Page 93 of Of Empires and Dust
“I can’t just let them die,” he whispered, throwing a sideways glance at the young porters who passed and eyed him askance.
“You can, and you will, lest everything we have done is for nothing. You will save more of them by finding the Heart.”
“I can’t… I just… No!”
“Grandmaster?” Brother Sangwen of The First stepped through a door to Kallinvar’s right, his eyes narrowed in concern. Uncertainty and a touch of fear drifted from the man’s Sigil. Kallinvar slashed at the feelings in his mind, shearing them from his thoughts.
“I’m fine, Brother Sangwen,” Kallinvar said without stopping.
Sangwen called out something in response, but Kallinvar couldn’t hear him over the sound of the beating hearts in his mind. The Sigil Bearers. At that very moment, he felt Olyria pressing the Sigil that had once belonged to Brother Tursen into the chest of a new bearer. The wave of emotion swept through him with such force he stumbled, catching himself against the foot of one of many enormous statues that lined the hallway.
A passing priest tried to aid him, but Kallinvar pushed the woman away and carried on, his hand twitching relentlessly at his side.
“You cannot ignore this, Kallinvar.”
Kallinvar moved through the corridors of the temple, Achyron’s voice booming in his mind, the heartbeats of the potential Sigil Bearers never stopping, his own heart feeling as though it were going to tear itself from his chest.
He swung open the door to Verathin’s study, barely hearing it smash against the wood and slam shut. He clasped his two fists against the sides of his head and screamed. “Get out of my fucking head!”
“You cannot run from this, my child. There are no choices from here on out that will be easy. I know you can make them. I know your heart.”
Kallinvar slammed his fist’s down onto the stone desk and swept his hands across it, sending pens, inkwells, journals, and all manner of trinkets smashing against the stone bookcase set into the wall.
“No…” He pulled two scrolls free of their alcove, trying desperately to wipe off the ink that had splashed from the shattered inkwell. Those scrolls had been Verathin’s. They were not his to destroy.
Achyron’s voice continued to speak in his mind as he dropped to the ground and rested his back against the stone desk, tossing the ruined scrolls into the shifting puddle of ink on the ground. He ran his fingers through his hair and pressed the tips into his scalp.
“Why did you leave me?” he whispered, staring up at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his head. In his mind’s eye, he could see Verathin before him, that all-knowing smile on his old friend’s face. “You had no right to leave… We were meant tostand side by side when the time came… meant to enter his halls together.”
His memories returned to the battle at Kingspass. To charging as Verathin stood alone. To crashing into the ground when Verathin needed him. To not being strong enough. Not being quick enough. Not being good enough. And finally, to seeing the Fade plunge its black-fire blade into Verathin’s heart.
Verathin had died because Kallinvar hadn’t been strong enough to stand at his side.
Kallinvar pressed his fingers into the creases of his eyes, then ran them along his scalp from front to back, tears rolling down his cheeks.
His father – a man he had not seen in over seven hundred years – had taught him that men didn’t cry, and they most certainly didn’t weep. Men were forged by Hafaesir, they were wrought iron given life. Their duty was to be strong and fierce for the ones they loved. To be the immovable, immutable anchor. That was what his father had tried to be after Kallinvar’s mother had died. And to his credit, Yor Thrace had not shed a single tear that Kallinvar had witnessed. Not one. Not a red eye or a cracked voice. And for as long as Yor had not wept, he had not spoken his dead wife’s name. It was as though Kallinvar’s mother had taken every shred of his father’s heart with her when she’d died. Every drop of his joy and every sliver of his love.
After her death, he was exactly as he had said a man should be: iron. Cold and unyielding. Hard and silent.
The night Amendel had burned, Kallinvar had brought the man his moon’s pay to ensure the family had food to eat. Yor had simply looked at him, nodded, then left for his day’s work in the fields, leaving the coin purse on the table.
That was the last time Kallinvar ever saw his father, or his brothers. They all died in the fires that night while Kallinvar bled in the fields outside the walls. After taking the Sigil, he’d weptfor days on end and spent every moment feeling ashamed of his tears – of his weakness. He had failed in life and then continued to do so in death.
“Even iron is tempered before it can become stronger,”Verathin had said when he’d come to Kallinvar on the fifth day.“We quench our weapons in water and our hearts in tears. Those who weep are those who wish to become stronger. This is the way of things, brother.”
Verathin had taught Kallinvar more about being a man in five days than his own father had in thirty-five years. And he didn’t think a day would pass in which he’d draw breath and not miss the man who had been a friend, a teacher, a mentor, a father.
“I could use some of your wisdom now…” Kallinvar looked around at the hundreds of compartments in both the chamber’s right and left walls. Each one was filled with scrolls and texts spilling out past their edges. He’d had a thought to tidy them, but he’d not been able to find the heart. Not all the scrolls and texts and notes had been written by Verathin, but most had. The others were things Verathin had collected across the years: notes, letters, poems, and texts he had considered worth reading. Perhaps if Kallinvar left all in its place, untouched, a small piece of Verathin would linger in the living world.
Kallinvar closed his eyes for a moment and pulled his knees closer to his chest. He sat there for a while, unmoving, until the door creaked open. He could feel Ruon’s Sigil in the darkness.
“Grandmaster?” The title left Ruon’s lips with the appropriate amount of venom. He should not have snapped at her.
“I don’t have the patience for a chastisement.” Kallinvar kept his eyes closed, his fingers tangled in the hair at the back of his head.
Ruon sat beside him, resting her back against the stone, her arm pressing against his.
They stayed like that, without a word, for minutes, not a sound but the patter of footsteps from the hallway outside and the occasional crackle of candles.
