A grim and stern people, unforgiving, unbending, unyielding, the Patryns were not effusive in their gratitude to the lord who constantly risked his life to save theirs. They did not speak of their loyalty, their devotion—they showed it. They worked hard and uncomplaining at any task he set them. They obeyed every command without question. And each time he went into the Labyrinth, a crowd of Patryns gathered outside the Final Gate, to keep silent vigil until his return.
And there were always some, particularly among the young, who would attempt to enter with him; Patryns who had been living in the Nexus long enough for the horror of their lives spent in the Labyrinth to fade from their minds.
“I will go back,” they would say. “I will dare it with you, my Lord.”
He always let them. And he never said a word of blame when they faltered at the Gate, when faces blanched and the blood chilled, legs trembled and bodies sank to the ground.
Haplo. One of the strongest of the young men. He’d made it farther than most. He’d fallen before the Final Gate, fear wringing him dry. And then he’d crawled on hands and knees, until, shuddering, he shrank back into the shadows.
“Forgive me, Lord!” he’d cried in despair. So they all cried.
“There is nothing to forgive, my child,” said Xar, always.
He meant it. He, better than anyone, understood the fear. He faced it every time he entered and every time it grew worse. Rarely was there a moment, outside the Final Gate, that his step did not hesitate, his heart did not shiver. Each time he went in, he knew with certainty that he would not return. Each time he came back out, safely, he vowed within himself that he would never go back.
Yet he kept going back. Time and again.
“The faces,” he said. “The faces of my people. The faces of those who wait for me, who enclose me in the circle of their being. These faces give me courage. My children. Every one of them. I tore them out of the horrible womb that gave them birth. I brought them to air and to light.
“What an army they will make,” he continued, musing aloud. “Weak in numbers, but strong in magic, loyalty, love. What an army,” he said again, louder than before, and he chuckled.
Xar often talked to himself. He was often alone, for the Patryns tend to be loners.* And so he talked to himself, but he never chuckled, never laughed.
*Those whom the Patryns accept into the circle of their being are few. They are fiercely loyal to these they term “family” either by blood or by vow. These circles of loyalty (Patryns would scorn to call it affection) are generally kept to the death. Once broken, however, the circle can never be mended.
The chuckle was a sham, a crafty bit of play-acting. The Lord of the Nexus continued to talk, as might any old man, keeping company with himself in the lonely watches of the twilight. He cast a surreptitious glance at his hand. The skin showed his age, an age he could not calculate with any exactness, having no very clear idea when his life began. He knew only that he was old, far older than any other who had come out of the Labyrinth.
The skin on the back of his hand was wrinkled and taut, stretched tight, revealing clearly beneath it the shape of every tendon, every bone. The blue sigla tattooed on the back of the hand were twisted and knotted, but their color was dark, not faded by the passage of time. And their magic, if anything, was stronger.
These tattooed sigla had begun to glow blue.
Xar would have expected the warning inside the Labyrinth, his magic acting instinctively to ward off attack, alert him to danger. But he walked the streets of the Nexus, streets that he had always known to be safe, streets that were a haven, a sanctuary. The Lord of the Nexus saw the blue glow that shone with an eerie brightness in the soft twilight, he felt the sigla burn on his skin, the magic burn in his blood.