Chapter 20

  Sweat beaded on Akkama’s forehead, but it evaporated before it could run into her eyes. She lay on her belly in the pleasantly hot sand, on a rise two miles from the radio tower, one eye up against a shaded telescope. She saw them: Anthea, Rosma, the others, but her mind was elsewhere. It was in the shining orange crystal she held tightly at her side, the mind stone. It was with Anthea.

  And by the fucking Ten, why was Anthea so gods-damned hard to control? Lex was infantile in comparison, and if Akkama could’ve used Rasmus as planned, it would all be over by now. She hissed under her breath and concentrated even harder on forcing Anthea to move. If she didn’t hurry, the opportunity would pass. All that practice on Lex was not availing her. She could control Anthea, but slowly. Too slowly. She’d never kill Rosma at this rate.

  Akkama cast her mind about for ideas, looking without sight through the dark misty haze of the mind stone, in which the intelligences of Anthea and the rest burned like dim lights in a world of shadows. Akkama thought quickly. Surely any of the others would be easier to control than Anthea, except Acarnus, but none were likely to be able to kill Rosma. Not for certain.

  Other intelligences lay nearby. The creatures of Prax were dim stars scattered in the dark. One bright light shone not far from Anthea. Akkama had only to brush it to recognize it as the vesta. She wasn’t sure that would work. But wait…what was that next to it?

  Near the vesta, in some approximation of physical space that sight through the mind stone afforded, a strange light glimmered in the dark. Vague, hazy, but powerful. Akkama did not know what it was; she could not see its form. Probably some beast of Prax. Whatever it was looked even stronger than the vesta. It was old. It was angry. Perfect. She would bend it to her will.

  “I choose you,” Akkama whispered.

  With most of the mind stone’s energy directed toward Anthea, because just maybe Anthea would slip up and suddenly make this easy, Akkama reached out with her new color priest powers and touched that other mind, the strange one.

  Rage. Fury. A torrent of wrath swept Akkama away in a flood of deep and abiding hatred. It conjoined her thoughts, consumed them, flowed through her and into her connection with Anthea. There, in Anthea, it found an outlet.

  *

  “Anthea? What’s wrong?” Acarnus drew Zayana’s attention when he stepped up to Anthea. Anthea stood before Rosma and gazed down at her with a blank expression, her scythe partially raised above her. She was trembling.

  “Just a moment,” Zayana told Fiora. She swept across the salt to Anthea.

  Emmius cried out in alarm. Zayana spun on her heel, saw him fall onto the sand, clutching at his head, eyes wide. His ears—he was covering his ears. The sand around him crumpled into wrinkled shapes like a sheet seized by a giant fist.

  Light drew Zayana’s gaze back to Anthea. Her wings were burning brilliance now; they shone almost too brightly to look at. Dangerously bright. Acarnus asked again what was wrong. Rosma started, awakened by the light and Emmius’s cry of alarm.

  And then Anthea screamed. It was the most horrible sound Zayana had ever heard, the more so because it came from her hero, her savior who had appeared to rescue her on a bright morning by the sea years ago. It was a wild shriek of rage, of terror, of pain. It stunned them all.

  Anthea’s scythe came down in a shining arc toward Rosma, and all the air in the clearing went with it, smashing the sand like a giant’s hammer. Rosma rolled across the salt, flung away by the blow, spraying black blood. A storm of wind and salt and sand blocked Zayana’s vision. The shockwave of the impact flung her to the ground.

  What was going on? Zayana didn’t know, but something was very wrong with Anthea. She had to stop it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her arda shone purple in the swirling salt. She found Anthea’s white arda in her mind and took the energy from it as though inhaling.

  But it didn’t work. Something blocked her. Some other force surrounded Anthea, something Zayana had never felt before, like a river running so swiftly it cannot be crossed, a river of ancient rage.

  And still, this whole time, the terrible sound of Anthea’s screams pierced the air.

  The shockwave tossed Acarnus onto the sand. He shouted her name, but his voice meant nothing in the howling gale. Salt and sand blasted him as he struggled up, crouched on all fours. Anthea was too bright, her arda dangerously overcharged. Its brilliance reflected off the blue sand and white salt that swirled around her, off of her white robes and her white hair, off the scythe. His goggles dimmed, adjusted to the brightness; he saw her face contorted, the expression unfathomable.

