On the morning of the second day after their return to Dor Dür Devrik left the keep just as the sun was beginning to lighten the eastern sky. Raven alone saw him off in that pale gray light – he’d said his good-byes to his friends the night before, and kissed his sleeping son in the pre-dawn darkness. Of them all, only Raven really understood this need of his to get away, to find his center again.

Actually, she seemed to understand it better than he did. He’d expected some resistance to his leaving again so soon, and alone – honestly, he’d expected fireworks. But she had been quietly understanding of his need to pursue what she called his “vision-quest.” Young men, and sometimes young women, of her tribe went off alone into the trackless marshland when they came of age, to find their spirit animal, the guiding spirit of their destiny, and gain their true name. She had done it herself at age 16, as had her brother, Black Hawk. Bird guides were strong in her tribe of the Rethmani, and most particularly in her family…

“You are old for a vision-quest, my love,” she had said the night before, after they had finished making love for the second time, half teasing and half serious. “I know your people’s ways are different than mine, but I think that your kind need a guiding spirit no less.

“I’m not sure how your people find it… in these schools you’ve told me of? Or in the wisdom of your elders? But whatever the method, I think you have not found yours… and it is time you did. Not just for your sake, but for our son’s. Solitude is the best way to hear the inner voice, my heart, to let the spirits reveal what makes your soul resonate in harmony with the All, rather than in opposition to it.”

Not how he would have said it perhaps, but her words had struck a chord within him. They had matched his own inchoate sense that he needed to get away, to free himself of all distractions so that he could find his balance again, discover the core of who he was, and finally seize control of his own destiny.

So it was with his wife’s blessing that he now climbed the gentle slope of the Elf’s Mound to the Gate that would take him… where? In his talks with Raven he had found that what his heart most wanted was to see the lands of his mother’s people. He had grown up on the tales she and his aunt had told of the wild, cold northlands, of viking raids and mysterious fjords, of waterfalls and glaciers… but as vividly as these pictures lived in his mind, he had never actually seen them with his own eyes.

“Perhaps that is at the heart of your troubles,” Raven had said, frowning thoughtfully, when he spoke of his desire. “You were born of two worlds, but you have ever only truly known your father’s world. It may be that whatever spirit is meant to guide you lays waiting in your mother’s homeland.”

But it seemed cheating somehow, using the Nitaran Gates for this journey… this vision-quest. Even if he knew for sure how to reach the northlands, which he didn’t. No, he would travel the long way, for was not the journey equally as important as the destination? Especially when you weren’t really sure what the destination was, precisely… beyond peace of mind.

With a wry grin, he summoned the energies required and opened the Gate to Shalara…

•••

From Shalara he had immediately booked passage on the next ship leaving for Olvânaal, a fast merchantman named Swiftwing. He had considered trying to commandeer the Fortune’s Favor, which was in port and preparing for a run to Fordym, in Valtira, but decided against it. Aside from having given up any right to do such a thing when he opted not to buy into ownership of the vessel with his friends, the whole point of this exercise was to get away from all he knew… and while Captain Levtor and the crew were not close friends, he knew them, and they him, all too well.

The Swiftwing left Shalara on the morning of 29 Emblio, sailing upstream on the wide waters of the Silvereye River, as Devrik stood at the rail and watched the city he now called home recede into the distance. As the last tower slipped into the summer haze, he felt a weight he had hardly been aware of lift from his shoulders. A least a little bit…

With a fair wind behind her, it took three days for the Swiftwing to reach the Western Locks of the Arakez Canal, three days spent in blissful silence except for the calming sounds of wind and water. Even the calls and chatter of the crew were no more than a meaningless background noise, like the babbling of a brook.

He had made it clear to Captain Alina Boreg, a tough, gray-haired, square-faced woman in her mid-fifties, that he wished to be left alone, and she had made sure her crew respected that. She had also invited him to dine with her each evening, a courtesy he had reluctantly accepted. Thankfully, he discovered that her own taciturn nature and disdain for small talk made the meals a quiet pleasure in their own right.

