When we had all been purified, the curse and the depression of the miasma lifted, Rennin and I changed back into travelling clothes and saw that the party was fed. Hunting by twilight was never easy, but we found only a pair of lean desert hares, and that – combined with the magical waters of the Holy Lands – restored us enough that we felt prepared to make it to morning.
We also took the time to bathe properly. Orland shaved Rennin’s head and jaw by wizard-lights, while Derrek tended to his own stubbled cheeks and chin. Elana helped me meticulously unbraided my hair and wash out all the fine desert dirt and ancient funeral ash that had worked its way in past the protective styling, Eventually, when it was dry and we had the time, we would spend hours re-braiding it, strand by narrow strand; in the meantime, I bound it in the single loose plait I had worn during my apprenticeship. In that moment, I particularly missed Veralar, who had so often helped with this task before. Was she still enjoying the hospitality and attentions of the uurnigath? Had Songlover and Crescent found some way to restore her memories? Would she be waiting for us among the Black Ear pack, or the court in exile?
The journey back up the river valley – it felt strange to think of it as such, knowing now that it ended in a waterfall into an infinitely deeper cleft in the earth, a canyon the likes of which I had never seen in the mortal world – was made in fair spirits. Rennin and I took the lead, looking for dinner more than for the trail.
Recalling the high waters brought on by morning rains, and trusting ourselves to find our way back to the jungle pyramid, we travelled along the top of the ridge as best we could. We also recalled the giant owl pellets. We were less worried this time, with Derrek and I now fully recovered from the battle with Lynqxaemass and from the effort of crossing over, but we still kept watch ever skyward, prepared at any moment to scramble down into the river valley and shelter in the rocks. No sign of the great bird came, though.
The grassy plain began to give way to the woods that we knew would become jungle, and we at last came upon a herd of the great mountain sheep. I felled one as soon as I saw it, and we stopped a whole day to celebrate: gorging ourselves on its gamy flesh, seasoned by what wild herbs we could find within an hour’s hike of our encampment.
Elana and Rennin snuck off to make love. The rest of us collapsed in our tents, taking the small risk of trusting the wards that Derrek and I wove hastily to obscure us from any predators, and to alert us to the presence of anything large enough to be a threat. I did not sleep, but I did rest, making a meditative task of re-doing my small braids as best I could, alone.
I thought of the Black Mask, and the mastery I had claimed for the last year and that I must now, surely, have truly earned. Who else living could boast of having broken into a tomb from the Heroic Agea? Even if Elana did not win her throne, surely the work I had done was still worthy.
I thought of Rrii`aa. Her warm, small, strong hands and her curling hair and her crooked smile. I began to plan how I would relate to her the adventure so far. Our time with the uurnigath would fascinate her. She would be as awestruck to hear of the Prophet of Enhyl as I had been to see them. She would be amazed at the dragon-battle and our crossing into the Holy Land. She would share my sadness at the tragedy of the charnel ground and the lost heroes of the First Age. And she would be amused, I thought, at my unplanned seduction of the Great Wizard.
How she would feel about the fantasies that had followed, I was less certain. Would she be flattered that I thought of asking her to circle in marriage with me? Would she be reviled or intrigued to know that, in the last weeks, I had imagined bringing a djuunan into that same imaginary circle? She would point out, certainly, that that fantasy was born in part from my profound loneliness. As uncertain as I was of Rrii`aa’s depth of feeling, at least I knew that she loved me as a friend, and as a Sister of Amalai loves all those they care for. Derrek Rowan’s feelings for me were an utter mystery, save that I seemed to have finally won his professional respect.
All of this assumed that we made it safely home. That, having made it back to Liddarn, the war of succession that inevitably followed our return ended in our victory. That any of us, Rrii`aa included, lived to the end of that war.
Romantic and morbid by turns, I could not help but laugh at myself. It wasn’t surprising, exactly that my thoughts would turn so upon leaving the charnel ground. To be surrounded by war and death so ancient and yet so present … how could I not think of my own mortality? And, dwelling on my mortality, how could I not think on my loneliness, and the people I turned to for relief from it?
But there was more to life than love and marriage. And with my mastery as a wizard finally proven to myself, if not yet confirmed by the world, I began, at last, to think more pragmatically on my future, as well. I owned a wizard’s tower, on the border between Tanirinaal and Mashandosaar and the Wolfwood. I was heir to a Minor House in Vencar, and held the deed to the estate if not the title – assuming it had not been claimed by a rival or loyalist or some other branch of the family. I could return to my tower and make a good life as a magical artist and artificer. I could settle in Vencar and make a fortune either continuing my master’s work or just as one of the wizards who helped the prince reclaim her throne. I could travel the Compact, find something I could be truly passionate about. If I lived, if we all lived, I could do almost anything. I was young enough that, if I survived this war, I could do it all.
