Prologue

Golden Halo

Once again, the end of the world had been postponed.

Nigh passionless, Fana peered up at the Pit’s shattered ceiling, watched argent plumes rise and swirl above its pockmarked surface, as if it were the baldachin of some conquered pagan temple. The amber hues of the dwindling sun stained the stone remnants of its yellow-painted dome. Unconscious Peacebringers strewn its perimeter, discarded muskets scattered about their slumped forms. The air smelled of dust, death, and damnation.

“Sister Fana!” a voice behind her shouted.

She spun, an unfathomable word rising to her tongue by habit, ready to burn all to glass and ash if need be. Her honor guard, fresh-faced men-of-war, armed with muskets of their own and dressed in the black-and-silver uniforms of the Guardians of the Flame, knelt around another of their number. They made room for her as she approached them and the Worship’s blue carriage.

The blank face that peer up at her from the ground was familiar, yet for a moment she struggled to place it. Then it came back to her, Ragon, the soldier Kalum had fought because of her. For some reason, she found herself having to resist the instinct that tried to curve her lips upward.

“What happened?” she asked in a soothing tone. “Did he inhale some Silver Dust?”

“We’re not sure, Sister.” A soldier with a long nose gave her a befuddled shrug. “One second he was laughing with us and the next he was tipping over. If we didn’t catch him, he would have cracked his head like an egg for sure.”

“I know the Third Compact forbids it. . . .” another soldier said. “But-but isn’t there something you can do for him?”

“My power doesn’t work like that,” Fana said. By the soldier’s expression she could tell he did not understand. So much of what her order did was secret, and with good reason. “Sophic Nuns are not healers,” she continued. “Once we were builders of a sort, but now we are little more than destroyers.”

The man’s face drained of color and his eyes rounded with what could have been nothing but dread. He stammered, backed away from her with the rest of his cohorts.

“Wait here,” Fana said, turning her back to them, “I’m going inside.”

Sighing inwardly, she strode toward the Pit, not giving them a chance to object. Worship Osei had commanded her to remain outside until the rest of the Guardians of the Flame arrived, but something within her refused to be motionless for an instant longer. It was not worry for Kalum.

No.

It could not be that.

Sophic Nuns did not moon over men like lovesick fools, they were beyond such things. And yet . . . what was this tightness in her chest?

She sauntered past the downed figures slouched about the building’s perimeter, touched the prayer beads looped about her wrist. The Pit enclosed her, enfolding her within its cracked and battered structure. Clouds of glittering smoke enveloped her, only to part about her otherworldly Wards as the air buzzed like a nest of enraged hornets.

Sunlight floated through the gaps in the ceiling, plumbed the smoky interior, set the silver fragments hidden in the whirling plumes aglow. Rubble stood gray and shrouded beyond the reach of the amber light, close enough to make out the cannon balls festooned with detritus. Fissures forked the floor.

The Nun lurched across the shifting ground, breathed deeply upon air filtered by her Wards, her gaze fixed upon a hole at the chamber’s heart. Mist seethed and broiled about its fluted edge. She paused before it, peered down into its pulsing void. Through a sheet of shimmering fog, she glimpsed Kalum slumped on his back, grinning up at her with watery eyes.

No. He can’t be. . . .

Long years of training had rendered her passions as remote as the stars. Yet now some phantom affectation clawed at her throat, choked her with sensations she had not experienced in decades. She whirled from the sight, scuttled down the winding staircase, erupted onto the first gallery, shedding swirling skirts of mist.

She leaped from the first gallery. A word rose from her depth, a word that should not be able to be made by any human throat, yet was—a word manifested as liquid light. Reality twisted then bent to accommodate her descent. Dark habit rippling, she fell to the ground as a leaf tossed upon a breeze.

“Lord-Inquisitor,” Fana shouted, dropping next to Kalum.

The Holy Fire receded from her eyes as she cradled his head in her lap. She ran a hand across his face, searched for a pulse, found one, but it was erratic, pumping much too fast. She knew what it meant.

“Nweh,” he murmured, drooling as he spoke. “Forgive . . . me.” His eyes rolled up into his skull.

The memory of fear shivered through Fana, searing for what it heralded.

“No,” she hissed.

“Fana,” a raspy voice whispered from beside Kalum.

The Nun blinked the heat from her eyes, saw Worship Osei sprawled on her side, her milky white eyes peering directly at Fana. In her rush, it seemed, she had completely overlooked her charge.

“Your Worship,” Fana said, laying Kalum’s head back onto the ground, “what happened here?”

The Worship moistened her dry and cracked lips with a snake like tongue before struggling onto her knees. Fana kept her from tumbling back onto the sand.

“Mindripper,” Osei said, gripping Fana’s shoulder. “There’s another Mindripper in Dilgan. You have to hurry, there’s no time to waste. You must destroy it before it’s too late.”

“Another one?” Fana tilted her head, taken aback.

The Worship used a gnarled finger to sketch a rough map in the sand, then she jabbed her finger at the outline of a sprawling mansion. “It’s here. Hurry. It’s very powerful, Sister. I’ve never felt a Mindripper more powerful.”

“But the Third Compact—” Fana began.

“There’s no one else.” Osei pointed at Kalum’s prone form. “Look, Sister. My Lord-Inquisitor lies incapacitated. I will take responsibility for whatever follows. I release you from the compact. Now go!”

Fana peered from Kalum’s blank face to the ceiling. Even when she was not looking at him, she could still see his unseeing eyes. The sight wounded, tugged at her ghostly passions. The Worship flung herself away, as if glimpsing a hint of what was to come.

Words of power spilled from Fana’s mouth, rolled off her tongue as golden light. The vaulted ceiling exploded upward like a jet of water from a geyser, and Fana followed it up, lifting into the sky upon a silken sail of crimson brilliance.