Eight 5.25: The Crystallization of Purpose

The next morning, I grilled the innkeeper about the local merchants, expressing my dissatisfaction with how small-time their operations appeared to be. Afterward, Fala made sure she was overheard suggesting we move on to more-profitable, more-civilized towns within the empire. We had a license to travel and do business, so we should be taking advantage of it.

Then, an hour later, we walked out of Bashtencru’s west gate, tailed by a pair of men hurriedly chasing after us. Neither of them was bad at their jobs, but they would’ve needed much more than that to get past our combined extra-sensory abilities.

We followed the road, just as one would expect of John and Emma. And another hour later, when it became apparent our tails weren’t willing to give up on following us, the Deer God left the herd to go creep up on them and take their lives and light. Anyone investigating would only find animal tracks in the area around where they’d died.

By the afternoon, we were confident we were no longer being followed, so we took a short break away from the road. Field rules applied, and the four of us evenly split the light we’d gathered the previous night.

The guard’s life barely made a dent in my awareness.

The young woman caught by the Maltrans had been a spy. Her name was Usalanei—we’d found the information in the record of her interrogation—and her life was driven by duty.

The same could be said of Ashkandal. She’d been a devoted subject of the empire, though I couldn’t tell how much of it had been genuine and how much had been due to the repeated exposure to Sister Moon’s influence.

I raised a mist afterward to cleanse the grimy feeling left afterward.

We’d examined the stone needles and hourglass the previous night, and brought them out again to see if we could learn anything beyond the obvious, that is: the needles appeared to be made of the same stone as the giant stone sculptures we’d encountered along our journey, and the hourglass kept time like you’d expect it to. Nothing we did activated the eerie glowing light we’d witnessed.

Alas, none of us had experience with enchanting, so we learned nothing new. We did, however, theorize that the needles were required to be embedded in a body at the moment of death to trigger the hourglass, but none of us were willing to test the theory.

All morning, I’d clamped down hard on my emotions. And just looking at these… these unholy magical tools made my head feel like it was full of scalding-hot steam. If I could’ve, I would’ve flown straight to Gorwenta to root out the problem at its source.

It was unbelievable—someone had disturbed at least one of the sculptures plugging a hole in the fabric between life and death. They’d “mined” it for the material need to make the needles, doing who knows what damage in the process.

And! Usalanei hadn’t been an isolated case. The notes we’d found documented twenty-three individual instances of interrogation and experimentation. Whether the victims turned out to be innocent or guilty, the region master had tortured them, then she’d followed instructions to use the needles and hourglass, to carefully mark the changes she observed, and send the information along with her seasonal reports.

Twenty-three victims this spring alone. How many had died before then? How many had had their spirits violated?

Gods, I wanted to wring Sister Moon’s neck—and Brother Sun too. Not that I knew how he was involved, but he had to be in some way.

Fala put a steadying hand on my shoulder. My own anger was mirrored inside her, except for my beloved it centered on the recklessness with which the Maltrans treated darklight.

“You’ve felt it, haven’t you?” Fala asked. “After becoming silvered, we’ve both become easily absorbed by things—the aspects of our paths that engross us.”

I nodded. It didn’t take staring at a puddle more than twice to realize she was right.

“For me, I feel my authority is off-center, swinging from direction to direction,” Fala said.

The Deer God laying nearby looked over at her. Yuki’s attention had earlier strayed to Voorhei where they’d been talking to Billisha, but now I felt it sharpen and focus on what Fala was saying.

My beloved picked up a twig. It was flexible enough to twist in her hands into a knot. She spoke slowly, picking her way through the words. “Our authorities are a source of power and they bind us at the same time. They determine the way our paths manifest.”

My beloved eyes were wide, as if she was realizing a great, overwhelming truth. “For me, I feel myself focusing on the just uses of silverlight and darklight.”

I licked my lips. “I feel my authority trying to solidify—to crystalize around the idea that sorcerers must die.”

After a day out in the wilderness, my thinking should’ve been clearer. Spending time outdoors had always done that for me in the past. Yet, it seemed that my authority had worked against me the entire time. It had stoked my anger instead.

I had and continued to feel like I ought to bend my everything around this goal. As if I’d found my life’s calling.

“It’s not lost on me,” I said, “that the World Spirit has offered me an assassin-based path at every milestone.”

