Bernt sat up, and rubbed at a sore shoulder. He’d managed to bruise it in his sleep, lying on the hard stone floor of the tiny room. He glared at the bed in the corner, mocking him with its perfectly comfortable straw mattress and thick, cozy blanket. He hadn’t dared lay down in it last night for fear of damaging both the mattress and the fabric in his sleep or worse, setting the whole thing on fire somehow.

  Closing his eyes, Bernt controlled his breathing and focused inward, methodically pinching off the hundreds of tiny sorcerous channels that poured mana into his flesh. Someday soon, he hoped to be able to control his temperature even while asleep, but he wasn’t there yet. He’d had to keep the window open to make sure it didn’t get too hot in the otherwise enclosed space. If he couldn’t figure it out soon, he would be forced to heatproof practically all his belongings.

  Getting up, he stretched his limbs, trying to work out some of the stiffness in his joints. It was uncomfortable, but still an immeasurable improvement over the state that he’d been in before. His ribs no longer ached, and the skin on the soles of his feet was healed and covered in fresh, pink skin, restored by a passing priest of Eyeli practically the moment he’d arrived last night.

  He eyed his robes critically before putting them on – they were ragged after weeks out in the wilderness, but they were all he had. He’d tried to feed it a few of the plants that grew in the Phoenix Reaches over the past few weeks, but the spirit infused garment had turned out to be rather picky. Of the plants that he could find, the robes had only absorbed a single handful of each before simply leaving them in his pockets. He’d need to get his hands on some more conventional fresh herbs soon to hopefully restore them to their former appearance.

  Opening the slightly too-small door, Bernt ducked out into the courtyard of the Temple of Ruzinia at the Sacral Peaks.

  The large generously proportioned open area was mostly bare dirt and rock, interrupted only by the occasional weed. It was quiet and empty, but someone had built a few raised garden beds in one corner, which looked well-tended and healthy despite the fact that it was winter. Bernt thought he spotted beets, carrots, lettuce and a few kinds of herbs – yarrow, wild mustard and mint, as well as a few he didn’t recognize. Whoever tended this place obviously liked to garden.

  Small doors like the one he’d just come out of ringed the courtyard on all sides except one, where a large set of double-doors led into the temple’s sanctuary. The entire complex had a utilitarian feel to it, squat and made of bare stone with heavy, ancient wood beams holding up a shale roof.

  Resolving to ask someone about those herbs, Bernt crossed the open space and stepped into the proper temple.

  The sanctuary, like the courtyard behind him, was deserted. It was a round room dominated by a large statue of a mostly featureless woman – Ruzinia presumably. It looked as if someone had started carving a person, but had given up before they got to any of the details. She was lit from behind by two braziers, which were filled with burning coal that sent dark smoke drifting up into soot-stained rafters, diffusing out through the roof. There were a few uncomfortable-looking wooden benches and two chairs, but no altar, nor much in the way of decoration.

  Bernt slowed and then stopped just inside the door. The room didn't feel empty, even though it obviously was. He stared at the statue for a moment, unsure if he should just walk through. It seemed… disrespectful. Making up his mind, he walked up to the statue, looked over his shoulder once self-consciously and gave it a small bow.

  “Ah… thanks for sending Torvald to come get me – him and Song. I appreciate the help.”

  He wasn’t sure that it had been a divine mission. Neither of the two paladins had said so, but it didn’t matter. They were her servants and besides, he was in her house. He tried to think of something else to say, but... what were you supposed to say to a goddess? Eventually, he just nodded and turned away, heading for the exit. There was no response, but he hadn’t really been expecting one. What could a goddess have to say to him?

  He stepped through the door into a wind so strong he worried for a moment that it might pick him up and sweep him right off the mountain. Blinking at the bright morning light, Bernt held up a hand to shade his eyes and took in the sight in front of him. He only vaguely remembered getting here, limping along well into the evening with the support of the two paladins to get here. It had been well past dark by the time they arrived. There had been some guards, a friendly priest who had healed him, and then just a few more stairs, always a few more stairs before he’d finally gotten to sleep.

  Now, finally, he got his first real look at the Sacral Peaks, and what a view it was.

  He was high up on a peak, looking out on three more that jutted up into the sky, forming a lopsided quadrilateral surrounding a small but gently sloping mountain valley below.

  Each peak was crowned by an architectural marvel. The largest of them, standing alone out toward the west, looked like a fortress, with high walls and towers that looked as though they’d grown directly out of the mountainside. It was enormous, with space for thousands of soldiers, surrounded on all sides by sheer cliffs except for a narrow stair that ran down along the ridge, connecting it to the valley below. That, he was sure, would be the Temple of Noruk.

