by Dorian Hart
One soldier, a woman with a uniform more elaborate than the others, kept her spear steady. “That’s ridiculous. Why would the warchief send you to warn us instead of coming himself?”
Aravia continued to cast her spell while Dranko spun his lies. “We’re double agents. We’ve been working for Davarian for two months now, and we’ve ferreted out a—”
“What is the day’s password?” asked the woman.
Uh oh…
“Davarian didn’t tell us,” said Dranko. “There wasn’t time.”
“I think you lie,” said the woman. She pointed to Aravia. “You, stop your magic, or we’ll do it ourselves. The rest of you, down on your stomachs.”
Aravia didn’t stop. A tall soldier poked a spear toward her over Dranko’s shoulder; Dranko caught it just below the point and held the haft in his right hand, even as he kept holding up his left in a gesture of supplication. “Are you insane?” he shouted. “You’ll get us all killed!”
“Down on your stomachs!” insisted the Kivian woman.
Was Aravia almost done? And where was Tor? Pain flared in Ernie’s leg with each frantic heartbeat. He had already lost track of how long they had been there, on what was presumably Kivian soil. He was so confused.
The ground rushed up; Grey Wolf had dropped him! Ernie landed awkwardly, the spear pushing further in and nearly blinding him with pain. The wound had started to clot, but now fresh blood welled up around the spear tip. He screamed, though he tried not to, and when he rolled over to take the pressure away from the dragging weapon, there was Grey Wolf on the ground with him. The mercenary had dropped to his hands and knees, panting, face screwed up.
“Hells, it’s happening again. My guts…”
Grey Wolf groaned, and the world changed a second time. This time there were trees.
All around them straight red-brown trunks rose into the sky like ancient pillars of a once-great woodland empire. The sky darkened, the breeze shifted, the air warmed. At first Ernie thought they had teleported, but the soldiers still surrounded them and Aravia still chanted. Were they back in Charagan somehow? No, this was not the forest near Seablade Point. The trees were strange, unfamiliar animal noises sounded from high up, and in the sky beyond the treetops shone a dark green moon that was much, much too large.
And yet, somehow, in defiance of all sense, they hadn’t gone anywhere at all. There was the arch, and the road leading to the army camp, and the sun on the eastern horizon, but at the same time the ground was loamy soil, and one of the trees grew right up through the solid stone of the arch. It was as though two different worlds were interposed, day and night, mingled somehow, occupying the same space.
The soldiers’ attention was diverted from Horn’s Company. They looked up in fear and wonder at the trees, at the oversized wrong-colored moon. And in that moment Tor came hurtling through the archway, barely dodging a tree that shouldn’t have been there, a bloody gash across his cheek, his sword held in his hand. He shoved right through the confused mass of Kivian soldiers, miraculously kept his balance, put one hand on Aravia’s shoulder, and extended his leg to touch both Grey Wolf and Ernie.
“This would be a great time to leave,” he said.
The timing was perfect. Aravia uttered a few final syllables, and just as a swarm of pursuing Kivians popped out of the arch, everything vanished. The noise, the trees, the Kivians, the moon—gone as though all the chaos of the past half-minute had been dropped into a trunk and its lid slammed shut. Now they were gathered upon a gentle grassy hill dotted with puddles, as if it had recently been raining. A squirrel-like creature chittered its annoyance at them from a few feet off and vanished into a hole. There was no other living creature in sight.
The pain and the spear, those were still there. Ernie gingerly lifted the haft off the ground to ease the pressure, then looked around. Aravia was sprawled out, asleep or unconscious after casting her spell. Grey Wolf lay curled up on his side, eyes tightly shut.
Tor stood above all of them, panting, a grin on his face despite bleeding from five or six different places. “We made it! Aravia did it!” But his smile faded as he turned a full circle in place. “Where’s Kibi?”
Ernie looked around, blinking away tears. The stonecutter was not among them. Morningstar had been in his arms, but now she lay on the ground next to Aravia, also out cold.
