Chương 26: Part 26 - Zhecima

I'm often asked if there was a moment when it seemed like all hope was lost, which I find amusing because it implies that I didn't spend almost the entirety of those days in a constant state of mortal terror. That last night in Sjatel, though, as the smothering blanket of dust turned from red to inky black, as the thunder drowned out the cries of panic and terror and the formless dark resolved itself into grasping, silent hands - well. I will not say it was our most dire moment, for it wasn't.

Even so, there have been nights since then when the wind and thunder sing just the right song to bring the taste of dust back into my mouth. I pass those nights in a well-lit room. - Tasjadre Ra Novo, Jesa Sagoja: Zhetam Asade The sea wind gusted slightly through the open window, a warm evening breeze redolent with the far-off smells of cooking and the perfume of the flowering trees that lined the harbor.

A cheery string of qim cast the room in warm light and provoked a hypnotic twinkle from the blade of Goresje's sword in his hand. Jesse blinked, looking around. A small vase on the nightstand held a bouquet of purple flowers, and above the bed hung an unskilled but emotive landscape of the high desert at sunrise.

"I like what you've done with the place," he said. The bright-eyed woman smiled at him from the corner of the room, then looked aside to the new decor.

"It was an experiment," she replied.

"With art?" Jesse asked, raising an eyebrow. She shook her head.

"With novelty," she said, pacing around to sit on the bed. Jesse frowned and sat beside her, laying the sword on the covers - but his hand still rested firmly on the grip.

"I'm not sure I understand," he admitted. There was a long pause while she sat beside him, looking around the room with its hodgepodge of homey accoutrements.

"I'm not sure I do either," she said.

"That's part of the problem. I wasn't made for understanding. Most of what I am are these fragments that I invoke without knowing how they work, what the benefits are - and the cost." She sighed and shook her head.

"I'm just supposed to marshal and wield them when the need matches their purpose. So far that's been adequate, but only barely."

"I mean, we're not dead yet," Jesse said wryly, his nascent smile dying when he saw the dour look on her face. She seemed oddly tense, and he noted that her eyes darted to his hand resting on the sword's grip.

"It's been closer than I'd like, closer than you think," she replied.

"I've come to realize that my control has been lacking. If I'm to do more than blindly trust in the fragments then the parts of me that live in the gaps between need to be stronger, so I'm trying…" She gestured at the vase of flowers. Out the window, there was a faint peal of thunder over the noise of the surf. They both turned to look at the noise, and when Jesse looked back her face had become grim.

"I think you've done a good job," Jesse reassured her.

"With keeping us alive as well as with the decorating. And if you're looking for more ways to help, I had actually been trying to talk to you with that in mind. We've been attempting to activate the gateway without much success so far and I was hoping you might have some answers." She looked at him quizzically.

"The gateway?" she asked.

"What can I do with the gateway?" Jesse stared back at her for a second, feeling a bit flat-footed.

"Ah," he said.

"I was hoping you'd know that. We're just trying to get it working. I thought that maybe you had some knowledge about them, a fragment or something."

"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head.

"I wasn't given any knowledge about the gateway."

"Do you think you could take a look at it, at least? I know the sword gives you a sort of boost, maybe we could-""No!" she shouted, startling him. There was a beat of awkward silence before she continued in a more level tone.

"No, we can't use the sword," she said firmly.

"It can't help us with something like the gateway regardless." He looked at her skeptically.

"That was a very firm answer," he noted.

"Mind telling me what's up?" She looked at the blade in his hand for a long moment before raising her eyes to meet his.

"Taking the sword may have been a mistake," she said. Jesse held it up, surprised at her evident dislike for the blade.

"A mistake?" he asked incredulously.

"You as much as told me to choose it in the vault. I'm fairly certain we'd be dead without it."

"You were almost dead because of it," she retorted.

"It's-" She paused, looking troubled, then stood to walk to his other side.

"I hadn't mentioned it before because I haven't yet figured out how to explain, at least not properly. I was going to pause and keep my distance from the danger until I was ready." She sighed.

"But it seems we may not have the time. I can show you." She bent down and grabbed the sword, sliding his hand gently off the grip. With an effort she carried it blade-down to the wall opposite the bed and held the hilt against the plaster. His vision seemed to blur and Jesse blinked rapidly against a stinging sensation in his eyes. When his sight cleared the sword was gone. In its place there was a narrowly-framed wooden door.

"There may have been greater purpose in my creation, but there is none in my actions," she said quietly.

