“Yes, when they were originally sealed.”
Mei Li’s head came up sharply and she paused in her preening. She hadn’t heard he was there for the original sealings. She only assumed he had been. Then again, the records for Jingfei and Zaffi were written well after the fact, as the first Tomes hadn’t sat down to write anything until well afterwards. She really, really had to find a chance to pick his brain.
Shunlei kept speaking, “We learned the hard way I couldn’t use fire against them. Tooth and claw barely made much of a dent, too. I was fortunate the group of mages I worked with at the time were clever and resourceful, otherwise we’d be short a country right now.”
Dolan grew excited for a split second, his voice rising in enthusiasm. “But if you’ve fought them before then you know—”
Shunlei gave him a sympathetic shake of the head, no.
“—you don’t know.” Dolan deflated, growling out a choice curse. “Let me guess. You weren’t really paying attention.”
“I was busy fighting, distracting both Jingfei and Zaffi so the mages could work. I didn’t bother to learn or retain what they’d done. The first Tomes was with us, and he’d recorded it. I just remember fire didn’t work with either demon.”
“Mei Li knows all of this, doesn’t she?” Rone demanded.
“Yes. It’s why she’s concerned.” Shunlei’s eyes met hers for a moment.
Mei Li grimaced at him and went back to preening before Bai lost patience and fidgeted.
Huan plopped down on the floor in front of them—some of the only clear floorspace left at this point. “Alright, describe exactly what we’re walking into.”
Dolan obliged, describing what re-sealing a demoness entailed. Gen, Tengfei, and Ling Ling all drifted into the conversation. Chen was asleep in a puddle of his own drool after being preened, Bai close to joining him. No one seemed inclined to wake them up. It was likely they’d spend the night right here.
Mei Li drifted up to listen in for a while, but she didn’t say much. After a moment, she shook her head and left again, braving the outdoors. She didn’t take more than a coat, as she didn’t expect to be outside long. It was just that the heat of the taproom had gotten to her. She wanted to cool off a bit and clear her head.
She stood just off the front porch, looking up at the skies. It was clear tonight, not a cloud to be seen, the stars brilliant in their inky black setting. If it wasn’t so brutally cold, it would be the perfect night for stargazing. As it was, Mei Li’s skeleton rattled inside her skin.
Coming up behind her, Shunlei wrapped the cloak around them both, bringing her against his chest in a friendly embrace. Mei Li startled, but she didn’t mind the loose hug. She sometimes felt she’d been as starved for affection as she had been for intellectual conversation back at that remote village. She leaned into him and helped to hold the edges of the cloak shut in front of her. He was far warmer, and if they stood like this, she could relax outside for a while longer. They stood there for a long minute, staring at the sky. It felt nice, really, this companionable silence.
“You won’t explain it to Rone,” Mei Li finally said, the words soft and low. “But will you explain it to me?”
“Explain what?”
“How you know me without my remembering you.”
“If I do, I risk…other things you should not know quite yet. I have faith you’ll figure it out very soon.”
She tilted her head up and gave him a wicked smile. “The anticipation is proving too much for my fragile willpower.”
Shunlei huffed a soft laugh. “I will give you a hint, however, in regards to the missing records.”
“Hints are acceptable,” Mei Li allowed graciously. In fact, she was dying to shake the answers from his cryptic little throat. But she didn’t. Even Mei Li wasn’t quite sure why. So much was riding on the answer and she desperately wanted to know, and yet…and yet. Something about his expression stayed her. He wouldn’t be cavalier about the fate of the world. Mei Li knew that down to her bones. If he was giving her the time to think about it and come up with her own answer, then she must have that time.
His light blue eyes danced with unvoiced laughter. “There is a way to retrieve them. But you must think along unconventional lines.”
“Unconventional lines, is it?” Alright, this was more serious now. He wasn’t teasing. In fact, he was earnestly giving her a hint he wanted her to follow through on. It was there in his tone, in the intense light in those ice blue eyes. It drove her instincts in turn, as she also very much wanted the answer. “You’ve said something like this before, to not close my mind to other possibilities. Are these unconventional lines something others might think too risky?”
His head canted, a hint of mischief in his expression. “Some might, yes.”
“But you’ll back me if I choose a risky route?”
“Assuming you choose the right one.”
“Ah. There’s always a catch. How sure are you your idea is going to work?”
“Quite, quite sure.”
“Then I’d better figure it out, hadn’t I?”
Mei Li laid awake that night, staring blindly at the ceiling. For all Shunlei had dropped hints, it hadn’t actually helped her much. She reviewed the clues one more time.
Fact one: The solution to the missing records was unconventional.
Fact two: Shunlei knew how to solve the problem, and it was a little risky.
Fact three: Shunlei had met her before.
That last one did and didn’t answer questions for her. Mei Li had figured something strange was going on because, frankly, the man knew too much about her. A person might be able to research someone else and find out a great deal, but no one outside that tiny, gods-forsaken village would have known her adult sizes. So how had he? And it was other things. Her favorite foods, which lotion fragrance she preferred, that she liked two towels to dry off with. It would take living with her to know some of this. So how did he know it all?