But now, as he stood at the starboard rail, he felt his carefully cultivated calm begin to slip away. The locks stood on the edge of the ruined city of Xaranda, and as the vessel rose, so too did his suppressed roil of memories, fears and suffocating rage. It was only a few kilometers from here that things had begun to fall apart, it seemed to him, and barely half a month ago. Where he had first met Farendol… and an Elemental Great Beast… a Beast of Fire…

It came to him then, suddenly, that it was his power over fire that was at the heart of this inner turmoil, whatever Raven thought about his heritage, his parents. He had been born with the power, it was a part of him, but it had brought him more trouble than joy so far. And worse, it seemed to be the focus of these damn prophecies about his destiny, and his son’s. Perhaps life would be better if he could snuff out the flame…

Kalos knew, he was more conflicted than ever after his brief but intense possession by the ancient Telnori mage Yimara Goldentouch, the soul of Zhezekar, the Great Elemental Beast of Fire. He had accepted her gift of knowledge, in the hope that it would help guide him to the right path, the Path of Light that everyone spoke of as one of his possible destinies.

He wondered now if that had been a mistake. All it had done so far was cloud and confuse his mind with memories and knowledge not his own… and he was certain that it was this very confusion that had allowed his mind to be so easily deceived by the Demon Lord Haranol. The reason he had been tricked into murdering a good man… one who had lived more than 600 years and might have lived two or three hundred more… cut down by Devrik’s own treacherous hand…

He cut off the thought, the same circling möbius strip of recrimination that had been playing in his mind since the event, and sought to regain his recent calm. And in that moment he made a fierce vow to himself that he would not to use his Yalvan powers on this journey, no matter the provocation. He would live or die by his sword alone on this “vision quest!”

•••

The transit of the canal took two days and two more sets of locks, days Devrik spent mostly in his small berth below decks. The edges of the Blasted March rolled by to the south, and he had no desire to spend any more time looking at that desolation. Nor wondering what the thrice-cursed Demon Lord might be getting up to out there…

Once the ship had cleared the Eastern Locks, however, he again spent most of his time above decks, enjoying the late summer sun on Lake Benil, and the rushing trip downstream on the River Ansil. By sunset on 5 Kilta, as the Swiftwing tied up at a dock in the city of Lairial, he had once again recovered a measure of peace and inner balance.

Devrik spent that night ashore, and all the next day, enjoying the sights and sounds of the historic and tragical city. He had always heard that the monument to Talorin Silvereye was beautiful, if not as massively impressive as the one in Azdantür, and seeing it he had to agree.

A serene pavilion of white marble and silver filagree, set in the center of an artificial lake and reached by a single low bridge, the monument referenced the the Rape of Lairial not at all, not even the Lairialan Odyssey. Instead it held a simple statue at its heart, of the famous Gray Mage surrounded by a score of children, water flowing from his hands to cascade among the smaller figures and surround them all in a circle of protection. Devrik was unexpectedly moved.

The Swiftwing sailed on the evening tide, and Devrik stood at the rail watching the lesser moon rise in the east and cast its pale violet light over the white walls of the receding city. Five hundred years ago a handful of boats had fled the burning, dying city, and the hundreds of children aboard them must have looked back much as he did now… if with very different emotions… while Talorin raised both the fog that shielded them and the winds that bore them away from all they had known. And on to safety…

Over the next five days Devrik found himself beginning to relax more, and by the time the ship sailed into the harbor of Poldarik on the afternoon of 11 Kilta he had become quite friendly with some of the crew, to the point of exchanging fighting tips, land vs. sea fighting. Erol had taught him a trick or two about ship fighting too, of course, but his mind quickly shied from thinking of his friend and his… current condition…

As soon as the vessel was warped in and tied off, Devrik took his leave of Captain Boreg and her men. Hoisting his light pack, settling his battlesword firmly in its sheath on his back, he strode up the hill toward the walled town of dark gray stone and black shingled roofs, the wooden beams of their peaks carved in the likenesses of dragons, wolves and ravens…

•••

A tenday later, Devrik stood in a clearing in the Forest of Herka Thûm, near the northern shore of the Long Lake, and heaved a sigh of weary resignation. When it was time to return home, he wouldn’t be going by way of Poldarik… killing one of the ruling lords of the land, however minor, however deserving of death, and however fair the fight, would not sit well with the other Olvânaali overlords, since it had been done in defense of the oppressed local Tarim folk.

