Will Wight - Of Dawn and Darkness

But laughter bubbled up inside him, and he let it show on his face. The Great Elder could do what he wanted, but he could not make Urzaia Woodsman despair.

The eye focused on him, a strange bulb on a stalk rattled next to Urzaia’s ear, and Ach’magut spoke to him.

YOU WILL DIE BEFORE YOU SEE DEFEAT.

At that, Urzaia did laugh.

Andel grabbed his medallion in his fist so hard that he wondered if his palm would bleed. The Luminian Order encouraged hatred of the Elders, but he knew the truth: the Elders were not manifestations of pure evil, but so chaotic and foreign that they might as well have been. Each of the Great Elders was unique in purpose, and they would be true to that purpose.

Everything Ach’magut said would be factually correct, and Andel could rely on its predictions of the future. He knew that as surely as he knew up from down.

Ach’magut’s words would be correct. But they would not be the truth.

WHAT CAUSE DO YOU SERVE?For a moment, Andel couldn’t take a breath.

He’d given up the cause of the Luminian Order, but he had never abandoned the teachings of the Unknown God. Even this job, as an aide and supervisor to Calder Marten, gave him the opportunity to guide a young man forward. Without support, Calder would be headed for a future more destructive than Andel could imagine.

Still, Andel’s Imperial supervisors intended him to guide the young Navigator back into the folds of the Empire, and Andel wasn’t sure he wanted to. He’d seen enough in his life to know that even the Emperor couldn’t be trusted, not fully.

If the Guild couldn’t be trusted, and the Empire couldn’t be trusted, what did the God want him to do?

Jerri trembled before the Overseer, one of the two Great Elders her father had always sought to meet. Anyone in the Sleepless would give their left leg for this chance, but now that she was here, she saw how futile all her plans were. She’d dreamed of this moment before, had actually charted out the questions she’d ask and how she would interpret the potential responses.

But she was nothing more than a tiny longboat on a storm-tossed sea. She did not chart her course, she merely tried to survive until the ocean stopped.

YOUR FATHER WOULD BE PROUD, the Great One said, and every nuance of meaning flowed into her mind. Her father was dead, as she’d suspected for years. May his soul fly free. Ach’magut’s words told her that, if he were alive, he’d be proud of what she’d done. Proud of her.

And in the future, he would be proud of the woman she’d become. She would accomplish more than her father had ever dreamed.

Seconds had passed as Ach’magut turned his gaze from one member of his crew to the other, and though Calder heard the words, they meant nothing to him. The Great Elder did not speak through vibrations in the air, but through a language of Intent so subtle and complex that Calder couldn’t catch a glimpse of its mechanisms. If the Overseer did not want Calder to know his words, that was how it would be.

But now, the strange wave of Intent broadened. Ach’magut addressed them all as a crew, as he had at the beginning. His words were for Calder, but every living thing in the great library—from the human crew to the innumerable Inquisitors—served as a witness.

THE THRONE WILL SOON BE EMPTY.

Calder didn’t need the volumes of explanation that came along with the Elder’s voice to tell him what those words meant. The Emperor was going to die. Soon.

And Ach’magut was telling him .

Hope and feverish expectation surged up in equal measure, as Calder dared to resurrect a foolish dream that he had carried since childhood.

A rustle came from behind him, as of a thousand sticks falling to the floor. He turned to look, as he was sure he was supposed to, and saw fields of Inquisitors bending forward. They’d folded their first legs and pressed their jaws to the floor.

It took him a moment to realize what the hordes of Elderspawn were doing, and when he did, his breath died in his lungs.

They were kneeling.

To him.

HAIL THE EMPEROR OF THE WORLD,Ach’magut said, and Calder stared incredulously into the Elder’s one giant eye. Never, in his most distant dreams, had he ever dared to imagine this.

The crew was looking at him now, and he could feel their reactions as easily as his own. Awe, fear, disbelief, hope, and sheer, mind-numbing shock.

But Ach’magut had one more thing to say, and he delivered it with a finality that made Calder wonder if the Great Elder would ever speak again.

SHOW ME THE FUTURE.

Calder’s return to The Testament felt like his first trip to Ach’magut’s library—that is, it felt like nothing at all. It wasn’t as though he’d fallen asleep, but as though he’d forgotten the journey.

He returned to awareness seated on a sack of beans with his back leaning up against the railing. He had traveled there from the library, he was sure, but no matter how he searched his memory he couldn’t recall the slightest detail of the time between.

The last thing he remembered were the words of Ach’magut. Those, he couldn’t forget.

The rest of the crew was strewn around the deck as though they’d been dropped there out of the sky, and they started to stir at the same time he did. Urzaia was on his feet and inspecting his armor, maybe checking himself for injuries, before Calder managed to stand up.

As soon as he did, he stumbled to the wheel and sent his Intent into the ship. He’d woken with an inexplicable certainty: that they should leave Silverreach as soon as possible. Not that he needed any supernatural urging to do that; he had already planned to show this town the back of his sails and never return.

The trick would be convincing the Lyathatan to stir. Calder had worked the Elder unusually hard over the past few months, and it had begun to let him know that it deserved a rest. Typically, it did so by sending him images of a broken ship littered with human bodies.

Today, the impression he received from the Lyathatan was very different.

The servant of Kelarac strains at its chains, eager to haul its cargo into the ocean. If it were allowed, it would depart without the human passengers, but a greater will consumes it. Not the will of the Lyathatan, nor the will of Kelarac, but the will of another Great One.

The Lyathatan knows it is in danger, that all the plans it has laid for the future will come to nothing if they cross the plans of Ach’magut.

With the closest thing to fear that Calder had ever sensed from the creature, the Lyathatan hauled The Testament out to sea. The acceleration made him clutch the wheel and sent Petal tumbling shoes-over-shoulders across the deck until Urzaia caught her. The Champion stood with his feet planted on the deck as though a hurricane couldn’t budge him.

In minutes, they left Silverreach behind. The town and its unlit lighthouse were swallowed up by the night, until the whole world was nothing more than the starlit waves, The Testament, and the submerged shadow pulling them forward.

That was when the ocean trembled.

A ripple shot across the surface of the water, like someone had dropped a pebble into a bathtub. Seconds after that, Calder heard a great roar, and sudden waves blasted them from behind. The aft half of the ship lifted up and slammed down, sending a creak of pain through Calder’s Vessel.

Petal started to tumble the other way, but Urzaia grabbed her out of the air and tossed her onto his shoulder.