by LJ Rivers
I got to my feet. “Thank you, Anfaddol, but I have more people to talk to. While I understand and respect your decision, I repeat my hope that you will reconsider in the morning. Please, come see me if you do.”
A string of unfamiliar people—some twenty of them—passed us in the doorway as Jen and I stepped inside Naheena’s hut. I glanced at them, wondering what they were. Their clothes were ragged and smudged with dirt, and they all wore a similar brown scarf around their throats, making them look like part of the same group. A team.
“No luck?” Charlie asked, making me avert my attention. She sat on a bench in the far corner with Rowan, while Brendan and Pullhelli sat by the long table. I noticed, with some degree of delight, that Cynthia wasn’t there. Before we went to talk with the bears, Erica and Jack had gone hunting. They were probably still out in the woods somewhere.
“He’s right to be sceptical,” I replied. “I mean, why would he trust a newcomer like me to bring the truth about the future?”
“Let’s look at the bright side. You have your first allies.”
“True. Zuwar brings over eight hundred wolves to the fray.” I gave Brendan a kiss on the cheek as I passed him and plopped down on the bench next to Charlie. “But now I want to hear about your adventure, sis. What have you got for us?”
Charlie cupped my face in her hands. “Sorry, Ru, but you look eighty years old. When was the last time you slept? Or ate something?” She nudged Rowan with her hip. “Row, get your sister some nourishment, would you?”
“At once, milady.” He poked her gently on her forearm and went to fulfil her order.
The instant he left his place next to Charlie, Jen swooped in, crushing the poor girl between us. “Let’s have it, Hargraves. I want details, preferably with grades.”
“Jen!” I blurted out. “That’s my brother.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, skip the dirtiest details, but give me something, Char!”
It was a welcome break from thinking about war, darkness, or my father, and ever so slowly, I felt the tension ease its grip on my neck and shoulders. Charlie was probably right about me looking way older than my age. I was tired, no doubt about it.
“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell,” Charlie said in a mockingly coquettish tone.
“Good.” Jen put an arm around her shoulders. “That means you can spill all the beans.”
Charlie smiled, but her face soon took on a more serious expression. “To be honest, I think I have to focus on other stuff. We learned a lot in Nidra, and it might be helpful in the upcoming battle.”
Jen patted Charlie’s hand. “I know, chéri. Auntie Jen can wait. Besides, there is no way you and Rowan—sorry, Row—are not an item now. Just putting it out there, is all.”
Charlie gave a quick shrug. “I don’t have a problem admitting to that.”
Even though I had seen it coming a mile away, it warmed my heart to hear her say it. At that moment, I managed to look beyond all the practical challenges and implications it would cause, and instead focused on the love between my brother and—
“Crap,” I said. “I can’t call you little sister anymore.”
“Guess not. Too weird, huh?” Charlie drew her lips down to a sad face. “Unless we get mar—no, I won’t go there.” She straightened her back and shook herself, as if to get rid of all notions of romance. “Let’s get back to business, shall we?”
Jen also leaned back, crossing her arms. “For now, but you and I are going for a long walk later.”
Charlie waved her off. “So we brought a few of Row’s old friends from the streets and alleys of Nidra. They’re fierce fighters, the lot of them.”
I gave her a thumbs-up. “How many?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Oh.”
“No, Ru, really. Each of them fight for ten, honestly. Wait until you see their moves, and how they skip from place to place.”
“You mean those guys who just left were Dodgers?” Brendan said from his place at the table. “Can’t say I’ve had any good experiences with their kind. Least of all those from Mynydd Dewin.”
“Don’t worry, B,” Charlie said. “Having them on our side is a huge advantage. Row has worked with them since he was a kid.”
“Char speaks the truth, Swordmaster.” Rowan placed a tray in front of me and went over to Brendan and Pullhelli. “The Or-Tu-Allan gang knows stuff even the most skilled Sorcerer or Fae could only dream about.”
