HIN UND HER

German, "back and forth; to and fro; there and back"

Tried to run but my feet were frozen

Tried to scream but there was no sound

-- Blackmore's Night, 25 Years

"We need a plan. A proper plan this time, that doesn't involve hunting for the hole in the veil." Karandren thought for a while. "What about setting up some sort of alarm system to alert us as soon as a skrýszel appears? Then we can kill it on the spot before it goes on the rampage."

Diarnlan rolled her eyes. "Yes, because we've done so well against skrýszel before. Remind me how you died most recently."

"But the two of us working together have a better chance of killing them."

"Are you joking or just stupid? We'd kill each other before the skrýszels ever showed up. I've had enough! As soon as we go back I'm running away to the other side of the world, and if any more monsters show up I'm going to kill myself again!"

Karandren stared at her. "...Are you all right?"

What sort of question was that? "No!"

There was a long and awkward silence. Diarnlan lay down, closed her eyes, and tried to go to sleep. She pretended not to know Karandren was giving her an oddly worried look. It was downright hypocritical of him to be worried about someone else's sanity considering the state of his own.

"All right then," he said at last. "We'll both go on holiday."

Diarnlan craned her neck to give him an incredulous look. "We? Why do you think you're coming?"

"Because I didn't enjoy ruling Miavain last time. I don't think I'll try that again. So I need something else to do, and travelling the world will do as well as anything else."

She glared at him. "Travel the world if you want to, but not with me! I hate you and you hate me! It would be a complete disaster!"

Karandren actually had the audacity to throw himself down in the snow beside her. He folded his arms behind his head and stared up at the stars as he spoke. "Yes, I hated you. I wanted to hurt you as much as you hurt me. Because you did hurt me, you know. I understand why now -- you're just a cruel bastard to everyone, including yourself--"

"Hey!"

"--but it doesn't change the fact that I was a child who didn't understand why his teacher hated him so much. Between the two of us, I think you started out as the most guilty."

Diarnlan found she couldn't argue with that. It left a bitter taste in her mouth. "What do you want? An apology? Don't you think it's a bit late for that?"

"Yes."

Silence fell for a long time. Diarnlan watched the stars move back and forth overhead. They didn't follow any of the paths that real stars did.

Abruptly Karandren broke the silence. "I don't hate you any more."

It took a minute for his words to register with Diarnlan. Then she sat bolt upright. "What do you mean you don't hate me? I killed you! You kidnapped me!"

There were very few constants in the time-loop, but Diarnlan had thought there were some things she could rely on. The sun would rise and set every day. The tide would come in and go out. And Karandren hated her as much as she hated him. Now he'd thrown that certainty into disarray. It was as shocking as if she'd seen the sun rise in the west or the sea cease to move.

Karandren never looked at her while he spoke. "I used to hate you. I swore I'd never forgive you. But what's the point in hating you now? We're stuck with each other and we can't get free. Not yet and maybe not ever. I'm tired of hating you." He laughed humourlessly. "You know, I never realised it was possible to get tired of hate."

Diarnlan wanted to reply with something biting and sarcastic. But all of her words got stuck in her throat. She was tired too, she realised. It was a sort of bone-deep weariness that made her just want to lie here and sleep for a thousand years. She knew she couldn't. For better or for worse she and Karandren would be thrown back into their old lives, left to act out parts they were sick of playing and trying to find ways to change the script. What use was hate? It didn't change anything and it certainly didn't make anything better.

In the end she said nothing. Neither did Karandren. They lay side by side in silence and waited for their next life to start.

Waiting for the curtain to rise on the next act, Diarnlan thought, and smiled bitterly. Did normal actors ever get tired of playing the same role night after night? Did they ever want to scream and throw things at the playwright?

The world disintegrated again. She sighed mentally and prepared for her next cue.

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Once again Diarnlan woke up in her old bedroom in her old house. She got up and made herself a cup of tea while still in her pyjamas. Then she went back to bed, pulled the cover over her head, and went to sleep with the grim determination to ignore the entire outside world. If the skrýszel's owners wanted to send it to attack again, she would leave it for someone else to kill.

She awoke several hours later to the smell and sound of fish sizzling in a frying pan. Diarnlan leapt up at once, instantly alert. Not even her sister would have the audacity to break into her house and help herself to her food. Which meant it could only be...

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She got changed and went downstairs to find Karandren staring at the frying pan as if it held the secrets of the universe.

"Oh, you're still here," he said when he saw her. "Did I add too little oil? I don't think there are meant to be so many black bits."

Diarnlan checked the frying pan long enough to be confused. Whatever he'd put the fish in, it didn't look or smell like cooking oil. In fact it smelled more like...

She closed her eyes and counted to ten. "Please tell me that's not furniture polish."

Karandren looked blank. "Furniture polish? I just used that bottle of oil there. It's next to the cooker so I thought it must be for cooking."

Diarnlan glanced at it, saw the only-too-familiar label depicting brightly-shining furniture, and contemplated throwing the frying pan at his head. "Look at the label, imbecile. How could you think it has anything to do with cooking?"

Karandren shrugged. "I've never used oil in cooking before."

That explained an awful lot about the inedible meals back in the lifetime when they were children. She took the frying pan off the stove, opened the window, and hurled the pan out into the garden.

Karandren watched his handiwork disappear with a mildly upset expression. "What are we going to eat now?"