  Bernt knew that the Sacral Peaks had been used as a stronghold for the early Invigilation during the collapse of the empire and during the Great Clysmic Wars that followed, but he hadn’t really considered what that meant. This place had to be able to support an army, and where better to house it than the home of the god of war himself? Unless he missed his guess, the far side would offer a view deep into Madzhur, as well as the Beseri borderlands. It was a virtually unassailable position.

  The peak to Bernt’s right was, in more ways than one, its opposite. It was the lowest of the four, with a relatively gentle slope that allowed Bernt to see clear down to the far side of it from where he stood. The entire thing had been carved into terraced fields and gardens surrounding the temple complex, which crowned the very top of the peak. Unlike the Temple of Noruk, the Temple of Eyeli was open and easily accessible from all sides. Its construction featured tall, overgrown pillars, graceful arches and what looked like a complex irrigation system, incorporating artfully carved canals and raised aqueducts to deliver water to the fields all around. The water had to be a gift directly from the goddess herself, as it ran down from the temple at the top of the peak. It couldn't possibly be natural.

  Not to be outdone by its peers, the Temple of Balarian to Bernt’s left rose up toward the sky – an ivory tower tastefully accented in gold and red, connected to the valley below by a long, meandering road that completely circled its peak several times to allow for a slow, gentle ascent. It looked impossibly tall and slender from this distance, but the people walking in and out of the enormous building looked like tiny specks. A single floor of the tower had to be far larger than Ruzinia’s entire temple complex.

  All in all, the temples looked as if the gods themselves had competed to outdo each other. All of them except Ruzinia. Her temple was smaller than some of the outbuildings on Eyeli’s peak. It looked out of place, like an afterthought.

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  That didn’t surprise him, exactly. Ruzinians usually didn’t build temples at all, and unlike her three peers she wasn’t seen as a pillar of human civilization. She was just as relevant to a random vagabond in the wilderness as she was to a soldier, a farmer or the captain of a merchant ship. Or, now that he considered it, to a native from the Mirian mountains, like Song.

  Slowly, being careful not to slip in the cloth shoes he'd been lent by the strange man the day before, Bernt began descending the incredibly steep stairs toward the valley below. His stomach fluttered uncomfortably at the height, and a sudden memory came back to Bernt of the night before, stopping him in his tracks. The Mirian man had taken a running leap off the path, out over a sheer drop into the dark. They’d been only minutes away from the Peaks and Song had said he would run ahead to get a healer to meet them as soon as they arrived. The man’s total disregard for gravity had been shocking enough to stick in Bernt’s mind, but he'd been too addled to process what he saw. What struck him now, though, was the way it had felt.

  Song had been doing magic. Mana had moved, but he hadn't traced any spellforms or whistled or used any other mnemonic device like a mage would. There was always the possibility that he was a druid of some sort, or even some kind of witch, but Bernt didn’t consider that to be very likely. He certainly couldn’t be a warlock, and that left a very intriguing possibility.

  At least, it did if he wasn’t imagining the whole thing. He would have to ask some pointed questions later.

  For now, he would settle for something to eat.

  With a spring in his step, Bernt continued his descent down into the valley below. A large, ancient-looking building dominated the center of the space between the peaks, surrounded by several smaller houses, some of which showed signs of recent repair. The entire place teemed with people like a kicked anthill.

  Bernt hadn’t really been sure what to expect when he got here. He knew that the Conclave would be made up of representatives from cities all over the former Madurian Empire, but he hadn’t expected this. There were hundreds of people here, squeezed into just a handful of buildings. He assumed that most of the chosen priests who would be attending the conclave were at their temples, which meant most of these people were just their legitimators.

  Stomach growling, Bernt advanced toward the small cluster of buildings. He could smell something spicy and savory wafting his way, and he was about to follow his nose to the source when a hand clapped down on his shoulder.

  “Bernt, you’re up!”

  He turned to find Torvald standing next to him, grinning. The paladin held out a bowl of what looked like a painfully bland porridge. “Here, I was about to bring you some breakfast. I thought you’d want to spend a day or two taking it easy before you came down here.”

  Bernt accepted the bowl with some hesitation and stirred the spoon around in it skeptically as Torvald nudged him back into motion. “Come on! Let’s go over to the Hall of Witnesses and get registered. The line’s pretty long, so I didn’t bother to get it done before I went looking for you.”

