A Hollow Mountain (The Brightest Shadow Book 2), page 69
After so much conflict with Celivia, meeting with Melal had been troublingly simple. Tani had been glad to see Veron with him, but the older woman was deeply distracted. She actually felt weaker than before and Tani worried that she had been drinking. Her eyes were clear, however, and she walked upward step after step without hesitation.
Reaching the village of Sages had been a brief joy. Tani had spent so long imagining their lives after hearing Slaten and Laeri describe it: if there was truly a village of those who saw the Legend, how did they live? She longed to know what they wore, who they respected, what they ate.
They had refused to speak to her. When she had asked for something to eat, they had stared at her like vermin crawling out of their soup.
Only one person had spoken to them, a girl named Julapa. Even she had been quiet, however, merely leading them to the base of the mountain. Her grandfather, Sage Tuvano, awaited them at the peak. Everything else in the village was as flimsy as smoke, nothing but a container for their meeting. Though it troubled her deeply, Tani focused herself inward so that she would be completely prepared for the Sage.
At first they had spoken to one another, but words grew more and more difficult as they climbed. The path itself was simple, shifting between ragged paths, carved stairs, and the occasional ladder. It was the air itself that fought them, stealing their breaths the higher they traveled.
Melal marched ahead, unaffected by such petty details. Slaten also appeared able to breathe easily, and when she had asked him, he suggested that Bloodskin training allowed it. Tani let her sein flow through her to maintain her strength, though she knew that she would eventually exhaust herself that way. Laeri had collapsed mid-way up and Veron began carrying her without complaint.
As they neared the top, Tani's vision began to waver. Occasionally she saw the path, but at times she walked on air. The clouds should have been dark, yet they flickered with glorious light. She felt her hand trailing along the rock at her side, except for moments when she felt marble and saw a golden city closing around them.
Then the mountain cut off above her. She thought it must be another hallucination until she took several more steps upward and began to see the top. Mount Tmil simply ended, as if an impossibly large sword had chopped off the peak. At the top of the stairs waited only a rocky plane with a small house in the center.
And the raider master standing with his arms folded, watching them.
Tani hesitated at first, remembering the destruction he had caused. Even if it had been against the Deathspawn army, it had been such a terrible loss of life merely to stop their march. If Tani had possessed his power, she would have caused the landslide ahead of them, to block their path but allow the Deathspawn to retreat. Yet if she had, would it truly have saved lives?
"At last, you have arrived." Aganomu stared over them, offering no help as they limped up the final steps. "This part is the old man's job, not mine. Sage Tuvano awaits you within."
"As he should." Melal strode past him toward the house, leaving all of them with no choice but to follow.
Though she had thought it was a house at first, Tani quickly realized that she had been wrong. It had the outer walls of one, but a house contained life. The building ahead of them was merely a shell, used by the Sage for purposes far above such mundane concerns. When Melal threw the doors open, she saw that the majority of the house was a single room, void except for a table with a chair at the end.
Sage Tuvano sat at the end of the table, awaiting them. When Tani saw his eyes, she drew a deep breath. There was none of the brashness of the Hero within him and nothing of violence. The Sage fought not with blades, but with truth. She could see the wisdom in the lines of his face, reminding her of her own master. Tani wanted nothing more than to sit at his feet and accept what he had to offer.
She shouldn't.
Tani desperately clawed for memories of herself, of how Jaer Krylyl had taught her to fill her mind with her own thoughts so that the Hero could not fill it for her. Except now she realized how little she had understood his lesson. She had armored herself against the Hero's commands to slaughter their foes, leaving a hollowness begging to be filled with wisdom. Any wisdom, no matter how cruel.
When she looked again, she saw Tuvano for what he was. An old man with thick white stubble, gray hair and eyes that could have been from any raider clan. He was clad in robes of a majestic white, but uncomfortably, as if he would rather be wearing something else. The Sage was only a man.
