Free The First Stone by Mark Anthony

the Scirathi.”
    Beltan jumped to his feet. “Why don’t you go find it yourself, you and the Mournish? It’s your bloody city.”
    Vani kept her eyes on Travis. “It is his fate to do it.”
    “Why?” Beltan said, cheeks ruddy. “Because you want it to be?”
    Vani’s face was hard. “No, because it is. Our oracles saw it long ago: The wizard who came to Eldh to defeat a great evil in the north would also be the one to raise Morindu. This task is his.”
    “Don’t you think he’s done enough already? He gave up everything to fight the Necromancer, and the Pale King, and Mohg. He’s done enough for the world. For both worlds. This is his time now. Our time. And you can’t just walk in here and take it from him. By all the gods, I won’t let you!”
    Deirdre felt she should turn her head, that she shouldn’t be seeing this, only she couldn’t look away. She had never seen Beltan cry before, but he was weeping now, tears running down his cheeks, and the big man’s anguish made her own heart ache. Even Vani did not appear unmoved. The
T’gol
cast her eyes downward, but again she said, her voice low this time, “It is his fate.”
    Travis laughed, and all of them stared. It was a bitter sound. He was gazing down at his hands. “I still can’t figure out how it can be my fate to find Morindu if I’m supposed to be one of the Fateless.”
    “What you say is true,” Vani said, kneeling beside him. “But it is the fate of my people to find Morindu through you.”
    Beltan wiped the tears from his face with a rough gesture. “Then you have no idea what his fate really is. For all you know, you’re telling him the wrong thing. Maybe it’s because he refuses to go to Eldh that you find the city yourselves.”
    Vani started a hot reply, but Travis held up a hand.
    “It doesn’t matter. Even if I wanted to try to find Morindu—” he gave Vani a sharp look “—and I’m not saying I do, but even if I did, I couldn’t. There’s no way for me to get back to Eldh.”
    Deirdre ran a hand through her close-cropped hair. “What about the artifact?” However, even as she spoke, she remembered what she had learned before about the way the gate artifacts functioned.
    “This is only part of the artifact,” Vani said. “With it, I can receive messages from my brother. But he has the greater part, and without it we cannot open a gate.” She gave Travis a piercing look. “But do you not have other means to travel between the worlds?”
    Beltan let out a loud guffaw. “You mean you just assumed he could go back to Eldh?”
    Vani gave him a dark look but said nothing, and it was clear this was exactly what she had believed.
    “It’s not like he can just snap his fingers,” Beltan said, grinning, though it was a fierce expression. “By Vathris, even I know that much. True, he could use the Great Stones to travel between worlds, but he left them in Master Larad’s care. And the silver coin he has only works in one direction, to bring him to his home—and that’s here.”
    Vani gave Travis a stricken look. “Is this true?”
    “You doubt Beltan?” he said simply.
    She hunched her shoulders and looked away.
    “What about Brother Cy?” Deirdre said.
    She was as surprised as the others that she had spoken—after all, they were the otherworldly travelers, not she—but now that their eyes were on her, she felt braver. In his reports, Travis had spoken of the mysterious preacher Brother Cy, and Deirdre had encountered one of his cohort, the purple-eyed Child Samanda. According to Travis, Cy, Mirrim, and Samanda were Old Gods. A thousand years ago, they had helped to banish Mohg beyond the circle of Eldh, only in the process they were exiled with him. Then, when Travis inadvertently created a crack between the worlds by journeying back in time, Mohg was able to slip through the gap into Earth—and so were Cy and the others.
    “Brother Cy helped you get to Eldh more than once,” Deirdre said.