From his hiding spot, Ehrban could clearly see his visitor enter by the open front door.

  Tall for his race and his birth-sex, though shorter than Ehrban, he had a presence and poise that made him seem larger than he was. His mixed Zhibrenese-Vallenese features were older, fuller than the last time Ehrban had seen him, with a maturity that suited him as well as the strands of white in his wavy dark hair. It was braided in the style of the Tabarantan court, asymmetrical with cornrows pulled away from the right side of his face to defiantly show off his unthulan tattoo.

  Xiun Daolan, former knight and lieutenant in the Holy Order of Saint Celund. Now wearing an expression of open shock and dismay as he looked around the inside of the hut.

  “Ruoi have mercy,” he muttered. “Living like a fucking rat. Ehrban! Damnit, man, you must be here somewhere!”

  Face burning at being caught huddling like — well, yes — a rat in hiding, Ehrban stepped out.

  “Ehrban! Brother!” Xiun lowered his arms as Ehrban flinched back.

  For a moment, memory had clouded Ehrban’s sight, had shown him Xiun’s face like wax under the blood and grime, lips pulled from his teeth in a grimace, eyes filmed over white —

  “Ehrban,” Xiun said more softly. “It’s me.”

  Ehrban hesitantly took the hand that was held out to him — dear Ruoi, how long has it been since he’d touched another human being? — and this time managed not to flinch when Xiun pulled him into an embrace.

  He was surprised at how tight and urgent his friend’s grip was, and to see Xiun openly weeping when he pulled back to hold Ehrban at arm’s length.

  “Let me look at you. I didn’t know if I was going to find you alive, brother, I feared the worst — ”

  Ehrban flushed under the scrutiny. He knew he was thinner, and the morning light in the mirror showed grey in his beard and the start of lines. When he and Xiun had set out for war, nine years ago, Ehrban had been twenty-eight years old and had felt like a man. It was only in retrospect that twenty-eight seemed so foolishly, so very foolishly young.

  “Well,” Xiun said, a wan smile as he recovered himself. “I certainly couldn’t have imagined anything worse than that ill-advised beard, really, Ehrban, don’t you have a razor anymore? I mean…” He gestured at the interior of the hut.

  “It’s not that bad,” Ehrban muttered and was startled at the sound of his own voice.

  “It barely has a roof. Even goat sheds are in better shape than this. Come,” Xiun said, producing a fine linen handkerchief to wipe his eyes. “I’ve got bags, and I need somewhere to put my horse.”

  *

  The house’s original stable was a sturdy stone structure and, once the gardening implements had been moved, was more than comfortable for an animal.

  “It’s in better shape than the house,” Xiun remarked. “If I didn’t love my horse, I would’ve suggested you move here for the foreseeable future.”

  While Xiun took care of his horse, Ehrban drew more water for washing, build up the fire again and, on Xiun’s cheerfully shouted command from the washroom, unpacked his bags.

  They contained a feast: an apricot nut roast, a round of spiced cashew cheese, a jar of vinegared string beans, loaves of crusty bread, vegetable pickles and tofu in rice paper wrappers, dried fig pastries, and two bottles of chilled fruit tea.

  “Good grief,” Ehrban said weakly. “It’s enough to feed an army.”

  “Oh, you know as well as I that’s not true.” Xiun sprawled himself in a chair. He was still slightly damp from his bath, and Ehrban marvelled at how at ease his friend looked with himself. “Armies march on beans and grains and lots of it. In any case, you look like you’re rather in need of feeding. Cooking skills lost along with your ability to reply to letters?”

  “You bought all this from town?” Ehrban asked, choosing to interpret Xiun's question as rhetorical. “How did you manage that?”

  Ehrban himself had only a tenuous understanding with the mayor, arranged through proxy by proxy. If he put out a list and money on the large rock downhill of his house at certain times, Gaial would leave the goods there. Usually moving very fast and only after making sure Ehrban was not nearby.

  “By not giving anyone the option to refuse. Besides, I had this.” Xiun pulled a slim onyx token from a pocket. It was marked with a seal Ehrban vaguely recognised as belonging to one of the viziers. “It doesn’t stop the comments, open stares or suspicion, mind you, and even in Tabaranta I still sometimes get spat on in the streets, but I do have some privileges. See, you’re looking at an under-under-under secretary of Vizier Merung.” Xiun sketched a mocking half-bow. “It’s a very minor post, and to be sure I only got it because the vizier wanted to make a political point against the Temple, but here I am.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “You’ve always had so much more ambition than I, I’m glad you finally got to…” Ehrban tried to piece together dim memories of a world he had forsworn four years ago. “Merung, the Badger of the East? He’s still out for reform?”

  “Separating State from Temple, yes.”

  “Ah.”

  “Don’t worry, I know how you feel about the idea,” Xiun said cheerfully. “Or felt? It’s been four years, Ehrban, I can’t pretend to still know you, can I.”

  It was a statement rather than a question. An extended hand, inviting Ehrban to open up in return. To explain himself, perhaps, and his decisions of the past four years.

  When he didn’t answer, Xiun smiled wanly. “Let’s eat, shall we? I’m famished.”

  “Of course.” Ehrban nodded at the food. “Will you…” He cleared his throat. “Please do the blessing.”

  Xiun lifted an eyebrow, but did not ask why, if it was Ehrban’s house and table, he wouldn’t ensoul the prayer-sigil of the Open Hand himself.

