Let your song and story live in the air long after this wicked fire consumes the parchment.

　　Let the spirit escape its corrupted cage of flesh, and become pure and kind again.

　　Let there be justice and peace for you and

　　Please, fire, take my regrets. I wish I hadn`t encouraged you go come south. I wish I had warned you not to cross Gaurlante. I wish they had not caught you on the road, had not taken you to the city, that they hadn`t butchered you. Take my regrets, burn them up and take them back, hold them close to your spirit.

　　Let the Risir curse the day we lost you - my friend.

　　245 YT, Winter: Ir-Hashkrim, in the Crescent Land

　　 Carla El-Kir rubbed her hands together to bring some heat to them, and watched the strips of paper tear off from their source, borne by the flame, and disappear slowly into the air. As they burned they became dust which melded with the light dust in the air. Even in this too-warm southern climate the fire had no chance of spreading, and especially not in the winter - snow would not come unless she went much further north, where the dusty land, degraded since the Desert`s passing and too eroded to easily support new growth, gave way to lush bright forests. But here, at least, there was little vegetation to risk setting aflame. As the mourning papers burned, scraps floated off into the air, in various directions - scattered to the seven winds.

　　 El-Kir sat upon a large boulder and watched the fire from afar, her legs folded up under her, knees cold against the stone. The sun would be coming up soon, and then the temperature would become a bit more tolerable - even in winter, this place was truly Desert-touched. But for now, she was comfortable sitting with the cold, letting it seep through her skin and into her bones, returning its embrace with a warm coolness of her own.

　　 She struggled to recall the last time she and Geshor had spoken in person, in the days when they weren`t sending surreptitious letters via innocent messengers over the sea, or trying to talk via radio signals that the Invictans couldn`t intercept, always rotating their frequencies, always talking around things so that they both understood while leaving anyone listening in a little bit in the dark. Their conversations in the past decades had been so rare, yet she`d savored them always, knowing her friend was still out there, still thriving. She applauded the publication of his most recent book, smiled when she heard that the presses all the way in Corod were printing them.

　　 And then, every time, she`d turned her gaze to the north and wondered whether she would ever set foot beyond that thin red line upon the mountains, the line beyond which was Invictan land.

　　 Holy ground, Carla El-Kir had to remind herself, a thousand times over thousands of days. That the regime had grown foolish, hateful, greedy, did not diminish the worth of the ground, nor the worth of the spirit that - ostensibly - reigned over it clothed in flesh. Every time she had set the radio aside, every time she had sent a messenger on one of those little skiffs across the sea that she dared not board herself for fear of attracting Invictan attention, she turned to the north and she wondered.

　　 How many times, she reflected, over the past several years had the Invictan raiders driven the Risir further south? How many times had they been on the backfoot, unable to help their friends to the north? Carla El-Kir and her camp were isolated but she was savvy enough to get news of the outside world, and she was not stupid. She`d long since learned to piece together the missing bits, knowing the patterns of Emperor Aivor`s behavior - no, she reminded herself for the thousandth time, Emperor Gaius. That a man had enslaved Aivor`s spirit did not make that man Aivor, whatever he might claim.

　　 The bright of the flames against the dark of the night made Carla El-Kir`s pupils shrink to pinprick points and caused the front of her head to ache deeply. When she blinked and rubbed her forehead, and then looked back at the fire, the core of the paper had already finished burning, and only the last wispy pieces of it were smoldering, the paper becoming air as they twisted off, blackened, floated off into the air. Those words, with all the terrible weight of ink, became lighter than air itself, a thing not so material as spirit-made. It became one with the sky.

　　 On the east horizon, the orange line was growing. It cast that familiar red line on the mountains far to the north, although when Carla El-Kir climbed down from the rock she could no longer see that range, blocked as it was by the hills of the Crescent Land. She stood vigil for a few more moments, watching the last of the mourning papers disappear and cease to shine their light, and then she turned east toward her camp.

　　 She breathed a slow sigh, looking at the tents. Not another soul was stirring yet. No mourners for Geshor, none beside her. She sighed again and turned around, looking to the city of Ir-Hashkrim.

　　 A year of camping outside this city, and Carla El-Kir still didn`t feel entirely herself when she walked in the streets - but still, she made herself walk toward the coastal town. There were several headmen and handwomen there, though only a few of them were on friendly terms with Carla El-Kir. None of the others would dare cause trouble, she knew, but in exchange, the silent understanding went, Carla El-Kir and her people would not set foot in those quarters of the city. Before morning finished rising, though& perhaps it would be best to check up on Shirahn.

