Chapter 383: The Shape of a Thunderbolt

The two gods arrived while I was being told that lifting a watering can did not count as resting.

“It was empty,” I said.

“Because you had already poured it out,” Evelyn replied.

Carol stood beside my chair, holding the evidence.

She looked from her mother to me, then carefully put the can behind her back.

Evelyn watched her do it.

“I can still see it.”

“Not all of it,” Carol said.

Adriana laughed into her cup.

Beyond the garden wall, a bell sounded from the receiving court. It was the ordinary bell announcing visitors whose business required someone from the household, rather than the warning that would have brought every god in Greykeep to their feet.

Mary appeared a few moments later.

“Two divine visitors. They gave their names as Vaerun and Elyan. Hurricanes and light, respectively.”

Something stirred beneath my ribs.

Not pain this time.

Recognition.

The air above the garden had become heavy with the scent of rain, although the sky remained clear.

Thor lifted her head from the bench where she had been helping Ignatius untangle a ribbon.

“Vaerun?”

“You know him?” I asked.

“I know his storms.”

She passed the ribbon to Adriana and stood.

“And Elyan?”

“If he's the one I remember, you'll like him.”

“Why?”

“He once left a divine audience while Othellos was still explaining why nobody was permitted to leave.”

Mary closed her book.

“I would prefer that neither of them demonstrates that during registration.”

Vaerun had the weathered face of a sailor and dark hair tied at the nape of his neck. His coat was salt-stained, its cuffs repaired with thread that did not quite match. He stood still, but the loose ends of his hair moved as though a breeze had followed him indoors.

Elyan was taller and more slender, with brown skin, pale gold eyes, and a travel cloak folded over one arm. Sunlight from the high windows rested on him strangely. When he turned, the brightness seemed to arrive a fraction before the movement.

Both had left their weapons with the receiving guard when asked.

Vaerun looked at Thor and smiled.

“Still carrying the hammer.”

“Still arriving damp.”

“It hasn't troubled me yet.”

She embraced him, then stepped back to introduce us.

Vaerun's hand was warm. Elyan's was ordinary enough that I wondered why I had expected otherwise.

“We've heard about your alliance,” Elyan said. “We came to offer our help.”

Vaerun looked past me toward the open courtyard, where a construction golem was patiently holding a beam while three carpenters argued about its placement.

“And to see whether the stories were true.”

“Which stories?” I asked.

“The ones about gods building houses.”

Thor folded her arms.

“You'll be disappointed. Sometimes we carry grain.”

“I can carry grain.”

“Mary will remember that.”

“I have already written it down,” Mary said.

Elyan smiled.

Then his gaze settled on the bandage above my cuff.

“Stonewake?”

I nodded.

Neither visitor offered the usual reassurance that I had been fortunate. I appreciated them for it.

We took them somewhere they could sit, eat, and give us the news they had brought. Mary recorded the roads they had used. Thor asked about enemy movements along the coast. Their information filled several gaps and raised several more questions.

Only after those matters had been dealt with did Vaerun ask about Avarn.

“We heard he'd reached you.”

“He's teaching in the yard,” I said.

“Good.”

Elyan exchanged a glance with him.

“There is something we'd like to discuss with him.”

They found Avarn correcting a recruit's stance.

He finished the explanation before greeting them. Then he asked Eshara to take the next group and walked over, practice sword still in his hand.

“I wondered whether you were alive,” he told Vaerun.

“A common disappointment.”

Avarn gripped his forearm.

For a moment, neither smiled.

Elyan rested a hand on Avarn's shoulder. The three stood together in the shade of the practice racks while Thor and I waited a little apart.

I could have left them their reunion.

Then Vaerun looked directly at me.

“How much has he learned?”

Avarn followed his gaze.

“With a sword? I haven't assessed him properly. He's recovering.”

“I meant his domain.”

“You should ask him.”

Vaerun accepted the correction with a nod.

“Will you sit with us, Uriah?”

Thor pulled a chair out before I could answer.

I sat.

There were disadvantages to everyone knowing Evelyn.

Elyan leaned against the practice rack.

“Vaerun and I have been discussing what your domain allows. Storms give you an unusually broad foundation. Wind, rain, pressure, lightning. Winter adds another range of possibilities.”

“And I've met enough gods to learn how little of it I understand.”

“That's useful,” Avarn said.

I looked at him.

“It makes teaching possible.”

Vaerun crouched and traced a circle in the dust with one finger.

“A hurricane is part of what you are. A narrower part than your whole domain, but one I know very well. I can teach you something you've already begun approaching.”

I remembered Aurethar's lessons. The change in my body when I finally stopped treating winter as something I merely summoned.

