Page 111 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

Slowly, gently, Cahra took his hand.

CHAPTER 43

Thelaema retched, her body yielding what little food had touched her stomach to the sands. It had been an age since she had attempted teleportation. And yet there was no time to waste, because she felt it: her connection to the All-seeing flowing from a trickle to a torrent, as the dam that had curtailed the source of her Oraculine’s magicks evaporated at last.

In the garden below the Reliquus’ statue, seedlings emerged from the blackened dirt, clear signs of life to indicate that Cahra had succeeded. Hael was free.

However, with her High Oracle’s powers came the insight that she was not alone. There was one other. And theirs was a reunion four centuries in the making.

Thelaema braced herself and inhaled, the capital’s desert air parching her lungs before she pushed off against the obelisk outside Hael’stromia’s pyramid, the palatial temple open. She looked to the row of empty pedestals that bordered the approach avenue, knowing Hael’s hounds would soon arrive.

But the Reliquus was not her purpose here, Thelaema reminded herself.

Finally, as she had seen he would, her High Oracle counterpart descended the steps, their home as Oraculine and Oracularus of the Order of Descry, 399 years before. Fleetingly, Thelaema wondered if Grauwynn had been granted the same vision from the All-seeing that had led her to him now. If he had some sort of plan.

She supposed it did not matter. They had both lived long enough.

Before she left the battle, the Nether had bestowed upon her crucial information: the person behind Hael’stromia’s fall. It was veiled, though she had not known it at the time. Veiled by her very counterpart. Her partner. Veiled by Grauwynn, from her.

He was the orchestrator of it all. But his motivations remained a mystery.

She would learn the reason for his heresy.

Grauwynn noted her at last, pausing. Thelaema stepped from behind the obelisk and directly into his path, in the centre of the forsaken road to their former temple.

‘Grauwynn.’ A greeting, and a warning.

‘Thelaema,’ he said softly.

She could garner nothing from his impenetrable face, his voice as neutral as the taupe pallor of his skin, as he stood towering above her on those steps. They stared at one another with the same periwinkle eyes. The colour of the Seers.

‘Is that surprise?’ Thelaema pondered. ‘Or stoicism? I never could tell.’

‘Nothing shall surprise us shortly,’ Grauwynn replied, lowering the hood of his robe. It was not their garb, that of the Order of Descry, their robes black as these hallowed sands. This was something different, light instead of dark, however shabby. Thelaema squinted at it. The fact that it was shabby, worn, was odd. Which god did it belong to? How long had he worn it?

Was this why they had been blocked from one another’s foresight?

‘I suppose. In which case, cease your dallying and peddle whatever lies you must.’ Formidable words. She would not dull them.

It was simple to disguise her peering at his attire with peering at her fellow Oracle. Was there nothing left of her former consort? The idea of him renouncing their beliefs…

Grauwynn chuckled. ‘How I have missed you,’ he confessed, a hint of something like remorse betraying his gaze, his wrinkled face echoing the sentiment. ‘Your shrewd mind.’ Then he switched tack, pressing against the gatehouse to her thoughts.

Shall we continue in the old ways?

Thelaema shoved back, prepared but still surprised he should attempt it.

‘Four centuries, no word, and you wish to communicate in the old ways?’ Thelaema’s words were acid, burning on her tongue, as she said, ‘Why do you ally with Atriposte and Decimus? They do not respect our ways, our prophecy, nor the All-seeing’s chosen Scion. The one thatIhave been shaping, safeguarding, all while you have been—’ Thelaema halted, full of scorn. ‘Astray,’ she finished, waving her hand at his wayward off-white robe.

‘Have you spoken your fill?’ Grauwynn straightened, pinning her with a stare that once upon a time might have given her pause. No longer.

She retorted, ‘Of course not!’

‘Then in the time we have left before the All-seeing recommences from the source, would you prefer your sweet lies, or the truth?’

‘What manner of question is that?’ She moved to march on him, and it happened, the gentle, urgent tug of her Oracle’s intuition. In her mind, she saw a flash of silver – then red. She knew that red, those vermillion flames.

By the Nether, what has he done?