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Chapter Eighteen

“Not a moment too soon,” the lawbinder said. Her voice was much younger than Rae expected, but it was always difficult to tell age with the orderbound. They were nearly as ageless as the mages who wove their souls with the fae of Elysium. The justicar gave him a smart nod of the head, then clasped her hands together, did something complicated with her fingers, and invoked pure Order.

A pearlescent light formed between her clenched fists. When she drew her hands apart, a blade of pure sunlight formed in the space between her palms. Golden threads trailed from her fingertips, weaving the sword out of nothing, tracing lines of light across the air, accompanied by a song of silver bells that danced through Rae’s head like strong wine.

Her spiritblade was a falchion, but the trailing edge was jagged, like a bucksaw, hung with golden rings. She gripped the basket hilt and executed a complicated slashing form. The rings along the blade sang a pure tone with each swing and thrust, and lines of light hung in the sword’s wake. She sang a single note, spoken in the tongue of Heaven. It echoed through Rae’s mind, scattering his thoughts, thrilling his blood.

The lawbinder changed in divine ways. Her body slowly rose into the air, her feet scraping against the ground before dangling free. She held the golden spiritblade vertically in front of her, with her left hand flat against the blade. As she ascended, four gilded wings blossomed from her shoulders. They formed a saltire of shimmering feathers. Black threads squirmed out from behind her ears, lacing themselves together across her forehead before dropping a veil over the justicar’s eyes, a blindfold woven with the sigils of Order in golden script.

The justicar began to sing.

Rae couldn’t hear the words. Well, he heard them, but they passed through his mind, leaving no trace in their wake. He was left with the impression of light, of golden halls, of a constellation of suns pinwheeling overhead. He went unbidden to one knee. Lalette was already there, her forehead pressed against the ground. Mahk resisted, but was slowly dragged onto his knees, chin buried on his chest, fists clenched at his side.

Whatever effect the song had on Rae and the others, the wave of corruption recognized the words, and feared them. The blackened skeletons, scattered by the impact of the justicar’s arrival, rose howling into the air. They curled back, disintegrating as the song struck them. Their bones turned pure white, then flaked apart, transforming into flower petals as they fluttered to the ground. The hard-packed earth cracked, rearranged itself, and slowly melded together into flawless granite. The crown of smooth boulders that topped the hillock swelled, quickly becoming blocks that clicked together, forming a ring. The last remnants of the black tide dissolved inside the ring. The rest of the wave, caught outside the barrier, slid down the hill and rolled away, leaving a trail of bleached bones in its trail.

“Woo! Alright!” the justicar whooped. She dropped to the ground, and her wings fell apart as quickly as they’d formed. The blindfold crawled back into her hair. She waggled the golden scimitar at the wave, the rings jangling loudly. “Keep running, you bastard! Don’t make me chase you!”

With a flick of her wrist, the justicar withdrew her jangling sword from the material plane. It disappeared back into her soul in a spiral of golden threads that floated peacefully to the ground. The justicar turned to him and smiled.

“Good job finding this watchtower. Don’t know if you would have made it otherwise. I’m Caeris Goev, assigned to the Hammerwall rescue efforts, operating out of Forward Camp Terris in Anvilheim,” she said, extending a delicate hand. “How’d you let them catch you out in the open like that?”

“Watchtower?” he ventured, switching the glass sword to his left hand before taking Caeris’s grip and shaking it numbly. Lalette was back on her feet, and looked tense. Only then did Rae notice that the newly formed marble at their feet was inlaid with interlocking wards, drawn in gold and jade. Even as he watched it started to crumble, turning back to dust and ash. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?” Caeris asked. “The tower? I just opened a portal into Heaven, using the angel as a conduit. Erosion imps can’t stand it. And it has the added effect of undoing some of the damage Chaos has done to this place, for a little while at least.” On the far side of the ring, one of the reconstituted granite blocks fell apart, its sharp corners eroding into sand as it cascaded to the ground. Larger chunks pulled free, splintering as they fell, nothing but dust by the time they reached the ground. The lawbinder gestured to the dissolving stone with disappointment. “See? Temporary fix. Chaos has its hooks too deep into this soil. But it was enough to send the imp running.”