“Becoming the storm.”

Vaerun looked pleased.

“Exactly.”

Elyan pointed toward the faint lightning flickering along my knuckles.

“And I believe I can teach you to travel in that.”

Thor went very still beside me.

Avarn looked from one visitor to the other, then down at the practice sword in his hand.

“A body a blade cannot cut,” he said slowly. “Movement an opponent cannot follow.”

“And a swordsman who knows what to do when he arrives,” Elyan finished.

Vaerun's expression lost its humor.

“Together, we could help make him one of the strongest combat gods any of us has seen.”

The yard continued around us. Wood struck wood. Eshara told someone to stop watching his own feet.

I looked at Thor.

She was watching the three gods with the same expression she wore when someone placed a useful new weapon on a table.

“Show us,” she said.

Castellan cleared an unused practice enclosure beyond the busy yards.

Evelyn joined us before the demonstration began. Adriana came with her, one hand resting beneath the curve of her stomach.

“Watching,” Evelyn told me.

“That is what I'm doing.”

“I wanted everyone else to hear it.”

Vaerun removed his coat and handed it to Elyan.

“Avarn. Your sword, please.”

Avarn exchanged the practice blade for his own weapon. He unwrapped it, checked the empty space behind Vaerun, and took his position.

Rain touched my face.

There were no clouds.

Vaerun's outline blurred.

At first, I thought water was running over his skin. Then I saw the fence through his chest.

His body had become moving air and suspended rain, turning around a quiet center. The shape remained recognizably human, but there was nothing solid beneath it. His face appeared in shifting droplets. His hands were spirals. Wind bent the grass around his feet.

Avarn cut across his ribs.

The blade passed straight through.

Water scattered along its edge, caught the circling wind, and returned to the place it had occupied.

Vaerun had not stepped away.

He had not blocked.

There had simply been no flesh for the sword to wound.

Avarn reversed the blade and thrust.

Again, it passed harmlessly through him.

Then Vaerun moved.

One transparent hand closed around Avarn's wrist. He turned the sword aside, stepped in, and stopped his other palm against Avarn's chest with enough force to shift the swordsman's coat.

His body remained a hurricane.

I sat forward.

“You can still strike.”

Vaerun released Avarn and reached for a practice hammer lying on the rack beside him. Wind and water curled around the handle. He lifted it, swung once, and struck the padded post.

The post cracked.

“Yes.”

His voice sounded like someone speaking through heavy rain.

“I can grip, carry, strike, and use a weapon. I choose where the storm exerts force. A sword passing through my chest doesn't receive that choice.”

The wind settled. Flesh returned, along with a thoroughly pleased expression.

Evelyn inspected the broken post.

“And what injures you in that form?”

Vaerun answered at once.

“Power that can harm or bind the storm itself. Divine fire, if it is strong enough. A working built to seize wind. Another god's domain pressed against mine.”

Thor nodded.

“Surtr would still be dangerous.”

“Very. But his ordinary soldiers could hack at me until they exhausted themselves.”

I looked at Avarn's sword.

At the place it had passed through a living chest.

I knew precisely how much difference that could make.

Elyan's demonstration required two white stones.

He placed one near the fence and the other on the opposite side of the enclosure.

“Watch whichever one you prefer,” he said.

He stood beside the first.

Light flashed.

He was beside the second.

I had seen gods move quickly. Thor could cross a practice yard before most mortals finished drawing breath.

This had no visible crossing.

Elyan returned to the first stone, appeared behind Avarn, and then stood beside the fence again.

Avarn had turned only halfway.

“You become light,” I said.

“Yes.”

“But light isn't my domain.”

“Lightning is within yours. I can't teach you to become what I am. I can teach you how to stop insisting that a body must remain flesh while it moves.”

He pointed toward Vaerun.

“His lesson will help with mine.”

Thor looked toward the distant hills.

“How far?”

“For me?”

“For him.”

Elyan studied me before answering.

“With practice, great distances in a single thunderbolt. From here to a ridge that would take a rider hours to reach. Farther as he learns to hold the journey together.”

I thought of scouts waiting for help. A road collapsing behind a retreat. A village watching an army approach while our messengers were still riding.

“And in a fight?”

“There.” Elyan pointed past my shoulder. “Then there. Above an opponent. Behind a shield. Out of the path of a falling blade.”

Avarn considered the empty places he indicated.

“Provided he arrives balanced.”

“Which is why we came looking for you.”

Castellan spoke from beside the gate.

“The castle's wards will not be treated as empty air.”

Elyan inclined his head.