"I pushed you to the sword because I felt that it was like me, in some way. Nothing more than that." Jesse rose and walked closer to the door, feeling oddly hesitant as he drew near. The air around the dark wood had a sharp, crisp feeling to it, all the qualities of cold without the change in temperature. She laid her hand upon the doorknob and looked at him, warning and a hint of trepadition in her eyes.

"Don't touch anything," she said, "and stay close to me." Before he could inquire she pushed the door open. A draft of cool air rushed out, replacing the pleasant evening air with the scent of damp stone and something less tangible, the sense of a deep place that had never known sunlight. He failed to suppress a shiver as they passed through the doorway. They were in a narrow hallway of blackstone, utterly dark but for a string of qim entwined in the woman's fingers.

Jesse was quite sure she hadn't been holding anything a few seconds prior, but as it was hardly the strangest thing currently happening he let it pass without comment. With her other hand she took one of Jesse's, leading him forward into the hall. It turned a few times before ending in a tall arched doorway, visible in the dark by a line of pale light that seeped under it.

As the warm light of the qim fell upon the door Jesse saw that it was heavy wood bound in metal, covered from threshold to peak with fine scriptwork. Despite their size the woman opened them effortlessly. The room beyond was intensely bright after the murky hallway, and for a moment Jesse felt snow-blind as he blinked away tears. When his eyes adjusted he looked up at a cavernous, vaulted hall that seemed to stretch away nearly to the limit of his vision.

Light streamed in from tall windows near the apex of the room - not sunlight, but a cold, wan light that cast a fluorescent pallor where it played over the stone. The base of the hall was lined with countless small alcoves. Each was flanked with ornate columns or statuary, from depictions of men and beasts to odd, formless abstracts that twisted and rippled in the glaring light from above.

"What are they?" Jesse whispered. He had felt an odd reluctance to make noise in the stillness but, as he spoke, found that he needn't have worried. The hall drank up the sound of his question as it was barely past his lips. Jesse blinked and looked around warily - the effect was oddly stifling. The woman didn't reply, but led him slowly forward down the length of the great hall. Jesse walked close beside her, keeping within the warmer light from the string of coins in her hand.

He didn't know what would happen if he strayed too far, but the radiance from the windows above had a bleak, numbing quality to it that promised unpleasant consequences should he attempt to wander. They drew near to the first alcove, bracketed by statues of men struggling under heavy burdens held across their shoulders on a yoke. The figures were uncannily detailed, carved with expressions of fatigue and anguish while the wood-grained stone yoke cut into the flesh of their back.

Behind the figures lay a simple dais, upon which- Jesse looked away immediately with stinging, watery eyes. Above the stone platform something hung in the air. He saw it only as a massive blind spot in his vision, an absence of content that his brain refused to acknowledge.

"What is it?" he asked again, pointedly looking away from the nauseating altar. Once more, the hall stole away the echoes of his voice. She shook her head and pulled him back toward the doorway, leading him in her circle of coin-light through the twisting passage until they were in the tower room once more. The distant crash of the waves through the open window seemed maddeningly loud after the ethereal silence of the hall.

Jesse heard the door shut behind him and turned, but there was only the sword leaning against the wall. He thought of picking it up, then thought better and turned to the woman with a questioning look.

"I've spoken of fragments," she said at length. Her voice was still hushed, as if she had brought a bit of the hall's silence back with them.

"The parts of my soul given to me at my birth. Each has a purpose, or a lesson. My small handful allowed me to grow, and learn, and to bend things in your favor where I could." She paused once more and stared at the bare stretch of wall where the doorway had appeared.

"What you saw are the fragments that reside in the sword." Jesse saw the cavernous room again in his mind's eye, stretching back into cold-lit infinity.

"Every alcove has one?" he asked. She nodded.

"I have walked the hall several times now but I've never seen an empty space, nor could I find an end." Her gaze lingered on the wall before she turned and sat on the bed once more.

"It taught me many things," she said.

"How to make a space so we could talk. How to help you move, help you fight, but-" Her sentence cut off, and a pained grimace passed over her face.

"But I lacked understanding," she said softly.

"The fragments I was born with were for guiding, learning, helping. I didn't have to understand them, they were my nature. The sword is - as you saw. Cold, silent, harsh. The ones who forged it did not make it as a ring, or a tablet, or a spade." She looked up at him, and her eyes glinted with the cold light of the hall.

