Yadovír laughed, the first unforced laugh of the last month. It was like poison seeping out of a wound. “Is that it? Excessive strictness?”

“No, I’m afraid it’s more than that,” said Otar Gleb. “Our dear chief priest is a very righteous man. Very correct. Perhaps even holy, if we were to judge by externals alone. But he forgot a subtle truth long ago.”

“What’s that?”

Gleb half-closed his eyes at Yadovír, assessing. Yadovír’s mouth tasted bitter.

“The heart is what matters. That’s what Adonais wants. Your heart. If you spend your entire life cleansing yourself of impurity, and yet your heart does not expand in love for those around you… It’s like scouring all the rust off a pot. If you don’t stop, you’ll rub a hole in the iron.”

He shook his head again and clicked his tongue. He always did that when pensive. It was one of the things Yadovír loved most about him.

“But I didn’t come here to gossip about my betters,” said Gleb, smiling again.

“Why did you come?”

Again the slitted eyelids, the fire in the eyes probing behind pale-blond eyelashes.

“Stop it!” The bitterness in Yadovír’s mouth turned sour. “You won’t convert me. You’ve tried for as long as I’ve known you. It hasn’t worked yet.”

“Fifteen years. But it’s never too late, I say.” Gleb smiled again, but without his eyes. “I’m not here to convert you. I only want you to know that there are those who love you. Those who wish you would use your gifts…well, for a better purpose.”

Yadovír groaned aloud.

“You have an incredible talent, my friend. Can you imagine if you redirected your endless energy to the refugee problem? You could stop this plague that’s beginning to ravage the first reach. Not shut them up like rats in a cellar! You could find places for all the Nebesti. Build makeshift homes in the marketplace, for Sirin’s sake! Instead you waste yourself, trying to assimilate power that doesn’t belong to you. Why? Haven’t you forgotten that you’re dying?”

“Dying?” Yadovír almost jumped out of his cushion. “What are you talking about? I’m as healthy as a horse!”

“And yet, you’re going to die. We all are. Have you forgotten?”

“You priests are so morbid.”

“Yadovír, I have a premonition about you.”

“Oh dear, not one of your—”

“I’m not joking with you. I don’t know how or why. But I sense that you are on a cliff, and there are abysses to either side of you. There may even be another abyss ahead of you. Some difficult choice that you have to make, or not make.”

Gleb leaned toward Yadovír and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Do not doubt, Yadovír, that evil is more than a state of mind. There are dark powers out there willing to use people against their will. Sometimes, all it takes is one compromise.”

“Well, then it’s too late for me,” said Yadovír, brushing it off with a laugh. But the heaviness in his heart was back.

Gleb said nothing, but his eyes filled with tears. “Here,” he said, pouring the last of the mead. “May the morning be wiser than the evening, eh?”

The next morning, the entire city was abuzz with news. The rising sun revealed a fresh onrush of refugees, but these were not Other Landers. These were Vasylli, from outlying villages. Every one of them told the same tale—the invaders had destroyed the Dar’s army to the last man.

Yadovír did not consider himself a superstitious man, but the timing of this news rattled him. It was too neat that he should refuse the priest’s offer on the eve of such a disaster. In any case, this changed everything. If the army was routed, that meant siege. He doubted he would survive such hardships, and he doubted anyone else in Vasyllia would either. They had all grown too fat and content with their lot. Eventually, someone would betray the city to the invaders rather than be reduced to eating horses and rats. Better for everyone if he did it than some half-wit second-reacher. Or an insane high priest.

At that thought, he remembered the cozy pleasure of the evening with Otar Gleb. Maybe the fool was right. What was the point of all this rushing about after power, anyway?

Down the street from his house stood the large courtyard of Sudar Kupian, one of the richest merchants in Vasyllia. It could hold at least a hundred people, and often the old man set up trestles full of food for passers-by, just to show off how little it meant to him. Yadovír envied him. Today, a royal crier stood in the middle of the courtyard. Yadovír hurried to hear what the man had to say. He missed the beginning, but came just in time to hear:

“Effective immediately, the Dar has declared martial law. The Dumar’s powers are revoked until further notice.”

