Voices rumbled and murmured through the boarding house walls. Ren struggled to ignore the familiar thumps and groans. He sat back in the room's lone chair, a pipe on his lips, the haze blurring his obvious problem.

The Benthrae boy played on the small rug with the wood blocks Ren had bought him in the low market. Through the haze, the boy looked like a fine addition to the chamber. A boy meant a consort, but somehow Ren had bypassed the traditional path.

He couldn't keep the boy indefinitely. There was his work, and leaving the boy alone was not a good option. Not with low-lifers and whores about. He sneered. He'd not call them priestesses. There was nothing sacred in their flesh. The women in the brothels never said whether or not they were priestesses. Some may have been, once. Or they were valley priestesses bereft of land. Or matrons of failed houses forced out by more enterprising or lucky Mornae.

“I'll be the first to toss them off,” he said to himself.

He didn't have to live in this rot and decay. It was no place to raise a boy. There was a tiny farm in the deep south, near the crossroads. The one with the small wood attached. He had a list of such places, and he knew the owners' secrets. Pulling the right thread would force any of them to sell at a fair price. He'd empty his vault to buy a property. Then he could find a valley woman to care for the boy. Just long enough to find a proper consort.

“It would be our house,” he said. “And we'd begin the cycles together.”

The boy stopped and looked at him. There was no fear in him; the boy had the goddess-stillness. That quality alone made him invaluable. Why had Maunyn rejected him? It still stung Ren when he recalled the look of disdain on his master's face.

He'd like to know what the boy was thinking. Had he been prepared to leave his birth house already? It seemed too easy.

His cheek twitched. A memory flooded him. He'd known some good women in Lowkamas, whether whores or not. It didn't matter. Could he make a life with one? Not a Mornae life. Surely not. But so many valley Mornae had lived a different life already for centuries, if not cycles. Maunyn would scowl at him, but his master had suggested nothing more for him than what he had now. Chits accumulated in his vault, bulged in his pockets. What use were they? He couldn't make himself a lordling without a name behind him, without a house. He was a hired hand, and in the Mornae world that meant he was a servant for life. Only a consortship to a priestess—even a valley one—with a name would give him respectability.

He puffed on the pipe and the embers glistened red hot. Plenty of houses needed his chits, and he'd come ready with a boy. A fine catch for any needy matron.

His master would never allow it. What was it with these lords and their servants? Was he not Mornae? A free man?

He seethed, unable to control his resentment. This Benthrae boy had awakened something in him. He'd suppressed it for so long and now it threatened to break him open.

“I hate my life,” he said to himself.

The boy turned back to the blocks and played quietly. He'd not asked a thing since arriving. Was he already plotting his escape? He'd seen Maunyn, Ren was sure of it. He'd considered returning him, but then he'd have to flee Vaidolin. Maunyn wouldn't rest until he was dead.

They could flee south and join a merchant train. Be a scout or guard, get himself a little nomad woman. Or two. He could teach the boy his tricks if the boy had any talent. He sat back and pondered happily, imagining himself and the boy thieving their way through far off southern cities. They'd reach the fabled Dragonlands where gems filled the rivers like pebbles and there were millions of people… easy marks. His powers would make him a god there.

His lips twisted and smoke sputtered out.

But what if the boy wanted to know who he was? Or people treated him wrong. The boy's gray skin, silver-white hair… Ren might have passed with a disguise, but the boy couldn't. What if he sprouted tall like a Mornae should?

He muttered a curse, and shouted, “What in the goddess's glorious name will I do with you?”

The boy looked up, startled.

“Nothing, boy,” he mumbled. “Uncle Ren's just tired.”

The boy needed a good family. One he'd taken from years ago. That would be a good thing. He could make up for so much taking and give back.

He sat up and pulled the pipe from his lips, staring at the boy. For a moment, he thought himself a lord, deciding the fate of this boy. No, a god, even. He whipped strands of dark with his fingers. It sat like a ball in his palm. The power was overwhelming. This is what it must feel like to be a lord over another.

His power would aid someone that deserved it this time and make him a man worthy of the goddess. A man of the goddess's justice like the Zauhune champion, not the man Maunyn decided he should be.

He sat back and downed a glass of clear, foul-tasting liquor. He could afford better, but he'd never thought himself worthy of anything good. He drank the cheap rotgut of the Halkamas lowborn.

That was all he saw for himself.

The goddess had granted him power, the ancient kind, and though he'd neglected its true practice, it still sat raw and uncut like a chunk of kith. He'd known her warmth, even searing heat. Surely that meant something.

Yes, this boy could change everything.

AUTUMN

The Fall of Saylassa revealed who we truly were, not who we believed ourselves to be.

A rabid beast lurked in every Mornae heart. Fifteen cycles of pent-up hatred and frustration poured out in a conflagration.

That was just the beginning.

FROM MEMORIES BY JEVAN LOR’VAKAYNE, SON OF SAVRA.

25

“This is unacceptable!” Gishna blurted, choking on her own voice.

Her servants hadn't prepared her chair and the ironwood's sharp edges pressed cruelly into her frail skin. Her old bones stiffened, refusing to budge. It was worse than a Daushalan dungeon, or so she imagined. She'd never been in those dark cells. Her frame rattled and her vision darkened for a moment.

Not yet, she thought. Goddess above, give me one more season! Just one more! I can do it all in one more season!

“The news of this… this kidnapping,” she said grimly, “has reached the middling houses. Rumors are becoming gossip. They say the house was proper Mornae even if it was a Zauhune vassal, supporters of the goddess-champion no less, and so the perpetrators could not be Naukvyrae. Didn't your man leave the markings? Is he an idiot?”

Maunyn stood across from her at the entrance to her private audience chamber.

“We can't be called to court!” she said. “I can't risk losing anyone of quality.”

“Or land in the east valley,” he said.

“No! No!” she said, her neck straining and shooting pain through her. “Never,” she said with a whimper.

“It was a simple mistake,” Maunyn said. “With your approval, we can press the matron. With appropriate pressure, I'm certain she will offer the girl.”

Gishna scoffed at the offer. “I can't waste my influence on such meager efforts. This is for you to handle. I let you keep that border rat, don't I? His head should be on a spike, but you are too soft. Imagine that, master of Isilmyr.”

He offered no retort, so she asked, “Where will it stop? I worry night and day about the scriptorium with all those scribes and diviners, proliferating like festival puppets. Who can tell who is who? I surely cannot. No one can find out! My diviners act against me, I know it.”

She should stop haranguing, but everything she said was true. Yet another underling who could not fulfill his duty. This was on Maunyn. She'd not let anyone convince her otherwise.

“Your man, your problem,” she said. “Clean this mess before it spreads.”

She heaved, overcome by the fear that her misdeeds, her offenses against the goddess, her abuse of the goddess's promise to them, became known.

Maunyn pressed a warm cup to her hand, but she refused it. She wouldn't let him win back her attention so easily.

“Valley folk have no need of matrons, anyway,” she said. “They have children like rabbits. They've no need to strive for the heights and can afford to be empty vessels. No one expects blue fire or calls to the Dark from them.”

She sounded like her mother, and her mother before her. Desperate! This way of thinking was foreign… the goddess could favor any living thing, but they had locked up the crater, caged it in rules and traditions no one could live up to anymore. And look what that had done! Rot! Nothing but rot within. Clutching and grasping at the goddess like sand through their fingers.