Prologue

Five thousand one hundred thirty-two years earlier...

“Have they started yet?” Gaiana asked, breathless from rushing through the corridors. She’d lost track of time trying to teach shaping magic to a group of children far too young to be learning such complicated spells. The Chosar would need more shapers if they were to rebuild the cities that had been lost.

Her husband nodded a greeting but didn’t smile. “They’re just starting now,” he said. Time had changed Argyros—he was no longer the man she’d married. The war had drained all of the humor and joy out of him, leaving nothing but a sense of duty and a determination to keep moving forward. It had been years since he’d touched her with any passion, and, in truth, she hadn’t wanted him to. She’d changed as well, more interested in her research than her marriage with this hard man she could no longer love. They were partners and friends, nothing more.

But the war was over now. Perhaps Argyros could learn to be happy again. Perhaps something could be salvaged of their relationship.

Lydos gave her a wide grin. “Perfect timing as always, Mother,” he said.

“Don’t start that,” she said, wagging a finger at him.

He just laughed. The war had shaped half his life, but unlike his father, it hadn’t broken him. His generation provided hope for the future.

First Admiral Myrrhine nodded to Gaiana but remained with the other Councilors at the far end of the observation window, giving the royal family some space.

On the other side of the window, in the ritual chamber itself, the wardens had separated into two groups, the wizards in one and Demea and Hera in the other. Boreas and Iris would be handling their parts of the ritual from a distance, with Hera participating as an elder mage rather than a wizard to even out the numbers.

The four in the wizard group arranged themselves facing each other from the cardinal directions, ten feet from their closest neighbors. Hera and Demea, too, faced each other. There was no visible indicator of Iris’s or Boreas’s readiness, but the other wardens seemed to sense it was time. They began the ritual without delay, closing their eyes as they entered a trance, the wizards muttering the words to the spell while the elder mages did something Gaiana couldn’t follow.

The wardens had been designing this ritual for years, but Gaiana had doubts about whether their goal was even possible. They’d claimed to have found some conjunction of the magics in a realm that didn’t otherwise exist, but the only people who could see it were the wardens themselves and a few wizards who could wield both elder and arcane magics. Gaiana had taken the time to learn the spell they’d used, but it had never worked for her.

General Straton snorted quietly as the ritual dragged on with no apparent effect. “This is nonsense. I don’t care what Pallis says—there’s no way a ritual to choose more wardens would be harder than a ritual to change the nature of magic itself.”

“When did you become an expert on wizardry, General?” Lydos asked. “The wardens have more experience with this than anyone.”

“And they’re centering more power in the hands of those who already wield it! Each new warden means nine more mages can achieve their full potential. Instead, we’re granting more power to the ones we already have.”

“It’ll help all of our mages, not just the wardens.”

“Did you ever notice what they didn’t say, Lydos? They never said it would make you stronger. You’ll still have trouble lighting a candle; you’ll just learn multiple ways to fail to light a candle.”

Lydos scowled. Gaiana’s son was an excellent commander of wizard troops in battle, but he wasn’t much of a wizard himself ... and he had too much pride to ask Hera to bond him. Perhaps Gaiana could give the woman a few gentle hints.

Argyros cut in. “Enough! This is what we’re doing now. We can discuss other matters later.”

The two men put their argument on hold, turning back to the observation window.

“Is that supposed to happen?” the seneschal asked.

Pulses of blue and white light had begun flickering through the ritual chamber. The wardens hadn’t noticed yet—their eyes were still closed and they were now deep in trance, the ritual spell requiring their full concentration.

Gaiana’s skin tingled. She recognized wild magic from an excursion around Donvar when she was young. The ship she’d been on had sailed close to land in the hope of sighting scourlings, but instead they’d attracted a burst of wild magic which had disabled the ship’s enchantments and killed two sailors. The ship had completed the voyage on wind power alone.

Was wild magic supposed to be part of the ritual? The wardens had never mentioned it, but the spell was incredibly complicated and the smaller details were known only to the four wizards amongst them.

Then she saw something that made her blood run cold. The wardens had placed a protective barrier around the ritual chamber to prevent any distractions, but they hadn’t built it to block hostile magics from escaping. It was a cylinder rather than a sphere, and the pulses of wild magic were slipping through the floor into the undercity.

