“Pacifism is a sham,” says Vil tightly from his place in the lead. “If a man raises arms against another man’s daughter, will the second man stand by and let her be slain? Will the daughter shut her eyes and do nothing?”
“If they truly believe in peace,” says Indridi, “then yes, yes they would.”
Vil shakes his head. “What would that accomplish, Indridi?”
She fixes her eyes on him. She fixes her wholebeingon him, and it makes my gut twist nastily. “Perhaps the first man will see that they do not fight back, and be ashamed, and stop his violence.”
“And if he does not stop? If he kills them?”
“Then he will feel shame at what he has done, and he will stop his violence then.”
Vil laughs. “How very un-Skaandan of you, Indridi. And how little you know of the hearts of men.”
He glances at me as he says this, and I shove my discomfort down into the deepest recesses of my mind so I won’t have to examine what it means.
Indridi, for her part, gnaws on her lip and looks away.
I have often thought it strange that the three peoples who share this peninsula have such wildly different beliefs about the First Ones, the original twelve beings to inhabit the world. The Iljaria, indeed, claim them as their ancestors, the beginnings of their power, and refer to them as Lords instead of gods. They believe that if they are faithful to their traditions and their people, that if they nourish and grow their power, they themselves will become immortal after death and join the ranks of the First Ones. If they are not, they will be reborn powerless. Damned. Skaandan.
The Daerosians don’t believe in the First Ones at all. They believe in nothing, no one, and hold that the world knit itself together, and will one day likewise tear itself apart. They scoff at the idea of life after death, resigned to their assertion that there is only emptiness. Darkness. Nonexistence.
But Skaandans revere the First Ones as gods. We build temples and shrines and write books of truths and prayers. We fight wars in the gods’ names, and we believe that if we are devout enough, they will reward us with eternal paradise after death. If not, we are damned todwell outside the gates of paradise, our backs bent with eternal labor, tormented and ashamed.
Not for the first time, I think that none of us have got it quite right.
Saga is the one who tells the story tonight, as we huddle close to the fire against the growing chill in the air. Vil is, as usual, sitting opposite me, and I wish I were brave enough to go and join him, to let his warmth banish the cold and the dark together. But I’m not brave enough. I stay where I am.
“For a time,” says Saga, “when Skaanda was first formed, there was peace. The Iljaria couldn’t be bothered to pursue us to our new home, or they did not like the idea of slaughtering adults as they had slaughtered children, their precious pacifism finally coming into play.”
Indridi frowns into the fire, her fingers making short work of repairing a tear in Vil’s cloak. Leifur sits closer to her than is strictly necessary, but Indridi has eyes only for her mending.
“They ruled from Tenebris, the mountain palace they carved from ice and rock. Some say they pulled the mountains themselves up from the earth and scattered the bones of the deep places in the glacier sea.” Saga is carving a design into the shaft of Pala’s spear, her knife quick and vicious, her eyes glittering as she talks.
“And then invaders came from over the sea, their eyes on our land, our resources. The Iljaria held to their damn pacifism. They abandoned Tenebris and retreated like cowards into the east, erecting their magical barrier and refusing to take part in the long wars between Skaanda and Daeros. And there they hide still, gifted with impossible power and using none of it to aid anyone but themselves.”
“The legends say they buried something in the heart of the mountain, before they left,” says Leifur unexpectedly.
For a heartbeat Indridi’s hands still over her work.
“What did they bury?” asks Saga, interested despite herself.
“Doesn’t matter,” says Vil, a little too quickly, but Saga waves him off.
“A weapon of impossible power,” Leifur answers. His eyes are on Indridi, who is making the last few stitches into Vil’s cloak. “They could have ended everything in a heartbeat, but that kind of power—it couldn’t be contained. It would have destroyed all life, so the story goes. So they hid it. They chose peace. That speaks to their sincerity, if nothing else, does it not?”
“It’s just a story,” says Vil dismissively. “If such a weapontrulyexisted, only a fool would hide it.”
Indridi ties off her thread and snips the end. She hands the mended cloak to Vil, who takes it with a nod of thanks.
“Kallias believes it exists,” I offer.
Everyone’s eyes snap to my face.
Vil frowns. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve overheard him discussing it with his engineer. He’s been digging into the mountain, looking for it.”
A tension comes into Vil’s body, his eyes glittering in the firelight. “Why didn’t you say anything about it until now?” he demands.
