An abandoned boy, a grieving prince, and a reclusive sorcerer find themselves caught in a web of peril and mystery...
Domi, a young thief abandoned on the street at birth, just wants to save his dying foster mother. But first, he must survive the m...
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A wailing golden cloud, beautiful and deadly, roiled in the ever-black night-side sky, but Valens didn't bother gazing at the shining storm with his eyes.
Deceptive, limited, bothersome things, eyes. Eyes could not see the pitch-black landscape past the horizon, where a newborn outcrop of jagged bedrock jutted from the earth in the destructive cloud's wake. Eyes could not see miles of torn whitehair meadows or the muddy creek far west, which the magic cloud had dragged a half mile beyond its banks.
No, Valens's eyes couldn't see much of the damage caused by the nightmarish clouds, which now drifted too high in the Trellis-less heavens to tear up much below. His worldholder magic, on the other hand, showed him plenty. The plume of rogue magic promenia particles extended a quarter mile past the boundary marker he placed six months ago and stretched five miles into the night-side wilderness. Its discordant, silvery ringing, so maddening, painful, and wrong, rolled across the devastated land and between Valens's aching ears.
Thank the Eternal Radiance that no one lived out here in these parts, where no Trellis light nurtured edible crops. Farmers settled farther north, south, and far west beneath the glow of night-side Trellis Isles or east beneath the day-side Trellis Proper. No cities weighed against Valens's sense of the land, just rock formations, forests, and lakes.
Good, no need to be selective about the promenia he destroyed. He looked forward to not hearing Cerasus whine for once about damaged public works. Damaged public works and Valens's refusal to explain to his Praetor's satisfaction how and why promenia roads, bridges, and dams in another provincia came to be damaged in the first place.
Everyone was a critic.
Eyes still closed, Valens claimed all the healthy promenia particles wafting above the rogue particle cloud. Then he proceeded to do what every worldholder did best from the earliest moment they kindled their magic.
Crackles and pops sizzled in the night-side heavens as the rogue promenia caught within his destructive field exploded. Valens's inner vision flared incandescent white and then glittered as brilliant sparks showered down from the bruised night-side sky and burned out before they reached the earth.
He tightened his hold, edging his field in by careful measures to follow the golden cluster as it shrank. He must not draw his promenia too close, or the corruption would spread and his particles would join the lethal cloud.
The task took an hour, and Valens enjoyed every moment of his work. Little in life satisfied him more than the sight and sound of dying particles. He even opened his eyes at the end to witness the cascade of golden sparks directly as the dangerous cloud faded into the eternal night and at last disappeared.
He stretched and blinked up at the now-empty starry sky, then cast his senses into the wilderness once more.
One down, fifty or sixty left to go. Afterward, he would enjoy a quick supper scavenged from the land, and after that, he would focus on the careful task of piecing together new, healthy promenia. He needed to replenish the particles the rogue cloud corrupted.
