“It will be fine,” he said. His heart ached though, remembering Ryldia and how he longed to see her. “Yes, we’ll be fine.”

Two days later, after spending a night and day hunting with Vedor Lor’Toshune, an Isilmyr cohort comrade, Taul sat on a rented pony atop a grassy hill dominated by a massive kith stele. He looked out past the last estate on Vaidolin’s easternmost border. The pony was more like a yak from the shagginess of him, a native creature repurposed to work on the farms and occasionally to carry people long distances. Mornae detested such beasts—those with no goddess-favor—but since the Fall of Saylassa, necessity overrode their distaste. Shadow steeds no longer roamed the mountains. He’d never seen one.

Beyond a thin defensive border was The Fringe, a five-mile-wide strip of desolate land between Mornae territory and the bottomless cliffs battered by the raging waters of the Barkasse, the endless ocean. Sea rain clouded the air, and he wiped his face for the tenth time. He pulled up a scarf around his mouth and nose.

Spray from the massive waves which crashed into the cliffs reached this estate daily and even deeper in when there was a squall. At the border estates, tenders waged a constant battle to keep the orchards and vineyards, crops of all kinds, thriving. The fifty-foot-tall kith steles lining the border could only defend the valley for so long. On this side of the slabs, things grew differently, like the Mornae, bound to the goddess-power. The steles’ sorcery would fail someday, and the sea rain would pour in and destroy what his people had built over fifteen cycles, reclaiming the land for itself. When was the last time a sorcerer or high priestess had touched one, imbuing it with zaeress, their stored goddess-power? As boys, they’d dared each other to touch them. He’d seen a boy die from it. That’s what their village healer had said. The diviner’s mind had slain him, she’d said, an illness no priestess could heal.

A train of nomads, a line of ants from this distance, pulsed and splintered on the barren landscape toward the various border gates. Mornae sentry towers with wooden walls barely fifteen feet high dotted the border. At the outpost down-slope from him, three spearmen stood watch. Most were tenders or field hands, serving a season in the frontier militia before heading back to their estates or villages. Traffic through this guard station fed into the network of paths running through the east valley. The nomads had made a permanent camp on the Fringe side, centered on a market. Taul couldn’t recall ever seeing them so comfortable at the border. In his youth, they’d chased them away with training spears and hunting bows.

None of his workers would stand on the wall this year or next. Not until he’d solved the problem of the rot. He couldn’t spare anyone. Let mightier houses defend the walls. Hadn’t the Fourth Accord mandated the crater’s defense? The apprentices could work on the old trees. If they rotted, the sickness would spread out to the younger trees and then there’d be no stopping it.

He wiped his brow. The pony stepped forward toward the flat expanse of The Fringe.

He’d like to visit the cliffs and experience the crashing waves against the rock. If he waited there long enough, he’d see the goddess rise in the southwest and fall into the vast ocean, taken captive by the sea god for ten days. That was what the nomads thought happened to Vai, the Mornae’s goddess-moon. The surrounding tribes dreaded her coming and cheered her captivity. Not the Mornae, though. They praised her arrival and reveled in the power she awakened in the rock and in them.

Or they used to. Few houses made the effort these days. The temple diviners would ring their bells and sound their gongs, and the cities would answer, but then everyone went about their business. The only power Taul had ever known was in the orchard, and that one time as a young man, when he’d attended a crater funeral and a high priestess had called down blue fire on the body of a dead matron. He’d forgotten the dead matron’s name.

He turned around, retraced his steps through a second, shorter row of steles, and traveled back up the road three miles. At a narrow dirt path lined with chunks of lacquer-white rock, which led to a small, walled estate, he paused. The pony, frustrated by the long trip, pawed the ground, wanting to move forward through the gate.

Lor’Vamtrin’s members would be out working at this time of day, but if he was lucky, he’d find Voldin alone. Taul didn’t need the gossip about his visit spreading. Was it so unusual to visit one’s teacher? It had only been sixty years. So much had happened in that brief time. He turned onto the path and urged the shaggy mass to a trot toward the open gate.

A boy ran up as they entered and reached for the reins. He was a nomad, Yatani by the look of him: all brown with cheeks chapped by the cold. Yet he cut his hair in valley fashion: short all around except for the longer top, which he’d pulled back and gathered in a knot at the back of his head. Over his heavy wool clothes, he wore a gray felt vest with Lor’Vamtrin’s sigil woven in black.

“The master is away at the grapes, jabun,” the boy said in rough sounding valley speech. He’d called Taul by the Yatani word for elder or chief. “But the jabra is here.”

