She saw Tuer and Raiva pacing together through the dark of the mountain. As they walked, Raiva aged with every step, until at last she turned to dust, a shimmer of Starlight in the darkness. Grief weighed heavy on the oldest god, but he did not stop to mourn. He could not—his task was unfinished. He reached the door to the Circle of Time, and with the touch of his hand and a Word of ancient power, he unlocked it.
On he went through Time and unlocked the door to the Circle of the Dead. Then, at last, the door to the Circle of the Living. There the other gods were waiting for him: Mahl, Ahdairon, and Hahld. Together, they stepped from Tuer’s Mountain.
Tuer’s power weighed on him like a heavy mantle. He burned with it. And as he stood on his Mountain, the other gods with him, he called the spirits.
They came in a rush of dark wings, pulled by the strength of his power. There were thousands of them. They all knelt before him, trembling. Tuer spoke a Word, and a crack split the sky above him. Darkness wheeled beyond.
The spirits screamed. Begged.
But Tuer lifted his hand and they were silent, cowering before him. “We bound you once, for the crimes you committed against Endahr,” said the oldest god. “Now we bind you once more, and this time, there will be no escape.” Tuer looked at the other gods and nodded.
Together, the four of them began to sing, an ancient song they had learned at the beginning of the world, woven together with Words of power. They sang and sang, and the mountain shook and the spirits shrieked as they were flung against their will into the void. The song went on and on, until every last spirit was swallowed up. In their wake they left a field of bones, the only remnants of those they’d slaughtered in their brief moment of freedom.
Wind rushed over the peak, and Ahdairon, Mahl, and Hahld turned to their lord Tuer, and bowed to him. “How will we seal them?” asked Ahdairon. “How will we make certain this will never happen again?”
“With the blood of a god,” said Tuer. For a moment, he seemed to look through the surface of the mirror, straight into Eda’s eyes. “I am sorry, little one. Forgive me.”
And he drew from his breast the other half of the godkiller, and plunged it into his heart.
“NO!” Eda screamed.
But the god fell from the mountain.
The crack in the sky vanished.
“Tuer!” Eda cried at the mirror. “TUER!”
But he didn’t answer, and she didn’t expect him to.
Tuer was dead.
She sagged back on her heels. Darkness clamored at the edges of her vision. There was nothing left. No Tuer, no Raiva. No one to save her.
There was only sorrow, and that’s all there ever would be.
Eda looked into the mirrors, looked and looked, for she found she had no will to turn away. Mothers wept and fathers died. Women cursed, men raged. A serving girl curled in a corner of a grand house, aching with loneliness. A child sobbed, a bruise in the shape of a handprint on his face. A daughter found her father ripped apart by beasts in a forest.
All wasacheandtorment.All was sorrow, sorrow, sorrow.
The grief continued in an endless parade before her eyes. She wept until she was emptied of tears, and then she wept even more.
She fought against the chains, raged against them. But they only pulled tighter, only bound her closer to the mirrors.
Time lost all meaning. She had been bound in the Circle of Sorrow for an hour, or perhaps a millennium. She did not hunger, did not thirst, did not sleep. All she didwas feel.And all she felt waspain.
She lost herself to it. She became sorrow, shewassorrow. That was all she ever would be.
Her life and her self slipped away. She forgot Niren and her parents and the Empire. She forgot Morin and Tainir and her long journey to find Tuer’s Mountain. She forgot anything had ever existed besides pain. She felt every tear shed in all of Endahr. Every hurt. Every grief.
There was nothing else.
Sometimes, the ground seemed to shake beneath her feet. Once, she thought she saw a host of shadows pass through the hall beyond the mirrors, led by a woman who shone like a Star.
She couldn’t properly hear or see them. They didn’t even make sense to her, because within them pulsed something other than sorrow, and that was impossible.
It was sorrow that bound the world together.
Another time, she thought she saw a man on a throne of mounded stones lift his head. He blinked and sighed and looked around him, confusion creasing his brow. He stood from his throne, and strode away from it, turning, as he did so, to dust.
