Faro lay long among the malir and the bodies of the Synod. The warm mist drifted around the Wellspring pool and condensed on his skin.

Are you satisfied?

Findel spoke only in the space between wills.

Faro stared up through the rising mist to the canopy of leaves and branches raised by the ancient eucalyptus trees. He did not even have the energy to curse Findel.

You carry a double portion of the blessing. My blessing. Do you think it would let you harm me? Do you think you are free of me? You are part of my Synod.

"If you knew I was no threat, why torment me? Why allow me to come here?"

Your only threat was that you would have a child, and your tree would branch and take root so that the blessings became inseparable and the Synod forever diminished. In the beginning, I established balance, the most good for the most of our people. Look at you, now. You will never mate. Your threat is ended. You will die here, and your blessings will return to the rightful Trees. The new High Liele will find their way here. They will drink of the waters.

Faro laughed, a bitter coughing sputter. If only he had found a young vienu maid in Isecan, married and had children. How that would have angered Findel! Now he was a husk lying on the mossy stones of the Wellspring Grove, surrounded by the burnt bodies of other victims of Findel's Embrace.

"Then why not have me killed in the River-Tir?"

For the High Liele feared for their scions. Forcing their minds only shortens their usefulness. You should not have been a threat to all of them together. What is this weapon, that holds strange Current?

"Mine."

Calcified knobs and growths jutted from Faro's body. One side of his face had gone numb, and he could not see from that eye.

You remind me of my brother. He was the last to challenge me so. How I miss him.

Faro looked across the Wellspring. The great malir towered there, its roots stretching down into the waters.

Which brother?

Isecan. He burned brightly, like a star in the winter sky. Would that I could have saved him.

You killed him.

My grief has never left me, and it never will. Though a thousand thousands pass me by, still I will mourn him. Those who have Changed can never change.

Do you think your grief absolves you?

Look around you. You know what it means to sacrifice others for the good. Do not pretend you are so different.

Faro did not reply, but clutched his spear. Reaching with his other arm, he pulled himself along the ground, pain searing through his legs.

You have spent yourself on them. You have nothing left for me.

Findel was right. Faro's body was dying, and even with the spear, if he drew on the Current again, the Change might take him entire. With his one eye, he saw the bubbling water and rising steam. He hardly needed to use his eye, for it was clear in his mind. The water offered to wash away his pain and weariness, to ease his very soul.

There is no need to die. Drink. Those who have Changed cannot change. Live forever with us.

Had Coir and his mother gone searching for Vah'tane? He should have gone with them. When he was a child, Coir had told him his hope, that perhaps seeking Vah'tane was enough. Maybe, that was what the prophet had meant.

The water was only a few feet away. Faro rolled, angling his body toward it. He pulled himself over the mossy cobbles at the water's edge, still clutching the spear in his hand.

He could not draw upon it; he could not endure any more. The Change was nearly upon him. The wound in his thigh had reopened, and his lifeblood drained.

Cast it in. Let it be used no more for evil.

Anger surged through Faro. He had been foolish, but how could this vile slave-master accuse him? If those who Changed could not Change, then Findel would go on for eternity, sated with himself, dominating all. Faro rolled on to his back at the edge of the pool. His tongue felt huge in his mouth. He was thirsty, and he felt the temptation to drink of the water, but he knew what it would do to him.

Far above all the malir in the grove, the great grove trees rose, enclosing their limbs and blocking out the sunlight in a mighty canopy hundreds of feet thick. The aromatic eucalyptus oils of a thousand years scented the hot, moist air.

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Join us. There are hundreds here with me. Your father. Your grandmother of Talanael. Your Trees back to the beginning. Join them and rest.

Faro closed his eyes. He would not let his mind be broken, or let his body turn into a malir. Though it surrounded him with such potency as he had never felt before, he would let the Current be, let his life blood drain away. He would not live for eternity enslaved to that monster. In that, at least, he could defy him. He listened to the sound of the disturbed water, the bubbling and the ripples. It was so deep. At first, he had seen the great plume of the Current rising over the land, but it was deep, too. He followed the flow downward in his mind. The well was deep. Its channel was clear to him, the rock sides with their gleaming mineralizations, the fissures of the layers. He thought of Klotig and the dhar, and wondered if Nesht was safe. How far down was their vent beneath the mountain? He could not even venture a guess, but certainly not so far down as the wellspring led.

He drifted further down, as the channel of the well turned and twisted, and even ran sideways for a time, before snaking up through the broken layers of rock. He saw it, then: a fracture miles below, a great pressure of Current leaking upward. Deeper than that, the flow was too dense, too hot, the pressure too immense. He could not perceive it further. Above the fracture, it divided into two narrow channels, one turning eastward. Isecan was merely a separate springhead. The Current was different so far down, as if it changed as it rose, weakened, and took on impurities from water and rock.

