Where Nam?’s head once settled thus flourish’d peat and fields abrus,

  and blessed pines grew in the clouds,

  where tender àlvar hands embroude peaceful songs into Her shroud.

  Such Order drew Lorkullen’s rage!

  Her Shroud ravag’d, befoul’d by rain,

  let melancholy roots entwine, drench’d by sin bled almandine.

  Divine strikes on frail shoreline cleaved sanctum with succus

  and curs’d the blessed truss.

  Murder foreshap’d ?elasdur.

  In soil his rot accrues; the sole gift he endues.

  —From “The Loss of ?elasdur,” The Green History

  ~

  Three hundred years before Esor arrived at ?elasdur, a young Ulishunn Mikteshfis sought a wife. Ulishunn had strong hands, a sturdy back, and a big round belly. He was so handsome that he received dozens of gifts from suitors daily, but only one other Dwarrow held sway over Ulishunn’s heart: Gennaneki, also of Mikteshfis Clan, born to farmers.

  Gennaneki was plain and stubborn. She was short. Her nose wasn’t big enough, and it looked like someone had pinned those overlarge ears back. Thick hair insulated her skull so she had no choice to be anything besides hot-headed. Most notably, Gennaneki had never left Ulishunn a single gift, nor positioned herself as suitor, and barely seemed aware of his presence.

  She rejected his first marriage proposal.

  “How can I make you see I would bend the stars for your love?” asked Ulishunn.

  Gennaneki bade him make an impossible artifact of legend. “I will marry you when you make a Heartbox.”

  She expected he would find a less exacting mate.

  Instead, he set about accomplishing the impossible.

  Legend said Spirits once made Heartboxes by plucking them from their breasts, but no Spirit still walked upon Her Divine Body to give Ulishunn one. Clerics explained adamantine might replicate the tissues of the divine, but only grand forges in Deep Frontier workshops could sustain steady fires at a high enough heat.

  “An impossible task,” said the clerics, as if this might deter Ulishunn, as if he did not already know, as if his heart were not set.

  Ulishunn exchanged a barrel of millennium beer with Deep Gnome traders to possess adamantine ore the size of his fist. He took shafts down to the magma lakes, then ventured into the Frontier, where forges champed metal teeth on flaming tongues hot enough to work the ore from Ashenna’s veins. Mhu-n Mowduh ran the only grand forge. Ulishunn bequeathed an entire wing of Mikteshfis Burrow to Mowduh in exchange for apprenticeship.

  Seasons passed while Ulishunn studied. The velvet shank bloomed and receded. Ulishunn’s hosts grew several flocks of chickens to harvest, and the rush of egg to chick to bird to meal blurred as Ulishunn grew calluses.

  Ulishunn practiced with Mhu-n Mowduh until he could melt adamantine without assistance. Then he began work on the Heartbox. The grand forge closed to other apprentices and journeymen.

  “Leave him to this queer mood,” said Mhu-n Mowduh. Even he seldom passed the locked gates, and only to ensure Ulishunn did not exhaust himself. Ulishunn ate a bite at a time when fed, he drank when water was poured over his steaming flesh, and he slept when he fell unconscious. His muscles became iron cords underneath blistered forearms.

  He changed.

  Then the grand forge cooled, the doors unlocked, and Ulishunn emerged.

  The Heartbox was curved and textured like Ulishunn’s palms. The delicate, double-crescent keyhole revealed glimpses of the mechanisms within.

  “What kind of key would open that?” asked the Mhu-n.

  “Only the right key,” said Ulishunn. None had seen the likes of such a key, even the creator of the lock. The creation of such was beyond his ken.

  Ulishunn returned to the burrow with gray hair bolting a beard that had grown to his navel. He first brought the Heartbox to the clerics to validate its divinity. “Divine indeed,” said the clerics. “But how?”

  “At a grand forge,” said Ulishunn. This was the extent of his explanation. He would tutor nobody in this process. He was not interested in doing it again. He would not make more to trade.

  There was only one Heartbox, and Ulishunn gave it to Gennaneki.

  He said, “Will you marry me, as you promised?”

  She was an honest sow; she believed a promise made was a promise kept. “We shall marry, but I cannot give you my heart.”

