Chapter 1

The Temple

Rusty banked low over the wheat field, skimming tips of grain and dodging Tennar-tipped arrows. The full moon had dropped beyond the southern ridge of Mt Sirius but continued to wash the landscape in an amber glow. Two Warriors crouched in shadows thrown by the grain silos, but he sensed others. Fast approaching the temple ruins at the far end of the field, Rusty thrust his wings high, then down with extraordinary power. He surged upward as an arrow rang past his right leg. Diving again, he entered the surrounding woods. An arrow dipped in pitch found his neck. Fortunately, it wasn’t lit. He regained his balance and wove his way through the massive Psyra trees. Another arrow grazed his chest, and a third bit into his shoulder. These came from a new direction.

So, there are at least four, whispered a jarring voice.

“What?”

Rusty shook the arrows free and spotted a clearing a hundred yards ahead.

They are more dangerous this time.

The quiet words grated.

“Who are you? Where are you?” he demanded.

Blistering pain raked his neck and spread to his limbs. Wings and legs thrashed as the ground approached, then everything around him exploded into blinding light—as if in a….

Rusty’s eyes shot open. His body was on fire, but the pain quickly receded, along with the last fragments of the dream. His nightshirt was soaked with sweat. He tossed his sheets aside as his emptiness swallowed the room. The time candle burned at the fifth stripe. Happy birthday, Rusty. It’s your Magehood Day! Or not.

He pulled his shirt over his head and wiped the sweat from his face. Magehood. Group bonding. Spending days with people who didn’t want him around. The feeling was mutual. He was exaggerating, but not much.

He drank from the goatskin next to his bed and lay back down. Just a little more sleep. He turned to his side. Then his other side. His stomach. His back. “Three hours,” he whispered, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. In three hours, mum and the Elder won’t be happy, but I’ll be free. “Well, I’m not going to be a Mage,” he said defiantly. Half of the village aren’t Mages. Not a big deal. It’s a choice, right?

He slid from the bed onto the cool thatched mats that covered hard-packed dirt. If I did become a Mage, Parser Lunat would have to treat me as an equal. It would almost be worth it just for that, he thought, kicking a pair of threadbare pants across the room. But Magehood was all about rules and rituals and community—one that had never let him forget he did not belong.

He put on a fresh tunic.

“You’re up early.”

“Mum!” he said, tense, nerves firing. “Make a little noise next time.”

Tara, her ashen hair framing the worry lines on her face, stood just inside the room. “I heard you from the kitchen. Happy birthday, Rusty.”

Tara hesitated, and Rusty braced for what was coming.

“Well?” she said lightly.

Rusty shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, words stumbling out. “I’m sorry. It would be a mistake. They don’t want me. And I don’t need them.”

“Rusty, Magehood isn’t easy, but neither is anything else that’s worthwhile.”

“It has nothing to do with easy. You know why.”

Tara’s mouth drew into a hard line. “There are plenty of fools in the Clan. Don’t let a few decide what is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. You have talents. You know you do. Magehood is the only way…”

“You’re wrong,” Rusty said. “Magehood isn’t the only way. It’s their way and they don’t want me. I’m okay with that.”

“D’tanya? Crevor Nu? They’re Mages. Are you ready to lose their friendship?”

“They’ll understand. It won’t make any difference to them.”

“For a while. But eventually you’ll grow apart. It happens every time.”

“Not every time. It won’t happen to us,” he said, harsher than intended.

Tara sighed. “I hope you’re right. And I hope you understand what you are giving up.”

Disappointment dimmed Tara’s eyes as she left.

It’s not really a choice if one of them is a life in hell. He stepped into his running moccasins. D’tanya won’t like it, but she’ll understand. Eventually.

A small section of broken mosaic tiles caught his eye. Let’s take a run.

Rusty stuffed several glow sticks, a knife, and a few other things into his backsack and headed for the kitchen. He wove around chairs, tables and the fire pit in the common room. Artifacts he’d found in and around the valley’s many ruins filled several shelves. Halfway across the room, the aroma of fresh pastries filled the air. Tara opened the oven as he entered the kitchen.

“You’ve been up for a while,” Rusty said, sniffing the air with a guilty smile. “Ruby Pears! I couldn’t sleep either.”

Tara’s smile was brief. “These don’t bake themselves,” she said, removing four small cakes from the oven. “It’s your Magehood day and whether you become one, it’s a day of changes.”

“Good ones, I hope,” he said.

Tara just shook her head.