How dare he? He has no right to deprive the people of their voice!

No. Gleb was wrong. If Yadovír did not take control of things, there would be no more Vasyllia soon.

Yadovír ran up the nearest staircase to the third reach. Absently, he noticed that some of the asters were still hanging on the brown ivy. It made him sad, somehow, but he pushed that thought aside.

The many-gabled house of the high priest glared at Yadovír, and the leafless cherry trees seemed to be reaching out toward him in threat. He banged on the doors of Kalun’s house until his hands were red and painful. Only then did he hear the squeak of bolts being pulled back. The door opened a fraction, and was about to close again, but Yadovír pushed it open.

“Otar Kalún. You were right. I want to help you. I want to be the instrument of Vasyllia’s purging.” Otar Gleb’s smile faded in his mind’s eye. Yadovír felt himself getting sick at his own words.

The door opened. Kalún beamed. Yadovír’s hands trembled at that smile: it was soft and childish, with no trace of guile. This was the face of madness. Yadovír had not seen it before, and for a moment his body clamored at him to flee. Instead, he walked into the tomb-like house, and the door shut behind him.

The lands under the protection of Vasyllia are called “The Three Lands” or “The Three Cities,” meaning, of course, Vasyllia, Nebesta, and Karila, with the lands appertaining to them. There are also other smaller principalities that officially owe allegiance to one of the Three Cities, but in fact are largely independent. There is Negoda, an offshoot of Nebesta, which shares the Southern Downs with its Mother City. Tiverna, Bskova, and Charnigal pay tribute to Karila. They make a kind of three-pointed gate to the hilly country that sits at the foot of the Vasylli-Nebesti Mountains. Another five or so cities do not even merit a name, for they stand at the edge of the Steppelands. Only nomads live beyond…

From “A Child’s Lesson in Vasylli Geography,”

(Old Tales, Appendix 3c)

Chapter 16

The Gumiren

The kestrel keened, hung on the air, trembling with ecstasy, then plunged down into the shadows. Sabíana, standing on a palace turret, thought of Voran. Whenever they had walked in the forests or simply sat in silence together, the kestrel had always commanded his attention. He had called it a “windhover.” She never really understood why he was so entranced by the small sparrow-hawks. But now, its appearance was enough to make her cry. Again.

For the first three weeks after Voran’s exile, Sabíana had rushed about like a madwoman, busying herself in important and unimportant work. She even finished the embroidered Sirin banner. One morning, when the fog seemed ready to smother Vasyllia, she woke up with the realization that she had never been so tired and lonely. She returned to her bed, hoping no one would hear her sobs. She slept the entire day.

That evening, when she woke up, she was refreshed and able to think about Voran without the memory gouging out the remnants of her heart. Until the kestrel.

Once again, the kestrel soared to the clouds, fell backward and caught himself right in front of Sabíana’s face. Its mouse-like squeak was almost comical, but she couldn’t laugh. Truly, its sleek, mottled shape was beautiful.

It hovered before her, staring at her.

“Go to him, little sparrow-hawk. Tell him to hurry back for me.”

The kestrel flew away, and Sabíana saw it ride a wind-gust out over the Covenant Tree—now no more than a normal aspen sapling, naked in the winter cold—into the forests beyond Vasyllia. Perhaps it had understood her. She stared after it as far as she could, until it melted into a dark band of cloud.

Except it was not cloud. It moved toward Vasyllia with supernal speed, and it twitched. She heard them before she realized what they were. The skies crawled—ravens by the thousand circled over Vasyllia, croaking discordantly, calling for the coming of the war to fill their bellies with the flesh of the dead. They remained high above the city, out of bowshot. Sabíana’s uneasy apprehension turned into dread.

Then she saw them: shimmering, dancing abysses at the very edge of the plateau. They resolved into a mass of men carrying torches. There were so many of them! Ten thousand strong or more. The enemy was here.