Footsteps round the hallway and Min Lo is suddenly striding toward us with Wyn Juun, the Wyvernguard’s elderly Vo priest who tends to the spiritual needs of the apprentices. Wyn Juun’s sapphire priest garb is marked with embroidered dragons rendered in a multitude of colors—the many manifestations of Vo. A necklace with a pendant depicting one of Vo’s sacred doves graces his neck.

The Noi priest looks at me, concern etched deep into his wizened brown face, his snowy hair pulled back in a knot, his long beard tied into a knot as well below his chin.

“He’s in here?” Wyn Juun asks, urgency in his tone as he gestures toward Trystan’s door.

“I told him everything,” Min Lo says to me, her clothing still soaked, her short hair sticking up in damp spikes.

“He’s not part of the Vo’lon religion,” I caution the priest. “He’s Gardnerian.”

“Is he?” Wyn Juun shoots back. He knocks on the door, his voice gentle when it comes. “Trystan Gardner. I am Wyn Juun of the Vo’lon faith. I come asking for you to speak with me.”

Silence.

And then the door opens, Trystan’s face wan and tearstained.

“Noi’khin Gardner,” Wyn Juun says with great kindness, purposefully using the address that marks a person as firmly part of the Eastern Realm, “please allow me to come in.”

Trystan’s face constricts. “I tried to save her mother. I tried.” His face crumples and he begins to sob. “We’re doing all this. The Mages. We’re forcing those people to flee. We’re to blame for all of it. We’re monsters.”

“You saved a baby,” Min Lo cuts in, her voice breaking with emotion.

Wyn Juun goes to Trystan and gently ushers him back so he can enter. “We will pray for her,” he says, his voice low and compassionate as he places his hand on Trystan’s trembling shoulder. “We will pray for all those who are fleeing to the East. And we will pray for you, as well.”

Wyn Juun briefly looks to me, then Min Lo and Sylla. And then he shuts the door.

Devastation rips through me. I fall back against the cobwebbed wall, barely noticing Min Lo’s and Sylla’s attempts to speak with me. Barely noticing the light steps of poisonous spiders climbing all over my legs, my arms, my cheeks, as sorrow takes hold and I’m lost to it.

CHAPTER TEN

VO’KHIN

Trystan Gardner & Vothendrile Xanthile

The Wyvernguard
North Wyvernguard Island, Noilaan
Eastern Realm
Sixth Month

Vothendrile