RLR (Real Life Rant) and Chapter One of A Monstrous Light

Darlins...

Darlins.

DARLINS.

Mkay, so...you know how sometimes when your kiddo is sick, you just don't manage to put two and two together until she's throwing up all over your bed? Yeah, that was this 4th of July. And the 5th was also a sick-y day for the little one, so as a result there is no new Rivalries today. I'm sorry, but...yeah. Couldn't do it. My man spent all day bleaching sheets; we both slept like crap between doing check-ins on the kiddo. I'm more than baked--I'm crisped.

 I'm going to give you the entire first chapter of A Monstrous Light instead, because I love you and it's just good, and get new Rivalries to you next week. Be warned for some dark themes in this one, friends. Nothing explicit, but definitely dark.

Stay cool and be safe!

***

A Monstrous Light

 

Three months after…

 

Beniel Tallance woke up to the hoarse sound of a mountain drake’s morning caw, with the smell of mildew in his nose and the taste of the evening’s wine sour in his mouth. He cursed his drunken last night self’s decision to get drunk and take shelter in this dank old barn, full of nothing but ancient horse shit and rotting straw. Fuck, it would have been better to set up camp in the rain than to fall asleep on a pile of bug-ridden old grain sacks that had, it seemed, disintegrated into a solid, soggy lump on the floor beneath him.

“You wouldn’t even recognize yourself if you didn’t do at least one stupid thing a day,” he grumbled, annoyed by the truth of it. The fact that he was in the abandoned village of Emmen Bar searching for a creature that might not even exist six months after gaining his freedom was proof of that.

Freedom. Ha. What freedom did he have now? The freedom to make all the decisions for himself he’d never wanted to anyway. The freedom to fuck whomever he pleased when no one was pleasing to him, to eat whatever he willed when nothing was tempting to him, to go where he wished when the only place he wished to be was with the ghost he was searching for.

It helped that he knew the alternative to his wanderings. Beniel would sooner pull out all his own teeth than return to the palace and be shackled to the new king. He trusted Ormyr more than most, which was still less than nothing, but he would not bind himself to another royal. He couldn’t.

Not when the one he had been meant to spend his life with was gone.

Enough morose thoughts, idiot. On your feet.

If he kept this up he’d lose the will to move and just lie on the bunch of mildewed sacks until rising, implacable rage tore him out of his deep despondence, and it hurt to push himself that far. He’d done it twice since the massacre, and while he hadn’t regretted not being able to let himself lie down and die, it nearly fucking broke him to be forced back to a place where he had to feel.

Up, fool. Up.

Beniel rolled off his back and onto his side with a groan, then slowly got his hands under him and pushed up until he could lean against the wall of the barn. Gods, he felt like shit. His head pounded and his stomach roiled, soured on a dinner of wine and nothing else. His hands trembled so badly he would barely be able to grip his sword if he needed to.

Disgraceful. What would Konnar say if he could see this pathetic display now?

No, it was no good for Beniel to try and shame himself with the memory of Konnar, not when he knew full well that the other man would have brought him water mixed with milkroot, to settle his stomach and ease the pain. When he knew Konnar would tease him for it, but not shame him, and stroke those long fingers across his scalp until his headache went away at last.

The hands of an artist. A musician. A scholar. Not a killer. That Konnar had been destined to be the greatest killer the Empire had ever known was the cruelest of ironies.

Beniel coughed once, to clear the dust from his lungs, then forced himself onto his feet. He staggered out into the damp morning air, wincing as a particularly rotten hunk of bag sloughed off the back of his jerkin, and headed for Flower.

Flower glared at him with her beady orange eyes, jaws straining at the bridle that bound them nearly closed. Shit, he’d forgotten to take it off last night. She hadn’t been able to forage at all. “Fuck,” he said, reaching for her head. “I’m sorry, let me—”

One of Flower’s forelimbs rose up and slashed the back of his forearm so fast he couldn’t dodge. Four long clawmarks bled through the filthy cloth of his shirt, and Beniel winced as the pain finally broke through the haze of his morning.

“Godsdamn fucking waste of a fucking egg, you piece of dragon shit,” he cursed through gritted teeth. Flower didn’t look sorry. She just looked satisfied. “I should take you to the edge of the Waste and feed you to your ancestors,” Beniel growled. “We’re close, you know. Less than five miles from here is the southern edge of the fucking Waste, and you’d make a nice meal for the Great Ones, you utter bitch.”

Flower glared at him. He glared right back, cradling his wounded arm against his chest. A moment later, her long, sticky tongue lolled out from between her close-clamped jaws, licking over the deep scratches. Almost immediately, they stopped bleeding. A moment later, they began to scab over, and the pain eased.

Drake spit was almost as good at treating pain as milkroot, but a lot harder to get. Drakes were smart creatures, too close a cousin to dragons not to be clever as fuck, and they knew their own worth. No wonder Flower was angry with him, after Beniel had abandoned her with her bridle and saddle still on while he collapsed in a drunken stupor.

“Sorry,” he said, ducking his head to emphasize his apology while scratching just behind her dark green eye ridges to show that he forgave her as well. “I’ve been a shitty companion lately, haven’t I?” He undid the buckles on the bridle and eased it off her long, boxy head, then removed the saddle and the rest of his supplies.

“Go hunt,” he told her, and she vanished into the forest with ease. It would mean a later start for them today, but then…where were they even going to go next? Emmen Bar had been his last solid lead, a town whose people had vanished seemingly overnight. Surely a terrible wrong had been done here, something to warrant the attention of the newest of the Great Ones. He had come here full of hope, desperate for answers, and found…

Abandonment, yes. Likely because of crop rot, which happened often when people settled so close to the Waste. A town that had been carefully evacuated, not destroyed, not wronged. Just…stupid people moving to correct their stupidity. An utter and complete waste of time.

