by Becky James
“Stop. No, that’s worse than a quiescent collar, that’s worse than being a slave!” I scowled at him.
Waker smirked. “I will let the others go. The royals you have rescued. Aubin. The other Thorrn, Aubin and Evyn. And this Evyn you see here.” She passed her hand over my soul’s slumped form. “Even now, I cannot kill her. She has given me a great deal of grief. Parting with her will be difficult.”
“But you know she’ll come after you in the real world because you have her soul and you think you can defeat her there,” alt-Aubin mused.
Waker inclined her head.
“Gough. What about him?” Aubin asked.
“You haven’t managed to find him. He stays in the dreamlands with me.”
“Throw him in as well.”
She smiled, shaking her head.
“Aubin,” I said, my voice wavering. “I am not signing any Thrall contract. There has to be another way out of this. We haven’t tried killing Waker.”
Aubin’s lips thinned. “We’re in my nightmare, Thorrn. Something like this was bound to come up. I am a contractor, after all.” He stepped forward. “I will accept the offer. It will be me who signs.”
Alt-Evyn gasped.
Waker cocked her head. “Very well.”
I closed my open mouth. “Aubin, wait! What are you doing?”
He pulled my arm so I leant close to him. “Waker is determined to kill Evyn, but she’s too powerful in the dreamlands. She wants Evyn to come after her in the real world, and Evyn will do that if Waker has you. Waker may think she can achieve the same effect with me.
“Your task is to convince Evyn to leave me.” His amber eyes bored into mine.
I shook my head, unable to tear myself away from the intensity in his gaze. “That will never work, Evyn would—”
“Lie. Say you discovered I really was just after her blood for Tuniel. Say I betrayed you. Make her hate me, want nothing more to do with me. Say I – I don’t know, make something up. I can’t think about that right now. I have to think about something else. The contract clauses are going to be vitally important.”
Aubin turned, shaking me off, and approached Waker with his shoulders straight. The nightmare Tuniel and Luc melted away as he passed them. A ringing started in my ears, and something boomed far off.
Aubin halted in front of the MasterMage. “Waker. You can take the contract I’m imagining right out of my head, I assume.”
“I can.” It appeared in front of them and she scanned it briefly. “All seems to be in order. Now sign with her blood.” Aubin grimaced but dipped his finger in one of the containers. There was another boom, closer. “That’s it,” she breathed.
Aubin put his bloodstained finger to the paper. As he did, a golden glow shone from his chest, and Waker held out her hands as it grew to envelop Aubin. His chest suddenly expanded, and he was yanked up off the floor as if lifted. He cried out, then clamped his lips shut.
Evyn burst in through the door riding a huge grey beast bristling with weapons, Gough behind her. “What are you doing? You’re all playing her game! Make your own rules! Stop!” Evyn yelled.
“It’s too late, Earthian! He has freely given me his spirit,” Waker crowed. My stomach plummeted as the Evyn in chains vanished. “Always check the merchandise before making a sale,” she spat. Aubin’s eyes went wide.
Evyn screamed and reached for him. He stretched toward her and suddenly his body collapsed into the golden glow within himself. Waker held the golden ball in her hands, and her laughter echoed through my mind.
We woke up.
Chapter 23
“No, no, no!” Evyn screamed, waking me up fully. I groaned, sitting up, my shoulders flaring with unwelcome pain.
Beside me, Evyn staggered to her feet, stumbling over Ellesmere who lay blinking awake. I rolled over and up as Evyn fell to her knees, shaking Aubin vigorously. His face was grey and slack, unresponsive.
“What’s wrong with him? What’s happened?” Tuniel shrieked, standing up in a flurry of skirts. She got a lodestone message, halting briefly to answer it and returning in less than a heartbeat. “That was Waker. She says she has Aubin’s spirit, that she has a Thrall contract with him.” Her chest shook. “She needs his body to reunite them and… and she wants me to bring you with it.” Her ice-cold eyes fixed on Evyn. “What happened? What did you do?”
Evyn tapped Aubin’s cheek repeatedly. He lay motionless except for his chest, breathing evenly. “I figured out the dreamlands, how you have to constantly think around what’s in front of you, but you,” Evyn yelled at me. “You just went with it! You walked right into a nightmare and started playing Waker’s game, and she won! She won, Thorrn. Why didn’t you use the dreamlands? Why did you just sit there?”