  They were wedded.

  The condition persisted for the remainder of their lives.

  One day, when the color began to fade from her cheeks, when she had already borne him cubs, Genna gave Ulishunn the key to the Heartbox. Her key was also made of adamantine and imperfect in different ways: a crooked keyshaft, teeth that followed impossible geometry, and a luster suggesting half the metal had melted off in the forge. Yet Genna’s key slotted perfectly into Ulishunn’s Heartbox.

  It took both their hands to unlock the Heartbox. When it opened, both of them saw for the first time what it contained. They wept over it. They kissed the tears from one another’s cheeks. Then they closed the box and told nobody what they had found.

  ~

  THE BOX ESOR CARRIED around his neck had more perfect angles than any form produced by nature, its surface like glass without flaws, the metal reflective as a mirror. Both box and Eternal Cross hid under his shirt when he attended his first appointment with Xeta, Lord of Great House Kovenor.

  “Doctor Xeta,” he clarified upon introduction.

  “It is an honor to meet you, Doctor,” said Esor.

  Xeta operated out of an infirmary accessible from the garden path. There awaited a half-dozen beds dressed in white linen, a maid polishing the floors, and the sharp scent of wine. Esor searched the doorways for an Eternal Cross to thank, but there were none. His hand fluttered over his cravat at the sight of dirty glass tanks lined along the wall. Some riparia were so muddy that he could not see inside. Others grew swamp grasses tall enough to brush the vaulted ceiling. Low leaves perspired against the glass and slime mold crept over the rims.

  There was no music in the infirmary. Only the off-key rattle of metal implements when a breeze shook their cabinet and the occasional thump of amphibians against glass.

  Doctor Xeta gestured toward a polished table. “Remove your overrobe and take a seat. I’ll listen to your heartbeat while you describe your medical history.”

  Esor alighted where he was told. Under his overrobe, he wore an embroidered topaz vest and billowing shirtsleeves. The light from the windows outlined his arms within the fabric. Metal tools gleamed on a cart beside him: scissors, probes, and needles.

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  “The pestilence guardians searched me for symptoms when I crossed into ?elasdur proper,” said Esor, eyeing the probes. He removed his vest. “I am free of buboes, rashes, the rattle...”

  “You would not be here if they found anything. I ask after your past.” Doctor Xeta removed his leather gloves and produced a long metal stethoscope. “Open your collar.” He spoke with a refined L?sàlvar accent, but limited his speech to verbal rather than tonal. Esor felt half-deaf listening to him.

  Hesitating, Esor unwound his cravat and released the knots holding his shirtsleeves closed. His chest was tanned from his last summer at Greenoak Pond. When he slouched, the Eternal Cross dangled at his navel.

  Doctor Xeta pressed the wider mouth of the stethoscope’s horn to Esor’s bare chest. Esor twitched at the contact of cold metal.

  “Since I recovered from lungrot as a child, I have been untouched by so much as springtime sniffles,” said Esor, head lifted to look away from Xeta’s stooped shoulders.

  Xeta listened to Esor’s heart for several minutes. The doctor stood so close that his jacket scraped Esor’s knuckles gripping the bed. Esor tried not to inhale too much lest he breathe in some scent nobility would not have otherwise permitted him.

  Esor’s heartbeat throbbed to the left of his throat, under his jaw, and pulsed on the insides of his wrist. Under the scrutiny of a proper doctor, Esor became so self-conscious that he sensed the constricting muscles of his cardiac system ripple from trunk to twig.

  Still, Xeta listened.

  “What do you hear?” asked Esor eventually.

  “Everything. The heart keeps no secrets.” Xeta turned to organize his tools. Only then did Esor dare affix his gaze directly upon the doctor. Xeta wore a straight black coat in the style of Inquisitors, though without religious adornment. Blond hair hung to his waist, unbraided but sleek. He had no antlers. “I am incredulous a Low àlvar could cross the threshold of adulthood without catching bog cough.”

  “Xilcadis Sibíko’s healers are the finest in the Great Thicket. Disease is seldom a concern.”

  “Your lieges have given you a blessed life,” said the doctor.

