Why did the Red Star race toward the planet? Agnessa wondered. It had peeked through the clouds. And now it hung there, shining. She stood there gawking at it from her place in the sky above the fourth rise.

  It was so strange to her, this matter of great import. And yet even she didn't know just how important it was or was not. She thought maybe Clement knew. What little she knew she learned through him. He seemed to know much, to have retained what most forget about past lives, lives lived before, at other times.

  She saw his mind once in the womb they shared. As he suckled his thumb and dreamed of the star, she watched. And as she dreamed, and he snuck for himself moments to think alone, she pried.

  And she remembered. What she saw then she could see clearly in her mind. He was as if in a library, though the library was consciousness. Therein, he searched for answers, from one great record to the next. And there he played out probable scenarios involving the star and involving him.

  Why?

  Her heart fluttered at the mere thought of Rain Gray. And then there he was, at the foot of the climb that led to her rise.

  Rain. Rain Gray. And Furggen. And the wandering boys.

  She dropped from her hidden position in the sky and flew to top of their climb. They were climbing the steps to the fourth rise. Insects crawled all around them, peering over things and under, to watch them, smell them, listen.

  She wondered if they knew.

  They probably did not. Maybe Furggen. Maybe Rain. Maybe.

  He looked taller than usual. And all but spent. Where had he been again? He’d run a great distance and hadn’t slept since.

  Poor Rain. Poor Furggen.

  He looked at her, noticed her as she landed.

  She stopped at the top of the climb and headed down. Heels, maybe not the best idea. And what about her hair; she forgot to check her hair. Oh, good – it was fine.

  Clip, clop, clip. How dumb he must think she was. Clip, clop. A try hard. Too hard. The skirt. The stockings. The noisy shoes.

  Whatever; she liked them.

  She hurried, trying to outpace her doubt.

  The blue boy kept shouting at her.

  Yeah, get that light out of my face.

  Or put it right back.

  Whatever. No problem. She had found him. He was okay. Rain. Rain Gray.

  “Rain Gray,” she said. “Here we are, together again, in peril. Isn’t that the way of it?”

  He didn’t reply. It had sounded better in her head.

  Whatever. He couldn’t hide his true feelings. They were there, buried. Probably. Probably, they were.

  “If unsure of what to do, remember that it's always best to keep a positive attitude.” Who was it that said that again?

  Didn't matter. She turned, headed up the climb. Stairs are awkward. Skirts on stairs – awkward.

  The kid, the blue one, kept pestering her.

  Was he the one with the sword, or the… what are they? Rocks?

  “Agnessa,” she finally said to shut him up. “Agnessa Iadora.”

  He went on. He was closer now. Too close. How annoying.

  “Age is not the matter.”

  She hated kids. She was glad Rain couldn’t have any.

  Or could he?

  Oh, man – maybe he could.

  What would she do?

  A voice in her head reminded her he wanted nothing to do with her. She shut it up.

  They were at the top of the climb. A quick scan. Nothing. Nothing… problematic.

  Problematic. She was so smart.

  The sword. Here was as good as anywhere to take a look.

  Well, maybe she should check out the broader area. Just one more time, just in case.

  Okay, okay, good – nothing.

  She flew back down. The blonde boy flinched. His sword glowed. So, he had it. He had kept it hidden from her without actually hiding it. That was good. That was smart.

  He noticed her noticing it, tried to hide it again, but it shone brightly now.

  She wanted to touch it, hold it, look at it all the sudden. God, she wanted that.

  Rain was there in her way. Furggen was saying something.

  Her mouth was watering. She said, “May I?” a hand outstretched.

  The boy.

  The boy gave her a look like he would fight her for it.

  “I only want to look,” she said.

  There was a brief pause during which the boy looked down at the sword. The great relic. He knew not what he even had. “Fine,” he sighed. “But it might-”

  Whatever. She had it.

  She turned away, trying to calm herself; it buzzed so beautifully in her hand, so powerfully, so….

  She relaxed. It was beautiful. It was a solid piece of energy so ridiculously slowed, it was practically in stasis. Clement had told her as much when they found it. Now, to see if he was lying.

  Who made you? she asked it to herself.

