Bron stops us as we turn a corner. “We’ll have to go back around.”

A mass of broken wood, brick, vehicle, and other debris rises like a wall two blocks ahead. It is not a result of the explosion. It is manmade, with men standing on top, meat knives in their hands.

Bron tries to herd me back the way we came. I resist. “The paths are blocked that way too. We’ll go over.”

“You don’t know what these men want.”

“Not yet.” I start forward.

“They built that wall for a reason,” Nyasha says.

The men spot us. There are five of them, and they come alive as I approach. One is obviously the leader. He wears a suit and tie, almost spotless, while the others wear dirty pants and button-up shirts. This was a wealthier part of town. The amount of shattered glass is staggering.

“Do you worship Elthor?” the leader calls.

I expected any number of demands and questions, but I did not expect this.

“I worship no one.”

“Then you are a fool.”

The words enrage me. Like a dagger, they cut me because they are false and untrue. And they touch me upon a sore spot because, despite the lie, I fear that I am a fool in ways the man cannot possibly understand.

“A fool? I have changed the world. My guidance lifted men out of poverty. My pursuits delivered power to the hands of the people. I–I, myself–confounded men far more intelligent than you could hope to be. What is this, a wall? It’s a monument to a world without me. You’ll die in filth and darkness without me. What is Elthor? A statue? A fairy tale?”

“He is the bringer of magic.” The leader is trembling. His words are powerful, deeply believed. He has transformed his anger into eloquence. “He gave the gift of magic to men, to Thyr and Yeva, to our ancestors.”

“And now–poof!–he’s taken it away. How nice. I’d like to spit in his face.”

I glance at Bron, who waits at my side now, warning him to stay out of it. He’ll keep Nyasha leashed, too.

“The Cataclysm was a warning. He is angry with us. We have forgotten him and replaced him with men. The Kyzers went too far, claiming to be gods. We must return to true worship.”

I want to keep talking with this man for hours. His words fall black and spiteful in my soul, and I relish them. I want to spar with him; I want to vivisect his beliefs until he forsakes everything he builds his life upon. And I will be happy.

“He demolished the entire world for one family? Is that what you believe?”

“Thyrion ruled the world and the Kyzers ruled Thyrion. No more. We will purge the unbelievers and rebuild in the power of Elthor’s might, unified and loyal.”

“And Dracon?”

“He is a pawn of the Kyzers and must be destroyed.”

“And us?”

“If you persist in your unbelief, your bodies will join the earth.”

Bron grabs my shoulder. “We must go.”

I shake him off. “I persist,” I say. “Nothing can convince me of a supreme being. If he exists, he maimed me. He murdered me. He slayed the world. No–no, never.” I grin madly. “Come down and get me.”

Bron’s arms are around my waist. He lifts me, and I scream, pounding him. I crane to see the man upon the wall. He motions, and one of his fellows hurls a spear at us. It is crudely made, a knife tied to a stick. It has no chance of reaching us. I laugh. I am sick with triumph. What fools! They have no weapons, no organization, just a lie, a belief they cling to because they must.

What sad, pitiful people.

I finally recover my senses. My exuberance is fast fading. “Let me down,” I say irritably, clawing at Bron with my good hand. I try to kick him where it hurts with my prosthetic leg, but I cannot manage the angle. “Down, now!”

He obeys. In the end, he always obeys.

“Let’s go,” I say. “We’re wasting time.”

I replay the incident in my head, savoring the man’s absurd words. We do not have this trouble in Jalseion. We have moved beyond mythology. A few among the Select have religious leanings, but they are based in philosophy and so-called spiritual aspects of the quantifiable world. I do not talk of the masses, of course. They have always been more superstitious than the intelligentsia. I have read the studies.

In less than an hour, I am proved right.

“Is it impossible for Elthor to exist?” Bron asks.

I do not even bother answering him.

“Papa always said the priests were corrupt,” Nyasha says. “The state supports them. They are politicians and government workers, that’s all. High Priest Pelag was a mouthpiece for Thorynn, that’s what Papa said, leading people astray. It’s just another way of controlling people.” And she looks at me. What does she know of Jalseion? Nothing.

“She’s right, Bron,” I say. “Even you can’t believe those men were sane.”

“Not those men.” He turns his head, just a bit, as if thoughts flow better at that angle.

“But?”