Every move he’d made, every rumor he’d chased, every mile he’d trod for the past three months had been a fucking waste of time. The only good to come from it was getting more distance from his own memories, and Beniel was beginning to think that he could have done that in a warm tavern somewhere instead of driving himself to the edges of the goddamn continent staring the worst of humanity in the face. He’d been tracking down tragedy after heresy after horror, and for all that Ormyr was convinced that the rumors about the revivals were truth, Beniel was beginning to lose hope.

Ugh. No more philosophy this early in the…he squinted up at the sky. Eh, sure, it was still morning, or close enough. He needed to eat, drink, and bathe, not necessarily in that order. He reached for the waterskin attached to the outside of his pack and downed every drop of it in one long pull, then set it aside and pulled out his pots. Finding wood was easy enough—finding wood that was dry enough to use was another issue entirely.

Shit, but this was going to make his head hurt. Working minor weavings had become so much harder since Konnar…left, was the easiest way to think about it, he’d found. Without the prince’s innate powers to draw upon, Beniel was left to rely solely on his training and the strength of his will, and he hadn’t been the most dedicated student. A village charmweaver could probably run circles around him right now, but…he needed a fire, damn it. Beniel took off the glove covering his left hand, closed his eyes, and began to visualize what he needed.

Threads for heat, not flame…dimmer…dimmer, or you might set the whole godsdamn forest on fire, you fool. Weave them into the shape you need, pull them tight in your mind, draw them through your own soul to power the web, and then… He hissed an exhalation, extending the fingers of his sacred left hand toward the pile of wood. A rush of heat arose from the wood, dampness sizzling to the surface and evaporating into the sky as the weaving did its work. A little bit more and—

Beniel’s stomach suddenly rebelled, and he belched foully into the air, disrupting the power’s flow. The weaving vanished, and so did the steam. A second later, most of the water he’d thrown back made its way onto the bare dirt—not onto the pile of wood, at least.

“Fuck,” Beniel gasped, hands on his knees as he strived to catch his breath. “Fuck.” He couldn’t remember the last time a simple weaving had strained him so much. Had he really let himself fall so far in so little time? What would Konnar say?

“Nothing,” he gritted out, willing himself to believe it. Konnar was gone, gone, vanished in a monstrous light. Nothing Beniel did would bring him back, and chasing tales of death magic was like chasing down a debt—everyone was good for it until the time came to pay up, and then all of a sudden they were good for nothing at all.

Well, fuck it. He needed to get clean anyway. He got out his firestarter kit and set a small flame to burning, praying that it would catch, catch, damn you catch—

The flames spread. Smoke rose, and the wood began to burn in earnest.

Thank the Great Ones for small favors. Beniel poured the contents of his other waterskin into his single pot and set it in the flame, then began to pull his glove back on. The filthy appearance of his hand stayed him. He should bathe. It had been over a week since his last one, easily. Even if there had been people here, they would have been right to turn their noses up at him before he slept in their old, nasty barn.

Fine. Time for a cold bath. Beniel grabbed his bag and headed in the direction of the stream he could hear burbling a little ways off.

This was where a lifetime spent acting as a prince’s indulgence came in handy. Beniel had been inured to the simple discomforts of cold baths, ill-fitting clothes, and unending physical exertion from the age of eight onward. Korran had done his best to mitigate the worst of it, but that had gotten them into even more trouble when they were caught. Princes weren’t supposed to be kind to their indulgences. Indulgences were there to be used, literal whipping boys trained to take the pain and the punishment resulting from their princes’ acts of disobedience.

“I hate this,” Korran had said more than once, rinsing the blood from Beniel’s back with tears in his eyes. The healers didn’t let the boys take permanent harm, but they weren’t allowed to make recovery easy on them either, and many of the lashes scarred. Korran had been targeted by everyone for being a bastard, and that meant Beniel was beaten constantly for infractions both real and imagined. “I hate it, I hate it!” He had wrung the rag out with so much force it shredded. “As soon as I have my own command, I will never let anyone hurt you again, not for anything!”

“It’s why I’m here,” Beniel had replied. “To be beaten, so you aren’t.” He’d said it every time, and every single time Korran had looked him right in the eyes and said, “You deserve so much better.”

Beniel stripped off his filthy clothes and lowered himself into the creek. Gods, it was cold, so cold—a single candle’s warmth above freezing, if that. Why was it always this cold so close to the Waste?

The Great Ones suck the warmth from the ground, leach it from the sky, drain it from the water. They answer the prayers of those who bring them heat. Fire and sacrifice, flame and blood. Give to them and your prayers will be answered. Feed them, and you will know true power.

Beniel still wasn’t sure if the Great Ones were gods or demons—it was a hotly debated question in the more boring theological societies of Dascenne and beyond—but right now, he was inclined toward demons, because that was an ice shard floating by him in the water, and yeah, he needed to finish and get out of here. He scrubbed himself down with brutal efficiency, shaking by the end of it but determined to get the muck out of his too-long hair. Finally he felt clean enough to dry off and get into his last set of clean clothes. He’d have to get the rest laundered at the next town he came to…what was the name of it, just north of here, Emmen Lyy? Emmen—

The crack of a breaking stick gave Beniel pause in the middle of putting his fresh shirt on. He kept going, slowly, too cold to wait on regaining some warmth but on edge now. Was it Flower? For all her size, the drake was careful with how she moved, and knew better than to do something that could give away her position. Another animal? A—

A shock of white passed behind a tree, a white too bright to be anything other than clothing. Beniel pulled his breeches on and stuffed his feet back into his boots, unwilling to go into a potential confrontation partially nude. His hand itched to grab his sword, just a few feet away.