  “I thank the All-Mother every Light and Night.”

  “Resist the urge. The Path has fallen out of favor with the Magistrate, and that matters once you’re off your mother’s leading strings, wandering far from the amniotic comfort of small town Sibíko.”

  Esor thanked him for the advice. “Do I owe you gratitude for this posting? I was hired by Great House Kovenor, and that is your name upon the placard.”

  “Quite so, though you will need to pay your respects to my brother for the placement.”

  “Your brother,” said Esor. “The Lord Mayor.”

  “You’ve already met.”

  “He bestowed the contract upon me.”

  “And his gaze, I imagine. Tell me...” Xeta’s smile was thin, curving at the edges, yet his cervine eyes remained serious. “How have your dreams been since meeting him?”

  Esor said, “Pardon me. Dreams?” The subject of dreaming and Lord Mayor Corvin appeared intertwined in Xeta’s mind. The connection was not so obvious to Esor, who had yet to dream of àlvare in ?elasdur.

  “Are you resting peacefully?” Xeta lifted Esor’s lip to examine the health of his teeth.

  “Sleep comes seldom, but I only need time to adjust,” Esor stuttered around the intrusion of the doctor’s fingers.

  Xeta ran his forefinger along the roof of Esor’s mouth, pressing the tip of bone against the ridge firmly enough to shift the inside of his skull. When Esor’s head tipped backward, the doctor cradled it, holding him in place to feel the soft palate.

  Xeta hummed using only the melodies of the High Tongue. ?When the nightmares come, whose name will you scream into darkness??

  Esor’s throat shut tight at the question. He could not have responded even if he were not being physically manipulated.

  The doctor’s expression was serene when he released Esor. Xeta rinsed his hands in a basin. “My sister will be pleased to hear you’re in good health. She’s eager to engage her mind after so many vetone bedbound by Wasting.”

  Esor slipped off the table and stood behind it, wavering. The hyacinth undertones to his flesh had taken a gray cast. “Do you mean to say that she had Wasting and survived to recover?”

  “The miracles of medical science.”

  “I suspect it’s less a miracle than the inevitable result of your determined experimentation.” Esor indicated the glass tanks with a bob of his head. He discreetly wiped saliva off his bottom lip with a thumb, smeared during Xeta’s indelicate handling.

  “Have you interest in science?”

  “I’ve an interest in learning anything.”

  “You will appreciate what I do here.” Xeta opened a cage and extracted a writhing bloodtoad. “Where Maiur engage with Chaos and artisans with Order, science means testing and observing what is objectively true. Imagine if alchemy were certain, simple, and infinitely applicable regardless of the arrangement of stars.”

  “One imagines its adepts might find a cure for Wasting,” said Esor.

  “Your rural mind cannot imagine the seasons of relentless study. The scale of experiments staged. Before plying the process of science upon my sister, I began infecting bloodtoads, a species invasive to Disunam?. They propagated after the Great Wave destroyed ?elasdur’s natural wetlands. Their nests are plenty and generations are short. I learned about curing disease with these creatures. I also learned about the creatures themselves.”

  Xeta traced a small metal probe over anatomical features, which he claimed were proof the toad’s origin was Orkish territory. He supported his hypothesis by showing anatomical diagrams of other species from that area, using a stack of text books on his desk. Then he took another tank off the wall to reveal how many hundreds of tadpoles fit inside.

  “It’s no wonder they have become so intrusive,” mused the doctor. “Like the Orkar who reign over its natural habitat, vermin that breed so freely can only be a blight.”

  He drove the needle through a grown bloodtoad’s jaw, penetrating the skull to emerge from the other side. The toad twitched wildly.

  “I found a nerve that makes these toads experience enormous distress without killing them.” Xeta placed seizing toad upon the table beside Esor. It was helpless to the pain. Long legs kicked out and squeezed in. It tried to open its mouth, but could not navigate the probe. “Do you believe in justice, Master Esor?”

  “It is one of the All-Mother’s highest aspirations.”

  “This toad devours pollinators, thus destroying our crops and leaving us suffering. If I were to pierce this nerve within every bloodtoad in ?elasdur, leaving them in endless pain, would that not be just?”