  He tried again to shout, but to no avail. He could hardly hear his own voice. He dug down into the sand with his hands and feet and crawled to her along the ground, step by step.

  She turned away from him, not seeing him. She disappeared in a flash, propelled by a blast of air that threw him backwards against a sharp coral protrusion that scored deep grooves down his back and broke off some of his spines with a sharp jab of pain.

  The scene cleared somewhat as the maelstrom scoured away the surface layers of sand and salt. Emmius lay on the sand, baffled and shocked. The sand around him remained firm; it held him fast as though pinning him to the earth. He was speaking, staring at the bluish sandstorm where Anthea had gone. Acarnus looked for Rosma and Zayana but didn’t see them.

  He ran to Emmius, thinking furiously, finding it more difficult than ever before simply because of the subject. Anthea. Gone mad? Not without help. Emmius’s cry of alarm—the mother stone? Possessing Anthea? Why, and why now? Not likely. What else? Lex, their newcomer. Not found in his databases. Coming to ask for and draw away a color priest—for Derxis. Derxis, the one among them who could have prevented whatever was happening to Anthea. A set-up. By whom? The Ephathites? What among them could do this? A rogue color priest? And perhaps a more important question: why?

  He recalled Anthea acting strangely, walking stiffly toward Rosma. Raising her scythe. Rosma had been the target, and Anthea had been fighting it. Something had then gone wrong.

  Rosma the target. Akkama. But how?

  These thoughts ran through his mind in the seconds it took to reach Emmius. Acarnus dropped to the sand near the terrified brown.

  “Emmius,” he said. “We must go.” Flight was their only option. Acarnus was not at all sure that he or anyone present could defeat Anthea in combat, and it was a moot point besides, for he did not intend to try. He would get the others to safety, because that is what Anthea would do, and then stall her long enough for either the problem to wear itself out or for Derxis to arrive.

  The storm came suddenly upon them. The wind, flattened into blades of air pressure, shredded Acarnus’s cloak and skin. Anthea appeared before them from the chaos, like a flying avatar of the Winged God herself, shining and wrathful, her eyes pure white and terrible, shrieking in pain, in rage, in horror. That scream cut Acarnus more deeply than the wind.

  He trudged toward her against the wind, shouting her name, his plan of moments before forgotten.

  The howling winds guttered, died down to a mere gust. She stopped screaming, gulped for breath. With each breath, her arda flared with brilliant light, and the winds flew. “...carnus…” He heard a voice in the air. “…elpme…” Her feet touched the ground; the tattered shreds of her white robe fluttered around her.

  A green blur scurried along the ground beside him in a series of quick bounds. Fiora reached Anthea and leapt without hesitation. She attached herself to Anthea’s torso in a tight embrace. She spoke words Acarnus did not catch—swift, soft words that sounded like poetry.

  It did not last. Anthea’s screaming began again. The winds blew. Fiora clung tightly, but Anthea spun and slashed out with the scythe. A wall of air hit Acarnus like a speeder and flung him away, lifting him far into the salty air. He saw Emmius, still anchored in his solid sand, still dumbstruck. He saw tiny Fiora, thrown along with him, sailing like a green comet over a reef.

  Then he had himself to worry about, for he crashed through the branches of a dry coral colony. They broke like brittle sticks under his impact. He landed in the stiff rubbery fronds of an anemone-like creature and almost passed out from its stings before he managed to roll out of it onto the sun-baked salt.

  *

  Fiora tried desperately to orient herself in the air, but it was futile. Halfway concussed by the blast, dizzy and spinning, surrounded by a nauseating gyroscope of blue sky and bright coral, she squeezed her eyes tight and did the only thing she could think of:

  “CATCH!”

  She made herself into a loose ball, prepared to strike some very hard coral. But that did not happen. Instead, she struck something warm and soft that adjusted itself to her trajectory and matched her fall and eased her to a halt somewhere on the ground. Fiora kept her eyes squeezed tight for a moment, trembling, clutching at Catch’s warm fur. Green tears leaked out into that golden fur.

  His warm nose nuzzled her, checking for injuries. Fiora had been cut up a little by the wind, but nothing major, and she told Catch so.

  That screaming. That horrible, terrible, awful sound that couldn’t possibly be coming from Anthea. It was still there, surrounded by the sound of howling winds.

  Fiora dropped to the ground and looked around, wiping tears. A raging funnel cloud dominated the sky, turquoise and white with sand and salt.