I gave myself that whole day to rest and dream, largely ignoring my companions. My inattention drew little notice and no comment. Elana and Rennin had, for this day at least, no apparent thoughts for anyone but each other. Orland watched them with a mixture of fondness and sadness on his face – probably missing his own family. Derrek kept to himself, even more than I.
The following day, I turned my eyes and my mind once more to the prince and her fighters.
Derrek had been withdrawing from us slowly, I realized in retrospect, since we left the Tomb. Lost in my own miasmatic depression, I had assumed he was suffering the same. He no longer watched our every movement with sharp, canny eyes. I no longer had the sense that his ears were perked for anything and everything we might say. Sometimes his gaze would fall heavy on the hilt of the Blade of Xadaer, where it rose over Rennin’s shoulder. Sometimes his gaze would fall on Elana, weighing, measuring. Sometimes it even fell on me, unreadable and leaving me wishing once again that humans had real ears by which to measure their moods. More often than any of these, though, he simply stared into the west with blank, hollow eyes.
I wondered what occupied his thoughts. Some were easy to guess. He had no home to return to. We had taken that from him, just as much as our enemy had. He had delivered us a powerful magical weapon, one which he knew we would use to kill his lover and mentor. He was so certain that he would not be welcome back in Vencar after this war that he had asked, in payment for his work, to have a tower built for him just past the edge of the known world.
And yet … those things had been true, or been going to be true, since he agreed to join the prince. It made some sense that he would dwell on them, now, but … somehow, the pain in his eyes looked both fresher and older than that.
The Vencari, by contrast, were in such high spirits that they didn’t seem to notice. They laughed and joked about old times, the early days of the resistance and the years before the Usurper’s rebellion. They weren’t cold to us, not by any means, but it was clear that their hearts and eyes were looking forward to a future in which we played a much smaller role, if any.
Day by day, we retraced our steps. The jungle grew thicker and the game more plentiful. After a few days, even the memory of the hunger and desperation we had felt in the charnel desert began to fade. Throughout the day, Rennin would consult with Derrek about our path, how far we had travelled and how best to stay on course. I kept my eyes on the jungle, searching always for meals and for threats. At night, when we camped, Elana and Rennin sat shoulder-to-shoulder, with Orland facing them, planning what they would do when they returned to Liddarn. From time to time they would ask Derrek for his insight into the magical strategies and capabilities of our enemies, or ask me for my thoughts on combat magic or protective wards or counter-spells, but mostly they left Derrek and I to ourselves.
“What troubles you, friend?” I asked him the first night after our day of rest. “You look as if you are still back at the Tomb.”
He sighed, and smiled.
“Perhaps I still am,” he said. “I wish that we could have taken more time to study everything.”
That thought had crossed my mind, as well. When would we ever have another opportunity like that? How many wizards had been able to study relics of the Heroic Ages – not just first hand, but in situ? But I did not believe for a moment that it was the real heart of his unease.
“It is a tragedy,” I agreed. “But could we not mount an expedition, when the war is won and we are both famous and rich?”
I said it jokingly. I also remembered what he had said back in So’renner, that he could have his fortune in either steel or wizardry, if fortune was what he had wanted. But it did, as I had hoped, wring a laugh from him.
“It would be quite the expedition,” he said. “I can picture it now: the baggage train we somehow snuck through the Wolfwood. The great scholars of Naal offering treasures and treatises to Lynqxaemass if only she would let us through. The dragon, herself, stunned equally by our offerings and our audacity.”
I laughed, too, at the image. In truth, I had never met anyone from Naal, scholar or otherwise. Vencar had too much influence in the port cities of around the Great Crystal Lake, and the routes by which Elana might have approached Naal, and by which they would have had to send any aid, were too circuitous to be plausible. But I did know their reputation among the Vencari: powerful wizards and brilliant scholars who spent more time arguing than they did acting on anything. Some of the characters in my imagining looked suspiciously like the more argumentative wizards who advised the prince at the court-in-exile.
But there was an undercurrent that did, perhaps, partially explain Derrek’s maudlin mood. The guardian, Lynqxaemass, would almost certainly be waiting for us. We had defeated her, once, yes. But Veralar had been instrumental to that victory, and we had been fresh. Did we stand a chance if she came on us swiftly while we were weakened by the crossing?