“Nor should they be. This is movement through the world. It doesn't make every barrier irrelevant.”

“Good,” Castellan said. “I will designate permitted practice routes.”

Adriana looked at me.

“You're thinking about how quickly you could reach people.”

“Yes.”

Her hand found mine.

“Think about the journey home too.”

I closed my fingers around hers.

“I am.”

Avarn waited until both demonstrations were finished before speaking again.

“Thor has taught you the hammer well.”

“She has.”

“You understand weight. Commitment. How to drive force through your whole body. I've watched you explain those things to the soldiers.”

Thor looked pleased.

“But a sword asks different questions,” he continued. “You can recover from a cut without beginning again. Threaten with the point while you change direction. Control an opponent's blade without trying to break through it.”

He rested his sword across his palms.

“You already carry one. I would like you to know it as thoroughly as your hammer.”

“How thoroughly?”

“Mastery.”

He said it without flourish.

Somehow that made the promise larger.

“Not a few tricks that work because you're stronger than the person facing you. I mean the ability to stand against another skilled god and understand every exchange.”

I looked between them.

“Why me?”

Vaerun drew his coat on again.

“Because you can learn what I can teach.”

Elyan answered more quietly.

“Because we've spent too many years keeping our best knowledge to ourselves. It hasn't made the people beneath our shrines safer.”

Avarn's thumb moved along the sword's guard.

“At that bridge, I could defeat everyone who came within reach. It wasn't enough.”

He looked up.

“I keep thinking about what might have happened if I could have reached the ford.”

Nobody offered an easy answer.

Thor stepped beside him.

“Then we teach one another. Uriah first, where the domains fit. We train the teams around what he learns. A fighter who can arrive quickly still needs someone to tell him where he's needed.”

Vaerun nodded.

“Agreed.”

Avarn looked back at me.

“Will you learn?”

“Yes.”

Evelyn cleared her throat.

“When your injuries allow.”

“Yes,” I added.

This received considerably less admiration than the first answer.

The first lesson took place sitting down.

I suspected Evelyn enjoyed that more than she admitted.

Vaerun placed a shallow bowl of water on the table between us. Elyan sat opposite, while Avarn remained nearby with Thor, discussing exercises that would not strain my healing arm or side.

“Aurethar taught you that your body can express your domain,” Vaerun said.

I nodded.

“Tell me what you do when you summon wind.”

I tried.

The explanation began confidently and became less useful with every sentence.

Vaerun listened without interrupting.

Then he held his hand above the bowl.

His fingers dissolved into rain.

“You keep describing something beyond your skin.”

I looked down at my uninjured hand.

“Because that's where the wind is.”

“Some of it.”

I closed my eyes.

Winter was familiar inside me now. I knew the stillness beneath its cold, the patience in deep snow, the terrible strength of water held motionless.

The storm was less patient.

I had usually called upon it to act. Strike. Break. Drive something away.

Now I listened without asking it to do any of those things.

Pressure stirred against my palm.

“Don't wrap yourself in wind,” Vaerun said. “Let that part of you be wind.”

For a moment, I understood.

My smallest finger vanished into mist.

I opened my eyes too quickly.

The finger returned.

Water splashed across the table.

Elyan caught the bowl before it tipped.

Vaerun smiled.

“There.”

I stared at my hand.

No blood. No pain. Only damp skin and a sensation like remembering the shape of something I had briefly put down.

Evelyn took my hand, examined it, and looked at Vaerun.

“Enough for the first attempt.”

He nodded immediately.

I had hoped he might be more difficult.

At supper, the children learned that one of our guests could become a hurricane.

This complicated the meal.

“All of you?” Garrick asked.

“All of me,” Vaerun said.

“Your ears?”

“Yes.”

“Your teeth?”

“Those too.”

Carol leaned forward.

“What happens to your supper?”

Vaerun paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth.

Thor began laughing.

Elyan, seated on his other side, offered no assistance whatsoever.

“It remains part of me,” Vaerun said at last.

Carol considered this.

“Don't do it over my plate.”

“I won't.”

Across the table, Ignatius whispered something to Seraphina. She immediately looked at Elyan, then at Evelyn.

Evelyn shook her head almost imperceptibly.

Seraphina tried to look as though she had never intended to ask the god of light about making a secret birthday decoration shine.

Io noticed the exchange.

“What are you planning now?”

“Nothing with lightning,” Ignatius said.

Thor reached for her cup.

I looked down at my plate until I trusted my expression.

Later, when Io had gone to speak with Lexander, Julian quietly brought Elyan the paper garland.

The god examined its uneven stars with complete seriousness.

“You want light without heat?”

Julian nodded.