"Tani?" Slaten had noticed and stopped beside her. She immediately grabbed the front of his shirt and drew him close to hiss in his ear.
"We should not ask him our questions."
"But we've come all this way..." He looked at her in concern and she saw that he had partially fallen into the Sage's glory. His mental discipline might be weaker, but fortunately he had never been as vulnerable to respected masters. They had only moments as Veron roused Laeri, so she sought to communicate what she had understood in only a few words.
"We thought he could reveal the workings of the Legend to us, but we were wrong. The builder is least able to see the flaws in their own house. To... to show him our doubts would be the same as to tell the Hero to embrace the Deathspawn."
She realized only as she spoke that she had been thinking of the mansthein as the Deathspawn and carefully steeled herself against the thought. Slaten observed her skeptically, but at the root of it he trusted her. He gave a very slight nod and they entered the chamber together.
"At last, you have arrived." Sage Tuvano spoke with an impossibly resonant voice, but Tani had braced herself and expected it. Concentrating, she was able to remember that the raider had said exactly the same thing. "The Hero and four of his companions. You believe that you have come here for guidance, but the Legend is the only signpost you need. You are here to learn of fate."
"Weren't we supposed to show you the seal?" Veron asked the question roughly, voice grating over the tabletop. Tani realized that she reeked of alcohol. Sage Tuvano only chuckled.
"That was once the path, but as I told your young friends, the Legend is a vine. Sometimes pruned, but forever growing. You may not yet have claimed the second seal, but you will. What matters is that all of us have dreamed deeply and we now have something to offer you."
Melal went down on one knee. "What is it, Sage Tuvano?"
"Prophecy." The Sage rose to his feet and slowly walked around the table toward them. "The Legends you have heard are echoes, not the heart of the story itself. What I offer you is a truth more important than any one life. It could be your downfall or your salvation."
"I have all the prophecies I need." Melal returned to his feet, eyes bright. Sage Tuvano nodded somberly.
"You do, Hero, you do. The prophecies are for your companions, for their roles in the Legend are not so clear. But I do have words to offer you: the longer you remain in the north, the more your fate will become entwined with the Zeitai who lurks there. All paths surrounding the Zeitai lead to death, more death than we could see beyond. I suggest that you retrieve the seal and then depart to seek your destiny elsewhere."
"Why not simply strike down every Deathspawn in my path before I take the next step?"
"It is vague indeed, but I sense a crack in your soul that you might regret for the remainder of your life. There is a chance that you will lose something precious to you, perhaps even lose it twice. If you lose it a third time, it will be... a terrible fate indeed. So for now, I suggest that you leave Breilin and find your destiny in other lands."
Though Tani had expected Melal to bridle against the suggestion that he should run away, to her surprise he simply nodded. If she had been taken off guard by the wisdom of the Sage, it seemed to have claimed him completely. Nothing remained of the Melal she had once known, at that moment.
Now that he had spoken to Melal, the Sage turned to the others, and Tani realized that she was standing at one side of their group. Without realizing it, they had formed a line in front of him. As the Sage walked toward her he extended a hand just in front of her forehead and closed his eyes.
She felt something stir within her and tried to slay it. These were simple tricks, letting the mind deceive itself. Everything he had said so far was vague, nearly to the point of being useless. She would listen, but he could say nothing about her as she truly was.
"Tani of the Nelee Rhen."
Not only did he speak her name, he spoke it as if he knew each letter intimately. Tani shivered, all attempts to dismiss his words failing as he continued to speak.
"You walk along the edge of a knife, your feet bleeding until you fall. In a time of great thirst, you will face a choice between two paths, between two lives you might defend. You must choose one and leave the knife or you will perish."
When his hand shifted away from her, Tani felt a great weight lift. Her mind was tangled up in his words, but it remained hers. She had not been swept up in his prophecy, though the words had burned themselves into her mind. Utterly meaningless, unless they weren't.
