Chapter One
Cool morning light streamed over the high walls of the Lux Temple, while the vast city outside its gates fell strangely silent. In the temple courtyard, Cymin took a deep breath and prepared to begin the most important procession he would ever lead. He wore the pearl mask of the aloof East Deity for the occasion. His sister Yinni’s face was hidden behind the gold mask of the benevolent West Deity. Wigs crafted from raw silk threads covered their shaved heads. The richly embroidered gold robes of their costumes billowed and fluttered, exposing their bare feet.
Behind them, sixty of their fellow tuteli clerics filled the narrow stone space, all standing in formation and waiting for the morning bells to announce the opening of Lux Temple’s Spring Exhibition. Brilliant regalia, archaic weapons and beautiful musical instruments abounded. Ahead of them all rose the temple’s huge ironwood gates, and beyond that, the secular world, filled with fascinating people, forbidden delights and all their future challenges.
Cymin bounced on his toes and rolled his shoulders, attempting to shake off a little of his nervous anticipation. This year’s procession was expected to draw more spectators than any in the last twenty years, and the exhibition matches afterwards would be attended by the top combatants from the Five Mage Schools. Cymin’s final year defending the honor of East Deity could be his most triumphant yet.
Or an utter humiliation—but Cymin didn’t allow himself to think about that. Instead, he stole a glance to his sister. At twenty, Yinni was two years older than him but still three inches shorter. She tapped her graceful fingers along the Black Staff in her right hand. Only that betrayed her nervousness. Noticing Cymin’s gaze, her fingers stilled.
“We’ll astound the crowd and trounce all challengers,” Yinni assured him. “By the end of the exhibition, thousands of new worshipers will flood the temple with donations and come begging for blessings from us.”
“Only if all the people out on the street forget that we’re just their local tuteli under these costumes,” Cymin teased her, though in truth he wished to the Heavens that she could be right. “Once they remember that, they’ll go back to looking down on us.”
“Shut up and let me bask in my glorious delusion,” Yinni responded. She then gestured grandly to the tuteli assembled behind them. “We’re all beautiful today.”
Cymin couldn’t argue with that, and he didn’t want to, in any case.
“Today we’re divine!” he agreed, loudly enough for his voice to carry across the entire gathering—from the twenty costumed performers to the vast retinue of musicians behind them. Cheers and a few giggles met his proclamation.
All three of the tuteli adepts standing directly behind Cymin and Yinni laughed and patted each other’s backs encouragingly. They were all close to twenty years of age and specifically selected for this year’s procession on account of their grace as well as their skill in tempering fei’lux to power the spells embedded in their ancient weapons. They, like Cymin and Yinni, wore refined deity masks and moved with practiced finesse, transforming displays of swords, staves and spears into elegant dances.
Together, the five of them represented the nation’s most revered and recognizable deities, the Five Guardians who had defended the Hallow Gates during the creation of the world and later subdued the Carnal Gods. While Cymin and Yinni represented the deities of the day and night, respectively, their three fellow tuteli adepts were costumed as the deities of the earth, sky and water.
If this had been 200 years earlier, during the reign of mage-kings, hundreds more deities would have filled out their ranks—at least one for every occupation, location or interest anyone could think of—but in the century since the People’s Revolution, most of the expansive pantheon had been abolished.
Five deities were enough for the revolutionaries; any more than that constituted excess.
Behind Cymin and the other adepts came fifteen novice tuteli ranging in ages from six to twelve. They struggled to contain their excitement, several of them spontaneously performing the cartwheels and somersaults they’d be expected to display along the parade route. Others waved their hands in the air and struck poses as ferocious beasts. Strings of brass bells tinkled from their wrists and ankles, and bright ribbons adorned most of their headdresses.
These children were meant to evoke the deadly adversaries of the deities. Those dressed like dragons, sea serpents and other mythical beasts represented the defeated Carnal Gods who were still worshiped in the nation of Piiroc. Novices wearing floating ribbons and layers of colorful gauze were sharwae, guardian spells that had been corrupted from their original protective purposes so much that the deities had to fight and defeat them.
And last came the children adorned in chaotic splashes of body paint and riots of flowers, reeds and seashells. They played chuuraun, chimeric monsters born of creatures and spells that supposedly had been fused together by the savage fei’lux storms of the archaic days before the Storm Towers had been built.
