"Eiraena?" Garanth edged closer to the tunnel hoping to lure her out. "Eiraena..."

She looked up, giggled and raced around to crouch behind the chair as if hiding.

Garanth knew there would be no coaxing her out. He took a second cautious step, then a third, waiting for the insects to leap up and attack him. Instead, they squirmed around and opened a pathway through the tunnel.

"Go on!" Karux urged. "Get her. Quickly. Before it's too late!"

Garanth entered the tunnel in a crouching side-step. The air, buffeted by millions of tiny wings, buzzed with a torrent of words he couldn't quite make out. It was if all the spirits of the land, too agitated to listen to each other, were shouting in his ears at the same time. Whether they were words of encouragement, dire warnings or vital instructions, he had no idea, but he could feel the pressure of their attention and anxiety.

"Eiraena, sweetheart, we're not supposed to be here."

Eiraena giggled and rose in a crouch as if ready to run in any direction.

"Grab her! Now!"

Garanth made a lunge, but Eiraena darted around the chair.

"Don't touch it!" Karux warned. "Don't make any physical contact with it at all!"

Garanth stopped to yell back through the tunnel. "You're not helping!" He approached the giggling Eiraena who quickly scooted away. He feinted a move in one direction then dodged around and caught her as she rounded the other side.

She stiffened in his arms; her innocent smile changed to a knowing grin. She lifted one dirty fist and opened it, palm up.

On it lay a shard of crystal.

Eiraena gave him a questioning look and he realized she knew exactly what she was doing, had known all along. Standing with his back to the tunnel, they couldn't see him take the crystal from her hand.

Eiraena pantomimed putting it into her mouth and smacking her lips.

The humming in the room seemed to increase. The vibrations rattled in his chest and caused his vision to jump around. This was the stone Karux didn't want him to have, the stone that had unlocked his students' ability to perceive that power he called karis. This was the stone Karux had denied him for fear he would hear the elementals' pleas too clearly and so be unable to resist them.

"Garanth? Garanth!"

And he was standing next to the seat of power. The power to control those elemental spirits and the life of the land itself.

"Garanth, bring her out now!"

Garanth slipped the shard into his mouth and swallowed.

The vibrations seemed to rattle his bones.

Eiraena smiled and took his hand. She led him from the chamber as the ground seemed to slowly rotated over his head. Dizzy, he stumbled and was forced to crawl through the tunnel of insects. But once outside, the room's thrumming reduced and the world righted itself.

Karux gave him a fierce look, and then turned that look on Eiraena who merely smiled in her abstract eye-dodging way. "That was a near thing," Karux told Twys. "We must seal this place up permanently."

<====|==|====>

Pronos smiled at the old woman in what he hoped was a friendly manner. She scowled and scooted closer to the middle-aged woman sitting with her on the steps of his and Apaidia's rented rooms. Pronos scanned the collection of people waiting outside the door. Over the course of the last year, he had tried to use Andral's oracular powers to attract followers much as Amantis had done in Nur. But, where Amantis had managed to work his way into positions of power among the rich merchants and city elders, Pronos had only managed to attract a paltry collection of the old, the poor, the diseased and the desperate. Andral spoke with elemental spirits beyond human understanding. One would have thought such a thing would have attracted more attention.

Ignoring the complaints, Pronos pushed through the waiting supplicants and up his steps to his door. Stepping inside he sneezed, remembering why he had left in the first place. As his eyes began to itch and his sinuses swelled shut, he repressed an urge to throw open the shutters and air the place out. Apaidia had insisted on paying the extra money for a place with large windows off a small courtyard, so of course she kept the windows tightly shuttered during working hours and burned rare scented oils instead.

An expensive piece of cloth, one of many hanging from the ceiling and tacked to the walls in billowing sheets, came free and brushed against his cheek, covered his face. Pronos angrily batted it away. Another outrageous expense dictated by Apaidia's melodramatic sense of providing the right "atmosphere" for the customer's consultations. The whole inside of their apartment looked like some mad old yotare woman's tent. Pronos had tried to convince her that they could use the money to make more money, but she insisted that it all belonged to Andral, since he was the one bringing it in and as his mother, she'd do what she thought best.

"Hello, Mahd Gorha, I am pleased to see you again." Apaidia's voice came from the alcove where she met with clients.

"Hello, Mahd Apaidia, I wish I were pleased to be here."

"How is your wrist, dear?"

"Much better, thank you. But this time it's my hip...."

Gorha launched into an endless list of complaints that seemed to include everything from her health to her neighbor's deliberate slights and not-so-subtle insults. It took Apaidia several minutes to get Mahd Gorha to produce a question for the spirits, but she finally asked what she needed to do to cure her hip. It wasn't the sort of question he liked, the spirits seemed to be better at answering questions about lost items and hidden secrets but it was typical of the ones that were asked.

