Epilogue to Book 1

There is one more page after the akatas. It is short.

It names two foes. The first is a ysoki, and his whole description of it is with implants and stuff, and under that, a bunch of tech. The page gives it wings, a mechanical eye, a long rifle, and a whip made of bladed chain. The second is a formian, and beside it he wrote that it shares a homeworld, and is at war with these things. He does not say which things. Formians are a hive people, and when one fights, it fights as a part of something larger than itself. I would like to know what he thought, writing that down in the middle of an arena. The page does not tell me.

The order has always told these two as foes, the ysoki and the formian both, and I have no reason to doubt it.

That is the last page. There is nothing after it. No count of blows, no list of what was taken, no question set aside for later. The record does not end the way his days usually ended, with a tally and a plan. It stops.

His notes cannot tell us what happened next. A man cannot write down his own going. For that we have only the Fragments, and the Fragments have it from somewhere the order did not record.

And in the arena of the chosen there were foes on the sand, and Kopalo stood among his own.
And one was a ysoki, made over with metal, and it wore its weapons like a second skin.
And one was a formian, and it fought as its kind fights, for the whole of its kind.
And above the sand stood the master of that place, the one who had named Bren chosen,
and it was twenty feet tall, and it did not go down into the pit. It never had.
And the master turned its regard on Kopalo, and it was not done as a kindness.
And Kopalo was not there.
And no telling knows what the master did, or what was said, or whether anything was.
Some tell it that he saw it coming and was still. This telling does not.
And the place where he had stood was only sand.
And the fight did not stop, for the fight was not his to stop.

— Fragments of the Keepers, the Kopalo cycle; this telling is the longer of two

This is the telling most of us learn first. The notes have the ysoki and the formian, and the master of the arena from the page before, and nothing else. The master's part comes only from the Fragments. The order has kept it a long time, and I do not doubt the shape of it: he was in the fight, and the master of that place took him out of it, and meant him no good by it. I doubt the stillness. The Fragments like him still. The records, as you will have seen by now, mostly show him busy.

His notes came back to the order. He did not. No one recorded who carried them home, or how they came by them, or how long it took. I have been asked that more than any other question about him, and I have stopped guessing at it in front of novitiates. What became of him is not known. Not where he was taken. Not whether he lived. The order does not say, and I will not.

I was taught that an absence is the animal, and that you learn its tracks. These are the last of his. They lead to the middle of a fight and no farther.

There is a shorter telling. It is the one I would keep, if I could keep only one.

And the fight was not over, and Kopalo was in it.
And then he was not.
And those beside him fought on.

— Fragments of the Keepers, the Kopalo cycle; the shorter telling