In the fifth hour of the ritual, Ogmios's voice was still as steady as it had been in the first. Forty years in his craft had taught him many things, and the simplest was this: a master shows his fatigue only after the work is done.
The Great Circle Hall was full. Every master of the tower lined the walls. The three observer lords sent by the emperor stood by the doors, and the old priest from Solaris had not spoken a word since arriving. At the center of the hall, forty mages chanted around the circle. They had chanted for four hours, and the chalk lines on the floor glowed a little brighter with every verse. The hymns were not ornament; mana adapted to the work it was called for only with time, and the adaptation this rite demanded ran deeper than anything the tower had ever attempted.
Ogmios stood at the head point of the circle, conducting the verses while a corner of his mind kept the tally. Ninety-one crystals consumed. One hundred and nine remained on their stands. The worth of the mana crystals drawn from the vault for this rite equaled the yearly pay of three legions, and Ogmios had presented that figure to the emperor himself. The emperor had approved it. The people needed hope, and hope was not cheap.
He did not expect success. He had said as much to the council; the rite had been attempted fourteen times, and fourteen times the circle had stayed empty. But Ogmios allowed no superstition in his craft, and to him, repeated failure was not proof. It was a question. For three days he had sat over the archive text with that question. The text was a command. From beginning to end it was written in the language of a sovereign: come, enter our service, obey. Fourteen towers had issued the same command and received the same silence.
Ogmios was a scholar, and scholars blame the method when failure repeats. So tonight, he would add a single sentence of his own to the final verse. It would enter no record, because he had no proof, and in the tradition of the tower, an unproven change could be defended only by its result. The sentence was simple. It was not a command. It was an invitation.
The fifth hour was completed. They passed to the final verse.
Ogmios raised his voice and the forty mages followed. The light in the lines turned from blue to white. The air at the center of the inner circle began to bend slightly, like glass over heat; one of the observer lords stepped back. Ogmios read the final verse, and as the chorus released the last syllable, in a voice only the circle would hear, he added the single sentence.
Then he waited.
The hymn ended. The light hung in the lines. The hall was silent. Five seconds passed, then ten, and the bending at the circle's heart slowly stilled. The air cleared. The white light in the lines faded back to blue and began to die.
The circle was empty.
Someone in the back rows let out a long breath. Velmar's shoulders sank; the old master had been proven right, and there was no triumph in his face, only weariness. The eldest of the observer lords shook his head. Ogmios closed his eyes for a moment. Something sharper than he had expected sat in his chest, and he did not want to call it disappointment. So that was not the question either.
He drew breath for the closing address.
The circle answered.
The sound came first. It was a very deep tone, heard not through the ears but in the teeth and bones, and everyone in the hall felt it at the same moment. The lamps went out. The lines on the floor reignited, but not in blue. Violet and gold, two separate lights, ran along the lines entwined. The air at the center of the inner circle did not bend.
It split.
"Everyone away from the circle!" Ogmios's voice found the hall, but he himself did not move. Masters pulled their acolytes back. The lords pressed against the walls. The rift widened and the pressure in the hall rose; ears blocked, knees grew heavy, and a young acolyte in the back lost his balance and caught the arm of the man beside him. The one hundred and nine crystals remaining on their stands cracked in the same second and fell to dust. The rite had collected the rest of its price on its own.
And in that brief moment, Ogmios felt something within the rift look at him.
He saw no face and no shape. He only knew that he was being watched, and that whatever watched him assigned him no importance at all. The gaze lasted an instant and passed. Ogmios's knees trembled. For the first time in forty years, without his permission.
Then a bolt of violet and gold fell, without touching the dome, straight into the center of the circle. The light blinded the hall for a moment, and everything ended. The lamps relit themselves.
In the center of the circle lay a boy.
No one moved. The boy was seventeen, perhaps eighteen. He wore a garment of coarse wool, cut like nothing made by any tailor of this continent. Above the collarbone at his open collar ran a pale mark that branched like the limbs of a tree; it was not a burn, and it was not an old wound. His chest rose and fell evenly. He was alive.
Velmar stepped forward and said, in a shaking voice, what everyone was thinking. "It is a child."
Ogmios did not answer. He walked to the edge of the circle, knelt, and checked the boy's breathing, his pulse, the movement beneath his eyelids, in that order. His hands were calm. His mind was not. The door was knocked upon, and it opened. Then someone was waiting behind it. He set the thought aside for now, because its answer was not in this hall, and questions without answers were not to be pondered in front of witnesses.
He rose and turned first to the hall, then to the observer lords. His voice was his usual voice.
"The tower has done its duty. Inform the emperor." He paused. "The Hero has come."
The hall dissolved into noise. Two of the lords hurried for the doors while the masters gathered around the circle, and Ogmios, without raising his voice, gave his orders in sequence: the boy would be carried to the guest room in the east wing, the room would be kept warm, two guards would stand at the door, and no one, no one at all, would speak a single word to the boy before Ogmios did.
"And send for a healer," he said. "Whoever holds the ward watch tonight."
A young acolyte ran out. Ogmios looked one last time at the boy in the circle. The sleeping face was calm, and entirely ignorant of this world. Tomorrow he would wake a stranger; without a tongue, without a soul he knew, and with the weight of a thousand-year legend on his shoulders.
They will tell you who you are, boy. I hope you can carry what they tell you.
The doors opened and the healer on watch came in, gathering her skirts, out of breath, and for a moment she froze on the threshold at the sight of the crowd. Ogmios pointed her to the circle.
"Your patient is there."