“Or-Tu-Allan?” Brendan asked.
“On the other side,” I said. “Isn’t that right?”
“Almost, sister.” Rowan smirked. “Outsiders would be a more direct translation from the ancient tongue. Boys and girls that grew up on the streets. Poor, orphaned, and with nothing to lose. They had to find ways to survive without riches of any kind.”
“And why would you have anything to do with them?” I asked. “You seemed to live a protected life inside the Lord of Nidra’s castle walls.”
“I did. Ma worked as a maid there, and although we never had much, we ate every day. The lord let me help out at the stables and hang out with his guards and soldiers. I learned to ride and handle a bow and arrow there. When I was seven or eight, the lord had me perform tricks for his guests at some grand celebration. I stood on the back of his unicorn while she went at full speed across the courtyard. I had planned to shoot a pumpkin off a pole in the middle of the yard, but Ma said it was too dangerous. If I missed, I could hit a guest, she said.” He scoffed. “As if I would have missed.”
“Oh, please!” Charlie groaned. “Could we get back to the Or-Tu-Allan?”
“Where are they?” I asked.
Rowan gestured at the door. “Cynthia took them with her for a little target practise.” He grinned. “She might be in for a surprise.”
“How so?” Brendan said.
“Don’t get me wrong, Swordmaster. Your friend is an excellent archeress, but she might be in over her head here.”
Brendan stood. “I’d better go check on them. She’s under my command, after all.”
What?
“I spoke with Lorekeeper Trevin in Vivana, Ru,” Charlie said, unknowingly pulling me back from my spiralling jealousy. “He knows stuff that’s not in any of the books in Morgana’s library.”
I stared longingly after Brendan as he went outside. “Mhm.”
Jen snapped her fingers in front of me. “Focus, Red. Remember what we agreed on regarding that Fae and your man, right?”
“Huh? Yes, of course. Sorry. What stuff, Char?” But the tip of the metaphorical knife didn’t stop poking at my heart. Not completely.
“He had scrolls that told about portals aeons before Kellewyn opened the one to Egypt. I saw the ancient spells myself. Symbols that looked very much like the ones on the cave wall back on Earth.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose, as she always did when she was deep into one of her lectures. “Let me show you.”
She reached under the bench and retrieved a satchel, then nodded at the table where Pullhelli and Rowan sat. “I need some space.”
Jen and I followed her, and Charlie produced a rolled-up piece of vellum from her satchel. Gently, as if it were the original Magna Carta, she rolled it open, and my heart nearly burst out of my chest.
“A portal!”
“Not a portal,” Charlie corrected. “The portal. The original. Check this out.” She reached into the satchel again, this time pulling out a parchment scroll that looked relatively new. “Here’s Morgana’s portal, as we saw it on Earth.”
The drawing on the parchment was done with fresh blue ink, as opposed to the older one on the vellum, which had faded into a light grey. At some places, it was hardly visible.
“They look the same,” Jen said.
“They do,” Charlie agreed. “Except here, here, and here.” She pointed at three symbols on the new drawing. “I’m willing to bet Morgana used Kellewyn’s drawing when she created the portal to Earth.”
“Let me get this straight,” I sa
id. “Kellewyn didn’t use this?” I pointed at the vellum.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
The door swung open, and Brendan and Cynthia entered, laughing. For once, my jealousy was only a distant hum, and I easily pushed it away. Charlie’s lecture was far too captivating.
“What are you looking at?” Brendan asked.
“Shush!” I waved him over. Cynthia came too, but placed herself between Pullhelli and Rowan on the opposite side.
“Right,” Charlie continued. She held her hand over the vellum. “This is more than three thousand years old, according to Lorekeeper Trevin.” Her voice had turned into a female version of David Attenborough, and we all leaned in to absorb every word. “There is no way Kellewyn the Sorcerer was the first to try this powerful magic. He went to Egypt just over two hundred years ago. Trevin was convinced there had been other portals. But they used this map. Somewhere along the years, the map changed. Maybe the original got lost for a few centuries and some Sorcerer or other made a new one from memory. I don’t know.”