He couldn’t really regret his actions, however… Gerik Hardalsig had been a brutal pig of a man, and his attempt to enslave the free Tarim clan of Rälum had been illegal even by the loose standards of his own conquering people. It was just a pity that, given how the always-restive relationship between the oppressed Tarim natives and their Skavarian-descended overlords had recently flared into open rebellion in some areas, Valkir Hardalsig’s peers were unlikely to be very understanding. Almost two hundred years had done little to truly integrate the two peoples, and it didn’t look to be starting now.

On his journey north to visit the thrandor of his mother’s family Devrik had guested at the small thrandor of Clan Hardalsig near the southern shore of the Long Lake, and been singularly unimpressed by his host and his fierce contempt for the local people. The man’s attitude certainly fit the pattern Devrik had noted soon after his arrival in Olvânaal, but seemed taken to an absurd extreme. Thus he’d been surprised when the Valkir had suggested that he should guest the next night at the steading of a Tarim neighbor across the lake, Clan Rälum.

The Rälum Chiefman, Hemsel, had been wary when the stranger arrived towards dusk, requesting shelter for the night, but the custom of guesting was strong and he would not lightly turn away a traveler, even a Skavarian such as Devrik obviously was. But during dinner Devrik won over his hosts with his tales of being raised in the western Lowlands, and had in turn been been deeply impressed by their kindness. As everyone relaxed and began to talk more freely, and he learned of the recent attempts by Clan Hardalsig to claim the Rälum as serfs, a claim rejected in the Clan Courts, he became increasingly uneasy.

Before retiring to his guest’s bed in the loft Devrik, after a brief internal debate over whether or not this constituted “using his powers,” had taken out his cards and laid down a reading… As a result, he and his hosts were able to ambush the attackers before they reached the steading in the dark hour before dawn.

Valkir Hardalsig had been shocked to find his plan apparently revealed, and outraged as only one who knows he is in the wrong can be. His fury at Devrik, to his mind a fellow Olvânaali who had betrayed him, was unbounded. He was practically frothing at the mouth when he’d accepted the traveler’s offer to settle the matter champion-to-champion in single combat.

The Valkir’s chief lieutenant seemed to think this was a bad idea, but a few fiercely whispered words from his lord silenced him. And a few minutes later, after Devrik had sent Hardalsig’s head flying from his shoulders, the man had obeyed his master’s final instructions and ordered his men to attack. But both Devrik and Chiefman Hemsel had been expecting treachery…

After the brief, bitter, fight, Devrik questioned the surviving lieutenant and discovered that Hardalsig had intended his former guest to be the perfect excuse to attack the hated Tarim steading – after the fact he would claim this foreign traveler had gone berserk and killed the household in their sleep, with the Valkir playing hero to ride in and succor the survivors. And not incidentally kill the berserk foreigner, of course. There might be suspicions, naturally, but with a fait accompli and none living to gainsay the tale, the result was unlikely to be challenged.

Now, as his hosts led off their prisoners and began discussing their next move, Devrik prepared to move on himself. He had been surprised at how much more he liked the Tarim folk of this land than his own supposed blood-kin; but as much as he hated the situation here, there was little he could do to change it. And the presence of a foreigner, maybe especially one with blood-ties here, could only complicate things.

As he hefted his pack and strode off into the dark tangle of the surrounding forest he began to wonder if he should continue on with his plan to seek out his relatives after all. He’d given his clan name (in retrospect a mistake, but who could have known?) and he didn’t want to involve his unknown family in a blood feud. Vendetta Law! By Kalos, what a mess that was – for all its flaws, the Republic was at least a land of proper laws. Even if they could sometimes be twisted by the rich and powerful, but when and where was that not true, in any system of Men?

