I am Heth, son of Thalion, of Nuahaven, on the western shores of Aetheria. I write these words in the autumn of my life, when my children have children of their own and the young must sometimes wait for me when we walk uphill. My hands are slower than they were when I shaped beams for houses, and on cold mornings my fingers complain before they consent to hold the quill. Yet there are things I remember with greater clarity now than I did when they happened. Memory is peculiar in that way. A man may forget what he ate three days ago and remember, after half a lifetime, the exact pattern of moonlight upon the floor on the night his life changed.
That is why I write.
Others have told parts of my story. Some have told them better than I could have told them myself. Some have made me braver than I was. Some have made Varyn taller, which would have amused him, and Lirael more solemn, which would not. There are children who know songs in which the three of us crossed Aetheria without once becoming lost, frightened, hungry, cold, quarrelsome, or foolish. I assure the reader that none of these songs is accurate.
I do not object to songs. A song must fit inside a melody, and a life rarely will.
What follows is what I remember.
I was twenty-three years old when Nua commanded me to go east.
At that age I was neither important nor especially promising. I was a carpenter by trade, though we generally called ourselves builders, since there were never enough hands in Nuahaven for a man to insist upon one narrow craft. I shaped beams, fitted doors, repaired roofs, set posts, patched fences, sharpened tools, raised sheds, and, when no one else was available, helped dig wells and carry stone. I knew how to make a wall stand straight, how to fit a peg tightly enough that weather would not loosen it, and how to judge from the sound of an axe whether its edge was biting properly.
These were useful abilities.
They were not, so far as I knew, the abilities of a prophet.
My father, Thalion, liked to remind me of this.
“You think too long,” he would say when I stood studying some troublesome joint in a frame. “Wood does not improve because you stare at it.”
Then I would make the cut, and he would inspect it.
“See?” he would say. “You should have thought longer.”
This was my father’s manner of teaching.
He was a large man by our standards, square in the shoulders and increasingly square in the middle as he aged. His beard had begun to show gray before I was old enough to work beside him, though he insisted this was caused by sawdust. He had been named for an ancestor who lived in the age of Tanes, and like many people of Nuahaven he carried his ancestry as though it were both an honor and a mild inconvenience.
Every family could trace itself to someone who had crossed the Azure Veil, fought the Gloomtreads, heard Tanes speak, carved the Covenant, or claimed to have done so.
Our people had long memories.
We lived among reminders.
My sire, Loren, died soon after I was born. I do not remember him. I knew him through my mother’s stories, through a few possessions that had been his, and through the recollections of older people who sometimes looked at me for a moment too long and then said that I had his eyes. Among our people it was common, especially in ordinary speech, to name the male parent when giving one’s lineage. Thus, I was Heth, son of Thalion. No one hearing the words would have thought Loren erased by them. Language, like memory, merely chose its shortcuts. I mention this only because I have come to realize that not all customs are universal.
The Covenant of Nuahaven stood in the meeting hall on three great tablets of stone, copies of the first tablets carved after the Gloomtread wars. Every child could recite its most important passages before learning to sharpen a knife. We honored Nua, the Eternal Shaper. We rejected Boana and opposition. We kept the sacred trinity of syren, female, and male, and we taught that the proper joining of the three preserved the harmony established at the beginning of creation.
Our oldest histories told of Elyria, the first home of our people, where Nua’s creation had once existed without death. They told of the first war, of the coming of opposition, of Galoth and his wandering, of Tanes and the great migration, of the drifting lands upon the Azure Veil, and finally of Aetheria, the continent upon which our ancestors had found refuge.
Every child knew the story.
Every child also knew that Aetheria had not proved quite as peaceful as our ancestors had expected.
The western lands around Nuahaven were settled and increasingly tame, but the interior remained a place of rumor. Beyond our farms stretched prairie, woodland, ridges, geyser fields, marshes, and the ancient Titan Spires. Somewhere farther east lay mountains that few Silvrens had seen. Beyond those mountains, according to the boldest travelers, the continent continued for a distance no one could measure.
There were beasts there that had no names.
There were ruins made by hands much larger than ours.
And there were giants.
Every child in Nuahaven learned about giants before he was old enough to wander beyond his mother’s sight.
The Gloomtreads had nearly destroyed our people generations earlier. They were immense creatures in the shape of people, though distorted by what our histories described as an ancient violation of Nua’s order. They were brutish, violent, and cunning only in the narrow ways required to hunt, raid, and kill. Our ancestors had discovered that the great predatory lizards of Aetheria hunted them eagerly while ignoring Silvrens almost completely. No one knew precisely why. Some said Nua had placed a protection upon our people. Others said we possessed a scent the creatures disliked. A few scholars insisted that whatever protected us was likely an ordinary property of nature and that ordinary properties of nature were themselves part of Nua’s design.
