by Becky James
“I loved Gavain like a brother, and he betrayed me. He saw an opportunity to progress under Torgund, and he took it. All the times we spent together – me, him, Aleric – he threw it all away. All those good times. All the lessons and the love. And to Aleric as well – he’s got him pending execution. Aleric! Our brother-in-arms!
“I might never have use of my arms again. We have so much I want us to do, and I won’t be able to do any of it the way I imagined. No woman will ever want to lie with me again, not when I can’t hold her or touch her!
“Tuniel was right. This is the first time I’ve ever suffered a crippling defeat. Everything is going to be changed, and I can’t even face this with my head held high, I’m crying and snivelling and I want to stop but I can’t.
“Evyn, help me!” My heart pulled her toward me.
Wrapping my head in her arms, Evyn whispered, “Let it all out. Let it out as much as you need.”
Hopeless, raging, lost and angry, the flow of my venting feelings went round and round. I wanted to run, I wanted to lie and do nothing. I wanted to smash Gavain’s face in, I wanted to beg him where I had gone wrong in our friendship so I could fix it. I promised I’d kill Gavain three times over.
Finally, I was quiet for a time, verbally and mentally. “How do you feel?” Evyn asked.
“Tired. Empty.”
She nodded. Covering us both with a blanket from the barge, she curled close to me.
I took a deep shuddering breath. The lyneal had pushed the pain back a step, at least. “We need to make plans, Evyn.”
“Well, we’ll wake up Elley and hear what happened to them.”
“Yes, but, I also mean, how we will extricate from Aubin and Tuniel.”
Evyn frowned. “They’re in this with us.”
“You don’t understand, Evyn. We are the last people who should trust a mage. She would kill for your blood.”
“But she literally had a perfect opportunity and didn’t.” She tapped my hand. “Think about it. You were out of it. She could have done whatever to me. They both could have! But they didn’t.”
That sank into me slowly. “We still shouldn’t… It’s not…” I struggled to frame my feelings, long-held training drummed into me against the proof of my experiences. “How did you get her to help? Did they force you into another contract?”
Evyn shook her head. “Not at all. She wanted to help you.”
That threw me. “Pardon?”
“When I felt your shock, your fear, Aubin and I went to find you. We heard voices. When I peered around the corner, you were surrounded. I came up with an idea, that Aubin and I would pick them off one by one.
“Then Aubin told me Tuniel was here, and we met up with her. I was a bit scared at first, I’ll admit. I didn’t know what a mage would be like, but she got straight to it. She said travel mancers and mages had been busy bringing a lot of troops to the mountain, so she came immediately. She heard you tell Gavain that Aubin was not guilty of anything, that you were taking the blame for it all. Aubin was really touched by that. You can tell because his ears go pink.” My chest felt tight all of a sudden. Evyn cocked her head at me, then grinned. “He redoubled his efforts, and Tuniel said she could handle the rest when there were less of them, that she would be willing to do that for you. I didn’t even need to ask her.”
My jaw opened and closed. “I… There must be some way they seek to gain from this.”
“I think they’re trustworthy,” Evyn whispered.
“She used your blood,” I pointed out, remembering Evyn drawing the knife up her forearm. I glanced at the edges of the bandage underneath the sleeves of her shirt, the tightly wrapped gauze familiar to me from whenever Aubin had ministered to a deep slash or graze of mine.
“When Gavain spotted what we were doing, we had to change tactics. Tuniel said there were still too many. I asked what would happen if I powered her up. She didn’t know but she was willing to try.”
“I expect she was,” I said, biting off each word.
Evyn rolled her eyes at me. “It was amazing. She caused an earthquake with my blood. She had that much power that she completely aligned with the mountain; she could get it to do anything! She opened up channels to the caves below and dumped the men in there.”
“What about the men you pushed onto Earth? What became of them?”
“Aubin and I dragged the others back in from Earth later and pitted them as well. They are still in there, as far as I know.”
I took a breath, letting this all settle into my tired mind. “I… I’m scared, Evyn. I can’t protect you from them if we’re wrong.”
