Two Years Earlier

    "Winds save us," came the cry from the vanguard. "Arcanist!"

    A moment later, Gara heard an explosion accompanied by the telltale hiss that came only from spellfire. Warnings and the death screams of a dozen Althandi warriors followed soon after. Gara ducked her head down low out of instinct, though she continued to run forward.

    "Sister, what do we do?" Xio asked.

    "Nothing has changed," Gara replied as she ran.

    Xio, only thirteen years old, managed to keep up. She kept her feathered shawl hooded over her head, the same as all the warriors. Rushing through the trees, she darted furtive glances towards Gara. "Nothing's changed? It's an arcanist!"

    "If you kill him before I do, I'll let you choose a mate."

    Xio stuck out her tongue in distaste.

    Gara smirked. "Stay with the sky women, Sister. Keep watch as they tend the wounded. I'll handle the arcanist."

    Judging by the dark look in Xio's eye, she didn't like being told to stay with the healers. She might've suspected that Gara wanted her near them so she could learn of their craft. Mother had always said she wished for a sky woman among her daughters. It obviously couldn't be Gara anymore, Siobhan was the way she was now, so that left Xio as the only sister it could be.

    "I want to fight!" Xio argued.

    "Obey, Sister," Gara snapped. "I can't kill Aleesh while I'm worrying about you. Go!"

    Xio hissed and changed direction.

    Once she was alone, Gara ran past charred and blackened ground. A score of twisted bodies lay in smoldering heaps. Others picked themselves back up from where the blast threw them. The warriors were about to break and run.

    This had been supposed to be a simple ambush. Gara expected a routine fight with a handful of slaver guards and maybe an Amethyst squire or two. An arcanist was an entirely different and far more deadly opponent. No one among the daan could face magic. At least, that was what everyone believed, but Gara knew a secret. Arcanists had a weakness, an easy to forget weakness they didn't want daan to remember.

    Behind all their magic, an arcanist's blood was as mortal as anyone else's.

    "Rise, warriors of Aeslyn," Gara shouted. "Kill the oppressors! Ration and males for every golden scalp laid at my feet!"

    The faltering warriors of Gara's clan turned to watch her running headlong towards the Aleesh position. Some gaped in disbelief. Others looked at her as if she were already dead. Enough saw their chieftess calling them to fight and followed her. Rallied, the Thandi charged back into the fray. Three dozen women were at Gara's back.

    The direct route would be a slaughter. Gara darted through brush and behind trees to stay out of the arcanist's line of sight. She used the woodlands to her advantage, and her warriors were trained and competent enough to follow her example. They spread out and didn't cluster into an inviting target for another blast of spellfire.

    "Azhakh mul!"

    Gara heard the shout. It was the Aeldenn Tones, but she didn't think it was a witch's incantation. Those were either single words or grouped into lines of five. The leader of the Aleesh was calling out orders or a warning.

    Most Aleesh spoke a language similar to the Thandi tongue; there were differences, but a speaker of either could muddle through the meaning of the other. Aeldic was usually spoken only by Aleesh of great importance, the high citizens. That meant Gara's quarry today was going to be especially troublesome. They were probably of the second summit, someone wealthy enough to spend their time cloistered in study of spellcraft.

    Every combat with the Aleesh was dangerous. Nearly all of their race knew a little magic. The ones who spent their lives studying it, becoming masters of spellcraft, those were dangerous on an entirely different plane.

    She caught a glint of burnished metal ahead through the trees and mist. The arcanist had elite guards. They were lowborn Aleesh, the lowest summit known as voori, but they were blessed with strong bodies and comely faces. These mercilessly conditioned fighters traded their freedom and served as guard dogs for the promise of their children rising to the fourth summit.

    The voori wore gilded plate armor, and their helms were stylized into the likeness of dragons. Gara doubted they could see much through the thin slits of their visors, and she intended on capitalizing on that vulnerability. As she drew near, she saw that both guards were armed with bright-lances.

    Gara swore under her breath. She hated bright-lances. Those things were scary.