At twenty-three, I had no opinion worth recording.
I knew only that a Titanclaw might walk past a Silvren to tear apart a Gloomtread, and that this was considered a useful arrangement.
The ruins were more puzzling.
Long before the Gloomtreads appeared, our ancestors had discovered enormous geometric chambers cut into the Titan Spires. Their ceilings towered above us. Their doorways were absurdly large. Their walls were too regular to be natural, their corners too exact, their passages too deliberate. Whoever made them had possessed tools, planning, mathematics, and patience.
They had also possessed enormous hands.
No Gloomtread could have built them.
So we spoke of two kinds of giants: the savage giants we knew existed and the ancient giants we knew only by what they had left behind.
As a child, I had been fascinated by those chambers. My father took me to one when I was twelve. I remember walking beneath a doorway so large that our entire house might have passed through it upright. The stone floor had been worn slightly lower along its middle by feet that must once have crossed it thousands of times.
I placed my foot inside one of the shallow depressions.
It looked like the footprint of a god.
“Do you think they are all dead?” I asked my father.
He shrugged.
“Everything dies now.”
It was not an answer, but my father often preferred statements that ended conversations to statements that resolved them.
I thought of those giants many times afterward.
I did not expect them to become the purpose of my life.
At twenty-three, my concerns were smaller.
There was a roof leaking above the grain house.
A farmer named Jorel wanted a new barn before the autumn rains.
My father believed our stock of seasoned timber was insufficient.
My mother believed I should marry.
Of these problems, my mother considered the last most urgent.
“Heth,” she said to me one evening as we ate beneath the open window of our house, “Mira asked after you again.”
I kept my attention on the bowl before me.
“That was kind of her.”
My father looked across the table.
“That answer will not produce grandchildren.”
My mother frowned at him.
“You need not say everything that enters your mind.”
“I do not,” he said. “The world could not survive it.”
I smiled despite myself.
My mother returned to me.
“Mira is a good woman.”
“I know.”
“And Seren is a good syren.”
“I know that too.”
“They are fond of you.”
“I know.”
She waited.
I ate another spoonful.
My father said, “Perhaps he has forgotten how conversations work.”
“I have not forgotten.”
“Then contribute.”
I put down the spoon.
“There is nothing wrong with Mira. There is nothing wrong with Seren. They are both kind. They are both responsible. I like them.”
My mother’s expression softened with premature victory.
“But?”
“I do not love them.”
My father grunted.
My mother sighed.
“Heth, love grows.”
“So does mold.”
My father laughed so abruptly that he coughed.
My mother gave me the look she reserved for occasions when my father’s influence had become too obvious.
“You know what I mean.”
I did. I simply could not persuade myself to enter such a union because it was expected.
Mira and Seren had approached me the previous spring. Mira worked among the orchards. She had strong hands, a quick smile, and the habit of tilting her head when she listened. Seren was quieter, broad-shouldered for a syren, with a pleasant laugh and a talent for music.
They would have made a good family.
They probably did, eventually.
Just not with me.
There had been another pair before them, Elara and Vaelis, and before them a woman whose name I prefer not to record because she married someone else and lived happily.
None had awakened in me whatever feeling everyone insisted would eventually arrive.
I was not unhappy.
That was what frustrated people.
A miserable unmarried man could be corrected.
A contented one seemed almost irresponsible.
So I worked.
There was always something to build.
Nuahaven itself was growing rapidly in those years. The settlement of Tanes’s time had become a sprawling town surrounded by smaller villages, orchards, grazing fields, workshops, and farms. Roads reached farther east every season. Hunters returned with skins from lands my grandfather had considered wilderness. Children played among foundations that had not existed when their parents were born.
We liked to say we remained one people.
We also liked to build our houses increasingly far apart.
Perhaps every generation discovers a new way to repeat the mistakes of its ancestors while insisting it has learned from them.
I did not think such thoughts then.
I thought about beams.
The day before Nua spoke to me, I spent nearly all of it repairing the roof of the western storehouse.
A spring storm had torn several wooden shingles loose, and rain had found the gap. By midday the clouds had cleared, leaving Solara brilliant above us. I was on the roof with my cousin Ethen, passing shingles back and forth while people crossed the square below.
The meeting hall stood opposite us. Its doors were open. From the roof I could see the Covenant tablets inside, dark against the back wall.
Ethen followed my gaze.
“You know,” he said, “if you fall from here and die, your mother will say it happened because you never married.”
“My mother can make marriage responsible for almost anything.”