“I’m going for a run with D’tanya.”

“Does she know that?”

Rusty shrugged. “Not yet.”

“Well, take these with you,” she said, wrapping the fruit cakes in green rice paper. “And, please, think about it. Magehood. There’s no changing your mind tomorrow.”

He nodded, avoiding her eyes.

“And don’t drink that foul water if you can help it. Take this,” she said, handing Rusty a goatskin of liquid. “Pear juice.”

Rusty put the fruit cakes and juice in his backsack. “Thank you,” he said, wrapping Tara in a hug. “I know what I’m doing.”

Tara frowned at his forced smile. “Go.”

As he walked across the den, he sensed a darkness hovering at the edge of his thoughts. He closed his eyes and shook his head. The run would help. He walked past the door to his room, pulled aside a tapestry of mythical animals that hid the front door, and slipped out into the chill of the early morning.

The empty village pathways filled Rusty with relief. He broke into a run and felt his body shed the lingering weight of a lousy night’s sleep. His breath danced in the air as he made his way across the common yard. His feet found just the right purchase on the uneven cobblestones as he moved through shadows and listened to each step break the otherwise quiet morning.

Speed and moonlight worked together to ease his mind, and his senses took flight. The waning lunar glow cast shadows across alleys and yards and helped him navigate benches, Psyra trees, and meditation pillars.

Rusty stopped at the edge of a garden. Everything looked soft in the moonlight. The shadow-strewn ground and the surrounding dens were a hundred shades of nighttime blue. The village dens—where people lived, worked, and played—looked like overgrown palm and tapestry hats. There were no straight lines to them except for the weave of the Talla Palm leaves. The ancestral colors and unique shape of a home den’s entrance announced the name of the family that lived within. Tara’s family colors were seven shades of blue, three stripes of deep red, and spirals of pale gold. A working den’s shape told of its purpose. The den of the village Council of Twelve was symmetrical, representing fairness and balance. The Weavers Guild’s den looked as if someone had thrown a blanket over a basket.

A scavenger lizard ran across the courtyard, pulling Rusty from his thoughts. Outside D’tanya’s den, he blew into his cupped hands and let out a low vibrating tone.

D’tanya, four months older and already a novice Sensor, appeared in the doorway, rubbing her eyes. Her hair rippled like water in the early morning breeze.

“Quiet,” she whispered. “You’ll wake mother.”

Rusty shrugged. “Want to go for a run?”

“Happy Birthday,” she said flatly. “Where?” It was an accusation. D’tanya tied back her long wheat-colored hair. “Aren’t you in enough trouble already? What about Magehood? Are you taking the tests or not?”

“Don’t start,” he said. D’tanya stared him down. “Okay, no, I am not going to be a Mage. I’m not you. I can’t follow rules that stopped making sense ages ago. And Parser Lunat…. Forget it. He hates me.” He shuddered and kicked the ground. “Sorry I woke you,” he said, turning to leave.

“Wait,” D’tanya said. She ducked inside and reappeared a minute later, fully dressed. “For someone so smart, you can be incredibly stupid.”

“About what? Magehood? They don’t want me and I…”

“What’s wrong with you?” she interrupted. “You’d make an amazing Mage! Forget Parser Lunat. You know who you’re afraid of? You. You…”

“Stop! I just want to go for a run,” Rusty said. “Coming?” He took off toward the trail to Infinity Rock without waiting for an answer. A moment later, he heard D’tanya’s footfalls close behind.

Rusty took the path that wound through the Emerald Garden; the ruin of an ancient courtyard, now covered with flowering vines, trimmed shrubs, and the toppled stones of the marketplace that once covered the area. Children’s stories told of the history of the Talla Clan, one of the last remnants of a vast empire. Tallans have lived in the three hundred-and-twelve-mile-long Valley of Blue Waters for over five thousand years. The stories were head spinning in their depiction of heroic rulers, fierce Warriors with cloaks of armor, and the enchanted city of Varrana, the capital seat of the Empire. Living among the ruins of these stories was more exciting than Magehood, though there were plenty of amazing stories about Mages that were hard to believe. The towers, domes, and spires of Varrana, covered with millennia of overgrowth, gave silent testimony to the rich civilization that once thrived. Yet, supposedly, no one had ever entered the abandoned city and lived to tell. Three thousand years ago, the ancestors sealed all ground access to Varrana. The Clan numbered over five hundred thousand. Now, just over four thousand Tallans survived. How had so many become so few? Rusty wondered, leaving the garden behind.