It could just be a villager gathering wood, like you. A final resident, perhaps, or someone tracking game. But if that was so, they wouldn’t be wearing white.

Boots finally in place, hair pushed back from his face, Beniel tracked the movement of whoever—or whatever—was out there in the woods. It seemed to be coming toward him, in a slow, zig-zagging manner. It wasn’t afraid of him, then. Was that a good thing? He was a scary guy—whoever it was should be fucking afraid of him. Finally the figure emerged from behind a thick copse of juniper bushes and raised its head to look at him.

Beniel just about dropped his sword.

It was a child. A girl, somewhere between eight and twelve, and she looked cold. Cold, bewildered, and more than a little afraid. Good gods, what was a child doing in this forsaken place?

“Are you all right?” he called out to her. She glanced from his face to his sword nervously, arms folded tight across her middle.

Ah. He put the sword down, then pulled the blanket he hadn’t had a chance to use last night out of his bedroll. “Here,” he said, shaking it out toward her. “Come and get this on, you must be cold. I won’t hurt you,” he assured her, and after another long moment of waiting, the girl stumbled over.

King’s get, she wasn’t wearing any shoes. There was no way she had gotten this far on her own. What kind of monster let a child loose in the godsdamned forest, much less without fucking shoes?

“Thank you,” she said faintly as she got close enough for him to wrap the blanket around her shoulders. He expected her to stand back, but she just kept moving until she bumped right into him. Beniel put an awkward arm around her skinny shoulders and patted her back.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?”

“I…I don’t know,” the girl said. He could feel her tremble through the thick woolen blanket. “I don’t remember.”

Beniel frowned, opened his mouth, then stopped himself. He wasn’t going to interrogate a child. Certainly not until he’d given her something hot to eat and made sure she wasn’t going to get sick from the cold. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get some breakfast. Do you mind if I carry you?” She shook her head, and he lifted her into his arms. She seemed to weigh less than his sword, and when he looked into her pale little face, her eyes were dazed, as though she wasn’t quite awake.

Was she drugged? How long has she been wandering?

Beniel carried her over to his fire, which was still blazing nicely. He pulled the saddle over and set it up like a chair, then set her gently on it and turned to his pot. The water had heated up nicely. He poured a cup of it straight into a mug—he’d run out of flavorings to steep in it three days ago—and added half a cup of blended grains and dried fruits to the remnants of the pot, then put the lid back on to let it absorb the water.

He set the pot down, then pressed the mug into her hands, making sure it wasn’t too hot to touch. “There,” he said. “Drink that, slowly. It’ll help warm you up.” The girl did so, taking tiny sips, and after she’d finished half the cup Beniel asked, “What’s your name?”

“Um…Cara.”

“Cara. That’s a nice name.”

She smiled suddenly. “It was my auntie’s name first. She shared it with me when I was born.”

“Your auntie, huh?” Now they were getting somewhere. “I’m sure your auntie is worried about you right now.”

“Oh, no.” Cara shook her head, sodden brown hair bunching against the sides of the blanket. “She died the year after my brother Olven was born.”

Well, shit. “What about your mother?” Beniel tried. “Is she still with you?”

“Mama…Mama!” Cara looked around wildly. “Oh, she’s going to be so worried about me!” She tried to set the cup down, but Beniel stopped her.

“She’s not here,” he said firmly. “I’ll help you find her, but you need to warm up first. Tell me where you live.”

“In Emmen Lay.”

Lay, that’s it. That was a good seven or eight miles to the north. What the hells was this child doing here?

For the first time, Beniel forced himself to move past the startlement of her existence and looked at her. The shift she wore—a nightshirt, probably, given the embroidery around the hem—was filthy, stained with mud and bits of leaf and something darker beneath that, something that had drained and drizzled through the cloth. He could see the remnants of those dark stains on her lower legs and feet, and a terrible, thrilling realization took hold of him.

“Cara,” Beniel said as calmly as he could. “Do you have any injuries, other than the scratches on your feet?”

The girl smiled shyly. “No, I’m fine.”

The amount of blood on her clothing said she should be nowhere near fine. He doubted she’d taken the outfit off of someone else—it had been sewn to fit a little girl, and there was a paucity of belongings in this abandoned village. Either she’d gotten very lucky and found the shirt, or she’d been standing right next to someone who’d died messily and she simply couldn’t remember it, or…

Or…

He couldn’t let himself think about that right now, both because he didn’t want to get his hopes up and because if he thought too long about the kind of person who would murder a little girl and leave her to rot in these woods…

You can’t do anything about it right now. Get her home, then find the person responsible.

He was just handing her the pot of cereal and a spoon when Flower came back into view at the edge of the clearing. Cara was immediately entranced, as children tended to be when they saw a drake that looked like his. “Oh my goodness,” she breathed, almost dropping the pot. “She’s so big! Is she yours?”

“More like I’m hers,” Beniel admitted.

“What’s her name? Is she friendly?”

“She’s called Flower,” he said. As for being friendly, normally he’d have said yes—despite her being a war mount, Flower was a gentle beast around children of any breed. But right now, she wasn’t coming over to them. If anything, she looked like she wanted to leave again directly, clawing at the ground and snorting anxiously before turning in a circle. “I need to check on her,” Beniel said, getting to his feet. “Are you all right to stay here by yourself for a bit?”

“Of course,” Cara said, with all the self-assurance of a child who knew far more than the adult they were being forced to deal with. Beniel forced a smile for her, then headed for Flower. Before he could touch her, though, she turned and stalked back into the woods.

“Godsdamn overgrown snake,” he muttered, following in her tracks. “What I wouldn’t give for you to just be able to talk to me instead of making me follow you around like I’m your drake.” Flower just ignored him and kept going, gliding through thorny thickets that left Beniel cursing as he gained fresh scratches.

