Each of us had come with the prince knowing full well that we might die. But … what had befallen Veralar Tann? To forget who you were, who you had been, who you wished to become? That was a fate far worse than death. I wanted to wail and beat my breast and gnash my teeth. But I could not. The woman who had been Veralar was confused and distressed enough without us loudly mourning the loss of the self she had forgotten.
Derrek’s face had taken a cold, ashen cast as he had explained to us what had happened. I had barely known him for a season, so I could not possibly know the whole range of him, but I had only seen something like that face once before: when our enemy’s soldiers had appeared in So’renner and threatened the wedding guests. I could not know what he was thinking or feeling, beyond regret and hurt, but I could tell that he was feeling it deeply.
I did not blame him for retreating as soon as he was able to. Elana, it seemed, did. As soon as Derrek had disappeared into his tent, she took me by the arm, squeezing perhaps harder than she intended.
“Can we trust him?” She hissed in my ear. “The dragon said that one of us was a traitor.”
I stared at Derrek’s closed tent for a moment, thinking about the damage I had seen in Veralar’s aura. There had been the faintest traces of wizardry, what looked like a near miss with a levin bolt, but no indication on her flesh or in the tent of a magical battle. There was something weirder, a psychic wound in her forehead, which did not look or feel like the work of wizardry. Whatever it was, I had never seen its like.
It was possible – it had always been possible – that he was pursuing an agenda that we had never guessed. That he wanted the magic sword for himself had always seemed the most likely, and had been suggested and debated back in Liddarn. But none of us could fathom why he would need Rennin and the prince to retrieve it, or why – if he did need us, the Prince’s Fighters, not just any heroes – he had not sought us out years ago. The man we had met in So’renner had clearly had no desire to leave his home and quiet life. He had only joined us when the actions of the Usurper had made that impossible.
I thought of his stricken face, now and when we first came for him. I thought of the cold resolve in his eyes when he promised to see us clear of the Black Ears Pack should the prophet’s judgement go against us. I thought of the surprise and delight he had shown when I had touched him last night. And I remembered that Songlover had warned me against Derrek, that he acted only for his own reasons which we could not know.
“I do not know,” I said after too long. “I have never truly understood why he joined us. But he is also the most powerful of us by an order of magnitude. He, ironically like Veralar, could have killed any or all of us on a whim. I cannot imagine what game might bring us so far only to be betrayed, and yet have eluded the sight of all your diviners.”
Elana nodded, relaxing her grip on my arm.
“I have never liked that I needed him,” she confessed. “And that makes it easy to be suspicious. But what of the guardian’s words? Was she just trying to manipulate us?”
Frankly, I had not yet given the question the attention that it deserved. I had been too tired, too preoccupied. I took a moment now. There were six of us, seven if you counted Shadow. I knew what I was lying about. What of the others? I shuddered to think that Derrek might be a traitor, but as a wizard it was almost impossible that he wasn’t lying about something. Who else then? The prince? Rennin? Orland? Veralar, herself? And ambition? The way Lynqxaemass had said the word, it had sounded like a condemnation.
“Dragons are not mortal,” I said after a moment. “Not like you or me. Who knows what common deceptions might offend her? I worry more about the other thing she said: that the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The fate of Vencar, without question. The fate of the Compact, small surprise. But … the whole world?”
Elana blanched at that.
“And yet she denied us entry,” she said. “As though she fears my rule as much as the Usurper’s. What future could I possibly unleash that would be worse than what he has already done?”
I sighed, and patted her hand on my arm.
“Dragons live for generations of elves,” I said. “It could be your children, or grandchildren, or great grandchildren. Or perhaps the Court of the Sun ruled incorrectly, and the rise of the Usurper was ordained by the Sunlord.”
Elana shuddered.
“I cannot believe that,” she said.
I shrugged, uncomfortable. Her confidence in mortal understanding of divine will was hubris at best.
“You are right,” she went on, tightening her grip on my arm again. “That he could kill us all at any moment, and that Veralar could have, too, until this morning. But Veralar makes the least sense as a traitor, and he the most, and of all of us, only Veralar stood a chance of countering him if he did betray us, and now she is lost to us.”
She probably would have said more, but Derrek emerged from his tent, carrying a wooden box under his arm. I wished that I could argue with her logic. I would have liked to reassure her … and myself.
