A boon that has now become a curse…

Ferras Vansen could feel thousands of years of confusing, dangerous history swirling like deep black waters just behind the fairy’s words. He wanted to ask what the Fireflower was, but Gyir for once was speaking so openly that Vansen feared to distract him.

My lady Yasammez had been fighting for the People long centuries before ever I was born. At the dreadful, infamous battle of Shivering Plain, during one of the last of the wars of the gods, she destroyed the earthly form of Urekh, no god’s bastard but a true god himself, who wore the pelt of a magical wolf as his invulnerable armor. For that alone she would be remembered and celebrated until time’s candle gutters out, but it is not why I speak of that battle. That was the same day of which I told you before, where Jikuyin delayed his coming, hoping to manipulate the results to his own advantage, and instead was struck down by Kernios himself, blinded and nearly killed.

Vansen remembered the story of Jukuyin riding late onto the field with his Widowmakers, then realizing he had bought more trouble than he could afford, since Perin, Kernios, and the gods called the Surazemai were winning and the rest of the gods and Qar were already in flight. Kernios hurt him, you said.

Indeed. Black Earth wounded Jikuyin so gravely that he would never heal. But now, for some reason, the demigod is digging his way into the very throne room of Black Earth—the one your kind call Kernios.

So what is Jikuyin going to do?

Make right what was done to him, somehow. Perhaps the god’s mighty spear Earthstar lies behind that gate, or perhaps Jikuyin seeks a more subtle prize. But if he does manage to open that doorway into Kernios’ earthly realm, I can feel that Jikuyin will gain in power—gain immeasurably. His long-ago defeat cast him down into weakness—what you see before you is scarcely a shadow of what he was on the day he rode out onto Shivering Plain—but he is one of the last living bastards of the true gods. If he gains that strength back he will be the most powerful thing that walks on the green world.

But we can’t do anything to stop him, Vansen said. Can we?

I fear we must, said Gyir.

Are you telling me it is up to us to defend all the world? Vansen turned to Barrick to see if the boy understood Gyir’s riddling words, but the prince only stared back at him balefully, still struggling for breath.

Of course—but also to save our own lives. Great magicks—the oldest, most powerful magicks—need blood and essences—what your kind call the souls of people or animals—to succeed. They need sacrifices. The word came like the tip of a dagger, cold and sharp, almost painless at first. Especially the sacrifice of those who are themselves powerful in some way.

What are you talking about? But Vansen had already guessed.