He was just about to hop on her back, saddle or no, when Flower stopped, snorting heavily. She clawed at the canopy of branches in front of them, branches that looked almost as if they had been woven together to create some sort of…wall?

“Back up.” Beniel clicked his tongue twice and Flower moved. In a flash, he had his sword out, slicing straight through the too-dense foliage. Anger boiled inside of him, hot and heady, more than he’d let himself feel in weeks. Was this where that coward, that child-killer, was hiding? Shivering behind a weaving of trees, like it would save him from Beniel’s wrath?

Branches parted, and…ah. It was too late for wrath—or at least, too late for Beniel’s to do any good. The corpse on the ground looked like it had been soaking up the dry heat of the desert for a month, not rotting in a cold, wet forest. Even odder, the furnishings in the little haven—a pack, a set of clothes hanging beside a firepit, a cup and plate—looked like they hadn’t been out in the weather long. The plate had no more than a few fallen pine needles on it, and the inside of the pack was dry and free of insects and animals.

It was more than odd. It was unnatural. Beniel took a closer look at the body. It was a man, that much was clear, and if the look on his face was anything to go by, he’d died in absolute agony. He was bent at the waist, clutching his own genitals in grasping hands. Beniel moved one of them back, and—Great Ones, had the man’s cod been set on fire? What else could cause that blackening, that shriveling? What else could make a man’s eyes bulge so hideously, could force him to dig his own fingernails into his testicles as if it would be better to rip them from his body than suffer the pain of leaving them attached?

What could make a man who couldn’t have been dead for more than a single day look like a sandblasted mummy?

Anger turned to excitement, excitement turned to fear, fear turned back into anger. You son of a bitch, you couldn’t have waited one more fucking day for me to get here? He held in his shouts with effort—he wasn’t so far from Cara that she wouldn’t hear him if he started screaming obscenities, and he didn’t want her to be afraid.

Well then. Time to move the fuck on and see what could be found out in Emmen Lay. Beniel examined the body for anything that might serve as an identifier, and found a torque around the man’s thin, wrinkled neck. It was thin, but rich—one of the three strands was made of yellow gold, another of silver, the third of copper, not traditional steel. A wealthy man then, a man who had never seen war, had never fought for the Emperor or one of his brood. A lucky man, to have avoided that.

Unlucky now, motherfucker. Or worse…Beniel thought about the stains on Cara’s shift again, and knew that this man was much, much worse.

He left the body there. Something would come along and helpfully desecrate it before long.

As he and Flower returned to Emmen Bar, he saw Cara standing by the fire, holding his blanket tight around her body as she stared fretfully into the distance. As soon as she saw him, she relaxed somewhat. “Hello,” she said with an awkward wave as he rejoined her. “I…was worried you weren’t coming back.”

“Of course I was coming back,” Beniel said easily, tucking the torque behind his back until he could get it into one of his saddlebags.

“It’s just…there are scary things in these woods.” She pulled the blanket even tighter around herself. “I don’t remember how I know that, but I know it’s true.”

It’s probably a blessing that she doesn’t remember. “Cara,” Beniel said gently, not reaching out to her, just leaving his hands at his sides, where she could see him. “I guarantee you I’m scarier than anything in these woods, and I’ll protect you with my life until we get you back to your mother. All right?”

Cara hesitated for a moment, then smiled so widely it was like seeing the sun through the clouds. “All right. Thank you! She must be so worried about me and Olven.”

“Who’s Olven again?” Beniel asked as he packed up his cooking set. To hell with washing it right now, he needed to get this child back home.

“My little brother. He’s almost two years younger than me, but he acts like he’s two years older.” She sighed the sigh of the put-upon. “We were playing together when…um…” Her brow furrowed. “When…”

Oh, fuck. Is there another child I have to find out here?

First things first—he needed to get Cara back to her village. He clicked his tongue and Flower came over, hunching down with ill grace to allow him to put the saddle on her. “Emmen Lay is to the north?” he asked as he tightened the girth, then began reattaching the bags.

“Yes, seven miles along the road.”

Too far to go with a struggling child—or children—without some sort of mount. Whatever, the beast had surely wandered off by now, probably back home. Beniel considered offering the girl a chance to bathe in the creek, but thought better of it. Given what he thought had happened to her, he didn’t want to strain her trust any farther than he had to, and the sooner he got her back to her mother and figured out what exactly had happened here, the better.

“We’d better get going, then.” He held out a hand. “May I help you onto Flower’s back?”

Her face brightened again. “Yes please!” He took her hand and tugged her up and onto the drake’s back—Flower crouched especially low to make it easier—then checked his campsite to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything.

Pack, saddlebags, sword, ornery drake. He was good to go.

He swung up onto Flower behind Cara, who immediately leaned back against his chest. She was shivering. Beniel frowned, then took off his dark green cloak and added it to the layers surrounding her. “Better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He grabbed the long, stiff reins and twitched the one on the right. Flower spun around elegantly and immediately loped for the road out of the village. Her sinuous, side-to-side gait seemed to throw Cara for a moment, but she adapted quickly enough, and soon she was giggling and stroking Flower’s long green neck.

“She’s so beautiful,” Cara said.

“She certainly thinks so,” Beniel agreed.

The child looked up and over her shoulder, a pout on her face. “No, she is! She’s the most beautiful drake I’ve ever seen! We only have donkeys in the village, and they’re not so fun to ride. Uncle Weylin had a horse, but…” A strange expression came over Cara’s face then, a look of utter blankness. “Um…what was I saying?”

“You were talking about the donkeys,” Beniel said, deciding to table the discussion of “Uncle Weylin” for the moment. If what he thought had happened to her really had happened to her, then it was entirely possible she’d never be able to remember anything substantial about the man. It was just the sort of touch Korran would add to a resurrection, that softhearted fool.