  Following his friend, Bernt took a bite. It was… fine. Someone had ground some nuts into it, which gave it at least a little bit of flavor. Still, he made a mental note to visit the open-air kitchen they passed as they rounded the huge building that marked the center of the little valley. It was staffed by acolytes in white tunics, dressed exactly as Torvald had been when Bernt had first met him months ago.

  The building’s entrance was crowded with tired-looking people – presumably groups who had just climbed up to the Peaks from the western side. Many were priests, but some wore military uniforms, mages’ robes or other expensive-looking clothes in unfamiliar foreign styles.

  They joined the line, waiting their turn to talk to a harried looking clerk – a priestess of Balarian who sat behind a tall counter just inside the door asking questions and scribbling down the new arrivals’ information.

  “So,” Bernt asked between bites of porridge, voicing the question that had been burning on his tongue for the last few minutes, “is Song what I think he is?”

  Torvald gave him a puzzled glance. “He’s a Mirian from across the sea. A paladin. What do you mean?”

  Bernt rolled his eyes. “Not that – I mean the magic! Do you know if he’s a sorcerer?”

  "Oh." The paladin shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know. He said something about his 'bloodline', once. I just assumed he has some alchemical enhancements – the kind rangers get. He can see incredibly well, and you saw how he moves over rough terrain. Do you really think he’s casting spells?”

  “I’m not sure,” Bernt said, “I wasn't really all there last night, but it felt like he was moving mana around. Rangers don't do that. You have to be able to sense mana, or," Bernt emphasized, "feel and control your spirit the way a sorcerer can.”

  “Okay... I mean, that's great, right? You should ask him! Spellcasters traditionally don’t join the priesthood, but I think that has more to do with old Madurian tradition than any kind of rule. You wanted to learn more about sorcery, and maybe you can help Uriah with his… whatever it was. His spirit, to fix it.”

  “His tangent,” Bernt clarified with a nod. “Yeah, maybe.” If Song was willing to share. The travelogue of Finnerixes didn’t suggest that Mirian sorcerers were any freer with their own knowledge than the guilds – the author had spent years extracting what little he had managed to learn, and it didn’t paint an overly rosy picture of their practices.

  Still, it wasn’t as though the strange paladin was hiding his power – though maybe he just didn’t expect anyone to recognize what he was doing. Whatever the case, he couldn’t be too offended if someone asked him about it. Besides, Bernt had uncovered a few secrets of his own. Maybe he could trade.

  When they got to the front of the line, the clerk gave them an irritated glance, looking back and forth between the two of them.

  “Legitimators? Who are you with? Registration needs to be handled by chosen representatives of the Invigilation only. Where is the rest of your group?”

  Bernt looked at Torvald, who cleared his throat and stood up a little straighter.

  “I'm a representative – a paladin, arriving from Halfbridge.” Then, more quietly, he added, “The rest of our group is dead – the priests, anyway. The guards turned the only other surviving legitimator away at the base of the mountain.”

  The clerk blinked up at him owlishly before remembering to make a note. “Died?! How? What happened?”

  “We were ambushed by demons and their cultists on the road between Gobford and Goldwater. Sent by the Duergar, as far as we know. Goldwater sent a mounted contingent to secure it after we made it out, but we haven’t heard any news since. Hopefully, any other groups coming after us will be safe.

  “Hmm.” the clerk said, flipping back several pages in her book, checking a list. “High priests, all of them? And with a high priest of Noruk. How very unusual.” She crossed out three lines, presumably the names of the dead, and added another note in the margin.

  Murmurs broke out behind them, and Bernt thought he overheard someone say High Priest Hannis’ name. He looked over his shoulder and found that the people queued behind them were crowding in, some trying to hear as others whispered to each other. A tall, middle-aged man in an unfamiliar military uniform who stood at the shoulder of a young, shocked-looking priestess of Noruk watched them intensely with narrowed eyes, sparing special attention for Bernt. Did he have something against mages?

  He returned the gaze defiantly for a moment, but turned back as the clerk took down their names and official date of arrival, and confirmed their temple affiliation. Finally, she handed Torvald a paper of procedural notes to memorize. When he reached out to take it, though, she didn’t release it immediately.

  “I’ll issue an official report to the temples based on your statement to forestall any rumors,” she said, throwing a disapproving glance at the people standing behind them, “but you may want to visit the temples yourselves to convey your condolences. You never know what they’ll make of something like this. There are already some... tensions.”

  As they left, Bernt could practically feel the soldier’s gaze boring a hole in the back of his head.