    Arrows flew over Gara's head. Her warriors loosed a volley to cover the advance. It was of little concern to the arcanist, who simply waved a hand to send the arrows careening away on a conjured gale of wind.

    Gara burst out of the tree line, a force of howling Thandi warriors right behind her. The voori dropped into ready stances and gripped the polished bronze hafts of their bright-lances. Their gauntlets left palms uncovered so that the weapons had direct contact with skin. That was important for bright-lances, though Gara couldn't fathom the magic involved. At once, foot-long blades sprang forth from the ends of the polearms. The blades shone with white light, or rather they were made of light.

    Without any more trees or mist concealing them, Gara found her enemy. It was a middle-aged male dressed in silver robes that bared his chest. The arcanist had a wicked gleam in his green eyes, and his expression was as dark as his face was handsome.

    That was the commonality shared by practically every Aleesh Gara had ever seen. Cruel beauty.

    A warrior running beside Gara suddenly stopped in mid-stride. Her body contorted, bones snapping and blood spraying all around her. She fell the next moment, killed by a crushing spell from the arcanist. Focused on her prey, Gara continued the charge even as a second and third warrior died.

    The arcanist saw that there were more Thandi coming towards him than he could kill one by one. He prepared to cast another spell and engulf Gara's warriors with spellfire to the last woman. Before he managed to work his nimble fingers into the proper sequence, a second volley of arrows flew towards his chest. The wizard aborted his fire spell and summoned another shielding gale of wind.

    Gara and her warriors were swift enough that this was all the time they needed to close the gap between them. Gara raised an iron axe over her head and screamed at the top of her lungs as she threw herself at the nearest voori.

    Well-trained, the guard caught the blow with his weapon's haft before turning the momentum into a lateral slash. Gara dropped to her knees and let the glowing blade pass overhead. It gave off a chilling hum as it arced through the air, and it made Gara's hair want to stand on end. She was positive it wasn't just her imagination.

    The guard's blow cleaved through half the trunk of a nearby tree. The bright-lance sliced through the wood as if it were parchment, meeting no resistance at all. Embers smoldered around the cut, and little tongues of flame caught alight on the bark. Gara had seen enough Thandi fall to bright-lances to know that flesh didn't hold up any better.

    She still had the initiative in this fight, and Gara was a lot more agile in close quarters than this armored behemoth. Still on her knees, she swung her hatchet low towards the tendons on his feet..

    The iron blade struck dully against the guard's armor. Magical protection. The arcanist had prepared his guards by placing some sort of warding spell over them. Gara's iron weapon was unable to cut through. Fortunately, the clan's smiths had prepared her for such an obstacle.

    The blade might've failed to break through the magic, but the axe's hooked bill was the perfect width for catching around a wrist or ankle. Gara tumbled over her shoulder underneath the guard's stance, and she regained her feet while pulling the voori's legs out from under him.

    To her side, Gara saw the other guard drive his lance through the gut of one of her warriors. Before she died, the warrior seized the weapon's haft and held on tight as two other Thandi sprang on the man and bowled him over. A third ran up with a two-handed hammer raised overhead and brought it down on the guard's head. The spellcraft protecting him didn't hold up against the blow, and his helm caved in with a crunching sound.

    Gara left the guard she'd tripped for her warriors to finish off and stalked towards the arcanist.

    "Aezkha mekk, shava," the arcanist snarled. He held up a hand which was already dancing through a wizard's gestures.

    A swing of Gara's hatchet left the arcanist unable to cast spells with that hand again.

    Fingers dropped to the ground. The arcanist cried out, more in surprise than pain. He wouldn't start to feel that for at least half a minute. He clutched his maimed hand to his chest and outstretched his other hand to cast a spell.

    Gara took that one off at the wrist.

    Backing away, the arcanist stared in stupefaction at the stump of his left arm. His green eyes were now vacant as he raised them to Gara.

    "Blazing savage," the arcanist said.

    Gara curled her lip and prepared to slam her axe down into the monster's skull.

    The arcanist took in a breath and shouted. "Lothya!"

    A strong blast of wind tossed Gara away and onto her back. She landed hard enough to knock the breath out of her. Moving quickly, she scrambled back to her feet just in time to see the arcanist fleeing into the mist.