She waved her hand over the parchment. “This map will create a portal with other characteristics than the original one.”
“Such as?” Brendan asked.
I thought I could sense a tinge of hope in his voice. It was certainly present in my own mind.
Could it be?
Charlie held her palms up. “I can’t say this for certain, but I believe these discrepancies make time move differently on each side of the portal.”
No one said a word for a long while.
Our lecturer broke the silence. “When Kellewyn went to Egypt to get his beloved Heka back, he found that many years had passed, even though he had only been back in Mynydd Dewin less than a week. Heka was long dead, and they had managed to build a monument in her honour. A famous statue to the people on Earth, in fact.”
“What about Merlin?” Pullhelli interjected. “He also went through a portal.”
“Yes, he did. I have read his chronicles, in which he writes about how he meant to go back, but was captured by Don Hekal knights. During his stay on Earth, he befriended King Arthur, and became a trusted advisor to the king at Camelot.
“A day or two after Merlin had gone, Morgana went looking for him. In his study, she noticed a strange glare around one of the bricks in the wall. We all know how Halwyn uses magic and herbs to make his rather large house appear like a small cottage. Merlin knew some of this magic, but didn’t master it like a Goblin. Morgana looked closer, and found the Sorcerer’s notes, where he described how he planned to create a portal.”
“So she went after him,” I said.
Charlie pushed her glasses up again. “That’s right. She found the spot where he had created his portal, and when she made one herself, she ended up only half a day’s march from Camelot. Or, to a winged Fae, an awr in the air. Still, when she arrived, she learned that Merlin had lived there and, as I said, had become part of Arthur’s court. She also found out that the king and his knights, with Merlin by his side, had marched to Camlann to fight Mordred, a former ally of Arthur’s.”
I shook my head. “Mordred? I thought he was one of Arthur’s knights.”
“He never made it that far, according to Merlin’s notes. After he killed a boy in a lopsided fight, Arthur banished Mordred from Camelot. Years later, Mordred had built an army and challenged Arthur for his throne.”
“Story of my life,” I muttered.
“Anyway,” Charlie continued, “Morgana followed Arthur’s army from a distance, and long story short, she helped Merlin save Arthur when he was mortally wounded. They extracted the king from the battlefield and dragged him back to the portal. A few of Arthur’s knights also went through before Merlin closed the portal.”
“Eight of them,” Pullhelli interjected. “All of whom I’ve had the honour to meet. They pledged their swords to Morgana when she needed them in the fight against the Nadredd.”
“And some even sacrificed their lives to guard Auberon in his shadow prison,” I added quietly.
“Could you swing back to our portal?” Brendan asked.
I felt so bad for him and Jen, and Erica and Jack, too. My quest to reclaim the Avalonian throne had pushed all thoughts of Earth and time aside, at least enough that I didn’t have to fight the fear all the time. Unlike some of my friends, I had no family left there. And although Charlie did, she had told me she didn’t feel so bad if her parents were gone. Losing Duncan hurt a million times more, and I too could subscribe to that. Jack was an orphan and Erica had lost most of her family in the bombings in the Forge.
But Brendan and Jen had left their families behind, and if two hundred or so years had passed on Earth—
“I think the key is in the state of the portal,” Charlie said. “But again, I have no way of proving this yet.”
“Merlin closed his portal when he went through,” Pullhelli said. “That’s what you mean, is it not?”
Charlie tapped her knuckles on the table. “Precisely! Trevin thinks these symbols,” she pointed at the three icons on the ancient scroll that differed from the parchment version of the portal map, “influenced the connection between the two worlds. Don’t ask me to explain it.”
Pullhelli leaned forward, resting his hands on each side of the vellum. “That one is the symbol for Enchantium. The one on your left.”
Charlie moved her finger. “This one?”
