1
Liar
I woke with a horrible, lurching feeling. It clawed at me, whispering to me that my time was running out, that the world was falling away from me. A great mist had descended during the night, drawing me from my bed earlier than usual. As I began my run, the haze lifted, revealing a world caught in stillness between one breath and the next, held in a frozen inhalation. My bare feet slapped against the cobblestone road, mist dampening my shirt. The hem had become too ragged, and I had been forced to cut it away. As I ran, the uneven hem pulled free from my pants, the frigid breeze crawling along my waist. The mismatched patch covering my right knee had fallen off, displaying the usual honeyed tint of my skin as it began to adopt a bluish pallor.
It was unseasonably cold, the mountains in the distance capped by stubborn ice that refused to melt into the spring streams. My feet were numb and stinging, but I pushed on. I ran because my legs itched, because there was something restless and unsettled building inside me. I ran to convince myself that I was in control.
I never deviated from my route. I never stopped to take in the scenery, to watch the birds, or to speak to anyone. I never stopped for anything.
Not until that strange, still day.
My feet slowed and turned, my body becoming autonomous, leading me to the rock retaining wall that stepped down to the banks of Lake Enke. There were a few staggered blocks along the wall for people to use as a staircase, but I ignored those, leaping over the ledge and landing below with a stinging slap against the bank.
I felt compelled to keep moving, my eyes drawn to the lines of fishing wire that pulled taut from the posts hammered into the ground around the lake. In Forsan, the ancient language, they were called vevebre. Lines of fate. They glinted in the morning sun, sharp and alluring. They begged me to walk amongst them, to grasp my destiny in my hands. To reel and twist the wire until my future unspooled in my palms. The lines called to everyone, but few were brave or stupid enough to touch them. They were sacred premonitions spun by the powerful Skjebre people, and neither fate nor those wielding the power of fate were to be tested, questioned, or unmasked. An unknown fate was an unending opportunity; a revealed fate was nothing more than a damning sentence—a gamble with impossible odds.
The shoreline was populated by a sea of pebbles in shades of brown and black, dotted every now and then with translucent white stones. They shifted beneath my weight, causing me to sink with every step. The water was a dark, deep, unbroken blue. It lapped at the pebbles, shifting them gently. Mist covered the entire bank, carrying a scent that grew claws, digging into the base of my throat. Both familiar and unfamiliar, it reminded me of a summer storm. I breathed it deeply. The water lapped at my toes, surprising me with the knowledge that I had moved all the way to the edge of the lake. I stared at the calm surface, thinking of a tale that I had heard often during my youth.
There is a beast in the water,
Talons of lead, death in his eyes.
There is a monster in the mist,
Waiting beneath a century of skies.
There is a girl by the water,
Dress of silver, stars in her eyes,
Singing of a beast called Dragur,
Wading in the shore of demise.
There is death in the water,
Hidden by a century of lies.
There is a beast called Dragur,
Waiting beneath a century of skies.
There is a whisper in the water,
Of one to fall, and one to rise.
“The water calls to you.”
The voice shocked me out of my stupor, and I took several hasty steps back from the water’s edge, spinning around to find the speaker, the movement splashing my ankles. A man stood behind me, a rough, dark-brown scarf looped around his shoulders, forming a cowl over his head and covering the lower half of his face. He wore black linen clothing with leather wraps around his hands, wrists, and over his boots. There was a thick strap angled over his chest—peeking out from beneath the scarf—and an assortment of leather purses, wires, strings, and tool pouches dangling from his belt. At six and a half feet tall and over two hundred pounds, he was unnaturally large, with a leanness of muscle beneath the visible skin of his forearms. If the other locals had been raised by the shore of Lake Enke, then this man had been raised by the vast Sea of Storms, far beyond the mountains, where the ancient giants had once lived.
A Skjebre walked out of the mist on the other side of the bank, crouching beside one of the posts, touching the line attached to it. His mouth moved, but he was too far away for me to hear his words. His face was visible, his hood thrown back. His cloak, which swept against the rocks, was of the finest quality.
I turned my attention back to the giant man with a wince. The rising sun was to his back, his scarf shielding his features from me—and yet, despite having never met him, I knew exactly who he was. People did not sing songs of this man; they preferred to whisper stories of him as they huddled about the fire with their necks prickling and their eyes wary-specked. He was only a figment of a myth, that horrible echo of a dark deal dancing with a choked remittance. He was an unending undoing, waiting for someone stupid enough to pluck at one of the unspooling threads he offered.
Someone stupid like me.
“Weaver.” The word escaped my mouth before I could stop it. I could taste the mist in the word. Sweet. Electric.
“Who seeks me out?” His voice was rough, as though he had just awoken. It scratched out of his throat and all the way into mine.
I swallowed around the discomfort, opening my mouth to answer. He cut me off, motioning to my clothing. “You clearly do not have the means to make a deal with me.”
He was right. My clothing was that of a steward, not a sectorian. I belonged to the lower class of people in Fyrio. The people without magic. I nodded in answer, not daring to speak another word. I hadn’t called to him or sought out his cottage hidden within the thatch of towering sequoia trees by the lake. He had no reason to believe that I had deliberately disturbed his work, and he would be forced to let me on my way. And yet, he stared.
He waited.
I could just make out his eyes—as deep blue and unbroken as the water behind me. His gaze passed right through me, igniting a healthy fear within my chest. That fear grew roots, shooting down my stomach, itching along my legs and sprouting through my feet to plant me firmly to the spot. I wasn’t permitted to stand before a man as powerful and important as the Weaver without very good reason … but there I was. Drawn to the bank, cajoled by the song of the water, taken prisoner by the thick dawn mist. I wanted to leave. My feet refused to budge. The Weaver was an impossible sight, and I couldn’t look away. I had never seen him at the markets, or by the bank of Lake Enke beneath the warm afternoon sun as the children raced along the rocks.
Deep in the darkness of night was when he emerged, along with the other chosen within his sector. They spun the vevebre, casting those lines of fate into the water. By midday, they were all gone, the Skjebre and the vevebre both. Hundreds of fates discarded to the ocean, released to the powers of chance, or reeled into precious, inescapable premonitions. I had wondered—as had most of us—if any of the premonitions concerned me, but I would never have sought out the Weaver to discover my fate. A deal with a sectorian of any kind was bound to cost more than I could afford, but a deal with the Weaver would place me in an unforgivable lifelong debt.