The Naharasii stopped quarreling when a faint tremor rumbled beneath their feet. Aftershock or the precursor to another earthquake, only time would tell. For the nonce, it was enough to divert their attention.

“Har-Kazahn.” They chanted. “Har-Kazahn. Har-Kazahn.

“In his anger, he shakes the ground.

By his might, he boils the sea.

Through his fire, we cleanse our blood.

His power sets fire to the wind.”

The Naharasii swayed to the beat of their spears thumping against the ground, stomping bare feet as they fanned out, still holding back, still…frightened. Frightened by something they had not yet identified. Steady, he wanted to tell his restless company, steady on, but to do so would only reveal their vulnerability. He could hear their breathing, quick and hard, heard the involuntary whimpers of at least one man behind him. He, Kolarin, and Scanlin were veterans of the last Horror, but few others among them had any experience with foes such as these. One of the youngsters to his right, a city guard by his uniform, could contain himself no longer. He broke rank with a ragged cry of demon on his lips. He never stood a chance. Not less than six Naharasii leapt at him, but death came swiftly when he was lanced by a boy half his size armed with a weapon the little one did not really know how to wield. No doubt terrified, he had hunkered down, braced the spear against the ground and the foolish guard had impaled himself. Poison did the rest, screams giving way to froth on lips slowly turning black. The adult warriors circled anti-sunwise, dipping their fingers in spilled blood to anoint the child’s head before taking their places once again.

“Stand down,” he warned as outrage flooded his ranks, but the shock had unnerved the uninitiated. His own people stood firm, but three more local hotheads charged forward, closing on the child that had slain their friend.

“Stop!”

He closed his eyes briefly. Lian. By all that’s holy, not now…

Lian ducked and wove until he was free of their circle of protection. He bent to touch the gaping hole in the chest of the fallen Alwynn guard. His left hand came away bloody. His left hand, with all six fingers. The Naharasii hissed, and cursed, and drew warding signs in the air. The three Alwynn guards that had broken rank parted when Lian stepped toward them, his hands balled into fists at his sides, blood dripping from his fingers. The lance clattered to the ground, and the boy, mortally wounded by those seeking vengeance, crumpled at Lian’s feet. The leader of the Horned Moon tribe howled and took aim with his own weapon. At that range, Lian had no hope of survival. What might it mean to them, to wear trophies from one of the soul-touched? Six digits strung on cord about their necks.

“Wait!” He put himself between death and his kervallys, lowering his sword by degrees. When he had the smaller man’s full attention, he repeated it, not as loudly. “Wait.”

Lian knelt and peeled away the skin mask to reveal a youthful visage, as unblemished as the others were scarred. The child was young. Nine, maybe ten years old. It sickened him. It sickened him more to think that no matter what Lian did, they were all going to die. Unless… unless… Lian extended his hand. And there was light in the darkness.

Stunned, the leader of the Horned Moon tribe let go his weapon, and in that moment, the lesser chief seized control. The horde moved like a swarm of locusts, too quickly, too many to count. They bypassed their disgraced leader, falling upon Aralt and the others like hammers, their lances and axes ringing against crystal. He slammed the first man to leap at him with his shield, flinging him back against two others. He parried, striking another, reminding himself that no matter their size, they were warriors bent on killing him. It was like doing battle with rabid, half-grown children. A dozen broke away to descend on their fallen comrade, be it to kill him or rescue him. Some unseen force drove them back and they yowled in protest, clawing at the air. Blue light. Blue light everywhere, scattering and spinning. Singing. Scanlin joined him in driving a wedge into the attacking force, and he strained to see Lian at the center of a growing mob, untouched, the blue flame of heaven dancing on his open palm, his other hand splayed against the fallen boy’s wound. A healing. Then and there. A healing like he had only seen done in Kyrrimar. Mother and Son! First one, then another of the Naharasii lunged forward, but not a man of them could get closer than an arm’s length away before they dropped their weapons and covered their eyes. When the earth shook again, knocking all to their knees, they did not chant the name of the burning mountain.