"They made a sword. A weapon. It trades only in lives taken. So when I used its fragments to help you…" She trailed off, and Jesse felt a chill in his gut.

"My life?" he asked, imagining himself aging a decade in the span of months. The corners of her mouth quirked up, even as she nodded gravely.

"Not like you're thinking," she clarified.

"Better to say 'vitality' than life. The asolan has already given back what you lost, and wards you against the worst of it." The faint trace of amusement vanished from her face.

"But it was a near thing. You came close to death before I realized that I had been wrong. The sword isn't like me at all."

"I was made hesitant, made to ponder which action might be correct for a given circumstance," she said.

"The sword kills. I doubt. I wonder. The sword kills. One edge, one purpose, one price." Jesse shivered, finding his eyes drawn to the gleaming metal of the blade.

"Why would Goresje make a weapon like this?" he asked.

"Why would he make it only to kill himself the same day?" She followed his gaze and shrugged, considering.

"An asolan will pay its price, at least for small favors," she mused.

"As to why he'd kill himself, I couldn't say. I told you I'm trying to understand, to comprehend beyond my limited perspective. Things like that are part of why."

"I'm not sure you should be trying to understand suicide," Jesse frowned.

"That doesn't sound healthy for either of us."

"Suicide, perhaps not," she admitted.

"But sacrifice - that, I must understand if I am to protect you from the blade's enticements. Remember what I can see. I know that even though the price horrifies you, there's a piece of you calculating what your life is worth. What it would take to make that bargain." He looked at her, somewhat puzzled.

"So why tell me at all?" he asked.

"You didn't have to show me what it was."

"Better that I show you," she disagreed.

"Even if I failed to understand I would have said something before long. Besides that I value your trust, I do not think hiding it would work. The blade does not have a mind but it would find a way to sate itself if I tried to keep you from it entirely. Better that its task is easy. I do not want to encourage it to become… creative." She shuddered, and her eyes flicked to where the sword lay against the wall.

"Besides, I've studied the fragments. There are some that are… well, they are all priced fairly, in their way," she admitted.

"You were right when you said we'd likely be dead without the minor indulgence we've given it so far." She looked up to meet his gaze, and the touch of chill light flicked through her eyes once more. The coins in the room flickered and dimmed, the roar of the surf quieting.

"But the cupful we drew is from the shallows of a towering sea. Every step is perilous," she said coldly.

"In its depths there are things that would render your soul to white-hot cinders with an instant's touch, and in that instant-" If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. She held out her hand and clenched it into a fist.

"Power. Enough to do what would take a hundred long lifetimes to achieve. Enough that, if you were to choose it with open eyes..." She stood and paced to the window, looking out onto the night waves as the room's cheery glow reasserted itself.

"But right now there's not one open eye between the two of us that could tell the safe path from the perilous, the worthy from the wasteful."

"So I put aside the lessons from the blade and instead make flowers, vases, pictures," she said.

"To try to understand better the things I was not born with. My insight is lacking when I am merely the tool that wields tools. Dangerously lacking. Now that I appreciate better the sword's power, its hunger - I know there is too much of it for there to be so little of me." Jesse stared at her for a moment when she had finished speaking. He was unsure how to respond to any of it. Before words occurred to him, however, a ripple of color splashed through the room and she spun around wide-eyed.

"What was that?" Jesse asked warily.

"I don't know," she said.

"Something has changed. The storm seems farther off than it was before." She closed her eyes for a moment, then smiled.

"It's warm," she said, surprised but appreciative.

"Like being wrapped in-" Three gunshots jolted Jesse out of his trance, echoing through the domed gateway hall and provoking a chorus of startled screams from the Aesvain refugees. He jumped to his feet and ran toward the noise with sword in hand. The light had faded since he began meditating, and now only a bloody red glower shone through the dome's oculus. Every inch of space was filled with a seething mass of qim-lit refugees pressing toward the center of the room.

Over the heads of the crowd he could see Mark and Jackie standing in front of the gateway with glaringly bright flashlights held high. The gateway was dark and opaque, and as he watched a cadre of gold-cloaked halberdiers squared their shoulders and walked through. He let his breath out in a rush, feeling a tension slowly drain from his posture. Somehow, they had made it work. Mark holstered his gun with sharp, annoyed motions and began barking orders to the crowd.

