Rowan’s heart ached until it felt like his chest might explode. He swallowed back tears and put his arms around his lover, burying his face in Jason’s neck. Jason returned the embrace, and they held each other tightly for a while before Rowan whispered, “I love you.”
Jason leaned back from him and kissed him. In that moment, Rowan realized--really, truly understood--what a fool he'd been for even considering letting him go.
Behind them, Sara cleared her throat.
Rowan broke the kiss and sighed. “I don’t know where we are,” he told them all. “Last night Sara and I did a ritual to open the Dreaming Gate, using this.” He held up the stone where Lex and Jason could see it. “We didn’t think it worked, but it must have, because we went to sleep and here we are.”
“Were you asleep?” Jason asked Lex, who nodded. “I was, too.”
“Dreaming Gate,” Sara pointed out. “It must only work while you’re asleep.”
Jason cast another glance up at the sun and then tore his eyes back down to the earth. “We’re still asleep, and dreaming now,” he mused. “How else could this be possible?”
“How could we all be having the same dream?” Lex asked.
Rowan pointed at the oak on the far end. “I think that’s the Rune Tree my mother spoke of. It’s carved with old Elvish, and it looks like this stone will fit into it perfectly.”
“Which does what?”
Rowan shook his head at Lex. “I have no idea. But we’re about to find out.”
Sara reached for his hand. “I don’t know about this.”
“Too late for doubt,” he replied. “I don’t think we can get home by going backwards.”
"All right," Jason said, coming back to himself and their current predicament. "We stick together. Lex, you're in charge of Sara."
Sara snorted. "I can take care of myself, thanks. You taught me, remember?"
He gave her a Look. "Don't forget, Agent, you're kicking ass for two now. Don't put yourself at risk if you don't have to."
"She won't," Lex said, and Rowan was surprised at his vehemence.
Sara rolled her eyes and told the Seraph, "Fine, have my back, but don't get in my way."
Lex's face was both impressed and irritated, but he said nothing, merely nodded. Rowan agreed--now wasn't the time to argue.
The Elf took the stone from his neck and walked up to the Tree, wondering if he should be excited, scared to death, or both; he wasn't really sure how he felt, except that he wished fervently that they'd waited to do the incantation until they'd found out more about where this was going to lead.
But, as he'd said, there was only one way forward.
He turned the stone so that the Jenai script was facing out, and pressed it into the hole in the Tree's bark.
He half expected to have to wait again, but almost immediately he felt something change; the carvings in front of him started to move. Each line of text slid to the left or right, as if some unseen eyes were reading it. At the edge of his consciousness, Rowan could hear the faintest whispers...dozens of voices, each repeating the same words in the ancient tongue, words that he couldn't understand...
...and then, out of nowhere, he could.
Language flowed into his mind, the same way he had transferred Elvish into Sara's and Jason's. He heard himself speaking, the words making no sense at first, then rearranging themselves in his head:
"...by the farthest star and the deepest sea, the glowing ember, the flame of eternity...part the mists between the worlds..."
He lost his awareness of everyone else, of the clearing; all he could hear were the voices, voices he recognized from far away and long ago, before loss, before death, before time itself...
Someone was speaking to him, calling him back, but he walked forward, unable to answer. It was calling...they were calling...the mists had parted...the Gate was open...
There was no going back.
Part Ten
"Rowan! Rowan, god damn it, come back!" Jason's fists struck the bark of the Rune Tree until they bled, but it was no use; the portal that had opened in front of the Elf had closed behind him in seconds, and now it was just a tree again. Even the stone was gone. There was no way to follow.
Jason rapped his head against the tree and rested, panting, his forehead bitten by the bark.
Rowan was in there. Rowan had gone on alone--that couldn't be right. Why else were they all here, unless it was to go with him through the Gate? How were they going to get him back?
And how were they going to get home?
Sara and Lex had to practically pry him off the tree, but he assented to their wishes readily enough. He had to think. There must be something they were missing, some way they could reopen the Gate and get Rowan back.
"What do we do?" Sara asked, on the verge of panic herself. "He's gone, Jason, he's gone, what do we do?"
Jason pushed away from the Tree and forced his brain to climb back on the tracks of logic. "We wait," he said. "We make ourselves comfortable and we wait. He went in there to learn something, and we have to assume that when he's done he'll come back out, or bring us in. Whatever brought us here couldn't have intended to leave us all to rot."
"I still don't get why we're all here at all," Sara said. "Rowan read the incantation. I was just sitting nearby holding a flashlight. You two weren't even in the same county. We didn't even all know each other."
"Still," Lex said, "it does make a certain sense, depending on who brought us here. I am meant to be guardian of the Singer. You are carrying the Singer in your womb, Sara. I'm as certain of that as I ever have been of anything. It's my job to keep your baby--and by extension you, of course--safe, so if you were to come here, I was too."
"But why me? Because I helped with the spell?"
The Seraph looked helplessly confused. "I don't know. I just know that where you go, I go."
Sara rubbed her temples. "Great, because that's not going to get annoying."
