Chapter 915: To the End of the World
“Of course not.” Roland reached over and pressed his finger to her forehead. “On the contrary — it’s exactly what I’d expect you to dream.”
“Then why were you so pleased by what Edith said?” Anna asked. The bewilderment in her voice was genuine.
“I wasn’t pleased by her prediction.” Roland leaned back. “History has too many variables for predictions. We might survive the third Battle of Divine Will and lose the fourth, a hundred years from now. We might discover that whatever is waiting at the bottom of the ocean is something we can’t overcome, and be erased from the surface of the world entirely. Whether the human race endures at all is far from settled — never mind the continuity of any single kingdom.”
“Hmm. That’s very like you.” Anna’s tone had shifted to the mild, observational register she used when she found his habits recognizable. “So what did please you?”
“Her vision.” He spread his hands. “When she said it, she stopped being a noble administering the Northern Region and became something else. She was reasoning from the perspective of all of Graycastle — from where the whole kingdom is heading, not from where her own territory is heading. She was making policy arguments that required her to model the next century.” He paused. “Barov doesn’t do that. As a City Hall director, he weighs every decision from Neverwinter’s immediate vantage point. It’s the most common limitation in local governance. Edith was operating at a completely different scale.”
It was a genuine shift, and it mattered. From the beginning, Edith Kant had been what she appeared to be — an ordinary noble of the Northern Region, working to govern her domain well while quietly seeking advantages for her local interests. That was the normal configuration. It was what you expected. Territory was the thing that actually belonged to a noble; the king they pledged allegiance to was, in practice, something more like a useful fiction for most of them — an arrangement they observed when it served their interests.
Edith had crossed some line in her own thinking. She was now arguing for outcomes that disadvantaged her region in the short term because they served a strategic logic she believed in.
“The other thing,” Roland continued, “is her attitude toward witches. That she thought to connect witch abilities to technological revolutions, and then treat that connection as a factor in governing policy — that isn’t something I’ve seen from anyone else in City Hall.”
Most of his officials followed the policy of fair treatment for witches because it was the king’s order. The public accepted witches because they had made daily life more convenient. Both relationships were serviceable and both were fragile — held together by habit and convenience rather than by any real understanding of what witches represented. The thread was thin. One serious conflict, one bad year, and it would snap.
What Edith had done was understand the reason. She had grasped that witch abilities were a primary productive force — not as a slogan but as an analysis, with specific implications for how kingdoms would relate to one another over time. That was categorically different.
“She’s not without limits,” Roland added. “Her vision is still constrained by the era. She can imagine Graycastle dominant for generations, but she can’t quite picture outcomes outside that frame — other kinds of success, other structures. At twenty-odd years old, that’s forgivable. What I’m curious about is who she’ll be in twenty or thirty years, after she’s absorbed everything modern governance has to offer.”
Anna tilted her head, a small smile at the corner of her mouth. Then she asked, more quietly: “Since the future is unpredictable, and you don’t care what Graycastle looks like after you’re gone — what are you planning to do if we survive the Battle of Divine Will?”
Roland met her eyes. Blue, steady, not asking anything she didn’t already know the answer to. “You already know.”
They had talked about this in the dark, in the space between sleeping and waking, in the particular intimacy of conversations that don’t need to be explained. He intended to cross the Fertile Plains and reach the Land of Dawn. To see the demons’ own territory. To cross the Sealine and find the other side of the ocean. To understand what the deities actually were, and what the truth of this world was. He would use every resource available to him, and he would require every person on the continent to contribute to that undertaking — not because he wanted an empire but because the questions were too large for one kingdom to answer alone. Anyone who tried to stop him would become an obstacle. That was simply the math.
“Remember to take me with you.” Anna’s smile arrived fully now. “I don’t want to miss the adventure.”
“Of course.” He pressed a kiss to her lips. “Wherever I go. Even to the end of the world.”
Neverwinter. The Third Border City.
Tilly stood before the magic core and watched it breathe.
The outer frame expanded and contracted in slow rhythm — magic power rising and falling, the pale blue of deep water pulsing with each cycle. At the pyramid’s center, a yellow light orb burned like a gemstone held up to sunlight. As long as it was lit, the Five-Colored Stone was intact. As long as it was intact, the witches were alive.
“If you’re tired, rest.” Pasha’s voice arrived in the usual way — without warning, directly into Tilly’s awareness. Behind it came the soft collapse of something large descending from the ceiling. “I’ll wake you if anything changes.”
Tilly turned. The Senior Witch settled her vast, boneless shape onto the floor — distinguishable from the others, after a few days, by something in the way she held herself at rest. “I’m not tired. It’s only been five days.” She yawned at the end of the sentence. “I’m slightly drowsy. That’s different.”
“When I could still feel sensations, I couldn’t tell the difference.” A tentacle moved in what might have been a shrug. “Don’t worry. The Magic Stone is intact — the witches are safe. If they encounter demons, they’ll break it.”
Tilly knew this. Knowing it had not helped.
She regretted letting Ashes go in her place. She had regretted it since the moment Ashes walked out, and she had been quietly furious at herself ever since for having been convinced by the argument — a silly argument, she thought now, the kind of argument that sounds reasonable until you are the one left standing watch while someone else takes all the risk.
Technically, the operation was sound. The witches selected were all experienced combatants who had fought the church. The method of infiltration closely resembled their attack on the church at the Fjords: Lotus would create an underground shelter, Orbit would dig a concealed passage between points, and even if a demon patrol found something it would only find an enclosed cave beneath the ground. The plan was careful and the people were capable.
The key step was the last. The light curtain of the phantom instrument had to be placed at sufficient altitude to expand its visual field. Tilly had planned to handle that herself, using the Stone of Flight. Ashes had overruled her.
Ashes had run the logic: a leader must not take unnecessary risks. What Ashes left unspoken, but which Tilly understood perfectly, was that she considered herself more expendable.
Tilly had confirmed through their practice maneuvers that moving at night significantly reduced the chance of demon detection. She had the timing worked out. She had the route. She had, in other words, a plan that was better than Ashes’s — and Ashes had gone anyway, and now Tilly was standing in front of a light orb that pulsed like a slow heartbeat and waiting.
She pressed the stone ring of Lightning more firmly into her palm.
It was no problem for her to manage the two Magic Stones in rotation. Ashes, however, could not fly in a straight line with both of them active. That was why Tilly kept the ring. One more reason to feel the helplessness of the thing — she had the tools, and the person who had taken her place did not, and there was nothing she could do about it now.
She did not say any of this. She simply nodded when Pasha made her offer, watched the Senior Witch move away down the corridor in her slow, enormous way, and turned back to the light.
She held the stone ring tighter.
The orb pulsed.
She waited.