“Fish,” they hissed, and rent their clothes, and those that could shook their weapons and snarled like ratdogs. “They lied! They lied!”

Aralt sought the leader of the Horned Moon in the crowd, saw that he was one of the first to regain his feet. “Did I not tell you they would lie?”

A curt nod was the response. He shouted at the lesser chief, “They lied!”

“Listen to your true leader! Listen to his wise words!” Aralt seized the moment, attempting to redirect their attention once more. Buy precious time. Alira and the others spun the release wheel on the hatch. Either the water had been diverted or—he caught her eye and for a moment her terror ebbed away.

You said you wanted options.

The braced himself as the ground shook again. Beside him, Scanlin did the same. “You once told me to stay on my knees.”

“Aye?”

“Speak to heaven.”

“I’ve nae stopped,” Scanlin said, sword and shield raised in defense even as he struggled to his feet.

“Out loud.”

Scanlin wagged his silver head. “I’ll not have ye make a mockery o’ the faith, Wolf.”

“Who’s mocking? They’re frightened. They’re also surrounding your next kavistra and I don’t know how we’re going to get to him without your prayers, Shepherd Ross.”

“It’s nae for me to—”

“Mother and Son, Grey. They remember you for being the one among us that prayed. Pray!”

Scanlin did so. Not only did he pray; he sang. The Naharasii did not like it. Not one bit.

“Though evil attend me, though sorrow pierce my shield,

The Light of the truth will console.

Though I bleed, yet I live, and my heart will rejoice,

For I know it is well with my soul!”

When Scanlin began the refrain, other voices echoed—Shepherd Alinn, an octave below, Telta, an octave above—the rest filling in, harmonizing until the sound reverberated down every spine.

“You will swallow your pretty words,” the chief of the Clenched Fist tribe snarled, but it did not deter the singers. He thrust his weapon toward Scanlin’s face. “You will swallow them, and we will swallow you.”

“Aye, that may be,” Scanlin said as voices grew louder and the words breathed with life, “but you’ll be swallowin’ all that I am. And all that I believe besides.”

His words precisely elicited the reaction Aralt was looking for, even if their various chiefs held firm. Amid the confusion, the blue light diminished until only a single flame danced in the palm of Lian’s left hand. The Naharasii scuttled away, shielding their faces as Lian reached down to assist the Naharasii boy to his feet. The song ebbed away, but something greater remained.

“What… you?” the boy asked in broken Kierran, patting his chest, the place where the sword had pierced his body, then patting Lian. “You. You. What?”

“I’m…just Lian.”

“But that! You light. I see, in eyes.”

“No,” Lian told him, blinking rapidly. Aralt could guess what the other boy saw, what he himself had seen, burning in Lian’s dark eyes. A spark not of this earthly realm. He did not understand it, but he could not deny having seen it. “I’m…I’m just…a messenger. I bring you the kyrrith anim—the living flame—and the deep peace of the Spirit. It is yours if you would have it.”

When the boy extended his hand and the blue flame leapt from Lian’s fingers to dance brightly in another’s palm, the Naharasii were undone. Those that did not flee moaned and whimpered, even the ones that refused to lower their weapons. Their terror was sealed when the earth shook harder than before, and jagged cracks appeared in the ceiling. Droplets of water fell from above like rain. The solid ground beneath their feet grew slick, shimmering like black ice.

“He summons the Kell’s witch.”

“The sea is angry.”

“The sea will swallow us all!”

“You see the fire in his eyes?” Aralt asked them, gathering their fear, fanning it, feeding it back to them. Scanlin was going to take him to task for it, but an idea came unbidden. A wicked idea that might just work. He’d ask for forgiveness later. “I’ve seen the fire between the clouds. The earth shakes with the storm inside him. He’ll bring the walls down around you—and the sea will do his bidding.”