　　 The town of Ir-Hashkrim was small and provincial compared to a metropolis like Kurikuneku, but in the years since her departure from that great city, she had seen few places as grand. She wasn`t blind to what was happening in the Gaurl Core. Her scouts, spies, agents of the Risir and friends had come back with reports of the land inside the inner ring of mountains, and by all accounts, Kurikuneku was no longer the great shining beacon of urban life that it had once been. Even the sky-touched Aetheric towers of the northern giant Tel Ezer were brighter now than what Kurikuneku had become in the intervening decades. Yet, not having set foot in Kurikuneku since, the great Gaurl city was - in El-Kir`s mind - always as it had been before it transformed into the beating heart of Invictan domination. Next to that nostalgic image, the warm glow of neon and channeled Desert residue - Tel Ezer was merely a mid-sized town with outsized importance, disproportionate to its size. The most astonishing part of her stay there had always been the incredible accomplishments of the city`s residents, its cultural standing in the world, and not the architecture of the city itself - the seven towers excepted.

　　 Then the Invictans` spies and assassins came south and drove the Risir from the city. And what could the magistrates do but acquiesce? The city`s independence hung in the balance. Even now, El-Kir couldn`t blame them. She`d chosen this path.

　　 While Iltha passed under Ir-Hashkrim`s little sand-stone gate, she thought of the words of her ancestor Rumi Darbinian, words always lodged in the back of her mind, to which she flitted when she allowed her mind to wander too much. Legacy`s path was always the compromise I chose to follow, and Karla understood that. Carla had always maintained a curiosity about her namesake - her ancestor`s friend, who she could only glimpse through snatches of memory. The old-world records room in z`Ark City had held surprisingly few secrets about Karla Enok that Carla El-Kir did not already know from the memories of Rumi.

　　 So much of the past, even the recent past, erased& it was a source of no end of consternation for Carla.

　　 Inside the sand-stone gate, dirt roads forked off from a plaza of brick mosaics, the necks of a hydra climbing out from the sea`s depths behind and below. Blue and grey and green and gold shone the tiles in the early morning sun - the red line on the horizon didn`t bring full light to the city, but the lamps were off, and so the faint glitter of each tile under Carla`s feet was as a separate star, shining from the earth to challenge the stars of the heavens. The leaves of Jubaea trees rustled against each other like the background of a soft song - and the melody was formed by the jingling chimes hung from the doors of Ir-Hashkrim`s houses. Carla took only a few moments to stand at the center of the mosaic and rest, observing the town as a whole, noting the few people coming slowly out of their houses to attend to morning chores. A man to Carla`s right waved from a distance, a brief three-fingered salute to the sky, and climbed up the ladder to the flat roof of his house. There he began to check the state of the clothes hung out to dry.

　　 El-Kir took to the leftmost path, and her view of the sea to the west was quickly blocked off by a row of densely packed houses. She walked for several minutes and found herself among the abandoned shells of market stalls. A few boxes of goods remained, and though El-Kir could have taken a handful of figs or nuts without alerting anyone, she dared not try. Within the next few hours, she was sure, this place would be bustling, the people returned to this market row. Yet for now, she had the city mostly to herself. The people of Ir-Hashkrim are not early risers, for the most part.

　　 The house of Shirahn, one of the town`s handwomen, was located next to the city wall, far from the currently-forgotten bustle of activity. To call on others to come and meet her there, instead of going to meet in a more central area, was an expression of her power - and Shirahn, for all her unassuming demeanor, was the sort of person who needed - more than almost anything else - to make her power known and to make others respect that power. While most of the houses of Ir-Hashkrim had flat roofs, the roof of Shirahn`s house was sloped in an ornamental style reminiscent of the Monsilier highlands, where heavy rains characterized the days all year round. From a heavy iron bar inset above the doorway hung an intricate set of chimes, the most complex El-Kir had seen yet in the town. The chimes were composed of many bars, set out in layers and tiers, with each step further inside the ring of layers accompanied by a decrease in the size of the chime, an increase in their pitch. As El-Kir approached the door, a light breeze swept over her shoulders, stirring her hair through the loose-fitting, open-woven scarf wrapped about her head. She came up to the door and glanced down at her feet, taking up a perfectly erect stance. Then she knocked against the door, taking in a slow and deep breath as she did so.

