“I shall have to meet him, won’t I?” she asked aloud. “Which one is it?”

The Soldier.

Lilias grimaced. It would have been easier, in a way, had it been one of the others—the Dreamer, or the Glutton.

The Dreamer, she understood. When all was said and done, they were both Pelmaran. The Were had raised him, and although their ways were strange, she understood them better than anyone else of mortal descent.

And as for the Glutton, his wants were simple. Gold, mayhap; a portion of the fabled dragon’s hoard. Or flesh, carnal desire. Lilias touched the curves of her body, the ample, swelling flesh at her bodice. That too, she understood.

What the Soldier asked would be harder.

The summons at the base of her skull shrilled louder, insistent. Lilias hurried, taking a seldom-used key from the ring at her waist and unlocking the door that led to the caverns and the tunnels below. The ancient steps were roughhewn, carved into the living rock. She held her skirts, descending swiftly. If not for Calandor’s wisdom, she would never have known such things existed.

Now, little sister. He comes now.

Down, and down and down! All beneath the surface of Urulat, the tunnels interlaced, carved out in ages past, before the world was Sundered. Calandor knew them, for it was his brethren who had carved them, long ago, when there were dragons in the earth. And along those passages lay the Ways of the Marasoumië, the passages of the Souma, along which thought traveled, quick as a pulse. Though they were Sundered from Torath and the Souma itself, still they endured; dangerous, yet passable to those who remembered them and dared.

Dragons remembered, as did the Shaper. No others would dare the Ways, save perhaps Malthus the Counselor, who wielded a Soumanië of his own.

Lilias reached the bottom, hurried along the passageway.

Ahead lay the node-point, and blood-red light beat like a heart, bathing the rocky walls. A vaulted chamber, and a tunnel stretching away westward into darkness. Lines of light, the forgotten Ways, pulsed along it, bundled fibers laid in an intricate network, all linked back to the severed bond of the Souma.

The Marasoumië of Uru-Alat, whom Men had once called the World God. Though Uru-Alat had died to give birth to the world, remnants of his power yet existed. The Marasoumië was one.

A figure was coming, dark and blurred, moving at a walking pace with inhuman speed, each motion fanning in her vision, broken into a thousand component parts. Lilias pressed her back to the stony walls of the cavern, reaching desperately for Calandor

All is well.

The node-light flared, red and momentarily blinding. Lilias cried out as a figure stumbled into the chamber, his body stunned by the transition to a mortal pace.

A Man, only a Man.