The only logical conclusion was: He’d lived with her at some point.
While that was all rational sounding, it still begged the question of when. Mei Li wasn’t a person who suffered from a poor memory. Far from it. She could recall most of her life perfectly (barring infancy). And it wasn’t like the shipwreck had given her amnesia, she remembered the events leading up to it and following it with perfect clarity.
This was all very, very strange. The only thing that could possibly explain it was…the absurd.
Mei Li turned onto her side, still staring at a blank wall without seeing it. When she was about ten years old, she’d snuck away from Abe at one point. He’d been careful doling out books to her, trying to pick not only age-appropriate records but ones with the right timeline for the time-sensitive situations. The time travel Tome was under lock and key since it was not part of any problem and really, most people shouldn’t know about it. Mei Li, an inquisitive child who burned through books, had handily snuck in behind his back one night when he’d forgotten to lock the cabinet and snuck that one out. It had made for fascinating reading.
The spell for time travel was actually quite simple. In the history of the world, three people had employed it, all of them mages. Each time, they’d gone into a key part of the past to help rectify something that had gone wrong, something that had severely impacted their timeline, and then returned. The record from all three had been quite blunt that they had no control over when they returned. When fate—or whatever it was that controlled time travel—decided they were done, then they were abruptly brought back forward to their own time.
One of them had come back not quite whole again. He’d been severely injured in the past and never completely recovered in the future. His account had served as a warning to anyone else who thought to try this.
Mei Li certainly took the warning to heart, but at the same time, she had a certain guarantee no other person had: a dragon who had likely protected her in the past. She fl
opped onto her back again, frustrated. The only course of action she could see was time travel. She literally knew of nothing else that would explain all of this. But was she leaping to conclusions she shouldn’t? Was she misreading Shunlei’s hints? He’d warned her that if she went on the wrong path, he’d pull her back. Which was nice and all, but it didn’t reassure her right now that she’d come to the right conclusion.
“Mei Li,” Rone groaned from the other side of the room. “Will you settle?”
With the full occupancy of the inn, the two women had volunteered to share rooms. Mei Li felt bad that her flopping about had woken Rone up. “Sorry.”
“What’s got you so agitated?”
Maybe Rone would be her sounding board for this. “Rone…I think I have a crazy idea of how to replace those missing records.”
Rone levered up onto one elbow and looked at her a little cross-eyed, not entirely awake. “Alright? Why do you sound torn about it?”
“Because I am. I think I need to travel into the past.”
For two beats there was no reaction from Rone. Then she flailed completely upright, wide awake now. She dragged her purple hair out of her eyes to stare at Mei Li. “You what?! Is that even possible?”
“Yes. There’s a spell for it. I know it. All Tomes do.” Mei Li gave up and sat upright as well. Her mind was too active to sleep.
“You can just casually pop into the past whenever you like?”
“Well, yes and no. Controlling when you go and where you end up is apparently difficult. Each person who’s tried this—there’s only been three—expressed frustration that they didn’t actually hit the day they wanted. And you have no control of when the spell returns you to your present time, either.”
“That sounds more than a little risky. Why are you considering it so seriously?”
“Two things. One, Shunlei’s hints. There’s no way I’ve met him and forgotten. My memory’s too good for that. And he knows me very, very well. It’s obvious I’ve spent a good chunk of time with him, but how is that possible if the adult me has been missing for two years?”
Rone digested this for a long moment. “That’s…I mean, I wondered the same thing. I’ve asked him about it several times. He’s never given me a straight answer.”
“I know, me either, but it makes sense in this context. Why won’t he answer us? Because he risks tripping into a time paradox if he does.”
A frown tugged at Rone’s face, but it was a thoughtful expression. “True, as much as he likes to tease people by not answering questions, he’s normally good about giving you the information you need. I found it strange he wouldn’t answer direct questions involving you.”
“Of course, this is an assumption on my part, but it’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”
“But if you’re right,” Rone said uneasily, “does that mean you’ll actually do it? Time travel? Isn’t that far too risky?”
“It does involve a great deal of risk. I won’t casually dismiss that. But Rone, if I’m right, then I know Shunlei will help me in the past.”
“That’s true, he would. Will? Bah, I don’t know which is correct.” Rone crossed both arms over her chest, staring fixedly at the floor. Chewing on her bottom lip, she mulled this over for a while. “Mei Li.”
“Yes.”
“Is this really worth it? You’re that sure you won’t be able to succeed without the records? I mean, our predecessors figured out how to seal these things once already. I know—I helped some of them. I lived through part of this. The world will survive these evils. It’s already done it once.”
“Sure, the world will survive as a whole. But certain sections of it will be razed to the ground. You know that better than me. You’re right, our predecessors figured out how to seal these things away, but what was the cost, Rone?”
The dragon slumped with a heavy sigh. “High. Too high. You’re right on that. But still, Mei Li, time travel? What if it goes wrong? What if you’re missing for years in the present?”
“No, everyone who went back came back more or less at the same time they started. Usually only a few hours or days had passed.”
