Nolyn Read online

  The Fhrey didn’t move, eyes blazing as he held the blade tightly.

  “She’s not worth it,” his friend said. “Don’t forget Ferrol’s Law. You can’t kill another Fhrey.”

  “But she’s—”

  “Even a single drop of Fhrey blood is enough. It’s not worth sacrificing your immortal spirit. You’ll be forever barred from entering the afterlife.”

  “Maybe Ferrol doesn’t care about half-breeds.”

  “Do you want to take that chance?” his friend asked.

  Fryln pointed the dagger at Sephryn. “Fine. But you watch yourself, mongrel. That’s a thin line to hide behind. Maybe killing half-a-Fhrey would prevent my entrance to Phyre, but there’s nothing against inflicting pain.”

  “Mongrel?” Arvis said, outraged. “Be sure to repeat that when Prince Nolyn sits on the throne.”

  The two Fhrey laughed. “That’ll never happen,” Fryln said as he sheathed his dagger. Then the two walked away from her, the crowd, and the man they had murdered.

  “Fryln, Fryln, Fryln, Fryln,” Arvis quietly recited, her eyes closed in concentration.

  “What are you doing, Arvis?”

  “Keeping a list to tell Nolyn. I want to see them punished when he’s crowned. I wish I knew who the other one was.”

  “Eril Orphe, and Fryln’s last name is Ronelle. But I don’t think you’ll get the chance. Emperor Nyphron is just a little over seventeen hundred. He’ll likely live another five hundred years.”

  Arvis thought a moment, her mouth twitching. “But you’ll still be around. Maybe you could think of me when they get what’s coming. Or perhaps we should go get Kendel’s brothers after all. Do you know where they live?”

  “No, let’s not do that. Your first idea was better. I’ll make sure Nolyn knows, and we’ll let him take care of it. Agreed?”

  Arvis reluctantly nodded.

  Crisis averted.

  Truth was, Sephryn didn’t know Kendel. She stopped short of labeling her comments to Fryln lies because the dead man probably did have friends and family, and though less likely, some might be city guards. Truthfully, Sephryn had her doubts about an arrest. The Orphes and Ronelles were powerful families, and what Fryln had said about Sephryn’s position wasn’t completely wrong.

  She had led protests and practiced civil disobedience for centuries, which finally resulted in the creation of the Imperial Council. Humans now had a voice in the palace, albeit a weak one.

  Still, Sephryn took exception to the charge that the council hadn’t accomplished anything. They had improved the lives of thousands of humans, though more in the provinces than in the capital. Fryln was right about one thing, though. After many years of trying, the Imperial Council still hadn’t been able to coax the emperor to attend a single meeting, and nothing truly significant could be accomplished without his say-so.

  The crowd shuffled abruptly as an older woman entered the square. Sephryn didn’t know her, but the look of anguish made her identity an easy guess. The woman fell on the body and cried. She shouted, but no one could understand what she said. They weren’t words in the usual sense, but rather the sound of primal suffering. Perhaps they were what the old mystic Suri used to refer to as the language of creation. The sounds that emanated from every living thing on the face of Elan.

  Others arrived, marked as family by wailing and tears.

  “Why can’t you stop this?” the mother sobbed at her. “You’ve been our hope. We’ve believed in you. Trusted you. Why couldn’t you have . . .” She fell back into the language of creation that was too painful for Sephryn to hear.

  Arvis reached out a hand of support, but Sephryn swatted it away. She didn’t want sympathy, didn’t deserve it. She had no answers, just excuses, and that wasn’t enough.

  Thinking she might cry and not wanting anyone to see, Sephryn found a quiet doorstep in a dim alley. The fact that she hadn’t known Kendel didn’t matter. His was another life taken. One more that didn’t need to die. She sat, face in her hands, between a rain barrel and a near-empty woodpile, but the tears didn’t come.

  Have I grown so callous?

  That was one of her fears, insanity was another.