The passage above the river valley was easier, and our feet and ankles thanked us for it, but it was not faster. It was some days before we came to the path where we had first descended into the rocky valley. It was days further, still, before we came to the clear, shallow creek and hollow tree where we had made our first encampment.
The day was yet young when we found the site, but we stopped to rest with little more than an exchange of glances.
“Let us take the day,” Elana said. “Rennin and Khanaarre will scout the path to the pyramid in the morning, and we will make the crossing tomorrow evening, as well-rested as we dare.”
Rennin and I nodded. Derrek and Orland did, too.
I hunted our dinner while the others set up camp. By the time I returned, dragging a red hart, Derrek’s tent had been erected, and everyone else’s bedrolls had been laid out around the cook fire. Orland’s hair was wet, so I guessed that he – and probably the others – had taken the time to bathe.
“I need to conserve as much energy as I can for the crossing,” Derrek explained, “but I think it best if I spend some time divining what awaits us on the other side.”
I nodded. It made sense. The tent was up, so clearly Elana agreed.
We ate dinner in tense silence. I could not say what the Vencari were thinking, but for my own part, I was both eager to return to the mortal world and sad to leave the Holy Land with so little exploration. I was excited to return to Liddarn in heroic triumph and terrified of the numerous conflicts that awaited us at and past the crossing. I mourned Veralar, anew. I could not wait to see Rrii`aa again.
After dinner, Rennin doused the fire. The night was warm and we didn’t really need the light. Derrek retreated to his tent. Elana and Rennin disappeared into the woods. Orland and I kept watch until at least one of them returned.
“We’ve been focused on the return to the court,” Orland said to me when we were alone, “but don’t think for a moment that we – that the prince in particular – aren’t grateful for what you’ve done. You opened the Tomb. Even the Great Wizard, himself, couldn’t do that for us. This quest would have come to naught without you.”
I nodded my head deeply, almost a bow.
“Thank you,” I said. “It was my pleasure and an honor.”
He nodded back in kind.
“Have faith that your friendship and service will be as well rewarded as his.” If I had any doubt who Orland meant, the nod toward the silent tent removed it.
I pressed my hand to my heart and bowed my head. The elven gesture did not quite mean the same thing as a Vencari bow, but it was close, and I thought that Orland, at least – a general, yes, but the well-educated son of a diplomat – would understand.
When Elana and Rennin returned, she curled up on her bedroll with only a languid wave of greeting and dismissal. Rennin took a seat between Orland and I, and volunteered for first watch. Orland stayed up a little later, but I followed Elana’s example. Late in the night, Orland shook me awake to take my own shift. I rose with a shrug and waved him off to his own bedroll.
The night was warm. I knew that my human companions could see little, without the fire, but more than enough light filtered through the canopy for elven eyes. The sounds of insects moving and singing through the brush, and the scents of loam and alien foliage, filled the night air.
The Vencari lay still and quiet on their rolls, Elana and Rennin laying closer than her other retainers would have liked, Orland on her other side in case of attack. There was no sign that Derrek had emerged from his tent.
I decided to make myself tea, gathering water from the nearby stream and boiling it with a drop of blood and a whispered word. I thought about taking the opportunity for a truly private bath, but I decided to wait until just before the crossing. I simply sat in camp and drank my tea, praying to my gods and ancestors that we would all make it home safely, and trying to decide what I wanted to make of the futures that would soon open to me.
Derrek finally emerged from his tent an hour before dawn. He looked rumpled and surly, like he’d been sequestered for longer than just the one night. There were dark bags under his eyes, which were so bloodshot that I thought he might have spent the night crying.
“Good morning,” I said to him quietly. “You don’t look like you liked what you saw in the future.”
“No,” he said bluntly. “I did not.”
“Should I wake the others?”
“That’s not necessary. Let them rest. Let them dream.”
I nodded. Whatever it was, then, was waiting for us to come to it.
“Go bathe,” I told him. “I will make tea and breakfast.”
His lip curled like he was about to say something rude, but he stopped and took a deep breath.
“Thank you,” he said, instead. “I will.”
I lit a small fire with magic and refilled the kettle from our stores. In the distance, I could hear him slip into the water. I did my best to move silently, but Rennin woke as I rustled through our gear for cooking utensils.
Rennin greeted me with a smile and a nod. I responded in kind. He helped me fry up the rest of the venison from last night. I could hear Derrek beating his tunic against a rock by the river, trying to get it at least a little cleaner. By the time he came back – his hair wet and hanging around his face – and breakfast was ready, Elana and Orland had risen as well.