That couldn’t be intentional, could it? There was no way to control wild magic, and many of the enchantments that allowed The People to live in comfort within the mountain were located in the lower levels. What would happen if the water purifiers were destroyed? Or the power collectors for the cookers? Unleashing that much energy all at once might kill everyone in the undercity.

“Stop them!” Gaiana exclaimed. She rushed to the observation window and pounded her palms against the glass, shouting through it, but the protective barrier blocked all sound. “Try the door!”

“What’s going on?” Argyros asked her.

The others stared, confused, until Myrrhine gathered her wits and pulled on the door handle. “I can’t open it—it’s inside the barrier. What’s wrong?”

“The spell’s gone out of control!” Gaiana said. She slipped her wardbreaker out of her pocket—she’d borrowed it back from her sister at the beginning of the war—and tapped the small iron bar against the window.

Nothing happened. The protective barrier was too strongly warded for the wardbreaker to overcome, and there wasn’t time to craft a new spell designed to pierce it.

The others started pounding on the window and shouting while Straton tried to kick the door down.

It was all pointless, but somehow, something woke Warden Zachal from his trance. He saw the pulses of light and his eyes widened in panic, then he shouted something at the other wardens. When they didn’t react, he grabbed Pallis by the shoulders and shook him. The other warden still didn’t wake, too deep in the trance to notice.

Zachal saw the observers’ efforts through the window and yelled something to them, but they couldn’t hear his words through the barrier. Then another burst of wild magic pulsed around the room before launching itself downward.

A look of horror grew on the warden’s face as he realized the implications. His lips moved again, but from his stance and demeanor, it was apparent he wasn’t trying to talk to them this time. He was casting a spell.

“What’s he doing?” Argyros demanded.

Lydos started murmuring but Gaiana beat him to it, triggering her stored arcane sight spell. Her vision was immediately overlaid with information about the structure of all the spells and enchantments within view.

“A healing spell!” she announced in relief. Zachal was a healing wizard, and he’d apparently realized the danger to the workers in the undercity. An undirected, wide-area healing cast over a long distance wasn’t ideal, but it had a warden’s strength behind it. It was better than nothing.

And it was a message to the observers as well. Lydos realized it first. “We need to send healers below!”

“And warding specialists to block the wild magic!” Gaiana said.

“What wild magic?” Argyros asked.

She didn’t answer her husband’s question—there was no time to explain. Before she could summon help, though, another pulse of wild magic echoed around the chamber, but instead of escaping downward, it flowed into Zachal’s healing spell. In the visible spectrum, nothing changed, but to Gaiana’s arcane sight, the spell turned dark and sickly—necromancy, the magic of death. Zachal realized the same thing and stopped his casting, but the spell didn’t end. Both it and the bursts of wild magic were now pulling their power from somewhere else—that strange conjunction to which the wardens had tried to open a gateway.

If there was necromantic magic loose below, sending rescuers was no longer an option.

“Evacuate the undercity!” Gaiana said. “Sound the alarms!”

“I’ll go!” Admiral Myrrhine said, heading for the nearest alarm control.

But just as she reached the entrance to the corridor, there was a flash of blue. Myrrhine cried out in pain, and then half of her body disintegrated. There were quiet thumps as the remaining pieces fell to the ground.

That burst of light had escaped through the top of the barrier rather than the bottom. It was loose in Fortress West ... which was full of spells, wards, and enchantments that could be twisted and warped by the wild magic.

Gaiana stared at the mangled remains of her friend, then forced her attention away. I’m back in the war, she told herself. Mourning comes later.

Zachal attempted another casting, perhaps to banish the flawed healing spell, but the longer he was locked in there with it, the more it drained his strength. He fell to his knees, dazed, before he could finish.

It was the growing encroachment of the necromancy magic that finally woke Pallis. He saw Zachal at the center of the corrupted spell and shouted angrily at the other man, but Zachal didn’t rouse from his stupor. In frustration, Pallis triggered a stored banishment spell. Gaiana held her breath in hope, watching through her arcane sight, but the spell drew in another burst of flickering blue and white light. The banishment spell faded away as it was swallowed up by the wild magic, and Pallis realized for the first time that there was a greater danger. He seemed to think Zachal was the cause, and with a grim look of determination, he waded into the heart of the necromancy spell, drawing his sword and thrusting it through the human warden’s chest.

