“Blade that Soars resented his father’s decision to make them two, however, for it greatly diminished his strength. He had wished for a perfect world, free from pain and suffering, and to do so, he strove to be his sire’s equal in power. It was he, not the Creator, who taught magic to his subjects. Hollow Knife criticized his brother’s actions, fearing the chaos that could come from the spells of imperfect creatures.”

“Aenah always said Hollow Knife was the true hero,” I murmured, remembering what Aenah had told me while she languished in the Odalian dungeons, pretending she had had no relationship with Telemaine. “It was why the Faceless worshipped him.”

“But isn’t that good?” Likh asked. “To want a perfect world?”

“To be perfect without suffering means no change. If you know neither hurt nor hardship, then you will not know the strength they can summon within a person. What is life’s meaning if you cannot distinguish between happiness and sorrow?”

“It would have been nice for the Great Creator to make the world with a little less suffering though,” Likh said sadly.

Garindor smiled briefly. “Blade that Soars certainly agreed with you. He believed that the world would be destroyed by its flaws. So he offered magic as a means to address those ills, for his people to forge a better life. But even he abused this power, giving the best of it to Dancing Wind and subjugating his dissidents.

“Hollow Knife determined the only way to stop his brother was to take his heartsglass and merge it with his own, to double his strength and restore the world in the image his father had originally intended—one without magic—even if it meant forfeiting his own life. And because Blade that Soars gave the core of his heartsglass to Dancing Wind, Hollow Knife had to take hers.”

He shifted some books off a heavy pile and selected one volume, opening it to reveal Drychta writing. “The unnamed book you referenced is only a piece of the puzzle. It is the oldest book written in the common tongue that talks of the legend, but this Drychta book—this precedes it by at least a year. Few people study Drychta, so it tends to be overlooked by even the best Isteran scholars. But I know this manuscript’s value; it was discovered twenty years ago, hidden within one of Drycht’s numerous mountains. It lay in a strange cave filled with unnatural flora, unearthed only because of a sudden rock slide. King Aadil decreed its contents heretical because it criticized the absolute rule of kings, and many of my colleagues were killed for defending the tome. This book is more important than my life, and I barely escaped with both intact. I came to Istera because they treasured and honored knowledge in all its forms—Aadil did not.”