“You were healed, Calea.”

“I told you. It was the effect of residual magic.”

“The steps were there. Why should they be there?”

“They didn’t appear for us. They were always there. We just re-discovered them.”

He is shaking his head now. “My mother believed.”

“Well, then. That settles it. Your mom says and her dad says. I prefer to study things in a bit more detail to discover the truth, but if that’s what works for you….”

Bron stops. I don’t wait for him.

“You don’t know what’s happening either,” he says. “No one does. Isn’t it possible?”

I turn around. “Possible? Yes. True? No. We live and die on our own, Bron. Each one to himself.”

He meets my eyes, and for one of the first times in my life, I see anger there. “That’s not what I believe.”

“What do you believe, Bron? That Elthor founded the most corrupt government on earth and blessed it?”

He does not answer. There is something moving deep within this rock of a man, something fundamental shifting. I am almost afraid of him. Whatever I think of him, I know I am safe when he is near. But if something changes….

“We are not our own,” he says. “I believe that. I’ve chosen that. You know that’s what I’ve chosen.” He takes a deep breath. “Let’s go. We’ve a long way to go.”

*     *     *

We are near the Central District when we finally settle in for the night. It’s just a corner of a collapsed building, a triangle of space we make by pushing rubble to the side. There’s little light, only what the moon provides. The night rumbles and grumbles, man and animal and rock muttering together. Tomorrow, we reach the Library. Tomorrow, I drown in words, delirious.

Dinner is quiet. We remove to our areas and make the best of it. I lie on my back, stiff, arms at my side, meditating on the continual aches.

I cannot remove the memory from my head. I am in the empty well, and I am dying. I am weak, so weak. I can feel my strength slipping, my blood leaking. I am drifting to everlasting sleep. To nothingness. To the end of all things.

And I am terrified. I have made peace, of sorts, with my arm and leg. But I still have my mind. I still have me. What else is there? If I were to lose even that…. I cannot linger on it.

I remember thinking that night that I would sell the world, all of it, everyone in it, just to stay alive.

But why? What use am I? I remember what I told Bron, because I had no one else to tell. “So little,” I confessed. “So useless.”

Less now. Utterly useless.

I’m not worth the air I breathe. But I will take it, squeeze my lungs full of it, and so damn myself ever more.

I am beyond sleep and I am beyond tears.

And so the night passes.

The night passes before my unclosing eyes. When I sense the first graying of day, I tell myself to rise. My single thought has writhed and burrowed deep, unearthing nameless filth and strange debris. It has given me a thread of hope, a sliver of purpose. But it is enough.

Some time after my first will to rise, I sit up. I find my feet. My body aches–my back, my hips, my legs. There is pain behind my eyes.

I enter the room. Bron is asleep in the armchair, Nyasha upon the couch. If Bron had not pushed the bookshelf in front of the door, if I could move it without waking them….

Bron’s body is heavy, his arm hanging limply over the edge. I have never seen him so deeply at rest. I am almost at a loss to remember ever seeing him so much as lounge on a sofa.

Nyasha stirs a little, turning to get comfortable. She fits nicely on the couch. I’ve never seen her in a house, only in the Medical Sanctuary and the wilderness. Somehow, I’ve conceived her as some sort of wild creature, like the street kids that roam the poorer Sections of Jalseion, yet here I can almost imagine her in the kitchen, helping her mother with breakfast.

I’ve been told young women do such things.

If I were a kind person, I would let them sleep. I would return to my room and wait for them to wake.

“Get up, you two! Wake up! Do you plan to sleep all day?”

It gives me cruel pleasure to scream at them. I have been unable to sleep; why should they?

Bron is awake in an instant. He takes in the room, the time, my demeanor in a moment. He waits for my next demand. Nyasha sits up, bleary-eyed and sour.

“We’re going to the Imperial Library.”

Nyasha yawns. “Now?”

“Why?” Bron asks.

“Why? Isn’t it obvious? The central question–the only question that matters–is, why did magic disappear? I will discover the answer. All other pursuits are petty digressions. The history of mankind has fundamentally changed, and we are fools for moving on as if it does not matter. The Imperial Library is the largest collection of research in the world. That is where I will begin.”

“Maybe someone has already figured it out,” Nyasha says.