“Right, we have donkeys in our village, not drakes. I’ve only seen travelers on drakes before, and one of them let me pet hers. Her drake was white—not like snow though, more like the white you see when…” Cara chatted happily in this vein for half an hour or so, eventually getting distracted as she saw sights that she recognized.

“That’s the mill!” She pointed excitedly at a slate-grey gambrel roof in the distance. “And the shrine!” Every village, no matter how rudimentary, had a shrine to the Great Ones in it—three spires erected on the roof, in the shape of a triangle. This shrine, however, seemed to have people working on the roof of it. Another spire was already coming into shape, right in the center of the other three.

A new expression of an old belief, or a new facet of that belief entirely?

They entered Emmen Lay with very little fanfare, no one noticing their arrival. It seemed like everyone who lived in the village was gathered around the shrine, some chanting on their knees, others standing and singing, yet others muttering as they stood in groups. A woman at the forefront of the crowd sang loudest of all, every other word breaking on a sob. There was a little boy in her arms, looking back over her shoulder. When he saw Cara, his mouth opened in a shriek, and he struggled until he’d freed himself from the woman’s arms.

“Cara!” the boy screamed, running toward them. “Cara!”

“Olven!” Cara slipped off Flower’s back and ran as fast as she could for the boy, slipping on the muddy, churned-up road but not stopping until they reached each other. The boy flung himself against her, wrapping her up in an embrace so tight it had to hurt, but Cara held him back just as hard.

The woman by the shrine, who’d turned frantically after the child slipped away from her, almost fell down when she saw the pair together. Beniel watched her face go completely white, her shoulders drop and body wilt before she regained control of herself and, picking up her skirts, ran for the children. She didn’t scream, didn’t smile, had stopped singing—she just ran with grim determination, like she wouldn’t believe what she was seeing until she felt it for herself.

She stopped a few feet away from the children, and murmured, “Cara?”

Cara looked up. “Mama!”

That was it for the woman, who collapsed right there onto all fours, then crawled the rest of the way to the pair and pulled them both against her. She rocked them, weeping uncontrollably, and Beniel couldn’t watch any more. He walked Flower around the edge of the square they had entered, toward the shrine. Most people were heading for the newly reunited family, but some had stuck by their worship, calling out louder and louder now. “In glory, in glory! In the light of your glory, oh Great One, the innocent are saved! In the light of your glory, the wicked are brought to justice!”

It was a variation on the most common hymn to the Great Ones: protection from the Frost, protection from the Plague, protection from the Monsters of the Waste. This was the first time that Beniel had ever heard a Great One being praised for doing anything as specific as saving innocent lives, though. The three Great Ones were elemental forces given fleshly appearance, and even then all who saw them—and there weren’t many—described them as beautiful but terrible beings, as golden as flame or as green as moss, covered in spines and adorned with wings and surrounded by a mist which always obscured part of them. They were ferocity incarnate, both protective and dire, and they didn’t concern themselves with minor affairs of an individual’s life and death.

Until now, apparently.

One of the men stopped singing when he saw Beniel approach. “Welcome, stranger,” he said, his voice full of joy. “Welcome to the site of a miracle!”

Beniel dismounted Flower, so that he could speak to the man face-to-face. It was easier to get a sense of another person’s honesty that way. “Thank you,” he said. “Tell me about this miracle, if you would.”

“Of course, of course,” he said, his ruddy face shining with tears. Tears, rolling down the cheeks of a man who looked like a lifelong ironworker, every exposed inch of skin scarred from sparks, his arms as thick as Beniel’s thighs. “It was truly a blessing. We had heard the stories, of course, of a new Great One with the power to triumph over death itself, to turn back time and reward the righteous with life. In truth, most of us considered such accounts little better than lies. Life at the edge of the Waste is hard enough without filling the heads of our children with fluff and…well.” He cleared his throat, getting back on track. “Last night, Mistress Claryse returned home from her field to find her son Olven dead, her daughter Cara missing. She—”

“What did the townspeople think initially of the disappearance?” Beniel interrupted.

“Oh, we…” The man’s look of rapture faded into discomfort. “We all suspected who was behind it,” he said. “It had been a subject of discussion now and again, but how could we berate a man with little more than looks to go on? And him being Claryse’s own brother?”

Aha. “So you suspected the children’s uncle.”

“Aye.” The discomfort had turned to utter shame. “There was something about the way Weylin looked at Cara that gave pause, but she and her brother were always together, and their mother was always near. They got schooling in the mornings, and barely saw the man but for supper some evenings. No one wanted to be cruel to him, after losing his wife not long ago. And then…” He spread his hands. “Mistress Claryse returned home yesterday to find Olven dead. The lad’s throat was crushed. Cara was missing, and Weylin was nowhere to be found.”

“And so she prayed to the Great One?” Beniel asked.

“No,” the man said. Beniel was surprised. “No, her sorrows were too vast for prayer to touch them. She clung to her son and screamed her rage to the heavens, for a whole night. And then as the sun rose…” He smiled. “There was a light. A heavenly light, it was…a light from the Great Ones, searing and awful and beautiful. All of us saw it. Woke me out of a sound sleep,” he added, “burned right through my eyelids it did. And then…Olven was back.”

And so was Cara. That was another element of the stories that had stayed consistent so far—the light coming at dawn. Whatever Korran had become, it seemed like there was some advantage to him waiting until the sun rose over the northern horizon before utilizing his powers.

Where did he go in the meantime? What did he do when he wasn’t saving murdered children?

“And you, traveler, tell us how you found Cara!” the man said, and now there was an audience of people listening avidly, praise postponed at the prospect of hearing about the other half of a miracle from the man who’d brought the missing child back.