“She asked my mother whether I knew anyone suitable for you.”
“That is alarming.”
“I told her no.”
“Thank you.”
“I know several.”
I looked at him.
He grinned.
I threw a handful of sawdust at his face.
That is one of the last ordinary moments I remember before the journey.
Perhaps that is why it remains so clear.
That evening I ate with my parents, returned to my own small dwelling further east, cleaned my tools, and went to bed.
I had built the house myself.
This sounds more impressive than it was. It consisted of a single main room, a smaller sleeping space, and a lean-to workshop. The walls were timber framed and plastered with clay. The roof was steep against winter rain. A narrow window faced east because I preferred morning light.
I had never considered the direction significant.
That night Luneth was high.
Its pale light entered through the window and lay across the floorboards in a long silver shape. Sylvara had already set beyond the western trees. Korath, smaller and reddish, hung near the horizon.
I remember lying awake for a while.
There had been nothing unusual about the day, yet I felt restless. I turned onto one side, then the other. Somewhere outside, a night creature made three descending notes. Another answered from the orchards.
I thought about Mira.
I thought about the storehouse roof.
I thought about whether I had cut enough braces for Jorel’s barn.
Then I slept.
I do not know how long I had been asleep when the dream began.
Even now I hesitate to call it a dream.
Dreams are unstable things. In ordinary dreams a house becomes a river without explanation, a dead man joins a conversation, one’s hands are suddenly those of a child, and nothing seems strange until awakening.
This was nothing like that.
There were no images at first.
There was only darkness.
Not the darkness of night, nor the darkness behind closed eyes, but an immense absence extending beyond anything I could imagine. I had no body. I could not feel the bed beneath me. I could not hear the wind outside.
Then something became present.
I cannot describe it more accurately.
It did not enter the darkness.
The darkness became insufficient to contain it.
I knew before the voice spoke that I was in the presence of Nua.
This certainty did not come from reasoning. No one introduced her. No sign appeared. I simply knew, in the way a man knows pain while feeling it or knows that he is awake.
Then she said my name.
“Heth.”
The sound was not loud, but it seemed larger than sound.
I felt it pass through me.
I wanted to answer.
I could not.
“The giants need your treasure.”
The words appeared with absolute clarity.
“The Silvrens need your measure.”
I tried to understand.
“Go east.”
At that, something changed in the darkness. Far away—or perhaps not far away at all—there appeared a line of faint light.
“Leave this very night.”
The line widened.
“Take only the clothes on your back.”
I felt suddenly afraid.
Not of Nua.
Of what she was asking.
The light became blue.
“Do not return until you see the blue.”
The dream ended.
I awoke sitting upright.
For several heartbeats I did not know where I was.
My chest heaved. My nightshirt clung damply to my back. Moonlight lay exactly where it had before, silver across the floor. The room was silent.
I listened.
Nothing.
I whispered, “Nua?”
The name sounded foolish in my own voice.
No answer came.
I swung my feet to the floor.
The boards were cold.
For some time I sat there with my hands resting on my knees, trying to convince myself that I had experienced an ordinary dream.
People dreamed of Nua.
People dreamed of Galoth, Tanes, giants, dead relatives, falling houses, talking fish, and food they had forgotten to eat before sleeping.
Dreams proved nothing.
Yet this had not felt like imagination.
I could remember every word.
The giants need your treasure.
The Silvrens need your measure.
Go east.
Leave this very night.
Take only the clothes on your back.
Do not return until you see the blue.
I repeated the words aloud.
They sounded stranger the second time.
“The giants need your treasure.”
What treasure?
I looked around my little house.
If Nua required a service involving my possessions, she had selected poorly.
I owned tools, furniture, clothing, dishes, bedding, two books copied on bark sheets, a box of nails, a small amount of coin, and half a wheel of cheese.
None seemed likely to alter the fate of giants.
Then I thought of the obvious answer.
Our faith.
What greater treasure did the Silvrens possess?
We had the Covenant. We had Galoth’s teachings. We had the Chronicle of Elyria, copied generation after generation from Tanes’s original account. The ancient giants who had built the chambers of the Titan Spires had possessed great intelligence, but perhaps they had lacked Nua’s truth. Perhaps some descendants of those builders still survived in the east.
Perhaps they needed what we had been given.
The idea seemed so plausible that I felt relief.
“The giants need your treasure.”
Yes.
The treasure was the knowledge of Nua.
I stood and paced.
“The Silvrens need your measure.”
That was harder.
A measure could be the length of something.
Builders measured constantly. We measured beams, walls, doors, angles, distances between posts. If a thing was to fit another thing, someone had to measure it first.
The Silvrens were spreading east.