Of course, all those mythic horrors and wonders were long gone. Or at least, they should have been—though this year might change that. Cymin turned his long black staff over in his hands and stared at the gates ahead of him, willing them to open.
At last, the city clock towers resounded with nine bells. The ironwood doors of the Lux Temple’s Sun Gate swung open and Cymin bounded out. He landed gracefully on the open street at the start of the parade route. Hordes of onlookers lined the roadside, and at the sight of him, countless excited voices suddenly roared. There were so many more spectators than he’d expected that Cymin nearly missed his second leap. Behind him, the temple musicians commenced to play, and for a moment the clamor of drums, horns and gongs of the procession nearly drowned out the shrill whistles and cheers of the assembled crowd. But not for long.
Everywhere Cymin looked, he saw more and more people. Shopkeepers, clerks and bike couriers gossiped with workers still wearing their factory overalls. Students dressed in bright green school jackets clustered around their instructors while little children waved from their parents’ shoulders. Beggars and street vendors wove through the throngs while radio reporters and even a film newsreel crew jostled for good positions. He met the gazes of hundreds of strangers in a single glance. They filled the walkways, crouched atop newsstands, leaned from the windows and balconies of nearby teahouses and even perched on the tile rooftops.
Had all seven million of the capital’s residents actually come out to watch the temple parade this year?
For the briefest of instants Cymin froze with shock. Then his fourteen years of training took over. In his right hand he raised his long staff. The gold teardrop-shaped finial at the top of it glinted in the sun, looking a little like a candle flame. Beside him, Yinni lifted her matching staff. Deep inside the Black Staves lay rods of goldwork, each etched with a treasury of ancient spells—the Thousand Blessings that once shielded entire cities from droughts, plagues and sieges. Though without fei’lux coursing through them the staves were little more than very heavy sticks.
Cymin flexed his left hand and began to draw fei’lux down from the seemingly tranquil air. A tingling current shot through the spell filaments—gold threads implanted into his hands and arms—and then spread across his chest. He spun in a circle, letting the fei’lux circulate through his body—tempering its erratic currents to match his heartbeat. In the time it took for him to complete one rotation, he calmed the torrent of blazing fei’lux to a steady stream of energy.
Then with his right hand he released that gentle flow of power into the Black Staff and channeled it to the gold rods at the core. Tiny gold sigils all along the shaft began to glow. Each sigil was itself powerless, but when grouped together they made up spells. The gold finial capping the staff flashed nearly as bright as the morning sun. Its light flickered across the gathered crowd while wisps of a silvery vapor coiled around the crown of the staff like steam.
Cymin leapt and spun again, twirling the staff as he went. Beside him, Yinni did the same. What appeared to be a playful dance was in reality a precise discipline, every step, leap and turn relating to the exact position of one of the thousand spells hidden within the staff. Those spells combined to make a larger spell array. Years of constant training and practice ensured that Cymin and Yinni not only roused the right spells but that they did so in perfect synchrony, their matched dance steps mirroring the flows of fei’lux they released. Cymin swept to the right, Yinni to the left. Sigils all along their staves glinted in time to the swelling music. Today they gently woke the sequence of spells that created a vast floating veil.
Plumes of silver vapor poured from their staves and coalesced in midair. One plume after another took on translucent floral shapes. Luminous petals as long as Cymin’s arms unfurled. As the blossoms rose they interlocked like clockwork, spinning and spreading above the onlookers. Warm breezes stirred and fragrances of jasmine and rose drifted down. Steadily, the sky filled with bright silver spells—each evoking one of the Sacred Blossoms that seeded the world with the first blessings of life: warmth, sustenance, health, protection, joy and a multitude of other kindnesses.
Cymin and Yinni danced forward and the Veil of a Thousand Blessings stretched behind them, sheltering the rest of the procession. A warm breeze perfumed with the fragrance of spring blossoms spread over the crowd, driving back the morning chill.
The resounding applause, hoots and cheers that followed seemed out of proportion to Cymin. The subdued selection they’d conjured from the complete Thousand Blessings wasn’t that impressive to him. A heavy rain would wash it away, and even fireworks could distort it.