“Doubtful. I am perhaps the foremost living expert on the nature of magic. Someone here in Thyrion deeply desired my knowledge. I am essential to understanding what has happened. There is a possibility it can be reversed.”

Bron nods. I don’t know what it means, whether he agrees or whether he simply accepts that he must. “It is a good plan,” he says. “In a few days, we will make our way. First, we must–”

“No! Now! We go now, today.”

Bron bows his head meekly. Nothing makes me angrier. “The city is tearing apart at the seams,” he says. “I heard it yesterday. There have been skirmishes. There may be civil war in the streets soon.”

I laugh. “War? It’s a Thyrian pastime. I don’t care.”

“It’s not safe.”

“The mountains weren’t safe.”

“Exactly. We met with trouble in a place no one lives. Tens of thousands live here in fear and turmoil. Give me a day to determine the best path, find the places the army has secured.”

“Nyasha, you know the city. You show us the way.”

She rubs her face. She’s exasperated? “We’ve done this all before.”

It takes me a moment to understand. “These aren’t the Burnt Mountains.”

“No. I knew that path better. I’d listen to Bron.”

I look from one to the other. They have no necessity to move. I do. We are separated by a gulf. “Bron, move this bookshelf.”

He looks at me, thinking in his slow, slow way.

“Now, Bron.”

“I won’t let you go.”

I begin to move it myself, awkwardly. I close my eyes with the strain, letting my emotions rush up against my closed lids.

“Calea, stop.”

I turn on him. “No!” I scream. “No! I won’t stay here.”

“I can stop you.”

I have never heard such words from him. They are firm, like a hand gripping my wrist. I can barely whisper my response. It is cold and low and sharp. “You will not.”

There is much more I want to say, but I see he understands. More than anyone else in the world, I think he can understand when he wants to.

He meets my eyes. There is pain in them. I drink it in. It resonates with me. Though I am filled with sorrow, it longs for more and drinks deeply of whatever fount of suffering I find. He steps forward; I step back. He holds up his hands. “I will come.” More words are on his lips, and I wait, looking into that face that seems to reflect my agony. Very softly, they come: “We cannot keep living this way.”

“I know.”

Yes, I know.

*     *     *

We raid the apartment, despite Nyasha’s mild protests and Bron’s reluctance. It offers little enough, though we restock some food and acquire a few other supplies.

The sun simmers just above the broken teeth of the cityscape when we reach the street, rodents scurrying from us. Men look down on rats and insects, but they survive when man does not. Religion, and even science, tell us that bettering our nature is necessary to improve our lives; perhaps, however, it is necessary to be degraded to thrive in disaster. Perhaps the vermin shall rule the earth.

So run my thoughts as I tromp down the street, not quite balanced. What am I but a rat, but a beggar, but half a woman pretending to choose the righteous path? Revive magic, save the world! A vile lie, but a lie I embrace. I will play the hero. I will act the just judge, knowing I am swayed by every desire and petty petulance.

I need the Library so I can hide.

And so I walk as fast as I can. My thoughts outrun me.

*     *     *

The path isn’t straight. It never is.

I don’t know why we turn and weave. When I demand an explanation, Bron gives some excuse about soldiers or rubble or how some man who used to repair government radios said something I don’t bother to listen to.

I am feverish in my haste. I hardly notice the city changing. I look up and find myself surrounded by destruction. Next I rise from my thoughts, a plaza, darkened by fire, but mostly intact. I have learned to walk long distances the past weeks, and I mean to put my experience to work.

Nyasha is skittish. I notice that much because she is like a fly hovering over me, darting one way, then the next. “I can’t believe it,” she whimpers, looking at how the buildings lie flat on their faces. How wrong she is. It doesn’t take effort to believe what’s right in front of you. The problem is most people ignore reality for some imagined version in their head.

I let the thought go–I dare not apply it too closely.

At noon, Bron forces me to eat. We sit in the collapsed structure of some government office, out of sight of the street. I can tell it is a government building by the reams of paper carpeting the floor.

We have seen a number of people, scavenging, repairing, sitting silently in the street as if waiting for something. They watch us. Sometimes they shout at us, warnings and questions. No one tries to stop us. That is one helpful thing about Bron’s bulk.

“How much longer?” I say, finishing the crackers we found in the apartment. Nyasha is searching through the papers. It’ll turn up nothing. Ninety-five percent of government work is useless, and the other five percent won’t be found in a place like this. I know. I was part of Jalseion’s ruling class.