‘But is that who you want to be?’ Yuki asked.

“No,” I replied. “It’s in me—I know it is—but that’s not the life I want. Elsewise, I would’ve chosen one of those paths.” My authority made it too easy to focus on myself and what I wanted, so I forced myself to turn inward to ask Yuki, “What about you? What’s yours driving you toward?”

‘Connection, but that’s the path we chose. The other paths were…’ Yuki hesitated, as if afraid to bring a secret out into the open. Then their resolve hardened, and they continued: ‘All of them were either highly invasive or highly militaristic. We don’t have the benefit of Ollie/Eight’s phone, but if we were to apply names to them, they’d be things like Qi Conqueror, All-Consuming Tide, Pink Plague.’ They made a flippant gesture with their qi, dismissing the paths as if they were nothing. ‘Things like that.’

I couldn’t help shaking my head. “When I asked before, you called them boring options.”

‘That’s because they were,’ Yuki said. ‘Differences matter; they make us stronger and life more interesting. Why would we ever want to diminish that?’

My heart swelled with pride. And I felt relief too. Power hadn’t corrupted our Yuki. Now, I had to make sure it didn’t sway me from who I wanted to be, while also supporting my family’s choices.

I looked over to the Deer God. From the tilt of his head, I could tell he didn’t want to talk, but the expression on his face was thoughtful.

“Life isn’t ever simple, is it?” I asked.

“Never,” Fala said, “Not even in the Glen when it was just the two of us.”

###

Later that night, after a full day’s travel, I invited my family and friends in Voorhei to visit my dreams. Nothing special happened; we just chatted and caught up on events. I did not go into detail about what we’d found so far, but I also didn’t shy away from describing the challenges that came from being silvered. Who knew if any of them would ever attempt the climb, but just in case.

Just in case.

###

The days fell like dominoes. One after the other, step by step through Maltra’s wooded and lake-strewn land. The villages and towns were just as rare here as in the alliance. One difference, however, was that we ran into many more soldiers patrolling the woods—these were mixed expeditions comprised of scouts and front-liners, including dog riders.

Each of these expeditions had a baggage train following behind stacked high with creature corpses, and it quickly became clear that this relentless hunting led to a tamer countryside. Fala and I ran into fewer encounters with high-level creatures inside Maltra’s borders than in the alliance’s territory.

The villages and towns we passed through still had walls, but their residents seemed to be fine with lower levels. They just weren’t as skilled as their counterparts in Albei, or even Voorhei. Only the soldiers exceled, the distribution of light apparently favoring them.

As we saw more and more of the empire, the four of us debated the strengths and weaknesses of the Maltran approach. Were the people happy? Did they find meaning in their lives? Would they be safe in the event of a catastrophe? What about the Long Dark?

There was no way to know the answers to these questions without spending more time in the empire. We’d probably need to live there for several years to truly understand the dynamics. Yet, I couldn’t shake the disturbed feeling I got every time I saw the distortions in people’s spirits.

And that distortion was everywhere. In the smallest villages and the most out of the way places, we encountered citizens with the telltale dizziness associated with Brother Sun’s and Sister Moon’s influence. It was like an infection that had spread to the far corners of their empire.

Otherwise, the basic components of everyday life were similar. The people spoke the same language. They ate, grew, and raised similar foods, and worshiped the same gods. Only the fascination with their leaders was different, and from that one point all the other differences emerged.

The four of us were powerful enough to shrug off Maltra’s influence. Hardly anyone else we encountered was that lucky—only a handful of soldiers, the ones on expeditions. And they were loyal too, willingly so.

It was enough to make a man sigh, which I did frequently.

As for how John and Emma got passed all those soldiers? The credentials provided by Albei’s spymaster were rock solid. Even when the Maltrans got frisky—for example, fishing for bribes—then all we had to do was flash Ashkandal’s badge and claim we’d been assigned a task by her.

We essentially played the game on easy mode.

###

The town was called Henwota. It was early evening—the sun just starting to dip over the horizon, turning the clouds the colors of wine and marmalade. We were ten days out from Bashtencru by then and knew to head for the central plaza to look for an inn.

We’d noticed that Maltran towns tended to be constructed along similar lines: A pyramid would stand at one end of a central plaza, with the administrative hall situated at the opposite end. Then, between them, running along the plaza’s borders, would be the various lodges’ headquarters.

