PROLOGUE:
Anton Gusch knew the world was going to end. Knowing didn't make things easier. But for Anton--unlike most in his village--the knowing brought with it a strange solace. Sure, there was much to be mourned. But only if one became lost in dwelling on the inevitable. But the end? Firm and fixed though it was, the end was still years away--a pinprick of light in the distance.
Of course, you'd never know that with the way townsfolk were acting. There was a look of doom, frenzy on every face that passed. Even the mayor, old Dijin Flang, up and resigned the same day the Queen's men posted her reward proclamation on the doors of the gathering hall. One might have thought there was an invading army two days east and riding hard. Folks were loading wagons, dropping tools in half-sown fields, abandoning linen half-washed. Even the air, growing brackish with the smell of food left to char on open flame, hung thick with the fever of anticipation and anxiety.
He could not be the only rational person left in Ta Glen. Tiny gods, what did such a thing say about the place where he'd grown up? He might only be a month to the sturdier side of his eighteenth year, but they must have realized the
world
itself wasn't going anywhere. Every living animal would go on about its business. It's just there wouldn't be a man, woman, or child left to pester gods creatures.
He'd be a fool to yearn for the apocalypse, to greet the end with open arms. But at the same time, it suddenly seemed as though the shackles of obligation had shattered, releasing a weight that had long pressed down on the shoulders of young Anton Gusch. No, not obligation exactly but a heavy cloak of duty.
Duty was the thing that had kept Anton up at night, a presence as constant as the stars above, and a reminder of the first moment he'd looked into his father's callused hands and felt a sense of awe. Duty was a legacy, a formidable mountain of expectation silently transferred from the broad back of the family's patriarch to a reluctant son. And it happened suddenly... when his father didn't return from the War of Eights.
Anton Gusch had worshiped the ground his father walked. The void left by his absence was vast and echoing.
Gosrick was a great man
, they'd tell Anton when he was about his chores.
You have big boots to fill
. Their words brought only more weight and little comfort, for no amount of praise could raise the dead.
In the wake of his demise, Anton became the caretaker of more than just memories. He shouldered duty and tended to the ancestral home, helped out his mother and twin sisters, and shepherded the flock that was his father's life before the Queen called her lands to arms.
His father's life.
Numbly, Anton watched his mother hastily packing the mule cart with the family's belongings. His elder sisters--The Twins--dutifully helped, but no one exchanged a word.
"But why are we leaving?" he finally asked his mother.
"There's nothing left for us here."
"Where will we go?"
Carimeen Gusch tied a neat knot in a potato linen. She paused a moment and looked up. Meeting Anton's eyes, she shook her head. "I don't know, Anton. But as sure as the gods curse the old tree on Gilmillin's Nob, we'll be on the wayroad at dawn. And it's there we'll find our new purpose."
Purpose. The word rang in his head. He followed his mother outside with the potato sack and hefted it onto the cart. Across the thoroughfare, he spotted a fire-headed pair of women mirroring efforts with a mule cart of their own. Liga Flang and her mother hoisted a cookpot between them but couldn't quite manage it. Without thinking, Anton hurried across the thoroughfare to help.
After offering her courtesies, Liga's mother returned to the thatch-roofed inn the family had owned for six generations. Liga listened intently for her mother's heavy footfall on the stairs before grabbing Anton's hand.
"Come on, then."
They walked beneath the great pantchoke and tatterglum trees at the edge of Bygully River. Dark strands of flame licked Liga's fair-freckled shoulders where her hair tumbled. Anton's sisters did not much like Liga Flang. She was the twins' age. Once, they'd all been friends, attending lessons and etiquette together at the Women's Circle. But something split the trio, something about a boy. And the twins had never been in the habit of explaining themselves to their younger brother. Suffice it to say, they'd ordered Anton to give Liga a wide berth. Even he could see the girl was as wild as they came, always courting trouble. Still, he thought she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid eyes on.
"Your family's leaving, too?" he asked.
"On the morrow."