Just then, the wind kicked up again, and seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, as if a helicopter was landing in the clearing--all three stepped back closer to the Tree, Lex hooking his wings to keep them from being thrown about in the gale, and Jason shifted position so he was in front of Sara.
A shadow fell across the grass...then another...and another...and another.
There was a great rushing sound, as of...wings…
Oh, fuck. Jason knew that sound.
When at last the wind died down, the three of them stood staring, and Jason could hear Sara's heartbeat thundering in her chest.
"I don't suppose either of you have weapons," Jason said calmly.
Lex shook his head grimly and Sara said, "I was in bed. Do you sleep with a gun in your pajamas?"
Jason snorted quietly. "You're lucky I have clothes on."
“Maybe they’re just here for a friendly chat,” Sara mused.
As one, the four Seraph facing them all drew long, curved knives like the one the Agency had recovered from Joshua’s angel.
“Doesn’t look that way.” Jason cast a glance around the clearing for anything that might work as a weapon, but the only potentially deadly things were tree branches, and only to him.
That was when he noticed that one of the Seraph had a spear gun loaded with a wooden projectile, and a quiver full of the same hanging from his belt.
They all looked exactly alike down to the nondescript dark grey clothes they wore—just like soldiers, dispatched as a unit on a mission, and by the looks of it, sent by the same sorcerer who had sent the Seraph after Lex days ago. They carried the same kind of knives…and weapons designed to kill vampires. They had known exactly whom they would find here.
That didn’t bode well.
Not at all.
“If they’re like you, they can’t take off from the ground, right?” Jason asked.
“No. Only from height.”
“So if we can lose them in the woods they’ll have to follow us on foot. All right. I’m going to
keep them occupied, and you get Sara as far away from here as possible.”
“No way,” Sara said quickly. “We’re not leaving you behind to fight them all. If you want me to run I’ll run, but Lex can stay here and help you. Besides, those wings of his will only slow us down.”
Lex looked torn, but said, “She has a point. I can be of more use here.”
“Fine. Sara, as soon as you get an opening you make for the trees.”
“But how will I find you again?”
“I’ll find you by scent. Don’t worry. Just lay low and wait for me.”
“But—“
“That’s an order, SA-9.”
Before she had a chance to retort, the Seraph took a step toward them, raising their weapons with the robotic grace of synchronized swimmers.
Sara moved backwards, edging toward the Tree, while Jason and Lex moved forward.
“What’s the plan?” Lex asked quietly. Jason was surprised, but pleased, that he was obviously not afraid.
“Don’t die,” Jason replied.
The first stake whistled past his left ear, and after that, there was no more time to talk.
*****
The fabric of the dream fluttered like a curtain, and when it stilled, Rowan was no longer in a clearing, or even within view of the Tree itself.
He stood, instead, in a painfully familiar place, one that had not existed for years: the center of the labyrinth outside the Clan Oak Temple.
This time it was night, clear and cool, the sky above flecked with stars that he could see moving in a slow, stately waltz around an axis point that was, it seemed, directly over his head. The sounds he would have expected in this place—wind, birds, the distant songs of Elves and laughter of children—were gone, but the peace he remembered remained.
He still held the stone in his hand, and absently looped it back around his neck as he took in the view he had never expected to see again.
It was definitely the labyrinth he had grown up walking, but beyond it, all around the Temple, the trees were blurry, drifting in and out of solidity the way the trees of the clearing had at first. The Temple itself looked the same as it always had when bathed in starlight. Was the rest of the village out there, too? Did it still exist in dreamtime, or had his mind simply conjured this place up?
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and whirled around.
She smiled.
Rowan fell back a step, hand going to his mouth, the other reaching out expecting his fingers to go through her the way they should a ghost.
"Mother?"
Neneva's smile widened, and she half-bowed. "Son."
He resisted the urge to throw his arms around her; they had never been physically affectionate. Rethla rarely were outside their work, as their touch tended to affect people very strongly even when they weren't actively using their skills. Neneva had always understood that, and besides, there was something in the dignity of her office that kept a distance between her and everyone else, even him, even when he was a child.
"Are you..."
"Am I a figment of your imagination? Are you dreaming me? No, and yes."
She looked exactly as he remembered her, although more like his dreams than in actual memory; here, as then, she had her Winter coloring, her hair white and shining, her eyes pale silver. The land around them was not in that season--was this place, then, frozen in time?
"How can you be real? You died decades ago."
"No, I did not. Come with me, child--there is little time." She started walking out of the labyrinth, and he only hesitated a breath before following her toward the Temple itself.
"I was found in the forest," she went on once he caught up. "Rescued, alone of all the Clan, from our dark and bloody fates. For a long time I thought you were dead, as well--I had heard that the slavers took you, and I prayed that you would die rather than face such an existence."
"I prayed for the same thing."
"But this grace was given to me; I survived, and found a new home, here."
"Here in a dream?"
She paused. "This is not a dream, my son. The Gate is a dream, and the Tree is a dream, but this place is very real. The Jenai created it beyond the mists of sleep so that no mortal could ever cross its borders. This place, and this place alone, is protected, forever, from destruction. They can reach the Tree, but cannot pass through the Gate to our realm. No one can hurt us here."