His mind occupied with these dark thoughts, he followed the narrow forest track northwestward all that day, avoiding the few scattered thrandors he passed. He had decided he would camp from now on, rather than risk further local complications, at least until he neared the lands of Clan Askalan. As dusk began to fall, earlier than usual thanks to the dense canopy of the forest, he began to look for a suitable spot to make camp.

As he cast about he suddenly spied a fire flickering through the undergrowth, apparently in a small clearing some way off the trail. Warily he approached, sword loosened in its sheath but not drawn. If this fellow traveler appeared benign, well and good, but if not…

“Well don’t just stand there skulking in the shadows, Devrik,” the woman on the far side of the campfire called out dryly. “Come join me… the fire keeps the damn mosquitos off. And I think we have much to talk about, sister-son.”

With a start of recognition, Devrik stepped out of the trees and into the clearing. It had been almost 15 years, but he knew that voice as well as any other in the world, save perhaps his mother’s.

“Aunt Kathela? Is that really you..?” For a moment suspicion and renewed fear of deceiving illusions darkened his mind. With a laugh his aunt quickly dispelled both suspicion and fear – the story she told, about his 11th birthday and the scene she’d come upon behind the drying shed – well, he knew she’d never shared that tale, and he hastily acknowledged the fact before she reached its embarrassing conclusion.

“But Aunt, how came you to be here?” he asked, seating himself on a rock conveniently placed across the fire from the small dark haired woman. Dark hair now heavily streaked with gray he saw with a shock. “This is no chance meeting, I think.”

“We skalds seldom have chance meetings,” she laughed. “Indeed, some would argue that no meeting is ever by chance… as we are all ruled by Fate.”

“Fate! Feh! I’ve had enough of Fate, thank you,” Devrik barked a harsh, unsmiling laugh. “ I will be the master of my own destiny, not the plaything of others, not even the Immortals!”

“So say we all, at some point in our lives,” Kathela replied cooly, her own smile fading away. “So what brings you to that point, my sister-son? Tell me what the years have brought you, since last we met.”

Reluctantly at first, and then with growing abandonment as he lost himself in the telling, he recounted the last 15 years of his life since leaving his mother and aunt in Thurnok… the two years in his father’s home, the disdainful wife and the half-brother she eventually bore… the fires, the near deaths, the rescue and the scarring of his voice… the banishment to the decade of hell in the Chantry of Kerig… the few highlights of those years, the teachers Wendeth and Kelskon, fellow student Sarno Janir, and the ancient wise-woman Mataya… the time with the mercenaries…

His story grew more detailed as he spoke of the last year and a half… his friends in the Hand of Fortune… his wife Raven and his son Aldari… the dangers they faced, not least from those who sought to use his powers… the meeting with the Mad God, and the gift He gave… possession by an ancient spirit of Fire… and at last, his delusional murder of a friend, and the wall he seemed to have hit…

As he wound down there was silence in the little circle of light – night had fallen fully while he spoke. His aunt picked up a stick and stirred the fire to greater life before she spoke.

“So,” she said at last, gazing intently at him over the flames. “You blame yourself for being unable to resist the manipulations of one of the most powerful of the ancient enemies of our world, one even the Immortals themselves cannot destroy, but only contain?”

“Yes!” Devrik growled fiercely. “Everyone – you, the priests of Korön, Mataya, even the god Kalos – speaks of my great destiny, for either good or evil. And now my son is dragged into it as well, and yet no one is willing or able to tell me what exactly it all means, how I should choose one path over another!

“I have no desire to bring the world down in fire and flame, but if I can’t control my own mind, if I can be so easily manipulated, how can I hope to be its savior? No, it’s better that I remove myself from it all, retire with Raven and our son away from the world, and take control of my own destiny, Fate be damed!”

“And that, my beloved sister-son, is at the heart of your turmoil,” Kathela smiled sadly. “You believe that control is truly possible, that with enough will and determination a man can seize his future and bend it to his own will alone.