  Only someone truly nuts would keep trying after so long. Maybe that’s why I’m friends with Arvis. Perhaps I’m not far behind her on the road to Crazy Town. It’s been—she did the math—seven hundred and ninety-six years. I’ve spent the better part of my first millennium fighting to make things better.

  Everything had been so hopeful, so full of possibilities, back in the year Fifty-Two. What a wonderful year that had been. The Northern Goblin Wars had yet to break out, so Nolyn was by her side. Bran was, too. All three of them had such grand plans for the future. Bran had always been the most fearless, the instigator. He found it impossible to ignore the cruelties of the Fhrey. He provoked the Instarya, called them out, shamed them.

  No, that belittles his deeds. He was terrified, but that didn’t stop him.

  He had made his parents proud.

  At least one of us did.

  The year Fifty-Two had been the best of her life—days so golden she gleefully revisited the memories. She had lived more than eight times the life span of a human, but only that one year had been great.

  She shook her head and chided herself. This self-pity is pointless. I’ve had other good years. I’ve won a few battles. I have a son—a wonderful, perfect boy. And, of course, my childhood was a delight.

  As she thought about it, Sephryn realized that was part of the problem. The glories of her youth had ruined her adulthood. Nothing in the centuries since had ever compared to the wonders of her first few decades. How could they? Back then, there had been magic.

  A man with a partially bald head and wearing an ugly brown frock passed the opening of the alley.

  Bran?

  The thought just popped into her head—an utterly irrational notion. Bran had left Percepliquis centuries ago, and she hadn’t heard from him again. Although she didn’t know for certain, Bran had to be dead. No human had ever lived longer than a hundred years, which made it utterly impossible for her to have seen him walk by.

  But it looked so much like him . . .

  Bran always dressed in the worst clothes, having had no interest in better ones. He would have gone naked if not for modesty and the weather. And the last time she saw him, Bran had been going bald, but only at the very top of his head—a bizarre sight, all that wild hair wreathed around a bare patch of pink. In over eight hundred years, she’d never seen anyone else with that peculiarity.

  Until now.

  Did I really just see him walk by?

  Bran had been an old man by human standards, but Sephryn and Nolyn appeared no different from the days of their youth. Bran’s hair had gone gray, his face sagged, and wrinkles ran like a rash across his skin. But his eyes remained unchanged. Whenever she had looked into them, she recognized her childhood friend. He was still in there, even though the shell was rotting.

  Bran was human. It can’t be him, she thought even as she rushed to the end of the alley and peered out at the street.

  Percepliquis wasn’t just the capital of the empyre and the center of the world. The city was also the largest and most populous. A vast variety of people flooded its streets, arriving from nine of the eleven provinces. No one came from Erivania, the Fhrey homeland, or Ryin Contita, which wasn’t really a province at all, just a buffer between humans and the Fhrey whom Nyphron had defeated. Everyone else came to the city, or at least it felt that way to Sephryn as she frantically searched the crowds and currents of humanity, looking for a single person: a man that couldn’t—according to the laws of nature—be there.

  But I’ve witnessed magic before. Bran and Suri were so close. Is it possible that . . .

  When she spotted him again, she realized he actually wasn’t difficult to find. The slender, disheveled man in the ugly brown robe with the telltale bald spot moved up the crowded thoroughfare exactly where he ought to be. H
e wove through the massive evening migration of workers and stepped around the pilgrims who made roadblocks as they stared up at the towering height of the buildings.

  She ran after him. “Bran!” she shouted. “Bran, wait!”

  He didn’t hear. Sephryn closed the distance quickly, her heart pounding with hope, the first she’d had in years. “Bran!”

  The man finally heard and turned.

  It’s not him.

  The disappointment was devastating. She stopped, halted by dashed hopes.

  The man stared, puzzled. “Were you calling me?”