    "Winds and storms," Gara snarled. She turned her head to shout at her warriors, who were prying off the guards' helmets and driving daggers into their eyes to make certain they were dead. "He's a twinborn, witch and wizard. Pursue and encircle."

    The warriors hesitated for one moment before darting off to follow her command. They left the dead Aleesh where they lay with their equipment. Aleesh plate was too cumbersome for Thandi and was so polished that it would make stealth all but impossible. Regardless, Gara would send some kids by later to pull it off the corpses. The steel could be melted down and repurposed. The bright-lances, however, were useless. Only Aleesh could get the magic to work.

    Gara picked herself back up and took a moment to listen to the forest. She could hear fighting elsewhere. The rest of her clan's warriors would be making short work of the slaver caravan. The slave wagons were protected by just a handful of nomin guards, which were more often than not poorly outfitted, poorly trained, and abysmally paid. Hardened Thandi warriors wouldn't break a sweat fighting the likes of them.   

    It seemed that the slavers had invested all of their hopes in a single arcanist. He might've been enough to bring the newest slaves back to Marwin, but the caravan made the fatal mistake of taking a route passing through the territory of Queen Aeslyn.

    Aeslyn might have been gone now, but her successor still haunted the forest.

    Blustering fool, Gara thought, berating herself for her mistake. She started off after the arcanist while her warriors ran to the flanks to cut off any escape. Kill him quicker next time.

    She should've been ready for a twinborn. They were rare, but not so unheard of that she had an excuse for failing to land a killing blow. Gara had never encountered one before this, but she'd heard about them from her mother. Normally, an arcanist could be a wizard, witch, sorcerer, scrivener, or an alchemist. Only one. Twinborn were a rare pedigree of arcanist who could circumvent the Law of Five and cast spells with more than one method.

    Gara should have been ready for the worst. It was a mistake she didn't mean to repeat.

    She was queen of Thandor now, though she had only come of age two months earlier. Gara was the fifth of Aeslyn's nine children. Three daughters were dead at Aleesh hands, the eldest was infirm and unfit to lead, and another was a child of thirteen. Though they had their uses, Gara's three brothers mattered little to the issue of succession. That left Gara as the sole heir to Aeslyn's ambition of uniting Thandor against the Aleesh.

    Untested. Too young. Soft. The other chieftesses said this and much worse of the young woman who meant to rule all the clans. On the darkest nights, Gara harbored the same doubts. Commanding a war party against slavers was one thing, leading a clan something else, and ruling an oppressed nation in open rebellion was a greater burden still. In her deepest heart, Gara knew her fears were true, but it didn't change anything. A queen had no choice and must remain faceless.

    Her ambition demanded action. Her hatred forbade mercy.

    Following the arcanist was a simple matter. In his panic, he neglected to staunch the flow of blood from his wounds, and it left an obvious trail through the forest. While the warriors cordoned off the area, Gara closed in to make the kill.

    The mist grew thicker the deeper Gara went into the woodland. She was nearing the center of the Great Forest. It was a forbidding corner of the world. Primal. A creature found here was as likely to be a spirit as a beast, and the Thandi were prone to avoid the area out of reverence. Perhaps that was why the caravan chanced this route. They mistakenly believed that Thandi were superstitious of the deep forest. Unfortunately for the Aleesh, Thandi caution came from hard lessons. Gara, however, had little fear of this place. Her clan gave frequent offerings to God, and the Great Forest was His.

    "Ingtar!"

    Gara threw herself to the ground as soon as she heard the incantation. Spellfire roared where she'd been standing a moment before. Without losing a moment, Gara was back on her feet and sprinted towards the source of the voice.

    She found the arcanist waist deep in a bog he'd blundered into. He was ten paces past solid ground, and Gara couldn't see a clear path to reach him. If she tried picking her way across half-submerged stones to the Aleesh, she'd be crushed by spellcraft long before she finished him. That left her with one good option. Gara threw her axe, and it slammed into the Aleesh's forehead.

    The arcanist was held upright in the muck. Slowly, the bog pulled him down and claimed his corpse for itself.