Yet no one knew how large Aetheria was.
There were maps of the western settlements and rough hunters’ sketches of the Titan Spires, but beyond those lay mostly blank bark and speculation.
Perhaps Nua wanted me to measure the continent.
Not precisely, of course. I had no surveying instruments, and the instruction to take nothing suggested she did not expect them.
But I could travel.
I could observe.
I could estimate distances.
I could return with knowledge useful to settlers.
The Silvrens need your measure.
That must be it.
Then there was the blue.
I went to the eastern window.
Beyond the dark houses of Nuahaven, beyond fields silvered by Luneth, the land disappeared into blackness.
East.
Everyone knew what lay west.
The Azure Veil.
The sea from which our ancestors had come.
If Aetheria was a continent, water must lie beyond its eastern shore as well.
“The blue.”
Surely Nua meant the sea.
The command had a shape now.
I was to cross Aetheria, find the eastern sea, carry the faith of the Silvrens to any surviving wise giants I encountered, and bring back a measure of the lands between.
It was an enormous task.
It was also comprehensible.
I wish I could say I recognized immediately that I had explained Nua’s words far too neatly.
Instead, I congratulated myself on understanding them within perhaps ten minutes.
Youth is efficient that way.
There remained one difficulty.
“Leave this very night.”
I looked toward the window again.
It was still night.
I could go to my father.
No.
The command said leave.
I could wake the elders.
But by the time I explained the dream, answered their questions, endured debate about whether dreams constituted revelation, and listened to advice from everyone old enough to possess an opinion, Solara would be rising.
Leave this very night.
The urgency seemed deliberate.
I felt a sudden pressure in my chest.
I had to go.
Now.
I stood, then realized what I was wearing.
A nightshirt.
I looked down at myself.
The garment reached somewhat below my knees. It was suitable for sleeping and little else.
“Take only the clothes on your back.”
I stared toward the folded tunic and breeches on the stool near my bed.
This, strangely, became the first great theological problem of my calling.
Had Nua meant the phrase literally?
The clothes on my back were a nightshirt.
To obey precisely, I should walk out of Nuahaven dressed for bed and continue east.
I imagined passing the baker’s house.
I imagined old Tera opening her shutters at dawn.
I imagined explaining myself to anyone I encountered.
Nua had not forbidden shoes specifically because she had said clothing, and boots might reasonably be considered clothing.
But they were not currently on my back.
Neither, technically, were my breeches.
I paced again.
Surely the meaning was obvious.
Take only the clothes on your back meant take no possessions.
Travel lightly.
Do not prepare.
Do not burden yourself.
It could not mean, Dress like an idiot.
Could it?
I picked up my tunic.
Then put it down.
I thought of Galoth, who had crossed forbidden lands and suffered imprisonment rather than abandon Nua’s purpose.
I thought of Tanes commanding our ancestors not to cut the Veilward trees and of what happened when they decided they understood the purpose of her command better than she did.
I looked at the tunic again.
For perhaps five full minutes, I stood half dressed in moonlight and argued silently with the creator of the world.
Eventually practicality defeated theology.
“Nua,” I whispered, “I believe you mean possessions.”
No voice corrected me.
I dressed quickly.
Tunic.
Breeches.
Wool stockings.
Boots.
I added a belt, then hesitated.
Was a belt clothing?
Yes.
Surely.
I reached automatically for my knife.
Stopped.
A knife was not clothing.
I left it.
My cloak hung beside the door.
I stared at it.
Spring nights were cold.
A cloak was unquestionably clothing.
But it had not been on my back when Nua spoke.
I put it on.
Then removed it.
Then put it on again.
I was beginning to appreciate why prophets often appear severe in old stories. Revelation creates impractical questions.
At last I kept the cloak.
I took no food.
No waterskin.
No tools.
No money.
No pack.
I stood in the middle of the room, dressed as though for an ordinary walk, and realized that if I obeyed the command I might never see the house again.
That possibility had not occurred to me.
I touched the table I had built.
The chair beside it.
The smooth door frame where my hand naturally rested whenever I entered.
My life was suddenly full of things I had assumed would still be there tomorrow.
I almost went to my parents.
I could reach their house in minutes.
I could wake them.
My mother would cry.
My father would tell me the dream was either sacred or indigestion depending upon how recently he had gone to bed.
Then they would insist upon food, tools, advice, and probably three additional travelers.
Leave this very night.
I opened the door.
The night air smelled of damp earth and flowering tart-fruit trees.
I stepped outside.
Then I went back inside.
I had forgotten to extinguish the lamp.
That is how my great journey began.
After dealing responsibly with the lamp, I left a second time.