Rennin distributed breakfast, and I handed Derrek his promised tea with a smile.
“Thank you,” he said. He was in no better spirits, but at least he looked a little less dead.
Derrek sat down beside me. Elana sat across from us, a knight to either side of her. She looked us both up and down and sighed.
“If you’ll forgive me for being a little crass,” she said, “you look worse than that first morning when we woke you in Renner. What have you seen in our future?”
A little to my surprise, Derrek laughed. When he spoke, though, his tone was somber.
“Very little,” he said, “and none of it good. The course of events has changed so much since we set out on this path that I can no longer find a clear view forward. All I know for certain is that we will not make the passage today.”
I grimaced. I had guessed as much from his face when he emerged from the tent. Elana looked as if she had been struck. Her knights looked as if they wished to strike him.
“The portal is only a few hours easy hike from here,” said Rennin. “What could possibly delay us?”
Derrek sighed. He scrubbed his face with both hands.
“I think it best if you see for yourself,” he said. He sighed, again, turning something over and over in his hands. It was his hair pin, I realized, that beautiful and alien design in silver. “You and Khanaarre should scout the temple as we originally planned. When we know for certain, we can decide what to do next.”
For a moment, Elana looked as if she were about to respond in anger. Then she paused. Whatever she saw in Derrek’s face changed her tone.
“What do you see,” she asked much more gently than I expected, “that you do not think we will believe you?”
He clutched the hair pin tightly for a moment.
“I see a threat so incredible,” he said, his voice tight, “so far beyond belief, that I would go, myself, if I thought that I could move as swiftly or as silently as Rennin and Khanaarre.”
This time I joined the exchange of incredulous looks. Elana looked, again, like she’d been struck. So did Orland.
“Go,” she said, gesturing to Orland and I. “Return as quickly as you can.”
We nodded. Disdaining his armor, Rennin had only to take up Iaoroai. I collected my Black Mask, on the off chance that was relevant. Derrek offered up his compass. Together, we slipped westward into the jungle, leaving our companions behind.
Even without his armor, I could easily have outpaced Rennin, but that served no purpose. We had travelled almost perfectly due east when we had descended the temple; using Derrek’s compass, we retraced those steps. I let him navigate, devoting the majority of my attention to forging the clearest path as quietly as possible, and looking for signs of danger on the ground and in the trees.
“Do you think he’ll tell them anything before we return?”
Rennin waited until we were half an hour out of camp before he asked the question.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Even if he does not sincerely doubt his own vision, as he said, waiting best serves his sense of drama.”
Rennin chuckled.
“You’re certainly right on the last point,” he said.
The jungle was so beautifully thick and green. But it grew eerily quiet as we moved ever westward. No birds. No animals. Only insects clicking and buzzing. The jungle thinned, some, as we approached the temple, and we slowed to move with greater stealth.
I could hear something in the distance that I couldn’t quite identify. An irregular movement of the wind. An animal call, too distant to place. The answer came to me just as the pyramid came within view, white granite gleaming in the sun, punctuated by black volcanic rock.
Dragons.
Two of them lounged on the lower steps of the pyramids. A third circled above, its wings beating irregularly as it moved through the currents of the wind.
Three. Fucking. Dragons.
The dragon in the sky was the color of ice on a deep lake, blue-white streaked with lighter and darker hues. In moments when it glided, or rose on a thermal, it almost seemed to disappear into the bright blue sky. Up in the air, I couldn’t get a good sense of its size.
One of the dragons on the pyramid steps looked about the size Lynqxaemass had been, but was clearly not her. This one was green, too, but the lurid emerald green of the jungle in which it lounged, with gold and crimson stripes along its spine. Its head was triangular, like a viper’s, and it had no wings that I could see.
The third dragon was easily twice, maybe even three times the size of Lynqxaemass. Its scales were massive and metallic, each one coppery red at the root and brightening to gleaming, polished gold. Its horns were like an ibex and gleamed like obsidian. Gleaming-glass-black spikes protruded from the ridge of its spine from the base of its neck to the tip of its tail. I could not see the color of its eyes: they glowed too brightly.
Three. Fucking. Dragons.
The airborne dragon trumpeted, then, and landed. My heart froze. I thought that we had been seen. But it just landed in the clearing, and the wyrm ascended the pyramid in order to take to the sky.
I turned to Rennin and found him ashen pale and shaking. He did not seem to see me. I touched his shoulder, terrified that he would scream. He did jump, but he did so silently. He shook himself and grimaced, then nodded at me.
