THE MONKS HUDDLED around a small fire that Aelarain, the youngest of their order, tended. Their long, pale faces seemed drawn in the jungle night, and worry creased their usually peaceful brows. Their lives were given to the service of the Temple of the Great Turtle, and the wandering island called Ishaamara in their ancient tongue. Through long centuries, they had dwelt in uninterrupted isolation and quiet meditation.

Now, some ill-fortuned wind had blown a pack of sinners and lost souls to the Isaamara’s holy shores, and the brutes had pillaged most of the great treasures that the monks had collected to honor the isle. They were sworn to abstain from violence, for was Ishaamara not an avatar of harmony? She circled the world across slow centuries, and was seldom moved to anger. Better to simply move on, as the tides did, than resist the wiles of such short and starved souls as those of men.

Taerenalin was their oldest, and he governed them as a superior penitent. He was ancient even for an Eridesh, having lived long beyond the strange borders of his homeland, where time held little sway. Ages had lined his face, and his golden hair had faded to silver. Taerenalin looked with half-blind eyes into their little fire, heedless of the jungle’s wild, teeming music.

Night birds chattered and insects hummed, but the blood flies left the clustered monks alone. Ishaamara had chosen them, and would not prey upon them. Swaddled in huge orange and blue robes, they wore necklaces of painted wooden beads carved from the buttery wood of the salas tree. They looked distinctly out of place, hiding in the undergrowth far from the trails that lined Ishaamara’s shell. But what choice had they?

When they heard the screaming drifting from the temple high above, they were frightened. It was violent and furious at first, the sound of wolves at one another’s throats, but soon took on an agonized edge that spoke of abject horror. The monks pressed close to ward off the danger and dark, taking in shallow breaths, and pressing themselves to the ground like small things. Something very bad had happened in their home, at the heart of the holy island, and they had done nothing to stop it.

“We should be ashamed,” Naudrelin whispered. She was younger than Taerenalin but older than the rest. Her hair was laced with golden threads of her former beauteous luster, and unlike her superior, her face was yet untroubled by age. She still had a grace about her bones. She fed sticks to the fire slowly. “The Mother would have smote those thieves.”

“We do not sit in judgment,” old Taerenalin offered.

“We tend the great turtle,” Irindyn intoned. She had been virtually silent since they fled the temple. Small, with unusually dark hair for an Eridesh, Irindyn’s bronze eyes flickered in the glow of the small fire.

The eldest began to pray. The others joined Taerenalin’s quiet intonations, reluctantly at first, but then all as one. Long had they prayed with a single voice, achieving a beautiful harmony in their praise of the great turtle. Prayer comforted them, soothed their tensions, and brought them together in a way beyond words. What was a little treasure lost in the face of their service? Worship was the best medicine, and Taerenalin knew it better than anyone.

A long time passed after the screaming from the temple was lost to the wind. Still, the monks prayed, feeling the deep current of power that beat in the island’s heart. Aelarain alone paused to keep their little fire fed, for they honored only Zol above Ishaamara. Always they kept a fire in worship of Him. The kindled light may not be in the gallery’s huge brazier, wherever it had burned since Taerenalin had first come to the island, but this humble flame on the forest floor would lift their hearts just as well.

Maeilin, the second youngest, gasped when something moved just outside their camp. The jungle fell silent, and Aelarain ceased his prayers, peering out into the dark. His eyes shone like a cat’s in the dark, nervous lamps searching the dark foliage, afraid that the men had come back to kill them.

His hand crept towards the hilt of the sword he had snatched up from the display in the gallery. Though they abstained from violence, the monks practiced the ancient arts of war, as all of Eridesh did, for it was their charge to be ever vigilant against the shadow. Yet, in three centuries, Aelarain had never lifted his blade in anger, or with the intent of true violence. Now he gripped it tightly, ready to kill if he had to. It felt alien, strange, as if the balance had changed to match the circumstances.

Naudrelin took up her sword, too, and Irindyn clutched a dagger to her breast.

Only Maeilin and Taerenalin knelt, unconcerned with whatever lurked in the bush.

Another noise, nearer yet. Aelarain surged to his feet and said, “Show your face, vagabonds! You might rob the temple, but I will not let you harm us!”

Naudrelin stood beside him. Together they searched the dark.

“I came to this place nine hundred years ago,” Taernaelin whispered, “to seek peace for the blood I shed during the War of the Burning Horizon. Ishaamara called me to the sea, to bathe in the surf, and promised to wash my heart clean. I will not dishonor her by raising a blade again in anger.”

The admonition hurt Aelarain, but it did not assuage his fear. “They’re out there,” he whispered. “Here to finish the job they started in the temple.”

Suddenly, Maeilin pressed her forehead to the ground, bowing in supplication. She let out a low, terrified moan.