  As Xiun’s fingers traced the lines in the air, the sigil flared in bluish-golden light, filling with his ethem and gathering the Eternal Breath of the Goddess to itself: the source of all ethem that was everywhere, always.

  Ehrban could not take his eyes off the gentle glow that trailed after Xiun’s hands as he ensouled. He moistened his lips, his throat gone dry. For a moment, he remembered the sensation of ensouling so clearly that it hurt.

  To feel the breath of the Goddess stirring the air. A great murmuration just beyond the edge of hearing as if all the birds in the world simultaneously took flight, all animals leapt at the same time, all insects opened their wings, all the leaves in all the trees and all the plants simultaneously waved in the wind, fungi pushed out of soil, all seeds unfurled into new life.

  It was the feeling of a sound that contained the wriggling of worms and maggots and the spinning of spiders, the bloody wetness of lambs being born, the tear of a mountain lion’s teeth into quivering flesh, of flesh decaying and stones crumbling and wood rotting, the sound of bats and the tongues of fawns and water over stones. Of all the tides in the world simultaneously surging from the sand.

  All of this felt inside a single beat of one’s own heart.

  Once this feeling was so commonplace as to be negligible. Now it made Ehrban’s chest clench. He pressed his lips tightly together.

  He had not been this close to an ensoulment in four years. Sometimes, he’d glimpse sigils at a distance. Gaial ensouling the Stillness of Breath if it was fly season and her mountain goat was skittish. Lemar ensouling the Blessing of Ease at night before closing the door to their home. The faint remnants of the Watcher next to campfire remains up in the hills. Goat herders ensouling the Red Thread to coax their herds to stay together and not wander off.

  Small everyday sigils imprinted on the world: a shape into which energy could flow and encourage matter to follow.

  Ehrban realised he’d involuntarily stretched out his hand, as if he could by physical touch reach through Xiun’s sigil to the divine force pulsing just beyond. He hastily put his hands on his knees, under the table. They were trembling.

  Xiun gave him an odd look but did not ask. As they ate, he instead kept up a stream of light chatter, commenting on the roads, which he considered dismal this high in the mountains; the weather, which he didn’t care for; the people, who he found very provincial, which was to say rather backwards; the landscape, which was just so… so Ulgarian — gloomy, brooding, and overly dramatic.

  It was a monologue that did not require input from Ehrban, which he supposed was exactly the point. Xiun was giving him time and space. It was kind. It was also embarrassing, and vaguely affronting.

  Ehrban had no appetite but, aware of Xiun’s scrutiny, forced himself to eat. When he could no longer stand the food turning to sawdust in his mouth, he finally gave in and asked: “How is Uncle Zhuain?”

  Xiun’s raised eyebrow made it clear that he knew very well of his father’s unanswered letters. There had been many, arriving regularly at first but, as Ehrban had no reply to their worry, grief and eventual alarm, at some point they stopped coming.

  “He’s well,” Xiun said. “They moved to Zhibren just around the time we came home, did you know? My mother always wanted to, but my father loves Heila. If it was up to him, he would never have moved away from Saint Celund. It broke his heart when the Order was disbanded. Closing the abbey was the last straw. He says he couldn’t bear seeing it empty and abandoned every time he passed. Now he’s enjoying the climate in Zhibren but complains about the food. He got too used to Vallenese fare.”

  Ehrban realised his hands had clenched around his utensils. Carefully, he put them down and flattened his palms on the table. “Why did you come here? Talking about… Dredging it all up as though it’s… it’s nothing.”

  “Because you need to know,” Xiun said, fixing Ehrban with a look. “You’ve been hiding here like a worm under a rock, while out there, the world has gone on for the rest of us. For all of us who survived Dnisenfeld.”

  “Don’t…”

  Xiun leaned back in his chair and counted off on his fingers. “Now. Bergram’s been with his family, going full Ulgarian in their mountain fortress. His family was all up in arms, for a while there was even talk about declaring a blood feud against the Temple for branding their precious son unthulan, but someone must’ve realised it’s no longer the dark ages and their family is not nearly as powerful as they think they are.”

  “Xiun, please.”

  “Lianu’s family, on the other hand, disowned her,” Xiun went on as if Ehrban had not spoken. “Being the uptight traditional Zhibrenese they are. Took her name off the family altar and burned her birth-gifted silkscreen, the entire spectacle. She’s been with the mercenaries down south. Probably could’ve led her own band by now except for that hasty mouth of hers.”

  Ehrban scowled at the table in front of him but did not bother trying to interrupt again.

  “The last anyone heard of Kilhelm was that he went east. Talking about joining the monastic river-nomads. Inself was in the Temple sanatorium for the mad in the Pella Hills for two years. He died there last monsoon from illness in the lungs. Falara was killed in a tavern brawl in some shithole down in the plains. By all accounts she started the brawl herself, if that makes it any better. And Yuan…” Xiun hesitated. “Yuan killed himself.”

  Ehrban flinched. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you need to know. We swore an oath, Ehrban, all of us. To fight and to die for Ruoi, for Saint Celund, and for our brothers and sisters-in-arms. Saint Celund might be disbanded, but you can’t turn your back on the rest of us.”

  “I’ve broken my oaths.” Ehrban rose to leave, but was prevented by Xiun’s grasp on his arm.

  “So have I,” Xiun said quietly. “So have all of us. But listen to me. This is why I came. We — the knights of Ruoi, the handful of us left — we’ve been offered a holy pardon.”

  Patreon.