Chapter Thirty-Three – In which Derrek enters a depressive spiral

My life was unravelling. Every day, every mile, every step we took northward, another thread pulled loose. Not today, not tomorrow, but sooner rather than later, it would all come undone. It was inevitable.

Looking back, it had always been inevitable.

The wonder, in retrospect, was that it had held on so long.

Three years in So’renner, a simple blacksmith keeping company with a young widow. I had work. I had friends. Roots in the community. I could have taken apprentices. I could have been rich, at least by the standards of my neighbors. I could have been mayor. But then Elana had come for me, and Aemillian had come for her.

Six years at loose ends, travelling north of the Compact, living among the elves and the uurnigath.

Eight years with Aemillian, the Great Wizards of Vencar. Bound by love and ambition. The envy of our peers. Heroes of the realm. We could have explored the cosmos together, tackled great mysteries of life and magic. We could have founded our own wizard’s order. But his ambitions had always been as political as academic, and there had been so very many reasons I could not be the Emperor’s consort.

Fifteen years studying wizardry, pursuing the great mystery of Illustrian shadow-magic. It had been a half-mad ambition, one which had broken countless wizards before me. But it had fascinated me nonetheless. And I had known things that no wizard before me had ever known, things that had made discovering the truth – or something close enough to the truth – possible. One way or the other, though: no apprenticeship lasts forever.

If I had had any time to myself, I would have wept in frustration. I would have screamed in agony. There were moments when I regretted everything. There were even moments when I wished my brother’s poisoned knife had cut true, all those years ago.

I knew the moment we crossed from the Holy Lands into the Lightning Plains: when the temperature plummeted and the thick body of the Starry Serpent vanished from the eastern horizon, so massive and bright and close to the world that it could be seen at the height of noon, and faded into a pale band overhead, still nearer than in the mortal world, but its glory only visible by night. And I knew that there was no way that we would be able to cross the whole of the Lightning Plains without detection. At some point, we would come upon scouts, or traders, or someone, and we would be forced to supplicate ourselves before the local archon. We would have to hope and pray that whoever found us would recognize and honor my tokens of passage, and take pity on our quest.

But what other options had there been?

To face the dragons? Fight them and die? Barter with them and hope that they were more amenable than Lynqxaemass, who had refused us even before we had fought her?

To wait out the dragons? To test the patience of near immortals?

To go south and hope to find another place to cross the veil? To hope that there was another weak point which, in seven hundred years of wizardry, had not been detected from the mortal side? To spend weeks or months or years perfecting magical arts which might not exist and would let us cross without Khanaarre or myself dying in the attempt, or sacrificing Rennin or Orland’s life to wedge our way through?

To give up, and make our home in the admittedly comfortable jungles of the Holy Lands? To seek out the prophet-people that Arcmedus had never found?

No. This was the only way. Dano`ar’s road north and then west, through the Lighting Plains. Down the Great Ice Wall to the source of the River Venn. Along that great river to skirt the edges of Mashandosaar and Tanirinaal and finally back to the Wolfwood and then Vencar.

In truth, I even had some confidence that it would work.

But at what cost?

Over and over and over again, I asked myself: what would be the cost?

What price would we all pay for passage? And what price would I pay for negotiating it?

Could I pay that price and still be Derrek Rowan? Still be welcome among the elves Tanirinaal and the wizards of Vencar? Or would I be as exiled from those homes as I was from Handar, where I had been born, and So’renner, where the scandal of my wizardry had come to light in the worst possible way?

And, if I could, which side would I choose in that final, fatal moment? Which emperor did I intend to betray? Which emperor would sit on the Rorgoth Throne by my actions?

All of that assuming we weren’t eaten on the Plains by the hunting cats and desert drakes that Dano`ar described, or the rock wyverns and dire wolves of the mountains north of the Compact. That we would not be killed by trolls, or by some unhospitable nymph or satyr. Or die in a blizzard. Or of thirst and starvation.

I was glad that the Vencari had taken responsibility for their own morale. I enjoyed the tales of their ancestors and countrymen’s victories. I was grateful that they did not ask me to share my own stories, which all featured Aemillian too prominently for their ears.

I wished that Khanaarre were inclined to share more, but lacked the fortitude to pursue that line of inquiry. I was grateful for the opportunity for comradery that the overgrown pyramid complex presented. I had some understanding of her fear – imperfectly, I recognized that, but better than the Vencari, at least. Their people had never been conquered. I had traveled the Compact. I had seen the scars left by the yoke of Vencari occupation, even centuries after it had been thrown off.

Somewhere on the road, I settled into a fugue state. I pointed the way, or my best guess at it, and Rennin and Khanaarre managed the actual overland navigation. I spoke when spoken to. I said whatever I thought was wanted. I hardly remembered what I said a moment afterward.

I thought of Aemillian. I thought of Sara, and of Chi Inaa. I thought of Khanaarre. I thought of my smithy in So’renner. I thought of the tower that Elana had promised me.

What did I want? Who did I want to be? And was there any chance that I had a real choice in how things would turn out, and who I would become?

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