Read Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands for Free Online Page A

each other and had thus decreed that the Qirsi and Eandi should remain apart. But what Panya and Ilias shared went deeper even than their fear of the great ones. Soon Panya was with child, and Qirsar’s rage flared like the fire magic some of his people possessed. For it was well known that Qirsi women were too frail to bear the children begotten by Eandi men. When Panya’s time came, she lived long enough to deliver her child, a beautiful daughter, but then she died. Ilias, bereft of his love and unable to find consolation in the birth of his daughter, took his own life, hoping to join his beloved in Bian’s realm.
    Qirsar, however, had something else in mind for them. He changed the lovers into moons, one white and one red, and placed them in the sky for all to see, as a warning to Qirsi and Eandi who dared to love one another. For all eternity, the great one declared, the lovers would pursue each other among the stars, but never would they be together or even see each other again. Whenever white Panya rose, red Ilias would set, and only when she disappeared below the horizon would he rise again.
    But so great was their love that even in death they were able to defy the god. The first time Panya rose into the night sky, brilliant and full, she paused at the summit of her arc. And there she waited until Ilias could join her. Ever after, they traveled the sky together, their cycles nearly identical.
    Cadel moved slowly through the second movement, carrying his audience with him through the range of Ilias’s emotions: his passionate love for the Qirsi woman, his fear of the wrath of the gods and his joy at finding that Panya was with child, and finally, as the melody spiraled upward again toward the lament’s heartrending conclusion, his anguish at losing Panya. Jedrek and the second woman stayed right with him throughout, easing the tempo of their counterpoint as he lingered on Ilias’s passion, matching him as he quickened his pace to convey Ilias’s fear, and, at the last, slowing once more, to wring heartache from their melody as he sang Ilias’s grief.
    The third and final movement, “The Lovers’ Round,” which described Panya and Ilias’s final defiance of Qirsar, was sung as a canon. It began with the first woman singing the lyrical, intricate melody in a high register. As she moved to the second verse, Cadel joined in, beginning the melody again, though at a lower pitch. He was followed by the second woman, who was followed by Jedrek. Thus the melody, first sung high, then low, then high again, then low again, circled back on itself, each voice drawn along by the previous one. Just as Ilias followed Panya through the sky, turn after turn, so their voices followed, one after the other, thirteen times through this final theme, for the thirteen turns of the year.
    They finished the piece and the audience erupted with cheers and clapping. But much more gratifying for Cadel was the single moment of utter silence just after their last notes had died away and just before the applause began. For that silence, that moment of awe and reverence, of yearning and joy, told him more about what their music had done to those listening than all the cheers the people could muster.
    He glanced at the woman beside him and they shared a smile. What is your name?
    “You sing very well,” he whispered to her.
    Her smile deepened, though she didn’t blush as some women might have. “As do you.”
    Each one of them bowed in turn; then the four of them bowed in unison and they left the stage, the noise from the audience continuing even after they were gone. Four times they returned to bow and wave, and four times the people called them back, until finally the innkeeper came to them and asked if they would sing the Paean once more, for another five qinde apiece.
    Once more, Jedrek and the other woman were willing, but this time Cadel and the dark-haired woman refused.
    “But, Anesse!” the second woman said, turning toward her