By the time Torvald returned to the temple and found them in the courtyard, the tea had gone cold and Bernt had run out of questions—at least the sort that Song was willing to answer. But that was fine. Once he had a chance to do some experiments and maybe do a little reading, he was sure he'd have new questions.

  Seeing them, the arriving paladin hauled a stool over to the table and plopped down with a weary sigh, interrupting Doreen’s story about a time when she’d been sent to rescue a child from an abandoned farm near Madzhur’s northern border with Sehesh—the ancient swamps of the lizardmen. He poured himself a cup of cold tea and held it out to Bernt expectantly.

  Obligingly, Bernt reheated it with a cantrip and Torvald quickly set it down on the table to keep from burning his fingers.

  “How did it go?” Bernt asked, and Torvald grimaced.

  “The temple of Eyeli was fine, but the other two... it wasn’t good. The temple of Noruk was especially bad, they practically interrogated me as if I’d killed the high priests myself. They kept going on about how the deaths reflected poorly on me as a paladin, and that the temple ‘wouldn’t ignore this kind of weakness’ or something.” He absently reached for the hot cup of tea and flinched back when he touched it, scowling and shaking out his hand. “I don’t get it, they know we’re at war—that’s why we’re having the Conclave in the first place! How can they blame me for us getting attacked?”

  “Hmm.” Doreen waved a hand dismissively. “I doubt they do. Not really, anyway. The Temple is trying to position itself, probably trying to suppress our influence, or maybe they just want to look tough at the Conclave.”

  Torvald closed his eyes and visibly suppressed his frustration. “This is exactly the sort of thing I didn’t want to be involved in.”

  Doreen shrugged, entirely unruffled. “Then don’t be. It’s just politics. There’s no need for us to worry about it. We go where the goddess leads us. She doesn’t really care about things like this, and we don’t need to, either.”

  “I can’t ignore it!” Torvald exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “I’m related to the royal family. If they’re trying to insinuate something about me, it might affect the king and the outcome of the entire Conclave! They’re obviously up to something, but what?” He stood up, clearly agitated. “I have to go down to Norhold. I have to go talk to my great-uncle, or maybe send a message home.”

  Bernt considered for only a second before rising as well. “I’ll come with you. I have some messages to send, too. And I think I can get the Mages’ Guild there to give us information that they wouldn’t give you. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

  He still didn’t have proper shoes, but if something fishy was going on then a bit of discomfort wasn’t enough reason to wait. Besides, Norhold would be the best place to find some new boots in any case.

  “Calm down!” Doreen insisted. “Nothing’s going to happen right now, and you have all day to go down to the city, still. It’s barely noon. You can finish your tea, at least.”

  ***

  The main entrance to the Sacral Peaks was located at the southwestern corner of the small valley that linked the four temple complexes. The small pass was walled, with an arch barely wide enough for a single person to walk through. Beyond it, a short, steep path quickly transitioned to steps that had been carved directly into the mountainside, plunging down in the distance into a sea of low, fluffy white clouds that obscured the valley below. The clouds didn’t roil and there was no storm here as there had been at the border to the Phoenix Reaches.

  Bernt stopped in his tracks, transfixed. It wasn’t the first incredible thing he’d seen in his life, but as he stood there, looking down from the top of the world, he knew that this was a sight he wasn't going to forget. A few months ago, he’d barely even traveled beyond Halfbridge’s walls. Now, somehow, he’d ended up here.

  Torvald, occupied by his own thoughts, had already started down the stairs and he hurried to catch up. The paladin was obviously disturbed by what had happened at the other temples. Bernt tried to ask about it as they climbed down, but the stairs were too narrow to walk comfortably alongside someone else. He couldn’t hear Torvald’s response over the steady wind that blew over his ears.

  The stairs were worn and smooth, but somehow still knobby, with uneven bits of harder stone that were eroded more slowly by the thousands of feet that had worn away the softer material around them. Someone with proper boots wouldn’t notice, but Bernt knew from experience that he was going to regret it soon if he didn’t watch his step. It was a meditative exercise of sorts, choosing his best footing one step after another, down and down into the clouds.