One pattern we’d also observed was that there’d almost always be an inn built next to the administrative hall. And always, that inn had had the best furnishings, food, and staff.

Interestingly, the only exception had been Bashtencru. The reason why wasn’t obvious, though, and Ashkandal was no longer around to answer those questions.

Henwota’s streets were busy with people hustling to make a living, the town seemingly down on its luck.

Before the relationship between the empire and the alliance had soured, Henwota had been a key transit point for trade between the two nations, and that old history was evident in the town’s markets, warehouses, and talents of its residents. Still, Henwota retained some of that cosmopolitan air. While Fala and I drew some attention, no one registered us as nathlein.

If anything, the two of us were seen as potential marks. We had to ignore the touts looking to lure us into their shady deals and/or establishments. There was even a pickpocket who we let get away with a stinging slap to the wrist. He ran like his pants were on fire.

You could see the old grandeur of Henwota in their Merchant’s Lodge. The building was three stories tall, with intricate engravings covering every inch of the walls. The paint had flaked in spots, though, and the recent rains hadn’t washed clean the years of accumulated grime.

A short distance away were the administrative hall and soldier barracks next to each other.

In the alliance, three leaders ruled from the lowest levels to the highest—world speakers, reeves, and village heads—each reporting up the ladder to the people above them, which in Albeityel was the hierophant, the land knight, and the city head. Also, the lodges had a huge say in how things operated, which distributed the power even more.

In Maltra, all power flowed toward the emperors. That was why the soldier barracks seemed to be an extension of the administrative hall; the soldiers reported to the town head. They, in turn, reported to either a region master or the capitol directly.

The exterior of the administrative hall appeared to be freshly washed; the handful of labors who’d done the work were now focusing on the soldier barracks. The nearby inn had also been cleaned—a young child was going from window to window to make sure no spots were missed.

As we got closer, we could make out the sign above the inn’s doors—a songbird inside a cage made of gold. The words underneath read “The Bright Melody.”

We were climbing the stairs to the front doors when suddenly a pile of soldiers spilled out of the administrative hall. They immediately split up, rushing in multiple directions, including one toward the barracks. I didn’t need to see their spirits to know they were alarmed.

John and Emma watched the proceedings with interest, but since it had nothing to do with them, they soon calmly went inside.

Fala hung out by the window, while I went to check us in. ‘It looks like the soldiers in the barracks are all coming out—twenty of them, and they’re organizing into teams.’

The head inn keeper was polite, his taste in clothes exquisite. And that interest in fashion was apparently fueled by the high prices he charged for his rooms. An eltaak a night was ridiculously expensive!

‘A man emerged from the administrative hall carrying a stack of paper, which he is distributing to the team leaders.’ Fala quietly shifted, so that she could scan the rest of the plaza. ‘People are noticing the commotion. A group of people have approached the soldiers to ask questions. They appear to be volunteering to help.’

I attempted to barter with the innkeeper, but he noticed right away that my heart wasn’t in it and held firm on the price. He raised himself up to his full height and spoke eloquently about his inn’s history, including a story about how an emperor had once stayed there—Aruholafa, grand be his name, who’d died one-hundred-twenty-five years ago.

‘One of the volunteers is coming this way with a piece of paper in hand. He appears determined.’ Fala moved toward the front doors, making it seem like she was simply admiring the furnishings, which were admittedly quite nice. A bit worn, but nicely made.

The front doors slammed open as the volunteer rushed inside. Fala slipped in behind him, her eyes seeking the paper in his hand. A moment later, the man stumbled to the ground. He’d somehow collapsed.

My beloved rushed to help him, but he wouldn’t get up. She checked his breathing, then shook her head. “He’s gone. So suddenly, maybe a bad heart?”

The other guests crowded around the fellow, and the innkeeper came out from behind his counter to impose order on the situation. “We’ll call for the Artisan’s Lodge,” he said. “They’ll know who he is; that’s their badge he’s wearing.”

Emma was John’s bodyguard. In a chaotic situation, she needed to be by his side, so she moved with purpose to stand between the crowd and me. Behind her back, she slipped me the paper that had been in the man’s hands.

It was a wanted poster with my face on it. Apparently, John the Traveling Merchant was now wanted for questioning in the disappearance of the administrator of Bashtencru. And from the hubbub outside, they’d mobilize fully to find him. Find me, because my cover was blown now.