    Gara clucked her tongue in annoyance. She wouldn't reach the Aleesh before he dropped beneath the surface. Once he was gone, no one would ever find his bones. That'd been a good axe, and now it was as good as lost.

    She stood in place and watched the corpse disappear. Her legs shook as the adrenaline faded, and she'd rather wait until it passed before rejoining her warriors. In the meantime, she pulled a whistle that hung on a leather thong from around her neck and raised it to her lips. She was preparing to signal an all-clear when something large began to rise from the bog.

    It was enormous and breached the muddy surface in the same spot the Aleesh had fallen. A great mound of peat moss and sodden debris, at least twenty paces across, began to rise from the bog.

    Gara took a step back. Her eyes had gone wide. She began to notice what looked like antlers at the highest point of the mound. Bleached white bone started to show where the mud sloughed away, and the mound continued to rise before her.

    It was a skull, the skull of a giant elk larger than any Gara had ever heard of. It sat atop a gigantic, skeletal figure. It was built similarly to a mortal, except it was on a far larger scale. The bones of a giant, one with an elk's head.   

    Transfixed, Gara stared in amazement. It was as if the surrounding air became a thick, oppressive blanket that fell over the land to smother her. Breathing became all but impossible. A distant part of Gara screamed for her to run, but she couldn't look away. Beneath the empty gaze of that enormous skull, Gara felt as insignificant as a flea.

    CHOSEN

    Gara was smote to her knees by incomprehensible power. She clutched at her ears, but she hadn't heard that terrible word. She felt it in her innermost being. It burst from inside her, yet she knew she'd understood it.

    She looked up at the skull with tears of pain in her eyes. "What... what are you?"

    DEATH

    Gara had braced herself to receive the figure's voice again, but a hundred years wouldn't have been enough time to get ready for it. It came so powerfully that she feared she would be torn apart.

    Panting, Gara kept her eyes on the ground in front of her. She prostrated herself and felt sweat pour down her face. Understanding brought a semblance of clarity. She realized who it was that spoke to her.

    "You are God," she whispered.

    NAME ME

    Gara grit her teeth as the command ripped at her soul. Her voice, so tiny in comparison to His, shook with absolute terror. "Lord of Bones."

    NAME ME

    Gara screamed her god's true name. "Hasanvor!"

    The voice didn't return. In its place, Gara felt an enveloping sense of divine satisfaction.

    The oppressive quality to the air faded. Gara felt the world appear to brighten, as if she had just remembered what light was. Then, her blood froze as she felt a hand rest upon the crown of her head.

    "Rise, Chieftess."

    Trembling, Gara looked up at the figure standing above her. No longer a monstrous skeleton, but a male cloaked in black. He was tall, much taller than any mortal Gara knew of. Seven feet, at least. The hand that came out of His robe's enveloping sleeve was deeply wrinkled and craggy, with fingers too long to be mistaken for human. Just as inhuman, He had four fingers to a hand.

    Gara couldn't see through the shadows that filled the hood covering His head. She was grateful. She felt that if she looked upon the face of God, she would be utterly destroyed.

    "Come now," God said. "On your feet, child. It is not reverence I require of you."

    Gara sucked in a hissing breath before she felt capable of obeying. God held forth His hand. Gara tentatively placed hers within it and let herself be pulled to her feet.

    He felt solid, if cold. He was real.

    "Is that not better?" God asked once Gara was upright. "I know your heart, Gara of Thandor. You abhor submission. As my instrument of contrition, you shall never submit again."

    Gara kept her eyes averted as she found her voice. "Your... instrument?"

    "Of contrition," God said. "It has come time, Chieftess, for a mistake to be rectified."

    "What... kind of mistake?" Gara asked. She felt a chill deep within her. "What have we done to offend you? What must I do for my clan to be spared?"

    God's hand brushed Gara's cheek. "The sin is not yours, nor your people's. You are to be my executioner. My general. My blessed saint."

    "Saint?" Gara gasped. Without thinking, she faced God, though the hood kept His features hidden. "They hear divine whispers in their ear. Blessed saints are the voices of their gods."