  For a moment, Sephryn didn’t reply; she couldn’t. Then, as he watched her with eyes that were not at all Bran’s, she said, “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

  Rather than turn away, or even show annoyance at the interruption, the man’s expression grew intense. He looked as if she had said something wholly different, as if she had posed a brilliantly cunning question, and he was struggling to find the answer. In that lingering moment, Sephryn had time to plumb the depths of her mistake. The man was nothing like Bran. His face was pleasant, might even be considered cute, like a gerbil endowed with a large nose and an unsettlingly passionate stare.

  “I’m sorry to have bothered you.” She turned away, embarrassed and more than a little angry with herself.

  I’m such an idiot. How could I have thought it was him? I’ve spent too much time with Arvis. Before long, I’ll start understanding the language of wagon wheels.

  The street they stood on was Ebonydale, named after the market to which it led. She thought to go back for the eggs now that it was—

  “Dammit!” She lifted her empty hands, glaring at them as if the two fists had betrayed her.

  The nuts were gone.

  I must have put them down when I was examining Kendel’s body. She noticed the stains on her skirt, a reminder of the man she had failed to save.

  I’m going home, she concluded and turned away.

  “Wait!” the man in the frock called. “Tell me. Who did you think I was?”

  She looked back only to cast a dismissive wave of her hand. “Nobody. You’re not him, so, again, my apologies.”

  No eggs and no nuts meant next to no dinner. Mica would be angry with her, but that was nothing new. The old woman was so—

  “You called me Bran.” The man was following her, and his tone picked up a tinge of accusation.

  What’s with this guy? I said I was sorry. “Yeah, that was my friend’s name.”

  “And you thought I was him . . . why?”

  “Look, it was a mistake, okay? I’m sorry I bothered you. Have a nice evening. Goodbye.”

  “Did he dress like me? And wear his hair this way?” He patted the top of his head. “Is that why you thought—”

  Sephryn stopped and turned. “You know him?”

  The man’s mouth hung open as he stared at her. “Who . . . who are you?”

  “I’m Sephryn. What is your name?”

  The man looked flummoxed beyond the ability to speak but managed to say, “I’m—ah—I’m Brother Seymour.”

  Sephryn gave him a wry smile and shook her head. “You’re lying; I don’t have a brother.”

  He laughed then. “Oh, no. Ah—my name is Seymour Destone. I’m a member of the Monks of Maribor. We call one another—well, that is to say, our titles are—”

  “How do you know Bran?”

  “I don’t—I mean, Bran, the founder of our order, lived eight centuries ago. I couldn’t know him . . . no one could. I only know of him. We follow his teachings and emulate his appearance, right down to how he dressed.” He tugged on his frock. “We shave the tops of our heads for the same reason.”

  “Bran didn’t do that.”

  “I beg to differ. All portraits of him clearly show a—”

  “He looked that way because he was going bald.”

  Seymour stared back in shock, then pointed at her. “How do you know such things? Have you been to the Dibben Monastery?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “I’ll take that as a no. So how is it that you are familiar with Bran the Beloved?”

  “The Beloved?”

  Seymour grinned and nodded rapidly. “Yes. Did he come to you in a vision? Did he speak to you in a dream? How do you know of him?”

  Sephryn shrugged. “We grew up together. As kids, we used to play tag.”

  After that, Sephryn couldn’t get rid of the man who had called himself her brother, and then explained the assertion away in a manner that didn’t make any sense. She’d told the truth about growing up with Bran, and it was fun watching those oh-so-serious eyes nearly fall out of his head. People—humans—guessed she was in her late twenties, early thirties at most. The truth always shocked, but the monk’s reaction made her rethink the wisdom of such a cheeky reply. For whatever reason, he revered Bran. A little more forethought might have tempered her reply. After all, she had no idea who this guy was. He could be unstable or dangerous. That idea didn’t bother her as much as it might others. Small men in dingy robes just didn’t worry her the way Instarya in palliums or soldiers in armor did.

  She continued to walk, cutting the distance to the safety of her home. Seymour followed like a dog she’d foolishly fed.

  “What do you mean you grew up with Bran the Beloved?”

  “I mean what I said.” She spoke without looking at him, her eyes focused on the street ahead. She hoped her body language and a curt reply would end the whole affair.