“Thank you,” La said carefully, “for saving us. I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t come along. But we really must be going.” She picked up her satchel and shouldered it. Rae remembered the dangers a justicar posed to them. With one hand still loosely in the justicar’s grip, Rae reversed his grip on the glass sword and stuck it into his belt.

“Yeah, we should be on our way,” Rae said hurriedly. The justicar watched them curiously.

“There’s been a change of plans.” She released Rae’s hand, then signaled to the windship circling overhead. It banked its sails and came in for a landing. Rope ladders dropped from its sides as it settled to the ground. Soldiers piled out, setting up a perimeter. The justicar never took her eyes off Rae. “We have strict orders to recall all rescue and recovery personnel from the wastelands. There’s been a disturbance at camp. We’ll give you a lift back to Anvilheim.”

“Completely not necessary,” Rae said. “We have some things to finish up here . . . our patrol. And things. We’ll be to the camp by nightfall.”

“Nightfall? You’ll be lucky to reach it by week’s end. You’re closer to Hammerwall Bastion than the border with Anvilheim.”

“That’s not possible. We’ve been traveling south for days,” Mahk said.

“Direction can be tricky in the wildlands,” Caeris answered. She turned to Mahk and looked him over, then arched a brow at Rae. “Traveling south, did you say? You aren’t with the rescue efforts, are you?”

“No!” La answered, trying to sound relieved. “We’re from Hammerwall. Fled when the Bastion fell. We were lucky to get out with our lives.”

“Yeah. Lucky,” the justicar said. Her eyes dropped to the sword at Rae’s side. “And a spiritbinder to boot. Kinda young to just be carrying your ’blade out in the open like that. What’s your oath?”

“Storm. And it’s . . . it’s my father’s blade,” Rae said. Out of the justicar’s view, La rubbed her eyes in frustration. Better pray she doesn’t examine it now. No one trusts the son of a diabolist. Well, the lie is told. Rae pressed on. “He was training me, in preparation for the entrance exam at the College. He didn’t make it.” Rae’s voice faltered on that, and Caeris’s face fell into sympathy. La crossed to Rae and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hm. Well, I’m sorry for your loss. But I can’t have rogue ’binders aboard my ship, especially not in the middle of the wastelands.” She reached out. “I’ll have to take the ’blade. You’ll get it back in Anvilheim.”

Rae hesitated, then handed the sword over. Caeris held it up to the light, examining the cracks inside the glass, pointing it into the sky, as though looking for a warp or bend.

“Kind of strange finding a stormbinder out in the wastelands,” she said casually. “Who is your sponsor at the Iron College?” When he didn’t answer, she leaned the sword tip-down in front of her, resting both palms on the pommel. “For that matter, who was your father? We keep a close eye on licensed spiritbinders, as you can well imagine. And in the wake of a disaster of this magnitude, that list gets a close review. I don’t remember seeing any stormbinders registered to Hammerwall. There were many reports of rogue ’binders, though.” Caeris stepped close to him, her silver eyes glaring down at him, even though she was still smiling innocently. She smelled sweet, with a hint of burned cloth. “Rogue ’binders, and heretics.”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rae stammered, but his eyes fell nervously to the sword in her hands. Caeris caught the motion and snorted.

“We’ll see about that. Get an earthlock on this one,” she ordered, then nodded to La and Mahk. “And chains on those. We’ll sort this all out at the camp.”

“You’ve just saved us, and now you’re arresting us?” La asked. “Is that how the justicars protect the Ordered World from Chaos?”

“It’s how we protect feral ’binders from themselves,” Caeris answered. “Be glad I’m not leaving you here to the demons. Fools like you cause more trouble than you’re worth.”


The windship lurched into the sky. Rae fell back against the wall of his cell. The cage they had put him in was set right against the curved hull of the ’ship, with barely enough floor for his feet, and a single plank for a bench. The chain that ran through his manacles threaded between the bars of his cell, linking him to the rest of the prisoners. Lalette was to his right, Mahk in the next cage over. To Rae’s left was an older gentleman who sat primly at attention, as though he was at a formal dining table in his manor home rather than in manacles on a windship in the wastelands. The cages faced a single row of velocity couches for the soldiers. There was a narrow walkway overhead that served as the windship’s main deck. In that back of the hull sat the stormbinder charged with keeping the ’ship flying, strapped into a padded chair. He looked too young for the task, but when given the order to fly, the stormbinder twitched his fingers and the windship sprang into the air.