  She stood shakily to her feet. She pointed at it. “Take me there, Catch,” she said. Catch could still approach Anthea, even in that wind.

  But Catch snorted and jerked his head sideways. No.

  “Catch! Please!”

  He did the same. A flat refusal.

  Fiora hopped up and down. She tasted blood and realized that she was biting her hand so hard she was bleeding.

  “Fine!” she said. “I’ll just go and—”

  Catch was there in a second, standing between her and the tower. Between her and Anthea. He shook his head again.

  Then Fiora noticed the animals. The rest of the sky, all around the huge funnel cloud Anthea was making, was full of the aerial creatures of Prax. Schools of manta rays, huge eels slithering up to the sky dreamers which gathered like stormclouds, and even a rare leviathan squid. Anthea’s storm must have disturbed them. It looked chaotic up there. It looked dangerous.

  Fiora leaned against Catch and put an arm around him. He was probably right. She had already tried to calm down Anthea. What else could she do?

  Movement caught the corner of her eye. She looked fearfully, afraid that it was a land-based creature of Prax, roused in anger. But it was not anything like that. It was Emmius, limping and holding his—oh gods he was missing an arm!

  He didn’t notice her at first when she skidded to a halt beside him. Only when she stepped right in front of him did he look down at her in surprise. He was bleeding all over, but his left arm was clean off just below the shoulder. He held the stump with his right hand. A solidified wad of turquoise Prax sand stemmed the bleeding somewhat, but he still left a trail of brown behind him.

  “What happened!?” she asked him.

  “Um like sorry but I gotta get to the mother stone.” He stumbled past her; he could barely walk. He had lost too much blood already!

  “Where is your arm, Emmius?”

  He shrugged and continued on his way.

  Fiora drew a knife from her belt and slashed her forearm. She let the blood pool in her palms before she caught up to Emmius and slapped it on the stump of his arm with a strong pulse of healing. It was just enough to stop him from bleeding any more. Fiora was afraid she might need all the blood she could spare today.

  Emmius mumbled something that might have been a thanks, but his mind was fixed on something else. He limped on.

  Catch nudged her from behind, drawing her attention back to the station and Anthea’s windstorm. It was dissipating. The radio tower became visible as the storm cleared and all the salt began to drift back down. The tower leaned askew.

  This time Catch didn’t stop her when she bounded back to her friends.

  *

  Rosma was lucky to be alive. Had she been any slower, Anthea’s first blow would have crushed her into the sand. Even with the uncanny reaction speed granted by the curse in her blood, the shock of Anthea’s attack had nearly been her undoing. And even though Rosma rolled aside at the last moment, the tip of the scythe scraped across her ribs and the blast of air tossed her like a doll across the clearing. She collided hard against sharp stone; her skull cracked against it; her vision swam apart into blurry shapes. She fell limp to the windblown sand, and for a long moment she could neither think nor move.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Agency returned to Rosma during a lull in the windstorm. She blinked salt from her eyes, saw only a pale smear of light approaching. She became aware of the noise, the roaring of the wind cut through by a horrible sound. It sounded to Rosma like the death shriek of the monster she had slain and whose tooth she had taken for her spear. That monster would have slain Rosma first, if not for Anthea. The spear lay half-buried in the sand before her. Her eyes could focus on the carved ivory shaft, but not on that smear of light beyond.

  Rosma reached out for the spear, her arm weak and her hand clenched tight. Something was wrong with her. She was in terrible pain, but that was no uncommon occurrence. Half of her body was numb; the other half tingled.

  The smear of light stood before Rosma in a gust of wind. It resolved itself into a creature that looked like Anthea. That creature raised its scythe, ready to kill. Not going to miss this time.

  The wind screamed unfocused words: “…please…”

  A dark shape appeared in the maelstrom above Anthea. It cracked like thunder and shattered the wind with sound and light. The shape fell, struck the sand with a heavy thud, and in an instant it wrapped Anthea in an iron embrace. She was held from behind by arms that glowed with the godshatter of the Thunder God.

  The scythe dropped from Anthea’s hands. She snarled and thrashed; wind tore at Rasmus. He did not let go, and Anthea may as well have been bound in chains of adamant. Yet the storm did not abate. If anything, it worsened, and Anthea’s crystalline wings glowed brighter—too bright, much too bright, and her shrieks of wordless rage and pain increased.