“But Devrik, I tell you that that is a fantasy, and a dangerous one. For we are all – men, women, Immortals, and even the demons – embedded in the World together and enmeshed in the Web of Fate, whether we will or nil. We are bound inextricably to one another, and there is no escaping that.

“You say you desire a simple life, removed from the larger concerns of the world… consider it, then, in smaller wise. Say it is your desire of a day simply to sit in a tavern and drink quietly… but another man takes offense at your presence for he hates red haired men, so he seeks to fight you. You have no control over his actions – you may choose to fight him, or not, but that choice is forced upon you. And whichever you choose, or even if you choose not to choose, there will be ramifications moving out like ripples in a pond. Ripples of consequence, as great for each non-decision as for each decision, and no man can see them all, nor even the Immortals themselves.

“That is the reality of the World, for we are merely parts in a greater whole, and the other parts will interact with us no matter our desires in the thing. The only choice we are given is how we react to what the World throws at us; no matter how constrained we may feel, there is always a choice, and it is ours to make alone.

“Even suicide does not remove us from the Web of Fate, for that too is a choice, and the consequences ripple out to impact others, and we may never fully know where or when or how. You worry that you will be used as a force for evil, for destruction, or that your son will be so used. But Devrik, I have known you most of your life, and I tell you, you need not fear your destiny, for your feet have long been on the Path of Light.”

“You knew me for the first twelve years of my life, Aunt,” Devrik said bluntly, but without rancor. “I was an unformed boy when last you saw me, and much has happened since then to form the man I am now.”

“Ah, my sister-son, I hesitate to tell you this,” his aunt said with a wry smile. “And yet… perhaps it’s best you see that not all illusions are evil.”

As he looked across the flames at her, Kathela’s face began to change, aging before his eyes, becoming a mass of wrinkles in which were embedded two bright green eyes and an almost toothless smile. Her hair lengthened and coarsened, turn white and flying out in a rats nest of tangles. In an instant she had become Mataya, the old crone who had lived in a crude hut in the woods outside Kerig and been his unofficial teacher of wisdom not offered in the chantry.

‘You were Mataya all along?!” he growled, torn between anger and a strange excitement. “Why did you… why didn’t you tell me–”

“I did it because I was concerned, after we heard of the fires and your exile to the chantry, of what path your feet might be set upon. I had laid a firm foundation, but only a foundation, in your youth. I wished to see that the work of building your house was well started, and I felt that was best done in disguise.

“And I left when I did, before your final year, because you were beginning to see through the illusion. Not fully, not then, but I could see it would not be long, and it were best you not do so, then. But now..”

And suddenly Devrik found that he could see through the illusion to the woman beneath. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You’re just letting me see through it –”

“No! Truly, I am not. You have a mind at least as strong as your body, Devrik, and such minds can build immunity to illusion and phantasms, once exposed to them. You had a powerful dose with that Demon Lord, and it has honed your native resistence. It will take work, and time, but you can strengthen your mind against false images… and take other steps as well.

“But it is not illusion or deception that is your problem now – it is your distrust of the Flame. Kalos has removed the phobia, true, and you have striven to suppress the ingrained, residual fear. But to fully become who you can be – I will not say who you should be – you must actively embrace the Flame! And I think I can help…”

She reached into the scrip at her side and pulled out a small vial, stoppered with a blue wax seal. Breaking the seal, she handed the vial across the flames to her nephew, who reluctantly took it. He stared dubiously at it, then at her.

“Trust me, Devrik. It will not hurt you, and it may well help you.”

Devrik considered for a moment, then with a quick motion he downed the contents. It tasted like bitter plum, with a smokey aftertaste. He waited expectantly, staring across at his aunt. He felt nothing.

“I don’t think-”

“Look into the flames!”