The boy patted the horse and it nuzzled at his vest, searching for whatever treats the boy had hidden there.

Taul hesitated, then said, “I will see her if she wills.”

“Your name, jabun?”

“Taul Lor’Toshtolin. Born of Lor’Nevtar.” The matron would surely recognize the names. Nevtar was a well-respected house. Not as ancient as Toshtolin, but with a storied past.

But would she also remember his past? That he was the second son?

He was sweating.

“Very good, jabun,” the boy said. “I’ll tell her.”

Taul dismounted and brushed the road dust from his clothes. The boy took his pony and led it to the trough where he pumped water for it. Then he ran in the front door of the main villa.

It was a small but fine estate with two villas. The second one was only a glorified hut. Flowering vines covered the inner wall. Bright blue bees buzzed through them, and tiny, red-black hummingbirds flitted about searching for a meal. This was the life he had exchanged for the almost sterile world of the crater, with its silver-lined marble columns and harsh, thin air. Not to mention the harsh, thin Mornae who lived there. Barely anything grew in the crater but kith. And power. There was always that.

He tugged at his tunic and raised his chin. Nostalgia was a risk he couldn’t afford. He’d made his choice, and it was the correct one. It had to be.

The estate’s design matched the style of the newer buildings of Halkamas. The villa’s glossy white walls mimicked the expensive lacquers used in the crater. On the second level, slit-like windows faced vaizoren, the goddess’s path through the night sky. The second story had a slant and curved around the atrium in a crescent so that nothing could block the goddess-light.

The boy reappeared and motioned Taul in. Like crater estates, there was a foyer and then a modest atrium, where the household would gather upon the goddess’s passing. They walked along a colonnade made not of marble or granite, but varnished ironwood trunks adorned with carvings of vines and birds and wild creatures. Tiny mounds of light green moss broke through the pavers and lined them like grout.

They passed through an arch into a parlor where a small woman sat on a stool sifting seed. Wrapped in layers of a gray homespun, she looked like any other valley priestess. Only her face and hands were visible. She touched each seed before dropping it into one of two baskets.

“Matron Silla,” the boy said with a deep bow, “here is your visitor.”

Taul nodded to Silla and waited for the boy to leave.

“You are Taul na’Nevtar, prime consort of Lor’Toshtolin,” Silla said without looking up. “How is your matron consort? I hear she is to birth an heiress soon?”

“If the goddess favors us, yes,” Taul replied.

“There’s nothing important that happens in this valley that I don’t hear of it.”

“Thank you for welcoming me into your home, Matron Lor’Vamtrin.”

He sounded pompous and formal in this rustic place. Silla smiled and invited him to sit on the other stool.

“He’s a good lad,” she said, referring to the boy who’d led Taul in. “We took him in from a Yatani clan. The ones with the red felt hats.”

Taul raised a brow.

“They had a poor year on the steppes,” she said, “and only so much food for their family. We made a trade. It was only to be for a year, but the boy asked to stay. We teach him our ways. A day may come when he consorts into a house.”

“How is that possible?” Taul asked, unbelieving. His chest tightened at the thought that such people could walk freely within the goddess’s domain, the ancient lands upon which his people had worked their sorcery.

She chuckled at him. “You’ve been away a long time, Taul na’Nevtar.” She wagged a finger at him. “I remember you. You were just a skinny boy hanging on to my consort’s every word.”

Taul nodded, embarrassed to not remember. He’d pushed aside that time to make room for the more important duties of a prime consort.

“Many of these nomads have some Mornae blood in them,” she said, emptying the basket of acceptable seeds into a sack. “And the goddess works her power in them in their own way. I’ve seen it. Some can live close to the crater. We always welcome those who can.”

“And you’ll teach them your arts?”

Silla cocked her head. “And why not? It is not ours to give or teach. It is always only guided, neh? The goddess blesses whom she blesses. Sometimes they do better than apprentices of our own blood.” She grabbed another handful, rolling each seed over, ensuring it received ample attention. “My grandfather was of the Fringe.”

Taul stiffened at the matron’s admission of inferior origin. He cleared his throat and said, “I had hoped to speak with Master Voldin.”

“He is about his work,” she said. “His duty.”

Taul rose from the stool. “Yes, well. That reminds me––”

“And you rode all this way to not get the wisdom you seek?”

Taul paused, his backside half off the stool, and then sat again. “It is a tending matter, matron,” he said.

Silla gazed at him, patient but motherly. “And I am a priestess. You really have been away far too long.” She chuckled softly to herself and continued with her work. “I can see it written on your face.”

“What do you see, matron?”