All in all, this ’ship was much tighter and smaller than the one that first brought Rae and his family to Hammerwall. This was a military vessel, built for speed, not comfort. The soldiers strapped into their couches opposite were from every corner of the Ordered World, some of them conversing in accents so strange that Rae wasn’t sure they were speaking the same language. They paid Rae and his friends no mind. Ever since the justicar had slapped those manacles on Rae, he had ceased to exist to these people. Just cargo to be moved. Rae laid his head against the hull and sighed.

A harsh wind howled outside the hull. Boards creaked, rigging thrummed, and the ’ship corkscrewed skyward. Whoever was flying this thing liked dramatic turns. Rae slid along his bench the few inches allowed to him, then banged against Lalette’s cell. His sister was holding on to the bars of her cell for dear life.

“It never does get better, does it?” she asked through clenched teeth.

“Not better,” Mahk said. “Just worse in more interesting ways.”

“Flying, I meant,” La said. She squeezed her eyes shut as the ’ship dropped out from under them, making them briefly weightless. La squeaked, her knuckles turning white with the effort of keeping her in place. “I have never liked flying.”

“First time for me,” Mahk said casually. The ’ship jerked one way, then the other, sending them all hard into the bars. “It’s different. A jail cell that roughs you up all by itself.”

That drew a laugh from the lone prisoner at the end of the row. Rae hadn’t gotten a good look at the man in the panicked moments before launch. He was an older gentleman, dressed in fine wool lined with silk and trimmed with fur, along with a wide leather belt and well-worn traveler’s boots. He looked more like a merchant or a scholar than a criminal deserving chains, though in the Ordered World there were all sorts of crimes, and all sorts of chains.

“I’m having trouble finding the humor in being a prisoner of the justicars,” Rae said to the man.

“Are you? Well, once you get past the basic injustice of the whole thing, you kind of have to laugh, don’t you?” he said. “And I’m not really a prisoner. This is more of a misunderstood escort. Everything will be cleared up once we’re in Anvilheim.”

“Sure,” Rae said. “Once your close personal friend the High Justicar hears about your terrible mistreatment, I’m sure there will be consequences. Consequences, I say!”

“It has been some time since I have called Yveth Maelys a friend,” the man said. The name sent a chill through Rae’s heart. Yveth was somehow involved in the Hadroy Heresy, wasn’t he? Was he High Justicar now?

“You know him? You know the High Justicar?” Rae asked.

“We were in college together, a long time ago,” the man said. He glanced down at Rae’s manacles. “A stormbinder? Ah, you should have seen Yveth in his prime. The greatest stormbinder I ever saw. A genius.”

“I am . . . was . . . still learning,” Rae said. “My father taught me.”

“Without the approval of the Iron College, I assume?” the man asked. When Rae didn’t answer, he smiled knowingly. “Then your father played a dangerous game. And you shall pay the price, unfortunately. Refugees from Hammerwall?”

“Yes,” Rae said tightly.

“Shut up, the lot of you!” one of the soldiers shouted. He kicked the bars of La’s cell without getting up from his couch. “Keep talking and the angel’s going to latch you to the outside of the ship and let the stonestorm do her work for her.”

“They make that threat every ten minutes. Ignore it,” the man said. He extended a hand through the bars. “Estev Cohn, at your service. And you are?”

“Rae. Raelle Kelthannis,” Rae answered, taking the proffered grip.

“So good to meet the next generation of students. Such talent in the young. Such energy! Reminds me of when I was an aspiring spiritbinder.” Estev leaned back on his bench and closed his eyes. “Yes, fine memories.”

A short while later, Estev was snoring contentedly. Rae settled back against the hard bench. He looked down at his own manacles. Unlike his friends, Rae had been given special chains. The symbols of elemental earth were etched into the steel, and runed wards hummed with elemental power. Rae snuck a glance at the guards. They were still ignoring him. It would be difficult to summon his zephyr without the spiritblade, but he had to try. He closed his eyes and focused on the warp and weft of his soul. He found the shard of the zephyr lodged in his soul and reached for it.