  She eyed it fiercely and demanded its answer.

  Runes appeared, one by one, from hilt to tip. They were in old Valasian, back when it was practically one and the same as old Galsian. “I am of he am slayed Star He made me so that I might make he who will be he.” Or something like that. Her old Valasian was admittedly bad.

  But it was him. It was the man who Clement had said. The star-killer after whom he’d been named. Vicarious King. Clemente Armassius.

  So, he wasn’t lying…. Now that she knew, she wondered why she ever suspected he would.

  “How did you do that?” the boy asked.

  Irrelevant. Figure it out. “Where did you get this?” she asked him, searching his eyes for lies.

  “I’ve always had it,” he said.

  What the hell does that mean? “Always,” she said. “What is always? For as long as you can remember? From the time you were born?”

  “I was… found with it,” he said. He was telling the truth. She saw it in his mind. She saw what he could not. The boughs of flowery trees from his back on the cold, wet ground. He kicked and squirmed his blanket away, cried and whined exposed. He was hungry, afraid. Someone… it was blurred; who had left him there?

  There was a man. He was there. He had been scary to the baby. He ran up and touched him, the baby. And then he touched the thing the baby clutched, the painful thing that made him cry.

  He died. He died there, and the sword was sucking him up into the baby, making him even stronger than he already was.

  How strong was he? Is he… Gorralian too?

  ?

  Who the eff was he?

  Who are you?

  “Who found you with it? Where?” Somewhere in The Garden. But where in The Garden?

  “My mom and dad.” Lies. “Or… some hunter found me.” Okay. “I was holding the sword. He must have died from touching it. He was clutching it too. Was dead when they found me. My father, and others… they found me while looking for him.”

  “Where?” she asked again.

  “Near Zephyr.”

  “Zephyr,” she said. Rain, you idiot. Yeah, yeah – shrug it off.

  “It’s just south-” blue boy was saying.

  “Quiet!”

  What, do you have a problem? Yeah, you little twerp – look away!

  The sword. She looked at it one more time and gave it back. “Keep it, I guess,” she said.

  “I will,” he said.

  Whatever. This should’ve never happened. But it did. Because of… Rain, Furggen. Their laziness. “I search high and low when I search. I do my damnedest. My god-damnedest to find what I’m looking for. Not you guys. You guys just… suck.”

  You know what? Where is that bird? “I thought you said you didn’t see anything!”

  “Furggen.”

  Dur! Suddenly, all you can say is Furggen. How convenient!

  “I would’ve killed to have been here rather than where I’ve been. I’m sure you guys don’t care. Underground, in a mother-effing volcano!” What the hell is that? That’s a big one. Oh, you want something? I’m not food. There. There you are. There you were. You were a big one. Not anymore.

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  So disgusting.

  “Oh, you want some too?”

  Even more gross.

  “And you?”

  “What about you?”

  I hate bugs when they’re small.

  “If you had just done what you said you’d do,” she said, “maybe all of this,” she said, spreading her arms as if displaying, “wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have been in the middle of God knows where again, and Rain, you wouldn’t…”

  There was a pause.

  “Where were you again?” Agnessa asked.

  Furggen grunted, “In the hills.”

  “The hills,” she said, dropping her head, her ponytail rising and tickling her lower back. “The hills!” she scoffed.

  Furggen was all puffed up again. She could just kill him. She really could.

  They had made it to the steps of the fifth rise.

  Its crossing was uneventful. Bugs, yes. But they’re a light matter.

  On the sixth rise, though, just beyond the gate, Agnessa felt a sharp energy signature, though she couldn’t tell where it was.

  She stopped, looked around.

  Eyes are no use at such times. She closed them, searched about the area for energy signatures. Bugs. Bugs. Bugs. And bugs. And men. Soldiers. Wait – what’s that?

  That signature. She’d felt this one before. It wasn’t blue, but it wasn’t green either. It was a mix of the two. Felt like Armeddes, maybe. Or maybe his right-hand man. Hard to tell.

  She faced Rain. “He is here,” she said, nodding. “He is.”

  The blue boy, whose mouth was best kept shut, said, “Who?” as if he’d know him.

  Furggen said, “The Wizard King,” and immediately flew off.