Klotig had told him of the forge of creation down below. Was his story true? How could the dhar know, if they could not sense the Current? Vireel had explained how Drennos was destroyed—the slipping of a fracture under the sea, one poised with great tension. The Wellsprings rose from such a fracture, and all around it, he perceived something else. Ore veining through the rocks, encircling the fracture, storing the immense power, super-heated and yet unmelted. It was living steel. He could feel tension there, too, great power poised.

His pain vanished, and his thoughts cleared. Bright light shone down. Findel stood near him, tall and fair. The wellspring pool remained, but now its steam rose into a wide open sky. Rocky slopes rose on all sides, moss-covered. There was not a tree in sight.

"Where are we?" Faro asked. He was on his feet, his body whole.

"We have not moved."

"Am I dead?"

"This is how I remember it, when first we came here. The land was barren, our people starving. This Wellspring saved us."

"How many has it killed?"

"Fewer than it has blessed."

Faro did not respond. Instead, he stared around the unfamiliar terrain. What had two thousand years wrought?

Findel stepped closer.

"Is Isecan's dwelling such a paradise? Do you think the war does not serve the same purpose for them?"

Faro gazed down into the bubbling waters, trying to remember what he had seen there.

"Vah spoke of paradise," Faro said.

Findel frowned.

"He was a gentle soul. The suffering of our people was too great for him. He never recovered from the loss of our forests. Not everyone can be strong enough."

"Yet he never gave up."

"What? His preaching and his gate? No, he never gave up, nor knew how often I protected him."

"Am I dead?" Faro asked again.

"We could sense the Wellspring for miles," Findel said.

Faro felt something in his hand. He looked down and saw that he was holding his spear, and there was blood on it. He could smell eucalyptus, but there was no eucalyptus there.

"You're trying to distract me," Faro said. He felt a twinge of pain in his leg, and as he paid attention to it, it grew. He focused on his body. The light dimmed, and then he was on his back next to the waters, the great canopy overhead.

He stretched out his hand. The spearpoint jutted over the water. Heat flowed down the haft—heat and cold, together. But it wasn't hot or cold. Faro could hardly tell that he held the spear at all, let alone feel the temperature of the haft. It was the Current that he felt. The living steel shone with a luster deeper than when Klotig had fashioned it in the depths of the cavern vent. He dipped the spearhead into the water. Current flowed into the living steel like a rushing flood. The sensation traveled up the haft, reverberating in his bones. Faro feared the spear would burst, but it held.

The same injunction rose up before him. He tried, but the edges of his mind buckled, and he grew confused. Gasping for breath, he released his intent. He could not harm Findel.

Findel exuded satisfaction like ripples of laughter.

Those who have Changed cannot change. I will never change.

It was true. Faro had tried. Findel would never change, never know his own flaws, never alter his mind or opinion, not for all eternity. He was no longer a person. He was a thing, doomed to enslave others forever, imprisoned in his own self. His was a living damnation.

Faro smiled.

Do not worry, Findel. I will help you. I will set you free.

Miles beneath, there was more living steel, and he reached for it. Findel's fear lashed out.

Not even the fanatics of Isecan would dream such madness. Hundreds of thousands would die!

Maybe. But you will wither.

Think of all the others doomed without the Current.

My mother has never known the Current.

The land will freeze. Famine and death will come. Our people will scatter, hunted by humans and quth alike, refugees once more. And you call me a monster?

You know what it means to sacrifice others for the good. Maybe I am not so different.

Vien, vienu, and children. Isn't it better that they live in my embrace than die? Would they choose this?

I don't know.

What gives you the right?

Courage.

Burn me, if you must. But do not do what is in your mind. Do not send our people into the cold of this world. All I wanted was to protect them, like children.

Faro smiled again.

The Current is not a child's plaything.

The whole world is fractured. The Current will escape somewhere.

But not here.

Findel's attack renewed like a sudden gale. As the weight slammed against Findel's mind, he grasped the Current out of instinct and habit. Something gave way. His renewed pain started to fade again. He thrust the spear further into the water, carelessly submerging his hand. He felt nothing but the Current flowing through the living steel like lightning. Growths erupted from his head and shoulders. Something exploded behind his eye, and he could not see. His body convulsed.

The living steel deep below answered the steel above, releasing its Current in one blast. The fracture shifted, twisted, and collapsed with unfathomable force. The land buckled and quaked. A plume of Current and hot water shot outward, sweeping Faro away from the Wellspring.

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