Nuahaven was not entirely asleep. Somewhere further east in town, voices drifted from a house where people were still gathered. A hunting beast barked once behind a fence. The night baker had already begun work; I smelled bread before I passed his lane.
The road east ran between orchards.
I had walked it hundreds of times.
Never had it looked so unfamiliar.
Every turn seemed to ask whether I truly intended to continue.
I passed the workshop where I had left several tools earlier that day. Through its open lean-to I could see the frame we were building for Jorel’s barn.
I stopped.
Someone would have to finish it.
This thought nearly broke my resolve more effectively than fear.
A man can imagine abandoning his life for divine purpose.
It is harder to abandon an unfinished roof.
I walked on.
At the eastern edge of Nuahaven, the houses thinned. Fields opened beneath the moons. A few Hexapods grazed in the distance, their six-legged silhouettes moving slowly through mist.
I turned once.
The town rested behind me, lanterns scattered like low stars.
I expected something dramatic.
A sign.
A sudden wind.
Nua’s voice telling me I had chosen correctly.
Nothing happened.
I faced east.
“Very well,” I said.
Then I walked.
By dawn, excitement had begun to replace fear.
Solara rose behind a bank of clouds, turning their edges gold. Birds and Skydrakes called from distant cliffs. Dew soaked my boots as the road narrowed into a track between farms.
People were waking.
This introduced another problem.
What was I supposed to tell them?
A farmer carrying a basket recognized me.
“Heth! Starting early?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you headed?”
“East.”
He looked east.
Then at me.
“There is quite a lot east.”
“I know.”
He waited for further explanation.
I did not provide any.
“Well,” he said finally, “good walking.”
“Thank you.”
This exchange convinced me that I needed a better answer.
The next person I encountered was a woman leading a pair of pack Hexapods.
“Nice day for a walk?”
It seemed like a question.
“Nice day for a walk.”
She looked concerned.
I quickened my pace.
By midmorning, Nuahaven was no longer visible behind me.
That was the moment the journey became real.
The road continued through country I knew: orchards, scattered houses, grain fields, grazing land, and stands of broad-leafed trees. Yet every mile carried me toward places I knew less well.
My hunger arrived before noon.
I had expected this.
I had not expected it to become the dominant subject of my thoughts so quickly.
At first it was merely an emptiness.
Then bread appeared everywhere in my imagination.
I thought of my mother’s morning loaves.
I thought of honey.
I thought of roasted Riverglint.
I thought of the half wheel of cheese sitting uselessly in my house.
“Take only the clothes on your back,” I muttered.
A Hexapod raised its head as though judging me.
Nua would provide.
That was what I told myself.
Our histories were filled with providence. When our ancestors lacked water upon the Azure Veil, an iceberg had appeared. When enemies invaded, storms or disease or celestial signs turned them aside. When Gloomtreads threatened our people, Titanclaws descended upon them.
Surely the Eternal Shaper who had guided nations could feed one carpenter.
At midday I found a stream.
I knelt and drank.
This raised another question.
Was water a possession?
Obviously not.
I drank until my stomach hurt.
Then I continued.
The landscape changed gradually.
Fences became less common.
The road narrowed.
Cultivated fields gave way to prairie where Velithons grazed in loose groups, their heads lifting as I approached. I saw a distant Titanclaw near the horizon, moving with the slow certainty of something that feared nothing alive. Its body was longer than several houses laid end to end.
I stopped walking.
No matter how many times one is told that Titanclaws ignore Silvrens, it is difficult to behave naturally when one is visible.
The creature turned its enormous head.
I stood very still.
It tasted the air.
Then it continued away.
I exhaled.
“Nua’s protection,” I whispered.
Or perhaps I smelled unpleasant.
At that moment either explanation was acceptable.
By afternoon my feet hurt.
By late afternoon they hurt considerably.
I had made another mistake.
My work boots were sturdy but not designed for uninterrupted walking. A hot place had formed beneath my left heel. My shoulders ached despite carrying nothing.
I began to understand the difference between traveling in stories and traveling on roads.
Stories omit feet.
Solara descended.
The land ahead was less familiar now. I had come beyond the farms I regularly visited and into the fringe where trappers, hunters, and solitary families lived.
Smoke appeared ahead.
At first I thought it was a brush fire.
Then I saw a hut tucked against a stand of trees.
The hut was small but well maintained, its roof weighted with stones against wind. Pelts hung drying beneath a lean-to. Several wooden traps rested near the wall, and bundles of herbs dangled upside down beneath the eaves.
A man emerged before I reached the door.
I initially thought him male, then recognized from his features and voice that he was syren. He was older than my father, narrow in the waist but strong in the shoulders, with a tangled gray-brown beard that seemed to contain portions of the surrounding forest.