"Slaten, once of the Oken." Sage Tuvano had moved on, eyes still closed. "You do not face any great death, for what you must fear is survival. If you turn back, you will live an empty life devoid of the Legend. If you walk forward, death will take more and more of you, one piece at a time."
"That's all?" Slaten spoke as the Sage started to move on. "An empty life or a slow death?"
For a brief moment the Sage looked at him, scratching at his beard as if he was only an old man. Eventually he spoke in a less sonorous voice, a quiet word to Slaten instead of announcing destiny to the heavens. "There is a chance, only a chance, that you could set aside your sword, raise a hammer, and build something that could become part of the Legend. But the moment when you could lay down your sword will be very brief indeed."
With that pronouncement, he moved onward. Though Tani had warned Slaten not to ask questions, she couldn't blame him for that one. Her own prophecy had been a clear warning to help her, whereas his had been nothing but a condemnation.
When Sage Tuvano reached Laeri, she straightened and beamed at him, eagerly awaiting his words. He was silent for much longer than with the previous two, but when he spoke, the Sage's voice was as confident as before.
"Your story will flow alongside the Legend, just as it always has. But so many currents of meaning flow past you, there is uncertainty. I see a great light within you, but what form that light will take is uncertain. Over the course of your story you will be offered many weapons and you must choose carefully whether to accept one, or none at all."
That meant nearly nothing, yet Laeri sighed and clasped her hands over her heart. Such vague encouragement had been what Tani had expected when the Sage had begun giving his words. She tried to tell herself that he might simply have learned their names in preparation, but couldn't believe it. Not with her mind under assault by his wisdom.
"Veron." Sage Tuvano gave a strange smile. "Veron, born of the Corans but now a child of the Chorhan Expanse. You believe you want a simple life and a meaningless death, but you have chosen against them time and time again, and now they are lost to you. In you, I see the potential to stand against the light and die tragically, or stand on the side of right and sacrifice it gloriously. Your final choice will come when a dark island crashes against the shore."
Though Veron nodded and lowered her eyes, Tani caught a flash of something else there. She would certainly not accept it so easily.
"My friends, I have given you so little, but you have taken all you can from me." Sage Tuvano returned to the other side of the table and placed his hands within his sleeves. "We Sages will return to sleep and dream of what we can. Perhaps we can offer you glimpses of your enemy's plans, but these are meaningless. The Legend is not a path into the future, it is seizing destiny. Return to the world below and take your place in it."
Tani wanted to mock him by agreeing that he had given them little. Only a few words... even if they were true prophecies of the future, they scarcely seemed to matter compared to the thousands of deaths the Hero caused. And if the Zeitai were truly part of the Legend, all the deaths they caused as well.
Yet as they turned to go, Tani realized that the Sage had said more than he knew. The Legend, which loomed above as both nothing and everything, had now been given form. She ran the words of the prophecies through her mind as if they were the declarations of an enemy. Though she could not claim to comprehend every detail, she realized that Sage Tuvano understood just as little as the Hero or all the others who followed him. Apprehension had never been the purpose, and indeed they scorned understanding. All that mattered was the beauty of destiny.
When Tani walked outside, she trembled as the light nearly blinded her. The storm clouds were gone, replaced with thunderous white all around them. She realized that the clouds must have descended, perhaps still stormy underneath but shining in the sun.
The sun... it yawned directly overhead, devouring half the sky. Tani longed to grab the ground as if she could prevent herself from falling upward and being consumed in it. She saw Laeri gasp in awe, while Slaten and Veron stumbled.
Only the Hero walked on, staring directly into the sun as it burned the sky.
- End of Part 4 -
Interlude
A loose thread tickled at the back of Eraes Tor Yin's neck, but when she reached to tear it out, she felt nothing. Frowning, she readjusted her rough jerkin, but the sensation only shifted. Given her present situation, she did her best to set it permanently out of mind.
