By the time dark had just fallen properly, the last of the flour had been made into dough, set to rise on the scrubbed kitchen table. The last of the mungbeans had been boiled, to be mashed with the last handful of dates and mixed with the last oats scraped from the bottom of the bin to make sticky cakes that, with the sugar, should last longer than the bread.

  Ehrban surveyed his provisions. Some nuts and seeds, a quarter jar of nut-cheese, a scant bit of dried fruit. Thinking of the campaigns against Barsland, he grimaced to himself. The imperial Sigilist armies had been a lot better equipped than he was right now, not to mention had any amount of Sigilists who could all ensoul the most basic cooling sigils to help preserve food for the long roads.

  Granted, there had been many times that baggage trains had been delayed by poor roads, treacherous weather, problems with carriages and carts and pack animals, and sometimes supplies had been lost or spoiled regardless of care. Once, for a week in the mountain passes west of Lebran, Ehrban and his troop had subsisted on nothing but stale bread and even so had managed to beat back the Barslanders who were waiting on the other side…

  Well. It was not as though he was going to war this time. He just had to get far enough from the village to be beyond reach of goat herders, pilgrims, and the occasional hikers. He didn’t pride himself on knowing the mountains better than the natives who’d walked those paths for fifty years, but the frequent long wanderings over the past four years counted for something.

  With the bread in the oven, Ehrban looked around his home a last time. After his father’s death in battle, when Ehrban and his sister Ytharn had been fetched to live with his father’s comrade-in-arms Uncle Zhuain, the local chapter of the Siblinghood of the War-Bereaved had sporadically cleaned and repaired it with financial aid sent by Uncle Zhuain.

  I’m maintaining it for you, Uncle Zhuain had told them. One day, you might want to return to the place of your birth.

  Ehrban had used to dream of one day bringing Pia here, to show her the mountains of his childhood, the hidden streams bright with moonstone carps, the tiny flowers of the stone-breath bush that only bloomed in the first hour after dawn, the silvery dusk-monkeys that hid in bamboo so that only their luminous lavender eyes were visible.

  Except he had returned from the war in disgrace. Ytharn had not returned at all. Overnight the house had gone from an honourable monument to the war-dead to the dwelling of an unthulan. Ehrban tried not to wonder what his father would have said if he had been alive to witness his son’s shame.

  The previous spring, he’d resorted to wedging bamboo poles under the beams near the backdoor to keep the roof up where it had caved under snowfall. He had temporarily fixed the roof with a piece of sheet-wood that Lemar had pointedly mentioned he had thrown onto the refuse heap. But really, the tiles needed replacing. Or fastening. Or something indefinable of which Ehrban had no knowledge and for which he possessed no skill.

  Good thing he would not be here when the next monsoon rains came, wasn’t it.

  Ehrban had a sudden dim memory of his mother up on the roof with a hammer, laughing down at his worried father. She had always been handy around the house; his father, like Ehrban, limited to a very specific skill set that did not involve house repairs. Or gardening.

  In a different life, it would have been as easy as going down to the Temple House of Loggers and buying wooden roof tiles and a cartload of bamboo before hiring a roofer from the Guild to put it all up. But the Temple would not sell anything to someone like Ehrban, and a roofer would charge three times the going rate — if they were willing to accept the job at all, since it would mean coming here, to this disgraced house…

  Ytharn would have known about roofs. Had she been up there with their mother, that dimly remembered day? Putting the tiles in place, handing their mother the tools?

  Ytharn. May Ruoi forgive him.

  *

  Since the war, the extent of Ehrban’s worship had been to keep the na-al in the centre of the house swept and dusted. Upon his return to his childhood home, he had found the figurines of the Goddess where they had been carefully packed in a chest along with the sacred bowls. He had closed the chest again and put it back in storage where it had stayed for four years.

  Ehrban now descended the few steps into the na-al, the round depression in the middle of the house that echoed the sacred founts at the centre of temples.

  In places with accessible water tables, the na-al often surrounded a well. This house had a fire bowl. The custom was to ensoul the Burning Cup over it and fill it with the Eternal Breath of the Goddess to flicker in multi-hued colours, but ensouling was something Ehrban could no longer do. Instead he brought some coals from the stove and kindled a small and entirely worldly little fire.

  Nowadays, none but the most remote, secretive mountain sects still recited all of the ten thousand holy names of the Goddess. Even the Alcazar in Heila, the oldest of all the Midland-Vallenese temples, only hosted eight thousand ninety-six depictions of Her. In everyday worship, most of the Sigilist faithful prayed to one of the principal four aspects — Khada, Nur, Omren, and Ruoi — that were popularised four centuries ago by the reign of Matriarch Yesinung IV who had brought her Zhibrenese influences west with her when she was elected.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  This deep in the Ulgarian provinces, however, one still found remnants of the ancient worship of Vishak, the Dreamer, the Slumbering One.

  Like in this heirloom set of icons, passed down through generations of Ehrban’s family. Kneeling, Ehrban took up the figurines of the goddess one by one and placed them around the fire bowl to face outwards, murmuring the names of each aspect as he did so.

