(The Lore of Nebesta, Book I, 3:6-8)

Chapter 9

The Fall

Among the ubiquitous women and children—some walking but most hanging on their mothers—Voran found no men at all. The implication was chilling—whoever did this had killed or captured the men and sent the women forward to spread tales of terror in their wake. Whoever this enemy was, they were cunning beyond Voran’s experience.

The woman who spoke to him called herself Adayna, daughter of Farlaav. Once she seemed satisfied Voran was not a “changer”—Voran had no idea what that was—she took him into the mass of refugees, eager to share something, a secret of some kind.

“I managed to save the Voyevoda, my father. But he will not last long.”

He was an old man, though his beard was still black with two streaks of white, like a badger-pelt. He lay on a makeshift litter pulled by a horse half as dead as he was. Only his face was visible in the mountain of furs keeping him warm.

“Lord Farlaav,” said Voran. “I am Voran, son of Otchigen.”

“Voran? I knew your father.” He looked suddenly lost, gazing about wildly, hoping to find something to orient him. “Are we near Vasyllia?”

“No, I suspect we are a week or so away. But you need not worry, Vasyllia will care for your people. You have my word. Please, what happened to Nebesta?”

“I do not quite know what to tell you first, Voran. There was no warning. In the weeks leading to this attack, some of our rangers disappeared in the wild. It should have alerted us to our danger.

“It happened in the dead of night, and suddenly most of the city was burning. How they breached the walls I will never know. An army of mounted men, screaming in a foreign tongue I’ve never heard. Their skill with the arrow is not human. They are like men possessed, with supernatural strength and cruelty. They call themselves Gumiren.”

Voran had never heard of them. In the back of his mind he remembered an old rumor, from about ten years ago, that nomad armies were assembling in the far Steppelands. Could this be the result of that muster?

“But even they are not the worst danger,” said Lord Farlaav. “In every shadow of the fallen city, unspeakable things lurked—monsters the like I’ve only read about in stories. I would not have believed it without the witness of my two eyes. Huge wolf-men and bird-creatures and many-headed snakes with wings.”

“Lord Farlaav, are you sure? Perhaps in the heat of the—”

Lord Farlaav lifted himself up from the litter with a groan and grabbed Voran’s arm, gasping with the effort.

“Listen to me! I saw what I saw. If you do not believe me, there will be nothing to stop him.”

“Him? Who?”

“This is not a human enemy we strive against, Voran. The Raven is coming.”

The effort was too much, and he collapsed in a dead faint. A pool of red seeped into the furs at his back. Adayna pushed Voran aside and called for help.

Voran’s mind reeled, but his instincts took over. He seemed to hover over himself, watching as he ran back and forth, cajoling here, ordering there, pushing, pulling, jostling, and helping along. Within an hour, he and Adayna—she had a new stick and had tied a wolf-fir around her chest with a leather thong, giving her the appearance of a nomadic priestess—led the mass of wounded Nebesti toward Vasyllia. He carried the skeletal girl on his shoulders. She was Farlaav’s great-granddaughter. Both of her parents, Adayna’s daughter and her husband, had been killed.

For the first day, Adayna spoke little, leaving Voran to his thoughts. He was almost unnaturally calm after his encounter with Lyna, but his mind told him that he was courting disaster for seeming to abandon the pilgrims, even for the sake of these thousands of refugees. Anyone else would be lauded by Vasyllia for saving the remnant of Nebesta. But it was more likely that the son of Otchigen would be imprisoned for abandoning his charge and leaving the pilgrims to an untamed wilderness crawling with creatures from nightmares and an enemy that slaughtered people just to make an impression. The Dar would be right to imprison him.

Worse still, he had lost Lebía. Agonized worry for her gnawed at him—he was sure he would have a red gaping hole in his chest by the time he reached Vasyllia. The desire to turn back and find her was so strong that a few times his feet seemed to turn aside of their own accord. Every time he moved back to the path, he imaged Lebía’s corpse riddled with arrows.

Another fear was the realization that the only way he could justify himself before the Dar and Dumar would be to tell them of the Sirin. But that was impossible. No one believed in the Sirin anymore. Actually claiming soul-bond with a legend? Impossible.