We turned and retreated as quickly and quietly as we could. Even when we were safely out of sight of the pyramid and its guardians, we moved with silent care for as long as we could stand to. Then we turned to each other and, with a final wordless exchange, we ran.
Careless of noise and the branches that lashed our faces, barely conscious of the roots and vines that snatched at our ankles. Somehow we made it back with all our arms and legs intact. I don’t know what we looked like when we stumbled back into camp a little before noon, but it brought whatever conversation we interrupted to a complete stop.
“Dragons,” Rennin said without preamble. “Three of them.”
I nodded confirmation, panting. I wanted to rant about the great wyrm, the first seen in the known world since the days when Rankurashma the Pervert tormented the Namorans and the western Rasyri, before being driven out by his own son Mathrankulranor and a cohort of young dragons whose names had been lost to the centuries. I couldn’t find the breath. I didn’t think that anyone but Derrek would care about the distinction.
“What,” said Orland.
“How,” said Elana.
“Fuck,” said Derrek. He closed his eyes and for a moment I thought that he had stopped breathing.
“How,” Elana said again. “How can we get past three dragons?”
“We don’t,” said Orland.
“We probably couldn’t even get past the one,” said Rennin. “Not without Veralar. And she’s probably still waiting on the other side even if we do get past these.”
“Not even with the Blade of Xadaer?” Elana sounded hopeful.
“No,” said Orland. “Not against three dragons. I’d want an army to fight three dragons.”
To fight a great wyrm, they’d want two armies.
I had nothing to contribute to the argument. None of them did. That was the problem.
I walked past them all, ignoring their eyes and questions, and down to the stream. I waded in, fully dressed, until I reached the deepest part. I couldn’t believe that we’d come all this way, accomplished and suffered so much, only to be trapped in the Holy Land by dragons out to avenge the defeat of their – friend? Sister? Spouse?
I would never see Rrii`aa or Llaariah or my parents ever again. My mastery would never be recognized.
Or … perhaps not never. Arcmedus der Alan had crossed without aid, without the gate. Perhaps in a year or two or three or five or ten, Derrek and I could invent new wizard arts by which we could part the veil somewhere south of here. But who knew what the world we returned to would look like?
I had lied to Elana, claimed to be a wizard I wasn’t, and now I was trapped in an alien world with the prince and her star-crossed love and a married man and a wizard who might want me and might be a traitor and might be both and …
The water only came up to my waist. It wasn’t enough.
I screamed. I couldn’t stop myself. High and ragged, I screamed until I was hoarse and then plunged face-first into the creek. I got a lungful of water for my troubles. For a moment, I considered letting myself drown. The shock of that thought, as much as the shock of the water, brought me back to myself.
I flung myself at the shore. Vomited up what felt like gallons of water. Coughed until my lungs were clear.
The prince and her fighters were silent and staring when I returned to camp. I cracked my neck, sat down as far from all of them as I could, and disdained to explain myself. A long and terrible silence followed.
Finally, Elana just asked: “So, what do we do?”
“We must go north,” Derrek said slowly, “and return to the mortal world by way of the Lightning Plains and the Great Ice Wall.”
He sounded reluctant, like every word was being drug out of him forcibly by the one before it. I couldn’t blame him. The suggestion was terrible and terrifying.
“We what,” Elana said again. “We can’t cross the Lightning Plains. That …” She swallowed hard. “That’s the domain of Tal Thannuu and his demons.”
“The Great Ice Wall,” said Orland. “But that’s a myth. An old story passed on to Handar and Georg from dwarves and Illustrians.”
I thought we’d had that conversation already? Maybe I had imagined that. Or it had only been Derrek and I. It was hard for me to think past the fear.
“How is it,” asked Rennin, “that we can walk to Hell from the Holy Lands? Is there another veil?
I shook my head. The Lightning Plains were not hell. Nor was it precisely true that the Lightning Plains were the domain of demons. The Children of Tal Thannuu were no more demons than the Children of Enhyl were. What the Children of Tal Thannuu were was more mundane, more banal in its evil. The sao`ashan, as we knew them, were enslavers. They had enslaved two races of giants since the dawn of time, and they had held my people and the dwarves as slaves in the earliest days of our history, stripping us of whatever and whoever we had been before. So far as we knew, the sao`ashan had never come south of the Great Ice Wall, but our oldest stories were steeped in the fear that they would come for us, or that we would be forced to flee back into servitude.
Derrek answered the prince’s questions, and the knights’. I was grateful. I wanted to scream again but I could barely breathe. I felt like I was drowning. He was right, of course. It was the only way. My only hope of returning home was to face my people’s greatest fear.
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