Pronos peeked into the room where Gorha sat on a cushion with her back to the room's entrance. Apaidia and a bored looking Andral sat across from her with a wooden tray between them.

"Do you understand the question?" Apaidia asked Andral.

Andral nodded.

"Go ahead and summon the spirits."

Andral sat up straight, closed his eyes and spread his arms wide and began to hum. After a while he cried out, "Spirits of the land, attend me!"

Apaidia, had composed the performance, and worked with him for months to get it right. Pronos had to admit it was an improvement over his customary "Hey bugs!"

At Andral's command, a trail of beetles marched out and circled the rim of the tray. It was less frightening than that first rush of thousands, but it looked like a trick. If it weren't for Andral's reputation of revealing hidden truths, their few clients would have left months ago. They certainly wouldn't be able to eat regularly, much less live where they lived.

They had enjoyed a surge of popularity over the summer where it seemed the entire city of Mari had come out to ask Andral to probe the mysteries of the spirit world. But it turned out that most people, once they had their one or two questions answered, could live their lives without needing to consult the spirit world. Winter had been long, hard, cold and financed by a trickle of sick and unhappy people.

Andral repeated the question and three beetles walked out onto a grid of smooth river stones lying on a tray. They had painted the symbols merchants used to indicate the goods and services used in trade. The beetles gathered first on one stone, then the next, spelling out each word, sound by sound in the same way they had revealed their name in the cave with the nut-fish maneuver.

The insects took a long time to spell out the elementals' reply. Pronos didn't pay attention. Things generally went much faster with yes or no questions. Then it was just black rock or white rock. After Mahd Gorha left, Pronos stepped inside.

Apaidia leaned back on her cushion and stretched her legs. "Phew! I thought she'd never leave."

"How are we doing?" Pronos asked.

Apaidia pulled out a handful of bronze coins from under the table and tossed them on its surface. "Eight kerma, half an aesc."

"There's not eight people outside. Do you think we can get a full aesc before the end of the day?" They had calculated they'd need nearly a full aesc a day to meet their increased expenses.

"We always have before."

Pronos picked up one of the stamped bronze discs and stared at it mistrustfully.

In Nur they had used clay tokens called kerma, but each token represented a specific good or service. A fisherman's token would represent a fish. A farmers' token would represent a basket of grain. But these coins didn't represent anything. He had once painstakingly calculated that if you melted down sixteen kerma, they didn't even really make one aesc worth of copper.

The whole system was a lie. It only worked as long as everyone continued to lie to themselves.

He tossed the coin back on the table. "This isn't going to work."

"What do you mean, this isn't going to work?"

"We barely make enough to get by! Amantis had the same powers we have and ruled a city."

Apaidia gave him a dark look. "Perhaps it wasn't his power that allowed him to succeed. Perhaps he was simply smarter than you."

Pronos scowled at her and began to pace. "We're not attracting the right people. Amantis showed up in Nur, an outcast herdsman and practically overnight, he had the ear of every wealthy and influential man in the city."

"And then overreached and got himself killed," Apaidia added with a bitter note. Then, in a softer tone, "Why can't you be satisfied with what we have? We have a good place to live and steady meals."

"Because we could have much more. We should have more!"

Apaidia scooped up the coins and made them disappear beneath the table. "You're going to repeat his mistake."

Pronos ignored her and went back to pacing. "He got his start when he convinced your father to let him manage his business for him and made a lot of wealth."

"Speaking of wealth, perhaps you should go call the next client in before they all get tired of waiting and leave."

"Wealth is nice," Pronos grumbled, "but power comes from people."

"No!" Andral said.

Pronos paused. The boy had sat unusually quiet throughout their conversation.

"Power comes from blood."

Pronos chuckled. "You're on the right track."

Apaidia rose with an exasperated sigh. "Very well, I'll bring them in myself."

"Amantis didn't really become powerful until the blight occurred." Pronos spoke to himself, pacing. "The fear of starving convinced the entire city to give him control of all their food." Pronos crouched in front of Andral and stared into his twisted face. "What will make people very afraid?"

Andral screwed up his face in an inhuman twist as he thought.

"Monsters."

<====|==|====>

After swallowing the shard of Cor Dwna, Garanth had spent weeks staring into flames and squinting at shadows. Whatever change of perception that allowed Karuk's students to see karis seemed to be beyond him. Other than strange and vivid dreams and an occasional metallic taste in his mouth, nothing changed. After a few months, Garanth gave up looking.