　　 Shirahn came to the door quickly, and immediately the question burst from Carla`s lips: "You were expecting me, weren`t you?"

　　 Without answering the question, Shirahn opened the door wide and gestured for Carla to come in. Her face was grim, her eyes serious and sympathetic, brows drawn close.

　　 After the door was closed and Carla El-Kir had stomped the dust of the road from her boots, and Shirahn gestured her toward the small table under the window, behind which sat a boiling kettle on a flame, Carla spoke up again. "You know what happened to Geshor, don`t you?"

　　 "I don`t know any Geshor," Shirahn said, not missing a beat. She reached up and opened a cabinet, rooted around inside for a green ceramic mug, placed it on the countertop and poured water from the kettle. Then she reached back, behind the stove - extinguished the flame - poured tea leaves into the mug singly by letting them pass quickly between her fingers. She rubbed her fingers together a few more times after the leaves had all passed through and begun to dissipate, leaching their flavor into the water. She set the mug in front of El-Kir. "But I know the look of one who`s in mourning for a friend. And you still smell like burnt paper."The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

　　 Self-consciously, Carla raised her hand and sniffed at her own wrist.

　　 "In any case," Shirahn continued, "there is - as always - more to discuss, but you shouldn`t push yourself hard at a time like this. If there is anything I can do for you and your camp, you know that all you have to do is ask."

　　 "If you could give us shelter inside the city," Carla began for what must have been the tenth time.

　　 Shirahn held up a hand to halt Shirahn. "Anything but that, I`m afraid. You know the other headsmen would never stand for that. They`d have me branded a danger to the community if I let you into the town on a permanent basis. You`re hunted people, Carla, and as much as I might not like it, the others simply aren`t willing to bring down danger onto -"

　　 "-and do you think if the Invictans make it this far south they`ll be any more merciful against the city for letting us camp nearby than for harboring us inside?" Carla scoffed. "A brutal empire will not care."

　　 "With respect," Shirahn said, "they will care. The Invictans may be brutal but they aren`t stupid, and they still haven`t been able to send a full army this far south. It`s likely they never will, occupied as they are." Shirahn slipped into the chair opposite Carla and took a sip of her own, cooling, tea. "If it were up to me," she said after swallowing the tea in a heavy gulp. "Well. I would let you and your entire camp in here, and I would ensure that the Risir have a safe place from which to operate in perpetuity." She glanced toward the door. "And everyone knows that is how I feel. For what it`s worth, if any Invictan scouts are spotted this far south, you are free to take shelter - but you must do it in secret, and not be spotted by anyone I can`t control - in my very home." She let out a slow breath, leaning back over the frame of her chair. "But remind me, Carla: when was the last time that you set foot in the Invictan lands?"

　　 "211," Carla said without hesitation. She took a sip of her tea, as the color was beginning to deepen. It was still so hot that it made her eyes water when she took the first sip, and the liquid slid down her throat like fire. She closed her eyes, breathed in, and let the earthy flavor waft up into her sinuses. When she`d recovered from the heat enough to speak again, she looked across the table into Shirahn`s earth-brown eyes.

　　 "The same year that Gaius inherited the spirit," Shirahn said, tracing with her finger on the table`s surface. "The same year that everything went wrong in the first place. It`s only natural that you see the entire Invictan project in light of that day, the last time you were there, the day you were forced to leave. I suppose that living through that probably tore down a lot of illusions in your mind."

　　 "I didn`t think the spirit would accept Gaius as host," Carla said. "There`s still a part of me that hopes it hasn`t. That Gaius is just a charlatan and the spirit has fled to be embodied by some better man, but that`s a faint hope. Even a god can become corrupted, isn`t that right?"

　　 "Were it not so," Shirahn said haughtily, raising her gaze a little, "there would be no need for angels. Nor for us." She took another sip of her tea, and when she set the mug down again, brushed against the corner of her cloak with the fingers of her left hand. "But I understand your distress, even so. But there`s something you have got to understand." Shirahn leaned in. "If I were concerned only with my own safety, and the safety of this town - and not with yours as well - I would say to any Invictan that passed this far south that we allowed you to camp outside to prove our neutrality in the matter. That we offered you nights of hospitality for the sake of etiquette, but nothing more than that. And that every time you attempted to enter the city by force, we rebuffed you with force in turn. I personally stood with sword and knife in hand at the gates of the city to keep you out. And the soldiers would sweep through your camp, and they would slaughter everyone there, but they would not touch the city, because they aren`t stupid.