“Oh. So to us, it wouldn’t be any real time at all. But those people who went back, did they safely return?”
“One of them was severely injured.” Mei Li spread her palms in a helpless gesture. “It’s not a risk-free venture. Still, the other two returned safe and sound.”
Rone rubbed a hand over her face, inhaling and exhaling noisily. “I trust that Shunlei wouldn’t be suggesting this if there was any possibility you were hurt. Are hurt. Gah, tenses.”
“I understand what you’re saying. And don’t get me wrong, Rone, I think this whole idea is a bit mad myself. But I don’t know how to resolve all the hints Shunlei’s dropped, or the problem resting in my hands, without time travel somehow getting involved. Can you think of any other solution?”
“No, but…you caught me off-guard. Let me think about it. Truth tell, Mei Li, this whole idea sits very uneasily on my stomach. I’d really you rather not mess with the past. That seems like an opportunity to really mess up the future.”
“More than it already is?” Mei Li sighed. She was no closer to a solution now than she had been at the start of this conversation. “It’s fine, sleep on it. I certainly will.”
Rone rolled back over and settled. For three seconds. “If we can’t think of anything brilliant in the next few days, I’ll help you torture answers out of Shunlei.”
Mei Li shared a feline grin with the other woman. “Deal.”
The next day was not as restful as Mei Li initially planned. Dolan had sent inquiries out in Horvath to find other mages willing to help them. In the process, he learned Jingfei was perilously close to breaking through her seal—so much so that the seal was blazing hot to the touch. They did not have time to stop and rest for a day.
Everyone was good-natured about quickly packing back up as the mages went to the east torii of Lost Souls Bridge and performed the necessary seal and glamour over that entrance. Then they loaded up onto their respective dragon allies, flew across Crimson Lake and into the center of the North Wind Mountains, landed, and sealed the other side. Mei Li still wanted to somehow permanently deal with that bridge, but she had other priorities to get through first.
They didn’t have enough daylight to reach Jingfei, so they chose to camp out for the night on the edge of Crimson Lake. With the gates to Lost Souls Bridge sealed, it was safe enough to do so. There was no town on this side—because the people of Horvath apparently had more sense than the ones in Laborde—so it meant for a rough camp.
They went about it as sensibly as they could, the mages pitching in and creating heating charms to stick on the inside of the tents, what few tents they had. They’d kept the amount of supplies down in deference to their dragon companions, who had to carry it all. It made for cramped quarters, to say the least. The dragons stayed in human form and wrapped up in multiple layers of fur to try and combat the cold. People piled up on top of each other so there was no spare space to be found in between bedrolls. No one felt at all inclined to complain about it. The extra body heat meant they were warmer and less in danger of freezing throughout the night.
Mei Li found herself somehow sandwiched between Rone and Shunlei, with no idea how that happened. Their blankets overlapped with each other’s, to share the heat, and while her toes were still cold, she wasn’t shivering anymore. The tension that rode through her slowly relaxed as she found some comfort. Mei Li breathed low and steady, shutting her mind down, seeking rest.
She was nearly asleep when she heard Rone whisper over her head, “Shunlei.”
“Hmm?” he responded, sounding half-asleep himself.
“I think you know very well you’re driving Mei Li crazy with these hints you keep dropping.”
“She informed me she’s determined to find the answer.”
“She has quite enough mental challenge
s right now. You don’t need to be adding to them.”
“In a way, this is the most important one.”
What was that supposed to mean? Mei Li almost considered opening her eyes and asking her own questions, but some impulse stayed her hand. She had a feeling Shunlei might let something slip with Rone.
Rone asked suspiciously, “Are you being vague for the entertainment value? Or is there some other reason for your silence?”
“I’m under an obligation, you might say, to keep this matter secret. But Rone, you won’t need to be patient for much longer. I believe the time to reveal the full truth is coming very quickly.”
“And you can’t say anything more than that right now.”
“No. Not without risking…well, everything. I say as much as I dare. I’ve been patiently waiting for this very event far longer than you. Trust me, I won’t wait a single moment longer than necessary.”
Rone harrumphed and settled. “Fine. I won’t push you.”
There was a long moment of silence.
“How soon is soon?”
“Rone,” Shunlei sighed, exasperated.
“There’s nothing wrong with me asking for a timeline!” Her hiss was barely away from a shout, and several people grumbled at her to quiet down.
“It’s truly a wonder how you reached the age of an elder without expiring from impatience in the process.”
Rone, not abashed by the scolding, retorted with heat, “It’s truly a wonder how we’ve been friends for over two thousand years and I haven’t murdered you yet. Especially considering I know where you sleep.”
Shunlei might have snorted a laugh, but it was so soft, it was hard to be certain. Mei Li felt it more than heard it.
“Fine, I’ll tell you this much: I believe sometime after we defeat Jingfei, possibly Zaffi as well, that’s when the time will be right for me to explain.”
“Oh. That is relatively soon.”
“You see? Even you can wait that long. Now, sleep.”
Tomes Apprentice Page 21