“It always takes him a few seconds to show up after Aravia teleports us,” said Dranko.
The seconds passed and drew out into minutes. Ernie, waiting for his turn, watched as Dranko patched up and bandaged Tor’s various injuries. Tor told his tale as Dranko worked. As soon as Aravia had gone through the arch, Tor’s illusionary disguise had failed, and the Kivians realized they had been deceived. Tor had been obliged to execute a fighting retreat, and he made it sound exciting, but Ernie’s heart sped up just thinking about it.
After Dranko had mended Tor, he offered Ernie a leather strap. “Bite on this if you have to. The next few seconds are not going to be pleasant.”
Ernie nodded. Courage!
At a nod from Dranko, Grey Wolf (now fully recovered) yanked out the barbed spear from Ernie’s leg.
That was the most painful (as well as the bloodiest) moment of his life, worse even than when he had once misjudged the temperature of a brick oven and burned his hand. But the pain did not last long; Dranko channeled Delioch’s blessings, erasing his wound as though it had all been a dream.
Morningstar and Aravia came awake not long after, and they all took drinks from their water skins. Ernie prodded his leg, marveling at the lack of pain. Still, it was impossible to be cheered by his recovery, or even by their miraculous escape from the Kivian army. After an hour, there was no longer any question. They had left Kibi behind.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“We can’t go back for him.” Morningstar knew how this would go. The rest wouldn’t like it, but it was the only sensible course.
Ernie immediately objected—of course. “We can’t just leave him with the Kivians. They’ll kill him!”
Dranko lit one of his disgusting cigars, sending its foul smoke trailing downward and oozing along the ground like a sickly sea creature. He looked dazed and pale after channeling for Ernie, and the hand holding the cigar trembled. Sunken pouches of purple hung beneath his watery eyes, and tiny spider webs of broken veins showed through his cheeks. She felt a welling of concern for him, until he opened his mouth.
“They’ll probably torture him first.”
Morningstar grimly agreed that was likely, but it was a pointless thing for Dranko to have mentioned. All it did was bring Ernie to the brink of tears.
“He might not be in the clutches of the Kivians.” Aravia pointed to Morningstar. “Kibi was carrying you. Was anyone else in physical contact with Morningstar at the moment I teleported us? No? Since Morningstar arrived, Kibi did in fact teleport as well. He simply didn’t go where we did.”
Ernie frowned. “Are you sure? We know magic doesn’t always work properly on Kibi.”
“No, I’m not sure. Kibi’s magic-resistant nature is baffling. But all of my previous teleports have eventually landed him on target, and random teleport is simply a related variant with the same core words and gestures. The possibilities as I see them, in what I deem the order of their likelihood, are the following: that he teleported to a random spot at a similar distance out; that he teleported, but his resistance drastically reduced the distance dislocated; or that he didn’t go anywhere at all and is thus certainly a captive by now, if not dead.”
Grey Wolf paced back and forth, running one hand through his hair. “If it’s that second one, he’s probably still smack in the middle of the army, which is just as bad as him not having gone anywhere at all. Unless he landed conveniently next to a giant boulder, he has as much chance of hiding or sneaking away as a blind bull.”
Morningstar squinted toward the rising sun. “I don’t understand why it’s morning. It’s as though six hours passed without us noticing.”
“Kivia must be thousands of miles from Charagan,” said Aravia.
“What does that have to do with it?” asked Dranko.
Surprisingly it was Tor who answered. “Because Spira is a giant spinning ball. That means the sun is shining on different parts of Spira at different times.”
Aravia looked impressed, an expression she didn’t often wear. “You’ve studied astronomy?”
“Sure,” said Tor, smiling to Aravia. “Cawvus taught me all sorts of things. Math, heraldry, lots of boring stuff like that.” His smile vanished, and he looked worried. “Uh, not that it was all boring. My astronomy lessons were actually quite fascinating!”
Grey Wolf stopped his pacing and stared at Tor. “You’ve been tutored in math and astronomy, and you lived in a castle. I know you don’t want us to know your real name, but it’s also true that you look improbably like that Kivian warchief. Is there something you ought to be telling us?”