  Slow felt best after that. Long slow strides, at a low posture, just in case.

  She kept feeling the energy here, and then there. But it wasn’t. Just stray energy. A high volume. Someone was… up to something… but trying to hide it.

  Goddamn all these tall buildings. Maybe eyes would be useful. So many good hiding spots. Stone is pretty good at blocking colors. Figures mounted all about distracted the eyes.

  The haunting statue of a king long dead….

  She paused in its shadow, beneath beautiful silvery gray clouds overhead on that perfect mid-May night. Someone had dispersed the mist, but why?

  Suddenly, something from near the towers caught her attention.

  The Haathuud was there, but still a mere nymph – how lucky. Rain could take him alone, perhaps. And with the boys, it should be easy.

  But the plague queen. Her being there meant it likely was Armeddes there. He was no easy matter.

  “The plague queen is there,” she told Rain. “But so is the wizard.” She tried to hone in on his location, but it hurt; his counter spell was intense, as if he expected someone like her to come around. “He is up to some form of wizarding madness, though I can’t tell just what.”

  She ran off. They chased her needlessly. She was going to do them one final favor in blasting that final gate, and then she had her own business to attend to.

  She sent the gate flying and launched herself skyward, the darkness lit by her unwillingness to let it blind her.

  She’d check the closest tower first. That’s where the first energy signature had come from.

  From bottom to top, or top to bottom? Which would be the safest route?

  The Haathuud was there at the bottom.

  He wasn’t necessarily a danger, but he wasn’t definitely not. Still, something inside her told her to leave him alone.

  She settled for the top.

  It was quiet there. Too quiet. That wide tower of stone so old, it was erected before the fortress now called Clemency had been dug out. She could feel the history there. It lingered in ways most histories don’t. There was an intense energy in the air, from a time when people like her were the norm, and the others were, at best, slaves.

  And, at worst, dogs.

  Dogs. One such lingered here, recently. She could practically smell him. A lowly boy, weak and afraid, trapped in the body of an emperor.

  But he was not here now.

  She looked up at the crumbling peak of the taller tower. It rose dark and looming, its cracked top a crown of days long past. For the tower upon which she stood was ancient, and its better was older still. Before the city sprawled below; before the cornerstone was set for the keep beneath her feet, the broken tower rose. Who now knows who and what it housed? Even Agnessa couldn’t tell. What energy she felt brewing there meshed with a current flow, both intertwining and exaggerating one another, obscuring from her both the present and the past.

  This put her on her guard. Still, she lit aglow in a sphere of glowing green and flittered up to the broken tower all the same. At the crack of stone in the peak, she settled. On the edge of the lowest point in the crack. It was a jagged break in a slab that could flatten a field, and it was of a typical size.

  There she waited, listened.

  Nothing. Nothing but a cold wind that raced by so suddenly in stillness, she suspected it was contrived. She looked behind her, at the city below. And then she climbed.

  She clambered over the edge of cold stone, smooth whereas the crack had been jagged. Pebbles clattered down behind her. Even still she could hear them.

  Another wind drowned them out. This time, the wind brought with it light. It swept over her and lit where it touched in daylight. There, and only there upon the tower, it was not night.

  “So,” she said, “the game of magic begins.”

  Magic. It wasn’t her forte. In fact, she only rarely felt compelled to use it. Raw energy manipulation had always come so much easier – what would be the point?

  Another wind. More light. It swept across the flattened peak. Where rock was broken, it was whole. And here and there, where nothing had been, space was filled – with carpet, and tables, and racks. A great throne of wood sat under a tent there beneath the stars where nothing had been, and, before it, at the edge of where the crack had been, there was a great looking glass on an iron mount.

  Agnessa felt compelled to look inside. What she saw left her second-guessing magic. She saw, southwest, clear as day, a great city where nothing stands today, gleaming green and blue, and surrounding a great tower.

  “The tower of Gitra. Of ancient days,” she said softly, stepping back from the eyepiece of the looking glass. So far away was that tower from here. And yet, by some magic or wizardry, the great battle that ended the Gitra….

  She shivered. Why had whoever painted history here chosen this era to display? To look as the Gorralians surely must have done upon the Gitra they let die so horribly.