  Khada, Nur, Omren… The figurine of Ruoi was missing. Ytharn had taken it when they left to live with Uncle Zhuain in Heila. Ehrban wondered where it was now. The thought of the cinnabar figurine lying dusty and uncared for in the recesses of the abandoned abbey of Saint Celund was a bleak thought. Or perhaps it was buried in the sand somewhere along the battle-marked journey to the West. Just like Ytharn’s bones, unburned in the depths of Ungberg.

  Ehrban hesitated with veiled Vishak in his hands, but She was quiet. He did not feel anything other than the cool weight of the hematite figurine.

  He placed Her next to Her sister aspects and sank back on his heels. He cupped his hands in the prayer position at the centre of his body, palms open and facing upwards. It was something he had not done for four years. It felt strange, and strangely familiar.

  On the back of his right hand, the sigil of Saint Celund was a dull red mark. It had been ensouled when Ehrban took the vow for Saint Celund on his fifteenth birthday, by their Suzerain himself. For almost twenty years, Ehrban had ritually renewed this sigil every time he reconsecrated his sword, and the sigil had remained a bright, living red.

  Now the sigil was dead; Saint Celund banished; his oaths broken. Every day that passed, the sigil faded some more. Soon it would be no more than a memory etched in pain.

  In his left palm, a soulbond sigil was likewise dull and starting to fade. Another broken oath.

  Ehrban’s father had regularly re-ensouled his soulbond sigil even after his wife’s death, kneeling in the na-al in prayer to Ruoi and Omren, whom Ehrban’s mother had followed. In grief and commemoration, a celebration of a love that extended beyond death. The day his father had left for war, his soulbond sigil was nearly as vivid as when his wife had been alive.

  Ehrban wondered if, had he been able to re-ensoul his own soulbond sigil, he would have been strong enough to resist doing so. He hoped he would have. To renew the vows that he himself had broken would not have been fair to the woman who bore the matching sigil in her left palm.

  An old prayer to Ruoi the Many-Limbed, Youth of War, She of Battle, came to mind. It was a circular chant, symbolising the sacred Dance of Battle with which Ruoi kept spinning the Great Orb of Khada which kept the River of Nur flowing.

  From the blade, the blood;

  from the blood, the iron;

  from the iron, the spirit;

  from the spirit, the hand that holds the blade;

  by the blade, the conviction;

  by the conviction; the steel;

  by the steel, the honour that drives the blade…

  The prayer ended with a plea to Ruoi to grant the mercy of conviction, the certainty of the cause, meaning to suffering, and purpose to death.

  There was no answer. Ehrban had not expected one. He had not heard Ruoi’s voice in four years. In four years, he had not felt Her limbs move along his own — as they used to, in the midst of battle when the clamour of metal and men all around rang as Her exultant cry, and every stroke, feint, and parry flowed with the clarity of the eternal-lasting and sacred now.

  Ruoi had fallen silent, that final night at Ungberg. When next Ehrban had experienced the Goddess, it had been the dark terror of Vishak illuminating the night at Dnisenfeld.

  He had not listened for Ruoi since, for fear that, once again, it would be Vishak who answered from the dark.

  But tonight, there was no whisper, no movement, nothing at all that stirred in him.

  When Ehrban straightened up from the na-al, he told himself he was only relieved. He had no right to the pain he felt, the loss like that of a child abandoned.

  *

  The bread was newly steaming on the kitchen table when the sound of hooves on gravel sounded through the night air. Ehrban froze, then reflexively ducked into the dark recess of the unusable back door. He flattened himself against the wall behind the make-shift poles keeping the roof up. The rough stone was cool against his cheek and snagged in his beard.

  Who on earth could it be?

  It was too late in the day for the post and besides, the sound was heavier, more measured than the mountain goat Gaial rode. Her trips up to the hut used to be more frequent, but now months or — dear Ruoi, almost a year — had gone by and Ehrban couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her. Besides, she always stopped at the big rock at the bend of the road and left his post there, not wanting to come any further to the house of an unthulan.

  Villagers who had finally come to evict the unthulan from their midst? But why now? Aside from Lemar, he hadn’t seen a living person in months. Unless some disaster had befallen the crops, or sickness broke out, or something for which an unthulan could be blamed…

  But no. It was a single horse, not a posse. One person, at most two.

  A single horse, at this time of evening? Ehrban knew the kind of rumours whispered about him down in the village. None of the village people would venture it up here in the dark without a lot of friends at their back.

  Perhaps a visitor for Lemar, who had missed the turn to the old couple’s home further down?

  Please let them go away, he prayed, just in case any of the Goddess’s aspects were listening after all. Whoever they are, please, please make them go away.

  He strained to hear more clearly over the thudding of his heart in his chest. Still the hooves came closer. They stopped. There was a long silence.

  Perhaps they would consider that no one was home…? But the front door was open, there was smoke in the chimney, a lamp lit, the smell of cooking and baking from within.

  Then what Ehrban had been dreading came: the faint jingle of harness as the rider dismounted, the crunch of gravel as their feet landed on the ground. Footsteps. Coming closer.

  “Hello?” The voice was shockingly familiar. “Ehrban? Ehrban, I know you’re here. Where are you?”