Page 103 of Realm of Thieves

“It can keep them alive but at the cost of living,” he says. “You need to find a balance or you won’t have much of a life.”

I go silent at that, pressing my lips together. I’m so terrified that if I don’t keep my aunt in my thoughts, I’ll lose my connection to her, just as I fear I’ve lost my connection to my mother and father.

“You are a vessel for all your untapped grief, and that is only fuel for rage, rage that will always burn out in the end, taking you into the ashes with it,” Vidar says blankly.

I look at him in surprise. He hasn’t said anything for some time, his cool eyes studying me from across the fire, gazing through the smoke.

“Very true, Vidar,” Sae Balek says before he turns his metallic gaze back to me. “These sessions aren’t for wiping the people from your life but for honoring them. It gives them space to exist still, while you can connect to them with time.”

“I just…” I begin. “The last two weeks I’ve been busy, so busy that I haven’t had time to grieve, and then it hit me all at once. I don’t want that to keep happening; the blows, they’re relentless, like they’re trying to pummel me into submission.”

“And that’s why this here”—he gestures with his arms, his robe swinging and moving the smoke—“is a place for you to let it out. So that you may go on with your life and keep living like your family wants you to, knowing that you will pay respect to them and their energy and memory in a holy space, with the goddesses watching. You won’t be alone, but it is wrong for us to grieve alone. We are social creatures at our base, and grieving with others sharing and making space for your pain is something that society has long forgotten. Perhaps all the wars and all the death have taken their toll on us, have made us forget what it is to share collective sorrow.”

I stare at his face, his pale skin, his low brows, and the dark shadows under his eyes and cheeks, the wavy red hair that frames his face, and of course the eyes made from metal. I wonder who he is really and where he came from, what grief he may have encountered over the years, and how long ago he was born. The things he might have seen. The people he might have known.

“A good magician never reveals everything at once,” he says in a low voice, giving me a lopsided smile. “In time, you will see things. You will know things. When you are ready to. For now, let’s start with looking into the fire.”

I look at the flames. Before they were small orange, red, and blue flickers that enveloped the chunk of resin. But now the flames are large and dancing. They move in unison, like each flame is its own entity and entirely sentient. I get the impression that they are moving for me, trying to show me something with each flicker.

I don’t know how long I stare at them, my brain is feeling sticky, like it’s been condensed into a mushy paste inside my head, and I’m thoroughly hypnotized by the fire.

And then I see it. The flames come together to form an image. Shapes at first, as if the shadows in the flames are attempting to look like something. Then it turns into something utterly, terribly real. I see color and texture and it’s like looking through a portal into another world, another time.

I gasp. “I see…I see something. I really see something.”

The others are silent as I try to grapple with and convey what I’m looking at.

“It’s a cave, I think. A cave with black walls, and in the middle of the cave is a pool of lava. Bubbling lava that slowly streams out of the cave through a narrow channel, maybe a foot wide. The pool…I have a feeling this is the Midlands. Yes, someplace in the Midlands.” It looks like many caves I’ve been to before, including the one I stayed in overnight with Andor, but none of those caves had lava inside them, obviously, or we would have never ventured there.

Then the lava pool starts to move; it no longer just pops and crackles in molten bubbles, but it’s waving like there’s something inside.

Suddenly, a head pops up out of the middle of the pool. A woman’s head that seems both vaguely familiar and horrific and beautiful all at the same time.

“There’s a woman,” I cry out softly, afraid to take my eyes off the scene.

“What kind of woman?” the Truthmaster asks sharply.

“She’s made of lava,” I say excitedly, and I watch as she steps out of the pool: full breasts, small waist, thin hips, long legs. Her body cools slightly in places, holding her shape while turning black, and the rest of her burns molten-hot. “She’s a woman made of lava.”

“And what else do you see?” he asks. “Is she saying anything to you?”

“Why would she be saying anything to me?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer. It doesn’t seem like I’m part of this scene with the lava lady, especially since her attention is at the back of the cave where…

“She’s not alone,” I tell them. “There’s a dragon there, I think I see a clawed foot, I…” I pause, blinking at the sight. “The dragon has two heads. It’s blue, metallic blue, and it has two heads. She’s talking to it and it’s listening to her like it…”

“Slangedrage,” Vidar whispers. “The dragon that lays the egg of immortality. This means we’re on the right track.”

I watch as she continues to say something to the dragon and then the dragon reaches down with its head and picks up something in its mouth.

A body.

I gasp again, hand to my mouth, but before I can see whose body it is, if it’s human or not, the image suddenly fades until I’m staring at a hunk of resin again.

“It’s gone,” I whisper, feeling lightheaded. “It’s gone.”

I look across at Sae Balek. “How do I make it come back?”

“You can’t,” he says calmly. “It showed you what you needed to know for now. You can come back another time and try again, as the Kolbecks do, but—”

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