  “It is not for me to say what is and is not just,” Esor said. “You are among the guardians, while I am among the guarded.”

  Xeta’s laugh was lazy while the toad shook. “Pain extends a moment to infinity. As I speak, this toad lives a thousand of its minuscule lifetimes with excruciating self-awareness. The antithesis of vero.” He twisted the needle. The toad became limp. “An animal does not perceive pain as we do, of course.”

  “This is a process of...science, you say?” asked Esor.

  Xeta lowered the toad’s body into the tank, where it was swarmed by its young. Their tiny mouths pulsed against its corpse. Bite by bite, they dismembered the dead, only just bereft of life’s spark, and took its flesh inside of themselves to grow anew.

  “And now for you, Master Esor.” The doctor opened a cabinet, its deepest drawers untouchable by the room’s light. Xeta spoke while searching. “You’ll be teaching my sister for the months to come. My brother dismisses every concern I express for Ilare’s safety. He wonders what could happen to my precious sister under the watchful eye of keroterase.”

  “I assure you, I have nothing but professional intentions. I will be appropriate as any governess,” Esor said.

  The doctor turned. He held a vial no larger than his thumb.

  “Regardless, the keroterase cannot protect Ilare from disease.” Xeta’s irises were dark-rimmed green, the same shade as the moss clinging to the village rooftops. They would look black when Night settled over him. “Take this jar. Spit into it and I will see if disease grows. That’s the only test I’ll need to perform today, unless you’d like to volunteer for the needle.”

  ~

  ESOR SOUGHT HIS ASSIGNED classroom behind the Patrician’s library. Arched windows gazed toward a terrace garden, beyond which stretched the smooth bark of the central tower. The maids hadn’t finished cleaning the room from its vetone of disuse. One hurried to wash the windows. Another set about drying the floor where overnight rains left a puddle. The windows had been left open to the mild weather, so Herald songs drifted through the cobwebs.

  “Forgive the mess,” the housekeeper said, bustling behind a bookshelf with a broom. “The bloodtoads got in when we were airing things out—clever little monsters!” Chisamith flung the corpse of a mangled black toad into a bucket.

  The shelves became clean one by one. Esor inventoried his books and arranged them on newly vacant space. Everything had arrived in good condition: the primary texts he endeavored to translate, the translations-in-progress penned in Esor’s hand, millennia of historical almanacs, gifts from prior clients he had yet to peruse, and more.

  He dared to feel optimistic about the time to come, though sickness from Xeta’s violating examination lingered.

  When Light subsided and Esor succumbed to slumber, he had a nightmare. It was not the first in his time since arriving at ?elasdur. But it was the most vivid.

  He dreamed of Dwarrow: a breed Esor had never once met in the waking world, but he identified as easily as neighbors. Any àlvare recognized the hairy bodies and cruel eyes. They were the enemies Heralds sang about every Light and Night. Dwarrow bristled with axe blades when they swarmed fishfolk villages, but ordinarily churned underground with picks. Esor dreamed of the churn.

  Esor dreamed the face of Ulishunn Mikteshfis.

  In death, Ulishunn was only a statue. Gennaneki raised their grandchild under the watchful granite eyes of her dead husband. Grandfather Mikteshfis watched the young cub frolicking between his immobile gray legs flush from pin to fruit.

  There was something special about the Mikteshfis grandchild in Esor’s dreams. Mishun Mikteshfis was ruddy-haired, serious-jawed, and square, and he gripped a Heartbox in one fist. It was so familiar, though the Heartbox looked nothing like Esor’s necklace, and the dreamland caverns looked like nothing from Esor’s life.

  In his nightmare, the caverns did not remain settled. They seethed and heaved and changed.

  The statue garden walked away.

  The cave’s precipice became the edge of a bear’s teeth. Mishun Mikteshfis did not know he was walking onto its tongue, and no matter how Esor shouted, the Dwarrow would not hear his warning.

  He is going the wrong way.

  You are going the wrong way.

  The Dwarrow vanished into the darkness, walking down the throat of the bear to be swallowed, and Esor screamed into oblivion after him. Doctor Xeta chuckled from behind it all.