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The fire burned, low, in the hearth. From it, rich-smelling smoke emanated forward, filling the small, bas-sized cabin with the aroma of herbs cast aside by the kitchens and the Chantry. The air against his chest was warm, even if a draft still crept along his back like lingering fingers. The Anchor beat steadily between his palms where they lay, clasped together, in his lap. It had not taken him long to realize that the Anchor broadcast his heartbeat, a rhythm marked by a glow that brightened and dimmed like the lapping of waves against the iron-plated hull of his silver skin.
“Why did you name me?” He asked the smoke once more, his eyes fluttering shut. It did not reply. “Twenty-three years, I have known that name.” Buried in the scent of the hearth was Tama’s perfume, the oils that soaked into her golden skin, her long, braided hair, the rounded tips of her careful nails. “Arvaarad.” He let the name glide off of his tongue with the same ease as smoke left the flames. It was old and familiar and instinctual. If it was not contained—by the stone of the hearth, by the door of the cabin—it would be snuffed out.
His palms pressed together and squeezed, feeling nothing but his own warm flesh and the coolness of the Anchor’s magic. For much of Arvaarad’s life, they had held Saarebas’ leash.
“I saw it,” he breathed, ridding his lungs of air and filling them with tamassran’s perfume. “The danger that magic can bring when left unleashed.” He felt the warmth of her memory blooming in his chest. “You told me to hold it back, to control it, to feel the weight of the chain in my palm.” Through the red haze of his eyelids, the Anchor’s glow brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed, faster and faster. “I feel it, still.”
On good days, the Anchor sent dull aches rippling along the lines of his veins.
On bad days, the rip of the Anchor felt fresh, the chain of his responsibilities ripping through his flesh as soon as he slackened his grip. He bled, he gasped, he begged for the bas to listen to him, to be rational, to see beyond his silver skin and pale hair, beyond his foreign accent, his looming frame.
On the worst days, and there were many worst days, they did not listen. The Breach loomed above them, and, like frightened cattle, they lowed and kicked blindly at the man that could have been their herder.
He took a deep breath, letting the warmth of the smoke again fill his lungs. He brought his clasped hands to his bare chest, feeling the cold magic contained within. “Tamassran, the name that was given has changed,” he whispered in smooth, old, familiar Qunlat. “Arvaarad is no longer only Arvaarad.” He kept his breathing steady despite the quickness of his heart. “Do you think Arvaarad could have fixed this wrongness in the sky? Or would he have cowered against the inevitability, lost without Saarebas and Sten and commanded Kith?”
He sighed.
“Tamassran,” he asked, “How inevitable was Ozol?”
He let out another breath, and it carried with it the memories of Tamassran studying the way to-be-Ozol grew, the imekari quickest to grow and gather the others around to-be-him, to care for them and dote upon them in a way that should have made the imekari one of Tamassran’s closest kin. An arvaarad with a gentleness that the Triumvirate permitted only to its soul.
Entirely, was the answer. A droplet of blood spilling out from the lines carved along one body, carving out a shape perfectly matched to the one now in his palm. It was not Fate. Such a thing did not exist. But thoughtful design often appeared the work of gods to those who never sought to shape their own solutions.
Such a coincidence knocked on his door. “Herald?” The chill-annoyed tilt to Cassandra’s voice was clear.
“Just a moment, Seeker,” Ozol called back, smiling softly as he picked his shawl from the floor and wrapped it around his shoulders. Through the smoke, another part of his soul rolled ocean-blue eyes, asking in a voice far less tender, far more teasing, if he was already such a whipped ox as to follow every command of a Seeker. He smiled a little wider, even if the familiar pull of his kith’s lingering soul still made him ache, would forever make him ache. Under the Qun, he thought back, Arvaraad holds the chain. He slid back the frail, rattling lock and opened the door.
Cassandra stared up at him, snowflakes resting in the furrow between her brows. “Do you plan to sneak away for hours on end, or was this a singular occurrence, Herald?”
He gestured her inside. “Tea, Seeker?”
“Black,” she huffed, as if she were making a demand, not a concession.
When he shut the door behind her, the Anchor was almost perfectly at ease within his palm.
But even with such changes, he added, feeling that soul-deep roll of Meraad’s eyes once more as he prepared his teapot, it seems Ozol prefers to hold the handle.