“As Picus told thee, Tuari is least likely of all of us to join a human—especially Eodward’s son—in any endeavor. Yet Dashon Ra is the Center of the Winter Canon, and he has named his consort Chosen. She could do this thing—divert the wholeness of the dance into the veins and not the land itself…” The words faded. His thoughts drifted deeper.
This was not what I wanted to hear. “Janus said the Chosen dances at the Center to ‘bring all life to joining.’ All life—human, Danae, birds, beasts…everything?”
“The dance of the Chosen joins all that is brought to the Canon by the long-lived—trees and rivers, mountains, stones, sea and shore, earth and all that grows, as well as all thou hast named.”
“But only the lands you remember. You can’t include the parts of the earth that are corrupt.”
Kol straightened abruptly. “I have told thee, I will not—”
“I know that you and your kind forget places that have been poisoned, Kol. Janus once created a great map, hoping to show you the places you had lost. But he didn’t understand that Danae could not make sense of such patterning. Somehow Sila Diaglou got hold of that map and was using it to judge her success in forcing your kind out of Aeginea.” I could not let him avoid the subject any longer. “Vayar, you vowed to provide me truth and healthy guidance. As you see I need both of those now more than I have ever done, else we have no hope of untangling this mess. My mother intended me to help. You know that. I’ve just no idea how. Permit me to do so. Please, uncle, teach me.”
Kol scooped a handful of sand, allowing the rain to wash it through his fingers. Only when his palm was clean did he respond. “Janus said he would help us reclaim the Plain. It is only a name in our tales of the Beginnings, yet we believe its importance equal to the Sea, the Mountain, and the Well. Thou hast judged rightly; we cannot bring it back into the Canon if we cannot find it. We cannot find it if we cannot remember. In the same way each of the sianous lost to the Scourge falls out of our memory and thus out of the Canon. Only the names linger to remind us of our loss.”
Sorrow, grief, and shame clothed him as new gards. “Clyste traveled with Janus as he marked his papers,” he continued, “returning joyful, for her eyes had seen these dead places. For one or two she was able to work a kiran to bring to the Spring Canon. With Janus’s magics we would be able to find these places again and reclaim them all. But when at last the Cartamandua returned and unrolled his great skin, we could see naught but scrawling that twisted our eyes and turned our heads wrong way out.”
“Ronila could read it,” I said. “But in her spite, she told no one. She must have taken the map from Janus then, or perhaps Picus gave it to her when he came back to Navronne. The hag burnt your only hope to find the dead lands. Sila wants you to forget Aeginea and interbreed with humans. Ronila wants to ensure you never remember. Ronila wants you dead.”
Kol scratched his head. “Neither of those could have taken it. Ronila was long away from Aeginea when Janus brought the great map. Picus too. I know that because the Cartamandua brought the skin map on his last visit, the same visit that Clyste lay with—”
He whirled about sharply, his golden eyes as bright as small moons in the gloom. Before I could ask what insight had struck him so forcefully, he yanked me to my feet. “Come, rejongai, we must resume your lessons. Take me to the Well.”
“We’ve no time. And I cannot—”
“The long-lived do not grasp humans’ constant invocation of time. Before and after, soon and how long seem to us but walls built to imprison you. But indeed, the change of season bites the air, and I see such danger and such possibility as tell me I have lived blind until inhaling this very breath that leaves my body.” His hands near burnt their image into my shoulders. “If thou wouldst justify Clyste’s fate, Valen Cartamandua-son, then do as I say, without thought, without distraction, without artifice, living only in the embrace of the Everlasting.”
His urgency made my heart race. And as dearly as I desired to determine my own course, the past months had taught me faith and trust. I trusted Kol in the same way I had trusted Luviar, when every mote of common wisdom said to distance myself from plots and conspiracies. In the same way as I trusted Osriel when the accumulated witness of my eyes and ears clamored for me to slay, not save him. But I hungered for answers as I hungered for spelled nivat. “I will obey, vayar, but I beg you answer one question: What have you guessed?”
“Many things, but only one sure. Tuari has given Ronila the map.”
No matter how I pestered, Kol was adamant. He would explain no more until I led him to Clyste’s Well. I had no capacity to judge what it might mean for the Canon if Tuari had been duped by his half-brother’s daughter. Duped, to be sure, for if the archon was a person who attended his responsibilities faithfully, and who would never compromise the Canon, then he could not possibly have read Ronila’s true intent. Yet no warning from Kol or from me could stop whatever scheme Tuari had devised. The archon had no use for either of us.
I had come to Kol for guidance. Thus, over the next hours, I indeed left everything behind and gave myself into the embrace of the Everlasting. We traveled the length of Navronne. Again and again I sank to my knees, placed head and palms on the mud, snow, or rocky ground, and released careful dollops of magic to seek a route to the Well. Though Kol’s dunking had eased my immediate sickness, the yearning for nivat dogged my heels like an unwanted hound, as I sought out landmarks…rivers, seas, mountains…anything that might tell me where we stood and where we must go next. Subtle steps on this journey; I needed naught else to make me heave.
When storm and night and weariness left me too confused to continue, I attempted what I had never done before, seeking through the wind-whipped clouds above me to find the guide star. Fixed and firm, Escalor took its place in the landscape of my mind with the brilliance of my uncle’s gards. Using its anchor, I knew which way to go next. Thou shalt map the very bounds of heaven, Janus had told me, and wonder and gratitude swelled within me.
Happily, the harder I worked to juggle the fruits of senses and memory with the direction of magic and instinct, the less my nivat cravings troubled me. Not just in the way focused attention masks a nagging distraction, but in truth. My gards grew brighter as night closed in.
When my steps flagged, Kol taught me how to sniff out a Danae cache—a small stone vault filled with provisions and marked with an aromatic cluster of horsemint seed heads. I devoured every morsel of the dried apples and walnuts we found in the store. Kol watched me eat and eased my concern when my full stomach at last waked my conscience. “Replenish the cache next time thou dost walk these hills, and it will serve another who lacks time to hunt,” he said. Beyond that he refused to speak, save for an occasional, “Attention, stripling. Thy mind doth wander.”
My first shift after the cache took us from one ledge of rock to another and into calmer weather. The strip of blackness west of the ledge was the valley of the Kay. Only a few steps more and I led Kol down the slotlike passage through the cliff and into the high-walled corrie of my mother’s sianou.
Saints and angels…it felt as if we plumbed the very heart of winter. Ice as thick as my thigh sheathed the walls of the Well, glinting eerily with the reflected lightning of our gards. The pool had shrunk. Crumpled, broken ice hid its sunken surface. The wind moaned softly through the heights, swirling dry snow from the crevices.
“Inerrant thou hast come here, just as on the morn we met,” said Kol, who remained in the dark mouth of the passage. “The Well has not faded from thy memory.”
“No,” I said, hoping he would now explain. “Its location is as clear to me as on the night I first walked here.”