“We’re not wrong. You’ll see.” Evyn smoothed my face.
Panic coiled, ugly and fanged, around my chest. “I was a protector. I protected the king, and I swore to protect you. I’ve failed utterly. It’s all I’m supposed to do, it’s what I’ve trained to do, and I can’t do it anymore. Without my skills, I am nothing.”
Evyn winced. “I’m not going to sugar-coat it. We will need to do some work. We’ll get Gadamere or another healer to look at you and give us a real prognosis beyond what we can guess. We’ll rehabilitate the shoulders, do exercises and stuff. If it helps, we can go to Earth and get them to do surgery, but Aubin thinks the drugs they use might hurt you. He also got a bit funny about the idea of opening someone up to operate; he called it barbaric. In the meantime, maybe you can teach me something? I need to learn anyway. And I’ll teach you how to ping so we can both get away from stuff. That way, this time next year, we’ll be even stronger than we were before.”
“We don’t have a turn, Evyn,” I argued, trying not to shake my head because it was too painful. “We need to wake Gough up and fight now. Torgund has Special Forces at his beck and call. He will be trying to silence Gough. He probably knows where he is, he put him there…” I trailed off. “Or did he? Why not kill his brother? Why keep him here in a magical sleep?”
“My guess is he got Waker to do it and didn’t bother to check details.”
Perhaps. That was careless of him. “How did the Oberrotian Ambassador for Daron get the MasterMage of Oberrot to commit treason? What does Waker get out of this that she cannot get under Gough?”
Drawing in a sharp breath, Evyn said, “That’s why Mum isn’t here.” She sat up. “Waker must have found out about Mum being Earthian somehow. Under Gough, she cannot have her, but under Torgund, she can.”
Reflexively, I tried to hold my soul. My arms merely twitched, and I bit my lip from the pain. When it cleared, I said, “Evyn, I’m so sorry. That must be the reason, and how Torgund was able to secure such a powerful ally.”
Silence surrounded us for a time. “Tuniel said…” I hesitated, but this needed to be said. “She thought you’d been broken before. Broken and reforged and broken again.”
“Did she?” Evyn sounded far away, avoiding the lure of conversation I dangled before her.
But I wanted to draw her out. “How do you feel?” I asked tentatively. “Let it all out. As much as you need.”
Evyn sighed. At first, I thought she would not say anything. I had decided not to press her when she began to speak, her soft voice flowing buoyant in the air around me.
“My best friend died when we were twelve. We did everything together. He got sick and… he died. Everyone told me how brave I was for being there for him. When he died, I didn’t have him anymore. I had spent all my time with him shuttling back and forth to hospitals, so I didn’t have any other friends anymore either. They had all moved on, and I felt stuck. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Everyone kept on saying how brave I was.
“Dad died. I knew why Dad did it. He couldn’t handle being himself anymore. And worse, I could understand a little of that. Everyone said how brave I was for handling that, but then they started avoiding me. I understood that. I kind of wanted to avoid myself too.”
Her voice wrapped around me the same way I wanted to wrap my hand around hers.
She went on quietl
y, “I first thought seriously about dying when I was fourteen.”
I jolted beside her, the pain shooting across my shoulders half as bad as the blow against my heart. “Evyn!”
She nodded. “Planned it all out. Wrote some notes,” she said. “Mum came back early from one of her trips and took me home from Gran’s and saw I was acting funny. I didn’t go through with it because… I didn’t want anyone to find me. I told her, and she was so, so angry. Angry and sad. It hurt me, so I promised her I wouldn’t hurt her again. She said how brave I was.”
Her voice trembled, as if on the edge of a precipice. “But I’m not brave, Thorrn, I just don’t say anything. I keep it inside because revealing it upsets people. I’ve never let this out before. People in school had no idea; they just made fun of me because I was the loner. I kept my head down and stuck it out because I had promised Mum, but I imagined what not feeling anything would be like.”
