DIE SEHNSUCHT

German, "longing; yearning; nostalgia"

Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was always just red. -- Kait Rokowski

The wards around Miavain kept its people from realising anything unusual was happening in Avallot. Along the shore the fishermen noticed a mysterious absence of fish and an abnormally high tide, but nothing that couldn't be explained away naturally. Near the Avallese border a few scattered farmhouses felt faint tremors like a distant earthquake. When days passed and nothing else happened they dismissed the tremors and promptly forgot all about them.

People in Avallot didn't have the luxury of forgetting about them. Every day they had to deal with what caused them.

At first they thought the monster was an anomaly never to be repeated. Everyone else that idea for well over a month. Teivain-ríkhon-hrair was much too busy trying to find Diarnlan to keep an eye on the veil, and none of the other mages lived close enough to it to monitor it every day.

The second monster's arrival went unnoticed until it barged headlong into a city. It took all of the Great Mages and half of the Avallese army to finally kill it. By then it had laid waste to the whole city. Only two buildings remained standing. Hundreds of civilians were confirmed dead, thousands were missing, and thousands more were injured and homeless.

The third and fourth monsters arrived the very next day. They charged right across Avallot until they reached the capital. But they didn't stop there. They ran right through it, destroying everything in their path, and continued on their way. A magician in western Avallot was fortunate enough to kill one of them. The other one was still at large.

Ships reported sighting a fifth monster swimming towards Byuryan. Rumours came from kingdoms to the west of a monster wreaking havoc among them. No one knew if it was the fourth monster or a sixth one. Everyone lived in constant terror of the next arrival.

Meanwhile in Miavain the people had a different sort of monster to deal with. It started with the disappearance of all the priests in Olhai Province. All over the province the townspeople woke up to find their priests' heads impaled over the town gates -- a punishment reserved for traitors and heretics. The news quickly spread. Factory workers in southern Miavain talked about it during the breaks. Priests-in-training in the ornate academies began to worry about their futures. The High Priest flew into a rage and hurled his ceremonial crown at the unfortunate messenger who brought him the news.

"I want this heretical murderer dead!" he roared. Later in his public address to the capital's inhabitants he said, "I will bestow a sainthood on anyone who captures the murderer and brings him to me."

In spite of his promises and the government's offered rewards, no one caught the murderer or could offer any information about him. Weeks passed and brought with them many more dead priests but no leads. No one dared say it to the High Priest's face, but everyone noticed an especially disturbing fact about the murders.

They were moving closer and closer to the capital.

Three months after the murders first started was the Day of Muimatorven, one of the biggest festivals celebrated by the Bone-Worshippers. The High Priest's palace in the middle of the capital was the centre of the festivities. At noon exactly the High Priest would walk out onto the raised platform above the watching crowd and would publicly burn any book or piece of writing considered heretical.

A few of his followers dared to bring up the question of the murderer on the loose. He scoffed at their concerns. "No one would dare attack me in public!"

When the day came he walked out onto the platform alone. He lit the fire and threw the books into it. The smoke billowed up until it could be seen from all over the city. Smoke from other fires was visible in the distance; proof that other people were obediently destroying anything that could by any stretch of the imagination be considered heretical. All of that smoke might as well have been a beacon.

An icy wind swept through the palace. It blew open the doors. It tossed aside curtains and tapestries. It knocked over the huge statue in the main temple. It chilled everyone to the bone. And when it was gone, three people stood on the platform.

The common people down below saw what was happening before the High Priest did. A chorus of gasps arose. That was what alerted him. He turned away from the fire and saw the figures standing behind him. The books fell from his hands.

If the gods themselves had descended from on high the gathered people could hardly have been more dumbstruck. They hardly noticed anything about the newcomers themselves; they were much too distracted by the blood-stained sword one of them had in their hand and the large box the other held to their chest. The High Priest looked around for his guards. They were supposed to stay in the palace out of sight, but to keep an eye on proceedings from the windows. If anything untoward happened they should have rushed out to defend him. So where were they?

Their absence put him in an awkward position. He and all the other priests never missed a chance to boast they had no guards and trusted to the gods and saints to protect them. He couldn't call for his guards without revealing he was a hypocrite. There was nothing else for it. He would have to deal with these interlopers himself.

At first glance there was nothing very intimidating about either of them. Both of them were wearing armour, but that on its own didn't mean they were dangerous. The one holding the sword was a young boy barely into his teens. Why, the sword itself was almost too large for him. He looked like he'd fall flat on his face if he tried to swing it at anyone. The High Priest glanced at him and promptly dismissed him as not a threat.

The one holding the box, on the other hand, looked like she might well be a threat. She was at least ten years older than the boy and almost a full head taller. The Bone-Worshippers had spent the better part of five hundred years preaching that women were helpless and incapable of defending themselves. The High Priest believed virtually none of the dogmas he propagated, but he had never questioned that one until today. He knew enough about his guards' training to recognise when someone was ready for an attack, and he couldn't help seeing she held herself exactly like a warrior before a duel.

Never before had the High Priest faced a situation like this. He knew he had to say something, but what?

The boy saved him the trouble. "You wanted me brought to the capital, so here I am." In the background the woman rolled her eyes and muttered something in a foreign language. With a wide and not-quite-sane smile the boy continued, "I think we've had enough of priests of all sorts, don't you?"

He held out his hand. The High Priest's chain of office lifted up and tore itself off him, scraping the skin off the back of its neck. It flew over to the boy and landed in his hand. He closed his hand around it. Before the High Priest's astonished eyes it burst into flames and fell apart. Murmurs arose from the watching crowd.