Zachal’s life faded away, as did the necromantic spell, but not before it claimed Pallis. The First Warden dropped his sword and slumped to the ground, struggling to push himself up to his hands and knees before falling again. This time he didn’t move.

But he’d succeeded, at least in part—the necromancy spell was gone.

Another flash of blue raced down the corridor outside the observation room, followed by screams from deep within Fortress West. And then the repeating sound of a deep bell—someone had reached the alarms. But the tone was wrong. It was the attack alert for Fortress Central. The wild magic had already escaped the western complex.

Argyros and Lydos were talking, trying to get Gaiana’s attention, but she ignored them. Her mind leapt from idea to idea, processing and discarding plans as fast as she could think, until she was left with only one.

The necromancy spell was gone. It might have drawn power from the conjunction, but it had still failed once the mage who’d cast it was dead.

The same was likely true for the ritual spell and the bursts of wild magic.

The wardens had to die.

It wouldn’t stop the wild magic that had already escaped, but it would prevent more from coming through.

Another pulse of blue, this time within the observation room. General Straton was left staring in shock at his left arm, which now ended just below the elbow. Blood gushed out and he swayed, slumping against the wall.

The wardens were protected by the barrier, and Gaiana wasn’t skilled in direct combat magics, but there was another option. Her wardbreaker might not be strong enough to cancel the barrier spell, but it could certainly take out a ward that Gaiana herself had crafted ... and directly above the wardens was the three-foot-thick ceiling of shaped stone. And above that, another level, and another, and another.

But all of Fortress West was part of the same shaping. The early settlers of Tir Yadar had crafted each portion of the city in massive blocks, applying ritual magic to shaping spells for the first time. To undo part of Fortress West, Gaiana would have to undo all of it.

Could she make that decision? There were nearly a thousand people in the complex—not just the wardens but the researchers, the wizardry academy, and all the support staff. Plus Gaiana herself, and her husband, and her son. There wasn’t enough time to flee. If the ritual progressed any further, it would be too late.

If she didn’t take action, everyone in Tir Yadar was doomed. Everyone in Van Kir. Possibly everyone everywhere. The people in Fortress West would die no matter what she did.

Sacrifice a thousand to save millions. Sacrifice her son to save her people.

There was only one choice she could make.

She touched the wardbreaker to the shaped stone, canceling the stability wards across all of Fortress West, then slapped her hand against the wall and cast the spell of unshaping as quickly as she could utter the words. The crushing weight of the stone should be enough to kill, but wardens were resourceful and Gaiana couldn’t guarantee they hadn’t taken protective spells or devices into the ritual chamber. For good measure, she modified the spell to turn the stone solid once again, ten seconds after it was unshaped. Long enough for the fortifications to fall, but not long enough for the liquid stone to drain away from the area and leave its victims uncovered.

She spoke the last word of the spell.

There was just enough time to grab Lydos’s hand before the end.

Darkness. A flash of blue light. Or was it a thousand flashes?

Shouting, one voice and then another, the words incomprehensible.

Pain, beyond anything she’d ever felt before.

Then darkness again.

Time passed in the formless void. She needed to remember. What did she need to remember? Where was she? Who was she?

Fractured thoughts began to coalesce.

Hera. That was what she was called by others. Others? What others? There was only endless nothingness.

She tried to move. It was slow, as if swimming in ... swimming in ... water. That was it—swimming happened in water. But this wasn’t water. It felt wrong. She had to get out.

How did she know that?

Elder senses. That was a new memory. Elder senses could show her the way. She cast out with her mind and was inundated with new information that was both comfortably familiar and impossible to understand. But it was enough to know there was an open area ahead, if she could just push through.

She continued toward it, moving with her mind, not with her ... what was it called?

Body.

Yes, her body could help her move, if she could just remember how. But the few memories that slipped through weren’t of any use.

She had to get out. She had to get to the open area before...

Before what?

Time was a new memory. Time moved from one moment to the next. That meant something had happened before the dark void of nothingness. That was the thing she needed to remember.

And then she was there, emerging from wherever she’d been into a scene of chaos.

People shouting, running in different directions. Others walking slowly and silently, injured and dirty. It was like the war all over again.

And with that, memories came rushing back, each one slamming into her with the force of a weapon. Not everything, but enough to remember who she was, beyond just the name.

