Trial and Conviction

Jeuni clambered down from his perch, landing softly on the needle-strewn ground.

"Kihara," he said, dazed expression on his face, "You're all I have left."

The town, Gyurot, barkeep, Nug, everyone—mom, dad, Sone—

The girl reached out and squeezed Jeuni's hand.

"And you're all I have left."

Jeuni felt warmth tingle through him at the words, at the tonal love they conveyed. And then he shook his head and he was chilly once more.

"No, you still have the god."

* * *

The two ran through the forest at a manageable yet rapid pace, quickly passing over the border by way of an abandoned guardhouse. There was nothing left to look back to, nothing left to miss, and the two pressed forward with abandon, only stopping to rest when the dawn started to peek through the upper foliage and the two could run no longer for weariness.

After waking and setting out once more, the two came across the unnatural clearing created by Jeuni when he had fought Ynthon a year earlier. There was no longer any trace of the Seventeenth Holder, but the upturned soil and powdered trees were easily recognizable to the juggler.

"My old cloak is probably around here somewhere—a-ha!"

Kihara smiled for Jeuni's accomplishment as he recovered his old blood-stained garment, balled it up, and stashed it behind a flap of his new cloak.

"It'll be useful when it gets colder," he said, and Kihara nodded.

"Fuck," he said, unable to stop himself from thinking about the two days he'd spent alone with the giant, "he never even told me his name."

"Who?"

"That beast-man. The Second Holder. He kept telling me, 'later,' 'we can save the pleasantries for later,' 'we don't have enough time for introductions.' And now he's dead, and there'll never be enough time."

Kihara walked up to Jeuni and laid her head against his shoulder.

"Herald, Jeuni. His name was Aranji Herald."

Jeuni blinked; the name was straight out of a history text he'd been reading about Harnecia's federation with the surrounding city-states, a strategy employed in order to combat Byhr.

"The long-lost brother of the last Harnecian King?"

"Yeah."

"Everything grand comes to an end, huh."

Maybe even Byhr, someday.

* * *

When the two travelers left the woodlands behind, Jeuni immediately knew something was wrong. He hadn't been conscious to experience the transition from the forest to the snow-plains on the last trip south, but what he saw upon clearing the trees was completely foreign to him.

Strong winds buffeted the juggler from all sides as he inched forward across the snow-covered plains. The sky was thick with flurries of white, and Jeuni could barely see beyond his nose.

"Are we going in the right direction?" he yelled, hoping that Kihara would hear him through what he determined must be a blizzard.

"Yeah!" she responded, her voice muffled by the wind and snow.

It was too strenuous to keep up a yelled conversation, so the two continued on in silence, waiting for the storm to pass.

The storm didn't pass. The two traveled for three weeks at a meager pace, trudging through deep snowbanks and occasionally stopping entirely as the wind became too fierce. Jeuni found that they were consuming their rations at an alarming rate, always hungry as their bodies burned fuel to fight the frost. They huddled together at night, combining their body heat to resist the dreadful blizzards which somehow grew colder when the sun was down.

Occasionally they would come across chunks of masonry sticking up out of a snowbank, and with a little magic-aided excavation they would find shelter in those ruins.

"Who used to live here?" asked Jeuni the first time they found such a windfall.

The juggler and the girl sat around a stone fire pit, wrapped in wool blankets that Jeuni had stashed in his cloak before leaving. Their garments hung from an invisible clothesline, drying as Jeuni spun flames through the air.

"I don't know exactly who," Kihara replied, "but there have been countless civilizations here in the South. Sometimes whole clans of people flee the Midlands, and they struggle to survive down here until... well, this weather happens. There's a long history, you know, of people coming south to avoid war. It predates Byhr."

"Odd." Jeuni frowned. "None of the historical or archaeological books I read mentioned the South at all."

"The Shaded Orchard is sacred to Harnecia."

Kihara shrugged. Jeuni followed suit.

"Huh. I guess no country's records are infallible."

* * *

The sky finally cleared at the end of those three weeks. Jeuni and Kihara crested a snowy dune and saw icy flatlands spreading out all the way to the horizon. The sun was white in the white sky and offered no heat. The freezing air bit at the two, and Jeuni redoubled his magical efforts at staying warm.

"It's really, really cold," he pointed out.

"Yeah," smiled Kihara. "We've reached the heart of the South; ahead lies the tundra of the god."

The god!