  Hissing and hushed and hurried voices stole her attention. Another wind lit the way down into the drop of covered steps, draped in red, down into the tower. A spiraled descent, a long descent, in growing warmth and gentle smoke, smoke that carried sooty-sweet smell of smoldering embers, was the way down. Torches lined the walls in brass fixtures. Beneath them were bouquets of dried flowers sprinkled in fresh spices. Portholes in the wall were rimmed in iron. Windows gaping today were encased in thick glass. Portraits hung where there was only cold stone today, and skins, and heads – of great beasts, the likes of which were now unseen. This was a different world, one of order, power, strength whereas today was weak, cracked and decayed. She was starting to see the point of the display. This was the order Armeddes touted from his own towering fortress of stone.

  “You perceive clearly my meaning,” came a cold and distant voice that broke the fa?ade at once. “Though you fail to perceive me. I am not the emperor, but rather his most humble servant.”

  Agnessa, who had been at the end of the winding way before the floor below, hesitated in the cold and dark before stepping further inside.

  “Like you, I prefer the warmth and light of a healthy fire,” an old man she thought she vaguely recognized went on as the light returned with the warmth. He stood before her in the middle of a vast expanse nearly the width on all sides of the round stone tower, on a great shaggy carpet of white and black fur patterned in zig-zags, on wood shiny and polished, under a great round chandelier of wood and antlers. He wore a round black cap on his curly white head. His eyes were a cold, severe blue beneath bushy white brows. His beard matched his hair and brows, and it hung just below a collar blue, velvet, like the jacket he wore. That jacket… so he is Pallin. But Pallin is First of the Five, beneath only the Vicar himself in the eyes of God. What was he doing here? With Armeddes, enemy of the church?

  Before she thought to ask it aloud, Pallin asked his own question. “What brings the Lady of agony here to the cold, dead peaks of Gorrals? Looking for trouble, I suppose. And why? Aren’t yours the concerns of one beyond such trifles? I thought you left to seek out The Sword. Have you abandoned this task, or is it that the Sword has found its way here? So, Armeddes guessed it. It is on the move, then.”

  Agnessa didn’t say anything. The truth was that she felt a bit outmatched. And it was confusing because his greatness wasn’t in any given power apparently beyond her own in any one way. Rather, she felt as though, despite her greater power, experience alone made him her greater.

  “I would never have expected the sister of Mercy to stand silently in question. You are not like him after all, then. Or he is unlike you, outside of perhaps your mutual vanity.”

  “Vanity,” Agnessa scoffed.

  “Look at you. Your beauty radiates as naturally as a newly sunlit morning beneath clear skies. And yet you dress in gold and glimmering stones.”

  “Does my brother dress this way?” Agnessa asked, a bit out of genuine curiosity. She hadn’t seen him, not in years.

  “He doesn’t have to dress in such a manner to show he’s vane. He wears it on his face. He’s stained in it. It’s a permanent thing. A sort of unwieldy magic he’ll never quite control.”

  “Magic,” Agnessa said, her eyes, for a moment, scanning the room.

  “Magic,” Pallin said, almost an admission. His actions further admitted his use of the forbidden craft. A wand, shoulder-height and itself vane in appearance, materialized from the ground up in his hand. It became apparent both how he’d been standing and how he’d painted the present with the past. “White wood of the Ether Tree,” he said, tapping, once in succession with each finger, the staff he clutched in white knuckles. “Tipped with the Eye of the Lord.”

  “It was you who stole it, then,” Agnessa said, eyeing the golden gem at the crest of the staff. She remembered when the relic went missing. Clement admitted he’d known who’d done it, though he never said who. He’d only say it had no connection with The Sword.

  “To call what I did stealing is a stretch whose measure few would understand.” He stood tall, and let it be known to Agnessa that he did not need the staff to stand.

  He threw down his coat, and his staff became a sword of white wood with gray grain, emblazoned in a golden light that flickered like flames. The sword was long, as long as the staff had been tall. And whereas the kite-cut gem had been as tall as a hand and as wide as round as a fist, it was shrunken and embedded in the center of the hilt. Still, it shown like the sun, and left lingering scars in the vision.

