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His hands left me as he stood up and began to pace. This, I guess, was more difficult to explain.
“According to what I have been taught about you...” Kalen struggled, stringing out the sentence like he was filling in the blanks of his own memory, “when you were put into the Binding, your soul was separated from your life force and broken into three pieces. They have been guarded on earth. Waiting for your return.” Kalen looked nervous as he sank back into the chair in front of me. “And for you to eventually find, once you were freed.”
Three pieces of my soul. Taken from me. All of the fear I had felt moments before dissipated, replaced by a feverous anger. “Well, this is only one, where are the rest?”
“That,” he huffed, “is more complicated.”
I found the strength, buried under the noise of my busy mind, to look at him then. Light flared in his eyes.
“Do your best,” I said.
IF YOU HAD ASKEDanyone in the southern courtyard, Kalen was alone, pacing the viewing corridor, which was a long outdoor hall made of the same ochre stone that supported the Well but with gaping arches that allowed anyone and everyone to watch the Guardians as they completed their afternoon sword lessons. There were about a hundred of them if my sweeping glance had given me the right estimate.
“They seem afraid of you,” I whispered, even though I knew the others wouldn’t hear me. We’d made two passes down the walkway and no one had a clue that I was walking beside him, or that I was anything more than a breeze of sweet air.
Immediately after we left the war room, Kalen cast me into the same magic he had used to conceal my journey through the armory. Instead of cowering from it as I had this morning when Kalen drew the orb of light from the center of his chest and broke it with a solid swing of his arm, I leaned into the unknown power. The taste in my mouth was becoming familiar, the brightening and sharpening of my surroundings exciting. Then I thought, I shouldn’t like this feeling. Not when I barely knew what it was or what it might do to me the more I was subjected to it.
To my left, Kalen shook his head. “In two days, this company is headed north to a camp near the southeastern flank of Grovsney, the neighboring faction,” he said. “The only things they have to fear are looters or rogue assassins once they start moving.”
“Why must they go?” I asked, even though I’d only understood half of his explanation at best. Kalen stopped walking, put his hands in the pockets of his pants, and leaned against the wall. I stopped too, and folded my arms across my chest as I waited. He stared intensely at the Guardians, his eyes darting back andforth as each soldier drew a longsword simultaneously. When the sound of sliding metal stopped, one man stepped forward, looked straight ahead to Kalen, and began shouting commands.
Against the echoing shouts of the other soldiers, Kalen offered stoically, “War.”
War. Like sunset, it was a word I instantly understood when I heard it in the stone’s vision. Now, looking out into the neat rows of young men and women, all dressed in brown leather, heavy under the weight of plated bronze, I could see it. Covered in the grit of the canyon, sweat dripped from each of their brows as the sun beat down on them, and they seemed to bask in it with gritted smiles, trading practicing blows that came close to actual cuts. A pair of Guardians who looked immeasurably young were scrapping near the edge of the plateau of the canyon, unafraid. War was etched into their faces. It was who they were. I was struck by the similarity of those expressions to mine—well, to the version of me the stone had shown me. I had known war, too, and liked it.
“When did it start?” I asked. Garnering information meant I needed Kalen to keep talking.
“It hasn’t,” he shrugged, still surveying the Guardians as they started to clash their swords together rhythmically. Shifting his weight he added, “Not yet, not really.”
I must have worn a look of desperation because after one glance at me, the entire story began to pour out of Kalen.
“Right before you were taken to that place, this world was on the brink of war,” he said, “The gods, we call them Sages, went through a bit of in-fighting, for lack of better terms. The Light Sage, who ruled and protected this faction, got into it with one of her sisters over some very archaic laws.” Kalen kicked at a collection of pebbles with the toe of his boot, shaking his head at the ground with a sigh. “The Shadow Sage was in love with one of the Preserver’s Guardians and wanted to turn him into animmortal, through a process we call Yielding. Once a person is Yielded, their soul belongs to the immortal who performed the Rite. But…”
“But the Light Sage wanted him for herself?”
Kalen nodded. “No one knew why, either. So they fought for him, brutally—fatally, even. At the moment of death, The Preserver’s Light was taken by her sister and kept hostage in the Shadow faction ever since.”
“These...Sages...were going to throw their factions into war over a man?”
Kalen laughed at my casual summary. “Blood has been taken for much less, Gwynore,” he said, eyes darkening. “Even if you don’t remember it.”
I swallowed hard, knowing he was alluding to blood that I had spilled—on a whim, perhaps. We fell silent, but the question itched at me, clarification for what I’d realized.
“I was one of them, wasn’t I?” Kalen looked at me sharply. “I was a Guardian?”
I could see in his hopeful expression, he thought that I was remembering this. But I wasn’t. No other visions of my life were coming to me. I just knew. He’d brought me out here to stir something, and he had. Excitement. I wanted to run out there and pick up a sword, though I’d spent whatever amount of time in the Binding, and had never even thought to fashion a weapon. Kalen lifted himself from his place on the column and walked towards me. He faced me, not seeming to care if the audience of Guardians thought he was crazy for talking to himself.
“At one point,” he said, eyes scouring mine with the same intent he’d watched the Guardians, “you were our best.”
“When?” I urged, closing out the space between us. “When was I your best, as you put it?”
“Seventy-two years ago.”
His voice had lowered, like when he’d told me my name forthe first time. This was difficult for him, it seemed.Seventy-two years ago. I was still getting used to time and it’s passing, but I could tell that for Kalen, this was an unsettling amount of it.
Before I could wonder why, a shriek came from the courtyard.
Blood-curdling andloud.