Jesse groaned and sheathed his sword in turn as he realized what had provoked the gunshots, pausing a moment before deliberately lifting his hand away from the grip. The blade had an odd sense of presence hanging there at his waist, a weight that seemed increased from before. The crowd churned slowly into motion, helped along by Jyte's halberdiers directing the flow of refugees towards the stockpile and from there to the gate.

Some were hesitant walking through, but most practically ran into the darkened room beyond the archway with bundles of food or jugs of water gripped tightly in their arms. Above them, the gale of the storm howled a steady roar of wind and abrasive grit that occasionally dipped a feathered tongue into the still air below the dome. The last touches of sunlight transformed the column of falling dust into an ominous halo that lingered over the gate.

With the swirling press of evacuation it took some time before he was able to work his way to where the others stood. Mark saw him first and beckoned him over with a tired glance, one eye on the streams of refugees hurrying past.

"Hey, man," he said.

"You work out whatever that was?" Jesse shook his head.

"Didn't do as well as you did," he said, gesturing to the gateway.

"Arjun figured it out?" Mark snorted.

"Tasja, believe it or not. Little bastard just earned all those rations he keeps stuffing down, as far as I'm concerned." He looked out over the crowd around them with a troubled expression, his hand tight on the grip of his rifle.

"Trouble is, I'm not sure it was soon enough. Going to take a while to get everyone out of here, and the storm just keeps ramping up."

"How long do we have left?" Jesse asked.

"Don't know, we don't have eyes on it," Mark said.

"It's bad enough out there that Jyte pulled all his men back. That scout of his has someone stick his head out every so often. Last guy just came back with his eyes full of grit and said it's real blowy out there, so not sure how much good that's doing us." Jesse's hand hesitated over the grip of his sword, then dropped to his side.

"I think I can help with that, actually," he said.

"I'll be right back." Mark gave him a quizzical look, then nodded.

"Whatever you can magic up, I'll take," he said.

"Just be careful. It's bad out there, way worse than the last time you went out." A knot of shoving refugees stole Mark's attention from him, and Jesse turned to walk towards the darkened entryway. A small squad of halberdiers stood by the truck, looking nervously down the length of the foyer and beyond into the midnight-black storm beyond. Jesse nodded to them as he passed, then walked alone into the black.

The noise of the storm grew louder than his footfalls until it was all he could hear, a mindless roar that ululated through the exposed bones of the city around them. He clicked on his flashlight to see ahead but found that it showed him little past the limits of the building. The doorway raged with the coursing windborne drifts, and Jesse paused several steps short of it to collect himself. Slowly, he reached a hand to the grip of his sword and curled his fingers around it.

He held it for a moment to feel the cool weight of it against his skin, then on a moment's impulse he drew it and stood with a light in one hand and blade in the other, facing the wall of sand.

"What do you think?" he asked quietly.

"Is the asolan enough for this?" There was a cold pulse that ran through his wrist, then a tingling electric buzz from where the asolan lay hanging from its lanyard against his chest. Enough, the echo confirmed. Jesse took a decisive step forward into the storm. As before, the grit parted around him even if the wind didn't abate, letting him peer into the darkness with only mildly dry eyes. Even so, the dust stifled the flashlight's beam. He gripped the sword tighter, asking a wordless question.

There was a moment's pause, then the envelope around him expanded forward. Dust sloughed out of the air in a narrow arc, and in seconds a corridor had opened across the plaza. At its end stood the draa je qaraivat from the far side of the square. He looked at the black pillar for a few heartbeats and felt the sensation of a tether take hold. There was another surge of heat from the asolan against his skin, and Jesse felt briefly lightheaded.

It passed in a moment, however, and all around him he watched the dust fly upwards, out of his view. The plaza was clear, and empty save for some windblown drifts of dust that the gale tugged ponderously forward over the doomed grasses. The dome penetrated upward through the thick carpet of grit sluicing through the city streets, showing a view of the sky that Jesse immediately regretted.

The storm wall perched on Sjatel's central hill to glower down at them, looming close and writhing with fat amber snakes of lightning.

"Now," said a vaguely awed voice beside him, "I'd have stayed inside if I'd thought something like that was waiting out here for me." Jesse managed not to jump at the sound, but he did turn with a less-than-dignified alacrity to see who had spoken. Ajehet the scout stood behind him, staring up at the storm wall with wide eyes.

"Jyte had said it might be worth following you out," Ajehet said, his eyes never leaving the storm.

"I've no notion what worth it is knowing that's out for us, though. That's not a thing a blade can turn away." Jesse turned back to the storm and fought away a manic urge to grin.

