POV: nomad
Summary
Eight people meet the Dawnchaser on landing — one runner for each of the surviving ships — and they sprint away with their chunks of sunheart as soon as they have them. Nomad stays out on the deck and looks up at the ridge above Beacon. The peaks look on fire because they are; the sunlight on the far side is turning rock to liquid. A jet of magma shoots up like a sunspot. He has had a crash course in this world's tectonics since arriving, and he still has no idea what process springs the mountains back up after each rotation has melted them flat.
Rebeke climbs back into the cockpit through a crush of people; the Dawnchaser now has to carry the displaced from two of the convoy's wrecked ships. She lifts off through her spear-holed windshield and the eight remaining ships of Beacon flee together along the shrinking shadow of the peaks. Nomad stays on deck for the wind on his bald scalp. He thinks of it as a tree's shadow on a sunny morning — long at first, then shrinking as the sun climbs. The convoy is not racing the sun in the usual sense; it is racing the *length of the shadow*, trying to reach the dark side before the shadow vanishes out from under them. They run their engines harder than the recent slapdash repairs really allow. There is no time to coddle the machines. If something fails they die. They burn the souls of their dead to outrun the dawn.
Far down the line, Aux notices that the last ship is falling behind — not the Chorus's ship, which is in the middle of the pack, but the bulky water-tower transport stuffed with people, several of whom are riding on the deck. Beside Nomad's face a small fracture floats in the air, no bigger than a fingernail — a misaligned shard of something that looks like a piece of his old armor, which Aux thought had been consumed for good. Aux does not know why it is back. Nomad wonders if it is because he fought, or because of *why* he fought. He asks Aux for the Skip number. About six percent — just over the body-strength threshold. Enough, maybe.
He runs. He leaps from deck to deck along the column — bound, land, run, bound again, the air pulling at him almost helpfully — past the Chorus's ship, past the next, until the last gap to the straggler is wide enough to make him brace and throw himself across it with everything he has. He lands and rolls and comes up sprinting toward the back of the deck. The Beaconites already there back away in awe. He manifests Aux as a shield and tells him to make it bigger, then bigger still, *use it all*. The sun crests the ridge. Aux burns through Nomad's reserves and grows — wide and tall as a building, wide enough to roof the entire ship. Light explodes around them. The shield catches it. Air ignites at the edges of the shield as if Nomad were braced not against light at all but against the flaming breath of some great beast of story. He wedges his shoulder into the shield and looks back at the staring faces of people who are getting through their very first dawn alive. A second later the ship slides into the shadows and the heat is gone. He drops the shield, slumps against the railing, and feels something he has not felt in a very long time: ordinary. Empty. Cold. Normal. No Investiture left in him at all.
Aux says, with shock, that he cannot believe that worked. He also says he felt something off about the light itself — light should not push that way. Nomad tells him, hoarsely, that the light was being pulled into the ground like a current, the way lightning forms between cloud and ground — only here the current runs between the sun and the planetary core. Everything between the sun and the core acts like the filament in a light bulb, superheated by the transfer. That, he realises, is why he could stand on the deck of Beacon up high in the sunline without burning — he wasn't between the two. That is why the rocks melt. That is why a sunheart charges as it does.
He hears cheers from the ships ahead. The people on his rescued ship do not cheer; they stare at him, knowing. He recognises Contemplation at the front, kneeling and holding a small girl. She does not heap him with thanks. She bows her head and whispers her two-word thank-you and that is all.
They fly on and land a safe distance into the dark side, beneath the specular ringlight. The ships set down in a circle. Plants grow up around their feet with uncanny speed. The Beaconites kneel together and pray — Confidence leads, but each prays his or her own version under her, soft and tearful and raw. Nomad watches from the deck. He had been moderately religious himself and still believes in a God Beyond, but he has never seen prayer done like this.
When they rise, the Greater Good gather at the heart of the circle and wave him forward. He comes down through the growing grass. Each of the three old women ungloves a hand and takes his in hers. *It won't work*, he tells them — they have tried before to give him their heat and could not. Compassion tells him that is because he was not one of them then. Contemplation passes on Rebeke's report that he prefers not to be called *Sunlit*; he would rather, he tells them, be known for what he has done than for some prophecy. They ask why *Nomad*. A name he has earned, he tells them, and one whose sound rhymes a little with what his parents originally gave him. They ask the birth name. *Sigzil*, he whispers — and saying the word again after so long brings tears to his eyes.
Compassion tells him *Nomad* names someone homeless, a man with nowhere of his own, and that no longer fits him — he has a place now, here with them. Contemplation asks if he will accept a name from them, one he has earned. He nods, numbly. They name him Zellion — after the original Lodestar, the one who led their people to this land. *One Who Finds*, Compassion explains, in a tongue she does not know the origin of. Nomad knows: it is from Yolen, where his master was born. Confidence tells him that whatever he has run from, whatever he has done, none of it matters here. He is of Beacon now, of Canticle. They welcome him. They accept him. He tries to spit out an argument — that words cannot make a stranger into a kinsman, that kindly sentiment cannot erase what has been done. Aux tells him, quietly, that words wielded with both meaning and Intent behind them are themselves a kind of power. He whispers, *I accept*.
Warmth floods into him through the three hands at once. He gasps and goes wide-eyed and drops to his knees. The Greater Good step back. Then every other person comes to him in turn — adults, children — and touches him ungloved, on his hand, on his cheek, sometimes folding him into a hug. Each one passes their heat into him. By Aux's accounting it is less than a single percent of his capacity all combined, and a quietly enormous amount for each of them to part with — but Nomad burns with it like a sun. He had been numb a moment ago and now feels more alive than he has in years. The Greater Good return. *Zellion*, Contemplation says, this is their thanks — but they still have one task left. They need the way into the Refuge. He says, voice hoarse, that he has a plan; but please, could he take a moment first.