“I don’t think we’ll make it today,” Bron says. “The destruction’s getting worse. You say the Library’s in the Central District. That’s near the well.”

“It’s only a city. We should be there any minute.”

“They had u-trains to move people,” Nyasha says, looking up. “And buses in all the streets. Papa said there used to be bicycles everywhere until ten years ago or so.”

Cars replacing bicycles. Because the battery became smaller and more efficient. In another ten, the world would have been changed forever. And I would have been responsible.

It decided to change without me.

Bron unlocks the door with skills I didn’t know he had and scouts the place before he lets us enter. It’s small, the second-story apartment above a small bicycle shop, one bedroom, one bath, a study, a kitchen. The shop is picked clean, but the apartment is clean, warm, and abandoned.

We shuffle around in the dim light through the window. Nyasha finds a pair of candles and a few matches. “Romantic, huh?” she says as she sets them on the coffee table. She sits on the edge of the couch, gazing at the pictures on the wall. A young couple smiles down at us. “I wonder where they are?”

“Dead,” I say.

“Maybe they were out of town.”

“Doesn’t matter to me as long as we can sleep here.” The cushions feel so good. I miss my own rooms, my own bed.

Bron locks the door, then places a small bookshelf in front of it.

We sit in silence. I lie down, close my eyes, and let the blood beat through my body. Nyasha moves over to the chair.

“The bed is yours, Calea,” Bron says.

“Did you and Nyasha decide that? You sleep there. It’ll keep your snoring behind a closed door.”

“It’s an offer, that’s all.”

“I’m sure Nyasha wants it. She’s a girl.”

“Let’s just admit we’re all too stubborn to accept it,” Nyasha says. “I’ll sleep anywhere.” Nyasha is obviously pleased with her grasp of the situation.

“Well, if you and Bron are too stubborn, fine. No use in a perfectly good bed going to waste just because you want to act like children.”

I am rather pleased with Nyasha’s expression as I stand. I was ready to fight tooth and nail to refuse, because I am not inferior to either of them and I won’t let them think I am. But a Select deserves better accommodations than those under her, and I need not let them think I am accepting a life at their level.

Or so I tell myself as I lie on the too-soft mattress, spread-eagle, alert and alone.

*     *     *

I cannot sleep. I am aware of everything, of every sound, of the creases of the sheets beneath me. Nyasha is speaking in the next room. “I know the general district where my dad’s relatives used to live. If we made it there, I’m sure we could ask around.”

Bron listens. He is considering events with his plodding brain. I already know what he will say in the morning. “Stay here. Let me look around.” He will concoct some scheme about blending in, making some money, earning our keep in some corner, and waiting. He won’t know what we’re waiting for. Just waiting, like he used to do when I spent hours in the lab, and he stood, guarding me from dangers that didn’t exist.

I lie awake, my mind turning over a single thought again and again. Nyasha has her search, however futile. Bron has his duty, however misdirected. And I have….

I have nothing.

When I wake up, why will I rise?

In a world of magic, I could study and create. My limbs didn’t hold me back; they were the focus of my studies.

Now I will be a beggar on a corner, living to eat another bite and sleep another night so that I can beg one day more.

Bron will drag me along, bleed for me in a world where bandits kill for food and rats fill civilized streets. Like a child he’ll carry me, as he did down the Well, as he did across the long miles to Averieom.

I can’t do it. I won’t do it.

I hate the bed. I twist and turn. I close my eyes and force myself to breathe slowly. I remain awake.

The thought remains, burrowing.

I will live like one dead. That is my future.

I stare at the ceiling for hours. The candles have been put out in the other room, and the city outside is dark. I hear the soft breathing of Bron and Nyasha; perhaps I only hear my own and pretend it is theirs.

A shift in the air draws my attention. I hardly know what it is. I listen intently.

“Bron?”

It is Nyasha’s voice, soft, a little scared.

He grunts. “I’m here.”

Nyasha settles again. I feel the house drifting to sleep once more. Then a whisper: “Bron, what will Calea do? She has nothing left.”

I wait. For thirty minutes I wait.

He doesn’t answer.

I am drawn out of myself for a time as we enter the city. I want to see how Thyrion is affected, how society works, how the people live. The Kyzers didn’t split the city into Sections as we do in Jalseion, but their management of the lives of their people was an experiment, no less than ours. Everything is experiment. In Jalseion, we just call it by its proper name and keep proper records of the consequences.