Hera stood in the courtyard at the center of the fortress complex. Ahead of her, the World Fountain had stopped flowing, its waters no longer rippling over the surface. The lights lining the metallic orb flickered before becoming steady again.

Near the orb was a series of large figures in strange shapes. Statues. The totem walk, her mind whispered to her. A place of familiarity and comfort. She headed in that direction. Moving was easier here. She no longer felt like she was being held back.

A woman stumbled into her path, trying to support a man with blood running down his face.

“Help us!” the woman shouted at a mass of people who’d gathered on the far side of the courtyard. The man was heavier than her, and close to losing consciousness. The two wore similar clothing. Uniforms. Soldiers. Of course—the military complex was nearby.

They hadn’t noticed Hera.

What happened? she tried to say, but nothing came out. She’d forgotten how to speak.

The details would have to wait—she could still help them. She reached for the man’s other side.

Her hands passed through his body.

In shock, Hera looked down at herself. There was nothing to see. Her hands had been barely visible when she’d moved them, transparent, but when she stopped, they faded away to nothingness, along with the rest of her body.

The two soldiers hadn’t noticed her at all. They walked through her as if she wasn’t there.

Hera looked back the way she’d come. Fortress West was gone. The outer walls of shaped stone had melted, hiding the entrances. Her elder senses told her the same thing had happened throughout the entire facility. That’s what she’d been swimming through—solid stone.

Was this death?

What had happened? There had been others in Fortress West with her, hadn’t there? Were they all dead? They’d been doing something before the dark void had come, doing something in the time she couldn’t remember.

A cloud of flickering blue and white light descended through the cavern’s stone roof, causing panicked screams from the people gathered in the courtyard. They fled in fear in all directions. One wasn’t fast enough. A clerk, by the look of him. He was struck by what almost seemed to be a small bolt of lightning, but instead of the burning scars typical of lightning magic, the man’s entire body dissolved.

Then the cloud struck again, at the World Fountain. The lights on the orb went out, and this time they didn’t return.

The cloud passed through the floor, heading for the undercity.

Was this some sort of attack? Had Vatarxis returned and assaulted Tir Yadar itself? It didn’t have the feel of demonic magic. Had some researcher’s spell gone awry?

Whatever its origins, it had to be stopped, but how? As a Mage Knight, Hera’s arcane magic had been deliberately limited, and she’d never learned much in the way of warding spells. But she had magical defenses of her own—she could protect herself while she sought out someone who could help.

Who, though? Many of the best combat wizards would have been in Fortress West. And the wardens...

That thought stopped her cold. The wardens—her people’s strongest defense—had been with her before the nothingness. If they were still alive, they would have already been fighting back against the attack.

The wardens were gone, Fortress West was gone, and even if she found someone who could help, how would she get their attention if no one could see or hear her?

Her attention was drawn once again by the seven statues along the totem walk. Eight totems, seven statues—Snake wasn’t welcome in Tir Yadar.

The totems could help. Were they aware of what was happening? They couldn’t be everywhere, and though they favored the Chosar, the world was a very large place.

Then a bird appeared high in the cavern, circling around the courtyard twice before landing on a statue that matched its shape. An owl. The creature was only there in spirit, transparent like Hera’s hands when she’d moved them. Its physical body was elsewhere. How did she know that? It was new information, not a memory.

The owl spoke into her mind. What have you done, foolish child? it asked. You’ve altered the structural integrity holding the Collision in balance! You risk destroying our worlds!

Hera shrieked in pain. The voice was too loud. Much too loud. She had to make it stop.

She thrust her hands forward and a stream of darkness swirled out. Magic, but not like anything she’d known before. Three magics working together as one. Elder magic, the first she’d ever touched, was easy to distinguish. And arcane magic, though not a spell she’d ever seen before. And then there was something new. A fragment of a memory. Something about a ritual.

The darkness lanced out at the owl spirit and the creature disintegrated before her eyes.

And then the void of nothingness returned.

By the fourth time Hera flickered back into awareness, she’d recovered enough of her memories to think clearly. The best place to learn more about what had happened would be Fortress Central and the Governmental Council chamber. In a time of crisis, the chamber would be occupied at all hours of the day.

But first, she had to get there. Each time she woke, she was back inside the melted remains of Fortress West. She floated through the stone once again, more quickly than before.