“Matron,” he said to the baker’s wife, “will you be kind enough to take charge of Lebía’s care for a day or two? I have determined to go hunting.”
“But there is no meat to be had on the island. Not after all that feasting,” protested the baker.
“I know,” he said, hoping the excitement now flaring inside him like the fire-light over the mountains would not show in his face. “I intend to try the mainland.”
Mirnían had come so close with a few of the arrows, but the deer escaped him. One of the arrows even had the slightest dab of red gore, tipped with a fluff of downy fur. Always at the last possible moment, it ran, as though it were prescient. A few times Mirnían nearly screamed in frustration, but he must not. No need to scare anything that might not have caught scent of him yet. Though he had been hunting for three days, enough of his original excitement remained to keep him going forward at full-tilt.
It was not merely deer he was after. Seeing Lebía in that state, pale as death, finally suggested to him a horrible truth—if he was still marked by leprosy, however latent, he was a threat to her and to their child. He needed to find healing. He needed to finish the quest for the Living Water, and quickly. How, he had no idea. But a strange kind of sureness was on him; a buzzing excitement that suggested the possibility of merely crossing the next ridge and finding another waystone, this one with a much more helpful direction. In the meantime, he hunted in vain.
He didn’t know the part of the world where he hunted. The trees were mossier, somehow more sinister and older than at home or on the island. Even the sounds were foreign. The trees creaked in the wrong tune, the needles of the conifers were the wrong length and far too sharp, the smells were old and dank, as though the trees didn’t breathe in this part of the world. Then a creeping certainty—he was being watched—tickled at the back of his neck and needled at the pit of his stomach. Shadows became hidden beasts waiting for the pounce.
Something immensely bright flew over his head and landed in the forest ahead. It was round and burning, like a sun fallen from the sky. He couldn’t hear the force of impact, but then he noticed that sound itself seemed to cease. He drew his sword and crouched forward, half-crawling, using his other hand to find the quietest path. Smoke filtered through the trees, but it did not burn his eyes. It was pungent, like the scented resin burned in the Temple, and it seemed to contain flashes of light, like small bolts of lightning, within it.
Mirnían saw that an entire section of forest had been annihilated, though there was no fire except for a few smoldering logs at the edge of the cleared circle. In the middle stood a monolith of stone, or at least so it seemed at first. Then the smoke cleared enough for a full moon to shine milky-blue, illuminating not a stone, but a giant warrior.
He was the height of a tree, the width of a house. His mail was golden-red, reaching down to his knees. His helmet was peaked and open-faced; its horsehair flowed down to mingle with his own hair like molten gold. The ear-covers were gilt serpents of iron that seemed ready to burst out of the iron and bite the giant’s neck. His eyes glowed, and his features were smooth like marble and beautiful like an iceberg. He held a tear-drop shield bearing the same twisting serpent as on his helmet, and the sword in his right hand was taller than a full-grown man. Flames of dark red played around his body, and Mirnían was reminded of the circle of fire around the darkened sun he had seen in Vasyllia, what seemed so many years ago.
“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.”