We sent the knights on patrol and cleared away the remains of breakfast. Shadow had begun to regale Veralar with tales of her prowess as he had seen it, and the details of our quest as Rennin and Orland had related them to him. Veralar seemed baffled, but also seemed to find the attention soothing.
When the dishes were cleaned, I joined Derrek at the gate, where he had unpacked a kit of aura lenses, dowsing rods, pendulums, and other exploratory tools very much like the one I had applied to Veralar just an hour before, if somewhat more expensive and extensive. It soothed us both to work on the problem of the gate. It was immediately solvable, unlike the problem of Veralar and her lost memories, or the question of which of us was lying about what and who might be a traitor.
Working out the order in which the sections were intended to be read, passing my dictionary of Draconic glyphs and grammar, arguing over which case or tense or mood a particular verb was intended to be … For the first time on our journey, I felt as if he treated me as an equal. Had I passed enough of his strange little tests? Had it been the fight with the dragon? Had it been the way I fucked him? Had the damage he had just done to Veralar and to our quest reminded him of humility? Whatever the reason, I was glad for it.
We worked together well, and we found the solution. When we presented it to the prince, I was glad that she decided to cross that same night. I said my goodbyes to Veralar as tenderly as I could, and was startled by her fierce embrace.
“Whoever you are,” she whispered to me, “I hope to know you again.”
When the time came to open the gate, I insisted on helping. I knew that I could offer little compared to what he would bring, especially still exhausted as I was, but I hoped that my contribution would make the difference between the changes he feared might come when he expended such power and traded all his blood for light. That he permitted me to do so led me to believe that he welcomed that hope.
In the end, the formulae were difficult, not complicated. We chanted, and gestured, and spilled blood. The pillars hummed and glowed. Derrek Rowan glowed to match. Knowing what I was looking at, now, I could see the how and the why of the sameness between his body and the gate. I could see how, as much power as we were exerting to open the portal, any other wizard would require so much more because they would not already be halfway there.
The glow began as pure, bright white. White turned to gold. Then gold turned to scintillating rainbow hues. Then the rainbows rippled back, forming a rough circle through which we could see a forest even more lush and verdant than the one in which we already stood.
“Go,” Derrek said. “Quickly. Khanaarre and I must hold the gate and go through last.”
There was a silent pause. Then Elana and her knights came running from behind us, and passed through. Each body was a ripple that made the gate more difficult to hold. Then it was just us.
“We need to cross through at exactly the same moment,” said Derrek, taking my hand. “And, on the off chance that this goes horribly awry: thank you. For everything.”
And then he thrust our hands forward and leapt, dragging me with him through the gate.
The sensation of crossing the Veil was beyond words. Light. Heat. Pleasure. Pain. Vertigo. Ecstasy. It took forever. It was over in an instant.
As soon as we were through, the gate snapped closed behind us with an audible whoosh. Orland was waiting to catch us before we could run ourselves over the edge. Elana and Rennin were standing at that edge, staring awestruck out over the forest. Fortunately for all of us, the gate itself had eaten most of our momentum.
We had been able to see through the gate, but not as clearly as I had thought. Rather than opening into a clearing, the gate had deposited us at the top of a step pyramid. Everything on the Wolfwood side had been carved of limestone. The pyramid, and the twin pillars that topped it, were carved of white granite, with tiles of porous volcanic rock laid to create a walking path around the top and down the hundred stairs. The whole thing was slick with rainwater, but the texture of the lava rock gave us traction. The trees that I had seen, and thought were close by were, in fact, nearly a hundred yards away, and massive on a scale that I had never seen before.
It was early summer in the Wolfwood. Whatever season it was in the Holy Lands, it was hotter and wetter. The air was thick and sticky. Rainclouds hung low and heavy over us, obscuring the sky.
Neither Derrek nor I were in good condition. I was trembling. He could barely stand. Orland found himself in the position of holding us up.
“Well, my wizards,” he said with an air of false cheer. “What now?”
“Now,” Derrek groaned, “we get as far east from this spot as we can before nightfall.”
Elana and Rennin turned at the sound of his voice.
“Are you serious?” Rennin demanded. “You two are clearly in no condition to do anything of the sort.”
Derrek laughed bitterly, then coughed.
“If there are guardians on this side,” he said. “The activation of the gate will draw them.”