Tor turned red and looked guiltily at Ernie. Grey Wolf crossed his arms. “If you know something that could be relevant to our current task, we need to know about it. We have too many secrets from one another.”
“Agreed,” said Dranko. “Why don’t you go first, Ivellios.”
Grey Wolf glowered. “If I’m keeping anything secret, I can assure you I’ll let you know if it becomes relevant.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” said Ernie. “Just trust me. Tor’s secret doesn’t matter—anymore. Let’s just be thankful things worked out the way they did.”
Grey Wolf stared long and hard at the two boys. Morningstar hoped he wouldn’t push it; the last thing they needed right now were distractions born of strife.
Ernie squirmed under Grey Wolf’s regard but then stood up straight. “We should be talking about what to do about Kibi.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Aravia. “We each went off at random vectors of up to two hundred miles. We have no recourse, no method of locating him.”
“What’s a vector?” asked Tor. “And don’t you have any spells that could find him?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? I packed some extra books for you—”
“Tor, no, I can’t use magic to find him. Location spells grow more and more difficult the farther away the person or object is you want to find. Anything beyond a mile is nearly impossible, even for more experienced wizards.”
“So what now?” asked Dranko. “If we’re not going to launch a rescue, we should find the city of Djaw, right? Kibi knows that’s where we’re headed, and he’s resourceful, if slow. If he just ended up somewhere else, we could end up meeting him there. Too bad I left my handy reference map of Kivia back at the Greenhouse.”
Tor grinned. “Be right back.” He produced the flying carpet from his pack, snapped it open, and hopped on.
“Are you sure you should do that?” asked Ernie. “Someone nearby might see the smoke!”
“I’ll go straight up,” said Tor. “It’ll look like chimney smoke.”
Morningstar could think of several flaws in the boy’s logic but was too weary to mention them. No one else stopped him—the others were probably just as happy that someone was energized enough to take initiative. With a whoop Tor launched himself into the sky.
Dranko craned his neck to watch Tor’s ascent. “So. That was pretty strange, huh? Back there? All those trees, and that moon? Aravia, was that a side effect of going through the arch?”
Morningstar looked at him, puzzled. “What are you talking about? What trees?”
Aravia was also confused by the question, but only for a moment, during which she and her cat stared at each other. “Oh. I didn’t notice, but Pewter did. From his description, we seemed to have temporarily been in two worlds at once, but there is nothing about random teleport that could have precipitated such a state. Fascinating.”
Ernie looked at Grey Wolf. “Just before it happened, you were complaining about your stomach.”
Grey Wolf winced. “Yeah. Right. I felt that tugging inside, like I was about to get sucked into Naradawk’s prison world. But it passed after a few seconds. I think your bracelet did the job like Aravia was hoping, and I stayed put.”
Aravia’s eyes widened. “That suggests the golden bracelet is astoundingly powerful, more so than I suspected. Grey Wolf stayed anchored, as I surmised, but a piece of Volpos instead came to him. Imagine someone expecting to lasso a sheep and pull it towards them, but instead finding they’ve roped a stone pillar. They decide to pull anyway, and end up being the one to move.” She looked briefly at her cat. “Yes, I know it’s a flawed metaphor. Suffice it to say, for a brief time, both worlds were overlapping, with Grey Wolf as the place in common.”
Morningstar shook her head, trying to force her weary brain to follow Aravia’s explanations. “How worried should we be about that? Could Naradawk use that…overlap, to simply move from Volpos to Spira?”
Aravia frowned, as she did when unsure. “I don’t know. If Naradawk were personally in the region of commonality—maybe? It’s not in my area of my expertise.”
“Tor’s coming down,” said Ernie.
Morningstar stepped back as the boy landed and dismounted with a flourish.
“Good news! No enemy soldiers in sight. Aravia’s spell must have moved us a huge distance.”
“Any sign of Kibi?” asked Morningstar.
