‘It is not the name that interests me,’ Cedorpul had retorted. ‘We would proclaim you seneschal. If words are your power in this new art, then lead us. We will all find our own paths, Gallan. The point is, there is need. You must see that. Neret Sorr now blazes with light. Syntara organizes against us, and would see a path burned into the heart of Kharkanas.’ He had stepped closer to Gallan then, his eyes fierce. ‘I have dreamed it, that golden road of fire.’

‘Dreamed it, did you?’ Gallan had laughed. ‘Oh, I do not doubt you, priest. Against the waking world, the mind finds its own realm, and fills it with myriad fears and dreads. Where else would one play so freely with dire possibility?’ He had raised a hand, and the tongues of smoky darkness had wreathed his arm. ‘But this? It has no answer to Liosan. Light is revelation. Dark is mystery. What marches upon us cannot be defeated. We – and the world – must ever yield. Imagine, my friends, what we are about to witness. The death of mystery, and such a bright world will come, blinding us with truths, humbling us with answers, scouring us clean of that which we cannot know.’

In some ways, the new world Gallan described well suited Rise Herat, who was by nature frustrated with things he could not know, with meanings at which he could only guess, and where his every effort to surmise trembled at the roots with doubt. Was this new future not an historian’s paradise? Everything explicable, everything understandable.

A world made mundane.

And yet, a part of him recoiled at the notion, for when he looked closely, he saw a future made stale, lifeless. The death of mystery, he realized, was the death of life itself.

Gallan had dropped his arm, watched as the magic drained away from his body. ‘Revelation shall surely bless us. Doubt lies bloody upon the altar. Into the channels it drains, drip by drip, and then ebbs. We shall make a thousand thrones. Ten thousand. One for every fool. But the altar remains singular. It will take any and every sacrifice, and thirst yet for more.’ He had then smiled at the historian. ‘Prepare to recount the future, Herat, and describe well the long lines, the glint of row on row of knives in waiting hands. And upon the other hand – why, I shall tell this to Kadaspala, so that he may paint it – place a tether, and upon the end of its modest length, name some private beast.

‘Praise the light! We march to slaughter!’ He grinned mockingly at Cedorpul. ‘Name it for the realm. The sorcery of Kurald Galain.’

And so, laughing, he had stridden from the chamber.

* * *