Well, fuck that. It wasn’t any of their business. This was for their mother to hear first and foremost, and it would be up to her to decide what she wanted to share. Beniel opened his mouth to tell the man to shove off—politely, or as politely as he could—but was prevented by Mistress Claryse struggling to her feet in the distance, still holding her small, very alive son in one arm while keeping the other wrapped around her daughter’s shoulders. She moved through the crowd with them, and the other townspeople made space, although some reached out to brush their fingers against Cara’s shift or Olven’s hair.

Mistress Claryse stopped in front of Beniel. She was clearly exhausted, her face bruised from hours of horrific grief followed by terrible joy. She looked haggard, and her whole body trembled minutely, but Beniel knew better than to offer to help her with her beloved burdens. “Sir,” she said in a hoarse voice, “my daughter tells me you found her this morning. You cared for her and brought her home to me. I am forever in your debt.”

Beniel shook his head. “She was well enough when I found her. She would have made her way home to you eventually, I simply hastened the process.”

“Still, allow me to offer you bread and beer.” Those were the most common hosting gifts in the south, and far more palatable to Beniel than the sharp, salted wine he’d been brought up with. “I beg of you.”

“No need to beg, Mistress.” He grabbed Flower’s reins. “Lead on.”

The crowd parted even more readily with Beniel and his intimidating drake sticking close to the family, and they reached her home, a small cottage off the main street, in less than a minute. The other townspeople bowed and then turned back toward the shrine, lifting their voices in praise again, but Beniel was just as happy to shut the door on the noise of it. Mistress Claryse pulled the guest’s chair out for him at the table in the front room. There were half a dozen enormous loaves of coarse peasant bread on the table, and twice as many jugs of beer. Clearly her neighbors had been generous with the poor woman recently.

Cara was stepping a bit gingerly thanks to the cuts on her feet, and her mother noticed it. “Darling, there’s warm water in the kitchen,” she told her daughter. “Please use it to wash off, and then I’ll tend to your feet. Olven, get your sister clean clothes,” she told her son, and the little boy, who had been silent so far except when he ran to his sister, nodded and trotted off to the back of the cottage.

“All right, mama,” Cara said easily enough, then looked at Beniel. “You’re not going to leave yet, are you?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he assured her, and she nodded before following her brother out of the room.

“Here, sir.” Mistress Claryse set an empty bowl down in front of him, and handed over a cloth already soaked in orphim soap. As he wiped his hands, she poured water down to cleanse them, then cleared the cloth and bowl and began to cut a tremendous slice of bread off for him.

He wanted to tell her to save more of it for herself and her family—they could undoubtedly use it, even with the plenitude they had right now—but then his stomach growled. Right, he’d given his breakfast to Cara.

Mistress Claryse set the bread down in front of him, then poured a tall mug of small beer and presented that as well. “Would you like oil?” she asked. “Or salt? I’ve heard you northerners prefer salt with everything.”

“Not me,” he said, and took a bite of the bread. It was hearty, almost too much so, and scraped down his throat. He chased it with a swallow of beer, then asked, “How did you know I’m from the north?”

“The style of your cloak,” she said. “None of the great cities of the south employ that sort of draping. And the fabric is thin, thinner than anything we would weave down here, even for a notable.” She sat down across from him and sipped at her own beer, her eyes never leaving him. “You found my daughter, and for that I’m forever grateful. But tell me, please, did you find…anything else?”

“I did.” Now was as good a time to do it as any, while the children were out of the room. He took the torque out from beneath the bag at his feet and set it on the table between them. The woman reached toward it but didn’t touch it, tired tears coming to her eyes. “The bearer was dead,” Beniel continued. “He looked like he had been dead for a long time, but your daughter told me this couldn’t be true.”

A wide, relieved smile broke out on the woman’s face, rendering her beautiful. “Thank the Great Ones, thank the Lord of Vengeance, all praise to them,” she murmured. “Weylin…he killed Olven yesterday, and stole away Cara before I came home. I found my boy on the ground, black marks around his neck, and my daughter…” She pressed a hand to her mouth and swallowed hard.

“I knew what he must have done to her,” she said hoarsely. “The way he looked at her…but he was my only family left, and I had no grounds to push him out of our lives, not on the strength of what I knew. Not even after the death of his wife.” She glanced at Beniel. “I’m sure now that he killed her. Why I don’t know, but I’m sure of it.”

“He won’t be killing anyone else,” Beniel assured her. “And whatever he may have done to your daughter, she doesn’t remember it. She doesn’t remember much of yesterday at all.”

“It’s a blessing from the Great One, the Lord of Vengeance,” Mistress Claryse said, clasping her hands on top of each other over her heart and tilting her chin up in a posture of prayer. “I had heard rumors, tales, and…I never thought he would answer my call, but he was my only hope. You understand?” She looked at him, her eyes brimming with tears again. “You understand, don’t you? How the worst thing in the world can become your only choice?”

“I understand.” There was nothing he knew better. That was the story of Beniel’s life, from his miserable birth to his position as an indulgence to his search now for the creature that had been the man he’d loved. A creature that could take the life from a killer and give it back to the children he’d murdered. Who’d reputedly done the same in three different towns that Beniel knew of so far, and would certainly do so again if he knew Korran at all. A man become a Great One, the Lord of Vengeance now.

“You’re looking for him too.” Mistress Claryse stared intently at him. “Because you have someone you want him to bring back as well.”

I want him to come back to himself. I want him to give up being your Lord and return to me as he was. Saying so would probably get Beniel slapped, so he said nothing, just took another drink.