“I’m sorry, no. No people, and only a few farms and farmhouses within a mile or so of here. But way on the southeastern horizon is a dark dot with little wisps of smoke rising from it. It’s on a river that’s running more or less north to south. Probably a city. It could even be the city with information about the Crosser’s Maze!”
“Djaw,” said Aravia.
Thank the goddess for some good news. “What’s the terrain like between here and there?” Morningstar asked.
“Farmland, a few small woods. At least one orchard. A pond or two. Very green. There are distant mountains to the north and northeast.”
“Wherever we are, the locals aren’t on a war footing,” said Grey Wolf. “It’s possible that we’ve left Kivia behind and are in another country.”
Ernie looked around uncertainly. “Should we find one of Tor’s farmhouses and ask someone?”
“That would seem a sensible course,” said Aravia. “Tor, were there any farmhouses more or less directly between here and the city?”
“I think so, yeah.”
Ernie yawned.
“We need sleep,” said Grey Wolf. “I know it’s morning, but to us it feels like the middle of the night. It’s been a tiring, stressful day, and I’m guessing all of you priests and wizards could use some recuperation time. I propose we sleep here for five or six hours; Tor, Ernie, and I can share the watches while the rest of you recover. Then we’ll stop at the nearest farm for directions, march until the sun goes down, and camp again for a proper night’s sleep.”
That sounded perfect. Morningstar still felt light-headed and weak from invoking Ell’s cloak. She had a better sense now of why Dranko looked so haggard after he channeled. Mortals were not meant to be conduits of godly powers.
Despite her months away from the dark halls of her church, it was still as natural as breathing to find sleep while the sun rose. She settled down in her bedroll and closed her eyes. Today she would try something new. Today she would look for allies.
* * *
The avatar was absent. Morningstar waited a few minutes in her grassy moonlit glade, feeling the Tapestry of Dreams around her as if it were silk passing through her fingers. Here in the shadows of her quiet dream space, she absorbed peace and drew strength from it.
Idly she manifested a wooden cup of cool water and brought it to her lips. The Tapestry was a patchwork of connected places, all the rooms and fields and towns and dark spaces of countless dreams, places that remained once the dreamers awoke. The Ellish avatar had taught Morningstar that the fabric of these places could be changed, manipulated—easily, once the dreamers ha
d abandoned them, but with difficulty while they still inhabited their illusions. Such control of the Tapestry would be vital when the time came to battle Aktallian Dreamborn.
The sea would prove no hindrance, the avatar had said. Morningstar allowed her awareness to drift, away from the glade, outside of the Tapestry altogether, to the misty borders of the dreamscape. From there she could see the dreams of those she knew, each like a tiny star twinkling in a field of purple cloud. Among those in Horn’s Company, only Ernie and Grey Wolf were dreaming at the moment. If someone were well disposed toward her, she could enter their dream, even affect it. She had done that once before with Kibi, to soothe his unusual nightmares born of rising above the ground on the flying carpet. She doubted that she could enter Ernie’s dream; the boy didn’t trust her. Even after all they had been through, Ernie hadn’t yet come to grips with the sorts of acts, the sacrifices, that would be necessary to save the kingdom. He mistook her steady practicality for heartlessness.
Grey Wolf’s dreams were troubled. She probed at the edges, thinking he would be more amenable to her approach, but his mind was turbulent, offering no points of ingress. Perhaps another time.
The dreamer she sought was far away—a thousand miles or more to the west if Aravia and Tor were to be believed. The line between thought and movement became insubstantial as she prayed; she cast her awareness far away, across the sea where no men dwelt, no men dreamed. The Uncrossable Sea was a black void to her senses here on the edge of the dreamscape…except for one brilliant star near its center. That was…unexpected. She ought not be able to detect the dreams of those she had not met and established some rapport. But somewhere below, perhaps on an island or adrift in wreckage, slept a single dreamer, her mind dazzling in its might and purity. She felt an urge to focus inward, to inspect the dreams of that solitary soul, but some other part of her mind cautioned against it. This was not her task, and some mysteries were best left alone.