“Your light has dimmed of late, Mirnían, scion of Vasyllia.” The giant’s voice was surprisingly gentle, though it echoed. Mirnían had no doubt that this was the giant’s whisper, and that he could tear down trees with a shout.

“I have been watching you for some time. This sedate, quiet life you have chosen. It does you no good. When my brother saw you last, you glowed with black fire. Now your sister is alight, and you are in wane.”

Mirnían, without realizing it, had cast aside his sword somewhere and stood at the foot of the giant, feeling for all the world like a two-year-old being scolded by his mother.

“Who are you?” he managed to whisper.

“I am the serpent of fire, the old power of the earth, the ancient lore long forgotten. You may call me Zmei.”

“What would you have of me, Zmei?”

The giant smiled, though his sun-eyes remained beyond all emotion.

“That is the right question, future Dar. I would have you healed. I would have you empowered. I would have you take your rightful place as Dar of Vasyllia.”

Mirnían scoffed. “You must be so old that you do not know of the Raven. Soon there will be no Vasyllia to rule.”

The giant laughed, and the earth rose and fell like a wave, throwing Voran down to the scorched grass. “The Raven? Do not make me laugh. A doddering fool who cannot understand that his time to die came centuries ago. A leech whose power derives from the power of others. He is nothing, a mere phantasm.”

“If you are so powerful, why is he ascendant?”

The laughter stopped, and the world seemed to hang in the balance, waiting for Zmei to pronounce judgment on it.

“It was not my time yet.” He rumbled, his fire dimming a fraction.

Mirnían snickered, then wondered at himself. When had he become so comfortable with the dark and legendary?

“I have never heard of you, Zmei,” he said, sneering. “You are not spoken of in the legends.”

“I predate the legends, Mirnían,” he said. “I was here before any Covenant, before any Adonais, before any Lassar. My power is not like theirs. It is the power of the earth itself.”

“You lie, giant. No power existed before Adonais.”

The giant’s half-smile returned. “Oh, is that so? Tell me, wise one. Why has that sore under your arm not healed, for all the power of the Sirin and their precious Adonais?”

“Are you baiting me? It is leprosy. Leprosy cannot be healed.”

In answer, the giant thrust his sword into the ground, shaking the trees as though they were mere bushes, and reached down with his finger. Mirnían wanted to run away screaming, but he held his place and didn’t flinch, sensing that this was some sort of test. The fires licking the edge of Zmei’s finger touched Mirnían, and his entire body flared with pain for a moment, then it faded. Something was different about him, though his senses were confused about it. He touched the place where his sore had been, and his touch revealed nothing but smooth skin. A wave of exhilaration rose up inside Mirnían.

“Very well, Zmei, you have my attention. But I know how this works. You require something of me in return for your generosity. What must I sacrifice?”

The giant smiled, and there was something fatherly in his expression.

“Ah, you poor child. The world has used you ill. But the earth will not. I require nothing. It is enough for me to see you rise in power, and to know that my gift began it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Do as you will, Mirnían,” said Zmei, chuckling. “Only know that if you seek to use my power, the only power that made you whole, you must always force events to turn in your own favor. Never wait for things to happen. Forge events. I happen to know that your steps are directed to a place of great moment. The Sirin was right in one thing—you will face your old enemy, Voran. And he is being trained in another power, a power not as old as mine, a power that revels in weakness and submission. You must exert your control, your will over him. If you do, you will have access to his power, which is not insignificant. That is the road to Vasyllia.”

The image of Voran standing on his knees as the hag danced around him flashed in Mirnían’s memory. A rush of hatred rose up with his gorge, and he nearly vomited from its fury.

“My pleasure, Zmei,” he said, and a savage excitement took him by the throat until he laughed from the sheer thrill of it. “It is the duty of any future Dar to ensure all traitors receive their just reward. Lead on, Zmei. I will follow you to the very edge of the world.”

The giant rumbled in laughter. “As a matter of fact, that is exactly where we are going.”