　　 "But if the Invictans came hunting you, and I defied them in the open - with sword and knife at the gates of the city, keeping them out - they would not only come with soldiers and assassins. They would call in for backup. Have you seen the technology they`ve reverse-engineered now? Old, old-world stuff. Aircraft that can carry explosives. They would bomb the city to ashes if they thought, if they were completely sure, that they could kill you and all your followers in the process. And if others raised an outage against them - as surely Tel Ezer would - they would simply accuse us, the entire city, of harboring dangerous fugitives. And they would be correct!" Shirahn took a deep gulp of tea and leaned back. "So you must understand, my hand is to some degree forced here. If you and your people are to shelter here, then no one can know. Word would get out, and it would mean the destruction of& all this." She gestured at the house around her with an arm, but Carla got her real meaning well enough. The house to which she gestured included the entire city within the walls.

　　 "All these decades and I`ve had the good fortune never to see a city face that level of destruction." Carla sighed, leaned forward onto her elbows, which she rested against the table, and slowly she nodded. "But I understand that you`re right. There are things you can`t risk. I respect that." She raised an eyebrow at Shirahn. "And you`re sure they`d spare you and your people, even if we were found camping outside the city."

　　 "They wouldn`t bomb us out as a purely punitive measure, I`m sure. Only to eliminate you." Shirahn shook her head slowly. "It would be unprecedented for this era of peace."

　　 "Peace?" Carla laughed. "This era of peace?"

　　 "Yes," Shirahn said quickly. "You know as well as I. Haven`t you spoken with old spirits, listened to those lost in the Memory Plague? We live now in an era of peace."

　　 "You say that, but there are armies on the march. They are headed north, killing as they go, turning the whole Vale into a blood marsh. They killed Geshor, simply for trying to pass through Gaurlante. They sent me a token of him - bloodsoaked. And far to the west, haven`t you heard? There are armies gathering under the Invictan banner in other lands, and chaos followers them as well. There are stirrings of a false warrior-king in Rivenstad, John Seid, a man who says that his army is eternal. The Orrmist Confederation along the seamist-border is fracturing, its council riven by internal strife." Carla took a quick sip of her tea. "I have connections in many places, Shirahn, and all of them speak of ill portents for the future."

　　 "And every day a world ends," Shirahn said, with a long sigh and a slight shake of her head. Her tone became more personable, yet also more bitter - the mask slipping, that public face she tried to put on for the crowds of people she was responsible for. "Every damn day the world ends, my friend. Just because somebody came along and put yours to the flame - decades ago, and continues to hold that flame against you now - that doesn`t mean everyone else is simply going to drop what they`re doing and rush to save you as though their own worlds depended on it too." She put her head in her hand. "I wish that weren`t true. I wish that everyone, everywhere, could understand the gravity of things, understand what`s truly at stake when the world ends beyond the borders of their own lives, but until it crosses into their field of vision, it`s abstract. It`s something happening far away, something to be taken note of, argued about. They`ll take sides, yes, but only for the sake of making themselves look smart to their friends. The&" Shirahn had to stop, and she took another sip of her tea before breathing in and moving on. Carla took note of a shadow`s movement through the window over Shirahn`s shoulder. By instinct, she reached up and pulled the scarf tighter around her head, obscuring a part of her face, and she ducked her head, tightening her shoulders.

　　 Shirahn began again: "The human mind can only focus on a few things at a time, Carla. You`re a nexus - like you say, you have connections in many places. And all of them speak only of the strife they experience - but most people are carrying with their lives as though there were no empire, no struggle, only the next step on the road in front of them. And why should they do any different? Would it make you feel better if the earth were on fire, the sky boiling?"

　　 There came a knock at the door. Shirahn stood up slowly. She paused next to her chair, one hand resting near her hip, finger making a clawlike motion as she stood stock-still. At the same time, El-Kir started to reach for the knife concealed inside her cloak - but Shirahn caught the notion and gave a sharp shake of her head. The second knock was a rhythmic series, and slowly Shirahn relaxed, walking over to the door. She opened the door only a crack and leaned to the side. "Yes?" she asked.

　　 Carla didn`t dare look directly at the door - the scarf protected the left side of her face from view ,and she continued to sip at her tea, hoping that this guest of Shirahn`s wouldn`t ask any untoward questions about the handwoman`s house-visitor. She strained, but couldn`t understand the other side of the conversation. Only Shirahn`s occasional comments:

　　 "Who?"