The woman opened the box. A human head fell out. The boy picked it up calmly and held it out. The murmurs turned to screams as the audience realised what it was. The High Priest found himself frozen in place. He couldn't have moved if his life depended on it.

That was the Prime Minister's head.

"I am taking over Miavain," the boy announced, as matter-of-factly as if he was only talking about a school subject he wasn't particularly interested in. "There is no place in my kingdom for your cult."

He raised the sword. The woman rolled her eyes again and held out her hand. The High Priest never had a chance to realise what she was doing. Her spell sliced right through his neck. His head landed in the fire amongst the ashes of the books.

"You are an absolute idiot."

Karandren scowled at Diarnlan. "What are you talking about? You were the one who made me look stupid by cutting off his head like that."

She rolled her eyes yet again. She'd been doing that so often over the last months that she wouldn't be a bit surprised if some day soon her eyes fell out. "You had already made yourself look stupid by your ridiculous speechifying. You should have just killed him and taken over the government without making a spectacle of yourself. The people wouldn't have noticed a thing for weeks. And how did you intend to behead him from the other side of the platform anyway? You haven't a clue how--"

He hit her with yet another silencing spell.

For the next month or so things went smoothly for Karandren. They did not go so smoothly for Diarnlan. Karandren, for all his grand proclamations about taking over Miavain, was still just a fourteen-year-old. A fourteen-year-old who barely remembered how to run a country, and certainly couldn't be bothered to learn. He spent most of his time practicing dark magic on the politicians he'd captured. He would have happily let the country run itself -- into the ground, most likely. Diarnlan was the one saddled with the responsibilities of actually ruling Miavain and undoing the damage done by the Bone-Worshippers.

It was bad enough that she had to trawl through centuries'-worth of government records just to find the answer to things like "how does the court system work" and "what's the normal price of linen". It was even worse that she was imprisoned in the High Priest's palace -- or Karandren's palace, as it was now -- and couldn't go outside. Karandren, for all his ignorance about politics, had the intelligence to realise handing the country over to his worst enemy would backfire on him if he didn't make sure she couldn't plot against him.

As a student at the academy Diarnlan had studied Old High Miavish to read documents from before the Bone-Worshippers' reign of terror. Now she discovered that Old High Miavish might as well have been a completely different language to modern-day Miavish. They used different alphabets, had different grammar rules, and shared at most one word in a hundred. Worst of all, the words she did recognise had changed meaning drastically over the years. There were spells to help people learn foreign languages. Unfortunately Karandren had sealed her magic so she couldn't use spells of any sort. Sometimes Diarnlan wanted nothing more than to bash that brat's head in with one of the ugly statues this place was still full of.

She found a handful of scholars who understood Old High Miavish and used them to translate things for her while she tried to learn the modern language. Things went on in this extremely inconvenient way for what felt like centuries. Diarnlan gave up trying to keep track of days. The palace's main hall had no windows, and that was where she spent most of her life now.

The first clue something was going wrong came with a crash that shook the entire city. Bells rang wildly in the towers. Plaster crumbled from the palace roof. Some of the statues overbalanced and fell to the floor so heavily they shook the palace again. The noise was the first thing in days that drew Karandren out of the basement. He emerged with his eyes glowing red and dark magic clinging to him like a garment.

"What was that?" he asked, rubbing his eyes and squinting in the lamp-light.

Diarnlan shrugged. She didn't even bother to look up from studying the Miavish alphabet. Strange sounds and miniature earthquakes were par for the course now Karandren was doing gods-knew-what with dark magic. This was just the first time the effects had extended outside the palace. "How should I know? Find out yourself."

Screams arose from the city. Distant thuds sent faint tremors through the building. Karandren conjured up his sword and ran to the main door. Diarnlan followed, more out of boredom than curiosity. She was long past being surprised by anything.

When she reached the platform where the High Priest had died she stopped in her tracks. She didn't have to look all over the city for the cause of the screams. Five enormous silhouettes towered over the buildings. And they were slowly but steadily approaching the palace. One of them looked like a giant frog.

The sight of it snapped something in Diarnlan's mind. A storm of memories swept over her, disorientating and frightening in their intensity. She saw that same monster on the beach outside her house. She saw herself killing it. She saw other monsters crawling out of the sea. She saw eyes staring back at her through the veil. The pain of her deaths hit her all at once.

She fell to the ground, too dizzy to remain standing. She knelt on the platform for several minutes. And by the time she stood up again she had a plan. It wasn't a good plan. It wasn't really a plan at all. It was just a series of facts and the conclusion she drew from them.

I can't kill all of those monsters. One way or another I'll die today. That thought led to, I want to die on my own terms. From there it was an easy step to, As soon as we both die we'll be sent back again. That wasn't really a comforting thought. At least I'll go back to Avallot. Even that thought wasn't as comforting as it should have been.

Karandren stood with his back to her, all his attention taken up by the skrýszels. Diarnlan had no magic and no weapon, but the monsters' footsteps had shaken loose the plaster in more places than the ceiling. The platform was lined with sharp spikes where heretics' heads had been displayed. Now the priests' heads were displayed there instead. Diarnlan took note of which heads hung lower and at more of an angle than the others. Those spikes would be the easiest to dislodge.

She pulled the head off the loosest spike and wrenched it free. Karandren was busy trying to conjure up some sort of dark magic. He didn't notice as she walked up behind him. He had no chance to defend himself when she plunged the spike between his ribs.

Diarnlan had planned to kill herself after Karandren was dead. She was spared the trouble. Karandren's spell lashed out at his killer as he died. The last thing she saw was one of the monsters crashing through the palace gates. Then the spell struck her. Diarnlan died.

Diarnlan opened her eyes.

END OF BOOK ONE