Ten years before the founding of the first kingdom

Eiraena exhaled, pressing her shape into the patterns of the air, filling the stone room with reflected images of herself, distorted by the vagaries of chance and the uncertainty of the elements, into funny and monstrous caricatures.

In the distance, the wound swelled, a gaping maw swallowing the foundation of reality—madness and death and the negation of all things trying to drag itself into existence by its teeth, clinging to the crumbling edge of the world, crushing its own hope by the weight of its need.

The frightened spirits of the land flit about like panicked birds trapped in a room, looking for a way out. Caught in the current of destruction, the n'phesh were being dragged, screaming, into the nothingness, their howling despair rising in a chorus of grief echoing in counterpoint to the rage of the thing seeking to birth itself through their deaths.

The wound sat like a dark sun below the southern horizon, but in the north, like a tiny ember waiting to be fanned into flame, a place of power waited to be discovered. A seed, containing in its hull, furled roots, stalk, and branches of an empire, a place of rest for the n'phesh and a barrier to the n'kroi.

A stream of dwerka oozed like water, eroding the bones of the mountains. A barrier of stone obscured the seed, turning those small people aside from the course they needed to follow.

Eiraena reached out with her perception and found an ancient spirit sleeping in the depths of the world and tickled it. It didn't want to wake. She tickled it again and it kicked out in irritation. The world shook, rocks fell, a pathway opened, the course of the dwerka changed and the seed was discovered. Soon it would sprout.

Eiraena's patterns had started to fade. She returned to breathing images of herself, painting her shapes across the room's ceiling.

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

"No, Garanth. I do not want you to participate."

Garanth looked at Karux in disbelief. "But why?" He glanced at the three students kneeling before their sand trays, looking for support, but saw only expressions of mild curiosity.

In the three years since he'd selected Netac as an apprentice, Karux had only chosen two other students. Tall, skinny curly-headed Harkin continued to trace shapes in his sand tray, a bemused smile on his face as if he had thought of a clever retort but only refrained out of fear of sparking the irritation clouding Karux's face. Only the voluptuous Corha showed any concern, frowning up at Garanth with an expression of vicarious hurt as he tried to justify his presence. Netac, as always, remained inscrutable.

"The n'phesh have already taken an unhealthy interest in you." Karux said.

"But that's not—" Garanth took a step backwards and heard the tiny crunch of chitinous exoskeleton. He looked down at a crushed beetle beneath his right heel. A patient line of the waiting creatures stretched out of the chamber's opening. What else could one expect living in a hole in the ground, Garanth thought, but said nothing knowing he could not deny the truth of Karux's words. Trying to would only anger him.

"If you learn to see the world of shapes—the world that is—" Karux warned, "their demands may well become irresistible."

"But—"

"It is easier to refuse that which you cannot see or hear."

Garanth gestured toward the sand trays. "But if I were to learn to see the elements and control them..."

Karux shook his head. "With their cooperation, you might become more powerful than any of us—you might even be able to lift the curse single-handedly—but that very power would become a trap. You would lose yourself in that power and become little more than a tool for their use."

"I don't think..." Garanth took another step back. Another beetle crunched underfoot.

Karux flung up a hand. "Enough!"

Garanth swallowed his hurt and said nothing.

Karux sighed. "You are my charge and you will do as I say. The rest of you put away your sand trays and light your lamps."

Garanth stepped over to a wall, leaned back against it and slid down into a seated position. Despite the unusually warm spring day outside, the mountain's stone horded its cold like a jealous teacher hording his secrets. He looked up and tried to spy the vaulted ceiling beyond the shadows above him.

Those little fellows sure build big, he thought. The dwerka, who had expanded this mountain refuge for their human allies, thought of the room as a type of closet, though it could comfortably hold fifty or sixty people.

"Today we are going to focus on the element of fire," Karux said. "You all know its name and the shadow this element casts, so we are going to try once again to perceive the elements themselves."

Garanth watched them stare into their little clay lamps, the burning keleos oil filling the chamber with the nut-like smell of a New Year's festival. The knowledge that they would probably fail removed some of the rejection's sting. In the four years since Karux had decided he needed to teach his craft to others in order to lift the curse, Garanth had spent his share of evenings staring into flames until his eyes watered and the color drained from his vision. That had all changed when the n'phesh shifted their attention from Karux to him.

On further thought, the knowledge they would probably fail depressed him more than it cheered him. He wanted them to succeed. He needed them to succeed, everyone did, or else the spreading blight would destroy everything they tried to build.

Silence drifted down like dust from the ceiling. Somewhere in the distance, echoing up from the depths of Har-Tor, an insect chirped Garanth's name.