Cara and her little brother reentered the room, both clean, Olven clutching his sister’s hand so hard her fingertips had gone blue. She didn’t seem to mind. Their mother smiled beatifically and held her arms out to her children. “Come here to me.” They came, and she enfolded them in her embrace. Cara hugged her, but kept her eyes on Beniel.

“Will you stay in Emmen Lay?” Cara asked hopefully.

Beniel shook his head. “Unfortunately, I have to move on today.” To find another village, another death, and see if he couldn’t catch Korran in the act of resurrection.

Mistress Claryse frowned. “Surely you can rest long enough to accept our hospitality for a night or two. Let us restock you, as well—I don’t want any of this food to go to waste.” It went unspoken that it was probably Beniel’s presence that was keeping visitors away from her door right now, neighbors insisting on seeing Cara and Olven again, on proving to themselves that the miracle was real.

You might as well. He was low on supplies, after all. And he needed to wash his clothes…and drink a lot more of this beer. “One night, mistress.”

She nodded. “That’s all I ask.”

It day wasn’t yet half over, so Beniel found much to do for himself, and for Mistress Claryse. She took his clothes away the moment he asked for clean water, insisting she would wash them with her own, and he in turn repaired the gated paddock just behind her home, where he let Flower settle in after grooming her pebbled scales and rinsing the mud from her claws. People watched him at it, curious but not quite bold enough to speak up, and when he went back inside a murmur went up from the watching crowd.

Despite her mother encouraging her to rest, Cara insisted that she felt fine. She joined Beniel in the tiny alcove that was the preparation space for meals and watched as he peeled some vegetables, then sliced through a rasher of salted marsh hog. “I thought you were too fancy to know how to cook,” she said.

“Fancy? Me? Pshaw,” he said teasingly as he slid the whole of the chopped foods into a pot, then started looking through Mistress Claryse’s spice pots. Peppercorns, and bay, and—she had a decent assortment, most of what he was looking for. He poured out the amounts he needed into a mortar and began to grind them up.

“You are, though,” Cara replied. “You have fancy clothes, and Flower is very fancy. And your sword is fancy.”

“My sword is fancy,” Beniel acknowledged, “but I didn’t get that for myself. It was a gift. So was Flower.”

“She was a gift?” Cara’s eyes were wide. “You have very nice friends.”

“I do.” I did. Even though they’d been given to him so that he could make war, Beniel still appreciated everything he’d ever received at Korran’s hand. Thinking about it made him look at Cara in a new light. She wasn’t a gift, not to him—she shouldn’t be looked at that way by anyone—but she had been returned to life by Korran’s actions, inscrutable as his whereabouts might be now. She was special…whether she wanted to be or not.

“Cara,” Beniel began, then faltered as he tried to figure out what to say. He stopped grinding herbs and knelt down in front of her. “Over the next few days and months, maybe years, people will treat you differently. Because what happened to you, the way you…came back, that was the act of a Great One. You understand that, yes?”

She nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

“But just because that’s true, that doesn’t mean you have to let people make you into something you don’t want to be. If they try to tell you you can’t do something, or that you must do something else just because of how you came back, you can tell them they’re wrong. You’re still you, and you might have to fight to make people respect that, but it’s worth it. Don’t let anyone else be in charge of your destiny.” He felt like an absolute hypocrite speaking this way—he had never been his charge of his own destiny, he still wasn’t—but Cara nodded in understanding.

“I’ll stand up for myself,” she said. “And I won’t let them make me the guardian of the shrine if I don’t want to do it.”

Ugh, what? She was far too young to be a shrine’s guardian, and this one was too small to support her anyway…although it might become a spot for pilgrimages, the way things were going now. “Good,” he said. “Now, go stoke the fire so I can get dinner cooking.” Cara nodded and ran into the main room. Beniel saw Mistress Claryse pass by the alcove entry as he got to his feet, but she didn’t stop to talk to him, or confront him, just nodded as she went by.

Dinner was early, and so was bedtime—the children were exhausted by the time they had food in them, and even though the shouts of worship an exultation at the shrine got louder as the sun hit the southern horizon, the noise hardly seemed to register with them. Mistress Claryse helped Beniel set up a pallet near the fire, ten times more comfortable than what he’d slept on the night before, before retiring to her own chamber with both children. “Wake us before you leave in the morning?” she asked.

“I will.” Then she left, and he was alone in the front room, listening to prayer songs and staring at glowing coals until he finally grew tired enough to drift into slumber.

He woke up on at the edge of a desolate plain, sand and grit coarse beneath his cheek. He sneezed as he sat up, blowing dust out of his nose as he looked around. The sun was high, but it wasn’t hot like it should have been. The wind kept the heat at bay, but the smell of rotting bodies was already spreading across the killing field.

Everywhere, there were dead. Dead soldiers wearing the colors of the Emperor’s rogue heir, the man who had come to represent everything evil in the Empire. Dead soldiers wearing the red and gold of the Emperor himself, the proud protector of the Inner Land, whose prayers to the Great Ones helped keep the Waste at bay. Dead princes and princesses, with their indulgences lying beside them. One yet alive, Ormyr, but still unconscious and better for it. And in the center of it all…

He still looked larger than life, even as a dead man. The Emperor had died on his feet, blasted so utterly with necromantic energy that his armor had fused into a solid mass around his desiccated body. He held his sacred spear in one hand, the end of it broken off, and his sword in the other. His helmeted head was tilted toward the sky, but the faceplate was open. His eyes were gone, burned out of his skull, and his mouth gaped wide in horror, the spell that had filled it replaced by a scream once Korran’s magic hit him.

And there was Korran, at his father’s feet. Not in the golden armor he’d been forced into that fateful morning, armor that had never suited him, but in the white robes he’d always preferred back at Dascenne. His long blond hair draped along the sides of his face like a shroud, and one look at his shaking shoulders was enough to tell Beniel he was weeping.