Kathela’s voice had taken on a deep, commanding resonance, and he automatically gazed down into the heart of the small fire – and suddenly it wasn’t a small campfire anymore, it was a bonfire, a blaze, a conflagration! And he was falling, falling into the flames, though he did not burn… he felt only a pleasant heat that beat upon him in rolling waves… and then he was standing in a place he’d been before, a vast cavern where flames rose from a great fissure… the place where he had met Yimara, in his possession by that ancient soul, the Flame at the Heart of the World…

She was not there now, but he felt the echo of her presence in his mind, and he looked again into the Flame… he saw the Chaos that was there, and it frightened him… but he continued to look, deeper, and suddenly he could see the patterns within the chaos… and going deeper still, chaos again seemed to be in ascendance… but within that chaos he again found structure and order… Chaos and Order, inextricably linked in an eternal dance, going deeper than any human mind could grasp…

He never fully remembered the totality of that vision, but when, after some timeless time he had returned to himself, and the small campfire in the heart of a dark forest, he knew that he had touched something Real. The fear was well and truly gone, and he knew that the Flame was his destiny after all, and that it would be on his terms and no one elses.

There was a reason there were two gods of fire, he thought, still gazing into the flames. Fire represented both destruction and creation, and both were equally true and eternally linked. Kalos was the Fire Creative, and Korön personified the Fire Destructive, and Devrik knew where his allegiance lay. He had long worshipped Cael, a fighting god and god of honor, but perhaps his true faith belonged with the Mad God after all… he had sought a spirit guide, and found that he’d already been given one in the form of Yimara.

He looked up then, half expecting his aunt to have vanished, but she was there, watching him intently. He didn’t try to explain what he’d seen, what he now knew, and she didn’t ask. She simply smiled when she saw the certainty in his eyes.

They made camp then, ate a quick meal, and retired to their bedrolls. They spoke no more of weighty matters, only of the small matters of family and daily life. Kathela was anxious to hear all he could tell her of his son, and of his wife, and he in turn was pleased to hear more of his mother than her terse letters usually revealed.

The next morning on arising, his aunt announced that she planned to accompany him to the Askalan thrandor, to make sure he got into no more trouble and that he received the proper welcome. When he expressed concern over the possibility of a feud with the Clan Hardalsig after his recent actions, she just smiled and said she’d see to it… by the time she was done, his own relatives would be willing to hang the deceased Valkir themselves!

Two days travel brought them to the ancestral lands of the Clan Askalan, and Devrik at long last met his northern family. With his aunt to guide him, a respected (and, he soon realized, somewhat feared) skald of wide repute, it all went fairly smoothly.

He met the uncle for whom he’d been named, and his three cousins, all of a similar age to himself, and visited the grave of Kathela’s twin brother Stavin, who had died the day after they were born. The younger of his uncles, Tynal, lived with his wife and three children on the coast four days hard riding north, so he only heard tales of them.

His grandfather Ronalt had died almost 30 years ago, but his grandmother Akio was still alive at 75 and ruling over her family with an iron will. She accepted this new grandson, whom she had only known of theoretically, with provisional wariness, but by the end of his visit had fully embraced him as a lost sheep of her flock.

“When you and your barbarian wife get tired of those crowded cities of the southern lowlands,” she told him as he took his leave of her on his final day, “you bring that great-grandson of mine back here – you’ll always have a place at your clan’s hearths.”

After all the goodbyes were said and gifts exchanged Kathela guided Devrik to a spot she knew of half a days ride east of the thrandor. There, in an open glen a waterfall tumbled over a short cliff into a small pool. Rough steps had long ago been carved into the stone wall, leading to a circle of partially tumbled standing stones near the edge of the stream.

“The closest Gate to the old homestead,” she said. “Memorize its pattern, sister-son, if you wish to more easily return here someday. And now, I leave you to find your way back to your wife, son and friends, while I go about the land and make sure your heroic muddling about with the Tarim and their troubles comes out properly…”

She hugged him then, and without another word strode off into the dappled shade of the forest. When she and vanished from sight Devrik turned reached out with the Sight to find the Nitaran hole in the fabric of space-time, and give it a certain, specific, wrench…

He stepped between the standing stones and vanished.