Jeuni burst out laughing.

"I'd forgotten," he said.

"Forgotten what?"

"Why we were heading south. That you had to bring me back here eventually. It's funny—this is my second time coming here, and neither time did you force my hand."

"You wanted to go south," said Kihara.

"I know. You and Herald, you both just wanted me to be happy."

Kihara smiled weakly.

"Just one problem, though." The juggler reached into his cloak and produced the last sack of provisions. "About one day's worth for the two of us, Kihara." He emptied the bag onto the frozen ground. Two loaves of stale bread, some ancient broccoli preserved by the southern frost, a gourd of water, and a flask of wine. "How're we going to make it back?"

The girl didn't respond.

"We weren't planning on going back, were we?"

She shook her head.

"Well, we're here, then. So what now?"

Kihara sat down and gestured for Jeuni to do the same.

"Now we wait for the wind to speak to us."

Jeuni sat down next to Kihara and idly picked at the loaf of bread. His stomach growled but he didn't feel like eating.

"It's all going to be over soon, huh."

Kihara leaned sideways, resting her head on Jeuni's shoulder and blanketing his side with her hair.

"Are you alright with this, Jeuni?"

"That depends on what I'm being judged for. Your god seems to have an odd agenda, or perhaps none at all. He acts at random sometimes, doesn't he? Yeah. Well, I don't know what he's up to, obviously. Do you?"

Kihara pulled back from the juggler, bent forward, and looked him in the eyes.

"You know how you have those dreams, sometimes?" Kihara asked. "The ones where you wake up crying 'Sone, Sone!' and then tell me it was just a nightmare?" Jeuni said nothing. "Did you ever see anyone about them, like a fortune teller or a cleric or anyone? Do you know where those dreams come from?" Jeuni shook his head frantically, keeping his mouth firmly shut. "Do you want to talk about those dreams?"

Jeuni shook his head again.

"Then it will be hard to explain," she said, sighing heavily. "Any other topics of interest?"

Jeuni said nothing, simply shaking his head one more time. After a few minutes of silence, he reached out, grabbed the flask of wine from the ground, and hurled it as far away as he could. The glass shattered against the ground, and the wine leaked out, staining the permafrost purple.

"Why did you do that?" Kihara asked.

"The Second asked me a funny question on our first trip south," Jeuni explained with a light tone, watching the stain slowly increase in diameter. "He asked me if I didn't know someone who retained hope in the Midlands. When I said no, he told me I was lying."

"That seems odd indeed."

"Thing is, someone asked me a similar question just a day before. Ynthon. He asked me if I hadn't known another wizard, and when I said no, he told me I was lying." Jeuni took a deep breath. "I wasn't lying; I honestly don't remember."

"I belie—"

Jeuni cut Kihara off with a shake of his head.

"Not remembering was a choice, Kihara. One I can't undo so easily, but one for which I am still responsible. You said yourself that I couldn't solve everything with alcohol, but that's exactly what I'd been doing for years before you showed up. I was using it to escape. This whole time, I've been running away, Kihara."

Jeuni surprised himself with how naturally the words flowed. His heart was still, his mind calm. I guess this is what it's like when you know you're going to die.

"Always running. I ran away from my boring life and joined the Byhryn military. I ran away from the horrors of war and deserted. I ran away from my desertion and became a drunk. I ran away from my alcohol and came south. And just now, I ran again, south again, fleeing once again. I can't run anymore, though. I've run all I can. I can't run anywhere else."

"So you're done with escaping?" Kihara asked softly.

"I'm done with everything," Jeuni responded.

"Are you done with denying your past?"

"Hah, I don't remember most of it," Jeuni replied carelessly. "But sure. What happened happened."

"Are you done with hiding from the truth?"

"What's true is true. I don't see where you're going with these questions, Kih—" Jeuni scrambled to his feet. Kihara was nowhere in sight.

"Are you done lying to yourself?" It was Kihara's voice, but it wasn't. It wasn't just her voice. It was the voice of Aranji Herald. It was the voice of Tomora Ynthon. In an instant, Jeuni understood why the voices of the Second and Kihara had been so hard to put words to: neither of Jeuni's two companions had spoken with the voice of a single human. The Second's infinitely faceted commands, Kihara's beautiful songs—they were both more than any one person's speech could be.

Jeuni didn't know why he hadn't realized this the first time he'd been in the heart of the South, but it was easy to attribute any lack of perception to the effects of the poison.