I rubbed the back of my head, the pain there part soul pain and part something else. “I don’t understand what happened—”
Evyn seethed. “What happened is, I rescued Gough and I taught him how to resist the dreamlands. I got him free, but you were trapped in a nightmare. It took me a while to get in because I was already there. Whoever’s nightmare it was had a place for me already so it was harder to get in.”
I passed a clammy hand over my face, trying to sort through the nightmare and the reality – but this, right here, felt like another nightmare. “The Evyn on the wheel. That was a fake. We instantly believed it was you.”
“Why didn’t you imagine me free? And ten foot tall? And anything apart from helpless and needing rescuing?” She scowled. “It’s because you wanted to be the hero.”
Hot anger at the unjust accusation flooded my chest. “It wasn’t even my nightmare. We figured out it was the Aubins’.”
“Aubins? Plural?” Tuniel asked, her hard gaze snapping between me, Evyn and her soul lying spiritless at her feet.
“Yes, there are world jumping versions of us around…” I refrained from telling Tuniel that apparently we were married. She was married to the slave version of me. “In any case, it was his nightmare. His nightmare where Tuniel… turns against us.” I put a location on my father’s sword, turning my head to watch the mage.
Tuniel’s face darkened. “Now I have no choice. She has Aubin’s life in her hands. And… And he’s a Thrall. What could possibly have been so bad that he went willingly into something like that?”
Both women looked at me. I couldn’t tell which one was angrier with me.
“I… He…” I looked at Evyn’s upturned face, the tear tracks down her cheeks. At Tuniel’s angry and fearful gaze. Finally my gaze rested on Aubin’s body, a corpse without its spirit, somehow still breathing but lifeless all the same.
Staring at him, I said, “He asked me to lie to you. To get you to hate him. I can’t do that to him. He went willingly to get us out of the dreamlands, Ellesmere and Gadamere too, and those other versions of us we found. He doesn’t want us to come after him because Waker wants Evyn to face her in the real world. The MasterMage could not defeat you in the dreamlands, but all she has to do is stab you here and you’re dead. Aubin wants you to stay away from Waker.”
Evyn’s face twisted. “Well, too bad. She has my mum, and now she has him.”
Tuniel nodded slowly. “I cannot disobey an order from my MasterMage, and certainly not while she holds my soul. I must bring you to her.” She stroked Aubin’s face.
“If you do that, she’ll be able to control him. He will be her tool for life.” I bowed my head. “I could imagine he would rather be dead than—”
“No. No, Thorrn. You don’t get to make that kind of decision for someone.” Evyn bristled. “Some life is better than no life at all.” She screwed her fists shut. “Why didn’t you explode the place, or imagine it full of Special Forces on your side, or… or anything!”
I had no answers for her. Searching for any excuse to fling at her in the hopes of placating her would be disingenuous. “I’m sorry. I failed.”
“You did. You really did.” Evyn’s glare felt nothing less than harrowing.
>
I took a breath, screwing my fists tight despite the pain. “He… He went instead of me.” They looked up. “Waker wanted me. She felt that would guarantee you’d come after her.”
“And you didn’t? You let Aubin do it?” Tuniel asked.
“He insisted,” I said, my voice low.
Tuniel’s eyes narrowed. “If he insisted, then who negotiated the terms? Who produced the contract?”
I kept my gaze lowered. “He did. He took over from the start, he kept saying that he is a contractor.”
Tuniel frowned at her soul. “He is. A spectacularly good one.”
“He didn’t spot that the Evyn in there was a falsehood—”
“That doesn’t matter. We got you all back and some of the royals.” Tuniel bit her lip, thinking quickly. “You sneaky, clever thing,” she smiled, patting her soul’s cheek. “Very well. Let us reunite his body with his spirit, shall we?”
Evyn frowned. “Why are you so happy all of a sudden?” she asked her.
“He was in charge. His nightmare, you said? Well, he turned that to his advantage. It became his world and his terms, and with his terms, Aubin always succeeds.”
Some of her optimism buoyed up my low spirits. Could Aubin really have outwitted Waker?