Large retailers and hotels and other commercial establishments occupy this area, obviously, as visitors often enter by this main road, and they seem to have largely escaped the explosion, if not the general disorder afterward. Some boarded windows, some crooked signs. The light is dim and fitful within. The thoroughfare leans heavily, sick and exhausted, but keeps its chin up. Because that’s what you do.

That’s what you do.

“We’re here,” I say. “Do you plan on walking until you hit a wall?”

“We need a place to sleep,” Bron says.

I point to the nearest hotel. “I believe they may take strangers in for a night. A hunch. Unless you’ve become a mountain man and prefer to sleep in an alley somewhere.”

He comes close. Nyasha hovers nearby. “They’ve guards there. See?” He points. “The place was probably expensive before. Now what’ll it cost? We’ve nothing to pay with. This place looks nice, but it feels like the Grunt. The people are frightened and suspicious.”

I summon Nyasha. “You’ve been here. Where do we sleep?”

The girl puts on a brave face, but I stop listening even before she speaks. She’s planning to invent lots of words for “I don’t know.”

“I won’t sleep outside again,” I say, making the obvious clear for Bron. “We’re not in the wild anymore. I won’t pretend we are.”

“Of course.” That hint of barely concealed irritation burns hotter than before, I’m sure. He will be done with me, sooner than later. Everyone is, eventually.

“Well?”

“We continue on. Into less frequented parts of the city. We’ll find a place.”

I nod. It’s not a plan. It’s floundering. But I take it. It’s movement, and I need movement. I want to end this journey; but I leap at the chance to delay that end just a little longer.

Bron didn’t need my permission. I see that. He waited for it, but he had made up his mind. I think he would have tried to coerce me, if I had not agreed. The fool.

I trudge forward, following.

When did I fall behind and he take the lead?

*     *     *

It is nearly dark. In a city of millions, the streets are dim and almost in shadow. There is rough laughter somewhere, a few houses full of rowdy entertainment. Elsewhere, hush and suspicion and the faint scurry of rats. I see their eyes in the alleys.

I ache terribly. My hip throbs. I soak the pain in, let my temper simmer, let my thoughts turn dark with the world.

Nyasha walks alongside Bron, like an only daughter with her father, speaking quietly. Bron deserves her. He can lick and wag his tail for her now, instead of me, and it’ll make them both happy.

“I’m not sure,” I hear her say. She’s lost, but she always finds it convenient to spin her ignorance in her favor. “I can’t see any of the landmarks in the dark.”

“We need to settle in somewhere,” Bron says. The man hardly speaks, and when he does, it’s to offer such wonderful nuggets of wisdom.

“You can find a house in the middle of nowhere, but in the greatest city on earth, now that’s really hard!” I laugh. I don’t know why.

Bron looks at me for a long time. Then he turns to Nyasha. “You don’t know the way?”

“No,” she admits.

He continues to stare at her, and she looks away.

“Nyasha,” he says. “Look at me.”

She does. Of course, she does. She would follow the idiot to the moon.

And he seems to wait for something.

The decision is made without thought. I start walking. I will leave them. Suddenly, all I want to do is leave them and walk into the night. It’s where I belong, where I long to be.

“Calea, wait.”

I halt at his voice, raging. “Enough talking. Let’s go.”

“Wait,” he says again. He’s pleading. Does he think that works on me?

“You can catch up if you want.”

I push on, boiling. I wipe my hand across my eyes.

I hope I never see them again.

I listen to their voices, to see what they will say about me, whether they will say anything about me. Bron’s voice is low, and I only catch some of it. He wants Nyasha to say something. And Nyasha answers in that desperate little voice she uses that reminds anyone, if they could possibly forget, that she’s just a hurt little girl.

I’ll never need to hear that voice again. She had her use. So did Bron.

So did I.

Bron is suddenly at my side. He touches my arm. His fingers are warm. It is almost as if he brings me back to solid ground, as if I had been slowly descending into the earth until his hand brushed me.

“I know where to go. This way.”

I follow, Nyasha at my side.

“I said I’m done with it,” I say again. The man is as dense as a block of iron. “I don’t need it anymore.”