She shook herself. “Then Mum sat me down and told me about this fairy-tale other world where she lived like a princess. I thought she’d gone mad until she showed me. Grey grass is kind of hard to fake.” She smiled up at me. “Mum told me I had another half here, someone who would complete me, that the reason why I felt empty and lost was because I hadn’t found him yet. But I was wary of looking for something to fix me. I knew it would not be that easy, but it was nice to think that there’s a magic thing somewhere that will change everything and make me normal.”
My stomach curdled with dread. “Evyn…”
“Let me finish. This story has a nice ending.” Clearing her throat, she continued. “You took one look and booked it. I was actually used to that since I reject myself all the time. But something in me wanted to show you up. I wanted to prove to you that I… was someone, I guess, and I wanted to show myself what I could do.
“I turned up to your training. There was bullying, but I was used to that. All I focused on was trying my hardest in front of you so you could see me. Or, rather, so I could see myself. I plodded on because that’s what I do, I endure, and I take it and I keep on coming back even if I don’t really want to. I knew I needed to do this, to prove to myself that I could.
“When you really rejected me, I thought maybe, actually, I was doing the wrong thing. That I really was useless and a waste of air. I pulled back and went back to Earth. I didn’t blame you. I hated myself, after all, so I couldn’t fault you for hating me too.”
My mouth worked wordlessly, warring between wanting to interject to reassure her, but that would end up defending my indefensible actions.
She saw and held up a finger to silence me. “Wait for the punchline. When you turned up on Earth, I was worried you were bullying me, laughing at my expense, hoping to trick me and bring me back for a really big fall. That was my fear. That if I dared to trust you, dared to trust myself, I’d fail.
“Then you started enduring, plodding on. You even got hit by a car. You kept on by my side and you went out to die just so I could help a woman and a baby get out of a bad situation that had nothing to do with us. You gave me the gift of your life, showed me that my life was worth that to you.
“I’m not brave, I’m quiet. I’m not considerate, I’m a pushover. But you’re showing me that I am worth… something. I’m not sure yet, but I can see it when you look at me. And when you do things like worry about how I’ll cope when you’ve just been tortured and maimed.”
“Well, that’s nice. But I’d like to not be tortured or maimed all that often, so I’d like to show you you’re worthy through other ways, please.” I smiled at her and in the dimness of the cavern she saw it and grinned back. “This is all very big and very heavy.”
“Too heavy? Sorry. You don’t need this right now. I shouldn’t have said anything—”
“No, I meant very heavy for you to carry around like that. I’m glad you shared it with me. I can help you carry it.” I took a deep breath. “Suddenly injured shoulders don’t seem so bad.”
“I did not mean to diminish—”
“I know.” Listening to her quiet breathing, I could not imagine my world without her in it now. “Do you love yourself?” I asked quietly.
“Sometimes. It’s… different than it was before. I’m not putting pressure on myself to be fixed or whatever. But it’s definitely different.”
My eyes stung with tears. If I could show her the depth of my love, would that make a difference? “You’re everything to me.”
“I don’t think we should be each other’s everything,” Evyn said slowly. “I’m not sure what I am to myself, but I can see… what I am to you.” She gently touched my face. “Do you think that’ll get us dreaming together tonight?”
“I had forgotten that was an objective. I was engrossed in understanding you.” She lay close to me, but not close enough. “You could rest on my arm?”
“You’re kidding. It will hurt.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’ll put my hand next to you. Okay?”
I did not like it but assented, and we slipped into a drained and deserved rest.
Chapter 19
I walked along a sandy shore. A welcome breeze blew off the Mid-Ete, the inland lake rippling out and over the horizon before disappearing into mystery. Ahead of me, Gavain and Aleric played along the shore. In a rare break from training, we boys were sent to collect driftwood and shells, and once out from under the eyes of adults, we could engage in high spirits. I gambolled with my friends, tossing Gavain in the sea and wrestling Aleric to the ground. Laughing, I held out my hand to help him up.
His torso was headless, Aleric’s head wearing a shocked expression as it rolled into the water. I scrabbled after it, but Gavain picked it up by the hair. “Give it back!” I cried.