A cold, stifling blanket fell across Rae’s mind. The earthlock shackles hummed quietly, singing a counternote to the zephyr’s symphony. The harder he pressed, the more the shackles pushed back. Sweat broke out on his forehead with the effort, but it was no use. He couldn’t summon his elemental, not so long as the shackles blocked him, especially without the spiritblade. He was trapped.

He looked over at Estev. The man’s hands lay in his lap, the manacles exposed. The symbols etched into his chains were from one of the arcane realms. Death, it looked like, though the pattern was much more complicated than the symbols in the primers Rae had studied as a child. The more complicated, the more powerful.

Rae’s eyes wandered over to the locked chest at the end of the row. All of their possessions were in there, scant though they were. The justicar had stowed his sword in the chest without examining it. If she had studied it closely, he was sure she would have seen the demon woven into the blade, and that would have been the end of it. She probably would have executed Rae on the spot. Why did I say it was my father’s spiritblade? What kind of idiot am I?

He couldn’t believe he had gotten into this nonsense. Worse, he couldn’t believe he had gotten La and Mahk into it. What had they done to deserve this? Well, in Mahk’s case at least, he had done a lot of crimes, but probably not the sort that ended with being executed for heresy by the justicars. And Lalette? His sister had only ever tried to protect Rae from his own bad choices.

Of course, if she hadn’t done that, she probably would have been home when that high mage killed their parents. She’d be dead, and Rae would be absolutely alone in this. He looked over at her. La’s hands gripped the bench, arms shaking every time the windship hit turbulence or bucked the air currents. Her eyes were squeezed tight. He leaned over, putting his forehead against the bars between them.

“Hey, La? La,” he whispered. She opened her eyes to bare slits to stare at him. “It’s going to be okay, La. I swear.”

“You keep saying that, and it keeps getting worse.” A sharp kick in the drawers indicated that they had leveled out once again. La turned pale and swallowed hard. “I suspect a pattern.”

The windship tipped forward, bleeding off speed. A roar of wind shook the hull as the bound zephyr keeping them afloat jerked the vessel to a halt. Estev Cohn startled awake, deflating the moment he saw his situation. The soldiers started checking equipment and preparing to disembark. Rae got to his feet, only to immediately be thrown back as the ’ship stopped completely. It still swayed underfoot, but for the most part, they were standing still in the air.

“We don’t have a lot of time, Caeris,” the stormbinder said from his padded chair. “That storm came outta nowhere. I need to keep moving if I’m going to stay out of it.”

“How can he even see?” Rae asked. The stormbinder’s gaze fell on him.

“The sooner you get this scrub off my ship, the happier I’ll be,” he said.

The justicar dropped down from the gangway overhead. She surely had to be younger than Rae, hardly out of her teens.

“Fine, fine, wouldn’t want to inconvenience you. Get ’em moving, boys!” She put her hands on her hips and beamed at Rae. “Congratulations, kid. You’ve been rescued!”

“I don’t feel rescued,” Rae grumbled. She gave his cage a smart kick in response.

“Ungrateful, even for a heretic. That imp would have turned you into bloody sand faster than you can sneeze, and all you can do is complain about your accommodations. Well. I don’t suppose I can blame you, since you have no idea how much worse it could be.” The justicar glanced at her attendant soldiers and motioned to the cages. “Line ’em up and get them out the door. I have to see to Mister Misunderstanding.”

“Lady Caeris,” Estev Cohn said. “While I appreciate the expediency of this trip, don’t you think we could shed the pretext of these chains? They’re hardly necessary.”

“I’ve heard enough from you,” Caeris said. “Your credentials will be in order when they’re in order, and not a moment beforehand. Until we’ve heard back from the College—”

“I promise it’s not necessary to contact the College on my behalf. Surely the documentation I showed you was sufficient.”

“Sufficiently out of date. Now, if you will . . .” Caeris passed a hand across the lock on Estev’s cell. There was a flash of light. Something tugged at Rae’s soul, the slightest glimmer of motion. So I’m not completely cut off from the elemental planes, Rae thought. That’s odd. The lock popped open, and Estev stepped into the narrow passageway. “This way, if you please,” Caeris said, gesturing to the stairs at the end of the hall.