The Great Ones themselves couldn’t have stopped Beniel from running to his prince’s side, dropping to his knees beside him and pulling his hands from his face. “He doesn’t deserve your tears,” he told Korran.

“No,” Korran agreed, his breath still hitching with sobs. “He doesn’t. But I can’t bear to look at everyone else. If I did, I would cry forever.”

Beniel felt a stab of frustration pierce him. It was a common feeling, when it came to Korran. “This was his fault,” he said, pointing at the fused Emperor accusatorily. “There is no one else to blame! He would have murdered all of you, and for what? To continue a lie that let him live a dozen lifetimes, and feast on the souls of his own children!”

“I killed them anyway!” Korran wailed.

“You freed them,” Beniel insisted. “It was always their lot to die. Ours, too. The fact that any of us lived is a miracle I can place right at your feet.”

Korran reached out a hand and cupped Beniel’s face, finally meeting his eyes. He looked so tired, Beniel’s prince. He longed to pull him closer, to shield him from the harshness of this reality, but it was already too late. What was done was done.

Except with Korran, that wasn’t quite true. “You saved two children,” Beniel said softly. “Cara and Olven.”

Korran nodded. “Innocent lives, like the ones I should have saved here.” He looked around again at the bodies. “I killed hundreds for the sake of getting rid of a tyrant, and ended up deifying myself at the same time.”

“That part was stupid,” Beniel said.

“No, that was the best thing I could do,” Korran argued with a little smile on his face. “If I hadn’t transformed, how could I repay my debts? How could I even begin to balance the scales, if I had remained just a man?”

“There are no scales,” Beniel argued, “except those that exist inside your mind. You are not responsible for what happened here.”

“Yet you cannot deny that my change has led to good,” Korran said. And Beniel wanted to argue, but…he couldn’t. He couldn’t remember Cara, in her dirty shift, or Olven who screamed for his sister, and say that their existence wasn’t good, and that their murderer hadn’t gotten what he deserved. “You do see it,” Korran murmured, sidling closer on his knees. “I knew you would. It is better this way.”

“Better would be if I were there to help you,” Beniel argued, closing his eyes as Korran’s other hand stroked his cheek. He felt cherished by his prince, surrounded by him in a way he hadn’t felt for three long, terrible months. “Let me help you,” he pleaded. “Let me come to you, let me be a part of this.”

“Darling, my darling,” Korran said. He was close enough now that their lips nearly touched, and his warm breath was soft against Beniel’s face. “You deserve more than chasing after a lost god. You deserve your peace.”

“I will never have peace without you,” Beniel swore. “And I will never stop looking for you, even if finding you takes me all my life.”

Korran shook his head. “Don’t say that. I—it makes me want you even more, but I can’t control where I go yet, I just follow the sounds of the screams and the hope, and—Ben, darling, please. Don’t live your life chasing horrors,” he begged. “Go back to Dascenne, make my brother give you a job, a sinecure, a—a new purpose, whatever you want, but the thought of you wasting your life pursuing me is a horror all its own.”

Beniel stared into his lover’s dark blue eyes and wished he could obey him. He wished he could ease his heart, but he’d have to cut out his own to do so. “Wherever you go, I’ll follow you,” he said. “I can’t help it. It’s what I’m for.”

“No, no…” Korran leaned in and kissed him, hard and desperate, then peppered his face with more kisses. Beniel held him through it, returning the embraces when he could, so grateful to have Lorran in his arms once more he would have tolerated anything, any pain, for this. “You will learn to hate me,” Korran whispered at last. “You will lose your heart to longing and anger, and you deserve so much more. You always have. I’m not worth your devotion, Beniel, none of us are.”

“I wish I could please you in this,” Beniel whispered in his lover’s ear, and he truly did. “I have always wanted to please you. But I can’t let you go.” It was beaten into his flesh, broken into his bones, and hammered into his heart. Some of it was from years of training, but far more of it was simply Korran—who he was, and what he deserved. Everything. “I can’t, so don’t feel sorry for me. Just let me find you.”

“But I don’t know where I’m going to go next!” Korran cried. “I don’t, I would tell you, but I—” All of a sudden he froze. He went so motionless he looked like a statue, and then his eyes filled up with light, and he opened his mouth and screamed in agony and then—

He vanished in a monstrous light, and Beniel woke up alone with tears on his face and the smell of ash from the fire mingling with the coppery scent of battlefield blood.

He left early that day, despite Mistress Claryse’s offer of breakfast. “I have somewhere to be,” he told her honestly. He didn’t know where yet, but that didn’t matter.

Cara lunged forward and clung to the end of his cloak as he hoisted himself up onto Flower. “Will you ever come back?” she asked in a small voice.

“I don’t know,” Beniel said honestly. “But you have a better protector than me in your life, Cara. You have your mother, and your brother.” He smiled at her. “And you have the Lord of Vengeance. If you can, remember to offer him a prayer of thanks every now and then, whenever you’re feeling happiest. Trust me, he will appreciate it, and he will never forget you. Neither will I.”

“I…I will.” Cara gave in to her mother’s urgings and stepped back, and Beniel guided his drake out of their pen and away from their house without another word.

He led his mount through the center of town, where some people were up early, working yet again on the fourth spire of the shrine. They stopped their work to watch him as Beniel stopped before it and drew the four fingers of his right hand down his face and throat before finally forming a fist over his heart. Traditionally, that movement was made with three fingers, but as far as he was concerned, tradition had ended the day Korran was taken from him. He would let his prince know that he was thought of, even if no one else did.

“I will find you,” he said firmly. “I swear it.” Then he and Flower left the village of Emmen Lay, and its murmuring people and miracle children, behind, in search of fresh atrocity.