Bron holds my crutch in his hand. “We still have two days walk to reach Thyrion.”

“Yes. And I will walk. I am no longer an invalid, much to your displeasure, I am sure. We are wasting time. Let’s go.”

He will not argue with me. It’s not his way, but I wish he would. “Nyasha, tell him I am perfectly capable of walking under my own strength.”

She looks at me, a bit wide-eyed. They are both waiting for me to explode, but I expect more spine from the girl. After a moment, she manages it: “You have gained much of the necessary strength, but the terrain is still rough. It would be best if you waited until we reach the city.”

“I disagree. Leave it here. I never want to see it again.”

“I’ll carry it,” Bron says.

“Leave it, Bron, or I’ll use it to expose what little gray matter you have in that thick head of yours.”

Nyasha blocks my path. I knew she would fight. “You may attempt to walk some distance. It’s a good next phase. But as your physician, I insist that we keep the crutch.”

“You’re not my physician. You’re an orphan pretending to be an adult.”

I walk away. I hear the soft sandy scuttle of the crutch landing on the ground. Whatever else happens behind my back, whatever looks and whispered conversations, apologies and demands, I don’t care. I started this journey with one objective–to reach Thyrion. I’m going to do just that.

And after…?

One thing at a time.

*     *     *

For nearly three weeks we have traveled alone, Bron, Nyasha, and I, almost as if we were the only people left in the world. But we aren’t. First, we met those men in the foothills, who tried to rob and kill us. And now, more.

They stream from Thyrion. As we cross the dry plains, we see them heading east and west, around the mountains, away from the city. And we see others approaching, caravans and families and tribes.

Who are these people and what do they want? Where are they going and what do they hope to do? It is a strange thing to watch these hundreds of faceless men. I am at a loss for understanding them. Do they believe that somewhere they might find a place they belong? If there is no magic, there is no place mankind can call home. His home will be the grave.

That’s what I envision as we approach the city: that Thryion is dead, just as Jalseion is maimed, and that the lines of men and women are visiting the coffin to see the empty body one last time.

I am one of them. I have come to pay my respects, not to the city of tyrants and warmongers, but to the power it represented. Thyrion did not thrive because of the Kyzers. It thrived despite them. Thyrion grew and expanded like a living thing because of the well, because of the immensity of the life at its center.

I have spent days of my life examining the scientific data from Thyrion’s well. The measurements and readings were daydreams, vistas of wonder that filled my head and even, I think, my heart, with something like joy. I prefer my lab to the world, but if there was one place in all the world I would leave Jalseion for, that was it. Even scientists are apt to name their theories and discoveries with poetic turns of phrase, and I always thought the Heart of Thyrion was a good name, if only “Thyrion” might be replaced with something more suitable.

The death of a person is nearly inconsequential. (That is my belief, and I will beat my emotions into submission.) Death is inevitable. It is the primary law of the universe. Everything goes to nothing. Magic was the one hope. Magic alone existed without decrease; magic alone powered the known world new each day, and would have without end.

Life without end.

The nearer I come, the more I am drawn within myself. Bron and Nyasha disappear. The city vanishes. I am alone with my thoughts. The fog has risen in my soul, and the rain is falling.

Select often make motions with their hands when manipulating magic. It is not necessary. Strictly speaking, it is utterly useless. And yet, the mind is aided by the physical motion; to force a smile is to eventually create the emotion.

Or so they tell me.

And so as I walk, step by step, I let myself realize what I have let myself ignore.

I am walking to my own funeral.

*     *     *

We walk the main road, the people crowding around us. They chatter and gossip as if the city were not in ruins, as if this were the festival Nyasha always talked of. Even she begins to talk, reminiscing about a city that no longer exists. I hear laughter, crude jokes, snatches of song, whispered debate, inane gossip, political diatribes, all of it distraction. Unknowingly, they skip along the surface of the world, fascinated by minutiae, using atrophied intellect in ignorant bliss.

They irritate me. And, deep down, I envy them.

I’m too intelligent to be unaware of my own motives, too brilliant to be blinded to my own true state of being. I lie to myself continually, knowing that I do it and why I do it. I let my emotions take charge as often as possible, fully cognizant of my irrationality.

Self-awareness is a curse, and I have found my ways of coping.