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

Years of brutal necessity had distracted Apaidia from her desperate hope that Amantis would keep his promise and follow her to Nur. By the time the realization that he wasn't coming had rudely forced itself upon her, she was already firmly planted in her new life. When she had looked out of her door to see Pronos standing there in the worn and patched clothes of a man of Nur, holding his strange two-headed spear, she thought Amantis had finally come.

For one long heart-stopping gasp, she looked on him and saw the face of her missing lover...until the rough planes of Pronos face emerged through the vision. She exhaled a sigh that was almost a whimper, a sigh she had held back for six years, the death-rattle of her dreams.

Apaidia shook her head as she led Pronos through portions of Mari she hadn't seen in years. Andral, who had always stayed close to the house, followed in sullen curiosity. They hadn't even made it out of the city before he started to complain alternately of both hunger and fatigue.

"I'm tired."

Apaidia called back. "It's not much further, dear."

"I want to go home."

"You'll like the stoma."

"I don't care about any stinky old stoma."

"You're almost there. It's just up ahead. Can you see it?"

The three tramped up a shallow wash, the hills rising on either side. No people were in sight, but a broken sandal and several smashed clay pots scattered along the way indicated the path had not been forgotten. They passed a tall snakes-tongue bush that scratched Andral as he walked by and set him to complaining anew. Then she saw the dark opening in a steep hillside. "There it is!" she cried cheerfully.

"Is there food?"

"There won't be anything good, but there might be something left over from last winter. Several families on Nur's north side use this as a winter storehouse."

They stepped under a thin curtain of parched and dangling roots and into the cool shadows of a natural spherical space. On their right, rows of sealed and dusty clay pots sat on a series of short terraces smelling of yeast and sour bread.

"Beer," Pronos announced leaning over and taking a sniff. "Still fermenting."

Apaidia went to a group of wooden bins and lifted a lid. She nearly fell into the waist-high bin reaching to its bottom, but rose and tossed Andral a shriveled turnip. Andral dusted it off, bit into it and made a horrible face. He continued eating, cringing with each bite.

"I think there is too much light in here," Pronos said.

"Are you sure?"

Pronos shrugged. "Amantis was quite obsessive about avoiding any light when he consulted his stone."

Apaidia shuddered, remembering how the stone had failed Amantis at the end. Carefully avoiding the light, Amantis had peered into the pouch where it was kept and screamed as if he had put his eye to a dead thing. He dropped the stone and ran away. The strangely transformed stone lay on the floor until Ctonos...

"Is something wrong?" Pronos asked as she staggered against the crudely solid wooden shelves along the back of the stoma.

"No," she grunted, "just stumbling in the shadows."

The stone had lain on the floor until the thing Ctonos had become—his lifeless body—had smashed its way into the house, killed the guards and picked up the stone. It pushed the stone into its mouth and just walked away.

Apaidia suddenly realized she had no idea where that abomination was. "At least we don't have that stone." She shuddered.

"But we do."

Apaidia's heart skipped a beat, then hammered to catch up. "What do you mean?" The idea that he might have brought that accursed thing—that Ctonos might be close behind—made her break out in a sweat.

"We have Andral. Amantis had intended the child to replace the stone as a link to the n'phesh."

"N'phesh or n'kroi?" Apaidia asked, thinking of the evil spirits of the Void and what might have controlled Ctonos' body.

Pronos tapped on the walls between the shelves. "Call them what you will, he communicated with some sort of spirit-beings."

Apaidia watched the boy eating the turnip and grimacing. There was something strange about him, and it wasn't just his twisted face or simple-mindedness, but somehow she just couldn't see him as evil. "And you think he can communicate with the spirits."

"I do. After all, he was fathered by one."

"I still don't see how." Apaidia watched Pronos pounding on the wall with his fist. "What are you doing?"

"You know what they say, where there's one stoma, there are others." He pounded lower down on a section of wall. "Does that sound hollow to you?"

Apaidia shrugged and Pronos stepped back and kicked at the wall, producing an unquestionably hollow knock. He turned, kicking backwards with his heel like a donkey, and pieces of stone rattled down from a spreading network of cracks. He kicked a couple more times, rapidly, and the stone suddenly gave way. "There we go!" Pronos paused to look in the hole and returned to kicking at the edges of the opening, expanding it.

"Be careful," Apaidia urged. "We don't know where that goes. The whole floor could give way." The floor was a layer of dirt which the locals had brought in to fill the bottom of the sphere and make a usable space. Her mother had warned her of stomas collapsing and pouring hapless victims into great subterranean depths. There was no telling how much—or how little—stone lay underneath them.

Pronos crouched and peered through the opening at different angles, trying to see what lay beyond. "I don't think it's that big." He stepped through and Apaidia could hear his boots skid on the steep slope. "There seems to be another opening though...a series of them."