“What is she doing?” asked Irindyn. “Taerenalin, is she well?”

The old monk reached out a shaking, gnarled hand to the youngling. He held it just above her back but did not touch her. A quiet gasp escaped his lips. “A vision is upon her! Ishaamara speaks through her!”

Aelarain looked over his shoulder. “What’s going on?” he hissed. His fear leaped into his throat. Long years of honing calm had not prepared him for the sudden closeness of danger and bloodshed.

But it was not the superior penitent who answered. Maeilin, small, quiet Maeilin spoke now with the issue of divine command: “Stay your hands! Before you, a lion, crowned in his majesty and cloaked in starlight! Can you not hear the surge of fate around him? Do you not recognize those who come before you, given life again in new flesh? Die by your swords or lay them aside, fools, but Ishaamara will not raise a fist against him.”

“It cannot be!” Naudrelin said. She dropped her sword, and it stuck in the ground, point-first. She threw herself to her knees. Taerenalin and Irindyn had joined Maeilin, placing their foreheads to the forest floor. They were all facing the direction of the noises Aelarain had heard.

The young monk slowly set down his blade and knelt with the others. A shape drew forth from the woods.

Aelarain raised his eyes to see what doom came before them, for Maeilin’s strange portent had shaken him to the core. He expected something

vast and powerful, wreathed in the arcane, profound beyond knowing.

Instead, he saw a man, slathered in dry mud, bleeding from cuts to the shoulder and arms, with black hair loose about his shoulders. He wore naught but scraps, and a sword across his back. On one finger, a band of gold glimmered. Aelarain’s breath caught as he saw the ring, and knew it for what it was. Eye-bending designs were pressed into the band, cosmic patterns that traced furious infinitude into the narrow gold.

The Ring of Imaahis, Alaerin knew. An Inheritor stood before him: fate made flesh, an avatar of the Conquering Flame. The Lion Lord was among those set on the prangs above the temple’s central gallery. Imaahis had broken the Enemy’s forces during the Return and reconquered countless lost lands. The greatest fighter the world had ever seen—and his Inheritors were no less: fierce kings and warlords of the mortal races; dragon slayers and giant-killers around whom legends flocked. But, Aelarain knew, that ring had passed out of memory long, long ago.

But his eyes could not deceive him. The Lion walked again, celestial might clothed now in the flesh of a gray-eyed man. Aelarain was witness to something vast in its import, and yet he could not bring himself to speak. The others were silent before this fearsome specter, too.

“Who are you?” the man asked in a gruff, surly voice.

Taerenalin answered in a quavering voice. “We are monks of Ishaamara, Lord, servants of the Great Turtle.”

“Then this belongs to you.” The man tossed several heavy sacks next to the fire. The treasures inside spilled noisily out onto the ground.

“Lord, tell us your name,” Taerenalin said. His mustaches trailed on the ground as he bowed low again.

“Lord? I am no lord. I am called Ulrem, of the Oron. I am the Lionborn,” the man said. His voice was heavy with pride.

“We are honored by the presence of a son of Imaahis.”

The man stroked his jaw. “What do you know of him?”

Taerenalin’s voice answered with all the solemn dignity of his years. “The chains of memory are broken in this forsaken age, my lord. The younger races remember little of Imaahis, except for his conquests. But he was much more, lord: Imaahis was a liberator, a forger of crowns, and a great Justice of the realms. Here on the isle of Ishaamara, we serve his sister, Inralea, firstborn of the sea. This holy island was her throne, and home to those who bear her ring.”

Ulrem gave an impressed grunt. “Is she here?”

“No, lord,” said Irindyn sadly. But hope dawned in her voice as she looked upon his grim face. “We have waited for the Mother’s return for many years. Perhaps, where the Lion walks again, his wife will follow soon behind.” At that, Ulrem’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Seeing you is a great boon to us,” Naudrelin said quickly, her voice unsteady. She kept her eyes on his feet. “How come you to Ishaamara?”The man seemed to consider his words carefully. The monks sat back on their knees, studying him.

Finally, he said, “A few days ago, my crew got me drunk. They bound my arms behind my back and tied a stone around my feet. Then the Captain tossed me and my kit overboard. But I slipped my bonds and swam to the surface. The current pulled me to the beach.”

The monks looked at one another. “The pirates, they are your crew?”

“Not anymore,” he growled. A fiery, deadly light sprung up in his eyes. The monks saw within them echoes of ghosts around Ulrem, and their wrath was plain. “Fate has delivered to me all my traitors, save the one who gave the order. Another came in his place, but I will find a use for that one. Stay here until sunrise. It should be over by then.”

And like that, the Lion who walked as a man was gone, vanishing away into the forest, leaving the penitents breathless.