The irritation smoulders. Nyasha blathers. Bron, in his laconic way, directs me here, there, as if I had no sense. We are to enter by the checkpoint to avoid suspicion. I am irrepressibly sad, and still the people yell and sigh and fling themselves on one another in stupid foolishness.

The line stops. We wait as the guards let people through at their own discretion. Miles of city by which to enter, and we’re stopped.

“They say the Kyzers are dead,” Bron says softly. “General Dracon is now Emperor. I’m not sure he uses that title exactly, but that’s what most of the people are calling him.”

“What is that to me?”

“The city is in turmoil. Dracon rules in name, but not in fact. The city’s splintering. We’ll have to be careful.”

“What’s new?” Nyasha says, trying to lighten the mood.

The sun is lowering and my legs are aching. People, endless people, moving in, moving out. I want my lab. I want my suite. I want to be alone.

We’re at the checkpoint. The soldier in the black uniform looks me over with searching eyes. A shudder goes through me. Men in black, in my lab–a man in black, taking my limbs, the work of my life. I step up to him. “Like what you see?” I growl.

“Step back. Now.”

“No.”

“Calea–”

“Bron, stay out of this.” I stare down the soldier. “I lost my arm and leg to one of you. Let me into your city. See what happens.”

“We welcome all people to Thyrion, the Great City.” The rote is paper thin.

“You’ll be sorry you welcomed me.”

Then I scream in his face. It’s a roar, a raging blast. He steps back, hand grasping for the sidearm he used to carry.

It feels so good.

Bron grabs my shoulders as if to hold me back. I might have attacked if he had not, though I only realize it after the fact. I am shaking. I burn.

“Can we enter?” Bron asks.

Of course we can. All the dead are welcome.

I know what I said when I was in that hole in the ground. It was dark and I was cold and I was afraid. I told Bron I didn’t want to die. I know I said it. I had never admitted it to anyone else, but it is true, and it has been since that day so long ago, that day that hovers over my shoulder no matter how fast I run, that day when the Well sucked in my arm, my leg, like wet noodles, savoring the taste. I have always feared death. The fear has lived in my soul and I have kept it in its cage, snarling, licking the wounds it gives.

I don’t want to die, but I don’t know how to live.

“What about Remirion?” I can barely manage the words.

I cannot see Bron, I don’t want to see him, but I can feel him. He says nothing.

“We can go to Remirion,” I repeat. “The well there is in the mountains, secluded, isolated. Protected. It’ll still be there. It has to be.”

I look at the ground. My eyes are still full of tears. I am incapable of feeling anything but inexpressible sorrow. If my mind touches it, even delicately, I begin to unravel. I can’t understand it. I can only express it.

Bron still has not answered.

“We can go north, then,” I say, “to the outskirts of civilization. Surely some of the small wells survive.”

The girl’s hands are on my shoulder. They are warm and strong and gentle. Their motion is small, repetitive. I notice it suddenly. “Get off me!” I fling my crutch around at her. It slips from my hand and flies away.

Bron remains silent. Nyasha says nothing. I dare not look at them. But I force myself to look up, to open my eyes and look.

Thyrion, the Great City. Thryion, the Center of the World. Its Heart ripped out.

And mine.

The gash is enormous. It seems to open into the bowels of the earth. An empty container is so much larger than a full one, an open grave so much darker than a closed one.

“Where do we go, Bron? Where now?”

“Down.”

“And then? Where?”

“It’s gone, Calea. All of it.”

I stiffen at the words.

“That’s impossible,” I say. Because it is. It is impossible. “Magic fuels the world. How will we live? The world is barren except where magic gathers. If magic dies, we die.”

Bron circles around and comes to sit in front of me. He almost blocks the wound that mars the great city with his body. He looks at me with his intense gaze. It burns. Whatever fire has gone out of the world has not yet left him.

He forms his words with agonizing slowness. “We have left one ruined city. We have come to another through hardship. Nothing has changed. Let us rest a while here and discover what news we might find.”

He did not answer the unspoken question. I need him to answer it. “I’ll find magic,” I say.

He nods and stands. “We’ll rest a while longer before starting down.”

He wanders off. Nyasha hovers nearby. “There has to be magic somewhere,” she says. She doesn’t mean it; she only wants it to be true because it sounds comforting.

*     *     *

I sleep deeply that night. I want to escape. They have seen me weep. They have offered poor comfort. And I am deeply, bone-wearily exhausted.