  Rosma shoved herself to one knee and then the other by sheer force of will, then planted a foot in the shifting sands. She held the spear in one hand. The wind focused itself into sharpness, into hammers of force. It beat at her; it opened her skin and let diseased blood flow.

  A sound carried through the torrent of sand, as though to Rosma’s ears alone: “…illme…”

  Rasmus shouted something, a negation, his voice mighty enough to defy the storm. He could have crushed Anthea like a paper statue. But he didn’t have the strength. Rosma knew that well.

  Rosma saw clearly for a moment. As though the currents of air conspired to create a window of clarity, she found herself face to face with Anthea. What she saw in that tortured face gave her the strength to act, to do what Rasmus could never have done.

  Her spear took Anthea through the heart. Rosma wrenched it out and for good measure described a great arc that slashed open the throat. Blood sprayed like warm milk. A sound rang out that vibrated through Rosma’s bones—the sound of shattering arda. The wind ceased almost at once. The momentum of her swing took Rosma back to the sand.

  Silence. Stillness. The suddenness of it was unnerving. Sand fell like a soft rain from the sky, blanketing Rosma as she lay on her side. Yet through the sifting haze she saw everything: saw Rasmus horror-stricken, saw him release Anthea, saw her drop to her side in the sand. Dead. Undoubtedly dead. A mercy, perhaps, for her wings of arda were broken stumps trickling a bright skybound smoke.

  When the sand had finished falling it was replaced by the salt snow, a powdery haze that drifted down like a sinking fog, like sand settling underwater. She saw Derxis approach, his gaze far away, his arda glowing and making a shimmery halo about him on the snow. He knelt next to a slumped body in a violet dress. Zayana. The body stirred feebly.

  Anthea’s body was blackening; the fragmented stumps of her wings clouded with shadow as though pigment was crawling through.

  Rosma put an arm under herself and levered herself up. Over Anthea’s body, beyond Derxis and Zayana, she saw Acarnus watching. Mostly hidden by the saltfall, he stood impassive, those dark goggles over his eyes, his expression neutral. He turned to scrutinize the distance where Derxis had been looking. He vanished into the salty haze.

  A sound rose up in the silence. Derxis’s laughter.

  *

  Derxis fell to his knees. He grabbed his sides and bent over. The laughter burbled up from some well of insanity deep within him. Was it actually funny? Not really. Not at all, no. The best of them—gone, just like that. Without warning, without cause, without meaning. His skin crawled as he laughed, beyond conscious control, shifting through bright colors.

  “What happened?” a tiny shout, frantic, lost in the haze of settling salt. Fiora.

  No one bothered to reply as she hurtled into view. The salt haze around her shone green, reflecting her arda. She knew exactly what had happened; she could see Anthea’s death right in front of her, even with her eyes closed.

  Fiora was by Anthea’s side in an instant, crouched over her blackening body. “No,” she whispered. “No, no, no, not her! Please!” Her eyes were wide and horrified; her jaw trembled. The sight of it hurt Derxis more than anything had since his color priest trial. He looked away. There was nothing he could do for her. There never really had been, and now in her greatest need he was as useless as ever. The thought made him laugh harder. What a useless friend. Here he was, laughing at her pain. That itself struck him as funny in the darkest way.

  Some color priest, D-man.

  The very best, Derxis.

  We’ll laugh when the world ends and all our friends die, D-man?

  Of course. What else could we do, Derxis?

  “Fiora,” said Rasmus in a deep rumble. “That will not help.”

  “Shut up, Rasmus!” she shouted at him, her voice choked with sobs. “Zayana, help me.”

  Derxis looked at Fiora again. His laughter trailed off into a weak giggle. Her blood was everywhere, running in a swift rivulet from her left wrist onto Anthea, joined by tears. A deep green haze surrounded her and Anthea, the rich emerald brightness of her crystals—that color that quickened Derxis’s heart—shining off the salty ground and sparkling in the air. She was trying to heal Anthea.

  “Fiora,” said Zayana. She approached and began to speak, to tell Fiora that it was useless, but Fiora cut her off.

  “Help me, Zayana!” Then she looked directly at Derxis. They locked eyes. His laughter stopped entirely. Something moved behind those eyes that he had never seen there before.

  Derxis always tried not to peer deeply into Fiora’s mind. He was afraid because he knew what he would find there when she thought about him. He was afraid because he knew that she already had a special person with a privileged place at the foremost of her thoughts, and it was not him.