　　 "Will the siege hold long?"

　　 "Good."

　　 "And the barrier?"

　　 "I`ll see what I can do. Get me the radio equipment and I think my people can take care of the rest."

　　 And with not so much as a goodbye, she closed the door.

　　 When Shirahn sat back down at the table she didn`t bother to wait for Carla to ask. She simply said, "you`re in luck. It may just be that I need the services of you and a few of your students, so - as long as you can sneak them in without anyone knowing it`s you - you can stay here."

　　 "What do you need us to do?" Carla asked.

　　 "You`re going to establish two-way radio contact with Kivv," Shirahn said. "And then you`re going to figure out a way to get supplies into the city. They`re under siege, and the only way I can think to resupply them is via Corod or Nie-Wypsa. However, it`s unclear where anyone in those regions stands on this conflict. There`s& something else, as well. This Geshor, this friend of yours& he was a Scholar, wasn`t he?"

　　 "Yes," Carla said, raising an eyebrow.

　　 "It seems like you`re not the only person who took note of his death. A young man elsewhere in town reported a strangely vivid dream to a doctor. In the dream, he said that he was a Scholar previously exiled from Gaurlante to the Wanderer`s Vale, passing through Gaurlante on the way to the south, and that he was accosted by Invictan soldiers, who took him to Kurikuneku, where he -"

　　 Carla cut her off. "You`re telling me that Geshor - who died only a short time ago - has already had his memories manifest in another person? And one so nearby? Doesn`t that seem strange to you?" She finished off her tea and set the mug aside. "This kind of thing hasn`t been seen in many years."

　　 "The Memory Plague coming back?" Shirahn shrugged. "Perhaps. The doctor suggested sending this young man to Steriat, to see the Merin. That they might be able to save him from any ill effect, and also reconstruct the memory."

　　 Immediately Carla nodded. "If this man is going to Steriat, then some of my students will go with him. They`ll help guard him, and if anything goes wrong on the journey I`ll know. And maybe we can learn something from these reconstructed memories, and from anything the man says along the way. It`s been too long since I spoke to Geshor in person. I don`t know if his knowledge will be useful against the Invictan court, but if there`s a chance -"

　　 "Indeed." Shirahn nodded. "As for the other matter&"

　　 "I`m no radio engineer," Carla replied, "so I`m not sure what you expect of me."

　　 "I have others who can help you with that." Shirahn finished off her own tea, stood up, and walked to the opposite end of the room from the door, further into the house. "Go and get your people and bring them back here in the evening under cover of night, and disguise yourselves when you do so. I`ll take you to the place where you can work."

　　 "And what if you have more visitors, like&" Carla tilted her head, gesturing toward the door. "Are you just going to keep your house empty, but for us, as long as there`s a chance somebody might see us? I can`t imagine that you trust every single one of your people to stay silent if they saw one of us in here, without our disguises."

　　 "You`ll have to be very careful," Shirahn said. "Do not tip your hand, do not reveal your identity. Officially, we`ll say that you`re a group of travelers on a stopover from Tel Ezer, going to visit& let`s say you`re headed to one of the Arcologies."

　　 "That isn`t too far off from the truth anyway." Carla shrugged, stood up, and walked to the counter - careful to keep her face turned away from the window. She poured herself a second mug of tea. "It`s my understanding that the archivists in Kivusk have records stretching back long before the Desert. If there`s anybody who can help us to free Aivor from the Invictans` grip, it`s them."

　　 Shirahn shook her head. "I hope that you`re right and that isn`t just a wild goose chase," she said. "I don`t understand how you can have so much faith. That such a powerful spirit would allow itself to be bound to the will of a human, and allow itself to be turned to evil, instead of steering the way itself? It seems inconceivable to me."

　　 "Nonetheless&" Carla turned, back to the wall, and took a sip of her tea. This second mug was much weaker, having had little time to steep and with the water so much cooler than before. Besides which, the leaves were likely somewhat drained of their flavor now. "I believe we`ll find a way. The Invictan Empire`s not going to be ended by cutting to the heart of Gaurlante and killing the high command - we`ll root out the corruption itself. Whatever they`ve done to Aivor, to God, I`ll stop them."

　　 Shirahn only sighed and glanced at the hallway that led deeper into the house. "First look to the now," she said. "And take care of that which is in front of you."