"I'm done lying to myself," Jeuni said, resolute. That voice was the voice of... "god."

"It has been a while, Jeuni Huros, but you have finally returned. It seems you are ready to be tried, but before that—do you know why I asked Herald to bring you to the South one year ago?" asked the wind.

"I have no idea."

"Allow me to instill in you some knowledge of this tundra, Jeuni Huros."

Suddenly, Jeuni's head filled with images and sounds. Pictures of white and gray, of a barren expanse of frozen earth and frozen sky. Pictures of a land where nothing can be born and nothing can grow, a land where everything can die. Sounds of the wind blasting across this nothingness. Somehow, Jeuni could feel the passage of time. He could see the pictures flying by as a clock ticked. Every tick was a second and the clock ticked sixty times. And another sixty times. And another sixty times. Sixty more times. Four minutes had gone by. And then twenty minutes, and then an hour. Hours turned into days and days into weeks and weeks into months and months into years. Now every tick was a year, and Jeuni counted them carefully as he watched the scenery flashing before his eyes.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five years. Six. Seven years.

The landscape was barren. There were no creatures. There was nothing save the cold and the earth and the sky and the wind. The wind was freezing, the sky was freezing, the earth was freezing. As the seasons turned, the colors didn't change. The tundra was always frozen. The sky was always white.

Ten years. Thirty-two years. One hundred years. Five hundred and sixty-four years.

A thousand years. Two thousand years. The clock ticked on.

"That's enough!" cried Jeuni, and the clock stopped ticking. The images and sounds dissipated and the juggler was back where he had been, standing a few feet away from a broken bottle of wine near the edge of the tundra of the dark god. "That's enough."

"Do you understand now, Jeuni Huros?" demanded the wind.

"Yeah, I understand," he said. "It all makes sense, all the nonsense Herald spouted at me about how tremendous my power was. You're not a limitlessly powerful deity. You're tired of this wasteland but you can't escape it. You can't undo yourself. The only thing that can destroy you is magic, and none of the powers you have managed to grant your Holders have been strong enough to fulfill your wish. Now I know why Kihara said that her power was just a pale imitation of magic. This whole time, you've been seeking a wizard with magic powerful enough to end you."

Jeuni sighed and shook his head, then, before the wind could respond, began talking again.

"But that's wrong. Did you think you were the only one capable of passing judgments?"

Jeuni sighed again and closed his eyes.

"You said I would be judged for my sins, and I believe you. I'll be judged, and I will die. But you've done terrible things as well. You also need to atone. That is why I cannot destroy you—destruction is nothing more than your desire. It will make up for nothing and it will fix nothing."

"Fix nothing?" echoed the wind.

"What you showed me didn't take the rest of the world into account," Jeuni explained. "This isn't the only place where everything dies. Outside of this wasteland, men massacre each other by the hundreds on a daily basis. Wars are waged, livelihoods are destroyed, and why?"

Jeuni took a deep breath.

"The Midlands are bountiful enough to afford all their inhabitants with comfortable lives. Nationalism, conflicting ideologies, misguided religions... the strings you have pulled and the orders you have issued have done nothing but increase the chaos. I understand now that you merely wanted some entertainment, and I can sympathize with that—my own journey began nine years ago, when I joined the army out of boredom—but because of you, my hometown, a little village that produced nothing but food and service, was just destroyed. There have been countless such slaughters, man killing man. This is something you have wrought, and something you right."

The wind grew chillier as it enveloped Jeuni.

"Is that your final answer?" asked the wind. It didn't sound angry, as Jeuni had expected it to. It sounded sad. There was no malice in its voice. No darkness. Just defeat.

"Trust me, I'm tempted." Jeuni let a few sparks of magic flow from his fingertips, and the white sky flickered green. "But if I kill you, your Holders won't be able to regenerate, right?"

"That's right."

Kihara's gonna die of starvation, and without the damn covenant she won't come back.

"Your Holders are powerful, and if you focus your efforts you might be able to use them to improve the Midlands. I'm going to follow in the footsteps of..." Jeuni paused, wincing before he continued. "... my father, and try to hold onto hope."

But mostly Kihara.

"So you won't destroy me?"

"Correct. I will die and you will live on, forever."