Gavain hooted, running off with Aleric’s head. I chased as hard as I could, but the sands were slippery and I kept stumbling, falling into the mud. When I tried to lever myself up, my hands sank into the mire. I couldn’t move my arms; they were fixed and frozen and stuck as firmly as if someone held them. My head sank into the morass and mud filled my mouth as I screamed.
“There you are!” Evyn lifted me up, pulling me free of the sucking quicksand with a pop. She brushed me off and scowled at the mud mire around us. It vanished to be replaced by a wide meadow.
“Oh. We’re sharing dreams!” I looked down at myself. I was a grown man, and my arms were whole again. Picking Evyn up, I twirled her around.
“Hey!” She laughed. “You’ll break your spine. Put me down!”
“We’re in a dream, Evyn! We can do whatever we like!”
“Okay, okay,” she chuckled. “Time to get to work. Where’s this link to Ellesmere?”
I surveyed the meadow, scanning over the variety of blue and purple flowers. “I have no idea. Hopefully we can think our way to it?”
“Oh, great. Well, um. I am dreaming that we’re going down a link to Ellesmere, I guess?” Evyn said. She did not sound convinced.
I grinned. “Perhaps it will be dramatic, and we will have to fight our way through a whole contingent of soldiers.”
“Uhhh…” Evyn shook my arm and pointed. Ahead of us soared a white bridge, and arrayed on it stood a whole contingent of soldiers in dark green. “You had to say something, didn’t you?” she tutted.
“Excellent.” I cracked my knuckles. “Stay back. I’ll deal with these.”
Evyn snorted. “It’s a dream, remember? In dreams I can fight too. I wonder if I can pick out how to be a swordswoman from your memories?”
Pulling my head down, she put our foreheads together, so close we shared breaths. I blinked at her, my eyelashes stroking her cheek. “Aha. Just like the Matrix.” She cracked her own knuckles, one at a time. “Ready?”
Before I could say anything, she took off running into the first rank. A halberd materialised in her hand, and she swept it to the side in a practised arc. The men fell before it in a wave. “Strike!” she whooped.
“Look out to the left!” I cried. She lo
oked right while on her left-hand side loomed a soldier’s raised sword. I skidded in between them, blocking it with my father’s blade. “Your other left,” I said.
“Oh yeah. Oops.” She dropped the halberd to hold a sword. “You know an awful lot about these!” She thrusted, parried, and riposted. “Okay, I’m fending them off, but how do I get them to stop coming?”
“Disarm or disable.” I disarmed my opponent with a strong flick of my wrists, easily twisting the weapon out of their hands. Evyn glanced at me and copied. Soon, we were both surrounded by a pile of swords. “Are you ready to try disabling them?” I asked her.
“Not really.” She bit her lip.
“It’s just a dream,” I scoffed, stabbing one of the men. He slid backwards off my blade and thumped to the floor.
“No!” Evyn rushed around to revive him. “Sorry about that,” she told the dream soldier as she helped him up.
I smiled at her soft heart. “It’s getting boring just standing here. Shall we try walking forwards?”
“Okay.” We walked beside each other, protecting and guarding each other’s vulnerable sides and back. The end of the soaring bridge jutted out into the sky. Below it was a blinding white path.
“I recommend we run for the edge. Ready? One, two, go!” I sprinted. Evyn kept up with me easily. She laughed, and my heart lifted at the sound. We reached the end together, and I grabbed her hand as we leapt. I landed and rolled while Evyn bounced. She came to a giggling halt.
Standing, she held up her hands, a pair of curved Skienien Battlemistress blades materialising. “Hm. You know next to nothing about these.”
I frowned at them. “Indeed. I’ve trained with solid Oberrotian weapons. That’s an import, and a weapon of the Battlemistresses. I’m not sure who would gut me first, my father or them.” Looking around, I assessed the landscape. We found ourselves in a clean but very busy street, lively with music and commerce. It looked like a pleasant place to while away an afternoon.