    "As you shall be mine. My voice and my fist."

    Gara nearly sank back to her knees, and only the command from God to remain on her feet kept her upright. "Who must I punish for you?"

    God leaned closer. "They who you have proven willing to punish on your own initiative. My divine brethren demand retribution upon the line of Inwé."

    "Kill Aleesh," Gara said.

    "More than this. Kill Shan Alee."

    Gara trembled. "All gods want this?" she asked in a whisper. "Why now? What has changed?"

    God's shadow fell over her, and His form appeared to swell to a staggering size. "The Dragon Emperor seeks a power which he must not be allowed to possess. Long has his line abused the gift given unto them by the gods, but his reach has outstretched too far. For this sin, the Dragon Emperor and his people must be brought low."

    Gara clenched her fists. Her eyes were locked on the ground beneath her. She felt a sudden anger press in around her heart. It was rage, pure and unadulterated. Rage and hate. Gara had never felt hatred so powerfully before, and she knew it was strong enough that God could see it enveloping her soul.

    "Yes," God said. "This is why I have chosen you to bear my gift and become my blessed saint. You know the true purpose of hatred."

    Gara shook her head. "You don't want me as your saint," she whispered.

    "I do." God reached for her, and Gara resisted the urge to flinch away.

    His hand touched on her brow. There was light. There was heat. More than anything else, there was pain.

    Gara awoke with her cheek pressed into the mud. As her eyes fluttered open, she saw at once that she was alone in the forest. She sat up and touched at her forehead, wondering how much, if anything, of that had been real.

    The only sign that she hadn't been hallucinating was the anger still burning inside her chest.

    It took a long time to return to her warriors. Once she emerged from the deep forest, a cry rose up from the Thandi. Gara was quickly welcomed by her warriors, many of whom expressed concerns that she'd fallen to the arcanist. She had apparently been absent for more than an hour.

    Xio was among the last to welcome Gara back. She'd been directing a few younger warriors in stripping armor and supplies off the elite voori guards. She carried a bloodstained bright-lance over her shoulder, but the glowing blade had vanished as soon as its wielder was killed.

    "You're back," Xio said, breathless. "Don't scare me like that, Sister! If you die, the rest of us end up as part of Dierdra's clan."

    Gara rubbed at her forehead where she remembered the touch of God. "Siobhan wouldn't let that happen."

    Xio winced.

    "Our sister's injury slowed her wits, but it hasn't dulled them. If I do fall, heed Siobhan's council when you become chieftess."

    Xio shrugged in vague acceptance before changing the subject. "What happened to you? The others came back and said there was no sign of you anywhere."

    "Nowhere of consequence," Gara said. She indicated the bright-lance Xio held. "No point taking that home. We can't even use the metal of those things after they're enchanted."

    "I don't know," Xio said with an impish grin. "Thought it might make a neat trophy."

    "Trophies are for the warrior who made the kill," Gara scolded. "That makes it mine to do with as I please."

    Xio pouted as she handed it over. Gara prepared to toss it into the brush to make her point. Before she had a chance, Gara felt a sudden weariness pull at her. It wasn't debilitating, but it was noticeable.

    Xio and all the nearby warriors took startled steps away from Gara. Several cried out to God in their shock. Gara felt the hairs on her arm standing on end, and slowly, her eyes traced up the length of the bright-lance.

    In her hand, the weapon awoke. Its light-born blade hummed in anticipation.

    "Gara," Xio whispered. "What... How?"

    I have named you as my chosen instrument of contrition, a voice whispered in Gara's mind. You are my saint, and this is a small part of the gift I give unto you and your people.

    Gara felt her mouth open to speak, but no words came out.

    And this, God said, is the rest.

    It felt as if every bone in Gara's body shattered.

    Before she gratefully fell into unconsciousness, Gara heard Xio and the warriors screaming for the sky women and felt herself being dragged away. The pain didn't stop. It got worse. Despite the agony, Gara felt herself laughing. Along with the pain came understanding. She knew exactly what it was God had given her. The days of daan were over.

    The Thandi had magic.