IN THE KITCHENS meals were left half-cooked, slowly cooling and drying, solidifying in pans that would never be washed. Monks were roused from their beds, donning red cloaks over dirty underclothes. Others were interrupted at half-finished board games. The pieces would forever be at war, victory several moves and an infinity away. In the courtyards and gardens, dogs and wolves remained shackled. They would die on the ends of their chains, starving, fading to bones and then dust. Beyond these gardens lay the vegetable fields, fruit trees and livestock pens. All would be rotten come winter: potatoes in the ground; fruit on the vine; chickens and sheebok melting back into the land. Books were left open, infrequent conversations hung unfinished, a bathtub steamed away to nothing. Quickly, efficiently and with a mounting air of expectation, the Monks converged on the Council chamber at the pinnacle of the Monastery. As the sun rose in the east, its early red light casting a pink glow on the life moon still faint in the sky, the chamber was filled with over three hundred Red Monks. As Fate would have it, one for every year of their wait. They sat in the tiered seating, their presence a bloody red smear across the ancient rock of the citadel.

Jossua Elmantoz was carried up through the portal in the floor of the chamber and onto the central dais. Gathana stood nearby and offered her arm, but Jossua waved her away and stood on his own. He looked around at the assembled Monks, not knowing one from another. He fumbled with his sword, resting his palm on its hilt. His own hood, raised like those of all the men and women watching him, hid the strain on his face. But they would respect that. They all knew the Elder, knew why he was the one to be the nearest they had to a leader. He had fought in the Cataclysmic War, and he had seen the Mages.

“Our time has come,” he said.

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. By then, deep inside, most of them had already guessed.

“Magic is back in the land,” Jossua continued. “The Nax have communed with me, and they know where it is, how it is. That is all they told me, so I must assume they know no more.” He paused for a breath, still exhausted from his day beneath ground. “At present it has a carrier, a male. I don’t know his name. He’s somewhere in the foothills of the Widow’s Peaks.