The wind blew away, gusting off to some other corner of the tundra. Jeuni fell back into a sitting position, exhausted. The montage of the dark god's experiences had been bleak and depressing, much more so than the prospect of his own imminent death. The South had a certain charm to it, Jeuni realized, a pleasing palette of untainted grays and whites. What the dark god had shown him, on the other hand, was more than just the tundra. It was the tundra a million times over, and nothing but the tundra. And it was ugly.

Jeuni ate half of the remaining broccoli and bread and then lay down on the ground and waited. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for. Was Kihara going to come back from wherever she had gone? Would he freeze to death? Or would his body eventually run out of energy and fail? Would it be thirst that would claim him, or a lack of nutrition? Jeuni did not know. He knew that he was going to die, though, so he left it at that, and went to sleep.

* * *

"Jeuni, don't go!"

Jeuni turned from the door to face the speaker. He was once more in that sepia-tinted room, surrounded by shattered bottles and the stench of death. His father's corpse lay on the ground, unrecognizable.

"It's time that I do, Sone," he said sadly, not sure why he was saying it.

"No... don't! They're outside, waiting..."

Byhryn patrols were everywhere in the town, looking for Jeuni Huros. He knew that if he so much as set one foot outside, they would see him and he would die on the spot. But he also knew he couldn't stay in that pungent room any longer.

"I'm sorry for everything," he said, addressing the person in the bed. "I really am."

And with that, he opened the door and stepped outside, the room swirling into nothingness as he set foot on the street. He heard the sound of crossbow strings twanging and then all he saw was white.

* * *

All Jeuni saw was white because he was looking up into the blank sky that hung drearily over the tundra.

"You're still alive, thank goodness," muttered Kihara, kneeling over Jeuni. "I couldn't tell if you were breathing or not, and—"

"I'll be alive until I'm dead," shrugged Jeuni, sitting up uncomfortably. His stomach hurt and he couldn't feel his legs. "I don't see how the timing matters. Where'd you go?"

"I went to find the god for you," Kihara explained. "But I couldn't, so I came back, alone."

"He came to me while you were gone."

"He did?" she asked, incredulous.

"Yeah. I figured everything out, Kihara. I figured out why I'm here and I figured out what I was supposed to do. Now, all I have left to do is die. It's my final duty, as it were." As he spoke, he felt his lips cracking. The air was cold and dry. "So here I will lie, until it's all over. It's funny."

Kihara lay down next to Jeuni on the cold, hard ground.

"What's funny?"

"I just had a dream."

"Yeah?"

"I dreamt that my sister forgave me for everything I'd done, that she asked me not to leave."

Kihara took Jeuni's hand and grasped it tightly.

"That sounds like a pleasant dream," she murmured.

"An ironic dream." Jeuni blinked back tears. "After all these years..."

The two lay in silence for a while before Kihara tightened her grasp on the juggler's hand.

"These are the last moments of our lives."

"But you'll be fine, right?" asked the juggler, not a hint of bitterness in his voice.

"If it's a matter of sustaining my body, I need food. I can't regenerate without fuel, Jeuni. This is the end for me, too. Say..." She reached over and stroked Jeuni's cheek. "You know, since nothing's going to matter in a few hours—"

Jeuni froze.

"Why, Jeuni?" Kihara propped herself up on one elbow, lips hovering inches from the juggler's. "I love you, Jeuni. I love you, and I know you—"

"You're a sweet girl," Jeuni said mechanically, scenes and words flashing by in his head. The yellow room of his dreams and everything he had done in it. Gyurot's jokes about Kihara that had somehow angered him. His nightmares, his past, his memories false and true.

"I'm not a girl," Kihara pronounced. "You still don't understand what it means to take the Covenant, to be a Holder, to be immortal, do you? We don't age. I took the Covenant when I was fourteen. But that was ten years ago, Jeuni. I'm an adult... and I love you, and we're going to die."

Jeuni didn't respond immediately. Kihara cupped his face in her hands, his ragged facial hair tickling her smooth palms, and turned it to face her. Her crimson eyes reflected something Jeuni had never seen in them before, and he pushed her away. He was atoning for his sins and he was going to die. Of course he loved Kihara—she had saved his life more than once. Of course he loved Kihara—she was beautiful. Of course he loved Kihara—even more so now that her advances had confirmed the affection he'd always felt radiating from her smile.

"You're a sweet girl," Jeuni repeated, turning back to look up at the empty, worn-out sky.

And they lay there on the frozen ground until they died.