He carried a staff.
He looked me over.
“Lost?”
“No.”
“Robbed?”
“No.”
“Fleeing a woman?”
“No.”
He considered.
“Fleeing a man?”
“No.”
“A syren?”
“No.”
He nodded solemnly.
“Then you are either very fortunate or very strange.”
“I may be traveling.”
“That would explain why you are on a road.”
I liked him immediately.
He leaned on his staff.
“Name?”
“Heth. Son of Thalion. Nuahaven.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Thalion the builder?”
“Yes.”
“I knew a Thalion once.”
“My father knows many people.”
“This one owed me money.”
“Then probably not my father.”
“Wise answer.”
He extended a hand.
“Rylor.”
We clasped wrists.
His grip was surprisingly strong.
He looked behind me.
“Where is the rest?”
“The rest?”
“Your pack. Waterskin. Food. Knife. Blanket. Sense.”
“I have all the sense I require.”
“That is exactly what a man without a pack says.”
He walked around me as though inspecting an animal offered for trade.
“Eastbound?”
“Yes.”
“How far?”
“Far.”
“Ah.”
He nodded.
“The famous village of Far. Lovely in autumn.”
I laughed.
My hunger chose that moment to make itself known with an audible complaint.
Rylor looked at my stomach.
“Your sense is hungry.”
Smoke rose from a firepit beside the hut, where something simmered in a blackened pot.
The smell nearly destroyed my religious convictions.
Rylor noticed.
“Velithon stew.”
I swallowed.
“Smells good.”
“It is terrible.”
I looked at him.
“I make too much every time, so I require travelers to remove it.”
I hesitated.
Take only the clothes on your back.
But Nua had not said, Accept no food.
Rylor tilted his head.
“You have taken some vow against stew?”
“No.”
“Excellent. Sit.”
I sat.
He handed me a wooden bowl and filled it generously.
For several moments I forgot divine revelation entirely.
The stew was not terrible.
It may have been the finest thing I had ever tasted, though hunger is a talented cook.
Rylor sat opposite me.
“So,” he said, “what news from Nuahaven?”
“The Covenant still stands.”
“Stone usually does.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
I told him ordinary things.
The western grain harvest had been good.
A bridge south of town had washed out and been rebuilt.
There had been a dispute over grazing rights near the old geyser road.
A child had been born to one of the households with a shock of nearly white hair, which everyone considered noteworthy for reasons I never understood.
Rylor listened with genuine interest.
People who live alone value news differently from those surrounded by it.
“And the old arguments?” he asked.
“Which ones?”
“The same arguments people always have while insisting they are new.”
“Those continue.”
“Good. I would worry if Nuahaven became sensible.”
He filled my bowl again.
I did not object.
The sky darkened toward evening.
Korath appeared first, reddish above the trees.
Rylor glanced at me.
“You have been answering everything except the question I actually asked.”
“What question?”
“Why is Heth, son of Thalion, walking east without provisions?”
I looked into the stew.
The dream felt different when I contemplated speaking it aloud.
Inside my head it was revelation.
Outside my mouth it might become foolishness.
Rylor waited without pressing.
Finally I said, “Nua spoke to me.”
His expression changed.
Not dramatically.
The humor simply left it.
“When?”
“Last night.”
“In waking?”
“In sleep. But not like an ordinary dream.”
He leaned forward.
“What did she say?”
I repeated the words exactly.
“The giants need your treasure. The Silvrens need your measure. Go east. Leave this very night. Take only the clothes on your back. Do not return until you see the blue.”
Rylor was silent.
The fire popped between us.
A night bird called from the trees.
At last he said, “And you left?”
“Yes.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Yes.”
“With no food?”
“Yes.”
“No knife?”
“Yes.”
“No water?”
“Yes.”
He looked at my cloak.
“You dressed.”
I felt suddenly defensive.
“I was sleeping in a nightshirt.”
“So?”
“I interpreted the command reasonably.”
His mouth twitched.
“You disobeyed the Eternal Shaper because you did not want your neighbors to see your knees.”
“When you say it that way, it sounds foolish.”
“It was foolish before I said it.”
I stared at him.
Then he laughed.
I laughed too, though uneasily.
After a moment he grew serious again.
“What do you think it means?”
“The treasure is our faith.”
“Maybe.”
“The giants who built the ancient chambers may still exist somewhere east. Perhaps Nua wants me to bring them the Covenant.”
“Maybe.”
“The measure means the land. Our people are moving farther east. I can learn what lies there.”
“Maybe.”
“And the blue must be the eastern sea.”
Rylor scratched his beard.