"A wise man once said that knowing is half the battle," he replied.

"Did he, now?" Ajehet grunted.

"And did this wise man have anything to say about the other half?"

"Not usually," Jesse replied. The scout snorted and walked up to stand beside Jesse.

"Typical," he scoffed.

"At least now there's a sign that we've made the right choice to run." Jesse nodded, distracted from his reply by a flicker of motion near the edge of the plaza. He swept the area with his flashlight beam, but saw nothing. Ajehet noted his motion and went very still, eyes tracking back and forth along the edge of the dust wall.

"There," he said quietly, stretching his hand out.

"Your light, big man. Right beside that collapsed wall." Jesse played the light where Ajehet was pointing and at first saw only swirling sand, but when the wind gusted once more the light reflected back in twin pinpoints. Eyes, black and sunken, staring back from the drifts of dust. Beside them was another pair. And another. A line of withered bodies pressed against the perimeter Jesse had made, close-packed and nearly motionless as the storm whipped around them. Their eyes, though, were all locked squarely on him.

Jesse looked slowly around at the encirclement of silent ones, taking in the forest of limbs and ragged scraps. Here and there he caught an extra glint from one of their dull black eyes, saw a half-hidden glimpse of a ragged woman's face screaming with the voice of the storm. His nose prickled with the scent of ozone, and a restless shiver went through the assembled dead.

"Ajehet," Jesse said quietly.

"Back inside. Now."

"Right, no need to say it twice," Ajehet said nervously, backing towards the archway. They had made it only a few steps before Jesse felt his hair standing on end. He abandoned all pretense of orderly retreat and flung himself toward the entryway, with Ajehet hot on his heels. They hit the stone floor of the foyer just as a blinding pillar of light struck the draa je qaraivat on the opposite side of the square. Jesse felt a jolt through his sword arm and winced.

The dust rushed back in to fill the plaza with opaque darkness. Though they could not see past the doorway, over the howl of the wind they could hear the sound of a thousand leathery feet scraping stone.

"Run!" Jesse shouted, hauling Ajehet to his feet and sprinting back toward the dome. He heard cries of panic at the thunderclap but pushed it from his mind. Mark had the evacuation in hand, and Jyte knew his business. He reached the truck and clambered into the turret on pure muscle memory, preparing the gun and swiveling it to point down the long entryway. There was only the howl of the wind. He had several seconds on them, and longer legs.

Dimly he was aware of the other noises in the dome - Ajehet's strident yells, Mark and Jyte shouting orders to the panicking evacuees, the dull howl of the wind across the oculus - but all that held his attention was the drum of his heart and the rush of his breath, too fast. Inhale, exhale. Where was the calm that was supposed to grip him in moments like these? He heard footsteps slapping on the stone floor of the hallway and tightened his grip on the gun, sighting down the hallway.

Out of the dust, the first withered face came into view, its eyes locked onto his. Time slowed a bit, and Jesse found his calm. Esita wiped a dusty tear from his cheek with one hand and clutched tight to his father's hand with the other. Fear gnawed at him, and the screams of the others resonated under the dome in tune with the howling winds outside. He missed the home they had outside of Mosatel, the squat plastered walls perpetually stained with wood smoke and tari shit.

He knew it wasn't a nice home, but home was what it had been. Father said that Mosatel was nobody's home now. The monsters had come from the sand to take it from them, just as they had chased them across the grasses to the old broken city. Mother hadn't been with them when they fled, and whenever he asked Father told him that she was just behind them. She would arrive tomorrow, or the day after. It had been many days before he realized that tomorrow was a lie. A lie to make him feel better.

They had sat in the camp near the broken city gathering wood scrap to make a wall. The wall would keep the monsters out, the men said. It didn't make sense to Esita - Mosatel had a wall, after all, and the monsters still got inside. Another lie to make people feel better. He said as much one day when he was tired of the heat and didn't want to gather wood. The men had gone silent, then one by one they smiled as though he had made a joke.

His father gave him a pat on the head and told him to rest for the day, and the others went to work. When he looked back over his shoulder, none of them were smiling. Even the camp with its tiny rations and back-breaking labor crews was better than this dark, terrifying dome with the storm raging outside and the tall aezham running around bellowing orders or jabbering in their strange spitting-words. Esita didn't like the aezham.

