Turold could see the change settling over her. The eyes grew deeper, wiser; the fear melted away, replaced by an expression of curiosity and resolve. She didn’t seem threatening (at least, not yet), but she made it clear that something had changed between them. The Giacinta he knew remained like a shadow, close enough to touch but impossibly distant. If he could just lay hold of the cup, he could discover what had bewitched her and reverse the spell. He gently reached out to her, tried to place his hands on the cup—
“I’m sorry, Turold, it’s too late,” she said, holding it close. “The grain has been released. It has awakened inside me. It’s too late…but in reality, just in time.”
“In time for what?”
“I can see the fear in your eyes, but it’s not what you think. I’m not what you think. It all makes sense now, why I couldn’t remember, why I remembered you. Given time I might have uncovered it for myself, but you confused me with your masks and talk of ‘Giacinta.’”
Turold doubted this, considering the poison or spell in the cup. He had seen this before, men and women made slaves from an ancient concoction, willing to betray their own family and even throw themselves into the flames for their master. The only question now was: whom did she serve?
“Remember why we came here–to find the cup, to close the portals. Don’t let them confuse you!”
“I have been confused, but no longer,” she said, sadly. “I understand everything now, more than I could explain in a lifetime, even if you cared to listen.”
“But I know who you are, and no frozen cup can convince me otherwise,” he insisted.
“I’m who you wanted me to be, Turold. But some things were decided long ago, our destinies most of all. Even this face, the woman I wanted to be…I didn’t choose it.”
“But I was there, I saw you! Remember, the toilet-water container? The beautiful woman on the box? You chose her face! You said it spoke to you!”
“Yes, she spoke to me, but I didn’t listen,” she said, nodding patiently. “That was far from a random face. Do you know where it came from?”
“It was just a face—a drawing, nothing more.”
“No, it’s an engraving on a temple wall; an ancient temple in the town where they make the water. They’ve long since forgotten who she was, or why the temple was consecrated in her memory. But that memory…is me.”
“You? How can you—that’s impossible!”
“It takes more than one life to know the world. I speak of gods and eternal life—of many such lives,” she said, letting the cup slip from her fingers.
He tried to leap for it, but the waters snatched it away; it veered toward a grate and vanished.
“Turold, ask yourself: where did I come from? Why am I here? Because Sir Otrygg rescued me from the abyss, a departed soul? Or because he summoned me, along with the others, through the portals that only open for a single purpose, to obey a single master?”
“But how can you be one of them? They hunted you–they almost killed you!” he protested.
“The insects weren’t from the Messengers, Turold. They came from Lord Gramsteed—or more accurately, his spell-broker accomplice. He sent them to obtain the Codex; that’s why he has it now.”
Turold stopped short, stuck on the words. Lord Gramsteed sent the plague of insects? The connections all swam into place: the assassination attempt, the snuff-box, the meeting at the Archives. Of course it was Lord Gramsteed! That only left the question of Sonya Vasileyevna; was she his accomplice? Were they working in tandem, playing the role of rivals, much as she and her Master had? Were they getting married, too?
“But how can you be one of them?” he asked, shaking his head. “How could Sir Otrygg control you?”
“He summoned us through the Codex, seeking his departed sister in vain. But no mortal has the power to recall the dead. When he learned his mistake, it was too late…we were already en route. I came without memory, and he tried to fill it with his sister.”
Turold realized this was a losing battle. Whatever the truth of the matter, he could see she preferred this awareness, this mask. It fit her to perfection, offered her a face she could show to the world without blushing. Not grotesque, or blue, or imperfect; it was the kind of face he might have wished for himself, if the tables were turned. Maybe the very reason he wanted to empty the goblet first?
“So now what?” he asked, miserably. “Are you going to bring it to him? Open the portals? Destroy the world?”
“Only humans long for destruction,” she said, coldly. “Turold, you don’t understand. And how could you? You’ve only been alive this long, the blink of an eye, while I’ve been here since the beginning. The four of us: The Wind, The Flame, the Smoke, the Storm.”
When Turold responded blankly, she continued: “His Messengers, his children. I was the Wind, and I carried his message across the world, and on my heels came the Flame, bringing light and knowledge. Only when they didn’t listen, when they threatened our dominion, did I summon the others: the Smoke, and if necessary, the Storm.”
The names gave him a jolt of recognition. He had run across them before, mere threadbare legends, and then typically in the most moth-eaten tomes. Rumors about the fabled henchmen of the god, four chosen warriors who were summarily defeated by the sorcerers of old. They brought fear and pestilence, warfare and disease; their god was destroyed so that humanity might live. It was the very foundation of modern magic, assuming such legends held any truth beyond the metaphor.
“The god gave your people magic and civilization,” she continued, solemnly. “In return, you gave him the one thing he wanted, the one thing he required of this world: longevity. He wanted to establish a world that would go on for countless ages, breeding people and stories and wisdom. In all his previous worlds, he could never plant a seed to outlive him. Only on this one.”
“So why did he try to kill us? Didn’t live up to his legacy? Weren’t obedient enough, is that it? Had our own thoughts?”
“If you call slavery and sacrilege disobedience, then yes, that was your flaw,” she countered. “That was not the legacy he envisioned for his inheritors. So he gave you a warning…or rather, we did. And you rebelled. By this time you had grown too powerful to ignore, even for us. So we had to choose: to destroy your race utterly, or to retreat and wait in the shadows.”
“The legends say you were defeated, that you abandoned the god to his fate,” Turold said.
“Of course they do—you wrote them. But the god agreed with our plan. So we wrote the Codex, hiding it away among mankind, for a future age to discover. When they did, we would return from exile and restore the god to life, to bring this world to judgment.”
“What…judgment?” he asked.
“We leave for the god to decide.”
Turold reeled from the information, all of which contradicted the Annals, the Histories, even the merest anecdotes written in the Marginalia. It couldn’t be true, not all of it…but in that case, which part? Had mankind disappointed the god, betrayed his wisdom? Had the four henchmen tried to bring us to heel in order to save us from destruction? It was certainly possible. But did that necessarily make Giacinta ‘the Wind,’ a divine being resurrected to restore the god—and the devil knows what else—to power? No, that he couldn’t believe; he refused to believe it.
“I don’t have time to explain the rest, but you’ll come to understand it, as will the others,” Giacinta said, as if taking her leave. “Don’t try to resist us. Just try to understand. One day, you will.”
She turned to go, moving with incredible speed and purpose. Indeed, she was nearly at the door before he could spit the words out of his mouth: “wait a minute! Why me?”
She paused at the threshold, her figure cloaked in blackness.
“You said you knew me! What do I have to do with any of this? Why did you need me at all?”
“Because you’re the one who could do what Sir Otrygg couldn’t. We saw it long ago.”
He tried to stop her but she vanished at the threshold, replaced by a swarm of guards bursting into the room, shouting, “he’s here, your grace!” They rudely seized Turold and clapped him in chains. As he looked past them, still desperate for a last glimpse of Giacinta, Lord Gramsteed entered the room, his face grimly triumphant.
“Ah, so it is you, Turold. If only you’d stayed put, or had the good sense to choose the right allies. But good sense was never your strong suit. Your Master taught you well.”