“Three maybes.”
“They make sense.”
“So do traps until the wrong animal steps around them.”
I frowned.
“What would you say they mean?”
“I would say Nua did not ask me.”
“That is not helpful.”
“Sometimes not pretending to know is the most helpful thing available.”
I considered this.
At twenty-three I found the statement irritating.
Now I regard it as one of the wiser things anyone said to me before I left Nuahaven.
Rylor poked the fire with a stick.
“You know the old histories?”
“Of course.”
“Tanes told the people not to cut the Veilwards.”
“Yes.”
“They cut them because they thought they understood why the trees mattered.”
I shifted uncomfortably.
“Are you saying I should have walked here in my nightshirt?”
“I am saying I would have enjoyed seeing it.”
“Rylor.”
He smiled.
“No. I am saying commands sometimes mean exactly what they say, and sometimes they do not. If Nua wanted a carpenter who never misinterprets anything, she chose poorly.”
“That is reassuring.”
“She chose a carpenter.”
He pointed toward my hands.
“Maybe that matters.”
I looked at them.
Calloused fingers.
A healing cut across one knuckle.
A scar near my thumb from a chisel that had slipped when I was sixteen.
“The giants need your treasure,” he repeated.
“What treasure does a carpenter have?”
“Knowledge of building?”
“Giants apparently know more about building than we do.”
“Then perhaps not.”
He shrugged.
“You may discover that the treasure is something you do not yet know you possess.”
Those words stayed with me.
Not because I understood them.
Because I did not.
Night settled fully.
Luneth rose, pale through the trees.
Rylor stood.
“You are sleeping here.”
“I should continue.”
“You can barely stand.”
“Nua said go east.”
“You can sleep on the eastern side of the hut.”
I stared at him.
“That is a terrible argument.”
“It is better than dying in the dark.”
“I have already delayed.”
“You have traveled all day.”
“She said take only the clothes on my back.”
“And did she say refuse everything anyone gives you afterward?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps I am part of the instruction.”
I almost laughed again.
“You think Nua arranged for me to find your hut?”
“I think Nua may have better things to do. But if she arranged the moons, the seas, the Gloomtreads, and your mother’s determination to marry you off, I suppose my hut is within her abilities.”
“How do you know about my mother?”
“You are twenty-three, unmarried, and from Nuahaven. I know your mother.”
That decided me more than his theology.
I was exhausted.
Rylor showed me to a pallet beside the hearth.
Before I lay down, he placed a cup of water nearby.
I looked at it.
He noticed.
“If accepting water violates your instructions, Nua can complain to me.”
“I suspect she knows where you live.”
“That is unfortunate.”
I removed my boots.
The blister on my heel had broken.
Rylor saw it and shook his head.
“Across Aetheria.”
“That is the intention.”
“You would not have reached the second village.”
“Nua would provide.”
“She did.”
He pointed at himself.
I had no answer.
As I lay down, the day’s events suddenly seemed impossible.
Yesterday I had been repairing a roof.
Now I was sleeping in a trapper’s hut because I believed the creator of the world had ordered me to cross a continent.
“What if it was only a dream?” I asked.
Rylor had settled into a chair near the fire.
He did not answer immediately.
“Then you will have taken a walk.”
“What if I travel for years?”
“Then you will have taken a long walk.”
“What if I die?”
“Then I suppose the distinction will matter less to you.”
I turned my head toward him.
“You are not very comforting.”
“I am a trapper, not a mother.”
I stared at the ceiling.
After a while he said, more gently, “Do you believe it was Nua?”
“Yes.”
There was no hesitation in my answer.
“That is the part I cannot explain.”
“Then sleep.”
“I keep thinking I should have told my parents.”
“You probably should have.”
I groaned.
Rylor chuckled.
“I did not say every choice you make after a revelation becomes wise.”
“My mother will think I am dead.”
“Eventually someone you met on the road will tell her you were heading east.”
“That will make her think I am foolish and dead.”
“Parents prefer their children foolish and alive.”
The fire settled.
My eyelids grew heavy.
Just before sleep took me, Rylor said, “Heth?”
“Yes?”
“When you see the blue, remember that you already decided what it was before you saw it.”
I opened my eyes.
“What does that mean?”
But he had turned away.
Whether he was being profound or merely annoying, I could not tell.
I slept.
No voice came that night.
No vision.
No correction.
I dreamed only of walking.
In the dream the road stretched east forever.
When I awoke, dawn had begun whitening the window.
For a few blissful seconds I did not remember where I was.
Then I smelled bread.
Rylor stood near the hearth, cutting a loaf.
My boots were beside him.
He had cleaned the mud from them.