Putting a hand on her hip, Tuniel tapped her full lips. “We’ll have to think about whether we bring you into the MasterMage’s Palais or just outside. I’ll need to analyse what he said to you and how he said it. Come along, we may as well start now.”
“We can travel on the Earth side. It’ll be quicker,” Evyn said. “I can put Aubin in the Evyn Rose and we will get there by barge.”
“We can’t take a mage to Earth!” I protested.
“Journey Mage of Stone,” Tuniel corrected me with a scowl.
“We can’t take a Journey Mage of Stone to Earth!”
Evyn murmured, “You’ll be good, won’t you, Tuniel?”
Ellesmere’s eyes focused. “Oh. Thorrn, dear. I had the most lucid dream… Where is Gadamere?”
Tuniel looked up, then nodded. “He’s awake. Someone should retrieve him and bring him down.”
“I’ll do it,” Evyn said, standing up and heading for the exit of the small cavern.
Struggling to my feet, I said, “I’ll come with you—”
“I don’t really want you near me right now.” Evyn did not look in my direction.
“It will be well, Tuniel thinks he out-thought Waker—”
Evyn held up a hand and walked out, long hair bouncing with every stride.
“I… I did my best,” I called after her.
Tuniel scowled. “It sounds like you could have done more.”
“I—” I opened my hands helpless in front of me, grasping for a solution that wasn’t there.
“I don’t want to talk to you either,” Tuniel snapped, settling to the floor next to Aubin and shoving a saucepan of water on to boil. “See to your queen.”
Ellesmere lay blinking on the cold stone floor. I got my legs underneath me and moved to get her water, my shoulders aching. I managed to help her sit up, but that was by offering myself for her to claw her way up my arm.
Ellesmere drank deeply and smiled at me. “Thank you for saving us.”
I nodded, then I lowered my head. “I had nothing to do with it. It was Aubin. He gave himself up for you.” I explained about Waker tricking us. “She wanted me to start with, but I refused. I’m… a coward, Your Majesty. And I’ve been injured, maybe for moon cycles or a turn. I am of no use to you. I should have given my life for you but when it came to it, I baulked. I couldn’t even do it for my soul.”
Ellesmere touched my chin, drawing me up to face her. The queen’s eyes were awash with compassion. “My dear, no one should give up their life lightly. I’m not saying Aubin did, but was every possibility explored?”
I stared hopelessly into the cup of water I held for her. “Evyn says not. She’s angry with me because I failed to see Waker manipulating us in a dream and failed to work outside of the rules she set us. I tried to get Aubin to stop negotiating with her, but he was firm. He felt that this was the only way to free Evyn and all of us.”
Ellesmere’s blue eyes softened. “Dear, if it was Aubin’s nightmare, then perhaps that was what he believed needed to happen. He was looking for it and he took the opportunity when it came.”
“He did try to offer himself to distract Waker earlier. But why would he…” I halted. “When we found him in his dreamland, he felt unworthy of Evyn. That she was practically royalty and that he was nothing, an apothecarist, outcast from all, including his soul.”
Tuniel bristled at my words. “I didn’t make him an outcast! It was and is the only way to draw attention away from him. It was the ruse we developed, that we live every day. Every time I turn him away it means I love him. He knows that.” She poured the hot water over a bitter brew.
I looked down at the body of the apothecarist, lying limp and spiritless. “I think it still hurt him,” I pointed out. “He feels unworthy of her.”
“And this will tip the balance, do you think?” Ellesmere asked me softly.
I screwed my fists shut. “Love shouldn’t be about balance or who owes whom. Love just is. He didn’t have to do that for Evyn to love him. For me to think of him as worthy of her. No one will be worthy of my soul companion, ever, so this is pointless.”
Ellesmere laughed, and my heart lifted.
“So glad you can joke while my soul lies here helpless,” Tuniel sniped.
My stomach fell, but I rallied. “He isn’t helpless. You said so yourself. He will come out winning this, somehow. He has to,” I murmured.
Evyn came back with Gadamere, and he and Ellesmere touched hands briefly. The single, simple contact seemed enough to hearten and strengthen them both. I tried to catch Evyn’s attention but she blatantly ignored me and went ministering to Aubin again along with Tuniel.