"How do I get back?" he asked.
She frowned. "For that you must ask the Sibyl."
"Is that where you're taking me now?"
"Yes."
He walked beside her around the Temple, and up the steps to its grand double doors, but try though he might to see what lay past the building, there was only shadow, color and darkness blending into one another and bending around itself every time he looked. It hurt his eyes, and eventually he gave up.
"What do you do here?" he asked Neneva. "Are you Jenai?"
She laughed. "Of course not. I serve them, as will all who survive the genocide of our people. They will save us and the chosen few will come here to act as their acolytes. Your acolytes," she amended, with emphasis.
Now it was his turn to frown. "I don't want servants. Least of all you."
"That is not for me to say," she told him. "Now, through here...you will know her when you see her. She is expecting you."
She pushed him gently through the doorway, and disappeared before he could say any of the thousand things he wished he could have. At the very least, he wished he had hugged her, custom be damned.
Still...she lived. Whatever she was doing here, she was alive. He couldn't help but find comfort in that.
Rowan entered the Temple, his mind full of memories of what it had looked like in his youth. What he found was a bit different.
Rather than the main sanctuary full of light and color, he stood in a stone room, windowless, lit only by the candles that were massed around something at the far end that looked like a wishing well without a roof. The room was stark, without rugs on the floor or stained glass, without any sort of life.
As he approached the well, he tried to focus his gaze on the walls, and for a second here and there he thought he saw carvings like those on the Tree. They, like everything else, drifted out of focus the longer he stared, and his eyes began to water with the effort.
Beyond the well, something moved in the darkness.
Rowan stopped a few feet from the well and waited.
"Weaver," came a soft, almost ghostlike feminine voice, full of wind and shadow.
He didn't speak, but gave a slight nod.
She separated herself from the edges of the dream and came forward, her shape shifting as the trees had, until she became a tall, almost wraithlike figure, draped in layers of shimmering cloth that looked like a moth's delicate wings. A veil covered her face, but he could see her hair, pale and feathery as it fell all around her, reaching the floor. A faint silvery sound like bells or water moved as she moved over the stones. She seemed to float, slither, and undulate all at once, dancing like a column of incense smoke climbing the sky toward heaven.
She, too, wore a stone around her neck, hers hanging from a thin silver chain. She reached up with one hand, its fingers long and spidery, and lifted the veil from her face.
"I know you," he said.
"You do." It was a confirmation, not a question. "Many a long and weary turning have I waited for you to return, my brother."
"Are you the Sibyl?" he asked, even though he already knew she was.
"I am. Of the seven of us who looked into the face of the One and One who fashioned us with Their own hands, only I have passed in this same body since that day."
"So there were seven Jenai originally. How many are there now?"
"At this moment? One."
He started to question her, but she waved her hand, and drifted closer to the well. Her eyes were blue, a dark and forbidding color like the water before her, and he found he didn't like looking into them--recogn
izing her made his body tense and his mind feel something he couldn't name but didn't like. It wasn't fear, or revulsion, but it certainly wasn't love.
"Look into the well, my brother."
Rowan hesitated, and she gestured to him. When the sleeve of her diaphanous robe fell back a little he saw that there were lines running along her forearm that looked like cracks, and indeed, she seemed brittle with age. How long exactly had she been alive? If she was telling the truth, and she had really been created as one of the first Elves, it could have been thousands of years--or millions, depending on which myths one had read.
He hadn't come all this way for nothing, though. He stepped up beside the well and looked in.
She held her hand over the water, and its murky blue depths cleared. "In the first days, we were seven," she said. "Our children became the Clans, the Elves."
He watched. The water shaped itself into the bodies of seven creatures, Elf-like in appearance but godlike in power, able to bend and twist reality at will, to read the future and the past like a child's Rune book, to heal and to create as easily as destroy.
The Sibyl appeared, young and sylph-like, with laughing eyes and radiant skin.
"We were the manifestation of Deity upon the Earth," she said. "I was the eyes of the Goddess...the Singer was Her voice. The Weaver was Her hands."
The water changed again, and Rowan stared at himself...only not. He knew his own face, and there was something in the Weaver's eyes that he knew as his own, but the form he saw in the well was regal, with the bearing of a king, or a god. Where his hands touched, reality was transformed, in accordance with his will. Day became night. The dead drew breath. The warp and weft of the universe were held in balance.
He saw others: the Warrior, with her sword of truth; the Maiden, a child who made things grow; the Teacher, who imparted the wisdom of the Elves to humankind and to their own children; and the Shadow, rarely ever seen, but feared by all who didn't understand him.
The Sibyl spoke again, and he listened with half his attention, watching the scenes play out before him to her narration: "The Shadow was the Weaver's opposite, death to his life. He was also the Weaver's beloved. Of all of us, the Shadow faded first, and then the Maiden. One by one we were killed, or vanished. Only I remained, here, alone, for centuries, as I watched the Clans massacred. I chose a few to attend me over the years--those who were strongest, whose faith was greatest, whom I could trust.
The Agency, Volume IV Page 11