“Uh-huh,” she says, like she was distracted and wasn’t listening. “So you’re saying I could use these clever tricks and tweaks to improve my current Axiom without changing its entire structure. Which took me months to figure out.”
“That’s . . . not even remotely close to what I said.”
“Because I know there are good Axioms built the way I’ve done it.”
“Sure, there are good ones. There might even be a few very good ones. But never great ones.” Salo folds his arms, lifting an eyebrow. “Which would you rather have?”
Nimara opens her mouth to say something, but a frustrated noise comes out instead. She drops her face into her palms in defeat. “I can’t start over, Salo. And what you’re suggesting sounds so complicated—”
“It is complicated,” he says. “But it’s by far the better way, and you’re more than smart enough to figure it out.”
Doubt shows in the pools of her eyes as she raises them to search his face. “You have too much faith in me.”
“I have just the right amount of faith. And if you want to speed things up, you could always do what I did.”
A pained shadow darkens her face. “Please,” she says in a quiet voice, “don’t tempt me.”
Salo is instantly ashamed of himself. Nimara watched him almost die because of the Carving—he would have died had she not found him. And then she had to keep it a secret. Of course she wants nothing to do with any of that. “Sorry,” he says. “You don’t need it anyway. Take your time, and don’t ever underestimate yourself. Just, let’s not make a habit of coming here and asking me things that could get me in trouble, okay?”
A slow smile spreads across her face, and Salo catches a glimpse of the young girl who used to chase after him back in the day with sweets and dolls since he was the only boy who would play house with her. That girl grew up way too quickly.
She banishes the mirage with a gesture and picks up her spider talisman. “Thank you, Salo. I’ll be back if I have more questions.”
He shakes his head and can’t help returning her smile. “Why do I even bother?”
To the uninitiated, the Carving might seem an innocuous, if particularly detailed, soapstone sculpture of a grove in high relief, something to be hung on a wall and occasionally admired.
Stare at it for long enough, however, and the woods come alive. The leaves rustle with the wind; the branches sway. Paths appear and disappear between the trees, leading to secret places. Keep staring, and the world will finally vanish as the mind is sucked into a dreamscape of dense forest. Here the trees are ancient, and the rich crimson soil underfoot is steeped in the knowledge of ciphers and Axioms and the secrets of their power.
During his first excursion into this realm, Salo wandered the woods for what felt like many hours before he understood that the entire grove was a continuously shifting pattern, and that successfully navigating its treacherous twists and turns to the glade at the heart was what imbued the mind with arcane secrets.
And so began his trysts with the Carving and its forbidden knowledge, trysts he managed to keep secret until the day he almost died and Nimara forced him to confess everything.
Salo hasn’t used it again since.
He’s trying to catch up on the backlog of work an hour after her departure from the workshop when a whirlwind of energy and excitement barrels through the door. “Bra Salo. You owe me a game of matje.”
Salo doesn’t look away from the patterns of the water pump’s unstable mind stone, projected above his worktable from his serpent talisman as a mirage of superimposed waves. Getting the talisman to subtly manipulate the stone’s energy and restore it to a state of equilibrium is a delicate task that requires practice and a great deal of patience. One faulty move could ruin the mind stone forever. “Go away,” he says. “I’m busy.”
Predictably his guest makes himself comfortable on a stool across the table. Salo looks up when he hears the clatter of pebbles; the boy is already setting up the game of matje they didn’t finish two days ago.
“What did I tell you about barging in without knocking?” Salo says. “Can’t you just knock for once in your life?”
Monti gets an impish look in his eye. “Are you doing something naughty, Bra Salo?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“That’s what my ama says. People want others to knock when they’re doing something naughty. That way they have time to hide whatever it is they’re doing.”
Salo rolls his eyes, though he fails to restrain a laugh. “Go away,” he says. “I don’t have time for your antics right now, and your aba made it clear he doesn’t want you spending time with me. I’m probably already in trouble because you followed me this morning.”
“He won’t find out.”
“That’s what you said last time; then he almost breathed fire into my face.”
“Just one game, Bra Salo. Please?”
“Go play with kids your own age.”
“But they aren’t any good,” Monti whines.
“The rangers on gate duty, then. Ama knows they’ve got nothing better to do.”
“I’ve already beaten them.”
“Then go beat them again.”
“I brought these.” The boy dips a hand into the leather pouch strapped to his hip and produces a paper-wrapped bundle of stick-shaped toffees. “I’ll share them with you if you want.”
Salo eyes the toffees despite himself. He never outgrew his fondness for sweet foods, and Monti knows this. “You’re the essence of evil,” he tells the boy. “All right, one game.”
Monti punches the air in excitement. “Yes!”
One game turns into three. By the fourth, the sunlight streaming in through the windows has gained a lazy golden hue, and the glowvines coiled around the shed’s exposed rafters have begun to give off a soft yellow light, like embers in a grate.
As they begin to set up the fifth game, a shriek makes both their heads swivel toward the windows.
“What was that?” Monti says.
“I don’t know,” Salo replies.
Then another elongated scream rattles their ears before ending abruptly.
Feeling the first stirrings of anxiety, Salo rises and walks to the windows but sees nothing untoward beyond the gum trees surrounding his shed. What’s going on out there?
“Come. I’ll walk you back to your compound.” The shed’s isolation doesn’t feel like such a good thing anymore.
“All right.” The boy picks up his case while Salo raises a long hand to agitate the glowvines so that they start to dim. He locks up, and they step out of the shed together, chewing on their toffees.
Only to stop dead as soon as they spot it.
There, in the skies above the kraal, a writhing mass of inky patterns that tricks the eye into seeing an infinitely black sphere with a prismatic corona. Salo immediately recognizes it for what it is: a mystic Seal.
Every mystic, upon receiving their cosmic shards and coming into their power, acquires a unique, hypnotic visual signature that can be cast at will—a Seal. To anyone who looks at it, the Seal will announce the nature and identity of its owner. The one above the kraal twists Salo’s mind into seeing the outline of a terrible mystic warlord sitting on a throne draped in shadows. His left eye glows scarlet with the intensity of moonfire. His army of disciples has plundered many towns and villages in his name.