“Fish,” they hissed, scratching more wards in the air, slamming their weapons against the ground. All but the chief of the Horned Moon tribe. His eyes were rigidly fixed on the Naharasii child cradling the light of heaven in his small hands.

“That’s right. Fish,” Aralt said, moving slowly in Lian’s direction. He hoped Alira and the shepherd were ready, because the last of the sand had dropped through the hourglass. “Fish can swim. Can you?”

The sluice of bone-chilling water hit them like a tsunami. He cut through the enemy line to reach Lian and the Naharasii boy, smashing faces with his shield. The blast of water hit the chiefs and their warriors full force, sweeping their twisted legs out from under them, smashing them against the tunnel wall. Others ran from the torrent before they too toppled into the spray. As the water poured, Alira and Shepherd Alinn wrestled with one of the other wheels. With Kolarin’s help, it slowly began to move. Aralt could feel the grinding and creaking in his teeth. A second rush of water, not as violent as the first, but stinking of offal, cascaded from a narrow drain.

“Go!” he shouted, ushering the others through the hatch after Alira. He caught Lian around the waist, held fast against the rising water by a chain of hands from Scanlin on back to Kolarin at the open portal. Lian held fast to the hand of the Naharasii boy.

“You are light!” the child exclaimed. He had released his hold on the kyrrith anim, tendrils of blue leaping and weaving like a joyful pod of belugas off the coast of Leyth and Kyrrimar.

“No,” Lian insisted. “I’m only a servant. Come with me.”

As the Naharasii fled, the leader of the Horned Moon tribe struggled against the rising tide, inhaling deeply, exhaling between narrow lips. He inhaled again, eyelids fluttering at the almost intoxicating aroma that now permeated the air like sacred incense, stronger still than the stink of the wastewater. It filled Aralt's lungs as well. Cinnamon and sea breeze and something he could put no name to. He looked down at Lian. Not the light, but the servant of the light. What, then, did that make him?

The Naharasii chief seized the child warrior, wrenching him away. His eyes locked with Aralt’s. “That one is yours. This one is mine.”

“Just so.”

He yanked Lian out of the water and thrust him toward Scanlin and the others as, one by one, they pulled themselves through the rising river of filth and into the clean, knee-deep water of the open tunnel. Sword in hand, he backed away until he was in position to help Alira slam the door. The last thing he saw before the hatch clanged shut was the flash of a red crystal dagger as the tall chief of the lesser tribe fell upon those of the Horned Moon, slew the child that Lian had healed, and dropped his small body into the water. Aralt had no doubt that the boy’s father would be next.

He clasped Alira to his side, chest heaving as the portal locked into place. What little lamplight they had was already moving away, his even further diminished company eager to put as much distance between themselves and the sealed vault as possible. Naharasii screamed on the other side of the door as the tunnels filled with water. The river would fill with their bodies. The Kell Sea’s witch would devour their bones.

“I'm sorry,” Alira sobbed, her wet fingers cool and soft on his face.

He leaned against the portal. “For what?”

“What I said before.” She gave a little toss of her head, auburn hair hanging in limp strands around her face. She had lost her cloak, her drenched cotton nightshirt now plastered against her body, revealing all. “About you being jealous of Tycho.”

“I’m not,” he told her, stripping off his coat and wrapping it around her shivering form. He moved her gently along, sloshing after the others. Lian was directly, leaning heavily against Scanlin, struggling through water that reached almost to his hips. The back of the boy’s shirt was blood-stained, but he knew without asking that they would find no wound. “Don’t you ever stop telling me when I’m being a fool.”

“What about Dozer?” Alira sniffled.

“That, dear lady, is another matter altogether,” he said, brushing his fingers against her cheek. “Should I be jealous?”

She stopped, gripping his hands. “I said I would wait for you, last year during the Short Month.”

He rested his forehead against hers. “Are you regretting that?”

“No. I will never regret waiting for you,” she told him, her lips brushing against his.

This time he did not turn away.