“Yes. And the one on the other side has something to do with blood. The one that looks like a wineskin.”
Charlie followed his directions, pointing at a balloon shaped symbol. “It’s a droplet,” she exclaimed. “Trevin said it might be water. Like, the sea or a lake.”
“If it’s mirrored, yes,” said the old Sorcerer.
Brendan clapped his hands. “I hate to interrupt this fascinating back and forth, but are you saying time might not have passed quickly on Earth after all? That doesn’t add up, though. We came from fifteen hundred years in the future.”
I sat down and closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Merlin and Morgana made a faulty portal. As did Kellewyn. When it’s open, time moves at the same pace in both worlds. So far, so good, Char?”
“I think so.”
“And this is because they used the wrong symbols?”
“Again, I think so. That said, we have no way of knowing if the ancient portal drawings would make a portal without this time issue. Evidence suggests, though—”
“Right.” A pounding ache was beginning to press behind my left eye. “When Morgana opened a portal to Earth and sent her people through, she closed it afterwards.”
“Which cut the connection between Avalon and Wales,” Brendan said. “Until you opened it again.”
I inhaled and held the air in my lungs for a moment before exhaling in a puff. “What does this mean for us?”
“You lost me ages ago.” Jen threw her hands up.
I opened my eyes and looked at Charlie. “Hold on!”
She grinned. “Say it, Ru.”
The cogwheels turned in my head, and I ticked off the options on my fingers. “Open portal, time moves at the same pace on both sides. Closed portal, time moves a thousand times faster on the other side.”
“Yes?” Charlie bobbed her head eagerly.
A tear swam down my cheek, and I reached for Brendan’s and Jen’s hands. Brendan took my left and Jen my right.
“What?” Jen put her free hand to her side.
“I never closed the portal on Crochan Island!”
Chapter Nineteen
“Wake up.”
I opened half an eye. “I’m sleepy.”
Pullhelli tapped my shoulder with his staff. “Get up, Your Majesty.”
I rolled to a sitting position, glancing at Brendan who was still snoring away behind me. I had fallen asleep next to him with more hope than I’d had in a long time. Hope that we might be able to return to our own time. And here Pullhelli was, waking me up from my cotton-cl
oud dreams. “But why?”
“There is no better time to train with the shadows than in the transition between night and day. We might not have sunlight, but nature is funny like that. It knows.”
“Fine.” I waved my hands at him in surrender. “I’ll just slip into something other than this linen shirt.”
“Very well. I’ll wait for you outside.” He turned and strode out the door.
I kissed Brendan’s warm cheek, stretched, and got out of bed. Stumbling around for a few moments to find my clothes, I sluggishly began to dress. Fully garbed in my makeshift black hunter outfit, made from robes taken from Auberon’s soldiers, I opened the door to the break of dawn. Or what passed for dawn in this world. There was no rising sun painting the sky in vivid colours and no warmth from its rays. Instead, the early day was dim and grey, shadows dancing between the huts and lifeless trees.
“Walk with me.” Pullhelli extended his arm. I took it, and we crossed the village to enter the treeline. It didn’t appear anyone else had decided that this was the best hour to roll out of bed, as nothing stirred while we walked through the forest.
Eventually, we found ourselves in Gwyn Tala Grove. The place where the peace treaty had gone south, and where I had witnessed my first ever hunters’ union. I knew which of those memories I was most fond of.
“I bet this place was gorgeous once,” I said.
“When the grass was emerald green, and the flowers bloomed in all colours known to Magicals, this was the most beautiful spot in Talani. People travelled here from all across Gwyn Fanon to spend a day or only a single moment in this grove. Some came here to die, others to make love. Most came here to find peace and tranquillity. It used to be a place where people said they felt at one with their essence, as though they could achieve some higher sense of self. It was one of our greatest wonders. The light would fill the grove, bathing it in gold that reflected on the vibrant petals to create the illusion of stardust in the air.”