  “You can’t leave it at that.” He continued to dog her.

  Why does that never work with men?

  “Of course I can,” she snapped. “Look, I don’t know who you are. You could be a criminal, trying to lure me somewhere, so you can—”

  “You were the one who approached me! You chased me. Remember? You tapped my shoulder and—”

  “I didn’t touch you!”

  He rolled his eyes. “I was speaking metaphorically.” He sighed. “And I can’t be luring you to your doom since I’m literally following you to . . . I honestly don’t know where. I’m not even sure where we are at this moment. I’m new to the city. Just got here today. Percepliquis is not an easy place to navigate. I had no idea there were this many people in the whole world. It’s like a massive rabbit warren, streets upon streets, bridges, avenues, alleys. It’s magnificent, of course, but also bewildering.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Rodencia, a small town northwest of here. The place is a disaster, a muddy mess. When I was last there, they’d dug up the streets to put in a hideous sewer system that made—oh never mind. Most recently, I hail from Dibben Monastery, just to the east of the Bern River.”

  “The Bern? Did you pass near the Mystic Wood?”

  His gerbil eyes brightened. “Yes. Do you know the area?”

  “My mother used to take me there when I was a child. She was born nearby on a high hill, a place called Dahl Rhen, which was nestled in the crook of the forest.”

  “What is your mother’s name?” he asked tentatively, as if uncertain about hearing the answer.

  “No, no, no, this isn’t about me. We’re talking about you right now. Remember? I’m trying to determine if you’re a vicious murderer of women.” Sephryn cut through the basket shop near a little bridge, saving time, and they reentered the crowds on Ishim’s Way, the tiny lane where she owned a narrow brick building.

  She used to rent the second floor from an old woman, but her landlady had died ten years later and left the building to her grandson, who in turn died forty years after that. His daughter didn’t have the money to pay taxes on the place, so Sephryn helped the girl by purchasing a permanent lease on her room. Two more generations of poor management passed, and Sephryn ended up acquiring the whole building. She migrated her quarters down to the nicer, first floor, and let out her original room to Mica.

  “You mentioned the Monks of Maribor. What does that mean exactly?”

  “It’s,
ah . . . well, we’re a group of men who try to follow the teachings of Bran by worshiping Maribor, the god of Man.”

  “There is no such thing as Maribor.”

  “You’re only saying that because it’s illegal to believe in any god other than Ferrol.”

  “I don’t care about that. But you’re wrong. The goddess of the humans is Mari.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because she is,” Sephryn replied, baffled by the man’s ignorance.

  “And where did you get such a notion?”

  “From my parents, and trust me, they ought to know.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Not about me. Remember?” They skirted the big urn fountain in the little square where Sephryn and Mica drew their water. She recognized half a dozen of the women filling jugs, and she didn’t want anyone asking about the blood on her clothing—something Seymour either didn’t notice or didn’t care about. That, along with his gerbil-like face, made it difficult to hate him. “Can you tell me what happened to Bran? He left here centuries ago, and I hadn’t heard a word since.”

  “Teachings say that he went to a little village in the south named Dulgath. That’s where he founded his first monastery.”

  “And what precisely is that? I’ve heard the word, but I don’t know what it means.”

  “I’m surprised you’ve heard of it at all. In the whole world, there are only seven, and most are in remote locations. A monastery is a place where we practice asceticism. In other words, by separating ourselves from the distractions of the world, we can completely focus on our devotional doctrines. We seek to better understand the wisdom of our Lord Maribor.”

  “Yeah, okay, whatever. Then what?”

  “Then what, what?”

  “What happened to Bran?”

  “Oh. Well, then he went into the far east.”

  “Was he being chased?”

  “Chased? No. Why would you ask that?”

  “Why else would he run off into the wilderness?”

  “He didn’t run off. Bran was in search of The Book of Brin.”

  Sephryn laughed. Seymour was at it again. First, he lied about being her brother, now he was telling her that—