It didn’t seem to take long to fall asleep this time; if anything it felt like no time at all.
When I awoke, the sun had set and it was raining. The twins were still sleeping, looking strangely tranquil, so I left them asleep and went for a wash, and smoothing out the folds in my robe as I headed downstairs. There seemed to be lots of creases in the fabric. I almost felt myself falling in, seeing it like Tanra used to – expanses of cloth, like Irimar’s oceans, where my hands were blood-stained mountains of iron pawing at the temporal fabric, only making things worse. Even worse.
In a dark pocket of the stairwell, surrounded by the creaking echoes, I froze, hearing her voice threading its way up from the desk in the bar-area.
“Have you seen them? He told me they would be here but I can’t find them.”
Rathal betrayed me. Vardae is here.
Why couldn’t she find us? The illusion?
Was I still focussing on the illusion?
“Twins?” The fussy old innkeep sounded perplexed. “Apologies, m’lady, I’ve seen none of their sort. We do have a mage with two children, though –”
I ran back upstairs, climbing a mountain of nausea. I was back there, in Etherium, ascending an impossible height, the arch-diviner not carrying me but hunting me – the room was on the third floor, which to me was farther than Mund from Zyger, farther than Iroontooth Gates from Zyger – it was only a few flights of stairs but that was impossible, impossible, she was so fast, even if I went a single step more, it was a miracle –
I burst back into the room, and she was there ahead of me, standing over them. The twins were still sleeping, still looking strangely tranquil. I was filled with the notion that she’d already killed them but the shield, the shield –
“The shield only protects against ill-will,” Vardae murmured.
There was something appealing about her ruggedness, her lithe confidence. The curly blonde hair she didn’t care about, twisted in a savage knot – the crudely-carved chin, the slightly-overhanging brow – none of it mattered.
Her violence; it attracted me.
“Ill-will means no killing,” I said.
“Only if you wanted them alive,” the heretic replied, smiling coldly. “It’s what you dreamt, isn’t it?”
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“No. That was the dragon.”
“The dragon’s gone. You long to be freed of your burdens. You could live however you wanted, be whoever you wanted –“
“No.”
“That’s why you killed Shadowcrafter.”
How does she know?
He told her! Rathal – Rathal, why have you betrayed me?
“That’s why you’ll never be free. Isn’t it freedom you seek? Wasn’t it Nentheleme who answered your cries? What will she think of you now?”
Gilaela, threaded with thorns.
“What will you do, when you’re tested? When you’ve grown weak from flying them across the country instead of standing and fighting, moulding your power, increasing your control? You will die! You will be nothing!”
Aidel and Graima. Ancient arch-liches, mere shadows of their former potential.
“Don’t kill them. But give them to me. They are twins. Their brother is an archmage. I will watch over them. You can go, be free. Or return, hide, safe in the knowledge no one will ever find them.”
I stared at her in horror. She stretched out her hand, stroked Jaid’s hair.
“You know I won’t harm them, but this makes your skin crawl, doesn’t it? You won’t let me have them?”
I just shook my head, trying to move my tongue. When I raised my hands to my throat, I choked myself as if to strangle the words, keep myself from speaking.
The window burst in, and she rode the lightning into the room, a white flash depositing her there at the foot of the bed in a shower of glass-shards.
Emrelet Reyd. A goddess in unblemished marble, molten platinum.
But the cobalt eyes turn on me, as does the crackling sword-tip.
“I never loved you anyvay.” She plunges forwards, the lightning-blade doubling in length, in heat, to strike me in the centre of the chest, vaporise the heart that never knew hers in the first place –
I dive to evade the blow, screwing my eyes shut – but my foot is an unresponsive paste of agony and somehow I’m falling – somehow I fell through the window. The chasm opens up, swallows me in an instant, and I am descending again, falling without a spell or a prayer this time, ready for the annihilation –
Ready for Zyger.
You never… left, the thorns sigh through his bloody lips.
I scream – I scream and I claw and I can’t escape – the darkness, I’m falling through it and it’s a part of me – the wraith shares my soul, my killer’s soul –
“You are a good man,” the old man lies. “A strong man.”
“Em! Em, catch me! Catch me, please! Em! Em…”
Em.
But it isn’t Em who catches me. It’s Dad.
I look into his face, and I know him again. Every wisdom-line, every patch of stubble. Every fleck in the green irises.
“You’re alive!” I cry. “You’re alive again!”
I weep, and his face is like mine in the way it creases.
He smiles sadly.
“You avenged me, son. You avenged me. And now everything’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.”
* * *
When I awoke, the sun had set and it was raining. The twins were sleeping, looking strangely tranquil, but I checked their chests were rising and falling before collapsing back on my bed, wiping the sweat from my forehead, trying to still my quivering hands. A few minutes later I left them asleep and went for a wash, but I didn’t go downstairs afterwards, instead returning to the room and sitting on my bed, smoothing out the folds in my robe by gremlin-light.
There were indeed lots of creases in the fabric. But I’d get them out.
In time.