As bad as things had been, they'd only become worse since the tall strangers showed up. They'd abandoned the wall they worked so hard to build, then been tasked to a double labor shift to clear a path for their giant chariot. Even the sight of its great lumbering wheels churning the dirt couldn't make up for the day spent toiling in the broken city's great empty streets. The work made no sense, helped nothing - yet another lie to help everyone pretend they were safe.

But his Father told him that the aezham had a way out of the city, a way to go where the monsters couldn't follow. He had mumbled that he didn't trust them, at which Father had laughed and replied that he didn't either - but he did trust Captain Jyte, and Jyte believed them. That had mollified him a bit, as Esita held the craggy-faced captain in great esteem.

The man seemed like a boulder made flesh and given a blade, and many times when Esita was huddling against Father for warmth at night he would close his eyes and see himself wearing a golden cloak, threshing a field of monsters like so much grain. But now the tall, pale aezha was yelling, and everyone was screaming, and Esita wanted nothing more than to be far, far away from any sort of monster. The crowd surged around him and his father's hand was torn from his grip.

He fought his way clear of the press but couldn't see his father in the crowd, couldn't make himself heard over the screams and the shouting and the roar of the wind. There was only one thought in his mind, and that was to get away, away, away. He turned from the crowd and ran from the surging noise until he found himself facing a broad brown wall. He took a step back and realized that it was the side of the asaezham chariot.

The chariot rocked, startling him, and the tall dark one emerged from the top to stare down the long entry hall with haunted eyes. He didn't see Esita. Wondering what held his attention, Esita peeked around the corner of the chariot - and saw the advance of implacable death. A mass of screaming, rattling corpses hurling themselves down the corridor, a nightmare rockslide of flesh and yellowed teeth. Esita froze, his mind locking up with the unreality of it all- And then there was thunder. Pain.

Flashes of blinding light pulsed in time with sound so intense it felt like a blow striking his entire body. He looked up to see the advancing line crumple, bodies torn apart and trampled as an unseen force shredded them three-deep over and over again. Esita didn't even hear the noise anymore, only a dull tone in his ears and a greater heart than his own beating fast against his ribs.

In a daze, he raised his eyes further and saw the tall aezha atop the chariot, a device of blackened iron in his hands, throwing thunder at the ranks of the dead with his teeth bared. The monsters fell, and fell. They could not advance a step against the thunder that tore them apart. A barricade of dead flesh formed, then a bulwark. He could no longer see the monsters, only the twitching of their mutilated bodies as the pile of corpses grew to block the corridor entirely. Then the heartbeat stopped.

The iron glowed red in the dark and the aezha jumped down from the top of the chariot, only now seeing Esita standing numbly against the chariot's side. The mans lips formed words that he couldn't hear, so Esita just shook his head and closed his eyes. Hands grabbed him under the arms and lifted him into the air. His eyes popped open in shock and he saw the man's grim face up close, his dust-speckled dark skin and odd curly hair.

The aezha was running, carrying Esita like a sack of grain as he ran towards the archway in the center of the room. He twisted to look behind them. A mountain of still bodies obstructed the corridor, but it was shifting at the edges, squirming. More were coming through from behind the fallen. Before he could muster the energy to be frightened once more they were at the gate, and the tall aezha handed him to another one, a woman with pale skin who smiled at him even though her eyes were afraid.

As he watched, though, bits of her hair floated up. Esita tasted a sharp tang in the air, the storm-scent. The aezham looked at each other in panic, even the thunder-thrower, and as one they turned their gaze to the roof of the dome with its great open eye and the storm raging above. The pale one bellowed out another command. Running. Everyone was running toward the gate, but some of them were still so far away. The thunder-thrower turned and saw it too, and the lines of his face went still.

Slowly, deliberately, he reached down and drew the long silvery blade at his side. The storm-scent was everywhere now, the air alive with a tense energy. The woman pulled him through the archway. He felt an odd sensation, like passing through the surface of water, and suddenly he couldn't smell the storm-scent anymore. Esita looked back and saw the people running toward the gate, Captain Jyte's men shouting for them to hurry, hurry - and in front of them all, the thunder-thrower closed his eyes.

He whispered something, so short and quiet that it seemed only his own ears would hear it. Something rushed past him and a blinding light flooded through the gateway, robbing Esita of his sight. Blind, deaf, he clung to the woman's hand until he felt trembling arms hold him tight, smelled the scent of his father and felt tears drip into his hair. It took the rest of the day before his vision returned.

For that time he sat, still and quiet, and instead of darkness he saw a crown of light and eyes of cold fire, a defiant blade held high against the storm.