“Your left heel is raw,” he said without greeting. “I put leather inside the boot. It will help.”
I sat up.
“You repaired it?”
“I am old, not useless.”
He handed me bread.
I accepted before thinking.
Then I thought.
Rylor noticed.
“If Nua objects to breakfast, she has had all night to tell me.”
I ate.
There were eggs as well, taken from some local six-legged bird, and dried fruit.
I ate enough for two men.
While I did, Rylor placed objects on the table.
A waterskin.
A small knife.
A coil of cord.
A packet of dried meat.
A flint.
A folded hide blanket.
I stopped chewing.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“She said take only the clothes on my back.”
“You did.”
“This is clearly against the spirit of it.”
“You already have a cloak you were not wearing when she spoke.”
“That was different.”
“Because?”
“It was clothing.”
“So is this.”
He held up the hide blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders.
I stared at him.
“You are mocking the Eternal Shaper.”
“I am mocking you. I assume she can tell the difference.”
“I cannot take these.”
“You can.”
“I should not.”
“That is a better argument.”
He sat opposite me.
“Listen. If Nua means you to cross Aetheria, you will need water. You will need a blade. You will need fire. If she intends to provide every meal by miracle, I see no reason she could not provide one by means of an old trapper.”
“But perhaps obedience requires dependence.”
“Perhaps. Leave everything, then.”
I looked at the waterskin.
My heel hurt.
The previous day’s hunger remained vivid.
Rylor continued.
“Perhaps she wanted you to leave immediately so you would not spend three weeks preparing, gathering companions, holding councils, seeking permission, and turning a command into a public ceremony.”
That struck me.
I had known enough elders to recognize the possibility.
“She said take only the clothes on your back.”
“Yes.”
“So perhaps she meant that you were not to bring wealth or supplies from home.”
“Perhaps.”
“But things encountered afterward—”
“Perhaps.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You enjoy that word.”
“It keeps a man from confusing his thoughts with Nua’s.”
I looked again at the objects.
“What would you do?”
“If Nua told me to go east?”
“Yes.”
“I would ask why.”
“She may not answer.”
“Then I would take the knife.”
I laughed.
That ended the debate.
I accepted the waterskin, knife, cord, flint, dried meat, and blanket. Rylor found an old leather pack and placed everything inside.
The weight surprised me.
After a day carrying nothing, even a small load felt substantial.
He adjusted the straps.
“Not too tight. You want the hips to carry some weight.”
“I know how packs work.”
“You walked here without one.”
“That was theological.”
“Your shoulders will not care.”
Before leaving, I stood outside his hut beneath the growing light.
The land eastward rolled into low hills.
Beyond them lay wilderness.
For the first time, no familiar roof or cultivated field was visible.
Rylor stood beside me.
“You can still turn around.”
The suggestion startled me.
“You think I should?”
“I think a man should know when he is choosing.”
“Nua commanded me.”
“And you are choosing to obey.”
I looked east.
The difference seemed almost offensive.
Now I understand it.
“I am going.”
Rylor nodded.
“Then go.”
I held out my hand.
He ignored it and embraced me.
The gesture surprised me.
When he released me, he said, “If you find wise giants, tell them Rylor of the western fringe says their doorways are ridiculously large.”
“I will.”
“If you find savage giants, do not stop to deliver the message.”
“I will remember.”
“And Heth?”
“Yes?”
“Do not become so devoted to your interpretation of Nua’s command that you fail to notice what actually happens.”
I smiled.
“You have already warned me about the blue.”
“I am old. Repetition is one of my privileges.”
He stepped back.
“May Luneth give you calm, Sylvara give you wisdom, Korath give you courage, and Nua give you enough sense to use all three.”
I turned east.
After perhaps twenty steps he called after me.
“Heth!”
I looked back.
He held up a second loaf of bread.
I hesitated.
Then walked back and took it.
Rylor grinned.
“Your theology is improving.”
I tucked the bread into the pack.
Then I started east again.
The path descended through tall spring grass.
Solara climbed behind me.
Rylor’s hut grew smaller each time I looked back until eventually the trees hid it.
I was alone.
Yet I no longer felt entirely alone.
There was the pack on my shoulders, given by a stranger who had become a friend in a single evening.
There were Nua’s words in my memory.
There was the vastness before me.
I had no idea where I would sleep that night.
I did not know where the next settlement lay.
I did not know how far Aetheria extended, whether the ancient giants survived, what dangers waited beyond the country known to trappers, or whether I would ever return to Nuahaven.
I believed I knew three things.
I carried a treasure.
I was seeking a measure.
And somewhere beyond the eastern horizon waited the blue.
I was wrong about all three.
But I had begun.
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