The fire licking around his edges consumed him until he was a nearly circular ball of red flames, dark as blood. Something seethed within the circle, and it resolved into a sinuous neck attached to a scaly body with a humped back, the legs long like a horse’s and covered in piebald scales. It had horse-like hooves and tufted ears that were too big for its head, a strange amalgam of a lizard and a horse, but not in the least awkward-looking. Its mane and tail were flame, and yet they were solid things that you could hold.

“Mount,” said Zmei, “if you have the stomach for it.”

The world spun in all directions, with Zmei as the eye in a storm. When Mirnían closed his eyes, he felt no movement, but as soon as he opened them, he felt sick. Mountains formed around him like piles of newly-churned butter, craggy ridges of hard grey-brown rock with hardly any plant life. As they hardened and ceased their strange, undulating dance, Mirnían breathed in, and felt the sparseness of the air. It left him giddy.

The giant stood next to him, looking over the dips and rises of the crags. They stood before a tall conical peak, probably the highest point of the ridge.

“There it is,” said Zmei, pointing at the tip of the peak.

Mirnían saw nothing of importance. “What am I looking at?”

Zmei sighed. “I had thought that maybe…” He shook his head. “The weeping tree is on the tip of that conical rock. You cannot see it; neither can I. But it is there. Just not in this Realm; it is in the Mids of Aer. Very soon Voran will find a way to it. We will help him find it.”

“Why can you not find it yourself, if your power is so great?” Mirnían was beginning to doubt his strange new friend.

“You have much to learn about the world, young pup,” said Zmei, no longer smiling. “Try to pay attention.”

With that, he spun into his serpent-horse form again and disappeared in a storm of fire and thunder. Mirnían sat down in the sparse shelter of a twisted pine, and closed his eyes to sleep.

There will come a time when the glory that is Vasyllia will fade. Much knowledge will be lost. Much wisdom. Much beauty. But we, the Warriors of the Word, will preserve it. In time, one will come who will have to restore it all.

A private letter from Vohin Elían to Dar Martinían, year 643 of the Covenant

Chapter 27

Black Turnips

Voran faced Sabíana, but she refused to look at him. For all his desire, he could not approach her. She sat at the edge of a still, oval pool, ringed on all sides by holly trees and osiers, their silver bark luminescent. She sang, and she and the song were somehow one. As her fingers plaited her black hair, they seemed to be plaiting music as well, the melody intertwining in and out of itself. Then she looked at him, and her eyes were all wrong. They were blue and cold, and too narrowly set together. Then her nose shifted slightly in her face, and green sprouted in her hair like fast-growing moss. She smiled, and her canines were long and sharp. The ground gaped at Voran’s feet, and he fell awake.

The terror was a foreign thing in his chest, a parasite feeding on him from within. Just a dream, he reminded himself. Just a dream.

This was the third night that the drowned girl, one of the three Alkonist who ruled in his favor against the hag, intruded on his dreams of Sabíana. Now, Voran no longer doubted she had done it intentionally. Every night, she seemed to be digging deeper into him, provoking, and today the unpleasant stir of lust for her was intense, yearning for release.

He threw aside his wool coverlet, stale with sweat, and ran out into the winter night with no shirt or boots. The biting cold, quickly turning to fire on his skin, was effective at purging the desire that she kept feeding him at night.

“You must be dying here, Voran,” said a girl’s voice, husky in a sultry way. The drowned girl, naked in spite of the cold, sat in the branches of a nearby oak. Her hair still waved as if she were underwater. The darkness did more than enough to hide the details of her nakedness, but Voran still squirmed. The unpleasant stirring was not going away this time.

“Why do you torture me?” he whispered, not wanting to awake his master. “I want no part of your games. I remember very well what you wanted to do with me. Tickling, was it?”

“Oh, it would have been such fun, I promise.” Her laugh was lunatic. As if to taunt him, the moon decided to pick that moment to show its nearly full face.

“For you, I have no doubt. But I imagine I know what happens to the men whom you… tickle.”