Ingenious,” I replied. “I wish we would have thought of
that.”
Jerem Cozak
shrugged. “There would have been no time. The Augers advanced too quickly here.
But Earth had warning.”
He did not
elaborate. “Will we be?” I asked. “Engulfed in flame?”
He smiled.
“We will be taking the strongest citadel in the world, the greatest
city-fortress Thaeron has ever known. And at any time, I would rather be
resistant to fire than not.”
I had to
laugh at that. “Just so,” I said. “Perhaps we will not have succeeded in any
other way.”
His eyes
found mine in the darkness. “Now you begin to understand.” We watched the flames for a while. He passed
the Swarm through the flames again. If there were fewer casualties falling from
his hand, I could not quite see it.
“I no longer
feel as I once did,” I said at last. “Ever since we took the Profuse Hand
whenever we rode into battle the world turned beautiful and we rode or marched
as one. But now in Nesechia we have fought together more than ever, and I only
feel the other way. There is a great weight inside my chest that threatens to
tear it open. I feel it more and more, though the danger is behind me. But I
should not, because it is the feeling that men call dread, which only fears the
future.”
Jerem Cozak
nodded. “The ones who come are dread themselves, and they are nearly here. We
will always be in danger until they and all their kind are gone.”
“But who?”
I said. “Who are these creatures? What do they want? Are they pets of the
Augers or what?”
He smiled
and pulled a brand from the fire. The end smoked, but had not yet caught. “This
is Being,” he said. “Everything that is has this property. Being claims space and
time for itself. Rocks, plants, and objects each have this property. Beneath it
there is nothing.”
No comments:
Post a Comment