I put the stew Aubin had made on to heat. Lifting the saucepan was almost too much; my arms shook. Ellesmere put her water down. “Gadamere, Thorrn needs some healing, please,” she said.
Putting my arms back down, I said, “My thanks, but do what you can for Aubin first.”
“Oh, so now you’re thinking of him?” Evyn snapped. “Great. Well done. There’s nothing to be done for him, Thorrn, and you know it.”
I held my tongue. There was nothing I could say that she wanted to hear right now.
For a wonder, Tuniel waded to my defence. “Would you prefer it to be your soul companion lying here, his spirit in Thrall to the MasterMage? Because that’s what Waker wanted. Aubin stepped in because he knew Thorrn would never be capable of the mental twists required to trick Waker out of a Thrall contract.” I tried to keep my face clear of the surprise I felt. Tuniel sat back. “If he did it confidently, then I will be confident that he knew what he was doing. Meanwhile, it would be useful to have a brute around just in case we need to bash something into submission instead of using our brains.”
I let out a resigned sigh. “That’s what I’m good at. That’s all I know. That’s all I am. I’m sorry I tried to fight Waker but that is, thoroughly, all I know to do. I’m meant to fight, and I’m meant to die. I baulked at doing the second part.”
“You’re more than a fighter, Thorn,” Evyn said. “You’re smart and insightful, but I’m still mad at you, so I’m going to stop complimenting you.” She passed a hand over her eyes. “You should get your shoulders seen to. Let’s see what the prognosis is.”
Evyn sat next to me without touching me while Gadamere carried out an investigation. I closed my eyes and held the pain deep inside as he first probed and then started to do wholesale magical work regrowing and replacing torn muscle fibre. “There’s some strain here,” he said, moving his hands across my burning shoulders. “What did you do, fall?”
“I was hoisted up with my arms behind my back. Gavain learnt it from Torgund. He meant to maim me permanently.” I winced.
“You’re
lucky. It didn’t do all that much damage.” I set my jaw at that. The pain I had been in told an entirely different tale.
Evyn’s lips twisted. “How is he? What’s the situation, how long will he be hurt?” she asked. I turned my head to her and, to my surprise, found the movement pain-free.
“You should be feeling sore for a bit longer, but I’ve repaired the major damage.” Gadamere leant back, flexing his fingers.
“Can I fight?” I asked. Tuniel rolled her eyes.
Gadamere nodded. “Yes, but you’d be better off resting for a while, though.”
“Thank you, Lord Gadamere.”
“Thank you for pulling me out of that dream,” he grumbled, embarrassed, shuffling off to sit next to Ellesmere. They sat in a similar fashion, upright and regal despite being in a rough-walled cave, but smaller mannerisms spoke of their strong bond with one another. They kneaded their fingers in the same way, and when Ellesmere winced straightening her back, Gadamere smoothed it, seemingly without thinking.
I watched them enviously.
We took a moment to regroup, packing our equipment while the queen and Gadamere recuperated. I deliberately kept moving; I’d lain prone for long enough, and the impatience tangling Evyn’s and my heart together was almost too much to bear when standing still.
“It was quiet here, until everyone woke up screaming, but Rhona and Special Forces are closer,” Tuniel reported to Ellesmere and Evyn. “We would be safe in the Labyrinth otherwise, but the monsters may be able to scent us and flush us out.” Tuniel wrinkled her nose at me. I scowled at her, but when her back was turned, I quickly sniffed my uniform. I needed a bath with urgency. Biting my tongue, I refocused on the group.
“We want to move Gough’s body somewhere safer,” Ellesmere replied. “Ideally Tergue Hall, the real one. I have a base of support there, and we can start to move against Torgund. Although” – Ellesmere’s face creased – “as I am not of the bloodline, and a mage to boot, I worry that I will not garner the support I need. I will not be able to command castle troops, nor the obedience of the lords.”
Gough’s body still rested in the hiding place Waker had prepared for the royals. He had not been freed; his spirit walked the dreamlands, and no doubt Waker had put stronger measures in place against him to hold him fast. “The MasterMage has invited war and broken the Accords. For what?” I wondered, then realised I had spoken aloud.