Prologue
A strange hush hung over the festive nighttime streets of Candeline. The circus had come, and gaiety reigned in the tiny village. Above the peeling paint of the carts and the glorious moth-eaten stripes of the great circus tents, flickering candles dripped their tallow and wax in the dust of Candeline’s streets. A single clown wandered these streets carrying a candle-snuffer on the tip of a long pole. He was a gnome, dressed in a grotesque approximation of a human Guard member, his wide, leathery features framed by a cerulean hood. He whistled as he walked the otherwise silent streets, shuffling in a peculiar, exuberant little dance. He spun a quick circle around his planted snuffer and then shot it out from his arm, neatly snuffing a candle that hung from a nearby pole.
Pastry crumbs and bones from fresh-fried fowl littered the dusty road, remnants of the evening’s festivities. The gnome picked his way over them carefully, still dancing to his own music. It was his favorite time of the circus. His act was over, all of the other performers were sleeping in their beds, and he had the streets to himself, free from his identity as a mere entertainer, free from the laughter and gawking of the audience, many of whom had never before seen a gnome. The people of the village were all gathered together in the big tent, hundreds of silent farmers and miners listening in rapt attention to the circus’s most-valued performer: the story-man.
No one knew how old the story-man really was. His withered, dried-apple face had seemed ancient when the gnome first joined the circus as a child. The story-man had no name or history, just his self-ascribed title—but he knew things, things old and beautiful and strange that no one could know, stories lost in the folds of time’s cloak or buried in the vaults of death. Some said that he had sold his soul to Ingway for longevity and knowledge. Others that he was immortal. The gnome believed none of these things, but he still spread the rumors. They were good for business. He shot out his snuffer again and neatly extinguished a flame. He would stop thinking about the story-man now, about the circus. It was his time, the time when he was more than just a living novelty. He whistled and danced on down the streets as they darkened beneath his snuffer.
Under the canopy of the big tent, the story-man sat on a small stool in the center of a dimly lit stage. Spreading before him, a sea of faces stared upward, waiting for the coming tale. His hands spoke as much as his mouth as he began, flowing in rhythms that swelled and subdued the expanse of his tale, that dulled his sharper inflections to render them palatable and heightened his monotones with emotion.
“Tonight we begin a tale nearly as old as the Iris of the human empire, a tale that was ancient when the hills around you had never felt the cut of a plow.
“All of you have heard the name of Reheuel, a name so steeped in legend that the stories obscure the man who lived them. The youngest child beneath this canvas tent could tell me the deeds of Reheuel’s descendants, that favored family of immortals. But I wonder how many could tell me aught of the man behind the family.
“We honor Reheuel because he was the first immortal, because his descendants so faithfully served the Iris of the empire, forming the Guards, the Keepers, and the Healers. But I wonder if any of us pause to ask whether the man would crave this reverence, a man who denounced the empire for imperialism.
“Tonight I wish to reach back to a time before the Hunter Wars had ended the reign of the immortals, to a time when the Iris of the human empire was still fresh and young. For that is the time when the immortal bloodline was first born, when Reheuel first entered the pages of history, pages he would then frequent for so very long.
“In this distant year, Reheuel dwelt as Captain of the Guards in the small town of Gath Odrenoch, a settlement carved from the foothills of the Gath mountains . . .”