D’tanya caught up with Rusty at the village wells and sat on the second step of the middle well. “Hold on. I’m not awake yet.”

“Here.” Rusty handed her a fruitcake and jogged to the top of the well.

“It’s still warm,” D’tanya said, holding up the pastry.

“Mum’s birthday breakfast,” he said, a flush of guilt resurfacing. “Hurry and eat.”

“What’s the rush?” she asked.

“I want to show you something before I meet with the Elder,” he said, winching up the well’s water bucket.

“Show me what?”

Rusty sniffed a palmful of the tainted water.

“You’re not going to drink that, are you?” D’tanya asked, twisting her ponytail.

“Yeah, why not?”

“It’s disgusting.”

“Just because I look like I’m not paying attention…. The Council says that, because of the earthquakes, there isn’t a clean cup of water in the entire valley.” Rusty took a sip and spit it back out. “Mm. No, they’re right—it’s gross. Tara and I are drinking juice until the muck in the wells settles.”

“You and everyone else. Some people are hoarding fruit!”

“I was at the stables when the first earthquake struck. It was weird, but it didn’t feel like much. Yet it changed the taste of the water.” He leaned over the well opening and sniffed. “Yeah. That last quake made it undrinkable.” He sniffed the water bucket. “That doesn’t smell right. Let’s keep going.”

“Where?”

“I found a ruin yesterday. A quake split the ground open. I only had one glow stick, and it went out a few minutes after I found my way inside. What I could see was—incredible.”

“That’s an Empire ruin. They’re off limits—way off limits. Especially to you,” she said.

“Why? Because I’m a castout?” Rusty hurled the bucket back down the well. The whirring of the pulley and the screeching of the falling pail echoed up the stone walls of the well.

“That’s not…”

“I don’t belong here,” he shouted.

“Rusty?” she whispered, her eyes glistening in the moonlight. “You know I…”

Rusty looked away. “No, I’m sorry,” he said as he set the bucket on its storage hook. “I kind of woke up this way.”

“Magehood?”

“That’s part of it.” He slung his backsack over his shoulder. “Once we tell the Council about the ruin, we’ll never get back in. And what will they do with it?” Rusty sneered. “Coming?”

D’tanya adjusted her backsack. “Only to make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

“I feel safer already.”

Rusty paused at a fork in the trail and peered through a break in the trees. The dark outline of Mt. Sirius peered back. A light breeze stirred the canopy of branches and leaves. “This way,” he said, heading east.

“Wait,” she objected. “The only thing up there is the Varrana wall.”

“We turn off trail before then.”

The path grew steep. Overgrowth made the path ahead almost impassable. Rusty pointed to fresh Jaranga marks on the trunk of a sapling. He drew in a quiet breath and studied the sap, still fresh in the tree’s wound. The enormous cat had passed within the last fifteen minutes. He searched for signs of the cat’s direction and relaxed when he spotted paw prints heading south.

The trail bent to the right and revealed the ancient city wall a hundred yards ahead. Even in the dwindling moonlight, the brilliant colors of the wall’s Tennar stone designs glowed.

Tennar stone was an unsolved mystery. There was no known source in the valley. No piece of unshaped, raw rock. Tennar only appeared as carved or shaped relics. And they were rare. Rusty knew of a few large sculptures. Smaller artifacts turned up now and then when someone dug a new well or replanted a field. Every piece, large and small, looked as if someone had polished it that day. No one could make a scratch in a piece, let alone carve it with the skill of the ancients.

Rusty caught D’tanya squinting at the wall.

“I swear it’s watching us.”

“It’s a wall,” Rusty said.

“Is it?”

Rusty ignored D’tanya’s smirk.

“We turn off here,” he said, shifting his backsack to his other shoulder.

The nine-foot-high trunk of a fallen Ravenwood tree blocked the trail. Thorny hedges framed both sides of the path.

“That’s a tree,” D’tanya said, staring at the towering base of the uprooted giant.

Rusty climbed gnarled roots onto the horizontal trunk and sidestepped over the crushed hedges toward the upended roots of a second tree. D’tanya followed up onto the trunk to the other root mass.

“Do what I do,” he said. He grabbed hold of the largest root, jumped out and away from the other roots, and let his momentum carry him alongside the tree’s base. He landed on his feet and, without thinking about it, let go of the root, which sprang back.

“Hey!” D’tanya shouted.

“Sorry! Your turn.”