Andral had finished his turnip and stuck his head through the hole.

"Andral, stand back! We don't know if it's safe yet."

"There are several of these things, like a spiral of bubbles." Pronos pounded on rock and more shattering stone echoed up from below. "Wow! I found a big space. It looks safe. Come on in."

Andral started to dive through the opening but Apaidia lunged at him. "Take my hand."

He gave her an irritated look but let her hold it.

Apaidia stepped through the hole, her sandaled foot sliding on the stone. The dim light grew even dimmer so that it was hard to find the opening to the next stoma. She stuck her leg through, searching with her foot for a floor and found it further down than she liked. A cool damp exhalation drifted up from below. "Are you sure this is safe?" She heard Pronos moving around below.

"Yes come. This should be dark enough."

With a thump and a scrape Andral jumped into the stoma behind her and slid down to smash against her left ankle. "Ow! Be careful, Andral! You could have crippled me and then how would you get me out?" He said nothing, only tried to push past her through the next opening. She held him back and carefully lowered her legs through until she felt the bottom, then lifted him down and held tightly to his hand.

The stoma was almost completely without light. Their shuffling echoes retreated to more distant walls. "Pronos? Where are you?"

"I've followed the wall around. I don't think there are any further openings."

Apaidia set off for the far side, the floor rose in a gentle convex hump and she realized it was probably the ceiling of a larger stoma below. A fall of ten feet could easily kill a person below ground. The stoma below could be a hundred feet tall or more. She froze. "I don't think this is a good idea."

"Hush! What was that?" Pronos said in a harsh whisper.

"What?"

"Listen! Do you hear something?"

Apaidia looked back at the stoma's entrance. A very faint dusting of reflected light shone against the far wall of the other stoma, a dark gray beyond their own blackness. A faint rustling rose up around them and the gray opening began to darken and change shape.

"Pronos, what's happening?"

"Void take it!" Pronos muttered. "I didn't want to have to do this."

Apaidia heard the rustle of cloth as he took something out of his belt pouch and fumbled with it on the ground. A few clicks and some brief blinding sparks and he had created a small flame in a wad of dried moss. He used it to light a small clay keleos lamp. Apaidia turned.

"Ah!" Terror stifled her scream before it could completely escape.

A tide of dark insects poured in through their only exit, filling the hole and scuttling into the room like a hungry flood.

Apaidia flung one arm around Andral and pulled him to the back of the room as the bugs surged forward.

Trembling, Andral cried out. "Stop!"

The insects stopped and waited motionlessly.

Pronos' light flickered from their shiny black exoskeletons like thousands of blinking eyes.

Afraid to move, Apaidia leaned over and whispered in Andral's ear, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "Tell them to move back."

"Move back!"

The insects scuttled back to the far side of the stoma.

Pronos stepped up next to Andral. "Come forward."

The insects ignored him.

"Tell them to come forward," Pronos said.

"Come forward," Andral said and the insects rushed forward.

"Stop!" Apaidia shouted.

"Stop," Andral repeated.

The insects stopped, inches from their feet.

"Can they really understand him?" Pronos asked, incredulous.

Apaidia shook her head. "But that would mean they were intelligent."

"Or that some intelligence controls them."

Apaidia leaned over Andral again. "Tell them to part."

"Part!"

The insects parted, leaving a cleared space on the floor between the three and the exit.

"We should leave," Apaidia suggested.

"One moment." Pronos put a hand on Andral's shoulder. "Ask them who they are."

Andral gave Pronos a puzzled look, then looked back to the beetles. "Who are you?"

A shiver ran through the flood and a group broke away into the cleared space before them. They shifted around and formed a lumpy round shape.

"Is that a keleos nut?" Apaidia asked.

The insects shifted again, forming a different shape.

"A fish!" Andral laughed.

"Nut fish? Nut-fish... nuf... N'phesh!" Pronos said. "They're telling us they're n'phesh."

The beetles swirled again, forming a round shape with a sort of sideways face on it.

"Is that Madra? The moon?" Apaidia asked.

Again the beetles swarmed forming a spear shape.

"Reav." Pronos scratched his bearded chin thoughtfully. "Madra, reav. Madra reav. Madreav... Ma ree. I've got it. They're saying they are N'phesh Mari. The spirit of this area. I remember the elemental Amantis spoke to called itself N'phesh Nur after that area. I think they are tied to the land and take whatever name we give it."

"So the n'phesh control the beetles," Apaidia said.

"And Andral can talk to them," Pronos added.

Apaidia sighed. "Well, that's what we wanted, wasn't it? A way to communicate with the n'phesh?"

"Yes," Pronos said. "But there's got to be a better way to do this."