Nothing felt right, all the way on the western coast. It was certainly no Xanunsol, and everything from the shoddiness of her clothes to the inferior food reminded her of that. Corunyon was one of the largest cities in Teralanth, and a critical point, otherwise she would never have remained. But she wasn't serving in the city itself, but outside a decrepit hidden port to the north, where everything wore on her.
But she'd been over those thoughts before. Eraes set them aside and did her best to focus on the strategy table in front of her. The pieces had barely moved since the previous night, and she knew them all by heart: the blockade around the city, the flagging defenders, and the two blocks of mansthein troops arrayed outside the walls.
It was not the heart of the fighting, but it was all that was left to her after her exile.
Every part of her work vied to be the hardest. Shipments rarely arrived on time and were often intercepted. Their defensive lines were always at a breaking point. They had yet to smuggle anything into Corunyon without drawing more problems to themselves.
"Commander Yin?" An aide appeared beside her, his name a meaningless note in the back ledgers of her mind. "Local fishers picked up several sailors who claim to be part of the crew coming from Baelen. They say that Zeitai Xetsu's forces sank their vessel."
"Dammit." Eraes stared off the edge of her map, imagining the deployment of forces there. "No attempt to steal their cargo?"
"No, commander. But we can assume that none of the salt will arrive."
She had risked shipment from Baelen because she knew that Xetsu didn't care about the war in Teralanth, but that fact had proved irrelevant. Regardless of the reason, she realized what she needed to do. "Stop purchasing salt from Baelen entirely. We'll source it from the Suonie Islands."
"But commander, that won't be cheap..." The aide swallowed when she focused fully on him.
"If anyone has a better idea, they can bring it to me. Until then, we avoid the coast of Baelen."
As he left, Eraes swept her eyes over the map yet again. The trouble was that the mansthein didn't seem in any hurry to take the city, instead lingering outside the walls and shifting their troops. She'd sent spies to learn more, but they'd yet to return. Meanwhile, their waiting only increased the human suffering within the city.
Strangest of all, she couldn't see any military reason for them to attempt to take Corunyon. Even if they intended to conquer Teralanth, beginning on the west coast made no sense. The city had only two significant assets on a global scale: access to shipping on the Terant Ocean and several ancient buildings of cultural value.
When they had given her a position of command, the first thing she had done was send out emissaries to negotiate terms to preserve the ancient buildings. They'd returned without a response, which was highly unusual. The mansthein had been so open to negotiation before she had gone to the Chorhan Expanse, but now...
"New scouts have reported, Commander Yin." Another one of the commanders entered the room and shifted several of the pieces representing the mansthein army. And removed two of them. Eraes immediately narrowed her eyes as she gave their formation a fresh look.
"Did our saboteurs eliminate those troops, Commander Vil?"
"Not to our knowledge." Kan Tor Vil swallowed and edged closer to speak quietly, as if they weren't in the middle of their command center. He was a nervous man with too much passion for pitched battles, but he had been the one to get her the position. "Spies say that the mansthein have been conducting training exercises between their forces, but we don't know why."
"No." Eraes's fingers gripped the edge of the table so hard it cracked, everything coming together in her mind. "No, they're fighting each other."
"What? But if the mansthein want to take Corunyon, why would they bring opposing forces?"
"Think about everything we've seen. There must be more than one faction, and they want to deny the city to the other more than they want to take it themselves. It must have broken out into actual fighting."
Kan regarded her skeptically, as he had every time she suggested anything that was even mildly unorthodox. Unfortunately, they weren't going to make someone with her limited experience the head commander, even here. Her time in the Chorhan Expanse had given her many things, but relevant experience was not one of them.
Just as she thought it would become an argument, a messenger rushed into the room. He handed her a scroll with a mansthein seal, but puffed out his message before she could finish opening it. "They responded... they want to meet... about the library..."
