The Core (The Demon Cycle, #5)

by Peter V. Brett

I don’t pretend to see the path, Tender Jona told him before the Battle of Cutter’s Hollow, but I know it’s there all the same. One day, we’ll look back and wonder how we ever missed it.

There was no pain, only an urge to relax, to let the current sweep him away to become part of the whole. And in that moment, Arlen wanted nothing more than to be part of that beautiful harmony of power. It was the essence of life itself, raw and omnipotent, radiating out into the world above. He reached out, Reading the magic flowing on those countless paths to and from the surface – the lifeblood of Ala. The world was bigger than he ever dreamed. The lands he travelled his entire life were but a minuscule fraction of its wide grandeur. Oceans and islands and far wide continents. For a moment, his mind was everywhere at once. He felt the Core pulling at him, drawing his consciousness still further apart, attempting to dissolve it into the single, omniscient whole.

The Creator did not give humans wards. Humans created them out of unified need. Alone, the symbols had no power. It was the resolve of their makers, the hope and prayers of the masses huddling behind them. That collective will Drew the magic and gave it structure, and in turn that imprinted magic fed back into the Core, becoming part of the whole. Could any will shape such vastness?

‘Light will always war with darkness,’ Jardir said. ‘Substance will ever be the enemy of the void.

The pact wasn’t the only thing he owed the Par’chin. Abban filled the cups a third time, and this time Jardir was first to raise his. ‘To the Deliverer, who sits with honour at the table of Heaven.’ Jardir did not hesitate as the other men gaped, clicking the nearest cup and tossing back his third cup of couzi. This time, it tasted like cinnamon.