  But when he saw the foreign and exciting determination there in her beautiful eyes, he dove in. With a mental shrug and sigh of acceptance, he stepped into one of the most defenseless minds he had ever known.

  He knew everything he needed to know in only a second. Fiora did not intend to give up on Anthea. She would heal her or die in the attempt, and this resolution was set in steel, irreducible and unswerving. It was like something Derxis would expect to see in the mind of Rasmus, but never in Fiora. He had not known such a resolve existed here. It was alien, foreign, exciting. How people surprised him!

  He tasted her hot anger and bitter disappointment with Akkama, her deep-rooted terror at the prospect of living in a world without Anthea to guide her, and a burning love for all of them—the kind that could easily drive her to sacrifice herself just as she was possibly doing at this very moment. Derxis could not help but turn to observe her feelings for Jeronimy. There they were: gnarled and knotted, confusion and bitterness shot through with compassion and sympathy like beams of sunlight through the clouds on a stormy day, and all of this swept up like flotsam in a relentless river of affection. Childish infatuation, perhaps, yet still curious. Whence came these feelings toward the monumental asshole that was Jeronimy? Derxis could trace them if he took the time, could identify their origins. More: he could change them. Right now, with Fiora distracted and her mind wide open, he could dislodge Jeronimy from that place.

  He laughed—a sidesplitter, a real knee-slapper of a laugh, right there in the slow unreal space of the mind.

  He turned to her conscious thoughts. Back to business.

  Fiora was thinking:

  she’s not all gone yet—there’s still a chance

  can’t do it alone

  need Zayana

  need Rasmus

  need Catch

  i might die

  that’s okay

  have to try

  have to try

  help me Derxis if you’re listening

  please believe in me

  He saw through her eyes, saw himself, his skin changed to deep green in mimicry of Fiora, slumped undignifiedly on his knees. The orange of his arda and the green of his skin looked like a dream never to be.

  Oh, well.

  He fled her mind and touched nothing on the way out. He could have responded to her. He could have revealed things to her; opened himself. He could have changed things, small things. He did not. He did not even prank her by meddling in her subconscious processes.

  Derxis opened his eyes to the terrible sight of Fiora bleeding out over a dead Anthea. Mere seconds had passed, and she still looked at him. He chuckled and gave her a wink. Believe? He could do that. He always did. That was the way of the color priest. Time to make a miracle.

  “Zayana!” he shouted. Then, having caught her attention, he focused on transmitting a series of ideas, more swift and sure than speech: amplify Fiora’s power as much as possible / AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE / regardless of her safety / it’s okay she asked for it / and she can do it / she can save Anthea but only with your help / trust her / trust me. Derxis’s arda shed ripples of bright orange light that arced and curled like flares in the corona of the sun.

  “Rasmus!” An extra-loud shout for him. stand by do not interfere / stand by do not interfere. Repetition, because Rasmus could be a bit slow. And the same message to Rosma. That only left the vesta, who had yet to appear.

  Fiora, bleeding over Anthea’s body, shone brighter. As bright as she could go. Still not enough. Not close to enough. She curled in on herself like a frightened insect, quivering.

  “ Now , Zayana!” Derxis shouted. He reiterated his message mentally, added urgency.

  Zayana’s eyes were wide, her royal composure fractured. She did not trust him; Derxis did not require his powers to know this. She never had. She would not help Fiora kill herself. But Derxis transmitted another message: the depth of Fiora’s resolve; she would heal Anthea or die trying. That decided it.

  Zayana became afire with violet light. The arda crystals set into her forehead blazed like small purple suns.

  Fiora’s light multiplied; her emerald aura grew until it filled Derxis’s vision. He heard her whimper. He found it strange that their vicinity was so audibly quiet, in direct contrast to the clamor he could vaguely discern in everyone’s minds. To the ears it was simply Fiora crying, Derxis chuckling, Rasmus breathing, and the occasional odd noise from unseen monsters above that Derxis wasn’t worrying about at the moment.

  A new sound joined these—hoofbeats, swift and sure and heavy. Catch appeared from the swirling salt haze like the legendary vesta named I Will Run Forever in the old stories, always appearing heroically just when she was needed.

  Fiora collapsed on top of Anthea, her arda blazing. Catch came to a halt over the pair of them, and Derxis played with the idea of trying to explain to the vesta what was going on. There was no need. The vesta settled down beside them, bent its neck gracefully, and touched Fiora’s back with its silver gem-flecked antlers.

