But as he rode east, a handful of horses separated from a copse of evergreens, and he recognized a gray standard he’d not expected to see.

When the riders approached, Grymlis rode at the head of them. Behind him, resplendent in the uniform of the Gray Guard of P’Andro Whym, rode five men he recognized and three he did not. The silver buttons upon their jackets cast back the red light of the rising sun, and a sudden rising breeze caught the edges of their standard and unfurled the crest of Windwir onto the morning air.

“Father,” Grymlis said, saluting when they were within earshot.

Petronus sighed. “I thought I ordered you back to the Ninefold Forest, into Rudolfo’s service?”

Grymlis smiled. “You did, Father.”

Petronus looked over the men. The new ones were younger and had the look of the Delta upon them. “You’ve no doubt heard about my present situation.”

Grymlis nodded. “I have,” he said. “And welcome back.”

Yes. He’d paid for his crimes with his life and then had his life handed back to him. He’d been made a spectacle, part of a story that would be told from town to town, city to city, in hushed tones and wonder, lending credence to the Y’Zirite Gospel. More than that, he also suspected he’d been brought back to force Jin Li Tam into a corner, and that frightened him more deeply than even his own return from the dead. Seeing the power of the Y’Zirites’ blood magicks manifested by Petronus’s resurrection, she had begged an ancient foe for the life of her child and it had been granted.

It was the beginning, he feared, of greater darkness in the land of his birth and first life.

Still, circumstances demanded that he leave and do quietly what could be done offstage and away from the eyes of the north. He realized then that Grymlis was speaking, and he forced his attention back to the old Gray Guard captain.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “My mind wandered.”

“Understandable,” Grymlis said. “I was telling you that there are others, as well, who will meet us at the Keeper’s Gate.”

Petronus felt his eyebrows furrow. “Others?”

“Androfrancines are no longer welcome here,” Grymlis said. “They killed the few that remained in the Summer Papal Palace. Caravans en route to Rudolfo’s forests have been attacked-again, Androfrancines massacred and left unburied for the crows. The only place untouched has been the Ninefold Forest, but some of us believe it’s only a matter of time before that changes. And now, the Gypsies owe a debt to these Marsher heretics.” He shifted in the saddle. “I’ve word out of our exodus; we’ll wait a week at the Keeper’s Gate for any others who would join us.”

At one time in his life, Petronus would have been angry at the disobedience of his orders, at the assumptions and actions being taken by the man before him. But the events of recent weeks had shown him that life was a nonmetrical song at times, one that went where it needed to for the melody without respect for the rhythm of history and tradition. Truly a canticle that one danced to as best one could. He would trust Grymlis to dance it, and he would not isolate himself from those who chose exile with their fallen father over a hidden life in a land that had turned on them so utterly in such a short time. Rudolfo’s kindness notwithstanding, he saw a day coming when no Androfrancine would be suffered to live in the Named Lands. And more than continuing, he feared the pieces had been set to this board in such a way that the Y’Zirite resurgence would not just survive but thrive in the rich soil of desolation prepared for it.

Finally, he nodded to Grymlis. “Then we will wait there for them.” He looked to the other men. “We will carve a home in the Churning Wastes, and we will offer ourselves to Rudolfo as his eyes and ears in that place.”

And we will find a way to undermine those tangled and bloody roots that threaten to choke our light.

Petronus touched the scar at his throat briefly, then touched his breast. Then, without looking back, he whistled his horse forward and rode east beneath the red fist of the rising sun.

Neb

Neb let the winds of the Churning Wastes move over him where he lay and turned himself again so that his other ear pressed to the cold iron cap.

Renard snored gently at the edge of the clearing, weary from the jostling ride he’d made. But Neb had not been tired. The canticle would not let him sleep. He’d lain awake here in this place for a night and a day, listening to the song and working through the ciphers in his mind.

It was nonmetrical, and the hands that plucked at the harp strings moved with a precision that he could hear clearly. It played and it played, with no beginning and no ending that he could discern, though he knew it had to have both.

And when the moon had risen that first night and the song’s strength increased, he’d found that the nuances of note and measure concealed numbers and those numbers coincided with the notches and dials and levers of the Rufello locks upon that great iron cap.

Still, he had not known how it was that he could hear them. During the daylight hours Renard had joined him but heard nothing, not even the faintest note of the song, when he stretched himself out upon the ground alongside Neb.

So Neb kept at his work and left the Waste Guide to his rest. Soon enough, the Gypsy Scouts would reach this stopping point along their way to Sanctorum Lux, and Neb did not want to be here when they did. He wanted, by that time, to have the source of the dream within his hands. They would go north to Renard’s people so that the Waste Guide could heal. And while he healed, Neb would find this dream the metal man spoke of.

He sighed and pressed his ear even closer to the iron. The numbers were hard to find, but they were there. Already, he’d puzzled out four of six lock ciphers. And now, his fingers found the fifth and worked it, too. Deep inside the iron lid, he heard the clacking and ticking of gears that moved a bolt aside.

He paused there and remembered the metal man’s words. The last cipher is the first day of the Homeseeker’s Advent.

He knew that one without listening to the song, but he’d still saved it for last. Sometimes Rufello’s locks had to be worked in sequence.

Biting his lower lip, he calculated the numerical date of his birth based on the Whymer calendar and twisted it into that last dial. When he finished, he heard nothing below him-no gears, no raspy sliding of the bolt. Furrowing his brow, he rolled onto his back.

He’d lost track of all time here. It had been daylight the last time he’d paid any attention to his surroundings. It was nightfall now and the sky was clear. Stars throbbed above him, their cold light casting an eerie glow upon the mountains that surrounded him.

It hadn’t worked. But why?

He tried again, but with the same result.

And then the moon rose and the song reached its crescendo with the rising. He stared at it, heavy on the horizon, and wondered at the size of it. He could see the lines where land ended and sea began and, squinting, he could even see the man-made line of the Moon Wizard’s tower, desolate and abandoned upon that poisoned and empty world that rose above them to remind them of that long-ago war that had killed the last of the Younger Gods who huddled afraid upon that blue-green rock.

Neb started. Of course.

He knew now, and he recalculated the number, not by the Whymer calendar but by an older one that had gone out of use. A calendar measured by different landmarks in time than those of P’Andro Whym and the disciples who gathered and shepherded the light along with the orphans of a broken world.

When he converted the date of his birth into the ancient numerology of the moon calendar of the Wizard Kings, he heard the movement of grinding gears as the last bolt slid free.