“And without telling Aunt Io,” Carol added.

Elyan glanced toward Evelyn.

She gave him a resigned smile.

“Welcome to the other council.”

Over the next several mornings, my lessons acquired a rhythm.

Evelyn examined me before I went to the yard. Some days she permitted more than others. Avarn accepted her decisions so readily that I began to suspect they had discussed me in advance.

He started with my feet.

Then my grip.

Then my feet again.

“I thought gods of swordsmanship taught swords,” I said.

“Yours will be more useful when the rest of you stops interfering.”

Thor laughed from the practice rack.

He did not erase what she had taught me. He built on it, showing where the strength behind a hammer blow could support a cut, and where carrying the same commitment too far left my point wandering past the fight.

When my side tired, we stopped moving and studied positions.

Vaerun taught me to dissolve a hand without surrounding the entire table in rain.

Elyan taught me to choose an arrival before I imagined the journey.

“You keep thinking about leaving,” he said. “Where are you going to stand?”

I selected a patch of earth three paces away.

“And which direction will you face?”

I hesitated.

Avarn tapped the back of my chair.

“That hesitation gets expensive beside a sword.”

The lessons began joining together.

I could feel why they had sought one another out.

My first thunderbolt carried me less than the length of a dining table.

It still changed everything.

Castellan had marked a clear stretch of ground. Evelyn stood beyond the enclosure with Adriana, and Thor waited near the arrival stone.

There would be one attempt.

I had agreed to that before anyone permitted me to stand between the markers.

Vaerun rested two fingers against my wrist.

“You know how to loosen the shape now.”

Elyan pointed to the stone.

“You know where it ends.”

Avarn added, “Left foot slightly forward.”

I almost laughed.

Then lightning rose through me.

Usually, I felt it gathering somewhere before release. In my hand. Along the hammer. Behind my eyes when anger came too quickly.

This time, there was no place from which to release it.

I was the brightness.

The world flashed white.

I stood beside the second stone.

Thunder struck the enclosure a heartbeat later.

Thor caught my shoulder as my balance shifted.

My boots were on the ground. Both hands were my own. The bandage remained exactly where Evelyn had tied it.

Three paces behind me, the grass bent beneath the fading charge.

I had crossed none of the space between.

Or I had crossed all of it too quickly to recognize the journey.

For several breaths, I could only stare.

“Uriah?” Evelyn called.

“I'm here.”

The words came out strangely.

I looked at the first stone.

Then at my wife.

“I'm here.”

She approached at once and began checking things I was too astonished to name.

Avarn looked down at my feet.

“Better.”

Thor shook her head, smiling.

“He becomes a thunderbolt, and you inspect his stance.”

“He'll need it when he arrives.”

There was no second attempt that morning.

By the time we reached the garden, I was grateful for that. The effort had left a deep weariness behind my eyes, and the chair looked considerably more welcoming than it had a week earlier.

Adriana sat beside me while Evelyn went to fetch something to drink.

“Was it frightening?” she asked.

“Afterward.”

“And during?”

I searched for an answer.

“There wasn't enough during.”

She smiled, then laid her hand over mine.

Beyond the hedge, Julian and Garrick Valewood were discussing the waterwheel. Cassia and Lysandra passed along the path carrying the children's covered picture frame, arguing in whispers over where it could be hidden from Io.

The four children followed them.

They had all grown again. I noticed it in the fit of Garrick's sleeves, in how easily Seraphina kept pace with Carol, in the new confidence with which Ignatius explained that the frame should be carried upright.

Still, when Carol saw me, she abandoned the procession and ran over.

“Did you do the lightning?”

“A little.”

“Did it work?”

“Yes.”

She inspected me closely.

“You look the same.”

“I'm pleased to hear it.”

Garrick joined her beside the chair.

“Can you come home faster now?”

Adriana's fingers tightened around mine.

I thought about the hills Elyan had pointed toward. The distances I might eventually cross. The difference between reaching a battle and being able to leave it alive.

“That's something I'm learning,” I told him.

He nodded, accepting the answer without asking for a promise I could not yet make.

Then he climbed onto the bench beside me.

Across the garden, Avarn stood with Vaerun, Elyan, and Thor. The swordsman drew something in the air with two fingers. Elyan shifted to illustrate an arrival. Thor corrected the angle of an imaginary hammer.

Vaerun looked toward me and raised a hand.

Rain turned briefly around his wrist.

I lifted my own.

For a heartbeat, sunlight passed through my fingers.

Then they were solid again, just in time for Carol to take hold of them.

“Enough lessons,” she said. “Julian needs you to look at the wheel.”

I let her lead me there.