Her every waking minute was spent aethermancing under Vela’s watchful instruction or sparring with Mara Kasdar.
The Lightweave could cut through physical weapons as though they were nothing, so Talasyn and the Blademaster fought with swords, daggers, spears, and flails. It was strenuous but, as the days passed, she noticed that she was getting quicker on her feet and more focused when it came to channeling her magic.
At least there was no longer any need to keep her abilities hidden from her regiment. There had been fears of espionage, or captured soldiers confessing that a Lightweaver walked among them. Since Kesath already knew, Talasyn could train in plain sight, frequently drawing crowds of amazed spectators.
Her aethermancy training had previously been limited to what few hours could be spared. There’d been no use sending her to the front in her capacity as a Lightweaver when there were hundreds of Shadowforged to reckon with. But now that Alaric Ossinast was aware of her existence, now that Gaheris would be even more determined to crush Sardovia because they harbored the last Lightweaver on the Continent—
Well. Talasyn had to start making sure that she was hard to kill.
She thought about Alaric a lot. It was never on purpose but, to her chagrin, he had the disturbing tendency to pop up in her mind when she least expected it. Alaric in all his height and armor, wielding his magic with a lethal confidence that was in such stark contrast to her own scattered, flailing attempts. Although the cuts on her arms had long since healed, she kept going over their duel. Kept pinpointing all the instances he could have easily hacked her head off but didn’t. Was she lucky to have survived? Or had he been holding back? But why would he?
Maybe he wasn’t as good a warrior as everyone said he was. Maybe his reputation lay mostly in his forbidding appearance. Those eyes—
Every time Talasyn thought about Alaric’s eyes, about the silver sheen to them set against a pale and half-shrouded face, about the way they had focused on her and only her, she was assailed by the oddest mixture of sensations. There was fear, yes, but there was also something magnetic. Something that insisted on hauling this memory of him into her orbit, so she could . . .
Could what, exactly?
No matter. She would keep training and she would commune with the Light Sever, and the next time she saw Alaric she would be more than a match for him. She wouldn’t hold back.
Meanwhile, the battle for the Highlands raged on. The bulk of reinforcements were sent from the Wildermarch a few days after they’d settled in, and so, in addition to fretting over her upcoming mission to Nenavar, Talasyn also spent her days fretting over Khaede and feeling powerless that she wasn’t there to help. Fortunately, Khaede returned safely the day before Talasyn was set to leave. Less fortunately, she’d returned to wait for new orders, because most of the alpine cities had surrendered and the War Council had begun discussions on shifting all available resources to the Heartland and the Coast.
A strategic retreat, many called it. It seemed to Talasyn that the Hurricane Wars were one strategic retreat after another on Sardovia’s end, but she kept that to herself. Morale was low enough.
“Do you even know how to commune with a Light Sever?” Khaede challenged. “What is the process, specifically?”
They were sitting on the burnt umber grass and crisp fallen leaves outside the barracks, beneath a shedding but still exuberant coppery cypress. The sun was setting on the Wildermarch, its crimson light rendering the canyon ablaze at the edges as a stiff wind rolled in from the north, carrying with it the glacial bite of faraway polar tundra. This particular spot overlooked a riverbed that would flush turquoise come the spring thaw, but for now it was just a wide ribbon of cracked earth, edged with gorse and sagebrush.
The riverbed would have been wholly unremarkable if not for the fact that it was the site of a Wind Sever, where the Squallfast sometimes bled through. A white-cloaked Sardovian Enchanter stood on the bank with a chest full of empty aether hearts at his feet, patiently waiting for the Wind Sever to discharge so that he could collect its magic.
While they couldn’t directly summon any of the dimensions into existence, Enchanters were the most prized of aethermancers throughout the world of Lir for their ability to manipulate the Tempestroad, the Squallfast, the Firewarren, and the Rainspring—as long as there was an existing source to draw from. Here on the Continent, they were the backbone of both sides of the Hurricane Wars, kept away from the fighting to craft the hearts that powered the airships and the stormships day in, day out. It was a thankless, taxing role, and Talasyn felt a twinge of guilt. She’d crash-landed so many wasp coracles during combat, wasting the multiple aether hearts that were built into each one.
With her gaze still trained on the Enchanter, she set about answering Khaede. “I’m not sure, but the Amirante and I have discussed in the past what would happen if I ever came across a Light Sever. She thinks that it shouldn’t be much different from how the Shadowforged meditate with their nexus points and that my instincts will tell me what to do.”
“So, you’re going to sneak into a country that’s notoriously unfriendly to outsiders and might possibly have dragons with the sole purpose of finding the Lightweave high up on a mountain using only a roughly sketched map, and you have no real idea what to do once you get there.” Khaede placed a hand over her eyes. “The war is lost.”
“Well, when you put it like that, of course it sounds impossible,” Talasyn shot back. “But I’ll figure it out. I have to.”
They sank into a desultory silence. It blew in with the northern wind rustling the cypress leaves. Talasyn wondered if she should broach the topic of Sol. They’d buried him here in the canyon, with the other dead, and Khaede had sailed back to the Highlands shortly after. But before Talasyn could decide on what to say and whether she should say it, Khaede spoke again.
“What do you know about Nenavar?”
I know that it calls to me, Talasyn thought. I know that it’s familiar for some reason. I know that I want to find out why.
She longed to tell Khaede—to tell someone—about all the emotions that Nenavar stirred in her, but she couldn’t bear to do it. She was too much like her friend; she didn’t want to open herself up to other people’s pity. Khaede would surely think that she was just desperate for any sense of connection, indulging an orphan’s foolish hopes.
Instead, Talasyn patched together everything she’d heard over the years from other Sardovians regarding their enigmatic neighbor across the sea. “It’s made up of seven large islands and thousands of smaller ones. The climate is tropical. It’s a matriarchy.” She’d learned that word from a Hornbill’s Head shopkeeper chatting about Nenavar with his patrons while she waited for an opportune moment to slip his wares into her pockets.
“Don’t forget all the gold,” Khaede helpfully supplied.
“Right.” Talasyn cracked a smile as she echoed one of the older children at the orphanage, in the slums of her early years. “A country of islands ruled only by queens, where the skies are home to dragons and the streets are made of gold.”
She couldn’t fathom a nation so rich in the precious metal that they paved with it. Perhaps that was why the Dominion refused to get involved in the affairs of the outside world: they had too much to lose.