  Agnessa smiled, though her eyebrow twitched. Wizards are not as easily destroyed as giant bugs. It can be accurately assumed that they come prepared in the way of protections. And most protections, if imbued about the body properly, reflect ill intent back on the original source.

  But she smiled all the same as a spike of flaming light, gold, like the radiant energy about the wizard’s sword, came alive in her hand.

  “I will ask you, milady, to leave only once.”

  “I will not go,” she said.

  “Very well,” he said, shutting his eyes. He was uplifted then, in a white light like visible wind that circled his body.

  Agnessa lit green as the tower faded from existence and they hung suspended in a pale orange sky. The atmosphere was heavy here, and when a ground of blue grass rose up to meet their feet, both nearly collapsed under the weight of their own bodies.

  With a grunt, the wizard lunged forward, performing a stab of perfect form, his right hand outstretched, arm straight, the tip of his blade angled perfectly at her heart, his other arm behind his back.

  Agnessa dodged, but did not parry, the attack. Instead, she flew up into the air and landed behind the wizard, who stood straight before turning and adjusting his stance to face her.

  Again, he lunged, and, again, she dodged. But this time, when he missed and she rose, he swiped at her feet.

  The tip of the blade nipped at her ankle with a scratch that scattered blood. It spattered on the grass and sizzled there until gone in a pungent plume of smoke.

  Agnessa had never bled from a wound before. She couldn’t help but grimace, eyes wide, as she looked upon the fading wound.

  Pallin didn’t smile. In fact, his face remained as cold and severe as it had been all along, his steely eyes finding her ankle only for a moment before returning to her own bright eyes.

  “One word,” he said, “and I drop the spell and let you fly. One. Word.”

  Agnessa, whose ankle had healed without scarring, blinked once slowly before shaking her head and letting out the smallest of sighs. She regained what looked like composure, though her nerves tortured her still.

  “Say it. Any one word. Say please. Or stop. Or no.”

  “Fuck,” she said, “you.”

  Pallin’s mustache twitched, and he adjusted his posture so that he stood ready in a more aggressive stance. “Say no more,” he said. “We end it, then.”

  Agnessa felt it was her turn to make the first move. She knew just what she’d do. Clement had done it to her. She showed her how, and she did it back. This was in the womb, maybe a week before their birth – not in their birth mother, but the one before. He had taken her space and shut her in it, removed it from space and laid it out again in a space he stretched with his intent. From her perspective, she did everything she could to hold her cells together in what was an omnidirectional pull from all directions.

  She placed Pallin under that same test now. His protective spells dropped, and he screamed in agony as he pulled himself together.

  Despite his struggle, and her effort, he did maintain himself.

  They appeared back in the tower, in that same grand room, only in the cold and windy dark of night in the present time.

  He fell to his knees, coughed a single glob of blood before wiping his mouth, standing slowly, and locking eyes with the young goddess of death.

  “Vanity is not all we share in common,” Agnessa said, for she knew even Pallin feared her brother. Everyone had. “And although maybe I only contain within myself a comparatively little amount of power, it is there, and it is great.”

  Pallin tried to speak, but he could not. He gripped at his throat and shook his head, his sword appearing at his feet with a clatter, and then rising up as a staff that met his hand.

  He faded in a puff of smoke there, and Agnessa ran through it to the open door beyond.

  She flew down the steps, and found the tail end of what she sought as a trail of pale yellow light stretching to the white ship.

  Armeddes had been there. He had observed, she thought – maybe. Or maybe it’d taken him that long to gather the Haathuud queen.

  She refused to accept that he was gone and launched herself after him in his trail.

  The ship was still there, greater than she’d ever imagined, and growing still as she neared closer.

  It shot down a great dagger of sunlight from within its core that left a bleeding gash in the city below.

  Suddenly, it was gone. It vanished in a flash that disrupted her path. What an enormous energy, to leave a hole in the air behind it, of nothing, of outer space in inner space, vacant until filled in again with sky. That, to her, was more impressive than the hole in the ground.

  But neither held her attention like what currently drew it. The Star. The Red Star – it had, for the first time, looked down at her and noticed she was there.