Vasin forced his fists to unclench. It wouldn’t do to part like this. He pulled Gada close, feeling the man stiffen before settling into an awkward embrace. ‘I’m sorry,’ he began, but his voice cracked and his throat tightened, swallowing the rest of the sentence.
‘Sssh,’ Gada said. ‘Deal with the hunt today. I can wait till tomorrow, the court for a while after that. One thing at a time.’ He peeled himself out of Vasin’s grip as another beat of the drums reverberated through the castle. ‘Hunt well and thorough.’
Unable to speak, Vasin nodded and left the room. His eyes were blurry with tears but it didn’t matter, he knew the way well enough, the hallways and rooms mapped over many lives.
With effort, he could push aside thoughts of the Sapphire High Lord and his brother, but the rage sat there, burning, like a hot coal in his chest.
It had been a glimpse, nothing more. The bottom half of a tunic and a pair of boots ascending a stairwell. One of the night guards doing the rounds.
Honoured Mother Chandni wandered to the bottom of the stairs, a frown spoiling her features. She knew all of the guards by sight and yet this one had seemed like a stranger. She also knew the routines of the castle as well as she knew the habits of the babe in her arms, and there were no changeovers due for at least an hour.
Still frowning, she continued up the stairs and stepped out onto the ramparts. It was still dark, the three suns some hours from rising, but Satyendra showed no signs of sleepiness. She felt the same. There was simply too much going on for her mind to rest.
A guard saluted her as she came into view. His name was Ji, one of the older ones. Ji was not the one she’d seen on the steps, they had moved too quickly, their stride that of a much younger man.
‘Did another guard come this way?’ she asked.
‘No, Honoured Mother. It’s just me and the cold out tonight.’
‘You’re sure?’
He nodded. ‘Even the castle is quiet.’
‘It’s holding its breath. We all are.’ It was Lord Rochant Sapphire’s rebirth ceremony in the morning and they all wanted him back dearly. The halls had seemed empty since he’d gone between lives.
‘When do you think he’ll come back to us?’ asked Ji.
‘When he’s ready. It’s not for you to question the time or place.’
‘Sorry, I just miss him.’
Chandni allowed herself a polite smile. ‘We all do.’
It’s time to replace Ji, she thought. The man’s losing his focus. I’ll keep him on long enough for Lord Rochant to see him in uniform one more time, and then retire him.
She made a slow circuit of the walls. Had she really seen that guard? It was dark and she was tired, perhaps she had imagined it? Chandni didn’t believe that though. There was something in the air, a tension that she hoped was connected to Lord Rochant’s return. But it wasn’t hope she felt in her stomach. Satyendra stirred in her arms, uncharacteristically restless.
‘You feel it too don’t you?’ she said softly. ‘You’re not alone. I doubt any of us will sleep easily tonight.’
Satyendra regarded her with dark eyes. He had always been a quiet baby but there was something alert in his manner, a watchfulness that suggested a wise head rather than a vacant one.
‘Somewhere over there,’ she continued, pointing into the night, ‘is another castle just like this, floating high in the sky. It belongs to Lord Vasin Sapphire. At dawn, he’ll be hunting for demons in a place called Sagan. Normally your grandfather, Lord Rochant, would do it, but his soul is somewhere else, somewhere far, far away.’
All along the battlements were sapphire lanterns that took the sunslight of the day and turned it into a series of little blue halos. Chandni loved the constancy of their light almost as much as she loved the order of their placement, each painstakingly positioned the exact same distance from its neighbours, a visible testament to the perfection of House Sapphire. She found it much more impressive than the stars, strewn messily across the sky.
Only the greatest minds can create such order.
And Lord Rochant’s castle was a beacon of order. Strong walls, symmetrical, smooth, polished so that the stone and sapphires shone. She had lived here her whole adult life and never felt safer or happier.
Her imagination re-conjured those feet on the stairs, unfamiliar, moving quickly, and she looked down into the courtyard, then across to the opposite wall, then either side of the ramparts.
Nothing.
The castle was as it always was. A fortress hanging impossibly in the sky, held aloft by ethereal currents and forgotten arts.
Safe and dependable and beyond the reach of demons.
The thought made her look in the other direction, out, over the edge of the battlements, away from safety.
Below, she could see miles and miles of unconquered woodland spreading in every direction: the Wild. Strange. Threatening. The very sight of it chilled her, and in the dark it was all too easy to imagine it growing, reaching out to engulf the road-born who dwelled on its perimeter.
She couldn’t imagine living so close to death. How do they sleep down there? she wondered. How do they bear it?
Her eyes moved to the silver-blue ribbon sparkling in defiance of the dark: the Godroad. There were many paths through the Wild but the only safe ones were the Godroads. Relics from the Unbroken Age, each was built straight and true, cutting clean lines of glittering crystal through the trees, dividing the great forest into sections.
Chaos and order. The Wild and the Godroad. The demons and the Deathless.
She let the thoughts roll around in her mind, seeing the way one connected to the other. Like a set of dance steps repeated over and over, endless.
The road-born scavenged the forest, in part to provide for themselves, and in part to provide for people like Chandni.
Inevitably, their activities would catch the attention of the demons and a stalking would begin. After a while, a farm animal would vanish, or a child that had not listened to the warnings of their elders. When this happened, a village would call to their crystal lords for aid and the hunters would come, sending whatever it was back into darkness one way or another.
So it is with the people of Sagan. A cycle. Demons, sacrifice and then the hunt. Soon there will be order again.
But then, should it not also have been that way for the people of Sorn? Chandni shook her head sadly. High Lord Yadavendra had left Sorn to the mercy of the Wild. It was Lord Vasin, not Yadavendra, that was coming to Sagan’s aid.
Things are not as they should be, she thought. We need Lord Rochant back now more than ever.
Satyendra shifted in her arms and she realized she’d been ignoring him for too long. She lifted him up so that he could see over the top of the battlements.
‘Somewhere down there, the elders of Sagan will be choosing their tributes and sending them into the forest. Tributes are very brave, they draw out the demons so the hunters can get them.
‘If you look closely, you might even see their lights. Each one carries a torch to guide the hunters to them.’ Each one would also bear a fresh cut to lure the demons with their blood, but she didn’t mention that.
There were complicated rules about the choosing of a tribute. Some villages would pick their best in the hope that they would survive, bringing honour to all involved. Others would pick their worst, as the hunt was the neatest way to deal with undesirables. For a pariah, such an outcome could be a second chance. More than once, Chandni had heard tales of criminals volunteering to become a tribute in an effort to be forgiven for past