Moments later, D’tanya flew out from around the root mass, mouth wide open in a silent scream, a thin bundle of breaking roots tight in her hands, and landed on her side upon a thick cushion of ferns.

“That was graceful.”

“You laugh, you die,” she said without a trace of humor.

Rusty smiled as D’tanya took in the four-foot-wide split in the earth and the newly revealed path that lay at her feet.

She brushed the dirt from a path stone and ran a finger over inlays of birds and animals. “These are beautiful. They’re all in flight, or running, or jumping,” she said.

The simple curves of one reminded Rusty of a Silver Zealian spiraling down toward its prey. Elegant. Determined. Fast. “There are hundreds more in the ruin.”

“Show me,” she said, following the path with her eyes.

“It’s underground. That’s how we get in,” Rusty said, pointing to a three-foot-wide opening thirty feet ahead.

“That’s a very dark hole,” D’tanya said.

“We slide down. It’s sand – mostly. I’ll light a glow stick. No one else has been inside for thousands of years,” Rusty said, unable to contain his excitement. “You’re going to love this.” He pulled two glow sticks from his backsack and handed one to D’tanya. “I’ll call up when I’ve landed,” he said, and disappeared feet first into the hole.

D’tanya guessed the bath she had taken the night before was about to be wasted. A quick burst of wind startled her. She tried to grab onto a whisper, pulling at the edge of her awareness. “Hello?” she called. I’m talking to myself.

“D,” Rusty’s muffled voice called.

D’tanya stepped into the dimly lit opening and slid on her side down the dry sandy surface for longer than she expected. When she hit bottom, her feet sank into a thick cushion of ferns and was grateful for Rusty’s forethought. It was pitch dark.

“A glow stick would be helpful.” It came out as more of an order.

“Give me your hand,” Rusty said as she felt him grasp her arm.

“Why didn’t you light one?” she said, fighting off mounting panic.

“I dropped it.”

A glow stick flared to life. Then another. “Here.”

The sticks’ bluish light revealed a stone door left ajar ages ago. In remarkable condition, the door’s carvings depicted a lush mountainside cradling a dozen streams that flowed into a small lake. Around the lake, Terricats, Jarangas, wildabeasts, and a band of Kooroos drank from its waters. Seriswans glided above flowers and lily pads. At the center of the lake, a domed temple, water flowing down winding channels in its roof, was a work of art in honor of some ancient and forgotten goddess or god.

“I hear water,” she said.

D’tanya followed Rusty around the door into a large chamber. The soft light faintly illuminated an opposing wall fifty or sixty feet away. As her eyes adjusted, she took in the details of the hexagonal room. Above, faded brush strokes of gentle waves crashed across the domed ceiling. Murals depicting streams flowing down mountainsides, across meadows, and through woodlands decorated the six walls. Clear water flowed in winding channels in the floor. Stone meditation pillows, goblets of various materials, and other artifacts lay scattered about. Symbols of wildlife and foreign glyphs covered the floor. “I’ve never seen glyphs like these,” she said, running her fingertips over several. “They’re beautiful. What language is this?”

“No idea.”

“I can’t believe I don’t have my sketch kit,” she sighed.

Rusty set his backsack on the floor and pulled out a tightly wrapped bundle of pencils and parchments. D’tanya’s eye lit on it with enthusiasm.

“I had a feeling. I’m going to check out a mural on the far side.”

D’tanya opened the bundle, pulled a scrap of cloth from her backsack, and polished one of the symbols. Its colors appeared to rise from the floor. “Rusty, the symbols are Tennar stone,” she said. “Look at the light it throws!” She cleared the dust from several more symbols. Who carved these? What do they mean?

D’tanya finished sketching the last of a group of symbols and looked at her drawings. “Rusty, I have one sheet left!” The room was quiet except for the sound of flowing water. “Rusty?” She looked around the chamber one more time, but there was no sign of him. “Not funny, Rusty. Where are you?”

Silence.

She removed a small knife from the sketch bundle.

“Not funny, Rusty,” she repeated, gripping the knife’s handle.

A faint noise turned into the sound of distant footsteps. D’tanya followed the sound around the chamber walls. “Rusty? Where are you?” she shouted. The small knife shook as it led the way. “If this is a joke, I am going to murder you. With this knife!” she said, holding it out for show—knuckles white, face pale.

The footsteps sounded just feet away. Rusty would have said something by now.

“D!” Rusty shouted, appearing as if from thin air. “You have to see this!”

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