Elana made a startled, strangled noise.
“Is there a reason you didn’t mention that before we crossed?”
“Of course,” Derrek coughed. “Crossing immediately was the correct decision.”
A moment of stunned silence followed that assertion.
Rennin swore. “Fucking wizards.”
Derrek was probably correct. But so was Rennin. It took both knights to help Derrek Rowan descend those massive stone stairs, leaving Elana to help me on her own. Fortunately for all of us, I was at least in better shape than Derrek was.
And so, battered and weary and grieving, I found myself in the Holy Lands, barely able to appreciate the experience. Even under the thick cloud cover, the colors of the worldwere more vibrant, more saturated. The forest below us teemed with life: birdsong and bugsong, the cries of animals I could not name. The very air and water and the earth below our feet felt warm and pulsing with life.
We made it to the base of the pyramid, alive and without further injury, but even more tired than we had been when we began. Derrek extracted a compass from his backpack and handed it to Rennin, who took point.
Now that we had found relatively flat ground, neither Derrek nor I needed as much assistance as we had down the stairs, but neither of us could safely get out of arm’s reach of our companions. I was so tired that my ears were ringing and my vision had begun to blur. The ground was wet and uneven, with massive rocks and tree roots as big around as my waist.
We managed to make it two hours into the forest before Elana and Orland announced that they could carry us no further. So the four of us stopped to rest while Rennin went in search of a suitable camp site.
“Be careful,” Derrek told him hoarsely. “Everything here is magical and holy and will try to eat you.”
Elana and Orland laid Derrek and I side-by side against one of the massive trees, then set their own backs against nearby rocks. It felt so good to stop moving. At the same time, everything seemed to hurt even more now that I had time to feel it. I had overdrawn badly. The magical waters of the creek by the gate were probably the only reason I was still alive. Combined with yesterday’s exertion, there was still a good chance I might die of shock.
It should have been dusk, but either days were longer here, or the hours did not align perfectly with the mortal world, because we had lost not a whit of light, despite the exceedingly thick canopy. Two hours later, when Rennin finally returned – weary and bathed in gore – it was still light out.
“I’ve found a spot,” he said without preamble. “And dinner.”
“Rennin!” Elana leapt to her feet. “Are you hurt?”
Rennin looked down at himself.
“Not badly,” he said, a little bemused. “Dinner just struggled more than I would have hoped.”
The camp site he’d found turned out to be closer than I would have guessed from his long absence. It took us most of an hour to get there, but the others could easily have made the journey in half that time without the burden of Derrek and I. When we got there, we discovered that Rennin had already built a fire and had left dinner – a massive red hart with an improbable golden rack – hanging to drain on the far side of the fire from a small cavern nestled into the roots of one of the massive broad-leafed trees. There was also a stream nearby, which Rennin told us was deep and slow enough to bathe in.
Once more, Elana and Orland propped us up side-by-side, this time just outside the cavern.
“Save the rack,” Derrek murmured. “The whole skull, if you can.”
Then he fell asleep. I followed him soon after.
When I finally faded back into consciousness, it was to an uncomfortable scene unfolding in front of us.
“I am so grateful for last night,” Rennin was saying in a low voice. “I have wanted that … wanted you for longer than I dare to admit.”
It was finally full dark. I could smell venison roasting over the fire.
“I have wanted the same,” Elana interrupted softly. “Things have just always been so … delicate. There is no privacy at the court-in-exile.”
I kept my breathing meticulously steady, and my eyes carefully hooded lest they catch the light.
“No,” Rennin agreed. “And when we return to the court, if we return, you must begin entertaining suitors. I…”
“You will be a hero of the realm,” she said, “and first among them.”
I did not want to interrupt them, but I had fallen asleep on top of my left arm and it was beginning to go numb.
“Hero or no, the court will never see me as a worthy consort.”
“That is their loss.”
And I desperately needed to pee.
“It will make it more difficult for you to rule. Without an appropriately noble alliance, you may never fully secure the throne.”
“I will take that risk.”
Orland rescued us all.
“Sweet gods,” he said, loudly, stomping back into the camp site from wherever he had been. “You two are disgusting. Just go fuck in the woods and be quieter about it next time!”
I wished desperately that I could see Elana and Rennin’s faces. I could not keep myself from laughing.
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