The guardians, however, had no control over its dreams.

Dreams of a land called Arcosìa, a land of many lands, many oceans away. A land of soaring architecture and culture. A land of diverse peoples all united into one. A land of powerful magic.

As the dream meandered on, the beauty, people, and especially the magic, faded into a gray, dismal landscape, with only crumbling towers and solitary columns amid bleak windswept grasses to mark the existence of a once-vast civilization, now extinct.

The sentience, still enwrapped in the dream, called out in sorrow. The forest trembled. Trees toppled over, beasts screamed, and rain poured down from the clouds that covered all of Blackveil.

The guardians of the wall shuddered in fear.

Journal of Hadriax el Fex

The clans have proven more resilient, more stubborn, than we believed they would. They lie in wait and ambush our patrols, and have had the upper hand in a few skirmishes. Their knowledge of the land aids them, and they can disappear into it at will.

Alessandros has taken more dire action, walking into villages, holding some of the folk as witnesses, leveling their homes, and destroying most of the population with the simple use of his powers. The etherea is strong in these lands, so he has no fear of diminishing it by such extreme use.

The example only mobilized the clans further, so Alessandros has taken yet another tack, by currying favor with certain clan chiefs who seem sympathetic to us, and with the enemies of certain other clans. Alessandros gives them many gifts and fine words, and even gives them concussives as an act of faith. He plans to turn the clans one against the other, to weaken them, and finally bring them into the embrace of the Empire. It is a worthy strategy.

THE RAIN

Karigan walked to her daily arms training session beneath darkening clouds. Finally, the long-awaited change in weather had come, and she hoped Drent would cancel the day’s training.

Cancellation, however, didn’t appear to be on the arms master’s agenda. As soon as she arrived, he barked orders at her to run fifteen laps around the practice field, a two pound weight in her left hand. She had to admit that these sessions were making her more fit overall, but after training, all she felt was achy and abused.

It started to sprinkle during her final lap. Drent called her over to one of the small practice rings, and belted her bad arm—sling and all—to her body. He’d begun doing this when the jostling of swordplay, and her natural reaction to use her right arm for balance, left her screaming in pain. It was not unusual, he informed her, for him to belt down a trainee’s dominant arm anyway, when he was working the non-dominant side.

He then handed her a wooden practice sword. When they had begun the sword training, the bouts were pure misery. Drent had worked her through the most basic of sequences, but every few seconds, it seemed, he slammed the sword out of her hand, or jabbed her in the ribs, or slapped his sword across her thigh. In a quarter of an hour, he “killed” her nearly a hundred times over.

Disgusted with her poor showing, he dropped the swordplay for a few days, and repetitively ran her through basic sword exercises. The exercises not only improved the strength and precision of her left arm, but helped her footwork and body control, too. These exercises were less grueling because Drent wasn’t constantly swatting or jabbing her.

When she improved sufficiently, he brought his practice sword back into use.

The sprinkles turned into a soft but steady rain, and still Drent did not terminate the training. He attacked her with the same basic moves, but this time Karigan found herself better able to meet his blows. She had grown quicker and stronger, and her mind and body had begun to adapt to her left side acting dominant.

Then he accelerated the speed of his blows and raised the level of difficulty. Once again, her practice sword went flying out of her hand. She clenched and unclenched her smarting fingers as she went to retrieve it. Usually onlookers watched Drent working with her for the entertainment value it presented, which Drent did nothing to discourage, as though embarrassment would force her to improve more quickly. Today, she and Drent were the only ones on the practice field, and now the rain was coming down in sheets.

When Drent overheard her grumble about her soggy tunic, he pointed his sword at her and demanded, “Do you think battle stops for a little rain? It slows troops down, it rusts steel, it makes soldiers miserable, but battle does not stop for rain.”

And so the swordplay went on. When Karigan thought she could take no more of the cold rain and the pounding she received from Drent, he kicked her feet right out from under her. As she lay there in the mud, the rain pattering on her face, Drent took the opportunity to explain to her that in real battle, swordfighting was not polite.

“If you are going to survive a real battle,” he said, “you will have to learn every aspect of it.”

Karigan was having doubts about whether or not she was going to survive the training.

The bell down in the city tolled ten hour, and Drent finally released her. He collected the practice swords and strode toward the field house, leaving her lying in the mud.

“I hate this,” she told the stormy sky. “I really hate this.”

Rider barracks was deliciously warm and dry. Karigan paused in the mud room, thinking that the only way she was going to keep the mud from tracking would be to totally strip down and proceed in the nude. Male voices and laughter from the common room made her drop that notion immediately.

She slipped into the common room, which was a cozy scene. Yates Cardell and Justin Snow sat beside the fire playing a game of Intrigue. Yates had blue pieces, and Justin the green. It appeared the blue were currently routing the green.