  The area became, for a brief moment, too bright for conventional sight. Derxis understood what was happening, for Fiora had understood before him. Even with Zayana’s amplification, Fiora might simply not possess enough life energy to heal a body as far gone as Anthea’s. But Catch, a vesta, was a deep well of life force. He could help her.

  It still was nearly insufficient.

  The wild light faded; the comparative darkness of the bright salty snow settled around them. The snow was clearing gradually, refracting more and more sunlight as it filtered down from above. All so quiet.

  Derxis dragged himself across the sand toward Fiora and Anthea, but both the vesta and Rasmus got there first. For once, the vesta seemed not to care that it was shoulder to shoulder with the one it viewed as its rival. They carefully pulled Fiora from atop an Anthea that looked doused in green paint.

  “Rasmus,” Derxis croaked, his voice harsh and dry, suddenly tired. “Is she all right?”

  Rasmus, of course, did not hear him.

  Zayana glided past Derxis and stooped down to inspect Fiora. After a moment she relaxed in obvious relief, and that same relief passed itself along, magnified, to Derxis. Fiora okay. Or at least, Fiora alive.

  “Bind her wounds,” grumbled Rasmus, “then look to Rosma.” He carefully lay Fiora on the sand beside Anthea. The vesta leaned over and began licking the blood from Fiora’s body. Something looked odd about Catch, and it took Derxis a moment to figure it out. The vesta looked tired. Not just tired, exhausted. Weakened. Its inner luminosity, which was never quite visible to the naked eye, flickered. Derxis had never seen it, or any vesta, like that before.

  Zayana was a better medic than he, so Derxis allowed her to work on Fiora’s injuries while he moved on to investigate Anthea. Rasmus knelt, a single huge finger touching her chest, feeling for a heartbeat. He turned astonished eyes toward Derxis, and those eyes were answer enough.

  Yet Derxis had to confirm it for himself. He placed a hand on her chest. And yes, a heartbeat. Weak, very weak, but there.

  He sat down heavily on the sand and folded his arms across his legs.

  Well, this has been an emotional day, D-Man.

  Sounds like a job for a color priest, Derxis.

  “Derxis,” said Rosma’s voice from nearby. He stood, weary, and trudged over to her. She was a mess, all bloodied and battered. He spotted one of her waterskins nearby and moved to grab it as she spoke. “I require a witness.”

  “You got one.” He took a swig from the waterskin, then poured the rest over Rosma’s dry and salty body. She grunted in appreciation.

  “I am swearing a blood oath.”

  “I must advise you not to do that at this time. You are emotional and—”

  “I swear on my blood, and by my stars,” she held up her left hand and showed him her constellation, “and by my Song. By these I swear that I will kill Akkama, and may they all be lost to the void should I betray this oath.”

  Derxis sighed, squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed the side of his head with a hand. “Witnessed,” he muttered. Gods damn it, Rosma.

  Things normalized as the panic and adrenaline wore away. Derxis shaded his eyes and looked to the east as the salt cleared. When he and Rasmus had returned to the windstorm, the first thing he had done was to sever the connection he had seen. In doing so, he had known exactly who was on the other end of it, and their location. He didn’t have to be Acarnus to figure this one out: Akkama stole the mind stone from Thaevrit, used Lex as a decoy to draw him off, and tried to control someone to kill Rosma. Probably Rasmus was the intended tool. Akkama bit off more than she had bargained for with Anthea, and something had gone terribly wrong. There had been another mind, another presence full of wrath and rage, which had continued to possess Anthea until her death.

  And on the topic of wrath and rage, Derxis could not imagine a greater abuse of a color priest’s powers than what he had seen today. This was why the creation of mind stones was controversial. He had to remove it from Akkama. He had just the mask for the job.

  One problem: Acarnus had noticed Derxis looking at the distant ridge. He was gone now; he had left before Anthea’s miraculous recovery. Acarnus wolf-bound had departed on a solo hunt. He should have known better. Maybe he needed to act, to do anything necessary to delay his face-to-face confrontation with the strange and terrible emotion of grief.

  A few cards fluttered down from somewhere above as Derxis stared east. They were his cards. One of them landed at his feet. A fool. Derxis had painted each card in this deck himself, and all of the fool cards were drawn with one of his masks.