Diarnlan stormed past him into the larder. She took a cloth bag off the wall and began filling it with biscuits, loaves of bread, and other foods that would stay fresh for months under the influence of the preserving spell woven into the bag.

"What are you doing?" Karandren asked, which was the most unnecessary question Diarnlan had ever heard.

"Bringing food so we don't starve on our travels."

A surprised look appeared in Karandren's eyes. "We?"

Diarnlan pointedly refused to look over at him again. "Well, if another monster appears I need someone to throw at it so I can get away."

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If anyone had been near Diarnlan's house that day they would have seen two figures leave it and disappear in the direction of the nearest port-city. When Diarnlan's sister arrived she found the house in darkness and the front door locked. There was no note left or any sign that Diarnlan ever intended to come back.

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Improbable though it seemed and irritating though it was, Karandren turned out not to be as unbearable a travelling companion as Diarnlan had expected. He didn't try to kill her beyond the occasional token attempt to stab or poison her -- and those attempts were so blatant that he obviously wasn't truly trying to kill her. When other people were around he did nothing to attract unwanted attention. Most startling of all, he actually produced money from somewhere -- probably some unlucky passer-by's pockets -- and paid for his own food.

The main problem with his company was his inability to keep his mouth shut. Every time a thought came into his stupid head he just had to tell her all about it.

One minute it was, "Look at those statues! How did they ever put them so high up?" The next, "Hey, that man's money is counterfeit." A little later, "Look! A clockwork shark!"

He rabbited on and on, never saying anything remotely interesting, until Diarnlan considered killing him just to shut him up.

Unlike her previous attempt to travel the world, they went in a completely different direction. Instead of east they went south, to the Gisengenmda Empire. Karandren developed a sudden and incomprehensible fondness for Gisengenmdese historical artefacts and monuments. Diarnlan tagged along, utterly baffled, on his trips to various sites he considered interesting. It was only when she flipped through a guide book that light began to dawn.

An old legend claimed that a long-ago emperor of Gisengenmda had been warned by the gods of impending danger -- different versions of the legend disagreed on whether it was an invasion, an earthquake or a volcanic eruption -- and granted the ability to relive his life until he found a way to protect his people.

It was probably nothing more than a legend. But it had enough similarities to their current predicament to make her wonder just how common time-loops really were.

"How exactly did Emperor," Diarnlan paused to check the guide book, "Emperor Tsamde-basyel get out of his time-loop?"

Karandren shrugged. "None of the stories agree. This book says he destroyed a volcano. Yesterday I read another book that said he gathered his army and drove the invaders away."

The two of them looked at each other for a moment.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"That we could get out of the time-loop if we stop the skrýszels?"

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"We need a plan of attack," Diarnlan declared as soon as they'd bought a notebook and found a quiet place to sit. The rest of the museum was full of tourists gawking at artefacts; two people staring at a notebook wasn't particularly conspicuous. "And don't suggest going into the Óhreinnjǫrð. Or blocking the hole in the veil. We've tried both and neither works."

"I haven't gone into the Óhreinnjǫrð yet," Karandren muttered.

Thank god for that. The mere thought of the chaos he could unleash there made her shudder.

"Why don't we raise the alarm? Tell the whole kingdom about the monsters then leave and let everyone else deal with it?"

Diarnlan considered this. "But the monsters follow us around."

"They haven't followed us in this lifetime."

Both of them paused to listen for the tell-tale thud of skrýszel footsteps. Nothing. The only noise was the clamour of the tourists.

"We need to defeat the skrýszel so definitively that their owners will never send them through the veil again. We need... Oh, I don't know. Some sort of ward that would kill them as soon as they step into this world. Hey, do you think we could manipulate a skrýszel into attacking its owners?"

Diarnlan shrugged. "How exactly do you intend to do that?"

Karandren frowned down at their scribbled notes as if he expected to see the answer there. "Mind control?"

Her instinctive reaction was, That's very dark magic, you idiot. Just in time she remembered who she was speaking to. Instead she asked sceptically, "Do you think those brutes have any minds to control?"

"I don't know, but I can find out when one attacks." He blinked and looked around. "Speaking of attacks, isn't it odd that there hasn't been one? I mean, usually those brutes follow us around. Their owners must have cast some sort of tracking spell on us."

Diarnlan pushed aside the disturbing image of a skrýszel's owner -- since she didn't know what they looked like she pictured them as an even bigger, nastier skrýszel -- tracking their every move. "Perhaps there are limits to how far they can track us. Or perhaps they've simply given the whole thing up. Vanadel said something about that."

Karandren pouted. "That'd be a terrible anti-climax."

She pretended not to hear him. "So there's really just one thing left for us to decide. Do we continue with this life and wait for a skrýszel attack that might not come, or do we start over and prepare for an attack that's almost certain?"

They both considered this.

"I'd rather start over," Karandren said.

Diarnlan stared at him. "What? Why?"

"Because I'm bored and I'd like to start work on an anti-skrýszel trap as soon as possible. And I want to see if I can mind-control them."

On the one hand Diarnlan didn't particularly want to die again. On the other she also didn't want to continue with this life. What she really wanted was to finally be able to rest, and she didn't particularly care if that meant permanent death or a skrýszel- and Karandren-free lifetime.

"All right," she said. "How are we going to die this time? Stabbing? Drowning?"

"How about poison? We've tried just about everything else."

"...Poison will do. As long as it's quick and relatively painless."

END OF BOOK TWO