This small array of spells was certainly nothing when compared to the magecraft required to serve in the Storm Towers. There, entire teams of tuteli battled onslaughts of wild fei’lux that surged down from the Hallow Gates far across the Great Chasm Sea. Those ancient, battered Storm Towers shielded their nation as well as the rest of the continent by capturing eruptions of fei’lux that could have scoured away both land and life and tempering them into sedate streams. The tempered fei’lux that the Storm Towers released became a steady flow of energy, one that drove electrical turbines, powered public trams and illuminated the newly built streetlamps all across the nation of Chyre. It was that tamed flow of energy that Cymin and Yinni tapped into now.
Surrounded by cheers and applause, Cymin gave silent thanks to all the older tuteli serving in the Storm Towers. And as he and Yinni led the procession onward, Cymin occasionally glimpsed the youngest tuteli dancing behind them. Despite their villainous costumes, several of the novices were too intimidated by the throngs of strangers surrounding them to be mistaken for anything but children. One scrawny boy actually clung to an adept tuteli’s leg, hiding his face in the gold silk. His timidity was balanced out by a plump little girl—with a malevolent violet sigil painted on her brow—who forgot her role as a corrupt sharwae completely and began waving at onlookers and throwing kisses like the star of a moving picture.
Cymin smiled behind his mask.
Perhaps something good could come of so very many people watching the parade this year. Maybe a family would take a liking to that little girl, pay off her temple debt and adopt her. Or someone might take the shy boy on as an apprentice and give him a chance to earn enough money to buy his own debt back.
For grown adepts like himself and Yinni, adoption or apprenticeship weren’t likely—after more than a decade of training and living in the temple, their debts were far too great—but a scout might hire one of them for stunt work on a moving picture. Or perhaps they could find side work performing blessings at a wedding or for the opening of a new business.
Cymin had recently been entertaining the fantasy that he might earn a little secular money before the end of the Spring Festival. After that he would begin his conscription maintaining the Storm Towers.
He often daydreamed about what it would be like to freely meet and mingle with the fascinating people who lived outside the Lux Temple. Though how many of them would be interested in him, he wasn’t certain. Most people looked upon Lux Temple’s tuteli as impoverished, celibate ascetics whose existences were entirely dedicated to refining the magecraft bestowed upon humanity by the deities.
As it was, the majority of secular people who Cymin interacted with were students from one of the five state-approved mage schools. Those encounters were largely confined to battles meant to hone the prowess of the Five Schools’ mages and were therefore mostly unfriendly exchanges.
But what would it be like to lounge on silk cushions and converse with people on whatever subject crossed his mind?
His gaze swept across the crowd to a group of young scholars sitting on the roof of a winehouse. They exchanged relaxed smiles and toasted one another. Their long dark hair hung loose, and their green university robes fluttered in the spring breeze, exposing bare dangling legs. A sandal slipped from one young man’s foot. A newsgirl on the walkway below caught it and hurled it back up to the roof. The scholars laughed and sang out some poem in response, but Cymin was already too far away to hear it clearly.
He smirked at his own wistful imagination. Master Tam would smack him until he saw stars if he knew of the absurdly shallow fantasies Cymin entertained while representing East Deity on this sacred day.
But after years of performing before lackluster gatherings of schoolchildren on day trips, bored government officials and dazed tourists, he felt a little giddy to see awe and appreciation in so many faces.
Still, as he manifested a shining veil of blessings over Grand Avenue, Cymin resisted the urge to display his genuine prowess. Tempting wisps of fei’lux curled around him as if summoned by his desire to show off. His left hand tingled and an excited hum stirred in his chest. It would be so easy to awaken the true power of the countless sigils etched into the core of this staff. Instead of faint silver flowers, this crowd could see the real invocations blaze to life. They’d be astounded—one of those rooftop scholars might even drop his wine cup.
But this year, of all years, the Temple Grand Master and the organizers in the Prime Minister’s office would be furious if he rashly deviated from the plan, so he absolutely shouldn’t screw around. He could not afford to add any fines to his massive temple debt. He was already facing seven years in the Storm Towers to work off his current balance.
Plus Yinni would probably slap the mask off his face for messing around and embarrassing her.
Cymin flicked his hand, releasing the stream of fei’lux back into the atmosphere.
I am East Deity, the light of the sun and guardian of creation. I do not show off just to impress pretty scholars in loose robes . . . at least not when anyone can catch me doing so.
As Yinni and Cymin crossed staves and circled each other. Yinni rolled her dark eyes meaningfully at a balcony on the right and said, “Hey! That’s Una Bayan, isn’t it?”