  Within a few minutes, his mind began to drift back to his earlier conversation with Song. For the most part, the man had avoided answering directly, but the way he talked about his magic even while avoiding any real substance was telling all on its own.

  As far as he could gather, cultivators—as Song called the Mirian sorcerers—approached spellcasting entirely differently than he was used to. The way he talked about cultivation had strange religious overtones, aiming less for practical utility than the prospect of ascension to some kind of higher realm to achieve a form of immortality. He also didn’t view his abilities as discrete spells so much as skills or “techniques”, as he called them. When Bernt brought up spellforms or the runes and glyphs that they were made up of, he appeared confused, hand waving the topic away as if it were irrelevant.

  It reminded Bernt of Jori in a way. She didn’t know anything about spellforms either, but that didn’t keep her from flinging hellfire or from manipulating her spirit physically to produce different effects. Cultivators, like demons and other sorcerous creatures, developed and cast spells by feel and intuition. At the same time, the process of actually cultivating the spirit sounded like it had to be highly technical. Song had hinted at libraries full of secret knowledge, alchemical cultivation aids, and “experts” who used methods for growing the spirit that were supposed to take decades of sustained effort.

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  It all sounded more like childrens’ stories than real magic. Now that he considered it, that was probably the exact reason why so few mages or wizards had bothered to study it. That, and the fact that the rest of humanity simply didn’t have sorcerers. Song had strongly implied that his power was somehow hereditary, and Finnerixes claimed in his book that they hunted elves and other fae to eat their hearts. A mage couldn’t change their parentage, and who would be insane enough to provoke the elves?

  Bernt was beginning to form his own theory, though. He’d effectively had the spirit of a living flame grafted into him to “open his spiritual sea” as Song had put it. That elemental wasn’t any kind of fae, but it was an entity with a sorcerous mana network. What if one of Song’s ancestors had somehow managed something similar with a wind dragon?

  The cultivator hadn’t said anything about it, of course, just as he hadn’t shared anything about how the process of cultivating the spirit actually worked. When pressed, he’d suggested that he should develop his sorcery the same way magical creatures did—by instinct. That didn't sit well with Bernt. Maybe the “wandering cultivators” of Song’s homeland did things that way, but they didn’t have a solid magical education and access to libraries worth of information.

  Being the most basic kind of sorcerer might be fine for a war mage who’d burned himself out, but Bernt needed to do better than that. He had a responsibility to understand this new power, and to bring out its full potential. Besides, he was a wizard, and he wasn’t about to just leave his own development as the continent’s first human sorcerer to chance. Song implied that sorcery had incredible potential—it would be a waste not to try to seize it.

  By the time they broke through beneath the clouds, Bernt had come up with the outline of a plan. First, he needed to let Pollock know what he’d learned and if he could find the time, he needed to get in touch with Jori. She was a sorceress, too—a natural one. She’d already told him what it was like to grow her spirit, but he might still be able to learn something. From there, he needed to experiment with ingesting new magical potential. The coal grass florets had done something, and that made it as good a place to start as any. Finally, he needed to work out what it meant to “refine his energies” as Song called it. It had something to do with spiritual development, which sounded more like something to do with magical potential than mana, but he had no way to be sure.

  The city of Norhold finally came into view below them as they rounded a large outcropping, arriving at the bottom of the endless stair. It lay crowded up against the Umris river on the Beseri side, with a castle a little ways up the slope whose walls reached down from it like arms to hug the town beneath it.

  The road that wound down from the base of the stair to the walls of Norhold wasn’t long, but it was steep. Bernt had to be careful not to slip as he hurried to keep up with his companion’s relentless pace. Torvald was clearly still rattled, which just seemed strange on him. Making a decision, Bernt put a hand on the paladin’s shoulder.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” he asked, practically dragging him to a stop. Torvald stared at him, surprised and probably a little annoyed at being manhandled. “Look, I’ve seen you charge into an army by yourself. I know what happened was probably pretty unnerving, but I’ve never even seen you get nervous. Why now?”

