But she held Nicci anyway, bellowing into her ear that it was all right and she was there and to close her eyes and keep them closed. She knew it was all over, but she wasn’t scared. There wasn’t time. The same numbness that kept her from understanding how she’d gotten into the water or how she’d gotten out kept her nicely cloaked against the horror of being burnt alive. She could only hope it wouldn’t take long.

But the wind changed. Suddenly and forcefully, it blew back against the ridge, pushing both the heat and the smoke entirely away and replacing it with choking cold.

Amber staggered in the wake of this new wind, trying to clear her lungs of the sediment made by water, smoke and heat. She didn’t feel very successful and the effort left her throat, chest and, oddly, her eyes feeling scraped and bruised. Cold, clear air cut at her lungs, making her cough even harder.

“What happened?” Nicci’s hands dug painfully at her neck, but Amber didn’t push her off. If anything, she pulled her sister closer, so that Nicci’s next frantic shout rang out painfully right in her ear: “What happened? Oh God, what is this?”

“It’s the ship,” Amber croaked, even though she knew Nicci couldn’t hear her through her own panic just yet. There wasn’t much point in talking, but Amber said it all anyway, just to hear it out loud and know that it was real. The waiting was over; the worst had happened. “The ship blew up.”

BOOK II

MEORAQ

In the city of Xheoth, in the state of Yroq, in the world and the hour of Gann, a pillar of fire rose up in the east, reaching like a desperate hand to heaven. It was a cool night, but not a cold one, and rainless although the wind was strong over the city, and so there were many who saw this miraculous sight. Uyane Meoraq, Sword of Sheul and well-honored in His sight, was one of them.

He supposed that was a smallish sort of miracle in itself. He spent enough time under the open sky that, given his leisure, he preferred a closed hall for his evening meditations. But the hall was engaged this night for the young initiates of Xi’Xheoth to take their oaths of ascension and so Meoraq took himself to the rooftop courtyard instead. He saw the fire that he might otherwise have never seen and therefore, there must have been some significance to the vision meant only for him. He meditated upon that as he watched it burn.

The sky had been filled with omens for many years, they said, but this was the first Meoraq himself had seen and he was a Sheulek—God’s Striding Foot—who had spent most of the past twelve years in the wildlands. And this, this was far more impressive a sign than the occasional glimpses of light or colors that some claimed to have seen behind the ever-present clouds. For hours, that blazing arm strained upwards and its many fingers grasped at salvation, but though it fell with each strong gust of wind, it always rose again.

Behind the low walls that separated the temple’s courtyard from those of the city’s ruling Houses, Meoraq could see smaller flames spark to life as braziers were lit, until it seemed all Xheoth had come out to see. As a man who often went many days without seeing another living man or hearing any dumaq voice but his own, sights such as these still had power over Meoraq. He admired the city as he admired the fire in the sky. Walls a quarter-span thick, now alive with lights, formed a perfect ring around the protected fields where cattlemen and farmers labored. In the daylight, from this same vantage, he would be able to see the lush colors of living crop against the dead wastes of the world outside the city walls. But at night, on this night, the fires of so many braziers seemed a wondrous proof of life, a miracle in itself, and as precious as any burning pillar Sheul had sent to be seen.

Meoraq bore it a reverent witness, keeping his own company as the rooftop over the temple-district filled with on-lookers. Although they kept a respectful distance, every backwards glance showed Meoraq more priestly robes: acolytes, monks, scribes, oracles and even the young candle-wards came to stare until it seemed there could not be a man left in the rooms beneath his feet.

Hours passed, each one marked by the tolling of bells throughout the city, not quite in sync with one another. It began to rain, dampening not only the fields below—the sweet, green smell of freshly-wetted manure billowed up at once and Meoraq breathed it in, still thinking of fields, of farms, of life—but the enthusiasm of many of those watching. Braziers all across the city roof began to gutter and die, breaking the perfection of the ring they had so briefly formed, but some stayed regardless of the discomfort. Meoraq was one of these. There would always be rain and he would always have days when he had to walk through it and nights when he had to sleep in it, but this fiery arm might never come again and he still had not determined its meaning.

As he meditated, one of the acolytes was jostled suddenly forward by the crowd, stumbling hard against Meoraq’s back. Meoraq spared his immediate bows and apologies a distracted grunt, but the damage was done. With a few shouts and clapped hands, the courtyard was cleared of all but the highest members of the priestly caste. The next man who drew near to speak apology was the abbot, whose name escaped Meoraq for the moment, but who seemed an amiable sort, for one of his caste.

They watched the fire together in comfortable silence. The rain and the wind both grew stronger, making the gesticulations of the flame wilder and more desperate even as it began to die down.

“It seems to be beckoning,” the abbot remarked.

Meoraq acknowledged him with a grunt, but his interest intensified. It did look like a beckoning arm now, less like the clutching one he had first imagined it to be.

“How far away would you say the fire burns?” asked the abbot.

It was a fair question. Meoraq was one of perhaps a hundred men in Xheoth this night who had ever been beyond the city’s walls. To speak in measurements of distance had only the most abstract meaning to most citizens, but this man had surely made pilgrimages in the past to be in a position of such authority now and so Meoraq considered the question fairly.

“The shadow of the Stepped Rise stands before it,” he said at last. “And is not illuminated by it. It could not be less than thirty spans.”

The other man grunted thoughtfully. “To see a flame at thirty spans…What city lies in that direction?”

“Tothax,” Meoraq replied at once. He knew every city that fell within his circuit well, and quite a few others that did not. Tothax, he knew better than most. He had received an urgent summons to that city half a year back, a summons not merely for a Sheulek but for Meoraq himself, and refusing to name the charges. This had so annoyed him that Meoraq deliberately made Tothax his last stop upon his circuit and he made certain the courts of Tothax knew it. Indeed, upon his arrival in Xheoth, he had found another summons waiting for him, even more tersely worded than the last. And if there was a reason why he had perhaps overstayed himself in this city many days after the last dispute had been heard and the last trial judged, there it stood. He was a Sword of Sheul, greatest of the warrior’s caste, a Sheulek. He took orders from his father and from God and no one else. He would move on in his own time, and he fully intended to make himself obnoxious in the House of whoever wanted him so damned badly right up until the last lick of autumn.

Ah, but then it would be home, home to Xeqor and House Uyane. Familiar faces. A bed more myth than reality. His father’s company in the evenings, and perhaps his brothers’ as well, if they were home from their own duties. Well…Salkith would be there; he was a governor’s guard and entitled to a room in their barracks, but he preferred to sleep at home where he could punish those who joked about his infamously slippery brain instead of force himself to laugh along. Nduman was a Sheulek with his own circuit and his visits were infrequent enough, but he was also keeping a low-born woman and several children in Vuluth, outside of conquest and without formal marriage, although he thought it a great secret. Thus far, their father had seemed strangely inclined to tolerate this, but Rasozul was lord of Uyane and steward of the bloodline and could not ignore the scandal forever. As for Meoraq himself, he was what he was: the eldest son of a legendary man, the heir to a glorious name and a proud House of Oracle Uyane’s own lineage, a servant in the favor of great Sheul, and a man who was perhaps not as humble as he’d ought to be. He was working on that.