Caeris and her prisoner shuffled past. As he passed Rae’s cell, Estev paused long enough to look Rae in the eye. “A pity about your home, young sir. I hope you’re able to continue your training.”

“He’ll be lucky if the Iron College doesn’t sear his soul,” Caeris said. She pushed Estev forward, but the prisoner barely moved. He looked back at her with distaste.

“There would be fewer heretics if the College were more forgiving. But I’m a fool to have that argument with a lawbinder.” He gathered himself, gave Rae a friendly nod, and continued toward the stairs.

Once they were gone, the soldiers stood up as one, unlocking the remaining cells with mundane keys. One soldier took each of their chains, leading them topside one at a time. A cold wind howled across the deck, chilling Rae to the bone the second he stepped into the open air. A stonestorm growled in the near distance, its squall line grinding closer with each heartbeat. Maybe the pilot’s dramatic flying had more to do with getting in before the storm hit and less with a zeal for the discomfort of his passengers. The soldiers glanced uncomfortably in the storm’s direction as they led Rae and the others to the gangway.

The windship was docked on the highest, skinniest spire Rae had ever seen. The swinging gangway led to a simple iron framework enclosing a spiral staircase barely two shoulders wide. The whole structure creaked in the wind, swaying back and forth in the gusts. Rae gripped the guardrail of the main deck.

“We’re not going down that thing, are we?” he asked.

“It’s that or jump,” the guard said. “You want to jump?”

Rae gave the approaching storm a hard look, trying to calculate how fast it would be on them. There wasn’t a lot of time to waste. Lalette was already across the gangway, her escorting guard holding tight to her elbow as they started the spiraling descent. Mahk wasn’t far behind, though the big man’s eyes were wide as he scrambled across the gangway. Rae swallowed hard against the bile rising in his throat and nodded.

“Take this lock off me, and maybe I can calm the storm,” Rae said. “My father was one of the greatest stormbinders—”

“Shut up and walk,” the soldier spat. He had a nasty scar across his face that puckered his lips, as though he was leaning in for a kiss. He gave Rae’s chain a jerk and started across the gangway. Rae stuck close. He tried to keep his eyes up, but then the gangway bucked underfoot, and he had to look down to steady his footing. What he saw nearly stopped him in his tracks.

The spire rose from a small encampment just outside the orderwall of what must be Anvilheim Steading. Rows of temporary buildings spread out in concentric circles around the spire, surrounded by a hastily constructed orderwall, no larger across than the inner wall of Hammerwall Bastion. But what caught Rae’s attention wasn’t the makeshift camp; it was Anvilheim. The steading spread to their south, its orderwall curving away from the camp, reaching to both horizons.

Every inch of the steading was ordered. Manicured gardens with hedgeway mazes and carefully pruned trees spread for miles, while roads twisted and ducked between warding towers, their pavement forming enormous glyphs of Order and Life. In the distance, towns rose from the tree line, their buildings covered in vines that resembled lettering, as though the plants themselves inscribed symbols of Order on the walls. Rae stared at it in wonder. It was nothing like Hammerwall, or even Fulcrum. But what shocked him most was the orderwall.

There wasn’t one. Not really. There was a clear line between Chaos and Order, but no towers rose into the air, no slow lightning playing across the ruin of the wastelands. Just a demarcation. On this side, the Ordered World. On that, Chaos, and the hell it promised.

“Enough gawking,” the soldier growled. He gave Rae a little push, nearly sending him tumbling into the void. The man’s voice betrayed his fear. Rae glanced up at the stonestorm. He has good reason to be afraid, Rae thought. We’re not going to reach the bottom before that thing hits us. He hurried on. As soon as they were off the gangway, the windship pushed off again, fleeing deeper into the steading for shelter.

They almost made it. The stonestorm slowed as it approached the warding sigils of the encampment. But with a quarter of the stairs still to go, and his arms bound in front of him, Rae and his escort looked up just in time to see the squall line wash across the temporary buildings before striking them full in the chest.

The winds roared over them, blotting out the light.


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