Cymin stole a sidelong glance at the group of people Yinni indicated. He recognized the screen actress at once. Her short-cropped dark hair, scarlet-stained lips and long silk trousers all evoked the vivacious, revolutionary roles that had won her many ardent admirers as well as a fair number of vitriolic critics. Two men in modern clothes lounged against the balcony railing on either side of her. One of them seemed rather mousy, with dull brown hair and a meek posture. But the second man rivaled Una Bayan in looks, with jet-black hair, a rich complexion and handsome features. He held a Bluecloud cigarette in between two of his long fingers. Then he suddenly looked down at Cymin and Yinni. His dark gaze seemed to bore right through Cymin’s mask.
The man flexed his empty right hand, casting a spell directly. Cymin’s eyes stung, and his vision wavered. The man had to be a master mage. Probably a graduate from the elite Boshyin School.
Embarrassed to have been caught gawking, Cymin lifted his chin and shrugged his shoulders. With every motion he attempted to convey: East Deity is indifferent to beauty and cares nothing about screen stars or handsome men with cigarettes. He is simply studying the crowd. There are many more impressive people than you for him to observe.
He maintained the pretense as they paraded on, making a steady circuit around the 800 acres of the sprawling Lux Temple Complex. At last, they neared the towering red walls of the exhibition grounds. Here, faces and figures Cymin had previously only seen in weekly newsreels suddenly became as plentiful as mice in a granary.
Clothed in resplendent silk robes and lounging in auto-carriages or pedicabs drawn by giant carriage birds, the governing elite and idle rich occupied long swaths of the walkways. Walls of dark-uniformed attendants, private security and city police insulated them from the surrounding rabble.
Then some dumb photographer dashed out into the street and lit off a burst of flash powder right in Cymin’s face.
“You fucker!” Cymin’s nerves hummed as the rush of white heat caught him unprepared. He barely had enough time to release his staff. The faint scars marking his hands and fingers gleamed for an instant—then the current dissipated. Cymin caught his staff again. He’d barely managed to expel the burst of energy before it polluted the stream of blessings. This year, of all years, was not the time to befoul the elegant Veil of a Thousand Blessings with ugly splotches that reeked of saltpeter.
Next to him Yinni’s arms shook and twitched, but she didn’t release her staff. Instead, she channeled the burst of power into her muscles to suppress it. Cymin winced in sympathy at the burning needles of pain spearing her every nerve.
He started for the photographer, but Yinni elbowed him and he regained his senses. Obviously, she hadn’t endured blistering pain just to have him slap a random photographer on the open street in front of thousands of people.
Still, Cymin couldn’t just let it go. He raised a finger from the Black Staff and ignited a wisp of fei’lux near the photographer’s face.
“Heaven decrees that the wicked shall be struck down,” Cymin’s voice boomed out.
The burst of energy wasn’t enough to even kill a horsefly, but it flashed bright and intimidating. The man yelped then fled towards the surrounding crowd. However, the instant the photographer reached the walkway, three women in police uniforms grabbed him and slammed him against the wall of a teahouse.
“And the Heavens’ punishment comes swiftly,” Yinni intoned.
They continued ahead.
Moments later, they reached the towering walls of the exhibition grounds. The huge scarlet doors were hauled open. Cymin kept his head up and his eyes focused ahead of him, maintaining East Deity’s assured, indifferent demeanor the same way he had for the past five years. When their procession passed through the gateway, cheers rose from the wooden stands like thunder, and petals of cut paper stamped with blessings fluttered down like drifts of snow. He, Yinni and the other tuteli quickly found their places near the center of the exhibition grounds and stood facing the gate, ready to welcome the guests who would come to challenge them. Over the years, they’d welcomed adepts and masters from all corners and defeated the majority of them. Very few mages even qualified to test their prowess against the Lux Temple tuteli. Fewer still ever won a prestigious champion’s ring from them.
Previously, he and his fellow tuteli had always outshone even the most promising and favored children from the Five Schools, so normally Cymin felt at ease here. Everything from the brilliant bas-relief carvings of deities and devils that adorned the surrounding walls to the pale flagstones beneath his bare feet was familiar to him.
But this year was different, and for the first time since he’d achieved the rank of adept, Cymin felt uncertain about the outcome of today’s battles.