  Torvald looked over at him a little warily, but then he sighed tiredly.

  “Look. Most of the time, it’s easy. If there’s a problem, she literally guides me through it. As long as I follow, I practically can’t fail. But this conclave—she won’t interfere. Ruzinia won’t talk to me. It’s a part of how the entire Invigilation works. That means she won’t protect my family—or our entire country—from whatever the Conclave eventually decides. You’re the one who pointed that out to me, remember? We have to handle this ourselves. And now... I don't know if we can deal with this, alright?”

  Bernt stared for a second, then he huffed out a laugh, releasing his friend. “Back to being a mere mortal for one job, and you’re shaking in your boots? Come on, it’s not going to be that serious, right? Maybe they’ll try to force us to take on more than our share of the fighting, or they’ll demand some kind of payment from the king—but that’s all still better than trying to fight the Duergar Empire alone.”

  “I just… I have a bad feeling about it, alright? I don’t know what can happen, but the way they responded to the news was wrong. The temple of Balarian was a bit condescending, which was strange, but at the temple of Noruk… it was like they were waiting for an excuse. They knew exactly who I was when I walked in the door. After I told them why I came, they pulled me away to a side room for two of them to ‘interview’ me—a priest and a paladin. The priest sat in front of me, asking questions and throwing around accusations while the paladin walked around behind me, trying to make me nervous. They were trying to intimidate me, and there’s no good reason to do that that I can think of. They didn’t even ask about the Duergar!”

  That was strange, Bernt had to admit. If they were just trying to angle for greater influence in the Conclave or to push for resources or concessions from Besermark, there was no reason to intimidate Torvald personally. They just needed to sway the other temple representatives. Bernt would relay the situation to Iriala—maybe she would have some ideas. For that matter, he owed Count Narald in Halfbridge a letter as well, formally reporting on Torvald’s actions in the country as his legitimator.

  The Mages’ Guild was easy to find once they passed through the city gates. Bernt’s eye was immediately drawn down the pin-straight road to the city’s central square. There, among several other large, blocky buildings, a bulky rectangular tower rose up into the sky. It wasn’t as tall as the one in Gobford, but it was larger and layered so heavily in wards that he could sense it from here. It couldn’t be anything but the Mages’ Guild.

  The entire city was built in straight lines, as if it had been planned and built all at once. Bernt didn’t know the local history, but the utilitarian design felt very military to him.

  Of course, that didn’t mean the current residents shared the original builders’ tastes. Some of the flat roofs had trees and other plants growing on them, there were large pots blooming with early spring flowers in the street and in front of some of the buildings, and colorful signs and pennants decorated shops and homes. The usual assortment of hawkers and merchants crowded the sides of the street, calling out to passersby.

  Keeping an eye out for anyone who might be selling shoes, Bernt followed Torvald through the streets, taking a left here and a right there. Despite the simple layout, he was lost almost immediately. Everything looked the same. How were you supposed to know which street you were on?!

  Torvald fortunately didn’t suffer from this problem. He took them directly to the inn where the others were supposed to be staying, only to find that none of them were there. That wasn’t too surprising—Bernt wouldn’t expect his friends to just sit around all day waiting for the Conclave to finish up. Nirlig would probably want to try the food and explore the city, and Elyn, Estrid and the other goblins might look for work while they were here. Uriah… well, Bernt didn’t know what he would do, but he wasn’t the sort to just sit around, either.

  “Uncle Olias said he wanted to sample the wine, right?” Torvald commented, looking up and down the street uncertainly. “ I guess the innkeeper might know where to look for him.”

  Bernt shook his head. “They’ll be back later tonight, right? Let’s talk to him and the others then. Come on, we can go to the guild in the meantime and send some messages.”

  “Hmm,” Torvald replied, patting his pockets and pulling out a broken pencil with a dull nub on it. “I could write to my mother. She’d know who to talk to on the other end, at least. “Do you have any paper?”