I wake when roused. I eat as directed. I gather my things and begin to stump my way down, leaning too heavily on my crutch. Bron makes his concerned face at me, which I ignore. Nyasha tries harder as we descend. “If we can find one of my dad’s relatives, I’m sure he can help us. Thyrion’s a big, important city.”

The girl’s optimism is disingenuous. If Jalseion had no preparation for the event that shattered it, I have little faith that Thyrion, run by the brutish and the blunt, will be a better source of information. But I let her chatter on. I hear little. I see little. I am in a fog, and I know it. I have no will to remove myself from its haze. It is a comfort, this numbness. It will pass, and then I will discover what the world has done to me and what I will do to it.

Down, down–new aches in my legs. I fall once and scrape my face and arms. Bron hurries to pick me up. I cannot even muster the energy to snap at him. “Do you need to rest?” he asks.

“No. Let’s keep going.”

Keep going–down, down, back to the world of men. Thyrion is a husk thrown aside by some careless god, and men rush to her and from her like ants. Down and down, sliding and skidding and relearning balance all over again.

We sleep again, and I stare at the sky. I remember, ages ago, a few weeks ago, a blue sky as I woke as if reborn. The sky is dark now and starless as rainless clouds drift in. I am wrapped in darkness. I shut my eyes and try to sleep. The fog in my soul is lifting. Thoughts are beginning to connect. A dull, cold fire burns fitfully in my gut, smouldering.

Bron is awake. I rise. “I’ll take the watch,” I say.

He looks at me. I see the worry in his eyes. I have not been myself, and he is waiting to see what will happen. I know he is afraid I will injure him–and I will. We both know it. It is strange how clear my thoughts are, how inconsequential, how utterly useless.

“Thank you,” he says. He allows me this task in his endless pity. “Wake me in four hours.”

I sit upon the boulder he vacates. I stare down at the city. It is dark, illuminated by faint pinpricks of light here and there, as if the stars had descended and hidden away in the ruined streets. It is a dead city, still fitfully stirring, still twitching though its life has drained out.

It is my destination. How fitting.

I let time roll over me. The wind is still. I can almost imagine I sit unchanging, that the world waits in anticipation for some movement that will direct its course. I wait, too.

I consider leaving. I could stand and walk away into the wilderness. I could head for Remirion or any number of cities, searching. In my mind, I see myself descending into the darkness. I am not sure what holds me back. Bron, pretending to sleep, is one. He would stop me, and I am not quite ready for that confrontation, not yet. But it is more than that.

Yes, it is my apathy that holds me back. It takes will to stand, will to make my own way in the world, and once I begin to want again, once I begin to need again–I am afraid. I had decided once to die, and the well healed me. I found a purpose. I moved on.

And then hope revealed itself as an empty hole in the ground.

I am clinging to my shock, trying to hold out. The wound is deep. I know it is fatal.

And tomorrow, it will begin to hurt.

This is the third book of Bron and Calea.

Previously, in The Doctor’s Assistant, Bron and Calea arrived at the Medical Sanctuary in Averieom in search of a non-magic-powered arm and leg for Calea. They were disappointed to discover Averieom’s magic Well was as empty as Jalseion’s. Nervous Dr. Burdock, the only doctor who didn’t take his services to Jalseion in the wake of the Cataclysm, tried to help them the best he could but ended up suggesting they find the young Sanctuary assistant, Nyasha Cormorin, who had picked up some tricks of the trade. Bron dug Nyasha out of the remains of her home, fallen during the Cataclysm, and devastated though she was by the loss of her parents in the destruction, she helped fit Calea with rudimentary prosthetics.

Calea insisted she and Bron travel on to Thyrion in the hopes of finding magic there. Nyasha offered to guide them across the mountains, buying her way into their twosome with food supplies, and the three set off on a supposedly two-week journey. Along the way, Bron mysteriously managed to find shelter for them in times of dire need. Also, Bron’s fighting skills came in handy when they got waylaid by bandits. When they finally got to Thyrion a week later than planned, they discovered that Thyrion, too, had lost its magic, and Calea’s spirit broke.

Now, they are headed into Thyrion to find a respite from their travels and discover what news they can. To see what’s been happening in Thyrion and other parts of the world, see the parallel storyline that begins with The Fall of the House of Kyzer and continues in The Rules Change.