I mean, I could try to talk my way out of trouble, but that was risky given how familiar these people were with torture. And, whatever Silasenei had done to keep her agents from being forced to magically tell the truth, she hadn’t done for me.

No, it was simply better to disappear. Ten days of escaping notice was already pretty good. We’d gotten to sleep at comfortable inns and observe the Maltran empire without too much worry. Now, though, we’d have to finish the journey hunter-style, moving through the land like it was hostile territory. Which it was.

Ashkandal’s disappearance had freaked out her superiors. From what we saw out the windows, they were sparing no expense to find the cause.

Fala and I found the back door and slipped outside. Moving through the still-crowded streets, we kept ahead of the soldiers who were forced to go house by house, shop by shop to ask if the people there had seen a man resembling me.

Later, we went over the wall to the west, not even bothering with the gate. Camouflaged, no one saw us.

###

The distances between villages were long, and towns and cities were rare. That left plenty of wilderness for Fala and me to get lost in. Even so, we had to assume that the Maltrans would put their best trackers on our trail, so we picked up the pace—the ground-eating lope of the hunters carried us and the endurance that came with our silvered status sustained us.

We ate on the go and rested in shifts. The time spent in the dream space was cut short in favor of maximizing true sleep.

The mountains came back. They once again surged up from the ground to fill the view to our south. Their sides were thickly forested, and streams ran down between the ridges, the water a music to my ears.

We did little fighting along the way. Only the orneriest, the dumbest, and/or the truly powerful willingly attacked us. And those that did, didn’t last long—learning very quickly that the creatures they’d sensed were dawn were actually silvered.

All told, we picked up five hundred silverlight each. And Fala saw a couple of skill rank gains, reaching 16 in Stone Bending and 10 in Relationships. The latter might’ve seemed odd, but the whole time we were running, we also chatted with each other and with our friends and family.

There were occasionally long stretches of silence, with each of us deep within our thoughts, but the time was never boring. Being out in the wilderness was invigorating, as was moving with purpose. I was finally able to wrestle my anger down.

After three days, our feet ached, as did our knees and lower backs. The strain of running for so long had built up, and not even a silvered body could withstand it entirely. That night, Fala dug us a shelter deep inside a hill, so that we might sleep the whole night through.

We ran again the next day, and for the first time since Henwota, we encountered a road, this one running north-south. Moderately wide, it looked like it might handle two side-by-side caravans. No one was using this portion of it at the moment, so simply crossed it and kept running.

We came across a few more, smaller tracks, and then we ran into a wider road two days later, a major trade route from the looks of it. Two long wagons pulled by oxen steadily made their way from north to south, escorted by a team of bodyguards. Following behind them were a handful of villagers taking advantage of the opportunity to travel under the guards’ protection. From what I overheard, they’d each paid a fee to do so.

Eavesdropping on the conversation also let us know that they’d noticed an increase in soldier patrols, especially to the north. There were outrageous rumors that the Three Cities was sending assassins to kill their zashas, Brother Sun and Sister Moon.

According to my maps, about two-to-three days travel to the north west was Oostha Hakei, the capitol of the Maltran empire.

The authorities must’ve assumed we’re heading that way, I thought.

‘Unless that’s what they want us to believe to lull us into a false sense of security,’ Yuki pointed out.

‘That’s a clever idea,’ Fala sent. ‘Twisty but clever.’

I moved to check if there was anyone else on the road farther to the north. There’s been no sign of pursuit so far, but it might be because we’ve kept to a quick pace.

Fala checked the southern approach, but there was only the one mixed group of merchants, bodyguards, and villagers. We waited until they were out of sight before crossing the road.

The Deer God was usually quiet whenever we discussed strategy, but this time he tentatively asked, ‘Should I travel separately to the north to act as a scout?’

I felt the others mulling over the proposal. Personally, I thought he could get away with it. One, he looked like a beast, which was perfect camouflage. And two, if something did happen, he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself.

Yuki voted against the idea, though. We might encounter trouble from any number of directions, not just the north. And while we were strong individually, our true advantage lay in our combined powers, including the deadliness of our ambushes, of which the Deer God hiding in the herd was a part.

Fala was on the fence for a while, seeing the sense in both arguments. Eventually, though, she decided on advising the Deer God to stick with the group. Ironically, it was her experiences playing Diaksha and Dragons that helped her decide. I’d introduced the game early on in my time on this world, and she’d quickly picked up on one if its most important rules: don’t split up the party.