In his unease, even the exhibition grounds felt foreign. He glanced to the indifferent faces of the Five Deities that decorated the stone walls. The gilt and ivory inlay adorning their figures looked newer than he remembered. Beneath his feet, at the center of the grounds, the mosaic depicting the constellations, which had always been off by a few degrees, had been fixed. Cymin’s favorite cluster of homely, worn-down and crooked stars had been replaced by gleaming gold perfection. Even the line of rusting iron vases along the outer wall, which normally sported inexpensive incense, had been re-glazed in vivid scarlet and now displayed vast bouquets of unlit fireworks.
The people filling the stands and the costly box seats had changed significantly too. Gone were the usual groups of devout grannies, as were the clusters of impoverished parents and relatives who’d come either to assure themselves that the children they’d sold to Lux Temple were thriving or to convince children being offered up to quietly submit to their exciting future as tuteli. Nor did Cymin recognize any of the trinket and food vendors who regularly worked the lower levels. Instead those benches were filled with well-dressed merchants, eye-catching entertainers, bureaucrats, bodyguards and a scattering of radio reporters wearing state official emblems on their jackets.
For the first time ever, the sleek, silver-haired prime minister and several famous members of his cabinet had deigned to attend the ceremony. Of course, they and their various attendants laid claim to the sheltered high seats. In their midst, Lux Temple’s Grand Master Ryn appeared out of place with her shaved head and modest brown vestments. The gaunt and infamous Minister of National Security, Lui Dane, leaned close to the Grand Master. He whispered something to her. She nodded, but her tense expression made Cymin suspect that she would rather have endured a viper flicking its tongue in her ear than share Lui Dane’s confidences.
Old Master Tam, who normally oversaw the ceremonies while Grand Master Ryn took part in the challenges, had been banished to a lower stand. Alongside him sat Lux Temple’s wiry old physician, Master Shuun, and six uneasy-looking volunteer nurses.
“Does something feel wrong to you?” Cymin whispered to Yinni.
She gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Maybe it’s the obscurity spells on the National Security agents.”
“Probably,” Cymin said. It was a good theory. People in blue NS uniforms dotted the crowd, though many more probably hid within obscurity spells. Cymin had no doubt that they’d deployed numerous other spells as well. He squinted up to where a gray shadow flickered in the clouds and guessed that it was a surveillance device of some kind. Still, Cymin’s attention was drawn back down to the cobblestones. He really didn’t like the feeling of the new mosaic against his bare feet.
The trumpeters at the gates blew out a cascade of resounding notes, heralding the arrival of competitors from the Five Schools, and Cymin’s wandering attention jolted back to the gates. His pulse quickened and an absurd nervousness flooded him—as if he hadn’t been greeting competitors from the Five Schools since he was seven years old. Yinni bounced anxiously on the balls of her feet. A plump little novice tuteli clutched at Cymin and Yinni’s belt sashes, trying to pull herself a little higher to see past them. Yinni nudged the girl back into formation.
Cymin and Yinni again raised their staves, manifesting the Veil of a Thousand Blessings, as adepts and masters from the Five Schools marched through the gates. The visiting mages’ silk clothes fluttered, and many of them smiled and bowed to the cheering crowds before lining up in their traditional positions.
Dressed in black, the elite mages of the prestigious Boshyin School took first position. They were followed by Chohe Institute’s cosseted eccentrics, all dressed in luxurious violets. The cunning, cream-clad academics from Guishuun College stood in the third position. Orae Academy’s all-male student body wore red uniforms. They jogged and joked into the fourth post. The yellow uniforms of the female students from the fledgling Ryde Academy shone bright as sunflowers. The young women swept into the fifth position with an air of excitement.
As always, Cymin tried to focus on reviewing his competitors and choosing one or two who seemed particularly self-important to thrash during the competitions. But he couldn’t concentrate on the usual attendees as he had in past years. Instead he kept glancing to the open gates.
The final guests had yet to arrive: the Wraiths of Saigrath.
In some corner of his mind, Cymin wasn’t entirely convinced that they would ever appear—or that they existed at all. But if they did, he wanted to be the first to lay eyes on them. The first to step forward and meet them.
“It’s going to be all right,” Yinni whispered. “No matter what happens, we can handle it.”
Cymin nodded. He tried to ease his rising tension, reminding himself that it had been more than 200 years since Wraiths last crossed the Great Chasm Sea and appeared in the mortal world.
What’s another few minutes?
Then the sky above them shuddered and five brilliant lights blazed through the clouds like stars falling to earth.
