“The Farmlands,” Lianshi breathed.
They stood atop a high cliff that ran forever in both directions, and from between whose crags fell massive waterfalls that dissolved into white plumes before crashing into great pools. These opened into broad blue rivers that rushed forth in violent eddies, but which began to curve and undulate only a mile or two away, soon growing serpentine, broader, slower, as they wended their way through lush green land.
Scorio had never seen the like, but it felt right in a way that only the blue skies had. The ruins of Bastion, the sun-wire’s amber light, the endless barren grayness of the Ash Belt, the monstrous nature of the Rain Wall, nothing felt as proper and good as the green land that spread out before them.
Most of it was cultivated, great fields of crops that grew under the Rascor sun’s mercurial illumination. Irrigation ditches were cut everywhere to carry water deep into the fields, complex systems that must have taken decades or centuries to build. Here and there great stony outcroppings burst free, or small copses of evergreens rose to prodigious heights. Flocks of white birds flew slowly across the land, and everywhere Scorio looked he saw small teams of people at work, managing plows hitched to lumbering six-legged fiends, tending the crops, walking along the high embankments beside irrigation canals, herding flocks of vividly colored birds as tall as a man who moved as if with one mind, their bright flecks making them look cloud-like against the pastures.
“It’s so beautiful,” Juniper said, barely audible beside the roar of the closest waterfall.
Scorio wanted to agree, but there was a knot in his throat. Why would anyone ever live in Bastion when there was this utopia out here? Studying the land, he realized there were no villages. Here and there he saw windmills built upon ridges, or large barns standing in splendid isolation in the midst of sprawling fields, but no towns, just the occasional rare farmstead.
He leaned over to Leonis, who was raking his fingers through his unbound long hair. “Are those all Great Souls, working below?”
Leonis grinned, his leather thong clenched between his teeth, then pulled it free and bound his hair back into a sodden ponytail. “Not at all! What Great Soul would stoop to such labor?”
“But the Curse?” asked Scorio loudly, cupping his hand to his mouth.
“Very much alive! You’ll see!”
Evelyn retracted her hair, caused it to form ropes that wrung themselves out, and then shrank to her normal mane. “Well done!” Her voice was pitched to a shout. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Naomi looked wonderfully alive, her thick black hair swept back, her burning eyes lifted to the clouds that loomed hugely over them. When she met Scorio’s glance she grinned.
Evelyn led them along the clifftop to a steep path that dropped precipitously straight down the cliff’s face. It bisected a much broader road that rose gradually in a series of patient switchbacks, crawling back and forth up the same escarpment and fit for wagons. One was slowly making its way up, hauled by two huge versions of the six-legged fiends, their heads clublike, their bodies thickened by horny growths that almost formed a shell across their backs.
The footpath’s descent was so steep that they were forced to half-run, half-skid down its length, and all too soon they spilled out onto the pasture at the base of the cliff.
Scorio turned to look up the way they’d come, then tried to take in the entirety of the world-spanning cliff. The scale was too large for him to wrap his head around. There was a waterfall every two hundred or so yards, and he counted twenty before he guessed there were at least three times that number along the curving escarpment before them. Over it all raged the Rain Wall, casting a haze of mist over the cliff’s edge through which the setting sun shot endless rainbows, fractured prisms of brilliant color that shifted and faded from view with each step he took.
“Incredible,” he whispered, then followed the party down the grassy slope to a stand of trees where an ancient stone table had been erected, its surface weathered and covered in pale lichen, some fifty wooden stumps arrayed around it, a giant oak spreading its canopy over it all.
“We’ll rest here for a cycle,” announced Evelyn. “Give our clothing a chance to dry. I don’t like marching wet. Also, I realize you need to get your amazement out of your systems. It is pretty, and the Farmlands are far nicer to walk through than the Ash Belt. So relax. Enjoy the view. We’ll be marching through it all too soon. Davelos is supposed to meet me at a Resting Barn today, so we’ll get there before we sleep and surprise him with your existence.”
They dumped their sodden packs on the table and stripped off their outer robes. Scorio and Leonis pulled off everything but their pants, the sun glorious on their skin, while Jova and Lianshi stripped down to the same plus their chest wraps. Juniper and Zala both sat on the table’s edge then lay back with a sigh upon the sun-warmed stone, spreading their wet hair about their heads in gold and black halos. Leonis, Naomi, and Lianshi were about to do the same when Scorio gestured for them to follow.
They didn’t go far. Merely a stone’s throw from the table to sit cross-legged in the high grass. Scorio passed his hand over the emerald stalks. He’d never seen their like, but they didn’t surprise him. Grass. The name came unbidden, though he’d only ever known scorched rock and the ancient trees that grew in the more luxurious wards.
“How is everyone?” he asked as the others settled in a circle.
“That was…” Leonis rubbed at his face then leaned back on his outstretched arms. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the sun. “Insane. But strangely enjoyable?”
“Agreed,” said Naomi. “I’d go back through it right now if I could.”
Scorio chuckled. “Maybe one day. But I’ve been thinking. We can’t stop our training just because we’re on the move. We need to get you three up to Tomb Spark as quickly as possible.”
Leonis cracked an eye open. “Great in theory.”
“Maybe you can share in more detail what you went through?” asked Lianshi.
“Yeah, sure. Let’s see. Leonis had just sacrificed himself to free me from those little bastards…” Scorio recounted that dark moment. The pain, the sense of futility, his despair and rage. “And then it just fell into place. The words I’d used to placate Imogen were the same I kept repeating to myself. How I was blaming others for my misfortunes. And sure, I still think Praximar is the worst, but everything, my titles, my original misdeeds, this life, my actions, stealing from Chimera—it was time to take ownership of it all. And when I did, I don’t know.” Scorio frowned. “A lot of my rage and bitterness just fell away, and I felt this tremendous sense of peace and acceptance. And that’s when I entered my Second Trial.”
The three of them listened intently.
“Doesn’t sound like you expended that much energy in compacting your Heart,” said Naomi. “More like your epiphany did all the heavy lifting.”
“What an epiphany though,” said Leonis. “After all you went through? I’ve always known you had an anger problem, but it felt justified.”
“I thought so, too. But it was holding me back. It was weakness. I found strength in taking ownership of my circumstances. It’s like everyone keeps saying. None of this is fair.”
They all nodded pensively.
“I’ve been trying to synthesize everything we were told,” said Lianshi. “I’ve always gotten the impression from Hera and the textbooks that there’s more to ascending through the ranks than mastering our Hearts. In a way, all of that has felt like misdirection. Not that it’s not of crucial importance, but it seems secondary to what we’re supposed to be intuiting from the process. As if all this focus on our Hearts is a heuristic device to—”