Do you remember that one time we were playing, I thought, and everyone decided to roll a ranger?

Fala and Yuki chuckled at the memory. The Deer God, however, responded with a wave of confusion.

Ah, you’ve never been there for game night, I thought.

‘We need to teach him out to play D&D,’ Yuki said, excited.

‘I bet an eltaak that he chooses a druid,’ Fala sent.

Nah ah, I thought. I’m not taking that bet.

And that was how we spent the next couple of hours—explaining table-top role-playing games to an earth spirit and former god, though admittedly he’d only been a minor one before incarnating into his new body.

###

The day before our expected arrival in Gorwenta, we cut our run short to hole up inside an underground stronghold that Fala created for us. While the Deer God went wandering off to explore the area, Fala and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening resting. First, we bathed in a granite tub—the water oh-so comfortable and healing despite it being unheated. Then we ate a rich stew made from venison and preserved winter vegetables.

After dinner, we laid down in our own bed. The candle stones we strung along the walls looked like fairy lights, and we’d livened up the rest of the space with art and furniture we had stored in the Hoarder’s Pocket. They helped to cozy up what would otherwise been a barren room.

For a change, my mind was empty. My attention was on the ceiling and the image of Abraham Lincoln I thought I saw there. To his right was the outline of a mountain lion.

Fala shifted closer to snuggle into my side, so I slid my arm under her head for a pillow. We were too tired to make love, so we just stayed like that for a while. Maybe ten minutes? I wasn’t sure, since I wasn’t looking at the clock. That was how long it took my belove to fall asleep, her soft breaths tickling my neck.

‘I miss the times when she used to woob-woob-woob when she snored,’ Yuki said, their qi bending in a smile.

I chuckled. That had been entertaining.

‘These spring pine needles are delicious,’ the Deer God sent. ‘Should I bring some back to you?’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ I heard Yuki say. ‘Ollie/Eight is nearly…’

And the rest was lost to sleep.

###

When the mountain range turned south, we knew were getting close, and the chit-chat died down between us. The Deer God ranged ahead and quickly found evidence of logging. When the rest of us caught up, I saw that the person responsible had had a sweet tooth. They’d left all the maple trees intact.

We came across a roving team of Maltran soldiers not too much later, then a second team only a half hour after that. They must’ve been working together to clear the area around Gorwenta of dangers.

As they passed by, I made note of their good discipline. They were talented too—not a one had less than four talents.

The mountains loomed as we continued our journey, the character of the land becoming heavier with every step. It wasn’t a spirit responsible, or at least we didn’t think so. We’d passed through several territories while on our way to Gorwenta, and this time there’d been no sensation of passing through a new boundary.

When we finally reached our destination, we saw that town lay directly at the base of the highest peak in this section of the mountain range. We climbed up—only about half a mile—so that we could overlook the town. An old oak’s branches provided a solid perch and good cover.

From this hidden vantage, we saw that the town was bigger than we’d first observed it to be, the looming mountain having made it appear smaller than it actually was. Maybe that was to be expected; a road ran past that connected Gorwenta to the capitol to the north and the rest of the empire to the south. A fair amount of trade likely stopped here.

The defensive walls were straight, even, and about forty-feet tall. Soldiers regularly patrolled the wall-walk; they moved in pairs. More soldiers guarded the town gates, and these ones were all either dawn or dusk. None of them possessed fewer than five talents. They all would’ve been considered prodigies by their families.

We continued our vigil, and the minutes turned into hours, the sun turning hazy near the distant horizon.

Supposedly, the people of Gorwenta made their living from hunting and silver mining, but there wasn’t much left to hunt in these woods—at least not from what we’d observed on the way in—and those commuting to and from the mountain had looked more like office workers than miners.

More tellingly, the town didn’t have any facilities for crushing or smelting ore. Now, those could’ve been based next to the supposed mine, but the circumstantial evidence was pointing to that not being the case.

That night, hidden away underground again, the four of us discussed our options and decided to skip Gorwenta entirely. There were too many uncertainties, and the risk was too great given my blown cover and the on-point readiness of the town’s defenses.

Farther up the mountain was the supposed mine and the Eagle Fortress. Our plan was to head there directly in the morning.