That winter, Garanth spent the Festival of the Long Night out in the fields with the tireavs. Those men who had come from Har-Tor or nearby koria were given permission to visit their families for two days. Most, however, remained camped in the fields outside Har-Tor. The sun seemed to set early and Garanth didn't feel like sleeping, so despite having decided to not stay up and welcome the New Year, he wandered over to one of the bonfires the men had set. "Mind if I share your fire?"

"Not at all, dra. Be welcome," a reaver called Tosser said. His real name was Arkven so he actually preferred the name the other reavers gave him when, after completing a grueling run and obstacle course, he was told to get up off the ground and go toss some spears, and promptly vomited.

"Thank you." Garanth moved closer to the fire and sat down, not realizing how cold he'd been until the heat started flowing into him.

A daikon called Knuckles held out a piece of flat bread. "Care for some keleos bread, Tacarch?"

Garanth still wasn't used to men five, six, or more years older than him, and often a head taller, calling him tacarch. Obviously the dwerka thought him tall enough when they'd picked him for their leadership training. Fortunately he had displayed some skill in improvising responses to their challenges with his "hand of hands" or the twenty-five reavers under his command.

He took the bread and bit off a piece, enjoying the simple nut-like flavor. It wasn't the freshest and, like all keleos bread past its prime, tended to crumble. He paused and looked at it. "Aren't you supposed to wait until the New Year's fire before you cook the new bread?"

"Yes." The daikon nodded and smiled. "That's this year's bread."

"Isn't it customary to throw all of the old bread into the fire?"

A reaver named Boots shrugged. "You know how the tireavs are. They throw nothing away."

Garanth took another bite and stared at the crumbly bread. Suddenly it seemed less appealing. He tossed it into the bonfire.

Tosser laughed. "That's the spirit. Leave the old life and the old worries behind in the old year. Start all over again in the new. There are plenty more waiting for us." He pulled out a large ceramic jug of beer and passed it around.

They drank and talked throughout the night. The men spoke of their backgrounds which were all different, yet much the same. They spoke of their ongoing life in the tireavs and why they chose to stay. They also spoke of the Oracle of Har-Tor in quiet hesitant tones with frequent glances to Garanth. Garanth found himself telling them of what it was like to live with Karux and how he first met Karux when his mother died. He talked about Karux's visions, what tales he remembered hearing of the wars, and Karux's endless quest to find students to help him end the blight.

In the end, midnight came and Garanth had not gone to bed. He watched the men dismantle the dying fire, mildly surprised they were completing the ritual. They doused the ashes with water and began the process of starting a new fire with a fire bow. He leaned back in the darkness and listened to the scratch of the wooden spindle against the fire board. At some point he must have fallen asleep, for when he opened his eyes, he was in another place.

Garanth stood on a tower of stairs. Below him lay a large city, the bodies of its citizens lying in its streets twisted in death. Overhead, dark clouds swirled in an angry upside down funnel whose edges obscured the top of the sacred mountain. Impenetrable darkness lay at the heart of the funnel as if opening into the Void itself. Garanth looked up fearing what might emerge and it suddenly seemed to him that the world turned upside down and he was hanging by an increasingly tenuous hold to the underside of the world, staring down into an abyss that would soon swallow him.

A spark of light caught his eye and like a bolt of fire falling from the heavens, it struck the tower next to him. In the bright flash, he saw the dark silhouette of a man standing at the tower's edge and realized he was not alone. No sooner had he discovered the man's presence then a woman of pure light resolved out of the flash. "Good," she said, and her words reverberated out of the air around them. "You are both here."

"Both?" The man spun around and Garanth recognized Karux in the gray light.

"Garanth? Is that you? Or are you a dream?"

"I am not sure where I am. The last thing I knew, I was in the fields outside Har-Tor, but I assure you wherever here is, I am."

"I brought you both here," the woman said.

Something about her nagged at Garanth's awareness. She seemed familiar somehow, though he was certain that despite her features being composed entirely of light, he had never seen her before. "Why?" he asked.

"Because the time of your struggle is nearing and you need to understand what you face."

"And what is that?" Karux asked.

"Look."

Garanth followed her gaze upwards and once again the sky and the land flip-flopped. He stared into the dark funnel and felt its strange pull. Then he saw movement at its center. A form rose "up," a black piece of nothing in a man's shape pushed its way into the base of the funnel and began to climb.

"Who is that?" Garanth asked.

"Your adversary," the woman said.

"What is it?" Karux asked.

"A creature of the Void. A spirit of the un-living. The n'kroi have found a living anchor to this world which they can inhabit."

"How much time do we have to prepare?" Karux asked.

"In four years he will appear in the west. Two years after that, he will have his army. One year after that, he will become un-killable."

"Un-killable?" Garanth asked.

"Yes. Undying."