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"I blinked and the man's eyes were glowing red." "Ah, Yorl again, Enas Yorl. Spying on everyone. How long do you suppose he's known we were fated for two eclipses in quick succession?"
"I didn't get a chance to ask. I blinked again, and he was gone." "And then Zarzakhan caught fire?" "No, the guard was still there—looking like he'd just awakened from a nightmare; Yorl was gone." "That's new. He's finding a way to turn that shape-shifting curse to his own advantage. You've got to ask
yourself—who would benefit more from a little sky sorcery? Doesn't want any competition, that's for
sure. Figure he'll show up in the tournament?" Cauvin cleared his throat. "All the more reason we've got to have someone there… and it can't be one of the Irrune, even though Raith volunteered, of course, and you know the Young Dragon would eat dirt for the chance."
Soldt recoiled. He stood up, stomped away, then turned on his heel. "I don't work in Sanctuary, you know that. It's bad enough, with everything that happened with Lord Torchholder's death, that my name is known. But a common tournament? I will not."
"Shite! I understand!" Cauvin couldn't meet the other man's eyes. "That's why I'm putting my name in."
"You?! It's a steel tournament, pud. You can't even draw a sword properly. You're—" Soldt stopped, mid-rant, then finished in a far more thoughtful tone: "You're getting more like him every day."
MICKEY ZUCKER REICHERT: Home Is Where the Hate Is
A dense fog blurred the long-ruined temples of the Promise of Heaven and dimmed the early afternoon sunlight to a dusk-like gray. Light rain stung Dysan's face as he slouched along the Avenue of Temples that led to the shattered ruin he alone called home. The dampness added volume and curl to raven hair already too thick to comb. It fell to his shoulders in a chaotic snarl that he clipped only when it persistently fell into his eyes. Few bothered with this quarter of the city, though Dysan guessed it had once bustled with priests and their pious. In the ten years since Arizak and his Irrune warriors had destroyed the Bloody Hand of Dyareela and banished all but their own religion from the i
At sixteen, Dysan was only just begi
Dysan flicked water from his lashes and wiped his dripping nose with the back of a grimy, tattered sleeve. He had managed to swipe a handful of bread and some lumps of fish from an unwatched stew pot, enough to fill his small belly. Tonight, he pla
Tears rose, unbidden, mingling with the rainwater dribbling down Dysan's face. Kharmael and the Dyareelans had raised him from a toddler to a child in a world of pain and blood that no one should ever have to endure. Lightning flashed, igniting the sky and a memory of a stranger: ski
Kharmael had been the survivor: large, strong, swarthy with health, and handsome with a magnificent shock of strawberry-blond hair inherited from their father. His father, Dysan reminded himself. Dysan had shared nothing with his brother but love and a mother, dead from a disease one of her clients had given her. Later, Dysan discovered, that same illness had afflicted him in the womb, the cause of his poor growth, his delicate health, and the oddities of his mind. Oddities that had proven both curse and blessing. Social conventions and small talk baffled him. He could not count his own digits, yet languages came to him with an eerie golden clarity that the rest of the world lacked. At first, his companions in the Pits, and the Hand alike, believed him hopelessly simple-minded. At five years old, he barely looked three; and only Kharmael could wholly understand his speech. It was the orphans who figured out that Dysan used words from the languages of every man who had come to visit his mother, of every child in the Pits, interchangeably, switching at random. But once the Hand heard of this ability, Dysan's life had irrevocably changed.
A gruff voice speaking rapid Wrigglie froze Dysan just at the boundary between the dilapidated skeleton of some unused Ilsigi temple and the one he called his own.
"Frog your sheep-shite arse, I'm done for the day. My froggin' left hand can't see what my froggin' right hand is froggin' doing."
An older man snapped back. "Watch your language, boy! There's a lady present."
The aforementioned lady spoke next. Unlike the men, clearly Sanctuary natives, she spoke Ilsigi with a musical, Imperial accent. "Don't worry about his language, Mason. I don't understand a word that boy says."
Dysan peeked around the corner. However else being born with the clap had affected him, it had not damaged his eyesight or his ears, at least not when soggy shadows and darkness covered the city, which was most of the time. He spotted three figures in his Yard, standing around a fresh stack of stone blocks. They had worked quickly. He had seen no sign of them when he left the ruins that morning. Gods-all-be-damned. What in the froggin' hell—? The goosebumps faded as curiosity warmed to anger. That's my home. MY HOME! Dysan's hands balled to fists, but he remained in place. He had seen plenty of fights in his lifetime, enough to know he could barely take on the plump, gray-haired woman, let alone the two strapping men beside her.
The mason translated for his apprentice, eliminating the curses, which did not leave much. "He says it's quitting time. We'll finish staging the wall tomorrow, then start mortaring." Mopping his brow, he straightened, then plucked a lantern from the ground.